‘I do not know, exactly. She married into wealth and moved away. We have lost touch. Poor little Peanut.’ Mrs Simpson picked up an old daguerreotype of a child. Smiling down at it, she said, ‘Of course no one calls her that anymore. She is all grown up and goes by her married name.’
Mrs Simpson held up the daguerreotype. It was a beautiful child’s face, familiar somehow. The wind howled suddenly and the trees brushed against the house. I shuddered.
‘What is her name now?’ I asked, already knowing the answer.
‘Isla McLaren,’ said she. ‘Ah, but you grow pale, Dr Watson. May I get you some brandy before you leave?’
PART SEVEN
THE POUR
‘I am not omniscient but I know a lot’
—Goethe, Faust, First part
CHAPTER 39
The Lady
t was close to midnight when I arrived back at Braedern. I had missed most of the train connections and was forced to arrange private transportation at considerable expense and what felt like perilous delay. But mad visions of the tale I had been told, Isla McLaren’s relationship to a ghost from Holmes’s past, and an insight into his aversion to this same young woman whirled in my brain. Is it not possible that ghosts are actually subtle ideas, just out of reach of our consciousness, tickling our minds with possibilities but vanishing just as we may try to label them?
In some way, Isla McLaren must have reminded Holmes of Charlotte Simpson. I am postulating that this was not on the level of consciousness, but enough to set off an extreme and painful reaction. That his masterful brain would not have made the connection was telling. This ghost was well hidden to my friend.
Perhaps he had been right about one thing all along. She could be a very real danger to him.
By the time I arrived, the castle was dark and Mungo let me in. The old man was surprised to see me. ‘I thought you had returned to London, Dr Watson,’ said he. ‘I apologize but we have cleared your room and removed the bedding for airing. But I can—’
‘Later!’ I cried. ‘Where is Mr Holmes?’
Mungo had no idea, and when he refused to accompany me to the East Tower and Holmes’s room, I barked out, ‘Damn it man, there are no ghosts! But there are real people who may be in danger!’
He offered me the keys, but would not go.
I found myself alone in our hallway, now nearly pitch black with only one light flickering feebly. I made my way to his room and unlocked the door. It was empty and cold. I felt in my pocket for the reassuring presence of my Webley and the knife. Holmes was formidable in combat but unarmed. Regret and fear filled my veins with ice. How stupidly angry had I been to leave my friend in this place? And where was he now?
I retraced my steps to the main hall and ran to Isla McLaren’s room. It, too, was vacant. I felt panic rising in my gorge. It was she who had initially wanted Holmes to come to Braedern.
Alistair McLaren was next. I awakened him from a sound sleep. He did not know where his wife, or indeed anyone in the family was, except his father, who was resting comfortably under the supervision of Dr MacLeish.
The man responded to my alarm with a shrug. ‘It is my opinion, Dr Watson, that the ghosts have played out their hand in this family. It is left to a few of us to pick up the pieces.’ I asked after Holmes’s whereabouts and he replied, ‘I have no idea. Your friend seemed inclined to persist, despite the rest of us being more than willing to leave the final stones unturned. He was not to be dissuaded, however. The last I understood was that he sought out more information on the various buildings in the distillery, though what he could hope to find at this time I cannot imagine.’
‘And your wife?’
‘It is nearly midnight, Doctor. Presumably she is sleeping.’
‘She is not in her room.’
Alistair’s one eyebrow shot up. ‘You checked? Then she is probably reading in the library. Good night, Dr Watson.’
But she was not there, either, and I returned to Holmes’s room with a sick feeling. Should I await him there? I was not easy with that thought. I paced the room, looking for any indication of his whereabouts. And it was then that I saw it.
A note, scrawled hastily on a slip of paper, lay upon the desk. It read. ‘Sherlock Holmes, I have information you seek. Meet me at Building C, the mash tun at midnight.’ It had been written in Charlotte’s unusual shade of golden brown ink. This had to be from Isla McLaren with revenge on her mind. It was just past midnight now. I wasted not a second longer. My friend was in danger and I knew it with a cold certainty.
I ran from Holmes’s room into the hallway. The single remaining lamp which had been flickering earlier was now out and the hall was shrouded in darkness. I went back for a candle, then emerged a second time into the hall.
I felt a sudden chill draught, and turned.
There, at the end of the hall, floated the eerie, glowing female figure I had seen on our first night at Braedern. My spine went rigid. The transparent figure emitted a high-pitched, keening wail. I could not move. Her diaphanous lace dressing gown, lit from within, blew softly in billows around her pale feet. The moon-like globe of her face bore features this time, barely distinguishable and wavering as if several feet underwater.
The figure was semi-transparent. It could not be a trick of the light. Holmes had said there was no room to create a stage magic illusion there.
‘You are not real,’ I called out. I could hear the quaver in my voice.
The figure continued to glimmer as I watched, and now she appeared to smile and nod. What did this mean? Suddenly one arm extended, pointing off to the right, in the direction of the distillery. Her other hand waved in that direction as if exhorting me to go there. The ghost quivered and her luminescence grew stronger. She was trying to tell me something. Something I already knew. I tore myself from looking at this apparition, and ran from her, down the hall, down the stairs and towards the front door of the castle. Holmes was at the distillery. In Building C.
After a perilous descent down the steep icy hill, I tore over ice-slicked cobblestones between the buildings of the distillery towards Building C, the one that housed the new mash tun. I fell, tearing the knee of my trousers. The heavy door was ajar and I entered the building into an anteroom which led into the main area. Over near a set of controls I saw a body sprawled on the floor. Rushing to it I discovered a workman, with bulging eyes and swollen tongue, apparently dead by strangulation. In his hand was a sheet of paper attached to a board, some kind of record of temperatures. I moved on.
I came to the cavernous room where the grains were soaked and raked in that huge, heated cast iron vat, the ‘mash tun’, turning into a hot, slimy soup. It was that same enormous vat where we had seen the men arguing at the controls.
It was dimly lit here. The metal grillwork flooring over the concrete made a silent approach difficult. I advanced cautiously. The mash tun was at the other end of the room. The vat itself extended up from the floor, some ten or fifteen feet. A metal staircase led to a platform near the top of the gigantic vessel.
At first I saw no one but heard the soft murmur of voices against the mechanical hiss and clank of the steam engine which drove the rakes circulating in the mash tun. I started to light a match but thought better of it. I inched my way silently towards the voices, careful to hide behind various pieces of equipment.
There he was!
In the dim light I made out Holmes, above me on the platform, unmoving and focused intently on something before him. He was very near the opening in the metal canopy which covered the vat. This yawning and treacherous opening was protected only by a narrow iron railing. The warm, churning liquid below gave off a cloud of steam which billowed around his backlit figure. The air reeked of wet grain.
I carefully ascended a staircase off to one side and emerging on the same platform, but across the room from him, I hid behind a boiler. Peering around it, I discovered the subject of his gaze. If what I had just seen in the hall had frightened me just a lit
tle, this sent ice through my veins.
A ghostly female figure faced him from the other side of the cauldron of bubbling liquid, terrible in her deathly aspect.
This apparition was brighter than the one I had just seen. White as porcelain, her hair, face and arms were aglow. The electric light on the wall behind the figure shone through the diaphanous fabric of her filmy dress and she seemed to shimmer in the darkness. The pale hair was dressed in a style of twenty years ago, blonde but tinged with white.
But it was the face that chilled my blood. Backlit and in shadow, it was terrible, with lips of frost and a deep hollowed blackness around the eyes. It bore a look of quiet fury. I had thought to find Isla McLaren. But instead—
Circling her bare, blue-white neck the clear mark of a ligature was visible.
Holmes was mesmerized. He stared at the figure, unmoving.
‘Holmes!’ I called out. But my voice did not carry over the noise of the engine. Or, he did not seem to heed me.
‘Charlotte?’ he said softly.
The apparition slowly raised her right arm and pointed at Holmes. Her voice was hoarse, low pitched, and strange. ‘Sherlock Holmes. Murderer. Confess.’
I stepped out from behind the boiler and moved closer to where Holmes stood. I hoped the apparition would not notice me in the dim light. I called out again, just above a whisper, ‘Holmes!’
But whatever it was that faced Holmes heard me. ‘Silence!’ the creature shouted in my direction.
Holmes did not move. ‘That is her voice.’ I was not sure whether he was speaking to me, or to himself.
‘Confess!’ intoned the apparition.
I stepped closer. I took the gun from my pocket and held it at my side. This was Isla McLaren. No matter what it looked like, it had to be Isla McLaren. But—
‘If you are the ghost of Charlotte Simpson then you know Sherlock Holmes would never kill her—kill you. He is not that kind of man,’ I called out.
Holmes turned to me in surprise. ‘Watson! When did you—stand back, Doctor! Put that gun away.’
‘You cannot kill me, Doctor Watson. I am already dead!’ said the apparition with a bitter laugh, spreading her arms wide, daring me.
Holmes moved closer to me. ‘Put it away, I say,’ he said softly.
‘Holmes, you do not believe this, do you?’ I whispered. ‘You do not believe this is Charlotte?’
He looked at me in utter surprise, then recovered and moved to stand between the ghost and me. He turned his back on her. His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Do it, Watson. Please. No matter what happens. Just put the gun away.’
Reluctantly, I replaced the gun in my pocket. He turned back to face the spectre.
‘Confess,’ said the ghost, her voice terrible. ‘I want to hear you say it. You killed me, Sherlock Holmes.’
‘I did not kill you.’
‘You made me a promise. And then you cruelly abandoned me.’
‘I made you no promise.’
‘Say my name.’
My friend paused.
The man for whom empirical evidence ruled all would not believe this was a ghost. Would he?
‘Say my name!’
‘Why should I believe you?’ said Holmes. It was as though he wanted to.
But it was Isla. It must be. And yet it did not quite look like her. ‘Because you gave me this.’
She reached into her voluminous white dress and withdrew a faded scarf, blue with pink, coral and red roses. It was six feet long, French chiffon, and appeared to be shredded in places. Holmes rocked backward in surprise. He squinted in the dim light. ‘Where did you get that?’ His voice was muted, full of wonder.
‘You gave it to me. Do you not remember? Wrapped in silver paper as we stood under the elm tree in the courtyard in front of the Green Pelican Inn. It was snowing. You had chosen a combination of my favourite colours and I complimented you on this.’
Holmes did not move.
‘Then we went inside. We stood by the fireplace. I said I had never met a man like you. And you were uncomfortable. Do you remember what we said?’
Holmes shuddered. ‘Please, no,’ he said softly.
‘We had been studying Todhunter’s book, The—’
‘—History of Probability, yes,’ said Holmes with difficulty.
‘See, you do remember. And I told you that the laws of chance said I was not likely to find anyone like you ever again. And you, so very confident, started to agree. But then you suddenly caught my meaning. And you said no, that I would surely find someone better suited—’
‘Stop!’ Holmes cried. He swallowed and took a step back as if struck. He seemed to shrink before my eyes, the vital energy draining from his body. ‘How—how can you know this?’
‘Because I was there. Say my name.’
Holmes was silent.
I wanted to speak but could not find my voice. The muffled sounds of the engine and the enormous rake droned steadily on. I became aware that the room was very warm from the steam arising from the tank.
‘Say it,’ said the ghost.
‘Charlotte,’ said Holmes. ‘Charlotte Simpson.’
‘I had feelings for you,’ the ghost continued. ‘But not long after this, you wrote me that horrible letter. It was a knife in my heart. As surely as if you had plunged it in yourself.’
Holmes looked stricken. ‘I was brusque. I—’
‘Did you love me?’
‘I felt betrayed.’
‘Betrayed?’
‘I had told you of my troubles with August Bell Clarion. You were his second cousin. You hid the relationship. Lying by omission—’
‘—is as shameful and dishonourable as lying outright. Or so you feel.’
The same words Holmes had said to Isla during our interview.
‘I thought he must have put you up to this,’ whispered Holmes.
‘You thought I would participate? That I was like my cousin August?’
‘You underestimated him. He was insidious.’
‘Holmes!’ I whispered.
He ignored me.
‘But how could you think Charlotte was so easily swayed? How could you think that of her—of me?’ she corrected.
‘I was young,’ he said. ‘Inexperienced. And I—’
‘I ask you again. Did you love me?’
Holmes paused.
‘Did you love me? Did you love Charlotte?’
‘In the only way I could,’ he said.
The ghost regarded him sadly.
‘But if you were Charlotte, you would know that,’ said Holmes.
‘But how? How did you love me?’ she said.
There was a long silence. Holmes could not bring himself to speak. Finally he looked down at the floor, his face torn in anguish. ‘That shall remain between us,’ he said in a choked voice.
The ghost waivered, unsure. Holmes rubbed his eyes. With effort, he took a deep breath and regained his poise. He drew himself up tall. ‘And now it is my turn.’ He glared at the female figure standing before him, and abruptly his voice sharpened into its normal tone. ‘Where did you get the scarf, Mrs McLaren?’
The woman facing us across the vat stood very still. My hand found my gun and rested on it. There was a silence.
Slowly, the pale figure reached up and pulled off the white-tinged, golden-haired wig to reveal dark auburn tresses. The rim of where the white makeup ended and her own skin colour began was visible at her hairline. She removed a handkerchief from her sleeve and rubbed off the ghostly paint, then took the familiar pair of small gold glasses from her pocket and placed them on her face.
And there she was, Mrs Isla McLaren. It had been a remarkable disguise. Even though I knew it must be her, she had made me doubt it. I raised the gun and aimed it at her.
‘I am glad you confirm you had feelings for my cousin, Mr Holmes,’ said Isla McLaren in her own, natural voice.
‘Your cousin?’ said Holmes.
‘Isla McLaren is the young girl you may h
ave known as Peanut.’ I said.
Holmes looked at me, startled as though he had forgotten I was there. He nodded, and turned back to the lady. ‘Ah, yes, of course. The resemblance is not something I would normally miss.’
‘Our own ghosts are hard to see, Holmes,’ said I.
He smiled ruefully. ‘Ah, so you are Peanut! You were but a child! Charlotte spoke of you but we never met.’
‘Twelve at the time she died. I was the person who found her.’
Mrs Isla McLaren fingered the scarf around her neck. Silence, except for the soft cacophony of the dripping condensation from the mash tun, the splash of the rakes, and the faint huffs and clanks of the engine. Steam continued to rise into the room.
‘Mrs McLaren, I will ask you again. Where did you get the scarf?’
‘She was hanging from it when I walked into the room.’
Holmes closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to his forehead, blinking back emotion. ‘Yes, I know. But it disappeared from the evidence room during the investigation. When did it come into your possession?’
‘I received it in the post, shortly before I came to you in London’ said she. Then, turning to me, ‘Put down your gun, Dr Watson. I mean your friend no harm.’
I did not believe it for a moment. ‘Holmes, I would not—’
‘Watson!’ Reluctantly I lowered my gun. ‘In the post? From whom?’ he continued.
‘Anonymous, but the writer identified himself as a retired policeman who worked on that investigation. He said he had proof that your letter caused her to hang herself.’
‘And you came to London for what reason? Retribution?’
‘Not exactly. You and I are much alike, Mr Holmes. I wanted to take the measure of the man. I believe in drawing my own conclusions, just as you do.’
‘And your conclusion?’
‘The jury is still out.’
Holmes turned to me thoughtfully. ‘Interesting. Watson, remember our visitor Mr Orville St John? He of the missing tongue?’
‘Of course.’
‘You recall our brief conversation in sign language? He told me that he had received a letter as well. The writer said he had proof that it was I who cut out his tongue so long ago.’
Unquiet Spirits: Whisky, Ghosts, Murder Page 33
