Tell any Person what o’clock it is to a Minute
BY THEIR OWN WATCH
Also
TELL THE AGE OF ANY ONE IN COMPANY;
And what is more Astonishing, she will
Discover A Person’s Thoughts
A Thing never heard of before
Moreover
In Private Audience she will
REVEAL THE FUTURE
Including
SUCCESSES FINANCIAL AND MATRIMONIAL
‘It is the pig from the fair!’
‘Sapient? Whatever is that?’
‘’Tis a clever word meaning wise. Which is a thing you would know if you was sapient yourself.’
‘Spells better than I do myself, that pig do!’
‘I wish it didn’t play so well at cards. I lost thruppence to it.’
‘Seventy-three, that pig said I was! I was that cross!’
‘I left before she started discovering the thoughts. I couldn’t bear to have a pig rummaging in my thoughts, never, never, never!’
‘Shilling a time, they was wanting for a private audience. Daft! Who’s got a shilling round ’ere to spend on an audience with a pig?’
The mechanical noise comes again, the advertisement makes way for the pig herself. In fact it is not Maud, but her daughter Mabel, who looks exactly the same to everyone but Armstrong. Seated opposite the pig is a young woman they all recognize.
‘Ruby!’
The hum of conversation fades abruptly.
In the image, Ruby proffers a shilling, and a dark-sleeved arm reaches down to take it from her. At the same time, she gazes into the eyes of the pig.
Now a voice breaks into the darkness – and it is the voice of Ruby herself.
‘Tell me my fortune, Stella. Who will I marry? Where will I meet the one who is to win my hand?’
The audience gasps and there is shifting in seats as people turn their heads to look in the direction of the voice, but nobody can see anything in the dark, and in any case, from another side of the room, voiced by one of the Little Margots, the pig replies, ‘Go to St John’s Lock at midnight on winter solstice night, and look in the water. There you will see the face of he who is to win your hand.’
Click. A clock face gleams in the darkness: it is midnight!
Click. St John’s Lock: everybody knows it. And here is Ruby again, on hands and knees, staring intently into the river.
‘Well I’m blowed,’ somebody says, and ‘Shhhh!’ says everybody else.
A click, St John’s Lock again. Ruby is standing, hands on hips in an attitude of vexation.
‘Nothing!’ comes the voice of Ruby again. ‘Nothing at all! It’s a mean trick!’
This time nobody stares at the source of the sound. They are all too absorbed in the story that is unfolding before their eyes in the magical darkness.
Click. Buscot Lodge again.
Click. The interior of a child’s room. A small child’s form under the blanket.
Click. The same room, but a dark-clad figure leans over the bed with his back to the audience.
Not a foot shuffles, not a hand fidgets. The Swan holds its breath.
Click. The same room, where the bed is now empty. The window is open to the sky.
The Swan flinches.
Click. An exterior view of the house from the side. A ladder reaches to the open window.
The Swan shakes its many heads in disapproval.
Click. Two people from behind. His arm is around her shoulders. Their heads are bowed towards each other in grief. There is no doubt who they are. It is Mr and Mrs Vaughan.
Click. A piece of paper, once crumpled but smoothed out:
The Swan lets out a gasp of outrage.
‘Hush!’
Click. A desk on which lies a money bag, bursting at the seams.
Click. The same money bag, this time positioned at the far side of Radcot Bridge, only a very little way from where they are all seated now.
Murmurs of consternation.
Click. Mr and Mrs Vaughan wait by the fireside. The clock visible between them says six o’clock.
Click. The same photograph, except that it is now eight o’clock.
Click. Eleven o’clock. Mrs Vaughan’s head is on her husband’s shoulder in an attitude of despair.
The Swan swoons and sobs in sympathy.
Click. A gasp! The foot of Radcot Bridge again – but the money is gone!
Click. From behind, Mr and Mrs Vaughan are seen collapsed in each other’s arms.
The Swan is roused. There is open weeping, a good many exclamations of outrage and horror, threats are made against the perpetrators: one would wring their necks, another would hang them, a third wants to tie them in sacks and drop them off the bridge.
Click. WHO KIDNAPPED LITTLE AMELIA?
The Swan falls silent.
Click. The image of the pig reappears. Daunt takes a stick and uses it in the current of light to delineate what the Swan failed to notice before. There is a shadow.
There is a hushed ‘Oh!’
Click. It seems to be the same scene, though in fact it is Mabel again, standing in for her mother. This time the picture is cropped so that only the pig’s tail is visible – and at the centre of the image is the bottom of a long coat, a few inches of trouser leg and a pair of boot toecaps.
There are gasps of shock. ‘It was not the pig that tricked Ruby! It was him!’
Someone stands, pointing, and shouts, ‘So it were him that took Amelia!’
Understanding floods the Swan, which now speaks in a hundred voices:
‘He were a short fellow!’
‘Skinny as a broomstick!’
‘There weren’t nothing to him!’
‘That coat – too wide across the shoulders.’
‘And long on him.’
‘Always in that hat, he were.’
‘Never took it off!’
They remember him, all right. Everybody remembers him. But nobody is capable of giving any description beyond the coat and the hat and the size of the man.
And when did anyone last see him?
‘Two year ago.’
‘Two year? Close to three if it’s a day!’
‘Aye, getting on for three.’
Consensus is reached. The man with the pig was an undersized man in an oversized coat with a low hat and nobody has seen him for nearly three years.
Daunt and Rita confer. They have been all ears, but there is nothing to indicate that anybody here is about to divulge information beyond what is already known.
He leans and murmurs in her ear, ‘I think I’ve wasted everyone’s time.’
‘It’s not over yet. Come on. Part two.’
While outrage fills the room, Daunt and Rita slip behind a curtain. Rita goes over the instructions again with the Little Margot and her child, while Daunt checks devices concealed elsewhere whose purpose is not evident from their appearance but would be familiar to any theatrical-effects manager or spiritualist. ‘I’ll nod when I’m ready for you to draw back that curtain, all right?’