The Sign of Four Spirits, page 2
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
Her hands continued to shake as she put the china teapot on the table.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Do you know those people?”
“Nothing’s the matter.” Miranda dropped a plate of sandwiches and lemon squares in front of us.
“I—”
“Gemma.” Jayne tightened her lips and threw me a look. “Miranda said nothing’s the matter.”
“But—”
“They … those people … reminded me of someone, that’s all.” Miranda hurried back to the kitchen as fast as she could go without breaking into a sprint. At the counter, the couple paid Jocelyn and waited while she made their lattes. They didn’t spare a glance for Miranda as she scurried past them, head down.
“That’s odd,” I said.
“Nothing odd about it.” Jayne picked up the teapot and poured for us both. “You’re looking for mysteries where none exist, Gemma.”
“I suppose you’re right. Is Miranda working out okay?”
“I wish she had a bit more confidence in herself. She’s always apologizing to everyone, even when she’s done nothing wrong. Still, early days yet. She only started on Wednesday, so she hasn’t experienced a weekend yet, and this is her first restaurant job.”
“Was it wise to hire someone with no experience?” I added a splash of milk and took a sip of tea. Hot and fragrant and delicious. I then helped myself to a perfect little circle of a sandwich: cucumber with the slightest hint of curry powder arranged on thinly sliced white bread.
“Wise? Probably not, but you know what it’s like around here in the summer, Gemma. Everyone’s desperate for seasonal staff. Miranda had a good reference from the store she worked at last summer. They closed, so she couldn’t go back this year.”
“Last summer? Is she in university?”
“Yes,” Jayne took a salmon sandwich cut into a triangle. She’s a business major at Harvard.”
“That must be incredibly boring. Perhaps that explains the aura of sadness surrounding her.”
“Sadness? What do you mean by that? I haven’t noticed her being sad.”
“She’s not expressing her feelings, certainly not to people she works with and hardly knows. Her nails are bitten to the quick, leaving a few ragged hangnails, and considering how well-groomed she is otherwise, I suspect that’s a recent development. There’s a tightness to her smile that’s covering up a deeper sadness and fresh lines appearing under her eyes. She did badly on her exams this year, I suspect, and she’s worrying about her future. That would explain why she didn’t look for a summer job until July—she had to do extra classes.”
“Good thing you’re not interested in reading minds,” Jayne said as she helped herself to a second sandwich.
Chapter Two
Back at the Emporium, Ashleigh was helping customers find what they wanted (or what they didn’t know they wanted until she told them) while Gale, my other assistant, rang up purchases. Moriarty’s full length was stretched across the sales counter, allowing customers to stroke his belly. Like the tearoom, the shop had been busy all day, and I had high hopes for a prosperous summer season.
I ran my eyes over the shelves as I came in. I’d been away for half an hour and two Sherlock Holmes jigsaw puzzles had been removed from the merchandise table, as had four of the “I am Sher-locked” mugs, and one brain puzzle game. Several copies of the latest Daniel Pitt mystery by Anne Perry were gone from the new books display, as were a couple of editions of the short-story collections edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger, and one of Gaslight Ghouls: Uneasy Tales of Sherlock Holmes, edited by J. R. Campbell and Charles Prepolec. Several volumes had been removed from the YA shelves, where the Enola Holmes books by Nancy Springer were prominently placed.
Large gaps in the nonfiction shelf were visible. From this angle, I couldn’t see exactly what was missing, but the space was where we kept the nonfiction works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as well as biographies about him and books to do with his life and times. Those have a select readership, so we don’t normally sell many of them on an average day.
“Did one person take all those nonfiction books?” I asked Gale when she finished with another satisfied customer.
“We had a run on them shortly after you left. Several women arrived in a pack and immediately charged for the nonfiction section. Some of them bought more than one book. They completely cleared us out of The History of Spiritualism and The Coming of the Fairies. Do you have any more in stock?”
I shook my head.
“They’re with the psychic fair.” Ashleigh pulled a flyer out of her skirt pocket and showed me. “One of them gave me this. If I show it at the door, I’ll get twenty-five percent off the entrance fee.”
“There’s an entrance fee?”
“It’s a big deal, Gemma,” Gale said. “You must have seen the various posters popping up all over the place. The town’s expecting hundreds, maybe thousands, of people to attend. They’ve rented the entire community center for the weekend.”
“There’s a sucker born every minute.” Then, realizing my comment might have been a mite imprudent, I glanced at my employees. “But if people want to go to the fair, that’s none of my business. Are you going?”
“Not me,” Gale said firmly. “Bunch of total nonsense in my opinion.”
“Bunny suggested it,” Ashleigh said. “She has some story about how advice from a fortune teller led her to her career, and she wants me to have a consultation. But I’m not sure I want to.”
Ashleigh was Bunny Leigh’s daughter. When Bunny had been on the verge of becoming a major teen pop star, she returned to her hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska, to drop the baby off with her own parents. She didn’t see any of them again for another twenty-two years. Not until this past winter when she popped up in West London wanting to build a relationship with her only child.
They were doing okay, I thought. That was mostly down to Ashleigh, wise enough not to rush into things and to take each day as it came to slowly get to know her mother. They’d made a trip to Lincoln together in the spring so Bunny could reconnect with her own parents. Neither of them told me how that had gone, and I hadn’t asked. Their identical smiles and happy chatter when they talked about the trip were enough.
“I suppose there’s no harm in going to the silly thing,” Gale said. “You don’t have to believe any of it.” She took the flyer out of Ashleigh’s hand. “According to this, they’re having séances with some famous medium. So famous I’ve never heard of her, but then again, I’m hardly their intended audience. You wouldn’t catch me dead at one of those.”
“You made a joke,” Ashleigh said.
“So I did!”
We broke off our conversation as the chimes over the door tinkled and three women came in.
“Do you have anything about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?” one of them asked us.
“He’s an English writer. Best known for being the creator of Sherlock Holmes,” her friend added helpfully.
“We have an extensive selection,” Ashleigh said. “Right over here.”
“He was prominent in Victorian spiritualism,” the third woman said. “We’re from Raleigh, and we’ve come for the psychic fair. Have you heard about that?”
“Oh, yes,” I said.
“We met this nice man earlier, and he told us all about Mr. Conan Doyle.”
“Sir Arthur,” I said.
“What?”
“He’s called Sir Arthur, being a knight. Not Mr.… Never mind.”
“Okay. Sir Doyle, this nice man told us, was very involved in spiritualism. He was an early member of the Society for Psychical Research in London, England. Isn’t that amazing! He wrote lots about spirits, and he even wrote about fairies. He spent a good part of his life investigating those things. Imagine that! He said you had his books here.”
“Mr. Arthur’s books. Not the nice man’s,” her friend added. “He was a hoot. Dressed just like him.”
“Dressed like Sir Doyle, not himself.”
My head spun. Obviously, they’d met Donald. Donald was never shy about promoting his passion, and, incidentally, the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium.
“He, the nice man, told us to get The History of Spiritualism as the best place to start. Do you have that one?”
“We’re sold out of that particular volume at the moment, but we can order it for you,” Ashleigh said. “In the meantime, I’ll show you what we do have.”
“What a lovely cat,” the third woman said as Moriarty wound himself around her legs.
I headed for the computer to place a rush order.
* * *
That night, I enjoyed a late dinner date with my boyfriend, Ryan Ashburton. We had a lovely, relaxing meal at the Blue Water Café, Andy’s place, sitting out on the deck perched above the calm waters of the harbor. After dinner, we bought ice creams and strolled along the crowded boardwalk, licking our cones and watching the tourists, also licking and strolling and watching the tourists. Ryan’s the lead detective for the West London police, and I asked him if they had any reason to be interested in the goings on at the psychic fair.
“We’re keeping an eye on it,” he said. “But I wouldn’t say we’re interested. I might think crystal ball reading and tarot cards and the like are a whole lot of nonsense, but if people want to fork over good money to hear what they hope the future holds for them, that’s not a crime. If they want to buy a pack of crystals or so-called fairy dust to keep them safe or to attend a lecture on what supposedly happens after death, that’s not a crime either. There are plenty of people who prey on the believers to the point of extortion or who take advantage of the elderly and confused to bilk them out of their life savings, but you don’t usually get that sort at a heavily advertised public event like this one.” He licked his triple chocolate explosion ice cream. “The real criminals prefer to keep themselves far away from the limelight.” We reached the lighthouse at the end of the boardwalk and turned and retraced our steps. “As for the attendees, we can only wish all the tourists who come to town are as well-behaved as them.”
Chapter Three
I’d once been talked, against my better judgment, into sitting up all night in a drafty old house waiting for a ghost to appear. After that experience, I vowed I’d never do anything like that again.
“I’d kinda like it if you came, Gemma,” Ashleigh said.
“You want me to come to a séance?”
“Yes, I do. I’m nervous about it, and I’d feel better if you were there.”
“Are you responsible for this?” I glowered at Donald.
“In a way, I suppose I am. Bunny and I had a fascinating time at the fair yesterday. I, of course, approached it purely as a matter of research, but Bunny insisted some of the exhibitors were legitimate. She had her palm read.” He turned to Ashleigh. “The palmist knew she’d recently reconnected with a long-lost object. Isn’t that fascinating?”
“Gosh, yes.”
I mentally rolled my eyes. “It would be more fascinating if she’d known the long-lost object was a daughter. These people know how to make generic statements of the sort everyone can relate to. If Bunny hadn’t reacted to that, they would have come up with something else. Did Bunny react?”
“She sort of squealed and clapped her hands,” Donald admitted.
“My point exactly.”
“I’m okay with the palm reading stuff, I guess,” Ashleigh said. “But I don’t know about going to a real séance. It’s kinda … spooky, don’t you think?”
“I must follow,” Donald pronounced pretentiously, “where Sir Arthur leads.”
Donald was a kind and gentle man, a good and loyal friend, but sometimes he could go a mite over the top in pursuit of his passion. This morning he was dressed in normal, for him, clothes of ironed jeans and a T-shirt proclaiming, “You Know My Methods.”
I attempted to change the subject. “Donald, have a look at the nonfiction section.”
He glanced to where I’d indicated. “Where have all the books gone?”
The shelves were almost bare.
“You did such a good job of talking up Sir Arthur yesterday, we’ve been cleaned out of most of the biographies on him as well as his own nonfiction books. Not that I’d call The New Revelation nonfiction, more like imaginative rubbish, but that’s how it’s classified. However, I digress. I’ve paid extra for a rush shipment of The History of Spiritualism and The Coming of the Fairies and some of the others, and I’m expecting them to get here by noon. If you happen to be going back to the community center this afternoon, you can continue pushing them.”
His eyes gleamed as a thought occurred to him. “I might do that, Gemma. Then again, I might not go back today. Although, if you agreed to come to the séance …”
“Nice try,” I said.
Despite my protesting instincts, I allowed my curiosity to get the better of me. “Okay, Donald. Tell me about this intended séance. How did it come about? Was it Bunny’s idea?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Donald said. “Bunny and I separated at one point when she went in search of healing crystals.” He peered at me. “Do you know what those are, Gemma?”
“No, and no one else does either. Someone polished up chunks of scrap glass and stuck a hefty price tag on them.”
“Your skepticism does you no credit,” he said sadly.
“I’ll live with that, if I must. Please continue.”
“While Bunny was searching for her crystals, I fell into conversation with a group of women who were fascinated to hear that the creator of Sherlock Holmes had been a prominent figure in the world of spiritualism in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. I mentioned to them that his books could be found at this very establishment.”
“Thank you for that.”
“When Bunny and I met up later at the snack bar, she told me she’d met a prominent medium—or perhaps the medium’s assistant. I’m not entirely sure on that point. Anyway, this medium’s offering private sessions this weekend for select attendees.”
I assumed “select” meant wealthy. Or vulnerable. Or, best of all, wealthy and vulnerable. Although neither Bunny nor Donald were that. Wealthy, I mean. They might both be vulnerable.
Moriarty yawned and leaped off the counter, going in search of more interesting conversation.
“The medium—or her assistant—offered to set up a special séance tonight, specifically for Bunny and any friends she’d like to invite.”
I snorted. “Special. Yeah, I’m sure.”
“The woman said she’s a huge fan of Bunny’s and was thrilled at the chance to do something specifically for Bunny.”
“Donald, surely you don’t buy that? Bunny’s blended into life here in West London, but it’s not hard to find out about her background. This woman’s flattering her in order to use her.”
“Perhaps you’re right, Gemma. But really, what can it hurt? Bunny’s excited about it, and after telling me about the arrangement, she rushed off to phone Ashleigh and ask her to come.”
“Which she did,” Ashleigh said, “and, without thinking about whether or not I really wanted to go, I agreed.”
“Once she’d gone to do that, and I finished my coffee,” Donald continued, “I spotted a booth selling material about the history of spiritualism and went to see if they had anything on Sir Arthur I might not have read.”
“Like that’s remotely possible,” I mumbled. “Sorry. Carry on with your story.”
“To my surprise, they had nothing at all on or by Sir Arthur. Most of their books were more in the overly sensational line.” He sniffed in disappointment. “Whereupon I got to chatting with some of the people browsing the booth and told them about Sir Arthur and the wealth of information on his life and times, with a particular emphasis on his involvement in the spiritualism of the Victorian era, which is available at this very store.”
“I’m sure the book vendor loved you for that.”
“He did ask me to leave. Quite forcefully. I told him I could make some suggestions as to how he could improve the quality of his stock, but he seemed to be uninterested in my advice.”
“Imagine that.”
“Did Bunny say why she wanted to go to a séance?” Ashleigh asked.
“I didn’t ask her,” Donald said. “I assume she’s simply curious, as am I. Think it over, Gemma. I’m sure it will be a fascinating evening.”
“How much are you paying for this?” I knew Donald didn’t have much in the way of excess money. On his father’s death, he’d been left a small inheritance, enough so he could abandon his family law practice and devote his life to the study of the Great Detective and his creator. Being a Sherlock enthusiast doesn’t exactly pay well, but Donald’s happy with his lot, and I believe that’s good enough for anyone.
“Bunny’s treat,” he replied. “She’ll pay for herself and any guests she wants to invite. Meaning, so far, me and Ashleigh. Plus you, if you want to come, Gemma. Nine o’clock tonight, at a private home in West London.”
I groaned inwardly. If this medium invited Bunny, it might be because she knew her history and suspected Bunny was wealthy. Such was not the case. Bunny Leigh had been a big star and had made a great deal of money in her glory days, but most of that was gone: bad investments, bad men, too many failed attempts to get her career back on track.
Still, if Bunny wanted to waste what limited funds she had treating her daughter and friend, that was her business.
“Count me out,” I said. “But you two enjoy yourselves.”
The bells over the door chimed, and more customers came in.
“I spoke to those ladies yesterday,” Donald said. “Allow me to assist them.” He bustled over to greet the new arrivals.
I turned to Ashleigh, ready to suggest we get back to work. The color had drained out of her face and her eyes were wide.
