The Durham deception

Act Two

The Major comes forward to the footlights. He says to the audience, ‘In my time I have brought to many audiences a veritable extravaganza of extraordinary feats deriving from the lands of the east, lands whose denizens have access to secrets of life which we in the west have long forgotten or never knew. But none, in my humble opinion, is so truly remarkable as what I am about to show you. ’

He claps his hands and the curtains behind him are parted to reveal a wide plank of wood resting on the backs of two chairs. The backdrop is as highly patterned as suburban wallpaper. Dull but not restful. An Indian gentleman comes on, dressed in a dark suit, western style. He is elderly and stooped, with flowing white hair. He acknowledges the audience with a slight inclination of the head. He does not smile.

‘ Ladies and gentlemen,’ says the Major, ‘allow me to present to you the mystical Mahatma of Agra. He has made a lifelong study of the methods by which a privileged few may escape our earthly bounds, our mortal bonds. Even I do not know how the mystical Mahatma accomplishes the feat he is about to demonstrate. It quite contradicts all that we know of the laws of nature. Sit back, ladies and gentlemen – no, do not sit back but lean forward – perch with eagerness on the edge of your seats – and marvel! ’

With the Major’s help, the Mahatma clambers awkwardly on to the plank supported by the chair backs. He lies on his back, steepling his hands on his chest like an effigy on a tomb.

Once more Major Marmont turns to confide in the audience.

‘ The incantation I am about to utter was taught to me by the Mahatma himself. We were standing on the shores of the Ganges River as the sun was setting. I can remember the scene as if it was yesterday. You will not understand the words I say for I can scarcely understand them myself. But see their result! ’

Major Marmont swivels towards the figure on the plank, who is so still he might be in a trance. He mutters several sentences in a foreign language, very fast, at the same time raising his hands in the gesture of a blessing. Slowly, very slowly, the plank bearing the aged Mahatma of Agra lifts itself clear of the chairs. When the Mahatma is about three feet above these makeshift supports, the Major whisks away the chairs with the dexterity of a waiter. The plank and the man continue their steady ascent. The audience is split between wonder (this is indeed a denial of the laws of nature) and a futile attempt to discover how the trick is worked. They strain their eyes searching for cords and levers; they listen for the whirring of cogs and pulleys. They see nothing except the levitating Mahatma; they hear nothing apart from their own gasps of amazement.

Once the Mahatma of Agra has reached a height of about fifteen feet above the stage there is a queer kind of shimmering in the air. He begins to come down again. The Major watches his descent. When the Mahatma – unmoving, hands still steepled – is at shoulder height, Marmont runs his own hands over and round the head and feet of the body. He is showing that there are no hidden supports here. The chairs are replaced in their original positions. The plank bearing the Mahatma settles itself on the chair backs once again. The Major utters a few more incomprehensible words and raises his arms.

The Mahatma climbs quite nimbly off the plank, without Marmont’s aid, and stands on the stage. But what has happened? The man who floated up through the air was old and stooped. The one who now appears before them is upright and handsome. The hair that was white and flowing is now a gleaming black. Major Marmont seems almost as surprised as the audience. He bows at the applause but the Mahatma only inclines his head.

Afterwards the audience conclude that the Mahatma has not merely travelled magically through space but also through time. He has shed his years.

It is all a trick of course, somehow emphasized by the simplicity of the props and the wallpaper backdrop. It must be a trick. But who is to say that the sages of the East do not have access to secrets of life which we in the west have either long forgotten or never knew?

On the Train to Durham

It was only when they were travelling north by train that Tom Ansell thought to ask Helen why her aunt Julia Howlett had chosen to live in Durham. They had a compartment to themselves once they’d changed lines from the Midland to the North Eastern at Doncaster. Their thoughts were turning to the different missions with which they’d been entrusted.

They were going to stay at Miss Howlett’s house for a few days. Helen had written asking whether they might visit. It had been many years since she’d seen her aunt and, besides, she wanted to show off her new husband. She said nothing about the main reason for her trip. Meanwhile Tom arranged through Scott, Lye amp; Mackenzie for a meeting with Major Marmont, who happened to be performing in Durham for a week.

So, why had Helen’s aunt gone to Durham when the rest of the family lived in the south?

‘It’s rather a sad story as I understand it from the hints my mother has given,’ she said. ‘Many years ago Aunt Julia moved to Durham in pursuit of a man. She was engaged to be married to a curate but something went wrong. He was working in a parish somewhere in the city. I do not know whether things went wrong before or after she visited him but anyway the engagement was broken off and then the curate was moved to a different parish. Aunt Julia was reluctant to come back empty-handed, so to speak, and decided to prolong her stay in Durham. She must have fallen for the place because a few weeks turned into months and then became a year or two. At some point she acquired a fine house in the old part of the city on the bailey, where she has been living, a prosperous and respected spinster, these many years. I don’t suppose she’ll ever return to the south now.’

‘She must have an independent streak,’ said Tom.

‘Mother says I take after her but I am not certain whether it is altogether a compliment. It’s only recently that Aunt Julia and she have started corresponding again.’

‘I had the feeling that your mother was not so concerned about your aunt but more about – I don’t know – about family honour, the memory of her father.’

‘It is this business of the medium using grandfather Howlett to get what he wants from Julia that is so distasteful. I agree with mother there. But, Tom, I am not looking forward to this one bit.’

‘After the trouble in Tullis Street?’

‘It does not give me much of an appetite for confronting mediums.’

Neither Tom nor Helen had talked a great deal about the apparent suicide of Ernest Smight. When they did discuss it, they tried to persuade themselves they had no share in the man’s death, that it was a result of his despair at the police action and imminent prosecution. But even so they felt twinges of guilt. They had been present at the seance; they were witnesses. Like the authorities, they too regarded Smight as a trickster who deserved exposure, for Helen had by now begun to revert to her old suspicion of mediums and Tom had almost forgotten the encounter with his father.

‘Never mind,’ said Tom. ‘You will not have to confront this Flask fellow by yourself, if it comes to that. I’ll be there. And maybe you will be able to convince your aunt without any confrontation, maybe she’ll have had a change of heart by the time we arrive and be all for leaving her money to a local orphanage.’

‘I hope so,’ said Helen. She gave up any pretence of reading her book and gazed out of the window at the countryside rolling by. They had stopped at several great manufacturing conurbations, each announced by a pall of smoke not merely overhanging but spreading out into the surrounding countryside. In between the towns the landscape was largely low and level, stretching away in the summer’s afternoon.

‘I feel life must be more serious up here,’ said Helen after a time. ‘More earnest.’

‘Is that because the Bronte sisters and Mrs Gaskell tell you so?’

‘Why, Tom, I did not know that you read female authors.’

‘I may have glanced at them from time to time.’

Tom had taken an interest in female authors ever since he had met Helen and she revealed to him her ambition to write a novel. He had even read a few of their books to get a sense of the competition. But he did not have much to say about his experience of women authors, except that there seemed to be an awful lot of them. This would not have been a tactful remark to make to Helen under any circumstances. He went back to reading the Cornhill Magazine and Helen returned to her book.

They were joined by a tall, well-dressed gentleman who got on at York. After putting a small valise in the rack, he settled himself in the opposite corner of the compartment. He stretched out his legs in front of him and flexed his gloved fingers. His glance flicked from Tom to Helen and back again.

‘Newly weds?’ he said.

Helen looked up, a very slight blush on her cheeks. Tom was about to tell the man to mind his own business but his wife said, ‘Not that new. But how do you know? Is it so obvious?’

‘When I was putting my bag up there I noticed that the initial, the last initial, on your case had recently been painted over and a different one substituted. You started out as an S but now you are transformed to an A.’

The man addressed Helen. The familiarity in his words might have been offensive in someone else but he had a curiously insinuating manner of speaking. His voice was warm and low.

‘Very observant of you,’ said Tom.

‘It is not only a question of letters and paint and luggage. Do not take what I say amiss but there is a kind of bloom on the both of you,’ the man persisted. ‘The bloom of the freshly married when the voyage of life lies all before you.’

‘Yes, we have lately cast off into the sea of marital life,’ said Helen, ‘marital life with its many shoals and shallows, its storms and its sunny days.’

‘My dear lady,’ said the man, his voice taking on a quality that was positively flowing and syrupy. ‘My dear young lady, you can certainly take a metaphor and stretch it. But to move from metaphor to actuality, are you travelling far today?’

‘To Durham,’ said Helen.

‘What about you?’ cut in Tom. ‘You cannot be going any distance since you’re travelling light.’

‘Durham is also my destination. A city on a hill.’

‘Going there on business?’ said Tom, giving the stranger a taste of his own inquisitiveness.

‘I reside there for the moment,’ said the man. ‘But I am always about my business. It never ceases.’

By now they were approaching the outskirts of the city. The green of the countryside was blotched with heaps of slag and skeletal pitheads and pinched lines of housing. Even the sheep in the fields seemed to have been dipped in a sooty dye. Helen looked as eagerly out of the window as she would have at an attractive prospect. Then the train ran across a gently curving viaduct and they had their first sight of the castle and the cathedral. The afternoon sun gave the stone a warm glow but the buildings were still massive and imposing.

‘Here we are!’ said the man, waving his hand as if he’d conjured up the scene himself. ‘The city on a hill.’

The train had scarcely begun to draw up alongside the platform when the tall gentleman leaped from his seat and took his valise from the rack in a single movement. He had the door unfastened before the train was fully stopped. He paused for an instant and made a kind of mock-bow towards Tom and Helen.

‘ Au revoir, Mr and Mrs A.’

And with that he stepped out on to the platform. By the time Helen and Tom had gathered their own luggage and got down, there was no sign of him. A few other people got off the train at the station, which was so new that the stonework had only just started to take on a darker, grimy colour. Among the alighting passengers was a tall, shabbily dressed man who stared at the retreating backs of Tom and Helen.

The Ansells took a battered old hansom from the railway station. Helen gave the driver an address in the old part of town called the South Bailey. As they were being driven downhill past terraces of new housing, Helen said, ‘I wonder if the man on the train is typical of the inhabitants of the city? I thought it would be full of miners.’

They drove across a bridge that straddled a river so dark in patches that it might have been running with liquid coal. Tom thought it was the River Wear. He had studied a town map before leaving London and recalled how the river looped round and back on itself so that the older part of Durham was isolated like a peninsula. Some loungers in artisan clothes turned from gazing into the black waters to look at the cab go by. To the right, high up on the bluff overlooking the river, were the castle remains and the twin towers at the western end of the cathedral. The carriage ascended slowly into this fortress-like area by a roundabout route, passing through a wide marketplace and then up cobbled streets that were lined with tearooms and confectioners and dress shops.

The road began to level out and they passed beneath the cathedral on its eastern side. Helen had never seen her aunt’s house before and had only the name to go by: Colt House, named for the mine-owner who had once lived there. Tom stuck his head through the trapdoor in the hansom roof and repeated the name to the driver who shook his head. Tom added that it was the residence of Miss Julia Howlett. The driver’s seamed face registered some kind of recognition at the name. Within a few moments they had drawn up before a broad-fronted house with a handsome pillared portico.

The Ansells got down. The driver produced their cases. Before Tom had finished paying him and while Helen was still studying the facade of Colt House, the front door flew open. A small woman came out at a run and nearly collided with Helen.

‘Helen, is it really you?’

She held Helen by the elbows and looked up at her face. She was tiny, bird-like.

‘Aunt Julia!’ said Helen. ‘You have not changed.’

‘But you have, my dear. Last time I saw you, you were so high – or so low, I should say. And this must be your husband Thomas.’

Tom shook hands with Miss Howlett. She had a darting eye, and he felt assessed within seconds. He wondered whether Helen felt the same twinge of discomfort. They weren’t exactly innocent visitors. They had come to persuade this woman to do what she probably had no wish to do.

Colt House

As they were talking in the hall, a stout and quite elderly man entered. He was carrying a bundle of papers under his right arm. White hair straggled from beneath his hat. He looked at Tom and Helen with curiosity.

‘Septimus!’ cried Aunt Julia. ‘You must meet my niece and her husband.’

The gentleman came forward. He awkwardly shifted the papers to his other arm and shook hands with the Ansells.

‘I have heard a deal about you,’ he said. ‘Miss Howlett has been greatly looking forward to your visit.’

‘Mr Sheridan – Septimus – is a lodger in Colt House,’ said Julia. ‘He has been here for so long that I may say he is almost part of the furniture!’

Far from being insulted, Septimus Sheridan smiled gently and bowed his head. He said to Helen, ‘You aunt is very good to me, Mrs Ansell.’

‘Now then, you two must be tired after your long journey. You will need to wash and change before dinner. We will be dining early because I have invited a few friends and neighbours for this evening.’

‘Not on our account, I hope,’ said Helen.

‘My dear, do not be so modest. But no, I had arranged this, ah, event before I knew you were coming. Even so your arrival is very timely. You see, I have asked a good friend of mine to provide us with a manifestation tonight.’

‘A manifestation, Miss Howlett?’ said Tom. He had an uneasy feeling he knew what was coming.

‘Oh do not call me Miss Howlett, Tom. If I am an aunt to Helen, I shall be one to you also. But, yes, we are having a manifestation. A gentleman by the name of Eustace Flask is to show us his powers. He will communicate with the other side, he will bring us messages from beyond the grave. I am sure your mother has mentioned Mr Flask, Helen? I have been filling my letters with him. He is a remarkable individual.’

‘She did mention someone of that name,’ said Helen, glancing at Tom. Her look gave nothing away. Well, thought Tom, this has come sooner than expected. But it was good to have an early opportunity to get the measure of their opponent.

Aunt Julia talked with enthusiasm on the subject of spiritualism while they ate their early dinner. But her enthusiasm was oddly impersonal. She wasn’t attempting to make contact with the ‘other side’ for herself or to soothe some recent grief. Rather, she was genuinely eager to further the work of those ‘brave and pioneering’ individuals who, in the face of misunderstanding and even persecution, were attempting to ‘pierce the veil between the mortal and the eternal.’

Tom caught Helen’s eye while she was coming out with all this. Yes, their task was going to be a difficult one. It did not seem to him, either, that Aunt Julia was physically weak or mentally failing and about to give away her worldly wealth, as Helen’s mother had implied. Perhaps that had just been Mrs Scott’s way of getting them to go on their mission to Durham.

It was difficult to work out Septimus Sheridan’s exact position in the household. From some comments he let slip during the meal, Tom understood that he spent most of his time in the cathedral library engaged on some scholarly work or other, which explained the bundle of papers he brought to the house. Certainly, he had the dry and dusty look of one who most enjoys old libraries. Even his hair was the whitish-yellow tint of old parchment. But every so often he’d glance at Julia Howlett in a way that was half admiring, half timorous. Whenever she was speaking he listened with particular attention and he was quick to agree with her, whatever the subject. She, for her part, treated Septimus with a weary familiarity. He called her ‘Miss Howlett’ while she called him by his first name.

He’d been introduced as a lodger. A lodger! It was just the kind of description which might have provoked a bit of scandalized gossip, a situation where a single man, however old, was living in the house of a spinster lady, however ancient. If so, Aunt Julia didn’t seem to care. In the brief time since they’d been introduced, Tom had realized that here was a woman who went her own way – something which would make Helen’s task even harder.

Julia Howlett referred to Eustace Flask several times more. His visit this evening to Colt House was a privilege. Helen and Thomas were truly fortunate that their own visit should coincide with one of Flask’s appearances. Aunt Julia’s face grew even more animated while she was saying all this. Her eyes sparkled.

‘What does this Mr Flask actually do during his evening sessions?’ said Helen.

‘I think you’ll find he puts on a good show for the audience,’ said Septimus Sheridan.

‘A show, Septimus! How can you describe it as a show! He is not some vulgar magician or entertainer. What Mr Flask provides is a manifestation. He is not unlike you.’

‘Me?’

‘Both of you toil to uncover the truth. You do it among piles of manuscripts, Septimus, while dear Eustace ventures into the trackless world of the spirits.’

‘Of course, Miss Howlett, you are quite right. He is no showman but a serious seeker of truth.’

Tom strained for any touch of irony in Sheridan’s words but could not detect it. Further discussion of the medium wasn’t possible because the advance guard of his party arrived at the house. They were called Ambrose and Kitty. Ambrose was a squat young man who at once started lugging planks and panels of wood out of a handcart which had been wheeled not to the tradesmen’s entrance but to the front door of the house. He carried the wooden sections into the morning room. Since the room was on the ground floor it was the most convenient place for the session. Kitty was introduced as the niece to Eustace Flask. She busied herself with bits of material, little muslin curtains, and an assortment of musical instruments which were also required for the evening.

The bits of wood were rapidly assembled by Ambrose into the framework for a large cupboard-like structure with double doors, each of which had an oval hole cut into it. The cupboard was on a stand so that the base was about a foot above the floor. Meanwhile, the household maids were bringing extra chairs into the room and being instructed on how to arrange them. Julia Howlett was obviously expecting a good turnout.

There was a bustle in the hall and a figure suddenly materialized at the door of the morning room. Tom and Helen had been watching the preparations with mild interest but they became very alert when they saw the newcomer. There could be no doubt over his identity. Afterwards Tom wondered why they hadn’t recognized him in the first place, not now but earlier. After all, they had seen his photograph. But the quality of the overexposed picture was poor and his heavily ringed fingers had been hidden by gloves. The new arrival in Colt House was the well-dressed gentleman from the train. It was Eustace Flask.

He noticed Tom and Helen on the far side of the room. Aunt Julia, however, had not seen the medium arrive since she was examining a tear in the fabric of the cover of a chair just put in place by a maid. She was tutting and shaking her head, as if debating whether to have the chair taken out again.

Meantime Flask walked briskly towards the Ansells. He came close to them. He said, ‘What did I say, Mr and Mrs A? I knew that we should meet again – and meet shortly.’

Tom and Helen did not have long to get over their surprise at the fact that Eustace Flask was none other than the insinuating individual who’d boarded the train at York. Now, with rings twinkling on his naked fingers, the dapper spiritualist was directing his two assistants to put the finishing touches to the cabinet or wardrobe which sat at one end of the morning room. Flask would have stood out in a crowd. He favoured colourful clothes, if his bright green frock-coat was anything to go by, and was of more than average height and very pale in the face. His hair was a light red and seemed to spring away from his head as if eager to escape. Helen whispered to Tom that he made her think of a walking candle, his flame-like hair wavering as he directed his helpers.

Ambrose was doing the finishing work of fitting panels into place and tightening screws while Kitty was fussing over the decorative curtains which hung over the oval windows in the upper part of the cabinet, a bit like a Punch amp; Judy booth. Tom took a more careful look at the assistants. Ambrose was a short fellow with a squashed nose who looked as though he’d be happier sparring in the ring than sitting around a table at a seance. Flask’s niece, Kitty, had an elfin sort of face on a well-padded body. Tom noticed that her uncle frequently touched her arm or shoulder as he was giving instructions. Meantime Aunt Julia was bustling about, welcoming the twenty or so visitors who had come for the show.

No, it was not a show, Tom reminded himself, but a ‘manifestation’. The visitors, men and women, were a mixture of ages but all of them had the look of solid citizens, not easily taken in. It was much more elaborate and professional than the session in Tullis Street.

Eventually everything appeared to be ready. The curtains had been drawn on the remains of the summer evening outside and the indoor lights – a mixture of gas and candles – turned down or extinguished. Nevertheless, the illumination was stronger than it had been at the Smights’ house. Eustace Flask stood before his audience, with Ambrose just behind him and Kitty to one side. In a well-practised move Flask slipped off his green frock-coat and handed it to Ambrose.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began in a style that was smooth as oil, ‘I customarily ask for a volunteer at this point to search my person and ascertain that I am not wearing any concealed devices. We live in such a suspicious age that all of us are forced to show ourselves beyond reproach, even Eustace Flask. I look around and I am delighted to see some familiar faces but it would be best if someone who was not known to me came forward for this personal examination. I might of course ask a lady here who is not known to me…’

His eyes lingered on Helen. Tom felt her shift on the chair next to him. But Flask was saying this only to tease for his glance then moved to Tom.

‘… but perhaps it would be more appropriate if an unknown gentleman volunteered. After all, we shall have no imputations of indelicacy here!’

Tom got up and walked the few paces to where Flask was standing in his waistcoat, shirt and trousers. Close to, Tom noticed a sheen of sweat on Flask’s pale face. He spoke quietly, hardly above a whisper.

‘Place your hands where you like, Mr..?’

‘Ansell.’

‘We have not been introduced before?’ said Eustace Flask speaking loudly enough for the whole room to hear.

‘No, we have not been introduced,’ said Tom. The man was quick, no doubt about it. They had met on the train but they hadn’t been introduced.

‘Place your hands where you like, sir, within the bounds of propriety.’

Flask looked out at the audience over Tom’s shoulder with a roguish twinkle in his eye. The voice was more brown and syrupy than ever. Tom put out his hands as if he were being invited to catch a ball. He felt uncomfortable and self-conscious, which was probably Flask’s intention. No doubt the medium counted on not being examined or searched thoroughly. God knows what he had concealed behind his waistcoat or inside his trousers.

Tom, suddenly provoked, decided that he would not be embarrassed. He would give this man as thorough a going-over as a criminal would receive in the police-house. So he ran his hands along the other’s extended shirtsleeves and over his sleek chest, he felt about his waist and up and down the trouser legs. To his slight disappointment, he felt nothing, not even a purse or a pocket-watch. Flask’s clothes were snug and well-fitting. They were also expensive. A fine stickpin topped by a pearl fastened his burgundy cravat. The thought crossed Tom’s mind that one of Aunt Julia’s cheques might have paid for the brocade waistcoat and, although it was really nothing to do with him, the idea irritated him.

He turned to face the people in the room. He shook his head and said,

‘As far as I can tell, Mr Flask is… clean.’

There were one or two titters from the audience, whether out of genuine amusement or from nervousness because Tom had shown a touch of disrespect towards Eustace Flask.

‘Thank you, Mr Ansell,’ said Flask from behind and then more quietly he spoke directly into Tom’s ear, ‘Your hands have such an expert touch that I thought you might be a tailor.’

Tom could have jabbed his elbow into the other’s gut at the little insult but he restrained himself and went back to sit beside Helen. Aunt Julia was beaming, gratified that Flask was acquitting himself so well. She was sitting beside Septimus Sheridan, who looked generally uncomfortable at the course of events.

Now Flask turned his back on the audience, his open hands stretched behind him. Ambrose produced a little bag from which he poured what appeared to be flour into Flask’s hands. The medium grasped the flour. Then Ambrose wound a coil of thin rope several times around Flask’s wrists. He made a show of knotting the cord tight and beckoned to a gentleman in the front of the audience to test the knots. This was quickly done and then Flask moved towards the wardrobe, where Kitty was standing by the open doors.

The interior was empty apart from a ledge or bench which ran along the back. Flask sat on this, rather awkwardly because of the position of his hands behind him. There were holes in the bench through which the ends of the rope were passed before being secured round Flask’s ankles by Ambrose. The same man from the front row was asked to test the new knots, which he did willingly. Now Flask was trussed up inside the wardrobe.

With a flourish, Kitty closed the double doors. She made sure that the windows were covered by the muslin curtains which hung on the inside. Within a few moments there was a stir from inside and an arm was thrust through the material. There was a collective noise from the people in the room, somewhere between a gasp and a sigh. The arm was bare and, for sure, it did not belong to any grown man. Judging by the thinness and pallor of it, the arm was a girl’s, even a child’s. Tom’s eyes automatically flicked sideways to see where Kitty had been standing but he could not immediately spot her. Now a second arm was thrust through the curtain covering the other hole in the other door. The two limbs were the same size but seemed to belong to two different bodies. In fact, they must do because the gap between the two holes was too wide even for a grown man to extend his arms any distance beyond the openings. The arms waggled their hands and the hands flexed their fingers, and the whole effect was unnerving.

All at once Kitty was in front of the cabinet again and the arms had scarcely time to disappear before she was unlatching the double doors and flinging them open to reveal – ah ha! – Eustace Flask sitting on his bench, the rope apparently securing his hands and feet, and with no sign of any bare arms floating about. But this was not the most extraordinary part of the manifestation. It was rather that Flask sat there quite still and calm, a seraphic smile on his face. There were noises of muted approval from the audience.

Helen whispered to Tom, ‘I’m impressed but I don’t see the point of it. What’s he trying to prove?’

‘That he is in touch with the spirit world, I expect,’ said Tom, wishing that he felt as calm as Flask looked.

The next part of the evening session followed when the various musical instruments – guitar, tambourine, violin and trumpet – were hung by Kitty upon hooks on the inner walls of the cabinet. All this while Flask had remained tied up, smiling benignly out at the room. The same man from the front row of chairs once more checked the knots and this time it was Ambrose who closed the doors to the cabinet. A few seconds passed before a terrible din emerged from within, the sounds of thumping and rattling, tooting and screeching. It was as if a pack of monkeys had got hold of the instruments and were doing their best to play them, or to destroy them. At one point the tambourine was thrown through one of the holes and almost struck a member of the audience in the face.

Ambrose now did duty by unfastening the doors as the cacophony faded away. Again Eustace Flask was revealed on the inside, securely trussed up on his bench, with the instruments hanging limply on their hooks. Ambrose untied him and the medium stood up, flexing his arms in front of him. He opened his hands so that a little shower of flour tumbled down from each of them. That proved – beyond a doubt, surely? – that his hands had been fully occupied grasping the flour all the time. Then he rubbed his chafed wrists and acknowledged the crowd in the room with little bows to left and right. He stood while Ambrose helped him back into his green frock-coat.

This concluded the second part of the evening. The trio of Flask, Kitty and Ambrose left the room whilst the medium paused to exchange a few words with Julia Howlett who was still beaming with pleasure at the success of it all. Tom observed that Septimus Sheridan, standing near her, looked less enthusiastic.

There was a gap like the interval in a play. Candles were relit and the gaslights turned up higher. Tea was brought in by a couple of housemaids and the visitors stood around chatting in small groups. Mr Sheridan came towards them. He said to Helen, ‘I understand, Mrs Ansell, that it is many years since you last saw your aunt.’

‘Yes. It was when I was a child, quite a small child.’

‘Whatever you may think of events this evening, she is a good woman, you know, a very good woman.’

‘I was too young to know it then but I see it now.’

‘We are of one mind then,’ said Septimus Sheridan with satisfaction.

Tom had half his attention on this exchange but he was also looking at the behaviour of the gentleman in the front row, the one who’d been asked to test the knots in the ropes securing Eustace Flask. He was a short, spruce-looking figure with a fine moustache. He was peering into the interior of the cabinet to scrutinize the musical instruments on the hooks as well as the ropes which had been left coiled on the shelf and the flour smeared on the floor. He was squatting and looking at the raised underside of the cabinet before walking round it to examine the back. Tom, his curiosity stirred, joined him.

‘Everything is in order?’ he said.

The man tugged at his moustaches and gave Tom the same careful study he had given Flask’s cabinet. ‘Oh yes, it is in good order. I wouldn’t expect anything else. This cabinet would not have been left so carelessly open for inspection had it been otherwise.’

‘You’re not a… believer in all this?’ said Tom, indicating the cabinet.

‘I am no believer.’

‘But you were the one who checked the ropes and knots securing Mr Flask and you seemed to be satisfied.’

‘Just as you were satisfied when you searched him, sir. He wouldn’t offer himself for inspection if he wasn’t confident of getting away with it. You are not from this city or this county?’

‘From London. My wife and I are visitors here. From your voice, you are not local either.’

It was easy to detect those who hadn’t been born or brought up in Durham. Although neither Julia Howlett nor Septimus Sheridan had acquired the local accent, Tom had been hearing the distinctive flattened vowels in undercurrents of conversation about the room. But Tom and the inquisitive gentleman could talk no further for Eustace Flask and his little entourage now returned to the morning room for the other half of the evening’s manifestation. The lights were lowered once more. Tom thought it was dimmer than it had been for the cabinet show. This time the medium sat at a small table. Aunt Julia was invited to sit on one side of him and Helen on the other. Four more of the guests joined them, but not the individual who’d been examining the cabinet even though he was hovering about as if he wanted an invitation to sit down. The other dozen or more guests stood around the group at the table.

The elfin-faced Kitty brought a hinged slate and a stick of white chalk to the table. Flask lodged the slate on his lap so that the edge of it was resting against the table. He propped both his hands on the table and invited Helen and Julia to rest one of their own hands on the tops of his. After a few moments Flask jerked violently and Tom heard a whisper from one of the group, ‘That is his control.’ Questions were asked for by Kitty. Almost everyone in the room seemed familiar with the form. Someone said, ‘What is twenty times thirty?’ and someone else said, ‘Who is your control?’

Each time there was a pause then a scraping sound like chalk being dragged across slate. Tom, straining to see through the gloom, thought that Flask’s hands stayed without movement on the rim of the table with the slate between them. Oddly, the whole thing was more unnerving than the cabinet display, perhaps because he was only a couple of yards away from Flask or perhaps because the scraping noises set his teeth on edge. More questions were invited by the medium, who spoke now with a queer trembling unlike his usual oily tone.

‘Have you a message for me?’

This was Helen. Tom was amazed that she should have asked something and faintly alarmed when her question was followed by more scratching. Then Aunt Julia asked, ‘Whom should I trust?’ Further scraping sounds.

Flask began to wobble his head violently as if an invisible person had seized him by the back of the neck. The slate clattered to the floor. Someone – Ambrose or Kitty? – turned up the gas, signalling the end of the session. By the better light, Flask looked paler than ever, as if he had just woken from a deep and unpleasant sleep. He seemed to come to himself. He picked the slate up from the floor. He displayed both sides of it to the room. They were blank. Tom was relieved – and a fraction disappointed. The man was a charlatan after all and an incompetent one at that.

But then Eustace Flask unhinged the slate to reveal some writing on the inside. He nodded as he scanned the words before handing the slate round the people in the room who were pressing closer. They treated it reverently, passing it from group to group. When the slate got close to Tom he saw the following answers, written in capital letters and on separate lines.

The number: ‘600’

A scrawl that looked like: ‘RUNNING BOOK’ or possibly ‘BROOK’.

The sentence: ‘BELIEVE HELEN.’

The words: ‘LIKE A SON’.

Apart from the first answer to the arithmetic question, none of these made much sense but it gave Tom a jolt to see Helen’s name scrawled on the tablet for everyone to read. Now Kitty took the slate and, for the benefit of those who hadn’t yet seen it or did not understand the responses, explained that ‘Running Brook’ was the name of an Indian maid who was Flask’s ‘control’. Indeed, the maid had already manifested herself that evening. Yes, it was Running Brook’s white limbs that had appeared through the cabinet doors. Kitty, with a voice straining to be genteel, said she believed that Helen was the lady sitting next to her uncle and that the message to her was plain. She must place her trust in the reality of the spirit world. She should ‘BELIEVE’. As for the final answer – the cryptic ‘LIKE A SON’ – Kitty was not sure of the application of these words but no doubt all would become clear in the fullness of time.

‘I know what it means,’ said Julia Howlett. ‘It was I who asked the question ‘Whom should I trust?’ and the answer has come from Running Brook. I should trust my dear Mr Flask here. I should treat him like a son.’

Flask put his hand on his shirt-front as if to say, ‘Who? Me?’ But his surprise, and everyone else’s, was greater when the spruce, moustached gentleman stepped forward and snatched the slate from Kitty.

‘Wait a moment, Mr Flask. I think you should explain first of all how the writing on the slate is in blue chalk when there is plainly a white piece on the table.’

All eyes swivelled from the blue lettering on the tablet to the stick of white chalk on the table top. It was strange, thought Tom, that he hadn’t noticed the inconsistency in colour.

‘The spirit moves in mysterious ways, sir,’ said the medium, perfectly self-possessed. ‘What matters is the message not the colour of it.’

‘You might also explain, Mr Flask, how you have left blue marks on your shirt…’

Flask gazed down at where he’d just patted his chest in his ‘Who? Me?’ gesture. There were smears of blue on his starched front. Automatically he glanced at his fingertips and there too were traces of blue chalk. For a moment he looked baffled. Then he looked angry as he saw the other man holding up a stick of blue chalk.

‘I was standing near the table just before you started your folderol and your fiddle-faddle, Mr Flask, and I switched the white chalk for the blue. Then at the end of your performance, I switched them back again.’

‘And what follows from that, sir?’ said Eustace Flask.

It was fairly obvious what followed. Flask had written the words himself. By now Helen had come back from the table to stand next to Tom and they turned to look at each other. The same thought was in both their minds: was this another police exposure as in Tullis Street? Yet although the moustached man had an odd air of authority he did not seem to be a policeman. What he did next made it even less likely that he was one. He dived for Flask’s ankles – the medium had not risen from his chair – and tugged at the bottom of the man’s trousers like an angry dog. A shower of flour rained on to Julia Howlett’s carpet.

‘There we are,’ said the man, standing up and gazing round the room, his own hands now white and floury. The guests looked bemused and shocked. ‘I ask you why a man should need to keep flour in little secret bags at the bottom of his trousers. There is no sane explanation unless it is to replace the flour that the same man has let drop while he is fiddling with his knots and jangling his instruments.’

When they discussed it afterwards, Tom and Helen both confessed to a touch of admiration at the way Flask responded, even if it was only admiration at his impudence. In their eyes, he’d been caught red-handed, or rather caught with a piece of blue chalk and with piles of concealed flour.

Instead of shrivelling up or admitting defeat, as Ernest Smight had done, Flask rose from the table. Ambrose shouldered his way towards him but the medium lifted a ringed hand, the tips of his fingers still tinged with blue chalk. It was like the benediction of a bishop. The gesture said, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ Flask paced slowly towards the gentleman with the fine moustaches, who did not shift one inch. He halted when he was within striking distance. When he spoke next it was not to his opponent but to the rest of the company.

‘Our Lord tells us that when our enemies assail us, we should turn the other cheek. I do not know what your reasons are for coming here tonight, sir, but you have fallen among people who seek no quarrel with you and rather wish the scales to fall from your eyes.’

There were nodded heads at this and whispers of agreement. Tom realized that, whatever the exposer’s motives, he had badly misjudged the occasion. Apart from the Ansells and possibly Mr Sheridan, Julia Howlett’s guests were true believers. It would take more to convince them than the uncovering of a trick or two. They blamed the accuser and not the accused, who was adopting the role of injured innocent. The man with the moustache understood this. He smiled. He bowed in a way that was slightly stagey. His departing remark too had a melodramatic ring. ‘Next time, Mr Flask, we shall do battle on a ground of my choosing.’

He turned smartly on his heel and strode from the morning room. There was a pause and then a woman began to clap and soon Eustace Flask had earned a round of applause for the way he stood up to the outsider. Aunt Julia clasped him by the arm and other women gathered round him with praise and reassurance. Everyone seemed to have forgotten the business of the blue chalk and the surplus flour, even though there were little mounds of the stuff on the floor by Flask’s seat. There was some talk about the identity of the impertinent fellow who’d tried to ruin their evening but no one seemed to have an idea of who he was. Yet, equally, Tom and Helen had the impression that, in the spiritualist community, such hostility and persecution were routine matters. These things were to be expected and, in a perverse way, they fortified the true believer.

Ambrose started to dismantle the cabinet and Kitty to pack away the curtains and muslin. Aunt Julia was sitting and writing at a roll-top desk in the corner of the room and Flask was standing over her like a shield. She handed a slip of paper to the medium who promptly tucked it away. Tom would have bet a month of his own salary that the medium was receiving his reward for the evening. The task which Helen’s mother had entrusted to her, that of weaning the aunt away from her devotion to the medium, seemed more impossible than ever.