The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told by Martin H. Greenberg Page B

instinct, a good thing to follow. Is he living in the house?”
    “He mentioned it, but Flora—for once—didn’t think that was proper.”
    “Is he romancing her?”
    Miss Saeger’s eyes went hard. “Slowly. He’s too smart to rush things, but I see the way he struts around, looking at everything. If he lays a finger on Flora I’ll—”
    I raised one hand. “I get it. You want Flora protected and him discredited.”
    “Or his legs broken and his big smirking face smashed in.”
    That was something I could have arranged. I know those kind of people. “It’s better if Flora gets rid of him by her own choice, though.”
    “I don’t see how, I may have left it too late. I called here on Saturday to make the appointment, but—” She went red in the face. “I could just kill him.”
    “What’d he do?”
    “The last séance—they have one every Sunday and that’s just wrong having it on a Sunday—something horrible happened. They all gathered in the larger parlor at the table as usual, lighted candles, and put out the lights. Soon as it went dark I slipped in while they were getting settled. There’s an old Chinese screen in one corner, and I hide behind it during their séances. Negative feelings, my foot, no one’s noticed me yet, not even Bradford, so I saw the whole thing.”
    “Which was?”
    “He put himself in a trance right on time. It usually takes five minutes, and by then everyone’s expecting something to happen, you can feel it. He starts out with a low groan and breathing loudly, and in the dark it’s spooky, and that’s when his spirit guide takes over. His voice gets deeper and he puts on a French accent. Calls himself Frère Lèon. He’s supposed to have been a monk who traveled with Joan of Arc.”
    “Who speaks perfect English?”
    “Of course. No one’s ever thought of talking to him in French. I doubt Bradford knows much more than mon Dieu and sang sacré .”
    She’d attended a good finishing school, speaking with the right kind of pronunciation. I’d heard it when I’d been a doughboy in France during the last year of the war, and had picked up enough to get by. Much of that was too rough for Miss Saeger’s tender ears, though.
    “And the horrible thing that happened?”
    “It was at the end. He pretends to have Frère Lèon pass on messages from James. He can’t have James talk directly to Flora or he’d trip himself up. He doesn’t pass too many messages, either, just general stuff about how beautiful it is on the other side. She tries to talk to him and ask him things and she’s so desperate and afterwards she always cries and then she goes back for more . It’s cruel. But this time he said he was giving her a sign of what she should do.”
    “Do?”
    “I didn’t know what that meant, until . . . well, Bradford finished just then and pretended to be waking from his trance. That’s when they found what he’d snuck on the table. It was James’wedding ring, the one he was buried with.”
    I gave that the pause it deserved. “Not a duplicate?”
    She shook her head, a fast, jerky movement. Her voice was thick. “Inside it’s engraved with To J. from F.—Forever Love. He never took it off and it had some hard wear: two distinct parallel scratches, and it wasn’t a perfect circle. Flora showed it to me as proof that Alistair Bradford was genuine. She didn’t want to hear my idea that . . . that he’d dug up and robbed James’ grave. I thought she’d slap me. She’s gone crazy, Mr.—”
    “Fleming. Call me Jack.”
    “Jack. Flora’s never raised a hand to me, even when we were kids and I was being bratty, but this has her all turned around. I thought Mr. Escott could find something out about Bradford that would prove him a fake or come to a séance and do something to break it up, but I don’t think she’d listen now. The last thing Bradford said before his trance ended was ‘you have his blessing.’ Put that with the ring and I know it means if