That Old Black Magic

by Cathi Unsworth

  “She vanished and I realised it was Helen who was in trouble. At which point, instinct took over. I dived into the cabinet and practised a manoeuvre I learned in a field hospital in Flanders. Thank God I remembered it – she would have been a gonner otherwise. She’d got something stuck in her throat. When she had recovered sufficiently, she told me she had been with this woman at the moment of her death – and that her name was Clara. Which is why I was intrigued to ask if the name meant anything to you?”

  Spooner tried to swallow but found his throat was too dry. He shook his head instead.

  “Strange,” said Swaffer. “Because last night, this same spirit returned to me again, through Helen. I recognised her immediately. But, since her message was not one I understood, I thought that it might be for you.”

  “W-what was it?” Spooner put the tumbler down before his fist went through it.

  “Tell he it is who seeks me,” said Swaffer, “not to go back into the woods.” He bent closer. “I was made all the more curious, you see, by the interview you did with Professor Melvin last month, about this mystery woman in the Midlands, Bella in the Wych Elm, as they call her. I had an inkling there were factors in common – the woodland location for one, and the fact that she was once referred to as Clarabella by the anonymous correspondent who keeps leaving messages about her,” he searched the other man’s face for clues, but found a flinty carapace had fallen over Spooner’s eyes. “I was hoping you might be able to help me unravel the mystery,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “I’ve searched in vain for a murder victim who might fit the bill since it happened. And if anything were to make a restless shade, then this…”

  Spooner reeled himself in. If Swaffer had made this connection from the magazine rather than any ghostly communication from Clara, he could explain it away with more half-truths. Still, he needed another lubricating sip of whisky before he continued.

  “Ach,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Swaff, but that was Ernest’s idea. He was the one who first drew my attention to it, and he’s had me covering that story since the messages started appearing. It’s an intriguing set of coincidences, I’ll grant you, and it’s one of those stories the readers have been mad on. But my only real contribution to that debate was suggesting Professor Melvin might be able to explain some of the mysteries about how the body was hidden, especially that grim wee detail about the severed hand. See, my father had her books, I read them as a youth, when I first started to get interested in these subjects. I’m sure Daphne’s told you a bit about my background?”

  Swaffer must have sensed he would get no further with his enquiries as he seemed happy to spend the next twenty minutes chatting about their hostess, before she called them down for dinner and discussion returned to the day’s events in court. They parted a couple of hours later as if happy to have made each other’s acquaintance.

  Spooner looked up the date in meteorological records the next morning. It coincided with the full moon on the fourteenth of January 1941. The information concurred with the findings of Professor Willis’ pathologist’s report about how long Clara’s body had been hidden in the tree. It was a perfect fit for the night of her murder.

  The music ended and a voice crackled over the radio.

  “Germany calling, this is Germany calling…”

  De Vere was still on the air in Berlin tonight.

  *

  The jury had not been at their deliberations for long. Twenty-four minutes, Swaffer calculated, looking down at his watch as the minute hand clicked to three minutes to five. He rubbed his eyes, taking in the shuffling figures. Their brevity was not an encouraging sign, considering they had sat through two hours of Loseby’s closing comments. Neither was the way they all looked to the floor as they made their way back to the bench.

  “Gentlemen and lady of the jury, have you come to your decision?” asked the Recorder.

  The foreman stood up. “We have, my Lord.”

  “How do you find the accused, Helen Duncan?” Carroll asked. “Guilty or not guilty?”

  “Guilty.”

  A great whispering swirled around the room, like the voices of disembodied spirits.

  “And how do you find the accused, Grenville Shadwell? Guilty or not guilty?”

  “Guilty.”

  At once, the voices hushed.

  “And how do you find the accused, Gladys Shadwell? Guilty or not guilty?”

  “Guilty.”

  There was silence as Helen slipped, fainting into her husband’s arms.

  “I shall wait in London for the sentencing,” Oaten’s voice down the telephone line sounded a decade older than it had the day before. “Expect to see me late on Monday. I’ll come direct from the train to the office.”

  “I’m sorry, Ernest,” said Spooner. “Is there anything I can do in the meantime?”

  His editor sighed. “You know which edition to start preparing,” he said. “I’ll phone back with the sentences, should be just after ten or thereabouts. But leave the leader to me, will you?” Some of his old spirit seemed to crackle back at the prospect. “I’ll write it on the train.” Then he sighed. “There’s nowt else you can do, really.”

  “All right,” said Spooner, his eyes resting on the two mock-up covers he had been working on, “leave it to me. Safe journey home, Ernest.”

  He replaced the receiver, shaking his head. He took down the cover with the celebratory headline: MRS DUNCAN VINDICATED! and tucked it under his arm. Then he turned back to his desk where, from the photograph clipped to the top of the folder, stared a reproduction of an old police mugshot, taken from a 1928 German paper, that looked very much like a younger version of Nils Anders. The man in this photograph was called Otto Dieterling, an eighteen-year-old burglar from Munich. Dieterling had been jailed for stealing jewellery from the bedroom of a countess, an offence that demonstrated a dextrous ability to climb up walls and pass through tiny gaps. He served three years for it.

  The first account the Chief had been able to find of Nils Anders appearing in the Goldschmidt Brothers Circus was in Hamburg, 1933, around the same time that Clara was singing at the Café Dreyer. When the circus disbanded in 1939, Anders was no longer on their books – perhaps because by then, if Anna’s story was true, he was already in Birmingham. The contents of the slim dossier provided only tenuous links but the forensics from the letters and the wax from the temple joined a few more dots.

  Ralphe’s typewriter had not been recovered from his room but the first letter was a match for correspondence previously provided to his CO; the second two letters indicated a different author using the same machine. The wax on the floor of the temple was made from the same substances – sulphur and pitch – as the candle in Clara’s severed hand.

  Spooner closed the covers of the grey folder and gathered it up with the obsolete front cover, to take down to the furnace in the cellar and offer them up to the flames. Rather, he expected, as would be his own fate, in exactly a month’s time – if he were to be proved, after all, as wrong about Anna as the Chief had been about De Vere.

  He left the remaining cover in place to welcome Oaten back. The headline set in bold across the page heralded the coming of THE NEW DARK AGES.

  29

  I DOUBLE DARE YOU

  Sunday, 30 April 1944

  Despite the lateness of the hour, the sun was still hanging low over the Clent Hills as Spooner stepped onto the platform of Stourbridge station at 10pm. It had been a fine day and the evening air retained its warmth, slowing the footsteps of the commuters who passed him, free now to enjoy the last half hour of daylight afforded by the clocks being put two hours’ forward into Double Summer Time at the beginning of April. Watching their faces lift to the unseasonable rays, Spooner felt acutely aware of how different he was from them. How he might be gazing on the sunset for the last time.

  During the course of the past month he had completed all his arrangements and said all his goodbyes. Hardest of those we
re the ones he had made to Oaten, Miss Josser and his life with them in Manchester, especially after the outcome of the Duncan trial.

  While the jury had found all those charged guilty, both the Shadwells’ charity receipts and their previous good behaviour mitigated a sentence and they were merely bound over. It was Helen who was sentenced to ten months’ imprisonment and faced the ordeal of the Black Maria to Holloway prison alone. She was bereft, Oaten reported. Behind bars, even her spirit guides had deserted her.

  Spooner had prepared his own exit from Two Worlds as meticulously as he had been planning for tonight. So far as everyone who knew him from his work there were concerned, he was returning to Aberdeen to lend a hand to his father, who had been in ailing health of late. A cover that the Chief would allow him to take for so long as the war continued, should he be successful in this mission. If he should fail…

  Spooner checked his watch. He had no doubt the instructions he had been given at the Hippodrome had been arranged precisely to render him as vulnerable as possible. There was no cover of night to cloak anyone who might be trailing him yet, in half an hour’s time, with the sun finally sunk beneath those hills where he was headed, the forces of darkness would be at their most powerful.

  For the past week, there had been no broadcasts from Lord Lucifer in Berlin.

  There was only one car waiting on the road in front of the station. A black Rolls-Royce Phantom Mark III, the car Anna had described to him on their first meeting, its sinister tone and crouched shape suggesting a sporting version of a hearse.

  As Spooner neared the vehicle, he could see the chauffeur, in black livery, sitting behind the wheel, cap pulled down so low as to obscure the face. There was someone else in the back seat too, but, as the figure behind the wheel made no move to do it for him, Spooner had to peer through the open window in order find out who had been sent to receive him.

  “I’m so glad you could be punctual, Mr Spooner,” the voice was familiar, even if the figure, dressed in a black suit with cropped blond hair, was not. This, Spooner realised, was Nils Anders as nature intended. Only he looked less convincing as a man. His long, sinewy form seemed ill at ease in conventional attire. His face, Spooner noted, was not entirely devoid of make-up, his cheeks had been powdered and his long lashes darkened. But, mindful of everything he had learned about hypnosis, he was careful not to look directly into the pale blue eyes that they surrounded, dropping his gaze instead onto where the other’s hands rested on a malacca cane.

  “My master has sent me to bring you to the party. Please, make yourself comfortable,” he said, a thin humour coursing under his icy tones. “Our journey will not take long.”

  As Spooner closed the door with a soft thud, the chauffeur started the engine and pointed the long nose of the car away from the safety of the surrounding streets, where children like Terry Jenkins and his gang were still out kicking footballs, and into the countryside.

  It wasn’t long before the obelisk at the summit of Wychbury Hill became visible ahead of them, a dark silhouette against the crimson rays of the sinking sun. The road that they took snaked around it, leading directly to the gates of the De Vere estate through which he had entered last spring with the Chief. They were guarded this time by a lone figure, wearing the plus fours and Norfolk jacket of a gamekeeper, his flat cap at exactly the same angle as the chauffeur’s. Without a word being spoken, he nodded them through.

  “Are we going up to the house?” Spooner asked, trying to get a closer look at the man’s face as they passed. The Chief had already ascertained that the Earl and Countess were not at home.

  Anders chuckled softly. On the other side of the car window, the man in tweeds evaded closer scrutiny as he turned to close the gates, disappearing in the rear-view mirror as the Phantom took the same turn past the Hall and into the woods that Spooner’s transport had made the last time. The sun had gone now, though the afterglow of its passing still lit up the sky above the trees in iridescent blues and mauves.

  “Do you still really think it is only circus tricks you will see here tonight, Mr Spooner?”

  “No,” said Spooner, his eyes on the rear-view mirror. “I’m expecting some real magic.”

  “Then you shall not be disappointed.” Anders leaned forward and tapped his cane on the partition between his seat and the chauffeur. “Here will do,” he instructed and the car glided to a halt. They had not come very far, just enough to take them away from the view of the house and into the cover of the trees.

  “Before we go on,” Anders turned back to his fellow passenger, “it is essential for me to make a few safety checks. To ensure you are not going to try using any of the tricks of our trade against us.” He lifted the end of his cane, pointing it towards Spooner’s chest. “Please, show me your hands, palms outwards.” His orders were an echo of Dr Bishop’s instructions to Spooner on the threshold of Nicholas Ralphe’s asylum cell. “And then don’t make another move.” With a tiny motion of the thumb, a stiletto blade was released.

  Spooner did as he was told, keeping his gaze not on Anders’ face but on the hands that controlled the swordstick. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as the blade was used to open his jacket and move deeper inside, travelling across his waistcoat to unhook the chain of his fob watch and loosen it from his pocket, dropping it onto the floor; then moving back to prod into his inside pocket and bring out his wallet, which was also allowed to fall with a thud into the space between them.

  “Raise your arms,” Anders went on. The blade moved over Spooner’s heart. It rested there for a while, the pressure gradually increasing until he could feel it pierce the material of his waistcoat and shirt and prick against his skin.

  “Oops,” Anders’ voice was as low as a serpent’s hiss. “The blade is so sharp and one has to be so careful with these things. I’m sorry, did I hurt you?”

  “No,” said Spooner, sweat now running down through his eyebrows and bringing a salty sting to his eyes. “What else are you hoping to find?”

  The blade moved away, taking with it the side of Spooner’s jacket, so that his underarm was revealed. When Anders found no holster on the left side, he looked to the right. Then he withdrew his weapon with a smile.

  “Perhaps you are less intelligent than I had anticipated,” he mused. “Or,” with another flick of his wrist he used the sharp end of the stick to lift the hem of the left leg of Spooner’s trousers, “could it be that you think a gun is better hidden here? No?” He tried the right. “Not here, either? Well, Mr Spooner. Am I to take it that you have come unarmed?”

  The blade retracted. Spooner was able to see for the first time that the silver handle on the top of the cane was fashioned in the shape of a goat’s skull.

  “Why should I have brought a gun, Mr…?” he began. “Oh, I never caught your name.”

  “I never offered it,” said Anders. “But I am sure you know it, all the same.”

  Spooner frowned. “Is this all part of the act?” He moved his hand slowly towards his jacket pocket, from where a handkerchief protruded. Anders’ blade swooped.

  “Allow me,” the magician’s tone hardened as he lifted the silk square. He turned it around on the edge of the blade, studying it for a long minute before he conceded it was, after all, only a piece of fabric.

  “Here,” he tossed it towards Spooner.

  Spooner wiped his brow and returned the square to his pocket with deliberately slow motions. “Finished all your checks now?” he asked.

  “Mr Spooner,” his companion looked pained. “You can stop pretending to be a theatrical agent. It’s starting to get tiresome. Do you really think we don’t know who you are?”

  Spooner continued to look puzzled. “What do you mean? Who do you think I am?”

  A slow smile spread across Anders’ face. “Perhaps you are Houdini? Let’s see, shall we? Put your arms straight out in front of you. That’s right.” With a flourish, Anders took from his pocket a pair of handcuffs and snapped them shut around S
pooner’s wrists.

  “Let’s see how long it takes you to get out of these,” he said. “And now,” he lifted Spooner’s watch from the floor and made a show of studying the dial, “it’s time to make our way to where the ceremony is to begin.” Pocketing it, he leaned across Spooner to open the car door. “Out you go.”

  Beyond the claustrophobic confines of the car, the air smelled sweetly. Above Spooner’s head, a dusting of stars glittered in the deep blue sky above the treetops and a crescent moon hung over Wychbury Hill. He was keenly aware of his senses heightening, none more so than where the point of the stiletto knife touched the back of his neck.

  “Very good,” said Anders, closing the car door behind them. “If you will now just follow the track. You can see well enough, can’t you?”

  Indeed, he could. Blue flames flickered ahead of them, marking their way at regular intervals along each side of the path. An old showbiz trick, rags soaked in copper chloride, Spooner reasoned. But their unearthly light brought to mind a trail made by fairies, spectral lures beckoning them deeper into the woods. An effect made more potent by the sounds he could hear around him, mirroring the dream he had of Clara with every snapping twig and scurrying of tiny feet. He wondered how many eyes were watching him; how many of them were human.

  “It looks fantastic,” he said. “I’m impressed.”

  Anders sighed. “Let me try this another way, Mr Spooner,” he said. “Did you never stop to think that Anna reads that magazine that you work for from cover to cover each month? Did you not realise she was certain to see your name there?”