Annie attends the first seance with a group of people.
Evie is there too, but in a cabinet, and then Annie is summoned. When the girl starts calling herself Merybelle and she is her six-year-old daughter, Annie is taken aback. Exactly six years ago she went through a miscarriage when her father died and her husband was away, arranging his father-in-law funeral. Annie was four months along, and her housekeeper told her that the baby would have been a girl. John never learnt about the miscarriage, and since then, Annie has kept her miscarriage a secret. Now that Evie says she is her daughter, Annie is puzzled to say the least.
While Annie is inside, Kathleen is waiting for her, and she learns that Evie lives there with her mother, Mrs Nickerson, who seems to be some kind of housekeeper.
Nate also makes his own enquiries, and he finds out that there are a few letters complaining about the Framptons, one of which comes from Judge Babcock’s sister, who requests to have her brother incapacitated. There are also some anonymous letters, but no lead the police can follow.
Then strange things start to happen. In the second seance Annie finds a note in her coat pocket, warning her to stay away in a threatening tone. Then Annie goes to see Lucy Pinehurst, who tells her that her sister is in an even worse condition. The woman is pregnant again, but instead of feeling joy, she is downcast as the voice of her dead son tells her that the new baby will come to be with him soon, so Sukie thinks that her second child will die too. She even blames her husband as he refuses to go with her to the seances, and reasoning that their dead son feels alone, he now wants to take the new baby. Lucy also tells her that her brother-in-law is not telling her something, and Annie thinks that maybe her suspicions about the Framptons being involved in blackmail might be true after all. It is on her way back home that there is an incident. It is raining, so she takes a horse car, which is crowded, and when she is to get off, she thinks someone pushes her and she falls. The people who witness the incident think that it was the wind that propelled the umbrella upwards, making Annie fall. With a sore knee and a bleeding hand, Annie hobbles home, to find another threatening note, which she keeps quiet about.
Then Annie attends a private seance with Evie. The girl starts saying that she is Annie’s made-up son, but then she stops and says she is Marybelle, but then she again gets transformed into someone called Eddie, who claims he is Marybelle’s elder brother, but he claims he is not dead. I think that what is happening to Evie is that she has multiple personality. What I don’t understand is why she came to be with the Framptons and being part of this charade. I guess it is her mother’s doing, but why is she letting her daughter be use like this?
Outside the room Kathleen waits for her employer once again, and then she recognises the maid as Biddy, a good friend of hers. Biddy tells her that she has been employed by the Framptons for a few months. Apparently, Albert, the man Annie and Kathleen thought was the butler, is Arabella’s uncle, and there is a maid who is his wife. She also tells her that she thinks that Mrs Nickerson is not the housekeeper, but what she would like was to be the next Mrs Frampton.
When Biddy visits Annie at Kathleen’s request, the girl tells her that she can arrange for her to check the house on Sunday as everybody will be out. When Nate hears about this plan, he isn’t happy, but this time he manages to control his temper, and he simply volunteers to accompany Annie on her search of the house. I wonder what she will find.
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