The Luminaries

the spirit was inviting us to stay until that time—at which point something wasto happen. We waited until the hour struck one; we waited in silence for one minute—two minutes—three—and then, exactly at that moment, there was a terrible crash: a painting tumbled from its hook upon the wall. We all turned, and saw, behind it, a hole in the plaster . The painting had been put up, you see, to mask the hole.
    ‘Well, the women in the group were screaming; there was noise all about; you can imagine the commotion. Someone found a knife, and cut out the piece of plaster—and lo and behold, lodged into the plaster, there was a ball of shot.’
    Frost and Nilssen exchanged a quick glance. The widow’s story had reminded them both of the bullet that had vanished from Anna Wetherell’s bedchamber, in the upper room of the Gridiron Hotel.
    ‘Was the case ever solved?’ somebody said.
    ‘Oh, yes,’ the widow said. ‘I shan’t go into the details—there are too many—but you can look it all up in the papers if you’re curious . You see, the woman was never savaged by a dog at all. She had been murdered by her own husband—and he’d shot the dog, and slashed her throat himself, to cover it up.’
    There were murmurs of distress around the room.
    ‘Yes,’ said Lydia Wells. ‘Tragic, the whole story. Elizabeth something , the woman’s name was. I forget the last name. Well, the good news was that when the case reopened, they had two clues on their side: first, that she had been killed by a ball from a Colt Army handgun … and second, that the precise time of her death was three minutes past one.’
    The widow was quiet for a moment, and then she laughed. ‘But you aren’t here tonight to hear me tell tales!’ She rose from her chair. Several of the assembled men made to rise also, out of politeness , but the widow put up her hand, stalling them. ‘I regret to say that the sceptics of the world are very many,’ she said, ‘and for every good-hearted man, there are ten more who are not good at all. There may be men among you who will attempt to deny whatever happens tonight, or who will attempt to discredit me. I invite you all to look around you, now, and to reassure yourselves that this room contains no tricks or deceits or follies of any kind. I know aswell as you that there are many pretenders in the art of fortune telling, but you may rest assured that
I
am not one of them.’ She spread her arms and said, ‘You can see that I am concealing nothing on my person. Don’t worry—you are free to look.’
    There was tittering at this, and much shuffling as the men looked around them, examining the ceiling, the chairs, the paraffin lamp on the table, the candles, the rug upon the floor. Charlie Frost kept his eyes on Lydia Wells. She did not look tense. She twirled around, revealing that she was hiding nothing in her skirts, and then seated herself very easily, smiling at the room at large. She picked at a loose thread upon her sleeve and waited until the men were still.
    ‘Excellent,’ she said, when the collective attention had focused upon her once again. ‘Now that we are all happy, and ready, I shall cut the lights, and await Anna’s arrival.’
    She leaned forward and doused the paraffin lamp, plunging them all into the gloom of candlelight. After several seconds of quiet, there came three knocks at the parlour door behind them, and Lydia Wells, still fussing over the lamp, called, ‘Come!’
    The door opened, and the seven men turned. Frost, forgetting Pritchard’s instruction for a moment, looked too.
    Anna was standing in the doorway with an expression of ghostly vacancy upon her face. She was still wearing the mourning dress she had been gifted by Aubert Gascoigne, but if the dress had been ill fitting once, it looked wretched on her now. The gown hung from her shoulders as though from a rail. The waist, though plainly cinched, was loose, and the tatted collar masked an almost concave breast. Her face was very pale, her expression sombre. She did not look at the faces of the assembled crowd. With her eyes fixed upon the middle distance, she came forward, slowly, and sank into the vacant armchair facing Lydia Wells.
    Why
, thought Frost, as she sat down,
she is starving
! He glanced at Nilssen, meaning to catch the other man’s eye, but Nilssen was frowning at Anna, an expression of grave perplexity upon his face. Too late, Frost remembered his own assignation, and turned back to the