is one of them. This young lady was just about to move out, wasn’t you, dear? Get packin’, Lucy.”
She stares at Li’l Lucy, who cringes and dashes back up the stairs. Li’l Lucy is pushing nineteen years of age. She is getting long in the tooth and dim in the noggin. Jessie watches her go. If Li’l Lucy suffers another medical problem, Jessie will have to move her to the cribs on Morton Alley, and that’s that. The biz is the biz.
“There is just one problem, a minor one, I’m sure,” Mr. Watkins says with a lovely smile. He pats his pockets for a smoke with the blind gesture of habit and finds one. Then he recalls her injunction and twirls the ciggie mournfully though his nicotine-stained fingers.
Jessie sighs. Young and vigorous. And insolent. And on the make. “Sure and you cannot pay me right away.”
He looks at her, all fraudulent innocence and cunning and genuine desperation aging his youthful face into an odd sort of mask. As if a wholly different person stands before her for a moment.
What is happening? Something strange! Jessie’s breath catches in her throat. Fireworks pop and crackle overhead, and she starts, her heart fluttering.
Then a horse clatters on the cobblestones outside, and the spell is broken, and poor Mr. Watkins looks like nothing so much as sick, lost kid.
Through the window, Jessie spies Madame De Cassin. What a fine lady she is, too. Jessie smiles as the dashing spiritualist leaps off her black stallion, ties him to the hitching post, and stomps up the stairs. She bursts into the foyer without ringing the bell, splendid in her billowing black cape, black riding habit, and tall black boots. She always smells of horses, leather, and lavender oil. Madame De Cassin surveys Mr. Watkins with a piercing glance and, without hesitation, says, “Well, give him a room, Miss Malone, but he’ll want to watch his step. I’ll wager you’re born under the sign of Aries, sir, am I correct?”
Jessie fairly bursts with joy. Madame De Cassin is the most respected, most sought-after expert in matters of the occult in this burg. Sure and the spiritualist has never laid eyes on Mr. Watkins before, yet she offers her opinion of him in less than a trice.
“You see?” Jessie says. “Madame De Cassin knows everything!”
“Aries, then, sir?” says Madame De Cassin. “The headstrong ram?”
“I haven’t the slightest notion, madame,” Mr. Watkins says and lights another smoke in spite of Jessie’s admonition. Mr. Heald pats perspiration off his forehead and grins tightly. The spiritualist has laid eyes on Mr. Heald before.
“Well, what I do know is this, my dear,” Madame De Cassin says to Jessie, tossing her riding whip on the side table, together with her black riding hat with its jet beads and black plumes. She flexes her hands, which she always keeps gloved in the finest black kid, and imperiously surveys them all. “I do know it’s a fine time to call upon the sweet spirits.”
“Mariah! Li’l Lucy!” Jessie calls. “Get the sitting room ready.”
Madame De Cassin boldly stares at Mr. Watkins. “Are you a believer sir?”
“A believer in what?” Mr. Watkins stares back, bold as you please.
“In communication with dead.” To Mr. Heald, “How about you, sir? Have you ever spoken with the sweet spirits? Indeed, have you ever spoken truthfully with your wife?”
But Jessie is too excited to pay much attention to Mr. Heald’s scarlet face and sputtering breath. “Sure and we have enough people to sit for a séance, do we not, Madame de Cassin, if we include the gentlemen and Li’l Lucy? Have you ever sat at séance, Mr. Watkins?” she says, taking his arm. “Mariah! Bring us the sherry.”
* * *
Jessie’s sitting room is a small inner chamber with no windows, one door, and one low-burning brass gaslamp left unpolished so that a dark green patina has mottled the metal. The walls are heavily draped in black velvet. Even on this sunny day, the sitting room broods untouched by any natural light. A large round wooden table stands at the chamber’s center, surrounded by eight plain wooden chairs. A single brass candlestick holding a squat black candle thick with wax drippings juts up from the table’s center.
Li’l Lucy busily rearranges five of the chairs around the table, scraping three chairs into a corner of the room. Mariah lights the black candle, holds the match to incense burners slung on brass chains mounted on the wall among the folds of black velvet. The