name!”
Yellow Feather moaned. “I can’t hear him. Too many spirits. They are all shouting. They all want to speak through me, but I can’t-”
“Is Mrs. Gittings there?”
Sarah started. That was her mother’s voice.
Yellow Feather gave a chilling moan. “I do not want to speak to her.”
“Let her speak,” Mrs. Decker insisted. “Can she tell us who killed her?”
“Oh, Elizabeth, please don’t!” Mrs. Burke cried.
“So many spirits,” Yellow Feather complained. “I am so tired.”
“No, no, you must find my father before you go!” Cunningham cried.
“Someone is here, someone new…” Yellow Feather’s voice broke, and he made some strangled sounds. “He wants to speak. He’s trying so hard to speak.”
Suddenly, a piano started to play. The notes were slow and uncertain, as if the player was just learning. Frank looked at Sarah. She covered her peek hole again and whispered, “It must be the Professor playing the gramophone.”
Frank knew the Professor hadn’t been in the secret room a few minutes ago, but he stepped over again and pulled back the curtain. Sure enough, the gramophone was turning, the needle pressed against one of the wax cylinders, and the bell-shaped speaker was turned toward the door that led to the cabinet. But the room was still empty. Who had started it up?
He hurried back to Sarah and shook his head to tell her no one was there.
Apparently, Yellow Feather was still trying to get the new spirit to speak up and encountering resistance. “He can’t… He is still too close. The pull of life is still too strong.”
Suddenly, everyone gasped, and they all started talking at once.
“What’s that?”
“Who’s there?”
“Did you feel it, too?”
Mrs. Burke made a sound like a sob.
“He is here,” Yellow Feather said. “He needs to speak to you. Spirit, who are you? Why are you here?”
This time the moan was a different voice, higher pitched and keening, and everyone gasped again.
“Speak, Spirit,” Yellow Feather called out. “Do not be afraid!”
“I… did… not… kill… her!”
“Who is it?” Mr. Sharpe demanded. “Who are you?”
“Nic… Nic… Nicola,” the spirit wailed, as if the word was torn from his throat.
More gasps and sobs. The piano music had grown more confident.
“I’m going to stop this,” Frank said, but Sarah grabbed his wrist and shook her head.
“Let her go,” Sarah whispered fiercely. “Maybe she really knows who the killer is.”
The new spirit was keening and Yellow Feather started shouting to be heard. “Stop it! Listen to me! What else do you have to tell us?”
That was when Frank realized with a start that Serafina couldn’t be doing both voices at once. From the way Sarah’s eyes had nearly popped out of her head, she had realized the same thing.
“Tell us!” Yellow Feather begged. “Tell us who killed her!”
“I did not kill her,” the spirit insisted.
“I know! I know! We believe you!” Yellow Feather said. “Tell us the truth. Tell us who killed her.”
“The same… The same…” the spirit sputtered.
“Who is it?” Yellow Feather cried.
“The same who kills Serafina!”
Someone shouted and suddenly a burst of light illuminated the room, and he could clearly see everything.
Frank peered through the hole, desperate to see what was happening, but he could hardly make sense of what he saw.
Nicola’s ghost stood in front of the cabinet, staring in wide-eyed shock at the dark figure holding a stiletto poised to strike, but not at Serafina at all.
He was going to stab Maeve.
16
MALLOY PRACTICALLY KNOCKED SARAH DOWN IN HIS frantic haste to get to the kitchen door and out into the hall so he could force open the door to the seance room. She caught herself and took out after him. He’d just forced the door open when she reached him.
She could hear screams and shouts and the sound of a struggle. Malloy lunged for the struggle, which was taking place on the other side of the table, just where Maeve had been sitting, but she was gone. Dear heaven, had someone killed her, too?
But in the next instant, she saw her good hat bobbing above the edge of the table, and an arm came up holding something long and cylindrical that had some kind of light streaming out of it and brought it down with a sickening thud. As quickly as that, the struggle ceased and the light went out, and from the other side of the table, people started to reappear. Malloy first, and then Mr. Sharpe, and finally Nicola.
Sarah blinked to make sure. He looked furious and slightly disheveled but very much alive. And he was helping Maeve to her feet.
“What did you hit him with?” he was asking her.
But Maeve wasn’t listening. She didn’t even seem to know she’d been assisted by a ghost. She was too busy glaring down at the body on the floor. “Is he dead?” she asked, obviously hoping he was.
“Not likely,” Malloy said. “Probably just stunned, but we’d better truss him up before he comes to.” He turned and realized everyone else was staring at them in horrified silence.
“Who is it?” Sarah asked, hurrying over to see for herself, and she looked down at the body sprawled unceremoniously on the floor, a nasty gash across his powdered hairline.
“The
“Just as he was not in the room today,” Serafina said. “Did anyone see him come in?”
“No, I didn’t,” Cunningham replied. At some point he’d gone to her aid and now held her arm as if to support her in case she fainted. Sarah had never seen anyone who looked less likely to faint.
“Neither did I,” Mrs. Decker agreed. She was supporting Mrs. Burke, who did look like she might faint, although she was probably too interested in what was happening to risk missing any of it. “But I didn’t see that young man in here either,” she added, nodding toward Nicola.
“He was probably hiding in the cabinet, weren’t you, Nicola?” Malloy asked.
“Yes, I was,” he admitted a little defensively.
“But the Professor wouldn’t fit in there,” Malloy pointed out. “And Nicola would have noticed him, so how did he get in?”
“He hid behind the door,” Serafina said.
Everyone looked at the door in question, and Malloy walked over to it. When he passed Sarah, he said. “Hold this,” and handed her the stiletto that she’d seen the shadowy figure ready to stab Maeve with. She looked at it with horrified fascination.
Malloy was examining the door.
“I did not think of it that day, not until later, but he would always come with me to escort the clients into the seance room,” Serafina was explaining. “He did not come that day, and I did not know where he was. Then I remember, I also did not see him come in at the end, when I called him to help when Mrs. Gittings fell over. He was just there, but he did not have the smelling salts. He always brings the smelling salts from the kitchen when he comes. Later, when I think about everything, I knew he must have been hiding behind the door. As the door closes,
