“Horrocks?”
“Well, come to think of it, sir, I did speak on the telephone to a member of the local constabulary one or two days after you departed for Broadstairs, but it didn’t really concern you in the end.”
There was a pause.
“What do you mean?”
“As I understand it, sir, someone had handed in a gold pocket watch with a hunter case that they had found in the local vicinity.”
“Right?”
“The watch-case had been inscribed, sir. I believe with a message that read: ‘Trelawney, from your ever-loving wife, Sarah’.”
I shook my head vacantly.
“When the club secretary heard the name ‘Trelawney’, I was asked to speak to him, sir.”
“I see…” I said, brightening suddenly. “So, presumably then you pointed out that the watch could not possibly belong to me. Firstly, because I have never been in possession of such an object and, secondly, of course, because my wife was not called ‘Sarah’.”
“Exactly, sir.”
“And, Horrocks, this is very important, did you tell this constable my late wife’s name?”
“I believe he asked it, sir.”
“Excellent,” I said, a laugh breaking across my lips. “That is peculiar, is it not? Certainly, I’ve never met anyone called ‘Trelawney’ before. It is, in fact, a significantly uncommon name—presumably on account of it being so gratuitously Cornish.”
“Mr. Hart, it still doesn’t make sense,” Doyle exclaimed suddenly, looking eagerly at me. “Don’t you see it, man? You’re suggesting Mr. Beasant, or someone else connected to the séance, communicated with your club, in some ruse to find out about you and your late wife…”
“Exactly.”
“But, Mr. Hart, how could they possibly know to contact your club in the first instance? You were travelling under an assumed name. I was the only person to know your real identity.”
“Ah, well, Doyle,” I explained with an embarrassed smile. “You see, unbeknownst even to myself, all the time I was in Broadstairs, I was carrying around a letter written on club stationery. It was contained within a carpet-bag that I thoughtlessly abandoned in my room the moment I got the room-key.
“I suspect that when your secretary—in his usual subtle fashion—asked for me to be added to Beasant’s séance circle at the last moment, it probably aroused a good deal of interest from some quarters. And I suspect that with some inventive enough pretext—or a bribe even—an obliging chamber-maid could have been persuaded to open the door to my hotel room—in order to find out who I was.”
Doyle shook his head again: “I can’t believe any of this,” he said, shaking his head but still looking at me intently. “I mean, it’s just so contrived. You reduce everything to the absurd, man! You say there’s a conspiracy, yet these two men don’t even know one another.”
Doyle turned his eyes pleadingly on Price who, far from coming to his defence, simply looked away.
It was all to clear that there was something in Price and Beasant’s manner which articulated an air of subtle disagreement.
Shaking his head, Doyle climbed to his feet. His cheeks were flushed and his shoulders shaking—and I realised he was working hard to retain his outward calm. He crossed silently to the table, where he had earlier deposited his overcoat.
Taking up his Homburg by the brim, Doyle turned it distractedly in his hands a number of times before speaking.
“I intend to go over my own account of this again,” he said in a wounded tone, picking up his coat and throwing it across his arm. “I believe my mental powers to be equal to yours, Mr. Hart—I shall find something that proves you wrong. I simply can’t accept what you’re saying at all.”
“Well,” I remarked languidly, “that’s the thing about you spiritualists. You need to learn to keep an open mind…”
Doyle sought out my eyes and he stared coldly at me, before turning towards the door.
“Oh, by the way…”
Doyle heaved back around, glaring wildly at me—and, as he did, I pushed across to a bookshelf and picked up a Chelsea-bound book in dark blue morocco.
“Not sure if it’s this one,” I said, opening it up and rifling the gilt pages, as I drifted back across the room towards him. “It’s that story of yours, you know…” I said, looking up. “About the dog…?”
Doyle paused, frowning at the volume in my hands, before responding uncertainly: “Do you mean The Hound of the Baskervilles?”
“Yes,” I replied, snapping the book shut. “That’s the one.”
“Well, what about it?”
“Well, you do realise that if you were to put phosphorus onto a dog, it would just kill the dog?”
Doyle shortened the focus of his eyes momentarily, as he considered my words. Then, appearing suddenly stung, his large, pouchy face shaking with anger, he turned and crossed slowly to the door.
“Well then,” I said, turning back to Price and Beasant. “Now he’s gone, how close was I?”
Looking across at Beasant, who had recessed still further into his chair, Price rose slowly and walked over to me with an insouciant air, his hands in his pockets.
“Sadly, Mr. Hart,” he said, his grey eyes gazing out from beneath their heavy penthouse lids, “I don’t think ordinary people will care a jot what you think. More than two hundred people were present last weekend—who would all swear to having witnessed a miracle—and now a number of national newspapers have picked the story up. Yours is, I’m afraid to say, a single voice against the crowd.”
Turning his head, Price considered Beasant’s lounging figure and shook his head despondently. “You know, he could’ve been a household name in a year, if he’d have managed to keep it together.” With a touch of exasperation and a long drawn-out breath, he added: “I suppose it’s my own fault really—somehow I decided to work with the only psychic in England with a conscience.”
Turning to me again, Price pulled back his suit jacket. “What you did to-day was quite impressive. It’s not so surprising, I suppose. When I discovered who you really are, Mr. Hart, I did recognise your name, slightly.
“Over the past week I have visited a good number of booksellers in London, and I managed, finally, to get hold of some of your father’s accounts of your education from Hatchards.” Dipping into his waistcoat pocket, Price produced a silver card case. “Your father is obviously a very brilliant man—and clearly did you a great service. If you ever wanted to collaborate on anything…” He shook a card out from the sleeve of the case and pushed it towards me; which, thoughtlessly, I accepted. “I could certainly use someone like you.”
“The thing is, Price…” I sighed, pushing the card back into his hand. “I think you’ve already tried that.”
“Well, if you bother to write a report up for Doyle, good luck with it,” Price murmured, returning the card to his case. “I don’t suppose it’ll ever see the light of day though. Doyle may be an old fool, but even he is unlikely to go out of his way to make himself appear ridiculous in public. Or discredit his precious Society, for that matter.”
Buttoning up his jacket, Harry Price fixed me again with an impassive stare, his thin lips creased into a smile. Turning away, he strode back across the reading-room.
I turned back to the bar and leant my elbow upon it for a moment. Closing my eyes, I realised that the afternoon had left me feeling quite fatigued.
When I re-opened my eyes, I saw Horrocks was standing before me, looking expectantly at me.
“You’d better get me a whisky and soda.”
Beasant’s head was in his hands, his fingers pushed into his wrinkled eyelids, in such a way that his spectacles were raised up and resting over the tops of his fingers.
“Here,” I said, placing the tumbler on the table beside him
.
Taking his hands from his face, Beasant’s eyes—bloodshot by drink and smoke—swerved up at me with surprise, before turning on the glass.
“What’s that for?”
I shrugged: “One for the road?”
For a moment, Beasant was completely still, but then, reaching out and taking the glass from the table-top, he shot me a sad, sottish smile.
“I didn’t plan any of this, you know? I did think I had the gift—once.”
Beasant’s voice had a protracted, slightly slurring inflection, and there was something faintly helpless about the way his eyes were attempting to fix on me.
“Maybe ‘gift’ is too strong a word. But, you know, perhaps a kind of intuition. Something. It wasn’t such a defined thing, perhaps…” He tussled distractedly with his hair. “Maybe it wasn’t anything at all actually—except an ability to read people and tell them what they wanted to hear.
“It’s just that, sometimes, when I look at people—words, phrases, sometimes complete halves of a conversation enter my mind. It’s almost as though I was listening to someone talking on a telephone, but had no idea what the person on the other side was saying. The voices are all different…” Taking his hand from his hair, Beasant began to rub violently at his brow. “The voices in my head.”
Throwing his arm down, Beasant jerked forward in his chair. “That was how it was, anyway,” he said bitterly. “Then Price convinced me that the world needed to know of my gift—but said we needed to do something to arrest the public’s attention. Something big. And so…” His head slumped forward and he tailed off. “Well, there you have it. I shouldn’t have done it. I suppose, everyone will think I’m just some bloody stage conjurer now. And I probably deserve it. I deserve it…” For a moment, he continued to chant the words half under his breath, as though taking some comfort in them.
“I don’t think you need to worry about that too much.”
“No,” Beasant said vaguely, without really hearing me. “I deserve it.” Then he rose unsteadily to his feet and, throwing his head back, pushed the whisky tumbler to his mouth and drained the contents of the glass.
“How much do I owe you for the drinks?” Beasant said suddenly, placing the glass on the table and pushing his hands clumsily into the pockets of his jacket.
“Nothing.”
He nodded sluggishly and gestured towards the door: “I should go.”
I watched as Beasant swerved away, surprised when he came to an abrupt halt and swung his face back to me. “Sorry about the séance.”
“That’s all right,” I nodded. “Out of interest, what would you have told me?”
Beasant frowned: “Told you?”
“At the séance. Before I left, you were going to give me a message from my wife. I just wondered what you were going to say.”
“I don’t know,” Beasant replied, with a heavy shrug. “I didn’t have anything planned. I was just going to tell you whatever I thought at the time.”
“Really?”
In that moment, the expression drained from Beasant’s face and he fell silent, regarding me intensely. Behind the thick frames of his spectacles, his eyes had become dull and sightless.
“She says…” Beasant said suddenly, as the focus returned to his eyes. He then hesitated, continuing in a bewildered tone suggestive of someone repeating words that they themselves did not fully comprehend. “She says you’re coming after her.”
With that, Beasant turned his back on me and slouched across the room. As I watched him depart, the words echoed dimly through my mind. For a moment, they seemed somehow familiar, but I could not place them. Slowly, I turned and walked back to the bar.
“Can I get you something, sir?”
I looked dimly at Horrocks for a moment, the words hardly registering.
“Hm?”
“Would you like a drink, sir?”
I nodded, and Horrocks headed to the back counter of the bar.
“Actually…” I said softly, turning away. “I’m not feeling too well. Perhaps we’ll leave the drink.”
EPILOGUE
Resigning Life
SIX DAYS HAD passed and I had heard nothing more from Arthur Doyle, other than to receive a short and impersonal cablegram from his office, signed off—on his behalf— by his secretary. The reason for this note seemed to be simply to further impress upon me that I had been engaged on behalf of the Society for Psychical Research and was still expected to turn out a report on the event that had taken place in Broadstairs—which, at least, was no longer being termed a ‘miracle’.
Sitting in a chair by the empty fireplace, my elbow bent across the table in front of me, I was scribbling onto the pages of a common-place book that Sibella had procured from a local stationer. With a final bored stroke of my pencil, I completed the diagram I had been working on, detailing how I saw the mechanics of Beasant’s platform and steps working.
Setting the pencil down on the table, I moved my eyes up from the page—and, just as I did, observed the door of the reading-room being opened. With a furtive air, a man entered, coming a few hesitant steps into the room.
In the uncertain light he remained in seclusion for some moments, though it was clear, from the white jacket he was wearing, that he was a member of the club’s staff.
Half hidden in the shadow of the curtain, the man turned up the angle of his head and, for a moment, his features displayed the cascading pattern of the rain that was lashing the window. It seemed to me that he was peering hopefully towards the bar, which was—in deference to the rest of the unlighted room—shining out, beneath the covered shades of a number of electric bulbs. Suddenly, he pressed onwards and, in the course of that moment, I realised—from his peculiar, dancing gait—that it was Hayward, the club’s secretary.
Evidently, his entry had not been missed by Horrocks, for he had already come out from behind the bar, and the two men met halfway across the floor; whereupon they came quickly into an exchange that was at once both vigorous and muted.
During the course of this conversation, Horrocks shrugged several times and then, turning his head, glanced anxiously in my direction. Hayward’s eyes briefly followed, but then, without further word, he turned his shoulder and sauntered back across the room.
With an air of resignation, Horrocks’ head dropped forward and he trailed after him.
Something like ten minutes must have elapsed since Horrocks had deserted his post at the bar. Having finished my drink, I pressed a fresh cigarette to my lips, diverting my attention away from the empty glass on my table by assembling some playful badinage I would use to rag him with when he did return.
I was stirred from these happy cogitations by a sudden crashing sound—and, looking up with a start, saw that in her typically delicate style, Sibella had entered the room. Framed within the doorway, she quickly raised her hand and, with a single, deft movement, pushed her flattened palm down upon the brass light-switches. She then sailed across the floor towards me, with the sound of humming filling the room and the rows of electric lights blinking on around her.
“Good afternoon, Trelawney,” Sibella said, reaching me.
“Turn those lights off.”
“Whatever for?”
“Well, because they don’t show me off to my best advantage, I suppose,” I answered, putting my palm to my forehead and shading my wrinkled brow. “What does it matter? This is my room. Surely I have some rights?”
“This is not your room—it is supposed to be for all members to enjoy.”
Saying this, Sibella glanced briskly around at the forty or so unoccupied tables populating the area. “Mind you, I think perhaps Mr. Andersen’s colourful testimony may have put paid to anyone else actually coming in here again.”
“Mr. Andersen?”
A pained expression crossed Sibella’s face, and she sighed deeply: “The man you threatened to set fire to!”
“Oh—him,” I responded sulkily. “Well, he kept asking me for matches. It was annoying.”
“So this is it again then, is it?”
I frowned: “What d’you mean?”
“This…” she persisted, gesturing about the room. “You’ve returned to this utterly bloody existence again then, have you?”
I glanced despondently up at her: “What’s the matter with you?”
“You realise that if it wasn’t for me, Trelawney, you wouldn’t talk to anyone at all?”
“That’s not true. When Horrocks can be bothered to turn up, we talk—we have great chats.”
“About what exactly?”
“Drinks. Cigarettes. He occasionally mentions the weather and other sundries.”
“This is my point exactly,” Sibella sighed. “The worst thing is, you actually seemed better after Broadstairs. For a few days, after you came back, you were more like your old self again. Like you were before—–”
I looked up sharply, causing Sibella to falter—the words dying upon her lips.
“It’s clear that you need distraction, Trelawney,” she continued, changing her ground. “Diversion. You need to think about something outside yourself. There’s a war going on out there—people are losing their loved ones every day. Most of them just have to get on with it.”
“Look, if you’ve just come in here to here to grouse at me again, I’ll—–”
“—–You’ll what, exactly?” Sibella shrilled. “Get drunk? Be rude to me? I’ve had four and half years of that, Trelawney!”
Shocked by Sibella’s outburst, I shuffled awkwardly in my seat, casting my eyes sullenly at the floor.
“I just thought…” continued Sibella, with a reflective sigh, “when you started inviting guests here, it might be a good thing—but that seems to be the end of that now.”
Conversations with Spirits Page 25