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towards the door. On impulse I rose and followed them. ‘All right, all right; I’ll go quietly,’ I heard Vernon Raphael say as they hustled him down the front steps. His hat was flung after him into the street. With no one taking the slightest notice of me, I took my cloak and bonnet from the hall-stand and followed him down the steps. There I waited until I heard the door close behind me; Vernon Raphael was walking slowly away, brushing the dirt from his hat.
    He looked at me ruefully as I came up beside him.
    ‘Have you too come to reproach me with cruelty to spirits, Miss er –?’
    ‘Miss Langton. And no, I have not; I only wanted ...’
    I paused, wondering what exactly I did want of him. In daylight his hair was straw-coloured, with a reddish tinge; his eyes were an intense, rather cold shade of blue, and his face had a slightly vulpine cast, but I liked the humorous edge to his voice. We began to walk again; it was late in the afternoon, and the street was relatively quiet.
    ‘Are you employed by the Society, Mr Raphael, to seek out fraud?’ MrsVeasey had warned me against the Society for Psychical Research; sceptics and unbelievers, she called them, with no respect for the departed.
    ‘Well yes, in a way; I am one of their professional investigators, but detecting fraud is only part of my work – more of a hobby, in fact. And you, Miss Langton? What brings you to Miss Carver’s parlour?’
    Again I wished I had not revealed my name; what if he were to turn his attentions to Holborn? But then it struck me that we had little to fear, now that I knew him.
    ‘Curiosity,’ I said. ‘Do you think, Mr Raphael, that all spirit mediums are cheats?’
    ‘All manifestation mediums, yes.’
    ‘And mental mediums?’ I had heard the term from Mrs Veasey.
    He looked at me curiously.
    ‘I see you know something of the subject. Some are frauds; the others mostly self-deluded.’
    ‘Mostly?’
    ‘Well ... I am a sceptic, not an out-and-out atheist – not yet, at any rate. Gurney and Myers – you know of them? – have assembled some very remarkable cases; they are looking at subjects who claim to have seen the apparition of a friend or relation at the moment of that person’s death, but the verdict is not yet in. And you, Miss Langton? What do you believe?’
    ‘I do not know what I believe, but . . . my sister died when I was five, and my mother has been prostrate with grief ever since. Frankly, Mr Raphael, if I could find a medium who could convince her that Alma is safe in heaven, I would want her to have that comfort. And so I wondered ... whether there is anyone you could recommend.’
    ‘My business, Miss Langton’ – he sounded more amused than indignant – ‘is to expose frauds, not to recommend them.’
    ‘It is all very well for you, Mr Raphael, who are clever and confident and at home in the world, but for those like my mother, who are simply crushed by the weight of grief, why deprive them of the comfort a séance can bring?’
    ‘Because it is false comfort.’
    ‘That is a harsh doctrine, Mr Raphael; a man’s creed, if I may say so. Have you never lied, or kept silent, to spare the feelings of another? If you had lost a brother, let us say, and your mother were to be as stricken as mine has been, would you sternly insist – as my father did – that she take no comfort in séances?’
    He looked, to do him justice, a little abashed.
    ‘I confess, Miss Langton, that I should be reluctant to disabuse her. But, to take the other side of the coin, what of those mediums who prey unscrupulously – for monetary gain – upon the bereaved? Do you think they should be allowed free rein?’
    ‘I suppose not,’ I said reluctantly. ‘But they are not all like that.’
    ‘You speak from experience, evidently.’
    ‘Only a little ... So there is no one, then, that you are prepared to name?’
    ‘Surely, Miss Langton, your mother needs the help of a doctor, not a medium.’
    ‘A doctor has