The Durham Deception (3 page)

‘I require vibrations. Give me a verse please.'

His sister stood, edged her way round the room to the little upright piano, drew out a stool, sat down again and plinked out a few bars. The piano needed tuning. Tom thought he recognized the opening of
Jesu, Thou art all our Hope
. As the music started to play, Ernest nodded as if to show he was receiving the vibrations he wanted. The music stopped abruptly. Ethel sat back on the piano stool. There was another prolonged pause.

Tom was starting to wonder what, if anything, was due to happen next when his ear was caught by a chinking sound. It was coming from the surface of the table. In the very centre had been positioned the tambourine. Tom couldn't be sure but the simple instrument seemed to be regularly rising and falling a few inches up and down above the baize cloth, giving itself a brisk shake each time it did so. He couldn't be sure because the light in the room had grown even dimmer and his eyes seemed to be watering. Yet the tambourine was surely moving a few inches, now up, now down. Then it was time for a contribution from the handbell which made a few dinging noises although without moving.

All this while they sat hand in hand round the table. As the tambourine moved and the bell sounded, Tom felt Helen's hand tighten in his own sweating grasp. Mrs Miles's by contrast stayed cool and unmoving. She'd probably seen it all before. Holding hands was a guarantee that no one could be manipulating the objects on the table – yet the trick might be done with devices involving wires or extending tongs. And where was Ethel Smight? What was she doing? Still at the piano? Tom thought so but the room now seemed so hazy that it was hard to make out.

The noises stopped. Ernest Smight, who had been sitting with his chin sunk on his chest, suddenly looked up in the direction of Mrs Miles. When he spoke, his voice was different, not so resonant, more familiar.

‘There is a spirit appearing behind you, dear. A short gentleman with a tanned complexion. He is young but with lines on his face as if he was accustomed to spending a long time in the open.'

Mrs Miles shook her head in a sign that she didn't recognize the description.

‘And his clothes are wet,' continued Ernest. ‘He is holding something in his hand which I cannot quite discern. A piece of rock, perhaps.'

‘He is my brother, Robert,' said the dark-haired Rosalind, speaking for the first time.

‘Ah, I see how he moves towards
you
now,' said the medium. ‘He has visited us before. I did not remember him at first. There are so many spirits pressing in on me.'

‘Robert died three years ago in an accident in California,' said Rosalind, partly to herself, partly to the others round the table. ‘He was prospecting for gold. He suffered an accident with a hydraulic sluice. Has he a message for me?'

She spoke in a matter-of-fact way as if she was describing a trip her brother had made to the shops. Tom noticed that she didn't turn round to look behind her. He could see nothing there. Nevertheless he felt a tightness in his chest.

‘Yes, your brother Robert has a message for you,' said Ernest. ‘He says that you are to follow your heart. Does that make sense? To follow your heart.'

‘Oh yes,' said Rosalind with more animation now. She didn't elaborate.

‘He is smiling and nodding with pleasure. He is pleased that you understand. Now he can depart.'

Mr Smight nodded with satisfaction himself. He let go of the hands on either side of him, Helen's and Mrs Briggs's, and rubbed his temples. Then he glanced round the table. His eyes fixed on Tom for an instant before darting behind the lawyer's shoulder.

‘I can sense a presence behind you, sir.'

‘Me?'

Tom's instinct was to turn round but he managed to conquer it. All the same, he felt cold air on the back of his neck as if someone were blowing on it.

‘Another young man, of about your own age I should say. And he is a soldier, to judge by his uniform.'

‘A soldier?' said Tom, his voice sounding strained to his own ears. ‘But I don't know any solders.'

‘This gentleman is wearing a blue uniform. He is smiling fondly down at you. This time I am not mistaken. It
is
you he is looking at.'

‘Oh God,' said Tom. His head and body were rigid with struggle. Half of him wanted to turn round, the other half wanted to stay staring frontwards. As if sensing his discomfort, the medium said, ‘Keep still, sir.
You
would not be able to detect anyone. But from your response I take it that you know to whom I am referring.'

‘Possibly. I am not sure. Can you say more about . . . what you can see?'

‘It is a peculiar coincidence but this gentleman also is wet, as if he had been immersed in water. Yet his blue uniform is fresh and shining for all that. Are you acquainted with anyone who has drowned, my friend?'

‘No,' said Tom. He was reluctant to say more but suddenly the words tumbled out of him. ‘I don't know anyone who drowned. But my father was buried at sea many years ago. I hardly knew him. He was on his way to fight in the Russian War. He died on board ship before he could arrive and was buried near the Dardanelles. I was quite young.'

To Tom it seemed as if someone else was speaking these words, yet he recognized the voice for his own. He had heard the details of the death and sea-burial only recently from a former comrade of his father.

‘He has a message for you,' said Ernest.

‘I did not know him,' said Tom.

‘But he knew you, sir, and he continues to know you – from the other side of the veil which separates all that is mortal and perishable from that which endures for ever. Your father is proud of you and what you have accomplished. He has a warning though. His message is that you are to be careful. He sees danger ahead for you and your good lady.'

Tom had almost forgotten Helen's presence beside him. Her hand still rested in his.

‘There is danger by some woods, danger near a stretch of water. That is why he has come in this guise, soaking wet in his blue uniform. There is danger, too, from an individual who is not what he seems to be.'

‘I can't make sense of this,' said Tom.

‘I am merely the conduit, the medium of the spirit world,' said Ernest Smight. ‘I do not claim to understand all. Now he fades away, his blue uniform absorbed into the shadows.'

There was a pause. Tom realized he was soaked in sweat. What had he just witnessed? Was it real? Not really real, but really the spirit of his father?

If Tom had turned round in his chair, could he have seen the man he had last glimpsed when he was a child? No, he would not have been able to detect anyone. Only Ernest Smight could do that.
If
, indeed, the medium was being truthful. Part of Tom wanted to believe but the other part, the larger one perhaps, was highly sceptical.

Meanwhile attention had shifted round the table to the couple on the side opposite from Tom and Helen. Arthur Seldon, the individual with sharp features, had placed a coin on the table. It was a half-sovereign, its gold gleaming dully in the gloom. Ernest seemed to start back from it but Tom observed how his eyes fastened on the money. Seldon added a second half-sovereign. The medium's hand hovered then stretched out to shift the coins closer to him.

‘Accept them as a love-offering,' said the man. ‘They are yours whether you are able to help us or not.'

‘I will help you if I can.'

‘It's not for me but for her,' said Seldon curtly. The bovine woman nodded. When she spoke, her voice had a surprising sweetness of tone.

‘It's my husband, my first husband I should say. He was run down by an omnibus. Can I be put through to him?'

‘Where did the accident occur?'

‘In the Fulham Road.'

‘I am not receiving any impressions,' said Ernest Smight after perhaps half a minute. He rubbed his temples again. ‘Wait, I seem to have the sense of a name beginning with the letter E . . . Edward is it? Edmund maybe. Or even Ernest.'

‘That's not it, none of them,' said Mrs Briggs. ‘Does the name of Angus bring him to you?'

‘Angus?' said the medium. ‘Possibly. It is hard to tell. There are figures in a mist, all clamouring for attention. However one is coming to the fore. Yes. A tall man, would you say?'

‘Why yes, you might say so,' said Mrs Briggs. ‘Angus was large, unusually large.'

‘He wants to know why he has been summoned back to this mortal vale.'

‘I need his advice,' said the woman. ‘I am about to be married to Mr Seldon here, and I want to know whether my previous husband – Mr Briggs – is content with that.'

Tom, still feeling the shock of apparently hearing from his father, wondered how the medium was going to answer this woman in the presence of her fiancé. But Ernest Smight was all tact.

‘Not everything is revealed to us but, if it is Angus whom I can glimpse in the shadows, he is nodding his head. Your happiness is what matters to him. If you are content then so is he.'

‘
I
have a question for him,' said Arthur Seldon. ‘Her late husband, the one who was run over by an omnibus, he kept some savings in a cash box in the house. My question is, will we find the box? We have failed to find it so far. Should we keep looking?'

‘My dear sir,' said Ernest Smight, ‘that is such a material question and you must know the spirits want nothing to do with earthly, material things. They have moved beyond that. What use is coin if one is fed and clothed by the ethereal powers? Nevertheless, Mr Angus Briggs – if indeed it is he – is again nodding his head in a way that I can only interpret as encouragement. Yes, you should keep searching for the cash box.'

There was a sudden stir from behind Tom and Helen. The gaslights flared and the room was illuminated more brightly than before. It was Ethel Smight who'd turned up the lamps. Tom had thought she was still at the piano but at some point in the proceedings she must have got up and moved round the room. Had she been responsible for that cold draught on the back of his neck?

The medium's sister said, ‘We should stop this now, Ernest. Say nothing more. I do not trust these two.'

She was referring to Mr Seldon and Mrs Briggs. Her warning came too late. Seldon reached inside his jacket and produced an official-looking badge.

‘Despite my civilian clothes I am a policeman, Mr Smight.'

‘All are welcome at our table, whether they come in disguise or in plain honesty.'

The medium was doing his best to put on a brave front but, by the brighter light, his face had gone pale and pasty while his voice lost all its confidence. He was older than Tom had first taken him for. Miss Smight's face, by contrast, was bright red. She stood glaring in outrage at Arthur Seldon.

‘A complaint has been laid against you . . .'

‘A complaint? Has it? By whom?'

‘I am not at liberty to say,' continued Seldon.

Ernest Smight sighed and seemed to shrink in his chair. ‘What have I done?'

‘Money has changed hands.'

‘It has not changed hands,' said Ethel Smight. ‘It hasn't, has it?'

She was appealing to the others, to Tom and Helen, to Mrs Miles and Rosalind. The single women looked baffled and slightly frightened. All four gazed at the two half-sovereigns, lying golden on the green baize.

‘You seemed to accept the coins, Mr Smight,' said Tom, though even as he spoke the words he wondered why he was getting involved. This was no business of his. Yet he persisted. ‘I am familiar with the law and you seemed to accept them.'

‘In return for services about to be rendered,' said the disguised policeman Arthur Seldon, nodding at Tom as if grateful for this confirmation. ‘Services were duly rendered. You have told fortunes and you have predicted the future. You have predicted that I will find money but I can assure you there is no cash box left by Mr Briggs. If there had been,
she
would've have laid her hands on it straight away.'

‘I predicted that your fiancée would be happy with you,' said the miserable medium. ‘Surely you do not hold the prediction of happiness against me?'

‘I do not,' said the policeman although his tone suggested he resented the idea of happiness. He smiled for the first time that evening, and Tom was reminded of a sharp-toothed rodent. ‘But you see, sir, this lady who is assisting me in my enquiries is not my fiancée. She cannot be my fiancée for the simple reason that she is already my wife.'

‘Yes, I am now Mrs Seldon although my first husband
was
called Briggs,' said the woman.

‘Angus, I suppose,' said Ernest hopelessly.

‘Ha, no. I once had a cat called Angus. Several of the facts I provided were correct. Angus the cat
was
large and he
was
run over by an omnibus, a misfortune which occurred in the Fulham Road.'

‘My wife, Lizzie, she did not lie, you see,' said Seldon. He reached over and took up the two half-sovereigns from where they lay on the table in front of the medium, who turned his head away. ‘These coins are not mine but will be returned to the police station. I will make a full report on this and I would be surprised if you do not find yourself up before the magistrates, Mr Smight. This is not the first time you have been caught out. Do not expect leniency.'

Seldon paused to let that sink in. He was thoroughly enjoying himself. He produced a notebook and pencil as he gazed at the other sitters round the table. ‘And as for you, ladies and gentleman, any or all of you may be called upon as witnesses to what occurred here this evening. To wit, how this person told my and my wife's fortunes in return for a cash payment. Your names and addresses if you please.'