The Darke Chronicles (7 page)

‘Well, all these little tricks can be accounted for quite easily. Dim lighting in a dark room with drapes on the walls allows for a number of accomplices to create numerous tricks. The perfume that your mother wore, for example, would be sprayed near your father at the appropriate moment. A muffled female voice which says little and yet professes to be your mother can be most convincing in such circumstances, especially when your father wants to believe it is her in the first place. So, we can eliminate any special magic in the séances. It is the angel that is the masterstroke. It is the appearance of this celestial visitor that has fully convinced your father that such supernatural shenanigans are possible; and thus gives credence to these medium shows. Therefore, it is this winged messenger that is to be the focus of our investigation.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘First I should like to come down to your house and scrutinise the scene of the visitation. I would need a couple of hours for such an investigation when your father was not there. Is that possible?’

‘He comes up to town every Friday to lunch with an old friend and play billiards at his club. He leaves on the ten o’clock train and returns at six.’

‘Excellent. Would a visit this Friday be acceptable to you?’

‘And so, my dear Inspector Thornton, I thought you would like to accompany me on my little investigation down at the Hordern residence. It is situated near Leatherhead.’

‘How can I resist? You have made the whole affair sound quite intriguing.’

‘Well, I suspect it will be instructional. Along the way we should learn how to create an angel.’

The Hordern house, a three-storey mock Gothic pile built in the 1840s, was situated some three miles from Leatherhead. The two friends engaged the services of a dogcart to deliver them to the doorstep. As this vehicle rattled up the driveway, Edward Thornton put a question to Luther Darke, one which he had been on the verge of asking ever since he first had been told of this affair. He had assumed – wrongly – that Darke would provide the answer without being prompted. Thornton now saw that this wasn’t to be the case.

‘Tell me,’ he said as casually as he could, ‘what is there about the name Sebastien Le Page? You have heard it before?’

Darke grinned. ‘What patience you have. I have been waiting hours, days for you to question me on that. Your restraint is admirable. Yes, I have heard it before. In a completely different context.’

Thornton waited a moment, but Darke was playing games and said nothing.

‘What context?’

‘Do you remember – it was in the summer of 1896 – the stir the Lumière brothers made in London with their cinematography exhibition?’

Thornton shook his head. ‘I do not recall it.’

‘It was a wonderful show. I went twice. It was so entertaining to watch the audience grow nervous during the showing of ‘L’Arrivée d’un Train’. They really believed that a locomotive was steaming towards them in the little theatre.’

‘What has this to do with Sebastien Le Page?’

‘I still have the programme from the event. For some reason the name of the projectionist lodged in a corner of my mind. It was Sebastien Le Page.’

On arriving at the house, Darke asked to see Cornelius Hordern’s bedroom. He was not surprised to learn that it was on the ground floor.

‘This is not a new arrangement; my parents have always slept down here. I think it may have been as a result of their stay in India when they lived in a bungalow. Since my mother died, I moved into the room next door to be near my father in the night if he needed me.’

‘As he did the other evening when you too were able to witness the angel,’ observed Thornton.

The young woman nodded.

To Thornton’s surprise, his friend’s examination of the room seemed cursory and brief. ‘Only one item of interest there,’ Darke whispered as they left the room. ‘The speaking tube.’

Leaving Sarah Hordern in the house to arrange refreshments, the two men then investigated the grounds, and in particular, the area outside Cornelius Hordern’s bedroom. Close to the shrubbery, about twenty yards from the bedroom window, Thornton discovered some marks in the wet earth.

‘Good man,’ cried Luther Darke, bending down to examine them. ‘Two sets of footprints – one fellow wearing heavily ribbed boots. And look here: three round indentations, each about two feet apart in a triangular arrangement.’ Suddenly he burst out laughing. ‘That clinches it, my dear Edward. We have caught our angel.’

‘Before we leave,’ said Darke some twenty minutes later as he and Thornton sat with Sarah Hordern in the drawing room, ‘I should very much like to have a word with your flirtatious maid, Sadie.’

Miss Hordern looked surprised. ‘If you wish. But I don’t quite…’

‘It’s just to settle a few points in my mind.’

‘Very well, I’ll send for her now.’

‘And, Miss Hordern, I think it would be best if we saw her alone.’

‘If that is what you wish.’ A certain frostiness had crept into the woman’s voice now.

‘She
will feel more at ease if her employer is not standing in the background, and therefore it will be easier for us to get at the truth,’ explained Thornton.

The maid arrived promptly and, with some reluctance, her mistress left her with the two investigators.

Darke smiled at the pretty young girl. ‘First of all, Sadie, you are not in trouble, and anything you say to me will not be repeated to your master or your mistress. It is just that my friend and I are trying to clear up a little mystery that is puzzling Miss Sarah, and I think you can help us.’

‘Help you? I don’t know anything.’

‘Now, how can you be sure of that until I’ve asked you a few questions? Eh?’

The girl looked sullenly to the floor. ‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘Now then, it is true to say that in the past Miss Sarah has reprimanded you for lateness in the morning…’

‘Not recently, sir.’

‘Good. No more suitors, then?’

‘Well…’

‘Something a little more permanent, I see by the silver ring on your hand.’

Instinctively, the girl covered up the ring with her right hand. ‘It’s just a present.’

‘From whom?’

‘From a friend.’

‘From your young man?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Not a local lad, is he?’

Again the maid hesitated.

‘Come, come, Sadie, the truth will out.’

‘No, he’s not local. He’s better than the layabouts and ruffians that live round here.’

‘He must be. That ring is quite fine.’

‘He’s a good man, sir, and … I love him.’

‘Tall, thin, dark-haired with a short beard?’

‘You know him?’

‘That will be all now, Sadie. You may return to your duties.’

After the maid had left, Darke shook his head sadly. ‘What is it the bard says in
Macbeth
? “but in this house I keep a servant fee’d.” Ah, well. Time to return to London, Edward. On the train, we shall plan our campaign of action and discuss two letters that we must write.’

Dear Cornelius,

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have to leave London for a week on pressing business, and therefore I shall have to cancel our Wednesday appointment. I know how upset this will make you feel, but I assure you my trip is essential. However I shall be back in London on the twenty-first of this month and hope to see you on that date.

Yours sincerely,

Sebastien

Dear Dr Le Page,

I have decided to cease my connection with The Church of the True Resurrection. My recent experiences have been most unsatisfactory and I now begin to wonder if the divine intervention, which I witnessed at the start of our association, was in fact an illusion – a dream perhaps.

Therefore I shall be making no further contributions to the funds of your organisation. In order to help me overcome my recent disappointments, I intend to take a protracted trip abroad and I leave in two days’ time on the fourteenth of this month.

Yours sincerely,

Cornelius Hordern

It was past midnight and Cornelius Hordern was still awake. Despite the lateness of the hour, he did not feel drowsy at all. He was sitting up in bed, waiting for the night to pass. The sudden cancellation
of his weekly séance at Le Page’s apartment had upset him terribly. He had come to live for those few sweet moments when, albeit in an insubstantial fashion, he was reunited with Gwendolyn. The snatches of speech, the breath of her perfume, were wondrous to him. He hadn’t quite realised how much he had come to depend upon the séances until this cancellation. There would be next week, of course, but that was six long agonising days away.

He sighed heavily and stared out at the blue blankness of the night sky. There was at least one comforting aspect of this affair: his gradual realisation that he had misjudged his daughter. In the last few weeks, as his own pain had lessened, he had begun to view Sarah in a different light. He could see now that in her own way she cared for him very deeply, and it was unfair of him to compare the girl to her mother. Both were unique and of a different time. For him no one could match Gwendolyn’s sweetness and beauty, but now he saw that Sarah had her own individual fire. She was a good daughter, and what she lacked in warmth, she made up for in decency and care. He resolved to be kinder to her in the future. This resolution eased his mind a little. Perhaps he should now try to get some sleep.