4 Beyond Belief Read online

  ALSO BY HELEN SMITH

  Alison Wonderland

  Being Light

  The Miracle Inspector

  OTHER TITLES IN THE EMILY CASTLES SERIES

  Three Sisters

  Showstoppers

  Invitation to Die

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2014 Helen Smith

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle www.apub.com

  ISBN-13: 9781477849729

  ISBN-10: 1477849726

  Cover design by Scott Barrie

  Library of Congress Number: 2013945214

  For my parents

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE THE EXPLORATION OF SCIENCE AND CULTURE

  CHAPTER TWO GONE

  CHAPTER THREE THE COLONEL, TRINA AND HILARY

  CHAPTER FOUR MADAME NOVA

  CHAPTER FIVE ON THE TRAIN

  CHAPTER SIX THE HOTEL MAJESTIC

  CHAPTER SEVEN THE POSITIVITY CIRCLE

  CHAPTER EIGHT CUP O’ ROSIE

  CHAPTER NINE PLEDGE AND PLUNGE

  CHAPTER TEN BORN AGAIN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN LIONS

  CHAPTER TWELVE WALKING ON WATER

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN HOW TO DISAPPEAR

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN A GHOST? A WERECREATURE?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN A WOMAN IN DANGER

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN THE LOST PROPERTY OFFICE

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN WHY?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN HE’S NOT WORTH IT

  CHAPTER NINETEEN A PSYCHIC WITH A NOOSE

  CHAPTER TWENTY AGATHA CHRISTIE’S HOUSE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE A MESSAGE FROM PEG

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO NOT MUCH OF A TRICK

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE RECONCILIATION

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR THE SÉANCE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE A BETTER PLACE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX OPHELIA

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN THE PASSWORD

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE EXPLORATION OF SCIENCE AND CULTURE

  It was a Thursday evening in March; the sky had given up its nightly fight against the dark a little later than the day before, but it still felt more like winter than spring. Twenty-six-year-old Emily Castles stepped out of the darkness into the headquarters of the Royal Society for the Exploration of Science and Culture, not far from Buckingham Palace in London. She was tired, poor, bored and hungry. In the space of an hour, at least one of those conditions would be relieved.

  Emily had an appointment in the boardroom. A uniformed doorman escorted her there along a wide corridor with a marble floor, past stuccos and painted frescos, past the opulent and imaginatively stocked members’ bar and the walnut-paneled library. When they reached the heavy wooden door to the boardroom, the doorman knocked and Emily went in. The walls of the boardroom were decorated with emerald silk wallpaper and portraits of past presidents. Motes of dust danced in the light of the tall brass lamps that stood at the corners of the room. At the far side of a polished expanse of a wooden table sat Gerald Ayode, current president of the society, beneath an unflattering oil painting of himself.

  Studying the portraits, Emily was treated to a pictorial time line of the changing face of the society, as represented by its presidents. In the nineteenth century, when the society had been founded, all the presidents had been moustachioed white men. Emily imagined them holding furious discussions about the weight and location of the soul, the best way to document the existence or otherwise of fairies, the size and number of angels, and the likely date that the first British man would travel to the moon. In the late twentieth century, when much of the exploration would have turned to mapping the mind and understanding how it might be used to investigate the spiritual realm as well as control the physical, two of the presidents had been severe-looking white women. Now, in the twenty-first century, the current president of the Royal Society for the Exploration of Science and Culture was a large, pleasant-looking black man.

  Gerald was wearing a charcoal-gray suit and an anxious expression, his short black hair threaded with more silver than when he had first taken up office. His hands rested protectively on a buff-colored folder on the polished wooden table in front of him.

  Next to Gerald sat a woman known professionally as Perspicacious Peg. She was a big woman in her fifties with a round face and muddy—blonde, wavy hair cut short in a no-nonsense style. She was wearing a paisley shawl draped over one shoulder, as if she expected to be handed a colicky baby to wind, and wanted to protect her clothes in case it should bring up its feed. Next to Peg sat Dr. Muriel Crowther, a philosophy professor who lived across the street from Emily Castles in Brixton, South London. It was she who had summoned Emily here.

  Emily was a bright young woman who had spent the last two weeks working on a temporary assignment in a small, stuffy office just off the Strand, typing up interview notes for an executive recruitment agency. Though the answers given by the candidates had sometimes been creative, Emily’s work had not. In fact, it had been stultifying. Emily had never quite found a job that suited her, a boyfriend who was clever enough for her, or a home that was close enough to the center of London to make the commute to work tolerable. But because she was young, that was OK. She was still at the age where she was moving toward possibilities, rather than away from them.

  That Thursday evening, Emily had been planning to go home, have a nice hot bath and a cup of tea, eat something cheap and wholesome, like a baked potato, then lie on the sofa watching undemanding programs on TV. She’d had a miserable day. But then came Dr. Muriel’s whispered phone call: “Can you meet me tonight, Emily? I need your help to investigate a suspicious death.” So Emily had come to the society’s headquarters straight from work, walking past St. James’s Park and partway along the Mall toward Buckingham Palace, before turning off to reach the quiet street where the white-fronted Regency building was located. She reflected that if she came to work here every day, she could walk through St. James’s Park in the morning, across the little bridge over the lake and past the pelicans, past the tourists photographing themselves feeding the squirrels, into Horse Guards Parade and past the sentries on horseback. There would always be some joy in a walk that took that route to work. But the people sitting in front of her now didn’t look joyful. They were solemn and anxious.

  “Gerald Ayode,” said Dr. Muriel, introducing her companions, “and Perspicacious Peg.”

  “Just ‘Peg’ is fine,” said Peg, amiably. Emily recognized her as a self-professed psychic who had a column in a Sunday newspaper. She had been a regular guest on breakfast TV about ten or fifteen years ago. Now her weekly “horrorscopes” in the Sunday Sentinel, which dwelt on all the bad things that might happen to the reader in the ensuing seven days, were hugely popular among young media folk for their campily dire predictions. If Peg’s readers got to the end of the week without any of the bad things happening, it was a cause for celebration, i.e., an excuse to get drunk on a Friday night. Emily wasn’t a hipster. At the end of the week she looked forward to treating herself with tea and television rather than a skinful of drink. But even she had read the horrorscopes.

  “I’m Emily,” said Emily, sitting down.

  “You’re the psychic investigator?” asked Gerald.

  “No.”

  “But you have a dog?”

  What on earth had Dr. Muriel t
old them? “I’m afraid my dog’s dead.”

  “Ah.” Peg seemed reassured. “So that’s it.”

  “Who’s died?” Emily asked.

  Gerald wrinkled his nose and looked offended, as if Emily was suggesting there was a horrible odor in the room.

  “No one…yet,” said Dr. Muriel. “I think we should give you some background. Gerald’s chairing a conference that’s taking place in Torquay this weekend.”

  “Belief and Beyond,” said Gerald. “You might have heard about it?”

  Emily hadn’t.

  “Philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, ethicists and theologians gather to debate the nature of belief,” said Dr. Muriel. “I go every year. It’s great fun.”

  “Muriel’s acted as my advisor in programming the academics,” Gerald said. “And this year, as we’ll be joined for the first time by mediums, hypnotists and psychics, Peg has acted as my advisor in programming them. At this conference we…we’ll try to find common ground. We’ll talk about why we believe what we believe, not whether it’s right or wrong.” Gerald glanced toward Peg. “We’ll try not to say, ‘I have the answers, and you do not.’”

  “Unless there’s a book to sell,” said Dr. Muriel cheerfully. “Then the gloves are off.”

  “The exploration of science and the exploration of culture,” said Gerald. “That’s what it’s all about. That’s what this society’s all about. And this year’s conference will be bigger and better than ever.”

  Peg folded her arms and sat back in her chair. “Culture’s what it’s called nowadays when people believe what scientists don’t understand.”

  “We used to be the Royal Society of Science and Spiritualism,” Gerald told Emily. “Had to change the name back in the 1920s when there was all that to-do about people seeing fairies.”

  Emily was so tired and hungry, before too long she’d be seeing fairies instead of dust dancing in the light from the brass lamps. She wanted to get home to her baked potato. “I’m not sure why you need me?”

  “We need a future crimes investigator,” said Dr. Muriel, with a mischievous smile.

  “Well…” said Gerald. He held up his hands in front of him, palms forward, as if trying to hold back these absurdities.

  “I’ve had a premonition, but the police won’t take it serious. You know what they’re like with people like us.” Peg spoke with the dignity of the oppressed, enunciating her words carefully in her London accent, as if she suspected the ghosts of the past presidents were lined up behind their portraits, ready to leap out and judge her for the accent, even if they didn’t object to the colloquialisms. “They’re a bunch of fuddy-duddies at Scotland Yard. In America they’re more open minded. Missing person, kidnap, site of a shallow grave in a forest, they’ll listen to a psychic. And I have called in to American radio programs on the subject over the years, and my contributions have been warmly received, and I have conveyed my thoughts and impressions of one or two high-level cases to police officers in America—and been treated with respect. Over here, you call the police to tell them you got a message from the other side, you hear them sniggering before they put the phone down.”

  “You called them today?” Emily asked her.

  “I told them I’d had a premonition that someone would die in Torquay this weekend. And the person on the end of the phone actually says to me, ‘Madam, we don’t have a future crimes unit.’ The cheek of it!”

  “And this premonition was connected to one of your…horrorscopes?” Emily tried to sound polite.

  “Not the horrorscopes, dear. That’s entertainment, for the newspapers. Pure tongue-in-cheek. If you can’t have a laugh then what’s the point of getting up in the morning? That’s what I always say. But I take very serious my mediumship and my telepathic skills. I’ve had numerous very alarming messages.”

  “What’s going to happen exactly?”

  “Well, I don’t know exactly.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m getting a gentleman choking, gasping for breath.”

  That wasn’t much to go on. Strangled? Poisoned? Hanged? Asthma attack? A large lump of food gone down the wrong way?

  “It’s something to do with water. He’s drowning, Emily.”

  “Who is it? Do you know?”

  Peg removed the buff-colored folder from under Gerald’s hands and slid it across the table to Emily. “Have a look at this.”

  Emily hesitated for just a moment before opening it. What would she see? How would she feel looking into the drowned eyes of someone who wasn’t yet dead?

  Inside there was a glossy poster, which Emily unfolded like a map and laid on the table in front of her, standing up to get a better look at it. It was illustrated with a photograph taken at the seaside. A man aged about thirty, wearing the traditional stage magician’s garb of top hat and a red-lined black cape, stood several yards out beyond the shoreline, out where the sea would be deeper than the height of a man. He was facing the shore. His feet skimmed the top of the water, his arms were outstretched. Behind him, the waves rushed toward a pinkish horizon where the sun had just set. His expression was arrogant—mocking, even. His gaze was intense; full of life.

  Emily read the words printed across the poster in white lettering:

  BEYOND BELIEF?

  TORQUAY

  29–31 MARCH 2013

  BELIEFANDBEYOND.CO.UK

  #BELIEFANDBEYOND

  “Edmund Zenon,” said Gerald.

  “A provocative picture for Easter weekend, isn’t it?” said Dr. Muriel. “The Christ-like pose, with arms outstretched.”

  “He’s offering fifty thousand pounds to anyone who can prove the existence of the paranormal this weekend,” Peg told Emily.

  “For a TV show? Like Britain’s Got Talent or something?”

  “No, no!” Gerald smiled at the idea. “It’s a serious scientific study. All participants vetted beforehand, all of them members of professional organizations, like the Association of Psychics, Paranormals and Spiritualists. Think of the security issues if we let just anyone show up!”

  Peg wasn’t smiling. “I wish he hadn’t offered the money, Gerald. It’s tacky. Makes it into a form of entertainment.”

  “So he didn’t tell you he was going to offer the money when you invited him?” Emily asked her.

  “I didn’t invite him. Gerald did. Me and Edmund Zenon don’t see eye to eye, so to speak. He’s a well-known skeptic. A rationalist. Call it what you want, he doesn’t believe in the paranormal, so how does he think anyone’s going to prove it exists, in Torquay of all places, this weekend?”

  “It’s not that he doesn’t believe,” Gerald corrected her. “He merely states that it has yet to be proved. We’re fortunate he agreed to join us in Torquay,” he told Emily. “With all his recent television appearances and the sold-out Don’t Believe the Hype tour to promote his new book, he’s a celebrity. He’ll bring a lot of much-needed attention to the work of the society, of which the conference is a small but important element.”

  Peg scrunched up her face and worked her tongue around inside her mouth, as if a filling had come loose. But she said nothing.

  Gerald tapped at the poster, impressed by Edmund’s celebrity. “This image was projected onto the outside of the Royal Festival Hall when he did his gig there last week!”

  “Could the image have triggered the premonition?” Emily suggested to Peg. “The picture of the magician standing on the water put the thought of drowning into your head?”

  “I know the difference between a psychic vision and a daydream. If my head got filled with nonsense every time I walked past a poster with a striking image on it, I’d be having premonitions about holidays in Egypt and Marks & Spencer ready meals.”

  “Well—” Emily wanted to be conciliatory. But Peg wasn’t quite finished.

  “And footballers in their underpants.”

  Emily had been standing to examine the poster. Now she returned to her chair. “Well, if the police won’t
listen, have you tried contacting Edmund directly?”

  “I’ve put a call into his management agency to ask them to pass on a message.” Peg glared at Gerald. “You should call him. Tell him to cancel. Is it worth it, just for the publicity?”

  “Not if he’s going to die,” said Emily.

  “It may not be him,” said Gerald.

  Peg beckoned for Emily to hand her the poster. Emily slid it back across the table. Peg passed her hands above it as if she was trying to detect warmth from it. The movement was fairly brisk, at about the speed of someone scanning an item at the self-service till in a supermarket. Then she withdrew her hands and adjusted her sleeves, calm and professional: a veterinary surgeon who has been up to the elbow examining a cow in calf. “When you get a premonition, you don’t see it clearly. It’s not like watching the television. You’d be lucky to see a face or hear a name. You get clues and you interpret the information. That’s the skill.”

  “Like a cryptic crossword,” said Gerald.

  “Or a game of charades,” said Dr. Muriel.

  Emily ignored them and talked to Peg. “But you think the drowning man is Edmund Zenon?”

  Peg sighed. “It could be anyone. Could be you, Gerald.”

  Gerald smiled bravely.

  “I’m in touch with my network of psychics up and down the country and I’ll tell you something for nothing, Emily: the forums are buzzing, emails going back and forth. Some say they can see a woman drowning. Some say it’s a man. But Edmund Zenon’s haunting a lot of people’s dreams. Now, I know what you’re going to say.”

  Emily wasn’t sure what she was going to say. She waited for Peg to tell her.

  “You’re thinking, ‘If something’s been foreseen, then surely it can’t be changed.’ Common misconception.” Peg spoke kindly. “Future events can be influenced with enough positive energy sent in their direction. You know the Leaning Tower of Pisa has stopped tilting? Have you ever asked yourself how that happened?”

  Emily admitted she hadn’t.

  “Strong, invisible arms keep it up, most of them belonging to women. And Neil Armstrong may have been the first man on the moon, fair enough. But he walked hand in hand up there with a circle of strong-minded, spiritual women.”