A Case of Spirits (11 page)

‘I can see that,’ said Cribb.

‘In a surprisingly short time he was beginning to gain a reputation as a successful medium. I believe he appeared at houses in other parts of London and produced some quite extraordinary phenomena, which I can only presume were engineered with the help of some of his vile acquaintances. He was not a genuine sensitive, I assure you of that. Well, Sergeant, the rest of the story I need hardly recount. Peter became established as the most gifted medium in London and everyone was clamouring to engage him. I confess to you that I participated fully in his deceptions: I pretended to see and hear phenomena that never occurred; I simulated rapping sounds under the table by knocking the heels of my boots together; and I carried things for him under my clothes and passed them to him during the sittings.’

‘What kinds of things were they, ma’am?’

‘Ah, you are thinking of what we in the movement call “apports”, Sergeant, objects that miraculously appear during seances. At times a seance table has been known to be entirely covered by flowers or fruit introduced by the spirits. But Peter would have nothing to do with apport phenomena. He said that it was too open to assertions of trickery. The only objects I carried for him were small boxes containing chemicals which he used to produce luminous effects.’

‘Were you carrying one of them for him on the night of his death?’

‘No. By then he had refined his methods. Anything he used in his more recent appearances he carried himself.’

‘He had fluor-spar on his hand, ma’am, but we found no box upon him. What did he do with it, do you think?’

‘I believe he must have chosen the time before the seance began to spread the chemical over his hand. Then all he had to do was throw the empty box into the fire. He needed to stand near the fire to heat the substance on his hand. If you remember, he placed a fire-screen in the grate shortly before the seance began. Any small amount of the chemical still in the box would not have been noticed burning.’

Cribb nodded. ‘That sounds to me like the way he did it, ma’am. It would have seemed quite innocent at the time, even if someone had noticed him. You didn’t carry anything for him on Saturday evening, then?’

‘Nothing at all, Sergeant. My participation was limited to claiming that I could sense the presence of a spirit and that it actually touched me. And, of course, I was sitting next to Peter so that he could break the link in the chain of hands to produce the various effects.’

‘You weren’t the only one who claimed to have been touched. Alice Probert said she felt a spirit hand upon her. That was the occasion for Captain Nye’s outburst, I believe.’

‘I cannot answer for Miss Probert or Captain Nye,’ Miss Crush primly answered.

‘I suppose not. Did your son—did Peter Brand throw the oranges at Captain Nye himself?’

‘I can assure you that
I
didn’t throw them, Sergeant.’

‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ said Cribb hastily, ‘but I don’t believe a spirit visitor threw them either, and from what you tell me of Brand’s methods I don’t think he would resort to anything as crude as that. You don’t suppose that someone else had broken the link in the chain as well as yourself?’

‘I don’t know what to suppose,’ said Miss Crush. ‘A number of things happened that evening that I find it very difficult to account for, but
supposing
isn’t going to help, is it? You
know
what happened, anyway, don’t you?’

Cribb ignored the question. ‘There’s one thing more, Miss Crush. I believe that you are quite well known in what you call the spiritualist movement.’

‘I flatter myself that I am, Sergeant. I have devoted myself to it with all the energy I lavished on the women’s movement in my youth.’

‘The thing that puzzles me, ma’am, is why you went so far with Peter Brand in his deceptions. It was one thing to play a joke on the Bratts, but quite another to create a fraudulent seance in Dr Probert’s house in front of an investigator from the Life After Death Society. These men were scientists, ma’am, seekers after truth. Sooner or later they were going to find you out and it was certain to destroy your reputation. As well as that, it would do irreparable harm to the cause of spiritualism.’

‘I was well aware of that, Sergeant. There have been exposures enough of fraudulent mediums in recent years. The movement could not afford another.’

‘Then why did you persist with it?’

‘Why do you ask me what is obvious? I had no choice. I was under threats from my son. He was blackmailing me, Sergeant. If I didn’t help him in his infamous deceptions he would have told the world what happened twenty years ago between a cabman and a rather rash disciple of Mr John Stuart Mill.’

Before Cribb left Eaton Square that evening he looked back through the trees at the long white terrace, its windows ablaze with light, spacious windows draped with elegant curtains. Behind them was what Miss Crush called ‘the world’, and it was not difficult to imagine how her youthful indiscretions would have been received there if she had refused to submit to Brand’s blackmail. She was undeserving of pity; he knew that he had only to pass a few hundred yards southwest into Ebury Street and look at the dimly-lit windows of Pimlico with their cheap hangings to banish any pangs he might feel on Miss Crush’s account. But he understood her, and that was what mattered. And he detested blackmail in any form. It was indefensible, whatever the victim might have done. It could also provide a motive for murder.

A right mood for investigation, this!

AS A CORPSE, THACKERAY was less than satisfactory. There were plenty in the Force more lean, pale and passably cadaverous than he. Years of beat-pounding by night left some officers looking like that, while others seemed to put on flesh and get redder in the face with every duty they were ordered to perform. Thackeray was among the latter, and this morning he was the only one available.

‘You might at least try not to look so comfortable in the chair,’ complained Cribb. ‘The body was rigid when we found it, and the hair was standing on end.’

‘Sorry, Sarge. Electrocutions are something new in my experience.’

The apparatus was now restored to its original position in the library, Dr Probert’s transformer having passed all the tests Mr Cage had devised for it. Cribb had been assured that the chair was in good working order. No more than twenty volts could possibly pass through the body of anyone who gripped the handles when the current was switched on.

Cribb had a vivid recollection of the position and appearance of Peter Brand when they had pulled back the curtain on the night of the tragedy, and he was doing his best to recreate the scene with Thackeray’s assistance. Mr Etty must have gone through a not dissimilar procedure each time he set the mode in position for the
Sleeping Nymph
and Satyrs.
Mr Etty, of course, did not have Thackeray to sit for him, but it was Cribb’s opinion that if Thackeray was posing for you it did not matter much whether your subject was a sleeping nymph or a dead medium; you were defeated before you started.

‘You’re still too central,’ he said, regarding Thackeray out of one eye, as if using two would cause him distress. ‘Turn your legs to the right and get your back into the left hand side of the chair and bring your weight forward.’

Thackeray wriggled helpfully.

‘That’s more like it. What are you holding the handles for?’

‘He must have been holding the handles to get an electric shock, Sarge.’

‘He
should
have been,’ said Cribb. ‘The muscles contract at the moment of shock. His hands should have taken an iron grip. But they didn’t. His left arm was hanging down on the left side of the chair. You’ve raised an interesting point there, Thackeray.’

‘Thank you, Sarge,’ beamed Thackeray. Praise from Cribb was too rare to pass unacknowledged.

‘Well, get your arm down, man! Didn’t you hear what I said?’

The beginning of a theory was forming in Cribb’s brain. If Brand had moved his left hand off the handle, perhaps to tamper with the transformer behind him and alter the connexions of the wires in some way, might he not have touched the positive terminal in error and electrocuted himself?

‘See if you can touch the transformer from there, Thackeray. You’ll need to slide further down than that and get your armpit over the chair-arm.’

Thackeray manoeuvred his rump towards the front of the chair and stretched behind with his arm, like a prize-fighter reaching from his corner for a bracer. Unhappily for the theory, his fingers stopped some inches short of the transformer; and unless Brand had got the physique of a gorilla, his arm must have been shorter than Thackeray’s.

Cribb frowned and got on his knees to check that the chair and transformer were correctly placed. Mr Strathmore had efficiently marked the carpet with chalk shortly after the body had been taken from the chair. The present positions corresponded exactly with the outlines.

Before Cribb got up, he picked two small filmy wisps from the carpet near the transformer and held them in the palm of his hand.

‘What have you found, Sarge?’ asked Thackeray.

‘They look like flower petals to me,’ said Cribb. ‘Chrysanthemums probably. There was a vase of them turned over next door.’

‘Somebody must have brought them in on his shoe,’ suggested Thackeray.

‘Possibly,’ said Cribb, placing them carefully between the leaves of his notebook. ‘Are you quite sure you can’t touch the transformer from there?’

‘It’s impossible,’ Thackeray declared. ‘Besides, I’ve thought of something else, Sarge. If he was reaching behind like this, he must have broken contact with the circuit, and that would have been recorded on the dial next door.’

‘That’s a fair observation,’ said Cribb, ‘but what you must remember is that Peter Brand wasn’t noted for playing fair. A man used to working the three card trick isn’t going to let two scientists and a galvanometer get the better of him. If he wanted to free his hand he had only to rest his chin on the handle, and the contact would remain unbroken. Try it.’

Thackeray’s face was already practically in contact with the handle. By turning it an inch or two to the left he achieved the position Cribb had described.

‘The strength of the contact would have changed, of course,’ Cribb went on, ‘but they were looking for a
break
of contact on the galvanometer, and that didn’t happen because he didn’t take his hand off the handle until his chin was in contact. From what I’ve heard from Inspector Jowett there were several variations in the readings, but nothing suspicious enough to bring anyone in here until the needle suddenly indicated a complete break of contact. When we pushed aside the curtain he was dead from a huge electric shock and his hand, or whatever part of him it was that came in contact, had been forced clear by the contraction of the muscles.’

‘It couldn’t have been his hand, Sarge. Look, mine couldn’t possibly reach the transformer,’ said Thackeray, demonstrating by pawing the air with his left hand a good six inches short of the deadly terminal on the cable side of the transformer.

‘If it comes to that,’ said Cribb, ‘there ain’t any part of his body that could have reached that far, unless he was a contortionist as well as a card-sharp. But he must have touched
something
that gave him a lethal shock.’

‘It’s a regular conundrum, Sarge,’ said Thackeray, with his knack of articulating the obvious. ‘May I take my chin off the handle now? My beard’s itching fit to break my concentration.’

Cribb nodded. ‘We won’t learn any more from the chair anyway. There must be something else in all this, Thackeray, something we haven’t considered at all. Let’s look at it from Brand’s point of view. He knows in advance that he’s going to have to do some clever stuff to pull the wool over the scientists’ eyes, so he comes prepared. He brings Blue John, which he uses for the first seance, and he wears a nightshirt under his clothes ready to fake a materialisation in the second half of the evening. But is that enough?’

‘It don’t seem very much,’ said Thackeray. ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t be taken in by
anyone
in a nightshirt.’

‘Don’t count on it,’ warned Cribb. ‘Suggestion is a powerful thing, Thackeray. They’d seen one apparition already that night, in the shape of a disembodied hand. They were sitting in near-darkness waiting for the next. I believe some of ’em took
me
for a ghost when I walked in—and I wasn’t wearing a nightshirt. Take my word for it, you’d have been shaking in your boots like the rest of ’em.’

‘I usually do if I meet you unexpected, Sarge.’

‘Really?’ said Cribb, momentarily disturbed. ‘I can’t think why. The point I was coming to is that if Brand knew in advance that he was going to be seated in this chair for an experiment, he would surely have devised some way of cheating.’

‘How would he go about it, Sarge?’

‘That’s a question I’d rather not answer before I know whether the first assumption is correct. The way to find out whether Brand inspected this apparatus before last Saturday is to ask the Proberts.’

They were in the drawing-room across the hall where Cribb had first met them. Mrs Probert, whom he noticed first because he was determined not to overlook her this time, was seated in her favourite place under the palm. Dr Probert was standing at the window looking out at the nannies doing perambulator duty on the Terrace. At the fireplace was Alice, dressed to go out in a dark green coat with a frogged front, and a large plush hat of the same colour with a dash of white in the trimming. She was adjusting it at the mirror.

‘What do you want, man?’ demanded Probert, without taking his eyes off the nannies.

‘A little of your time, if it can be spared, sir—and ladies.’

‘My daughter’s just going out,’ said Probert. ‘It’s a damned fool thing to be doing on a day like this, but she won’t be told. Charity can’t study the weather, she says. She’ll die of pneumonia before she’s twenty-five, while the great unwashed of Richmond grow old and get fat on the fruit and veg. she’s given ’em.’

‘It’s not like that at all, Father,’ said Alice, glancing into the mirror at Cribb. Her face had a doll-like neatness, with large blue eyes and high cheek-bones that gave the permanent promise of a smile. ‘They certainly won’t get fat on the meagre amount provide. Letting them know that someone cares is what really matters. The food is a mere gesture.’

‘If that’s all it is, let’s keep the five shillings a week and have a bottle of champagne on Saturdays,’ said Mrs Probert.

‘Mama, that’s a dreadful thing to say in front of the sergeant!’ Alice chided her. ‘Don’t take any notice, Mr Cribb. You can’t rely upon a quarter of the things she says.’

‘If my arithmetic is right, that means three-quarters of the things I say are reliable,’ said Mrs Probert without a glance in her daughter’s direction. ‘If the words of other people in this house—not to say their conduct—could be relied upon to that extent, the sergeant would have an easier task.’

Alice turned from the mirror to look at her mother, an action insignificant in normal circumstances, but noteworthy in this family, whose members seemed to have evolved monolithic existences based on the least possible acknowledgement of each other’s presence. ‘What are you insinuating by that remark, Mother?’

Mrs Probert continued to look at the carpet. ‘That’s a bold new hat you are taking so much care over arranging, my dear. If the hat fits, wear it, I say,’ she said mysteriously.

Alice indulged in another long look at Mrs Probert, a look singularly devoid of the regard a daughter might be expected to feel for her mother. Then she addressed Cribb. ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to speak to Papa in private?’

‘Not at all, miss, but if I’m delaying you—’

‘I can wait a few minutes.’

‘In that case, miss, I’ll presently escort you down the hill. I’ve got a constable sitting in the hall who can carry your gifts for the poor.’

‘That’s very obliging of you. It’s a shopping-basket, you know, not the sort of thing one generally sees a policeman carrying.’

‘Don’t concern yourself, miss. I’ll see that he keeps a respectable distance behind us. Now, Doctor, if I may . . .’

Probert turned at last from the window. ‘What is the trouble then?’

The phrase came so readily that Cribb suspected it was the one the doctor used in consultations.

‘No trouble at present, sir. I’m merely wanting to establish certain facts touching on the death of Mr Brand. That apparatus in the library, sir: when did you get it ready?’

‘The chair, you mean? On Wednesday of last week, I believe. Strathmore came to help me. It didn’t take long. We had to screw on the brass handles and connect the various wires, but to a scientist it’s a very elementary piece of wiring. There really wasn’t much to go wrong, which makes the accident all the more baffling.’

‘It’s a puzzle indeed, sir. Mr Strathmore helped you, you say?’

‘Helped him drink his claret,’ put in Mrs Probert.

‘That was
after
we had set up the experiment,’ said Probert, sensitive, for once, to an interruption from his wife. ‘It is not done to offer muffins and tea to a professional acquaintance. The answer, Sergeant, is yes. Mr Strathmore helped me. It was fortunate as it turned out. We can both vouch for the safety of the apparatus. I believe your expert from the Home Office was unable to detect any fault in the wiring.’

‘That’s correct, sir.’

‘The transformer was found to be in good order?’

‘Perfect, sir.’

‘I thought so. The wire and the galvanometer were new. I purchased them from Mr Cooper, who owns the supply station. It’s a rum go, is all this. You know, I’ve been trying to decide whether it was Brand’s dickey heart that did for him. He
looked
as though he’d been subjected to a powerful shock. I’d have staked my reputation on that, but I suppose twenty volts or so of electricity could be just as destructive to a chap in his condition as several hundred to you or me.’

‘That may be so, sir, but it doesn’t account for the fracturing of several of his bones. Do you mind if I continue with my questions? Did Mr Brand by any chance inspect the apparatus before Saturday night?’

‘No,’ said Probert firmly.

Alice turned from the mirror. ‘But Papa—’

‘Brand did not inspect the apparatus before Saturday night,’ Probert insisted in a way that brooked no challenge from his daughter. ‘Without wishing to denigrate Mr Brand, I think it must be obvious that he was not the class of person one invites to one’s house except in a professional capacity.’

‘I was thinking that for professional reasons he would have wished to come in advance, to view the room where the seance was to be held,’ said Cribb.

‘You have obviously forgotten that Brand came here previously for a seance,’ said Probert. ‘It was on October 31st, the night the vase was stolen from Miss Crush’s residence. He had an ample opportunity then to inspect the room.’

‘But he didn’t see the chair before Saturday?’

‘That is so. If we’d given the fellow a chance to make preparations, it would have invalidated the blasted experiment. Is the interrogation over?’

‘For the present, sir, I’m obliged to you,’ said Cribb as if it was a wrench to take himself away from such congenial company. ‘Now, Miss Alice, where’s that basket?’

Half way down Richmond Hill, with Thackeray ten yards in the rear carrying a shopping basket topped with oranges, Alice Probert said to Cribb, ‘You believe Peter Brand was murdered, don’t you?’

‘It’s a possibility, miss.’

‘Papa thinks so, too. He thinks Professor Quayle did it.’