The Truth of All Things (26 page)

A
t ten minutes to four the next day, Lean, Dr. Steig, and Helen stood in the dim, heavily curtained parlor of Mrs. Porter. Marks on the rug showed that the table had been dragged in from the kitchen for the occasion. Four straight-backed wooden chairs and a rocking chair were arranged around the table. Mrs. Porter looked surprised when they entered her home, glancing past Dr. Steig as if looking for an additional visitor. Grey had decided not to come, since Lean was perfectly capable of discovering whether Mrs. Porter had been visited by a client who fit what they knew of the killer. Grey declared that anything else the spiritualist had to say would amount to nothing more than an exercise in mutually agreed-upon gullibility.

Mr. Porter, a bald, meek-looking man, was visibly agitated by their visit. His wife had him remove the extra chair as she herded him off to a back room. Mrs. Porter gave the group a tepid smile. Lean noticed her eyes lingering on the bony, slightly withered right hand of Dr. Steig. She then arranged the visitors so that Lean was to her left. If form held from other recent séances, he would be holding her left hand, the same as in the fish market the day before. Helen was to sit opposite Mrs. Porter, and Dr. Steig was on the medium’s right. Lean wondered whether this was a kindness to the doctor, to spare him any discomfort at the need to share his damaged hand with a stranger, or if it was for her own benefit. He glanced up from the doctor’s hand and saw that Mrs. Porter was watching him.

“I don’t know why you’re here. But I have the sense that it’s a recent
occurrence. A new loss. Sometimes old wounds have a way of becoming tangled up in the present. It confuses things. Makes things difficult to discern.” Mrs. Porter leaned forward to light a new candle in a silver holder in the center of the table. Then she sat back and laid her hands flat on the table in front of her, fingers fanned out as wide as they would stretch. She directed the others to do likewise, so that each person’s fingers overlapped both neighbors’.

“I can’t promise anything,” she said. “I can’t make the spirits come if they aren’t willing. And I’m not going to tell you things for the sake of you hearing something. I still feel things sometimes, but I will be honest with you. It’s been years since I’ve seen clearly into the Other. I don’t hold out much hope for you today.”

“But you’ve agreed to try,” said Helen with an encouraging smile.

“Yes.” Mrs. Porter looked at her with a certain sadness, then turned to Lean, her fingers closing a bit tighter on his. “We can try. But I will need help. My abilities have faded with age. I think the dead prefer the young. More full of life, perhaps.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Tell me who you are searching for.”

Dr. Steig and Helen both looked at Lean, who weighed his options before answering.

“A killer,” said Lean, and he watched Mrs. Porter’s eyes flicker open in surprise, then close again. “A killer of young women.”

There was silence. Mrs. Porter’s chair began to rock, slowly, barely making a sound on the thin carpet beneath them. More than ten minutes crept past with nothing more than all of their breaths disturbing the stillness of the room. Lean’s back was growing stiff from sitting motionless in the hard wooden chair. He tried to stretch without altering the position of his hands. It was then that he noticed Mrs. Porter’s touch growing cold. Her rocking chair slowed and was still.

“A tower standing in a pool of darkness. It’s thick like blood. It’s filling with darkness. There’s a spark there. A flame? I can see a flame. There’s still time. Dear God, please hurry.”

There was silence. Lean exchanged glances with the others as they waited for something further. Another minute passed.

“Floating. In darkness.” Mrs. Porter’s voice began as a whisper, then grew, but was still soft enough that each of the observers leaned forward to hear better. “It’s tight here. The stones were rough, but now I’m floating.” Her neck arched, and Lean could see her eyes rolling back into her head. “Stars. So many.” The words drifted out of her mouth. She gripped Lean’s hand.

“A little farther, dear,” she said in a lower voice, pleasant still, but urgent. “Look at the lights, John. Do you see them there? Like little halos. He can’t hear me. My mouth is so …” Mrs. Porter pulled her right hand away from Dr. Steig, and her fingertips fumbled about her lips. “That sound—like starlight breaking, icicles falling. What is it?” She answered herself in her second, lower voice. “Nothing, love. Come in now. I’ve got you.”

Her head swung a bit to each side. “It’s dark here. Twisted shapes. Sharp metal. I can’t see, John. Hold the candle higher. Stopped. Funny.” Mrs. Porter’s head flopped forward onto her chest. “Dirt? Where have we gotten to?” Her hand shot up to her face. She was clawing at something near her mouth. Her body jerked, and she released a pained gasp, as if the wind had been knocked from her.

Lean rose from his chair. “Mrs. Porter!”

Dr. Steig also stood and reached across with his left hand to keep Lean from interfering with the woman. Amelia Porter was now still and silent, her eyes shut. Her husband came rushing into the room. His gaze went from his wife’s motionless form to the faces of the visitors. He stared at his wife and took a step backward, eyes widened in fear.

“Black.” The word escaped from Mrs. Porter’s lips like a drip from a leaking faucet. “Floating. Nothing in the world touches me.” Her eyes flicked open for just a second, and then her head fell to her chest again. “I’m down below. How? What are you …? What have you got?”

Mrs. Porter’s head craned upward, as if she was desperate to look away from the table. “A giant metal circle. Little teeth, minutes on a clock, but pointing out. A cold, dead clock.”

Her body convulsed in a sudden shock of pain. She slumped forward.
Lean grabbed hold of her, cradling her close as he lowered her to the carpet. He was near enough to hear her voice.

“I know the truth of all things,” she whispered.

Within a minute, Lean and the others were ushered out of the apartment by an agitated Mr. Porter. They found Rasmus Hansen outside, atop the doctor’s cab, waiting to take them to Grey’s rooms on High Street as previously arranged. Along the way they went over their precise memories of everything Mrs. Porter had said, Lean copying it all down in his notebook.

On High Street, the landlady, Mrs. Philbrick, told them to go right up, they were expected. Lean took the stairs two at a time and rapped at Grey’s door.

“Enter …” Grey’s voice boomed out. Lean pushed in through the door as Grey completed his greeting: “… all those who seek truth from the spirits of the dead!”

Lean froze in midstep. Grey’s apartment was dark. The curtains were closed, and no lamp or any other light source could be seen. But there was Grey, seated at his desk, arms spread out before him in greeting, enveloped in an eerie yellow light.

“Who dares disturb the thoughts of the Great Spirit Guide Professor Mallephisto?” Grey’s voice thundered across the room.

Lean heard Dr. Steig chuckling behind him and went to turn up the gas lamp. When he faced Grey again, he could see that two small glass bottles had been placed atop the desk. Grey removed the thin white fabric that had been covering each, revealing the dirty yellow-brown liquid contents.

“What’s that, then?” Lean said.

“Phosphorous,” Grey said. “Dissolved match heads. It was a bit tedious preparing the concoction, but I hope the effect was worthwhile.”

“What effect is that?”

“To demonstrate that whatever displays you think you witnessed at your séance are easily explained and replicated. It’s all common knowledge.” Grey handed over a book to Lean, who glanced at the title:
Revelations of a Spirit Medium
, by A. Medium.

“For your information, there were no such displays at all. Simply Mrs. Porter going into a trance and making some rather uncanny statements.” Seeing the doubt in Grey’s eyes, Lean added, “And I completely vouch for the validity of the woman’s abilities.”

Helen nodded. “She was thoroughly credible. Gave me shivers down my spine, in fact.”

“It certainly appeared to be an authentic trance.” Dr. Steig’s head tilted slightly, as if his mind were a scale actually weighing the evidence. “Though I didn’t physically examine her.”

Grey sat back with fingers folded in front of him and said, “Fine. Let’s have it; the identity of the murderer has been unveiled from the beyond. And here we were wasting all our time with an actual investigation. What a fool I’ve been.”

“She didn’t actually reveal a suspect. Although she did call him by his Christian name.”

Grey arched an eyebrow. “From the beginning. What information did you give her?”

“I did say we were searching for a killer,” Lean said.

“Of young women,” added Dr. Steig.

Grey slapped his own forehead in disbelief. “And you had already identified yourself as a police deputy?”

“No. But I
had
given her my name,” Lean said.

“Then it’s no large feat for her to determine where your interests lie. And how many murders of young women have been in the newspapers in the past few months? Easy enough for this Porter woman to sniff out the trail. Continue.”

Lean sat down while he read his notes aloud, then announced, “I don’t know what the whole business is with the dark tower and blood and a fire.”

“Meaningless imagery to set the mood and capture your imagination,” Grey said.

“Maybe. But the rest of it—I think she’s describing Maggie Keene’s last minutes alive.”

“Interesting. Your analysis.”

“First she’s floating, in darkness. It’s tight, and the stones were
rough, but then she can’t feel them. We know that the killer led Maggie Keene to the site through a dark, narrow alley, where cobblestones gave way to earth.”

“That could describe a hundred places in this city. But go on.”

“Then she calls him by name: John. Our man was using the alias John Proctor at the boardinghouse on St. Lawrence Street.”

“Also the most common male name in the English language, and the one most likely to be offered by a client who doesn’t wish to reveal his true name to a prostitute,” Grey answered.

“She notices lights, like halos. Not a light up close, because the streetlamp near the door to the machine shop had been busted. She only sees the gaslights in the distance. Little halos.”

“An imaginative stretch, but I’m following you.”

“Next she implied difficulty talking; her mouth or lips seemed affected. She touched them like so.” Lean repeated the gestures.

“That could well be a sign of having been drugged. The entire narrative had that tone to it. An affect of the voice similar to one who was heavily sedated,” said Dr. Steig.

Lean nodded. “Then there’s a breaking sound. Like starlight or icicles falling. Our man punched in the glass to unlock the door. They’re inside now. It’s dark, she sees twisted metal shapes, and this man John has a candle. Then she stops, she looks down and is surprised to be standing on dirt. After all, she’s inside the building now. Then she gasps, suddenly, like she’s been struck.”

“Yes. That is how it sounded.” Helen’s wide eyes showed that her mind was still afire with the memory of the bizarre encounter.

“Next, she was trying to pull something away from her face. You yourself suspected that Maggie had been chloroformed. He must have held a cloth to her lips. At this point, Mrs. Porter’s body was violently struggling. Then went deathly still. When she spoke again, she says she’s floating, and then it’s like she’s looking down on Maggie Keene.”

“Chloroform has been known to produce an effect in some of a sensation of floating outside one’s own body,” said Dr. Steig.

Grey shrugged. “An external perspective would also be naturally
adopted by a complete stranger trying to describe an event as she imagined it to have happened.”

Lean continued. “Then she asks what the man is holding. Mrs. Porter’s head turned away, not wanting to look, and she starts talking about a metal circle above her. It has little teeth pointing out from the center. The description fits: that giant gear that was suspended above Maggie Keene’s body on the crane in the machine shop. Then her body shook, and it was like she was dead. It’s the very portrait we’ve constructed of Maggie Keene’s death.”

“Yes, and it’s all explainable—Amelia Porter could have learned or guessed all this from newspaper accounts, a visit to the Portland Company, and a few well-placed questions,” Grey said.

“Tell him what she said at the end,” prompted Helen.

“Right. Before Mrs. Porter came to, she said, ‘I know the truth of all things.’ ”

“The same comment that Boxcar Annie reported from Maggie Keene,” Helen explained. “This man said he would show her the truth of all things.”

“And the same comment that Boxcar Annie, or another of Maggie Keene’s business associates, could have repeated to Amelia Porter. An explanation wholly more plausible than the belief that Mrs. Porter actually channeled the spirit of our murder victim from beyond the grave.”

Helen stared at Grey. “Do you simply refuse to even consider the possibility that someone like Amelia Porter has powers that you or I cannot explain?”

“Oh, I can explain her powers rather easily. Her power lies in the need of others to believe in something inexplicable. People pay good money to have that belief confirmed, that there really is something more out there.”

Helen peered at Grey again, a deeply perplexed look on her face. “I for one refuse to believe that everything we experience in this life can be observed and measured and explained. That’s not life at all. Don’t you agree, Mr. Grey?”

Grey responded with a weary smile.

“You weren’t there,” Lean said. “We all felt something extraordinary while in Mrs. Porter’s presence. And I do choose to believe it, whether or not there’s any earthly explanation.”

“Believe what you will, but tell me, what have you learned? Are you any closer to the killer?”

“I don’t know. But it’s a piece of information. Another view of the killing. Something we didn’t have before.”