Fodor noticed that both these stories hinged on a break in consciousness. In each case Alma had become unmoored, detached from herself. He wondered if at times like this her buried life surged to the surface and broke out. ‘There is a door which leads from the mind we know to the mind we do not know,’ he told the Daily Mirror in March. ‘Now and again that door is opened. Strange things happen. There are manifestations, queer phenomena, transfigurations. Who or what opens that door? The mind itself? Or some outside agency?’ As the door to the unconscious swung open, a suppressed feeling might escape its human host in the form of a cold wind or a warm clothes brush, a spinning teacup or a figure from the past.
Fodor did not know how this transmission worked: in his Encyclopaedia he speculated that mediums might discharge electromagnetic rays from their fingers and toes, or extrude invisible, semi-metallic psychic rods, or ectoplasmic threads like cobwebs. He had tested the theory of mental radiation by asking the young medium Ronnie Cockersell to carry photographic plates in his pockets, in case he could project his thoughts, as black shapes, onto the silvered sheets of glass. The Hampstead medium Madge Donohoe claimed to have produced hundreds of ‘skotographs’ in this manner. Though Fodor’s experiment with Ronnie was unsuccessful, it was not ridiculous: the Austrian physicist Victor Franz Hess, who won a Nobel Prize in 1936, had discovered cosmic radiation by laying photographic plates on mountaintops and sending others three miles into the sky in the basket of a hot-air balloon.
Fodor told Alma that her poltergeist seemed angry: a psychoanalyst might describe the shattering of glasses and other objects in her house as a protest from her unconscious self against ‘things whole’. She ignored the suggestion, replying only that Les was dull, but she liked fun, adventure, risks and danger. Alma no longer seemed the fragile, frightened woman who had called the reporters to Beverstone Road. She was in a holiday mood.
At midday they stopped for coffee at the village of Billingshurst, halfway between London and the sea. Fodor picked two books off the shelf in the coffee shop and gave them to Alma to hold, in case ‘Jimmy’, as he christened the poltergeist, could summon them later as apports. The books were Professor Hoffman’s Modern Magic, a nineteenth-century compendium of conjuring tricks, and a recent publication about how to predict one’s fate. He seemed to be teasing her with the titles – one a manual for stage magicians, the other a guide to fortune telling.
Alma, in turn, was tickled by Fodor’s naming of the poltergeist. It so happened, she told him, that her maternal grandfather was known as Jimmy. A wheelwright-turned-house-painter, James Bannister had died in 1927. He had been something of a poltergeist himself, Alma said he used to plague his family with practical jokes. He was forever putting tacks on chairs, pulling the linen and blankets off freshly made beds, shaming his relatives in front of strangers. As if to make a connection with Fodor, she remarked that Jimmy Bannister had been partly Jewish.
They continued towards the coast. At one point on the journey Fodor let go of Alma and a few minutes later noticed a new ring on her right hand. She expressed surprise: her wedding and diamond rings had been joined by a band inset with a large, artificial blue stone. Fodor was uneasy. He thought that he had noticed her right hand slip out of view just before the ring’s arrival.
At 1.45 p.m. the group reached Bognor Regis. As well as the usual seaside fixtures – an arcade, a pier, a beach, an esplanade – the town boasted an amusement park and zoo and a branch of the British Union of Fascists, which ran an annual summer camp nearby. The fascist party had been weakened by the passing of a Public Order Act in 1936, which banned political uniforms and unauthorised marches, but had started to gain ground again in the south of England. Three weeks earlier its leader, Oswald Mosley, had urged an audience in the Bognor Theatre Royal to show friendship to Italy and Germany.
Over lunch in a small Bognor restaurant, Dr Wills remarked that it would be nice if Alma’s diamanté clip, which she had left at home, were to appear on her frock. While Alma was leaning forward, her elbows on the table and her hands clasped in front of her, Mrs Wills cried out and pointed at her dress. The clip had come. ‘I was looking at Mrs Fielding’s rings,’ she explained afterwards, ‘then at her hair, which she herself had permed. Suddenly there was a bright flash. It must have been the moment of the clip’s arrival.’
After lunch they met Laurie and his girlfriend on the Bognor seafront, as arranged, and Fodor took a few snaps of the company with his Leica. There was Alma, slight, smiling, hunched against the breeze in her ruffled cretonne frock, fur-collared coat and brown hat; Gerald Wills, skinny and self-assured, leaning proprietorially towards Alma to his left, with the stockier Hilda Wills in a pale matching jacket, skirt and hat to his right. Gerald and Hilda Wills had married in the 1920s, after the death of his first wife. Towering above them was Laurie, fair and moustachioed in a double-breasted checked suit, bow tie and felt fedora, and his statuesque, dark-haired companion, the film actress Barbara Waring, in a fitted suit and round sunglasses.
Dr and Mrs Wills, Fodor and Alma made a side trip to Pagham, a suburb of Bognor in which Alma wanted to visit some bungalows available for summer rental. In one of the bungalows, Dr Wills laughingly picked up a tumbler and placed it in front of Alma to see if ‘Jimmy’ would smash it. As they were walking along a road next to the shingle beach a few minutes later, a tumbler crashed to the ground behind them. Fodor collected the fragments as evidence.
Back in Bognor they joined Laurie and Barbara, and hatched a plan over tea: they would visit Woolworth’s and see if Alma could psychically transport a piece of jewellery out of the shop, as she had done in Croydon. Alma said it would be fun if something turned up in Fodor’s Kodak film canister, so he lent it to her. As they were walking to the local Woolworth’s, which was some distance away, they passed a branch of the Marks & Spencer department store and Alma suggested that they go there instead. It turned out to have no jewellery counter, so they reverted to the original plan and made for the Bognor ‘Woolie’s’, on the London Road.
The Woolworth’s shopfront was bright and inviting, with a bold red sign and a busy window display. Inside, maroon-clad shop girls stood at the counters. Fodor and his party stopped at the jewellery stand and watched as Alma selected a ring with two stones on a curved bridge, examined it, then returned it to the assistant; it was the nicest ring there, Alma said, but she did not want to buy it today. The shop girl eyed them suspiciously as they moved away. ‘It looked fishy to her,’ wrote Fodor. ‘She followed us. We began to feel uncomfortable. We were afraid we would get in trouble if the ring which Mrs Fielding had handled suddenly appeared on her finger.’ Barbara stopped to buy something at another counter. The others left the store, and saw a policeman across the street. ‘I thought we had better hurry,’ said Fodor. As the group turned into a road a few hundred yards from Woolworth’s, Alma said that she heard a rattle in the film container. Fodor took the box from her, opened it, and found inside the ring that she had handled. ‘My flesh creeped,’ he said.
Everyone was staggered by the arrival of the ring. All swore that they had seen it still on the jewellery counter as they left.
‘The experience was rather alarming,’ said Fodor. ‘We had committed psychic shoplifting! We were in possession of stolen property.’