“Never mind,” I said to him. “It doesn’t matter.”
He blinked and gazed past me, out the window. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“I think so, yes.”
“You were unconscious for a long time.”
“It was the smoke, I think. And my mind had . . . exhausted itself.” I rubbed a hand over my hair, suddenly self-conscious, wishing for a bath. “Did you carry me out of the woods?”
His gaze flicked to me and away again, and he shrugged. “You don’t weigh very much.”
The air seemed heavy, unbearable. I wanted to touch him, but I wasn’t sure I could stand, and I could tell he didn’t want me to. “James,” I said.
“Listen.” He seemed to be gathering his courage. Still he stood in the doorway, not coming inside. “Ellie, you are . . . You know what you are. To me.” He raised a hand from his pocket and rubbed his jaw. “But I think I’ve proven that I’m a bit of a mess right now.”
“You were brave,” I said quietly. “And wonderful.”
He shook his head, making a sound of disgust.
“And you’re hurt,” I continued, “and you went through terrible things. But it doesn’t mean—”
“It does,” he interrupted. “It does mean it. I nearly blew his brains out, Ellie. Right in front of you, in front of his own brother, in front of everyone. I was this close.” He shifted, his body moving as if he was uncomfortable in his own skin. “It doesn’t matter that he was a criminal and a murderer. Don’t you see? I nearly blew his brains out when I knew the police were coming, while you stood there watching. I should probably be locked up in one of those hospitals you hear about in the newspapers.”
I pressed my knees together, rubbing one aching foot over the other, silent.
“The drinking didn’t work,” James said. “Working for Paul and the Society didn’t work—chasing ghosts. I thought it helped, but it turns out that if you put a gun in my hand, I’m the same old barbarian.”
“What are you saying?” I asked, my voice rising in panic before I could stop it.
Finally he looked at me. His eyes were sad, his jaw tight. “You know what I’m saying.”
“No. I won’t accept it.”
“Ellie, you should find somebody else. Somebody—”
“Somebody what? Normal?” I laughed, a bitter sound. “James, I just identified an international terrorist by touching a cigarette, and then I summoned my dead friend. I don’t want normal. I want you.” My voice had risen, but I ceased to care. “Besides, you’re forgetting something important. You didn’t shoot him. You stopped.”
“I was so close, Ellie. So goddamned close.”
“Yes, you were. It’s true. And you stopped.”
He looked so exhausted. “God, I’m going to have to fight you on this, aren’t I?”
“I don’t accept it, James. You may as well know it now. I never will.”
He was quiet for a long moment, his eyes closed. I held my breath—quite literally held it, as my heart hammered in my chest. I had made a good show, but a show was all it was. If he turned away now, I would fall to pieces.
The silence stretched on. My fingers clenched in the bedspread.
Finally he let go a slow breath. He came into the room and sat on the end of the bed a few feet away, his back to me, his elbows on his knees.
A small sobbing sound escaped my throat. I scooted over and slid in behind him, putting my arms around his waist. I wrapped my legs around him, hooking them over his thighs, my feet between his knees. I pressed my cheek to his back, between his shoulder blades, feeling the thick tension that ran through his body, listening to his breathing and his blood pulsing. We stayed like that for a long moment.
“You saw her, didn’t you?” I said in a whisper.
“Yes,” he whispered back. “I saw all of them. What did she say to him, when she whispered in his ear?”
“She said, No,” I replied softly. “I saw her lips move; I heard it. He was coming for me, and she stopped him. She said, No.”
“Jesus.”
“Don’t leave me,” I said into his shirt. “I can’t do this alone.”
He was quiet for a moment. The muscles of his back softened only slightly beneath my cheek. And then he put a gentle hand on my leg, his thumb tracing a line on the back of my bare calf.
“Yes, you can,” he said.
“Fine, then,” I replied, my arms still around his waist. “I don’t want to.”
His hand gripped the back of my knee, and in a single movement he’d turned himself around, pressing my knee into the bed, pushing me back, pulling himself over me. He was so incredibly strong. He looked down into my face and brushed my cheek with a brief touch.
“If you’re in, then you’re in,” he said roughly. “For all of it.”
I ran my hands down his chest. “So are you,” I reminded him.
He kissed me, in that way he had, soft and possessive at the same time. When he pulled away, his eyes had gone dark, his breathing as ragged as my own.
“I’m in,” he said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
THREE WEEKS LATER
The seams of my stockings weren’t straight. I bent and fixed them, then brushed smooth my best skirt, its hemline decorously falling to the middle of my calves. I buttoned the matching jacket, then unbuttoned it again. It was wool serge, protection against the early October chill, but as I stood in this small room in Whitehall, I felt myself dampening with sweat.
“Are you finished?” George Sutter asked from beside me.
I glanced at him. Long gone was the man who had begged for his brother’s life as the woods burned behind him. Instead, he was once again the calm, powerful cipher in a suit pressed by his invisible wife, watching me with an unreadable expression in his eyes.
“I suppose so,” I said, glaring a little at him.
“Good.” He ignored my expression. “Remember what I told you, the information we are specifically looking to retrieve. Try to keep control of the conversation.”
“Assuming there will be a conversation,” I said.
“That is up to you, Miss Winter. In any case, you have been briefed extensively and should have an idea of what questions to ask.” He paused. “And remember, someone is watching and listening at all times. He will be bound, and there is a guard just outside the door. He cannot hurt you.”
“I shall try not to expire in fear.”
George sighed. “It would be beneficial if you would take this with a degree of seriousness, Miss Winter.”
I shrugged. The sweat trickling down my back belied the gesture, but I didn’t let on. “Just open the door.”
The interview was to take place in a small room with a high window, furnished with a single table and two chairs. On the wall was a pane of smoked glass, through which I presumed someone would be watching us. Colin Sutter was already there. He sat at the table, wearing pale prison linens, his hands cuffed and chained to the chair, having been brought from whatever private cell he was kept in as the great minds of British government tried to get him to confess.
His eyes flashed with interest when he saw me; he obviously had not been given any warning of who he had been brought to see.
I pulled out the chair opposite him and sat. He did not move; I tried not to let his resemblance to Gloria rattle me. His dark hair had been combed back and slicked to his head. He was clean shaven, well fed, relaxed. His presence was like that of a snake in the room.
“I may as well tell you,” I said to him, glancing at the smoked window, “that I’ve been briefed about what to ask you. I believe your brother told his superiors that sitting opposite one of your victims would have the chance of unnerving you. That’s how he got clearance for me to be here.”
Colin regarded me blankly and said nothing.
“But i
t’s a lie,” I said, loud enough for whoever was listening—however they were listening—to overhear. “And I think we both know why. You know why your brother wants me here, and so do I.” I shifted in the uncomfortable chair. “Everyone, quite frankly, wants to know what I saw that day when you shot at me, but no one in the official government wants to admit it. They don’t want to admit they’re curious about the vision of a psychic.”
Colin glanced away. It took me a second to realize that he, too, was looking at the smoked glass. There was no sound, no interruption. No one came in to take me away. Colin, according to his brother George, had resisted all attempts at interrogation. He had answered only the most basic questions, refusing to give names of those who had hired him, to confess to the bombings or the murders, even to speak for himself. He was well on the way to being hanged for treason for the bombings, and behind his immaculate exterior, even I knew that George was afraid his brother would go to the gallows without answering a single question that hung over the last seven years of his life.
Colin looked back at me, and his gaze flared with curiosity. In that second, I knew I had him. Finally, he spoke.
“It was the cigarette, wasn’t it?” he said, his voice rasping a little, as if he didn’t use it often.
“Yes,” I said.
He leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling. “I knew it. I knew. It took me too long to remember it—too long. By then, it was too late.”
I shrugged, hoping it was convincing. “You made a mistake,” I said. “It cost you.”
“What did you see?”
I didn’t want to be in this room with him any longer than I had to, so I told him. “I saw her.”
The chains gave an abrupt clang against the table leg as he moved, and for a second I nearly jumped out of my chair. But he was only shifting, jolting with surprise and suppressed emotion. “What did you see?”
“Look,” I said. “We can sit here all afternoon and talk of bombings and false papers and shootings of ambassadors, or whatever you’ve been doing, but I don’t want to. Perhaps because I’m a woman. All of that, I think, is secondary. What matters is the woman I saw. She had dark hair and dark eyes, and she was terrified of something. I couldn’t see what it was.” I stared at him, my chin up, unblinking. “I think she’s the key to everything. Am I wrong?”
He closed his eyes briefly, and then there was anger in his face, real anger. “I met her in Belgium. She was helping soldiers to escape, English soldiers, to help smuggle them back through the borders and home to avoid the slaughter. She wasn’t the only one; it was a network. We were everywhere. She and I worked together. But someone betrayed her.” He looked at me with empty eyes. “She was convicted of treason and executed by firing squad.”
I swallowed. “You loved her. And that is why you hate your country. That is why you’ve done all of this.”
“I went to war for my country,” he said, his gaze vanishing backward into memory, “and I believed in it. I had dreams, plans. And the first day I went into battle, I saw a man get the top of his head blown off, just”—he raised one chained hand as far as it would go, touched the fingers together—“so. The top of his skull hung down by a flap of skin, dangling, while he screamed and his brains were open to the sky.” He looked at me. “People who are shot by firing squads often shit themselves when they die. Did you know that?”
My stomach turned and my head spun. I hadn’t been able to eat before coming here; now I was glad. “Give me your hands,” I managed.
“What else did you see?”
“I have questions first.”
“What could you possibly want to know?”
“How you knew about me,” I said. “You read the article about Gloria, didn’t you?”
Colin shrugged. “She’d always claimed she was psychic. But yes, when I read it, I realized. She could do a séance, try to reach Harry and Tommy and me. And then she’d know.”
“But me,” I said. “The article didn’t mention me. The tests said my powers were unproven. Why did you come after me?”
He looked thoughtful, and then he decided to answer. “I questioned the fortune-teller before she died. Or I should say, she offered me information.”
“What do you mean?”
“When it became clear what my business with her was, she told me that Gloria wasn’t the only one. That you had powers, too. That she’d seen you summon the dead.”
I put my hands on the table and gripped it. Ramona had tried to sell me in exchange for her own life. How terrified she must have been, trying to think of something, anything, that would placate her killer and convince him to show mercy. “But you knew who I was before that,” I guessed.
“I knew you were working for my brother, yes. I’d seen you in Trafalgar Square. But until I visited the fortune-teller, you had stayed largely out of my way. It was only afterward that I understood you were an obstacle. And there you were, just as she finished talking about you—there you were, coming up in the elevator.” He almost smiled. “Life has a great many coincidences sometimes.”
I wanted out of there, in that moment, more than I had ever wanted anything in my life. But I took one breath, and then another, and I held on. “How did you do it?” I asked, remembering the shreds of the briefing George Sutter had given me, the questions he wanted answered. “How did you convince the Germans to falsify your death, give you a new identity?”
“Oh, come now,” he said. His voice had grown easier with use, more melodic. “You can’t possibly be confused about that. After she died, I got myself captured by the German army. I demanded to see the prison commander, and I made him an offer to take to his superiors.”
“And they welcomed you? Just like that?”
“They were worried I was a double agent, of course, but I was convincing. I no longer cared about my life, and they knew it.” He leaned forward over the table, though his restraints did not let him move very far. “Now tell me. What else did you see?”
I cleared my mind, thought about the images that had gone through my head that sunny day on a green hilltop in Kent. “I saw what you were wearing, your motorcycle, the sidecar. I saw you throw a suitcase through the window of a factory.” I shook my head. “I saw men at a table, four of them. I saw the woman’s face, and I knew that she was dead, that that was what drove you. You wanted to kill yourself with your razor, but she was the reason you stopped. Because you hadn’t finished.” I looked at him. “And then the telephone rang, and you put the razor down and answered it.”
His face was slack, and I suddenly realized that I was heartily sick of that expression, the one of wonder that I had seen on so many faces. I never wanted to see it again. “Impressive,” he said after a moment. “I thought that summoning my sister and my brothers was well-done already. You are rather amazing, are you not?”
Not for long, I thought. I looked at his hands.
I was supposed to take his hands, to gather information. Names, dates, faces, details. I was to use myself as a conduit, to absorb as much as I could and transmit it to the authorities, like a human radio. Those were my instructions, and they had been clear.
And suddenly I wanted none of it. I pushed my chair back.
“I’m leaving,” I said loudly to the pane of smoked glass. “You’re going to have to get the rest of your answers yourself.”
I banged on the door, and after a moment—there was quiet consultation on the other side, male voices deliberating—the guard opened it.
It was over. I was quits. I did not look back at Colin Sutter. I walked out the door and went back to my life.
* * *
James was dressed in an overcoat and hat in the golden October sunshine. He watched me approach him, standing at the gates to Hyde Park, his hands in his pockets, his gaze warm with appreciation.
“Well?” he said when I drew close.
“
It’s done,” I replied.
He raised his eyebrows at me.
I reached up and brushed an imaginary speck from his coat with my gloved hand. It was an excuse for me to touch him, and he knew it, but he stood still and humored me. “I talked to him,” I said. “That was all. I didn’t have the heart to do a reading.”
He caught my meaning immediately, which was why I loved him so. “It was that bad, was it?”
“Worse.” I tried to say more, but the words stuck in my throat. Instead I said, “I’ll tell you about it later. If I can.”
“All right,” he said, but I knew he was watching me carefully.
I shrugged. “Anyway, while I was there, I made a decision. No more readings, ever again.” I looked up at him. “It seems I’m out of work.”
That made him smile. “I know the feeling.” He’d left his job at the New Society, telling Paul Golding that he could no longer work with ghosts. Going back to the law was out of the question, and he’d been at loose ends for the past three weeks. It hadn’t bothered him, since we’d spent part of that time selling my mother’s house and as much of the rest of it as possible in bed. “Though I may not be out of work for long.”
“Why not?”
“I got a letter this morning. An acquaintance of Paul’s, referred by him. This fellow has a bit of a problem, and he needs someone discreet to look into it for him. For a fee.”
I smiled. “An investigator.”
“It’s a thought,” he said. “I always was good at it.”
“No ghosts?” I asked.
“None at all.”
I thought it over. “Will you answer him?”
“Tomorrow, perhaps.”
“I like it,” I said. “You can work while I study.” I’d sold my mother’s house and moved into James’s flat, complete with Pickwick. His landlady was beside herself. She said we could keep the dog, but we couldn’t stay in her house unless we were married. James told her to be patient and she’d get everything she wished. In the meantime, I had enrolled, embarrassing as it was, in courses. It had always bothered me that I’d never been to school. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my schooling yet, but just the idea of learning made me think of possibilities.
The Other Side of Midnight Page 30