The Square & The Circle

Chapter One

Lavender Umbrellas and Death at a Séance

Tuesday, January 10, 1860

A murder at a séance, I repeated incredulously. A séance? You mean ghosts and such?

Lord Arthur Summerhayes was an elegantly dressed white-haired man in his early seventies. A military background I surmised, as he wore enormous and immaculately clipped side whiskers, made popular by troops returning from the Crimea. In his youth, and clean-shaven, I believe he would have been a handsome man.

Indeed I do, Mrs. Hunter-Payne. I’m talking spiritualism, mediums, apparitions, spirit controls from beyond the veil, and communicating with the beloved dead. The whole battalion, if you have my meaning.

I was taken aback by the notion, and I struggled for a response. I knew spiritualism had become a popular pastime lately despite this being the age of rationalism, and surrounded as we were by very real advances in science and engineering. Airships droning away above the city and steam-powered aircraft patrolling the clouds were common sights now, as were Cumberland cabs steaming along every street and thoroughfare. Submarines skulked beneath the waves, and automatons had even entered domestic service. The list of technological marvels was endless. Gone for the most part was the age of horse and carriage in which I had been born.

I’d read in The Times that after the war in the Crimea, and the more recent mutiny in India, both of which incurred such great loss of life, there had arisen an ever growing desire of the bereaved to contact their lost loved ones. Spiritualists, those purporting to be able to contact the spirits of the dead, had conveniently materialised to meet the demand.

Séances, as I understood them, were ritualised gatherings of people in a darkened room sitting in silence around a table, holding hands, awaiting a spirit to contact them through the auspices of a medium. For some it was an amusement; merely a parlour game. For others it was an earnest and sorrow-fuelled desire to contact lost loved ones. Newspapers made light of the pastime, ridiculing believers and taking particular glee in exposing frauds and charlatans. The church proclaimed it sacrilegious, no doubt believing the practice subverted their monopoly over the afterlife.

That was the extent of my knowledge and my interest. I understood quite intimately the emotional need of the bereaved to have some form of contact with their loved ones. My thoughts rested always with my late husband Jonathan who had been killed in the Crimean War. I had given the possibility of actually contacting him scant regard, thinking it slightly foolish whenever the thought arose. Though I would give anything to see him again, and know for certain he was at peace, I admit to being highly sceptical of the notion of mediums being able to accomplish the task. Jonathan lived in my mind, and in my dreams; an ever-present reminder of the deepest love and consuming passion I could ever hope to experience. I glanced at his portrait, and my longing for his company struck me like a blow to the chest.

I need your help, Lord Summerhayes said urgently. His face was creased in anxiety, his faded blue eyes pleading. Or my wife and I shall be ruined. Not that I care for myself. I am old, ready for whatever is next. It is for my wife that I fear.

I’ve not any experience in spiritualism, I said carefully, in case Lord Summerhayes was a believer.

Devil of a thing. Absolute nonsense, of course, he said. But murder nonetheless. Man drowned by ectoplasm.

Just in time I stopped myself from appearing particularly obtuse by repeating the unfamiliar word. I was aware, however, of my mouth hanging open and thought that I must appear quite vacuous.

His lordship continued. In my own drawing room, would you believe. Terrible slimy stuff. Ruined the carpet. Dashed inconvenient.

Until that astounding announcement my morning had progressed prosaically enough, though it did bring with it a touch of novelty. Marianne, my trusted maid turned factotum as the general once observed, had entered my bedroom following her young cousin Florence, who carried my breakfast tray. I put down The Times where I had been reading about the latest military threats from the continent. We were surrounded by jackals it seemed, protected only by our mastery of the sea and air. It was all very depressing.

However, Marianne brightened up my morning considerably by bringing two lavender umbrellas which she brandished high in the air for me to see.

Look at these, she said excitedly.

Florence put the tray carefully over my lap and stepped back with a beaming smile and twinkling eyes.

Thank you, Florence, I said to her. How are you today?

Very well, madam. She curtsied, gave me an embarrassed smile, and fled from the room.

Am I that forbidding?

Marianne put one umbrella on the bed beside me. She’s still rough about the edges, madam, but she wants to learn.

She’ll do well under your tutelage, I’m certain. I picked up the prettily coloured rain catcher, and weighed it in my hand, surprised that it didn’t feel any heavier than a normal umbrella.

For a few moments Marianne played with the handle of the one she held until she’d been rewarded by a quiet mechanical click. With a flourish she extracted an eighteen-inch blade, which she proudly swished through the air. Last year Miss Clayton, a fellow Agent of the Queen who used my home as a dosshouse, had gifted me a swordstick while I convalesced from an injured leg. While a walking stick would be useful for when I was disguised as a man, Marianne and I had thought concealing a sword in an umbrella would be useful when not in disguise.

I’d used the blade to wound the Russian agent, Vladimir, during a confrontation on the quayside at the London Docks. The stick had done its job, piercing that pernicious spy in the chest before being lost to the dark waters of Father Thames.

The memory of Vladimir immediately poisoned my thoughts. While physically recovered from my injuries, my nights were plagued by disturbing dreams and nightmares. I never imagined my new career as an investigator, and now as an Agent of the Queen, would involve so many physical confrontations. It seemed every experience added a new horror to inhabit the dark hours.

In the previous night’s dream Vladimir repeated his vile calumnies about my late husband while we faced each other; me holding a swordstick, and he a gun. I’d told no one about what he’d said, for to do so would sully my darling Jonathan’s name in the minds of his friends. I was absolutely sure of the untruthfulness of the Russian’s words, yet his lies filled my nights, and I wondered if Vladimir had succeeded in mesmerising me in those moments on the quayside before I lunged at his chest with the pointy blade, and he had shot me in the head.

I used to have erotic dreams, and as unsettling as they could be sometimes -- with me being fucked by mechanical automatons, or by my two human lovers, Baudry and Felix, watched by Bisby and Oxley, my footmen, and occasionally even Miss Clayton playing a role -- those nocturnal adventures were immensely preferable to the nightmares I currently endured.

Thinking about Baudry and Felix saddened me. During my incapacity Felix had become intimately connected with Nurse Bramble, a vivacious young woman, and Baudry had become unaccountably distant. If I could not have them in the flesh, I would settle for my dreams, but my tortured brain would not cooperate no matter the salacious thoughts I would purposefully entertain before I dropped off to sleep. The fiend Vladimir would always win over and terrorise me with his taunting words and his little gun.

I’d spent the three weeks after my violent adventure on the London docks getting over a serious illness. My unintended swim in the Thames, where I swallowed more than I should of the polluted water, had resulted in an infection of the lungs causing intermittent fevers which I had only overcome a fortnight before. That wasn’t my only problem. My swollen nose, broken for the second time by Vladimir as we struggled in the water, had not recovered its former shape despite the attempts at realignment by my family physician. It was flatter, and no longer quite as straight as before as my looking glass reminded me every morning. The damage to my ear, shot off by Vladimir as I pricked his chest with the sword, can only be described as an ugly mess. It was easily covered by my hair, but the days of drop earrings were over. It was lucky that so far in all my physical altercations with sundry killers and ruffians, my teeth had escaped untouched, a blessed miracle when I thought about it.

Once the fevers had passed, and I was able to get out of bed, I had resumed my exercises to rehabilitate my leg, which had earlier been stabbed by the murderer Wragge during a mortal struggle over a purloined Indian gemstone. Though the stitches had been removed, leaving small but unattractive scars, the muscles still hurt when I walked. Despite the minor discomfort I was at the stage now of walking without a noticeable limp, though stairs were sometimes a challenge.

I stood carefully, picked up the umbrella, fiddled with the catch until I perceived the method of its action, and extracted the shiny blade. En garde, I said playfully in a poorly executed French accent and adopted an equally inexpert stance ready to fence. Marianne laughed, and our blades met with a satisfying clash of steel.

Oooh! We better not damage them, madam, Marianne said, withdrawing.

I studied the blade and could not discern any nicks in the fine steel. Hardly a useful weapon if a little sparring damages them, I said.

That’s true, she agreed as she advanced, and with an elegant flick of the wrist sent her blade clashing against mine. Her moves appeared stylish and well-coordinated.

Stop, I said, quite breathless after only a couple of hits. Archie’s been teaching you, hasn’t he?

He has, madam, she admitted. We’ve been at it using broomsticks out in the yard.

Archie, bless him, was, in all important aspects, my adopted son. He’d been my late husband’s batman during the war in Crimea and had been dreadfully wounded in the action that had taken Jonathan from me. He had livid scars on his face as permanent reminders of his steadfast bravery. On his return to England, his condition had been precarious, and Marianne and I had nursed him back to health. I was so pleased he had developed into a very suitable young man, and I had made him the main beneficiary in my will. Marianne was besotted with him, and over the last six months or so he had begun to return her affections and had become obsessively concerned with her safety. He was yet to ask her for her hand in marriage, and his reticence was most vexing, not only to Marianne, but to the whole household who could see their obvious affection for each other.

Our playful duel was interrupted by a knock on the door. It was Bisby, one of two agents appointed by the general, my Jonathan’s military mentor, to pose as footmen and oversee the security of my household and assist me whenever I required them on the Queen’s business.

Madam, a Lord Summerhayes has called wishing to speak with you. He apologises for not requesting an interview more formally, but he has only just learned that you may be able to assist him. He hesitated.

And? I prompted.

He says he is friend of the general.

My heart jumped. To evoke the general was to command attention and portended something serious. Settle him in the drawing room and tell him I’ll be there directly.

Marianne dressed me quickly in my favourite cornflower blue housedress and I rushed, as well as I was able, downstairs. My hair was not as I’d wished as I was self-conscious of how it fell over my damaged ear. That, however, was insufficient to quell my excitement over the possibility of another case.