Two

Things went wrong when the luminous glowing head floated out of the darkness.

Up until that point, Marianne had felt confident in her abilities to expose one more fraudulent medium. The séance itself had been lively, entertaining, and totally by the book. Marianne had been asked to attend by the heir of Mrs Silver, an elderly rich widow. The heir, a lank and limp young man who liked to count money rather than spend it, was worried that Mrs Silver was wasting all of her money on trying to contact her dead husband; and she had a great deal of money, and therefore a great many mediums of fame and reputation keen to help her. Marianne knew all about magnetism but could have stated a good case for money having a particular attraction of its own.

Marianne had attended the small circle in disguise, of course. She was getting too well known to be able to get invited as herself; who would want Marianne Starr, Scientific Investigator, ruining all their tricks? Only last month, an illustration had appeared in Punch that had looked suspiciously like Marianne, at least according to her cousin Phoebe. “I am getting well known!” Marianne had exclaimed in triumph, snatching it from Phoebe at the breakfast table, and poring over it with glee.

“You say that as if it were a good thing. Look closely, and you see they have pictured you in rational dress,” Phoebe had retorted. “So unflattering. These women look positively deflated.”

“Oh, marvellous, so they have. It is better than being over-inflated, surely!”

“That’s true. I saw Mrs Wilson last week and her corset had pushed her unfortunate bosoms so high that she could rest her chin on them.”

“It saves on scarves,” Marianne said.

Price Claverdon snorted and coughed and Phoebe fluttered a hand at him. “Sorry, dear; I forget you’re there when you’re reading so quietly.”

He forgave his beautiful young wife instantly, and resumed his perusal of the more respectable papers.

“Do you think it is really me?” Marianne said. “I am not the only woman in this field. There is no name. This could be Mrs Sidgwick.”

“Hardly. She is ancient and you are ... tall.”

Price sighed heavily. He did not like his breakfasts to be so full of chatter. They had lapsed into silence.

Marianne was in two minds about her increasing notoriety but it could not be ignored. So, at tonight’s séance, she had arrived in the guise of one Miss Lily Bowman, bereaved of her dear brother just five months ago, and hence handily hidden behind a veil and a white-powdered face as she was still technically in the late stages of mourning. It was six months for siblings, so the manuals and aged aunts advised.

They had assembled in a nicely-furnished room, the guests of Mrs Silver herself. There was a crowd of eight persons, plus the medium, who was a stout rough woman with an accent of the streets. Her gifts had brought her up in the ranks of society, at least into the presence of her betters, even if she were never going to be accepted by them in any other situation.

The medium had flabby cheeks and a tendency to look one directly in the eye when she spoke, which Marianne liked, and a secondary habit of wiping her nose on her sleeve every few minutes, which Marianne tried to politely overlook. She was called The Great Italiano, despite being thoroughly London and also thoroughly female.

The Great Italiano – or Mabel Frink, as Marianne had discovered prior to this evening’s antics – was only nominally in charge of proceedings. As they were gathered at the house and behest of Mrs Silver, it was Mrs Silver who directed things. First, they dined very lightly on a selection of foods, the sort one might take before going to the theatre. Then watered-down alcohol – mostly sweet wine – was passed around but no one was to get inebriated. Marianne would have taken a little brandy and hot water, but none was offered. By this time, the gathering was talking most amiably and even strangers were feeling as if they were friends.

Usually they would then move into the room set aside for the real business of the night, but Mrs Silver seemed to crave the games of her past, for she clapped her hands together and suggested they “explore the hidden strengths of the human mind, and see whether we can collectively bend our will to propel another to act, telepathically.”

Or, to Marianne, “play some parlour games.”

The Great Italiano had protested, suggested that the spirits were waiting for them, hovering around impatiently in the ether, and that there was a danger they might float off to another séance. But the other people in the gathering – a mixture of couples and friends, a solitary gentleman and one other single lady – were pleased to go along with Mrs Silver’s suggestion. The solitary gentleman was apparently a guest who was invited very late, to replace someone who could not make it at short notice. No one seemed to know him but he inserted himself into other people’s conversations with persistence, charm and a little vulgarity. Marianne ignored the other people, and focussed her attention on The Great Italiano. The medium stood to one side of the room, twisting a rope of fake pearls with her fingers, glaring at everyone in turn. At first Marianne thought that she was simply eager to get her séance over and done.

However, the lively gathering grew even more animated and Marianne realised that their gaiety meant that they weren’t going to approach the séance with the solemnity and edge of fear that the fake medium needed them to feel. Tricks were far more effective when people took them seriously and believed them to be true.

Marianne excused herself from the games, citing her state of mourning. She stood on the opposite side of the room to The Great Italiano. Mrs Silver directed the other single lady, an old spinster called Miss Henderson, to leave the room. Everyone else was to choose an object in the room, just one between them all, and a sparky young man, a dashing dandy called Timothy, alighted upon the ornamental silver snuff mull that was in the middle of a sideboard. “She will not think of that,” he claimed. “Will she not naturally cleave to things of a feminine nature?”

“How clever, Timmy!” said his companion, a woman of simpering words and looks. “Yes, let us all concentrate our will upon that. Oh, someone call her back in, and we shall see!” Everyone put on very serious faces to indicate that they were imagining, very hard, Miss Henderson touching the selected object. They would will her to do so, and demonstrate the power of the mind.

Miss Henderson slipped back into the room and everyone affected great nonchalance, though there was a lot of lip-twitching and narrowed eyes as people sought to show how hard they were willing Miss Henderson to approach the ram’s head snuff mull. No one looked anywhere near it, and it made the thing even more obvious; they stared anywhere but the silver snuff mull.

Miss Henderson looked at them all, and inched towards the object. The simpering woman could not contain herself, and her hand jerked. Marianne rolled her eyes. It was too easy.

Miss Henderson took another step towards the sideboard. Everyone had grown very still, holding their breaths. Could they make it any more plain, thought Marianne in disgust.

As Miss Henderson reached out towards the sideboard – and her hand might have as easily being heading for a nearby vase as the mull – everyone burst out into applause.

“Now might we begin?” The Great Italiano demanded. She looked as unimpressed as Marianne felt. Mrs Silver acquiesced and they left the “Willing-Game” and filed through to the room which had been set up for the séance.

***

“SET UP” WAS ENTIRELY the right phrase. The lighting was low, and the air smoky. They were placed around a heavy table with one central pillar for a leg. A curtain had been hung across one corner of the room, and beyond that, Marianne knew, would be the “spirit cabinet” harbouring all manner of tricks and fakery.

They began in the usual way, with their hands resting on the table, their fingers lightly touching. The Great Italiano shuddered her breath in and out, and the gas lighting flickered; the lamps had been turned down so low that one went out. A man jumped up to attend to it, before they were all poisoned, but The Great Italiano ordered him to sit down again. She got up herself and went to the door, and called in a small thin girl. “My assistant,” the older woman said with no more explanation than that, and Mrs Silver nodded, evidently already acquainted with her.

So they settled back down at the table while the thin girl fiddled with the lamps, but she was a clumsy sort and for a brief moment they were all plunged into darkness. The girl said something about the lamps, and instead lit a candle, which was woefully inadequate and now Marianne could not see anything but dark shapes in a dark room. The candle was put far from the table, deliberately so, at the opposite end of the room to the cabinet. The wick needed trimming and of course, this was deliberate, as the sides of the glass grew smoky and let even less light pass through.

That short spell of blackness had given The Great Italiano enough time to extract her hands and join the hands of the neighbours to either side, so that each person thought that they still touched the person they were supposed to touch. With the weak candle guttering so far away, it was impossible to see one’s own hands at all. Now she would be free to indulge in her trickery, Marianne knew. But Marianne could not expose this fraud yet. Everything rested on choosing the best moment for the maximum impact. Everyone had to know that The Great Italiano was a fake. It had to be demonstrated clearly and unequivocally.

Otherwise, people would continue to believe what they wanted to believe.

The séance progressed with the usual mixture of cold-reading, fishing, and shocking revelations of “facts” that The Great Italiano probably already knew from her research. One woman was told that her uncle did love her and was sorry about what happened to the carriage, and she gave a stifled sob. A man was assured that “she is always watching over you” but that could have easily been a threat as any kind of a reassurance. At one point, a flurry of rapping came from below the table top, which made everyone gasp but didn’t seem to serve any real purpose – except perhaps to exercise The Great Italiano’s toe joints.

And then it was time for the main event. This is what Mrs Silver wanted, and what Marianne was waiting for.

The Great Italiano, with much pomp and ceremony, retreated to the spirit cabinet, where she said that she would channel her spirit guides. They would announce their presence by music and drums, and everyone was to remain seated, whatever happened.

The Great Italiano called for two strong and honest men to come into the cabinet and tie her up. There was a veritable fight between the gentlemen to be allowed to perform this office; the victors proudly slipped into the cabinet and soon returned, announcing to everyone that the medium’s bonds were secure.

The candle blew out.

That surprised Marianne; she hadn’t seen anyone near to it, though at least one of the participants around the table was bound to be one of The Great Italiano’s stooges. She filed the event away for further investigation.

Silence descended in the pitch-black room.

They waited, and even Marianne, who knew – or thought she knew – what was coming felt a tension rising. It was so very easy to let oneself be drawn into the atmosphere. She clenched and unclenched her toes, and concentrated on her breathing.

Finally a cacophony of sounds erupted from the cabinet – a drum was beaten, and a trumpet played, albeit badly. A young lady squealed but it was cut off, strangled and swallowed back down. A man laughed nervously and turned it into a cough.

Marianne remained calm. There would be more. She had to pick her moment. She could leap up now and fling the cabinet open to reveal The Great Italiano, free of her bonds, blowing on the trumpet, but that was a small revelation.

Suddenly there was a rustling and a puff of air touched Marianne’s cheek. She shuddered. She blinked furiously as if she would be able to clear the darkness from her eyes and see what was happening.

It was at this point that the glowing head appeared.

No one had been expecting that.

The curtains billowed to each side, only noticeable by the impression they made around the rounded object as it loomed forward in the darkness. It had a wide and domed forehead, two sunken cheeks and a thick chin.

It was, Marianne thought, clearly a balloon painted with some sort of phosphorus. It was a common enough trick, but one that was unexpected here: it was a low kind of game. Nevertheless, this was her moment. She pulled a long hatpin free and leaped forward, and jabbed it viciously into the balloon’s side.

The balloon shrieked.

Hands flapped at her, and someone else grabbed her from behind. Everyone was yelling and shouting, and a door was flung open and light flooded the room. It froze everyone to the spot.

Only Marianne moved, fighting her way free of the man who had gripped her around the waist. He harrumphed with an apologetic awkwardness.

The thin girl, the assistant of The Great Italiano, was holding her cheek and sobbing.

“Untie me!” called the medium from within her cabinet. “What is going on?”

Mrs Silver shot Marianne a look of pure venom. “How dare you launch such an attack! Who are you?”

“It matters not who I am. What is going on here, my dear lady, is fraud, pure and simple. I am sorry to tell you that you are a victim of dreadful duplicity.”

“Absolutely not!” cried Mrs Silver. “How can you even say so?”

“Er – well, this girl here has been painted to glow in the dark, and scare us, for a start,” Marianne said, still waving the hatpin. “Look at her skin!”

“I was channelling a spirit!” the girl sobbed. “Madam, tell her.” By now The Great Italiano had been freed from her ropes, and she had emerged, looking as furious as Mrs Silver.

In fact, everyone was looking angrily at Marianne. She had spoiled the fun for those who did not believe, and utterly ruined the night for those that did.

“Get out!” Mrs Silver said. “Don’t you dare come back in this house again, Miss Bowman. Never.”

“But she is a fake,” Marianne insisted.

“You have no evidence, just bitter spite. The spirits will not reveal themselves again until you are gone!”

Marianne tilted her chin and stalked out of the room. She was followed by someone, and she assumed it was Mrs Silver or a servant, ensuring that she left the premises. Her heart was pounding now, partly in annoyance and a great deal in embarrassment.

She reached the ground floor hallway, and found her outdoor wear in a small room just off to the side of the main door. She glanced behind to tell the servant that she was only going to retrieve her things, but stopped in surprise when she saw she was being followed by one of the other séance participants.

It was the late-added guest whom nobody knew. She wondered how he had managed to get added to the party. He was a tall man in his thirties, with a well-built air, and a grin that spoke of whisky and song. He had shaggy dark hair, and pale brown eyes, and a dandyish love of colourful clothing. He spoke with a smoked edge to his cut-glass accent. “Miss Starr, what an unfortunate turn of events for you.”

“I am Miss Lily Bowman...”

“Balderdash. Or I am the King of China.”

“I don’t believe China has a king, actually. They have an Emperor.”

“How clever of you. Tragically you were not clever enough to spot that girl was not going to pop like a balloon.”

“It was dark,” Marianne said scornfully. “If you will excuse me, I have business to attend to.”

“No, you don’t, actually. You have just been thrown out of a private house. Come, get your things, and let me escort you home. I would very much like to get to know you.”

“Thank you, but there is no need for any escorting, sir.” She slipped into her long travelling coat and pulled her gloves on. She adjusted her hat, and sailed out of the house onto the narrow London street. It was dark outside, but there were streetlamps casting light from afar, where they ranged along the main carriageway at the end of the side street.

She walked towards the main road, but the man followed. “Sir,” she said, very sternly, “This area is frequented by policemen and I still carry the hair pin. It is very sharp.” She often walked the streets alone, even at night, though she picked her routes with care, and knew most of the policemen and their regular beats. And she had more than one type of weapon about her person, which made her walk with a confidence that most footpads could recognise.

“A pin! Such a weapon hardly strikes me with any great fear,” he said. “Though you nearly had that poor girl’s eye out of her socket. So close. Pop! Like a winkle on a stick. Wouldn’t that have made a tale for the papers?”

“Sir!” she said, with fear and caution now creeping along her spine. She picked up her pace. She wanted to be in a busier place. “I am afraid I do not know you.”

“But I know you, and that is something.”

He had used her name. “Well, you have the advantage of me. Jolly good for you. Ah! A cab. Thank you sir, and good night.” She didn’t have much money, and would not have usually indulged in a cab, but this man was a pest of the highest order and she had to get away from him.

“Wait.” He put out a hand to the cabbie, who nodded, nestled in his greatcoat up on the step of the cab. The horse lowered its head, grateful for a moment’s rest. “Then let me give you my card. I am Jack Monahan, and you know, I fancy that we should find much in common, were we to talk. You are a modern woman and don’t need introductions and arrangements, do you? Let us become known to one another, naturally. I do believe that we shall be friends!”

“We shall be no such thing!” She took the card out of habit and pulled herself up into the cab. But the infuriating man still stood there. She did not want to give her real address, so she instructed the cabbie to take her to an address in Cavendish Square.

Jack Monahan laughed as if she had made a great joke. He grabbed hold of the brass rail that held the cab’s lamp, and pulled himself up towards the cabbie’s seat, one leg dangling in the air. “She’s trying to throw me off the scent, my friend,” he said with a conspiratorial air. “She actually lives at Woodfurlong, out at Deenhampton. Bit of a trek for you, this time of night, mind.” He jumped back down to the road. “Off you go now! I shall call upon you soon, Miss Starr. We shall discuss many things.”

The cab lurched forward and she shrank back in the seat, cursing.

How did this strange man know so much about her?

And why?