by Lisa Tuttle
“Lady Florence wasn’t there,” I said, recalling that she was one of the people I had expected to see in Lord Bennington’s party.
“She had a sick headache that came on very suddenly. And Mrs. Chase was feeling so much better…Of course, she could have stayed with Lady Florence, but that sort of headache doesn’t like company and only responds to darkness and silence. How dull for Mrs. Chase. How she would adore to see her husband’s greatest public performance. This resulted in a change of plan at the last minute…What a blithering idiot I can be.”
“How can you say that?”
“You told me how Lady Florence likes to talk. If I had played my cards closer to my chest, it would have been better. Of course, Mrs. Chase learned from Lady Florence that I had inquired about her health and her plans for the evening. And why, when I had never met her? That was very suspicious and must have roused her natural impulse to protect her husband; to be on hand in the event that she was needed. I don’t know, of course, but perhaps, as a small act of revenge, she even gave Lady Florence a sick headache.”
He picked up the brandy bottle. “Are you sure you won’t have a glass? It helps wonderfully with the pain.”
“No, thank you. No one has been punching me…I am not feeling any pain, and I find I enjoy the experience of a clear head.”
The sheepish look was back. “You must think me awfully selfish, leaving you and the others captive so long…but really, it wasn’t because I wanted the glory of unmasking Chase so dramatically and defeating him before a cheering audience.”
I bit my lip. “That had never occurred to me.”
“You see, I knew that if I could get you all safely away from his influence, able to give statements to the police, it would then be impossible for Chase to deflect the blame onto his servant.”
“Yes, yes, I understand. But…” It was hard to ask, but I must face it. “You managed to deduce the reason Mr. Chase wanted mediums. How did my abduction fit into your theory?”
He swirled the brandy in his glass and watched it glinting darkly. “That gave me pause, I admit, but only at first. You remember, I am sure, that Chase took you for a medium at first meeting?”
I nodded. “So, one possibility: that Chase had kidnapped you under this delusion.“Second possibility: you are, in fact, a medium.”
My heart gave a curious little flutter. “You really considered that?”
His eyes met mine across the desktop. He raised his glass to me. “Sure you won’t have one?”
When I shook my head, he drank off the rest, put the glass down, and sat up straight. “I not only considered it, but came to the conclusion that it was correct.”
I am not sure how to define the feeling that mounted in my breast. It was a mixture, I think, of fear and excitement. “Why? What did you have to go on, apart from Mr. Chase’s delusion? I have never, ever—”
“Never?” He gave me an intent, searching look. “What about the materialization in your bedroom?”
“A hypnotic suggestion implanted by Chase.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You would suggest that Chase somehow managed to implant the suggestion in me?”
“But you did not see it!”
“I saw the residue of the spirit matter…the ectoplasm,” he reminded me.
The thought that the ghastly head had been something produced by me—not my imagination, but physically exuded from my own body—brought on a shudder I could not repress. “Oh, but that…that might have been anything!”
“Anything that can take different forms, hang in the air, and then disappear into nothing,” he said calmly. “Can you name me two things other than ectoplasm which that rapidly vanishing matter on the carpet might have been?”
Of course I could not.
He went on. “And there was another instance—you will recall how Creevey flung Mr. Chase toward the river—in response to his prearranged command, of course—and then we saw him hang suspended by nothing in midair? How he did not fall, but seemed held up by invisible spirit hands? It was the same trick he performed in the drawing room in Belgrave Square—only more dramatic.
“But in Belgrave Square he had his wife’s power to support him, or he may have stolen the energy from Signora Gallo. On the embankment that night, unless he had powers of his own, or unless the whole thing was a hypnotically induced hallucination, he must have stolen the psychic power he required from one of the three of us. And I am sure you have not forgotten how utterly exhausted you were afterward. You fainted. You could barely walk. You fell asleep in Creevey’s arms as he carried you home. That was not your normal reaction—you remarked upon it yourself, at the time; you could not understand why you should have fainted. But if you see it as a natural response of a body suddenly depleted of spiritual energy—chi, as the Chinese refer to it—then it all makes sense.
“Oh, Miss Lane.” His voice was warm and coaxing. I met his eyes again, and saw in them the lively interest and intelligent curiosity to which I had always been drawn. “This is remarkable! You have a rare talent, one that is little understood and given to only a few—surely you wish to learn more about it?”
Hadn’t I spent years of my life investigating the very question that now yawned like a terrifying chasm before my feet? He was right, of course. The fact that I was frightened, and even now, somewhat disbelieving, was no reason to flinch from exploration.
He continued: “You accused me, earlier, of not playing fair, and not treating you as a full partner, because I did not share every half-formed idea I had about who was controlling the somnambulist. Now it is my turn to ask why you are holding back. Are you ashamed? Is it because you simply gave up while you were his prisoner and became his passive slave? Is that what you fear to tell me?”
Stung, I leaned forward, fists clenching in my lap. “Of course not! How can you think—” Then I saw that he had meant to provoke, and I relaxed, shaking my head reprovingly. “I’m not afraid to tell you anything—it’s only that it’s all so vague and difficult to explain.”
I took a deep breath and began. “I could not understand how, if I had powers that Mr. Chase could steal, I could not use them myself. Signora Gallo was not helpful; she said it would be like teaching a deaf person to hear. It was as if I had been deaf since infancy, and now must try to puzzle out what it meant to hear before I could do it.
“Since she was no help, there was only Mr. Chase to be my teacher. I began to suspect that he was happier to keep me in ignorance, in the same way that he kept me locked in a room without shoes or hairpins—I was his prisoner and yet he did not think I was helpless. That encouraged me to try to resist.”
I paused and recalled the sensations, impossible to describe. “I soon found that the harder I struggled, the more powerful he became. And I remembered that little toy of yours”—I gestured vaguely at the bookshelves, unable to see in the shadows cast by firelight where it was—“the one you called ‘Chinese handcuffs.’ ”
He understood at once; I saw by the subtle shift of his expression, and I nodded.
“Since I must not resist, I could only try to evade him. Oh, I can’t explain how; it was all inside my head.”
“Not only in yours—in his, too,” said Mr. Jesperson. “There must have been some sort of thought transference…Perhaps that is your power?”
“Did you receive any of the many, many thought messages I sent you?” I asked dryly.
“Perhaps they were misdirected.”
“Or lacked sufficient postage—and for postage, read psychic strength. No, it’s no good—I do not have the power to read thoughts or send mental messages, useful as that would be. I was able to utilize some sort of sixth sense in my encounters with Mr. Chase, but those were very special circumstances. Apart from that, I could do nothing with my supposed power.”
He gave me a hard, challenging stare. “You call the fall of Aphrodite nothing?”
Since it had happened, it had come to seem more and more like a dream—a desperate fantas
y, born of fear. I evaded his question.
“Not nothing. It was very fortunate,” I said. “But…it was an accident, surely; caused by the activity on stage, shaking the boards—even, perhaps, the arrival of the police in such a mob backstage.”
“Hmmm. True, those gods were all heavier at the front than at the back; even more so after I had that carpentry work done to provide a secret exit. But I am more inclined to believe in unfortunate accidents than in fortunate ones. My first thought was that Sims had come back—or even my mother—and pushed it over to help me. But, of course, no one came back except you and Miss Fox. And neither of you were near enough to touch it. So it can only have been you, using the power of your mind.” He looked at me curiously. “Am I wrong?”
I sighed, suddenly aware of how tired I was and what a very long, strenuous night it had been. “Perhaps it was me. I wanted something like that to happen. I was trying to save myself and to save you—by using Mr. Chase’s own energy against him—the way you and your mother have been trying to teach me.”
I stopped. “It seemed real enough at the time, but now…now I think there must be another, better explanation. When did merely wishing for something make it happen? How could I—or even Mr. Chase and I together—have made that enormous thing fall, with just the power of the mind?”
He stood up, eyes alight. “That’s a very good question. Shall we try to answer it?”
Uncertainly, I watched him scan along the bookshelves on the wall behind the desk, searching for something among the variety of small trinkets, toys, and souvenirs displayed before the ranks of books. “How?”
“Oh, any reproducible model will do. Rather than risk breaking the furniture, best start with something small. This.” He picked up something about the size and shape of a cricket ball, made of some very light wood and painted to resemble a globe of the earth. He handed this to me, then moved the brandy glass and bottle before clearing the piles of paper and books away.
“What am I to do with it?”
“Feel its weight and size, then put it down on the desk. You are going to try to make it move without physically touching it, only imagining that you are pushing it.”
Rather self-consciously I rolled it in the palm of my hand. It was even lighter than I had expected, and the painted continents were badly misshapen. It would never pass muster in any geography lesson. I set it down carefully on the flat wooden surface.
“Give it a push with your hand, first, to see how it rolls.”
I gave it a gentle tap, and it rolled in a wobbly way, stopping well short of the edge. I picked it up and returned it to the original spot.
He sat back in his chair, hands in his lap, not touching the desk at any point, and I copied his posture.
“In your own time,” he said softly.
I looked at the ball. I thought of nothing. Then I thought of how it had looked when it rolled, and imagined it rolling in the same way as before, remembered the wobble and the sound it made. Nothing happened.
I sighed. “This is silly.”
“How did you make the statue fall? Can you think about the ball in the same way?”
I shut my eyes, imagining myself back inside Aphrodite, remembering how it had been…I opened my eyes again.
“Mr. Chase was there, after me, as in a game of hide-and-seek, but deadly serious. If he caught me…if I couldn’t keep away from him…I had to do something, and pushing the statue over on him seemed the best thing. I didn’t even push it myself, but made him do it. All in deadly earnest. This is too different.”
“You’re saying that it only works when you’re frightened?”
“Don’t you dare!” I spoke sharply, moving back in my chair.
“Miss Lane.” His look of wide-eyed, wounded innocence was overdone, but I apologized all the same for my expression of distrust.
He shrugged, then admitted that it had crossed his mind to give me a scare. “But I could not think of any way in which pushing a ball across this desk would ease your anxiety or free you from any imaginable danger. Although if I could irritate you enough to make you hurl it at my head—”
“If I was that annoyed, I’d pick it up and throw it,” I retorted.
“Yes, that did occur to me. Go on, you’re not concentrating.”
I stared at the ball again, as if I might push it through the strength of my eye-beams (as the poets would have it), but nothing happened. I stopped before I induced a headache. It was easier with my eyes shut to imagine I could make the ball move—prodding it with an imaginary finger, or thinking about jogging the desk with my feet, the way some mediums rocked and lifted tables.
I opened my eyes. The ball was still in the same place. I looked at my friend, who gazed back expectantly. “How long?” I asked.
“It’s only been three minutes.”
The thought of doubling or tripling the time made me weary. “Nothing will happen in ten minutes, or two hundred,” I said. “Not even if it would save my life.” All of a sudden I was certain of it. “It wasn’t my mental force that toppled the statue—it was his. I told you I deflected his force—that’s all.”
“That’s all?” he smiled, gently mocking. “I call that quite a lot—and it was enough.”
“Enough,” I agreed, and stood up. “Well, I am glad I was able to do it, whatever it was I did, when the need was there. But it has been a long day.”
He quickly rose to his feet. “You’re right. We’ll try this another time, when you’re well rested.”
I waited as he made sure the fire was safely banked, and then together we turned toward the door.
At that moment, I heard a familiar sound. Looking at the desk, I saw the ball was rolling. It moved slowly, at first, then with gathering speed, until it reached the edge of the desk and dropped, landing softly on the thick Turkish carpet.
We looked at each other, startled. I began to laugh.
Chapter 32
Another Problem
I was still smiling as I stepped into the front hall ahead of Mr. Jesperson and began to mount the stairs, when a sudden, sharp volley of knocks sounded on the front door.
I stopped, fingers gripping the banister, and turned back. My eyes met those of Mr. Jesperson, and I saw he had no more idea than did I as to who might be calling at such a late hour.
Perhaps it was the police, I thought, with yet more questions. Although, with Mr. Chase safely in their custody, surely they might wait until morning?
I waited, curious, and watched as my partner went to unlock the door.
As soon as the door was open, a man stumbled in, almost throwing himself into the hall, without waiting to be invited. In those first seconds, I saw a stranger: a youngish man, perhaps in his late twenties, with brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard, well dressed, in top hat and evening clothes beneath his black overcoat. The most striking thing about him was his expression of absolute terror. Just to witness it made my skin prickle with apprehension. Beads of sweat stood out on his face, even on this cold night, and his eyes were wide and so greatly dilated that they appeared almost entirely black.
“I say,” said Mr. Jesperson assertively, quickly moving to stand between the intruder and the stairs where I stood. “May I help you, sir?”
“Help me,” the man repeated, turning his frightened gaze on Mr. Jesperson. His teeth were chattering so he could scarcely spit out the words. “Please…Or I am dead!”
“Who do you fear?”
But the man, now panting heavily, scarcely seemed to hear the question. He turned his head quickly from side to side in an agitated search. “Is it safe? Can you help? Will I be safe here?”
“Of course. You are safe now.” Mr. Jesperson put a steadying hand on the man’s arm. “Let us help you. Tell me, who is after you? What do you fear?”
“Witchcraft!” As he spoke, his head jerked up, and he noticed me, standing slightly above him, looking down. The sight of me made him more anxious. He raised his hands, one seeming to ward me off, the
other pointing accusingly. “She is a witch!”
“No, no, that is Miss Lane—my partner. You need have no fear of her. Come, let us sit down—perhaps a glass of brandy?—and you can tell us how we may help.”
“Witch!” he repeated, still staring at me, ignoring, or perhaps simply not hearing what Mr. Jesperson had said. Locked in his own fearful imaginings, he was unaware of anything else. “I am cursed…it’s too late…no one can help me now…too late…”
His eyes rolled, his knees buckled, and before my friend could manage to catch him, our mysterious visitor had collapsed to the floor, eyes wide and unseeing, his body unnaturally still.
A line from Shakespeare’s Scottish play ran through my head: “Macbeth hath murdered sleep.” It required no special gift of clairvoyance to recognize that we were unlikely to get any sleep that night. Not with a new mystery to solve.
To Michele, with thanks for the eyepatch
And, of course,
To Colin
About the Author
LISA TUTTLE won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Writer of the Year in 1974, and has since written a dozen novels within the wider field of fantastic fiction, and more than a hundred short stories, some of them award-winners, as well as nonfiction and children’s books. Her first novel, Windhaven, was written in collaboration with George R. R. Martin. Others include The Mysteries, which combines a detective story with ancient Celtic legends, The Silver Bough, a contemporary fantasy set in Scotland, and Lost Futures, short-listed for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.
lisatuttle.co.uk
