‘But if what you say is true,’ said Dr Hamid, in whose parlour the co-conspirators were assembled over a pot of tea and a large plateful of Eliza’s favourite almond biscuits, ‘as soon as Mr Phipps has his evidence Miss Eustace will be found out.’
‘I cannot help but think that she will find some way to extricate herself,’ said Mina. ‘There are any number of people who would lie or blind themselves to the truth in order to protect her. And we must catch Mr Clee, too, and soon, or he will disappear. We can’t wait for Mr Phipps to complete his enquiries.’
‘Then what do you suggest?’ asked Richard. ‘I suppose I could always break into her apartment again and declare my undying love. That should work. I’d have all her secrets in an hour!’
‘Promise me that you will not,’ said Mina. ‘No, we must engage that great and noble personage, Lady Finsbury.’
Nellie, who had been admiring her new pair of lace gloves, laughed.
‘Lady Finsbury,’ Mina pointed out, ‘is an admirer of Miss Eustace, so much so that she wishes to be her patroness, and use her influence to enhance her protégée’s fame. Lady Finsbury will hire a hall, she will engage a man to sell tickets and keep undesirables from the door, pack the room only with the most dedicated believers, guarantee that she will purchase a dozen or more tickets for herself and her fashionable friends, and she will promise Miss Eustace a generous extra payment if she can only produce a full form manifestation of her beloved great uncle Sir Mortimer Portland.’
‘Do you expect Miss Eustace to personate a man?’ said Richard.
‘Not at all. I expect her to get Mr Clee to personate Sir Mortimer. Mr Clee is well known by sight to all of Miss Eustace’s circle. Only unmask him and the imposture will be apparent. Remember, in her previous séances, Miss Eustace, through the Gaskins, had full command of all the circumstances. She will imagine that on this occasion she enjoys not only the approbation but the protection of Lady Finsbury. Miss Eustace will undoubtedly make many conditions for her appearance, and Lady Finsbury will agree to them all, but it will be we who have the control.’
‘If she should suspect anything …’ said Dr Hamid.
‘I know,’ said Mina. ‘If she does then the event will be a failure. She dare not risk a complete failure before such a large gathering, and will produce some slight effects to please the crowd, but there would be nothing we can use to prove fraud beyond a doubt. She has escaped so many times, she knows what to do. The important thing for our purposes is the production of the spirit form of Sir Mortimer Portland. Lady Finsbury must make a very valuable offer to tempt her to do that.’
‘Has she brought out a male spirit before?’ asked Richard. ‘I mean a whole body that walks about, not just a mask and a false beard on a stick.’
‘It seems she has. Mother swears that at a private séance she saw Father actually standing before her in the room, and conversed with him and even touched him. It is my belief that it was Mr Clee, as they are of similar height and build, perhaps with a scarf or shawl around his face, as they do not look very alike, but Mother insists that she saw Father clearly and cannot have been mistaken. Lady Finsbury has provided Miss Eustace with a portrait of her great-uncle, and if asked about his height and build, she should mention something very like Mr Clee. That will be enough to tempt them to try the imposture, if, that is, Mr Clee can bear to leave the arms of his new bride.’
It took several days to make all the arrangements. Mina hired a suitable meeting hall, and hoped that with the sale of tickets, which were deliberately priced at a very reasonable level to encourage the maximum possible attendance, she would not be greatly out of pocket. Fortunately Miss Eustace’s circle was so well known that there was no difficulty in securing considerable interest in the event, which it was promised would be the most astounding séance that the renowned medium had ever conducted, with the added relish that it would be graced by a noble lady celebrated for her beauty and taste, and her glittering entourage.
Mina, though not Miss Eustace’s most favoured person, was fully intending to be there to both witness and oversee the course of events, and since Richard was acting as doorkeeper there would be no difficulty over her gaining entry, but she thought it best to conceal herself at the back of the room in case Miss Eustace was to spy her and take alarm, which would give her the opportunity of casting the blame for any failure on Mina’s bad influence. Once the room was in darkness, Mina intended to creep forward and secure a better position in a seat reserved for her at the front.
On the day of the event another package arrived from Mr Greville, and Mina was just about to open it when Richard, who had hired the cab to take them to the hall, arrived with a downcast expression.
‘What is the matter?’ asked Mina. ‘Has Miss Eustace taken flight? That would be almost as good a result if we were never to see her again.’
He shook his head. ‘No, she is here and Lady Finsbury is fawning on her and promising the most astonishing wealth, but I do not think we will see Sir Mortimer, in fact without her accomplice it is doubtful that anything of note will happen, and we will have spent our money in vain.’
Mina ignored the suggestion that he had had any share in the financial arrangements. ‘Has Mr Clee left Brighton?’
‘Oh, he is still in Brighton,’ said Richard, ‘very much so, and unable to leave it if he wished, but he and his lady wife have had a disagreement which took quite a violent turn. I am surprised that it did not echo all over town. The subject of their dispute was, I believe, which one of them was able to pay the bill at the Grand Hotel, and the only thing they could agree upon was that it was neither of them. Mr Clee has by now discovered that his wealthy bride has not a copper coin to her name. There was a great deal of shouting and epithets and some broken furniture, and the manager had no choice but to call the police. The two lovebirds are currently cooling their heels in the cells, and will come before a magistrate tomorrow. What shall we do?’
Brother and sister sat together and considered the sad wreckage of their plans.
‘There is nothing we can do,’ said Mina, eventually. ‘All is arranged and must be paid for, but I think now that we will get little result from it. It is my fault, I am afraid, I have been too ambitious. Well,’ she said, folding the unopened package and pushing it into her reticule, ‘let us go.’
Twenty-Five
They arrived at the hall shortly before the main crush was expected. Richard and Dr Hamid, while reserving for themselves seats on the front row, had taken on the role of doorkeepers, supposedly to ensure that pressmen and other undesirables were refused admission, but actually only to make Miss Eustace believe that this was taking place. The medium had also been reassured that when a volunteer was asked for from the company to check that all was genuine, the person who would step forward would be a friend of Lady Finsbury who was a firm believer in spiritualism.
Professor and Mrs Gaskin were early arrivals. Although they had relinquished their supervision of Miss Eustace to Lady Finsbury and her agents, they remained close by the medium’s side, perhaps hoping that some of the glamour of her noble patron would touch their garments, and brush them with a little glossy stain. Nellie was impeccable in her role; her dress, deportment, manners, and mode of speech were exactly as someone who had never met a titled lady would imagine one to be.
Mina took care to make herself inconspicuous, which for the most part meant sitting behind a person of a larger stature, there being more than sufficient to choose from. As the audience arrived, in a steady but powerful stream, all chattering with excitement, Mina was able to see each individual as they entered; her mother, Mrs Bettinson, Mrs Phipps and her nephew, Mrs Langley, Miss Simmons, Mrs Peasgood and her sister and friends, Mr Jordan and Mr Conroy. The crowd was, she knew, salted with representatives of every leading newspaper in Sussex, and there was a local artist specially hired by the Illustrated Police News to record the event, and several plain-clothes detectives. The unfortunate Miss Whinstone had, Mina had rece
ntly learned, gone away on a sea trip to recuperate from her upset. Mr Clee and his wife were presumably still incarcerated, and did not make an appearance.
As the room filled she remembered that she had not yet looked at the item she had received in the post from Mr Greville, and so pulled it from her reticule and opened the packet. It was another copy of the Illustrated Police News from October 1869, and this one included a small picture of Miss Eustace and her husband on trial. It was cruder than the paper’s usual portraits, and the likeness of Miss Eustace was only fair while the man in the dock beside her looked nothing like Mr Clee. Mina wondered if the artist had been in court at all.
A theatrical-looking gentleman with a colourful cravat and a flower in his buttonhole strode into the hall and looked about him with an air of aristocratic confidence. He clearly expected to be and indeed was directed to one of the reserved places. Mina was a little mystified at first as to who he might be, although there was something a little familiar about his appearance. He clearly knew Lady Finsbury for he greeted her in a warm but respectful manner. Mina suddenly realised that this must be Rolly Rollason, the man who had posed for the portrait used for Sir Mortimer Portland. In his own person he was a remarkable-looking individual, a giraffe of a man, well above six feet in height, with a long neck and prominent Adam’s apple but without the bushy hair and long nose of the character he had portrayed. He seemed to be formed almost entirely of arms and legs with prominent knees and elbows attached to a small body. Mina felt some curiosity to see him as the Caledonian Marvel.
It was time. The hall was filled and the doors closed. Richard and Dr Hamid came forward to take their reserved places, and Richard took Lady Finsbury by her tiny fingertips and drew her to face the assembly. All grew silent in anticipation of her words.
‘My dear friends,’ she began, in a queenly voice, ‘for I do most sincerely believe that we who have come together today to celebrate a great truth are friends; how happy I am to see you all! You may be wondering how it was that I came to meet Miss Eustace, and the truth is quite as astonishing and wonderful as any story you may have heard of her powers. Some days ago I received a visitor in the form of a spirit, the spirit of my dear departed great-uncle, Sir Mortimer Portland. I was not afraid, for in life Sir Mortimer was the dearest, kindest and most generous of men, and one who always had my welfare at heart. He had a message for me, one of very great importance, but since I am no medium it was hard for him to express what he wanted so urgently to say. At last he said that I must go at once to see Miss Eustace, who alone was able to receive his words, and this, at the very first opportunity, I did. I have been privileged to witness her powers myself, privileged too, to become acquainted with Professor and Mrs Gaskin whose intelligence and perceptiveness I must applaud. I ask them now to stand and receive your appreciation.’
The Gaskins both rose and faced the audience and bowed without any attempt at humility. There was polite ripple of approbation.
‘They,’ Lady Finsbury continued, ‘better than any of us here know the foundation of Miss Eustace’s powers, and it is to them that we should be grateful for first bringing her to the notice of the public. I would urge you all to study carefully anything they may say or write on the subject.
‘I have now determined to do everything in my power to ensure that the fame of Miss Eustace will spread. Her wonders must not be confined to drawing rooms, and seen only by a fortunate few. All the world must know of Miss Eustace. She has astonished Brighton, and next she will astonish London, and all of Europe. Soon, she will conquer America. But today, I know, she will win all your hearts.’
There was enthusiastic applause for Lady Finsbury as Richard escorted her back to her place.
There was no curtain to conceal a stage, and no cabinet. The hall was generally employed for meetings at which a long committee table and chairs were used, but the table, which was draped with a thick dark red cloth, had been moved back against the far wall, and all the chairs but one assimilated into the rows laid out for the audience.
The assembled company therefore sat facing nothing apart from an open space with the table at the back and a single chair on which lay a coiled rope. ‘May I please have a volunteer to inspect the arrangements?’ asked Richard, and before anyone could move Rolly Rollason had leaped energetically to his feet and darted forward. Rolly was a whirling windmill of activity. He picked up the rope and examined it carefully along its length, then, with the ends wrapped around his fists, tugged it hard and loudly declared it to be unbreakable. He picked up the solitary chair, lifted it above his head and looked underneath it, then he drew back the red cloth and showed everyone that nothing was hidden under the table. He next walked about stamping on the floor and pronounced it solid. He was quite an entertainment on his own, and did everything except dance.
Finally, he spotted that there was a door to one side of the room, and hurried over to it, but after making a great display of trying and failing to open it, he told everyone that it was securely locked.
Richard thanked Rolly warmly for his efforts, and asking him to remain, offered his hand to Miss Eustace, who was sitting at the end of the front row. She rose with her customary gracious manner, and came to sit in the chair, then Richard and Dr Hamid tied her in place, and Rolly inspected the knots and said that it was utterly impossible for the lady to escape. Rolly then returned to his seat while Richard and Dr Hamid went to turn down the lamps, allowing Professor and Mrs Gaskin to lead the company in a hymn.
Mina, having already determined her route, left her seat and crept forward into a better place, covered by the darkness and the sound of singing.
The hymn droned to a close, and everyone waited for wonders. The audience, thought Mina, was not only larger than Miss Eustace was used to, it was also, unknown to her, differently composed, being made up partially of those who had seen Miss Eustace’s tricks before and were hoping for something novel, those who had seen Miss Foxton and were unlikely to be impressed by anything Miss Eustace could do, and unbelievers. The atmosphere was therefore less one of expectancy than impatience. Believers, thought Mina, were better able than others to endure a long wait for a manifestation. Time ticking away brought them to a state of heightened emotion, the better to appreciate what loomed out of the darkness. Time ticked, but nothing happened. Someone had a coughing fit, someone else giggled, and there was a silken rustling of people shifting in their seats, a creaking of leather shoes, and even some subdued muttering.
At length, after what seemed like an unusually long wait, there was a rap on the far wall. A few moments later another rap sounded from the right. There followed a soporific silence, and then a rap on the wall to the left. It was an unimpressive performance. The dancing lights were next to appear, but while they were attractive enough, they had been seen before, and were not what people had paid their ticket money to see.
A noticeably disgruntled whispering arose, and Mina caught the words ‘Miss Foxton’, since it appeared that Miss Eustace was being compared unfavourably to her rival. It was apparent to Mina that Miss Eustace, robbed of Mr Clee who was her usual accomplice, had been obliged in some haste to engage another rather less adept. Mina was tempted to turn up the lights and reveal the imposture, but she knew that Miss Eustace would only claim ignorance of what was being done, and it would be impossible to prove that the medium was directing the fraud. The only result of such an action would be an angry audience demanding a refund of their ticket money, a heavy loss to Mina and the closing of the ranks of the faithful about poor illused and maligned Miss Eustace.
Even the appearance of the praying hands and the glowing mask from under the tablecloth did little to pacify the crowd, especially when the mask fell off the end of the stick, and had to be retrieved by an invisible, presumably black-gloved hand. This time there was no Miss Whinstone to claim it as a relative, and the result was a mixture of dismay and amusement.
Mina turned to Richard beside her. ‘I think we should call an end to this
soon,’ she whispered. ‘Could you make the announcement, and then stand by the lights with Dr Hamid?’
‘Right you are!’ said Richard. ‘It’s all a bit lame, I’d say. Sorry, old girl.’
He was about to creep away, but before he could move there was another development, and this one more promising. Mina put her hand on his arm and he stayed.
From underneath the heavy draped tablecloth there came a little extrusion of light, quite formless, but slowly growing. The audience fell silent, as the cloudy shape pushed forward, and became the size of a large pudding, and then a pillow, and then a hound, and then a chair. Having decided on its preferred width, it started to grow in height, and gradually rose to the size of a man. At last it was unfolded, and raised its head and lowered its arms, and stood before them. It was undoubtedly a male figure, dressed as for a fashionable assembly, but covered all over with pale glowing draperies. Through the phosphorescent gauze few of its features were distinct, but there was a luxuriant shrub of wild hair and the thrust of a long nose. A glassy sheen suggested that a monocle adorned one eye and in an outstretched hand it held a single rose.
Bathed in the phantom’s pale radiance, Miss Eustace flung her body back in her chair and uttered a great sigh. ‘Spirit!’ she cried. ‘Identify yourself!’
The form slowly turned to face the assembled crowds, some of whom cowered back, while others leaned forward and peered with interest. There was, from the body of the hall, the scratch of busy pencils. ‘I have no name, for I am part of another world,’ it intoned, in a guttural voice. ‘I live in heaven above with the angels, but when I was alive and walked the earth in fleshly form, I had a name, and a history, and loved ones.’
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