What Empty Things Are These
Page 27
At last, all was quiet. The flame in the small oil lamp began to gutter.
‘He is here. He takes hold of me.’ The pitch of Madame’s voice rose and the flesh crept upon my arms.
With a last flicker, the flame went out. The lightlessness and silence, packed about with that stifling weight of velvet and brocade, was as if a cocoon or a coffin held us all buried and airless deep in the earth.
‘He takes me, he takes me.’ Madame’s voice seemed to move from its place at the table and to rise, physically, toward the ceiling. I found I was gripping Mr West’s hand, and that he too had a tight grip on mine.
Miss West suddenly exclaimed, ‘Oh heavens. There is a foot upon my shoulder!’
‘Oh, hallelujah! She levitates!’ cried Edith. ‘Praise the—’
But then it was that Mr West withdrew his hand from mine, and apparently Mr Broadford, too, chose that moment to slip his own from Edith’s. Each of the men struck a match against a box taken with a rattle from each of their pockets.
In the brief and wavering light could be seen how Madame Drew stood on her chair and leaned for balance against the curtained wall, and how one foot was raised and rested upon Miss West’s shoulder.
Chapter Thirty-nine
The rest was farce. It is something that might have enlivened the music hall, I thought, though I had never attended at such a performance. Such a performance, indeed! Though not quite the one Madame had in mind.
I repaired with Edith, Mary, the Viscount, and Miss West to the other side of the parlour, while Mr Broadford—declared as the inspector, at last, and blowing hugely on his whistle (somebody shouted outside in the street)—struggled without success with his matches and the oil lamp upon the long table. Sobriety brought a candle to the table to be lit, and then rustled across to other candles standing on the mantel and smaller tables to light these also.
Mr West, standing behind Madame Drew, had a strong grip on the spiritualist’s arms. She wrestled a few moments with him, and their shadows played looming and jerking across the ceiling like monsters dreamt by the Brothers Grimm.
There were some moments before the inspector gave up the struggle with the table lamp. ‘Tcha! It is empty!’ he said, surprised.
It seemed right that the rest of us should stand to one side while the drama was played through—a crowd though they made with me, Edith, and Mary pressed into a corner, skirts ballooning against chairs and small tables, and the Viscount, and Miss West standing like something biblical and full of judgement. In any case, Edith had need of some restraint and a great deal of talking to. Keeping a strong hold of one of her elbows, while Mary had hold of the other—for she showed signs of wanting to fly to Madame Drew’s rescue (while Madame herself was showing signs of wanting to fly the house itself)—I spoke firmly.
‘Shh, shh, Edith. This must be done. Tell me, what was she expecting from you?’
Miss West, cradling one hand in the other and regarding the activities of the men and the Madame as if she too were at a performance, turned at this.
‘Mrs Courtney, too?’
‘I believe so. Edith, what was she expecting from you?’
‘Look how he grips her. The monster!’
‘She does not deserve your sympathy, ma’am.’ Mary nearly hissed, it seemed to me, as if much exasperation had been pent up for too long. ‘You must tell what she was expecting.’
Mr Broadford was now walking about the table, pulling aside the chairs and lifting the cloth. Sobriety held up the candle, and together they bent to peer underneath.
My sister-in-law wailed, meanwhile, ‘Oh! Outrageous! Adelaide, Adelaide—when she had brought George to you, from the very brink!’ Mary and I both stared at her, neither with the words to answer.
Calmly, the inspector’s voice came muffled from beneath the table. ‘See, Miss Mullins, such interesting engineering. She would press here…’ The table jerked a little. ‘Ah yes.’
Mr Broadford tugged at something from beneath the table. At length, he pulled up a quantity of gauzy material, white and scattering a white powder. He sniffed at the material, and showed it to Sobriety.
I turned to Edith. ‘Not Mr Hadley, I think, Edith.’
Mary breathed out a long time, as of someone finally vindicated. ‘No. Indeed.’
Sobriety handed the candle to the inspector, and looked closely at the material. ‘Cheesecloth. It is coated with something, I think, Mr Broadford. Is this a kind of paint?’
The inspector chuckled at this. ‘Oh, I do believe you are right, Miss Mullins. Mrs Courtney, here is what was worn so that we should all think a spirit descended upon us.’
One of the inspector’s policemen entered then, having caught an elderly fellow, or, I decided while peering from across the room, simply a fellow with the remains of a heavy powder upon his face, hair and beard.
‘Oh, yes. And here we have the spirit himself,’ Mr Broadford chuckled. ‘And you see, Madame—’ He raised his eyebrows at the silent spiritualist. ‘—how my reinforcements have been waiting without all this time.’
I shuddered.
I glanced at Edith, whose face was become slack, was without focus and older, as a result, by many years. The flesh was thick, colourless, drooping in pouches outlined without mercy by shadow. She shook her head slowly again and again, perhaps to deny what was occurring, to give this betrayal no chance to grip and bring her down.
Edith, pray remember: the betrayal is not mine.
Edith’s eyes were lowered, her hand raised to her mouth. She breathed as if she laboured uphill, puffing. She leaned into me, drained of any spark, murmuring in such monotonous, low tones that I was shocked.
‘Adelaide, you do not know. What have you done, what have you all done. This was her calling and I, her acolyte. And we witnessed such miracles. Nay—’ And here Edith’s voice rose a little. ‘Nay, we created miracles. We unlocked truths—we were respected by those who came to speak with us…’ Her voice faded. Mary produced a handkerchief from where it was tucked into her sleeve, and Edith began to weep silently into it.
See, she does not distinguish…all the world is responsible. It is simple. She is hemmed in by betrayal. She is bathed in humiliation. And she has lost…well, she has lost what she thought she had helped create.
The inspector, meanwhile, scraped a finger against the new captive’s cheek and smiled at Sobriety. ‘Flour.’ He turned to the policeman who held the man fast. ‘Into the vestibule, for the moment, I think, where—’ There was the sound of rustling and an angry grunting from the open doorway. ‘—I fancy the maid is also being held.’
The policeman said, ‘Come along, then, you,’ and led the floury man away. Madame Drew now stood still and silent in Mr West’s tight hold (with his full mouth very stern), while her breast heaved and she watched, unblinking, first as her henchman was taken through the doorway, and then as Mr Broadford bent once more to look beneath the table, holding aside the cloth while Sobriety moved the candle forward.
I placed my hand over Edith’s.
‘Edith, what had you promised Madame Drew?’
Edith Courtney looked toward the spiritualist, but Madame Drew turned her face away so that only her profile was visible, shadowed as grey stone.
Mr Broadford, down on his knees, was by now feeling about beneath the table. With some huffing and heavy breathing, he soon began to back his way out, and then sat on his heels and grabbed the edge of the table to help himself to his feet. He turned to the group gathered across the way, and, watched by Madame Drew, still unmoving in Mr West’s firm grip, held up his hand. Those regarding him—with the exception of the spiritualist herself—each could not help a small gasp, which we uttered almost as one. For a moment only, it seemed like horror had truly visited us, for what Mr Broadford held in his hand seemed like another: a ghastly hand detached from its arm. But soon it was evident that it
was merely a glove, stuffed with something so that the fingers stood stretched just like a person’s. The breathiness throughout the room became titters and giggles for a moment, each pitched too high and quivering with the release both of fear and relief.
‘See here,’ Mr Broadford said, poking at the end of the glove, which was oddly wide and quite long. ‘I believe Madame slipped this onto her foot, when we were all thinking she had gone into a dead faint. It is probable…’ He smiled, thoughtfully slapping the gloved fingers against the palm of his hand (I do wish he would not do that). ‘ …We will find a slipper down there when next we look.’
Edith, who had stood very still now for a long time, now turned to me. Mary lifted her head, alert to her employer’s final defeat. Edith’s face was wet, though she seemed scarcely to know it. She had ceased to dab at it with her handkerchief some time ago. She did not look at me when she said, ‘I had redrawn my Will in her favour—’
‘Edith!’
‘Mrs Courtney!’
‘And I was about to give her a large sum—I had not decided how much—as an advance, because that odious Mr Farquharson had cheated her.’
She kept her face averted while she dabbed at her tears.
‘Women must do what they can on their own for their own good,’ she sounded petulant, and I was sure she quoted Madame. ‘And men such as that think nothing of cheating women who must fend for themselves.’
Well, that is certainly true.
‘Edith, it seems to me that Madame Drew was intent on cheating you,’ I murmured, my arm across my sister-in-law’s shoulder.
Edith Courtney twisted away, and snapped in a fierce whisper that drew another succession of tears. Her face shone with them. ‘You cannot understand, Adelaide. She gave me what I needed!’
I dropped her arm, and felt it best to say no more for the moment than, ‘I am sorry, Edith.’
At the table, Mr Broadford shook the oil lamp and held it up to scrutiny for a moment, by the light of the candle that Sobriety held. ‘I see now. Timed, I suspect, to go out and add full drama to Madame’s levitation,’ he said, and replaced it upon the table. ‘She must have worried that the Viscount’s argument would land us all in darkness before she was ready!’
He then took the candle from Sobriety and crossed the room, to twitch at the curtaining at the wall until he found space behind it. It was soon evident to all that another doorway stood behind. Mr Broadford walked through, and within a moment was back with what looked like an apple on a piece of string.
‘Bump!’ he said.
Edith whispered, very quietly so that I was obliged to tip my head to hear. ‘What now? What do I do now?’ But it seemed a very private thing that she was expressing, and so I made no answer. I thought instead of Edith sitting the long nights, through the long years of her widowhood alone in her house but for Mary, watching the flames twist in endless, tedious repetition in the fireplace. This, where once she would have wrapped her shawl about herself and called the carriage for her weekly visit to Madame Drew, for that reassurance that the late Mr Courtney, at least, still held her to be central to his being, wherever he dwelt. Such visits being all the more of a comfort, I pondered, because the late Mr Courtney in life was in truth a flawed gentleman, prone to peevish outbursts that demanded his wife’s anxious pandering. I peeked at Edith, whose agitation shook her plump cheeks with little tremors, and thought that, more than anything, these séances—this fantastical world hushed by velvet and dressed with empty incantation—were a creation by these women and fearful men, where everything and everyone was just as they should be, where loved ones yearned for them now as they may never have done in life. There was the illusion of power; they could summon noble savages, great men and wonderful, wonderful beings.
The Viscount pulled a cloth from his own pocket, and likewise pressed it to his eyes.
Suddenly, there was a banging on the front door, the sound of its opening, and some hurried male voices. Into the parlour rushed another policeman, a young man all out of breath and with the cold of the winter’s night about him.
‘Inspector Broadford, sir!’
‘Constable! Where have you been?’
‘Sir! Sir! I…sir!’
He was a boy, his face gone white—this much was evident even in this weak light—and his hands waving inside their overlarge sleeves as if they were themselves seeking words to speak.
Mr Broadford put the apple upon the table and clasped the young policeman’s shoulders.
‘What is it, lad?’ It was a little as if he dragged the boy to him, downward, for the young man was the taller by far, though slight and gangling. The young policeman opened his mouth and closed it, looking about himself as if lost, and Mr Broadford grunted ‘Lord!’ in exasperation, and shook his constable roughly, just once.
‘Look at me!’
The boy looked at him.
‘What is it? Tell us, boy!’
The youth reared back an instant, as if aware of his superior’s face for the first time, thrust up into his own.
‘Oh! Murder, sir! Actual murder, sir! And I gave chase—’ It was very clear to all those in the room listening, with their breath held fast for the moment and their eyes unblinking on the white and sweating face, that the young policeman was as innocent of any real experience of violence as anyone here.
His voice twisted. ‘But I lost him, and when I got back—’ Mr Broadford’s hold upon the shoulders gentled at this. ‘—she was dead.’
The boy’s face contorted while he struggled for a breath to calm himself. It came with difficulty, wheezing as if his throat could not relax around it. Mr Broadford turned first to Sobriety and then, silently, to me.
Of course, of course.
We left her alone out there.
Unaware that I did so, I opened my mouth and keened in one long note.
Part Four:
In which Adelaide and Sobriety make ready for what is to come
Chapter Forty
The folk we do not see
by A. Hadley
London thrives, we know it. The world knows it also, and sends its goods for trade in mighty ships, and we sleep each night well satisfied with England’s might and England’s Empire. We are certain of our place at the centre of things, and certain that our emissaries and soldiers do make of this world a better, more British place. We are certain that London’s industry and London’s business is a beacon to the rest.
Yet in powerful London, think on it, there are poor creeping folk whose home is found in rookery or alleyway and is shared with vermin, and who live, perhaps, by the sale of our waste. Speak to them of ‘the world’ and they will believe you speak of London alone, or that small part of London that they know well, for this is where they scrabble, this is all they know and hear of, and this they will never leave.
It is a wild place, this London, and it is not kind.
I was content with this. It had flowed onto the page and settled there. I even fancied there was an authority to it, though it made me sit with hands folded, thoughtful for some time. I fancied—and it left me with a nausea almost, at the very idea—a teeming of thin, homeless children such as that dead girl, all brown and hunched and scurrying as rats through the streets of London, all left without shelter because Mr Mayhew’s report had caused where they had used to live, those rookeries, to be torn down. Slums, yes, but homes, and all ripped away because London felt disgraced by them. Is this how she came to shiver in alleys and tunnels, each meant not for shelter but for the passage of wastes?
I drew my shawl more tightly about my shoulders.
I wondered then at the Madame Drews of the world, and of that awful concoction of a séance that pretended to reach the dead when all the time, outside… In any case, how was Madame Drew herself made? She who was the pair to Mr Farquharson in many ways, each conjuring false solace or hope in
order to make gain, shamefully, from those who are perplexed in these ungentle times.
And Madame Drew, I thought, made a further pretence—to be fey because it is often thought it is women who are fey, or who even are witches. People expect it, and so she gives it to them. I smiled at this a little. Since there is no hope of her pretending to be the purchaser of railways!
I thought how last evening, when Sobriety and I, suddenly and unusually both restive at home, had set out to walk together for perhaps half an hour—we had decided to reach the new house a-building not a great distance away, before turning back—and Sobriety had said an odd thing: ‘Women are expected to say and do what is comfortable to others. And all of us prefer to be thought wise.’
Sobriety squeezed the arm that she entwined in hers. ‘I think of my aunt who read fate in cards, especially. I do not know if she believed in her own foretellings, but certainly many flocked to her for the comfort, and sometimes paid her for it.’
To which I had felt I must exclaim, ‘But it is so wrong to take payment for a lie!’ And Sobriety had said, ‘Of course it is. Very wrong. But people do pay, or make gifts, because they receive comfort in some way, and the fortune teller receives it knowing people believe they have paid for comfort.’
She paused, and I watched the mist puff into the air from our breath. ‘Besides, my aunt believed she was wise.’
We walked along in a silence of whispering skirts while a carriage clip-clopped by. ‘And it must be remembered,’ Sobriety said at last, ‘that fortune-telling, that I know of, leads to very little violent death.’
I smiled. ‘You are grown remarkably forgiving for a Methodist, my dear.’
Sobriety laughed. ‘Oh no, no. To mislead others is always wrong!’
But with these thoughts my mind had swung, without her willing it, back to Mr Farquharson and violence, to the despised and lonely wife grasping for love, and to his littlest, most frail victim.
I passed a hand in front of my eyes before packing away my pen and papers.