He seemed to rouse himself as if from a deep trance. “What’s that, Bess? Oh.” He released her hand from his grip.
Later that night, in the privacy of the Doyles’ guest room, the frigid English breeze blew through the cracks around the window, and Bess buried her head in Harry’s shoulder. “Do you think it was truly your mother coming through?” she asked him. It was difficult even for her to believe that the Doyles—the sincerest Catholics she knew—would resort to manipulation. But Harry had produced all kinds of spooky effects through his own “magic.” She had always relied upon him to decipher the real from the fraudulent, and it seemed now, for the first time, he could not. During his own “séances,” to prove that such things could be done, he had produced luminous figures that moved through the air. But this was different; this was a séance with a well-known public figure and his wife who insisted they had spoken with his own mother. It was hard for her to call them frauds outright.
Harry wrapped his arm around her and pulled the blanket up to his chin. “I am afraid that I cannot say. Her eyes—they looked at me, but they were not focused on me. It was . . . strange.”
It seemed to Bess that her husband was a magician who wanted, desperately, to believe that magic was real.
By that spring, Doyle had become almost as famous for his lectures on spiritualism as he was for his writing. He had crossed the Atlantic for his speaking circuit and traveled the Northeast, giving one lecture in Atlantic City and another in Carnegie Hall in New York. Afterward Harry and Bess invited Doyle and his wife to see a showing of Raymond Hitchcock’s Pinwheel Revue, then back to their home for dinner. Bess had invited Gladys as well; she had recently moved out of the Houdinis’ home and was attempting to live on her own, with the help of an aide, but Bess worried she was often lonely. She had noticed that Gladys still wore only black, and still seemed to grieve her mother’s passing even more than Harry did. When they had returned from California, Gladys seemed different to Bess—quieter, more subdued. The energetic girlishness she had once possessed seemed gone.
Harry was eager to show Sir Arthur his collections. He felt he had a kindred spirit in the writer, who appreciated libraries as much as he did. At the same time, having had some time to reflect on the séance he had done with Lady Doyle, Harry had decided that there had been nothing significant in the message that had come through from his mother. He told Bess he would like to test the lady again, if the opportunity arose.
Bess sat beside Gladys and Lady Doyle sat on the large sofa with cups of tea, listening to the men prattle on about London. Bess leaned over to Lady Doyle, trying to entice conversation out of her. The woman was still an enigma to Bess. “Lady Jean, I heard you have a remarkable voice,” she said.
Lady Doyle stirred her tea, her large rings flashing. “I did have an admired career once.” She had a very British hauteur and seemed to compose her dialogue carefully. “Of course, as you know, being the wife of a recognized figure is work enough now. People say I’m quite a recognized figure as well.”
Bess was not impressed by her boasting. She was Doyle’s second wife and had married him at the height of his wealth and fame. Bess had heard rumors that she had convinced him to change his will to leave the daughter of his first wife out of his inheritance.
“Tell me about your mother, Gladys,” Lady Doyle continued, as the men talked. “Am I correct that she lived here with you?”
Gladys’s jaw tightened. “Yes. She was very happy here.”
“She was a lovely woman,” Bess added. “She always treated me like a daughter.”
“It is a shame about her passing.”
“Yes. It certainly was.” Bess knew what she was up to. She and Harry had done just such fishing for information in their medium days. She had an idea. “Harry loved her very much. When we were home in New York he used to wear only the clothes she had given him because he thought it would please her.”
“How lovely,” Lady Doyle said.
By the fireplace, Doyle was surprised to see how many books on spiritualism Harry had amassed. “Good man,” he said. “I took you for a skeptic.”
Harry laughed. “Oh, no, I still am. That’s why I read so much.”