brown and syrupy than ever. Tom put out his hands as if he were being invited to catch a ball. He felt uncomfortable and self-conscious, which was probably Flask’s intention. No doubt the medium counted on not being examined or searched thoroughly. God knows what he had concealed behind his waistcoat or inside his trousers.
Tom, suddenly provoked, decided that he would not be embarrassed. He would give this man as thorough a going-over as a criminal would receive in the police-house. So he ran his hands along the other’s extended shirtsleeves and over his sleek chest, he felt about his waist and up and down the trouser legs. To his slight disappointment, he felt nothing, not even a purse or a pocket-watch. Flask’s clothes were snug and well-fitting. They were also expensive. A fine stickpin topped by a pearl fastened his burgundy cravat. The thought crossed Tom’s mind that one of Aunt Julia’s cheques might have paid for the brocade waistcoat and, although it was really nothing to do with him, the idea irritated him.
He turned to face the people in the room. He shook his head and said,
‘As far as I can tell, Mr Flask is… clean.’
There were one or two titters from the audience, whether out of genuine amusement or from nervousness because Tom had shown a touch of disrespect towards Eustace Flask.
‘Thank you, Mr Ansell,’ said Flask from behind and then more quietly he spoke directly into Tom’s ear, ‘Your hands have such an expert touch that I thought you might be a tailor.’
Tom could have jabbed his elbow into the other’s gut at the little insult but he restrained himself and went back to sit beside Helen. Aunt Julia was beaming, gratified that Flask was acquitting himself so well. She was sitting beside Septimus Sheridan, who looked generally uncomfortable at the course of events.
Now Flask turned his back on the audience, his open hands stretched behind him. Ambrose produced a little bag from which he poured what appeared to be flour into Flask’s hands. The medium grasped the flour. Then Ambrose wound a coil of thin rope several times around Flask’s wrists. He made a show of knotting the cord tight and beckoned to a gentleman in the front of the audience to test the knots. This was quickly done and then Flask moved towards the wardrobe, where Kitty was standing by the open doors.
The interior was empty apart from a ledge or bench which ran along the back. Flask sat on this, rather awkwardly because of the position of his hands behind him. There were holes in the bench through which the ends of the rope were passed before being secured round Flask’s ankles by Ambrose. The same man from the front row was asked to test the new knots, which he did willingly. Now Flask was trussed up inside the wardrobe.
With a flourish, Kitty closed the double doors. She made sure that the windows were covered by the muslin curtains which hung on the inside. Within a few moments there was a stir from inside and an arm was thrust through the material. There was a collective noise from the people in the room, somewhere between a gasp and a sigh. The arm was bare and, for sure, it did not belong to any grown man. Judging by the thinness and pallor of it, the arm was a girl’s, even a child’s. Tom’s eyes automatically flicked sideways to see where Kitty had been standing but he could not immediately spot her. Now a second arm was thrust through the curtain covering the other hole in the other door. The two limbs were the same size but seemed to belong to two different bodies. In fact, they must do because the gap between the two holes was too wide even for a grown man to extend his arms any distance beyond the openings. The arms waggled their hands and the hands flexed their fingers, and the whole effect was unnerving.
All at once Kitty was in front of the cabinet again and the arms had scarcely time to disappear before she was unlatching the double doors and flinging them open to reveal — ah ha! — Eustace Flask sitting on his bench, the rope apparently securing his hands and feet, and with no sign of any bare arms floating about. But this was not the most extraordinary part of the manifestation. It was rather that Flask sat there quite still and calm, a seraphic smile on his face. There were noises of muted approval from the audience.
Helen whispered to Tom, ‘I’m impressed but I don’t see the point of it. What’s he trying to prove?’
‘That he is in touch with the spirit world, I expect,’ said Tom, wishing that he felt as calm as Flask looked.
The next part of the evening session followed when the various musical instruments — guitar, tambourine, violin and trumpet — were hung by Kitty upon hooks on the inner walls of the cabinet. All this while Flask had remained tied up, smiling benignly out at the room. The same man from the front row of chairs once more checked the knots and this time it was Ambrose who closed the doors to the cabinet. A few seconds passed before a terrible din emerged from within, the sounds of thumping and rattling, tooting and screeching. It was as if a pack of monkeys had got hold of the instruments and were doing their best to play them, or to destroy them. At one point the tambourine was thrown through one of the holes and almost struck a member of the audience in the face.
Ambrose now did duty by unfastening the doors as the cacophony faded away. Again Eustace Flask was revealed on the inside, securely trussed up on his bench, with the instruments hanging limply on their hooks. Ambrose untied him and the medium stood up, flexing his arms in front of him. He opened his hands so that a little shower of flour tumbled down from each of them. That proved — beyond a doubt, surely? — that his hands had been fully occupied grasping the flour all the time. Then he rubbed his chafed wrists and acknowledged the crowd in the room with little bows to left and right. He stood while Ambrose helped him back into his green frock-coat.
This concluded the second part of the evening. The trio of Flask, Kitty and Ambrose left the room whilst the medium paused to exchange a few words with Julia Howlett who was still beaming with pleasure at the success of it all. Tom observed that Septimus Sheridan, standing near her, looked less enthusiastic.
There was a gap like the interval in a play. Candles were relit and the gaslights turned up higher. Tea was brought in by a couple of housemaids and the visitors stood around chatting in small groups. Mr Sheridan came towards them. He said to Helen, ‘I understand, Mrs Ansell, that it is many years since you last saw your aunt.’
‘Yes. It was when I was a child, quite a small child.’
‘Whatever you may think of events this evening, she is a good woman, you know, a very good woman.’
‘I was too young to know it then but I see it now.’
‘We are of one mind then,’ said Septimus Sheridan with satisfaction.
Tom had half his attention on this exchange but he was also looking at the behaviour of the gentleman in the front row, the one who’d been asked to test the knots in the ropes securing Eustace Flask. He was a short, spruce- looking figure with a fine moustache. He was peering into the interior of the cabinet to scrutinize the musical instruments on the hooks as well as the ropes which had been left coiled on the shelf and the flour smeared on the floor. He was squatting and looking at the raised underside of the cabinet before walking round it to examine the back. Tom, his curiosity stirred, joined him.
‘Everything is in order?’ he said.
The man tugged at his moustaches and gave Tom the same careful study he had given Flask’s cabinet. ‘Oh yes, it is in good order. I wouldn’t expect anything else. This cabinet would not have been left so carelessly open for inspection had it been otherwise.’
‘You’re not a… believer in all this?’ said Tom, indicating the cabinet.
‘I am no believer.’
‘But you were the one who checked the ropes and knots securing Mr Flask and you seemed to be satisfied.’
‘Just as you were satisfied when you searched him, sir. He wouldn’t offer himself for inspection if he wasn’t confident of getting away with it. You are not from this city or this county?’
‘From London. My wife and I are visitors here. From your voice, you are not local either.’
It was easy to detect those who hadn’t been born or brought up in Durham. Although neither Julia Howlett nor Septimus Sheridan had acquired the local accent, Tom had been hearing the distinctive flattened vowels in undercurrents of conversation about the room. But Tom and the inquisitive gentleman could talk no further for Eustace Flask and his little entourage now returned to the morning room for the other half of the evening’s manifestation. The lights were lowered once more. Tom thought it was dimmer than it had been for the cabinet show. This time the medium sat at a small table. Aunt Julia was invited to sit on one side of him and Helen on the other. Four more of the guests joined them, but not the individual who’d been examining the cabinet even though he was hovering about as if he wanted an invitation to sit down. The other dozen or more guests stood around the group at the table.
The elfin-faced Kitty brought a hinged slate and a stick of white chalk to the table. Flask lodged the slate on his lap so that the edge of it was resting against the table. He propped both his hands on the table and invited Helen and Julia to rest one of their own hands on the tops of his. After a few moments Flask jerked violently and Tom heard a whisper from one of the group, ‘That is his control.’ Questions were asked for by Kitty. Almost
