A Study in Sable (27 page)

There was a bottle of chilled mineral water waiting there for her, in ice, as champagne would have been for someone else. And more grapes. As always, Sarah sat in a cushioned chair toward the rear of the box and drew the curtains on the side nearest the audience half-closed. She could see Magdalena perfectly, and Magdalena could see her, but it was unlikely that anyone else would know who was the tenant of that box seat.

She waited as the orchestra filed in, as noises from behind the curtain announced the final setting up of the first-act props and scenery, and as, at long last, the rest of the audience was allowed in. She waited as the limelights were lit, as the gaslights in the house were turned up, as the audience, gossiping, laughing, made their way into their seats and got themselves comfortable. It was going to be another full house. Only the Royal Box would be empty, for the Queen, even after decades,
still
thought
La Traviata
was immoral and still would not come to see it, nor allow any of her children to. The only
way any of the Royal Family would be able to see this opera would be if they came without the Queen knowing, incognito.

Which was, of course, quite possible, especially for her heir, Prince Edward, who never let a little thing like “immorality” stop him when it came to pleasure. He went plenty of other places “incognito” (although he never tried all that hard to hide who he was, and he was
very
distinctive), so why not the opera?

And then the orchestra ceased its tuning, the lights came down again, the audience settled. And the overture poured, lush, faintly erotic, into the hall.

The curtain rose on a party in a fashionable apartment in Paris—probably not unlike ones Magdalena attended on a regular basis. Except that, of course, at this party most of the women present were courtesans, and the men were their keepers, for Magdalena was singing the part of Violetta, the Lady of the Camellias, the most beautiful courtesan in Paris.

Sarah did not give herself over to the music—not completely. Instead, she kept her occult senses active, waiting for the brush of chill, the hint of the otherworldly, the catch in the throat that meant something un-alive had entered the hall. But there was nothing, and Magdalena took the stage like a conquering hero, her voice soaring out over the others with a power that was positively uncanny.

It even caught Sarah, vigilant though she was, and she understood, as she came to understand over and over, every night, why so many were in love with this woman.

• • •

Sarah waited in Freddy's cab at the stage door for Alicia to come out. She always slipped out as the applause began and took the entrance into the backstage to slip out the stage door. More than one gentleman had tried to engage the cab and been sent away disappointed and grumbling that the hansom was already occupied; Sarah looked respectable enough and met them with a fierce enough glare that none of them tried anything other than a weakly bullying effort to
get her to give it up. There was, as usual, a crowd around the stage door—admirers of small consequence, not important enough to be allowed inside, most of them students and the like. Some of them were impudent enough to peer into the cab to see if Sarah was anyone important; she ignored them or gave them her best basilisk glare. Finally, Alicia emerged, head held high and chin thrust out aggressively, making her way, with energetic thrusts of her elbows and kicks to shins whenever necessary, until she reached the safety of the cab. Once she was inside, Sarah knocked on the roof, and Freddy and Crumpet took off smartly.

“Students!” Alicia said, making the word into a curse.

Sarah laughed. “They're hoping to pick up pretty ballet girls.”

Alicia snorted. “The pretty ballet girls wouldn't give them the time of day. Why settle for a beer and a cheese sandwich when you can get champagne and pheasant and maybe a gold bracelet?”

“From a wheezy old man, who might be fat, and will almost certainly be bald and want to put his hands all over you at the least!” Sarah pointed out. “I think I would take the beer and sandwich.”

“Most wouldn't,” Alicia replied. “
I
wouldn't. You and I can go on until we are old harridans, but
they
are mayflies. Dancing for pennies, and ten years, fifteen at best, they replace you with someone younger? Then, if you're lucky, you go into the costume department, or teaching little girls, and if you aren't, you hope you can find honest work at a laundry. You've got to make your hay whilst the sun shines, as my old mother says. Take that little black-eyed minx, May Fancher.
There's
a girl who knows how to butter her bread! A ruby ring she got last night!”

Sarah settled back for a nice bit of gossip about the ballet girls, who were highly sought-after by certain men, those who would not or could not support a mistress but could derive much of the same benefits of having one (without any of the inconvenient attachments) by dint of sumptuous suppers and a few gifts. As Alicia had noted, the girls of the ballet corps came and went, most were poor, and the men took full advantage of that.

This was a world Sarah had never even dreamed existed until
Magdalena introduced her to it. There was the spectacle of the opera itself, and then there was the theater going on behind the scenes, which could be even more histrionic than what was presented on stage.

The cab pulled up to the hotel, and the two of them got out; for these rides Alicia—or rather, Magdalena—paid. They crossed the vast expanse of the lobby, getting friendly nods from the concierge and the desk clerk, and took the elevator up to Magdalena's room.

Their arrival was the signal for the concierge to notify the kitchen to prepare whatever Magdalena had selected for her supper before she left for the theater. While they were lighting candles, making sure the rooms were as Magdalena liked them, spritzing rose cologne about to scent the air, and making sure that if Magdalena happened to bring an admirer with her, all would be as it should be, the kitchen was hard at work. Magdalena was by no means the only guest of this hotel who wanted midnight suppers, especially not in the more luxurious rooms and suites.

Sarah reflected, as she plumped a sofa pillow, that for an artist, Magdalena was astonishingly regular in her habits. She would entertain her admirers in her dressing room for an hour; no more, seldom less. Then one of them would be allowed to take her to the hotel in his carriage. About the time she left the theater, the supper arrived at the room, and the waiter who had brought it would arrange everything, including two place settings, with two extra place settings left on the sideboard. If Magdalena sent a note, Alicia and Sarah would eat together. If she came back alone, Magdalena and Sarah would eat first and Alicia would enjoy her share after Magdalena had been put to bed—before Sarah's addition to Magdalena's entourage, Alicia had eaten before her mistress arrived, but Alicia swore she didn't mind waiting. Possibly, she didn't; there was certainly enough fruit to stave off hunger in Magdalena's dressing room, and plenty of time while her mistress was on stage for Alicia to make a sort of meal out of it.

And if Magdalena arrived with a man, Sarah and Alicia would withdraw into the other end of the room and stay behind a screen,
then eat after they had dined and vanished into her bedroom. The first time this had happened, Sarah thought she was going to perish of embarrassment, but she was used to it now. She and Alicia would play cards until the murmuring and laughter stopped and the bedroom door closed . . .

And then they would ignore whatever sounds came out of that bedroom. Or try to. Sarah still had trouble doing that.

“Doesn't that make you . . .” Sarah had asked the maid once, blushing. Alicia had just shrugged.

“If you are in service, you get used to being thought part of the furnishings very quickly,” she had said philosophically. “Besides, I'm not going to wait until this lovely quail gets stone cold just to avoid listening to the bedspring chorus.”

The supper came up, and the dining table and sideboard were arranged. At almost the same time, a driver and three attendants arrived from the theater with the masses of flowers from Magdalena's dressing room, which she and Alicia placed around the sitting room and dining room like trophies. When Magdalena and Alicia left to go to the theater, maids would come in and take them all away, to be replaced by the new tributes that night.

And since no note arrived with the flowers, that meant that Magdalena, or Magdalena and an admirer, would be coming shortly.

Tonight, however, Magdalena arrived alone.

She flung her magnificent sable cloak over a chair and greeted Sarah by kissing her cheek. That sable cloak had become a signature garment of hers, like Lillie Langtry's famous little black dress. “
Six
curtain calls!” she said with satisfaction. She glided into her chair and snapped her fingers in the air. “
That,
for that nasty little man in the paper who said I could not possibly equal Patti! The great Patti only got
four
when she sang Violetta in London!”

Clearly, Magdalena was in an excellent mood, and Sarah relaxed. She had only seen Magdalena in a bad mood once—but that once had been quite enough, and she was always just a little on edge when Magdalena returned until she knew what mood her patroness would be in.

Alicia served them both supper, and Magdalena kept up a nonstop stream of what could only be described as a monologue throughout the entire meal. Sarah didn't mind. Mostly she tuned it out, because it was about Magdalena's performance, or her admirers, or what they had told her, all mixed up in no particular order. Evidently tonight she'd had a new one; quite a good “catch,” it appeared, a “Marquess,” whatever that was. Some sort of nobleman who had come into London, on a whim obtained tickets for a box tonight, and Magdalena had enchanted him. Of course. Most women admired her, but men from six to sixty were utterly captivated by her.

It appeared that this gentleman, one George William Thomas Brudenell-Bruce, was the 4th Marquess of Ailesbury. “Call me Willie,” the gentleman had allegedly told Magdalena. According to what Sarah gleaned from Magdalena, “Willie” had vast estates and profligate habits, exactly the sort of gentleman admirer that Magdalena liked best. She was just as happy to receive their admiration in the form of gowns or sumptuous furnishings or offers to pay her bills or lavish jewels as the little ballet girls were happy to get thin gold bracelets and necklaces and boxes of chocolates.

So Magdalena was in fine spirits tonight, so much so that halfway through the meal, and a little tipsy, she invited Alicia to set a third plate and join them, which Alicia was quite ready to do. By the time Alicia helped her mistress to bed, Magdalena was toasting her own triumph with a last glass of wine and singing bits of “Sempre Libera,” her first-act aria. Even tipsy, her voice was glorious.

Alicia emerged again smiling. “I don't know how she does it,” the maid remarked. “You or I would want to die in the morning, but she'll awaken fresh as anything and now that she can sleep at night, she'll eat her breakfast like a prizefighter.” She gestured at the empty room. “I leave you to your ghastlies.” Alicia had become remarkably nonchalant about the haunts, which Sarah regarded as a distinct improvement over her initial terror.

Sarah went about the room putting out lights until there were only two, and the dying fire in the fireplace. Then she composed herself on the sofa, and waited. She didn't bother keeping Puck's charm
in her hand now, the spirits that were left were utterly harmless—if infuriatingly stubborn. The rooms went to silence, with only the occasional pop of an ember in the fireplace and the smell of dying roses, carnations, lilies, and, of course, camellias, in the air.

Attracted, as always, to the presence of an active medium, the last four spirits left to dismiss appeared, one by one, fading into existence between Sarah and the fireplace. These last four had been . . . remarkably mulish. So far, Sarah had not even been able to get them to communicate with her, much less move on.

Three of the four were mere thin wraiths, so attenuated by age and loss of power that they were difficult to make out, and it was only by virtue of experience that Sarah knew one was female and two were male. Like shapes of fog, they barely had a distinction between head and body. They didn't seem to have a purpose; they didn't seem impelled by anything. They had merely appeared, night after night, and . . . hovered. That would be uncanny enough, of course, for someone like Magdalena—possibly even more frightening than a spirit that actually
did
something, because having a vague shape with hollow, dark pits instead of eyes hanging at the foot of your bed and staring at you was not something most people handled well. But for Sarah . . . they were a distinct problem. She had tried invoking the door to their ultimate destinations—most spirits either went straight to it or fought to get away from it. There had been no reaction whatsoever. It was as if they weren't even aware of it. How could she dismiss them if she couldn't even get them to react to the door?

The fourth spirit she was ignoring for now, because it was not like any ghost she had ever seen before. It was bright, brighter and stronger than the others by far, but the details about it were vague, as if the spirit itself was keeping her from seeing what it was. It was definitely female, and that was all she knew about it. It wouldn't speak to her, and like the other three, it was neither attracted to nor repelled by the door. The only difference between it and the others was that Sarah got a very strong sense of purpose and a sense of betrayal and anger from it, though not directed at her.

But since it was so strong, she was leaving it for last.
If I can work out a way to get the others through the door, I should be able to use that on the last one.

And so, for the rest of the night, she concentrated on the lone female of the three she was calling the Lost Wraiths. She tried coaxing it, tried persuasion, tried bribery, tried commanding it . . . all to no avail whatsoever. By the time morning arrived, and the four spirits faded away in the predawn light, she was exhausted and no further along than she had been when she started.