The List of Seven

by Mark Frost

  Tears were flowing down her cheeks, but she made no move to brush them away. Her voice remained even and strong. “The next day I took the train here. I had no other clothes to wear, but my cloak was full enough to cover the bloodstains on my dress. I spoke to no one. I completed the journey undisturbed, although I’m sure many remarks were made about the strange woman in the fancy evening dress, traveling without luggage or companion. I took a room here, like some haunted, heartbroken lover. I bought these poor clothes and sent my dress out to be cleaned. The blood had spoiled the satin, but I couldn’t bear to part with it; it was my best dress, the only time I’d worn it before was New Year’s Eve a year ago—I was so absurdly happy the night I wore that dress, I thought my life was just beginning and…” She paused again, before pulling back and saying, simply: “…and so I took a room here and slept and waited for the company to arrive.”

  She looked back at Stoker, indicating the next chapter of the story was his arrival, which brought the tale to its current pass. Even Sparks’s rectitude seemed mollified by the plain harshness of her ordeal. Doyle offered her his handkerchief, which she accepted without a word.

  Stoker was the first to gently advance the conversation. “Miss Temple, you should tell them what happened here the night before I found you.”

  She nodded and lowered the handkerchief. “I was awakened in the middle of the night. Gently. I don’t know why, I didn’t move, I just opened my eyes. I wasn’t sure, I’m not sure now, if I wasn’t dreaming. A shape was standing in the shadows in the corner of my room. I looked at it for the longest time before I could be sure what I was seeing. A man. He didn’t move. He looked…unnatural.”

  “Describe him for me,” said Sparks.

  “A pale face. Long. All in black. His eyes—it’s hard to describe—his eyes burned. They absorbed light. They never blinked. I was so terrified I couldn’t move. I could hardly breathe. I felt as if I were being watched by…something less than human. There was a hunger. Like an insect.”

  “He never touched you.”

  She shook her head. “I lay there for the longest time. I had no sense of time. I felt paralyzed. I would close my eyes and reopen them, and still he was there. With the first morning light coming in, I opened my eyes again, and he was gone. I got up from my bed. The door and windows to my room were locked, as they had been when I went to sleep. I hadn’t truly been afraid until that moment…even though he never touched me, he never moved, I felt so…violated.”

  “Miss Temple spent last night in this room,” said Stoker. “I sat up all night in that chair with this in my hand…” He picked up a double-barreled shotgun from behind the dresser. “No one came into this room.”

  Doyle looked at Sparks with alarm. “We shan’t leave you alone again. Not for a moment.”

  Sparks didn’t answere. He sat down on the bed and looked out the window. His shoulders slumped slightly.

  “Am I mistaken in believing that the man in Miss Temple’s room is the same man responsible for the crimes we’ve been discussing?” asked Stoker.

  “No. You are not mistaken,” said Sparks softly.

  “What manner of man is it who can move through the night this way, move through doors and windows into rooms without a sound, who can strike down people in their sleep, carry them off, and never be seen?” Stoker moved closer to Sparks as he spoke, never raising his voice. “What manner of human being is this? Do you know?”

  Sparks nodded. “I will tell you, Mr. Stoker. But first you must tell me what you were doing when you found us at Goresthorpe Abbey.”

  Towering over Sparks, Stoker folded his arms and thoughtfully stroked his generous whiskers.

  “Fair enough,” he said. Stoker leaned against the windowsill, and took a pipe and pouch from his pocket, busying himself with the small, precise rituals of smoking as he began to speak. “I spoke with a great many people in Whitby when I first arrived. Few had anything of substance to tell me. Then I met a man in a pub down by the bay. A whaler, a grizzled old dog, seventy if he’s a day. Been round the world a dozen times. Now he sits and watches the harbor and drinks his stout from noon to closing, alone. The publican and his regulars regard the man as a sot and a harmless nutter. The sailor called me over to him soon after I came into that place. He was most agitated and very eager to tell me something he was sure no one else would credit—or rather something he had tried to tell repeatedly that no one else believed.

  “He never slept much, he told me, some combination of alcohol and age, and so he spent many long nights walking by the shore and up the hill, toward the abbey, where his wife was laid to rest ten years since. She speaks to him sometimes, he said, he hears her voice on those late nights, whispering out of the wind in the trees above the graveyard. One night about three weeks ago as he made his way through the headstones, she called to him. He said her voice was stronger than he’d ever heard it.

  “‘Look to the sea,’ she said. ‘Look to the harbor.’ The graveyard runs along a ledge directly above the harbor. It was a blustery night, and the tide was high. He looked down and saw a ship running in with the waves, running fast in to shore, too fast, sails flapping, lines loose; it was looking to go directly aground. The old sailor picked his way as quickly as he could down to the beach where the ship was headed; if they hit the rocks there, it could mean disaster; he’d have to sound the alarm.

  “When he got to Tate Hill Pier, a small cove out of sight from the seawall, he saw the ship had dropped anchor fifty yards offshore. She was a trim schooner, showing a lot of hull, lying light in the water. A skiff was coming from it toward the beach; he saw with surprise there were people waiting onshore with lanterns, waving them in. He moved closer to them but stayed hidden, deciding not to reveal himself. He saw the bishop among their number.”

  “Bishop Pillphrock?” asked Sparks.

  Stoker nodded. “The others he didn’t recognize. The small boat made land, two men on board, one all in black. Their cargo was two crates, the size and shape of coffins, which were quickly unloaded. The man swore he saw a large black dog jump off the boat as well. The schooner did not wait for the return of the small boat; she had already pulled anchor, tacking against the wind for the open sea. The group onshore shouldered the crates, which did not appear to be heavy, and headed up the hill toward the abbey. They passed not ten feet from the old sailor’s hiding place. He heard the Bishop say something about ‘the arrival of our Lord’—he thought it was the Bishop who’d said this—and the man in black shouted at him in a harsh voice to be still. The sailor followed them and said he watched them carry the crates, not to Goresthorpe, but to the ruins of the ancient abbey farther up the hill. And he swears he watched that black dog run into the cemetery and disappear into thin air. Since then, he’d seen strange lights burning late at night in the ruins. What disturbed him most was that since that night his wife’s voice had not spoken to him again.”

  “We must speak to this man,” said Sparks.

  “They found him the next morning in the graveyard. His throat had been ripped apart, as if he’d been attacked by an animal. The caretaker said that during the night he’d heard the baying of a wolf.”

  Sparks and Doyle looked at each other. Eileen wrapped her shawl tight around her shoulders and stared at the floor. She was shaking. The walls seemed suddenly both too small to contain what they were feeling and far too insubstantial to hold at bay the forces arrayed against them.

  “What’s that?” asked Sparks, pointing to a package on top of the dresser.

  “That was my breakfast this morning,” said Stoker. “A local product, apparently.”

  Sparks picked up the package of Mother’s Own Biscuits.

  “We’ll tell you the rest of our side of the story now,” said Sparks.

  And so they did.

  chapter sixteen

  DEVIL DODGERS

  SPARKS AND DOYLE SPARED NO DETAILS FROM STOKER AND Eileen, save Sparks his alleged government connection and Doyle his linge
ring reservations about Sparks himself—that note from Leboux still lay across his thoughts like an iron pike—and it was dark and evening before the telling was done. Snow continued to fall throughout the afternoon. Streets were already muffled with a fresh foot of it, and the storm showed no signs of abating. They sent down to the kitchen for a light supper of soup, cold mutton, and corn bread, which they shared in Stoker’s room and from which they all took no small, restorative comfort. Eileen said little during the meal, never meeting Doyle’s eye, withdrawing inside herself to some fortified place of sanctuary. Feeling a greater strength in numbers was called for, Sparks excused himself from their company to collect Barry and Larry from the inn near the station where they had registered earlier that long day. Eileen lay down on the bed to rest. Stoker took the occasion to draw Doyle out into the corridor for a private word, leaving the door slightly ajar so as to keep an eye on the room and more specifically the windows.

  “As one gentleman to another,” began Stoker quietly, “it is my fervent hope that the situation here does not appear to be an indelicate one.”

  “How so?” asked Doyle.

  “I am a most happily married man, Dr. Doyle. My wife and I have a young child. Miss Temple, as you cannot have failed to notice, spent last night in my room.”

  “You were standing guard over her life—”

  “Even so. Miss Temple is an actress and, you cannot have failed to notice, an extremely attractive woman. If any word of this were to find its way to London…” Stoker shrugged in a way common to the private rooms of the most exclusive gentlemen’s clubs.

  “Given the circumstances, such a thing would be unthinkable,” said Doyle with unexpressed amazement. Was there no end to their society’s fanatic preoccupation with propriety?

  “I shall depend on your discretion then,” said Stoker, greatly relieved, offering his hand. “I’m going to fetch a brandy, may I bring you one?”

  “Thank you, no,” said Doyle. He wanted nothing to cloud his mind during the coming night.

  “Miss Temple asked for one as a soporific before retiring last night. Perhaps I shall bring her one as well.”

  With a slight bow, Stoker took his leave. Doyle reentered the room. Eileen was sitting up awake on the bed, deftly rolling a cigarette from a pouch of shag tobacco. Doyle’s eyes widened.

  “Do you have a match?” she asked.

  “Yes, I believe I do. Just a moment. Here we go,” Doyle fumbled through his pockets, produced a match, and lit the cigarette for her. To steady the trembling—the result of nothing more complicated than being alone in the room with her—as he held the match near, she gripped his hand.

  “Do you really think they’d attack us here with all these people about?” she asked, with a casualness and familiarity he’d not heard in her voice before.

  “Oh, it is possible, yes, I would have to say, that it is, quite.” Why did English suddenly seem something a great deal less than his native tongue?

  “You ought to sit down. You look terribly tired.” She crossed her legs and blew smoke into the air.

  “Do I? Thank you, I am. I shall,” said Doyle formally, and he looked busily around for a place to sit. He finally picked up the straight-backed chair from across the room, set it facing the windows, picked up the shotgun, sat down, and tried to appear purposeful.

  “You look like you know how to shoot,” she said after watching him for a moment, with the slightest trace of a smile.

  “I sincerely hope I won’t have occasion to demonstrate while you are in such, uh, proximity.” He felt himself blushing. Blushing!

  “And I have no doubt that if the occasion were to arise, I would be most suitably impressed.”

  Doyle nodded and smiled like a mechanical bird. It was hard to look at her. Was she toying with me? he asked himself. Is it because I’m behaving like such a filbert?

  “Do you treat many women, Dr. Doyle?” she asked, that Gioconda smile surfacing again.

  “What’s that?”

  “In your practice. Do you have many female patients?”

  “Oh my, yes. That is, I have my share. I’d say a good half, at any rate. Half of the whole, that is.” Half of eight, at its height, truth be told: all lost to him now. And not a one of them under the age of fifty with a swan’s neck and skin like the petals of a rose and…

  “Are you not married?” she asked.

  “No. Are you?”

  She laughed a little. It reminded him of tinkling crystal goblets at an impossibly glamorous dinner. “No, I’m not married.”

  Doyle nodded intently, looked down at the shotgun in his hands, and with great concentration rubbed an imaginary smudge off the barrel.

  “I’ve never given you proper thanks,” she said more soberly.

  “None necessary,” he said with a casually dismissing wave.

  “Still. I owe you my life. You and Mr. Sparks.”

  “There’s no reason for you to feel indebted in even the slightest way, Miss Temple. Given the chance, I would gladly do the same again and more,” he said, feeling emboldened. This time he held her eyes until she looked away.

  She needed somewhere to stub out her cigarette. There was no ashtray on the bedstand. Casting around, Doyle came up with the wrapper from the biscuits and held it for her on the table as she tapped out the smoke. Their fingers brushed together lightly with an electric tingle that he didn’t believe he was imagining.

  “I want to help you,” she said in a low and husky voice. “In any way I can. You must convey that to Mr. Sparks. Because, you see, I feel a certain responsibility.”

  “You acted out of need. Urgent financial need. You couldn’t know what would happen. You had no way of knowing.”

  As she finished with the cigarette, she looked up, and their faces were only inches apart.

  “Nevertheless,” she said. “Will you convey that to him? Perhaps there is a way. I can be very resourceful.”

  “Of that I have no doubt whatsoever.”

  Her tongue flicked a tiny speck of tobacco off her lower lip. Their eyes met, and her look was far from discouraging. Doyle felt a sharp tug in his chest, as if caught in a strong gravitational field. Beauty is the promise of happiness, that phrase leapt in his mind from some long-forgotten source. He found himself leaning in to kiss her when multiple footsteps preceded the opening of the door. With a single sharp rap, Sparks entered the room. Doyle hastily pulled away and disposed of the biscuit wrapper. Larry and Barry took up stations on either side of the door.

  “I’ve had a look at the other inn; we must move ourselves there at once,” said Sparks. “It’s a far less vulnerable structure. We will be able to protect ourselves for the night more efficiently there.”

  “I hope that you’re not organizing this defense around any presumed incapacity of mine,” said Eileen, rising energetically to her feet, “because I’m quite capable of defending myself as well as if not a good deal better than any man could ever do.”

  “Miss Temple, after the fate that’s befallen your colleagues, surely you do comprehend that you are a target of considerable urgency and importance to our enemies,” said Sparks, with measured reasonableness.

  “What I comprehend is that you, sir, have no comprehension whatsoever of my ability to aid and abet you in this matter,” said Eileen, not backing down an inch.

  “This is not the time to—”

  “And if you expect me to remain locked in a room like so much bait on a hook waiting for trouble to arrive while you men are free to come and go as you please, you, sir, are very much mistaken—”

  “Miss Temple, please—”

  “I will not be a party to it, nor will I honor your antiquated notions of what a woman is or is not capable of: I begin to suspect that you would be equally disapproving of giving women the vote—”

  “What on God’s green earth has that to do with moving to the other inn?” Sparks protested. Doyle could not remember seeing Sparks so beleaguered. Barry and Larry were staring at
their shoes, trying hard to keep the smiles off their faces.

  “I have been an expert shot since the age of ten: A man raises his hand against me at his own peril—I’ve shot a man before; I would not hesitate to do it again—”

  “Don’t be a fool—”

  In a single, swift move, Eileen seized the shotgun from Doyle’s hand, drew back the hammers, dexterously swung the gun around to draw a bead on the hat rack in the corner, pulled the trigger, and blew Stoker’s bowler hat to kingdom come. Larry and Barry dropped to the floor. Stoker chose that unfortunate moment to appear in the doorway toting two full snifters of brandy; Eileen spotted movement in the corner of her eye and whipped around to train the second barrel on him. Stoker’s hands flew up, and the snifters fell to the ground.

  “Lord, no!” cried Stoker.

  “How emphatically do you wish me to demonstrate my point, Mr. Sparks?” she asked calmly.

  “Your point,” said Sparks, his face taut with rage, “is made.”

  Eileen lowered the gun. Other guests, curious about the loud report, appeared in the hallway.

  “Everything’s all right,” said Doyle to them, taking Stoker by the arm and pulling him into the room. “Go on about your business. No trouble here.”

  “What in great heaven’s name is going on?” said Stoker shakily as Doyle closed the door behind them. “Miss Temple, please, these are our friends.”

  Eileen broke down the barrels, slipped out the remaining live round, and handed the gun back to Doyle. “Mr. Stoker, I owe you a new hat.”