The Hole in the Wall

A clairvoyant couture-clad charlatan billed as Madame Mysteria is flung from velvet-lined séance car to muddy rail ditch when the night express hurtles off an embankment; her body lies unclaimed because three grifters—sardonic cardsharp “The Fox,” limping pickpocket Limpy Jim, and brutish strong-arm Deagon—treasure the dead woman’s cache of extorted confessions more than her corpse. Spotting condemned shop-girl Jean Oliver in the county lockup, they bargain: impersonate the medium, fleece the bereaved, and we’ll spring you. Jean, framed by steel-willed Mrs. Ramsey for consorting with the dowager’s smitten heir Donald, counters with a darker demand—abduct the Ramsey grandson, a silver-spoon tot whose disappearance will wound the society dragon who engineered her ruin. While the conspirators rehearse ectoplasmic parlour tricks in candle-lit parlours, investigative newshound Gordon Grant—once Jean’s betrothed—traces a daisy-chain of post-séction burglaries, each victim a patron of the late oracle. His scoop unspools: blackmail lists, forged death certificates, a switched infant in a carpet-bag, and finally the living Mysteria herself, very much breathing beneath widow’s weeds. A courtroom crescendo sees Mrs. Ramsey, pride cracked, exonerate Jean, the kidnapped child restored, the lovers reunited, the conspirators shackled, and the hole in the wall—once a peephole for voyeuristic larceny—boarded up, its secrets sealed yet still humming like a hive.