by John Harwood
St. John Vine moved away down the room, leaving us in near darkness. He closed the front of the armour and extinguished all of the other lights, except for the four candles in the candelabra, which he returned to its shelf.
"Join hands," he said hoarsely, "and concentrate all of your attention upon Vernon. Pray, if you are minded to; anything that may help to bring him back." He passed through the door into the library and closed it behind him.
Edwin's hand was dry, and icy cold; Professor Charnell's felt like damp parchment. On the other side of the circle, I could see the glitter of Dr. Davenant's eyes, and the faint gleam of candlelight on his forehead; it was too dark to make out anything more. I was near fainting, and numb with shock, yet I could feel the vibration—was it only the trembling of our hands?—gathering in the circle.
Then all four candles flickered and went out, and we were plunged once more into impenetrable darkness. Someone—it sounded like Professor Fortesque—was gabbling the Lord's Prayer. He had reached "deliver us from evil" when a faint glimmer appeared in the vicinity of the armour, a misty pillar of light which hovered for a moment in the void and then opened, with a movement like the unfurling of wings, into a shimmering figure that detached itself from the body of the armour—now dimly visible in the glow—and glided toward us. It had no face, no form, only a veil of light floating over emptiness. I could not move, could not breathe.
I heard the sound of the library door opening, and footsteps approaching. The apparition shimmered to a halt.
"Vernon!" cried St. John Vine from the darkness. "Will you speak to us?"
"I may ... not stay"—the voice, though faint and indistinct, was recognisably Vernon Raphael's—"but will you not ... shake hands ..."—growing fainter with each word—"for friendship's sake?"
The footsteps came closer; the dim outline of a man passed between me and the apparition. Light swirled; a glowing arm appeared, but there was no hand, only an empty sleeve, and when St. John Vine tried to grasp the arm, his own hand passed straight through it! With a cry of despair, he flung both arms around the apparition. For an instant, man and spirit were united; then darkness engulfed them, and I knew no more.
I came to my senses with the taste of brandy on my lips, and a lantern shining into my eyes. Coals were crackling in a grate nearby. I was lying, I realised, where I had fallen on the gallery floor, but with a cushion beneath my head. I have had a terrible dream, I thought, turning my head away from the glare. Edwin was kneeling beside me, with Vernon Raphael peering over his shoulder.
"Miss Langton, I owe you the most abject apology; I am truly very sorry. I should never have subjected you to such an ordeal."
"Indeed not!" said Edwin angrily. "If I had had any notion of what you were playing at, Raphael, I should never have allowed ... that is to say ..." He broke off, embarrassed, and offered me another sip of brandy.
"I don't understand," I said to Vernon Raphael. "Did you mesmerise me? Did I dream the lightning?"
"No, Miss Langton," he replied. "Everything happened exactly as you perceived—only it was an illusion, a demonstration, if you like, engineered by Vine and myself. I had planned to explain it all afterward, but you must rest now; I am really very sorry indeed."
"No," I said, becoming conscious of my disarray. "I am quite recovered, and could not possibly sleep without hearing your explanation." Lights were burning along the walls, but the floor where I was lying was still in near darkness. I took Edwin's arm and rose unsteadily to my feet.
"Well, if you are quite sure," said Vernon Raphael with obvious relief.
"Where are the others?" I asked.
"In the library," said Edwin. "I thought you might prefer..."
Grateful for his tact, and for the darkness of the gallery, I straightened my hair and brushed the dust from my cloak whilst Vernon Raphael went to fetch the rest of the party.
"Truly it is said, that he who attends a séance in the medium's house is asking to be deceived."
Vernon Raphael was standing beside the armour, with the rest of us gathered in a semicircle nearby.
"When I first heard of this cabinet—as, in effect, it is—I suspected it might have some further trick to it."
He grasped the hilt of the sword—I was not the only member of the party to recoil when the plates sprang open—whilst St. John Vine, who was standing off to one side, played the beam of his lantern over the armour.
"Though the back of the armour appears absolutely solid, it, too, is hinged. The trick is that it can be opened only when the front is closed, and only if this catch"—indicating the pommel of the sword beneath the mailed fist—"is in the correct position. Thus..."
He stepped inside once more and closed the plates. St. John Vine moved closer, and seemed to stumble; the beam of the lantern flashed across our faces.
"You see," said Vernon Raphael, appearing from behind the armour, "it needs only a momentary distraction. And if, of course, the lights should mysteriously fail—" St. John Vine strode the few paces to the library door and disappeared within. A few seconds later, the flames of the candelabra were again extinguished as if an invisible hand had snuffed them out.
A standard magician's—or spirit medium's—property," said Vernon Raphael, "done with India-rubber tubing. The sinister glow from the helmet was equally simple: it needed only a dark lantern, concealed beneath my cloak, and a suitable piece of stained glass; your imaginations did the rest."
"But the lightning?" said Edwin. "How could you possibly...?"
"Powdered magnesium, my dear fellow; all the rage with photographers, though not in quite such quantities, accompanied by a charge of black powder, and fired by a long fuse from the library window. We were lucky the chimneys smoked so badly, or you might have smelt the fumes. And whilst you were still dazzled ..." He moved a couple of paces from the armour, one hand trailing along the wall, to the corner where the massive fireplace projected into the room, and slipped behind a mouldering tapestry, which hung almost to the floor. There was a faint creak of hinges; St. John Vine strode across from the doorway of the library, where he had been watching, and drew aside the hanging, to reveal only a blank expanse of panelling. He rapped three times on the wall; a narrow section slid open, and Vernon Raphael stepped out.
"I was sure we would find something of the kind," he said, "though I should not care to spend any length of time cooped up in there. That masonry is several feet thick."
"Why did you not enlist my help?" Edwin sounded nettled.
"Because, my dear fellow, we wanted you to partake of the illusion. And now, ladies and gentlemen, if you would care to resume your seats, I shall give you my explanation of the Wraxford Mystery before we adjourn for supper."
Still dazed by everything I had seen and heard, I was happy to return to the warmth of the fire. My companions seemed equally subdued; whether by the force of Vernon Raphael's personality, or the sombre atmosphere of the gallery, I could not tell.
"The real mystery, in my opinion, is the death of Cornelius—rather than Magnus—Wraxford. It is plain, reading between the lines of John Montague's narrative, which Miss Langton has kindly allowed me to see, that Magnus Wraxford murdered his uncle. The question is: how?"
"Forgive me," said Dr. Davenant, "but can you explain, to those of us who have not seen this narrative, how you arrived at this very remarkable conclusion?"
"By all means," said Vernon Raphael, and proceeded to summarise the relevant passages, principally Magnus's discovery of the secret of the armour, as Magnus himself had related it on that first afternoon in John Montague's office.
"The effect of that interview," he continued, "was to convince John Montague that his client was a practicing alchemist, and a dangerous lunatic to boot—to prepare him, in other words, for Cornelius's imminent decease by occult means, just as he was about to exhaust the last of the estate's capital. But John Montague had never met Cornelius, and knew him only by his reputation as a sinister recluse. He was therefore predisposed to
believe the tale that Magnus spun for him—including Cornelius's supposed hostility to his nephew and sole heir.
"Yet in the library next door, you will find not a single alchemical work. Nor, for that matter, will you find a copy of Sir William Snow's treatise on thunderstorms, or any other work on that subject. John Montague, when he came here in response to Drayton's summons, found a quantity of burnt paper in the study fireplace. But books do not burn easily; you could not possibly dispose of an entire collection that way. I put it to you that there never was such a collection; that however Cornelius passed his time, it had nothing to do with alchemy. I say further that the manuscript of Trithemius never existed, except for the fragment Magnus contrived for John Montague's benefit; and that the story Magnus told his uncle was a very different one.
"That Cornelius Wraxford was indeed morbidly afraid of death we have no reason to doubt, if only because Magnus's scheme could not have worked if he hadn't been. Remember, too, that Magnus Wraxford was a man of great persuasive powers, an accomplished mesmerist—and possessed, I believe, of a genius for improvisation. And suppose now that he came to his uncle and said something along these lines: 'I have just learned of a wonderful new invention, with extraordinary powers of prolonging life, based upon the work of the great Professor Faraday; and it has the added benefit of affording you absolute safety during a thunderstorm. With your permission, I shall adapt the armour which, by a lucky chance, is ideal for the purpose.' One of the expert witnesses at the inquest upon Magnus argued, as you may recall, that the armour would function as a Faraday cage, with the entire charge passing around the outside, leaving the occupant unharmed. The coroner scoffed at the idea, but to an old and fearful man, whose only contact with the outside world was his nephew, it could have been made to sound very plausible indeed.
"Magnus had, with his uncle's active co-operation, constructed a seeming death trap, and one which fitted perfectly with the Hall's sinister reputation. The death of young Felix Wraxford in 1795, and the subsequent disappearance of Thomas in 1821 (I assume that both were accidents, but we shall never know), were woven into the history he was creating, no doubt with an eye to its usefulness once the Hall was his.
"But there was one serious difficulty. Lightning might strike the Hall next week; on the other hand, it might not strike for another ten years, with no guarantee that Cornelius would actually occupy the suit. And Magnus, having prepared John Montague for Cornelius's imminent decease, now had to ensure it. His plan, I am sure, was to leave his London house, ostensibly for some remote part of the country—Devon, let us say—adopt a suitable disguise, and make his way to the Hall. Once in his uncle's apartment—and I remind you, we have only Magnus's own word for the state of relations between them—he could easily smother the old man, place the body in the armour, and discharge a 'thunderbolt' from the safety of the woods nearby.
"Risky, you will say, and I agree. But, like any true artist, he was prepared to run risks in order to achieve the effect he wanted. And then Fortune came to his aid with a remarkable stroke of luck: John Montague became so anxious about the gathering storm that he wired Magnus to that effect, giving him several hours' grace in which to prepare.
"There was now no need of artificial thunder; all Magnus had to do was place the body in the armour and slip away without being seen. But why was the body not found? Even supposing that lightning actually did strike the Hall, I don't believe that Cornelius could have been vaporised out of existence; Magnus's own eventual fate is proof of that. And I refuse to believe that his vanishing so precisely on cue was mere coincidence. Yet it was plainly not in Magnus's interest for Cornelius to vanish; in the event it cost him two years' delay, and an expensive court case, before he could take possession of the estate."
He raised his hand to forestall a question from Professor Charnell.
"With your permission, I should like to complete my thesis before we debate it. During that two-year interval, Magnus Wraxford married a young woman supposedly possessed of psychic powers; an ideal accomplice for the fraud he set out to perpetrate."
I had listened, thus far, with rapt attention, but the last remark brought me up short. I was about to protest when I realised that I could do so only by revealing the existence of the journal.
"Though the evidence of Godwin Rhys, John Montague and the manservant Bolton led the court to believe that the Wraxfords had been estranged for some time, it is possible that the appearance of estrangement was—initially—contrived between them, to further Magnus's seduction of Mrs. Bryant, and also perhaps to heighten the effect of Eleanor Wraxford's powers; if she could be seen to be acting the part of medium against her will, the illusion would be all the more convincing. Magnus made the first approach, and succeeded in charming an initial ten thousand pounds out of Mrs. Bryant before Eleanor Wraxford appeared on the scene. That money, as you know, he had converted into diamonds; a highly portable and negotiable asset.
"His intention, I am sure, was to stage a séance along the lines of tonight's demonstration. Eleanor Wraxford's gift would have been brought into play; and Mrs. Bryant's late husband would surely have appeared, encouraging her to devote her entire fortune to Magnus Wraxford's Sanatorium. But by the time the party arrived at the Hall, Eleanor Wraxford had turned against her husband. Perhaps she was jealous of Mrs. Bryant; or perhaps, as some have suggested, she meant to elope with a lover. Her mental condition, at any rate, was certainly unstable. She was estranged from her own family; her previous fiancé had died here at the Hall in mysterious circumstances; and according to Magnus, as reported by Godwin Rhys, she had foreseen his death in a vision. Magnus had sent her down here with her child, from whom she would not be parted, to prepare for her part in the fraud—"
Again I opened my mouth to protest, then thought better of it.
"He must have been very confident of his power over her. But then his plan misfired with the death of Mrs. Bryant on the night of their arrival.
"You may recall that a note was found, in Eleanor Wraxford's handwriting, inviting Mrs. Bryant to meet her here in the gallery at midnight. There are several possibilities here. It may be that she meant to betray Magnus's scheme, or simply to wreck it by frightening Mrs. Bryant out of her wits. You can see how easily, using this apparatus, a woman with a weak heart could be frightened literally to death. Of course Magnus risked killing the golden goose with his intended demonstration, but that was a risk he had to run; and Mrs. Bryant would have gone to the séance expecting to witness something remarkable, whereas here she was taken completely by surprise.
"The rest is simply told: Eleanor Wraxford managed to regain the safety of her room while the alarm was still being raised. As I need scarcely remind you"—this with a bow to Dr. Davenant—"the popular understanding of madness is quite misguided. A man—or, as here, a woman—in the grip of delusion may commit the most monstrous crimes, and yet remain lucid and to all appearances rational.
"Sometime during that night, Eleanor Wraxford staged her disappearance. She concealed her child, or murdered it—I am sorry to distress you, Miss Langton, but the latter seems most probable. A woman alone would have had a fair chance of evading the search that followed; a woman carrying an infant, scarcely any. Unless she had arranged to give the child to an accomplice, which she would have to have arranged in advance—and why, then, bring the infant to the Hall in the first place?"
I had not thought of this objection to my own theory, but I saw, with a horrid sinking feeling, the force of it.
"Whatever the fate of the child, Eleanor Wraxford managed to conceal herself until Magnus alone remained at the Hall. She confronted him with her pistol, took the diamonds, forced him into the armour, and jammed the mechanism—so much is plain from the lawyer Montague's evidence. Perhaps she meant to trap him only long enough for her to get away, or perhaps her nerve failed her at last, as witness the discarded pistol and the torn piece of her gown caught in the armour.
And then came the final irony: lightning
really did strike the Hall a day or so later. Perhaps Magnus Wraxford was already dead; I rather hope so; I shouldn't wish such a fate upon my worst enemy. I don't believe he was instantly reduced to ashes, as the coroner concluded; men have been struck in the open, after all, and survived. Most likely the heat of the blast set fire to his clothing, and the body burned slowly away, as with spontaneous combustion, so vividly described by Dickens, except that in this case the combustion occurred within a confined space, and so was more complete.
"And there, ladies and gentlemen, you have it. We shall never know what became of Eleanor Wraxford and her child; I suspect that both are lying in some undiscovered hollow in Monks' Wood."
He bowed, and the men responded with a brief round of applause, in which I did not join. The fire had burned low while he was speaking; my feet were numb with cold; the promised revelation had come to nothing. His admiration for Magnus had been plain throughout, whereas he had dismissed Nell as a madwoman who had spoiled an elegant plan. It struck me, indeed, that Vernon Raphael and Magnus Wraxford had a good deal in common.
I looked up from the floor to find the men waiting expectantly for me to rise. The thought of listening to their debate was suddenly unbearable; I was neither hungry nor thirsty, only mortally cold.
"I should like to retire," I said to Edwin. "I want nothing; only a lantern; so if you will excuse me, gentlemen..."
I rose unsteadily to my feet, and the room seemed to sway around me, so that I was obliged to take Edwin's arm. Accompanied by murmurs of concern, we moved slowly down the long expanse of the gallery and out into the deeper chill of the landing, where Edwin immediately began to apologise for the evening's ordeal.
"I chose to come here," I replied, "so let us not speak of it." I felt his yearning for a glance, a smile, some token of intimacy, but I was incapable of responding.