A Case of Spirits

Cribb raised an eyebrow. ‘Lettie, eh? Suits her. Carry on.’

‘Estimated value thirty pounds,’ continued Thackeray. ‘Japanese in style, made by one James Hadley-’

‘Cut the description,’ ordered Cribb. ‘What about the means of entry?’

‘A glass pane nine inches by eleven was broken in the rear door,’ read Thackeray. ‘It appears to have been accomplished with a brick which was found nearby. The glass fell on to a piece of coconut matting, and the servants heard nothing.’

‘Clumsy, even so,’ said Cribb.

‘Yes, Sarge, particularly as there was a window with a broken sashcord not ten yards away. He could have got through there, easy.’

‘What about the Richmond job?’ said Cribb. ‘How does the method of entry compare?’

‘Oh, that was uncommon crude as well, Sarge.’ Thackeray thumbed the pages of his notebook to check the damage inflicted on Dr Probert’s property. ‘The felon made a number of unsuccessful attempts to prise the bars off the pantry-window with a pick-handle before seizing on the notion of using it in conjunction with a thong. He made a shocking mess of the pantry, climbing in, too. Knocked over a tin of Bath Olivers and scattered a packet of pearl barley all over the floor. We’re not exactly dealing with a Charlie Peace, Sarge. That’s what so infuriates the bobbies on the spot. They reckon they could run the man to ground in a matter of hours, given the chance. It’s obviously someone who knew the nights when Miss Crush was out at Dr Probert’s, and Dr Probert was giving his lecture at University College Hospital. A dabbler in this table-tapping nonsense and a pretty poor hand as a burglar.’

‘Inspector Jowett,’ said Cribb.

‘Eh?’ ejaculated Thackeray.

‘Good evening, Officers,’ said Jowett, at his side. ‘You don’t mind if I join you? I think the lecture is about to commence.’ He just had time to take the seat on Cribb’s other side. The harmonium strains gave way to polite applause as the chairman for the evening stepped out from behind a tub of pampas grass to occupy the centre of the stage.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, it is my privilege tonight. .’ he began.

‘This promises to be instructive,’ said Jowett in Cribb’s ear. ‘Professor Quayle has had his palms on the tables of some of the best addresses in London. He stepped into D. D. Home’s shoes in the seventies. In demand everywhere. Now it looks as if young Brand is ready to eclipse him. Decent of Quayle to include the boy in his lecture.’

Cribb gave an affirmative grunt. He was getting used to hearing mediums discussed as if they were tenors or fiddle-players. It didn’t matter to the well-to-do whether there was anything in spiritualism or not; mediums were drawing-room entertainers, as ready to be hired for an evening as the latest velvet-voiced Italian over for the season at Covent Garden.

‘. . I give you Professor Eustace Quayle,’ concluded the chairman, neatly stepping back behind the pampas grass.

The professor, a man of commanding height and total baldness, advanced to the lectern, propped his elbows on it and leaned forward until his head and shoulders loomed over the front rows like a figurehead. ‘Who will deny that there are visitors from the Other Side in this place tonight?’ he demanded in a voice that rang through the hall. There was not a whisper from the audience as he cast his eyes challengingly along their stunned rows. It was not notably his baldness that intimidated, nor the extreme hollowness of his cheeks. It was the intensity of his eyes, so deep-set as to be fathomless under the gas-burners, and topped by a prodigious growth of eyebrow. ‘They are everywhere about us, are they not?’ he continued, with a glance which seemed to take in the back rows.

Thackeray shifted in his seat, turned slightly and found himself eye to anxious eye with his neighbour, a grey-haired lady in a racoon fur hat.

‘Invisible presences,’ said Professor Quayle. ‘The unseen spirits of the departed. Unseen? Oh, I have seen them, my friends, seen them and spoken with them, as any of you may do if you wish. Tonight I shall show you photographic plates that will satisfy the most sceptical among you. But I am not here to persuade you that beings exist outside the material world. You are free agents. You think, and act upon the promptings of your thoughts, and we call the faculty within you that determines those thoughts your inner being, your soul, your spirit. I tell you, friends, that the spirits that a medium makes contact with are nothing but the souls of men and women like yourselves extracted from their envelope of gross, terrestrial matter.’

‘Isn’t that Dr Probert there, second row from the front and two from the end?’ Jowett unexpectedly asked Cribb.

‘You’re right, sir! And Miss Crush sitting next to him.’

‘Ah, you’ve met the lady already. She was gratified to learn that Scotland Yard are on the track of her stolen vase, no doubt.’

‘That wasn’t my impression, sir.’

‘No?’ Inspector Jowett turned in surprise.

On the platform, the professor had finished talking about the spirits in the hall and had reached the less disturbing matter of his conversations with famous historical personages from St Peter onwards.

Cribb waited till the roll had passed by way of Julius Caesar and William Shakespeare to George Washington.

‘Miss Crush would like us to abandon the case, sir. Says she doesn’t mind about the vase.’

‘Good Lord!’ said Jowett loudly.

The man on his left frowned and leaned forward in an attitude plainly conveying that if he had to listen to blasphemies he preferred them to come from the platform.

‘I think she doesn’t want to upset the people she knows, sir. It’s not worth the price of the missing vase to have her spiritualistic friends investigated.’

‘Understandable, I will admit, but quite impossible. You told her that you have your job to do, I hope?’

‘Left her in no doubt at all, sir.’

Below, the professor quoted from a conversation he had recently had with Napoleon, ‘ “March forward, children! You do not need the aid of bayonets to sustain your cause. Truth is more powerful than armies, fleets, cannon and grape-shot.” ’

‘Hear, hear,’ someone shouted in the middle of the hall, and there was a nervous burst of applause in which Miss Crush could be seen to be joining energetically.

‘I trust you didn’t threaten the lady,’ said Jowett. ‘People of her class aren’t accustomed to bullying methods, you know. To be frank, I was somewhat disturbed by something Dr Probert repeated to me this afternoon, that you were planning to “put the screws on Miss Crush”. That’s not the way we conduct our investigations is it, Sergeant- not where people of refinement are concerned?’

‘Slip of the tongue, sir. Nothing sinister intended.’

‘I can vouch for that, sir,’ added Thackeray, leaning forward to catch Jowett’s eye.

‘Good God! I hope you weren’t there,’ said the inspector, as if that would have confirmed his worst suspicions of police brutality.

Remarkable as they were, Professor Quayle’s conversations with the great would undoubtedly have taken a stronger grip on the attention of the audience if they had been extensively edited. There was a disappointing sameness about them. There seemed to be a conspiracy on the Other Side to give nothing away about the life hereafter. The communications consisted in the main of expressions of goodwill and exhortations to keep getting in touch, not helped by the professor’s delivery, which was strongly reminiscent of the Best Man at a wedding reception reading out the messages from absent guests. When Lord Beaconsfield was reached, and the audience realised that his recent decease almost certainly made him last on the list, an unmistakable sensation of relief spread through the hall.

It was a critical phase in the proceedings. The moment the references to primroses and the Conservative Party were rounded off with applause, a strong injection of interest was wanted if the lecture was to be kept alive. Happily it was available. ‘At this juncture, ladies and gentlemen,’ said the professor, ‘I beg leave to introduce a young medium whose seances in recent weeks have been attended by phenomena of a most exceptional character and variety-so exceptional, in fact, that he is rapidly becoming the talk of the metropolis. Noises and rappings under a table in the suburbs are nothing new, but what do you say to the materialisation of a spirit hand in Kensington, the levitation of the entire furniture of a room in Hampstead and the writing of a message from the late Duke of Wellington in a private house in Camberwell-writing, I may say, that has been verified as authentic by the foremost