“Ellie, I’ve told you everything. I’m an open book.”
“You haven’t told me why you’re so dedicated to investigating this.” I sipped the wine; it was rather good. James kept good wine for a bachelor who never had company, and my head was pleasantly spinning, my thoughts loose and full of possibilities. “You knew her and you feel badly that she was killed, yes. But there’s more to it than that. Do you want to know what I think?”
He watched me pace, his expression closed. “Go ahead.”
“You’re the one who wrote the article about her for the New Society,” I said. “I think that, deep down, you are wondering whether somehow that paper, the work you did with her, is the reason for her murder.”
He was silent.
I turned on my heel and looked at him. “Am I right?”
He dropped his gaze. “All right. I always felt a little sorry for Gloria. I think she was used by everyone she knew, myself included. Everyone except, possibly, you.” He raised his eyes to mine again. “But yes, part of me thinks it’s possible. Her death was so soon after the story in the newspapers. If I’m somehow responsible, I want to know.”
Our gazes locked for a long moment as a gust of wind blew up and threw rain at the windows. I lowered my glass to my side. “How could that be?” I asked softly.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t know what I wrote that would make someone want to murder her. I just feel . . .” He shrugged. “I can’t rest until I know for certain that I didn’t contribute to this.”
“Did your tests include spirit sessions?” I asked him.
“At least a dozen.”
“Perhaps it has to do with someone she found on the other side. Something she learned.” I thought it over. “My mother and I learned a lot of family secrets in the spirit medium business. Things people take to their graves.” We had spoken once to a woman who had died giving herself an abortion, though the fact was kept from her grieving husband. We had heard about infidelity, and babies given away for adoption, and money stashed in places where the heirs would never find it.
James looked thoughtful. “I don’t recall any shocking revelations offhand. It’s a possibility, I suppose, but it’s a distant one. If Gloria died because she uncovered secrets, then she could have uncovered those secrets during her regular business. That means hundreds of clients, hundreds of suspects. And Scotland Yard is already covering that.”
“It would be someone recent,” I said, thinking of Inspector Merriken saying, Murderers tend to be impulsive. “Someone from the past few weeks. Perhaps someone on this schedule is a client because they read the article.”
“Or perhaps he’s just a madman who likes killing spirit mediums.”
A shiver of cold fear went down my spine. “In which case, James, your article is blameless.”
“Except that it gave her publicity in the news.”
“Gloria made her own publicity. And Ramona’s name was never in the papers, so why did she die?”
“It’s a gut feeling, Ellie. None of which tells me why you don’t want to pass information to Scotland Yard.”
I sighed. I was exhausted, but since my experience that afternoon, a part of me felt more awake than I could ever recall. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, but if you get carted away in a black van and interrogated in a windowless room somewhere, please don’t blame me.”
“Ellie, what in God’s name are you talking about?”
“George Sutter,” I said. “You told me in Trafalgar Square that you don’t know who he works for.”
“No, and I still don’t.”
“Neither do I,” I said. “But whoever it is, it’s an office that has full access to every report Inspector Merriken submits regarding this case.”
James blinked, then shoved back his chair and stood. “And you know this how?”
“Because he told me when he hired me. He said he’d give me everything I need from Scotland Yard’s reports. And he has.”
I told James everything I knew that hadn’t been in the papers, or anywhere else—that she’d been hit once in the face, very hard, to subdue her, and then she’d been stabbed calmly through the heart and dumped in the pond. I told him what George had said of the layout of the property, the possibility of neighbors, the paths the killer could have taken to and from the Dubbses’ house.
“The damned coroner’s report and everything,” James said when I finished. “You waited a hell of a long time to tell me, Ellie.” His voice was rough, and he was starting to use profanities, which meant he was tired.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He dropped onto his single narrow sofa, his body graceful even in exhaustion. “Did Sutter tell you the Dubbses had left town? Did you already know that?”
“No.”
“Perhaps he didn’t know. The Yard may not know, either—I got the information from my own channels.” He looked up at me, standing in the middle of the floor in my stockinged feet, holding my forgotten wineglass. “What is it?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean the look you’re giving me. What is it?”
I gathered my scattered nerves, took a breath. I felt jumpy, terrified and strangely free at the same time. “I’m going out there,” I said to him. “To the Dubbses’ property. I don’t care that they’re not there. I’m going myself.”
He watched me from his lazy pose on the sofa. “And what do you expect to find there?”
“Answers. Courage, perhaps.” I swallowed. “I’m going to do what Gloria asked of me, what George wants of me. I’m going to find her on the other side. I think that if I’m there, in the place where she died, I may have the backbone to do it. And I have to do it soon.”
James was quiet, his face in shadows. “All right,” he said at last.
“There’s more,” I said. “I’m going to travel in daylight. No hiding. Let whoever wishes to follow me follow me.”
“Ellie.”