Chapter Two
OLIVIA MORELAND SAT BACK against the comfortably cushioned seat of the carriage. Her spine was ramrod-straight with irritation. The nerve of that man!
“Mad Morelands, indeed,” she muttered.
It was an epithet she had heard all her life, and it rankled. Her family was not mad in the least; it was simply that all the rest of England’s upper crust were narrow-minded, set-in-their-ways snobs.
Well, perhaps her grandparents had been a little strange, Olivia acknowledged in the interest of fairness. Her grandfather had been somewhat obsessive about some rather bizarre medical cures, and Grandmama had insisted that she had “the second sight.” But her father was simply a scholar of antiquities, and her great-uncle Bellard was a shy, sweet man who loved history a great deal and stayed away from strangers with equal zeal. There was nothing odd in either of those things, she thought. Nor was there anything wrong with Aunt Penelope going off to France to sing opera, though everyone in society had reacted with as much horror as if she’d been transported to a penal colony.
The problem, she knew, was that her family thought differently and acted differently from the rest of society. Her mother’s greatest sin in society’s eyes, Olivia knew, had been to be born to minor country gentry instead of the nobility. Personally, Olivia suspected that this attitude was prompted simply by jealousy over the fact that she, a virtual nobody, had managed to snare the prize bachelor, the Duke of Broughton, when none of the titled debutantes had been able to. Olivia found her parents’ meeting and subsequent marriage a charming love story. One of her father’s many holdings upon his own father’s early demise had been a factory. Her mother, an ardent social reformer, had managed to burst in upon a meeting between him and the manager of the factory, somehow evading all the minor clerks outside, and she had passionately put forward to him the rampant injustices in the treatment of his workers. The manager had moved to toss her out, but the duke had refused to allow him to do so and had heard her out. By the end of the afternoon, he, too, was seething at the plight of the workers and even more passionately in love with the redheaded, shapely reformer. She had also grown to love him, moving past her strong dislike of the nobility, money and power. They had married two months later, much to the dismay of the dowager duchess and most of the British peerage.
Olivia’s mother, who held decided and innovative views on women’s place in society, held equally unusual views on the education of children, and all seven of her children had been educated by tutors under the duchess’s careful eye. The girls had received the same education as the boys, and all had been allowed to explore every manner of subject as their interests dictated, though their father had insisted on a basic grounding in Greek, Latin and ancient history. As a result, the entire brood was a well-educated lot, as well as an independent one. It was this combination of bookishness and independence that had caused most others in society to term them odd. Caring little for society’s strictures, each of them had gone his or her own way.
Theo, the heir to the duke, had followed his passion of exploring, whereas his twin sister, Thisbe, had pursued the area of science, conducting experiments and writing papers on them. It was true, Olivia had to admit, that a few of Thisbe’s experiments had gone awry. There had been a small shed on the country estate that had blown up during a study of explosives, and there had also been one or two fires, but, after all, it was in the interest of science and little damage had been done. It was excessively wrong, Olivia thought, to label Thisbe a pyromaniac, as some had done.
The younger twins, Alexander and Constantine, had gotten into a number of scrapes, but, really, what else could one expect from two lively, intellectually curious boys? It was a nuisance, of course, to find one’s clock did not run because they had taken it apart to find out how it worked, and even Mother had been a trifle upset when they had ruined the Carrara marble floor in the conservatory trying to build a steam engine. It was an endeavor, the duchess had pointed out, that was better suited to one of the outbuildings behind the house. But the hot-air balloon incident, in Olivia’s opinion, was entirely the fault of the owner of the balloon. Anyone with any sense would have known better than to leave two ten-year-old boys alone with one’s empty-basketed balloon. And, anyway, they had managed to bring the thing down with a minimum of damage, hadn’t they?
Kyria’s “madness” in the eyes of society was that she refused to marry. And Reed—well, Olivia could not imagine how anyone could find Reed odd. He was the most normal and down-to-earth of them all, always the one to whom one turned in trouble, the one who would step in and right things. He took care of the family’s finances and reined in their extravagances and kept the admittedly erratic path of the family ship somewhat straight.
Olivia knew that most would consider her profession a strange one. Indeed, most would consider it bizarre that a woman would have an occupation at all. But Olivia had been intrigued by the possibility of communication from the spirit world since she was a child and had listened with a combination of horror and fascination to her grandmother, the dowager duchess, tell her that she was possessed of second sight and suggest that Olivia was similarly inclined. Although Olivia was quite certain she possessed no such ability at all, she had wanted to study the subject. She saw no reason why one could not apply the tools of science, such as research, logic and experimentation, to the more nebulous world of spirits. Several scientists, indeed, were also exploring the claims of mediums and the possibility of communication with the dead, although it seemed to Olivia that they were all strangely inclined to ignore evidence of fraud and to seize upon any evidence that seemed to support the existence of spirits.
There was nothing wrong with any of the Morelands, Olivia thought staunchly as she got out of her carriage and marched up the front steps of the grand Broughton House. It was the rest of society who was wrong.
As she stepped inside the massive front door of the house, she was met by her twin brothers, who were taking turns jumping off the steps of the main staircase onto the black-and-white squared tile of the entry hall.
“Hallo!” Alexander called cheerfully, bending down to place a marker where his brother’s feet had landed, then hurrying up to the same step from which his brother had jumped.
Constantine gave her a cheerful wave as he bounced up from the floor and went over to get a silver candlestick to use to mark his twin’s progress.
“You might be careful,” Olivia told them mildly. “You could crack your heads on that marble.”
“We don’t land on our heads,” Con remarked scornfully.
Since her brothers had been jumping from the steps onto the marble since they were toddlers, Olivia had to admit that they were, in all likelihood, experts at it. “What are you marking?”
“How far we slide. You can’t accurately measure your jumps from the stairs because you always slide. We’ve tried factoring in the slide, but one really cannot.”
“Sometimes one slides a lot, and other times hardly at all,” Alex put in. “Here I go, Con.”
He jumped and slid, coming up short of Con’s marker. “Blast!”
“Language, Alex,” Olivia reproved automatically.
“So we thought, why not see who could slide the farthest?” Con finished the tale.
“I see.” Olivia was well used to her brothers’ competitions. Theo and Reed had been much the same, although to Reed’s disgust, Theo had nearly always won, being two years older. “But why are you up so late?” Though her mother believed in freedom, she also had definite views on health, and her children, when young, were bound by early bedtimes. “And where is Mr. Thorndike?”
“Oh, him.” Alex shrugged, dismissing their tutor. “He’s sound asleep.” The twins found sleep a boring and useless pastime and were seemingly able to run endlessly on sheer energy.
“I am sure he is exhausted after a day trying to keep up with you two,” Olivia noted. “But that doesn’t explain why you are up. Your bedtime was an hour ago.”
Con grinned. “We have permission. Thisbe is going to take us out back for an astronomy lesson. We’re just waiting for Desmond.” He named Thisbe’s husband, also a scientist. “He has an experiment running, and he won’t be through until ten o’clock.”
“Ah, there you are,” Thisbe said as she came into the entry from the back hall. “I thought you were working on your Latin upstairs.”
Con’s mouth twisted in a grimace. “It made me sleepy. I hate Latin.”
“Well, you can’t get out of it,” Thisbe said. “You know Papa insists on it. And, besides, you have to know Latin if you hope to be a biologist. Or a doctor,” she added, turning her gaze to Alexander.
“On a more immediate note...” said an amused voice from above them, and they all looked up to see Kyria, in an elegant emerald-green gown, her flaming red hair done in an intricate pattern of curls, descending the stairs. “If either of you hopes to live past ten and a half, you might want to retrieve your boa constrictor. It was traveling down the hall toward the back stairs when I stepped out of my room just now. You know what Cook will do if it enters her kitchen.”
The two boys, who had a healthy respect for Cook and the great metal cleaver she had threatened to use on the next “devilish serpent” that entered her domain, cast an alarmed glance at each other and started off at a run toward the kitchens.
“Hallo, Thisbe. Liv. Have you been out this evening?” Kyria cast a glance at Olivia’s hat.
“Yes. How did you—oh!” Olivia realized that she had not removed her cloak and bonnet. She glanced back at the footman, who was still hovering behind her. “I’m sorry, Chambers. I quite forgot.”
“Perfectly all right...miss.” The footman had to force out the last word. He had not been here long, and it was still difficult for him to address Olivia with the egalitarian “miss” that she preferred instead of the “my lady” to which she’d been born.
Olivia handed him her cloak and hat and turned back to her sisters. Kyria had sauntered down the last few steps to the bottom of the staircase, but she still towered over Olivia by several inches, as did the willowy, dark-haired Thisbe. Olivia was dishearteningly accustomed to it. She was the only one in her family who was not tall, except for her great-uncle Bellard.
“Where are you off to?” she asked Kyria, who carried an elegant satin evening cloak over her arm.
“Lady Westerfield’s soiree,” Kyria answered. “It will probably be quite dull, but it was the best of the offerings tonight.” She sighed. “The season is almost over.”
“Oh, my, and whatever will you do?” Thisbe said with a large dose of sarcasm.
Kyria raised a brow at her sister. “Really, Thisbe, one doesn’t have to mess about with chemicals to lead a worthwhile life.”
“Of course not. But with your abilities, one ought—”
It was a long-standing argument—or discussion, as their mother preferred to call it—between the sober-minded Thisbe and her flamboyant, fun-loving younger sister, and Olivia cut in quickly to ward it off. “Kyria?”
“Yes, dear?” Kyria turned back to Olivia. She never minded her little tussles with Thisbe; in fact, she rather enjoyed them. But she was well aware that Olivia hated to see anyone in her family quarrel.
“Do you know—have you ever met Lord St. Leger?”
“Do you mean the new one? Or Roderick?”
“I—the new one, I suppose. Who is Roderick?”
“He was Lord St. Leger, but he died, oh, about a year ago. A hunting accident, as I remember.”
“Well, no, this man was very much alive.”
“You met him? Tonight?” Kyria’s brows went up with interest. “Is he handsome?”
“Well, yes, I suppose one could say that. He has, well, rather devastating gray eyes, almost silver, one would say, if one were inclined to say things like that.”
“I see.” Kyria’s eyes turned speculative. “Well, I’m afraid I don’t know much about him. I have never met him. He came back to take over the title after his brother died, but he’s been living on the estate ever since he returned. There has been a great deal of speculation about him, of course, because he is unmarried and something of a catch. Apparently he has been living in the United States for the past few years and made a fortune there. I didn’t know he was even in London. How did you meet him?”
“He was at a séance that I went to tonight.”
“He’s one of those?” Thisbe asked with scorn.
“No. He doesn’t seem to believe in it at all. I’m not sure why he was there, really, but he mistook me for an accomplice of the medium!” Her voice rose in remembered indignation.
“No! Why?”
“I had gotten up to go to the medium’s cabinet and open it to show her untied and holding up those silly pictures she does—but then he grabbed me, and of course it was all ruined.”
“He grabbed you?”
“Yes, by the arm. You see, he thought I was going to put on a ghost act myself. And of course there was a tremendous hubbub about it, and they ejected us from the séance.”
Laughter bubbled up from Kyria’s throat. “Oh my. That must have been quite a scene.”
“Yes. But the thing is...” Olivia hesitated, and her sisters’ attention sharpened.
“The thing is?” Thisbe prodded, and Kyria took Olivia’s arm and guided her over to a bench against the wall of the entry. Gesturing for the footman, she handed him her cloak and motioned him away, then sat down on the bench with Olivia, Thisbe providing the opposite bookend.
“What is it?” Kyria questioned her in a low voice. “Are you—well, have you developed any feeling for this man?”
“Kyria!” Olivia gave her a horrified look. “No! How can you ask that? I just met him.”
“Sometimes it does not take long,” Thisbe, usually the most pragmatic and logical of the sisters, interjected.
“The thing is...well, when he grabbed my wrist, it jolted me. I actually screamed, I was so surprised. And scared.”
“Of course. Who wouldn’t be?” Kyria sympathized.
“But then they lit the lamp and I saw who my captor was, and the oddest thing happened. Even though I did not know him at all, and even though he was looking at me quite fiercely, I was no longer afraid.”
“Well, I suppose you saw that he was a gentleman and not a ghost or some such. It is what we cannot see that is the most fearsome, ofttimes,” Thisbe said.
“But it was more than that. I felt the oddest sensation. This sort of tingle ran up my arm, and for just an instant I felt—oh, I don’t know. This sounds mad, I know, but I felt as if I knew him. Yet at the same time I was sure that I had never seen him before. Of course then he made me quite irritated, and the feeling fled. But still...there was that instant. I don’t know what to make of it.”
For a moment both sisters looked at her. Then Thisbe said calmly, “It’s chemistry.”
“What?”
“That moment of attraction. It is all a chemical reaction. I’m convinced of it. I remember the moment I met Desmond. I have never been so startled in my life by the shiver that ran through me when he turned his eyes to mine. And when he reached out and touched my arm, I felt it all through me. Chemistry.”
“No! I’m not going to marry the man!” Olivia cried out in protest. “I told you, I scarcely know him. He was perfectly odious, too. Not only did he ruin my chance to expose that dreadful Mrs. Terhune, but then he had the audacity to call us the ‘mad Morelands.’ Right to my face!”
“No!” Kyria’s green eyes flamed with anger.
But Thisbe shrugged philosophically. “They all do. It’s their narrow minds. One really has to feel sorry for them.”
“Well, I don’t,” Kyria said. “I give them a piece of my mind. And if that is the sort of man Lord St. Leger is, then you are better not to feel anything for him.” She reached out and took Olivia’s hand. “Come with me to the soiree, Livvy. We’ll search for a gentleman good enough for you—well, that’s not possible, I suppose, but at least one who measures up as well as a man can.”
Olivia gave her a faint smile. “No. Really, Kyria. I’m not interested in Lord St. Leger or any other man. I am fine just as I am. I enjoy what I do, and a gentleman would only interfere.” She smiled over at Thisbe. “Men such as Desmond are few and far between, I’m afraid. To find a man who respects one’s mind and one’s career, even shares it—well, rare isn’t even the word for such a man.” She sighed unconsciously.
Beside her, Kyria echoed the sigh. Then she summoned up her usual glittering smile. “It is just as well that I decided never to marry, isn’t it? Still, there is fun to be had. Please, do come with me.”
But Olivia shook her head, saying, “No. I am a bit tired, I’m afraid. And I must work tomorrow. There is correspondence to be answered, and...” Her voice trailed off. “I fear I have forever lost the opportunity to expose that charlatan Mrs. Terhune. Still, there are other avenues to explore.”
“Of course.” Thisbe patted her youngest sister’s hand, and Kyria accepted Olivia’s refusal with a philosophical shrug. She was well aware that, despite Olivia’s fierceness if a loved one or a cause was threatened, she was a rather shy creature, not at home among crowds. Crushes such as Lady Westerfield’s tonight would at worst make her uneasy and nervous, and at best bore her.
Olivia watched as her beautiful sister let the footman help her on with her cloak, then swept out the door. She turned back to Thisbe, but at that moment the twins came in, accompanied this time by Desmond, a quietly good-looking man who usually wore a faint air of abstraction.
“We got the snake in time,” Con announced with satisfaction. “Cook never even saw it.”
“And we ran into Desmond in the kitchen,” Alex added, pulling Desmond forward. “We’re ready now, aren’t we, Thisbe?”
“Ready for what?” Desmond asked vaguely, and had to be reminded of his promise to star-watch with his wife and the twins. He seemed, however, quite pleased with the notion once he was told about it. “Jolly night for it. Not often you get such a clear sky in the city. Do you have your telescope?”
It seemed the boys did, tucked under the staircase, where it could come to no harm during their jumping from the stairs, and they had also brought a blanket, a lantern and a small sack of fruit for a midnight snack. They asked Olivia to join them, but although she normally would have done so, she demurred, pleading tiredness from her own adventure that evening.
In truth she was not tired so much as desirous of being alone. She wanted to think about the evening and go over what had happened and what had been said. The feeling she had experienced when she looked into Lord St. Leger’s eyes had been so odd...and though she was certain that it was nothing to do with being attracted to the man, either emotionally or chemically, as her sisters had suggested, she was not sure to what she could attribute that brief frisson of awareness that had run through her.
So she went upstairs and undressed, then sat by the window, wrapped in a brocade dressing gown, and brushed out her long hair. She typically did not require the attendance of a maid, for she wore her hair in a simple, practical style, low on her neck in a bun, that she was able to put up and take down without assistance. She also favored pragmatic clothes, with bodices that buttoned up the front and no whalebone corset that had to be yanked and tugged and tied into place to give her a minuscule waist. It was another of her mother’s dicta, adopted by her daughters, not to endanger one’s health with constricting corsets for the absurdity of an eighteen-inch waist. Therefore, she rarely needed help in getting undressed, either. Olivia deemed a personal maid an unnecessary luxury for herself, and besides, she usually preferred to be alone with her thoughts rather than listening to a maid’s chatter.
Brushing her hair normally relaxed her, but she found that this evening it did not, and her thoughts remained unaccustomedly scattered. She could not seem to concentrate, and she rose more than once to pace about the room. She could not figure out why she had felt as she did when she first saw Lord St. Leger, and it irritated her that she was so concerned with the subject. She kept thinking of things she should have said or done, witty remarks that would have put the man in his place. It was some time before she settled down enough to go to bed, and even then, it took her some time to fall asleep. It was another disagreeable problem to lay at Lord St. Leger’s door, she thought. She wished she could see him again, just to give him a piece of her mind.
She spent a rather restless night and arose early the next morning. The only person at breakfast was her great-uncle, Bellard, who smiled with pleasure at seeing her. He was a quiet man usually, but Olivia was his favorite relative, and today he was full of news about the arrival the day before of his latest acquisition, a full complement of French and English soldiers, made out of tin and perfectly replicated down to each tiny ribbon or epaulet the armies of Napoleon and Wellington at Waterloo. Her uncle was a history buff, and his particular pleasure was recreating famous battles in history. On the third floor in this huge house, not far from the nursery, was a huge room given over entirely to tables on which the terrain and participants of such epic clashes as Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar, in which glass painted blue carried replicas of the ships involved, and Churchill’s win at Blenheim were laid out with exactitude.
A thin man, somewhat hunched over from years of poring over books and tabletop armies, Bellard was often subject to chills, especially in the poorly heated upper reaches of the house, and he was given to wearing a soft cap over his wispy white hair. A beaked nose gave him a look somewhat reminiscent of a bird, but the smile beneath it was so gentle and sweet that no one who saw it ever thought of considering him odd. He was simply Great-uncle Bellard, and his great-nieces and -nephews loved him.
After breakfast, Olivia returned with him to his workroom to review the tin figures he had unpacked, and then she left the house, a plain brown bonnet on her head to match her plain brown dress, whose severe lines were softened only by a conservative bustle in back, below which the garment fell in rows of ruffles of the same material, its one touch of frivolity. Her only ornamentation was a sensible gold watch hanging from a brooch on her chest.
The ducal carriage took her, as it did every morning, and deposited her in front of the door of a modest building containing a few offices. Olivia climbed the stairs to her second-floor office, where the door sported the same discreet title as her business card.
“Hello, Tom,” she said as she reached the door, taking out her key to unlock it.
Tom Quick, her assistant, sat on the floor beside the door, his shaggy yellow head turned down to the book in his lap. He jumped up at her words, grinning, and closed the book. “Good morning, miss. ’Ow are you this fair day?”
“Well, I believe, Tom. No need to ask you. You are obviously in good spirits.”
“Not from any misdoin’,” he assured her quickly.
Tom had been one of her brother Reed’s projects, a pickpocket whom he had caught attempting to steal his wallet some years ago. Reed had recognized the bright mind behind the dirty face, and instead of turning the lad in to the authorities, he had provided for his schooling. At her brother’s suggestion, Olivia had hired him for her office assistant two years ago and had never regretted it. No one, including Tom, knew his actual age or name; Quick had been an appellation given him for the speed with which he could pick a pocket. He was, Olivia judged, somewhere between sixteen and eighteen, with a worldly-wise view of life far beyond his years. Slavishly devoted to both Reed and Olivia, Tom refused to leave her, though Olivia was sure that he could have earned more as a clerk for a larger firm. She also suspected, though she had never confronted him about it, that Tom and Reed considered his job more one of unobtrusively protecting Olivia than of actually clerking.
“’Ow’d it go last night?” Tom asked as she unlocked the door and they went inside.
He went around raising the shades on the windows while Olivia walked over to her desk. “Not well at all, I’m afraid.” She described as briefly as she could the contretemps that had arisen at the séance the night before, spoiling her plans.
Tom reacted with appropriate shock and dismay. “That’s ’orrible, miss. Wot are you goin’ to do now?”
“Forget Mrs. Terhune, I’m afraid. It wasn’t even a paying case. I am just so incensed at her foisting those obvious daguerrotypes off as ghosts. Anyone can see that they are flat.”
“Anyone except her followers,” Tom pointed out.
“I know. I suppose I should let them be deceived, if they are so foolish.” Olivia sighed.
“There’s some as are born marks, miss, and that’s the truth.” He came over and perched on the edge of her desk. “I guess we’ll ’ave to start lookin’ into somethin’ else, wot do you say?”
“I’d love to,” Olivia admitted, glancing over her tidily arranged desk. “The only problem is, I haven’t any cases.”
The business, never robust, had trickled down to almost nothing in the past year. Olivia had spent much of her time conducting investigations on her own, compiling evidence of the tricks used by the mediums.
“You’re never thinkin’ of givin’ up, are you, miss?” Tom looked faintly horrified.
“No. I won’t give up. I cannot stand to think of these people fleecing the bereaved, taking advantage of people at their most vulnerable... It is just that I am at something of a standstill. We have no new cases. I have done research until I’m not sure what to look into anymore. I cannot force my way into people’s homes and say, ‘Look here, let me prove to you that that man is lying when he says he can communicate with your dead mother or husband or whoever.’”
“Well, look on the bright side. We might get a new customer any time now. Until then, we’ll just make do.”
“Yes. Of course, you’re right.” She gave him a smile. “I shall get to work writing up my experiences last night, and we can close that file.”
She pulled out a sheet of paper and dipped her pen in the inkwell, then settled down to do as she had said. She found it rather difficult, however, to put into words what had happened the night before without it sounding completely foolish and unscientific. No matter how she couched it, she could not get around the fact that Lord St. Leger had grabbed her arm, and she had screamed, and they had wound up getting thrown out of the séance.
Olivia had finally finished sweating through the report and was tucking the file away in a cabinet marked Closed when there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs. She could not help glancing up expectantly, waiting for the steps to stop outside their door, even though she knew that there were two other offices on this floor and more above it, and the odds were the steps would not stop here. Indeed, hardly anyone ever came here, except members of her family now and then.
There was a sharp rap at the door, and Olivia jumped, startled. She glanced over at Tom, who nodded at her with a grin before he jumped up and walked over to open the door. He pulled it open to reveal a tall man standing in the hall. The man looked at Tom, somewhat surprised, then past him into the office, his gaze coming to rest on Olivia.
Olivia simply stared at him, stunned. She had never expected to see this man again. Excitement leaped in her stomach, even as the rest of her seemed frozen. Her reaction annoyed her. She swallowed and forced her legs to move, propelling her up and toward the door.
“Lord St. Leger,” she said, pleased that her voice came out cool and calm. “What a surprise. Please, do come in.”
St. Leger took off his hat and stepped past Tom, who was regarding him with great interest. He stopped and glanced around the office somewhat awkwardly. “I...um...”
“Are you in need of some investigating, sir?” Tom jumped in, reaching to take Lord St. Leger’s hat and hang it on the rack by the door. “You’ve come to the right place, then. There’s none better than us for tracking down those psychic phenomena.”
“Are there any others?” St. Leger asked, faintly surprised.
“Well, um...” Tom looked abashed, but quickly recovered. “No, you’re right. We’re not only the best at it, we’re the only.”
“Lord St. Leger, please, sit down.” Olivia gestured toward the chair beside her desk, ready for a customer to sit down and spill out his problem. She cast Tom a quelling look.
Her assistant cocked an eyebrow but hung back, sitting down at his desk and pretending to be busy sorting papers.
Lord St. Leger went to the chair Olivia had indicated, politely waiting for her to take her seat behind the desk before he sat down. Olivia looked at him, waiting. He looked at her, then away, then cleared his throat. An awkward silence stretched between them. Across the room, Tom moved restively in his seat.
Finally Olivia said, “Is there some way that I can be of assistance to you, my lord?”
“I—” He looked at her and sighed. “Frankly, I don’t know. Lady Ol—”
“I prefer Miss Moreland,” Olivia said. His eyes, she thought, were really a most extraordinary color, even brighter here in the well-lit room than they had been last night. Silver—or perhaps pewter was a closer color.
“Miss Moreland,” he repeated. “I—I am afraid that we got off on the wrong foot last night.”
“You might say that, if you consider seizing me and accusing me of being a charlatan and later calling me mad ‘getting off on the wrong foot.’”
Faint color stained his cheekbones, and he looked abashed. “I did not mean—I was simply surprised when I realized who you were, and the phrase popped out. It was something I had heard over the years, and, well, in my surprise, I didn’t think. I apologize sincerely, and I assure you that I do not think that you—or your family—is insane. I am sure no one does. It is merely a—a silly appellation.”
Olivia continued to gaze at him coolly, and finally he went on. “I apologize, too, for accusing you of being Mrs. Terhune’s assistant. However, you have to admit that there were circumstances that made it seem that you were.” His eyes flashed as he said, “The scene at the séance was not entirely my fault.”
When Olivia did not answer, he sighed and stood up. “I can see I am wasting my time here.”
“No! No, wait.” Olivia popped up, too, and extended a hand as if to detain him, then blushed and let it fall to her side. “I accept your apology. What is it that you want? What can we do for you?”
He hesitated, then sat back down. “I’m not sure—well, what exactly is it that you do here?”
“We investigate the occurrence of certain odd and inexplicable events.”
“Ghosts?” he asked with an ironic undertone.
“I have never been called upon to investigate ghosts, my lord. In general, it is the people who call themselves mediums and their practices that I have investigated.”
“Like Mrs. Terhune last night.”
“Precisely.”
“Why?”
“Because I dislike fraud, my lord, and I find it reprehensible that someone deceives people, often those grieving for a dead loved one, by pretending that he or she can communicate with the dead, in particular those departed loved ones.”
“Then you don’t believe they can communicate with the spirits from beyond?”
“I have never found one yet who did,” Olivia returned crisply. “None of them have offered proof that satisfied me.”
“Do you know a woman named Madame Valenskaya?”
“I have heard of her,” Olivia replied. “I have not met the woman myself.”
“Do you think that she can communicate with spirits?”
“I have not investigated her, but based on my experience with other mediums, I would say that it is highly unlikely. In general, Lord St. Leger, mediums employ a number of tricks to make it appear that so-called spirits are in the room with them. They insist on having the right atmosphere in the room, which generally means the room must be in darkness or very low light. Then the ‘spirits’ visit them in the form of rappings or sometimes as luminous things floating in the air, or even ghostly looking people. They will offer ‘proof’ that they are not themselves causing these things to occur. This ‘proof’ usually comes in the form of their having everyone hold hands around a circle, so that someone on either side is holding the medium’s hand. They even have the people on either side place their foot upon each of the medium’s feet under the table. Then when the rapping comes, the people on either side can vouch that the medium did not use her hands or feet.”
“So how do they accomplish the rappings?”
“Some, like the Fox sisters, said that they were able to crack their toes inside their shoes and even their knees, as well, to produce the rapping. They will wear shoes that are too big for their feet, so that they can pull their foot down inside the shoe and crack the toes or even pull their feet out of the shoe altogether. Then they can crack their toes or raise their knee and knock against the underside of the table. Another common ruse is to have an accomplice in the group, and that person sits on one side of the medium. He will say that he held the medium’s hand throughout the course of the séance, but in reality, one of her hands is free. Also, under cover of darkness, the medium can arrange it so that the innocent person on the other side of her is actually taking hold of her accomplice’s hand and foot instead of her own. Then she is free to flit around the room doing whatever she pleases.”
Olivia, warming to her subject, stood up and went to a nearby cabinet, opening it to reveal a number of items inside. “This bottle contains phosphorescent paint. They can paint it on whatever object they wish to hang in the air in a ghostly glowing way—a popular one is a trumpet. They can put it on a piece of thin cloth, such as gauze, and when they are free of the table, they-or an accomplice who was not even in the room to begin with—can drape this gauze over themselves, and in the dark they give off the appearance of a ghost. I have known intelligent, even scientific, gentleman to be completely won over by the appearance of one of these ‘ghosts.’”
St. Leger came over to the cabinet and stood beside her. Olivia was tinglingly aware of his presence, the heat of his large body, the faint smell of shaving soap that clung to his skin. St. Leger looked down dubiously at the length of gauze and the tin toy trumpet and harp that had all been painted with phosphorescent paint. At length he said, “It’s absurd. Why would anyone believe these things?”
“Well, they are more impressive viewed in the dark, glowing and seeming suspended in air,” Olivia pointed out. “There is heightened tension. People are waiting for the unknown, hoping, and probably a little fearful. And if one believes, as these people do, that the medium is still firmly planted in her chair, then it must seem that these things appear freely, just hanging magically in the air. Even I, I confess, have felt a little shiver down my spine when one has appeared. And I know how the tricks are done.”
“What is that?” He pointed to a short black rod, narrow in diameter, with a clamp on one end.
“A telescoping rod,” Olivia explained, taking the rod out and pulling it out to its full length of four feet. “They can hold the objects up quite high with this, but then it can be pushed back down to a foot and easily concealed, like the other things in their capacious pockets. You will notice that the mediums always wear rather full garments, with plenty of room for deep pockets inside, where they do not show. Few people will insist on searching a medium’s body that closely. It would be considered impolite.”
He nodded. “What about this cabinet thing that Mrs. Terhune was locked in?”
“Oh, that is another ‘proof’ that the medium is not the person committing the acts those in attendance see. The medium sits down on a chair inside the cabinet, and she is tied up as Mrs. Terhune was. In these instances, the medium is skilled at getting out of knots or she has an accomplice who makes sure that the knots are loosely tied, or a combination of both. Then the door is closed and even sometimes locked. The lamp is turned out, so that no one can see, and sometimes the group is encouraged to sing to welcome the spirits. The singing helps to cover any noises the medium makes getting out of her ropes inside the box. Then she’ll put on the phosphorescent gauze and leave the box, or even just stand inside it and let her head show over the door, or hold up a painted glove or trumpet or such. Mrs. Terhune holds up pictures of people’s heads. It is quite ludicrous to see, except that most of the people there believe they are ghosts. Then the medium ties herself back up, and when the guests open the door again, she pretends to come out of her trance and wants to know what happened.”
St. Leger frowned. “It all seems so simple. So obvious.”
“It is. But most people don’t look at what they see critically or logically. They want the medium to be genuine. They want to believe their loved one can still see them and talk to them. They want to believe that life goes on after one dies. It is easy to believe when one wants to so much.”
“I suppose.” St. Leger looked at her thoughtfully. “If you were to go to a medium’s séance, could you spot the tricks? Could you expose her?”
“I think so. It might take a few times. Spotting what she does is not as difficult as proving it. I can explain what tricks I think she uses, but usually the victim is so eager to believe the medium is real that I would have to catch her in the act to make the victim believe that it’s a trick.”
He nodded. Olivia watched him. She could almost see the thoughts turning in his head. She wondered who it was who was being deceived by a medium—presumably Madame Valenskaya, since he had mentioned her—and what relation the victim was to Lord St. Leger.
“What is it you would like me to do?” she asked finally.
He looked at her. “I want you to come to my home in the country for a few weeks.”