Free Murder on Waverly Place by Victoria Thompson Page A

been converted to gas. Fortunately, the sunlight made artificial light unnecessary, at least in here.
    “Get some chairs, will you, Professor?” Frank said.
    He disappeared and returned with two straight-backed chairs that he’d probably fetched from the kitchen. O’Toole wouldn’t have let him into the séance room. Then the Professor closed the doors behind him and was gone.
    Mrs. Burke sat down on one of the chairs, and Frank placed the other so he could face her. “I know this has been a shock, Mrs. . . . I’m sorry. What was your name?”
    “Mrs. Burke,” she said, her voice a little steadier. “Mrs. Philip Burke.”
    Frank pulled a notebook and pencil from his pocket and jotted it down, along with the address she gave him. She was a near neighbor of Mrs. Decker’s on the Upper West Side and a long way from home down here on Waverly Place. “Tell me what happened or at least what you remember happened.”
    “Where shall I start?”
    “Right before Mrs. Gittings . . .” He made a vague gesture with his hand.
    She nodded and drew a steadying breath. “We were sitting around the table.”
    “In the dark, I know. Holding hands. Talking to the spirits.”
    “That’s right,” she said with some surprise.
    “Who were you holding hands with?”
    “Not holding hands exactly,” she corrected him. “We hold each other’s wrists. Madame Serafina was holding mine and . . .” She had to stop and swallow before she could finish. “And I was holding Mrs. Gittings’s.”
    Frank nodded encouragingly. “And what was happening just before you noticed something wasn’t right with Mrs. Gittings?”
    She gave a little shudder and for an instant Frank was afraid she would start screaming again, but she got hold of herself and went on. “Mrs. Decker was . . . Oh, dear! I mean, Mrs. Brandt . . .”
    “I know who Mrs. Decker is,” Frank told her. “I won’t tell anyone. Go on. What was Mrs. Decker doing?”
    “She was trying to get her daughter to speak to her.”
    “Her daughter?” Frank echoed in surprise, wondering why Mrs. Decker would need a séance to talk to Sarah.
    “She has a daughter who died,” Mrs. Burke clarified. “She wanted to contact her.”
    “Oh, right,” Frank said, remembering now. “Go on.”
    “As I said, Mrs. Decker was trying to get her daughter to speak to her, but there was a lot of confusion, and Yellow Feather couldn’t understand the message. Yellow Feather is—”
    “I know, the spirit guide,” Frank said, managing to keep the sarcasm from his voice. “What did you hear?”
    “Yellow Feather was shouting and there was some music,” she remembered with a frown. “I don’t think it was really a song exactly, just notes, discordant. There was so much noise, and we were all listening to find out what Mrs. Decker’s daughter would say to her.”
    “What did she say?”
    “Nothing,” she admitted sadly. “Or at least nothing I could understand. I was distracted, you see. I was holding Mrs. Gittings’s wrist.” She held up her left hand and looked at it in wonder.
    “How exactly do you do that?” Frank asked, trying to picture it in his mind. “Hold each other’s wrists, I mean.”
    “Oh, well, you hold the wrist of the person on your left, and the person on your right is holding your right wrist.”
    Frank nodded, understanding at last. “All right, go on. You were holding Mrs. Gittings’s wrist.”
    “Yes, and she was very still, although I didn’t think about that at the time. But then she leaned over toward me, or at least I thought that’s what she was doing. Her shoulder touched mine.” She instinctively grabbed her left shoulder with her right hand, as if she could still feel the pressure from the dead woman. “And then . . . and then . . . she just kept coming.” Her voice caught on a sob and she was weeping again, her shoulders shaking as she bawled into a fine, lace handkerchief.
    Frank sighed and sat back, letting her cry for a few minutes.