Eustace Flask was already aware that Sheridan was no friend to him. Stray comments and quizzical glances during his visits to Colt House suggested that Sheridan was a sceptic about spiritualism. Fortunately, Sheridan was so indebted to Miss Howlett, so ready to follow her lead, that he would never dare to contradict her openly. If he was yet another enemy, he was an enemy too feeble to influence the old maid. Flask walked on, pale head held aloft like a high candle, deigning to give Septimus Sheridan one more tiny nod.
Flask would have been surprised, even shocked, had he been able to read the other man’s thoughts. Septimus hadn’t noticed the medium’s arrival in the cathedral library. He was too wrapped up in his work (a study of the patristic fathers). It was only as Flask was leaving that he happened to glance up and see the familiar figure swaying towards him. All at once, and from nowhere it seemed, a great contempt and loathing for Eustace Flask welled up. What was that man doing here in a place devoted to study, to contemplation and religious history?
Although Septimus Sheridan had largely lost his faith, he had never lost his respect, even love, for the institutions which enshrined that faith. Hence his return to Durham and a life of undisturbed scholarship. He was glad to be allowed to live in Julia Howlett’s house under almost any terms, and he understood how much he owed to her. Understood how foolish he had been to reject her as a wife when they were both comparatively young and she had come up to the north searching for him — a typically independent action on her part.
He could hardly recall the reasons for his rejection of her now. He was sorry for it almost at once. He had moved away from the city and spent years in obscure parishes in grimy suburbs or even bleaker countryside until that terrible day, the worst day of his life, when he had written to his bishop explaining that he could no longer remain in the church with a clear conscience.
Ever since going to live at Colt House he had grown fonder than ever of Miss Howlett. Sometimes he imagined what it would be like if they were sitting round the breakfast table not as householder and lodger but as man and wife. If he were able to call her not ‘Miss Howlett’ but ‘Julia’. How would the intervening years have been different if they had married? Septimus Sheridan could not know, but different — and better — they would have been.
He was fiercely protective of Miss Howlett while realizing that she was well able to protect herself. She had resources and good sense. Except when it came to spiritualism and to Eustace Flask in particular. Septimus had not trusted Flask from the start, and the distrust had deepened to an instinctive rejection of everything that Flask said or did.
Septimus would have done almost anything to wrest Miss Howlett away from the medium. But what could he do? Perhaps it was because he was so helpless that these feelings of contempt and loathing surfaced so abruptly in the hushed surroundings of the cathedral library.
The Military Magician
A meeting had been arranged between Major Sebastian Marmont and Tom by letter for noon of that day. The Major was staying at the County Hotel just the other side of the river. Tom was told that the Major had a suite of rooms on the first floor of the hotel, reputedly the best in the city. As he climbed the stairs he reflected that there must be money to be made through magic. But then the Major and his Hindoos were a big attraction. Tom and Helen had already glimpsed several posters advertising the ‘Wonders of the Orient’ show at the Assembly Rooms. See the Miraculous Talking Head. Marvel at the Fabulous Perseus Cabinet. All of this illustrated with a picture of a wise-looking cove wearing a suit and a solar topi together with a couple of youths clad in loincloths. In the background disembodied heads floated through the ether.
Tom knocked on the door of the room where he had been directed. A voice that he recognized told him to enter and he was not surprised to see, sitting cross-legged in a sunny window seat and smoking a cigarette, the troublesome guest from Colt House. An inkling that the man he’d appointed to meet and the man who’d stirred things up the previous evening at Aunt Julia’s were one and the same had occurred to him while walking on the riverbank. Standing in the door he gave his name.
‘Ah, Mr Ansell,’ said Major Sebastian Marmont, untangling himself and coming forward to give Tom a firm handshake. He was formally dressed although he had removed his suit jacket. ‘I saw you arrive at the front entrance downstairs and I wondered if you were my midday visitor from Scott, Lye amp; Mackenzie. But of course we have already met, in a manner of speaking, even if I didn’t know who you were yesterday evening.’
‘It is strange that no one at Miss Howlett’s house recognized you either, sir, since your face is on bills all over town.’
‘If you look carefully, Mr Ansell, you’ll see it’s not a very good likeness on the bills. No doubt some of the people there last night have seen me on stage at the Assembly Rooms but it’s extraordinary how different one looks in front of the stage-lights and wearing a bit of slap.’
‘Slap, Major Marmont?’
‘Face-paint, my dear chap. I darken my phizog so that audiences imagine I’ve come straight from tropical climes. And Mr Eustace Flask knows who I am, or at least he does now. I have invited him to one of my shows. I thought it only fair to give him the chance to see a real magician. Please sit down, sir. Cigarette?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘They help me concentrate, I find, when I am mulling over my tricks. Only this brand, mind,’ said the Major taking another one from the packet. ‘The Luxor, made by the Alexandria Company in Artilley Lane.’
Tom settled in an armchair while Major Marmont returned to the window seat, where he again perched cross-legged and wreathed himself in cigarette smoke, tapping the ash into a bowl of Benares brass next to him. He might have been the Buddha sitting amid clouds of incense; Buddha with an incongruous moustache. Tom glanced round the spacious sitting room which had a fine view of the cathedral beyond Sebastian Marmont’s shoulders. It was well furnished with armchairs and an ottoman, a desk and tables including one laid for dining. An internal door led to what must be Marmont’s bedroom.
The soldier-magician asked after David Mackenzie in fond terms and enquired how long Tom had been with the law firm. He had discovered somehow that Tom was married to the daughter of Mr Scott, whom he had known. Tom found himself taking a liking to the Major. It was partly on account of the way he had shown up Eustace Flask but there was also an appealing straightforwardness to the other’s manner. Yet he was a professional magician. How straightforward could he be?
‘Why did you visit Miss Howlett’s yesterday evening, Major Marmont? You must have known that the other guests would not be, ah, sympathetic to what you were doing.’
‘Perhaps I went too far. I did not plan it. But there is something very provoking about that Flask. He’s an egregious character. I have been tracking his progress round the north-east like a hunter following a spoor. When I discovered that Miss Howlett was keeping open house for him, as it were, I could not resist the temptation to go and beard the fellow. Using a little of my own sleight of hand and the substituted chalk, I was able to show that he must have written the tablet answers himself.’
‘But my wife and her aunt were touching his hands all the time.’
‘Oh they are very clever, these people. I have known a foot covered with a dummy hand to be thrust up through a hole in a table. But that wasn’t what happened in this case. Did you observe how Flask gave a start when he was taken over by his ‘control’, the Indian maid?’
Tom nodded, fascinated but also surprised at the undercurrent of bitterness in Marmont’s words. It was plain that he despised the spiritualists or at any rate despised Eustace Flask.
‘I would wager a whole evening’s takings that both your wife and her aunt lost contact with Flask’s hands for an instant when he pretended to go into his trance. When they felt him again he was actually offering both of them the same hand. So all that time the other hand was free to scribble his nonsense on the slate.’
‘It is easy to see when you explain, sir. And I suppose the arms of the Indian maid were actually that woman’s, Kitty’s.’
‘Undoubtedly they were. But I could tell from your own attitude last night that you already had your suspicions about the medium.’
‘My wife and I both. Her Aunt Julia has no suspicions, she believes in Flask absolutely.’
‘A pity. Flask is very adept in his dealings with older women. Individuals like him bring honest, decent magicianship into disrepute. You should ask yourself why mediums need the paraphernalia of conjurers, why they
