Page 81 of Mesmerized

“We didn’t hurt her!” Madame Valenskaya contended. “She wanted to hear those things, and she had plenty of money. It wasn’t as if we took much. She’d give me a ring or a bracelet or some such thing.”

“Nice little items you could sell or pawn.”

“She never missed ’em, she had so much.”

“But what about Blackhope?” Olivia asked, dragging the two combatants back to the subject. “Did your daughter set it up for you to come here?”

“Yes. She worked it around, her and Lady Pamela, so that Lady St. Leger invited us to come here, thinking she’d come up with the idea herself.”

“But why?”

“It was because of what Irene was doing,” Madame Valenskaya said obscurely. “She wanted to find that treasure, her and Lady Pamela both. Irene thought up tricks to make the lot of you think there were ghosts here—the monk in the garden and like that. Lady Pamela told her about the place in the nursery where you could take off a tile and talk and sound like you were right in the room below. Her husband had told her about you and him playing with it, you see.”

“Yes, of course. I should have realized she was lying about that.”

“But why did your daughter want the treasure so much?” Olivia asked. “I mean, there are more valuable things in this house, as I understand it. Why that particular box?”

“Because of—of what she was doing. What I told you—” She glanced around again nervously.

“Madame Valenskaya, don’t worry,” Stephen said. “We will not let your daughter do anything to you.”

“Maybe you won’t be able to stop her!” Madame Valenskaya said. “You were right there when that happened to Mr. Babington, and you couldn’t stop that, now could you?”

“You’re saying that... Irene did that to Mr. Babington? Put him into a coma?” Stephen asked.

“Course she did. Or, rather, what she conjured up. She—see, something’s latched on to her. She never was a sweet girl. I mean, she always looked out for herself first and the devil with anybody else. But she wasn’t...obsessed, the way she is now. The last few months, all she can talk about is Blackhope and getting in and getting that treasure and all. And she got all secretive-like, locking herself up for hours in that room, you know, the one where I saw that funny star thing.”

“She is practicing witchcraft.”

“More than that. She summoned something up. Something awful and wicked.”

“What do you mean ‘something’?”

“I don’t know.” Madame Valenskaya lowered her voice. “Spirits, I think. Evil ones. Maybe even the devil. That’s what’s been coming into the séances lately. Nothing like that ever happened before. I swear it. Something took hold of Babington that night, something powerful evil. Didn’t you feel it?”

“Yes, I did,” Olivia agreed. “What do you think it was?”

“I don’t know! I don’t want to know. I told her I didn’t want to do it anymore. And she told me I had to keep on. She threatened me if I didn’t. But I couldn’t! It was too scary. I was afraid of what was going to happen next. That’s why I ran away. I wasn’t thinking straight. I didn’t know what I was going to do.” She looked at Olivia a little ruefully. “The fact is, my lady, I’d had a mite too much to drink last night. I didn’t think about what I was going to do once I’d got there. I just wanted to get away from her. To hide. So last night, in the middle of the night I got up and—”

She stopped, her face growing visibly paler.

“Yes?” Stephen urged, leaning forward, his eyes fixed on the woman’s face. “What happened?”

Madame Valenskaya swallowed and said, “I saw Lady Pamela going down the hall, all quietlike. She was in front of me, going the same way I was. I didn’t know what to do, but she looked so odd, the way she was sneaking along, so I followed her. She went into this bedroom around the corner, and I went after her and opened the door a crack and peeked in. There was a door in the wall, and it was open into another room, and there was a candle in the room. I could see that. I guess Lady Pamela was in there, because I didn’t see her anywhere else. But—but then all of a sudden that little room was filled with this awful oily black smoke. And—and it scared me so bad, I nearly dropped my own candle. I closed the door and I ran. That’s—that’s when I did get lost in that other part of the house. I hid when I heard them coming because—I don’t know what I thought. I was scared.”

She paused, then added mournfully, “I wish I’d never come to this house.”

No one added what they all thought—that everyone else in the house no doubt wished the same thing.

Stephen sighed, then said, “You had best take her back to her room, Tom.”

“No!” Madame Valenskaya screeched. “You can’t send me back there. Irene will be furious with me. There’s no telling what she’ll do to me!”

“I’ll stand guard outside her door,” Tom offered.

Madame Valenskaya sent him a contemptuous glance. “As if you could thwart her!”

“I will be talking to ‘Irina’ in the meantime, Madame Valenskaya,” Stephen said sternly. “I will get to the bottom of this and be rid of you both. Now, I suggest you go to your room, or I shall have to fetch the constable to investigate the fraud which you and your daughter have perpetrated upon my mother.”