The Seance (13 page)

‘Do you think ... is it possible that your uncle was actually present – I mean at the Hall – when Felix Wraxford died?’

‘He did not say so, but yes, it is possible; I believe the estrangement between Thomas and his brother Nathaniel – Cornelius’s father – did not begin until after the tragedy. Are you suggesting that my uncle might have been responsible for his cousin’s death?’

I had not meant to imply as much, but he had divined my thought.

‘Well, I hardly like to ...’

‘Pray don’t apologise; the same thing should have occurred to me, but my mind was running on other lines. I can well imagine my uncle, as a child, devising some scheme to terrify his cousin ...’

He fell silent, contemplating the dying fire. I found myself imagining Cornelius as a boy in rusty black clothes, with a wizened old man’s face, crouched behind the armour; the darkening sky outside; another boy, pale and fearful, moving through the gallery ... and then a pounce, a clatter of running feet, a shriek, drowned in the crash of thunder. I thought of Cornelius, decades later, drawing out his life alone in that same gallery. If it had happened thus, the gallery was haunted indeed. Had Cornelius, even as a child, coveted the Hall and understood that only Felix stood between him and eventual possession of it?

Magnus leaned forward to stir the coals, breaking my reverie.

‘You said your thoughts were running on other lines,’ I ventured.

‘I was wondering – again it should have occurred to me sooner – whether my uncle did not purchase that manuscript as he professed, but discovered it somewhere in the house ... wondering, in other words, whether Thomas Wraxford was also acquainted with Trithemius ...’

A fearful presentiment crossed my mind.

‘What were the words you copied?’ I asked. ‘About the young tree and the old?’

Magnus drew the paper from his coat.

‘. . . if he be a true
Adept
, to Perform that
Rite
of which I have written Elsewhere. For as a young
Tree
may be Grafted upon an
Old
, so . . .’

I seemed to read my own apprehension in his glance.

‘Surely,’ I said, ‘no man would set out to sacrifice his own son—’ realising as I spoke that Abraham had set out to do precisely that.

‘Surely not,’ said Magnus. ‘It is a thousand to one the boy died in a tragic accident.’ But he did not sound altogether persuaded.

‘And Thomas Wraxford’s disappearance?’ I persisted. ‘What do you make of that, in the light of your uncle’s talk of vanishing?’

‘I see your drift,’ said Magnus, ‘but without further evidence, we can only speculate. As for my uncle ... there are, at any rate, no children at the Hall now. Beyond that, I fear you are right; all we can do is watch, and wait. And now, my dear fellow, it is growing late, and I must not keep you up any longer.’

I could not quite recall having advised him thus, but could think of no alternative, and though I pressed him to stay, he insisted that he must be going. We compromised upon my walking back with him to the White Lion: the sky had cleared, and the night air was still and very cold, with no sound but the faint rattle of pebbles from the starlit shore away to our left. Magnus turned the conversation back to painting as we walked, saying that he hoped I would one day be able to make another study of the Hall in happier circumstances. But the horrors we had summoned were not so easily dispelled, and my dreams that night were haunted by the sound of running footsteps, and a manikin with a wizened face.

For the next fortnight or so, I was gripped by foreboding whenever the sky darkened or the glass fell further than usual. I had received a note from Magnus on his return to London, saying how delighted he had been to make my acquaintance, and thanking me again for my offer to go out to the Hall if it should prove necessary, but nothing further. We had parted like intimate friends; yet when I looked back I realised that I had learned nothing of his history, or of his interests and aspirations apart from his work, whereas I had revealed a great deal about myself. Our encounter had left me restless, unsettled, with no idea of what to do about it.

April proved cold and blustery, and May was well advanced before a prolonged spell of fine weather brought out the last of the blossom. Day after day I walked down to the office under a dazzling blue sky, wishing that my spirits would rise accordingly. I thought long and often of giving up the law and trying my luck as a painter, but I lacked belief in myself.
Wraxford Hall by Moonlight
still hung on my office wall, reminding me of the power I could not recapture, and of Cornelius in his haunted gallery. Several times I set off in the direction of Monks Wood, but something always drew me back. The weather grew warmer still, until one hot and airless morning I emerged to find the sky already overcast, the sea flat and still, with an ominous leaden sheen. My anxiety grew until, early in the afternoon, I wired Magnus to say that a severe storm was brewing. There was no reply, and I spent the rest of the day reproaching myself for sending the message.

All afternoon the heat pressed down and the glass continued to drop, until darkness fell without a breath of wind. Too restless to read, I sat out in the garden, staring into the night. Then away on the seaward horizon came the first faint flicker of lightning, branching and multiplying in dumb show until the air began to stir and the distant muttering of thunder rose above the shrilling of the insects. The approach of the storm, gradual at first, seemed to gather pace as it came nearer, until the sky to the south was a searing tapestry of light. The words of Trithemius came back to me amidst the tumult: ‘Thus, a Man who could command the Power of
Lightning
would be as the Avenging Angel upon that Dreadful Day ...’ I thought of the blackened suit of armour in the gallery: if Cornelius had been mad enough to occupy it, he must already be ashes. No one but a lunatic would consent to such a thing, no matter what the inducement ... but supposing consent had not been asked – or given? If anyone is dead, I thought, it will be on my conscience; we should have tried to stop him, regardless of the risk to Magnus’s prospects. But the thought was interrupted by a rush of wind, accompanied by a flash, a deafening blast and a torrent of rain; I was drenched before I had left my chair.

I sat up long after the lightning had ceased and the wind had died away, listening to the steady patter of rain on the leaves outside. Whatever I ought to have done, it was too late now; unless the Hall had been spared, in which case, was I simply going to wait for the next storm to strike? Or try to persuade Magnus to have his uncle certified; and if that failed, at least to warn Cornelius that we knew what he was up to? Except that we did not know; the only certainty here was that any such intervention would lose Magnus the estate, and me my client, if not my professional reputation. I went over and over the ground until the small hours, without reaching any conclusion whatever.

Nevertheless, I was early at the office next day and spent most of the morning pacing up and down my room, peering out at the rainswept street and plaguing Josiah with queries about wires and messengers. My uneasy conscience forbade me to mention the name Wraxford, and by the time I departed for a hasty luncheon at the Cross Keys Inn, the poor man was plainly concerned for my sanity. But no message was waiting on my return. And then at half-past three, just as I had convinced myself that nothing would happen, Josiah announced that a Mr Drayton wished to see me on urgent business.

I had pictured Drayton as a tall man, but he turned out to be several inches shorter than myself, frail and stooped in a suit of rusty black, with a long, pallid face and the eyes of an anxious spaniel. His hands were visibly trembling.

‘Mr Montague, sir; forgive me for troubling you, but Dr Wraxford – Mr Magnus, that is – said I should come to you if ... well it’s the master, Mr Montague. He didn’t come out for his breakfast tray this morning, or his luncheon, and he won’t answer when I knock, so I thought ...’

‘Quite right,’ I said. ‘Have you informed Dr Wraxford?’

‘I sent a wire on my way here, sir, but the reply will have to come from Woodbridge, so it won’t reach the Hall until six at the earliest, even if he answers by return.’

‘I see ... I take it you would like me to come out to the Hall, and see
if – if everything is all right.’ I tried to sound calm and assured, but an icy knot was forming in the pit of my stomach.

‘Thank you, sir, if you could, it would be much appreciated. Grimes is outside with the carriage, sir, but I’m afraid it’s open, so you will need to wrap up warm.’

Ten minutes later we were on our way. The rain had all but ceased, but grey, swirling cloud hung low over the sodden landscape. Grimes – a dour, prognathous individual, all too appropriately named – sat slumped in his greatcoat, swaying like a sack of meal; he appeared to have sunk into a deep sleep before we had passed the first milepost. Drayton sat beside me in the body of the ancient vehicle; I tried at first to draw him out, but in vain: he had seen nothing, heard nothing, noticed nothing unusual until this morning. The master had dismissed him at seven the previous evening – well before the storm began – saying he would need nothing more until breakfast. The storm had been very loud, but he had been in his room all evening, and could not say whether a lightning bolt might have struck the Hall; he showed not the slightest curiosity on that score. I asked him whether he found the lightning conductors a comfort; he did not seem to know what a lightning conductor was. He had been forty years at the Hall, and everything, it seemed, had been exactly the same from the day he arrived until this morning. At that I gave up, and huddled deeper into my own greatcoat.

For two and a half interminable hours we splashed and jolted past empty fields and marshes and patches of woodland. The horses plodded steadily onward, never varying their pace; they seemed to know every turn along the way, for Grimes did not stir throughout the journey, and Drayton too dozed, his head lolling on his breast, once I had ceased to question him. Despite my heavy coat and muffler, the chill seeped into my bones, slowing my thoughts to a dull trance of apprehension until I sank into a dream in which I seemed to be conscious of every creak and rattle of the carriage, and yet somehow safe and warm at my own fireside, only to wake, half frozen, in the gloom of Monks Wood. I fumbled
for my watch and saw that it was already past six o’clock. Another fifteen minutes passed before the massive oak loomed ahead of us, and Grimes roused himself from the depths of his greatcoat to announce, in the tones of one relishing another’s misfortune, ‘Wraxford ’All’.

Shrouded in vapour, the lightning rods all but concealed in the mist that swirled just above the treetops, the Hall looked even darker and more ruinous than my memory of it, the grounds more wildly overgrown. The only sign of life was a trickle of smoke from the chimney of Grimes’s cottage, barely rising in the saturated air.

We pulled up amongst the weeds by the front door. I stretched my cramped limbs and descended upon feet so numb they could scarcely feel the ground beneath them. Drayton was in an even worse case; I had to help him down in spite of his protests, wondering how on earth he managed in the depths of winter. Grimes remained slumped in his seat, seemingly oblivious, only to drive off the instant we had alighted.

The uncertainty of my position struck me with full force as Drayton struggled with the lock (opening the door was evidently not part of the maid’s duties), and ushered me into a vast, echoing chamber dominated by a staircase ascending into the gloom. Far above my head I could just make out the landing from which Felix Wraxford must have hurtled to his death. The floor was bare, uneven flagstones; the walls dark panelled oak, pitted with wormholes. Everything smelt of age and damp and decay; a dead chill lay upon the air.

‘Perhaps,’ I said to Drayton, trying to subdue the quaver in my voice, ‘you should go up ahead of me; it is possible, after all, that your master has merely overslept.’ He responded with a look of such fearful entreaty that I felt obliged to accompany him, wishing to God I had never made this foolhardy offer, as he moved slowly up the stairs, past canvases so darkened with age and grime that their subjects were indecipherable. When we reached the landing, I knew from Magnus’s description that we were facing the study, and that the two sets of double doors in the
dark panelled wall away to our left led to the library and the gallery. Grey mist swirled against the high windows above our heads; there was still a fair amount of light, but it was fast diminishing.

‘I think you should knock once more,’ I said to Drayton. He raised a trembling hand and rapped feebly; there was no reply. I came up beside him and rapped in turn, more and more loudly until the echoes rang like gunshots up and down the stairwell. I tried the handle, but the door would not budge.