The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade (18 page)

Podmore was tall, distinguished, with greying hair and side-whiskers, perhaps forty. His eyes were calm and kind and he showed a huge sense of occasion as he quietly took his seat. He made it clear that tonight’s ‘show’, if such was the right term, belonged not to him but to Madame Slopesski.

It was some minutes before the Great Lady arrived. Carlton was the soul of courtesy and hostmanship, ushering the living legend to her place. Lestrade took her in at a glance. The light of the oil lamp shone mercilessly on her dull grey hair, wild and unruly by English standards. She was a woman of about sixty, he would judge, large, matronly with a chronic stoop and a pronounced limp. She bore a passing resemblance to the Queen, who also of course dabbled in such things, though hardly for a living. Her hands were strangely young, with long, tapering fingers and when she spoke, it was in a deep, resonant middle-European boom. Gregson would no doubt have assumed her to be another anarchist, had he been here, Lestrade mused to himself.

For what seemed an hour, the Sensitive and her Circle sat in silence. The phonograph rasped out some anonymous music, somewhere behind Lestrade’s head. Madame Slopesski spent most of this time with her eyes shut, breathing deeply every sixth or seventh breath. The others sat with bowed heads, except Lestrade, who watched them all.

Then the Great Lady stretched out her arms. It was the signal to commence. Carlton leapt to his feet with noiseless experience and turned off the phonograph. As he returned he dimmed the oil lamp and it went out. In the flickering firelight, Lestrade felt the hairs on his neck stand a little shamefacedly on end. He hoped he hadn’t visibly jumped when he felt the two old ladies, one on each side of him, grab his hands, their bony fingers sliding into position until fingertips touched.

‘Is anybody there?’ Madame Slopesski intoned.

Nothing.

Lestrade watched every face in the flickering light. They all had their eyes shut, except himself and Podmore, who was carefully watching the medium.

‘Aaaaggh,’ Madame Slopesski cried out in a harsh guttural scream. Lestrade felt fingers tighten on his own. Madame Slopesski recovered her composure. ‘Is it you, Isaac? Are you among us?’

Nothing.

A long silence followed. No one moved. Madame Slopesski occasionally murmured, sighed, arched her neck. Podmore gave nothing away. Lestrade was watching the others. Was it one of them? Was it Isaac Prendergast who was the real target? And had all the others been mere blinds? That was the theory he had put to Forbes the night of the Police Ball. The last time he had seen Forbes alive. Had Forbes followed up that line of enquiry? Had he been lucky where Lestrade had not? And was it that luck that had killed him?

‘Isaac.’

A thump. Then another. The table shook and rattled. There were gasps from those present except Podmore and the medium.

‘Knock once for yes, Isaac.’ Madame Slopesski was swaying slowly from side to side. ‘Twice for no. Are you near?’

A single thump. Lestrade tried to tune his ears to catch the direction of the sound. His detective’s training had taught him to be suspicious of all this. It was trickery, all right, but how was it done? He could not free his hands or break the circle and he could not see beyond the heads and shoulders of the members hunched around the table.

‘Are you happy?’

A double thump and then several more, agitated, malevolent. The chandelier tinkled and rang, sending sparks of reflected light shooting over ceiling and walls.

‘Have you a message?’

Yes, said the thump.

‘Speak through me,’ wailed Madame Slopesski, swaying now more violently.

Another long silence.

‘Hypocrites!’ It was Madame Slopesski’s lips that were moving, but it was not her voice. ‘Isaac,’ whispered the old lady on Lestrade’s left. ‘That’s Isaac’s voice.’

‘All of you, hypocrites. You left me. Deserted me. Where were you when I needed you?’

‘Oh, Isaac,’ sobbed another lady, ‘we didn’t like to disturb you. We know how you hated to be called upon.’

‘Quiet, Esmerelda,’ snapped Carlton. ‘We’ll lose him.’

Silence again.

‘Mr Podmore?’ Carlton turned to the
eminence grise
for advice. Madame Slopesski remained motionless, rigid in her chair. Podmore leaned forward without breaking the circle.

‘Isaac,’ he whispered. ‘Is it warm, where you are?’

Nothing.

‘Is it dry?’

Nothing.

‘Are you cold?’

A thump.

‘We’ve lost him,’ hissed Carlton.

‘Not yet,’ Podmore answered. ‘Isaac.’

Another silence.

‘Is your murderer here?’

A single thump, followed by violent shaking of the table. The fire spat and crackled.

‘Who is it?’ It was Lestrade’s voice, to his surprise as much as to everyone else’s.

A deep guttural roar came from somewhere within Madame Slopesski. She stood up, hands outstretched. ‘Beware,’ she growled in Isaac’s voice, pointing to Lestrade. ‘Beware, you will join us before long. Beware.’

She slumped back in her chair. Lestrade’s eyes flashed from side to side. Everyone was looking at him. Except Podmore, who was smiling to himself and looking at Madame Slopesski.

Hasdrubal Carlton re-lit the oil lamp and the Circle broke up. ‘I believe this is all we shall have tonight,’ he said.

Podmore took the limp wrist of the medium and checked the pulse. ‘I think it would be unwise to ask Madame Slopesski for more,’ was his verdict.

The Circle generally agreed that voice manifestation was enough for one evening. Madame Slopesski’s speciality was ectoplasm, but all present, except Lestrade, knew that such physical manifestation was rare and that conditions had to be just so. The ladies in the Circle fussed around Madame Slopesski who began to revive. Some of the others began to make leaving noises. It was Lestrade who stopped them.

‘May I remind you, ladies and gentlemen, that Madame Slopesski – or was it Isaac Prendergast? – told us that a murderer was present. I am afraid I must detain you for a while.’

‘But you can’t believe that one of us …’ Carlton began.

‘It’s not a matter of what I believe,’ Lestrade interrupted him. ‘It is not my belief that is at stake here, but yours. If Madame Slopesski is wrong, then either she is a fake – or your whole spiritualist movement is.’

There were cries of indignation at this, but Lestrade had his suspects in a cleft stick. ‘Mr Carlton, may I use your drawing room for the purpose of my interrogations?’

Grudgingly, mine host agreed. Lestrade began with Carlton himself, to give Madame Slopesski a chance to recover. He was aware of the danger of leaving other members of the Circle together in an adjacent room, with a perfect opportunity to concoct and perfect a story. But without constables and without a telephone, he really had no choice.

‘How long have you known the deceased?’

‘We of the spiritualist persuasion …’

‘… do not use the word “deceased”. Yes, I know,’ Lestrade chimed in. ‘All the same, Mr Carlton, I am conducting a murder investigation and would be grateful for an answer.’

‘About five years. I am not a Kentishman myself, Inspector. I was until lately in Her Britannic Majesty’s Civil Service in India.’

‘Hence the servant – the Lascar?’

‘Jat, actually. Jemadar Karim Khan. Late of the Viceroy’s Bodyguard. A capital fellow, Lestrade.’

‘These fellows have some interesting ways of despatching their victims, I’ve been told.’

Carlton laughed. ‘I see your reasoning, Inspector. I am supposed to have sent Karim Khan to do the evil deed, thereby giving myself a suitable alibi.’

‘The thought had crossed my mind.’

‘May I remind you, sir, that you are a guest in my house? The audacity of it!’

‘Murder is an audacious enterprise, Mr Carlton. Although this particular murder wasn’t. It can’t have been difficult to overpower a weak old man.’

‘Weak? Inspector, I don’t know why you have been talking to, but Prendergast was far from that. I’ll grant you, he must have been seventy, but he must also have weighed over twenty stone.’

Lestrade found it genuinely difficult to conceal his surprise. He had assumed that the emaciated corpse he had stumbled over at the mill was not appreciably lighter than the former living frame. Then
Struwwelpeter
came back ominously to his mind –

‘Yes, Inspector, your deceased was obese – and powerful with it. He would not have gone easily.’

‘Did you like him?’

‘God, no. No one did. I think it’s probably true to say that the whole Circle hated him. He was an almost total recluse, especially of late. The only time he ventured out was to attend our meetings, and then grudgingly.’

‘So why did he come?’ probed Lestrade.

‘He believed, Inspector.’ To Carlton that was reason enough.

‘When did you last see him?’

‘It must have been three, no four, months ago.’

‘And then he stopped coming.’

Carlton nodded.

‘Why didn’t you – one of you – check on him? After all, he was seventy.’

‘I’m sixty-three myself, Inspector. Anyway, you don’t bother a testy old gentleman like Isaac Prendergast. He hated callers. I’ve heard he put buckshot into the Vicar’s breeches once. Vicar never admitted it, of course, but his progress to the pulpit each Sunday is painfully slow.’

‘You attend church, Mr Carlton?’

‘Why, certainly, Inspector. And I am not, as you are probably thinking – what is the phrase – “Hedging my bets”. I am simply a Christian spiritualist. There is no dichotomy here.’

Lestrade thought he had better change tack before the dialogue got beyond him.

‘When Madame Slopesski – Isaac – whoever that was in there,’ he said, ‘told us that the murderer was present, whom did you have in mind?’

‘Inspector, I have known all these good people for five years. I would stake my life on the fact that not one of them is capable of such a deed. When you share the shadows of the night with a fellow human being you get to know these things.’

Lestrade interrogated all of them and he had to admit that Hasdrubal Carlton was probably right. He spoke to six anxious people, deep believers all in what they were doing. He saw gullibility, sincerity, hope, but he didn’t see a murderer. But he still had two to go, to his mind the most likely of all – Podmore and the medium. It was by now well past midnight. As the genial host, Carlton, had asked if those who had been questioned might be allowed to go home. Lestrade saw no reason why not. He asked the dark, silent, Karim Khan, who understood but spoke no English, to show Madame Slopesski into the anteroom. In the event, it was Podmore who appeared and seeing Lestrade’s annoyance at having his instructions misunderstood, said, ‘I’m afraid she’s gone, Inspector.’

‘Gone?’ Lestrade was furious.

‘Yes, I didn’t think you’d be pleased, but, I beg you, don’t be hard on poor old Carlton. She is a very eminent lady in our field. If she pleaded tiredness due to her tour and the strain of tonight, how could he do other than to let her go?’

‘Go where, exactly?’

‘To her hotel. I believe she told me it was the Postgate, here in Dymchurch.’

Lestrade’s eyes narrowed. ‘I have been in this town for four days.’ The clock struck one, ‘Correction, five days,’ he went on, ‘and I have not seen an hotel called the Postgate here. In fact, I have not seen an hotel at all. Which is why I am staying at the pub. Did any of the Circle overhear this conversation?’

Podmore stretched out on the sofa in front of the dying fire, chuckling to himself. ‘No, Inspector, they did not. And suddenly, it’s all fallen into place.’

‘What has?’ Lestrade sensed that Podmore was playing games with him. He didn’t like it.

‘Have you attended a séance before, Inspector?’

‘I have not.’

‘Watch.’ Podmore sat bolt upright. ‘Put your hands on the table between us,’ he said. Lestrade did. Podmore turned out the oil lamps and resumed his seat opposite Lestrade. ‘I’m going to place my fingertips against yours. Can you feel them?’

‘Yes.’

‘Right. Now be still. Absolutely still.’

Silence.

Podmore broke it first. ‘Is anyone there?’

Silence.

Again, the repeated question.

Then, a thump, muffled, far off.

‘Isaac, is that you?’

A louder thump.

Lestrade’s heart was racing.

‘Is your murderer here?’

A series of thumps, rocking the table.

‘You did that with your knee,’ Lestrade shouted.

‘Yes, that wasn’t very good, was it? Madame Slopesski was better.’

‘She was a fake?’

‘Please relight the lamps, Inspector. I haven’t finished my exposé yet.’ Lestrade did so and returned to his position. ‘You noticed how the thumps were soft, then loud?’

Lestrade nodded.

‘The soft thumps were done like this,’ Podmore produced them again. ‘I am merely pressing my toes against the soles of my boots. The harder knocks, as you guessed, are done with the knee. It is easier through skirts, of course,’ Lestrade wondered in passing if Podmore ever wore them, ‘and with the atmosphere so carefully created in the other room.’

‘So Carlton was in on it?’

Podmore chuckled. ‘What a marvellously quaint way you policemen have of putting things, Inspector. No, I don’t think he was. Like all other members of the Circle, he is a true adherent. Just like the hundreds I have met all over the country. It’s just part of the ritual which mediums insist on. The darkened room, the soft music. Oh yes, and the spitting fire.’ Podmore threw a handful of something into the dying flames. They crackled into life. ‘Salt,’ he said to Lestrade’s surprised look. ‘Common table salt. Most mediums carry it in a purse attached to their wrists.’

‘But the circle of fingers was unbroken,’ said Lestrade.

‘Indeed so,’ Podmore smiled. ‘As you see.’

Lestrade could not believe it. Podmore appeared to have three hands.

‘This one is wax,’ said the ghost-hunter. ‘Most mediums are essentially conjurors. They cheat people as surely as your – what’s the phrase – confidence tricksters do. Most of them in fact are just that – frauds who dupe innocents for money or the limelight. I am looking for the one who is not. For the one who is genuine.’