“Yes,” I managed.
Her brow furrowed. A man, quite obviously her father, had appeared at the front doorway of the house and watched us impatiently. “I looked at Gloria,” Octavia continued, “and her eyes were wide. She was breathing hard, almost as if she was afraid, and she was sweating. Then she looked at something over my shoulder.” Octavia leaned toward me, uninterested in her father’s impatient stance behind us. “She saw something, don’t you see? I begged and begged her to tell me. ‘Is it Harry? What does he look like? What does he say?’ But she wouldn’t answer. She looked like she’d had some sort of shock. She said, ‘I had no idea,’ and tears came down her face. She was weeping.”
I blinked at that; I couldn’t picture Gloria weeping any more than Octavia could. “That was all she said?”
“No, not all. She closed her eyes, as if listening to something. I begged her again to tell me what was going on, but she didn’t seem to hear me. She said, ‘Good-bye, darling,’ and then she said it again, softer: ‘Good-bye, darling.’ And then she opened her eyes, just like that. She pushed back her chair and stumbled out of it and said she had to leave.”
“She didn’t tell you what had happened?”
“It wasn’t fair.” Now real anger crept into Octavia’s voice. Her father waved at us, and she made an impatient gesture ordering him to wait. “She wouldn’t say. You have no idea how I pleaded with her. I was the customer. I had paid. Harry had been in the room; I felt it the same way I know you’re standing here now. And she wouldn’t tell me what he’d said.” She sounded like a petulant child, and though it wasn’t flattering on her, I couldn’t help but feel empathy. “I was so close, don’t you see? I deserve to know. You don’t understand—you take it for granted, this power you have. You get to see things, to know things, that the rest of us go to our graves wondering about. It isn’t fair.”
I stared at her. “And that’s what Gloria did,” I said. “The next day. She went to her grave, and now you’ll never know.”
Octavia patted her cheeks briefly with her gloved hands and straightened her shoulders, collecting herself. “I simply couldn’t believe it. I came to her apartment that day I ran into you there because I had to know if she’d left a diary, a note—anything. I was in such shock. I’m still not over it. I think Europe will be good for my nerves.”
“But you didn’t tell the police any of this.”
“I saw no need for it,” she said crisply. “It was a personal matter. What if the murderer was caught and I was required to testify in some sort of courtroom? I couldn’t help but suspect that her murder had something to do with our session. And I was afraid, because Gloria was afraid, and Gloria was never afraid.”
She turned away and started toward her father, who was saying something to her. She put a hand on the brim of her cloche hat and turned briefly back to me. “Good-bye, Ellie,” she said. “If you speak to Gloria on the other side, tell her—” She stopped, and a look of pain and raw confusion crossed her face.
“I won’t,” I told her. “I have no plans to. Not ever.”
She nodded and turned back to her father, who ushered her into the waiting taxi.
I felt the brush of a tail over my ankles again. “Sometimes you have to lie, Pickwick,” I confessed to the dog. “Sometimes it’s for the best.”
As the taxi drove away, Octavia’s father turned and stared at me, his expression dark and forbidding. He looked at me for a long moment before he walked back to the house.
I retreated, tugging on Pickwick’s leash. I’d never seen the man before, but his expression was a familiar one. He wasn’t just a father sending a troublesome dependent to the Continent. When Mr. Murtry looked at me, he was afraid.
* * *
The plan was simple. I was to board the 10:47 train from Victoria Station, alighting at Charing, in Kent, from which I was to travel to the Dubbs residence. I was to act normal—that is, oblivious—in case anyone followed me. Inspector Merriken and his men would already be in place in Kent, waiting to see whether Gloria’s killer would show himself.
“And what will you do if Inspector Merriken refuses to bring you with him?” I’d asked James as I dressed that morning. “Go on foot?”
James had crooked an arm behind his head, watching me from the sofa. He was washed and dressed already—he was an early riser, I’d discovered—but he had not yet put on his jacket, and he was sprawled deliciously in his white shirtsleeves. “Ellie, did I ever tell you of how I tracked three German horse guards over fourteen miles of terrain in 1916?”
“You know you didn’t,” I said, tucking my hair behind my ears so I could put on my hat. “Are you saying you’re some sort of tracking genius? And if you are, what are you going to do with it in the wilds of Kent?”
“I’m no genius, but I spent most of the war trying not to be seen by the enemy. I’d expect the police to know the same.”
“You’re not even armed.” I reached for my hat, unwilling to admit that my own plans were giving me misgivings, that I was putting his life in danger. “I’d be happier if I knew you had—I don’t know—some way to defend yourself.”
He’d laughed at that, and I’d had to pause for a moment, appreciating the sight of it in daylight. “I don’t intend to go around shooting people. But I do intend to keep you safe, with or without the police.”