A Case of Spirits (10 page)

‘Murder by electrocution,’ mused Dr Benjamin. ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing, but I suppose it’s possible. Who would want to murder a medium?’

‘Before we answer that,’ said Jowett, ‘there’s a question I should like to put to Mr Cage. If some malevolent person chose to tamper with the apparatus in one of the ways you have described would he not run the risk of electrocuting himself?’

‘If he tried it when the power was on, he would certainly kill himself,’ Cage confirmed.

Jowett spread his palms to signify the collapse of Cribb’s theory.

‘As I understood it,’ returned Cribb, looking steadily at the table in front of him as he spoke, ‘there was an interruption during the seance when Mr Brand claimed that someone had entered the study. Mr Nye went downstairs to turn off the current. It was not turned on again until Mr Brand was pacified. Shortly after, Brand was found dead in the chair.’

‘That is so,’ conceded Jowett, discountenanced again. ‘What I can’t explain is why he was not killed at the instant the power was restored,’ Cribb went on. ‘If I have it correct, the experiment was set up again at twenty minutes to eleven, the current was switched on and the galvanometer reading was not exceptional. It was a full minute before the needle jumped and we pulled aside the curtain to find Brand’s body.’

‘It makes no sense to me,’ said Cage.

‘There’s a notion forming at the back of my mind, but it’ll want time,’ said Cribb. ‘For the present, can we proceed upon the assumption that this was murder?’

‘If you think it will lead us somewhere,’ said Jowett, without much enthusiasm.

‘Well, sir, let’s return to the spirit hand for a moment.’

Jowett went a shade pinker.

‘If Brand was waving his right palm, coated with Blue John, about in the air—and it must have looked uncommon convincing, sir—he couldn’t have been holding the hand of the person on his right. In other words, the circle was broken and that person must have known it and been a party to the deception.’

‘By George, yes!’ said Jowett. ‘Do you know who it was? Miss Crush, of all people! I am absolutely certain of it.’

‘Rightly so, sir. Mr Strathmore very helpfully made a plan of the seating arrangements, which I borrowed on Saturday. Miss Crush, as you say, sat on the right of the medium and must have helped him. Now why should that lady be so rash as to conspire with a fraud—as we now know Brand to have been? He was not her class of person at all. You don’t find respectable maiden ladies with houses in Belgravia associating with the dregs of the race-course. There had to be some reason for this irregular alliance.’

‘I think I know it, Sarge,’ said Thackeray suddenly.

‘We’ll return to you in a moment, then,’ said Cribb without much gratitude. ‘I first suspected something between them when we attended Professor Quayle’s lecture. Already she had tried to persuade me not to question Peter Brand about the theft of her vase, although at the time I put that down to her enthusiasm for spiritualism, and her wish not to upset the medium. But at the lecture, it was crystal clear that she was there to help him, supplying him with information about Uncle Walter, and pretending it was all quite new, although they had been through the same performance at the first seance at Richmond.’

‘A point that had eluded me, Sergeant,’ said Jowett. ‘It may be significant!’

‘It seemed likely that the medium had got some hold on Miss Crush and was using her to further his career. The first seance was held at her house in Eaton Square, if you recall, sir. I couldn’t fathom what the secret was, or how Brand came to possess it.’

‘I could tell you, Sarge,’ offered Thackeray.

‘All in good time, Constable. But on the night the medium met his death it all became clear. Do you remember how Miss Crush behaved, sir?’

‘We had to restrain her from going to him in the chair, as I recollect,’ said Jowett. ‘And after that she was repeatedly fainting, confounded woman. Now that you bring it to my attention it was curious behaviour. It would certainly indicate that there was a bond of some description between them.’

‘That’s exactly what I thought, sir, though I couldn’t have put it so elegant. The clincher was in the wallet we found on his body. Do you remember when we made the list of his possessions?’

‘I have it with me,’ said Jowett, producing a notebook from his pocket as proudly as a plumber’s mate putting his hands on the required spanner.

‘I thought I could rely on that, sir. Do you have a note of those numbers we found on the reverse of the photograph?’

‘Yes, indeed. 469 and 9281, followed by the symbol of a square. Do they have something to do with the young woman
in puris naturalibus
on the other side?’

‘That was my first thought,’ said Cribb, ‘but I racked my brains for an hour or more and couldn’t see a connection. Then I looked more closely at the photograph. It was somewhat creased and dog-eared, if you remember. It must have been kept in his wallet for some considerable time. Yet it wasn’t the sort of picture a man might carry in his wallet out of sentiment.’

‘I doubt whether the female in the photograph was his sister or his fiancée, if that is what you mean.’

‘That’s exactly what I mean, sir. There’s a row of shabby little shops in Holywell Street, just off The Strand, which purvey photographs like that by the hundred. They call ’em art studies, and Inspector Moser goes there periodically with a couple of his men and seizes the most offensive specimens. There are always new ones to replace ’em, though, and if one dealer comes to court there’s another to take his place. The photographs themselves have been getting more objectionable of late. I believe they ship ’em in from France on the cross-channel steamers; you wouldn’t catch any of the fair sex here taking up such brazen attitudes in front of a photographer. But you’ll know yourselves, as gentlemen of the world, that the men who buy these things are forever searching for something new. They don’t keep them for any length of time. That’s what’s so odd about the photograph in Peter Brand’s wallet. It’s been there too long. In the end I was forced to conclude that he didn’t keep it all that time for the lady on the front, but for the numbers on the back. They had an importance of their own. And when I thought of ’em in isolation they began to make sense.’

‘I don’t know how,’ said Cage. ‘May I look at them, Inspector?’

‘What you must realise as you study them,’ said Cribb, ‘is that Brand was an illiterate. We came to that conclusion some days ago at a lecture given by Professor Quayle.’

Jowett looked blank, but said nothing. Thackeray said, ‘Illiterate, Sarge?’

‘He couldn’t read,’ explained Cribb. ‘When Brand came on to the stage during the lecture to do his turn it was Quayle who read out the names written on the envelopes containing articles borrowed from the audience. At one stage Brand was holding your envelope in his hand and he had to
ask
Quayle what the name was.’

‘So he did!’ recalled Thackeray in admiration.

‘But if he didn’t know his letters, at least he was cognisant of numbers, or he wouldn’t have kept the photograph. It was when I looked at those numbers trying to pretend I was as illiterate as Brand that I understood their meaning. They were the two most important numbers in his life.’

‘How on earth do you deduce that?’ asked Jowett.

‘By taking the second number first. It’s the one with the square beside it, and that’s helpful. I had to say it to myself a dozen times before I got it. 9281 square. You say the digits one by one, as an illiterate would. 9 and 2 are numbers, but 8 and 1 are words, eight one, the nearest he could get in numbers to Eaton. It’s an illiterate’s way of writing 92, Eaton Square. And that, if you remember, sir, is Miss Crush’s address in Belgravia.’

‘Eight one square,’ said Jowett. ‘It doesn’t sound like Eaton Square to me.’

‘Not the way you say it, sir,’ conceded Cribb. ‘But Peter Brand wasn’t taught to speak the way you was. Let’s hear you say Eaton, Thackeray.’

‘Eaton,’ said Thackeray with more than usual care.

‘I take your point, Cribb. But if that set of digits represents Miss Crush’s address, what is the significance of the others? 469 doesn’t sound like anything to me and I don’t think it would even if Thackeray said it.’

‘It stands for the other important person in his life, sir. I looked it up in the Hackney Carriage Licensing Department. 469 is the license number of one Charles Brand, cabman.’

‘His father! Good Lord! Are you suggesting that Miss Crush might be his—’

‘Must be, sir. I’ll be confirming it this evening. Now, Thackeray, you had something to contribute, I believe.’

Thackeray had parted with ten shillings for the same information on the Charing Cross cab-rank that morning, but now he shook his head. ‘I think you’ve said all there is to say, Sarge.’

‘I
knew
that you were a sensitive,’ said Miss Crush when he had finished. ‘Didn’t I recognise you as one the first moment you came into my house? You can look into a woman’s eyes and see the secrets of her life laid bare, can’t you? Oh, they must have jumped for joy at Scotland Yard the day they recruited you, Sergeant.’

‘I don’t recall it, ma’am,’ said Cribb. ‘But I think you should understand that I didn’t uncover these personal matters through guess-work. It was a process of deduction.’

‘Seduction?’ said Miss Crush. ‘Oh no, it was not that. I might have been an
ingénue
twenty years ago, but I was not so ill-bred as to allow myself to be seduced by a common cabman. I seduced
him
.’

‘You did, ma’am?’ said Cribb, grateful for this unsolicited information.

‘I did, most certainly. I was one of the New Women. It was the time when dear Mr Mill was holding up the banner of emancipation. I listened to a speech he made in the election of 1865 and it transformed my life, Sergeant. I decided on the spot that I should never be the slave of man and I have not faltered in that resolution since. But so that I should know what I was to devote my life to fighting against, namely the power man has to enslave my own poor sex, I resolved to make one foray into the enemy camp. If I got to know the contents of his armoury he would be powerless ever to take me by stealth, you see. It was sound strategy, as you must appreciate.’

‘Very sound, ma’am.’

‘I had to choose a man of suitable age and physical attributes, but of course it needed to be someone quite outside my social circle. That made it very difficult, but then I had an inspiration. There were rows of men sitting on view at every cab-rank in London. I took a walk along The Strand one morning and selected a subject at my leisure.’

‘Number 469.’

‘That was he. I noticed that his horse—which I think he called Deuteronomy or something from the Bible—was conspicuously underfed, even for a cab-horse, so I made that the reason for my interest. I sent my servant back to hire him and that was the first of several excursions in the cab.’

‘Several, ma’am?’ said Cribb, lifting an eyebrow.

‘It was necessary to undermine his defences first, Sergeant.’

‘Of course,’ said Cribb. ‘Did you—er—gain access to the armoury?’

‘Within a week. It was the only occasion I assure you, but unhappily for my plans there was a consequence.’

‘Young Brand?’

‘Yes. In the true emancipating spirit I made quite sure that it was his father who raised him. I provided money for his upkeep until he was old enough to earn for himself.’ Miss Crush sighed. ‘I am afraid the boy was shamefully neglected. If I had thought there would be a child I should have selected a cabman with a better looking horse. People who treat animals well are usually tolerant of children. The truth of it is that the boy got into odious company, thieves and tricksters and probably worse. I believe his father lost touch with him altogether.’

‘You lost touch too, I gather, ma’am.’

‘Goodness, yes. It would have been most imprudent of me to have anything to do with the boy. He thought I died of cholera when he was a child. He thought so at least until one afternoon last year, when he met his father on a race-course and the silly man must have drunk far too much, because he told Peter the whole story. The rest must be obvious to a man of your insight. Peter took some months to trace me, but he did, early this year. It was a terrible shock, Sergeant, unforgettable. Oh, he was very charming in his way, and disarming too. From his unwholesome friends he had acquired the art of winning a lady’s confidence, as I learned to my cost. Weeks passed before he suggested anything irregular, but for him the time was not wasted. He used those weeks, I now realise, to learn about my way of life, my friends and my social engagements. He took particular interest in the seances I attended and he made me tell him everything that happened, time and again. Foolishly I allowed myself to be flattered by his interest, and I never tired of answering his questions. You can see what was happening, can’t you? I see it in your eyes.’

‘It’s the way these people work, ma’am. We get to know their methods.’

‘Well, one evening he suggested we should play a prank on my friends, the Bratts. Sir Hartley and his wife are somewhat elderly and Penelope, their daughter, is easily taken in. The plan was that I would arrange a seance, which was certain to interest them because they like nothing better than to get in touch, and I would introduce Peter as a medium. With my help he would then produce some marvellous phenomena. At first I would not agree, on the grounds that it was uncharitable, and might even provoke hostility on the Other Side, but Peter said it was like a parlour-game, and there was no harm in it. He promised never to attempt anything of the kind in a genuine seance. In short, Sergeant, he was so enthusiastic that I found it impossible to disincline him from the plan. We invited the Bratts, and they were totally convinced that he was genuine! The pity of it was that the deception did not end there. He made me introduce him to more of my friends in the spiritualist movement and he repeated his performance, never telling them, of course, that what we did was fraudulent. It is a strange thing, but the more mystified they were, the more impossible it became to tell them the truth. It would have upset them so.’