Mr Scarletti's Ghost (7 page)

‘It is the greatest insult,' said Mrs Gaskin, loudly, ‘to call into question such a virtuous lady, and it says much regarding the coarse and ignorant unbelievers who would subject her to such a proceeding. But their downfall will be our victory!'

‘And then,' said the professor in a gentler tone than his good lady, ‘we may raise them to greater understanding. Let us take a few moments of silent prayer, in which we give thanks to the Lord God for His miracles as His blessing to the holy, and ask Him to give us the power to save and enlighten those who are even now mired in the slough of prejudice.'

‘For they are as children,' intoned Mrs Gaskin, ‘and we must lead them.' There were a few moments of quiet reflection after which the professor said, ‘Amen!' very firmly, and the company echoed him.

‘And now,' said Professor Gaskin, ‘I would like to bring before you – Miss Eustace.'

He threw the curtains apart with a brave flourish, as a man might have done who was displaying a marvel of the world or a performing lion, or some such novelty. There was a little gasp of fright from Miss Whinstone, which was soon quelled, for in the dim alcove created by the corner of the room, on a plain wooden chair, there sat a woman, not a spirit, but a real solid breathing woman, in a pose of great humility, her head bowed as if in prayer. She wore a gown of pearl grey silk, embellished with flounces and velvet ribbons, with deep ruffled cuffs, and the hands that peeped out and lay clasped upon her lap were small and very white. Her face, seen as she slowly raised her head, was serene with the kind of regular features that made it pleasing without being beautiful. Professor Gaskin offered her his hand with a proud and gallant gesture, and she took it, rose to her feet in one graceful movement, and came forward until she stood before the curtains. The gathering murmured appreciation, which she acknowledged with a slight bow. Professor Gaskin brought the chair forward into the room, and she was seated. ‘If I might have the assistance of any observer who will attest that the bindings are properly done?' he asked.

Mina would have liked to volunteer but she did not move quickly enough, and the ropes, which had lain coiled on a small table behind the curtains, were taken up by Dr Hamid, clearly a gentleman who always endeavoured to be useful, and Mrs Mowbray, who had been gazing admiringly at Dr Hamid, something to which he seemed oblivious. Professor Gaskin supervised the binding, which attached Miss Eustace by her wrists to the framework of the chair. While this was being done, Mina had the opportunity to see what other articles were behind the curtains. The small light bentwood table was barely a foot across, and had no cloth to cover it, so it was impossible for anything to be hidden underneath. On its surface was a pencil, a sheet of notepaper, a small handbell and a tambourine. As far as Mina could see there was nothing else behind the curtain, and the wall covering at the rear of the enclosure was the same as the rest of the room. There was certainly insufficient space to conceal another person or an object of any size.

Once Professor Gaskin's two assistants had pronounced themselves satisfied that Miss Eustace was securely bound, and were back in their places, he lit the candle and turned down the gas. Carrying the candle, the professor returned to his seat – the yellow flickering light casting deep moving shadows in his eye sockets and cheeks.

‘I would now like everyone to take the hand of the person sitting beside them,' he said. ‘Those who are seated on the end of a row, please take the hand of the person beside you with both of yours. This is for the assurance of all present that no one will be able to move about the room during the proceedings, since the energy of the medium must not be disturbed. I will then blow out the candle, and when I have done so, I ask you all to join me in a hymn. We will have ‘
Abide With Me'
.' This was a popular choice at Christ Church and one to which all the assembled company knew the words.

There was a sobbing whimper from Miss Whinstone, as if she constantly needed to remind everyone in the room that she was not only there, but afraid and in need of attention; however, she did not faint. Miss Whinstone, Mina recalled, had never, as far as she was aware, actually fainted, although she often said that she was just about to. Mina encountered on one side the cold dry hands of Mrs Gaskin, and on the other, the tight clasp of Mrs Mowbray. The candle was blown out, and then Professor Gaskin began to groan out the hymn at great volume, and other voices, of varying degrees of melodiousness, wove around him.

After a minute or two, the singing ceased, and the company was overtaken by a more pleasing silence, and enveloped in an aura of arrested breath and expectancy. As Mina's eyes grew used to the darkness, she saw only very dimly the shape of Miss Eustace still seated, her head moving first forward then back, then tilting from side to side as might be done by a person in a fit, or in a trance, or pretending to be in either state. She felt no fear, only curiosity, and just a trace of hope that something would occur with even a hint of the drama she put into her tales, but her practical mind told her that she was about to see nothing more than pretty parlour tricks.

As the seconds passed, the mood of the company was wound tighter and tighter into a state of anticipation, and then the silence was abruptly broken by the sound of a quiet rap on the wall behind them. One or two ladies gasped, and there was even a little scream. The rapping sounded again, only louder this time, and developed into a sequence of knocks that speeded up until they became almost a rattle. Mina tried to glance about her, but she was unable to turn sufficiently to look directly behind, and Mrs Gaskin held her fingers fast. She could see nothing to account for the noise and as far as she was aware no one had moved from his or her seat. Other raps and knocks followed, stouter and louder, and they were travelling about the room, so they came from the side walls, the ceiling, which of course no one could have reached even if they had tried, and the floor, too. The vibration of the floorboards beneath their feet was apparent to all. It was not a sound that might have been produced by fingers or even a foot or a fist. If Mina could have likened it to anything, it was as if some mischievous and invisible person armed with a stout rod had walked about the room belabouring every surface in sight.

A perfect torrent of raps sounded against the far wall directly behind the company, and then, quite suddenly, stopped. There was a silence, all the more anxious because of what had just occurred, and a nervous apprehension of what might happen next. The next sound was a musical tinkling noise, as if two of the water glasses on the sideboard were knocking gently together. The more Mina thought of it the more she realised that this was exactly what was producing the sound.

She sensed, quite unpleasantly, that there was a presence in the room, something that had not been there when the company had assembled, and it was nothing she could see or hear other than the effects it was producing. She tried to listen for the whisper of feet on the carpet, and the breath of another individual, but Miss Eustace had started sighing and moaning, and the other ladies were giving little excited gasps, so if there were any sounds other than those she could not make them out. Mina, who lived so much in a world of her own creation, was strongly aware of the difference between the things she conjured up in her mind and the real, solid things she saw about her. She trusted her own observation and rejected the idea that there was a spirit in the room that owed its existence solely to her imagination. There was, she felt sure, a being of some kind that was present and apparent to them all, but whether corporeal or not, alive or not, she was unable to tell. More to the point, she wanted very much to find out. Others might be happy to sit holding hands and receive impressions, but for Mina this was not enough.

There was a sudden little squeal from Mrs Mowbray. ‘Oh! there was a wind on my face!' and a few moments later Mina's mother exclaimed, ‘Oh! I felt a hand touch my cheek!'

Mina was just wondering if these experiences were the product of overheated anticipation, when something like a silk handkerchief caressed her throat. She shivered at the sensation, and would have liked to escape Mrs Gaskin's hands and clasp the thing before it was gone, but Mrs Gaskin had a firm, almost bruising grip on her fingers, and any attempt Mina might have made to break free would have caused some disquiet.

After a few moments, there was another period of near silence, and then the bell behind the curtain began to ring, followed by the rattle of the tambourine. Whatever was in the alcove was extremely lively, and there were either two hands or two entities, since the ringing and the rattling started to sound together until the noise resembled nothing more than the jangling music of the minstrel bands on the marine parade. If this was an example of the music of the spirits, thought Mina, then heaven promised to be a very clamorous and unmelodic place.

All then fell quiet again apart from the sound of panting breath and little gasps from the ladies, then they heard the scratch of a pencil moving on paper. There was another long silence followed by a sudden muffled thud, suggesting that the table behind the curtain had fallen or been knocked over, which caused loud exclamations from the company. Mina longed for a swift movement and a sudden blaze of gaslight, but no one stirred.

The period of silence that followed lasted for a minute or two, and Mina began to wonder if the séance was over. Professor Gaskin must have thought so too, for he was just starting to rise from his chair and say something when he was stopped by the sound of Miss Eustace crying out. Soft moans began to issue from the lips of the medium, and above her head, where her hands could not have reached even had they been free, there appeared a little dancing light. It was not enough to illuminate the room, but very sharp and clear to see, and it hovered above her like a fairy sprite. Another light soon joined it, and then the two danced together about the room, moving about each other, never more than a few feet apart, until first one, and then the other went out.

It was such a pretty display that, strange and unaccountable as it was, no one could be afraid of it, and there was a little sorrowful sigh when the lights vanished. Mina was mystified. These were like no lights she had ever seen; they had neither the yellow flicker of a candle or a spill, nor the sizzling flare of a match, but each was a single bright constant point and they had just appeared without any sign of having been ignited by something else. A professor of chemistry might, though Mina, be able to explain the phenomenon, but then a professor of chemistry was in the room and believed he saw disembodied spirits.

Miss Eustace, who had fallen into a brief silence, began to breathe very heavily and rapidly, with little gasping sounds and groans. Everyone took this as a signal that another marvel was to follow, and there were little murmurs of anticipation and the sound of people shifting in their seats. Mina felt sure that all the onlookers were leaning forward and craning their necks. They were not disappointed, for high above Miss Eustace's head a brightly glowing form began to issue from between the curtains, which parted in the centre just enough to allow it to intrude into the room. There was an exclamation from the audience, and Mina sensed that what they were seeing was a new exhibition that no one, quite possibly even the Gaskins, had expected.

The apparition was hovering about six feet from the ground, and as it pushed forward it grew in both size and brilliance, and began to adopt a familiar shape, until it became apparent to everyone that they were seeing a pair of hands, palm to palm in an attitude of prayer, only so far above the floor that they could not be attached to any living thing. The vision remained still for a while, and Mina hoped that it might perform some act appropriate to a pair of hands, or do anything other than remain stiff as a statue's but it seemed that the hands were simply being offered as an object of admiration. Slowly, they rose up almost to the ceiling, and tilted backwards, still in the same attitude. Then they seemed to be shrinking, although Mina thought that this was an illusion created as they withdrew behind the darkness of the curtains, and finally they vanished.

There were muffled exclamations of pleasurable apprehension as the company waited for what might happen next, and after a few moments, a new shape, veiled in a gauzy glow, peered from the parted curtains. The softness of the outline concealed its form, but as it turned from one side to another there were gasps and cries all around, for it was a face, the face of a man with thick hair clustering on his brow, pools of hollow darkness for eyes and a long black beard. A sudden terrible scream rang out and an exclamation: ‘Archibald!' Miss Whinstone rose abruptly to her feet, and there was a loud crash as finally and unequivocally she fainted. There was pandemonium in the room, and someone called for lights and someone called for a doctor, and chairs were pushed back and people dropped hands and stood up. Professor Gaskin pleaded for calm, and relit the candle, and then Dr Hamid tended to the prostrate form of Miss Whinstone, who soon came to her senses and was furnished with a glass of water. Miss Eustace was, saw Mina, still firmly tied to her chair, and appeared to be unconscious, but Mrs Gaskin untied her and dabbed her forehead with a handkerchief, and she raised her head with an exhausted smile.

The disturbance gave Mina the opportunity to go and look behind the curtains, and there was, she had to admit, little enough to see. The table that had fallen was now standing upright with the bell and tambourine in place, and there was an untidy pencilled scrawl on the paper. Mrs Gaskin loomed up beside her. ‘Please do look at everything,' she said, triumphantly.

‘I didn't intend to intrude, but I am naturally curious,' said Mina. ‘I would like to learn more.'

‘We are all students,' said Mrs Gaskin, grandiloquently, suggesting that as students went she was at the very least senior in understanding.