The Dark Enquiry

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  And so it was that I had quite forgot the matter of Madame’s death. I had seen little of Bellmont, but he and Brisbane had apparently mended their quarrel, for as I descended to tea one afternoon, I found him in Brisbane’s rooms.

  “Monty! I did not know you were coming. Brisbane, have you rung for Mrs. Lawson to tell her we will be three for tea?” I asked brightly.

  But one look at Bellmont’s face told me this was not to be a peaceful family visit. He was slumped in a chair, his complexion waxy and pale, clutching a letter in his hands. I sank into the chair next to him and put out my hand.

  He seized it, his expression aghast. “Good God, Julia, what have you been doing? Your hands are utterly ruined.”

  “I have been at work in my darkroom. The chemicals turn the skin black.”

  He dropped the hand with a little moue of distaste. “You look common. Is there no remedy?”

  “I hear cyanide of potassium works rather well, but it has a tendency to be fatal,” I replied tartly. “And haven’t you more important things to worry yourself over just now? Like the blackmail note in your hand?”

  Wordlessly, he handed it over, and I saw that his hand trembled slightly. The hunted look had come back into his eyes.

  The letter was concise, as such things often are. It explained that the sender was in possession of certain papers that would destroy Bellmont if he did not arrange payment for a particular sum. I lifted my head to Brisbane.

  “There are no directions for payment.”

  Brisbane was thoughtful. “Such demands seldom include details with the first communication. The sender wants Bellmont in a state of anxiety so that when the details are conveyed, he will act. This is merely the first.”

  “The first for the rest of my life,” Bellmont put in bitterly. He pierced Brisbane with his gaze. “What do you advise?”

  Brisbane gave a slow-lidded blink. “I advise you to have the sum in readiness. When the next demand comes, pay it.”

  “Pay it!” Bellmont’s face flushed dull red and he started forward in his chair. “You must be mad.”

  Brisbane endeavoured to explain. “You have nothing to work with here, only a single sheet of paper of the sort that may be purchased at any stationer’s in London. The postmark tells us nothing save that it was posted in London, which gives us over four million suspects. There are no telltale watermarks upon the page, no distinctive perfumes. There are no peculiarities of syntax or grammar to give us a hint as to the blackmailer’s identity, and there is nothing to learn from the handwriting save that these smudges here indicate the individual wrote with the left hand in order to disguise the writing and throw you from the scent. So,” he concluded, “we have a right-handed blackmailer who lives in London and has the means to purchase the cheapest of all possible paper.”

  “But you must know something else,” Bellmont insisted. “The person must be close to Madame to have her papers.”

  “Not necessarily. Madame may have sent them to anyone of her acquaintance, a friend, a banker, a man of affairs.”

  “Surely a banker would not attempt to blackmail a member of Parliament,” I put in.

  Brisbane slanted me a curious look. “You have never met the sort of bankers I have dealt with,” he observed. “In any event, Madame could have given her papers to anyone at all, including any member of the Spirit Club, her family, even her other lovers.” He paused a moment and Bellmont sucked in his breath sharply. Brisbane went on. “Or she may not have given them to anyone. She may have hidden them and they were discovered after her death. They could have been secured for safekeeping and some chambermaid may have helped herself.”

  “I hardly think a chambermaid would be sufficiently intelligent to orchestrate a blackmail scheme,” Bellmont objected.

  Brisbane smiled thinly at the sarcasm. “No, but a police inspector might. Madame’s rooms were searched along with the rest of the Spirit Club. Any one of a dozen police officers or their superiors could have found the papers and decided to make use of them. I hear a police pension is not what it ought to be,” he finished blandly.

  Bellmont looked at him with barely concealed contempt. “I shall never forget how singularly difficult you have been during this business.”

  I put a hand to my brother’s sleeve. “Bellmont, he is only attempting to prepare you for the worst.” But another thought had come to me, one I wished to discuss only with my husband. I rose briskly and put an end to the conversation. “You must leave it with us, Monty. Go and get the funds together and when you receive another note, you must bring it to us at once. In the meantime, we will begin to work on the likeliest sources for this new outrage.”

  Bellmont did not like being brushed aside, but he eventually left, and I resumed my seat, only to find Brisbane’s eyes resting thoughtfully upon me. I gave him a reproving glance.

  “You might have made that easier for him.”

  “Yes, I might have,” he agreed. “But I saw no point. He is demanding the earth and he cannot have it. He is still the same arrogant, entitled, overbearing fellow he always was. It will do him good to cool his heels.”

  “I do not say you are wrong about him,” I said with some primness, “but you should be a trifle more considerate of his difficulties in future. This entire affair has shaken him badly.”

  Brisbane snorted. “My dear wife, your brother and his mentor, Salisbury, have embarked upon a scheme to augment the navy by some twenty-one million pounds. If he cannot manage his nerves over a simple spot of blackmail, how can he possibly hope to keep Germany in check?”

  I sighed. Brisbane had strongly opposed the Naval Defence Act, and some of the more acrimonious exchanges he and Bellmont had had in the past struck precisely upon the point that Bellmont felt it necessary to spend millions of pounds shoring up the navy against German aggression whilst Brisbane maintained it would only lead to an escalation of German and French military spending. The entire question left me cold, but they had argued contentiously upon the matter, and Bellmont had been less than gracious when Parliament finally passed the act and building had begun.

  “Politics aside,” I said firmly, “we are family and we must do what we can to unmask the villain who threatens him.”

  Brisbane narrowed his gaze. “You have a thought upon the matter. I saw your eyes light up just before you threw Bellmont out.”

  I repressed the urge to explain that I had not actually thrown Bellmont out. “It may be nothing at all, but I had a sort of inspiration, a flash of intuition.”

  To my astonishment, Brisbane leaned closer over his desk. “Go on.”

  “Well, I am sure you will think it quite absurd, but it did occur to me that when I read the account of Madame’s inquest in the Illustrated Daily News, it seemed rather too detailed, too precise, as if the reporter had actually been at the Spirit Club.”

  Brisbane shrugged. “I daresay he would have gone to get a feel for the place and attended another medium’s séance.”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. There was something familiar in his writing, as if he knew his subject quite well, intimately almost.”

  “You think he might have been another lover of hers?” Brisbane’s gaze sharpened.

  “I don’t know. But he might well know something about Madame’s associates, someone whom she might have trusted with her papers and who would not scruple to use them.”

  “And she might have trusted the reporter himself with the papers,” Brisbane pointed out.

  I blinked. “You mean, he might be the villain? Good heavens, I thought the press were above that sort of thing.”

  Brisbane gave me a pitying smile. “In my experience, no one is above that sort of thing.”

  The Tenth Chapter

  Sit by my side And let the world slip.

  —The Taming of the Shrew

  Unfortunately, after several pleasant days of marital accord, a quarrel of substantial proportions ensued, and we found ourselves covering old territory again.
I pressed every advantage I had, and in the end, Brisbane agreed that I could investigate the Spirit Club. We had decided that until Bellmont received more information, our only leads were the club itself and the reporter. I pointed out, with inescapable logic, that we could cover twice the ground in half the time if we divided the investigation, and in the end, Brisbane was forced to concede the point. He left to investigate the reporter and make casual enquiries at his clubs, for it occurred to both of us that Bellmont might well be one of many gentlemen being persecuted. The sum in question was sizeable, and it might prove difficult for some to raise on short notice. Any whisper of sudden financial worries would be sure to reach the clubs. I was to pay a call upon Mademoiselle Agathe and use her as an instrument to discover all I could about the workings of the Spirit Club. It was an equitable division, and one that made me entirely happy, for it was the first time Brisbane had given his approval to my direct involvement in a case.

  I dressed carefully in a striking and expensive costume of dark red silk trimmed with black passementerie, calculating that Agathe might be swayed to gossip by the combination of fashionable clothes and my title. I had not thought of a proper pretext for calling upon her, and as I made my way to the club, it suddenly occurred to me that she might have taken up residence elsewhere. With her sister’s death, there was nothing to keep her at the Spirit Club, and I thumped the seat of the carriage in disgust. Well, there was nothing for it. I would simply have to demand her new address if she had taken herself off, and as I alighted from the carriage, I set a smile upon my lips. Pigeon darted ahead to rap smartly upon the door, and the porter, Beekman, seemed startled to see him, swinging his glance between the two of us.

  “Thank you, Pigeon, that will be all,” I said with a note of finality. He hurried back to the carriage with a backwards glance at the club, and I wondered if Brisbane had ordered him to be particularly watchful. I turned to the porter with my winsome smile.

  “Good afternoon. I am looking for Mademoiselle Agathe LeBrun, the sister of the late Madame Séraphine.”

  He gave a gruff cough. “Mademoiselle Agathe is in session.”

  I started in surprise. “In session? Mademoiselle is holding a séance?”

  “She is.” His gaze turned suspicious. “Isn’t that why you’ve come?”

  “Yes,” I hastened to assure him. I cast wildly for a plausible excuse for my confusion. “I thought she gave only private readings.”

  He stepped backwards. “You can wait. In there,” he added with a nod of his head towards the antechamber where we had gathered before the séance the night of Madame’s death. It was entirely the same as the last time I had seen it, from the Spiritualist publications to the open guest-book lying upon the table.

  Suddenly, I was seized with an idea. I scrabbled hastily in my reticule for a pencil and my notebook and turned the pages of the guestbook until I reached the date of the séance. It was the work of a moment to transcribe the names into my notebook, and when I was finished, I stuffed the notebook and pencil back into my reticule and took up a magazine and an expression of studied nonchalance. I had not long to wait. I had just begun a rather fascinating article about spirit photography when Mademoiselle Agathe entered, wearing the same embroidered black robe her sister had worn.

  “You asked for me?” she enquired. There was an anxious furrow between her eyes, as if she had not thrown off the mantle of the lesser yet, and as she slipped out of her robe, I saw that she wore the same dull gown she had worn upon my first occasion at the Spirit Club.

  “I did. I am Lady Julia Brisbane,” I informed her. “You may be acquainted with my father, the Earl March. He is very interested in all matter of Spiritualist subjects,” I added in a well-bred murmur. It was a lie, of course. The only interest Father would have had in Spiritualism would be in conjuring the ghost of Shakespeare. But his title seldom failed to open doors, and at the sound of it, Agathe’s expression sharpened slightly.

  “I have not had the honour,” she told me, “but welcome to the Spirit Club. What can I do for you, my lady?”

  “I wanted to speak with you about Madame Séraphine.”

  The dark eyes clouded with tears. “Oh. Did you know my sister?”

  I temporised. “I had not the pleasure of meeting her formally, but I do know several people who attended her sessions. They were quite overcome.”

  Her mouth curved and she put out a hand as if to touch mine, then thought better of it. “You are very kind, madame.”

  “I see that you are holding sessions, as well.”

  She shook her head. “I have nothing like her talent, but the management is very insistent that her contract be fulfilled. I am doing my best with my wretched skills.”

  “I am sure you are very talented,” I soothed.

  Agathe gave me a shy smile. “Would you care to take some refreshment, my lady? This parlour is not very comfortable, but I could take you upstairs and ring for some cordial.”

  I agreed with alacrity, and in a very few moments we were cosily ensconced in Madame’s boudoir, sipping a fruited cordial. I tried not to think about Madame as I seated myself on the recamier, but I did shudder ever so slightly as I remembered her lolling there, her eyes half-closed, quite dead. There was a drape of some silken fabric over the sofa, doubtless to hide the stains, I thought nastily.

  “This was my sister’s room,” Agathe said suddenly. “She died here.”

  I gave her a look pregnant with sympathy. “What a dreadful loss for you. You have my deepest condolences, mademoiselle.”

  She sipped at her cordial. “The inquest says that the death was accidental. A bit of poisonous root mistaken for horseradish.”

  “A terrible tragedy,” I commented.

  “Inexcusable,” she returned harshly. “To cut down my beautiful sister in her prime and with such a stupid mistake! It is unbearable.”

  “You were very close.” The comment was a lure, designed to coax reminiscences from her, and it was successful. The words came thick and fast, tales of their impoverished upbringing in a farming village in France, of their time in an orphanage, and how Madame’s abilities and clever ways had extricated them. Agathe talked of their travels and their life together, speaking quickly, as if she knew that she must outpace the pain of her memories. Theirs had been a life of daring, of chances seized and opportunities made. They had crafted an existence for themselves that was adventuresome and intrepid, and always Madame had been the leader, the driving force behind their resolve. And as she spoke, the customary mask of control slipped, and I saw what I think few others had seen.

  “I shall not know how to begin to live without her,” Agathe finished, succumbing at last to emotion. She buried her face in her handkerchief, but when she lifted her head, she had dried her tears and once more mastered her feelings. “Forgive me, madame, but you have been so kind to listen. No one else wants to know. The management of the club, they are concerned only with money. The clients want only answers. Only you have looked at me and seen the grieving sister.”

  I said nothing, but merely inclined my head in silent sympathy. She hesitated, and then leaned closer, her lips parted. For an instant, I thought she was about to reveal something, but then her mouth closed and she said nothing.

  I leaned closer myself, tempting confidences. “You seem troubled. Is there something beyond the loss of your sister? You may tell me.”

  She hesitated, perched on the edge of a precipice, but she would not fall.

  I prodded again, gently still. “It sometimes is good to unburden oneself.”

  She gave a short, sharp laugh. “Unburden? What do you know of my burdens?”

  “Nothing,” I returned boldly. “But I would like to help.”

  She gave me a cool stare, and I returned it, unflinching. At last a smile curved her lips. “I wonder if you mean that,” she murmured.

  I said nothing, and she seemed to be deliberating something within herself. At last, she made up her mind and drew a small b
ox from her pocket.

  “Very well. I will give you something to remember this meeting by.”

  She opened the box and tipped the contents into her palm. I suppressed a gasp. A single button lay there. The button was jewelled, the facets sparkling up at me in invitation. I reached for it almost against my will. There was something repellent about the tiny jewel. It was Teutonic in origin, dark yellow, a strange and menacing sort of colour, and it was overlaid on the top facet with a bit of black enamel worked in the shape of an eagle bearing a shield upon its chest. The shield was quartered in black and white, a most distinctive piece indeed.

  “Very interesting,” I murmured, determined to conceal my excitement. I turned it over, but there were no identifying marks upon the button itself, and I made to hand it back to Agathe, almost against my will.

  As if she sensed my reluctance, Agatha refused to take it, shaking her head firmly. “I do not want it,” she said fiercely. “Take it away with you.”

  Obediently, I tucked it into my reticule.

  “Do you understand what I have given you?” she asked, tipping her head as she regarded me. “No, I thought not.”

  “It is a pretty trinket,” I temporised.

  She laughed again, a mirthless sound in that small room where death had stood. “It is more than a trinket. If I should die, that button will point the way to my murderer.”

  “Mademoiselle! You fear a murderer?”