A Case of Spirits

CHAPTER 10

As a corpse, Thackeray was less than satisfactory. There were plenty in the Force more lean, pale and passably cadaverous than he. Years of beat-pounding by night left some officers looking like that, while others seemed to put on flesh and get redder in the face with every duty they were ordered to perform. Thackeray was among the latter, and this morning he was the only one available.

‘You might at least try not to look so comfortable in the chair,’ complained Cribb. ‘The body was rigid when we found it, and the hair was standing on end.’

‘Sorry, Sarge. Electrocutions are something new in my experience.’

The apparatus was now restored to its original position in the library, Dr Probert’s transformer having passed all the tests Mr Cage had devised for it. Cribb had been assured that the chair was in good working order. No more than twenty volts could possibly pass through the body of anyone who gripped the handles when the current was switched on.

Cribb had a vivid recollection of the position and appearance of Peter Brand when they had pulled back the curtain on the night of the tragedy, and he was doing his best to recreate the scene with Thackeray’s assistance. Mr Etty must have gone through a not dissimilar procedure each time he set the mode in position for the Sleeping Nymph and Satyrs. Mr Etty, of course, did not have Thackeray to sit for him, but it was Cribb’s opinion that if Thackeray was posing for you it did not matter much whether your subject was a sleeping nymph or a dead medium; you were defeated before you started.

‘You’re still too central,’ he said, regarding Thackeray out of one eye, as if using two would cause him distress. ‘Turn your legs to the right and get your back into the left hand side of the chair and bring your weight forward.’

Thackeray wriggled helpfully.

‘That’s more like it. What are you holding the handles for?’

‘He must have been holding the handles to get an electric shock, Sarge.’

‘He should have been,’ said Cribb. ‘The muscles contract at the moment of shock. His hands should have taken an iron grip. But they didn’t. His left arm was hanging down on the left side of the chair. You’ve raised an interesting point there, Thackeray.’

‘Thank you, Sarge,’ beamed Thackeray. Praise from Cribb was too rare to pass unacknowledged.

‘Well, get your arm down, man! Didn’t you hear what I said?’

The beginning of a theory was forming in Cribb’s brain. If Brand had moved his left hand off the handle, perhaps to tamper with the transformer behind him and alter the connexions of the wires in some way, might he not have touched the positive terminal in error and electrocuted himself?

‘See if you can touch the transformer from there, Thackeray. You’ll need to slide further down than that and get your armpit over the chair-arm.’

Thackeray manoeuvred his rump towards the front of the chair and stretched behind with his arm, like a prize-fighter reaching from his corner for a bracer. Unhappily for the theory, his fingers stopped some inches short of the transformer; and unless Brand had got the physique of a gorilla, his arm must have been shorter than Thackeray’s.

Cribb frowned and got on his knees to check that the chair and transformer were correctly placed. Mr Strathmore had efficiently marked the carpet with chalk shortly after the body had been taken from the chair. The present positions corresponded exactly with the outlines.

Before Cribb got up, he picked two small filmy wisps from the carpet near the transformer and held them in the palm of his hand.

‘What have you found, Sarge?’ asked Thackeray.

‘They look like flower petals to me,’ said Cribb. ‘Chrysanthemums probably. There was a vase of them turned over next door.’

‘Somebody must have brought them in on his shoe,’ suggested Thackeray.

‘Possibly,’ said Cribb, placing them carefully between the leaves of his notebook. ‘Are you quite sure you can’t touch the transformer from there?’

‘It’s impossible,’ Thackeray declared. ‘Besides, I’ve thought of something else, Sarge. If he was reaching behind like this, he must have broken contact with the circuit, and that would have been recorded on the dial next door.’

‘That’s a fair observation,’ said Cribb, ‘but what you must remember is that Peter Brand wasn’t noted for playing fair. A man used to working the three card trick isn’t going to let two scientists and a galvanometer get the better of him. If he wanted to free his hand he had only to rest his chin on the handle, and the contact would remain unbroken. Try it.’

Thackeray’s face was already practically in contact with the handle. By turning it an inch or two to the left he achieved the position Cribb had described.

‘The strength of the contact would have changed, of course,’ Cribb went on, ‘but they were looking for a break of contact on the galvanometer, and that didn’t happen because he didn’t take his hand off the handle until his chin was in contact. From what I’ve heard from Inspector Jowett there were several variations in the readings, but nothing suspicious enough to bring anyone in here until the needle suddenly indicated a complete break of contact. When we pushed aside the curtain he was dead from a huge electric shock and his hand, or whatever part of him it was that came in contact, had been forced clear by the contraction of the muscles.’

‘It couldn’t have been his hand, Sarge. Look, mine couldn’t possibly reach the transformer,’ said Thackeray, demonstrating by pawing the air with his left hand a good six inches short of the deadly terminal on the cable side of the transformer.

‘If it comes to that,’ said Cribb, ‘there ain’t any part of his body that could have reached that far, unless he was a contortionist as well as a card-sharp. But he must have touched something that gave him a lethal shock.’

‘It’s a regular conundrum, Sarge,’ said Thackeray, with his knack of articulating the obvious. ‘May I take my chin off the handle now? My beard’s itching fit to break my concentration.’

Cribb nodded. ‘We won’t learn any more from the chair anyway. There must be something else in all this, Thackeray, something we haven’t considered at all. Let’s look at it from Brand’s point of view. He knows in advance that he’s going to have to do some clever stuff to pull the wool over the scientists’ eyes, so he comes prepared. He brings Blue John, which he uses for the first seance, and he wears a nightshirt under his clothes ready to fake a materialisation in the second half of the evening. But is that enough?’

‘It don’t seem very much,’ said Thackeray. ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t be taken in by anyone in a nightshirt.’

‘Don’t count on it,’ warned Cribb. ‘Suggestion is a powerful thing, Thackeray. They’d seen one apparition already that night, in the shape of a disembodied hand. They were sitting in near-darkness waiting for the next. I believe some of ’em took me for a ghost when I walked in-and I wasn’t wearing a nightshirt. Take my word for it, you’d have been shaking in your boots like the rest of ’em.’

‘I usually do if I meet you unexpected, Sarge.’

‘Really?’ said Cribb, momentarily disturbed. ‘I can’t think why. The point I was coming to is that if Brand knew in advance that he was going to be seated in this chair for an experiment, he would surely have devised some way of cheating.’

‘How would he go about it, Sarge?’

‘That’s a question I’d rather not answer before I know whether the first assumption is correct. The way to find out whether Brand inspected this apparatus before last Saturday is to ask the Proberts.’

They were in the drawing-room across the hall where Cribb had first met them. Mrs Probert, whom he noticed first because he was determined not to overlook her this time, was seated in her favourite place under the palm. Dr Probert was standing at the window looking out at the nannies doing perambulator duty on the Terrace. At the fireplace was Alice, dressed to go out in a dark green coat with a frogged front, and a large plush hat of the same colour with a dash of white in the trimming. She was adjusting it at the mirror.

‘What do you want, man?’ demanded Probert, without taking his eyes off the nannies.

‘A little of your time, if it can be spared, sir-and ladies.’

‘My daughter’s just going out,’ said Probert. ‘It’s a damned fool thing to be doing on a day like this, but she won’t be told. Charity can’t study the weather, she says. She’ll die of pneumonia before she’s twenty-five, while the great unwashed of Richmond grow old and get fat on the fruit and veg. she’s given ’em.’

‘It’s not like that at all, Father,’ said Alice, glancing into the mirror at Cribb. Her face had a doll-like neatness, with large blue eyes and high cheek-bones that gave the permanent promise of a smile. ‘They certainly won’t get fat on the meagre amount provide. Letting them know that someone cares is what really matters. The food is a mere gesture.’

‘If that’s all it is, let’s keep the five shillings a week and have a bottle of champagne on Saturdays,’ said Mrs Probert.

‘Mama, that’s a dreadful thing to say in front of the sergeant!’ Alice chided her. ‘Don’t take any notice, Mr Cribb. You can’t rely upon a quarter of the things she says.’

‘If my arithmetic is right, that means three-quarters of the things I say are reliable,’ said Mrs Probert without a glance in her daughter’s direction. ‘If the words of other people in this house-not to say their conduct-could be relied upon to that extent, the sergeant would have an easier task.’

Alice turned from the mirror to look at her mother, an action insignificant in normal circumstances, but noteworthy in this family, whose members seemed to have evolved monolithic existences based on the least possible acknowledgement of each other’s presence. ‘What are you insinuating by that remark, Mother?’

Mrs Probert continued to look at the carpet. ‘That’s a bold new hat you are taking so much care over arranging, my dear. If the hat fits, wear it, I say,’ she said mysteriously.

Alice indulged in another long look at Mrs Probert, a look singularly devoid of the regard a daughter might be expected to feel for her mother. Then she addressed Cribb. ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to speak to Papa in private?’

‘Not at all, miss, but if I’m delaying you-’

‘I can wait a few minutes.’

‘In that case, miss, I’ll presently escort you down the hill. I’ve got a constable sitting in the hall who can carry your gifts for the poor.’

‘That’s very obliging of you. It’s a shopping-basket, you know, not the sort of thing one generally sees a policeman carrying.’

‘Don’t concern yourself, miss. I’ll see that he keeps a respectable distance behind us. Now, Doctor, if I may. .’

Probert turned at last from the window. ‘What is the trouble then?’

The phrase came so readily that Cribb suspected it was the one the doctor used in consultations.

‘No trouble at present, sir. I’m merely wanting to establish certain facts touching on the death of Mr Brand. That apparatus in the library, sir: when did you get it ready?’

‘The chair, you mean? On Wednesday of last week, I believe. Strathmore came to help me. It didn’t take long. We had to screw on the brass handles and connect the various wires, but to a scientist it’s a very elementary piece of wiring. There really wasn’t much to go wrong, which makes the accident all the more baffling.’

‘It’s a puzzle indeed, sir. Mr Strathmore helped you, you say?’

‘Helped him drink his claret,’ put in Mrs Probert.

‘That was after we had set up the experiment,’ said Probert, sensitive, for once, to an interruption from his wife. ‘It is not done to offer muffins and tea to a professional acquaintance. The answer, Sergeant, is yes. Mr Strathmore helped me. It was fortunate as it turned out. We can both vouch for the safety of the apparatus. I believe your expert from the Home Office was unable to detect any fault in the wiring.’

‘That’s correct, sir.’

‘The transformer was found to be in good order?’

‘Perfect, sir.’

‘I thought so. The wire and the galvanometer were new. I purchased them from Mr Cooper, who owns the supply station. It’s a rum go, is all this. You know, I’ve been trying to decide whether it was Brand’s dickey heart that did for him. He looked as though he’d been subjected to a powerful shock. I’d have staked my reputation on that, but I suppose twenty volts or so of electricity could be just as destructive to a chap in his condition as several hundred to you or me.’

‘That may be so, sir, but it doesn’t account for the fracturing of several of his bones. Do you mind if I continue with my questions? Did Mr Brand by any chance inspect the apparatus before Saturday night?’

‘No,’ said Probert firmly.

Alice turned from the mirror. ‘But Papa-’

‘Brand did not inspect the apparatus before Saturday night,’ Probert insisted in a way that brooked no challenge from his daughter. ‘Without wishing to denigrate Mr Brand, I think it must be obvious that he was not the class of person one invites to one’s house except in a professional capacity.’

‘I was thinking that for professional reasons he would have wished to come in advance, to view the room where the seance was to be held,’ said Cribb.

‘You have obviously forgotten that Brand came here previously for a seance,’ said Probert. ‘It was on October 31st, the night the vase was stolen from Miss Crush’s residence. He had an ample opportunity then to inspect the room.’

‘But he didn’t see the chair before Saturday?’

‘That is so. If we’d given the fellow a chance to make preparations, it would have invalidated the blasted experiment. Is the interrogation over?’

‘For the present, sir, I’m obliged to you,’ said Cribb as if it was a wrench to take himself away from such congenial company. ‘Now, Miss Alice, where’s that basket?’

Half way down Richmond Hill, with Thackeray ten yards in the rear carrying a shopping basket topped with oranges, Alice Probert said to Cribb, ‘You believe Peter Brand was murdered, don’t you?’

‘It’s a possibility, miss.’

‘Papa thinks so, too. He thinks Professor Quayle did it.’

‘I thought he put it down to the weakness of Peter Brand’s heart,’ said Cribb.

‘Oh, he wants to. That’s the explanation that will cause the least offence all round. He doesn’t want the opprobrium of a public murder trial, with us all appearing as witnesses, but he is not such a fool as he seemed this morning, Sergeant. He knows very well that the shock that killed Mr Brand would have killed anyone sitting in that chair at that moment. He is quite convinced that somebody tampered with the apparatus.’

‘And he suspects the professor?’

‘Papa’s argument is that Professor Quayle was the only person in the house that night with a motive for murdering Mr Brand-professional jealousy. That was the explanation of the burglaries, was it not?’

‘Broadly speaking, yes, miss.’

‘Well, my father reasons that the professor must have been the person who crept into the study while Mr Brand was sitting in the chair and caused him to call out and interrupt the seance.’

‘I think he’s correct in that, miss.’

‘He believes that in those few seconds the professor did something to ensure that within a very short time Mr Brand would be subjected to a huge electric shock.’

‘And what was that?’

She smiled. ‘Papa doesn’t know. He says that he is not a policeman. Of course, Mama and I have our own suspicions. We don’t subscribe to Papa’s theory at all.’

‘No, miss?’

‘No, we’re perfectly sure that Professor Quayle is not a murderer. He’s an old friend to us. We’ve known him for a long time, and he often visits us.’

Cribb’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Now that’s a thing I didn’t know.’

‘Oh yes. Papa has been interested in spiritualism for at least ten years. He invited the professor home for dinner after he met him once at a lecture, and he calls socially quite often. When I was younger he always used to bring me sweets-pan-goods and surprise packets-so I can’t think of him as a murderer.’

‘With respect, miss, I don’t suppose you could think of him as a house-breaker either, but he is. He admits to it.’

‘Yes, but he isn’t a hardened criminal. You got the stolen things back, didn’t you? I hope he gets a light sentence, poor duck. Mama is exceedingly upset about the whole episode.’

‘I thought your mother disapproved of spiritualists. She didn’t have much time for Peter Brand, if I understood her correct.’

‘Oh, Professor Quayle is as different from Peter Brand as chalk from cheese. A charming man. Besides, he never discusses the spirits with Mama. She has a high opinion of him, I assure you. Do you like hot chestnuts? There’s a man who sells them at the bottom of the hill, near the bridge.’

‘It’s a shade too early in the day, thank you,’ said Cribb.

‘I’ll buy some for your man, then. I hate to walk straight past street-vendors, don’t you? Mama is quite wrong about the spirits, of course. It’s really awfully jolly to get in touch. William, my fiance, isn’t much better. He gets positively liverish when the lights go out.’

‘So I’ve heard, miss. But you don’t get alarmed, I gather. I understand you felt your clothes being tugged and your hair touched on Saturday, is that so?’

‘It’s not at all unusual in a seance,’ said Alice, without really answering the question. ‘There’s no need to agitate oneself about such things, as William did.’

‘Perhaps there’s a natural explanation for what happened, anyway,’ suggested Cribb.

‘I trust not. What a disagreeable thought!’ Alice’s hand went to her hair and rearranged it over her collar.

‘You’re quite convinced that the spirits touched you on Saturday?’ asked Cribb, determined to pin Miss Probert down.

‘I’m sure it wasn’t anybody else in the room.’

‘But you’re equally sure that it happened?’

‘I don’t imagine things, Sergeant.’

‘No, miss.’ It was the nearest he would get to an answer. They were fast approaching the chestnut stall, and he had something else to ask. ‘You said just now that you and Mrs Probert have your own suspicions about Saturday. Might I inquire whom you suspect?’

‘Mr Strathmore.’

‘The scientist?’

‘He is a dangerous man, Sergeant. Papa should never have associated with him. One looks for a degree of detachment in a scientist, a commitment to proceed by the scientific method of hypothesis, investigation and proof. When Mr Strathmore came to the house on Wednesday to prepare the experiment, he revealed himself as anything but detached. His sole object was to set traps and snares, in the conviction that the medium would fall victim to them and show himself to be fraudulent. If Papa had not been firm with him he would have smeared the handles of the chair with carbon so that anything the medium touched would be marked, and he had brought cotton thread with him to weave a giant cat’s cradle around the room, if you please, in the belief that it would snap and prove that the medium had left the chair. Imagine the impression such stratagems would have made on a medium of Mr Brand’s standing!’

‘It might have led to an ugly scene, miss.’

‘Exactly. He was totally fanatical in his determination to prove Mr Brand a charlatan. It was odious to see the way he calculated the position of the chair to the nth degree, just as if he was Sweeney Todd, the infamous barber. It had to be so far back from the curtain so that he couldn’t lean forward and touch it, and the transformer had to out of arm’s reach, and the handles screwed in with screws an inch and a half in length. It makes me shudder to think of it now. He should be a public executioner, not a man of medicine.’

‘That may be so, miss, but I can’t arrest him for that. What you’ve told me doesn’t endear Mr Strathmore to me, but none of it’s against the law.’

‘Don’t you see, Sergeant? He and Papa were the only ones who knew what the chair looked like before Saturday. Between Wednesday and Saturday he must have thought of something else, some horrible appendage to the experiment that turned the chair into an execution chair the moment poor Mr Brand moved his arm or shuffled his foot.’

‘What sort of appendage exactly, miss?’

‘I’m not certain, but then I’m-’

‘Not a policeman, miss? That’s not such a bad thing, if I might say so. Mr Strathmore and your father weren’t the only ones who had a chance to see that chair before Saturday. From what you tell me, I’m bound to suppose that you saw it yourself. And if your mother agrees with you about Mr Strathmore, it’s reasonable to presume that she saw it on Wednesday too. Now I gather also that Mr Nye is a frequent visitor to the house. Would it be too presumptuous to suppose. .’

She smiled. ‘All right, Sergeant. William saw it too, on Friday, when Mr Brand came-’ She stopped, the colour rising in her cheeks.

They stood still by a pillar-box, only a few yards short of the chestnut stall, the fumes of burning nut-shell and coke wafting towards them. ‘Mr Brand, miss?’ said Cribb. ‘That’s a funny thing. I rather supposed that he must have had a look at the apparatus, but your father didn’t seem to remember the occasion. It was Friday, then.’

‘Friday,’ she confirmed in a low voice. ‘He came to make arrangements about the seance.’

‘That’s understandable, miss.’

‘Please don’t let Papa know I told you. I really don’t know why he was so unwilling to tell you about it.’

‘It’s our secret, miss. Hello, here’s Thackeray. Miss Probert wants to buy you a bag of chestnuts, Thackeray.’

‘That’s very generous, miss.’

The chestnut man touched his cap as Alice approached him. She proffered twopence and said, ‘I believe these gentlemen could catch a bus from here to Charing Cross, is that right?’

It was as neat a way as she could have contrived to terminate the interview.

‘That’s right, miss. Cost ’em a bob each.’ He shovelled a large helping of chestnuts into a bag. Cribb stepped forward to take them, since Thackeray was still holding the basket and they were clearly too hot for a young lady to handle. He passed them to Thackeray in such a way that his back was towards Alice as he deliberately tore the side of the paper bag and dropped the still smoking nuts among the oranges in the basket.

‘Moses, Sarge!’ said Thackeray in bewilderment.

‘Another bag, if you please,’ called Cribb to the salesman.

It was the work of a few seconds to retrieve the hot nuts, and no visible damage was done to the fruit or the basket. To Thackeray it was a wholly mysterious incident, but he contained his curiosity until Miss Probert had set off again along Hill Street on her errand. ‘Why did you do it, Sarge?’ he asked, biting with relish into a chestnut.

‘I wanted to see what was under that layer of oranges. Didn’t you notice?’

‘Yes, Sarge. A lady’s hairbrush and comb. There’s nothing extraordinary in that, is there?’

‘That’s a matter I want you to investigate, Constable. Follow Miss Probert and find out where she goes. You’d better leave the nuts with me, or she’ll smell you coming a mile off.’