The Riddle of the River Read online

  It was a joy to find myself there finally, and I relieved my feelings by describing the séance to him in detail. I explained as frankly as I could – searching inside myself to the very best of my ability – that it seemed equally impossible to me to believe that I had witnessed a manifestation of spirits, or that the strange phenomena had been caused by some kind of complicated, unimaginable system of cheating. He laughed.

  ‘In cases like this, one might as well simply suspend disbelief,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I’d be amazed if the thing yielded any useful piece of information, though. According to what I’ve heard, they’re usually vague enough to be irritating. Still, you’re not the only person puzzled by such things. No physicist can resist at least wondering how it might work. Some declare they have found explanations, and others that those explanations are insufficient. And so it goes on.’

  ‘Who claims to have found an explanation?’ I asked. ‘What is it?’

  ‘The most famous by far is Michael Faraday’s,’ he said. ‘He was England’s foremost researcher on the relation between electricity and magnetism until Maxwell. Faraday was an experimentalist, and I remember that he did some controlled experiments with table-tipping in his old age, and published some articles refuting the spiritualists claims. I really don’t remember where he published them, but I can try to find out for you tomorrow if you like.’

  ‘Oh, I would like that,’ I said. ‘I don’t think the table-tipping is the most important aspect of this case, to be sure, and yet…I don’t wish to leave any stone unturned.’

  ‘Perhaps this is another stone, then,’ he said, handing me a letter. ‘It came this morning. It’s addressed to Miss Duncan, here in your very own house. Isn’t that strange? Who could possibly know you by your maiden name and yet know that you live in this house?’

  Taking up a paper knife, I sliced open the elegant envelope. Out fell a neatly printed dinner invitation:

  Mr and Mrs Geo. Darwin have the pleasure of requesting your company for dinner on the twelfth of July

  followed by a prettily handwritten message from Mrs Darwin, professing to be delighted to meet a young friend of her dear acquaintance Mrs Burke-Jones.

  I blessed Mrs Burke-Jones inwardly, and showed it triumphantly to Arthur.

  ‘Our nearby neighbours, just up at the bridge,’ I told him.

  ‘The brood of very active children, you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, the Darwins. He is the son of Charles Darwin, I learnt recently. Oh, I do wish you could come with me, but it’s really impossible this time. What a bother. I’m sure they’re most interesting people. But Mrs Burke-Jones organised this for me, and I asked her to introduce me to them by my maiden name – I really cannot be known for who I am. It’s for detecting purposes!’

  ‘But they might recognise you,’ he said. ‘I mean, I know we don’t know them, but I know who they are from seeing them pass in the street and it is to be supposed that the process is symmetric.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think they know me,’ I said. ‘We hardly ever see the parents, and when we do, I don’t think they see us. Mr Darwin is always fussing over his rugs and trying to make sure he’s well-wrapped. I think he must be either ill or hypochondriac. As for Mrs Darwin, I’ve seen her only rarely, and she seems always in a great hurry. And even if the children do recognise my face, how should they know what my name is? I’m not worried.’

  1895

  The handkerchief was adequate to signal success from the fields in front of the villa. It would not be seen if Alfonso went to the far side of the hill behind the house. For this he was armed with a hunting rifle, and he marched sturdily off, up the narrow path past the farm buildings. It was the end of September now, and the vines were heavy with purple grapes, the air golden. The walk over the rim of the hill took twenty minutes. Alfonso led, followed by the farmer Mignani and the gardener Vornelli. Finally Guglielmo, watching tensely from a window, lost sight of the small procession as it dropped over the horizon.

  In the distance, a shot echoed down the valley.

  Friday, July 8th, 1898

  Experimental investigation of table moving, by M. Faraday, I read, sitting on the garden bench, perusing the yellowed copy of The Athenaeum which Arthur had managed to locate and borrow for me.

  ‘He did this in 1853!’ I remarked. ‘And yet people still continue with spiritualism, so his reasoning doesn’t seem to have convinced the public.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ smiled Arthur.

  ‘What fun it must be to be a physicist,’ I said. ‘I wish I could simply tell Mrs Thorne that I should like to make some experiments to verify her statements. But I could hardly ask her that, and even if I did, I admit I can’t see what experiments to make.’

  ‘Well, there were two physicists there already, according to what you told me,’ he answered. ‘Perhaps they are investigating the phenomenon.’

  ‘Ernest and Professor Lodge? They were there, certainly. But they don’t seem to be investigating much. I mean, Professor Lodge certainly thinks he is investigating, but he believes so completely in the phenomenon of communication with the dead that it doesn’t occur to him to question it. So it’s not the same kind of investigation.’ I turned over the page of The Athenaeum and began to read Mr Faraday’s report.

  I obtained the cooperation of participants whom I knew to be very honourable, and who were also successful table-movers. I found that the table would move in the expected direction, even when just one subject was seated at the table. I first looked into the possibility that the movements were due to known forces such as electricity or magnetism. I showed that sandpaper, millboard, glue, glass, moist clay, tinfoil, cardboard, vulcanized rubber, and wood did not interfere with the table’s movements. From these initial tests, I concluded that: No form of experiment or mode of observation that I could devise gave me the slightest indication of any peculiar force. No attraction, or repulsion could be observed, nor anything which could be referred to other than mere mechanical pressure exerted inadvertently by the turner. I began to suspect that the sitters were unconsciously pushing the table in the desired direction. However, they firmly maintained that they were not the source of the table movements. Therefore, I devised an arrangement to pin down the cause of the movement. I placed four or five pieces of slippery cardboard, one on top of the other, upon the table. The sheets were attached to one another by little pellets of a soft cement. The bottommost sheet was attached to a piece of sandpaper that rested against the table top. This stack of cardboard sheets was approximately the size of the table top with the topmost layer being slightly larger than the table top. The edge of each layer in this cardboard sandwich slightly overlapped the one below. To mark their original positions, I drew a pencil line across these exposed concentric borders of the cardboard sheets, on their under surface. The stack of cardboard sheets was secured to the table top by large rubber bands which insured that when the table moved, the sheets would move with it. However, the bands allowed sufficient play to permit the individual sheets of cardboard to move somewhat independently of one another. The sitters then placed their hands upon the surface of the top cardboard layer and waited for the table to move in the direction previously agreed upon. I reasoned that if the table moved to the left, and the source of the movement was the table and not the sitter, the table would move first and drag the successive layers of cardboard along with it, sequentially, from bottom to top, but with a slight lag. If this were the case, the displaced pencil marks would reveal a staggered line sloping outwards from the left to the right. On the other hand, if the sitter was unwittingly moving the table, then his hands would push the top cardboard to the left and the remaining cardboards and the table would be dragged along successively, from top to bottom. This would result in displacement of the pencil marks in a staggered line sloping from right to left. It was then easy to see, by displacement of the parts of the line, that the hand had moved further from the table, and that the latter had lagged behind – that the hand, i
n fact, had pushed the upper card to the left and that the under cards and the table had followed and been dragged by it.

  ‘That seems to be that,’ I said after having read this paragraph aloud.

  ‘He doesn’t say it’s fraud, you notice,’ said Arthur. ‘He absolutely believes in the good faith of the table-turners. They were actually all friends of his. It’s just that he attributes all the strange phenomena rather to their own unconscious movements, whether psychological or muscular, than to transmission through the magnetic field.’

  ‘Which means in particular that messages purporting to come from spirits of dead people might just as well emanate from deep within the mind of the medium,’ I said. ‘Yet the things that Mrs Thorne said were strange and eerie, and the voice was so far away – all the voices which spoke through her were so completely different from each other in tone and accent. I wonder if the words she said had any real significance. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.’

  I jumped up from my seat, pushing the papers off my lap.

  ‘What I really need,’ I said, ‘is to stop thinking about this, and visit a bookshop to obtain serious information about serious matters. And I must see Inspector Doherty.’

  I went up to the nursery and peered into the two little beds where the children were taking their afternoon nap. They were sleeping deeply, their soft, regular breathing making two little rhythms on either side of me. The room was dim, but not completely dark; the soft glow of sunshine gleamed through the drawn curtains, printed with elephants and giraffes, giving a fuzzy outline to the furniture and the toys scattered about: the wooden rocking horse, the Lilliputian table and chairs, the doll’s bed with its bonneted occupant.

  Cedric’s long eyelashes fluttered, and he opened his large dark eyes and looked up at me.

  ‘Are you finished sleeping?’ I asked him softly. He nodded seriously.

  ‘Do you want to come to the shop with Mamma?’ I suggested. In a single movement, his compact little body was standing upright in the bed, his arms raised to be lifted. I scooped him up, removed his little nightgown and took up the sailor suit that was hanging neatly over a chair.

  ‘Come,’ I said, ‘we’ll get dressed in Mamma’s room, and then we’ll go out.’

  Several boot buttons and a glass of water later, we were on our way, hand in hand down the summery street. We took an omnibus into town, a great adventure for an active little boy both fascinated by and a little frightened of horses, and alighted in the centre, where we began by looking in at the police station to ask if Inspector Doherty was in.

  ‘He’s out,’ said the young man at the desk. ‘He left word that he would be back in an hour, though.’

  I left a note, and wended my way with Cedric to my favourite bookshop, a dusty hole containing hundreds of ancient books and magazines piled upon shelves, upon chairs, and upon each other, kept by Mr Whitstone, an equally ancient person with a wrinkled face, sparse white hair and twinkling eyes which appear to know everything. Mr Whitstone has been of invaluable help to me for at least ten years, since I first began teaching in Cambridge.

  I found him alone, sitting on a stool behind his grubby, much-marked wooden counter, and reading. He looked up as I came in, carrying Cedric in my arms in order to preclude his causing any untoward accidents with the rather precarious piles of books which left little room to navigate.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Weatherburn,’ he said, nodding. ‘A pleasure. What can I do for you today?’

  I hemmed and hawed for a moment. But Mr Whitstone is a man of experience, and there was no use in beating about the bush.

  ‘I need to learn about prostitution,’ I said, more firmly than necessary in order to compensate for my extreme embarrassment, not at the thing itself, but simply at the speaking of it aloud. Our culture acts more strongly upon us than we could wish, at times. And interestingly, my own predicament reminded me of Ernest’s words, when he had said that the speaking of his acts aloud had brought home to him a feeling of loss of honour more strongly than the acts themselves. I seemed to recall that I had been rather sententious with him.

  ‘You want novels? Or serious works?’ asked Mr Whitstone, not batting an eyelash at my request.

  ‘Serious works, if such things exist,’ I replied at once.

  ‘You want to understand the sociology of the phenomenon?’

  ‘Yes – I think so,’ I said.

  ‘Parent-Duchâtelet’s study of prostitution in Paris is the definitive scholarly work on the subject,’ he informed me. ‘If that is the kind of thing you want. Statistical information, you know, about the social origins of the women and so on. I don’t have it – you would need to order it from a French bookshop. Let me see now, I seem to remember…why, yes, I might have something else useful for you, however.’

  He puttered about in a corner. I peered over his shoulder.

  ‘What about that?’ I said, pointing to a book interestingly entitled Fanny Hill, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.

  ‘No, no, no,’ he said, hastily taking that book and pushing it behind a pile of others. ‘That is not what you think. It is not memoirs. It is a novel from the last century. Not right for you at all. No, no, no.’

  He inserted his body between me and the titles he was examining, and appeared to become somewhat anxious, so I stepped back and let him finger over his books by himself. After a moment he turned back to me, holding a pile of sensible tomes called A Social History of Women in Rural England, The Woman Question, a Collection of Pamphlets Advocating Suffrage, and Fabian Essays.

  ‘You do read French?’ he asked, holding out a book by Alexandre Dumas.

  ‘Yes, reasonably well,’ I replied, surprised. Surely if an English novel was deemed unfit for my eyes, a French novel could hardly be better!

  ‘You know Dumas, of course,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘But you very probably do not know of this book,’ and he took out and handed to me a leather-bound little volume with its binding partially falling away.

  ‘Filles, Lorettes et Courtisanes,’ I read.

  ‘It is a brief and somewhat more literary summary of Parent-Duchâtelet’s work,’ he said. ‘Dumas was not only a very prolific writer, but he wrote about much more varied subjects than most people realise. The French littérateurs are more fascinated by the subject than our English writers,’ he added. ‘You might – ah, you might want to look into Balzac. And for what has been written by our British authors…’ He ceased speaking momentarily and glanced suspiciously around the perfectly empty shop, then continued in a hushed voice. ‘You may remember the Stead affair of 1885?’

  Although I was seventeen years old and no longer a child in 1885, I knew nothing of the affair he referred to, having lived a sheltered life. I raised my eyebrows questioningly and allowed him to continue without interruption.

  ‘No greater indictment of the evils of British…ah, prostitution, has ever been written,’ he told me. ‘Stead discovered, Stead published, Stead offended and was punished for making known what was not meant to be known. I cannot tell you more. You would have to manage to locate an old copy of the Pall Mall Gazette.’

  ‘I will search for one,’ I said. ‘In the meantime, I will take the Dumas.’

  I purchased it and carried it out of the shop, leading Cedric by the hand.

  The sun was bright after the dark interior of the shop. I found myself walking towards Petty Cury. I wanted to go to Heffers, partly to examine their English translations of Balzac, and partly just to see the younger Mr Archer. Not that merely seeing him could provide me with any information of any kind, but I felt that as he had very probably been acquainted with Ivy Elliott, any contact with him might bring me, however infinitesimally, closer to her, and thus to the truth. I entered the shop and looked for him, but he was not to be seen either at the counter or in the little glass-windowed office behind it. I led Cedric among the many shelves, reading over their labels until I located the French literature. I stopped, and Cedric immedi
ately sat down on the floor and pulled three books out of the lowest shelf.

  ‘No, no,’ I whispered quickly, trying to remove his little fingers and replace the books without becoming too noticeable or obnoxious to the many customers frequenting the large, quiet shop. He let out a kind of screech and prepared to follow it up with several more. Hastily, I scooped him up and plumped him into a large, well-used leather armchair placed among the shelves for the convenience of the browsers.

  ‘Stay here and watch Mamma,’ I told him firmly. ‘If you’re very good, we’ll go and have a bun after the shop. All right?’

  Always willing to eat, he assented and sat down. Less than ten seconds later, however, he was standing on the seat and performing gymnastics over the back of the armchair. It stood solidly and showed no sign of tilting and spilling him to the ground, so I allowed myself to look away for a moment and read over the titles of Balzac’s novels. Having discovered and taken up Splendours and Miseries of Courtesans, I glanced back at Cedric, who was now sitting on the seat, engaged in thrusting his hands deep into all the cracks between the seat cushions and the arms and back.

  ‘Look, Mamma,’ he said proudly. I hurried over, and removed a small, dusty but originally green sweet from his fingers. He looked about to rebel, but contented himself with fingering the rest of his treasure trove: three dustballs, a key, a crumpled ball of paper, a not-very clean handkerchief, a cheap tie-pin and the disgusting remains of another sweet. He sat contentedly, his legs straight out in front of him, his boots only just at the edge of the seat, this collection of delights spread out upon his lap. I swept up the little pile and glanced around, but there was nowhere to deposit it, and it didn’t feel right to push it all back into the chair, so I gave up and to his great satisfaction, tucked everything back into his chubby hands.

  ‘These things are dirty,’ I told him. ‘When Mamma is finished here, we’ll go outside and throw them away.’