Palace of Tears

by Julian Leatherdale

  This was so patently untrue that Adam did not even bother to finish. Conan Doyle had the reputation of being a tireless public speaker and storyteller; his restless intellect furnished him with an opinion on every subject and he spoke ex tempore and at length with a disarming simple eloquence that few could rival. And when it came to the subject of spiritualism, Sir Arthur’s passion was inexhaustible.

  ‘Very well,’ said Adam.

  Adelina smiled and kissed him on the cheek. She had not felt this happy or enthusiastic about anything for as long as she could remember. She hoped that now, seven years almost to the week after Robbie’s death, she would be able to find peace for both her son and herself.

  Adam Fox studied his image in the mirror. He did not like to think of himself as a vain man but, at age forty-six, he was quietly pleased with what he saw. He was in good shape thanks to regular exercise and a sensible diet. In his early thirties he had resolved to banish his ‘rich man’s belly’, an occupational hazard for hoteliers. He was looking forward to tonight’s dinner party as a celebration. The Palace had survived some lean years during the Great War and was now thriving, not just restored to its pre-war prosperity but boasting a worldwide reputation as a haven for the rich and famous, including actors, politicians, opera singers and writers.

  Adam dared to hope that his marriage, too, might have turned a corner. After the great rift in their lives, Adam and Adelina had retreated into their own private places of suffering. The bitter recriminations about Robbie’s death raged for a long time but eventually died down. The marriage settled into a state of precarious truce. Even so, Adelina’s grief-stricken face had remained a permanent accusation.

  Adam had done what he could to make amends. Dr Liebermeister worked long and hard to maintain his wife’s health and sanity despite her congenitally weak constitution. And most important of all, Adam had finally given in to Adelina’s repeated tantrums and comatose silences and erased the painful reminder of his adultery and Robbie’s death. He had driven the Woods out of their cottage next door and made it part of the hotel’s grounds.

  Still, Adam managed to salve his conscience by telling himself he had been protecting the Woods rather than taking advantage of their circumstances. It had certainly not been safe for them to stay in Meadow Springs in 1916 when anti-German feeling was running so high. Even at the end of the war, there was no evidence this hatred had died down. Following his secret dealings with Freya over the von Gettner painting, he had insisted she sign over her land title to him on payment of monies into a trust account which would support her and her child for three years. The agreement expired in early 1920 and Freya’s family solicitor, Saul Mendel from Lithgow, had sent a letter asking for the return of the title.

  It would have been the simplest thing to do so. But Adam had become used to the calm in his household since Freya left. His wife seemed to have partly forgiven him for the suffering he had subjected her to. Given the dreadful situation they had all found themselves in, he felt he had tried to deal fairly with Freya, only to be faced with her unremitting coldness and stubbornness. She had never shown any gratitude or sympathy. In truth, it was a relief to be rid of her and the ever-present shadow of his guilt. On making inquiries with the Intelligence Section, Second Military District, Fox learned that Freddie Wood had been deported and his wife and child would soon join him in Germany. Did they ever intend to return to Australia? Did they even have that choice? He didn’t think it was likely.

  With the phenomenal financial success of the Palace since its opening, Adam had been toying with plans to expand the hotel for some time. The property next door presented an ideal solution. Adam saw no reason why he shouldn’t make use of the cottage and its gardens which had been abandoned for three years and could sit empty for who knew how many more. So he instructed his solicitor to invoke a sub-clause in the agreement with Freya that allowed for the automatic sale of the property for an agreed sum to Fox ‘if the other party failed to notify of their intentions to renew or terminate the contract within twelve days of the date of expiry’. It was a low legal trick, he knew that. His solicitor’s letter persuaded Freya to desist from any legal challenge to this sale with veiled references to the fact his client had chosen to keep silent about the matter of the painting. It also pointed out that Fox was paying above market price for a property that could easily be seized as an asset by the Public Trustee at any point and held until the government decided how to dispose of it. All the money in the trust account was now Freya’s. It was a generous settlement. As an ex-enemy alien in exile and with few legal rights to protect her, Freya should look on this arrangement as a lucky break. He was not to blame for Freya’s fate. He had not started the war or stirred up animosity against his neighbours. He had even stood up for them when the threat was greatest. He had done everything he could to help Freya under difficult circumstances and had taken care of any obligations he had to Freddie and Angie. Beyond that, he believed, he owed them nothing.

  Of course, such feelings could never really be tidily filed away in a box. Shortly afterwards Adam had received a personal letter from Freya. After railing against him for his treachery, her letter changed its tone to that of a desperate plea. ‘I cannot fight you. But you of all people, Adam, should know what that cottage means to me. If you have any shred of decency or tenderness left in your heart from when you once loved me, I beg you to find it now and undo this terrible wrong.’

  Adam was reminded of a spring morning in the cottage garden many years before when he had come to confess his undying affection for Freya and beg her for forgiveness. He was tempted to reply echoing the words she had used that morning to silence and reject him: ‘It’s too late. You know that.’ Instead, he had crumpled Freya’s letter into a ball and thrown it into the fire.

  Adelina was nervous about Saturday night. She rarely made an appearance at social gatherings and was anxious to make a good impression. Even though she was in her mid-forties she had remained relatively lissom compared to other women of her vintage – some would have said unnaturally thin and small-breasted – and she was not immune to womanly vanity. Her husband was rich and liked to buy her beautiful things. It seemed perverse for her to hide away when her wardrobe and jewellery would have driven most women mad with jealousy.

  Adelina studied her pale oval face and angular body in her dressing-room mirror and was pleased at how they were flattered by the latest fashions. Her chestnut hair had been bobbed and Marcel-waved to show off her delicate ears and slender neck. She wore pearl drop earrings and a silk bandeau embroidered with tiny pearls like a tiara above her brow. The silver-beaded evening dress in deep purple silk, imported from Paris, had a daring diaphanous skirt sparkling with appliquéd paisley teardrops and peacock-feather eyes. She admired how her alabaster flesh showed off to perfection the art nouveau onyx, gold and jade necklace and the sinuous bracelets on her upper arms.

  Adam came in to fetch her at seven. He looked very smart in his new custom-made midnight blue dinner jacket and white waistcoat with matching white bowtie. He was nervous too, she could tell by the way he fidgeted with his clothes and said he hoped that Sir Arthur and Lady Jean would not find his lack of full evening dress ‘presumptuously modern’.

  ‘I suspect Sir Arthur is very broad-minded in such matters,’ she reassured him with a touch of good-natured teasing, ‘If it’s good enough for the Prince of Wales, I’m sure he can have no objections.’

  Adam smiled. For a moment, he stopped fussing with his bowtie in the mirror and took in the full-length view of his wife. ‘You look lovely, my dear.’ He gently took her right hand in his and kissed it.

  ‘Are you glad I’m coming tonight?’ she asked, looking at his handsome face in the mirror. It was hard to hate Adam Fox when he looked so charming.

  With startling clarity Adelina remembered how she had stood at her husband’s side the night the Palace opened, welcoming their guests in the thick of a snowstorm nearly twenty years earlier. Her rightful place
at his side had been taken from her by illness and infidelity, and later by tragedy and grief. But tonight she and Adam were united once more. The clock had been rewound.

  Adam Fox felt his heart settle. Adelina looked radiant and calm. Tonight would be a triumph, an evening to look back on with pride. He had nothing to fear. ‘Yes, Adelina, I am,’ he whispered in her ear.

  Adam noticed that Sir Arthur was in fine form. He abstained from alcohol throughout the evening but, as champagne, cocktails and wine flowed all around him, he remained the wittiest and most convivial of the guests, sipping his sodas with slices of lemon. He began by entertaining the company with stories about his recent travels, including his family’s trip this last week in the Palace’s charabanc out to the Jenolan Caves and his encounters with parrots, wombats and kangaroos. His son Denis had been thrilled to be photographed holding up a dead red-bellied black snake that one of the groundsmen had killed in the long grass on the south side of the hotel.

  The prolific author, who had written weighty historical novels, stories of the supernatural, critically acclaimed stage plays, the Professor Challenger adventures (including the best-selling The Lost World), essays, memoirs and a six-volume history of the Great War, graciously answered the perennial questions about his hero Sherlock Holmes – ‘that monstrous growth out of such a small seed,’ he chuckled – and insisted that he had no intention of writing another word about him.

  ‘The curious thing is how many people around the world are perfectly convinced he is a living human being,’ Sir Arthur told his rapt audience, ‘I get letters addressed to him all the time. I’ve even had ladies wrrrriting saying they would be glad to act as his housekeeper!’ Laughter rippled around the table.

  Mr Longford explained that he and his collaborator, Miss Lyell, were currently writing the screenplay for an ambitious new film; it was a murder thriller adapted from a novel and set in a luxury hotel, to be called The Blue Mountains Mystery. They intended to start filming later this year and were definitely interested in using the Palace as a location if Mr Fox was agreeable. Mr Fox warmly welcomed the idea.

  Dinner was served in the grand dining room under the elegant half-barrel vaulted ceiling with its twin chandeliers. Mr Carson’s boys outdid themselves with their polished choreography of flashing cutlery and juggling crockery. They served a banquet of alternating ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ dishes, mixing simple fare with gourmet delights, starting with a silver platter of oysters served on blini with Oscietra caviar. The second course of roast garlic and potato soup served en croute in their own baked pastry ‘bowls’ was accompanied by gin and champagne cocktails. As the third course of poached Scottish blue lobster with shaved black truffle arrived, the conversation had turned to sport, and Sir Arthur listened to Fanny Durack describe her record-breaking swim at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics.

  ‘I am of course familiar with the aquatic prowess of Australians. Has not your lovely countrywoman, “the mermaid of the south”, Miss Kellerman taught the whole world how to swim? I believe she has even written a book on the subject,’ said Arthur, winning over his audience with his knowledge and appreciation of all things Australian.

  The fourth course, planked squab with bacon and pink fir potatoes, was followed by a fifth of roasted rack of veal with golden brown sautéed cep mushrooms in a bordelaise sauce. The claret and champagne flowed as freely as the conversation, which had turned to theatre with lively exchanges between Hugh and Grace Ward and Sir Arthur about their favourite dramatists and leading actors.

  Adam looked around the table and allowed himself a glow of satisfaction. This was the reason he had become a hotelier. Hotels brought interesting people together in unexpected ways, gave them a stage on which to perform. Like theatres, hotels were places of magic and danger, where different rules applied; they combined secrecy and discretion with public displays of extravagance and high emotion. They were indeed the perfect setting for dramas of all kinds: murders, romances, intrigues and new beginnings.

  As he looked round at the smiling, animated faces of his guests, he tried to banish a vision of Freya from his mind: her braided copper hair and pale face, her sea-blue eyes and that beautiful mint-green gown he had bought her. How she would have loved a night like this. Where was she now? he wondered. No, he must not let his thoughts dwell on the past and spoil the pleasures of the present.

  Adelina spent the evening in a state of quivering attentiveness. It had been years since she had spent time among such people. It dawned on her now that her customary aloofness had simply been a reflection of her own anxiety; the truth was she had been intimidated by the witty, educated and accomplished people her husband had gathered around him. Who was she, Adelina Fox, compared to them? What had she ever achieved? But tonight was different. She did not feel estranged or patronised. She felt accepted. A keen reader of novels, including several of Sir Arthur’s, Adelina ventured an opinion every now and then and was rewarded with a concurring nod or compliment from their distinguished guest. ‘I believe you are quite right, Mrs Fox!’ She flashed a smile at Adam whenever he glanced in her direction and she could see the relief and happiness in his face.

  The sixth course of Welsh rarebit with grape chutney was followed by a spectacular dessert of opera cake with gold leaf and milk-and-honey ice-cream, which was greeted with a round of applause.

  ‘Time to withdraw to the library,’ announced Adam at the conclusion of the meal. The conversation had inevitably come round to the subject of Spiritualism. Freddie Lane had asked Sir Arthur if he had any spirit photos on him and the author was happy to oblige, fishing several out of his dinner jacket pocket to show the company.

  Adelina leaned in to take a closer look. In each of the sepia prints men and women stared solemnly into the camera oblivious to the disembodied faces that floated above their heads or close by their shoulders. Each floating face was framed by a halo of light which Sir Arthur explained was the shining ectoplasm used by the invisible spirit to reveal itself. Adelina found these portraits unnerving. It was as if the living were in constant proximity to the spirits of the dead but chose perversely to ignore them.

  In the library, Mrs Wells had set chairs around a large dark oak table and lowered the lights to a few candles flickering on the bureau. She entered the room with the medium: a short, grim-looking woman whose head was wrapped tightly in a silk shawl so that only her face was visible. The face itself was ageless, pale but unlined, with protuberant eyes that scanned the room restlessly. Adelina wondered if she had seen the woman somewhere before.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Miss Glanville-Smith from the Spiritualist temple in Springwood,’ announced Mrs Wells. ‘She has been conducting séances as a sensitive in the district for the last five years and Mrs Fox asked that I should invite her here tonight for the enlightenment and interest of our distinguished guests. She has also brought with her Mr Upton, who has some experience as a spirit photographer.’ A bowler-hatted gent in a velvet-cuffed coat bowed and proceeded to unfold a tripod and set it up in front of the table.

  ‘Excellent,’ murmured Sir Arthur.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Mr Longford.

  ‘Please be seated,’ the short woman directed in a light, young voice at odds with the severity of her expression. She herself took the chair at the head of the table. ‘May I welcome you all here, believers and non-believers.

  ‘I would like to extend an especially warm welcome to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Lady Doyle who have consecrated their lives to the spread of our glorious gospel, which contains more proof of the eternal love of God than any truth yet revealed to Man. I am honoured to have you present.’

  Sir Arthur and his wife nodded in acknowledgement of this tribute. Miss Glanville-Smith cleared her throat and led the gathering in a hymn.

  Shall we gather at the river,

  where bright angel feet have trod,

  with its crystal tide forever

  flowing by the throne of God?

  Soon we’ll reach
the shining river,

  soon our pilgrimage will cease;

  soon our happy hearts will quiver

  with the melody of peace.

  Adam looked across the table at his wife. Did he have any reason to be concerned? She looked happier and more at peace tonight than for as long as he could remember. What was she hoping for from this séance? He hardly dared guess.

  When the hymn concluded, Miss Glanville-Smith placed both hands on the table, palms down. She had arranged several of her tools in front of her: a trumpet to magnify the voices of the spirits, a hinged slate on which they might chalk their messages, and sheets of paper and a pencil for automatic writing. Mediums had to be prepared for whatever method the spirits chose to communicate. Mrs Wells had been nominated as her ‘control’, able to assist with the tools and ready to intervene if the medium was in danger of slipping into a coma or choking. Two lengths of rope also lay on the table for no obvious reason. Mr Upton’s camera had been mounted on its tripod and at Mrs Wells’ signal the plate would be exposed by opening the lens.

  Miss Glanville-Smith asked Mrs Wells to blindfold her and she then sat straight-backed in the chair, arms tensed, fingers spread flat and face tilted up as if basking in the manner of Dr Liebermeister’s patients when they took ‘sun baths’ on the rooftop.

  The company sat in the trembling glow of the candles in near silence for some time. Adam tried to avoid making eye contact with anyone else at the table in case he disturbed the ritual. He was decidedly a sceptic when it came to this business of talking with spirits but he did not want to offend his guests or upset his wife. He caught a glance from Freddie Lane, who was also struggling to take the whole thing seriously. Longford and Lyell appeared fascinated by the entire procedure while Hugh and Grace Ward had their heads bowed as if in prayer.

  A low moan escaped the medium’s lips. Her lips contorted into a grimace and then the moan resolved into a voice, small and childlike: ‘Who seeks our friends?’