The London Séance Society: A Novel

When Morely finally returns to collect them and bring them to the séance, Vaudeline seduces Morely as planned, allowing Lenna to sneak behind him and bludgeon him across the face with the candlestick. Morely falls but is still conscious. He grabs Vaudeline’s ankle and prevents her escape. At Vaudeline’s behest, Lenna flees and locks Vaudeline and Morely in the room together, then runs to the room of the carriage driver, Bennett. He tells her that he was a friend of Evie’s; she got him the job at the Society. Morely had been looking for a deaf carriage driver, so Bennett faked the disability to get the job. Bennett confirms that Morely has been lying about Evie’s participation in the Society, and reveals that on the night of Volckman’s death, Morely went into his study and spent days there.

Hoping to find more information, Lenna rushes to Morely’s study and finds two notebooks in a secret desk drawer. One is Evie’s diary, which Lenna quickly scans. She discovers that Evie was working undercover as a spy within the Society. She was writing an exposé of the Society’s fraudulent practices, and she even communicated this to Vaudeline. Vaudeline wrote her a letter in response, encouraging her espionage and telling her to infiltrate the very séance that led to her death. Lenna is horrified by the realization that Vaudeline has been lying to her and has played a role in Evie’s death.

Morely, trapped in the library, tries to break the door down. He is terrified that Lenna will find the contents of his secret drawer. He recalls the day Evie accidentally left a letter addressed to Vaudeline D’Allaire in his office. He read the letter and discovered her true motives for having sex with him and joining the Society.

Lenna reads the second notebook, which contains descriptions of men, some of whom are ill, along with the names of “member candidates” (240) assigned to these men and payments that these candidates would make to the Society. As Lenna continues to read these entries, she realizes that their author, Morely, knew quite a bit about the deaths of the men described. She reasons that this notebook describes men whom the Society appears to have killed. Lenna is horrified to find an entry for Mr. Heslop, the father of her former lover, Eloise. Mr. Heslop died mysteriously several years ago. From here, Lenna pieces together the Society’s scheme and realizes that Morely killed sick men and then manipulated the dead men’s widows into marrying debt-ridden members of the Society. Those men would then siphon portions of the widows’ fortunes to the Society. Lenna is horrified to see that the final entry is for Vaudeline, Beck, and herself. She realizes that Morely invited Vaudeline to London to kill them all during the séance.

Morely and Vaudeline escape from the library and burst in on Lenna. Lenna lies to Morely, claiming that she only read her sister’s notebook. She accuses Vaudeline of being a liar, and Vaudeline is deeply hurt. Morely grabs a gun from his desk and orders the women to leave the room so they can all head to the séance.

Morely reflects on the day in October when he discovered that Evie was a traitor. He lied to her, telling her that he had mailed her letter to Vaudeline without reading it. In reality, he held onto the letter, and the medium never received it.

To Beck and Bennett’s surprise, a bloodied Morely ushers Vaudeline and Lenna into the carriage at gunpoint. They arrive at the cellar where Volckman was killed and prepare for the séance. While they work, Lenna quietly confronts Vaudeline about her lies, but the medium denies that she ever wrote to Evie or knew about her exposé. Once the preparations are complete, the séance begins.

Morely reflects on his mission in assembling this group in this chamber. He has set up a slow-burning cask of gunpowder that will explode in 34 minutes. He has timed their midnight arrival precisely and knows when to leave the room to escape the explosion. In his estimation, this plan is a clever one because Vaudeline’s séances are renowned for their peculiar occurrences; the explosion will be explained away as yet another supernatural incident.

Vaudeline begins the séance, and the candles immediately go out. As Morely rushes to re-light a few, Lenna notices the handprints of spirits on the tablecloth—at long last, the tangible evidence of spirits that she has sought. As Vaudeline proceeds through the stages of the séance, Lenna begins to experience thoughts about Morely that are not her own. She realizes too late that Evie’s ghost has entered the room and is now possessing her body. Vaudeline expels Evie from Lenna, and Lenna watches as Evie’s ghost exits her sister’s body and spirals above the table.