'I was always attracted by the occult,' she murmured. 'Even as a child I realised that I had unusual powers. Automatic writing came to me quite naturally. I didn't even know what it was! I'd just sit there with a pencil in my hand – and not know a thing about what was happening. And of course I was always ultrasensitive. I fainted once when taken to tea in a friend's house. Something awful had happened in that very room… I knew it! We got the explanation later. There had been a murder there – twenty-five years ago. In that very room!'
She nodded her head and looked round at us with great satisfaction.
'Very remarkable,' said Colonel Despard with polite distaste.
'Sinister things have happened in this house,' said Sybil darkly. 'But we have taken the necessary steps. The earthbound spirits have been freed.'
'A kind of spiritual spring cleaning?' I suggested.
Sybil looked at me rather doubtfully.
'What a lovely coloured sari you are wearing,' said Rhoda.
Sybil brightened.
'Yes, I got it when I was in India. I had an interesting time there. I explored yoga, you know, and all that. But I could not help feeling that it was all too sophisticated – not near enough to the natural and the primitive. One must go back, I feel, to the beginnings, to the early primitive powers. I am one of the few women who have visited Haiti. Now there you really do touch the original springs of the occult. Overlaid, of course, by a certain amount of corruption and distortion. But the root of the matter is there.
'I was shown a great deal, especially when they learned that I had twin sisters a little older than myself. The child who is born next after twins has special powers, so they told me. Interesting, wasn't it? Their death dances are wonderful. All the panoply of death, skulls and crossbones, and the tools of a gravedigger, spade, pick and hoe. They dress up as undertakers' mutes, top hats, black clothes.
'The Grand Master is Baron Samedi, and the Legba is the god he invokes, the god who 'removes the barrier.' You send the dead forth – to cause death. Weird idea, isn't it?
'Now this,' Sybil rose and fetched an object from the windowsill. 'This is my Asson. It's a dried gourd with a network of beads and – you see these bits? – dried snake vertebrae.'
We looked politely, though without enthusiasm.
Sybil rattled her horrid toy affectionately.
'Very interesting,' said Despard courteously.
'I could tell you lots more -'
At this point my attention wandered. Words came to me hazily as Sybil continued to air her knowledge of sorcery and voodoo – Maоtre Carrefour, the Coa, the Guide family -
I turned my head to find Thyrza looking at me quizzically.
'You don't believe any of it, do you?' she murmured. 'But you're wrong, you know. You can't explain away everything as superstition, or fear, or religious bigotry. There are elemental truths and elemental powers. There always have been. There always will be.'
'I don't think I would dispute that,' I said.
'Wise man. Come and see my library.'
I followed her out through the french window into the garden and along the side of the house.
'We made it out of the old stables,' she explained.
The stables and outbuildings had been reconstituted as one large room. The whole of one long wall was lined with books. I went across to them and was presently exclaiming.
'You've got some very rare works here, Miss Grey. Is this an original Malleus Maleficorum? My word, you have some treasures.'
'I have, haven't I?'
'That Grimoire – Very rare indeed.' I took down volume after volume from the shelves. Thyrza watched me. There was an air of quiet satisfaction about her which I did not understand.
I put back Sadducismus Triumphatus as Thyrza said:
'It's nice to meet someone who can appreciate one's treasures. Most people just yawn or gape.'
'There can't be much about the practice of witchcraft, sorcery, and all the rest of it that you don't know,' I said. 'What gave you an interest in it in the first place?'
'Hard to say now. It's been so long. One looks into a thing idly, and then – one gets gripped! It's a fascinating study. The things people believed – and the damn fool things they did!'
I laughed.
'That's refreshing. I'm glad you don't believe all you read.'
'You mustn't judge me by poor Sybil. Oh, yes, I saw you looking superior! But you were wrong. She's a silly woman in a lot of ways. She takes voodoo, and demonology, and black magic and mixes everything up into a glorious occult pie – but she has the power.'
'The power?'
'I don't know what else you can call it. There are people who can become a living bridge between this world and a world of strange uncanny powers. Sybil is one of them. She is a first-class medium. She has never done it for money. But her gift is quite exceptional. When she and I and Bella -'
'Bella?'
'Oh, yes. Bella has her own powers. We all have, in our different degrees. As a team -'
She broke off.
'Sorcerers, Limited?' I suggested with a smile.
'One could put it that way.'
I glanced down at the volume I was holding in my hand.
'Nostradamus and all that?'
'Nostradamus and all that.'
I said quietly: 'You do believe it, don't you?'
'I don't believe. I know.'
She spoke triumphantly. I looked at her.
'But how? In what way? For what reason?'
She swept her hand out towards the bookshelves.
'All that! So much of it nonsense! Such grand ridiculous phraseology! But sweep away the superstitions and the prejudices of the times – and the core is truth! You only dress it up – it's always been dressed up – to impress people.'
'I'm not sure I follow you?'
'My dear man, why have people come throughout the ages to the necromancer – to the sorcerer – to the witch doctor? Only two reasons really. There are only two things that are wanted badly enough to risk damnation. The love potion or the cup of poison.'
'Ah.'
'So simple, isn't it? Love – and death. The love potion to win the man you want, the black mass to keep your lover. A draught to be taken at the full of the moon. Recite the names of devils or of spirits. Draw patterns on the floor or on the wall. All that's window dressing. The truth is the aphrodisiac in the draught!'
'And death?' I asked.
'Death?' She laughed, a queer little laugh that made me uncomfortable. 'Are you so interested in death?'
'Who isn't?' I said lightly.
'I wonder.' She shot me a glance, keen, searching. It took me aback.
'Death. There's always been a greater trade in that than there ever has been in love potions. And yet – how childish it all was in the past! The Borgias and their famous secret poisons. Do you know what they really used? Ordinary white arsenic! Just the same as any little wife poisoner in the back streets. But we've progressed a long way beyond that nowadays. Science has enlarged our frontiers.'
'With untraceable poisons?' My voice was sceptical.
'Poisons! That's vieux jeu. Childish stuff. There are new horizons.'
'Such as?'
'The mind. Knowledge of what the mind is – what it can do – what it can be made to do.'
