drowning, had already developed an enthusiasm for seances, for she spoke of having attended several at other people’s houses. And when tragedy struck her family, the lady had been ripe to be “helped.”
One strong objection to the theory that we were about to witness a simply fraudulent performance was the problem of where, if some accomplice was intended to play the role of Louisa, such an impostor might currently be concealed.
Ambrose Altamont had joined us before dinner. Afterward, to help Holmes and myself find answers to this and other difficulties, our host took an opportunity to conduct the two of us on a short tour of the house and the immediate grounds, under the guise of simply showing us the gardens.
Proceeding slowly, we three circled the house. There were no dogs to be concerned about, both of the senior Altamonts having a general dislike of the species. Ambrose also claimed to suffer a physical sensitivity to the animals. That, I thought, might make matters easier both for impostors–if any–and investigators.
Holmes took the opportunity to ask what room or rooms were immediately above the parlor or sitting room in which the seance was to be held. Two bedrooms, our host replied, but in that part of the house, there was no direct communication between floors.
During the course of this tour, Ambrose Altamont suggested to us that the house and the grounds could be swiftly searched, without warning, before darkness descended upon us entirely, in hopes of exposing any planned trickery before it came about. The master of the house assured us that he had a couple of trusty servants ready to undertake the task.
Holmes expressed his opinion that such a search was unlikely to discover anything useful.
When we had returned to the house, Mrs. Altamont remarked worriedly in my presence that today the Kirkaldys did not seem quite their usual selves.
“I thought the young woman gave quite a good account of herself when questioned.”
“True enough, Dr. Watson, but to me–and I know her better than you do–Sarah looks quite haggard, as if some new problem had come up just this afternoon. but she says there is nothing.”
“I suppose it could be the presence of Mr. Holmes and myself.”
“She says not. Oh, I hope devoutly that the strain, whatever it is, will not prove too much for the poor girl.”
I commented that I thought that unlikely; still, I thought that both brother and sister did look rather worn.
Sarah spoke rather mechanically of the possibility that no manifestations would occur at tonight’s sitting. She said that such a negative result was frequently the case when conditions were not right.
Privately I was quite ready to attribute this seeming reluctance to perform to the presence of investigators– ourselves. but Holmes was not so sure.
So far, at least, tonight’s sitting had not been canceled. Still, I could not escape the feeling that if the two mediums had felt themselves perfectly free in the matter, they would have preferred at least to postpone it.
Mrs. Altamont in conversation informed me that the S.P.R., or Society for Psychical Research, had been founded in England in 1882. Its purpose, she stated, lay in pursuit of objective research, not worship or the giving of spiritual solace.
Actually, as Holmes himself later pointed out to me, the practitioners and enthusiasts of mesmerism (or “hypnosis” as certain medical men had called it for a generation) were not likely to support the S.P.R., for they generally regarded spirit-rappings and table-turnings as fraudulent or foolish.
I commented that Holmes must have been doing a good bit of private research into these matters since 1897. He replied that he had begun his studies in the subject considerably earlier: “My two years in Tibet were not wasted, Watson.”
“You have never spoken to me at length of what happened during that time.”
“Your enthusiasm for such matters, old fellow, has been remarkably restrained. Suffice it to say that I thought the time not wasted when we had to face our peculiar difficulties of eighteen ninety-seven.”
With the onset of the long summer twilight, and the drawing near of the hour for our appointed confrontation with the spirits, the physical atmosphere in and around the house seemed ever to grow more oppressively sultry. The rain that had threatened earlier did not come. Louisa’s mother, all eagerness to begin the sitting, beseeched and encouraged her reluctant pair of sensitives to bring her daughter once more before her.
When Mrs. Altamont, reminded of Louisa, wept, one of the mediums told her: “The veil, as we know, is very thin, and you must let yourself be comforted with the certainty that she is not far away.”
And suddenly Abraham gave indications of an extreme reluctance to conduct the seance at all. I saw and heard him, looking and sounding rather ill, propose quietly to his sister that they abandon the plan and leave the house at once.
Sarah Kirkaldy needed several minutes to argue and cajole Abraham into going on.
Listening, while trying not to appear to do so, I heard her last remark, which seemed to clinch the case: “Remember a’ the chamber pots an’ dirty boots!”
At five minutes before eleven o’clock, the appointed hour for the sitting, we all heeded the increasingly impatient, though still polite, urging of our hostess and assembled in the library.
This was my first opportunity to inspect the room where the seance was to take place, and once inside I gazed about with considerable interest. I wanted to see whether the mediums intended to use some elaborate wooden cabinet, or framework, as a so-called “spirit cabinet.” I had heard such devices described, and knew that they were favored by certain of the Kirkaldys’ rivals; other psychic practitioners adopted an alternate method and simply curtained off a corner of a room by a suspended sheet or blanket, thereby achieving the same end of concentrating the “spirit force.”
When I commented on the absence of any such device, Mrs. Altamont informed me that she had seen them used by others, but added–rather proudly, I thought–that the Kirkaldys could readily open the necessary pathways to the other world without such aid.
Nevertheless I remained alert to the possibility of physical trickery. The old oak wainscoting of the walls, and the extensive built-in bookshelves, formed ideal places, I thought, for concealing a secret door. I considered trying to make a careful examination–but surely Altamont himself would have been aware of any such contrivance had it existed in his own house.
The library was, as in most houses, on the ground floor. It communicated with the rest of the house by two interior doors. It was by one of these doors that we entered the room from the main hall, while the other, in the opposite wall of the library, opened into a narrow passage leading toward the kitchen and the servants’ quarters.
Thunder grumbled in the distance as we assembled near the massive round table of dark wood which occupied the center of the room. Meanwhile the servants, following the orders of their mistress, were closing all the room’s windows and drawing thick draperies over them. The electric chandelier had been switched on–Norberton House boasted a modified Swan System, dating from the 1880s, for the private generation of electricity–but even so the corners of the room were dark, and I began to find the atmosphere intensely oppressive.
Two large old mirrors, one framed in gilt and one in silver, both of which hung upon the east wall, were now starved for light. The room, being at the southwest corner of the house, would have been bright in ordinary daylight, for it was well supplied with windows. The three in the south wall were really French doors, extending almost from floor to ceiling and giving on a narrow terrace, beyond which I could glimpse the shrubbery forming part of the extensive garden, through which Altamont had conducted Holmes and myself.
Thunder sounded again, closer this time.
The room contained comparatively little furniture. In the center of the broad red carpet, as I have already mentioned, had been placed a round table of dark wood, large enough for all of the participants to take their seats around it–and, as I thought, heavy enough that any experiments in psychic table-tipping would be truly impressive if they succeeded. In the center of the table a single candle of red wax burned in an antique silver candlestick.
Holmes and I had already discussed in private, and later in the company of Altamont and Armstrong, the common varieties of tricks to be expected on such occasions. Our list, by no means complete, included the wind-up
