The Curious Affair of the Somnambulist & the Psychic Thief Read online

  “No, thank you; I don’t wish to intrude any more than is necessary. I’ll go now, with Miss Lane, and return later…What time do you go to bed?”

  It was agreed that he should come back at eleven o’clock, and we departed—with several slices of cake.

  Chapter 6

  An Invitation and a Visitor

  Over the next few days, we made no significant progress with the case of the somnambulist—who was completely non-ambulatory on the nights that Mr. Jesperson spent in his house. Mr. Creevey did his best, and searched his memory and his wife’s for more details, but nothing he related regarding meals, moods, or moving furniture was remotely helpful.

  I spoke with the alienist, Dr. Linton, and interviewed the household servants about their recollections of those particular days and nights, and Mr. Jesperson spoke with Mr. Creevey’s employees, observed him at work, and scoured the shelves of the London Library for works relating to somnambulism, but despite our best efforts, we were as much in the dark as ever.

  Perhaps this was a case for an alienist or a priest, rather than detectives. It could be that something from the past had stirred in Arthur Creevey’s mind, sending him out to grieve before his childhood home or beside the grave in which his mother was buried. It was, as he had told us, in October that she had died. We even began to wonder if, the month having ended, Creevey might rest in peace for another year.

  The brief period of optimism about our future faded as quickly as the coins vanished from my purse. Letters arrived from those old acquaintances I had written to; friendly enough, but not one so much as hinted at any prospect of employment, and only the envelope from Lord Bennington contained anything I could share.

  “We are invited to a séance,” I informed Mr. Jesperson, as we three sat beside the fire. “Wednesday evening, at Lord Bennington’s house in Belgrave Square.”

  This piece of news startled his mother into looking up from her sewing and wondering how I came to be acquainted with that noble gentleman.

  Mr. Jesperson explained: “Lord Bennington is a patron and supporter of the Society for Psychical Research. He financed the last investigation that Miss Lane was involved in.”

  Turning his attention back to me he asked, elaborately casual, “Any good? Or two hours of hymn singing interspersed with saccharine remarks from an Indian spirit guide regarding life beyond the veil?”

  “I don’t think it will be that. The medium is described by Lord B as ‘the most amazing psychic and material medium I have ever encountered.’ He is called Christopher Clement Chase.”

  “You don’t say! C. C. Chase? What a coup!” Mr. Jesperson beamed. “Miss Lane, you are a dark horse! From what you said, I imagined you scarcely knew Lord Bennington, when, in truth, you are a member of his inner circle”

  “No, no, I am not—truly,” I hurried to correct him. “Indeed, when I ventured to write to Lord Bennington, I was not at all certain that he would remember me.”

  “You are too modest,” he replied. “Of course, you would have made an indelible impression. Quite naturally, he wishes for a person of such intelligence and insight to be present when he introduces C. C. Chase to the crème de la crème of London spiritualists and psychic investigators! I am honored that he is willing to include me—I am certain this will be a most exclusive gathering.”

  “Who is this Mr. Chase?” asked his mother.

  “If what I have read about him is true, he commands powers the likes of which have not been seen since the heyday of Daniel Home. He is an American, but has been in Europe for several years, and it was in France that his powers first came to public attention. Unlike most mediums, he welcomes examination by skeptics and scientists, does not insist on darkness, and makes solid objects move about, appear, and disappear. The man has been seen to levitate.” He shook his head slowly. “I have read a great deal about the ways in which fraudulent mediums create their effects. I have a good idea what to look for. Most of them are very simple tricks. Whatever Mr. Chase does must be on a higher level, to fool as many scientists and other intelligent observers as he has done in France.”

  I frowned uneasily. “You think he has fooled them all—Lord Bennington, too?”

  “No,” he said quickly. “I have no evidence, and therefore no opinion, on that subject. I did not mean to imply that he is a fraud—indeed, I admit I very much hope that he is not! I have always regretted being too young to have witnessed Mr. Home in action. And Mr. Chase sounds like a medium of more dazzling talents than even Mr. Home.” Sighing blissfully, he stared into space.

  I gazed into the fire with a less happy sigh as I wondered how Lord Bennington would react if my friend exposed his impressive new protégé as yet another one of the many frauds that infested the ranks of spiritualists. The Society for Psychical Research had been founded to do proper, unbiased research into the unexplained, but hope was often stronger than reason. Lord Bennington, as I well knew, was eager for scientific proof of the existence of a spirit world and the reality of life beyond death. And even if he had been truly open-minded, no one liked it made public knowledge that they had been deceived.

  “Do you need a rest?” Mr. Jesperson asked.

  I looked around in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Are you tired? Recovering your strength to go on?”

  Still puzzled, I shook my head. “I haven’t anything particular I need to do just now.”

  His eyebrows went up in surprise. “Don’t you? What about replying to Lord Bennington’s extremely thoughtful and most gratefully received invitation? You must write to him and accept for both of us. What are you waiting for?”

  “Jasper!” His mother said reproachfully.

  I laughed. I liked it that he didn’t stand on ceremony, that he felt comfortable enough to treat me like the brother I’d always wanted. “There’s no hurry.”

  “But if you write it now, I can post it when I go out this evening.”

  —

  I was in no hurry to go downstairs the next morning and decided to wait to break my fast until Mr. Jesperson had returned. He usually ate breakfast at the Creeveys’ house, where the cook seemed to have made it her mission to fatten him up, but he did not forget us at home, bringing back small treats—pastries, rolls, muffins, or cake.

  I enjoyed those treats but looked forward even more to his company. I admired his mother, and was grateful to her, but we were not the most comfortable companions. It was entirely my fault, I knew. She had asked me, several times, to call her Edith, but, as I did not extend the same invitation to her, nor explain why, our friendship had foundered.

  I had tidied my room and had just started a game of patience when I heard Mr. Jesperson arrive, and the sound of voices in the hall before they moved into the front room made me hesitate. Although I was more than ready for a cup of tea, it occurred to me that although she never made me feel unwelcome, his mother must miss the days when she’d had her son all to herself, so I finished my game and found other reasons to delay before I went downstairs.

  Entering the front room, I saw at once that the female seated near the fire with Mr. Jesperson was not his mother. Her back was to me, but even before she turned, I knew who it was, and my stomach clenched in sick surprise as I recognized the blue silk dress and the springy black curls escaping from a jaunty new tricornered hat.

  Miss Gabrielle Fox turned and gave me the mocking, triumphant smile I knew so well; one eye was narrowed and gleaming, the other was hidden, as usual, by a patch. Today, the patch was of violet silk, a hue that complemented her hat. I felt myself tense defensively and spoke before she could.

  “What are you doing here?” Realizing how rude that must sound, I quickly apologized. “Forgive me. I wasn’t expecting a visitor.” Unsettled, I turned my accusing gaze on my partner. “Why didn’t you let me know?”

  He gave an unconcerned shrug. “Would you have me ring a bell? I had no idea where you might be. I met Miss Fox on the doorstep; intercepted her before she could knoc
k.”

  I looked around the room, wanting to escape her sharp gaze—and his. I must be cool with her, but perfectly calm.

  “Have you offered Miss Fox any refreshment?” I asked, seeing no sign of the tea tray. “I haven’t had a cup of tea yet myself,” I added.

  “Forgive me. I was so interested in your story, I forgot the social niceties,” he said to Gabrielle.

  My heart nearly stopped as I wondered what story she had told him.

  “Tea would be lovely.” She twinkled at him before turning back to me. “You may remember how I like it. China, if you have it, a little sugar, but no milk.”

  “I’ll get it,” said Mr. Jesperson before I could make a move.

  My heart sank. To be left alone with the clever Miss Fox was exactly what I’d feared. Well, I must move past that. Steeling myself, I sat down beside her, on the seat Mr. Jesperson had abandoned. “So, what is this story you have been telling Mr. Jesperson?”

  “My, you are businesslike! Well, I shouldn’t be surprised. You must have a great many clients, and it would never do to relax and simply chat with them as if you were old friends…even if they are old friends.” She pouted reproachfully.

  Although I wanted to take exception to her claim of friendship, I tightened my lips and said nothing.

  “I expect you will be very good at solving crimes,” she said, cocking her head. “That’s what I said to Mrs. Traill when she told me of your new venture. And that is why I came here today.”

  “To ask us to solve a crime?”

  She widened her eye. “I hope it is not a crime, but it is certainly a mystery. Did you ever encounter the De Beauvoir sisters?”

  The name was familiar, bearing a hazy impression of two identical and rather insipidly pretty faces. “Twins, and very young,” I said, frowning as I pursued the memory. “I think they do a sort of mind-reading act.”

  “No act. They are quite prodigiously talented, with a genuine gift of clairvoyance.”

  “And what have they to do with your mystery?”

  “They are the mystery; at least, they are part of it.” She moistened her lips and leaned a little closer to me. “They disappeared almost three weeks ago. Vanished. They went up to bed at the usual time, with no hint of anything wrong, but in the morning their beds were empty, and the girls have not been seen nor heard from since.”

  “How old are they?”

  “Just sixteen.”

  “Did the family go to the police?”

  She shook her head gravely, and I guessed they had reason to fear a scandal. Her next words confirmed my thought.

  “A certain young man has also gone missing. I don’t know how closely you follow events in spiritualist circles these days, but he is quite a star, recently arrived from Paris, expecting to take London by storm—”

  “Christopher Clement Chase?”

  She looked at me, astonished, her eye blinking rapidly. “Certainly not! No—I had heard rumors that Mr. Chase is now in London, but—why do you say it?”

  Interesting, I thought. Was it possible she was not invited to the séance; that she had fallen out of favor with Lord Bennington and his set? “I suppose I have heard the same rumors as you, so when you mentioned a ‘star, recently arrived from Paris,’ his name came to mind.”

  “Mr. Chase has not disappeared, too?”

  “I have no reason to think so. Before you arrived here today, I had heard nothing of any disappearances. Please, go on.”

  She wriggled a little more deeply into her chair as she composed herself. “The man I speak of is French. Monsieur Ribaud. He is a materializing medium, reported to have great powers. I have never seen him myself. I understand he is about four-and-twenty, attractive and charming, and only a week before the De Beauvoir sisters vanished, they were witnessed in conversation with him. I don’t mean to imply there was anything improper. It was at a social gathering in early October, held in a respectable private house, and they were well chaperoned—but one or the other of the young ladies kept close beside him for almost the whole of the evening, and the general impression received by anyone who noticed was that there was a strong, mutual attraction.”

  “To and from one of the sisters?”

  “Ah, well.” She gave me an amused, conspiratorial look. “The De Beauvoir family certainly hoped they might return from Gretna Green—or Paris, or wherever people elope to these days—with one sister now legally Madame Ribaud, the other happy to have acted as her chaperone. They couldn’t even mind that the fellow was French, not when they bear the name of De Beauvoir.”

  “But if they were both in love with him, and he married neither…” I raised my eyebrow suggestively.

  Gabrielle smirked. “The more days went by without a word, the more it must have seemed the girls were lost to respectability, living under assumed names somewhere with their dastardly seducer.

  “And yet, no one has heard anything more of Monsieur Ribaud. What of his plans to impress English spiritualist circles with his abilities to materialize objects from thin air? Never having seen him perform, I am unable to judge, but his reputation is good. He’d done a few private sittings—I had expected to attend one, if he hadn’t so suddenly disappeared—and he was booked for a week in the Egyptian Hall, with the possibility of another show at the London Pavilion. Would he really throw all that over, the chance of money and fame, to run away with two young misses?”

  “I don’t suppose he has a private fortune?”

  “Far from it! And the girls seem to have taken nothing—literally, not even a bag between them. Like most people who must try to live by such talents, he relies on wealthier friends—and as I understand it, none of them, not in France nor in England, has heard from him in weeks. It’s as if the three young people simply vanished into thin air.”

  “Perhaps they went to America under assumed names and are now astonishing audiences in New York or Baltimore,” I suggested.

  “Leave a sure thing here to begin all over again as strangers in a strange land?”

  I could imagine many situations, ranging from the prosaic to the gothic, that might make any sixteen-year-old girl determined to run away, especially with a gallant protector.

  “That’s what I thought,” said Gabrielle, as if she’d read my mind. “I thought, depend upon it, he thinks he’s rescued them from the family prison, and they’re making a new life in another country—soon enough we’ll be getting reports from Boston or Montreal about this astonishing psychic trio. But when I learned that Hilda Jessop was missing, too, I knew I was wrong. The De Beauvoir family was wrong. They had no evidence for a romance—the girls had met their supposed seducer only once before they disappeared. They assumed a connection because they vanished the same week that he did.”

  “Wait—you’re saying there is no connection? That’s—”

  She narrowed her eye impatiently. “Of course there’s a connection! Pay attention! But they made the wrong connection—as did I, before I knew. You see, it wasn’t only one young man and two young ladies who went missing. There were four who vanished. In one month, four psychic mediums have disappeared without trace.”

  Chapter 7

  A Missing Medium

  Mr. Jesperson entered with the tea tray as I tried to recall what I knew of Miss Hilda Jessop.

  She had hovered on the edges of spiritualist circles for years, her age now in that indeterminate region between forty and sixty. At one time, it was said, she had been considered a most compelling soothsayer, credited with predicting events that subsequently came to pass, but then she had been caught cheating—paying servants for information, even bribing one to steal a letter—and that was the end of her promising career. Yet she had clung to those who would shun her; perhaps she simply had nowhere else to go. Which naturally raised the question: If she had nowhere to go, where had she gone?

  “Who reported Miss Jessop as missing?”

  Miss Fox replied promptly. “I did. But the police took no more interest once they
learned she had not paid her rent for several months. It’s true, the midnight flit is not unknown to her. But the family with whom she is—was—boarding are fond and generous; they never would have pressed her for money. There was no reason for her to leave.”

  Unobtrusively, Mr. Jesperson set down a cup of black tea on the occasional table nearest to Miss Fox. He raised his eyebrows at me and indicated the teapot.

  I shook my head and leaned in closer to Miss Fox. “When did you learn she was missing?”

  She sat back with a sigh, noticed the tea, and sent a smile in Mr. Jesperson’s direction before she replied. “Oh…There was a gathering last Tuesday night—All Hallows’ Eve, you know. The Traills were the hosts, and Hilda was expected but never arrived. Thinking she might be unwell, I called on her the next day—at least, I tried. The children in the house told me she had not been seen since Sunday, when she had been observed setting off for church. Chapel, I should say. No one could say when, or if, she had returned. Fearing the worst, I begged the landlady—Mrs. Bicker or Beaker, something like that—to unlock her door.” She paused for a sip of tea, and a faint, pained expression flitted across her face. I understood: The tea was Indian, not Chinese.

  Sighing, she set the cup down and continued her tale. “Hilda was not there, but all her possessions were. Her clothes, her books, all her pathetic trinkets, the silver-backed brush and mirror set on the dressing table—and her cards.”

  I felt a chill. No one running away from debt would leave behind anything that could be pawned. And her cards, the special deck, which had come all the way from Egypt, she would surely have kept. “You think something happened on her way to—or from—church?”

  “No. As soon as I saw her room I knew—Di, the bed was unmade. Could you imagine Hilda leaving for chapel without first making her bed?” She reached for my hand, and I did not resist. “You will help me find her?”

  “Of course.” No other answer was possible. I knew this was not the sort of case we should be accepting, with our need for paying work as desperate as it was. Miss Jessop was one of the forgotten souls of this world, without family or wealthy friends to pay for her return. But I knew I must do my best to ensure she was not lost without trace.