He pulled a piece of paper from the breast pocket of his jacket and unfolded it. As he smoothed it over the table between us, he replied, “She either appears, or she doesn’t, for this.”
It was a playbill. CLAIRVOYANT EXTRAVAGANZA, it declared. COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD! FORTUNES TOLD FROM THE AUDIENCE! AMAZING PSYCHIC FEATS! And across the bottom: CONTACT YOUR LOST LOVED ONES! SEE THE TRUTH FOR YOURSELF!
On the bill for the evening were Ramona and another psychic. Next to Ramona’s name was an ink drawing of a dark-eyed woman with black hair slicked down into a bob. The venue was the Gild Theatre, Streatham.
“I’ve never heard of this theater,” I said.
“It’s not far from here.” James stirred his tea. “I’ve used some of my contacts to request an invitation to the private sitting she’ll do after the show. If she hasn’t fled the country and she actually appears, we’ll get a chance to interview her.”
“We?”
“You’re solving this for George Sutter, are you not? Besides, you’re an expert.”
I gulped my tea, which was hot, thinking. For showgirls like Ramona, the theater performance was an opportunity to show off in front of an audience, but it wasn’t particularly profitable. The theater would take the lion’s share of the sales. The real money would come from the private sitting offered afterward, for which she would hopefully get takers impressed by what they had seen. This was the showgirl way of working, used when you didn’t have a repeat client list. “I thought you were the expert,” I said. “Is she one of your subjects?”
“If you mean did we test her, the answer is no,” James said. “I think it’s rather obvious she’s a fraud, as is the other psychic on this bill.”
The waiter came, and we ordered our luncheon. I managed to speak my order past the bitterness that had risen in my throat. When he had gone, I said, “That’s still what you do, then, is it? Expose frauds like my mother and me?”
He went very still, and for a moment even the quiet noise of the café seemed to disappear.
“I don’t suppose I ever apologized to you for that day?” he said softly.
I gaped at him, my bitterness stealing my speech. “No,” I managed. “Never.”
“Of course not.” He ran a hand through his cropped hair again, his eyes dark and serious. “I always meant to. I certainly felt sorry enough. I suppose I just never got up the courage to do it.” He looked at me, taking in the incredulous expression that must have been on my face. “I realize it’s hard for you to believe, Ellie, but I do try to have some semblance of honor. And something about that day felt dishonorable, at least to me.”
“It’s very simple,” I said. “The New Society did tests on my mother, and on me. To assess our psychic ability. We failed.”
“No,” said James. “I don’t believe it was that simple. Not anymore. Though I’m damned if I know why.”
Our luncheons came, and for a moment he cut his steak while I stirred my soup. Outside the window, the busy London crowd moved by—shoppers, nannies with children, workingmen, newsboys. I saw none of it. I could feel the disappointment of that day like a fresh wound—disappointment that we had failed the tests, yes, but also the piercing sense of failure that James Hawley thought me a skimmer, a fraud. Just like all the others. That particular sense of failure had dogged me for more long, sleepless nights alone than I wanted to admit.
I raised my gaze from my soup to see him looking at me again. “You know,” he said, as if he’d read my mind, “I’ve thought about you quite a lot since that day.”
My throat went dry. He was looking at me steadily, his face perfectly half lit in the light from the window, his eyes on mine. We’d never spoken since the day of the tests. He’d never contacted me; he had no reason to. I’d told myself a thousand times that it didn’t matter to me how James Hawley had looked at me the first night we met, or that he now had the lowest opinion of me. But now something shifted in my chest, squeezed my blood in my veins. I looked at the firm, well-shaped line of his mouth. He had thought about me?
“What—what do you mean?” I managed.
He leaned forward over his plate, and for a second I thought he was bringing his face closer to mine, that he would bring up the night at the bar. “The tests we did,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “The results we got. It doesn’t feel right to me. It never has.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“She shouldn’t have failed,” said James, still leaning forward. “Your mother. Every client we interviewed called her real. They told us stories that couldn’t be faked. And you, Ellie.” Still he stared at me, and I couldn’t look away. “Your clients don’t lie to me when they tell me what they’ve seen you do.”
I sat up, my spoon clattering in my soup bowl. “My clients?”
“Yes, of course.” He returned to his steak, cutting it gently. “They aren’t very hard to find, you know.”
“My client list is—”
“Private, I know. All I had to do was stand in a secluded spot across the street for three days, maybe four, and watch who came out the door. Those ones gave me the names of the rest. They refer each other. I don’t think you’re a candidate for MI5.”
“You—you watched my house?”
“Place of business,” James corrected, briefly holding up his fork. “There’s a sign on the door, after all.”
“But why?”