A Rich Full Death

by Michael Dibdin

  It was at eight o’clock on Wednesday evening that I set out for the ancient palace in one of whose remoter nooks and crannies the Misses Chauncey live, as frugally as a pair of Reformed Church mice. The palazzo in question is one which really merits the name, which is applied here to any sizeable pile. It dates from the early Fifteenth Century, and originally belonged to a more than usually unpleasant branch of the Strozzi family. This clan having killed themselves off long since, the place is now divided into a multitude of small shops, offices, suites of apartments, storerooms, studios and garrets. In addition to the obligatory private dungeon, the entire structure is rumoured to be a maze of secret passages and concealed doorways, without which no well-appointed residence of the period was deemed complete. In short, the place fairly reeks with ‘atmosphere’, giving the impression of being packed like a sponge with History-the contents oozing out at the lightest touch of a sympathetic imagination. For anyone with an interest in spirits and ‘the other world’, no more suitable address could be imagined.

  I was welcomed on my arrival by Miss Kate Chauncey, the younger of the two sisters-although ‘younger’ is very much a comparative term in this case, for neither of them will see fifty again. She stayed in the background for the rest of the evening, as indeed she must have done for the rest of her life; for it is Miss Edith who has ‘powers’ and ‘gifts’ and is in short a ‘medium’-and one whose reputation is such as to allow her to live, albeit modestly, on the offerings of her followers.

  My contacts with this lady had thus far been of the slenderest. I had heard of her-one could not help hearing of her-on every side, for spiritualism is very much the vogue here. How can it fail to be, offering as it does both mystical experiences and practical advantages? It is as though it were discovered that viewing Canova’s ‘Pauline Bonaparte’ by moonlight was a cure for consumption. On the one hand, you are offered beauteous visions from the land of faery, and on the other the chance to commune with your late spouse, or chat to Napoleon. Indeed, I suspect that my resistance to the movement hitherto may in the last resort have amounted to little more than a feeling that it was all rather too good to be true.

  However, I never dreamed of mocking the spiritualists to anyone here: they are much too influential for that. There are of course a few die-hard sceptics-notably Mr Browning, who seems to regard spiritualism with a particularly virulent fury, as something not merely untrue but unclean, like a nigger fetish cult. Indeed, his behaviour has apparently been so extreme on some occasions in the past that some spiritualists here regard him as little short of deranged.

  The whole movement is of course still at a pre-Nicene stage of indulgent toleration, but despite this, I was extremely surprised to find that the first person I saw on entering the Chauncey’s sitting-room was Miss Jessie Tate. This female is really the most extraordinary personage, even by the standards of the Florentine exile community. She is about thirty-five years of age; strong, stocky, almost burly in appearance, with a shock of fiery red hair and an almost violently animated manner; lives alone, smokes the local cigars, and worships Giuseppe Mazzini, whose daggers and bombs she believes will liberate Italy-although who is to liberate it from such liberators she does not say. She talks so hard you seem to hear the tumbrils rolling and the guillotine swish, and although radicalism is rife here-indeed it is as much de rigueur as spiritualism in many circles-Miss Tate is generally considered to take things a deal too far. To come upon her there in the Chaunceys’ old-maidish parlour was therefore as unexpected a shock as finding a tarantula in one’s bed.

  Far more disturbing, however, was to learn why she was there. The discovery that Jessie Tate is an adherent to the spiritualist cause was not in itself any particular cause for astonishment: spiritualism appeals to all manner of people for all manner of reasons. As far as Miss Tate is concerned it is apparently part of something called ‘the wave of the future’, which as far as I could gather means that faith in kings and priests is to be replaced by the scientifically demonstrable doctrines of socialism and spiritualism, the latter providing the transcendental ingredient without which the former would become a mere mechanistic materialism incapable of satisfying mankind’s higher needs.

  This, then, was enough to explain why Jessie Tate was attending a ‘seance’; it did nothing to explain why she was attending that one. For the intention was apparently to assemble a group of people whose relations with Isabel had been particularly close; since, as Miss Chauncey explained, ‘the spirits will only respond if the ectoplasmic vibrations are in harmony’: which I take to mean roughly that the inhabitants of the spirit world, like the rest of us, are more likely to accept invitations when the company is agreeable. If close relations with Isabel had been the criterion of inclusion, then what on earth was Miss Jessie Tate doing there?

  Well, I was not long in finding out, and the answer left me feeling even more ‘streaked’ than the discovery that Isabel and DeVere were lovers. For what did I learn but that Miss Tate and Mrs Eakin had been the greatest of friends, and used to meet tete-a-tete at least once a week!

  What they found to talk about I find as difficult to imagine as I do what possible attraction Miss Tate’s society could have had for a woman like Isabel. The inverse appeal is of course no very great mystery, given Jessie Tate’s presumed amorous propensities. I can only suppose that all her talk of a brave new world proved titillating to Mrs Joseph Eakin. After all, she had hooked herself a millionaire and could therefore afford the luxury of cultivating revolutionary blue-stockings. No doubt realising, however, that her ideas would cut precious little ice with Joseph Eakin himself, Miss Tate always took care to visit Isabel in her husband’s absence.

  The only other person present on my arrival was Seymour Kirkup, a fantastic old gentleman whom I was surprised to see there only in the sense that it seems as remarkable to see him out of his own home as to see a turtle walking about without its shell. To do justice to this extraordinary character I should require Mr Dickens’s genius for caricature, combined with the antiquarian charm of a Walter Scott, a touch of Sterne’s crankiness, and more than a hint of the outright horror and madness of our own poor Edgar Poe.

  Baron Seymour Stocker Kirkup, to give him his full name, seems older than the city itself, whose every stone he knows. He is an accomplished student of Dante, of whose works many rare manuscript versions are to be found in the fabulous library which fills several rooms of the old palace he inhabits. Just for good measure, this building-which overlooks the Arno at the south end of the Ponte Vecchio, a few doors from where Cecil DeVere lived and died-was the Florentine headquarters of the Knights Templar until the brutal suppression of that mysterious order five and a half centuries ago. It contained the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, whose whereabouts Kirkup claims to have discovered by means of necromancy. He also claims to hold conversations with Dante, who revealed to him the location of his portrait by Giotto, which had been whitewashed over. It is even believed in some quarters that he possesses the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone! All in all, then, Kirkup is an eccentric although well-loved member of our little community-and one who enjoys the rare distinction of being notorious among the Florentines, who in general take as much notice of us as cattle of the flies that pester them in summer. Indeed, one reason Kirkup so rarely leaves home is that he is apt to be pursued through the streets by gangs of children yelling ‘Stregone!’ This means a sorcerer, one who exercises power through the agency of evil spirits; which may all seem mere superstitious rubbish in bright breezy Boston, but is still taken very seriously here.

  And his connection with Isabel? I was ready for anything by now, particularly since I knew that Kirkup is given to recognising spritualistic ‘gifts’ in pretty young women-one of whom, a former servant, he has installed in his house, where she has subsequently proved to be with child. It turned out that my idea was not very wide of the mark, except that this was no mere senile fancy of Kirkup’s: no less an authority than Miss Edith Chauncey herself informed m
e solemnly that Isabel had had all the makings of a highly-gifted ‘medium’. Indeed, Miss Chauncey seemed to regret her ‘passing over’ almost solely for this reason. In all other respects, she assured me with a rather sickly smile, dear Isabel is so much better off ‘on the other side’, and once established over there will become a first-rate ‘control’ (whatever that may be)-indeed, it was for precisely this reason that this initial attempt to ‘make contact’ had been arranged.

  I could not help feeling an instinctive revulsion at all this. There we were, five respectable gentlefolk seated in a primly decorous sitting-room, nibbling Miss Kate’s home-made cookies and chatting equably about the great army of the Dead, who it seems have nothing better to do than hang about their former haunts, as ubiquitous and pervasive as some stale odour.

  Our company was not yet complete, however. It seems that the number required to initiate an experience of this kind is seven-a figure of considerable mystic significance, according to Kirkup, who treated me to a disquisition on numerical symbolism in Dante which might well have been considerably more protracted but for the arrival of the remaining two guests.

  It having been established that these would be people whose relations with Isabel had been particularly intimate, the first thing to strike me about the newcomers was the fact that they were gentlemen. Well, one of them was, at any rate: Charles Nicholas Grant, an Englishman of some fifty years of age, whose family are long-established in the wine importing business. He is blessed with one of those faces which immediately inspire respect and trust, so clearly is it stamped with the great English civic virtues of rectitude and fair-dealing. So what had Isabel and Mr Grant been up to, that he should be invited to help contact her spirit? Well, it seems that Grant’s contacts with the Eakins were originally all with Joseph. However, he soon succeeded-as indeed was no matter for surprise, given the charming urbanity of his manner-in ingratiating himself with Isabel, whose passion for art he had helped to gratify by accompanying her on pilgrimages to various galleries, churches and palaces to which her husband, having once paid his respects, declined to return.

  I should point out that Joseph Eakin shared the notion, not unknown among our fellow-countrymen, that the Uffizi and Santa Croce are comparable to such domestic points of pilgrimage as, say, Paul Revere’s house, or Bunker Hill, in the sense that a decent curiosity to view them may be satisfied by a single visit, and that any desire to go back smacks of excessive enthusiasm. Whereas Mr Jarves remarked to me recently that it was only on the fourth or fifth visit that he began to ‘see’ a picture at all-as opposed, that is, to seeing his ideas of it, or what other folk had told him they had seen, or what he had read somewhere he should see, and so on. Isabel, apparently, agreed with him-or at least wanted to get out of that glacial villa and down to the life and bustle of the city streets. In either case, Mr Grant served as an escort to whom her husband could not possibly object.

  The other person I did not know at all-which you must understand speaks less of me than of him. For without any wish (for indeed I have no need) to brag, anyone that I have not met at least once must exist in some sense upon the fringes of society, unwilling or unable to gain admittance. I have no way of knowing which was the case with the Very Reverend Urizen K. Tinker.

  This individual hails, unmistakably, from Illinois, being by his own account one of a veritable tribe of Tinkers begot with what sounds like indecent haste by a Chicago schoolmaster. Urizen K. seemed destined, if his luck held good, for a lowly clerkship in some canal company, when his life was transformed by the first in a series of communications from a source which he terms ‘Guard’. These communications concern themselves with the very largest issues: the nature of the universe, the meaning of life, the history and future prospects of the human race, and Mr Tinker’s apparently critical role in all three.

  As is invariably the case for men of destiny, Tinker’s early days were far from easy. He described in colourful terms the pettifogging and obscurantist attitude of various local churches in which he had attempted to have himself ordained, all of whom proved to be tiresomely insistent on the need for a minimum of theological qualifications, and deaf to Tinker’s contention that direct revelation-‘a telegraph line to the Deity’, as he vividly put it-was worth more than any number of ‘bits of paper’. And so, with that spirit of hardy initiative and independence which is said to characterise those who dwell beyond the Catskills, Mr Tinker promptly founded his own church, based on the usual biblical material, supplemented by the so-called ‘Prophetic Epics’ of one William Blake, a crackpot Cockney mystic-Urizen K.’s father had somehow got his paws on some of this Blake’s doggerel, lengthy extracts from which he used to read aloud to all the tiny Tinkers to help while away the long dark cold Chicago winter evenings.

  Well, all this was of course ludicrous enough-my only concern was to keep a face straight enough to avoid offending the Very Reverend Tinker, who like most autodidacts is extremely sensitive to slights. What interested me considerably more was the discovery that Tinker’s church is supported financially by the bottomless purse of none other than Mr Joseph Eakin! He thus sank even lower in my estimation-particularly when I learned that Tinker’s relations with Isabel had been encouraged by her husband, and this very much against her own wishes.

  I am happy to be able to report that in this matter, at least, Isabel’s behaviour was irreproachable. Unlike her fool of a husband-for these tough calculating captains of industry always have their Achilles’ heel, which some smart operator will find out-she held that the Very Reverend Urizen K. Tinker was an impostor and a buffoon, and made little or no attempt to disguise the fact. There can be no doubt about this, for I had it from the lips of the prophet himself, who reported his response to have been one of exemplary mildness.

  ‘I turned the other cheek, Mr Booth, sir; and when that would not avail, I turned the first one a-gain! But though meek and lamb-like, very, do not for one single solitary moment permit yourself to imagine that I could be detracted from my plain and bounden dooty. Do not! For you would err, sir, you would err. From that sacred path I would not deviate, nor could not be forced. Back I went to that unhappy female, a-gain and a-gain, in perpetuity and without respite. And but for the fatal catastrophe, I do not scruple to pronounce that the exquisite bliss of inducting a-nother stray sheep into my little flock would once more have been mine. Ah me, the bliss of succouring a lost soul, Mr Booth, sir! Verily I tell you, it is a very unique and exceptionable grace.’

  Hearing the wretched creature thus preen and prattle about having pressed his unwelcome attentions on Isabel, aided and abetted by that credulous pander of a husband, I could cheerfully have strangled him on the spot. Fortunately, Edith Chauncey chose that moment to announce that the proceedings would begin.

  14

  We were led through into a back parlour, hung with tapestries and very sparsely furnished: just a plain sideboard, supporting a single candlestick, and a circular table surrounded by seven high-backed chairs. On the table lay a semi-circular cloth with the letters of the alphabet inscribed around its rim, and two spaces within, marked respectively Yes and No. Nearby stood the small heart-shaped board mounted on rollers which the spiritualists term a ‘planchette’.

  When we had taken our places-this operation being supervised by Miss Kate-Miss Chauncey directed us to take the hand of the person sitting to either side of us. I complied with no very great enthusiasm, placed as I was between Miss Jessica Tate and the Very Reverend Tinker. Miss Tate’s member proved to be clammy, and given to frequent and presumably involuntary spasms; the man of religion had an almost fiercely positive grasp, which may have been intended to conceal the underlying tremor which I nevertheless detected.

  We were now directed to close our eyes, and to concentrate all our thoughts on Isabel. This I duly tried to do, but I found to my consternation that every image came out first as stiff as a waxwork, and then began to melt and run, producing that hideous discoloration and rictus of the corpse I wi
ll never be able to forget. To rid myself of these visions I opened my eyes-and was unnerved to find Edith Chauncey, who was sitting opposite, staring fixedly back at me with unblinking insistence, as though inspecting some interesting detail etched on the interior of my skull.

  I immediately assumed that I had incurred her displeasure by disturbing the ectoplasmic vibrations, or whatever. A moment later, however, I realised that her stare was too intense and unyielding to be a glare of disapproval, however strong. What was disturbing in her expression-as with that of a blind person — was what was not there: direction, focus, intent. Those eyes did not see me, did not see any of us. Edith Chauncey had entered her trance.

  Her sister now instructed us to open our eyes, release our hands, and place the index finger of our right hand on the planchette. The little board rolled idly about for a moment or two under the various impulses it received, and was still.

  For a few minutes nothing whatever happened. Then, so faintly at first that it was only after hearing it for some time that I understood what it was, a voice became audible in the room: a low resonant voice, unlike any I had heard so far. But I soon realised that it was emanating from Miss Chauncey’s throat, although at least an octave deeper than her usual organ.

  ‘Isabel … Isabel … Isabel …’ she intoned, drawing the word out so lengthily that it sounded as though she was about to formulate a question concerning the nature of bells.

  My feeling had at first been one of lively interest, coupled with a little natural apprehension. However, as time went by, and Edith Chauncey’s trance-voice droned on, repeating Isabel’s name over and over again, with intervals of silence during which I became uncomfortably aware of a dull ache in the arm which was extended to touch the planchette, it all began to feel like one of those ‘improving’ Saturday evenings which my mother and her cronies used to get up for the Boston Women’s Guild, when someone would recite half of Southey’s ‘Vision of Judgement’, and you had to sit very very still and try to look as if you didn’t care how much longer it went on.