When the Walls Fell (21 page)

Madame Petrovka nodded and clasped her hands. “It was unusual. I cannot guarantee such—”

Simon grunted.

“A disbeliever. Yes, I sensed that the other evening,” she said as she took a seat.

“Sensed it, did you?” Simon said and then cocked his head to the side. “Do you always drug your sitters?”

She shrugged. “The incense helps them relax. Some need it more than others.”

Elizabeth knew she’d better jump in quickly before Simon got them kicked out. “It was amazing. And disturbing. What exactly happened?”

Madame Petrovka smiled. There was nothing ominous about the smile. It appeared completely genuine and yet it made Elizabeth shiver.

“Yes, wasn’t it?” Madame Petrovka said. “Such a tragedy, losing a child like that.”

Elizabeth could feel Simon winding up for a good one. “I felt something that night,” she said quickly hoping to keep him from erupting. “I’m not sure how to describe it.”

“Did you? You must be sensitive to the spiritual vibrations.”

Elizabeth took Simon’s hand in a silent appeal to play along. “What was it?”

“What did it feel like, my dear?”

Elizabeth knew this was a typical tactic by fraudulent mediums. She was doing all the talking, providing all the information and Madame Petrovka would keep providing the carrot as long Elizabeth was willing to play along. For now, she was. “Cold, very cold and…”

“Evil?”

Simon made another noise.

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth admitted. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

“Of course you were.” Madame Petrovka poured herself a cup of tea. “When a person dies their spirit begins a new journey through the realms to peace. Depending on how they lived their lives, spirits find themselves on different levels of ascendance. Sometimes, when a death is violent or life is filled with unresolved issues, the spirit can lose their way. Dear Violet is lost. Lost in a place with other souls that are tormented. It would be a horrible and frightening place for a child.”

That made a disturbing sort of sense, even if Elizabeth didn’t want it to. “And that other presence? Some sort of tortured soul or demon.”

“Possibly.”

“And I suppose for a price you’ll help little Violet find peace,” Simon said not bothering to hide his disdain.

“Simon—”

Madame Petrovka raised a hand. “It’s quite all right. I’m used to it. Yes and no, Sir Simon. Yes, I do hope to help Violet find her way to the next realm and no, there is no price. She’d been abandoned. By the people she thought loved her,” she said, the tenor of her voice and body language changing, tensing. “She was betrayed by them.”

“Betrayed?” Elizabeth asked. Someone had lost the plot and she was pretty sure it wasn’t her. From what she knew about the Grahams, they would never do anything to hurt their child. They loved Violet to distraction.

Madame Petrovka relaxed. “Perhaps I spoke too strongly. The child’s spirit is quite powerful.”

“And you’re not taking any money from the Grahams for all of your…assistance?” Simon asked.

“Not a brass farthing, Sir Simon.”

The room was chilly, but it wasn’t anything supernatural.

Simon reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out the pocket watch. “We won’t take up anymore of your time.”

It was funny, Elizabeth hadn’t even realized that the watch worked as a watch. She was about to say her goodbyes when she noticed that Madame Petrovka was staring intently at some nebulous spot on the wall. Elizabeth didn’t see anything there and for a moment, Elizabeth thought the woman had fallen into a trance. Her eyes glassed over and she seemed almost to be in a fugue state. “Madame Petrovka?”

The woman took a deep breath. “My time. Yes. Time.” She came back to herself and took a cleansing breath. “I do have appointments. If you’ll see yourself out.”

She almost hurried to the door, but turned back and smiled like the Cheshire Cat. “I’m so very glad you came.”

Chapter Nineteen

I
t was her turn to watch. Elizabeth lay on her side; head propped up on her elbow and watched Simon sleep. She knew he often watched her as she slept. He said it was better than tea. From Simon, that was high praise.

How he could sleep at a time like this though, she had no idea. Tomorrow was Easter Sunday and unless she stopped whoever was after Victor Graham, everything she cared about would cease to be. As if he’d heard her, Simon gave a small snore and rolled his head to the side as he continued his blissful night’s sleep. Amazing.

Was this what it felt like for Simon all those nights in New York? He’d had prescient nightmares of her death nearly every night. She’d been disturbed by them; who wouldn’t, but she didn’t really understand how he felt. Until now.

Their fight about her new job and her crappy car didn’t just seem insignificant; they felt a lifetime away. In a way they were. What was it about traveling back in time that seemed to give them a fresh start? In New York it had given them a chance to fall in love and here, a chance to stay that way.

She rolled onto her back and tried to calm the torrent of possibilities that flooded her mind. There were just too many what ifs. How could she possibly protect Graham from all of them?

She kissed Simon’s cheek, eased out of bed and pulled on her robe and slippers. Sleep wasn’t going to come. Only two things helped and she and Simon had already tried the first. The second wasn’t as surefire a method, but it was worth trying.

She picked up a candleholder and carefully made her way into the hall. She struck the match and lit the candle, but it wouldn’t last long. It had nearly guttered out. She made her way downstairs protecting the flame as best she could.

The kitchen was bigger than she thought. As she moved to set her candle down and light the gas lamp when her candle gave up and the flame snuffed itself out. There were only a few windows in the kitchen and she had no idea where the matches were.

“Crud.”

She was feeling her way along the edge of the table when the crack and sizzle of a match being lit broke the silence and a flickering light grew behind her.

“Trouble sleeping?”

Gerald, clad in his nightshirt, robe, slippers and nightcap looked like something straight out of
A Christmas Carol
. He held out the candle out between them.

“Lot on my mind,” she said. “You?”

“I’m old.”

She laughed and he lit the gas lamp and soon the room glowed with a yellow warmth. Elizabeth walked over to one of the cabinets and opened it. “Got anything to eat in this place?”

She opened a few more cabinets before Gerald stopped her. “Sit down. You’ll just make a mess of things and I’m the one who’ll have hell to pay with cook when she gets back. Just put that down and leave it to me.”

He tossed his nightcap aside, took the can of kidney beans out of her hands and put it back in the cabinet. “I think we have some eggs,” he said. “You can cut some bread for toast if you’d like.”

“Eggs are fine.”

He opened the icebox and pulled out a bowl of eggs, a bottle of milk and an ornate butter tray. “He still here?”

“Simon? Yes.”

Gerald grunted, but no lecture followed.

Earlier that night, Elizabeth had pulled up her big girl panties and gone to see Mrs. Eldridge about Simon. She’d hemmed and hawed, as embarrassed as a teenager when Mrs. Eldridge had lowered her pince-nez and said, “I may be old, dear, but I’m not blind. I do remember what it feels like to be madly in love, you know. Life’s far too short.”

She’d said that she would ask Jane to make up a room for him for propriety’s sake. She’d even promised to handle Gerald. And, judging from his response, or lack of one, she’d done just that.

Gerald bent down to revive the fire in the huge cast iron stove.

“Why do you hate him so much?”

He pushed some paper and kindling into the firebox and jabbed at the wood, forcing the flames to life.

“It’s not him so much as…the English.”

“All of them?”

“No,” he said, “But when you’ve seen them do what I saw.”

“Your leg?”

“That and more. I was good with a gun and twenty-two when the war started. My father and my uncles had all fought in the revolution and I saw my chance for glory.”

“What revolution?”

He looked at her like she’d grown a second head. “For independence.”

“That was over a hundred years ago.”

“Are you going to keep interrupting or let me tell it?”

“I’m sorry.” She really never would get used to things like this.

“It was 1813. The War of 1812. I don’t suppose they teach about that when you come from?”

Elizabeth didn’t mention the only thing she knew about the War of 1812 was a kitschy song from the fifties her father used to sing. It was a sobering thought that virtually an entire war had been swallowed by history. What else didn’t they teach anymore?

“They came in the middle of the night,” Gerald continued as he cooked. “Going to stick us with bayonets while we slept, but we gave them hell. Right in the middle of it, this man appears out of thin air. Magic. Everyone stopped, even the Brits.”

He seemed lost in the memory for a moment before continuing. “But that didn’t last long. One of them was about to shoot him in the back. That’s how it was. I pulled him out of the way, stuck him behind a tree. I managed to shoot a few of them before I got my leg blown off a few minutes later.”

Unconsciously, he rubbed the top of his thigh. “The last thing I remembered was the man looking down at me. They say I had fever for a week and when I finally woke up, I was here. Upstairs in this very house.”

He plated the eggs and sat down.

“Mr. Eldridge was the man,” Elizabeth said, knowing it was true.

“That was thirty years ago and I’ve been here ever since.”

“Wow.” Elizabeth tasted her eggs. “Good.”

He raised his fork in salute.

She took another bite and discovered she really was hungry. “Thirty years. That’s a long time to hold a grudge.”

He eyed her carefully and smiled. “I have issues.”

She laughed and after a few more bites, her egg was gone.

“Sleepy?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Me neither,” he admitted.

She really wasn’t tired at all now. So much for Plan B. She rubbed the surface of the table, lost in thought, when she remembered that she had the perfect solution to sleepless nights. “You play cards, Gerald?”

“I’ve been known to.”

“Any good?”

“Better than you, I’ll wager.”

Elizabeth smiled. “I’ll take that bet.”

***

They’d played for an hour before both headed back to bed. Sleep finally came for Elizabeth, but it was filled with haunting, disquieting dreams. The only comfort was waking up in Simon’s arms.

After a quick breakfast they took Mrs. Eldridge’s carriage to Simon’s hotel so he could put on a fresh shirt and check in with his network of spies. Simon ran the entire thing with Machiavellian precision and a generous wallet. Anyone who learned anything useful reported back to the hotel concierge who, in turn, reported to Simon.

They picked up on Graham’s trail as he left Easter services at the First Presbyterian Church. According to a valet at the Prescott mansion, the Grahams were scheduled to attend a lawn party there that afternoon, but their carriage traveled straight back to their house on Nob Hill.