The Death Chamber (19 page)

Poor old Bartlam! He was left without so much as a roof over his head, although it seems that the roof could have been replaced for him, had he, on his part, been able to replace the walls to
support it.

His claim form records six people as being present in the house on the night in question. ‘A few friends for supper’ is how he puts it. So let’s not wonder too deeply as to the
purpose of those friends, or question the authenticity of the ‘doctor of repute’ or the ‘prelate of the Church of England’. Let’s not wonder, either, if the sly old
bird calculated that to admit there were more than six might cause the Fidelity & Trust officials to accuse him of packing too many people into too small a room and to dismiss the entire claim
on those grounds. So let’s assign a judicious eight persons to the evening.

It’s not difficult to piece together the fragments of clues and to assemble a picture of what that night must have held. Whether six or sixteen people were present, and whether any of them
really were doctors and church prelates, what with candlelight and lime cones it’s very clear that Bartlam had set the scene for a major and important event in the Partridge calendar.

And it all went disastrously wrong . . .

November 1917

Clara Caradoc had found it quite difficult to get through a whole week before the next meeting at Violette and Bartlam’s house, and when finally the evening did arrive
she was annoyed to find her heart beating fast with excitement and anticipation.

She reached the house at the same time as Henry Bingley and his wife.

Violette was there to welcome them, taking their hands delightedly, full of hope for the evening ahead.

‘My dears, I have the strongest feeling that tonight we shall see marvellous things. Muriel, I have the greatest confidence of reaching your dear sister – I feel she is very close to
us – hovering on the outer edges as I like to put it. And Lady Caradoc – Clara – I know your boy is waiting eagerly tonight. Now that he has made the journey here.’

‘Crossed the divide,’ put in Bartlam.

‘And knows himself to be welcomed and surrounded by loving friends, he will certainly come to us again.’

There were similar messages for the others: the Reverend Lincing would be reunited with the one he sought – there was a sidelong smile from Bartlam at this as if he might possess some
information that Reverend Lincing would not like made generally known. And the dear ladies who were such earnest seekers would be rewarded as well, said Violette, beaming at the knitting lady whose
name Clara still had not found out, and including the two young sisters and the painted female, who, as always, sat on her own.

They took their places around the table; Clara was between Henry Bingley and the Reverend Lincing, with the painted hussy directly opposite. She had half thought the room would be different
after the last time – she had almost fancied that Caspar might have left some kind of mark on it – but it was exactly as she remembered: the dark red wallpaper and the brass Benares
ware on the mantelshelf. The aspidistra in its heavy pot, the fringed curtains, shawls everywhere. Bartlam had left a gas jet near the door burning quite high which caught Clara’s attention
because he had previously been careful to turn them all right down, saying the spirits preferred the dimness. At the time Clara had wanted to say this would not tempt Caspar who, in life, had
enjoyed light and noise and brightness, but she had not done so. But tonight, it appeared, they were to have a little more light.

Violette saw everyone was seated around the table and then left the room – ‘To make my preparations,’ she said, placing a finger to her lips to indicate silence. Bartlam smiled
– he was always so agreeable Clara thought, despite not being
quite
a gentleman – and said Vita had been in a ferment of anticipation all day.

When Vita returned, she looked subtly different although Clara was hard put to it to say precisely why. Something about Vita’s face, was it? She was decidedly on the plump side (all those
violet creams she indulged herself in!), but tonight her face looked really fat – when she turned her head to one side, her cheeks were positively bulging. But most likely it was the light;
the single gas jet was throwing odd shadows everywhere, and Bartlam had spent several minutes tinkering with it. It was to be hoped the jet was not faulty; Clara was always a little nervous of gas
fittings.

Vita took her usual place at the table and they placed their linked hands on the surface, as always. Clara’s heart began to beat faster, because if only Caspar would come again, and this
time stay with them for long enough to speak.

Violette did not seem to be calling up her spirit guide tonight; she was staring straight ahead of her, not saying anything at all. Clara had no idea if this was a good sign or not; she risked
glancing over her shoulder to where Bartlam was standing by the door. He still seemed concerned about the gas jet. Clara began to feel worried, which was annoying because she should have been
concentrating on Caspar and not bothering about gas fittings.

Ah, now Violette was getting more into her stride. She was still not speaking, but she was turning her head this way and that and twice she brought her hand up to her mouth – she did this
rather gracefully. The second time she did so it seemed to coincide with a popping sound from near the door. Clara had time to think it was the irritating gas fitment again, and then a flare of the
most brilliant light seemed to shoot upwards in the room, and Bart gasped and cried, ‘A spirit light! My dear friends, on no account move from your seats! An
ignis fatuus
at the very
least!’

The light swooshed up and up, and as it did so Violette gave a little cry and her hand flew to her mouth again. A stream of something cloudy and almost vapour-like began to pour from her mouth,
and again Bartlam cried out.

‘Ectoplasm! Spirit vapour! Do not attempt to touch it.’

The ectoplasm floated across the table. Against the glowing whiteness of the light it was like thin clouds of gossamer.

The painted female opposite said, rather sharply, ‘What, precisely, is it? I’ve heard of ectoplasm but I’ve never known what it is.’

‘Spirit energy,’ said Bartlam repressively because the rule was silence at all times, and Violette said, ‘The spirits are here with us – all our lost loved ones are
here.’ Her voice sounded slightly thick and flannelly; she must still be in a semi-trance.

The painted female said in a down to earth voice, ‘It looks remarkably like bits of white chiffon to me,’ and Clara turned to stare at her, because just for a moment the stuff did
look exactly like that. Ribbons of feathery-thin cloth. Indian muslin, thought Clara.

‘In fact,’ went on the woman, ‘if you aren’t careful it’s going to drift straight into that light you seem to be conjuring up in the corner, and if that happens it
will—’

She did not finish the sentence. The cloth and the bright light finished it for her. The floating ectoplasm suddenly turned brown at the edges and shrivelled into threads. The glowing
incandescence licked hungrily upwards and within minutes half the room was on fire.

Clara thought afterwards that you could never predict how people would behave in a crisis. If she had known that the half the house was to be set on fire that night, she would
have said it would be Bartlam himself, possibly with the help of Reverend Lincing, who would take charge. She would have expected them to marshal the ladies to safety, while Violette wrung her
hands and wept.

The reality was that Bartlam reeled backwards, and let out such a stream of curses that the two sisters squeaked with embarrassment, and Lincing let out a moan of distress. It was left to the
painted female and – remarkably – to Violette Partridge to fling wide doors and windows (this last was rather a mistake, Clara noted, since it fed the fire considerably), and then to
rap out sharp orders to everyone to leave the house immediately, and for someone – you, Mr Bingley – please to run as fast as possible to the police box along the street and summon
help.

By this time Clara had recovered a little from the first shock, and made haste to help everyone out through the nearest door which gave onto the garden, and then to lead them along a narrow
alleyway and so to the street. Muriel Bingley was dithering back and forth, telling everyone that Henry had gone straight along to the police box as requested, he was extremely good in an
emergency, Henry, everyone said so.

Clara found herself standing next to the painted female, who seemed to have found time to snatch up a few personal belongings, and was in the process of restoring the knitting lady’s
beaded dorothy bag to her. Since it was a situation where etiquette must perforce be set aside, she said, ‘What on earth happened? Is everyone safely out?’

‘What? Oh, yes, everyone’s out, unless there are any other occupants of the house we don’t know about.’

‘Servants, do you mean?’ said Clara. ‘I don’t believe they have any live-in servants.’

The woman sent her a scathing look. ‘I didn’t mean servants,’ she said.

‘Then who?’

‘Accomplices.’

Clara stared at her, forgetting for a moment about the fire which was by this time sending out clouds of evil-smelling smoke. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’

‘You didn’t swallow all that guff about spirit energy, did you? Good God,’ said the woman in what Clara thought a very coarse way, ‘you did, didn’t you? I’d
have thought you of all people would have more sense.’

‘The lights—’ began Clara.

‘Probably produced by a cone of lime held over a flame. It’s used for stage effects. And as for that image they contrived of your son at the last meeting, that would have been done
by—’

‘You’re here,’ said Clara, snapping the rest of the sentence off in case it might be hurtful.

‘I’m here because I want to unmask them for the charlatans they are,’ said the woman with suppressed anger in her voice. ‘I’m a journalist.’

‘A what?’

‘A reporter,’ she said with angry impatience. ‘I write articles for newspapers. I’m working on a series of exposés about bloodsucking tricksters like these two.
They’re heartless and greedy and they batten on people’s tragedies. I want to see them both held up to the ridicule they deserve!’

The suggestion that Bartlam and Violette were charlatans was ridiculous – you only had to see how concerned they were for their friends to know they were genuine. The implication that
Clara herself was not able to recognize fraudulent behaviour was downright insulting; Clara was perfectly capable of knowing when people were being deceitful. And the remark about battening on
people’s tragedies was as melodramatic and vulgar a remark as she had heard in a long time, although presumably you had to expect such colourful language from a person who made money by
writing things for newspapers. One had heard about the tricks these people adopted to make a good story and probably this female had some kind of grudge against Violette or Bartlam.

Clara was about to reply very sharply to put this woman right on the matter, when Henry Bingley came panting back to say, importantly, that he had spoken to the police station and help was on
the way.

‘They won’t get here in time to save the house,’ said the woman, studying it critically. ‘It’s burning like the deepest cavern of hell already. I’ll bet a few
bits of evidence have gone up with it, as well. Pity. I might have managed to get a photograph or two.’ She looked across at Reverend Lincing. ‘A shame you couldn’t recite a few
prayers to drive back the flames of Satan, Reverend, isn’t it?’ she said.

Extract from
Talismans of the Mind
by C. R. Ingram

There is evidence to suggest that in the aftermath, several of Bart and Violette’s victims – most of whom refused to believe they had been duped – rallied
round to help them. But the evidence of what actually happened to most of the victims is sparse and comes to us in tantalizing fragments.

‘My sister and I sold our mother’s jewellery in the hope of reaching her after she and our father died and left us orphans to be brought up by distant cousins,’ one is reported
as saying. Again the
Finchley Recorder
helps us with some information, giving an account of how an unnamed lady of very slender means paid her dues to the pair by knitting
gentlemen’s golfing sweaters, which she sold in a street market. The paper also provides a very vivid description of a careful arrangement of lime cones ignited over a gas jet, and of how
Violette packed thin cheesecloth into her mouth with an end thread tied around a back tooth, and then sneezed or spat the cloth out daintily at the appropriate moment to suggest ectoplasm.