Silence for the Dead(114)

He went very still.

I looked at his face. “Of course, I knew it was false. Though if you like, you can publish in your newspaper that I have found the toy soldiers you lost when you were eight. That’s what you were really thinking about just now. Here it is: Your brother Tommy took them. He broke them in half and fed them to the dog while playing African Explorer.”

There was a long beat of silence. I hadn’t meant to say that, not exactly. It had just come so clearly to me: the crisp fall day, the little boy roaring as he pretended the dog was a man-eating tiger, eagerly snapping up Stanley and Livingstone. I wondered if the dog had gotten indigestion from the enterprise. It seemed likely, though the vision didn’t specify. A shadow crossed over the vision of the boy, something foreboding, but I pushed it away.

Mr. Baker was looking at me with the shocked expression people wore when they first realized I told the truth. “There’s no way you could know that,” he said softly. “No way at all.”

This was always a telling moment. People came to me for answers, yet they were always knocked on their heels when I actually gave them. Some customers tittered nervously; others grew angry and defensive, accusing me of trickery or lying. Those were the dangerous ones. The truth, even one so small as the fate of a few wooden soldiers, affected everyone differently. You couldn’t predict it, not really. It was why I kept my client list so select.

But the look on Mr. Baker’s face was one I hadn’t seen before. He stared at me with a sort of profundity, as if I’d answered a question he hadn’t even known he’d been asking. And yet the revelation seemed to strike him as a blow, and his look of desperate misery almost made me step back. It was the look of a man who had just seen proof of Hell’s existence—an answer to one of life’s deepest questions, and not the answer he wanted to hear.

“Mr. Baker,” I said, keeping my voice level, “I’m asking you to leave the premises.”

He swallowed, and something indescribably sad crossed his features. “If only you’d let me explain.”

“There’s no need.” My voice rose almost to shrillness. I wanted no part of the sadness and desperation on his face, none at all. “I’m well acquainted with the local constable. If you don’t leave, I’ll have no choice but to send for him.”

It was a bluff—the local constable thought me a hussy, when he thought of me at all—but Mr. Baker only looked ashamed. He took an expensive handkerchief from his pocket. “I’m sorry,” he said, dabbing his forehead and looking away. “Good night.”

And then he was gone, without another word to me, my front door shutting on the back of his well-cut suit. I still had no idea why he’d come, what he’d wanted, or even why he’d left so quickly. I told myself the most important point was that he had gone. You’re a woman alone in this job, my mother had taught me. You must never take chances.

I sighed into the lonely quiet of my sitting room. I looked around at the narrow chintz sofa, the heavy draperies over the front window, the plum velvet curtain hanging artfully over the door to the corridor. In the middle of the room was the session table, a simple square with a flowered tablecloth and wooden chairs on opposite sides. Every piece in the room had been picked out by my mother.

“At least he paid me in advance,” I said to no one.

The room stared silently back at me. Theatrical, my mother had called the decor, yet respectable. It’s the sort of look that works best.

The Fantastique. That had been what my mother had called herself. It had made my father uneasy, and the neighbors had never approved, but séances were a very lucrative business. For as long as I had memory, there had been a small hand-painted sign in the window next to our front door, a crystal ball with striped rays emanating from it. THE FANTASTIQUE, it said. PSYCHIC MEDIUM. SPIRIT COMMUNICATION. DO YOU HAVE A MESSAGE FROM THE DEAD? Everyone, it seemed, had someone dead they wanted to talk to.

“It looks a bit like a sunset,” I’d said to my mother of that painted crystal ball, when I’d been old enough to notice.

“It’s theatrical, yet respectable,” she’d replied. “It’s the sort of look that works best.”

Then my father had died in the war, and my mother and I were left alone in our little house in St. John’s Wood, my mother grieving and, eventually, sick. She had taught me everything she knew. And when she’d died four years ago, what was I to do? Her clients still needed someone. The money was good, and steady. I was beholden to no one. Now the Fantastique was me.

I had meant to get the sign changed. The Fantastique now found lost things; that was her only offering. She didn’t do séances anymore.

I left the sitting room through the velvet curtain and went up the small staircase to my bedroom on the first floor. I undid my dress—a custom creation dripping in jet-black beads that had been my mother’s—and set it carefully in the wardrobe. It was the Fantastique’s only costume. I disposed of my stockings and heels and untied the black scarf wound in my hair. I brushed out my short waves with a silver-backed brush. Then I tied a silk wrapper over my underthings and went barefoot to the kitchen, making a stop in the lav to wash the makeup from my face.

Supper was set on the table, a dome placed over it. I removed the dome and looked at a chop, a potato, and a few cooked carrots. I had a daily woman who came, cleaned, prepared a few meals, and left again, always while I was working. She didn’t mind me, and I didn’t mind her. I paid her on time, and she ensured I had a bottle of wine uncorked by supper. It worked out well enough.