‘Do as you please,’ said Harcourt but he spoke the words under his breath to the retreating back of Eustace Flask, who, with a nonchalant farewell waggle of his hand, turned into a doorway leading off from the cloister.
The superintendent of police made his way out of the cloisters. He was still sweating inside his new suit, sweating with heat and irritation at the conversation with Flask, and he went into the cool of the Galilee Chapel to recover. Idly, he gazed at the tomb of the Venerable Bede which stood isolated and flanked at each corner by ceremonial stone candleholders. There was an inscription in Latin on the black surface of the tomb. Frank Harcourt wondered at the meaning of the words. No doubt Eustace Flask could have told him. Flask was an educated man. A plausible educated fraud.
Harcourt had encountered Flask a few months ago when the medium had first arrived in Durham and before he had set up with his retinue of Kitty and Ambrose Barker. In a moment of weakness the policeman had asked him if he might make contact with his late wife. Harcourt’s marriage to Rhoda was scarcely a year old but, for all her comparative youth and relative attractions, he found himself missing Florry who had passed away three summers before. Florence Harcourt was like one of the old, comfortable, familiar suits which Rhoda had forced him to discard. He missed the way that Florry had been satisfied with his rank and his pay, or at least the fact that she had never complained about it. It was no mean thing to be a police superintendent, one of only six in the city, and to be bringing home a weekly wage of forty-two shillings. No mean thing for him, who had worked his way up from the ranks, but yet not enough for Rhoda. She made not-so-casual remarks about promotion, she regularly inquired about the age and health of Alfred Huggins, the Chief Constable.
So, after meeting Flask, he attended a seance without telling Rhoda and there he heard from Florry. Yes, she was more than content on the other side – oh, it was a place of such light and ease and wonder. A place where one breakfasted with angels and dined with the spirits of the departed. His first wife was also content that he had found happiness in the arms of another although she – or rather Eustace Flask – didn’t put it exactly in those terms. But Frank Harcourt was no fool. He had spent too much time questioning felons and listening to their denials and evasions to be incapable of smelling a rat. Once the initial delight at hearing from Florry had worn off, he quickly concluded that he had been taken in. He wondered why angels should need to eat breakfast, or why his late wife needed to eat at all for that matter.
But by then it was too late. Flask was no fool either and he speedily realized how useful it would be to have a member of the Durham constabulary looking out for him while he pursued bigger game in the city. From hints dropped carelessly by Frank Harcourt, the medium understood the policeman’s resentment at his new wife’s nagging ambition.
Under the guise of paying his respects to Rhoda, he called at their house in Hallgarth Street when he knew the superintendent was at work. When Harcourt got home that evening and heard that Flask had visited, he was first angry then fearful. He expected Rhoda to give him hell over his secret consultation with the medium, he thought she would as good as accuse him of infidelity by wanting to be put in touch with Florence. But Rhoda Harcourt had been charmed by Flask. ‘A real gentleman, so educated and refined,’ she said. He had even given her a brooch as a token of his regard. It was the first of several gifts. Harcourt wasn’t sure that Rhoda was aware that Flask practised as a medium, since he had introduced himself as someone who had encountered her husband in the course of ‘civic affairs’. Perhaps she assumed that he had no need to earn money for it was well known that gentlemen, especially such educated and refined ones, could be idle all their lives.
But the fatal error that Frank Harcourt committed was to take money for himself. Or for the ‘household economy’ as Flask expressed it. The medium, with his perception of others’ weak points, had seen that the police superintendent was strapped. One glance around the house in Hallgarth Street, with its furniture and curtains which were new but not quite expensive enough, was sufficient to tell him that. He presented the white five-pound note to Harcourt as a favour, one friend to another. To tide him over. Pay it back when you can. Best not to say anything about it to anyone.
The superintendent reached out and felt the white paper. He closed his fingers on it. Even as he did so, he knew that he was lost. But the note amounted to more than two weeks’ wages! And he’d been having a particularly difficult time with Rhoda recently, who was insisting on the need for another housemaid. He tucked the note into his wallet and muttered something about repaying it as soon as possible. Once the money was secure, Flask produced a small black notebook and wrote down the amount and the date of the loan.
‘Why are you doing that?’ said Harcourt. ‘I’ve got a poor memory’, said Flask, ‘I note down everything. Don’t worry, we’re friends, aren’t we?’ Harcourt should have handed the money back there and then, he should have seized the notebook and torn out the offending page, but he did neither of these things. Instead the fiver lodged in his wallet like a lead weight while his hands hung heavy at his sides.
Other smaller loans had followed, two pounds here, a pound there. Having accepted one, Frank Harcourt found himself almost helpless not to accept more. These loans were never called in. Frank decided that he would prefer to be in the hands of the most grasping usurer rather than in Eustace Flask’s. For it was evident that the medium expected not cash but favours, he expected the superintendent to protect him from the law or, indeed, any unwelcome attention from the authorities. As Harcourt had described it, there were plenty of important people in Durham – several but not all of them in the church – who objected to the presence of Flask in the city. They were particularly concerned about the spinster Julia Howlett, a wealthy and respected member of the community.
The Chief Constable, old Huggins, had personally demanded to know what they were going to do about this ‘fraud’ Flask. Was it true that Harcourt knew him? said Huggins in that gruff no-nonsense manner of his. Some whispers had reached his ears. It didn’t look good, you know, for one of the senior members of the Constabulary to go round consorting with such a dubious creature. Frank protested that he was merely trying to gather evidence so that he could bring charges against the medium. ‘Well, be quick about it, Harcourt,’ barked Huggins. ‘I’d like nothing better than to see him behind bars.’
This conversation had occurred a couple of days before Harcourt’s meeting with Flask in the cathedral. What Huggins would say when and if he heard that there had been a scene involving Eustace Flask at Miss Howlett’s house, Harcourt dreaded to think. It might be enough for the Chief Constable to demand Flask’s immediate arrest even though, in this case, it seemed that the medium had been the victim and not the assailant.
The superintendent might have been relieved by Flask’s saying that he was planning to leave Durham in a few days but he wasn’t. He did not trust the medium, not an inch. And there was the threat that the man had made today, the first time he had uttered it, the threat to let slip the story of the gifts to Rhoda and the household loans. He could deny them, of course, but he wasn’t certain that his wife would keep quiet and there was the evidence in Flask’s little black book. Besides, it was already known to Alfred Huggins that he had dealings with Flask.
No, if this ever got out, Superintendent Frank Harcourt could see disgrace stretching in front of him. Stripped of his rank and discharged from the force without a penny. Worse, banged up in the gaol alongside some of the very felons he had had the pleasure of putting there.