The Ghost Hunters

by Neil Spring

  He held an image out for me to see: Schneider strapped into his chair, Price holding him down, the ghostly mist hanging in the air before them. ‘Look here – the plate in the overhead stereoscopic camera was fogged by the light of the flash striking the lenses.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘But see here …’ He produced a separate image, this one much clearer than the first. ‘The stereoscopic camera at the side of the counterpoise table reveals something quite different.’

  I stared as my mind went blank. It wasn’t possible. How could it be possible?

  Somehow Schneider had managed to free his right arm and put it behind his back.

  ‘Clearly,’ said Price, ‘the flash ignited before he had time to get his arm back into place.’

  I rejected the suggestion immediately. ‘That doesn’t mean he faked it, Harry. How could he have done that? How could you not have seen it? You were sitting right in front of him! We saw hands, my father’s hands – I saw a torso in the smoke. My father!’

  ‘Sarah, I am afraid what you saw was nothing but the talents of a very clever man.’

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘Come now, you know as well as I do the wiles of the wizards; you know that no seance these days is complete without a materialisation. The production of luminous hands or faces is part of their routine. I admit it was an extremely convincing performance, but you and I have witnessed these tricks many times; you know how it’s done. Trapdoors, sliding panels with a waiting accomplice dressed in wigs, costumes and make-up, balloons painted with luminous faces. What you saw last night was no different. The only tangible difference is that you had an emotional investment in this experiment. I don’t have the full answer, not yet, but I will. I’ll work it out. But one thing I do know: these photographs can make us certain it was an illusion.’

  For seconds, perhaps a whole minute, I was speechless. I tried as best I could to frame an explanation. ‘Perhaps … perhaps the flash startled him and … and he jerked his arm away. Or perhaps, like Marianne Foyster, he connects with occult forces he can’t always control, and his powers are … unreliable, and when they wane he resorts to the occasional attempt at trickery.’

  I could hear how ridiculous I sounded. Price was staring at me sadly. ‘I don’t think so. Earlier this morning, before you came in, I confronted Schneider with these photographs and made him understand that I believed he had cheated.’

  I attempted to steady myself. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Price. ‘He met my accusation with complete silence. And silence, my dear, is the first refuge of a scoundrel.’

  I cradled my head in my hands as the world around me fractured. ‘Harry … this is too much.’

  ‘You must believe it. There is no doubt. The entire performance was fraudulent.’

  My eyes floated up to meet his as I shook my head in denial. ‘You normally explain how, but this time …’ Price stared at me. ‘You don’t know, do you? You have no idea.’

  ‘I know he got his arm free. That is enough.’

  He amazed me with his apparent lack of concern. He had believed in Schneider faithfully, had spent hundreds of pounds courting the man, testing him. ‘But there was music, Harry – my father’s music. I heard it! A nursery rhyme. Didn’t you?’

  ‘I heard nothing.’

  My hands flew to the side of my face as my temper threatened to explode. ‘How can you be so calm?’ I demanded. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’ I could sense it from the way he was pursing his lips. ‘Harry?’

  He held my gaze. ‘Sarah, all you need to know is that Schneider said something to me which convinced me he was lying.’

  I rose shakily out of my chair, my heart racing. ‘I will decide what I need to know. Tell me now. What did he say to you?’

  ‘Very well.’ Price sighed deeply. ‘I asked Schneider this morning what effect the seance had on him, what it felt like, what he heard, sensed and saw.’

  ‘And … ?’

  ‘He told me a message was imparted to him from beyond, a message … from your father.’

  My fists clenched as I braced myself. ‘Well?’

  ‘He said your father was a weak man.’ Price hesitated. ‘He called him a coward.’

  I stepped back into an endless silence. Then, when at last I found the words: ‘But my father died fighting for his king and his country! A coward? He was a hero!’

  ‘I know,’ Price said quietly. ‘So you see now – complete and utter nonsense. We would be wrong to waste any more of our precious time on Schneider.’

  I could barely contain my rage. I flew to the door, but before I could step out into the hallway a mumbled remark from Price made me stop dead.

  I turned slowly, feeling something close to dread rising within me. ‘What did you say?’

  Price shook his head. ‘What?’

  ‘Repeat what you just said!’ I demanded.

  ‘I said, we will tell the world about this.’ He pronounced these words as if nothing were more obvious or straightforward. ‘I’ll write a detailed report explaining why Schneider is a fraud.’

  ‘No, you can’t!’

  ‘Sarah, you must know that I have to make this public. It is my duty.’2

  There followed another prolonged silence as the gravity of his words pulled me down into a mood of bleak resentment. From the street below I could hear every sound of normality – the bell of a passing bike, the hum of an engine, a dog barking. They seemed a world away from this room.

  ‘You knew all along that Schneider was a fraud. Just like Velma Crawshaw! You must have known; you were so keen to have him visit us.’

  Price’s silence incriminated him.

  ‘You encouraged him,’ I continued, my limbs trembling uncontrollably at the realisation, ‘so that you could bring him down – and you used me to do it, Harry. My own father!’

  ‘I needed to ensure Schneider gave us his best performance, Sarah.’

  ‘Harold Robert Grey will not become a chapter in your next book,’ I said, turning away from him in disgust. He reached for my arm.

  ‘Don’t you dare touch me!’ I cried, spinning round. ‘You’ve done enough damage to me as it is without this.’

  ‘What … what do you mean?’ I had never heard him so hesitant, so worried.

  I longed to fire at him the secret I had kept, to hurt him as badly as I had been hurt. But the words refused to come.

  ‘All this time you’ve been waiting for the perfect opportunity to show the whole world that you were right, just to grab a quick headline, just to show all your competitors at the Society for Psychical Research that you were in control.’

  ‘I am in control,’ he snapped. ‘After this, it will be necessary for previous investigators to revise their findings.’

  ‘You used me! My own father, Harry. How could you do that? What on earth will Mother say? This could ruin her – she thought this was real! I thought this was real!’

  My tears broke through then as the hopelessness of my predicament and the full impact of my remorse washed over me. I stared helplessly across at the glass cabinet full of the items that Price had collected from the many fraudulent mediums we had worked with, scrutinised and exposed. And there, on the top shelf, in prime position, mocking me, was the handkerchief that Rudi had made dance around the lamp.

  If Price had said something to me then I wouldn’t have heard it, for the pain I felt filled my head, obliterating my blind love for the man. Something inside me withered and died.

  ‘Sarah—’

  ‘No. No more,’ I said, trying my hardest to stem the flow of my tears. ‘I gave you my trust … you deceived me.’

  ‘Sarah, please—’

  I knew what I had to do. I spoke in a resolute tone, taming the trembling within. ‘Albert Einstein once said the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I must be insane to have imagined this could ever be any different. To even hope yo
u could change for me. I can’t do this any more, Harry.’

  Then I stood, turned my back and prised myself away from the man who had plucked me from an ordinary existence and dropped me, so carelessly, into his peculiar, uncharted waters.

  ‘But why? Where will you go?’ The tremor of concern in his voice made leaving him so much harder.

  ‘I’ll find somewhere,’ I muttered, feeling lost and scared, knowing that I needed to collect my thoughts and focus on finding another job away from this peculiar subject, if only for a short while; then I would be able to stand alone. Independent. Free from all of this. But where to start?

  Suddenly I was struck with a wonderful idea. Films. Yes! From my brief days in modelling for Eve magazine I knew something about how performers were cast. I had developed all the right skills while working with Price to be able to promote people and events, to whip up publicity where it was needed, not to mention a good knowledge of photography. I made my mind up then. I would apply to one of the new film companies operating out of Soho. I would act as though the Laboratory and Borley Rectory and everything in between had never happened.

  Suddenly Price was beside me, his weighty hand on my shoulder, his voice soft and somehow distant. ‘Please stay. I need you, Sarah.’

  ‘You never asked how I coped, Harry. When you were away in hospital and I was here alone. You never asked where I went, what I did.’

  He looked away guiltily, then met my gaze. ‘But I can help … financially. You and your mother. Like before—’

  ‘Before?’

  And suddenly it all made uncomfortable, terrible sense to me: the new kitchen wireless, the new armchair that appeared in the drawing room when I had left London two years earlier. ‘You gave her money, didn’t you? When I was away in Yorkshire. No wonder she agreed to the experiment with Schneider. You bought her trust! You put her – us – in your debt.’

  ‘It wasn’t a loan,’ he rushed to assure me, his eyes red and wounded. ‘You weren’t working. I wanted you both to be all right. I was trying to help.’

  I thought back to the night before we had gone to the Rectory in the summer of 1929. The night he had escorted me home. ‘You’d kept Mother’s bracelet all that time. You used it so that you could win her trust.’

  He looked confused now, as if he had expected me to be grateful for his peculiar generosity. ‘No, you’ve got it wrong. Do you really think I could be so devious? Sarah, look at me. We can forget all about this.’

  ‘Do you realise what you’re saying? What you’re asking me to do? What sort of person do you think I am? Do you think I can just walk away from this and pretend that it doesn’t matter?’

  ‘But you can’t leave. I rely on you now.’

  ‘And who do I rely on?’ The words caught in my throat. I swallowed. ‘We don’t want your money, we never did! How … how could you do this? Our greatest fear was that Schneider would trick us, and you cheated us into it. You manipulated us.’

  ‘No, no.’ He attempted a smile. ‘Do you remember, this was where we met? Right here in this room. I asked you whether you could type. I asked you to be my assistant. Remember?’

  How long will you follow him, Sarah? How long?

  ‘Miss Grey,’ he said hopefully, remembering, ‘can you type? I believe there is a vacancy.’ He smiled; he was trying to be sweet, but the words stung.

  ‘I respectfully decline,’ I said, wiping away a tear as I stepped backwards, away from him, towards the door. My head pounded as I fought against my trembling legs. You must keep control now, Sarah, I told myself. I took a deep breath and said, ‘This isn’t the end, Harry Price. I’m sure one day I’ll see you again. But I need time. I need to begin again. Can you understand?’

  He looked past me, staring dejectedly out of the sash window.

  ‘I will miss you, Miss Grey.’

  The finality and acceptance in those words brought a numbing pain to my head and heart.

  ‘I will miss you too,’ I said quietly, with the greatest effort.

  And then I walked out of the door, out of the Laboratory and out of Harry Price’s life.

  * * *

  Notes

  1 ‘An Authentic Interview with Conan Doyle from Beyond’.

  2 Price seems not to have made this decision immediately. A few weeks after developing the photograph he wrote a particularly intimidating letter to Rudi informing him of the ‘suspicious-looking photograph’: ‘I am just commencing my report on the series of séances we held with you in the spring. I have not yet decided what to do with the photograph we took of you when trying the handkerchief experiment. It is so suspicious looking that there really is only one construction to be put on it’ (27 May 1932).

  Part III

  The Bad Death of Harry Price

  ‘It is fatal to have anything to do with Borley.’

  – Sidney Glanville, Harry Price’s ‘Chief Investigator’

  – 27 –

  THE GATHERING STORM

  Now began an uncertain but exciting period in my life – though at first it hardly seemed so. Weeks passed, months passed, and as the blank seasons flew by life seemed to me altogether less interesting. Gone was the nervous anticipation at the thought of what new discoveries the day might bring; gone were the thrilling night-time adventures to strange places; and gone was the rush of excitement that came each time Price took my hand, looked into my eyes or whispered to me to follow him. And though I tried to forget, my every attempt was met with failure that was fraught with frustration – at him and, increasingly, myself.

  Of course, I didn’t tell Mother that Price suspected Schneider was a fraud. What would be the point? I still hoped there was a chance he would keep his doubts private, and spare us both yet further sadness. Nor did I ever mention the money she had accepted from Price: her pride and dignity were too valuable to me.

  I lived in habitual monotony, dragging myself out of bed each day, following routines robotically. A mechanical existence. I wanted to move on, to pursue the new career I had dreamed of, to see Amy again if I could only cover my embarrassment. But like a ghost I returned week after week to the places in my past that were familiar to me because I had visited them with Price: the restaurants, bars and cake shops on Piccadilly. Wherever my mood took me, the shadow of his memory went too. I saw him everywhere: in the reflections of shop windows, at street corners and in my dreams, his broad silhouette outlined against a vast isolated moor, the outline of the Rectory visible in the distance behind him.

  I had only one item by which to remember him – the St Ignatius brass medallion. And this alone restored my confidence in the life change I had committed to, for a bad air seemed to hang about it like a disease. On the few occasions I dared to pick it up, I did so carefully and only for the briefest period. Then I would remember. And my world would turn dark.

  I could at least keep the thing away from me, keep whatever evil I sensed radiating from it at bay. I left the medallion in the top drawer of the cabinet next to my bed, resting on the brown leather jacket of the Holy Book.

  It was less easy to deal with the faint sounds that came occasionally from the partition wall that divided Mother’s bedroom from mine.

  On a blustery night in December 1932 I was lying in bed when I noticed it again: tap-tap-scratch; tap-tap, scratch.

  I got out of bed, shivering in my nightdress, and went gingerly to the corner of the room nearest the window, pressing my ear to the wall. No squeaking, rustling or scurrying. And no mouse droppings in the house.

  The faint, insistent sounds taunted me: Tap-tap-scratch; tap-tap, scratch.

  I slapped my hand against the wall. Silence, quickly followed by the scrape of Mother’s bedroom door on the carpet as she came out on to the landing.

  I joined her in the gloom.

  ‘Did you hear something?’ I asked.

  ‘Only you,’ she replied. Her face was pale and blank, and unquestionably innocent. ‘Try to get some rest, Sarah, please.’

  Oh, b
ut how I longed for rest! How I wished for the cobwebs in my head to blow away. I sat, hour after hour, watching the rain run down my windowpane, contemplating with regret the countless opportunities I had forfeited because of him. All around me old attitudes were changing, class barriers being dismantled, women occupying all manner of professions beyond domestic employment – in factories, on the land and even on the buses. It had been that way for years but I hadn’t really noticed. I had been left behind.

  By January 1933, ten months after Price had detected the suspected fraud in the photograph of Rudi Schneider, I was simmering with resentment not only of him, but also of the other ladies my age who were embracing the new egalitarianism of the times, flocking to the dance halls and jazz clubs of London and exchanging weekly invitations to afternoon tea. I wondered how my old friends spoke of me now. How did Amy, who was married with a family of her own, remember the old Sarah, the ambitious, glamorous Sarah who had loved life? I imagined her mocking me with her new friends: ‘the ghost hunter’s assistant’.

  And of course I couldn’t help wondering what had become of Vernon Wall. I had heard nothing from him. No phone calls, not even a letter. Nor had I noticed any more of his newspaper articles, and believe me when I say that I scanned all of the newspapers every morning. According to Mother – who had heard as much from a friend – the young journalist had taken off, deserting London for a woman in Italy. Lake Como. Whether it was true, I had no idea. I hoped it wasn’t.

  The preponderance of my negative thoughts was so great that by February I began to feel unwell, waking each morning to a dull ache pulling at the bottom of my spine. I felt bloated and quickly lost my appetite. Something, I was sure, was wrong, yet I did not respond with the urgency I should have done, or would have done had I been in a healthier frame of mind. It was Mother I had to thank for eventually persuading me to see a doctor. I did so reluctantly, little imagining I would soon find myself admitted to the Chelsea Hospital for Women for an operation. A small growth – they called it a subserous fibroid – was growing from the outside wall of my uterus into my pelvis; it was removed and afterwards I spent fourteen days recovering. And as I lay in my bed at night, listening to the sounds of the hospital and the other sick women, for the first time in many months my spirits rose. I was lucky. Unlike some of the women around me, I was going to be all right.