The Ghost Hunters (52 page)

‘Why indeed? He appreciates the finer aspects of life, prefers
the company of the upper middle class.’ Wall gave me a tight smile. ‘Well, forgive me, but there is little that is middle class about New Cross.’

I thought this over for a moment and remembered the cadence of a South London accent I had thought I defected the first time I heard Price speak in public, the way his voice had drifted between registers. Was it possible that he had lied to me about such a personal piece of information? If so, what else had he lied about?

‘Let’s turn to his profession,’ Wall continued. ‘How much do you know about that?’

‘More than anyone, I should think!’

‘Tell me, then.’

‘Why, you know very well: he is a psychical researcher.’

‘At some times of the day, yes,’ Wall acknowledged. ‘When he isn’t tending to his other business.’

‘What is this?’ I asked slowly, shifting over in the pew to put more distance between myself and Wall.

‘When his father died, Harry inherited his paper bag business. Did you know that?’

My mind was alive now with memories of the strange ways he had behaved: the odd change in his work patterns, the secrets he couldn’t confide. It could all be explained if he had another job.

‘Did you know that he still runs the business, even to this day? Oh, and he never attended university, never gained the letters he so brazenly lists after his name. He is a canny but dishonest man who has used the mysterious to enhance his standing in life, and anyone who examines that life, as I have done, will find a minefield of fabrications and contradictions.’

My mouth opened to respond, but failed to form any words. The scale of Wall’s accusations was making me dizzy.

‘It began in the early twenties, when he exposed William Hope. That case made him famous. But it was the Society for Psychical Research who set him on to it – not that he gave them any credit! From that day he swung between scepticism and belief, straddling the domains of the Spiritualists and scientists. The inconsistency made him radical. Anything halfway true was sensationalised. Any medium that showed promise, he kept to himself. Any medium he could expose, he did, and to hell with the consequences!’

‘No, he wanted the truth!’ I said sharply.

‘Fame and fortune, that’s all he wanted. And there’s more,’ said Wall with relish. ‘There are signals from Germany that Hitler is taking a special interest in the potential of psychical phenomena. According to my sources over there, the Third Reich has given permission for the founding of a Department of Psychical Research at Bonn University. Sarah, before the war Harry was engaged in discussions with them about donating his Laboratory and his work to their research.’

‘No! He wouldn’t.’

‘He and Stuart Worsley, acting principal of the University of London, visited Bonn as official guests of the Third Reich on the thirteenth of April 1937. It seems he was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to obtain the academic recognition he has sought all these years. Sarah, I’m sorry to say it, but I believe – and I intend to make it known – that Harry Price is very likely a Nazi sympathiser.’

I stared at him in disbelief. Apparently realising my inability to speak, Wall pressed on.

‘Over the years you were apart he made numerous visits to the Rhine and held many meetings there with the relevant authorities. In November 1938, while the synagogues were being raided,
Jewish shops destroyed and Jewish people murdered, he was off enjoying himself at concerts in Bad Godesberg, taking dinner in Bonn and tea in Cologne with the people he thought were going to help him. He even wrote to Hitler asking to attend – in comfort, I might add – the Nuremberg Rally in August.’ He shrugged. ‘It came to nothing when war began.’

I found myself able to speak again and asked Wall how he could possibly know all this. The answer was reasonable enough.

‘Price told William Salter, the prominent psychical investigator, and Salter, in turn, told me.’

Salter. I remembered. He had been there at the beginning, all those years ago, at the grand opening of the Laboratory. Plotting to bring Price down.

‘But why?’ I asked, caught in bewilderment at how the past and present were meeting like this. ‘What on earth is your interest in this – in him – after all this time?’

He pursed his lips, then, looking at the folder in his hand, said, ‘I mean to bring him down. I mean to bring
both
of you down, unless you give me what I want.’

‘Which is … ?’

‘Closure,’ he said quickly. ‘Harry is collecting information for a second Borley book, isn’t he?’

I nodded.

‘I intend to stop him, and I want you to help me.’

‘What? But why, why would you ask that of me?’

‘You work in the film business, don’t you? You can help me get this out.’ He grinned. ‘Come to think of it, the whole story would make a suitable film.’

‘You can’t be serious,’ I managed to say.

‘Sarah, it’s
my
story!’ His shout rebounded around the cold, musty church. ‘It was always my story! Even at the beginning,
before the two of you ever came to Borley. And he – you – cheated me out of it.’

‘No, that isn’t fair!’ I cried. ‘I had nothing to do with it!’

‘You were complicit! You can’t expect me to believe you never knew.’

‘I went to him because I needed someone.’

‘And look what he did to you,’ he said numbly. ‘You must help me. We must be rid of Harry Price.’

My mind was racing now as I scrambled for explanations. ‘After we left Borley, Harry took little interest in the case. His mind was on other things – securing the Laboratory against the Spiritualists, testing Rudi Schneider. He wasn’t involved with the Borley case for years.’

‘But clearly he was involved,’ said Wall, glaring at me. ‘He’s been collecting information on the case all the time, squirrelling it away for publication. He just never told you.’

‘No,’ I argued, ‘that’s not possible, I would have known, I—’

And then I remembered Price’s odd behaviour after we had left Borley for the first time and returned to London. The long disappearances without explanation. The phone calls that came when I was left alone at the Laboratory, taunting me, just before he suffered his heart attack.
Ask him – ask him where he goes. Ask him about the props
.

I looked up and saw that Wall was looking at me, and in his expression I registered sadness mixed with anger, frustration and betrayal. ‘You?’ I could hear my own disbelief. ‘You made those calls to me. You were the one I heard him shouting at down the phone in his office!’

He nodded slowly, sadly, and as he did so, the words he had spoken during our first visit to the Rectory drifted back: ‘
The
telephone bell is a rather simple device, but it still rings with vital messages.
’

‘Oh, but
why
? Vernon, the stress brought on his heart attack! Why did you do that? Why? What did you mean, “ask him about the props”?’

Wall took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, Sarah, but Harry …’ He hesitated.

I stared at him, wishing he would just tell me and be done with it.

‘Do you remember the first time we went to the Rectory? The candlestick that hurtled down the stairs, the pebbles rolling about in the hall? All that happened after the seance, even
during
the seance.’

I remembered all of this vividly and told him so.

‘And in the saloon, on the journey we made from London, his coat pockets were filled to the brim with odds and ends?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Props,’ he said quietly, ‘that’s all they were, like the curious items he keeps in that cabinet of his at the Laboratory – props for a clever magician’s conjuring act. Harry brought them with him, and when our backs were turned he threw them all about that house, down the stairs, along the corridors, wherever phenomena were observed.’

‘What? No, that’s not true. He would never do that. He
couldn’t
have done it, not all of it. How could he? He wasn’t standing in the right place to have done those things without our noticing.’

‘There is much he
could
have done. His pockets were stuffed full. You said so yourself. Remember he is a trained member of the Magic Circle. Even the Smiths agreed that when Price arrived in the Rectory the phenomena became worse.’

I couldn’t accept this. ‘Harry is a man of ability. His training with the Circle was impeccable. If all he could do to fool us was
throw a few stones around, he wasn’t a very good magician, was he?’

Wall shook his head, his expression somewhere between frustration and pity. ‘Think back, Sarah! The blue lights which appeared during the seance? The Smiths said it themselves: such things had never happened before! Don’t you find that an intriguing coincidence? Today, poor Mrs Smith thinks tricks were being played all around her, on all of us, and she was in no mental state at that time to be rational. Put yourself in her situation: in coming to Borley, succeeding the Bull family, hearing of Miss Ethel’s family feud, she and her husband had walked straight into a psychological drama. At every turn the locals were telling her and her husband to beware and not to stay at the house.
Psychological
, Sarah, not supernatural.’

‘We found a medallion. It appeared from nowhere. An apport.’

He shrugged. ‘Harry Price is an avid coin collector. Did you know that? He probably has hundreds of the things at his home.’

‘But what about the bells that rang, the cake of soap we saw hurled across the room, the brick that crashed through the verandah roof right above your head? Vernon, the haunted mirror? We all heard it tapping at us.’

‘Nothing but hocus-pocus,’ Wall insisted, gripping my arm, his voice urgent now. ‘The heat and moisture from our lamp could have caused the wood in that mirror to expand, thus creating what Price led us all to think were spirit raps. He turned that lamp on and off repeatedly, remember? That alone would have induced a constant change in the air’s humidity.’

‘I’ll hear no more of this!’ I exclaimed.

‘Listen to me,’ he demanded scornfully. ‘I
saw
him do it, as clear as I see you now. I
saw
him throwing pebbles when we ran upstairs together. His pockets were full of them. I am so sorry, I
really am, but you must allow yourself to believe it. Harry Price had a mundane existence with a wife he kept hidden at home and a paper bag business of which he was ashamed. He wasn’t scientist or an academic. He was a fantasist, Sarah! A fraud, a humbug, a psychological liar.’

I could not, would not accept it.

But Wall, clearly, already had. ‘Take this,’ he said, handing me the file of documents.

‘What is it?’

‘All the evidence we’ll ever need to prove it, to bring him down.’

This was just ridiculous. The idea that Price, who had dedicated his life to the exposure of fraudulent mediums, had himself turned deceiver was alien to every understanding I had of the man. I said to Wall, ‘Harry went to Borley at your request, not to prove it was genuine but to debunk it. And now you’re saying …’

‘That the man has been playing a long and cruel game with you, laying clues from day one so he could finally solve the case for publication and financial gain. His team of untrained observers gave him everything he needed. He prepared them for what might happen there: his briefings, his Blue Book of activities. His observers saw things, heard things, because they were told that they
would
see things. All he had to do was write them up in the appropriate way. Which is precisely what he has done.’

I was shaking my head, but Wall continued. ‘It’s understandable that you should resist it, after everything you’ve done for him, but you’re holding the evidence right there in your hands. Take my word for it, his best-selling book is nothing but an impressive blend of legends, fantasy and lies twisted around some facts. A stone was thrown and the ripples have spread.’

His words were slaying me. But were they the truth? I had good reason to doubt it. Why hadn’t he tried to warn me or get in touch? ‘Not one letter, Vernon! And why didn’t you say anything at the time? If you saw him hoaxing phenomena, if you knew, why didn’t you warn me?’

‘I wrote, many times. To the Laboratory and to your home address. I tried to warn you, Sarah! And I wanted to go public. I threatened Harry that I would – just before his heart attack – but my editor forbade it. Said you and Price would fight it in the courts, two to one against us. So he made me suppress what I knew.’

There had been no letters to the house from him. None that I had seen.

‘
I wake and find myself downstairs … doing things I can’t remember … collecting the mail …
’

Mother, always up before me …

The realisation hit me with a thud.

She collected the post.

‘
I know how that sounds, but it’s as though something is taking me over, taking control
.’

These thoughts slashed through my mind, cutting away any clinging doubts. I wanted to pause and reflect, make sense of all of this. But the moment was overtaken as a single newspaper clipping dropped out of Wall’s file and landed at my feet. ‘What’s this?’ I asked.

As Wall retrieved the cutting he told me it was a letter recently published in the
Daily Mail
written by Mabel Smith, whom we had met on our first visit to the Rectory.

I took the article from this hand and read: