The Royal Ghost Read online

  ‘And now, Richard,’ said Mina, as the sky gradually cooled and they strolled along the promenade past tall white hotels, ‘I want to know the reason for your visit.’

  ‘Does one need a reason to visit Brighton?’ he asked with a smile.

  ‘If it was anyone other than you I would have no need to ask. I love the smell of the sea and the air, and for entertainment I am not sure I would find more to delight me in London. But I am sure that you are not here for your health or even pleasure.’

  ‘Now you can’t deny that there has been a great deal happening here, what with poisonings and scandals, it has been in the London papers as well, and I could not wait to come here where life is so much richer in incident than London.’

  ‘Surely living with Edward is not as dull as that?’ exclaimed Mina.

  ‘Oh but it is; he talks of nothing but work and Miss Hooper! He is in a perfect frenzy of excitement at the prospect of making that delightful maiden his bride. He wearies me on the subject incessantly. I only hope that when he is her husband at last the lady does not disappoint.’

  ‘You do not admire her?’

  ‘She is pretty, I admit, but tedious. They will make an admirable couple. And would you believe Edward actually suggested that I join the company as a clerk! A clerk! Imagine me sitting at a desk all day, I would dry up like an Egyptian mummy and have to be put in a museum.’

  ‘I assume that you are here to pursue some more pleasurable and less arduous way of making your fortune. Please let me know what it is; reassure me that nothing illegal or scandalous is involved and you will not need to hide it from mother again.’

  He grinned. ‘Well there has been a lot of talk just lately about a certain book and the ghostly shade of old George as was, only seen when he was young and virile. Now my thought is this – if one book will make money then two will make twice as much. I did think about writing my own but somehow I can’t seem to get properly started. So I thought that as you are an author you could give me some advice. Where do you get your ideas from? What do you do when the words refuse to come? Do you have to force yourself to write? It’s all a mystery to me.’

  ‘If you need to ask those questions then I would suggest book writing may not be your forte,’ advised Mina.

  ‘Perhaps not, although there are many who do not allow that to stop them. Have you read about the ghostly encounter? It might be a bit fast for you.’

  ‘And not for you? I have been told that only mature men or married persons would not find it shocking. Mother has a copy, only she would never admit it.’

  ‘I have read it of course. Mother likes to think that I am innocent of the ways of the world, but she knows the truth. All I am innocent of is ready money.’ A new thought struck him. ‘Tell me – how is Nellie? I haven’t seen her since she was married. Is she happy with her new husband? I didn’t take to him myself.’

  ‘I believe she is content. If their marriage may be likened to a ship then he is the proud owner, but it is her hand on the wheel.’

  ‘Well if he is ever unkind to her you must let me know at once and I will come and teach him the proper way to treat a lady. But do you see where my thoughts are tending? I might not be able to write a book but a play should be far easier. Yes, that is what I shall do!’

  ‘It may be harder than you think,’ warned Mina.

  ‘Oh, I am sure it is very easy; after all, what is a play but people standing on a stage and talking a great deal of nonsense! I have seen enough of the theatre to know that!’

  ‘I am not even sure if it is easy to write a bad play, but a good one will certainly require hard work and some literary ability.’

  ‘Aha,’ he exclaimed triumphantly, ‘in that case you will write it, Mina!’

  ‘I shall do nothing of the sort, and don’t try to persuade me.’

  ‘Really? Well, I should be able to dash it off in a day or two in any case, and I know exactly what the crowds will come to see. It will be the story of the Prince and Mrs Fitzherbert and their doomed love. Good or bad writing doesn’t signify since there would only be a few performances and no one would know the truth until we have sold all our tickets.’

  ‘We? Richard – I shall have nothing to do with this project in any capacity!’

  ‘Just a little cash advance, that is all,’ he pleaded. ‘I have to advertise and have tickets printed and hire a room and costumes. Mother’s cheque won’t cover all of that if I am to make a fine show. I shall get Nellie to personate Mrs Fitzherbert, I am sure she is pining for the theatre and would jump at it.’

  ‘Would her husband not object?’

  ‘No, Nellie will get around that – she has her ways, you know. And I shall be the Prince of Wales. Prinny was said to be very handsome in his youth.’ Richard preened himself with a satisfied pat to his chest then allowed his palm to descend to his stomach. Despite his hearty appetite he remained defiantly slender. ‘I shall need padding of course. Perhaps we will get Nellie’s old friend Rolly Rollason to take part; he’s a good sport. I know! He could be Napoleon!’

  ‘Do you think he will be suitable for the role? I believe Napoleon was quite a short man, and Rolly is well above six feet in height.’

  ‘Then he will personate Napoleon on his knees. It will be a novelty. Yes, I can see it now! Prinny and Napoleon will fight with swords for the love of Mrs Fitzherbert and the honour of England! Or the love of England and the honour of Mrs Fitzherbert, whichever is more appropriate. Prinny will stab the Frenchman through the heart to the wild applause of the groundlings.’

  ‘So it will not be a historical piece.’

  ‘Not at all. It will be much more interesting. Then Mrs Fitzherbert will fall into the Prince’s arms in an ecstasy of passion. It will be —’

  ‘Indecent?’ Mina suggested.

  ‘Piquante.’

  ‘Richard, you do know that the late King George was a very unpopular figure? Gormandising – drinking – running up debts – gambling – mistresses …’ Mina’s voice tailed off as she realised that she was cataloging her own brother’s principal faults.

  ‘Oh but I have been told that he was very well thought of in Brighton, since he brought the fashionables to town. And if not, it is high time he was rehabilitated! I would rather spend five minutes carousing with Prinny than a whole evening’s dreary banquet with the Queen. I’m sure that good Prince Albert was a splendid sort, but ten years of mourning is really overdoing it.’ Richard looked suddenly thoughtful. ‘Did Albert ever come to the Pavilion?’

  ‘It is possible,’ said Mina grudgingly. ‘Please do not personate him. Treason is still a hanging offence.’

  ‘And of course the best place to perform my play will be in the Pavilion! I hope it will not be too expensive to hire a room. I shall go there tomorrow and find out.’

  ‘Then I had better come with you, and make sure that you do not make any unwise arrangements with money you do not have.’

  They turned back to Montpelier Road and Mina, leaning on her brother’s arm, did not mind the pitying looks of passers-by as she limped by his side. There was a note waiting for her at home saying that Dr Hamid and Anna would be delighted if she joined them for a light supper that evening. Richard, Mina admitted to herself, had been right about one thing – she must warn Miss Whinstone of the threat from Mr Hope, even if the result was capitulating to his demands. Mina wrote a note to Miss Whinstone asking if she might visit her very soon.

  Eleven

  Dr Hamid and his sister Anna lived in a pleasant villa near the seafront, not far from their place of business. Only once had they allowed a séance to be held in their home, and it was done not at the desire of either but at the earnest request of their older sister Eliza, who had been seduced by the charm and promises of Miss Eustace and her acolyte Mr Clee into the belief that she was a medium. As Mina had later learned, adults of restricted stature were valuable allies for a spirit medium, able to appear at séances in the guise of ghostly children yet with the discipline to m
aintain the deception for as long as necessary. Mediums who lacked such confederates often resorted to creating the illusion themselves by crouching or kneeling, but in doing so risked an embarrassing exposure if distraught parents attempted to embrace the spirit of their dead offspring.

  Mr Clee had also tried to draw Mina into Miss Eustace’s fold but he had failed. A young man with a persuasive manner and the looks and address of a hero of romantic adventures, he had worked his wiles on the matrons of Brighton to considerable effect. He had initially presented himself at one of Miss Eustace’s séances masquerading as a stranger and a sceptic, but had rapidly undergone a miraculous conversion to a devoted worshipper at her shrine. So ardent was Mr Clee that there had been talk all over the town that he was in love with the medium, a rumour that had saddened many a susceptible female heart before he protested that his admiration of the lady was chaste and pure. Only later had it been revealed that he was not only Miss Eustace’s co-conspirator in fraud and confederate in the production of supposed spiritual effects, but her brother. Their father, Mr Benjamin Clee, was a respectable purveyor of materials and equipment for the use of conjurors, and both brother and sister were adept in that art. Mina hoped that any attempt by Mr Clee to use his skills to beguile the warders of the Lewes House of Correction where he was now securely confined would fall upon hearts made stony by long experience.

  Miss Eustace had not attended the event at the Hamids’ house since she had been suffering from a heavy cold, but that illness, of little consequence to a youthful person in otherwise good health, had been carried to the house on the breath of Mr Clee and found its way into Eliza’s cramped and underdeveloped lungs. After her death Dr Hamid, distracted with grief, had consulted Miss Eustace in the hope of making some contact with Eliza’s sprit. A simple slip had revealed to him that a message purporting to come from Eliza actually had a more earthly origin. ‘Perhaps in a quite different sense it was sent by Eliza,’ he had once told Mina. ‘Oh I don’t mean that it was actually she, but it was what I knew of my sister and what Miss Eustace did not that revealed to me how woefully I had misplaced my trust. It does not take a medium to tell me that Eliza lives on. She still, as she has always done, inspires Anna and me in our study of the spine and its diseases so that we may help others. One day Eliza and I will meet again and she will be healed in a way that I could never achieve and we will be content. But I no longer believe that I will see or speak to her before we are joined in death. I will be patient.’

  With Eliza’s loss the house seemed quieter. The room where she had spent her days, supported in a chair made specially for her to be able to sit and read in comfort, was as she had left it, the book she had been reading lay open at the last page she had perused, and her spectacles were where she had placed them, ready to be picked up. It was a house of double mourning, for Jane Hamid and now for Eliza, both taken to their rest far too young. But the future was there too, in photographic portraits of Dr Hamid’s sons and daughter. All were engaged in study and destined for the practice of medicine, although in the case of the daughter she would need double the courage and determination of her brothers as she would have to overcome not just examinations but male opposition to women studying medicine at all, in order to achieve her desires.

  The day’s work done, brother and sister liked to sit together companionably and Mina often joined them. Her good health and increasing vigour were also, she knew, a part of Eliza’s legacy. In the last few months she had seen, thanks to the exercises in which Anna had carefully coached her, the first positive change in her form she had known for many a year; her back and limbs were stronger and there was a curve of muscle on shoulders and upper arms that had not been noticeable before. Many would have thought such development unseemly and unwomanly, but Mina, who had her clothes specially made so that she could dress herself unaided, enjoyed her secret.

  She still had to take care not to deplete her energies through incautious exertion, and that evening Mina hired a cab, delivering her note to Miss Whinstone on the way and finding a stationer still open where she was able to purchase a pocket book to record her story ideas. Once she was settled by the Hamids’ fireside and the maid had brought hot cocoa and sandwiches, the conversation turned to the lecture by Arthur Wallace Hope.

  ‘I cannot deny his bravery, and who knows but the exploration of Africa will benefit us one day, but if he is to be the champion of that indecent book then the sooner he is gone from Brighton the better,’ said Anna. ‘Some of my patients who attended the lecture are actually taking his words as a recommendation and reading it when they had previously determined not to.’

  ‘I have already been invited to a séance,’ added Dr Hamid with obvious distaste. ‘I declined, of course.’

  ‘I am afraid the situation is far more serious than that,’ Mina confessed. Brother and sister listened to her with increasing concern as she described her conversation with Arthur Wallace Hope. ‘Mother and Enid do not know the true reason for his visit, although I have told Richard, who has just arrived to stay with us. My next step will be to speak to Miss Whinstone. I don’t want to frighten her, but if she is in danger then I would not want her to be unprepared for it when I could have warned her.’ Dr Hamid and Anna looked at each other, and Mina could see that they saw the wisdom of her proposal. ‘I fear that she will ask me to spare her by doing what Mr Hope asks, and I will have to comply. Perhaps I can find some way of meeting the demands of all parties without shaming myself. And then I will try to forget all about Miss Eustace and her kind and go back to my life as it was. I have, however, written to Mr Greville, my late father’s business partner, to see if I can discover more about the book. Not only is it causing such dismay amongst the ladies of Brighton, but it is the stimulus to Miss Eustace’s wishes to return here. If I can show it to be a fiction then perhaps she will be less welcome. I will let you know what he can tell me.’

  Dr Hamid smiled at Mina. ‘Mr Hope is a very clever, wealthy, influential and respected man. I wonder if he knows he has met his match?’

  There was a knock at the front door, which caused them all some surprise since no visitor was expected, and the maid brought a letter addressed to Dr Hamid. He, assuming it to be of a medical nature, took it to his study, while Anna and Mina made the most of the remaining refreshments, but before Anna could ring for the plates to be cleared her brother returned with the opened letter in his hand and a deep frown on his face.

  ‘This is quite extraordinary. The letter is from Mr Arthur Wallace Hope. He requests a private meeting with me at my earliest convenience.’

  ‘Does he say what the subject of the interview might be?’ asked Mina.

  Dr Hamid reread the letter carefully and shook his head. ‘No, he gives no indication at all. I doubt that it is a medical matter.’

  Mina was thoughtful. ‘Since he has spoken to Miss Eustace he most probably knows that you used to attend her séances and engaged her for private consultations. I expect she also recalls your presence at the event where she was arrested, though of course many of her circle were there as well. I think it very doubtful that Mr Hope knows the part you played in her discovery.’

  ‘And he must never know! Fortunately, I was not asked to give evidence before the magistrates and as far as I am aware I will not be called at the trial.’

  ‘Perhaps he believes that you might be sympathetic to her, and would be willing to act as a character witness?’ suggested Anna.

  ‘He may well be seeking out people with professional and social status for that very purpose,’ agreed Mina. ‘He might ask you to sign a statement attesting to your belief that Miss Eustace is genuine.’

  ‘I shall of course do neither,’ said Dr Hamid firmly.

  ‘There is another possibility,’ Mina added. ‘He has been making enquiries about me and therefore might know by now that I am a patient of yours. This message comes just hours after he failed to induce me to sign the statement he wanted. Could he be trying to find out more about me �
�� some new way of forcing my hand?’

  ‘If so, that is deplorable, and I will show him the door at once!’

  ‘I would prefer it if you did not,’ said Mina.

  Dr Hamid looked wary. ‘Miss Scarletti – I know that look – what are you suggesting I do?’

  ‘Mr Hope may be quite unaware that we are of the same mind on the subject of sprit mediums. Perhaps you might simply listen to what he has to say, and neither oppose his wishes nor agree to comply with them. Ask for more time to consider, as I did. He might reveal more to you than he has done to me.’

  ‘As long as you don’t require me to break into his hotel room and rifle through his possessions.’

  ‘What an interesting suggestion. But no.’

  ‘Very well. I doubt in any case that he is a man who can be put off for long. I will write to him at once and arrange to see him tomorrow.’

  Twelve

  Next morning, Mina received a letter from Mr Greville. A letter to her from the office of the Scarletti Library of Romance was not an unusual event and excited no comment at the breakfast table, in fact Mina’s literary activities did not usually excite any comment at all in her home. Had her mother actually seen her tales of hauntings and horror there would no doubt have been unceasing comment.

  Disappointingly, Mr Greville reported that he had been unable to discover anything further concerning the Misses Bland, authors of the sensational An Encounter. The proprietor of the printing firm, Mr Worple, was personally known to him, as there were occasional social gatherings of men in the publishing trade, and the office of Worple and Co. was not far from his own. Mr Greville had obliged Mina by finding a pretext to call on Mr Worple and mentioning to him that he was curious about the authors of the notorious book, and asking who they were. Judging by Mr Worple’s reaction, this was a question the printer had been asked very many times. Nevertheless, he was more polite and communicative to a brother in the publishing trade than he might have been to a correspondent of the popular press. Mr Worple had replied that all he had been asked to do was print the book as written. He had no means of contacting the authors, since they had initially made a personal visit to his office, and thereafter the copies had been collected by a servant, who carried messages back to her employers. The servant also brought instructions when a further printing was required, and payment of his invoice, which was made in banknotes. On their initial visit to his office, the ladies had asked, in view of the position of their father, who was a clergyman, that their identity should be protected and Mr Worple had respected their wishes. Both ladies had been veiled. They had made only one subsequent visit, some two weeks previously, when they had come to the office for an interview with the distinguished explorer Mr Arthur Wallace Hope.