Murder On Waverly Place

“Oh, right,” Frank said, remembering now. “Go on.”

“As I said, Mrs. Decker was trying to get her daughter to speak to her, but there was a lot of confusion, and Yellow Feather couldn’t understand the message. Yellow Feather is-”

“I know, the spirit guide,” Frank said, managing to keep the sarcasm from his voice. “What did you hear?”

“Yellow Feather was shouting and there was some music,” she remembered with a frown. “I don’t think it was really a song exactly, just notes, discordant. There was so much noise, and we were all listening to find out what Mrs. Decker’s daughter would say to her.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing,” she admitted sadly. “Or at least nothing I could understand. I was distracted, you see. I was holding Mrs. Gittings’s wrist.” She held up her left hand and looked at it in wonder.

“How exactly do you do that?” Frank asked, trying to picture it in his mind. “Hold each other’s wrists, I mean.”

“Oh, well, you hold the wrist of the person on your left, and the person on your right is holding your right wrist.”

Frank nodded, understanding at last. “All right, go on. You were holding Mrs. Gittings’s wrist.”

“Yes, and she was very still, although I didn’t think about that at the time. But then she leaned over toward me, or at least I thought that’s what she was doing. Her shoulder touched mine.” She instinctively grabbed her left shoulder with her right hand, as if she could still feel the pressure from the dead woman. “And then… and then… she just kept coming.” Her voice caught on a sob and she was weeping again, her shoulders shaking as she bawled into a fine, lace handkerchief.

Frank sighed and sat back, letting her cry for a few minutes. “I’m sorry to put you through this, Mrs. Burke, but I only have a few more questions and then you can go,” he said when she’d slowed down a bit.

She looked up, her eyes red-rimmed and full of horror. “She fell on me! I’ll never forget how that felt. I tried to catch her, but she was too heavy.”

“And then you screamed,” Frank said.

“I did?” she asked in surprise. “I don’t remember. I was just trying to tell everyone she fainted, trying to make myself heard over the din.”

“What happened next?”

“I don’t know… Someone opened the door, I guess. I didn’t see who. Then I could see her lying there, in the light that came in from the hall. Her face… She looked surprised. Her eyes were open, and she just seemed surprised. I asked her if she was all right,” she remembered with another shudder.

“What happened then?”

She tried to remember. Frank could see her making the effort, picturing the scene. “Everyone was talking at once. Someone… Mr. Sharpe, I think, he knelt down to help her. Madame was calling for the Professor to bring smelling salts. We thought she’d fainted, you see. Then someone said, ‘My God! Look at her back.’ ”

“Do you remember who that was?”

“I… No, I’m sorry. I looked at her back, and I saw…” She shuddered again. “And then everything is all confused. I just wanted to get away. The next thing I remember clearly, we were all in the parlor, and the Professor told us to wait there while he got the police.”

“This Mrs. Gittings, was she a friend of yours?”

“Oh, no, not at all,” she said too quickly. “I met her here. She was at the first seance I attended.”

“Do you know anything about her?”

Mrs. Burke had to think about this. “I believe she was trying to contact someone in her family, but I can’t think who. Isn’t that strange? I know who everyone else in the group wanted to contact.”

“You don’t know where she lived?”

She bit her lip, and Frank realized she was lying, although he couldn’t imagine why. “No, I don’t. I’m sorry. I’m sure Madame or the Professor could help you.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Burke.”

“May I go now?” she asked eagerly.

“Yes, you can. Do you have a carriage waiting for you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Stay right here. I’ll have the Professor escort you out.” She looked as if she might not even be able to walk back to the parlor, and if she did faint, Frank wanted no part of it.

The Professor was only too glad to do Frank’s bidding. Frank returned to the parlor to select the next witness. Once again, everyone looked up when he walked into the room. The two remaining men had been conferring in the corner, and they both started toward him. Frank instantly chose the older man as the one most likely to have power and influence and therefore the most likely to cause him trouble.

“I’ll see you next,” he said and turned away before the other one could argue. As he’d expected, the older gentleman followed him. They passed Mrs. Burke and the Professor on their way out.

“Are you all right, Mrs. Burke?” the man asked solicitously.

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Sharpe.”

“If you need help getting home-”

“Oh, thank you, but my carriage is waiting outside. I’ll… Well, good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” he replied and watched until the Professor had gotten her out the front door before following Frank to the empty dining room. Frank closed the doors and indicated he should take a seat.

Sharpe was well dressed and well groomed, the masculine equivalent of Mrs. Decker and Mrs. Burke. He could probably have been welcomed into Felix Decker’s home and conducted himself well.

“I don’t know why you’ve detained all of us,” Sharpe was protesting even before Frank had a chance to sit down himself. “You can’t think any of us were responsible for what happened to Mrs. Gittings.”

“Somebody stuck a knife into Mrs. Gittings’s back,” Frank reminded him. “If it wasn’t one of the other five people in that room, who was it?”

“I… I’m sure I don’t know,” he sputtered. Plainly, he hadn’t thought of it in those terms.

“I don’t know either,” Frank said, keeping his voice respectful so the man would have no reason to take offense. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the notebook and pencil. “What is your name, sir?”

He didn’t like this one bit, but he said, “Sharpe. John Sharpe.” He gave his address with equal reluctance, indicating that he, too, lived on the affluent Upper West Side.

Frank wanted to know what a man like Sharpe was doing at a seance in Greenwich Village, but he refrained from asking. There would be time for that later. “I’d like to know what you remember about what happened in there.” Frank nodded in the direction of the room where the dead woman lay.

“We were sitting around the table,” he said as if the words were being pulled from him like so many aching teeth. He must have been embarrassed to be caught in such a situation, and he hated having someone like Frank know about it. Like most people of his social class, he’d consider the police little better than the criminals they arrested.

“I know that part. You were holding each other’s wrists, trying to talk to the spirits, and there was a lot of noise and confusion. What did you hear?”

“Yellow Feather, that’s Madame’s spirit guide, he was shouting. A lot of spirits were trying to get his attention, and he couldn’t make sense out of what they were saying.”

“What else did you hear?”

He tried to remember. “Noises, very strange noises, like music but more like an orchestra warming up than a real melody.”

Frank nodded encouragingly. “Who were you holding hands with?”

“We don’t hold hands,” Sharpe reminded him stiffly. “We clasp each other’s wrists.”

“All right, whose wrists were you clasping?” Frank asked, managing not to sound annoyed.

“I was clasping Mrs… Mrs. Brandt’s wrist with my left hand, and Mrs. Gittings was holding my right one.”

Sharpe had won some points with Frank for trying to protect Mrs. Decker’s identity.

“When did you notice something was wrong with Mrs. Gittings?”

He gave this a moment of thought. “I wasn’t really paying close attention to her. I was listening to Yellow