Prof. Wilson gave them his library to use and passed on his solemn oath that no staff would blunder through the door to interrupt. Mina and Jonathan took the wider of the couches while Penclosa claimed a chaise and Van Helsing settled himself in a chair. He had his own notepad on hand and had given likewise solemn oaths in both the Harkers’ and Wilsons’ direction that he would record only the most pertinent bullets of observation. This pointedly did not include Jonathan’s description of the following:
“There is not much more that can be told beyond what we explained in the garden. Last year, I suffered an experience of singularly horrific proportions. The sort which are on a scale of literal nightmare and utterly unbelievable to anyone of sound mind. Yet it happened. Though the physical shock of its aftermath is over, though the second and far more despicable illness of my poor Mina has come and gone, though all has been dealt with in the waking world that can be dealt with and healed…” His throat worked against a jagged stone. His hand trembled inside Mina’s. “It was two months that this event lasted for me last summer. All of May, all of June. This, combined with the illness that boiled my brain and body upon escape, on top of the very real, very dire threat to Mina that followed it—a threat I-I should have never—,”
“Don’t.” A shadow of a whisper. But Mina’s voice gave it power, made it a salve. Her cheek pressed his shoulder while her other hand overlaid its twin in holding him. “The nightmares may lie to you, but don’t you dare do it to yourself awake. We are well past that.” Mina turned to Penclosa who sat once more in statue stillness, her own gaze intent. When she spoke it was still soft, but with an edge that bordered on brittle with enforced calm. “Last year was one of suffering for us and for loved ones. There were many losses, great and small. Yet taken as the most unvarnished sum of time and effects, Jonathan found himself the winner of a most cruel lottery. Miscellaneous torments were all passed his way, and for far longer than myself or our friends had to endure. They have damaged his sleep ever since, but now, as the anniversary makes its return—,”
“How frequently?” Penclosa asked. As she did, she performed a blink. “Forgive my curtness. I ask because I already find no way to doubt the sincerity of Jonathan’s trouble. For a history to haunt him so deeply even as he throws himself between villain and victim like a wall suggests that whatever monstrosity inflicted itself on him before must be of a great scale. The only issue for us now is the timing. Before I can attempt to plant a countermeasure to his nightmares, if and when they next arise, we must define how often they occur at present. For example, Jonathan, do you expect you will have one as soon as tonight?”
“I do,” Jonathan nodded. “What used to be every other night is now almost routine. Last week I did not have a single night free of bad dreams.”
Penclosa grinned.
“Good.”
“Good?”
“Pardon. I fear some of Wilson’s scientific thinking has rubbed off. I say ‘good’ in that we have good odds of defining whether it will be my mesmerism that helps parry your nightmares or your mind merely deciding to quit the assault of its own volition. Of course, it would be most welcome if the latter were the case. If these grim dreams are truly tied to memories of what befell you a year ago near the same period, it could be they might reach a crescendo around the anniversary, then peter out to nothing as it passes. Only for them to make a return next year and around again. In truth, it seems as if your mind has conditioned itself in much the same way I might set a particular stimulus to make a subject react later.”
Penclosa raised her hand as if to illustrate a scenario:
“‘When the clock strikes ten o’ clock tomorrow, you will hop on one foot. The next time you smell fish, you will decide you must write a letter to someone.’ It all comes down to ‘When this event happens, then you will perform this action.’ For you, the recall of the turning seasons to that soured period is having the same effect, albeit slowly. Subconsciously, you are reading into the calendar’s creep the same portents that led up to last year’s horrid experiences, and your dreams prey on you for it as if the events themselves are coming for a repeat performance. Now, I will not make promises as to how far my reach can extend in terms of permanently blunting the nightmares for good. Really, I can’t even say if this initial trial will bear fruit. But the trial is what matters before we attempt anything more extensive. To that end, I would like to ask how long you all intend to stay in Tuppeton.”
“We have two weeks planned out,” from Mina.
“And I shall be gone by this Sunday,” Van Helsing put in.
At this, Penclosa smiled anew and nodded, explaining, “That shall be enough to confirm things one way or the other. What I propose is this: I shall mesmerize Jonathan to see if I can prevent the nightmare expected tonight. Rather, and I apologize for this, to let the nightmare come upon him for just a moment, and then be banished by the command I place today. If the nightmare is not registered and then observed being thwarted by my countermeasure, we shall not know if I was effective or not. A wholly peaceful sleep might be written off as a fluke. Though I do swear to make sure it only exists long enough to be noticed, then quashed.” Her gaze returned to Jonathan. “It is imperative that you record all you can remember of tonight’s sleep. Every detail you can spare. It is just as important that neither Mina nor Professor Van Helsing let slip the description I will give you during the trance state. I trust you to be an honest fellow, but we cannot risk anything skewing your description after the fact.”
“That seems sound enough,” Jonathan agreed, “though there is a last obstacle that we have not gone over.”
“What is that?”
“Me,” Van Helsing put in. “I am practiced in mesmerism myself, Miss Penclosa, and have succeeded in many cases. Jonathan, however, has proven a subject most hard to maneuver. I have gotten him so near to the trance, but his mind snaps out at me at the last moment and shoos the influence like a dog chasing out an intruder. And that with him all willing and trying with full consciousness to accept the hypnosis.”
Miss Penclosa’s brow furrowed at that. Her hand drifted up again to her high collar, scrubbing thoughtfully. But her expression smoothed again as she turned back to Jonathan.
“I have had my hard cases in the past. Let’s see what happens. Mina, could you please give Jonathan the whole seat? When I begin, there can be no one to distract either of our lines of sight. Stand by with the Professor, if you would. Thank you.”
Once Jonathan was alone on the couch, Miss Penclosa stood herself up. Her strain in balance seemed somehow even less than the sudden strained vigor that had taken her in her demonstrations at the party. She stood erect and staring as her arms began their strange arches and swoops. Jonathan found each sweep sent a feeling of warmth gusting into him. A drowsy pulse that seemed at once to dull and pull him from himself. Yet all this was secondary to the new shock of her eyes.
As instructed, he had begun the session by focusing his gaze on her face. But in moments her face had burned off like steam to leave only the growing pools of her gray-green stare behind. They were pools, were ponds, were a single merged mountain lake over which he found himself flying—
No no no the Sisters the Brides they are here in the room—
—falling—
—this drowse is not by choice, not playing dead, they want you still on the couch, want you wanting—
—falling—
—fight it fight their sound their mist their maws because after them—
—falling—
—after this—
—sinking below the surface like a flailing stone desperate for the surface—
—comes him. You feel it you know it he is here in the room he is there in your eyes in your neck in your head you let him do it let him into your life to eat and own and swallow whole he is coming to take it all and have you worse than dead get him out get away please please please not again please—
—and shuddering all the while.
—please…
Down, down, down he went into so dense a gloom that all light was thinned to a faint dancing glimmer on the water’s surface. Still he kicked, bucked, clawed at the water that sank him without drowning, crushing him as if Poseidon’s own hand were dragging him below. He shuddered again, and seemed to gain a lap upwards before being shoved down again. Back and forth, kick and foam, until he was sunk just deep enough that he could scarcely make out the surface’s light as a twinkling pinprick.
Which was the same instant that the water reversed its verdict. The moment the darkness turned complete was the moment he was rushed suddenly back up towards the light. He lunged to the surface as swiftly as a fish caught on a powerful line. As he breached, he heard Penclosa’s voice call out:
“Awake!”
Jonathan came to with a jolt. Awareness returned to him with several announcements. One, that a faint glaze of perspiration had formed on his brow and that his hands had bent into claws within the cushion he sat on, almost tearing it. Two, that Mina was flying to his side with a look that could not decide between relief and anxiety, while behind her Van Helsing made a last hasty scratch upon his notes and followed her example from his other side. Three, that Miss Penclosa still stood, albeit by using the chaise as her support rather than the crutch. She too had a dew of exertion on her temples and her wan cheeks were flushed, but she smiled proudly just the same. The victor of some unknown duel.
“You were not overestimated, Jonathan Harker. If I had not had some little way in by the aid of your conscious mind, I don’t know that I could have gotten past the violent guard of your subconscious. But it has been managed and the foothold has been made. Should we have need to try again for greater measures—as I hope and expect we shall attempt tomorrow afternoon—the way in shall have its metaphoric door still chocked open.”
Jonathan blinked at her and at Mina and Van Helsing now bookending him.
“Was I really so resistant when I went under? I’d thought I was fairly calm as it began.”
“Only at the beginning, darling,” Mina took his hand and seemed to search his face as if for signs of injury. “You quite worried us once the trance started setting in.”
“How so?”
“You seemed to be locked in a fight, my friend. An imagined battle in a dream. And you spoke.” This came from Van Helsing. While the weathered face was steady enough, Jonathan was less than heartened at the worry flaring in the man’s gaze. Fruitlessly, but instinctively, he lowered his voice to add, “You said, ‘Don’t let him in.’”
A nauseous chill flooded through Jonathan, blooming out from his core until he wondered if he might actually be sick right where he sat. But Mina squeezed his fingers in hers and he steadied.
“You were distressed for some time,” she admitted as one hand drifted up to his shoulder. “But it fell off as she went to work. The session was completed. She’s set something up in you. Something to trip up a nightmare should it come around.” Then, lower, “Tonight’s all arranged.”
They’d discussed said arrangement before ever arriving in Tuppeton. A small repeat of the lopsided nights of the year prior, in which days and nights were broken into shifts of uneven sleep to keep watch. Van Helsing had volunteered to be a conscious observer of the couple following Penclosa’s first attempt and to note whatever there was to note by way of triumph or failure in the battle between hypnotic command and dreamt assault.
“Remember,” Penclosa broke in, settling herself down again on the chaise, “record all you can recall on waking. Honest specifics.”
“I will. Are you alright?” He asked for the mesmerist seemed far more winded than she had appeared when working on the guests. She had ticked through those sessions with supreme ease. Now she sat wan and exhausted against the cushions. Even so, her smile redoubled at his question while she daubed herself with a handkerchief.
“This? Just the payoff of a most exerting day. Wine is fine but for these little spells,” she fluttered her hand at herself, “brandy is better. There is a decanter by the window…” Jonathan was already up and fetching it, likewise a tumbler. “Thank you,” she hummed, taking the cut glass as gratefully as if she were handed the Grail. A sip later she sighed and sank into the pillows. “I do sincerely hope to see you all tomorrow with good news. If we succeed in this small step, then the way towards greater leaps is possible. But whether it does so or not—,”
“Three o’ clock tomorrow afternoon,” Van Helsing assured. “We shall arrive with our news, whatever it may be. Deep thanks again for your aid regardless, Miss Penclosa.”
And there was little more to it than that, barring the necessary parting talk with the Wilsons. Yes, Van Helsing and ‘the Murrays’ would record all diligently. Yes, tomorrow. Yes, three o’ clock. Yes, yes, yes. Professor and Harkers parted ways in separate hansoms. Van Helsing headed back to the hotel to ensure he had a good heavy sleep to see him through the night watch while Mina pointed out how it would be a shame to waste the last of the day on heading back to their room when there was plenty of light left to enjoy the town’s little High Street, wouldn’t it?
It would. They found a petite restaurant and took a late lunch that satisfied far better than what they’d nibbled at the party. They found a table that looked out on the tranquil tree-lined streets that were such a refreshing sight compared to Exeter’s din. Between bites, Mina nudged his foot under the table. Jonathan looked up from his cup to see her grinning in a way that spoke to her owning a secret that was only unknown to him because he had looked it full in the face and not seen it.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re lying.”
“I am.”
“So what is it?”
“Just thinking to myself that we shall have to add another address to the long-distance holiday pile when it comes time to send cards. It seems the good Sisters of St. Joseph and Ste. Mary shall have to share ink with Miss Penclosa.”
“I don’t follow.”
“You never do when you’ve gone and charmed another heart around your finger.”
“Said the pot to the kettle. And what charm? She was no more than sympathetic and professional—,”
“As sympathetic and professional as a mother learning that her child has scuffed a knee or caught cold for the first time. I got the impression she was only hindered from inviting you to lay down for a nap and broth because Van Helsing and I were there. If nothing else, her freedom with names shows an informality that I’d not have expected in someone with so moderate a demeanor, not counting her fire against Atherton. ‘Jonathan, Mina, Helen.’ There is a slight accent to her tone, same as Mrs. Wilson’s. Wherever they hail from, perhaps forenames come more freely.”
“Perhaps. And perhaps you’re reading too much into someone who takes courtesy and defense of the wronged as seriously as you do.” Jonathan batted his lashes and laid a hand to his chest. “Unless you mean to say you would not dote on a cause of mine even if I saved you from being struck with a heavy stick?”
“I suppose I would consider it. Idly.” She hid in another bite. Jonathan watched her and waited. “It’s just odd to me.”
“What is?”
“I don’t know. Even calling it ‘odd’ seems too tame for what I felt. Seeing it.”
“Seeing what, Mina?”
“You going into the trance. It was like watching the reverse of how you’ve been in your throes with the nightmares. On those occasions, I see you in distress and I can wake you out of it. You’re afraid, but then it breaks. I can always break it. But having to sit and watch you sink into that fear, or something so near to it—it made me want to jump up and shake you. Or,” her words thinned out to a noise too small and ashamed to even count as a whisper, “or even knock Miss Penclosa off her feet to stop her work. It was an awful way to feel, but a worse thing to watch. I felt so strangely like a traitor sitting with Van Helsing as you sank into that horrible state before she finally won out and you went slack.” Jonathan’s hand went across to hers. It was her grip’s turn to tremble. She pressed on, “And somehow that was worse.”
“Worse how?”
“Because you looked just the same. Even before you said, ‘Don’t let him in,’ you looked just as you did that night. When he—when he had pushed your mind under and he—,” Jonathan stopped just short of crushing her hand in his. Her hold returned the favor. “You were limp, but you were struggling in your head just as she was struggling without, as though you two were fighting. Like you knew something was wrong and were clawing against it on the inside.”
“That is not too far from the truth,” he admitted. He told her of the lake that grew from Penclosa’s eyes, the fight he had made against the pressure of her hypnosis with animal reflex. “But it was not what he did to me. Likewise the Weird Sisters. Whatever irate creature lurks in the cellar of my mind, it read Penclosa as a threat even greater than Van Helsing’s softer attempt, and it fed fear up into me. Not that I can blame it any more than I can deride you for your concern. It was frightening for how unmoored I felt. She really does have a method all her own. Certainly one wholly alien to the mild haze that Van Helsing tried to push on me. But you saw yourself that she did no more than help. Or try, anyway. We shall see tonight.”
The tight grip had softened both ways to a mere cradling. Then Jonathan brought her knuckles up to press the gold band to his lips.
“I thank you either way for your concern. And for not tackling her.”
“Yes, well. No guarantees if tonight is unsuccessful. I should have to thrash her with my train guide in revenge.” Her attempt at a dour look cracked on the fourth word in and she batted his ankle with her shoe when he laughed. With food and drink now gone, they resumed their walk. While they’d not yet come by a shopfront with cameras in the window, they did find something smaller and sweeter in a jeweler’s display. Two somethings. Mina feigned a moment that it was a silly trifle, a saccharine one, really, and anyway it was more proper for a soldier and his wife, and…
“Oh, but haven’t you heard? I must be an officer of some kind. Witnesses all agree.” He slipped in the building before she could stop him. The unspoken warning sent by his look said that he would pick both if she did not choose her own. Chasing him inside, she saw him edging perilously near a pair of gold—
“I like the silver better,” she got out in a rush.
—then stood with her as the seller behind the glass cases came puttering up to point out every example in silver there was in his collection. To the man’s mild disappointment, the Harkers settled on a matching set with simple designs devoid of even a single scanty gem.
“We most definitely require a camera after this. We haven’t any photographs small enough for these.”
“We have this.” Jonathan tugged on a white lock of hair. Mina muttered again about soldiers and sailors.
But then, as Jonathan bowed so she might latch his chain on, she confessed, “I suppose we have risked as much as them. More than.”
“So we have,” Jonathan agreed, fastening her necklace at the nape. Back at the hotel they made their small snips before the toilet mirror, tying the cut locks with thread before tucking each in its locket. Jonathan sighed at hers. “This was a mistake after all. Yours looks as though you’re courting someone’s grandfather.”
“First, no one shall see inside but us.” Mina snapped the lid shut as punctuation. “Second, even if someone did see, it would not matter. They are not the one lucky enough to be your wife. If it’s someone especially young who saw, I could get away with telling them it came from some prince of fairy gentry.” She looped her arms about his neck. He hugged the small of her back in turn. “He courted me since we were small, better and sweeter than any ordinary man of England, wed me in a faraway land, and saved my life from a monster. With all these Grimm essentials out of the way, we are set to live our requisite happily ever after.”
“That is certainly a way to tell it. But my face is all wrong for it.” He tapped his cheek. “Too much of umber, not enough pearl.”
“Likewise for myself. But we can always say you were dreamt up by Scheherazade. The point is you are very much one of a kind and worth far more than the shade of your hair. In any case, I wager you have more jealous onlookers than anything. There are girls who would dunk their head in lime for a blonde tint half as fair.”
“If I grow it out, perhaps I could make a new career by shearing it all off and peddling it to the wigmakers.”
“No.” The word was anguish.
“Oh, or I could go in for those rococo ringlets without having to bother with powder.”
“No!” The word was dismay.
“Or I could just start making off with your pins and ribbons every morning.”
There was an affronted gasp as he tossed his head and she played as if she meant to hide away her pin box. Laughter bubbled. Then there came a knock at the hotel room’s door with Van Helsing’s voice on the other side.
“I am rested and I see you both are restless,” the Professor announced as he made ready his post in the far corner facing their bed. He decorated it with books enough to bludgeon a man and a flask full enough to revive him. “If you need aid in dropping off, I can always practice my next lecture upon you. Dear John can attest there is no better soporific aid apart from chloral.”
It was an odd scene that unrolled through the evening. Though both Harkers were appropriately swaddled in robes to bar the sight of nightclothes, there was an unavoidable air of being overseen by an uncle with a heap of tiresome family stories to impart in lieu of nursery tales. Van Helsing himself grew bored enough of his own topics that he gave it up and plied husband and wife for talk of their day following the visit with Penclosa. That rambled on pleasantly before snagging on the topic of the mesmerist’s winded stance following Jonathan’s session.
“Ah, you made note of it too? Yes, she did greatly, truly struggle as I have not seen any mesmerist do before. Perhaps she is right, that it was just something of a long day’s fatigue and great focus on her task that so tired her. Yet I wonder. Professor Wilson, he shared with me his notes taken in interviews with himself and herself and the former partner, Professor Austin Gilroy.”
By now he had abandoned his chair and moved up into his habitual stance and pace of the scholar before his staring pupils. He seemed to ache for a chalkboard at his back, for his hands kept stopping just short as if to gesture at something written. The Harkers sat with drowsy raptness as best they could.
“To them,” Van Helsing went on, “she claims that her method is much, much different than the hypnotist who has only his eyes and voice and hand as his tools. Miss Penclosa, she declares that it is her own mind she uses as the sole instrument; that her will is a thing she may use detached of herself to enforce a command. This takes some toll upon her physical self, coming as lethargy in good moments and true exhaustion in bad. Wilson, he said to me that this must only be an offshoot of the hazy land of clairvoyance. But that there is some truth in her description seems to have credence, I think we cannot doubt. She did wrestle with your subconscious, my friend, and it was a hard battle won.”
Mina paled as she listened. Jonathan more so.
“So she claims it is a psychic act rather than a standard trance?” Mina ventured with only a slight treble. “She sent her mind into him?”
“That is the claim. And yes, I too would worry, but for our playing witness. We saw and heard ourselves how difficult the matter was for her, and how careful her implanted instruction. More, an instruction meant only for his unconscious mind to undertake against the nightmares it manufactures. It is not an easy thing to trust those of extraordinary skill, I will grant, but in this case, it seems we are all of us reacting with the suspicion owed to another party. One who had his reasons to do harm. Miss Penclosa has known all of us less than a day. That she would exert herself to such an extreme, risking her own well-being to breach the barrier Jonathan’s mind bricked over to stop any influence at all, shows a character more prone to aid than mischief.”
“Not counting the show with Professor Atherton,” Mina parried. She was now sitting straighter on the bed’s edge. “While I cannot say the fellow didn’t deserve a little shaming for being so shameless, she quite thoroughly gutted him of all his secrets on a whim. Considering Jonathan’s and my own experience with such powerful wills overriding our own, I cannot say I approve of only discovering the whole of the method now, after she’s already been and gone from his head.”
“Wilson did not see fit to tell me so until after the session as we escaped to our hansoms. But your point is fair, Madam Mina. We should have known beforehand.”
“She should have said—,”
“We should have asked,” Jonathan said, trying not to let it grow to a yawn. His eyes were beginning to burn even as new nervousness twisted in him. “We were so occupied with my trouble that we skipped over any inquiry or interest in her. Regardless of whether tonight works out or not, we should still give her better due for,” he stifled another yawn, “her efforts.”
Though perhaps adhering strictly to that track would only be another heap of tedium, he thought but did not have the energy to share. He imagined she had spent most of her time in a guest or gawker’s company alternately doing tricks or regurgitating interviews that only scraped the professional interest of her ability. Jonathan’s mind floated into a hypothetical world of people only ever asking him about the handling of properties, every hour, every day, every week, every month. Intolerable. He would try to make a better effort tomorrow. He would. He would…
Think on it later. Let him lay back and rest his eyes a moment.
Ten minutes of rested eyes later, Mina signed to Van Helsing to lower his voice. Carefully, they took some spare blankets off a chair in lieu of jostling him to get him below the covers. Mina departed from the bed with a last gentle squeeze of his hand before getting up to keep watch with her own books and journal at hand. When Van Helsing whispered that there was no need and that she deserved her rest, she whispered back that she could not rest if she were rolling in Morpheus’ own poppies. Besides, better to have two on watch than one, wasn’t it?
Memory flickered in the man as he opened his mouth and shut it again. Perhaps he smelled garlic blossoms again, perhaps he saw another resting body upon a different bed, waiting on awful dreams. If he did, he did not say. Only agreed that Madam Mina raised another good point. They settled in to wait.
Only two other rooms in Tuppeton were more pregnant with anxious anticipation than theirs.
In one room, a man sat with his journal, scratching miserably at it to force some small half-page of a record into existence. He paused with every other sentence to look despondently on his toils of the last few hours. Here was a coat and a screwdriver assailed mercilessly with turpentine. These had been crusted with a rich green paint earlier in the day. Earlier than that, even. No doubt as early as midnight.
He had cried upon seeing the stains that afternoon. Just sat on his bed and wept as he had thought only assaulted women and wounded babes capable of. Even now, pen in hand, his eyes carried a traitorous wet burn. Still, he wrote. Still, he waited. Still, he doubted now more than ever that his tormentor would be quit of these turns of the screw. First his professional status was laughed to pieces. Now his freedom as a law-abiding citizen was left balanced on a knife’s edge. Ah, no! Upon a window’s ledge.
Even as he wrote to the page that he had taken only five grains of antipyrine for his storming headache and that his fiancée was all that kept him from taking fifty, his thoughts strayed again and again to the bleak mercy of the bottle. His life would not be his until one or the other of this damned link was dead. He took this knowledge to bed where he dreamt of bottomless jade eyes and a future full of miserable revelations.
“Be done with me,” he whispered to the dark. It might have been plea or prayer. “Be done with me, you parasite. There is nothing for you here.”
The dark did not answer, but he bit his tongue all the same. No, it was not done, for his enemy was not done. The screw would turn and turn and turn until…
He fell asleep on the mental picture of a screw turned so far it had drilled through the virgin wood and vanished into some inner void on the other side. Even there, he knew it was turning still.
In another room, a woman stood at her window. The moon fell in and pooled on her eyes. Even as a girl she had been wont to stare without realizing. Since her adventure up at the Suttons’ she found she could forget the chore of blinking for hours at a time. Many small things had changed since that trip. Oh, what a difference an evening could make. What a greater one could be made in a single afternoon.
Other eyes watched on behind her. Some glass, some porcelain, some wood, some cloth. They belonged to an accumulated crowd she had not been able to part with in childhood or adolescence. There were newer ones still in storage with the rest of the goods delivered over from Trinidad. She did not play with them, of course. But these old friends still went where she did. Her heart was soft in that way, as she would demurely admit. One of the very few but very deep sentimental touches she permitted herself in life. She supposed, quite rightly, that if her fancy was for shrunken heads or naked skulls, her friend’s husband would be no less accommodating to their presence.
He saw nothing about her beyond the potential anatomy of his future gloating before the disbelievers of his academic world. This was just as well.
The stargazer turned briefly from the moon to regard the dolls along their shelf and the puppets hung mid-pose on their coat hooks. All stared, all smiled.
She stood with one hand upon her crutch while the other gripped a card. The label of Hawkins and Harker was stamped on its front with the litter of address and business information below. On the other side were her own additions.
Exeter.
Letter address.
Locale tour with Gloria (?).
Old furnishings from storage.
New furnishings with J.
The last was underlined twice. Circled. Underlined again. She turned the card gently in her hand and brought it up again to look over. After a moment, she held the slip of heavy paper to her lips.
“Not to worry,” she murmured to the print. “I’ll take care of everything.”
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