Jennifer Ashley: The Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie

From the dining room, Daniel heard excited voices— Did you see that? Ellingham, it’s behind you! —but in this room all was calm.

Daniel looked thoughtfully at the kerosene lamp amidst the trinkets on the table. He saw by the lamp’s light that, as in the next room, a gaslight chandelier hung overhead, unlit, and gas sconces adorned the walls. Yet Mademoiselle Violette and her mother kept kerosene lamps in here and candles in the dining room. For the ambience? Or because the gas had been shut off?

Simon sat up and drew a long breath. “You have a mean punch, Mr. Mackenzie.”

“You know who I am then?”

“Everyone knows who you are. Me and me mates always have a little flutter on your dad’s horses. Sir.”

“Wise of you.”

Daniel looked around at the wood paneling that covered the room, which was much older than the furnishings. He put the house as built in the last century. In those days, covering the walls with raised panels outlined with molding had been common, and much more tasteful than the garish wallpaper that adorned most people’s houses these days.

The paneling was also convenient, because it could hide any number of things. This sitting room was in the front of the house, the dining room behind it. But the dimensions of both rooms did not match the length of the hall that ran from the front door to the back of the house. Daniel, who could keep calculations in his head to the nearest inch, had noted that immediately.

He rose and made his way to the wall that divided the sitting room from the dining room. Not an easy journey, because the room was crammed with potted palms, potted ferns, side tables, sofa tables, rugs on rugs, and bric-a-brac of every size, shape, and color.

A narrow door through which Simon had dragged Daniel, closed now, led to the dining room. Daniel ran his hands over the wall panels next to it.

His fingertips found a catch. Working it, he pried open a panel about five feet high and a foot and a half wide. Behind this lay a shallow niche full of thin ropes and wires attached to gears. Two metal levers a little below Daniel’s eye level controlled a couple of the wires, but the rest of the ropes and pulleys ran up into the wall as far as Daniel could see.

“Oh, you clever, clever lass.”

“Wha’ is it?” Simon asked, still on the floor and not very interested.

“The secret of Mademoiselle Bastien’s success.”

Simon grunted again, which Daniel took to mean he cared more about his immediate circumstances than unraveling secrets of fraudulent mediums.

Daniel craned to look upward, wishing he had better light. Whoever had set up this rig had taken advantage of the bell system—ropes and wires woven through the house so the lady upstairs could summon a maid from the depths of the servants’ hall without bestirring herself too much.

The bellpull systems were sophisticated enough that a specific servant could be hailed from a specific room. Daniel had delved into the paneling in the walls in the house he’d purchased in London to put in pneumatic speaking tubes, so he’d be able to communicate instantly with his staff—whenever he got around to hiring staff.

Daniel closed the panel and made his way back through the overstuffed parlor to the door to the hall. Simon heaved himself up and followed Daniel, rubbing his bruised face. Daniel took pity on him and told him to rest himself on the hall bench while he explored.

The housemaid was nowhere in sight. Daniel ran lightly up the stairs, which were lit only from a glow from above. He found another kerosene lamp burning in the upstairs hall, set on a table between two doors. Another flight of stairs continued upward, but Daniel was fairly certain he’d find what he sought on this floor.

The first door in the hall opened to a dark and empty room. No furniture, no people, nothing. But that room was over the parlor. The room next to it lay above the dining room where Mademoiselle Bastien held court.

Daniel opened the door of the second room. It too was bare of carpeting, although it contained a few pieces of furniture pushed against the walls. Two kerosene lamps on one table lent their glow to the housemaid, who was kneeling in the middle of the floor. Several floorboards had been lifted away, and the maid was gazing into the opening, her hands on something inside.

So intently was she focused on her task, she never heard Daniel until he walked around her and crouched down in front of her.

The maid lost her hold on a lever with a little cry, and stared at Daniel, her eyes round. Below Daniel heard Ellingham say, “What the devil happened? Where did it go?”

Daniel glanced into the opening. Beneath a series of levers, a square spy hole opened into the dining room ceiling, right through the chandelier—probably one reason the gas was not on. The chandelier swayed a bit from residual motion, but the otherworldly wind and noises had vanished.

“Oh, sir,” the maid whispered, face paling. “You ought not be in here.”

“Neither should you. Get on up to bed, and leave the theatrics to me.”

The maid’s mouth popped open. She was about thirty years of age, pretty, with dark hair under a white starched cap, her accent putting her from South London. “To you, sir?”

Daniel gave her his warmest smile. “You must be exhausted, lass, with Mortimer tramping in with his friends in the dead of night. You go up and make sure your mistress is well, and go to bed. I’ll take over for you. I know a bit about manipulating machinery.”

“But you can’t . . . I can’t . . .”

“It’s all right, love. Your mistress sent me up. Let me give this a whirl.”

The maid eyed Daniel in sharp suspicion. “Did she? Where did Miss . . . I mean Mademoiselle Bastien find you?”

“Oh, lying about.” Daniel winked. “Her secrets are safe with me.”

The housemaid came to a decision. She truly did look exhausted, wanting the relief of sleep. “Well, get a move on. She’s needing a bit more down there.”

She climbed to her feet, shook out her skirts, and left the room. Daniel noticed that rather than shoes, she wore soft slippers, which made only the faintest of noises on the board floor.

Once the maid had closed the door behind her, Daniel lay flat on his stomach, stripped off his gloves, and looked through the opening to the dining room below.

The room was in darkness now, the gloom relieved only when Mademoiselle lit a single candle in the candelabra. The candle’s light fell over the openmouthed faces of the gentlemen and haloed Mademoiselle Violette’s pale face and ringlets of dark hair.

She spoke in soothing tones, though she sounded a bit breathless. “Sometimes the spirits go suddenly, just like that. The ether closes, and the connection is lost.”

“Not entirely.” Ellingham pointed upward at the chandelier, which started to sway again, its facets tinkling.

Violette looked up, the extraordinary attractiveness of her face softened by the lone candle.

Daniel could expose her at that moment, call down to those below that he’d discovered how she’d tricked them all. But he knew he never would. Not because Mortimer was a bully, and not because of Mademoiselle’s anger, though she showed plenty of that. And not because of her pleading look, though it was nearly lost under all the anger.

It was her cheekiness. In the middle of the night, Mademoiselle Violette sat alone in a room of gentlemen, which could spell ruin for any other young woman, and played upon them like a master musician played his piano.

These bachelors of London’s best families, who cut dead anyone who didn’t fit their extremely rigid rules of behavior, sat like tame puppies while Mademoiselle Violette made fools of the lot of them.