The Problem of the Spiteful Spiritualist

by Roberta Rogow

  “Amelia, you let my mother deal with those men in the kitchen,” she said briskly. “I have already spoken to Jenny. It seems her mother was in good service and can oblige you with some scrubbing until you can find another housekeeper to replace Mrs. Cavanaugh.”

  “No one could replace Emma,” Amelia declared with a fervent sniff.

  In the conservatory at the end of the hall, Bedelia watched as her sister tried to cope with the morning’s visitors. Mrs. Doyle had been all solicitous concern last night, and now her mother was fighting off the tradesmen in the kitchen. Mr. Dodgson had come to take care of her. Someone would always take care of her, Bedelia told herself, with an inward smile. With or without Emma, Bedelia Arkwright would get exactly what she wanted. She looked at the pots lined up on their shallow shelves, each marked in her father’s sprawling handwriting. Ficus, Dieffenbachia, Cannabis. Bedelia wondered if the Botanical Gardens at Kew would want these plants, and how much they would pay for them.

  In the hall, Amelia took a deep breath and tried to regain her composure. “Excuse me, Mr. Dodgson,” she said finally. “I really must make the arrangements for my poor father’s interment. Inspector O’Ferrall said last night that he might have to speak to me about the … the séance …” Her voice faltered again.

  “He’s wasting no time about it,” Touie commented. “There’s the police brougham on the street. I wonder if Arthur managed to come with them.”

  Apparently the police had left Dr. Doyle to his own devices. The police vehicle was full of policemen, who emerged to the delight of the crowd and the chagrin of Miss Arkwright.

  “What will the neighbors think?” Amelia moaned, as Inspectors Fletcher and O’Ferrall made their way up the walk, followed by two constables and Sergeant Stafford. She nodded to her nautical neighbor, who scowled back. “Good morning, Admiral Groves, Mrs. Groves!”

  “Be off.” Stafford ordered the reporter, who grinned cheerily and waved at Inspectors Fletcher and O’Ferrall.

  “Just doing my job, Sergeant.” Harrison withdrew to the opposite side of the street, joining a growing group of interested bystanders that now included several women in aprons and caps, a vendor of apples, and two men in seamen’s pea jackets and caps. The butcher, the baker, and the rest of the tradesmen were escorted to their respective vehicles by the constables and told to return later. Amelia’s worried eyes followed them as they drove out of Elm Grove, vowing never to honor the Arkwright accounts again.

  Inside the house, O’Ferrall took one look at Miss Amelia’s face and squared his shoulders, as if to attack some unpleasant chore. Fletcher smiled, smoothed his mustache, and took the lead.

  “I’m glad to find you here, Miss Arkwright. It is imperative that we continue our investigation into the robbery,” Fletcher said.

  “I have already sent for the carpenter and a locksmith to repair the kitchen door,” Miss Amelia stated frostily. “As for the purpose of the robbery, all I can do is repeat what I said last night. I have no idea what these people were searching for, if, indeed, they were searching for anything in particular.”

  “Oh, I believe they were,” Mr. Dodgson put in. “Something rather small, if they took apart the stuffing of the sofa and chairs.”

  “Miss Arkwright, we must examine your father’s study,” Inspector O’Ferrall said.

  “The study is locked,” Miss Amelia told him. “You yourself locked it, when you took away my father’s …” She choked on the words.

  “Very well,” O’Ferrall conceded. “The room was locked. Has anyone been into that room since Captain Arkwright’s … that is, since his demise?”

  “No one.” Miss Amelia swallowed hard, in a struggle to maintain her composure.

  “Then will you please find the key and unlock the door, so that we may see if anything was removed before your father’s untimely death?” Fletcher asked, glancing at his colleague.

  “I was going out,” Miss Amelia said. “There are certain errands …. I must make the arrangements ….”

  “The arrangements can wait,” Fletcher said briskly. “In fact, Miss Arkwright, we would prefer that you did not leave the house until we have finished our inquiries.”

  “Am I to be held a prisoner here?” Amelia’s voice rose. “How dare you, sir? Are you accusing me—”

  “Certainly not!” O’Ferrall broke into her tirade with an anguished glance at Fletcher. “Amelia … Miss Arkwright … we have to do our duty. It’s the law.”

  Touie took over. “Amelia, you had best let the police look at your father’s study. If it is too painful for you, you can sit in the drawing room, and I’ll see that nothing is moved from the study.”

  The sound of the argument had drawn Bedelia into the hall from the greenhouse. “What is going on?” she asked, looking from her sister to the two policemen.

  “They want to look at Papa’s study,” Amelia told her.

  “Is that all?” Bedelia shrugged. “I thought there was another robbery, the way you were shrieking.”

  “I was not shrieking,” Amelia retorted.

  “It certainly sounded like a shriek to me,” Bedelia said pettishly. “Well, then, why don’t you show the nice policemen Papa’s curiosities?”

  “Curiosities?” Mr. Dodgson echoed.

  “He had all sorts of odd things in his study,” Bedelia said with one of her girlish giggles. “Things he had picked up over the years.”

  “I should very much like to see them.” Mr. Dodgson looked wistfully at the two policemen, who consulted wordlessly and came to the same conclusion: Here was a harmless, if eccentric, onlooker, who could not be got rid of, ergo, he might as well be permitted to observe the police at their work.

  “I shall fetch the key,” Amelia decided, removing her hat with the air of one who would do her duty, however much it pained her. She blew her nose, lifted her head, and went upstairs to her bedchamber. In a few minutes, she returned with a ring of keys, one of which opened the door of Captain Arkwright’s lair.

  The study took up the southwest corner of Treasure House, facing onto the front garden. In earlier times, Captain Arkwright might have been able to see the sea from his desk. Now the area had been built up, and his view was blocked by the row of trees that marked the boundary of Hemlock Lodge next door.

  The room was permeated with the smell of ancient cigars, imperfectly smoked. Mr. Dodgson’s sensitive nose wrinkled involuntarily as the odor assaulted his nostrils. Miss Amelia pulled the curtains aside from the two small windows on the south side of the house and opened the casement window behind the desk that faced the fireplace, apparently a match for the one in the dining room on the other side of the inner wall. As the light filtered through the small panes of glass, the full extent of Captain Arkwright’s assortment of curiosities came into view.

  Captain Jethro Arkwright had been a collector of oddities, and his private study was full of them. His desk, strategically placed so that light from the window could fall over his shoulder, was of the monumental sort, carved and polished, with drawers on either side of the kneehole, and furnished with a high front that held more small drawers and pigeonholes, all filled with correspondence. His personal chair was huge, with carved feet and arms, covered with leather that had been worn from its original red to a nondescript brown. A leather-upholstered daybed had been placed in the space between the two side windows, and covered with a hand-worked crocheted blanket. The pseudo-Tudor windows let in some light, and the illumination provided by the oil lamps beside the door and on the desk did not really make the dark room any brighter. A second small desk had been placed in front of the larger one, accompanied by a plain wooden chair. The wall facing the Captain’s desk was taken up by large bookcases on either side of the fireplace. Two brass vases, decorated with intricate designs of inlaid enamel and studded with lumps of glass, flanked the fireplace, which was full of ashes; apparently the Captain’s fire had died out on the night he met his mysterious end, and the grate had not been swept since.


  The two policemen gasped as they took in the true nature of Captain Arkwright’s “curiosities.” The upper shelves of the two bookcases were filled, not with books, but with small objects of stone, metal, or possibly dried animal flesh, while the lowest shelves held leather-bound volumes, maps, and ships’ logs. The impression was of a den filled with mysterious and slightly sinister magical paraphernalia.

  Inspector Fletcher glanced around the room and winced. Inspector O’Ferrall, who had been in the room once before, concentrated on Amelia.

  “Miss Arkwright,” O’Ferrall asked formally, “do you see anything in this room that strikes you as being amiss or unusual? Anything not here that should be?”

  Amelia shook her head, rendered incapable of speech by the sight of her father’s belongings. Bedelia had followed her sister into the room. She looked involuntarily at the leather chair, still imprinted with the late Captain Arkwright’s bulk, and shuddered. “It’s almost as if Papa was still here with us,” she squeaked out. “Do you suppose that was he at the séance? Was he trying to warn Emma …?”

  Amelia stopped her sister’s maunderings with a look. “Mr. Dodgson,” she said sharply. “Do not touch that!”

  Mr. Dodgson stopped and looked at her. “I beg your pardon?” He drew his hand away from the mantelpiece, where he had been investigating a long case, apparently made of a single piece of snakeskin, filled with equally long sticks, whose impressions were fixed in the leather.

  “The … the arrows in the case,” Amelia said, swallowing hard. “The tips are quite poisonous. Papa told me … that is, the natives in the Amazon jungles use them to catch their dinners.”

  “Dear me,” Mr. Dodgson said. He stared at the ashes in the grate and turned over a small charred piece of wood with one toe. He went on to inspect the rest of the “curiosities” lined up on the shelves of the bookcases, stepping around the enormous brass vase as he did so. “Your late father seems to have had a morbid turn of mind,” he observed. “This, for instance … is this what is known as a shrunken head?” He pointed a gray-gloved finger at a hideous black object the size of his fist, whose features were quite distinct: eyes and mouth sewn with some sort of thread, adorned with a strand of coarse black hair.

  Amelia nodded wordlessly. Bedelia took over as interlocutor. “Papa told me that the natives on the Amazon take their enemies’ heads as trophies in battle.”

  “Indeed.”

  Bedelia moved to the cabinets on the outside wall, set in the corner next to the daybed. “These are some butterflies Papa collected in Bermuda,” Bedelia went on, indicating a case of insects, each impaled on a pin, carefully labeled in a delicate, feminine handwriting. She stepped around the brass vase on the hearth and pointed to two red pottery statues, inlaid with turquoise, placed next to the poisoned arrows on the mantelpiece. “He told me he found those in the jungles of Yucatan. He said there was a great pyramid in the middle of nowhere, but the native Indians would not go near it because they said it was haunted by evil spirits.”

  “Your father was an explorer as well as a mariner, then?” Mr. Dodgson commented.

  “Papa was many things,” Amelia said carefully. “When I was little, we lived in Bermuda. That is where we gathered these shells.” She indicated another case on the shelves, next to the butterflies. “Of course, Papa did not spend all his time gathering butterflies or shells when we were in Bermuda. He and Mama—” She stopped suddenly, her face turning pale.

  “Ah, yes, your mother. You asked about her during last night’s … er … experiment,” Mr. Dodgson murmured. He continued his examination of the study, while Amelia glanced at Inspectors Fletcher and O’Ferrall, who were staring at the shrunken head with expressions of mixed horror and amusement.

  “My mother died when I was thirteen, in Bermuda.”

  “So I have been told,” Mr. Dodgson said. “I trust it was not a painful illness.”

  “I was born in Bermuda,” Bedelia put in. “Emma said my Mama died when I was born.” She did not sound distressed to recall it.

  “Well, that is neither here nor there,” Fletcher said briskly, putting an end to further reminiscence. “Now, then, Miss Arkwright, can you tell me anything more about your father and his business dealings? I understand you wrote most of his letters for him.”

  “Yes, that is true,” Amelia admitted. “I wrote a good hand. My mother saw to it that I went to the missionary school in Bermuda, with several other children on the island.” She applied the handkerchief again. “When we came back to England, Papa had me copy out his letters for him. He thought my hand was better than his, since his education had been cut short when he went to sea. I do not recall all the letters, but I am quite sure they were not about India.”

  “And do you recall any of your father’s business affairs?” Fletcher bore down on her.

  Bedelia came to her rescue. “Papa sometimes sent Emma out to do errands in Portsmouth,” she said. “Amelia didn’t know anything about them.”

  “You seem to be quite observant,” Mr. Dodgson commented.

  “Oh, yes,” Bedelia said with a small smile. “Papa called me a clever puss, and said that I was very nearly a woman.”

  Amelia’s head went up. A line formed between her brows. Before she could reply to this remark, the door knocker was banged with an authoritarian touch.

  Mrs. Hawkins, in her unofficial role as parlormaid, let the new visitors in. “Miss Arkwright,” she announced at the study door, “two Indian gentlemen have come to have a word with you. What am I to do with them?”

  “Put them in the sitting rooom,” Amelia ordered with a wave of her hand. “Inspector, it appears that Mr. Ram has returned, as he said he would.”

  Bedelia peeped out the study window and crowed, “And he has brought someone with him. Oh, Amelia, do you suppose it is the Rajah? He doesn’t look very dark, and he is quite elegant!”

  “If it is this Prince Jahal, seeing him now would save me a trip over the Solent,” Fletcher said. “Remember, O’Ferrall, this is my case!”

  “And I wish you the joy of it,” O’Ferrall muttered as he followed Fletcher out of the study.

  “Mr. Dodgson,” Bedelia urged. “Don’t you want to meet a rajah?”

  “Not particularly,” Mr. Dodgson said, absently stroking the top of Captain Arkwright’s desk. “I shall be along shortly. I do wish Dr. Doyle were here! He is much cleverer at this than I.”

  “Well, you can sit here all alone, if you like, but I am going to meet him!” Bedelia flounced out of the study, leaving Mr. Dodgson staring at the curiosities.

  Mr. Dodgson carefully walked around the desk and sat down in Captain Arkwright’s chair. What had he been doing at that desk? Mr. Dodgson wondered. He had been preparing for bed. He was not reading, for there was no book on the desk. He was not writing, either, for there was no paper at hand, although there was a pile of manuscript on the smaller of the two desks.

  Mr. Dodgson peered at the objects on the desk. There was the pen-holder and the inkpot, both of utilitarian brass. There was a small stone statue, an oddly squared-off stylized figure of a man, inlaid with turquoise and agate, being used to hold some papers down. Shamelessly, Mr. Dodgson examined the topmost item, which appeared to be a letter from a collector of orchids. Another pile of papers, written in the firm yet feminine hand which had labeled the butterflies and shells, was apparently a list of the plants in the conservatory. Mr. Dodgson frowned over the Latin names. “Ficus,” he said aloud. “Dear me. Ficus!”

  He got up and went over to the smaller desk. Again, he examined the manuscript, which had been written by the same hand as the correspondence on the Captain’s desk. Apparently Captain Arkwright had been in the process of compiling a magnum opus on the flora and fauna of Bermuda, illustrated with watercolor paintings of the same.

  As far as Mr. Dodgson could tell, there was nothing in the room of such value that someone would kill for it. Yet Captain Arkwright was dead, and Dr. Doyle was convinced that it was not a nat
ural death.

  Mr. Dodgson sighed and stood up. A stray ray of light fell on the brass vases. He frowned and walked over to the fireplace. There was something about those vases that annoyed him. They were certainly large, and he did not consider them particularly attractive, although he had never set himself up as an authority on art. One held long spills of paper, for lighting the fire; the other held the fire-shovel and tongs. They had seen quite a bit of use; the enamel inlays had been chipped and there were gaps in the design of glass beads around their necks where some of the studs were missing.

  Mr. Dodgson’s musings were interrupted by Bedelia. “Come along, Mr. Dodgson! Prince Jahal would very much like to meet you. He says he knows you!”

  Mr. Dodgson allowed himself to be dragged into the drawing room. “I wonder …” he mused. “I really need Dr. Doyle,” he decided. “I shall consult with him. For a young man, he is remarkably astute.”

  Until he arrived, however, Mr. Dodgson would have to carry on by himself. He did not recall ever having been introduced to any rajahs, but he seemed fated to meet one now. He followed Bedelia into the sitting room.

  CHAPTER 13

  The sitting room looked worse by the light of day than it had the previous night by lamplight. Sergeant Stafford had let Jenny sweep up the debris left by the burglars, but the chairs remained unusable, their upholstery in shreds and their seats sagging. The sofa had been righted, but only one side still held its shape, and Amelia had to be careful not to shift her weight, lest she fall through in a manner as demeaning as it would be undignified. The doors of the sideboard hung askew, and the stark wooden chair from the kitchen was the only seat left whole.

  Inspectors Fletcher and O’Ferrall had been joined by Ashok Ram and his noble cousin, Prince Jahal of Rajitpur. The young Rajah had attired himself in the most proper English dress he could find, and was resplendent in gray striped morning trousers, a gray coat, spotless white linen, and gray top hat. He would have been perfect at Ascot. In the drawing room of Treasure House, on a fall morning in Southsea, he looked as exotic as his richly appareled cousin, who had chosen to wear a dark blue jacket, black jodhpurs, and a pale blue turban for the occasion of a visit of condolence.