Sabina added quickly, before John could continue, “And when he was ready for the table to appear to levitate, he simply unhooked his ring and thrust upward with his foot, withdrawing it immediately afterward. The illusion of the table seeming to float under our hands for a second or two before it fell was enhanced by the circumstances and the darkness.”
Buckley, with some bitterness: “It all seems so blasted obvious when explained.”
“Such flummery always is, Mr. Buckley. It is the trappings and manipulation that make it mystifying. The so-called spirit lights are another example.” Sabina placed the stoppered glass bottle on the table and described where she’d found it and what it contained. “Mix white phosphorous with any fatty oil, and the result is a bottle filled with hidden light. As long as the bottle remains stoppered the phosphorous gives off no glow, but as soon as the cork is removed and air is permitted to reach the mixture, a faint unearthly shine results. Wave the bottle in the air and the light seems to dart about. Replace the stopper and the light fades away as the air inside is used up.”
“The little winking lights were more of the same, I suppose?”
“Not quite,” John said. “Match heads were their source. Hold a match head between the moistened forefinger and thumb of each hand, wiggle the forefinger enough to expose and then once more quickly conceal the match head, and you have flitting fireflies.”
Grace Cobb asked, “The guitar that seemed to dance and play itself — how was that done?”
John fetched the guitar, brought it back to the table. Beside it he set the reaching rod from Vargas’s sleeve. The rod was only a few inches in length when closed, but when he opened out each of its sections after the fashion of a telescope, it extended the full length of the table and beyond — more than six feet overall.
“Vargas extended this rod in his left hand,” he said, “inserted it in the hole in the neck of the guitar, raised and slowly turned the instrument this way and that to create the illusion of air-dancing. As for the music...”
He reached into the oval sound hole under the strings, gave a quick twist. The weird strumming they had heard during the séance began to emanate from within.
Mrs. Cobb: “A music box!”
“A one-tune music box, to be precise,” Sabina said, “affixed to the wood inside with gum adhesive.”
Mr. Buckley: “The hand that touched Mrs. Cobb’s cheek? The manifestations? The spirit writing on the slate?”
“All part and parcel of the same trickery,” John told him. Again he went to the cabinet, where he pressed the hidden release to raise its top. From inside he took out the two stuffed and wax-coated rubber gloves, held them up. “These are the ghostly ‘fingers’ that touched Mrs. Cobb and Mrs. Carpenter. The smoothness of the paraffin gives them the feel of human flesh. One ‘hand’ has been treated with luminous paint; it was kept covered under this” — he showed them the black cloth — “until the time came to reveal it as a glowing disembodied entity.”
He lifted out the silk drapery and theatrical mask. “The mask has been treated in the same fashion. It was the combination of these two items that created the manifestation alleged to be Dr. Cobb’s mother.”
He raised the fine white netting. “Likewise made phosphorescent and draped over the head to create the ‘spirit’ purported to be the Buckleys’ daughter.”
“But... I heard Bernice speak,” Margaret Buckley said weakly. “It was her voice, I’m sure it was...”
Her husband took her hand in both of us. “No, my dear, it wasn’t. You only imagined it to be.”
“An imitation of a child’s voice,” Sabina said, “just as the other voice was an imitation of a man’s deep articulation.”
John picked up the two slates, which bore the “spirit message” under his false signatures. “I Angkar destroyed the evil one. The actual murderer wrote those words, in sequence on one slate and upside down and backward on the other to heighten the illusion of spirit writing. Before the crime was committed, in anticipation of it.”
“Who?” Dr. Cobb demanded. “Name the person, sir.”
“Professor Vargas’s accomplice, of course.”
“Accomplice?”
Once again Sabina spoke before John could. “No one individual, no matter how skilled in supernatural fakery, could have arranged and carried out all the tricks we were subjected to even if he hadn’t been roped to his chair. Someone else had to direct the reaching rod to the guitar and then turn the spring on the music box. Someone else had to jangle the tambourine, make the wailing noises, carry the phosphorous bottle to different parts of the room and up onto the love seat there so as to make the light seem to float near the ceiling. Someone else had to manipulate the waxed gloves, don the mask and drapery and netting, imitate the spirit voices.”
“Annabelle? Are you saying it was Annabelle?”
“None other.”
They all stared at the silent, black-robed woman at the head of the table. Her expression remained frozen, but her eyes burned with a zealot’s fire.
Dr. Cobb said, “But she wasn’t in the room with us...”
“Ah, but she was,” John said quickly. “At first it seemed to me that she must be in another part of the house—”
“Seemed to us,” Sabina corrected him with a touch of asperity. Then to the others, “Not because of the locked door but because of the way in which the lights dimmed and then extinguished to begin the séance. As though she turned off the gas at a prearranged time. But that wasn’t the case. Some type of automatic timing mechanism was used for that purpose. Annabelle, you see, was already present in this room before the rest of us entered and Vargas locked the door.”
Mr. Buckley: “Before, you say?”
“She disappeared from the parlor, you’ll recall, as soon as she announced that all was in readiness. While Vargas detained us with his call for ‘donations,’ Annabelle shed her robe and slipped in here—”
Dr. Cobb: “Shed her robe?”
“Yes, certainly. It would have been too cumbersome for the performance of all the necessary tricks in the dark, might possibly have made rustling sounds that would have given her away. Whereas dressed only in some sort of close-fitting, black undergarment she had complete freedom of movement. Such also made it easier for her to conceal herself before and after the commission of her crime.”
“Conceal herself where? There are no hiding places... unless you expect us to believe she crawled up inside the fireplace chimney.”
“Not there, no. Nor are there any secret closets or the like. She was hidden in the same place as her spirit props, within the cabinet. The interior is hollow, and she is both tiny and enough of a practiced contortionist to fold her body into such a short, narrow space.”
“The catch that releases the hinged top,” John said, reclaiming the narrative, “can be operated from within as well. Once the room was in total darkness and Vargas began invoking the spirits, she climbed out to commence her preparations. Gloves and a mask to cover her white face completed her all-black costume. And her familiarity with the room allowed her to move about in silence.”
“All well and good,” Mr. Buckley said, “but the woman was outside the locked door, pounding on it, less than a minute after Vargas was stabbed. Explain that.”
“Simple misdirection, sir. Before the stabbing she replaced all props inside the cabinet and closed the top, then unlocked the door; the key, despite careful oiling of the keyhole, made a faint scraping and the bolt likewise clicked slightly as it released — sounds which I... which Mrs. Carpenter and I both heard. Annabelle then crossed the room, plunged her dagger into Vargas’s back and neck, recrossed the room after the second thrust, let herself out into the darkened hallway, and relocked the door from that side. Not with Vargas’s key, which remained on the cabinet, but with a duplicate key of her own.”