Ragtime in Simla

by Barbara Cleverly

  Maisie knew the list by heart and recited the names from the top in order. ‘The list changes every week. Some people are what you’d call the core of the meeting and we add others for variety. Major Fitzherbert. He’s a regular. Trying to contact the Mem. They were inseparable. He’ll likely succeed because she only died a year ago.’

  ‘Is that significant – a year ago?’

  ‘Oh, yes. You tend not to be lucky if the subject passed over more than about four or five years ago. They lose interest, you know – the spirits, I mean. They have work to do on the other side. They don’t particularly want to be called back here all the time to sort things out for their relations. You know – “Aunty Enid – what did you do with Granny’s garnets?” It’s boring for them.’

  ‘I can understand that. But Maisie – does this really work? I mean, you can tell me. It carries me out of my depth.’

  ‘Out of your depth?’ said Maisie derisively. ‘It carries me out of my depth! But it’s there and it does work. But you – you’re too bound up in police procedures. You imagine that if you don’t understand it, it doesn’t exist! Where was I? Mr and Mrs Tilly. He’s a financier. Their three boys died in Flanders. The eldest comes back quite often. Helps them to bear it. Then there’s Miss Trollope. This is her first visit. She’s hoping for a message from Snowdrop. Her dog.’

  ‘Any hope?’ asked Joe trying to keep a straight face.

  ‘Yes. Now if he’d been a cockatoo or a stick insect I’d say no but dogs do come through. They put their noses in your hands sometimes to show they’re there. Then we’ve got Colonel and Mrs Drake. They lost their twin daughters to the cholera in the plains three years ago. They’ve not given up hope yet. Then there’s Mrs Sharpe of ICTC. Her husband never comes with her. She’s trying to contact her mother.’

  Joe looked away, but too late apparently to avoid giving Minerva a message he was unaware of signalling. ‘Ah! So that’s your mark! The Saintly Alice? Well, well!’ She gave a cynical smile and went on with her list. ‘And the last name is Cecil Robertson, the jeweller. I think he comes to see if he can catch me out – there’s always one! But also because he’s an expert on religions and he’s, well, I suppose you could say he’s making a study of me and my techniques. Oh, and lastly, a newcomer you can add to the list – Joe Sandilands, policeman, blackmailer and sceptic. With him in the room sneering, the spirits will take a powder and I won’t blame them! Now, that’s all you’re getting! Bugger off! Hecate wants to get back into her chair.’

  Joe got to his feet and the waiting cat sprang triumphantly back into its place.

  ‘I’ll make sure you have no cause to regret what you’ve agreed to do for us, Maisie, and thank you for — ’

  ‘Cut the cackle, smart arse!’ she snapped impatiently. ‘You don’t need to turn on the smarm for me. I’ve said I’ll do it – leave it there, will you?’

  Joe put on a face of blazing honesty, one hand over his heart.

  ‘I have your word and I trust you, Maisie. I wish you’d trust me a little.’

  Maisie Freeman began to laugh. A derisive laugh that made her magnificent bosom quiver and rattled the jet beads around her neck.

  ‘Well,’ said Joe, ‘why not? I did make it my business to see that that charge sheet against you in London was wiped clean. You’ve been in the clear for four years now!’

  He dodged neatly as a whisky glass materialized and flew through the air, narrowly missing his ear.

  * * *

  Chapter Fifteen

  « ^ »

  The room when he returned just before eight on Friday evening projected a very different mood. The dark red curtains were drawn and a log fire burned brightly in the hearth. The lighting was discreet but adequate and supplied by two or three Tiffany lamps about the room and a row of tall white candles down the centre of the table.

  The cat had been banished from the scene and Minerva Freemantle was alone in the room when he arrived. She was wearing a simple dark green velvet gown, low-cut and sleeveless, he noticed, a clear indication that no trickery was contemplated. Joe allowed his eyes to run appreciatively for a moment over the voluptuous and highly unfashionable curves of her figure, admiring the strong white arms, the waist improbably narrow between swelling bosom and lavish hips. Minerva – as he was beginning to think of her – had chosen her name well. As imposing as any Roman statue that had ever graced the temple of the Goddess of Wisdom, he thought fancifully; and guaranteed to distract the attention of any man lucky enough to be granted a seat at her table. She was still a show girl, he reckoned, and a clever one.

  Unusually for India there were no drinks or sweetmeats of any kind on offer. A serious business, a seance, and not to be confused with a social occasion. All had been rehearsed and they moved easily into their routine when the other guests began to arrive. Introductions were made and brief descriptions given but they were not followed up with the usual social chit-chat. The other guests were friendly and greeted him without suspicion but with that automatic reserve which prevents people from starting up a conversation in the waiting room of a doctor’s surgery. They had their own preoccupations and were not disposed to take much interest in his.

  Alice Conyers-Sharpe was the last to arrive, surprised but pleased to see him.

  ‘Well, now we’re all here… Most of us know each other well but we welcome two newcomers to our little band this evening – Miss Trollope who has very recently lost her dear companion, Snowdrop, and who is hoping for a sign that he has safely passed over and will be there to welcome her when it is her turn to make the transition…’

  Miss Trollope was a small, fair woman with the wide-eyed and earnest expression of a porcelain doll. She smiled nervously and received sympathetic and encouraging smiles in return. They all had animals they were fond of themselves and would hope to meet up with again in the hereafter.

  ‘… and a new gentleman.’ (Was there the slightest emphasis on the word ‘gentleman’?) ‘Commander Joseph Sandilands from London. I will let him tell you in his own words what his motivation is in joining our circle.’

  She turned to him with a sweet smile. This was not rehearsed. He inferred that he was not forgiven.

  ‘Minerva and I are old friends,’ he said with engaging sincerity. ‘Our paths crossed many years ago in London Town when she was already quite a star in her own field. I have long appreciated her remarkable talents. I’m here to explore the paths of truth, honesty and love. I open my mind and my heart to an approach from anyone who has passed through ahead of us to the Happy Fields and is prepared to give of his or her precious time to speak words of guidance or comfort to me.’

  Everyone nodded fervently in understanding except for Minerva Freemantle whose lips appeared to twitch with suppressed emotion at this speech.

  She gestured to the table. ‘If we can all take our seats then? Joe, no penance, I think, if I ask you to sit between two pretty ladies? If Mrs Sharpe sits on your left and Miss Trollope on your right? There we are. Now, hold hands everyone and place your joined hands on the table where we can all see them.’

  She doused the electric lamps but left the candles burning. If he had not been anxiously waiting for the performance of his own trick, Joe thought he would have begun to enjoy himself.

  The atmosphere was not at all what he had expected. Seated holding the hands of a pair of pretty girls at the walnut table, surrounded by kindly faces, he was more in the mood of cheerful expectancy that came over him at the beginning of a dinner party with friends and not in the dark mood of guarded superstition he had associated with seances.

  ‘We’ll begin with our usual prayer,’ said Mrs Freemantle without emotion.

  Everyone except Joe and Miss Trollope knew the words and began to recite them together.

  ‘Lord of the Universe, Spirit of Love, we ask you to look with kindness on our gathering and keep all here assembled safe from evil, from despair and from doubt.’

  A silence fell but it was a comfortable silence,
the silence of an audience who know the curtain is about to go up on a performance they very much want to see. Joe found that he was thinking deeply as he did in those few minutes of private prayer before a church service. The hands holding his were not the source of embarrassment or even arousal that he had anticipated but a comforting touch linking him to the rest of the group. He narrowed his eyes and focused on the candle flame in front of him. He was not sure how many minutes had slipped by when Minerva Freemantle began to speak.

  ‘David? Is that David? Mrs Tilly, your son is with us!’

  Mr and Mrs Tilly looked at her eagerly but stayed silent. Joe felt a tingle in his arms and hands and stirred his elbows and shoulders discreetly to keep the circulation flowing.

  A voice, shockingly deep to the inexperienced Joe, came from Mrs Freemantle’s throat. A young man’s voice full of life and humour and excitement.

  ‘Mother! Father! I’ve found them! Both of them! Bill and Henry are with me and quite safe now. If you can believe it they were both still in their bunker on the Somme. Didn’t know which way to turn. Didn’t want to desert their post even though they were supposed to have passed over! They say thank you for the last parcel you sent. Bill had the blue socks and Henry had the green ones. They send their love and we’ll all be waiting for you when you come through.’

  The voice faded and Joe was quite certain that he could hear chatter and laughter in the background. Mr and Mrs Tilly sat rigidly still, tears pouring down their faces but beaming with happiness.

  ‘God, she’s good!’ Joe thought. ‘She’s bloody good! I wonder who we’ll have next? And how on earth will she manage to do Snowdrop?’

  Silence fell on the group once more and again Joe found himself hypnotized by the candle flame in front of his eyes. He was startled from his trance by a voice which boomed from Minerva Freemantle.

  ‘Joe! Joe Sandilands, you old so-and-so! Ladies present so I’ll watch my language. Well, there you are, old boy, and here I am! Now do you believe me?’

  A soldier’s clipped, jocular tones.

  ‘Seb? Sebastian?’ Joe managed to gasp. He was conscious of Alice Sharpe squeezing his hand tightly to help him through his astonishment.

  ‘Of course it’s Sebastian! We have unfinished business! I’d have won our last game, you know, if that shell hadn’t wiped it off the board and me with it. I was going to move my bishop to KB3. Checkmate in three moves. Take care, old man! And watch your left flank!’

  Joe couldn’t speak. His throat seemed to be choked, his tongue paralysed. This wasn’t in the script. His mind raced back to the summer of 1915, to the shell burst that robbed him of his dearest friend, tore open his own face and stopped a game of chess he had just realized he could not possibly win. He looked desperately at Minerva. She read his thoughts and shook her head sadly. She could not call Sebastian back again.

  Excited and congratulatory looks were being directed at him from those around the table. With a final squeeze of encouragement, Alice Sharpe’s hand relaxed its grip once more and Joe wondered if she thought it at all unfair that he should have made a contact on his first visit when she had tried often to communicate with her mother. He also thought about Seb’s last crisp warning. ‘Watch your left flank!’ He looked briefly to his left flank and encountered Alice’s smiling blue eyes.

  ‘It’s all right, Seb!’ he said silently to himself like a prayer. ‘Your message received!’

  The candles guttered as a chill rush of air swept through the room. A log fell and the glow of the fire dimmed. The grandfather clock behind Mrs Freemantle abruptly stopped ticking. Somewhere in the corridor outside a cat screeched in terror and was abruptly silenced. Mrs Freemantle began hurriedly to mutter a prayer. Joe caught the words, ‘… keep us from evil… let no bodeful presence come nigh…’

  Tension spread around the group. Feet shuffled, throats were cleared but the circle of hands remained intact and firm. Ears straining for the slightest sound heard it at the same moment. Tap, tap. Tap, tap. The sound of a stick in the corridor outside. It paused then tapped again. Exploring. Searching out the way. Soft footsteps shuffled after the stick. They grew louder, more confident, and came to a halt by the small door behind Minerva.

  In her own voice from which she could not totally eradicate a tremble of fear, she said, ‘Friends, this is very exceptional. We must not be afraid. Stay firm. We are being visited by a very strong spirit – a spirit so strong it has the power to materialize before our eyes. It wants to show itself to us. It insists on showing itself! But beware! It takes its power from negative emotions – from resentment, from hatred and desire for revenge!’

  A barely audible whimper came from the throat of Miss Trollope and she squeezed Joe’s hand tightly.

  ‘This spirit is searching for someone who is close at hand. For one of us.’

  The door creaked open.

  ‘Someone whose initials are…’ She frowned, concentrating on an inner voice. ‘… are… I. N. Is there anyone here who is aware of an I.N. in their life?’

  Alice’s hand had become icy cold and she was unconsciously moving her whole body closer to his.

  No one spoke.

  ‘There is no one here with those initials,’ said Minerva. The relief was evident in her voice. ‘Will you not admit your error, spirit, and leave us in peace? She whom you seek is not among us.’

  ‘You lie! She is here!’

  The voice burst from the doorway and a dimly perceived figure took on hideous shape before their eyes.

  Darkly clad, the only parts of the apparition which revealed a human identity were the pale hands and the pale face. A face of such horror that Miss Trollope gurgled, released Joe’s hand and slumped under the table. The deathly white features glowed with the marble colouring of a fresh corpse. A trail of blood trickled down from the forehead to the chin and as they watched in frozen fascination, dripped on to his front. Where the eyes should have been there was a black and gaping void. The apparition moved its head from side to side, slowly sweeping the table with its blind gaze. Searching. It raised a white stick threateningly.

  ‘She’s here! Isobel, you are here! Isobel Newton! You could have saved me! Why did you leave me dying?’

  Alice Conyers-Sharpe made a sound half-way between a scream and a gasp, jumped to her feet and hurled herself towards the door and to the head of the stairs. Leaving a shattered audience behind him, Joe set off in pursuit. He saw her face upturned in terror as she heard him coming after her and then she lost her footing on the narrow stairs and fell with a scream.

  * * *

  Chapter Sixteen

  « ^ »

  Scrambling to her feet, she blundered on and fled with a bewildered cry into the street. She started to run at speed through the crowds, dodging neatly between the strolling couples, never looking back. To Joe’s surprise she seemed to be making her way past the Ridge, past Christ Church and on south towards the wooded hills in which lay Sir George’s Residence but at the last she turned aside and ran, still at speed, sandalled feet pattering, down a narrow lane between the backs of two rows of houses. Joe followed her into the lane and saw her disappear at last through a small arched gateway.

  He went in pursuit and found himself in a walled courtyard. As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom he became aware that a narrow flight of steps led upward from this to a higher level, a higher level from which flowering creepers and trailing roses cascaded down across the face of a pale wall. Tentatively he set his foot on the steps and began to mount.

  The silence was broken by a sharp click.

  Someone above him had slipped the safety catch from a pistol.

  ‘Not a step nearer! Whoever you are, you stay right there or I fire!’

  The voice was breathless and quavering with terror.

  She was leaning on a parapet wall and Joe caught a glint of moonlight on the barrel of a revolver. She repeated, ‘Not a step nearer!’

  ‘This is a bit unfriendly, Alice! It’s me – Joe San
dilands. I wish you no harm.’

  There was a pause. ‘Joe? Oh, Joe! Thank God! Are you alone?’ And then, ‘That creature… it hasn’t followed you?’

  ‘There’s only me here, Alice. Let me come up, will you? Why don’t we take a seat? Why don’t we share a cigarette? Why don’t we enjoy a moment of tranquillity together? Tranquillity! A commodity always in short supply in Simla as far as I can see.’

  As he spoke, step by step he climbed the stair until at last he joined Alice on a small terrace platform shaded and scented by jasmine. Alice was just discernible in the fretted moonlight but the pistol in her hand was clear to see.

  ‘Spare me!’ he said. ‘I am unarmed! At least, not entirely unarmed. Not quite sure how the evening was going to turn out, I took the precaution of filling a flask with the Governor’s excellent Courvoisier! Whatever else, you’ve had a taxing evening! Won’t you join me?’

  With a sob Alice threw herself into Joe’s arms and clung to him. Gently he disengaged himself and led her to sit on the low parapet wall. He sat beside her, an arm around her shoulders, waiting while she gained a fragile measure of control.

  ‘Before we do or say anything,’ she said, ‘please tell me who or what on earth – or in hell – that was? Was he real? Did he exist? Did you see him too? Did everybody see him? Did you see him, Joe?’

  Joe hesitated. Perhaps the truth might be most serviceable. ‘He was real all right,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t a figment of your imagination. He wasn’t a revenant. He was, though, someone you know. Someone you have known. Any ideas?’

  Alice looked at him with huge, uncomprehending eyes. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have never met such a… a… creature. And anyway, you heard him – we all heard him – he was looking for someone with the initials… oh, what was it?… I.M.? Yes, I.M. Isobel something or other…’ She shivered. ‘I shall never ever go to a seance again! It was horrid and very frightening. I had to get away! And that wretched woman, Miss Trollope! Did you see her? Fainted away completely! I really think Mrs Freemantle has overstepped herself. It’s perhaps time that she moved on from Simla. I’m quite sure that when Her Excellency hears of tonight’s fiasco she will insist. Don’t you agree, Joe?’