‘Three feet square?’ Alec said. ‘Did you get out your tape and measure it while you were chatting to the doctor?’
‘I paced it,’ I said. ‘My feet are nine inches long. And the doctor had rushed off by then. She was rather upset, I’m afraid.’ Alec was silent. ‘I know you think I’m being hard on her, Alec dear. But the fact is that she’s hiding something for that brother of hers.’
‘You’ll be careful, Dandy, won’t you?’ Alec said. ‘Prowling about searching where you shouldn’t be. Be very careful of Tot. And Merrick’s lot too.’
‘Ah well now,’ I said. ‘When it comes to the mediums, I’ve had a brainwave.’
‘Oh dear,’ Alec said.
‘And I shall be quite safe. Like a general, sitting back and sending the troops to the front. I’ve drafted reinforcements, you see.’
It had taken very little in the way of persuasion. Grant comes from a theatrical background, as is sometimes obvious from the way she paints my face and arranges my hair, and when I had put my plan to her at bedtime the evening before, her face had lit as though all the limelight in the West End had just been shone on it.
‘Now, you must think it over very carefully before you agree, Grant,’ I said. ‘It is far beyond the call of duty.’
‘I’m only sorry it’s taken so long, madam,’ she said. ‘I told Becky right from the start that I expected Gilver and Osborne would call on my services. I thought maybe that business with the circus, but this is nearly as good. Spirit mediums? I wonder if there’s a sewing machine in the house.’ She carried on blithely brushing my hair as I gaped at her in the glass. That circus business, as she called it, had been four years ago and I had thought, back then, that my detecting adventures were a secret all my own.
‘I’m slightly feeling my way about what your story’s to be,’ I told her when she finally stopped planning her costumes, ‘but I thought perhaps we could mix a bit of truth in with the lies. We can say that you are here with your employers – as you are – while they’re taking the waters – as they are – but that after you arrived you felt a tremendous whatever it is you’d feel.’
‘Vibration, madam,’ said Grant. She was pinning the side curls into my hair for the night and spoke quite casually.
‘I bow to your unexpected greater knowledge,’ I said. ‘Now, since you are not known in spiritualists’ circles…’ I paused a moment in case she was about to correct me, ‘I think you should say that you are a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter or whatever but that you had such upsetting experiences when you first tried to direct your powers, that these days you try to avoid…’
‘Contact with the other world,’ said Grant.
‘Quite. Now, as to what was vibrating. I wondered about Mrs Addie, but perhaps you should steer clear of her. So tell me what you make of this instead: the mediums are conversing with – we think, Mr Osborne and I – the spirits of hanged prisoners from the Gallow Hill.’ Grant nodded calmly. ‘That is to say, they’re pretending to. Or are deluded into thinking they are. Just to make it clear that I don’t believe any of this.’
‘I’ll need to see when I get there,’ said Grant.
‘And the reason we think this,’ I said, passing swiftly on, ‘is that they’re meeting at the hanging place on the hill and also that one of them – actually it wasn’t one of them; it was another guest who was going to tell them about it, now that I remember – said that Mary Patterson – when she appeared – was speaking of repenting her sins and forgiving her killers. The judge and the hangman, this would be.’
‘That’s nice of her,’ Grant said. She had finished pinning my hair and was dabbing it with lotion to keep it safe through the night.
‘Well, anyway, the mediums seem to know how many they’re expecting – either fifteen or seventeen anyway – and they know some of the names but not all. From piecing together old court records, I suppose. They’ve got some already.’ I opened my dressing-table drawer and took out my notebook, leafing through it to the right page. ‘Lizzie, Peggy, Marjorie Docherty, Ann Dougal, Big Effie, Mary Patterson, Abigail Simpson, Joseph the Miller and a grandmother with a blind grandson.’
Grant tutted.
‘Say what you like about the good old days, madam, but we don’t hang blind children any more. No wonder him and his granny are not resting easy.’
‘Yes, so what I think you should do is pick a very common name – Rose or Jeannie for a woman, James or William for a man – but best stick to women, since most of them seem to be women so far – and claim to have been… contacted.’
‘A man,’ said Grant, ‘because it’ll be so much better when I speak in his voice. Listen to this, madam.’ She finished stretching my net cap over my hair, then half turned away and cleared her throat. When she spoke again it was in a deep, ragged, rumbling voice which seemed to come straight from the pit of her stomach without her lips moving at all.
‘I am William, come down from the hill. Wrongly judged and wrongly hanged, now I seek my revenge.’
‘Good God Almighty!’ I said. There were shivers running through me from head to toe and Bunty, on the bed, had raised her head and was staring at Grant with her lip drawn back from her remaining upper teeth in the closest thing she could ever make to a snarl.
‘It’s really nothing, madam,’ Grant said. ‘Just a question of breath control. I could teach you.’
‘I am glad to say I don’t foresee needing to know,’ I told her. ‘But William it is – wrongly judged and wrongly hanged. Excellent, Grant. You can start in the morning.’
13
Friday, 25th October 1929
I was lucky enough to witness her arrival too. Mrs Scott, Mrs Davies and the gooseberry-eyed girl, who I had discovered was called Olivia, were taking morning coffee in the ladies’ drawing room, no sign of Mr Merrick, and I was waiting there to see Donald and Teddy safely out of their respective Faradaic heat bath and ten lengths of breaststroke, install them on the terrace with hot bottles and then begin my search for the missing yard-square object. As I sat there I saw a mousy figure enter at the double doors, hesitate and then come creeping towards the party of ladies who were just one table away from me, reading luridly coloured picture papers which I did not recognise – Spiritualists’ Weekly, perhaps. Grant was wearing something close to a novice’s habit, a plain grey pinafore dress and white neckpiece underneath it, and had straightened her hair and scraped it to either side of her head. Her hands were clasped in front of her and she made only darting glances up to see where she was going, keeping her head for the most part decently bowed.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, bobbing a curtsy when Mrs Scott deigned to notice her. ‘Are you the… Someone told me I should speak to you. I’m in need of counsel. I just don’t know what to do.’ Before any of the women could answer, Grant seemed to buckle at the knees and she sank into a chair, raising a shaking hand to her brow. ‘I feel sick,’ she said. ‘Oh my, I feel so very sick. Such great evil. I don’t think I can bear it.’ She went so far as to make a couple of rather convincing noises which caused Mrs Scott to edge away as far as she could without leaving her chair. The gooseberry-eyed girl, Olivia, put a hand out and touched Grant’s arm. Grant immediately raised her head and smiled. I would have said that roses bloomed in her cheeks but no one, even from a theatrical background, even a Barrymore, could change colour at will.
‘Thank you,’ Grant said. Then she frowned a little and looked at the girl’s hand on her arm. ‘What did you do?’
‘I am at peace with my gift,’ said Olivia. ‘I simply shared my peace with you.’