My heart clenched in dread.
“Worse than ever afore.” Kady clasped her hands together in her lap, the knuckles turning white as she relived her memories. “She’d wake up thrashin’ and screamin’, beggin’ for whatever it was to stop. Woke her da’ a time or two in his room doon the hall. I asked her what it was . . .” She sounded like she was pleading with her charge again. “But she wouldna’ tell me. A time or two when she’d just waked I heard her babblin’ aboot the cold and the darkness, but that’s all I ken. And all I could think to ask her was if they were aboot her da’. She told me nay. That’s when I realized . . .” She broke off, unable to speak the words.
So I spoke them for her. “That it might be her.”
She nodded. “I didna want to ask her. Didna want to even think it.” Her face crumpled, and she came close to losing her composure. But she took a deep breath and swallowed her grief and guilt. “But it might’ve been.”
I pressed a hand to my chest, where my heart pounded furiously, having trouble coming to terms with the information the maid had just given us. If Miss Wallace had foreseen her own death, and if it had been as unpleasant as her reaction to her nightmares suggested it was . . . heavens! How could she live with that knowledge? How could she go about living her life, day after day, knowing it was only a matter of time before her nightmares came true? The very thought made me dizzy with fright.
I jumped at the feel of Gage’s hand on my shoulder. He squeezed gently, reassuring me, and I inhaled sharply.
Kady offered me a tight smile in commiseration. “Aye. The an da shealladh is a dark thing,” she told me, using what must be the Gaelic term for “second sight.”
“Did Miss Wallace mention anyone she might have quarreled with?” Gage asked, turning the subject. “Someone who might wish her ill or hold a grudge?”
Kady lifted her eyes in contemplation and then shook her head. “Nay. Though she doesna talk to me much aboot people. She mostly keeps her opinions to hersel’.” She squinted one eye. “But I can read her reactions fairly weel. Like when that fool Munro yelled oot his window at us after he fell off his roof ’cause he didna listen to her warnin’. Tried to blame her, the sod. I could tell she didna feel the least bit sorry for the man, though to all else she looked fair concerned.”
I felt a measure of my equanimity return during her story, especially considering the fact that I had had a similar thought about Mr. Munro and what Miss Wallace’s reaction should be to him. I even felt a certain amount of calm. Until Kady spoke her next words.
“And then there was that doctor. Miss Mary didna like him,” she added, shaking her head.
The hairs stood up on my arm. “What doctor?” I demanded.
“I dinna ken his name.” Her eyes had widened at my sharp reaction. “He approached her in the village and she refused to talk to ’im.”
“When was this?” Gage asked. I could hear the same heightened level of interest in his voice as mine but his had taken on an angry edge, which I wasn’t sure he was even aware of.
“A few weeks ago, I guess it was noo,” Kady said, stumbling over her reply.
Gage nodded to her and then turned to me. “I think we need to speak with Mr. Wallace again.”
I rose to follow him to the door, but before going I paused to ask the bewildered maid one more question. “Just out of curiosity, did Miss Wallace encounter the doctor before or after her nightmares began again?”
“Why, I think it was afore,” she replied in surprise.
I thanked her and turned back to Gage, who was watching me with an expression that said we would be having a conversation about this later.
*
“His name was Callart,” Mr. Wallace told us in reply to Gage’s query.
We had found him in his study where we had left him, deep in unhappy thought, if the frown on his face was any indication.
He rose to cross the room to his desk. “He came to call one afternoon, offering his services to help my daughter. Said he was some brain specialist and he’d heard of my daughter’s ‘affliction.’” He lifted his gaze, a martial gleam in his eyes. “I told him to sod off.”
I had to smile at that, despite my uneasy suspicions.
“Did he try to pressure you?” Gage asked.
Mr. Wallace bent forward to rummage through the papers in a drawer. “Aye. Had to threaten to throw him off my property to get him to leave.”
“Did you know he accosted your daughter in the village?” I inquired.
He straightened and moved back toward us. “Nay. Who told you this? Kady?”
I nodded.
“Impertinent leech,” he growled. He handed the card he’d taken from his desk to Gage. “Dr. Thomas Callart. Noo I’m glad I kept his card. Do ye think he’s behind my daughter’s disappearance?”