Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [148]
Richmond helped me to regain my feet. “Strange, is it not?” he said. “To think that when one walks about in the London fog, the gauzy stuff of other lives drapes itself over one’s coat or cloak, even slips into our eyes and mouth? That all around us drift shades and phantoms, beings who cling to the bonds of the flesh, old friends and enemies who yet wish us well or ill?”
“Are you suggesting that this is your sister’s ghost? You have no proof.”
“Proof?” He made a derisive noise. “If her presence alone is insufficient proof, watch a while. You will see a veritable host of proofs. Ghosts old and new, the ghosts of men and women, and that of a creature to which I dare not give a name, all unwilling to abandon this plane.”
He started to close the curtain.
“Wait!” I said.
“I cannot bear to watch her in torment. Once she reaches this state, she is mostly in whatever world she travels to and cannot or will not see what occurs in this one. She will remain like this a minute more and then vanish. She never stays long and is often absent half the day. But she will return and . . .” He pointed out a grille mounted in the glass. “You may be able to speak with her.”
“Ridiculous!”
Richmond shut the curtain.
“Do you believe me so gullible? It’s a medium’s trick!” I said. “Some type of illusion.”
“I invite you to prove your thesis,” said Richmond. “Perhaps after you have failed to do so, you can then concentrate on solving my problem.”
I sought to hold up logic as a shield against the fact that what I had witnessed overthrew all my notions concerning the composition of reality; but despite my protestations, as I adjusted to this reordering of the world, I was inclined to accept that the woman had been neither flesh nor the projection of a magic lantern. Her body had not been a wavering image on a backlit screen—it had been sharply etched upon the air, a vital presence edged by an almost imperceptible aura, an outline as thin as a knife edge. I knew that I had seen Christine Richmond, her shade, the colored shadow of the person she had been in life.
“Can you define your problem with more precision?” I asked once my nerves had settled. “You wish me observe, to counsel, but I think you have a more complicated task in mind.”
“I have devised a machine whose function it is to remove coal dust from air. Instead, for reasons I do not claim to understand, it attracts ghosts, some essence of those who have gone before. One of these is my sister, who manifests regularly within the chamber and is sometimes seen in other rooms, albeit infrequently. I wish to know how she came to own the brothel and who provided the money for her venture. Is that stated precisely enough?”
His tone had been that of a teacher lecturing the dunce of the class, but I ignored this lack of civility and said, “Extracting information from a ghost may prove more difficult than removing coal dust from the air. Should it be possible, well . . . if it were I, my first priority would be to identify her murderer.”
“It is not certain that she was murdered. She may have suffered a fall and struck her head. But if it was murder, yes, I should like to know his name as well.”
“She can speak, or so you say. Why not ask her yourself?”
“She will not speak to me. Twice she has spoken my name, but no more. Why this is, I can only guess. We were close as children, closer