The Death Collector

Chapter 10

The Atlantian Club was only ten minutes’ brisk walk from the British Museum. Sir William Protheroe sat alone in the oak-panelled dining room, thinking carefully through the events and discoveries of the evening. No one joined him for dinner — the people who knew him well enough could also see that he was deep in contemplation. They knew better than to disturb him.

By the time he had finished dinner, Protheroe had already forgotten what he had eaten. He thanked Vespers the chief steward of the club, nodded in greeting to Sir Henry Walthamstow and a few other acquaintances, and made his way back through the chill of the night to the Museum.

He had several ideas about the body, and was ready to start putting them to the test. Protheroe had sent Berry home before he himself headed off to the club for dinner, so the few rooms that constituted the Department of Unclassified Artefacts were dark and empty. He lit the lamps in the main specimen room. Their flames flickered in the glass doors of cabinets and cases, dancing across artefacts that should not, according to science, exist.

But the workbench was bare. The body of Albert Wilkes, and the bones that Protheroe had removed for examination, were gone.

‘Is there anybody there?’ The room was almost totally dark and Madame Sophia’s voice was a ghostly wail that echoed in the gloom.

George had decided that the seance was a waste of time as soon as Madame Sophia greeted ‘Mr and Mrs Smith’ at the door and bustled them into her parlour. She gave almost every impression of being a scatty, eccentric lady of a certain age. But her sharp eyes gave her away. George could almost feel himself being sized up by the woman. If she had licked her lips in anticipation, it would not have surprised him.

Liz on the other hand seemed to be completely taken in. She sat carefully and attentively at the large round table in the middle of the cluttered parlour and seemed to hang on Madame Sophia’s every word.

There were six of them in all. Madame Sophia’s husband was a small man with a sharp nose on which was perched a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. He was forever rubbing his hands together and had a permanent stoop that George thought made him look like a fictional money-lender. Madame Sophia introduced him as ‘my husband Gerald’.

Mr and Mrs Paterson made up the six. Mrs Paterson was a small, timid, white-haired woman, while Mr Paterson was a huge, broad-shouldered man who was so fat he had to sit well back from the table. His hair was as black as his wife’s was white, and slicked across the top of his head with oil.

‘I do hope the spirits will be kind to us tonight,’ Mrs Paterson said as husband Gerald turned down the lights. Her voice was shrill, like a bird pecking for a worm. Gerald was preoccupied with something on the dresser at the back of the room.

‘Oh so do I,’ Liz said, sounding eager and excited. ‘It’s all so enthralling.’

George said nothing. In the near-darkness, he was aware of Mrs Paterson’s fingers coldly meeting his own as they spread their hands across the table. If they hadn’t been twitching, he might have imagined he was touching a corpse. On his other side, Liz’s fingers were warm and comforting.

‘Is there anybody there?’ Madame Sophia repeated.

George looked round, trying to see if everyone else was attentive. Something moved at the corner of his vision, a slight ripple of light in the emptiness. For a moment his heart flickered — a spirit? He stared, trying to make it out.

A bell rang. The sudden jangling made Mrs Paterson’s hand leap away from George’s in surprise. ‘They are here!’ she hissed. ‘The bell!’

‘What bell?’ George asked, despite himself. He could see now that the dim light from one of the gas lamps had caught on a thread as it moved. A pale, thin thread that stretched across the back of the room.

‘On the dresser,’ Madame Sophia explained. ‘The spirits have taken to ringing the bell when they are preparing to make themselves known to us.’

George grinned in the dark. ‘How very convenient for us,’ he said. The thread he had glimpsed stretched to the dresser, and he would be willing to bet it was attached to the bell. But before he could decide whether or how to tell Liz, he felt her hand shift too.

‘Look!’ she gasped. Liz had raised her arm, dark silhouette pointing across the room towards the door. ‘A spirit,’ she breathed. ‘At the door.’

George shifted slightly to see the door. And sure enough, a pale, ghostly face was staring back at him.

‘Don’t look,’ Husband Gerald whispered loudly. ‘They don’t like you to stare.’

‘And please don’t break the circle,’ Madame Sophia said. ‘That could be very dangerous indeed.’

‘Of course,’ Liz said, returning her hand to its position next to George’s. He thought he could detect a hint of amusement in her tone, and as if to tell him he was right, her fingers tapped the back of his hand.

‘Yes,’ Madame Sophia was saying. ‘Yes, I can hear you … You wish to speak to someone here?’ Her voice had taken on an ethereal, sing-song quality. The bell rang again. ‘You do!’ Sophia exclaimed in delight. ‘And your name is … Edward.’

‘Edward?’ Liz’s voice was shaking with emotion. ‘Not Edward?’

‘You know an Edward? Someone who has passed over?’ Husband Gerald asked. There was a glimmer of satisfaction in his voice.

‘Why, no,’ Liz said. ‘It just sounds such a nice name. For someone who is dead.’

George stifled a laugh. ‘I don’t know any Edward either,’ he said helpfully.

‘It’s a small world,’ Liz told him in apparent seriousness.

‘No wait,’ Sophia interrupted quickly. ‘Edward is his spirit name. Here on Earth he would have been known as …’ She hesitated, for all the world as if listening to a voice that George and the others could not hear. ‘As …’ she added impatiently after a few moments. ‘It isn’t,’ Mrs Paterson said in a squeak. ‘I mean, it couldn’t be — could it?’ She gave a table-jolting sigh. ‘Not little Andrew?’

‘Why yes.’ Sophia seemed surprised. ‘That is what he says his name was. Andrew. There is another name …’ She made no effort to give it.

‘Griffiths,’ Liz said with conviction.

‘Andrew Griffiths,’ Sophia agreed. Then she realised that it was Liz who had spoken. ‘Er, is not the name,’ she finished.

‘Andrew Jones?’ George suggested.

‘Do we all have to guess?’ Mr Paterson asked. He sounded bored.

‘My brother,’ Mrs Paterson explained with an oblivious sob. ‘He … passed over when we were children.’

‘It is a child,’ Madame Sophia confirmed, as if this was something that she had simply forgotten to mention in all the excitement.

‘We were hoping for an Albert,’ Liz said sternly.

George sensed she had had enough of this. ‘Or a Percy,’ he added, trying to sound equally stern.

‘The spirits are not at our beck and call,’ Husband Gerald reprimanded them.

‘Oh, aren’t they?’ Liz murmured, just loud enough for George to hear. Then a moment later: ‘Look!’ she gasped.

Their eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness now, and everyone looked where Liz pointed. They all saw a white shape, formless and ethereal, hanging in the air above the table. It shimmered and twisted as if trying to become real, dancing across the room towards the dresser. It disappeared into the darkness and the bell gave a startled jangle.

Mrs Paterson clapped her hands together in delight. ‘A ghost. Oh, do say I have seen one of the spirits.’

But Madame Sophia did not answer. She was staring open-mouthed across at the dresser. ‘I don’t …’ she muttered. ‘I never …’ She turned white-faced towards Husband Gerald. But he too seemed pale and shocked.

‘Is that the end?’ Mr Paterson demanded. ‘Show over, is it? Can we go home now?’

George was about to say that he thought they probably could. But then, the table levitated. He was not actually aware of it happening until Liz gave a startled gasp. ‘The table,’ she cried out. ‘It’s moving. Can’t you feel it?’

Her eyes were wide and pale in the gloom as she looked round at them. ‘There it goes again. Oh, my goodness — it’s rising up. You must be able to feel it.’

George could indeed. And by the ashen expressions on the dimly lit faces of everyone else so could they.

‘You can tell it’s moving, can’t you, Mr Smith, dear,’ Liz said to George. He nodded dumbly, really nervous for the first time since they had sat down. But despite her apparent anxiety, she winked at George. ‘Oh my goodness,’ she said as she did so. ‘Here it goes again.’

The new delivery boy was charming, if rather scruffy, Mrs White decided. She was surprised he had been sent out so late, but the lad insisted that this was his last delivery of the day and he would be off home soon. But could he beg a quick cup of tea before he went — just to keep out the cold of the night?

Mrs White was the cook, not a maid, so she wasn’t in the habit of making tea for delivery boys. But he seemed so cold and exhausted that she made an exception. And after all, he had come out late in the night to her kitchen. He was a chatty boy. Well, he didn’t talk an awful lot, but he was interested.

He told Mrs White that he had heard that the house was used for seances and the like. ‘Are you a believer in the afterlife and all that?’ he asked her.

So she told him. Yes, she thought there was probably something in it. So many people thought so, after all. Not that you would want to come here to find proof, she told him.

‘Oh?’ He seemed surprised.

Mrs White shook her head. ‘Madame Sophia, she calls herself. Sophie Southgate’s her real name, but she never uses that. No, nothing’s real here.’

‘What do you mean?’

But Mrs White refused to be drawn. ‘It’s not my place to say, young man. More than my job’s worth.’

‘That’s all right,’ the boy assured her. He finished his drink. ‘Thanks for the tea.’

The boy handed her his cup, and Mrs White took it over to the sink. When she turned back, the boy was gone. Funny, she thought — she had not heard the outside door. He was a strange one, working all hours, demanding tea, then just slipping away like that. Still, it was kind of him to bring the …

Mrs White frowned. What was it the boy had delivered? For the life of her she could not remember. She blew out a long breath. It had been a tiring day. She locked the outside door before making her way up to the servants quarters, and bed.

Liz was having fun. She had realised almost at once, just as she assumed George had, that it was all a fake. At first she had considered going along with it, appearing to be impressed, then making as early an escape as possible. But soon she decided that if she was wasting her time she might as well enjoy herself while she did it.

Husband Gerald was sitting next to her, and Liz could see his leg jerk every time the bell rang. It did not require much imagination to work out that there was — literally — a connection. The face painted on the door had provoked a quick frisson. But again, she knew all about luminous paint from the theatre.

Confusing and misleading Madame Sophia was almost too easy, so Liz tried to think what else she could do to liven up the proceedings. It was a challenge, to see if she could beat Madame Sophia and Husband Gerald at their own game — could convince them that they were experiencing genuine spiritual moments through the simplest of tricks. Throwing her handkerchief across the room with the same movement as pointing had worked well. The lacy material seemed almost to hang in the air before landing on the dresser and — with a stroke of good fortune — knocking the bell. But Husband Gerald had glared at her, evidently not convinced.

So she turned her attention to the table. It was not really levitating. She nudged and jiggled the heavy wooden table with her knees, just enough for the seance participants all to feel some slight movement. In the darkened room, their minds attuned to the possibility of mysterious happenings, Liz’s insistence that the table was levitating might be enough for their imaginations to do the rest.

It worked better than she had hoped. Even Husband Gerald gasped in surprise, and seemed to be trying to push the table back down — into the floor. George too seemed taken in, bless him. His eyes were wide with amazement. Mrs Paterson was shrieking with a mixture of delight and fear. Mr Paterson was grumbling as if bored with the whole thing, but Madame Sophia herself was rocking backwards and forwards and keening like a child at Christmas.

After a while they seemed to decide that the table had stopped moving and some semblance of order was restored. Husband Gerald suggested in a strained voice that perhaps they might try something else. He excused himself from the table for a moment, and turned up the lights. Liz guessed this was as much for his own peace of mind as anything.

Madame Sophia was also in something of a state, but in her case it was closer to euphoria. The notion that the spirits actually had visited her seance seemed almost too much for her, turning her into a bundle of nervous excitement and bubbling enthusiasm.

‘The glass, Gerald dear, the glass. And the cards. I shall do the cards.’

Gerald soon gave up trying to persuade her that perhaps they had entertained enough spirits for one night, and fetched a glass tumbler. This was placed upside-down in the middle of the table. Then Gerald, with help from everyone else, arranged a set of cards — a letter printed on each — in alphabetical order clockwise round the table.

‘Now,’ Madame Sophia said in a stage whisper, ‘who shall we contact?’

Liz glanced at George. This was obviously a complete waste of time, but George was watching with interest and enthusiasm. There was no way to tell him that she, Liz, had orchestrated much of what had happened while the rest was simple stage trickery.

‘Albert Wilkes,’ George said. ‘We want to make contact with a gentleman who recently departed this life named Albert Wilkes.’

Madame Sophia smiled confidently. ‘And so we shall,’ she said. ‘Do you have any small thing, some personal possession or other that I may use to focus my communications.’

Liz sighed. Probably she wanted it to glean any clues about the dead person. Perhaps, since George had nothing that had belonged to Wilkes, this would soon be over.

But to Liz’s surprise and horror, George had taken out his wallet. He passed the scrap of paper from Glick’s diary carefully across the table to Madame Sophia. She inspected it somewhat dismissively.

‘It’s worth a try,’ George mouthed to Liz. She sighed.

‘I suppose this will have to do,’ she decided, and set it down on the table in front of her, next to the letter ‘A’. ‘Fingers on the glass,’ she instructed. She kept one of her hands pressed down on the fragment of paper. Her eyelids fluttered.

‘Don’t be disappointed if we fail to make contact,’ Gerald warned.

‘We won’t,’ Liz assured him.

But her words were drowned out by Madame Sophia’s sudden shriek. ‘He is here,’ she exclaimed in surprise and delight. ‘Albert Wilkes. His spirit is still in the land of the living. He is with us now!’

In the laboratory at the back of a large house, Albert Wilkes sat up. His movement was stiff, his eyes were unseeing pearl-like marbles.

‘The vocal cords have atrophied,’ the man standing beside the workbench said. ‘But he should still be able to write.’

‘We got no sense out of him last time, sir,’ Blade observed. ‘That was why we sent him off to the Museum for the diaries. Except he ignored us and went home instead.’

The other man was nodding. ‘I am aware of the problems. But despite Sir William’s meddling, I am optimistic. Now that we have a little more time, the bones have been properly replaced, and while they are not actually his own they will more than suffice. The brain has been subjected to an improved form of electrical stimulation which I hope will this time have shocked it into some semblance at least of sense as well as life. I need sentience as well as instinct.’

‘Speak to us,’ Madame Sophia intoned. ‘You are troubled, I can sense that. Do you have a message for anyone here? For Mr Smith perhaps? Anything?’

Beneath her fingers, Liz felt the glass tumbler tremble. She looked round at the others seated at the table. They all seemed equally surprised. Then the glass began to move.

‘A pen, sir?’ Blade offered. He was unable to take his eyes off the dead man.

‘If you please. Of course,’ his master went on as Blade took a pen from the desk and dipped it in an inkwell, ‘despite my best efforts, the brain may be damaged beyond the point of repair.’

‘He has been dead rather a long time, sir.’

The lifeless fingers closed coldly on the pen, and Blade suppressed a shudder. He placed a sheet of paper on the workbench under the poised, dead hand.

Liz was as sure as she could be that it was not movement caused deliberately by anyone there. The glass quivered and shook like a struck tuning fork. It circled slowly, as if trying to make up its mind which letter it wanted.

‘Yes?’ Madame Sophia hissed excitedly. ‘Yes? Tell us, please. What is your message, you poor tortured soul?’

‘Now, Mr Wilkes,’ the man said gently, ‘you are quite aware of what I want to know. Be so good as to write it down would you?’

Nothing. No flicker of understanding or tremor of movement from the corpse.

‘Write it down!’ the man shouted with a ferocity that made the windows rattle. ‘Or would you rather Blade returned you to the ground?’

Slowly, deliberately, the pen stroked at the paper.

The glass paused, then trembled again. It moved directly across the table towards George, stopping by the card imprinted with the letter ‘O’. It hesitated only a moment, then it moved again. Not far, just a few letters clockwise round the table: ‘R’.

Wilkes’s fragile hand continued to move slowly over the paper. His dead eyes did not look down. Another letter was slowly inked on the page.

Next was ‘I’. Liz could almost feel the tension in the room. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath.

‘O R I,’ Gerald said quietly. ‘What can it mean … Origin?’

‘Hush,’ Madame Sophia said, surprisingly gently. The glass trembled again.

‘Thank you.’ The man’s breath misted the cold night air. It didn’t do to mix warmth with death.

Blade waited for Wilkes to finish. Then he took the sheet of paper. He swallowed dryly when he saw what was on it. He handed it to his employer without comment.

Next was ‘M’. Liz’s throat was dry. It was just a trick, she kept telling herself. But both Gerald and Madame Sophia seemed as caught up in it as anyone. Just a trick — surely it was just a trick.

The glass moved again, heading for another letter.

The man stared at the paper for several moments, breathing deeply as he struggled to keep control. Five uneven characters were scratched into the paper. Ragged and useless:

O R I M O

‘Another O,’ George said out loud.

The glass stopped. It wasn’t trembling any more. The strange life it had taken on seemed to have deserted it again.

As if to confirm this, Madame Sophia let out a long, deep sigh. ‘He has gone,’ she announced. ‘He has left us. The link is broken.’ She lifted her hand from the table and carefully passed the scrap of paper back to George. But despite the disappointment of contact being lost, she was smiling.

He crushed the paper into a ball and hurled it across the laboratory. The man was trembling with anger, but when he spoke his voice was cold and controlled.

‘Dead too long, it seems. There is something lingering, but not enough. I think, Mr Blade, we shall have to try a different approach.’ He snapped his fingers impatiently. ‘Paper and pen. Quickly, man.’

Blade hurried to oblige. He took the pen from Wilkes, dipped it in the ink again, and returned it to the dead man’s grasp.

‘Not for him, you dolt! Give it to me.’

‘I’m sorry, sir. I thought-’

‘You are not paid to think,’ Augustus Lorimore said, snatching the sheet of paper that Blade offered him. ‘Now leave me in peace for ten minutes. Then I will have a letter for you to deliver.’