Page 40 of The Secret of the Three Fates
She shrugged as a pair of ducks landed on the water behind her, disturbing the smooth surface. “Nothing I am not used to. Women who make their own way often deal with such… men. They think to frighten me into admitting to something. It is strange though.” A flicker of something flashed through her rich brown eyes, the color of a pot of hot chocolate.
“What is strange?”
She looked up at me in surprise, as if I ought to have known what she was about to say. “That they are not looking for the other medium.”
What other medium?She must have seen the question in my face.
“Abigail. Abigail was the third Fate. We had been doing several shows a week, traveling the countryside—shows like the other night. Well…” She winced at the memory. “Not exactly like that night. It had never been likethatbefore.” She flexed her fingers. “The spirits do not usually come, I do not know if it was the stranger’s presence or if it was—”
I straightened, turning to face her. “Which stranger?”
“Hecate.”
“Hecate?” First Abigail, now this? The woman was starting to remind me of Mr. Owen with the way she talked in circles.
She inclined her head back to the house. “The dark-haired witch. She arrived a few days before you, looking for work. She fit into Abigail’s costume. Lucy said that it made sense for her tostep into the role. It was important to Lucy that the séance take place no matter the cost.”
The White Witch had a name after all.Hecate. It made her seem more human. “What happened to the other medium? To this… Abigail woman?”
“We do not know. She disappeared. Lucy believed she was murdered—we found her valise on her dresser as if she was about to leave.”
The picture she drew mirrored the one I’d stumbled across in Lucy’s room.
“Packed?”
Genevieve nodded. “Everything was in her case. She’d been acting peculiar before she disappeared. She said she’d found something important, but wanted to be certain what it was.”
“Do you have any idea what she’d found?”
She shook her head. “Lucy went all the way to Edinburgh to seek help after Abigail vanished, but no one would come to Manhurst. No one cared about the disappearance of a woman like us.”
The thought enraged me, and yet I was familiar enough with the situation. It was a sad fact of life that many men considered women disposable. Poorer women, or those who fell outside the proper bounds of society—well, to certain sorts of men, we were a nuisance at best. “And then Hecate appeared…”
She nodded.
“How much do you know about her?” Several swallows on the wing soared up into the early morning sun, out of sight. I wondered briefly if Hecate herself, the White Witch, could be involved in the crime though I quickly pushed the notion away. She wanted to be rid of me; the very last thing she’d do is create a situation in which I was trapped within five miles of her precious Ruan Kivell.
“Not much. The witch keeps to herself. I’m not even certainwhy she is still here. Hecate is nothing like Lucy. Lucy was a true spiritualist and was patient trying to teach me her ways. She believed the dead used her as a conduit and that she could teach me to do the same. I never put much meaning in it, but it pays the rent and I’ve always been good at reading people. Abigail didn’t have Lucy’s gifts either. No one did and I’ve never met another like her. Not when I lived in Petrograd, Paris, nor Rome.” She stared at the cigarette in her hand as she twisted it between her fingers.
“But you said the other night was different from earlier séances…”
“It was beyond anything I’ve ever seen. I do not know if it was the presence of the stranger, or if the spirits are as angry as Lucy kept warning. She told me that they demanded vengeance. That’s what she said. That the spirits would not be denied their due.”
I drew in a sharp breath. “Do you think that’s what happened here? That the spirits were angry at Lucy for some reason?”
She shook her head, giving me a gimlet eye. “No. I think the spirits told Lucy the truth. I think they told her something that someone here didn’t want known.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
She sniffed and looked away, picking at the edge of her finely polished nail. “I cannot help myself. There is something about you that makes me…”
I followed her gaze and spotted a group of men coming onto the bridge. I recognized the first instantly. The lithe form of Andrew Lennox and next to him was his father, Malachi. The dreadful man had his stringy gray hair tied back in a queue and looked as miserable this morning as all the other times I’d crossed his path.
His expression turned to pure malice as he spied me. There was no doubt in my mind that he was the person quarreling with Mr. Owen this morning. I noted a nick at his jaw, with driedblood scabbing it over. My mind suddenly recalled the knife in Mr. Owen’s hand when I entered his room.
Distracted by Malachi’s sudden appearance on the bridge, I nearly overlooked the Duke of Biddlesford, who followed behind with easy grace alongside Mr. Sharpe. Sharpe, for his part, kept his distance from me, dropping to the back of the group. I studied every inch of his face for some tell. Someevidencethat he truly was Elijah. Perhaps I’d get word from Hari today. That would be a boon.
All four men were dressed for golf, with a pair of young boys of fourteen or more lumbering along with the clubs slung over their shoulders.
