All eyes turned to look at her. She in turn scanned the faces around the room, her heart quickening in excited antic.i.p.ation as she searched for one face in particular.

Four men awaited her, their own servants in attendance with them. To her left, sitting in a large, leather-upholstered armchair - which needed to be large to contain his corpulent bulk - was her honoured guest, Herr Sigmund Faustus. He was dressed in the manner of a country gent, wearing a tweed three piece suit. Standing stiffly beside his chair was his personal aide. He was staring at her expectantly, making no effort to hide the fact, his right eye bulging from behind the lens of a monocle, while his left eye was scrunched almost entirely shut.

Emilia moved on in her observations.

Trying to look casual, leaning an elbow on the mantelpiece above the fire smouldering in the grate, was a handsome, athletically lean man, his dark hair slicked back with lacquer, nonchalantly balancing a cigarette holder between thumb and the first finger of his left hand. On seeing Emilia, a brief smile rested for a moment upon his otherwise dourly aloof countenance. Emilia felt her spirits lift, but his delightfully welcome face wasn't the one she had been hoping for in particular.

The two remaining gentlemen were standing either side of a partially-unfolded card table between the library's two velvet-draped windows that looked out onto the croquet lawn. On becoming aware of her entering the room, the two of them stopped fiddling with the curious device standing on the table and looked up. Mr Smythe, the taller of the two, had a pinched and pale face, and wore round wire-framed spectacles. His companion, Mr Wentworth, was an unattractive specimen, stooped as if his spine was malformed with a feeble growth of spiky whiskers on his upper lip, the pathetic moustache only serving to make him look like some kind of rodent.

Both had attempted to dress smartly for the occasion, although Emilia rather suspected that their stained and moth-eaten suits were what amounted to their Sunday best.

She quickly scanned the room, hoping against hope that she had missed something the first time. Then her heart dropped; he had not come.

"Good evening, gentlemen," she said, doing her best to hide her obvious disappointment. "Have you all been introduced?"

"Herr Dashwood, kindly - how do you say? - did the honourables," the corpulent foreign gentleman replied. His voice was higher than might have been expected, with a fluting tone, curiously at odds with his guttural native accent.

"Thank you, Daniel," she said, addressing the young man at the fireplace, who dismissed the need to be thanked with a wave of his cigarette holder, and then turned back to the German. "Herr Faustus," she said, clasping her hands together in front of her, to prevent herself from nervously fidgeting while she spoke. "Thank you so much for coming such a long way to be here."

"Not at all, my dear," Faustus replied, tapping the arm of his chair with a finger, as if to emphasise the point he was making.

"You were always so generous in your support of my father's work. He spoke very well of you."

"The late lamented Prince Consort was not the only German philanthropist with a desire to help the people of the British Empire, my dear." He spoke to her as if he were an affectionate, although not altogether heteros.e.xual, uncle. "And besides I had a - how do you say? - a vested interest in his work. It shames me greatly that the very project I was funding might have brought about his untimely end."

Emilia's throat went taught - to hear it put so bluntly like that, even after three months - and she swallowed hard.

"If there is anything I can do - anything at all - you only need to ask," Faustus added.

"You are too kind," Emilia replied, blinking away the moisture collecting at the corners of her eyes. "You have done more than enough, already."

She turned to the curious-looking pair at the card table, and their equally curious device.

"And thanks to you both, Mr Smythe. Mr Wentworth." She looked at the machine, all polished teak, gla.s.s dials and gnarled bra.s.s k.n.o.bs. It looked not unlike the b.a.s.t.a.r.d offspring of a wireless radio set and an ornate clock. "You really think this machine will help?"

"We certainly hope so, Miss Oddfellow," Smythe replied, an excited, slightly manic smile suddenly seizing control of his pinched features. "We still need to carry out a final calibration of the device," he said, a hand straying back to the dials with which he had been fiddling when Emilia entered the room, "but we are highly confident of success."

"Confident of success," the weaselly Wentworth parroted.

The library's wall-lights suddenly flickered and dimmed. All eyes were drawn anxiously to the humming lamps and Emilia's heart missed a beat. A moment later, full power was restored.

"I... I'm very pleased to hear it," Emilia said, feeling that someone needed to say something to dispel the growing sense of unease, but her words didn't seem to make any difference. "I am told that Madam Garside has almost finished her preparations and that we shall soon be able to begin. Please help yourselves to another drink in the meantime."

Her duties as a hostess dispensed with for the moment, Emilia moved swiftly across the room to the dashing Dashwood at the fireplace.

"Daniel, how delightful to see you," she said, clasping the young man's hands in her own. "I am so glad you're here."

"I wouldn't have missed this for the world," he beamed back at her, giving her a wink. He paused, looking around the room. "Any sign of you-know-who?"

"No, not yet," Emilia said, her carefully composed mask of togetherness wilting for a second, threatening to reveal her true feelings.

"Come on, chin up. I hate to say it, cuz, I really do, but... Well, I told you so."

"Yes. Yes, you did, dear Daniel, and I should have listened to you. He's obviously not coming."

"He could have at least replied to your invitation."

"I'm sure he's been very busy. I think I read that he'd been involved in that Carcharodon debacle."

"That was months ago," her cousin chided, good-naturedly. "Stop making excuses for him, Em. He was always letting you down before, and now he's gone and let you down again."

Someone coughed politely behind her.

"Um, excuse me, Miss Oddfellow, but if your guests are all a.s.sembled, Madam Garside is ready for you now."

Emilia turned to see the medium's a.s.sistant, Renfield, standing behind her. She hadn't heard him approach.

"What? Oh yes, of course," she sighed, feeling her shoulders sag as disappointment deflated her. "We're ready. Caruthers will just have to join in to make up numbers," she said pragmatically, lowering her voice so that only Dashwood heard what she had to say.

She moved to cross the hall to the study where the seance was to take place. "This way, please."

Emilia paused in the hallway - her guests filing past her, led by the moon-faced Renfield into the mahogany-panelled study - and looked longingly in the direction of the front door.

And then she heard it; the faint purr of an engine and the grinding crunch of tyres on the gravel drive at the front of the house.

A moment later the sound of the engine died. A door slammed and leather soles were heard trotting up on the steps to the front door. The strident jangling of the doorbell made everyone pause and look round then, and sent Emilia chasing along the corridor, reaching the door before the hobbling Caruthers could get anywhere near it.

She flung it open.

"Not too late, am I?" Ulysses Quicksilver asked, flashing Emilia a rakish grin.

"Oh, Ulysses, I thought you weren't coming!" Emilia chided, grabbing him and pulling him close to plant a kiss on his cheek.

"You wouldn't believe the traffic coming out of London tonight," he said, pulling away from her. Behind him, his manservant, Nimrod, was extricating his master's luggage from the boot of a Mark IV Rolls Royce Silver Phantom.

Clasping her hands in his Ulysses looked deeply into Emilia's eyes, his expression suddenly serious. "I was so sorry to hear of your loss," he said. "His pa.s.sing is a great loss to us all."

"Thank you," she said, returning his intense stare.

"How are you?"

"All the better for seeing you," Emilia said, and pulled him close again. There was a moment's silence between the two of them, which said more than words ever could, and then they parted, as if suddenly remembering that they had company.

"Ah, Dashwood," Ulysses said, catching sight of the darkly dressed individual at the other end of the hall. "How long's it been?"

"Not long enough," the other replied, that same aloof glower on his face.

"Well, I'd like to be able to say that it's good to see you again, but..."

"The feeling's mutual," Dashwood said, a false smile contorting his facial muscles for a moment.

"Not now, Daniel," Emilia said with forceful calm.

"But he can't just walk back into your life like this and carry on as if nothing happened."

"Daniel, please."

"Your concern for your cousin is very sweet, Dashwood, but I'm sure Miss Oddfellow can stick up for herself. At least she could when she and I were better acquainted," Ulysses said, flashing her that rakish grin. "Black suits you, by the way."

"Now come along, Ulysses, everyone's waiting. This way."

II - PARLOUR TRICKS.

With everyone seated at the circular table that had been set up in the late Alexander Oddfellow's study expressly for the purpose, the seance began.

"Spirits, can you hear me?" Madam Garside called, her eyes tight shut, her head held high. "I beseech you, dark watchers from beyond the veil, hear my plea, and answer."

Ulysses Quicksilver opened one eye and took in the faces of his fellow attendees. Madam Garside sat at the head of the table, a gla.s.s and walnut bookcase behind her, her palms flat on the table cloth in front of her. Her bony fingers were adorned with ostentatious rings but Ulysses seriously doubted that any of them were of any real value, the precious stones set within were no more than cunningly cut-gla.s.s copies. Her dress was as vulgar as her jewellery, and about her shoulders was draped a shawl, embroidered with silver stars and crescent moons. But the piece which set it all off for Ulysses was the turban she had seen fit to place on top of her head. The green silk from which it had been wound was fastened together with an apparently gold and lapis lazuli scarab beetle brooch, like those cheap knock-offs sold in their thousands to tourists visiting the Nile kingdom every year. She was certainly keeping her options open with such an array of cosmological symbols.

In the ruddy light of the shuttered Bedouin lamp she had placed on the table in front of her, her overly made-up face took on an appropriately h.e.l.lish quality.

"Spirits, heed the call of one who knows you, answer the pet.i.tion of Madam Garside."

Ulysses couldn't stop himself from smirking at hearing that, and snorted as he tried to suppress a laugh. He then had to loudly clear his throat to try to cover up his inappropriate reaction.

One eye suddenly flicked open and fixed on Ulysses. "Spirits!" she said again, her entreaty louder this time, as she tried to bring the seance back under control.

But it didn't change the fact that, as far as Ulysses was concerned, the whole thing was no more than an embarra.s.sing charade.

To the phoney mystic's left sat Daniel Dashwood, hands flat on the table also - as had been dictated for all of them by Madam Garside - eyes closed and head erect, cigarette holder clenched between his teeth. The lazy blue tobacco smoke coiled upwards to join the clouds of incense fugging the room.

Beside Dashwood was Emilia, her eyes screwed tight shut, an expression of earnest desperation knotting her usually soft features. Ulysses seat was next to hers.

He noticed that his former sweetheart had taken to wearing her straw blonde hair plaited into a tight bun at the back of her head. The girl he had once known had worn it down, like a cascade of gold. That same girl would never have been seen dead in a stiff black mourning gown b.u.t.toned to the neck. Time and its cruel predations had changed her, he thought. And a broken heart might have had its part to play too, he considered ruefully.

She was so close he could almost touch her, the little fingers of their hands inches apart. The sarcastic smile left his lips, and at that moment he wanted nothing more than to grab hold of her, take her away from this morbid shadow play which was wringing a bitter grief from her.

Instead he turned his attention to the man to his left. Smythe was paying about as much attention to proceedings as Ulysses was himself. He was absorbed in fiddling with his machine. As he played with the k.n.o.bs and dials on the front panel, the two short aerials that sprouted from the top rotated independently about a hemispherical gimble and the crackle of radio interference came from speakers at either end of the device.

It was a ghost detector, or so Smythe had told him as they had taken their seats at the table. All the fiddling was necessary to focus the signal apparently projected by all supernatural ent.i.ties, thereby allowing the machine to read the presence of ghosts. Next to him sat his fellow parapsychologist Wentworth, who flicked switches and adjusted dials on his side of the machine from time to time.

Despite being an obvious fraud, as far as Ulysses was concerned, he had to give Madam Garside her due. It was testament to her level of concentration that she was able to keep up the pretence of communing with the souls of the departed with the constant background disturbance of Smythe and Wentworth's box of tricks.

Next around the table, and someone who was trying desperately hard to concentrate, despite the distraction of the apparition manifestation meter, was the rotund Faustus. Eyes closed, his mouth was slightly agape, as if in wonder.

And that completed the circle of seven.

"Spirits of the netherworld, if you can hear me, send me a sign."

The gathered seance-goers variously held their breath in expectation or struggled to keep a straight face. Smythe and Wentworth continued to tinker with their gizmo.

They waited, but if the spirits were there they were not in a talkative mood this particular evening.

Madam Garside stretched out her hands again and decried: "Spirits, I invoke you, by Osiris, by Hades and by Samhain. I command you, answer me!" Her voice had become a savage growl of barely suppressed fury.

An unearthly quiet fell upon the room and Ulysses became aware of the m.u.f.fled pitter-patter of rain from behind the thick velvet drapes drawn across the one window in the study.

And then, the expectant hush was sharply broken by a loud knock on wood. Emilia gasped and jumped in her seat while Faustus let out a girlish cry of alarm. Ulysses looked at Dashwood, but he remained unmoved, chin in the air, eyes calmly closed.

"Thank you, spirits. Now, you watchers from the shadow world, answer me clearly. Can you hear me?"

The knock came again. In the muted red light of the room Ulysses looked for the medium's a.s.sistant but he was nowhere to be seen. He knew that there was some manner of trickery at work here, and Renfield was certainly up to his neck in it.

"Are you ready and willing to answer my questions?"

Again, the knock.

"Very well," Madam Garside said, with the commanding tone of one who believes themselves to be in authority, "who is it that haunts this place, who is lost and cannot find their way to the other side?"

The two parapsychologists made another adjustment to their machine and it began to emit a high-pitched whine, accompanied by a c.o.c.kroach-like clicking.

"What is that?" Ulysses hissed, leaning towards the fiddling Smythe.

"Just white noise,"the investigator whispered back.

"Bit like her over there then."

The lights flickered. Madam Garside broke off suddenly, opened her eyes momentarily to glance around the room and then, finding Ulysses boldly meeting her gaze, shut them again.

"Dwellers in darkness, if you can hear me, give us a sign."

As Ulysses watched the Bedouin lamp began to rise slowly into the air above the table as, with a fizzing hum, that almost seemed in tune with the noise being made by the strange machine on the table, the lights in the room faded until only a feint dirty glow remained inside each buzzing bulb.

They all heard the mournful voice, despite its eerie distortion, as it came to them through the loud speakers of the wireless box. "Emmiilliiaa!"

Emilia cried out in alarm and gasps came from those around the table. Ulysses looked to the startled woman who returned his gaze imploringly, eyes open now, glistening with tears. "Father!"

"Emmiilliiaa," the voice came again and all looked to the parapsychologists' device.

"Mein gott!" Faustus whispered.