I fought to remain calm. “He killed three people and just sat there, waiting to be discovered, until the next day. Did he, perhaps, offer a motive for such unusual criminal behavior?”
“That’s the strange part, Mr Holmes. He related that while in a trance, the malevolent spirits he conjured, or channeled within him, somehow caused the fatalities. He took responsibility for opening the door to Death.”
“Preposterous,” Watson said, spilling some of his tea and attempted to mop up the stain before he could be discovered.
“Hard to believe, I admit,” Lestrade shook his head, “yet the servants found the doors and windows to the room locked, there was no sign of violence. All were seated around the table just as casually as we are now.”
“Not quite so casually, if they had ceased to be animated,” I added. “And what of the assistant?”
“A M. Le Blanc. We were able to revive him; however he was in no condition to give a statement. He was taken to St Bart’s.”
“A fine picture, Lestrade. A locked room, three dead, the killer willing to confess, no…bear the blame for the action of what…ghosts? Seems like one of your fictional tales, Watson. It is clear that you have not scratched the surface of this case, Lestrade. I fear there is more here, much more.”
Lestrade set down his cup. “Well, I did have a few more questions…a few loose ends to tie up. Seeing as you just happen to be in London, Mr Holmes, and, as you have been of assistance to Scotland Yard on one or two occasions—perhaps you would like to accompany me and make some observations…on a purely consulting basis, mind you.”
“Consulting. Naturally. There is little time and much to do then. Where are the bodies of the victims being held?”
“At the morgue at St Bart’s. Same as Le Blanc.”
“Excellent. We shall need to examine the bodies as well as Marcel and LeBlanc, but first we must investigate the crime scene, if it has not already been hopelessly spoiled. Come, Watson. The game is afoot and our quarry has a head start.”
* * * *
Before Mrs Hudson could summon a protest at the state in which we had burst upon and rendered 221B, we were out the door, commandeering Lestrade’s driver, and heading from Baker Street through the Paddington Gardens to Marylebone High Street. We soon found ourselves at Spivey House, Westchester. A servant dressed in mourning answered the door and showed us to the parlour where the bodies had been discovered.
I surveyed the room: dark curtains covered the windows, a table with stained velvet surrounded by five chairs. A pen and a bell lay upon the table. “What has been removed from the room, Lestrade?”
Lestrade looked about. “Nothing, except of course, the bodies…oh and the drinks service set upon the side board.”
I removed my glass to closely examine the table cloth. “It seems obvious that of the three victims, two were women; both widows, one young, one old. The third person was a military gentleman. They had few close living relations.”
“Astounding, Holmes, but how can you have known this from such a cursory evaluation of the premises? We have not released any information as to the identities of the victims.”
Watson shot me a knowing glance and stated, “You will find that nothing Sherlock Holmes does is of a cursory nature, Inspector.”
“Thank you, dear friend,” I said. “You know my methods, Lestrade. We have little time but I am sure that you would have noticed that Spivey House is a venerable old place, yet modern conveniences have been laid on. Note the electric lights and modern furniture and flowers in the foyer: a young woman’s touch. However, we sadly note there is not a hint of the masculine upon entering the home. No study off the main hall, no lingering aroma of late night cigars, no trophies. Moreover, one has a clear path to the parlour without avoiding the inevitable accumulation of disarray or toys left in the wake of children. This was a home inherited by a young man who went to war and was lost. The young couple had no time to bear children.”
“Lady Penelope Spivey,” Lestrade stammered.
“Yet, an ornate sword rests in the umbrella stand in the hall. The black scuff of the boot left upon the floor, admits that a military man was present last evening. The servants could hardly have had time to wipe the mark away. The sword indicates a man of rank, the boot mark shows that his foot drags a bit, the result of some wound to the nerves of the leg, wouldn’t you agree, Doctor?” Watson nodded absently. “This must have been one of Spivey’s superiors, sent for by his widow to attend the séance. I am speculating here, my knowledge of such things is sparse, but he may have wished to contact either Spivey or other lost comrades through the conveyances of the medium, M. Marcel.”
“That would be Colonel Mills,” mumbled Lestrade.
“And finally, we come to the hint of perfume in this tightly sealed room. The subtle bouquet is somewhat masked by other odors, but one cannot help recalling a bygone era.” I remembered our faithful spaniel, Toby, as the men sniffed about the room in hopes of acquiring the scent. “The aroma is too passé for the lady of the house—hence we detect the presence of an older woman.”
Lestrade threw up his hands in resignation. “The Dowager Tsu Ling. Here on a diplomatic errand for the Chinese Consulate.”
“Ah, that is why the reluctance to release the names of the victims,” Watson observed, still wrinkling his nose above a grey moustache. “To avoid international scandal the police will want to pin down a perpetrator as quickly as possible.”
“I fear nothing has been avoided, Doctor. Lestrade, I will beg your leave for a time. Watson and I will venture to the hospital and then rendezvous with you to interview, with your permission, Monsieur Marcel.”
“He’s not French,” Lestrade shook his head and wandered out of the house.
We left Lestrade to rumble off in his motorcar—the offensive thing belching smoke and hemorrhaging noise. I was fortunate to hail one of the few surviving hansom cabs, instructing the driver to avoid the Strand and head north along the river to the hospital.
* * * *
“What do you make of it, Watson?”
“Hard to say. Lestrade has found a man at the murder scene who has already confessed.”
“Convenient for Lestrade, I’d say. Most inconvenient for the accused, if he swings for a murder he didn’t commit.”
“But surely, sir, you don’t give credence to the ranting of charlatans, magicians, and mumbo jumbo men.”
“It’s not what we believe at all, but if the mesmerist and his subjects are convinced of the reality of a phenomenon.…” I let the thought trail and we proceeded in silence to our destination.
One would assume that the sight of the dark, rain-soaked institution housing the sick and suffering would promote feelings of melancholy to anyone approaching, but a return to the place where Watson and I first made acquaintance so long ago, did seem a bright ray in the cloud of gloom. We left the cab and made our way through the receiving hall, down back stairs and through a low corridor that wound past my old chemistry laboratory to the morgue. A young attendant sat at a desk reading a newspaper and jotting notes on a pad.
“Help you, gov?” he said without looking up.
“Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson here to examine the recently murdered.”
“Got a lot of bodies, here, man,” the clerk said.
“See here!” Watson exclaimed, his grip stiffening on his stick.
“It’s all right, Watson. This man suffers a loss and sits confined amongst the dead, wondering if he will ever meet another woman equal to his late wife. We will grant him leeway in his lack of courtesy.”
The clerk put down his paper. “How could you know that? What is this?”
“The evidence is clear. I observe you have a mark on your finger where a wedding ring once resided. Your laboratory coat has been poorly pressed—either from neglect or lack of a woman—you are reading the agony column of the paper, searching for a new mate while taking notes, likely preparing to compose your own advertisement. You write th
is next to the scrawled name Lestrade on your house phone log, hence we can assume that the inspector has phoned ahead, and your supervisor, Dr Butlin, alerted you of our imminent visit.”
While the baffled attendant attempted to process these revelations, a bearded man in a white smock entered through a side door. “Mr Holmes! Dr Watson! What a surprise, it’s been a long time.”
“Still at the game?” Watson asked.
“Don’t know what else I’d do if I retired. Probably go mad reading books and smoking alone. I could do the same here in better company.” Dr Butlin laughed, gesturing to the silent drawers containing the recently departed. “You came to see the bodies.” He snapped his fingers and the attendant jumped from his desk and ran to locate the requested victims. Shortly he had the cadavers laid out for our inspection. “Not a mark on them. No sign of violence or struggle.”
“Poison, then?” Watson asked.
“It would seem the obvious conclusion, Doctor, yet it would have had to have been an agent with a rapid onset of action to kill three at once. We have analyzed the drinking glasses from the room for arsenic and strychnine but not a trace did we detect. Moreover, those agonizing potions would have left the faces of the deceased in a contortion of pain. Look upon their faces.”
“Perfectly calm,” I said, “as if in a peaceful slumber.”
The doctor continued, “I have tested the stomach contents, naturally, but I detected no unnatural odors on postmortem. In fact, the cause of death eludes me.”
“Some sort of death of the mind then?” I mused. “Would you say that these unfortunate people died of fright or in some sort of trance or stupor?”
“It would have to have been a very powerful state induced, to have killed all of the people at once, Mr Holmes. The dowager was elderly, as was the colonel, but he was a man in robust health.”
“Military man to the end,” Watson said.
“But Mrs Spivey was in the full bloom of youth.”
“Broken hearts? Visits from the spirit world?”
“I don’t know what to say.” Dr Butlin shook his head.
“And yet…this powerful force that brought about the instantaneous death of three also spared both the mesmerist and his assistant. A spiritualist awakens from his trance and finds those about him dead or incapacitated and so naturally assumes that he was somehow the culprit. Tell me what you know of the assistant,” I said.
“The man was in bad shape when he came in: stuporous, lividity about the face, quick pulse, which is not unexpected as he was discovered face-down on the table next to the mesmerist. He responded quickly to treatment with brisk massage to the face and extremities and restorative liquors.”
“We should waste no time in questioning the fellow,” Watson said.
“That will be hard to do,” I said. “The man will have left the hospital by now, and as I am sure that he was using an assumed name, will be difficult to track.”
Dr Butlin used the telephone to call the hospital ward attendant and confirmed that the patient had fled.
“Scoundrel!” Watson said.
“To be expected,” I replied. “Lestrade, complacent in the assumption that he has apprehended his murderer, has let LeBlanc slip away.”
“Ghastly! What next, Holmes?” Watson asked.
“We must interview M. Marcel, the only witness to the crime. Watson, be kind enough to telephone your friend, Dr Doyle. He will find this matter of interest and may be of use to us.”
* * * *
Dr Doyle met us at the prison. “A pleasure to see you, gentlemen. I must say that I am unfamiliar of an instance with a séance or mesmeric trance resulting in the deaths of the participants. Most concerning.”
“Yet you are convinced of the authenticity of these sessions?” I asked.
“As a man of science, I was initially skeptical but I have witnessed first-hand the power of the spirit realm and the ability of certain persons to channel this energy into an earthly plane. I am certain that the phenomenon is as real as the invisible energy of X-rays or radio waves or the flow of electricity or magnetism.”
“Arthur has written extensively on the subject,” Watson said.
“Of course, the science will be corrupted by quacks and mountebanks looking to profit from the grief of the bereaved: the nefarious are everywhere. I look forward to assessing the abilities of M. Marcel. I am sure, John, that you have witnessed the power of mesmerism in medical use.”
Watson had to admit that he had seen the fakirs of India place themselves in profound states of transfixion. “Yes, and that fellow Dr Eaisdale felt that the mesmeric influence was some sort of animal magnetism that could be transmitted from one person to another. On the other hand, Dr Freud posits that the phenomenon is all in the power of suggestion; he claims that he could place patients into a state of coma such that he could perform amputation of limbs without the sick man sensing any pain whatsoever.”
“Regardless of the source, the operator’s influence on the mind of the subject must be some force of nature. We must admit to its veracity.”
I wasn’t convinced.
Lestrade led us to an isolated cell where we met a forlorn Marcel. I attempted in vain to put the man at ease by introducing myself and my colleagues as strict believers in his innocence and of our benevolent intentions to be of assistance.
“I am honored by your attentions, Mr Holmes. But really, I can see no explanation other than that the people who had trusted themselves to my powers, people who had come to me to contact departed loved ones, to ease their suffering, were irrevocably harmed by the process. Mrs Spivey had contacted me in a distraught state after the loss of her husband in the war. His commanding officer, Colonel Mills, friend of the family, had been under a cloud of deep depression due to the loss of so many of his men.”
“And what of the Oriental lady?” I inquired.
“Madame Tsu Ling. She was here on a diplomatic mission of some sort. She too had recently lost a loved one, but she was wary and astutely inquired as to how the spirits of dead Chinese could communicate through me in English.”
“Yes, that is a bright question,” Lestrade added.
“I cannot explain it other than to say that the spirit plane is universal. I assure you that the information that passes through me is almost always confirmed by my subjects as being authentic and containing facts that could only be known to themselves and the departed.”
I had no doubt of Marcel’s utter sincerity and his beliefs in his gifts, and his motivations to use them for the good. His innate honesty, however, had run him afoul of the law and his confession had placed him in imminent danger of the gallows. “Would you be so kind, Monsieur, and take us through the events of the fateful evening.”
Marcel shook his head woefully and seemed to stare vacantly as he recalled the séance. “It won’t bring the poor folks back…I am able to place myself in a state receptive to spirit communication. My assistant, M. LeBlanc, is an accomplished mesmerist but remains awake. We have found that by LeBlanc acting as liaison to the sitters, they are guided and made to feel at ease by the experience of contact with the dead. He directs the activities while I am channeling the spirits. That evening, as usual, we sat in a darkened room around a table bare except for a bell to announce the presence of the spirits. Mr LeBlanc had the sitters write the names of the loved ones and any questions that they might wish to ask after I had entered the trance state. In this way, I might add, I can have no foreknowledge of the circumstances of the deaths, or as in the case of Madame Ling, I cannot possibly understand her question as it was written in a language unknown to me. Each sitter affixes their signature to the question and folds the sheet of paper so there can be no tampering.”
“You can see, gentlemen,” Conan Doyle said, “the use of the scientific method. The medium remains separate from all influences and preconceived notions.”
“Lestrade, you no doubt recovered the sheets of paper from the crime scene,” I stated.
The inspector seemed ill at ease. “No, Mr Holmes, we did not.”
Marcel had begun to perspire. I offered him my kerchief and as he blotted his face I lifted the small lamp that sat on the table and held it above him.
“Doctors, would you witness the markings on M. Marcel’s forehead and temples. Note the symmetry of these indentations of the skin.” Watson and Doyle leaned in as did Lestrade so that all five of our faces were in close proximity like the weird sisters of Macbeth.
“How did you come by these abrasions?” Watson asked.
“I am sure that I do not know,” Marcel said, touching his face absently. “Sometimes there are physical manifestations brought about by spirit contact.”
“Yes, I have seen emissions of ectoplasm and physical manifestations,” said Doyle.
I set the lamp back upon the table. “I think that in this case the markings were made by someone very much alive. Gentlemen, I must inform you that I suspect the sitters of the séance were victims of gas asphyxiation and that M. Marcel is innocent.”
“What? Gas!” The four exclaimed nearly in union.
“The conclusion is inescapable. Three dead with no sign of violence or internal poisoning with pleasant expressions upon their faces. Having already been placed in a relaxed state by the mesmeric atmosphere they would have expired peacefully with no obvious outward manifestations.”
“Ha! I have you there, Mr Holmes,” Lestrade pointed an accusing finger at me. “The Spivey House has all the modern amenities, including electric light! If there was a leak of gas, how is it that Monsieurs Marcel and LeBlanc were unaffected?”
Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Volume 15 Page 17
