Séance Infernale

by Jonathan Skariton

  A feeling of terror washed over her and she banged on the door, attracting the attention of passersby. George Macrankin, the night watchman, came to help. He, too, knocked on the door, but to no avail. The commotion had stirred a few neighbors from sleep, and they stumbled out of their houses to figure out its cause. One of the men broke the window of the basement floor and they clambered into the residence. The house was silent. They darted up the stairs, calling to the children.

  At the end of the corridor, a cold draft blew through the passageway leading to the children’s bedroom. In these narrow premises, they found Adolphe Sekuler lying facedown on the floor. The boy was soaked in blood, which, they realized, was not his own; upon closer inspection, he had sustained no physical injuries. He was in such shock that he was not able to speak for weeks. They combed the house, shouting Zoe’s name, but she was nowhere to be seen. By this time, more people from the neighborhood had gathered outside, and some of them entered the home. They held candles high, looking for an intruder, and someone ran to the borough police to fetch help. Zoe Sekuler was never seen again.

  Whitman again glanced out the window. After rolling through a whirling valley of golden fields, the train darted out of a tunnel to accost the immeasurable blue expanse of Lac Léman; from down there, the colossal mountainscape cloaked the horizon. A big estate that could have been Les Rives de Prangins loomed over the mountains. Deep-seated vineyards spilled over the contour like wine in water; past the lake, chalets poked their sloping roofs out from the green blanket. The Stendhal syndrome of this display came, in part, from surprise. There had been no sign of the lake or mountainscape about to materialize. Like Alice going down the rabbit hole, the train entered that tunnel and emerged in a magnificent wonderland of mountains and vineyards and castles and the mist of the great lake enshrouding it all.

  The conductor, pockets jingling, came around and validated Whitman’s ticket. He shut the folder, grabbed his coat and backpack, and got up. The door at the far end of the corridor had been left ajar, and a sudden breeze flew in, ruffling a suited man’s newspaper. Whitman held the door open for an elderly woman and she squeezed through with a cold nod of the head.

  He traversed into the carriage where the restaurant was located, feeling the cracking barrage blaring from underneath his feet. He ordered a sandwich and sat at a nearby table, jolted by the train’s undulations. A signal post flew past, then a dreary, forlorn platform, with a sign obscured by the train’s speed and the overcast sky. Whitman had the vague feeling of being followed, watched by familiar faces caught in the glow of their cigarettes, their facial features covered by the strike of their matches; overcoat-wearing characters entering pay phones and pretending to dial nonexistent numbers; faces obscured by sunglasses and newspapers, reappearing in different locations, even in different countries. As he ate his sandwich, he saw nothing suspicious. By the time he moved on to coffee, the train was approaching Lausanne.

  —

  A few minutes later, his feet touched the concrete platform of Lausanne Bahnhof. He passed through the domestic ticket section and went out the other side, facing the department stores and a McDonald’s. The sky seemed unwelcoming, covered by a deep gray haze that shaded the Old Town. The Cathédrale de Notre-Dame, farther up the hills, darkened the city skyline, like a falcon lying in wait.

  One word came to mind: order. Everything moved like clockwork in a pathologically tidy manner; even the buildings were constructed with a no-nonsense quality. The people walking hurriedly among the cobbled streets were coral-faced and flush with vigor, as though they scrubbed their faces with tangerines every morning before sitting down to eat a 150-franc breakfast. The men moved their limbs with the confidence of success. It would take the women a mere twinkle of the nose and a whirl of the waist to make any man fall in love.

  The sidewalks of Avenue de la Gare were sluggish with tourists. Peak-capped students and happy shoppers fumbled up and down the steep climbs of the pebbly troughs leading up to La Cité. By the underground passageway serving as an entrance to the platforms, behind a mobile canteen, a violinist was playing “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” with the animosity of a true virtuoso. Whitman looked up at the circular clock above the Lausanne Capitale Olympique logo. A quarter to noon.

  He went straight for the taxi stand to his right. He gave the driver the address, and a few minutes later the car was humming along the north bank of Lake Geneva, through the quiet semi-suburban settlement of Saint-Sulpice. The taxi rattled along a cobbled section of the main road, then took a left down the hill from a local restaurant. Picturesque parks and delightful beach paths extended along the lakeshore. Terraces, broken by gorges, rose above the lake. He looked over the jungle of sweetbriar flowers, south toward Morges, behind which extended hidden, vine-bordered vistas and valley towns set athwart fast-running streams. The area separated by the beach paths was sprinkled with imposing medieval residences and immaculate mansions. The wealthy hid their spacious garages and magnificent patrician manors behind high stone walls. The dense and soaring trees did the rest. Directly by the lake and the promontory and its pier stood a Romanesque church, its belfry-windowed square tower dominating the rest of the apsed structure. Two centuries ago, on the grounds nearby, Napoleon Bonaparte had reviewed the army that was to distinguish itself in Marengo.

  The taxi stopped before a wrought-iron gate. Whitman paid the driver and told him to wait, in the event he was unsuccessful. He was uncertain whether Sekuler’s grandson, Albrecht Genhagger, would be there, and even less certain the man would agree to see him. Still, he could have information on Sekuler or “Séance Infernale.” Having only an address to work with, Whitman had written a letter a few days earlier. In it he said he would pay the house a visit on that day at that specific time and that he hoped it would be convenient, but he had not allowed time for a reply. He was hopeful, though, for his letter had been written in a manner carefully calculated to gain him admission.

  He got out of the car, taking in the freshwater smell of the lake. The sky looked ominous; a storm was approaching. The iron gate was open. Perhaps they were expecting him. He gazed up at the manor, which was surrounded by a strip of land dotted with gloomy trees.

  It was a residential Gothic Revival mansion with thick limestone walls and three scalloped arches over the entrance. The multi-gabled louvered cupola, a self-supporting double-shell dome, adorned the steep mansard roof. Below it, curvilinear, gingerbread-type vergeboards accented the steep, carved gables and pointed arches with ornamented pendants. Modillioned with zinc, cornice molding crowned the diamond-paned colored-glass windows in sculptured elegance and Old World charm.

  The gate creaked and slid into place with a click. Whitman walked up a path laid with terra-cotta tiles and lined by ivy-covered tree trunks and vegetation. Fountains trinkled with water among small ponds green-laden with hydrophytic plants. The wind pushed him forward. He took up the moss-strewn stone steps leading to the front door. As he rang the bell, he stared at the inscription above the door’s corbeled cap: AD PATRES.

  With a little luck, he thought. There was no answer, so he rang the bell again. Hands in his pockets, he turned around and gazed at one of the marble statues by the fountains, thinking. The taxi was still waiting outside the gate.

  As he was about to ring the bell again, he heard a noise from inside the house. It was a voice—someone shouting—followed by the muffled sound of something crashing to the floor. He thought of ringing again but decided against it. A little lovers’ quarrel between Albrecht and his Swiss wife? he thought. Whoever was in there did not want to be disturbed.

  Unfazed, he traversed the side of the building through the water-soaked bushes, head ducked, prowling for open windows; they were all fastened. He tried the back door, but it was locked. Then he saw what he was looking for: on the west-facing side of the manor, the curtains of a downstairs window were shivering in the breeze. The window, he realized, had not been opened; it had been forced, the glass smashed in
.

  Perplexed now but curious, he stuck his head into the opening in the curtains and peered inside. The darkness of a dining room stared back at him. All was silent. Taking care to avoid the broken glass, he climbed in and stumbled into the obscurity of the room.

  “The Cat creeps,” he uttered under his breath. The house smelled peculiar, old. All the curtains were drawn, giving a dingy, deserted feeling. Moving slowly in the dark, he felt his way around the dining table and through the kitchen. His eyes couldn’t serve him adequately, but his ears strained in the blackness. He eased through a swinging door and crossed into a living room. As his vision adjusted to the dark, stairs came into focus.

  A woman lay on the floor, motionless. Near her, next to the scattered shards of broken glass and traces of blood, lay a handkerchief and duct tape. Whitman approached the woman’s body and knelt down beside her. Her eyes were closed. He didn’t see the movement behind him; he felt it. He staggered forward, slumping across the carpet. He tried turning around, but by the time he could register the dark figure, everything was going black.

  9

  Whitman regained consciousness an indefinite amount of time later. A sharp pain pierced through his skull. He moaned, feeling his forehead. He was looking at the blurry outline of a post-and-beam coffered ceiling.

  Out of the corner of his eye, a hand extended toward him and he flinched, his head aching even more with the movement. It was a woman’s hand. The nails were painted blood red. She was holding a small, Saran-wrapped plastic bag, dripping wet on the inside.

  “Ice,” a female voice said in French.

  He accepted it with something between a “thanks” and a moan. Something was jutting into his thorax. His glasses. Someone—probably the owner of the voice—had placed them there. He realized he was in a different room from the one he had last found himself in. He was lying on a chenille-upholstered sofa, flanked by French chairs with lion tapestry. A finish of subtle gold-leaf details and architectural medallion designs adorned the walls, emanating a rustic charm. It was a living room with antique furnishings, decorated with Victorian drapes and lace curtains. A humpback Victrola stood on the marble top of a Victorian parlor table. He recognized the Bechstein grand piano that occupied one corner of the room. He had passed through here on the way to the stairs, although at this point he wasn’t conscious enough to remember it. He jiggled his glasses in place. Then he stood halfway up from the sofa, his feet touching the Oriental rug underfoot, and faced the woman standing over him.

  She was tall and in her mid- to late thirties. Her medium-length black hair had been ruffled from the struggle, and crimson lipstick had smudged on parts of her cheeks. She was dressed in a black skirt and a short-sleeved top. The effects of the struggle had given her the look of an expensive hooker. Her blood-red fingernails were wrapped around the bag of ice over her head. With her other hand she was holding a cell phone. Her green eyes, a hint of icy steel, scrutinized him with quick, nervous intelligence.

  “Vous êtes américain,” she said.

  He looked back at her, his consciousness still lingering, wondering how she knew. He could picture her as a devious vamp princess, clad in fine lingerie and dancing hypnotically.

  “You were talking to yourself while you were out,” she said.

  The iron gate, the locked door, the broken window, the stairs; the unconscious woman, now fleshed out, standing over him.

  She threw him his wallet. He made a mental note to later check whether anything was missing.

  “You went through my stuff?”

  “I had to know whether you were dangerous or it was just a case of unfortunate timing.” She put the hand holding the phone on her slim waist. She looked annoyed, tapping her foot on the floor, waiting for Whitman to explain himself.

  “I was…”

  “Attacked, yes.”

  “Who?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” Her manner was abrupt and hurried, as if she already knew what he was going to say. She looked as if she wanted to call the police and get it over with, then forget all about it, perhaps peel off her clothes and relax in a hot bath. Whitman tried to stop himself from visualizing the last bit.

  “I don’t like it when people break into my house.”

  He apologized. “I wasn’t…”

  “I know,” she said. “I did the math while you were out. Whoever broke in here knocked us both out. So maybe I should be thanking you?” She didn’t wait for him to answer, as though she wasn’t expecting a reply to begin with. “Still, it begs the question of why you were here in the first place.”

  He scrambled to the edge of his seat, the pain still piercing his head, trying to find the words that eluded him.

  “So, Mr. Alex Whitman. Before I call the police, you mind telling me what’s your business here?”

  “I had an appointment with a Mr. Albrecht Genhagger.”

  She stopped tapping her foot and gave him a surprised look, blinking. “When did you talk to Albrecht Genhagger?”

  “I didn’t.”

  She nodded deliberately, as if that explained everything.

  “Do you know if he’s available?”

  “He’s been dead for twenty-five years,” she said.

  Whitman closed his eyes in pain and disappointment. He should have expected this. He pushed his head back so it touched the pillow, and sighed. The final dead end had manifested itself from the darkness.

  “What did you want to meet with him about?”

  “About a man called Augustin Sekuler.”

  She cocked her head in recognition and placed the phone back on the table. She had decided to grant him a little more attention.

  “Have you heard the name before?” he asked, running his hand across his face.

  She laughed. “I’ve come across it quite a few times.”

  He nodded, still dizzy.

  “My name’s Elena. Elena Genhagger.”

  Whitman furrowed his brow. “Any relation to…”

  “Albrecht Genhagger was my father.”

  “Which would make Sekuler…”

  “My great-grandfather.”

  Whitman just stood there as the woman told him she was the only surviving offspring of the Sekuler-Genhagger family.

  “But…how?” he said. “How is that possible?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Sekuler’s son, Adolphe, died in a hunting accident in 1901. As far as I know, he hadn’t married, and he didn’t have any children.”

  She nodded in agreement.

  “And Sekuler’s daughter, Zoe, disappeared when she was a little girl.”

  There was again that hint of icy steel in her eyes. “Zoe Sekuler did not disappear for long; she was found soon after.”

  “My research didn’t show anything like that. When was this?”

  “It must have been shortly after the patent wars against the Edison Company. Early 1900s, I suppose.”

  “That’s over ten years after her disappearance!”

  “More or less,” she said. The rough math made sense.

  “Nobody thought to ask about this? What happened, I mean.”

  She shook her head. “Her disappearance was an incident as mysterious as that of her father.” She leaned on the arm of the chair, and for a second her silk stockings came into view.

  “My great-grandmother was a very eccentric lady. She was a woman of many talents; a Georgian prodigy, you could say. But she didn’t really blend in with the crowd, or even with her own family. She never talked about her disappearance. I only got to see her near the end of her life, when she had almost lost it. She’d had two strokes by then. She still had that kind smile. But she wasn’t really there anymore.”

  Whitman nodded. He imagined Zoe’s mother wouldn’t really have looked into what had happened; by the time Zoe reappeared in her life, she had lost a husband and two children. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, she was being given her daughter back. She would never question the whats and hows.
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br />   “I think we could both use a brandy,” Elena said. “Then you’re going to tell me why my great-grandfather should be of any interest to you, Mr. Whitman.”

  —

  “Is that what you do for a living? Find movies?” She had sat down slowly, next to him, her skirt gliding up just a bit too far.

  “Sometimes.” He took a sip of his brandy. It warmed his throat and seemed to relieve the pain in his skull and neck. “Sometimes it’s a film prop or an object linked to a particular film. Other times, it’s the film itself. People hire me to find the most obscure things.”

  “You’re something of an archaeologist, then. Or a detective,” she said with a smile. “Like Indiana Jones, or Philip Marlowe, non?”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “You said people hire you to find things. What is it that you’re trying to find, exactly? I assume it’s something to do with my great-grandfather.”

  “I’ve been hired to find a film which he is believed to have made.”

  “A film?” she said, furrowing her brow, trying to follow. “Sekuler was not a director; he was an inventor.”

  “There’s some evidence to support it. Inconsistencies in frame numbers of surviving material, as well as a letter from a man named Carlyle Eistrowe, mentioning a film which we believe was Sekuler’s work.”

  She seemed to flinch at this. Sensing her urgency, he handed her the folder with his research.

  “In other words,” she said, leafing through the notes, “you have hardly any evidence at all.” She chuckled. “The name Augustin Sekuler seems to be quite popular nowadays.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She crossed the room to a stand holding an old mirror. She reached behind it, pulled out a case. Whitman’s gaze wandered over her body, lingering on the backs of her thighs. She clicked the case open and fished out a cigarette. Closet smoker, Whitman thought.