A Study in Sable Read online

  A shadow moved in that corner. The sound of soft clapping came from the depths. “Bravo, Maestro. Bravo.”

  The violinist bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement. “But . . . you saw nothing?”

  “I saw nothing. Then again, what I see and believe is immaterial. Or so you keep telling me.” The man in the shadows rose to his feet. He appeared to be as tall, and as slender, as the violinist. “What matters to me is that you obtain results that I can see and believe in. So let us hope we can bring this affair to its appropriate conclusion. Until we meet again—buenas noches, Maestro.”

  “Buenas noches,” said the violinist—but the door had opened and closed again, and his visitor was already gone.

  14

  AFTER tea, Sarah had taken a nap, knowing that without the need to rehearse or practice—and with Willie being literally a mere door away—Magdalena was very likely to stay up late. When the first gong rang before dinner, she hastily got up and put on her only evening dress, fixing her hair as well as she could, and wishing at that moment for Nan’s helping hands. Somehow, Nan could always make her hair look elegant. But enough hairpins could tame nearly anything, and when Willie came to escort Magdalena to dinner, since neither of them gave her a reproving look, she trailed along behind. Willie didn’t pay much attention to her, but neither did he snub her, and when the time came for the group assembled in the drawing room to “go in to dinner,” he signaled unobtrusively to a gentleman at the fringe of the group to act as her escort. According to Alicia, this was not what was supposed to happen; the lady of the house was supposed to arrange escorts, and introductions to the escorts, beforehand. It appeared there was no “lady of the house,” so Willie was free to arrange things as he liked. A glance at the clock on a nearby mantelpiece as she passed in to the dining room on the arm of her escort told her they were going in at a little before nine in the evening. She reflected that at least she wouldn’t have to wait until midnight for her dinner while she was here.

  The dining room featured a table of daunting length, but only a quarter of the possible seats had place settings in front of them. There were chandeliers over the table, every candle in them burning brightly. Every place had an elegant place card in the form of a little scroll curled over a rose and a sprig of fern. When her escort left her at her place, she found herself situated at the bottom of the row on the left-hand side of the table, sitting next to a tall, thin man with beautiful hands, who told her he was a violinist. “I’m afraid I don’t know very much about music,” she confessed. “Which seems absurd, considering that Magdalena von Dietersdorf is my patroness, I am sure . . .”

  “Ah! She is a great artist, I am told,” the gentleman said and, putting his hand to his chest and bowing a little, added, “I have been too busy preparing for and performing my own concerts this season to attend any of her performances, so I will trust to hearsay. We must not stand on any ceremony, then. You may call me Pablo.”

  “I’m Sarah, Sarah Lyon-White,” she replied, and offered her hand to him to shake—trying to remember from all those etiquette lessons if that was the proper thing to do at dinner or not. Evidently it was, for he took it and bowed over it instead of shaking it, and no one gave them any strange looks.

  Magdalena was the queen of the table, of course. She sat at Willie’s right hand, chatting away gracefully, and attracted all eyes toward her, except, perhaps, for those of the man beside Sarah. He gave her only polite interest at best, and for the most part applied himself quietly, and elegantly, to his food. He did not ignore her, however; he asked what she did for Magdalena (she told him she was Magdalena’s companion, which was not far from the truth), what sort of music she liked, what she was reading—nice, commonplace conversation that was easy to answer. The gentleman across from her was very much occupied with the young lady next to him, who had an American accent, and there was no one to her right.

  It was a very long dinner; Sarah was put in mind of the history lessons Nan had been giving Suki and the royal dinners of Henry VIII with their bewildering parade of dishes. There was even a menu! Dish after dish was presented by the servants—there seemed to be one servant for every two or three guests, and after a glance at the menu card, Sarah realized that she would have to be careful and decline at least two-thirds of what she was offered.

  After dinner, rather than the men settling in the dining room for coffee while the ladies took to the drawing room for the same, the guests were escorted into the music room for a concert by the gentleman who had been sitting beside Sarah—but being aware just how late her evening was going to be, Sarah slipped away to go take another nap. It was very obvious that no one was going to miss her presence. She was feeling the fact that she’d been forced to be awake for the journey here, and didn’t want to fall asleep when she was supposed to be watching over Magdalena. And . . . truth to tell, although no one had openly snubbed her, her feelings were a bit bruised by being ignored so much. She left a request with Alicia to fetch her when Magdalena returned to go to bed, changed into her nightgown, then cuddled with Grey and a book until Grey grew sleepy. She left Grey on her night perch on the headboard, and took to her bed.

  When Alicia came to fetch her, it was nearly three in the morning, and from the slightly disheveled appearance of Magdalena’s gown and hair, Sarah had the notion the diva had been rewarding their host with what their host expected. Since they weren’t in the hotel, and she was going to be able to go straight to sleep in the morning, Sarah stayed in her nightdress and pulled on her dressing gown for what she expected to be an uneventful vigil.

  Oh, how very wrong she was.

  She’d brought Puck’s charm against spirits with her, and it was a good thing she had. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement, and reflexively turned to face it just as a transparent, balding fellow in Roundhead garb appeared out of thin air, gabbled something about witchcraft, and swung a sword at her.

  Instinctively she ducked, a shriek freezing in her throat. She gazed at him in horror and some shock for a moment before she realized that, of course, Puck’s charm easily kept him far enough away to be nothing more than a nuisance. Waiting for her heart to stop pounding, she watched him rage at the invisible boundary, swinging at it with his spectral sword, then beating at it with fists and swearing at her for being a vile, Popish trollop. He managed quite a colorful sort of invective without ever uttering any real profanity, but eventually even his ghostly patience ran out, and he was reduced to crossing his arms and glowering at her.

  He was the first but by no means the only violent ghost. If she had not been sure of the strength of that charm it would have been a terrifying night, and as it was, it was an ordeal.

  The next to appear was a woman enveloped head-to-toe in a long black veil who tried to strangle her, then came the Cavalier who was as eager to shoot her as the Roundhead was to chop her head off. When he wore himself out, there appeared the centurion in Roman armor who was as eager to take her head off with a short sword as the Roundhead was with a longer blade. The Roman was, by far, the oldest spirit she had ever encountered, and if he hadn’t wanted to kill her, it might have been enlightening to try to get him to talk. Assuming her Latin was up to such a thing. . . .

  But that wasn’t an option. There was no chance of talking with spirits who were intent on violence. Nor with the two Catholic priests, who kept exploding into flames, the nun that just paced and wept, or the four children who clung to each other in the corner and stared at her as if they expected her to murder them.

  Any sort of communication at all was impossible with the highwayman who actually did not have a head, the gentleman in an Elizabethan collar who stood off to the side, apparently muttering to himself, or the old woman who shrieked curses, then exploded into flame.

  She was beginning to gather that a good many people had been burned at the stake hereabouts.

  As for the man in knee breeches of the last century w
ho would not stop leering at her and trying to fondle her—well, she wanted, badly, to have been able to open the door to the afterlife right under him.

  And those were just the ones who pushed themselves into her attention. She got the distinct feeling that there were more who had chosen not to manifest themselves . . . yet.

  In the end, she only managed to send the Roman and the Roundhead on through the door before the first thin light of day came creeping in through the windows and the rest of the spirits faded away.

  It had been a long, exhausting night.

  Sarah was very glad that all she had to do here at Tottenham House when the night was over was get as far as her room, pull off her dressing gown, and fall into bed. If this had been the hotel—she didn’t think she’d have gotten much farther than the elevator after the grueling night she’d just endured.

  But before she went to bed . . . she was starving. Wishing she could somehow drink a breakfast, she rang for the maid—poor things, they were up at daylight regardless, or so Alicia had told her—and when the girl arrived, looking shocked that any of the “gentry” were awake at this hour, Sarah begged for something to eat. “It doesn’t have to be anything special. Whatever you’re eating in the kitchen. Porridge is fine, or whatever was cold from last night.”

  The girl returned with hot bread, butter, fruit, biscuits, and a leg of cold chicken, which seemed like a feast to Sarah. By this time Grey was awake, so she shared her fruit and one of the biscuits with the parrot, then went straight to bed.

  When she woke, it was midafternoon. The rooms were very quiet, but her bedroom had been tidied a bit and Grey was eating some carrots and peas, so evidently the maid had come in and done her work and gone without waking Sarah up.

  She had a headache after that grueling night, but more often than not that sort of headache could be cured with food and especially drink, so she dressed and went out looking for Alicia. She found the girl in Magdalena’s room, shaking out one of Magdalena’s magnificent gowns; Magdalena was nowhere in sight.

  “Mistress is playing tennis,” Alicia said without prompting. “You probably can too, if you like.”

  “I’d rather stay here and read,” Sarah replied. “I’m not really here to—” She shrugged.

  “Then let me have the maid fetch you something to eat,” Alicia replied, and before Sarah could say anything, she had already pulled the bell. A few moments later the maid appeared.

  “Miss Lyon-White requires a late luncheon,” Alicia said, loftily; the chambermaid gave a quick curtsey and hurried off. “You’ll probably get whatever was left over,” Alicia told her with a shrug. “But you never know. The staff might already have eaten everything, so you might get something new-made and nice.”

  In fact, she got a nice big plate of finger sandwiches, scones, clotted cream, and sliced strawberries, which she shared with Alicia and Grey. “Is anyone going to notice that I have only the one evening gown?” she asked, nervously.

  “I doubt it,” Alicia replied bluntly. “You’re here as Magdalena’s companion. Mistress has made no secret of the fact that she’s sensitive to spirits, in fact, she’s rather boasted about it. They know you are here as a medium, you are here to keep her from being disturbed by them. I did a lot of listening while I was having luncheon with the house servants. You may be a guest, but the only reason you are at the dinner table is because Magdalena wants you, and you make up the matching woman to go with that Spanish violinist who was invited.”

  “Oh,” she said, feeling rather hurt. I’ve been invited to Lord Alderscroft’s parties! she thought. And he’s in the Cabinet! This Willie is just one of those peers who turns up twice a year to sit in his seat in the House of Lords and otherwise just . . . fritters his time away with actresses and dancers! But she did her best not to show she was hurt. Besides, most of these people are horribly dull. They’ve never done anything in their lives, or with their lives, except to spend money.

  Except perhaps that violinist. There was something about him—something that reminded her, oddly enough, of Lord Alderscroft.

  I’m not here to socialize. I am here to protect Magdalena. Nevertheless, this was very like a snub, and as such, it stung.

  Alicia gave her a sidelong look, as if she wanted to point out that the only real difference between her and the maid was that the maid worked by day and she worked by night. It was clear to Alicia that it was only purest accident that Sarah wasn’t eating in the kitchen with the rest of the servants.

  Now feeling both hurt and irritated, Sarah left the remains of the luncheon to Alicia to clean up, although she had generally, in the past, helped with putting things on the tray and getting the tray out to the hall for the hotel maids to deal with. She retreated to her room, her head still aching, closed the door behind her, and decided to open the window to get some fresh air in.

  Then she sat down in the lone chair next to the window—one that was not particularly comfortable, and appeared to have been given a quick reupholstering job then left here as being “too good” for a servant’s room but not good enough for the real guests. She rested her aching forehead on her hand and tried not to cry. None of this was what she had expected. She’d thought it would be a small group in a much smaller house, and much less formal. She’d thought she’d be treated the way Magdalena treated her, as someone valuable, even necessary. Instead she was this . . . well, not insignificant enough to ignore, but not important enough to pay any attention to.

  “Want Nan,” said Grey.

  “Well, you won’t get her!” Sarah snapped. “She’s not interested in petty things like banishing ghosts.” Which was unfair—Nan hadn’t refused to come. It was Magdalena who had pointedly not invited Nan, who probably would have come if she had been invited, but—

  Magdalena probably saw through all that veneer of civilization that Memsa’b put on her to the dirty little street urchin underneath. Magdalena probably knew as soon as she saw Nan that you couldn’t put her in this kind of society without her embarrassing us.

  And as soon as she thought that, she was ashamed of herself. Why should she think that about Nan? Even if Magdalena thought Nan was “common,” she had never been anything other than the best of friends and partners to Sarah! And as for her lowly origins, when had Nan ever put a foot wrong with Lord Alderscroft and his guests?

  And then she was angry with herself for being ashamed. After all, Magdalena must have seen something wrong with Nan—or why should she have pointedly excluded her from the very moment Sarah started protecting her from spirits?

  “Want Nan!” Grey insisted. “Want Nan. Want Neville. Want Suki. Want Nan!”

  Sarah glared at her. Grey glared back. It was very clear that she was going to continue to chant that she wanted her friends like a little repeating clockwork, whether Sarah liked it or not.

  “Will you shut up, you stupid bird!” Sarah snapped, and got up and thrust her hand roughly at Grey, intending to shove her into her carrier, close her inside, and cover it with a cloth so she’d go to sleep and stop with her irritating litany of Want Nans.

  Grey growled—something she had never done to Sarah before—but Sarah ignored her, and shoved her hand at the bird again. “Up!” she barked.

  And Grey looked at her face, then at her hand—and quick as a cobra, darted her head down and bit Sarah, hard, so hard that blood spurted from the bite as she clung on, grinding her beak on the finger.

  Too shocked to shriek, Sarah instinctively shook her hand, roughly, and Grey was off like a shot through the open window. In a moment she was at the edge of the formal garden, flying hard for the trees, not looking back.

  And as Sarah stood there, stunned, a black shadow dove from the roof after the flying parrot, flying swiftly in pursuit of her.

  Now she shrieked, “Grey!” and dashed out of the room, injured hand forgotten, trying to find a door to the outside. It took far too many
minutes to find one, far too many to run around to the southwest side of the building where the formal garden was—

  And by then, there was no sight of her, nor of the predatory bird that had followed after her. But she ran for the distant line of the forest anyway, because if Grey had been able to get that far, that is where she would have gone. She ran as hard as she could, holding her injured hand in the other against her chest and sobbing, over and over, one word.

  “Grey! Grey! Oh, Grey!”

  But there was no reply.

  • • •

  Sarah’s side was aching, along with her head, and her eyes were sore from crying, as she craned her head to peer into the trees above her, looking for a sign of that red tail, listening for a reply. “Grey!” she sobbed, hoarsely. “Grey! Please come back, Grey! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! You were right! Magdalena is horrid. I never should have come here. I should have stayed with Nan and Suki, and now you’re gone, and it’s all my fault!”

  Then her eyes dropped, and she saw it. A single red feather, lying on the grass.

  And a vision flashed through her mind, of a hawk, talons outstretched, snatching Grey out of the tree where she had landed, as Grey writhed and gasped her last breath, and carrying her off, leaving behind a single, red tail feather to fall to the ground.

  All that was left—

  “Grey!” she cried, and dropped to the grass, picking up the feather and sobbing over it hysterically. “Oh, this is all my fault! It’s all my fault!”

  “Why yes,” said a dry voice, “It is. You are the one with psychical powers. You know what they can do. You let Magdalena get into your head, and this is where it’s brought you.”

  Her head shot up and she stared in shock at Mary Watson, who was standing just inside the forest, arms crossed over her chest, frowning.

  It didn’t even occur to her to ask how Mary had gotten there, or why she had come. She had thought she could not possibly be more miserable until that moment, but grief piled upon grief as she realized Mary was right. She’d been so proud of herself, she’d been so thrilled that she had been singled out by Magdalena, made a pet of, flattered and spoiled, that she’d been pushing her friends away, pushing Grey away . . .