Woman Who Spoke to Spirits

by Alys Clare

  But Felix is desperate to know. Instead of a direct question, he remarks instead, ‘Just now you said poor Violet.’

  It is Arnold Pilbury’s turn to look as if he’s deciding how much he can reveal. After a short silence he nods to himself, as if in response to some privately posed question, and mutters, ‘It is all in the records, anyway.’ Then he looks up, meets Felix’s eyes once more and says, ‘Archie Twort was already married.’

  Poor Violet indeed, thinks Felix.

  He waits.

  ‘Archie Twort was a conscienceless man,’ Arnold Pilbury pronounces eventually. ‘He was handsome, charming, and he had a way with the fair sex. He was a local man but he went away to sea when he was young, and his family heard not a word from him for years. He’d been in the Royal Navy, the rumours said, and at some point his disregard for rules and regulations must have caught up with him, for the story goes that he was dismissed. He returned to the area, which was when he met Violet – Violetta, I suppose I should say – when she was appearing in a delightful little comedy at the Dippers’ Steps Theatre. Do you know it?’

  ‘I do,’ Felix says.

  ‘He swept her off her feet, as the saying goes, and there must have been intimacy between them, for when they came to see me to ask me to marry them Violet admitted that she was expecting a child.’

  ‘I do not believe that anybody in her professional life knows of Florence’s existence, nor that Violet is married.’

  ‘In fact she is not married,’ the rector corrects him gently, ‘for, with Archie already wed, the marriage is bigamous and thus invalid.’

  Felix sits back, trying to work out the ramifications of this. He wonders if Violetta is aware of her true marital state. He’s about to ask when Arnold Pilbury says, ‘She came down here, of course, for her confinement. She had always got on well with Beryl Twort, who of course is her aunt by marriage, only of course she isn’t.’ He smiles sadly.

  So that is how Violetta has kept her secret, Felix thinks. And also, he supposes, why she keeps returning to the town to perform in a pretty but surely not very important little theatre. Because this is where her daughter lives.

  Her beautiful thirteen-year-old daughter, who labours in a brickworks. Oh, Violetta, he thinks, was there not something better you could have come up with for her? Once again, his heart is struck with pity. This time, it’s for both mother and daughter.

  Silence falls. There is a post prandial sense of torpor, and Felix guesses that the Reverend Mr Pilbury is keen for his unexpected guest to go so that he can slump into his Sunday afternoon nap.

  Felix puts his empty cup back on the tray and stands up. ‘Thank you very much, sir, for the information and for the very welcome cup of tea,’ he says.

  The rector looks up at him. ‘I expect,’ he says with surprising shrewdness, ‘that Violet is wishing to marry, and that is why you have come chasing after my parish records.’

  Felix doesn’t answer, which is a way of agreeing.

  ‘Well, there is nothing to prevent her,’ Arnold Pilbury goes on. ‘Unless, of course,’ he adds with a smile, ‘she has taken another husband in the meantime. I would think that unlikely, however –’ his expression is sombre again – ‘for she truly loved Archie Twort, and I believe it broke her heart when she found out he had deceived her.’

  ‘So she knows?’ Felix says.

  The rector nods. ‘Oh, yes. The first wife tracked him down and came looking for him. He fled,’ he concludes succinctly.

  ‘I see,’ murmurs Felix.

  ‘Yes, that was the last we saw of Archie Twort,’ the rector says as he escorts him to the door. ‘I heard a rumour that he is dead – killed in a fight up in Birmingham, or it could have been Manchester … Liverpool! It was Liverpool.’ He nods.

  Felix thanks him again and steps outside. Just as he is about to walk away, Arnold Pilbury calls him back. ‘She is more sinned against than sinner,’ he says softly. ‘She has suffered, and it would be nice to think she might now find some happiness.’

  Felix meets his concerned eyes. ‘Rather how I feel too,’ he says.

  Then he tips his hat and strides away.

  EIGHT

  It is Monday morning, very early. Lily wakes soon after dawn, and out of consideration for the Little Ballerina – would that such consideration were reciprocated – she moves very soft-footedly around her top-floor rooms as she washes and dresses, conscious of her tenant on the floor below and aware that this tenant didn’t get home until the small hours.

  Monday is a Mrs Clapper day and washday to boot, and there will be steam, wet clothing and constant activity out in the little brick outhouse where the copper is. Mrs Clapper will still undoubtedly find the time to make something tasty for Lily’s midday meal. Lily has tried to persuade her to include Felix in her reckoning, and there are the first signs that Mrs Clapper’s fortifications may be beginning to crumble a little. She said grudgingly to Lily only last week as she set about preparing a steamed pudding, ‘Suppose he doesn’t turn his nose up at belly pork,’ which was definitely promising.

  But it is too soon even for the early bird Mrs Clapper to be here yet, and, if you ignore the Little Ballerina (easy to do when she’s asleep, for she sleeps very soundly for hours at a time; no doubt being a ballet dancer is extremely draining), Lily has the house to herself.

  She sits at her desk reading through her notes on the seance. She is secretly impressed by Felix’s smart black book and his note-taking habit and has made up her mind to emulate it. Now she has a list of those who attended Circle at the Stibbins house, and a neat diagram indicating where they all sat. She has recorded as well as she can everything that was said, and to whom.

  Now she tries to describe the sense of menace, but as she writes the hesitant words she realizes with dismay that she doesn’t seem to have been watching the one person whose reaction to it she should have observed the most closely: Albertina Stibbins. She is cross with herself. She has already planned to return on Tuesday – tomorrow – and she makes a firm resolve not to allow herself to be distracted, whatever happens, but to keep her focus firmly on Albertina.

  As she makes one or two further notes on what she intends to do next – she believes she should find out more about Albertina’s background, for example – she discovers how much she is looking forward to going over it all with Felix. And he, she thinks with a definite lift of the spirits, will be bursting to tell her how he got on in Tunbridge Wells, and exactly what it was that necessitated staying in the town for the best part of four days.

  She glances at her watch. It is a small gold half-hunter, and belonged to her Aunt Eliza. It’s rather a mannish item, and Lily, like Eliza before her, wears it on a long chain around her neck. She is often tempted to purchase a waistcoat with pockets and a suitably placed button on which to secure the larger link in the chain, but possibly her work attire is quite unfeminine enough already. She goes through into the outer office, for it is a little after eight fifteen and Felix will be here any minute.

  The next minute, as it turns out.

  The outer door is flung open, she hears his tread in the hall – his footfalls slightly uneven – and then there he is, the vivid colour in his face and the bright shine in his eyes suggesting he has been hurrying. She is taken aback by how pleased she is to see him.

  He opens his mouth to speak but she says, ‘Sit down, for you look a little out of breath. The kettle has only just boiled, so I will not be long making tea.’

  As she glides out of the office she catches a brief glimpse of his crestfallen expression, and instantly wonders if he thinks she was being overly repressive. If so, she regrets it.

  Returning with two mugs of tea, she says, ‘Come through into my office and pull up a chair. Now,’ she goes on when he has done so, ‘I would like you to tell me everything you have discovered.’ She sits down opposite him and smiles. He looks quite surprised – perhaps she doesn’t smile often enough – but recovers, takes a sip of his tea and takes o
ut his notebook. Then he tells her.

  Some time later, as she absorbs the details of Violetta da Rosa’s private past, Lily is struck by how hard Felix has worked. He has revealed how he walked round what seems like an endless list of churches in and around Tunbridge Wells, and now she understands his odd gait: she guesses he has rather sore feet.

  After a few moments’ reflection, she says, ‘So she became pregnant out of wedlock by this Archie Twort, but married him in plenty of time to make their daughter legitimate. Only, of course, she did no such thing, the marriage not being valid because he already had a wife.’

  ‘Yes, but she didn’t know!’ Felix protests.

  ‘I appreciate that.’ She smiles at him. She is impressed by his championship of Violetta. Such a forgiving attitude is rare in men, in Lily’s experience. ‘She was a victim of Archie Twort’s deception, of course she was, but our job is not to apportion blame.’ He opens his mouth as if to protest but she talks over him. ‘Mr Wilbraham, we have been employed by her young suitor’s father to determine what sort of a woman she is; in short, whether she is fit to be the wife of a man who will one day inherit a title, considerable wealth and several estates. Our job is to relate the facts to the man who is paying us to find them out, and I very much doubt that he will appreciate our marginal comments and footnotes explaining why Violetta acted as she did and why this does not detract from her good character.’

  Felix has a rebellious look in his eyes. ‘What sort of a woman she is,’ he repeats. ‘Your very words. She has suffered by another’s dishonesty, and in all innocence borne an illegitimate child, who she has hidden in that little cottage on the outskirts of the town. She visits her daughter as often as she can, and presumably, since Florence works in the brickworks and her great-aunt is a laundress and seamstress in a very small theatre, she supports the household. Surely that all speaks in her favour and suggests she is a fine woman!’

  Lily, moved by his passion, nods. ‘I quite agree,’ she says gently. ‘But then I am not Lord Berwick.’

  He begins to say something but then, as if her words and her tone have only just penetrated to his brain, he stops. ‘I do not wish to stab her in the back,’ he says mutinously.

  ‘No, and I applaud your sentiments,’ she replies. ‘But we are in business as investigators. If we allow our own strong emotional responses to colour our conclusions, if we gain a reputation for being anything but totally impartial, it will not be long before word spreads and the World’s End Bureau will have failed before it has had a chance to succeed.’

  ‘So what are we to do?’ he demands.

  ‘We do what we must always do. We tell the truth, hold nothing back, and leave the facts to speak for themselves.’

  He bows his head, and she thinks he has accepted her judgement. After a short silence he stands up, gives her a sort of bow and says, ‘Then I shall draft my report.’

  ‘Before you do,’ she replies quickly, ‘I would like to talk to you about what I found out in the Stibbins household.’

  He looks down at her. ‘You want to share it with me?’ Me and my strong emotional responses, hangs unspoken between them.

  ‘I do,’ she says.

  He draws in a breath and sits down again, and she relates to him almost all of what happened at the seance. She tells him what Albertina said to her, but she doesn’t reveal that the vision of the falling man described precisely how Lily saw her father’s death. She isn’t sure why she holds this back, but she finds she cannot confide it to him.

  He has been busy with his notebook and pencil while she has been speaking. She had thought perhaps he was doodling, but when she finishes speaking he waits for a few moments and then says, ‘So, Leonard Carter is in love with her, old Mrs Sullivan depends on her providing a link to her beloved late husband in order to go on with life, and the Sutherland father and son have some distressing mystery to sort out for which they need help from beyond the grave, which they believe she can relay to them, and we have no idea as to the nature of Mr Haverford’s reasons for attending.’

  ‘Er – yes,’ she says. It is a succinct but essentially accurate summation. ‘I should add that there are others who were not there yesterday but whom I observed on Thursday. There was a young woman dressed in unrelieved black and two middle-aged women whose resemblance to each other suggests they are sisters.’

  He makes some more notes. ‘And you felt that another entity was in the room,’ he says very softly, ‘one that you could not see but from which you felt a strong sense of menace.’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispers.

  He looks straight at her. ‘Of course you’ll be going back,’ he says tonelessly. Then, a fleeting expression too swift to read crossing his face, he says, ‘Be careful, Miss Raynor.’

  It is the second time somebody has cautioned her that she needs to take care.

  Not wishing to dwell on this, she says hurriedly, ‘I believe that our next step is to discover all that we can about these regular Circle members, for our first hypothesis must surely be that Albertina’s strong sense of being threatened originates in one of them.’ She stares out across the office, frowning. ‘I know Ernest Stibbins told you it was her spirit guides who were warning her of the danger, and that this meant the peril could emanate from anyone anywhere, but—’

  ‘But we have to begin somewhere,’ Felix, writing again, is nodding. ‘Yes, I agree.’

  ‘At the same time,’ she goes on, feeling a definite sense of pleasurable satisfaction that he sees it the same way, ‘I believe it is necessary to look into Albertina’s background. She came to London from St Albans on the death of her parents, so that seems a good place to begin.’

  Again he nods, but this time doesn’t speak.

  Lily waits until his pencil is still. Then she says, ‘I would like you to pursue the enquiries here, because—’

  Once again he leaps in. ‘Because they think you’re Miss Maud Garrett and we need them to go on thinking it,’ he says. ‘Furthermore, it was I to whom Ernest Stibbins first spoke, and by now he’s probably expecting some sort of a report from me.’ His face eager, he adds, ‘He’ll be at work but I’ll go this evening, shall I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There is a moment of silence. Then he says, ‘What do I tell him when he asks Mr Raynor what progress he has made?’

  She smiles briefly. ‘I suggest you mention that there are several areas of enquiry but you don’t want to reveal them as yet because if and when any of them turn out to be invalid, you prefer not to have cast suspicion where there was no need.’

  He nods again. ‘Yes. I like that.’ He makes another note. ‘Then I go through all the regular Circle members – I’ll just describe them and wait for them to provide names to fit, since it’d be stretching my abilities a little if I had somehow managed to find out all the identities – and ask them to tell me what they know about each one.’ He glances up and meets her eyes. ‘Do you think they’ll be forthcoming, or will some sort of professional confidentiality apply?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replies honestly. ‘If they are reluctant, you’ll simply have to remind them what’s at stake.’

  ‘Albertina’s safety,’ he says softly. ‘Yes. I’ll do that.’

  ‘And I think I shall go to St Albans,’ she goes on. ‘I cannot see how it can possibly get back to Ernest or Albertina that I have done so, her kin there being dead.’

  He is watching her. ‘Do you truly think that some dark shadow of her past is reaching out its malice to do her harm?’

  His words give her a sense of alarm, for the image he has unwittingly drawn is far too close to what she has seen. What she thought she saw, she corrects herself. She shakes off the sudden fear and says briskly, ‘I have no idea. That is why I am going to do what I can to find out.’

  He is getting to his feet, tucking away his notebook. ‘Very well,’ he says. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get down to work on my preparations for this evening’s meeting. I’ll need a full
description of all the Circle members, in due course, if that’s all right?’

  ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘I will prepare them directly.’

  She watches him return to the front office and his own desk. She had been going to go on to say that she is also going to take over the investigation into Violetta da Rosa and her suitability as a wife to Julian, believing as she does that Felix is not being entirely objective in his assessment of the actress. But, although her conscience whispers to her that she’s being cowardly, she elects to postpone that command.

  Shortly afterwards, leaving Felix studying her list of Circle regulars and working on his preparatory notes, Lily sets off for King’s Cross station and a train to St Albans.

  The journey takes under an hour, and she arrives in a pleasant town where a helpful woman tells her the way to the cathedral. Noticing its bell tower soaring into the blue sky just as the woman finishes, Lily quite admires the forbearance which held back the comment, ‘Use your eyes!’

  Lily pauses to look briefly at a noticeboard just inside the entrance, which tells her amongst other things that the Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban has the longest nave in England, as well as the saint’s shrine and its own Watching Tower above it and some fine medieval paintings.

  None of which, interesting facts though they are, has anything to do with the reason for her visit.

  She introduces herself to one of the vergers. After a brief exchange of pleasantries and an admiring comment or two from Lily on the longest nave in England, she admits that she has a purpose in coming here. She shows him one of the Bureau’s cards, and he raises his eyebrows in an unspoken question.

  ‘I am making enquiries on behalf of a man named Ernest Stibbins,’ she says, ‘who is anxious about the safety of his wife, Albertina. Now I understand her to be a former member of the cathedral’s congregation, and—’