The Seance (28 page)

Friday – about 9 p.m.

Mrs Bryant arrived by coach at about three o’clock this afternoon, escorted by Magnus on horseback. I watched from the window of her sitting-room for long enough to see who had accompanied her. Apart from Dr Rhys there were only her two maids, a footman and the coachman. The maids are to share a small bedroom across from the vast chamber prepared for her; Dr Rhys will have the room at the head of this corridor, so that he too will be within call if required.

I resolved to keep to my room until Magnus summoned me, and for three very long hours I waited, with my heart pounding whenever I heard footsteps in the passage outside, but no one knocked. Clara woke, and was fretful for a while, which helped at least to distract me. At around six there came a tapping at my door, but it was only Carrie to say that ‘the master’ would like me to join our guests in the old gallery at half-past seven: dinner would be served at half-past eight. And so I endured another anxious vigil while the light faded above the treetops beyond my window. Surely, I thought, Magnus will want to instruct me as to how I am to behave; but still he did not appear. At seven Clara was still wakeful, and I had no choice but to give her a spoonful of Godfrey’s cordial, not knowing how long I would have to be away from her.

Carrie returned at a quarter-past seven to help me dress, not that much help was required, for I had deliberately chosen the same grey gown, without hoops or bustle, that I had worn to Mrs Bryant’s house a month before. By the time the half-hour had struck, the last of the twilight had faded from my window.

Until this evening, the passage outside my room had been pitch dark. Now candles had been lit in the sconces along the wall, but the glass was so blackened that they yielded only a dim, murky light. The air was stale and close. Expecting at every turn to find Magnus awaiting me with a smile, I made my way through the gloom to the landing. The double doors to the gallery stood open.

Along each wall, a row of wavering flames receded. High windows shone with a faint cold light; higher still, the ceiling was shrouded in darkness. In the centre of the floor, some twenty feet away from me, more candles burned upon a small round table, lighting up the faces of Magnus, Mrs Bryant and Dr Rhys so that they seemed to hang in the air above the flames.

‘Ah, there you are, my dear,’ said Magnus, just as if he had last seen me five minutes, rather than several days, ago. I moved reluctantly to join them. Mrs Bryant, resplendent in crimson silk and displaying a large expanse of white bosom, greeted me with disdain; Godwin Rhys bowed awkwardly.

Behind them, the wall at the far end of the gallery was dominated by an immense fireplace. But nothing had prepared me for the sheer bulk of the armour towering in the shadows beside it. The sword glittered beneath its gloved hand; in the shifting light it seemed alert, alive, watchful. Within the fireplace stood a massive chest of dark metal: the tomb of Sir Henry Wraxford.
I have been here before
, I thought, but the flicker of recognition was gone before I could catch it.

‘Dr Wraxford was about to tell us,’ said Mrs Bryant impatiently, ‘of a discovery he has made amongst his late uncle’s papers.’ She spoke as if I had kept them all waiting, and I realised that Magnus had deliberately arranged matters thus.

‘Indeed I was,’ he replied. His tone was as cordial as ever, but with an edge of anticipation. His teeth caught the light as he smiled; the pupils of his eyes shone like twin flames. ‘But perhaps we should return to the mystery of his disappearance – all the more baffling to anyone who has stood where we are standing now. To recapitulate: my uncle’s man Drayton saw him retire to the study next door at about seven on the night of the storm. When Mr Montague arrived the following evening, he was obliged to break in, and found all the doors to the landing locked and bolted on the inside, with the keys still in the locks. We have tried in vain to lock, let alone bolt, any of those doors from the outside. There is, to the best of our knowledge, no secret passage, trap-door, priest’s
hole or anything of the kind. The flues of the chimneys are too narrow for a grown man – even a man as small as my uncle – to pass. What, therefore, became of him?

‘The only rational explanation – the only one that I can see – is that he somehow got out of that window’ – indicating the one above the suit of armour – ‘climbed down the cable, stumbled away into the forest, and fell, as his predecessor Thomas Wraxford is supposed to have done, into one of the old workings. It is not impossible – we found that casement closed, but not latched – only incredible, to suppose that a frail elderly man could have done all that in pitch darkness, on the night of a violent storm. I have made the climb myself, in far better conditions, and I can assure you it was not a pleasant experience.’

His gaze flicked towards me as he said this. I clenched my fingers until the nails dug into my palms, struggling to conceal my distress. For a year and a half I had feared him; now I knew that I hated him.

‘But if we eliminate the window, we are forced to consider – less rational possibilities. As you know, my uncle burned a great many papers, including the manuscript of Trithemius, on the night of his disappearance.’

Again Magnus glanced at me, as if to say, I know perfectly well, my dear, that you have never heard of Trithemius.

‘You have heard, too, of my uncle’s strange conviction – derived from Trithemius, and possibly from Thomas Wraxford – that the power of lightning might be harnessed to summon a spirit, using that suit of armour to contain the force of the bolt. Now in going through his study the other day, I found a page of notes, scrawled in haste, and sometimes quite impenetrable, which had slipped behind a row of books.’

He drew from his coat a crumpled sheet of paper.

‘I shall not weary you with the tale of my efforts to decipher this. The first legible phrase is “divined T’s meaning at last”; whether “T” is Thomas or Trithemius we cannot tell. He then refers to the armour as a
portal
(the word is heavily underscored) – which may be used either to
“summon” or to “pass without need of dying” – and prays for “strength to endure the trial”. He believed, in other words, that if he were inside the armour when lightning struck, he would pass unharmed into the next world, just as the risen body, according to scripture, will ascend to heaven upon the Day of Judgment.’

‘But surely,’ said Dr Rhys, ‘anyone foolhardy enough to occupy that suit during a thunderstorm would be struck dead ... indeed, is it not possible that your uncle did exactly what you suggest, and was reduced to ashes, or even vapour, by the force of the blast?’

‘Possible, yes. But we found no trace of ash, or evidence of burning, on the inside of the suit. Men have been struck by lightning and survived’ – he paused, as if struck by a sudden thought – ‘others have died instantly and been badly charred; but I know of no case in which the victim simply vanished from the face of the earth.

‘All of this, I agree, would seem utterly incredible, were it not for the inconvenient fact of my uncle’s disappearance. For a scientist, there is surely but one course: test the hypothesis.’

‘But my dear Dr Wraxford,’ said Mrs Bryant, ‘we cannot sit here for days or weeks, waiting for it to thunder.’

‘There is fortunately no necessity for that. I have managed to secure an influence machine – a device for generating a powerful electrical current – which Bolton will operate from the library, so as not to disturb us; the current will be conveyed to the armour by means of wires passed under the connecting door. Though not as formidable as lightning, the charge is continuous.

‘There is a theory, you know, that the basis of spirit may be electrical. For spirits to communicate with the living – the question we shall try tomorrow night – they must surely be composed of
something
. A something which is able to store energy, yet clearly not material. For a scientist, then, it is natural to think in terms of the electrical and magnetic forces.

‘I have even begun to wonder whether my uncle’s obsession was not,
perhaps, quite as mad as I assumed. Gods are often said to wield lightning; and whilst this represents primitive awe at the power of nature, it may also shroud a genuine intuition. The same applies to the spiritualist practice of linking hands around a table. Ghosts and spirits are generally depicted as emanations of light; one thinks of St Elmo’s fire or the very rare phenomenon of ball lightning ... a far-fetched analogy, you may say, but just as a magnetic field will cause a heap of iron filings to arrange themselves into a complex pattern, so the soul, the vital principle – call it what you will – animates the earthly body. Might it not be that the vital principle is electrical, perhaps in some subtler form that science has not yet grasped?

‘These are, as I say, mere theories, but there will certainly never be a better opportunity to test them. Tomorrow night we will seek to summon a spirit; but if that should fail, I am willing to try a bolder experiment. I shall instruct Bolton to operate the influence machine at full power, and occupy the armour myself.’

‘But my dear Magnus,’ said Mrs Bryant, forgetting her discretion, ‘that is surely too great a risk.’

‘I confess,’ said Magnus, ‘that it would take a good deal more courage to try it during a storm. But that is how science advances. And if we succeed – if there is genuinely something in this business of the portal – then your dream will become a reality ... You may not have heard, my dear’ – turning to me with his most charming smile, while Mrs Bryant looked on in triumph – ‘that Mrs Bryant wishes to endow a retreat for spiritualists: a place where conditions are peculiarly favourable, sheltered from the hustle and bustle of daily life ...’

I looked from one to the other of them in disbelief.

‘It is a magnificent house, Mrs Wraxford,’ said Godwin Rhys, ‘sadly in need of refurbishment of course, but it could be the pride of the county. And such a picturesque history – the disappearance of two owners only adds to its
cachet
—’

‘Evidently, Dr Rhys,’ I heard myself saying, ‘my husband has not told
you that my late fiancé, Mr Edward Ravenscroft, died here two years ago, or you would not speak so lightly of this accursed place. I will attend your séance, Magnus, because you command it, but I will not dine with you. And now you must excuse me.’

I had forgotten the threat of the asylum, forgotten, for a moment, even Clara. Dr Rhys’s mouth opened, but no sound came out; Mrs Bryant regarded me with apprehension. I glanced at Magnus as I turned away, but instead of fury I saw only triumph. The after-image of his smile accompanied me to the door.

Ten o’clock has just struck; my hand still trembles as I write. Clara has not stirred; she scarcely breathes. It was wicked of me to give her laudanum, but what else could I have done?

Once again I fear my temper has betrayed me into doing exactly as Magnus intended. I half expected a summons to the dining-room, but Carrie came up with a tray at about a quarter to nine, which only confirmed my suspicion. He was goading me, and I did not see it – just as Mrs Bryant and Dr Rhys do not see that he plays upon them like puppets. But
what
does he intend? Why, after making so much of my ‘gift’, did he not so much as mention it tonight? And if the séance is to be a fraud, why does he want me here? The others are entirely under his spell, and he must know that if his scheme miscarries, I will be the first to expose him. It makes no sense.

But if Magnus truly believes in this monstrous business with the armour, then that must mean

10.15 p.m.

Someone has slipped a message under my door. Within the last few minutes; it was certainly not there when I went to look at Clara. A plain
sheet of paper, folded once, no address or signature. The hand is feminine – it could almost be my own.