  Mistress Bleaker was waiting by the window as we entered the room. The wheels of her chair squealed angrily as she turned to face us.
"Good evening, my friends, good evening," she said, the youthful tone of her voice at odds with the advanced years of her age. "I say," she continued, her tone conspiratorial. "Isn't this terribly exciting ? " The awful truth of the matter was that it was not exciting at all.
I was only there to keep Claude company, and Claude was only there because Mistress Bleaker's Cook made a rather fine sherry trifle, and there was promise of a late supper. I would much rather have been at home that sitting in a dingy back room listening to some French fraud pretending to communicate with the dearly departed. Aware of Mistress Bleaker's sensitivities, however, I held my tongue. It transpired that there were to be six of us at the S&eacute;ance - in addition to myself, Claude and Mistress Bleaker, we would be joined by the Maurer-O'Callaghan's and by Mademoiselle Friante, the renowned French medium.
And, if the word in the London dailies was to be believed, a courtesan and a mountebank. Claude and I had discussed attempting to unmask her as the fraud that she undoubtedly was, but had decided against it as a mark of respect for Mistress Bleaker. 
