The Isolated Séance

ONE

Badger

London, 1895

‘We sat around the table in the unused room,’ said the possible client. His speech was better than Tim Badger’s, more like a tradesman, though he said he was a valet. His clothes certainly looked the part: fitted coat, waistcoat, hair parted down the middle but a little windswept. No mustache or beard, but he was in want of a shave.

‘Go on,’ said Tim. Conscious of his own ill-fitting suit with its threadbare elbows and the loose threads at the cuffs, he glanced over his shoulder for reassurance from the stoic face of his partner Benjamin Watson, whose shaded eyes never left the client’s. His brown suit was little better than Tim’s, stretched as it was over his stocky frame.

The client’s eyes roved uncertainly over the dim room. Wallpaper was peeling off the wall by the door. There was a rusty stain on the plaster in the far corner that made a crack that traveled the length of the ceiling from one side of the room to the other. And above the fireplace, the whole wall was blackened by coal smoke. Not one piece of furniture was in perfect order, with a torn cushion here, a repaired chair leg there. Tim could see it all on his face. The man was beginning to wonder what in the world he was doing there in a shabby room in the slums of London, hiring these nobodies to save him.

‘Describe the scene,’ Tim hurried to say. ‘Please.’

The distraction seemed to work, for the man faced Tim again and resumed his narrative. ‘None of us wanted to be there. The room felt close, stuffy, especially because of the burning incense.’ He sneered in disapproval. ‘It made everything a bit smoky, even though the window was open, though the drapes were shut. Only the single oil lamp hanging above us lit the table – the rest lay in shadow.’ He paused, thinking. ‘Erm … It’s a small room. Paneled wainscoting with plate rails. A mirror on the wall beside the fireplace. A brass candlestick on the mantel.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s all. It was empty but for the table and chairs. No pictures. No fancy things.’

‘How many were in the room?’ pressed Tim, standing at his own sooty mantel, holding the unlit pipe to his face, but neither lighting it nor putting it to his lips.

‘There was five of us, including the madam or medium, whatever you’d call her. She had rings on her fingers and gold earrings under wild hair. Looked like her neck needed scrubbing.’ He shivered. ‘I suppose she was a Gypsy.’ This did not seem to rouse the interest he’d hoped for, and so he continued, counting them off on his fingers. ‘There was her, me, the housekeeper, the housemaid, and Mister Quinn. Then she told us to touch the planchette. You know. That thing that skates along the spirit board. Well, I don’t think any of us but the master wanted to touch it, but we did. She told us to concentrate. On what, I’d like to know. We must reach into the spirit world to talk to your business partner, she said.’ He shivered again. ‘I don’t mind saying, the whole thing was queer.’

‘Interesting,’ Tim decided he should say, waving the pipe. ‘Go on, Mister Brent.’

‘Well, she said something like, I call to Stephen Latimer across the spiritual plane, or some such nonsense. And damme, that planchette moved along the board by itself! I don’t believe in those things, Mister Badger, but it did give me a fright. Especially when the maid shrieked at it. But she was always in a state. Like a mouse, she is. Well, then the madam went on with, Is it you, Mister Latimer? Tell us. And blimey, but that planchette jerked and skidded over the board again, landing on Yes. Even the master, Mister Quinn, gasped at that. But then Mister Quinn, quite agitated by this time, demanded, Ask him what I want to know!

‘The madam scowled at him. We must take our time, Mister Quinn, she said. We cannot hurry the spirits of the dead.

‘He’d better dashed hurry, he said in a state. I’ve been searching a fortnight since he died. He even yelled to the ceiling, Give it up, Latimer, you scoundrel!

‘It upset the madam terribly. Mister Quinn growled something at her again. He’s the one who wanted this séance in the first place, but he seemed barely able to tolerate it …’

‘A question, Mister Brent,’ said Tim. ‘Just what is it the master wanted to find?’

Brent shrugged. ‘He never told us. Then the maid, almost in tears, said, Oh sir, listen to the madam. I don’t want no ghosts getting angry at us. And I thought she had a point until the housekeeper told her, like she always does, Silence, girl. You do what you’re told.

‘The maid simpered a bit as the madam continued. Mister Latimer, the Gypsy woman said, come to us. Tell us the information.

‘When the master yelled again, Spill it, Latimer, you swine! the planchette moved again, sliding across the board to where the letters were. A-T-I-C, it spelled. And the master got worked up again and cried, What are you talking about, you fool? There’s nothing in my attic!

‘And that’s when the oil lamp went out. Then someone jarred the table. The maid screamed. The housekeeper slapped her. There was a sound of stumbling, movement. And across the room, a silky mist began to appear. The maid screamed again. Even Mister Quinn yelled.

‘I got up from my seat, stumbled to the fireplace, and struck a match, blinding everyone for mere seconds and freezing them all to the spot, before everyone turned to the master slumped back against his chair. A letter knife stood up in his chest and there was blood.’ He swallowed hard. ‘He was dead.’

Thomas Brent then took a deep breath and eagerly looked up. Tim got the uncomfortable feeling that Brent expected him to solve it right then and there.

Trying to seem professional, Tim asked, ‘And where exactly were you, Mister Brent?’

‘I was standing at the fireplace. That’s where I got the matches.’

Watson was about to speak with finger raised and mouth open, when he seemed to think better of it, curled his finger down and leaned back in his chair once more.

Brent sidled close to Tim and thumbed behind him at Watson. ‘Do we have to have this blackie in the room? These are personal things I’m telling you.’

Tim blew out a long breath with barely constrained patience. ‘That, Mister Brent, is me partner, Benjamin Watson, and no better man there is in an investigation. His skin color is of no concern of mine, nor should it be of yours. I beg you to have a better care in what you say in his presence, for I will not abide any form of intolerant speech, sir.’

Brent turned and looked over his shoulder at Watson again. Face dark as coal, hair close-cropped to his head, except where he parted it on the left side, he was a man with some heft to him and presence, with wide shoulders, chest and beefy arms. He seemed to be a stone statue, saying nothing, nor twitching his face one iota.

‘All right, then,’ Brent muttered unapologetically.

‘Did you see anyone, Mister Brent?’ Tim continued, pushing on.

‘Did the door open?’ asked Watson suddenly.

Brent turned from one to the other. ‘I didn’t see anyone. It was dark. The light had gone out and it wouldn’t light again. So I lit the candle.’

Tim leaned an arm on the mantel, still clutching the unlit pipe and posturing with it. ‘What do you make of the strange glow in the room?’

Brent shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It was odd, is all I can say about it.’

‘Did it come from the lamp? Had you ever seen it before?’

‘No one was allowed in that room. It wasn’t ghosts, if that is what you’re trying to say. I don’t believe in them.’

‘Then why were you there, Mister Brent?’

‘I’m Mister Quinn’s valet. And footman. And driver. And everything else he needed a man for. I was the only man in his employ at the house. He told me to be there. Told the maid and housekeeper, too. None of us would have been mixed up in such nonsense otherwise.’

‘But isn’t it true, Brent, that you were blamed for the murder and have been on the run since?’

‘How … how did you know that?’

‘Simple, really.’ Tim gestured with the pipe. ‘You’ve got shaving soap on your collar and patches of stubble, which indicates a slap-dash shave. You’ve got a tear in your trouser leg – new – that you haven’t had a chance to repair, and your fingers are scuffed and scratched as if making a hasty exit … out of a window, possibly.’

Tim slid his glance proudly toward Watson in time to see the man roll his eyes.

‘That’s … amazing, Mister Badger! I knew I was right all along in coming to you, sir.’

‘There was also the notice in the Chronicle,’ Watson said, sotto voce, hiding it under a cough. Then, leaning forward, elbows resting on his thighs, he asked, ‘But why?’

‘Why what?’ Brent didn’t seem to like speaking directly to Watson.

‘I want to know why you came to us … instead of Mister Sherlock Holmes.’

Tim gave him a warning look, but, as usual, Watson ignored him.

‘Well … truth to tell … I did go to him first, but he told me he hadn’t time to take the case. And to come to you.’

Tim pulled up short and nearly dropped the pipe. He stared at it and placed it on the mantel. Composing himself – pulling taut his patched waistcoat and clamping his hands to his tatty coat lapels – he postured once again. ‘I see. That was good of Mister Holmes to send you here. He and I are colleagues, after all.’

‘Yes. Well.’ He glanced around the shabby room once more. ‘I can’t be clapped in gaol, Mister Badger. Once a man like me gets nicked, there’s no hope. And I didn’t do it.’

‘Of course not.’ Tim picked up the pipe again, opened the lid of the chipped tobacco jar on its wobbly side table, and dipped in the bowl of the pipe. He inexpertly shoved the tobacco down into the bowl with his thumb and turned again to the mantel to pinch a match from a wooden cup, striking the match on the scuffed and repaired sole of his shoe. Touching the flame to the tobacco, he sucked hard on the pipe as it slowly drew. He then tossed the match behind him into the fireplace, leaned an elbow on the mantel again, stuffed his other hand in his pocket like any country squire, and puffed on his pipe.

Watson watched the whole performance, shaking his head slightly with open mouth before he took a breath and leaned toward Brent again. ‘How did the spirit or that madam spell attic again?’

‘A-T-I-C, like I told you. Just like …’ He frowned and said no more.

Watson thought for a moment. ‘And how would you spell attic?’

‘What the deuce difference does it make?’

Watson paused before he sat back. ‘Nothin’.’ He crossed his arms over his chest and did what he did best: stare with hooded eyes.

Brent turned back toward Tim. ‘Will you take the case, Mister Badger? Will you find the real culprit so that I don’t get arrested for it?’

Tim pulled the pipe away from his lips and coughed. The toxic fumes seemed to rumble uncomfortably in his belly. He didn’t feel so good. ‘Quite, Mister Brent. We’ll take the job. How will we find you, should we need to ask more questions? I assume you are going to your nearest bolthole?’

‘That I am. I’ll contact you every other day, Mister Badger, if that’s in keeping.’

‘Very good. I don’t suppose Mister Holmes mentioned a retaining fee?’

‘Oh. You mean … you want money?’

‘Just a small fee to retain our services. We’ll be so busy with other work …’

Brent gave the room another perusal.

‘It will take our valuable time, you see?’ said Tim. ‘A man must be paid for his time.’

Brent thrust his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘Well, er, how much, Mister Badger? I haven’t got much, being that I had to hastily leave my situation.’

‘A shilling will do.’

‘A shilling? I don’t have as much as that, Mister Badger.’ He pulled his hand free of his pocket and in his palm lay four ha’pennies. ‘But I can get more for you later.’

‘Naturally. That will do for now, Brent.’ Tim cocked his head at Watson, and a silent exchange ensued. With a frown, Watson grudgingly leapt from his seat and took the money.

Still coughing, Tim escorted Brent to the door. ‘We shall see you soon, Brent. Keep your head down.’

He no sooner closed the door on him than he leaned against it and coughed helplessly.

‘You look green, Tim,’ said Watson.

‘Ruddy pipe,’ he choked.

‘What did you expect? You never smoked a pipe before.’

‘That shag … it’s awful. It’s like smoking hay that’s been shat on by a team of oxen.’

Watson slapped him in the back to help the coughing. ‘And what’s the idea, making me fetch the money? I told you I was not going to pose as your servant. Proud and equal, is what you said. It’s what we agreed on.’

‘It’s your money too,’ he gasped, eyes watering and lying against the door. ‘Gawd. Get rid of that pipe, for Heaven’s sake.’

Watson took the pipe from the mantel and knocked the burnt tobacco on to the coal.

Tim slid slowly down the door to the floor. ‘I don’t know how you smoke them cheroots. It’s all an abomination.’

‘It takes practice. But why do you suppose Mister Holmes wouldn’t take his case?’

‘Get me some beer, will ya?’

‘Get it y’self.’

Tim lifted himself from the floor and dragged his feet to the curtained alcove of their pantry. He grabbed the near-empty jug and poured the beer into a clouded glass. He downed it and leaned heavily against the pantry shelf. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

‘Do it out the window. I don’t want to smell your sick all night.’

Tim rested his hands on the sill, but there was a crawler sleeping in the narrow space between his building and the next, and he soldiered through it instead, breathing deep of the outside air, though that was barely fresher than a room full of tobacco smoke.

‘Why wouldn’t Holmes take the case?’ Watson asked again.

‘Why do you care?’ Tim asked, coming back in and resting against the wall.

‘Because I don’t like it, is why. Don’t it seem like the kind of case Mister Holmes would take?’

‘Maybe it’s as Brent says. He’s too busy. Wants to give me a chance, his old Irregular.’

‘Seems dodgy to me, is all.’

‘You know what they say about looking horses in the mouth.’

‘That’s gift horses.’ Watson sighed, looking at the coins in his palm. ‘We’re never going to make money at this.’

‘We got four pence.’

‘No, we got four ha’pennies. That’s two pence.’

‘Oh. Right.’

‘You look less green. Feeling better?’

‘I’d feel better with a pint of bitter.’

‘You’ll get nothin’ for tuppence.’

‘We … we could share one.’

Tim watched Watson’s face skew from angered to defiant to resignation. ‘I’ll get you a bloody half,’ he muttered. ‘And oi! Forget the pipe. Smoking ain’t for you.’

‘You’re right. You’re always right.’

Together they went around the corner to their local and ordered a half each. They sat at a scratched table in a dim corner. The weak flutter of gas in the sconce above them flickered its light. Most of the regulars were there – wagtails with tatty shawls taking a rest from walking the streets, working men with dirty faces slouched over their gins, other men and scoundrels in furtive conversation.

Watson drank his mostly down before he set the glass on the table, but kept his hand on it lest some drunkard got it into his head to steal it out from under him. ‘Whatcha want to go and smoke a pipe for anyway? Because the guv’nor did?’

Tim felt foolish now for his attempt with the pipe, for the truth of it was just as Watson had said. Holmes did it. Why couldn’t he? ‘Aw, lay off, Ben. Can’t I preen a bit, getting a decent client for once?’

‘I think if the rozzers have him down for it, he probably did it.’

‘Nah, Mister Holmes wouldn’t have done that to us. He’s a right proper gentleman.’ He lifted his half glass, studied the dark beer for a moment, simply whetting his thirst, before taking a large dose of it.

‘He spelled attic wrong.’

Tim smacked his lips and set the glass down. ‘Why are you still on that?’

‘Because the ghost wouldn’t have got it wrong. The madam wouldn’t have got it wrong. Who knows what went on at that séance?’

‘Well, me lad, that’s what we’re hired to find out.’ He clinked his glass to Watson’s and smiled.

‘Then what next?’ said Watson. ‘Talk to them others at the séance? We’ll have to find that madam as well.’

‘I wonder if we will be able to find her. Sure as you’re born that Mister Quinn hired her.’

Watson wiped the beer from his lips. ‘Now what would a gentleman know about hiring a medium? It’s got to be one of them servants what knows.’

‘Sounds like a perfect job for a chimney sweep, hired by the master before he died.’

Watson gulped another swallow of his beer. ‘You want me to go by m’self.’

‘You’re the one what knows how to be a chimney sweep, not me.’

‘Ain’t that convenient,’ said Watson into his glass.

TWO

Watson

With his brushes and rods over his shoulder – and a little extra soot on his face and shoulders just for authenticity – Ben tramped down Gower Street in Bloomsbury toward the Quinn house. Clean and bright terrace houses, looking like picture books on a bookshelf, all stacked neatly together. The street was clean, too. None of the garbage in the gutters one found back in his part of town. None of the smells either. Maids regularly brushed and cleaned these porch steps. Coppers, no doubt, made this one of their beats to keep the riff-raff out.

Ben glanced behind him to make sure he had no rozzers on his tail. He cheerily tipped his hat to the ladies and gents along the avenue as he walked. And because he was attired as a sweep, they were friendly back.

He found the right address at last – a middle-class house made of brick, with a nice, black-painted metal fence surrounding the step-down to the kitchen entrance below the front stairs.

When he knocked at the front entrance, a maid opened the door, startling upon seeing him. ‘What do you want?’ she said in an expression somewhere between haughty and frightened.

He tipped his hat and smiled. Ben knew he wasn’t a bad-looking bloke. But white women generally didn’t treat him as anything but a servant, and one to be watched at that.

‘Good morning, miss. I’m here to clean the chimbleys.’

She narrowed her eyes, her hands still firmly clutching the edge of the door. ‘I don’t know nothing about no chimneys being cleaned today.’

‘I got me orders from Mister Quinn not more than three days ago.’

She turned her arm just that much to show the black armband. ‘The master died two days ago.’

‘No! That’s a shame, that.’ He pulled the dented gray topper from his head, pressed it to his breast, and bowed. ‘I give my blessings to all in sorrow in this household.’

She started to close the door. ‘So, as you can see, we won’t be needing the likes of—’

‘Then you are in sore need of your chimbleys cleaned. The room to lay him out in, at least. When I’m hired to do a job, I don’t skip out on it. It’s me honor at stake, you might say.’

He donned his hat again and sidled ever so slowly toward the door. When it didn’t look as if the maid would surrender the doorway, he simply pushed forward, pretending he had been given permission.

She stuttered and made a bit of a fuss. ‘I … I didn’t give you leave …’

‘Blimey …’ he said, reaching under the brim of his hat and scratching his head. ‘Quinn. Isn’t that the gentleman what was killed here … during one of them séances?’

He stood in the foyer on its black-and-white tiled floor, looking about. It was just what he expected from a terraced house on this street: arched entries to parlor, morning room, and to a back stair. A table in the center with a dish for calling cards. There were none. One would expect there to be some for a death.

‘It’s none of your business …’ said the maid, rushing toward him.

‘I read it in the paper.’ He shook his head. ‘What a shame. I’ll wager you didn’t know nothin’ about it, being the maid and all. And right here under your roof.’

She seemed to calm from her earlier fluster. ‘That’s all you know.’ She glanced over her shoulder and drew her voice down to a whisper. ‘I was right there in the very room.’

‘No! That’s horrible. You was in the room?’

‘I was. And the master making us all sit for that terrible spirit conjuring. That’s what comes of devil work.’

‘He made you sit in on it? That’s a terrible thing.’

‘Ain’t it?’ She clutched at something from the pocket of her apron. Ben thought it was likely a cross at first, but when her busy fingers moved over it again and again, he could see instead that it was a rabbit’s foot.

‘So what happened?’ Ben felt the smile inside. He’d done it again. At first, they were frightened of him. He was a burly fellow, just a little on the stout side but tall with wide shoulders, and a beard. Intimidating, he admitted, and most weren’t used to talking to a black man, but with a little beguiling and a cheery attitude, he got them to talk. He knew there was nothing a young housemaid liked to do better than to gossip to a stranger. More experienced housemaids and ladies’ maids knew better than to speak out of turn, but this girl was ripe for the pickings.

She sidled closer. ‘We was sitting there. And I don’t mind saying that I was terrified. That ain’t nothing a Christian woman should be doing.’

‘Oh, miss, I agree wholeheartedly.’

‘I don’t mind the occasional tarot card or palm reading. That’s different.’

‘’Course it is.’

‘But this was calling to the dead. You must never call out to the dead. The dead might linger.’

He shivered at the thought. Even though he wasn’t one to believe in ghosts. It was just the idea of the thing, he told himself.

‘And there we were,’ she went on. ‘That madam talking in a scary voice, and her a Gypsy, I reckon – and you can’t trust them, now can you? We was there and she was talking to some spirit and our fingers were on that spirit board and I was ready to jump to me feet and run, I was that frightened.’

‘I wouldn’t blame you if you did.’

She stopped and truly looked at him. He knew how to lower his chin, to look up at her with a soulful expression, and she offered a shy smile, all the while stroking the rabbit’s foot. ‘That’s kind of you to say.’

‘It’s God’s truth, innit? Then what happened?’

‘All of a sudden, there was a cold wind, like the coldest snowy