The London Séance Society

Praise for The London Séance Society “Penner brings history to vivid life in this atmospheric and evocative whodunnit.” —Nita Prose, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid “Readers will savor this suspenseful tale. Penner shines, and the result is breathtaking!” —Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of Code Name Sapphire “Penner has conjured up another winner. Haunting in the best of ways.” —Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Magnolia Palace “Brilliant… An explosive, immersive time-bomb of a novel.” —Laurie Lico Albanese, award-winning author of Hester “An evocative and delicious read with a mystery that will have you turning pages late into the night.” —Madeline Martin, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Bookshop in London “At turns spooky and sexy, sly and subversive.” —Natalie Jenner, internationally bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society “Mesmerizing, seductive and absolutely irresistible… The London Séance Society is completely spellbinding.” —Hank Phillippi Ryan, USA TODAY bestselling author of The House Guest “A Victorian whodunit crackling with tension and lavished with ambience. A winner!” —Heather Webb, USA TODAY bestselling author of The Next Ship Home Sarah Penner The London Séance Society ISBN-13: 9780369726018 The London Séance Society Copyright © 2023 by Sarah Penner All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental. Park Row Books 22 Adelaide St. West, 41st Floor Toronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canada ParkRowBooks.com BookClubbish.com For my big sister, Kellie. (And for you, Mom. After all, you were the first to say, “Let’s go to a séance…”) Contents Epigraph The Seven Stages of a Séance Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 Epilogue Author’s Note Victorian Mourning Customs Victorian Funereal Feasting Do-It-Yourself Three-Layer Trick Candle Further Reading Acknowledgments Graves, yawn and yield your dead... —William Shakespeare The Seven Stages of a Séance I Ancient Devil’s Incantation The medium recites an incantation to protect séance participants from rogues and fiends. II Invocation The medium issues a summons to all nearby spirits to enter the séance room. III Isolation The medium rids the room of all spirits except the target spirit, i.e., the deceased person whom the séance participants intend to contact. IV Invitation The medium compels entrancement by the deceased’s spirit. V Entrancement The medium is entranced by the deceased’s spirit. VI Dénouement The medium ascertains the information desired. VII Termination The medium expels the deceased’s spirit from the room, ending the entrancement and concluding the séance. 1 LENNA Paris, Thursday, 13 February 1873 At an abandoned château on the wooded outskirts of Paris, a dark séance was about to take place. The clock read thirty-two minutes after midnight. Lenna Wickes, spiritualist understudy, sat at an oval table draped in black linen. A gentleman and his wife, the other séance participants, sat at the table with her. Their faces were somber and their breathing uneasy. They were in what was once the parlor of the dilapidated château, which had not been inhabited for a hundred years. Behind Lenna, blood-colored paper peeled from the walls, clusters of mildew hiding underneath. If all went well tonight, the ghost they sought—that of a young woman, murdered here in this very place—would soon appear. Above them, something skittered. Mice, surely. Lenna had seen the droppings when they walked in, the tiny black kernels scattered about the baseboards. But then the skitter turned to a scratching noise and—was that a thud she’d just heard? She fought off a chill, thinking that if ghosts did indeed exist, this derelict château would be the place to find them. She glanced quickly out the window into the darkness. Fat, wet snowflakes, rare for Paris, drifted down around the château. They’d set a few lanterns outside, and Lenna’s eyes fell on the metal gate at the front of the estate, wrapped in dead ivy vines and quivering in its brace. Beyond it stood dark, thick forest, the needly evergreens dusted with white. The séance participants, called sitters, had gathered at midnight. The parents of the victim—whom Lenna had met several days prior to this event—arrived first. They were followed soon after by Lenna and her teacher, the renowned medium who would lead tonight’s affair: Vaudeline D’Allaire. All of them were dressed in black, and the energy in the room was neither warm nor welcoming. As the parents waited in their seats, their movements were nervous and abrupt: the father knocked over a brass candlestick and apologized profusely. Lenna, opening her notebook from across the table, couldn’t blame him. They were all anxious, and Lenna had wiped her damp palms on her gown a dozen times already. No one wanted to spend this agonizing hour under Vaudeline’s guidance. The price of admission was terribly high, and that wasn’t accounting for the francs she required up front. The spirit they meant to conjure tonight was not of the everyday sort, but nor were any of the ghosts Vaudeline invited to come forth. These were not old grandmothers in white nightgowns, lives lived long, stalking through corridors. These were not the casualties of war, valiant men who’d known what they were getting themselves into. No, these ghosts were victims of violence, and gone too soon. They’d been murdered, every