‘Who are you and what do you want to tell us?’ Nigel demanded.
The glass began to slide in such a frenzy that we had to half rise out of our seats to keep up with it. First it darted to the letter A, then R, then A again — and it came as no surprise to me that the rest of the word it spelled out in this way was BELLA. Then it paused.
At that point it occurred to me that someone like Angela who had devoted herself to psychic matters might easily have come across Mary Lawson’s ‘Narration’.
‘Arabella, did you pass to your new life a long time ago?’
The glass wavered, moved backwards and forwards touching letters that had no meaning, and then as though making an effort spelled out TIME CHANGES.
‘When did you pass over?’ asked Nigel.
The glass danced to the numerals and indicated 1758.
‘What caused your passing?’ he continued. By now I was aware of the tension that gripped the circle; the group gazed at the glass as though it held some ultimate revelation. For a moment it was still again, then it began to make its now familiar clockwise circular motion, going faster and faster so that Ashley’s hand fell away but still it increased its speed, the glass rim screeching against the polished surface of the table. Then it struck a letter so hard that the plastic square on which it was printed spun away to the floor.
‘M,’ everyone muttered.
A few seconds later the word MURDER had been indicated.
A sigh of satisfaction went up from the sitters. Here was a real-death drama, and I wondered who was manipulating the glass. Obviously someone who knew the story of the ‘Narration’, and I decided it was probably Nigel Chambers. I believed the other members of Angela’s group were as sincere as Angela appeared to be. But I guessed Nigel was the ambitious sort; I suspected he wanted to become a name in the psychic world with an eye on the television and lectures that would follow. I decided to keep an unobtrusive eye on Nigel.
‘Who murdered you?’ he asked, perspiration beginning to glisten on his forehead.
The glass made a few reluctant circles, then slowly nudged the letters DICK one after the other.
‘Why did Dick harm you?’
The glass slid to NO and stopped. It was as though the force which had animated it — and which I had no doubt was Nigel’s right arm — had gone out of it. But despite my feeling of frustration I had to admit he was playing it well. After the real manifestations of last night, I had hoped for something better than this glorified parlour game. And yet — even here — the subconscious observer was at work; notes on how the sitters looked and reacted were being stored for future reference.
‘Are you still there?’ Nigel asked after a minute.
No response from the glass.
The sitters shifted in their chairs, their muscles becoming uncomfortable as they kept their arms extended over the table.
‘Gone,’ said Angela. ‘Arabella has gone. Something blocked her, something to do with the tragedy. I sensed that she was still full of grief. To her it might seem that it had only just happened; the time scale is different on the other side. When we can explain time we will understand the paranormal.’
Her last words struck me as containing a pearl of truth, but before I could ponder it the glass came to life again. After what I now regarded as the obligatory screech round the table to get up speed, rather like a skater circling an ice rink, it lunged at the word NO and kept hitting it.
‘Another is with us,’ said Angela.
‘Peace,’ said Nigel. ‘There is no harm here. We ask who you are.’
NO NO NO NO, continued the glass.
‘Your name?’
The glass backed away from NO, made a series of wild tangents in which nonsense words were spelled out like a young child playing with the keyboard of a typewriter. Then it paused like someone calming themselves after a hysterical outburst and deliberately spelled EVELYN.
The sister, I thought. Someone certainly had been doing his homework!
‘Evelyn, you lived here?’ Nigel asked.
The glass touched YES.
‘And you passed over here?’
Again the affirmative.
‘What caused your passing?’
AGUE
‘You were happy here?’
YESSSSNO
‘You mean there was a time when you were happy, and a time when you were sad?’
YES
HAPPYTHENMAD ‘Do you mean sad or mad?’ SADMADSADMAD ‘What went wrong in your life?’
B A B Y Y Y Y ‘A baby? Did you lose it?’
The glass zig-zagged in a frenzy. I found it extremely difficult to keep my finger in place. Top marks for drama, Nigel old fraud! I thought.
‘You must tell us what happened,’ he said in a very positive voice.
The glass paused as it had before after a bout of desperation, then deliberately touched five letters. SMOTH
Nigel was about to say something but Angela gave a frightening groan and slumped back into her chair.
The sound was so unexpected that we drew our hands back from the glass, which remained with its facets gleaming by the letter H.
‘Something’s happening,’ cried Estelle.
‘She trances,’ Mr Peter declared.
Angela’s eyes rolled up so that only the bluish whites were visible. She groaned a second time and then, horribly, a deep male voice issued from her gaping mouth. ‘Madam, you shall do as I say or by hell, madam …’ The angry tones were cut by a woman’s voice.
‘You cannot mean it, Richard …’
For a moment I looked for the speaker and then realized that the second voice was also issuing from Angela — a dreadful dialogue from the same mouth.
‘Madam, do you dare to think that I am going to allow this weakly thing to ruin you and me? You know the church rule, madam, on a bastard born between such as you and me — you knew the peril when you crawled between my sheets with your quim afire, by hell — and there are enough viper tongues in this county, among those that used to fawn at my table, to destroy us. How they’d laugh to see us topple, those bastards and bitches with their Sunday faces and envious hearts.’
‘But you’re talking about …’
‘Yes, madam?’
There was a long pause.
‘Murder.’
‘Murder, is it? Would it have been murder if the midwife’s trick had worked? You play with words, madam. Murder! ’Tis no murder to cull the runt from the litter.’
‘How can you talk like that when I am so weak? No matter what you say, I cannot do as you ask.’
‘Then I shall, madam. A minute in the pail, and …’
‘Is this all love means?’
‘You would see us disgraced and yet you prate about love. If it were not for what I thought was love, madam, I would not be in this midden. You throw the word murder at me, but it was for you …’
‘What was for me, sir?’
‘Stop playing the innocent. She might have lived for years …’
A scream issued from Angela. ‘Arabella! Arabella, and now … you want me to … dear God! No, I shall get help. I shall run to our neighbours … you shall hang before I …’
Angela’s head jerked as though she had received an unseen blow across the face. A sobbing. ‘I shall tell. I shall tell.’
‘You are lunatic! I’ll settle all now …’
‘Don’t take her … please …’
‘The hell with you, madam. You think I like such work!’
A cry seemingly endless issued from Angela’s froth-flecked mouth. Then there was another noise. The glass began to spin about the table under its own volition, scattering the letters on to our laps. Then, with a report like a rifle shot, it exploded.
When Angela played back the tape in her recorder the explosion of the glass was followed by shouts of alarm and fear we were not conscious of having made.
I remember we threw ourselves back from the table; Mr Peter and Estelle went over backwards in their ch
airs; and the next thing I was aware of was Ashley looking at me and screaming. When I saw myself in the wall mirror I saw why; my face was a mask of blood. A fragment of glass had buried itself in my forehead, a part of the body which tends to bleed very profusely when cut.
‘I’m all right,’ I kept telling her while I pulled out the splinter and pressed my handkerchief against the spot.
Gradually our voices subsided. I was not the only one to have been cut; another glass fragment had drawn blood on Mrs Kelly’s hand and a red blot had appeared over the heart on Ashley’s cream blouse. Like me she picked out a piece of triangular glass that had sliced the material and half embedded itself in her flesh, repeating ‘I’m all right!’ just as I had to her. Once the glass was out she pressed her fingertips against the wound to slow the bleeding.
It was Angela who gave us the most concern. She sprawled back in her chair, a frightening rasping sound coming from her throat and her eyes still rolled up. It seemed likely to me that she had had some sort of stroke.
‘I must get a doctor,’ I said, making for the door. ‘I’ll phone from the vicarage.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Nigel. ‘I think she’s coming round. She’d hate an outsider to be involved.’
I paused and saw her eyes return to normal, and although her breast rose and fell as though she had been running for her life, her breathing lost its alarming death rattle sound. Like the rest of us, her first words were to announce that she was all right. Then, while Ashley went to the bathroom for sticking plaster, cotton wool and the old-fashioned iodine which I preferred to modern antiseptics, I poured everyone a generous measure of brandy.
‘Please do something about your face,’ said Nigel as I handed him a glass. ‘You make me feel faint.’
‘Of course.’ I retired to the kitchen to wipe away the gore with a dishcloth.
‘Here, darling, you can’t do that,’ said Ashley, coming through the doorway. ‘Let me.’
She dabbed away the blood with cotton wool and then applied iodine, causing a spasm of pain which I would never have got with a modern bland antiseptic.
‘What on earth happened in there?’ she asked as she pressed a plaster against my skin.
‘I really don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Perhaps Angela can explain. Obviously we had a re-run of the “Narration”.’
‘At first I couldn’t help wondering if it was being faked. I mean, most likely someone into the ghost business would have read about Mary Lawson’s experiences here.’
‘I thought so myself when the messages started to be spelled out, but why go to all that trouble? Money doesn’t come into it.’
‘You’re a well-known author,’ Ashley said. ‘If you were to draw attention to it — even write a book about it — it would be fantastic publicity for someone wanting to become famous as a medium.’
‘But that exploding glass was no fake,’ I said. ‘Remember Mary Lawson wrote about a loud report at the height of the manifestations. Perhaps this was some sort of repetition.’
On returning to the dining room we found that now the initial shock was over an air of excitement pervaded our guests. Only Angela, who looked exhausted but otherwise normal, remained silent and thoughtful as though working out in her mind what to tell me.
‘Sit beside me, my dears,’ she said as she caught sight of us. ‘I must thank you for introducing us to such remarkable phenomena. Such violence is rare. For such a physical effect the psychic force was of tremendous intensity.’
‘Was?’ said Ashley.
‘Oh, yes; it’s over now.’
‘How do you know?’ Ashley asked.
‘When you are a medium with years of experience you just “know” these things. It is part of the gift.’
‘So what really happened just now?’
‘The force — a force bred out of a long-ago mix of extreme despair and what we term evil — for some reason became re-activated, feeding upon itself until its very intensity burned it out. It was like an electrical overload burning out a circuit. The destruction of the glass was the final surge.’
‘Like a fuse going,’ suggested Ashley.
‘Exactly.’
It sounded rather glib to me — I have always been wary of easy comparisons — but I suppose it was what I wanted to hear.
‘What do you think it was that re-activated the force? I don’t think the previous occupant, who had lived here since the First World War, ever found the place to be haunted.’
From a silver mesh handbag Angela took out a packet of Sobranie Lights and I noticed that her beringed fingers were still trembling as she lit up and inhaled gratefully.
‘Who can say what reawakens a dormant psychic force?’ she said. ‘In science everything is logical. Recognized causes and effects can be expressed in mathematical formulae. But when it comes to the paranormal we are like explorers who have just landed on the beach of an unknown continent. I experience the paranormal almost every day; I see its effects, but I can only guess at its causes. That is why my group is independent. We could not belong to any organization with dogmatic views or religious convictions. All I can suggest is that it was something to do with you or Ashley which triggered all this off. Perhaps there is some hidden psychic quality of which you are not aware …’
‘It couldn’t have been Ashley,’ I said hastily. ‘I was hearing those voices before she arrived here. And there’s nothing psychic about me.’
‘Certainly you do not have that sort of aura,’ said Angela. ‘Being a writer, though, you do have imagination.’
‘But what happened tonight was hardly imaginary,’ protested Ashley, her fingers touching the bloodstain on her blouse.
‘I didn’t mean that.’ Angela smiled enigmatically. Then she said, ‘Could I have a very hot cup of tea with loads of sugar, please? I know I’ll be all right after that. A séance always drains me, and tonight …’ Her fingers fluttered like a pair of fans.
‘Of course.’ Ashley went to the kitchen.
‘I think it would be a good idea if you took Ashley for a little holiday,’ said Angela, to whom our personal relationship was obvious. ‘Give things a little time to settle down.’
‘But you said that everything was over.’
‘It is, but there still might be a lingering disturbance in the ether, the ripples after the stone has vanished into the pool. You understand?’
‘A very sound idea,’ I said.
Twenty minutes later Ashley and I watched the tail lights of the Volvo vanish in the shadowed lane as Mr Peter headed back to London with Angela’s little group.
We turned and walked down the dark drive to the house which, when we reached the garden, made a dramatic shape against the starshine, its three gables and illuminated windows giving it the hint of a Halloween mask.
‘If you feel nervous I’m sure Henry would be happy to put us up for the night,’ I said, ‘though it might be difficult explaining why we need his hospitality.’
‘Me — nervous?’ cried Ashley in mock surprise, then seriously, ‘I think Angela was right. The atmosphere seemed to change somehow after the glass blew. Now all I want is to get to bed, and for you to kiss my wound better, and then sleep, blessed sleep. I feel as if I’ve just run a marathon.’
Together we walked over the grass towards the house.
‘By the way, is your passport in order?’ I asked.
‘Seeing I’ve only just arrived in the Mother Country it ought to be,’ she answered. ‘Are you going to take me for a naughty weekend in Paris?’
‘Something like that,’ I answered.
*
Ashley dozed beside me as the aged Boeing 707, with the Flying Leopard insignia of the Royal Abu Sabbah Airline emblazoned on its fuselage, followed the electronic trail which led to the Mediterranean and thence to the Red Sea and our hope of a reprise from the tension which had gripped us at Whispering Corner.
That morning we had gone to the village and I had put a telephone call through to the royal palace of
Abu Sabbah. For several coin crashing minutes I spoke to officials of ascending importance — ‘the royal eunuchs’, Ashley called them, refusing to be impressed by the fact that I was phoning a real live king. Then the voice of Syed came on the line, saying how delighted he was that I was responding to his letter.
I told him that because of ‘some unexpected free time’ I should like to take up his invitation to visit his country with a ‘dear companion’, as he had phrased it.
‘You will be most welcome,’ he said. ‘Are you immediately free? I ask because we have a flight leaving Gatwick this evening, and there will not be another for a week. Could you make it do you think?’
Delighted, I replied that it might be possible.
‘Excellent. I shall have the reservations telexed from here.’
After expressing my thanks to the king and saying how much I was looking forward to seeing how his college was progressing, I rang Paul Lincoln to explain that I would be away for a while and would he please keep an eye on the Regent Bank situation for me.
‘I hope you’re taking your work with you — you know how important it is to raise money from that bloody book.’ he said.
‘I am and I do.’
Next I broke the news to my agent, who impressed upon me the need to return with the completed manuscript.
‘I’ll be more productive with a change of scene,’ I reassured her.
On the way back to Whispering Corner we met Henry Gotobed. When I explained that I was taking a holiday he promised he would keep an eye on the house and open cans of Whiskas for Mrs Foch.
‘I’m hoping to spend my fortnight’s holiday on another research spree up in London soon,’ he said. ‘While I’m at the British Museum I’ll try and find more information about Mrs Lawson’s “Narration” and Whispering Corner.’
At the house we packed our bags and Ashley bemoaned the fact that she had hardly any clothes smart enough for palace wear.
‘You look marvellous in the silver and grey,’ I said. ‘I doubt if we’ll spend much time at the palace, anyway. Syed said he would provide a guest bungalow for us in a secluded spot on the seashore so that I could have tranquillity in case I wanted to do any writing — which I certainly do.’
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