The Willing Game

by Issy Brooke

  He had his back to her. He clattered the kettle against the china pot, and she saw his shoulders rise and fall, as if he had sighed heavily. “I just want to know,” he said.

  “Don’t you know it already? Isn’t that the point?”

  “I just want to know for sure. Yes, yes; look at me.” He turned around. He was the picture of dejection, and the opposite man completely to the one who had opened the door to her ten minutes before. “Of course I cannot confront them. The least they will do is laugh at me. I cannot threaten them or promise violence nor do I have any recourse to the law. I just want to know for sure.”

  “And then what?” she pressed.

  “I don’t know. I have not thought beyond that. It’s just that my thoughts run so fast and jump around my head, and I think it’s because I feel so persecuted, and if only I can know this one thing, for sure, it will help, won’t it?”

  “Simeon, before this current obsession, you were convinced that the family in the upper rooms of the house next door were following some strange religion that involved chanting, and the overthrow of parliament.”

  “I admit that I was mistaken, and my actions were not helpful.”

  “No. I think that we can all agree that your night-time raid upon the poor family was ill-advised, and that the police were very generous to let you out of the cell the next day.”

  “Well, they have moved away, anyway, and this situation is not the same.”

  But it was, and she knew it. She wondered if he knew it too, somewhere, deep inside.

  “Oh, Simeon.”

  He sagged.

  “Simeon, make the tea.”

  He moved mechanically, and brought her a hot cup, and took the seat opposite to her. He stared at his drink. “So why did you come around, if not to help me?”

  She felt like a cruel and selfish woman then, because she had to say, “Because I would like your help. If possible. Please.”

  “Is this the Bartholomew matter? Or the Monahan one? Or a new problem entirely? And you say that I have obsessions! You are collecting them.”

  “Does it look that way from the outside?”

  “Yes.”

  She sighed. “I can trust you, can’t I?”

  “You do not even need to ask. I am insulted that you do.”

  So she told him everything, absolutely everything, and all of her suspicions, and it was a huge weight being taken from her shoulders. And in turn, the light and the fire returned to his eyes. He had a new project, and finally decided to embrace it. She hoped that it would replace the fixation on thieves.

  “I like how you are thinking about Edgar Bartholomew,” he said. “He could easily be Wade Walker in disguise, as both were close friends, and both were something of recluses. Especially as now, no word can be got of Wade Walker at all. One man is dark, one blond. Well, the easiest thing would be to see if the man you suspect to be fake is dyeing his hair.”

  “Easy?” she said. “I don’t think so. What do you suggest we do – sneak into his house and watch him at his ablutions? He has no servants we can ask or bribe, or I should have done that at once.”

  “Maybe we do not need to go to such lengths,” Simeon said. “That’s a pun.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Hair. Lengths. Do you get it?”

  “No, for it does not work if you have to explain it.”

  “You told me to add humour to my act. As you can see, it is not working. Listen,” Simeon said, leaning forward, “we simply need to obtain a length of his hair. Then you can do your science on it, and tell us if it is dyed!”

  “Yes, but also no,” she replied. “I am not a chemist. Even so, I am sure that I can work out what tests to perform, yes, if we know what people actually use to dye their hair. I have no idea what people use. However, the main problem is: how do we obtain this lock of hair? Shall we set up shop as barbers and entice him in?”

  “Oh no, it could be far simpler,” Simeon said. “He is a man who is visiting mediums, is he not? And you know the ways of the séance, and I know the ways of magic and artifice. I have some useful devices...”

  “We will not need a sleeve-full of hidden birds,” she said. And she smiled. She had realised what he meant. “But yes. I think we can do this.”

  Seventeen

  Planning was invigorating. It made Marianne feel as if she were in control of events. They decided that they would perform a small private séance, and all the other participants would be hand-picked stooges that Bartholomew would not recognise. All they needed was darkness, really, and either Marianne or Simeon could clip some of his hair. As he had never seen Phoebe, they decided that she should play the medium, and she readily agreed to this plan. She was delighted to be involved. Marianne would coach her in what to say. Simeon would be one of the fake participants, and Marianne would hide in the spirit cabinet or some cupboard within the room. They also needed some more participants. In the end, she decided to ask a few old college friends that she knew were in London.

  As for premises, Simeon said he could speak to his landlord who rented out many properties in the area. There was a chance that they could gain access to a well-furnished drawing room for the evening.

  The final piece of the puzzle was to get Edgar Bartholomew invited. But as he was known to be hunting for mediums who might help him, that turned out to be easier than they had thought. They mocked up some cards declaring Phoebe to be “Mrs Algernon Carter”, a middle-aged widow of many years due to a tragic accident early in her marriage. Since then, the spirit world had called to her but she had resisted the vocation until very recently. Now she was newly come to London from Edinburgh, where she intended to live quietly but to follow the promptings of the spirit for a “select few people of status and class.” They pasted up a few handbills and paid for a small announcement in one of the spiritualist periodicals.

  Naturally, Bartholomew was all over that as soon as he had heard. He sent a letter to the address that Simeon had procured, and the amenable landlord kept up the pretence for them. He was in the process of having work done to the building, installing plumbing so that he might let the rooms to better-paying guests, but while the back rooms of the apartments were a mess of pipes, the drawing rooms at the front remained untouched.

  Within a week, they had all the people assembled, and Phoebe sent a note back to Bartholomew saying that she had been led, by the spirits, to invite him to a small private séance to be held the following evening.

  He arrived very early.

  Marianne was hidden in a large sideboard in the corner of the drawing room. They had drafted Emilia in to act as a general servant, though she needed a great deal of persuasion. She was not confident that she could play a successful role in the charade, but she agreed for Phoebe’s sake. She led Bartholomew into the drawing room where Simeon was already present, engaged in a stiff and formal fake conversation with the so-called Mrs Carter. They had taken care to disguise Phoebe as much as possible, so that her reputation be protected against any accidental unmasking. Her blonde hair had been scraped back and hidden under a lace cap more suited to a much older lady. Rather than apply paint and powder to accentuate her beauty, Emilia had shown dexterity that made Simeon gasp. Under her brushes and paint, Phoebe had acquired around ten years on her life, with shadows and wrinkles and sags to her cheeks. Even Price would have had to look twice.

  Marianne could hear everything. She was on a cushion, kneeling in the cupboard, and staying as still as possible. She was wearing nothing but a long white cotton dress, a simple sort favoured by young maidens and painters like Burne-Jones. She could not risk swishing silk skirts around.

  Bartholomew introduced himself and began to eagerly press Mrs Carter for information about her successes and her techniques. He sounded like a thorough believer in all matters spiritual.

  “Although,” he confessed with a sad air, “I am finding more and more that mere charlatans are invading this most sacred calling, and I should be devastated to dis
cover that you were of their ranks, my good lady.”

  Marianne bit her lip. It sounded like a very polite threat, and she was glad that Simeon was out there. The magician stepped into the conversation swiftly, and began to ask questions that were designed to reveal information that could later be used by the medium.

  They were also designed to make Simeon and the whole proceedings look entirely innocent. “And does your wife also have your sensitivities, sir?” was Simeon’s first question.

  “Alas, I am widowed, but that is not why I am here, and nor do I care to speak too much, for this, I know, is how the fakes operate. They seek out information, do they not?”

  Marianne, kneeling on her cushion, winced. He knew what he was about, all right. But it did not matter. They already knew more about Edgar Bartholomew than he would realise.

  They were saved by a fresh interruption from the two other participants. Miss Mary Sewell and Miss Clara Ettington-Vane entered and there was a flurry of introductions and light giggling. Marianne could not see anything, but she could hear that both young women were faking their personas and enjoying every minute of it. In real life, both had been serious and studious bluestockings, albeit with a penchant for the theatre, which gave them both a release from their daylight routines.

  And so the séance began, rumbling along in the usual patterns. Their hands were linked as the lights were put out. Emilia moved silently around, placing a candle at the far end of the room on a side table. She removed herself to stand by the sideboard.

  Phoebe began to moan and shake, and the chemicals that Marianne had added to the wick of the candle caused it to flare up, glow green from copper particles, and then go out in a shuddering rush.

  The room went utterly silent.

  Marianne was stiff with tension now. It was all down to Phoebe and whether she could follow their coaching for long enough for Marianne to get out of the cupboard. In their plans, they had asked Emilia to do the deed, clipping a lock of Bartholomew’s hair, but the lady’s maid had been so horrified that they had to rethink. She could not, she said, go near a man in the pitch darkness carrying scissors. If she slipped, she would be a murderess. And therefore out of a position, she had added, as if that was the worst of it.

  Phoebe began to alter her voice. “There is a man here,” she said, “who has some words to speak to one of you.” Marianne cursed silently. Phoebe had dropped her voice too soon, but she should not have done that until she was actually purporting to speak as that man. She went on, saying, “He is called John – John Masters...”

  Mary gasped convincingly. “My grandfather! Oh! Can it be?”

  “Mary,” Phoebe rasped, her voice now gravelly. She would have to be careful, Marianne thought, or she’d induce a coughing fit. “You are to pull out the middle drawer in the bureau. Pull it out completely. The will is lodged underneath.”

  Now everyone gasped. “Thank you, grandfather! Mother will be so pleased!”

  Marianne longed to be able to see what was going on, but even if she weren’t in the cupboard, she would not be able to. She hoped that the calculated revelation would have the right effect. Bartholomew, now, should have all his attention focused on Phoebe.

  Phoebe let her voice rise up, and now she was playing the part of a small child, and pretending that she was a long-dead daughter speaking to Simeon, who did a very nice impression of a heartbroken father. His sobs covered the sound of Marianne pushing the well-oiled cupboard door open.

  Her instinct was to rub her eyes but it had no effect. The room was pitch-black. She knew roughly where Bartholomew would be seated, and they had practiced the next steps a few times.

  As Simeon thanked Phoebe, she gave out a low wail. “Oh! The spirits, they are coming, they are ... they are here! Did you feel that?”

  Mary and Clara tittered nervously, and Simeon choked back his final sobs. Marianne counted her paces and slowly reached out until her fingers brushed the back of a man. It was Simeon, and he called out, “Oh, I feel a hand upon me!” This helped her to orientate herself properly. “Ah, it strokes my cheek – dear Millie, is that you?”

  “It is Millie, come to comfort you,” Phoebe crooned.

  It really was the most excitingly convincing séance that had ever happened.

  While Bartholomew’s attention was fixed on Phoebe, Marianne took two steady paces, silently, to the right, and reached out carefully. Her fingertips met the warm skin of a neck, and Bartholomew yelped out, and then coughed, and muttered an apology that barely covered his excitement. “Who is that?” he asked.

  The problem was, they were not sure who to say it was, without blowing their cover. It was down to Phoebe to muddle her way through this. They’d practised a few options.

  Phoebe said, in her normal voice, “There is someone here for you but they are faint. They are struggling to get through. Come, come...”

  Bartholomew leaned forward slightly in his eagerness, and Marianne lost touch. But she had her small embroidery scissors in her hand and she employed the pickpocket’s tactic of misdirection. She placed her left hand very firmly, and very suddenly, exactly where she judged his left shoulder to be, and at the same time slid the scissors close to his scalp at the back, closing them slowly to avoid an audible snip.

  She caught the tuft in her palm and then released his shoulder, and stepped silently back until her hip caught the sideboard and she was able to retreat into her hiding place once more.

  Meanwhile Phoebe was claiming that the spirits were fading away.

  Everyone murmured their disappointment, and none more so than Edgar Bartholomew.

  “So close! I felt his hand upon me!” he said.

  His hand, thought Marianne. He was not expecting his dead wife, then.

  “I am sorry,” said Phoebe, affecting exhaustion. “They have all gone, and I am left as nothing more than a husk ... please, girl, let us have some light.”

  Marianne double-checked that the door to her cupboard was firmly closed and she heard Emilia cross the room toward the candle. The main door to the room opened. Chairs scraped and conversation resumed. Marianne tried to focus on what Bartholomew was saying, but he had evidently drawn Phoebe to the far side of the room. It seemed to take an interminable amount of time before everyone had left, and she was finally released from her prison.

  “I have it!” Marianne declared, and held the rough scrap of dark hair aloft.

  Simeon, Emilia and Phoebe grinned, but Phoebe’s smile died first.

  “We might have a problem,” she said. “He has spent some time trying to persuade me to give him a private sitting. He is now utterly convinced that I am genuine, and that I am the only person who can help him to contact his dead best friend.”

  Eighteen

  Russell Starr was in bed until late the next morning. He had been out and about around town for half the night, and Marianne hoped that he had stayed out of trouble.

  She wrapped a long apron around her clothing and set to work in the laboratory. She placed the lock of hair on a clean white tile, and set her notebook down on the bench beside it. She began to make a detailed visual analysis of the sample, and took meticulous notes. Although she far preferred electricity, magnetism and all manner of other mysterious and invisible forces, she still had a basic grounding in the scientific method, and so she could make a start while she waited for her father to wake up. She hoped that he would be fit and well.

  “What have you discovered so far?”

  Her father’s voice startled her and she knocked her cheekbone against the microscope. He looked tired, grey and lined, and was dressed in a violently red and purple dressing robe trimmed with fur. He was pursued into the laboratory by Mrs Crouch, who was urging him to return to his bedroom, or at least to eat some breakfast.

  He turned, demanded strong coffee and a lightly poached egg, and then came to Marianne’s side. “Coarse, rough, and a chocolate-brown. How are the ends?”

  “Not recently cut. The outer layer of the hair is
not smooth, and it appears damaged. What would one use to dye hair?”

  “You are the woman. This is your domain. You tell me.”

  She sighed. “Hardly. I will go and speak to Emilia.”

  “Bring me an egg when you come back, won’t you?”

  WHEN SHE RETURNED – minus the egg – she found her father dining at the laboratory bench, with a yellow-stained cloth tucked into his robe. “Coffee?” he asked. “Crouch was complaining but she has sorted out a fine feast here.”

  “Thank you, yes, I should like some coffee.”

  “Well, you ought not to.”

  “It is a dreadful habit I got into at university.”

  He harrumphed and poured a small cup for her. She accepted it and said, “Emilia says that there are various ways to turn light hair dark but they are not straightforward. You can use herbal rinses, but she was dismissive of their effectiveness. To effect a strong change, one needs chemicals. You can buy things from the chemist that will do it, she said.”

  “But she did not know the chemicals used?”

  “No, of course not. She is a lady’s maid.”

  “Then go and purchase the relevant items, please. Make sure the ingredients are on the packets, or insist that the chemist in the shop tell you how it was made. We need a starting point otherwise this runs the risk of becoming a wild goose chase.”

  “You mean it isn’t already?” Marianne said, but she took her cup of coffee into her own room to dress for a quick visit into town. Their local shops should be able to furnish the necessaries, she thought.

  When she returned, she had a packet of dye and a sheet of paper scrawled across with the local apothecary’s hand. He knew and liked Russell, and had taken time to note down everything he knew that might be relevant.

  Russell studied the paper. “Charcoal and grease is used in the theatres and by criminals,” he read. “Of course, yes, that won’t stand up to much scrutiny. Woe betide you if you are caught in the rain. Oh! Salts of bismuth, lead and silver. Yes, that makes a lot of sense. It is much the same in photography, is it not?”