Mina looked at the two portraits once more, but the main difference she saw between them was the eyes. Mr Holt in the family portrait was proud and confident and looking directly into the camera. The man held by the police was devastated and crushed by circumstance. His eyes were vacant, devoid of hope. He was a man nourished only by pain.
Mina composed two letters to be sent immediately. The first was to Mr Phipps:
Dear Mr Phipps
I am not sure if you were aware of this, but I have discovered that three of the gentlemen whose names were mentioned in connection with the Maritime Queen Insurance Company fraud were at one time members of the Brighton Yacht Club. They are Captain Bulstrode, Mr Sutherland, and Mr Cobbe. The club premises was located in Old Steine, where the Company also maintained an office. I don’t know if the Club or its records still exist, but I do have the loan of a photograph of its members which may be of assistance. Perhaps the senior partners who recall the case might like to see it,
Yours faithfully
M Scarletti
Mina’s second letter was in response to a piece published in The Brighton Gazette, which caused her some annoyance:
MR HOLT’S CREDITORS RIOT IN BARTHOLOMEW SQUARE
The Town Hall Square witnessed some shocking scenes this week as a great crowd of men, numbering several hundred, all assembled demanding to enter the police offices and see the man being held there under the name of Jasper Holt. At one point your correspondent was nearly trampled in the rush and assaulted with walking sticks. The two constables guarding the Town Hall were unable to restore order and it was left to Mr Livermore, a hotelier, to calm the rioters. The excitement was a result of the rumour that the lady known as Mrs Vardy has privately concealed assets of substantial value, which would enable Mr Holt’s creditors to make a claim on the estate. As to the truth of this rumour we are not in a position to comment, but it has become the subject of energetic debate in town.
Mrs Vardy has refused to make any statement to the Gazette. Mr Holt remains in custody and will shortly appear before the magistrates to answer a serious charge of attempted fraud.
Meanwhile we must make an earnest appeal to Miss Mina Scarletti the noted spirit medium and sensitive, whose powers have been commented upon by no less a personage than Viscount Hope, to pay a visit to the Town Hall and settle the dilemma once and for all.
She wrote to the editor of the Brighton Gazette:
Sir — please could you publish the following notice.
Miss Mina Scarletti wishes it to be known that despite allegations to the contrary made by uninformed persons, she is not a spirit medium or a sensitive and has never claimed to be such or practised as such. Residents of Brighton are therefore entreated not to contact her either directly or indirectly with demands for her to provide any assistance in the case of the individual currently in police custody under the name of Jasper Holt.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sometimes Franklin Holt thought he was dead. He was not sure what being dead felt like, so he could not be entirely certain. Would death mean that he could float about in the air, drifting though the world wherever he pleased? Or would he soar up to heaven to be with the angels? Both possibilities felt pleasing, desirable, in fact far better than his present earthly existence. Maybe, he thought, next time the witch gave him the poison, he would swallow every drop of it, even ask for more, and then at last, he would find some peace.
In some of his dreams however, death was very different. His soul was still trapped in his body, which lay in a coffin, his flesh rotting, until all that was left was a skeleton. If that was true, then one day, he would be found in his miserable grave and dug out of the soil to make way for another corpse, and the gravediggers would tell jokes about him and use his leg bones to tap out their doleful music on his grinning empty skull. Perhaps, he thought, after all, it was better to endure his present ills than escape to something that might prove to be far worse.
Matthew wasn’t there anymore. He had been sent away to another school, but Franklin didn’t know why. Mother and Mr Vardy and Aunt Marion walked about the house whispering, although much of the time Mother took to her room. He was told she had a headache. Sometimes he could hear her crying.
There were noisy people in the street outside the house. At first, he thought he had imagined them, or if they were real, they were angry devils come to take him down to regions of fire. But when he was properly awake, which he was when he managed to spit out the witch’s potion, he was able to look outside and then he saw that they were only men.
‘Why are there men outside?’ he dared to ask Aunt Marion one afternoon. She had brought him some books of lessons to keep him busy, which she dropped with a thump onto his little writing desk. ‘I can hear them talking. Why don’t they go away?’
‘They want to see your mother, but they won’t,’ said his aunt, throwing down an exercise book and some pencils.
‘What about?’
‘Oh, you’re full of questions today!’ she snapped. ‘They’ve come about your father, if you must know!’
‘But — but father is dead. What do they want with him?’
She laughed. ‘Oh, this is the child who imagines he has seen his father’s ghost,’ she said derisively. ‘Well, I have some news for you, and when I have told you it, I want all this silly ghost nonsense to stop. Do you understand?’
She had her witch face on, and he nodded. There was nothing else he could do.
‘Your father isn’t dead at all. He’s come back but you’ll never see him again, because he is a very wicked man. He has done some bad things, and he has been locked up. He’s nothing more than a criminal, and he will be in prison for the rest of his life. And if you don’t behave yourself, that’s where you’ll end up!’
She walked out.
Franklin started to sob, but no-one came to comfort him.
Since Mrs Vardy had been unable to attend the most recent séance due to illness, Mina had not expected to hear from her. She was especially pleased therefore to receive a letter from Mrs Vardy, although less so when she read the contents.
Dear Miss Scarletti
I do hope this finds you well.
Forgive me for not writing to you sooner, but the recent terrible events have left me quite devastated.
I am sure that you have heard the news that a man claiming to be Jasper has appeared at the Town Hall. The poor soul must be deluded, and I have the greatest of sympathy for him. I did go to view him, and it wanted barely a minute of my time to advise the police that he was not Jasper. That was perfectly clear to me. How can a wife not know her own husband?
But it seems that I am not to be believed. The horrible letters that have arrived at my home making the cruellest accusations have quite undermined my health. Only yesterday we were obliged to summon a policeman to urge a crowd of particularly vociferous individuals standing outside our house to depart peacefully. And poor Franklin, who we have done our best to protect from all this has heard them talking, and now he is more distressed than ever. My sister is doing her best to keep him calm and reassures me that when these dreadful events are past and forgotten, he will recover.
I believe more strongly than ever that Franklin is in touch with his father’s spirit, which is unable to be fully at peace in the heavenly realms until his earthly troubles are resolved. I would do anything in my power to relieve his troubled soul, but poor Jasper is unable to tell either Franklin or myself what it is we must do. That appears to be the nature of spirits, they seem to exist in a region where all is indistinct, and they cannot think in practical terms as we do or even as they once did when alive. Mrs Barnham has explained all this to me. That is why the messages we receive from our departed loved ones are often couched in the vaguest of terms. Materialists who refuse to believe in these communications complain that they are so general that they say nothing at all, but I beg you, do not listen to them. The spirit world is not like ours, but they cannot comprehend it.