When I came downstairs in the morning, I found Mrs Widge standing in the doorway to the dining room, holding a tray containing a large silver coffee pot, a toast rack, a covered dish and a fragrant, steaming sponge cake, and looking offended.

‘He’s gone off, ma’am,’ she said, ‘he’s gone, Mr Dixon is. He left a note.’ She gestured with her two chins towards the dining table, where an envelope was propped against the vase which decorated its centre.

‘Oh, Mrs Widge,’ I said, ‘had you prepared an extra-lovely breakfast for our guest? I’m sure if he’d known he would have stayed for it! But as it is, we shall have to enjoy it ourselves. The sponge cake will be much appreciated in the nursery, I know.’

I extracted Ernest’s note from its envelope and read it.

Dear Vanessa,

Can’t face the friendly family breakfast. You’ll understand. You know I’m counting on you. I’ve heard about the cases you’ve solved. Don’t fail me. I feel I’m staring death in the face – not sure whether it’s hers, mine or HIS, whoever he is.

Come to 10 Heron Lane in Islington, at 9 o’clock this evening. And thank you.

 

Ernest

Goodness, I thought to myself, as I sat alone at the table in front of the large quantity of succulent things that Mrs Widge was setting upon it. I wonder whose address that is? Whom does Ernest want me to meet? Some of the girl’s friends, I suppose. He seems to know all kinds of people in the acting world. Islington, though – that’s hardly the kind of place where actors live!

Arthur came down a few minutes later, freshly shaven, and poured himself a cup of coffee before sitting down. His eye roved appreciatively over the table.

‘Mrs Widge has outdone herself,’ he remarked. ‘Where is the happy beneficiary of all this effort?’

‘Arthur, right or wrong, he learnt last night that the girl he loved is dead,’ I said. ‘Do you expect him to be interested in sponge cake?’

‘Well, I don’t know about sponge cake, but sausages, maybe?’ he said, lifting a dish cover and spearing one with a fork. I opened my mouth indignantly, but shut it again. He cannot help it. The idea that Ernest should be in love with an actress while being married to Kathleen is not an admissible one in Arthur’s moral world. He would not deny, in theory, that such a thing can happen, and there are even moments when he might be brought reluctantly to speak of it, but certainly not at table in the clear light of day. One cannot change people.

‘He left early,’ I contented myself with saying. ‘He must have caught the first train, and he’s left me a note asking me to meet him in London at nine o’clock this evening.’

‘To meet him?’ he said, surprised.

‘Well, to meet someone. He just left an address.’

‘A bunch of murderers, probably,’ he said.

‘Nonsense, Arthur. I suppose he wants me to learn something about the dead girl’s friends and relations.’

‘One of whom killed her, unless she was killed by a passing tramp.’

‘She might have been,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘She was found in the river in the early morning, and had not spent more than a few hours there, Inspector Doherty told me. She must have been killed in the middle of the night.’ I wondered if the police knew more or less precisely at what time she actually died. Post-mortems do allow them to determine such information. I realised that I knew almost nothing about the circumstances of her death, and that my first task should really be to find out more.

To this end, I proceeded to the police headquarters after breakfast and enquired if Inspector Doherty was available. He was in, and seemed quite pleased to see me.

‘An excellent tip, that one about Geoffrey Archer,’ he told me. ‘Good work. I am very angry with Pat for stealing the bracelet, obviously. But he insists that he did it entirely without your knowledge. You should have brought it straight back here when he gave it to you, you know that. In fact, you ought to have told me immediately that you thought it might have come from Robert Sayle’s. Still, let bygones be bygones. Our talk with Archer was conclusive. The girl has been identified beyond a doubt.’

‘I suppose Mr Archer is not the murderer?’ I asked, thinking suddenly of Estelle’s anxiety on that score.

‘No,’ replied the inspector. ‘Do you think we didn’t ask ourselves that question at once? We questioned him about his relationship with her, and found out that although he was not precisely keeping her, he did give her the occasional gift of money for services rendered. The child she was expecting might have constituted a motive of sorts, though it’s not clear why it would represent a threat to a man in his position, but some people panic about such things; perhaps she was threatening to make a public scandal. However, be that as it may, he’s out of the running with a cast-iron alibi.’

‘Oh, that is interesting,’ I said. ‘Are you allowed to tell me what it is?’ If I had asked him straightforwardly, he might have been reluctant to give me details out of pure official discretion or the fear of my continuing to meddle (little did he know…), but the word ‘allowed’ had the hoped-for effect of piquing his sense of importance.

‘Certainly I can tell you. The girl Ivy Elliott was last seen at a party at Mr Archer’s home on the evening of 21st June. Mr Archer was present, obviously, and there was a fairly large number of guests. Sergeant Forth and I questioned them all.’

He handed me a list of some twenty names. Although not personally acquainted with any of them, I saw more than one that I recognised as belonging to people of the highest social standing in Cambridge. The testimony of each witness had been taken down and signed. I read rapidly through the statements. Most of them had virtually nothing to say on the subject of Ivy Elliott’s presence at, and departure from, Mr Archer’s home on the night of the dinner party. They had simply not taken any notice. A few were more observant.

Miss Elliott left a few minutes before midnight. She said she was tired and would go home; she was staying with a friend. Mr Archer spoke with her for a few moments in the hall before she left. He opened the front door and let her out himself. I saw her walking away down the drive. She was easy to make out in her white dress. The path was lamplit, and the weather was so warm that she had only a shawl over her shoulders.

The party took place in Mr Archer’s drawing room, which has large windows giving over the front garden. Miss Elliott was in the drawing room for most of the evening. She did not exactly act as hostess, but took care of the material aspects of the service, telling the servants when to bring liqueurs and biscuits, which curtains to draw and which to leave, when to light the outdoor lanterns and so on. She left quite late. I did not look at the time, but it must have been near midnight. A lot of the guests had already left at that point. Miss Elliott seemed tired, and going up to Geoffrey, she told him that she thought she would be on her way. She said she was going to a friend. He asked her if she was sure she wanted to leave, and pressed her to stay a little while longer. She did so, but after a few minutes she said that she was very tired, and would leave. He went out into the hall with her to bid her goodbye. He cannot have been out of the room for more than five minutes. She left, and Mr Archer returned and remained with us for the duration of the party, which continued until past two o’clock. He did not leave the room again. I am certain of it, as I was sitting on the sofa next to him for the entire time. He simply rose to his feet once or twice to say a few words to the butler.

After letting Miss Elliott out, Mr Archer came back to the drawing room, where he remained with us for more than two hours. He did not leave the drawing room again, I am certain of it. In fact, we were both sitting on the sofa during the whole of the conversation that followed. My husband does not support the same parliamentary candidate as Mr Archer, and this led to quite an argument. Spokes came in once or twice to see if anything was needed, since Miss Elliott had left. After Miss Elliott’s departure, the servants brought new drinks as well as tea for two ladies who desired it, and several trays of small cakes. At one point – it must have been an hour or so after Miss Elliott left – Mr Archer sent the servants to bed. Several guests left before Miss Elliott, and she sent out for cabs for some of them. The remaining ones, myself, my husband and four or five others, left together. It was already after 2 o’clock in the morning.

From seven o’clock to midnight, when she left, Miss Elliott was the one who would come here to the kitchen whenever anything was needed. She didn’t oversee the dinner service, she sat at the table with the others. But she made sure the drawing room and dining room were arranged properly before the guests came and after. She did the flowers herself and made sure everything was dusted. After the dinner was over, there was music, and more refreshments were served throughout the evening. That was how Mr Archer wanted things. It’s not our place to question that. Miss Elliott was pleasant and polite in her ways. We had nothing against her. After she left Mr Spokes went in to the drawing room to see with Mr Archer what was wanted.

Miss Elliott played the role of housekeeper during the party, making sure that all ran smoothly. The whole pretence was perfectly shocking, if you ask me. Miss Elliott is not a housekeeper, and I was surprised that Mr Archer permitted such a person to mingle with his guests, when we all know what she is. Had I known she would be present, I should not have accepted the invitation. Indeed, I was quite surprised that she actually left. She claimed that she was staying with a friend. She and Mr Archer avoided showing any signs of vulgarity in our presence, but I saw them standing in the hall when she left, and he was holding her hands in his, and then he pulled out a roll of bank notes and pressed them into her hands! Yes, he certainly did. No, I cannot guess how much money passed between them, but it was no trifle, I assure you! I was both shocked and disgusted. I shall not set foot in Chippendale House again.

‘Did you notice that he gave her money?’ I said to Inspector Doherty, surprised by the vehemence of this last statement.

‘Well,’ he said uncomfortably, ‘what do you expect?’

‘Oh, I know,’ I said, ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant that it’s strange that the money was not found on her. Or was it?’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ he said.

‘Where did she put it?’ I wondered. ‘Was she carrying a bag of any kind?’

‘We asked Archer that. Look here.’

He separated Mr Archer’s statement from the others, and handed it to me, pointing to the lines at the end. I read:

‘It’s all very odd,’ I said, looking up. ‘Where can she have been going, all by herself, on foot, at midnight? Why on earth didn’t she simply stay at Mr Archer’s home?’

‘Read Archer’s statement from the beginning,’ he counselled me. ‘It’s quite interesting.’

I met Miss Elliott through friends two years ago. To be more precise, these friends, who are very fond of theatre, had invested some money in a newly formed theatre company and were invited to a cast party after their first successful production. I was visiting these friends at the time, and joined them there. I met Miss Elliott upon that occasion.

I developed a strong affection for this charming young woman and used to employ her services from time to time, because I enjoyed her company, and also in order to aid her financially. She was an actress, but her position was obviously quite precarious; she earned very little and was not with any established theatre, although I believe that she subsequently found work with an experimental roving company, which plays in tents, or open fields, or some such thing. At any rate, it wasn’t very serious, and she was in straitened means, so I was pleased to be able to contribute to her welfare.

I saw Miss Elliott regularly, but not very frequently; perhaps two or three times a month. Sometimes I saw her in London, other times I wrote to her to propose some little service up here in Cambridge, and if the schedule did not interfere with her rehearsals, I would then send her a train ticket and she would come. I did not become involved in the rest of her life in any way. As far as I know she was a busy young lady with a great many colleagues, friends and acquaintances, but I am not acquainted with any of them. I was not in the habit of interfering in any way in her personal life.

Yes, I bought her the ivory bracelet a week or two ago, on one of her visits to Cambridge. She had come up to help me sort some old pictures. It was a pleasure to me to be able to offer her a small gift. She was really a good-hearted young person. At that time, I asked if she would be willing to return to Cambridge on the twenty-first of June, in order to help me with the organisation of the evening dinner and party for twenty guests. I much prefer organising things this way to having the servants come in to get their orders, or going out to the kitchen continually myself, or having a fixed and rigidly timed plan beforehand. Yes, I do have a housekeeper, of course, but I preferred to have Miss Elliott in and out of the drawing room than Mrs Munn.

I really do not know where she went when she left my house. She told me that she was tired and wished to leave, even though the party was not quite over. I thought it a little strange that she wished to walk into Cambridge at midnight, but she said she was going to a friend’s and that there was nothing to worry about. Let me be blunt; the streets at night hold no terror for young women such as she. I did not think much about it and let her go.

As far as I remember, she was not carrying anything. Yes, I did give her money as payment for her services during the evening. I gave Miss Elliott three pounds. She folded the notes and slipped them into her dress. I then bid her goodbye and opened the front door for her. She walked out and down the drive. I shut the door and returned to my guests. I did not leave the party at any time. I never saw Miss Elliott again.

‘So this is his alibi?’ I said. ‘The fact that he remained at the party until two o’clock in the morning? What did he do after that?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he told me. ‘After that she was already dead. As it turns out, she must have been killed very shortly after midnight. The post-mortem showed definitively that she was killed within an hour of leaving the house at the very most.’

‘Really!’ I said. ‘That’s strange, very strange. How can they be so sure? Isn’t the time of death usually rather vague?’

‘When you have to guess it from the condition of the corpse itself, yes,’ he said. ‘But in this case, there were the, ah, the stomach contents.’ He glanced at me apologetically. ‘You see, the meal was partially although not much digested, but the stomach contained fragments of practically undigested food…actual biscuit crumbs. They were identified as almond-flavoured wafers. We were able to determine that Mr Archer had a tray of such biscuits served at eleven-thirty, and not before. Given their state, the pathologist claims that they must have been in the stomach for a period of half an hour to an hour.’

‘She could have eaten them any time between eleven-thirty and midnight,’ I said.

‘Yes. So we can narrow down the time of her death to the half-hour between twelve-thirty and one o’clock,’ he replied.

‘It’s so peculiar, though,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you tell me that she had been floating in the river for about three hours? What time did you say the body was discovered?’

‘At seven. Yes, I agree that it is very odd. The results of the post-mortem clearly indicate that she was strangled before one o’clock and placed in the water around four or even five o’clock. Even by stretching the medically established times, the two events cannot possibly be brought to within less than three or four hours of each other.’

‘So she was killed somewhere, and her body transported to the river later?’ I asked.

‘Who knows? She was found in a place almost directly on her way from Chippendale House to the centre of town, so at first I wondered if her body had not been left on the bank of the river, and rolled or slipped in of itself after some lapse of time. But there were no stains of grass or mud on her clothing to substantiate that idea, nor could we find a specific imprint where the body might have lain, even searching some distance upriver. We may never know exactly where she was actually dropped in, but we can estimate the farthest possible distance, since drowned bodies sink after some time if they do not become caught, as this one did. We searched up and down both banks over the whole area, but the trouble is not that there are no marks, but that there are far too many. The riverbank is constantly being trampled by people and animals. We found nothing conclusive. Still, as far as Archer’s involvement is concerned, his alibi seems final. We’re looking into the circumstances of the girl’s life in London.’

‘Well,’ I said, deciding that I had better confess at once and get it over, ‘so am I. My services as a detective have been retained by a friend of hers.’

He stared at me.

‘I know you told me not to,’ I went on quickly. ‘And I certainly would not have gone on meddling in your investigation on my own. But now I have a client, and, well, I want to propose something to you, Inspector Doherty, if you will allow me.’

‘Who is your client?’ he barked abruptly.

‘Oh, I can’t reveal his identity,’ I said, feeling a little guilty at having openly disobeyed his injunction to stay out, and now refusing his very first request.

‘Any friend of hers might be or know the murderer,’ he said.

‘It does not appear possible to me that the murderer would retain my services, and the rules of my profession do not allow me to divulge my client’s identity at this point,’ I said anxiously. ‘However, I did want to tell you that if I discover anything at all that seems to have a bearing on the case, I will tell you about it at once. I do not want to enter into any kind of competition with the police, but simply to add the results of my investigation to theirs.’ This promise afforded me some relief. It seemed to me to be more than likely that Ernest would plunge into acts of inexcusable and irreversible foolishness were he to learn the identity of the murderer of his idol before the police had seized him. Inspector Doherty allowed himself to smile.

‘You do that, Mrs Weatherburn,’ he said. ‘I cannot stop you from investigating, much as I would prefer to, but since you insist upon it, I would much prefer that we work together. I believe I can work with you – and I wouldn’t say this about just any private detective, you know. Stay out of danger, see what you can do, and let me know.’

I thanked him profusely and shook his hand. I really do not want to arouse the hostility of the police. Such a worthy, able and admirable institution.

I boarded the London train in the early evening with a feeling of rising tension. Had Ivy Elliott been murdered by a passing tramp or common thief, for the money he snatched from her dress? Or was somebody waiting, waiting for her outside Mr Archer’s home, knowing that she was there, biding his time, planning, pulling on the gloves of the strangler, perhaps…

Then he would have carried her body to the river – but why not throw it in directly? Why wait three or four hours?

No, she must have been killed somewhere else, and the body transported somehow to the river later on. Midnight was too early; there were people in the streets, Mr Archer’s guests were being driven home. Three or four o’clock in the morning seemed a much safer hour for disposal of bodies. It began to make more sense. The question was to discover where the girl could have been strangled and kept, secretly, for three or four hours.

In Mr Archer’s house, for example? Could her departure have been nothing more than a gesture of politeness, to save appearances? Could she not have slipped quietly back into the house through some other entrance? And could not Mr Archer have known it and darted quickly upstairs – a mere minute of absence – to strangle her?

This idea so excited me that I had to remind myself firmly that I was in a train to London, and that there was no possibility of immediate communication with Inspector Doherty. I sat back and breathed deeply. I might be wrong, of course. Ernest had something important to show me. I should complete my task in London. Cambridge and its police force – and for that matter, very probably London’s police force as well – would still be there upon my return.

The train drew into Liverpool St, and I stepped out, collected my little valise, gave up my ticket, and proceeded to the exit, where I found a cab to take me to Islington. Heron Lane turned out to be a small, curved street with a line of little houses built along it, separated from each other by small gardens with high walls. From what I knew of her, I thought it a rather surprising place for a girl like Ivy Elliott to be frequenting, but I pushed all preconceived ideas to the back of my mind, walked up the path, and rang the bell firmly.

The door was opened at once by a plump, buxom lady who seemed too decoratively dressed to be a housekeeper. She wore a long, ample turquoise gown with flounces, and an aqua-green silk shawl embroidered with butterflies was draped over her shoulders and hung almost to her knees. Around her neck was a heavy necklace of large, irregular stones, shells and feathers.

This lady immediately seized me by the hand and drew me into the house.

‘You must be Mrs Weatherburn, dear,’ she said kindly. ‘We are expecting you. Come in, come in and meet the others.’ She divested me of my wrap and led me into a rather small, stuffy drawing room, lit with electric lights – the first time I had seen them in a private house. Several men and women were already there, seated on numerous little sofas and hassocks. Their presence filled the room to overcrowding. The air was permeated with a strong fragrance of incense; I perceived the slim little stick burning and smoking in a corner of the room.

Ernest rose to greet me as soon as he saw me in the doorway. He came forward and pressed my hand, nodding at his hostess.

‘I am glad you came. I’ll admit it; I was not sure you would,’ he said. ‘All I ask you, Vanessa,’ he added in an undertone, ‘is to let go of your prejudices completely for one hour. Just one hour.’ He eyed me significantly, and I assented with some surprise. Were these good people so very disreputable as all that? I glanced about me, and saw a little drab woman with red eyes and a hat decorated with flowers, two portly gentlemen, one bearded and the other moustached, a young man afflicted with a complete absence of chin, a stern young woman with spectacles and a notepad, and my genial hostess. Who could they be?

‘We are all here, are we not, Mrs Thorne?’ said one of the portly gentlemen, rising from his seat. ‘Perhaps we should begin.’

‘Certainly, Mr Doyle,’ replied my hostess with great respect. He smiled at me, a kind of friendly walrus, looking somewhat uncomfortable in his formal collar. Then suddenly he hoisted up his large armchair in his arms, and shoved it unceremoniously against the wall.

To my surprise, the guests all now rose in unison and began to move the furniture, pushing all of the sofas and little tables to the edges of the room, and carrying a round table to its very centre. Around this they arranged eight chairs. Mrs Thorne turned off the electric lights with a flip of a switch, and the room fell into utter darkness. For a moment I was quite blind, but after a few moments, the tiny glow of the incense stick sufficed to allow me to make my way to the table and seat myself together with the others.

‘Place your fingertips on the table,’ said Mrs Thorne, and I realised that I was participating in a spiritualism séance – and understood why Ernest had exhorted me to forget my prejudices. I saw him glancing anxiously in my direction now, and stifled a nervous giggle of apprehension. Was he – could he seriously be expecting the dead girl to communicate with us?

We sat in silence for a long time, while I repressed a series of powerful urges to cough, to scratch, to yawn, to look at the time. Not that I was in the least bit bored; these irritating urges seemed to appear uniquely because I was not in a position to satisfy them at once. I ignored them in deed, and tried sincerely to ignore them in thought, although nobody had told me what to concentrate upon instead. So I gazed alternatively at Mrs Thorne and at the shiny table-top.

Suddenly, I felt it vibrate under my fingers. Mrs Thorne was rocking softly back and forth in her seat, her eyes closed. There was a tremendous atmosphere of tense expectation around the table. Then, after several minutes, I felt the table tilt and rock. Two or three sharp raps sounded against it. I glanced around the table, and saw all the hands of those present simply resting on it, as mine were.

Mrs Thorne took a deep, shuddering breath, and began to speak.

The effect was startlingly unexpected, amazing, horrifying. The voice which issued from her mouth was absolutely not hers. It was a man’s voice, deep and slightly raucous.

‘Louise? Louise? Louise? Louise?’ it repeated, again and again.

The drab little woman with the flowery hat burst into excited sobs.

‘Oswald?’ she squeaked. ‘Oswald? Is that you?’

‘Louise? It’s me, Oswald. I’m here, Louise. I’m near you, I’m near you. I watch over our children – always.’

‘Oswald?’ said the woman again. ‘Oswald – what is it like there?’

‘It’s good, Louise. It’s good here. Good. Only – they all want to speak. I must go.’

Mrs Thorne shivered and fell silent for a moment. Oswald appeared to have departed. Louise was weeping and helplessly wiping the tears which were running down her face. I tried to check the many thoughts which flashed through my mind. Drop all prejudice.

I jumped half out of my seat with shock, as Mrs Thorne now burst into a shriek of manic laughter – ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaaaah. This was accompanied by a frenetic series of raps.

‘It’s Macky!’ cried a shrill voice. ‘Macky is here! Ha-ha-ha! Let me speak! Let me speak!’

It continued in this vein for a minute or two, until Mr Doyle suddenly said, in a stentorian voice,

‘Go away, Macky. Go away now, unless you have a message to transmit.’

‘He doesn’t want to be dead,’ said Macky. ‘He doesn’t like to be dead. He wants to come back. You know who I mean! ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!’ The weird staccato laughter rang out mockingly.

‘What rubbish,’ said Mr Doyle firmly. ‘Let him stay dead. I shan’t resuscitate him.’

I found this quite incomprehensible.

Mrs Thorne fell silent again. Her eyes were closed, her face chalky white. After some time, a sad, throaty voice emerged from her mouth.

‘Is my son here?’

‘Is that you, Mother?’ cried the young, chinless man. The bearded professor did not speak, but looked as though he hoped it might be his mother.

‘Nobody loves like a mother loves her son,’ said the voice.

‘I know, Mother,’ said the young man, and appeared at a loss for words. ‘Are – are you well?’ he said after a second’s hesitation, and then blushed furiously at the stupidity of the question.

‘Be well,’ said the sad voice. ‘Goodbye.’

There were several further interventions of this kind. The spirits, some acquainted with the members of the circle, others strangers, came and went at will, sometimes rudely pushing each other aside. The young woman with spectacles was never addressed by any spirit. The members of the circle did not seem to be allowed to call up whomsoever they wished, although several times I felt that one or another of them would have liked to do so. I saw Ernest frame the word ‘Ivy’ with his mouth more than once, as though trying to silently summon her. I could not help wondering how much Mrs Thorne knew about the lives of the people surrounding her, and in particular how much about Ivy. Surely Ernest would not have informed her – his desire for knowledge was intense and genuine.

Suddenly the electric lights in the room flashed on, all together, and then off again. All the faces seemed white and strained in the brief glare. Mrs Thorne began to rock more quickly, more agitatedly.

‘Murder,’ she wailed in a strange, sing-song voice. ‘Murder, murder, grisly murder.’ This was not accompanied by raps, but by a strange swishing noise. I started, wondering if I was hearing the lapping of water.

‘Ivy?’ gasped Ernest, in a half-whisper, obviously not sure of himself. I wished he would keep silent.

‘Who wants to know about murder, here? Who is thinking about murder?’ said the chanting voice.

‘I do,’ he said with stiff lips. ‘I am.’

‘The dark box,’ said the lilting, softly wailing voice. ‘Oh, the dark box. Oh, the dark box.’

I had a horrible vision of Ivy, still young and fresh, struggling miserably in her coffin. Ernest winced.

‘Who killed you?’ he asked.

‘The ba-a-ad man,’ wavered the voice. ‘The bride will never see the church, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,’ and it tailed off into weak sobbing.

Ernest glanced at me doubtfully.

‘Are you Ivy?’ he said.

‘Yes, Ivy. I am Ivy. Poor Ivy,’ said the voice.

‘Go away, Ivy, go away!’ shrieked another, violent voice. ‘Macky is back! Macky is back, ha ha ha.’

‘No! You go away!’ said Mr Doyle severely. But Macky had displaced Ivy once and for all. He proved immensely difficult to get rid of, and no other relevant messages came for anyone present. Mrs Thorne fell silent for longer and longer periods, and finally she appeared to be sleeping deeply. After about five minutes of total silence, Mr Doyle said,

‘It is over. We should wake her.’

He leant forwards and touched her gently on the shoulder once or twice. She opened her eyes, and sat up.

‘Finished, ducks?’ she said kindly, although she appeared extremely worn and tired.

‘Yes, Arabella,’ he replied. ‘You were wonderful, as always. Shall we ring for tea?’

The guests were rising, pushing back their chairs. Mrs Thorne tottered to the wall, pressed the electric light switch, and rang the bell. A neatly dressed maid appeared, carrying a large tea-tray containing a pot of tea, several mismatched pretty porcelain cups piled in each other, and a plate of biscuits. Obviously all had been kept in readiness for this moment. The sofas were pulled out and placed about the room, and we all sat down to partake of refreshments. It was most peculiar.

‘Did everyone get a message?’ asked Mrs Thorne.

‘Not I,’ said the girl with spectacles.

‘Nor I,’ said the bearded gentleman.

‘Nor I,’ I said meekly, but nobody heard.

‘Who were you expecting, Professor?’ asked the medium.

‘Oh, no one in particular,’ he replied. ‘I’m interested in the science of the thing. How do they reach you, Kate?’

‘I’ve no notion, dear,’ she said. ‘It just takes me. I don’t remember a thing.’

‘It is my dearest wish to understand what makes some people into better mediums than others,’ said the professor. ‘I consider it a kind of magnetism. It is like investigating why some materials make better magnets than others. Something about the structure of the atoms reflects the force of the magnetic field. But human beings are all made of the same atoms.’

‘It could be chemical, Professor Lodge,’ said Ernest eagerly. ‘Different people have different chemical compositions in their brains, don’t you think?’

I looked at him with renewed interest. So this was Ernest’s mentor, Sir Oliver Lodge, the professor of physics from Liverpool who studied the ether.

‘Certainly,’ said the Professor. ‘But the transmission: how does it work? If only you could remember what it feels like, Kate. What happens in your brain before you begin speaking with the voice of another?’

‘I can’t remember a thing, you know that,’ she replied. ‘Everything I know about my own trances, other people have described to me.’

‘It must be waves,’ said Sir Oliver. ‘Electric waves of some kind. Because the lights came on.’

‘Did they really? No, I just turned them on myself.’

‘No, during your trance they flashed on and off without anyone else touching the switch. Could it have been your maid, by any chance? Is there another switch to your lights?’

I admired the purity of the Professor’s mind. Did he really think that if Mrs Thorne had arranged with her maid to flash on the lights, she was about to tell him? But she merely replied,

‘No, dear, the only light switch is right in here.’

‘So they are electromagnetic waves,’ he said firmly.

‘I am disappointed,’ murmured Ernest into my ear, as we stepped out into the darkening street a short while later, having bid our hostess goodbye exactly as though we had been invited for a perfectly ordinary tea rather than a conversation with the spirits of the dead. ‘I hoped – I truly hoped that we might learn something important, something definitive.’

‘The – the spirits don’t seem to give a lot of factual information,’ I said hesitantly.

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I didn’t really expect Ivy to name her murderer. The spirits are far removed from our daily world of living beings. But I thought she might say something about the circumstances of her death.’

‘Ernest, I will try to discover them, I promise you, even if I do have to resort to more down-to-earth methods,’ I said.

‘But how?’ he groaned. ‘I was so sure…’

‘Well, I will begin as I always do, by collecting information,’ I reassured him. ‘Tomorrow I will visit her theatre company. There are many things I need to learn about her life. And there are many questions that I will have to ask you. For instance – do you know where Miss Elliott lived?’

‘No, I don’t,’ he replied glumly. I glanced at him quickly. It was obvious that he had been in love to the point of sickness, yet it was not at all clear what the material circumstances of that love had been. I did not know whether the two had ever exchanged even a single word, or whether it had all been the passion of a spectator for an actress upon the stage. And it seemed extremely difficult to ask directly.

‘You’ll never be able to find all the people she knew,’ he said. ‘I mean, all the people who knew her. There are too many, they are too anonymous.’

‘What do you mean?’ I said, surprised and confused by this odd remark. ‘Are you talking about spectators?’

‘Not spectators,’ he said. ‘Don’t you understand? She was an actress, Vanessa. An actress is – I mean – known to many people. An actress is public. Don’t you understand what I’m saying?’

‘But it can’t be a member of the public who killed her,’ I said. ‘It must have been someone who knew her more closely than that.’

He turned away, sweeping his hand through the air in a gesture of despair.

‘An actress is public property,’ he said. ‘It’s a hopeless task. But after all, she was killed in Cambridge. Shouldn’t you be looking for the murderer there?’

‘Oh, I am going to do that,’ I said quickly. ‘But her murderer must have come from her own circle. I need to find out more about it. More about her.’

We composed our faces into cheerful politeness as we entered Ernest’s flat. Kathleen was still up, waiting for her husband. She looked thin and tired.

‘Did you enjoy it?’ she asked me. ‘Ernest always wants me to go, but I just don’t believe in those things.’

‘Oh – it was extremely interesting,’ I said. ‘I don’t know yet whether I am a believer or not. I would need to see more.’

‘Who was there?’ she asked him.

‘Professor Lodge and the other usuals, minus a few,’ he said. ‘We’re all members of the SPR, you know,’ he added, turning to me, ‘the Society for Psychical Research. We are dedicated to pursuing any hint of psychic activity that we hear of. Mrs Thorne is a fairly recent discovery of ours, although she has been having trances for years. She is remarkable. So simple about it all; no pretension, no pose, no properties. No Ouija board, no tricks, no wires.’

‘The lights did go on,’ I remarked.

‘Well yes, but that was the effect of the electromagnetic waves,’ he replied. Quite exactly as though this were an established scientific fact.

It was already late, and Kathleen rose and showed me to the small spare bedroom. I settled myself in bed, looking around me a little sadly; it was obvious that the pretty Morris wallpaper, the white ceiling, the fresh curtains in front of the window protected by white-painted iron bars, had all been arranged with the intention of making the room into a nursery. But there were no children in it. I fell asleep with the image of the twins in front of my eyes, hearing the echo of their quick little feet as they went trotting across the room on some errand of fundamental importance to their infant minds.

I was awoken from deep sleep in what seemed to be the darkest part of the night, by a hand laid gently on my shoulder. I started awake, and sat up. Kathleen was kneeling by the bedside, faintly visible in the gloom in her white nightgown.

‘I am sorry to wake you, Vanessa,’ she whispered. ‘Please forgive me. But I can’t sleep, I am so worried. What happened in Cambridge, while Ernest was staying with you? Why did he return so changed? What has come over him? He has been like a sleepwalker since he came back. I am beside myself with worry. What is going on? You were there – you must know!’

I sat up straighter, and rubbed my eyes. I felt myself in a most difficult moral predicament. What was I supposed to do? Hide the truth from her, or tell it? My ability to make swift, accurate decisions was hindered by the sleep which seemed to fill all the pores of my brain, as Newton had described the ether filling the pores of all solid materials.

‘I love him, Vanessa,’ she urged me. ‘But he won’t talk to me. It’s like he’s gone somewhere else. I can see he’s suffering, but I don’t know why. I’ll go mad if this goes on. I can’t bear it.’

‘I do know what the matter is,’ I said finally. ‘He has received a bad shock. A woman was found murdered in Cambridge several days ago, and I am working on the case. Ernest was present when we discovered that the identity of the dead woman was none other than an actress he greatly admired.’

‘Ophelia,’ she breathed, with sudden understanding. ‘I know the actress you mean.’

‘Yes, the actress who played Ophelia, and was to play Titania when we went to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Do you remember how we discussed whether or not she was wearing a wig? Well, she was, because it wasn’t the same actress. The actress Ernest knew was already dead on that day.’

‘So she’s dead!’ she whispered, with an emotion which emerged as a strange little squeak. ‘I see it all now. Vanessa, I can’t thank you enough. I was desperate. I was thinking – you can’t imagine what I was thinking. I thought maybe Ernest had fallen in love with you. He came back this morning, and could talk about nothing but you for the whole day, and how he wanted you to come to the séance in the evening. Ernest can’t help talking, talking, when he is upset. Yet he doesn’t say what’s on his mind – he’ll go all around it. Oh, I know him so well! I see now why he wanted to go there – and why he wanted you to come. She’s dead. He must have thought that she would speak.’ She stopped, thinking for a moment, and then added, ‘Did she? Did she appear?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but she only said strange, incomprehensible things like ‘‘the dark box”.’

‘Horrible!’ she said, shuddering. ‘The dark box. It’s nightmarish. I must go to him. Forgive me for having woken you, Vanessa. I am more grateful than you can imagine.’

She slipped away, and I lay down again, feeling that I had been as tactful as the situation permitted.