Page 10 of Unforeseen Affairs (The Sedleys #6)

“Three knocks means you’ve had far too much to drink and ought to be put to bed,” chortled Beaky.

Mr. Bass turned a severe gaze in Beaky’s direction. The young lieutenant, blithely unaware, waggled his eyebrows at Colin, as if expecting a responding jibe.

Mr. Bass cleared his throat and waited.

“A gentle hold,” Mrs. Stone instructed Colin. “Only the fingertips need touch.”

She rested her hands loosely on the table, and this time Colin followed suit, such that their fingertips overlapped only just.

“Now, where were we? Ah, yes. Everyone, together now, from the top,” Mr. Bass began, then kicked up the hymn once more.

Soon the chorus of hesitant voices again joined in, some managing the melody far better than others.

Some kind of incense must have been lit, for the air was now especially pungent.

Captain and Mrs. Pearce, whom Colin had regarded since childhood as stiff and strait-laced, were singing with gusto, their gazes intent upon one another from across the table.

Colin frowned. He’d have to ask Beaky if they were the ones who had put his mother on to this nonsense; he had a sneaking suspicion about Mrs. Pearce’s influence in that regard.

He dared not look his mother’s way, not wishing to feel that curious distress in his chest once more.

Beaky was still grinning in Colin’s direction, but Alice was gazing at Mr. Bass with all the fervor of an enraptured young maid, with parted lips and eager eyes.

Colin frowned at her apparent enchantment. Why, the medium was old enough to be her father!

By now the assembled had warbled their way through the first stanza. They really ought to get on with it, for he’d no desire to be reprimanded by Mr. Trenwith again and disappoint his mother.

He realized his right hand was still alone on the table, and he looked to Miss Sedley.

She was watching him in the low light, her expression inquisitive and determined, her eyes large and piercing. He felt the urge to look away, as if she were an effigy of a pagan goddess in a crumbling temple somewhere in the Aegean Sea, and gazing upon her for too long would turn him to stone.

But he didn’t look away.

She was seeking something, the answer to an unknown question hidden somewhere within him. But what on earth could that be? What could be so mysterious about him?

Finally, her eyes shifted to his outstretched hand.

Colin followed her gaze, watched as she reached for it. Her fingertips felt cold, and he instinctively closed his hand about them again before he could catch himself.

He was surprised by his own eagerness, but he didn’t want to pull back and draw even more attention to it.

So he held fast to her and sang.

Blimey , he thought as they began the sixth verse, has this song always been this bloody long?

A bell rang out of nowhere.

A collective gasp rippled through the group. Alice shrieked.

“Ah, the spirits have received our call,” Mr. Bass intoned, “and they grace us now with their encouraging presence. Spirits, if you walk among us this moment, and are of noble intent, then please, once more to your manifestation attest!”

He paused, and an unbearably long silence followed. It felt as though everyone in the circle held their breath.

Then Mr. Bass dropped his voice even lower. “Ring us a bell.”

Colin leaned forward. He hadn’t expected anything to happen, certainly not—

The bell rang again. And again. It kept on, growing in force until it sounded as if the spirits were positively desperate to be acknowledged. Had there even been a bell in the room? Colin wondered. He could feel the hair on his arms standing up.

Someone at the table whispered something, but he could barely hear it over the ringing. Then there was another whisper, and he realized it was Miss Sedley. Colin leaned to his side so he might hear her.

“Wires,” she breathed, smug even as she barely made a sound.

“What?” he whispered back, incredulous. “But how—”

“Invisible wires,” she said, still staring straight ahead, her expression empty.

The ringing ceased.

“I can feel it.” Mr. Bass spoke with disquieting authority. “Yes. The spirits are with us.”

The room practically sparked with electricity, the atmosphere was so taut.

“Are you a loved one? A friend?” Mr. Bass inquired into the ether.

Two raps sounded out, an affirmative from the beyond.

Miss Sedley slid closer to him, her arm pressing against his while maintaining the light touch of their fingertips.

Her voice was so low and breathless that Colin couldn’t be certain of what she said, but he thought it was, “It’s only his foot.”

But how in the blazes?

Colin frowned. It didn’t make sense. He peered across the table.

The medium sat as still as if frozen in ice, his hands still atop Alice’s and Mrs. Gearing’s.

With his long hair and enigmatic bearing, Mr. Bass seemed out of place in the modern world.

He didn’t belong in a place with practical advancements like steam engines for ships and chloroform for pain and the new invention Colin had only just read about in the paper, the device that connected speakers over vast distances through their own type of wire.

He wondered what Miss Sedley would make of such a thing. A telephone, he thought it was called.

With some effort, Colin could see in the half-light that Alice and Beaky’s faces were still, quite unlike their usual selves.

To the other side of Mr. Bass, his mother appeared overwrought with anticipation.

His heart tightened, and in that moment he prayed that Mr. Bass was no mere table-tipper, that his reputation was merited. For his mother’s sake.

“A family member, then, having left behind those who love you dearly?”

Colin did not look at his mother’s face, lest he disrupt the precarious affair.

One knock rang out.

No matter how much he willed it, no other sound followed.

“A no,” he heard his mother whisper from across the table.

Miss Sedley gave his hand a gentle squeeze.

He realized he’d been holding himself so tight, with his shoulders hunched up, his jaw clenched, and the skin of his forehead somehow stretched beyond comfort. Colin released a breath.

Bernard was not present.

He hadn’t truly expected to speak with his brother, and yet somehow he was disappointed. Funny, that. How had he been taken in so quickly? No doubt Miss Sedley was correct; it must be wires.

“I feel a formidable urge…” Mr. Bass shut his eyes tight, as if he were trying to hear something far in the distance. “A desire, a wish from the spirit to prove itself, to beg your faith and understanding.”

Colin heard Mrs. Stone sigh loudly at his side.

And then the table began to quiver. It took a moment to register in his mind what exactly was happening, for notion of a large, heavy piece of furniture rattling of its own volition was far outside the bounds of logic.

But then it began to heave itself about in a slow, lurching fashion. Rotating clockwise.

Immediately and without thinking, Colin flung his arms onto the table before Miss Sedley and Mrs. Stone and pushed his chair back.

“Please, fear not!” cried Mr. Bass. “And on no account should you leave your places!”

Colin’s heart raced. With arms still outstretched, he gaped at the table.

In the faint light the purple cloth swayed back and forth, waving hypnotically in the wake of the table’s ceased movement, before finally coming to rest. Colin couldn’t say how far the table had twisted itself—ten degrees?

Thirty? He only knew there could be no possible way a thin, weak-limbed man such as Mr. Bass had moved it himself using only wires.

A chorus of stifled gasps and cries of amazement echoed his own thoughts.

Mr. Bass took a deep breath, his eyes closed in concentration.

Could he really be a true clairvoyant?