The Seance
On the night of the séance, Madame Deveraux and her assistant, Cassandra, arrived at the appointed time at the stylish townhome on Chancery Lane in downtown London, to be greeted by two footmen who assisted them up the steps to the ornate front door.
Madame and Cassandra stood respectfully in the foyer waiting to be received, surrounded by black and gold gilt enameled panels lining the hallway in this very grand home. Filigreed woodwork graced the tall arched doorways, and the parquet floors were gleaming.
“Madame Deveraux, we wanted to ensure everything here would be satisfactory for you. Let us have some tea in the parlor and get acquainted with the ladies I invited.” Mrs. Tifton extended a gloved hand to both ladies, and they exchanged pleasantries while being shown to the parlor. A large piano flanked the back corner of the room. That is perfect, Madame thought. Pianos are easily manipulated even from a distance. She had acquired a German contraption that could be placed under the piano’s hood. After a period of time, it would move by a timed mechanical action and make the piano bang a few chords, appearing to play by an unseen force.
The women chatted in the parlor. Moments before they were to be ushered into the conservatory to begin the séance, there was a sharp knock at the door. Mrs. Tifton’s butler opened the door, and a man was standing there, impeccably dressed in top hat and tails, standing alone on the stoop, with no carriage evident behind him. He introduced himself as Eustace Scrubb with a deep bow and announced he was there to attend the special ceremony.
Mrs. Tifton was already approaching the man as he stepped over the threshold, and the man told her, “Eustace Scrubb, at your service. I knew your husband quite well, and I much appreciate the opportunity to be present tonight”, as he gave her a second deep bow and kissed her gloved hand. Mrs. Tifton replied, “Well, anyone who was a dear friend to my Charles is certainly welcome, although I trust you understand the nature of tonight’s events.”
“Why, yes, Madame, I am not entirely ignorant of communication with the spirit world.” He replied with an interesting tinge of an accent, not Spanish, not French, maybe Scandinavian, Madame Deveraux could not place it. While she does not relish men attending her events, nor a last-minute stranger to be included in the ceremony, she did notice that he could be the perfect distraction for Cassandra to place the mechanical piece inside the piano.
In fact, the other women had already circled the handsome stranger with dark curly hair, impeccably groomed beard, and angular face. They were like little birds, all atwitter with introductions and his compliments to them, quite grandiose and seemingly sincere.
Mr. Scrubb approached her with an intense look in his dark eyes. Extending his hand to her, he says in a lowered voice, “We share a common acquaintance, Madame, the newly deceased Marie Laveau.” He then kissed her hand, while his eyes met hers to gauge her reaction. How could he know her mentor? The famed voodoo priestess from New Orleans never traveled to London.
Once they were all seated at the circular table in the parlor, Madame announced the rules that they were to abide by. She was ready for her act. She had already placed her implements around the room and on the table. The ladies looked bemused at the marbles in the middle of the table. The tambourine was placed on the sideboard next to one of the large ferns adorning the walls of the room.
There was only one door. Better to deter a curious servant who could be peeking into the room through the extra doorway. One of her rules was that the servants be as far away from the event as possible because the spirits are shy and can easily be frightened away.
The curious stranger, Mr. Scrubb, took the seat next to Madame, and the ladies took their seats with barely contained excitement. She took them through the meditative sequence and set the tone of the ritual. Both she and Cassandra pulled their black lace veils over their faces. Madame began her invocation of the spirits. Before she could finish her first few sentences, the piano in the parlor began to play. Not the clumsy one or two discordant bangs of the keys from the mechanical German device, but it was an actual melody. So shocked was she by this that she momentarily forgot her script. A few of the women’s faces lit up with excitement, while one looked like she might faint.
Quickly, Madame collected herself and said, “The spirits are in fine form tonight.”
“We call on Mr. Charles Tifton, the former master of this house. His bereaved bride would like to receive some messages from the beyond.” Madame turned her head to Mrs. Tifton and said, “Please tell your departed husband what you would like to say in a final farewell or ask a question. I believe he is close.”
“My dear Charles, I miss you and desire to know if you thought of me in your final moments.”
The query was scarcely off Mrs. Tifton’s lips before the marbles on the table began to move. Not the tiny movements from Madame’s cleverly disguised breath blowing them, but they began to swirl and roll individually as if to make a pattern. It was not a random pattern; the marbles stopped rolling and spelled a word clearly: “Mistress”. The ladies, along with Madame and Cassandra, looked in disbelief. The only person who did not seem dumbstruck by the word was Mr. Scrubb. In fact, as Madame noticed, he didn’t seem at all flustered or frightened; she noticed a look of pure pleasure on his face, a wide grin, in fact.
Mrs. Tifton spoke up, “He sometimes called me his mistress to shock people. Charles could be such a scandalous cad,” she mused. “I received my answer that he did think of me at the end. How I do hope he didn’t suffer…” She trailed off, daintily dabbing a handkerchief at the corner of her eyes.
Madame’s mind was whirring over how the marbles spelled a word. Could it be that after all these years and effort, she finally had the gift, and the spirits were talking to her?
“Enough!” Mr. Scrubb bellowed and slapped the table with both hands. “I cannot sit here one more minute and bear witness to this!”
“You see, ladies, what the late Mr. Tifton is trying to tell you is that his last thoughts were of his mistress and, in fact, he died in her arms when his ship went down”, he said matter-of-factly. Mrs. Tifton clutched at her throat; all the blood drained from her face.
“How could you know such things? Why would you upset our hostess during her event?” Madame Deveraux hissed.
“You see, I know many, many things about a lot of your loved ones”, he demurred while scanning the faces at the table, with a look that bordered on leering.
“Mr. Scrubb! You need to leave here this minute! The very gall and presumption to come and upset this kind lady with such rudeness!” Madame rebuked, getting to her feet. The tambourine flew across the room over the ladies’ heads, and the marbles began dropping off the table. Instinctively, Cassandra bent down to collect the marbles, and as she did, she happened to look under the table and saw that behind Mr. Scrubb had…Could it be? A tail poking beyond the cut of his suit and just grazing the floor.
Cassandra’s face shot up from under the table. “Beelzebub!” she screeched, pointing at him.
“I do prefer to be called Mephistopheles,” he calmly answered. “I came here tonight to tell you all that you should not be dabbling in matters that are beyond your frail minds to understand. I came to point out the charlatan, Madame Deveraux, and how she takes advantage of grieving families.
Turning to Mrs. Tifton, “You should not ask questions to which you really do not want the truthful answer. You see, Mrs. Tifton, your husband had a mistress these past twelve years. He was not, in fact, sailing to New York for a banking meeting, but to set her up in a sumptuous apartment so that he would be able to see her for extended periods of time while he was there for meetings.”
“Madame”, he tipped his hat to Madame Deveraux. “Your teacher, Marie Laveau, is here in hell with me, and she wanted me to let you know that she will be seeing you soon.”
As the devil rose to his feet, he announced, “For the record, Dante had it mostly right, by the way.” He leapt from the table, and his entire body went aflame, leaving only a scorch mark on the parquet floor.