Hugo coughed, perhaps to remind his wife that he was still there. If we had been able to see clearly, I suspect the furious look she might have returned would have melted steel.
“Let us begin,” was all she said, but the anger was evident in her voice.
We sat in silence for a moment.
“Do we hold hands?” asked Marie, from out of the darkness.
“You can hold mine,” said Plantin, and they giggled together like the lovers they were.
“Shhh!” said mevrouw van Engels who, despite having said nothing or moved one inch since she had entered the room, was evidently a believer.
“Is there a John?” Francesca asked suddenly. “I can sense a John…”
I was immediately disappointed. John is one of the most common names in Britain. She knew that she was trying to accommodate Holloway and me in this séance and, I supposed, she thought that we might respond. I refused to do so. She may not feel that she was under scrutiny this evening, but I had not promised to refrain from examining and testing everything she said and did.
Marie spoke up: “Could it be… Jean?”
“He is an old man – a grey beard.”
“My uncle!” Marie said.
“Has he passed over to the other side? This… Jean… is on the other side.”
“Oui! He died six years ago.”
“He says to tell you that all will be well.”
“What will be well?”
“This thing that concerns you most deeply at this time. The thing that you do not feel you can talk about. The secret thing. I do not know if it is secret to all or secret only because you should not talk about it in this company. But this thing… all will be well. Do you understand?”
There was an expectant silence.
“She understands,” Plantin answered for her.
“Oui. I understand very well. Thank Uncle Jean for me…”
I was very disappointed. These were all generalities. Jean or John. Common names in any language. And this “all will be well” platitude. Everybody has secrets. I thought of mine. “All will be well” would fit that just as effectively. I admired the woman. I was enjoying just sitting in her company and listening to her warm voice. Nevertheless, she would have to do better than that.
“Someone broke something before they came here. Very precious. Given by a special person.”
Generalities again, I told myself.
Van Engels spoke, “My spectacles?”
“No… no… it is… porcelain. Or glass.”
“My spectacles,” insisted van Engels. “I have lost them,” he explained, somewhat unnecessarily.
“Shhh!” admonished his wife.
“No… no… a container. Flowers?”
“A vase!” Werner erupted. “I gave my wife a vase for her birthday, two years ago. I broke it before I came. I have told her to replace it. I gave her money.”
“Is it blue?”
“Blue?” Werner thought for a moment. “It has blue in it. Or it had blue… now it is broken.”
“Then your wife has bought a new vase and this is blue.”
“Nonsense!” Pivcevic laughed. It would seem he could restrain his cynicism no longer.
“Tomas, please…” Anna scolded in the darkness.
“Well – she is just saying anything that could apply to anyone. If there are enough people here, you can choose anything to have happened and, in all the thousands of things that happen to people every day, you will always find a match.”
“Tomas, please…”
There was an uncomfortable silence. My eyes had started to become adjusted to the profound darkness in the room. Although I could not quite make out shapes, I could at least detect a difference in the degrees of darkness if somebody moved. Francesca sat stock still while others, I could see, were more animated. Eventually, Francesca broke the silence.
“I can only say what I am given to understand. The new vase is blue. He will find it when he gets home. And when he finds it, he will know that I am right and did speak true.”
I admired her dignity. She was a very strong, as well as magnetic, woman.
Holloway, through all of this sideshow, had understandably become increasingly impatient with these exchanges, and wanted to get on to the main event on the playbill.
“What about Holmes? We came here to see if Holmes’s spirit would come.”
“Ja!” agreed Werner.
“Did you not see anything about my spectacles?” asked van Engels, sounding disappointed. It would seem, however, that even the world beyond was not as interested in him.
“Forget about your stupid spectacles!” exclaimed mevrouw van Engels, displaying an animation none of us around that table could have guessed that she possessed. “The spirits cannot talk about anything they would like, or what you tell them to talk about; it comes when it comes. Please proceed, Francesca.”
The room, I noticed suddenly, was filled with a fragrance. Lily of the valley. It was not, though, a psychic manifestation. It was the fragrance that Francesca wore. I had noticed it as I had entered the house, and as she had entered this room. Why I should suddenly smell the scent at that point, I did not know. It just seemed to waft across to me. Perhaps, in the darkness, although I could not confirm it, she had leaned closer to me across the table for a moment. Whether she had or not, in the end did not concern me. What did concern me was that I then began to wish that she had. In fact I began to wish that she were sitting right next to me, rather than across the table from me. I wanted her to be closer, so that I might enjoy her warmth and her fragrance and her personality…
I shook myself out of this absurd reverie. It was impossible. She could not possibly captivate me. No other woman has captivated me apart from my beloved Touie, who favoured, I reminded myself, lavender water.
But that lily of the valley was an entrancing fragrance. Fresh, young. Vital. Full of promise and spring and meadows and young love. The early days of love, before familiarity and the daily round set in.
What was happening to me? What was beguiling me…?
“I do not know if I can discover whether there is a spirit of Sherlock Holmes,” Francesca said. “Yesterday, I wondered if it might be possible. Today… now… I am not so sure… I cannot make things happen.”
“You must!” cried Holloway. “You take our money and then you give nothing in return. I like your business, madam. Would that I could share in it. I daresay I could. Just turn out the lights and repeat: ‘The spirits tell me they have nothing to say today. That will be one guinea, thank you. Close the door as you leave.’ Oh yes, a most convenient method of procuring an income, I must say.”
“If you are not satisfied, I will not take your money. But I say again, I cannot make things happen.”
“My friends,” Plantin said, “I suggest that this is inutile and that we should close the meeting for tonight. Are we all in agreement?”
Some agreed, some did not. Some mumbled non-committally. It was hard to tell who was who. I said nothing.
“Doyle?”
“Holloway?”
“Concentrate.”
“What?”
“Think about Holmes. Picture him in your mind. Summon him into your thoughts. Bring him alive in your imagination. Like Shelley’s Frankenstein, summon life into your creation.”
I considered objecting, but realized that this was the precise reason for our presence around this table. There were also Francesca’s feelings to take into account.
“Very well,” I said. Not that I was in any way taken with the woman. I was happily married. Dear Touie. “Happy to oblige.”
“Are you thinking about him?”
“Just about to.”
We sat in strained silence for a short while. All at once, Francesca gave a sharp gasp.
“Is it Holmes?” asked Holloway.
“Sounds like she has a headache,” said Pivcevic.
“Shhh!” said Anna and mevrouw van Engels.
Fra
ncesca cried out again; this time her voice was deeper.
I carried on concentrating on Holmes. I was imagining him in Scarlet when we first encountered him, bending over a bench, conducting a chemical experiment. Lean, intense, intelligent and absorbed in the science of deduction. Arrogant. Powerful yet flawed; greatly flawed. A musician, a pipe smoker, a lover of orderliness and propriety. A seeker of truth and justice. Outside the law. Tenacious. Heroic. Quick tempered. Easily bored when not occupied in matters of the greatest moment. Alone. Lonely. Misunderstood.
“Oh!” cried Francesca once more.
“What is it…?” a number of the assembled asked, concerned for any number of different reasons. Worried for her health, worried for theirs. Frightened of the unknown, or eager to learn more and experience a hitherto unimagined journey into the mystical and the psychic planes.
“He is falling!” Francesca wailed.
“Who is?” we asked.
All of a sudden the table began to vibrate. The legs rattled on the flagged floor and there were both gasps of surprise and whimpers of concern.
“Falling… falling!” Her voice was strange, trembling, agitated. “He turns… Once, twice…”
The table was now lifting and bucking as if it were alive and trying to shake us off. Marie moaned in fear and mevrouw van Engels sniffed. Werner rumbled uncontrollably.
“Ahhhh!” Francesca screamed.
I was practically thrown off my seat as the table convulsed and flung itself halfway across the room. Judging by the exclamations, others, too, were similarly affected. There were also cries of pain as people perhaps caught glancing blows. The table landed with a crash upside down somewhere outside our circle. The oil lamp, which had been set in the middle of the table, followed it an instant later, with a resounding clang and a smashing of its glass lens.
Those of us who had leapt to our feet in the confusion blundered about the room in the darkness, seeking to calm one another and regain a sense of perspective. This went on for a few moments until someone, I think it was Pivcevic, had the presence of mind to go to the door and open it. The light from the hallway flooded in and we all winced at the unaccustomed brightness after the gloom of the room.
Francesca sat in her seat, head bowed, her chin resting on her sternum. She looked exhausted. Holloway was still sitting also, staring in a dazed, unseeing way.
It took us some further few moments to calm down and regain our dignity and equilibrium.
“I think…” suggested Pivcevic, wisely, “that is quite enough for one evening. Perhaps we should all go straightaway back to the hotel.”
We all agreed. Holloway started to stand up, and Werner helped him to his feet. They followed Monsieur and Madame Plantin and the van Engelses out of the room. Hugo, Francesca’s husband, was only too eager to see them to the door. The Pivcevics thanked Francesca, who had also recovered herself sufficiently to stand, for a splendid evening’s entertainment, and paid the bill. Francesca made a play of refusing the money, but Pivcevic insisted and, to be honest, she didn’t try too hard to object the second time.
The Pivcevics having left, only I remained with our hostess. She looked at me and smiled.
“Was that what you were seeking?” she asked.
“I was seeking nothing. But I think the desired effect was achieved.”
“Sherlock Holmes came?”
“I am not so sure of that. I’m not so sure what it was I witnessed tonight, to be frank. However, the effect was that we all were shaken and some even frightened out of our wits. I do not know what occurred, but everybody has probably gone away from here taking with them whatever they desire to take with them. Be it belief or scepticism.”
“And you?”
“Me…?”
“Why did you agree to this?”
“Like you, I expect. One can never discover new territory from the comfort of one’s own home. You have to get out there in your little coracle, paddle for all you’re worth and hope you do not get swamped and drown.”
“Coracle?”
“Boat.”
“We are both explorers. We have just caught sight of a great map. An indication of a dark continent that we feel we might some day investigate further. It excites you, yes?”
“It intrigues me. But as far as this evening is concerned… I shall say no more.”
Hugo returned and stood with folded arms in the doorway. I took the hint. I nodded my goodbye to Francesca, sidled past her husband, who filled most of the doorway, and allowed him to accompany me off the premises.
“Goodnight.” I stepped out into the street. “We must do this again sometime,” I added, not entirely seriously.
I heard the door close firmly behind me. I set off to join my companions on their stroll back to the hotel through the fresh, starlit night.
Up ahead, Holloway seemed to be engaged in an argument with the Pivcevics. It was not hard to discover its nature. The young hothead was convinced something spectacular had happened at the house they had just left. The Pivcevics, for their part, were more sanguine about the whole experience. There is nothing so annoying for a new convert than to have ice water flung on recently kindled passions. With a final expression of exasperation, he dropped away from them, fulminating. He slowed to allow me to draw alongside him.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” he said, as if I had been privy to the whole preceding conversation, which I had not.
“What is?”
“Can’t they?”
“Because they are concealing something and, if Holmes had appeared, they would be found out.”
“Ah.”
I left it at that. I had relit my pipe and was, to be frank, more rapt in my own musings. I did not have much time for my companion’s rants just then, really. This was a state of mind that quickly became clear to him. With another expression of impatience, he veered away to find some other poor soul among our company upon whom he might lay his wild imaginings.
I was neither concerned nor unconcerned about the events we had just witnessed, despite Holloway’s obvious conviction. For my part, I doubted very much that Holmes had put in an appearance. Nevertheless, if there were anything at all to this humbug… well then, might it not have been the spirit of Brown? After all, Holmes had never fallen off anything in my stories. At least not as far as I could recall. Nor had I planned any such adventure for him. Although, I supposed, that was not entirely out of the question.
TEN
I tracked Holloway down to the library the next morning after breakfast. I discovered him sitting in a wing-back staring intensely at nothing at all. I presumed he was thinking hard.
“There you are, Holloway. I believe that we really should attempt to gain access to Brown’s belongings. It is most probably too late, but it needs must be done.”
He turned and looked at me. His face wore a curious expression. Benign but superior. As if he were indulging me. He tented his fingertips. “I shall ask Eva. She has already informed me that she will help me in any way she is able.”
“You have not told her?”
“Of course not.” He wafted his hands in the air.
“It is imperative that we keep the nature of our enquiries strictly between ourselves.”
“But of course.”
“So – what did you mean by saying Eva is willing to help us?”
“Simply that… I told her that we were concerned for our countryman, and that you wanted to make sure that he was repatriated with dignity. You are a doctor.”
I was not convinced. Nevertheless, as Eva was involved now, it could not be helped. She could even be useful, among other things, in gaining access to the deceased’s belongings. That was, if they were still at the valley hospital and not already packed and making their way back to England. I drew the line at breaking and entering again.
“When do you see her again?”
“We have an arrangem
ent to meet this morning.”
“Then please ask her this. Which way was Brown lying, where was he found precisely, and who found him? I would like to know the exact details. Perhaps she might elicit a description from one of the fellows who discovered him?”
“There goes your wretched vanity again, my dear Doyle.”
“My vanity!?”
“You have, for some reason, decided that you are in charge of this case. Yet, try as I may, I can find no significant evidence upon which you might justifiably base such an assumption.”
“Now, look here, Holloway…”
“We have attempted to follow your methods to the letter these past few days, and where has it brought us? I respectfully suggest, nowhere. By your own admission,” he continued suavely, “there was nothing at the fall. You have some half-baked theory about a missing smoker’s knife and…”
“Just a minute…”
“… and an alpenstock that was immaterial. It was left behind in his room. Forgotten. Not needed. Who knows? Who cares? What does it prove? Unless we had found it in the murderer’s grasp. Even then, I doubt it would prove anything. We need real clues, Doyle. Specific and unambiguous. Undeniable and empirical.” He had the impudence to raise one eyebrow in my direction. “No, my dear Doyle, I suggest that you put your vanity to one side with good grace and allow me, if I may, to pursue your interests on your behalf.”
I had never heard such impertinence in all my life. Was it not he who had harried and cajoled me into exerting my influence upon this sorry business? Was it not he who had engineered the investigation of Brown’s body? Was it not he who had forced the pace and driven all the interests before him? I had merely been gulled into complying with his bidding. And now, here he was, tantamount to accusing me of manipulating the whole affair to my own ends. It really was beyond the pale, and I told him so.
He just smiled sardonically to himself and, in a manner which suggested affectation, tented the tips of his fingers together again, and rested them thoughtfully against his lips.
“I fear, my dear Doyle, that the facts speak for themselves.”
“You just said that there were no facts.”