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“Nothing should be done that might endanger Miss Delacourt,” Electra added.
Hardy eyed her with interest. “Have you seen that she is in danger?” He gestured toward her vaguely as if to indicate that he meant with her psychic abilities.
“I saw her being watched. Both Iris and Calliope Collier. One of those ladies is dead and the other has not been heard from in three days. And the same man spoke to Aurora Fretwell. The same man who must have touched the necklace you offered me. Perhaps he was one of the last people to touch it before it came into police custody.”
“Is that how it works? Something someone has touched?”
“That is generally how my abilities proceed. When I touch an object, I sometimes sense the memories of a person who owned it or touched it. Often someone who recently had contact, but that’s not always the case. Others touched the necklace too.” She bit her lip, considering whether her abilities would ever conform to neat rules. “Sometimes, I hold an object and see nothing at all.”
Hardy seemed to consider that for a moment. “Then it is not out of order to theorize that the killer who may be responsible for all three deaths might also have some involvement with Miss Delacourt.”
Gideon hesitated.
Electra weighed whether to speak of the certainty she felt, her intuition, with men who preferred verifiable facts.
“I sense that she is alive and in danger,” Electra admitted.
Gideon’s brow flickered up as he regarded her. “How do you know? Have you seen something?”
“No.” Electra turned to meet his gaze. “I would never keep such a thing from you. It is merely what I sense.”
Gideon glanced at Hardy, then back at Electra. “Beyond my own, there is no one’s intuition I trust more,” he told Hardy.
“I have directed constables to speak once more to the Braxton and Fretwell families to see if we can discover any detail that would link the two young ladies. Perhaps the tea shop or a place they frequented. Any male acquaintance they had in common. And I will certainly keep you apprised if we find any connection at all to Miss Delacourt.”
“Whatever they discover, I would like to know,” Gideon said.
“My hope is that the Braxtons can identify the engraved notebook case, and then we have a link between the three cases.”
“The same beast preying on all of them.” The words were out of Electra’s mouth before she could stop them. That person she had sensed watching Miss Collier and Miss Delacourt had felt animalistic in his hunger.
They all seemed to sink into their own thoughts as the carriage rolled onto the gravel drive on the approach to the walled prison and its many buildings which stretched over acres of Clerkenwell.
Electra had never been to a prison, but Coldbath Fields had a reputation for being a brutal one.
As they entered through a tall wrought-iron gate, they passed building after building constructed of red brick, and she noticed chimney stacks puffing smoke at the top of one building. Immediately after, she caught the scent of fresh-baked bread in the air.
Hardy noticed her interest and explained, “They have their own bakehouse as they must feed five hundred men every day.”
Emotions overwhelmed her for a moment as if they filled the very air their carriage rolled through.
“Electra?” Gideon called her name softly, somehow sensing her unease.
“A strange feeling.”
“What is it?”
Misery. Anger. Sadness. Regret. “It is like I’ve waded into a fog, but the fog is composed of emotions.”
“Can you shield yourself from it?”
“I will try.” Much as she had at Cordelia’s charity luncheon, she willed herself not to open her mind to the feelings of others. It was a mental exercise of reminding herself not to seek, and she yearned to do the opposite even as she attempted it.
They exited the carriage, proceeded inside the gatehouse, and were each asked to sign a logbook. Then they were led to a stark, gray-walled room with a battered table and chairs. A quarter hour later, a prison official entered the room with a shackled young man Electra recognized.
Sandy hair. Thin frame. The only thing missing was the spectacles she’d seen him wearing when he shouted at Iris Delacourt. Electra had seen the images of them together inside the museum’s back hall when she’d held Iris’s necklace.
“Detective Sergeant Hardy,” Mr. Frye said, his voice sharp and a bit high-pitched.
