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the day Alma died. The faint patch of light stirred and brightened and seemed to open like a flower into the glowing form of Arabella facing us across the table; only this time she was cradling something in her arms. Accompanied by murmurs of amazement, she glided around the room until she was standing directly behind us.
    ‘Alma has come from heaven to comfort her Mama,’ said a woman’s voice from the darkness overhead, ‘but she may only stay a little.’
    The scent of violet water grew stronger. My mother had already released my hand, though I could see only her outline, turning around in her chair and reaching out her arms towards the small, shimmering form, which stirred faintly as my mother received it; no mere doll, but a real infant in luminous swaddling clothes. ‘Alma,’ she murmured, ‘at last, at last, at last.’ Someone was weeping in the darkness nearby. Tears sprang to my own eyes, and I had to subdue the impulse to whisper mythanks to Miss Carver, stooped so close between us that I could feel the heat of her body. Thus we remained for perhaps twenty seconds before Miss Carver held out her arms again and my mother, to my surprise, surrendered the child with only a deep sigh, echoed around the table as the glowing figure turned and retreated and vanished into the dark.
    My mother smiled and wept by turns as we rattled homeward, thanking me over and over again. ‘At last,’ she kept saying, ‘at last I can rest in peace.’ I remember embracing Lettie as she opened the door to us; I remember too, wondering how on earth I was to keep Mama from telling our fellow sitters in Lamb’s Conduit Street, and whether I ought even to try; perhaps, after this, we would have no more need of séances. I tried to persuade Mama to take a glass of wine with supper, but she declined. ‘I am perfectly happy, dear Constance, and not in the least hungry. I shall go to bed now, and dream of Alma.’ And with that she kissed me and went on upstairs, while I went down to the kitchen to sup with Lettie and Mrs Greaves and tell them as much as I dared, and thence to my own room, where I slept more deeply and peacefully than I had in a long time, and woke with autumn sunlight slanting in through my window. Mama did not come down to breakfast, but that was quite usual; Lettie’s custom was to take a tray up at about ten, tap lightly on the door and leave my mother to fetch it when she would, and it was not until eleven had struck that I became uneasy. At last we resolved to force the door with a poker, and found her tucked up in bed with Alma’s christening-gown held to her breast, and a faint smile on her face. There was an empty bottle of laudanum upon the night-table beside her, and a note which read, ‘Forgive me – I could not wait.’

    The days that followed are mercifully blurred in memory. I can picture, rather than recall, the feeling of leaden blackness filling my body, as ifMama’s torment had descended upon me; I remember, too, the conviction that I would never eat or sleep again, but only lie upon my bed and stare dry-eyed into the dark, wondering what was to become of me, and whether, if I went to the police and confessed what I had done, I would be sent to prison. Yet I said nothing of the séances to Dr Warburton, or to my father when he appeared in a state of extreme irritation (it was most inconsiderate of Mama, he all but declared, to poison herself just as he was about to begin work on his second volume) and announced that he was giving up the lease on the house.
    We were seated, as with every conversation I had ever had with him, at the breakfast table; he did not seem to notice that I had eaten nothing.
    ‘It is a very great nuisance,’ he said, ‘but I suppose you will have to live with us in Cambridge. My sister will find work for you around the house, and for the rest you must try to be quiet and cause no further upheaval.’
    ‘But what is to become of Lettie and Mrs Greaves?’
    ‘They must