A Case of Spirits

CHAPTER 7

‘He has gone, I’m afraid,’ said Dr Probert, refastening his shirtsleeves. Half an hour’s concentrated attempt to resuscitate Peter Brand had produced not a glimmer of life. The body lay as it had first been put down on the table in the library. The rest of Dr Probert’s guests and family stood in attendance.

‘Passed over?’ queried Miss Crush, unable, apparently, to accept the information.

‘Joined the majority, madam,’ said Strathmore, in language she would understand.

‘Support her, Alice!’ ordered Probert. ‘She’s going again.’

‘How the deuce does a thing like this happen?’ asked Nye, ignoring the attempt to stop Miss Crush from hitting the floor.

‘That will be for a coroner to decide,’ said Probert. ‘I suspect that the immediate cause of death is heart failure induced by an electric shock. The muscular contraction and the peculiar behaviour of the hair suggests nothing else to me. A man with a heart condition such as his would be vulnerable to a severe electric shock.’

‘But you led us to believe that the apparatus was entirely safe,’ said Nye. ‘How could he have received a severe shock?’

Probert shook his head. ‘William, I am at a loss to account for it. Everything will have to be examined by experts.’

‘That’s a fact, sir,’ said Cribb, speaking from the study. ‘We shall have to arrange for this room to be locked until it’s been seen. I’ve got a shrewd idea that unless you take precautions the housemaid will be here at some ungodly hour tomorrow morning pushing a carpet-sweeper through the wires.’

‘You may have the key for as long as you need it,’ said Probert, much subdued in manner.

‘I’ll take charge of it,’ said Jowett, leaving no doubt who was the senior officer present. ‘This is the moment I think, when I should explain to your guests, Probert, that I am a detective-inspector. My connection with Great Scotland Yard you have already disclosed, notwithstanding my request to the contrary. The man who interrupted the seance is Detective-Sergeant Cribb, and his arrival on the scene was as surprising to me as it was to the rest of you. We now know that he was pursuing a man who had illegally entered this house, the person known as Professor Quayle. Where have you put Quayle for the present, Cribb?’

‘The kitchen, sir. Handcuffed him to the range. He’ll keep nice and warm until we’re ready for him.’ Cribb smiled at Mrs Probert, who had come downstairs and was sitting inconspicuously between two bookcases. ‘That was as neat a knockdown as I’ve seen, ma’am, if you’ll allow me to say so.’

‘It was pure fright,’ said Mrs Probert simply. ‘I heard the voices on the landing underneath me and I came to the conclusion that an army was on its way up to my room. Waiting for them to burst in on me was too much to endure, so I stood at my door with the first thing that came to hand, the book I was reading. I thought it would show that I was not prepared to submit without a fight. I had a knitting-needle ready for the next man. It was a good thing you stopped the other side of Professor Quayle, Sergeant.’

‘I think we should not concern ourselves too much with Quayle at this juncture,’ said Jowett firmly. ‘It seems evident that by coincidence two lamentable events occurred in this house tonight within minutes of each other. Speaking as the senior police officer present, I must insist that the sudden death of Mr Brand has priority in our investigations. Can’t you cover him over, or something, Probert? The sight of him is obviously distressing the ladies.’

‘I’ll fetch a sheet,’ said Mrs Probert, going to the door.

‘A coincidence, you say,’ said Strathmore. ‘I’m doubtful of that, Inspector.’

Jowett crossed his arms challengingly. ‘Exactly what do you intend by that remark, sir?’

‘Why, that it seems reasonable to suppose that Brand’s accident and Quayle’s presence here are not unconnected. The men are professional collaborators, are they not?’

‘They were,’ said Probert.

‘And they lodged in the same house,’ continued Strathmore. ‘As an investigator of the occult, I am bound to reflect on what has happened this evening and ask myself whether Quayle was here in the role of accomplice, to assist the medium in producing fraudulent phenomena. It is nothing unusual in the annals of spiritualism, I assure you.’

‘That’s a quick turn round,’ said Nye. ‘An hour ago you were ready to tell the world that eternal life was an established fact.’

‘And what grounds do you have for suggesting this was a fraudulent seance?’ demanded Miss Crush, now fully conscious, and brandishing the smelling-salts at Strathmore.

‘The things I heard and saw tonight were genuine, I am perfectly confident. You all experienced them-the rap-pings, the spirit hand and the oranges being thrown about and the vase overturned while we all had our hands linked. If you are suggesting Professor Quayle was in the room with us throwing fruit in our faces I think you have a lot of explaining to do. Do you suppose he was under the table as well, tugging at our clothes? Alice, you felt the hand touching you, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, I did, most certainly. It touched the hem of my dress and pulled it several times. And in the second seance, my hair was stroked. I told you all at the time. You could see that nobody was in the room but ourselves.’ Alice Probert’s eyes shone with earnestness. She spoke with all the passion of her nineteen years, her forehead creasing prettily with the importance of it all.

‘Delusions, indubitably,’ said Strathmore. ‘You were predisposed to expect something of the sort.’ He chuckled deep in his throat. ‘This isn’t the first time I’ve heard one of the fair sex claim that somebody touched her in the dark, my dear.’

She returned a withering look. ‘That is an observation that reflects only upon you, Mr Strathmore.’

‘Careful how you speak to my fiancee, sir,’ warned Nye, with as much effect as a man who puts Beware of the Dog on his gate after his pet has savaged the neighbour.

Probert had a constructive suggestion to make. ‘We might establish whether Brand was fraudulent by turning out his pockets. They will need to be emptied for identification purposes. If there’s a white glove in there, or a hand made of plaster of Paris, we shall know Strathmore’s suspicions are correct. What do you say, Inspector?’

‘I have no objection,’ answered Jowett, pleased to be consulted. It had begun to look as if he was losing control of the discussion. He took a step towards the body, checked and on second thoughts delegated the duty to Cribb. ‘Sergeant, come over here and go through the pockets, will you? I shall make an inventory as you do so.’

Cribb stepped briskly forward. ‘Left hand trouser pocket, sir: nothing. Right hand: some money, two shillings and sevenpence halfpenny. Hip pocket: nothing. Jacket pocket, left hand outside: cigarette case, silver, and box of safety matches, Bryant and May. Right hand: two keys on a ring. Ticket pocket: railway ticket, third class return, Richmond to Waterloo. Breast pocket, left hand inside: nothing. Right hand: wallet, pigskin, containing two penny postage stamps, three ten shilling notes and a photograph, somewhat dog-eared, of a lady in the-er-music-hall costume. There’s numbers on the back, sir.’

‘The back of the photograph, I trust,’ said Jowett drily. ‘Let me see.’

Cribb handed it discreetly face downwards to his superior. Jowett frowned. There were two sets of neatly-formed numbers: 469 and below it 9281, followed by a square, the same size as the figures.

‘Not significant, in my opinion,’ said Jowett, after a pause. He turned the photograph over, blushed, and handed it back to Cribb. ‘Carry on, Sergeant.’

‘Top pocket: nothing, sir. Waistcoat, left hand side: nothing. Right hand: silver watch and chain, inscribed “P. B.” That’s all, sir.’

Cribb put the objects in a neat arrangement on the table at the dead man’s feet. Mrs Probert came forward with a sheet and draped it over the body.

‘That seems to answer your point, Mr Strathmore,’ said Jowett. ‘There’s nothing here to suggest he was a fraud.’

‘I hope certain people feel suitably ashamed of themselves,’ said Miss Crush in a stage whisper.

‘Very well, the medium had no evidence of trickery on his person,’ Strathmore conceded. ‘That is not to have prevented him from passing things to his collaborator. I suggest we make a similar search of Quayle.’

‘Done, sir,’ said Cribb. ‘He’s carrying a railway ticket, twelve and sixpence and a hip-flask of gin, which fortunately survived his fall.’

Jowett gave the sort of cough a chairman gives to call a meeting to order. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have explored this avenue of inquiry for long enough. It has produced nothing of consequence. I propose that we now confine ourselves strictly to the circumstances of Mr Brand’s unfortunate demise. Do I understand that you have something to contribute, madam?’ He peered warily at Miss Crush, who had been waving her hand throughout his speech.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t somebody go and fetch a policeman?’

Even in the presence of death, unforced laughter is difficult to suppress. It took several seconds for Jowett to restore order. ‘I believe, madam, that you were insensible when I introduced myself just now. I am Detective-Inspector Jowett of the Criminal Investigation Department, Great Scotland Yard, and I will suffice for a policeman. My assistant here is Sergeant Cribb, whom I was led to believe has already interviewed you at your house. He is a policeman, too.’

‘I should have remembered,’ said Miss Crush, flapping her hand at the inspector. ‘I think of him as a sensitive, you see, not an officer of the law. It would help if you both wore uniforms.’ She sighed and looked misty-eyed. ‘I think tall helmets are very chic.’

Jowett closed his eyes, and said with deliberation, ‘I need to determine the circumstances leading to Mr Brand’s decease. I shall require a statement from each of you, but before we begin the formalities, is there anyone with anything to say bearing on the accident which has not been mentioned already?’

‘I think so, sir,’ said Cribb. ‘If you’ll step into the study, I can show you.’ He crossed the room with Jowett following and crouched in front of the chair in which Brand had died. ‘Put your hand on the carpet here, sir. Feel it? It’s damp over quite a large patch eighteen inches in front of the chair. When we found the body the feet were positioned on this patch. I don’t regard myself as much of a scientist, but I know that water can conduct electricity, and that electricity tends to go to earth. If Mr Brand started with his feet under the chair on this dry area, but moved them forward during the experiment, mightn’t it have diverted the path of the current so that it flowed through the length of his body to earth? I think it’s pertinent to ask how the wet patch got here.’

‘That’s no mystery,’ said Probert at once. ‘I kicked over a bowl of salt solution we used to make a good contact for the terminals.’

‘When did this happen, sir?’

‘Halfway through, when Brand called me from behind the curtain. We were totally in darkness, if you follow me, and I blundered into the thing. It made no difference, though. He didn’t get a shock, or anything.’

‘Probably not, sir, if his feet were on the dry part of the carpet. He’d get his shock when he moved them forward.’

‘I see your point, Sergeant, but it still doesn’t explain how the shock could have killed him. The current couldn’t change, you see. It was no more than a tickle. Several of us tried it.’

‘Couldn’t feel a thing,’ Nye confirmed.

‘The transformer was the safeguard, you understand,’ continued Probert. ‘It reduced the electro-motive force to twenty volts, and that won’t kill a man, I assure you.’

Cribb looked thoughtfully at the wooden box from which the wires trailed. ‘This cable connected to the other side of the transformer leads up from the batteries in the cellar, does it, sir?’

‘Yes, that’s the main lead. It carries 416 volts. If I’d connected that to the chair it would have been lethal.’

‘And if there was a fault in the transformer?’

Probert shook his head emphatically. ‘I’m damned sure there wasn’t, Sergeant. Have it checked, by all means, but you’ll find it’s working perfectly. Otherwise we shouldn’t have got the galvanometer readings we did. Heavens, at 416 volts the blasted galvanometer would have been burnt out!’

Cribb stood up and massaged the side of his face, a tactful way of indicating to Jowett that he was at liberty to take over the questioning if he wished. There was silence except for the rasp of Cribb’s side-whiskers, so he began again. ‘Dr Probert, you mentioned that Brand called out to you, and that was how you came to overturn the bowl of water. What did he want?’

‘He claimed that somebody had come into the study while he was in trance. He was most indignant about it, and only calmed down when we suggested it must have been a spirit. All the people in the house except my wife were present in the library, you see.’

‘That was what you supposed at the time, sir.’

‘Good God, I’d forgotten! It could have been Quayle who interrupted him-or even you!’

‘Not me, sir, I assure you, but Professor Quayle is a possibility. Quite an engaging one. I followed him into the house through the back door. You ought to have a word with your servants about that, sir. We spend a lot of time in the Force reminding people about doors they haven’t locked. Anyway, I think the professor must have heard me in pursuit, because he was nowhere to be seen by the time I got up here from the basement. It’s my guess now that he let himself in through the study door to give me the slip. He probably couldn’t see a thing when he first came in.’

‘Of course!’ said Nye excitedly. ‘The silly blighter cracked his foot against the transformer and shot 400 volts into Brand, poor beggar.’

‘Impossible!’ said Probert with a glare. ‘Brand was perfectly all right when we pulled aside the curtain. The accident happened later, between the time when we withdrew and closed the curtain for the second time and when the Sergeant came in through the library door. At that time Quayle was definitely not in the study.’

‘He’d given me the slip, sir,’ said Cribb. ‘The next I heard from him was the creaking of a floorboard upstairs after we discovered what had happened in here. He couldn’t get out through the basement because Captain Nye was down there switching off the current, so he went upstairs instead.’

‘As we discovered,’ said Probert.

‘As I did,’ his wife corrected him.

‘What nobody has made clear,’ said Alice, ‘is why Professor Quayle came into the house at all. If it wasn’t to assist Mr Brand, as now seems clear, what was the purpose of his presence here?’

Cribb shot an inquiring glance at his superior. ‘I was rather hoping to extract that information from the professor himself, miss. If Inspector Jowett was proposing to collect statements from you all, I wondered if I might be spared to put some questions across the kitchen table downstairs. Only, of course, if you were planning things that way, sir.’

Jowett nodded, the first positive thing he had achieved in ten minutes. ‘That was precisely what I was coming to, Sergeant.’

‘Thank you, sir. It looks like being a long night, so while I’m down there, I’ll put the kettle on, if I may. I’ll stand it on the range beside the professor and see which one sings first.’

As it turned out, the interview could not take place in the kitchen. Hitchman, the Proberts’ deaf maidservant, had returned from her evening off and was threatening the professor with a meat-hook when Cribb got down there. The kitchen was her domain and she was clearly quite intractable, so he side-stepped her, unlocked the professor, marched him upstairs and obtained the key to the picture-gallery from Probert.

‘Sit down, sir,’ he said, poking the professor in the chest with sufficient firmness to park him in the flirtation settee. ‘I shan’t join you. Nothing personal intended, but I like to see a man’s eyes when I ask him questions. In case you wondered, we ain’t here to look at the ladies on the wall, and I don’t propose to compete with ’em.’ He pulled the draw-string at the side of one of Dr Probert’s naked goddesses, who was partially in view, then smartly turned about, pointed a finger at Quayle and asked ‘What have you done with the Etty?’

‘The what?’ asked Quayle, in a voice so thin nobody would have believed it had harangued an audience from the platform of the Store Street Hall.

‘Sleeping Nymph and Satyrs. Occupied a place on the wall behind you until last Friday week. Dr Probert wants it back. I hope it ain’t mutilated.’

‘I don’t know anything about this, Constable.’

‘Sergeant, if you please. Cribb’s the name. Don’t waste my time. I want some sleep tonight. Etty was the artist, you see.’

‘I don’t think I have heard of him.’

‘That’s evident,’ said Cribb, ‘or you wouldn’t have walked out with the canvas you did. There’s better things on these walls than Ettys, I can tell you. You and I might say there isn’t much to choose between buxom wenches in the buff, but we’d be wrong. There’s some here worth ten of your Ettys. French ones. No man of culture would have helped himself to an English nymph when there was madamoiselles to be had. And why take only one, when you could have had an armful? You gave so much away, you see. You’re no picture-thief. You can’t even cut a canvas neatly off its frame. You’re a raw beginner, Professor, no doubt of it.’

Quayle said nothing, but his tongue raced nervously round his lips, moistening them.

‘It was the same at Miss Crush’s,’ Cribb went on. ‘You took a piece of common Royal Worcester when you could have had a priceless Minton. It was plain to me that you knew as much about china as you did about nudes, or housebreaking. You made a shocking mess of Dr Probert’s pantry, climbing in through all the biscuits and pearl barley, didn’t you? So it didn’t take a Scotland Yard man to work out that the thief wasn’t a professional cracksman.

‘How did I come to suspect you? Well, at first I did what you intended-I suspected Peter Brand instead. It was obvious the thief was primed. He knew the only favourable times to rob the houses: when the owners were out visiting. Consider the sequence of events. On October 15th there’s a seance at Miss Crush’s at which Brand and Dr Probert are guests. The doctor very civilly invites Miss Crush back to his house for a return seance on October 31st. She attends, and so does Brand. During the evening Dr Probert makes reference to a lecture he is going to give, which his wife and daughter will attend. The seance comes to an end, Brand leaves, and an hour later so does Miss Crush. When she gets home she discovers the theft of her vase. On November 6th, the night of the lecture, the Proberts’ house is broken into, and a picture stolen. Who can I suspect but Brand, the only person other than the doctor and Miss Crush who was present at both seances and knew when to execute the burglaries?’

‘It seems a reasonable inference to make,’ said Quayle, guardedly. ‘He is of humble extraction, as you must have gathered from his occasional lapses of speech. His father was a common cabman, I believe. A person of that class admitted suddenly to the residences of the well-to-do is subject to certain temptations, is he not?’

‘Ah,’ said Cribb, putting up a forefinger. ‘That’s what you wanted me to think, and so I did for a short time. Until I clapped my eyes on you, Professor.’

‘Where was this?’

‘Don’t look so alarmed. It wasn’t in Probert’s garden. It was legitimate enough at the time-your lantern lecture at the Store Street Hall.’

‘You were there?’

‘My assistant is Constable Thackeray, the man with the handcuffs.’

‘I might have guessed.’

‘You might, sir. You looked a trifle worried when Peter Brand removed the handcuffs from the envelope, as I recall, but so did Brand, of course. I must be fair. Before that, though, I was already starting to turn things over in my mind. It seemed to me that Peter Brand was a young man with ambition. He was earning something of a reputation in the metropolis. What was it? Spirit-writing in Camberwell and the levitation of a suite of furniture in Hampstead? At any rate, there can’t be many mediums of twenty capable of sharing the billing with you at the Store Street Hall.’

‘It was only at my invitation,’ insisted Quayle.

‘The whole point is,’ Cribb continued, ‘that he was starting to earn fat fees, and the prospects were even better. Why should he queer his own pitch by robbing the clients when he was fleecing them handsomely already? It made no sense.’

‘Fleecing them?’ repeated Quayle. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Simply that I class young Brand with any other sharp, and it’s my experience that the needle-pointed fraternity don’t play two games at once.’

‘I hope you are not equating spiritualism with racecourse practices.’

‘It’s all a way of lining your pocket, as I see it,’ said Cribb. ‘You don’t find your thimble-rigger picking pockets at the same time as he works the cups. When young Brand picked the handcuffs out of the envelope at the meeting, he was terrified, I could see that. But it wasn’t on account of the Etty or the Worcester vase; it was because he was afraid we’d tumbled to the fact that he already knew Miss Crush and all about her Uncle Walter.’

‘Oh that,’ said Quayle dismissively. ‘Pure opportunism. It was perfectly legitimate.’

‘I’d like to hear you justify that to your audience,’ said Cribb. ‘However, Brand, for whatever reason, took the first opportunity of dashing for the exit. We caught up with him a few yards short of Tottenham Court Road. Do you know, Professor, he didn’t even know the vase had gone from Miss Crush’s house, and when I mentioned it, he thought it was the Minton that must have been taken. Unlike you, you see, he can tell the value of a piece of china. He also talked about you.’

Quayle’s eyes flashed with fury. ‘Did he? The little guttersnipe!’

‘Yes. Called you a regular pal, if I recall correctly. Said that you took him in and taught him the rudiments of table-tapping.’

‘Oh, did he?’ Quayle rapidly switched to a conciliatory tone. ‘That’s perfectly true, of course. I gave him introductions to some of the best addresses in London.’

‘So I heard,’ said Cribb. ‘Just when you were slipping out of public favour, too. It takes a generous-hearted man to lend a helping hand to an up-and-coming youngster at a time like that.’

‘I’m glad you appreciate the fact.’

‘I asked myself why you did it.’

‘From altruism, Sergeant.’

Cribb walked to the sideboard and poured a glass of water from the flask there. ‘You’ve got all the answers ready, haven’t you? No, a man in your shoes doesn’t hand his livelihood over to an upstart for no good reason. I know why you did it. You gave him the helping hand to let him get ahead of you so that you could stab him in the back. Figuratively speaking, of course,’

Quayle shook his head so vigorously that his cheeks quivered. ‘Arrant nonsense!’

‘In that way there was far more chance of winning back the favour of your patrons. Have you ever studied prizefighting? You’ve got a lot in common with the great Jem Mace. Do you know, Professor, there’s only one thing that the Fancy like better than a novice who comes fresh to win a championship, and that’s the old’un who comes back to knock him out. It’s a sound principle, and it would have worked for you if you hadn’t been such a poor hand as a thief. All the conditions were right. Brand didn’t have the slightest notion of what you were planning, so he fed you all the information you needed. You broke into the houses when everyone was out and found the things of value without trouble. Unhappily, that’s where your plan ran into difficulties, because you picked the wrong things to steal. The objects didn’t matter to you; it was the act of theft that was important. That was all that was necessary to scotch Peter Brand’s career. Far better to do it that way, you decided, than expose him as a fraudulent medium, which would have raised doubts about mediums in general.’

‘This is all very ingenious, Sergeant, but where is it leading us?’ said Quayle in a bored voice. ‘You can prove nothing except that I was in this house tonight. My presence here is quite contrary to your theories, in fact.’

‘It is indeed, sir. I fully expected you to break into the empty residence of one of the guests. I’ve got Constable Thackeray on duty at this moment at Miss Crush’s place.’

‘Really? How ridiculous!’

‘Yes, I didn’t expect you here tonight, but since you came, I felt obliged to follow you. And now I am arresting you on suspicion of entering this dwelling house tonight with intent to commit a felony. That’s just a start, sir. I expect to bring several charges later, including the theft on November 6th of one picture entitled Sleeping Nymph and Satyrs, the property of Dr Probert.’

‘I deny it! You have no proof.’

‘But I have,’ said Cribb. ‘It’s in this glass of water.’ He held the still half-full tumbler six inches in front of the professor’s eyes. ‘See the small white object lying on the bottom? I put it in the glass a few minutes ago. It’s swelling nicely, ain’t it? I removed several like it from your trouser turn-ups when we carried you downstairs after Mrs Probert knocked you senseless with her book.’

‘What is it, for God’s sake?’

‘I don’t go in for stews over-much, sir, but I think I know what that is. There’s a lot of ’em still lying where you knocked ’em over climbing in through Dr Probert’s pantry. Devilish little things. Pearl barley, Professor, pearl barley.’