The Other Side of Midnight (17 page)

I
telephoned my daily woman—to say she was shocked to hear from me would be an understatement—and explained, omitting the supernatural elements, what had happened to Mr. Bagwell and his dog. She agreed to come by and check on Pickwick, let him out in the garden, and walk him if he needed it. I wanted to warn her that the dog was dejected, but it seemed a strange thing to discuss. She’d see for herself soon enough.

I found some tinned meat and put it down for him. He glanced at it from his spot under the kitchen table, then put his head on the floor again. “I’m going out,” I told him, running my hand over his head. “I’m not sure when I’ll be back, but you won’t be alone. You should eat something.” He made no reply.

I put on my coat and hat and was just tying the belt at the waist of my coat when someone knocked at my front door.

I thought it might be Mrs. Campbell or one of my other neighbors, come to check on the dog. But I opened the door to an unfamiliar man,
tall and dark, his overcoat hanging ominously from his broad shoulders. He removed his hat and I saw a handsome face, its features serious and intelligent. “Miss Winter,” he said. “I’ve found you at last.”

I stared at him as the cool September breeze snaked past me through the doorway and a child on a bicycle pedaled by on the street behind him.

The man reached into his breast pocket and handed me a card. “I’m Inspector Merriken, from Scotland Yard. May we speak?”

I took the card in fingers gone numb. “I’m on my way out to meet someone.”

His gaze traveled over me, missing nothing. “Anyone I know?”

“No,” I lied.

“That’s a shame,” he said. “Still, I’m certain you can take a few minutes.”

“I can’t.” I looked past him, but his large frame with its wide shoulders and long dark coat blocked the door. “I have somewhere to be.”

“In London?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Perfect,” the inspector said smoothly. “I happen to have a motorcar here. We can talk at the Yard, and then I’ll drop you wherever you like.”

At the Yard? Panic squeezed me. I rubbed my throat, as if massaging the air through it. I’d never been to Scotland Yard before—I’d never had any reason to. What did it mean that he wanted to take me there now?

Inspector Merriken read my face like a book. “Don’t worry,” he said, his voice as smooth as cold water over river stones. “I’m not in the habit of eating women alive at the Yard, only questioning them. Especially women who pop up all over my murder investigations, then avoid me.”

I stared up at him, my hand still on my throat. “I’m not going to get rid of you, am I?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Honestly, no, you’re not. Persistence is a virtue of mine. Shall we go?”

He didn’t speak to me on the drive to the Yard, and I didn’t speak, either. I sat in the backseat, twisting my hands in my lap. Damn George Sutter. I’d asked him whether the Yard thought me a suspect and he’d neatly avoided the question. If he had access to Inspector Merriken’s files, he must have known. Now I was on my way to Scotland Yard and I had no idea of the situation I was walking into.

I looked out the window at London passing by and tried to plan how I would play my cards. Did Inspector Merriken know that George Sutter somehow had access to his files? Had the man who followed me that morning seen me leave with the inspector? If so, then George Sutter would learn any minute that I was on my way to the Yard. In any case, if it got out that I was somehow aligned with the police, no one I needed would ever talk to me again, and any hope of my finding Gloria’s killer would disappear.

Scotland Yard was smaller than I’d imagined, an intimate warren smelling of ink and smoke, half the desks empty. “It’s getting late,” Inspector Merriken said to me as he led me down a corridor, though I hadn’t voiced a question. “Most of the others are either out on an investigation or have gone home.”

“I see,” I said.

“I’m just in here. Have a seat.” He showed me into an odd-shaped cubbyhole containing only a desk and two wooden chairs. Stacks of paper teetered on the desktop, and blots of ink had soaked into the aged wood. It could have been an accountant’s office except for the newspaper clippings about Gloria’s murder on the desk, the file marked
SOMERSHAM STABBING
half pulled from the stack of papers, and the large map of London pinned to the wall.

I pulled up a chair and sat, glancing at my watch. Half an hour and I’d be late meeting Davies. I pulled off my gloves and laid them in my lap.

Inspector Merriken shed his coat and lowered his tall frame into the chair behind the desk. “You needn’t calculate so obviously,” he said. “All I want is information.”

“About what?”

“What do you think?” he said. “So far, in my interviews over this murder, one name has persistently popped up. Miss Davies, Fitzroy Todd, James Hawley, even Paul Golding. Every single one of them, somewhere in the conversation, has eventually mentioned you.”

I stared at him aghast.

“It seems you’re very well-known in certain circles,” Inspector Merriken went on. “And yet my journalist sources know almost nothing about you, even though you’re a practicing psychic. You manage to stay out of the public eye. Yet everyone in these certain circles knows about your association with Gloria. How the two of you were great friends for a while, and how it ended. Paul Golding himself told us about how his tests debunked your mother’s powers, and how the tests were Gloria’s idea. But he didn’t need to tell us about it really; we’d already read the article ourselves. It was recently in the newspapers, after all. Even Ramona—or Joyce Gowther, as she should be known—was eager to tell us about it.”

I sat speechless. They had talked about me? Paul Golding had talked about me?
I hear things,
Ramona had said.
All about The Fantastique, and Gloria Sutter, and how they used to be friends cutting up London.

Inspector Merriken seemed to need no reply. “Hawley claimed he hadn’t seen you in years, that you likely hated him. He’d been part of the tests on your mother. And yet”—the inspector leaned forward, and for the first time a flicker of frustration crossed his impassive face—“there the two of you were at the Gild Theatre last night, thick as thieves. The man I’ve got watching Ramona saw you plain as I see you now.”

My mind raced. The man with the mustache—the man I’d thought
was a plant. Was he working for Scotland Yard? What about the person I’d glimpsed leaving the balcony?

He didn’t think much of either me or my profession,
James had said.

“James Hawley has nothing to do with this,” I said.

The inspector looked at me. “James Hawley threw away a law career, by all accounts, in order to be a drunk. Then he dried out and started investigating psychics. His employer, Paul Golding, recently wrote a forty-page journal article about fairy photography. I’d give a limb for a credible source in this case.”

“You don’t know anything about it,” I said, my voice shaking. “You’re hearing all the wrong stories. James had no reason to kill her. Neither did I.”

He leaned back again and let out a disgusted sigh. “I’ll admit you don’t seem likely. Murderers tend to be rather impulsive, and the tests on your mother happened three years ago. What’s more, you’ve had a thriving business ever since, and Gloria’s actions didn’t threaten your livelihood.”

I flushed. They
had
threatened our livelihood; my mother’s career had been finished. We’d paid the bills only because I’d officially stepped in and taken over. But I saw no need to disabuse the inspector.

“And yet,” I said, my voice trembling, “I make a living as a psychic, so I must be a liar. I’m not one of your credible sources. That is what you assume, isn’t it, Inspector? That is why I’m on your list. Let’s get to the heart of it, shall we?”

He drummed his fingers on the stack of papers on the desk, looking at me thoughtfully, and said nothing.

“I could tell you where I was on Monday night,” I said. “I was home alone, just as I always am every night of my life. But you haven’t asked me that, because there’s no point, is there? I’m a liar, and any answer I give to your questions must automatically be a lie.”

“It may not be a lie,” he said easily. “It’s just possible. Your neighbors didn’t see you leaving.”

I gripped the arms of my chair, my fingers squeezing so hard they began to go numb. “You questioned my neighbors?”

“Yes, for the fat lot of good it did me.” He pushed back his own chair and stood, and I saw how much frustration was leashed inside his large frame, cloaked in the elegant way he handled his body but still informing his every movement. “Do you want to get to the heart of the matter?” he said. “Very well, then. Let’s. By all indications, this should be an open-and-shut case. I’ve got witnesses, or close enough. A victim who was a popular public figure, distinctive and easily recognizable. A murder that happened out in the open for anyone to see. I have Gloria Sutter’s client list, her schedule, her every movement for her final week. I know who she saw, how much she charged—I even know who she slept with, which was no one, at least not for the last few months. Everyone I’ve interviewed has been more than happy to talk my ear off, yet no one has given me an inkling of information that can actually lead me to her killer.” He said the last word as he thumped one large, well-formed hand on the desk in front of me, leaning on it and looking down at me. “
That
is the heart of the matter.”

I stared up at him, biting my lip. I knew then, from the honest frustration on his face, that Inspector Merriken had no idea that George Sutter—whoever he was, whoever he worked for—was reading his reports. If I told him now, it would unbalance everything. And I
needed
George Sutter if I was to get to Gloria’s killer. However, I needed Scotland Yard as well.

“All right,” I said. “Do you want to hear what I think?”

The inspector made a sound I couldn’t interpret and walked to a sideboard where a pitcher of water stood next to several cups.

“You’re looking in the wrong place,” I said. He turned and glared at me, but I gathered my courage and plunged on. “Clients, rivals, lovers—none of those things matter to her death. It’s all misdirection, like the card tricksters use. Gloria’s entire life was a misdirection. She was a master at it.”

Inspector Merriken poured one glass of water, and then a second. “You’d be surprised who some of her clients were. I know I was.”

“I wouldn’t,” I said. “But what does it matter? What powerful man is going to be afraid of a psychic? I could go to the newspapers and say I had psychic information about the prime minister, or the King, and they’d just laugh at me. Some politician’s petty affairs are not the reason she was murdered.”

“Then pray tell, where should I be looking?”

“I keep coming back to the murder itself,” I said as he took one of the cups of water and handed it to me. “It didn’t fit Gloria’s usual pattern. She never did sessions outside of her own flat. The only reason she did the session for the Dubbses was for money.”

Inspector Merriken took a sip of his water and waited for me to continue.

“The Dubbses paid Fitz to get access to Gloria,” I said. “And then they paid Gloria. Do you have any idea how much money that must have been?”

“Wait a minute.” The inspector frowned at me. “Fitzroy Todd never told me he’d been paid.”

“That’s because he’s a liar who would sell his own mother to suit his ends. Trust me, Fitz needed money, and whatever the Dubbses offered him was well worth the risk. Then whatever they offered Gloria was worth her abandoning her own rules to solve her money problems. Both of them had expensive tastes, especially Fitz. Neither one would have agreed for less than a princely sum. So exactly how rich are the Dubbses?”

Inspector Merriken sipped his water and frowned. “The house in Kent was rather nice,” he said. “But nothing about them suggested they were wealthy.”

“Look again,” I said. “Look for where the money came from, and then look for why.”

“Miss Winter,” he said slowly, his voice a low drawl, “what exactly are you suggesting?”

“It wasn’t a random act,” I said. “It was a lure, a setup. Someone put it together very deliberately because someone wanted her dead.”

“Are you saying that the Dubbses killed her?”

“I wish I knew,” I said. “To me it doesn’t seem likely that if you want to kill a girl, you invite her to your house and do it right on the property. But then, I know less about murder than you do.”

Still he stood by the water pitcher, frowning, idly swirling his water glass. “It bears examining, I suppose. We looked at the Dubbses from the first, because we looked at everyone in attendance that night. But they seemed a normal couple. He works in the city, where they have a flat he uses during the week, while they spend weekends at the house. Affluent, but not too rich. No surviving children. The house has three servants, none of whom live in, and all of them had been given the night off. Everything they told us seemed to fit.” He frowned. “Except for one thing, now that I think of it. Ramona told us that when she and Fitzroy Todd appeared with Gloria at the train station, the Dubbses were upset and tried to send them home. But both Todd and the Dubbses denied it, so we assumed Ramona was lying.”