Dead Ringer

by Kat Ross

  “How did you get in here?” I whispered. “And keep your voice down. Myrtle has hearing like a bat.”

  “Took a cab,” he answered in a monotone. “Climbed up the drainpipe. Window wasn’t locked.” Moran peered through a crack in the curtains. “It’s out there somewhere,” he said, so softly I could barely hear him. “Waiting.”

  I stared at the window in consternation. I always locked it. Always. Since the previous summer when Mr. Hyde crept into my house as I slept, I was meticulous about security. And yet I couldn’t remember turning the catch before bed the night before.

  Moran’s uncanny luck. It had to be.

  “Pull yourself together,” I whispered sternly. “And don’t turn around.”

  I took my dressing gown from where it hung on the bed post and tied the belt around my waist.

  I had to get rid of him before someone heard. The hour on the bedside clock read 2:15, so at least I could count on Mrs. Rivers being fast asleep. Connor slept in an attic room and I doubted an earthquake would wake the boy. But my sister. . . .

  “Listen, Moran,” I began in the tone one adopts with a recalcitrant toddler.

  He spun around so fast it made me jump, closing the distance between us in three long strides. “I’m going to die,” he growled, his hands clamping down painfully on my arms. “I don’t care about myself, but Mother. . . . It will kill her! You have to help me, Pell.”

  “Let go of me,” I said calmly, though my heart was racing again.

  Moran stared at me a moment longer, his eyes wild. Then he let out a long breath and stepped back. “I’m sorry,” he said tonelessly. “But you don’t know what it’s like.”

  “Sit,” I ordered, pointing at the chair facing my desk.

  He gave me a dour look but complied.

  “If you want my help, you must be totally honest with me.”

  “I have been—”

  “No. You’re holding back.” I sat down on the edge of the bed. I could still feel the imprint of his viselike grip on my arms.

  His dark eyes went flat. “What do you want to know?” he asked warily.

  “What happened the night your father died.”

  Moran looked away. “I shot him.”

  “I’m aware of that. Why?”

  He inhaled slowly through his nose. “He was a hard man.”

  “In what way exactly?”

  He turned back, meeting my eye again, and there was something so raw in his face it almost hurt to look at him. “I was too clever, too bookish. My interest in music was abnormal. Music is for women and my father scorned women. He took it on himself to toughen me up.” Moran gave a bitter laugh. “He never hit me in the face. That would have been too obvious.”

  “But he beat you?”

  “Would you care to see the scars?” He asked dryly, elegant fingers moving to the top button of his shirt.

  “That’s not necessary,” I said quickly.

  Moran stared at me for a moment more, long enough to make my cheeks burn, and lowered his hands.

  I cleared my throat. “And your mother? Did he mistreat her too?”

  His expression darkened further. “What do you think, Pell? And what the hell does it have to do with anything anyway?” His eyes moved to the window again, then flicked away. He reached into his pocket and took out a cigarette case.

  “You can’t smoke in here,” I said. “Myrtle will smell it and she’s already deep in withdrawal.”

  He sighed and returned the case to his pocket. Moran started gnawing at a fingernail, his leg jittering.

  “I haven’t slept in days,” he muttered. “It’s like sitting in one of those miserable death cells at the Tombs and never knowing when your date with the gallows will arrive.

  “That thing. . . .” He shuddered. “It’s getting bolder. Every time I see it, it comes a little bit closer. I wonder if that’s what Danny and Francis saw at the last. Their own face, leering down at them.” He grabbed his head in his hands. “Christ, Pell, I’m not sure how much more I can take. Maybe Cash did the right thing. Put an end to it himself.”

  “Stop talking like that.” I pulled the robe tighter, wrapping my arms around myself. “Listen, I would have come to you, but the hour was too late. John discovered what we’re dealing with.”

  Moran’s head snapped up. I had his undivided attention.

  “A creature called a doppelgänger. It’s from German folklore.” I drew a deep breath. “This feels extremely personal, Moran. It’s about suffering and terror before death.”

  “Doppelgänger,” he repeated softly. “Jesus.”

  There was a faint Irish lilt in the way he pronounced the word. Jay-sus. I had never heard it before and something about that troubled me, but now was not the time to worry about it — not with him sitting in my bedroom on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

  “The stories say it’s the exact double of a living person,” I whispered. “To see one’s own doppelgänger is considered bad luck. Death or misfortune usually follows such an encounter. It’s unclear where they come from, but John says there might be a way to summon such a thing.”

  “That sounds dead on,” he muttered. “How do we send it back?”

  “We don’t know yet,” I admitted.

  His face deflated. “I thought you found something useful!”

  “Keep your voice down,” I hissed. I hurried to the door and cracked it open. When all remained quiet in the hall, I returned to my perch on the edge of the bed.

  “It is useful,” I whispered. “It tells us something about the person controlling this thing. Not even the other investigators at the S.P.R. had heard of a doppelgänger, Moran. So it must be someone intimately familiar with German folklore. The whole scenario is Old World. It’s not. . . .” I struggled to find the right words. “Not an American way to kill someone.”

  Moran gave a low, humorless laugh. “A knife. A bullet. A bit of cyanide. That’s what most people would think of.”

  “Precisely.” I cleared my throat. “And here’s another thing. John thinks the person behind this might not be interested in punishing all of you. Just one. The rest are incidental casualties.”

  He clearly hadn’t thought of this for he grew quiet, his thick brows drawing together as he puzzled it out. “It’s a plausible theory. I told you the truth when I said we weren’t troublemakers. If anything, we all kept our heads down. If someone has it in for a member of the Pythagoras Society, the real victim could even be one of the names after mine. Quincy or Thad or Joseph.”

  For a purported genius, he could be incredibly dense sometimes.

  “It could.” I made my tone as gentle as possible. “But frankly, Moran, I’d put my money on you.”

  He gazed at me coldly. “Thank you for the vote of confidence.”

  “Look, you’re the obvious choice. Will you really force me me to say it plain?”

  The words were a quiet rasp. “Say what, Pell?”

  “You’re a criminal,” I hissed. “And not just any criminal, but the most devious and dangerous in the city, if my sister is to be believed.”

  That made him smile. “Did she say so?”

  I clapped a hand to my forehead. “God save me. You don’t even deny it, do you?”

  He gave a bored shrug and crossed his ankles. His nonchalance irritated me.

  “Why do you do it, Moran? You’re already richer than sin. Men kowtow to you and women don’t exactly run screaming, though they probably ought to.”

  He frowned.

  “Surely you could find something else to occupy your energy and intellect. Even if you survive this curse, the odds are excellent that you will end up in prison again.” I bit my lip. “So why do it?”

  Moran looked at me gravely for a long moment. Then he grinned. “Someone has to. Why not me?”

  I sighed. “Never mind. It’s not my business. But you’ll answer my questions truthfully or I’m quitting right now.”

  His eyes danced with amusement. “Fire awa
y.”

  “Your grandfather came from Ireland. None of this is Celtic lore. What about your mother’s people?”

  “Old Dutch blood.”

  “Emma and Tamsin look very different,” I observed carefully.

  “They had different mothers. That’s why they’re so far apart in age. My own maternal grandmother died young. Emma’s mother had Spanish blood.”

  “Oh.” That explained a good deal. “Who else do you know with a connection to Germany?”

  Moran frowned. “There was a nurse. She served the family for years.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Klara Schmidt. She was always kind to me, though I got the feeling Emma was a little scared of her. She was gone when I got out of jail.”

  I felt a tickle of apprehension. “What’s your impression of this woman?”

  “Klara? She was already old when I was a child. Too old to care for me. Emma did that when Mother was indisposed.”

  “Was she indisposed often?”

  He slid his tie off and began weaving it into a series of intricate knots. Even when the rest of him was still, Moran’s hands were always moving. “Often enough. Klara must be a fossil by now, if she’s even still alive. I haven’t seen her since. . . .” He paused, his slender fingers hesitating.

  “Since what?” I prompted.

  “The trial,” he replied curtly.

  “Did she testify?”

  “Briefly. She came every day and sat in the public benches. She always wore a black hat and dress, like a crow.”

  “Was she at the house that night?”

  Moran nodded. “Sleeping in her room, apparently. Claimed she didn’t hear a thing.”

  “Could she have lied about that?”

  He frowned. “Why would she?”

  “I don’t know. You said she was a nursemaid to your father?”

  “Yes. Emma was eleven when she first came to the house.”

  “What happened to her?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I never asked. I was just glad she’d gone. The woman always smelled of cabbage.” His eyes grew distant. “She used to make these chocolates every Christmas with molds she’d brought over from Germany.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  He laughed. “Not exactly. One of them was Santa Claus with a cudgel in his hand about to beat a disobedient child. I never forgot that one.”

  Klara Schmidt.

  She was there when he killed his father. She had served the family for years. And I’d wager she knew what a doppelgänger was.

  “We have to find her, Moran. Tomorrow,” I said firmly. “And you have to leave.”

  The fear surged back into his eyes. “In a little while.”

  “No, now. You’re lucky I haven’t summoned the police.”

  His voice sank to a rough whisper. “Don’t make me go out there. Not in the dark.” He swallowed hard, his fingers gripping the arms of the chair. “Please. I’m begging you.”

  Moran turned his face away but not before I saw what it cost him to reveal vulnerability to another person. To place himself at my mercy.

  I suppressed a sigh and tossed him the extra quilt at the foot of the bed. “Just for tonight.”

  He wrapped it around his shoulders and tipped the chair back so he could rest his head against the wall. I left the candle burning. After a minute, his eyes slipped shut.

  “Pell?” he murmured.

  “What?”

  “I’ll keep my promise. No matter what happens.”

  Moran did not speak again and his even breathing signaled that he had finally fallen into slumber. With the lines of his face relaxed, he looked closer to his age.

  Nineteen.

  I dozed fitfully, waking every time the house creaked. I wasn’t sure how I would stop it if it tried to come inside, but I knew I wouldn’t let it have him without a fight.

  When the soft light of dawn came, I sat up, rubbing my eyes. The candle had burned down to a stub. My spare quilt was folded at the end of the bed.

  The window was open and James Moran was gone.

  Chapter 12

  The temperature had dropped overnight and dead leaves skittered along the sidewalk as I crossed Fifty-Eighth Street, driven by a wind that cut straight through my thin coat and forced me to clutch my hat with one hand. The Moran mansion looked even more grim and forbidding than usual. All the blinds were pulled shut. Not a gleam of light shone through the windows.

  It seemed sentient, that house, as if it were waiting for something, and I felt a twinge of uneasiness as I passed through the iron gates and sounded the knocker.

  The door was opened by a uniformed maid, who curtsied and took my coat.

  “Miss Pell to see Mr. Moran,” I said briskly.

  She led me to the downstairs drawing room. Moran sat near the fireplace, his legs stretched toward the cold hearth. He looked nothing like the frightened boy who had begged to sleep on my floor hours before. He wore an immaculate dark suit and somber tie. His hair was combed, his beard shaved. The only telltale sign anything was amiss lurked in his eyes, which were red-rimmed and guarded.

  Tamsin and Emma sat side by side on the couch. Emma sipped a cup of coffee.

  “Miss Pell,” Moran said in a neutral tone, rising to his feet.

  “I hope I’m not intruding.”

  “Not at all. I hoped you’d join us.”

  I took a chair opposite to Tamsin and Emma, again struck by how different they were in appearance. Both women were beautiful, but Tamsin was wan and ethereal while Emma smoldered with dark fire.

  “We were just discussing Klara Schmidt,” he said. “Apparently, she returned to Germany two years ago.”

  I kept my face smooth, but the news surprised me. “Is that so?”

  “She had a niece in Cologne,” Emma said. “Klara always spoke fondly of her. Her name was. . . .” Emma trailed off with a frown. “What was it? Hannah, I think. Yes, Hannah. She sent letters at least once a month. Don’t you remember, Tamsin?”

  Moran’s mother looked up with a vague expression. “What?”

  “Hannah Schmidt. She pressed Klara to return to Germany and live with her.” Emma laid her cup in the saucer. “James won’t tell me why you’re so interested in Klara. Are you afraid something’s happened to her?”

  “She’s a person of interest,” I said. “I’m afraid I can’t say more than that.”

  “But she didn’t even know those boys,” Emma said. “The woman hardly left her room for years. She was older than Rip Van Winkle. I can’t imagine her hurting a fly!”

  “I can,” Tamsin said darkly. “Klara was an odd duck. I have a picture somewhere.” She rose to her feet, brushing off Emma’s attempts to help her. “I’m not a complete invalid,” she snapped. Emma flushed and looked hurt. “Come,” Tamsin said to me in an imperious tone. “There’s a trunk up in the attic.”

  I thought Moran would insist on joining us, but he stayed in his seat, staring at Emma, as I walked his mother to the door. She led me up three flights of curving stairs, clutching the rail the whole way, her legs wobbling like a newborn fawn. I feared she might collapse, but at last we gained the top floor and she opened the door to one of the round turret rooms. Stained glass windows admitted soft light. The space was filled with boxes and furniture under white sheets. Mrs. Moran rummaged through a trunk and took out a small photograph in a silver frame.

  It must have been taken in the nursery because a painted rocking horse was visible off to the side. A severe-looking woman with her hair in a tightly braided bun stared at the camera, her mouth set in an unsmiling grimace. A dark-haired child stood next to her in a white dress with lace trim. The impish nose and pointy chin told me it was little Emma.

  “That’s her,” Mrs. Moran said with a dry cackle. “The witch herself!”

  Klara Schmidt stared at the camera and I had the eerie sensation she was looking directly at me.

  “May I borrow this?”

  “You can have it,” Mrs
. Moran said firmly. “I never liked the woman. Kept her away from my James.”

  “Why didn’t you just dismiss her?”

  Tamsin laughed. “Declan wouldn’t stand for it. She was like a second mother to him. For all I know, she raised his grandfather, too. He wouldn’t hear a word against her.”

  I tucked the portrait in my pocket and we started back downstairs. When we passed Moran’s music room, I paused and bent down to examine the lock. I had finally managed to wade through Myrtle’s monogram on tool marks and it proved quite enlightening. Moran thought the shallow gouges had been made by the dogs (“They can’t stand a closed door”) but the nails of a large animal would be wider and leave longer, deeper scratches. These were most likely—

  “What are you doing?” Mrs. Moran was staring back at me with a queer expression on her face.

  I hastily stood up. “Nothing. Sorry! My boot came untied.”

  I fussed with the laces as she eyed me for another moment, then hurried to follow her down the stairs. When we reached the drawing room, Moran and Emma were in the same places, but the air between them felt charged. I wondered what they’d been talking about while we were gone.

  “Did you find it?” Emma asked, bounding to her feet.

  I showed her the picture.

  “Oh, my Lord,” she murmured, studying it over my shoulder. “I haven’t seen that in years. Where did you find it, Tamsin?”

  “Trunk in the attic,” Moran’s mother replied.

  “I remember that day,” Emma said slowly. “It was just before Christmas. I was so excited to have my portrait taken. You gave me that dress, Tamsin. It had little pearl buttons.”

  “Actually, I seem to recall that Declan bought it for you.”

  “Did he?” She glanced at the bare place on the wall where his portrait had hung, then looked at Moran. “You were just a little boy, James. I don’t suppose you remember Klara.”

  “Not well.” He slouched in the chair with his ankles crossed, an unreadable look on his face.

  “I’m tired,” Tamsin announced. She looked ghostly and I wondered if our brief trip up to the attic had exhausted her. “I’m afraid I must lie down. James, would you help me to my room?”