The Seance Read online

  All afternoon the heat pressed down and the barometer continued to drop, until darkness fell without a breath of wind. Too restless to read, I sat out in the garden, staring into the night. Then away on the seaward horizon came the first faint flicker of lightning, branching and multiplying in dumb show until the air began to stir, and the distant muttering of thunder rose above the shrilling of the insects. The storm, approaching gradually at first, seemed to gather pace as it came nearer, until the sky to the south was a searing tapestry of light. The words of Trithemius came back to me amidst the tumult: "Thus, a Man who could command the Power of Lightning would be as the Avenging Angel upon that Dreadful Day ..." I thought of the blackened suit of armour in the gallery: if Cornelius had been mad enough to occupy it, he must already be ashes. No one but a lunatic would consent to such a thing, no matter what the inducement ... but supposing consent had not been asked—or given? If anyone is dead, I thought, it will be on my conscience; we should have tried to stop him, regardless of the risk to Magnus's prospects. But the thought was interrupted by a rush of wind, accompanied by a flash, a deafening blast, and a torrent of rain; I was drenched before I had left my chair.

  I sat up long after the lightning had ceased and the wind had died away, listening to the steady patter of rain on the leaves outside. Whatever I ought to have done, it was too late now; unless the Hall had been spared, in which case, was I simply going to wait for the next storm to strike? Or try to persuade Magnus to have his uncle certified; and if that failed, at least to warn Cornelius that we knew what he was up to? Except that we did not know; the only certainty here was any such intervention would lose Magnus the estate, and me my client, if not my professional reputation. I went over and over the ground until the small hours, without reaching any conclusion whatever.

  Nevertheless, I was early at the office next day, and spent most of the morning pacing up and down my room, peering out at the rainswept street, and plaguing Josiah with queries about wires and messengers. My uneasy conscience forbade me to mention the name Wraxford, and by the time I departed for a hasty luncheon at the Cross Keys Inn, he was plainly concerned for my sanity. But no message was waiting on my return. And then at half past three, just as I had convinced myself that nothing would happen, Josiah announced that a Mr. Drayton wished to see me on urgent business.

  I had pictured Drayton as a tall man, but he turned out to be several inches shorter than myself, frail and stooped in a suit of rusty black, with a long, pallid face and the eyes of an anxious spaniel. His hands were visibly trembling.

  "Mr. Montague, sir; forgive me for troubling you, but Dr. Wraxford—Mr. Magnus, that is—said I should come to you if ... well, it's the master, Mr. Montague. He didn't come out for his breakfast tray this morning, or his luncheon, and he won't answer when I knock, so I thought..."

  "Quite right," I said. "Have you informed Dr. Wraxford?"

  "I sent a wire on my way here, sir, but the reply will have to come from Woodbridge, so it won't reach the Hall until six at the earliest, even if he answers by return."

  "I see ... I take it you would like me to come out to the Hall, and see if—if everything is all right." I tried to sound calm and assured, but an icy knot was forming in the pit of my stomach.

  " Thank you, sir, if you could, it would be much appreciated. Grimes is outside with the carriage, sir, but I'm afraid it's open, so you will need to wrap up warm."

  Ten minutes later we were on our way. The rain had all but ceased, but grey, swirling cloud hung low over the sodden landscape. Grimes—a dour, prognathous individual, all too appropriately named—sat slumped in his greatcoat, swaying like a sack of meal; he appeared to have sunk into a deep sleep before we had passed the first milepost. Drayton sat beside me in the body of the ancient vehicle; I tried at first to draw him out, but in vain; he had seen nothing, heard nothing, noticed nothing unusual until this morning. The master had dismissed him at seven the previous evening—well before the storm began—saying he would need nothing more until breakfast. The storm had been very loud, but he had been in his room all evening, and could not say whether a lightning bolt might have struck the Hall; he showed not the slightest curiosity on that score. I asked him whether he found the lightning conductors a comfort; he did not seem to know what a lightning conductor was. He had been forty years at the Hall, and everything, it seemed, had been exactly the same from the day he arrived until this morning. At that I gave up, and huddled deeper into my own greatcoat.

  For two and a half interminable hours we splashed and jolted past empty fields and marshes and patches of woodland. The horses plodded steadily onward, never varying their pace; they seemed to know every turn along the way, for Grimes did not stir throughout the journey, and Drayton, too, dozed, his head lolling on his breast, once I had ceased to question him. Despite my heavy coat and muffler, the chill seeped into my bones, slowing my thoughts to a dull trance of apprehension until I sank into a dream in which I seemed to be conscious of every creak and rattle of the carriage, yet somehow safe and warm at my own fireside, only to wake, half-frozen, in the gloom of Monks' Wood. I fumbled for my watch and saw that it was already past six o'clock. Another fifteen minutes passed before the massive oak loomed ahead of us, and Grimes roused himself from the depths of his greatcoat to announce, in the tones of one relishing another's misfortune, "Wraxford All."

  Shrouded in vapour, the lightning rods all but concealed in the mist that swirled just above the treetops, the Hall looked even darker and more ruinous than my memory of it, the grounds more wildly overgrown. The only sign of life was a trickle of smoke from the chimney of Grimes's cottage, barely rising in the saturated air.

  We pulled up amongst the weeds by the front door. I stretched my cramped limbs and descended upon feet so numb they could scarcely feel the ground beneath them. Drayton was in even worse case; I had to help him down in spite of his protests, wondering how on earth he managed in the depths of winter. Grimes remained slumped in his seat, seemingly oblivious, only to drive off the instant we had alighted.

  The uncertainty of my position struck me with full force as Drayton struggled with the lock (opening the door was evidently not part of the maid's duties), and ushered me into a vast, echoing chamber dominated by a staircase ascending into the gloom. Far above my head, I could just make out the landing from which Felix Wraxford must have hurtled to his death. The floor was bare, uneven flagstones, the walls dark-panelled oak, pitted with wormholes. Everything smelled of age and damp and decay; a dead chill lay upon the air.

  "Perhaps," I said to Drayton, trying to subdue the quaver in my voice, "you should go up ahead of me; it is possible, after all, that your master has merely overslept." He responded with a look of such fearful entreaty that I felt obliged to accompany him, wishing to God I had never made this foolhardy offer, as he moved slowly up the stairs, past canvases so darkened with age and grime that their subjects were unidentifiable. We passed the turning; as we came up onto the landing I knew from Magnus's description that we were facing the study, and that the two sets of double doors in the dark-panelled wall away to our left led to the library and the gallery. Grey mist swirled against the high windows above our heads and at the far end of the landing; there was still a fair amount of light, but it was fading fast.

  "I think you should knock once more," I said to Drayton. He raised a trembling hand and rapped feebly; there was no reply. I came up beside him and rapped in turn, more and more loudly until the echoes rang like gunshots up and down the stairwell. I tried the handle, but the door would not budge.

  "It's this one, sir," said Drayton. His face was ashen pale; the keys danced and jangled as he handed them to me. The key would not go into the lock; there was evidently a key on the inside, turned so that it could not be dislodged.

  "Very sorry, sir," said Drayton faintly. "I'm afraid I shall 'ave to ..." indicating a chair against the wall to our right.

  "Where is the maid?" I asked as I helped him over to it. He mumbled some
thing unintelligible.

  And Mrs. Grimes?—never mind," I said, "show me the keys to the other doors." He indicated them with a shaking finger and sank down on the chair, one hand pressed against his heart.

  The pounding of my own heart seemed unnaturally loud as I approached the entrance to the library. Again the doors would not budge, and the key would not enter the lock. Which left only the gallery. The threadbare carpet had worn right through in places, and I did not like the way the echoes rebounded, sounding unnervingly like running footsteps. I glanced at the railing as I came to the last set of doors; the repairs, at least, had been done well enough to leave no trace of the accident—if such it was.

  Once again the doors were locked from the inside. I hammered on the panelling, again with no result but a fusillade of echoes. I could go in search of Grimes, but how long would that take?—and would he obey me if I found him? I did not want to enter Cornelius's domain by candlelight.

  Of the three entrances, the door to the study had felt a little less solid than the others. I retraced my steps toward Drayton, who had slumped lower on his chair and seemed barely conscious, set my shoulder against the upper panel, and felt it give. I drew off a little and threw my full weight against the door, expecting the panel to fracture; instead the door burst open with a rending crash, pitching me across the threshold as lock and bolts tore from their sockets; the jamb had been rotten with woodworm.

  There was no one in the study, which was perhaps twelve feet by ten, with a fireplace at the far end. Against the wall to my left stood a camp bed, neatly made up, beneath rows of theological works. Further along that wall, another door stood open, concealing whatever lay beyond. On my right, beneath the windows, a desk, a tin chest and, incongruously, a washstand. Despite the cold, the air smelled frowsty and stale. And there was something else: a faint odour of ash, which grew stronger as I moved uneasily toward the other door. It was coming from a blackened, calcined mass of paper in the fireplace.

  The room beyond was, as Magnus had said, a typical country gentleman's library, with tall cases on three sides, a ladder for the high shelves, more dark oak panelling, threadbare carpet, leather chairs, a vast fireplace in the end wall. And no sign of Cornelius, even when I braced myself to glance around the corner, into the alcove behind the study wall: nothing but a large, empty table; no books or papers on it, or on any of the tables or chairs. Both the doors in the wall adjoining the gallery were closed.

  If I should vanish ... Swallowing hard, I strode across to the nearest of the two and grasped the handle, hoping it would be locked. But the door swung inward with a creak and groan of hinges, opening onto an expanse of bare wooden floorboards, a long table beneath darkening windows. There was the massive fireplace framing the sarcophagus and flanked by the dark bulk of the armour, exactly as Magnus had described ... but no wizened manikin sprawled upon the floor, and nowhere, as Magnus had said, for him to hide; nowhere but the blackened figure that loomed higher and higher as I approached until it seemed at least seven feet tall.

  Shuddering as if I were about to grasp a serpent, I reached for the sword hilt. As my fingers touched the icy metal, I heard a choking sound, followed by a thud, somewhere at my back. It broke the last of my nerve and sent me retreating headlong through the library. As I burst onto the landing, with the sound of my footsteps reverberating around me, I heard another cry from the darkness below. For an instant I thought it was Drayton, until I saw him sprawled in the shadows beside his chair, and realised that he had answered his last summons.

  I remember finding the elderly maid Sarah trembling at the foot of the stairs, thinking the ghost had returned (she received the news of her master's vanishing with indifference, but burst into tears when I told her about Drayton); stumbling out to the cottage and railing in vain at Grimes, who was already in drink; seizing a lantern from his wife and setting off to walk the five miles to Melton in the dark. But the chill would not leave my bones, and the shivering grew worse as I walked until my teeth were rattling in my head. I think I must have crouched for hours beside the fire at the Coach and Horses, unable to stop my teeth from chattering, with the odd sensation of looking down at myself from somewhere near the ceiling; and then I was shivering in a strange bed, with the dead face of Drayton circling through nightmares whilst I burned and froze by turns. Other faces came and went in my delirium, Magnus's amongst them, but I could not tell which were real and which mere hallucinations.

  The fever broke on the fourth day, leaving me very weak but otherwise unscathed. The doctor attending me—George Barton from Woodbridge, a genial, commonsense fellow of five-and-forty or thereabouts—told me that the Hall and Monks' Wood had been thoroughly searched, without result. I dared not ask whether they had opened the suit of armour; his bluff, hearty manner did not encourage talk of alchemy and supernatural rites.

  Magnus came to see me the next morning, full of apologies for my ordeal; he had been in Devon when the alarm was raised, and had not arrived until late on the following day. There was still no news of Cornelius.

  "Have you been out to the Hall?" I asked.

  "Yes, I spent yesterday there. Inspector Roper from Woodbridge—are you acquainted with him?—thought that I should look through my uncle's papers to see if they afforded any clue."

  "And did they?"

  "I fear not. He seems to have burned a great many—you noticed the ashes in the grate?—including, I believe, the manuscript of Trithemius. There were fragments—I thought I recognised the hand—but it all fell to pieces at a touch."

  I'll burn my book ... The words of Faustus came involuntarily to my lips.

  "I confess," said Magnus, "that the same thought occurred to me."

  "And—the armour?"

  "Empty. I showed Roper the mechanism, and told him something of my uncle's alchemical obsession, but he dismissed the whole business as mediaeval make-believe. He takes the view that Drayton was mistaken in thinking he saw my uncle retire—and yes, I know that you found all the doors secured on the inside, but Roper insists that the door you forced must have been jammed, rather than locked."

  I realised, as I opened my mouth to dispute this, that I could not positively swear to it; the fever had blurred my memory.

  "It isn't easy, as you see, to argue with rugged common sense. Roper, just to complete his theory, thinks that my uncle left the house sometime during the previous afternoon—at any rate, no later than dusk—and was caught in the forest when the storm broke. As he says, you could pass within three feet of a body in Monks' Wood and never know it was there."

  "And you?" I asked. "What do you believe?"

  "I am half-inclined to agree with Roper, if only because the alternative seems too monstrous to contemplate .... And now, my dear fellow, I must tax your strength no further. Whatever has become of my uncle, I shall have to apply for a judgement of decease, and if you see no conflict, I shall be delighted if you will act for me. I wonder, by the way, since Roper seems determined to ignore the darker possibilities, whether the business of Trithemius and the armour might remain confidential between us; the Hall's reputation is sinister enough as it is."

  I assured him that it would remain a secret between us, and on that inconclusive note we parted. I scarcely knew Magnus Wraxford, and yet I could not help thinking of him as an intimate friend, an intimacy forged around the secret we shared.

  Cornelius had not, it transpired, written down any of the strange provisions he had mentioned in his final interview with Magnus, and the terms of the 1858 will remained unaltered, though it would be another two years, as things turned out, before the judgement of decease was granted. He had left one hundred pounds to Grimes and Eliza, and another hundred to Drayton and Sarah (who had evidently been Drayton's common-law wife; I learned afterward that his lawful wife had left him many years before). My father had not mentioned these bequests, and I was surprised by their generosity. Everything else went to Magnus: a millstone rather than a windfall, for the estate was heavily enc
umbered.

  There was a strange coda to Cornelius's disappearance. A few weeks after the event, I was conversing with Dr. Dawson, who had charge of the parish infirmary, and he told me the story of a patient who had recently died there. This man, an itinerant stonemason, had been abroad in Monks' Wood on the afternoon of the great storm (possibly to check the contents of certain snares, but that was by the by). At any rate, he had missed his way, and wandered until he came to the old Wraxford chapel. Oppressed by the airless heat, he lay down to rest a little way from the entrance, fell into a deep sleep, and woke in pitch darkness. The storm had not yet broken, but with the stars entirely obscured, he dared not move; he could not see his hand in front of his face.

  Then a spark of light appeared in the blackness, flickering amongst the trees as it came toward him. He thought of calling out for help, but—though he was not a local man, and knew nothing of the Hall's reputation—something about its silent, purposeful approach unnerved him. As it came closer still, he could make out a human figure—whether a man or a woman he could not tell—with a lantern in its hand. Again he was about to call out, when he saw that the figure was shrouded, not in a greatcoat but a monk's habit, with the hood drawn over its head. Now he feared for his soul and would have fled blindly into the wood, but his limbs were frozen with dread. Twigs crackled beneath its feet as the figure passed within a few yards of him; it was tall, he said, too tall for a mortal man, and as it went by he caught a glimpse of dead-white flesh—or was it bone?—beneath the hood.

  It did not pause, but went straight up to the chapel door. He heard the scrape of a key, the rasp and snap of a lock, and then a creaking of hinges as the door swung inward and the figure passed into the chapel, closing the door behind it. The glow of the lantern shone out through a barred window at the side.