Mrs Wells leaned towards Mrs Fox. ‘Rosie. Miss Glanville-Smith’s spirit guide. She will help us. You must state your name clearly.’
Adelina was suddenly overcome with trepidation. This was the moment of truth. Was she really ready to talk with Robbie after all these years? What could he possibly tell her that would allay her guilt and soothe her agony? And what if he could not be found? Or, even worse, what if he refused to communicate at all? Her breathing grew shallow and rapid.
‘Are you alright, my dear?’ whispered Adam.
‘She’ll be fine, I assure you,’ said Sir Arthur.
Adelina sucked in a lungful of air and nodded to indicate she was feeling calmer. ‘Adelina Fox,’ she stated loudly.
The medium gulped as if devouring the name whole and her nostrils flared with a deep inhalation of breath.
The small childish voice again. ‘Whom do you seek?’
‘My son.’
Adam heard the tremor in his wife’s voice.
The medium gulped again, swallowing the words. Her head swivelled from side to side and even beneath the blindfold her eyelids could be seen to be twitching violently. A long slow hiss escaped the woman’s lips but her head continued to swing back and forth for some minutes.
‘No one answers,’ came the small voice, almost churlishly.
Panic spasmed in Adelina’s face and she cried out in great agitation, ‘I wish to speak with Robbie. Robbie Fox.’
After a short repeat of the head-swinging, the medium’s throat convulsed and her jaws distended in a ghastly silent scream. Out of her mouth a tube of glowing white jelly was excreted and snaked over her chin and down her blouse, breaking up into long shiny filaments that dissolved into the air like thick, creamy smoke. A murmur of horror spread around the table. Mr Upton stood by his camera.
‘No need to be alarmed,’ said Sir Arthur. ‘It is merely the ectoplasmic fluid. The spirit is near.’
Adelina was trembling now and steadied her breathing by an act of will. Mrs Wells wiped Miss Glanville-Smith’s mouth clean as if she was tending an infant. It was such a familiar domestic gesture in so strange a context it verged on the comical.
The medium’s right hand clutched at the table. Mrs Wells realised what was happening and slipped the pencil into her grasp. Miss Smith did not look down. Her head was tilted so far back, all they could see was her silk-covered neck. Her hand jerked across the blank paper with a life of its own, animated but with a heavy reluctance like the wooden limbs of a string puppet. Mrs Wells read out each letter as it was formed.
‘F-O-R-G . . .’ There was a pause as the fingers hung limply.
‘Forget?’ Adelina whispered to no one in particular. She looked bewildered.
The hand resumed its writing: ‘. . . I-V-E,’ intoned Mrs Wells. ‘Forgive.’
Adelina’s breath caught in her throat. The hand continued its jerky movements. ‘H-E-R. Her.’
‘Forgive her?’ said Lady Doyle, looking around the table. ‘Who?’
Adelina felt a fever begin to burn in her brow.
Adam tried to catch her attention but she seemed to be avoiding his eyes. ‘Darling, maybe we should stop this,’ he suggested gently.
‘No,’ she replied. If this was a message from Robbie, Adelina was determined to know the truth. Whom should she forgive? Freya or Angie? There was only one way she could be sure. She must know the reason.
‘Why? Why should I forgive her, Robbie?’ she demanded.
The medium’s lips chewed on these words and swallowed them like a lump of bitter gristle. Miss Glanville-Smith sat bolt upright now. More jelly spewed from her mouth, glistening and smooth like a paste. Mr Upton opened the lens of the camera as the room filled with a golden miasma.
‘He has something to show you, Addie,’ said the girl’s voice. She was using Robbie’s pet name for his mother when he was small.
‘It’s really him,’ whispered Adelina, her eyes shining with tears as she looked at Adam. ‘It’s Robbie.’
‘Bind her,’ said Mr Upton urgently. Mrs Wells seemed to know exactly what to do and seized the two lengths of rope lying on the table. She pinned Miss Glanville-Smith’s arms to her side and bound them.
‘Why is she doing that?’ Fanny asked Sir Arthur.
‘Miss Glanville-Smith is about to do an apport. She must sit very still so that she does not thrash about and accidentally injure herself or anyone else. And this way you can also see that she is not using her hands or arms in any way to manipulate objects.’
They all stared at the medium, who was now blindfolded, bound with ropes and as rigid as a board. She began to moan again, rocking from side to side as her cries grew louder and wilder until they climaxed in an inarticulate shout. The candles on the bureau dipped and their copper glow winked out for a second.
‘My birthday present,’ said Miss Glanville-Smith in a new voice, still young but deeper. A boy’s voice.
Adelina gasped, her hand to her mouth.
From the ceiling there dropped a small object which landed on the table in front of the whole company. It was a rectangular piece of card, stained and dog-eared, and completely blank on the side facing them.
‘Turn it over,’ said Sir Arthur.
Adelina’s breathing was laboured, her hands clenched. Adam reluctantly picked up the card and turned it over. It was a sepia photo of a young naked woman wearing only a necklace of clear crystals and bangles at her wrists. She sat on a beaded cushion, legs crossed delicately, but with her arms raised to show off her breasts. At her feet lay a basket from which a snake had risen, evidently mesmerised by the woman’s beauty.
‘Good God! It’s one of those naughty French postcards from before the war!’ exclaimed Sir Arthur.
Fanny Durack giggled. Longford shrugged. ‘What does it mean?’ he whispered.
Adelina trembled from head to toe. She was staring at her husband. All the blood had drained from his face. He looked haggard and old. He knew what this was. He had seen it before, she could tell. It was Freya’s. It had to be. Had she given it to Robert? Was that what she must forgive?
‘Forgive her,’ repeated the boy’s voice.
The blindfold, though securely tied to Miss Glanville-Smith’s face, came loose and dropped into her lap. The medium’s eyes rolled back like marbles and her mouth gaped, a raw, pink wound. The voice deepened again and sang a lilting chant:
In the valley, here I lie
Here I lie but am no liar
Before the snows come, two shall die
One by water, one by fire
Before the snows come, two shall live
But only if they can forgive.
As the last words died on the medium’s lips, the candles blew out. The room was plunged into darkness. All the guests could hear in the yawning blackness was the sound of a woman’s inconsolable sobbing.
Adelina Fox knew she must die because she could never forgive.
CHAPTER 16
* * *
Laura
Meadow Springs, June 1921
With a boyish mix of nerves and excitement, Adam could hardly wait to head over to the Palace that morning to meet the cast and crew of The Blue Mountains Mystery.
The cameraman, Arthur Higgins, and his assistant had begun setting up their Klieg lights and blackout drapes in the casino before sunrise. It was no surprise that word had spread among the guests that Australia’s most celebrated director, Raymond Longford, and his partner, Lottie Lyell, the adored film star, were shooting scenes in the hotel for their latest film. Some fans were disappointed to learn that this time Lottie was remaining behind the camera as Longford’s co-director. Even so, by mid-morning a large crowd had gathered near the entrances to the casino, held back by ropes strung across the thresholds. One of the crew, a tall stocky lad named Simon, had gained permission from the general manager to display placards on the walls.
NOTICE
All persons not in actual scene PLEASE keep away from FRONT OF THE CAMERA and OFF T
HE SET by order of the Director
While those instructions were mostly for the benefit of the throng of curious onlookers, they were also a reminder to less experienced members of the cast. Adam Fox had read how Longford, with a string of box-office hits to his name – including The Sentimental Bloke, Ginger Mick, On Our Selection and, most recently, Rudd’s New Selection – was praised for his ‘natural’ style of directing which ‘captured the truth of Australian life and manners’ and avoided the melodramatic stock gestures and expressions of most silent-movie acting. He achieved this in part by using not only experienced screen and theatre actors but also untrained non-actors, usually for smaller roles. He would pluck someone off the street because he liked their face.
Which is how Adam came to meet Laura.
Raymond and Lottie were in the billiard room making notes when Adam arrived at the hotel. They were sitting, heads close together, scripts in their laps, talking in low voices. They both looked tense and tired.
Adam had spoken with Longford and Lyell about their film back in January on the memorable night of the Conan Doyle dinner so he had some idea of the pressure they were under. The Blue Mountains Mystery was a new kind of film for Longford: a high-society crime thriller set in a luxury hotel where a rich businessman is found dead and his wife suspected of the murder. Based on a popular novel, the story’s main plot twist was that the dead man turned out to be an imposter, an underworld gangster who was holding the businessman hostage and blackmailing his wife.
The lead male was a good-looking veteran actor, John Faulkner, who usually played tough guys and villains like the German spy-ring leader in Enemy Within. His challenge in this film was to play the double role of suave rich gentleman and ruthless thug. Longford had cast Mrs Marjorie Osborne as the female lead. Marjorie was the cosmopolitan wife of a rich Queensland squatter. She was very helpful in the costume department, as she knew all about high-society fashion, but she had never acted in a film before and needed close direction.
The shoot had been going on since April. The crew and cast had been staying at the Carrington in Katoomba and were now occupying an entire floor of the Delmonte Wing of the Palace. This film had the biggest budget of any film Longford had ever directed, with a large cast and many outdoor locations all over the Blue Mountains as well as inside the beautiful Carrington Hotel and the Palace. For the next month or so they would be shooting scenes in and around the Palace as well as down in the valley. While his previous films had done well in Australia and Britain, Longford’s producers, Dan and E.J. Carroll, had high hopes for this film in America. All in all, it was a monumental undertaking.
‘I hope I’m not interrupting,’ said Fox as he drew near.
Longford looked up and smiled broadly. He was a tall, thickset man, handsome in a world-weary way.
With her restless dark eyes, Lyell also looked up and acknowledged the hotelier with a curt nod. Adam noticed the translucency of her skin and heard the wet cough in her chest; according to gossip she had spent time last year in a clinic in the mountains recuperating from a bout of tuberculosis.
‘No, not at all. Welcome. We were expecting you,’ Longford said affably. ‘Come and meet the actors and crew.’
Given the early-morning frost and plummeting temperatures outside, it was strangely hot and stuffy inside the casino. Every small detail of the grand room was illuminated startlingly in a blaze of brilliant white light that poured from six giant carbon arc lamps on tall stands. Adam could hear them crackling and sizzling as they radiated waves of intense heat.
Arthur Higgins was busy making final adjustments, tweaking a barn-door here and there on the lamps as he tiptoed over the riot of cables snaking across the casino floor. He doffed his cap in greeting at Mr Fox as he passed. ‘One of the best cameramen in the business,’ said Longford proudly.
This morning’s scene was to be shot on the casino’s stage, usually used for concerts and palm court orchestras. Today it had been dressed with a giant web of wires for a performance by dancers Fred Leslie and Ivy Shilling, darlings of Australian and London variety theatre. Adam had first seen this duo perform their famous ‘Spider’s Web’ routine in a revue at the Tivoli back in 1913. He dimly recalled the sensuous writhing and flutterings of Ivy, a long-legged beauty, dressed in multicoloured silks as a butterfly in a colossal web at the mercy of the predatory arachnid, Fred. It was all very artistic and titillating, as he remembered, but then so were most of the entertainments offered at the Tiv.
As Longford and Adam made their way through the crowd of onlookers, the hotelier saw a knot of people assembled in the middle of the ballroom. Some were already in full make-up and costume while others were still in their street clothes. They had been summoned from their dressing rooms upstairs especially to meet the owner of the Palace.
Adam immediately recognised John Faulkner, even with his shocking mask of white pancake and thick, blackened eyebrows. Standing next to Faulkner was a slender young woman, still in her overcoat. She had glossy black, shoulder-length hair, tied back from her forehead with a scarf. Her pale fine-boned face had an aristocratic air of boredom when in repose, but when she smiled, her eyes were animated with the most compelling warmth and intelligence Adam had ever seen. And those lips, so luscious and full, struck him as irresistibly ripe for kissing.
Adam was taken completely off guard by this vision of loveliness. He felt the axis of his everyday world tilt off-centre. Not since the first time he had laid eyes on Freya in her cottage all those years ago had he been so unexpectedly smitten. Before he could stop himself, he lunged forward.
‘So you must be Miss Marjorie Osborne,’ he declared, loud enough for the entire assembled cast to hear.
There was an awkward silence during which the young woman in the overcoat looked at him in alarm.
Longford coughed and hastened to the hotelier’s aid as a flustered older woman stepped forward from among the knot of actors.
‘Ah, no, actually, that is Laura, who is playing Mrs Osborne’s maid – and this,’ the film director said with great emphasis and a theatrical flourish, as if presenting a member of royalty, ‘is Mrs Marjorie Osborne, our leading lady.’
‘Oh. My sincerest apologies,’ said Adam Fox as he realised his gaffe.
Mrs Osborne graciously laughed it off.
Fox shook hands with all the cast and crew, welcoming them to the Palace and leaving them in no doubt about his enthusiasm at having such luminaries on his premises. He was all charming smiles and attentive nods, but every now and then his eyes flicked in the direction of the ‘maid’.
Finally, Longford glanced at his watch. ‘You must excuse me. It’s time we got to work.’
‘Would it be alright if I stayed and watched the dance?’ asked Adam.
Laura was standing with her back to him, talking to a fellow actress. He admired the way her hair moved under the light like the motion of dark water in a stream.
‘We would be honoured, Mr Fox,’ the director said diplomatically. ‘Let’s find you somewhere to sit.’ Longford called over his runner, Simon, and told him to fetch a chair.
Lyell appeared at Longford’s side with her pencil and script, making no secret of her impatience to get started. ‘The pianist is ready. And Fred and Ivy are in costume, Raymond, and waiting in the wings.’
‘Alright, everyone!’ said Longford clapping his hands and assuming an air of command. ‘Arthur, are you ready?
Higgins stood by his hand-cranked camera, a bulky black box topped with two film magazines, the whole contraption mounted on a heavy wooden-legged tripod. He leaned forward, squinting slightly as he rechecked his framing, then gave Longford the thumbs-up.
‘Fred, Ivy, how about you?’ Longford called in the direction of the stage. A male voice replied in the affirmative from the wings. ‘Ready when you are, Mr Longford!’
‘You know this routine inside out so I hardly need to give you directions. Let’s go for a take, shall we? Mr West, if you please.’ Longford nodded at the
pianist and signalled to his cameraman. Higgins began cranking the long slender camera handle with a steady metallic whirring. A hush fell over the onlookers, both the guests of the hotel and the cast members who had never seen Leslie and Shilling perform. Among these, Adam noted, was Laura.
The piano began its high, silvery, meandering tune. Entering the stage on pointe like a ballerina, Ivy Shilling tiptoed cautiously at first as if aware of the dozens of curious eyes upon her. Her costume was tastefully erotic: a tight bustier emphasising her shapely bosom while its short gauzy skirt revealed the creamy perfection of her thighs. Midnight blue satin shoes matched lustrous stockings that stopped provocatively just above the knee. Long buttoned gloves encased her elegant arms, beneath which butterfly wings opened out in silken folds as iridescent and hypnotising as sunlight on oil. As the music spiralled upwards, Ivy danced with sensuous abandon, basking in her own magnificence and the warmth of an imaginary sun.
Adam glanced towards the group of actors close by in the half-darkness behind the lights. There she was. Laura. Laura, Laura, Laura. Adam was forty-six years old, a respected businessman at the height of his success and a husband about to celebrate his silver wedding anniversary. So how was it that, all of a sudden, he felt as giddy and helpless as a lovesick adolescent?
Ah there! Laura stole a quick look in his direction. Their eyes met. Adam smiled. She smiled back, a small, tentative smile, before turning her attention again to the stage, her chin tilted up at a slight angle. Bewitching.
With a menacing discord, the butterfly’s spring dance stopped as she detected a malign presence nearby. With an unexpected crescendo from the piano, a pair of flash pots ignited, blinding the audience momentarily and spewing twin columns of smoke into the air. These geysers quickly mushroomed into two scattering clouds of grey into which beams of bright light were shone. The resulting effect was electrifying. With gleaming jewelled eyes and bristling, sticky legs, two giant spiders magically appeared and crawled up the furled golden drapes either side of the proscenium arch before disappearing into thin air. The audience gasped in horror.
Palace of Tears Page 21