It could be just a clever guessing game: there is surely a statistical probability that someone with the correct initial, and then the correct name, will be present in an audience of this size, and a medium might cleverly organize her words to lead her to this candidate. Or it could all be a straightforward hoax, with accomplices planted in the audience to impress and perhaps convert the credulous. And then there is a third possibility: that those in the audience who nod and raise an arm and stand up and cry out are genuinely taken by surprise, and genuinely believe contact has been made; but this is because someone in their circle – perhaps a fervent Spiritualist determined to spread belief by however cynical a means – has passed on private details to the organizers. This, George concludes, is probably how it is done. As with perjury, it works best when there is a clever mixture of the true and the false.

'And now there is a message from a gentleman, a very proper and distinguished gentleman, who passed ten years ago, twelve years ago. Yes, I have it, he passed in 1918, he tells me.' The year Father died, thinks George. 'He was about seventy-five years of age.' Strange, Father was seventy-six. A longish pause, and then: 'He was a very spiritual man.' At which point, George feels his flesh begin to prickle, all along his arms and up into his neck. No, no, surely not. He feels frozen in his seat; his shoulders lock solid; he stares rigidly at the stage, waiting for the medium's next move.

She raises her head, and starts looking at the higher parts of the hall, between the upper boxes and the gallery. 'He says he spent his first years in India.'

George is now utterly terrified. No one knew he was coming here except Maud. Perhaps it is a wild guess – or rather, an exactly accurate guess – by someone who worked out that various people connected with Sir Arthur would probably be here. But no – because many of the most famous and respectable, like Sir Oliver Lodge, have merely sent telegrams. Could someone have recognized him when he arrived? This was just about possible – but then how could they have discovered the very year of Father's death?

Mrs Roberts now has her arm outflung, and is pointing to the upper tier of boxes on the other side of the hall. George's flesh is throbbing all over, as if he has been thrown naked into a bank of nettles. He thinks: I am not going to be able to bear this; it is coming my way, and I cannot escape. The gaze, and the arm, are moving slowly round the great amphitheatre, holding the same level, as if watching a spirit form go questingly from box to box. All George's rational conclusions of a moment ago are worthless. His father is about to speak to him. His father, who spent all his life as a priest in the Church of England, is about to speak to him through this… improbable woman. What can he want? What message can be so urgent? Something to do with Maud? A paternal rebuke to his son's failing faith? Is some terrifying judgement about to fall on him? Close to panic, George finds himself wishing Mother were by his side. But Mother has been dead these six years.

As the medium's head slowly continues to turn, as her arm still points to the same level, George feels more scared than the day he sat in his office, knowing that at some point a knock would come and a policeman would arrest him for a crime he had never committed. Now, he is again a suspect, about to be identified in front of ten thousand witnesses. He thinks he must simply rise to his feet and end the suspense by crying, 'That is my father!' Perhaps he will faint and fall over the balcony into the stalls below. Perhaps he will have a seizure.

'His name… he is telling me his name… It begins with an S…'

And still the head turns, turns, seeking that one face in the upper boxes, seeking the glorious moment of acknowledgement. George is quite sure everyone is looking at him – and soon they will know exactly who he is. But now George shrinks from the recognition he wished for earlier. He wants to hide in the deepest dungeon, the most noxious prison cell. He thinks, this cannot be true, this absolutely cannot be true, my father would never behave like this, perhaps I am going to soil myself as I did when a boy on the way home from school, perhaps that is why he is coming, to remind me I am a child, to show me his authority continues even after he is dead, yes, that would not be unlike him.

'I have the name-' George thinks he is going to scream. He is going to faint. He will fall and hit his head on – 'It is Stuart.'

And then a man of about George's age, a few yards to his left, is on his feet and signalling to the stage, acknowledging this seventy-five-year-old who was brought up in India and passed in 1918, seeming almost to claim him as a prize. George feels that the shadow of the angel of death has been cast over him; he is chilled to the bone, sweaty, exhausted, threatened, utterly relieved, and deeply ashamed. And at the same time, part of him is impressed, curious, fearfully wondering…

'And now I have a lady, she was about forty-five to fifty years of age. She passed over in 1913. She mentions Morpeth. She never married, but she has a message for a gentleman.' Mrs Roberts starts to look downwards, into the arena. 'She says something about a horse.'

There is a pause. Mrs Roberts drops her head again, turns it sideways, takes advice. 'I have her name now. It is Emily. Yes, she gives her name as Emily Wilding Davison. She has a message, she had arranged to come here to give a gentleman a message. I think she told you through the planchette or Ouija board she would be present.'

A man in an open-necked shirt, sitting near the platform, rises to his feet, and as if conscious he is addressing the whole hall, says in a carrying voice, 'That is correct. She told me she would communicate tonight. Emily is the suffragette who threw herself before the King's horse and died from her injuries. As a spirit figure she is well known to me.'

The hall seems to take in a vast collective breath. Mrs Roberts starts to relay the message, but George does not bother to listen. His sanity feels suddenly restored; the clear, keen wind of reason is blowing again through his brain. Hocus-pocus, as he always suspected. Emily Davison indeed. Emily Davison, who broke windows, threw stones, set fire to postboxes; who refused to obey prison regulations and was consequently force-fed on numerous occasions. A silly, hysterical woman in George's view, who deliberately sought death in order to advance her cause; though some said she was merely trying to plant a flag on the horse, and misjudged the speed of the animal. In which case, incompetent as well as hysterical. You cannot break the law to advance the law, that was a nonsense. You do it by petition, by argument, by demonstration if necessary, but by reason. Those who broke the law as an argument for obtaining the vote thereby demonstrated their unfitness to receive it.

Still, the point is not whether Emily Davison was a silly, hysterical woman, or whether her action resulted in Maud getting the vote of which George fully approves. No, the point is that Sir Arthur was such a well-known opponent of Women's Suffrage that the notion of such a spirit attending his memorial service is absurd. Unless the spirits of the departed are as illogical as they are unruly. Perhaps Emily Davison thought of disrupting this gathering just as she once disrupted the Derby. But in that case, her message ought to be for Sir Arthur, or his widow, rather than for some sympathetic friend.

Stop, George says to himself. Stop thinking rationally about such matters. Or rather, stop granting these people the benefit of the doubt. You were given an unpleasant shock by a clever false alarm, but that is no ground for losing your reason as well as your nerve. He also thinks: yet if I was so scared, if I panicked, if I believed I might be going to die, then consider the potential effect on weaker minds and lesser intelligences. George wonders if the Witchcraft Act – with which he is admittedly unfamiliar – should not remain on the Statute Book after all.