The Other Side of Midnight (18 page)

“Why would she lie?”

“Why not? Why would Todd and the Dubbses lie?” He looked at me. “If it wasn’t the Dubbses themselves orchestrating the murder, that means they were somehow being used. You know that you’re suggesting something with large implications?”

I set my water glass down on the desk, untouched, thinking about George Sutter, how he’d given me confidential documents from the first.

“You don’t seem surprised,” Inspector Merriken said.

“May I go now?” I asked.

His gaze sharpened on me. He didn’t reply, but instead said, “Are you truly psychic?”

I sighed. “Why ask? You’re not going to believe my answer.”

“You’d be surprised at what I believe, Miss Winter.”

My gaze rose to his. There was a hint of something, deep in his eyes, that made me wonder what exactly had happened to Inspector Merriken to make him ask that question. But I wasn’t ready to reveal myself to the relentless scrutiny of Scotland Yard.

I lifted my chin. “You have a fiancée,” I said, “and you’re on your way to see her tonight.”

The inspector went very still.

“Here’s how I know,” I continued. “There is a clock on the wall behind my right shoulder. I can hear it ticking. You’ve glanced over my right shoulder exactly six times during this interview, which tells me you have somewhere to go. It’s past five thirty at night, and Gloria died four days ago. You’ve likely put in long hours since her murder. If you’re looking at the clock, you’re likely expecting your first evening off since her death. And you’re doing something you’re very much looking forward to.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but I interrupted him and went on. “You aren’t going out with friends for a pint, or going home alone. You’re going to see someone important, someone who matters. That means a woman.” I nodded toward his left hand. “You don’t wear a wedding ring, so you haven’t married her, at least not yet. But she isn’t a casual girlfriend, either, judging by your anticipation. That leaves a fiancée.” I looked into his eyes again. “Does that answer your question?”

His expression had gone very hard and his jaw was flexing. “Very well,” he said tightly. “You may go.”

I pushed my chair back and stood, but as I turned to leave he spoke to me again.

“Miss Winter. Did Gloria have contact with her family that you know of?”

I turned back to him. The tightness in his jaw was gone, but his expression gave nothing away.

“No,” I replied.

“How many brothers did she have?”

“Four. Three died in the war.”

“And her parents?”

He must have known this already. “Her mother is dead and her father is in a home. He’s lost his faculties.”

“What were her brothers’ names?”

“Harry, Colin, and Tommy. George is still alive.”

“And what is the name of my fiancée?”

“Jillian.”

We both stopped. The air in the room seemed to turn itself inside out, become something unbreathable.

“Very interesting,” Inspector Merriken said.

Anger flushed through me and I stood frozen, staring at him.

“Misdirection,” he said softly. “A useful trick. If you can use it, then so can I.”

“Am I right?”

“You know you are.” He shook his head. His voice carried a hint of admiration, but no wonder or shock, and again I was curious about exactly how he had come across the paranormal before. I suspected it was an interesting story. “You almost had me, you know. That was a clever move, making me angry.”

I hesitated. “The glass of water,” I admitted. “It came to me when you handed it to me.”

His fingertip had barely touched mine, and yet it had come so clear, like a rush of water. No pain, just a flow of information, my powers working just as they always had. And they had been
right.

He seemed to accept my explanation. “Did you get anything else?”

“She has dark hair,” I said. “And she drives you crazy, and the last time you kissed her she tasted like apples. As for the rest of what you’re thinking about, I’ll only say it’s a good thing you’re going to
marry her.” I watched his expression and shrugged. “It was in your mind—sorry. I can’t always help what I pick up.”

“I’ll be damned,” he said softly. “That’s a very good trick. But for God’s sake, please don’t repeat any of that.”

“I never do,” I said, and turned and left to meet Davies.

B
y the time I arrived at Marlatt’s Café, out of breath and my hat askew, I was thirteen minutes late. It wasn’t much, but I didn’t trust Davies to wait.

The café was a little closet-size spot in the warren of streets and alleys of Soho, run by a tiny man with nut brown skin whom everyone assumed was Marlatt. The place specialized in coffee that was painfully strong, served in an atmosphere in which you practically rubbed knees with the person at the table next to you, and there was a blue-tinged fug of cigarette smoke that never dissipated day or night. Gloria had loved the coffee here, but she’d said the place was like a great-grandmother’s closet, and smelled worse.

I pushed open the frosted door, nearly bumping into the back of an old man who sat smoking at one of the tables, and squinted into the gloom. At the counter in the back corner stood Marlatt. He was wiping it down with an oily rag and did not look up at my entrance.

I looked around frantically. The old man I’d almost collided with
was the only patron in the place. Davies was nowhere to be seen. My stomach sank. She had left—if she had ever kept her word and come here at all.

Marlatt was looking at me now, his dark eyes incurious. He was Turkish, we thought, something over fifty, his black hair combed back and slicked down on his head. He picked up a teacup and slowly polished it with his rag.

“Excuse me,” I said as politely as I could, considering how hard my heart was thumping in my chest. I stepped to the back counter. “Was Miss Davies just here?”

Marlatt frowned at me and shrugged, uncaring.

“Please,” I said. “I’m looking for her urgently. She was supposed to meet me. Was she here?”

“Sure,” Marlatt told me, though grudgingly. “Just a minute ago.”

“What happened?” I tried not to sound shrill. “Where did she go? Did she go home?”

“How do I know? I didn’t follow her.”

“Did she say anything? Please, it’s important.”

Marlatt shrugged again. “She didn’t say. I assume because she was following the fellow.”

I went cold.

“Fellow?”

“The fellow who came in here. Talked to her a few minutes only. Then they left.”

“Who was he? What did he look like?”

“How do I know?” Marlatt said again, annoyed now. Behind me, the door opened and someone else entered. “He looked like all the other fellows.”

“But have you seen him before? Was he—?”

“I didn’t know him,” Marlatt said, shooing me with his hands. “Now go away.”

“If you’re asking, I didn’t know him, either.”

I turned and saw the old man I’d almost bumped into, still sitting
at a table by the door. He wore a rumpled suit and held a cigarette between two tobacco-stained fingers. He regarded me from under gray-white eyebrows of astonishing length.

“Please,” I said, turning away from Marlatt and approaching his table. “My friend was supposed to meet me here. It isn’t like her to go walking off with strange men. Can you tell me what he looked like?”

The old man looked me up and down and shrugged. “Can’t say I got a close look at the chap. Slim. Dark suit, black coat, black hat. Respectable. Spoke softly.”

“His face?”

The man shrugged again.

“Was he dark haired or light haired?”

“Dark haired, from what I could see.”

So it wasn’t James, then. It couldn’t be. “Did she seem to know him?”

The man took a drag of his cigarette, enjoying the attention, likely the only he’d had all day. “Well, she gave him a glare when he approached her, though she’s always got a sour face, that one. Argued with him a bit at first. But then she got real quiet while he talked, and the next thing I saw she followed him out of here without a word.”

“Did you hear them?”

“Miss, I haven’t heard right since about ’13. I have no idea what they said.”

“Which way did they go?”

“That way.” The man pointed.

The opposite direction from her flat, then. I thanked him and hurried back into the street. The rain had long stopped, but dusk was just beginning to fall, the sky turning lavender-blue. I hurried down the sidewalk, looking for Davies’s rumpled hat and mismatched jacket, her patented slouch as she walked alongside a nondescript dark-haired man. I pushed through the suppertime crowd, dodging elbows and handbags and puffs of cigarette smoke.

By the time I pushed my way out into the crowds on Shaftesbury Avenue, I had to give it up in despair. Davies and her mysterious man
could have gone anywhere, ducked into a shop, taken a taxi or a bus. I was nearly at the roar of Piccadilly Circus, where I had no hope of finding them, even if they had come this way.

Davies never went off with strange men.

Never.

Perhaps she knew him. It was probably nothing.

It wasn’t nothing.

She got real quiet while he talked, and the next thing I saw she followed him out of here without a word.

What could a man—any man—have said to Davies to make her follow him in silence?

“Damn it,” I said under my breath, the curse feeling satisfying on my tongue. I tried it a little louder.
“Damn it.”

“Watch your language, young lady,” a woman said disapprovingly as she passed me. She turned and tutted to her companion. “Girls today.”

“Damn it,” I said to her back, and walked toward Piccadilly Circus.

*   *   *

I
suppose it was inevitable that things would fall apart after I met Gloria Sutter. I’m convinced that she had some of it planned, possibly from the moment she recognized who I was while I was sleeping on that train. But sometimes I wondered whether even she was fully in control of what she’d set in motion. The problem with Gloria, as always, was sorting out the truth from the lie.

My mother believed in my new friend Florence for nearly two years. The incredible stretch of time I kept my mother’s suspicions at bay both relieved me and utterly shamed me. In my occasional “nights over” at “Florence’s” house, my mother was never given the burden of knowing exactly what I was up to. But her credulousness came from her belief in me, in my honesty and my loyalty, none of which I earned.

I didn’t see Gloria every day, of course, or even every week. But a month would pass, or possibly two, and I’d get a note in Gloria’s
distinctive handwriting, the words toppling over one another like children’s blocks, inviting me to Soho. Perhaps she missed my company, or perhaps she was simply bored; I never knew which, and I never cared. I’d pack my valise, tell Mother I was off to visit Florence, and we’d go out on the town.

Those are some of the longest nights of my memory, stretching until three or four o’clock in the morning. We went to nightclubs and late-night supper clubs; we danced with people we didn’t know; we mixed gin with champagne. I grew used to the sophistication of Gloria’s social circle, their shallow jokes and ridiculous pretensions, and though the experiences were foolish and ultimately meaningless, they had one salient quality: They were fun. We were young, the war was over, and we dealt in death day after day, the faces of the dead haunting both our waking lives and our dreams. So fun was its own reward, a virtue in and of itself. And although we were usually in a crowd, I always felt that between Gloria and me alone there was something different, some recognition and understanding of the desperate need we had for those endless riotous nights.

And then one night I stupidly took a taxi home instead of sleeping on Gloria’s horrible sofa, arriving home drunk at three o’clock in the morning and waking my mother out of bed.

It was a moving scene, straight from a stage melodrama or a two-reel film. My mother was bewildered, then tearful, then angry; I was sullen, rebellious, and finally sick. Before I passed out, my head already aching, I confessed that Florence was a hoax, and I gave my mother Gloria’s name.

The next day, as I alternated between moping in the kitchen and lying prostrate on my bed, my mother called off her afternoon’s appointments and marched out the door, handbag in hand. Through my fog I was able to feel the sheer, horrified embarrassment that my mother was going to Soho. She came home two hours later, white faced and unspeaking.

I stared at my mother over our silent supper that night, watching
her pick at her food. “What is it?” I managed, overcoming the shame that had kept me silent. “What did Gloria say to you?”

She set down her fork and looked at me. She wore a faded day dress under a black cardigan, her hair tied at the nape of her neck, and in that moment she looked like any other housewife on our street, a woman who had seen a war and buried a husband and raised a daughter. The anger had faded from her eyes, but something else had replaced it, something deep and terribly torn.

“Why didn’t you tell me about her?” she asked.

I swallowed. “I thought you’d disapprove.”

“The drinking? The strange men?” She shook her head. “Of
course
I disapprove.”

My cheeks heated. “I don’t do anything with strange men.”

“Well, there’s that, at least.” She sounded weary. “But that isn’t what I meant. Why didn’t you tell me about
her
? About Gloria?”

She meant Gloria’s powers; she’d almost certainly sensed them from the first moment, just as I had. What had happened when they met? What had they talked about? Had they discussed me? I was seized with jealousy, sharp and overwhelming. I hadn’t told anyone about Gloria because Gloria was
mine.

“I don’t know,” I managed, sullen.

My mother put an elbow on the table and pressed her fingers to her chin, her gaze leaving me. She had long, elegant hands, the fingers tapered, the nails oval. I’d only partially inherited those hands; mine were nice enough, but my mother’s had a beauty I’d always envied. Now she sat thoughtful, the thin circle of her wedding ring dull in the evening light.

“I feel sorry for that girl,” she said at last.

I gaped at her. “Sorry for her? She’s beautiful and rich.”

“She’s lonely,” my mother said. “This is a lonely business. Do you know she actually offered to contact your father for me?”

“What?”

“Oh, yes. It was a clever offer, you know. Contacting one’s own family . . . It’s unthinkable. I could never have done it myself, though I’ve thought about it more times than I can count.”

I swallowed. “You’ve thought about contacting Father?”

“Every day. Don’t look so shocked, Ellie. Someday, when you have a husband, you’ll understand what the cost is to lose him.”

She looked tired again, and I closed my mouth. She almost never talked about my father, who died in the war. A shell hit him in Gallipoli, and he never came home. My father had always been kind and loving to me, but the center of his life had been my mother—a sentiment I understood, because she was the center of my life, too. My own grief at his death had been suffered in silence, subsumed by the fact that my mother had nearly fallen apart. My parents had never been showy or romantic; it was only after the loss of my father that I began to understand how truly in love they had been, in their quiet way.

“Gloria Sutter,” my mother had said, “knew within seconds just what to offer me, and she had no second thoughts about speaking of it. She called it an offer to atone for how the two of you deceived me. I turned her down, but I won’t lie—I was horribly tempted. I considered it more seriously than I’d like to admit before I said no.” Her gaze focused on me again, and she sighed. “I’m still angry with you, and perhaps this is stupid, but I’m not going to forbid you to see her again. You don’t have very many friends your own age—possibly the two of you can help each other in some way. But I don’t want you drinking in public. And stay away from any of the men she introduces you to.”

It was generous, but I defied her, even in that. It was 1921, and hedonism was the height of fashion in London. I stayed out late dancing; I had my hair bobbed. We had another fearful row. I continued to see Gloria, and I continued to follow her into anything she told me was fun. I kissed a few different men who seemed to want me to, but they tasted like alcohol and cigarettes, and the thought of taking off my clothes for them was humiliating. Still, I tried the kissing at least,
and we laughed about it afterward. Something about me was jagged and off-kilter; I felt like a stranger inside my own skin, a person I didn’t recognize. And somewhere in that fog of late nights and arguments, the stranger I had become met James Hawley, and watched from under her lashes as he removed her shoes, her heart squeezing in her chest in longing and disappointment as the room spun.

My mother and I did sessions during the day as we always had, with Mother in her beaded dress and scarf in the sitting room and I behind the plum curtain with my eyes closed, the back of my neck itching, summoning the dead. They always came. My mother grew tired more often, and sometimes she went to bed after supper and slept without pause until I roused her in the morning. I watched her grow paler, the smudges under her eyes becoming larger, and something inside me wanted to climb into bed with her at night and curl up next to her as I’d done as a child. But I never did.