The Angel of Highgate

12 SÉANCE IN THE DARK

Five figures sat around a circular table covered in a white tablecloth embroidered with floral patterns. At the center of the table, a softly hissing lantern, turned down low, provided the only source of light apart from the ruddy glow of coals in the fireplace. From their gilded frames, the portraits of the Wakefield family — a grandfather with white hair and a long white beard, a matronly woman wrapped in a fox stole, a young girl of three in pigtails — looked down upon the séance with luminous eyes that seemed to move in the flickering light.

Thraxton was seated between Mister Wakefield, a thin, ascetic man with white hair; to his left, and Constance Pennethorne to his right. Algernon sat to the right of Constance, while to his right sat Mrs. Wakefield, whose emaciation did not bode well for her cooking abilities. As is often the case with couples married so long, the two more closely resembled brother and sister than husband and wife.

“Now, if the sitters would kindly take hold of each other’s hands,” said Mister Wakefield in his broad Yorkshire accent. Grateful of the excuse for the intimacy of touch, Thraxton reached for Constance’s hand. She flashed him a polite smile, but then turned her attention to Algernon. As she took his hand in hers she gave it a slight squeeze that immediately brought Algernon’s surprised eyes up to meet hers. Thraxton noticed the brief exchange and felt a twinge of jealousy. Mister Wakefield took hold of Thraxton’s left hand.

“My good lady wife’s hands must remain free,” Mister Wakefield announced, “so she may write upon the pad.”

“We are to hear no rappings, then?” Thraxton asked. “Witness no ghostly manifestations?”

Mister Wakefield shifted a little in his chair and cleared his throat, clearly agitated by the question. “No, Lord Thraxton. My wife and I leave such theatrics to the frauds and music hall conjurers. We of the Spiritualist Church are interested only in sober communication with the spirits of the departed. What we practice is called automatic writing. My wife, who acts as medium, enters a trance, whereupon we may put any questions we like — so long as they are serious — to the spiritual presences hovering around us. They will guide my wife’s hand as it moves across the paper.”

“Ah, quite,” Thraxton said, frowning. He, of course, had been hoping for knocks and table rapping, for disembodied voices and levitating trumpets, even to see milky white ectoplasm streaming from the mouth, nostrils and sundry other orifices of Mrs. Wakefield. In short, all the sensational manifestations of the séances he had read about in the London Standard. Instead he would have to be content with an old woman scrawling on a notepad with a pencil. And if he wasn’t very much mistaken, the affections of Constance Pennethorne seemed to be taking a turn toward Algernon instead of himself. The evening was proving to be a crashing disappointment.

Mister Wakefield begged for silence while his wife steeled her mind for contact with the Other Side. All attention remained fixed upon Mrs. Wakefield as she sat with her eyes closed, lids trembling, then suddenly slumped in the chair, head lolling forward so that her chin rested upon her chest. For a while the only sound in the room was her slow, steady breathing.

Wonderful, Thraxton thought to himself. The old crone’s fallen asleep.

Everyone jumped as Mrs. Wakefield gasped and stiffened. A sudden chill descended upon the room. Thraxton sensed it and the hair at the back of his neck bristled. Algernon, ever the skeptical scientist, wrote it off as nothing more than a draft from the fireplace.

In a trembling voice, Mrs. Wakefield asked the spirit presences hovering near if they bore a message for one of her sitters. Her right hand began to shake with uncontrollable tremors, and then suddenly shot across the paper, scribbling down words at an unbelievable rate. Interspersed with the words, written in a free-flowing cursive script of excellent penmanship, were strange icons and hieratic symbols, the meaning of which Thraxton could not even guess at. The scribbling went on for seven or eight lines and then stopped. Mrs. Wakefield’s hand flew back to the corner of the pad and sat there quivering, as if waiting for another message to come through.

Mister Wakefield leant over from his seat and read aloud what was written on the pad. “My dearest Constance—”

Constance drew in a shuddering breath at the mention of her name, her eyes filling with tears. Mister Wakefield continued reading.

“How I miss you, my darling. How I miss our quiet evenings together, the sound of your voice, and your sweet singing. But despair not, for time on this side passes quickly. Soon we will be reunited in eternal bliss.”

“But what if Constance were to remarry?” Algernon blurted the question aloud before he could check himself. All eyes, save Mrs. Wakefield’s, immediately turned upon him. He cleared his throat and squirmed in his chair. But to his surprise, Constance squeezed his hand in reassurance and turned to Mrs. Wakefield. “Yes,” she said. “I should like to ask my husband that very question. What if I were to remarry?”

Mrs. Wakefield drew in a deep breath. Her hand quivered, then shot across the page. Words flowed for several lines and then stopped. Like an automaton, her arm flew back to its resting place.

“We are all one in the spirit world,” Mister Wakefield read aloud. “There is no jealousy here. Only love. Endless compassion. If you wish to remarry, do so. With my blessing.”

Constance breathed an audible sigh of relief. She turned at once to Algernon and smiled broadly.

Watching how much attention Constance was paying to Algernon, Thraxton sulked.

“Lord Thraxton?” Mister Wakefield addressed him. “Do you have a question to put to the spirits? A loved one you wish to speak with?”

Thraxton thought immediately of his mother. But what would he say? What could he ask? And after all these years? For some reason the idea terrified him. There was too much to say. Too much to be answered in a few scribbled lines. “No,” he fought for the right words. “I mean yes, there is a loved one I wish to speak with, but… but not now. I should need to prepare myself first.”

“I understand,” Mister Wakefield said. “It is no trivial thing to open one’s heart to a love long thought to have been lost.” He turned his eyes to Algernon. “What about you, Mister Hyde-Davies? Do you have a question for the spirits? A deceased loved one you wish to converse with?”

During the exchange with Constance, Algernon had toyed with exposing the fraud by asking to speak with his father, who was still very much alive. But having just witnessed how much comfort Constance took from these exchanges, he decided against causing her any pain. He shook his head.

“Wait,” Thraxton interjected. “Did you say I might ask any question of the spirits?”

“Yes, Lord Thraxton. The spirits see everything in our world, past, present, and future.”

“Very well, then. I wonder if the spirits could tell me the name of my inamorata, the woman I might marry.”

All eyes returned to Mrs. Wakefield. She sat slumped in her chair, trance-bound, her mind presumably floating somewhere above the séance table as it communed with the ghostly presences hovering there. As they watched, a tremor rippled across the features of her face that was quite disturbing to see. Her right hand resumed its quaking, then shot across the page, this time not writing but sketching geometrical shapes: a triangle mounted atop a rectangle, and then a curving shape coming out of the triangle, and several ovate circles attached to it. Her hand flew back to the center of the rectangle and wrote something, a single word in large block letters. Having finished, Mrs. Wakefield’s hand jerked back to its resting point.

“I, I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” said Mister Wakefield upon examining the pad of paper. “In all our séances, I’ve never…” He trailed off, stymied. “I, I’m afraid I simply don’t know what to make of this.”

He turned the pad around and pushed it across the table toward Thraxton. On the pad was a simple, almost child-like drawing of a rectangular building topped by a triangular pitched roof. At the front of the building were two double doors. Above the doors written in Roman script, as if chiseled there, was the word ELYSIUM. Strangest of all, growing out of a hole in the roof was a huge flower with a slender stem and curving, orchid-like petals.

When Thraxton looked at the drawing, an involuntary shudder passed through the core of his being.

“Elysium,” Constance said, reading the word aloud. “What does that mean?”

Thraxton was familiar with the term. “In Greek mythology, Elysium is the abode assigned to the blessed after death,” he explained. “It is the place where the dead live in a state of ideal happiness.”

“But what is this building supposed to be?” Constance asked.

Thraxton lifted the pad and turned it so that both Constance and Algernon could see the rough sketch of a small rectangular building topped by a pitched roof.

“Is it not obvious?” he asked. “It is a tomb.”