Mr Scarletti's Ghost (35 page)

Since Mrs Langley was a level-headed lady and not given to attacks of emotion, Mina decided to lay before her everything she had thus far uncovered about the medium who had been committed to prison in 1869. If Mr Clee was already a married man, most probably the husband of Miss Eustace, then unless his claim to be affianced to another lady was a lie to extricate himself from any association with Miss Simmons, he had been planning to commit a very serious crime, and had some questions to answer about his conduct. She saw a fresh light in the lady's eyes, the light of a huntress who had sighted her prey, noted its weaknesses and was in determined pursuit. Young Mr Phipps was about to be presented with a case that would shock and scandalise Brighton, and perhaps even bring a sudden end to the career of Miss Eustace.

Mina and Mrs Langley, seeing that they had a shared concern, promised to keep each other acquainted with developments. A few days later, however, Mina received a somewhat disappointing letter from her new friend.

Mr Clee, she learned, on being confronted with the newspaper report of 1869, had denied that he had any acquaintance with the lady named therein, declared that the newspaper must have made an error in the medium's name, and asserted that he was a single man, had never been married, and anyone who attempted to prove otherwise was free to try it, but would inevitably fail.

The confidence with which he made these denials made Mina pause. Either he knew that no proof of a marriage could be found, or he was gambling that no one would trouble to make enquiries. Mina did not feel equipped to challenge him on this point, but at least Miss Simmons's suit still remained.

There was better news from Richard, which Mina thought well worth the inevitable price of the dinner and wine she provided for her brother and Nellie. Richard had discovered that Miss Eustace was living in a lodging house in Bloomsbury Place. As he had promised, the secret had not been a hard one to uncover; he had simply hired a messenger boy to loiter outside the Gaskins' rooms on the night of a séance and then follow the medium to her lair. The lady, it was reported, on leaving the house had stepped quickly into a cab that had been ordered in advance, and it had been a delicate balance between speed and concealment to keep up with her progress unseen. The cab had not paused to take another person on board and Miss Eustace had completed her journey and slipped into the lodgings alone. A careful watch had been kept for some hours but no one else entered the premises. The house boasted a basement, a ground floor, and three upper storeys, but how these were divided and how many tenants were accommodated was unknown.

‘Perhaps Lady Finsbury might pay her a visit,' suggested Nellie, who was resplendent in another new gown and a necklace that sparkled rainbows like broken glass. She patted the jewels occasionally as if wishing that they were real. ‘I am sure Miss Eustace would be very amenable to that. The only slight awkwardness would be explaining how I came by her address, which she has clearly been at some pains to conceal.'

‘I don't suppose she has thought to try to discover if Lady Finsbury exists,' said Richard, easing open a button on his waistcoat and puffing at a cigar. ‘These lying types are so easily taken in, you just have to play them with their own tricks.'

‘That's it!' said Mina. ‘Her own trick! Of course!'

‘Oh you have a perfectly wicked imagination, Mina,' said Richard, appreciatively. ‘We are all ears.'

‘All that Lady Finsbury needs to do,' explained Mina, ‘is say that she was given the address by a spirit. Miss Eustace can hardly argue with that, as it is her stock in trade. Even if she is a conjurer, there may be some shred of belief in her that the things she pretends are real. I suggest, Miss Gilden, that you go there in your finest gown and best jewels, present Lady Finsbury's card, and insist on an immediate interview. She is bound to see you.'

Nellie nodded, thoughtfully. ‘I can carry that off without any trouble; and perhaps I should offer some reason why the interview cannot take place at my hotel; a disapproving or invalid husband, perhaps. But what reason should I give for the urgency of my request?'

‘There is only one thing that tempts Miss Eustace and her kind, and that is money,' said Mina. ‘Perhaps the spirit has spoken of buried treasure or a hidden will, at any rate something of great value, and has directed you to Miss Eustace as the only means of discovering its location.'

‘But would she agree to that?' said Richard dubiously. ‘She can produce messages that make sense to the listener, but finding some hidden object would surely be beyond her. She might fear losing her reputation if it is not found.'

‘If the customer is eager enough and willing to be duped, she will agree,' said Mina. ‘Only make it clear that she will be paid well whatever the result. All we really want is the opportunity for Miss Gilden to visit Miss Eustace, and note anything in her apartments which might offer us clues as to her mode of life and business.'

Miss Gilden smiled. ‘That should be easy enough. I shall even provide her with a picture of the spirit.'

‘A picture?' said Mina.

‘Oh, I have any number of portraits of theatrical persons. What about Rolly?' said Miss Gilden, turning to Richard.

He laughed. ‘Oh yes, Rolly Rollason, the master of mirth. He has this thing he says—' Richard adopted a curious pose with his arms wrapped about his head, and affected a villainous grimace – ‘I ain't, though! Ain't I?' he said gruffly, and chuckled. ‘Very droll.' He paused. ‘Nellie, dear, I didn't know you had his picture?'

‘Oh, a great many gentlemen give me their pictures,' said the charming Nellie, without even the hint of a blush. ‘Yes, there is a very characterful one of him which would do extremely well. He is in evening dress, wearing a monocle and a full wig and staring at a rose. I shall tell Miss Eustace that he is my late uncle. If she manages to produce his ghost that would be most amusing.'

‘You will be very convincing, my dear,' said Richard. ‘Perhaps, to demonstrate your grief concerning the deceased relative, your personation from
The Wayward Ghost
would be suitable?'

‘Oh yes,' said Nellie with a smile. ‘It was a burlesque of the tragedy of Hamlet,' she explained to Mina, ‘I played Ophelia and sang and danced and went mad and tore my clothes to ribbons.'

‘There were gentlemen in the front row in tears every night,' said Richard. ‘I think Lady Finsbury might aspire to a slightly more modest exhibition of distress, but if Miss Eustace hesitates to assist then you might open the floodgates a little. Yes, let us make the attempt tomorrow!' He signalled the waiter and ordered a glass of brandy.

‘And what of Miss Foxton, how does she prosper?' asked Mina.

‘Well, we have not quite reached the heights of the Theatre Royal or the Dome,' said Richard, almost as if that was a possibility, ‘but we have played extensively in some very prestigious drawing rooms, and just lately we have been reaching an altogether wider audience by taking our turn at the New Oxford Theatre of Varieties in New Street.'

‘We appear just after the Chinese sword-swallower and before the one-legged gymnast,' said Nellie.

‘How wonderful!' exclaimed Mina, thankful that her mother was as likely to patronise such an establishment as she would a hospital for infectious diseases.

‘Only sixpence for a seat in the gallery and packed to bursting every night,' said Richard. ‘We are in place for the whole of the summer but we might look for something more elegant in the high season. Mind-reading, perhaps.'

‘Can you do that?' asked Mina.

‘Oh yes, I used to be the Ethiopian Wonder when I was with M. Baptiste,' said Nellie. ‘I had to be Ethiopian so I could wear paint and wouldn't be recognised. It was a wonderful costume.'

‘It is all a trick, though,' said Mina.

‘Everything is a trick,' said the former Ethiopian Wonder. ‘The secret is making it look as if something is happening before your eyes that you know to be impossible. Of course in a séance it's still impossible and it's still a trick, only then people believe it. And, of course, they pay more to see it.'

‘I don't expect you to tell me how these things are done,' said Mina, ‘but there are some things that I can't explain, and it is those that trouble me most, the things that Miss Eustace tells people at the private séances. Everyone who has been to one says that they are told things, quite personal things unknown to anyone else, things that Miss Eustace could not possibly have known and which therefore must be messages from the deceased. It is those messages that convince people she is genuine. I applied for a private reading myself, but she will not grant me one. That fact alone tells me she is a fraud. If she was genuine she would have nothing to fear.'

‘People who want to believe in the spirits are too ready to dismiss something as impossible by natural means,' said Nellie. ‘They say that the medium could not have known this or that, but there is always a way. How many secrets are there that are known to only one or two people?'

‘Dr Hamid, whose sister died very recently, claims he has received messages from her that convince him,' said Mina. ‘Miss Hamid would not discuss the pain she suffered except with her own family, yet Miss Eustace was able to say where it was.'

‘It is like every such trick,' said Nellie. ‘When you do not know the secret it is mysterious and inexplicable. Once you know, it seems so simple, so obvious, you would swear that a child could do it. Remember, Miss Eustace does not work alone. She is like a spider with a web, and she spins it all around the town and draws people in. I am sure that if you took a single example of something she has said and found out how she learned about it, you would discover a great deal more about the lady and how she deceives people, and perhaps then some of her followers would see her for what she is.'

‘Only some, not all?' asked Mina, although she knew the answer.

‘Only some,' said Nellie.

N
ot for the first time Mina was tempted to put her case before the police but on reflection, realised that she had nothing to go to the police with. She had not been fooled or paid over any money, so had nothing personally to complain about, and anything she said would be opposed by a chorus of voices extolling the virtue and probity of the medium.

The next time Mina exercised at Hamid's she expressed her continuing anxieties to Anna. Anna now had quite a number of lady patients who went to her to exercise, often for diseases of the spine. She did not believe in the wearing of stays during these activities, indeed she confided in Mina that she did not approve of the wearing of stays at all, since she thought that a lady's own body ought to be developed to create and support her shape and not pulled into some distortion dictated by fashion in order to please men. She had therefore devised an exercise costume consisting of a loose blouse and pantaloons which ladies might either purchase or hire. Mina had ordered a set made to her own dimensions, and it was beautifully comfortable. If she had one exercise that she especially enjoyed it was a simple side stretch, not so much because it was in itself pleasurable, but because she knew from what she was told that when she placed her left hand on the back of a chair and leaned to one side, raising her right foot from the ground, this was the one position in which, perversely, her spine lay perfectly straight. How she wished she had known that some years before, when, ordered to straighten her back by her mother, she could quite simply have adopted this pose.

The exercises with the dumb-bells had in the last few weeks so strengthened her upper arms and the muscles of her chest that Anna had deemed her ready to advance to the next stage, which was hanging by both hands from a bar. Mina first stepped on to a low stool then grasped the bar, and Anna slid the stool away, and carefully supervised her so that the stretches were applied in the correct place. It was too soon, she warned, for Mina to attempt this at home, for an exercise incorrectly done was worse than none at all. The weight of Mina's small body seemed to pull through her arms and shoulders and back, lengthening and warming her muscles, but without pain, although the effort made her want to gasp. As Anna eased Mina to the floor, she looked concerned, and asked if all was well, but Mina's slight breathlessness was a good feeling, and she felt tired yet exhilarated, having achieved more than she had ever thought possible.

Dr Hamid, Mina learned later as they were enjoying a tisane, had been visited by Miss Eustace three times for private séances, and planned another. He had now told Anna about the communication regarding Eliza's pain, and Mina asked if Eliza had ever described this to another person.

‘Daniel and I were the only persons she ever spoke to on the subject,' said Anna. ‘I believe she did not even talk about it to you.'

‘That is true,' Mina admitted. ‘But both Miss Eustace and Mr Clee came to see her. Might she not have disclosed something then?'

‘I very much doubt it. She preferred not to discuss the subject at all, and had they pressed her on the matter she would not have wanted to see them again.'

‘And she has not been examined by any other doctor?'

Anna paused. ‘We did receive a visit some months ago from Dr Chenai, who Daniel has known for a number of years. He had been making a study of the spine and asked if he might see Eliza. We persuaded her to allow him to examine her, which I think she did only because she thought that it might help others, but I was there and she did not speak a word all the time. I think she was very relieved when he left, and did not need to tell us that she preferred not to see him again.'

‘I suppose,' said Mina, ‘that Miss Eustace could have read a book about scoliosis and guessed where the pain might be.'

‘I had the impression from Daniel that he was told more than that, something very peculiar to Eliza.' She sighed. ‘I shall ask him again and see if he will tell me what it was, but he thinks that I only ask him in order to destroy his belief, which of course I do, and he prefers for the moment to cling to it.'