He turned smartly on his heel and strode from the morning room. There was a pause and then a woman began to clap and soon Eustace Flask had earned a round of applause for the way he stood up to the outsider. Aunt Julia clasped him by the arm and other women gathered round him with praise and reassurance. Everyone seemed to have forgotten the business of the blue chalk and the surplus flour, even though there were little mounds of the stuff on the floor by Flask’s seat. There was some talk about the identity of the impertinent fellow who’d tried to ruin their evening but no one seemed to have an idea of who he was. Yet, equally, Tom and Helen had the impression that, in the spiritualist community, such hostility and persecution were routine matters. These things were to be expected and, in a perverse way, they fortified the true believer.
Ambrose started to dismantle the cabinet and Kitty to pack away the curtains and muslin. Aunt Julia was sitting and writing at a roll-top desk in the corner of the room and Flask was standing over her like a shield. She handed a slip of paper to the medium who promptly tucked it away. Tom would have bet a month of his own salary that the medium was receiving his reward for the evening. The task which Helen’s mother had entrusted to her, that of weaning the aunt away from her devotion to the medium, seemed more impossible than ever.
Flask’s Family
Eustace Flask and Ambrose Barker and Kitty were renting a tiny end-of-terrace house outside the city walls in the old borough of Elvet. The medium and his companions were better dressed and kept odder hours than most other inhabitants of the borough, which lay to the north-east across the River Wear. If anyone asked, the trio was a family of sorts, with Flask as the uncle, Kitty his niece and Ambrose some kind of cousin. But no one did ask because in this area of back-to-back terraces, boarding houses, small shops and drinking places on the fringe of a colliery, there was little neighbourly curiosity. Besides, Ambrose had a faintly threatening air to him that discouraged questions.
If the old part of the city was dominated by the cathedral and castle, this more recently built quarter was the location for the new court and police-house and an imposing prison. Ambrose might have seen more than one prison from the inside – he looked the type – but if it disturbed him to glimpse the high walls of Durham Gaol first thing in the morning and last thing at night he did not show it.
Now he finished stowing away the handcart containing the dismantled cabinet which he had wheeled down from the old maid’s place in the South Bailey. The terrace house was backed by a tiny yard, convenient for storing the equipment required by the guv’nor. The guv’nor! Ambrose was able to maintain a sober face while Flask was pulling his tricks but the moment the show was done with and they were away from the spiritualist mob and their trusting sheep’s eyes he could hardly keep himself from sneering and cackling at the stupidity of humankind.
This attitude did not extend to Eustace Flask himself for, although Ambrose was often nettled by the airs and graces of the medium, he recognized that the man had a real talent for deception and moneymaking. He called him Eustace but also the guv’nor sometimes and it was not altogether ironic. It was his appreciation of Flask’s skills that made him bite his tongue as he watched the medium and his ‘niece’ Kitty walking ahead while he trundled the cart behind them over the cobbles, feeling a bit like some beast of burden. He knew that if they were to be stopped by one of the town police – which had happened more than once – Mr Flask would soon knock any suspicions on the head. He’d talk in that superior way of his and refer in a familiar style to the Chief Constable and his superintendents and other town worthies as if he dined with them every day. Nevertheless, it hurt Ambrose in the heart to see Kitty next to Flask and touching his arm so constantly with her little paws as they walked so close, to see her whispering and giggling all confidential in his ear, and altogether behaving like a silly chit.
Ambrose had always taken Flask for a molly, a Mary Anne. The guv’nor slipped into the manner easy enough and he was relaxed in the company of women, especially older ones, which could be a sign of molly-hood. But perhaps the truth was that he was something in between, or a nothing in between, neither fish nor fowl. Yet it disturbed Ambrose to see Eustace and Kitty so cosy. He’d have words with Miss Kitty Partout later on, he would.
He pronounced her name Par-tout, putting the stress on the second part and rhyming it with ‘out’, which she said was wrong because it was French and she should be pronounced Par-too. Kitty claimed to be French originally, a generation or two back. In that case, said Ambrose, what’s Par-too mean? Does it have a meaning? Dunno, said Kitty. My mum never said and my dad wasn’t around to ask. But Ambrose did believe that Kitty might have Frog blood in her. She had a saucy air sometimes and a way of looking up from under her lowered lashes that was, well, foreign as far as he was concerned.
Ambrose made certain that the gate to the yard was locked before he entered the house by the back passage. He heard rustlings from the parlour and walked into the room just as Mr Flask and Kitty sprang apart from each other. Ambrose thought that his guv’nor’s hand might have been on her tit. Trying the goods, eh? He almost laughed to imagine what that old maid and the other worthies up in the high town would say if they could see their precious medium fondling the boobies of his ‘niece’. He almost laughed. Instead, he promised himself he’d definitely be having words later on with Miss Kitty.
‘Ah, Ambrose,’ said Flask. ‘Everything tucked up for the night? Join us for a libation?’
There were glasses of some sticky pale brown stuff on a table. Sherry or something.
‘There’s a jug of porter in the kitchen. I’ll have some o’ that. Run and fetch it, Kitty Par-tout, there’s a good girl.’
Kitty hesitated for a second and Ambrose saw Flask nod almost imperceptibly before she scampered off to the kitchen. But he put his best face on it and said, ‘Find anything in York, Eustace? That’s where you was this afternoon, wasn’t it?’
‘A couple of likely prospects,’ said the medium. ‘One of them a widower.’
‘Thought you found women easier to work with than men, guv’nor. More – what’s the word? – pliant.’
‘It depends,’ said Flask.
Kitty returned carrying the jug of porter and a tankard. She made a show of pouring it out for Ambrose and not spilling more than a drop or two, as if she wanted to demonstrate what a careful girl she was. Then, picking up her own sticky brown libation, she flung herself into a battered armchair, one of a pair. Eustace Flask settled in the other while Ambrose had to content himself with an even more dilapidated rocking chair which was hard on the bum and pinched the hips.
‘We did well tonight. Here is a contribution for the cause,’ said Flask, producing the cheque which Julia Howlett had presented to him. Ambrose noticed that he didn’t let it out of his hands or even say how much the cheque was for.
‘Who was that terrible man with the moustache?’ asked Kitty.
‘I think I know who he is,’ said Flask, without enlarging on it.
‘He nearly spoiled everything.’
‘That’s where you are wrong, my dear Kit. He made an exhibition of himself and, far from convincing the congregation he was right, he made them feel I had been hard done by. I am sure that Miss Howlett gave us more than she would have done without his intervention.’