- We begin with another epigraph from Christabel LaMotte. This one is a poem that includes images of death and haunting. Spooky.
- As the chapter itself gets underway, we readers are reunited with Mortimer Cropper, who's in the middle of giving a lecture on Randolph Henry Ash.
- As we learn, Cropper has decided to drum up a bunch of press about the Ash-LaMotte correspondence and is hoping to swing things in his favor.
- Possession's narrator describes Cropper's lecture style, then tells us a little bit about the things that the gaunt American cowboy has been up to since we last saw him. As we learn, Cropper has recently remembered that the archives in Harmony City, Nevada (where he lives and works) might contain a letter by Christabel LaMotte.
- Sure enough, the archival assistant soon finds the letter that Cropper was looking for. As it turns out, it was a letter that Christabel LaMotte wrote to his own great-grandmother, Priscilla Penn Cropper. The two women had written to discuss their shared beliefs in spiritualism.
- Mortimer Cropper's brain is like a steel trap, and LaMotte's letter to his grandmother quickly reminds him of one of Randolph Henry Ash's letters.
- In the letter he has in mind, Ash describes a supposedly fraudulent séance that he attended—the very same one, maybe, that inspired the biting poem Mummy Possest.
- With the newfound Ash-LaMotte correspondence in mind, Cropper suddenly starts to wonder if Christabel LaMotte may have been at that very same séance, too.
- As it turns out, James Blackadder is hot on the same trail. Possession's narrator whisks us over to Blackadder's office in the British Museum, where we find him reading through a book by Helen Lees—a spiritualist medium Randolph Henry Ash most definitely met.
- As he reads, Blackadder quickly realizes that Christabel LaMotte was at the séance that Randolph Henry Ash attended.
- Take it from us, Shmoopers: things at that séance got real.
- According to Helen Lees's account, Randolph Henry Ash interrupted the séance by grabbing Mrs. Lees and accusing her of being a fraud. He then rushed over to Christabel, and demanded to know what had become of their child. Talk about making a scene.
- After showing us a long excerpt from Helen Lees's book, the narrator tells us some more about what Blackadder has been getting up to since hearing from Toby Byng.
- As we learn, Blackadder has been doing his best to lobby the government and other British institutions for the support he'll need in order to keep the Ash-LaMotte correspondence in the country.
- While Blackadder himself muses angrily on Mortimer Cropper's limitless checkbook, he gets a call from a journalist named Shushila Patel, who invites him to do a television interview about the Ash-LaMotte letters. He agrees.
- When Blackadder meets with Shushila Patel, he doesn't do a great job of explaining why twentieth-century people should give a hoot about Randolph Henry Ash's love letters to Christabel LaMotte.
- Suddenly, Leonora Stern sweeps into the studio. Turns out Shushila Patel has invited her as well.
- Leonora gives Blackadder some good advice about making Randolph Henry Ash sound sexy to their listeners, and Blackadder actually does a pretty good job of pulling it off.
- Leonora proves to be a great ally during the interview: she insists that the Ash-LaMotte correspondence should stay in England, and she helps to make it all sound sexy and cool.
- After the interview, Leonora and Blackadder decide to get a drink together. As we readers watch them walk away, Leonora begins to tell Blackadder where she thinks Maud Bailey and Roland Mitchell have gone…