The Other Side of Midnight

by Simone St. James

  I started up the road toward the Dubbses’ house. He knew I would go there; he had put together what I wanted and why. He would go there as certainly as a bird goes to his nest, unable to stay away, unable not to finish the job. There was the possibility that, after the failed attempt with the rifle, I would turn around and go home, but he didn’t think I would do it. I was supposed to be dead—quick, clean, no chance of getting caught, as usual—but the man in the houndstooth jacket had surprised him, and now he had something of a problem. Still, nothing he couldn’t clean up quickly, as long as I was out of the way. Once I was dead, he could vanish, just as he had before. A man who didn’t exist.

  The hum of a motor approached on the road behind me. A thick, heavy sound, not that of a motorcycle. I rubbed my eyes.

  It drew up beside me, and the motor idled as I heard the door open. “Jesus God,” someone said. James’s voice. Confusing, because James did not own a motorcar. Where had he gotten a motorcar?

  And then his hands were on me, an arm beneath my knees and another behind my shoulders, picking me up swift and easy without even a grunt. “What the bloody hell,” he said, his voice short with fury. I smelled the tangy scent of him, felt myself being placed gently in the motorcar.

  “My dog,” I cried.

  I needn’t have worried. Pickwick bounded into the car after me, uninvited, scrabbling on the seat. I put my arm around him. We were in the backseat, and someone in a dark hat was up front driving. James circled the car and slid in next to me, his weight making the seat sag. He slammed the door, said, “Drive,” shortly to the man in front, and took my face in his hands as the vehicle began to move.

  “Are you all right?” he said to me, brushing my cheeks with his thumbs. I looked into his face, the other vision finally clearing away. He looked more wonderful than anything I’d ever seen. I opened my mouth to tell him so, but he didn’t let me speak.

  “Jesus, Ellie,” he said. “Where have you been? We found the bicycle—I nearly went mad. Are you hurt?”

  “My head hurts,” I rasped, “but he didn’t hit me. Where were you?”

  James glanced at the back of the driver’s head, fury in his eyes. “I was doing my best to protect you, despite our mutual friend here.”

  “That was my chief inspector, you idiot,” came the reply from the front seat. “For the last time.”

  “Inspector Merriken?” I said.

  “The Yard took me in for questioning,” James told me through gritted teeth. “For Gloria’s murder. And the order to send men out here was delayed.”

  For the first time I felt a thin strain of hysteria. “You weren’t there? Neither of you? Not on the train, not on the roads, not anywhere?” It had been the thought of the police watching from shouting distance that had given me courage. Instead, I’d been alone the entire time?

  “No,” James said, running his hands gently down my shoulders, over my arms, looking for injuries. “Because the Yard is full of oafs who don’t know what they’re doing—”

  “I was the one who got you out of there,” said Inspector Merriken.

  “—and wouldn’t know a suspect if he popped right out of their asses and said hello.”

  “There’s no respect for the police in this country,” Merriken complained, his voice deceptively mild.

  “I came for you as soon as I could. It was him, wasn’t it?” said James to me. “He found you. Ellie, your knee is bleeding. We’ll have to— What did he do?”

  I ran a hand through my hair, keeping the other arm around Pickwick, who was leaning into my side. He was trembling, unused to the motorcar, and I pulled him closer to me. “A rifle shot from a hilltop,” I said. “He knocked me right off my bicycle.”

  The car was deadly silent as both men forgot their argument. James went positively gray.

  “I’ll never forgive myself,” he said softly.

  From the driver’s seat, Inspector Merriken’s voice was subdued. “I’m sorry that happened to you, Miss Winter, and I’m glad you’re all right. If you can tell me exactly how it happened, I can have some of my men search the area for his vantage point.”

  “I already found it,” I said, not ready to talk about the figure in the woods who had led me there. “I already searched it.”

  “Ah.” The inspector’s voice was gentle. “Good. With all due respect, Miss Winter, we still need to go over the scene for shell casings and the like. I don’t suppose you found any shell casings?”

  “No. But your men will have to go back there anyway, because he left the body of the man who stopped him.” I swallowed. “And he left a cigarette.” I turned and looked at James, who was regarding me with an expression I couldn’t read. “I saw him,” I said. “I know who he is.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The Dubbses’ house was at the end of a long, shaded drive, far from the road. The motorcar’s tires made a prickling sound on the gravel, and in places the branches of the trees dipped low enough to scrape the roof. By the time Inspector Merriken pulled the motorcar to a stop in front of the house, it felt as if we had descended into a hidden pocket of the country, a place where no one could see us.

  The house itself was of red brick, with a thatched roof and a thick patch of ivy, already half russet, climbing the walls. A door of fresh-painted white showed like a tooth from its nest of ivy, and the mullioned windows winked in the sunlight as the sun began to lower in the afternoon sky. It was a house that had stood for a hundred years, the picture of bucolic English gentility, and it was easy to picture an old gentleman smoking his pipe while his wife puttered in the garden. The very last thing it looked like was a house that needed a séance.

  “This is it?” I said, staring at it as James helped me out of the car. “This is where they live?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” Inspector Merriken slammed the driver’s door and patted his pockets, anger and disgust written on his face.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It turns out the Dubbses are something of a cipher,” said James.

  “That’s putting it mildly,” said the inspector.

  I frowned, looking at the quiet house, the well-kept garden. “They’re gone to the Continent, you said.”

  “Farther than that,” said James. “They’ve vanished.”

  Inspector Merriken stopped patting his pockets and looked at me. “Do you recall our interview, Miss Winter?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You suggested I take another look at the Dubbses, specifically at their finances, as they paid both Gloria and Fitzroy Todd presumably high sums. Perhaps this will surprise you, but I took your advice. And what do you think I found?”

  I shook my head, bewildered.

  “Nothing,” the inspector said. “This house you see here is registered as owned by a Martin Dubbs, and that is all. Martin Dubbs has no birth record, no marriage record. His son has no birth record. He claimed to work for Barclays Bank in London, where he mostly lives, but when I checked, they had never heard of him. In short, Miss Winter, Martin Dubbs, and presumably his wife, are fakes.” Anger flushed red on his handsome cheekbones. “And I missed it.”

  “But his identification?” I said.

  “I inspected it when we questioned them, yes, and so did one of my men. I’m trained to look for false papers—I’ve seen dozens of them in my career, from the amateur to the professional. What the Dubbses showed us looked perfect to me. That means that, assuming what I inspected was fake, they had the very highest talent create their papers. One would have to be extremely well connected, and extremely deep in the pocket, to get work like that done.”

  “Unless,” said James, “the papers were created by the government itself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Inspector Merriken patted his pocket again and pulled out a thin stick of metal. He turned toward the Dubbses’ f
ront door. “While I was investigating, Mr. Hawley here was doing some searching of his own. It seems he contacted the War Office, looking for the record of one Davey Dubbs, whose spirit Gloria was supposed to call on the night she was murdered. The War Office must have alerted someone. When Mr. Hawley turned up at the Yard this morning, asking to see me so that he could convince me to let him come on this operation, he was taken for questioning—in person—by my chief inspector. At the same time, I was told that my request for men to cover the roads in Kent this morning was delayed. It goes completely against protocol for my CI to interview a subject in my murder investigation without me while at the same time altering my plans. I’d like to know what the hell is going on.”

  “He kept me for two hours,” James said. “I told him I had to leave, that I had to meet you because I was afraid Gloria’s killer would go after you, but still he detained me.”

  Inspector Merriken regarded the Dubbses’ front door. “When I heard what inquiry Mr. Hawley had made that had him detained, I picked up the phone and called the War Office myself. And do you know what I was told? ‘Classified.’ Classified!” He glanced at my bewildered face, as if I should have known what outraged him so. “My own evidence, in my own murder investigation, classified. No, I don’t think that will do at all. I had no choice but to interrupt the interview, claiming I needed to question Mr. Hawley about new information I’d received.” He reached down and twitched his trouser legs in an immaculate fall before crouching before the door and inserting the black pick into the lock. “We had no choice but to leave the Yard without backup—it was either that or continue to delay. In the meantime, since the Dubbses apparently aren’t home and aren’t even real people, I have no problem entering their premises for another look.”

  “You can pick locks?” I said.

  James came next to my shoulder, his hands in his pockets, and watched alongside me. “Makes you feel safe as a citizen, doesn’t it?”

  “Sod off,” said the inspector.

  “You told him about George Sutter, didn’t you?” I said to James.

  “Yes,” he replied. “It’s made him rather angry.”

  “There is nothing I hate worse,” Merriken clarified as the lock mechanism clicked, “than people who meddle in my murder cases. Except possibly ghosts. Don’t ever talk to me about ghosts.”

  He had the door open in less than a minute, and we followed him inside. The front hall was tidy, the sitting room opening from it snugly furnished, with lace-trimmed curtains on the windows and a rustic clock on the mantel. I hesitated, Pickwick at my heels, before following the two men into the house. This felt like a home. How did it fit with the nonexistent Dubbses?

  James and Inspector Merriken had already moved to the back of the house, past the narrow staircase leading to the upstairs bedrooms, to the snug kitchen, which was tidy and featured a large kitchen table. “This is where the séance was supposed to happen,” the inspector said as he began opening cupboards and gently rifling through their contents. “Or so I was told, the night I interviewed them and they lied about nearly everything.”

  “Fitz told me the Dubbses weren’t ready for a séance,” I said. “That they seemed clueless about how to even go about it. Ramona said the same thing.”

  “Neither one of them told me that,” said the inspector, continuing his search.

  “According to Ramona, the Dubbses didn’t want either of them there—either Fitz or Ramona. They were unhappy about it and wanted both of them to go home, as if they wanted Gloria alone.” I rubbed a finger over my forehead, trying to remember everything through the fog of pain. “Also, Fitz lied to you about how he convinced Gloria to come here and do the session. He’s been selling narcotics, to Ramona as well as others, and a man approached him and blackmailed him to get Gloria to show up, or else.”

  Inspector Merriken glanced at me. “We knew about the drugs. One look at Ramona and it was obvious she’d been taking—and that night. As for Fitzroy Todd, he isn’t particularly bright, and he’s never been discreet. He’s not much of a master criminal. But his family is powerful, and none of our charges ever stick. He’s become one of those nuisances we all know about but we have to put up with. I suspected his story was full of holes. I just couldn’t figure out where they were.”

  “I keep coming back to the fact that they wanted Gloria alone out here,” James said. “Do you think this couple, whoever they really are, is behind this?”

  “It’s a shell game,” the inspector mused. “Set up an intermediary, make contact with someone close to the target who has something to lose—in this case, Fitzroy Todd. Blackmail him into bringing your target to the intended place. When it’s all over, disappear again. The question is, what did they want her for?” He closed the cupboard he was peering into and turned to me. “I have my own theories. But first, Miss Winter, please have a seat and tell me what you know.”

  There was no refusing him. I pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat. If this had indeed been intended as the séance table, it was a terrible choice; it was too long, the feel of it too utilitarian, like a workbench. And the cheery, sunlit kitchen was not a good place to summon the dead. James went to the kitchen sink, where he quickly found a rag and soaked it in cold water. He pulled out a chair next to me and placed the rag on my knee. Pickwick curled up in a corner of the kitchen, put his nose into his tail, and promptly fell asleep, exhausted.

  I pulled my messenger bag off my shoulder, wincing as my sore muscles moved, and set it on the table. I opened it and slid out Gloria’s three telegrams, in which I’d once again folded the three photographs after studying them on the train. Gloria’s three brothers looked up at me from the wooden surface, their faces forever frozen in time. I bypassed Tommy and Harry, put my finger on the edge of Colin’s photograph, and slid it into the middle of the table.

  “It’s him,” I said. “This is the man you want.”

  “And who is that?” asked the inspector, angling his tall body down to inspect the photograph.

  “Colin Sutter.”

  “Colin Sutter?” James stopped pressing the cloth to my knee and stared at me. “Colin Sutter is dead.”

  Inspector Merriken’s quick brain calculated behind his eyes. “One of Gloria’s brothers who died in the war?”

  “He’s not dead,” I said. “He shot at me this afternoon. He killed Gloria and Ramona, and George Sutter’s man.” I looked at both of them, for the first time wondering whether they would believe me. “I saw it. I saw him. I saw his face in the mirror.”

  “Ellie.” James put his hand on my leg, looked at me. “I know you,” he said. “I know. So I’ll only ask this once. Are you absolutely certain of what you saw?”

  I blinked. “He’s wearing an outfit that looks like a farmhand’s, with a cloth cap. He’s driving a motorcycle with a sidecar and taking back roads. I don’t know how he was reported dead in the war—I didn’t see that, didn’t see how he survived. I saw something about a woman, and a few other things I didn’t understand. But it was him.” I dropped my gaze to the photo, to Colin’s dark good looks, so much like Gloria’s. The politician, his family had called him. Always so serious, so reserved. I thought of the razor blade I’d seen in the vision. “He wanted to die at one point,” I said, “but he didn’t do it. There was something he had to accomplish.”

  “What?” the inspector asked.

  I looked up at him. “It’s very vague, you understand. I don’t get words, sentences, explanations. I get images. And I saw an empty factory, and I saw him throw a suitcase through a broken window.”

  Inspector Merriken straightened as if I’d slapped him. “The bomber?” he said, and for the first time his unshakable composure broke and amazement crossed his face. “You’re saying that Colin Sutter, who died in the war, is the bomber?”

  Both men stared at me. I thought of the headlines I’d seen in the newspapers on the train
: UNKNOWN BOMBER STRIKES AGAIN. FOUR DEAD AT GUILDFORD AIRPLANE FACTORY. I’d given the articles only a cursory read, using the newspaper as a cover. Now I wished I’d read everything in depth. “I told you, I don’t know all the answers,” I said, unable to help the defensiveness in my voice. “I only know what I saw.”

  Inspector Merriken turned away, pacing the kitchen. “Miss Winter, this is too much.”

  “Now wait, Merriken,” said James. “You have to at least consider it. If you’d ever seen Ellie in action, you’d know—”

  “I have,” the inspector said. “I have seen her in action. For God’s sake, I wouldn’t have followed both of you this far if I thought she was a fake. But you have to see it from my position—this leaves me almost nothing to work with. I can’t go back to the Yard and tell my chief inspector that England’s mysterious bomber is Gloria Sutter’s dead brother, and the only evidence I have is the vision of a psychic—and not just any psychic, but one who has been officially debunked by the New Society.”

  James removed his hat and ran his hands through his short hair. “Are the bombings your case?”

  Merriken shook his head. “Terror acts don’t fall to the Murder Squad. I’d have to involve the police, the Home Office, the War Office—all the way up the line. It wouldn’t end. And it would take about a half hour before I’d be staring at some terrifying, cold-blooded fellow from MI5.”

  We were all silent, the air thunderous and still.

  “George Sutter,” said James.

  “Wait.” Inspector Merriken held up his hands. He pulled off his hat and dropped it on the sideboard, pacing again, his long dark coat flapping as he moved. “We have to stop right now. I’m trying to do police work here—proper police work, not speculate like madmen.”

  “George Sutter can’t have known about it,” I said. My voice was almost shrill with panic, and I took a breath. “He can’t have. Why would he have come to me—why would he have recruited me, if he already knew about Colin?”