Philip Gooden - The Durham Deception

‘There we are,’ said the man, standing up and gazing round the room, his own hands now white and floury. The guests looked bemused and shocked. ‘I ask you why a man should need to keep flour in little secret bags at the bottom of his trousers. There is no sane explanation unless it is to replace the flour that the same man has let drop while he is fiddling with his knots and jangling his instruments.’

When they discussed it afterwards, Tom and Helen both confessed to a touch of admiration at the way Flask responded, even if it was only admiration at his impudence. In their eyes, he’d been caught red-handed, or rather caught with a piece of blue chalk and with piles of concealed flour.

Instead of shrivelling up or admitting defeat, as Ernest Smight had done, Flask rose from the table. Ambrose shouldered his way towards him but the medium lifted a ringed hand, the tips of his fingers still tinged with blue chalk. It was like the benediction of a bishop. The gesture said, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ Flask paced slowly towards the gentleman with the fine moustaches, who did not shift one inch. He halted when he was within striking distance. When he spoke next it was not to his opponent but to the rest of the company.

‘Our Lord tells us that when our enemies assail us, we should turn the other cheek. I do not know what your reasons are for coming here tonight, sir, but you have fallen among people who seek no quarrel with you and rather wish the scales to fall from your eyes.’

There were nodded heads at this and whispers of agreement. Tom realized that, whatever the exposer’s motives, he had badly misjudged the occasion. Apart from the Ansells and possibly Mr Sheridan, Julia Howlett’s guests were true believers. It would take more to convince them than the uncovering of a trick or two. They blamed the accuser and not the accused, who was adopting the role of injured innocent. The man with the moustache understood this. He smiled. He bowed in a way that was slightly stagey. His departing remark too had a melodramatic ring. ‘Next time, Mr Flask, we shall do battle on a ground of my choosing.’

He turned smartly on his heel and strode from the morning room. There was a pause and then a woman began to clap and soon Eustace Flask had earned a round of applause for the way he stood up to the outsider. Aunt Julia clasped him by the arm and other women gathered round him with praise and reassurance. Everyone seemed to have forgotten the business of the blue chalk and the surplus flour, even though there were little mounds of the stuff on the floor by Flask’s seat. There was some talk about the identity of the impertinent fellow who’d tried to ruin their evening but no one seemed to have an idea of who he was. Yet, equally, Tom and Helen had the impression that, in the spiritualist community, such hostility and persecution were routine matters. These things were to be expected and, in a perverse way, they fortified the true believer.

Ambrose started to dismantle the cabinet and Kitty to pack away the curtains and muslin. Aunt Julia was sitting and writing at a roll-top desk in the corner of the room and Flask was standing over her like a shield. She handed a slip of paper to the medium who promptly tucked it away. Tom would have bet a month of his own salary that the medium was receiving his reward for the evening. The task which Helen’s mother had entrusted to her, that of weaning the aunt away from her devotion to the medium, seemed more impossible than ever.

Eustace Flask and Ambrose Barker and Kitty were renting a tiny end-of-terrace house outside the city walls in the old borough of Elvet. The medium and his companions were better dressed and kept odder hours than most other inhabitants of the borough, which lay to the north-east across the River Wear. If anyone asked, the trio was a family of sorts, with Flask as the uncle, Kitty his niece and Ambrose some kind of cousin. But no one did ask because in this area of back-to-back terraces, boarding houses, small shops and drinking places on the fringe of a colliery, there was little neighbourly curiosity. Besides, Ambrose had a faintly threatening air to him that discouraged questions.

If the old part of the city was dominated by the cathedral and castle, this more recently built quarter was the location for the new court and police-house and an imposing prison. Ambrose might have seen more than one prison from the inside — he looked the type — but if it disturbed him to glimpse the high walls of Durham Gaol first thing in the morning and last thing at night he did not show it.

Now he finished stowing away the handcart containing the dismantled cabinet which he had wheeled down from the old maid’s place in the South Bailey. The terrace house was backed by a tiny yard, convenient for storing the equipment required by the guv’nor. The guv’nor! Ambrose was able to maintain a sober face while Flask was pulling his tricks but the moment the show was done with and they were away from the spiritualist mob and their trusting sheep’s eyes he could hardly keep himself from sneering and cackling at the stupidity of humankind.

This attitude did not extend to Eustace Flask himself for, although Ambrose was often nettled by the airs and graces of the medium, he recognized that the man had a real talent for deception and moneymaking. He called him Eustace but also the guv’nor sometimes and it was not altogether ironic. It was his appreciation of Flask’s skills that made him bite his tongue as he watched the medium and his ‘niece’ Kitty walking ahead while he trundled the cart behind them over the cobbles, feeling a bit like some beast of burden. He knew that if they were to be stopped by one of the town police — which had happened more than once — Mr Flask would soon knock any suspicions on the head. He’d talk in that superior way of his and refer in a familiar style to the Chief Constable and his superintendents and other town worthies as if he dined with them every day. Nevertheless, it hurt Ambrose in the heart to see Kitty next to Flask and touching his arm so constantly with her little paws as they walked so close, to see her whispering and giggling all confidential in his ear, and altogether behaving like a silly chit.

Ambrose had always taken Flask for a molly, a Mary Anne. The guv’nor slipped into the manner easy enough and he was relaxed in the company of women, especially older ones, which could be a sign of molly-hood. But perhaps the truth was that he was something in between, or a nothing in between, neither fish nor fowl. Yet it disturbed Ambrose to see Eustace and Kitty so cosy. He’d have words with Miss Kitty Partout later on, he would.

He pronounced her name Par-tout, putting the stress on the second part and rhyming it with ‘out’, which she said was wrong because it was French and she should be pronounced Par-too. Kitty claimed to be French originally, a generation or two back. In that case, said Ambrose, what’s Par-too mean? Does it have a meaning? Dunno, said Kitty. My mum never said and my dad wasn’t around to ask. But Ambrose did believe that Kitty might have Frog blood in her. She had a saucy air sometimes and a way of looking up from under her lowered lashes that was, well, foreign as far as he was concerned.

Ambrose made certain that the gate to the yard was locked before he entered the house by the back passage. He heard rustlings from the parlour and walked into the room just as Mr Flask and Kitty sprang apart from each other. Ambrose thought that his guv’nor’s hand might have been on her tit. Trying the goods, eh? He almost laughed to imagine what that old maid and the other worthies up in the high town would say if they could see their precious medium fondling the boobies of his ‘niece’. He almost laughed. Instead, he promised himself he’d definitely be having words later on with Miss Kitty.