CHAPTER SEVEN #2
So lost in her thoughts, she tripped on a cobble. Expensively hatted and coiffed heads turned toward her, then bent together to whisper.
As it was at Francine Creighton’s, so it was at the home of Raleigh Williams and Eldon Gray.
And at Mrs. Lois Debran’s more modest residence, they told her once more she was no longer welcome.
But there was one last place. She caught a hackney to Mrs. Eliza Rackham’s, hoping they’d let her in.
To her surprise and relief, the butler opened the door to her.
“Mrs. Rackham’s family is out,” the butler informed her. “I’ll fetch her caretaker.”
The light tap of running feet above and a high-pitched giggle reached her as she waited in the foyer.
“Mrs. Rackham!” an exasperated shout, followed by more giggles.
Leona glimpsed Mrs. Rackham in a flowing night dress on the stairs. Behind her stood Audrey with her cuffs rolled up to her elbows. The woman spied her standing there and rushed toward her. Leona’s heart sank. Not Audrey, though she looked quite like her.
“Who are you?” Water soaked the woman’s sleeves and the front of her apron. Her eyes were blue and her yellow hair pinned up. On close inspection, she was heavier than Audrey and a little older.
“I’m Mrs. Leona Gladney.” Damn it, should she have used another name? She stepped forward, pulling off her glove, and offered her hand. “I’m a friend of Mrs. Rackham’s.”
“My name is Jenny Dove, ma’am.” The woman put her hands on her hips. “What do you want?”
“Only to talk to Mrs. Rackham. I’m looking for Audrey Larkin. Mrs. Van Wyn employed her, God rest her soul.”
“God rest,” Jenny Dove echoed.
“Audrey’s owed some money, her last pay packet,” Leona improvised. “I don’t have her address, and they’ve shut up the house.”
“I don’t know if you’ll get answers from her, ma’am.
Mrs. Rackham’s son and daughter-in-law have moved in to watch over her.
” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder.
“And she’s got a nurse who sees to her, Mrs. Dooley.
Mrs. Rackham’s a handful these days.” Fondness tinged her words and softened their impact.
Leona would go mad if she’d gained entry to the house but not the answers to her questions. “I just wanted to ask her about Audrey.”
“She’s in a good mood, ma’am.” Jenny Dove stalled, appearing to think it over. “I don’t want you bringing up anything sad or distressing to her.”
From her change purse, Leona pulled out a half dollar and held it out. “For your troubles, thank you.”
Jenny took it and made it disappear into an apron pocket. “She may not want to talk to you.”
Leona knew Mrs. Rackham would talk to her. She’d always been fond of Leona. She could reason with her.
“Let me find her wrap, ma’am. Sometimes she isn’t decent, and it embarrasses her later when she remembers. And she talks wild, so pay no mind to it.”
Her heart sank at this news. She followed Jenny Dove down the hallway, aware of a tuneless humming. The wrap lay in a heap on the floor in a room dressed in soothing green and yellow. In a rocking chair, Eliza Rackham sat in her nightgown singing, smiling into the air above her head.
“Mrs. Rackham?” Leona asked gently.
Her eyes brightened and focused on her. “My dear Leona.”
Jenny Dove took the opportunity to coax the dressing gown around her.
“Justina, please put the tea on. You can serve it in the front parlor.”
“It’s Jenny, ma’am, and I’m not—”
Leona caught Jenny Dove’s eye. She stopped herself, giving a mock curtsey before she left.
“Leona!” Mrs. Rackham said with urgency, launching herself from the rocker and standing before her. “They’re trying to kill me.”
Leona put out her hands to steady the elderly lady. Shock rattled through her. She couldn’t take much more. “What? How?”
“Poisoning my food! With worms and maggots and spiders,” Mrs. Rackham cried, making it sound like an incantation. “I can’t eat it. I can’t!”
Relieved, Leona suspected Mrs. Rackham spoke nonsense, as Jenny had advised her.
It would do no good to argue with her. Neither did she want to support the idea her family fed her anything but healthy, nourishing food.
But she had her own fears about heirs killing off their grandmothers, didn’t she?
“Mrs. Rackham,” she spoke in as soothing a tone as her nerves could muster. “I wanted to ask you a question or two. Do you remember Audrey Larkin, Daphne’s nurse?”
Mrs. Rackham settled back in the rocking chair, tucking her feet up under her like a child. “Poor Daphne.” Her eyes filled with tears.
Leona suffered a stab of guilt. She didn’t want to upset Mrs. Rackham any more than Jenny Dove did. “I need to find Audrey.” She handed Mrs. Rackham her handkerchief. “To give her a pay packet and—a letter of reference from Benedict Van Wyn.”
Mrs. Rackham’s tears dried up, perhaps distracted from her grief. Leona almost envied her.
The elderly woman raised her head, tipping it sideways with a squint. “Who? Audrey?”
“Daphne’s nurse,” Leona repeated.
“I want to talk to Daphne.” Mrs. Rackham sighed. “But they’re poisoning me, and I can’t think straight.”
“Mrs. Rackham, dear. Your family loves you.”
“They went to the opera tonight. I wanted to go, but I—I am not well.”
“It’s all right,” Leona said gently.
She brightened. “You can ask Daphne!” and left the room at a trot.
Leona called out to Jenny Dove as she followed the elderly figure. They wound their way through the labyrinth of rooms and hallways of the second floor. She worried they wandered only through the tangle in Mrs. Rackham’s mind.
The tiny, wizened figure stood in the middle of her bedroom, looking about her. “I had to hide it,” she said. “They don’t trust it. But it brought Daphne peace, and so why not?”
Whatever could the woman be talking about? Leona braced herself to let go of hope.
Mrs. Rackham struggled to pull out the drawer in a huge armoire.
Leona stepped in to help, but she waved her off.
The elderly woman rummaged about until she drew out a black-beaded reticule with a muffled, aha !
From it she removed some coins, dried flowers, a few pins.
Then, with suppressed excitement, a playing card, torn in half.
Leona’s heart sank. She’d followed Mrs. Rackham into a folly. She hoped Jenny Dove would arrive soon to help her find her way back to the front door.
To her incomprehension, Mrs. Rackham said, “Jesper Frost. He’ll help you talk to Daphne. He brought her and her husband together again, and her sons. It was extraordinary.”
Loathing rose in Leona. “A—spiritualist?”
Daphne had never mentioned such a thing to her.
Perhaps she feared Leona would scoff? Her grandfather was not a friend to those who purported to speak to the dead.
He’d written more than one scathing essay calling out the frauds.
Leona remembered herself expounding at length at the Van Wyn’s about her own, similar views on spiritualism.
In retrospect, it’d hardly been a lively discussion with a participant of one.
“Oh, Daphne,” she whispered, taking the card, and turning it over. The Page of Hearts.
“The playing card will get you in. It’s a ticket to the spiritual realms,” Mrs. Rackham continued in a happy tone. “I knew you are one of us, a seeker at heart.”
One of the vulnerable, one of the lost. Leona’s heart quickened, her patience closing in on its limit. The late morning hours were fleeing.
“I must go,” Leona told the elderly woman, who frowned.
“You’ll go to see Jesper Frost?” she asked, her lower lip trembling. “I so miss Daphne!”
“I will,” Leona assured her. “And I will give her your love.” The lie stuck in her throat, but worth it to see the smile return to her face. “Did Audrey Larkin accompany you to the spiritualist too?”
“Of course. She knows them well.”
Excellent news! “And I need to know where to find Jesper Frost.”
Mrs. Rackham rooted around in the detritus on a small table, knocking papers onto the floor.
She handed Leona another card, this one a calling card.
An Egyptian eye floated on a cloud surrounded by a circle of stars and rain drops—no, they were tears.
The opposite side gave the address where they would find Jesper Frost. A not too shabby address, she noted as she tucked the card into her pocket. “I must go, Mrs. Rackham.”
She yawned. “Come and see me again, Justina.”
Leona leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Yes, dear. I’ll be back.”
As she turned toward the door, hoping to find her way out on her own, Mrs. Rackham cried out. “Leona! They poisoned her! The laudanum!”
Her blood froze at the reminder of Audrey and her brown bottle.
Leona turned back to face her. “How do you know?”
“Daphne complained to me. She said the nurse was giving her too much laudanum, and it gave her headaches. Daphne said there was something going on between Benedict and her nurse, and she wanted to stop them. She meant to tell Benedict’s wife.”
Jenny Dove’s step on the stairs made her stomach clench. “And did she, Mrs. Rackham?”
“Yes? No. I don’t know. I can’t remember now.”
After the light of clarity had sharpened her wits, the abrupt befuddlement tore at Leona’s heart.
Tears puddled in Mrs. Rackham’s eyes. “It’s very important, isn’t it?”
Leona nodded. But it was too late. Jenny Dove appeared in the doorway, anger suffusing her face with red.
“It’s time for you to go, Mrs. Gladney,” she said, making her voice sing-song so as not to upset her charge. “Mrs. Creighton sent word they banned you from the house. I insist you leave at once.”
“I’m going to clear my name,” Leona told the glowering woman.
Jenny nodded. “You do that. But in the meantime, you will go before I call for the police.” She couldn’t manage the soothing tone anymore, the words more dire than her patience.
“Leona, what’s happening?” Mrs. Rackham asked in a quavering voice.
Jenny Dove and Leona locked eyes. She couldn’t blame the caretaker. Jenny Dove was only protecting Mrs. Rackham.
Leona pushed a false cheer into her expression. “Everything is fine, Mrs. Rackham. Not to worry one bit, my love. You’ve helped me immensely.”
But she feared she held only stardust and moonshine from the poor woman’s nightmares, and it would all come to nothing.