It wasn’t exactly true; the taxi was idling in front of the row house on Harriet Walk, and a burly hired man was working on transporting a trunk and a valise from the door to the back of the cab. Octavia stood on the walk in a beautiful forest green coat, her honey brown hair tucked under a matching hat, as she watched the man work with a vaguely tired expression.
“It’s just a few questions,” I said. I had put on a belted wool coat over my shirtdress, as well as a soft cloche hat and the comfortable buttoned shoes I usually wore only to the grocer’s. It wasn’t exactly fashionable—the dismissive glance Octavia gave my ensemble confirmed that—but I found I didn’t quite care. I was comfortable, and aside from the aches from the night before, my body felt newly awake, aware of itself.
“I’m in a hurry,” Octavia complained, though she quite obviously wasn’t doing anything except watch someone else work. “I’m leaving for Paris today, and Lausanne after that. Father says I’m to go to the Continent for at least a month, if not longer.”
“Why?”
She sighed, put upon. “He says I need to find a new influence since Gloria has died. He also thinks I’ll meet a man and forget all about Harry.” She slid me a sidelong look. “I’m sorry we won’t have time for a proper séance, like I’d hoped, but perhaps I’ll find someone who can help me in Paris.”
“I wish you well,” I said, almost meaning it. “But I have one question before you go.”
“Very well.”
“Why did Gloria come to see you the day before she died?”
Octavia’s expression went very still.
“You said you hadn’t seen her since you went shopping with her last Saturday,” I said. “That was a lie, wasn’t it? She came to see you on Sunday, the day before she died. No one knew about it, not even Davies, and you didn’t tell the police. Why?”
Octavia had gone ghostly white under her powder. “How could you know that? How could you?”
I shrugged, and her eyes widened. If she thought I’d used my powers, all the better.
She shifted and looked away. “I didn’t want to tell anyone,” she said. “In fact, I never wanted to think of it again.”
She paused, so I prompted her. “Start from the beginning.”
“I’d been asking her to do a special reading for me. Like you said, you know, when we met the other day. I wanted her to contact her brothers, but she always said no.” She glanced at me; I gave her no reaction, only waited. “On Sunday,” she continued, “she telephoned me. She told me she’d changed her mind, that she wanted to contact Harry and Tommy and Colin. She’d canceled her other appointment for the day, and she hadn’t even told Davies. She wanted money for it—it was a little insulting, because we were practically family and the sum was so large. But I wasn’t about to say no, so I agreed. I was supposed to have tea with my grandmother, but I canceled everything and cleared my schedule.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“She came here. God, she looked awful, like she hadn’t been sleeping, like she’d been drinking. She said she had a headache. I can only imagine how much she’d had to drink to make her look like that.”
I dropped my gaze to the top of Pickwick’s head where he sat at my feet, my own headache pulsing, left over from Ramona’s appearance. Pickwick’s tail slid over my ankles as if he knew what I was thinking. “Go on.”
“I told you before—there was something wrong with her in those last days. She never did sessions outside of her own flat. But she said she’d been home alone, trying to contact her brothers and unable to do it. She said she had to get out of there, that she needed me. That because I’d been engaged to Harry, contact with me would help her do it. She seemed almost panicked. I have to say, it was tasteless of her to ask me for money when she already wanted to contact her brothers herself, but there was nothing I could do at that point. You know what she was like when her mind was made up about something.”
I can’t listen, I thought. I can’t. I pictured Gloria, her powers fading, knowing that her final chance to speak to her beloved dead brothers was slipping away forever. That Octavia would always have money, but Gloria’s only source of wealth was about to dry up. My mother had had me to cover for the fact that her powers were fading, but Gloria had no one. And neither did I.
“Did she do the reading?” I asked.
Octavia was silent for a moment, until I finally raised my gaze and looked at her. She had gone even paler than before, and though she was looking at me, she seemed to be staring at something far away that I could not see. “Tell me,” she said after a moment. “When the dead communicate with you, do you always tell your clients everything they say?”
“This isn’t about me,” I replied, thinking of suicidal abortions and anonymous babies. “Tell me what happened when you did the reading.”
The hired man had finished loading the taxi and now he leaned on a lamppost, taking a break to light a cigarette as the taxi idled. “At first there was nothing,” Octavia said. “I thought it was the headache interfering, because she was quite obviously in pain. And then I felt something.” She blinked, still staring at whatever it was behind her eyes. “The air was electric, and there was a sort of smell. Faint and almost bad. And I felt something brush the back of my neck.” She touched a gloved hand to the back of her neck as she recalled it. “I know some would say it was the power of suggestion, but I know what I felt. I’ve been to a great many séances, and I’ve seen tables move and doors open—I’ve heard knocks and seen messages spelled with a Ouija board. But just sitting at a little table in my dressing room with Gloria, I felt something so real I almost couldn’t comprehend it.” She blinked, seemed to notice me, and shrugged, her previous shallowness reappearing. “It sounds mad, but I think you understand.”