A Case of Spirits

CHAPTER 5

Inspector Jowett gently squeezed Miss Alice Probert’s left hand, securely clasped in his right. The pressure was delicately calculated to convey the promise of support, nothing else. After all, he had his reputation at the Yard to consider. The consequence of an incautious squeeze was quite unthinkable. Yet the experience of holding hands, for all its hazards, was not unpleasant. And it was illuminating. Sitting here in the dark next to Miss Probert he understood perfectly why seances were all the rage.

His left hand was held in the unequivocal grasp of Mr Strathmore, the spirit investigator. Strathmore was similarly linked to Miss Crush, and the circle was completed by Peter Brand, Dr Probert and Captain William Nye, Miss Probert’s fiance, who very properly held her other hand. They were seated at an oval table in the library of Dr Probert’s house in Richmond.

He had readily accepted Probert’s invitation to attend the next experiment, as it was termed. Not that he believed in this table-turning nonsense, but if the rest of sociable London was dabbling in it, he could hardly ignore it. The one condition he had demanded of Probert was that he was not to be introduced as a detective-inspector. It was certain to excite people, and lead them to expect clever explanations of everything that happened. Explanations were not his forte; even bottom of the bill music hall magicians mystified him absolutely. No, he was quite content to be known as Mr Jowett, a civil servant with an office in Whitehall.

The preliminaries had been got over quickly: introductions, a glass of sherry in the drawing-room and then to the library. Seven chairs were already positioned round the table, which was of polished mahogany. The room was narrow and shelved to the ceiling, but the electric light, the pride of Probert’s establishment, more than compensated for the sombre bindings of the books. At one end, a set of velvet curtains divided the room, to provide a recess, which the doctor used as a study.

Hearts were alleged to beat faster when the lights went out at a seance, but the moment when Probert pulled the switch had come as a distinct relief to Jowett. Young Nye, on Miss Probert’s other side, had been scrutinising him in a manner decidedly antagonistic, quite unjustifiably, in his opinion. Why should he be blamed if the fellow’s Intended addressed almost all her conversation to him? Alice Probert was uncommonly appealing, he was ready to admit, with natural black curls and flashing eyes and a figure he could only describe as precocious at the age of nineteen, so perhaps Nye’s state of agitation was not surprising. What torment the wretched man must be suffering with the light off!

‘Please feel free to engage in subdued conversation,’ said Brand’s voice from the darkness. He articulated each word with the care of one who had studied elocution without altogether mastering the vowel sounds. ‘I like it better than a wearisome silence and so do the spirits. If at any time during the seance you feel constrained to shout something aloud, or sing at the top of your voice, or gesticulate, I urge you for your own good to give way to the impulse. Likewise, if the person next to you goes into convulsions do not be alarmed. It is quite normal. Put a supporting arm around them and let them lean against you until the fit passes.’

That was bad news for Nye! Jowett gave Alice’s hand another gentle squeeze to let her know that support was available on the left.

‘I’ve given the domestics a night off,’ said Probert, in response to the call for conversation. ‘Sent them out. Didn’t want them making noises round the house and alarming us.’

‘Where is Mama?’ asked Alice.

‘As far away as she can get,’ said Probert. ‘I gave her a volume of Notable British Sermons to take upstairs. Should take her mind off the goings-on down here. Have you checked the room temperature, Strathmore?’

‘Sixty-eight point five degrees,’ said Strathmore. ‘That was five minutes ago, at half past eight.’

‘Excellent. I’m sorry about the fire-screen, ladies and gentlemen, but darkness is essential. Does anyone feel anything yet? What about you, Jowett? This is your first seance, isn’t it?’

‘That is so. I feel nothing exceptional, I assure you.’

‘Capital. And Miss Crush?’

‘I begin to feel a presence,’ said the voice of Miss Crush, speaking with a strange emphasis. ‘The room has become colder, has it not?’

Jowett, certainly, had goose-pimples forming rapidly on the backs of his legs.

‘Is there someone wishing to get in touch?’ asked Brand.

There was no response, but now the atmosphere was charged with tension. Subdued conversation had terminated for the night. The sitters waited breathlessly for Brand to put the question again.

‘Please signify your presence if you are here.’

It came at once: a distinct rap on the table.

‘There it is!’ cried Miss Crush superfluously.

Brand was into his routine with professional slickness.

‘Are you prepared to answer questions, three raps for yes and one for no?’

Three confident raps were heard.

‘Are you known to any of us?’

The same.

‘To our host?’

One rap.

‘Miss Crush?’

Three clear raps.

‘Can you give your name?’

Five raps.

‘Alphabet,’ said Dr Probert, who also seemed to know his seance procedures.

Brand recited the alphabet at a rate so brisk that it seemed he was determined to get to Z without being stopped, but at W there was a sharp rap on the table. He began again, and was stopped at once by a second rap.

‘A,’ said Dr Probert. ‘W followed by A.’

‘Walter!’ exclaimed Miss Crush in an intuitive flash. ‘Uncle Walter!’

Three loud raps confirmed the fact.

Jowett leaned forward in the darkness, trying to locate the rappings. First they had seemed to come from the medium’s side of the table, but the latest sounded closer at hand. He was not taken in by them, of course. There were at least a dozen ways of producing sounds of that sort without invoking the spirits. Over the years, so-called mediums had confessed to everything from castanets between their knees to cracking the joints of their big toes. There was the story of a lady at a seance who had fainted when one of her companions cracked a biscuit. It would take something more sensational than a few knockings under a table to convince a Scotland Yard man that he was in the presence of the paranormal.

Even so, the darkness evoked irrational possibilities. The senses were primed to respond to the smallest suggestion of anything irregular. It wanted all the self-possession cultivated in a lifetime in the Force to keep things in their proper perspective.

‘These scientific gentlemen are here to observe the phenomena of the seance,’ Brand explained to the spirit of Uncle Walter. ‘Are you prepared to assist us in our experiments?’

Three raps.

Jowett felt a sudden pressure from Alice Probert’s hand.

‘Look!’ she said. ‘Something is hovering over the table.’

‘By Jove, yes, I can see it!’ said her fiance.

‘I, too,’ said Probert.

Jowett straightened up from trying to locate the source of the raps and to his intense astonishment saw the phenomenon for himself: a patch of light, the size of a small bird, fluttering three feet above the table. The luminosity was not sufficient to irradiate the faces of the sitters, but something was undeniably there, and it was animated, too. It rose and swooped, seeming to vanish at will and reappear in another position, altering its shape miraculously.

‘Do you see it, Strathmore?’ asked Probert.

‘Quite unbelievable!’ murmured the man from the Life After Death Society.

‘God save us!’ said Miss Crush. ‘I believe it is a hand.’

Even as Jowett watched, the fluttering movement slowed sufficiently for him briefly to discern the shape of a human palm with fingers and a thumb. Not a glove, not a plaster cast: no obvious artifice. An identifiable hand, detached at the wrist, stretching and clenching in a natural manner, so that the creasing of the flesh coincided with the characteristic markings of the palm. But for all its mobility, it lacked the colour of a living hand. It was not pink; it was livid, and glowing through the darkness.

‘A materialisation!’ whispered Probert. ‘I never thought I should live-’

‘Nor I,’ murmured Strathmore, with awe.

‘It is a common enough manifestation,’ said Brand composedly. ‘Keep a firm hold on each other’s hands and it will come down and touch us.’

As the medium spoke, Jowett saw the fingers close over the palm, which turned in the air and vanished. An instant after, there was a scream.

‘It touched my cheek!’ said Miss Crush.

At once Alice Probert said, ‘My dress! It is tugging at my dress!’

‘Is it, by Jove?’ said Nye, on her other side. ‘I won’t have that!’

‘Keep your hands on the table,’ warned Brand.

‘I’m not having my Alice interfered with,’ said Nye determinedly.

‘It’s all right, William. It has stopped,’ said Alice.

‘Damnable behaviour, whoever it was,’ said Nye.

‘Uncle Walter could never resist a pretty girl,’ revealed Miss Crush.

‘It’s a fine time to tell us that, madam, when there’s a hand at liberty under the table,’ said Nye. ‘Do you think we ought to go any further with this, Dr Probert?’

Before anyone could comment there was a blood-curdling bellow from Nye. ‘What the blazes is going on? Someone’s pelting me with fruit!’

True enough, something rolled across the table and came to rest against Jowett’s hand. It must have split on impact with Nye, for there was a pungent smell of orange-juice in the air.

‘The spirit has got the impression that you are a hostile presence,’ Brand explained. ‘Try to reassure it, Captain Nye, or the experiment will be ruined.’

‘Yes, play the game, William, for Heaven’s sake,’ added Probert.

‘The Devil I will!’ said Nye, unsociably.

There was the sound of another orange making contact with Nye. A third must have missed, but hit a vase of chrysanthemums on the mantelpiece behind him, for there was a sound of a vessel overturning, followed by a rapid dripping of water into the hearth.

‘The spirit has left us, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Brand.

‘Damn you, Nye, you’ve ruined everything!’ exclaimed Strathmore. ‘We had the eternal secret within our grasp.

I’ve waited twelve years for this. Twelve years!’

Nye was unrepentant. ‘I’m not allowing my fiancee’s clothing to be interfered with in the name of science or anything else. It’s unendurable! If that’s the nature of your experiments, Dr Probert, sir, I demand that Alice leaves the table, and so shall I. Good God, it’s like a blasted mess-night after the Colonel’s left!’

‘I think it might be prudent if we all left the table for an interval,’ said Probert. ‘I cannot see the sense in sitting here waiting for something else to be shied at Captain Nye.’

Alice, on Jowett’s right, made an odd sound in her throat which he could almost have believed was a stifled giggle. She was obviously hysterical, poor child.

‘You’re right,’ said Brand. ‘The moment has passed. We all need to compose ourselves. After that, I shall be happy to cooperate in the second experiment you prepared, Doctor. For the present, I suggest someone turns on the light.’

Sergeant Cribb had miscalculated. He would have laid a guinea to a gooseberry that the burglary that evening would take place at Miss Crush’s. He had backed his judgment by posting Thackeray behind a tree in Eaton Square for the night. It seemed so obvious: with Miss Crush out at Richmond the Minton vase was there for the taking. Too obvious, perhaps? Thackeray was going to say some strong words about that in the morning, for the plain fact was that the man Cribb suspected of the burglaries was not in Belgravia at all. He had just let himself in through the back door of Dr Probert’s residence in Richmond.

Cribb had followed him there from central London, pursued him in a cab as far as Richmond Bridge and tracked him on foot the rest of the way. He had rarely been so surprised as when the trail led clean through Kensington High Street and on to Hammersmith, Chiswick and Richmond.

And now his suspect had confidently entered Probert’s house by the back door and stepped inside. What in the name of sanity were the servants doing to leave the door unlocked? Curiously, there wasn’t a light on in the basement. The only lights in the house were at the front, on the ground floor, where the seance was presumably taking place, and a small window at the top, where the timid Mrs Probert must have gone for refuge.

Probert wasn’t going to welcome a detective-sergeant on the premises this evening and nor was Jowett, but Cribb knew which way duty lay. Allowing his quarry half a minute to get up the back stairs to the gallery of classical subjects, he followed by the same route.

When he reached the door of the gallery, he found that he had made a second miscalculation. The door was locked, and the man he was pursuing was nowhere within sight or hearing.

Dr Probert’s Edison-Swan lamps were not only more powerful than gas; they lit the room in full brilliance the moment the switch was turned on. The sitters blinked as their optic muscles strained to adapt to the new conditions, but the discomfort was a fair exchange for a clear sight of the room. During the seance, Jowett had felt an increasing urge to check the position of the furniture and the proximity of the walls and ceiling. It was more than a mere wish to orientate himself; it was a need to reaffirm that furniture, walls and ceiling were actually there at all.

‘Would anyone care for another drink?’ asked Probert, breaking the uneasy silence.

‘A small gin neat wouldn’t come amiss, since you mention it, Doctor,’ said Miss Crush.

‘If I may say so,’ said Strathmore, ‘it would be wiser if we all refrained from further consumption of alcohol until after the second experiment, in the interests of science. I shall, of course, be writing a full report of tonight’s events for the Proceedings of my Society. One would not wish to report that certain of the participants had indulged themselves to the extent of a sherry followed by an undiluted gin. It would tend to detract somewhat from the authority of the report.’

‘You have a good point there, Strathmore,’ said Probert. ‘What do you say, Miss Crush?’

‘Oh, a very pertinent point, Doctor. I had no idea that we might be reported in the Proceedings.’ She smiled coyly in Strathmore’s direction. ‘Will you mention any of us by name, Mr Strathmore?’

‘With your permission, madam, with your permission. I have a notion that my report will be read and discussed in scientific societies all over the world when the importance of what is happening here this evening is generally known.’

‘Then I shall definitely forego the gin,’ declared Miss Crush.

‘In that case, I think we might proceed without delay to prepare the apparatus for the second experiment. I trust that everyone is still prepared to co-operate?’ Dr Probert looked speculatively round the table, leaving the eye of his prospective son-in-law till last.

Captain Nye sniffed. ‘It had better be conducted in a more decent manner than events so far tonight. I won’t have my fiancee put to any more embarrassment, I promise you.’

‘It’s quite all right, William,’ Alice assured him, taking his arm.

‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ said Nye, primly. ‘I have heard of certain very disagreeable things happening in the name of spiritualism-things you in your innocence could not begin to imagine-and I refuse to be a party to them here.’

‘Nothing improper happens under my roof, I assure you,’ said Probert, through his teeth.

‘I’m glad to have that assurance, sir, and I respect it,’ Nye went on, ‘but I take a less sanguine view of the probable outcome of several people of both sexes linking hands in a darkened room.’

Before Probert could reply, Peter Brand tactfully intervened. ‘It isn’t absolutely necessary to link hands. The spirits don’t insist upon it. We do it as a safeguard against trickery. If everyone holds hands, as we did just now, you can be quite sure that no one is producing artificial phenomena. But you need not link hands for the next experiment if you prefer not to, and I don’t object to the seance taking place in a subdued light, if that would ease your mind, sir. We could take away the firescreen and sit by the natural light of the fire.’

‘That sounds a promising way to preserve decorum,’ said Jowett, who felt it was time he contributed something constructive to the debate. He was resigned to relinquishing Alice Probert’s hand now that Nye had made such an issue of it.

‘I have no objection either way,’ said Miss Crush. ‘Personally, I don’t feel threatened by anyone present, including poor Uncle Walter.’

‘Is it agreed that we continue as Mr Brand suggests, then?’ asked Strathmore, as keen as Brand to resume the seance.

‘Very well,’ said Nye, ‘but I give due notice that Alice and I shall withdraw at the first hint of anything objectionable.’

‘That’s agreed, then,’ said Brand cheerfully. ‘Perhaps you will set up the apparatus, gentlemen. I shall repair the small amount of damage that our visitor inflicted.’ He went to the mantelpiece, stood the vase of chrysanthemums in its former position and gallantly withdrew his own handkerchief to mop up the water spilt along the ledge and in the hearth.

‘That’s not necessary,’ said Probert. ‘I can-’

‘-Call a servant?’ said Brand. ‘I thought you’d given them a night off, sir. Leave this to me and show your other guests what is behind the curtain in your study.’

It was an electric chair.

More precisely, it was a handsome oak chair carved in the Gothic style, with brass handles screwed to the arms. Wires trailed from the handles to a black box the size and shape of a shoe-box, to which a thicker lead was connected on the other side and snaked across the floor and under the door.

‘It is a simple electrical circuit,’ Dr Probert explained to the others as they grouped round the chair. ‘I am not sure how intimately you are all acquainted with the theory of electricity. This is one of the few houses in Richmond so far connected to Mr Cooper’s electrical supply station in Queen’s Road. I have four storage batteries in my cellar, each with a tension of 104 volts, and they are charged from Mr Cooper’s generator. One does not require 400 volts to illuminate a house, of course, so we pass the current through a transformer which reduces it to the appropriate strength. The box you see on the floor is a step-down transformer of my own design, manufactured solely for this experiment. When I presently connect the supply to the transformer it will ensure that only a mild and even current passes through. It will travel along this copper wire to the handle of the chair. A similar wire leads from the other handle back to the transformer, so that when the handles are linked by a conducting agent an electrical circuit is formed.’

‘And Mr Brand is to be our conductor!’ cried Miss Crush delightedly. ‘What an ingenious idea! If he takes his hands off the chair the circuit will be broken.’

‘But is it quite safe?’ asked Alice anxiously.

‘Oh, perfectly, my dear,’ her father answered. ‘The current passing through him will be very mild, you see-a mere fraction of an ampere. The transformer steps down the electromotive force from the storage batteries to just twenty volts. But as an extra precaution we have thought of a further modification. It is this.’ He tapped a squat, metal instrument with a glass face, behind which a numbered dial was marked. ‘This is a galvanometer. It measures the strength of electricity which passes through it. I am going to introduce it into the circuit by connecting it to this wire which trails from the right arm of the chair. The wire is long enough uncoiled to enable us to have the galvanometer with us on the other side of the curtain. Mr Brand will sit here holding the chair-handles and we shall know from the instrument whether he breaks the contact for so much as a fraction of a second.’

‘Bravo!’ said Miss Crush. ‘What splendid reading it will make in Mr Strathmore’s report! I can visualise it already- The Medium who Stood the Test of Electrical Science.’

‘The Proceedings is a professional journal, madam, not a penny newspaper,’ said Strathmore, his monocle gleaming.

‘Frankly, it seems to me that you’re going to excessive lengths to make sure that the fellow’s hands stay on the chair,’ said Nye, voicing the thought that was crossing Jowett’s mind. ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler to have a couple of us in here watching him instead of a confounded galvanometer on the other side of a curtain?’

‘It would indeed,’ said Probert, ‘but it would certainly destroy the experiment. Mr Brand has been persuaded this evening to attempt the ultimate feat in the repertoire of spiritualism. It calls for a quite exceptional summoning of the powers at his disposal. He is going to pass into a state of total trance, and for this he requires a situation in which he is physically isolated. There are practical reasons for this: a medium completely in trance is in a singularly vulnerable state; he has, in effect, broken contact with the world, and any noise or interruption, however accidental, must come as a severe shock. Mr Brand will not mind my confiding to you that although he is no invalid, his constitution is not of the strongest. He has a condition known to the layman as a murmuring heart-not a serious handicap in normal circumstances, but one which could conceivably be complicated by a sudden shock. The few mediums who have attempted what Mr Brand is to try for the benefit of science this evening have always worked from a detached room or a specially constructed cabinet which insulates them from unpredictable shocks. We should be grateful that Mr Brand is prepared not only to attempt this experiment, but to submit to the intrusion of our electrical wires.’

‘I am profoundly grateful,’ murmured Miss Crush.

‘I’m sure you are, ma’am. And I have no doubt that the entire scientific world will share your sentiment if the experiment is successful.’

‘What is the object of the experiment, then, for Heaven’s sake?’ demanded Nye.

‘The object, William, is to produce, in scientifically controlled conditions, the total manifestation of a spirit.’