Isabelle now acknowledged that she just hadn’t thought deeply enough.
“I would never have made that mistake in India,” she admitted, “I would have assumed there was an entire clan of thieves behind the fraud. Or worse—”
Because there had been worse. It was not always money that was at stake in India, and there were worse fates than death.
“You were thinking of your friend—”
“And not of danger.” She nodded.
“I think—” he paused. “I think danger here has become more subtle than when we first lived in England. The attacks are indirect.”
She frowned a little. “I would have said, more petty. And that bothers me. We know there are great occultists with cruel agendas still living here. So where are they?”
“In hiding.” He paused, and released her. She stood away from him a little, looking up into his face. “I wonder if they are not waiting for science to make people forget that they ever existed.”
“So that they can return to prey on the utterly unwary?” She shivered. “An uncomfortable thought.”
“But not one we need to confront tonight or tomorrow.” He smiled down at her. “Sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof.”
“True enough.” She took his hand, and looked coyly up at him. “And since it happens to be night—”
He laughed.
***
The medium lived in a modest house just off one of the squares in the part of London that housed those clerks and the like with pretensions to a loftier address than their purses would allow, an area totally unfamiliar to Nan. The house itself had seen better days, though, as had most of the other homes on that dead-end street, and Nan suspected that it was rented. The houses had that peculiarly faded look that came when the owners of a house did not actually live there, and those who did had no reason to care for the property themselves, assuming that was the duty of the landlord. Mem’sab had chosen her gown carefully, after discarding a walking suit, a mourning gown and veil, and a peculiar draped garment she called a sari, a souvenir of her time in India. The first, she thought, made her look untrusting, sharp, and suspicious, the second would not be believed had the medium done any research on the backgrounds of these new sitters, and the third smacked of mockery. She chose instead one of the plain, simple gowns she preferred, in the mode called “Artistic Reform”; not particularly stylish, but Nan thought it was a good choice. For one thing, she could move in it; it was looser than the highest mode, and did not require tight corseting. If Mem’sab needed to run, kick, or dodge, she could.
The girls followed her quietly, dressed in their starched pinafores and dark dresses, showing the best possible manners, with Grey tucked under Sarah’s coat to stay warm until they got within doors.
It was quite dark as they mounted the steps to the house and rang the bell. The door was answered by a sour-faced woman in a plain black dress, who ushered them into a sitting room and took their coats, with a startled glance at Grey as she popped her head out of the front of Sarah’s jacket. She said nothing, however, and neither did Grey as she climbed to Sarah’s shoulder.
The woman returned a moment later, but not before Nan had heard the faint sounds of surreptitious steps on the floor above them. She knew it had not been the sour woman, for she had clearly heard those steps going off to a closet and returning. If the séance room was on this floor, then, there was someone else above.
The sitting room had been decorated in a very odd style. The paintings on the wall were all either religious in nature, or extremely morbid, at least so far as Nan was concerned. There were pictures of women weeping over graves, of angels lifting away the soul of a dead child, of a woman throwing herself to her death over a cliff, of the spirits of three children hovering about a man and woman mourning over pictures held in their listless hands. There was even a picture of a girl crying over a dead bird lying in her hand.
Crystal globes on stands decorated the tables, along with bouquets of funereal lilies whose heavy, sweet scent dominated the chill room. The tables were all draped in fringed cloths of a deep scarlet. The hard, severe furniture was either of wood or upholstered in prickly horsehair. The two lamps had been lit before they entered the room, but their light, hampered as it was by heavy brocade lamp shades, cast more shadows than illumination.
They didn’t have to wait long in that uncomfortable room, for the sour servant departed for a moment, then returned, and conducted them into the next room. This, evidently, was only an antechamber to the room of mysteries; heavy draperies swathed all the walls, and there were straight-backed chairs set against them on all four walls. The lily scent pervaded this room as well, mixed with another, that Nan recognized as the Hindu incense that Nadra often burned in her own devotions.
There was a single picture in this room, on the wall opposite the door, with a candle placed on a small table beneath it so as to illuminate it properly. This was a portrait in oils of a plump woman swathed in pale draperies, her hands clasped melodramatically before her breast, her eyes cast upward. Smoke, presumably that of incense, swirled around her, with the suggestion of faces in it. Nan was no judge of art, but Mem’sab walked up to it and examined it with a critical eye.
“Neither good nor bad,” she said measuringly. “I would say it is either the work of an unknown professional or a talented amateur.”
“A talented amateur,” said the lady that Mem’sab had called “Katherine,” as she, too, was ushered into the chamber. “My dear friend Lady Harrington painted it; it was she who introduced me to Madame Varonsky.”
Mem’sab turned to meet her, and Katherine glided across the floor to take her hand in greeting. “It is said to be a very speaking likeness,” she continued. “I certainly find it so.”
Nan studied the woman further, but saw nothing to change her original estimation. Katherine wore yet another mourning gown of expensive silk and mohair, embellished with jet beadwork and fringes that shivered with the slightest movement. A black hat with a full veil perched on her carefully coiffed curls, fair hair too dark to be called golden, but not precisely brown either. Her full lips trembled, even as they uttered words of polite conversation, her eyes threatened to fill at every moment, and Nan thought that her weak chin reflected an overly sentimental and vapid personality. It was an assessment that was confirmed by her conversation with Mem’sab, conversation that Nan ignored in favor of listening for other sounds. Over their heads, the floor creaked softly as someone moved to and fro, trying very hard to be quiet. There were also some odd scratching sounds that didn’t sound like mice, and once, a dull thud, as of something heavy being set down a little too hard.
Something was going on up there, and the person doing it didn’t want them to notice.
At length the incense smell grew stronger, and the drapery on the wall to the right of the portrait parted, revealing a door, which opened as if by itself.
Taking that as their invitation, Katherine broke off her small talk to hurry eagerly into the sacred precincts; Mem’sab gestured to the girls to precede her, and followed on their heels. By previous arrangement, Nan and Sarah, rather than moving toward the circular table at which Madame Varonsky waited, went to the two walls likeliest to hold windows behind their heavy draperies before anyone could stop them.
It was Nan’s luck to find a corner window overlooking the street, and she made sure that some light from the room within flashed to the watcher on the opposite side before she dropped the drapery.