But he would. Perhaps not in the way he meant—not from footpads or ruffians—but I could imagine the Roderick I knew and loved sinking back into the slough of sodden despair and self-contempt that had almost killed him before. I caught at his sleeve as he turned to go.
“Dear heart,” I said. “She is not worth risking your health for. Not worth risking anything for.”
His smile was curiously gentle. “I know,” he said. He kissed me lightly on the tip of my nose. “Fret not, sweet Sybil,” he said, and then he left.
Julia was late for rehearsal the next day. It was our first rehearsal in the theater building, and held mainly for the sake of learning how to accommodate the changes of scenery and the setup and removal of the spectacles. Her tardiness gave me an excellent opportunity to stand in for her and begin to learn the character’s movements on the stage.
This did not sit well with Marianne, unfortunately. “Why should I not be the one to learn Elfrida’s role?” she demanded of the manager. “I am Julia’s understudy.”
Mr. Ivey, whom I had come to think of as Kenton, blinked at her with the benign yet vague expression that I had learned he used when he wanted to discourage questioning. “It helps me to be able to see where everyone is on the stage at a given moment.”
Though her face bore a mutinous expression, she did not argue. I could sympathize with her. Understudying the female lead poised her to rise to the next level in her career in the theater, and yet here was I, standing in her way. I hoped she would not resent me too much, but it could not be helped. And of course I would only be filling “her” role for one night.
Roderick seemed to bear no ill effects from his night out. To my great relief, he had joined me for breakfast in my suite, in high energy and good spirits, ready to devote himself once more to the play. Perhaps all he had needed was one evening in which to say a final, symbolic farewell to the woman he had thought he knew. Certainly he seemed to have regained his ability to be politely detached when around her, as I saw when she finally arrived.
She made another one of her entrances, seizing everyone’s attention as she gaily called out apologies, but she was brought up short when she saw me on stage. “I can see I had best not be late again,” she said with false sweetness, “or I am liable to be replaced.”
Considering that I was only there to carry out her wishes, this was a bit rich. “I couldn’t possibly take your place, Julia,” I said pointedly. “I’m simply not capable of it.”
Roderick turned away to hide a grin, and I was amused to see the play of emotions across her face as she weighed her response.
In the end she elected to avoid outright war. “How sweet of you, Sybil chérie,” she cooed. “And also how wise. One should always be aware of one’s limitations, no?”
“Is that the French term?” I wondered aloud. “I always called them ‘standards.’”
Choosing to ignore that, she swept onto the stage and allowed Philippe to approach and kiss her cheek. Evidently she was once more the reigning goddess in his heart. There was another reason for Marianne to be irritable. I felt a flash of irritation myself to see how solicitously the smitten swain inquired after Julia’s welfare. Was the boy willfully blind? It was difficult to imagine such naiveté—but on the other hand it was difficult to imagine that he was playing a part, for that would mean he was using their affair as a career stepping-stone.
Rehearsal was sporadic. Julia kept bringing things to a halt to argue with Kenton, and even dignified Helaine was beginning to show signs of impatience after half an hour of this. Finally Julia commanded, “I wish to speak with you in your office, Ivey. Sybil, you shall join us. And you, mon brave”—this was directed to Roderick, in the orchestra pit—“come along too.”
Kenton looked for a moment as if he might challenge her. Then he gave a weary little sigh as if the prospect of that argument was too taxing. “Very well,” he said. “The rest of you, please carry on.”
No sooner had the office door closed behind us than Julia exclaimed, “Let us get this business of retrieving the letters done as soon as possible. I want the two of you out from underfoot.” It was clear that Kenton was not included in the two she meant.
A little explosion of laughter from Roderick. “Need I remind you that Sybil and I are doing you a favor—as is Ivey? It’s hardly our fault if your scheme isn’t working out the way you expected.”
“Bien sûr it is your fault!” she snapped, planting her hands on her hips so that her elbows jutted out aggressively. “You have been deliberately difficult from the start. Are you trying to sabotage me?”
Her attitude had drastically changed if she was no longer interested in winning Roderick back. She might even consider him an enemy now, I realized. I hoped that did not mean she was planning to get revenge on him, but the possibility could not be ruled out—not with a woman who took things as personally as did Julia.
Kenton did his best to placate her. “Let’s discuss it calmly,” he suggested, his deep voice very soothing. “The soonest that Sybil can possibly carry out her masquerade is the night after the opening, because Monsieur Fournier will certainly be there on the first night to accept all the congratulations that are due him.”
The dry little dig made me smile. As good-hearted as Kenton Ivey was, he was no fool.
“Very well,” said Roderick, who seemed undisturbed by Julia’s temper tantrum. “What do we need to do to guarantee that he won’t be either here or at home on the following night? Should one of us send him a message to meet for some pressing reason—like his threats to blackmail me?”
“Or Sybil,” Kenton put in. “A pretty woman is more likely to draw him out. Although you bravely called his bluff, my dear, you could pretend to be nervous that there are more secrets for him to unearth.”
“That’s true,” I said. “I could write him a note asking him to meet me at some distant place so that by the time he gets there and finds it’s a decoy it will be too late for him to interfere with the plan.”
Julia flung herself into a chair with a whoosh of taffeta skirts. “I suppose so,” she said petulantly.
“We’ve come this far, Julia.” Kenton’s voice was as gentle as ever, but I was reminded that he had a stake in this scheme. “It seems like folly to turn back now. Unless you would rather go to the police.”
She shook her head with vigor. “I cannot involve them. There is too great a risk of the contents of the letters coming out.”
“Maybe it’s time you told us what the contents are,” Roderick said. “It’s possible that with your—how shall I put it—your penchant for the dramatic, you may be exaggerating the damage that they can do.”
“No. This is something no loyal French subject could forgive.”
Roderick walked over to the window and stood with his arms folded, staring out in silence, though I suspected he was not at all aware of the view. I wondered if he was bracing himself to learn of something she had done during their affair. “We’re waiting,” he said.
Julia looked a little ill. Unlikely though it was, I felt a stab of sympathy for her and reached out for her hand. “It can’t be that bad, surely.”
Snatching her hand away, she said defiantly: “I was a Prussian officer’s mistress during the war.”
She said it as if she expected the world to fall in after this pronouncement, and perhaps it would have if any of us had been French by birth. As it was, Roderick turned to regard her in such bewilderment that she might actually have blushed. Kenton blinked and looked rather as if he had walked into a wall.
I was uncertain just how seriously the knowledge of this affair would affect her standing. Then I thought back on what I had learned of the siege of Paris and other horrors that the Prussians had inflicted on France. How many thousands of her countrymen had given their lives to resist the conquerors? I had seen the fierce patriotism of the French and heard of the political involvement of the theatrical community. I had also heard of cases in which French citizens suspecte
d of being friendly with the Prussians were treated as pariahs. Evidently this was what Julia expected to happen to her. That might indeed spell the end of her career and make it impossible for her to remain in her native country.
“You needn’t look at me that way, Roderick,” she said now. “It was a terrible time. They were just about to lay siege to Paris. I had to get out of the city and find a safe place to wait out the war.” She shrugged. “There was none safer than with our conquerors.” Her voice turned petulant. “I had no one else to turn to, after all, since you had deserted me.”
“How dare you try to place the blame on Roderick!” I cried. “You always make your own decisions, the consequences be hanged. Don’t pretend that this was any different. In any case, you had your chance to marry him, and you refused him. So he didn’t desert you at all.”
“Sybil.” Roderick moved to my side and placed a hand on my back to calm me. “It isn’t worth arguing about. Whatever salve Julia has to lay to her conscience to justify her actions, it has little enough to do with me.”
The look she gave him then would have scorched a lesser man to a cinder. I was sure of it now: any desire she had felt for Roderick had transformed into hatred and resentment. A little chill crept over my skin, and I suddenly remembered the psychic’s warning. For our own safety, Roderick and I needed to get away from this woman.
“Yes, let’s try to keep our heads,” urged Kenton, the peacemaker. “Accusing each other will get us nowhere.”
If I could only think of a way to circumvent the theater scheme, Roderick and I might be on our way in a matter of hours. Think, Sybil!
“I’m sorry for getting worked up,” I said. For Roderick’s sake I must placate her and make her think we were still on the same side. “Perhaps there is a more straightforward way to resolve the matter of the letters. Julia, you told us that Fournier had many enemies, that it would be unwise to be seen as being close to him. Who are these enemies? Might it follow that they would be friends to you and could help you now?”
She looked at me as if I were an idiot. “Fournier is an informant and a blackmailer,” she said with exaggerated slowness. “Of course he has enemies. But it does not follow that they would look upon me with kindness.”
“An informant?” Roderick repeated.
She nodded impatiently. “He is a collector of secrets, and he feeds information to those in a position of power in order to gain some shreds of power himself. So he has allies in many places—despite having made himself despised by everyone else. He is almost untouchable.” Then she sent an imploring look to Roderick. “But if you issued a challenge—”
“I am not dueling him.” The words were final.
“Au nom du ciel!” She jumped up and seized his right arm, pushing his sleeve down to expose the strip of black silk. “You wear the badge of your encounter with my husband like some morbid reminder of your guilt, as if you are ashamed to have emerged alive. This is a chance to expiate your sin—by ridding the world of a man who is universally despised.”
I feared this low blow would make him lose his temper, but he detached her fingers from his arm with careful politeness. “Julia,” he said dryly, “your convent education was clearly deficient in the area of mathematics, or you would know that two wrongs do not make a right.”
At that, she pouted and crossed her arms. “Must you be so ungracious?”
He laughed mockingly. “If you want the man murdered, Julia, you’ll have to find someone else to do it for you.”
The words were still hanging in the air when a loud knock at the door startled us.
“Come in,” Kenton called, and the door opened to reveal Gustave. I wondered how much he had heard of our conversation. His peculiar features were so difficult to read that I could learn nothing from his expression.
“Pardonnez-moi,” he said, “but you are needed, Ivey. And Brooke as well.”
“We’ll be down directly. Just give us a few minutes more.”
Kenton waited until Gustave’s footsteps had receded into silence. “Well?” he asked Julia. “Do you wish to change the plan? If you do, say so now, while there’s time for Brooke to rearrange the music.”
Roderick raised an eyebrow at being volunteered in this fashion, and I knew that he had no intention of altering the music. Nor could I blame him. He had worked hard to compose new songs and write new portions of the score, and it would have been unfair to expect him to change everything again.
“If you want Sybil and me to go, we’ll be more than happy to,” he told Julia. “We suspended other plans—important plans—to come to Paris to help you.”
Maybe it was the prospect of his leaving her without a show of regret or reluctance that made her want to punish him. Maybe she truly thought the first plan the best one... or maybe she just wanted to stir things up and see what happened.
“No,” she said, “you mustn’t go, not before seeing the results of your work.” Smiling brightly, she rose, and her face was as serene as if nothing had happened. “Sybil shall play my role the night after we open. And then we shall see what we shall see, non?”
Chapter Ten
As we neared the backstage area and heard voices raised in argument, Kenton drew me aside.
“My dear,” he said with unusual hesitancy, “I have learned that you possess the gift of communicating with spirits. May I trespass upon your kindness and humbly ask you to learn whether some malign entity is haunting this theater?” He glanced about as if expecting to see shrouded figures advancing upon us. “It is probably nothing more than my own superstition, but...” He smiled apologetically.
“I shall be glad to do whatever I can,” I said. I made certain we were out of hearing range of the others before I offered, “We can hold a séance tomorrow afternoon, if you wish.”
That seemed to comfort him. “That would be most generous,” he said.
Perhaps I would not have agreed so readily had I any real expectation of discovering a spirit presence in the theater. I myself had experienced no strong feeling of ill luck or unhappiness there since that first day. Or perhaps I should say, no strong consistent feeling. On some occasions I might have been too preoccupied in learning Julia’s role to be receptive to any supernatural signals. But once in a while, an unexpected whiff of tragedy like a waft of pungent smoke would seize my attention so strongly that I wondered at not having noticed it before.
For that reason, I felt that it might be helpful to have others lend their energy and concentration when I attempted to make contact with whatever entity might be lurking about. My senses alone might not be sharp enough.
The next afternoon Gustave readily consented to join our séance. Philippe, too, was agreeable, and Marianne then decided to join as well, perhaps since it was a chance to hold hands with the object of her affection. Madame Thiers was more difficult to persuade, however.
“Isn’t it true that the presence of a skeptic can destroy the vibrations? Is that the correct term?”
“It is as good a term as any,” I said lightly. “I honestly cannot say whether the individual beliefs of those at a séance can have an effect on its success. I have always suspected that it is simply a convenient excuse for charlatans whenever they find their schemes thwarted. I think your presence would help, Madame Thiers. My personal theory is that actors are particularly receptive to influences from beyond, and you are a notably sensitive actress.”
This seemed, if anything, to increase her unwillingness. “It sounds rather sinister, Miss Ingram.”
Kenton surprised me by giving a comfortable chuckle and reaching out to take her hand. We were standing in the doorway of her dressing room. “It’s nothing to be afraid of, Helaine,” he said. “There may be no result at all, but I would consider it a personal favor if you joined us in making the attempt. You know what an old mother hen I can be, worrying about every little thing, and this would help put my mind at ease.”
“Well, if you truly think my presence will help...”
> She allowed herself to be convinced and followed us to the green room. She looked a bit pale, I thought, but perhaps the green color of the walls had that effect on her complexion, especially combined with her black dress. The gray in her cloud of light brown hair was conspicuous in the bright gaslight that illuminated the room.
I soon lowered that light, however, and lit a green-shaded spirit lamp to place on the large round table that Gustave had brought from the prop room. Some literal-minded soul had decorated the theater green room in shades of green, from the walls to the carpet to the upholstery of the chairs, and in the dim light I felt rather as if we were all underwater.
I had chosen the green room for our séance in part because it was not in use now; it was only needed immediately before and during a performance, when actors would gather there to await their entrances instead of loitering in the wings and getting underfoot. Perhaps because the theater was so new, this green room was still handsome, and it had not yet acquired the patina of much use. There were signs of actors passing idle hours there: decks of cards, magazines, and a game of draughts. Another practical touch was the full-length mirror in which actors could make a final check of their appearance before going onstage.
It was an interior room, so no daylight penetrated after I extinguished the gaslight, and it also had a slightly musty quality. Gustave shut the door to the corridor, blotting out the sound of the musicians in rehearsal. Roderick was with them. The timing was not accidental: I had chosen to hold the séance at an hour when he would be otherwise occupied and in no danger of stumbling upon us. I had decided not to tell him about the séance at all, knowing that he would worry about me, and fearing that if he wanted to be present he might distract me. I did feel a twinge of uneasy guilt at keeping this secret from him, but I pushed it firmly aside.
“If everyone will draw a chair up,” I requested, “we will all put our hands on the table, holding onto the hands of those on either side.”
“Do we need to sit in a certain order?” Kenton asked.
The Last Serenade (Sybil Ingram Victorian Mysteries Book 2) Page 13