"And the painting?" Holmes inquired sharply. "What did you do with it when you moved to cheaper rooms?"
"Mr. Holmes, the very day I was to move, the painting vanished. I have not seen it since."
By this time, I could hardly contain my impatience with the fellow's tale. But Holmes merely said, "Certainly the painting vanished. It had to vanish. And the dog?"
"Still with me," Marplethorpe said. "My one consolation in a way. I cannot blame my miserable condition on Eddie. He's a loyal little fellow, more so than my supposed friends."
"Have you lost all contact with them?"
"I did not advertise my whereabouts when I moved. I heard nothing from any of them until this very day. And that is why I came to see you. I received a note in the post from Charles Vickery. He expressed regret he had failed to locate me until now, said all the old circle were already gathered at his country house, and assured me the celebration was incomplete without me. I feel drawn to go, Mr. Holmes, Charles's house parties having been such a happy part of my life, my old life in any case. And yet I feel a sense of foreboding at the same time. If you could come to Charles Vickery's country house, talk to my friends, investigate the odd occurrences, and perhaps come up with some reasonable explanation for them, the whole downward plunge of my existence might be reversed on the very anniversary of my unhappy decline's beginning."
It seemed to me that Marplethorpe was asking a great deal, but Holmes seemed to regard the request as a mere trifle. "Certainly, Mr. Marplethorpe, but first you must give us some directions."
"To Charles's country estate," he said, his face brightening with hope.
"Yes, but first to your old rooms in Kensington."
On occasion during my association with Sherlock Holmes, he asked me to represent him at some point in an investigation—the adventure of The Hound of the Baskervilles was one such instance. It was a flattering responsibility I always accepted with serious purposefulness. Thus it was that I attended Charles Vickery's Christmas celebration the following day. Holmes, who had swiftly departed the Baker Street rooms with Marplethorpe the previous night, did not explain why he could not appear at the Vickery house in person, merely admonished me to be on my guard.
By arrangement, a carriage met me at the railway station.
"A happy Christmas to you, sir," the coachman said. "Dr. Watson, is it?"
"Yes, and a happy Christmas to you."
"I had understood there were to be two passengers to the house, sir. Mr. Sherlock Holmes—"
"Mr. Holmes was called away on business related to an investigation," I said, quite accurately, as it happens.
Following a bracing if bumpy ride through the tree-lined countryside, I had my first view of Vickery's stately country house. The young man, I realized, must be wealthy indeed.
The host, who was waiting for me at the door to offer a hearty greeting, was a jolly and affable young man, who concealed his disappointment at my conveying of Holmes's regrets more successfully than had his servant. He assured me he was delighted to make me welcome. While his friendliness seemed quite genuine, the holiday gaiety was obviously somewhat forced. I detected an expression of concern in his eyes.
"Have you had any communication from Oliver Marplethorpe?" he asked.
"No, indeed, not since last evening," I said. "Do you mean to tell me he is not here?"
"No. When he telephoned last night, he advised me to expect him on the earlier of the two morning trains and to expect you and Mr. Holmes on the later. I was delighted and relieved to hear that he was coming. Oliver has not had the easiest of times in the past year. Indeed he unaccountably cut off all contact with those of us who most value him. When he asked leave to invite two additional guests as distinguished as yourself and Mr. Holmes, my delight increased. Imagine our disappointment and concern when he did not arrive this morning as expected. I had hoped he would prove to have accompanied you on the later train."
"I am as puzzled as you are, sir."
"Well, it's Christmas Day all the same, and we must celebrate as best we can."
The Christmas decorations proved as elaborate and festive as Marplethorpe had promised. In the shadow of an enormous tree thick with ornaments, I was introduced to several revellers of about my host's age, though they acted a decade younger. Several were clearly disappointed not to have the opportunity to meet the celebrated Sherlock Holmes, but only two of them seemed to share my host's deep concern about Marplethorpe.
Miss Hawley proved a comely young woman indeed. When smiling and vivacious, she undoubtedly could melt any masculine heart. Even in her current pale and distracted state, her amazing beauty shone through and her helpless desolation created an almost automatic desire to shield and protect her. That others felt the same was emphasized by the phalanx of young men that surrounded her. Seeing Elspeth Hawley for the first time made me feel all the more sympathy for Oliver Marplethorpe, madman or not. Next to the loss of her, the loss of income and literary reputation, even of sanity, might seem secondary.
"Dr. Watson," she said gravely, "I am heartened to know Oliver has made such a friend as you. But where can he be? What new misfortune can have befallen him to prevent his being here?"
"There are any number of explanations, Miss Hawley," I said, not really believing it. "I'm certain he will appear before the day is out, with an amusing story on his lips."
She shook her head distractedly. "How I wish I could share your confidence. But I feel things, Dr. Watson. I always have. It is an uncanny ability and not always a welcome one. Oliver is dead. I know it."
"Surely not, Miss Hawley. You must not lose hope."
"Thank you for your comforting words, Dr. Watson," she said, not seeming at all comforted. "You gentlemen will excuse me, I know. I must prepare."
Without revealing what she was preparing for. Miss Hawley drifted away. A moment later, my host introduced me to the third of the persons on whom it was my duty to concentrate my attention, Colin Ragsdale.
"Dr. Watson," the slight, red-bearded Ragsdale assured me, "I for one am even more honoured to meet you than the absent subject of your remarkable stories."
"In that, you are most unusual, sir."
"In many ways he is most unusual," Charles Vickery said humorously, earning him a sardonically arched eyebrow.
"I cannot but ask," I said. "Why on earth would you rather meet me than Holmes?"
"Because of the value I place on the written word. While I am sure Mr. Holmes is a talented man, it is your accounts that have made him famous—and made him rich, I suspect."
"You flatter me, sir," I said, quite sincerely. "Holmes was already well known long before I put pen to paper."
"To thief-takers and villains, perhaps, but not to the general public."
"I suppose there is something in what you say."
"What a strange thing is fortune, Doctor," Ragsdale said reflectively. "If I had met you as recently as one month ago, I would have ascertained whether you were in the market for larger rooms, but happily I have left all that behind me." A shadow appeared over his face. "I believe I would be the happiest man in England at this moment, if I weren't so concerned for my old friend Oliver Marplethorpe. Where can he be do you think?"
"I had expected to find him here."
"And are you joining us for the séance, Dr. Watson?"
"A séance? On Christmas Day?" I cast a puzzled glance at my host. "It seems vaguely sacrilegious, somehow."
"Not to one who believes," Charles Vickery said. "I am not one such, I hasten to add, but Elspeth insists. And we all find it hard to deny Elspeth anything, especially on a day that once was intended to be her wedding day. She has brought her own medium for the occasion, and I have the delicate task of providing a suitable circle of participants."
"We must not laugh," Colin Ragsdale said gravely, "much as we might want to. Charles has to keep out the open scoffers—of whom I confess I would be one, were it not for my tender regard for Elspeth. We also must not have anyone li
kely to be too much affected by the proceedings. We don't want any deaths by fright, do we, Charles?"
"Nor any deaths at all," Charles said solemnly, apparently thinking of his absent friend. "Will you join us then, Doctor?"
To refuse would have been to ignore my duty.
We sat in a circle of six, our hands joined on a round table, the only illumination a series of candles on a side table and a fitfully burning fire on the other side of the very large and oppressively dark upstairs room. The sparsely furnished chamber was innocent of seasonal decoration and far from the noise of the Christmas revellers. Our group consisted, reading clockwise round the table, of Charles Vickery, Elspeth Hawley, myself, a Miss Cavendish, who was a contemporary of Miss Hawley and apparently a fellow believer in spiritualism; Colin Ragsdale, and the spirit medium, Madame Larousse, a tall, slender, heavily veiled woman whose French accent did nothing to counter my scepticism.
"Hear us, O spirits of the departed," she said, in a sort of chant. "We seek your wisdom and your comfort, you who have gone to the other side. Bring us your messages of advice and guidance."
The medium suddenly halted her chant, her head dropping forward in the dim light as if she had suddenly lost consciousness. Then another, higher voice, issued eerily from her mouth, its unaccented English in sharp contrast to her normal heavily Gallic tones. "I want to go home, master. I want to go home. Please let me go home, master."
The medium's head shifted from one side to another. We heard a new voice, and though the medium's lips moved, the voice seemed to issue from the corner of the room farthest from the table where we all sat.
"Eddie! Eddie!" the hollow voice cried, like a lost soul begging for release.
On my left, Elspeth Hawley's hand gripped mine harder. She breathed softly, "Oliver. Oliver, is it you?"
"Elspeth," the voice croaked. "I loved you, Elspeth, but Eddie took me away from you. Why, Eddie? Why?" The medium's lips were still moving, but surely even the most gifted ventriloquist could not throw her voice that far. "Eddie," the haunted voice continued, "what can your full name be? Is it Edgar or Edward or Edmund or Edwin? Tell me, Eddie."
The medium's head shifted violently to the other side and the high-pitched voice came again from her lips. "None of those, master, none of those. Eddie denotes not my name but my position in life. The position 1 took from you. I was your better, master. I was always your better. You knew that." With a sudden ear-splitting shrillness, the medium shrieked out, "Editor! Editor! Oh, let me go home, master!"
I heard some creature skittering across the floor. The table rocked as one of our number broke the chain of hands and pushed back his chair. Miss Cavendish squeaked slightly and Charles Vickery uttered an exclamation. The lights in the room came up full and we saw Colin Ragsdale sitting, a horrified look on his face, a small white terrier leaping excitedly at his feet. Ignoring the dog, he rose from his chair and charged toward a black-clad figure in the newly illuminated corner.
"I should have killed you, Marplethorpe," Ragsdale roared. "And I will—!"
I leapt from my chair to intercept maddened Ragsdale, but the medium proved quicker, coming between the two of them and knocking Ragsdale to the floor with the skill of a practiced boxer. The French medium, freed of her veil, was none other than Sherlock Holmes.
# # #
Back in the rooms at Baker Street, I demanded of my friend why I had not been given more idea of what to expect.
"You could not have played your part as effectively, my friend, and I knew if I could fool an observer as keen as you, our quarry surely would not see through me."
Somewhat mollified, I inquired, "How did you get onto him?"
"Starting from the supposition that our client was telling the truth—and as you have pointed out, I was not the person to help him if he was not—I knew his tormentor had not only to be a gifted if secret 'weekend artist' but someone with access to his rooms. Since there was no wet paint on the canvas, there had to be multiple, nearly identical versions of the dog-ventriloquist painting extant, and there had to be some place to secret them near to where they were hanging, in a hidden closet or some other hiding place unknown to the occupant of the rooms. Only then could the nocturnal switches be made when needed. An intruder was also necessary to produce the voices Oliver Marplethorpe heard—and of course to steal the painting when Marplethorpe was to make his move to lesser quarters. Naturally Marplethorpe could not be allowed to take the picture with him, for the maddening effects could not be reproduced in his new quarters and having an unchanging version of the picture might cause him to reclaim his reason more quickly.
"Colin Ragsdale as far as we knew seldom left London, unlike Vickery or Miss Hawley. When I heard he had worked as an estate agent, I wondered if he had by any chance gotten Oliver Marplethorpe his new Kensington accommodations. When I learned that he had, the identity of the tormentor seemed clear.
"As we now know, Ragsdale was intensely jealous of Mapplethorpe's success. He felt his own capabilities were greater, and yet he saw Marplethorpe getting all the writing assignments. Ragsdale also was in love with Miss Hawley, and here, too, Marplethorpe had outdone him. The appointment of Marplethorpe to the editorship of their friend's journal was the final blow. At that point, Ragsdale determined to bring Marplethorpe down, ruin him as a writer, get back everything he believed had been taken from him by his old university friend. What progress he had made toward winning Miss Hawley's affections I do not know, but he had recently been named the new editor of Vickery's Weekly, thus his reference to you of his recently improved fortune."
"Did the others know Ragsdale was the creator of the painting?"
"Certainly, but they didn't realize the nature of the macabre joke he had in mind. And the gift of the tauntingly named Eddie was also quite innocent on the part of Miss Hawley, who never suspected what Ragsdale was doing. They all liked Ragsdale, as indeed did Marplethorpe himself. They never suspected what vengeful bitterness simmered beneath the surface. Miss Hawley has confirmed that it was Ragsdale's careful manipulation that led her first to cease visits to Marplethorpe's rooms on grounds of propriety—it being essential to Ragsdale's plan that no one of their circle visit while the changes in the painting were being engineered—and later to postpone the engagement and depart on a holiday. One of his ploys was to convince her that her presence only made Marplethorpe's mental affliction worse, that it would be good for the poor fellow not to see her for a time.
"When Marplethorpe dropped out of sight, Ragsdale was delighted, thinking he'd seen the last of his ruined nemesis. But Vickery and Miss Hawley still had warm feelings for the unfortunate Oliver Marplethorpe and were determined to draw him back into their circle for the annual Christmas celebration. Ragsdale, of course, had to pretend to concur and join them in their search. When Marplethorpe and I arrived here by hired carriage in the early hours of the morning, we managed to attract Miss Hawley to her bedroom window. We related our plan of attack to her and she was happy to cooperate in our exposure of Ragsdale. I must say she was very surprised to hear Oliver Marplethorpe suggest a Christmas Day séance, but in the circumstances, she readily agreed to it, as well as to sponsoring my masquerade."
"And now they are again to be married," I remarked. "But Miss Hawley has given up the notion of being a Christmas bride and has agreed to settle for the New Year instead."
"Now then, Watson," Holmes said, "do my nostrils sense that much-delayed Christmas pudding?"
The Adventure of the Man Who Never Laughed
John H. Watson, M. D. Discovered by J. N. Williamson
It was past the middle of December, in the year '94, that I woke one morning with a start and a distinct impression that some uncommon sound had disturbed my slumber. The clock on the mantelpiece indicated it was not yet seven, and I lay quite still for some seconds attempting to expel a vague presentiment of danger. My friend Sherlock Holmes rarely rose before I was ready for my medical rounds, but there was no question that he still had enemies
whose dearest desire was his extermination. After all, it had been only the spring of the present year when Colonel Sebastian Moran had endeavoured to slay Holmes with a powerful air rifle.
Persuaded that my fears were probably the product of having again read Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" before falling asleep, I slid from bed, donned my robe, and tiptoed across the bedroom floor to the door. I opened it as quietly as possible and descended the stairs even more noiselessly to the sitting room.
"My congratulations, old fellow," a voice called. "You have single-handedly proved the contention that some aging faculties may improve in compensation for the deterioration of others."
"Holmes!" I cried as I stepped into the room. "You are already up and around."
"Very good, Watson." He glanced up with a wry smile. "Perhaps the acuity of your vision has not diminished to the degree I feared."
His remarks perplexed me. "My eyesight is normal for a man in his middle years," I said. I drew my robe more tightly round my waist as I walked toward my chair. "Or was that a jest, an allusion to my occasional failure to perceive things as swiftly as you do?"
"You are as astute as if it were midday," he murmured, and returned his attention to his previous activities.
Sherlock Holmes was seated cross-legged in the centre of the floor, barefoot but wearing his favourite mouse-coloured dressing gown. His hawk-nosed face was in profile and I marvelled anew at his capacity for concentration so keen it rendered the rest of the world invisible.
Sitting, I saw several incoming letters were open to his left, another roughly half a foot to the front. Several sheets of his own writing paper and envelopes were to Holmes's right, while two of his letters were ready to be posted and he seemed in the midst of a third. I had no idea why he had not chosen to use the writing desk.
"You could apologize for waking me," I said with pique.
"And if I do not do so," Holmes answered, "you may be assured there is a reason for my apparent rudeness." His moving pen stopped for an instant. "I should think you would be pleased to find me with an amiable disposition. For years you have tried to wheedle me into assuming your relentlessly cheerful seasonal mood."
Holmes for the Holidays Page 16
