The Gold Masters

by Norman Russell

  Brookwood Cemetery, originally planted out in 1854, was a vast sylvan burial ground for London’s dead, occupying 2000 acres. Box had been there once, as a boy. Over the years it had developed into a strangely beautiful, almost rural, estate, and many of the crowded London parishes had their own sections there.

  A short walk along a winding path brought the two detectives to Charnelhouse Lane. Number 24 proved to be a pleasant villa of modest proportions, with a green-painted veranda running along its front. It stood in a very well tended garden, bright with summer flowers. This, as Knollys had ascertained, was the home of Mr Alfred Pennymint, market gardener, and his wife, Minnie. Box pushed open the garden gate, and the two detectives walked up the path to the front door.

  A man was sitting at a rustic table in the garden. He had no coat, and his shirt sleeves were rolled up to the elbow. He wore a battered straw hat to protect his sparse silver hair from the strong sun. A large jug, and a collection of earthenware cups, stood on the table. This, Box surmised, would be Mr Alfred Pennymint.

  ‘You’ve come in by the wrong gate!’ cried the man. His voice was cheerful, and his eyes humorous. ‘The entrance to the market garden is another hundred yards along the road, just beyond the turn.’

  ‘We’re police officers, Mr Pennymint,’ said Box. ‘We’re here to have a few words with your wife. I’m Detective Inspector Box of Scotland Yard, and this is Detective Sergeant Knollys.’

  ‘You’d better come in then, gentlemen, and slake your thirst. It must have been a dusty journey from London today. Pour yourselves out some cider. That’s right. So you want to see Minnie? I expect it’s about that poor young man Lane?’

  ‘It is, Mr Pennymint. You see, he’d visited one of your wife’s seances shortly before he was murdered. As a matter of fact, I was there with him. I think there may be a connection between the Temple of Light and the people responsible for PC Lane’s murder.’

  Mr Pennymint shook his head, and sighed. Box saw that his words had not really registered. The hint that his wife may have been involved in a murder plot had been quite lost on him.

  ‘It’s not something I hold with, myself, Mr Box,’ said Pennymint. ‘This spiritualism business, I mean. But it keeps the wife happy, and she loves her meetings up there in London. They seem a decent lot of folk, as far as I can make out. Very respectable. And that Mr Portman of hers is a real gentleman. But it’s all a bit – well, funny, isn’t it?’

  ‘This cider’s very welcome, Mr Pennymint,’ said Box. ‘Thanks very much. So you don’t really believe that your wife has special powers?’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Mr Box. She picks things up, you know. She’ll suddenly know that something’s happened before anyone’s brought news of it. Things like that. It’s uncanny, really. Very clever, I suppose. But Minnie’s not one for study and perseverance, so she’s never really trained herself. It’s all haphazard, if you know what I mean— Ah! Here’s Minnie now. I’ll leave you, gentlemen, to have your chat with her, and get back to work.’

  Mrs Pennymint had appeared on the porch. She looked as homely and natural as when Box had first seen her over a fortnight earlier. She was wearing a sprig muslin dress, which was far too young for her, and a vivid scarlet kerchief draped loosely round her neck. Her husband introduced her to the two detectives, shook hands with them, and made his way through the garden to a gate that led out on to the main road. His wife joined them at the table.

  It’s about poor young PC Lane, isn’t it?’ said Mrs Pennymint. Her eyes were troubled, and she spoke in a low voice. ‘He should never have gone to visit Almena. Madam Sylvestris, you know. He was in such a state over the loss of his little girl that he’d have believed anything he was told.’

  ‘Do you mean that Madam Sylvestris deceived him, ma’am?’

  ‘Dear me, no!’ Mrs Pennymint sounded shocked. ‘I mean that Mr Lane was not ready to approach so near to the other world. It was too early, and I was surprised that Madam Sylvestris didn’t realize that. Yes, I was very surprised at that….’

  Mrs Pennymint frowned, and Box could sense her perplexity and confusion. Watching her, he had a sudden conviction that she was wholly innocent of any attempt at deception. Deluded she may have been, but deceitful? No, not that.

  ‘Do you hold all your seances at the Temple of Light in Pennymint?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Twice a week I go there. Oh, I’ll arrange a little private sitting for neighbours here in Woking, but mainly they’re at the Temple of Light.’

  Her eyes suddenly closed, and they saw her eyelids tremble for a second before she opened them again.

  ‘I shouldn’t worry about that girl if I were you, Mr Knollys,’ she said. ‘She’ll be quite safe on her own. She knows you’re not another – another – what is it? Fenton? Fenlake.’

  Mrs Pennymint seemed hardly conscious that she had spoken at all. She sat politely, waiting for one or other of her visitors to speak. Jack Knollys had gone pale, so that the ugly scar across his face stood out white and fearsome. Box felt a leap of superstitious fear in his stomach.

  Jack Knollys’ fiancée, Vanessa Drake, had been neglected by the young man to whom she had previously been engaged, a Foreign Office courier called Lieutenant Arthur Fenlake. It was that neglect to which the spiritualist medium was referring. How could she have known such an intimate detail of a young woman’s life? Or of Knollys’ nagging worry that Vanessa would think that he, too, was neglecting her in favour of his official duties? Box placed a reassuring hand on Knollys’ sleeve, and the sergeant took another swig of cider. From that moment, he never took his eyes off Mrs Pennymint.

  ‘Now, ma’am,’ Box continued, ‘I want you to tell me whether or not you have any financial interest in the Temple of Light? Have you ever paid for any repairs, or matters of that kind?’

  He had thought that the medium would have taken offence, but she merely laughed.

  ‘Repairs? Stuff and nonsense! To be quite honest with you, Mr Box, I know very little about the place. As far as I know, the premises belong to a trust, with Mr Arthur Portman as principal trustee. I’ve never been interested in that kind of thing. My concern is to bring a bit of comfort to the bereaved. That’s my work.’

  ‘And do you travel up by train for your seances? It must be a heavy day if you have to come all the way back again on the railway.’

  ‘My goodness, what a nosy man you are! I travel up by the early morning train from Woking on seance days, and I’m met at the station by Mr Portman, who takes me to his lovely little house in Henrietta Terrace, off the Strand. And there I stay, enjoying the company of his wife Mildred, until it’s time to go to Spitalfields. Mr Portman takes me there in a cab.’

  ‘And when the seance is over?’

  ‘When the seance is over, Mr Box, Mr Portman takes me back to his home, and I stay there the night. Next morning, I catch a train back here to Brookwood. I hope you’re satisfied with all that, young man?’

  Again, Mrs Pennymint’s eyes closed, and her eyelids fluttered and trembled before they opened again. She added: ‘Your father’s very happy today, Mr Box, because the doctors say that he’ll be measured for an artificial leg, soon…. Yes, and the next morning, I take a train back home to Brookwood.’

  Once again, the medium sat patiently, waiting for one or other of her visitors to speak.

  What was going on? Was this woman making it all up? But how could she be? How—’

  ‘What can you tell us about Madam Sylvestris, Mrs Pennymint?’ asked Knollys. He had seen that Box was, for the moment, beyond speech.

  ‘Well, of course, she’s very famous, Mr Knollys. She’s what they call a physical medium. I can only do thoughts and mental communications of all kinds, and there are occasions when I can see spirit beings. But Almena – Madam Sylvestris – she can conjure up discarnate entities, fully developed spirits that can talk. It’s quite wonderful, what she can do. You … you can—’

  Mrs Pennymint suddenly clutched Box’s arm. At the
same time, her eyes closed again, and her head sagged forward. She began to speak, and her voice was harsher and deeper than her normal tones. Around the three of them the August sun touched the trees with gold, and the birds sang lustily.

  ‘The man who killed PC Lane has a pockmarked face. He’s a big, brutal man. M. I see the letter M. And an X. He was dressed like one of us, Inspector. For a moment I was deceived – the uniform. And then he came at me…. This man who killed PC Lane is hiding. He’s being sheltered by an accomplice. But he’ll not survive this month. He’s marked with the dark cone, the black flame. Darkness.’

  Mrs Pennymint opened her eyes, and shook herself like a terrier, at the same time removing her hand from Box’s arm. She smiled apologetically.

  ‘There, now,’ she said, ‘I’m dropping off to sleep! It’s this warm weather. They say it’s going to change by mid-month. But then, they’re always saying things like that. How do they know what the weather will be like before it’s happened? You can’t foretell the future.’

  Some minutes later, Box and Knollys set out to walk to Woking station. Both men felt shaken to the core by their experience at Mr Pennymint’s home.

  ‘Sir,’ said Knollys, ‘while Mrs Pennymint was telling us about Mahoney – which in itself was a bit of a shaker – PC Lane himself started to speak in his own voice—’

  ‘Yes, I know, I heard him, and I don’t believe it, even though it was true. I’d rather not believe things like that. But I don’t know what to make of it, Sergeant, and that’s a fact.’ Box shook his head in bewilderment before continuing.

  ‘I suppose she could have gathered together a whole dossier of little facts, just like Portman must have done to feed that harpy Sylvestris with the details of poor little Catherine Mary and her death. Maybe she’s right about Vanessa, and about Pa’s leg. But what about my so-called Uncle Cuthbert? She slipped up there, right enough.’

  Jack Knollys made no reply, and the two men walked in silence for a while along the leafy lane that would take them out of Brookwood.

  ‘That woman’s innocent of any collusion in this business of Lane and the bullion robbery,’ said Box at length. ‘She knows nothing. But the same can’t be said of Sylvestris. Mr Mackharness has secured three warrants, one for the Temple of Light and the other two for Belsize Park – search and arrest. Tomorrow, Sergeant, we’ll kill two birds with one stone.’

  Outside the Temple of Light in the nameless alley off Leyland Street in Spitalfields, a throng of devotees, some hysterical, others belligerent, had gathered to witness the desecration of their sanctuary by unbelieving officers of the Metropolitan Police. ‘Blasphemy!’ ‘The Antichrist is here!’ ‘Where is Freedom now?’ These, and other cries assailed the air. A police van, its rear door open, stood outside the building, a patient horse between the shafts. Hidden by the van was the notice board announcing to the passers-by that ‘There Is No Death’.

  Inside, the building was alive with policemen. Two of them had taken down the plush curtains behind the platform, revealing a number of wires descending from the ceiling, and attached to pulleys. Some of them had heavy lead weights attached, and Inspector Box had just concluded an experiment in which, by letting one of the weights drop to the floor, he had reproduced the loud report that had accompanied Mrs Pennymint’s trance. He remembered, too, that she had not flinched at the sound. Either she had expected it, or her trance was genuine. After his visit to Brookwood, Box was inclined to the latter explanation.

  Sergeant Kenwright, whose burly, bearded presence had overawed the crowd in the alley, slowly appeared on the platform, rising up inch by inch from some kind of pit below. It would have been a comic sight, if Box had not recalled the spirit of Tom Prentice, appearing before his overawed brother, Alexander.

  ‘How’s it done, Sergeant?’

  ‘It’s a rising platform, sir, raised and lowered by a cranked wheel down in the cellar. You see these thin tubes, attached to the underside of the platform? They’re fastened to a tiny little furnace with bellows, to pump coloured smoke up into the church. There’s a host of tricks and traps down there.’

  Box had spotted the man calling himself Alexander Prentice in the crowd. He was now sitting forlornly in the police van outside. Like all the others connected with this den of superstitious deceit, he would be charged under the Vagrancy Act of 1824.

  The search continued. Sergeant Knollys had found a little cramped office in the cellarage, and looked up from reading a book as Box entered.

  ‘Do you see this book, sir?’ said Knollys. ‘“The Psychic’s Warehouse Catalogue. High quality mechanical appliances to assist the medium. Only the finest materials used.”’ He flicked over the glossy pages, showing Box some of the items for sale from a private address in the Edgware Road. A clockwork rapping hand, for table tapping, 4s. Telescopic reaching-rods, from 2/6d. The Complete Spirit Rapping Table, ‘for use in private apartments’, 21/- Slate writing; Sealed letter reading; Self-playing guitars. Luminous materialistic ghost. Phosphorescent paint Coloured spark wheels. Percussive light boxes. All at reasonable prices.

  ‘What a rotten place this is, sir!’ Knollys cried, throwing the book down on the table of the little office.

  ‘Yes, Jack, it is. Rotten to the core. I don’t suppose you remember the book on this shady business that came out in ’91? It was called, The Revelations of a Spirit Medium, and was a true confession by one of these so-called psychics It had to be anonymous, of course, but I happen to know that it was genuine. That book tells you all about the things for sale in that catalogue. By the time we’ve finished here, I expect we’ll find quite a few objects of that nature hidden in cupboards.’

  They made their way back upstairs, where the searchers had discovered more false panels, sliding floorboards, and other devices calculated to deceive. Sergeant Kenwright was busy paying out a thin wire through his gloved hands and, as he did so, a fine white ‘ghost’ rather like a kite with a round head attached, floated down from a trap in the ceiling.

  ‘What will happen to these bloodsuckers, sir? We’ll round up the whole gang of them very soon, I should think. They’ll be so frightened after our raid that they’ll betray each other out of sheer funk, though Portman might be a tough nut to crack.’

  ‘Yes, Portman. We’ll save him to the last, Sergeant. By visiting him at his precious bank, we may be able to shake his confidence a little. As for all this deceit and chicanery, we can only see it punished under the terms of the 1824 Vagrancy Act.’

  ‘And what kind of punishment is that, sir?’

  ‘Hard labour in the House of Correction for a period not exceeding three months. Most of them get a month. We’ve seen enough here, Sergeant. All this rubbish will be collected, and produced in evidence before the magistrates. If I had my way – which I haven’t – I’d burn the whole place down.’

  Outside, the devotees renewed their clamours on seeing Box and Knollys emerge. Several elderly women were kneeling on the pavement, holding up beseeching arms to Heaven. The men, silent now for the most part, regarded the police officers with surly defiance.

  ‘They’ll change their tune, sir,’ said Knollys, ‘when we produce all that proof of fraud and deceit. This will be the end for Madam Sylvestris.’

  Box shook his head. Poor Jack! He’d seen many terrible things in his career, but evidently he’d never come across spiritualism before.

  ‘Change their tune? Oh, no, Jack, they won’t, you know! Madam Sylvestris will become a martyr. These devotees will pour fresh money into her coffers, and condemn the police as brutal unbelievers, conspiring with the Government and the Church of England to suppress the ‘truth’. Exposing rogues of this type, Sergeant, is a very unrewarding occupation. Still, we’re not in this job for rewards. We’d better get out to Belsize Park, now, and complete the morning’s good work.’

  The police van halted at the beginning of Melbourne Avenue, Belsize Park, and Box, accompanied by Sergeant Knollys and the Scotland Yard Matron, stepped down into
the road. Box pointed to an elegant closed carriage, with a glossy black horse between the shafts, drawn up in front of one of the opulent villas on the right side of the leafy road. An elderly coachman was busy loading a quantity of luggage on to the roof.

  ‘It looks as though we’re just in time,’ he said. ‘Word must have reached Madam Sylvestris of our visit to Mrs Pennymint. That’s number eight, and those trunks on the pavement suggest that our spiritual lady friend is doing a flit.’

  The matron, a capable-looking woman in her forties, dressed discreetly in civilian clothing, treated her companions to a grim smile. Also known as the ‘female searcher’, or more prosaically as ‘the search woman’, she had a long experience of consorting with the more unspeakable specimens of her own sex.

  ‘You may have trouble with this lady, Mr Box,’ she said. ‘They usually like to make a fuss, these fake mediums, in the hope that their plight will get into the papers. There’ll be no need to search her, though. We’re not taking her in flagrante, producing spirit babies from her leg-of-mutton sleeves.’

  ‘I hope there’s no trouble, Kate,’ Box replied. ‘But after what happened to PC Lane, I’m in no mood for compromise. She’ll walk down the road with us to the van, and behave herself, or she’ll be carried there! Come on, let’s get it over and done with.’

  They walked up the garden path, and Knollys rapped sharply on the door. A face peered briefly at them through a stained-glass panel in the door, which was opened cautiously. A housemaid, her face darkened by a suspicious frown, peered out at them.

  ‘Who are you? Madam can see no one today. She is about to embark upon a journey—’

  ‘We are police officers,’ said Box curtly. At the same time he pushed the door open. He, Knollys and the matron entered the house.