‘Mr. Moody was Mr. Carver’s passenger,’ Gascoigne put in. ‘He arrived on the Godspeed the very night she came to ground.’
Moody felt a stirring of unease at this disclosure. He had used a false name while booking his passage upon Godspeed, and he did not like to advertise the fact that he had arrived in Hokitika upon that craft, given the nature of what he had witnessed—or imagined that he had witnessed—in the hours before the ship had foundered. He looked at the widow, seeking, in her face, some flicker of doubt or recognition that might show that she had known about the bloody phantom in Godspeed’s hold.
But Lydia Wells was smiling. ‘Did he?’ she said, looking Moody up and down. ‘Then I’m afraid Mr. Moody is a very common specimen of a man indeed.’
‘How so?’ Moody said stiffly.
The widow laughed. ‘You are a lucky man who is scornful of the notion of luck,’ she said. ‘I am afraid, Mr. Moody, that I have met a great many men like you.’
Before Moody could think of a reply to this, she picked up a small silver bell, rang it sharply, and announced, in a voice that was no less penetrating for its husky half-whisper, that all those without tickets were to make their departures at once, for the séance was about to begin.
VENUS IN AQUARIUS
In which Sook Yongsheng forgets his shilling; Lydia Wells becomes hysterical; and we receive an answer from the realm of the dead.
What a different gathering this was to the clandestine council that had assembled in the Crown Hotel three weeks ago! The Crown had played host to a party of twelve, which, following Moody’s arrival, became a party of thirteen; here, in the front room of the Wayfarer’s Fortune, they were a party of eleven seeking to summon a twelfth.
Charlie Frost, under Joseph Pritchard’s instruction, kept his eyes fixed upon Lydia Wells as the widow led the seven ticket holders into the parlour where Ah Sook and Ah Quee, shining with greasepaint, sat cross-legged on either side of the hearth. The drapes had been drawn over the parlour windows, and all but one of the paraffin lamps had been doused, giving the room a pinkish glow. Above this last lamp a tin dish of attar had been placed on a metal stand, and the liquid, gently heated by the warmth of the flame, filled the room with the pleasant scent of roses.
Mrs. Wells invited the men to take their seats, which, in the interval while the other guests departed the Wayfarer’s Fortune and dispersed into the night, had been arranged in a circle in the middle of the room. There was much embarrassment and nervousness in the room as the seven guests were seated. One man kept emitting a high-pitched giggle; others grinned and elbowed their mates in the ribs. Mrs. Wells paid these disturbances no notice. She was busy arranging five candles in a star pattern upon a plate, and lighting them, one by one. When the candles were lit, and the paper spill extinguished, Lydia Wells seated herself at last, and remarked, in a voice that was suddenly hushed and conspiratorial, that Anna Wetherell, these hours past, had been preparing her mind for the impending communion with the dead. She was not to be spoken to, when she made her entrance in the parlour, for even the smallest disturbance could disrupt her state of mind, which in turn would disrupt the widow’s own transmissions. Did the present company consent to ignore her?
The present company consented.
Did the present company consent to assist the widow’s transmissions further, by maintaining a state of mental receptivity for the duration of the event? Would every man agree to keep his mind cool and open, his limbs relaxed, his breathing deep and rhythmic, and his attention focused absolutely, like that of a monk at prayer?
This was assured.
‘I cannot tell you what will happen in this room tonight,’ the widow went on, still speaking in a voice of conspiracy. ‘Perhaps the furniture will move about. Perhaps we will feel breezes—the breath of the underworld, some might call it—as the spirits around us are disturbed. Perhaps the dead will speak through the mouths of the living. Or perhaps they will reveal themselves by the presentation of a token.’
‘What do you mean, a token?’ one of the diggers said.
Lydia Wells turned her calm gaze upon the speaker. ‘Sometimes,’ she said quietly, ‘and for reasons unknown to us, the dead are unable to speak. When this happens, they choose to communicate in other ways. I was party to a séance in Sydney where this occurred.’
‘What happened?’
Mrs. Wells became glazed. ‘A woman had been killed in her own home,’ she said, ‘under circumstances that were a touch mysterious—and some months following her death, a select group of spiritists convened at her house, to contact her.’
‘How was she killed?’
‘The family dog went savage,’ said Lydia Wells. ‘Quite out of character, the beast attacked her—and ripped out her throat.’
‘Hideous.’
‘Ghastly.’
‘The circumstances of her death were suspicious,’ the widow continued, ‘not the least because the dog was shot before its true nature could be established by the law. But the case was closed, and the woman’s husband, wild with grief, quit the house and sailed away. Some months later, a servant who had been employed in the house brought the matter to a medium’s attention. We arranged for a séance to be held in the very room in which this woman had been killed.
‘A gentleman in our group—not the medium, but another spiritist of high renown—happened to be wearing a pocket watch that evening. The watch was tucked inside his vest pocket, with the chain pinned to his breast. He had wound it, he assured us afterwards, before he arrived at the house, and the piece kept very good time. Well, that night—during the séance—there came a queer little whirring noise from his vest. We all heard it, though we did not know what it was. He retrieved the piece, and found to his astonishment that the dial now read three minutes past one. He insisted that he had wound the watch at six o’clock, and it was not yet nine. There was no way that the hands could have moved so far on their own accord, and he could hardly have turned the knob by accident! He tried the knob—and found that it had stuck. It was broken. In fact the piece never worked again.’
‘But what did it mean?’ someone said. ‘Three minutes past one?’
The widow’s voice became low. ‘We could only assume,’ she said, ‘that the spirit of the dead woman was trying to tell us something, very urgently. The time of her death, perhaps? Or was she delivering a warning? A death that was yet to come?’
Charlie Frost found that he was breathing shallowly.
‘What happened next?’ Nilssen whispered.
‘We decided to stay in the drawing room until three minutes past one in the morning,’ said Lydia Wells. ‘Perhaps, we thought, the spirit was inviting us to stay until that time—at which point something was to happen. We waited until the hour struck one; we waited in silence for one minute—two minutes—three—and then, exactly at that moment, there was a terrible crash: a painting tumbled from its hook upon the wall. We all turned, and saw, behind it, a hole in the plaster. The painting had been put up, you see, to mask the hole.
‘Well, the women in the group were screaming; there was noise all about; you can imagine the commotion. Someone found a knife, and cut out the piece of plaster—and lo and behold, lodged into the plaster, there was a ball of shot.’