Mr Scarletti's Ghost by Linda Stratmann Read Free Book Online Page A

I am concerned about Mother’s enthusiasm for Miss Eustace. I am far from convinced that she is not a charlatan preying on the superstitious.’
    ‘Oh, I have no doubt that she is,’ said Richard, airily. ‘These people are all cheats and conjurers, but they provide amusement and I really think they do no harm. There is a new sensation on the West Pier – did you see the posters? Madame Proserpina the fortune teller. Guaranteed genuine. I am sure the crowds will flock to her.’
    ‘But that is a matter of a few pence, and I have no quarrel with that if folk get enjoyment from it,’ said Mina. ‘If Miss Eustace asks for a shilling or two, or even half a guinea at the end of the evening, then it is worth it for the improvement in Mother’s health and happiness. But there are villains who prey on widows with money, and try to filch their entire fortunes from them.’ Mina took the booklet from her pocket and showed Richard the story of Mr Home.
    He read it, she thought, with rather greater interest than she might have wished. As he did so, Mina watched a few early summer families trudge out on to the beach, the children bringing fistfuls of seaweed as proud offerings to their less-than-delighted mothers, while distant bells announced the approach of the first caravans of donkeys. The warm, furred flanks of the donkeys and the slippery dark weed could not, she thought, have been more different, yet the weed – while it remained wet – could live on the beach and the donkeys could tread some way into the water. The land and the sea; life and death. Where did one end and the other start? It was not a simple question. Was there a clear-cut boundary like the line of markers where one might go from Brighton to Hove in a single step, or was there a wide borderland of sea-washed pebbles where two worlds became one? Were they really so incompatible that a fleshless spirit could not co-exist with the living?
    ‘Mrs Lyon had a lucky escape from ruin,’ said Richard at last. ‘Has Miss Eustace tried to persuade Mother that she can pass on messages from Father or Marianne, or demanded large sums of money?’
    ‘Not as far as I am aware, and she may not; after all, Mother has a family to protect her, and poor Mrs Lyon had none. But there are many ladies in Brighton in Mrs Lyon’s position, and they may be in danger.’
    He looked serious and thoughtful. ‘Have you shown Mother this booklet?’
    ‘No, do you think I should? I am not sure it would do any good.’
    ‘I agree. She would only see it as a criticism of her new favourite. And she would tell you that whatever Mr Home did – and he has many defenders – has nothing to do with Miss Eustace. It would not change her mind.’
    ‘Has Mother ever changed her mind?’ asked Mina, although she knew the answer.
    ‘Not by persuasion, no. In order for Mother to change her mind she must come to believe that the view she has just adopted is the one she has always held. Mere printer’s ink won’t do it.’
    Mina sighed. ‘I fear you are right.’
    ‘And if you say anything to the detriment of Miss Eustace, Mother will have the perfect reply – that you have not seen the lady for yourself and therefore can know nothing about the matter.’
    Mina was reluctant to go and see a spirit medium and be ranked with the gullible, but she thought that unless the danger passed it must come to that. She was not, however, as she soon found, the only person in Brighton with doubts. The activities of Miss Eustace had provoked a correspondence in the newspapers in which a number of people who had not been to her séances denounced them as mere conjuring tricks, and others who had been, while unable to explain what they had seen, nevertheless entertained grave suspicions. When Mina’s mother read the letters she was scathingly contemptuous about those who talked of what they did not know, or were so closed of mind that they could not see what was before their eyes. There was a strong