The Willing Game

by Issy Brooke

  “Yes, and it was with his consent. We thought that we could trick death, you see, and peek beyond the veil.”

  “But it went wrong.”

  “It ... did.”

  “Why did you not report this terrible accident at once?” Inspector Gladstone said. They reached the door, and no one seemed willing to touch the handle.

  “I would have done, but I was submerged in grief. And panic. For I had killed him. There is no escaping that fact,” Wade said. “But yes, I knew what I had to do. Except ... there was another part to our plan.”

  “Whichever one of you were to die first, then they would contact the other, is that right?” Marianne said. It was a common enough pact among the spiritual crowd.

  He nodded, still staring at the door. “This was his house, you know. And he died here. So I knew that he was going to manifest here. That was what we agreed. I had to stay, to wait for his spirit.”

  “But you didn’t expect his son to turn up, did you?” she said. “That changed everything.”

  “Oh!” said the inspector. “This George Bartholomew that was spoken of?”

  “Indeed, the very same,” Wade went on with a heavy sigh. “He came in darkness, suddenly, one night, without even sending word. I hid myself in my room and heard him tramping around. I called out, saying that I was sick, and I spent the night sleepless and wondering how to go on.”

  “A good man would have gone on by telling the truth,” the inspector said. “I reckon, however, you did not choose that option.”

  “I did not. I had to stay here, you see. I had to wait for Edgar to contact me, and I could not let George know what had happened to his father. They were long estranged, anyway, and so as dawn broke I went into town and bought the hair dye. I thought that I might be able to pass myself off as his father, but... he suspected.”

  “Of course he would!” the inspector scoffed. “Oh, this is a sorry tale. And we are all avoiding the main thing – we must enter this room. Mr Walker, you will go first.”

  “I?”

  “Yes,” Inspector Gladstone said very firmly. “Go on with you.”

  The constable held the lantern high. Wade Walker closed his eyes, and opened the door, but did not proceed over the threshold until the inspector jabbed him roughly between the shoulder-blades.

  Walker stepped in, and the constable went in beside him. Marianne and Gladstone followed closely, as much to stay in the lantern’s safe embrace as anything else.

  “What do you see?” Phoebe called in a small voice from the now-dark corridor.

  Marianne looked around. They were in a small room with a sloping ceiling and the windows were papered over. In the middle of the room was a circular table familiar to a thousand séance rooms. There was a curtain across one corner of the room. Two chairs stood either side of the table.

  Neither contained a dead body.

  “I brought the mediums here, at first,” Wade explained. “I thought perhaps he needed an intermediary to make contact with me. But every attempt failed. Until I met Mrs Carter. She, too ... oh, Edgar!”

  Marianne stepped towards the curtain. The pole passed from wall to wall, making a triangular space behind it. She steeled herself, and took hold of the right hand edge of the curtain.

  “Miss Starr...”

  She dragged the curtain across.

  There was nothing but a very large trunk there.

  “I assume that he lies within,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady as a prickle of cold sweat trickled down her spine.

  “He does.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Asphyxiation. We thought that we could stop his breathing for long enough that he was dead, but that I would be able to bring him back again before it was too late and he fully crossed over. But I miscalculated.”

  “So he is not mutilated or damaged in any way?”

  “No, but he has been there now for at least three weeks.”

  She stepped backwards. “It is a well-sealed trunk.”

  “Yes, I took care to use bandages soaked in camphor and strong scents. But I would not recommend that the trunk is opened until it is in a safe laboratory space.”

  She turned to face the others. “I would agree.”

  “Is that your professional opinion, Miss Starr?” Inspector Gladstone asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Wade Walker, I am arresting you on the suspicion of murder by two counts. One, the murder of Edgar Bartholomew and two, the murder of George Bartholomew.” He began to run through some cautions to Wade, regarding what he should or should not say. Wade hung his head, and she could tell that he was crying.

  Again she quashed the sympathy that threatened her. He was guilty. The first murder might be accidental, but his killing of George was premeditated and awful. That reminded her of one more thing.

  “Why did you poison George with white phosphorus?” she asked. “You knew what you were doing, didn’t you?”

  He hung his head. “I did know. I had found it in a jar of water, left behind by one medium who had thought to trick me, and I knew what it was. I was going to throw it away but George was becoming increasingly troublesome. I used it to spike everything he might eat or drink in the kitchen, and then I threw him out.”

  “You monster.”

  “You don’t understand. I had to ... I still have to ... make contact with Edgar. It was our life’s work and I couldn’t allow George to ruin it all!”

  Marianne shook her head in disgust. He might plead that he was of unsound mind, but if he didn’t hang for these offences, he was surely going to Bedlam for the rest of his life.

  As if reading her thoughts, he said, “Will I swing for this?”

  “It is likely.”

  “Good,” he said. “I deserve it. And my friend will be waiting for me. I welcome peace, and death, and I look forward to being reunited with Edgar and all the others I have lost.”

  “Well,” Marianne snapped, “let us hope, then, that you are right and there is someone else waiting for you too – George Bartholomew, who might have made mistakes in his life, but he didn’t deserve to die. He will be wanting to be reunited with you, too.”

  Wade shuddered, and the constable put the lantern on the floor so that he could fit the handcuffs to the arrested man. Their shadows flared up around them on the walls, and Marianne tried not to look at them, because she was sure she could count more than four.

  Twenty-seven

  “Let me speak to Price before you do,” Marianne said as they walked wearily up the steps to the front door of Woodfurlong. It was nearly midnight. Inspector Gladstone had sent a younger constable with them to see them home safely, and he promised to call upon them in the morning. Wade had been taken into custody, and would be up before the police court magistrates in the morning. The police would need to build a case if they were to do the prosecution, which seemed likely, and they would need to talk to Marianne and Phoebe again.

  About everything, Gladstone had warned.

  That was complicated.

  “He is my husband,” Phoebe complained. “I am so tired, Marianne. Just let’s go to bed, and we can approach all this over breakfast.”

  Mr Barrington opened the door, and hustled them into the hallway. He looked at Phoebe’s unfamiliar and unbecoming dress, and their smeared painted faces, but he didn’t make a comment beyond enquiring as to anything they needed.

  “No, thank you, Barrington. You may close up for the night.”

  “Very good, madam.”

  At the bottom of the stairs, they stopped to embrace. Marianne would be going along the ground floor to the garden wing, and Phoebe would creep upstairs to her rooms.

  “Phoebe?”

  They remained holding one another’s arms, and looked up to see Price standing at the top of the stairs, illuminated by one gas light on the wall behind him. He was in his silk dressing gown, and his face was unreadable in the shadows.

  “Price! I am sorry we are so late.”
r />   Marianne cursed. Price would have questions if he saw their faces or studied their clothing.

  But maybe it was time to answer those questions.

  “Come on,” she said to her cousin. “Let us go up, and find some brandy, and settle this whole matter. Then I think we will find that sleep comes easily.”

  PRICE’S STUDY SEEMED the natural place to go. He poured himself a large glass and fixed Marianne with a glare. She ignored it. The truth was going to come out, and he needed to be grateful that it was not as bad as it could have been.

  He tried to take control from the start. It was his private space, after all, and he was used to being in charge from his work life. “I don’t know what is going on here, but Miss Starr, you are a bad influence. I do not want to be the cruel or heavy-handed man but I must warn you that changes will have to be made.” He stared and stared, willing her to keep silent.

  “More has been happening than you know about,” Marianne said. “I beg you to listen to everything and not to speak until I am quite done.” Then she turned to Phoebe. “And the same goes for you, dear cuz. Please. Nothing I say will harm either of you, really, in the long term. Please just listen to the very end.”

  She paced around while they sat on comfortably scuffed leather wing-back chairs. Phoebe nestled herself in a blanket and Price just sat, his back straight and his hands on his knees. She started at the beginning, telling them things that they already knew and things that were new to them.

  She explained how she had initially been approached by the shady Jack Monahan, and how her refusal to help had triggered some reaction in him. “He did not like being told no,” she said, “and it all became personal.” She told them about George, and his suspicions, which was a shock to Price. She then told them about Price’s appeal to her for money, and Phoebe clutched her knees and laid her head on her forearms, all bunched up like a little girl, and didn’t speak at all. And Price was gazing intently at Phoebe, watching for a reaction, any reaction, and Marianne could feel the love between them that was desperately stretching, growing thin, but still there like a thread that connected them. They wanted it to be all right, and so it would be.

  Price was shocked that Marianne had found the dead body, and intrigued by the experiments she had done with her father. He was shocked all over again as she told him about the fake séances.

  “You did this twice?” he spluttered. “Sorry, sorry, carry on.”

  At the end, there was silence.

  Price got up, and refilled his brandy glass. As he crossed the rug on the way back to his seat, he detoured to go alongside Phoebe. As he passed her, he bent and kissed the top of her head. She put up her hand and caught his, and squeezed it. He nodded, and went back to his chair.

  “I think I might fill in one or two gaps which remain,” he said, in a rough and low voice, quite unlike his usual self. “It is true that I have been a weak and foolish man, but I have always been utterly faithful to you, Phoebe, and it hasn’t been any kind of effort on my part – it is easy to stay your devoted husband, my dear, for you are my world, my everything. Everything. Do you believe me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then. What I did was show weakness for my country, not for a woman. Is patriotism a weakness? Perhaps I was blinded, more, by my own puffed up sense of importance. I truly thought that the authorities had chosen me to help them in their investigations! I was excited. I liked the secrecy. It was like living in a book. Can you imagine?”

  Phoebe and Marianne both nodded. It made more sense to Marianne than she would ever admit.

  “Anna was charming, but I thought of her like she was a clever daughter.”

  Phoebe narrowed her eyes. But Marianne stepped in. “She really was, Phoebe. I liked her a lot. She was clever, witty and had a way with her. We should have been friends,” she added wistfully.

  “Where is she now?”

  “We believe she has fled,” Marianne said.

  “Good. Shoot her if you see her again.”

  Price nearly smiled at that. He said, “Anyway, it soon became apparent to me that she was not who she claimed to be, and I was ... I was, to my eternal and undying shame, caught fast in a blackmailer’s plot. She was one of them – one of the Prussians. I made Marianne promise not to tell you, Phoebe. Don’t blame her.”

  Phoebe met Marianne’s eyes. She would always blame her a little bit, Marianne knew, but it didn’t matter.

  “But at least she has gone,” Price said. “And that is an end to that, or so I hope.”

  “But your company’s information is now in the hands of these foreigners, these Junkers,” Phoebe said. “What happens now?”

  “I do not know,” he said. “But I have been scouring the newspapers every day for news from Prussia. The new chancellor’s attempts to open up trade and drop the tariffs – which we were primed to capitalise upon – are being thwarted at every turn. The ruling landowners in the east really won’t give up their monopolies without a fight. It might be that she didn’t need to take that information about the deals from me at all. Perhaps we won’t be expanding operations there, not as we planned, at any rate. Maybe she did not manage to pass the information on.”

  “Do you think you ought to tell the management at your company?”

  Price jiggled his knee nervously. “I will watch and wait, at this stage,” he said. “The main thing is that she is gone, and I will be able to pay off the loans – and what I owe you, Marianne.”

  When had he started using her first name? She smiled. “Take your time,” she said. “After all, I live here under your sufferance and generosity.”

  “Nonsense, nonsense.” He waved at her and turned his head away slightly, embarrassed. “You are family. What matters more than this?”

  “Well, there is a question that Wade Walker needs to consider,” Marianne said.

  They fell into silence, and this time it deepened. No doubt there would be a dozen conversations over the next few days, rehashing the same events over and over, but for now, everything had been said.

  It was time for bed at last.

  Twenty-eight

  Marianne was shocked when she awoke the next day. It was already past midday. She could not remember ever having slept so long before. She rolled over and stared blankly at the heavy curtains at the window. Bright light shone down one edge where the fabric had not been pulled across tightly enough. Usually, that would have annoyed her and she would not have been able to sleep.

  But she had fallen into bed and barely moved.

  Now she was stiff and foggy-headed. She sat up slowly, and remained there on the edge of the bed, hunched forward, trying to work out why she felt as if she had been hit by an omnibus.

  That was how her father found her. He was dressed in a perfectly smart and respectable suit as if he were going out for luncheon. He was carrying a tray of food which he put on her bed, and she finally stirred.

  “The maids will be furious – father, put it on the table.”

  “Nonsense. You need to eat. You’re in bed during the day, which makes you an invalid, which means normal rules do not apply.”

  “I’m not in bed.”

  “You’re on bed. It is the same. Now, eat. I command it.”

  It was not worth arguing about and anyway, her stomach had started to rumble. So she did eat, and gratefully too.

  “Do you know how Phoebe and her husband are?” Marianne asked.

  “Sickening.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Russell stood up and picked up the empty tray. “I went to join them for breakfast. But no place had been laid for me!”

  “Because you never come for breakfast.”

  “Well, it didn’t matter, because I took your place.”

  “Oh, I bet they were delighted.”

  He shrugged. “They were mostly focused on one another, simpering and cooing and looking at each other. You know. Looking. I expect Gertie and Charlie will have a new sister or brother next year.” />
  “Father! Get out of my room. I need to dress.”

  He retreated, and Marianne sighed, but she smiled. At least the Claverdons were safe once more in their relationship.

  PHOEBE WAS IN HER MORNING room, reading her correspondence and looking at her diary for upcoming events. She rose when Marianne entered and they embraced.

  “You look pale,” Phoebe said. “Do not read the papers.”

  “Well, that just ensures that I will do that first. Which paper and what am I supposed to avoid?”

  “Oh, Marianne, you will get yourself worked up. It’s the top one on the table. I’ve opened it at the right page.”

  Marianne saw it immediately. There was a long thin column written by Harry Vane, the “celebrated and distinguished investigator of the science of the paranormal” accompanied by a flattering print showing him to be a proud but benevolent man. Marianne took up a pencil as she read, and shaded in some devil’s horns.

  The article alluded to her, of course, and took a swipe at all women who dared to unbalance God’s own order of things, bringing down certain calamity and ruin upon society.

  He drew a parallel between women becoming educated, and the women who were performing séances, using both as an example of the degradation of the feminine.

  By the time she had got to the end of the article, she had stabbed right through the paper.

  “I am taking this,” she said, folding the newspaper up. “I shall write a rebuttal this very afternoon.”

  “Leave it until tomorrow,” Phoebe said. “Today we should go and check on Simeon.”

  Marianne remembered that he had left the scene yesterday, and felt like a bad friend for not thinking of him. “At once,” she said. “Let us go. And after that, we will call on the solicitor and I shall have the balance of payments that is owing to me.”