I put a hand on my hat and turned to watch it approach.
And somewhere, miles behind us, Portis House sat solitary, continuing its slow descent into the marshes.
Photo by Adam Hunter
Simone St. James is the award-winning author of The Haunting of Maddy Clare, which won two RITA? Awards from Romance Writers of America and an Arthur Ellis Award from Crime Writers of Canada. She wrote her first ghost story, about a haunted library, when she was in high school, and spent twenty years behind the scenes in the television business before leaving to write full-time. She lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband and a spoiled cat.
CONNECT ONLINE
www.simonestjames.com
facebook.com/simonestjames
Turn the page for a preview of Simone St. James’s new novel, THE OTHER SIDE OF MIDNIGHT,
about a psychic medium in 1925 London who is compelled to investigate the murder of her greatest rival when she receives a message from beyond the grave.
Available in April 2015 from New American Library in paperback and as an e-book.
CHAPTER ONE
LONDON, 1925
The man who sat before me at seven o’clock on a Tuesday evening was lying.
He’d come with an impeccable reference from a barrister client of mine, and though he was barely thirty-five, the tailoring of his three-piece suit and the glint of his watch chain spoke of success. He wore power easily in his posture and the set of his shoulders, like a man accustomed to it, and yet the problem he set me was not only trifling—it was false.
He dropped his gaze to the table, where my fingers rested over his, and I took the opportunity to study his face undetected. Slender, clean-shaven. Almost handsome, but not quite; something about the width of the temples was off, and an absolute seriousness marred his expression, suggesting no sense of humor. His brows were drawn down as though something weighed on him, and his mouth was pulled into a grim line, as though he were thinking of something terrible and new. Whatever his true reason for consulting a psychic, he was not giving it away.
I glanced at the clock on the mantel. Seven o’clock. We’d been here for an hour already. I’d earned my shillings.
The man looked up at me, uncomfortable in my silence. “I wonder perhaps—”
“Hush,” I said with seriousness. “You must not interrupt.”
It never occurred to him to obey. “It’s just that—”
“Mr. Baker, if you cannot let me concentrate, I have no hope of finding your sister’s brooch.” I gave him a stern look, the black beads on my dress clacking. I was prolonging things needlessly now, but he’d annoyed me, and I was admittedly peevish. “Please concentrate. Picture the brooch in your head. See it in as much detail as you possibly can. Picture where you last saw it.”
He sighed, shifting in his chair, as if it hadn’t been he who had come to waste my time this evening. “I suppose I’ll try again.”
He would fail. The brooch he’d asked about did not exist; I’d known as much as soon as I’d touched him. What I didn’t know—what his touch hadn’t told me—was what he actually wanted from me. And here I was, trapped at the little table in my sitting room, hungry, my cold supper waiting for me in the kitchen. If this man didn’t want to be honest, then he could suffer in one of my hard chairs a little bit longer.
I waited for a stretch of minutes, my eyes closed, as the clock ticked on the mantel. “It really isn’t coming very clearly,” I said at last.
Mr. Baker, who was no more Mr. Baker than I was, squirmed just a little. “Perhaps I should come again another time.”
“No, truly, I can find it. Sometimes it takes a little time, that’s all, and you must concentrate harder. Just a little longer . . .”
“It’s quite all right.” He squirmed again, and from under my lashes, I saw the first evidence of a conscience. “I’m afraid I have another appointment.”
I shook my head in a show of frustration and lifted my hands from his. “But of course. We’ve run out of time, haven’t we? I’m sorry the brooch did not appear to me, Mr. Baker.”
“No, no. You mustn’t apologize. I insist.” Now he seemed almost annoyed. His gaze wandered off and clouded over with disappointment, as if he’d expected something else entirely from this evening and was already forgetting my existence. “Perhaps I’ll come and try again another time.”
I stood, pushing my chair back coolly. “You could, but that wouldn’t make an interesting story, would it?”
He frowned. “I beg pardon?”
“For your newspaper.” My peevishness was fleeing now, leaving only tiredness behind. “I assume you write for one. ‘Famous Psychic Debunked,’ perhaps? Or ‘Seer Bilks the Innocent of Money’ may also work. Though I can’t imagine why any newspaper would want yet another story about people like me.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” His outrage was convincing. He pushed his chair back and stood as well, and though he was only slightly taller than I was, he somehow seemed larger. “Do you honestly take me for a journalist?”
“Honestly? You don’t look like one at all. You dress too well, and your demeanor is wrong. Honestly, Mr. Baker, I don’t know what you are, but a journalist is the only kind of person who would go to elaborate lengths to get a referral, then come here and waste my time with a false story about a valuable brooch.”
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.