The Other Side of Midnight (3 page)

“My sister is—” The man at my gate stumbled over the words. “My sister was Gloria Sutter.”

My cigarette fell to the ground. “Gloria is missing?”

“Gloria is dead.”

My vision blurred, black circles overlapping black circles.

“She got herself murdered,” he said. “But before it happened, she left me a note. It said, ‘Tell Ellie Winter to find me.’
Now, what do you think that means?”

I couldn’t answer. I was lowering slowly to the paving stones in my garden, my knees giving way almost gracefully, the wineglass clinking to the ground and rolling away. George Sutter said something else, but I didn’t hear it. I had raised my arms and locked my hands behind my head, squeezing my arms over my ears, blocking out the world and everything in it. I closed my eyes and felt the cool silk of my dressing gown against my cheek, and I never wanted to get up and feel anything else again.

“I
suppose I made a hash of this,” said George Sutter as he stood awkwardly in my kitchen. “I didn’t foresee that it would upset you quite so much.”

I was seated at the table, where he’d ushered me to get us out of sight of the neighbors. I blinked my dry eyes and felt the world come slowly back into focus. “It was something of a shock,” I said.

“You seemed quite distressed.” He stayed standing, close to the door to the back garden, as if my emotion was contagious. And though his expression was as controlled as ever, I thought I saw a hint of disapproval. “I didn’t know you were friends.”

“We weren’t.”

He waited, but when I didn’t elaborate, he said, “You were in the same business, and I know how competitive Gloria was. You were rivals?”

I looked up at him. “I find lost things,” I said. “Gloria was a spirit medium, communicating with the dead from the other side.”

“Soldiers, yes,” he said.

“That is not the same business,” I told him firmly. “Not at all.”

He frowned. “If you say so. But you knew each other?”

“We were acquainted.” I felt in control enough now to force the words through my lips. “When did she die?”

“Last night.” He looked away, his lips thinning. “She was at one of her . . . sessions. A ghost hunt in a house.”

I shook my head. “Gloria didn’t do ghost hunts. She did
séances
. In the privacy of her own rooms. Are you saying she was on location?”

Now he looked confused. “She was at some sort of session, or so I was told.”

“At a private home? With a group of others?”

“Yes.”

I digested this. “And what happened?”

The misery I’d glimpsed in my sitting room came over his face again. “Someone stabbed her,” he said, his voice flat. “A single wound to the heart. Then he dumped her body in a nearby pond.”

I set my hands on the kitchen table, feeling the coolness of the wood on my palms. I took a shaky breath.

Sutter finally grasped the second kitchen chair, the one my mother had always sat in, and lowered himself onto it. “What about the note?” he asked me. “‘Tell Ellie Winter to find me.’ What does that mean?”

I looked at him for a long moment. “You don’t know much about what your sister did for a living, do you?”

He regarded me steadily back. “We weren’t close.”

“Gloria told me her family disowned her,” I said. “After her other brothers died in the war.”

His control had returned, and now I could tell he was choosing his words carefully. “There were three others, yes.”

That explained the shadow I’d seen over the little boy with the soldiers. Three brothers, all of them dead in the mud of France. Gloria had almost never spoken of it. “You two were the only ones left, and you weren’t speaking.”

He showed no flicker of emotion. “My parents disowned Gloria when she took up her . . . profession during the war. Taking money from people and pretending to talk to their loved ones. It was ghoulish—she made a living from grief. It cut my parents to the bone. After our brothers died, it was too much for them to forgive.” His tone implied he agreed with this wholeheartedly. “And, of course, she simply had to be so . . .
showy.
Going to wild parties with her lovers, getting her photograph in the papers. It was shameless. She never cared about the rest of the family, never cared about anything but herself. She never once asked our family for forgiveness. Having a good time was the only thing that mattered.”

Perhaps he was right. I never did any of those kinds of things, of course. Not anymore. Not ever again.

George continued. “Last year our mother died, and our father is now in a hospital for the elderly. Age has taken his faculties. Neither one of them had spoken to Gloria in years.”

I didn’t give him the usual expression of sympathy; something told me it wouldn’t be welcomed. “So now she’s dead,” I said, “and you’re all that’s left.”

“In any meaningful sense, yes.” His gaze rested sharply on me. “But you didn’t answer my question. What does the note mean?”

I took a breath. “Finding people is what Gloria did,” I said. “It is the term she used. You’d go to her to
find
your husband,
find
your son.”

He looked at me in disbelief. “Among the dead,” he said. “Find them on the other side.”

“Yes. Those who died in the war were her specialty.”

“Specialty.”

“It takes effort,” I explained. “The exact soul you’re looking for may not be there, may not hear you calling. It may be wandering lost. In that case, Gloria would find it. And then she’d communicate with it.”

“And you believe all of this?”

“Gloria,” I said carefully, “had a great many satisfied customers.”

George grunted. “And can you . . . do this thing? Can you
find
her?”

I felt a brief note of panic as I thought of the sign next to my front door. “Mr. Sutter, I told you. That is not what I do.”

“And yet she seemed to think you could do it.”

I rubbed my eyes, suddenly more exhausted than I could ever remember being. That wasn’t who I was anymore. I had decided on that years ago, and if I hadn’t exactly been happy since, at least my life had been quiet and peaceful. “Mr. Sutter, I’m very sorry for your loss, but your family disowned Gloria. You think she was a fraud of the worst kind. I’m not certain exactly what you want from me, and, frankly, I don’t even know if I want to help you at all.”

He seemed to think this over. He leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest, and regarded me. “Gloria and I had not spoken in seven years,” he said. “I have a town house here in London, but it is under renovation, so I have been staying at a hotel. The hotel is called the King Richard. It is not the fanciest hotel in London, nor is it the lowest. It’s modest and it’s near where I need to be for work, which is why I chose it.”

I raised my eyebrows and stared at him, waiting for him to continue.

“Gloria knew nothing of this, of course,” he said. “And yet last night, when I arrived at my hotel after supper at my club, I found that note I speak of. It had been left for me at the front desk. Gloria’s note. I’m a careful man, Miss Winter, and I’ve examined the note thoroughly. It is most definitely in her handwriting. The clerk at the front desk described her in every detail—Gloria was rather unforgettable, as you know. There is no chance of fraud in this case. Gloria knew where I was. She could have left a note for you directly, but she didn’t. She left it for me, communicating with me for the first time in seven years. And six hours after she left that note, she was dead.”

“And what of the people who were with her last night?” I said. “What of the police?”

“Scotland Yard is involved, yes. They have interviewed the people who were with her—low characters, all of them. A murder weapon has not been found, and an arrest has not been made. They claim they have no cause for an arrest as of yet.”

“Then you should let them do their jobs.”

“Gloria wanted
you
involved.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. Everything was closing in on me. “No.”

“I believe you’ll find me a very persistent man, Miss Winter. And I have some connections in law and government that you may find unpleasant to deal with.”

“What does that mean? What connections?”

“My meaning is clear enough, I think.” He regarded me impassively. I wondered who he worked for, where he’d collected such power. I’d never broken a law in my life, but a pulse of unease went down my back. I didn’t want complications; I wanted simplicity. Something told me that no matter what I did, I wasn’t going to get my wish.

“Why did you come here?” I was almost trembling with a sudden spurt of anger. “Why did you pretend to be Mr. Baker? What did you think you would accomplish?”

He uncrossed his arms, frowning. “I had never heard of you before I received the note, of course.” The “of course” was dismissive, as if it were ridiculous to think a man so important could have heard of me. “I checked into who you were and discovered that you are some kind of psychic. I assumed you were a fraud, as most psychics are. Before I involved you in my sister’s case, I wanted to meet you for myself.”

“And I just had to go and prove myself to you, didn’t I?” I said bitterly. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Sutter, but I will not help you. I do not find people on the other side. I do not speak to the dead. I won’t do it for you, or for Gloria, or for anyone.” I pushed back my chair and stood. “It’s late. Please leave.”

He sighed, as if my continued denial was a wearisome chore. “Miss Winter—”

“You may not have a reputation to protect, but I do,” I said. “I can’t have a man in my home this late. The neighbors only barely tolerate me as it is.”

He looked surprised. “I have a wife and children, Miss Winter. You have nothing to fear from me.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Despite my agitation, I tried to picture this man, so perfectly contained, siring children on any woman. I failed. “I only keep what reputation I have with great care. And so I am again asking you to leave.”

He remained in his chair, looking up at me. “I have no wish to compromise you. I will leave on one condition.”

“And what is that?”

“That you meet me tomorrow, after you’ve had the night to rest and think. I’ll be in Trafalgar Square at ten o’clock. Surely there can be no impropriety in public at that hour.”

I should have said no. I should have stayed firm. But I wavered. Perhaps it was because I wanted him to leave. Perhaps it wasn’t.

“Miss Winter?” he said again, as inexorable as a schoolteacher.

I swallowed and nodded. His expression relaxed, almost imperceptibly, and he nodded in return.

“Good night, then.”

I closed my eyes as the garden door shut behind him. Under my eyelids, black circles overlapped black circles again. It was a vortex, pulling, pulling. Gloria’s vortex.

Tell Ellie Winter to find me.

Alone in my kitchen, I put my head in my hands.

I
t was in the newspapers the next morning, of course. I read the headlines in the newsstands as I made my way to the tube to meet George Sutter, unable to stop myself from pausing.
NOTORIOUS “PSYCHIC MEDIU
M” FOUND DEAD,
read one. And on another:
SPIRIT
MEDIUM MURDERED DUR
ING SCANDALOUS SÉANC
E.
Gloria had been a favorite of the popular press, and everyone from the
Mirror
to the
Daily Mail
had splashed her death somewhere on the front page, complete with pictures and insinuations of outré behavior. The more staid and conservative
Times
stayed out of the muck, carrying headlines about a factory bombing in Manchester.
TWO DEAD, BO
MBER UNKNOWN,
it read.
NO OFF
ICIAL RESPONSIBILITY
HAS BEEN CLAIMED.
The
Times
had never been the paper for scandals.

The photo of Gloria most often printed was a studio portrait that looked to be recently done: Gloria in a bold-print wrap dress that accentuated her flawless narrow frame, her black hair bobbed and marcelled, curling almost sensuously over one ear. Her chin was
tilted, her dark-painted lips set in a mischievous smile, her big dark eyes rendered black in cheap ink. She looked like the hoyden she was, rebellious and full of glamour. I found myself mildly surprised she’d sat for a studio portrait at all; Gloria did not like to sit still, even for short periods.

Still, I bought three papers and read them as I sat on the train. The stories were full of the usual misinformation and shaded truths that always cropped up in stories about Gloria: lovers she’d never actually had, parties never attended, rumors of everyone from the Church to royalty on her client list. All Gloria had to do was appear in public, innocently standing next to this person or that, and suddenly she was written into legend as either the man’s lover or his pet psychic. “My God,” she’d said to me once, when I’d shown her an article linking her to the Earl of Craven. “I think not. His breath was positively
rotten.
”

As for the murder, the papers knew precious little. She’d been working for a “private party” at an “undisclosed home” in the Kent countryside when she’d been killed. One paper called the session a ghost hunt; another called it a séance. Scotland Yard had questioned all of the parties involved but had made no arrests. The other people in attendance that night were not named.

Two of the three articles mentioned the now notorious report by the New Society for the Furtherance of Psychical Research, uncovered by the
Mail
two months earlier, concluding that Gloria was the only true spirit medium they had ever investigated. The articles aimed derision at both the report and the Society itself, “an unusual group of so-called scientists and untrustworthy researchers, mixed in with wealthy eccentrics and curious artistic types, claiming to be on a quest for the truth about the supernatural.” I felt my jaw harden. I had my own reasons for disliking the New Society, but the press’s—and the public’s—attitude toward it was not new. It was easier for the average factory foreman or bank clerk to dismiss the New Society as fools than to face the possible alternative.

Not one article wondered what ghost Gloria had been seeking, or whether she had found it, or what it had said to her if she had. No one questioned why she was at a private home in the first place, something she had never done before.

Reporters, I thought, only ever wrote about the inconsequential details and never about the important things.

I threw down the newspapers in frustration as the train came to my stop, leaving them there for someone else to read.

In Trafalgar Square, I found a bench and sat with my hands in my lap, waiting. It was a crisp, warm September morning, the dome of St. Paul’s looming bright against the cloudless blue sky, Nelson atop his column peering over all our heads into the distance. On the pedestal at the base could still be seen the marks of the victory bonfire that had burned there during the Armistice celebrations—several days of wild madness in the streets, or so I had read. I had stayed home on my mother’s orders, staring at the walls and wondering madly what was going on.

I had deliberately dressed in deadly navy blue today, a suit of wool serge trimmed with silk braid, the hem just long enough, my heels just high enough. I had topped it with a felt cloche hat sporting a satin flower. I was a shopgirl, or a secretary who came to the City every morning and made awful tea in an electric kettle as she typed letters all day. Only my bright blond hair—natural, as it happened, though most people assumed I dosed it with platinum—gave away that I wasn’t exactly a normal girl, but there was nothing I could do about it except bob it short and tuck it under my hat.

“Miss Winter.”

I turned on my bench to address the voice behind me. “Mr. Sutter. You are almost late.”

He gave me a look that said lateness was not in his repertoire. “It is ten o’clock exactly.” He took a seat on the bench next to me, though he kept a respectable distance. He wore a dark three-piece suit much
like the one he’d worn the night before. I pictured an entire wardrobe of similar suits, all kept cleaned and pressed by the mother of his children. “I take it you’ve thought further about our conversation last night?” he said to me now.

I looked away and idly watched a street performer, a man with a windup organ that played an out-of-key tune as the man made a marionette dance on its strings. “I don’t understand exactly what it is you want me to do.”

“Perhaps,” George Sutter said, “I wasn’t being clear.”

The street performer put down his marionette and wound his music player again. “I read the papers,” I said. “It seems that Scotland Yard is on the case.”

I heard him sigh. “Miss Winter, what I am about to tell you is in confidence.”

I turned and looked at him. His expression gave nothing away, as usual. He seemed to have regained his balance after the night before; here, in daylight in London’s center of power, he was back in control. “Go on,” I said. “I deal in confidences for a living.”

“I have seen the coroner’s report,” he said. “It was released to the Yard this morning. It states that Gloria was hit in the face. Once, very hard, while she was still alive. Then a knife was inserted into her chest. She was stabbed, yes, but that word isn’t quite accurate. What was done to Gloria was done slowly, precisely, and without passion. She had no defensive wounds on her hands. There is no bruising around the wound, as of a man punching the blade with force. The knife was inserted between her ribs and into the cavity of the heart, causing the heart to cease almost immediately. Death, the coroner states, would have come in seconds.”

I looked down at my lap.

“So he hit her first,” George said. “Once, hard enough to stun her. Then he put a knife into her and stopped her heart. Then he carried her body to the pond and dumped her in. She had told the others
she wanted some air, and she was not immediately missed. Because the body was hidden in the pond, it was some time before she was discovered and anyone knew a murder had occurred.”

I frowned. How could he know all of this?

He continued talking. “Scotland Yard has interviewed all of the people present that night, of course. You may have noticed that none of them are named in the papers. Most of the people in attendance were inconsequential; however, one of them was from a good family who wishes to keep things quiet. Suspicion falls on all of them, but the house was not exactly isolated. There are neighboring homes twenty minutes’ walk in two directions, and the property backs onto woods in which there are well-trodden paths. The pond itself is in easy reach of at least two of those paths. A stranger or neighbor could have done this just as easily as one of the inner group—more easily, in fact, as the people inside the house are now alibis for one another.”

“They could be covering for someone,” I said, my words almost automatic. I had a suspicion about who the person “from a good family” was.

“I thought so as well,” George replied, “but the Scotland Yard reports indicate that this was not a group of loyal friends. Far from it, in fact. They seem to have been a random group of pleasure seekers.”

“The Scotland Yard reports?” I asked. “Gloria was murdered just over a day ago, and the papers say nothing. How have you seen the reports?”

“That’s none of your concern,” he said, turning away and looking out over the traffic passing in the square.

I tried to follow his gaze, taking a closer look around me. The spires of the Houses of Parliament were visible not very far away; Scotland Yard itself, though it couldn’t be seen, was not far, either. Any number of government buildings, including Buckingham Palace, was within easy distance. My companion had approached me from behind, and I hadn’t seen which direction he’d come from.

“Mr. Sutter, what exactly do you do for a living?”

He shook his head. “That is also not your concern, Miss Winter. Be assured my sources of information are valid. What I’m telling you is the truth. May I continue?”

I trained my gaze on a man sitting on another bench in the square, reading a newspaper propped in front of his face.
MURDER!
the headline shouted.
NOTORIOUS PSYCHIC S
TABBED TO DEATH AT S
ÉANCE.
And underneath it:
WHO KILLED GL
ORIA SUTTER?

“Continue,” I said.

“I’ll put it bluntly. We may have been estranged, Miss Winter, but someone brutally killed my sister and dumped her body. I have no faith that Scotland Yard can solve this crime. There are too many possibilities.”

“They’ve barely begun investigating,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter. I have no faith, Miss Winter. None at all. This is not unusual for me. Even in the smallest things, I never have faith that anything competent can be done unless I’m in charge. And this is, to me, very far from a small thing. They have not even found a murder weapon. I will not go home and wait for the official investigators to bungle this up. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said. I did. To my left, I vaguely heard the marionette man playing his music again. The man reading the newspaper turned a page.

“I considered hiring an investigator, but the note Gloria left me made it simple. I came to see you instead, and you impressed me. You are not a con artist as I suspected. You are honest. You are, in fact, the ideal candidate. You knew Gloria. You can talk to her friends, her associates without suspicion. You can move in her world in a way that no one else can—especially me. And you specialize in finding lost things.”

“I don’t talk to the dead,” I said, panic in my throat.

“Perhaps you don’t, though I’m well aware that your mother did.” He caught the look I gave him. “It’s hardly private record, and I told you I researched you. Perhaps you’re correct and Gloria’s note
was wrong. But you have a talent, a sensitivity. I may not understand it, but I don’t have to in order to make use of it.
You
are my investigator, Miss Winter.
You
will find who killed her for me.”

I leaned my head back, looked up at the sky. The usual London gloom had vanished, and I looked into a vista of cerulean blue punctuated by far-off clouds. The usual protests bubbled up in me: I wasn’t trained as an investigator; it wasn’t my profession; I would have no idea what I was doing; I already had a job. “I don’t work for you,” I told him, still staring up at the sky. “I have no access to coroner’s reports or papers from Scotland Yard.”

“You’ll have what you need,” he said.

Of course. I rubbed my nose, unladylike. “Did your research tell you that we were enemies, Gloria and I? Did it tell you what she did to my family? That I hadn’t spoken to her in three years?”

“If that mattered, Miss Winter, you wouldn’t be sitting here now.”

I hated her. Or I had, at one point. But I thought about that knife, the cold dispassion of it. Someone had slipped it between her ribs and stopped her heart as easily as if they’d put a key in a lock. Someone who hadn’t even cared enough to hate her.

Still I kept my head tilted back and I stared at the sky. It was beautiful, and endless, and uncaringly cold. Mysterious in its way. All the mysteries of the universe were just above us, if only we would look up. And yet we never did.

“Miss Winter?” George said. If he thought it strange that I sat on a bench in Trafalgar Square staring at the sky, he made no comment.

“The papers,” I said at last. “Scotland Yard. No one is asking the right questions. No one.”

He sounded almost relieved. “How many of your appointments did you cancel today?”

I finally lowered my gaze, righted my head, and looked at him. “All of them.”

He nodded, and his eyes gleamed, whether from satisfaction or excitement I could not tell. “Exactly,” he said.