Sowing Poison (15 page)

Custom remained brisk at Temperance House. Guests continued to arrive in order to consult with the famous Mrs. Elliott, and there were a few farmers and tradesmen who were of a temperance persuasion who came to Wellington for business reasons and needed a place to stay. Now, however, they also had occasional guests who arrived not for the rooms, but for the dinners, as word of Sophie's talents spread. And the meeting room had been booked again for that evening.

The master of the Orange Lodge had been correct; the members did indeed grumble about the lack of spirits at their meeting, and he had quickly made arrangements with the Wilman Hotel for the use of their ballroom the following Saturday night.

Daniel hadn't expected the Lodge to return to Temperance House, but it seemed that the Orangemen had managed to turn the tables on the Agricultural Society — the society was now forced to look for other premises for a lecture they had planned for the same evening. They approached Daniel and asked if they could hold it at Temperance House.

“Well, this is all right, isn't it?” Daniel had said when he gleefully reported the news to Lewis. “It'll keep us hopping, what with all the guests right now, but we're in much better shape than we were for the first meeting.”

Chairs were not an issue this time. The Agricultural Society lectures nearly always drew a reasonable crowd, but they appealed mostly to farmers, and any of those who also belonged to the Orange Lodge would probably opt to go to the livelier gathering at the Wilman instead.

Nor was Lewis instructed to stand in the hall until refreshments were called for. The society president made it clear that any of the hotel guests and staff were welcome to sit in. Their guests were duly informed of this at breakfast, but none of them seemed particularly interested when they discovered that the subject of the evening's lecture was to be the latest improvements in farm implements. It was a specialized subject, to be sure, but Lewis, ever-thirsty for whatever knowledge came his way, found that he was looking forward to the talk.

The guest lecturer was a fussy little man with a huge handlebar moustache who spent most of the afternoon setting up a magic lantern with which to illustrate his comments.

Lewis's prediction that the lecture would be lightly attended proved to be accurate. Only twenty or so people filtered into the room, but to Lewis's surprise, Clementine Elliott was one of them. Maybe he shouldn't have been so surprised — no doubt her evenings were dull. She seemed disinclined to sit with the group of guests who commandeered the sitting room every night after supper, instead keeping herself to her room. Probably any diversion would be welcome, even one that had so dry a topic.

The lecturer reported breathlessly that he had received reports of a new, improved hand-powered threshing machine — the esteemed manufactory of Barrett, Exall and Andrews of Reading, England, were poised to introduce this wonder to the North American market. He discussed this miracle of modern agriculture for a full twenty minutes before moving on to the next topic, which was the advent of a portable steam engine designed for farm use.

“This is used mostly for belt work,” he reported. “Threshing, winnowing, chaff cutting, root pulping, cake crushing …” On and on he droned, outlining in detail how the engine could be used for a myriad of farm tasks.

The farmers in the audience appeared to find the information fascinating, but Lewis soon found his attention wandering from the subject of zigzag harrows and new kinds of seed drills and he began to pay closer attention to the lecturer's manipulation of the magic lantern. Any of these types of shows Lewis had seen before had used glass plates through which the light shone the image onto the wall across the room. The images could be made to appear to move using this method, but only from side to side and in a jerky, unrealistic manner. This man, however, had mounted his device on some sort of roller behind a screen, and he moved the entire lantern back and forth, a technique that gave the projected pictures a more lifelike sense of movement. Lewis resolved to ask him about it after the lecture.

He had been kept busy with serving the refreshments immediately after the man had finally finished talking, so there were only a handful of people left in the room by the time he got the chance to ask his questions. To his surprise, Clementine was still there, sitting in the same chair she had been in all evening.

The lecturer was only too happy to explain how his lantern worked.

“Yes, many magic lanterns use glass frames, and you can make the image seem as though it's moving, but as you noted, it's not a very realistic movement, because there is no depth of field.”

Lewis must have looked puzzled at this, because the man explained further. “In real life, objects don't just move from side to side.” He demonstrated by picking up one of the wine glasses that had not yet been cleared away. He moved it from right to left in front of Lewis. “Real objects also move up and down and toward and away.” Now he held the glass out to Lewis, as if offering him a drink, then pulled it back toward himself, as if to take a sip. “You see? With the rollers you can vary the size and pace of the pictures and make them seem more lifelike.”

“What are the mechanics of the lantern itself?” Lewis asked.

The lecturer was only too happy to open the back of the device for Lewis to examine.

“This particular
camera obscura
, or should I say more properly
laterna magica
, uses a double-image device. It is this, combined with the rollers, which allows manipulation of the camera itself. A skilled operator can then more closely imitate the movement of real life. So, the light from the lamp” — here he pointed to the oil lamp that had been set on a table directly behind the camera — “enters the box, providing the illumination of the glass plates. The light shines through them and exits the camera,” — he indicated the aperture at the front of the box — “and shines onto a flat surface, in this case the wall, some feet away from it.”

“What is the mirror for?” Lewis had practically stuck his head inside the box to look at it.

“Oh, if you don't have a mirror, the image comes through reversed,” the man said. “Everything would appear to be backward and upside-down. This, like so many things we don't understand, was originally ascribed to some sort of natural law and was thought to be an insurmountable problem. Then as time went on, someone realized that if the image was reflected in a mirror, it would project in the correct manner.”

“I hadn't realized that,” Lewis said. “Upside-down you say?”

“In the old days, of course, the only source of light strong enough to effectively project pictures was the sun, so magic lanterns were used only in the daylight. Now, with our superior lamp oils, it's not only possible to operate them at night, but in some respects it's better, as you can more effectively exclude other light sources. The roller system is a vast improvement in terms of making the images move more realistically, but we have a long way to go, I'm afraid, before we can ever match the effect of projecting a real object.”

“It's possible to do that?”

“Oh, yes.” The man chuckled a little. “When the camera obscura first came into use, many unscrupulous people used it to dupe the unwary. Some scoundrel would set up in a darkened room and when he had assembled an audience, a confederate would move around in front of a pinhole light and it would appear that a ghostly image was in the room. The unwary audience could be convinced that spirits were being called back from the dead.”

Lewis was aware of someone pushing back a chair, and then of someone walking away. When he looked around, he realized that Clementine Elliott had abruptly left the room.

“Is it possible to make an image that would be life-size or something approaching life-size?” Lewis asked.

“It all depends on the focal length of the lens used,” the lecturer replied. “With a portable camera like this one, the pictures remain fairly small. The longer the lens, the larger the enclosure would be the rule of thumb. Not terribly practical for casual use, I'm afraid.”

Lewis thanked the man for his trouble in explaining the inner workings of his contraption and bade him goodnight.

He lay awake a long time that night, digesting the information he had gathered at the lecture. It was now clear to him how Clementine had produced the ghostly image on the wall. The curtains she had hung across part of the room obviously concealed a camera obscura, and she required Horatio to be present for her sessions, not as a chaperone, but as a living image, projected on the wall by the natural light from the window. She had been unable to solve the problem of the reversed image, however. The size of the mirror required to correct a life-sized image would present far too many difficulties for a travelling show. The camera itself must fold down somehow, in such a manner that it would fit easily in a trunk.

Somewhere she must have come by a general description of Mrs. Sprung's daughter, and by designating Amelia as the conduit through which the other spirits spoke, she was able to convince any other questioners that contact had been made. Lewis didn't know if Horatio assumed other disguises — he had only attended the one session — but he assumed that by wearing various wigs and hats and varying the pitch of his voice, the boy could represent almost anybody, depending on what Clementine had been able to find out about the circumstances of the questioner. He wondered where she had discovered Mrs. Sprung's recent loss, and then he realized that she seemed to be on excellent terms with Meribeth Scully — Meribeth, who heard everything that went on in the village, and passed the information on without a second thought.

There were other aspects of Clementine's performance that still puzzled him, however. He had no explanation for the wispy streams of matter that had emanated from her ears or for the strange mirror-writing she had exhibited. Her voice had changed dramatically as she spoke, as well, but this could be a theatrical trick, easily acquired with a little practice.

His conviction that it was all just a parlour trick now became a certainty. He wondered if there was any way he could sneak inside Mrs. Elliott's sitting room to examine the camera she had obviously set up there. He was already sure of the method, but he was keenly curious about the mechanics of the device, and perhaps closer examination would reveal the answers to his other questions, as well.

But the sitting room doors were always firmly locked. He supposed he could attend another session, but the deceptive tricks would already be in place for the willing victims. He could scarcely bluster in and start tearing down curtains or rummaging under the table. Daniel would consider that a gross violation of his guests' privacy and the rules of hospitality, and it was, after all, Daniel's hotel. The alternative was to break into the room somehow.

He wondered if he was being obsessive again, like he had been when he suspected Renwell of murder. It certainly seemed within his character to become so, and it was a trait that he had vowed to guard against. Breaking into a room in order to satisfy his curiosity would definitely fall into the category of obsession, he decided. Then he wondered if he should bother doing anything at all. Now that Hiram Elliott had died, it remained only to settle his estate, and no doubt Mrs. Elliott would soon be on her way to somewhere else, taking her outrageous activities with her. As he drifted off to sleep that night, Lewis resolved to put the entire matter out of his mind.

Mr. Gilmour did not appear at breakfast the next morning. This was odd, as he had yet to miss a meal, and had appeared to enjoy his food even on the days when it was poorly cooked. There was still no sign of him long after the rest of the guests had drifted in and taken their seats, and when the breakfast hour had come and gone without him, Lewis remarked to Daniel how unusual this was.

“Did he say anything about going out early?”

“No,” Daniel said. “Of course, he doesn't say much about anything, so I suppose it's possible that he had an early appointment, although I don't know where, since I've never been able to discover his business here in the first place.” It remained a sore point with Daniel that Mr. Gilmour had refused to confide in him. “I wouldn't worry about it. He'll probably be back in time for dinner.”

But he wasn't, and none of the other guests could recall when, exactly, they had last seen him.

“I'm sure he was here for supper last night,” Daniel said. “I distinctly remember him remarking on the excellence of the pumpkin pie.”

“Perhaps we should go and knock on his door,” Lewis suggested. “He may be ill and in need of assistance.”

But there was no answer when they knocked. When Lewis tried the handle, the door was unlocked. He swung it open tentatively.

“Mr. Gilmour? Are you here?” Lewis called. “Are you all right?”

There was no reply. The room was empty. Gilmour's valise was on the chair, however, and his hairbrushes were neatly lined up on the washstand.

Lewis looked at Daniel and shrugged. “I don't know where he's gone, but he must be intending to return. He's not lying here in distress of any sort, so I don't see that his whereabouts are any of our business, do you?”

“I guess not. It just seems so odd.”

They closed the door and descended to the kitchen, where Sophie had begun to serve the family dinner. She dished up the main course and passed the plates. Lewis noted that Francis had taken care to sit down last, so that there was room for Sophie beside him at the end of the table.

“I don't suppose there's any of that pumpkin pie left, is there?” Daniel asked.

“What pumpkin pie?” Sophie's brow wrinkled in puzzlement.

“The pumpkin pie you made for supper last night. It was excellent, and I was hoping there might be a sliver left.”

“We didn't have pumpkin pie last night. We had apple cobbler.”

Now it was Daniel's turn to be puzzled. “Well, we had it one night this week, didn't we?”

“Yes, we had it Friday night.”

Lewis looked at Daniel. “Are you sure it was the pumpkin pie Mr. Gilmour liked so well?”

Daniel nodded.

“That means he's been missing for more than a day.”

“What do you think we should do?” Daniel asked.

“I'm not sure.” A guest was well within his rights to go off and do whatever he wanted and was under no obligation to inform anyone when he did so, but it was generally considered a courtesy to let the innkeeper know, especially where meals were involved. But supper the night before had been a hurried affair, because of the meeting upstairs, and Lewis could not recall with any degree of certainty whether Gilmour had been present in the dining room or not.

“You don't suppose he's taken a powder?” Daniel said anxiously. “He's run up quite a bill.”

It was possible, Lewis supposed. It was true that some of Gilmour's personal belongings were still in his room, but they had no way of telling whether or not everything was there. What were a set of hairbrushes and a valise against the amount that was owing for the room? And they hadn't even looked inside the valise. For all they knew, it could be sitting there empty, a decoy to cover his departure.

“Let's look around his room again. We'll be a little more thorough this time.”

But the valise was full of clothing, along with a number of letters bundled together with string. In the drawer of the washstand they found a tin of moustache wax and a container of hair pomade. There was no sign of his overcoat or the tall hat he wore when he went out, but as far as Lewis could tell, the rest of his effects were still there. It appeared as though Mr. Gilmour had had every intention of returning at some point.

“Should we inform someone?” Daniel asked. “I mean, I know it's only been a day or so, but what if something's happened to him? Should we let the constable know?”

“Why don't we talk to the other guests first?” Lewis said. “Maybe one of them can shed some light on his whereabouts.”

He and Daniel discreetly canvassed the guests during the supper hour. Everyone was aware of the gentleman, they said — he was difficult to overlook, what with his brightly-coloured accessories — but no one could recall having seen him during the last two days.

“I'll ask around town tomorrow morning,” Lewis said to Daniel. “If no one's seen or heard from him, I'll talk to the constable then.”

The next morning Lewis went up and down the street asking about their missing guest. No one had much helpful information, except the postmaster, who informed him that Gilmour hadn't been to collect his mail since Wednesday or Thursday of the previous week.

“He gets quite a lot of it, you know,” the man said. “And it's all from New York.”

Lewis stopped in at the livery stable on the way back, but Gilmour had hired neither horse nor cart, nor, as far as anyone there could tell him, had he boarded any of the coaches. Wherever he had gone, he had apparently gone on foot. Up and down the main street Lewis asked everyone he met, and although most he asked could remember seeing Gilmour at some point within the last week, no one had any recollection of setting eyes on him within the last two days.

Lewis began to wonder how such a striking figure had managed to disappear without anyone noticing. Not even Meribeth Scully could shed any light on Gilmour's whereabouts. In fact, she seemed a little put out that she had no information for him.

Lewis decided it was time to report the disappearance to Constable Williams.

“Are you sure he hasn't just skipped out?” the constable asked.

“I can't rule it out,” Lewis replied. “But his things are still in his room. I'm just a little concerned, that's all, and my brother-in-law and I both feel we would be remiss if we didn't say anything, and then subsequently discovered that he had met with an accident.”

Williams nodded. “I'll ask around town about him, but I'm sure he'll turn up. If he returns to the hotel in the meantime, could you please inform me?”

Lewis wasn't sure what else he could do. Gilmour might well have gone out of town for a day or two and forgotten to let them know. But he couldn't get rid of a nagging suspicion that the disappearance might have something to do with Mrs. Elliott. Apart from the fact that Gilmour seemed to have been spying on her, there was no apparent connection between the two — unless Clementine Elliott really was the Madame LeClair from the New York newspaper, and Gilmour had followed her to Wellington, hoping to collect the reward that had been mentioned. But if that were the case, why would he have disappeared before he had a chance to collect it?

So much for putting the matter entirely out of mind
, he thought ruefully.

Clementine wasn't at all sure what her next move should be. It was clear that the preacher had deduced the means by which she summoned the “spirits” that so enthralled her clients. She had no idea what would he do with the knowledge. He had been skeptical from the first, she knew, and had made no secret of his disapproval. In ordinary circumstances, his detection of her methods would have been a clear signal that it was time to leave, to pack up and carry on to the next place where there was a ready supply of bereaved relatives. But these were anything but ordinary circumstances.

More than ever, she missed her husband. They had always listened to each other's advice, plotted each move as a team, played to each other's strengths. She understood the importance of playing her role, of improvising only within the boundaries of the story that had been agreed upon, but this plot had unravelled somehow, and she was no longer sure what her role was. But she had been left no message, no instruction, no indication that the plan had changed. She had questioned Reuben closely, had made him go over the details many times, but he could shed no light on what had happened.

Sometimes in the dark of a sleepless night she wondered if her husband had deliberately abandoned her. She was no longer the young girl she had been when he'd scooped her off the streets of Boston. She'd not been on her own for very long when he found her, and she had not yet honed the skills she needed to survive. She'd picked the pocket of a prosperous-looking mark, but she had been clumsy and the man felt a tug as she removed his purse. He'd spun around and accused her. Suddenly there was a second man at her side, who proffered the purse to its owner.

“This fell from your pocket, sir, as you were walking,” he said. “It's fortunate that I saw it fall. You should be more careful.”

She had no idea how the purse had made its way from the sleeve where she had tucked it to the hand of the second man, but she was grateful that he had managed it. The owner of the purse glared at them, as if he knew that something was not quite right, but then he went on his way with a nod and a muttered thank-you.

Her saviour, who she now realized was quite a fine-looking young man, had taken her by the elbow and marched her down the street.

“If you're going to be a common cutpurse, you need to be better at it,” he'd hissed in her ear. “I was able to remove only half the coins from his wallet before I had to hand it back. I'll split the take with you if you like, but you'll make far more if you come with me. I could use a pretty accomplice.”

He'd introduced her to less risky methods of generating funds and she discovered that she had a talent for discovering secrets that were used to good effect in his schemes. They worked well together, and the partnership was further cemented when she fell in love with him. He had always seemed to return the regard.

But now there were fine lines gathering at the corner of her eyes and every day it was becoming more of a struggle to corset her body into the hourglass shape that showed her expensive dresses to best advantage. Perhaps her husband had tired of their partnership and had found opportunity to get away cleanly. But in her waking moments she couldn't take this explanation seriously. He would never have willingly left the boy behind. He doted on his son.

Perhaps he truly had met with an accident and she really was a widow. But if that were the case, where was the evidence? His body should have been found by now, somewhere, and then maybe she and Reuben would be able to come to some sort of arrangement. The way matters stood, however, she was in limbo, with no definitive proof of what had happened and no definite indication of what path she should follow. She knew that the sensible thing to do was to cut her losses and leave, but even that would be far from simple. Gilmour had been dogging her closely, but in some respects that made him easier to deal with. At least she had known who he was and why he was following her. Now, apparently, he had disappeared and she had no way of knowing if he had given up or had merely been replaced by someone new — someone she wouldn't immediately mark as a bounty hunter.

She had denied any knowledge of Gilmour's whereabouts when the innkeeper asked at supper the previous evening, but before the final dishes were cleared away she had sent the boy upstairs to Gilmour's room, with instructions to look for any correspondence that might shed some light on the situation. By the time she had finished her meal and retired upstairs, her son was back in their bedroom with a fistful of letters, some of them personal, but many of them from the old man in New York. These confirmed that Gilmour was a hired detective, but there was nothing to indicate that he had been instructed to give up the case. One letter noted that Clementine's husband had been tracked to Wellington, and another that he had vanished shortly thereafter. She found that the date of her arrival had been reported, but there was no hint that Gilmour had been replaced. Maybe he had changed his tactics. Maybe he was hoping that his absence would provoke a move on her part.

Until she knew for sure what he was up to, the safest place, and the one with the most promise, was Wellington.

In the meantime, she would destroy the letters and find some way to silence the preacher. She could try the time-honoured method, she supposed, one that she had used successfully before in order to get out of a tight spot. To be sure, he was religious man, but in her experience that sometimes made it all the easier. She would have been surer of this approach if he had been one of those men who scrambled to tip his hat to her. But she knew that her charms had so far failed to enchant him in any way, and she wished she hadn't seen the way his face softened when he looked at his wife. She had no idea what else to do.

Upon his return to the hotel, Lewis reported his conversations of the morning to Daniel, who appeared to be somewhat relieved that the constable was unconcerned.

“Well, I guess Gilmour will turn up,” he said. “So, do we hold his room in the meantime?”

“I don't think we can do anything else until we have a more definite idea of what has happened to him, do you?”

“No, I guess not. As long as we're not stuck for the money he owes us.”

Just then Sophie announced that they could begin serving dinner. She continued to conjure miraculous meals out of the kitchen, this noontime serving up a succulent chicken stew with fat floury dumplings. Daniel, in the meantime, headed upstairs. He had lingered too long over his morning tea break with Susannah, apparently, and had not yet finished cleaning the rooms. That left Lewis and Francis to manage the service by themselves, a task they performed adequately, if not efficiently, and they briskly cleared away the plates from the main course as soon as the diners had finished.