At last the moan drew to a close, petering away to a hoarse whisper, and then the medium took another deep breath, which she let out in a piercing wail. The table floated, about six inches higher than when they began, vibrating, otherwise motionless, hanging in midair.
Sibyl trembled, her hands twitching with tension. Then she gasped, her stomach contracting in horror. Out of nowhere the tabletop overran with a sheen of ice cold water, which crept under Sibyl’s wrists and soaked her dress to the elbows. She gurgled a scream of misery and dismay, and heard Professor Friend cry out, “Good God in heaven!”
Then, without warning, the room flooded with artificial light, and the table fell to the floor with a thud. Rivulets of water dripped from the edge of the table, leaving wet plops on the floor.
Mrs. Dee’s wail stopped as surely as if someone had stuffed a cork in her mouth. Sibyl squinted, the light glaring in her eyes, which had grown accustomed to the darkness.
“Professor Derby!” bellowed Edwin Friend. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?”
Sibyl spun in her seat to find Benton standing by the electric light buttons on the wall. His hand rested on the switch, and his face bore a satisfied smile.
“Throwing a little light on things,” he said.
Chapter Nineteen
Mrs. Dee’s face contorted in rage, blotching crimson from her neck to her cheeks, her wattles trembling, little hands knotted into fists on the tabletop.
“How dare you!” she cried. “Who do you think you are, young man? Have you any idea how dangerous it is, what you’ve just done?”
“Dangerous for whom, madam?” Benton asked, walking at a leisurely pace back to the table.
“Why, dangerous for all of us! For Miss Allston, who is in a most delicate psychological condition. And nearly fatal for me.”
“I should say it is nearly fatal for you,” Benton agreed. “Look here, Edwin.”
Benton took hold of the edge of the table and hoisted it up. It resisted at first, then rose with a mechanical creak, stopping at a sharp angle. Benton let go, and the table stayed tilted. Confused, Sibyl bent to look under the table and saw Benton tap the end of the table leg with the toe of his shoe.
“Ingenious,” he said. “It’s on mechanical leg extenders. Mounted from beneath the floor. And controlled, I expect . . .” His voice trailed off as he moved to the head of the table, where Mrs. Dee sat, apoplectic with rage.
“Ah, yes. Pardon me,” he said to the woman. Her mouth was pinched, but she made no move to stop him. Benton leaned over her and reached under the table. He adjusted some kind of dial, and the table lowered itself again. A very faint whirring could distinctly be heard, of gears gnashing together. Faint enough to be obscured by a loud moan, or a wail.
“But—” Sibyl started to protest.
“That’s not all,” Benton said. Still leaning over the medium’s chair, he fiddled with another control, and a hole opened in the center of the table, another faint chugging, whirring sound could be heard, and then the opening emitted a thin spreading puddle of water from somewhere underneath.
“A pump?” he asked. The medium said nothing.
“I thought so,” Benton said. He straightened, sliding his hands into his pockets. “Now, Mrs. Dee. Is there any need for me to open the cabinet in the corner?”
The medium stared at him, her eyes livid with hate.
Professor Friend’s attitude, Sibyl noticed, had traveled in the past several minutes from surprise, to dismay, to mild amusement. He leaned back in his chair, arms folded.
“Well, well,” the philosopher said. “I, for one, would love to have a look in the cabinet, Professor Derby. I can hardly see how the lady is in a position to object.”
Mrs. Dee said nothing, her hands gripping tighter at the armrests of her chair. Through the lingering confusion left over from the séance, Sibyl absorbed the full force of what Benton was suggesting. Her gaze traveled to Mrs. Dee, coming to rest on the familiar face, the face that had offered her solace.
A face that had lied to her.
And taken her money while doing it.
A storm cloud gathered in Sibyl’s chest, and the corners of her mouth pulled into a frown.
Benton strode to the cabinet and opened it. Inside were shelves with tidy stacks of folded table linens, napkins, tea towels. It was in every respect a standard and uninteresting linen cupboard.
“I fail to see,” Mrs. Dee hissed through clenched teeth, “what interest you could possibly have with my table linens.”
“Ah,” Benton said, holding up a finger. He turned back to the cabinet, ran his hand alongside the outside of the door hinge, and tripped a concealed catch. He reached inside the cabinet, threaded his finger through a small opening in the wall behind the napkins, and pulled. Sibyl heard a distinct click, and the inner portion of the cabinet swung open. The shelves masked a false back, and behind the inner doors formed by the false shelves were none other than a small Victrola, a long speaking tube, a strangely altered violin, a tambourine, and a bin containing a grayish heap of what appeared to be gauze soaked in some unidentifiable liquid.
“There’s your ectoplasm,” Benton said, grimacing at the pungent smell. “Ugh. What is that?”
Professor Friend laughed, clapping his hands together with appreciation. “I say, you are clever, finding the catch for that cabinet. I suppose that’s where music emanates from as well?”
“But—I don’t—” Sibyl said. No one else in the room paid her any attention.
“More interesting than the cabinet, even,” Benton theorized, “is what I suspect we’d find concealed in her chair. Madam? I don’t suppose you would be so kind as to stand up?”
“All right!” the woman spat, getting to her feet, her hands planted on the table. “There’s no need to look. If you must know, the chair has a compartment under the seat. In that compartment you’ll find a few wigs, some stage makeup, and a wax hand. Are you quite satisfied now?”
The door to the drawing room flung open as the butler, hearing the commotion inside, rushed to the aid of his mistress. When he saw the cabinet standing open, its secret contents revealed with all the horror of a gutted cadaver, he stopped short, aghast.
“Madam!” he exclaimed. “But what can have happened?”
“It’s likely,” Benton continued to Professor Friend as though the two of them were carrying on a conversation in his office, paying no mind to the other individuals within hearing distance, “that the butler is her confederate. She’d need someone who could come in under cover of darkness and operate the mechanism to play the music, or the voice recordings, on cue. And possibly to smuggle her the box of gauze before the manifestation portion of the evening.”
“But how could he bring it to her unobserved?” Professor Friend wondered, also speaking only to Benton. “They’d have a whole roomful of people, and some of them would be bound to sit facing the cabinet.”
“Why, along the floor, I should think,” Benton said. “Look at him. He’s spryer than he looks. Could just shimmy along there, on his stomach, easy as you please.”
The butler’s face flushed bright crimson. He said nothing.
“Aha. You see? That’s what I thought,” Benton said, smiling.
“I’ll thank you,” Mrs. Dee said with hauteur, ignoring the butler and addressing herself to the two professors, “to leave my home at once.”
Benton moved to stand behind Sibyl, who sat beetle-browed, her mind warring over what had just been revealed. He rested his hands, lightly, on her shoulders.
“I should think,” he said, “that you owe this young woman an apology. And possibly, a great deal of money.”
Mrs. Dee stood at the head of her table, drawing herself up to her fullest, albeit unimpressive, height. “I do no such thing,” she said. The butler moved to stand behind her.
“The hand,” Sibyl said, blinking. “My mother’s hand. It was . . . ?”
Mrs. Dee looked on her with a new, closed
hardness in her eyes.
“And the voices? All those voices, of people’s husbands? People’s children?” Sibyl searched the medium’s face, as if she might find a logical explanation there. A logical explanation, that is, other than the obvious one.
“You charge a fee for your services, don’t you?” Benton said.
“I do not,” Mrs. Dee replied, her voice brittle as a cracked crystal glass.
“Yes, you do!” Sibyl burst, shaken out of her numb denial, awakening to the anger boiling in her chest. “You most certainly do!”
“My dear,” the woman said. “You’ve had a terrible shock today. I feel dreadful that you’ve been put in such a delicate position by these thoughtless acquaintances of yours. But on that count, you are mistaken.”
“I’m not mistaken.” Sibyl rose to her feet, buoyed up by her disillusionment. She turned to Benton. “Every time! Every time I’ve come here, they all leave money for her. In the card tray on the hall stand. No one’s let out of the house without leaving something. Some people leave quite a lot. You should see the bills. Hundreds of dollars. Every time.”
“Nonsense,” the woman said smoothly. “If the people who visit me feel moved by their experience to make some sort of donation, why, that’s their own affair. It has nothing whatsoever to do with me. And at no time have I ever suggested such a thing. To think, me, talking openly of money.”
“The time I was here, and you gave me the scrying glass,” Sibyl exclaimed, pointing at the butler. “He wouldn’t let me leave. I had to pay.”
“A misunderstanding,” Mrs. Dee said. The butler didn’t speak, instead staring with leaden eyes at the assembly from his position behind the medium’s chair.
“I—” Sibyl’s voice caught in her throat, her anger subsiding into disappointment and shame. “I believed you.” She turned her face away, hiding it behind her hand, trembling.
Professor Friend got to his feet, brushing his hands along his coat sleeves in a gesture of finality. “Miss Allston,” he said. “You aren’t the only one. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. If anyone should be feeling shame in this room, it certainly isn’t you. It’s to combat the reckless and coldhearted manipulations of charlatans”—he paused, to ensure that all hearers knew to whom he was referring—“that the Society conducts the investigatory work that it does. She was preying upon your better nature, upon your love of family, and on your sense of loss. She’s no better than a vulture.” He turned to look at Mrs. Dee, an expression of rancid disapproval settling on his otherwise friendly features. “Truly, the expression of a baser instinct I’ve rarely had the displeasure to see. I’ve a good mind to notify the authorities. Though if the fees were never explicitly stated, I’m afraid we have very little legal recourse.”
“Oh, nothing is ever explicit, is it!” Sibyl spat. She slapped closed the box containing the scrying glass and thrust it into her pocket. “That’s all anyone ever does, is imply. I can’t believe what a fool I was.”
“But don’t you see?” Mrs. Dee said quietly. “That none of it makes a particle of difference?”
“What?” Sibyl said, anger burning in her pale cheeks. “How can you possibly say that?”
Benton reached a steady hand to take Sibyl’s elbow, and he made a soothing noise through his lips, an effort, perhaps unconscious on his part, to calm her rising temper.
“Consider, my dear,” Mrs. Dee said, hard and unapologetic, fingertips resting on the tabletop. “That we all have different ways of understanding what is authentic, and what isn’t.”
“That’s a fine person, to talk of authenticity,” Benton growled. He exerted gentle pressure on Sibyl’s elbow, to begin steering her to the door. She hung back, baffled as to what the little woman could be driving at.
“What do you mean?” Sibyl demanded.
“What were you looking for, when you came here?” she asked, watching Sibyl.
“I was . . .” Sibyl started to say, but trailed off.
What had she been looking for? Reassurance that her mother and sister were well. And perhaps she was looking for absolution. Sibyl’s grief and sorrow weighed on her with leaden pressure, deepened and soured by her all-encompassing guilt. Guilt for not being with them when the ship went down. Guilt for resenting their voyaging without her, and guilt for being secretly relieved that she yet lived. Perhaps she came seeking permission. Perhaps she came to the séance seeking permission to live.
Sibyl glanced back at the medium’s face and saw that she knew what Sibyl had been looking for, and did not judge her. Mrs. Dee’s face softened, a half-smile bending her puckered mouth.
“Were you looking for a true experience?” Mrs. Dee asked. “Or were you looking to have your grief soothed? Which is more important, do you think?”
She paused, to let her point sink in, not only for Sibyl but for the professors as well. Benton and Edwin Friend exchanged a pointed look.
Mrs. Dee continued, without agitation or defensiveness. “I offer succor to suffering people, that’s all. When you come down to it, what difference does it make, the methods that I use? What matters, in the end, is that the succor you found in this drawing room was real.”
The woman stepped from behind the trick séance table and moved toward Sibyl. She stiffened as Mrs. Dee approached, a carapace of anger and bitterness settling over her. Sibyl resented the physical proximity of someone who had abused her trust. Yet she wondered if the medium had a point. If she found what she was looking for, did it really matter if it was found under false pretenses? Sibyl frowned, uncertain, hating feeling tricked. Her gullibility was the most horrifying realization of all.
The tiny woman edged nearer, taking Sibyl’s hands in hers. Mrs. Dee’s hands felt fragile and small, warm, reassuring even, and Sibyl felt for the last time a twinge of the deep relief that she had grown accustomed to finding in Mrs. Dee’s company. In a sense this revelation of Mrs. Dee’s duplicity, this drawing back of the complex curtain of dissembling that Sibyl now knew had cloaked her awareness every time she entered the Beacon Hill house, felt like yet another loss. In the glaring light of truth revealing the technology of deceit, this realm of safety, of anonymity and reassurance, was closed to her. She would never be able to fool herself so thoroughly again.
The woman turned her round face up to Sibyl, her gaze boring deep into Sibyl’s eyes. “You must understand,” she said, almost in a whisper. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I do hear spirits, you know, I always have. I could see the smoke, but I could never see through it. They speak so quietly, sometimes. You mustn’t think, just because I’ve added a few bells and whistles to heighten the effect, that your experiences with me have no meaning.”
Sibyl swallowed, her brows drawn in a furrow over her nose, unsure what she was supposed to say in the face of this nonapology. The medium rose on tiptoe, reaching her lips for Sibyl’s ear. Obediently, Sibyl dipped her head to capture the last words that Mrs. Dee would ever say to her.
“I know that you can see, too,” the woman said, her whisper so faint that it seemed to occur inside Sibyl’s head. “Don’t let anyone else tell you what’s true, when you know.”
Sibyl drew her head back, looking down at the false medium in shock. Her mouth twisted as she wondered how to respond. Mrs. Dee held her gaze for an instant longer, nodded once, as if to say, You know that what I say is true, and then stepped back, releasing her hold on Sibyl’s hands.
Sibyl’s confused reverie was abruptly broken by the voice of Professor Friend, who announced, “Well, I think we’ve seen all that there is to see here, haven’t we? Come along, Miss Allston. It’s getting late. I’m sure you’re wanted at home, and I have an early start tomorrow.”
“Yes,” Benton said, still holding her elbow with a delicate grip. “Sibyl, let’s go.”
The two men moved to the drawing room door, Sibyl allowing herself to be led away, stumbling on feet made uncertain by the combined effects of cough syrup and her odd trance during the séance. Mrs. Dee watched her go, the
butler looming behind her, sepulchral and silent.
“Madam,” Professor Friend said, “it’s been a most enlightening afternoon. I thank you for your hospitality.”
Mrs. Dee did not respond, only flaring her nostrils in annoyance. Benton glared at her, not bothering to conceal his malice as he wrapped a protective arm around Sibyl’s shoulders.
Sibyl climbed into her coat and hat, feeling strangely detached, as though the afternoon had happened to someone else. As the two men flagged down a taxicab and bundled her out the medium’s front door for the last time, Sibyl looked over her shoulder into the drawing room. The butler was sliding the inner door closed, and Sibyl caught sight of the little woman, whose first name, Sibyl realized, she did not even know, disappearing by slow degrees behind the rolling pocket door. Just before the medium vanished from view, she caught Sibyl’s eye, and mouthed I know you see.
And then she was gone.
In the taxi bumping alongside the Common in the gathering darkness, Benton and Edwin chatted between themselves, digesting the turn of events. Sibyl gazed out the window, listless and perturbed.
“There you have it,” Benton was saying. “They’re all just cunning manipulators. It’s fascinating, in a perverse way. The psychology of her. I don’t deny she had tremendous personal magnetism, but you know, there are personality disorders that’d account for it. I grant you she probably believed she could communicate with spirits. But, Ed, that doesn’t mean Spiritualism is legitimate. You should know. After all, you’ve debunked more than anyone, I’d wager.”
Sibyl pressed her fingertips to the cab window, her breath fogging the glass. Outside, beds of tulips rolled past, their pale flower heads wet and glistening, receding into the shadows of the park.