by Laura Briggs
"Probably he'll persuade grandfather to leave the money to some stupid institute. Rescuing spotted toads or saving blind whales or some other rot."
"Hush, William!" his mother Kay's tone was sharper now. Despite her headache, she gave her son a look which was both annoyed and — strangely — anxious.
"Maybe if you had made a better effort in your studies — or in any of the opportunities provided for you — your grandfather would feel a great responsibility towards at least one of his future heirs," snapped Phillip. "What happened with that Civil Service opportunity? Or that position under the ambassador that Sir Peter spoke of for you?"
"Why is it my fault?" said Bill, defensively. "What about you — he doesn't call you 'Mr. Greed' for no reason, dear uncle. What will young Will have to say to that, I wonder?"
"Stop it!" said Kay. "Enough of this kind of talk. Derrick told me before we left that we should humor father only to a certain limit and no more." She set her drink on the sideboard and pressed her fingers to her head. "That beastly sun — I wish they had the decency to build a shelter over that old wreck from the beach."
Whoever young Will was, the thought of him showing up had definitely thrown a damper over the already-unhappy family gathering. He hadn't been on the guest list, so I wondered why he wasn't invited. A black sheep in the flock? Or maybe he simply got on even less swimmingly with the earl than the rest of them?
"Derrick told you that, eh? Anything to protect the sacred family name." Bill rolled his eyes and stubbed out a cigarette in a crystal bowl on the sideboard, although smoking was not allowed in the hotel's formal sitting room. Three bent ones now rested there in a row.
"Bill —"
"Now, now," Budgy said, polishing off his fifth cocktail — this time stealing a stray one from Gomez's tray. "Blood is thicker than water. Whatever happens, Freddy will do right by the family homestead in the end, never fear. Sacred family ties and what not. Else, I don't know my oldest and dearest friend." He set the empty glass on my tray. "Here he is now — the man of the hour."
The doors opened and Dalton rolled the earl into the room, in the company both of the young medium and an older woman wearing an elegant blue designer gown. Natalie's dress was a simple white silk without adornment, and a decorative headband encircled her brow. It looked old-fashioned and modern chic at the same time.
"Dinner is announced," groaned young Bill under his breath, anticipating the next step. The rest of the guests were now arriving in time to dine, and I scanned them anxiously. The man with such lively, intelligent eyes, a face with lines, a shock of grey hair — was he —?
"Dinner is served." The hotel manager Mr. Trelawney had appeared, opening the doors to the neighboring private dining room, and the guests now paired off to escort each other into dinner — a very old-fashioned scene from the days when the earl was a party host in his prime, I imagined.
Four more guests were now present, seated amongst the original party. K. Salinger was actually Kate Salinger — a paranormal investigator with an online 'vlog' series about debunking hauntings and psychic manifestations. She was a young brunette and nothing like the dignified older man I had pictured. Next to her was a sculptor named Ofong Obadwa, formerly from Senegal, whose artwork reflected African folk tales on death and mystical forces, I discovered. The older woman was former heiress and philanthropist Minerva Willingham, who had known the earl for a few decades now.
The striking senior man in the tuxedo and white tie was not Alistair Davies, much to my disappointment, but Sir Nigel de Coverly instead, a celebrated playwright from London. Like the others, he was one of the many friends the earl had made in the elite circles of society and entertainment in London until his illness progressed over the last couple of years.
I watched the door with a keen eye as I helped serve the salads, but no one else came in. With disappointment, I discovered there was no extra place at the table. The elusive author was not joining them for dinner, apparently.
"I'm looking forward to seeing your power in practice, Miss Norridge," said the sculptor Ofong to the psychic. "When did you discover you had the gift?"
"I've always known," she answered. "It was just ... with me." She smiled.
She was seated closest to the earl, except for his assistant, who was helping cut the lamb chops into bite-size pieces. Next to her, the worried daughter, who was fussing about the food and the room's drafts.
"You knew since childhood, I read somewhere," said Kate the ghost hunter. "Did anyone besides you recognize it? Family, teacher, school counselor?"
"My mother," said Natalie. "In truth, the gift belongs to my family. My mother shared it, and so did my grandmother. You could say that I come from a long line of spirit whisperers."
"Or con artists," muttered Bill. There was no discreet way to cut him off from the dinnertime wine, and he was definitely suffering its effects.
"It's rather fascinating. The paranormal, I mean," said the playwright Sir Nigel. "When I was young, and first working in the theater, I was an actor. My first role was in a production of Hamlet, you know. Shakespeare's ultimate ghost story." A smattering of laughter followed his little joke.
"I'm sure you were positively brilliant," said Kay, with an ingratiating smile. "Father reminisces often about seeing you in your prime. The great legend of the theater in his humble beginnings. I'm a devotee of the theater myself, so I quite understand the magnitude of that first great role."
"If I were to confess the truth, I am rather hoping that my last play will be about ghosts," said Sir Nigel. "It seems rather fitting to me. Perhaps I'll write about a haunted house, with a séance thrown in for good measure."
"A haunted hotel, Sir Nigel," corrected Minerva. "And a psychic in the fashion of Miss Norridge, of course." A few more laughs rippled through the dining room.
"Perhaps," said Sir Nigel. "One can never tell. I believe that our friend Frederick may have stumbled upon a brilliant idea regarding one's last great party in life. Perhaps I'll use that in the play — with his permission."
"Do you believe in spirits, Sir Nigel?" asked Natalie. The psychic had been generally quiet this evening, though she didn't seem shy. Molly had whispered to me before dinner that the medium entered her famous 'quiet mode' just before channeling the other side. Maybe a quiet meal was the first stage.
For a moment, the playwright's lighthearted expression dimmed. "That is the great question with which we all struggle," he said. "For my part, I've seen enough strange things in the world to believe such things are possible. Odd experiences happen to one in the theater, you see."
"As much as I've hoped for it, I've never had a truly paranormal experience documented with confidence," said Kate the ghost hunter. "I traveled last month to a haunted castle in northern Scotland trying to collect hard evidence to confirm the existence of one outside of the human mind or the senses, but no joy."
"Tonight could be your fortunate evening, then," pointed out the sculptor. "Miss Norridge, how does your gift work? I apologize, for I have never seen your appearances on the television, or heard you interviewed on the radio. It is nothing like the shaman I observed when I was traveling in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, I'm sure. African tradition — English psychics — it is not the same practice."
"Have you really never watched a psychic on telly?" said Kate. "Miss Norridge reads people like an open book. She — supposedly — can tell us almost anything about ourselves that nobody else here knows, via spiritual communication and telepathic connections — shared with the unseen forces of the universe, that is."
"Then tell me something about myself," said Ofong, smiling. "Give us a demonstration."
The young psychic studied him intently for a moment. "Red bird," she said, after a moment of silence. "That phrase comes to me. Does it mean something to you?"
Ofong looked surprised. "That is the name of my next sculpture, actually," he said. "I am very impressed, Miss Norridge."
"You mentioned it to no one before now, I t
ake it?" said Budgy, with a dry snort of contempt.
"No one in this room, that I am aware of," answered the sculptor.
"Tell me something about me," said Kate. She leaned forward, watching the medium intently. Natalie studied the ghost hunter with a wide, innocent gaze.
"Who is Jerry?" she asked. At the look on Kate's face, a murmur of surprised astonishment rose from several guests, for it was clear that this question touched a nerve for the paranormal investigator.
"Nobody," said Kate. "Whom I want to discuss in public, anyway," she added, with a wry smile. Still more murmurs of impressed reaction, and a chuckle or two.
"Tell us something about our host," said Kate, turning the tables now. "Something nobody else knows, not even his family."
I temporarily slowed in my job of passing out dessert plates, because I was curious to know what was going to follow this challenge. Did Natalie really know a secret, or merely things which she could have easily learned from the earl or his friends?
Natalie looked at the earl, who patted her arm kindly. "That would be difficult to do," she said. "So many people know him so well. What could I tell his family that they shouldn't already know about him?"
"Especially since you've only met him twice." This mumbled comment from Bill wasn't totally drowned out by his latest sip of wine. His mother glared at him.
"I'm sure that many of you here wonder at this ... unusual choice for my birthday." The earl spoke now. "But it's true that as one nears the grave, one becomes increasingly more interested in the subject of what lies beyond it ... and the subject of whether one's life was spent as it should have been."
"I'm sure yours has, my dear Freddy," said Minerva.
"When one reaches my age ... the mind simply turns itself to those who are gone. There are ... so many." Here, the earl's voice faltered, betraying both his age and his emotion. "And you wonder if you have made your peace with their lives, and their loss. With your own, truthfully."
The dinner seemed very solemn all of a sudden. Even Gomez and I stopped taking away the finished course, and Mr. Trelawney, who had brought the earl's latest wine request from the hotel's special cellar, refrained from fully entering the dining room, as if sensing this moment was one in progress.
"I married late in life, at nearly fifty, as you all know. No fool like an old fool when it comes to a pretty younger face, I suppose. When I lost Olivia ten years ago —" for a moment, the earl's quavering speech was interrupted by a sudden coughing fit. His daughter Kay laid her napkin on the table.
"This evening has really been too much for you, Father," she said, half-scolding him. "I think it's time that you go up to bed. A nice soothing bedtime cup of tea would do you more good than sitting up at all hours of the night."
The earl shook his head. The caretaker Dalton piped up. "I think a little of Dr. Pitt's prescribed syrup will put him right soon enough," he began, reassuringly. He laid his hand on the earl's arm and spoke this suggestion in a quiet voice.
"Stop interfering," said Kay, slapping his hand away. "I believe I know what's best for my father —"
The earl recovered his breath enough to interrupt. "Enough, Kay," he said, rattling another breath before he spoke again. "I'm quite all right. Dalton, go and fetch the syrup and my pills for after dinner. Be quick about it."
"As you say, sir." Dalton pushed back his chair. The earl lifted his water glass with a trembling hand and took several sips as his assistant disappeared from the room. He placed it on the table again.
"I was saying before my health so rudely interrupted, that I have given these questions a great deal of thought for the past ten years, since the loss of my wife far too soon in her life. The time has come, I hope, to ask for answers, albeit using a science which both the sensible and the educated have proven largely to be a hoax. Fortunately for me, I have found a practitioner whose methods have yet to be 'debunked' by so-called scientists in this field."
His hand rested lightly on the medium's arm. "Beginning tonight, I hope, with Miss Norridge's help, that I can lay both of these subjects to rest in my mind. After all, I would prefer my one hundred and first year to be spent pondering mysteries of a milder nature."
A few laughs followed the earl's little joke, although he still looked serious. But when he smiled and patted Natalie's arm again, his features grew relaxed. For a moment, questions of the supernatural were set aside for the scrumptious chocolate mousse in little crystal bowls and the earl's selected dessert wine.
In the sitting room again after dinner, both halves of the earl's gathering mingled with each other, making polite conversation about politics, theater, art, and the occasional mention of the paranormal. Natalie Norridge was the object of a lot of curiosity, particularly from the earl's son and grandson, as well as the paranormal investigator, who was probably writing a story about the rising psychic star now contacting the dead for the rich and famous.
Thus far, there were no last-minute guests barging in to alter the party, neither the feared relation known as 'young Will' nor the earl's favorite author. The last one was the most disappointing for me, since I had held out hope that Alistair Davies was surely supposed to attend the first séance along with everybody else.
Curiosity had my sleeve. Maybe the writer was only invited to the birthday dinner itself — or maybe he had been delayed for a good reason and was joining the party later. There was only one way to know, short of risking Brigette's wrath, so I waited, pins tingling in my skin, for the perfect opportunity to bring it up.
"Is the earl expecting any other guests?" I asked Budgy. The earl's good friend had made the tour of the room and returned for his (second) refill from the bar — and not from the coffee being served by me.
"I believe we're all here, young lady," he answered. "More drinks for the rest of us, thank heavens. These week-long parties do tend to drag on with nonsense." He took a sip from his cocktail. "Why do you ask, pray tell?"
"I'm sorry — I overheard part of the conversation before dinner, and you were talking about others coming to join the party," I said. "And at dinner, I couldn't help noticing the guest number was short of the list —"
"Whom do you mean?" said Budgy, sounding puzzled. "Whom were we talking of? Oh, yes — Will." A short laugh escaped him. "No fear of him surprising us all — except in the metaphysical sense. He's been dead nearly twenty years."
"I'm so sorry. I didn't realize," I said, feeling shocked — and forgetting about Alistair Davies for a moment. It certainly put Bill's words into a new context, given the earl's speech at dinner. "You spoke in a way that made me think you were expecting trouble from him."
"Nothing to be sorry about." Budgy poured himself a new drink from Bill's cocktail pitcher. "Happened ages ago. William was Freddy's firstborn, you see. The boy died of an infection somewhere on the Ivory Coast. Quite the humanitarian, though — chucked university and all the airs of his title and fortune to go muck about in some poverty-stricken village. Rather gets under the skin of the others, who preferred the finer things in life. As we all do." His latest cocktail went down easily after these words, which sounded almost cheerful. "Bill was christened for him — not that there's any resemblance between the two."
"No more coffee," Gomez whispered to me. "Mr. Trelawney says it's almost time for them to go into the parlor." That meant the first séance was only minutes away from beginning. I began passing the last tray of after-dinner 'digestive biscuits' with quicker speed; the earl had requested them to be served with his guests' coffee and cognac — not that Bill's latest cocktails were anything near the refined size of his grandfather's planned refreshment. Swimming in gin, tonic, and lemon squash seemed to be the recreational par for the course for both the earl's grandson and his good friend the professor.
"I believe it is time, Lord Billings." Mr. Trelawney stood in the doorway. "If your party is ready—?"
Natalie was gone already, probably preparing for whatever state of consciousness linked her with her supernatural co
ntacts. Now the rest of the earl's party made their way to the gold parlor, as Mr. Trelawney beckoned towards me also.
"Follow me, Miss Kinnan." I set aside my tray and left the sitting room, wondering what he needed from me. That it would have any connection to the séance seemed unlikely, although I hoped somehow it would. What better experience for a writer whose novel was about the paranormal than to witness whatever Natalie Norridge was about to do?
The gold parlor was so named not for its gilding, but for the gold shades of fabric which upholstered its furniture and colored its drapes. Across from the carved teak mantelpiece, the guests were assembled around a large, circular mahogany table, with Miss Norridge at its head. Her eyes were closed, and she looked as if she were asleep in an upright position.
"Stand by the lights and the windows," said the manager, in a quiet voice. He was speaking to me and to Molly, who looked excited — and slightly afraid. "There must be absolutely no question that no one has entered or left this room once the lights are switched off. The earl would like no suggestion whatsoever to exist that Miss Norridge might have a partner who makes a late entry to the party."
"Yes, sir," we answered in unison.
"In short, no tricks," said Mr. Trelawney. He closed the door and locked it from the inside, then looked at me stationed at the light switch. "When you are ready, Lord Billings," he said to the earl.
Natalie opened her eyes. "In a moment, we will lift the veil between our world and the next," she said. "I would ask that you be as silent as you can, but remember that the spirits respond to our voices. It is not necessary to join hands, or concentrate upon anything regarding those who have crossed over. Simply wait with me here until they are ready to speak."
She closed her eyes again. The earl waved his hand impatiently towards Dalton, who opened a small box of matches and lit a single candle in the middle of the table. "Go ahead," he said to the manager as he sat down beside his employer again. Mr. Trelawney plunged the room into darkness, and I could hear the collective deep breath-gathering of the guests who were waiting in suspense for this evening's communication.