The Quiet Madness of 'Séance on a Wet Afternoon'

I'm often drawn to the more muted mystery thrillers. The ones that star quiet, unbalanced individuals who promenade in gloomy, claustrophobic habitats that tend to close in ever so slowly with every page turn. Where the only explosions that occur are the synapses of the mind, when mental slippage is in its most sinister, and secreted form.

Written by Australian author Martin McShane in 1961, Séance on a Wet Afternoon checks all those boxes for me when it comes to psychological thrillers, as it takes an unsettling dive into the disturbed mind of Myra Savage.

Myra is a middle-aged medium who believes she possesses special sensory "gifts", "gifts" that have her foresee the future and has her in touch with spirits from other dimensions. She supports her unemployed, asthmatic husband, Bill, through this "gift" by conducting seances out of the couple's isolated Victorian dwelling.

As quaint as it all sounds, Myra isn't content. She vies to be world-renowned for her "gifts" and abandon the meager existence her and Bill share, thus, she hatches a plan to kidnap the child of a prominent businessman, and to use her "gifts" to find the "missing" child and collect the ransom, with camera bulb flashes, congratulatory headlines, and patrons lined up at the door to soon follow. Ensnaring the assistance of her hapless hen-pecked husband into the plot, Myra is convinced that the plan possesses no flaws, but it's obvious to the reader that the signs are there for a flurry of disaster to unfold.


From the synopsis it feels as if McShane has written a predictable story that is screaming its conclusion in the first chapter. Right when Myra rattles off the kidnapping plot it's obvious that these two individuals aren't criminal masterminds, out of their depth, and that nothing will end well for them. Yet, McShane writes as if things aren't as obvious as they appear, and he turns the screw by smearing his swift and crisp prose with heaps of skepticism. It's this doubt that raises the tension in the prose where you begin to believe that maybe, juuuussst maybe these two have in fact crafted and executed the perfect crime.

Also within this frame of doubt, you begin to question Myra's psychic ability, as with the caper going forward, she becomes more and more subtracted from reality. Séance is able to blend with a seamless precision the paranormal and the psychological. To garnish the genre salad are elements of noir and gothic, all without bloodshed and a ghost knocking about the house. It's one of the few stories I've read that attempts to contest "extrasensory perception" and the spiritual world with mental illness, almost dispelling the notion of the metaphysical and finding a technical reasoning behind Myra's mental decent.

This type of treatment reminded me of a book I read last year, 1961's Some Of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon. While also following a character with mental illness, instead of concerning itself with the spirit world, Some Of Your Blood takes a fantastical Victorian-era monster to task and psychologically analyzes a would-be vampire. Whether this was some kind of 1960s trend is a wild guess (and in a decade that began with the debuts of sci-fi/speculative shows, The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone, and ended with Roman Polanksi's literal horror classic Rosemary's Baby makes for a debate), but it's interesting that there were authors like McShane and Sturgeon who were attempting to explore beyond unknown forces and actually attempt to explain the unexplainable.

Still, even with this detour away from the supernatural, the doubt seeds are planted, as Myra is so calm, so nonchalant as she doles out this kidnapping plan to where it seems that she does in fact know what's coming around the corner --- or does she?

Séance achieves a creeping domestic claustrophobia that often drowns out the deranged criminal act and focuses on the slave/master relationship Myra and Bill possess. Consistent rainfall, Bill's asthma, and Myra conducting her business within the confides of their congested homestead traps them inside and keeps them isolated often, but it's more so Myra that keeps Bill in a suffocating snow globe of madness. Bill's position is not as a husband, but as a protector of Myra's delusions, grimacing cheerleader of her superiority complex, and the pawn in the maddening games that only make sense in her own twisted mind. He's also the moral compass throughout as all the while Myra is exalted at how 'smoothly' the kidnapping (or in her words "borrowing") went, Bill is a bundle of nerves and is concerned about the child's well-being, especially when she ends up contracting the flu.

Their dysfunctional dynamic is better realized in the Bryan Forbes-directed 1964 film, that stars Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough. On-screen you can see how Myra looms over her husband, her constant dominance and sly, berating word play sheathing Bill in a state of infantilization. Stanley is just fantastic at portraying a character with such polite cruelty and steely madness that it's no wonder she received an Academy Award nomination for this performance. With every condescending coo tossed to Attenborough's Bill, you flinch and divert gaze along with him.

Though Stanley's performance dominates the narrative, on a second viewing of this film I paid more attention to Attenborough's Bill as he doesn't just play a put-upon husband, he plays a defeated man who is has been the weary gatekeeper of his wife's madness for so long that he has not only normalized it, but has canceled himself out to where you don't even feel he has committed a crime, but rather done a self-sacrifice. His life is so without purpose, so without singular motive that following his wife's orders is all he think can do.

Bill's misery is conveyed through Attenborough's expressive eyes. The man is just begging to have his strings severed from this miserable existence that when the police begin to draw suspicion towards the Savages, he seems to want to say more, while also wanting to protect the wife he does indeed have affection for. Of course your rooting for the victim (who is a six-year-old not to be bossed), but when Myra wields that Lady Macbeth-ish power over Bill you're truly rooting for him to just hop on his motorbike and drive fast down those desolate English roads away from this vindictive madwoman.

Both book and film are great companions and compliments to one another as they both raise doubts, but also raise questions of culpability. It often happens that the ringleader of a crime should shoulder a bulk of the punishment and judgement, but Myra wasn't the muscle behind the crime. Sure, Myra is responsible for devising the plan, but she's not 'all there', and Bill knows that, but instead of putting a stop Myra, he did what he always did --- he went along and became a kidnapper. So is he more or less culpable of the crime than his wife? Or are there more victims than just the kidnapped child? 

It's these questions, grey areas, doubts, and conflicts that make Séance On A Wet Afternoon a psychological terror of unique human complexity and a rarity in the thriller genre.  

from the margins

• Rating: *** 1/2 stars
• 192 pages
• First published in 1961 // Published April 30th 2013 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road

• There was a plan for the film to change Myra and Bill into a male same-sex couple. While interesting and bold for the time, I'm glad this wasn't done. Seeing the woman in the relationship be ruthless while the male adopts a maternal mindset was a nice flip of the script --- and ripe for all kinds of gender psych evals. 

• Book vs. Movie Showdown: It's weird, but I prefer the ending to the movie than the book (Seriously y'all, Kim Stanley...the finale...chills). This largely due to the film better humanizing the characters by way of the audience discovering the Savages had a stillborn child. This, to me, colors in the contention between the couple, along with giving Myra a "reason" for her fiendish plan as she believes her deceased child is contacting her and instructing her on how to conduct the kidnapping. It also gives Myra another dimension of complexity as it seems odd that a woman so obsessed with the loss of her child that she would not only bring harm to another child by kidnapping it (and then being dismissive when the child falls ill), but would put a mother through similar anguish. 

• I'll let you finish...Julie Andrews, but Kim Stanley should've scooped up the Best Actress statuette in 1964 as a medium who slips into utter madness is much more fascinating than a stock-sure singing nanny who dances with chimney sweepers any day.