Woman Who Spoke to Spirits

by Alys Clare

  Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by Alys Clare from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prelude

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Afterword

  Recent Titles by Alys Clare from Severn House

  A World’s End Bureau mystery

  THE WOMAN WHO SPOKE TO SPIRITS

  The Gabriel Taverner Series

  A RUSTLE OF SILK

  THE ANGEL IN THE GLASS

  The Aelf Fen Series

  OUT OF THE DAWN LIGHT

  MIST OVER THE WATER

  MUSIC OF THE DISTANT STARS

  THE WAY BETWEEN THE WORLDS

  LAND OF THE SILVER DRAGON

  BLOOD OF THE SOUTH

  THE NIGHT WANDERER

  THE RUFUS SPY

  The Hawkenlye Series

  THE PATHS OF THE AIR

  THE JOYS OF MY LIFE

  THE ROSE OF THE WORLD

  THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE

  THE WINTER KING

  A SHADOWED EVIL

  THE DEVIL’S CUP

  THE WOMAN WHO SPOKE TO SPIRITS

  Alys Clare

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2019 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  This eBook edition first published in 2019 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2019 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  Copyright © 2018 by Alys Clare.

  The right of Alys Clare to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8868-6 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-993-1 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0206-2 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  PRELUDE

  London, autumn 1879

  She is not scared yet.

  She has come to the great city because life in the overcrowded slums of Birmingham is hard, dirty, very often brutal and always under the domination of her drunkard of a father and her two loutish older brothers, an unholy triumvirate who rule every moment of her days (at least one is always out of work, often all three) and for whom, despite her efforts, nothing is ever good enough. All through the spring and into the early weeks of summer she employed every iota of her ingenuity and managed to amass a small hoard of coins, largely by such means as telling her father when in his cups that the stale bread and the fatty bacon cost a farthing more than they did, that the pawnbroker paid a penny less than he actually handed out; sometimes by more blatant stealing, when one of the brothers fell into bed so drowned in cheap alcohol that he was unlikely to notice a small, silent shape slipping a careful hand into his pocket and removing a halfpenny.

  She made her escape at the end of June and, arriving in London, tried for an increasingly desperate and terrible five weeks to find work before coming to understand that, uneducated, unworldly, with almost no practical skills and with nobody to champion or help her, only the oldest profession was going to save her from starvation.

  The only small stroke of luck – everything is relative – was to have fallen in with a group of older women who absorbed her into their number and taught her a few brutal facts about her new life. Their companionship – it couldn’t really be called friendship – helped a little, but it was no compensation for the awfulness of having sex with a stranger ten or twenty times a week.

  Now on this autumn night as she hurries along the Embankment towards Battersea Bridge and what for want of a better word could be called home, she is feeling a very small glow of happiness, for the man who has just been holding her up against a wall while he thrust himself inside her was overcome with lust and finished very quickly. In his hurry to be rid of her he overpaid her, and she managed to slip away, still trying to rearrange her skirts, before he noticed.

  She is seventeen years old, she has reddish-brown hair so long that she can sit on it, a tiny waist and a shapely bosom and hips. Born into another tranche of society, she would probably be courted by handsome men with good prospects. But she knows better, now, than to dream of Prince Charming seeking her out and sweeping her away. It will not happen.

  So, she is lonely, not in good health, barely the right side of destitute and, deep within her soul, ashamed of what she has become.

  But she is not scared.

  That, however, will soon change.

  She has crossed the bridge and is trying to quicken her pace without appearing to run, for she has been told by her mentors that a running woman is a vulnerable woman. Besides, her boots are far too tight and one heel is loose. The other women have also told her to avoid the river late at night if she is alone, hinting at a frightful, lurking danger that, brash and bold though they are, none is prepared to speak aloud. But it is late now and she is alone; the neat residential streets she hurries through to reach the tenement where she shares a dingy room are deserted, few if any lights showing from behind the tightly drawn curtains.

  The fog descends.

  She realizes that she has missed a turning. It doesn’t matter, she’ll take the next, parallel street and double back. No harm done.

  But then suddenly she feels a stab of alarm.

  Just for an instant it seems that a heavy black veil has descended, and all at once she is viewing the ordinary street and its neat, smug rows of houses through something dark and thick. The air has suddenly turned very cold.

  It is a horrible sensation, full of menace and foreboding.

  She quickens her steps and, as soon as it began, the sensation stops.

  But nevertheless she is shaken, her heart beating too fast, her stays cutting into her ribs as she pants for breath. Despite the other women’s warning, despite the tight boots with the loose heel, she breaks into a run.

  She comes to a junction, turns, heads off down the next street. Not far away a church looms up out of the fog, big, grey, solid, reassuring. It is not really on her route home but such is its appeal, in this whirl of anxiety and incipient fear, that she decides to make the short detour. The church’s door is always open, or so she believes. Maybe she will slip in
side and sit for a while in the darkness. Maybe she will try to pray. Maybe – this is a very faint hope – some cheery, avuncular vicar will be kind to her.

  There is someone coming towards her, from the direction of the church. Oh, oh, she thinks, if this man (she decides it is probably a man) has been in the church, he’ll be nice, and charitable, perhaps even spare her a coin or two.

  It is a dangerous assumption.

  She hurries towards him.

  He gives a little gasp as she approaches, as if he has only just noticed her. He is a very good actor.

  ‘Oh, sorry!’ she gasps. ‘Didn’t mean to make you jump.’

  He raises his hat courteously, staring into her face in consternation. He assures her she did no such thing.

  He asks one or two questions: where does she live? Why is she out by herself late at night? May he be allowed the pleasure of escorting her to wherever she is going?

  His voice is genteel, his tone concerned, and she falls into his trap.

  Only when it is far too late does she recall the moment of doubt, when she felt those deep eyes raking her, assessing her, penetrating her, but ignored the instinctive warning.

  She should have listened to it, because it would have saved her.

  Instead, she is going to die: very unpleasantly. After rather a long time in his hands, her dead, naked body will be slipped into the river, her long reddish-brown hair flowing out behind her in the powerful water like a pennant.

  He takes her arm, at first gently but then, pulling her into a dark little high-walled alley as he removes something from his pocket and lifts it towards her mouth, his grip turns to steel, his hard fingers pushing into her soft flesh.

  Now she is scared.

  ONE

  Faced with an unsavoury task which she has no option but to perform, Lily Raynor habitually gets it out of the way at the earliest opportunity. Accordingly, on this bright spring morning in 1880, when the Thames is glittering with spangles and the scent of blossom manages to make itself known above the usual stench of horse shit and sewage, she is drawing on her boots and about to set out to seek audience with Lord Dunorlan.

  She knows he will be at home, and also that he will receive her. He is, indeed, desperate to hear what she has to tell him. She is not as keen to reveal it; in fact, she isn’t keen at all.

  The second boot is on and she stands up. They are inelegant footwear: knee-high and laced, they are work boots, made of well-greased and waterproofed leather, strong yet supple and extremely comfortable. They are low-heeled and Lily can run in them without turning an ankle. Some time after she purchased them, she took the left one to a cobbler in a distant part of town and asked him to sew a long, narrow channel down the inside of it, of a size to accommodate the rigid horn sheath she provided. The cobbler did a neat job and the pocket is hard to spot from the outside, with a shadow of the stitching only just visible. In its sheath inside the channel – she didn’t reveal its purpose to the cobbler – lives a long, fine, very sharp boning knife that belonged to her grandmother, worn from years of sharpening, its brass handle bound with red leather.

  Lily does not anticipate having to use her knife in her new profession. But if she is ever in a situation where she needs a weapon, she intends to make absolutely sure that she doesn’t die for the want of one.

  She puts on her coat and hat, picks up the slim file of papers on her desk and crosses the office to the door, closing and locking it behind her. The middle floor of her house is occupied by a tenant – a minute, scruffy and bad-tempered Russian ballet dancer – and Lily is inclined to believe the Little Ballerina may also be incurably nosy and pretty much without conscience. She lets herself out of the front door, locking that too (the Little Ballerina has her own key and, besides, is rehearsing all day today), and steps out into Hob’s Court, walking briskly along to where it opens into World’s End Passage.

  She is tempted, as she always is, to turn right and go down to look at the river. But the swiftest way to Lord Dunorlan’s house in Eaton Terrace is in the opposite direction, so she turns left up Riley Street, then right onto the King’s Road. Hansom cabs, growlers and several omnibuses pass her, but she keeps walking. Money is tight, and if she can save even the cost of a modest omnibus ride, she does.

  She crosses Sloane Square and all too soon is in Eaton Terrace, looking up at the elegant frontage and the smart, glossy black-painted door of Lord Dunorlan’s town residence. She does not hesitate, but marches straight up the steps and rings the bell.

  She is admitted by the supercilious footman with halitosis who has opened the door to her before. Again without a word, nor indeed any sign other than a faint sneer that he has registered her presence, he stalks off along the corridor and, pausing, taps on a closed door. In answer to some barely audible response from within, he opens the door and says, with the sort of obsequious reverence that a devotee might adopt before a powerful, temperamental and unpredictable god, ‘The investigator, my lord.’

  He does not grace her with a name and pronounces investigator in the tone others might give to night-soil man or even multiple child-killer.

  ‘Show her in, Forshaw,’ says a weary voice.

  The footman opens the door a fraction more widely and steps aside. Lily, not a woman to be cowed and refusing to contort herself to get through such a small gap, pushes it fully open and steps into the room. She is aware of Forshaw closing it, rather forcefully, after her.

  Lord Dunorlan is standing by one of the long windows that open onto the walled garden. This room is his study and it is beautifully furnished with high-backed leather-covered chairs, elegantly carved bookcases, a deep red Turkey rug in front of the hearth and a wide desk, presently clear of papers, books, writing implements or anything else.

  Lord Dunorlan is looking at her. He is an upright man of around the mid-sixties, lean, white-haired, dignified. His expression is a brave smile. He says courteously, ‘Let us sit beside the fire, Miss Raynor, for the air is chill and the sunshine deceptive.’

  Lily, fresh from her vigorous walk, is already too hot and beside the fire is the last place she wants to sit, but she nods, forcing a reciprocal smile, and, removing her gloves, places the file on her lap.

  Lord Dunorlan’s faded blue eyes have shot to it. ‘You have something to report,’ he says dully.

  ‘I have, my lord.’ She goes to hold out the file to him, but he shakes his head. ‘Am I to read it?’

  He makes a vague sound which she takes for assent.

  She opens the file.

  It is unnecessarily cruel to make him wait, so she clears her throat and starts to read her own words. ‘Investigator Y, detailed to observe and record the movements of Subject A, concludes after two weeks of close scrutiny that there is indeed evidence to suggest an inappropriate association, Subject B having been seen in Subject A’s company in what cannot reasonably be viewed as innocent circumstances.’ She hesitates, but this, too, seems cruel. ‘Subject A has been observed to enter Subject B’s residence at different times of the day, and invariably when there is nobody except Subject B at home.’ She looks up, but Lord Dunorlan’s face is hidden by his raised hand. ‘Investigator Y was extremely thorough in this respect, my lord, given the sensitivity of this particular aspect.’ Lord Dunorlan nods but doesn’t speak.

  Lily returns to the file. ‘On the evening of 24th March, Subjects A and B had been in Subject B’s house since just before luncheon, and at half-past eight they emerged and took a hansom to Drury Lane.’ There’s no need, surely, to add that as the pair stood under the portico of the house waiting for the cab, thinking themselves unobserved, Subject A leaned close to Subject B and slowly and sensuously licked right up his face from chin to ear, in a gesture so fiercely erotic that there was an instant and very evident response within Subject B’s close-fitting trousers. ‘They attended the theatre,’ she continues, ‘after which they went to the Café Royal for supper. They returned to Subject B’s house afterwards, it being then an hour after m
idnight, and Subject A did not emerge until ten o’clock the following morning. Nobody but Subjects A and B were within during that time, although a manservant and two lads arrived soon after Subject A had left.’

  ‘As if,’ Lord Dunorlan murmurs, ‘they had been specifically told the time they might return.’

  ‘Well, one could look at it like that,’ Lily agrees.

  The hand is dropped and for an instant the faded eyes blaze blue. ‘How the devil else could one look at it?’ he snaps. Then, instantly contrite, he says, ‘I apologize.’

  Lily nods her acknowledgement.

  After a moment Lord Dunorlan signals for her to go on.

  There is quite a lot more to read, but it tells the same incontrovertible story and quite soon Lord Dunorlan says softly, ‘Enough, I think.’

  He gets to his feet, slowly, levering himself up as if his body has suddenly become an intolerable burden; as if all at once his years have caught him up. He crosses to his desk, leans a hand on it as if in urgent need of support, and then moves to the window to resume his earlier contemplation of the lovely garden, bright with cherry blossom, narcissi, tulips and some brave early irises.

  Lily sits perfectly still watching him. His very posture shouts of defeat, despair, grief, and she wants more than anything to go to him, to take his hand, to tell him how very sorry she is. For, although she is not meant to know and discreetly pretends she doesn’t, Subject A is, of course, Lady Dunorlan: the beautiful, erratic, self-indulgent Lucia Simpson-Halliday, as she was before her marriage, debutante of the season almost a decade ago and her elderly husband’s junior by some thirty-five years. Subject B is the Honourable Jimmy Robertson, playboy, ridiculously wealthy second son of a lord; dilettante and gambler, womanizer; a man who has never had to do a day’s work in his life and never will and who thus is free to pursue and bed other men’s wives to his heart’s content.

  Investigator Y is Lily. She is the World’s End Bureau’s only investigator and, for now, its sole employee, although she is planning to change that imminently. She hasn’t revealed her investigator’s identity to Lord Dunorlan, and has no idea whether or not he has realized that it is she who has been spying on his wife’s movements. She hopes rather fervently not, although really it makes little difference.