Nevile had changed into a dark gray three-piece suit with a cream shirt and a red silk necktie. ‘I agreed to be guest of honor at a new art exhibition,’ he explained. ‘“Visions of the World Beyond.”’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Rodeo Drive, the Kleban Gallery, nine o’clock. Don’t ask. I know just what it’s going to be like and I’m beginning to regret it already. Most American artists seem to think that the “world beyond” looks like one of those episodes of Star Trek when Kirk and the crew go on shore leave. You know, all Greek pillars and orange skies and girls walking around in lime-green mini-dresses.’
‘You’re quite a cynic, for a psychic.’
‘Not at all. I’m just a realist. The world beyond looks exactly like the world of the living, except that everybody’s in stasis – the same as they were the day they passed over, for ever. If you die angry, you stay angry. Let that be a warning to you.’
‘Tell me about Danny. Or this spirit that pretended he was Danny.’
Nevile sipped his Tom Collins. ‘When I spoke to Lynn Ashbee’s little girl, Kathy, there was no question at all that it was her. Young Kathy was shocked, and she was very faint, and she didn’t really understand what had happened to her, especially since she had suffered such massive physical trauma. The way you die has an enormous effect on you. If you pass over peacefully, your spirit adapts to death much more easily; you’re ready for it, you can accept it. But if it’s wham! – the way it was with Kathy and all of those other school-children – it can take you a long time before you adjust. Months, or even years.’
‘Did you see Kathy?’
‘I saw a dancing light, like a will o’ the wisp, and only for a few seconds. That’s all I would have expected to see, so soon after such a violent death. That’s why Danny’s appearance was such a surprise to me. Danny may not have passed over instantaneously, like Kathy and her classmates, but all the same he wasn’t really expecting to die, was he?
‘Yet there he was, and his image was almost as clear as if he were still alive. Not only that, he wasn’t bewildered or confused. Quite the opposite. He was full of resentment, and he was able to articulate that resentment very clearly. That’s why I’m ninety percent convinced that it wasn’t Danny, but another spirit trying to pass itself off as Danny.’
‘Can spirits do that? I mean, take on the shape of other spirits?’
‘Of course. A person’s spirit has no physical substance. It’s nothing but a highly charged collection of all the electrical impulses that made up their personality when they were alive. A spirit makes itself seen and heard by stimulating the synapses in your brain, so that you think you can see it and you think you can hear it, even though it’s invisible and it’s not making a sound. Why do you think there are no authenticated tapes of spirit voices, and no video recordings of ghosts – even though people swear that they’ve heard their dead mothers talking to them, and seen their dead lovers standing over their beds? What you saw outside the window was very vivid, but it was nothing more than a picture from your own memory.’
‘So how come you saw it, too?’
‘Because whoever this spirit is, it was able to conjure up Danny’s image in my brain, too, and Margot’s, and Lynn’s, so that we all witnessed what was more or less the same manifestation.’
Frank finished his vodka and beckoned the hostess for another one. ‘What I want to know is, why would another spirit do that?’
‘I’m not at all sure. But spirits often make attempts to influence us, so that we can take care of unfinished business for them.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, there are some things that spirits can do for themselves. If a man never got the chance to tell a woman that he loved her before he died, he might whisper it to her, inside her mind, or evoke a song or a smell that reminds her of him. He might even be able to appear to her, or give her the feeling that he was touching her. But spirits can’t hurt anybody. They can’t take revenge – not with their own hands, anyway.’
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely. That’s why people shouldn’t ever be scared by ghosts. Spirits can sometimes make a room feel chilly, or make the lights appear to go dim, but that’s not because it really goes colder or darker; they’re just affecting our perception. They can move objects, sometimes, that’s elementary psychokinesis. But they certainly can’t strangle you or stab you or push you off a building. That’s because they can’t make your brain act against your own self-preservation. What they can do, however, is try to persuade some other living person to get their revenge by proxy.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I’ve done quite a lot of research into it – and there are several recorded instances where people have been killed and this seems to be the only plausible explanation. The most recent case I heard of was in New York two or three years ago when Antonio “Horseface” Agnelli was shot dead by one of his closest friends, George D’Auria.
‘In his defense, D’Auria said that he had met one of Horseface’s cousins, Bruno, in a restaurant in Brooklyn and that Cousin Bruno had tipped him off that Horseface had been having a passionate affair with his wife.
‘However it turned out at the Grand Jury hearing that Bruno had been expelled from the Agnelli family in 1994, and that his body had been found in 1997 in a burned-out car in Queens. So we have to ask ourselves, who did George D’Auria meet in that restaurant, if anybody? The manager and the waiter swore blind that he had eaten alone.’
The pianist started to play an even more careless interpretation of the theme from The Love Boat. Frank said, ‘I still don’t understand why a spirit should have appeared to me as Danny, and told me that he didn’t forgive me.’
‘Quite honestly, Frank, I don’t either. But it stirred up serious trouble for you, didn’t it, between you and Margot? And that graffiti all over her paintings – that must have been the last straw, as far as she was concerned.’
‘You think a spirit could have spoiled her paintings?’
‘I suppose it’s possible. As I say, spirits can’t hurt you directly, but many of them are capable of moving things, like pictures, or even furniture, and some spirits can fling things around.’
Frank said, ‘I have a very bad feeling about this. I feel like I’m being led somewhere, but I don’t know where.’
‘Well, there’s only one way to find out. We ought to try another communication session – another séance. And before you say no, this one will be free of charge. I’ve been commissioned to write a new book about psychic detection and this will make a terrific chapter all on its own. It’s an extremely unusual case, Frank. It really is.’
‘OK . . . if you think it might help.’
‘More than anything else, I think it’s a sensible precaution. I don’t want to be alarmist, but it seems to me as if this spirit is intent on doing you some serious mischief.’
Twelve
Astrid knocked on his door just after eleven. As soon as he let her in she clung to him and held him tight, without saying anything. A young musician with a beaky nose and curly, shoulder-length hair came out of the room next door and winked at him. ‘Looks like you’re all right there, mate.’