Page 80 of Mesmerized

There was a rumble of voices and the sound of footsteps outside, and the three of them turned toward the hall. A moment later, a strange trio appeared in the doorway: Tom Quick and Rafe McIntyre, each with a firm grasp on one arm of Madame Valenskaya, who stood dispiritedly between them.

She was dusty and bedraggled, her hair straggling down from its knot.

“We found her hiding in the unused part of the house,” Rafe said, steering the woman into the study.

“I was not hiding,” the medium protested, pulling herself a little straighter and trying to regain the threads of her dignity. She jerked her arms from the men’s loose holds. “I was lost.”

“Is that right?” Tom asked, grinning. “Then why’d we find you inside that wardrobe?”

“I was frightened when I heard you approach.” Her eyes darted about the room. “Where is my dear friend, Lady St. Leger?”

“You needn’t look to her for help, Madame. She has finally seen how you have deceived her these past few months,” Stephen said.

“What? You lie! I haff never—”

“Be quiet!” Stephen snapped, and, startled, Madame Valenskaya subsided, looking at him warily.

“You have worse problems now than Lady St. Leger discovering the game you and your group have been playing on her. Lady Pamela is dead.”

Madame Valenskaya gaped at him, her face turning white. “Dead! Oh, no! Oh, no! They have killed her!” The medium’s Russian accent had completely deserted her now. She looked frantically about the room as if she was once again going to hide. She grabbed Stephen’s arm. “You must help me. You must protect me.”

Stephen took her arms and none too gently deposited her in a chair. “What do you mean, ‘they have killed her’? What are you talking about? Who killed her?”

“They will kill me, too. You must help me,” Madame Valenskaya repeated, rolling her eyes about in a dramatic way.

“Really, Madame, I have a little trouble believing these histrionics,” Stephen told her sternly.

“No! I am telling you the truth! You must believe me!” Madame Valenskaya looked panic-stricken, and despite her melodramatic way of acting, Olivia had no trouble believing the woman was indeed terrified.

“Then, tell me, of whom are you so frightened?”

“Irene!” Madame Valenskaya said at last, looking around nervously, as if her daughter might suddenly appear in the room with them.

“You are saying that your daughter killed Lady Pamela?” Stephen asked skeptically.

“Yes! Yes! It had to be her. She—she’s—you don’t know her. She looks timid and retiring, but that is all an act. It is what she wants people to think, so they won’t see what’s really inside her. But she is powerful! It was all her idea—it always is. I am only an actress, you see. That is what I did all my life, and I made a living at it. But then Irene came up with this idea, you see—a way for us to make money. I used an accent. In America, I was French, and in France, I was Russian. And here, as well, I was Russian, as it worked so well. Irene pulled Mr. Babington into it, as well. She—she convinced him to join us, to let us use his house.”

“So you’re saying that it was Irina—Irene—who set up the tricks?” Olivia asked. “Painting the glove with phosphorescent paint? Hiding a music box about your person and turning it on?”

Madame Valenskaya gaped at her. “How did you know? Yes, she learned how to do all that and showed me. She and Howard rigged up some things in his ceiling, too, so that harps and such would hang from it, looking like they dropped from the sky. She was smart. But she always wanted something more. She would cast stones and lay out those cards.” She gave an outsize shudder. “It scared the devil out of me, I tell you, what I would hear coming from her room sometimes.”

“What do you mean? What did you hear?” Rafe asked.

“Voices...chanting...and once, in one of the upper rooms at Babington’s house, I saw this, this star sort of thing done in chalk on the floor. It fair gave me the shivers, I’ll tell you.”

“She was dabbling in the black arts?” Stephen asked.

Madame Valenskaya nodded her head emphatically. “And after that is when she came up with this idea. This thing about Blackhope.”

“Here?” Stephen looked surprised. “This house specifically?”

“Yes. She went on and on about it. She looked into everything about the estate and who lived here. She was happy as could be when Pamela came to town. She arranged it so she could meet her, but Lady Pamela wasn’t any too interested in the séances. She said she didn’t believe in that nonsense, you see. Irene was furious, only then Lady St. Leger arrived, and Irene learned how it was with her, how she mourned her son, the one who died—more than that Lady Pamela ever did, I’ll warrant you! So she cooked up this scheme to get Lady St. Leger. She got Lady Pamela involved in it, promised to give her some of the money, you know. So Lady Pamela told us all about things at the house and about her dead husband, so I could make Lady St. Leger think I was talking to him.”

“Very clever,” Stephen said sarcastically.

Madame Valenskaya paused and looked at him, seeing the contempt and anger on his face. She lifted her chin and said with some defiance, “We weren’t doing anything all that wrong! It made her ladyship happy to think she was talking with her Roddy, and that’s a fact.”

“And the fact that you were lying to her, playing on her grief to extract money from her, makes no difference, is that it?”