A Fold in the Tent of the Sky by Michael Hale Page A

plant pot. And centered on a half ream of foolscap, a planchette—a small, heart-shaped board of light basswood on two small legs with tiny wooden wheels as feet. A short pencil was affixed to the tapered point of the heart—the crux of the tripod, the meeting place, the business end.
    â€œConjuring up the spirits of the dear departed may be cause for celebration in your circles, Mr. Rathburn; but to me, as a scientist, it is no more than the vestigial squirmings of our primitive past.” The parlor was stiflingly small, dimly lit—the lamp on the roll-top desk in the next room shod a muddy umber light; but even so, the globe of Dr. Stuart’s balding head glinted in its glow. Wisps of gray hair, like striations of cirrus, veiled continents of lividity.
    â€œWhy are you with us tonight, then, Dr. Stuart? A sitting with Sarah Pope is a rare event even for us believers.” Mr. James Rathburn put his fountain pen back in his waistcoat pocket and closed his notebook. He placed his two beefy forearms on the table and let his teeth work at the stem of his pipe.
    â€œMy curiosity got the better of me,” Stuart replied. “Or should I say, I came along at the urgings of my dear wife, whose curiosity sometimes gets the better of both of us.” He chuckled to himself, sending a smile out amongst his fellow sitters and without turning to look at her, reached overand touched the hand of the woman next to him—this unconscious gesture an economical but insincere apology, it seemed to Rathburn, who proceeded to vent his disapproval of Dr. Stuart by drawing on his pipe till it faintly gurgled. As he inhaled he felt the fabric of his jacket tighten across his back. The jacket of a suit he had owned since his college days. Around a body that had expanded over the years with his interest in Spiritualism—as if his growing convictions about Cartesian dualism had prompted his subconscious to wrap his precious soul in a blanket of flesh.
    With a cryptically anthropomorphic swirl, the smoke from his pipe rose into the faint light from the doorway. Lavinia Stuart raised her hand to her face, delicately dabbing at her nose with an embroidered handkerchief. There was an earnest sadness to the line of her mouth, Rathburn thought, the fall of her shoulders, that he realized now must be the only ammunition she had left.
    They were all waiting for the entrance of Sarah Pope. Dr. Stuart, his wife, Lavinia, and a businessman from Boston Rathburn had only just met—“Edward Smith,” the mill owner had said from under his mustache, his handshake dry and firm. There was a carnation in his buttonhole, as if he’d arrived for a more festive occasion than a séance in the somewhat damp and threadbare parlor of a modest walk-up on the Upper East Side.
    â€œI would think,” Stuart continued, “with all the controversy over the notorious Fox sisters and other so-called mediums, you would welcome the likes of me—a skeptic, a scientist.”
    Rathburn chuckled and shook his head. “Materialists like yourself, by their very nature, cannot tolerate the inexplicable, and when they are presented with an explanation—theproduct of controlled experiments by the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, no less—”
    Dr. Stuart interrupted him: “I think Mr. Doyle should stick to his penny dreadfuls.”
    â€œâ€”a defensible theory of postmortem survival, that too is relegated to the dustheap of superstition.”
    Mrs. Stuart straightened up, the contentiousness of the discussion seeming to galvanize her spine; the hand clasping her handkerchief hovered shakily above the table, the lace trim brushing for an instant the neat stack of paper under the planchette as if she were conjuring up her own voice. “But what of Sir Oliver Lodge, dear? His son Raymond, died in the war like our Richard. The evidence was overwhelmingly—”
    â€œMy wife’s dear brother was