A Case of Spirits

by Peter; Peter Lovesey Lovesey

  ‘For a parley about Mr Brand’s death, I would guess, sir.’

  Jowett shook his head. ‘A conference, Sergeant, a conference. This is a modern detective force, not the Bow Street Runners. Yes, I have invited two other gentlemen to attend: Mr Cage, who is an authority on electrical matters and has been examining the apparatus at Richmond, and Dr Benjamin, the police surgeon, who attended the post mortem examination conducted by the Home Office Pathologist this morning. The official report will be issued later, of course, but Dr Benjamin should be able to tell us the salient points this afternoon. Now be so good as to call in Constable Thackeray.’

  Were it not for its location, the conference might have been taken for another seance. Jowett actually sat with his hands palm downwards on the table, but that was from vanity; he liked it to be known that he went regularly to a manicurist. Mr Cage, slimly-built and with deep-set pale blue eyes any medium would have envied, was on his left. Dr Benjamin, more conventionally handsome, with a black moustache and a glint in his eye suggesting he was capable of getting in touch, though not perhaps with spirits, sat next to him, opposite Thackeray and Cribb. A clerk waited with pen poised at a desk in the corner of the room.

  ‘Let us dispense with formalities, gentlemen,’ suggested Jowett. ‘Dr Benjamin, we are all desirous of knowing the results of the post mortem examination. Did you ascertain the cause of death?’

  Dr Benjamin nodded. It was clear from the way he then produced a box from his pocket (which Thackeray for one moment imagined contained a souvenir of the morning’s work) and took snuff, that he saw no reason to expand upon this response. The information would have to be prised from him.

  ‘It was not from natural causes, I presume?’ said Jowett.

  ‘No.’

  ‘There was a weakness in the heart, we understood.’

  ‘Confirmed,’ said Dr Benjamin.

  ‘So that a moderate electric shock would have killed him,’ Jowett continued.

  ‘Possibly,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Did you not establish that?’

  ‘No. Not moderate. Massive.’

  At this Mr Cage jerked to life. ‘Massive? Impossible. That apparatus could not have put more than twenty volts through the man. I checked it myself.’

  ‘Then you’re wrong,’ said Dr Benjamin simply.

  ‘Wrong?’ repeated Cage as if he had not heard correctly. ‘Perhaps you are not aware that I have given lectures upon electrical theory at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and in all the principal capitals of Europe. Dr Probert’s apparatus was incapable of electrocuting a man. I stake my reputation on it.’

  Jowett turned to Dr Benjamin, ‘Then what evidence is there that Brand died of a massive electric shock?’

  The doctor showed by his expression that he regarded the question as a breach of etiquette. He had named the cause of death; that ought to be enough for a set of policemen. He tersely catalogued the findings. ‘Severe contraction of the muscles, causing several splittings and fractures of the bones. Widespread destruction of tissues, including necrosis of areas of muscle and certain internal organs.’

  ‘Quite impossible!’ insisted Cage. ‘Injuries on that scale could only have been caused by a force of several hundred volts. I have myself sat in the chair with the power turned on and felt no untoward effects.’

  ‘The transformer that Dr Probert constructed did provoke some comment,’ said Jowett, with a glance at Cribb. ‘Could it have been faulty, and so transmitted the full current to the chair?’

  ‘I subjected the transformer to a series of tests in my own laboratory,’ said Cage, ‘and I can assure you that there is no fault in the construction. I shall tell the coroner so on oath. I have science on my side, gentlemen.’

  ‘I have an electrocuted corpse on mine,’ retorted Dr Benjamin.

  Jowett interposed a cough. ‘We appear to have reached an impasse, gentlemen. I do assure you both that your findings are not in doubt. Somehow we have to find an explanation which fits all the evidence, and I begin to suspect that it might be something quite extraordinary. You see, gentlemen, I have the advantage over all of you, in that I was present from the start of the seance that preceded Mr Brand’s death. My fellow-officers here will attest that I have both feet on the ground—I am speaking figuratively, for Heaven’s sake, Thackeray—and I am not given to flights of imagination or hallucinations.’

  Cribb, who was determined not to commit himself to anything approaching insubordination, nodded once.

  ‘But I tell you,’ Jowett went on, ‘that in that seance I saw a spirit hand hovering in the air, a moving, disembodied hand, blue in colour, shining luminously through the darkness. Others saw it as well, and two at least were touched by it. Later, fruit was thrown about the room, overturning a vase of flowers. I did not imagine these things, gentlemen. I am a senior police officer, trained to observe accurately. The things I saw on Saturday night at Dr Probert’s convinced me that this spiritualism, for all its dubious practitioners, is not lightly to be dismissed. If there is such a thing as a genuine medium, Peter Brand was one. On Saturday, however, the spirit he was contacting appeared to be hostile. Oranges, as I mentioned, were flung at one of the sitters.’ Jowett lowered his voice. ‘I hesitate to say this within Scotland Yard itself, but I am almost disposed to think, in the absence of any rational explanation, that the death of Mr Brand was induced by a supernatural agency.’

  ‘A hostile spirit, do you mean?’ said Cage.

  ‘If you insist, yes,’ said Jowett. ‘There are unknown forces just as powerful as electricity, we may be sure.’

  ‘Poppycock!’ said Dr Benjamin.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Jowett.

  ‘Supernatural agency be blowed!’ said Dr Benjamin. ‘Brand was a charlatan. Have you never heard of Blue John?’

  ‘Blue John? He is not known to me.’

  ‘It’s a substance, not a person.’

  ‘I am at a loss to understand what you are talking about, Doctor.’

  ‘That’s obvious. Before the post mortem we were asked to pay particular attention to the hands of the deceased. On examination we found a number of minute particles adhering to the surface of the right palm. When we analysed them they proved to be crystals of calcium fluoride, or fluorspar— in layman’s language, Blue John. There is a quick method of identifying the fluoride ion, which we carried out, heating the substance in concentrated sulphuric acid and holding a plate of clear glass over it. The hydrofluoric acid so produced etched the glass, rendering it opaque. Blue John, without a doubt.’

  Jowett was still shaking his head. ‘I fail to see—’

  Dr Benjamin turned his eyes heavenwards, inviting everyone round the table to share his exasperation at Jowett’s incomprehension. ‘When Blue John is gently heated,’ he said, as if talking to a child, ‘he glows in the dark. Have you not heard of fluorescence? The spirit hand you saw was the medium’s, coated with fluor-spar, which he had warmed at the fire before the seance commenced. And if you don’t believe that establishes Brand as an impostor, you might reflect on the fact that under his normal clothes he was wearing a nightshirt, in the pocket of which we found a small bag of talcum powder. You obviously have a closer acquaintance with the spirits than I, but I believe that people who have encountered them have observed that in their manifested form they have white faces and long, flowing garments.’

  Jowett was pale enough to have slipped on a nightshirt himself and caused havoc in the corridors of Scotland Yard. ‘We are—er—deeply in your debt Doctor. This is remarkable information. Greatly to be commended.’

  ‘We can’t claim much credit,’ said Dr Benjamin. ‘We were acting upon the suggestion contained in a note we received before the post mortem. It categorically requested us to examine the palms for Blue John.’

  ‘Really?’ said Jowett weakly. ‘Did you discover who wrote the note?’

  ‘It was one of your chaps, or we shouldn’t have acted upon it. A Sergeant Cribb.’


  ‘My godfathers!’ said Jowett. He turned to look at Cribb, who had seldom felt so uncomfortable.

  ‘I say, was it you?’ asked Cage. ‘You’re a quiet one, by Jove!’

  ‘How the devil did you know about Blue John?’ demanded Jowett.

  Cribb had pledged himself to keep out of trouble by not saying a word.

  ‘Speak up, man!’ ordered Jowett.

  That made it insubordination to remain silent. ‘I spent a few months in Derbyshire when I was in the army, sir. Blue John is also known as Derbyshire Spar. It’s common there.’

  ‘Well, you might have had the decency to stop me earlier, when I was talking about supernatural forces. Made me seem a confounded—never mind. This has been most instructive, of course, but it has brought us no nearer to ascertaining how Mr Brand met his death, unless the sergeant has some other information he has been keeping from us.’

  Everyone looked in Cribb’s direction. He was acutely conscious of the delicacy of his position. Jowett must on no account be led to suppose that his thunder had been stolen again. ‘No information of any note, sir. Nothing more than a few theories.’

  ‘We had better hear them,’ said Jowett resignedly. ‘Mine has collapsed, so we may as well put yours to the test.’

  ‘I’m obliged to you, sir. It seems to me that if the electric chair works perfect now, as Mr Cage has indicated, it couldn’t have been working perfect at the moment Brand was electrocuted. Something must have happened to make it dangerous, something that was put right afterwards. So I’d like to ask Mr Cage if there was any way in which the main current could be made to by-pass the transformer.’

  ‘Only by disconnecting it and fastening the cable directly to the wires that were attached to the arms of the chair,’ said Cage. ‘Or I suppose another way might be to attach a wire to the positive terminal on the mains side of the transformer and connect it on the other side with one of the trailing wires. In either case it would have to be a deliberate act and it would amount to murder.’

  ‘Murder by electrocution,’ mused Dr Benjamin. ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing, but I suppose it’s possible. Who would want to murder a medium?’

  ‘Before we answer that,’ said Jowett, ‘there’s a question I should like to put to Mr Cage. If some malevolent person chose to tamper with the apparatus in one of the ways you have described would he not run the risk of electrocuting himself?’

  ‘If he tried it when the power was on, he would certainly kill himself,’ Cage confirmed.

  Jowett spread his palms to signify the collapse of Cribb’s theory.

  ‘As I understood it,’ returned Cribb, looking steadily at the table in front of him as he spoke, ‘there was an interruption during the seance when Mr Brand claimed that someone had entered the study. Mr Nye went downstairs to turn off the current. It was not turned on again until Mr Brand was pacified. Shortly after, Brand was found dead in the chair.’

  ‘That is so,’ conceded Jowett, discountenanced again. ‘What I can’t explain is why he was not killed at the instant the power was restored,’ Cribb went on. ‘If I have it correct, the experiment was set up again at twenty minutes to eleven, the current was switched on and the galvanometer reading was not exceptional. It was a full minute before the needle jumped and we pulled aside the curtain to find Brand’s body.’

  ‘It makes no sense to me,’ said Cage.

  ‘There’s a notion forming at the back of my mind, but it’ll want time,’ said Cribb. ‘For the present, can we proceed upon the assumption that this was murder?’

  ‘If you think it will lead us somewhere,’ said Jowett, without much enthusiasm.

  ‘Well, sir, let’s return to the spirit hand for a moment.’

  Jowett went a shade pinker.

  ‘If Brand was waving his right palm, coated with Blue John, about in the air—and it must have looked uncommon convincing, sir—he couldn’t have been holding the hand of the person on his right. In other words, the circle was broken and that person must have known it and been a party to the deception.’

  ‘By George, yes!’ said Jowett. ‘Do you know who it was? Miss Crush, of all people! I am absolutely certain of it.’

  ‘Rightly so, sir. Mr Strathmore very helpfully made a plan of the seating arrangements, which I borrowed on Saturday. Miss Crush, as you say, sat on the right of the medium and must have helped him. Now why should that lady be so rash as to conspire with a fraud—as we now know Brand to have been? He was not her class of person at all. You don’t find respectable maiden ladies with houses in Belgravia associating with the dregs of the race-course. There had to be some reason for this irregular alliance.’

  ‘I think I know it, Sarge,’ said Thackeray suddenly.

  ‘We’ll return to you in a moment, then,’ said Cribb without much gratitude. ‘I first suspected something between them when we attended Professor Quayle’s lecture. Already she had tried to persuade me not to question Peter Brand about the theft of her vase, although at the time I put that down to her enthusiasm for spiritualism, and her wish not to upset the medium. But at the lecture, it was crystal clear that she was there to help him, supplying him with information about Uncle Walter, and pretending it was all quite new, although they had been through the same performance at the first seance at Richmond.’

  ‘A point that had eluded me, Sergeant,’ said Jowett. ‘It may be significant!’

  ‘It seemed likely that the medium had got some hold on Miss Crush and was using her to further his career. The first seance was held at her house in Eaton Square, if you recall, sir. I couldn’t fathom what the secret was, or how Brand came to possess it.’

  ‘I could tell you, Sarge,’ offered Thackeray.

  ‘All in good time, Constable. But on the night the medium met his death it all became clear. Do you remember how Miss Crush behaved, sir?’

  ‘We had to restrain her from going to him in the chair, as I recollect,’ said Jowett. ‘And after that she was repeatedly fainting, confounded woman. Now that you bring it to my attention it was curious behaviour. It would certainly indicate that there was a bond of some description between them.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I thought, sir, though I couldn’t have put it so elegant. The clincher was in the wallet we found on his body. Do you remember when we made the list of his possessions?’

  ‘I have it with me,’ said Jowett, producing a notebook from his pocket as proudly as a plumber’s mate putting his hands on the required spanner.

  ‘I thought I could rely on that, sir. Do you have a note of those numbers we found on the reverse of the photograph?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. 469 and 9281, followed by the symbol of a square. Do they have something to do with the young woman in puris naturalibus on the other side?’

  ‘That was my first thought,’ said Cribb, ‘but I racked my brains for an hour or more and couldn’t see a connection. Then I looked more closely at the photograph. It was somewhat creased and dog-eared, if you remember. It must have been kept in his wallet for some considerable time. Yet it wasn’t the sort of picture a man might carry in his wallet out of sentiment.’

  ‘I doubt whether the female in the photograph was his sister or his fiancée, if that is what you mean.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean, sir. There’s a row of shabby little shops in Holywell Street, just off The Strand, which purvey photographs like that by the hundred. They call ’em art studies, and Inspector Moser goes there periodically with a couple of his men and seizes the most offensive specimens. There are always new ones to replace ’em, though, and if one dealer comes to court there’s another to take his place. The photographs themselves have been getting more objectionable of late. I believe they ship ’em in from France on the cross-channel steamers; you wouldn’t catch any of the fair sex here taking up such brazen attitudes in front of a photographer. But you’ll know yourselves, as gentlemen of the world, that the men who buy these things are forever searching for something new. They don’t keep them for any le
ngth of time. That’s what’s so odd about the photograph in Peter Brand’s wallet. It’s been there too long. In the end I was forced to conclude that he didn’t keep it all that time for the lady on the front, but for the numbers on the back. They had an importance of their own. And when I thought of ’em in isolation they began to make sense.’

  ‘I don’t know how,’ said Cage. ‘May I look at them, Inspector?’

  ‘What you must realise as you study them,’ said Cribb, ‘is that Brand was an illiterate. We came to that conclusion some days ago at a lecture given by Professor Quayle.’

  Jowett looked blank, but said nothing. Thackeray said, ‘Illiterate, Sarge?’

  ‘He couldn’t read,’ explained Cribb. ‘When Brand came on to the stage during the lecture to do his turn it was Quayle who read out the names written on the envelopes containing articles borrowed from the audience. At one stage Brand was holding your envelope in his hand and he had to ask Quayle what the name was.’

  ‘So he did!’ recalled Thackeray in admiration.

  ‘But if he didn’t know his letters, at least he was cognisant of numbers, or he wouldn’t have kept the photograph. It was when I looked at those numbers trying to pretend I was as illiterate as Brand that I understood their meaning. They were the two most important numbers in his life.’

  ‘How on earth do you deduce that?’ asked Jowett.

  ‘By taking the second number first. It’s the one with the square beside it, and that’s helpful. I had to say it to myself a dozen times before I got it. 9281 square. You say the digits one by one, as an illiterate would. 9 and 2 are numbers, but 8 and 1 are words, eight one, the nearest he could get in numbers to Eaton. It’s an illiterate’s way of writing 92, Eaton Square. And that, if you remember, sir, is Miss Crush’s address in Belgravia.’

  ‘Eight one square,’ said Jowett. ‘It doesn’t sound like Eaton Square to me.’

  ‘Not the way you say it, sir,’ conceded Cribb. ‘But Peter Brand wasn’t taught to speak the way you was. Let’s hear you say Eaton, Thackeray.’