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The White Crow When the lights come on after a seance in the parlor of Victorian Boston's most celebrated spiritualist, a pillar of the community lies dead. The world of restless and vengeful spirits has invaded Beacon Hill--while Caroline Ames, seated next to the victim, may hold the key to an all-too-real crime. From the mysterious device called the telephone to the new electric conveyances that cross the Charles, a tide of change is rising around Caroline, her brother, Addington, and their boarder, Dr. MacKenzie. For Caroline, it has been a time to face her loneliness--and the growing affection she feels for Dr. MacKenzie. For Addington, it is a time marked by the fierce, ineffable pull of a beautiful but dangerous woman. Now they find themselves in the center of a maelstrom, at the heart of a case of multiple murder. And while a killer has already claimed two victims, a clairvoyant has revealed the third: "Ames next..."

CYNTHIA PEALE is the pseudonym of Nancy Zaroulis, author of Call the Darkness Light and The Last Waltz, among other successful novels. She has written two previous Beacon Hill mysteries, The Death of Colonel Mann and Murder at Bertram’s Bower. She lives outside Boston.

From the Hardcover edition.

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Chapter 1

In a darkened room in a house on Lime Street, on the flat of Beacon Hill, Caroline Ames sat at a table clasping the hand of her friend, Dr. John Alexander MacKenzie, and tried to speak to her mother, who had been dead for a year and a half.

There were six other querants in the room. The medium, Mrs. Evangeline Sidgwick, was in deep trance. Her control, a temperamental entity named Roland, had spoken some minutes before in answer to a question--not Caroline's--but since then he had been silent for what seemed a very long time.

Caroline shifted in her chair. Her back itched just below her waistline, but her corset made the place impossible to scratch. The room was very warm--too warm, the windows closed and the curtains drawn against the bright May afternoon--and filled with a scent she could not identify: some heavy, musky odor that smelled the way she imagined incense might smell.

As if in answer to her movement, Dr. MacKenzie squeezed her hand. Impulsively she squeezed back. Improper, she knew, but she didn't care. Dr. MacKenzie, over these last months, had proved to be the best friend she'd ever had, and she realized she had grown perhaps too fond of him. What would she do if he decided to move on, to return to his position as a surgeon with the army in the West? Well, she would worry about that when it happened. For now--and particularly now, at this moment--he was here with her, and that was all that mattered.

It had been a daring thing to come here this afternoon. She'd had to swear Dr. MacKenzie to silence, make him promise not to tell Addington where they were going. Addington--her older brother, the guardian of her life--disapproved of mediums. Very probably he would have forbidden her to attend this seance today. In which case, she'd have had to engage in a deception even more blatant than the one she'd devised. We are going to walk in the Public Garden, she'd told him, such a lovely day, the first really good spring day we've had. He'd accepted it and gone about his business.

And now here she was, and after all her maneuvering, she'd failed. Her mother hadn't come through.

Dear Mama. Where was she? Was she happy? Busy about her work, up there in the ether or heaven or wherever she lived, now that she had passed over? Surely she'd gone to heaven, Caroline thought, where all good souls went.

She blinked back her sudden tears. Her mother's death had left a terrible emptiness in Caroline's life that hadn't eased until Dr. MacKenzie had come to board. She hadn't missed her mother so much these last months, and she knew that the doctor's presence in the Ames household was largely responsible for that.

But still, when the opportunity had presented itself to attend one of Mrs. Sidgwick's seances, she had been unable to resist. Mrs. Sidgwick was reputed to be the best medium in Boston, and Caroline had heard intriguing, even astonishing reports of her abilities to contact loved ones who had left the earthly plane. Meeting her for the first time today, she'd been surprised, for the medium was a small, modestly dressed woman, soft-spoken, even seeming rather shy, nothing about her to make one suspect she had such extraordinary powers.

But despite her powers, she--or, rather, her control, that irascible "Roland''--hadn't managed to reach the late Mrs. Ames.

Other spirits, yes. Many of the people there today had had the satisfaction of speaking to their loved ones. Before the seance had begun, they'd gathered in this room and gotten to know each other a bit. That nice Mrs. Ellis, for instance, an elderly widow who said she'd been trying for years to reach her son, killed at Gettysburg. He'd come through for her loud and clear, with fulsome assurances that he was doing splendidly, no pain, no sorrow, living in harmony with the hundreds--thousands--of other spirits like himself, no bodily ills, choirs of angels . . .

And Miss Price, a

Excerpted from The White Crow by Cynthia Peale
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The White Crow A Beacon Hill Mystery

The White Crow A Beacon Hill Mystery

0440614198

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