William then stood and looked at Henry and smiled again. He had, Henry saw as if for the first time, an extraordinary face. His expression was open and perceptive, his eyes roved about as though he needed to take in the many competing aspects of the scene in front of him before making up his mind. His considerable and sparkling intelligence was close to charm in the way it manifested itself. His gaze was both provocative and amused; in his eyes and in the lines of his face there were signs of compassionate judgements and complex distinctions that he was clearly in the habit of making with great confidence and wit and clarity of thought. He did not look like an American, nor indeed like a member of the James family. He had developed a physiognomy entirely his own. Alice, Henry felt, was easier to place, handsome and well-groomed, her kindness not masking her intelligence nor diminishing it, demonstrating only that her sympathy would always come first. Before they were halfway up the hill, he felt that they had come as parents might, the father slightly distracted and withdrawn and the mother all smiles. He was glad that he had written to them so sharply about his purchase of Lamb House so that it would now be beyond their criticism, as he hoped he himself might be, during their stay.

It was apparent that Alice had decided that she would like Rye from the start, and put care into her remarks so that they would not sound too gushingly enthusiastic and undiscriminating. She spoke about how beautifully old the town seemed, about how private Lamb House was, like a country house in the town, she said. William assented to this as they stood in front of it. The garden, Henry explained, was not at its best, they must come in the summer for that, and the recent weather had not helped. Immediately on entering the house he showed William the study he might use, then accompanied his guests to their bedroom, stopping at the room their daughter would sleep in when she arrived. Then he took them to view the dining room, the downstairs sitting room, the garden room, soon to enter its period of hibernation, and the kitchens. He introduced them to the staff and then led them upstairs once more to see his own room, saving the largest room, the drawing room, for last, presuming that William and Alice, so used to the proportions available in Cambridge and Boston, would perceive the other rooms as small.

He showed them the house as though they were prospective buyers; and they managed to make positive and supportive remarks. Over supper that evening, it struck him that were the Smiths to reappear, drunken and slatternly, Alice would have something cheerful to say about the quality of the service at Lamb House and William would nod in manly agreement.

AFTER LUNCH the next day, when the dishes had been cleared, Alice James closed the door of the dining room and asked Henry if she and William could speak to him, uninterrupted, on a matter of some importance. Henry found Burgess Noakes in the hallway and asked him if he could ensure that they were not disturbed in the dining room. When he came back into the room, Alice was sitting with her hands joined at the table and William was standing by the window. Their expressions were serious. Had a lawyer appeared at that moment to read a long and complicated will, Henry would not have been surprised.

‘Harry,’ Alice said, ‘we have been to see another medium, a Mrs Fredericks.We have been a number of times. I went alone at first and I am absolutely certain that she did not know who I was or anything about me.’

‘And then I accompanied her,’ William said, ‘and all in all we have had four sessions with her.’

‘We thought to write to you,’ Alice said, ‘after the first session with her, but then as they went on we decided we would wait until we came to England. Harry, your mother has been in touch with us.’

‘She spoke through Mrs Piper,’ William interrupted, ‘we know that, but there was something more personal in her message this time.’

‘Is she at rest? Is my mother at rest?’ Henry asked.

‘Harry, she is at rest, she is simply watching over us all,’ William said, ‘through the mysterious gauze between her state and ours, in the vast white radiance that lies beyond.’

‘She wishes you to know that she is at rest,’ Alice said.

‘Has she said anything about my sister?’ Henry asked.

‘No, nothing about Alice,’ William replied.

‘About Wilky or my father?’ he asked.

‘In none of the sessions did she allude to the dead,’ William said.

‘What did she say then? To whom did she allude?’ Henry asked.

‘She wishes you to know that you are not alone, Harry,’ Alice said.

She looked at him gravely as he took this in without speaking.

‘Her consciousness has not been extinguished, then,’ he said.

‘She is at rest, Harry,’ Alice said. ‘She wishes you to know that.’

William moved across the room and sat at the table. Henry could see more clearly now that he had lost flesh around his jaw; his eyes were sad but seemed to shine as he spoke.

‘Our medium described this house. There were things she could not have known about. Yesterday when we walked through these rooms it was all confirmed for us.’

‘Harry,’ Alice said, ‘she described that statue over the mantelpiece.’

All three of them examined Andersen’s statue of the young count.

‘And there is something even stranger in the front room,’ Alice went on, ‘it is a painting of a deserted landscape.’

Henry stood up suddenly and walked across the room.

‘I don’t know if you noticed me studying it yesterday,’ Alice said. ‘Harry, I did so because she described it in detail. She said that it meant something very special to you, but when I asked you about it yesterday, you said nothing.’

‘It belonged,’ Henry said, ‘to Constance Fenimore Woolson. It is the only object of hers in this house. I brought it from Venice.’

‘Mrs Fredericks described these rooms,’ Alice said, ‘the windows, the colours, but these two objects – the statue and the painting – she said were special. We have to believe her, Harry, we have to believe her.’

Henry moved towards the door and opened it. He stood in the hallway for a moment until the appearance of Burgess Noakes made him retreat once more into the dining room. William and Alice sat at the table watching him.

‘I need some time alone,’ he whispered.

They both stood up.

‘We did not mean…’ Alice began.

‘Nothing,’ Henry replied. ‘Nothing. Give me a day or two to think. This is a great shock and I promise we will return to the matter when I am ready to accept the idea that my mother’s voice is calling to us.’

IN THE AFTERNOON, he walked for miles and when he returned he made his way quickly and silently to the garden room but he could neither read nor write and he was cold. He wished above all that William and Alice might go now, having carried the message. At supper, however, as soon as he sat down, he felt an immense warmth towards them. He realized that his brother and sister-in-law, operating in unison, had saved many anecdotes about mutual friends until now. He watched William being funny and judicious and deeply informative on the rise of Oliver Wendell Holmes and the lives of John Gray and Sargy Perry, old before their time, he said, and William Dean Howells, whom he admired still. William told stories, moving towards pure malice before saving the moment with a remark which was so well phrased as to cause his brother a pure and self-forgetful delight.

That night when he had retired he wished his sister Alice were in the house with them too; he would have enjoyed her acid version of this formidable couple in their soft-spoken intimacy, a pair who were ostensibly offering an open smile while, in fact, operating like a great fortress built to repel all intruders. He wished he knew how to introduce the subject of his sister, and her contempt for mediums and her belief that seances were pure nonsense. Her diary, he was aware, had not spared her brother and sister-in-law.