The Mysterious Point of Deceit

by Beth Byers

  “Well,” Lisette said, glancing at Severine and then smiling as her mother joined them. “Momma and I would like to know why we haven’t heard of your sister before.”

  “It’s private,” Mr. Oliver answered quickly before Mr. Thorne could reply.

  “So are the things Severine has been investigating.”

  Mr. Oliver’s jaw tightened. “They’re not the same thing.”

  “Aren’t they?” Lisette shot back while Severine idly sipped her coffee, ready to observe the battle rather than to participate herself. She took a deep breath when Oliver barely held back a curse.

  “There are a few things, I think,” Mr. Brand said calmly, “that have made this a larger concern. I think that the first is why.”

  “Why?” Mr. Thorne asked. “Like we said, this is a private matter.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Mr. Brand replied in that same calm manner. He’d have been a good priest, Severine thought, with that steady tone and easy manner. It belied the mind and the stubbornness behind his straightforward expression. “What I meant was that I think we’re all a little more concerned about the motives behind those who insert themselves into Severine’s life now.”

  Mr. Thorne looked shocked. “So you think we’re involved with this mysterious person who manipulated Andre into hurting Severine?” Thorne’s gaze moved to Severine. “Is that what you think?”

  She wanted to say no. In fact she wanted to say a lot of things, but what she said was, “There are grounds for concern on our parts outside of a better understanding of what is driving your own quest.”

  “What’s that?” Mr. Oliver snapped. His cheeks were ruddy, and she had little doubt it was because of his fury.

  “In the simplest of terms, Mr. Oliver, you have been insinuating yourself into my cousin’s life and heart, and I think you know it.” Before he could object, she held up her hand. “It doesn’t make it better, sir, if you insinuate yourself into the hearts of a half-dozen young women. Florette only knows what you do to her, and I cannot and will not watch as you break her heart while you pursue your wife.”

  Mr. Oliver’s mouth snapped shut, and the ruddiness of his cheeks morphed to a mottled purple. He did not, however, bother to lie to them.

  “Perhaps,” Mr. Thorne inserted, “we can take a deep breath and all calm down. We might have reasons for concern among ourselves, but we also have a history of relying upon each other.”

  “I think,” Severine said, “that my own worries about who might be trying to slip into my life will leave me cursed with paranoia that may follow me beyond these events. I should not like to feel this way, always. You did help me, Mr. Thorne, at the big house. Your presence along with Mr. Brand’s kept me from the asylum my brother hoped for and the grave as an alternative. I haven’t forgotten that, and neither have the rest of us.”

  Mr. Thorne pushed aside his untouched beignets. “I can only tell you that we’re not under the manipulation of anyone else.”

  Severine nodded once, though her heart railed at her. Could she trust him? Should she trust him? If she couldn’t trust him, however, maybe she couldn’t trust Mr. Brand or Lisette or Chantae. She didn’t want to live like that, so she said, “All right.”

  She glanced at Mr. Brand, who nodded as well, but she recognized the look in his eyes. It told her that he wasn’t worried about the state of his soul after this, but about her. She had little doubt he’d use whatever connections he had to look further into Thorne and Oliver regardless of what they decided here today.

  So, Severine leaned back and made the choice to take them into her confidence. “Mrs. Grantley believes that someone is purposefully haunting her. She is offering, for our help, information about your sister and my parents.”

  Mr. Thorne’s eyes widened. “Mr. Oliver was—”

  “Romancing the little blonde, Clementine, tonight? Pursing his own agenda with the girl?” Lisette said without an edge of forgiveness.

  Mr. Oliver’s purple mottled face had faded back to red and started to escalate again when Mr. Thorne said, “Yes. She told him that she didn’t understand why her parents were even involved in the Spirit Society. They mocked it at home.”

  Severine lifted a brow, searching her mind. “Clementine is her name, right? Isn’t she a Claremont? That’s her family name, I believe.”

  “Indeed,” Mr. Thorne replied.

  “They were founders,” Severine told them. “The Claremonts. We knew that some of the members of the society are no more believers than our Mr. Brand, but why would they mock it as founders?” She ran her fingers along her jaw as she considered and then lifted her pearls, fiddling with the shape against her jawline.

  “It occurs to me,” Mr. Brand added, “that we have met some of the pre-eminent members of New Orleans society in the Spirit Society socials, but Lisette was also welcomed without a blink by anyone other than your grandmother. No offense, Lisette.”

  “None taken, cher,” she replied. “Don’t think I hadn’t noticed. There was that jazz singer a few weeks ago. At the party at that big mansion near the bayou.”

  “There was a priest at the one before. With the walk through the cities of the dead and the stories from the cathedral.”

  Mr. Oliver had calmed down once the talk had turned from him and his romancing of Severine’s cousin. He rubbed his brow and muttered, “We met the mayor at one of these.”

  “The governor too,” Mr. Thorne added. He cursed low. “Anyone could be involved.”

  “They all are,” Severine said. “The Spirit Society is a place for those of all statuses—and with things to offer—to meet. It brings together the powerful among the religious, the political, and those in business worlds, but also those less powerful who might still be in their presence. You are as likely to rub elbows with a future president as you are to be speaking to the man who grows half the tobacco in the South or the man who baptized his children.”

  “It narrows nothing,” Thorne murmured.

  “They’re snakes,” Severine told the rest of the table. “We just need persistence and a steady eye, and they’ll turn on each other. Just like they did to my father. And, I assume, whoever can account for your missing wife.”

  Mr. Oliver caught the message. The firm word, the harsh look, the lifted brow. Severine wouldn’t cover for him. Not when it came to Florette. Not even though he’d given her no promises. Florette was the ideal, innocent, sweet young thing, and Severine wouldn’t watch that lively little spirit be crushed by any man when Severine could help stop it.

  Chapter 7

  “I wonder,” Severine said after Mr. Thorne and Mr. Oliver left, “if we should think more deeply about what we’ve learned. I wonder, in fact, if it couldn’t help the snakes turn on each other.”

  Before she could explain, there was another ringing of the doorbell and in a few moments, Chantae returned and said, “That woman, Mrs. Grantley, has arrived. She’d like to talk to you.”

  Severine glanced at Lisette and Mr. Brand, and they all rose, leaving the table with the remnants of beignets and empty coffee cups and a few shreds of the trust that had been built between themselves and their British friends. The trust wasn’t gone entirely, but it would take time, Severine thought. Time and awareness to consider upon what they really felt.

  For Thorne and Oliver, Severine was willing to admit to a level of trust and a desire to trust them. For Mrs. Grantley, however, the same could not be said. They seated themselves in the parlor and asked for a coffee tray for their guest.

  The dogs had followed silently. The girls had gone from small puppies to nearly the size of Anubis. The three hounds had been compared to hell hounds by a good dozen people during their walks, and their names, Anubis, Kali, and Persephone, only lent to the impression.

  As they waited for the coffee, they talked about Amelia Grantley, who was single but had hopes in one of the lads Severine had met and forgotten almost immediately. They talked of Mrs. Grantley’s other four grandchildren who varie
d in ages between seventeen and still at school to twenty-five and quite handsome. That was said with a lingering glance after taking in the French Quarter mansion that Severine lived in. Severine chose to ignore the inference.

  “You’ve abandoned my request?” Mrs. Grantley finally said.

  Severine shook her head.

  “Young people, like yourself, have no understanding of what it is like to be an old woman, alone and friendless. I’m not surprised. Your mother was thoughtless and entirely without feeling as well.”

  “Why do you think someone is haunting you?” Severine asked, the moment after that comment and having no desire to explain her gut reaction to Mrs. Grantley in general. It had, Severine noted, been on the edge of nauseating. She would follow that instinct without fail. “Why would anyone haunt you?”

  “Because I’m an old woman?” Mrs. Grantley laughed coldly. “That means I’ve had quite a lot more time to develop a long line of enemies behind me, dear.”

  The dear had been condescending, and Severine didn’t react. Mrs. Grantley had taken a turn from last night, taking on an offended high-handed manner that made Severine regret their bargain.

  “There must be another reason,” said Mr. Brand. “I am guessing that you’ve been part of the decades-long playacting of hauntings that the Spirit Society indulges in. Handing out wine before a ghost walk does beget issues and I’m sure there have been many.”

  “Knowing how to fake a haunting…well…” Lisette said and trailed off purposefully.

  “Yes, obviously,” Mrs. Grantley. “Hiring actors and charlatans. Unseen noises and thumps with ropes and pulleys. The sudden cold spots. It’s not the first time someone thought of buying and hiding dry ice. It adds to the overall effect both with the gas that comes off of it and the cold in the air.”

  Severine waited as Mrs. Grantley mumbled to herself. “The slamming doors when no one is supposed to be there. The sounds of murmuring. I’m an old woman. You can make creaking noises outside of my room and call my name, and it’s not like I can chase them down. It’s just…it’s…not what I would have expected from my enemies.”

  Severine sipped her coffee to give herself time to consider.

  Lisette, however, wasn’t so gentle. “What do you expect from your enemies?”

  Mrs. Grantley laughed coldly and Severine flinched. She’d lived with women from their early twenties to their nineties for the last half dozen years. In all that time, she’d seen those wrinkled faces convey a variety of deep feelings. Love, longing, regret, fear, hatred, but never had she seen this sort of evil twist to an expression. It brought to mind the discussion the night before of regrets and guilt and Severine realized that Mrs. Grantley must have more than her fair share of both. Or, perhaps, not enough.

  “A knife in the back? A painful poison? Something agonizing.”

  Severine wished she could feel for the woman. Only, on the other side of the guilt was a slew of people that Mrs. Grantley had hurt. People whose lives had been affected by her actions. People who might have lost money, homes, loves—Mrs. Grantley’s guilt was so deep, it could have been anything.

  Rather than providing a false comfort, Severine focused on the mundane. “Who are your heirs?”

  Mrs. Grantley snorted, but her face softened slightly. “Much of what I have was directed by my husband already to my sons. I have some money, however, to leave to my grandchildren, which is what I have done. Left equally between the five of them. Why they would try to haunt me for it, I don’t know. All of them know I would give them the money if they needed it.”

  “Perhaps there is someone who doesn’t hate you enough to murder you but hates you enough to torture you,” Lisette suggested.

  Mrs. Grantley scoffed.

  “Why are you part of the Spirit Society?” Severine asked.

  Mrs. Grantley rubbed her brow and then set her coffee aside. “It’s all mixed up. It was an earnest thing for me and Genny.”

  “Genny?” Mr. Brand straightened. “Genevieve Thorne?”

  Mrs. Grantley lifted a brow. “Mmm. Yes. Mr. Thorne’s grandmother. I knew her when she was Genevieve Braxton. I visited her in London where she lived with her husband. Joined her at their version of believers pursuing the supernatural. It had been a club for decades. Genny and I had told each other so many times how New Orleans needed one. When I came back, I talked to a few other believers about it, and we started more earnestly.”

  “How did it become a place where people conducted secret business?” Lisette asked with confidence that declared it a truth rather than a theory.

  “Oh early days,” Mrs. Grantley answered, confirming the truth. “It wasn’t uncommon for my husband to take over all the things I was interested in. He was a controlling man, involved in everything I did. Everyone I knew. Everywhere I went.”

  “It sounds horrible,” Severine told Mrs. Grantley, but she didn’t think the woman felt the same.

  “If he were a monster—” Mrs. Grantley laughed and then admitted, “He could be a monster. But I always did what he wanted, and so he wasn’t a monster to me. An occasional fist, a few days in the bedroom. He could have been worse.”

  In her mind, Severine repeated the, ‘It sounds horrible.’

  “No thank you,” Lisette muttered.

  “You modern girls don’t calculate beyond your independence. There’s more to marriage than that, dear. Though you’ll be lucky to find anyone decent, considering your—” She raked her eyes over Lisette’s face and body and didn’t finish with the color of her skin.

  Severine gasped but Mr. Brand snapped, “That’s enough of that, Mrs. Grantley.”

  Mrs. Grantley seemed shocked, but her mocking laugh told what she thought of their reaction to the unspoken insult to Lisette.

  “Lisette is a valuable member of our household,” Severine said, “and from what I can see, your marriage has little to recommend other than a gilded, and sometimes painful, cage.”

  Mrs. Grantley’s mockery didn’t fade. “Lisette’s mother might know something about the value of never having to worry about being hungry. Never having to worry if your children will have clothes and food. Antoine was all that I needed him to be. If he was too rough at times, he was never too poor.”

  “She knows those things well,” Lisette told Mrs. Grantley, “but I think she’d rather know those things than whatever you’re feeling right now.”

  “What happened to your husband?” Mr. Brand asked when Mrs. Grantley crossed her arms over her chest and scowled at all of them.

  “He…” Mrs. Grantley sniffed and then set her coffee cup back down with a sharp click, “…died.”

  “That sounds like there’s more to the story,” Severine said, striving for how Mr. Brand sometimes spoke to her. Sort of gentle and calm and probing all at once.

  “He died.” Mrs. Grantley looked to the side, focusing on the corner of the room. “He was out. He seemed fine before he died. He collapsed.”

  “A heart attack?” Severine asked, but she could see Mrs. Grantley didn’t think so herself.

  “He’s from a long-lived line. The kind who turns out old codgers who die in their beds irascible and irritated after a century. He wasn’t that old. He wasn’t…I don’t know.”

  Again that sideways look. Again that focusing in the corner.

  “If you want our help,” Severine told the woman flatly, leaving out the gentleness, “you’ll be straightforward with us.”

  “You want my help too,” Mrs. Grantley said as if she had all the cards.

  “Yes,” Severine replied. “But we’re not dying and you are not our only hope. How can we even trust you?”

  Mr. Brand—with that calm, gentle tone—said, “I fear I must insist upon some proof that you can help us.”

  “Both us,” Lisette inserted, “and Mr. Thorne and Mr. Oliver.”

  Mrs. Grantley’s gaze narrowed but she finally offered what might have been news of interest if they hadn’t already suspected. “Your guess about th
e other purposes of the Spirit Society are correct.”

  “We had figured that out for ourselves,” Mr. Brand replied.

  She paused and then continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “They use some of the charlatans they hire to pass information, letters, even money. It’s so easy, you know, for anyone present to come up to the performer and speak to them. Entirely unsuspicious.”

  “Do you know who Andre was working for?” Lisette demanded.

  Mrs. Grantley lifted a brow and her slow smile made one think she knew just that. What she said was, “That information is worth far more than a simple payoff. Madame Cocotte, our theatrical fortune teller and society charlatan, can be bought by anyone.”

  “What does that mean?” Mr. Brand asked. “The society charlatan?”

  “Ask her who hires her. She’s been used to provide the desired ambiance. They also use her to pass messages and the like. For a price, she’ll probably tell you things you might want to know. She has been performing for the Spirit Society for quite some time.”

  “When my parents were alive?” Severine demanded.

  Mrs. Grantley smiled smugly.

  “Why do you think your husband was murdered?” Lisette demanded. “Do you think the person who murdered him is the person who is tormenting you?”

  “I’m quite sure it is not.”

  “Why?” Mr. Brand asked.

  “I have felt, for some time, that my son, Philip, murdered my husband.”

  The words tolled like a death bell and the rest of them were struck silent.

  Lisette recovered first. “Why?”

  Mrs. Grantley sniffed, but this time there was feeling behind it. Her eyes were shining when she said, “Antoine never was without his flask. Never except for when his body was brought home.”

  They all waited, knowing that wasn’t the end of the story.

  “After I realized it was gone, I mentioned it and Philip chided me for borrowing trouble as though the missing flask meant nothing. I knew, however, it was gone. I wondered at it. I had wanted to follow my husband’s wishes to give it to our other son, and it wasn’t there.”