The Clairvoyant Curse (29 page)

Conscious that time slipping
away from her, she had only half a day and one night left to find
the killer and save Dr Watson from a sojourn in a French prison.
The Countess had begun to dress herself when Xenia returned and
took over the task in her usual motherly manner.

“Fedir say no darts in cabin,”
she said in broken English, fastening the looped buttons that ran
down the entire length of the back of the dress from the slender
curve of the neck to the wider curve of the female derriere. “He no
take darts to Dr Watson.”

“Is he sure?”

“Sure he sure,” said Xenia
grumpily, rising to her brother’s defence. “He play game with Dr
Watson yesterday. Dr Watson have blue darts. Fedir have red. Darts
go in box for darts when game of darts is finish.”

“Dr Watson had the blue
darts?”

“Blue darts for Dr Watson,”
repeated Xenia as if her mistress was suddenly hard of hearing.
“Red darts for Fedir.”

The Countess straightened her
shoulders and appeared to grow a couple of inches in stature,
putting the buttons and loops through their paces. Her voice
likewise lifted, the softer chords heightened by the urgency of the
higher octaves. “I want you to tell Fedir to go at once to the
cabin of Dr Watson and search for the blue darts. He should check
the pockets of the tweed jacket first and then the brown wool
herringbone coat second and then look everywhere else. When you
finish looping the last button go. I can put on my own shoes and
tidy my own hair.”

The Countess was fairly certain
she had just solved the mystery of the unknown murder weapon – but
where did the blue darts disappear to?

Before she did anything else
she had to send a wireless message to Constable MacTavish in
Glasgow. She needed to inform him that Madame Moghra was dead and
that the death was suspicious. She needed to make it crystal clear
that Dr Watson was likely to be charged with the murder once they
reached Biarritz. It was also imperative to find out just what the
constable had discovered pertaining to the death of Sissy. Did he
really know who the murderer was? And why had he not attached the
name of the murderer to his message?

Storm clouds were building and
little squalls of rain blew in and out all afternoon but the ship
was still steaming ahead, making good time…unfortunately.

The Countess by-passed the
wheelhouse and raced directly to the telegraphic room. The same
seaman who had delivered the message the previous evening and spoke
no English was on duty; his eyes were closed and he was dozing in
his chair. She slammed the door and watched him jump.

“I need to send a message to
Glasgow,” she announced in French, shaking him out of his
lethargy.

“I’m afraid that’s not
possible,” replied the seaman respectfully in his native tongue,
leaping to his feet upon recognizing the foreign Countess as a rare
member of her sex who showed an interest in electronic devices and
seemed to know what she was talking about. “The storm has affected
the machine. There are no messages coming through and none can go
out neither. The electronic signal is being affected by the high
winds and the squally rain.”

“When was the last message able
to be sent?”

“It was just after midnight. It
was telegraphed to Plymouth and then forwarded on to Biarritz. We
were receiving a return message when the wireless went dead. There
has been nothing since. I have not left my post since midnight and
nothing has come through. I don’t expect anything until the worst
of the storm has passed over us. By then we will be three-quarters
of the way across the Channel.”

“Will you alert me at once when
the wireless is up and running again?”

He gestured a half salute.

She thrust a five pound note
into his hand and he shifted uneasily.

“That is not necessary,
la
comtesse
.”

“Necessary or not – let me know
at once.”

She leaned into the blustery
wind as she fought her way along the deck, sea-spray slapping her
in the face until she reached the heavy steel door leading down to
the public rooms. Mr Ffrench was propping up the bar, Miss
Morningstar was learning about I-Ching from Dr Hu, Mrs Merle was in
the grand saloon with her varicose veins supported by an ottoman
and her eyes half-closed, and Madame Sosostras was reading a book
in the library. It was Monsieur Croquemort the Countess wanted to
speak to and she soon tracked him down.

“I was wondering when you were
going to get around to me,” he said with disarming candour, the
French accent adding a husky vibration to the mellifluous tone that
almost, almost, lulled her into softening her stance.

Looking immaculate and
debonair, he was wearing a purple velvet smoking jacket and rather
appropriately lounging in the smoking room with its tobacco
coloured walls and wide leather armchairs, soaking up its gently
dark, smoky intimacy while puffing on a fat cigar, giving the
impression of a man of the world rather than a man whose world has
just crashed.

“Light up one for me?” She
arranged herself with
soigne
elegance in an adjoining
armchair and flung off her cashmere shawl.

“Cuban or Mexican?”

“A corona gordia if you can
find one in the humidor.”

“You’re in luck.” He lighted it
and transferred it into her waiting hand.

She inhaled and blew some
bluish bracelets into the cigar-scented air. “You have the best
motive of all for killing Madame Moghra.”

“Is that a question?”

“An observation.”

“Then here is my response to
your observation: I was furious when she announced she was retiring
to Monte Carlo! Just like that! I built her up! I made her famous!
I created her! I begged her to reconsider! She laughed in my face!
I wanted to kill her then and there!”

“When did she announce to you
that she was retiring?” she asked calmly, wondering how much time
he might have had for planning a murder, and whether he had roped
the others in to helping him.

“It was just prior to dinner.
We’d all had a turn at having our palms read by Madame Sosostras in
the library and were going back to our cabins to dress for dinner.
She whispered for me to come to her cabin. As I said earlier at
lunch I thought she’d been behaving strangely all day but I didn’t
explain why I thought that. I thought she wanted to speak to me
about the Chinaman. It was as if she was frightened of him.
Whenever he came near her she moved away. I thought at first I was
imagining it but it happened every time he got close. She was
keeping a measured distance. But when I went to her room it had
nothing to do with the Chinaman. She told me she was leaving the
troupe. I could have struck her down with my fist.”

“But you didn’t?”

He puffed furiously on his
cigar, sending curls of smoke up to the coffered ceiling. The hand
resting by the side of his body was bunched so tightly the knuckles
were coming up white. “No, I stormed off instead. I took a turn of
the deck while I gathered my thoughts and salvaged my pride. I
bumped into Blackadder and told him the news. He was just as angry
as I was and went straight to her cabin to confront her with it. I
caught up with him a few minutes later and he was even angrier
because she’d told him in her usual blunt manner that she was
trading him in for a more virile lover.”

“So the two of you could have
plotted her death together?”

“Yes,” he admitted with barely
restrained rage, “and as soon as you tell me how she died I can
mount my defence. I cannot speak for Blackadder, or even Crispin,
but she didn’t die by
my
hand – more’s the pity.”

“It may simply have been a
heart attack,” she suggested mildly, backtracking, sending a plume
of smoke into the clouds.

He gave a dismissive,
disbelieving, scornful laugh. “You are speaking to a conjuror,
Countess. I can see through an attempt at a sleight-of-hand with my
eyes closed. Madame Moghra didn’t have a heart!”

“A conjuror and a mesmerist,”
she commented airily, drawing him out.

He gave a modest nod.

“And a hypnotist?”

“Another astute observation?
Yes, I have hypnotized dozens of credulous fools but it’s not
something I do on stage. Too many things can go wrong.”

“Do your subjects always have
to be credulous and foolish?”

He puffed dramatically and
shrugged melodramatically. “It helps.”

“What sorts of things can go
wrong?”

“The subjects don’t always come
out of the trance when you want them too. Sometimes they stay
hypnotized much longer than is good for them. They behave queerly
in ways you don’t expect.”

“How do you mean?”

“I think they allow their own
subconscious to take over and direct their actions in ways they
wouldn’t if they were fully awake. Why are you suddenly interested
in hypnotism?”

She decided to be brutally
honest since time was of the essence. “I was wondering if you
hypnotized Dr Watson.”

“To kill Madame Moghra?”

“Yes.”

He threw back his head and
laughed richly. “I wish I had thought of it! What a scheme! Is your
travelling companion such a credulous fool as that!”

“Dr Watson wished Madame Moghra
dead as much as anyone.”

“That’s true, he didn’t hide
his hate like some of the others, and that would have made him a
more willing subject, gullible of mind, ready to do my bidding
since it coincided with his own subconscious desire to kill her.
Congratulations, Countess! If only you could prove it!”

She tried not to wince and
almost bit off the end of her cigar when she clenched her teeth.
“Whose idea was it for you to attend the World Spiritualist
Congress in Biarritz?”

“It was Madame Moghra’s idea
and I see now why she was so keen to go to France prior to visiting
America.”

“A short train ride from a
villa in Monte Carlo?”

“Yes,” he hissed malevolently,
“and she might pick up a few clients along the way.”

“But it was you who arranged
this passage on the SS Pleiades?”

“Yes, but it was initially her
idea. She read about it in the newspaper. I contacted the captain
of the vessel, Jacques Lanfranc, a fellow Frenchman, and suggested
that it might be in his best interests to take a small group of
passengers from Glasgow to Biarritz to put the crew through their
paces before the ship went into official service. He contacted the
shipping company and they agreed. We stayed on in York for an extra
week of shows so that our final performance would coincide with the
voyage of the SS Pleiades. Otherwise we would have departed earlier
and travelled by train to Southampton and then taken the ferry
across the Channel and then again the train to Biarritz. It worked
out well for all concerned – or so I thought.”

“I was under the impression
Captain Lanfranc was a
copain
of yours?”

“I don’t know who gave you that
impression. We are both from the south of France, he from
Marseilles, me from Toulon, but we met for the first time in
Glasgow. The south of France is large. One cannot meet everyone. I
am a magician, he is a mariner – I can assure you our paths have
never crossed.”

The hypnotic effect of his
voice and the mesmerising effect of his magnetic eyes was powerful
but they were nothing compared to the dark power of his personality
which was slowly but surely conspiring to evoke in the Countess a
feeling of feminine sympathy, to believe every word he said. She
had to break the charismatic spell.

“Tell me about the time that
Antoinette was killed.”

He blinked and the magic spell
was broken.

She breathed a sigh of relief
and inhaled deeply.

He smoked moodily for several
long moments, battling to contain his anger and the wretchedness
that came with remembering the tragedy in all its gory detail.

“We had done the guillotine act
several dozen times. It was foolproof. There was nothing that could
go wrong unless someone removed the key for the blade mechanism at
the last moment. It couldn’t be put in earlier because the audience
had to see the real blade come down. I demonstrated its sharpness
with a cabbage or cauliflower to whet their appetites. Madame
Moghra, dressed as Antoinette’s aristocratic lover, pranced
manfully around the stage waving a sword, I did likewise, when I
performed a flourish with my scarlet and black cape, creating a
diversion and covering for her, she slipped the key into place. She
never failed. Until that fateful time when someone in the audience
called out:
Vive la France
! Down with the English! A violent
brawl erupted, punches were thrown, chairs were smashed. The
curtain was coming down when everyone suddenly calmed down and I
decided to continue with the show. It was a large theatre. Several
ouvriers
had leapt onto the stage to protect the props, the
scenery and to stop any hot-headed charge in its tracks. Madame
Moghra claims she put the key in place and that someone removed it.
The key was never found. Elodie died.”

“Elodie? You just said
Elodie?”

“Elodie was her real name. Her
stage name was Antoinette.”

The Countess’s heart was
beating so fast she felt the extra blood rush to her face. The
spirit writing must have been an attempt to spell out the name:
Elodie. But why was the planchette spelling the name of the dead
girl? Did Madame Moghra do it deliberately or was it an unconscious
act, perhaps a guilty conscience? If so, the suggestion of suicide
was looking more likely, and yet, the small hole in the top of her
head could not be ignored. No one in their right mind would stab
themselves with a dart!

The facts! The facts!
Everything had to fit the facts. She could not ignore the facts
that didn’t suit in the hope of closing a case for convenience
sake, even when Dr Watson’s life depended on it. That was wishful
thinking at its worst.