by Issy Brooke
She strained her ears to here. Someone had raised their voice. She thought it was Simeon, but it was difficult to tell. Was he shouting? Then the voices faded. She held her breath.
The door opened and she heard the scrape of a chair. Phoebe must have stood up. There were the usual greetings. Phoebe addressed him as “Mr Bartholomew”, and invited him to take a seat.
“Would you like any refreshments?”
“No, no. I would like to get straight on with things, if I may. Thank you once again, Mrs Carter. I have high hopes for this.”
So do we, thought Marianne.
“Simeon, would you dim the lights, please?”
There was a rustling, and footsteps. The tiny strip of light that marked a gap between the door and the cupboard’s side went out. He would have lit a candle, but that was all.
“Take my hands, please. Simeon, will you wait outside? Thank you.”
There followed a period of silence. Phoebe had been told to wait until the candle blew out. They had rigged it, of course. The candle had been put on a small table by the far wall, near to a large and ugly oil painting. The painting concealed a hole in the wall which had been made for the purposes of a gas pipe during the renovations to the building. No pipe had yet been fitted, and it was easy work for Simeon to stand on the other side of the wall, poke his finger through to shift the painting to the side, and blow the candle out.
She heard Bartholomew mutter in surprise, and she guessed that it had happened.
Phoebe said, “Sometimes the spirits prefer darkness. Let us wait to see who might appear before we ask our questions.”
It was the sign for Marianne to carefully open the door and extend the stick which had the tambourine tied to the end. Everything felt different in the dark. She held it at arm’s length, the thin pole waving, and hoped that she had cleared their heads. She didn’t want to bop anyone in the dark. Once she judged it to be above the table, she began to rattle it gently.
She heard Bartholomew hiss and draw in a breath.
That was good. Their intention was to unsettle him, and convince him that he really was in the presence of the spirits, without going too far and putting on a show.
She carefully retracted the pole, trying to stop the tambourine from shaking again, and did not dare to breathe again until her hand closed over it, and she was able to silently draw it back into the cupboard.
Phoebe then went into her prepared script. “Ah ... yes. Yes, my control is here.” She began to drop her voice and alter the timbre of it. “A man wishes to speak to you.”
“Who is it?”
“Wait ... oh. There is something strange. He is unsure. He is confused. He thought that he had come to speak to you but he might have mistaken your identity. He is sorry but he is in the wrong place. He is not here asking to speak to Mr Edgar Bartholomew...” And she fell into silence, and they waited.
Marianne had inched her way back into the cupboard, pausing every other second to try to hold the fabric of her gown so that it didn’t make a sound. She was conscious even of her own silent breathing as she waited for someone to speak.
Finally, Bartholomew said, “Edgar? Is that you?”
In a very low voice, Phoebe said, “I cannot tell you until you confirm who you are. The spirit world is like a mist all around me. I cannot see. Oh, how cold it is here! I am alone and I am scared ... who is it that calls me? Who is it that is using my name?”
Even Marianne felt the hairs go up on her arms, and she knew that Phoebe was faking it. How much more effective it was, then, for people who expected to hear this sort of thing.
And Bartholomew cried out, “You know me! It is I, Wade, your friend! I have ever been your friend! Do you not know my voice? Oh, Edgar! Oh, God. It wasn’t supposed to have happened, not like it did. Tell me, tell me, tell me that you forgive me. It was an accident, by God! And if anyone should have died, then it should have been me – believe me when I say that every day since then has been a torture to me. Oh God! Edgar! Do you forgive me?”
“What happened?” Phoebe blurted out in her normal voice, forgetting in her horror that she was supposed to be speaking as the control spirit, or as the dead man. She hastily dropped her voice again and continued, “What happened? It is a blur. My memories are all mixed together. I was at my house and then I was ... lost. I was here. What did you do to me, Wade?”
“Tell me that you are all right! I have been hunting for you all over London. I only want to know that you forgive me.” Bartholomew – no, Marianne corrected herself, this really is Wade Walker, just as I suspected – sounded broken.
“What did you do to me, Wade?” Phoebe repeated.
“Our experiment. You must remember, Edgar, as we had been planning it for so long. It was that experiment to cheat death and discover what really lies beyond the veil. But now you are here, you can tell me! At last we have proof. I will write for the journals! Everything is proved” But it wasn’t supposed to be like this. We gave up so much. We gave up society and everything. For it to end in both failure – and yet success! Oh, Wade, have you found your Molly again? Is she there, too?”
“What did you do, Wade?”
The silence stretched out. Marianne perched in her cupboard, the door still open, but her hand on the handle ready to retreat. She heard a snapping sound, and thought it might be Wade licking his lips.
But before he could speak, there came a furious banging on the door, and shouting, from two voices – one was Simeon, calling “You cannot enter, sir!”
“By God I shall break down this door. Step aside, you weasel. You’re all in it together. Snakes, the lot of you!”
The door was slammed open and light flooded in. Marianne squirmed backwards, and dropped the tambourine as she tried to close the door, trapping her skirts. She had a glimpse of a small, squat man outlined in the doorway, and Simeon launching himself at the man’s back as if he were a monkey.
“This is a private séance!” Simeon yelled, trying to strangle the man.
Wade Walker leaped to his feet in alarm, and his first instinct was to rush to Phoebe’s side to protect her. “Mrs Carter, have no fear, I shall – wait. Who are you and what the devil are you doing?”
Marianne looked up at him from her tight spot in the cupboard. “Good evening. I’m the maid, doing some cleaning...?”
He grabbed her arm and hauled her out. Her monstrous skirts popped and unfurled at the back like one of Simeon’s flower tricks. He held her and said, “Oh – it is you, that dreadful meddler, Miss Starr. Did I not say that you should stay well away from me?”
“I was trying to, but you pulled me out of the cupboard.”
“And you’re damned cheeky, too!” snarled the stout interloper, still trying to prise Simeon from his back. He was currently smashing him against the wall, and Simeon was crying out with each blow.
This would not do. For the umpteenth time in as many days, Marianne pulled her gun from her handbag, and waved it at the intruder. She was getting quite good at it, now. She hoped that she would never have to fire it.
“Simeon! Get off that man. You, sir. Stand still. Who are you?”
Simeon relinquished his grip and slithered to the floor. The man shook himself and put his pudgy hands on his hips. He was dressed very smartly as a man of taste and wealth. He had young, twinkly pale eyes in a pink and white face, and was clean-shaven. And he was looking at Marianne with pure disgust. “Are you really Miss Starr?”
“I am, sir! Who are you?” she asked again.
“I see before me everything that is wrong with the so-called New Woman,” he spat out. “There is nothing more ugly than a woman threatening violence. Except perhaps a woman burdened with an education more befitted to a man. This makes you doubly ugly, Miss Starr.”
Even Wade Walker protested at the insult, and he had no reason to be kind to Marianne. And she felt sorry for him. She was going to take another scrap of comfort away from the man, and he was a murderer and a fool but he was a
decent one for all that, she thought.
She kept her attention, for the moment, on the man in front of her. “Who are you?” she insisted. “This is loaded, and you are an intruder, and I can happily shoot you for burglary.”
“I know you. I didn’t, at first sight, but I do now. Everyone knows you, Miss Starr, yet you don’t know me? You will. My name has been in the press more than yours has, this last month or so. Your star – ha ha! – will fade but mine is rising, and I shall take your place. I am Mr Harry Vane.”
She lowered the pistol. “The psychic investigator? Late of Vienna and Paris? The Mr Vane? Oh! I have been wishing that we might meet...”
“So that you might learn from a master? That, my dear, can never happen. It is time to clear the arena of silly women playing at science, and put the business of psychic investigation back firmly in the hands of rational men once more.”
She brought the gun back up level again, although her arm was getting tired and she could feel a tremor rippling through it. He laughed. “You cannot aim straight,” he said. “You have held it out, for too long, too stiffly.” He shook his head and looked at Wade Walker. “You see?” He didn’t need to add “silly women” but it was there, hanging in the air.
The attention on Wade seemed to wake him from his trance. He looked around at Marianne, at Phoebe, and at Simeon who was standing by the door and rubbing his wrist. “What is going on here? Why were you in the cupboard?” And then he looked back at Phoebe, at her inexpertly painted face, and at the matching paint and powder still smeared over Marianne. He saw the tambourine on the floor, and the pole. “It was all a trick, wasn’t it?” His lip twitched.
Marianne lowered the gun again. “Oh, Mr Walker – that is who you are, isn’t it? – Mr Walker, I am so sorry. But we needed to get at the truth. And that is the truth. You are Wade Walker, and you killed your best friend Edgar Bartholomew.”
“No, no, no,” he was saying in a miserable, heart-breaking stream of words. “I am Edgar, I am Edgar...”
“Simeon heard your confession,” she said, knowing that his testimony would count for more than hers or Phoebe’s. “And we also have scientific proof that you have been dyeing your hair.” She shot a dark glance at Vane. “My father did the tests,” she added with a sneer. “If that is any help.”
Walker hung his head and did not speak.
“We need the police here,” she said.
“I have done nothing wrong!” Vane said with a bark.
“This is not about you,” Marianne shot back. “For goodness sake, why are you here? Phoebe, would you go and find a policeman?” She did not want to be alone without Simeon present. Phoebe nodded and slipped past them all, and they heard her run down the steps and out into the street. It was not yet very late, and they all walked regular beats. She would find one quickly enough.
“I am here because I have been interested in the reports I heard of a certain Mrs Carter, new to the town,” Harry Vane said. “I thought she would be a good person to expose. However my initial observations of her premises revealed certain irregularities, and I grew even more suspicious today when there was a flurry of activity. I followed the mysterious persons and knew that something was amiss. And here I am, and I was right!”
“Ugh,” Marianne said. It was all she could think of. What a terrible way to meet one of her heroes, and what a terrible let-down too. She turned away from Vane again. Walker was looking dejected. He had sat down on a chair and slumped forward, broken.
“It is all over, isn’t it?” he said in a small voice.
“Yes,” she said, as kindly as she could. And then the police arrived.
Twenty-six
Phoebe had used her family name and connections to persuade a higher rank than a mere constable or even Sergeant Giles to come out. Inspector Gladstone was lean, lithe, young and personable. He spoke with a rough Cockney accent. Like so many of the up-and-coming police force, he had clearly been recruited from the streets, and had shown promise which had been rewarded with promotion.
He was assisted by an older constable who was not introduced to them. The constable took notes while Inspector Gladstone addressed Wade Walker first.
Wade hung his head. He muttered, “It is as you have been told.”
“No, sir, I need to hear this from your own lips.”
“I cannot. I cannot speak of it. But just come along with me, and I shall show you.”
“What do you intend to show us, sir?”
“The body of my friend Edgar Bartholomew, which is the man whom I have killed.”
Inspector Gladstone nodded as if it were a perfectly normal sentence to hear someone utter. Harry Vane, on the other hand, exploded into a barrage of questions.
“Hold on one minute!” he cried. “This woman here is a fake – a fraud – she is no medium at all! And she is being assisted by someone who claims to expose mediums. There is a crime happening here, right before our eyes!”
“Mrs Claverdon has explained her situation while we came from the stationhouse,” the inspector said. “I am aware of the business in which she and her cousin Miss Starr were engaged here and while I do not condone their methods, I am grateful to them and their efforts. Have you any business here at all, sir? Are you a witness?”
“To what? This travesty?”
“No, the murder.”
“What murder?”
“Constable, take his details. We will be in touch. Now, Mr ...”
“Walker. Wade Walker.”
“Mr Walker, will you please lead us on?”
“Certainly.”
Harry Vane stared after them in frustration and Marianne knew that she hadn’t seen the last of him.
“WHERE IS SIMEON?” PHOEBE hissed to Marianne as they walked, arm in arm, behind Wade Walker. He was flanked by the constable, who was ready at any moment to grab him should he try to flee. Behind them came Inspector Gladstone.
“I was going to ask you that.”
“He must have slipped away when the police turned up.”
“Silly man. He has nothing to hide, has he?”
“No, not at all. He just gets scared about things. He doesn’t like authority.”
Phoebe sighed. “He has some demons chasing him, doesn’t he? Does he indulge in laudanum?”
“No.”
“Maybe he should. Your father does all right by it, doesn’t he?”
“Hmm.”
It was fully night by now and the air was growing chilly. They began to walk more briskly by a mutual and unspoken agreement.
As soon as a vacant cab of a suitable size passed them, Inspector Gladstone flagged it down and commandeered it for official police use, and their journey passed quickly once they had all wedged themselves together within. It was slightly smelly, but a good deal warmer.
There was a light on in the window of the gatehouse but the cab driver took them right past it and up the driveway. He was ordered to wait while they entered the dark house. The constable accompanied Wade to the back of the house, disappearing down a corridor which seemed to swallow them in shadows while Phoebe, Marianne and Inspector Gladstone stayed by the open door, where at least a little light was provided by the grey clouds and the moon behind them.
The constable returned, carrying a lantern aloft, which filled the hall with shifting yellow and black shapes. All eyes were now on Wade.
“Show us what you need to show us,” the inspector ordered.
He hesitated. “No, I cannot – it is not for ladies. They should not have come. I did not think clearly. I feel as if I am in a dream. You know those dreams where you fall and fall and any minute, you expect to hit the ground?”
“Well, they are here now, and they are witnesses, of a sort. Bert, did you see any candles back there? We cannot leave them here in the dark.”
“You will not leave us here at all,” Marianne said. “I have seen dead bodies, and in some terrible states, too.” She thought of George Bartholomew, then, and the sympathy that s
he had been feeling for Wade evaporated. She pointed a finger at him. “I found your best friend’s son, sir, who died in agony at your hand.”
“What’s this? Another victim? Is this true?”
Wade nodded. “It is true. Oh, I am sorry.”
“How did this other man die?”
“By poisoning. White phosphorus, in fact,” Marianne said. “And I found the body. So I have no fear of what I am about to see. I am a woman of science,” she added. “I have a professional curiosity which overrides my natural feminine instincts and sensitivities.”
“I don’t,” Phoebe muttered, but she followed along anyway.
The constable kept even closer now to Wade as they ascended the main wide staircase. Their footsteps echoed on the uncarpeted floor. The air inside was even colder than it had been outside. Phoebe leaned on Marianne’s arm, and she was shivering. “I might wait at a distance,” she whispered to Marianne.
Marianne patted her arm.
They passed along a dizzy and disorientating series of corridors, and one narrow flight of stairs at the back of the house, until they were walking along a long gallery with a sloping ceiling. At the far end stood a door that was not quite the height of a fully grown man.
“In there,” Wade said in a croak.
“What will we find? Do we need to be prepared?”
“You will find a dead body. There is nothing to harm you – there are no traps, no tricks, no poisons. It is only the final resting place of my dearest friend, and the scene of all our folly.”
The constable and the inspector exchanged glances. Then, to the surprise of the constable, the inspector addressed Marianne. “Miss Starr, you seem to have uncommon knowledge about this whole affair. Can we believe what he says, do you think?”
“I think that you can.” She dropped Phoebe’s arm, and stepped forward along the corridor with Wade and the two policemen, leaving her cousin behind in the gathering shadow. “I have been piecing things together as we drove over here. Mr Walker, you only intended to half-kill Mr Bartholomew, didn’t you?”
