Ghost Talkers (7 page)

Chapter Five

When Ginger's aunt Lady Penfold was in town, she stayed in the Hôtel de Ville, the only hotel of any note in Le Havre. As the maid escorted Ginger into the sitting room of her suite, a flurry of lace erupted from the chair. “Ginger, darling! You are too thin, poor dear. Come. Sit. Have some chocolates. No—cheese. Have you eaten today? Hush—I can see by your aura that you were about to lie to me. Sit, my dear. Sit.”

Ginger's aunt patted an overstuffed chair the way she would to call her pug.

Laughing, Ginger sank into the chair. “Truly Aunt Edie, I had lunch before I came.”

“Piffle. I have seen what they serve you.” She set a cheese board in front of Ginger and cut a slice herself. Placing it atop a piece of bread, she handed the whole to Ginger. “I do so wish you would stay here. I hardly use the place, and even when I am here, there is more than enough space.”

“The dormitory is small, but convenient. You are all the way across town.”

“First of all, your ‘dormitory' is an unused asylum. Second, you say ‘across town' as if you were talking about London distances. Across town? I can walk ‘across town' in half an hour! Even were that not the case, there is a streetcar that stops just across the Jardin Publique, and runs nearly to your door.”

“And some days, I am so tired…” Too late, Ginger saw the trap her aunt had laid. Edith, Lady Penfold was the younger sister of Ginger's mother and had taken a vested interest in her niece, even when the Atlantic Ocean had separated them.

“Ha! I knew you were exhausted.”

Ginger held up her hands and shrugged. “We've had to schedule double shifts. Please, please tell me that you have some new recruits for us.”

Aunt Edie cut herself a slice of cheese and nibbled on the corner of it. “Well … I do. But not so many as either of us would like. My efforts to discredit the spiritualist movement have been a trifle too successful, I think.”

Ginger winced. “The fake séances?”

“Not as well attended as they have been, although—I've been working with Houdini, and we have found ways to fake most of the effects of an actual ghost. So the spectacle still draws some people. Mm! I brought six women who all have actual talent—completely undiscovered. Charming things.”

“And their discretion?” Charming, unfortunately, did not always mean discrete.

“From excellent families! And all so, so eager to do their bit for king and country.”

“That is a relief.”

She sighed and shook the piece of cheese at Ginger. “What you are actually thinking is perhaps closer to
only six,
isn't it?”

“Would it help if you no longer had to pretend spiritualism was a fraud?”

Narrowing her eyes, Aunt Edie tilted her head. “Yes … but I thought the whole point was to keep the Germans from realizing what we were doing for as long as possible.”

“They might have figured it out.”

Aunt Edie clapped her hands over her ears. “Good heavens, girl! Do not tell me that. You
know
I cannot be trusted. It is a miracle I have managed not to tell people that I am faking the fakery. If that even makes sense. Oh … Ginger, dear. I am a gossip. Please, please, do not tell me anything more.”

And that was why her aunt avoided the staff meetings. The same thing that made her such a success in society and so able to recruit mediums was also her greatest liability. Ginger sat forward and set the cheese and bread aside. “I'm afraid I need to tell you one more thing, because there is a matter I need your help with.”

Her eyes brightened. “Ooh! Do tell.”

“I took a report from an officer who was murdered while in Le Havre by someone who appeared to be a British officer. I stepped into the man's soul and experienced his death, so I'm absolutely certain it was murder.”

“My God.”

Ginger took a breath. “My problem is that I told Brigadier-General Davies about it and he believes I'm making it up. Could you speak with him? I think he might take your title more seriously. He's always annoyed when I come to meetings instead of you.”

Snorting, Lady Penfold sat back in her chair. “I will do one better than that. I will speak to his wife. We will get this sorted out, posthaste.”

*   *   *

The chime sounded, ending their second shift. Ginger settled back into her body, and the entire circle groaned in unison. Joanne giggled. “Lord. Don't we sound like the worst choir in the world?”

Lt. Plumber shook his head and gave a weary grin. “Not near as bad as some of the singing in the trenches.”

These were good people, and she was fortunate to have them. Aches ran through her limbs with half a dozen phantom memories. Maybe she would take Helen's advice and have a stroll by the shore, just to get some air untainted by death. Then, too … she finally had a letter back from Ben. With the uncertainty of the post coming to the front, it could sometimes take only a day for a letter to reach her, and sometimes two weeks. This looked to have been a week in transit. She'd had to fight the urge to open it immediately when she received it, but she was so tired she hadn't been sure she would be able to make sense of it.

Ginger scrubbed her face, trying to chafe some feeling back into her form. When she lowered her hands, the entire circle was staring at her. “What?”

Across the circle, Helen stood, stretching. “What are your plans this evening?”

“I was thinking about a walk to the shore.”

“Bother.” Joanne clapped her hands over her mouth and looked around at the group.

Ginger's soul was still unsettled enough that the sudden flashes of brown annoyance from the group were as plain as text on a page. “Again, I ask, what?”

Joanne lowered her hands and gave a sheepish shrug. “We had a pool about how long it would take you to read Capt. Harford's letter.”

Ginger glanced around the group in disbelief. “A pool…”

Mr. Haden nodded. “Aye. 'Twas my idea, and I was out of the running first thing.”

Helen said, “Well, we all knew you got it. It was written all over you during the first shift.”

“Figured you'd open it straightaway, I did.” Mr. Haden shrugged. “It's what I would have done with a letter from my sweetheart.”

Helen smirked. “And I said you would wait until right before bed tonight, so you had no other distractions.”

“I see … and Joanne thought I would go straight back to my room, I take it. If I open it right now? Who wins?”

Mrs. Richardson raised her hand and waggled her fingers. “I said that you'd think about waiting, but you wouldn't be able to stand it.”

Mr. Haden frowned at Joanne. “Although now that
someone
let you know there was a pool, it won't count.”

“In that case, I shan't worry about playing favourites.” Ginger pulled the letter out of her pocket and waved it at them. “I am going back to my room straightaway and will read it there.”

The cheer they let out did more to restore her than any other measure, short of Ben arriving in person.

*   *   *

Ginger settled at the small table in her room. Its past as an asylum meant that, though she had a window, it was close to the ceiling and barred. At least the building no longer held restless souls. When the Spirit Corps had first moved in … it had required some effort to make it habitable by the sensitive.

On the table, she had a pad of paper and her copy of
The Story of an African Farm,
both of which were absolutely necessary to read a letter from Ben. She started with the salutation.

My dearest, darling, beloved Ginger—

With that, she breathed a sigh of relief. In their private cipher, it meant that he was not going to see combat or venture into enemy territory. She only worried when he wrote a simple
Beloved
.

The paragraphs of the letter, by agreement, would contain nothing coded, though sometimes there were veiled references.

I received your letter of 17 July and so wish that I could be there with you. Or you with me, if that didn't mean bringing you closer to the front lines. I'm indulging myself by imagining that you are sitting just behind me. You laugh. I can hear that sweet mocking tone. We are currently in a meadow under an apple tree, drinking mint tea sweetened with honey. The hive is not one field over. If it were not for the constant thunder and rattle of the guns, it would be a lovely holiday.

Ah … my dear. I miss you so very much.

Damn this war that keeps us apart. In fact, it has inspired me to commit some verses. Pray, bear with my attempts at doggerel. I never claimed to take any prizes for my poems in school, but it is supposed to be the mark of an educated Englishman, so I continue to try. There is so much more that I want to say, and I do not think these verses will be able to touch upon my feelings about this war with any degree of justice.

Ginger slid the pad closer to her. Here was the meat of the letter.

Death vanquishes brave and daring men.

Consider a captain, pacing near a quagmire found within.

Even valour escapes consideration now.

The heroes accept pain. Even frightened. Even vets.

Any restless, angry fighters are facing threats

Powerless over their sacrifice and death.

Death follows, as death is part of corporeal war.

Such anyone can reasonably abhor.

Certainly others find victory inside death,

Justice and freedom inhabit flesh.

Reach, find another path constantly.

And seek any path that the inner dream offers passionately.

The verse, as Ben said, was not very good, although better than it had any right to be. What mattered was that the poem converted to the numbers in a book cipher. Only the first letter of each word mattered in the cipher. The consonants represented numbers zero through nine, while vowels or the end of a line indicated the end of number. So “Death vanquishes brave and” became 260. That was the page number. The next number would be the line, and then the third would be the word, and so on through each set of three numbers.

The line break at the end of a verse represented the end of a phrase. Going through, Ginger converted the poem to a string of numbers, and was left with:

(260, 29, 1) (110, 2, 6) (237, 6, 7) (168, 6, 10)

(55, 1, 3) (9, 3, 3) (351, 1, 1) (54, 2, 1)

(23, 2, 1) (174, 13, 1) (36, 26, 3) (333, 11, 4) (155, 2, 1)

She rubbed the bridge of her nose, trying to massage away the ache behind her eyes. Next came the book. Each number was part of a book code that linked to
The Story of an African Farm
. She flipped through the pages and found page 260, line 29, first word …
Gas.

It took the better part of an hour to find all the references and check her work. When she was finished, she sat back and stretched. Her neck popped audibly, sending a jolt up behind her right ear.

She bent forward and read Ben's words, in her writing:

GAS NEEDED DEVELOPMENT TIME.

GERMAN IN LEADER SHIP.

CURIOUS EXACT WORDS CAP HEARD

Ginger sat back and shivered. If the Germans had needed development time to create the gas, then that potentially meant a long-standing leak. German in leadership … a spy in the command structure? God.

And then the last—if Ben wanted to know the exact words Captain Norris had heard, which she hadn't been able to relay in verse, then it likely meant he was worried it related to the mediums.

She almost would rather not have been right.

 

Chapter Six

22
J
ULY
1916

Ginger ducked into the relative shade of the hospitality hut. Edna followed, with her notebook clutched over her chest. Her rosy complexion had reddened into blotches at her cheeks. The sides of the tent had been drawn up to allow for a breeze, but the July heat still stuck Ginger's chemise to her back and left an itchy layer of sweat on her scalp.

The six recruits her aunt had brought from England looked just as wilted as Ginger felt. Why, oh why couldn't their uniforms have been cotton?

She let her soul expand a little so she could see their auras. Mostly the grey-brown of boredom, although the older woman with grey hair had a layer of grief over her. Ginger pasted on her society smile and approached the small café tables they sat around. “Good morning, ladies.”

Most of them turned to face her, but one young woman, with her dark hair pinned up in a complicated twist, kept chattering to the girl across from her. Her conversational partner shifted in her seat and glanced meaningfully at Ginger, with a flurry of ruddy embarrassment clouding her aura. She cleared her throat, but the dark-haired woman kept chattering on.

“… so I sailed over the fence on my beloved Golden Galleon and landed smartly on the other side, just in front of Lord Tipley. Such a fine-looking gentleman, and he said—”

Ginger cleared her throat. “Pardon me. I do so hate to interrupt, but I'm afraid I haven't much time with you today.”

“Oh.” The woman sniffed and brought her distinctive silhouette around. The pert nose, the low forehead … Ginger would recognise her anywhere, and by the flush of poison green disdain that coloured her aura, it seemed that Abigail Giddeon recognized her as well. “Miss Stuyvesant! What a pleasant surprise.”

“Miss Giddeon, did my aunt not tell you I was here?” She looked down at her list of six names and did not see an Abigail Giddeon anywhere on the list. All respectable girls from good families … ha. Miss Giddeon would only qualify as “respectable” under a very narrow set of definitions.