A Case of Spirits (12 page)

‘I thought he put it down to the weakness of Peter Brand’s heart,’ said Cribb.

‘Oh, he wants to. That’s the explanation that will cause the least offence all round. He doesn’t want the opprobrium of a public murder trial, with us all appearing as witnesses, but he is not such a fool as he seemed this morning, Sergeant. He knows very well that the shock that killed Mr Brand would have killed anyone sitting in that chair at that moment. He is quite convinced that somebody tampered with the apparatus.’

‘And he suspects the professor?’

‘Papa’s argument is that Professor Quayle was the only person in the house that night with a motive for murdering Mr Brand—professional jealousy. That was the explanation of the burglaries, was it not?’

‘Broadly speaking, yes, miss.’

‘Well, my father reasons that the professor must have been the person who crept into the study while Mr Brand was sitting in the chair and caused him to call out and interrupt the seance.’

‘I think he’s correct in that, miss.’

‘He believes that in those few seconds the professor did something to ensure that within a very short time Mr Brand would be subjected to a huge electric shock.’

‘And what was that?’

She smiled. ‘Papa doesn’t know. He says that he is not a policeman. Of course, Mama and I have our own suspicions. We don’t subscribe to Papa’s theory at all.’

‘No, miss?’

‘No, we’re perfectly sure that Professor Quayle is not a murderer. He’s an old friend to us. We’ve known him for a long time, and he often visits us.’

Cribb’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Now that’s a thing I didn’t know.’

‘Oh yes. Papa has been interested in spiritualism for at least ten years. He invited the professor home for dinner after he met him once at a lecture, and he calls socially quite often. When I was younger he always used to bring me sweets—pan-goods and surprise packets—so I
can’t
think of him as a murderer.’

‘With respect, miss, I don’t suppose you could think of him as a house-breaker either, but he is. He admits to it.’

‘Yes, but he isn’t a hardened criminal. You got the stolen things back, didn’t you? I hope he gets a light sentence, poor duck. Mama is exceedingly upset about the whole episode.’

‘I thought your mother disapproved of spiritualists. She didn’t have much time for Peter Brand, if I understood her correct.’

‘Oh, Professor Quayle is as different from Peter Brand as chalk from cheese. A charming man. Besides, he never discusses the spirits with Mama. She has a high opinion of him, I assure you. Do you like hot chestnuts? There’s a man who sells them at the bottom of the hill, near the bridge.’

‘It’s a shade too early in the day, thank you,’ said Cribb.

‘I’ll buy some for your man, then. I hate to walk straight past street-vendors, don’t you? Mama is quite wrong about the spirits, of course. It’s really awfully jolly to get in touch. William, my fiancé, isn’t much better. He gets positively liverish when the lights go out.’

‘So I’ve heard, miss. But
you
don’t get alarmed, I gather. I understand you felt your clothes being tugged and your hair touched on Saturday, is that so?’

‘It’s not at all unusual in a seance,’ said Alice, without really answering the question. ‘There’s no need to agitate oneself about such things, as William did.’

‘Perhaps there’s a natural explanation for what happened, anyway,’ suggested Cribb.

‘I trust not. What a disagreeable thought!’ Alice’s hand went to her hair and rearranged it over her collar.

‘You’re quite convinced that the spirits touched you on Saturday?’ asked Cribb, determined to pin Miss Probert down.

‘I’m sure it wasn’t anybody else in the room.’

‘But you’re equally sure that it happened?’

‘I don’t imagine things, Sergeant.’

‘No, miss.’ It was the nearest he would get to an answer. They were fast approaching the chestnut stall, and he had something else to ask. ‘You said just now that you and Mrs Probert have your own suspicions about Saturday. Might I inquire whom you suspect?’

‘Mr Strathmore.’

‘The scientist?’

‘He is a dangerous man, Sergeant. Papa should never have associated with him. One looks for a degree of detachment in a scientist, a commitment to proceed by the scientific method of hypothesis, investigation and proof. When Mr Strathmore came to the house on Wednesday to prepare the experiment, he revealed himself as anything but detached. His sole object was to set traps and snares, in the conviction that the medium would fall victim to them and show himself to be fraudulent. If Papa had not been firm with him he would have smeared the handles of the chair with carbon so that anything the medium touched would be marked, and he had brought cotton thread with him to weave a giant cat’s cradle around the room, if you please, in the belief that it would snap and prove that the medium had left the chair. Imagine the impression such stratagems would have made on a medium of Mr Brand’s standing!’

‘It might have led to an ugly scene, miss.’

‘Exactly. He was totally fanatical in his determination to prove Mr Brand a charlatan. It was odious to see the way he calculated the position of the chair to the nth degree, just as if he was Sweeney Todd, the infamous barber. It had to be so far back from the curtain so that he couldn’t lean forward and touch it, and the transformer had to out of arm’s reach, and the handles screwed in with screws an inch and a half in length. It makes me shudder to think of it now. He should be a public executioner, not a man of medicine.’

‘That may be so, miss, but I can’t arrest him for that. What you’ve told me doesn’t endear Mr Strathmore to me, but none of it’s against the law.’

‘Don’t you see, Sergeant? He and Papa were the only ones who knew what the chair looked like before Saturday. Between Wednesday and Saturday he must have thought of something else, some horrible appendage to the experiment that turned the chair into an execution chair the moment poor Mr Brand moved his arm or shuffled his foot.’

‘What sort of appendage exactly, miss?’

‘I’m not certain, but then I’m—’

‘Not a policeman, miss? That’s not such a bad thing, if I might say so. Mr Strathmore and your father weren’t the only ones who had a chance to see that chair before Saturday. From what you tell me, I’m bound to suppose that you saw it yourself. And if your mother agrees with you about Mr Strathmore, it’s reasonable to presume that she saw it on Wednesday too. Now I gather also that Mr Nye is a frequent visitor to the house. Would it be too presumptuous to suppose . . .’

She smiled. ‘All right, Sergeant. William saw it too, on Friday, when Mr Brand came—’ She stopped, the colour rising in her cheeks.

They stood still by a pillar-box, only a few yards short of the chestnut stall, the fumes of burning nut-shell and coke wafting towards them. ‘Mr Brand, miss?’ said Cribb. ‘That’s a funny thing. I rather supposed that he must have had a look at the apparatus, but your father didn’t seem to remember the occasion. It was Friday, then.’

‘Friday,’ she confirmed in a low voice. ‘He came to make arrangements about the seance.’

‘That’s understandable, miss.’

‘Please don’t let Papa know I told you. I really don’t know why he was so unwilling to tell you about it.’

‘It’s our secret, miss. Hello, here’s Thackeray. Miss Probert wants to buy you a bag of chestnuts, Thackeray.’

‘That’s very generous, miss.’

The chestnut man touched his cap as Alice approached him. She proffered twopence and said, ‘I believe these gentlemen could catch a bus from here to Charing Cross, is that right?’

It was as neat a way as she could have contrived to terminate the interview.

‘That’s right, miss. Cost ’em a bob each.’ He shovelled a large helping of chestnuts into a bag. Cribb stepped forward to take them, since Thackeray was still holding the basket and they were clearly too hot for a young lady to handle. He passed them to Thackeray in such a way that his back was towards Alice as he deliberately tore the side of the paper bag and dropped the still smoking nuts among the oranges in the basket.

‘Moses, Sarge!’ said Thackeray in bewilderment.

‘Another bag, if you please,’ called Cribb to the salesman.

It was the work of a few seconds to retrieve the hot nuts, and no visible damage was done to the fruit or the basket. To Thackeray it was a wholly mysterious incident, but he contained his curiosity until Miss Probert had set off again along Hill Street on her errand. ‘Why did you do it, Sarge?’ he asked, biting with relish into a chestnut.

‘I wanted to see what was under that layer of oranges. Didn’t you notice?’

‘Yes, Sarge. A lady’s hairbrush and comb. There’s nothing extraordinary in that, is there?’

‘That’s a matter I want you to investigate, Constable. Follow Miss Probert and find out where she goes. You’d better leave the nuts with me, or she’ll smell you coming a mile off.’

Now mark! To be precise
—

Though I say, ‘lies’ all these, at the first stage,

’Tis just for science’ sake:

He considered what he had learnt from Alice Probert. In some particulars she was not to be relied upon—notably her experiences with invisible hands—but this morning’s revelation that Brand had visited the house on Friday had escaped her lips before she realised its significance. Her consequent embarrassment had been genuine, no doubt of that. What she had said stamped Dr Probert as a liar. He had firmly stated that Brand did not visit the house to examine the chair before Saturday.

The difficulty in dealing with Probert was that he was so easy to dislike. Cribb had handled him with kid gloves so far not because he was a friend of Inspector Jowett, but because antagonism towards a witness could lead to errors of judgement. It wanted guarding against. Probert was a liar, but that did not necessarily make him a murderer.

But why should he have lied at all about Brand’s visit to the house? On the face of it, there was nothing sinister in a medium taking a preview of the place where he was to conduct a seance, particularly when the conditions were so unusual. It was questionable whether anyone would consent to being part of an electrical circuit without inspecting the apparatus first. People like Strathmore, dedicated to eliminating every possibility of fraud, might argue that seeing the apparatus in advance gave the medium the opportunity of devising some means of cheating science, but Cribb was not Strathmore; he was investigating a possible murder, not a manifestation. There were more important things at issue now than the validity of an experiment.

Obviously there was a reason why Probert did not wish it to be known that Brand had come to the house. The visit showed Probert—or someone he wished to protect—in an unfavourable light. It could well be connected with something Cribb had turned over in his mind repeatedly since the
post mortem.
There was reason to suspect that Dr Probert, like Miss Crush, had knowingly assisted Peter Brand in his deceptions.

Anyone unacquainted with Cribb’s reasoning on this question could be forgiven for regarding the suggestion as monstrous. Would Probert have gone to the trouble of setting up an elaborate experiment in order to nullify its results by cheating? Cribb’s understanding of events suggested exactly that. At the seance when the spirit hand had seemed to materialise, Probert had been seated next to the medium, holding his left hand. Was it not likely that whilst Brand’s right hand, coated with Blue John, and helpfully liberated by Miss Crush, was describing convolutions in the air, slight pressures and tensions would have been transmitted by his left? And even if Probert could not
see
the rest of Brand’s arm from so close a range, would he not have heard movements of his sleeve and shirt-cuff? More suggestive still were the oranges that had been flung at Nye. If it was accepted that they were not propelled by some supernatural agency, then either Miss Crush had thrown them with her left hand (an unlikely achievement), or Brand had used his right and nobody had noticed the Blue John on it (equally unlikely) or Dr Probert had something to do with it. The bowl containing the oranges had rested on a tripod table within reach of his right hand or Brand’s left.

If Probert
had
conspired with Brand, there had to be an explanation for it. From what Cribb had learnt so far of Brand’s
modus operandi
it was probably blackmail. And the chances were high that on the Friday evening when Brand had gone to Probert’s house to view the apparatus, he had announced his terms. Some dark secret was to be preserved provided Probert, like Miss Crush, co-operated in producing spiritualistic phenomena.

The bus slowed to pick up a passenger, the brake-shoes rasping against the iron tyres. It was a nurse, probably bound for Charing Cross Hospital. Before she approached the platform, Cribb unpeeled the largest chestnut in the bag and offered it to the small boy. Just as the little fist was about to claim it, his mother whisked the child protectively on to her lap, and a seat was provided for the nurse.

It was difficult to imagine the sort of indiscretion that could have made Dr Probert susceptible to blackmail. Unlike Miss Crush, his standing in society was not threatened if a youthful peccadillo came to light. Nor was his marriage. That first conversation with Mrs Probert, before Cribb met the doctor, had convinced him that she was indifferent to her husband’s extramarital distractions, whether they were naked goddesses or dancers from the music hall. No, it was some other thing with Dr Probert. Cribb had a shrewd idea that he would know what it was before the day was through.

For the rest of the journey he managed to retain his seat on the lower deck. From Turnham Green onwards his thoughts were on Mr Henry Strathmore, whom he had decided to interview next.

The
London Directory
gave the address of the Life After Death Society as Albemarle Street, as respectable a location as you could hope to find. The chambers were on the second floor, appropriately enough above the Veterans’ Club. Cribb’s knock was answered by a timid-looking young woman who explained that she was only the typewriter and Mr Strathmore was at lunch. She would be obliged if Cribb would come back at two o’clock. He consulted his watch. It was a quarter to two. He handed her his bowler and said he would wait.

‘The gentleman insisted on waiting,’ explained the typewriter apologetically when the door opened, exactly fifteen minutes later.

Strathmore jammed his monocle into place. ‘I remember you. The gentleman from Scotland—er—won’t you come into my office? Kindly step this way.’

His office would have been like any other but for the picture on the wall behind him. Instead of a portrait of the founder, it was a line-engraving of Daniel Home in horizontal levitation.

From the expression on his face Strathmore would dearly have liked to practise levitation himself at that moment, clean out of the window, down Albemarle Street and away along Piccadilly. ‘What contingency has brought you to this office, Sergeant?’ he asked.

‘Mr Brand’s death, sir,’ said Cribb, as encouragingly as he could. ‘Inspector Jowett has asked me to inquire into the circumstances.’

‘Jowett, yes,’ said Strathmore, as if something slightly offensive had been mentioned. ‘You know, it was quite a shock to learn that Jowett was a peeler. I thought he was a senior Civil Servant at the very least.’

‘I shouldn’t let it depress you, sir. Inspector Jowett isn’t one of your common peelers. He doesn’t walk the beat at nights. He’s got an office of his own and a house in South Norwood.’

‘Has he, my word? I could see there was something genuine about the fellow. Mind you, I don’t attach any importance to class, Sergeant. As a scientist, I cannot rule out the possibility that the spirits—if they exist at all—’ He held up a cautionary finger ‘—might choose to communicate with us through a medium from the labouring class.’ The finger altered in direction to point at the picture behind him. ‘Daniel Home’s father claimed to be the illegitimate son of the 10th Earl of Home, but the medium was raised in quite modest circumstances.’ He gave a thin smile, and added, ‘Perhaps “reared” would be a happier choice of word than “raised” in his particular case.’

‘For that matter, Mr Brand was only the son of a cabman,’ Cribb observed, to bring the conversation down to earth, ‘and he was getting invitations from some very well-connected people.’

‘Yes indeed! There will be a few red faces in Mayfair and Belgravia when his deceptions are generally known. He is an example, I am afraid, of the axiom that breeding will out. I must admit that I had high expectations of Brand myself.’

‘I remember, sir. You told me when I met you at Miss Crush’s house.’

‘Yes. Poor Miss Crush! She was completely taken in. As a scientist, of course, I took a more objective view of Brand. What a scoundrel he turned out to be! An impostor and an enemy of truth! The pity of it is that he enmeshed Professor Quayle in his infamous activities. I am quite sure that was the way of things, Sergeant. Quayle is at bottom a decent man, highly respected in spiritualistic circles. Brand corrupted him. He persuaded him to collaborate in his odious plot to rob the people whose houses he was visiting for seances. And now, you see, Quayle’s own reputation is in ruins. Nobody will believe that he was ever an authentic medium. This appalling affair has set back the cause of spiritualism by at least ten years!’

This interpretation of events was somewhat at variance with Cribb’s, but he had not interrupted because he saw no purpose at this stage in expounding theories of his own. Strathmore, for his part, had clearly needed to give vent to his feelings, and now looked ready to provide rational answers to questions.

‘Would you describe yourself as a spiritualist, sir?’

‘Good Lord, no! That would imply a commitment to the very things I am pledged to examine objectively. I am a scientist, no more and no less.’

‘With respect, sir, the name of your society seems to suggest that the members have made up their minds already.’

‘No more than the Ghost Club at Cambridge University, or the Society for Psychical Research. One has to provide some indication of what one proposes to investigate.’

‘I take your point, sir. And you’ve been a member for twelve years, if I remember right.’

‘Since 1873,’ Strathmore confirmed.

‘You must have investigated quite a little regiment of mediums in that time.’

‘I think I can fairly state that I played some part in most of the inquiries the Society has initiated,’ said Strathmore. ‘I dare say you have seen some marvellous sights, sir.’

‘Very few that I would dignify with that adjective, Sergeant. What might appear spectacular to the layman is of no interest to me if I can see that it is nothing more than a conjuring trick, as it usually is. If I have learned anything in these twelve years it is that the gullibility of the public is limitless.’

‘You’re still a sceptic yourself, are you, sir?’

‘I am, Sergeant, until science shows me otherwise.’

‘But you were prepared to take young Brand seriously?’

‘Yes, indeed. We take every claim seriously until we have had the opportunity of testing it.’

‘Did you know him personally, sir?’

‘Not at all. It is usually better if we do not. My first contact with the young man was the seance at Dr Probert’s on October 31st, the night that Professor Quayle took the opportunity of stealing Miss Crush’s vase. I was sufficiently impressed with that seance to decide to take a second look at Brand, and that in itself is unusual. The phenomena, you see, were not exceptional—we heard some rappings and a spirit voice, as I recall—but they were singularly difficult to account for, although you must allow that it was in no sense a scientific experiment. That came later.’

‘Was that your idea, or Dr Probert’s?’

Strathmore took out his monocle and started polishing the lens. ‘My recollection is that we were considering the possibility from the beginning, but we arranged for Brand to conduct the first seance in uncontrolled conditions to secure his co-operation. The Society has a clear policy over the matter of co-operation with mediums; we tell them exactly what the tests are to be. It really will not do to rip aside the curtains of cabinets or grab at the clothes of spirit forms. Science is capable enough of detecting fraud without melodramatic interventions of that sort.’ He replaced the monocle firmly over his eye.

‘So you devised the test with the electrical circuit,’ said Cribb. ‘Was that an apparatus you had used before, sir?’

‘It was not. It was an invention of Probert’s, but it promised to serve a useful purpose, so I co-operated in its construction.’

‘You visited Dr Probert’s house to assemble the experiment on Wednesday of last week, I believe.’

‘I did, yes, but it seems an age ago now. I should like to emphasise that the apparatus was working perfectly at the end of Wednesday evening. We both took turns at sitting in the chair.’

‘Were arrangements made for Mr Brand to see it before Saturday?’

‘No, that was not necessary,’ said Strathmore. ‘He had agreed to put himself at the disposal of Science, so we showed it to him on Saturday at the commencement of the evening.’

‘Would it surprise you to learn that he visited Dr Probert on Friday evening and inspected the chair then?’

Strathmore’s monocle provided the answer to Cribb’s question by dropping from his eye and landing with an alarming clink on the surface of his desk. When Strathmore added, ‘Devious blighter!’ it was by no means clear whether he was referring to Brand or Probert.

‘I’d like to ask you about Saturday,’ Cribb mildly went on. ‘I’ve heard Inspector Jowett’s account, of course, but I’d like to hear yours, sir, just in case there’s something the inspector forgot. Have you by any chance prepared your report for the Society?’

‘There will be no report,’ said Strathmore firmly. ‘The Society does not exist to perpetuate the memory of charlatans like Brand. I shall give you what recollections I have, however. I take the view that we have a public duty to cooperate with the police, so you may take note of anything I say and put it in your pocket-book, Sergeant. As I recall it, the first part of the evening was devoted to a table-seance and I remember handing you a piece of paper showing the disposition of the sitters.’

‘I was grateful for that, sir.’

‘The first indication of anything unusual was Miss Crush’s observation that the temperature in the room appeared to have dropped, and that was followed by a sequence of raps on the table indicating apparently that a spirit by the name of Walter wished to get in touch. Soon after that a luminous and animated hand was observed, I believe by all present, to be present in the room, hovering above the table in front of the medium. I have no doubt that it was Brand’s right hand coated with some substance of a luminous property.’