Mr Scarletti's Ghost (4 page)

‘What sort of person is Miss Eustace?' asked Mina, who was tempted to ask if this creature of the holy spirits had ridden into the room on a sunbeam, but refrained from a comment that she felt would not have advanced the conversation.

‘She is a very proper and modest young lady,' said Louisa. ‘I have to confess, I was concerned that I might be confronted by a person of coarse manners and appearance, and then I would have been obliged to leave immediately, but that was not the case. She was most tastefully attired, and behaved throughout with great decorum. She was seated on a chair in front of the curtain, facing us, and I am sure that she did not move from her place, yet all around us we saw lights and heard noises that no living soul in the room could have made. Professor Gaskin showed us a bell and a tambourine behind the curtain, also a pencil and paper. All of us heard the bell ring several times and a good hard rattle on the tambourine, then the sound of the pencil moving. None of us was near enough to touch them.'

‘All this was behind the curtain, hidden from view?' asked Mina.

‘It was. One of the gentlemen present said he wanted to draw the curtain and see what was happening for himself, but Professor Gaskin explained that any disturbance could injure the medium, and so he refrained, but very unwillingly. He was a bad influence and I think he will not be admitted again.'

Mina thought that had she been present she too might have been tempted to part the curtains, and wondered what she would have seen. A bell suspended in the air ringing itself; a tambourine in the grasp of a ghostly hand? Somehow she doubted it. Surely a more earthly and tangible arrangement of wires and black thread would answer the purpose.

‘Then, as if that was not wonderful enough, Professor Gaskin announced that he could feel a hand on his shoulder. Of course we all felt somewhat alarmed, but he reassured us that there was nothing to be afraid of, and if anyone should feel the same thing they should not try and clasp the hand, for it disturbed the energy. And then,' Louisa went on, her eyes glowing with excitement, ‘I felt it – very briefly – fingers touching my cheek. It was quite extraordinary!'

‘It could not have been anyone in the room?' asked Mina.

‘Oh no, most assuredly not. We were all, on the strict instructions of Professor Gaskin, holding hands, so no person in the room could have touched my face, and of course Miss Eustace was the furthest away of all. The surprising thing was that I had imagined a spirit hand to be somehow different, less … well, less like a real solid warm hand of a living person. But there was nothing insubstantial about it at all. If Miss Eustace can manifest things of this nature she must have very considerable powers.' Louisa waved a hand at Simmons to attend to her plate, and the young woman, anxious to please, scurried to comply.

‘So a spirit hand feels just like the hand of a living person,' said Mina, without a change in her expression. ‘That is most remarkable. I wonder how Professor Gaskin can explain such a thing.'

‘He has many years of study before him,' said her mother who, if she detected irony in Mina's tone, chose to ignore it, ‘but he remains hopeful that one day he will be able to reveal to the world how the spirit powers manifest themselves. Miss Eustace was, as you may imagine, quite exhausted, so that was all we were able to experience on that occasion. We all sang another hymn and then when the gas was turned up—'

‘The gas?' said Mina. ‘The gas had been lowered? That is a detail you omitted. Was there candlelight? Or was the séance conducted in darkness?'

Louisa looked offended at the question. ‘Of course there was darkness; you don't suppose we could have seen the little spirit lights otherwise? But I can assure you that Miss Eustace did not move, or we would have heard her. When the gas was turned up she was barely conscious, and had no memory whatsoever of what had occurred. Then Professor Gaskin drew the curtain aside and all was as it had been before – except for the paper.' She poured more tea, exhumed a warm roll from its napkin and applied a salve of butter and honey. ‘You, Mina, have a hard inflexible mind, and will no doubt find this impossible to believe, but there was writing on the paper – clear writing! It can only have been a message from the spirits. It said that all those present would enjoy good fortune.'

Mina had never seen a ghost or experienced anything that suggested the existence of a force outside of the body apart from what was already known to and approved of by science, such as the warmth and light of the sun. The world of paper ghosts she had created from her imagination was, she thought, a great deal more interesting than the commonplace manifestations described by her mother. She was not sure that she even believed in the apparitions of deceased loved ones that fanciful people sometimes reported seeing. Her stories, far from inducing her to credit the possibility of ghosts, did rather the opposite, since they created a vivid impression in her mind that was very different from what she saw around her. Perhaps, she thought, all ghosts, both those in stories and those said to be real, were only the product of the human mind. In her own case she knew they were false and wrote about them to entertain her readers, but for those who did not write, they became not words, but visions.

Still, Mina was obliged to admit that the evening's séance had been considered a success by all present, and her mother said that she would certainly go again, since Professor Gaskin had said that they had only seen a tiny part of what Miss Eustace could do. There were things he had seen with his own eyes that they would not believe until they had seen for themselves. The professor was intending to write a book about Miss Eustace, which, he was quite sure, would cause a sensation not only amongst the public but all the leading men of science.

‘She is undoubtedly genuine,' said Louisa. ‘She refuses to take any payment at all for her work, although some of those present did press her with small gifts, but she
asked
for nothing! When I go again I will see if Miss Whinstone can be persuaded to come, as I am sure she will benefit. I did ask Mrs Parchment, but really she is impossible. I do believe she may be an atheist, or even one of those horrid materialists who Professor Gaskin says are even worse. How you could have admitted such a person to the house, I do not know.'

‘I did not seek to enquire after her religious observation when I accepted her as a tenant,' said Mina. ‘She seems perfectly respectable, paid a month in advance without quibble and has given us no trouble and regular rent ever since.'

‘Her husband was little more than a peddler,' said Louisa, shaking a copy of the
Gazette
at Mina. ‘Do you see this advertisement? Parchment's Pink Complexion Pills, that was he.' She allowed her fingertips to glide over her cheek, as if to demonstrate that she needed no such thing. ‘The man must have been a scoundrel, since I believe they once had a fine house in London with a carriage and servants, but I suppose that is all gone now, and the poor woman has to live in one room and pay rent and entertain herself with long walks and fresh air. What a thing to come to!'

Mina was curious as to the nature of the gifts Miss Eustace had been persuaded to accept, but when she asked, her mother replied dismissively that she didn't know, in a manner that entirely confirmed Mina's suspicion that they took the form of money and that her mother had been one of those to part with a ‘gift'. Miss Eustace without doubt made a tidy enough income from her activities but then, Mina thought, the lady had provided a few hours of entertainment as one might do at a musical recital and it seemed harmless enough.

As Mina climbed the stairs to her room, trying to ignore the pain that stitched down her back, its needle-sharp point embedded deep in her hip, she began to have second thoughts. Was this new enthusiasm of her mother's really so unobjectionable? Ought she to be concerned about something that might in time become detrimental, either to health or purse? By the time Mina had reached the top of the stairs her worries had multiplied to the point where she felt she needed sensible advice, and decided to write a letter to her older brother Edward.

M
ina's room was a quiet place where the ghosts that lived so noisily in her mind were transferred by the medium of her pen to a new life as dark ink bled on to clean paper. Her desk was set before the window where she might take advantage of the clear brilliant daylight, to compose, or read, or sometimes just to gaze out on to the street and think. There were few distractions. The northern end of Montpelier Road was far enough from the seafront to avoid the worst clusterings of excited visitors, the flowing movements and gentle sounds of passers-by affording an unobtrusive and pleasing reminder of the life of the town.

Before Mina settled down to write, she tried to stretch her back, reaching around her shoulder with one hand, pushing her fingertips into the sore muscles there and trying to prise the knots apart. Then she sat, tucking a cushion under one hip to help straighten her posture. She knew that Edward would not come to Brighton. He rarely left his business, or, more importantly, Miss Hooper, a young lady of good family he was ardently pursuing with a view to marriage. Rival suitors of similar persistence, lesser charm but greater fortune, ensured that he dared not be out of the capital for long. Mina started the letter with good news, her mother's improved health and state of mind. She decided not to alarm her brother by revealing that their mother had attended a séance, but wrote instead of the interesting new arrivals in Brighton, Mr Bradley, Professor Gaskin and Miss Eustace, who had recently been in London, and wondered if Edward had heard of them, begging him to tell her all he knew.

She could not help but hope that Miss Eustace would prove to be a nine days' wonder, and vanish like one of her own spirits, to be superseded by some other novelty as Brighton, under its surge of summer visitors, blossomed into life.

Two days later Mina received a small packet from Edward, containing a letter and a booklet, and took them to her room to read. Edward expressed his sincere relief that his mother was so much improved, and reassured Mina that he was in the best of health although hard pressed by business. Unhappily, he wrote that the loveliest girl in the world was sorely afflicted by a cold in the head, which had thrown him into the most perfect anguish. He ended with a stern warning that it would be as well not to meddle in the affairs of people claiming to be in touch with spirits. Mr Bradley was unknown to him, but Professor Gaskin was a respected man of science, the author of many papers on the subject of chemistry and physics, who had lately espoused the claims of spiritualists and had made himself something of a laughing stock amongst his friends and colleagues. The professor had been advocating the claims of a Miss Eustace who had recently appeared in London, claiming that she had triumphantly proved herself to be a genuine medium, and advertised her as such, but the truth, commented Edward, was less convincing.

There was, he added, a new fashion for spirit mediums in London, and the gullible were willing to pay them any sum for the most ridiculous displays of obvious fakery. Professor Gaskin and his wife, shepherding Miss Eustace, had recently removed to Brighton for the early summer season, where they hoped to have fewer rivals and be more successful. Miss Eustace claimed to accept no money for her séances but it was widely believed that she lived on the hospitality of the Gaskins and accepted payments from her sitters. The enclosed booklet, he added, was a recent publication, and an object lesson, but he felt sorely afraid that it was a lesson many would chose to ignore. He urged Mina to read it carefully and take its message to heart.

The booklet, some sixteen pages long, was called
The Claims of D.D. Home Refuted, Containing a Very Full Account of the Lyon Case and His Disgrace
, by Josiah Rand MD. Mr Home, said the author, had been a very active and celebrated spirit medium for a number of years, including amongst his adherents medical men, scientists, barristers, military men, titled personages, and other notable individuals. He was said by many to be the most powerful medium alive, able to levitate heavy items of furniture, cause musical instruments to play by themselves, and touch hot coals without harm, but his most famous achievement was to rise in the air and hover sometimes several feet above his astounded audience.

Scottish-born Home had lived in America from an early age, and was one of many thousands who, after the widespread publicity given to the spirit rappings of the Fox sisters in Hydesville New York in 1848, had suddenly discovered that he too had mediumistic powers. The sisters' exhibitions, which, said Dr Rand, most closely resembled the activities of the almost certainly fraudulent Cock Lane ghost, had themselves attracted allegations of trickery, which had had no deleterious effects on the ladies' continuing fame.

In March 1855 Home had sailed for England, where an ardent believer in his mediumistic powers who also happened to be a hotelier had generously granted him free accommodation. The tall slender youth – he was then only twenty-two – with blue eyes, flowing auburn locks, and the luminous transparency of the consumptive, seemed already to be hovering on the boundary of another world. In repose his face suggested suffering, and this, together with a gentle air of kindliness, was enough to recommend him to ladies, especially those rather older than himself. His natural charm lent him an easy persuasiveness, but it was his undoubted ability to produce powerful spirit manifestations that quickly gained him an entrée into fashionable society and brought many admirers. There were, however, also sceptics who charged him with fraud, and these included the poet Robert Browning who had openly declared Home to be a charlatan. Browning went so far as to satirise Home in a poem as ‘Mr Sludge, “the Medium”'. Home was not averse to critical examination, and a distinguished scientist, Sir David Brewster (who was an authority on the nature of light) attended Home's séances. While believing that the phenomena were attributable not to the work of spirits but clever conjuring, Brewster was forced to admit that he was unable to explain what he had seen. The controversy only increased Home's fame, and income.