Trick of the Light

Betrayed. Her father. Herself.

Ran to her mother’s den, grabbed a small leather case that was lying there, swept all the precious remnants of her father, letters, photographs, official papers, all she could find into that willing receptacle, downstairs without pause, back onto that sweating horse and – disappeared.

Right out of sight.

Never to be seen again.

Just as well, because if she ever came across them again she would shoot the pair where they stood.

Sophia came out of the reverie to find her face wet with tears. Not of grief or rage, just – tears.

Sometimes they fall. All of their own accord.

She took a deep breath of the honey-scented air in the shrine, dried her eyes and then frowned.

The framed picture she had fixed upon the wall, so that it looked down upon her sitting form, had slanted.

While she had closed her eyes.

How was that possible?

Sophia reached up to straighten it. Good. The Glorious South.

She had wanted to die but that had not happened. Fell in with some wild river-men who used her like a toy but she didn’t mind. Life was not important.

Then the voices began. In her mind. In the dark of the night, whispering of things unseen.

She knew things and the river-men left her alone. A voodoo woman. She had power. Pure and simple.

Wherever she went she followed that power. It led her to San Francisco by the waterfront, to Magnus Bannerman.

The chosen one.

When she saw him, deep into him, to see the weakness inside, she knew that part of her search was over.

And the other part just beginning.

They became lovers almost at once. That was good. Fusion was power.

He was her public face, with his charm, energy and sharp gambler’s brain. She became known in certain circles.

Her name was changed to make her sound more mysterious. Sophia Adler. As if from distant Europe. His mother’s maiden name, Adler. Magnus found great amusement in that and she accepted it without fuss.

Sophia had many secrets to keep and now could hold her father’s name to herself. Hidden. For her alone.

The Spiritualists took her under their wing, her fragile quality offset by Bannerman’s brash salesman’s pitch, and she began to do private meetings, then the larger halls, all the time her reputation growing.

A grand tour of Europe was proposed. Last port of call, Edinburgh. She had insisted upon that.

Vengeance at last.

It had been simple to slip out, hire a coachman and find out where the Morrison brothers lived. To see their greedy, pitiless faces. To identify how a beast might break through to kill.

Not just kill but mirror another death.

Amongst the papers Sophia ripped that day from her mother was a report forwarded to Melissa about her husband’s demise. From an unsympathetic consul in Glasgow, Warner L. Underwood. In it was a factual description of the body, its head blown to unrecognisable shreds. Lying in the gutter.

The good man.

In the report those responsible for the crime were not found. But from her father’s letters Sophia knew the guilty ones. As if a finger pointed. The betrayers.

And when she saw Gilbert Morrison that night, sitting in the audience, a face that she had seen not days before, that was the sign. The spirits had led him there. Her scream had not been fear but exultation.

Isolating the beast in Magnus had not been difficult; he had a dark, primitive, superstitious being and a mind that was infinitely suggestible.

Especially after the act of love.

She might put him easily into a mesmeric trance; it came naturally to her, and after a time used three key words to bring about an instant effect.

Find.

Kill.

Destroy.

The murder night they had walked the street cloaked to mingle with the Halloween revellers, thence to the Morrison house where she pointed him the way, bade him remove his socks and shoes for balance, gave him gauntlets to protect his hands from evidence of blood then set the beast loose.

Find.

Kill.

Destroy.

In the aftermath she brought him back through a rear entrance she had discovered in the hotel, unseen since the kitchens were now closed, and then bathed him like a child.

When he woke in the morning he remembered nothing of being an instrument of vengeance.

As it should be.

But now he was dead. Poor Magnus.

He had suffered from these evil headaches after each possession and died to serve her.

Sophia had watched from the shadows as McLevy’s two shots rang out in the still night and Bannerman plunged to his death from the rooftop. But she was certain that in his heart he would rejoice and wish her to live on in glory.

And therefore she had a duty to perform. The spirits would wish it so. This was the largest audience she had ever faced and would be her biggest challenge.

For her father. She would do it for him. Perhaps at last, she might hear his voice.

The voice she had waited for all her life.

Walter Morrison, unfortunately, was now safe from anything except her curse.

And she had to hope that one wasn’t heading her own way because her voices had been silent these last days.

Did they disapprove of what she had done?

Or were they just saving themselves for the challenge?

39

They buried him ’neath the sycamore tree

His epitaph there for to see

‘Beneath this stone I’m forced to lie

The victim of a blue-tailed Fly.’

TRADITIONAL, ‘The Blue-tailed Fly’

Ballantyne was worried, his innocent eyes perplexed as McLevy fiddled with the lock-picks.

‘D’ye think this a good idea, sir?’ he asked.

‘Sssh!’