Made me seem a confounded-never mind. This has been most instructive, of course, but it has brought us no nearer to ascertaining how Mr Brand met his death, unless the sergeant has some other information he has been keeping from us.’
Everyone looked in Cribb’s direction. He was acutely conscious of the delicacy of his position. Jowett must on no account be led to suppose that his thunder had been stolen again. ‘No information of any note, sir. Nothing more than a few theories.’
‘We had better hear them,’ said Jowett resignedly. ‘Mine has collapsed, so we may as well put yours to the test.’
‘I’m obliged to you, sir. It seems to me that if the electric chair works perfect now, as Mr Cage has indicated, it couldn’t have been working perfect at the moment Brand was electrocuted. Something must have happened to make it dangerous, something that was put right afterwards. So I’d like to ask Mr Cage if there was any way in which the main current could be made to by-pass the transformer.’
‘Only by disconnecting it and fastening the cable directly to the wires that were attached to the arms of the chair,’ said Cage. ‘Or I suppose another way might be to attach a wire to the positive terminal on the mains side of the transformer and connect it on the other side with one of the trailing wires. In either case it would have to be a deliberate act and it would amount to murder.’
‘Murder by electrocution,’ mused Dr Benjamin. ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing, but I suppose it’s possible. Who would want to murder a medium?’
‘Before we answer that,’ said Jowett, ‘there’s a question I should like to put to Mr Cage. If some malevolent person chose to tamper with the apparatus in one of the ways you have described would he not run the risk of electrocuting himself?’
‘If he tried it when the power was on, he would certainly kill himself,’ Cage confirmed.
Jowett spread his palms to signify the collapse of Cribb’s theory.
‘As I understood it,’ returned Cribb, looking steadily at the table in front of him as he spoke, ‘there was an interruption during the seance when Mr Brand claimed that someone had entered the study. Mr Nye went downstairs to turn off the current. It was not turned on again until Mr Brand was pacified. Shortly after, Brand was found dead in the chair.’
‘That is so,’ conceded Jowett, discountenanced again. ‘What I can’t explain is why he was not killed at the instant the power was restored,’ Cribb went on. ‘If I have it correct, the experiment was set up again at twenty minutes to eleven, the current was switched on and the galvanometer reading was not exceptional. It was a full minute before the needle jumped and we pulled aside the curtain to find Brand’s body.’
‘It makes no sense to me,’ said Cage.
‘There’s a notion forming at the back of my mind, but it’ll want time,’ said Cribb. ‘For the present, can we proceed upon the assumption that this was murder?’
‘If you think it will lead us somewhere,’ said Jowett, without much enthusiasm.
‘Well, sir, let’s return to the spirit hand for a moment.’
Jowett went a shade pinker.
‘If Brand was waving his right palm, coated with Blue John, about in the air-and it must have looked uncommon convincing, sir-he couldn’t have been holding the hand of the person on his right. In other words, the circle was broken and that person must have known it and been a party to the deception.’
‘By George, yes!’ said Jowett. ‘Do you know who it was? Miss Crush, of all people! I am absolutely certain of it.’
‘Rightly so, sir. Mr Strathmore very helpfully made a plan of the seating arrangements, which I borrowed on Saturday. Miss Crush, as you say, sat on the right of the medium and must have helped him. Now why should that lady be so rash as to conspire with a fraud-as we now know Brand to have been? He was not her class of person at all. You don’t find respectable maiden ladies with houses in Belgravia associating with the dregs of the race-course. There had to be some reason for this irregular alliance.’
‘I think I know it, Sarge,’ said Thackeray suddenly.
‘We’ll return to you in a moment, then,’ said Cribb without much gratitude. ‘I first suspected something between them when we attended Professor Quayle’s lecture. Already she had tried to persuade me not to question Peter Brand about the theft of her vase, although at the time I put that down to her enthusiasm for spiritualism, and her wish not to upset the medium. But at the lecture, it was crystal clear that she was there to help him, supplying him with information about Uncle Walter, and pretending it was all quite new, although they had been through the same performance at the first seance at Richmond.’
‘A point that had eluded me, Sergeant,’ said Jowett. ‘It may be significant!’
‘It seemed likely that the medium had got some hold on Miss Crush and was using her to further his career. The first seance was held at her house in Eaton Square, if you recall, sir. I couldn’t fathom what the secret was, or how Brand came to possess it.’
‘I could tell you, Sarge,’ offered Thackeray.
‘All in good time, Constable. But on the night the medium met his death it all became clear. Do you remember how Miss Crush behaved, sir?’
‘We had to restrain her from going to him in the chair, as I recollect,’ said Jowett. ‘And after that she was repeatedly fainting, confounded woman. Now that you bring it to my attention it was curious behaviour. It would certainly indicate that there was a bond of some description between them.’
‘That’s exactly what I thought, sir, though I couldn’t have put it so elegant. The clincher was in the wallet we found on his body. Do you remember when we made the list of his possessions?’
‘I have it with me,’ said Jowett, producing a notebook from his pocket as proudly as a plumber’s mate putting his hands on the required spanner.
‘I thought I could rely on that, sir. Do you have a note of those numbers we found on the reverse of the photograph?’
‘Yes, indeed. 469 and 9281, followed by the symbol of a square. Do they have something to do with the young woman
‘That was my first thought,’ said Cribb, ‘but I racked my brains for an hour or more and couldn’t see a connection. Then I looked more closely at the photograph. It was somewhat creased and dog-eared, if you remember. It must have been kept in his wallet for some considerable time. Yet it wasn’t the sort of picture a man might carry in his wallet out of sentiment.’
‘I doubt whether the female in the photograph was his sister or his fiancee, if that is what you mean.’
‘That’s exactly what I mean, sir. There’s a row of shabby little shops in Holywell Street, just off The Strand, which purvey photographs like that by the hundred. They call ’em art studies, and Inspector Moser goes there periodically with a couple of his men and seizes the most offensive specimens. There are always new ones to replace ’em, though, and if one dealer comes to court there’s another to take his place. The photographs themselves have been getting more objectionable of late. I believe they ship ’em in from France on the cross- channel steamers; you wouldn’t catch any of the fair sex here taking up such brazen attitudes in front of a photographer. But you’ll know yourselves, as gentlemen of the world, that the men who buy these things are forever searching for something new. They don’t keep them for any length of time. That’s what’s so odd about the photograph in Peter Brand’s wallet. It’s been there too long. In the end I was forced to conclude that he didn’t keep it all that time for the lady on the front, but for the numbers on the back. They had an importance of their own. And when I thought of ’em in isolation they began to make sense.’
‘I don’t know how,’ said Cage. ‘May I look at them, Inspector?’
‘What you must realise as you study them,’ said Cribb, ‘is that Brand was an illiterate. We came to that conclusion some days ago at a lecture given by Professor Quayle.’
Jowett looked blank, but said nothing. Thackeray said, ‘Illiterate, Sarge?’
‘He couldn’t read,’ explained Cribb. ‘When Brand came on to the stage during the lecture to do his turn it was Quayle who read out the names written on the envelopes containing articles borrowed from the audience. At one stage Brand was holding your envelope in his hand and he had to
‘So he did!’ recalled Thackeray in admiration.
‘But if he didn’t know his letters, at least he was cognisant of numbers, or he wouldn’t have kept the photograph. It was when I looked at those numbers trying to pretend I was as illiterate as Brand that I understood
