Under the Skin (4 page)

“Mama?”

The tentative whisper wavered in the rose-scented dusk of the darkened room. One of the heavy draperies covering the tall windows quivered slightly, allowing light to spill across the thick-piled carpet in a bright stream that vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared
.

“Mama?”

Hands linked around the tapestry-covered table, the seated figures remained motionless as the child’s wistful voice called, first from one side of the room then from another. Above the table a soft, luminescent shape hovered just over the chimney of the low-turned oil lamp—a dancing will-o’-the-wisp, an otherworldly flame that swirled, glowing and dimming, coalescing and dissolving
.

There was a choked cry and one of the women half rose. “It’s my Julia—Julia, my darling! Mama’s here!”

The woman stretched out a tentative hand, but the phantasmal apparition moved higher, as if to escape the searching fingers
.

“
Madam, you must not!” The gentleman on the bereft mother’s right caught at her questing hand and pulled her down to her chair. “You break the circle
.
Without our combined energies, the drain on the life force of the medium is insupportable. You
must
resume your seat.”

Across the table the medium groaned and writhed in her chair. Her eyes showed white in the lamp glow and her beautiful countenance was contorted into a mask of suffering
.

The grieving mother’s face remained upturned but she allowed her neighbors to take her hands once more. The pale phantasm hung above her and from all sides came the pealing of silvery bells
.

The child spoke again, this time her voice brimming with pleasure. “Mama, so you’ve come! But the bells say that my time is almost up and I must go back soon. Will you truly-ooly promise to visit me another day?”

“Oh, it’s she … my Julia.” The words were sobbed rather than spoken but the mother’s face was radiant with joy. “My angel child, yes, yes, truly-ooly! But my darling, tell me before you go—are you happy … where you are … over there?”

“Silly Mama, everyone’s happy in Heaven. Truly-ooly …”

The bells sounded again and the child’s voice grew softer, dying away as the light in the room dimmed and the apparition grew more and more indistinct
.

It was a whisper in the still air that breathed into the mother’s ear. “I miss you and Papa and the boys but I know that we’ll be together again. And when I can speak to you like this, why then the waiting doesn’t seem so dreadful. And did you know—I have Tip here with me now. He’s all well again and we have ever so much fun, playing in the beautiful garden … Mama, I love …”

“Julia?” Once more the weeping woman pulled free of her companions’ hands. She raised tentative fingers to
her cheek. “She kissed me … I felt her touch … like the brushing of a feather.”

Across the table, the medium slumped senseless in her chair
.

“And by the by, Dorothea, the animal’s name was Nip, not Tip—when I go to the trouble of collecting useful information for you, the least you can do is to remember it correctly.”

The tall dark-haired young woman in the deep violet dressing gown took a book from the jumble of illustrated papers and volumes that shared space on the center table with the remains of a substantial luncheon. She seated herself in the upholstered rocking chair next to the window seat where her sister was nestled amid a mass of silk and velvet fancy pillows
.

Dorothea, her sister’s mirror image but for the emerald of her dressing gown, did not look up but continued buffing her fingernails. “I don’t believe it made a particle of difference, Theo. I could have called the animal Pip or Rip or Gyp—Mrs. Farnsworth heard what she wanted to hear. After the ‘truly-ooly’—which I collected myself—she was convinced.”

Dorothea stretched out an elegant hand, turning it this way and that, the better to admire her work. “She’s booked again for Thursday, is she not, Renzo? And do put out that vile cheroot—the odor is perfectly disgusting!”

The swarthy gentleman lounging on the divan by the window blew out a long plume of blue smoke and, with a dramatic flourish, tossed the smoldering cigar out the open window
.

“As always, milady’s slightest wish is my command. And yes, La Farnsworth is panting for another kiss from her Julia.”

Reaching under the divan, he drew out a short black-painted
rod and gave it a practiced twist. He smiled with satisfaction as the shaft extended in length to something over a yard long. At its end quivered a small black feather
.

“I love you, Dorothea.” The young man’s pleasant baritone shifted to a honeyed falsetto, as the feather tip brushed the ear of the woman in the window seat. “And I love you too, Theodora,” he continued in his normal voice, bringing the feather to the cheek of the other sister, who scowled and batted away the wand tip with an unladylike expletive, “though that frown’s enough to frighten away even the friendliest of spirits. And your language—what would our dear mother say?”

“I doubt
our
dear mother would say much, having perished of the drink so many years ago,” Theo snapped. An angry flush stained her pale face. “But as to what
your
mother might say—”

“Theo!
Pas devant la domestique!
” Dorothea rapped out the warning as a wiry woman of indeterminate age appeared in the doorway. “Have you finished the bedchambers, Amarantha?”

The chambermaid paused, shifting the heavy box of cleaning supplies from one arm to the other. She did not meet the young woman’s eye but seemed to be looking at something just beside her. “I reckon that I have. I still got to dust in here and sweep the carpet. The housekeeper wouldn’t have sent me along if she had knowed you folks wasn’t going to the baths today. I kin come back later—”

“The baths!” Dorothea sat bolt upright amid the cushions. “Good heavens, what time is it? We’re booked for three.”

She shot an accusing glare at her sister, who was already on her feet and moving toward the bedchamber, tugging at the satin sash of her purple dressing gown
.

“Whatever made you ask for such an early appointment
,
Doe? You know we always …” Her voice trailing behind her, Theodora whisked past Amarantha and into the bedchamber
.

Lorenzo pulled a pocket watch from his fob and clicked it open. “It’s a quarter till,” he called after the pair. “If you girls are able to forgo your usual primping, I should think that—”

The slam of the chamber door cut short his pronouncements as the second sister hurried to ready herself for the baths
.

“Like I said, I kin come back later.” The chambermaid, standing like a patient work animal, addressed the young man in her flat mountain accents
.

His eyes slid over her spare frame and gaunt face and he yawned. “No need—pray, go on with your work—I’ll take a stroll while my sisters enjoy the healing waters.”

Lorenzo stood and stretched. His hand went to an inner pocket of his morning coat and withdrew a cigar case of fine Moroccan leather. After retrieving his hat and walking stick from the lunette table by the door of the suite, he paused. With a sigh of resignation he retraced his steps, past Amarantha who was kneeling to brush the ashes of a dead fire into a dustpan. At the closed door of the bedchamber, Lorenzo raised his cane to rap on the door but it opened at once and the sisters, now clad in walking dresses of lavender and spring green, burst forth, exchanging muttered recriminations
.

“If you would have the decency—”

“Decency! You have the effrontery—”

Lorenzo stepped back to let them pass then followed them out the door into the hotel hallway. “Ladies—I’ll see you in the dining room at six-thirty. You do remember, Theo, that the recently widowed Mr. Harris is eager for a consultation—”

Amarantha looked up as the door closed behind the trio
.

“Furriners,” she commented to the empty room. “Dressed so fine and with money to burn. Think I can’t see what’s before my eyes? I reckon I could say a word to the manager—and him a strong Baptist—and he’d turn these three out. If that Lo-renzo’s the brother of them two huzzies, well then I’m a Tennessee mule … But it ain’t none of my concern. I got my rooms to do.”

Giving the pale marble hearth a final polish with her rag, the woman stood and gazed around the sitting room of the Mountain Park Hotel’s third-best suite
.

She crossed to the window seat, where she began to plump and rearrange the scattered pillows, placing them in exact alignment
.

“There, that’s better, now ain’t it?” she said to the air. “I like to bust out laughing—her thinking she’s so smart and all the while, you making faces at her. You ought not to do me thataway. I ain’t fixing to mess with them three.”

Amarantha replaced the last cushion and drew the curtains shut. Her faded blue eyes narrowed and came to rest on the black feather protruding from beneath the divan
.

“Still and all …” Amarantha mused, weighing the possibilities
.