Last Nocturne

by M. J. Trow

  ‘After you’ve made some tea, of course. I’m parched.’

  As soon as Eleanor opened the door, Grand could tell that Lady Wentworth was still in residence. The girl looked exhausted but also on the alert; friends of Grand’s back home had come back from visits to Haiti with stories of zumbi, the living dead, and he had always pooh-poohed it. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

  He raised his eyebrows and nodded towards the drawing room. Eleanor nodded and slumped back through the green baize door.

  In the drawing room, Caroline and her mother sat decorously at either side of the fireplace, sewing. Caroline looked up and her eyes were not dissimilar to Eleanor’s.

  ‘Mr Grand.’ Lady Wentworth extended her black-wisped claw for him to kiss. He wondered how many women in this year of their Lord 1878 sewed wearing gloves. He was willing to bet not that many. ‘You are enjoying better fortune today. Lady Caroline and I are At Home.’

  ‘Lucky me,’ Grand smiled. ‘My visit will not be a long one, Lady Wentworth. I am here to invite Lady Caroline out for the evening, this coming Thursday.’

  ‘May one ask to where?’

  ‘The Grosvenor gallery,’ he said, with a smile and a reassuring look at Caroline.

  ‘I have gathered from my daughter that she is not really that fond of the Grosvenor,’ the woman said, with a basilisk smile. ‘So she will have to decline.’

  ‘But, Mama …’

  Lady Wentworth raised her chin and looked at her daughter through her lorgnette. ‘Caroline,’ she barked. ‘You either dislike the Grosvenor or you do not. Or,’ and she screwed up her mouth in distaste, ‘you were indulging in your habit of hyperbole again, against which I have warned you time without number.’

  ‘Perhaps an evening event, Mama,’ Caroline ventured, ‘may remove my antipathy.’

  Her mother looked at her with sympathy. ‘I am not a fool, Caroline,’ she said, ‘nor, and I think I may say this as you are not a child any longer, am I a stranger to the feelings you no doubt have for Mr Grand.’

  Grand narrowed his eyes at Caroline and stuck his tongue out in the merest flicker. He doubted very much whether this shrivelled woman had ever had even a quarter of the feelings he knew Caroline harboured under her high-buttoned bodice.

  ‘So,’ the woman continued, ‘I fear I must answer for you and say no. On the other hand, Mr Grand, if Caroline’s absence will make an awkward number at the table, I will be happy to attend in her place. May I ask the occasion?’

  Grand had little choice. It was fruitless to lie. Lady Wentworth was not exactly a vital member of stylish tables throughout London, but she did know people; if it got out that it was a séance and he told her something else, that would be the end of his engagement to her daughter, and he suddenly realized that he would dislike that very much. ‘It’s a séance, Lady Wentworth,’ he said.

  His future mother-in-law – unless he had blotted his copybook irretrievably – gasped, closed her eyes and pressed a scandalized hand to her chest. ‘A séance?’ she whispered. ‘You dare invite my daughter to a séance? Are you an animal, Mr Grand?’

  ‘They are very popular, Mama,’ Lady Caroline suggested, realizing as she spoke that she had used the wrong word. ‘The very best people are seen at séances these days.’

  ‘Frauds and charlatans the whole boiling of them,’ Lady Wentworth announced. ‘I shall go, Mr Grand, though it pains me to think of being in a room with such depravity. If, as I suspect, there is skulduggery to which you are all too keen to expose my daughter, then the engagement is off.’

  ‘But Mama …’ Caroline had tears in her eyes.

  ‘Lady Wentworth …’ Grand didn’t take his eyes off Caroline.

  ‘I have decided. At what time do I need to arrive, Mr Grand?’

  ‘Nine o’clock.’ Grand hung his head, defeated.

  ‘An appalling hour. No wonder the whole of society is so effete, keeping to such times. But, I will spare nothing for my girl. I will be there. Good day, Mr Grand.’

  Caroline started to get up for her ritual kiss.

  ‘Stay in your seat, Caroline. I do not wish you to show Mr Grand any overt displays of affection. I am considering his position. Most carefully.’ She looked up at Grand. ‘I daresay you can see yourself out, Mr Grand.’

  With a bow, Grand saw himself out of the room.

  In the hall, he passed a note to a lacklustre Eleanor. ‘Make sure Lady Caroline gets this. Not her mother. Promise me?’

  The maid nodded and a small spark entered her eye. Mr Grand was fighting back. Perhaps the world wouldn’t end, after all.

  On his way home that afternoon, Grand put his head around the office door. Miss Wolstenholme had gone home, but Martin was sitting at his desk, sealing envelopes and putting them on a pile.

  ‘How are the invitations coming along, Alexander?’ Grand asked, though he knew the answer already. Perfectly, of course.

  ‘This is the last one, Mr Grand,’ Martin said. ‘I will get them in the five o’clock post and, with luck, most of them will be there tonight; they’re quite local. Worst case will be tomorrow morning.’

  ‘And you’ve put emergency RSVP?’

  ‘I certainly have, Mr Grand. We don’t have much time. But I’m sure everybody will come – it’s not every day you get an invitation to a séance in an art gallery. They’ll be intrigued, if nothing else.’

  ‘I hope so. See you tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, Alexander?’

  ‘Somewhat unprecedented, Mr Batchelor.’ Martin sat at his desk with one full basket and one empty one in front of him. ‘All the answers in, mostly hand delivered, and all are “yes”.’

  ‘Really?’ Grand was surprised. ‘Even Metcalfe?’

  ‘His was the first in. Barnes brought it round.’

  ‘Excellent. All we need now is a medium, and we’ll be set.’

  The door banged behind them and Grand barrelled in. ‘I’ve been thinking about that, James,’ he said. ‘Do you think Miss Wolstenholme could carry it off?’

  ‘Not a chance,’ Batchelor said. ‘She just doesn’t have the …’ He spread his arms in mute appeal to Martin.

  ‘… charisma,’ Martin suggested, and Batchelor nodded.

  ‘Who, then?’ Grand asked. ‘It isn’t as if we need a real one.’

  Martin gave him an odd look. ‘Is there such a thing?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t nitpick, Alexander,’ Grand snapped.

  ‘There was a medium in that case in ’75,’ Martin said. ‘The one where that woman wanted to divorce her husband because she said he was having unnatural thoughts about …’

  ‘I remember that one,’ Grand said. ‘Florence Cook, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. She’s in the papers from time to time, so she is still in business, if that’s the word I mean.’

  ‘She sounds ideal. Do we know her address? Of course we do.’ Martin was already writing and passed the slip of paper to Grand. ‘We’ll go and see her, see what she’ll do for money.’

  ‘Almost anything, I would imagine,’ Martin said, sourly, and watched his employers leave. He couldn’t see, for the life of him, how this was going to end well.

  THIRTEEN

  Matthew Grand and James Batchelor were de facto hosts and had dressed the part. The invitations had not called for evening dress, but they knew that at least half of the guests would assume it was mandatory. So they had donned their best bibs and tuckers and waited to welcome the participants to the séance on the steps of the Grosvenor. Florence Cook – who would, indeed, do anything for money – was already ensconced in the Long Gallery. She was a tall woman, as pale as the spirits she summoned, and her large grey eyes were set deep to see into men’s souls. The large circular table at which she sat had been cobbled together by Joe from various odd bits of timber from the packing room. His brief was simple. It had to have room for at least thirteen people to sit round it, but also be light enough to rock about, should the fit take it. He had not been keen to take on the task, until Grand h
ad reminded him that, had it not been for his intervention, he wouldn’t have a roof over his head, even, let alone a job. So, muttering, Joe had bent to his task and the end result was not at all bad.

  ‘So, Caroline isn’t coming?’ Batchelor checked.

  ‘Her mother wouldn’t allow it,’ Grand said shortly.

  ‘Ah.’ There seemed little more to say. Lady Wentworth appeared to be a fixture in London and the only person happy about it was Lord Wentworth, left to potter at will down at the country pile, as far away from the Season as good manners would allow.

  Grand consulted his watch. ‘They’ll be arriving soon,’ he said. ‘I wonder who’ll be the first to turn up.’

  ‘Five bob says it’ll be the police,’ Batchelor said, holding out two half-crowns.

  ‘My five bob says it will be the Lindsays,’ Grand said. ‘It is their gallery, after all.’

  ‘Have you ever met them?’ Batchelor asked. He knew his partner mixed in some pretty exalted circles from time to time.

  ‘Not as far as I know,’ Grand said, as a carriage pulled up at the side of the road. ‘This may be them now.’

  Two people tumbled higgledy-piggledy out of the carriage. They were wearing what had possibly begun as evening dress, but splodges of paint could be seen on his shirt and her skirt and she had charcoal under her nails. They were bickering mildly together and she had her tiara caught in his tie. Eventually, they were separated by the footman sitting alongside the groom and they walked up the steps to greet Grand and Batchelor.

  ‘Sir Coutts and Lady Blanche Lindsay,’ the gentleman said, looking the two up and down. ‘Are you the chaps causing chaos in our gallery?’ He looked fiercely through his monocle at Grand.

  ‘Well, not chaos, hopefully, Sir Coutts,’ Grand said. ‘We hope to lay the ghost tonight, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Never seen it!’ the woman barked suddenly at Batchelor. ‘Don’t want to. Never mind. Nibbles?’ she asked as the doorman did his job.

  ‘In the foyer, Lady Blanche.’ Saunders had appeared from nowhere, looking even more stuffed than usual in his tails.

  ‘Who’s payin’?’

  ‘We are, Lady Blanche,’ Grand called over his shoulder.

  Sir Coutts Lindsay winked at the American. ‘She’ll enjoy them all the more for that,’ he said. ‘She likes to think of herself as an artist starving in a garret.’

  Batchelor looked at Grand. ‘So they do exist, then,’ he chuckled.

  The carriages were beginning to line up, and soon the people standing on the steps to be welcomed could officially be called a queue.

  ‘Do you think they’ll all come?’ Batchelor asked.

  ‘James, you sound like a debutante at her first party,’ Grand laughed. ‘Miss Cook says the perfect number is nine, but we’re way over that. Perhaps it will be the more the merrier. Anyway, Florence Cook is a draw all by herself. You’ve heard the scandal, of course?’

  ‘I never listen to idle gossip,’ Batchelor lied. ‘You seem very merry, anyway,’ he said, looking at his friend rather askance. ‘Do you have anything up your sleeve I should know about?’

  ‘No, indeed. I leave that to Miss Cook.’ Grand turned with his hand outstretched. ‘Lady Wentworth. How good of you to come. And right on time.’

  ‘Punctuality is the politeness of princes, Mr Grand,’ the woman rapped out. She looked Batchelor up and down as if something the cat had dragged in and swept into the foyer, where she ignored the Lindsays and didn’t even see Saunders.

  Hard on her heels came the rest of the guests, Whistler being the next, with Oscar Wilde in anxious attendance. Having snagged his famous artist, he was unwilling to let go, and even Whistler, with an ego as big as the great outdoors, was beginning to find it wearing. And Wilde was wearing a huge gardenia in his buttonhole.

  Barnes arrived on foot, in a shabby suit, an apology already on his lips. ‘I’m sorry it’s me,’ he said. ‘Inspector Metcalfe was going to come but he …’ Here, his invention left him. He had no vocabulary to paraphrase the words that Metcalfe had used to describe what he felt about Grand and Batchelor. ‘They’ll be dressed up like a couple of sodding penguins’ was the politest and, at least in that regard, he was right.

  ‘Nothing to apologize for,’ Grand said, politely. ‘I know how hard you policemen have to work and we’re happy to have you. A policeman’s lot is not a happy one, after all.’

  George Frederic Watts was alone. John Stanhope had offered to come along; Lizzie was a great adherent of table turning, and he thought he might be able to bring something to the table, so to speak. But his attempt at a pun had fallen on deaf ears and Watts was there, though unimpressed. ‘Damn fool bloody thing, Grand,’ he muttered. The man might be a good model, but that didn’t make him intelligent. ‘If this is all an attempt to contact poor Evangeline, it is in the worst possible taste. She didn’t have much to say for herself when she was alive. I doubt that will have changed.’

  ‘We are not trying to contact Evangeline,’ Grand assured him. ‘It’s the ghost of the Grosvenor we are trying to lay.’

  Alice Arbuthnot, the next in line, looking like a galleon in full sail with the sunset of middle age just gilding her canvas, nudged the gentleman by her side in the ribs. ‘That sounds right up your street, Percy,’ she whispered.

  Perceval Keen, QC, looked her up and down. ‘Unhand me, madam,’ he said, with perfect accuracy. ‘I don’t know you and don’t want to!’ He passed his hat and scarf to the doorman.

  Auntie Alice dropped a ghost of a wink to Batchelor as she swept past in a whisper of tulle and organdie. Keen stormed ahead, just snapping as he did so, ‘Load of tommyrot!’

  ‘Just two left, now,’ Grand said, consulting his list. ‘Ruskin and Inverarity.’

  ‘And Martin,’ Batchelor pointed out.

  ‘True, but he wasn’t exactly invited, was he? More a kind of staff do, I suppose, for him.’

  ‘He does know to come, though?’ Batchelor was suddenly worried that no one had asked him.

  ‘Yes, yes. I’ve given him a few bits to do. Backstage, you know. Miss Cook needs …’ He broke off as Willoughby Inverarity panted up the stairs, smart in his mess dress, the gold lace on his waistcoat gleaming in the lights streaming from the gallery windows.

  ‘Sorry I’m late, gents,’ he said, a hand to his chest as he gathered his breath. ‘Not missed anything, have I? I say … we’re not trying to get Peebles to speak, are we? Because, as you know, I had decided to cut the man from that moment on. Don’t want to have to carry on the conversation from Beyond, as it were.’

  ‘No, no,’ Grand recited what was quickly becoming somewhat of a mantra, ‘we’re attempting to lay the Grosvenor ghost.’ He pointed into the foyer. ‘Champagne inside.’ And with a whoosh of conversation, cut off with the click of the door, he disappeared inside.

  ‘So, just Ruskin now,’ Batchelor said. ‘I bet he doesn’t come.’

  ‘I bet he will,’ Grand said. ‘Men like him don’t reply to invitations and then don’t arrive, you know. It simply isn’t done.’

  ‘But what if he has found out Whistler will be here?’

  ‘Then I would imagine he will be all the keener to come. If Whistler loses his temper again, Ruskin will win his case hands down.’

  ‘He’s late, though,’ Batchelor pointed out.

  Grand glanced at his watch. ‘Just about fashionably late, I would say.’

  A carriage rattled around the corner and drew up in front of the gallery. Ruskin alighted, leaning heavily on his cane.

  ‘See. Five bob, was it?’

  ‘Sorry to be tardy, gentlemen,’ Ruskin said, making heavy weather of the few shallow steps. ‘I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Grand bowed and ushered him in. ‘We will have to forgo champagne, though. It is time to begin.’

  ‘Where’s Martin, though?’ Batchelor whispered to Grand.

  ‘Don’t worry. He’ll be where I need him,’ Grand said, then, lou
der, ‘ladies, gentlemen, shall we go through? Mr Saunders, if you would lead the way.’

  With a clink of glasses being replaced on trays and a murmur of low conversation, the guests moved through into the candle-specked darkness of the gallery.

  Terence Saunders had seen the table being erected, but after that had not witnessed the transformation that had been wrought in the gallery. The pictures were hardly visible in the almost total darkness. Here and there, a candle guttered in the draught from the open door. In the middle of the round table, three fat candles burned low, grouped together on a mirror. A shrouded figure sat facing the door, her face lit in the flickering flame when she leaned forward, but otherwise hidden behind a lace veil she wore over her head. Her dress was white and almost glowed with a life of its own. The sleeves were loose and flowing, covering her hands. Saunders stopped in shock and the guests behind him cannoned into him and almost sent him flying. Lady Wentworth’s skeletal forefinger in the small of his back soon got him moving again, and it was fortunate for his peace of mind that he didn’t hear Lady Blanche whisper to her husband that the man really did have to go.

  Grand weaselled his way to the front and shepherded everyone to their seats. There was a shortage of women, so it hadn’t been possible to seat them alternately with the men, but Grand and Batchelor had done their best. Their main aim had been to make sure that no two people who absolutely hated each other were being asked to hold hands; in some cases, that might be a step too far.

  In low tones, Grand sent them to their places. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please meet Miss Florence Cook, who many of you will know is a very accomplished and indeed acclaimed medium.’

  The murmurs from the guests were mixed, but Florence was used to that. Speaking for herself, she really couldn’t see why people were always so surprised when she was from time to time exposed as a fraud. What did they expect? That the dead would turn up on cue to talk to people about the other side? Why would Uncle Norman come back to a seedy scullery in Acton to tell his niece that it was all very lovely, he was at peace, and he’d been talking to Beethoven only the other day, who told him to tell little Bessie to carry on with her piano lessons? But, it was a living, and this evening – in nice surroundings, with champagne and a meat tea – was a pleasant bonus; as was the fee.