The Royal Ghost

by Linda Stratmann

  ‘In your earthly lives you may have worked diligently, been virtuous, treated others with consideration, honoured your families, and yet you have suffered reverses which were wholly undeserved, and failed to find the love, the respect and the advancement that are surely due to you. Why this is so, I cannot say; it may be evil influences or unkind chance. What I can tell you is that in the spirit world, all injustices will be mended.’

  Mr Hope now had the whole attention of his audience, who were listening to him with increasing interest. ‘Those who pass from this earthly life aged, infirm of body, suffering the ravages of disease, will in the world of the spirit be whole again – young, strong, comely, in the perfection of health. They will live in fine houses, reunited with their loved ones who have gone before. Married couples who have not lived harmoniously on earth will be permitted to part and they will then be able to make new spiritual unions, a form of marriage that will lead to eternal happiness. Those who have not met with earthly success will find all that they need to develop their minds and gratify their highest senses, so they will achieve recognition. Children who have passed before their parents will be carefully nurtured until they are reunited with their mothers. But what of the wicked, I hear you ask? Will they not be cast into damnation? No, they will be met with compassion, not burning fire, and will be guided to the ways of righteousness, so, having done their penance and found a true path, they too will be admitted to the world of blessed spirits. Is this not wonderful?’

  All around her Mina saw the enthralled expressions of those who had been offered a miracle, and were eased of man’s oldest fear – death. Many of those present were elderly, and several had the grey shrunken countenances of declining health. There were couples whose postures of formality told of marriages endured but not enjoyed, and humbly garbed young men who had been disappointed in their ambitions. In the wonderful world of the spirit, all wrongs would be righted. And then there was Mina herself, bowed but not broken, cheated of the most fundamental desires of womankind, every day a battle against strain and frustration. She did not know if this world described by the great seers was real or not, but she had no desire to hurry towards her death to find out.

  On the way home Enid’s eyes were bright with happiness, and Mina did not care to enquire why. Here was proof, if Enid had ever needed it, that her union with Mr Inskip was not a blessed one, but a temporary affair, and that her beloved in eternity would be another. ‘I expect you will be a disciple of Mr Hope now!’ said Enid. ‘He is such a clever man; it quite makes my head spin when he speaks.’

  ‘Mine also,’ said Mina.

  ‘Oh please do say you will sign a paper for him! It is such a small thing to do.’

  Mina had no wish to argue with her sister. ‘It is a serious matter and I have asked the advice of my solicitor. I can do nothing until I hear from him further.’

  ‘Not that dreadful Mr Phipps. I have heard some very unfortunate things about him. I would not go to him on any matter!’

  ‘If Mr Phipps is being slandered then he really ought to know what is being said and who is saying it. Can you enlighten me?’

  Even Enid had the sense to say no more.

  Twenty-Eight

  Next morning, as Enid excitedly regaled her family across the breakfast table with the wonders revealed by Mr Hope, a set of beautifully printed invitations arrived, addressed to Louisa. ‘They are for all the family,’ she said, waving a hand at Enid to stop her chattering, ‘for an exhibition at the Royal Pavilion. The Mystic Stefan invites us to a demonstration of conjuring promising never-before-seen mysteries. All ladies will receive a present.’

  ‘Which room has been hired?’ asked Richard.

  ‘The banqueting room. He must be expecting a large crowd.’

  Richard looked unusually mournful at this prospect, and took the first opportunity of speaking to Mina alone in her room, flinging himself down on her bed in an altogether casual fashion which he would never have displayed before their mother, while Mina sat at her desk with her little wedge of a cushion supporting her hip.

  ‘Dare I ask why you are so despondent?’ asked Mina.

  ‘Well, here is Mr Hope taking the banqueting room which may hold hundreds, and I find even the smaller suites are far beyond my means. Do you know, the Pavilion committee actually wants money in advance! That is most unfair since we have not yet performed the play or sold any tickets. I asked them if they could wait for their money but they absolutely refused. Is that how people run an enterprise nowadays?’

  ‘But surely that should not pose any difficulty to you as you have just borrowed some money from mother.’

  ‘Yes, but I have had expenses.’

  This theme was all too familiar to Mina. ‘Please don’t tell me you have already spent it!’

  ‘I couldn’t help it, there was just one thing after another. You know how it is.’ He sat up. ‘Mina – I don’t suppose —’

  ‘No, Richard, this time I must put my foot down. I have lent you money before, paid your bills, and seen you fritter it all away and waste opportunities. Where is the play? Can I see it? Is it written yet?’

  ‘Not yet, but it will be.’

  ‘Good. When you have it complete, show it to me, and if I think it worthy to be performed and not likely to bring shame and ruin to our family, I will reconsider, but not until then.’

  Richard gazed on her with his most imploring look, but she remained adamant. He rested his chin in his hands gloomily. ‘Also the Pavilion committee has told me it needs to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain for his approval. Something about preserving good manners, decorum, and the public peace. What has any of that to do with a play?’

  ‘Well at least you now know what is expected. If that is all you have to say, I think both of us have some writing to do.’

  ‘Can’t I sit here and write?’

  ‘No, because you would be forever interrupting me and then neither of us would finish anything.’

  He looked so downhearted that she took pity on him and, getting down from her chair, went to his side and hugged him warmly. ‘Richard, I love you dearly, but my best advice for you is to forget all about this play, go back to London, take up Edward’s offer and try to make a success of it.’ It was not what he wanted to hear.

  Once Richard had left her Mina tried to settle to her writing. The story involved a young girl visiting a museum and being enthralled by oriental figures in magnificent costumes, which came alive and acted out a drama of the past. Later the girl discovered that what she had seen solved an ancient mystery of a missing princess. Mina managed to construct the framework of the story but so preoccupied was she with Mr Hope’s talk and its effect on the listeners that the detail eluded her, and finally after a struggle, she laid aside her pen. More than anything else she was struck by the ease with which he had swayed his audience, and she could only feel helpless at the thought. She might resist him, and so would Dr Hamid, but that was not enough. She needed more facts, more ammunition.

  Some months ago, when Mina had been gathering the information which had resulted in Miss Eustace and her coterie finding themselves behind bars, she had obtained through Mr Greville an advance copy of a report made following an enquiry carried out by the erudite men and women of the Dialectical Society into the claims made by devotees of spiritualism. Mina once again turned to its four hundred or so pages, hoping to find something she might use to oppose Mr Hope.

  Mina had first been alerted to the dangers of trust in mediums by the activities of a Mr D.D. Home. This Scottish-born American spiritualist had very nearly succeeded in defrauding a seventy-five-year-old widow, Mrs Lyon, of her entire fortune – some £30,000 – by persuading her that he had received messages from her late husband who wished him to have it. Fortunately, a court action had seen through his villainy, cancelled what he had intended to be irrevocable deeds, and obliged him to restore the lady’s property. Extraordinarily to Mina’s way of thinking, the egregious criminal had not been cast
into prison as he richly deserved or even put on the first ship back to his adopted homeland, but remained free to perform his mediumistic tricks, and had even participated in the Dialectical Society’s enquiry. Mina had never met Mr D.D. Home, but often rehearsed exactly what she would say to him if she ever did.

  The Society’s report had ultimately been inconclusive, although some members of the committee had strongly suspected that the manifestations produced by the mediums they had witnessed were solely the result of trickery designed to deceive credulous onlookers, and said so. The Davenport brothers, famed American mediums who had made a triumphant tour of England, had been subjected to a close examination by one of the Society’s members and been caught out in a blatant deception, disguising a prepared drawing to look like a blank sheet with the object of claiming when the picture was revealed later that it was the work of spirits. Their best-known performances, however, were those in which they had been securely bound with ropes inside a large wooden cabinet, which they had had specially constructed for their purposes, and from which they were able to produce spirit sounds, wave spirit arms through apertures, and cause musical instruments to fly through the air. Nellie had explained to Mina that none of this was very amazing if one only assumed that like the good conjurors they indubitably were, the brothers had some method of freeing their hands, and then re-tying themselves so they would appear to have been bound all along.

  Inevitably, the Society’s objections were vigorously opposed by champions of the spiritualists, including a Mr Samuel Guppy, a gentleman of advanced years and strong opinions. Mr Guppy’s wife was a famed medium who claimed to be endowed with more than the usual abilities. Her speciality was making all manner of produce appear on the séance table. She had conjured up a basket of fresh flowers and shrubs at a séance attended by a sceptic from the Society, who was sure that it had come from no further than the nearby sideboard, an easy enough deception to manage in darkness. Mrs Guppy naturally claimed that she had brought them from a distance, and she had assured her enthralled devotees that flowers could travel bodily through walls or window panes or shutters, just as easily as a bird flew through the air. Mina was reminded that at the séance conducted by poor Eliza Hamid, a little posy had appeared on the table, which had surely flown from no further distance than Mr Clee’s pocket.

  Mrs Guppy had more than one trick, since she had, it was reported, been seen by witnesses at séances actually rising into the air, lifted by some unseen agency that placed her on the table around which the guests were seated. Mina found this unimpressive as evidence of spirit activity, since she had already seen Richard produce exactly the same effect with Nellie using nothing more ghostly than a roll of opaque black fabric. Having said that, Nellie was no great weight and Mrs Guppy was reputed to be a lady of generous dimensions, which suggested that she required not one but two confederates in the room.

  To dispel any lingering doubts as to her close relationship with the spirits, Mrs Guppy, when holding subsequent séances, was happy to agree that the doors of the room should be locked and windows fastened. She then allowed herself to be searched by a lady, and when seated at the table her hands were securely held. Despite these precautions, the sitters were still greeted by cascades of fresh scented flowers.

  Last July, however, several newspapers had reported an even more sensational achievement by the miraculous Mrs Guppy and Mina, out of curiosity, had made a study of the various accounts, which had afforded her a great deal of amusement. A Mr Benjamin Coleman had launched the story by advising a journal called The Spiritualist that ‘living human bodies may be transported from place to place’ and that Mrs Guppy, although ‘one of the largest and heaviest women of his acquaintance’, had been carried a distance of three miles by some invisible agency ‘in an instant of time’ to be dropped with a heavy thump on a table around which clustered a number of people seated shoulder to shoulder in a dark séance. The doors of the room in which they sat were locked, the windows fastened, and the fireplace covered in, although, given the size of the lady in question, Mina wondered why Mr Coleman had thought it necessary to add this last fact. So unexpected was this journey to the lady that she arrived without bonnet, shawl or shoes, and holding a memorandum book in one hand and a pen, still with the ink wet, in the other. When Mrs Guppy, who appeared to have been in a state of trance, recovered from her ordeal, she said that she had been at her home three miles away writing up her household expenses in the company of a Miss Neyland, when she had suddenly lost consciousness and knew nothing more until she found herself at the centre of the circle.

  Mrs Guppy returned home by more conventional means, accompanied by a party of interested gentlemen who questioned Miss Neyland. She confirmed that she had been in the company of Mrs Guppy, who was writing up her household accounts. Miss Neyland had been reading a newspaper, and when she looked up found that the lady had simply vanished. A search had confirmed that Mrs Guppy was not in the house. Miss Neyland naturally informed Mr Guppy of his wife’s disappearance, but he seemed not to be troubled by this, and after consulting the spirits to satisfy himself that she was safe, went to have his dinner. This curious lack of concern was explained by the fact that he was not a stranger to such incidents, since a gentleman of his acquaintance, a Mr Hearne, had quite literally dropped in on him one evening by descending from the ceiling after being snatched up by the spirits while out taking a walk. Careful reading, however, told Mina that this event had only been witnessed by Mrs Guppy, who had uttered a loud scream, and when her husband came to see what the matter was, told him that their unexpected visitor had fallen from the ceiling like a large black bundle.

  Mr Coleman advised his readers of other wonders, too. The most extraordinary items would arrive on the table at séances conducted by Mrs Guppy as soon as asked for – seawater, snow and ice, even lobsters. The readers of The Spiritualist were presumably delighted by these tricks, although other newspapers took a heavily satirical tone, suggesting that if spirit transport of individuals was possible, as suggested, then this would do away with the necessity for railways, the only problem remaining to be resolved being that of arriving in the place one wanted to go. There was a danger that the traveller might end up somewhere quite different, such as an income tax office, or the Court of Chancery.

  Following a certain amount of press ridicule, Mr Guppy issued a bold challenge, wagering his wife’s diamonds against the Crown Jewels. His wife, he offered, after an examination strict enough to satisfy a jury of matrons, would go either to ‘the inmost recesses of the Bank of England’ or ‘the deepest dungeon of the Tower’ and there, behind locked and guarded doors, she would bring to her by spiritualistic means, something she did not take in with her. This item might only be flowers or fruit, but it might also be a dog or cat, or even a lion or tiger or elephant from the Zoological gardens. Mr Guppy asserted that just as an engineer could send a ball through an iron plate leaving a hole where it passed, so spirit power could convey a living organism, whether plant or animal, though iron doors and stone walls, without leaving a mark of its passage.

  The press was quick to observe that a wager against the Crown Jewels would never be accepted, and thus Mr Guppy could feel perfectly safe that his suggestion would never be taken up. A more moderate stake, however, hinted the newspapers, would surely be possible, and Mr Guppy’s response was awaited with interest. One journal, with tongue very firmly in cheek, suggested that Mrs Guppy be taken to the ‘inmost recesses’ of the nearest lunatic asylum. If Mr Guppy was also there to participate in his wife’s joys then it might, it was suggested, do him a great deal of good.

  Mina had been unsurprised to discover that Mr Hearne, who had made such a dramatic and unexpected visit to the Guppys, was himself a medium, but it further transpired that both he and another medium of their acquaintance had been at the séance table when Mrs Guppy made her unexpected appearance, and that Miss Neyland was herself being developed as a medium. All of Mrs Guppy’s mysteries, which would have
been hard for her to achieve alone, would have been simplicity itself with a few confederates and a willing audience.

  That, of course, was the difficulty concerning Mr Hope, Mina realised. He did not simply believe, he needed to believe. If a medium was comprehensively proven to be a fraud he could easily persuade himself that they had resorted to fakery on just the one occasion to please their needy audience, but were otherwise genuine. If a medium confessed to fraud then Hope would put it down to illness, or alcohol, or insanity, or the harsh pressure and even bribery of those dreadful bigoted unbelievers, and he would trumpet his joy when the confession was retracted. In the remote likelihood that it was possible to prove that a medium was and had always been a fake, then there were numerous others he would be certain were genuine. Mr Hope believed in Miss Eustace, and since he was a man used to getting his own way, it seemed that the more Mina refused to approve her, the more his determination to exonerate the fraudster hardened.

  Twenty-Nine

  The banqueting room of the Pavilion, the one with the great chandelier that had so alarmed William IV’s consort, Queen Adelaide, was a spacious apartment, much used for public events such as balls and concerts. There was easily room enough for rows of seating to accommodate a substantial crowd. Mina suspected that young Mr Phipps would not be one of the recipients of Mr Hope’s free tickets and since she very much wanted him to be there, she had made sure that Phipps, Laidlaw and Phipps knew about the event, as tickets would be bound to be available for paying patrons. While Mr Hope might fail to extend his favour to Mr Phipps, he was, thought Mina, unlikely to cause a disturbance by refusing him admission at the door, and so it proved. Mr Phipps, in any case, arrived in the company of his elderly aunt, who leaned heavily on his arm and required his constant attention. Any intolerance of his presence would therefore have been a gross solecism. The gentleman who Mina had previously surmised was Mr Laidlaw was also present with his lady wife, and the two solicitors sat side by side. They glanced at each other once, and thereafter remained carefully silent.