“South of the Liffey?” Wilde asked casually. “Aungier Street? Or Chapelizod?”
Webb froze. His face visibly paled. The corner of one eye twitched. It took him a moment to regain himself. “Very good, Mister Wilde. You have a discerning ear.”
“When it comes to detecting the Irish masquerading as the English, I do. After all, I consider myself the foremost exemplar.”
“A remarkable ear.” Lord Webb’s eyes took on a steely glint. “In addition to being a remarkable subject for hypnosis. In fact, I don’t think I’ve met a person more susceptible to the influence.”
“Thank you.”
“No, that’s not a good thing.”
Wilde raised an eyebrow. “It isn’t?”
“No, it is not, because I have already implanted a hypnotic trigger word in your mind. Now all I have to do is fix your gaze and utter the words Sherlock Holmes, and you will instantly fall into a trance.”
Wilde went rigid, his eyes glassy and staring.
Webb removed the burning cigarette from between Wilde’s thick fingers and tossed it in the fireplace. “Now Mister Wilde. Are you carrying a weapon in that voluminous cloak?”
“Yes,” Wilde spoke robotically.
“I would very much like to see it. Please show me.”
Wilde reached into an inner pocket and drew out Conan Doyle’s service revolver.
“An impressive weapon. Is it loaded?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent. Mister Wilde, you will be at the séance tonight?”
“I have promised Arthur.”
“Yes, that’s right. He had to leave, quite unexpectedly.” Lord Webb could not conceal a smirk. “I’m afraid the telegram was a cheap ploy, a distraction to remove him from the house so I could enjoy a private moment with you. Fortunately, Mister Doyle lacks the deductive powers of his fictional detective. He will be back in South Norwood before he discovers the deception. Not that it would matter if he were still here. Lady Thraxton’s Fate is to die. It appears that she will perish by your hand. Tonight, at the séance, when I say the words Sherlock Holmes, you will produce the revolver and shoot her twice in the chest. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“And then, quite naturally, as a gentleman you will feel tremendous remorse at your murderous act, so you will place the gun to your temple and blow your brains out. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now put the gun away. When I say the word Watson you will awaken. The only part of this conversation you will remember is that I asked you for a cigarette and we smoked together. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
“Very good.” Webb snapped his fingers in Wilde’s face and said “Watson.”
Oscar Wilde blinked as he came out of the trance. He went to puff the cigarette held between his fingers but found that it had inexplicably vanished.
“Thank you for the cigarette and the conversation, Mister Wilde. I will see you at the séance tonight.”
“Yes,” Wilde replied, feeling strangely bewildered. “See you tonight.”
Lord Webb bowed and strolled from the room. Wilde stood looking around, unable to shake a sense of confusion. He remembered smoking a cigarette, but did not remember entering the music room. He checked the pocket of his cape. The revolver was still there. Reassured, he strolled out of the music room and headed for the parlor. He had three hours before the final séance began.
* * *
Conan Doyle was sweating through his tweeds by the time he slogged into the main street of Slattenmere.
At the very last second, he had bolted from his first-class compartment, thrown open the train door, tossed his suitcase onto the platform, and leapt from the moving train after it.
The Scottish author had no grand plan. He had not diagramed where this plot was heading. He was operating purely on instinct, making things up as he went along. After leaping from the train, he had snatched up his suitcase, dusted himself off (he had taken a bit of a tumble jumping onto the platform), and then marched at a brisk, military pace the one and a half miles from the station to Slattenmere.
Despite its rather ugly name, Slattenmere was a pretty village with a picturesque square—complete with a sleek black horse grazing on the village green. There was a corner shop with a POST OFFICE sign and a thatched-roof public house: the SAILOR’S RETURN, according to the wooden sign swinging above its door.
Cool air smelling of spilled beer and pipe smoke swirled about him as he stepped into the gloomy saloon bar. He ambled to the bar and set down his suitcase. The pub landlord, a stout, ruddy-cheeked man with bristly sideburns and the tattoo of an anchor on his meaty forearm, was polishing a pint mug with a bar towel.
“Good day,” Conan Doyle said. “I am looking for Frank Carter. Would you know his whereabouts?”
The landlord made a sour face. “Arr, if you be looking for young Frank, you just missed ’im.”
“Will he be back soon?”
The landlord shook his grizzled head, slinging the towel over one shoulder as he hung the pewter pint pot on a hook above the bar. “’Fraid not, sir. He just left on a run to Baxchester, the next town over. Won’t be back ’till late.”
Conan Doyle agitatedly brushed his moustache as he pondered his next course of action.
“Do I know you, sir?” the landlord asked, peering at him queerly.
“Pardon?”
“I’m a good one with faces,” the landlord said, grinning to show a wide set of yellowing, peg-like teeth. “I know I seen you somewhere.”
“I’m sorry but you are mistaken. I’ve never been to Slattenmere before.” Conan Doyle watched as the landlord began polishing another tankard and was reminded of his thirst. “I’ll have a pint of your best ale, barkeep,” he said, climbing onto a bar stool. The landlord pulled him a pint, still shooting him quizzical looks from beneath his bushy brows. He scraped the foaming head level and slid the tankard across the bar. Conan Doyle slapped down a crown and the landlord scooped it up. The beer still held the chill of the cellar and he quaffed deeply, brushing foam from his walrus moustache with the back of his hand. “Perhaps you could help me with something else.”
The landlord looked at him quizzically. “We can do you a pie or sandwiches if you’re hungry, sir, only you’ll have to wait until Elsie arrives. She’ll be here in a tick.”
“Actually, if you could tell me where I can send a telegram, I’d be indebted.”
The landlord’s brows concertinaed in puzzlement. “I’m sorry, sir. We don’t have no telegraph office.”
Conan Doyle gaped in surprise, then rummaged in his pocket and drew out the telegram, unfolding it on the bar. “Look here,” he said, pointing. “It says it was sent from the Slattenmere telegraph office.”
The landlord chuckled. “I think someone’s having a bit of a joke on you, sir. The nearest telegraph office is fifty miles away. There ain’t never been no telegraph office in Slattenmere. We ain’t big enough to warrant. Now if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go change the barrel.”
The landlord walked away, chuckling. Conan Doyle examined the crumpled telegram in his hand, completely stymied. Then he looked up, catching his own stunned reflection in the bar mirror—the reflection of a man who had been made a fool of by a simple ruse. But who could have done it?
“The murderer, obviously,” said a familiar voice. He looked to the stool at his side, and found it empty. But when he looked back at the mirror he saw the image of Sherlock Holmes sitting next to him.
“You’ve been bamboozled, Arthur,” Holmes said, a cigarette burning in the hand he casually rested on the bar. “The murderer wanted you gone and you took the bait. You’ve left your friend Wilde in the lurch. He is a clever man, but I doubt he will be able to prevent Lady Thraxton’s murder at the séance, which will take place in just a few hours.”
Conan Doyle banged down the pewter mug and dropped from his stool. As he turned to leave he heard a raucous laugh, which drew his ey
es to two figures seated in the shadows in the back of the pub. One was a large ginger man. The other, a short, vole-eyed creature. He recognized them instantly as the drivers of the hearse and suddenly realized: these were the owners of the black horse grazing on the village green.
“Are you going to confront them, Arthur?” Holmes called from behind. “They’ll just deny it. You have no evidence of any wrongdoing. Perhaps you should first obtain some proof. It’s one of the elementary techniques of detection, as you should know.”
Conan Doyle spun to fire a riposte back at Holmes, but the bar stool was empty and the only reflection the mirror held was his own.
He left his suitcase nestled next to the bar stool and ducked outside. The small village square was empty, apart from a man watering a hanging petunia basket in front of the post office. The black horse had its head down and was contentedly nibbling the bright green grass. And then Conan Doyle noticed the hearse drawn up in a small alleyway between houses. The back of the hearse was not locked, and when he opened the doors, the familiar stench of death wafted over him. A half dozen flies, the color of green glass, buzzed his face. The hearse still contained the coffin. The men were obviously not real undertakers, who would never have dallied in a pub while in possession of a recent corpse. No doubt they meant to dump it in a river or a field once they had quit Slattenmere.
Conan Doyle looked around and quickly clambered inside. In addition to the coffin, the hearse contained a number of leather trunks. The first trunk was not locked and sprang open to his touch. It was stuffed full of clothing. A moment’s rooting and the first thing he pulled out was a rubber mask, ghostly and skeletal, the kind of prop commonly used in sham séances. A sheet of wood was laid up against the inside of the hearse, and when he slid it loose he saw that it was a music hall sign that read: MESMERO: MASTER OF HYPNOSIS, complete with a painted depiction of a man in a shiny black suit fixing the viewer with a hypnotic gaze.
Mesmero was unmistakably the same man who was passing himself off as Lord Webb. Now, he had no doubt who had been wearing the rubber mask when a ghostly figure entered Madame Zhozhovsky’s room and strangled her.
* * *
The red-haired behemoth guzzled the last of his beer, banged his pint pot down, and belched extravagantly. “Wot say ya, Billie? It’s yer round, mate.”
Both men startled as a rubber ghost mask landed in the middle of their table. They looked up to see Conan Doyle standing over them, the cricket bat held discreetly at his side. “I understand you two are part of this charade,” he said. “Now I’d like some answers, if you don’t mind.”
The two cronies recovered quickly from their initial shock, as men of the criminal class usually do. Conan Doyle never saw the redheaded brute slip the fish knife from his jacket sleeve until he burst up from his chair, bellowing like an ox, his face contorted with hatred. He swung a huge arm, slashing at the doctor’s face. Unfortunately for him, he also brought his large head into the exact space where Conan Doyle was swinging his cricket bat with all his might. Thunderer connected with the redhead’s skull with a resounding crack and the behemoth crashed down upon the table, crushing it beneath him, and pinning his small confederate to the floor.
It was a blow that would have knocked a normal human senseless. But amazingly, the bone-crushing minotaur groaned, shook his head, and staggered to his feet, his huge fists clenched into cannonballs.
A tremendous battle ensued, but several minutes of cacophonous struggle ended with Conan Doyle standing victorious, the two cronies unconscious and groaning on a floor littered with broken chairs and overturned tables.
The small man feigned unconsciousness, but yelped when Conan Doyle prodded him in the kidney with the business end of Thunderer. “The coffin you brought to the hall, where did you get it from?”
“We dug it up.”
“Dug it up from where?”
“Gallows Field.”
Conan Doyle sifted that information.
“The man you work for. What’s his name?”
“I dunno. The guvnor.”
Conan Doyle prodded again with the cricket bat. “His name.”
“Oww, give off, will yer? His name’s Seamus. I dunno his last name.”
Seamus? A sickening realization tattooed needlepoints across Conan Doyle’s face. Wilde’s astute observation about Lord Webb’s concealed Irish accent suddenly made sense. The faux aristocrat was, in reality, Seamus Kragan, the son of the Irish housekeeper. Packed off to live with relatives in Ireland, he had returned in disguise after years of banishment. But what could he hope to accomplish by murdering Lady Thraxton? What was his motive? But then Conan Doyle remembered what Podmore had spoken of: Hope Thraxton was the only surviving heir to the Thraxton fortune. If she died, the fortune would pass to a recipient chosen by the executor: Mrs. Kragan.
“Here what’s your game? You’ve wrecked me pub!” It was the landlord. He bellied around the bar, clutching a stout wooden rod in his large hand, his ruddy face like a clenched fist.
“I see you’re a man who served in her majesty’s navy,” Conan Doyle quickly observed.
The words stopped the large man in his tracks. “What? How’d ya know that?”
“By the belaying pin in your hand, which you undoubtedly took as a souvenir of your service, and by the anchor tattoo on your forearm, which I’d warrant you had done in a Chinese opium den in Portsmouth upon your return from a voyage to the West Indies.”
The landlord’s mouth sagged open. And then recognition flooded his eyes. “I knows who you are now. I reckon I seen your picture in The Strand Magazine.”
Despite himself, Conan Doyle couldn’t help but preen.
“You’re that Sherlock Holmes fellow, what solves all them crimes.”
Though it pained him not to correct the landlord, circumstances obliged Conan Doyle to go along with the charade. “Yes, you are quite correct, I … I am … Sherlock Holmes. And I need you to hold these dangerous felons until the local constabulary can be summoned.”
“You can rely on me, Mister Holmes,” the landlord said, slapping the belaying pin into his open palm. “I’ll make sure these bastards don’t go nowhere.”
Conan Doyle strode out of the Sailor’s Return a few minutes later, his cricket bat once again strapped to his suitcase. He knew young Frank would not return for hours and time was against him. He was desperate to find a ride … and then he saw the black horse still grazing peacefully on the village green and instantly knew what means of transport he would be using to return to Thraxton Hall.
CHAPTER 26
THE DEATH OF A GREAT PSYCHIC
Bedraggled peacocks parading in the gathering twilight screamed in a mixture of terror and outrage as the black hearse thundered up to the phoenix steps of Thraxton Hall, wheels churning gravel. Dusk was quickly falling. Toby the gardener was wheeling a barrow of shovels and rakes toward the potting sheds, cleaning up at the end of a day’s labor. Seeing the hearse, he dropped the barrow handles and rushed forward to catch the reins tossed to him as Conan Doyle jumped down from the driver’s seat.
“Hide the hearse around the back of the house,” he said. “Somewhere out of sight.”
“We thought you wuz on a train for London by now, sir.”
“There has been a change of plans.”
“How did you hear, sir?”
Conan Doyle’s feet were already ringing up the stone steps, his suitcase swinging at his side, when Toby’s words froze him on the spot.
“Hear what?”
“Your friend. He’s near death. I doubt he’s gonna last the night.”
Conan Doyle’s mouth bittered with the taste of copper pennies. If something had happened to Oscar, he would never forgive himself. Dreading the answer, he forced himself to ask: “Who is near death?”
Toby tugged at his cap. “The Yank: Mister Daniel Dunglas Hume.”
Conan Doyle relaxed a little, thanking the stars it was not Oscar, but the news still perturbed him. “Has a doct
or been sent for?”
Toby shook his head. “Mr. Hume said it was too late for what ailed him. He did predict you would return. He’s asked to see you afore he passes.”
* * *
Conan Doyle burst into Daniel Dunglas Hume’s bedroom to find the American slumped upon his bed, his head floating on a cloud of pillows.
“I just received the news,” Conan Doyle said.
The American’s ravaged gaze followed Conan Doyle’s journey across the room to his bedside. Hume had the look of a creature fished from the bottom of the sea, and when he spoke, the words came out in an underwater gurgle. “I am on the final journey, sir.” He had to pause to suck in a labored breath before he could continue. “The Genie is just about used up.”
Hume’s face was veiled in shadow. Conan Doyle slid the lamp forward on the bedside table, but to his puzzlement, the shadow remained.
“It is death,” Hume explained. “A shadow no amount of light can chase away. I have kept it at arm’s length for many years. But I can restrain it no longer.”
Conan Doyle nodded sadly as he checked the pulse at Hume’s throat and then pressed an ear to his chest, listening. The American’s congested lungs made a sound like the ocean sucking in and out of a sea cave. When Conan Doyle stood upright, his expression was grave.
Hume smiled up at him, which had a rather ghastly effect. He had lost his good looks and seemed to have aged forty years. His features were sunken, the cheeks gaunt, the eyes peering out from dark hollows like death-row prisoners skulking behind bars. “I’m dying, Doctor Doyle. I can no longer hold back the shadowy tide.”
Conan Doyle nodded.
“So at least I’m no longer a suspect?”
Conan Doyle smiled gently. “No. You were only briefly a suspect.”
“Believe in Fate, Mister Doyle. It controls our destinies, despite our best efforts to elude its influence. Years ago, I foolishly used my powers to foresee my own death. The knowledge was a poison kiss to my soul. I knew I was fated to die here, in this place. I tried to avoid it. I traveled around the world. I have freely spent the money of the rich. I used my powers like a fool. But I was too busy running from death to live the life I had. Sadly, in the final throes, it ends for me as it ends for all men … in a deathbed.”
The Revenant of Thraxton Hall: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Page 25
