Justin Richards - The Death Collector

‘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.