Shadows on the Nile, Page 2

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘But I need Georgie’s new address to write on the envelope.’ She kept smiling. ‘Then I can forget about Georgie.’

  He sighed. A long sour sound.

  ‘Oh, Jessica, I know how clever you are.’ He held his hand out for the letter. ‘I will address and post it for you.’

  She didn’t argue. Just handed it over. Knowing it would burn on the fire.

  ‘Papa, Georgie is clever too. He can read almost as well as I can. Ask Miss Miller.’ Miss Miller was the most recent in a long line of nannies who had come and gone.

  Her father lifted her chin, tilting her head back, and studied her keenly, examining the lines and contours of her face. She felt like one of the spaniels that her Uncle Gus judged at dog shows.

  ‘Jessica, the ugly truth is that George is an extremely difficult human being who cannot live with normal people. Hush, don’t start denying it. You know it is true and you have to accept it.’

  ‘Papa, if I am bad will you send me to the same place?’

  He released her chin. ‘No. So don’t try that.’

  ‘Would you send me somewhere else?’

  For a moment he didn’t speak and a nerve twitched at the side of his mouth. She realised he was struggling not to shout at her, so she put her smile back on.

  ‘Don’t be foolish, Jessica,’ he said briskly. ‘The past is over and done with. It’s finished. Forget about it. This is a brave new start for us all, including young Timothy.’

  He stepped around her, avoiding her, and opened the drawing-room door with a wide smile spreading across his face as he looked inside. ‘So how is my fine boy?’ He vanished into the warmth.

  Jessica remained in the empty hall, struck dumb with sorrow.

  2

  London, England 1932

  Twenty years later

  A fox barked. The eerie sound of a feral creature wandering the streets of London in the middle of the night made Jessie Kenton’s hand pause as she checked that the window catch was securely closed. The animal barked again, its voice echoing as lonely as a lunatic’s across the gardens of Putney.

  Jessie backed away from the window. The flat was on the first floor and her bedroom looked out onto the street where a lamp-post further up the road stood patiently, watching out for her like a friend. Its yellow light pushed its way every night through the wide gap between her curtains, so that she could move from room to room without turning on the lights. It was better that way. She didn’t want to give any sign that she couldn’t sleep. That she might be nervous.

  Anyway, she didn’t want to disturb Tabitha.

  She moved on silent feet into the living room. It was darker here, the curtains drawn fully closed, and she felt her heart-rate pick up a notch. But she could steer her way around each chair and table even with her eyes closed, so reached the broad bay window with no mishap. There were three catches. She slipped her hand behind the curtain and tested each one. All locked. Her heart rewarded her by climbing back down the scale, and she smiled, shaking her head at herself. She was tucking the curtains back into place when the yellow light outside wavered and her breath stalled in her throat. She made herself look again.

  Nothing moved. The light had settled, but something – or someone – had crossed its path. From behind the swathe of curtain she examined the quiet residential road with care, inspected each solid pouch of darkness and scoured the black outlines of the shadows.

  I can wait.

  I can wait longer than you can.

  ‘Oh, Jessie, what on earth are you doing up at this hour?’

  Tabitha flipped the switch and Jessie blinked in the sudden flood of light that swept through the room. She stepped quickly away from the window.

  ‘Just restless,’ she shrugged. ‘Can’t sleep. Too much wine last night.’

  ‘I love it when you come to the club to hear us. I always play better.’

  Jessie laughed.

  Tabitha Mornay had shared the flat with her for the past three years. She possessed straight black hair that hung halfway down her back, and very white skin. That may have been because she lived her life the wrong way round – she slept much of the day and emerged only when the sun went down, full of energy and passionate about her music. She was a saxophonist in a jazz band called The Jack Rabbits, which played a smoky London club every night. Though nearly thirty years old, she looked no more than nineteen.

  Tabitha twined her hair into a sleek snake over one shoulder. ‘Who was that good-looking man you were dancing with at the end of the evening?’

  ‘No one particular.’

  ‘Hah! I wish I had a “no one” like that.’

  ‘I didn’t like his skinny moustache. Like a bootlace.’

  ‘His moustache was elegant. He had style. You’re too picky for your own good, my girl.’

  Jessie rolled her blue eyes. ‘Next time I’ll stick his head down your saxophone and you can play his moustache your tune.’

  Tabitha chuckled, yawned, wrapped her horrible pink satin robe more tightly around her waist and slunk off into the kitchen. Immediately Jessie darted into Tabitha’s bedroom and checked the window catch. This side of the house faced out onto the back garden and she peered closely but nothing was moving in the blackness, except the branches of the lilac tree. For the room of a smoke-hardened jazz player, it was eerily neat and tidy. She returned to her own bedroom but paced back and forth across the yellow slash of light until she heard Tabitha’s door close, and only then did she emerge again. She quietly tested the window catch in the kitchen and although it was definitely locked, she tightened it further. Then in the dark she stood with her cheek pressed against the front door, listening.

  I can wait.

  I can wait longer than you.

  Timothy Kenton inspected his companions at the round table with an interest that he kept carefully veiled. But his quick eyes spotted the small movements of their fingers where they lay splayed out on the gold cloth in front of them, tiny twitches of tension. He heard their breath, rising and falling in unison. He saw hope staring blatantly out of their eyes and he wondered if they saw the same in his. The room into which they had been ushered was high-ceilinged and ornate, with its tall windows covered in heavy purple drapes that failed miserably to keep out the piercing draughts. He wished he’d kept his overcoat on. It was as cold as a blasted sepulchre in here and it gave off a distinct odour of bad drains that the scented candles did little to disguise.

  Timothy counted six clients at the table, including himself: four other men and a woman of about forty who had wisely chosen to wear a fur coat. Obviously she had been before. She wore heavy make-up but her lips were pale, almost bloodless, and she chewed on them incessantly. Six clients or sometimes nine – that was the usual number, always divisible by three. Only two of the men did he recognise: Fabian Rawlings and the Right Honourable Phillip Hyde-Mason. Like himself they were both in their twenties and both old hands at this game. He nodded a brief greeting to them across the table but no one spoke. You only spoke when Madame Anastasia invited you to do so.

  She was seated on Timothy’s right, magnificent in a purple and gold feathered headdress that made her dramatically taller than anyone else in the room. She was a middle-aged woman with strong hawkish features and tonight she was encased in a stiff purple gown, a figure as intimidating to her clients as she must be to her spirit guide. She sat now with her hands flat on the table in front of her, palms down, eyes closed, murmuring strange words under her breath while her clients waited. Timothy always found the waiting hard, impatient for the action to start. Spittle gathered in his mouth and each time he swallowed, it took an effort. He always had the odd sensation at these sessions that one of the spirits was hovering behind him, its fingers around his throat. But that was something he kept firmly to himself. Didn’t want to sound a complete dunce. What would Rawlings and Hyde-Mason make of such nonsense?

  Such nonsense?

  Was the need to get in touch
with those who have passed over nothing more than pathetic human frailty? Superstition? Just nonsense?

  He frowned, irritated by his sceptical mood, and stared down at Madame Anastasia’s hands. Her fingers were stretched out wide on the table next to his own. She had good hands, elegant and expressive. Free of all rings and without that odd grasping hunch to them that afflicted many of the mediums he had encountered, as though they were readying themselves to snatch the spirits from the air around them, as well as the money from his pocket before either had time to blink.

  A chill wind suddenly whistled through the gloom. It seemed to swirl around the ceiling cornices and made the hairs rise on the back of Timothy’s neck. However many times it happened and however many times he told himself it was trickery, it still set his guts churning. The candles near the windows flickered and died, steeping much of the room into darkness, except for the three candles that formed a triangle at the centre of the table. They cast shadows on the eager faces, turning them into skulls.

  ‘They are here,’ Madame Anastasia intoned and opened her eyes.

  Timothy felt the familiar tug in his chest. Always it was the same. Something seemed to shift position inside him, realigning itself, edging itself forward. Elbowing its slippery way to the surface. Something that cried out for a voice.

  ‘We welcome you, Beloved Ones.’

  Madame Anastasia spoke with a solemn voice that Timothy had come to expect of mediums, but there was a quality underlying it that made his nerve ends tingle, a sweetness as enticing as barley-sugar to a child. What spirit could resist such beguiling tones?

  ‘We welcome you, Beloved Ones,’ she declared again, ‘with gifts from Life unto Death.’

  All eyes focused on the simple offering of bread and soup that stood in the centre of the triangle of candles to attract spirits, who still yearned for physical nourishment and who still craved warmth and light.

  ‘Come with us and move among us.’

  The air grew thicker in Timothy’s lungs. Madame Anastasia tipped her head back, the weight of the headdress resting on her chair, and closed her eyes once more, her purple-swathed bosom moving heavily. This was the moment when Timothy watched for any sleight of hand. A tug on a cord, the push of a button with the knee to create a moment of magic when the spirit makes its presence felt. It was what they were here for.

  On the table her clients’ hands lay flat, each person’s last finger touching that of the person next to them, forming a symbolic circle, a necklace of hands. It intensified the energy in the room. Timothy could feel the tension rising in the older man on his left. He wore a calm benevolent expression above a neat goatee beard that gleamed white in the shadows, but his fingers were trembling. They sent ripples into Timothy’s flesh. On the other side of the man, the fur-coat woman’s eyes were open wide and fixed on a spot directly above the feathered headdress.

  ‘I see them,’ she whispered.

  Timothy’s gaze jumped to the blank space above Madame Anastasia’s head, his heart thumping.

  ‘Where?’ He could see nothing.

  Abruptly Madame Anastasia’s chin dipped forward onto her chest and her voice became that of a child’s, one who was clearly excited to be standing with one foot on each side of the divide between worlds.

  ‘I am Daisy.’ Her young voice was high and pure as a choir boy’s. ‘I have a man with me. He is a gentleman who is seeking his child. He is nervous of coming forward … in case his child does not want contact.’ The last words were added in a whisper, so that they all had to lean closer to hear.

  ‘Father!’ The fur-coat woman’s voice quivered. ‘Is that you? Stephen Howe?’

  Instantly a strange anger seemed to flicker around the table. Timothy felt its heat rise through the cloth, penetrating his fingertips. His eyes darted from face to face in the shadows and saw the anguish on each one. How many here had lost their fathers? On the other side of Madame Anastasia a middle-aged man was seated, a small figure in an expensive suit and with a birthmark reaching across his neck. He was looking closely at the slumped medium, squeezing her fingers, but she didn’t respond.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘Tell us, little girl, is he the spirit of this woman’s father?’

  ‘Many of us have lost fathers,’ the woman sobbed. ‘The Great War robbed a whole generation of them.’

  The little girl told them sharply to hush while she spoke further with the gentleman. In the silence that followed the tension in the room rose and all eyes focused in silence on the medium’s lips. Finally the client with the goatee beard lost patience and asked, ‘Daisy, my dear, can you tell us the name of the child that the spirit seeks?’

  A knock on the table made them jump.

  A trick, Timothy told himself, a trick. But his heart was racing. Suddenly he wanted to break the circle of darkness, to leap to his feet and walk away from whatever it was they had conjured into their midst. He was a fool to believe that the world this side of the veil could tinker with those on the other side with impunity. Seconds ticked past and foreboding bunched in his chest, still and cold as stone.

  ‘Daisy,’ the man tried again, ‘we thank you for the sign. What name does your gentleman seek?’

  ‘He is sad. He says his heart is heavy.’ The girl’s voice did not sound remotely like Madame Anastasia’s own.

  ‘Will it help him to speak with his child?’ the man asked.

  Again came the sharp knock on the table. Timothy saw the candles quiver and the air in the room grew heavier.

  ‘Daisy,’ the fur-coated woman spoke slowly, struggling for words, ‘tell us, dear. We’ve all gathered here to speak to someone who has passed to spirit. I badly need to communicate with my mother, Audrey Howe, who passed over four years ago. I would like you to ask your gentleman if he is my father, Stephen?’

  ‘No,’ the girl answered immediately in a sing-song voice. ‘He is not Stephen.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Who is he?’ Rawlings asked.

  ‘His voice is fading.’

  ‘Quickly, then,’ Rawlings urged. ‘Ask him now.’

  ‘So many voices, all chattering in my ears. They are restless and they all want to speak out at once.’

  Timothy’s hands pressed down hard on the table. ‘Is it the letter K? Tell me! Does the child’s name start with K?’

  A definite knock rapped on the table, louder than before, as he knew it would. Yes. ‘It’s Kingsley, isn’t it?’ he called out. ‘The child is Kingsley. You always said you would communicate, you were always a missionary for the cause.’ The words were tumbling out now. ‘You promised and I never stopped believing you. Do you—’

  Two sharp knocks. Curt. Dismissive.

  ‘He says no,’ the child’s voice whispered. ‘Not Kingsley. But he says yes, it is the letter K.’

  ‘Kenton starts with the letter K,’ Hyde-Mason pointed out. ‘Maybe it’s you – Timothy Kenton. You could be the one the spirit is seeking. It could be your father here tonight.’

  Timothy’s heart stopped. This wasn’t what he’d come for. Not this. He snatched his hands from the table, breaking the circle, and stumbled to his feet. The goatee man shouted something but Timothy’s ears seem to have disconnected from his brain because it didn’t make sense of the words. He hurried across to the door, pulled it open and rushed outside into the hall, slamming the door behind him to block off the spirits that were calling to him. His brain buzzed, as if insects were trapped inside, fluttering their wings. He breathed deeply, dragging in the ice-cold air, but none of it seemed to clear his head.

  The hall was huge, a great marble entrance area with an ancient coat of arms above a columned fireplace, half hidden in the gloom. It was a dim and sombre place. The only light came from a solitary candelabra on a window ledge and its flame swayed in and out of focus.

  His coat. Where the hell was his coat? He was freezing.

  He moved unsteadily towards an armoire table at the far end of the hall where a pile of garments lay, but whe
n he bent over them to search for his navy overcoat, his mind seemed to stutter and forget why it was there. His hands rummaged aimlessly among the coats and clutched at a dark sleeve. He pulled. But instead of the sleeve coming towards him, he came towards the sleeve. It swayed and undulated in front of him. The darkness of it seemed to flow up into his head and he closed his eyes, thankful for the peace as he slid to the floor.

  3

  Jessie Kenton was walking up Putney Hill in the rain. It was a dank and soulless evening, and an ambulance raced past, its bell clanging. It sent a shudder through her, and made her walk faster, head ducked to fend off the wind that charged down from Putney Heath.

  It was the end of October. Cold, wet and dark. Winter had sneaked in early this year. Jessie hated October with an intensity that even she recognised was out of all proportion, but there was no doubt in her mind that she functioned at her worst at this time of year. Her drawings became flat and unoriginal, reluctant to take shape. Pens and pencils lay sluggish in her fingers while she tried to cudgel her brain into activity. Bad things always happened to her in October. That was why her heart jumped prematurely at the noise of the ambulance and she lengthened her stride as she hurried to reach home.

  Around her, London growled its nightly chorus. The engines of cars and cabs, trams and trucks belched out their black breath as the workforce of the city spilled out of offices and factories to fight their way onto trains, trams and buses. Jessie worked in a design studio in the Fulham area of west London and she usually cycled home the few miles along Fulham Palace Road and over Putney Bridge, enjoying both the exercise and the sight of the River Thames. It slid under the bridge like a dark thread of history – King Henry VIII himself had skated on its surface four hundred years ago in the days when it used to freeze. Prime Minister Gladstone had escaped from under the eagle-eyed gaze of Queen Victoria to prowl its muddy banks in search of prostitutes to save. Sherlock Holmes had slunk through the foul mists that coiled from its polluted depths.