The Other Side of Midnight

by Simone St. James

  Now I sat up groggy and confused, my eyes heavy, my head spinning. The headache had drained away. I rubbed my neck and looked at my watch. Three o’clock in the afternoon.

  The dog barked again, and again. I realized the sound was high pitched and frantic.

  I stood and went to the front window, pulling back the curtain. My neighbor’s collie, Pickwick, was standing in the street. His leash lay forgotten on the ground.

  I frowned and went to the front door, opening it. “Pickwick!” I called into the damp, brisk air; the rain had moved off, but left its breath behind. “Where is Mr. Bagwell?”

  Pickwick spared me only the quickest glance before returning his gaze to something down the street. His tail was low, his ears back. He barked again and again, the sound high and unhappy.

  The street was deserted. I took a step outside and stopped, awareness trickling up my spine. Pickwick’s long coat was soft and vivid in the afternoon light, orange and russet brown, short and dark over his sleek, intelligent head. His tail was set so low that its long brush of fur touched the ground, and I thought incongruously that Mr. Bagwell, who adored Pickwick and kept him meticulously, would likely tut over the dirt when he saw it.

  I took another step toward the street. The wind touched my sleep-heated cheeks, cleared my head. Pickwick crouched lower, still barking, his back legs digging into the ground. I had approached him and bent to take up his leash before I realized I felt a telltale tickle at the back of my neck.

  “Pickwick,” I said. I picked up the loop of his leash and straightened again. I followed his gaze down the street.

  Mr. Bagwell stood down the lane, almost at the corner. He was wearing his usual brown trousers and matching jacket, a cloth cap on his bald head. He stood facing us, his hands at his sides. Oh, dear, I thought at first. I’ve interrupted a training exercise of some kind. I had the urge to rub the skin at the back of my neck, scratch under my hair. If Mr. Bagwell was training Pickwick to stay, it was strange that he’d do it in the middle of the road. We had motorcars come through here every day.

  Pickwick made a whine deep in his throat and lowered his haunches farther, his toenails scrabbling against the cobbles. He was trembling, and he wasn’t pulling on the leash I held. His gaze was locked on his master, his look almost desperate. A faintly putrid smell wafted to my nose through the rain-fresh air.

  “No,” I said, my voice low and thick. “Please, no.”

  Under the lip of his cloth cap I could see Mr. Bagwell’s eyes, their gaze fixed on the dog. He did not seem to have noticed me. I felt Pickwick’s body shake.

  “Please, no,” I said again, but my voice was flat, hopeless.

  Mr. Bagwell lifted one hand and held it palm out. Pickwick raised himself up, as if he would lunge; then he lowered himself again and whined. Mr. Bagwell’s hand stayed level, the gesture unmistakable. It was the dog master’s universal gesture of Stay.

  Pickwick stayed. But a sound came from his throat, low and awful, unlike any sound I’d heard from a dog—mournful and angry and confused. A howl, but the dog swallowed it, tamped it down to please his master. His ears were back, flattened to his silky head. Dog and man locked gazes, and their look was so despairing, so intimate, that I moaned softly myself. Don’t go, I thought. Wait, please, please—

  A hand grabbed my arm, turned me roughly. It was Mrs. Campbell, my neighbor of two doors down, her hair askew and her face flushed with anger.

  “What is the matter with you?” she cried, furious.

  I stared at her in shock. The itching drained away, the throbbing in my head, and for the first time I noticed a knot of people gathered in the street behind her. “What?”

  “Are you blind, or just stupid?” she nearly shouted. “Can’t you see what’s happened? Don’t you even care?”

  Inside the knot of people, a man was bent over something on the road. A van turned the corner and stopped, two men in uniforms jumping out. The man bent over moved aside and I glimpsed the familiar brown suit, the legs of Mr. Bagwell prone on the road, unmoving.

  I turned and looked back at the corner, my mind clear. The spot where Mr. Bagwell had stood was empty.

  “I didn’t know,” I said to Mrs. Campbell as Pickwick put his nose to the ground. He did not look at the body of his master. “I didn’t—”

  “Some neighbor you are,” she spat at me. “Turn your back on a man while he dies on the road.”

  I didn’t turn my back on him, I opened my mouth to say, but she had already moved away and was helping the ambulance men with the body. “His heart stopped,” came the murmurs from the crowd. “Just like that, sudden-like. No one saw it coming.”

  More people drifted from their homes and up the street to watch the spectacle. A policeman in uniform approached me as they put the body in the back of the van and asked if this was Mr. Bagwell’s dog.

  “Yes,” I said, my grip on the leash tightening instinctively. “This is Pickwick. I’ll take him home with me.”

  He took down my information, told me someone would contact me with instructions for the dog once the relatives had been informed. Mr. Bagwell was a widower, and his grown children had long since moved away; even I knew that. I moved closer to Pickwick, leaning my shins against his trembling rib cage. When I had finished with the policeman, I tugged gently on the lead and the dog followed me back into the house. He had stopped shaking, and he did not look at me. He curled up obediently at my feet as I sat at the table in the kitchen. I watched him lay his nose on the linoleum and sigh.

  “I’m sorry,” I said aloud to him, my voice ringing in the quiet kitchen. “That was awful. I’m so sorry for you, sweetheart.”

  Pickwick made no move.

  My chest felt tight. I kicked off my shoes and slid from the chair, going to my knees in my stockings on the kitchen floor. I bent over Pickwick, running my hands over the short fur of his forehead, the luxurious ruff of his neck. He didn’t respond, but I sat there anyway, stroking him for a long time. He seemed to need no words; the action consoled me as much as it consoled him, I was sure. I lifted his chin and looked into his eyes, so sweet and soulful, eyes that had seen what I had seen. Eyes that understood.

  Deathbed visions, James had called them, though it seemed cruel to call it that when a man had died so far from his bed before he’d even grown old. Yet I also thought that hadn’t been exactly what it was. That had been Mr. Bagwell, not just an echo or a shadow of him. It had really been the man, telling his beloved dog to stay as he went where his companion couldn’t follow. It had been just like all of the visions I’d called for my mother, only this time, like the previous night, I hadn’t called it at all. My grip on my powers was loosening, and the dead could come whether I willed it or not.

  I dug my hands into the dog’s warm fur and waited for the terror to subside.

  * * *

  “Davies,” I said into the telephone that sat in my front hall. “It’s Ellie.”

  “What now?” she said. “I thought I was free of you, Mary Pickford.”

  I sighed. Mary Pickford, the name of the ringleted, golden-haired movie star, was Davies’s epithet for me, her attempt at the kind of wit Gloria had wielded so easily. “I came to see you earlier.”

  “I was out.”

  Doing what? “Yes, I know. I need to talk to you.”

  She snorted. “Did you have fun with Octavia Murtry, that little fortune-petter, the other day?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Useless, isn’t she? The only reason Gloria put up with her was because of Harry, though God knows what Harry saw in her. I was glad to see you have to put up with her for once. My guess is you’ll have a hard time getting rid of her.”

  I was starting to feel steady, the nightmarish event with Mr. Bagwell fading from my mind. Pickwick was asleep on the kitchen floor. “She wants to contact Gloria’s brothers,” I said.

&
nbsp; “She never had half a chance,” Davies replied. “Gloria would never do it. She always said she could bear to look at other people’s dead, but she had no desire to contact her own. Those boys dying ripped her to pieces.”

  She seemed talkative, so I pushed her further. “Did you know Gloria’s brothers?”

  “No, but Gloria had photographs. I only saw them once, because she never showed them around.”

  “She carried them with her. All three of them. Along with their notification telegrams.”

  There was a pause, and I realized I’d thrown Davies for a loop. “How the hell did you know that?”

  She hadn’t known, then. I rubbed my hand on my forehead. She’d be resentful now that I knew something about Gloria that she didn’t; it would be an insult in her book. “I took her flask bag,” I said, trying to sound apologetic. “When I was at her flat. It was all in there.”

  “You took her flask bag from under my nose? When I let you in and everything?”

  “I didn’t plan it.” I tried to sound remorseful. “An impulse, that’s all. I’m sorry, Davies.”

  “Some people have no manners,” she said.

  “Look, the letters and photographs weren’t the only things tucked in there. She’d written out her schedule as well.”

  “I kept her schedule.”

  God, Davies was a monster of ego. “Yes, I know. This is in her handwriting—she jotted it down and carried it with her so she wouldn’t forget. A reminder note, that sort of thing. I assume you gave a copy of her last week’s schedule to Scotland Yard?”

  “I didn’t have any bloody choice, did I? One of those toffs could be the one who killed her.”

  “Yes, I know. I agree. The thing is—Davies, in Gloria’s own schedule, she’s crossed out one of the appointments and written something else in. Something I can’t decode.”

  The line went very quiet.

  “Davies?” I said.

  Her voice was low, almost hurt. “She wouldn’t have done that. Gloria wouldn’t have.”

  “Maybe something important came up,” I said.

  “If it was important, it would have gone through me.”

  For a second I felt for her; Gloria’s schedule had been Davies’s entire life, her reason for existence. But this was Davies, after all, and my sympathy was short-lived. “Maybe you know what this means. It says—”

  “Stop! Don’t say it.” Davies’s voice lowered. “I won’t discuss it over the telephone. It could be secret. You never know who is listening in on these things.”

  “Oh, please. That’s ridiculous.”

  “No. It was Gloria’s own policy—never discuss business on the telephone. Meet me at Marlatt’s Café at six o’clock, and I’ll look at this code, whatever it is.”

  “Davies, I don’t have time for this. It’s really a very simple question.”

  “Are you thick? That’s my offer, Goldilocks.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Fine. I’ll be there.”

  “Make sure of it,” she said, and hung up.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  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.”