A Dangerous Collaboration (Veronica Speedwell #4)(59)

Stoker lifted a brow. “How so?”

“Helen does this sort of thing for a living. Madame Helena and all that. She contacts the dead with the same frequency that the average woman might speak with the butcher. And yet the manifestations this evening seemed to distress her.”

“Veronica, she does not actually contact the dead,” Stoker said flatly. “She is a charlatan.”

“Perhaps,” I temporized.

“Perhaps nothing,” he said. His tone was always dismissive when we discussed anything that could not be explained perfectly by scientific inquiry. “She takes money from grieving and desperate people to make them think she is doing something which is quite plainly impossible. The woman is no better than a common cutpurse, stealing money from the unsuspecting.”

“How very uncharitable,” Tiberius murmured.

“Charitable! What cause have I to be charitable to a person like that?” Stoker demanded. “She sits in a room and puts on a voice and suddenly everyone behaves as if it were the Second Coming. It’s maddening.”

“Maddening, but not the point. Helen Romilly was deeply shaken. I think she was as surprised as everyone else at that table at what transpired. She seemed sincerely distressed by the music. In fact, that particular manifestation has left everyone closely connected with Rosamund ill at ease,” I said, trailing off suggestively.

Tiberius’ grey eyes widened. “Except me, you mean. Are you seriously suggesting that I have anything to do with that childish trick?”

I shrugged. “You have the best motive,” I pointed out.

“Motive?” Stoker asked, his expression suddenly bright with curiosity.

I paused and Tiberius took a moment to summon his usual sangfroid. “Very well, Veronica. Tell him. He will enjoy it mightily, I have no doubt. But if you don’t mind, I would rather not be witness to my own exposure. It is a conversation best conducted in privacy.”

“In other words,” Stoker supplied, “‘Get out.’”

Tiberius’ handsome mouth thinned cruelly. “Precisely. I will lock the door behind you. Or ought I to try holy water? A little friendly exorcism might send you on your way.”

I rose and smoothed the skirts of my dressing gown. “Come, Stoker. Tiberius is in a pet, and I cannot blame him. His shoulder must be hurting dreadfully.” I turned at the door and blew him a kiss.

He responded with a muttered profanity and I smiled. No matter how much they brawled, the Templeton-Vane boys were the proverbial peas in a pod.



* * *



? ? ?

A distinctly unpleasant interlude followed during which I stitched Stoker’s wound under his exacting instructions. He gave my handiwork a long, measured look before nodding his grudging approval. “I suppose it will have to do, although it would have been a damned sight neater if I’d been able to wield the needle myself,” he grumbled.

I dressed the wound, none too gently, and settled myself into an armchair while he stirred the coals. He was silent a long moment as he watched the flames catch, then turned to me, his smile tinged with mischief. “You realize there is no possible way to explain my presence here should I be discovered,” he said, mocking my objection of the previous evening. “Whatever would they think?”

“I am beyond the opinions of provincials,” I retorted.

“I thought you liked the Romillys,” he replied, taking the second armchair and stretching his feet towards the fire now crackling merrily on the hearth.

“I do rather. But it is difficult to become friendly with people who are cohabiting with a ghost.”

He snorted. “Surely you do not believe that nonsense.”

“No,” I said, drawing out the syllable.

“I swear upon my mother’s moldering shroud, if you expect me to believe that there is an actual phantom lurking in the corridors of this castle, I will put you over my shoulder like a sack of wool and carry you away,” he warned.

“It isn’t that I think Rosamund is present,” I protested. “The trick with the music is the product of a nasty imagination—a human one, I have no doubt. But what if there is something beyond that, a presence from beyond prodding the living to do the bidding of the dead?”

His brows knitted together. “A scientist must consider every possible hypothesis,” he said seriously. “And after giving that idea very careful consideration, I can tell you that it is the rankest horseshit.”

“Language,” I murmured.

“Well, honestly, Veronica. You cannot seriously believe that.”

“I did not say I believed it,” I pointed out coolly. “I merely suggested it is a possibility.”

“It bloody well is not.”

“If all scientists were as stubborn as you, we would still be expecting ships to sail off the edge of the world and thinking the sun revolved around the earth.”

“I am not stubborn—”

“Spoken with the obstinacy of a bull,” I said sweetly. “It is not your fault that you suffer from a lack of imagination.”

“A lack of imagination! To refuse to entertain the possibility of an actual ghost playing harpsichords and blowing out candles!”

“I did not mean those things,” I said, striving for patience. “Those were clearly tricks. Drafts can be manufactured with ventilators or candles can be tampered with. As for the music—”