The Seance (47 page)
‘No,’ she said, as if answering an objection, ‘I am sure that my visitations intrigued him; but I think he was drawn to me principally because I resisted his spell; because he had twice failed to mesmerise me; and, I
fear, because he truly desired me. And so he hated me all the more when he discovered how much I loathed him.’
‘And – your visitations?’ I asked hesitantly. ‘Was the one in your journal – of you and Clara vanishing – invented for Magnus’s benefit?’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘And did they ever return?’
‘No,’ she said wryly, ‘and neither did the intolerable headaches that used to follow them. That fall on the stairs: I remember thinking that it had opened a crack in my mind, just enough to let in glimpses of a world beyond – a world I never wanted to see. And then the rift closed again; I sometimes think it was the shock of Edward’s death. And I will always wonder whether I should have told him about that vision; and whether he would have taken any notice if I had.’
‘Do you think,’ I ventured, even more hesitantly, ‘that Magnus might have had something to do with Edward’s death?’
‘I don’t know. Edward was quite reckless enough to have climbed that cable of his own accord, but Magnus might very well have encouraged him, or even ... I try not to think of it.’
‘I am sorry,’ I said, ‘I should not have asked.’
‘You need not be,’ she said. ‘It is always somewhere in my mind.’
‘How did you escape from the Hall?’ I said, after a pause.
‘Very much as you surmised: I left the Hall at dawn the next morning, in a gown and bonnet of Lucy’s. I was enough of a mimic to pass as a lady’s maid. It would have been too dangerous for me to go straight to Yorkshire, and so I had reserved a room, under the name of Helen Northcote, in a temperance hotel in Lincoln. I was still there when the first reports began to appear in the papers, and I realised that all the time I had been planning my escape from Magnus, he had been fashioning a hangman’s noose for me.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but ... why did he kill Mrs Bryant the night before the séance, when he had made all those preparations, and brought everyone together at the Hall?’
‘Because . . .’ she paused, as if searching for words, ‘because those preparations were meant to mesmerise everyone into
expecting
him to vanish from the armour. Now that I know he was living a double life as Davenant, it makes sense at last. The Hall was heavily encumbered; he had already converted Mrs Bryant’s ten thousand pounds into diamonds; that cheque was her death warrant. Another man might have gone on trying to extract more money from her, but for Magnus I think money was simply a means to an end; it was power he craved: power and revenge. If I
had
been dragged away to an asylum that night, I’m sure he would have insisted upon trying the experiment anyway. “We owe it to Mrs Bryant’s memory,” I can imagine him saying; and Magnus Wraxford would have vanished, leaving nothing behind but ashes. But when his original plan miscarried, he saw that he could use the death of Magnus Wraxford to exact an even more terrible revenge upon me.’
‘Did you believe, all along, that he was still alive?’
‘Yes – alive, and hunting for me. I had a waking nightmare – one of many – of standing on a scaffold, with the rope already round my neck, and seeing Magnus smiling from the shadows. I never thought I would escape him, but I was determined that Clara would be saved. And so Ada and George – at my insistence – became her parents. They let the servants at Helmsley think that Laura – as we named her – was their foster child, but when George was offered a living at Whitby a year later they began to speak of Laura as their own, and nobody questioned it. Ada gave Helen Northcote a reference, and after three years as a housekeeper in Chester – the longest years of my life – I came to Whitby as Ada’s companion.’
‘It must have been dreadfully hard for you,’ I said. ‘Knowing you might be snatched away at any moment, I mean.’
‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘Laura knows I love her, but I have always withheld something of myself. To brace yourself for the worst, every time a stranger knocks at the door, leaves its mark, as you see ...
‘It is strange – or perhaps not – that Laura has grown to be so like Ada: sweet-natured and tranquil, with nothing of my temper, and even
a natural gift for music, which I certainly do not possess. No one would ever doubt that they were mother and daughter. And now – thanks entirely to you – the shadow is gone from our lives.
‘You risked your life for me,’ she said, taking my hand once more, ‘you were willing to go to prison for me; I shall never forget you. I came to London prepared to reveal myself as Eleanor Wraxford, if there was no other way of ensuring your safety. But thank God we have been spared that; the police have agreed that Ada’s name will not appear in the matter, and Laura need never know.’
‘But surely,’ I said, ‘you must
want
the world to know who you really are. How else can you clear your name?’
She was silent for a while, gazing out across the city.
‘Magnus worshipped power,’ she said at last: ‘the power to deceive whomever he chose, to make them believe, feel, even see as he directed. If they would not succumb, then in his eyes they deserved to die. And yet out of all that terror and cruelty came Laura. There is nothing of Magnus in her; blood does not always out; sometimes it is washed clean, or never tainted from the first.
‘But the world, Constance, does not see things thus. Magnus’s vision and the world’s have more in common than we care to admit. I could shout my innocence from every one of those rooftops, and people would still believe me guilty of
something
. No; Eleanor Wraxford will always be “that woman who murdered her husband” – or her child, for what could I say had become of Clara? If Laura were to learn who I really am, she would surely divine the truth.’
‘But – now that there is no reason to deceive her – might she not prefer to know? Would she not have two loving mothers instead of one?’
‘Yes; but she would have to accept that instead of the kind and gentle man she remembers as her father, she is the daughter of a monster, who delighted in cruelty, murdered we do not know how many people, and never cared a jot for her. Would you really wish that upon her?’
‘No, but – there is a way,’ I said tentatively. ‘If you would let me be
Clara; you could say that you gave me up – exactly as you did give Clara to Ada – to protect me, and now we have found each other again. Laura could go on being Ada’s daughter, and ... I would dearly love to have you for my mother; I would never tell a soul, I promise, and then Laura could be my sister . . .’ My voice broke at the last phrase, and tears welled over again. She drew me into her arms and stroked my hair and murmured the small wordless comforting sounds I had longed to hear from my own mother, and I found myself quite unable to stop until I had drenched her shoulder with my tears and lay quiet in her embrace, feeling the warmth of the sun on my back and wishing the moment would last for ever. But I knew what her answer would be as soon as I looked up.
‘It is a dream of happiness, Constance, but it could never be. The secret would divide us; we should all be whispering in corners, and sooner or later, Laura would guess what we had done. I had no choice when I gave her to Ada; it would be unforgivable to deceive her a second time.
‘No; Eleanor Wraxford vanished twenty years ago, and will not return. I am, and will remain, Helen Northcote, and the secret I beg you to keep – if you will – is that you and I met, here, this morning.’
She rose, and drew me to my feet, and we stood for a long moment gazing at one another.
‘Shall I never see you again?’ I said.
‘I will always think of you,’ she replied, and held me in a last embrace before she turned and walked away down the hill towards the sea of rooftops below, with the dome of St Paul’s rising above the haze of numberless chimneys. My fancy of the Underworld beneath the kitchen floor, with its endless tunnels stretching away into the dark, came back to me as I watched her, remembering how often I had gazed at that dome as a child. My thoughts turned to Edwin, perhaps already waiting in the gardens by the church, but I remained on the hillside, gazing after Nell’s diminishing figure, long after she had vanished from sight.
