Pursuit

by Felice Picano

  That night, I attended upon Lord Tay and Pell at their club and seconded Pell’s contention that genuine materializations had occurred at such séances. “I am myself too frightened of such horrors,” I said with a shudder, “but I will go with you in the cab to the door, and leave you at the place.” In reality, I would get out on the next street, and slip back into the building to play my role.

  After some demurral, Laurence’s excitement was palpable.

  The other two attendees were already in place there, funereal in garb and aspect. They merely nodded to Pell and Tay’s greeting. A sober Thom Cullen, dressed in his usual suit but with black armbands and a dark turban upon his head wrapped by Vanessa, led the four into the heavily draped chamber. He seated them so that Lord Tay would face the alcove with the author on one side and myself as Swami on the other. The clients as well as Cullen would complete the circle. The alcove itself was semi draped, the statue of Erato in deep shadow.

  As they placed themselves around the circular table, I arrived, soot and blacking upon my nose, chin, and forehead, a pair of blue-glass spectacles in front of my eyes, and another turban about my head. My costume consisted of more drapery that Vanessa had wrapped around my slender form, cinched with a gaudy gold cloth belt.

  They were enjoined to all hold hands. “Once the circle is established,” I began in an accent that would waver all night, but never be fully comprehensible as one nationality or another, “it must not be broken until I say so. This is well understood, yes?”

  All agreed. Silence ensued, and then I began low-voiced chanting. At one point, Vanessa took up the chanting in a barely audible voice from her spot behind the drapes in the alcove.

  Not to be fazed, I intoned, “Heed! My spirit guide Althea is here.”

  The first spirit to make an aural appearance, thanks to Vanessa’s lowest tone of voice, was a gentleman named Anthony Parduc, “late of the shire of St. Albans,” who asked Thom Cullen if he had located his “long-missing traveling shave-kit in a tooled leather container.” His response had been prepared.

  Cullen answered, “But where shall I look for it?”

  “Under the watch case of mine you secreted upon your person moments before you announced my departure from this earth.” This was not the prepared answer, and Thom sputtered and wasn’t able to reply. This was sufficiently realistic for Laurence to be impressed.

  Next came a childish voice which the butler replied to, asking, “Is that you, Maisie?” Maisie said it was and to his consternation predicted he would be joining her soon, and they would play games as they used to do. “You recall, dear uncle, the ones with my skirts up and covering my face.” That rather stopped him from any more questions.

  Another longish silence ensued, and then Thomas released agreed-upon mist from beneath his chair, to cover over the alcove drapes and then reveal them opened. I as Swami announced, “A very strong presence has entered this chamber. My Althea says she is powerless to resist its baleful influence. She is going and—ah!” Suddenly the alcove was undraped and Vanessa as the Yorkshire Miss could be ascertained upon the plinth yet as though floating in the mist.

  Here a bit of luck was added to the evening. Not two days earlier, while looking through the photographic plates of a professional he knew, Pell had come upon one of Lord Tay and his brothers. One was distinctly thin, almost to the point of starvation, obviously quite ill. When Pell asked a friend in the club that evening, he was told the brother had since died. His name was Afton.

  Vanessa was saying in a soft voice, “Afton, Afton, Afton, come back, come back, fear me not. For I am more than a sister to you.” She repeated this until it was loud and clear enough to be heard.

  “Oh, God. Are they together even now?” Lord Tay shouted, and kicked the chair from under himself as he attempted to rise. He had been carefully placed, however, and he could not get away from my own tightly gripped fist on one side and Pell’s on the other. Both of us struggled while enjoining him to not break the circle no matter what he did.

  “Afton. Afton, wait for me!” Vanessa moaned in a dying voice, then the mist returned, and Laurence slumped over the table. Soon enough the drapes were fully shut over the alcove, and I called an end to the séance.

  Released, Lord Tay leapt up and rushed into the alcove only to find the statue of Erato there.

  “Why so agitated?” Pell asked. Laurence turned to him with agony written upon his face. “I stole her from Afton in life. I told her he could never be well enough to be a husband and father. And now they spite me in death by being together!”

  ✥ ✥ ✥

  Distraught he may have been, but Lord Tay ended up serving me very well indeed. Word of that sensational communication with spirits led to several members of the club, and indeed Laurence himself, begging for another such opportunity to commune.

  We conspirators naturally felt vindicated. I found myself thinking this might be a lucrative and less physically demanding manner of earning my keep and it might be a bit more distinguished, once I thought about it. I was seventeen years old, nearly a grown man, and I’d experienced a great deal that London and its environs might offer the ambitious, intelligent, otherwise indigent lad. Even so, I must acknowledge that problems existed with repeating, never mind expanding, that first séance as or more successfully.

  One of these was almost immediately solved when Thom Cullen revealed he was chums with the messenger lad of the employment bureau that had in fact sent him to me for work, an agency that supplied service to the best families in London town.

  “Meaning what, exactly,” I asked.

  “Meaning sir, I have an in on private information.”

  “An in on whom?”

  “Well, sir,” Thom Cullen said, pulling out the little bound notebook of foolscap I had given him the first day he’d been hired and rattling off a dozen names. “Will any of those do?”

  “I believe so. Yes, indeed.”

  I promptly raised the lad’s wages.

  The following day I met Ex-Queue at the club and showed him the list, suggesting that we expand our field of spiritism.

  “Who is this fellow, then?” Meaning Cullen’s friend. “Not one of those for-hire detective fellows?” he asked. He’d been thinking about the subject after rereading Wilkie Collins’s novel The Moonstone, and he thought this private detection business was an idea worth looking into further to write up and possibly even work up into some sort of story for the magazines.

  “He’s merely a messenger, although a very well-connected one. Hardly a for-hire detective, although my own lad seems to have a talent for the work.”

  “Anything at all subversive is exactly up his line, eh?” Pell asked smarmily. Before I could answer, he pointed to the list. “These two names and perhaps this name here.”

  “As I’d hoped.”

  “But you understand that expanding this sort of thing would go well beyond merely a lark or two.”

  “I’m well aware of the fact, Mr. Pell.”

  “It will require time, planning, and something of an outlay of expenditure.”

  “Again, I concur, Mr. Pell. But with Lord Tay as good as a shill for us already,” I pointed out, “advance promotion would be the least of our expenses.”

  “At least one rather large handyman would be required,” Pell said. “For heavy lifting and other sundry activities.”

  “For security purposes also. Yes, I think I know just the fellow, Mr. Pell.” I was thinking of Michael Aloysius, whom I’d spotted outside his Lambeth Private Postal Clerkship while passing in a cab.

  Surprisingly, while she thought the idea both “barmy and beautiful,” Vanessa begged off, citing her all-encompassing new interest in equestrian activities. Someone or other at a house party had gotten her enthusiastic over Arabian bred stallions, and she’d gone into it, as with most things in her life, head over heels. Me and Pell scarcely saw her for our bi-weekly games in my chambers. But when asked about the séance business, she said she might allow
herself to be drawn back at least one more time, if it meant with Laurence, Lord Tay himself, for whom she admitted she possessed a soft spot.

  That final bedside romp trio took place in her own rooms, with a somewhat inebriated, although by no means limp, Scots peer, an ardent me busily undressing him, and once that had been accomplished, Eugene appeared and unbuttoned what lay beneath his trousers for Laurence’s surprise and delectation. Tay was just sober enough to enjoy both youth and lady. When he was placed inside a cab and sent home some hours later, he declared, “I shall return,” to their amusement.

  But before he could deliver on that promise, he fulfilled my prediction and delivered new clients for the séances. Nor was he above adding information of a rather intimate quality beyond even what Thom Cullen and his confederate might discover to aid in our productions.

  Those two hireling youths became the leading behind-the-scenes practitioners of the séances, while Michael Aloysius—eager to gain additional income as well as regain a spot in my own bedchamber, came up with new and often unusual methods of producing the spiritualist evenings. For an example, he had laboured for a musical supply depot for some months while still a lad, and so he introduced various horns and pipes and organs which might be hidden off-stage, as it were, to emit eerie sounds, moans, groans, and even passable animal mewls as needed.

  But then Pell himself became more often indisposed or otherwise occupied with various dinners and salons he decreed he simply must attend. No matter. He was no longer absolutely required. Of course, that also meant the financial take from each séance was no longer divided but single, except payouts to those hired. Even so, I found that one of these performances a week produced enough income that I now need accept fewer visitors for my other type of employment, and from an even smaller and even more select company of gentlemen.

  After a while, Lord Tay stopped coming, too. In the club, it was being bruited about that he and Eugene were now the fastest of friends and boon riding companions, spending increasing amounts of time together.

  Pell’s newest—and slimmest—volume of verse was published and achieved an astonishing groundswell of positive reviews. That meant increased sales, and a second and then third printing was ordered. No one could be more astonished, nor more grateful than Ex-Queue himself!

  After several more months. it all seemed so flowing, so easy, that it couldn’t last—and it didn’t.

  ✥ ✥ ✥

  “Where, lad, is my tea?”

  “There is none.” The lad was completely confused.

  “Then ask Cook for some.”

  “Cook isn’t there. Butler neither. The fire on the hob is out. No one is to be seen in their rooms neither,” Cullen reported. “I thought it oddly quiet when I woke, although they are never noisy folk.”

  I wrapped my robe more tightly around myself and, taking Thom by the hand, walked him down the stairs to the chambers below.

  Vacant, as reported. Without a fire, as reported. All three chambers, including the servants’ bed and sitting chambers empty, their wardrobe closets empty of clothing. All of it clean enough but bereft of human—even of feline—company. That was perplexing enough.

  “No word at all of them leaving?” I asked.

  “None to myself, sir,” Cullen reported.

  “Nor to myself. And the cupboards are equally bereft of food.”

  “Shall I go down and out to the Widow’s Mite,” he said, naming a local public house we sometimes utilized at odd hours, “for tea and toast, sir?”

  “Why don’t you?” I handed him some coins from my robe pockets.

  While Thom did that, I went back upstairs and dressed for the street. I then descended and knocked on Vanessa’s front door. And waited. And knocked. And waited. When no one came to open it, I went back to the street, opened the gate there, dropped three steps down to the service entry, and knocked at that door. Also to no avail. Looking in the windows there as best as I might, I was greeted by what seemed to be unoccupied servants’ and kitchen rooms. It was as though Vanessa, her servants, and her entire household had overnight removed themselves to another location entirely, without word, without warning, with never a fare-thee-well.

  We ate breakfast, master and man, together, hungrily, yet in a state of much perplexity. I’d given Thomas enough coins for a larger repast: rashers of bacon, parboiled eggs in little cups, a heap of toasted bread with pots of butter and jams, as well as a substantial metal pot of strongly brewed tea. We ate, we drank with appetite, and between mouthfuls, we two chewed over the mystery. We had been at the little theatre for a séance and as usual had arrived home quite late the previous evening, and all had been—as usual—dark when we came in quietly.

  I started up and went to my bedchamber and jacket. Sure enough, the pay for the evening’s entertainment was intact. Some more recent of my savings were in a drawer of the large wardrobe in his room. But the bulk of it had been placed for security in a wall safe in Vanessa’s own bedchamber. If no one else returned there, I would have to find a way in and pry it open. If it was even there?

  “It’s gone!” I said, thinking aloud. “It must be, all of it. With them.”

  “Sir?”

  Just then we heard a loud knocking at the door two floors below. Thom leapt up to go answer it.

  “Wait.” I pulled him back and went to a small window from which we might look out and down without being seen.

  Two stout men, and with them a bobby. What in the world?

  “Bailiffs, sir!” Thom said, pulling me back in. “I’ve seen their kind before. They have come to evict or arrest or both. Shall I go let them in?”

  “No. Follow me.” I dragged Thomas into my bedchamber, pulled out a travel case, and began tossing in my best clothing, leaving some still hanging by a shoulder or sleeve. I then filled up a smaller case with my personal effects. My money I kept upon my person. Below, the knocking was added to by shouting of an intemperate nature. “Climb out back here,” I directed Thom, “and get to the rooftop with all this, and cross over until you are well away from these buildings.”

  “But, sir, what about you? They’ll take you in.”

  “We’ll see about that. Go now, and we’ll meet at the back door of the news-seller’s stall. Go, now.”

  I then hid the breakfast remnants in a cupboard, ruffled my clothing and hair, and went down to answer the door.

  “It’s about damned time,” one fat elderly man declared.

  “’Twas sleeping,” I said with as much of a Villa Sheen accent as I could recall.

  “We are bailiffs of the law, and we have a writ here to come demand payment,” the other stout fellow thundered as they pushed past me and began up the stairs.

  “Master’s asleep, he is!”

  “Not for long, he isn’t,” the second fat one shouted. “Awake! Awake up there!”

  I had intended to slip out past them, but the constable remained at the doorway and looked at me as though daring me to try it.

  “Get upstairs and help them fetch your master!”

  I went up slowly and with a poor grace, in time to see the bailiffs take a look around the servants’ quarters.

  “Not a soul,” one thundered. “Not even a fire lit.”

  “Whose chamber is this?” the other thundered. It was Thom Cullens’s bed chamber.

  “Mine, sir. You just woke me from sleep from here. Shall I go fetch my master for you?”

  “You remain here,” one said to him. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Bill,” he said to his companion in a lower voice.

  “Aye. Me too, Burt,” the other said angrily. He pushed me into Cullen’s bedchamber and attempted to lock the door behind him. But the lock was broken, so he wedged a stick in there instead.

  I gathered up as many of Thomas’s few belongings as I could, wrapped them inside an overcoat, and wrapped all that about with a tightened belt. I opened the single little window from his bedchamber and dropped the bundle onto a jutting rooftop. It wouldn’t
be difficult to climb up and retrieve it later on. I then dressed himself in what outer clothing and cap remained to aid my disguise as servant lad, and sat waiting, until I heard their shouting and thundering steps back down to my floor, where they thrust open the door. “He’s skipped. He’s made a run for it, that rum master of yours! Where’s he gone to?”

  “What? Who? Where? Isn’t he upstairs?”

  “Damn you, he is not!” one declared.

  “He’s made a run for it. Skipped,” the other said. “Left the landlord in the lurch for six months’ rent and he’s run off!”

  “In a hurry, too. Left much behind, although when sold that will not come near to what he owes.”

  “What my master owes who?” I asked, genuinely confused.

  “Why, this building’s owner. He who owns this and the next building over.”

  “P’raps he’s over there, then?”

  “We tried it. That’s shut up as a tomb. And you may not remain here another minute, either. This house, this entire premises is under formal eviction!” the first bailiff shouted.

  He pulled me out the chamber door, and I cringed, servant like, and begged. “Is he not upstairs, then? Master?”

  “I just told you he isn’t.”

  “He’s done a skip, lad. A skip. If you are owed wages…”

  “A half-sovereign. I was due a half-sovereign!” I mewled as I let them push me down the stairs to the entry, Thom’s clothing upon me.

  “No half-sovereign you shall see, my lad, I fear,” the constable said to me, more kind then the others. “Here then! Here’s a two-penny! Get you some grub.”

  I looked at the coin in my hand but quickly closed it, as it was so clean and manicured a hand. Certainly not the hand of a servant.

  “Now, get you gone!” The stoutest of the two pulled me away from the outside door while the other reached into a leather case he’d left down at the door. He began nailing it shut with hammer and brads, as the other tacked up a printed notice that read: Eviction of Premises. Do Not Enter!