Amanda Quick - Quicksilver

“Hollister.”

“No doubt. I see the prints of a woman’s shoes, as well. More than one woman, to be precise. Whoever they were, they came through here recently.”

“Lady Hollister and the servant who helped her carry me down here, perhaps.”

“No doubt.” He straightened and aimed the lantern at the flight of steps at the far end of the room. “Let us see where that leads.”

They climbed the steps. The door at the top opened onto a darkened library. When they emerged into the room Owen saw that the opening they had come through was concealed as a section of bookshelves.

“A house of secrets,” Virginia said. “But obviously Lady Hollister knew at least some of those secrets.”

Owen set the lantern on the desk and began opening and closing drawers. “Others may have known them as well. Lady Hollister’s companion, for example. Or some of the servants.”

“I do not recall seeing any servants other than the housekeeper when I arrived. There must have been a couple of daily maids and a gardener, at the very least. One simply cannot run a household this size without staff. But I can’t believe that they would have remained silent if they had suspected what was going on down in that chamber.”

“By all accounts this was a rather eccentric household.” He closed one drawer and opened another. “If most of the staff came in daily and did not live on the premises, it’s possible that they never knew about their employer’s unpleasant hobby down in the basement.”

Virginia came toward him. Her shoes made no sound on the expensive carpet. “Are you searching for anything in particular?”

“It would be rather useful to find a record of the purchase of one or more of those damned clockwork devices.” He closed the last drawer. “But there is nothing of that sort here. Just some blank paper and a few odds and ends.”

Virginia began plucking books at random off the shelves. After half a dozen volumes, she opened one and paused.

“This is interesting,” she said.

He rounded the desk. “What have you got there?”

“There are a number of photographs concealed in this book. They all appear to be of young women and girls about Becky’s age.” Virginia looked up quickly. “Dear heaven. I fear that this is a record of Hollister’s victims.”

He took the book from her and examined the photographs. Each showed a young woman dressed like a prostitute. Each girl in the pictures was lying on the bed in the mirrored room, clearly dead.

Wearily Owen closed the book. More victims he had failed to save, he thought. More images to haunt his nights. “He indulged his obsession for years, and no one ever knew.”

Virginia touched his hand. The knowing look in her eyes told him that she understood what was going through his mind.

“There is no changing the past,” she said. “There will always be monsters. You cannot hunt them all. You will do what you can, but you must accept that you will not be able to save every victim.”

“Knowing that truth and accepting it are two very different things.”

“One accepts such truths by concentrating on the present and the future, not the past.”

He smiled. “Where did you learn such wisdom?”

“My mother told me that when I was thirteen and just coming into my talent. She said I must never forget that although I would see a great deal of evil in the mirrors, once in a while I would be able to find justice for some of the victims and provide a sense of peace to some of those left behind. She said those rare moments must be enough to sustain me or I would be driven mad by the afterimages I would view in the years ahead.”

“Your mother sounds like a very wise woman.” He tucked the book under one arm. “I will give these pictures to Caleb Jones. He can turn them over to his friend at Scotland Yard. Perhaps the police will be able to notify the families of some of Hollister’s victims and assure them that the killer is dead.”

“That is a good plan,” she said.

He went toward the door that opened onto the hall. “Let’s go upstairs. People are inclined to keep their most closely held secrets in their bedrooms.”

They went down a long hallway and started up the broad stairs to the floor above.

“I remember coming up this staircase,” Virginia said. She looked around uneasily. “The bedroom that Lady Hollister wanted me to examine was on this floor at the end of the hall.”

“That was the room in which you were overcome by the drug?”

“Yes. I remember nothing after that until I woke up in that mirrored chamber.”

The faint creak of a rope twisting on wood brought him to an abrupt halt. He looked up.

“Virginia,” he said quietly.

She froze. “What is it?”

“If I am not mistaken, it is Lady Hollister.”

The flaring light of the lantern revealed the body of a woman hanging from a rope secured to the banister two floors above.

“Dear heaven,” Virginia whispered. “I’m sure that’s her.”

Owen went swiftly up the next flight of stairs. Virginia followed on his heels. They both looked over the banister. The light fell on the face of the dead woman.

“It is, indeed, Lady Hollister,” Virginia whispered. “Was she murdered, too?”

Owen opened his senses and looked at the fluorescing light that clung to the rope and the wooden banister. Madness and despair radiated like a terrible poison.

“No. It is the same psychical energy that I saw downstairs in the tunnels where Hollister was killed. After she avenged her murdered daughter, Lady Hollister went about her wifely duties. She saw to it that her husband’s body was quietly removed. She made up the bed and dismissed the servants. And then she hanged herself.”

“And she managed it all without creating a scandal in the family.”

Virginia was in her study, a cup of tea in one hand, a note from a grateful client in the other, when she heard the carriage in the street. She ignored the rattle of wheels and the stamp of shod hooves until she realized that the vehicle had stopped in front of Number Seven. Her pulse kicked up a beat and then immediately settled back into its normal rhythm. Not Owen, she thought. If he came by cab today it would be in a fast, sleek hansom, not a large, private equipage.

She listened to Mrs. Crofton’s quick footsteps in the hall and knew that the housekeeper had also recognized the unmistakable clatter of an expensive vehicle.

The front door opened. There followed a low, indistinguishable murmur of voices. Not a client, Virginia knew. She met those at the Institute. It was one of Gilmore Leybrook’s policies, and she thought that it was a very sound one.

In her early years as a glass-reader she had been obliged to interview clients in her personal lodgings. Some of those who sought out the assistance of a glasslight-talent were more than a bit odd, to say the least. A few of the truly distraught had appeared on her doorstep at midnight, demanding second or even third readings, convinced that she had been wrong the first time. There had been some threats from time to time. All in all, life was vastly more peaceful when clients did not know the address of the reader.

But if the new arrival was not a client and not Owen, Virginia could not imagine who would be calling on her in such a fine carriage.

The door of the study opened abruptly. For all her professional polish and aplomb, Mrs. Crofton’s eyes sparkled with excitement. She raised her chin and assumed a commanding tone of voice that was certain to carry out into the front hall.

“Lady Mansfield to see you, ma’am. Shall I tell her that you are at home?”

“Good grief, no. ”