by Mary Hooper
He shrugged and gave an embarrassed grin. ‘I took Sissy home and when I came back I had one last glass of champagne – just to clear the bottle, you know. It was obviously one too many for me, because I fell asleep at the kitchen table. I only woke just now when I heard the stairs creaking.’
Velvet felt relief rush over her. ‘I wondered where you were. I could only think that –’
‘Out like a light, I was!’ He rubbed down his arms. ‘Damned hard, that table.’
‘Oh, George!’ Velvet discreetly stuffed the envelope into her jacket pocket and looked up at him tearfully. ‘I’m in a terrible dilemma and don’t know what you’ll have to say about it.’
‘Really? What’s going on, then?’
She sighed. This, surely, was the hardest thing she’d ever had to say in her life. ‘You know that we agreed that Madame was the most incredible person in the world and that we would go to the ends of the earth for her?’
‘Yes. We did.’
‘Well, what would you say if I told you that she’d been misleading people all along . . . that she was just a hoaxer? A fraud.’
George’s face hardened. ‘What are you talking about?’
She sighed again. ‘There are so many ways in which she’s been deceiving people,’ she said. ‘But I know one way most particularly because one of the girls who came to the séance last night was . . .’ She paused. ‘I’m not proud of this, George, but she was a friend of mine whom I’d asked to come and act a part. You remember the girl who stood up and said that her grandfather had left her a fortune?’
George gave a brief, stern nod.
‘Well, that wasn’t true – any of it. I asked her to play that part to see what Madame would do with the false information.’
‘What?’
‘Because I suspected Madame was a fraud, you see.’ And then everything came tumbling out. ‘There have been so many other things, George. The baby, the questions in the envelopes at the mediumship evenings – I know there’s something odd going on there. The way Madame picks up on little things we tell her, and her materialisations look more like billowing chiffon than anything else! I know you think the world of her but it can’t be right to deceive grieving people just to get at their money.’ Velvet sighed and blew her nose. ‘In the end there were just too many things, too many lies, to overlook.’
‘And where are you going now, then?’
‘I’m going to the police station,’ Velvet said.
‘Why? I don’t understand.’
‘I have to report Madame to the police. Will you come with me?’
‘What?’ George asked again, looking at her with horror.
‘Please, George. You will back me up, won’t you? I’m sorry and I know it’s both our livelihoods at stake, but the things Madame is doing are really and truly wrong. And sooner or later those psychical research people will come and find out everything anyway.’
George did not give any answer for some time. A score of emotions ran across his face but Velvet could not work out what he was thinking or what he might do.
Anxiously, she slipped her hand into his. ‘I feel terrible, awful, I really do, but I just knew I had to do something. Please say you’ll come with me!’
George hesitated again, sighed and eventually nodded. ‘I suppose it’s only what I’ve been thinking myself.’
‘I did wonder if you had.’
‘We’d better get it over with.’ He buttoned up the jacket he was wearing, unbolted the front door and opened it. ‘Which police station were you going to?’
‘The big one in Harrow Road,’ Velvet said. ‘I’ve heard that it’s one of the few that are open all night.’ She would rather, of course, have gone to Charlie’s station, but didn’t want to risk it being closed when she got there.
Together they went down the front steps into a dark, damp and misty London morning.
‘We’ll go by the Marylebone Road,’ George said, turning left. Then he stopped. ‘No, I know. We’ll take the shortcut along the canal.’
Velvet saw no one as they crossed the road towards Regent’s Canal, just heard the hollow clatter of a horse’s hooves on the cobbles and a milk cart somewhere in the distance. Suddenly remembering the envelope with her name on it, she reached into her pocket as they went down the steps which led to the water. There were a few longboats moored here, but none showed a light. Here and there, however, a lamp glowed from the wall, and Velvet waited until they were under one of these, then pulled at the envelope flap.
‘Just a moment,’ she said.
‘What have you got there?’
‘Something from my friend Charlie.’ Velvet was torn between getting to the police station and reading the note. Deciding that it must be something very urgent for Charlie to deliver it overnight, however, she pulled a square of paper from the envelope and held it under the light.
It was a piece of newspaper printed with a photograph of a sullen-looking couple. Underneath it said:
Mr and Mrs George Wilson, a married couple who were formerly performers at the Britannia Theatre in Hoxton, appeared at the Old Bailey yesterday on a charge of Gross Deception. They were apprehended at Epsom Races, where they were working a confidence trick which required Mrs Wilson to pose as a socialite who had had all her money stolen. Found guilty, they were both sentenced to six months’ hard labour. Full story on page 3.
Velvet read the paragraph swiftly and, hardly understanding its significance, read it again, then studied the photograph.
The married couple pictured were George and Madame.
Chapter Nineteen
In Which Velvet Experiences Her Final Moments
Velvet’s legs wobbled and felt as though they might give way beneath her. Of course! It hadn’t been Sissy and George she’d walked in on after the séance – it had been Madame and George. She knew that she should drop the piece of newspaper over the side of the canal and let it float away, or screw it up quickly and say to George that it wasn’t anything important. She was so horror-struck, however, that she just stood there holding it, staring at the photograph of George and Madame outside the Old Bailey; George unkempt and looking a little younger, and Madame, her hair all anyhow, in drab, workaday clothing.
George inclined his head to look at the picture over Velvet’s shoulder, then caught her wrist between his thumb and first finger. The night seemed to grow very still; the only sounds were of the water lapping against the sides of the canal and, somewhere far off, the call of an owl as it flew home to roost.
‘Ah, yes, the Help the Lady Scam,’ he said.
‘You were . . . thieves?’
‘When we stopped being actors. We weren’t bad at relieving folk of their money, either. One day we cleared over a hundred pounds.’
Velvet looked up at him and blinked.
‘But there was no really big money in it – it never brought the rewards that being a medium does. Mind you, that game’s becoming a bit too popular now. People are getting careless and bringing the profession into disrepute.’
Velvet’s breath felt very tight in her throat. ‘You and Madame . . .’
‘Been together four years now – since, like I told you, she picked me up from the gutter. Got married in ninety-seven, we did.’ When Velvet didn’t respond to this, he continued, ‘That’s why I wasn’t in my room when you called – because I spend my nights with my wife. When I heard you moving around upstairs I used the private staircase to get out and went back in the house by the kitchen door.’ He grinned. ‘Fooled you all right, didn’t it?’
Velvet began to shake all over. ‘So everything you’ve done, everything I’ve seen, has been fake?’
‘Indeed it has,’ George said.
‘The ectoplasm?’
‘You were nearly right about that: it was muslin, inflated by a foot-operated set of bellows under the carpet pumping up air. Rather clever, we thought – some mediums just dress up their assistants in white veiling and have them appear through a trap door.’
‘But how do you know about my real name and everything? How could you possibly know what happened when my father died?’
George smiled a cold smile. ‘I’ll leave you to try and work that out for yourself,’ he said. ‘You’ll have about . . . well, about two minutes, I should think.’
‘Two minutes? What d’you mean?’ Velvet tried to wriggle out of his grasp, but his hand was firm around her wrist. ‘I’m still going to the police! I’m going to tell them everything I know.’
His fingers bit into her flesh, tight as a handcuff. ‘Oh no, you’re not. As if I’d let you destroy the neat little business that we’ve built up with our well-off clients and our cache of jewellery – not to mention a nice new motor car and a villa in Brighton. Oh dear me, no!’
‘But how did you manage to –’
‘The hows and whys don’t concern you now,’ he said. ‘If you’d been a good girl we’d have filled you in on the whole deal – you and my wife could have worked a scam as a team. But no, you had to come over all high and mighty, and because of that – well, as I said, it’ll take about two minutes.’
Velvet looked up at him and frowned.
‘For you to drown, I mean.’
Before she could draw breath, George gave Velvet a hefty shove in the chest which sent her staggering across the cinder pathway, skirts flying. She fell backwards into the canal with an almighty splash.
Velvet’s first thought was that – how strange, how ironic – she was going to die the same death as her father, and this was surely a just punishment. Her second thought was an angry one: no, she was not going to die. She was going to survive and make sure that Madame and George paid for their crimes. And then she had no more clear thoughts, for her only instinct was to survive and she started fighting, kicking and struggling. She knew that the canal could kill in other ways apart from drowning, for it was disgustingly alive with disease-bearing rats as well as the contents of countless chamber pots, and she must get herself out of the putrid mess as soon as possible.
Down, down, she went, into the murk, feeling her flailing hands touching repulsively slimy, indefinite things in the water all around her. Her booted feet touched the bottom and she began to rise up, fighting not only against the water but in order to try and get free of the heavy clothing she was wearing. The extra layers of skirt and petticoat clung to her legs, however, twisted around her knees and weighed her down so that she had hardly gained the surface and taken a gulp of air before she felt herself sinking again, pulled down by yards of sodden material.
Frantically scrabbling as she came up once more, she kicked out to try and reach the side of the canal and cling on to something – anything – but the walls were so slimy with filth and waterweed that it was impossible to get a grip. Struggling ineffectually, she opened her mouth to scream for help but merely swallowed a chokingly large gulp of canal water. Before she went under again she saw George standing above her on the canal-side. He had a long stave of wood in his hand which, she presumed, he was wielding to hit her on the head and finish her off.
Down she went again, taking in more filthy water which filled her nose and mouth and caused an excruciating burning sensation all the way down to her lungs. With another involuntary gulp this pain became so unbearable that she all but lost the power to struggle. She would just give up the fight, she thought, and let the all-consuming agony take over her body. She would float downstream and die, and finally be at peace. As she sank lower in the water she thought about her mother, how perhaps they could be together again, and whether she was even now waiting for her on the Other Side.
Seconds passed, and more seconds, then there was a vast splash and disturbance of the water. It seemed to her that George had jumped into the canal and was trying to hold her under, tugging at her jacket to keep her below the surface and gripping her arms hard. Having someone to fight spurred Velvet into action again. She forced her hands into fists and beat them against her aggressor’s head with as much strength as she could muster. He grabbed her around the neck, however, and, although she broke the surface once more and was able to choke in a gulp of air, held her tightly under the arms, forcing her on to her back and under the water.
Her final thought was of Charlie and the strangely heartbreaking knowledge that she would never see him again. After that, everything closed in and became black.
Chapter Twenty
There followed some oddly disjointed moments when Velvet seemed to wake from a dream and found herself being jolted rhythmically up and down, as if on a horse, but it was a strange sort of ride because she appeared to be lying across the animal’s back. She was aware of a tremendous rushing noise in her ears and of her clothes sticking to her, dripping and stinking, then she spewed up a great gush of warm, filthy water, and someone exclaimed in shock.
The next thing she could remember – whether an hour or days later, she couldn’t tell – was finding herself lying on her side, feeling weak and ill, with a scratchy grey blanket wrapped around her. She was in a small room or cell, there was an enamel bowl just by her head and she was completely naked under the blanket, with not even her mother’s old lace petticoat on. What had happened?
Muddled, she tried to reason things out. She had not drowned – that much was clear – but she was not at all certain what had happened or where she was. She reached for the enamel bowl, was sick again, then closed her eyes, stopped thinking of anything and allowed herself to drift off to sleep.
The next time Velvet woke, she had to work out where she was all over again, but she must have been feeling a little more normal because she immediately remembered that under the blanket she was naked. Where were her clothes and who had taken them off? What was real and true, and which were her dreams?
She was sick once more and felt a little better. Someone came into the room and she tried terribly hard to open her eyes, knowing that if she had to fight this person off she couldn’t have lifted as much as a finger to help herself. This someone took her hand and stroked it gently. Her eyes struggled not only to stay open, but to focus.
‘Velvet.’
Hearing the dear and familiar voice of Charlie, Velvet felt peace lapping over her, as welcome as sunlight. She did not feel strong enough to speak to him, however, so she just let her eyelids flutter down and concentrated all her efforts on not drifting off to sleep. What day, what month, what time it was she couldn’t have said. She only knew that she felt safe.
‘Do you know where you are?’ Charlie asked. She couldn’t reply, so he went on, ‘You’re in the sickroom at my police station. That . . . that blighter tried to drown you – he pushed you into the canal. Do you remember?’
Velvet nodded; a tiny movement.
‘It was my fault,’ said Charlie. ‘I shouldn’t have put that newspaper cutting through your door. But I suppose he would have tried to drown you before you got to the police station anyway.’
Velvet opened her eyes.
‘I realised too late that the cutting might have put you in danger, so I came round early this morning to try and speak to you.’ He took her hand and squeezed it. ‘Of course, it was too late by then – you’d already found it and gone off. I ran up and down looking for you and a milkman told me that he’d seen the two of you walking along by the canal. I followed and heard a commotion in the water. When he saw me, the blighter bolted as fast as the king’s horse.’
‘Who got me out of the water?’ Velvet whispered.
‘Why, I did!’ Charlie said. ‘I jumped in for you. Reckon I redeemed myself a bit by doing that, eh?’ A smile spread across his freckled face. ‘Mind you, I didn’t think you wanted to come out – you fought me tooth and nail.’
‘I thought it was him, still trying to drown me . . .’
‘And then when I gave you a fireman’s carry to the station you were sick all down my back by way of a thank you!’
Velvet, embarrassed, said that she was very sorry indeed for it. She closed her eyes momentarily. ‘What abou
t him and Madame?’ she asked. ‘Where are they?’
‘They’ve scarpered,’ said Charlie. ‘They left the furniture and the fine clothes in the house. The housekeeper told me they’d gone off in a motor car and didn’t leave a forwarding address.’
‘Brighton,’ said Velvet. ‘That’s where you’ll find them.’
‘Is that right?’
She nodded and sighed. ‘They were both comp-letely . . . utterly . . . false.’ After a moment she added, ‘They were, weren’t they?’
‘Yes. I did try to tell you,’ Charlie said. He lifted her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers. ‘By the way, what did George tell you about his friend Aaron, the boy who died?’
‘He just said that he helped him and that he invited Aaron to Madame’s for a meal. That’s why George’s name and address were in his pocket.’
‘More lies,’ Charlie said. ‘They were friends at one time, true, but then George seduced Aaron’s sister. Got her in the family way, he did.’
‘No!’
‘Aaron was probably looking for George to knock him about a bit, but the poor chap died first.’
Velvet shook her head. ‘But there are other things I don’t understand. I mean, how did they find out my real name? And they knew about my father. I’ve never told anyone what happened to him.’
Charlie looked at her as if weighing up whether or not she was ready to receive more information. He decided that she was.
‘Velvet, the plain fact is that your father is still alive.’
Stunned, Velvet didn’t know if she was pleased or aghast at this news.
‘Alive as I am! I was on loan to Chelsea police station a week or so ago when he was brought in drunk and disorderly after a race meeting. He was using another name, but I recognised him straight away. He told the desk sergeant that he and Conan Doyle were having private sessions with your Madame – full of it, he was – so I guess she must have been relieving him of his winnings and finding out your family secrets at the same time.’
