Breaking the Circle, page 6
Evadne Principal knew how to control a room like this; she’d been doing it for years. As a precursor to her arrival, she had insisted on the total absence of servants. There must be no dogs; preferably, no animals at all, although she always made allowances for goldfish. After all, whatever happened in their little bowls, stayed in their little bowls. The fire was de rigueur. So was the locked door and the key was in her pocket. She wore a veil, black of course, the colour of mourning, the colour of death. She nodded to each of the Circle in turn, but she did not shake their hands. And they could not touch her before the séance began.
She sat with her back to the fire so that her face was in darkness and everyone else’s was lit. When, after everyone was settled, she judged the moment to be right, she stretched out her pale hands, paler still against the black of her sleeves. Other hands reached out, male and female alternately around the table. Nine, the perfect number. Evadne looked at them all from behind her veil. And they didn’t even know she was looking. How often had she seen them all before, these predictable idiots so ready to part with their money. She had not asked their names, their backgrounds – all that was the stuff of fairground tricksters. Evadne was above all that, above them all.
There sat the newly widowed, still in weeds, in shock, trying to come to terms with her loss. The newly departed may have had his hand in the till at the bank or his hand up the skirt of the downstairs maid; that made no difference to the widow, saturated in grief as she was. Nobody was more ready for a voice from beyond; nobody was more gullible. Beside her was the professional gentleman, possibly in insurance, precise, pedantic, pathetic. Evadne would have him for breakfast. Next to him the perpetual daughter, plain, buxom, the sort who had devoted her life to Mama because no man was interested in her. All her sad little life she had been at some ghastly harridan’s beck and call; and now she was still waiting for her in the Great Beyond. What a waste; but it put bread and gentleman’s relish on Evadne’s table.
Next to her was a gentleman whom Evadne could indeed relish, were they to have met in different circumstances. He was tall, perhaps forty, with a military bearing. Had he served on the Veldt? Had he stood on the rolling deck of one of His Majesty’s ships of the line? Did he dread nought? Evadne had to admit she couldn’t quite pin him down to a particular type of sitter; he’d bear watching. At his elbow was the resident religious maniac – every Spiritualist Circle had one. She was a member of the local Spiritualist church, but it was not enough for her. What she wanted was not God’s peace but a full-blown manifestation, an apport floating ethereally before her very eyes. Evadne had toyed with that tonight, but it carried its own risks and this niggardly lot simply wasn’t paying her enough.
The others fell into place easily enough: the widower, completely at sea without the woman who used to run his life; the young thing whose fiancé had succumbed to that ghastly fog at the start of the year. The last one mystified her – a tall, angular woman with large shoulders and a knowing smile. There was something of the night about her, but it was indefinable, like a shadow.
Well, there’d be no shadows tonight. There wasn’t time and there wasn’t space. First, the mood, then the voices; that would have to be enough. Evadne squeezed the fingers of the men on each side of her, arching her back and shuddering. The newly widowed let out a gasp, but that was all. She noticed their heads moving, their eyes swivelling.
‘Let us focus,’ she said, so softly some of them had to bend closer. ‘Think,’ she said, louder. ‘Think of those who have gone.’
She lowered her head and relaxed her fingers, sliding them back until only the tips touched. ‘John,’ she said, sharply and suddenly.
‘Oh!’ It was the newly widowed, right on cue.
Evadne allowed herself a little smile. Had she chosen Algernon, there would have been no response at all. ‘He is here,’ she said. ‘Keep the circle tight. Let him come in.’
‘Ah!’ The newly widowed was better than any stooge. Evadne had had several of those in her time, but they were unreliable and prone to using blackmail.
‘Are you there, John?’ Evadne asked.
The logs shifted in the grate and the medium answered her own question with a non-committal grunt.
‘It’s him! It’s him!’ The widow’s hands flew to her mouth.
‘Keep the circle!’ Evadne hissed, and the woman’s hands flew back to join the others. ‘John,’ she said, ‘do you have a message for anyone here?’
She lowered her head.
‘He’s near,’ she muttered, over and over again, swaying in front of the fire, the light on her hair making it seem to move, curling and twisting like the Medusa’s snakes.
‘My wife!’ A thunderous voice came from nowhere, echoing around the room. It had taken Evadne Principal years to perfect that, just the right blend of breath control and larynx-work.
‘John!’ The widow was crying with delight. ‘It’s Alice. I’m here, my darling, I’m here.’ The tears trickled unchecked down her cheeks and Evadne gave silent thanks for the name – they always did it and didn’t even know they had given the information out loud.
‘Alice?’ The voice was still harsh and rasping, but softer now. ‘Is it you?’
‘Yes, yes, my love.’
‘All is well,’ the voice said. ‘You must not worry. We will meet again …’ The voice trailed away.
‘He’s going,’ Evadne said, her back arched again, her eyes closed. ‘I can’t … John …’ And she sank into her chair. ‘Wait!’ This was a second voice, deeper than the first, more commanding and with a hint of an unfamiliar accent. Evadne’s head had dropped again and she took the opportunity to flick the veil into place with her tongue, so no one could see her mouth moving. Everybody obliged, not daring to breathe. Alice had been reunited with her love tonight; who knew what was next?
‘What is it?’ Evadne asked in her own voice. ‘Wovoka, ghost-dancer, who is it that you seek?’
She dipped her head. There was a long pause. Then, ‘One who is not who they seem,’ Wovoka grated. ‘An unbeliever in our midst.’
Neither man on either side of Evadne felt her fingers slip away. Neither felt them replaced by the wax replicas she carried in the folds of her skirts. No one saw her hurl the sprinkling of powder behind her into the fire. All they saw was the flash of sulphur, the shower of stars. All they heard was the loud bang as the ghost-dancer left their presence.
‘Lights!’ somebody shouted. It was Evadne herself but no one knew it.
The host broke the circle and Evadne’s hands were back at the table as if they had never left. First one gaslight, then another, broke the moment, and the harsh light of the twentieth century filled the room.
The medium sat slumped at her place, her eyes closed, her lips drawn tightly.
‘Miss Principal.’ Someone shook her gently, as though she would dissolve and crumble to the floor with the dust of ages.
Her eyes flickered open and she took in the sea of anxious faces around her. ‘What happened?’ she asked. And of the eight other people in that sitting room, not one of them could give her an answer.
Evadne Principal was tired. There were more arduous ways of making a living, although few people not on the London stage could truly appreciate the strain a nightly performance entailed. She checked the clock in her hallway. It was nearly midnight and she had an early morning the next day. She had a sitting at Cliveden, and this was all bells and whistles, smoke and mirrors. What the Cliveden set wanted was a manifestation, no less, Wovoka himself, the ghost-dancer in all his buckskinned finery. Damn Buffalo Bill Cody! Why had his Wild West show been so popular? Why did everyone now think they knew what a Red Indian looked like?
There was a soft tap on the door, more the kind of noise she specialized in during her more intimate sittings than a proper knock. She sighed and considered ignoring it, but it came again, soft but insistent, and she opened the door just a crack.
‘Yes?’
‘Miss Principal,’ the visitor said, ‘I am so sorry to bother you again tonight.’
Evadne popped her pince-nez into place. The light was not good on her doorstep. ‘Ah,’ she said, stepping back and opening the door wider. ‘You were at the sitting.’
It was the large woman with the shoulders and the enigmatic persona.
‘I was, and may I say how captivated I was by your performance?’
‘Performance?’ Evadne’s reaction was acid. ‘Is that what you believe it was?’
‘Well, of course,’ the woman said. ‘Superbly done. And I was wondering if I could trouble you for a private sitting? Just the two of us?’
‘I don’t do that,’ Evadne told her. ‘The presence is unbalanced with two. It doesn’t work.’
The visitor fumbled in her handbag. ‘Couldn’t I persuade you?’ She held up several pound notes.
‘No, really, I …’
But the woman was already across the threshold. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I must insist.’
It was a different voice entirely.
FOUR
‘Morning, Nacker. They don’t let you out often.’ Andrew Crawford had just alighted from his cab.
The man who seemed to have been born at the front desk at Scotland Yard grunted something incomprehensible and stepped aside to let the detective sergeant in. Crawford took in the place. Genteel and expensively done out. Very much what you’d expect of a well-to-do residence just off the Tottenham Court Road.
‘Maid’s in the kitchen,’ Nacker said. ‘The body in question is here.’ He led the way into a comfortable sitting room, with dark Baroque furniture lining the walls. A woman sat on a chair at the circular table in the centre, face down and fully clothed. Crawford felt for a pulse. One of the first things he had learned as a police constable is that you don’t take anything for granted, not even when a coroner or pathologist tells you something.
‘Cold as a witch’s tit,’ Nacker confirmed, presumably from his comprehensive knowledge of the world of the occult.
‘How long, do you think?’
Nacker was used to plainclothesmen asking his opinion. He’d been around the Aldwych a few times and there wasn’t much among London’s lowlife that missed his eagle eye. ‘Midnight, give or take,’ he said. ‘Maybe a little after.’
Crawford raised the dead woman’s head as gently as he could. Her hair was jet black and would have been her glory in life. Now it was matted with dark brown blood that had sprayed across her neck and shoulders and had soaked into the pink tablecloth. Her eyes were closed and there were red marks around her lips. Crawford breathed in.
‘Almonds,’ he said. ‘Cyanide.’
‘Or she was fond of nuts.’ Nacker played devil’s advocate to perfection.
‘Who was she?’
‘According to the maid,’ the uniformed man flicked out his notebook, ‘she was Evadne Principal, medium.’
‘Was she now?’ Crawford was intrigued.
‘Is that ringing bells, Detective Sergeant?’
‘Oranges and lemons,’ Crawford confirmed. ‘Next of kin?’
‘We’ve not got much on that yet. There was a husband – Perceval Principal – but apparently, he buggered off some time ago. According to the maid, he didn’t approve of her carryings on.’
‘Carryings on?’
‘In the Spiritual sense. She was the first choice of anyone wanting a better class of séance but he didn’t want to know. The maid didn’t remember him at all – before her time – but she knew from the late Evadne what his take on it all was.’
Crawford squatted and looked under the tablecloth. The woman’s skirts were to the ground and there was no sign of any interference. ‘Is the maid live-in?’ he asked Nacker.
‘No, and that’s the problem. She found the body when she got here this morning; apparently, when she came in to lay the table for breakfast while the kettle boiled.’
‘What time was this?’
‘Seven this morning.’
Crawford looked around the room. ‘Nothing disturbed, by the look of it. How many lads have you got with you?’
‘Six, sir.’
‘Right. Put three of them on door-to-door up and down the street. Did she hold séances here? Any visitors? That sort of thing. The other three; I want this place combed from top to bottom. Anything out of the ordinary, anything amiss, I want to know about it. Has Stockley Collins been informed?’
‘I’ve got a bloke on it,’ Nacker said. ‘And he’s bringing a photographer.’
‘Good man.’ Crawford tapped the man’s shoulder and looked again at the dead woman. ‘Another medium, eh? Now the guv’nor will have to listen.’
Andrew Crawford had questioned maids before. They came in all shapes and sizes, from raddled old matrons who could give fully grown dragons a run for their money, to doe-eyed little tweenies still in their teens who sometimes wore their virtue on their sleeves. Annie Stock was somewhere in between. Despite her red, puffy eyes and quivering lip, she was a beautiful girl, immaculately turned out in starched apron and cap. She sat in the kitchen at Number Thirty-Eight, hands clasped around a cup of tea.
‘Oh, sir,’ she said to Crawford once he had introduced himself. ‘Can I make you one?’
‘No, thank you, Annie.’ He sat down in front of her. ‘Now, I know the big sergeant has already asked you this, but can you tell me what happened this morning, when you arrived for work?’
She sniffed and took a deep breath. ‘I got here just before seven o’clock,’ she said. ‘The Tottenham omnibus Number Eleven, like I always do.’
‘Do you have a key?’
‘Yes, sir.’ She pushed a bunch of keys towards him across the table.
‘And you let yourself in.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Tell me, Annie, does anybody else have access to those keys?’
‘No, sir!’ The maid was horrified. ‘I never let ’em out of my sight. Even at night, they’re on my bedside table at home. My mum can vouch for that.’
‘I’m sure she can,’ Crawford smiled. ‘What happened then?’
‘Well …’ Annie scrubbed at her eyes with a damp handkerchief. She was having difficulty with all this, more and more as she got nearer to the moment when she had opened the door into the sitting room.
‘Take your time,’ he said.
‘The missus isn’t usually up at that time and my first job is to get her tea for the morning. I knew she had an early start today – it’s written on her calendar – so I lit the fire over there to get the kettle going before I went up to wake her. It saves time when she …’ She scrubbed with the hankie again and Crawford waited patiently. ‘Well, I was heading for the stairs, when I saw it.’
‘What, Annie? What did you see?’
‘The lamp was burning in the sitting room. It’s usually in darkness. So I went in to turn it off and … and …’
She was trembling now, the cup rattling in the saucer as she tried to pick it up to take a sip.
‘And you found the missus?’ Crawford finished the sentence for her. Annie nodded, suddenly unable to look the man in the face.
‘Tell me, Annie, was there anything wrong with the missus? Before, I mean. Did she say anything to you, about … oh, I don’t know … somebody bothering her?’
‘No, sir.’ Annie shook her head.
‘Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt her?’ he asked.
Annie’s face darkened. ‘’T’ain’t for me to say, sir,’ she said.
‘Oh, but I’m afraid it is, Annie,’ the sergeant corrected her. ‘You see, the missus can’t speak for herself now, can she? You’ll have to do it for her.’
Annie blinked and gnawed her lip. ‘Well, in the missus’s calling, sir, there’s any number of peculiar people.’
‘Did you ever meet any of them?’
‘Not to say meet,’ Annie said. ‘I opened the door to some of them, passed the time of day.’
Crawford leaned back, defusing the moment. ‘I’ll take that cup of tea now, Annie,’ he said, ‘and you can tell me all about them.’
Stockley Collins had people for the heavy lifting. On that particular Monday it was Constable Leyton, a fully paid-up member of the Islington Photographic Club. The lad was staggering into Evadne Principal’s crime scene, armed with a tripod, two cameras, lenses and rolls of black cloth. They had been taking photographs in situ since at least 1888, the year of the Ripper, and in mortuaries various for years before that. Men like Leyton were a new breed, however, more photographer than copper, more artist than beat-pounder, and he was very good at what he did.
Collins was carrying paraphernalia too, but all of it could be fitted into a Gladstone bag which he called his little bag of tricks, partly to impress colleagues with his technical wizardry and partly because, as a true-blue Conservative, he could not condone carrying luggage named after the leader of the Opposition. He hovered over the dead woman like a ghoul, flicking the tablecloth and chair backs with his little badger-hair brush and sprinkling everything with powder.
Leyton arranged his tripod and blacked out the windows once the inspector had finished. He fixed the camera and fiddled with the lenses, not once or twice but a total of fifteen times. He knew perfectly well that the late Mrs Principal didn’t have a good side any more, but he was not creating poses for the National Gallery. These were photographs for a courtroom, a stark black-and-white record of what a room looked like after a murder had been committed. Colleagues would see his work, so would legal counsel, judges and possibly jurors, if the corpse was not too upsetting. Perhaps – just perhaps – some of them might end up in the Police Museum, and Nathaniel Leyton’s name would live on, long after he himself had hung up his wet-collodion process; old school, was Nathaniel Leyton.
