by Dianne Day
“It wasn’t exactly a double murder,” I said patiently, “there was one murder and then another. Some weeks and some days lapsed between the two. First Abigail Locke and then Ingrid Swann.”
“Yes, I know,” Edna said, nodding wisely, “and they were both your so-called mediums, though your first one hasn’t been nearly so effective as the second one, meaning Ingrid, used to be. Dunno what to think of that.”
I didn’t know what to think of that either. In fact, I hadn’t understood a word after “mediums.” I said, “I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that, Fremont, though it’s very nize of you all the same. You didn’t do nothing to be pardoned for, far as I know.”
I suppressed a smile. “What I intended to say was, I don’t take your meaning, about the first and second mediums—you know, what you said just now.”
“Oh, now I see! Fremont, for a nize girl, sometimes you do talk funny.”
“Probably because I’m from Boston.” Conversations with Edna did have a way of getting out of hand. If she didn’t explain herself in the next sentence, I intended to press on with my own agenda.
“Boston!” She winked. “Well, la-dee-dah. I better be on me peaze and queuz. Anyways, about those two mediums: The first one, that Abigail Locke? She was never as great as Ingrid was in her best times. Mrs. Locke, she didn’t have style. She just sat there and talked up a storm. Could maybe contact a few dead loved ones, that was all. Nothing exciting. Soze I heard tell, you unnerstand.”
I nodded, to keep her talking. So she did know something after all. I wondered if she, being a widow with some money and time on her hands, had ever availed herself of a medium’s services—particularly the services of the two in question.
“Now Ingrid Swann, she was something else. Beautiful woman, that. Kind of woman even other women, as well as all the men of course, could admire the looks of. And oh, she had talent. She didn’t just talk. Ingrid weren’t no trance channeler, no sireee, she could do all the fancy stuff: Psychokinesis, apports, remote views, ectoplasmic extrusion …”
“I’ve heard about the ectoplasmic extrusion. She worked in a cabinet, yes? You wouldn’t happen to have seen any of that, would you, Edna?”
Edna beamed, and tipped forward in the chair so that her tippytoes reached the floor. To keep from slipping right down, she had to hold on to the chair arms with both hands. “Me and a couple thousand others!” she announced with glee.
“Thousand? Edna, that sounds hardly possible. There’s no place in all of San Francisco to hold such a large audience.”
“Well, it wasn’t all on the same night, Fremont. She did seven performances, seven nights in a row, back about five years ago, I think it was, in one of the bigger the-ay-ters. I fergit which one. Nearly killed her, so they said. The effort, you know. But it made her famous all in one fell swoop.”
“And you saw one of the performances. Would you describe it to me?” I had been standing near a corner of my former desk, which was Edna’s now. But I took a chair, the one designated for prospective clients, from against the wall and sat down at an angle.
Edna scooted back in the chair, refolded hands over tummy, and told the tale with a glittering eye: “It was like thiz, now. The stage was all hung in black drapes, black as night they were. Nize material, looked like, probably black velvet. Anyways”—she closed her eyes for a moment and screwed up her features a bit as if that might help her remember—“right in the middle of the stage was this black box—the cabinet, that was—inside a big huge box made all of glass. Like a little room of glass built right there on the stage—walls, ceiling, and everything. Had a door, too. Only thing wasn’t glass was the frame of the thing, to hold it up, you know.”
Fascinating! I thought, but did not interrupt.
“So out comes thiz man what works with Ingrid Swann, her consurge or whatever he was—”
I doubted “concierge” was the word she’d been looking for, but accepted it without breaking into giggles, which took some effort.
“And he does his introduction: ‘Ladeez and gentlemens,’ and all that. Dee dum dee dum dee dum. Then here comes Ingrid Swann, and that whole audience gasps, everybody all at once, like some huge animal taking a breath. Oh, you shoulda seen her, she looked like a bride in a silvery dress, silver threads sewed right in. No, not a bride, more like an angel, or a fairy. You know, a good fairy like in one of them fairy tales. ’Ceptin’ no wings.”
“It must have been very exciting,” I contributed.
“Oh, it was,” she nodded, “it was that. Exciting, and she hadn’t never even done a thing yet. So she goes right up to thiz glass box and the consurge, he makes a coupla fancy passes at the door of the thing, like a magician, and then he opens it. And in she goes. In he goes, too. They both go right up to that other box, which is black and looks like a steam cabinet, you know with the head poking out and all the rest of the person inside.”
I nodded. Steam cabinets were a fairly common phenomenon, though I had certainly never tried one myself, nor did I intend to.
“Then the consurge, he opens that black cabinet up wide and calls two men out of the audience to come take a look-see, that there’s nothing inside it but only a stool for Ingrid to sit on. No false panels, no light switches, no levers nor strings to push and pull. Which there wasn’t. Then the men leave and Ingrid, she sits down on that stool and the consurge, he locks that cabinet up around her tight as a drum, with only her pretty head sticking out.”
Edna’s voice dropped a notch. “Then he leaves by the glass door, locks that, too. In her glass cage, Ingrid Swann, she closes her eyes while the consurge steps over to the edge of the stage—he has a real big voice, y’know—and says in a kinda confidential tone but not so soft as you can’t hear: ‘And now we must ask for complete silence and ab-so-loot stillness from the audience. Anyone who is easily frightened should be warned, you’re about to witness an eerie experience that is not for the faint of heart to see. If you think it might upset you, you should leave now, because any noise or other disruption during Mrs. Swann’s direct link of her body with the spirit world could cause her serious physical harm.’ ”
“You seem to remember it word for word,” I observed. Having such an ability myself, I recognize it in another, though I was frankly amazed to find such ability in the person of Edna Stephenson.
She simply nodded her head, as if she did this kind of thing so often that it was not worth remarking, and indeed she probably did. She went on: “You know what that blessed angel Ingrid Swann did right there on that stage in front of all those people, Fremont? She let the departed spirits, which is bodiless, use her own body for to make themselves hands and arms and feet and the like. Ectoplasm, that’s what they make it out of, and it come out of her. Out of Ingrid Swann. I seen it with me own eyes.”
“I can’t imagine!” I said, which was true.
“Well then, lemme tell ya.” She scooted forward again and told the rest of her tale with breathtaking urgency: “The the-ay-ter went almost all dark, just only a few little glimmers of reflected light from somewhere off her silvery dress, and off the frame of that glass house. Which you could see the inside of through the glass, of course.”
Her head nodded vigorously, and so did I.
“Such a silence that was, of waiting. All eyes on the woman. Then, little by little it starts. First like a wisp of white smoke curling out of her mouth. She breathes the stuff out, y’see, out of her nose and her mouth.”
Charming, I thought but did not say.
“So this white stuff keeps coming, and coming, till pretty soon it’s coming out of her in such a steady stream she has to open her mouth, and out it pours, and swirls around and begins to climb the glass walls of that box—that’s why the glass is there, y’see, so’s it won’t drift out over the audience. And my goodness me, did it ever get colder’n a witch’s titty in that the-ay-ter while Ingrid was a-doin’ her ectoplasmic extrusion.”
Now, I did
not believe in the least that Ingrid Swann was somehow using her own body to give shape to spirits, nor did I think that anything like ectoplasm actually existed. What I really thought was that the phenomenon of having discovered and harnessed an invisible substance—electricity—to do our bidding in such recent years had given rise to the thought that there might be many other invisible things that can be made to work for us … and this idea has sometimes been taken to ridiculous limits. As far as I was concerned, the concept of ectoplasm was right up there with the most ridiculous.
Yet, as I listened to Edna tell about Ingrid Swann alone on a darkened stage, inside her black cabinet, inside a glass box, with this substance—whatever it was—streaming out of her mouth, wreathing around her, I found myself more than half believing. Certainly I wanted to believe. And so I asked:
“Did the ectoplasm then form itself into a body? Any recognizable shape?”
“Hands.” Ha-a-ands, she said. “Fingers, long skinny fingers reaching out, feeling the glass of that box. It was just a demonstration, see, that she could do it. Not like a real séance where there might have been something happening.”
“And in a real séance, what would have happened?”
“Why, the ectoplasm would have formed itself into the recognizable shape of someone what’s passed on. Or the person in control—that’s the consurge—he’d ask it questions or tell it to do things, like hold a trumpet and blow it, ring a bell, rap on the table once for yes, twice for no, stuff like that. Which she didn’t do none of.”
“How long did it last?” I asked, unable even in my wildest dreams to imagine ever having such an experience.
Edna shook her head wonderingly, again looking like an old but credulous child. “Dunno. Long time, it seemed. Afterward, that’s when I got to go up.”
“Got to go up?”
“Uh-huh. From the audience, we could go up inside the glass box if we wanted. See the residue of the ectoplasm.”
In spite of myself, I felt a chill creeping along my skin.
“Like slime, it was,” Edna said.
15
———
The Spirits Are Moving
Wherever Michael had gone, he had not taken Max; which was a good thing, because of Bernal Heights being some distance away and not easy to get to by streetcar. In fact, since I did have the use of the auto, I had not bothered to ascertain whether there was or was not a streetcar to that part of town.
Mr. Conrad Higgins lived on Precita Avenue, a short street of Victorian houses clinging to a hillside with a spectacular view of the City of San Francisco in the distance, and the Bay with its boats and islands. I stood looking at that view for quite some time, because it refreshed me and gave me hope. I had found Edna Stephenson’s story of Ingrid Swann’s ectoplasmic extrusion to be both affecting and depressing, and in fact had felt, during the longish drive out from our house on the north end of Divisadero to Bernal Heights, as if a residue of the story itself were somehow clinging to me like that cold slime.
“Poor Ingrid,” I murmured. The logical part of my brain told me I should not feel sorry for her, because she must have been a charlatan of a very high order indeed to produce such an illusion; but some other part of my inner self, the part that is commonly called in sentimental parlance the heart, simply understood how hard Ingrid had worked, and how desperate she must have been, to produce this illusion. Finally, in spite of myself, in spite of my very best efforts, there was an even deeper, darker part of me that asked the question: What if it really happened? What if Ingrid Swann, at risk to her own health and certainly great expenditure of energy, had really produced the substance called ectoplasm out of her own body, so that spirits might have substance for even the shortest and most futile of explorations in that glass box?
“How lonely she must have been,” I murmured. In my mind I had such a vivid vision of her sitting enclosed, trapped, in that glass box. And now the poor woman was dead. All because some vicious, cruel person was murdering the mediums of my beloved City. Well, it just wouldn’t do.
I pulled myself together, marched up some very steep steps to a front door, and rang the bell. I was quite prepared for no one to be at home, as it was only the middle of the afternoon; but somehow I didn’t have the feeling that Mr. Conrad Higgins would prove to be a nose-to-the-grindstone type of man. Else why would a woman like Myra, also known as Ingrid, decide to leave him and earn her own way in the world in the manner she had, which ultimately had gotten her killed?
My surmises, or hunches, proved correct. I had to ring a second time, and stand waiting for a while longer but then the door opened inward to reveal one of the ugliest-looking men I had ever seen in my entire life. I instinctively moved back half a step, which on those narrow steps put me in danger of overbalancing and going right down the whole steep flight. But I was able to stop myself from that happening, and so cleared my throat and said, “Good day. Mr. Higgins?”
“Who wants to know?” That voice might have come up from a gravel pit. It suited his face, which was pitted, as if from the smallpox, and in addition looked as if it might have been pounded out of shape more than once. He had what I believe is called a cauliflower ear, and his nose had been broken so many times it lay like a squashed mass in the middle of his face. He was a good two inches shorter than I, but perhaps three times as broad. A nasty customer.
“My name is Fremont Jones.” I produced a card from J&K and handed it to this troll masquerading as a human. “I am a private investigator working on a case that has direct bearing on your wife’s murder. I’d like to talk to you. May I come in?”
“Wife?” He tilted his head back and to the side, as if that would help his eyes to emerge from the loose folds of flesh that draped from his eyelids down below the orbits. “Don’t have a wife. Haven’t had for years now. But come on in.” His eyes swept over me from head to foot as he stepped back to allow me entry. “You’ll see I’m telling the truth about there being no wife. Never realized till she was gone how much the woman must have done to keep things going around here.”
He did not exaggerate. Conrad Higgins lived like a pig. He acted worse, scratching himself with a dirty hand as he preceded me down the hallway, saying, “The kitchen I do manage to keep pretty clean. Also keep a pot of coffee going in there these days. Never know when a pretty lady will drop by. Heh-heh-heh.”
This last was accompanied by what he may have considered a coy look over his shoulder. Disgusting! It was really all I could do not to run away. “The kitchen will be fine,” I said.
I did not, however, accept a cup of coffee but asked my questions in a rapid-fire and efficient manner. I imagine I must have come off like a severe schoolmarm, because he gave me no more of those disgusting looks, nor did he seem anything but relieved when I decided I had learned enough and rose to take my leave.
Out in the fresh air once more, I took a deep breath and prayed (to the God I don’t quite believe in) that I should never, ever fall so low as this man had allowed himself to go.
On the drive back into the City, I mentally reviewed what I had learned from Conrad Higgins: First, Myra had been an orphan destined for “the fate worse than death, for a woman, if you know what I mean” when he had “rescued” her by marrying her; second, only two years later, he had tossed Myra out on her rear end (his inelegant words) for being an unfit wife when she had month after month demonstrated her inability to conceive a child; third, Conrad himself was a famous prize fighter, deserving of the best in wives, since he could “whup anything that stands on two legs and some that stands on four in the state of California”; and fourth, since it had been her fault he’d had to throw her out, and it certainly wasn’t his fault that his last fight three years ago had left him unable to continue in the ring on account of he’d lost his sense of balance, then it was only right she should now be supporting him. Finally (he’d roared in that gravelly voice), what the hell was he supposed to do for money now she was dead?
Not wanting to
put ideas into the head of this gross individual—the thought of Ingrid Swann’s delicate beauty in those hands being truly repulsive beyond belief—I had not asked about a will, or who would inherit whatever estate had been left. I assumed, since she had reputedly been so successful, there would be a will. Of course I must look into it. I was operating on the assumption that she would have legally changed her name. I should have to go to the Court House, the Hall of Records or some such. I wondered about the so-called brother, Ngaio Swann.
“He will have changed his name from something more ordinary, too,” I mumbled. “Nobody has as interesting a name as Ngaio Swann unless he has made it up himself.”
At any rate, the gross personage known as Conrad Higgins was extremely unlikely to have had anything to do with the death of his wife by either name, Myra or Ingrid. Because Myra Higgins had been his meal ticket, his only means of support.
As I proceeded into the City on Mission Street, I mused over something that had not occurred to me before: Why had Myra/Ingrid been so willing to support this despicable man? Was Ngaio maybe not her brother, and did the despicable husband know about that and use it to blackmail her?
“Hmm,” I said aloud.
I had a lot to look into. How much of it would have to be done before I dared leak the information about Conrad’s existence to the press, I did not yet know.
It was, I thought, a good beginning for Ingrid Swann’s side of my case. As for Abigail Locke’s side, the best entry I had there was probably still back in the office at Divisadero Street. Patrick Rule and Frances McFadden were all too likely, whenever they got together, to lose track of time.
———
“They’re in the kitchen,” said Edna as soon as I walked through the door. No hello, no “How was your afternoon,” no nothing, just “They’re in the kitchen.” It was really quite unlike the gregarious, not to mention garrulous Edna, so I nodded and proceeded on the assumption that “they” were Frances and Patrick, and that there was something going on that Edna did not particularly like. Actually her facial expression told me as much: Her lips, which were usually so busy flapping that I could not have told you the shape of her mouth to save myself, were compressed into a tight line.
