From Aberystwyth with Love

‘Not for a while.’

‘She’s probably busy,’ said Eeyore.

‘Sometimes I think I’m a physician treating the symptoms of an incurable disease.’

‘I used to feel like that when I was a cop. It’s natural. You still have to do it though.’

‘Make the patient feel comfortable?’

‘As best you can. Call it pain management.’

‘It’s always fatal eventually.’

‘Of course.’

‘Where does the witch doctor go when he gets sick?’

‘That’s why it is hard being a witch doctor, son.’ Eeyore looked thoughtful. ‘What you are feeling, it’s not new. It’s as old as the hills. It’s like monks in the old days who went out into the wilderness to commune with God. Sometimes it happened that being alone there all that time they became afflicted with a disease of the soul; a terrible malaise that filled their hearts with blackness, with bleak despair. They called it the noonday demon or sometimes it goes by the name acedia. The private detective can get a similar sort of malaise, called Client’s Chair Acedia. I’ve seen it before.’

Chapter 9

Sometimes in life the only sensible thing to do is sit under a tree wearing a sombrero and sleep until the sun is lower in the sky and the shadows lengthen. I didn’t have a sombrero but I had an office and a fan. I leaned back in my chair and yawned. Calamity had set up an open-reel tape deck with the seance tape. There was also an astrolabe, some tarot cards and an archive edition of the Cambrian News from 1955 lying on the desk. It carried the story of a bank holiday battle between cops and Teddy boys from which someone had cut out the main photo. The Slaughterhouse Mob had been involved in the fight.

‘Where’s the picture?’ I asked sleepily.

‘I don’t know, it was like that when I got it.’

‘What’s the astrolabe for?’

‘Reverse horoscopy.’

‘Oh.’

‘It’s like a horoscope done backwards. Normally you use the positions of the planets to predict someone’s future, but it’s just as easy to work out what their horoscope would have been, say, last month. I thought I would run a check on this Goldilocks boy to see what he was up to the day Gethsemane disappeared. According to the news reports he refused to provide an alibi. The Feds use it a lot to check the stories of the perps.’

‘I’ve never heard of it before.’

‘Well they don’t like to shout about it, you know, it’s a pretty powerful technique. You get a guy in the interview room who claims he was nowhere near the crime scene on the night in question, he says he was with his auntie in Wichita the whole time, and the grumpy cop throws down the horoscope and says, “Oh yeah? That’s not what The Mighty Zoroaster says: he’s got you down two blocks away from the robbery on Friday between ten and twelve. And that’s not all. Next day he says it’s a good day financially and you could come into a little windfall. Explain that one to me, Einstein. Or do I have to check out the horoscope for your sweet little auntie in Wichita, too?” That’s usually the point where the perps give it up.’

‘This is daft.’

‘The Feds don’t think so.’

‘If you believe in that sort of stuff you might as well do a reverse horoscopy for Gethsemane’s dog, after all he disappeared, too.’

‘That’s not such a bad idea.’

‘Let’s listen to the tape.’

Calamity pressed down on a clunky Bakelite knob and the reels warbled up to speed. ‘You have to listen hard,’ she said.

Room acoustic, shuffling, whispers inaudible. Then a woman’s voice, ‘Is there someone there?’

A child whispering, ‘Hello, Mummy.’

‘Yes? Speak, spirit.’

‘Hello, Mummy.’

‘Who are we talking to?’

‘This is Gethsemane. It’s nice here. I’m having a lovely time. Happy birthday, Mummy. Bye-bye, Mummy.’

Silence, unidentifiable noises. More inaudible muttering, shuffling. Then the tape ends in a riot of knocking, clunking, banging and white noise. Calamity stopped and rewound.

‘You have to listen two or three times to get the detail.’ She played it again. At the end, after Gethsemane had spoken, she turned the volume up full. The hiss sounded like a swarm of angry cicadas. In amid the symphony of noise other sounds emerged, soft but distinct, a collection of tantalising sounds: high-pitched squealing, demonic laughter, a clattering sound together with a bell; and a muffled voice saying something indistinct. Calamity pressed stop with an air of triumph, we looked at each other. Her eyes gleamed.

‘Any idea what the voice is saying?’ I asked.

‘It sounds like quelle ee something. I think it might be French.’ She ticked off items on the fingers of her hand. ‘Squealing, demonic laughter and bloke saying something in French. That’s a sound signature, Louie, it’s a watermark, every one of those sounds helps us identify the place where that recording was made.’

I didn’t really think so, but maybe she was right. Since Christmas when her own venture failed I had been taking extra care not to dampen her enthusiasm for things. I was scared she might notice. ‘Pretty tough job working it out,’ I said.

‘It looks like it now, I agree, but you wait till we start unpicking it. The perp. has left his muddy footprints all over this one. Those noises are a key which will help us unravel the mystery.’

‘What’s the next step?’

‘The envelope was postmarked Aberaeron. There is only one medium listed in the phone book for Aberaeron. The chances of it being the same one are slim, but it’s a good starting point. We can play it to her and ask her to tell us where the recording was made. I’ve booked us in for a sitting tomorrow morning. Her name’s Madame Sosostris.’

‘You’ll need to make a copy of the tape, I promised to return it to Arianwen.’ I picked up the envelope and tore the stamps off. ‘Take these and send them and the tape round to Grimalkin’s.’ I put the envelope back into the drawer.

‘Why are you keeping that?’

‘It’s got a smell that puzzles me. They won’t mind, they only care about the stamps. What if the spiritualist won’t co-operate?’

‘We lean on her using the Ehrich Weiss manoeuvre.’

Calamity gave me a nonchalant look, the one that said, I know you don’t know what that is but first you have to ask.

I laughed. ‘Oh, the old Eric Weiss manoeuvre!’

‘Do you know what that is?’

‘Of course!’

‘What?’

‘It’s when someone gets something stuck in their throat.’

‘That’s the Heimlich manoeuvre.’

‘OK then, I don’t know.’

‘Ehrich Weiss was the original name of Harry Houdini. He used to expose Victorian charlatans. He had this particular trick where he would turn up at a seance under an assumed name with a letter addressed to that name in his pocket. The letter would contain all sorts of bogus personal details and he would hand the coat in when he arrived. And lo! Even though he had made it all up, the spirits would start quoting it.’

I grinned, it was impossible not to. If this was superseding the paradigm it was fun. ‘And then what