The Last Séance

‘I hold you to it, Madame,’ said the other woman.

‘I do not break my word,’ said Simone coldly. ‘Do not fear, Raoul,’ she added gently, ‘after all, it is for the last time—the last time, thank God.’

At a sign from her Raoul drew the heavy black curtains across the alcove. He also pulled the curtains of the window so that the room was in semi-obscurity. He indicated one of the chairs to Madame Exe and prepared himself to take the other. Madame Exe, however, hesitated.

‘You will pardon me, Monsieur, but—you understand I believe absolutely in your integrity and in that of Madame Simone. All the same, so that my testimony may be the more valuable, I took the liberty of bringing this with me.’

From her handbag she drew a length of fine cord.

‘Madame!’ cried Raoul. ‘This is an insult!’

‘A precaution.’

‘I repeat it is an insult.’

‘I don’t understand your objection, Monsieur,’ said Madame Exe coldly. ‘If there is no trickery you have nothing to fear.’

Raoul laughed scornfully.

‘I can assure you that I have nothing to fear, Madame. Bind me hand and foot if you will.’

His speech did not produce the effect he hoped for, for Madame Exe merely murmured unemotionally:

‘Thank you, Monsieur,’ and advanced upon him with her roll of cord.

Suddenly Simone from behind the curtain gave a cry.

‘No, no, Raoul, don’t let her do it.’

Madame Exe laughed derisively.

‘Madame is afraid,’ she observed sarcastically.

‘Yes, I am afraid.’

‘Remember what you are saying, Simone,’ cried Raoul. ‘Madame Exe is apparently under the impression that we are charlatans.’

‘I must make sure,’ said Madame Exe grimly.

She went methodically about her task, binding Raoul securely to his chair.

‘I must congratulate you on your knots, Madame,’ he observed ironically when she had finished. ‘Are you satisfied now?’

Madame Exe did not reply. She walked round the room examining the panelling of the walls closely. Then she locked the door leading into the hall, and, removing the key, returned to her chair.

‘Now,’ she said in an indescribable voice, ‘I am ready.’

The minutes passed. From behind the curtain the sound of Simone’s breathing became heavier and more stertorous. Then it died away altogether, to be succeeded by a series of moans. Then again there was silence for a little while, broken by the sudden clattering of the tambourine. The horn was caught up from the table and dashed to the ground. Ironic laughter was heard. The curtains of the alcove seemed to have been pulled back a little, the medium’s figure was just visible through the opening, her head fallen forward on her breast. Suddenly Madame Exe drew in her breath sharply. A ribbon-like stream of mist was issuing from the medium’s mouth. It condensed and began gradually to assume a shape, the shape of a little child.

‘Amelie! My little Amelie!’

The hoarse whisper came from Madame Exe. The hazy figure condensed still further. Raoul stared almost incredulously. Never had there been a more successful materialization. Now, surely it was a real child, a real flesh and blood child standing there.

‘Maman!’

The soft childish voice spoke.

‘My child!’ cried Madame Exe. ‘My child!’

She half-rose from her seat.

‘Be careful, Madame,’ cried Raoul warningly.

The materialization came hesitatingly through the curtains. It was a child. She stood there, her arms held out.

‘Maman!’

‘Ah!’ cried Madame Exe.

Again she half-rose from her seat.

‘Madame,’ cried Raoul, alarmed, ‘the medium—’

‘I must touch her,’ cried Madame Exe hoarsely.

She moved a step forward.

‘For God’s sake, Madame, control yourself,’ cried Raoul.

He was really alarmed now.

‘Sit down at once.’

‘My little one, I must touch her.’

‘Madame, I command you, sit down!’

He was writhing desperately in his bonds, but Madame Exe had done her work well; he was helpless. A terrible sense of impending disaster swept over him.

‘In the name of God, Madame, sit down!’ he shouted. ‘Remember the medium.’

Madame Exe paid no attention to him. She was like a woman transformed. Ecstasy and delight showed plainly in her face. Her outstretched hand touched the little figure that stood in the opening of the curtains. A terrible moan came from the medium.

‘My God!’ cried Raoul. ‘My God! This is terrible. The medium—’

Madame Exe turned on him with a harsh laugh.

‘What do I care for your medium?’ she cried. ‘I want my child.’

‘You are mad!’

‘My child, I tell you. Mine! My own! My own flesh and blood! My little one come back to me from the dead, alive and breathing.’

Raoul opened his lips, but no words would come. She was terrible, this woman! Remorseless, savage, absorbed by her own passion. The baby lips parted, and for the third time the same word echoed:

‘Maman!’

‘Come then, my little one,’ cried Madame Exe.

With a sharp gesture she caught up the child in her arms. From behind the curtains came a long-drawn scream of utter anguish.

‘Simone!’ cried Raoul. ‘Simone!’

He was aware vaguely of Madame Exe rushing past him, of the unlocking of the door, of the retreating footsteps down the stairs.

From behind the curtains there still sounded the terrible high long-drawn scream—such a scream as Raoul had never heard. It died away in a horrible kind of gurgle. Then there came the thud of a body falling …

Raoul was working like a maniac to free himself from his bonds. In his frenzy he accomplished the impossible, snapping the rope by sheer strength. As he struggled to his feet, Elise rushed in crying, ‘Madame!’

‘Simone!’ cried Raoul.

Together they rushed forward and pulled the curtain.

Raoul staggered back.

‘My God!’ he murmured. ‘Red—all red …’

Elise’s voice came beside him harsh and shaking.

‘So Madame is dead. It is ended. But tell me, Monsieur, what has happened. Why is Madame all shrunken away—why is she half her usual size? What has been happening here?’

‘I do not know,’ said Raoul.

His voice rose to a scream.

‘I do not know. I do not know. But I think—I am going mad … Simone! Simone!’

IN A GLASS DARKLY

I’ve no explanation of this story. I’ve no theories about the why and wherefore of it. It’s just a thing—that happened.

All the same, I sometimes wonder how things would have gone if I’d noticed at the time just that one essential detail that I never appreciated until so many years afterwards. If I had noticed it—well, I suppose the course of three lives would have been entirely altered. Somehow—that’s a very frightening thought.

For the beginning of it all, I’ve got to go back to the summer of 1914—just before the war—when I went down to Badgeworthy with Neil Carslake. Neil was, I suppose, about my best friend. I’d known his brother Alan too, but not so well. Sylvia, their sister, I’d never met. She was two years younger than Alan and three years younger than Neil. Twice, while we were at school together, I’d been going to spend part of the holidays with Neil at Badgeworthy and twice something had intervened. So it came about that I was twenty-three when I first saw Neil and Alan’s home.

We were to be quite a big party there. Neil’s sister Sylvia had just got engaged to a fellow called Charles Crawley. He was, so Neil said, a good deal older than she was, but a thoroughly decent chap and quite reasonably well-off.

We arrived, I remember, about seven o’clock in the evening. Everyone had gone to his room to dress for dinner. Neil took me to mine. Badgeworthy was an attractive, rambling old house. It had been added to freely in the last three centuries and was full of little steps up and down, and unexpected staircases. It was the sort of house in which it’s not easy to find your way about. I remember Neil promised to come and fetch me on his way down to dinner. I was feeling a little shy at the prospect of meeting his people for the first time. I remember saying with a laugh that it was the kind of house one expected to meet ghosts in the passages, and he said carelessly that he believed the place was said to be haunted but that none of them had ever seen anything, and he didn’t even know what form the ghost was supposed to take.

Then he hurried away and I set to work to dive into my suitcases for my evening clothes. The Carslakes weren’t well-off; they clung on to their old home, but there were no menservants to unpack for you or valet you.

Well, I’d just got to the stage of tying my tie. I was standing in front of the glass. I could see my own face and shoulders and behind them the wall of the room—a plain stretch of wall just broken in the middle by a door—and just as I finally settled my tie I noticed that the door was opening.

I don’t know why I didn’t turn around—I think that would have been the natural thing to do; anyway, I didn’t. I just watched the door swing slowly open—and as it swung I saw into the room beyond.

It was a bedroom—a larger room than mine—with two bedsteads in it, and suddenly I caught my breath.

For at the foot of one of those beds was a girl and round her neck were a pair of man’s hands and the man was slowly forcing her backwards and squeezing her throat as he did so, so that the girl was being slowly suffocated.

There wasn’t the least possibility of a mistake. What I saw was perfectly clear. What was being done was murder.

I could see the girl’s face clearly, her vivid golden hair, the agonized terror of her beautiful face, slowly suffusing with blood. Of the man I could see his back, his hands, and a scar that ran down the left side of his face towards his neck.

It’s taken some time to tell, but in reality only a moment or two passed while I stared dumbfounded. Then I wheeled round to the rescue …

And on the wall behind me, the wall reflected in the glass, there was only a Victorian mahogany wardrobe. No door open—no scene of violence. I swung back to the mirror. The mirror reflected only the wardrobe …

I passed my hands across my eyes. Then I sprang across the room and tried to pull forward the wardrobe and at that moment Neil entered by the other door from the passage and asked me what the hell I was trying to do.

He must have thought me slightly barmy as I turned on him and demanded whether there was a door behind the wardrobe. He said, yes, there was a door, it led into the next room. I asked him who was occupying the next room and he said people called Oldam—a Major Oldam and his wife. I asked him then if Mrs Oldam had very fair hair and when he replied drily that she was dark I began to realize that I was probably making a fool of myself. I pulled myself together, made some lame explanation and we went downstairs together. I told myself that I must have had some kind of hallucination—and felt generally rather ashamed and a bit of an ass.

And then—and then—Neil said, ‘My sister Sylvia,’ and I was looking into the lovely face of the girl I had just seen being suffocated to death … and I was introduced to her fiancé, a tall dark man with a scar down the left side of his face.

Well—that’s that. I’d like you to think and say what you’d have done in my place. Here was the girl—the identical girl—and here was the man I’d seen throttling her—and they were to be married in about a month’s time …

Had I—or had I not—had a prophetic vision of the future? Would Sylvia and her husband come down here to stay some time in the future, and be given that room (the best spare room) and would that scene I’d witnessed take place in grim reality?

What was I to do about it? Could I do anything? Would anyone—Neil—or the girl herself—would they believe me?

I turned the whole business over and over in my mind the week I was down there. To speak or not to speak? And almost at once another complication set in. You see, I fell in love with Sylvia Carslake the first moment I saw here … I wanted her more than anything on earth … And in a way that tied my hands.

And yet, if I didn’t say anything, Sylvia would marry Charles Crawley and Crawley would kill her …

And so, the day before I left, I blurted it all out to her. I said I expect she’d think me touched in the intellect or something, but I swore solemnly that I’d seen the thing just as I told it to her and that I felt if she was determined to marry Crawley, I ought to tell her my strange experience.

She listened very quietly. There was something in her eyes I didn’t understand. She wasn’t angry at all. When I’d finished, she just thanked me gravely. I kept repeating like an idiot, ‘I did see it. I really did see it,’ and she said, ‘I’m sure you did if you say so. I believe you.’

Well, the upshot was that I went off not knowing whether I’d done right or been a fool, and a week later Sylvia broke off her engagement to Charles Crawley.

After that the war happened, and there wasn’t much leisure for thinking of anything else. Once or twice when I was on leave, I came across Sylvia, but as far as possible I avoided her.

I loved her and wanted her just as badly as ever, but I felt somehow that it wouldn’t be playing the game. It was owing to me that she’d broken off her engagement to Crawley, and I kept saying to myself that I could only justify the action I had taken by making my attitude a purely disinterested one.

Then, in 1916, Neil was killed and it fell to me to tell Sylvia about his last moments. We couldn’t remain on formal footing after that. Sylvia had adored Neil and he had been my best friend. She was sweet—adorably sweet in her grief. I just managed to hold my tongue and went out again praying that a bullet might end the whole miserable business. Life without Sylvia wasn’t worth living.

But there was no bullet with my name on it. One nearly got me below the right ear and one was deflected by a cigarette case in my pocket, but I came through unscathed. Charles Crawley was killed in action at the beginning of 1918.

Somehow that made a difference. I came home in the autumn of 1918 just before the Armistice and I went straight to Sylvia and told her that I loved her. I hadn’t much hope that she’d care for me straight away, and you could have knocked me down with a feather when she asked me why I hadn’t told her sooner. I stammered out something about Crawley and she said, ‘But why did you think I broke it off with him?’ and then she told me that she’d fallen in love with me just as I’d done with her—from the very first minute.

I said I thought she’d broken off her engagement because of the story I told her and she laughed scornfully and said that if you loved a man you wouldn’t be as cowardly as that, and we went over that old vision of mine again and agreed that it was queer, but nothing more.

Well, there’s nothing much to tell for some time after that. Sylvia and I were married and we were very happy. But I realized, as soon as she was really mine, that I wasn’t cut out for the best kind of husband. I loved Sylvia devotedly, but I was jealous, absurdly jealous of anyone she so much as smiled at. It amused her at first, I think she even rather liked it. It proved, at least, how devoted I was.

As for me, I realized quite fully and unmistakably that I was not only making a fool of myself, but that I was endangering all the peace and happiness of our life together. I knew, I say, but I couldn’t change. Every time Sylvia got a letter she didn’t show to me I wondered who it was from. If she laughed and talked with any man, I found myself getting sulky and watchful.

At first, as I say, Sylvia laughed at me. She thought it a huge joke. Then she didn’t think the joke so funny. Finally she didn’t think it a joke at all—

And slowly, she began to draw away from me. Not in any physical sense, but she withdrew her secret mind from me. I no longer knew what her thoughts were. She was kind—but sadly, as thought from a long distance.

Little by little I realized that she no longer loved me. Her love had died and it was I who had killed it …

The next step was inevitable, I found myself waiting for it—dreading it …

Then Derek Wainwright came into our lives. He had everything that I hadn’t. He had brains and a witty tongue. He was good-looking, too, and—I’m forced to admit it—a thoroughly good chap. As soon as I saw him I said to myself, ‘This is just the man for Sylvia …’

She fought against it. I know she struggled … but I gave her no help. I couldn’t. I was entrenched in my gloomy, sullen reserve. I was suffering like hell—and I couldn’t stretch out a finger to save myself. I didn’t help her. I made things worse. I let loose at her one day—a string of savage, unwarranted abuse. I was nearly mad with jealousy and misery. The things I said were cruel and untrue and I knew while I was saying them how cruel and how untrue they were. And yet I took a savage pleasure in saying them …

I remember how Sylvia flushed and shrank …

I drove her to the edge of endurance.

I remember she said, ‘This can’t go on …’

When I came home that night the house was empty—empty. There was a note—quite in the traditional fashion.

In it she said that she was leaving me—for good. She was going down to Badgeworthy for a day or two. After that she was going to the one person who loved her and needed her. I was to take that as final.

I suppose that up to then I hadn’t really believed my own suspicions. This confirmation in black and white of my worst fears sent me raving mad. I went down to Badgeworthy after her as fast as the car would take me.

She had just changed her frock for dinner, I remember, when I burst into the room. I can see her face—startled—beautiful—afraid.

I said, ‘No one but me shall ever have you. No one.’

And I caught her throat in my hands and gripped it and bent her backwards.

And suddenly I saw our reflection in the mirror. Sylvia choking and myself strangling her, and the scar on my cheek where the bullet grazed it under the right ear.

No—I didn’t kill her. That sudden revelation paralysed me and I loosened my grasp and let her slip on to the floor …

And then I broke down—and she comforted me … Yes, she comforted me.

I told her everything and she told me that by the phrase ‘the one person who loved and needed her’ she had meant her brother Alan … We saw into each other’s hearts that night, and I don’t think, from that moment, that we ever drifted away from each other again …

It’s a sobering thought to go through life with—that, but for the grace of God and a mirror, one might be a murderer …

One thing did die that night—the devil of jealousy that had possessed me so long …

But I wonder sometimes—suppose I hadn’t made that initial mistake—the scar on the left cheek—when really it was the right—reversed by the mirror … Should I have been so sure the man was Charles Crawley? Would I have warned Sylvia? Would she be married to me—or to him?

Or are the past and the future all one?

I’m a simple fellow—and I can’t pretend to understand these things—but I saw what I saw—and because of what I saw, Sylvia and I are together in the old-fashioned words—till death do us part. And perhaps beyond …

S.O.S.

‘Ah!’ said Mr Dinsmead appreciatively.

He stepped back and surveyed the round table with approval. The firelight gleamed on the coarse white tablecloth, the knives and forks, and the other table appointments.

‘Is—is everything ready?’ asked Mrs Dinsmead hesitatingly. She was a little faded woman, with colourless face, meagre hair scraped back from her forehead, and a perpetually nervous manner.

‘Everything’s ready,’ said her husband with a kind of ferocious geniality.

He was a big man, with stooping shoulders, and a broad red face. He had little pig’s eyes that twinkled under his bushy brows, and a big jowl devoid of hair.

‘Lemonade?’ suggested Mrs Dinsmead, almost in a whisper.

Her husband shook his head.

‘Tea. Much better in every way. Look at the weather, streaming and blowing. A nice cup of hot tea is what’s needed for supper on an evening like this.’

He winked facetiously, then fell to surveying the table again.

‘A good dish of eggs, cold corned beef, and bread and cheese. That’s my order for supper. So come along and get it ready, Mother. Charlotte’s in the kitchen waiting to give you a hand.’

Mrs Dinsmead rose, carefully winding up the ball of her knitting.

‘She’s grown a very good-looking girl,’ she murmured. ‘Sweetly pretty, I say.’

‘Ah!’ said Mr Dinsmead. ‘The mortal image of her Ma! So go along with you, and don’t let’s waste any more time.’

He strolled about the room humming to himself for a minute or two. Once he approached the window and looked out.

‘Wild weather,’ he murmured to himself. ‘Not much likelihood of our having visitors tonight.’

Then he too left the room.

About ten minutes later Mrs Dinsmead entered bearing a dish of fried eggs. Her two daughters followed, bringing in the rest of the provisions. Mr Dinsmead and his son Johnnie brought up the rear. The former seated himself at the head of the table.

‘And for what we are to receive, etcetera,’ he remarked humorously. ‘And blessings on the man who first thought of tinned foods. What would we do, I should like to know, miles from anywhere, if we hadn’t a tin now and then to fall back upon when the butcher forgets his weekly call?’

He proceeded to carve corned beef dexterously.

‘I wonder who ever thought of building a house like this, miles from anywhere,’ said his daughter Magdalen pettishly. ‘We never see a soul.’

‘No,’ said her father. ‘Never a soul.’

‘I can’t think what made you take it, Father,’ said Charlotte.

‘Can’t you, my girl? Well, I had my reasons—I had my reasons.’

His eyes sought his wife’s furtively, but she frowned.

‘And haunted too,’ said Charlotte. ‘I wouldn’t sleep alone here for anything.’

‘Pack of nonsense,’ said her father. ‘Never seen anything, have you? Come now.’

‘Not seen anything perhaps, but—’

‘But what?’

Charlotte did not reply, but she shivered a little. A great surge of rain came driving against the window-pane, and Mrs Dinsmead dropped a spoon with a tinkle on the tray.

‘Not nervous are you, Mother?’ said Mr Dinsmead. ‘It’s a wild night, that’s all. Don’t you worry, we’re safe here by our fireside, and not a soul from outside likely to disturb us. Why, it would be a miracle if anyone did. And miracles don’t happen. No,’ he added as though to himself, with a kind of peculiar satisfaction. ‘Miracles don’t happen.’

As the words left his lips there came a sudden knocking at the door. Mr Dinsmead stayed as though petrified.

‘Whatever’s that?’ he muttered. His jaw fell.

Mrs Dinsmead gave a little whimpering cry and pulled her shawl up round her. The colour came into Magdalen’s face and she leant forward and spoke to her father.

‘The miracle has happened,’ she said. ‘You’d better go and let whoever it is in.’

Twenty minutes earlier Mortimer Cleveland had stood in the driving rain and mist surveying his car. It was really cursed bad luck. Two punctures within ten minutes of each other, and here he was, stranded miles from anywhere, in the midst of these bare Wiltshire downs with night coming on, and no prospect of shelter. Serve him right for trying to take a shortcut. If only he had stuck to the main road! Now he was lost on what seemed a mere cart-track, and no idea if there were even a village anywhere near.

He looked round him perplexedly, and his eye was caught by a gleam of light on the hillside above him. A second later the mist obscured it once more, but, waiting patiently, he presently got a second glimpse of it. After a moment’s cogitation, he left the car and struck up the side of the hill.