Philip Gooden - The Durham Deception

There were several puzzling or worrying aspects to the letter. It had been delivered that morning to the dwelling in Old Elvet, and Flask wondered how the writer had found out the address of the house which he was renting. But that was a minor matter compared to this man’s motives. Why did he wish the medium to be ‘enlightened’ and all the rest of it? Was he holding out an olive branch with one hand and hiding a knife behind his back with the other? Or if not a knife then a piece of blue chalk. Flask’s instinct was to keep his distance, to have nothing to do with this individual. Yet at the same time his curiosity was piqued. There could be no harm, surely, in his taking up the other’s invitation? The old saying about ‘knowing your enemy’ crossed his mind.

He moved out from the shelter of the alcove and started to walk back towards the entrance to the library. On the way he was conscious of someone staring at him from behind a mound of books. There was a peculiar intensity to the stare. All he was able to see was a pair of dark eyes surmounted by wild white hair. It was not a friendly gaze. Flask did what he usually did when faced by hostility. He turned the other cheek. He dipped his head in slight acknowledgement and gave a half-smile. But the man kept on staring, if anything with greater intensity and dislike. As he passed, Flask recognized him. The straggling hair and dark eyes belonged to Septimus Sheridan, the permanent guest at Miss Howlett’s house in the South Bailey.

Eustace Flask was already aware that Sheridan was no friend to him. Stray comments and quizzical glances during his visits to Colt House suggested that Sheridan was a sceptic about spiritualism. Fortunately, Sheridan was so indebted to Miss Howlett, so ready to follow her lead, that he would never dare to contradict her openly. If he was yet another enemy, he was an enemy too feeble to influence the old maid. Flask walked on, pale head held aloft like a high candle, deigning to give Septimus Sheridan one more tiny nod.

Flask would have been surprised, even shocked, had he been able to read the other man’s thoughts. Septimus hadn’t noticed the medium’s arrival in the cathedral library. He was too wrapped up in his work (a study of the patristic fathers). It was only as Flask was leaving that he happened to glance up and see the familiar figure swaying towards him. All at once, and from nowhere it seemed, a great contempt and loathing for Eustace Flask welled up. What was that man doing here in a place devoted to study, to contemplation and religious history?

Although Septimus Sheridan had largely lost his faith, he had never lost his respect, even love, for the institutions which enshrined that faith. Hence his return to Durham and a life of undisturbed scholarship. He was glad to be allowed to live in Julia Howlett’s house under almost any terms, and he understood how much he owed to her. Understood how foolish he had been to reject her as a wife when they were both comparatively young and she had come up to the north searching for him — a typically independent action on her part.

He could hardly recall the reasons for his rejection of her now. He was sorry for it almost at once. He had moved away from the city and spent years in obscure parishes in grimy suburbs or even bleaker countryside until that terrible day, the worst day of his life, when he had written to his bishop explaining that he could no longer remain in the church with a clear conscience.

Ever since going to live at Colt House he had grown fonder than ever of Miss Howlett. Sometimes he imagined what it would be like if they were sitting round the breakfast table not as householder and lodger but as man and wife. If he were able to call her not ‘Miss Howlett’ but ‘Julia’. How would the intervening years have been different if they had married? Septimus Sheridan could not know, but different — and better — they would have been.

He was fiercely protective of Miss Howlett while realizing that she was well able to protect herself. She had resources and good sense. Except when it came to spiritualism and to Eustace Flask in particular. Septimus had not trusted Flask from the start, and the distrust had deepened to an instinctive rejection of everything that Flask said or did.

Septimus would have done almost anything to wrest Miss Howlett away from the medium. But what could he do? Perhaps it was because he was so helpless that these feelings of contempt and loathing surfaced so abruptly in the hushed surroundings of the cathedral library.

A meeting had been arranged between Major Sebastian Marmont and Tom by letter for noon of that day. The Major was staying at the County Hotel just the other side of the river. Tom was told that the Major had a suite of rooms on the first floor of the hotel, reputedly the best in the city. As he climbed the stairs he reflected that there must be money to be made through magic. But then the Major and his Hindoos were a big attraction. Tom and Helen had already glimpsed several posters advertising the ‘Wonders of the Orient’ show at the Assembly Rooms. See the Miraculous Talking Head. Marvel at the Fabulous Perseus Cabinet. All of this illustrated with a picture of a wise-looking cove wearing a suit and a solar topi together with a couple of youths clad in loincloths. In the background disembodied heads floated through the ether.

Tom knocked on the door of the room where he had been directed. A voice that he recognized told him to enter and he was not surprised to see, sitting cross-legged in a sunny window seat and smoking a cigarette, the troublesome guest from Colt House. An inkling that the man he’d appointed to meet and the man who’d stirred things up the previous evening at Aunt Julia’s were one and the same had occurred to him while walking on the riverbank. Standing in the door he gave his name.

‘Ah, Mr Ansell,’ said Major Sebastian Marmont, untangling himself and coming forward to give Tom a firm handshake. He was formally dressed although he had removed his suit jacket. ‘I saw you arrive at the front entrance downstairs and I wondered if you were my midday visitor from Scott, Lye amp; Mackenzie. But of course we have already met, in a manner of speaking, even if I didn’t know who you were yesterday evening.’

‘It is strange that no one at Miss Howlett’s house recognized you either, sir, since your face is on bills all over town.’

‘If you look carefully, Mr Ansell, you’ll see it’s not a very good likeness on the bills. No doubt some of the people there last night have seen me on stage at the Assembly Rooms but it’s extraordinary how different one looks in front of the stage-lights and wearing a bit of slap.’

‘Slap, Major Marmont?’

‘Face-paint, my dear chap. I darken my phizog so that audiences imagine I’ve come straight from tropical climes. And Mr Eustace Flask knows who I am, or at least he does now. I have invited him to one of my shows. I thought it only fair to give him the chance to see a real magician. Please sit down, sir. Cigarette?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘They help me concentrate, I find, when I am mulling over my tricks. Only this brand, mind,’ said the Major taking another one from the packet. ‘The Luxor, made by the Alexandria Company in Artilley Lane.’

Tom settled in an armchair while Major Marmont returned to the window seat, where he again perched cross-legged and wreathed himself in cigarette smoke, tapping the ash into a bowl of Benares brass next to him. He might have been the Buddha sitting amid clouds of incense; Buddha with an incongruous moustache. Tom glanced round the spacious sitting room which had a fine view of the cathedral beyond Sebastian Marmont’s shoulders. It was well furnished with armchairs and an ottoman, a desk and tables including one laid for dining. An internal door led to what must be Marmont’s bedroom.