The Curfew Circle

by Nina Dreyer

  ‘Well, you may change your mind when you hear this,’ said John. ‘Have you ever sat in a seance with her?’

  Sid said nothing.

  ‘Neither had I, until this evening.’ John gazed at the flame in the rusty little oil lamp on the table. ‘That woman is a natural,’ he whispered. ‘You know, I didn’t use to think there were such things as natural mediums. It’s an avenue of scientific research, after all. You can’t be a natural scientist. You can adhere to the rigorous standards of your discipline, you can practice and experiment, but-’

  ‘So you’ve found your own personal Marie Curie, then.’

  John lit a cigarette and leaned back. ‘You don’t like her. I can tell you don’t. Is it because she’s a foreigner?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Well, you’ve managed to relegate one of the great natural talents of our age to the psychic equivalent of a scullery maid. Why?’

  Sid folded his hands. ‘Tell me what happened at this seance of yours.’

  ‘A cold seance. Black veil, blindfold, red lamp. You’d have liked it, it was a very traditional arrangement. Just Marion, myself and Eilis Hurlihy to take notes. No levitations or table-rappings, though.’

  ‘What were you trying to accomplish?’

  ‘A trance seance.’

  Sid’s face hardened. ‘You attempted a trance seance without permission? Without asking me?’

  John shrugged. ‘Better to ask forgiveness than permission.’

  ‘You were not raised to be so bloody reckless,’ Sid dropped his voice. ‘Trance seances are not a parlour game, John. They’re not some scientific experiment for you to tinker with. People become possessed. People go insane.’

  ‘Oh, please.’

  ‘When I was your age, a woman younger than you are now attempted trance seances once too often. Margaret Devlin. Sat up every night. Began to speak in the voices of the dead, she did, cackling and howling and screaming. In the end, she hurled herself from the window by the fireplace in the library. Where you like to sit and read. Smashed herself on the cobblestones below. Broke herself. Had to be laid out in a closed coffin.’

  John tapped his lighter on the edge of the table. ‘So the Titanic sank. Therefore, we abandon steam engines and transatlantic travel forever? Where does this lead us, Sid? Progress can’t just stop dead in its track because of one accident forty years ago.’ He thought briefly about that Parisian medium, her face streaked with blood, nails boring into her face, screeching. Well. No need to tell Sid about that.

  Sid pulled his hands through his coarse grey hair. ‘If you were anyone else, I’d say good luck to you, and go learn from your mistakes the hard way.’

  ‘Grand. You’ve made your point. Now listen to this-’

  ‘And what did Eilis say to this?’ An unhealthy redness spread in Sid’s broad face. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘I’d say she wanted to show off Marion’s skills to me. They’re thick as thieves, the two of them. You know how Eilis is. Always on the prowl for new mediums. If they’re not promising, she drops them like a soiled glove. If they are, she tries to claim them as her own personal discovery.’

  ‘She went along with it? Eilis went along with it?’

  ‘Very enthusiastically.’

  ‘And whose idea was it?’

  John paused for a moment. ‘Mine.’ No reason to lay the blame on Marion. He looked the old man in the eye. ‘Eilis took very little persuading. None, as a matter of fact.’

  Sid turned down the corners of his mouth, pulled out a handkerchief and rubbed his gleaming forehead. ‘Trance seances have been banned in our regulations since 1892. I could expel you for this, John.’ The thought seemed to genuinely upset the old man.

  ‘Yes. But you won’t. Listen to this now. It was a perfect, textbook execution of a trance seance. Someone came through.’

  Sid blinked at him, bewilderment and anger in his eyes. It was disconcerting to see him like this, John thought. When John was young, the old man had seemed so formidable. Sharp as a horsewhip.

  ‘Someone came through,’ John said again. ‘Loud and clear. It took less than seven minutes from the moment of immersion.’

  ‘Seven minutes,’ Sid spluttered, ‘that’s not true, I’d never believe that.’ He picked up his whiskey glass and downed its contents in one long gulp. ‘No, no, it usually takes hours of immersion before anything manifests, if it ever does.’

  ‘Nevertheless.’ John smiled slightly. Sid was an old hand, a veteran, and curiosity might win out over his outrage at broken protocols. ‘This could prove evidential in the extreme, Sid. I’ve not had a chance to verify it yet. I’ll go tomorrow and get backdated copies of the Times, the Freeman’s Journal, all the papers.’

  ‘How much do you have?’

  ‘Name. Christian name, at least. Time of death. Manner of death. Location of death. Several memories of the incident. Even physical sensations in the medium herself. I witnessed it myself. Actual physical manifestations mirroring the incident itself.’

  ‘What do you mean, physical manifestations? Ectoplasm?’ Sid’s eyes widened.

  ‘Try to stay with me in the current century, Sid. Ectoplasm, indeed. Everyone knows there never was such a thing. You all cheated back then.’

  ‘We did not,’ Sid pounded his fist on the small table, rocking the whiskey glasses.

  ‘Grand. Peace.’ John raised his hands.

  Sid leaned back and folded his arms across his squat chest. ‘So what physical manifestations did occur, then?’

  ‘Pain. She kept lifting her hand to the side of her head, and she uttered this low, pained groan.’

  ‘That’s not a physical manifestation,’ Sid waved his hand dismissively and signalled to the barman for another round at the same time, ‘that’s just your one making a groaning sound.’

  ‘It sounded very convincing to me. The sound someone makes when they’ve been shot. I think I know that sound better than you.’

  Sid avoided John’s eyes and let the matter drop.

  The barman arrived with another round of whiskey.

  ‘So who was your spirit? Or who did he claim to be?’

  ‘Young lad. Shot in the streets last week. Pembroke Street, I believe. Probably a Shinner gunman.’

  Sid went the colour of milk-boiled oats. ‘Rule number one,’ he said hoarsely, leaning in on the rickety table between them, ‘we never interfere with recent passings of a political nature. Never. Do you understand that? Because I’ve been drumming that into your thick skull since you were thirteen years old.’

  ‘Sid, we have an actual, functioning trance seance. We have facts that can be checked out. We have a natural medium who is able to communicate directly with the dead. Directly. It may not be evidence of heaven, not yet at least, but it is evidential. Is that not why we do this? Is that not the whole bloody point of this?’

  ‘What do you mean, directly? Directly with the dead?’

  John lit another cigarette. Thinking on it too closely had produced several avenues of concern in his mind, so he had pushed it aside. He regretted mentioning it now. ‘It does not appear that she uses a control.’

  Sid’s face contorted. He threw up his hands, seemingly unable to decide which expletive to employ first. ‘That’s it. Your games with this woman stop now.’

  ‘Listen-’

  ‘No, you bloody well listen. I’m sick to the teeth of your irresponsibility, John! An unauthorised trance seance with a medium who doesn’t even use a fucking control.’ Sid dabbed his forehead again and crumpled the handkerchief in his shaking fist. ‘Haven’t I taught you myself? Have you forgotten why we use controls? Have you? Maybe you have. You seem to have forgotten everything else I’ve taught you. It’s so there’s a barrier, an intermediary in the spirit realm, John, it’s so that people don’t get-’

  ‘Fine, there are irregularities in her performance,’ said John, ‘but that can be fixed. Be realistic. She may be the best medium we have. She may be the only genuine
medium we have, by your old-fashioned standards. Since Frankie Burke died…’

  ‘Don’t compare Frankie to her.’ Sid slurped his whiskey. ‘He was one of the true greats. I’ll drink to him any night. Don’t compare him to that woman.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you despise her this much. You know, I’ve never witnessed you actually hating anyone before.’

  Sid shook his head. ‘She’s a bad seed. There’s something wrong with her. I set her to do visitation rounds to haunted houses, thinking that would scare her off. But it only made her more insistent. Christabel Smythe has resigned because of what happened when she went on a visitation with that woman. The girl’s not right after that. I had to go myself and apologise to the father. That Marion woman has a hunger for the unnatural, John.’

  ‘Strange. That’s exactly what your old friends among the clergy have been saying about you for the last forty years, isn’t it?’

  Sid slammed his glass down on the table and stabbed a finger in the air at him. ‘The fucking neck on you. If you were ten years younger, I’d slap you well and good for that.’

  John inclined his head and imagined him trying.

  ‘Come to your senses, John, and stop with all this nonsense before you get yourself hurt.’

  ‘Alright lads, please,’ shouted the barman, ringing his little bell furiously, all the while glancing at the door. ‘Alright lads, please! Bar’s closed. Come on now, the curfew’s upon us.’

  Sid stood up, a little unsteadily. ‘You don’t believe there’s anything wrong with that Marion creature, but there is, and I’ll bloody well find out what it is for you and rub your nose in it.’ He put his hat upon his head. ‘You stay away from her, John. Do you hear?’

  Chapter Seven

  The church bells struck midnight as John strode through the melancholy old halls and corridors of Dublin Castle, his heels echoing under the high ceilings. From crowded offices came the click-clack of typewriters, the shrill wail of telephones, and barked commands from officers. Even at this late hour, scowling civil servants elbowed in an out amid jittery spies and darting office clerks. Three junior staff officers came walking down the hall towards John, parting silently to let him pass. ‘You there,’ John said over his shoulder, ‘is Brockhurst still around?’

  ‘The colonel is in his office,’ said one, before hastily turning away.

  John sauntered through an anteroom plastered in maps of Dublin, streaked with shadows of the rain and sleet from the tall French windows. A young sergeant sat by the door, his rifle perched over his knees. He jumped to his feet as John approached.

  John nodded at the man and walked into the office, one hand in his pocket, twirling his silver lighter in the other. The glow of the moon seeped through the tall, unshuttered windows, emerging in pools of pale light between sliding storm-cloud shadows.

  Colonel Brockhurst sat hunched behind his vast mahogany desk. A single electrical light bulb fizzed high above him, slanting light over his course skin. He dabbed his thick neck with a handkerchief and looked up from his stack of reports, squinting in the weak light. ‘John? Is that you? What are you doing here this late?’

  ‘Evening, Brock.’ John seated himself in a red leather chair, stretching out his legs.

  ‘Did you see this? Most grotesque thing I ever bloody laid eyes on.’ Brock slapped a picture magazine onto the desk, open on a large photograph. ‘Damned thing should be banned, if you ask me. Bloody disgrace. Call that modern art, do they? It’s an insult to our men, having them splayed out like, like bloody babes dashed on the rocks.’

  John held the magazine up to the light and examined the photograph. He kept his face impassive, allowing not the slightest tremor to show. But the image hit him like a kick in the throat. A bronze sculpture, hideously jagged, with broken, crumbling edges jutting out like twisted ribs. In the centre, an Allied soldier hung, head bent as if in mourning, crucified on a broken door. Crucified on bayonets. Below him, a group of Huns crouched like hyenas. He felt very cold suddenly. ‘It’s just a sentimental pastiche.’ He tossed the magazine aside and took out a cigarette from his case. ‘We all know what the Germans did. The atrocities. Nothing new in it. It’s all in the execution, I suppose.’

  ‘Damned disgrace, if you ask me, shouldn’t be allowed. Bloody artists should be lined up in a trench and shot.’

  John cocked his head. ‘Modern art upsets you mightily, but modern warfare doesn’t?’

  Brock cleared his throat and began moving some papers back and forth. ‘Well. What’s important enough to bring you here at this hour, John?’

  ‘I’ve got a proposal for you.’

  ‘How so?’ Brock rummaged in a drawer and pulled out a pipe and a tin of fragrant tobacco.

  ‘You know I’m involved with psychical research?’

  Brock began loosening the strands of tobacco with his fingernails. ‘Quite. Yes. Spiritualism. Seances and suchlike, yes? My wife can talk of little else. It’s all spirits this and spirits that with her lately.’

  ‘We’ve been making great strides recently, Brock. What if I told you that my researchers and I can help you detect the gunmen?’

  Brock crinkled his brows. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s very simple,’ John leaned forward, resting an elbow on the desk, ‘in fact, I’m surprised nobody’s thought of it before. You provide us with the names of your recent casualties. We use our skills to identify the murderers and their associates.’

  Brock’s face flushed and unhealthy tint of red, the shades under his thick eyelids darkening. ‘Now look here, John, you know I have the most immense respect for what you did in the-’

  ‘Look at this.’ John pulled out a folded newspaper and slapped it down on the desk.

  Brock frowned at the front page. ‘What? Last Thursday’s edition of that rebel rag, that propaga-’

  ‘There. This man, right there.’ John stabbed the page with a finger. ‘This man was gunned down last week, in Pembroke Street. Bullet to the left side of the head. A medium of mine made contact with him from the other side. She was able to get several items of information from him. His name, his age, the manner of his death, and a physical description of the man who shot him.’

  Brock inhaled deeply. He seemed short of breath, tugging at his uniform collar.

  ‘There.’ John pointed at the dead man’s photograph, dark and blurry. ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘If what you say is true…’ Brock rubbed his jaw.

  ‘It is true.’

  ‘Well, look….’

  ‘Spiritualism is not the quackery it was fifty years ago, Brock. Leading men, men of science and letters, many of them support it now. Lord Balfour. Sir William Barrett. Sir Conan Doyle. Sir Oliver Lodge. Vice-Admiral Moore.’

  Brock held up his hands. ‘Yes, fine, point taken. But, John, with all due respect to your, uh, dedication…’ He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I can’t sign off on this. It’s just not the done thing. Not the sort of serious intelligence-gathering I can-’

  ‘We succeeded, on a first attempt, to make contact with a dead Sinn Féin gunman, and you’re not the least bit tempted?’

  ‘I just can’t get my damned head around it, John.’

  It sounded like an apology and a goodbye, all in one. John leaned closer. ‘There’s nothing for you to get your head around. You provide us with names of the dead, dates, places. We provide you with the identity of the murderers. Don’t trouble yourself over the rest. We’ve got the skills, and we want to help.’ He thought of Marion, that determined set of her wine-stained lips, that iron conviction in her eyes, we should be out there, helping.

  The wind rattled the old windowpanes.

  ‘It just seems, well, it just seems… not quite the respectable thing. That sort of thing… well, we should be defeating these bloody insurgents with guns and cannons, which we will in the end, of course. Not using the,’ Brock folded and unfolded his thick hands, ‘well, black arts, I suppose.’

  ‘If they were black arts, y
ou presumably wouldn’t allow your own wife to deal with them.’

  Brock leaned heavily over the desk and lowered his voice. ‘Let’s say I sign off on this. What if the G Division finds out, or those Cairo Gang characters, or the Dublin Metropolitan Police? I’d the a laughing stock from here to Belgravia! They’ll have my head on a platter!’

  Like a stuck pig, thought John. We’ll force an apple into your jaws. ‘The G Division? The Cairo Gang? Please. They may delight in nurturing their fearsome reputation, but tell me, how many gunmen have they actually succeeded in locating? And besides, what have you got to lose?’

  Brock brooded over this for a moment. ‘We could just make sure that nobody gets wind of it.’ He picked up a pencil and fingered it nervously.

  ‘A remarkably good idea,’ said John, suppressing the urge for sarcasm. ‘Nobody will get wind of it, not for a very long time. If ever.’

  ‘But surely you’ll want the Home Office informed, if you succeed? I mean, if we succeed?’

  ‘Sure, we mustn’t forget the brave boys of the Home Office.’

  A red leather side door opened, and a lieutenant emerged from the shadows, walking to the desk with a halting, uneven gait. He was carrying a stack of manila folders and when he saw John, he faltered. ‘Oh. I didn’t realise…’ He withdrew slightly and held the folders tightly to his chest.

  ‘What do you want, Rothman,’ said Brock. ‘Can’t you see we’re busy in here?’

  ‘My apologies. The reports you requested, sir.’ Lt. Rothman placed the folders on the desk, then withdrew again, as if to half-way hide behind the colonel.

  ‘Yes, jolly good, dismissed.’

  Rothman remained standing there, arms tense by his side. He avoided John’s eyes, and his fine-boned features gleamed slightly under the hissing electrical light. ‘Permission to speak freely, sir,’ he mumbled.

  ‘What is it? For god’s sake man, speak if you must, but don’t hang about.’

  ‘This man has a reputation, sir. Among the men. Among all the men. I heard it at the club only last week. It’s said… I don’t want to disrespect his record…’