The Seance (30 page)

‘But to compel you, against your will – and to bring an infant child here, of all places—’

‘I cannot blame him for that; he wanted me to leave Clara in London, and I refused. You may think it selfish and wrong of me, but Magnus does not care for her – he wanted a son – and if I defy him, he will have me confined. Mrs Bryant’s physician is under his spell, and would sign the certificate, I am sure of it.’

‘But you do not behave like a madwoman. Do you still suffer from this – affliction?’

She shook her head mutely.

‘Then he has no ground; and besides a physician ought not, and in law should not, seek to certify his own wife. Has he threatened to confine you?’

‘Not in as many words, no – only by insinuation.’

‘Forgive me, but are you quite certain, in that case ...?’

‘No, Mr Montague, I am not. That is the curse of my situation. Magnus is utterly opaque to me; I do not know what he really thinks, or feels, or believes. But it makes no difference. I cannot risk defying him, for Clara’s sake. And he has said, or at least implied, that if the séance is a success, he may agree to a separation.’

‘And if it is not a success?’

‘He has not said, and I have not dared ask.’

I remained silent for a little, staring at the gravel around my feet.

‘If there is anything I can do . . .’ I said.

‘There is one thing,’ she said. ‘I have a journal; an account of my life until my marriage. I brought it with me, not knowing what else to do, but I should rather it was in safe keeping. Would you take it for me, and promise to keep it, and never show it to anyone, unless you hear from me?’

‘Upon my life,’ I said.

‘Then I shall fetch it – no, stay here – I shall be only a few minutes.’

She walked swiftly away, glancing around the empty clearing as she went, while I sat wishing to God I had confessed my jealousy of Edward that wintry afternoon at the rectory. Was it possible, if she and Magnus were to separate ...? I found that I too was scanning the clearing, and especially the tumbledown row of outbuildings away to my right. Something had attracted my attention; something dark, moving in the shadow of the old stables. I felt suddenly conspicuous, an intruder upon Magnus’s domain.

A door creaked behind me, and Nell reappeared with a packet in her hand. As I took it from her, a current of sympathy flowed between us; her face lifted towards mine, and our lips brushed before she whispered ‘You must go.’ I looked back once, as I walked away across the ragged grass, in time to see the door close behind her.

I returned to Aldeburgh consumed by the wildest imaginings, all my senses inflamed by that intoxicating moment. The next day dragged by in an agony of hope and fear; I thought of Magnus arriving, and tormented myself with wondering how far ‘he leaves me entirely alone’ might be construed. I had more or less forgotten that I was going to attend a séance, and thought only of seeing Nell again. At midday on Saturday, unable to bear the confines of my house, I walked down to the Cross Keys Inn and there heard the news which was already the talk of the district. Mrs Bryant was dead, and Nell and her child had vanished during the night.

The principal witness to these events was Godwin Rhys. According to his testimony at the inquest (which I give here more or less in his own words), he had joined Magnus and Mrs Bryant in the old gallery at about a quarter-past seven that evening. They discussed their plans for the séance the following evening; Mrs Wraxford joined them some twenty minutes later. She seemed apprehensive and ill at ease. When Dr Rhys, in his own words, ‘inadvertently reminded her of her late fiancé’s death at the Hall some two years previously’, she became distressed and left the gallery. The others continued their discussion over dinner until about ten o’clock, when Dr Rhys and Mrs Bryant retired to their rooms, leaving Magnus downstairs.

Dr Rhys (a poor sleeper, by his own account) went to bed at around eleven, but was still awake when the half-hour struck. Soon after that he heard soft footsteps – a woman’s, he thought; he assumed it was one of the servants – moving past his door. His room was at the head of a corridor, just off the landing. Quarter to twelve had sounded, and he had begun to doze, when he was awakened by the sound of a key turning in a lock. Though his window was in shadow, it was bright moonlight outside. He opened his door a little and saw Mrs Bryant, wrapped in what appeared to be a dark cloak, pass the entrance to the corridor in the direction of the landing, shielding the flame of her candle with her hand. Her expression made him wonder if she was walking in her sleep.

The lights along the passage had been extinguished, and so he was able to follow her as far as the landing without risk of being seen. Moonlight was shining down through the high windows at the far end. Mrs Bryant snuffed her candle and continued on around the landing, past the library and all the way to the gallery, where she passed through the open doors and out of sight. He remained where he was, about forty paces away, looking over the black pit of the stairwell.

Faint sounds, as of someone moving about in stockinged feet, came
from the gallery. The shuffling ceased; he held his breath, straining to make out another, even fainter sound: a muffled creaking of hinges, as of a door being slowly and stealthily opened.

The scream that followed seemed to explode inside his head; a prolonged shriek of terror and repulsion that rose to an intolerable pitch, reverberating up and down the stairwell in a cacophony of echoes. For several seconds he stood paralysed, until the sounds of opening doors and hurrying feet brought him to his senses.

Dr Rhys was the first to enter the gallery. He found Mrs Bryant sprawled on the floor between the round table and the suit of armour, stone dead, her eyes open and her features contorted in an expression of the utmost horror. Mrs Bryant’s two maids ran in as he was kneeling beside the body, followed a few moments later by Bolton and some of the other servants. Magnus (as was later attested by Alfred the footman) had gone out for a stroll in the moonlight; he heard the scream from two hundred yards away, and came running back to the house.

Magnus, therefore, did not arrive at the gallery for some minutes after Dr Rhys. His first question upon seeing the corpse was, ‘Where is my wife?’ The maid Carrie was sent immediately to Mrs Wraxford’s room, where she knocked for some time before her mistress came to the door in her nightgown. Alone of all the household, she had slept right through Mrs Bryant’s scream. When informed by Carrie that Mrs Bryant was dead, she replied, ‘There is nothing I can do; tell my husband I will see him in the morning’, and closed her door again; Carrie heard her turn the key in the lock.

Mrs Bryant’s body was then carried back to her room, where Dr Rhys made the examination. He found no trace of injury; on every indication, she had died of heart failure induced by shock. But what had caused the shock? A search of the gallery and library revealed nothing untoward; the seal which Magnus had placed upon the armour in anticipation of the séance remained unbroken; the movements of everyone
in the house had been accounted for. Magnus and Dr Rhys decided to wait until first light before dispatching a messenger to the telegraph office in Woodbridge, and the household retired for a few hours’ uneasy sleep.

At around eight-thirty the next morning, Bolton returned from Woodbridge with the news that he could not find a doctor willing to attend; all had said, upon hearing that Mrs Bryant’s physician was already at the Hall, that he could perfectly well sign the certificate himself. Dr Rhys, therefore, despite considerable misgivings, certified the immediate cause as heart failure brought on by shock, with advanced heart disease as a contributing cause. It was quite possible, as Magnus observed, that Mrs Bryant had indeed been walking in her sleep, and that the fatal spasm had been precipitated by the shock of finding herself in the gallery.

Magnus and Dr Rhys were still at breakfast (since Mrs Wraxford had taken all her meals in her room, they were not expecting her) when a horseman arrived with instructions from Mrs Bryant’s son. An undertaker and his men would follow within two hours to collect the body and convey it directly to London for examination by a distinguished pathologist. Dr Rhys, upon hearing this, wanted to tear up his certificate, but Magnus dissuaded him, saying that it would give the impression they had something to hide.

Magnus had already decided to close up the Hall and return to London that day, and Carrie was accordingly sent to pack her mistress’s things. But she found the door locked, and an untouched tray still in the passage where she had left it half an hour before (her instructions were to tap on the door and leave the tray without waiting for Mrs Wraxford to emerge).

At Magnus’s request, Dr Rhys accompanied him upstairs to the room, where the door was forced – there was no bolt, but the key was lying upon a little table beside the bed. They found – or rather
Magnus, observed by Dr Rhys, found – a diary open upon the writing-table, with a pen lying across the page, as if the writer had been interrupted, and beside it the stub of a candle which had burned down to its socket. The bed was turned back, the pillow dishevelled. In the child’s room beyond (it had no independent exit) the blanket on the cot was turned back in the same fashion. There was soiled linen in the pail, water in the basin; nothing to suggest struggle or sudden flight, or an alarm of any kind. And according to Carrie – though she could not be certain, because of her mistress’s secretive habits – the only things missing were Mrs Wraxford’s nightdress and the child’s swaddling gown.

It seemed to Dr Rhys, as they were waiting for the door to be forced, that Magnus was striving to conceal anger, rather than anxiety. Several times he nodded to himself, as if to say ‘this is just what I should have expected of my wife’. But as he began to leaf through the diary, his expression changed. The colour drained from his face; his hand trembled; a cold sweat appeared on his brow. For a minute or two he read on, oblivious to his surroundings; then he closed the book with a snap and slid it, without explanation, into his coat pocket.

‘Search the house,’ he snapped at Bolton, who was hovering by the doorway. ‘And send for a party to comb the wood. With the child she cannot have gone far ... Perhaps, Rhys, you might assist with the search while I look around in here.’

It was a command, not a request, and Dr Rhys spent the next few hours stumbling fruitlessly from room to dusty room, without any clear idea of why he was doing so.

A quarter of an hour after I heard the news, I was driving at a brisk pace along the Aldringham road. The day was warm and close, and I was obliged to rest my horse more than once, so that it was well after two
before I reached Monks Wood. As I drew nearer the Hall I heard voices hallooing in the woods around me.

At the front of the house, several vehicles waited on the gravel, their horses harnessed as if for immediate departure. Servants were running between them, stowing boxes and bags and bundles of clothing. A slight, fair-haired young man in tweeds was hovering by the largest of the carriages, attempting to direct the loading of it. He looked at me fearfully as I approached, and began to explain that the undertakers had already left; I thought for a ghastly moment they had left with Nell. Such was his agitation that it took me several attempts to establish that he was Dr Rhys, and convince him that I was not a surgeon, and several minutes more to extract from him a sketch of the night’s events. I was about to ask him why on earth the servants were packing up the house, instead of joining in the search, when I saw Magnus over by the stables, conferring with a group of men. I left Godwin Rhys wringing his hands beside the carriage, and went uneasily to join him.