The Dark Enquiry

“I shall be staying with Lady Bettiscombe,” I informed her. Portia had agreed to supply me with a bolthole and any other necessities I should require.

“And what shall you give me to ensure I do not relate that information to Mr. Brisbane or Mr. Plum should they ask it of me?”

I squawked at her. “You cannot seriously think you can extort money from me to purchase your silence!”

She gave me a calm, slow-lidded blink. “It might be worth rather a lot to your plans to keep me silent, and I think it is not the job of a lady’s maid to enter into intrigues.”

I smothered a bit of profanity I had learned from Brisbane and rummaged in my reticule. “Five pounds. That is all, and for that, you will persuade everyone—everyone—that I am rusticating in the country.”

I brandished the note in front of her, and her eyes lit with avarice. “Oh, yes, my lady! I will make them all believe it, even if I have to lie to the queen herself,” she promised.

“Good.” She reached for the banknote and I held it just out of reach. At the last moment, I tore it sharply in half and gave one of the halves to her.

“What bloody use is this?” she demanded.

“Do not swear,” I told her. “Aunt Hermia would be most disappointed if I told her you still spoke like a guttersnipe.”

“If you don’t want me to swear, don’t steal my bloody money,” she returned bitterly.

I tucked the other half of the note into my reticule.

“You may have the other half when the task is completed to my satisfaction. If you exchange both halves at the bank, they will give you a crisp new banknote in its place,” I informed her. She brightened.

“I suppose that’s all right then,” she conceded. “Mind you don’t lose the other half.”

“Shall I give it to the Tower guards to look after with the Crown Jewels?” I asked.

She waggled a finger at me. “I shall speak to God about that tongue of yours, as well.”

“Do, Morag, I beg you.”

The THIRD CHAPTER

I had the gift, and arrived at the technique

That called up spirits from the vasty deep…

—“The Witch of Endor” Anthony Hecht

With my maid and my trunk safely dispatched to the country and my web of lies coming along nicely, I took myself off to my sister’s house on foot, approaching through the back garden. I thought to make an unobtrusive entrance, but when I arrived, I found the entire household standing outside, admiring a cow. A man stood at the head, holding its halter and nudging its nose towards a box of hay.

Portia waved me over to where she stood with Jane the Younger and Nanny Stone.

“Isn’t she divine?” Portia crooned.

I sighed. “Yes, she is quite the loveliest baby,” I assured her, although truth be told, she had the rather unformed look of most children that age, and I suspected she would be much handsomer in another year or two.

“Not the baby,” she sniffed. “The cow.”

I turned to where the pretty little Jersey was being brushed as it munched a mouthful of fresh hay. “Yes, delightful. Why, precisely, do you have a cow in London?”

“For the baby, of course. Jane the Younger will require milk in a few months, and I mean to be ready. She cannot have city milk,” she informed me with the lofty air of certainty I had observed in most new mothers. “City milk is poison.”

I said nothing. Portia could be rabid upon the subject of the infant’s health and I had learned the hard way not to offer an opinion on any matter that touched the baby unless it concurred with hers in every particular. In this case, I could not entirely fault her. Adulterated milk had been discovered in some of the best shops, much of it little better than chalky water and full of nasty things. It was difficult to believe that in a city as grand as London we should resort to keeping cows in the garden to feed children, but I suppose the greater evil was that not everyone could afford to do so.

I studied the animal a moment. It was a sound, sturdy-looking beast, with velvety brown eyes and a soft brown coat. It paused occasionally to give a contented moo, and in response, Jane the Younger gurgled.

“Well, congratulations, my dear,” I told her. “You have just acquired the largest pet in the City.”

We both subsided into giggles then, and Portia passed the baby off to Nanny Stone and escorted me to my room for the night. I had brought with me only a carpetbag, but the contents had been carefully selected. Her eyes widened as she watched me extract the garments, a short wig and a set of false whiskers.

“Julia! You cannot possibly go about London dressed like that,” she objected, lifting one garment with her fingertips.

“Leave it be! You will wrinkle it, and I will have you know I am very particular about the state of my collars,” I added with an arch smile.

But Portia refused to see the humour in the situation. “Julia, those are men’s clothes. You cannot wear them.”

“I cannot wear anything else,” I corrected. “If I am to sleuth the streets of London undetected, I can hardly go as myself, nor can I take my carriage. It is recognisable. I must take a hansom at night, and that means I must travel incognita.”

“Is it ‘incognita’ if you are disguised as a boy? Perhaps it should be ‘incognito’?” she wondered aloud.

“Do not be pedantic. I knew this costume would prove useful,” I exulted. “That is why I ordered it made up some weeks ago. I have been waiting for the chance to wear it.”

I had ordered the garments when I had commissioned a new riding habit from Brisbane’s tailor, using an excellent bottle of port as an inducement to his discretion upon the point. He was well-accustomed to ladies ordering their country attire from his establishment, but the request for a city suit and evening costume had thrown him only a little off his mettle. “Ah, for amateur theatricals, no doubt,” he had said with a grave look, and I had smiled widely to convey my agreement.

In a manner of speaking, I was engaging in an amateur theatrical, I told myself. I was certainly pretending to be someone I was not. I had last adopted masculine disguise during my first investigation with Brisbane, and the results had not been entirely satisfactory. But this time, I had ordered the garments cut in a very specific fashion, determined to conceal my feminine form and suggest an altogether more masculine silhouette. And I had taken the precaution of ordering moustaches, a rather slender arrangement fashioned from a lock of my own dark chestnut hair. The moustaches did not match the plain brown wig perfectly, but I was inordinately pleased with the effect, certain that not even Brisbane would be able to penetrate my disguise.

I spent the rest of the day in my room, finding it difficult to settle to anything in particular. I skimmed the newspapers, ate a few chocolates and attempted to read Lady Anne Blunt’s very excellent book, The Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates. At length, Portia had a tray sent up with dinner, but I found myself far too excited to eat. I rang for the tray to be cleared and applied myself to my disguise. I observed, not for the first time, that gentlemen’s attire was both oddly liberating and strangely constricting. The freedom from corsets was delicious, but I found the tightness of the trousers disconcerting, and when Portia came to pass judgement, she shook her head.

“They are quite fitted,” she pronounced. “You cannot take off the coat at any point, or you will be instantly known for a woman.”

I tugged on the coat. “Better?”

She gestured for me to turn in a slow circle. “Yes, although you must do something about your hands. No one will ever believe those are the hands of a young man.”

I pulled on gloves and took up my hat, striking a pose. “Now?”

Portia pursed her lips. “It will not stand the closest inspection, but since you mean to go out at night, I think it will do. But why did you chose formal evening dress? Surely you do not intend to travel in polite circles?”

I shrugged. “I may have no choice. Everything depends upon where Brisbane is bound. If I am in a plain town suit, I cannot follow, but if I am in evening attire, I might just gain entrée. At worst, I can pretend to be an inebriated young buck on the Town.”

She hesitated. “It seemed a very great joke at first, but I am not at ease. The last time you did this, you took Valerius. Could you not ask one of our brothers to accompany you? Or perhaps Aquinas. He is entirely loyal.”

I nibbled at my lip, catching a few hairs of the moustaches. I plucked them out and wiped them on my trousers. “I cannot ask any of our brothers. They are as peremptory as Brisbane. Although I do wish I had thought of Aquinas,” I admitted. “He would have been the perfect conspirator, but it is too late now. Besides, I am not certain I could afford it,” I added, thinking of the five-pound bribe I had promised Morag.

I tugged the hat lower upon my head and flung a white silk scarf about my neck, just covering my chin. I collected a newspaper in case I grew bored during my surveillance and tipped my hat with a flourish. “Wish me luck.”

Portia linked smallest fingers with me and I was off, slipping out of the house on quiet feet. Too quiet, I reminded myself. Men walked as if they owned the earth, and I should have to walk the same. I slowed my pace, my heels striking hard against the pavement. On the corner, the lamplighter had just scaled his ladder. After a moment’s work, a comforting glow shone from the lamp. I smiled, and the lamplighter touched his cap.

“A cab for you, madam? There’s a hansom just coming now.”

I cursed softly, then called up to him. “What betrayed me?”

He gave me a broad smile. “A gentleman would never smile at a lamplighter. But the effect is not bad. For a moment, you had me quite deceived,” he reassured me.

I sighed and gave him a wave before hailing the hansom. Struck with a sudden inspiration, I adopted a thick French accent to address the driver. It was a point of national pride for Englishmen to consider Frenchmen womanly and effeminate, and it occurred to me that I could manage a far better job of impersonating a Frenchman than an English fellow.

“Where to, me lad?” he asked, but not unkindly. I hesitated. Brisbane could be departing from either our home or the consulting rooms, but I could not be certain which. On a hunch, I called out our home address in Brook Street. Whatever business Brisbane was about, he would most likely have gone home to bathe and dress for the evening and shave for the second time. His beard was far too heavy to permit him to go out for the evening without secondary ablutions.

I jumped lightly into the hansom, beginning to enjoy myself. I instructed the driver that I meant to hire him for the night. He demurred until we settled on an extortionate rate for his services, at which point he was my man. He threw himself into our surveillance with an admirable enthusiasm, holding the hansom at some distance from the house itself, but still near enough I could see the comings and goings. I think he thought me involved in a romantic intrigue, for I heard several mutterings about Continentals and their wicked ways, but I ignored him, preferring to keep a close watch upon my house instead.

And while I watched, I discovered an interesting fact—surveillance was the dullest activity imaginable. I had not been there a quarter of an hour before I was prodding myself awake, but my evening was not in vain. Some half an hour after we arrived, I saw Brisbane emerge, elegantly attired in his customary evening garments of sharp black and white and carrying a black silk scarf. Just as he emerged, another hansom happened by, or perhaps Brisbane had arranged for its arrival, for he stepped directly from the kerb to the carriage without a break in his stride, tucking the scarf over his shirtfront as he moved. I rapped upon the roof of my own carriage to alert the driver, and after a few moments, we followed discreetly behind.

My man was a marvel, for he never permitted Brisbane’s hansom out of his sight, but neither did he draw near enough to bring attention to us. He held the cab at a distance as Brisbane alighted in front of an imposing old house on a respectable if not fashionable street. A lamplighter had been here, as well, and by squinting, I could just make out the sign, marked in imposing letters. The Spirit Club.

There came a low whistle from the hansom driver and I put my head through the trap. “I know. Give me a minute.” I banged the trap back down and sat for a moment, thinking furiously. I knew I had encountered the name of this particular club recently, very recently, in fact. I scrabbled through the newspaper until I found the notice I sought.

The Spirit Club hosts the acclaimed French medium, Madame Séraphine for an indefinite engagement. Ladies may consult with Madame during the Ladies’ Séance held every afternoon at four o’clock. Gentlemen will be welcomed for the evening sessions, held at eight and ten o’clock. Places must be secured by prior arrangement.

I ought to have known. When Spiritualism had become fashionable, several dozen such clubs had sprung up around London like so many toadstools after an autumn rain. Usually they were maintained with a tiny staff and a resident medium to hold sessions for paying clients. Depending upon the talents of the particular medium, the sessions might involve a séance or automatic writing or some other sort of spiritual manifestations. Some clients went purely for the purpose of entertainment, viewing the mediums as little better than fortune-tellers. Others went from desperation, and it was sometimes the most surprising people who turned to Spiritualism to give them comfort or answer their questions. Sometimes perfectly rational men of business became so dependent upon their medium of choice that they refused to stir a step with regard to their investments without the advice of the spirits. Engagements could not be announced, children could not be named, houses could not be purchased until the spirits had been consulted.

For my part, I found the entire notion of Spiritualism baffling. It was not so much that I felt it impossible the spirits could revisit this life as I thought it vastly disappointing they should want to. If the afterlife could promise no greater entertainment than visiting a club of clammy-handed strangers, then what pleasure was there to be had in being dead?

I blessed the instinct that had caused me to kit myself out as a man, but puffed a sigh of irritation when I realised that without prior arrangement, I could hardly expect to gain entrée into the club.

Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained, I told myself brightly, and I dropped to the pavement. I tossed a substantial amount of money to my driver with instructions to wait some distance farther down the street, then made my way to the Spirit Club. There was no sign of Brisbane, and I realised that he had disappeared as I was tearing through the newspaper for information. I had broken the cardinal rule of surveillance and taken my eyes from my subject, I thought with a stab of annoyance. But the Spirit Club was the only likely destination for him, I decided, and taking the bull firmly by the horns, I rang the bell and waited. After a long moment, an impossibly tall, impossibly thin gentleman opened the door. He had a lugubrious face and a sepulchral manner.

“May I help you?” He gave me a forbidding glance, and I knew instinctively that I should have to put on a very good performance indeed to gain entrance to the club.

I coughed and pitched my voice as low as I could as I adopted an air of bonhomie. “Ah, bonsoir, my friend. I come to see the great medium—Madame Séraphine!” I cried in my Continental accent. I swept him a low, theatrical bow.

The lugubrious expression did not flicker. “Have you an appointment?”

“Ah, no, alas! I have only just this day arrived from France, you understand.” I smiled a conspiratorial smile, inviting him to smile with me.

Still, the face remained impassively correct. “Have you a card?”

I felt my heart drop into my throat. How I could have been so stupid as to forget such an essential component of a gentleman’s wardrobe was beyond me. I did not deserve to be a detective, I thought bitterly.

The porter noted my dismay and took a step forward as if to usher me from the premises. But I had come too far to be turned back.

I flung out my arms. “I should have, but the devils at the station, they pick my pockets! My card case, my notecase, these things they take from me!” I cried. “It is a disgrace that they steal from me, the Comte de Roselende, the great-nephew of the Emperor!”

Napoléon III had been deposed for the better part of two decades, but an innate snobbery lurked within most butlers and porters, and I depended upon it. “I am here in England to visit my beloved great-aunt, the Empress Eugénie,” I pressed on. “She lives in Hampshire, you know.”

This much was true. The Empress lived in quiet retirement in Farmborough, and had once taken tea with my father. It was a particularly brilliant stroke of inspiration as it was well-known that the Empress had once hosted the famous medium Daniel Douglas Home who had conjured the spectre of her father. I watched closely, to see if my connections with royalty swayed the porter at all, but he seemed unmoved.

“I am sorry, Monsieur le Comte, but without a prior appointment, I cannot admit you to the Spirit Club,” he intoned sadly. He made to shut the door upon me, but just then a woman appeared, her plain face alight with interest.

“Monsieur le Comte?” she asked, coming forward to put a hand to the porter’s sleeve as she peered closely at me. “You are a Frenchman?”

Her own accent was smoothly modulated, perhaps from long travels out of her native land, for I detected French as her native tongue, but touched with a bit of German and a hint of Russian in her vowels. “Oui, mademoiselle! St. John Malachy LaPlante, the Comte de Roselende, at your service.” I sprang forward to press a kiss to her hand, praying my moustaches would not choose that moment to desert me. But they held fast, and I released the little hand to study the lady herself. She was dressed plainly, and it occurred to me that I had erred grievously in paying her such lavish attentions.

But she merely ducked her head, blushing. “You are very kind,” she murmured in English for the porter’s benefit. “My sister will be very happy to find a place for you.”

“Ah, you are the sister of the great Madame Séraphine!” I proclaimed grandly.

She gave me a shy, gentle smile. “Yes, I am Agathe LeBrun. Please, come in. You will be our special guest. Beekman, let the gentleman pass.”

The porter, Beekman, stepped aside, not entirely pleased at the development. I smiled broadly at him as I passed and followed the kindly Agathe as she conducted me down a dimly lit corridor. She stopped at a closed door and inclined her head. “This is where the gentlemen gather before the séance. Please sign the guestbook and make yourself comfortable. There are cigars and whisky.”

I pretended to shudder and she gave me a look of approbation. “I understand,” she mumured in French. “Whisky is so unsubtle, is it not? I will see if I can find something more palatable for you.”

“You must not exercise yourself on my behalf,” I protested.

She ducked her head again, glancing up at me, a thin line of worry creasing her brow. I put her at somewhat older than my thirty-three years, perhaps half a dozen years my senior, and her plain face would have been more attractive had she not worn an expression of perpetual harassment.

“I wonder if you are troubled, monsieur,” she said softly.

I started, then forced myself to relax as I realised how clever the arrangement was. Doubtless she was meant to extract information from me in the guise of a simple conversation—information that would be conveyed to her sister for use in the séance. The opening gambit was such that could have been used upon anyone at all, and I marvelled at its simplicity.

“It is kind of you to notice,” I murmured back. “Money troubles. It is for this reason that I come to England.”

Her expression sharpened then, and I knew I had said the wrong thing. My entrée had doubtless been because I had neatly dropped the Empress’ name into conversation. The notion that I was rich and well-connected—and therefore could prove valuable to Madame Séraphine—was my only attractiveness. I hastened to reclaim it.

“Of course, I have expectations, excellent expectations,” I confessed. “But I am a little short at present. I would like to know how long I am expected to wait for my hopes to be realised.”

I tried to adopt a suitable expression, but I found it difficult. How did one manage to convey respectable avarice?

It must have worked, for her features relaxed again into faint worry, and she dropped a curtsey. “I understand, monsieur. May I take your hat? Please make yourself comfortable. The séance will begin in a moment.”

I handed over my hat and she gestured towards the door, leaving me to do the honours as she disappeared back down the darkened hall. I took a deep breath and steeled myself before opening the door. By the window stood an older gentleman of rigid posture and decidedly military bearing. His clothes were costly enough, but his shoulders sported a light dusting of white from his unwashed hair, and his chin was imperfectly shaven. He stared out the window at nothing, for the garden was shrouded in blackness, and I suspected he stood there as a stratagem to avoid conversation.

In contrast to him was a second gentleman, who occupied himself with the whisky and a gasogene. He was sleekly polished, with a veneer of good breeding that I suspected was precisely that—a veneer. His lips were thin and cruel and his brow high and sharply modeled. He put me in mind of a bird of prey, and he eyed me dismissively as I entered. The third gentleman looked a bit less certain of himself, a trifle rougher in his dress and decorum, and only he gave me a smile as I entered. He was dressed in an evening suit that I guessed to be second-hand, and his bright ginger hair had been slicked down with a heavy hand.

I nodded politely towards them all and made my way to the guestbook, where I took up the pen and signed with a flourish. Just as I finished the last scrolling vowel of Roselende, the door opened, and I gave a start. For one heart-stilling instant, I thought it was Plum, but instantly I saw my mistake. Like the newcomer, Plum was an elegant fellow, but I daresay if the pair of them had been placed side by side, few eyes would have fallen first upon my brother. They were of a size, both being tall and well-made, and both of them had green eyes and brown hair shading to the exact hue of polished chestnuts. But Plum lacked this fellow’s predatory grace, and there was something resolute about the set of this gentleman’s jaw, as if he seldom gave quarter or asked for it. His eyes flicked briefly around the room, lingering only a fraction longer upon me than the rest of the company. He inclined his head and advanced to where I stood next to the guestbook. I stepped back sharply and held out the pen.

“Thank you,” he murmured in a pleasant drawling baritone. I flicked my eyes to the page as he scrawled his signature with a flourish.

Sir Morgan Fielding. I had heard the name once or twice in society gossip, but I did not know him, and I relaxed a little as I realised he doubtless did not know me, either.

He replaced the pen, and although he did not look at me, he must have been aware of my scrutiny, for his shapely mouth curved into a slow smile, and I felt a blush beginning to creep up my cheeks.

Hastily, I turned away and picked up the latest copy of Punch. I flicked unseeing through the pages, grateful when the door opened to admit another visitor. To my surprise, this one was a woman, thickly veiled and silent. She was dressed in unrelieved black, at least twenty years out of date, and the severity of her costume was a trifle forbidding. She moved well, but it was impossible to place her age. She might have been twenty or forty or anywhere between, for she was slender enough and her step was light. She approached the guestbook, but before she could sign, the door opened again and Agathe LeBrun appeared in the doorway.