A Case of Spirits

CHAPTER 14

There was not much conversation being exchanged across the table in Dr Probert’s library, although every one of the original sitters had arrived, with the understandable exception of the late Peter Brand, whose place was taken by Sergeant Cribb. In keeping with rank, however, it was Inspector Jowett who called the gathering to order. The tension did not ease, but it now had a focus.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Jowett, ‘the circumstances of this evening’s gathering are unusual to say the least, and none of us can feel particularly comfortable at this moment. I do assure you that I should not have inflicted such an experience upon you unless it were necessary to the investigation of Mr Brand’s death.’

‘His happy release,’ interjected Miss Crush, who was dressed in black bombazine.

‘I beg your pardon, madam.’

‘In the Movement we do not speak of death, Inspector. If you like you may say that he has joined the choir invisible.’

‘As you please, madam. The point I wish to convey is that Scotland Yard is grateful for the co-operation of you all. Before we turn out the light I must ask you to behave exactly as you did on Saturday evening. Some of you-let us be perfectly candid with each other-assisted the medium in producing phenomena. I shall not go into the reasons for this; I simply appeal to you in the name of law and order to play your part in precisely re-creating the events of that seance.’

‘But how can we, without the medium?’ asked Alice.

‘Sergeant Cribb will play the part of the late Mr Brand,’ Jowett explained. ‘I have given him a full account of what happened.’

‘He is a sensitive,’ Miss Crush confided to the others in a stage whisper.

‘Shall we begin?’ said Jowett. ‘I believe you turned out the light, Doctor.’

Before the switch was turned, Cribb glanced rapidly round the table at the faces of his fellow-sitters: Miss Crush, on his right, eyes agape with expectation; Strathmore, by contrast grimly sceptical, even his monocle flashing hostility; Jowett with the fixed smile of a chairman anticipating trouble; Alice, dignified, demure and difficult to connect with Maids of Honour Row; Captain Nye, head erect as if in the front line of battle (and the Soudan campaign suggested itself here, for as Probert had once remarked, there was a striking resemblance to the features of a camel); and finally Probert himself, on his feet to switch off the light, red-faced and frowning, but visibly deflated since Saturday.

The light went out.

‘Kindly link hands,’ said Jowett, sounding oddly like a dancing-instructor.

‘Surely it isn’t necessary to re-enact last Saturday so slavishly as that?’ protested Nye. ‘Holding hands in these conditions is a very doubtful practice, and I objected to it then. My fiancee is not used to being grasped by strange men.’

‘But William, you are holding my right hand and the inspector has my left,’ said Alice.

‘You agreed to co-operate,’ Jowett reminded him.

‘Only after somebody approached my Commanding Officer. Very well, but tell me the moment anything untoward occurs, Alice.’

Cribb smiled in the darkness, imagining how Jowett would receive that remark, but no more was said on the matter. It was time, anyway, to begin his own part in the proceedings. He moved forward in his chair and turned his feet on their sides to bring the heels of his boots silently into contact, face to face. Then he addressed the company: ‘I believe Mr Brand began by asking you not to be alarmed if anybody behaved irregular. I make the same request, ladies and gentlemen. Soon after this one of you indicated that you sensed a supernatural presence in the room.’ As a cue, he gently squeezed Miss Crush’s left hand.

‘Oh! It’s me!’ she announced in a squeak. ‘That is to say, I did.’

‘Say it again then, madam,’ said Jowett with an obvious effort to be amiable.

‘I sense a presence,’ said Miss Crush flatly.

‘Is anyone trying to get in touch?’ asked Cribb with rather more conviction. The whole situation verged on the ridiculous and it was only too easy to imagine what they would make of it in the mess-room at the Yard, but having brought himself to the brink, so to speak, he was not the man to stand quivering there.

‘Not a thing,’ said Nye, after some five seconds had passed. ‘The whole exercise is futile, in my opinion.’

‘Is there anyone there?’ asked Cribb. He pressed the soles of his shoes together and gently clicked his heels three times.

‘Did you hear that?’ demanded Miss Crush.

Before anyone had time to respond there were five independent raps. They appeared to have originated from Alice’s area of the table.

‘Alphabet,’ said Dr Probert mechanically.

‘There is no need for that,’ said Miss Crush. ‘We know it will be Uncle Walter.’

Cribb clicked three times to confirm the fact and at the same time withdrew his right hand from Miss Crush’s grasp. She passed no comment. By keeping two of his fingers folded against his palm he had avoided rubbing off much of the fluor-spar he had assiduously applied before the seance. The hand was warm from being held in front of the fire a few minutes before.

‘I recollect that we were treated to the apparent manifestation of a spirit hand at this juncture,’ said Strathmore in a bored voice which changed dramatically to exclaim, ‘My eyes! There it is!’

Perhaps because he had not had the opportunity of seeing Brand’s performance, Cribb’s hand-movements were different in character, more suggestive of traffic-control duty than the conducting of the choir invisible, but the fluor-spar glowed bravely, drawing gasps of admiration.

‘How the devil did that thing get in here?’ asked Nye. ‘We want no repetition of that deplorable episode last time.’

‘You can’t stop it!’ cried Miss Crush excitedly. ‘I can feel my skirt being pulled already.’

‘Mine too,’ said Alice, adding quickly, ‘It is lightly fingering the hem, William, that is all.’

The pace of events surprised even Cribb. An orange thudded against Captain Nye before he had a chance to protest about the skirt-pulling. Cribb noticed that Dr Probert was no longer holding his left hand. Another orange bounced across the table. A bellow from Nye signalled a second hit.

‘I say!’ called Strathmore. ‘This is carrying verisimilitude too far!’

‘Lights, if you please,’ said Cribb.

Dr Probert obliged by going to the switch, but not before another orange had found its mark. When the light went on, Nye was seen to be stooping below the level of the table.

‘My poor William!’ said Alice, leaning over to stroke his forehead, on which a red mark was forming. ‘You must be bruised all over.’

‘I’d like to know who was so beastly inconsiderate as to set out another bowl of oranges,’ muttered Nye.

‘They were there on my instruction,’ said Jowett. ‘Most obliging of you to take a second pummelling so manfully, Captain. The East Surreys can be proud of you. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I think we have reproduced the first half of the seance with passable fidelity, with one small exception which we must not overlook.’ He got up from the table and approached the mantelpiece behind Nye’s chair. ‘I recollect that on Saturday this vase of chrysanthemums was tipped over by a stray orange, like so.’ He pushed his forefinger towards the vase and gently toppled it on to its side. The water coursed along the shelf and dripped noisily into the hearth.

‘That’s mahogany, damn you!’ said Probert, starting towards it.

‘It won’t hurt if it is kept well polished,’ said Jowett, waving him back. ‘If I have it right, the medium wiped the surface dry with his handkerchief while the rest of us examined the chair in the study.’ He beckoned to Cribb with his finger. ‘If you please, Sergeant.’

Cribb set to work with a white handkerchief he had thoughtfully brought with him, and the others obediently followed Jowett through the curtain into the study. By the time the call came for Cribb to take his place in the chair, he had mopped up the water, removed the fluor-spar from his hand and drawn aside the fire-screen.

He went through to the study. Probert and Strathmore were ready with lint and salted water. It reminded him rather of visiting the dentist, except that in this surgery six attendants surrounded the chair and one of them was a murderer.

Probert dipped two small squares of lint into the water and placed them over the brass handles attached to the arms of the chair. ‘Please sit down, Sergeant, and grip the handles. Captain Nye, would you be so good as to go down to the cellar and switch off the electric power until I call out to you to turn it on again? Alice, would you light the candles, please?’

In a matter of minutes the chair was ready and a gentle current was passing through Cribb and registering 200 divisions on the galvanometer.

Everyone but Cribb returned to the other side of the curtain and the candles were extinguished. The play of firelight on the faces of the sitters caught clear indications of apprehension that had not been evident before. However artificial the reconstruction had been so far, it was fast approaching the moment when its purpose was inescapably relevant.

‘Do you have a reading?’ asked Probert.

‘198, and the time is 10.20 p.m.,’ responded Jowett, from beside the galvanometer. He turned to face Miss Crush. ‘Don’t you have something to tell us, madam?’

She gave a start that jerked her jet ear-rings into glittering movement. ‘Oh good gracious me! What do you wish me to say?’

‘Merely what you said at this moment on Saturday evening- that you have reason to suspect that a spirit is abroad in the room, or words to that effect.’

‘Did I really say such a thing?’ asked Miss Crush.

‘You detected a presence,’ whispered Alice.

‘Oh, my stars and garters! Yes, I did!’ Miss Crush held up her forefinger. ‘I divine a presence. We have a visitor with us.’

‘And I can feel my hair being stroked,’ said Alice, whose memory was more reliable.

‘Wasn’t this the moment when we heard the footsteps from behind the curtain?’ asked Strathmore.

‘It is all arranged,’ said Jowett. ‘Please behave exactly as you did on Saturday.’

A log subsided in the grate. There was a whimper from Miss Crush.

‘Do you have your sal volatile with you, madam?’ Probert inquired.

‘In my hand, Doctor, in my hand.’

‘The galvanometer is quite steady,’ announced Jowett by way of reassurance.

Then they heard the door in the study open and the unmistakable sound of footsteps starting across the room and just as quickly returning.

‘It’s a bloody liberty,’ called Cribb’s voice, from behind the curtain.

‘Shall I go to him?’ asked Probert.

‘No,’ said Strathmore. ‘If you remember, you asked me to go to the curtain first.’

‘Please do so,’ said Jowett.

Strathmore advanced to the curtain and opened a gap wide enough to peer through. ‘Is everything in order?’

‘No it ain’t,’ said Cribb’s voice. ‘Ask Dr Probert to come through.’

‘Remember to kick over the bowl of water, Papa,’ Alice helpfully advised.

Probert played his part with less zest than he had on Saturday, but everyone heard the bowl of salt solution being overturned, followed by his appeal for candles. Jowett lighted two and led the others through to where Cribb was seated.

‘What the bleeding hell-’ began Cribb.

‘Very well, Sergeant,’ interposed Jowett. ‘We can afford to omit the unparliamentary language. Ladies present, you know. Is everything in order so far?’

‘Yes, sir. The professor entered on cue and went out again.’

‘Very good. Dr Probert, has Captain Nye gone downstairs to turn off the current?’

‘He has, Inspector.’

‘Splendid. What happened at this stage, then?’

‘We tried to pacify the medium,’ said Probert.

‘So we did. Do you consider yourself pacified, Cribb?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And ready to die-in simulation, of course?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Stout fellow! Ah, I can hear Captain Nye approaching. Kindly ask him to go downstairs again and restore the electricity, will you, Miss Probert? I believe I returned to my galvanometer at this point in the proceedings.’ Jowett was sounding increasingly like a host determined to inflict party games on unconvivial guests. He left the others standing woodenly round the chair and bustled through the curtain. ‘Capital!’ he presently announced. ‘I have a reading of 195. We now commence the last phase of the exercise, ladies and gentlemen. Take your places, please.’

They filed silently through to the library, leaving Cribb to his simulated fate.

‘I have a reading of 200 divisions, Mr Strathmore,’ said Jowett, when everyone was seated.

Strathmore’s co-operation in the reconstruction had not extended to copying the readings into a notebook, but he nodded, since his name had been mentioned.

It was the last movement in the library for an appreciable time, except for the flickering of the fire. Even Jowett had succumbed to the tension now, and was standing by the galvanometer with his hands locked tightly behind his back. Alice, on the edge of her chair, was poised to give support to Miss Crush, who was holding her bottle of sal volatile six inches from her nose. Somewhere in the house a grandfather clock chimed the half-hour.

‘Half past ten. The needle is at 196, a slight drop, I think,’ Jowett observed.

‘Something is moving somewhere. I know it,’ said Miss Crush.

‘Steady, madam!’ growled Probert.

‘That man behind the curtain is a sensitive,’ she insisted. ‘Dear God, the room is getting colder! What is it, Captain Nye, what is it?’

Nye, apparently unwilling or unable to respond, lifted his arm to point ahead of him. His eyes stood out like two half-crowns in a penny bazaar. They were focused on an object which had appeared between the two sections of the curtain. It was a white, moving hand.

‘God preserve us!’ cried Miss Crush, pushing the sal volatile against her nose.

The hand came further round the curtain, exposing a wrist and forearm, partially draped in white.

Captain Nye slumped over the table in a dead faint.

‘The galvanometer reading is the same!’ said Jowett. ‘Look at the needle, Strathmore!’

But Strathmore, like the others, had eyes only for the apparition which was gliding clear of the curtain and into the library. Its face and hands were as pallid as the shroudlike garment which enveloped it, but Miss Crush’s perceptions had been sharpened by the sal volatile. ‘I recognise it!’ she said. ‘Look at the nose and side-whiskers. It is the spirit of that poor man Cribb, passing through on its way to purgatory. The chair has taken him from us, as it did poor Peter.’

‘Not so, madam!’ said Jowett, in a dramatic intervention worthy to rank with anything Irving ever did on the boards of the Lyceum. ‘That will do, Sergeant.’

The figure halted.

‘Dear God!’ exclaimed Miss Crush. ‘It still obeys commands, poor, hapless thing. It has not yet freed itself from its mortal obligations.’

‘I’m afraid not, ma’am,’ said Cribb’s voice. ‘You can’t give up the Force as easy as that.’ He wiped some talcum powder away from his lips with the sleeve of his nightshirt. ‘I seem to have alarmed Captain Nye, sir.’

‘Not only Captain Nye,’ said Probert. ‘What the devil is this charade all about, Inspector?’

Jowett was quite unperturbed. ‘I shall tell you, Doctor. I arranged this as a demonstration. This evening you have seen what Peter Brand intended you to see on Saturday evening: the apparent manifestation of a spirit. After his death we discovered that he was wearing a full-length nightshirt like this one of Cribb’s under his outer clothes. In the pocket was a small bag of talcum powder for application to the face and hands, to give the ghostly pallor, you understand. It sounds like a parlour game, I admit, but in the uneven light of a fire and before sitters who have already witnessed other phenomena, it could, I believe, carry some conviction. Even Cribb’s unrehearsed performance tonight seems to have impressed some of you. Are you feeling better, Captain Nye?’

‘Perfectly well,’ retorted the Captain over the bottle of sal volatile. ‘Haven’t had enough sleep lately.’

Alice was frowning at what Jowett had said. ‘But if Peter Brand had dressed up-or, rather, undressed-like this, and left the chair, we should have known as soon as he took his hands away from the brass handles and broke the electrical circuit.’

‘A valid observation, Miss Probert,’ said Jowett, obviously relishing his role as unraveller of the mystery. ‘Won’t you kindly come over here and examine the galvanometer?’

The invitation was to Alice, but she was joined there by everyone else.

‘Damn it, the confounded thing is still registering 196!’ said Probert. ‘There’s something amiss.’

‘There must be somebody else in the chair!’ said Alice. ‘An accomplice! That large policeman with the beard.’

‘No, Miss Probart. You are quite mistaken,’ said Jowett. ‘Come and see for yourself.’ He walked to the curtains and drew them emphatically apart.

There was nobody seated in the chair. Stretched between the handles was a white handkerchief.

‘What’s a blasted wipe doing there?’ demanded Probert.

‘Standing in for Sergeant Cribb, Doctor,’ said Jowett. ‘You wouldn’t think a pocket handkerchief could stretch that far until you held it by opposite corners and saw the length of it. It tucks in nicely where the handle is screwed to the wood.’

‘A handkerchief won’t conduct electricity,’ said Probert.

‘Ah, but a wet one will,’ said Jowett. ‘And this one’s nice and wet from mopping up the water I spilt when I knocked over the flowers. You did a good job there, Cribb, and very naturally as well.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Cribb.

‘We take no credit for the idea,’ Jowett went on, having conceded Cribb as much gratification as was good for him. ‘That was Brand’s. And he was clever enough to knock the chrysanthemums over with an orange-unless somebody put out a hand in the dark to assist the operation, and I suppose we’ll never know that for certain. However, he got his handkerchief saturated in a perfectly accountable way, by very decently agreeing to wipe up the water himself. He then replaced it in his pocket and took his place in the chair.’

‘How would he remove the handkerchief from his pocket when he was holding the handles?’ asked Strathmore.

‘That is easier than it might appear. He could not take his hands off the handles without breaking the current, it is true, but that still permitted him a considerable amount of movement with the rest of his body. It would not be difficult to bring the right pocket into a position where the thumb of the right hand could hook out the handkerchief. So long as the palm of that hand remained firmly on the handle he could use the fingers to fasten the end of the handkerchief as you see it here. He then had only to pick up the loose end in his teeth and transfer it to the left hand, and secure it to the handle. The contact would thus be unbroken, and he could leave the chair by passing the upper half of his body under the handkerchief. Sergeant Cribb is not a contortionist, but he seems to have achieved this feat without trouble. Is that so, Sergeant?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The rest you have seen for yourselves,’ said Jowett, spreading out his hands.

Nye was frowning. ‘We’ve seen what the poor beggar planned to do, but you haven’t shown us how he was killed.’

‘That’s a different question, Captain, but you shall have the answer if you would oblige me by going downstairs to turn off the electricity again-for the last time, I do assure you. And Cribb, Constable Thackeray is waiting outside the door, I believe. Ask him to step inside, will you?’

‘Dressed like this, sir?’ said Cribb, frowning.

‘If you please. After that you may step behind the curtain and put on your normal clothes. I need Thackeray to take the part of the corpse. He is experienced in the role, you told me.’

‘That’s right, sir. He’s a natural in the part.’ Cribb paused, remembering something. ‘Might I make one small request, sir? I’d like to put my jacket and trousers on again first. I wouldn’t care for Thackeray to see me like this. Not good for discipline.’

‘Really?’ Jowett eyed the nightshirt speculatively. ‘I suppose not. Be quick then. We can’t keep everyone here till midnight, you know.’

‘I trust that it will not distress anybody if I ask the constable to adopt the position in which we found Mr Brand,’ Jowett resumed, after Thackeray had entered, wearing an eye-shade.

There was no dissent, although Captain Nye was staring fixedly at Thackeray, frowning and inclining his head slightly to one side and then to the other. The constable was glad to have a reason to turn his back, sit in the chair, and give his impression of an electrocuted corpse. When he was propped stiffly against the left-hand side, he explained between his teeth, ‘By rights my hair should be standing on end, sir.’

‘This is quite realistic enough for our purposes,’ said Jowett. ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, I want you to notice most particularly the position of the left hand which is not gripping the handle as one might expect. In electrocution the muscles contract and the hand takes an even stronger grip on anything it is holding. But what has happened here? The left arm dangles over the left arm of the chair. You may relax, Thackeray.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘So we asked ourselves why the body should have been in this position,’ Jowett continued.

‘Perhaps the handkerchief had fallen on the floor and he was reaching to pick it up,’ suggested Alice. ‘He could grip the left handle with his teeth to maintain the electrical contact.’

‘That’s clever thinking, Miss Probert,’ said Jowett, ‘but it isn’t quite consistent with the facts. Mr Brand couldn’t have received a shock of four hundred volts by doing what you say.’

‘The only way he’d get a shock like that is by touching the main cable,’ said Probert, ‘but it’s out of reach behind the chair. Anyone can see that.’

‘Quite right, Doctor,’ said Jowett. ‘But let us suppose that instead of the damp handkerchief lying on the floor here, as your daughter suggested, it was here.’ He pointed to the transformer. ‘Let us suppose that one end of it was attached to the positive terminal on the main side of the box. What do you suppose would happen if the medium reached out with his hand to recover the handkerchief-which we have seen was essential to his purpose?’

‘He would die the moment he touched it,’ said Strathmore, ‘but are you really asking us to believe that the handkerchief fell from the chair and somehow landed three feet behind it with one corner attached to the positive terminal?’

‘No, sir,’ said Jowett. ‘It was placed there as a deliberate act.’

‘But that would be murder!’ said Nye.

‘It was.’

‘Wait a moment, gentlemen!’ said Alice. ‘I think you have forgotten something. If this theory is to be believed, we should have found the handkerchief attached to the transformer when we discovered poor Mr Brand in here.’

‘We should indeed,’ agreed Jowett, ‘but it was not there or anywhere in sight. And the interesting thing is that there was no handkerchief among the list of possessions found on Mr Brand’s body. We are quite sure that he had one, because he mopped up the chrysanthemum-water with it. There is only one explanation possible, and that is that it was picked up by one of you-after Mr Brand had been murdered.’

The drift of Jowett’s thesis must have been increasingly obvious, but this conclusion still had the effect of stunning everybody. Miss Crush gasped with such force that it was difficult to tell how many smaller intakes of breath occurred at that precise moment.

Probert was the first to respond. ‘Before anyone begins to make assertions about present company, I think you ought to make it absolutely dear, Inspector, that this is an engaging theory without any basis of evidence. I’m no lawyer, but I know enough about the workings of the courts to point out that the Attorney-General himself couldn’t prove what you’re saying without a witness to the facts. Let’s see if we have one, shall we? I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, did any one of you see a handkerchief attached to the transformer as Inspector Jowett has postulated?’ He looked at each person in turn, with eyebrows speculatively raised. ‘You see? Not one witness. You can’t even produce the confounded handkerchief! It’s like trying to prove a poisoning without the arsenic.’

This was clearly not the response Jowett had expected. He frowned, cleared his throat and rubbed the side of his face. He had the look of a conjurer who had waved his wand and been unable to produce a rabbit from his hat.

‘It’s plausible, I’ll grant you that,’ Probert continued, pressing home his advantage, ‘but you’ve got no proof. There’s nothing on earth to show that a wet handkerchief was ever tied to that transformer.’

Sergeant Cribb, who had been a bystander in all this, put his hand in his pocket. The movement, slight as it was, drew the attention from Jowett’s bleak countenance. Cribb withdrew a pocket-book, turned the pages methodically, found his place and opened it. ‘You require some proof, sir? I found these on the carpet beside the transformer.’ He tipped two thin wisps, no more than an inch in length, into his palm and held them out for inspection.

‘What the devil are they?’ asked Probert.

‘Chrysanthemum petals,’ said Cribb. ‘They must have been picked up by Brand’s handkerchief when he wiped the mantelpiece dry. Tiny things, ain’t they? I don’t suppose you noticed them on Saturday when you picked the handkerchief up and put it in your pocket after Peter Brand’s death, Doctor.’