Jonathan Barnes - The Somnambulist

“Ah, yes. Well, Mr. Skimpole’s arranged for us to attend another of her soirees tomorrow. Perhaps things will become clearer then.”

The Somnambulist drained his final glass of milk, gathered chalk and blackboard to him and, with ponderous dignity, pulled himself to his feet.

“See you tomorrow?” Moon called out hopefully. “For the seance?”

The Somnambulist loped grumpily away, heading for his suite. They had not shared a room since the theatre blaze — a hotel as exclusive as this seemed to draw the line at bunk beds.

In the morning, a gruff kind of rapprochement took place. The Somnambulist scrawled what might generously be construed as an apology, Moon plied him with further assurances and it was in the spirit of uneasy truce that they set off after lunch for Tooting Bec.

Madame Innocenti was waiting for them on the steps of her shabby house. “Gentlemen,” she said, all smiles. “So pleased you’ve come back to us.”

Moon bowed his head and said politely: “Mrs. Bagshaw.”

The woman froze and Moon saw a look of fear pass across her face, but she recovered her composure almost immediately and walked into the house as though nothing had happened. As they moved down the corridor and toward the seance room, Innocenti’s husband lurched from the shadows where he had obviously been eavesdropping, and shot them a look of pure animosity.

The seance took place exactly as before and Moon even recognized some of the same faces — Ellis Lister and the widow Erskine. With them were an elderly couple and a grim-faced, lugubrious man in mourning for his wife. In other words, the usual parade of misfits and delusionals desperate for their pain to be soothed away by the coos and sweet nothings of their hostess.

After half an hour or so of meaningless socializing, handshakes, introductions, tea and biscuits, the seance began in earnest, everything exactly the same as before — Madame Innocenti at the head of the table, the swift assumption of her Corcoran voice, those same nebulous, artfully worded missives from the spirit world. She turned first to Mrs. Erskine. “To whom do you wish to speak?” she asked, in the Spaniard’s familiarly punctilious tones.

“My boy,” Mrs. Erskine said, her voice weary and thin. “My little ‘un. Billy. Sixteen when he died.”

“Billy?” Corcoran whispered. “Billy? Is there a Billy Erskine amongst the spirits?”

Pause. Then, predictably: “Mother? Innocenti managed a passable impression of a young man’s voice, cracked and unsure of its register.

“Billy?” Mrs. Erskine asked, pain and hope intermingled in her voice. “Billy, is that you?”

“Mother! Why have you come to me now? I’ve been here so long. I’ve been waiting.”

Mrs. Erskine sobbed. “I’m sorry, Billy. Can you forgive me?”

“Will you join me soon? It’s warm here and soft. You’ll like it, Mother, I know you will.” His voice had acquired a plaintive, wheedling tone. “But what’s happened to you, Mother? You seem, so old.”

Erskine sobbed again and Madame Innocenti murmured: “Mother, I love you.”

This exchange continued for what felt like hours and Moon felt himself on the verge of nodding off into a light doze when he heard the mention of his own name.

“Mr. Moon?” It was Innocenti in her Corcoran persona.

“Senor,” Moon replied. “Such a pleasure to meet you again.”

“I wish I could say the same. Seven days to go and you haven’t done a damned thing.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“In little more than a week this city will be set ablaze and you’ve done nothing to stop it. The spirits are afraid, Mr. Moon. London is in great peril.”

“So people keep telling me.”

“Honeyman was a hook. You’ve taken the bait and you don’t even realize it. You’re being used.”

“Go on.”

“Underground.” Corcoran’s tone became more forceful. “Danger underground.”

“Danger?”

Madame Innocenti arched her back. Moon and the Somnambulist felt her hands begin to tremble violently, as though galvanized by some invisible force. “The death of the city approaches,” she chattered. “The poet dreams uneasy in his cot. The conspiracy moves against you. The sleeper wakes.”

Despite his skepticism, Moon found himself enthralled. “What do you mean?”

“Skimpole is a pawn. You are their target. And it is you who are to blame.”

Moon and I discussed Madame Innocenti’s warnings at length. Of course, they sounded every bit as recondite and oracular as one might expect but they were also astonishingly accurate on a number of key points. Moon argued for a time — trying more to convince himself than me, I fancy — that she might have obtained the majority of the details from Skimpole, Lister or someone of that ilk, but in the end we were forced to accept that Madame Innocenti may well have been the real thing.

Innocenti opened her eyes and what happened next took even Moon by surprise. Later, no one could be entirely certain what they had seen and witnesses disagreed on all but the most basic facts. Moon himself believed the Innocenti’s eyes suddenly turned a profound shade of scarlet, others that they had become green or an iridescent yellow, and Mrs. Erskine insisted (though her testimony, as you will shortly discover, is not entirely to be trusted) that they turned a ghastly black. The color itself, of course, is not important. What is significant is that something remarkable, something unquestionably preternatural, took place.

The medium screamed and fell to the ground where she lay in deathly silence. Some present even claimed to have seen tendrils of smoke emerge from her mouth and nostrils, as though some terrible engine were exhausting itself within her.

The spell was swiftly broken. Mrs. Erskine, a septuagenarian at the very least, leapt — genuinely leapt — to her feet and bounded around the table toward the psychic, whereupon she pulled the woman to her feet and slapped her hard in the face.

“Ann Bagshaw?” Erskine said, declaiming her words like a policeman collaring a suspect.

Madame Innocenti relaxed and her eyes returned to their everyday shade. “Not any more.”

Mrs. Erskine turned to the other guests. “Ladies and gentlemen, forgive my intrusion. I represent the Vigilance Committee.”

There were rumbles of disapproval from the faithful at this, but Mrs. Erskine went on, “This woman’s name is not and never has been Madame Innocenti. Her name is Ann Bagshaw.”

The woman’s husband moved forward to protest but she waved him meekly away.

“Today I apparently spoke to my late son,” Erskine said. “But I have no son, living or dead. If Mrs. Bagshaw is to be believed, I conversed this afternoon with a boy who never existed.”

Innocenti recovered and seemed to direct herself not to her accuser but to Edward Moon. “What happened was real,” she insisted. “The warnings were real.”

There was such consternation and general bedlam at this that Moon had to shout to make himself heard. “Please. You’ve not been told the whole truth.” A hush fell upon the room as everyone, psychic and punter alike, turned to listen. “Our hosts may not be exactly who they claim to be, but neither, I fancy, is Mrs. Erskine.”

The old woman muttered something under her breath.

“Look at her hands, ladies and gentlemen. Too supple, too smooth and unlined. Too youthful, I fancy, to be real.”

Erskine glared, pushed past Ann Bagshaw and dashed from the room at a speed quite impossible for a woman of her advanced years. They heard her clatter through the house and escape out into the street, like a rat making its obligatory exit from some leaky and waterlogged old hulk.

Moon turned to his friend. “Keep everyone here until I return. I’ve just realized who we’re dealing with.”