Page 74 of Death at the Dower House
I narrowed my eyes, and she added, “Everyone be quiet.”
We sat in silence again. The candles sputtered. Marsden’s foot searched for mine under the table. He must have hit Francis instead, because the latter shot him an unkind glare, and Marsden subsided, at least for the time being.
“Is there a spirit present?” Laetitia intoned.
The glass wobbled toward ‘yes.’
“Can you tell us your name?”
C, spelled the glass. H. A.
“No,” I said, as it moved toward the far end of the alphabet and the R. The glass stumbled, or someone’s fingers did. Crispin looked up at me. I met his eyes as I shook my head. “Absolutely not. I don’t want to talk to my dead aunt, or my dead cousin, or my dead mother or father… No, wait. Actually, I would like to speak to my dead father. If someone can conjure up my dead father, I’d be happy to speak to him.”
There was a pause.
“Very well,” Laetitia said. “Can we have Miss Darling’s father? Is he here?”
The glass stood stock still, of course. Nobody knew my father’s name—or rather, Christopher or Francis, or perhaps Crispin, might have heard it at some point, but neither was likely to remember it now. And I didn’t think either of them had been pushing the glass in the first place. Francis clearly hadn’t been any happier to recognize Robert’s name than I had, and Crispin had flinched when he’d realized the glass was spelling out his mother’s name. And Christopher… well, Christopher just wouldn’t, that’s all.
So we spent a few minutes waiting for the spirits to settle down again. My father never appeared, of course. Eventually, Laetitia tried again. “Is there a spirit present?”
The glass twitched.
“Can you tell us your name?”
The glass moved backward towards the middle of the alphabet. Several people held their breaths when it approached the J, but instead of stopping there, it moved on to the I. Then the R, and back to the I.
“Mother?” Constance breathed.
The glass abandoned the letters in favor of the ‘yes,’ where it lingered, seemingly waiting for another question.
“Lady Peckham?” Laetitia tried. “Is that you?”
The glass stayed where it was. Obviously, as it was already firmly planted on the affirmative.
“Mother,” Gilbert said. “Do you have something to tell us?”
The glass seemed to hesitate, then started moving. L-O-V-E, it spelled out. L-I-G-H-T.
I thought about rolling my eyes, but decided that under the circumstances it would be insensitive. Gilbert seemed invested in the actions of the glass, and Constance didn’t seem opposed, so my skepticism might not be appreciated.
“You’re happy?” Gilbert ventured, while Constance choked back a little sob.
The glass signaled an unhesitant ‘yes.’
“Can you tell us what happened to you?” Laetitia asked, and the glass went into a frenzy of movement, all of it in the first half of the alphabet. A-C-C-I-D…
“An accident?” Gilbert asked, as it made its way unhesitatingly toward the E.
The glass zoomed toward the ‘yes,’ so quickly that Crispin, who was farthest away from the ‘yes’—as well as from the first half of the alphabet—lost his connection with it. It didn’t seem to matter. The glass arrived triumphantly at ‘yes’ and stayed there.
“Thank you, Mother,” Gilbert said humbly, while Constance sobbed quietly beside him. She’d always been a bit gullible, even back in our Godolphin days, and under the circumstances… well, if it had been my mother who’d died today, I might have been overcome, too. She would surely realize, at some later point, that she hadn’t really communicated with her dead mother, and Lady Peckham hadn’t really sent her children love and light from the beyond.
Then again, did it really matter if Constance believed it? If it gave her some kind of peace, could it really hurt?
While I cogitated, we had lapsed into silence again. And— “Is there a spirit present?” Laetitia intoned.
The glass twitched, then headed for the J. Then the O. Then the H.
