The Seance Read online

  Mr. Montague came to see me on a freezing January morning; I was standing by the window when the maid showed him into the drawing room, and he paused as the door closed behind him, seemingly struck by something in my appearance. He was tall and spare, and slightly stooped, with grey hair receding markedly at the temples. His face was lined as if by suffering or illness; his skin had a greyish tinge, and there were dark shadows like bruises beneath his eyes. He might have been anywhere between fifty and seventy, and yet there was an air of diffidence, even of apprehension about him as I extended my hand—his own was icy cold—and invited him to take a seat by the fire.

  "I wonder, Miss Langton," he began, "whether the name Wraxford means anything to you." His voice was low and cultivated, with a faint burr to it.

  "Nothing at all, sir."

  "I see."

  He regarded me in silence for a moment, and then nodded, as if confirming something to himself.

  "Very well. I am here, Miss Langton, because a client of mine, a Miss Augusta Wraxford, died some months ago, leaving the bulk of her estate to 'my nearest surviving female relation.' And assuming—forgive me—that you are indeed Constance Mary Langton, and the granddaughter, on your late mother's side, of Maria Lovell and William Lloyd Price, then you are the principal beneficiary of Augusta Wraxford's will, and sole heir to Wraxford Hall."

  He sounded as if he were preparing me for news of some grave misfortune.

  "The estate consists of a derelict manor house—very large, but quite uninhabitable—on several hundred acres of woodland near the Suffolk coast. The property is heavily encumbered, and will yield, at best, two thousand pounds after the creditors have been satisfied—"

  "Two thousand pounds!" I exclaimed.

  "I must warn you," he said, in the same troubled tone, "that it will not be easy to find a buyer. Wraxford Hall has a very dark history. But before we come to that, I am obliged to ask you certain questions—though I confess, Miss Langton, that I have only to look at you ... the resemblance is quite remarkable—"

  He broke off suddenly, as if shocked by what he had just said.

  "The resemblance ...?" I prompted.

  "Forgive me, it is only ... May I ask, Miss Langton, whether you take after your mother? In appearance, I mean?"

  "No, sir. My mother was barely five feet tall, and—I do not think I favour her at all. May I ask in turn, sir, how you came to know of my existence?"

  "From the notice of your mother's death in The Times. Miss Wraxford had instructed me to trace the female line, which proved a long and difficult task; I had got as far as the notice of your parents' marriage, but after that, the trail went cold until my clerk—who goes through all the papers every morning—brought in that death notice. But I was not at liberty to approach you then. Miss Wraxford felt that expectations were bad for the character; and of course, so long as she was alive, there was always the possibility that she might change her will. And by the time she did die, your former house had changed hands several times—hence our advertisement."

  He was silent for a moment, gazing into the fire.

  "You said in your letter," he resumed, "that you were born somewhere near Cambridge, but you do not know exactly where?"

  "No, sir."

  "And you have no record of your birth?"

  "I am afraid not, sir; it may be amongst my father's papers, with my aunt in Cambridge."

  "It is possible that none exists; there is no entry in the register at Somerset House—but it was not then mandatory," he added, seeing the change in my expression, "to notify the Registrar, so you need not be alarmed on that score."

  Once again he paused, studying me without seeming to be aware that he was doing so. Despite—or perhaps because of—his talk of a resemblance, I was becoming more apprehensive with every question. Did he suspect—or even possess some evidence—that I was not my parents' child? Should I reveal my own suspicions? I might lose a fortune by speaking out, but to remain silent would surely be wrong, perhaps even criminal. My thought was interrupted by Dora tapping at the door with the tea-tray, and for the next several minutes I was obliged to make uneasy small-talk, whilst trying to decide what I should do.

  "Sir, before you continue," I said as soon as the door had closed behind her, "I think I ought to tell you ... I have sometimes wondered whether I might have been a foster child—a foundling. My—My parents never said, but it would explain—certain things about my childhood—and if I am not their child by blood, then—"

  I broke off, alarmed by Mr. Montague's reaction. What little colour he possessed had drained from his features; his cup rattled against his saucer, and he was obliged to set it down.

  "Forgive me, Miss Langton—a momentary indisposition. Are you willing to tell me how you came to this conclusion—to consider the possibility, I mean?"

  And so I launched into the story of Alma's death, and my mother's collapse, my walks with Annie by the Foundling Hospital and my father's utter indifference, but leaving out the séances, wondering all the time what had so shaken Mr. Montague. Though the fire was scarcely keeping the cold at bay, I noticed a faint sheen of perspiration on his forehead, and every so often, though he did his best to conceal it, he would wince, as if in pain. He asked various questions, most of which I was quite unable to answer, about my parents' lives before they had married—I did not even know where or how they had met—the sources of my father's income, and whether I had any memories at all of the time before we moved to London.

  "None, sir; none that I am sure of."

  "I see ... Let me say at once, Miss Langton, that even if your suspicions were proven, the bequest would stand. You are your mother's legitimate daughter according to law, and that is all that the law requires. And besides..."

  "Mr. Montague," I ventured, when he did not immediately continue, "you have spoken of a resemblance, and intimated—at least, my heart divines—that you know something which touches upon my suspicions about my birth. Will you not tell me what it is?"

  Still he kept silent, as if caught up in some inner debate, glancing from me to the glow of the fire and back again. Pale grey light slanted through the window; the glass was streaked with tears of condensation.

  "Miss Langton," he said at last, "I assure you, I know nothing of your history beyond what you have told me. What you divine is—only the wildest of fancies on my part. No—the best advice I can give you is to sell the estate, sight unseen, enjoy whatever wealth it brings you, and let the name of Wraxford vanish from memory."

  "But how can I be certain of that," I persisted, emboldened by his hesitation, "if you will not tell me what you suspect—or whom you think that I resemble?"

  He seemed more struck by this than I would have expected, and resumed his communion with the flames.

  "I confess, Miss Langton," he said finally, "that I do not know how to answer you. You must allow me time to reflect; I shall write to you within the week." And soon after that he took his leave.

  My uncle was naturally astounded by the news, but the name Wraxford meant nothing to him, beyond vague associations with some ancient crime or scandal, and the weather remained so bitter that the streets were mired with frozen slush, whilst the hours dragged by in an endless round of speculation until, on the fourth morning after Mr. Montague's visit, a stoutly wrapped parcel arrived for me by registered mail. It contained another package, also sealed; a brief letter, and a chart of the Wraxford genealogy, drawn in the same small, precise hand.

  20th Jany 1889

  Dear Miss Langton,

  You have trusted me with your secret, and I have resolved to trust you with mine. I sealed this packet nearly twenty years ago, and have not opened it since. As you will see, I am placing my reputation in your hands, but I find I do not greatly care. My health is failing; I shall shortly retire from practise; and if anyone has a right to these papers, it is you. When you have read them, you will understand why I say to you: sell the Hall unseen; burn it to the ground and plough the earth with
salt, if you will; but never live there.

  Yours most sincerely,

  John Montague

  Part Two

  John Montague's Narrative

  30 DECEMBER 1870

  I have at last resolved to set down everything I know of the strange and terrible events at Wraxford Hall, in the hope of appeasing my conscience, which has never ceased to trouble me. A fitting enough night for such a decision, for it is bitter cold, and the wind howls about the house as if it will never cease. I shrink from what I must reveal of my own history, but if anyone is ever to understand why I acted as I did—and why else attempt this?—I must not withhold anything of relevance, no matter how painful. I shall feel easier in my mind, I trust, knowing that if the case is ever reopened after I am gone, this account may help uncover the truth about the Wraxford Mystery.

  I first met Magnus Wraxford in the spring of 1866—my thirtieth year—in my capacity as solicitor to his uncle Cornelius, a trust I had inherited from my father. Ours was a small family firm in the town of Aldeburgh, and I had followed my father as he had followed his. Like every boy growing up in that part of Suffolk, I had heard tales of Wraxford Hall, which lies at the heart of Monks' Wood, about seven miles to the south of Aldeburgh as the crow flies, but a good deal farther by road. Old Cornelius Wraxford had lived there in complete seclusion for as long as anyone could remember, attended by a handful of servants seemingly chosen for their taciturn qualities, for there appeared to be little else to recommend them, whilst the house slowly decayed around him and the wilderness reclaimed the park. Even poachers avoided the place, for Monks' Wood was said to be haunted by—as one might expect—the ghost of a monk; according to local legend, anyone who saw the apparition would die within the month. Cornelius, besides, was rumoured to keep a pack of dogs so savage they would tear you to pieces if they caught you. Some said that the old miser was guarding an immense hoard of gold and precious stones; others maintained that he had sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for the gift of flight, or the cloak of invisibility, or some such diabolical attribute. Then there was William Brent the poacher, who used to boast that he could hunt as close as he liked to the Hall without arousing the dogs, until the night he saw a malignant face peering down at him from an upstairs window, and was dead within a month; of pleurisy, admittedly, but all the same ... My father scoffed at the rumours, but could shed no light of his own, as he had met Cornelius only once, at the office, several years before I was born. Even then, he said, Cornelius had looked like an old man; small, wizened and suspicious. All of their business thereafter had been conducted by letter.

  As I grew older, I absorbed more of the Hall's history from my father. It had been built in the time of Henry the Eighth, on the site of the monastery which had given Monks' Wood its name. The Wraxfords, like many Catholic families, had renounced their religion during Queen Elizabeth's reign; Wraxford Hall, indeed, had served as a Royalist stronghold throughout the Civil War. Charles the Second himself was said to have hidden in the priest's hole while Henry Wraxford faced down Cromwell's men. At the Restoration, Henry was rewarded with a knighthood, but the title died with him, and for the next hundred or so years, the Hall served as a summer retreat for several generations of Wraxfords, mostly scholars and clerics who seemed to have done nothing whatever of note.

  In the 1780s, it passed to one Thomas Wraxford, a man of grander ambitions who had recently married an heiress. He immediately set about extending the house and grounds, with a view to entertaining in the grand style, deaf to warnings about its remoteness and difficulty of access. He spent a good part of his wife's fortune, as well as his own, on this plan, but the great parties never eventuated; the invitations were politely declined, and the newly fitted-out rooms remained unoccupied. And then, around 1795, his only son, Felix, died at the age of ten, in a fall from a gallery above the great hall.

  Thomas Wraxford's wife left him soon after the tragedy and went back to her own people. He lived on at the Hall for another thirty years, until one morning, in the spring of 1821, his manservant brought up the hot water at the usual hour and found his master gone. The bed had not been slept in, but there was no sign of struggle or disturbance; the outer doors and windows were all secured as usual; and the only thing missing was the nightshirt he had been wearing when the servant had last seen him the evening before. The house and grounds were thoroughly searched, in vain; Thomas Wraxford had vanished from the face of the earth, and no trace of him was ever found.

  It was generally assumed that the old man's wits had finally given way, and that he had somehow got out of the house in his nightshirt (it had been a clear, moonlit night), wandered off into Monks' Wood, and fallen into a pit. The area had been mined for tin many centuries before, and some of the old workings still remained, roofed over by bracken and fallen leaves, as snares for the unwary. A year and a day after Thomas's disappearance, Cornelius Wraxford, his nephew and sole heir, petitioned the county court for a judgement of Thomas Wraxford's decease, which was granted readily enough. And so Cornelius, a reclusive, unmarried scholar, resigned his fellowship at Cambridge and took possession of the Hall. And that was all that my father could tell me, save that over the years, Cornelius had gradually sold off the rest of the land from which the estate had once derived its income, except for Monks' Wood and the Hall itself.

  I spent a great deal of time, as a young boy, happily plotting with my companions as to how we might make our way through the forest, evade the dogs, and creep into the Hall through the secret passage which was said to lead from the house to a disused chapel in the woods nearby. None of us had seen more than a distant glimpse of Monks' Wood, and so our imaginations were free to run wild; the terrors we invoked haunted my dreams for years afterward. Our plans, of course, came to nothing; I was sent away to school, where I endured the usual brutalities, until the shock of my dear mother's death left me for a while indifferent to lesser torments.

  It was then, I think, that I began to find refuge in sketching and drawing, for which I possessed a natural facility but had never taken very seriously, or received much in the way of instruction. My forte was natural scenery—the wilder the better—houses, castles and, especially, ruins. Something in me was struggling toward the light, but it seemed to have nothing to do with my destiny, which was to read for the law at Corpus Christi, my father's old college at Cambridge. This I duly did; and there, in my second year, I met a young man named Arthur Wilmot. He was reading classics, but his real passion was for painting, and through him I discovered a new world of which I had been ignorant. It was in his company in London that I saw Turner's work for the first time, and felt that I understood at last those lines of Keats about stout Cortez gazing upon the ocean with a wild surmise. During that long vacation we spent three weeks painting and sketching in the Highlands, and with Arthur's encouragement, I began to believe that my future might lie in a studio rather than a solicitor's office.

  Arthur was about my own height, but very slightly built, with fair skin of the sort which burns easily, and delicate features. But the impression of frailty was misleading, as I realised on our first day in Scotland when he went scampering up a steep incline with the agility of a goat whilst I followed, panting, in his wake. He spoke a great deal of Orchard House—a perfect Arcadia, as he made it sound—near Aylesbury, where his father, a clergyman, had a living, and especially of his sister Phoebe, who was plainly very dear to him: he grew anxious if more than a day or two had passed without a letter from her. By the end of our tour, it was settled that instead of returning to Aldeburgh, I should accompany him home and stay at least a fortnight. I had neither brothers nor sisters—my mother had been very ill after my birth—and I knew that my father had been looking forward to having me at home again. But I did not want to disappoint Arthur; or so I told myself in justification.

  Orchard House was everything he had promised, and more: a rambling place of thatch and dazzling whitewash, set as its name implied amidst groves of apple and pear
trees. Arthur's father, white-haired, genial, rubicund, might have stepped straight from a canvas by Birket Foster (though I did not see it so at the time), as might his mother, a serene, slender, fine-boned woman—one could see where Arthur had gotten his looks—always to be found somewhere in her garden when there was nothing else to attend to. And then there was Phoebe herself. She was beautiful, yes, with her mother's classical profile and slender figure; she had thick lustrous hair the colour of dark honey, and her eyes were hazel, the eyelids always slightly lowered, though there was nothing coquettish about her. But it was her voice that first enchanted me: low and vibrant, with a kind of tune to it, a singing undertone which made the most commonplace remark seem charged with emotion.

  My love for Phoebe was returned; I had her promise soon enough, though consent to our engagement was much longer in coming. I put aside all thought of starving in garrets and applied myself to the law, knowing that the sooner I had secured my articles, the sooner we would be married. Aside from the torments of longing I endured, away from her, swinging between bouts of wild elation and terror lest she should change her mind, the one cloud on our horizon was the question of where we were to live. I was serving my articles with my father in Aldeburgh; to turn my back upon the firm would break his heart, and lead perhaps to a permanent breach between us. But to keep my place with him would mean separating Phoebe from all that she loved best in the world. She and my father had tried to like each other for my sake, but did not quite know how to go about it. I knew, too, that she found our house, a plainly furnished cottage overlooking the strand, windswept and bleak.

  In the end we reached an uneasy compromise: we would live in Aldeburgh, but in a house of our own, somewhere away from the sound of the waves which, as Phoebe reluctantly admitted, seemed to her melancholy and oppressive. I would more than once catch her murmuring, half-unconsciously, "Break, break, break, on thy cold grey stones, O sea ...." And we were to spend as much time at Orchard House as the demands of my practise would allow.