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Phoebe had used her family name and connections to persuade a higher rank than a mere constable or even Sergeant Giles to come out. Inspector Gladstone was lean, lithe, young and personable. He spoke with a rough Cockney accent. Like so many of the up-and-coming police force, he had clearly been recruited from the streets, and had shown promise which had been rewarded with promotion.
He was assisted by an older constable who was not introduced to them. The constable took notes while Inspector Gladstone addressed Wade Walker first.
Wade hung his head. He muttered, “It is as you have been told.”
“No, sir, I need to hear this from your own lips.”
“I cannot. I cannot speak of it. But just come along with me, and I shall show you.”
“What do you intend to show us, sir?”
“The body of my friend Edgar Bartholomew, which is the man whom I have killed.”
Inspector Gladstone nodded as if it were a perfectly normal sentence to hear someone utter. Harry Vane, on the other hand, exploded into a barrage of questions.
“Hold on one minute!” he cried. “This woman here is a fake – a fraud – she is no medium at all! And she is being assisted by someone who claims to expose mediums. There is a crime happening here, right before our eyes!”
“Mrs Claverdon has explained her situation while we came from the stationhouse,” the inspector said. “I am aware of the business in which she and her cousin Miss Starr were engaged here and while I do not condone their methods, I am grateful to them and their efforts. Have you any business here at all, sir? Are you a witness?”
“To what? This travesty?”
“No, the murder.”
“What murder?”
“Constable, take his details. We will be in touch. Now, Mr ...”
“Walker. Wade Walker.”
“Mr Walker, will you please lead us on?”
“Certainly.”
Harry Vane stared after them in frustration and Marianne knew that she hadn’t seen the last of him.
***
“WHERE IS SIMEON?” PHOEBE hissed to Marianne as they walked, arm in arm, behind Wade Walker. He was flanked by the constable, who was ready at any moment to grab him should he try to flee. Behind them came Inspector Gladstone.
“I was going to ask you that.”
“He must have slipped away when the police turned up.”
“Silly man. He has nothing to hide, has he?”
“No, not at all. He just gets scared about things. He doesn’t like authority.”
Phoebe sighed. “He has some demons chasing him, doesn’t he? Does he indulge in laudanum?”
“No.”
“Maybe he should. Your father does all right by it, doesn’t he?”
“Hmm.”
It was fully night by now and the air was growing chilly. They began to walk more briskly by a mutual and unspoken agreement.
As soon as a vacant cab of a suitable size passed them, Inspector Gladstone flagged it down and commandeered it for official police use, and their journey passed quickly once they had all wedged themselves together within. It was slightly smelly, but a good deal warmer.
There was a light on in the window of the gatehouse but the cab driver took them right past it and up the driveway. He was ordered to wait while they entered the dark house. The constable accompanied Wade to the back of the house, disappearing down a corridor which seemed to swallow them in shadows while Phoebe, Marianne and Inspector Gladstone stayed by the open door, where at least a little light was provided by the grey clouds and the moon behind them.
The constable returned, carrying a lantern aloft, which filled the hall with shifting yellow and black shapes. All eyes were now on Wade.
“Show us what you need to show us,” the inspector ordered.
He hesitated. “No, I cannot – it is not for ladies. They should not have come. I did not think clearly. I feel as if I am in a dream. You know those dreams where you fall and fall and any minute, you expect to hit the ground?”
“Well, they are here now, and they are witnesses, of a sort. Bert, did you see any candles back there? We cannot leave them here in the dark.”
“You will not leave us here at all,” Marianne said. “I have seen dead bodies, and in some terrible states, too.” She thought of George Bartholomew, then, and the sympathy that she had been feeling for Wade evaporated. She pointed a finger at him. “I found your best friend’s son, sir, who died in agony at your hand.”
“What’s this? Another victim? Is this true?”
Wade nodded. “It is true. Oh, I am sorry.”
“How did this other man die?”
“By poisoning. White phosphorus, in fact,” Marianne said. “And I found the body. So I have no fear of what I am about to see. I am a woman of science,” she added. “I have a professional curiosity which overrides my natural feminine instincts and sensitivities.”
“I don’t,” Phoebe muttered, but she followed along anyway.
The constable kept even closer now to Wade as they ascended the main wide staircase. Their footsteps echoed on the uncarpeted floor. The air inside was even colder than it had been outside. Phoebe leaned on Marianne’s arm, and she was shivering. “I might wait at a distance,” she whispered to Marianne.
Marianne patted her arm.
They passed along a dizzy and disorientating series of corridors, and one narrow flight of stairs at the back of the house, until they were walking along a long gallery with a sloping ceiling. At the far end stood a door that was not quite the height of a fully grown man.
“In there,” Wade said in a croak.
“What will we find? Do we need to be prepared?”
“You will find a dead body. There is nothing to harm you – there are no traps, no tricks, no poisons. It is only the final resting place of my dearest friend, and the scene of all our folly.”
The constable and the inspector exchanged glances. Then, to the surprise of the constable, the inspector addressed Marianne. “Miss Starr, you seem to have uncommon knowledge about this whole affair. Can we believe what he says, do you think?”
“I think that you can.” She dropped Phoebe’s arm, and stepped forward along the corridor with Wade and the two policemen, leaving her cousin behind in the gathering shadow. “I have been piecing things together as we drove over here. Mr Walker, you only intended to half-kill Mr Bartholomew, didn’t you?”
“Yes, and it was with his consent. We thought that we could trick death, you see, and peek beyond the veil.”
“But it went wrong.”
“It ... did.”
“Why did you not report this terrible accident at once?” Inspector Gladstone said. They reached the door, and no one seemed willing to touch the handle.
“I would have done, but I was submerged in grief. And panic. For I had killed him. There is no escaping that fact,” Wade said. “But yes, I knew what I had to do. Except ... there was another part to our plan.”
“Whichever one of you were to die first, then they would contact the other, is that right?” Marianne said. It was a common enough pact among the spiritual crowd.
He nodded, still staring at the door. “This was his house, you know. And he died here. So I knew that he was going to manifest here. That was what we agreed. I had to stay, to wait for his spirit.”
“But you didn’t expect his son to turn up, did you?” she said. “That changed everything.”
“Oh!” said the inspector. “This George Bartholomew that was spoken of?”
“Indeed, the very same,” Wade went on with a heavy sigh. “He came in darkness, suddenly, one night, without even sending word. I hid myself in my room and heard him tramping around. I called out, saying that I was sick, and I spent the night sleepless and wondering how to go on.”
“A good man would have gone on by telling the truth,” the inspector said. “I reckon, however, you did not choose that option.”
“I did not. I had to stay here, you see. I had to wait for Edgar to contact me, and I could not let George know what had happened to his father. They were long estranged, anyway, and so as dawn broke I went into town and bought the hair dye. I thought that I might be able to pass myself off as his father, but... he suspected.”
“Of course he would!” the inspector scoffed. “Oh, this is a sorry tale. And we are all avoiding the main thing – we must enter this room. Mr Walker, you will go first.”
“I?”
“Yes,” Inspector Gladstone said very firmly. “Go on with you.”
The constable held the lantern high. Wade Walker closed his eyes, and opened the door, but did not proceed over the threshold until the inspector jabbed him roughly between the shoulder-blades.
Walker stepped in, and the constable went in beside him. Marianne and Gladstone followed closely, as much to stay in the lantern’s safe embrace as anything else.
“What do you see?” Phoebe called in a small voice from the now-dark corridor.
Marianne looked around. They were in a small room with a sloping ceiling and the windows were papered over. In the middle of the room was a circular table familiar to a thousand séance rooms. There was a curtain across one corner of the room. Two chairs stood either side of the table.
Neither contained a dead body.
“I brought the mediums here, at first,” Wade explained. “I thought perhaps he needed an intermediary to make contact with me. But every attempt failed. Until I met Mrs Carter. She, too ... oh, Edgar!”
Marianne stepped towards the curtain. The pole passed from wall to wall, making a triangular space behind it. She steeled herself, and took hold of the right hand edge of the curtain.
“Miss Starr...”
She dragged the curtain across.
There was nothing but a very large trunk there.
“I assume that he lies within,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady as a prickle of cold sweat trickled down her spine.
“He does.”
“How did he die?”
“Asphyxiation. We thought that we could stop his breathing for long enough that he was dead, but that I would be able to bring him back again before it was too late and he fully crossed over. But I miscalculated.”
“So he is not mutilated or damaged in any way?”
“No, but he has been there now for at least three weeks.”
She stepped backwards. “It is a well-sealed trunk.”
“Yes, I took care to use bandages soaked in camphor and strong scents. But I would not recommend that the trunk is opened until it is in a safe laboratory space.”
She turned to face the others. “I would agree.”
“Is that your professional opinion, Miss Starr?” Inspector Gladstone asked.
“Yes.”
“Wade Walker, I am arresting you on the suspicion of murder by two counts. One, the murder of Edgar Bartholomew and two, the murder of George Bartholomew.” He began to run through some cautions to Wade, regarding what he should or should not say. Wade hung his head, and she could tell that he was crying.
Again she quashed the sympathy that threatened her. He was guilty. The first murder might be accidental, but his killing of George was premeditated and awful. That reminded her of one more thing.
“Why did you poison George with white phosphorus?” she asked. “You knew what you were doing, didn’t you?”
He hung his head. “I did know. I had found it in a jar of water, left behind by one medium who had thought to trick me, and I knew what it was. I was going to throw it away but George was becoming increasingly troublesome. I used it to spike everything he might eat or drink in the kitchen, and then I threw him out.”
“You monster.”
“You don’t understand. I had to ... I still have to ... make contact with Edgar. It was our life’s work and I couldn’t allow George to ruin it all!”
Marianne shook her head in disgust. He might plead that he was of unsound mind, but if he didn’t hang for these offences, he was surely going to Bedlam for the rest of his life.
As if reading her thoughts, he said, “Will I swing for this?”
“It is likely.”
“Good,” he said. “I deserve it. And my friend will be waiting for me. I welcome peace, and death, and I look forward to being reunited with Edgar and all the others I have lost.”
“Well,” Marianne snapped, “let us hope, then, that you are right and there is someone else waiting for you too – George Bartholomew, who might have made mistakes in his life, but he didn’t deserve to die. He will be wanting to be reunited with you, too.”
Wade shuddered, and the constable put the lantern on the floor so that he could fit the handcuffs to the arrested man. Their shadows flared up around them on the walls, and Marianne tried not to look at them, because she was sure she could count more than four.