"Oh? Are they terribly upright?"
"Very. The family is old, has buckets of money and owns a great deal of land in Essex. They spend most of their time there except when Parliament is open in spring and summer and they come to London together. Lord Preston has a lot of political influence in the House of Lords but he's a Tory -very conservative. Could you imagine a man who doesn't want to give farmers the right to vote associating with a demonologist?"
He laughed and I laughed too. But I couldn't imagine it. I wondered what Lord Preston would think of his dead son communicating with a spirit medium.
"What's so funny?" asked Jacob, suddenly appearing beside me.
I put a hand to my rapidly pounding heart. "You scared me."
"My apologies. If there was another way to come and go without alarming you I'd employ it." He gave me that smile I'd become so used to, the crooked one that made his lips curve in just the right way. It would seem he was no longer upset by what Mrs. Culvert had said.
"Is he here?" George asked, glancing around the room.
"He is," I said.
"Oh. Good." He cleared his throat. "Hello, Beaufort, how are you?"
Jacob sighed and shook his head in disbelief at the polite but inappropriate question. "I see you told him about me. Was that wise?"
"He guessed." To George I said, "He's well thank you, and asks how are you?"
"Very well," George said. "Fit as a fiddle." He pushed his glasses up his nose and grinned at me. He was enjoying this. I suppose he'd never had a conversation with a ghost before. Although to be technically accurate, he wasn't having one now, I was.
"Since he knows about me, I want to ask him something," Jacob said.
"He wants to ask you something," I said to George. "He's standing right beside me."
George's gaze settled on my right.
Jacob, on my left side, sighed again and picked up a book. George's gaze shifted. "Ask him to introduce us to the maid he suspects of stealing the book."
***
The girl, known by her surname of Finch, said she was sixteen but she looked older. Dark circles underscored eyes that drooped at the corners as if they were too tired to open properly. Red blotches on her cheeks and chin marked her otherwise sallow skin and she seemed to have far more teeth than could fit in her small mouth.
"Finch," George said, towering over the girl, "this lady wants to ask you some questions." He spoke to her with his hands clasped behind him and a deeper voice than he used when addressing me. I suppose he was fulfilling his role as master of the house by asserting his authority over her but, like most men, he didn't realize the best way to get answers was with kindness, not by frightening the poor girl.