Mesmerized by Candace Camp

happened. She turned and made her excuses to Lady St. Leger, who answered her somewhat abstractedly.
    “I apologize again for my behavior, Mother,” Stephen said.
    “I know, dear.” Lady St. Leger smiled at him. “I do wish that you would give Madame Valenskaya the benefit of the doubt. Such a dear woman.”
    “You did not use to be so skeptical, Stephen,” Pamela said in a teasing tone.
    St. Leger looked at her and said in dry tone, “That was before I learned what people were capable of.” He turned back to his mother. “I know how much you enjoy Madame Valenskaya’s company. I will do my best to, um, restrain my boorish tendencies.”
    With a small bow to his mother, he offered Oliviahis arm. They strolled through the great hall and down the back hall to the conservatory, where wicker furniture, softened by flowered cushions, was scattered among the large number of green plants. It was dark inside, lit only by the sconces in the hall outside and by the moonlight coming in the many windows. Stephen paused to light a candelabra, then led Olivia into the conservatory, making his way to a wicker sofa in the center of the plant-filled room.
    “I am sure you are going to tell me that I was foolish,” Stephen said. “I know I was. It was that woman’s trotting out Roddy like that. I couldn’t bear hearing her use his name to perpetrate her schemes. And to play on my mother’s grief in such a manner!”
    It struck Olivia that he had made no mention of Roddy’s widow’s grief. She had also noticed the steel in his voice earlier when he spoke to Pamela. However, she had no intention of mentioning either of those things. She said only, “I know. It is despicable. But your mother wants so badly to believe that Madame Valenskaya can contact your brother that we will never be able to convince her simply with reason. We will have to catch the medium in the middle of her deception.”
    “Yes. It is rather clever of her to have the spirits ‘speak through’ her. There’s no rapping at which one can be caught out. And it sounds like her because the spirit supposedly uses her voice. Pretty difficult to disprove that.”
    “Yes. But she did the trick with the hand. I feelsure that was a painted glove stuffed with paper or cloth and held up with a telescoping rod. She could easily hide the glove and rod in a large pocket. Her skirts are full. And you’ll remember that she went back to her room before she came to the séance, so she could have slipped the things into her pocket.”
    “True. But I can hardly stop her leaving the room and demand to search her pockets.”
    “No. We will have to observe what she does, and when, and then, at just the right moment, light a match and reveal her actually doing the trick.”
    “Sometimes I wonder if Mother would believe it even if she was confronted with the evidence.” He paused, looking thoughtful, then asked, “But why that talk of unhappy shades, these souls that can’t rest? That’s not the normal thing, is it?”
    “No,” Olivia admitted. “That was odd. Usually they talk about the peace and beauty of the other side. After all, that is what everyone wants to hear—that their loved one is happy in the afterlife, that there is no more pain and suffering, and that whenever they, too, die, they will join them in that blissful place.”
    “But for some reason she wants Mother to believe that Roderick is unhappy, that his soul is uneasy. What do you want to bet that it will take some certain amount of money to cause his soul to be at peace?”
    “No doubt you are right.” Olivia sighed. “I am afraid that Lady St. Leger would be willing to pay almost anything if she thought it would help her son.”
    “And completely aside from the money they aregoing to swindle out of her, there is also the fact that they are causing her pain right now. She is distressed because she thinks that Roderick is unhappy. That he ‘cannot rest.’ The woman is making her miserable,