Page 32 of Mesmerized

“I think,” Stephen said after a moment, “that what we could use now is a bit of brandy.”

He took her arm and led her in the other direction, where his study lay. Once there, he closed the door behind them and lit the wall sconces, as well as the lamp on his desk. Olivia plopped down in a chair, watching him numbly as he crossed to a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of brandy. After pouring a healthy dollop into each snifter, he brought them back and handed one to Olivia.

“I’ve never—” she began protestingly, but he shook his head.

“This is a time to break the rules,” Stephen assured her. “Drink up.”

In truth, Olivia felt as though she needed something to calm her nerves, and she took a quick sip. The liquid burned in her mouth and all the way down her throat to her stomach. Her eyes watered, and she let out a gasp. But she had to admit that a moment later she no longer felt as cold or as numb.

“Now...” Stephen said, taking a healthy swallow and perching on the edge of his desk. “Can you tell me what we just saw?”

“A woman,” Olivia said, pleased that she managed to keep her voice steady. “Who appeared from nowhere and walked across the room in front of us and through a wall, disappearing.”

“Succinctly put.” He paused. “Can this have been some trick of Madame and her group?”

“Oh! Babington!” Olivia exclaimed, suddenly remembering. “We were following him.”

Stephen nodded. “That apparition drove him out of my head. No hope of finding him now. We don’t even know by which door he left.”

“I guess not. I’ll tell Tom to search Mr. Babington’s room tomorrow, to see if he hides it there.” Olivia sighed and turned her mind to his question. Could Madame Valenskaya have engineered the vision they saw?

What they had seen, she thought, had been far eerier than the “monk” treading the garden path this afternoon. There had been something not quite solid about the woman; she had not been transparent, but she had somehow not looked substantial, either. Most of all, she had not gone from sight down steps into the dark lower garden. She had walked through a solid wall and completely vanished.

“I cannot imagine how anyone could have accomplished such a trick,” Olivia admitted, and took another swallow of brandy. “I have seen a medium put on gauze painted with phosphorescent paint and move about the room in very little light to pretend to be a spirit. But this was nothing like that. What we saw appeared to be a real person, someone of flesh and blood. And she walked through a wall! How could anyone make it look as if she had strode right through a solid wall?”

She did not add the most bizarre and chilling thing about the vision they had just seen: that the woman had looked exactly like the woman Olivia had dreamed about sitting in front of the fire yesterday.

She could not think of any way to tell Stephen that without sounding as if she had gone utterly mad. But she was certain it was the same woman. The dress had been different, a deep crimson this time, with gold undertunic and sleeves, a richer, more formal looking gown, and she had worn a headdress and veil, which had hidden her pale blond hair except at the very front, but her eyes, her facial features, the small, lithe body—all were exactly like the woman in her dream.

It was impossible. One did not dream of an unknown woman, then see her so soon thereafter, particularly when that woman seemed to walk straight through a wall. She refused to even think about the fact that at first, when she had seen the woman yesterday, Olivia had thought she really was there in front of the fire. It was only later, when Olivia woke up, that she realized she must have been dreaming. The whole thing made her uneasy in a way she could not begin to express. If it were not for the fact that Stephen, too, had seen the woman tonight, she would have been afraid she had run mad.

“Would it be possible...?” Stephen began musingly, then halted, looking embarrassed.

“What? Go on? It could not possibly be any more bizarre than what we just witnessed.”

“You’re right. What I was thinking was—if a person were an expert mesmerist, would he or she be able to make someone else believe that he saw something that was not really there? I have heard strange tales of mesmerism.”

Olivia sat up a little straighter, intrigued by the idea. “I’m not sure. I have studied mesmerism—it is a fascinating subject. Not all that silly mumbo jumbo about animal magnetism and such. That is why I prefer the term ‘hypnotism.’ It separates the study from Mesmer’s oddities. It is possible to put a person into a sort of half-conscious state. It can be used to remove pain. I have experienced that myself. But I personally have never witnessed any of the phenomena that some have claimed, such as making people act in peculiar ways or do things that they do not remember. The times when I was put into a trance that way, I was aware all the time of what he was saying, and I remembered it afterward, as well. However, there are those who claim it can be used to give one suggestions that one later carries out, not knowing why. If such claims are true, then...”

Stephen grimaced. “It sounds absurd.”

Olivia nodded. “But no more absurd than someone walking through walls. However, it would mean that Madame Valenskaya or one of the other two would have had to hypnotize both of us and implant the suggestion that we would see such a woman, and also have gotten us to forget that we had ever been hypnotized.”

“Unlikely,” Stephen agreed. “And how could they make sure that we would see her at the same time? But how else could they have done it? Some sort of mirror arrangement? There was no sign of any mirrors in that room. And I can see no way for a person to appear to step into a wall and disappear.”

“And how would they have known to set it up for just that particular time and place? It was happenstance that we were there,” Olivia pointed out.

“Not entirely. We were following Mr. Babington.”

“You mean, he could have led us right to it? That would indicate they knew we would be following him,” Olivia said.

“One could assume we might, I suppose. Clearly you and I did not believe there was a ghost in the garden. They could guess that we would have worked out that Mr. Babington would be the most likely suspect and that he would go out to retrieve his costume, and that we would follow him.”

“They could assume that you might,” Olivia corrected. “I do not think most people would expect me to be helping you in the investigation.”

“True. But if they set it up for me, you saw it simply because you were there, too. They wouldn’t have had to plan for you.”

“Unless it was done by hypnotism, as you suggested. But then they would have had to plant the suggestion in both of us. And they would have had to know we would be there at that time.”