Things Half in Shadow (30 page)

“Yes,” he said quietly. “Or to the attention of the police.”

“And you think these threats came from the man you found speaking with your wife?”

“Clergyman or not,” Mr. Pastor replied, “he looked like someone capable of doing harm. His face was horrifying.”

“How so?”

A bud of unease formed in my chest, slowly blooming as Mr. Pastor described a man who had pale skin (“As white as chalk”) and dark, cold eyes. The nervous bloom got worse when he told me how thin and angular the stranger's face was. By the time he got to the man's missing nose, which marred the center of his face like two bullet holes, the fear had blossomed fully, and I found myself trembling from the top of my head to the toes of my feet.

If I had closed my eyes, I could have seen his terrifying visage staring at me in the reflection of a shop window. His black eyes. His sneering mouth. His nose that was nothing more than two dark wells burrowing into the pale surface of his skin.

But I didn't close my eyes. Fearful of remembering that horrid face, I kept them open as I said, “I, too, have seen that man. I saw him this past Sunday morning. He seemed to be
following
me.”

“Perhaps he knew you had attended my wife's final séance.”

About that, I now had no doubt. The main question was
how
he knew I had been there. Yes, my name was on a widely read article about her death, but it was doubtful a stranger could pick me out of a crowd just from that alone. Besides, my encounter with the noseless man occurred before my words had been put to print.

“Let's say this man did indeed threaten your wife,” I said. “Even if he had, he certainly didn't kill her. He wasn't at the séance.”

“I have a theory about that,” Mr. Pastor replied. “One I've told the police about, as well.”

I leaned forward, eager to learn more. “Which is?”

“That this pale man was only working for someone,” he said. “Someone who really
was
at the séance. Someone who then killed my dear Lenora.”

“That doesn't leave too many suspects,” I replied. “And it's doubtful any of us had a deformed henchman working for us.”

“I can think of one person who might employ such a man.”

Robert Pastor didn't need to say anything more. I knew he was referring to the one man at the séance known for hiring, and even exploiting, such people. The one man whose very name summoned up images of the freakish and the bizarre.

“Of course,” I said, angry with myself for not thinking of it sooner. “P. T. Barnum.”

In theory, it made perfect sense. It wasn't hard to imagine P. T. Barnum employing someone as strange as the noseless man. Nor
was it too difficult to think Mr. Barnum would send such a malformed person to perform bits of dirty work, such as intimidating a medium. Since Barnum was present at the séance, it wasn't much of a leap to conclude that he was the one who had poisoned Lenora Grimes Pastor.

Yet two things cast doubt on Mr. Pastor's theory. The first was P.T. Barnum himself. Despite being known for unrivaled braggadocio and the uncanny ability to understand what entertained the common masses, he was, by all accounts, a devoted husband, a generous philanthropist, and a staunch abolitionist. In other words, not the type of man you'd think capable of murder.

The second seed of doubt was due to Mr. Barnum's location at the moment of Mrs. Pastor's death. Occupied at the time with putting out the fire on the floor, I hadn't kept track of his whereabouts. Yet someone else had. Before I dismissed Mr. Pastor's suspicions entirely, I needed to speak with that person.

And, despite Barclay's warning to steer clear of her, that meant another visit to the home of Lucy Collins.

I
found Lucy in the room where she conducted her bogus séances. It looked the same as the last time I'd seen it—dim, sparsely decorated, a round table in the center, and a fraudulent spirit cabinet along the wall.

The only difference was that, instead of bells under glass, the table now held several musical instruments. I saw a small drum, a wooden flute, a pair of circular objects that resembled wooden clamshells and, in Lucy's hands, a bugle. A string, one end wound tight around the bugle's mouthpiece, stretched into the ceiling.

“Stealing a few ideas from Mrs. Pastor?”

“She doesn't need them anymore,” Lucy said. “But once my name is cleared and customers return, I will.”

“Or you could find a more honest profession,” I replied. “Armed robbery, perhaps. At least then your victims know they're being swindled.”

“The last thing I need from you, Edward, is another lecture.” Lucy set the bugle on the table, bell side down, and turned to the spirit cabinet. “Try it now, Thomas.”

The bugle rose into the air and hung limply a few feet off the table's surface. Instead of inspiring astonishment and awe, as the floating instruments at Mrs. Pastor's séance had done, this looked exactly like what it was—a horn on a string.

“Hmm. It's not very convincing, is it?” Lucy conceded.

“Not at all,” I said.

Lucy stood beside me, scratching her head. “What do you think we should do?”

“
We
?” I said, my eyes bulging at her use of the word. “There is no
we
, at least not involving this trickery of yours.”

Sighing, Lucy crossed her arms and said, “Would you like to know what's absolutely maddening about you, Edward?”

“Not particularly.”

“It's that you can be so judgmental. We both know you're skilled with illusions. It's in your blood. Just this once, I would appreciate it if you set your disapproval aside to help a friend in need.”

“I'd hardly call us friends,” I told her, chuckling. “As for need, I know you're not lacking money.”

“Sometimes,” Lucy said as she moved to the table, “it takes all the self-restraint I can muster to keep from slapping you.”

“It pains me to say that the feeling is mutual.”

“Well, then,” Lucy replied, “we can either take turns flailing at each other like children or you can help me. Just this once.”

Reluctantly, I joined her at the table, grabbed the dangling bugle, and untied the string from its mouthpiece.

“You're going to need a thinner string,” I said. “What you have now is too visible, even when in dim light. Also, it needs more life and motion. Something to make it look as if a real spirit is carrying it.”

I set about retying the string around the bugle's center. When that was finished, I went to the cabinet and found Thomas crouched in his usual corner, the other end of the string in his hand. Above his head, a circle had been cut into the top of the cabinet. Beyond that was another hole in the ceiling, in which a pulley had been placed. There was, no doubt, another pulley located in the ceiling just above the table.

“You have to raise it slowly,” I told the boy. “Don't be afraid to take your time with it. And don't hold the string so tight. It's not a kite. It won't fly away.”

Thomas glared at me. “Why should I listen to you, you pile of manure?”

I looked away from the cabinet to address Lucy. “Must your brother always talk this way? And why doesn't he go to school?”

“Thomas talks the way he likes,” Lucy replied with a detached shrug. “I've long ago given up trying to censor him. As for school, I tried to send him, but he kept running away.”

“School is for girls and pantywaists,” Thomas grumbled from inside the cabinet. “I got enough learnin'.”

“Learn
ing
,” I corrected him before turning back to Lucy. “Will you at least tell him to do as he's told?”

“Thomas,” Lucy called to her brother, “do what Mr. Clark told you to.”

“Why?”

“Because
I
told you to, as well.”

“Fine,” Thomas said before mumbling a series of words so profane I'm sure they would have caused hardened sailors to blush.

I returned to the table, where we gave it another go. This time, it worked beautifully. Thomas raised the bugle ever so slowly, giving
the impression that it was being lifted by a pair of tentative, invisible hands. With the string tied at the bugle's midsection, both ends battled for dominance, making the instrument seesaw back and forth.

Lucy clapped her hands and exclaimed, “It's wonderful, Edward! You're a genius!”

“I wouldn't say that,” I replied. “But perhaps a little of my father's skills rubbed off on me.”

“Then you must help us with the others,” Lucy said.

Apparently three more lengths of string were located just inside the ceiling. I was instructed to climb onto the table, retrieve the strings and work my magic on the other instruments in the room. Since I had already learned not to say no to Lucy Collins, I did as I was told.

“You know, I came here to do more than help you trick your customers,” I said as I scaled first a chair, then the table. “I have information about Mrs. Pastor.”

“Good news, I hope,” Lucy said.

While I uneasily fished the strings out of the ceiling, I recalled not only my encounter with the noseless man on Sunday morning but my conversation with Mr. Pastor.

“He thinks this man without a nose was working for Mr. Barnum,” I said, pulling the strings lower until they skimmed the tabletop. “Which makes Mr. Pastor think Barnum is the one who killed his wife.”

Lucy set about knotting the strings around the other instruments. “Interesting, to be sure. But what does this have to do with me?”

“You were with Mr. Barnum at the end of the séance,” I said as I hopped down from the table. “Did he leave your presence at any time between then and our discovery that Lenora Grimes Pastor was dead?”

“No,” Lucy answered. “He was injured from that falling violin. I had a handkerchief to his head the entire time to stop his bleeding. I never left his side.”

That was all the confirmation I needed to determine that Barnum was
not
Mrs. Pastor's murderer. I was certain her killer was the darkened figure who had approached her while I put out the fire. Since Barnum had an alibi, that left only four possible suspects: Mr. Pastor, Mrs. Mueller, and the Duttons.

“That doesn't mean Mr. Barnum is entirely innocent,” Lucy said. “I'm intrigued by this noseless man you described.”

Finished with tying string to the drum and the flute, she moved on to the small items that resembled wooden clamshells. There were two pairs of them, each attached to one another with twine.

“What are those?”

“Castanets,” Lucy said, holding a pair between her thumb and fingers and clicking them together. “They were a gift from a Spaniard who was trying to woo me a few years back.”

“Was he successful?” I asked.

“It takes more than castanets to win the heart of Lucy Collins.”

“What
does
it take, I wonder?” I said.

Lucy hesitated not a second before giving her response. “Money.”

“Such an obvious answer,” I said, shaking my head in mock disappointment. “I was hoping for something unexpected from you.”

“An unexpected answer, you say?”

“Yes. Surprise me.”

This time, Lucy gave it quite a bit of thought, standing for almost a minute with an index finger pressed to her lips.

“Acceptance,” she eventually said. “Of who I am. Of
what
I am. And of what I want out of life. Did
that
surprise you?”

Indeed, it did. Only her answer, sincere though it might have been, wasn't the most surprising part. What truly took me off guard
was
how
she responded—straightforward, sincerely, and without an iota of affectation. It was the first time her facade had cracked wide enough for me to glimpse the real person hidden behind it. I rather liked what I saw.

“In spades,” I replied. “I can see how castanets wouldn't do the trick. Then or now.”

“Now?”
Lucy said, back to her old self again.

“Sorry to say, they'll never work properly for what you have in mind,” I replied. “Replace them with one of your bells.”

Lucy retreated to the spirit cabinet, where she tossed the castanets into a small box and retrieved an equally small bell. Tying the string around the bell's top, I said, “Back to the noseless man, I don't find him intriguing at all. Having seen him once, I don't want to lay eyes on him again.”

“But let's assume Mr. Pastor is right and that he
is
working for P. T. Barnum,” Lucy replied. “What reason would someone like Mr. Barnum have to threaten a medium?”

“We're not certain he wrote those threatening notes. It's just a theory.”

“Well, it's one I think we should look into.”

“And how do you propose we go about that?”

“I have it on good authority that Mr. Barnum is hosting a masquerade ball tonight at the Continental Hotel,” Lucy said. “We simply need to show up and ask him about this gruesome man without a nose.”

I finished attaching the string to the bell and set it on the table. Then I called to the cabinet one more time. “All right. Try all four of them now, Thomas.”

All the instruments on the table started to rise. Not quickly, mind you, but slowly and eerily. Once they were in the air, the effect was now quite realistic, even with the strings visible. The bugle and the flute spun around each other while the drum rocked back and forth and the bell lightly rang.

“Splendid!” Lucy declared. “Simply splendid!”

“About this masked ball,” I said. “You realize we haven't been invited, right?”

Lucy shook her head at me, disappointed by my apparent lack of imagination. “Honestly, Edward, you're more naive than I thought. An invitation isn't necessary. All we need is to arrive at the hotel tonight in costume. Which is exactly what we're going to do.”