“You say we, but I think you really mean me, don’t you? What are you about to ask me to do, Mr. Clemens?” Mrs. Boulton looked at him with puzzlement on her face.
“Maybe you can save an innocent man from the gallows,” said Mr. Clemens. “Lestrade and his boys think Ed McPhee is the guilty party, or at the very least his sidekick. And unless somebody proves they’re wrong, they’ll hang him, sure as you’re born.”
“You need more faith in British justice,” said Mrs. Boulton. “Mr. McPhee will not go to the gallows if he can prove his innocence in a court of law.” She paused, a finger at the side of her chin. “And if he cannot prove his innocence, perhaps the world would be a better place without him.”
“We see it differently back home,” I pointed out. “A man is not guilty until proven so.”
“At least, not a respectable-looking white man who can afford a good lawyer,” said Mr. Clemens. “The rest take their chances. Now, Ed McPhee is a humbug and a swindler—and if Lestrade hasn’t learned that, he will soon enough, if he sends a telegram to Pinkerton, or anybody else in America who keeps his eye on shady characters. But I know something Pinkerton doesn’t: Ed’s not a killer—and the longer Lestrade has his dogs barking up the wrong tree, the easier it will be for the real killer to cover his tracks and get away clean.”
“Mr. Clemens, I am not quite so certain that Chief Inspector Lestrade’s men are barking up the wrong tree, if I understand your metaphor,” said Mrs. Boulton, looking somewhat dubious. “But assuming they are, what would you have me do?”
Mr. Clemens tapped his forefinger on the rim of his teacup. “I want you to tell me about last night. When did you first realize something had happened to the doctor?”
Mrs. Boulton lifted her chin and stared into the distance for a moment, then began speaking. “Well, of course, I was very excited when I learned of the sitting. Mrs. McPhee seemed to have such a genuine gift—I cannot remember having seen one so luminous before. Cedric used exactly that word when she first came to the Spiritualist Society—luminous. And so I knew I absolutely had to go to the sitting. And of course when I arrived there, I was pleased to find you and your family—it made me think, ‘If Mr. Clemens has come here, all the way from America, Mrs. McPhee must be even more gifted than I knew.’ ”
Mr. Clemens glowered as he heard these words. “I should have put a gunny sack over my head,” he muttered under his breath. “Now everybody in London will think I believe in that claptrap.”
Mrs. Boulton glanced at him, but he gestured to her that she should continue, and she did. “Of course, when the lights went out and the spirits began to speak, I was hoping so that poor dear Richard would visit us. That was the real reason I went, you know. It has been so long without him, and I have been so lonely. And then, just as I was beginning to fear that Mrs. McPhee would not be successful, he came to us and spoke! I was thrilled beyond belief, Mr. Clemens. I know now that he is safe on the other side, at the end of all his pain, and that I can hope to rejoin him when my own time comes. He suffered so very much, and we had tried so many things—I wanted to take him to Lourdes, but he was too ill to travel, and then . . . then he was called away before we could make the journey. I still believe the waters might have saved him.”
“Yes, of course,” said Mr. Clemens, though his expression made it clear—to me at least—that his patience was wearing thin with her meandering about the subject. “But what about Dr. Parkhurst?”
Mrs. Boulton shook her head, a sad expression on her face. “Oh, Richard thought Dr. Parkhurst was the only man in London who could save him—the poor dear, if he’d only trusted in spiritual healing as readily as he did in doctors and hospitals, I know he’d be sitting here today. Of course medicine has come a long way, even in our lifetime, but it cannot treat diseases of the soul, can it? I tried to tell him exactly that, but—”
Mr. Clemens looked utterly baffled at this apparent digression until he realized—a moment before I did—what Mrs. Boulton was evidently referring to.
“Pardon me, Mrs. Boulton. I guess I didn’t make myself clear,” he interrupted. “I didn’t know Dr. Parkhurst had treated your husband. I was referring to the other night, when the doctor was shot.”
“Oh, how silly of me,” said Mrs. Boulton, throwing up her hands. “Of course you were! And now I’ve forgotten what I was getting at. What was it you wanted to know about the doctor?”
Mr. Clemens held up a hand. “Well, first, I’d like to know whether you were satisfied that Dr. Parkhurst did the best he could for your husband.”
Mrs. Boulton sighed. “Mortal medicine has its limits,” she said with a resigned expression. “I doubt whether the finest doctor alive could have done any more for him.”
My employer nodded, then returned to his previous question. “Since you were sitting next to the doctor at the séance, I wondered if you remembered exactly when you realized something had happened to him. Or did you not notice anything until his wife cried out?”
“Let me think, now,” said Mrs. Boulton. “Of course, I was paying attention to what the spirits said rather than the other people at the table. With the room darkened, I only became aware of the others in the room as they spoke.”
She thought for a moment—I realized it was the longest
