The Ghost of the Mary Celeste

by Valerie Martin

  How was it possible?

  All I wanted was to quit my room. I dressed quickly, stepped into the hall, locking the door behind me, and walked purposefully away from the hotel. I wanted to walk to Philadelphia and never see Lake Pleasant again, but I was soon standing on the shore, looking out at the still, calm surface of the eponymous body of water. The chortling ripples playing in the grasses near the edge mocked me. A ghostly mist lay across the water and in the hollows of the forest beyond. It was early; the waitresses were just setting up in the tent and only myself and an aged crone who sat muttering on a bench under a tree were about. To recover my composure, I decided to walk along the path to the highlands.

  The natural world is rife with anomalies, but I believed everything in it could be explained by a thorough understanding of its properties and laws. Water, for example, which seeks the lowest ground, could be forced to run uphill, as it did in the aqueducts the Romans designed to refresh their citizens’ thirst from sources far away. Fire, with its ravenous appetite for fuel, could be cajoled into accepting a steady diet of candlewick or cotton strips soaked in kerosene. Wind, well, one couldn’t say wind was actually harnessed, though sailors liked to think so, and they had made such a study of its various temperaments that they contrived to use it to accomplish a marvelous feat; by adjusting sheets of canvas, they could move large ships across entire oceans. Wind in my view was the most capricious element, but there was one thing it couldn’t do and that was whip up a tempest in a closed box. Therefore, it was clear that the wind had entered my room from the outside. The door had been open and slammed shut just as I reached it. As for the vases of flowers, they might have been protected by the bench and the low shrubbery near the path.

  So I reconciled myself to a practical view, and exercised by my climb, I arrived at Gussie’s Tea Room in a rational state of mind. As I drew closer, to my surprise, the screen door flew open and Jeremiah Babin barged out, walking briskly toward me, his head lowered and giving off an air of agitation, which struck me as odd because his nature, as I had observed it, was expansive, sociable, and not prone to vexation. When he glanced up to see who stood in his path, he appeared at first startled and then annoyed. “Good morning,” I said. “You’re up early.”

  He stopped, scowling at me so intently that I took a step back. “I’ve been up since dawn,” he said coldly.

  I felt nothing but relief at this news. “Was it the storm?” I asked. “It got me up too, but not before it wrecked my room.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I’ve been up since dawn attending on our dear Miss Petra, who is in quite a state, thanks to you.”

  “Now it’s I who am mystified,” I said. “She wasn’t the least excited last night.”

  “Really?” he said, meaning he didn’t believe me. “She says you accused her of being a fraud, and she says you tried to get her to admit it, and she’s sure you have every intention of writing horrible lies about her in your newspaper and she’s back there”—he flung out his arm in the direction of the hotel—“packing madly because she wants to leave at once, though she has an important sitting this afternoon with Mrs. Grover Greenwich who has come all the way from Ohio on purpose to see her.”

  “But that’s not true,” I protested. “I said nothing of the kind.”

  “Well, you must have said something, Miss Grant. And I think it very small of you, as we’ve been nothing but welcoming and generous and willing to answer all your nosy questions since you came among us.”

  My conscience stung me, but not because of my conversation with Violet. It was because I had allowed Jeremiah to pay for my dinner the night before. I shouldn’t have, and he knew it as well as I did. “I’m very sorry to hear that something I said upset Violet,” I said. “But I assure you, I made no accusations or any kind, nor do I intend to write anything critical of her.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I hardly said anything at all. I just asked what you call ‘nosy’ questions. Perhaps she regrets her answers, but not because I suggested she should.”

  This appeal tempered his anger, but he was still uncharacteristically sullen. “I shouldn’t have left her alone with you,” he said. “Now I don’t know who to believe.”

  We had been walking in a leisurely way as we talked and had arrived at a bench set in the shade of three birch trees that hovered over it, as if to eavesdrop on any conversation that might take place in their domain. “Let’s stop here,” Jeremiah suggested, and I agreed. When we were seated, he repeated his dilemma. “I don’t know who to believe.”

  “What motive could I have for dissembling?” I asked.

  He considered this question, and its corollary—what motive might Violet have for not telling the truth—and for several moments neither of us spoke. I was thinking over anything I might have said to Violet that would make her desperate. “I hope you won’t be offended,” I said, to break the silence. “But I think it isn’t a good idea to give her wine.”

  His heavy brows drew together and he cocked his head to have a closer look at me, as if I were a cat who had unexpectedly offered advice. “That’s what Virginia says,” he admitted. “But Violet says it helps her sleep. She can be very insistent.”

  “I believe that,” I said.

  “That wine helps her sleep?” he asked.

  “That she has trouble sleeping.”

  He studied me with unnecessary intensity. “And why do you think that is? Why can’t Violet sleep?”

  “Because,” I said measuredly, “Violet is a deeply unhappy woman.”

  “Is she?” The thought appeared entirely novel to him. “But why should she be?”

  I shrugged. How could he not know? was what I thought.

  “Insomnia is a common female complaint, isn’t it? Many women suffer from it; men seldom do. Virginia takes a sedative most nights. She can’t do without it. Women have very complex nervous systems. They are too highly strung.”

  “I’ve heard that view expressed by medical men,” I agreed.

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s widely understood.” He stroked his hair back from his temple, as if to assist his brain in its pursuit of the solution to a puzzle. “Do you have difficulty sleeping?”

  “Not as a rule,” I replied. The sleepless night I’d just passed nagged at me, and I realized it had left me shaken and dispirited.

  “But you’re an unusual woman. I’ve observed that. I don’t think many women could live by their wits as you do. I certainly don’t think Violet could, nor should she. Her gift is too important; it must be protected.”

  “You think she’s too sensitive to take care of herself.”

  “I know she is.”

  “Perhaps that’s what makes her unhappy.”

  “Why should it?” he said sharply. “People come from miles around to consult her. She’s welcomed everywhere she goes. She’s had a great success.” He shook his head in profound perplexity.

  Violet, I thought, had spent the morning “playing the tyrant” with her protector, and she had managed to vex and even to frighten him. My sympathies were not unengaged by his dilemma; he was an intelligent, open-minded, amiable, unimaginative man who wanted life to go smoothly and pleasantly. But where Violet was concerned, he was paddling about in a pond that was deeper and darker than he could possibly know. To such a man, Violet Petra must be well nigh unfathomable. Nothing in his nature could account for what was in hers. Now he regarded me with pleading eyes, eager for some useful feminine clarification, blissfully unaware that the obstinacy of his befuddlement had begun to wear on my patience. “No,” he concluded, “I can’t believe she’s unhappy. She has a fascinating life.”

  I recalled Violet’s weary reply the night before—Ten long years.

  “Is it such a life as you would want for your own daughter?” I asked my insistent companion.

  The slow intake of breath, the drawing away that followed this question, didn’t surprise me. I lowered my eyes, wait
ing for his momentary confusion to be replaced by resentment or hostility. A gnat had struck at him, after all. But Jeremiah had better defenses in his arsenal. After a proper, nearly ceremonial silence, he said softly, without agitation, “I see.”

  I met his eyes, which buried me in an avalanche of contempt. “I see,” he said again, calm and distant. All his courtesy and interest and earnest entreaty of my opinion had evaporated like the mist the sun had burned away while we had been talking.

  “What is it that you see?” I asked, deflecting his iciness with a chill of my own.

  He smiled joylessly. “What you do,” he said. “And why I found Violet hysterical this morning.”

  Abrupt reversals in the terms of a professional relationship are not uncommon in my experience. A previously willing party to an investigation decides all at once to become an obstacle. My questions have touched some nerve, my intentions, which—I really think because of my sex—are presupposed to be honorable, are revealed to be ignoble. The story I’m after is not the one my subject wishes to be told. I may well take the liberty of printing “horrid lies.” I made no reply, as I had nothing to say, and I expected Jeremiah to fire some dismissive parting shot and walk away, but he sat there glowering at me in what could best be described as a huff.

  Our fellow campers began to appear, sauntering in small groups toward the lake or up the path to the waterfall, eager to take in the delights of the new day. Two pretty children in white dresses and light summer shoes skipped on the path, their straight black hair cut in identical bobs, their heads inclined together, deep in conversation. They didn’t notice us as they passed, but I watched Jeremiah notice them, and some sliver of sympathy awakened in me—he must think of his own lost darlings whenever he saw living children, children who would grow up, children who would have more to say than “we are happy here.” His eyes rested upon them as they passed, but his expression didn’t soften.

  A young man stepped out of the teahouse and, seeing the girls, called out to them. “It’s Mr. Talbot,” one gasped to the other, and they took off at a run to greet him. Mr. Talbot was the proprietor of the spirit photography shop; I’d seen samples of his work in the window. One sat for him and the resulting photograph invariably included a misty spirit hovering over the chair, or funneling in from the ceiling like a cloudburst. If these innocent girls had a dollar to spend between them, they might pass a titillating half an hour inside the tent, while Mr. Talbot, a handsome young impostor who always wore a boater hat and a floppy black tie, posed them and teased them and swore he could see the veiled face of a spirit rising up behind them, but they must not turn to look or the picture would be spoiled. I watched the girls, holding hands and laughing at some witticism from the droll photographer. An old couple, the man thin, the woman portly, appeared at the edge of the forest path, their eyes strangely glittering in the morning light.

  A powerful sensation of revulsion rose up in me. Who were these bizarre, complacent people, these obstinate monomaniacs fixated on the patently absurd? Amid all this natural beauty, what most enlivened them was their conviction that death was not momentous, that life, as they put it, was continuous. The spirits they peddled had no mystery; they were ghosts stripped of their otherness. In their cosmography, the dead were just like us and they were everywhere, waiting to give us yet more unsolicited advice. That and the news that they were happy being dead, that life as they now lived it was better than it had been when they walked the green earth disporting themselves in flesh and blood.

  The tumultuous events of the night, the condition of my hotel room, my anxiety to get away from it, the rush to the lake, the beauty and serenity of the scene, the timely intrusion of Jeremiah Babin with his provocative innocence and his sham interest, it all struck me as of a vicious piece, but a piece of what I couldn’t tell.

  Jeremiah, emanating superiority and indifference, leaned forward beside me and dangled his hands between his knees. Did he really believe it? I wondered. Did this powerful, wealthy, educated man believe in the continuity of life? Or was he more interested in the continuity of his own comfort?

  As if he felt my question, he turned to me. “I’d like to assure Violet that you won’t write anything against her,” he said.

  “You may assure her,” I said. “I will tell you that when I met her, it was my intention to expose her as a fraud. And she may well be, for all I know. But I find I haven’t the heart to do her any harm. My article won’t mention her name.”

  He was faintly disappointed, but I could see that his wish to return Violet to a state he thought of as normal was gratified by the idea that I would cause no further disturbance to her sensitive nervous apparatus. He stood up and looked down at me. “I’ll carry your message, Miss Grant,” he said. “And I trust you’ll make no further attempt to contact her.”

  This amused me. “I never attempted to contact her to begin with,” I said. “She summoned me.”

  “Did she?” he said, though of course he knew this, had been in on it. “Well, I don’t think she will again. Good day to you.”

  “And to you, sir,” I said. Without looking back, he strode briskly down the path to the hotel. I watched his strong back, his well-coiffed hair, until he turned off at the lake and left my line of sight. I sat for a few moments more, mulling over my best course. At length I stood up and made my way down to the Lakeside Café, where the waitresses were serving coffee. I decided to drink a cup to brace myself for the tiresome business of putting my room back together and packing up my belongings.

  An hour later, as I checked out, I asked the ever-cheerful desk clerk if he had been disturbed by a sudden storm in the night, which, I regretted, had resulted in my water pitcher being now in three pieces inside the basin. “No,” he said. “I sleep like the dead.” He winked at his own cleverness. “But things do go bump in the night here, don’t you know,” he continued. “We call them polterguests. There won’t be no charge for the pitcher.” I thanked him, paid my bill, and set out along the wooden walkway, past the dance pavilion and down the steps to the station platform. A soft breeze rustled in the white pines, a woodpecker was up and drilling, and I could hear the band running through scales in preparation for their morning parade. I plopped down on the platform bench, grateful to spend my last fifteen minutes at Lake Pleasant communing with nothing more spiritual than my valise. I made out the train, like a drop of ink spreading on a page, far down the track.

  I had been waiting for perhaps ten minutes when I glanced up the hill and noticed a woman walking swiftly on the path from the hotel. As she reached the board walkway, she paused, bent over her ankles, and unbuckled her shoes. Then she sprinted, her skirt billowing, her dark hair loosening from the pins that restrained it, her stockinged feet flying across the wooden planks. At the stair landing she paused, gazing in the direction of the oncoming train, then at me, before she came pattering down the steps to join me on the platform. It was Violet, of course, flushed, wide-eyed, laughing at her own impetuosity. I stood up as she rushed to me, holding out her hands. “I couldn’t let you leave without saying good-bye,” she said, her breath coming in gasps. She took my hand in her own, shaking it gently as if we were just meeting. “Jeremiah said he told you I was angry at you, which is just ridiculous, I hope you know. I was angry at him!”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” I said, and I meant it. “But—”

  “I couldn’t sleep after you left,” she continued. “I just paced the room until I couldn’t stand it anymore and I knocked on Jeremiah’s door and made him get up and listen to me. I tried to tell him how excited I was, and how I wanted to change everything, but he is so dense. I got frustrated and wound up in tears.”

  The approaching train wailed as if in sympathy to her plight. Violet raised her voice over the racket. “But I was never angry at you. I had to tell you that.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” I said again. “But I fear you’ve torn your stockings.”

  She raised one foot and we both laughed at
the shredded silk. “I haven’t run in years,” she said. “Why do we never run?”

  Now the engine was grinding and huffing and the brakes squealed as it lumbered to the platform. I picked up my valise and turned toward it. As I did, Violet caught my hand to stop me, and I turned to her. She released me at once, drawing back as if abashed by her own impulsiveness. “You have completely shaken me up, Phoebe Grant,” she said.

  “I didn’t mean to,” I replied. The two carriages glided in before us; there was a wheeze and a cloud of white steam rose from below. The attendant yanked the heavy door open from inside. “Good luck to you,” I said, handing in my valise and following it.

  When I looked back, Violet was smiling. “And to you,” she said. She had gripped her skirt in one hand, pulling it up and back so that the hem was lifted above her ankles. Another belch of steam issued from the train, washing over her torn stockings, her lifted skirt, up to the hand clutching the cloth at her hip. It alarmed me; I felt she was being swallowed up, and though I was perfectly aware that this was not the case, I had a strong premonition of something dark, something like doom gathering around this small, pert, eager woman who had made a most unladylike spectacle of herself in her anxiety to bid me farewell.

  “Don’t forget me,” she called out, as the door slid shut and the train, with another wail of the whistle and screech of metal against metal, pulled away from Lake Pleasant.

  ON TOUR IN AMERICA

  Philadelphia, November 1894

  The Anglo-Saxon race will own the world.

  ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  When the last guest was gone, Dr. Doyle bid his host good night and climbed the deeply carpeted stairs of the mansion to his luxurious bedroom. Two consecutive nights in the same bed felt like a novelty. He had been traveling nonstop for a month. Hotel rooms, no matter how dreary and overheated, were welcome enough, since most nights he and his brother got what rest they could in the narrow bunks of the Pullman cars. Each day they were greeted at another small, overheated railway station by representatives of the reading circle or lecture hall or booking agency sent out on purpose to gather them in. Unfailingly polite, enthusiastic, obsequious, and curious, these Americans never failed to inquire, first, what he thought of America and second, whether he would bring the famous detective back to life. They took him to dinner in rooms festooned in ribbons and flags, where the tables were decorated with unsubtle references to his characters. Large groups of strangers sat down with him. His glass and his plate were constantly replenished, toasts went round and round; he proposed a few himself, and even his brother joined in.