The confrontation at Hella Lees’s séance becomes a defining crisis in the concealed history of Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. Its surviving traces present an accusation, an ambiguous message that there was no child, and a later scholarly reconstruction: the scene leaves Ash with lasting guilt while exposing how little can be known for certain about what occurred.

Background and Reconstruction

The account of the séance reaches readers indirectly, through Ash’s reflections and the later interpretation of James Blackadder. Blackadder proposes that the poem Mummy Possest concerns LaMotte’s association with Hella Lees, and that LaMotte attended the séance Ash famously interrupted. He further conjectures that Ash believed LaMotte was trying to speak with her dead child and that the possibility the child was his would have made him furious. This is explicitly an interpretation, not a fully confirmed account of Ash’s motive or the séance’s events.

The Accusation and the Message

Ash recalls a terrible sentence cried out during the séance: LaMotte blamed him, saying, “You have made a murderess of me,” and he describes the words as something he hears daily. The recollection makes the confrontation endure beyond the gathering itself: the accusation becomes a recurring burden rather than a matter he can put behind him.

A second utterance complicates the scene. Through the medium, a voice declared, “There is no child.” Ash cannot determine whether this came from cunning, an involuntary exclamation, or genuine telepathy. The message does not settle the truth about the child; instead, its uncertain origin compounds his distress and leaves the central fact unresolved.

Consequences and Significance

Ash’s retrospective account links the séance to a crisis of responsibility. He describes feeling disgust, terror, and responsibility, alongside the persistence of his love for LaMotte, and says he nearly made himself a murderer in earnest. The passage presents the event as both emotional rupture and unresolved moral danger: an accusation, a possible loss, and a supernatural claim that cannot be verified remain entangled.

The séance also shapes later understanding of the relationship. Blackadder’s reconstruction connects Ash’s interruption to his belief that LaMotte might be seeking contact with their dead child, but the evidence preserves that explanation as conjecture. The conflict therefore offers no clean revelation: its force lies in the collision between private grief and public spiritualist performance, and in the lasting uncertainty over what Ash thought he heard and what responsibility he believed he bore.