Interviewing the Dead

by David Field

  ‘We can always find you some useful work here appropriate to your talents,’ Adelaide remarked acidly. ‘For example, the floors haven’t been swept for three days.’

  ‘Very funny,’ Matthew growled. ‘While you appear to be devoting your life to ensuring that women are able to follow their own career aspirations, have some regard for mine. It might be a matter of some considerable, if light-hearted and ill-placed, amusement to you that I might be about to be blocked from the one mission in life that ever appealed to me, but please bear in mind that devotion to God’s work, while it might seem trivial and misguided to you, is not something that appeals to everyone. It requires as much dedication and self-sacrifice as banging the drum for women’s rights. ’

  ‘Sorry,’ Adelaide replied in a small voice that seemed to denote true regret.

  Matthew turned to go. ‘I’d better turn my mind to what I’m going to say when you set me up like an Aunt Sally in a fairground. And so I bid you good day. Save me the floor sweeping until after the public meeting and I’ll be there by six.’

  18

  Matthew was true to his word and as he walked the final few yards down Leman Street from where the horse bus had dropped him off in Whitechapel High Street he passed a long line of clearly excited people in a long queue, even though it was only a few minutes past six, and there was another hour to go before he delivered the address that he had completed only that afternoon.

  It was beginning to snow — light, hesitant flakes that gave the appearance of testing the ground ahead of their more insistent relatives in the cloud behind — and Matthew pushed between the two uniformed constables on the front door, intent on suggesting that the doors be opened early, in order to allow these poor folk somewhere dry, if not exactly warm, in which to escape the elements.

  When he went through the inner set of swing doors and emerged into the main hall in which he would be giving his address, he realised with a start why there was a queue outside. The place was already packed and he was about to face the biggest audience of his modest career. He would no doubt need to shout to be heard, which would hardly improve the quality of his message.

  In vain he looked from side to side for any sign of either Carlyle or Jennings, then his eyes lit upon a sizeable crowd, largely male, forming a queue of their own in front of a collection of trestle tables, behind one of which he could clearly identify Adelaide, smartly dressed in a formal blue costume with matching hat. She appeared to be playing cards with people who had succeeded in reaching the front of the queue, while smilingly handing out what looked like slices of cake. To her side, doing battle with a tea urn, was Clarice, the maid from the Carlyle household.

  Skirting the back of the queue Matthew made his way behind the trestles and smiled warmly at Clarice, who handed him the next cup of tea that she poured, nodding towards the milk and sugar on the table in front of her. Selecting milk but only one sugar, Matthew sidled over to stand beside Adelaide, who appeared to be ignoring him as she took a red card of some sort from each of the well-heeled males presenting one, handing them a slice of a delicious looking fruit cake in return.

  ‘If they’re dance cards, you’re going to be fairly exhausted by the end of the evening,’ he jested as he reached for a slice for himself, only to have his hand slapped away hard by Adelaide.

  ‘Sorry, but they’re only for certain invited guests. The ones with the red cards with their names written on them. They’re all members of the press and they received their cards along with their invitations.’

  ‘But presumably not all of them will accept their invitation,’ Mathew argued, ‘so there are bound to be a few spare slices, surely?’

  Adelaide glared at him as she replied, ‘We won’t know how many we’ll need until you start spouting your deathless prose, will we and even then there may be some late-comers, so hands off.’ When Matthew made a playful feint with his hand for one of the slices of fruit cake she grabbed his wrist in a vice-like grip and hissed at him, ‘If you touch so much as a smidgen of that cake, I’ll get my father to set about your innards with a stomach pump. Now get lost!’

  ‘Where is your father, anyway?’ Matthew asked as he made a big display of finishing off his tea and placing the empty cup down on the tablecloth.

  ‘In the room at the back, with Inspector Jennings and awaiting your arrival. Go down the right hand side of the stage and you’ll see the “No Exit” sign. Just ignore it and push through the double doors. The room’s on the left, just behind the stage.’

  Matthew did as instructed and found the two men deep in conversation. Jennings looked up as he saw Matthew entering and asked, ‘Did you see a load of bobbies in there?’

  ‘No,’ Matthew replied. ‘Are you expecting a riot, or what?’

  ‘Depends how things work out,’ Jennings replied enigmatically. ‘I’ll just nip up the road to the station and tell them to get a move on.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Mathew demanded suspiciously of Carlyle. ‘I was expecting a polite handful of people and more empty rows than full ones. Have you promised them a fan dancer as well as me? And why cake?’

  ‘All in good time,’ Carlyle told him. ‘Did Adelaide appear to be handing out much cake?’

  ‘She certainly prevented me from sneaking one,’ Matthew told him. ‘I gather that they’re reserved for the gentlemen of the press. Although after my recent experience, I use the term “gentleman” in a purely anatomical sense.’

  Carlyle chuckled. ‘I think you’ll be getting your revenge this evening. But is your speech prepared?’

  ‘Of course, but I’ll be lucky to be heard over the heads of the massive crowd that’s in here already,’ Matthew complained. ‘And they’re queuing halfway up Leman Street.’

  ‘The price of fame,’ Carlyle said. ‘But don’t worry, because I’ve already prepared for that eventuality. When you go on stage, you’ll find what looks like a broom handle with a pot on its head, balancing on a floor stand. Just say what you have to say into the pot and you’ll experience the weird sensation of hearing your voice booming out around the hall. If a little man with a bald head keeps running on and off the stage to attack it with tools, just ignore him. He’s a friend of mine and there’s more than one branch of science. Now tell me, how long do you intend to speak for?’

  ‘Perhaps twenty minutes,’ Matthew replied gloomily. ‘No more than half an hour at most. I hope that you and Jennings are prepared to go on after me.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that we make our contributions when called upon to do so,’ Carlyle said. ‘But there’s no hurry to start. Keep them waiting, since it never fails to enhance the expectation.’

  ‘I just hope I don’t disappoint them,’ Matthew replied dejectedly, but Carlyle seemed beyond any possibility of becoming depressed.

  ‘Did you think up a suitable ghost story for them, by any chance?’

  ‘I did in the end. I was racking my brains and took to thinking of the Tower. Then I remembered the old story about Thomas Becket and it came to me.’

  ‘Don’t forget to share it, preferably early on in your address,’ Carlyle told him. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a few last-minute matters to attend to. I’ll come back when we’re ready for you. There’s a privy just behind that door, when you need a nervous pee.’

  Several nervous pees later, Matthew had gone over his notes five times and was hoping that some natural calamity had overtaken the noisy audience he could hear through another door in the side wall of the small room that felt like a prison cell, when a smiling Carlyle appeared through the door from the main room.

  ‘Ten past seven and time for your grand entry. Follow me.’

  He opened the side door and suddenly the audience noise was almost overpowering. Up a flight of three wooden steps and Matthew could see them as well as hear them and his bowels churned as he looked down at the sea of faces and heard the noise of excited chatter descend into a communal rustle of anticipation as Carlyle walked ahead of him towards the �
�broom handle with a pot on top of it’, as he’d described it earlier.

  The surgeon looked down at the audience and spoke his first few words. As he did so, it sounded to Matthew as if Carlyle had suddenly transformed into God calling down from the heavens, as his voice seemed to bounce off the three walls ahead of him and the audience regarded him with transfixed faces, looking like stunned fish that had been ‘gaffed’ after being brought to shore.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, it’s my pleasure and privilege to introduce our main speaker for this evening. From the East End Mission, please welcome one of its most respected preachers, Matthew West.’

  There was a moderate spattering of applause, most of it from male hands, and Matthew cleared his throat, opened his mouth, prayed silently and began. ‘First of all, many thanks for taking the trouble to venture out this evening, in such inclement weather. But the topic is an important one and one that has caused excitement, morbid speculation and not a little fear, among our humble community here in the East End. I refer, of course, to the alleged return of the souls and bodies of the dead from a plague pit that once existed on the site of what is now Aldgate Underground Station.

  ‘Let me say from outset that not for one moment did I believe that these poor unfortunate victims of a natural disaster over three hundred years in the past had been reborn in any form, or for any reason, and most certainly not for the express purpose of exacting any form of vengeance on the living. “Vengeance is mine”, as our Lord is reported as saying in Romans, Chapter Twelve, Verse Nineteen. The mere suggestion that it is possible for those who have ended their mortal life to return and communicate with us is an abomination in the sight of our Lord Jesus Christ and His Heavenly Father.

  ‘But for many hundreds of years, ignorant people have thought it possible and have reaped the consequences of their sin. Not least among their punishments has been a morbid fear of the dead and a terror that the dead might return to confront them. But if we have faith in God, what do we have to fear? He will, in His infinite mercy, preserve us from all evil. All evil, including that which might be feared from the returning souls of those who have passed before us into the Kingdom of Heaven. God has prepared such a wonderful place for us when we pass on to our eternal reward that no-one would wish for one moment to return to this miserable location, with all due respect to the London County Council.’

  This raised a ripple of laughter and as he paused for breath and to remind himself of what came next in his notes, Matthew was heartened to see several well-dressed men in the first few rows of the audience scribbling away urgently in their notebooks and he moved swiftly on to the part of his address suggested to him by Carlyle.

  ‘Let us examine just one of these spurious tales regarding the return of “ghosts”, as we now call them. This one occurred not far from here, in the Tower of London and it involved one of the most famous clergymen ever to grace the English Church. His name was Thomas Becket and he was the Archbishop of Canterbury in his day. His sins were so few and his holiness so complete, that we can be assured that one of the best seats of all in Heaven would have been reserved for him. And yet he is alleged to have returned to this earth in the early Thirteenth Century, while workmen at the Tower were constructing a new wall.

  ‘According to those who claimed to have seen the incident, he raised a giant cross and struck the wall a mighty blow, reducing it to rubble. This was allegedly in revenge for the fact that he had been murdered by followers of the King two generations earlier. But the only ones to see this alleged act of demolition were those in charge of constructing the wall and it was later discovered that the real cause was poor workmanship, causing the wall to fall down of its own accord.

  ‘Ask yourselves if it is likely that a ghost as exalted as Becket, who would of course have been able to take his revenge in any way he wished, would return to this life simply in order to demolish a wall. It was too easy for those guilty of poor workmanship and terrified of the consequences of their incompetence, to invent the story of Becket’s ghost. Likewise, if the spirits of those angered by the disturbance of their bones during the construction of a railway line were to pick a target for their anger, would it not be those guilty of the act of desecration? Why pick on innocent citizens? And why wait so long?

  ‘No, my friends, we have not been witnessing the return of the spirits of the dead bent on revenge. We have been witnessing the wicked machinations of those who seek to perform evil acts in the present day, making cynical and blasphemous use of our natural fear of what lies beyond the final curtain of death. But those of us who believe in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God for all those who seek his mercy and all-powerful arm, need have no fear of such things, for we are protected from such evil and may go about our lives in the perfect knowledge that our Heavenly Father will not allow his children to be taken from him by the forces of evil, once they lift up the hearts to Him and worship in the true way.’

  It went on much like this for a further ten minutes, until Matthew looked up from his notes and saw that some of those who had previously been eagerly scribbling down what he said had stopped and appeared to be staring into the space behind him. In the belief that he was boring them, he opted to conclude with his usual, ‘Does anyone have any questions?’

  A portly man in the front row lowered his spectacles and said, ‘Yes, I do, and I’m sure I speak for all of us from the press when I ask why you thought it necessary to engage in a cheap theatrical trick, when your words were persuasive enough.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Matthew said indignantly, in the belief that his delivery might have been over melodramatic and his questioner pointed to a spot behind Matthew towards the back of the stage.

  ‘Him!’ the man replied indignantly. ‘Why did you deem it necessary to dress some second-rate actor up as Archbishop Becket?’

  Matthew looked quickly behind him at the empty platform, unable to fathom what the man was referring to. But he was not without support, as another press reporter two seats away added, ‘That’s right — a disgraceful low trick that cheapens your entire delivery.’

  ‘What are you two drivelling on about?’ asked a third man. ‘There’s no-one there.’

  ‘You must have come out without your spectacles, Ronald Bailey,’ the first man insisted. ‘He’s standing there, clear as daylight.’

  ‘And you must have had a few before you came here,’ Bailey fired back indignantly. ‘You’re seeing things that aren’t there!’

  Matthew was just asking himself where he’d heard that expression before when mayhem broke out in the first few rows beneath him. A sizeable number of press reporters were insisting that the empty space behind Matthew was occupied by a man acting the role of Thomas Becket, while a vocal minority were insisting otherwise. As was perhaps inevitable, certain individuals rose from their seats to confront others and within a minute fists were beginning to fly.

  Matthew was debating whether or not to call for order when he was pushed gently aside from his ‘speaking pot’ by Inspector Jennings, who extracted a police whistle from his waistcoat pocket and blew hard on it. Given the capacity of the electrical device to magnify sound the effect was devastating and almost everyone in the hall — including Matthew — clamped their hands to their ears in an effort to drown out the dreadful piercing noise.

  It fell unnaturally silent, as a line of uniformed police officers trotted in through a side door, to form a line in front of the stage. Then Jennings spoke. ‘No-one is to leave this hall until I say so. You’ve all become part of an ongoing police investigation.’

  Completely bemused by the turn of events, Matthew stepped back a few paces, glancing behind him to confirm that there was indeed no high ranking clergyman, of any generation, standing there. As he did so, he became aware of a grinning Carlyle coming back on stage from the rear steps, accompanied by Adelaide. They walked to the speaking pot, where Carlyle raised a hand high in the air to command silence and the hubbub generated by Jen
nings’s announcement died down.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Carlyle announced, ‘you have been privileged this evening to witness the remarkable conclusion of work that has been going on tirelessly ever since the first plague pit manifestations invaded the East End. As you will be aware, certain of those among the gentlemen of the press believed — and indeed may still believe — that standing behind us is the ghost of the late Archbishop Becket. Others of them are equally convinced that there is nothing there. I can now reveal the true reason for this apparent dichotomy in their observations. But first, let me introduce myself.’

  ‘You’re Henry II?’ some wag from the front row called out, to nervous laughter around him.

  Carlyle grinned. ‘No, I am not, I’m delighted to say. I prefer my current role, which is that of surgeon at the London Hospital, in which capacity I came into possession of certain information that led me to conduct further investigations and experiments, and I thank you all for being participants, even though you were not aware that you were until now. I am Dr James Carlyle and this beautiful lady by my side, who some of you will recall serving cake earlier, is my daughter Adelaide, who is about to demonstrate a simple card trick.’

  On cue, Adelaide reached into her bag and extracted a moderately sized handful of red cards, each of which had a name printed on it.

  Carlyle nodded his acknowledgment that she had done so and turned back to the audience. ‘Might I invite all those who saw the ghost of the late Archbishop Becket to please rise from their seats?’

  Two dozen or so men did and Carlyle addressed the one on the extreme left. ‘Your name, sir, if you would be so obliging?’

  ‘Samuel Giddings,’ the man replied. Carlyle turned to Adelaide, who sorted through the cards, finally holding one high in the air and calling out, ‘Samuel Giddings, night editor of the Herald.’

  ‘And you, sir?’ Carlyle asked of the next one in line.