“And I must insist that it be well-curtained,” she went on. “Poor Horatio needs a great deal of rest and I must be able to draw the curtains against the light if he’s sleeping, poor lamb. And is there a sitting room attached? If not, could I ask you to also furnish a good table and a few chairs?”
Lewis knew that he should go and help the poor carter, but he was mildly intrigued by the woman’s requests, and so he remained standing in the hall to see how his brother-in-law would respond.
“That’s no problem, ma’am,” Daniel said with barely a moment’s hesitation. “We can prepare rooms to your specification if you give us but half an hour. Perhaps you would like to take tea in the dining room while we make it ready?” He shot Lewis a glance, as if to tell him to get busy with the luggage, and then he almost bowed as he showed the woman the way to the dining room. “And of course we’ll ensure that the rooms are adjoining, although I must inform you that there will be an extra charge for it.”
“That would be lovely,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Thank you.”
Daniel reappeared gleefully a short time later, just as Lewis set the last of the luggage down in the hall.
“I was able to charge that woman more for two rooms than we normally get in a month for the whole lot,” he said in a low voice. “She didn’t bat an eye when I told her how much it would be.”
“Who is she?” Lewis asked.
“She’s Nathan Elliot’s wife. She says her first name is Clementine. I don’t recall ever meeting a Clementine before, but then she’s American, and they do have strange ways, don’t they?”
As a veteran of both the War of 1812 and the more recent Patriot Hunter invasions, Lewis had to agree. Still, he wondered why Nathan Elliott’s wife and, presumably, his son, would choose to stay at a hotel instead of at the Elliott farm.
“I wonder why she didn’t come with her husband in the first place,” Lewis said as they carried a large trunk up the stairs.
“Hiram Elliott wasn’t expected to last nearly this long,” Daniel replied. “I expect Nate thought he could just skip up here, pay his last respects, collect his inheritance, and then skip back home again. Apparently, it’s the first time he’s been to visit his father in twenty years. I hear it was always Reuben who danced to the old man’s tune.”
“Well, everyone must be regretting the visit now,” Lewis remarked. “Poor woman. It’s a desperate reason for a visit.”
Susannah was busy in the kitchen making the tea that had been promised and was unable to supervise the preparation of the rooms, so she had given Daniel strict instructions about what needed to be done.
“Apparently, we need to turn the bed,” Daniel said as they stood in the large front room he had chosen for their guest.
“Why?” Lewis asked. “No one’s slept in it for weeks.” But he took one side of the floppy feather mattress and helped Daniel flip it over.
Fresh linens were necessary, as well, apparently, and after a struggle the two men managed to make the bed adequately, although the coverlet refused to hang straight.
“Should I find some extra blankets?” Daniel asked. “They won’t be used to the cold nights.”
“Do it later,” Lewis said. “We’ve got to move the beds out of the other room and find a table and some chairs to move into it. And there are still bags and boxes that need to be brought up.”
They went through the connecting door between the front bedroom and the smaller one beside it. The latter held two small beds. They moved one of them into the big room for the boy. The other they heaved out into the hall for the time being. They then brought up a small table and some chairs from the dining room. When they had finished, Daniel surveyed their handiwork.
“Well, I don’t expect it’s what she’s used to, but it’s the best we can do on short notice.”
Lewis carried the rest of the luggage up the stairs while Daniel went to inform their new patron that her accommodation had been prepared. There were three heavy valises and a number of bandboxes, besides the trunk he and Daniel had already deposited in the bedroom. Rather a lot of luggage for what Lewis assumed would be a fairly short visit, but then what did he know of city ladies and their sartorial needs? She probably changed her dress every day. He could only hope that it wouldn’t be he and Daniel who would be expected to do her laundry.
Clementine wafted into the room just as the two men had delivered the last bag. “Oh, this is lovely,” she said, and again Lewis found himself slightly irritated by the timbre of her voice. She turned and smiled at Daniel. “Thank you so much for going to such trouble.”
Daniel reddened, and stammered in return, “You’re most welcome, ma’am. And now I’ll leave you to get settled.”
Obviously he found her high-pitched drawl of no concern. It was obvious, to Lewis at least, that he found Clementine Elliott quite charming.
Chapter Three
Over the next few days, Mrs. Elliott appeared to charm nearly everyone else in Wellington, too. As a widow, or at least a presumed widow, she was the subject of a great deal of sympathy.
“I expect we’ll find her husband’s body in the spring,” was Susannah’s opinion. Unlike her husband, Lewis’s sister generally took no delight in idle gossip. She did seem, however, quite willing to report on Clementine Elliott, as the community’s sympathy turned to curiosity and then, in certain circles anyway, admiration.
“The men fall over themselves to cross her path so they can tip their hats,” Susannah said. “I don’t see what the attraction is myself.” At which point Lewis noticed that Daniel blushed. At least he had the good sense not to make any comment.
She went on. “The only topic of conversation amongst Wellington women is the cut of her dress and the amount of ribbon used to trim it. Meribeth Scully says they’ve been bought right out of satin.”
The Scullys ran the local dry goods store, and although they carried a large selection of cloth and bobbins of thread, their supply of ribbon was limited to the plainer types required by local housewives and the two tailors in the village, mostly grosgrain in black or a dignified brown. This did not amount to a great deal of ribbon in a year, especially as there were so many Quakers in the area, and they, of course, used no ribbon at all.
Lewis knew from their sidelong glances that Daniel and Susannah were expecting him to launch into a diatribe about the folly of letting personal vanity occupy the attention that should rightly go to spiritual concerns — it was what was expected from a Methodist minister — yet he found that he could quite understand the interest in this display of exotic female finery.
In all the years of their marriage there were few ribbons that had ever come Betsy’s way, yet there had been one time when he had been paid for a christening with a few yards of cloth. It had been a pretty calico print, with a blue background and a scattering of pink and yellow flowers. He should have taken the bolt to the nearest town and traded it with some storekeeper for flour or sugar or even a few coins, but something had held him back. Instead, he had taken it home and suggested to Betsy that it was time for a new summer dress. Her eyes had lit up when she saw the cloth and he chided himself for not thinking of her more often. Even then, she had said something about their daughter’s wardrobe, but he had insisted that she use it for herself.
Women needed things like pretty clothes once in a while to offset the harshness of their lives in this hard place, to take the edge off their constant round of looking after houses and children and husbands. Betsy had looked lovely in her new dress and he had told her so. Let the Scullys sell as much ribbon as they could lay their hands on, and if Clementine Elliott had raised the bar of Wellington fashion, then so be it. What real harm could it do if it was but a transitory thing and made women happier creatures?
Of more concern was his brother-in-law. He knew that Daniel had a bit of an eye. After all, it had been what attracted him to Susannah in the first place. She had been an extraordinarily pretty girl and was still a fine-looking woman, bu
t Lewis knew that she had begun to fret about the fine lines that had etched themselves into the skin around her eyes and mouth, and once he had surprised her at the mirror in the front hall. She had been pulling at the slightly sagging pouch of flesh under her chin. She’d blushed a little when she saw him, and he had not commented. He had no real reason to think that any part of Daniel would rove except for his eye, but he was anxious that his sister’s feelings not be wounded by even this small transgression. If necessary, he would have a word with him, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Mrs. Elliott had dutifully attended her father-in-law the day after her arrival, but what the old man made of her was unknown, for by now he was apparently so far gone that it was unlikely that he even realized she was there. She must have concluded the same thing, for she made no move to return to the Elliott farm. Instead, she wandered the town, her small, pale son in tow, and handed her cards to everyone she met. Daniel had a supply of these cards, for she had asked him to leave a pile on the table in the entrance hall. He showed one to Lewis. Psychic Guide, it said in an ornamented script, and underneath, in plainer letters, Mesmerism, Transportation and Spirit Communication, Dr. & Mrs. Nathan Elliott. Rates upon inquiry.
“What nonsense is this?” Lewis said. “Spirit communication? What’s that supposed to be about?”
“I asked the same thing,” Daniel said. “Apparently, Mrs. Elliott has the ability to contact the dead, and helps their relatives speak with them, make sure they’re all right, that sort of thing. It all seems very odd, doesn’t it?”
Lewis was quite prepared to overlook the obsession with dress that Clementine Elliott had ignited, but this was something he could not countenance.
“This is wrong,” he said flatly, “a desecration. Not only that, I suspect it’s impossible anyway. This can’t be anything but a parlour trick.”
Daniel shrugged. “It’s got everybody talking.”
“I expect it has,” Lewis said. “That doesn’t mean it’s right. Has any fool actually taken her up on it?”
Daniel appeared unconcerned. “Not yet, but I suspect it’s only a matter of time. There are plenty enough people who are desperate over the loss of a loved one. And there will be plenty of people who are curious enough to come at least once, just to see what it’s all about.”
“You’ll have to tell her she can’t do that sort of thing here.”
Daniel bristled. “Now, why on earth should I do that? It’s none of my business … and she’s a paying customer.”
“But it’s fraud,” Lewis protested. “You’d be a party to it.”
“I don’t see how you can come to that conclusion. All I do is rent the rooms. Besides, how do you know it’s a fraud? Maybe she can do what she claims.”
“You know that can’t be true, Daniel.”
“No, I don’t know for sure,” he said. “Maybe she can. Whether she can or not, all she’s really doing is bringing a little comfort to folks. What’s wrong with that?”
“But it’s a lie.”
“Oh, leave it alone, Thaddeus. She’s not hurting anybody. Not everybody has your conviction, you know.”
In spite of his certainty that contacting the dead was both impious and impossible, Lewis had to concede that there was a certain element of truth in this argument, for he, too, had once been guilty of a longing to communicate with his lost daughters. He wondered if he would have availed himself of a similar service had it been available at the time of his most intense grief. In spite of his moral objections, he rather suspected that he might have considered it.
Chapter Four
Clementine stood at her upstairs window and watched as two women struggled down the street toward the hotel. She recognized one of them; the woman had been at the fusty little dry goods store the day before when she had called, and had seemed quite interested when she had been handed a card. The woman’s eyes had been red-rimmed. A recent loss, and a heavy one from the look of it, she had thought at the time. She would have spoken with the woman at greater length, but she had barely been able to get a word past the prattling of the little dressmaker who worked at a table in the corner. Fortunately, the gossipy woman had happily filled Clementine in on the details she needed to know after the woman had left.
“That’s Mrs. Sprung. Poor lady lost her little girl in an accident just a month ago. She’s only just managed to pull herself together and go out once in a while.”
“How dreadful,” Clementine had murmured. “Whatever happened?”
She was treated to a blow-by-blow account of a runaway horse, a small child slipping in the street in front of it, broken, shattered bones, and the wails of the mother when it was discovered that the life had been battered out of her child. She had filed each detail away in her memory. The dressmaker had a very loose tongue, and Clementine made a mental note to frequent the store as often as possible.
Clementine had known that it was only a matter of time until the grieving woman came to her, but she was surprised she had come so soon. It was nearly always a woman who made the first approach, and most often they brought someone with them the first time, for comfort and support. The second woman in the street beside her could be safely ignored.
“Is the room ready?” she asked the boy, over her shoulder.
“Yes, Mama.”
“Bring me my shawl.”
“Yes, Mama.” His tone was flat. The boy always did what she asked, and with his father gone he had proved to be an enormous help to her; but she realized that she was never quite sure what this pale son of hers was thinking. There was no time to worry about it now, though, for the two women had arrived at the front door.
Clara Sprung hesitated as she and her companion reached the hotel. If her husband, Ezra, knew what she was doing, he would be furious. She had wondered at it herself all the way down the street, but the prospect of once again talking to, maybe even seeing little Amelia, was a possibility that she couldn’t ignore. One part of her mind argued that the whole enterprise was a waste of money, and that Ezra would be sure to notice the missing coins. Another insisted that this woman could indeed hold the key to finding out what had really happened to her darling Amelia, in spite of the assurances of the preachers that the little girl had without doubt gone to heaven and was even now basking in the glow of God’s blessing. She needed to know firsthand. But just in case her judgment had deserted her entirely, she had decided to bring her sister Harriet with her.
She was a little taken aback when she stepped inside and saw Mr. Lewis in the hallway. Everyone knew about him, of course. He had tracked down a notorious killer and brought him to justice. The whole village had been atwitter when he and his ailing wife had moved into the community. But she had been so flustered at the thought of speaking with her sweet little girl again that she had forgotten that Lewis was now helping to run the hotel. She had attended Methodist meetings on occasion, before she had settled into the habit of going along to the Church of England, and she was fairly certain what this preacher’s view of trying to contact the afterlife would be. Would he remonstrate with her, right here in the front hall of the hotel? Send her away; tell her she was nothing but a foolish woman? But he merely nodded and showed her up the stairs to Mrs. Elliott’s sitting room. She and Harriet were invited to take a seat at the table and the door was firmly shut in the preacher’s face.
Lewis didn’t know either of the two women who disappeared into the sitting room, but Daniel passed them in the hall and was quick to fill him in.
“One of them is Ezra Sprung’s wife,” he informed him. “They lost their little girl a while back. I expect that’s why she’s here, to see if Mrs. Elliott can help. The other is Mrs. Sprung’s sister. Sad, isn’t it?”
With the arrival of a paying customer, Lewis’s dilemma regarding Clementine Elliott’s activities had suddenly moved from the theoretical to the actual. He tried again to persuade Daniel to put a stop to it. “Do you really think we should be subscribing to this?” he insisted. “It
can’t be anything more than party tricks, and she’s using your premises to perform them in.”
Daniel was having none of it. “I don’t see that it’s any of our concern what she does in her rooms as long as it’s not illegal or outright immoral. If she wants to carry on her business while she’s here, who are we to stop her?”
Lewis felt that this statement was on extremely shaky ethical ground. “But if it’s fraudulent in any way, that would be neither legal nor moral. And you could be held culpable in the consequences.”
“I don’t see how,” Daniel scoffed. “Besides, who’s to say that she doesn’t have a genuine ability to communicate with the afterlife? God has wrought greater miracles. Think of Daniel in the lion’s den, or Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace.”
Lewis was at a loss as to how he should counter this argument. God had indeed wrought many miracles in the Bible, but the preacher had a great deal of difficulty believing that the same agency was at work in a hotel room in Canada West. But as Daniel pointed out, it was a difficult argument to uphold. How could you convince people of the miracle of God’s grace if you denied them what they perceived as evidence of that grace, especially when it was impossible to prove it otherwise?
It was obvious that Daniel was not to be persuaded. For now, all Lewis could do was keep his eyes and ears open. When he had collected enough information to make his case, and he was certain that he would, he would once again ask Daniel to put a stop to the nonsense.
Lewis made sure to be standing near the landing when the two women descended the staircase two hours later. Tears were running down Mrs. Sprung’s face and she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. Whatever had happened upstairs must have been upsetting, indeed, he thought, but then he realized that her sister wore a puzzled expression that was tinged with more than a little awe.
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