Some of the good feeling from the night before evaporated. I took a tin of meat from the cupboard with numb fingers. “Yes. I heard.”
“Someone choked her. I heard it was a—a garrote, you know, some sort of wire.”
I turned and looked at him. James hadn’t told me exactly how Ramona had died, and I hadn’t asked. He’s some sort of professional, James had said. I pictured the body on the floor, the way I’d seen it in my mind when I’d knocked on her door that day, so still, the arms reaching.
I looked more closely at Fitz. Sweat was beading on his brow. He and Ramona had both been in attendance at the séance when Gloria died, so they had at least been acquainted. But he looked torn now, and strangely guilty, and some of the missing pieces fell into place. “You knew her,” I said. “You were the one who invited her to Gloria’s séance.”
“I didn’t invite her,” he protested. “I swear it. But when I told her about it, she was adamant. She wanted to go. She wanted to see Gloria in action, she said, and she wanted a chance at such a rich client.” He breathed out, rubbed his face again, that strange smell wafting from him as he moved. “She needed the chance, she said, and she was going to take it whether I allowed it or not.”
“You were lovers.” It all made sense now—how Ramona knew so much about Gloria, about me. How she’d known what Gloria did in her séances. Why she’d hated Gloria so bitterly. I was sick of hearing about the great Gloria Sutter, the irreplaceable Gloria Sutter. “You were trying to replace Gloria with her.”
He shrugged, and then he laughed mirthlessly. “Gloria wouldn’t take me back.”
Ramona with her glossy black bob, her kohl-rimmed eyes. She’d looked nothing like Gloria, but she’d done her best to try. Ramona with her savage will for survival, her pinpointed pupils. “And the drugs?” I asked him. “What about the drugs?”
A flicker of surprise crossed his face that he didn’t bother to hide. He’d had no idea I knew. “I tried to get her off them, but she wouldn’t listen.”
I stared at him. “That’s a lie,” I said, suddenly certain. “You gave them to her. You supplied them. You’re the only one who had the money.”
Are you asking if I’m for sale? Name a price, handsome, and I’ll consider it. She’d practically told us everything that night, if only I’d opened my eyes to see it. How could I have been so stupid?
“Ellie, you don’t understand.” Fitz was nearly pleading with me. “The drugs had a hold on her. I wanted to get her clean. I did. What was I supposed to do?”
“Why are you here, Fitz?” I said to him. “Why have you come to my house for the first time? What do you want from me?”
He was silent for a moment, and I heard a polite scratching at the back door. I let Pickwick in, then worked on putting down some food and water for him. Even if my daily woman had already fed him, I still wanted to do it myself, as an offering. He gave me a placid look and a single thump of his tail in thanks.
“All right,” Fitz said, as if we’d had some sort of argument that had exhausted him. “You’re right—there’s no point in going over everything. What’s past is past. The fact is, Ellie, I’m in a spot and I need a loaner of a little bit of money.”
“What?” The request was so outrageous that if I hadn’t had a creeping feeling of wrongness climbing my spine and the back of my neck, I would have laughed. “You want money? What for?”
“Just to get out of London for a little while. Take a little trip, you know.”
“And you don’t have your own money for this?” His dinner jacket alone, which he seemed to have rubbed in garbage, cost more than a month’s earnings for me.
“I’m a little out of pocket right now.”
“Then go to your parents.”
He looked away. “They won’t give me anything. My allowance is gone, and Father says he’s finished handing me money.”
I pulled out a kitchen chair. “What about the fee you got from the Dubbses?”
Still he looked away. He really did look awful, his skin pouching under his eyes. I’d never seen him look like this before, even after he’d been on a multiday bender. “It’s gone,” he replied finally, seeming to grit the words out. He turned back to me. “Ellie, I have to get out of London, and quickly. Ramona is dead. Do you understand?”
“And you think you could be next,” I said. “Why?”
He didn’t answer me. I looked into his bloodshot eyes, and suddenly I felt a strange, slow jolt of panic, a pulse of it injecting itself heartbeat by heartbeat into my veins. It felt as if something was crawling up my back on invisible insect legs, and a telltale itch was beginning at the base of my skull. And the smell . . . the smell . . .
“Fitz,” I said, trying to keep my voice under control, trying not to scream. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything,” he said. “Ellie, I swear I didn’t.”
Someone is here, I thought, the words a certainty in my mind. I glanced at Pickwick and saw him sitting next to his bowl, his food half eaten, his ears pricked up. “Fitz, what did you do?”
“Nothing!” His shout was hoarse. “A few weeks ago a fellow came to me. He said he knew about Ramona, about the drugs. He knew I was selling them to supplement my allowance. I don’t know how he knew, but he did. He told me the only way I could stay out of prison was to do as he asked.”
“And what was that?”
“To go to Gloria and ask her to do this one job. This one séance, for these clients, the Dubbses. To convince her to do it.”