“How is Lady Thraxton?” Wilde asked.
“Understandably traumatized. She is resting in her rooms. My wife Eleanor is at her bedside.” Sidgwick’s bloodshot eyes turned to Conan Doyle. “Perhaps you would be kind enough to look in on her, Doctor Doyle.”
“Yes. I would be most happy to do so.”
When he entered Lady Thraxton’s rooms, the young medium was lying atop her bed, still dressed in her black séance robes. Eleanor Sidgwick sat in a chair pulled close to the bedside, holding the younger woman’s hand.
Conan Doyle strode over to the bed and looked down on her.
Her eyes roved his face questioningly.
“What has become of Seamus?” she asked in a ruined voice.
Conan Doyle rocked on his feet, reluctant to add more distress to the young woman. “He has come to justice … by his own actions.”
She thought a moment and then asked, “And Mrs. Kragan?”
Conan Doyle cleared his throat. “I’m afraid she, too, has come to grief.”
Hope Thraxton covered her mouth with a hand, eyes welling with tears.
She turned her head, and lay staring in distracted silence at the far wall.
Conan Doyle paused a moment, looking down at that lovely face, his eyes tracing the slender line of her jaw to the crescent-moon-shaped birthmark at the corner of her full lips. Then he tore his gaze away, breathed a sigh, and turned to leave. As he walked to the door, the portrait of the young girl in the blue dress once again captured his eye. As he examined it at close range, his spine stiffened. He drew out a fountain pen from the inside pocket of his jacket and looked about the desk for a piece of writing paper. He flipped open a red leather stationery box. It held a neat stack of the distinctive notepaper that bore the phoenix watermark. He took a sheet and sketched the crescent moon birthmark on it:
Then he returned to the bedside again, and briefly examined Hope’s face, comparing it to his sketch. She bore the identical birthmark. He left the lady’s chambers a moment later, his face calm and composed, while in his brain, a lightning storm raged.
* * *
“Ah, there you are, Arthur.”
Wilde strode across the polished marble of the entrance hall to where Conan Doyle was staring up at the portrait of Mariah Thraxton. “Arthur,” he repeated, touching his friend’s elbow, “are you quite well?”
Conan Doyle turned a grave face to his friend. “When first we arrived at Thraxton Hall, I was immediately struck by this portrait.”
“I concede that it is well executed. Especially for its time.”
“More than that: it has a strange quality to it, almost as if it were alive. When I scrutinized it a second time, in the company of Madame Zhozhovsky, she pointed out a detail that now seems strangely anomalous.”
“Strange? In what way?”
“Look closely at the birthmark on Mariah’s Thraxton’s cheek. It is in the shape of a crescent moon. The scrying mirror she holds in her hand reflects her face, and the crescent moon birthmark. Do you see that?”
Wilde’s brown eyes narrowed as he scoured the portrait. “Yes, yes I believe I see what you’re referring to.”
“How much do you remember from your geometry lessons?”
“I told you I was never much for mathematics.”
“Axes of symmetry?”
Frown lines wrinkled Wilde’s brow. “The term vaguely rings a bell. I’m sorry if I’m being a bit lead-witted, Arthur, but what exactly does all this mean?”
“It means I now understand why Lord Edmund Thraxton feared mirrors.”
Conan Doyle turned abruptly on his heel and set off toward the parlor. “Come, Oscar.”
Wilde hurried to catch up and fell in step. “Where are we going?”
“To arm ourselves with something capable of breaking glass.”
Wilde grabbed his friend’s sleeve and snatched him to a halt. “I don’t understand. Whatever for?”
Conan Doyle’s face clouded over with intent. “We must find every last mirror in the house … and destroy it.”
* * *
A few minutes later, Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde stepped inside the mirror maze, both armed with brass pokers. Faced with a multiplicity of reflections, it was hard not to flinch at a sudden movement. The reflected glow of their lamps, bounced from mirror to mirror, transformed the room into a vault of light.
Wilde said, “Now what?”
Conan Doyle pulled a piece of notepaper from his pocket and unfolded it. He held it up to show Wilde. “This is a sketch of Lady Thraxton’s birthmark. It is in the shape of a crescent moon. Notice that the ‘horns’ of the moon are pointing to the left, indicating a waxing moon.”
He turned to face the large cheval mirror and held up the note before it. “Now look at the sketch reflected in the mirror.”
Wilde’s eyes flickered over the image in the glass. At first he seemed nonplussed, but then a spark flashed in his eyes and his full mouth tightened. “In the mirror, the image is reversed: the waning moon becomes a waxing moon!”
“When Mariah Thraxton lay dying, shot twice by her husband, she called for a servant to fetch her the scrying mirror. It captured her reflection and, as Madame Zhozhovsky remarked: a reflection never dies.”
“Which explains Lord Thraxton’s abhorrence of mirrors?”
“The birthmark is hereditary; all the Thraxton women have it. Strangely, in the entrance hall portrait, the birthmark on Mariah’s face is of a waning crescent moon, while the image reflected in the scrying mirror is of a waxing crescent moon.”
“That’s odd.”
“More than odd, unnatural. When I examined the portrait closer, I realized that the entire thing is mirror-reversed. Something happened to that portrait when Mariah died. Transformed it. I believe that, through her dark magic, Mariah has endured as a spectral entity, moving from mirror to mirror.”
“That is quite fantastical.”
“Yes, and that is why we must destroy every last mirror in the house.”
“Oh, dear! Must we? Smashing a mirror brings seven years bad luck.”
“I’m afraid we have many more than one to break.”
“I shall regret this,” Wilde said. “I know I shall.” He backed off several paces and nodded to the large cheval mirror. “You’re the luckiest, old fellow. You go first.”
Conan Doyle raised the brass poker and swung it full force into the cheval mirror, shattering it into jagged daggers. The two of them moved about the room swinging left and right, so that the crash of glass was deafening.
“Seven years bad luck,” Wilde moaned as he smashed a mirror. “Fourteen years bad luck,” he added as Conan Doyle smashed another. Wilde smashed a third. “Twenty-one years bad luck.” The orgy of smashing continued until their feet slipped and skidded on ankle-deep shards of broken glass. Suddenly Wilde cried out, “Stop! Stop!”
Conan Doyle froze, his arm raised. “What is it, Oscar?”
“My mathematics cannot keep up. I make it two hundred and forty-five years of bad luck. Surely we can stop now?”
Conan Doyle scanned the room. Not a single mirror remained intact, save for one, which he now reached into the hip pocket of his tweed jacket and drew out: the scrying mirror. For a moment, he studied the obsidian disk, seeing his own inverted reflection bowled in its concave surface. As he gazed, the glass fogged with swirling clouds that coalesced into an image—the scowling face of Mariah Thraxton. He dropped the mirror as if it were red hot, raised the poker above his head, and brought it crashing down into the middle of the glass: Wa-chunk. Mariah’s image vanished as the onyx surface starred over in a spiderweb of opaque white cracks—an eye for gazing through time forever blinded. Then he scattered its fragments across the room with a vicious kick.
“Two hundred and fifty-one years bad luck,” Wilde moaned. “I may never leave the house again.”
“I’m afraid we’re not done,” Conan Doyle said.
“Good Lord, no!” Wilde moaned, wipi
ng his sweating brow with a lace handkerchief. “Surely not a single mirror can remain in this wretched house!”
“Not a mirror, but one remaining image of Mariah Thraxton: the portrait in the entrance hall. I believe it holds a strange power. And as long as it exists, I fear the house will forever be under her curse.”
CHAPTER 31
A STEP INTO THE LIGHT
“Come along,” Conan Doyle coaxed. “You’ll be quite all right, I promise.”
He and Wilde stood on either side of the phoenix steps that climbed to the front doors of Thraxton Hall. It was early on a gray morning. Dawn had yet to break. The rest of the SPR members stood assembled at the base of the steps. All attention was fixed on the shadowy threshold, where Lady Hope Thraxton lingered.
“I-I’m frightened,” she said in a tremorous voice.
Conan Doyle climbed a step toward her and held out his hand encouragingly. “Take my hand. The sun has yet to rise. I promise as a doctor that you will suffer no ill effects from the light.”
Several of the waiting Society members now called out encouragement. Agnes the maid was standing behind her mistress, hands pressed to her mouth, tears shining in her eyes. Hope Thraxton took a tentative step over the threshold and Conan Doyle guided her down to the next. A ripple of applause greeted her.
Hope shielded her eyes with one hand as she peered around uncertainly. “The world is so bright.”
“Yes,” Conan Doyle agreed. “And you make it brighter still.”
“And you have the rest of your life to explore it,” Wilde added.
Taking both their hands she stepped down until she stood between the two friends. “I can never thank you enough. You have both done so much.”
“There is one task that remains to be done your ladyship. A task that only you can perform.” Conan Doyle indicated the center of the circular drive where the gardener had stacked a bundle of branches and wooden faggots: a bonfire waiting to be lit. The three descended the steps to the fire. Something tall was set in the middle of the kindling, draped with a tarpaulin. Conan Doyle snatched it away, revealing the portrait of Lady Mariah that had hung in the entrance hall.
Conan Doyle beckoned forward Toby, the gardener, who handed him a lit taper. He, in turn, placed it in the hand of Hope Thraxton. She looked at the taper and then at the portrait, her wide violet eyes brimming with reluctance. “Oh, no! Must I really burn it? Surely not!”
He nodded. “We have destroyed the scrying mirror and every mirror in the house. There is no place left for the malevolent spirit of Mariah Thraxton to hide—no place except for the portrait. It is the last remnant of her malign presence, and I fear this house will forever be under her curse until it is destroyed.”
Oscar Wilde studied the portrait discriminatingly, tilting his large head this way and that. “I don’t know,” he mused. “I’d quite like it for my parlor. It would go well with the French sofa—” Conan Doyle silenced him with an elbow in the ribs before he could say more.
Doubt and uncertaintly swept the young woman’s face. She dropped the burning taper on the ground. “No. I cannot burn it. We are of the same blood. If she was wicked, then she was driven to it by the brutality of the age. I cannot judge her.”
“What about Madame Zhozhovsky,” Conan Doyle asked, “murdered at her behest? What of Mrs. Kragan and Seamus? Both their deaths can be laid at her feet, for Mariah’s evil poisoned their minds.” He stooped, picked up the still-burning taper, and held it out to Lady Thraxton. “It is a malevolence that must be destroyed. You must burn the portrait. Only then will you lift Mariah’s curse from the house of Thraxton.”
Lady Thraxton took the taper with a trembling hand. But as she leaned closer and extended the burning candle, a burst of foul-smelling air gusted, snuffing the flame. She gasped and looked up at Conan Doyle in fear. He snatched the taper from her hands, quickly relit it, and handed it back. But the second time she tried to light the wood, the wind gusted again and the flame went out.
“Allow me,” said Wilde. He scratched a match to life on the sole of one of his ruined two guinea shoes, paused to light a Turkish cigarette, then casually tossed the burning match into the pile of wooden faggots. The kindling had been drizzled with turpentine and lit with a dull whumph. The portrait caught fire immediately and tongues of luminous blue flame licked up the canvas.
A piercing scream shattered the morning quiet. They shrank back from the fire, hands clamped over their ears. Within moments, the bonfire was a roaring blaze, spitting and crackling. The screaming pitched to an agonized howl as the canvas blackened and buckled in its frame and the painted eyes of Mariah Thraxton burned through, releasing gouts of orange flame. A sudden whirlwind lashed the treetops of the nearby coppice, filling the air with leaves and small branches. It swept across the courtyard and centered on the fire, where it sucked the burning canvas from its frame and tumbled it in spindizzy circles above their heads. The flames greedily devoured the image of Mariah Thraxton until the last canvas tatters disintegrated in a swarm of fiery embers. The screaming abruptly ceased, and then the whirlwind moved on, snaking across the gravel drive before it whirled away across the fields.
Calm returned, just as the sun kissed the horizon, and the first rays of dawn illuminated the limestone façade of Thraxton Hall and the stunned faces of Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, and the members of the Society for Psychical Research.
* * *
An hour later, several carts, traps, and a single enclosed carriage arrived to conduct the SPR members back to the Slattenmere train station. As they were loading baggage onto the carts, workmen from the village arrived toting tall ladders and began to screw tight the shutters at every window.
After a brief period of awakening, Thraxton Hall was returning to its gloomy somnolence.
“Reet, then,” Young Frank said, sliding onto the wooden seat next to Conan Doyle and Wilde. This time he had loaded the cart with Wilde’s extravagant surfeit of baggage without a single word of complaint. “Are we ready for the off?”
“One moment,” Conan Doyle said, jumping down from the cart. “I must say a final good-bye.”
He vaulted up the stone steps and plunged through the shadowy maw of the doorway. In the echoing marble entrance hall, Hope Thraxton stood waiting beneath the place where Mariah Thraxton’s portrait had once hung, the space around her visibly darkening as window shutters were banged shut, and the once-banished shadows crawled back into their old familiar places.
Conan Doyle approached her hesitantly, finding himself struck speechless: a man with too much to say and no time in which to say it. But she spoke first. “I must thank you again. You have saved me.”
“I am happy to hear you say that.” His face lost composure as he grappled with his emotions. “I … you know I am not free. I am a married man. But my wife is … one day … in the near future…”
She touched two fingers to his lips to shush him. “I know what is in your heart. But you must live your life as it happens; do not yearn for a tomorrow that even a medium cannot predict.”
At her words, all his pent-up feelings released. He dropped his head in a nod of surrender. When he had gained control of himself again, he quietly asked, “After you come into your inheritance, will you remain at Thraxton Hall?”
Hope’s eyelashes fluttered. A tear fell to the marble floor. “Where else can I go?”
“You could close the house. Move to London.”
She wiped away another tear and laughed bitterly. “Why? You know of my condition. It matters little where I reside. One darkness is much the same as another.”
“But in London you could have friends. Receive guests. Perhaps … perhaps I could visit—”
She interrupted before he could finish. “I have looked into your future, Arthur. You shall find love … but not with me.”
“Can you be so sure? As you once said, even to a medium the future is a glass swept by clouds and darkness.”
She flashed a smile of broken me
lancholy. “Then let us believe that we shall meet again someday.”
He swallowed the knot tightening in his throat. When he spoke again, his voice was ragged. “You must come to London. You must. I despair to think of you living alone in this place that has known so much unhappiness.”
“No.” She shook her head resignedly. “I must remain in Thraxton Hall and keep company with its ghosts … until I become one.”
“I will not say good-bye. Just farewell.”
She took his hand. “You will fare well, Arthur Conan Doyle. You are a good man, brave and kind and deserving of love. You will.”
He clasped her small hand between both of his, not willing to let go. And then, with a wrench that tore him all the way to his soul, Conan Doyle drew his hands from hers and turned to walk away. As he stepped through the door of Thraxton Hall into a dazzle of morning light, he turned to look back a final time. Hope Thraxton remained in the shadowy entrance hall, but now there was a small figure standing beside her, holding her hand—a young girl in a bright blue dress.
* * *
Before they set off, Henry Sidgwick insisted they all take a vow of secrecy, promising to never reveal the events that had transpired to protect the name of a great English family. Conan Doyle thought of his Casebook and the astonishing revelations he would never be able to share with the world—at least, during his lifetime.
The two friends rode side by side on the front seat of Frank Carter’s wagon. Lost in his own thoughts, Conan Doyle said little during the journey. Even Oscar Wilde was uncharacteristically quiet.
As the wagon reached the gnarled hanging tree at Gallows Hill, they found a ragged-tailed crow lying dead in the road in a sprawl of wings, its black claws curled around nothing.
At the sight, both friends exchanged a wordless look that spoke volumes.
CHAPTER 32
THE GRAND REVEAL
White clouds billowed and swirled. The railway engine’s brakes released with a metallic clunk and the train lurched forward as the small Slattenmere station reversed away. Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde were once more ensconced in a first-class carriage—this time the 10:45 train bound for London. The Scottish author stared blindly out the window, oblivious to the Lancashire countryside as the station fell behind and the green monotony of fields whizzed past.
The Revenant of Thraxton Hall: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Page 28
