A Case of Spirits

me, but none of it’s against the law.’

‘Don’t you see, Sergeant? He and Papa were the only ones who knew what the chair looked like before Saturday. Between Wednesday and Saturday he must have thought of something else, some horrible appendage to the experiment that turned the chair into an execution chair the moment poor Mr Brand moved his arm or shuffled his foot.’

‘What sort of appendage exactly, miss?’

‘I’m not certain, but then I’m-’

‘Not a policeman, miss? That’s not such a bad thing, if I might say so. Mr Strathmore and your father weren’t the only ones who had a chance to see that chair before Saturday. From what you tell me, I’m bound to suppose that you saw it yourself. And if your mother agrees with you about Mr Strathmore, it’s reasonable to presume that she saw it on Wednesday too. Now I gather also that Mr Nye is a frequent visitor to the house. Would it be too presumptuous to suppose. .’

She smiled. ‘All right, Sergeant. William saw it too, on Friday, when Mr Brand came-’ She stopped, the colour rising in her cheeks.

They stood still by a pillar-box, only a few yards short of the chestnut stall, the fumes of burning nut-shell and coke wafting towards them. ‘Mr Brand, miss?’ said Cribb. ‘That’s a funny thing. I rather supposed that he must have had a look at the apparatus, but your father didn’t seem to remember the occasion. It was Friday, then.’

‘Friday,’ she confirmed in a low voice. ‘He came to make arrangements about the seance.’

‘That’s understandable, miss.’

‘Please don’t let Papa know I told you. I really don’t know why he was so unwilling to tell you about it.’

‘It’s our secret, miss. Hello, here’s Thackeray. Miss Probert wants to buy you a bag of chestnuts, Thackeray.’

‘That’s very generous, miss.’

The chestnut man touched his cap as Alice approached him. She proffered twopence and said, ‘I believe these gentlemen could catch a bus from here to Charing Cross, is that right?’

It was as neat a way as she could have contrived to terminate the interview.

‘That’s right, miss. Cost ’em a bob each.’ He shovelled a large helping of chestnuts into a bag. Cribb stepped forward to take them, since Thackeray was still holding the basket and they were clearly too hot for a young lady to handle. He passed them to Thackeray in such a way that his back was towards Alice as he deliberately tore the side of the paper bag and dropped the still smoking nuts among the oranges in the basket.

‘Moses, Sarge!’ said Thackeray in bewilderment.

‘Another bag, if you please,’ called Cribb to the salesman.

It was the work of a few seconds to retrieve the hot nuts, and no visible damage was done to the fruit or the basket. To Thackeray it was a wholly mysterious incident, but he contained his curiosity until Miss Probert had set off again along Hill Street on her errand. ‘Why did you do it, Sarge?’ he asked, biting with relish into a chestnut.

‘I wanted to see what was under that layer of oranges. Didn’t you notice?’

‘Yes, Sarge. A lady’s hairbrush and comb. There’s nothing extraordinary in that, is there?’

‘That’s a matter I want you to investigate, Constable. Follow Miss Probert and find out where she goes. You’d better leave the nuts with me, or she’ll smell you coming a mile off.’

CHAPTER 11

Now mark! To be precise -

Though I say, ‘lies’ all these, at the first stage,

’Tis just for science’ sake:

Cribb had secured an inside seat between a large woman muffled in furs and a small boy occupied in scooping straw off the floor, shredding it and depositing pieces on the other passengers’ clothes. It was not the best position on the bus, but it was preferable to the knifeboard upstairs. Common courtesy threatened to deprive him of his seat before long; there was sure to be some shopgirl late for work waving the driver down in Kew or Turnham Green. But he had privately resolved to see the small boy sitting on his mother’s lap first. With that satisfying thought, he started on Thackeray’s bag of chestnuts.

He considered what he had learnt from Alice Probert. In some particulars she was not to be relied upon- notably her experiences with invisible hands-but this morning’s revelation that Brand had visited the house on Friday had escaped her lips before she realised its significance. Her consequent embarrassment had been genuine, no doubt of that. What she had said stamped Dr Probert as a liar. He had firmly stated that Brand did not visit the house to examine the chair before Saturday.

The difficulty in dealing with Probert was that he was so easy to dislike. Cribb had handled him with kid gloves so far not because he was a friend of Inspector Jowett, but because antagonism towards a witness could lead to errors of judgement. It wanted guarding against. Probert was a liar, but that did not necessarily make him a murderer.

But why should he have lied at all about Brand’s visit to the house? On the face of it, there was nothing sinister in a medium taking a preview of the place where he was to conduct a seance, particularly when the conditions were so unusual. It was questionable whether anyone would consent to being part of an electrical circuit without inspecting the apparatus first. People like Strathmore, dedicated to eliminating every possibility of fraud, might argue that seeing the apparatus in advance gave the medium the opportunity of devising some means of cheating science, but Cribb was not Strathmore; he was investigating a possible murder, not a manifestation. There were more important things at issue now than the validity of an experiment.

Obviously there was a reason why Probert did not wish it to be known that Brand had come to the house. The visit showed Probert-or someone he wished to protect-in an unfavourable light. It could well be connected with something Cribb had turned over in his mind repeatedly since the post mortem. There was reason to suspect that Dr Probert, like Miss Crush, had knowingly assisted Peter Brand in his deceptions.

Anyone unacquainted with Cribb’s reasoning on this question could be forgiven for regarding the suggestion as monstrous. Would Probert have gone to the trouble of setting up an elaborate experiment in order to nullify its results by cheating? Cribb’s understanding of events suggested exactly that. At the seance when the spirit hand had seemed to materialise, Probert had been seated next to the medium, holding his left hand. Was it not likely that whilst Brand’s right hand, coated with Blue John, and helpfully liberated by Miss Crush, was describing convolutions in the air, slight pressures and tensions would have been transmitted by his left? And even if Probert could not see the rest of Brand’s arm from so close a range, would he not have heard movements of his sleeve and shirt-cuff? More suggestive still were the oranges that had been flung at Nye. If it was accepted that they were not propelled by some supernatural agency, then either Miss Crush had thrown them with her left hand (an unlikely achievement), or Brand had used his right and nobody had noticed the Blue John on it (equally unlikely) or Dr Probert had something to do with it. The bowl containing the oranges had rested on a tripod table within reach of his right hand or Brand’s left.

If Probert had conspired with Brand, there had to be an explanation for it. From what Cribb had learnt so far of Brand’s modus operandi it was probably blackmail. And the chances were high that on the Friday evening when Brand had gone to Probert’s house to view the apparatus, he had announced his terms. Some dark secret was to be preserved provided Probert, like Miss Crush, co-operated in producing spiritualistic phenomena.

The bus slowed to pick up a passenger, the brake-shoes rasping against the iron tyres. It was a nurse, probably bound for Charing Cross Hospital. Before she approached the platform, Cribb unpeeled the largest chestnut in the bag and offered it to the small boy. Just as the little fist was about to claim it, his mother whisked the child protectively on to her lap, and a seat was provided for the nurse.

It was difficult to imagine the sort of indiscretion that could have made Dr Probert susceptible to blackmail.