"Elizabeth Delmont was a complete fraud, of course," Caroline said thoughtfully, "but I cannot help but admire her for pursuing such an interesting career. There are so few profitable professions open to ladies."

"Very true," Emma agreed. "Did you learn anything else of note this afternoon?"

"I noticed a young maid standing by herself, watching the commotion around Mrs. Delmont's house," Caroline said. "I requested the driver to stop the carriage so that I could talk to her. I thought it quite safe because I knew that she could not possibly have the faintest notion of my identity. She was delighted to tell me about the rumors that were going through the crowd."

"What did she say?" Milly asked.

"She told me that everyone was talking about how all of the furniture in the séance room had been overturned by supernatural forces."

Emma sighed. "I suppose that sort of gossip was inevitable, given that it was a medium who was murdered."

"Yes" Caroline picked up her teacup. "She said that there was also a great deal of talk about a broken pocket watch."

Milly looked curious. "What was remarkable about the watch?"

"Evidently it was found next to the body. The police think that it was smashed in the course of the murder." She took a sip of tea and lowered the cup. "The hands on the face of the watch were stopped at midnight."

Milly shuddered. "How very melodramatic."

Emma's lips thinned. "The watch will no doubt feature heavily in the newspaper accounts of the murder."

"I suppose it's possible that a disgruntled sitter decided to take revenge against Mrs. Delmont," Milly said. "Communicating with the Other Side can be an extremely emotional business for people who take that sort of nonsense seriously."

"Perhaps," Caroline said slowly. "But I have been giving the matter a great deal of thought and I have come up with another possibility."

"What is that?" Emma asked.

"The gentleman who called here this morning is convinced that whoever murdered Mrs. Delmont did so in order to obtain a certain diary. But as you know, I have spent a great deal of time lately at the headquarters of the Society for Psychical Investigations, and it is no secret there that Mrs. Delmont did have one very jealous rival, a medium named Irene Toller."

"You did say that there is a considerable amount of professional jealousy among mediums," Milly remarked.

Emma stirred her tea. "We can only hope that the police will arrest the villain quickly and put an end to the matter."

But what if the police did not find the killer? Caroline thought. Would they eventually turn up on her doorstep just as Adam Grove had? And what of the mysterious Mr. Grove himself? If he did not locate the diary, would he re-turn to plague her with more questions and not-so-veiled accusations? Would he eventually decide to give the police the list of sitters at Delmont's last séance?

She knew better than most that men from his world could not be trusted.

Emma looked grim. "If only you had not taken a notion to use a medium as a character in your next novel, Caroline. You would never have gone to Wintersett House to study psychical research and we would never have at-tended Elizabeth Delmont's last séance"

But she had made those choices, Caroline thought glumly. And now she and her aunts faced the possibility of being dragged through the muck of another dreadful scandal, one that could well destroy her new career upon which they all depended financially.

She could not just sit here, waiting for disaster to crash down upon them like an avalanche. She must take action. There was too much at stake.

She dreamed the old nightmare again that night.

She clutched her heavy skirts and ran for her life along the rutted dirt path. Behind her the terrible thud-thud-thud of her pursuer's footsteps drew closer. Her heart pounded. She was tiring, sucking oxygen into her lungs in great, rasping gasps.

Fear and panic had provided an unnatural surge of energy at the start of the ordeal, but the weight of her gown had become a terrifying burden, slowing her desperate rush. The parasol attached to the pretty chatelaine that Milly and Emma had given her for her birthday bounced against her side, threatening her balance.

She did not know how much longer she could go on but she knew that if she stopped, she would die.

"You have to go away," her pursuer said, speaking in that eerie, unnaturally reasonable manner. "Don't you see? He will come back to me if you go away."

She did not turn her head to look back over her shoulder. She could not take the risk. If she stumbled or fell she was lost.

There was no point looking back, in any event. She knew all she needed to know. Her pursuer gripped a large, gleaming carving knife and was bent on murder.

"You have to go away.^"

Thud-thud-thud. The footsteps drew closer. The woman who was chasing her was not weighted down with a cumbersome dress. The would-be killer wore only a light linen nightgown and a pair of sturdy shoes.

"He will come back to me if you go away."

The woolen skirts of her gown felt like leaden weights in her hands. She was losing ground…..

Caroline awoke in a cold sweat, the way she always did after the dream. It was no doubt the affair of the murdered medium that had inspired the return of her nightmare, she thought.

She had endured the dream off and on for three years now. Sometimes she would be free of it for a fortnight or even a month; just long enough to begin to hope that she had seen the last of it. Then it would come back without warning, shattering her slumber. Sometimes it would stick around for several nights in a row before disappearing again.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed and reached for her robe and slippers. There was no point in trying to go back to sleep. She knew the pattern all too well. There was only one thing to be done—the same thing she did every other night when the dream and the frightening memories returned to haunt her.

She made her way quietly downstairs to the chilly study. There she lit a lamp, poured herself a small glass of sherry and paced the floor for a time.

When her nerves had steadied and her pulse was no longer racing, she sat down at her desk, took out paper and pen and began to write.

Nightmares, murder and the enigmatic Mr. Grove aside, she had work to do. Mr. Spraggett, the publisher of the Flying Intelligencer, would be expecting the next episode of The Mysterious Gentleman at the end of the week.

The successful writer of serialized sensation novels survived by adhering to an inflexible schedule: A new chapter had to be written every week for some twenty-six weeks in a row. Each chapter consisted of approximately five thou-sand words. To maintain readers' interest, each chapter had to begin and end with a Startling Incident.

The time constraints placed on Caroline were such that she was usually obliged to begin research and make notes on her next novel while finishing off the last few episodes of the current one.

A few hundred words later she put down her pen and studied what she had written.

No doubt about it, the character of Edmund Drake was at last starting to take shape. Just in the nick of time, too, she thought. Drake had been a shadowy figure until now but he was due to take center stage in the remaining chapters.