4 Beyond Belief Page 4

  “Very funny,” said Dawn sourly.

  “We’re not interested in Oscar Wilde,” said Jackie Churchill.

  Madame Nova looked once more at Jackie’s palm, then she looked solemnly round at the group. “We all like to drown our sorrows at the weekend, don’t we?”

  It seemed like a trick question. What was wrong with having a drink? Nobody said anything.

  “The gods are no different. This weekend they will drown one of their sorrows…and it seems they propose doing it in Torquay.”

  “Eh?” said Jackie. She turned to her friends. “What’s she on about?”

  “Have any of you girls caused the gods to be sorrowful? If not, you’ll be safe.”

  “It’s the good ones that get taken young. That’s what my gran used to say,” Dawn protested.

  “I’ve looked at Jackie’s hand and it’s as plain as the pimple on your face, Dawn. Someone will die this weekend.”

  “Well, that’s a right downer.” Jackie pulled her hand away at last.

  Mandy Miller put her arm round Jackie and began to lead her out of the shop. “Only one way to fix that. The pub! Come on. It’s a four-day weekend.”

  “The pub!” Dawn and the others called as they followed Jackie and Mandy.

  Before they had reached the Lamb and Dragon pub on the High Street, the girls had managed to make a joke of it, with some of the feistier ones repeating their favorite line: “Have any of you girls caused the gods to be sorrowful?”

  “If anyone gets drowned this weekend, it should be her,” said Dawn, touching her chin with her fingertips, checking to see whether she really did have a pimple. “She’s the most nastiest person in Torquay.”

  Madame Nova had enjoyed giving them a little scare. She had got caught up in the wordplay that involved drowning sorrows, unfortunately. She was better at delivering the lines than she was at inventing them. She had never enjoyed improv. Never mind, she’d had a little fun. Fun came by even less often than casting directors since she had moved to Torquay.

  Madame Nova gave a bitter little smile, locked the door of her shop, and went out the back to look at her collection of wigs. She could never choose between her three favorites, which had been crafted for a pantomime. They were two foot tall and brightly colored, each of them with a false panel of hair at the front which could be opened to reveal, in the yellow one, a cuckoo clock, with a bird that flew out and back in again on a wire and made a chirping noise; in the pink one, a tiny gun that could be operated with a lever and fired with quite a loud bang; and in the red wig, two fingers on a waxwork hand that moved up and down to make a vulgar Anglo-Saxon gesture.

  But today Madame Nova got no pleasure from the thought of putting one of them on. Someone will die this weekend, she had said. Was it really going to happen?

  She went upstairs and opened a bottle of Merlot to drown her sorrows.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ON THE TRAIN

  It was Friday morning, about ten o’clock. Emily Castles stood next to Dr. Muriel on the concourse at Paddington train station in London, her little suitcase by her side, looking up at the changing configuration of orange lights on the electronic departures board. Her neck ached. As soon as the allocated platform for their train was announced, it would be the cue for waiting travelers to rush toward the platform with the fierce competitiveness of shoppers in the January sales, even though most of them would have a seat reservation. And then there it was: platform nine. They were off! Dr. Muriel jabbed an elbow at Emily to make sure she was paying attention, picked up the long metal handle of her suitcase, tapped her silver-topped cane on the ground in front of her, then she charged toward the platform, pulling her case behind like a horse trailer, Emily trotting beside her. They hurled themselves onto the train, slightly breathless, and then settled into two window seats either side of a small table—a premium position. Despite the rush to claim it, they had the table to themselves for the whole journey. The train wasn’t crowded after all. It was March, out of season for Torquay.

  Emily sat back in her seat and looked out of the window. The train was still in the station. The doors were open and passengers were boarding. But when the train in the next platform slowly began to move off, Emily experienced a strange trick of the mind as her eyes told her head that her train must be moving. A look down at the platform readjusted the signal from Emily’s eyes to her brain, reassuring her that the train she was sitting in was motionless.

  Across from her, Dr. Muriel was anything but motionless. She exhibited all the signs of busy enjoyment that made her such a likeable companion. She put her handbag and a newspaper on the table in front of her and shrugged out of her emerald-green corduroy jacket, standing up and sitting down at least twice to do it, and then standing up again and going onto tiptoes to tuck her jacket onto the storage rail above her head. Then she insisted on storing Emily’s jacket for her, so that Emily had to stand up and shrug out of it, and hand it over, and sit down, and Dr. Muriel had to go up on tiptoes again, scrunching up Emily’s jacket and stuffing it into the very small space available. Next, she grasped the handles of her handbag, which was enormous and heavy looking, and eyed up the luggage rack above the head of a nervous-looking young man sitting across the aisle from them at another window seat.

  “No!” he said. He stood up, alarmed. Then he lowered his voice, a little embarrassed. “Do you want me to help you with that?”

  “Thank you, no.” Dr. Muriel put her handbag on the table and shoved it over toward the window where it was more or less out of the way. She looked pleased as she sat down. “We’re a regular pair of jack-in-the-boxes.” Emily suspected that her friend found ordinary things entertaining because she spent so little time doing ordinary things—usually she was preoccupied with philosophical conundrums.

  The lad across from them sat down again, too. He was in his twenties, about Emily’s age, pale and fragile looking, with the intense, hungry expression common to vampires and postgraduate students. He was wearing a khaki knitted hat that looked like a tea cozy. It was probably considered fashionable in the circles he moved in. Behind him, as the train moved off quietly and on time, the world outside the window slid back like a panel of scenery in a play.

  “It’s strange, isn’t it?” Dr. Muriel said to Emily.

  Lots of things seemed strange to Dr. Muriel because she had an off-kilter way of looking at things. Emily stayed quiet and waited for an explanation.

  “I should be impressed by the silence that accompanies a modern train’s departure from the station. But I’m not. Now, why is that?”

  “It feels like the train’s trying to sneak out of the station and leave some of the passengers behind?”

  “Aha! Very good.”

  “It would explain why everyone runs to the platform in such a rush.”

  “Of course, I don’t really believe that a train is capable of being sneaky.” Dr. Muriel was suddenly sharp, as if Emily had been trying to catch her out. “But I must say, I miss the trains from my childhood with their slamming doors and whistle-blowing guards. Does that make me sound ancient?”

  “I remember slamming doors and whistle-blowing guards.”

  “What do you think of the idea that a train is no longer just a train when it starts to move—that when so many souls are riding alongside each other, all of us trusting this beast with our lives, we are transformed and combined into one entity? We submit to a mutually altered consciousness. We’re children clinging to a serpent’s back as it wiggles and whooshes through the English countryside.”

  “Are you planning on saying something like that at the conference?”

  “No indeed! Much too fanciful. But I thought it might appeal to you.” Dr. Muriel was very cheerful. But then she was always cheerful. She clasped her hands together and sat back and smiled, looking out of the window. “I find it very interesting the way you feel the presence of Jessie quite strongly, even though it’s a while now since she died. The belief in angels has always held fairl
y steady. But there does seem to be a resurgence of interest in spiritualism. Dead relatives. Dead pets. Spirit guides.”

  “I don’t see her ghost. I don’t talk to her spirit.”

  “One doesn’t judge, of course. One simply asks why.”

  “I just sometimes think, you know, wouldn’t it be nice if Jessie was here? Jessie as she was in her prime. Not the old lady who lay all day sleeping by the kitchen door.”

  “So there’s a time travel element?”

  “No!”

  Dr. Muriel smiled and looked out of the window. She was facing forwards, Emily was facing backwards—only able to appreciate the English countryside after they had left it behind them, as if she was hopelessly nostalgic.

  As they sped away from London toward Torquay, Emily saw blurry trees. She saw swings and plastic climbing frames in primary colors in the long, narrow gardens of terraced houses sloping down toward the embankments at the sides of the railway tracks. She saw the purple spikes of buddleia growing unchecked along the embankments, and leaf-strewn pathways leading up to grassy hills. She thought how much Jessie would have enjoyed running through the piles of leaves, picking up sticks that were impracticably big and trying to run with them in her mouth. Then she thought about the strange assignment she’d been hired for, because of her “sensitivity.”

  “Do you think Gerald believes Edmund Zenon’s going to die this weekend?”

  “Ah! Interesting question. I don’t know. But I do know he’s ambitious. He’s overspent on this conference and he wants to use Lady Lacey Carmichael’s legacy to help him publicize it so he can fund the next one.”

  “What about Peg?”

  “You know she gives fashion advice in the newspapers based on conversations she claims to have with Princess Diana in heaven? I like her, from the little I know of her. She’d be tremendous fun at a dinner party. But I do think she ought to be called Preposterous Peg.”

  “Could she have invented these messages about a man drowning in Torquay so she can publicize her book somehow?”

  “I had the impression that she was sincere, didn’t you? But even if she believes that she has received a message from the spirit world about a death by drowning, does that mean she has? Based on the data available from the study of similar cases over the years, it’s highly improbable.”

  “Maybe she’s had information from a real live person? I mean, a phone call or something.”

  “Ah! Interesting. That may be so.”

  “I think I need to treat this investigation as if someone really might be murdered. I’ve accepted the job so I want to do it properly. I’m going to see if I can identify any suspects, establish possible motives.”

  “Where will you start?”

  “I’ll start with you.” Emily opened her notebook and got out her pen. “You’ve been to these sorts of conferences before, haven’t you? And nothing like this has ever happened.”

  “The weirdest thing was when Miriam Starling got the heel of her shoe caught in a grating as she crossed the road. She was pulled to safety by two German professors as a bus came round the corner. The bus ran over her shoe and she had to hop back to the hotel.”

  “So…not very weird at all then?”

  “Heh! Well, it was dramatic and quite amusing once we knew she was safe. I’m afraid we laughed a lot at the hopping—Miriam laughed more than anyone, she’s a very good sport. But it couldn’t be classed as a supernatural event. No one had predicted that it might happen.”

  “So these conferences have been going on for years with nothing extraordinary happening. Now Peg, and dozens of other psychics up and down the country, are having visions about a man drowning. Why?”

  “Why indeed?” said Dr. Muriel. She preferred asking questions to answering them.

  “It seems the big difference between this conference and the others is that Edmund Zenon is coming to Torquay and he’s offering lots of money.”

  There was the sound of a little gasp and then a long, soft sigh from one end of the carriage as the automatic door slid open quickly and then closed again slowly. The conductor’s voice called, “Tickets, please!”

  Dr. Muriel rustled in her handbag and found a bag of treacle toffees before she found the train tickets Gerald Ayode had bought for her and Emily to travel to Torquay.

  She offered the toffees to Emily and unwrapped one for herself. “You need to make time to enjoy yourself. Treat your stay in Torquay like a holiday. The Hotel Majestic is a lovely, big, white Art Deco building on a cliff above the bay, facing down toward the sea. It has plenty of amenities, including indoor and outdoor pools, two restaurants, a bar, a ballroom, a spa, a gymnasium, conference rooms, a business center and free Wi-Fi. There are thick white towels in the bathrooms, crisp white sheets in the bedrooms, duvets for winter, complimentary slippers, complimentary bathrobes, complimentary fancy hand creams, shampoos and soaps. If you believed in ghosts, then the Hotel Majestic would be the perfect location to watch for guests from a more glamorous era, when Torquay’s golden beachfront was an alternative to the French Riviera, and the French Riviera was as glamorous as anywhere could possibly be. I know you’ve been miserable stuck in that office for the last two weeks, Emily. When Gerald came to me asking for advice about how to get the report done, I thought of you immediately.”

  People like Dr. Muriel were always trying to get Emily to do something else for a living, as if she worked in offices on temporary assignments because it had never occurred to her to do anything more interesting with her time, like apply to NASA to be an astronaut. They meant well but they didn’t seem to realize she did this kind of work because it suited her. She might moan about it sometimes but at least she could pay the bills. Yes, it would be lovely to be a movie star or an astronaut. Or even a “future crimes investigator.” But Emily had never met anyone who earned their living that way.

  “What’s funny?” asked Dr. Muriel.

  “I was thinking about trying to earn a living as a future crimes investigator.”

  “Too bad you didn’t have time to get some business cards printed.” Dr. Muriel twinkled mischievously. “You could have put a picture of Jessie on the front.”

  “It’s a shame you have to work while you’re there.”

  “The work’s almost the best thing about it, apart from the morning swim. There’ll be friends I haven’t seen in a year—it’s fascinating to see how they’ve changed and grown older; rather like time-lapse photography. Old friends, new ideas, fish and chips on the sea front, and Edmund Zenon’s challenge, which will annoy just about everyone, which will add to the fun. If someone wins—which I very much doubt, but you never know—it will be like Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve and my birthday, all in one.”

  “Do you know if he’s putting up his own money for the challenge?”

  “He is!” The young man in the knitted hat leaned across the aisle to join the conversation. “Fifty thousand pounds of his own money, and it’s, like, in a certified account, ready and waiting.”

  The conductor had worked his way down the train carriage and now stood by their table. “Tickets, please!”

  Dr. Muriel showed him the tickets and offered him a toffee, which he declined with the professionalism of a policeman who has been offered a drink on duty.

  “Are you going to make a bid for the money?” Emily asked the lad with the knitted hat.

  “Nuh. I do magic tricks.”

  “I love magic! What kind?”

  “Close-up magic. Card tricks.” He made a swan’s-neck movement with his right hand and produced a deck of cards from his sleeve, fanning the cards and holding out the queen of hearts for Emily to see. He grinned. “Once they know Edmund Zenon’s in town, everyone’s gonna be milling about, hoping to see something. If he’s busy, maybe they’ll pay to see me.”

  “How did you know he’d be down here?” said Dr. Muriel. “He’s attending an academic conference.”

  “His picture was on the Royal Festival Hall. It’s on Twitter.
People have been talking about it.”

  “And you saw it and you thought…what?” Emily got out her notebook and pen.

  “I thought, I can do twenty, maybe thirty tricks an hour, working the crowd in the street. My girlfriend said we should come down, try and make some money.”

  “I think it’s time your girlfriend made her appearance, don’t you?” said the conductor. “Passengers have to pay for their tickets, whether they’re taking up a seat or not. You’re a magician, are you? Why don’t you use your magic wand and make her appear?”

  Emily stared at the empty forward-facing seat across the aisle. Sure enough, little by little, the girlfriend materialized, from the feet up. Dr. Muriel and Emily exchanged a quick look with each other, impressed. Then they turned back to watch the impromptu show. The first part of her they saw was a foot in a pink sock inside a pink spotted sneaker. Then the other foot, in matching sock and sneaker. Then her legs in a pair of jeans, followed by the rest of her. She looked as though she had hardly any flesh on her bones under the layers of warm woolly clothes she was wearing, which included a baggy sweater and a long stripy scarf wound several times around her neck. Finally, her face: she had fairish hair cut in a long bob that fell to her jawbone, and very little makeup. She had not been invisible so much as hidden. And strictly speaking, she didn’t materialize so much as slowly reveal herself by dangling first one leg, then another, from the luggage rack above her boyfriend’s head where she had been concealed, folded up behind the coat that had been laid along it.

  She lowered herself to the floor beneath, light as a cat and almost as languorous, and took her seat by the window. She made a great show of stretching her arms and yawning, as if she’d been so tired she couldn’t help but lie down and go to sleep up there, even before the train had left Paddington. She was a better contortionist than she was an actress. As the conductor waited, she put her hand in the back pocket of her jeans and produced a ticket.