by Mary Hooper
‘My dear Mrs Lilac, I’m sure that she will,’ Madame said, and she gave Mrs Lilac’s hand a comforting squeeze.
Chapter Thirteen
In Which Two Young Ladies Attend a Séance
Velvet caught Lizzie’s eye and gave her the trace of a smile. What a night this was turning out to be. Not only were they the youngest – and perhaps the prettiest – girls in the room, but they had been toasted with champagne by two well-dressed young gentlemen who seemed very keen to further their acquaintance. And, Velvet thought, even though she was mad about George, it did a girl the power of good to know that when one raised one’s eyes there was a gentleman standing opposite, all ready to give her a flirtatious wink.
Velvet and Lizzie were attending an evening of mediumship at the villa of Mrs Eusapia Palladino, who had rented a house in Chelsea for the season. Madame Savoya, anxious to know what her rival was up to, had asked Velvet to attend and suggested that she take a friend with her. Together they were to act the part of two young ladies attending their first séance – and as long as they acted modestly and kept their voices down, Velvet hoped they could pass as such.
It was mostly, she thought, those at the very peak of sophisticated society who attended Mrs Palladino’s evenings. Hardly anyone behaved as if they were bereaved, and the evening of mediumship seemed born less of a desire to contact the Other Side and more of a wish for a congenial evening of gossip. Whilst waiting to go into the main room, Velvet and Lizzie heard several scandalous rumours about the new king and his mistresses, some fears voiced about the Whitechapel Murderer and whether he might, even now, strike again, and the latest news on the utterly amazing feats of Harry Houdini.
Lizzie had been eager to come with her and even more eager to borrow one of Velvet’s outfits for the occasion. That afternoon, Madame and George both being busy at an accountant’s office, the two girls had had a high time trying on gowns and hats and mantles in Velvet’s room. Velvet had ended up in her clover-pink outfit; Lizzie was wearing watered silk in a pretty pale green.
The first thing Velvet had wanted to do on meeting her friend that afternoon was to dispel any awkwardness about the situation regarding Charlie. Once Lizzie had been taken on a tour of Darkling Villa and gasped admiringly at everything, Velvet began discreetly with ‘I know you’re probably walking out regularly with Charlie now, but –’
Lizzie had interrupted her with a sigh. ‘We’re not really,’ she said. ‘In fact, not at all. Since he moved to his new beat I’ve hardly seen him.’
Velvet stopped, surprised. She’d been about to say, in as open and generous a way as possible, that – as far as she was concerned – it was quite all right for Lizzie to continue seeing Charlie and she shouldn’t feel in the least bit bad about it.
‘I don’t know why he doesn’t visit now,’ Lizzie continued with another sigh. ‘Pa says it’s because he’s doing shift work, but Ma says he only ever came round to talk about you.’
‘Oh!’ said Velvet. She realised she should have felt irritated by this news but, strangely, only felt pleased.
‘Have you not seen him either?’
Velvet shook her head. ‘Hardly. Apart from when he came round to see George.’
‘That’s what you wanted, though, isn’t it? For him to leave you alone?’
After a moment, Velvet nodded. ‘It is what I wanted. Although I hoped we could remain friends.’
‘George, though! What a catch for a girl. Has he declared himself?’
Velvet hesitated another moment. ‘Not exactly, but I think he loves me.’ She bit her lip. She wasn’t sure of this; how was a girl supposed to know without being told? She loved him, of course. Yes, she was almost certain that she loved him.
‘There! We are both unsure about these young men, aren’t we?’ Lizzie said. Then she added (for she had just read a desperately sad love story in a magazine), ‘The path to love is a stony one, is it not?’
‘It is,’ Velvet agreed, and then looked at Lizzie trying on a fur hood back to front so that it covered her face, and they both dissolved into giggles.
When Eusapia Palladino entered the room where the séance was to be held, Velvet knew that Madame would be pleased to have it confirmed that her rival was no beauty, but a sturdy, rather homely-faced woman. She was dressed in one of that season’s newest fashions – a gown with huge lace-bedecked puffed sleeves – which unfortunately made her look even more sturdy. She took her place at a large round table and gestured for everyone – fourteen people in total – to join her.
There were some formalities to go through first: a woman checked Mrs Palladino over for anything that might be concealed about her person and then her feet were tied to the legs of the chair she was sitting on, so that she couldn’t move them or lift the table. (Madame had told Velvet that this might be expected, for Mrs Palladino had, apparently, been accused of fraud several times in the past.)
A male attendant, the equivalent of George (only nowhere near as handsome, Velvet and Lizzie agreed), locked the door, lowered the black blinds and pulled the drapes. The room was now only lit by one tall wax candle standing on a sideboard at the back.
There being no piano in the room and thus no hymn singing nor recital, Mrs Palladino went into action straight away, asking what she termed ‘a vast number of spirits anxious to speak’ to please get themselves in line and wait their turn; she would receive them as soon as she was able. She asked everyone to touch hands around the table and to take particular note that her own hands were also touching the person on each side of herself.
‘If, at any time, anyone believes that the chain of hands around the table is broken,’ Mrs Palladino said, ‘would that person call out immediately.’ She paused. ‘I’m now going to enter a trance state.’
For some moments there was complete silence in the room and then Velvet heard a tap-tap-tap on the table, which brought a startled gasp from Lizzie next to her.
‘Don’t be alarmed,’ Mrs Palladino said in her ordinary voice. ‘These are just my spirits letting me know they’re arriving.’
More tapping ensued. At first it was like fingernails and then it became more of a thump, as if a fist was being banged down hard.
‘Someone sounds very displeased!’ Mrs Palladino said, and two or three people around the table laughed.
The table then buckled, as if it had been picked up and tilted, and Mrs Palladino asked the spirits to please be careful as she didn’t want anyone harmed at her séance.
There were more silent moments, then a trumpet sounded somewhere in the room, followed by a bugle call. To Velvet’s amazement she then saw these instruments floating above the centre of the table, glowing in the darkness with a strange luminescence. Several flowers flew across the heads of the guests and landed, with a scattering of petals, in the table’s centre, and then came a few oranges, two of which rolled past Velvet, off the table and on to the floor, so that Velvet had to force herself not to break the circle and go after them. She tried to peer through the gloom and work out from which direction all these things were appearing, but the almost complete darkness in the room made this impossible.
There was further tapping and Mrs Palladino commanded, ‘Spirits! Please let us have more proof that you are truly with us.’
Velvet felt something brush across her head, but whether it was a draught of air, a hand or a spirit, she couldn’t have said.
A woman screamed in the darkness that she had felt a hand stroking her cheek, and a male voice – the young man who had winked at her, Velvet thought – was heard to say that someone had patted him on the head.
‘There’s someone behind me!’ another person called. ‘I felt a hand on my shoulder.’
Velvet felt Lizzie wriggle in her seat. ‘I’m scared,’ Lizzie whispered to her.
‘It’s all right. This sort of thing always happens,’ Velvet whispered back, trying to sound brave when she wasn’t at all. The truth was that she was used to Madame’s ways and of the methods she emp
loyed to get in touch with spirits, but had no experience of musical instruments playing by themselves, or of floating hands stroking her cheek.
‘I’ll try to materialise one of my spirits,’ said Mrs Palladino. ‘I’ll call up a will-o’-the-wisp, which is a type of faery that often comes to speak to me.’ She began whistling softly, an eerie sound in the dark room, and suddenly there appeared, dancing above the table, a little swirl of white, bobbing and turning this way and that.
‘Oh, I don’t like it!’ Lizzie squealed.
Velvet, rather terrified herself, was trying to think of something comforting to say when a light flared in the darkness. One of the young gentlemen had lit a match!
The faery disappeared and in the half-light Velvet looked towards Mrs Palladino, seeing immediately that her gloved right hand was lying in her lap covered by a white silk scarf. Her left hand was still flat on the table, but the man and woman to each side of her both touched this same hand with their own, thus leaving Mrs Palladino’s right hand completely free to throw flowers, brandish trumpets, stroke cheeks and the like. An uncomfortable thought suddenly came into Velvet’s mind: if, during the first proper séance she’d attended at Darkling Villa, Madame had had a hand free, it would have been the simplest thing in the world for her to reach under the table for flowers which she’d hidden previously, and throw them into view.
‘Mrs Palladino, I’m very much afraid that you’ve been found out!’ said the other young gentleman. He reached across the table, lifted the square of white silk by one corner and flicked it about. ‘Here is your “will-o’-the-wisp”! It’s nothing more than your black-gloved hand holding a silk scarf.’ He moved to the window to raise one of the blinds. ‘The Society for Psychical Research will be very interested to hear of this séance,’ he concluded.
Much to Velvet and Lizzie’s wonder, the evening then descended into chaos, with Mrs Palladino answering her accusers by fainting clean away and having to be carried from the room by her young assistant and a maid, and her clients, incredulous and appalled, hailing cabs to go home.
‘It was utterly shocking,’ Velvet reported to Madame later, in her private sitting room. ‘It became clear that she had had one hand free the whole time, and when they looked under the table, both her legs – previously tied up – were also free. They said that she’d been lifting the table with her knees.’
‘So there were two members of the Society for Psychical Research there?’ Madame asked.
‘Those devils are appearing everywhere these days,’ George said, frowning.
‘They just looked like two ordinary young gentlemen,’ Velvet said. ‘It was one of them who lit the match. They said afterwards that they’d had several reports that Mrs Palladino was acting dishonestly once more, and were hoping they might expose her. They’re going to report her to the authorities this morning.’ Velvet shook her head wonderingly. ‘I was completely taken in, especially by the bugle and trumpet.’
‘Ah,’ Madame said. ‘That’s a well-known trick – holding wind instruments painted with luminous paint with your free hand, and blowing into them to make sounds. And getting the person on each side of you to hold the same hand is a very old trick indeed.’
Velvet, rather taken aback at Madame’s composure in the light of the revelations about Mrs Palladino, said, ‘Excuse me for saying this, but you don’t seem at all startled by anything I’ve told you.’
Madame shook her head. ‘There’s always some fraud or other being perpetrated by so-called mediums.’ Her eyes shone as she spoke, as if challenging Velvet to dare ask if she had ever done such a thing. On Velvet certainly not daring to do so, she added, ‘Cheating is especially prevalent in London, where there are so many of us and each medium is trying to prove they’re more gifted than the next.’
‘I see.’ Velvet found she could not meet Madame’s eyes.
‘It may be, of course, that Mrs Palladino is a true and talented medium who just occasionally uses her wits to aid her clairvoyance.’
‘Yes . . .’
‘As we know, sometimes the spirits need a helping hand.’
Velvet did not say any more, but could not help wondering what would happen if no one ever helped the spirits and they were left to their own devices.
It was two days later that Madame came upstairs to Velvet’s room, quite early, before she’d even finished dressing. Madame had never been to her room before and Velvet was not quite sure how she should act; if she should speak to her at the door, or allow Madame to come in and sit on the bed.
But Madame decided this point for herself, stepping over some shoes and sitting down on the window seat. ‘I dare say you’re very surprised to see me this early in the morning.’
Velvet nodded, hurriedly doing up her buttons.
‘I fear I’ve had a very disturbed night. There’s something urgent I need to speak to you about.’ Madame looked at her searchingly. ‘My dear, I’m loath to say this, but I believe you haven’t been altogether honest with me.’
Velvet, feeling the blood drain from her face, wondered what on earth Madame was going to accuse her of. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she protested. ‘I’ve always tried to tell the truth in all my dealings and have never touched anything of yours that I shouldn’t have. You’re always so generous anyway that I wouldn’t dream of taking anything that wasn’t mine.’
‘No, you misunderstand me,’ Madame said. ‘It’s not stealing which I want to speak about; stealing is comparatively straightforward and can be dealt with quite easily. What I mean is that you’ve been dishonest by not telling me of the terrible circumstances surrounding the death of your father.’
Velvet sat down heavily on her bed. How much did Madame know? And how did she know it? ‘Please, it’s not that I tried to deceive you . . . But how did you find out?’
‘I found out because I’m a medium, and your father’s spirit came to tell me of it.’
Velvet began to shake.
‘He told me about the night you defied him, and the chase, and how he fell in the canal. He said he screamed for you to come and help him, but you didn’t, although you knew the water was very deep and icy cold. In effect, you let him drown, wouldn’t you say?’
Velvet fought the urge to cry. ‘Yes, and I know I should have helped, but I despised him! They say it’s wicked to hate your parents, but I hated him for how he’d treated my mother and all the awful things he’d done over the years.’
‘Your father says that your ignoring his call for help was tantamount to manslaughter,’ Madame said. ‘This puts me in a very difficult position.’
Velvet held her breath. What could she mean?
‘I rely on the spirits for my living,’ Madame continued. ‘And you rely on these same spirits for your living. This is why we must always be honest with each other. The spirits hate deception, lies and double-dealing. If we lie to the spirits, they will lie to us.’
Velvet looked at her, heart in mouth, wondering what was coming next.
‘You should have told me of these circumstances before now.’
‘I . . . I know, but . . .’
Velvet couldn’t say any more for a sudden terrible fear that Madame was about to cast her out on to the streets, that she would lose her job, her lovely room, her clothes – and George.
‘But I can hardly believe you are capable of real deceit, Velvet.’
‘No, indeed I am not,’ Velvet pleaded. ‘I love working for you and love everything about living here. Please let me stay! I’ll always tell you the absolute truth from now on.’
‘And help me in all my endeavours?’
Velvet nodded vehemently. ‘Of course! I’d do anything for you.’
Madame got up from the window seat and clasped Velvet’s hand. ‘Then I shall speak to the spirit of your father on your behalf, and ask forgiveness.’
‘Oh please, if you could,’ Velvet said. ‘The matter has been much on my mind.’
‘And so we shall be friends now,’ Madame s
aid, ‘and never speak of these things again.’
Madame Savoya’s Third Private Sitting with ‘Lady Blue’
‘How well you look, Lady Blue,’ Madame Savoya said. ‘There’s quite a spring in your step and a twinkle in your eye.’
‘Thank you very kindly,’ said Lady Blue. ‘I must admit that since I’ve been coming to you and speaking to Bertie I have felt more like my old self.’ She smiled at George. ‘George here has been most helpful. He’s taken me to the solicitors in town several times and read through the legal niceties with me. He’s even advised me on matters concerning the motor car Bertie bought just before he . . . before he –’
‘Passed peacefully to the Other Side,’ proffered Madame quickly.
‘I feel it’s the least I can do,’ George said to Lady Blue. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m rather embarrassed to be the recipient of such a large amount of money. I can scarce believe it even now.’
‘Dear boy!’ said Lady Blue, patting George’s knee. ‘Didn’t Bertie say – in this very room – that he would rather someone like you had it than have it disappear in taxes and trifles?’
George shrugged. ‘I know, but . . .’
‘But nothing!’ said Lady Blue gaily. ‘You shall have Bertie’s money and that will make him happy. When I die you shall have mine, too.’
George spread his hands out and shook his head in wonder, as much as to say that Lady Blue was incorrigible but there was nothing he could do about it.
‘Did you mention a motor car?’ Madame asked.
Lady Blue nodded. ‘And what a nasty, noisy thing it is. I can’t abide it! It needs to be cranked to get started and – well! – however am I supposed to do something like that?’
