A Study in Sable Read online

Nan blinked at him in some surprise. “Can you tell me more than that?” she asked carefully.

  He shook his head. “’Tisn’t a Sight, it’s just a sense. There’s summat workin’ against you. Don’t let it, that’s all. That temper of your’n led you wrong with me, and it can lead you wrong again, if ye let it.”

  “Then, thank you,” she replied, feeling embarrassed all over again, and grateful at the same time. She wanted to say more, but Agatha put her foot down and sent him up the narrow stairs to bed.

  So, after taking their leave from Agatha and collecting Suki from the farmyard, where she was playing with a litter of kittens, they departed from Sennoke.

  Thankfully, Suki did not ask for a kitten.

  They walked back to Sevenoaks in weary silence; at least, Nan assumed John and Mary felt at least as weary as she did. It had been a long day, with a great many emotional ups and downs. But it was a pleasant walk, and Neville certainly enjoyed it. The lark of this morning had found a friend to duel with, musically speaking, and there were other birds calling from every bush and tree.

  But the sight of town was welcome, and the sight of the hotel even more so.

  Presumably, John collected and destroyed his letter once they got back to the hotel. Nan went straight to the room and changed her clothing, coaxing Suki into doing the same, since she was covered with dust from the lane, before tapping on John and Mary’s door. Right at the moment, the one thing she wanted more than anything was a bath, and she hadn’t the least idea of how to go about getting one.

  “Ah good,” said John, when he opened it. “Mary and I were just discussing our plans. We have a choice. We can catch the last train to London and go straight home, or we can spend the night here and leave first thing in the morning.”

  Home . . . and a hot bath! That had been one of the chief attractions of the flat when she and Sarah had taken it: it had an absolutely modern bathroom, and they were able to have a good hot bath whenever they wished. “To be honest, I would be very happy if we went straight home,” Nan said, and glanced at Suki, who was already half-asleep on the big featherbed. “On the other hand, we’d be carrying Suki back like so much luggage.”

  “I don’t at all mind that,” John chuckled. “She doesn’t weigh anything to speak of. Truth to tell I would very much like to get back to Baker Street and find out what Sherlock has been up to in our absence. Can you be packed and ready to go in, say, half an hour?”

  Suddenly Nan longed for that bath and her own room and her own bed with an intensity that positively hurt. “Less,” she said. “I’ll leave Suki here and take care of it all myself.”

  Neville had come in the window and was devouring the food in his cup as she came in. “We’re going home tonight,” she told him, and smiled as he raised his wings and whistled for joy. “Hurry up and eat, then go into your carrier. I intend to be packed up in no time.”

  “Faster!” Neville declared.

  Within the hour, they were in another first-class compartment, on the way home. Suki was fast asleep with her head in Nan’s lap—not even the prospect of another train trip could keep her awake. Neville showed no particular interest in coming out of the carrier either, although Nan left the door open for him. Then again, he had probably done more flying in the last few days than he had in the previous month, and he was probably just as tired as Nan was.

  Or John and Mary Watson—a glance at them showed they were both starting to droop a little. Nan was just glad that, although it wasn’t an express, they would not have to change trains. It would be a straight run back to the station and a single cab home. It would be dark by the time they got to the flat, and Sarah would likely be gone, but in the morning Nan could tell her everything.

  John had gotten a paper, and Mary and Nan had books, so the trip back was conducted in companionable and comfortable silence. Suki got enough of a nap that when the train pulled in to their destination, she was almost her normal, lively self and did not need to be carried as Nan had feared she might.

  John got two cabs; one for Nan and Suki, and one for himself and Mary. “I’ll call on you tomorrow afternoon,” he told Nan as he handed her into hers. “After I speak with Lord Alderscroft in the morning. I think he’ll mark this down as a job well done.”

  Even though I almost wrecked things, Nan thought ruefully. But there was no point in browbeating herself; it had all come out all right, and they’d learned a very great deal. On the whole, a success.

  The cab rolled away, and a half an hour later pulled up at the house. Suki ran ahead and pulled the door open; Nan followed and called out “Mrs. Horace, we’re back!” as soon as she got across the threshold.

  Mrs. Horace popped out of her own door and threw her arms around Suki, then gave Nan a more restrained embrace. “It’s been too quiet in this house with you gone!” she declared. “I’ll bring up some tea and biscuits, you’re probably perishing, and Neville’s dinner as well. I won’t be a minute!”

  Nan could have done without the tea and biscuits, but a hoarse voice from inside the carrier demanded, “Want dinner!” so she shrugged internally and followed Suki up to their own door.

  Where they were greeted by the exuberant cry of “Nan! Want Nan!” a feathered bullet shot out of the bird room and landed against her collarbone, and Nan found herself with a Grey parrot on her shoulder, being showered with beaky kisses.

  And as she kissed Grey back and put her down on the back of the chair, Mrs. Horace appeared with food for both birds and people, and she settled into a chair that suited her and no one else with a good cup of tea and a plate of shortbread, it occurred to her that . . . this was home. And she was very, very glad to be back in it.

  After Suki’s bath (as short as the rascal could get away with) and hers, she wrapped up in a dressing gown and peeked into her own room to see that Neville had already settled onto his perch on her bed and was asleep, then into Suki’s to make sure she was asleep, too. She was, sprawled all over the bed like a starfish.

  “So,” Nan said, turning to the sitting room and leveling a look at Grey, who was waiting on the back of the sofa, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “You are not happy.”

  She padded barefoot into the sitting room and curled up on the sofa, facing Grey.

  “No,” Grey said. “Sarah different.”

  “You have a talent for understatement,” Nan muttered. “It’s that woman, isn’t it? Magdalena.”

  Grey gave an impression of someone in the throes of indecision. “Yes,” she said. “No. Maybe.”

  Nan gritted her teeth, then forced herself to relax. “Sarah is being spoilt as she has never been spoilt in her life. That might be all this is. But if it is something that woman is doing to her, we have to figure it out, and how she is doing it, before we can undo it. In the meantime . . .”

  She remembered what Cedric had said to her, and gritted her teeth again. I have many good characteristics, but patience is not one of them, she admitted to herself. “We need a lot more information, and we’ll need to be patient to get it.” A thought occurred to her. “I don’t suppose she could have made a mistake and gotten possessed by one of those ghosts, could she?”

  Grey shook her head emphatically. “I would know,” she said.

  “Pity. That would be the easiest thing to undo. Well, come to my room and sleep with me and Neville. There’s plenty of room on the foot of my bed and there’s no reason you need to be all alone at night.” She held out her hand to Grey, who stepped up on it, then leaned forward and made grateful kissing noises.

  Nan smiled, brought the little head to her lips, and kissed the soft feathers. “The man we went to get turned out to be a good man. He said we need to remember that Sarah is our friend, under everything else, and not let her break that friendship.”

  Grey heaved a theatrical sigh. “All right,” she replied. “Bed now?”

  Nan yawned, c
aught herself, and laughed. “Yes indeed. Bed.”

  12

  NAN was having a difficult time keeping to her resolution not to lose patience with Sarah. In the few short days Nan and Suki had been gone, Magdalena seemed to have cemented her hold over Sarah to the point where it was alarming.

  Nan and Suki had risen at their usual time, Mrs. Horace had brought up breakfast, and a few moments after that, Sarah had come back from her nightly stint at Magdalena’s suite. She had been surprised to see the two of them sitting there and eating breakfast and greeted them cheerfully enough, but . . . to Nan’s mind, her greeting had not been nearly as enthusiastic as Nan would have expected after several days’ absence.

  Nevertheless, she sat down at the table with them, got Grey on her hand, and cuddled the parrot against her chest while they all talked, which was a better sign than that greeting and much more like Sarah’s normal behavior. Suki launched into an enthusiastic recitation of her first train ride, and then another about what the real country was like and how she wanted to live there some day, but only if she could come back to the city when she wished. Sarah laughed and encouraged her to talk. When Suki ran dry and went back to her breakfast, Sarah turned her attention to Nan.

  “So, this blood magician, obviously you came out of the confrontation unscathed, but what happened?” Sarah asked.

  “We came out of it unscathed. The poor man himself got savaged by Neville,” Nan replied ruefully.

  Sarah looked puzzled. “Why do you say ‘poor man’? I thought he was supposed to be some sort of . . . well, what we think of as an evil wizard!”

  “He turned out to be nothing of the sort,” Nan told her, and gave her a brief summation of the “confrontation.” And that was when things went . . . oddly.

  Normally Sarah would have been full of questions, wanting to know all the details, particularly about that Celtic warrior-woman aspect Nan sometimes took on—because when that happened it was generally without warning, and Nan had never yet been able to deliberately invoke it. But this time, as soon as Nan had finished the briefest of explanations and taken time for a few bites of toast and bacon, Sarah launched into the litany of her own past days.

  Or . . . to be precise, she got on the topic of Magdalena and could not seem to get off of it. Nan was particularly startled when Sarah casually described Magdalena coming home with one of her lovers, Sarah sitting down to have supper with them both, and Magdalena carrying the man off to her bed. What was startling was Sarah describing all this with no sign of embarrassment.

  “Isn’t she supposed to be the fiancé of that German?” Nan interrupted. “I thought when people got engaged, they were supposed to be . . . well . . . faithful.” She looked at Sarah doubtfully. This simply did not sound like Sarah, at all.

  Sarah frowned a little. “Well, she explained all that. And really, that’s just middle-class morals. Really enlightened people understand.” There was a great deal more in the same vein, no real explanation as far as Nan was concerned, although she got the distinct feeling that the “explanation” really was “what Helmut doesn’t know about doesn’t matter.” And since Helmut had gone back to Germany, he wasn’t likely to learn, either, so long as Magdalena kept it all out of the papers. But again, that off-handed “that’s just middle-class morals” did not sound like Sarah. Before Magdalena, she would have been embarrassed to have someone flaunting a lover in front of her, and she certainly would have had some tart things to say about people who were engaged going to bed with whomever they pleased.

  And as for “what Helmut doesn’t know doesn’t matter—”

  That . . . seemed extremely unfair to poor Helmut. His first fiancé vanished with a Canadian, and his second was collecting and going to bed with a string of wealthy admirers? Helmut was definitely getting a very poor set of bargains here. Perhaps he was a dull, stodgy little German businessman, but if Magdalena didn’t want him, why had she gone and gotten engaged to him in the first place?

  “What if one of these gentlemen decides he wants to marry her?” Nan asked, interrupting a description of the jewelry the latest lover, a Marquess no less, named “Willie,” had presented to Magdalena last night.

  Sarah stopped in midsentence, her mouth a little open, looking slightly annoyed. “That’s really none of my business, nor of yours, Nan,” she said, brusquely.

  “Well, how are you progressing with the ghosts?” Nan asked, before she could get back on the subject of Magdalena. Grey’s right. There’s something wrong with her. She certainly wouldn’t have been so offhanded three weeks ago about this woman hopping into bed with a random assortment of men for the sake of their presents. And on top of that, Sarah never cared about jewelry or gowns at all, and now that’s all she can talk about when she’s not talking about Magdalena directly.

  Now Sarah looked like the old Sarah—a bit flustered, and unhappy, and definitely uncomfortable. “There are four I can’t seem to get rid of, and I cannot make out why. Three of them are the merest wraiths, just—sketches of spirits. They’ve lost most of their substance, so I think they must be terribly old, hundreds of years, perhaps. Those kind are usually the easiest to move on; they get one look at the door, and they can’t wait to get through it. But these three won’t move. And I can’t determine any reason for their reluctance. If there’s something holding them to the earth, they haven’t told it to me, or given me any hint of it. It’s exceedingly frustrating!”

  “I can scarcely imagine,” Nan said, with all the sympathy she could muster. “What about the fourth?”

  “The fourth is the very opposite. She’s strong, full of emotion and determination. She won’t go through the door or tell me what she wants, either, but I get the impression from the first three that they aren’t talking to me because they can’t, while the fourth spirit isn’t talking to me because she won’t. If that makes sense.”

  Now this sounds more like Sarah.

  “It makes perfect sense,” Nan replied, and dipped her toast in the runny yellow of her egg and ate it thoughtfully. “What if the fourth one is the one holding the other three back? Can some ghosts command others?”

  Sarah blinked, as if that hadn’t even occurred to her. “If that’s true, that would explain why they won’t move on . . . but the fourth one completely ignores everything I do!”

  “Well,” said Nan, after a moment, “You’re being paid to keep the ghosts away from Magdalena at night, and you’re doing that.” She shrugged. “There doesn’t seem any harm to me if they won’t go away. Just keep collecting her money until her season is over. She’ll go back to Germany and won’t be your problem anymore.”

  Sarah looked alarmed at that last, as if it had not occurred to her that Magdalena would leave. “Oh, surely she won’t do that—” Sarah replied uncertainly.

  Nan wanted to shake her for being so—bloody infatuated! Did she think Magdalena would be in London forever?

  “She has a fiancé she is going to have to marry eventually,” Nan pointed out, trying very hard not to sound waspish. “She’ll have to go back to Germany to do that. Certainly he is going to insist she live at least part of the time with him; if she doesn’t, it’s going to look scandalous.”

  “Yes but her career on the British stage—” Sarah stammered, now looking quite alarmed.

  “And her career on the German stage,” Nan reminded her. “And the French stage, and the Italian stage. She’s going to have to sing at the Vienna Opera, probably Berlin, likely Rome, the Paris Opera, and La Scala in Milan at the very least if she’s going to have the sort of reputation Patti does. My impression was that was exactly what she was aiming for.”

  “Yes, but—she hasn’t said anything about leaving!” Sarah actually looked as if she was about to panic, which alarmed Nan considerably, although she took pains not to show it. Clearly, reminding Sarah that Magdalena would absolutely have to return to the Continent to further her career wa
s not a good idea at this point. Three weeks ago, Sarah had only been interested in helping those spirits pass on. Three weeks ago, she had been pleased with the money Magdalena was paying her and admitted to being impressed with how Magdalena lived, but otherwise had no sort of attachment to the prima donna. Now she looked as if the mere prospect of being separated from Magdalena was going to put her into a faint.

  Nan decided to say nothing more and just concentrate on her breakfast while Sarah engaged in a silent, internal struggle. Finally, as if she was talking to herself, calming herself down, she said again, with more certainty, “Magdalena hasn’t said anything about leaving. And at any rate, it’s almost summer, and she’ll certainly be asked to come to Willie’s manor for a long visit. I gather it’s a rather grand house, and the company is going to be quite spectacular.” The last was said wistfully, as if Sarah longed to be invited herself. Once again, Nan was taken aback, because this was nothing like “her” Sarah. Sarah enjoyed luxury, as who wouldn’t, but when she had spoken of “good company” that she would enjoy in the past it was more in reference to a circle of friends like those of the Hartons—writers, artists, intellectuals, and occultists. Not a lot of jewel-bedecked aristocrats who changed their clothes six times a day and wouldn’t know how to change trains without their armies of servants to guide them from one place to another.

  “If she goes there for the summer, then the ghosts won’t trouble her anymore,” Nan said. “They are rooted to the hotel, correct?”

  “I think so,” Sarah agreed.

  “Then once she’s away from the hotel, she should be all right. But, if Willie—or anyone else—sets her up in her own establishment, make sure to impress on her it should be an absolutely modern, brand new flat, that no one has ever lived in before.” Nan just left things at that, though personally, she thought it extremely unlikely that any such thing would happen. Setting Magdalena up in her own flat would be tantamount to announcing the liaison in public; Helmut would certainly want to know where the money was coming from for such a thing. Besides, why go to the bother, when at the hotel she had all the benefits of a luxurious flat without having to go to the trouble of hiring her own servants to staff it?