Ghost Talkers Read online

  He winked. “Thank you. Hey … that’s the light. Thought they were foo…” And he was gone.

  Without opening her eyes, Ginger said, “Edna. Will you see that this report goes directly to Brigadier-General Davies? He’ll want someone to examine the scene in case there are further clues to the men’s identities.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  Helen asked, “Do you need to take a break?”

  “No.” Ginger forced a laugh, even though everyone in the circle would be able to feel how shaken she was. Sometimes, external appearances could help shape her internal response. “We’ve only just begun. But I am happy that it is your turn to lead.”

  “Hmm. We’ll talk after,” Helen said, and she took the lead on the circle.

  Ginger subsumed herself in her physical form and helped the rest of the circle anchor Helen as another soldier stepped forward.

  * * *

  As Ginger crossed the line of salt, she sighed with relief at leaving the cool pressure of death behind. God, but she was tired. Given her druthers, she’d have gone straight back to the dormitory to sleep until her next shift. Duty, however, meant talking to the brigadier-general. Given Capt. Norris’s report, it was all too likely that Davies would want to question her as the closest thing he had to an eyewitness to the crime.

  “Oh, no you don’t.” Helen linked her arm through Ginger’s and steered her away from the offices toward the front door. “We both need some sunlight and life before more work. Have lunch with me?”

  Ginger cast a glance back over her shoulder toward the offices. “I should really go talk to the brigadier-general.”

  “Mm-hmm. About that soldier who was—no, wait. What is it in the manual? The irregular death.” She shook her head. “As if any of them are regular, after what we doing to them.”

  “Speaking of which…” Ginger glanced around to see if anyone was listening, but the other people in the hall were either chatting with forced animation to cast off the memories of work, or so turned inward with exhaustion that they likely did not even hear the distant sound of the armaments. Still … it was better to be safe than sorry. Ginger tightened her hand on Helen’s. “I think that stepping out sounds very nice.”

  Helen pursed her lips and snorted, clearly reading Ginger’s aura.

  Arm in arm, they walked outside. The sun brushed the chill from Ginger’s fingers and wrapped itself around her like an aura. “The temptation to go find a grassy field and wantonly lie down in it is very strong.”

  Helen chuckled. “Now you sound like me. Except that I want a proper beach.”

  “Rocky cliffs are not satisfying?”

  “Cold water is more the problem.” Helen tugged her arm and steered her to an unoccupied bench near the wall. “Come. Sit in the sun for a bit. Then I let you talk business.”

  It did feel good. Ginger sank onto the wood slats and leaned against the back. “Oh, my.”

  Helen nodded. “I told you. Now—what happened with that Capt. Norris?”

  “I thought you said we weren’t going to talk business!”

  “This is about your soul.” Helen nudged Ginger with her elbow. “You knew him?”

  “Not really. He said some unpleasant things last night while I was walking, and then got into a fight with Ben.”

  “You don’t think—” Helen cut herself off. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have even thought that.”

  “Thought that … thought that Ben killed him? Because of me?”

  She shrugged. “Men change during the war.”

  “Not that much.” He had changed, that was true. But not so much as to murder a man over a few words. “Besides, neither voice was Ben’s. And anyway—the important thing is that I think it was related to the Germans looking for us.”

  “‘The skirts’? I wondered that too. Do you think he was going to say the name Anne, or something like ‘an apple’?”

  “Could be either. There are half a dozen Annes in our ranks, to say nothing of the regulars.”

  Helen shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

  Wincing, Ginger bit her lip. Of course, Helen and the other West Indian mediums were not assigned to work the hospitality tents. “I’ll get the list from my aunt.”

  “And ask that fellow of yours if he’s got any ideas.”

  “Next time I write to him.” Ginger looked sideways at Helen. “Speaking of gentlemen. How was your evening out?”

  “Better than it had any right to be.”

  “The heat?”

  Helen hesitated and then shook her head. “My cousin—he was supposed to have come back from the front yesterday, but he didn’t.”

  “Oh. Oh, my dear, I am so very sorry.”

  “It’s okay. He’s in hospital. And I know this because I met one of his squad mates when you forced me to go dancing.”

  “I suggested.”

  “Forced.”

  “Be that as it may, I am glad to hear that he is alive.” Ginger watched Helen with some interest. It had not occurred to her that Helen would have family in the war. “Have you other family here?”

  “Two cousins. A brother in Egypt.” Helen drummed her fingers on her knee and leaned back against the bench. Closing her eyes, she turned her face up to the sky. “I think I am going to sit here and ponder the question of how to move our mediums.”

  “You look more as if you are going to nap.”

  “It is all the same thing.” Helen waved her hand to shoo Ginger away. “You go talk to the brigadier-general.”

  * * *

  Helen had probably been correct that Ginger should have gone for lunch first. But given what had happened to Capt. Norris, she could not put off talking to the brigadier-general any longer. She was the closest they had to an eyewitness to the crime. Marshalling her strength, Ginger leaned against the wall outside Davies’s office. The wood scraped against the cloth of her uniform, and she concentrated on the sensation of the fibres sliding across the grain to ground herself in the here and now.

  Straightening her shoulders, Ginger put a professional smile on. Thank God Davies couldn’t read auras, or it would not have fooled him for a moment. She rapped on the door.

  “Enter!”

  Turning the cool brass knob, Ginger followed orders and entered the brigadier-general’s office. “Sir. I am here to follow up on my report about the death of Captain Harold Norris.”

  “What? Who?”

  She faltered. Edna was supposed to have the runner take the report straight here. “The officer who was murdered in the baths last night … did you not get the report?”

  “Oh…” He pawed through the pile of papers on the desk. “Oh, that. I sent someone round to fish him out of the baths. Devil of a mess, but not murder.”

  “He was held under.”

  He snorted. “He was drunk, which has been confirmed by multiple witnesses. He fell asleep in the baths. Have to have the bloody thing drained.”

  “Sir—I think you must not have received my report. He heard two men talking and then one of them, in a British uniform, held him under. He was quite certain that they were spies.”

  “Because that would make him seem less foolish, right?” The general pinched his nose. “I see men who shoot themselves in the foot, quite literally, in order to be sent home from the front.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I am not a medium, but I know men. This man had a history, and was going to come to a bad end with or without the war, and he did.”

  “Sir. I relived his last moments. I saw the men who—”

  He waved his hand to cut her off. “You saw what he wanted to think his last moments were. But really … if we had spies in our midst, why would they bother with the murder of a drunk gunnery captain? Now go, sit down and be quiet, and leave the war to the men.”

  That was not how it worked. When she relived a memory, it was as if it had actually happened. Shaking with fury, Ginger gave a brief nod and thanked the stars that the British and their goddamned regulations wou
ldn’t allow women in their ranks, so she did not have to salute or listen to this arrogant ass. She would write to Ben, and he would take her seriously.

  Capt. Norris was murdered. He might have been a drunk, but his death would not be in vain.

  Chapter Five

  When Ginger’s aunt Lady Penfold was in town, she stayed in the Hôtel de Ville, the only hotel of any note in Le Havre. As the maid escorted Ginger into the sitting room of her suite, a flurry of lace erupted from the chair. “Ginger, darling! You are too thin, poor dear. Come. Sit. Have some chocolates. No—cheese. Have you eaten today? Hush—I can see by your aura that you were about to lie to me. Sit, my dear. Sit.”

  Ginger’s aunt patted an overstuffed chair the way she would to call her pug.

  Laughing, Ginger sank into the chair. “Truly Aunt Edie, I had lunch before I came.”

  “Piffle. I have seen what they serve you.” She set a cheese board in front of Ginger and cut a slice herself. Placing it atop a piece of bread, she handed the whole to Ginger. “I do so wish you would stay here. I hardly use the place, and even when I am here, there is more than enough space.”

  “The dormitory is small, but convenient. You are all the way across town.”

  “First of all, your ‘dormitory’ is an unused asylum. Second, you say ‘across town’ as if you were talking about London distances. Across town? I can walk ‘across town’ in half an hour! Even were that not the case, there is a streetcar that stops just across the Jardin Publique, and runs nearly to your door.”

  “And some days, I am so tired…” Too late, Ginger saw the trap her aunt had laid. Edith, Lady Penfold was the younger sister of Ginger’s mother and had taken a vested interest in her niece, even when the Atlantic Ocean had separated them.

  “Ha! I knew you were exhausted.”

  Ginger held up her hands and shrugged. “We’ve had to schedule double shifts. Please, please tell me that you have some new recruits for us.”

  Aunt Edie cut herself a slice of cheese and nibbled on the corner of it. “Well … I do. But not so many as either of us would like. My efforts to discredit the spiritualist movement have been a trifle too successful, I think.”

  Ginger winced. “The fake séances?”

  “Not as well attended as they have been, although—I’ve been working with Houdini, and we have found ways to fake most of the effects of an actual ghost. So the spectacle still draws some people. Mm! I brought six women who all have actual talent—completely undiscovered. Charming things.”

  “And their discretion?” Charming, unfortunately, did not always mean discrete.

  “From excellent families! And all so, so eager to do their bit for king and country.”

  “That is a relief.”

  She sighed and shook the piece of cheese at Ginger. “What you are actually thinking is perhaps closer to only six, isn’t it?”

  “Would it help if you no longer had to pretend spiritualism was a fraud?”

  Narrowing her eyes, Aunt Edie tilted her head. “Yes … but I thought the whole point was to keep the Germans from realizing what we were doing for as long as possible.”

  “They might have figured it out.”

  Aunt Edie clapped her hands over her ears. “Good heavens, girl! Do not tell me that. You know I cannot be trusted. It is a miracle I have managed not to tell people that I am faking the fakery. If that even makes sense. Oh … Ginger, dear. I am a gossip. Please, please, do not tell me anything more.”

  And that was why her aunt avoided the staff meetings. The same thing that made her such a success in society and so able to recruit mediums was also her greatest liability. Ginger sat forward and set the cheese and bread aside. “I’m afraid I need to tell you one more thing, because there is a matter I need your help with.”

  Her eyes brightened. “Ooh! Do tell.”

  “I took a report from an officer who was murdered while in Le Havre by someone who appeared to be a British officer. I stepped into the man’s soul and experienced his death, so I’m absolutely certain it was murder.”

  “My God.”

  Ginger took a breath. “My problem is that I told Brigadier-General Davies about it and he believes I’m making it up. Could you speak with him? I think he might take your title more seriously. He’s always annoyed when I come to meetings instead of you.”

  Snorting, Lady Penfold sat back in her chair. “I will do one better than that. I will speak to his wife. We will get this sorted out, posthaste.”

  * * *

  The chime sounded, ending their second shift. Ginger settled back into her body, and the entire circle groaned in unison. Joanne giggled. “Lord. Don’t we sound like the worst choir in the world?”

  Lt. Plumber shook his head and gave a weary grin. “Not near as bad as some of the singing in the trenches.”

  These were good people, and she was fortunate to have them. Aches ran through her limbs with half a dozen phantom memories. Maybe she would take Helen’s advice and have a stroll by the shore, just to get some air untainted by death. Then, too … she finally had a letter back from Ben. With the uncertainty of the post coming to the front, it could sometimes take only a day for a letter to reach her, and sometimes two weeks. This looked to have been a week in transit. She’d had to fight the urge to open it immediately when she received it, but she was so tired she hadn’t been sure she would be able to make sense of it.

  Ginger scrubbed her face, trying to chafe some feeling back into her form. When she lowered her hands, the entire circle was staring at her. “What?”

  Across the circle, Helen stood, stretching. “What are your plans this evening?”

  “I was thinking about a walk to the shore.”

  “Bother.” Joanne clapped her hands over her mouth and looked around at the group.

  Ginger’s soul was still unsettled enough that the sudden flashes of brown annoyance from the group were as plain as text on a page. “Again, I ask, what?”

  Joanne lowered her hands and gave a sheepish shrug. “We had a pool about how long it would take you to read Capt. Harford’s letter.”

  Ginger glanced around the group in disbelief. “A pool…”

  Mr. Haden nodded. “Aye. ’Twas my idea, and I was out of the running first thing.”

  Helen said, “Well, we all knew you got it. It was written all over you during the first shift.”

  “Figured you’d open it straightaway, I did.” Mr. Haden shrugged. “It’s what I would have done with a letter from my sweetheart.”

  Helen smirked. “And I said you would wait until right before bed tonight, so you had no other distractions.”

  “I see … and Joanne thought I would go straight back to my room, I take it. If I open it right now? Who wins?”

  Mrs. Richardson raised her hand and waggled her fingers. “I said that you’d think about waiting, but you wouldn’t be able to stand it.”

  Mr. Haden frowned at Joanne. “Although now that someone let you know there was a pool, it won’t count.”

  “In that case, I shan’t worry about playing favourites.” Ginger pulled the letter out of her pocket and waved it at them. “I am going back to my room straightaway and will read it there.”

  The cheer they let out did more to restore her than any other measure, short of Ben arriving in person.

  * * *

  Ginger settled at the small table in her room. Its past as an asylum meant that, though she had a window, it was close to the ceiling and barred. At least the building no longer held restless souls. When the Spirit Corps had first moved in … it had required some effort to make it habitable by the sensitive.

  On the table, she had a pad of paper and her copy of The Story of an African Farm, both of which were absolutely necessary to read a letter from Ben. She started with the salutation.

  My dearest, darling, beloved Ginger—

  With that, she breathed a sigh of relief. In their private cipher, it meant that he was not going to see combat or venture into enemy territory.
She only worried when he wrote a simple Beloved.

  The paragraphs of the letter, by agreement, would contain nothing coded, though sometimes there were veiled references.

  I received your letter of 17 July and so wish that I could be there with you. Or you with me, if that didn’t mean bringing you closer to the front lines. I’m indulging myself by imagining that you are sitting just behind me. You laugh. I can hear that sweet mocking tone. We are currently in a meadow under an apple tree, drinking mint tea sweetened with honey. The hive is not one field over. If it were not for the constant thunder and rattle of the guns, it would be a lovely holiday.

  Ah … my dear. I miss you so very much.

  Damn this war that keeps us apart. In fact, it has inspired me to commit some verses. Pray, bear with my attempts at doggerel. I never claimed to take any prizes for my poems in school, but it is supposed to be the mark of an educated Englishman, so I continue to try. There is so much more that I want to say, and I do not think these verses will be able to touch upon my feelings about this war with any degree of justice.

  Ginger slid the pad closer to her. Here was the meat of the letter.

  Death vanquishes brave and daring men.

  Consider a captain, pacing near a quagmire found within.

  Even valour escapes consideration now.

  The heroes accept pain. Even frightened. Even vets.

  Any restless, angry fighters are facing threats

  Powerless over their sacrifice and death.

  Death follows, as death is part of corporeal war.

  Such anyone can reasonably abhor.

  Certainly others find victory inside death,

  Justice and freedom inhabit flesh.

  Reach, find another path constantly.

  And seek any path that the inner dream offers passionately.

  The verse, as Ben said, was not very good, although better than it had any right to be. What mattered was that the poem converted to the numbers in a book cipher. Only the first letter of each word mattered in the cipher. The consonants represented numbers zero through nine, while vowels or the end of a line indicated the end of number. So “Death vanquishes brave and” became 260. That was the page number. The next number would be the line, and then the third would be the word, and so on through each set of three numbers.