Occult Detective

by Emby Press

  ‘I just found the men lying on the floor. Didn’t hear anything prior. Oh, Mr Barnum, I’m scared!’

  He nodded. ‘We’re all scared for the Jacks, Gladys. Now –’

  ‘No, Mr Barnum. I’m scared about the demon!’

  How did she know about the demon?

  ‘Jack Right told me while Mr Coleman was fetching you,’ she continued. ‘He said a demon killed him. Mr Barnum, are we haunted?’

  Were they? Of course not. Demons were…well, the room had been unbearably hot, but that might be anything. ‘Now don’t you worry, Gladys. I’ll get to the bottom of this. Whatever killed Jack Left: heart attack, murderous attack…demon…I’ll solve it.’

  Bold words, considering his own self-doubt on that issue. What did a demon look like, anyway? His wife, Charity, was more likely to believe in the supernatural. He was a man of science. Well, a man who respected science. Well, a man who –

  A scream came from down the hall. Barnum knew every inch of his museum; it was from the Jacks’ dressing room. He barrelled out of the office, brushing up against Gladys as he did so with an involuntary shudder, and darted through the green room, leaving a trail of cigar smoke behind him.

  ‘Stay here!’ he called to the assembled freaks, most of whom were already on their feet.

  It was only a short dash back to the Jacks’ room, but Barnum was sweating already. The heat within was stifling. Coleman was on his knees bending over the Jacks, the back of his shirt damp with perspiration. All Barnum could see were the Jack’s two legs sticking out. One of them, the right, was trembling as if Jack Right were having a fit. The left leg, which was controlled wholly by Jack Left, remained still.

  ‘What’s going on, Coleman?’

  The young man looked frightened. ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  Jack Right was pointing at a spot behind Barnum. ‘The demon!’ he cried. ‘It’s here!’

  Barnum cast about the room as if expecting some horrible monster to jump out at him. Of course there was nothing. He turned back to Jack.

  ‘Now listen, Jack. It’s all right. There’s nothing here except me and Coleman. Good Lord, but it’s broiling in here.’

  ‘It’s the demon!’ cried Jack Right. ‘It’s the fires of Hell!’

  ‘I’d prefer to think someone’s turned the gas up too high.’ Barnum went to the jet in the wall and turned the spigot. The roaring flame subsided to a more temperate hiss, but the close room trapped the heat. Barnum tugged at his tight collar as he gestured to Coleman.

  ‘Help me get him onto the sofa,’ he said.

  Touching that bizarre body made Barnum shudder despite himself. He tried to remain expressionless as he touched the twins’ clammy flesh. He made sure he hefted Jack Right’s body and left it to Coleman to handle the cold corpse of Jack Left.

  They sat him on the sofa, legs on the floor, double bodies sagging slightly.

  ‘Now, Jack,’ said Barnum. ‘I want you to keep calm if you can. Mr Coleman here is going to send for the doctor, and we’ll see if we can’t do something for you.’ He pulled Coleman to one side and whispered: ‘Get Simpson.’

  ‘But Simpson isn’t a real –’

  ‘Get Simpson!’ Barnum hissed. Then he dropped his voice so even Coleman could barely hear it. ‘Simpson’s a quack, I know, but he’s seen the Jacks before. He’ll at least know if there’s anything we can do, and if there is we can get someone proper to do it. I don’t want this getting out yet.’

  Winged dollar signs appeared before Barnum’s eyes, and they were all flying away from him.

  ‘He should be going to hospital, Mr Barnum.’ Coleman was a young man, but newly come to Barnum’s world, and still had delusions that he could sway his employer’s opinion.

  ‘And he will go to hospital,’ said Barnum. ‘And he’ll receive the best attention affordable in the circumstances. But I want to find out what happened to Jack Left first.’

  He patted Coleman on the shoulder for reassurance – although which one was being reassured was a moot point – and pushed the young man out the door.

  Gladys was in the corridor, effectively barring the way back to the green room just by standing there.

  ‘I thought I told you to stay in the office,’ Barnum said.

  ‘I want a word with you.’

  ‘We were having a word. Jack Right got the wind up for some reason. The room was too hot.’

  Gladys peered into the room. The Jacks were still on the sofa. ‘I’d get the wind up too, if my dead brother was attached to me like that.’

  He studied her face carefully. Not many people had faces that could fool Phineas Taylor Barnum. Reading the faces of the suckers was a necessary skill in a profession based on flim-flam and humbug. There were many genuine exhibits in his museum: a magnificent collection of stuffed animals, the history of steam engines told with working models, a miniature railway, three symphony orchestras playing music from around the world – even honest-to-goodness pieces of gopher wood from Noah’s Ark, all certified genuine. But there were a lot of things that weren’t so true, and selling their reality to the public was something he took a devout pleasure in.

  Gladys Geoffrey the Fat Lady, who was billed at 500 pounds but came in at considerably less, had a face that was like the front page of the New York Times. It was full of revelation.

  ‘You were very fond of the Jacks, weren’t you, Gladys?’

  More than fond. Friends. That’s what her face was saying.

  ‘Not so much that, Mr Barnum,’ she replied, as a tear began down her cheek. ‘More like they were very fond of me.’

  That was in her face, too. A deeper relationship than the business-like tone of most of the freaks. People with physical deformities, in Barnum’s experience, didn’t share secrets much. But there was something more between the Heaviest Woman in the World and the Two-Headed Miracle Man.

  ‘We used to have such a laugh together,’ she said. ‘They were both funny, could both tell a good joke, but it was Jack Left who could get me thinking more. If you want my opinion…’ She leaned in closer to Barnum, who leaned back an equal distance so as to avoid contact with her mountainous bosom. ‘…Left was the more intelligent.’

  He’d always thought that, too. Right was a talker, enjoying a smoke and being the life at parties – Left usually had his head in a book. And good books, too. Literature. There were some of his volumes on the dressing room shelf right now. Lord only knew how he found the peace and quiet to read with his brother laughing and roaring in his ear. But he had a lifetime of experience.

  ‘What do you think of this demon idea?’ he asked suddenly, surprised at his own question.

  Gladys went wide-eyed. ‘He could be right.’

  There was that heavy breathing sensation at the back of his neck again. The feeling that…something…was behind him. He glanced over his shoulder before he could stop himself.

  Nothing there.

  There was an exhibit in this very museum – on the first floor, showing a diorama of souls tortured in Hell. It frightened the children, and some of the adults too, and was a popular drawcard, especially during Lent. There were some fanciful demons displayed there that operated by clockwork. They stabbed at repentant sinners with pitchforks, much to the horrified delight of the crowd. It was very life-like, if anything about Hell could be said to be lively.

  But it was all just a fancy, of course. A humbug. Hell did not really exist, in this world or any other. Gladys was just another gullible sucker among the many that made Barnum rich.

  Now tell that to whatever was breathing down the back of his neck.

  ‘Why would Jack Right think he saw one?’

  She shrugged. ‘Left often used to tease Right about such things. Left read a lot of arcane stuff. You know, books about magic, devils, that sort of thing. They used to argue about it. Right believed God had cursed them at birth, which is why they had their affliction.’ Barnum almost laughed at Gladys’s polite euphemism for the nightmarish physical cond
ition of the twins. ‘Left, on the other hand, believed they’d been created by the devil himself. As a sort of joke. A defiance of God.’

  Looking in at the dead Left and the still living Right, groaning and sweating beside him, Barnum felt that either explanation was plausible.

  Coleman came back along the corridor. He didn’t look into the dressing room, just removed his hat and twisted it in his hands.

  ‘Simpson’s on his way,’ he said. ‘I sent a man for him.’

  Gladys grunted. ‘You sent for Simpson? He can put on a bandage, maybe fix a broken bone. What’s he going to do for the Jacks?’

  Barnum didn’t bother to reply. ‘Go back to the green room, Gladys,’ he said. ‘Tell the others I’ll continue questioning them shortly.’

  ‘Does that mean you’re done with me?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘Good. I’ll slip into something more comfortable then.’ She scratched her immense backside as she waddled off to her dressing room.

  Barnum stepped back into the Jacks’ room. Coleman was thoughtfully trying to give Jack Right some water and had pulled the blanket off him and draped it wholly over Left so the corpse was no longer visible. Right thrashed weakly and tried to resist the water, but Coleman was persistent. Some of it spilled from the glass down onto Right’s chest, where it pooled in the valley between their torsos.

  The shelf of books was located above Jack Left’s suitcase. Each of the twins had an area of the dressing room – which was the biggest one available – for their personal space. This space was little more than a suitcase, a shelf and a cupboard, but it must be almost a sacred area symbolising isolation from each other. Barnum knew they had a rule that each was to close his eyes while the other ferreted around inside those cupboards.

  He slipped out a book from the half dozen on Left’s shelf. A penny-dreadful Western, with a picture on the cover of Indians biting the dust under the guns of cowboys. The next book was more like the literature he’d seen Left reading: Daniel DeFoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. It appeared well-thumbed. The third book he took out made him feel hot and sweaty again.

  The Theory and Practice of Dark Magic. No author’s name, just a plain black cover, with the title embossed in gold. Barnum opened the book carefully, as if expecting it to moan or something. The text was hand-written. There was the occasional hand-drawn picture: weird symbols, pentagrams, leering demon faces.

  This was what Left read for pleasure? His mind must have been tortured enough sharing the lower half of his body – even his genitalia – with someone else. Why would he pollute his mind with this rubbish?

  Or maybe it was easy to understand why. Left believed he devil had made him, after all.

  He put the books back on the shelf and opened Left’s cupboard. There was nothing much to see. The twins shared their outer clothing, which had to be specially made: extra wide jackets and shirts with four arms. Their trousers they shared between them, as they only needed had two legs. But each man had his own upper undergarments and other personal items: jewellery, handkerchiefs, vests. Left’s cupboard contained those and not much else. This wasn’t where they lived of course, merely their work place. Barnum closed the cupboard, bent down to try opening Left’s suitcase, but found it locked. He stood up and moved to Right’s cupboard and opened it.

  ‘Mr Barnum!’ Coleman’s voice was urgent.

  On the sofa, Jack Right was holding out his hands towards him. Coleman had stopped trying to give the man water and just stood uselessly in the way.

  ‘What is it, Jack?’ said Barnum.

  But the man just shook his head and flicked his hands like he wanted something. Coleman made a try with the water glass and Jack Right knocked it away. Glass shattered on the floor.

  Jack Right didn’t want him to look in the cupboard. Barnum had thought Left’s might have revealed something, with all this demon nonsense, but it was Right who was objecting to a search of his own belongings. All right, then: all the more reason to look. Barnum’s opinion was that this was his museum, and consequently he owned the dressing rooms, and the cupboards in those rooms, and therefore had a right to examine their contents. The safety of the museum was paramount, he told himself. He turned and looked in the cupboard.

  Pinned to the back of the door were papers. Lots of papers. A large one, occupying centre stage, as it were, was one of Gladys Geoffrey’s publicity posters. Barnum had approved the design himself. It was an engraving of Gladys in all her diaphanous glory lolling on a sofa, supported by numerous pillows. In marquee lettering above the picture was the declaration: See the Heaviest Woman in the World! Miss Gladys Geoffrey! 500 Pounds of Feminine Pulchritude! And below the picture, in letters just as large, Exclusive to Mr P. T. Barnum’s Museum of Wonders! Nowhere Else! Extra Show on Saturdays!

  The other papers were letters. He glanced over at Jack Right, but the man had fallen back on the sofa, moaning, his eyes closed. Coleman was clearing up the broken glass. Barnum coughed to cover the sound and removed one of the letters from the door, then stepped out into the corridor to read it.

  It only took a few moments to peruse, and by that time his eyes were already welling with tears.

  It was a love letter. From Jack Right. To Miss Gladys Geoffrey.

  Jack Right, one half of the most ghastly travesty of the whimsical Maker, was in love with a woman of whom the Maker had made far too much. Hopelessly in love, even more hopeless because of course the love could never be consummated.

  But was it requited?

  ‘Coleman! Let me know when Simpson gets here!’ He folded the letter and stormed off down the corridor to knock on Gladys’s door.

  She opened it, garbed more modestly now, with a huge bathrobe thrown over the top of her dress. ‘I was just going to ask if I could go home, Mr Barnum,’ she said. ‘The others in the green room, they’re getting restless.’

  Barnum stepped inside and closed the door. He never did that – it was another rule of his, never close the dressing room door when alone with one of the employees. But sometimes rules didn’t apply. He pushed the letter into her hand.

  ‘Read that!’

  Her lips moved as she perused the letter. After the first paragraph she looked up at her boss.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Barnum.’

  ‘Did you know about this?’

  ‘Oh Mr Barnum, I never meant any harm!’

  ‘Tell me what this means, Gladys.’

  The woman sat down heavily on her sofa. The wall behind her was covered in pictures and engravings of slim, svelte and buxom ladies, most of them half or fully naked. Barnum had never noticed them before – but then, he’d never been this far inside the room. The pictures weren’t visible from the doorway.

  ‘I knew he loved me,’ she said quietly. ‘Dear Jack Right. But I couldn’t love him back, sir, even if I wanted to. I couldn’t, I…’ She glanced up at her collection of girl portraits. ‘It wasn’t just his physical condition, sir. It was also me. My…preferences, as it were.’

  Poor Gladys Geoffrey could never attract a desirable man. Now it was plain she had no desire to. Barnum was no prude – he knew other tastes existed among people. Each to their own.

  ‘I’ve read this letter before, sir. I gave it back to him. Where did you find it?’

  ‘He has a collection of letters to you in his cupboard. And one of your posters. I suppose Jack Left knew they were there. Maybe not. But what does it all mean?’

  ‘It means he’s a sweet man, sir. Jack Left knew, of course. He had to be there when I gave the letter back. I remember that he laughed at my rejection of his brother.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Just a month or so ago. I didn’t think anything of it. I do have my admirers, you understand. But I never get involved at all. It’s not professional, apart from anything else. It nearly broke his heart, though. He cried.’

  ‘Right cried and Left laughed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you, Gladys. I’m s
orry.’

  He left her room and hurried back to the Jacks. Something had just become very clear to his mind.

  ‘All right!’ he roared. ‘You, Jack Right! You miserable worm!’

  Coleman was washing his hands in the sink. He spun around as Barnum entered.

  ‘Sir!’ he said. ‘There’s no cause to be –’

  ‘I’ll be whatever I want to be, Mr Coleman! Kindly remember who your employer is!’

  ‘Yes, but, Mr Barnum, the poor man’s dying.’

  There was no attempt to speak softly now. Jack Right was already pale, breathing heavily. He didn’t have long.

  ‘Jack!’ Barnum stood over him, the letter in his hand. ‘Jack, did you write this?’

  The man half-opened his eyes and stared the letter.

  ‘You found it in my cupboard? You had no right, Mr Barnum.’

  ‘I had every right, sir. Every right in the world.’ He flung the letter at Coleman, who caught it with wet hands. Then Barnum stooped down and peered at Jack Left’s throat.

  ‘Strangled, you say? I can see bruises there all right. Made by someone’s fingers squeezing the poor man’s life away. But whose fingers were they?’

  He glared at Jack Right, eyebrows almost meeting over his broad face. The man shrank back, whimpering.

  ‘Mine, sir,’ he whispered.

  ‘A confession, by God!’ gasped Coleman.

  Phineas Taylor Barnum straightened up and blew out a long breath. ‘I’m sorry, Jack,’ he said.

  Coleman looked from Barnum to both the Jacks and back again. ‘He killed his own twin brother?’

  ‘So it appears,’ said Barnum, pointing at the letter. ‘The evidence is in your hands there.’

  Coleman stared at the letter dubiously. The paper was damp and spongy in his wet hand. ‘But…why? Killing Jack Left would mean he’d die himself. Why?’

  ‘Because he had nothing left to live for. Jack Right, you said a demon killed your brother. And you were correct. A demon did – you!’