Strong Poison: Chapter 18 - A Spirit Message from Cremorna Leads to the Hidden Will

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Chapter 18 It was, of course, useless for Miss Climpson to try to conceal from the boardinghouse ladies where she had been and what she had been doing. Her return at midnight in a taxi had already aroused the liveliest curiosity, and she told the truth to avoid being accused of worse dissipations.

My dear Miss Climpson, said Mrs. Pegler, you will not, I trust, think me interfering, but I must caution you against having anything to do with Mrs. Craig or her friends. I have no doubt Miss Booth is an excellent woman, but I do not like the company she keeps, nor do I approve of spiritualism. It is a prying into matters which we are not intended to know about, and may lead to very undesirable results. If you were a married woman, I could explain myself more clearly, but you may take it from me that these indulgences may have serious effects upon the character in more ways than one. Oh, Mrs. Pegler, said Miss Etheridge, I don't think you should say that. One of the most beautiful characters I know, a woman whom it is a privilege to call one's friend, is a spiritualist, and she is a real saint in her life and influence.

Very likely, Miss Etheridge, replied Mrs. Pegler, drawing her stout figure to its most impressive uprightness. But that is not the point. I do not say that a spiritualist may not live a good life, but I do say that the majority of them are most unsatisfactory people, and far from truthful.

I have happened to meet with a number of so-called mediums in the course of my life, agreed Miss Tweedle acidly, and all of them, without any exception, were people I would not have trusted any further than I could see them, if as far.

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That is very true of a great many of them, said Miss Climpson, and I am sure nobody could have better opportunities of judging than myself. But I think and hope that some of them are at least sincere if mistaken in their claims.

What do you think, Mrs. Liffey?

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She added, turning to the proprietress of the establishment, We'll, said Mrs. Liffey, obliged in her official capacity to agree as far as possible with all parties, I must say from what I have read, and that is not a great deal, for I have little time for reading. Still, I think there is a certain amount of evidence to show that, in certain cases and under strictly safeguarded conditions, there is possibly some foundation of truth beneath the spiritualists' claims. Not that I should care to have anything to do with it personally, as Mrs. Pegler says, I do not as a rule care very much for the sort of people who go in for it, though doubtless there are many exceptions. I think perhaps that the subject should be left to properly qualified investigators. There I agree with you, said Mrs. Pegler. No words can express the disgust I feel at the intrusion of women like this Mrs. Craig into realms that should be sacred to us all. Imagine, Miss Climpson, that that woman, whom I do not know and have no intention of knowing, actually had the impertinence once to write to me and say that she had received a message at one of her séances, as she calls them, purporting to come from my dear husband. I cannot tell you what I felt, to have the general's name actually brought up in public in connection with such wicked nonsense. And of course it was the purest invention, for the general was the last man to have anything to do with goings on.

Pernicious Poppycock, he used to call it in his bluff military way.

And when it came to telling me, his widow, that he had come to Mrs Craig's house and played the accordion and asked for special prayers to deliver him from a place of punishment, I could only look on it as a calculated insult.

The general was a regular churchgoer and entirely opposed to prayers for the dead or anything pope-ish. And as to being in any undesirable place, he was the best of men, even if he was a little abrupt at times. As for accordions, I hope, wherever he is, he has something better to do with his time. A most shameful business, said Miss Tweedle.

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Who is this Mrs. Craig?

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And asked Miss Climpson. Nobody knows, said Mrs. Pegler ominously. She's said to be a doctor's widow, said Mrs. Liffey. It's my opinion, said Miss Tweedle, that she is no better than she should be.

A woman of her age, said Mrs. Pegler, with hennaed hair and earrings a foot long. And going about in those extraordinary clothes, said Miss Tweedle, and having such very odd people to stay with her, said Mrs. Pegler. You remember that black man, Mrs. Liffey, who wore a green turban and used to say his prayers in the front garden till the police interfered.