The Problem of the Spiteful Spiritualist

by Roberta Rogow

  “Yes, yes, I know all about it,” Farlow fairly shrieked. “Tell them … tell them I shall see to it as soon as I can.”

  Ingram bowed, turned to leave, then turned back. “You know, there is a way to get around it, sir.”

  Farlow looked more cheerful. “They wouldn’t take a Post obit, would they?”

  “Not bloody likely,” Ingram said coarsely, losing some of his polished facade. “Your pa is well known to be in perfect health. He was seen at Deauville Races, in company with a ‘certain royal person,’ and no one’s going to take anything on his leaving this earth in the near future. No, what the persons have suggested is something else. There is a certain boat race to be held here in a month’s time—”

  “Eights Week,” Farlow interrupted him. “What about it?”

  “It would be to a certain person’s advantage if they could have advance information as to the fitness and, ah, willingness of the, ah, participants …” Ingram’s voice trailed off, leaving the rest of the thought to Farlow’s imagination.

  It took a few minutes for the implications of the suggestion to sink in. Then Farlow exploded in wrath.

  “Do you mean that I’m to go out and spy for you?” he exclaimed. “And all so that the chaps in London can get better odds?”

  “If the information was correct, some adjustment could be made on your debt,” Ingram said smoothly. “The persons to whom you owe a debt of honor—”

  “No honor with those thieves,” Farlow muttered fiercely.

  “—they might put off payment of the debt completely.” Ingram ignored the interruption.

  Farlow closed his eyes in despair and ran his fingers over his head, while Ingram’s eye was caught by the box on the desk. His quick fingers went through the various objects, lighted on one, and nipped it up while the younger man’s back was turned to him.

  Farlow stared out the window. There was no answer to his difficulties there. The street was full of passersby: students scurrying to tutorials or the library, dons strolling along contemplating the universe (or perhaps just the possibility of jam cakes for tea), cabs, drays, and private carriages, even two bath chairs trundling along with ladies on their way to or from paying the all-important calls that regulated the social world.

  Ingram permitted himself a smug smile, which vanished as the younger man turned away from the window. “Don’t blame me, Mr. Farlow. I’m only a messenger.”

  Farlow’s mouth twitched in annoyance as he reached for his cigar case. Ingram was there before him, offering the cigar and ready with a light.

  “And did you deliver my message?” Farlow asked.

  “I did, sir.”

  “Then all we have to do is wait, and as soon as I have the dibs, I can pay off everyone, including your bloodsuckers.”

  “Don’t be too long about it, sir,” Ingram warned him. “These people are not going to wait for someone to die.”

  “Oh, no one has to die,” Farlow said, with a careless wave of his hand. “Just go about your business, Ingram, and tell your people that they’ll get their damned money, one way or another.”

  Ingram bowed himself out, and Farlow turned back to his contemplation of St. Aldgates. This had to work! he told himself. The Old Boy would have to stump up, and then he could pay off these cursed leeches.

  Ingram closed the door to the rooms behind him and opened his hand. The young fool hadn’t even noticed that his diamond stickpin was missing. So much the better! This post had not been one that Ingram would have taken, given the choice, but it had opened previously untapped opportunities for a clever and resourceful man. Ingram considered himself both clever and resourceful, far worthier than the aristocratic youths whose soiled linen he picked up and whose dishes he cleared away. None of them would miss a trinket here and there.

  He dodged into one of the open doorways to avoid Telling, who was on the prowl on the staircase leading to young Farlow’s rooms. The chief scout was becoming suspicious. Perhaps he should be more careful, he thought, but there was a sure thing coming at Newmarket, and all he needed was a few pounds to put up for a truly spectacular win.

  Ingram looked at the untidy sitting room. “Undergraduates!” he said to himself. “Always expecting someone else to clean up after them.” Well, that was what scouts were for, weren’t they? He had best get on with the job he was supposed to be doing before Telling came around to ask why he wasn’t doing it.

  Two miles north of Christ Church, three young women also asked the question: “What shall we do now?”

  Miss Dianna Cahill and her two dearest friends, Mary Talbot and Gertrude Bell, sat at the long refectory table, which was the primary furnishing of the library at Lady Margaret Hall, a room lined with bookshelves but seriously devoid of books. They bent over a packet of papers at one end of the table, while Miss Daphne Laurel, the oldest student at Lady Margaret Hall, tried to concentrate on her own book a few chairs away from them.

  “I don’t understand what the great fuss is about,” Gertrude said, with a toss of her auburn tresses. “It’s just a photograph.” She was a strongly built young woman, whose athletic prowess was evident in her slim figure and general air of determination.

  “It’s not just the picture,” Dianna said. “It’s what goes with it.” Her plump cheeks reddened under her mop of fair curls, which were caught up in a blue ribbon in a knot at the top of her head, while her blue eyes filled with tears as she stared at the photograph before her.

  Mary Talbot, a petite brunette whose gentle voice disguised a nature every bit as determined as Gertrude’s, looked over the page and the photograph on the table before them. “I cannot believe that anyone could be so vile, so cruel, as to demand that you leave Oxford because of this!” She tapped the printed page before them.

  “But why?” Dianna asked plaintively. “I don’t know what these words mean, exactly, but it sounds horrid. And why does it have my picture with it?”

  Gertrude looked over the printed page. “It’s something about kissing,” she pointed out. “And I know what that is.” She indicated a very short word, and pointed to a portion of her own anatomy.

  Dianna referred to the handwritten letter that accompanied the printed page and the photograph. “Leave this University at once, or this will go to every college and newspaper in Oxford,” she read.

  “Well, you can’t do it.” Gertrude pounded her fist on the table in righteous indignation. “I never heard such rot!”

  “I beg your pardon, Miss Bell?” Miss Laurel turned from her book to stare at the younger woman. “Did you address me?”

  “Of course not, Miss Laurel,” Gertrude said. She turned back to her friends, who were hovering over the offensive pages.

  “Unfortunately, some people will do anything to remove female students from Oxford.” Mary sighed. “Although why they should pick on you, Dianna, is more than I can tell. No offense, dear, but you’re hardly First material, and your family isn’t particularly well-connected.”

  “I don’t understand it either,” Dianna said. “But this … this stuff … and the photograph …”

  “How did it come to be taken?” Mary asked, dispassionately regarding the object before her. It showed a six-year-old girl, frontally nude, with one hand on a globe and the other hiding her crotch. The background was very dark, and the child’s face was almost hidden in shadows, but there could be no mistaking the kinky curls that clustered about her face. This was Dianna Cahill, without a doubt.

  Dianna looked helplessly at her two friends. “It was when my father had been appointed to his living in Northumberland. We broke our journey here in Oxford, and my parents went to tea with the Liddells at Christ Church.”

  “And they brought you along with them? How odd,” Mary commented. “Why didn’t they leave you with your nurse?”

  “There was some commotion in the house,” Dianna recalled. “We were staying with my aunt and uncle Roswell, and there was to be a visitor, and I was to be gotten out of the house so that I shouldn
’t see her. At least, that’s what I think I heard.”

  “How perceptive of you,” Miss Laurel commented, from her place at the table.

  “I don’t know about that, but I do remember being heartily bored at the tea party where everyone was older than I, even the other girls who thought me quite a baby. And then a gentleman came to deliver a book, I think, and he saw me and asked if he might take me to his rooms for tea. And we had the most delightful time … and he asked if I would like to be photographed. And so he took the pictures.”

  “Without your clothes on?” Gertrude’s blue eyes fairly danced with the thought.

  “I was six years old and thought nothing of it,” Dianna said apologetically. “And he was quite respectful, and I felt so comfortable with him; and it was such great fun that I let him pose me with the book and the globe; and then we had jam cake, which I was never allowed at home. Not even at Aunt Roswell’s, and she kept a very good table.”

  Dianna helped herself to the cake in front of her. Clearly, she had made up for lost time.

  Mary frowned at the packet before them. “Who took the picture?” she asked.

  Dianna frowned. “I can’t remember!” she wailed.

  “Try!” Gertrude ordered.

  “Could it have been Mr. Dodgson?” Miss Laurel offered, laying aside her book and moving closer to the trio.

  Dianna stared at the older woman. “That name does sound familiar. I suppose it could have been. Why do you think so?”

  “I have lived in Oxford for some time,” Miss Laurel explained. “Mr. Dodgson was well known as a photographer of children. It may well have been he who took the photograph.”

  “What I don’t understand is why this person should single you out for this … this outrage!” Gertrude exploded.

  Dianna’s eyes filled with tears. “No more do I! Examinations are coming, and I don’t know what to do! If I fail, I disappoint my dear aunt and uncle Roswell, who have spent so much time and money on my education. If I pass, this … thing … will be …”

  “Will be what? Sold on the public market? I think not,” Gertrude said staunchly. “I say, tell this blackguard to go about his business. ‘Publish and be damned!’”

  “Gertrude!” Miss Laurel corrected her wayward classmate. “Moderate your language!”

  Mary covered the offending photograph with the even more offending letter. “The real question is, how did this blackmailer find this photograph? Once he found it, how did he find you?”

  Dianna lifted her shoulders in a mute shrug of complete incomprehension.

  “More to the point,” Gertrude said, taking charge of her more reticent schoolmates, “what do we do about it?”

  “We can’t give in,” Mary said firmly.

  “Of course not,” Gertrude agreed. She thought for a moment, then went on. “We have to find out where that photograph came from. Once we know that, we can find out who sent it; and once we know that, we can deal with him ourselves.”

  “But that means, I have to ask Mr. Dodgson,” Dianna quavered. “I can’t just call on him out of the blue! He doesn’t remember me at all. I saw him when he called on Edith Rix, and he never even looked at me.”

  Gertrude’s quick mind was already planning a strategy. “Weren’t you going to the Cathedral today to look at the glass?” she asked Dianna.

  “Yes, I was,” Dianna admitted. “Miss Wordsworth gave permission, and Dean Liddell had no objections, so long as I was there within visiting hours and left before Evensong. Only,” her blue eyes grew troubled, “we need a chaperon, and Miss Wordsworth has to go with Tessa to the lecture at Balliol—”

  Miss Laurel coughed gently to remind the others of her presence. “Excuse me, Miss Cahill, but perhaps Miss Wordsworth will permit me to accompany you on this excursion. I am, after all, somewhat older than the rest of you, and I have been a governess.”

  Dianna considered this offer. “And what shall we do, once we get to Christ Church?”

  “We must find Mr. Dodgson and ask him what happened to that photograph,” Gertrude decided, with the air of a general who had devised the winning campaign.

  “You can’t think Mr. Dodgson had anything to do with this!” Mary protested. “Everyone knows he’s the kindest, sweetest gentleman, and besides, he wrote Alice in Wonderland. He couldn’t be a blackmailer!”

  “But he might have left that photograph about, and someone else might have found it,” Gertrude said, the light of battle blazing in her eyes. “Miss Laurel, go ask Miss Wordsworth if you can come with us, and then let’s get our hats and gowns. We’re going to Church!”

  Chapter 3

  Mr. Dodgson was waiting at the elaborately carved gateway that opened out onto St. Aldgates as the bell of Great Tom struck three. It mattered not that the time on the watches and clocks of Oxford stood at 3:05. Oxford was five degrees past the delineator set at the Greenwich Naval Academy, ergo Oxford University was exactly five minutes behind everyone else, and the school liked it that way.

  The young man in the tweed suit bursting through the sea of black gowns was clearly five minutes ahead of everyone else. His mustache fairly bristled with excitement as he took in the medieval architecture about him; his blue eyes sparkled and he seemed to breathe in the scholarly atmosphere. Behind him trotted his wife, a young woman in a tartan traveling suit with a modest bustle, topped off with a straw hat trimmed with a matching tartan ribbon, the very image of the provincial doctor’s wife ready to assist her husband in all things.

  Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle spotted the tall figure in black at the gate and waved vigorously. “There he is, Touie!”

  “Of course, Arthur,” Touie answered breathlessly, trying to keep up with her husband’s stride.

  “Мr. Dodgson has promised to show us the Cathedral,” Dr. Doyle reminded her. “I particularly want to see the chair that the king used before Naseby.”

  “I’m sure Mr. Dodgson will show it to you,” Touie said, having caught up to her husband.

  Mr. Dodgson lifted his hat and bowed ceremoniously to his guests. “Good afternoon, Dr. Doyle, Mrs. Doyle. I hope you are settled into your rooms?”

  “Quite comfortably, thank you,” Dr. Doyle said, with a glance across the street at the White Hart Inn. “An old coaching inn! Just the setting for my book!”

  “That inn has been there since the reign of Richard the Second,” Mr. Dodgson informed them, as he led the young couple into the quad. “Before the House was built, I might add.” He gestured toward the pond in the center of the central grassy plot. “There was a statue of Mercury in that pool, and it is still called by that name. Some of the undergraduates find it amusing to duck each other in it, but it is strictly forbidden to do so.”

  The three adults stepped aside as two undergraduates hurried down the path, their gowns flapping behind them.

  “Where are they off to?” Mrs. Doyle wondered.

  “Lectures, possibly, or to the library,” Mr. Dodgson replied. “At least, one hopes so. Many of the undergraduates seem to prefer sport to scholarship.”

  Dr. Doyle laughed heartily. “On such a day as this, I can only agree with them. I only wish my own student days had been so pleasant.”

  Mr. Dodgson recalled that Dr. Doyle had spent his time at the University of Edinburgh, where the prevailing cold and damp might well have encouraged his interest in the murkier side of life.

  Mr. Dodgson continued his tour of the grounds, keeping to the south side of the quadrangle. “These buildings were designed by Sir Christopher Wren, although they were enlarged and, um, improved by our present dean.” He paused, then decided not to tread on delicate ground. He detested the so-called improvements made by Dean Liddell and had written several biting pamphlets giving his opinion of the new belfrey (which he had likened to a tea caddy) and the passage into the gardens behind the walls of Tom Quad (which he had dubbed “the tunnel”).

  Instead, he pointed out the noble proportions of the buildings, and reminded his guests that the founder
of Christ Church was none other than Cardinal Wolsey. “Of course, after his unfortunate dismissal by King Henry the Eighth, the House was expropriated, so to speak, by the king.”

  “Why do you keep calling it ‘the House’?” Touie asked innocently.

  “Why, because it is God’s House, Mrs. Doyle,” Mr. Dodgson explained. “And it is never referred to as Christ Church College. It is Christ Church or the House.”

  Touie made understanding noises. Dr. Doyle looked around him, mentally docketing the proportions of the quad for future reference. Mr. Dodgson quickly led his guest toward the Cathedral, keeping his back to the bell tower.

  Dr. Doyle stopped at the entrance to the Cathedral to take in its medieval carving, much to the discomfort of two dons in caps and gowns who were trying to round the corner of the quad. Clearly, Mr. Dodgson was in full instructor mode, pointing out all salient features of Christ Church Cathedral.

  “This is the smallest cathedral in Britain,” he stated. “You do know why it is called a cathedral and not merely a church?” He looked expectantly at the Doyles, prepared to elucidate when ready.

  “It’s because of the Bishop, isn’t it?” Touie smiled sweetly at Mr. Dodgson. “Is not the Dean of Christ Church also its Bishop?”

  “I see you have informed yourself before coming here, Mrs. Doyle.” Mr. Dodgson looked slightly put out. Some of his thunder had been stolen.

  Touie glanced at her husband, who was by now entranced by the brass plates fastened to the walls of the church. “Arthur and I have been preparing for this excursion ever since you gave us the invitation,” she told Mr. Dodgson. “It is something of a change for us.”

  “I understood that you were going north to visit Dr. Doyle’s parents,” Mr. Dodgson said, steering Touie around the small chairs that had been placed for the afternoon service.

  “It’s Arthur’s father. He is not well.” Touie’s pretty face clouded. “And there is some difficulty about his mother as well. And there are his sisters …” She stopped, conscious of having said too much. “But this little excursion is just what Arthur needs. He is so enthusiastic about his historical novel, and he will find so much material here …”