Damsel in Distress #3
Daisy sighed. How much easier life was for those who didn’t see both sides to every question!
Lucy sighed. “I suppose Binkie expects me to sit next to Lady O,” she murmured. “I hope that Research bounder gets a move on with doing his stuff, so we can get it over with and go home.”
She sat down beside Lady Ormerod, and Daisy took the next chair.
Mrs. Baines moved to sit next to Vasiliev, but the nameless Research chappie, still surprisingly unquestioned, got there first. Mrs. Baines’s mouth tightened with annoyance, though she did not protest aloud.
She took the place between the man and Daisy.
Seated in the spirit cabinet, Madame Vasilieva requested, “Gloves off, please, and everyone hold hands. Do not break the circle or the power will depart.”
Mrs. Baines took Daisy’s hand with a deprecating smile. “Most mediums prefer physical contact,” she said in an undertone.
To give the illusion that their hands are restrained, Daisy recalled from her reading. In this case, Madame and her husband obviously each had a hand free to produce phenomena.
For some reason, Daisy had assumed Mrs. Baines was new to the séance business. She must have attended several, though, to make such an observation. Daisy regarded her with more interest than hitherto, but the room was too dark by now to pick out more than a pale patch of disembodied face.
“I’m getting the creeps,” Lucy whispered on her other side.
Daisy turned to smile at her. She too was nothing but a pale blur, so Daisy squeezed her hand instead.
“Hush!” hissed Lady Ormerod. “Madame needs quiet to enter the trance.”
After a few minutes of silence, during which the last hint of light vanished, strange mutters and moans came from the direction of the cabinet. It was jolly eerie, Daisy admitted to herself as Lucy’s grip on her hand tightened.
Suddenly a high, shrill voice cried out in an exotic tongue—an Indian language? More likely nonsense syllables.
“Is that you, Devaki?” came Madame Vasilieva’s lower tones.
More shrill nonsense.
“Please speak English. We need your help. Will you help us?”
“No, I don’t want to. It’s no fun.”
“Just for a little while,” Madame coaxed. “Only you can bring comfort to a sorrowful mother.”
“I don’t.…” The petulant voice broke off. “Oh, here is someone who wants to speak.”
“Who is it?”
“A soldier.”
“Devaki, we don’t want just any soldier again.”
A high giggle: “A soldier.…”
Her words were drowned by the blare of a trumpet playing the Reveille. The sound came from the far side of the room. A ghostly, phosphorescent trumpet floated there, suspended in midair.
Lucy gasped.
The brassy notes died away. “Who is there?” the medium queried sharply.
“Je … Je.…”
Gervaise? thought Daisy, her heart somersaulting.
“Jerome!” cried Lady Ormerod.
“Jemmy Heatherwood.” The slow, country voice came from behind Daisy. She twisted her head to look back. A luminous sword hovered there.
“What do you want?” asked Madame.
“Kilt on Bosworth Field, I were, wi’ nary a chance to bid me mam farewell. Mother, are ye there?”
“Your mother is not here, Jemmy.”
The sword slashed the air and a horrid, keening lament rent the darkness, fading into a silence shattered by the clang of the sword landing on the table. It lay there, glimmering. Daisy shuddered.
“Devaki, please find Captain Jerome Ormerod for us.”
“There are no ranks on this side,” scolded the childish spirit guide. “No ranks, no titles, no.…”
“Mater?” A clear, light tenor, very public-school. A muted trumpet sounded the Last Post, the mournful notes bringing tears to Daisy’s eyes.
“Who is it?” the medium asked.
“Jerome? Is it you?” cried Lady Ormerod. “Oh, my dearest boy.”
“Hullo, mater. Can you hear me? This is Jeremy.”
“Not Jerome?”
“Not Jerome,” the voice confirmed sadly. “Hold on half a tick. There’s this frightful little Hungarian blighter.… Hullo? Are you there?” It was like a bad telephone connection. “Jerome is here. He wants to speak to you, but.…”
“Mater?” This voice was very similar, perhaps a shade deeper, coming from the opposite direction, to Daisy’s left, well behind Lady Ormerod. A filmy white figure stood there, hovering above the floor. Its indistinct, moustached face suggested a handsome young man—any fair, handsome young man.
“Jerome!”
“Don’t break the circle,” snapped Madame Vasilieva, “or the spirit will vanish.”
Daisy imagined Lady Ormerod frantically trying to see her son without losing hold of the medium’s and Lucy’s hands. She’d not be able to get a clear view, but even if she did, in the frenzied state she was in she would be convinced it was Jerome.
“Jerome, speak to me! Are you happy?”
“It’s absolutely ripping over here, Mater. But I have to tell you…”
A burst of rapid gibberish interrupted him.
“Go away, you perishing bounder!”
At that moment the beam of a powerful electric torch shot out.
From somewhere to Daisy’s right, the dazzling light crossed the medium’s pallid, shocked face, probed the empty space where Vasiliev ought to be, and swung back.
It struck the spirit figure in the face, pitilessly illuminating a crude mask, then sank past the billowing gauze to focus on a pair of black trouser turn-ups and black-socked feet.
Toes twitched. Their owner bolted for refuge behind the cabinet.
Caught in the scattered light on the edge of the beam, Lady Ormerod opened her mouth in a sobbing wail of desolation and fury.
Springing to her feet, she leaned forward, hands outstretched.
The table went flying. The torch fell with a thud on the carpet and lay there, still shining, its reflection from the plush curtains providing a dim, ghostly light in which unrecognizable figures moved.
A ghastly shriek rang out.
Daisy made for the nearest door. Feeling for an electric light switch, she snapped it on.
The glare blinded her momentarily but, expecting it, she was the first to recover. The tableau which met her eyes made her wish she hadn’t.
The shabby little investigator lay flat on his back on the carpet, glassy gaze fixed on the ceiling. A crimson stain crept across his white shirt-front, spreading out from the spot where Jemmy Heatherwood’s sword protruded from his chest.
His mouth twitched once and then fell open, still and slack.
Lady Ormerod was on her knees at his head, her face hidden in her hands, rocking back and forth.
A low, steady moan issued from her blanched lips.
Beyond him the medium clung to her husband’s arm.
They both stared down with appalled fascination at the inert clay whose spirit was passing “to the other side” even as they watched.
Lucy stood by her chair, transfixed, camera forgotten, too utterly astonished to be horrified yet. Mrs. Baines knelt and reached for the man’s wrist.
“He’s gone,” she said tersely.
Lady Ormerod threw back her head and laughed. The hysterical cackle rose to a screech, fell in a whimper to an incoherent mumble. Hurrying to her, Daisy snapped, “Lucy, you’d better go and telephone the police.”
“But…” She turned an aghast gaze on the Vasilievs. “Daisy, I can’t leave you here with them. It’s not safe.”
“It wasn’t them.” Gently Daisy raised Lady Ormerod to her feet and supported her tottering steps to the nearest upright chair. “It was her.”
“Lady Ormerod? Impossible!” As if the scene had suddenly sunk in, Lucy paled; the rouge on her high cheekbones standing out starkly, horribly, like the crimson smears on Lady Ormerod’s gaunt cheeks.
“Look at her hands, her face. Don’t you understand? He parted her from her son, drove Jerome away. He’s the investigator from the Society for Psychical Research.”
“No, no, my dear,” said Mrs. Baines in a shaky voice.
As she rose awkwardly from the floor, she drew from the man’s sleeve a black rod with a hook on one end. She pulled on the hook and the rod lengthened telescopically. Comprehending, Daisy drew in a sudden breath.
Mrs. Baines continued, “This man is Agnes Potts’s—Madame Vasilieva’s—uncle, who was once a stage ventriloquist. My information suggests that his was the brain behind this swindle.
No, her ladyship made the same mistake as you did.
I am the psychical researcher. I very much fear the sword was meant for me. ”