Shadows on the Nile Read Free Page A

front of them, tiny twitches of tension. He heard their breath, rising and falling in unison. He saw hope staring blatantly out of their eyes and he wondered if they saw the same in his. The room into which they had been ushered was high-ceilinged and ornate, with its tall windows covered in heavy purple drapes that failed miserably to keep out the piercing draughts. He wished he’d kept his overcoat on. It was as cold as a blasted sepulchre in here and it gave off a distinct odour of bad drains that the scented candles did little to disguise.
    Timothy counted six clients at the table, including himself: four other men and a woman of about forty who had wisely chosen to wear a fur coat. Obviously she had been before. She wore heavy make-up but her lips were pale, almost bloodless, and she chewed on them incessantly. Six clients or sometimes nine – that was the usual number, always divisible by three. Only two of the men did he recognise: Fabian Rawlings and the Right Honourable Phillip Hyde-Mason. Like himself they were both in their twenties and both old hands at this game. He nodded a brief greeting to them across the table but no one spoke. You only spoke when Madame Anastasia invited you to do so.
    She was seated on Timothy’s right, magnificent in a purple and gold feathered headdress that made her dramatically taller than anyone else in the room. She was a middle-aged woman with strong hawkish features and tonight she was encased in a stiff purple gown, a figure as intimidating to her clients as she must be to her spirit guide. She sat now with her hands flat on the table in front of her, palms down, eyes closed, murmuring strange words under her breath while her clients waited. Timothy always found the waiting hard, impatient for the action to start. Spittle gathered in his mouth and each time he swallowed, it took an effort. He always had the odd sensation at these sessions that one of the spirits was hovering behind him, its fingers around his throat. But that was something he kept firmly to himself. Didn’t want to sound a complete dunce. What would Rawlings and Hyde-Mason make of such nonsense?
    Such nonsense?
    Was the need to get in touch with those who have
passed over
nothing more than pathetic human frailty? Superstition? Just nonsense?
    He frowned, irritated by his sceptical mood, and stared down at Madame Anastasia’s hands. Her fingers were stretched out wide on the table next to his own. She had goodhands, elegant and expressive. Free of all rings and without that odd grasping hunch to them that afflicted many of the mediums he had encountered, as though they were readying themselves to snatch the spirits from the air around them, as well as the money from his pocket before either had time to blink.
    A chill wind suddenly whistled through the gloom. It seemed to swirl around the ceiling cornices and made the hairs rise on the back of Timothy’s neck. However many times it happened and however many times he told himself it was trickery, it still set his guts churning. The candles near the windows flickered and died, steeping much of the room into darkness, except for the three candles that formed a triangle at the centre of the table. They cast shadows on the eager faces, turning them into skulls.
    ‘They are here,’ Madame Anastasia intoned and opened her eyes.
    Timothy felt the familiar tug in his chest. Always it was the same. Something seemed to shift position inside him, realigning itself, edging itself forward. Elbowing its slippery way to the surface. Something that cried out for a voice.
    ‘We welcome you, Beloved Ones.’
    Madame Anastasia spoke with a solemn voice that Timothy had come to expect of mediums, but there was a quality underlying it that made his nerve ends tingle, a sweetness as enticing as barley-sugar to a child. What spirit could resist such beguiling tones?
    ‘We welcome you, Beloved Ones,’ she declared again, ‘with gifts from Life unto Death.’
    All eyes focused on