That Old Black Magic

by Cathi Unsworth

  13

  SEEIN’ IS BELIEVIN’

  Thursday, 4 December 1941

  “I told you that woman was dangerous,” said Brigadier Rory Firebrace.

  The Chief’s counterpart in Scotland was a regular séancegoer who had shared information with him on Helen Duncan before. Which was why he had thought it prudent to bring him in on the debriefing of the men from D-Division, Naval Intelligence, who had attended the Master Temple. It was Firebrace’s suggestion that officers Forshaw and Miles should be interviewed separately. He anticipated their reports might contain crucial differences.

  Officer Forshaw described what he had seen as “a large-scale puppet show”. To his mind, the Duncans had used a mixture of deliberately dim lighting and clear prior information to create an illusion, fashioning a sailor out of wood and a length of gauze and topping their apparition with a cap that read BARHAM for good measure. Forshaw believed the Temple’s workings to be an opportunist façade, an opinion given further weight by his knowledge that the councillor who had inspected Helen beforehand was a member of the same Masonic lodge as the chemist Grenville Shadwell.

  Officer Miles, on the other hand and to his own great embarrassment, thought he had seen a ghost. Unlike Forshaw, he had clearly discerned the features of a young man, dressed in a midshipman’s uniform but minus the cap, who appeared before his mother. The words he had heard him speak were delivered in an authentic Pompey accent, rather than the Scots-inflected tones Forshaw reported. And where Forshaw had seen strategically draped cloth, Miles had seen the ephemeral mist of ectoplasm.

  The only point they agreed on was that the men sharing the back of the room with them had been a plainclothes policeman, Detective Inspector Frederick Fraser from the local constabulary, and Richard Lexy, a reporter on the Portsmouth Evening News. The third man they pegged as a reporter too, as he had made an amateur attempt to trail them after they left the premises. Forshaw reckoned he was from the News of the World; Miles’ money was on Psychic Times. On this last point, the Chief was with Miles.

  When in London, the brigadier was fond of dining at Rules in Covent Garden, so the Chief booked a private room for lunch. The capital’s oldest restaurant had been fortified by a thick outer layer of planking since the war began, but inside it was comfortingly reminiscent of the Firebrace ancestral game lodge, the menu offering copious rabbit, grouse and pheasant that remained beyond the ration, as well as its celebrated seafood. This menu, along with its dining rooms and closeted booths, made the place very popular with the organisation both men worked for, meaning that they were able to eat well and talk for the next two hours without risk of being interrupted or overheard.

  Once the waiter had left them to their potted shrimp, the brigadier set forth his opinion of Helen. This was not the first time he had known her speak of the sinking of a battleship – that was with his own ears, during a private séance in Edinburgh last May. There had been no manifestation that time, but, while in a trance, Helen had predicted that a disaster was imminent and a ship of great reknown was about to be destroyed. She could see the fires of Hell rising up from the icy waters of the Atlantic.

  Days later, the brigadier learned of the nightmarish fate of HMS Hood, sunk during an exchange of salvoes with the German battleship Bismark from their main guns in the Denmark Strait. Having taken a direct hit to her own magazines, the vessel was ripped in two and exploded in a ball of flame, sinking in three minutes flat, her bow nearly vertical in the water. Out of 1418 men aboard, only three sailors had survived. By Firebrace’s calculations, these events took place at the same time Helen had fallen into her trance at the Edinburgh sitting.

  “What do you think explains the discrepancies?” was what the Chief wanted to know.

  The brigadier shook out his napkin and tucked it under his chin. He lifted his fork, peering at his pot and assessing his aim before he spoke. “I should have thought that was obvious,” he said, spearing shrimps. “Miles is more sensitive than Forshaw. More tuned into the vibrations, you know.”

  “Like a radio, you mean?” The Chief rolled his own fork around in his fingers.

  The brigadier nodded, chewed and swallowed. “That’s about the size of it.”

  The Chief had heard this analogy before from spiritualists. That every living being was a collection of molecules, vibrating at a speed that kept their corporeal form together, on a frequency like a radio wave. Death was merely the switching of a dial. That same force field of energy that made a person still continued to exist, it was just operating on a different wavelength. Mediums were the operators between the two worlds, able to intercept these lines of communication and share them with their intended recipients.

  All very fascinating, but it still didn’t explain why Forshaw claimed he was seeing a magic trick in the Temple while Miles – despite not wanting to believe it – perceived an actual spirit. Though one thing was clear. Unlike either Forshaw or, say, Mrs Vera Martin of Torquay, who had recently written to Two Worlds to complain about the trustworthiness of Mrs Duncan, the brigadier was not of the opinion that the medium was a charlatan, preying on the vulnerable naval families of Portsmouth. Nor, like the leader writers in the Daily Sketch and other, more informed sources in Intelligence circles, did he think it likely that enemy agents had infiltrated the spiritualists, using séances to spread disinformation. No, the brigadier firmly believed that Helen Duncan possessed terrifying supernatural powers.

  “Well, what do you think we should do about her?” asked the Chief.

  The brigadier chewed on for a while. “I should like to get her out of the way for the duration. Safer that way, don’t you think?”

  Alone in his office, Maurice Barbanell was looking over dummy front covers for his next issue. From a reporter’s point of view, there was one clear winner: the copy that his journalist in Portsmouth had filed, illustrated by a striking, though not particularly recent, photograph of Helen. In it, she had a short, marcel-waved black bob and was wearing a drop-waist wool and satin pleated dress, redolent of the era around a decade ago when she had known her greatest celebrity, giving private readings to society ladies able to fund this style of upmarket dressing. The portrait had been staged to give the impression of further mystique; a length of gauze had been draped in folds before the lens, so that it appeared the sitter was staring out from beyond the veil.

  The attendant headline spelled out the scoop: SAILORS FROM STRICKEN SHIP SPEAK! Beneath, the standfirst expounded: HELEN DUNCAN PASSES ON MESSAGES FROM CREW OF HMS BARHAM AT PORTSMOUTH SÉANCE.

  Its competitor was a much less eye-catching report on a recent Spiritualists National Union convention and the speech the Psychic Times’ editor had delivered for the occasion, illustrated with a photograph of himself at the lectern: a small, slight man with a receding hairline, thick-rimmed spectacles and a neatly clipped moustache. He could have been a geography teacher delivering a lecture, or a leftwing novelist declaiming from his latest masterpiece.

  However, as the sole proprietor of a small newspaper with no great magnate to form a protective financial wall around him, Barbanell was very nervous about running the Duncan story. For a start, he still didn’t even know if the HMS Barham had actually been sunk at all. It was something he and Swaffer had been trying to ascertain over the past two days. And, if she had, that would then present him with a further conundrum: was it in the public interest to break the news?

  The telephone on his desk started to ring.

  “Hello, Maurice, Godfrey here,” the voice on the other end of the line spoke in the hushed tones of one who didn’t want to be overheard, and for good reason. Godfrey Heath was a civil servant at the Ministry of Transport as well as being, like Swaffer, a member of both Barbanell’s home circle and the SNU. “Don’t know if this is good news or bad,” he went on. “But I’ve had it confirmed.”

  “You have?” Barbanell swivelled around in his chair. It was dark now, the blackout drawn three hours previously shielding him from the busy H
olborn thoroughfare outside. But still the editor couldn’t shake off the feeling he was being watched.

  “I have,” his confidant confirmed. “It happened two weeks ago. But I wouldn’t advise you to disclose the fact. It’s been placed under a D-notice, not considered to be in the public interest. Only the families of the deceased are to know.”

  Barbanell felt his palm go slick against the receiver as he stared at his dummy.

  “Thank you, Godfrey,” his own voice sounded faint to his ears. “I shall take your advice.”

  “I rather think it’s best that you do, old chap. Well, TTFN.”

  Barbanell was left wondering if ripping the alternative cover into a thousand pieces would provide safety enough. He had only just returned the receiver to its cradle when the telephone rang again. It was his secretary, and she too seemed to have caught the whispering bug. “There’s a man here to see you, he says he’s…”

  Barbanell looked up and saw a shape outside the opaque glass panel in his door, the long shadow cast by a very tall man wearing a Simpson’s overcoat and a trilby hat.

  14

  WHISTLING IN THE DARK

  Friday, 5 December 1941

  Copnor Road ran down the centre of Portsmouth, a long, wide thoroughfare crisscrossed by tramlines, with parades of shops, pubs and garages between houses that had mainly been built in the preceding two decades. The chemist’s at number 301 was less than ten years old, but the bay window over the shop front was designed on Tudorbethan lines.

  Below the eye of the Master Temple, on each side of the front door, advertising hoardings promoted the merits of Vaseline and Virol, though the glass frontage that once displayed wares had been boarded over since the previous August when the first wave of German bombers had begun unleashing their cargo on the city.

  It was a very humdrum looking place, thought Spooner, as he walked towards it. Not a likely setting for the scene of such great intrigue. He hadn’t had to wait long to discover why his boss in London had taken an interest in Helen Duncan. The day after he had taken that call, his boss in Manchester was unusually uncommunicative, withdrawing into his office and closing the door for most of the morning. It wasn’t until Miss Josser made her afternoon dash to the post office that he beckoned Spooner to join him in the inner sanctum, closing the door behind them.

  “Have you ever seen this before?” he enquired. He slid a journal across his desk.

  BULLETIN 1 of the NATIONAL LABORATORY of PSYCHICAL RESEARCH, Spooner read. Regurgitation and the Duncan Mediumship by Harry Price. With 44 Illustrations.

  “No,” said Spooner. Though he had found recent correspondence concerning the medium to pass onto the Chief, including that of the aggrieved Mrs Martin from Torquay, he had yet to discover anything more substantial in Miss Josser’s files, nor on Oaten’s shelves. This publication was dated 1931 – quite a relic – and he could see from the foxed corners it had been consulted many times over the past decade. Perhaps his editor kept it at home.

  “May I?” he asked.

  Oaten nodded. “Take a good look at it,” he advised. “It’s a record of the sittings Mrs Duncan willingly gave in Price’s Laboratory to prove her legitimacy ten years ago. He has been using it to persecute her ever since.”

  Spooner lifted the document. Plates showed the medium dressed from head to foot in what looked like black sateen pyjamas, bound at the hands and feet and seated in a chair at the centre of a cabinet. The most striking element of the photographs was not merely the image of Helen trussed up, it was the stream of white material emanating from her nose.

  “Two Worlds has always defended Mrs Duncan from the attacks of that man,” Oaten continued. “But I fear she may soon be coming under a renewed assault.”

  “Oh?” Spooner dragged his gaze up to meet his editor’s eye. A dapper, white-haired man in his mid-fifties, Oaten could easily have been mistaken for a prosperous wool or steel merchant. But today he looked less than safe and content; his face was etched with worry.

  “And from more powerful quarters than that sinister one-man band,” he continued.

  “What do you mean?” asked Spooner.

  Oaten gave him an outline of the story he had been given that morning, down the phone from London, by Maurice Barbanell. Two days ago, Mrs Duncan held a séance in Portsmouth, in which a sailor came through from a sunken ship, with a message for his mother in the audience. One of Barbanell’s stringers witnessed it – along with a reporter from the local paper, a detective and two other men, believed to be Naval Intelligence. Barbanell had his journalist file the story while he sought verification on the ship. Just as he’d had it reliably confirmed that the Barham had been torpedoed two weeks ago, he received a visit from a man from “over the river” who told him that on no account was he to publish anything about the goings on in Portsmouth, otherwise he would find himself in court.

  Barbanell passed the story on as a warning to Oaten, and also because he wondered if they should let Helen know that she had come to the attention of the security services. What, Oaten asked, did Spooner think would be the best course of action?

  Spooner already knew who Barbanell’s visitor had been and what he wanted him to do. The suggestion he made, he hoped, would please both men, while letting neither of their confidences in his abilities down.

  “Why don’t I take a trip down to Portsmouth?” he suggested. “Not to write a story, but to gather information that could come in handy if things do start to look bad for Mrs Duncan. Get some testimonials from the people who were there – the sailor’s mother and the couple that run the Temple, for a start. Speak to this local reporter and see what he intends doing with his copy, or whether he’s had a visit the same as Mr Barbanell. And see if I can’t have a word with this detective, find out what his story is.”

  “Then what would we do with this information?” Oaten wanted to know. “Why do you think it would come in useful for Helen?”

  “In case Mr Barbanell’s visitor decides to charge her,” said Spooner. “We’d have some contemporaneous eye-witness statements she could use in her defence.”

  Oaten wiped his handkerchief across his brow. “Do you think it might come to that?”

  “Isn’t that why you asked?”

  The bell above the chemist’s door tinkled as Spooner crossed the threshold. The chemist, in his whites, was handing one lady customer a brown bag containing her prescription, while three more, in their winter coats and hats, waited in a line behind her and another, in an overall and hairnet, worked the till. They were all so busy talking that not one head turned, leaving Spooner to peruse at his leisure the corn plasters and moth balls, camomile lotion and cod liver oil.

  Around the walls, posters advised customers to Take Beecham’s Pills for Active Service! or try Bile Beans for Radiant Health and a Lovely Figure. Spooner’s eye was drawn from these sophisticated adverts to a cork noticeboard promoting local attractions. There was a dance at a church hall and a smudged handbill for an act called The Two Magicians, but most prominent was a poster informing customers about the activities of the Master Temple. That very night, at 7pm, he could witness Voices from the Other World, channelled via the Amazing Mrs Violet Adams for 15s – about 10s more than most sittings advertised in Two Worlds.

  “Can I be of any help to you?” an accent thick with the coal dust of the Rhondda floated his way. Spooner turned his head. The woman at the till smiled. Her face was dominated by round, tortoiseshell-rimmed bifocal glasses, which magnified her dark brown eyes.

  He opened the door for the departing customer then walked towards her, extracting one of his business cards.

  “I was just checking I’d come to the right place,” he said, proffering it. “My editor said I should drop in on you.” He watched her eyeballs grow wider still as she read the words Assistant Editor, Two Worlds. “He’s heard great things about your work here.”

  He could have acted like a journalist and telephoned earlier to announce himself, but the detective in
Spooner wanted the Shadwells to meet him unprepared.

  “Well, I never! Grenville,” she hurried to her husband, making up another prescription in the back of the shop. “You’re never going to believe it…” They were an odd looking pair, even with their backs turned, Mr Shadwell standing over a foot taller than his wife, with long, thin limbs and hair that looked like iron filings. After a few moments of muttered conversation, Mrs Shadwell returned, beaming. “My husband said, would you like to come up for a cup of tea when we close? We’ve only got ten minutes, if you can wait that long?”

  “Of course,” Spooner smiled first at her, then at the remaining three ladies at the counter, now staring at him with expressions that ranged from the enquiring to the downright hostile. “Though, I’ll not keep you from serving the ladies, please go ahead.”

  Gossip time was over. Seven minutes later, Mrs Shadwell had got everyone out and put the CLOSED sign across the front door. “Come this way, Mr Spooner,” she put one hand on his arm, while the other motioned the way up the staircase at the back of the shop. Like Officers Forshaw and Miles before him, Spooner experienced the strange sensation of going from the realm of science, with its lingering aroma of Friars’ Balsam, into the parlour of the supernatural. In a few short steps, 301 Copnor Road ceased to be quite so ordinary.

  “This is where we hold the meetings,” he was informed by his hostess as she flicked on the light. Spooner peered past rows of chairs towards a Woolworth’s print of The Last Supper hanging over an unlit electric fire. In front of that stood a sideboard on which was placed a crocheted mat and a plain wooden cross. To the left of this makeshift altar was a compact organ and piano stool, but it was to the contraption on the right that Spooner’s attention was diverted.

  “And this is our cabinet,” Mrs Shadwell read his gaze as one of admiration. “Would you like to take a closer look? We’ve nothing to hide, you know.” She gave a little laugh.