First to appear were a couple, Mr. and Mrs. Salisbury, both of them settled into the plump, comfortable final stretch of middle age. They were followed by an unusually ugly young woman who introduced herself as Dolly Creed — her face, sagging and acutely unremarkable, further marred by four evenly sized brown warts clustered around her left nostril. After her a Mrs. Erskine appeared — hunched, elderly, walking-sticked yet oddly nimble, she moved with a brittle, scuttling grace. The biscuits had all been eaten and the teapot run dry by the time the final guest fetched up, a gingery, skittish young man who passed out his card to all present — Mr. Ellis Lister, B.A. (Oxon.). He was evasive about his profession, stating only that he worked in a wing of the Civil Service, Moon and the Somnambulist recognized him immediately, however, as a Directorate man.
Eventually, Innocenti’s husband skulked back into the room.
“Take your seats. My wife is here.”
They moved obediently to their chairs, Moon and the Somnambulist careful to place themselves at the head of the table on either side of the seat reserved for Madame Innocenti herself.
Heralded by the satiny music of her gown, the medium walked through the room, lovelier than ever, basking in the puppy-eyed adoration of her clients. Her husband withdrew to the edge of the room and discreetly pulled shut the door, once again sinking the place into candle-lit gloom.
“Welcome,” said Madame Innocenti.
A discreet round of applause ensued as, after a graceful curtsey and a brief fumble of handshakes and kisses, the medium took her place at the head of the table.
“Death is not the end,” she said soberly. “Life is not snuffed out with our frail physical forms. There are worlds beyond our own, realms inhabited by the dead, planes of existence ruled by forces beyond our comprehension. Believe me, I know. I know that the soul endures. I know because I have seen beyond the veil. I have spoken with the departed and they have chosen me — unworldly vessel that I am — to be their voice in the world of the living.” Innocenti laughed. “But enough. I’ve no wish to bore you. I’m sure you’ve heard that sort of thing before.”
“Link hands,” her husband instructed, and they all obeyed, each grasping the hands of their neighbors, forming around the table a daisy chain of sweaty palms and twitching fingers. Moon and the Somnambulist exchanged glances, checking to make sure they had a firm grip on the medium.
“You are right to be cautious,” she said. “We understand your unwillingness to believe. The spirits will forgive you.”
“Glad to hear it,” said Moon.
Madame Innocenti spoke grandly. “I shall leave you now. I will remove myself from the mortal plane and ascend toward the sunlit realms of the dead. When I speak to you again I shall not be alone. My body will become the vessel of another. My spirit guide. A Spaniard from the age of Elizabeth. He is known to us all as Senor Corcoran.”
Murmurs of earnest assent around the table.
“Don’t be afraid.” With that, Innocenti sighed deeply and slumped back into her chair.
The old woman, Mrs. Erskine, cried out in alarm.
“Don’t break the circle,” hissed the medium’s husband.
A moment’s silence, then Madame Innocenti sat up. Her eyes remained closed, but whilst to all intents and purposes she seemed the same woman as before, something almost imperceptible had changed about her — some small shift in the alignment of her face, a subtle alteration in the cast of her features. When she spoke again, her voice was deep and rich and tinged with a European accent, maddeningly unclassifiable. “I sense you have many questions. Who amongst you would speak first to the ranks of the departed?”
Mr. Salisbury spoke up eagerly. “My son. Is he with you?”
A strained smile passed across Innocenti’s lips. “I need a name,” she said, still speaking in Corcoran’s pseudo-Spanish tones.
“Albert,” the old man murmured. “Albert Salisbury.”
“Albert?” There was a long pause. Madame Innocenti screwed up her face, as though she were grappling with some intensely complex problem. “Albert?” She exhaled loudly. “Yes, there is one here called Albert.” For a terrible moment, Innocenti’s body juddered and convulsed, bucking and writhing on her seat as though electricity was being passed through her body. Throughout these contortions Moon and the Somnambulist were careful to keep tight hold of her hands. When she spoke again, it was in the singsong tones of a child. “Papa?” she breathed. “Papa, is that you?”
Mr. and Mrs. Salisbury sobbed as one. The latter was content to leak her tears discreetly but her husband, half-laughing, half-crying, all but screamed: “Yes, my boy. Yes, it’s me!” There was something pitiable in the sight — bald, bullet-headed, with the look about him of a retired headmaster, the kind of man who’d gleefully have thrashed a classroom’s worth of boys before breakfast — weeping and gnashing his teeth, womanish in his hysteria.
Madame Innocenti giggled childishly. “Papa,” she squealed. “I’m happy here. The spirits have been so kind. So very kind. It’s warm, Papa, soft and warm and filled with furry animals and little woolen things.”
The Salisbury’s eyes shone with tears. Moon stifled a yawn.
“Grandmama is with me,” Innocenti went on. “Grandpapa, too. Every day is Christmas and everything is wonderful. I am floating, Papa, floating in amber and honey. I love you. I love you. But I have to go now. Please. Please, join me soon.”
The voice stopped. Innocenti slumped forward and when she spoke again it was in her Corcoran persona. “Forgive me,” she said briskly. “We lost contact. Who’s next?”
Moon caught the Somnambulist’s eye and they exchanged skeptical smiles.
I’m almost certainly dead by now and your identity matters to me not a whit. But whoever you are, I imagine you to be at best a cynic, at worst a genuine, honest-to-goodness misanthrope. None but the terminally cynical, after all, could have maintained your interest in such a parade of thieves, crooks, fantasists and liars as fill the pages of the present work. Consequently, I doubt anyone with what I take to be your pessimistic view of life has a great deal of time for the table-rapping, ectoplasmic nonsense of mediumship and seance. Am I correct? I thought as much.
Moon, of course, who had a strongly misanthropic streak only occasionally tempered by acts of charity, would certainly have agreed. Before Mr. Skimpole had destroyed his home and livelihood, he had made his living by gulling people into believing the impossible. Madame Innocenti, it appeared, did rather the same thing, only a good deal more lucratively and (if the albino’s claims of the frequency of the Directorate visits to Tooting were to be believed) with rather more influence.
If nothing else she was a first-rate performer. Her assumption of different voices — Corcoran the fusty Spaniard, the babyish tones of the infant Salisbury, her own beguiling appearance out of character — all were masterfully played and she possessed the ability (honed no doubt by years of end-of-the-pier mummery and mysticism) to tell her listeners precisely what they wanted to hear, to confirm in a few short lines of nebulous, comforting twaddle all they had ever dreamt and hoped was true.
After the Salisburys had spoken to their son, Corcoran presented Mrs. Erskine with the shade of her husband (lost at sea these past twenty years) and Miss Dolly Creed with the thin, pedantic voice of her late fiance. Moon wondered what kind of man would consent to marriage with such a troglodyte and concluded that he must have arranged his own death in order to escape the altar. Trying enough, he thought, to be saddled with such a horse-faced creature in life — worse still to have one’s carefree gamboling through the fields of Elysium interrupted by the same.