01 - Memories of the Dead (2 page)

“Mrs Greengage had us sit at
the table and for my benefit explained she was a medium and the parrot
sometimes channelled spirits. Just as she said that the awful bird looked straight
at me and went ‘Dorothy!’ Well that’s my Christian name and I was so stunned to
hear it I nearly fell out of my seat. Mrs Greengage looked at me then and said
‘There is a spirit wants to speak to you, Mrs Wilton, it’s a man and his name
is Geoffrey’.”

“Your husband.” Clara
concluded.

“Oh no, I don’t know any
Geoffreys. Well except the baker’s little boy, but he was hardly likely to be
channelling himself through a parrot!”

Clara felt the realm of things
‘hardly likely’ to happen had already been seriously breached.

“No, no, Geoffrey was some
sort of spirit mediator – a go-between.” Mrs Wilton continued, “It seems
Geoffrey had been in contact with my husband in the afterlife. I’m still a bit
hazy about how it all came about, perhaps there is some sort of giant meeting
place up there. Anyway Geoffrey had spoken with Arthur, my husband, and
promised that if I stuck with Mrs Greengage Arthur would eventually be able to
come through in person, but in the meantime Geoffrey would relay the messages.”

“Ah,” Said Clara beginning to
see the game unfold, “So you ‘stuck’ with Mrs Greengage?”

“I had to! Geoffrey said
Arthur was desperate to speak with me but was gathering his strength.
Apparently it takes a while for a spirit to properly disengage itself from the
corporeal world and, until it does, communication is very difficult.”

“How many sessions did it take
for Mr Wilton to gather his strength?” Clara guessed enough to make a shilling
or two.

“It was the fourth session he
came through, I believe.”

“Via the parrot?”

“Sort of, you see a bird has a
limited vocabulary, as Mrs Greengage puts it, so she listens to the parrot
psychically and then tells us.”

“Right, but Mr Wilton
eventually came through?”

“Yes.”

“And he said?”

“He was deeply upset by the
situation I found myself in, felt it was all his fault for not being clearer
about where the money was. He promised he would help, but it would take him
time to gather enough spiritual force to get the information to me. I was
desperate, as you can imagine and could hardly wait thinking soon all my
prayers would be answered.” Mrs Wilton had started to tremble with emotion,
“Then last night when I arrived Mrs Greengage was bubbling with excitement.
Arthur had visited her in her sleep and had caused her to dream of this vivid
map, which, when she awoke, she felt compelled to draw out.”

Mrs Wilton fiddled in her hand
bag again and took out a folded piece of paper. Opening it, she showed it to
Clara, who saw it was a blotchy map drawn in red ink and loosely recognisable
as the outskirts of Brighton.

“That’s my house.” Mrs Wilton
pointed to a coloured square, “And these are landmarks; the field, the church
and the duck pond. Arthur told Mrs Greengage that he had buried all of his
wealth in a tea chest and this map would lead me to it.”

Clara took the map and studied
it. It was rudimentary and lacked any indications of roads, directions or even
the compass points. It looked like something a child would scribble and hardly
helpful to the desperate woman across from her.

“You are wondering about directions?
Arthur was very security conscious and created clues to help locate the
treasure. He wrote nine and the first three he told me the same night Mrs
Greengage gave me the map. He is going to give me another three next week when
I visit and the last in a fortnight’s time. It is very clear.”

“That it is.” Clara nodded,
impressed by the ingenuity, though not the ethics, of Mrs Greengage.

“And now perhaps you can see
where you come in?” Mrs Wilton smiled hopefully.

“Not entirely.” Clara answered
though she had a strong suspicion.

“Why, I want you to translate
the clues and find the treasure for me! You see the clues are riddles.” Mrs
Wilton handed over a handful of papers, each written on in the same distinct
red ink.

Clara repressed a sigh, she
really didn’t like riddles or wild goose chases.

“I have to ask Mrs Wilton, is
this sort of thing something your husband was likely to do?”

Mrs Wilton looked puzzled.

“What do you mean, dear?”

“I am curious if he was the
sort of man to whom riddles and treasure hunts appealed.”

“Does that matter?”

Clara bit her lip and looked
at the slips of paper. She was sensing this would prove a delicate moment.

“I was just wondering whether
our spiritual personas were much the same as our physical ones.”

It was a fumbled answer, but
Mrs Wilton seemed satisfied.

“He quite liked cryptic
crosswords, though I must say he was never very good at them.”

“So it might have pleased
his…” Clara shut her eyes as the next sentence formed unerringly on her lips,
“…spirit to write little riddles?”

“I think so, yes.” Mrs Wilton
suddenly flushed, “I know most people think I am a fool who has fallen into the
clutches of a charlatan. But I have seen things, heard the things she has said
and I can’t think of any logical explanation for them other than that she is in
contact with the deceased. If you came to a séance you would see for yourself,
surely that would not be too much to ask before you turn down this case?
Because you are considering turning me down, aren’t you?”

Clara saw the desperation on Mrs
Wilton’s face and her resolve crumbled a bit more. Was it so far-fetched after
all that a woman so grief-stricken and in dire need would turn to what seemed
the only source of hope, even if it was an old lady with a parrot?

But this Mrs Greengage was a
con-artist, she had to be, and she was exploiting a woman’s emotional state to
make easy money. Even worse was that she was not taking advantage of a wealthy
woman who had more money than sense, but someone who probably had to do without
coal or bread just to afford another séance. And if Clara took on the case
based on these ghostly riddles would she be any better? She would be being paid
to investigate something that was impossible.

“I have a special séance
booked for tomorrow night and I have reserved a place for a guest. Will you
come?” Mrs Wilton persisted.

“Are you absolutely certain
that your husband left behind some sort of legacy?”

“Yes, of course!”

“And there is no traceable
bank account?”

“Nothing, I already told you.”

“You have to forgive me.” Clara
said sincerely, “But these days it is rare for a person to bury their
‘treasure’, so to speak.”

“Yet my husband did, I am
certain of it, and now he is trying to get in touch with me. Please will you
come? Let Mrs Greengage prove herself to you.”

Clara sighed.               

“I need to think about this
Mrs Wilton, it is, you must agree, a very unusual situation.”

“I know and I am grateful you
have listened to me without laughter or ridicule.”

Clara felt even worse now.

“I will think this over and
let you know my decision tomorrow. Do you have access to a telephone?”

“I can use the public phone at
Mrs Branbury’s bakery on the corner. She lets people use it by appointment,
usually between twelve and one.”

“Then I will ring you then,
what is the number?”

“Brighton 42.” Mrs Wilton said
quickly, “I shall be there waiting and I hope it is good news I hear.”

“I make no promises Mrs
Wilton.” Clara stood to see her client out.

“I’ll just have to have a
little faith then.” Mrs Wilton gave a slight smile, “I’ll hear from you tomorrow.”

“Of course, but please don’t
get your hopes up. This is not my usual sort of case.”

They said goodbye on the
doorstep and Mrs Wilton hurried away up the road, gloveless hands tucked under
her arms. The sky had turned ominously grey and a thin veil of snow was
beginning to fall. Clara hoped the luckless Mrs Wilton would make it home
before the weather turned worse.

She returned to her office and
stared at the odd slips of paper left behind by Mrs Wilton, as soft thuds of
snow hit the window pane behind her. The riddles were the usual random clues,
the like of which Clara remembered from childhood adventure novels. One read;

“Think of me before you sleep,
where I am lost the earth runs deep.”

Another stated;

“You’ll need me now your world
is lost, I am by the steeple and the cross.”

And the last one was even more
cryptic;

“Three paces North, three
paces South, the staring man who has no mouth.”

Clara imagined Mrs Greengage
had spent an enjoyable afternoon working those rhymes out. How the woman kept a
straight face when telling them to Mrs Wilton she did not know.

Suddenly she felt very angry.
What right did this ‘soothsayer’ and witch have to convince the poor Mrs Wilton
that her husband was in contact and that soon her money woes would be over? She
had half a mind to visit the séance just so she could tell Mrs Greengage
exactly what she thought of her. But that would mean giving false hope to Mrs
Wilton and she couldn’t do that. No, she would ring her the next day and tell
her she could not take on the case and it would all be over. It wouldn’t be a
pleasant conversation but it was the only thing she could ethically do.

She neatly stored the riddles
and map away in an envelope ready to return to Mrs Wilton and then found some
paperwork to finish out of a desperate need to do something to distract
herself.

Tommy was sat in his wheelchair at the dining table
attacking white paper with a pair of scissors. Since the war which had stripped
him of the use of his legs he had relied more and more on creative mental
activities to, as he put it, keep himself sane. Clara walked in and kissed her
older brother’s cheek fondly.

“What are these?” She picked
up a spiky shard of paper dotted with irregular holes.

“Christmas decos.” Tommy
replied jovially, “They taught us how to make these in the hospital. Keeps a
fellow’s mind busy.”

“Christmas has been over for two
weeks.” Clara reminded him as she browsed through an assortment of paper
scrapes, some were vaguely recognisable as snowflakes, others defied interpretation.

“I’m preparing for next year.”
Tommy told her haughtily, “I made a string of angels for the bannister.”

Tommy rummaged through the
piles of paper and withdrew a string of distorted figures.

“Oh good.” Clara said
uncertainly, “But couldn’t they have been, well, a little more angelic and a
little less… demonic?”

Tommy gave her a hard look and
then grinned.

“Are they that bad? I did go
at it rather hammer and tongs. Needed to distract myself after last night.” He
frowned apologetically, “Sorry about that, by the way, old thing.”

“You didn’t do it on purpose.”
Clara shrugged.

“Bad enough those dreams keep
me awake without inflicting it on someone else.” Tommy toyed with a lopsided
snowflake, “What’s up anyway? You look like you have the world on your
shoulders.”

Clara flopped down into an
easy-chair by the fireplace.

“What do you make of
Spiritualism, Tommy?”

“Is that the one where you
spend all your time talking with the dead?”

“I don’t think you do it all
day long, but it’s a part of what they believe, yes.”

“I always thought it an
interesting idea.” Tommy mused, “Imagine being able to talk to anyone from the
past you wanted to, like Aristotle. Though you would have to learn ancient
Greek of course.”

“They seem to only get in
touch with the recently deceased and people they know… knew, I mean.” Clara
pulled off her shoes and rubbed her toes, “I thought you would be more of a
sceptic.”

“Me? Oh I know some took the
trenches as first class proof God didn’t exist, but I wasn’t one of them, not
that I am about to join the spiritualists and go talking to ma and pa, that
is.”

“To me it just all seems
wishful thinking.” Clara sighed.

“There was a lad in the
trenches who claimed to see an angel. He had caught a mine in No Man’s Land and
we only managed to drag back his top half. He lasted an hour like that and,
towards the end, he said this angel was coming for him, he could see it.” Tommy
picked up his string of deformed angels, “We tried to get him to describe the
angel, but he couldn’t. No one even thought of arguing with him about what he
was seeing. Right then it seemed perfectly logical. Of course now we are back
to calling things like that hallucinations.”

Clara watched her brother tear
the string of angels into tiny pieces. Sometimes she tried to imagine being
surrounded by dying men, some so horrendously mutilated there was barely
anything of them left. But her mind couldn’t wrap itself around the thought,
which was perhaps just as well considering the nightmares Tommy suffered.

“What’s this all about Clara?”
Tommy looked up at her sharply.

“I had a new client this
morning, she has been visiting a clairvoyant who claims to be in touch with her
deceased husband and is feeding her riddles, of all things, to some sort of
treasure her husband supposedly buried before he went to war.”

“Really? Even I’m not that
gullible. What does she want with you?”

“To solve the riddles so she
can find the treasure.” Clara rooted in her bag and pulled out the envelope of
papers.

Tommy inspected each one
carefully in turn.

“Who writes in red ink?”

“Clairvoyants. Apparently.”

After examining the slips
Tommy handed them back to his sister.

“Are you taking the case?” He
asked.

“Of course not, this medium is
a fraud and I would be one too if I followed clues I knew to be false.”

“On the other hand you could
take the job and prove the medium a liar, whilst also looking to see if there
was any truth to the husband’s treasure.”

“I would be wasting my
client’s money and time.” Clara rubbed at her eyes wearily, “She wants to
believe so badly that her husband left her some money somewhere. She is
struggling and I think she has pinned her last hopes on this clairvoyant and a
mythical treasure.”

“Well that decides it.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“If you don’t help her she’ll
find someone else, someone who has no scruples wasting her money on a wild
goose chase, meanwhile she will also still be paying for a medium to tell her
lies. You need to step in, prove the clairvoyant a charlatan and find out if
there are any legitimate savings left for the poor woman.”

It was a persuasive argument
and Clara saw the sense in Tommy’s words. Besides, if she let Mrs Wilton carry
on being fooled when she might be able to help, then she was little better than
Mrs Greengage.

“I’ve got another argument for
you.” Tommy said fixing her with his brown-eyed stare, “You need the money and
I need something other than paper angels to keep my brain going. It’s over a
month since the mayor’s case.”

There was truth to that too.
Finding cases was never easy when you were a relatively unknown detective,
finding a case when you were an unknown female detective was even harder.

Clara had started her business
out of the ashes of the Great War. It was partly practical and partly a means
to, as Tommy had pointed out, help keep her older brother occupied. It began by
helping friends and neighbours who were dealing with the aftermath of losing
all their menfolk. Some were still looking for answers as to what had become of
loves ones, others were trying to track down lost savings accounts or war
pensions. Before she knew it, Clara was the person people went to when they
wanted something sorted out.

As she gained a reputation
work mounted up, as did the difficulty of the cases she was involved in. She
was starting to feel overwhelmed at the same time as Tommy came out of the
military hospital in the depths of depression. She had given him some odd
research to do just to occupy his mind while she was out of the house and
before long he was intrigued by his sister’s new life and wanting to know more.

Now two years on they were a
real partnership, but Tommy still suffered the worst when there was no work to
do.

“Think of it this way.” Tommy
said to her now, “If she was looking for a relative lost in France you would
tell her it was a near enough impossible task, but that you would try anyway.
Is this so different?”

“She is certain her husband
left her money somewhere.” Clara admitted.

“Then find it and expose the
fraud this medium is conducting!”

Clara closed her eyes for a
moment and let her thoughts swirl inside her mind. Mrs Wilton needed someone’s
help, no doubt about that, and to leave her in the clutches of Mrs Greengage
was unthinkable. She opened her eyes having made up her mind.

“I am to ring her tomorrow and
I will tell her I will take the case.”

“Good.”

“But I will charge no fee
unless I find her husband’s lost savings.”
“Clara,” Tommy groaned, “You can’t give your help away like that, we have our own
finances to think about.”

“Daddy’s investments will see
us through, so where is the problem?”

Tommy shook his head at her.

“What were you saying about
gullible?”

“I call it being ethical. Now,
she has arranged a séance especially for me tomorrow night, I imagine you will
want to come?”

“Absolutely!”

“Then I shall ensure you have
a place. There. Now I best see if Annie has managed to arrange some dinner.”

Tommy grinned at her.

“This is going to be a fun
one.” He said.

“I hope not, I remember the
last case you described as fun. It made me crave dull and boring.”

“Just don’t get spooked if any
ghosts or ghoulies turn up tomorrow night.” Tommy mocked.

“Hah!” Clara said as she
opened the door, “Don’t you worry about me big brother. It’s Mrs Greengage who
will need to be watching out tomorrow night!”

Mrs Wilton was elated when
Clara rang and agreed to come to the séance, she didn’t even make a fuss when
Clara insisted she would need a second invite for her partner in the firm to
come along too.

Clara had just hung up the
phone receiver, feeling rotten about the whole situation, when the front door
opened and Tommy appeared, his chair being pushed by their housemaid Annie.

“Where have you been? It’s
bitter outside.” Clara heard the sharpness of her tone and regretted it. She
had been so protective of Tommy since he had come home, but she knew she was
beginning to drive everyone crazy, especially herself.

“Hold your hat, old thing.”
Tommy grinned, “Annie just wheeled this old crock down to the library, that’s
all. It only opens for two hours on a Wednesday, remember?”

Clara mentally kicked herself.
Tommy had told her last night he was going to go to the local lending library
and see what books they had on Spiritualism.

“Any luck?” Clara asked,
casting an apologetic smile at Annie – their one and only servant, regular
dogs-body and loyal friend – who seemed to spend most of her time making sure
Tommy had everything he needed. She winked back at Clara, a reminder that they
were old enough friends for her to know when nerves had gotten the better of
her mistress’ tongue.

“Did you find anything good?”
Clara asked making a determined effort to change the subject.

“A couple of titles. ‘From
Darkness to Light: a Re-evaluation of Christianity and Spiritualism’ and
‘Essays on the Spiritualist Church and its role in Mediumship’.”

“Sounds quite riveting.”

“Well, at least I have
something for when I can’t sleep and I did pop into Mrs Eaton’s bookshop and
pick up a couple of pamphlets on clairvoyancy.”

Tommy handed over two slim
volumes.

“ ‘The Art of Mediumship’ and
‘Thirty Short Lessons Designed to Strengthen the Mind and Promote Clairvoyant
Abilities’. Should I be worried?”

“I doubt it. It seems mostly
to consist of shouting ‘is anybody there?’ a lot.”

Clara gave him back the books.

“Well our places are booked
against my better judgement.”

“Aren’t you excited to be
rooting out a potential charlatan?”

“Potential? For certain she is
a charlatan.”

“Not necessarily, on page 5 of
‘Thirty Lessons’ it clearly states that ‘certainty’ is only a relative state of
mind and once we open our minds to impossibilities we will realise there is
nothing certain about certainty.”

Clara gave him a withering
look and Tommy began to laugh.

“If Mrs Greengage starts
spouting nonsense like that I may have trouble holding my tongue.”

“Keep strong, old thing.”
Tommy chuckled, “We are doing this for the sake of a destitute widow.”

“Yes, yes. Well I have one
absolute certainty for you, I am in desperate need of a cup of tea.” Clara
replied.

“That I will happily concur
with.”