“The idea is you summon the departing spirit with madrigals and conduct a ceremony to send it on its journey, but Neema’s Yamaha badly needs a service.”
“She rides a motorbike?”
“No, her electric organ. It sounds so awful that decent spirits won’t answer its call any more. The last time she performed the ritual she summoned an Icelandic incubus, and we had to burn incense-soaked cloths to clear it out. Unfortunately, she also set fire to the sofa and we all nearly wound up on the other side. Flammable kapok. I called
Maggie’s amber necklaces rattled as she threw herself down into a broken-backed orange armchair. “There are only five of us left, you know. We had a membership drive for the new millennium but it’s dropped off.” She waved a dismissive hand in the direction of the street. “You’d think that lot out there would be curious about spiritualism, but they’re more interested in shopping. Olive, the lady who used to conduct our seances, had to pack it in because she can’t get up the stairs. She only attends the Hendon branch now because they have a ramp. Nigel and Doris have both passed over, and unless I use a spirit guide I never get to see them.”
“Do you still have Edna Wagstaff’s cat?” asked May, looking around for the Abyssinian.
“I use it as a doorstop,” Maggie admitted. “I fear its days as a source of spiritual succour ended when it got the moth. Of course I can’t throw it out, because I have nothing else to remember Edna by, and she doesn’t answer the Call” – Maggie pointed at the cracked Tibetan bell that hung above the fireplace – “because she’s a lost soul. Either that or she’s gone deaf. You’ve lost a bit of weight. Are you dying?”
“God, I hope not.”
“God’s not got much to do with it any more. You’re not coping well without Arthur, are you?”
“I’ll manage,” May replied wearily. “Do you have anything to drink?”
“I just made tea. You can have a shot of whisky in it.”
“What brand?”
“PG Tips.” She made her way to the kitchenette and rinsed a mug. “I suppose you want ‘closure’. That’s the buzzword these days, isn’t it? When will people learn that there’s no such thing? Life and death are open-ended. Everything begins and ends in the middle.”
“Not this time,” said May, accepting the mug. “I know who killed Arthur. I just don’t know where he is.”
“Perhaps I can help you there. Hang on a minute.” Maggie crossed to the window and shut the curtains. “Did you remember what I asked for?”
“Here.” May withdrew a plastic bag from his overcoat pocket and emptied the contents onto the coffee table before him. “You said bring something that belonged to him.”
“What is it?”
“A souvenir of our first case together. It belonged to a tortoise called Nijinsky.”
Maggie picked up the tortoise shell and peered through its leg holes. “What did you do with the body?”
“I guess it just, you know, decomposed or something. Bryant was given the tortoise because it wouldn’t hibernate in the theatre. It lived right through the war, although its nerves went towards the end.”
“It’s a bit Steptoe-ish, but it’ll have to do.” She lit a pair of candles and set them at either end of the tortoise’s earthly remains. “Rest your fingertips on one end of the shell.”
“Which end?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She seated herself opposite and extended her fingers to touch the tortoise, then began breathing deeply through her nose.
“You think you can really contact him?” May could hardly believe that he was doing this, after all the times he had given his partner grief about believing in the afterlife.
“As long as it’s an object he touched many times in the past.”
“Oh, he had many happy years with Nijinsky.”
“Good. Now shut up and let me concentrate.”
May watched in the half-light of the front room as Maggie rolled back her head and fell into a light trance. After a few minutes, she started snoring. May wondered whether he should wake her. He leaned forward and reached out his hand, but just as he was about to touch her, she spoke. “Do you remember the first time we met, John? What a sceptic you were in those days?”
“I still am,” he whispered.
“I can’t be right all the time.” Her eyes remained closed. “But you – I was right about you. You always did have a very powerful aura.”
“That’s what Edna Wagstaff once told me.”
“So you do, and it’s that which enables the sensitively gifted to read from you. You’re a bit of a tuning fork.”
The wind breathed around the sashed windows, pulsing them in their casements. The sound faded from the street, and time was gently suspended. He remembered his first visit to the flat in 1942, when Maggie had just passed her nineteenth birthday. The surroundings were more elegant; she had fallen on hard times since then. But the flickering candles were the same, and so were the oddly shadowed corners of the room. He remembered the settling silence of the street outside, the suspiration of the wind, and the strange visions she had described to him.
“Oh, we’re like hypnotists,” said Maggie, her slack mouth barely moving. “Nobody believes in our effectiveness until some time later. You and I have known each other for over sixty years, and you still don’t really have faith in me.”
“I wouldn’t say – ”
“There’s no point in pretending, John. We’re both far too old for that.” She drew a long breath, her trance state deepening. “I am speaking now to the owner of this shell.” She tightened her eyelids, focusing her thoughts. “He is dead, but present,” she explained casually, “here in the room with us, right now. He is standing between us, silently watching.”
A chill lifted the hairs on May’s arms as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Arthur?” he called, searching the shadows.
“He can’t speak, poor man, he’s dead. His injuries are terrible to behold. I can barely bring myself to look. He’s put on quite a bit of weight. There is something he must communicate, but it’s so difficult, so painful…”
I must be daft, thought May, sitting in darkness above a London pub, listening to the ramblings of a mad old woman. This is doing neither of us any good.
“He wants to show you what he feels, but to do so he must cross the divide between the spiritual and physical worlds.” Maggie raised her arms in a creaky gesture of prestidigitation, like an elderly magician’s assistant. May had started to rise from his armchair when, to the surprise of both, a low rumble shook the room. There was a sheen of metal in the kitchenette, and something shiny shot between them. When May glanced down, he realized he was looking at a kitchen knife, and that it was sticking out of his calf. He sat down sharply in shock.
“Why on earth would he become violent?” asked Maggie, examining the cut on May’s leg. “That’s not like him at all.” She found a length of crepe bandage and unrolled it over the cut. “It’s not deep,” she consoled, “but I’m surprised by his behaviour. It’s rare for spirits to react so violently.”
“It was the underground,” said May, wincing. “Just a passing train. The vibration made your breadboard fall over and it flipped the knife from your drying rack, that’s all. This bandage isn’t very clean.”
“Well, you can choose a rational explanation if it makes you more comfortable.” Maggie poured herself a generous tot of Scotch. “You never were much of a believer.”
“Not when the alternative is believing that my dead partner just tried to kill me. This is crazy. I’m being trailed by a man with werewolf fangs, and now this.” May rose and collected his coat. He saw what a mistake it had been to come here. “Thanks for the drink.”
“But how are you going to find Arthur’s killer?” Standing in the middle of the faded rug she suddenly looked lost and frail. This was how it would end for her, he realized, alone and bewildered, stranded by the world racing ever faster past her window.
“I’ll think of a way,” he promised, taking a card from his wallet and handing it to her. “That’s my new address. If you need me, please call.”
It was the least Arthur would have done, he thought as he headed back down the stairs to daylight.
