The Royal Ghost Read online

  Hope met the question with a disarming smile, but there was something cold and forced in his expression. ‘Mystic Stefan makes no claims one way or another. He seeks only to entertain. We all may have our opinions as to how he performs his miracles, but only he knows the truth.’

  ‘Well, I know what I shall ask him,’ said Enid, lowering her eyelashes.

  ‘I think we can all guess your question,’ said Richard. ‘What we would like to know is what answer you are hoping for.’

  ‘Perhaps since he is so adept, and knows so much, he can conjure up the real names of the ladies who wrote that curious book,’ said Mina mischievously. ‘It would be interesting to discover how they came to write it.’

  ‘Mina!’ her mother snapped with a frown.

  Richard finished his second glass of wine and poured another. ‘My dear sister is far too modest to admit it, but she is herself an author.’

  ‘Mina writes stories for children,’ Enid explained quickly. ‘Not at all the same thing as proper books.’

  ‘I should hope not!’ said Louisa.

  ‘I have never yet written, but I think I may have a talent for it,’ Richard went on, ‘so I have determined to write a play, something noble and high-minded, with a monumental subject. It will be like Shakespeare – or – those other fellows who are like Shakespeare.’

  ‘That is an admirable ambition,’ said Hope, ‘and when it is completed I would like to read it.’

  Mina smiled, and he caught the look and returned it in a strange moment of mutual understanding. Both had guessed that the chances of Mr Hope being obliged to meet that promise were slim.

  Rose was summoned to clear the plates, and at Louisa’s direction moved the wine bottle out of Richard’s reach. Mr Hope complimented Louisa on the beefsteaks, saying that a good English dinner was the best in the world, and an excellent butcher a treasure beyond price. Dessert was brought, a moulded blancmange decorated with fruit.

  ‘I would be very interested to learn more of your meeting with the Misses Bland,’ said Mina, timing her question at the point when her mother was too preoccupied with dessert to interrupt. ‘Was it very recent?’

  ‘Yes, about two or three weeks ago. I was very impressed with how modest they are, and their simple and wholly natural sincerity.’

  ‘If I understand correctly from your lecture, the ladies claim to have seen the ghost of the late King not as he appeared at the time of his passing, but when he was the young Prince of Wales, together with members of his court.’

  ‘Extraordinary, I know, but that is the case,’ said Hope. Louisa gave him a worried look, but he did not offer further detail.

  ‘I have recently paid a visit to the Royal Pavilion, and made a study of its history, and I would deduce that the room in which this encounter took place was once the King’s breakfast room but is nowadays a select retiring room for lady visitors. The wallpaper is a beautiful shade of red and with a very distinctive pattern. It is part of King George’s oriental re-design, the work of Mr Nash, and most probably dates from about 1820.’

  ‘How very interesting,’ said Hope politely, but he gave Mina a searching look. Enid and Louisa clearly thought the subject not at all interesting, but since their guest did they said nothing to deter Mina from further observations. Richard smiled the smile he always gave when he knew Mina was up to something.

  ‘But here is the thing that mystified me,’ Mina went on, and from the corner of her eye she saw Richard’s smile broaden, ‘I would have expected that if the ladies had seen ghosts then the figures would have appeared before them in the room as it is now. I hardly ever read ghost stories myself, but when I have that always seems to be the way of things. But in this case it was not, since the furnishings were not the same. Also, in these ghost stories, the figures always appear as they were in their last moments of life, which these did not. Supposing, however, that the figures were not ghosts at all, and the ladies had, as I believe you yourself suggested, looked or even stepped back by some means or other into the days of the King’s youth, then they would have seen him and his court in the room as it was then, perhaps in 1790 or thereabouts, before he parted from the lady he loved, but many years before the red wallpaper was placed there. Instead, the figures, which looked as they did in the last century, were in a room furnished as it was some thirty or more years later, a room they could never have occupied. I am afraid that it struck me then that the Misses Bland have done no more than compose a story for their own amusement, basing it on some histories imperfectly studied, and have found against all expectation that their readers believed that they were describing a real incident. If I write a story about a child meeting a pretty fairy, it is no more than a story, and I know it. A young child might believe it to be real, but I do not think an adult would. Adults do not, as a rule, believe in fairies.’

  There was a very distinct silence around the dinner table. Louisa was annoyed but clearly did not know how to respond, and Enid was simply bewildered. Mina dared not glance at Richard or she could never have maintained a serious expression.

  Mr Hope, however, was obviously well used to having his beliefs questioned, something that amused rather than offended him. He gave Mina’s comments only a moment’s thought before he smiled indulgently. ‘The ways of such events are still a mystery to us, but your concerns do not, as you think, show that the ladies invented the story. On the contrary, it proves to me the very high order of their mediumship, something of which they themselves are quite unaware. Please be assured, Mrs Scarletti,’ he went on, turning the heat of his gaze towards Louisa, whose concerns evaporated almost instantly, ‘the Misses Bland have no desire to conduct the kind of séances of which you disapprove. They do not seek the admiration of the public.’

  He addressed the gathering about the table once more, as sure as a man could be that he had captured his audience. ‘Miss Scarletti suggests that what she sees as inconsistencies in the book resulted from imperfect study, but this is not so. The authors informed me that they had never before their remarkable vision visited Brighton or made any study of its history or seen any portraits of the Pavilion’s apartments. They knew little about the Pavilion other than that it was very famous and had once been a royal residence. I believe that as they moved about the building they were, without realising it, carried by the influence of spirits to different times in its past. Perhaps a kind of blending of the rooms and the figures took place, created by their own unconscious powers. It is an extraordinary and rare phenomenon, one that is not at all understood, and I hope very much to be able to meet the ladies again and persuade them to submit themselves to scientific study. Just imagine,’ he went on with forceful intensity, putting down his spoon to gesture with both hands, ‘if we could, as they did, travel into the past. What mysteries we could solve, what wrongs we could make right!’

  ‘Oh, indeed!’ breathed Enid, her eyes shining.

  Mina could see that whatever objections she made, Mr Hope would somehow turn them about to become proofs of his way of thinking. ‘Do you believe that the ladies’ experience has revealed a previously unknown branch of science?’ she asked, without a change in her expression. Beside her, Richard almost choked on his dessert. It was, as they both recalled, a claim made by those who had once championed Miss Eustace, whose science had consisted of little more than anointing filmy draperies with phosphorised oil.

  ‘I do,’ said Hope emphatically, ‘and I am so happy that you have hit upon this concept, one that so many of the doubters simply do not understand. They refute anything that does not conform to the way they see the world, and cannot conceive that it can differ in any way from their narrow-minded perception. I compliment you, Miss Scarletti; you are a visionary, you open your mind and in so doing you see into the future.’

  Mina wished very much that she could see into the future, but she was less concerned with the world of science or the spirit than the happiness of her family. She pitied Enid, unable to find solace in her children and dreading
the return of her husband, and she daily expected to hear that Richard’s gadfly adventures had ended with him in a morass of debt, or even under arrest. She was powerless to influence Enid and able only to restrain Richard’s wilder exploits. Mr Hope, however, too narrow minded to understand his own position, was a different matter. Once he had taken his leave Mina put her new idea into action and sent a note to her brother’s former mistress, the beautiful Nellie, asking if she might pay her a visit.

  Twenty

  Next morning Mina received yet another letter from Mr Greville.

  Dear Miss Scarletti,

  Please find enclosed a cheque for the sales of your most recent publication, The Tower of Ghost Musicians.

  Mina winced at the title, which she thought clumsily worded and which she had not approved. She had wanted to call the story The Tower of Music but Mr Greville had pointed out that one could scarcely have a story about ghosts without the word ‘ghost’ or ’spectre’ in the title, any more than one would publish a story with a title that promised ghosts but did not provide any. The letter continued:

  Mr Worple wishes me to pass on to you his grateful thanks for the information you have supplied. As you know, he was initially of the opinion that the action for plagiarism against the authors of An Encounter was motivated solely by greed and would quickly prove to have no foundation. Your revelations have convinced him, however, that there is a case to answer and he has therefore undertaken to co-operate fully with the plaintiff’s solicitors. He has just revealed to me the outcome, which you might find interesting.

  The Misses Bland had recently ordered another printing of the book, with the usual arrangement that their servant would arrive to collect the copies. Under the circumstances Mr Worple decided not to carry out the commission; instead he advised the plaintiff’s solicitors when the servant might be expected to call, and they came to his office and lay in wait with the appropriate documents. I was not present at that confrontation but Mr Worple was, and I am sure you can imagine the ensuing consternation. The servant was required to reveal the real names and address of her employers and accompany the solicitor to their home to serve the papers. It transpired that the ladies are, as they claim to be, sisters, but they are not called Bland, and the father is not a clergyman, although he is a respectable tradesman who pursues the businesses of undertaker and cabinet maker. He knew nothing of his daughters’ adventure in the world of publishing and when he learned of it, it came as a great shock to him. When confronted with the situation, the ladies were sufficiently discomfited that they were unable to say anything on the subject, however, one fact of interest did emerge. Your enquiries showed that the visit to the Pavilion could only have taken place on 17 October last year. Not only have the ladies and their father never been to Brighton, all three were on that date at a family gathering in London, and there are therefore over twenty witnesses to the fact that they could not possibly have been in Brighton on the day in question.

  I am not sure what to make of this and neither is Mr Worple, but the ladies have been summoned to Brighton for a formal meeting with the plaintiff’s solicitor, should their health permit it, and more information may emerge then.

  The only other thing I can tell you is that Mr Worple is quite satisfied that the two ladies are the same two who supplied the original manuscript and who also came to his office for a meeting with Mr Arthur Wallace Hope. You might be interested in his account of them, and I cannot help wondering as I write these words if they will one day be personated in one of your stories. One sister, who we understand to be the elder of the two, is more retiring than the other owing to some defect about her face, which means that she is always very heavily veiled in public. When Mr Worple and the solicitor came to interview her, she at once threw a shawl over her head and was very distressed at the intrusion. The younger, who appears to be aged about thirty, is altogether the bolder and sharper of the two. She reviled the visitors for upsetting her sister and would speak of nothing else but their impertinence. Mr Worple thought this was no more than a cunning means of avoiding questioning.

  Their father has declared most emphatically that the manuscript, which he has been shown, is not in the handwriting of either of his daughters and is prepared to employ an expert to testify to that effect. The case may prove to be more than usually complicated.

  Mina could only agree. There were, she thought, several disparate elements in the publication of An Encounter; there was the matter copied from the original pamphlet, the facts about the Pavilion drawn from the book she had studied, the details of the events taking place in the Pavilion on 17 October 1870, and finally the indecent gloss on the story. She concluded that the ladies must somehow have obtained a copy of Some Confidential Observations by a Lady of Quality, perhaps one that had been passed on by a friend or relation. If they were telling the truth when they claimed never to have visited the Pavilion, they must have been told about its delights and presented with The Royal Pavilion in the Days of King George IV, perhaps by a different person to the one who had given them the pamphlet, someone who had visited on the day in question and might not have been aware that the entertainments were unique to that day. Handwriting could be disguised, or they might simply have adopted a clearer copy than their usual for the purposes of the printer.

  Why, if the sisters were so modest and retiring, they had introduced matter of an indelicate nature into a story that had not been so in the original she could not say. Perhaps it had been introduced by a third party after the manuscript left the ladies’ hands, the only possible object being to make money.

  Mina paid another visit to the reading room and was able to study the newspaper record of the day in January 1850 when the public had been able to view the interior of the Pavilion for the first time. There was no note of who had been there on that occasion although it was mentioned that some of the visitors, confused by the unusual layout of the great building, had got lost. Mina thought of what it must have been like to be the very first explorers of that lost and faded grandeur, like finding a sunken wreck on the bed of the sea, and picturing what it had once been in the days of its glory. If she had been there she was sure she would have written about it, too, but it would have been a work of the imagination, and who knows but she might have invented a story of stumbling by chance into the royal court of yesteryear. Could it be, she thought, that Confidential Observations had always been and was always intended to be taken as a work of fiction?

  The company who had printed Confidential Observations might conceivably have assisted her enquiries, but on examining some Brighton directories she found that it was long defunct, the sole manager having passed away several years ago.

  By now the news that the authors of An Encounter had been accused of plagiarism should by rights have set all of Brighton, if not Great Britain, abuzz with gossip, but somehow it had not. Over the next few days Mina carefully studied both local and national newspapers and listened carefully to conversations, but it was not discussed or even faintly alluded to. She visited Mr W.J. Smith’s bookshop and found that he was no longer selling copies to eager enquirers, but his excuse was that he was waiting for more to be printed. She began to wonder if powerful interests were suppressing the news. She herself was most reluctant to drop the bombshell into conversation as she would then be roundly attacked with demands to know how she had come by the information, and she had no wish to reveal her private correspondence with Mr Greville. If the case did come to court then the truth would be revealed and Mina determined that she would be present when it was, but it could well be many months before any action was heard, if indeed it ever came to court at all. If Mr Hope took an interest in it, which seemed very probable, or the ladies’ father had sufficient resources, the whole affair might be quietly settled before the dispute was made public with no one left any the wiser, and all those in the know well-paid to maintain silence.

  Mina decided that it was a dreadful shame that so important a case should be in progress without t
he local press and interested members of the public knowing anything about it. It was one of her wickedest pleasures to place a metaphorical cat into a no less metaphorical flock of pigeons, and so she composed a letter to the editor of the Gazette suggesting that he might care to look into the matter.

  Twenty-One

  The inaugural performance of Mystic Stefan had been set for the following Monday, and Mrs Peasgood’s neat little cards distributed to a favoured few. All the Scarletti family was invited, but there was one person above all who Mina most wanted to be present at that event, one with the eye of a professional conjuror, who could see how the illusions were being achieved and comment on the competence or otherwise of Mr Hope’s protégé.

  The former Nellie Gilden had, before her recent marriage, enjoyed an unusual career. Now aged about twenty-five and admitting to seventeen, she had for some years assisted a Monsieur Baptiste, a highly successful stage magician, and was therefore fully conversant with the secrets of that trade, secrets she would never explicitly divulge. She had also been daubed from head to foot in paint to become the Ethiopian Wonder who could supposedly read minds, danced to near naked madness as Ophelia in a burlesque of Hamlet, and appeared on the Brighton stage with Richard as the spirit medium Miss Foxton. Demurely clad Miss Foxton had gone into a trance and by dint of some clever manipulation of her clothing, had transformed via a floating trail of ethereal light into a winged sprite that rose up out of an oriental vase clad in a glowing costume as clinging as a cobweb, a garment that left nothing to the heated imagination of any gentleman in the audience. This brazen attempt to become rich on the fashion for conjuring spirits had failed largely because the expense of Nellie’s new gowns had outstripped their income by a substantial margin.

  It had been an easy task for a woman of Nellie’s unusual and varied talents, arrayed in her best gown and resplendent in paste jewellery, to persuade Miss Eustace that she was the wealthy Lady Finsbury and so lure her into the situation that had exposed the medium as a trickster and a thief.