Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [157]
“I think not,” I said. “I would prefer to spend my time with you.”
After another brief delay, she let out a peal of laughter, as though delighted by my response; but she said nothing more, only continued looking above me and to the right. I wondered if she could hear me—judging by her attentive expression, she might have been listening to another voice.
“My name is Samuel,” I said. “Samuel Prothero.”
The delay again and then she said, “Yes! Of course! I know your father.”
My father, as far as I knew, had never been to London and was so conservative in nature that the idea of visiting Saint Nichol would have given him palpitations. I began to doubt that Christine was responding to me. Yet if, as Richmond suggested, a ghost was a scrap of life left behind after death, a fragment caught on a metaphysical nail, and not a faded version of the person entire, these oblique statements might be the only responses of which she was capable and she could be trying to communicate, unable to express herself more fluently than a tourist in a foreign land armed with phrases from a guidebook. I decided to risk a direct approach.
“Christine,” I said. “Tell me about the night you were murdered.”
Following an interval of twenty or thirty seconds during which she appeared to be frozen, she vanished. Soon thereafter I apprehended a chill presence behind me. I did not want to see her in that bloody guise and kept my head lowered until the feeling of cold dissipated.
That night Jane came to my room with an excellent bottle of pinot noir, and as we sat by the fire, which had gone to embers, I asked her to tell me more about Christine. What had she been like in her unguarded moments? Did she maintain any friendships outside the brothel? Did she spend much time away from it? If so, how did she spend that time?
“I wouldn’t know about friends outside the house,” said Jane. “She couldn’t have had many . . . if any at all. What time she didn’t spend here, she was at one music hall or another, or at the theater. She’d tell us about what she saw, all the people and what the ladies wore and such, but she never mentioned anyone specific. And I think she would have. We were her employees, but we were also her confidantes. Like us, she was trapped here, unhappy and on the lookout for something that would make her happy. If she found it, I don’t believe she could have kept it to herself.”
Light from the hearth ruddied her pale skin. She leaned forward to caress my cheek.
“You’ll see again her soon enough,” she said. “Stop thinking about her.”
“I know. It’s just . . .”
“Tell me.”
“I’m beginning to feel that my efforts are wasted here.”
“But you said you had broken through to her.”
“I did, but in retrospect it was the kind of moment that persuades me that what I’m doing here is worthless. I don’t believe I will ever be able to communicate with her.”
She mulled this over. “Dorothea says that Christine seems to enjoy her singing.”
“Dorothea’s singing?”
“Yes.”
“What does she sing?”
“Popular tunes. ‘Pretty Polly Perkins from Paddington Green’ and that sort of thing. She says they seem to make her happy. It causes her to hang about longer, she says, but she’s not so horrid looking.” Jane held up her glass so that the fire added ruby highlights to the wine. “It makes me nervous, her hanging about, so I pretend not to see her and let nature take its course.”
“Was ‘Pretty Polly Perkins’ her favorite song?”
“I don’t know as she had a favorite. Oh, wait now! She used to go larking about here singing snatches from ‘Champagne Charlie.’ If she had a favorite, I reckon that was it.”
She had a sip of wine, the voluptuous, vaguely predatory curve of her upper lip kissing the glass. Though she was of Christine’s type, her features were so delicate and fine that I no longer thought of Christine when I looked at her, but saw a beauty entirely her own. And it was not just her beauty that moved me. During our time together she had told me of her life, less a life than an escape route, a flight from one brutal circumstance to another.