by Dianne Day
“I gather you wish me to, um, go and speak with them? With Patrick and Frances?” I removed the black sweater I’d worn in the auto and hung it on the clothes tree. “Is anything wrong, Edna? Anything you want to tell me first?”
She crooked her finger at me, a come-hither motion, and raised her face toward mine as I bent down. “He’s got her hypnotized,” Edna said softly, her voice tight with disapproval, “only he don’t call it that. Calls it something else. She’s in his power, poor woman. I may not know much but I know that when I see it, and I know it’s dangerous for a woman to be in somebody’s power. So I didn’t let them use that little office you said they could use, where he could shut the door and do … things as shouldn’t be done! I put them in the kitchen and that’s that.” One emphatic nod of the head punctuated her statement.
“Quite wise of you,” I said, and patted her shoulder as I passed. I was growing as fond of Edna as I was of her son, and that was saying a good deal. “I’ll go on back there with them and see what they’re doing. I have some questions for both of them anyway. Oh, and Edna?”
“Yes, Fremont?”
“Did anything come up while I was gone that needs my attention before five o’clock?” I estimated it was probably about four-thirty, and even as I did so, the chiming clock in the hall landing gave the one chime with which it marks the half hour. I had become quite good at telling time without a watch.
“No, not a thing. You folks need more work, and that’s a fact. My Aloysius, he’s out doing something of his own for no pay, he says. Course, it’s not as if he’s likely to starve without—what’s that you call them, cases—but still when he was in the PD they always did have something to do.”
“I know, believe me.” I also took that mild criticism like a blow to the heart. I cared far too much whether the J&K Agency succeeded or not, and so—probably unwisely—instead of just putting what Edna had said away in some mental filing cabinet, I explained: “Michael Kossoff, the other partner, is away at the moment. I don’t believe you’ve ever met him?”
Edna folded her arms and rocked back and forth a little in her chair. “Can’t say as I have, no. But Aloysius has told me about him plenty of times. Admires him. Wants to be like him, to e-moo-late him. Hah!”
“He could do worse,” I said rather grimly … because I knew all too well that, with his particular temperament, Wish Stephenson could also do better. Wish is basically a sunny person while Michael has moods, and a black streak a mile wide.
I got lost in amorphous thoughts of my complex life-and-work partner for a moment, but soon recalled myself. “At any rate, one of Michael’s contributions to the business, aside from bankrolling it single-handedly and volunteering his time as consultant, is that he goes out and recruits business through his personal contacts. When he returns from his current trip, I’m sure he’ll bring some new work with him.”
I wasn’t sure of any such thing but felt a need to appease Edna. To prepare the way for her to like Michael, since I didn’t want to lose her.
“Oh, and Edna—” I began but then I stopped myself. I had been about to tell her of my plan to use my current case to get us some newspaper publicity, but I thought better of it. I wasn’t ready yet to have anyone else know that but me. So I changed in midstream, rapidly, and went on: “Please feel free to lock up the front door and go home a bit early. I’ll look after Mr. Rule and Mrs. McFadden now. We’ll be fine.”
Edna Stephenson cocked her head to one side and regarded me skeptically, those round brown eyes of hers full of questions. But then to my relief her expression cleared, she smiled and regained her more habitual bounciness. Edna could bounce while remaining attached to the seat of a chair better than any human being I had ever known.
“That’d be nize,” she said, “on account of I could stop in me favorite market on the way home, get there a bit early, before the crowd, maybe they’ll have some fine lamb chops. Aloysius does love a good lamb chop, and so do I, but you haveta get there early.”
“By all means,” I agreed. It did sound good; my own stomach rumbled at the thought of lamb chops, and I realized that I hadn’t given thought to my own dinner at all. More evidence of missing Michael, and how quickly all the patterns of one’s life can become entwined with another’s.
Well, never mind. What was waiting in my kitchen had nothing to do with lamb chops. I said a final good night to Edna and went on back.
Halfway through the conference room I heard them, a low murmuring exchange of voices, male and female, so soothing it was like the ebb and flow of a quiet sea. The peacefulness, the quiet tone, caused me to slow my steps, to listen all the harder, and to proceed with care.
Whatever Edna Stephenson may have feared, it was not what I found in my kitchen. I found a man and a woman so remarkably in accord with one another that they seemed almost to be functioning as two halves of one person.
Neither was aware of me. They were off in a land of their own, whose boundaries, I imagined, might be fragile. So I hung back just beyond the door. From there, I could see both Frances and Patrick in profile; without turning their heads, they could not see me.
Patrick Rule seemed to be burning with quiet intensity—I could almost feel it myself, as if it were through riding on his energy that Frances was able to do whatever it was she was doing. Though he stared raptly at her face, her eyes were closed, and her face was … incandescent.
He murmured, but by listening intently now I could just make out the words: “Tell me, describe for me, dear Frances, the place where you are now.”
Long exhalation of breath, like an endless sigh, then Frances said, “I am walking down a street, it’s very flat. The street is broad, and there are trees on both sides, huge old trees—are they oaks?—whatever they are, their branches meet overhead and turn this street into a kind of leafy tunnel.”
Another long sigh.
“Continue, my dear,” said Patrick, positively yearning toward her. “And tell me, if you can, why you are on this street, and if you know it, the name of the city you are in.”
A single faint frown line appeared between Frances’s brows. “There is someone here who needs … diagnosis. A woman who is ill, in one of these houses.”
“Tell me about the houses.”
“They’re old. They have long porches, all the way across the front.” A silence ensued, as if Frances were walking past one house and then another. “Some of them have columns … others are not quite so grand … but they all have the porches.”
“A warm climate then. Southern perhaps?” Patrick suggested.
Frances, off in her own dream now, or whatever peculiar state she was in, ignored this comment to continue her perusal of the landscape: “All the houses have these fences made of wrought iron, very nicely done, with spikes on top. This is … this is … New Orleans.” The line between her brows passed away.
I folded my arms and leaned against the wall. They had been at this for at least an hour and a half, maybe longer, because I had no way of knowing exactly when they’d arrived. I supposed Patrick Rule was only continuing to do what he’d said he would do—determining the nature and extent of Frances’s psychic ability—so how could I complain? Yet how walking around the streets of New Orleans in one’s mind, especially considering that it seemed to take a considerable expenditure of energy on both their parts to get and keep her there, could be of any help to anyone was beyond me.
Benefit of the doubt, I told myself, benefit of the doubt.
Frances had now found the house wherein the person needed her to diagnose something. As far as I knew, Frances had never diagnosed anything more than an overcooked egg in her entire life. So I nearly fell through the carpet when she exhaled another of her long sighs and then said:
“The patient is here, a woman named … Jean.”
I leaned away from the wall and looked again through the door. Frances had spread wide the fingers of both hands and was holding them palms down about six inches above the surfa
ce of the table. Patrick had pulled back to give her room. With her eyes still closed, Frances moved her hands back and forth in small circular motions made with agonizing slowness.
She said, “Jean has a tumor in her abdominal cavity.” More slow motion of hands and fingers. “It is located in the lower right quadrant. The appendix is absent in this person.” Small frown. She turned her head just slightly, as if she were listening to something or someone she could hear a little better that way. “The appendix was removed when Jean was sixteen years old. She is thirty now. If this tumor is not surgically removed, Jean will die because it will grow so large as to obstruct bowel function. In itself, the tumor is not life-threatening, in other words it is not cancerous. But due to its size the tumor must be removed because it is functionally dangerous. That is the end of the information available for Jean.”
“Good!” Patrick declared, in much more his normal tone of voice. “Remarkably good, Frances. You’ve done extraordinarily well.”
Frances opened her eyes and smiled at him, but she did not really return to anything like normal consciousness. She was herself, and not herself. It was exceedingly strange, and now I knew why Edna had been so upset.
Patrick turned his head and saw me. Rather than be startled, or resent the interruption, he seemed genuinely pleased. “Fremont, do come in. Sit down with us at the table and let me tell you all that Frances and I have done this afternoon, building on some work we began a couple of days ago. Frances, say hello to Fremont.”
I joined them at the table, on the side opposite the door; and as I sat down I remembered another round table where Frances and Patrick and I had all sat; at the head of that table, although properly speaking a round table cannot have a head, had sat a medium now dead: Abigail Locke. And Abigail’s faithful servant Patrick had found himself a new … what?
“Hello, Fremont,” Frances said. She smiled, but the smile was vacant, without warmth. Yet she seemed so serene, so peaceful. Her eyes did not connect with mine, though she turned them on me for a moment. They did connect with Patrick Rule; as soon as her roving eye had found him again, her face lit up (again) like a Christmas tree.
I looked a question at Patrick, not knowing how to ask it in Frances’s presence.
He understood the question I hadn’t asked, and he answered: “We have discovered that Frances McFadden is a natural somnambulist. I have become her mesmerist. We work together; this type of work requires the combined energies of both. This afternoon we have done some remarkable things together.”
I’m sure, I thought. But I asked, “Such as …?”
“Traveling clairvoyance—in this case, the diagnosis of illness and prescribing of treatment by seeing at a distance. Also simple clairvoyance, and some telepathy. The telepathy works extremely well, extremely; I can’t thank you enough, Fremont Jones, for bringing Frances McFadden into my life.”
“Yes, thank you, Fremont,” Frances said, with that eerie, disconnected smile.
“We’re going to work together, it’s perfect,” Patrick declared enthusiastically.
“I beg your pardon?” I said. “I don’t think Jeremy McFadden is very likely to allow that. He wouldn’t have two weeks ago, I can say that for certain.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about that,” Patrick said dismissively. “With a talent as big as hers, the spirits themselves will find a way. Doors will open, you’ll see.”
“No doubt,” I said dryly. I expected him to say next something about money being required to open doors. He did not disappoint me. He said:
“Of course, there will be expenses in getting her set up. Therefore I’ll be dispensing with your detective services, Fremont Jones. Effective immediately.”
I was stunned. This could not be happening. My first big case, for which I had done so much extra work, and which could get J&K the publicity we so much needed … No!
I did the only thing I could think of to do. It was a drastic remedy, but I was desperate. I focused on Frances, until she turned and focused equally on me. Then I said, “Frances, what does Emperor Norton think about all this? About your becoming a somnambulist?”
There came Frances’s little frown again, and this time it deepened. Patrick Rule looked at me with wide eyes, his whole face having, it seemed, turned into a question mark. Frances’s eyes began to clear, and she looked at me as if she recognized me, as if she were herself again. She blinked a couple of times, sat up a little straighter, and said in her usual tone of voice: “Emperor Norton? I forgot all about him! Imagine that.”
16
———
The Emperor Rules
You have to let her go,” I said quietly, so that only Patrick Rule could hear. My right hand on his shoulder restrained him from following Frances. I could feel the tension in his body, longing to follow as surely as a dog must follow its master. I was wondering which one of these two people held the other in thrall.
Frances ran lightly down J&K’s front steps to Divisadero Street, and when she had reached the bottom she turned and waved. “Patrick,” she said, “you know how to get in touch with me. I just need time to contact the Emperor, that’s all. My first loyalty must be to him, surely you can understand that? Why, without his help I could not have come this far. I wouldn’t have known where to begin.”
“And he did give her a task to do,” I murmured, again to Patrick alone.
He raised his hand in a halfhearted wave and, to give him credit, gave a small smile that no doubt was at odds with his feelings. “Whatever you think is best, Frances. The gift, the talent, are yours. I am only your connection, the link that would otherwise be missing.”
She smiled then, fleetingly, and set off at a brisk pace. She had not far to walk, she would be at home within a few minutes, and then I would rest more easily.
As soon as she turned the corner and passed out of sight, I said in my normal tone: “Now, Patrick, we must talk. Because your case is one thing, and Frances McFadden is quite another. She was first my friend, and I won’t have her put into danger.”
As he followed me back into the office, he said, “I would not place that woman in danger for all the world.”
I looked back skeptically over my shoulder at him, wondering if he was speaking that way because she represented his next meal ticket, or if he genuinely cared. Having once seen them linked as mesmerist and somnabulist, I could not forget the eerie power they had in those roles. It made me uneasy about them in a way I had not been before.
Though it would not be dark for a couple of hours yet, the fog was coming in and causing an early waning of the light. From the north windows you could see the thick, burgeoning, insubstantial bulk of it pour through the strait of the Golden Gate. I began turning on electric lights, first the desk lamps, then the overhead chandelier in the dining room.
“Take a seat at the conference table,” I directed Patrick, indicating the chairs grouped around the end of the table nearest the main office space. The other end, near Michael’s office and the passage to the kitchen, I was now using for a desk. I added, “I’ll just see to the doors. J&K’s office is officially closed for the day, but you and I still have some work to do.”
He did not like being ordered about, of course. That proud face with its hawklike nose lifted, and he glared momentarily at me. I did not stay to see any further reaction, but went on doing as I’d said, locking first the back and then the front doors. Both had heavy new locks, installed at Michael’s direction, with bolts one throws from the inside. The latest thing for security.
Of course it did occur to me that I might be locking myself in with a murderer. Nevertheless I went back into the conference room and took my place opposite him at the table. I folded my hands in front of me. “Now,” I said, “suppose you explain to me just what is going on with you and my friend.”
Patrick stared at me for a moment without speaking.
Eyes of a mesmerist, I thought. Be careful, Fremont Jones!
But his eyes, hypnotic though the
y might be under certain circumstances, were also tired. So dark-circled they had a hollow look. And his face was more gaunt now than it had been a week ago. He looked like a man who has either been working too hard or not sleeping much, or both.
Finally he said, “Frances McFadden has psychic ability, but it is of a passive, not an active kind. She fell naturally into the state that you saw earlier, during my second time of working with her. Miss Jones—”
“Fremont.”
“—Fremont, I have been looking all my life … well, at least for all the part of it since I discovered the excitement of psychic phenomena for myself, and my own small talents … for someone like Frances. There is literally no end to the good we might do together; and who knows to what heights of celebrity we might rise!”
“You aren’t going to rise very far if Jeremy McFadden beats his wife to death. And he could, you know. My partner, Michael Kossoff, was right. I should have listened to him.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Jeremy beats his wife? A man like that, who is known in this, of all cities, as a fair-dealing businessman?”
I inclined my head gravely. “The very same.”
Patrick could not, apparently, sit still for this. He popped up out of his chair and began to pace back and forth like a long-legged, lithe animal trapped in a cage. “I can’t believe that,” he muttered. “No, it can’t be!”
“I’ve seen the evidence with my own eyes, Patrick. She has admitted it to me. There are times when he keeps her a virtual prisoner in the house. That is why she has devised this means of coming and going by a seldom-used door. The one you yourself have used. You may be sure Jeremy will find out eventually—about you and about the door.”
“How do you know about that?” The hawklike nose went up in the air, and he looked at me from the corners of his eyes. It was effective, intimidating.