Especially when the slumming involved spirit mediums and psychics.
She turned to me, her tears gone though her eyes were still red, a sweet smile on her lips. “Isn’t this cozy?” she said. “It’s so nice to see you again. It’s terrific that I showed up when I did, isn’t it? Just in time to take you where you wanted to go.”
“Terrific,” I agreed.
“Did we meet at the Jaclyn-Dunbar party? I can’t recall.”
“No,” I replied. “I don’t believe so.”
“Oh, well,” she said, smiling again. “There are so many parties, aren’t there? It’s impossible to keep track. And ever since I heard about Gloria, I’ve barely been able to put two thoughts together. It’s positively mad that I can remember anything.”
It struck me then—the thought I’d been pushing away since the moment she’d come to the door of Gloria’s apartment. This girl had been my replacement. After Gloria and I split up, Octavia Murtry had become inseparable from her would-be sister-in-law. I studied her face for a moment, trying to see what Gloria had seen there. Octavia was prettier than me, perhaps, in her patrician way, but I had a hard time picturing her taking her shoes off and dancing a French cancan at two o’clock in the morning, as I had once done on one of Gloria’s dares.
“You two were close,” I said.
“I was engaged to Harry, you know,” she said. She set her nervous hands on her lap for a moment and looked out the window. I waited. “He died in Flanders,” she said after a pause. “It was the most horrid day of my life.” She turned back to me. “I’ve heard that some people had dreams when their boys died—prophetic dreams or visions. They see the man beside their bed or something, and they get the telegram a few weeks later stating that he died at that very moment. Have you ever heard of that?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I thought for a time that I should have seen him,” Octavia said. Her voice was almost avid, but it had not quite lost its well-trained coolness. “That the bond between us should have done something. I should somehow have known. But I didn’t see anything.”
She seemed to want a response from me, but I could think of nothing adequate to say. “I’m sorry,” I said at last. “Gloria didn’t speak about her brothers much. I think it was too painful.”
“Tommy went first,” Octavia said bluntly. “That was a shell. Then Harry. Colin went last—that was almost near the end of the war. He nearly made it through. But of course he didn’t.”
“You knew them?” I asked, surprised. “Gloria’s other brothers?”
“Harry talked about them all the time,” she replied. “His brothers—and Gloria—were the most important thing to him. Even Colin, who he didn’t get along with, and George, who was a few years older than the rest of them. I met them all eventually, at family functions and the like. Did you know Gloria’s brothers?”
“No,” I said.
“They were all so different.” Octavia had warmed to her topic now, brightening a little as she remembered. “Tommy was the youngest and the sweetest. Harry adored him. George was older, so he was almost more of a father than a brother—he was a bit remote. He likely still is, though I haven’t seen him since the war. Colin was what Harry called the future politician, always angry and on about something—he’d dampen the party by getting on his political hobbyhorse and we’d have to ignore him. And there was Harry himself, of course.” She sighed. “Harry was gorgeous, like a movie star. There are times I still can’t believe that all of them are dead, all those men I talked and laughed with. But they’re all gone now, even Gloria. All of them dead except George.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
She didn’t seem to hear me. “Harry was killed by a sniper while delivering a message. They think I’m too sheltered to know what that means, but I know perfectly well. It means he was shot in the head, most likely. Colin was taken by the Germans and died in a prison camp—they never got his body back. George never went to the front—he did some kind of top secret office role. Do you know, I’ve actually thought it was a shame that, of all of them, George would be the one to survive the war.” She bit her lip. “It’s such a horrible thing to think, I know. Do you think I’ll go to hell?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. “I don’t think so,” I said finally, my voice a little strangled. “I don’t think there’s a hell.”
She took my gloved hand in hers and squeezed it. “That’s what Gloria always said. You’re a medium like she was, aren’t you? That means you know.”
I stared down at our linked hands. I had encountered this type of person before, both in my own line of work and in my days with Gloria. Octavia Murtry was what we called a fortune-petter, a person addicted to psychics and fortune-tellers of all kinds. Fortune-petters would sit through any session, pay any fee, try any cheap sham to get the answers they thought they wanted. It explained why Octavia knew who this Ramona was. It also explained why she’d found Gloria so intoxicating. For a fortune-petter, a medium of Gloria’s power would have been like a strong drug.
“It’s so wonderful that I met you,” she said to me, squeezing my hand again. Now that Gloria was gone, I seemed to be her new best friend. “I have so many questions,” she said. “We should arrange a session.”
I shouldn’t have done it. Even as I did it, part of me knew it was wrong. I told my clients I needed our hands touching, skin to skin, to get a reading, but in truth that was all for show. I could do a reading even through gloves. It took only a second for me to let the world fall away and do what I did best: see what my client was seeking.