From Aberystwyth with Love (16 page)

Madame Sosostris strode in with a self-consciously theatrical demeanour, and the members of the sitting simmered with anticipation. She was in her early sixties, wore a purple dress and had a large bosom which supported a chain of heavy amber beads. She wore the stern expression of a schoolmistress who tolerated no nonsense from her girls and would equally tolerate no monkey business from the spirits at her séance.

The lights were dimmed and Madame Sosostris closed her eyes and clasped her hands; she lowered her head slightly. After a while she began to moan. The excitement intensified, meaningful looks were exchanged around the table. She began to speak in a voice that was not her own, or rather was not the one she had used when she greeted the guests. This was the voice of her personal go-between in the spirit world; for a reason not disclosed she didn’t talk directly to the spirit but the information was relayed via this intermediary who was called Prince Marmion. Not much information was available concerning this prince, such as when he had reigned and where and what sort of palace he inhabited, but one of the spinsters whispered with a glint of excitement in her eye that he was a ‘dark fellow’.

Prince Marmion told the two spinsters that Lucy their third sister was happy and did not resent them for abandoning her during the final years of her illness. They were told that they should not reproach themselves, the bitter terrors of a painful death which Lucy had endured alone had now been forgotten. The old man was informed that his late wife had noticed his collars were slacker than they used to be and was worried that he wasn’t eating as well as he should. He ran his finger around the collar and indeed the spirit seemed to be correct. The man made an apologetic smile to us as if he had been caught out in an indiscretion. All the while, Madame Sosostris maintained her ‘trance’ and allowed herself to be the conduit to the prince’s insights. She groaned a few more times, and then told the old man that his late wife was a bit short of cash because things were so expensive in heaven. He took out a ten pound note and passed it across the table. Prince Marmion promised to see that she got it without delay. Then he asked, ‘Is there a doctor here?’ It seemed like an easy guess but the two sisters expressed admiration for the acuity of the prince’s vision. ‘I have a message from William, he’s in a terrible place,’ said Prince Marmion.

Calamity grabbed my hand. ‘Papa, the prince is talking about Wild Bill!’

‘Hush now, Lucrezia! Let the spirit speak.’

‘He is in a dark and terrible place, with lots of cockroaches,’ said the spirit. ‘He’s not happy. And hanging over him is the shadow of the curse of the man he slew!’

There were gasps round the table: it didn’t usually get as juicy as this.

‘And now he broods upon his wasted life and contemplates a desperate action. You must save him, you must go and implore him not to lose faith, not to lose heart, because the dear Lord is watching over him, even in the darkest pit, even when it least seems like it.’

The old man watched the medium, entranced, the sisters nodded at the wisdom of the prince’s advice because this description of the MO of the Lord accorded exactly with their understanding of his benevolence.

‘But wait!’ said Prince Marmion. ‘There is something else . . . another person  . . .’

The tension increased, people strained to hear the spirit’s next words.

‘A woman, the spirit of a beautiful, sad and desolate woman, a sweet lady who died young, whose little limbs were tormented on the rack of the infirmary bed, night after night on fire with the fever that started in her foot—’

‘Papa, it’s mama!’ said Calamity.

‘Isabella,’ I cried, ‘Isabella! Is it you?’

‘Oh the poor man,’ whispered one of the sisters. The old man watched, his lower jaw thrust forward in fascination.

‘Isabella!’

‘Oh!’ cried the prince. ‘She is receding, receding, receding . . . going away into the fog. I could try to call her but she won’t respond, she is going far away over the misty plain  . . .’

After the séance the sitters were quickly ushered out by the maid. We retrieved our coats and returned to the parlour. We asked the maid to inform Madame Sosostris that the police would like to have a word with her. She sailed in with a slightly less regal air than before and looked perplexed and slightly anxious. I pulled out my wallet and let it fall open to show my badge the way the TV cops do. ‘I’m Detective Medavoy and this is Loo-tenant Sipowicz.’

Calamity gave her a steely gaze.

I threw the bogus letter down on the coffee table. ‘I don’t need to ask whether you recognise this.’

Madame Sosostris’s eyes widened but she said nothing.

Calamity examined her nails and spoke to them. ‘Funny, I never took her for the type who would fall for the Ehrich Weiss. I had her down as someone smarter.’

‘W . . . what do you mean?’ asked Madame Sosostris.

‘Make a habit of reading other people’s mail, do you?’ I said.

Madame Sosostris glanced at the letter and stammered, ‘The letter just fell out of your coat  . . .’

‘I know, and you just accidentally read it.’

‘Oldest trick in the book,’ said Calamity.

‘I haven’t done anything,’ she said.

‘Keep it for the DA,’ I sneered, then turned to Calamity. ‘What do you reckon we got ourselves here, loo-tenant? The genuine article or one of those “gottle of geer” jobs?’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Madame Sosostris.

‘Don’t play coy with us, Sosostris,’ I said.

‘Prince Marmion a regular visitor here, is he?’ said Calamity. ‘Or just some clever piece of voice projection?’

‘I’m not a ventriloquist, if that’s what you are trying to imply.’

I snorted. ‘What would you say if I told you Prince Marmion has been in Acapulco for the whole of the past month?’

‘No!’

‘I’ve got fourteen witnesses who can place him within two blocks of the casino. What have you got?’

‘A nickel’s worth of nothing,’ said Calamity. ‘Medium schmedium. Just a two-bit toffee apple grifter peering into the crystal ball and seeing dollar signs.’

I leaned forward, close to Madame Sosostris. ‘You spent any time in the Pen recently?’

‘Whose pen?’

‘She thinks you’re talking about a Biro, boss,’ said Calamity.

‘Sure she does. Listen up, Sosostris, we send you to Shrewsbury the only pen you’ll hear about will be the one some cell-block big shot hammers into your ear.’ I began to shout, ‘Through the ear, Sosostris, so you can hear it going bang bang bang!’

‘No!’

‘Yes!’ said Calamity. ‘Last thing you ever hear: the sound of a Biro being hammered into your brain.’

‘No, no, no! They would never do a thing like that.’

‘Of course they would,’ said Calamity. ‘Why do you think they call it the Pen?’

‘They put them other places too,’ I said. ‘Some of those felons in Shrewsbury gaol are none too refined.’

‘I’ll thank you not to use profanity in my house!’

‘Oh you don’t like profanity, huh? We’d better not send you to prison then. Make a note of that, loo-tenant, the perp. doesn’t like profanity.’

‘Maybe we’ll send you to the Girl Guides’ jamboree instead,’ said Calamity.

‘Play her the tape, loo-tenant.’

‘What tape?’ said Madame Sosostris.

Calamity took the portable cassette player out and banged it down on the table. She punched the play button the way the Feds do in the movies. She said, ‘One of our guys wearing a wire caught this. We think it’s one of your séances. You prove to us it’s not, maybe we can ride you a little easier.’ The tape began to play. ‘Recognise any of this? That demonic laughter, one of yours is it?’

‘No, no, he’s not one of mine.’

‘We think it is,’ I said.

‘I’ve never heard it before. It’s not Astaroth, his voice is deeper, and it’s not Caacrinolaas nor Malacoda; and the Tartaruchi never laugh; it’s not Zelusrous, nor Xitragupten, nor Oulotep, and defintely not Naberius. No, it’s not one of my usual ones. Please don’t send me to the Pen, I don’t want to die like that.’

‘What about the squeals?’ I said. ‘I guess you don’t know anything about them either?’

‘No!’

‘Think about it, Sosostris,’ said Calamity. ‘You’re looking down the barrel of twenty years.’

‘What for? I’ve done nothing wrong.’

Calamity gave a bitter laugh. ‘Nothing wrong? We caught you red-handed!’

‘Doing what?’

‘Money laundering.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

Calamity gave me her cynical, world-weary cop’s scowl. ‘They think once it passes through them pearly gates we can’t trace it.’

‘Or maybe that ten pound won’t even get that far,’ I said. ‘Maybe it will end up in the cashier’s pouch down at the bingo.’

‘No, no, you don’t understand . . . I can explain about the money.’

‘Save your breath,’ I said. ‘We saw that money passed across the table, we caught it on hidden camera.’

‘But it’s not like you think.’

‘It never is,’ said Calamity. ‘Robbing an old guy like that of his pension.’

‘I wasn’t robbing him, he knows it doesn’t really go to the spirits. We have to do it this way, you see. That Mr Williams is a kind man, a very decent man.’

Calamity and I exchanged frowns. We hadn’t been expecting this.

‘Oh, what’s the point?’ sighed Madame Sosostris. ‘You’ve already made up your mind, you don’t care about the truth, you just want to send me to the Pen.’

‘Of course we care about the truth,’ I said, puzzled. ‘Just tell us how it was. We saw you taking that man’s money, but maybe we didn’t see right.’

‘Take your time, ma’am, and tell us in your own words,’ said Calamity.

Madame Sosostris paused as if summoning up the strength to go on. ‘He started coming to my sittings when his wife got sick. She wasn’t what you might call an easy woman, Mrs Williams. No, not easy at all. She was one of those women who liked to organise everything, you see, she liked everything “just so” and woe betide you if it wasn’t. She used to send him here to make the arrangements for when she went to heaven, so it would be just how she wanted.’ Madame Sosostris paused and grimaced slightly as if the next bit was hard to say. ‘I’ve never . . . I’ve never been a very attractive woman, I know that. But Mr Williams didn’t seem to mind. He would stay for tea and, with time, when the weather turned nice and summer was upon us, we would sometimes drink pop – dandelion and burdock and on occasion, why! we might even treat ourselves to a glass of shandy. Mr Williams would take the bottles back for a refund and give the pennies to me, saying it was a little something for the spirits. That’s how it started. It became our little joke. Oh! We would chat so gaily. I suppose it sounds absurd to big city people like you, but I’d never had conversations like that before, not with . . . with someone who liked me. This isn’t easy for me to say but I’m afraid our friendship led us to stray from the path of righteousness. There were consequences. A child. A little girl called Maddy. This was fifteen years ago, Aberaeron was different then – there was no way we could even think of keeping her. Mrs Williams was still alive, you see, and despite having made very elaborate provisions for her accession to heaven she didn’t show any great impatience to finish the job. So we decided to give Maddy to my sister in Gwent who would bring her up as her own.’ Madame Sosostris clenched the tablecloth in her fists. ‘I’ve never been very good with words, so I won’t even try and say how that felt, giving her up, the fruit of the only episode of happiness I had ever known. Such a harmless thing, happiness, and yet we always seem to end up being punished for enjoying it. Mr Williams never saw her after that. I mean he never met her, although I do suspect he goes away sometimes and watches her through his binoculars. He goes on birdwatching trips, you see. But for fifteen years now he has given me anything he can spare for her. This is his way. A little money slipped across the table to be passed on to the spirits. That way the gossips round here will be none the wiser and he goes home happy that his daughter will have the occasional treat.’ A shiny tear fell on to the tablecloth. ‘May the Lord have mercy on us both. We were weak, led astray by laughter and summer days filled with gaiety and shandy, in a life that had always been as dour as the cover of a Bible. Was it such a sin? Life is so hard sometimes, so hard . . . so . . . cruel.’