That Old Black Magic

by Cathi Unsworth

  Spooner’s expression remained blank. “Who do you suspect?” he asked.

  “The way I see it, there’s two possibilities,” Lexy opined. “MI5 or the navy. Either way, it doesn’t look good for the Duncans, does it?”

  “No.” Spooner shook his head. “I’ll give you that.”

  “So,” Lexy pressed on, “I thought we might pool our resources. You might hear something from the Duncans’ defence team; I might pick up something else from the Admiralty or the less cerebral officers at Freddie’s station. Something that might be of use to all of us…”

  Spooner stood up, folded the newspaper and tucked it under his arm. “Thanks for the paper and the tip, Mr Lexy,” he said, fishing in his pockets and dropping enough coins on the table to pay for what they’d ordered. “But I’d best be on my way.”

  “But you don’t understand,” Lexy pushed back his chair. “We can help each other out here. And you might need it, Spooner. Freddie will be gunning for you and your magazine when this goes to trial and, whoever his real paymasters are, they’ll be giving him all the ammo he needs. Why not gun for him first?”

  Spooner held out his hand. “I’m obliged, Mr Lexy, honestly. But I don’t need your help.”

  He left the journalist standing there, for the moment lost for words.

  Spooner couldn’t afford to spend any more time in the environs of Portsmouth. He had another interview promised to Oaten and Lexy’s warnings only strengthened his urge to get it done quickly. The years that had elapsed since he had been given the contact details meant the testimony might not be as powerful as if he had pursued it back then. When he had finally dialled the Dorset number the night before, he was prepared for the voice on the other end of it to turn him down flat.

  But as Mrs Dowson had suggested, back when she slipped him her details, Davey Walker’s mother welcomed the idea of sharing her story. She had heard of the arrests from her friend in Portsmouth who had been at the séance when they happened. Sounding less frail than he had anticipated, she gave him instructions for finding her sister’s farm.

  Spooner was glad of them. Without any road signs, he might easily have got lost along the narrow lanes that twisted through this undulating landscape, banked by towering hedges that gave him the feeling he was travelling through a bramble and hawthorn maze towards his location, between three villages at the bottom of a river valley.

  As the black Anglia finally bumped its way into the courtyard, he was greeted by a small figure, dressed in tweeds and gumboots, her hair pinned up into a bun from which tendrils were busily trying to escape. Spooner ran his eyes across the limestone farmhouse and its huddle of barns and outbuildings. “You’re well hidden here,” he said.

  “Which has its compensations,” she broke into a smile. “Will you come in, Mr Spooner?”

  He had to stoop to avoid knocking his head on the lintel as he followed her through the door and into the kitchen. Built around a central chimney, it was a large room with a range, flagstone floor adorned with rag mats and an oak table with Windsor chairs, all of which was kept cosy from the fire being so close to the ceiling, evidenced by the tabby cat sleeping on an armchair. A practical room, uncluttered by ornamentation, save for the horse brasses tacked around the fireplace and the bright yellow curtains.

  “I don’t think I would have got over what happened to Davey if I hadn’t been able to come back here,” Mrs Walker admitted. Wrapping a tea towel around her hands, she reached a copper kettle off the hob. “But I was born into this life and it has always sustained me in times of need.”

  As she prepared tea, his hostess explained how she and her sister had grown up on the farm, the third generation of the family to own it. She wanted a career and went to train as a nurse in Portsmouth, where she met her husband, a captain in the navy. Her sister married a farmer’s son, taking over the place from their parents. They had two lads of their own, both now serving with the 43rd Wessex in France. Two volunteers from the Women’s Land Army were working with them now.

  “The girls are a great help,” Mrs Walker said. “They fill the place up and keep things lively, including making those curtains. Does me good to be around young people. When my husband was taken in the last war, I came up here with Davey and stayed until he was old enough to go to school. It meant he was never lonely.” She returned her attentions to the teapot. “But it’s the same with June – Mrs Dowson – and a lot of our friends. Our husbands were in the navy and so our sons wanted to follow them, even though they hadn’t got a father to remember. You can’t stop them, can you?”

  She set the teapot, mugs and a bowl of sugar down on the table, went into the pantry for a jug of milk and a tin of biscuits. Her motions stirred the cat, who jumped down and began to twine a path between her feet, mewling for attention.

  “Get away, Tiggy,” she chided. “Here,” she said, arranging the china in front of Spooner and taking the lid off the tin, “dig in.”

  Spooner did as he was told. Mrs Walker observed his enjoyment with a smile, and only when she had filled his mug a second time did she suggest that it might be time to start.

  Spooner lifted up his briefcase and took out his notebook and pen. As he put it back down, the cat leapt onto his knee.

  “You are honoured,” Mrs Walker said. “She normally keeps a distance from strangers.”

  Purring loudly, Tiggy plumped paws up and down on Spooner’s thighs.

  “Knock her off if she annoys you,” his hostess advised.

  “No, no,” said Spooner. “Actually, I like cats. We always had one at home. I was brought up in a bookshop and that’s the last place you want to find a mouse.”

  “Really? What an interesting start in life that must have been.”

  “Aye,” Spooner felt himself flush, as if she had caught a glimpse of something he didn’t want her to see. “So,” he broke her gaze to thumb open his notebook and take the cap off his pen, “where would you like to start?”

  “The night that it happened, I suppose,” she considered. “It was June’s idea. As you probably know, there’s a set of them go regularly to the Shadwells, but I wasn’t one of them. My hours at the hospital were too long and, to be honest, I was never all that keen on the Shadwells themselves.” She frowned. “I’m sure you know how superstitious us country folk can be and partly that’s down to coming from somewhere so closely knit – there’s no room for anyone to pretend to be something that they’re not. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I didn’t trust them because they weren’t local; I just found it odd that they’d done all that travelling and never really settled anywhere. You could see she’d had ambitions in show business, she was a terrific pianist and somehow that got worked into what they did. Calling it the Master Temple seemed terribly pretentious, I thought. But,” she shook her head, “it kept June happy, so what was the harm in it? I was trying to keep myself busy, trying not to think about what Davey might be going through. He always used to write, you see…”

  Spooner heard a wobble in her voice. She blinked and reached inside her sleeve for a handkerchief. “Sorry,” she said, dabbing quickly at her eyes with it. “You’ll have to forgive me. Hard as I try, I can’t always control it.”

  Spooner thought of his grandma, having to stay strong for everyone else around her, losing her daughter and then taking over her role in bringing him up without complaint. He thought of the other parallels between his life and that of this woman sitting opposite. He was just three years older than Davey Walker would have been.

  “Aye,” he said. “I understand. I’d the same feeling about the place myself. There were a lot of good people there and the Shadwells do give them something they need, but…”

  “Yes, a big but,” Mrs Walker nodded. “The prices they charge, for a start. Anyway, I suppose me saying that makes what happened next seem all the more extraordinary. I was worried about Davey. A bad feeling, you know, that history was about to repeat itself. Now, June had seen Helen Duncan once before, up in Londo
n, and she was very impressed by her. When she heard that Gladys Shadwell had somehow managed to get her to come down to Pompey, she was adamant I should come with her.”

  “So you weren’t actually expecting much?” asked Spooner.

  “No, I don’t think I was,” Mrs Walker agreed. “It was more a case of humouring June and really, just not rattling round the house on my own that night.”

  “Fascinating,” Spooner’s pen could hardly keep up with his thoughts. His mind was back in the darkened parlour of the Christian Spiritualist Greater World Association, where he had awaited the Highland seer with a similar scepticism. Was this, he wondered, what he wanted to hear? That his mind hadn’t being playing tricks with him that night, that someone else had the same kind of experience with Helen as he had?

  “And you were the first person she picked out of the audience?” he asked.

  “That’s right,” Mrs Walker nodded. “Well, she said there were a lot of voices all talking at once and could they please take it one at a time. It looked like she was listening into them, but of course, you can fake that if you’re a good enough actor, and the lights were very dim. Then she pointed at me and asked if I was the one who’d been waiting two weeks to hear from someone. I went cold as she said it. I knew it was going to be Davey.”

  Mrs Walker’s gaze refocussed. Though she continued to look in Spooner’s direction, her stare went beyond his and her voice began to speed up. “You’ve got to remember, this wasn’t what I was hoping for,” she said. “To get a message from him meant he was dead, didn’t it? But I got to my feet, everyone in the room staring at me, and she says: ‘I’ve got your Davey here. You’re Mrs…’ and I know I shouldn’t have done, but I told her my name, I said: ‘Mrs Walker, yes,’ and as soon as I said it, I could see him, my Davey, and I don’t know how else to put this but… he was coming right through her.”

  Spooner’s pen stopped in mid-air as he recalled the headless form that seemed to flow out of the foam of white around Helen’s head in Holland Park. “I know,” he said. “You could clearly see that it was him, his features were recognisable?”

  “Not just his face, his voice. It was him speaking to me, it was his voice that I heard. How can she have faked that?”

  Spooner got the cold chills. “That’s the thing, isnae?” he said. “The voice…”

  Mrs Walker didn’t miss a beat. “You’ve seen her do it too,” she said.

  Spooner put down his pen. “Aye,” he said, forgetting about the purpose of his visit, only wanting to know what she knew. “You’re right. But it wasn’t a loved one who came through to me, it was no’ a person I’ve even met. And yet it’s the voice that keeps coming back. I don’t think she could have faked it either. ’Cos the thing I’ve learned about Helen Duncan,” he admitted, “is that no one ever sees the same thing in the same room at the same time when she’s the medium. When I had my experience, what I saw and heard was not the same as the people sitting each side of me.”

  “And how do you think that happens?” Mrs Walker stared at him intently.

  “My theory,” said Spooner, “and it is only a theory, is that Helen operates like a long-wave radio. She sends out a signal on a certain frequency and if there is someone else within range, someone in the audience who can pick up her wavelength, then they can turn on a kind of receive switch and her message comes through to them.” He thought of Karl Kohl, tapping on his crystal set, trying to locate Clara when she had passed through any earthly range. “I think it’s a gift she has, but I dunnae think she can control it.”

  “Which is probably why,” Mrs Walker said, “she gets accused of trickery. Why as many people love her as hate her.”

  Spooner nodded. “That’s about the size of it, aye.”

  “Well, I’d like to thank her,” his interviewee said, “for having that gift. Now the shock of it’s passed, I realise how lucky I am. I don’t have Davey no more, not here, but his words still reached me and I’ll always have them for comfort. If he was there, in a room above a chemist’s shop in Pompey,” her eyes rolled upwards, “then he could be here now, couldn’t he?”

  Tiggy stirred from Spooner’s lap and jumped down to the floor. She headed for Mrs Walker, rubbing her head around her ankles before leaping into her lap.

  Mrs Walker rubbed a knuckle against the brindled head. “I don’t know where she got it from,” she said, “but June told me that Mrs Duncan’s mother said she’d get burned at the stake as a witch one day. Is that what they’re going to do to her?”

  “I don’t think they’ll go quite that far,” Spooner found that he could not begin to practise to deceive this woman. “But I think they mean to take her out of public circulation for as long as they possibly can.”

  “And you don’t think that’s right?”

  Spooner shook his head. “I’m not sure she deserves it, no.”

  Mrs Walker nodded. “Then I hope I can help you to stop it,” she said. “Will you tell me something in return? You must believe in it, for you to make your living writing about it, but did you go to the spiritualists because you were missing someone yourself?”

  “Aye,” Spooner recalled the conversation he had had with Daphne that had led him to pick up the phone to Mrs Walker. “There’s someone I’ve been hoping to hear from for the past twenty-six years. So far,” he shrugged, “no luck. But that won’t stop me carrying on.”

  “That’s a long time,” Mrs Walker said. Her voice softened, along with her eyes as she did her own mental arithmetic. “Your father?” she guessed.

  “My mother,” Spooner told her. “She died giving birth to me. Maybe that’s why she doesnae want to come back.”

  On the top floor of a modernist building on the Embankment, inside a panelled boardroom, the Chief, the CO and Cecil Forbes-Dixon sat around a desk. Between them lay the report on the arrest of Helen Duncan made by DI Frederick Fraser.

  “I’m afraid,” Forbes-Dixon was saying, “Inspector Fraser behaved against all the advice we gave him, when he charged Mrs Duncan under the Vagrancy Act. We remain of the opinion that there are serious pitfalls to proceeding with this.”

  “We think we may have an alternative,” said the CO, nodding towards the Chief.

  “Yes,” said the Chief. “Witchcraft. Section 4 of the 1735 Witchcraft Act, to be precise.”

  26

  YOU GO TO MY HEAD

  Wednesday, 15 March 1944

  The ringmaster stood under a spotlight. His red frock coat, top hat and curly moustache defined the traditional garb of his profession, yet the violin tucked under his chin was an unusual touch. He had not used it earlier, in his two previous acts, when he had made his assistant levitate and then sawn her in half and put her back together again. Such feats could only be followed by something still more spectacular. Facing sideways to his audience in the Birmingham Hippodrome, he looked up to the ceiling, raised his bow and plucked a silvery note from the strings.

  Another spotlight swivelled from the ceiling, picking out the form of a woman standing in mid-air. Her platinum blonde, marcel-waved head was bowed and the sequins on her evening dress reflected back multiple shafts of light across the theatre. At the sound of the violin, she lifted her head and opened her eyes, as if waking from a dream.

  A collective gasp, like the sound of waves breaking on the shore, rose from the crowd.

  The ringmaster drew his bow a second time. A cascade of notes flew forth and the woman in the sparkling dress turned a pirouette in mid-air.

  “Oooh!” once more, the crowd spoke as one entity, catching its collective breath in its throat as its eyes widened to take in the spectacle.

  The notes from the violin formed themselves into a tune and the glittering figure followed them, dancing across the ceiling. From one side to the other she leapt and spun, a marionette keeping time to the tune. When it slowed, so did she, her body swaying, her arms outstretched like a ballerina. When it quickened, her steps became more staccato. As the fiddling reached crescend
o, she turned another pirouette, then another, until her very form became a blur. The myriad beams that flashed out from her costume gave her the appearance of something from another realm, almost as if she were an angel.

  In the blackness beneath, the audience gasped and moaned in a thrilling mix of fear and awe. They had never seen anything like this before.

  Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the music stopped. The spell broke and the seraphim became human again, a woman suspended in mid-air, swaying and stretching her arms out to try and catch her balance. Strangled shrieks came from the seats as, for a few heart-stopping seconds, it seemed that she might tumble and fall.

  The ringmaster raised his bow and brought it back down, the shivering noise mirroring the pulsation of the dancer. Then he called forth another tune, soothing this time, almost mournful. The woman above bowed her head, folded her hands in an aspect of prayer. Then she stepped off the wire.

  More screams crackled through the air as stomachs plunged with the trajectory their minds had foreseen. But just as quickly their voices turned into murmurs of awe as the golden figure floated, gently as thistledown, from the ceiling to the stage. Her slippered feet touched the boards at the exact same moment that the last note from the violin dissolved and the two figures turned towards each other and bowed.