Philip Gooden - The Durham Deception

But they had to leave Hackney in a hurry and somehow they decided to quit London altogether. They made a slow zigzag progress north, going via Newport Pagnell and Birmingham and then across to Derby and Nottingham. It was as if they were giving substance to her original jest about Gretna Green. Eventually they arrived in Durham, a city that neither of them knew. They were on their uppers.

It was then that, in desperation, they tried a form of mild extortion. Kitty was to accost a man in one of the city vennels or alleys and after a brief time Ambrose would appear on the scene as her outraged mate demanding payment by bluff and bluster. They were depending on Kitty’s good looks and Ambrose’s pugnacious ones. They selected a fine-looking gent on account of his clothes and swagger. They watched as he turned off Saddler Street down one of the alleys, and Kitty cooeed softly after him. The pair got to talking in the covered passage. Kitty started to fondle him, even though he was not very receptive, and she wondered whether she’d laid her hands on a molly. Then, too soon, Ambrose clumped down the alley, full of useless outrage.

The gent was Eustace Flask. Unfortunately for Kitty and Ambrose, Flask was better at the bluff and bluster business than they were. He saw through them, saw that they were not as ferocious or threatening as they seemed. Rather than taking his money, the couple found themselves listening to a proposition. He, Flask, was in need of a couple of assistants for his work. What work? It’s legal, he said, it’s legitimate. It will take you into the better houses in the city. It will make us some lucre. They were impressed by his smoothness, by his way with words. He explained that they would have to smarten themselves up, be on their best behaviour. They agreed.

The threesome established themselves in the rented house in Old Elvet. Kitty was Eustace’s niece, if anyone asked questions, while Ambrose was a cousin. Flask was ready to develop his spiritualist show. No longer content with table-rapping and such minor manifestations, he realized that more elaborate and impressive effects were required. He was cultivating a wealthy spinster who lived in the old part of town. Ambrose constructed the spirit cabinet and Kitty purchased the material for the curtains and painted the cabinet.

This was a new world for them. Flask instructed them in some of his methods. He demonstrated how one could write on a slate even while one’s hands were seemingly at rest on top of a table. He showed them how to tie knots which could easily be slipped. He taught them how to use two of the key techniques of the performer, which are expectation and distraction.

Kitty in particular took to her role as Running Brook, the Indian maid who was Flask’s ‘control’. She was an adept performer. Ambrose wasn’t so willing or useful but he acted as a combination of handyman and valet. He still believed that Flask was a molly but Kitty wasn’t so sure. Some day she would have to put it to the test, to put him to the test. But not yet. She was happy to be in bed with Ambrose, even if he was somewhat coarse and brutish compared to Eustace. She was happy that they were all together, that they had a roof over their heads and a bit of cash in their pockets. They were almost like a family.

‘It felt like a real hand,’ said Helen, ‘though now I think about it I was only touching one of his fingers with one of mine, which is what the medium told me to do. And the lights were low.’

‘Well, we know that Flask somehow managed to write those words on the slate and at the same time make you and your aunt believe both his hands were resting on the table.’

‘Unless he’s got three hands,’ said Helen. ‘Or unless he was using his feet to write. Or unless there was a dwarf concealed beneath the table and busy scribbling away.’

‘That wouldn’t explain the blue chalk on his fingers,’ Tom couldn’t help pointing out, though he admired his wife’s skill and imagination in coming up with all these possibilities.

‘Whatever the explanation, whether it’s three hands or feet capable of writing or whether it’s dwarves, it is all rather horrid. I did not like the way he employed my name. Writing ‘BELIEVE HELEN’ on the slate.’

‘But you asked him a question,’ said Tom.

‘I felt that he wanted me to. It gave me goose-bumps.’

‘And he was using your name to show how familiar he is with the household,’ said Tom. ‘He’s clever all right.’

‘Clever and sinister. I’m glad we’ve got this romantic view all around to distract us from Mr Eustace Flask.’

It was the morning after their arrival in Durham. Helen and Tom Ansell were strolling beside the river and below the rise dominated by the castle and cathedral. They could feel the presence of those great edifices although the buildings themselves were hidden by the rise of the bank and thick tiers of summer foliage. A walk had been created under the overhanging oaks and chestnuts, and there were other people ambling along in the morning sun. Among the casual walkers was the individual who had alighted at Durham Station from the same train as Tom and Helen. Once again, his attention seemed to be fixed on the backs of the young couple who were perhaps fifty yards ahead of him.

It was warm and Helen had brought a parasol although it was still furled. In front of them was a fulling mill and a line of dirty foam where the river level dropped and the water tumbled across rocks. For all the coal-black streaks which ran through it like threads, the water sparkled in the light.

They’d spent most of the walk discussing the session of the previous evening. They thought they’d worked out how the thin white arms might have been done: Tom said it was significant he hadn’t been able to spot Kitty during the time when the limbs were being waggled through the muslin curtains. Although she’d appeared in front of the cabinet just as the arms were being withdrawn inside, perhaps some trickery had occurred. Make-believe limbs of wax or plaster which might be substituted for real ones at the last moment? The light was low and everyone was in a state of heightened expectation in which they might see what they wanted to see.

But it was one thing to use common sense and discuss how it might have been done while walking along the riverbank on a bright summer’s morning, and another for Helen to persuade her aunt to see Eustace Flask for the fraud he really was. Indeed, she was wondering whether it was even right for her to try.

‘After all, Tom, we’ve already had an unhappy experience with the spiritualists. That man in London who drowned himself. Suppose Mr Flask did something so desperate.’

‘Flask isn’t like Smight. He is a — I don’t know — he’s a professional. If he fails here then he’ll go and try somewhere else. Besides, he is not failing, unfortunately, but doing rather well. Making money.’

‘I know it is my aunt’s money. But it is also her life. I do not think I can dictate to her how she should use them.’

‘Even though Flask is no better than a confidence trickster. It was very clever how he nudged your aunt into believing that he should be treated “like a son”.’

‘We can see that he is a trickster but no one else there last night was willing to accept it.’

‘Apart from the gentleman who exposed him,’ said Tom.

‘Who was he, do you think?’

‘I’ve no idea except that he is an outsider here, like us. But he was very accomplished with his own sleight of hand. Substituting the sticks of chalk and then knowing that Flask had flour hidden away at the bottom of his trousers.’

There was something so absurd about the flour and the trousers that Tom and Helen laughed out loud. Then a thought occurred to Tom. It was to do with an outsider who was skilled with his hands… the techniques required by a fraudulent medium… or by a magician. Now Helen was saying something else and he wasn’t listening.