Blanche sipped her sherry and smiled. The woman would have made a good headmistress of a girls’ school. She talked like one often. But that didn’t worry her. Gypsies, fairground people, crystal-ball gazers and, in the old days, actors were not house-trained and not to be trusted. The Miss Rainbirds of this world put up barriers which could be knocked for six when the moment was right. She said, “All I want to know, Miss Rainbird, is that you really do in your heart hope I can help in some way. I don’t ask that you believe in me. I just ask that you shall be fair and judge me by results. Quite frankly I may not be able to help you get across.”

  “Get across?”

  “To this person.”

  I see.

  “However, we can try, can’t we?”

  “Here and now?”

  “That’s why you asked me to come, Miss Rainbird.”

  “Yes, of course.” For a moment Miss Rainbird felt a loss of confidence, and with it a slight feeling that she was being unfair to this woman, who met her outspoken scepticism, hostility almost, with a bland good-nature and understanding.

  “All I ask,” Blanche said, “is that you don’t get upset at the beginning. Making contact is a strain. If I groan or seem, well, to be suffering—please don’t let it worry you and, whatever you do, don’t touch me. I’m sure Mrs. Cookson must have explained something of what goes on.”

  “Yes, she has.”

  “Then let’s have a crack at it, shall we?”

  Seeing the expression on Miss Rainbird’s face, Blanche laughed. “Don’t look surprised. I’m not being flippant. This is for me a gift like all the others I have. Seeing is a miracle, so is hearing. All part of life. And this psychic gift is part of life, this life and the greater life beyond. They are all one. I just see a little more and hear a little more than most people. Now, what I’d like you to do is to sit in your chair and relax your body and then forget me and think about this person. Think pleasantly and warmly about them. By the way, I should tell you that sometimes when I come round, I have no memory of what has happened or been said. And if you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to. Naturally, if it is something you can tell without embarrassment, I would like to know because it does help at any later sittings. All right? Are we all set?”

  Slowly Miss Rainbird smiled and gave a little laugh. When she laughed, thought Blanche, you saw something more of the pretty girl she had once been. Underneath she was sure that she wasn’t such a bad old trout. For all her money and position, life hadn’t been all good to her on the fun and frolic side. She should have married and had children, been regularly tupped by her man, and had the great kick of kids growing up about her. Only dedicated people like herself could seriously deny themselves most of that.

  Blanche said, “That’s better. Now just sit back and let yourself go.”

  Miss Rainbird sat back in her chair and shut her eyes for a moment, composing her thoughts, and trying to bring them around to Harriet. Perversely she found her mind suddenly full of the memory of Sholto. The whole thing had stemmed from him, from his sense of family and its good name. Harriet had been putty in his hands. She felt a little stir of anger at the thought that she hadn’t known a thing about it until two years afterwards when Harriet had told her. Her eyes still shut, she heard Madame Blanche’s voice.

  “There is anger in you. Put it from you. It confuses and holds me back.”

  Eyes opening, Miss Rainbird saw that Madame Blanche was sitting almost primly, stiffly even, upright in her chair. Her hands had gone to the long hanging loop of the pearls and she was holding it with lightly clenched fists. Her head was slightly raised and her eyes were shut.

  “I’m sorry,” said Miss Rainbird.

  Madame Blanche smiled. “Anger is a tall black wall without a gateway. Love is the gateway. From us to them and from them to us.”

  Miss Rainbird unaccountably had a quick mental picture of the wide elaborately worked wrought-iron gates that led from the closed garden of Reed Court down a long stretch of greensward to the fringe of the ornamental lake where she had been that morning. She saw Harriet moving down to the lake, a blue poplin dress sweeping the sunbathed grass, straw hat swinging from its ribbon in her hand; Harriet at nineteen, the light summer breeze lifting the stray tendrils of her blonde hair. The memory pleased her. Almost as though Madame Blanche were sharing the pleasant memory with her, she saw her smile.

  Madame Blanche breathed in and out deeply as though she were filling her nostrils with the perfume of some secret garden. Then slowly she dropped the pearls and raised her hands to her temples, her fingers smoothing at her brow, and she sighed deeply. Her hands came down from her forehead and held the ends of the arm-rests of the chair. The movement of the hands held Miss Rainbird’s attention and she slowly realised that they were not resting easily on the ends but gripping hard at them, so hard that she could see the whitening of the knuckles. Madame Blanche began then to breathe quickly, her body tensing as though she were possessed by some inner struggle. For a moment or two Miss Rainbird was frightened. Not for Madame Blanche, but for herself, for being in this position, for letting herself consider even for a moment that there was any need for this ludicrous experiment. Harriet was dead. Only a memory to her now. And Sholto was dead and a far less pleasant memory. Only she lived and there was no one to command her to this charade. . . . Not even Harriet in her dreams.

  Madame Blanche in an unexpectedly loud voice said, “Somebody is here. Not closely, not willingly. No, not one . . .” She broke off and a long, strange almost animal groan broke slowly from her. Almost curtly, she cried, “No, there are two. But very distant . . . away, away at the end of a great vista, but I can see them. An old man and an elderly woman.” She paused and then said briskly, “Henry? Are you there, too? Yes, you are. I get you now.” She laughed happily. “Welcome, love. What’s all the trouble? Why do they stay so far away?”

  Miss Rainbird, fascinated by the sudden change in Madame Blanche’s manner and tone when she greeted and talked to Henry, watched her closely. Her hands were relaxed now and her body had slumped easily against the upholstered chair back. She was a big, slack, vulgarly handsome woman.

  Madame Blanche gave a low laugh and said, her voice coarsening a little, “Come on, Henry—don’t you be difficult too. Not one of your bad days, is it, love? Tell me what’s bothering them. Why won’t they come closer?”

  She was silent for a while and then with an accompanying quick jerk of her body Madame Blanche began to speak again, but now her voice had changed. It was a man’s voice, not deep, but a firm, unemotional deliberate voice just touched with some accent. Miss Rainbird felt the skin at the back of her neck begin to creep as she listened.

  The voice said, “There is forgiveness always here. There has to be that. The woodside that is cut down leaves a scar on the hill. But the trees grow again and the hill is what it was.”

  Madame Blanche chuckled. “I’ve someone here, Henry, who wants help. Can’t you save the poetry for another time? Why do they stay so far away?”

  Henry said, “She knows why they stay far away. They won’t come—even though there is now peace and forgiveness between them—unless they know she really wants them. She must not be offended, but there is a selfishness in her which keeps them away.”

  Madame Blanche’s head moved sharply towards Miss Rainbird.

  “Is that true, Miss Rainbird?”

  Stung, Miss Rainbird said pertly, “All human beings are selfish. It’s typical of the kind of excuse Sholto—” She cut herself off quickly. Madame Blanche had impressed her against her will, but she had no intention of giving any information away. Certainly not at this stage.

  Madame Blanche smiled and said, “We’ve got to be patient, Henry, ducks. Miss Rainbird isn’t a believer. We can’t expect that yet.”

  Henry in an even, almost offhand voice said, “With some it can only be blind faith. With others the growth of belief is the struggle of a wayward flower to bloom out of season. The gentlewoman with you must warm her scepticism with love. Belief will bloom.”

  A little impatiently, Madame Blanche said, “You’ve been runnin’ around with too many poets up there, Henry. You’re an engineer, remember? So make it plain.”

  A man’s laugh came from Madame Blanche and then Henry’s voice. “You’re a bully, Blanche. Ask her if she knows who they are.”

  Madame Blanche turned to Miss Rainbird. “Do you know them?”

  Miss Rainbird, becoming more at ease in these strange circumstances, said, “I know who they might be. But I clearly can’t know who they are.”

  Madame Blanche said, “There’s your answer, Henry.”

  Henry said, “It is what I expected. But tell her that human selfishness is weaker than a love of justice. She knows this. That is why she came to you. Tell her they both now want to see justice done, but they can’t help until she is ready. Tell her the family of Man is the only true family.”

  Madame Blanche turned to Miss Rainbird. “Do you understand what Henry means?”

  “Yes, I do, of course. I’m familiar with all the platitudes—”

  Henry, through Madame Blanche, laughed, and the quick switch in tones, from female to male, broke through Miss Rainbird’s temporary ease and chilled her. She was suddenly anxious for this pantomime to stop.

  Madame Blanche, disappointment in her voice, said, “Why are they going, Henry? They’re turning away.”

  Henry said solemnly, “They have been turned away, Blanche. We have love and understanding. We have powers which enable us to reach back to the old life. But we have no power to change the human heart. As an engineer I could pipe water a thousand miles and make a desert bloom. But neither I nor anyone else here can bring faith to you below as though it came from the strike of a match at the turning of a gas tap.” Madame Blanche chuckled. “You’re behind the times, Henry. We have electricity now.”

  Henry said, “Old habits of thought die hard. So do long-held prejudices.”

  Miss Rainbird saw Madame Blanche’s shoulders slowly shiver as though coldness had swept like an icy wind over her.

  Madame Blanche said, “The man’s gone, Henry. Why does the woman linger?”

  “Love makes her drag her steps, Blanche. Two loves. A love she gave and a love she killed.”

  Madame Blanche said to Miss Rainbird, “Do you understand that?”

  In a low voice, Miss Rainbird answered, “I think I might.” Then suddenly dropping her head, she went on in a half-choked voice, “Ask him to tell her . . . to tell her . . . Oh, no . . .! Oh, no . . . I” She was fighting now to stop herself from crying, fighting hard, one part of her wanting to abandon herself to it, and another strongly, angrily almost, upbraiding herself for being so stupid.

  Henry said quietly, “From tears the desert of the heart will bloom. Goodbye, Blanche . . . Goodbye . . .”

  “Bye, Henry.” Madame Blanche’s voice echoed after Henry’s.

  Miss Rainbird sat and slowly recovered her composure. When she looked up Madame Blanche was leaning comfortably back in her chair, eyes shut. Her hands came up slowly and held her pearls. She sat like this, her eyes closed, for a long time until Miss Rainbird, her own emotions now quietened, thought she had gone to sleep.

  She said, “Are you all right, Madame Blanche?”

  Blanche opened her eyes slowly and smiled. She let out a long breath and said, “My goodness! What was all that about? I feel as though I’ve been properly done over. Oh, dear . . . Do you mind if I—55 Her eyes went to the little table with its sherry decanter on a silver tray.

  “Of course.” Miss Rainbird got up and poured sherry for them both. For a moment or two they sat and sipped at their drink and then Miss Rainbird said, “Do you remember what happened?”

  Blanche shook her head. “No, I don’t. I only know that Henry must have come. He always leaves me like this when he’s been really moved about something.” She laughed. “Honestly, sometimes I look to see whether I’ve actually been bruised. He’s a frank, hard-speaking man, though sometimes he gets a little fancy in his talk.”

  “You don’t remember any of the conversation at all?”

  “No, Miss Rainbird, I don’t. Sometimes, in fact very often, I do. But there are times when Henry cuts me out. He’s very discreet. Did it help you at all?”

  Miss Rainbird finished her glass of sherry and looked at Blanche. She had been impressed, but she was not a gullible old woman. She was quite prepared to admit that there could be phenomena in the world which she knew nothing about. More things in heaven and on earth, Horatio. . . . But before she accepted anything new it had to be demonstrated beyond doubt. There was doubt here. Madame Blanche could have gone off into a mediumistic trance state and quite honestly didn’t remember anything. But the mind and the memory still functioned in such a state, as it did in sleep, though on a different plane. And she was not unaware of the possibility of mental telepathy. There was an impressive body of research to support it. Some people had the uncanny knack of sensing others’ thoughts or emotional moods. And some people who had such gifts, she knew, were not above furnishing them out with trickery.

  Very deliberately, she said, “There must have been some things about me and my family, Madame Blanche, that you have learned from Mrs. Cookson.”

  “Well, of course.” Blanche smiled. “Sometimes it’s not possible to stop Mrs. Cookson telling things. She told me who you were and that you had an elder brother and a younger sister who are both dead. She told me too that you were very fond of your sister and . . . well . . . not quite so fond of your brother. That’s all, Miss Rainbird.”

  Miss Rainbird considered this. Ida Cookson was an habitual gossip. But, all things considered, there was little to gossip about. Sholto’s reputation had been well known. The business about Harriet was a very closely guarded family secret. Ida Cookson could know nothing about that. And certainly no one but herself could have known about Harriet’s dream appearances. Two people who stood a long way off. . . at the end of a heavenly vista, no doubt. And they wouldn’t come any closer, wouldn’t communicate with her unless she had already made up her mind that it was her duty, no matter what it might cost in embarrassment and discomfort to her, to dedicate herself to Harriet’s tearful, histrionic wishes. If Harriet had asserted her rights as a human being years and years ago there would never have been any of this foolery, no plump, over-ripe Madame Blanche sitting in the chair opposite with a warming smile on her face. Didn’t remember a thing. What nonsense. She had just put on a . . . well, yes, a very, very good performance based on the merest scraps of knowledge and—she would give the woman this—a sound knowledge of human psychology. And her Henry—a prosy fool if she had ever heard one.

  Miss Rainbird stood up, making it clear that their session was finished and said, “Well, thank you for coming, Madame Blanche. As you know by now I am not a woman who is afraid to say Yes or No. I must frankly say that at the moment I don’t know what I feel.” She began to walk towards the room door as Blanche rose. “I need time to think a little. It is not, I want you to understand this, a question of my faith or otherwise in you and your powers. I have a personal decision to make about going on which is nothing to do with you. I will let you know, and if this should turn out to be our last meeting, Madame Blanche, I will, of course, see that you are properly remunerated.” She pressed the bell push three times, a signal to Syton that a visitor was going.

  Affably, Blanche said, “That’s all right, Miss Rainbird. If this is the last time I don’t need any money. You know . . . sort of seven days’ free trial and no obligation. I can guess how you feel. It’s all upsetting and strange and your mind is full of doubts about yourself and me. If I don’t hear from you I shall quite understand and I won’t in any way be put out. My problem is to find enough time to help those who do really need me.”

  As Miss Rainbird opened the room door, Syton appeared. Blanche moved out and the butler helped her on with her coat. Then with a smile for Miss Rainbird she began to follow him across the hall, past the foot of the long, oak-balustraded stairway that ran down to the ground floor. At the foot of the stairs Madame Blanche suddenly came to a halt. It was almost as though some invisible hand had come out and planted itself firmly against her bosom, blocking further movement. She stood motionless for a moment, then slowly turned back and looked at Miss Rainbird, and said, “Something happened here.” She looked up the curving run of steps. “Something terrible happened here. I can feel it.” Her shoulders shook with a quick shivering spasm and she moved on, following Syton. When Syton turned back from seeing her out, Miss Rainbird had retired to the sitting-room.

  She went straight to the decanter and poured herself another glass of sherry. She was full of disturbance. Normally she would not have dreamt of taking so much sherry on her own. Sholto’s excesses had firmly reinforced her natural habit of moderation.

  What an extraordinary woman! How could she have felt anything? Only she and Dr. Harvey had known that Sholto had fallen drunkenly down the stairs. Although Sholto was dead, he had miraculously not broken any bones or been more than mildly bruised, but the shock of falling had been too much for his heart. Dr. Harvey—their doctor for forty years—had for the sake of the family name and to save village gossip simply certified death from heart failure. Even in death Sholto kept upsetting her when she thought of him. And now that fool Harriet was aiding and abetting him. How dare they say there was a selfishness in her which kept them away? She wasn’t selfish. At least, not unduly so. She just wanted to be left alone to enjoy her few remaining years of life in a tranquillity which had come only too late to her. She certainly didn’t want another man about the place . . . and all the talk it would mean in the village, the chatter and the knowing nods and their eyes on her . . . on them. And most daunting of all, what kind of man would he be with Harriet as a mother? And the father a heedless, good-for-nothing who’d been killed commanding a tank in the Egyptian desert during the war? No they could stay at the end of their long heavenly vista, all of them. They were dead and she was alive, and she wanted this house to herself.