“It’s a shell game,” the inspector mused. “Set up an intermediary, make contact with someone close to the target who has something to lose—in this case, Fitzroy Todd. Blackmail him into bringing your target to the intended place. When it’s all over, disappear again. The question is, what did they want her for?” He closed the cupboard he was peering into and turned to me. “I have my own theories. But first, Miss Winter, please have a seat and tell me what you know.”
There was no refusing him. I pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat. If this had indeed been intended as the séance table, it was a terrible choice; it was too long, the feel of it too utilitarian, like a workbench. And the cheery, sunlit kitchen was not a good place to summon the dead. James went to the kitchen sink, where he quickly found a rag and soaked it in cold water. He pulled out a chair next to me and placed the rag on my knee. Pickwick curled up in a corner of the kitchen, put his nose into his tail, and promptly fell asleep, exhausted.
I pulled my messenger bag off my shoulder, wincing as my sore muscles moved, and set it on the table. I opened it and slid out Gloria’s three telegrams, in which I’d once again folded the three photographs after studying them on the train. Gloria’s three brothers looked up at me from the wooden surface, their faces forever frozen in time. I bypassed Tommy and Harry, put my finger on the edge of Colin’s photograph, and slid it into the middle of the table.
“It’s him,” I said. “This is the man you want.”
“And who is that?” asked the inspector, angling his tall body down to inspect the photograph.
“Colin Sutter.”
“Colin Sutter?” James stopped pressing the cloth to my knee and stared at me. “Colin Sutter is dead.”
Inspector Merriken’s quick brain calculated behind his eyes. “One of Gloria’s brothers who died in the war?”
“He’s not dead,” I said. “He shot at me this afternoon. He killed Gloria and Ramona, and George Sutter’s man.” I looked at both of them, for the first time wondering whether they would believe me. “I saw it. I saw him. I saw his face in the mirror.”
“Ellie.” James put his hand on my leg, looked at me. “I know you,” he said. “I know. So I’ll only ask this once. Are you absolutely certain of what you saw?”
I blinked. “He’s wearing an outfit that looks like a farmhand’s, with a cloth cap. He’s driving a motorcycle with a sidecar and taking back roads. I don’t know how he was reported dead in the war—I didn’t see that, didn’t see how he survived. I saw something about a woman, and a few other things I didn’t understand. But it was him.” I dropped my gaze to the photo, to Colin’s dark good looks, so much like Gloria’s. The politician, his family had called him. Always so serious, so reserved. I thought of the razor blade I’d seen in the vision. “He wanted to die at one point,” I said, “but he didn’t do it. There was something he had to accomplish.”
“What?” the inspector asked.
I looked up at him. “It’s very vague, you understand. I don’t get words, sentences, explanations. I get images. And I saw an empty factory, and I saw him throw a suitcase through a broken window.”
Inspector Merriken straightened as if I’d slapped him. “The bomber?” he said, and for the first time his unshakable composure broke and amazement crossed his face. “You’re saying that Colin Sutter, who died in the war, is the bomber?”
Both men stared at me. I thought of the headlines I’d seen in the newspapers on the train: UNKNOWN BOMBER STRIKES AGAIN. FOUR DEAD AT GUILDFORD AIRPLANE FACTORY. I’d given the articles only a cursory read, using the newspaper as a cover. Now I wished I’d read everything in depth. “I told you, I don’t know all the answers,” I said, unable to help the defensiveness in my voice. “I only know what I saw.”
Inspector Merriken turned away, pacing the kitchen. “Miss Winter, this is too much.”
“Now wait, Merriken,” said James. “You have to at least consider it. If you’d ever seen Ellie in action, you’d know—”
“I have,” the inspector said. “I have seen her in action. For God’s sake, I wouldn’t have followed both of you this far if I thought she was a fake. But you have to see it from my position—this leaves me almost nothing to work with. I can’t go back to the Yard and tell my chief inspector that England’s mysterious bomber is Gloria Sutter’s dead brother, and the only evidence I have is the vision of a psychic—and not just any psychic, but one who has been officially debunked by the New Society.”
James removed his hat and ran his hands through his short hair. “Are the bombings your case?”
Merriken shook his head. “Terror acts don’t fall to the Murder Squad. I’d have to involve the police, the Home Office, the War Office—all the way up the line. It wouldn’t end. And it would take about a half hour before I’d be staring at some terrifying, cold-blooded fellow from MI5.”
We were all silent, the air thunderous and still.
“George Sutter,” said James.
“Wait.” Inspector Merriken held up his hands. He pulled off his hat and dropped it on the sideboard, pacing again, his long dark coat flapping as he moved. “We have to stop right now. I’m trying to do police work here—proper police work, not speculate like madmen.”
“George Sutter can’t have known about it,” I said. My voice was almost shrill with panic, and I took a breath. “He can’t have. Why would he have come to me—why would he have recruited me, if he already knew about Colin?”
James touched my neck, briefly. “We already know why he needed you, Ellie.”
“As bait?” My voice went shrill again, and again I tried to stay calm. “It makes no sense. How would he have known from the first that Colin would come for me? And what was Gloria, then? Was she bait as well?”
Inspector Merriken shook his head. “This whole setup,” he said, gesturing to the house around us. “It’s too elaborate. To recruit Fitzroy Todd, the fake Dubbses, all of it, to get Gloria to come to the countryside so that Colin—if indeed it’s Colin he’s after—will follow her? It’s completely impractical. No. This setup was for Gloria’s benefit, but it was for a different purpose.”