Murder at Locke Abbey (11 page)

“Son? Son, are you there?” A woman’s voice again, this time with an aristocratic accent.

No one answered.

“Cole, my Cole!”

“I’m here,” Cole answered from beside Thea. She gripped his hand harder, wondering which guest had called for him.

“I forgive you, my wonderful son. I love you, I always have and I always will.”

That answered that, Madam Davina was impersonating the late Mrs Cole.

All the fear that Thea had felt building up inside her was suddenly overwhelmed by anger. How dare she play on the death of his mother to give her parlour tricks credence! How dare she toy with his grief and emotions!

At that moment, it didn’t matter that Madam Davina had fallen for their trick, all that matter
ed was how little regard she had for his feelings.

Her right hand was balled into a fist, although her father
had moved his hand from her wrist and enclosed her fist in his hand. Her left hand was squeezing Cole’s, almost to the point of pain.

“Hush
,” Cole whispered, to her. “Relax.”

His thumb kept rubbing her hand but she could take no comfort in the gesture. Rage was clouding her judgement and only a tiny shard of clarity kept her from launching herself at the mystic. She couldn’t just attack the woman, she had to attack her methods and prove her a fraud.

The psychic had clearly taken his soothing words as acceptance of the apology.

“Thank you, my son.”

Silence reigned for a few moments; the only sound Thea could hear was the blood pumping in her ears.

Then there came a high pitched shriek.

Chairs scraped the floor as people moved back, frightened by such a primal scream.

“She is gone, she is gone,” came Madam’s soft words. “You may break the circle. Call Philip, please, I need him.”

The door was visible only by a thin, weak line of light from under it so although disoriented, one of the gentlemen made his way there and opened it, calling for Mr Platt, who rushed into the room and to Madam Davina’s side.

“Are you all right?” he asked, kneeling beside her.

She didn’t reply so using the weak light from the doorway, he reached for the matches and lit the black candle, then handed them to another gentleman to light the rest of the candles.

Her chair had been pushed back from the table and Philip now crouched beside her. She raised her head and a line of blood ran from her nose.

“Oh!” “She’s hurt!” Startled cries came from various people.

One gentlem
an handed her his handkerchief, which she pressed to her nose. Whisky was produced from somewhere and while holding the white cloth to her nose, she gulped a few mouthfuls down in a most unladylike manner.

“I must get her upstairs to rest,” Platt urged.

“No,” she put the hand holding the handkerchief on his shoulder to stop him. “I must explain.”

“I’ll explain,” he assured her.

After a brief hesitation, Madam wearily nodded her acceptance of his offer, so he stood up, while she pressed the white cotton against her nose again.

“Madame Davina has little control over who takes possession of her voice. The encounters however, take a great toll on her body. If she was unable to contact who you wanted to speak to, she will try again but she must recuperate for at least a day first.”

Thea, Cole and her father were the only ones still sitting at the table, primarily because Thea wouldn’t relinquish her hold on their hands.

“As nice as holding you
r hand is, Thea, I fear my bones shall be powder if you do not relinquish your hold soon.”

She looked down, only noticing at Cole’s gentle teasing. She abruptly withdrew her hands, as if scalded by something hot.

“I’m sorry.”

“No apology necessary,” he assured her.

Spotting an opportunity to disprove one trick, Thea urged her father to get the handkerchief from the mystic.

***

Cole watched as Lord Copley approached the mystic. Under the guise of concern, he gently pried the handkerchief away from her face. She tried to resist, proclaiming that she was unharmed but Copley was insistent. Rather than cause a scene, she relinquished the square of cloth. He tilted her head back slightly and appeared to examine her.

“The bleeding seems to have stopped,” he assured her with a smile
, then attempting to distract her, continued. “Do you often get nose bleeds?”

“I’m afraid so, I am used to them by now.”

“As long as you are well, but I would urge you to consider consulting a physician.”

“Thank you, Sir, I will consider it but my people have their own ways of dealing with illness.”

“Your people?” he asked, slipping his hand with the handkerchief into his pocket, as he offered her his other elbow for support.

“Romani.”

Cole almost scoffed; she was about as Romani, as he was Chinese.

Platt hovered behind his mistress as Copley guided her out, waiting to take over his duties.

“Well, you are tired, so I must not indulge my curiosity any further.” He paused in the doorway. “Good night, Madam Davina.”

“Thank you, Sir, you are too kind.”

Thea approached her father and Miss Eliza took her vacated seat, blocking his view of Thea.

“I say, that was exciting, wasn’t it?”

Cole gave her a confused look.

“Oh! How dreadfully insensitive of me, that was your mother, wasn’t it? It was hard to tell in the dark.”

“That’s perfectly all right, I’m fine.”

“Good,” she grinned. “And it must be nice to hear that she forgives you.” 

He was trying to peer around her and it took him a moment to realise what she had said.

“Yes, quite.
If you’ll excuse me.” 

He made his way to Thea and her father.

“Nightcap?” he asked.

“Excellent idea,” Copley agree. “You and Thea should compare notes. I want to stay here and see who has been unnerved by tonight’s events.”

“Are you sure?” Cole asked, although he appreciated the chance to spend time with Thea.

“Quite sure. Here.” He handed Thea the handkerchief he had taken from Madam Davina.

Thea didn’t seem to have been paying much attention to the conversation but she followed him to the study. The pug, who had been in the care of a servant during the séance, followed Thea.

Cole
discovered the reason for Thea’s inattention once he closed the door behind them.

“I could throttle that woman!” Thea exclaimed. “Honestly, who does she think she is, toying with people’s
grief?”

Cole had a rather different perspective. Yes, the circumstances surrounding his mother’s death were fictitious but had they not been, he would have felt comforted by the psychic’s words. While he didn’t believe in the supernatural, he was willing to concede that Madam Davina could ease people
’s suffering, and he said as much.

“But it’s not true!” Thea argued. “Taking comfort in a lie is immoral.”

“Perhaps, but grief can be all consuming and if believing in ghosts or an afterlife eases their suffering, I cannot see any harm. The dead will not return to prove the mystic a liar.”

Thea shook her head, unable to understand what he was saying. Why would anyone want to believe a lie?

Realising the futility of his argument, he dropped the subject. “What did you want the handkerchief for?” he asked instead.

“The blood.” Thea
suddenly seemed to remember she held it in her hand, and she brought the handkerchief to her nose and inhaled.

“What does that tell you?”

“I’m sure she didn’t spontaneously begin bleeding,” Thea explained. “I think the blood is bogus.”

“She couldn’t have wiped it on herself, she was holding hands with those either side of her.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course, I’m sure. She
held our hands the entire time the light was out. Except for right at the end, which didn’t give her enough time to put blood on her face.

“And when she sneezed?”

“She… got a handkerchief out.”

“Exactly.”

“But the séance hadn’t begun then, not really, and she was holding our hands for the rest of the event.”

Thea wasn’t at all sure about that but couldn’t prove otherwise yet.

“If she sneezed and retrieved her handkerchief, why did she accept someone else’s handkerchief at the end?”

“I… don’t know, perhaps in the commotion, she forgot she already had her own.”

“Perhaps,” Thea didn’t sound convinced.

She opened the handkerchief and made her way over to an oil lamp, Cole watching her closely.

“This isn’t blood,” she proclaimed. “Aside from the fact that a nose bleed often causes a handkerchief to be saturated, this is a slightly wrong colour.

Cole approached her to see for himself. He wasn’t an expert and
the light was low, but he thought it looked very much like blood, and told her as much.

Thea responded by taking her own handkerchief out and
undoing a brooch on her gown. Cole watched her actions in puzzlement, until she aimed the pin of the brooch at her finger. He caught her hand before she could stab herself.

“Are you mad, woman?”

“I’m merely attempting to prove that this,” she waved the stained handkerchief, “is not blood.”

“Not by harming yourself! I realise that you don’t like to be wrong, Thea, but I can't allow you to maim yourself to prove a point.”

“It’s a pinprick, Cole, I’ve suffered worse while sewing.”

“Perhaps that’s true, but I can't bear to see you hurt yourself. I believe you, the blood is phoney.”

“Except you don’t believe me, you are simply trying to placate me.”

“Then surely there has to be a better way to convince me. A mind like yours must be able to find another way to prove it.”

“There isn’t enough here to determine with accuracy what the stain is made of. Even if there was, I only brought a small selection of my laboratory equipment and chemicals. In sunlight I could possibly transfer some to a slide and put it under a microscope so you can see that this hasn’t clotted, as blood would, but even so, you would need to see a slide of clotted blood to compare and contrast.”

“Then we wait until tomorrow, and I will supply a drop of blood to compare it to.”

Her jaw slackened. “So you cannot watch me prick my finger, but you expect me to watch you do it?”

“Well, yes. It’s only a pin prick and hardly a bad pain.”

She raised her eyebrows, since he was essentially using her same arguments in his own defence. He also thought he detected a smile on her lips but he couldn’t be sure, it might be a grimace at his hypocrisy.

“I was teasing,” she admitted. “I saw a brain this morning, watching you prick your finger
, like the Sleeping Beauty did, would not be too difficult to watch in comparison.”

“You are correct, of course, but I worry that being right is so important to you, that you may lose sight of your safety. This investigation is not worth even one drop of your blood, Thea, and I would rather it was never solved, than have you place yourself in harm’s way.”

“I can be single minded,” Thea admitted. “But I have been that way since I was a child, and I am unlikely to change now. I’m sorry.” She looked away, sounding despondent.

Cole stepped closer and placing a finger under her chin, applied gentle pressure until she raised her head and looked into his eyes.

“Never apologise for being you,” he said, attempting to convey the depth of his regard for her in his expression. “But do not expect me to stop caring because it’s inconvenient for you.”

She was frowning, seemingly confused.

“Cole?”

He still wasn’t
convinced of her feeling for him but given her anger on his behalf, not to mention the sensation when they touched (which he was fairly sure she experienced too) he was willing to risk exposing his feelings.

“I find that I have come to care for you, Thea, a great deal. I know you value honesty above all else, so I cannot tell you that I love you yet, I don’t know quite what this between us is yet, I have never experienced anything like it before. I think you can feel it as well, and it concerns you because it’s new to you too. Am I right, Thea, are you coming to care about me?”

For a few excruciatingly long moments, she didn’t respond. Just as he was losing hope, she nodded her head slightly, and he let out a breath he had been unaware that he was holding.

“Then might I suggest that we explore these feelings together, and find out if this attraction is the start of something very special?”

To his immense surprise, her eyes began to fill with tears.

“I’ve upset you?” he
said, withdrawing his hands. He felt awful, wondering what he could have said to hurt her. His language had been a little business like he supposed, but Thea wasn’t a woman to be swayed by flowery prose. Or at least, he hadn’t thought she was.