We Hear the Dead (11 page)

I could hear the indrawn breath of many in the audience as they waited for Mr. Capron's reaction to the challenge. Our journalist friend turned to look at Leah, who raised her eyes and nodded briefly, placing her welfare in his hands. Mr. Capron looked out at the audience, then dropped his gaze to Mr. Bissel. “We agree to your terms, sir—but only if a committee can be gathered from the persons already present here tonight, who could be assumed to have an open-minded stance on the issue.”

Applause broke out spontaneously from the audience, and immediately a barrage of nominations erupted, with accompanying catcalls and cheers. Glancing at each other, the Posts rose and moved to the front of the platform to supervise the selection process. Leah signaled Mr. Capron, who escorted us from our seats and to the doorway at the back of the platform.

I clutched at Leah, whispering fiercely, “What is happening?”

“They are choosing a group of men to determine whether we are making the raps by deceit.” Leah gave me a glance meant as warning, conscious of Mr. Capron's presence at our side.

Still, I pressed on with my anxious inquiry. “How do they propose to determine this?”

Mr. Capron leaned forward to give me a placid and comforting smile. “There is nothing to fear, Miss Maggie, because there is nothing they can find. The spirits will surely prove themselves to be real, so that even a committee appointed by Josiah Bissel and his friends cannot lack satisfaction.”

And to this, there was nothing more Leah or I could say.

Maggie

Before the end of that evening, we learned that Leah and I would be expected to meet the chosen committee at ten the following morning and again at two in the afternoon. A carriage would arrive to take us to the appointed place, which would not be revealed until the last minute for fear that we would plant some mechanism for trickery there.

Leah wanted to know who had been chosen for the committee. Mr. Post told her, “I did the best that I could to make certain it was a fair group, impartial in the balance of votes, if not in the individuals. Josiah Bissel won places for a couple of his cronies, but I managed to acquire two judges of the court who are known to be fair and honest.”

I turned to Amy Post and asked her urgently, “Who was that man, that Mr. Bissel?”

Anyone else of the company might have dismissed my question without serious answer, but I knew that Amy would grant me the dignity of a reply. “Josiah Bissel is a dangerous man to run afoul of, with many friends and associates who will do whatever it takes to keep his favor. I would be very wary of his men on the committee, Maggie.” Amy took my hand and patted it, seeing the worry in my eyes. “I will be with you tomorrow, and you may call upon me if you need my help. I have faced down enough slave hunters in my time that I am not easily intimidated by the likes of Mr. Bissel!”

***

The next morning, as promised, a carriage arrived at Leah's house, which transported four of us—Mr. Capron, Amy Post, Leah, and myself—to the location of our first examination, which proved to be the Sons of Temperance Hall. Before our departure, Leah had instructed me privately on my behavior during the tests.

“The spirits will not be answering questions today,” she told me. “A few discreet raps will be sufficient, but take no chances. If there is the possibility of detection, make no sound at all. Silence proves nothing—remember that!”

Leah and I were conducted into a meeting room off the main auditorium and given a place to sit. Mr. Capron and Amy were obliged to wait outside the room. One of the men, a lawyer named Mr. Whittlesey, proved to be friendly and not very intimidating. He greeted us, introduced himself and his fellow committee members, and assured us, “There is no reason to be alarmed. You shall have a fair investigation.”

One of the other men, a justice of the circuit court, began immediately to ask us questions, challenging us to identify his mother's maiden name and other personal information about himself.

Leah was polite but firm. “You have been misinformed, sir, if you believe us to be clairvoyants. I cannot read your mind.”

“But I thought your spirits answered questions,” he insisted. “Surely your Mr. Capron told us so in his lecture.”

“The spirit of the murdered man in Hydesville answered questions about himself,” Leah acknowledged. “And when we sit in a proper setting, after dark, many of our guests receive answers from their departed kin, but the spirits have never engaged in guessing games.”

“Then what are we here for?” grumbled another man.

A gray-haired gentleman with cold eyes and a thin-lipped mouth stepped forward. “We are here to determine the true cause of the rapping sounds produced in the presence of these women. We will be hearing those sounds, will we not?”

“I hope so,” Leah replied sweetly. “We certainly entreat our invisible companions to make themselves known.” And as if in answer, we heard three sharp raps. The man's eyes shifted to me at once, and I, having resolved to make myself as Kate-like as possible, gazed back at him in wide-eyed innocence, smiling blandly.

“There they are now,” I told him.

The gentlemen circled around us, discussing the situation. “They were seated in chairs last night, too,” said one of the judges. “Let us have them stand.”

“You may address us directly,” Leah said brightly, helpfully standing up. I rose from my seat and stood beside her, but the man with the cold eyes, whose name was Dr. Langworthy, put out an arm and moved us apart.

We stood motionless for a minute or two, and the committee members exchanged puzzled glances as we still heard two strong raps. Dr. Langworthy observed us shrewdly for a time, and then he motioned to a table in the center of the room. “Mrs. Fish, I will ask you to sit upon this table with your limbs stretched out before you.”

Raising an eyebrow at the questionable dignity of such a position, Leah eased herself onto the table and then gathered up her skirts and swung her legs until they were stretched out on the table in front of her. While she was arranging her skirts to fully cover her ankles, Dr. Langworthy reached out and grasped both of her knees with his hands. Leah let out a startled shriek and drew back from him in outrage.

“Mrs. Fish,” the doctor chastised her with a sneer, “I don't know what you may be accustomed to in the country, but accredited physicians generally touch their patients to examine them.”

“You are under a number of misapprehensions, Dr. Langworthy, which I will gladly correct for you,” Leah snapped. “The first is: I am not your patient. Secondly, I have lived in Rochester nearly all my life, and I am quite familiar with the practices of accredited physicians. And finally, I have seen many Rochester doctors in the course of my life, but never one who would lay hands upon a female patient without asking her permission first!”

“See here, Langworthy!” the lawyer, Mr. Whittlesey, exclaimed. “There is no reason to treat Mrs. Fish or her young sister with anything other than the respect due a lady. If you will not amend your behavior, I will ask you to dismiss yourself from this committee.”

The doctor murmured an ill-tempered and scarcely sincere apology and asked for Leah's permission to hold her limbs while he listened for the raps. She agreed, but the atmosphere between them was tense and filled with mutual dislike. I dared not make a sound, and the silence was long and unpleasant.

For the next three-quarters of an hour, Leah and I were asked to submit to a number of indignities. I spent my time upon the table with the doctor's hands upon my knees. They also asked us to stand upon pillows, and they tied a thin rope on the outside of our skirts around the level of our ankles. Dr. Langworthy pressed a stethoscope against our backs to listen to our lungs and held our wrists with his cold, clammy fingers to measure the pulse of our blood.

When Mr. Capron knocked on the door and announced that the agreed-upon time had passed, Leah and I were quite relieved to escape the clutches of the vile doctor. To Mr. Capron's inquiry about the consensus of the committee, Dr. Langworthy quickly replied, “There was scarcely a knock to be heard during the entire hour and never when the ladies' limbs were held.”

Amy Post's brow furrowed at the discovery that we had been physically handled, and Mr. Capron looked shocked at the very mention of the word
limb
. But Leah gathered her dignity and turned in the doorway to face the doctor. “Did you determine a method by which my sister and I create the knocks through some mechanism or deceitful behavior?”

Langworthy inclined his head. “No, we did not.”

“Then I trust you will report as much when asked,” Leah retorted.

Mr. Capron seemed quite taken aback by the obvious hostility between the doctor and my sister. “Will you send the carriage again this afternoon?” he asked tentatively.

“No need,” said Mr. Whittlesey. “If Mrs. Post is willing, we would like to make the next examination at her home, because she is well known to you and to us, and the ladies may find themselves more at ease there.”

“My home is open to you,” Amy replied. “We look forward to meeting you there this afternoon.”

***

Our suspicions were raised by their choice of the Post house as a second location for their examination. We were, of course, very familiar with the house and had, on occasion, met there to discuss spiritualism or hold a private sitting.

“I don't know why they have chosen the Post house,” Leah muttered. “They think we will be at ease there. Perhaps they believe we will make some mistake that will reveal trickery on our part.”

“That is absurd!” exclaimed Mother. She had never stopped believing in the spirits. “What trickery can they possibly hope to reveal?”

I avoided Mother's eyes and made a pretense at eating. We could not freely speak our thoughts in front of my mother, but I understood what Leah was trying to communicate. I must continue to be on my guard and act with the utmost discretion and caution. It would be better to have the examiners fail to hear or see any evidence of a spiritual presence than to have them positively identify us as frauds!

Our prudent planning served us well, as we discovered immediately upon the arrival of the committee at two that afternoon. When the five gentlemen entered the Posts' parlor followed by three stern-faced women, I guessed immediately what they had in mind and was relieved that our foresight had led me to wear clothing without any hidden balls or bells.

Two of the ladies were introduced as wives of committee members, Mrs. Langworthy among them. The third was a relative of Josiah Bissel. They had been deputized as a subsidiary committee to perform a thorough examination of our bodies and our clothing.

Amy and Leah were irate at this unannounced and degrading affront to our modesty. Mr. Capron could not decide what he thought about it, proving himself an inadequate champion of our cause by declaring that “the girls” had nothing to hide and so there was no reason to object to an examination by other members of the “fair gender.”

Fair gender, indeed! There was nothing fair about these women! The doctor's wife had the face of a hatchet, and the Bissel woman's squinty eyes were cold and black, giving her the look of a vicious snake. The third woman was so pale and spiritless that she withdrew to the back of the room immediately and let the other two do as they pleased. As soon as the parlor door closed, with the men and Amy Post on the outside, Mrs. Langworthy snapped, “Doctor thinks the girl is doing it with her feet. Off with your shoes, child!”

Shaking like a leaf, I unlaced my shoes and stepped obediently out of them. Mrs. Langworthy picked them up, shook them, and stuck her skinny, veined hands inside them. Miss Bissel insisted Leah hand over her own shoes, and my sister complied slowly and insolently. Mrs. Langworthy then grabbed hold of my skirts and began to run her hands over the fabric, squeezing and shaking the folds and turning up the ends to examine the hem.

I folded my arms over my bosom in quiet misery, allowing the wretched woman to turn me about as she clutched at my dress in a most personal and humiliating manner. All the while, she was muttering in my ear: “We know you are a liar and a fraud, you little guttersnipe. You might be able to fool the common masses, but you should not have tried to swindle your betters. You deserve what's coming to you!”

Leah was submitting to her own humiliation, allowing the Bissel woman to manhandle her in a similar fashion while staring at the ceiling as if too haughty to notice her own abasement. But I could see twin circles of reddish color in her cheeks, and her lips were pressed together as if locked against the words that were boiling within.

“Take off the dress,” snarled my tormentor.

“What?” I gasped, turning a shocked face to the doctor's wife. “No! I won't!”

“I want to look at the inner seams. I believe I feel something inside them, just here!” she said, jabbing me in the ribs.

“That's my corset!” I cried indignantly, and it was the truth, for there was nothing hidden in this dress. She only wanted to embarrass me further.

“We demand you take the dresses off,” Miss Bissel chimed in, smiling smugly at Leah. “Or else we will return to the committee and tell them we could feel hidden objects sewn into your clothing that are undoubtedly used to make your mysterious noises.”

Tears were stinging my eyes and Leah appeared to me through a blurred haze, but I could hear the misery and defeat in her voice as she told me, “We'll take off the dresses, Maggie. These harpies will not be satisfied with less, and our reputations will only suffer more if they are not able to acquit us of concealing objects on our persons.”

Snuffling back my tears, I unfastened my dress and struggled out of it. Never in my life had I undressed before anyone other than Kate and my mother. I wadded up the dress and flung it furiously at the nasty old wife of that horrid doctor. “Here! Take it! There is nothing inside it, as you will see!” I snarled.

Mrs. Langworthy only smiled triumphantly at my display of temper, saying, “Poor breeding always shows when a whelp is cornered.”

She examined my dress with great thoroughness, clearly disappointed to find nothing that should not have been there. Leah had also removed her own dress and was standing with her fists clenched at her sides, as if she wanted to box the ears of the woman who was now peering at the seams nearsightedly and making side comments about the quality of the fabric. Mrs. Langworthy next made me take down my hair, and when I did not do so quickly enough, she reached out and pulled it down herself.

When I thought it would be impossible to reach any lower point, my examiner sighed and tossed my dress aside, onto the floor like a rag, and said, “Well, then, let us have off with the rest.”

I was already standing in a corset and petticoats; there was nothing that could have induced me to disrobe any further. Leah, likewise left in only her undergarments, put an arm around me and said in a rather shaky voice, “We've had enough of your examination. You won't get another stitch from us.”

“I think you'll do as you are told!” the doctor's wife replied as though to a recalcitrant child. She grabbed hold of my arm and tried to yank me out of Leah's grasp.

Breaking out in sobs, I pushed at her blindly and tried to break free. “Amy! Amy!” I cried. “Please help us!”

The parlor door burst open so promptly that I think she must have been on the verge of intervening when I cried out to her. Amy Post was not a beautiful woman, but she looked like an avenging angel to me when she charged to our aid, her face flushed and her eyes alight with fury. “That will be enough from you, Evangeline Langworthy! Unhand that child and leave my home at once! You've accomplished what you came to do and enjoyed it all too well, I suspect.”