A Case of Spirits

the palm of his hand.

‘What have you found, Sarge?’ asked Thackeray.

‘They look like flower petals to me,’ said Cribb. ‘Chrysanthemums probably. There was a vase of them turned over next door.’

‘Somebody must have brought them in on his shoe,’ suggested Thackeray.

‘Possibly,’ said Cribb, placing them carefully between the leaves of his notebook. ‘Are you quite sure you can’t touch the transformer from there?’

‘It’s impossible,’ Thackeray declared. ‘Besides, I’ve thought of something else, Sarge. If he was reaching behind like this, he must have broken contact with the circuit, and that would have been recorded on the dial next door.’

‘That’s a fair observation,’ said Cribb, ‘but what you must remember is that Peter Brand wasn’t noted for playing fair. A man used to working the three card trick isn’t going to let two scientists and a galvanometer get the better of him. If he wanted to free his hand he had only to rest his chin on the handle, and the contact would remain unbroken. Try it.’

Thackeray’s face was already practically in contact with the handle. By turning it an inch or two to the left he achieved the position Cribb had described.

‘The strength of the contact would have changed, of course,’ Cribb went on, ‘but they were looking for a break of contact on the galvanometer, and that didn’t happen because he didn’t take his hand off the handle until his chin was in contact. From what I’ve heard from Inspector Jowett there were several variations in the readings, but nothing suspicious enough to bring anyone in here until the needle suddenly indicated a complete break of contact. When we pushed aside the curtain he was dead from a huge electric shock and his hand, or whatever part of him it was that came in contact, had been forced clear by the contraction of the muscles.’

‘It couldn’t have been his hand, Sarge. Look, mine couldn’t possibly reach the transformer,’ said Thackeray, demonstrating by pawing the air with his left hand a good six inches short of the deadly terminal on the cable side of the transformer.

‘If it comes to that,’ said Cribb, ‘there ain’t any part of his body that could have reached that far, unless he was a contortionist as well as a card-sharp. But he must have touched something that gave him a lethal shock.’

‘It’s a regular conundrum, Sarge,’ said Thackeray, with his knack of articulating the obvious. ‘May I take my chin off the handle now? My beard’s itching fit to break my concentration.’

Cribb nodded. ‘We won’t learn any more from the chair anyway. There must be something else in all this, Thackeray, something we haven’t considered at all. Let’s look at it from Brand’s point of view. He knows in advance that he’s going to have to do some clever stuff to pull the wool over the scientists’ eyes, so he comes prepared. He brings Blue John, which he uses for the first seance, and he wears a nightshirt under his clothes ready to fake a materialisation in the second half of the evening. But is that enough?’

‘It don’t seem very much,’ said Thackeray. ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t be taken in by anyone in a nightshirt.’

‘Don’t count on it,’ warned Cribb. ‘Suggestion is a powerful thing, Thackeray. They’d seen one apparition already that night, in the shape of a disembodied hand. They were sitting in near-darkness waiting for the next. I believe some of ’em took me for a ghost when I walked in-and I wasn’t wearing a nightshirt. Take my word for it, you’d have been shaking in your boots like the rest of ’em.’

‘I usually do if I meet you unexpected, Sarge.’

‘Really?’ said Cribb, momentarily disturbed. ‘I can’t think why. The point I was coming to is that if Brand knew in advance that he was going to be seated in this chair for an experiment, he would surely have devised some way of cheating.’

‘How would he go about it, Sarge?’

‘That’s a question I’d rather not answer before I know whether the first assumption is correct. The way to find out whether Brand inspected this apparatus before last Saturday is to ask the Proberts.’

They were in the drawing-room across the hall where Cribb had first met them. Mrs Probert, whom he noticed first because he was determined not to overlook her this time, was seated in her favourite place under the palm. Dr Probert was standing at the window looking out at the nannies doing perambulator duty on the Terrace. At the fireplace was Alice, dressed to go out in a dark green coat with a frogged front, and a large plush hat of the same colour with a dash of white in the trimming. She was adjusting it at the mirror.

‘What do you want, man?’ demanded Probert, without taking his eyes off the nannies.

‘A little of your time, if it can be spared, sir-and ladies.’

‘My daughter’s just going out,’ said Probert. ‘It’s a damned fool thing to be doing on a day like this, but she won’t be told. Charity can’t study the weather, she says. She’ll die of pneumonia before she’s twenty-five, while the great unwashed of Richmond grow old and get fat on the fruit and veg. she’s given ’em.’

‘It’s not like that at all, Father,’ said Alice, glancing into the mirror at Cribb. Her face had a doll-like neatness, with large blue eyes and high cheek-bones that gave the permanent promise of a smile. ‘They certainly won’t get fat on the meagre amount provide. Letting them know that someone cares is what really matters. The food is a mere gesture.’

‘If that’s all it is, let’s keep the five shillings a week and have a bottle of champagne on Saturdays,’ said Mrs Probert.

‘Mama, that’s a dreadful thing to say in front of the sergeant!’ Alice chided her. ‘Don’t take any notice, Mr Cribb. You can’t rely upon a quarter of the things she says.’

‘If my arithmetic is right, that means three-quarters of the things I say are reliable,’ said Mrs Probert without a glance in her daughter’s direction. ‘If the words of other people in this house-not to say their conduct-could be relied upon to that extent, the sergeant would have an easier task.’

Alice turned from the mirror to look at her mother, an action insignificant in normal circumstances, but noteworthy in this family, whose members seemed to have evolved monolithic existences based on the least possible acknowledgement of each other’s presence. ‘What are you insinuating by that remark, Mother?’

Mrs Probert continued to look at the carpet. ‘That’s a bold new hat you are taking so much care over arranging, my dear. If the hat fits, wear it, I say,’ she said mysteriously.

Alice indulged in another long look at Mrs Probert, a look singularly devoid of the regard a daughter might be expected to feel for her mother. Then she addressed Cribb. ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to speak to Papa in private?’

‘Not at all, miss, but if I’m delaying you-’

‘I can wait a few minutes.’

‘In that case, miss, I’ll presently escort you down the hill. I’ve got a constable sitting in the hall who can carry your gifts for the poor.’

‘That’s very obliging of you. It’s a shopping-basket, you know, not the sort of thing one generally sees a policeman carrying.’

‘Don’t concern yourself, miss. I’ll see that he keeps a respectable distance behind us. Now, Doctor, if I may. .’

Probert turned at last from the window. ‘What is the trouble then?’

The phrase came so readily that Cribb suspected it was the one the doctor used in consultations.

‘No trouble at present, sir. I’m merely wanting to establish certain facts touching on the death of Mr Brand. That apparatus in the library, sir: when did you get it ready?’

‘The chair, you mean? On Wednesday of last week, I believe. Strathmore came to help me. It didn’t take long. We had to screw on the brass handles and connect the various wires, but to a scientist it’s a very elementary piece of wiring. There really wasn’t much to go wrong, which makes the accident all the more baffling.’

‘It’s a puzzle indeed, sir. Mr Strathmore helped you, you say?’

‘Helped him drink his claret,’ put in Mrs Probert.

‘That was after we had set up the experiment,’ said Probert, sensitive, for once, to an interruption from his wife. ‘It is not done to offer muffins and tea to a professional acquaintance. The answer, Sergeant, is yes. Mr Strathmore helped me. It was fortunate as it turned out. We can both vouch for the safety of the apparatus. I believe your expert from the Home Office was unable to detect any fault in the wiring.’

‘That’s correct, sir.’