The Dark Enquiry (4 page)

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.

“It is time,” she intoned, and to my surprise, I found myself shivering. I wondered briefly where Brisbane was, but I trotted along obediently as Agathe herded us out.

The military gentleman cast a quick look at the veiled lady and grumbled at Agathe. “I thought this was a gentlemen’s only session,” he began.

Agathe shrugged. “Madame makes exceptions when it suits her. This lady has come several times to commune with the spirit of her dead child, and it is not the practise of Madame Séraphine to turn away those in need of her services.”

“Still, I do not like it,” he said, his mouth mulish.

“The lady’s presence means there will be seven at the table. It is a most auspicious number for Madame.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but Agathe turned with a snap of her skirts and beckoned for us to follow. The veiled lady inclined her head towards the military fellow to show she bore him no ill will. He gave a harrumph and strode off behind Agathe. As he passed me, I caught a whiff of old dust and unwashed flesh and wrinkled my nose. The sleek and hawkish gentleman who had stood by the whisky offered the veiled lady his arm and she took it. The rest of us fell in line like a crocodile of children just out of the nursery.

Agathe led us down a long, narrow corridor, off which opened several rooms set aside for various purposes. Small signs directed vistors.
Automatic Writing Room
.
Lecture Hall. Summoning Room. Room of Special Examinations.
It all sounded faintly alarming, and instinctively I crept nearer to the fellow in front of me. The ginger-haired young man gave me a sharp look, and I fell back again, muttering an apology in French.

The walls of the corridor were very dark and the lighting almost nonexistent, lending an otherworldly effect. Over it all, I detected the thick floral scent of incense, the smoky fumes of funeral flowers burnt to ash. It did not seem to disturb the others, but I found it increasingly difficult to breathe, and my head grew light and oddly disconnected from my body.

At last, we came to the final door in the corridor, marked
Séance,
and Agathe stood by to let us enter. As we passed her in turn, she gave each of us a meaningful look. The general was first, and he rummaged in his pockets, producing a bit of money, which he pressed into her palm. She murmured her thanks and the rest of us followed suit. I had no idea what the expected donation might be, so I handed over a guinea as I entered the room, and it must have been acceptable, for Agathe nodded and said softly, “Monsieur le Comte is very generous.”

The chamber was of modest size, the walls hung with black, and illuminated by a single lamp near the door. A heavy round table, also draped in black, stood in the centre of the room, and about it were ranged a series of chairs. The black hangings were velvet, dull and weighty, and the room felt oppressive. More of the thick aroma hung in the air, and a small brazier smoked upon the cold hearth. There were no paintings or decorations of any sort, only the web of unrelieved black, robbing the room of all light and movement, and a single clock upon the mantel. The timepiece was a strange affair of black enamel with a figure of Death looming over the clock’s face and gesturing to it with his scythe. I supposed it was meant to warn us of the fleeting nature of time, but the hands never moved, and I shivered at the ghoulishness of it and turned my attention to the rest of the room.

At the opposite end from the door stood a cupboard of sorts, and I realised with a start that it was a spirit cabinet, a place for manifesting souls that did not rest. It was some seven feet high but quite narrow and only some two or three feet deep. A heavy velvet curtain closed it off from the rest of the room, and I wondered what mysteries it concealed. Would Madame claim it was a portal to the other side, a ghostly no-man’s land of disembodied voices and spirits that could not sleep? I felt a quickening of my pulse, a sudden longing to be quit of the place. But before I could act upon it, we were instructed to take any chairs save the one in the centre, and we seated ourselves quickly. As near as I could tell, the chair in the centre was the same as the rest, but my suspicions had been raised. I took the chair next to it, the ginger-haired man on my other side, whilst the chair opposite mine was taken by the handsome latecomer, Sir Morgan. On either side of him sat the other gentlemen, and the veiled lady took the chair across from that reserved for the medium.

We had been seated only a moment when Agathe appeared again in the doorway, now wearing a black shawl over her plain gown, and proclaimed, “Honoured guests, I present your guide to the spirit world, Madame Séraphine!”

There was a moment’s pause—to heighten the anticipation, I had no doubt—and then a figure materialised behind her. As she moved forward, I saw that she was slender and delicately boned, but she gave the impression of great force, as if a much larger and more imposing person had come into the room. It was a trick of personality, I supposed, and I believe it would have been impossible to ignore her even in a crowded ballroom. In this small space, she commanded our attention. She was dressed in black robes, and as she walked, I saw that the robes were embroidered with various arcane signs and symbols. Her hair, thick and black and perhaps assisted by the hairdresser’s arts, flowed freely down her back, and her eyes were heavily ringed with kohl. They gleamed in the dim light of the room, locking briefly upon each of us with a sort of knowing that touched my spine with a shiver.

As she reached the table, she raised her arms as if in benediction, and her small white hands floated upwards in the air like doves. “My friends,” she intoned in a sweet, light voice. “I thank you for coming, and I ask the Spirit that covers us all to bless you.”

Her voice rang with sincerity, and I wondered precisely how much of a fraud she was, for I had begun to suspect Brisbane had been engaged to unmask her, although precisely where he was at that moment, I could not imagine. I knew he had done such work a few times in the past, always at the behest of families who worried that the ancestral fortunes were being squandered upon charlatans by a gullible relation. I was convinced he had set out upon such work again, and I was vastly irritated that I had followed him upon an errand that clearly had nothing to do with Bellmont. I should have to continue to trail him if I meant to uncover his connection there, and that would mean a rather late night. I stifled a yawn.