India Black and the Widow of Windsor Read online

  “I sympathize, ma’am. I too have lost a husband.” Well, not so much lost him as never quite found him. Given Alafair’s colouring and temperament, her father was likely Charlie McClelland, the cardsharp who haunted the Mississippi riverboats, relieving commercial travelers of their hard-earned profits. Or the culprit could have been Frank Summers, the itinerant preacher who was always skating out of town after pocketing the contents of the collection plate.

  “Then you will understand how important my dear Albert was to me and how much I long to speak with him whenever I can.”

  “Of course I do. And if he is ready to speak to you tonight, you shall have the chance to say all that you would wish to him.”

  “Dear Albert always comes to me,” said the Queen. “I am a spiritually receptive person.”

  I’m counting on it, thought Mrs. LeBlanc. Victoria Regina she might be, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and Empress of India, but she was desperate to contact her dead husband, and in that frame of mind, she would ignore all evidence to the contrary and believe Mrs. LeBlanc had the power to summon spirits.

  “Shall we begin?” Mrs. LeBlanc placed her hands on the table and extended her fingers until her pinkies touched that of the Queen on one side and the bewhiskered old gentleman on the other. The rest of the group likewise stretched out their hands until their little fingers rested against those of their neighbors.

  Alafair glided discreetly behind a small desk tucked into the corner, out of the line of sight of everyone except her mother, and surreptitiously fingered the elaborate arrangement of wires and twine located beneath the desk.

  Mrs. LeBlanc closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. The group around the table muttered and rustled until finally the noise subsided to an expectant silence. The Queen sat like a statue, staring into the flame of the candle on the table before her. Minutes passed, and the room was quiet. Alafair studied the circle of participants and smiled. The bewhiskered gentleman looked bored out of his skull. Probably wished he were tucked up at his club with a brandy and soda, and a lively game of whist to occupy his time. None of the others looked very excited at the prospect of hearing from Albert again, either. After twenty years, the gossip from the spirit world must be getting pretty stale.

  Mrs. LeBlanc spoke softly. “I am seeking Albert. Come, Albert, and commune with us.”

  Silence. The air stirred, and the candle flame guttered. The Queen sighed. Alafair carefully replaced the tiny fan of peacock feathers.

  “Come, Albert,” said Mrs. LeBlanc. “Your friends are here. Your wife is here. They want to speak to you. Leave the realm of living souls and move among us.”

  The only sounds in the room were the ticking of the clock on the mantle and the crackle of the fire in the grate. There was a muted popping sound, like a cork being pulled from a bottle, and a blue flame erupted among the coals. Alafair let the thin wire slip from her fingers, as the group at the table started in their seats and shifted nervously in anticipation.

  “I feel your presence, Albert,” said Mrs. LeBlanc. “Will you speak with us tonight?”

  The scent of lilies filled the room, and the Queen drew in a long, quavering breath. “He is here,” she whispered. “I feel his presence.”

  Alafair snorted silently and replaced the atomizer behind one leg of the desk. She was as bored as the whiskery gent. She’d done this so often, she could have done it in her sleep.

  “Are you there, Albert?” asked Mrs. LeBlanc. “We seek your companionship and counsel tonight. Please, do not fail to appear to us.”

  The table tipped to one side and rocked gently.

  “Albert,” cried the Queen. “Oh, Albert, my dear.”

  Mrs. LeBlanc removed her foot from the lever beneath the table and pressed another. A tapping sound, like fingers rapping gently on the old oak table, resonated through the room.

  “Drina?” The sound had emanated from Mrs. LeBlanc, but the voice belonged to someone else. It was deep, guttural, and overlaid with a thick German accent. The Queen’s hand quivered against Mrs. LeBlanc’s.

  “It must be him,” whispered one of the ladies-in-waiting. “Only her family calls her that.”

  “Albert, are you there?” asked the Queen in a tremulous voice.

  Mrs. LeBlanc shivered. Her eyes closed and her head lolled to one side. Alafair stifled a yawn.

  “I am with you, my darling Drina,” said Mrs. LeBlanc in the harsh tone of a Teutonic aristocrat.

  “Are you well, my dear?” asked the Queen tenderly.

  Alafair bit back a guffaw. He was dead, for Christ’s sake. How well could he be in those circumstances?

  Mrs. LeBlanc forged on. “I am quite well. And you? Are you also well?”

  “Well enough, dear. Just the slightest indisposition. Nothing for you to worry about. I fear I have had some difficulty sleeping, and my appetite has decreased recently.” The Queen paused for breath, and the German voice spoke hastily.

  “I’m sure you’ll feel better soon. And the children? How do they fare?”

  Victoria inhaled sharply, and the group around the table stirred uneasily.

  “The girls are doing wonderfully, Albert. And Arthur, Leopold and Alfred are such fine gentleman. But Bertie—” The Queen’s voice rose in indignation as she contemplated the ribald exploits of her son Albert Edward, Prince of Wales and heir to the British throne.

  There was a strangled moan from the participants in the séance, and Mrs. LeBlanc, realizing she had started down a path leading to disaster, interjected swiftly in the heavily accented voice: “My dear, do not trouble yourself about Bertie. All will come right in the end. Trust me.”

  “I do wish that I could, Albert, but he is such a trial. There’s not a serious bone in his body. All he wants to do is drink and carouse and chase women. I don’t understand why you could not have had greater influence on him while you were with us.”

  Mrs. LeBlanc was quickly developing sympathy for poor Albert. Generally, those left behind were looking for reassurance from the departed, not an opportunity to complain about their health or harangue the poor dead relatives about their lack of parenting skills. The Queen was still cataloguing Bertie’s deficiencies for her departed husband. At this rate, the séance would drag on for hours, as Bertie’s deficiencies were both manifold and extensive. Mrs. LeBlanc seized the bull by the horns.

  “My dear wife, I know how you struggle to rein in Bertie and to see that he is provided with the training appropriate for your successor. I do not like to see you so exercised by these trials. I beg you not to concern yourself with this matter and to take care that you do not injure your health by worrying excessively about our son. My time with you is brief, and soon I must return to the others. I have come to you tonight with a request, Drina.”

  The Queen straightened in her chair, her face avid with curiosity, and Bertie’s shortcomings forgotten for the moment. “Anything, anything at all for you, my dear.”

  “I miss you terribly, and the children as well.”

  Tears seeped down the Queen’s heavily powdered jowls. “And we miss you.”

  “I remember all the happy times we shared at Osborne and at Windsor. But most especially I long to relive those halcyon days at Balmoral.”

  The Queen sniffed and nodded lugubriously. “They were happy times indeed.”

  “If I could return to you, I would ask only that we might spend the rest of our lives there together.”

  “What, even in the winter?” Her Majesty looked dubious.

  “Yes. I would go this instant, if I were there with you. My one regret is that we never took the opportunity to spend the holiest of days there together with our family. I would so dearly love to spend the Christmas holiday there, with friends and family, and hold a ghillies’ ball for the servants, and dance to a reel together just as we used to do.”

  The Queen’s lip trembled. “Ah, yes. What wonderful times we had at those balls.”

  “Will you go now, this instant, to Balmoral? Will you give me the satisfaction of spending Christmas at our Scottish home, where I may visit you in spirit and observe the close bonds of our family once again?”

  “Well,” said the Queen, “you know I always spend Christmas at Osborne.”

  “Please go, my darling. How I long to be with you there in the Highlands. It would mean so much to me if you would accede to my wishes, just this once, and spend the holiday at Balmoral. It is my heart’s desire. Please, do not disappoint me.”

  “Er, no, of course not,” said the Queen. “I should never dream of disappointing my dear husband. I shall inform the master of the household at once that I will be spending Christmas at Balmoral.”

  While Alafair distributed coats and mufflers, Mrs. LeBlanc accepted the compliments of the Queen’s party on a successful communication with the spirit of Prince Albert. She curtseyed to the Queen, now swaddled in furs and scarves, who gave her a grave nod.

  “I should like to see you again, Mrs. LeBlanc. I have spoken to dear Albert on several occasions, but he has never been quite so, er, explicit about his wishes. You must be exceptionally talented as a channel for spirits.”

  “Thank you for your kind words, ma’am. I am glad that I could provide such a direct communication to you. I should be pleased to wait upon you at any time.”

  The Queen shuffled to the door, and the footman swept it open for her and her entourage.

  The bewhiskered gentleman dropped a coin into Mrs. LeBlanc’s hand. “With Her Majesty’s compliments,” he said as he tipped his hat.

  The last of the party to leave sidled furtively to Mrs. LeBlanc’s side. “Most convincing, madam. You remembered every detail. Well done.” The voice was a soft Scottish burr. A handful of coins cascaded into Mrs. LeBlanc’s outstretched hand. “Remembe
r, not a word to anyone, or you may find yourself back on a ship to Louisiana, Miss Gooch.”

  ONE

  “India,” French hissed, “at last I have you where I want you.”

  His face was inches from mine. I could feel his breath through the mask, hot with lust, and his eyes were aflame with it. There was a sharp pain in my left breast, I was sweating buckets, and my knees felt as though they could give way at any time. I had never seen French like this, and it worried me.

  But only for a moment. I’ve found myself in a bad patch or two, and if I do say so myself (and if I won’t, who will?), I’m at my best when the chips are down. The options in this situation were the usual ones available to a woman physically threatened by a man: attack (my preferred method but not always the wisest), submission (only if every other option had turned tail and fled over the hill) and deceit. Now there’s a world of possibilities in the latter, and so I turned my mind to how best to practice that glib and oily art (as old Willie Shakespeare put it). It didn’t take long for me to decide on an approach. French is as predictable as a vicar’s afternoon appointment with the sherry bottle.

  I gave him a look of maidenly meekness. “Ow,” I said. “You’re hurting me.”

  French sprang away as though I’d produced a viper from my pocket. “Oh, I say. I didn’t mean to injure you.”

  You can always count on the English gentleman in French, at least until he sniffs out that you’ve been relying on his good manners to take advantage of him. Then, he can be a right brute. The moment when French discovered that I had been pulling his leg was looming on the horizon like a Malay pirate ship, so I dropped my act and went in for the kill.

  His foil hung at his side. I gathered my strength and lunged toward him in a perfectly executed flèche, my arm thrusting forward and the button that covered the point of my foil slamming into French’s fencing jacket at the breastbone. The blade of the foil bent wildly and skittered off French’s chest as my momentum carried me along the fencing strip, but as I passed him, I let out a great whoop of victory. A touch for India!

  “That’s a touch,” I cried when I’d halted my headlong rush and turned back to face him. I ripped off my mask and pushed my hair from my face.

  “Oof.” French was recumbent on the strip, cradling his sternum and breathing raggedly. “That wasn’t a touch; that was a bloody ambush.” He pushed himself to a sitting position and regarded me reproachfully. “That was underhanded, even for you, India. You misled me, and when I dropped my guard, you attacked.”

  “You’re the one who said that fencing was in part the art of deception.”

  French probed his chest for an entry wound. “Within accepted conventions, it is.”

  “That’s ridiculous. How can you deceive someone if you have to follow rules about how to deceive him?”

  French ignored my question, as he no doubt knew there was no adequate response to it.

  “That maneuver of yours would be frowned upon at L’Ecole d’Escrime Français. In fact, you’d be tossed out of every salle d’armes in France.”

  “Well, I learned the art of self-defense at L’Ecole d’Boulevards d’London. ‘Needs must’ is the school motto. And if you don’t know how to wallop a gent in the bollocks, you can’t graduate.” I tossed my mask to one side and wiped the sweat from my face. “Really, French, I do appreciate your interest in my personal safety, but I’ve done alright on my own up to now. To be honest”—and surprisingly, in this case, I was—“I’m not sure fencing is for me. A well-aimed kick in the testicles is more my style. And if the situation requires it, I’m a fine shot with my revolver.”

  I carried my .442 Webley British Bulldog with me whenever I traveled at night or into any of the more questionable districts of London. I’d used it on several occasions, including a few weeks ago when I had cut down a sabre-wielding Terek Cossack guard from the Russian Embassy who had been about to filet me while French had been occupied wrestling with Major Ivanov, the tsar’s agent in Britain. I opened my mouth to point out how very effective my Bulldog had proved against the Cossack’s great killing sword, the shashka, but French was glaring at me as he got stiffly to his feet.

  “Do not,” he said, in a warning tone, “blather on about how effective your Bulldog was against the Cossack. If I hear one more word from you about that, I’m going to be ill. I am well aware that in most cases, it is more advantageous to hold a gun in your hand than a sword. However, there may be times when you don’t have your Bulldog on your person, and you find yourself threatened by an assailant with a knife or a club or even a sword. The object of teaching you how to fence is to provide you with an additional means of self-defense if, at some time in the future, you should find yourself wishing you hadn’t left your revolver on the fireplace mantle. I should think you would be glad to learn a few new tricks to protect yourself, given your, ah . . . profession.”

  Dear French. Always so solicitous of my feelings, except when he isn’t. My profession, as he so delicately referred to it, is in fact prostitution. I am the abbess of Lotus House in St. Alban’s Street, an elegant and luxurious establishment catering to the upper echelons of the civil service, minor aristocracy and our brave military lads (officers only, of course). The whores I employ are attractive, clean and generally devoid of any ambition other than getting their hands on the next bottle of gin. I feed them well and keep a doctor on retainer to ensure the girls don’t provide anything to the customers that they shouldn’t. I run a tight ship and am justifiably proud of my services and my reputation, which has improved by leaps and bounds over the past few years. I’m not in the first rank of brothels just yet, but give me a year or two and the old abbesses will have to step aside or get shoved out of the way.

  No doubt you are wondering how the madam of a brothel came to be learning the art of fencing from a handsome British blue blood with blue-black hair and arrogant grey eyes. Surprisingly, our relationship was not of a business nature, unless you could call French’s attempt at blackmailing me not long ago (enterprising as it was) “business.” It’s like this, you see. One of my regular customers, a spaniel-faced cove named Archibald Latham, expired on the premises of Lotus House not long ago. Naturally, I had to dispose of the body before any of the other madams got wind of the situation, or they would have made my life a living hell, spreading the word that the bints at Lotus House were a bloodthirsty lot and Latham had been killed for the contents of his pocket. As it turned out, Latham had passed over the River Jordan due to natural causes, probably as a result of the stress and strain of his work at the War Office. On the day he died at Lotus House, he was carrying a memo containing vital information about the state of the British military.

  Russia and Britain had been rattling sabres at each other over Russia’s threat to attack the Ottoman Empire, ostensibly to assist their Serbian cousins who were being put to the sword by the Sublime Porte’s rascally military irregulars, but in truth because Tsar Alexander II was a bit sulky over not possessing a warm water port for the Russian navy. Naturally, the British government didn’t want the Russian bear anywhere in the vicinity of the Mediterranean, where it might come roaring out of its den and cut off British access to the Suez Canal and the route to India. In consequence, the British government had been trying to intimidate the Russians with talk of the number of British Tommies champing at the bit to have a go at the Russians again, just a few decades after the debacle of the Crimean War. I know, hard to credit, but you know how these diplomats are: they fancy themselves as master strategists, just because they’ve gone to public school and read a little Cicero.

  Normally, I’d have shoved Latham’s papers in the fireplace and put a match to them, just to get rid of any evidence that the old goat had been in my establishment, but in this case I didn’t have the chance. Russian agents had been shadowing Latham and took the opportunity his death presented to spirit away the case containing the War Office memo, a memo, which, you’ve no doubt realized by now, contained an accurate depiction of the strength of the British Army, which was just about large enough to repel an attack on Penzance by the combined forces of Norway and Sweden.