The Seance (38 page)

Then came the sound of hurrying feet from the library. A shaft of light spilled across the floor; the connecting door flew open and St John Vine, lantern in hand, flung himself at the armour and wrenched at the sword. The plates sprang open, the beam of the lantern steadied, and we saw that there was nobody within.

The others pressed forward; I remained in my chair, not trusting myself to stand. More lights were lit; St John Vine was pacing back and forth in front of the armour, wringing his hands and saying, ‘I warned him, I warned him.’ Then he turned towards me and he seemed to rally.

‘There is still a chance. Vernon made me promise that if this should
happen, we would try to summon him. We must try it, at least; Miss Langton, if you will form a circle with these gentlemen, I shall operate the influence machine. He has given up his life to bring us proof; we must not fail him.’

I tried to speak, but could not. Edwin assisted me to rise whilst the others rearranged the chairs. St John Vine, his face deathly pale, held the lantern to guide them; all of the witnesses looked shaken and fearful, excepting Dr Davenant, whose expression was quite inscrutable. Before I had fully grasped what was happening, I found myself seated, with Edwin on my right and Professor Charnell on my left. I had my back to the fireplace, so that I could see the armour, whereas Edwin and Professor Fortesque could not.

St John Vine moved away down the room, leaving us in near-darkness. He closed the front of the armour and extinguished all of the other lights, except for the four candles in the candelabra, which he returned to its shelf.

‘Join hands,’ he said hoarsely, ‘and concentrate all of your attention upon Vernon. Pray, if you are minded to; anything that may help to bring him back.’ He passed through the door into the library and closed it behind him.

Edwin’s hand was dry, and icy cold; Professor Charnell’s felt like damp parchment. On the other side of the circle, I could see the glitter of Dr Davenant’s eyes and the faint gleam of candlelight on his forehead; it was too dark to make out anything more. I was near fainting, and numb with shock, yet I could feel the vibration – was it only the trembling of our hands? – gathering in the circle.

Then all four candles flickered and went out, and we were plunged once more into impenetrable darkness. Someone – it sounded like Professor Fortesque – was gabbling the Lord’s Prayer. He had reached ‘deliver us from evil’ when a faint glimmer appeared in the vicinity of the armour, a misty pillar of light which hovered for a moment in the void and then opened, with a movement like the unfurling of wings, into
a shimmering figure that detached itself from the body of the armour – now dimly visible in the glow – and glided towards us. It had no face, no form, only a veil of light floating over emptiness. I could not move, could not breathe.

I heard the sound of the library door opening, and footsteps approaching. The apparition shimmered to a halt.

‘Vernon!’ cried St John Vine from the darkness. ‘Will you speak to us?’

‘I may ... not stay’ – the voice, though faint and indistinct, was recognisably Vernon Raphael’s – ‘but will you not ... shake hands . . .’ – growing fainter with each word – ‘for friendship’s sake?’

The footsteps came closer; the dim outline of a man passed between me and the apparition. Light swirled; a glowing arm appeared, but there was no hand, only an empty sleeve, and when St John Vine tried to grasp the arm, his own hand passed straight through it! With a cry of despair, he flung both arms around the apparition. For an instant, man and spirit were united; then darkness engulfed them, and I knew no more.

I came to my senses with the taste of brandy on my lips, and a lantern shining into my eyes. Coals were crackling in a grate nearby. I was lying, I realised, where I had fallen on the gallery floor, but with a cushion beneath my head.
I have had a terrible dream
, I thought, turning my head away from the glare. Edwin was kneeling beside me, with Vernon Raphael peering over his shoulder.

‘Miss Langton, I owe you the most abject apology; I am truly very sorry. I should never have subjected you to such an ordeal.’

‘Indeed not,’ said Edwin angrily. ‘If I had had any notion of what you were playing at, Raphael, I should never have allowed ... that is to say ...’ He broke off, embarrassed, and offered me another sip of brandy.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said to Vernon Raphael. ‘Did you mesmerise me? Did I dream the lightning?’

‘No, Miss Langton,’ he replied. ‘Everything happened exactly as you perceived – only it was an illusion, a demonstration if you like, engineered by Vine and myself. I had planned to explain it all afterwards, but you must rest now; I am really very sorry indeed.’

‘No,’ I said, becoming conscious of my disarray. ‘I am quite recovered, and could not possibly sleep without hearing your explanation.’ Lights were burning along the walls, but the floor where I was lying was still almost in darkness. I took Edwin’s arm and rose unsteadily to my feet.

‘Well, if you are quite sure,’ said Vernon Raphael with obvious relief.

‘Where are the others?’ I asked.

‘In the library,’ said Edwin. ‘I thought you might prefer ...’

Grateful for his tact, and for the darkness of the gallery, I straightened my hair and brushed the dust from my cloak while Vernon Raphael went to fetch the rest of the party.

‘Truly it is said, that he who attends a séance in the medium’s house is asking to be deceived.’

Vernon Raphael was standing beside the armour, with the rest of us gathered in a semicircle nearby.

‘When I first heard of this cabinet – as, in effect, it is – I suspected it might have some further trick to it.’

He grasped the hilt of the sword – I was not the only member of the party to recoil when the plates sprang open – while St John Vine, who was standing off to one side, played the beam of his lantern over the armour.

‘Though the back of the armour appears absolutely solid, it too is hinged. The trick is that it can only be opened when the front is closed, and only if this catch’ – indicating the pommel of the sword beneath the mailed fist – ‘is in the correct position. Thus ...’

He stepped inside once more, and closed the plates. St John Vine moved closer, and seemed to stumble; the beam of the lantern flashed across our faces.

‘You see,’ said Vernon Raphael, appearing from behind the armour, ‘it needs only a momentary distraction. And if, of course, the lights should mysteriously fail—’ St John Vine strode the few paces to the library door and disappeared within. A few seconds later, the flames of the candelabra were again extinguished as if an invisible hand had snuffed them out.

‘A standard magician’s – or spirit medium’s – property,’ said Vernon Raphael, ‘done with indiarubber tubing. The sinister glow from the helmet was equally simple: it needed only a dark lantern, concealed beneath my cloak, and a suitable piece of stained glass; your imaginations did the rest.’

‘But the lightning?’ said Edwin. ‘How could you possibly ...?’

‘Powdered magnesium, my dear fellow; all the rage with photographers, though not in quite such quantities, accompanied by a charge of black powder, and fired by a long fuse from the library window. We were lucky the chimneys smoked so badly, or you might have smelt the fumes. And while you were still dazzled . . .’ He moved a couple of paces from the armour, one hand trailing along the wall, to the corner where the massive fireplace projected into the room, and slipped behind a mouldering tapestry which hung almost to the floor. There was a faint creak of hinges; St John Vine strode across from the doorway of the library, where he had been watching, and drew aside the hanging, to reveal only a blank expanse of panelling. He rapped three times on the wall; a narrow section slid open, and Vernon Raphael stepped out.

‘I was sure we would find something of the kind,’ he said, ‘though I should not care to spend any length of time cooped up in there. That masonry is several feet thick.’

‘Why did you not enlist my help?’ said Edwin, sounding nettled.

‘Because, my dear fellow, we wanted you to partake of the illusion.
And now, Miss Langton and gentlemen, if you would care to resume your seats, I shall give you my explanation of the Wraxford Mystery before we adjourn for supper.’

Still dazed by everything I had seen and heard, I was happy to return to the warmth of the fire. My companions seemed equally subdued, whether by the force of Vernon Raphael’s personality, or the sombre atmosphere of the gallery, I could not tell.

‘The real mystery, in my opinion, is the death of Cornelius, rather than Magnus, Wraxford. It is plain, reading between the lines of John Montague’s narrative, which Miss Langton has kindly allowed me to see, that Magnus Wraxford murdered his uncle; the question is: how?’

‘Forgive me,’ said Dr Davenant, ‘but can you explain, to those of us who have not seen this narrative, how you arrived at this very remarkable conclusion?’

‘By all means,’ said Vernon Raphael, and proceeded to summarise the relevant passages, principally Magnus’s discovery of the secret of the armour, as Magnus himself had related it on that first afternoon in John Montague’s office.

‘The effect of that interview,’ he continued, ‘was to convince John Montague that his client was a practising alchemist, and a dangerous lunatic to boot – to prepare him, in other words, for Cornelius’s imminent decease by occult means, just as he was about to exhaust the last of the estate’s capital. But John Montague had never met Cornelius, and knew him only by his reputation as a sinister recluse. He was therefore predisposed to believe the tale that Magnus spun for him – including Cornelius’s supposed hostility to his nephew and sole heir.

‘Yet in the library next door, you will find not a single alchemical work. Nor, for that matter, will you find a copy of Sir William Snow’s treatise on thunderstorms, or any other work on that subject. John Montague, when he came here in response to Drayton’s summons, found a quantity of burned paper in the study fireplace. But books do not burn
easily; you could not possibly dispose of an entire collection that way. I put it to you that there never was such a collection; that however Cornelius passed his time, it had nothing to do with alchemy. I say further that the manuscript of Trithemius never existed, except for the fragment Magnus contrived for John Montague’s benefit; and that the story Magnus told his uncle was a very different one.

‘That Cornelius Wraxford was indeed morbidly afraid of death we have no reason to doubt, if only because Magnus’s scheme could not have worked if he hadn’t been. Remember too that Magnus Wraxford was a man of great persuasive powers, an accomplished mesmerist – and possessed, I believe, of a genius for improvisation. And suppose now that he came to his uncle and said something along these lines: “I have just learned of a wonderful new invention, with extraordinary powers of prolonging life, based upon the work of the great Professor Faraday; and it has the added benefit of affording you absolute safety during a thunderstorm. With your permission I shall adapt the armour which, by a lucky chance, is ideal for the purpose.” One of the expert witnesses at the inquest argued, as you may recall, that the armour would function as a Faraday cage, with the entire charge passing around the outside, leaving the occupant unharmed. The coroner scoffed at the idea, but to an old and fearful man, whose only contact with the outside world was through his nephew, it could have been made to sound very plausible indeed.

‘Magnus had, with his uncle’s active co-operation, constructed a seeming death-trap, and one which fitted perfectly with the Hall’s sinister reputation. The death of young Felix Wraxford in 1795, and the subsequent disappearance of Thomas in 1821 (I assume that both were accidents, but we shall never know) were woven into the history he was creating, no doubt with an eye to its usefulness once the Hall was his.