The Manifestations of Sherlock Holmes

by James Lovegrove

  “Whatever this Mrs Leinster said to Sir Hubert during the altercation, it must have aroused dark feelings in him which he had thitherto been able to suppress.”

  “So it would seem,” said Holmes.

  “Mrs Hudson tells me you have been unusually noisy at night,” I said. “Would you care to explain why?”

  “Practice,” my companion said with a dismissive wave of the hand.

  “In aid of what?”

  “You will soon see. The wheels are in motion. My investigation is drawing to its climax. I anticipate its resolution within the next twenty-four hours.”

  Try as I might, I could not educe any more from him than that. Holmes liked to be enigmatic when it suited him, teasing me with scraps of intelligence but withholding the full feast of facts until he felt the time was right. It was one of his more infuriating peccadillos.

  The following day, I received a telegram instructing me to be at a certain address in Chelsea at a certain hour. As ever with a missive from Sherlock Holmes, the wording of it brooked no refusal. The telegram was not so much a request as marching orders.

  Accordingly, I showed up when and where stipulated. The time was eight o’clock and the place was a dingy basement flat on the western fringes of Chelsea, where that elegant borough shades into its less salubrious neighbour, Fulham. Later I would learn that the flat was one of what I have described elsewhere as Holmes’s “small refuges in other parts of London”. Indeed, it was his first such acquisition, a bolthole wherein he might elude criminal attention and conduct business clandestinely. Over the ensuing years he would go on to purchase several other similar residences, as his fame grew and he began to adopt distinct alter egos, Captain Basil, for instance. He would inhabit these personae for days or even weeks at a stretch, creating whole other lives for himself in order to meet the demands of his more complex cases.

  Incognisant of the flat’s ownership at that precise moment, I knocked upon the door. Somewhat to my surprise, it was opened by Alec Carstairs.

  “Mr Carstairs,” I exclaimed.

  “Come in, Doctor. Swami Dhokha awaits.”

  “Swami…?”

  “The great fakir Swami Dhokha,” said Carstairs. “Newly arrived from the subcontinent. His skills as a psychic medium are second to none.”

  “But where is Sherlock Holmes? Is he here too?”

  “Mr Holmes, I regret to say, is otherwise engaged. I am present at his behest, in order to greet the Swami’s guests, of whom you are the first.”

  “I confess I do not understand any of this.”

  “I am sure all will become clear in due course,” Carstairs said. “For now, I ask simply that you make yourself comfortable in the living room. We are expecting five more attendees. Then the séance can begin.”

  It was all very puzzling. A séance? Conducted by some Indian medium? And why was Alec Carstairs involved? What on earth was Holmes playing at?

  As I mulled the matter over, it dawned on me that Holmes might well be laying a trap for Carstairs. Indeed, who else could this Swami Dhokha fellow be but Holmes himself, in disguise? I fancied that during the course of the séance he would manifest the spirit of Sir Hubert, who would then accuse Carstairs of engineering his demise. Carstairs, no sceptic when it came to spiritualism, would be shocked into making a confession.

  I smiled inwardly. For someone who often condemned me for the melodrama I injected into my chronicles of his exploits, Sherlock Holmes himself had a marked penchant for theatrics.

  One by one the other guests turned up, joining me in the dusty and rather cramped sitting room, where Carstairs supplied us with refreshments from the drinks cabinet. They were an odd assortment of human beings. The first was a slender, elderly fellow with a pinched face and a rather prissy bearing, like a perpetually censorious schoolmaster. The second was a grossly corpulent man who shuffled along with the aid of a walking stick and wheezed like a set of bellows as he sat down. The third was a delicate-seeming woman in the habit of constantly wringing her hands and dabbing at the corners of her eyes with a minuscule lace handkerchief. The fourth was a dandyish bravo who affected a swaggering, nonchalant air and whose buttonhole was adorned with a red rose. As for the fifth and last, she was already known to me, for it was Miss Ellen Efralstein.

  Her surprise at seeing me mirrored mine at seeing her. “Dr Watson,” said she. “This is unexpected.”

  Before I could reply, Carstairs interjected, “Dr Watson was impressed by the perspicacity the spirits displayed when he consulted you, Miss Efralstein. I believe he has become a confirmed believer, in much the same way that I have, thanks to you.”

  “Oh,” she said. Her mouth, below the edge of her half-veil, quirked at one corner. “Yes. I wondered about that when I saw your name mentioned in the letter of invitation. Why is Mr Alec Carstairs, of all people, hosting this event, I asked myself. You too are a convert, then, I take it?”

  “I am indeed,” said Carstairs.

  “Well, that is gratifying. And Doctor? After just the one sitting, as with Mr Carstairs, you have accepted the existence of the spirit world?”

  All I could think to do was nod. I sensed that Carstairs, as our host, wished us all to get along. His goal was that the evening should pass smoothly, without hindrance or upset. Little did he suspect what lay in store for him.

  “What about your friend Mr Holmes?” Miss Efralstein asked. “I do not see him here.”

  “I regret to say that he, madam, remains in the doubters’ camp.”

  “I suppose there will always be those who embrace the temporal and reject the ineffable,” she said with something of a sigh.

  The corpulent man rose to his feet, with some effort, and gave Miss Efralstein a bow. “Permit me to introduce myself. Aloysius Guthrie, Esquire. I have heard of you, Miss Efralstein. I believe we are both in the same trade, namely the conjuration of spirits.”

  “As am I,” said the elderly fellow. “David Ventnor Brown, medium to the aristocracy, at your service.”

  “I thought I recognised you, Mr Ventnor Brown,” said the dandy. “We met at one of the Duchess of Wolverton’s psychical soirées. You produced some very remarkable effects, I must say.”

  “You are too kind, Mr…?”

  “Lapham. Clifton Lapham.”

  “Ah yes. I remember now. You too are a medium.”

  “I have been known to dabble in a spot of table-turning,” Lapham said, preening. “In fact, my materialisations have been commended far and wide. I am on record as extruding the greatest quantity of ectoplasm at a single sitting, more than any other medium in London, and my levitations are second to none.”

  “I myself am a levitator par excellence,” said the delicate-seeming woman. “Mrs Isolde Potts. More than once I have caused a trumpet to fly halfway across a room. I mean, of course, the spirits cause the phenomenon. I am merely the conduit for their powers.”

  “Then we are all of us, it transpires, practitioners of the same art,” said Aloysius Guthrie. “How fascinating. I suppose Swami Dhokha, whoever he may be, wishes to make a splash in the spiritualist community. That is why he has organised this event and invited a bevy of London’s top mediums to attend.”

  “That would be my interpretation too,” said Lapham. “His letter was very persuasive, I found. Apparently, he is a celebrity in his native India. He has performed for maharajahs and governors alike, to huge acclaim.”

  “Moreover, he has been vouched for by my erstwhile employer, Sir Hubert Cole,” said Carstairs.

  “Sir Hubert,” said Ventnor Brown. “Yes, Dhokha said as much in the letter I received. A great man, was Sir Hubert. His loss is keenly felt. I had the privilege of his presence at a few of my séances. He was not only an enthusiastic participant but a generous one.”

  “Sir Hubert consulted me too, on several occasions,” said Mrs Potts. “He complimented me on the spirit-slate readings I did for him. ‘You truly have a gift, Mrs Potts,’ he said. ‘I come to you with the burden of a diffi
cult decision, and every time the spirits, through you, lift it from me.’ I came to regard him as a friend, and he, I hope,” she added with a coy, girlish smile, “felt a reciprocal affection.”

  “I propose a toast,” said Lapham. “Everyone, raise a glass to Sir Hubert. He has gone to a better place, and his shade is now watching over us. Sir Hubert!”

  Ventnor Brown, Guthrie and Mrs Potts all joined in the toast. So did Carstairs. I participated but, knowing what I did about Sir Hubert, with circumspection. No less grudging was Miss Efralstein, who barely tilted her glass and did not echo Sir Hubert’s name as the others did. I surmised that she must have mixed feelings about the man. After all, there had been that unpleasantness at the séance, when she had been moved to rail at him violently and then been hurled to the floor – although whether this had been of her own volition or by dint of ethereal forces, I could not say.

  “How did Sir Hubert and Swami Dhokha come to meet?” Ventnor Brown enquired of Carstairs.

  “Sir Hubert chanced upon him during a business trip to India back in ’eighty-six,” came the reply. “Such was the Swami’s skill as a spiritualist that Sir Hubert sought several times to bring him over to England. Only now has he been able to make the journey, however. He set off from Calcutta three weeks ago with every expectation that Sir Hubert would present him to all of you in person. Sadly, as you know, that was not to be. Now the duty has fallen, instead, to me.”

  “And when are we going to meet the fellow?” Guthrie asked. “I confess I grow impatient. If his abilities are as remarkable as Sir Hubert found them…”

  “I wonder if they are so great,” said Lapham offhandedly. “Perhaps by the standards of his homeland they pass muster, but here in London? He will have to be of a very high quality if he is to win over experts such as ourselves.”

  “Now that we are all settled in,” said Carstairs, “I shall go and ask the Swami whether he is ready to receive you.”

  He disappeared through a velvet curtain, returning a few moments later.

  “Swami Dhokha bids you enter.”

  He held the curtain aside, and one after another we filed into a back room whose walls were hung with swags of batik cloth. The air smelled headily of incense, and arrayed on a shelf were sundry items including a tambourine, a violin, and a hand-bell covered by a heavy glass jar.

  In the middle of the room stood a large round table and seven chairs, one of which was occupied by a gaunt, turbaned fellow in voluminous robes. He bowed to each of us as we entered, pressing the palms of his beringed hands together. His teeth, as he smiled, shone whitely against his nut-brown skin.

  “Greetings,” he said. His voice was pleasantly lilting and conveyed the impression of the better-educated Indian. “Greetings, all. You are welcome. Most welcome indeed. Please, take a seat. I am in illustrious company tonight, I know. I only hope my humble talent will meet with your approval.”

  As luck would have it, I found myself sitting to Swami Dhokha’s immediate left. No sooner had I drawn in my chair than he half-turned his head and aimed at me a subtle, secretive wink. None of the others could have seen it. The wink was for my benefit alone.

  That confirmed it for me. Although Swami Dhokha lacked Holmes’s aquiline nose and domed forehead, it was not beyond Holmes’s skills with theatrical makeup to disguise both features. He must have rubbed his skin with burnt cork dissolved in alcohol to lend him a swarthy tropical complexion, as a tragedian will when playing, for instance, Othello.

  Swami Dhokha was quite clearly Sherlock Holmes himself.

  Things, I sensed, were about to become very interesting.

  * * *

  Carstairs lowered the lighting to its dimmest level, so that we became little more than silhouettes to one another. Then he withdrew. This puzzled me somewhat. If Holmes’s intention was to catch him out by some means during the séance, how could he do so if Carstairs was not in the room with us? I assumed he had prepared some ruse that would bring the young man back when necessary.

  After Carstairs was gone, Swami Dhokha exhorted us each to grasp the wrist of the person to our right.

  Thus united, we waited with varying degrees of hushed expectancy. I could scarcely make out the faces of the five mediums in the gloom, but their eyes were all directed towards Swami Dhokha and I sensed the intentness of their stares. The séance, as far as they were concerned, was a kind of test. To pass it the Swami would need to produce the same effects they could, with as much, if not greater, adroitness.

  I myself was fascinated to see what Holmes, in the guise of Swami Dhokha, was capable of. To the best of my knowledge he had no experience as a medium. Conversing with spirits was far from his forte. Somehow he had to prove himself before this audience of specialists, and at the same time provoke the absent Alec Carstairs into an admission of guilt. It seemed a tall order; yet I thought that if anyone were capable of such a feat, it was he.

  I should not have worried, at least about the first part. What ensued was a quite spectacular display of spirit activity.

  Swami Dhokha began murmuring to himself in a foreign tongue, which resembled some dialect of Hindi. Then, switching back to English, he invoked the spirits, asking them to announce themselves.

  Immediately, the tambourine on the shelf shook, for all that no hand touched it – certainly not Holmes’s, for I was clasping his left wrist with my own hand, while his right hand was clasping Ventnor Brown’s wrist. The instrument’s shivering rattle sent a small frisson through me.

  Next, the hand bell rang, which was even more unnerving than the rattling of the tambourine because the bell never left the confines of the glass jar. Its chime was muted, as the chime of a hand bell inside a glass jar would be.

  Then, after a minute’s pause, we heard the violin play. One could not call the result tuneful. Rather it was a faint, atonal scraping, which sounded, I suppose, as music from a higher plane of existence might.

  From what little I could see of them, the five mediums had yet to be swayed by Swami Dhokha’s accomplishments. With her half-veil, Miss Efralstein was the most enigmatic of them all, but her mouth remained set fast, very much the mouth of someone unimpressed.

  “I shall now, with the spirits’ aid, make the table levitate,” said Swami Dhokha. “To prove that I shall achieve this feat through their agency rather than my own, I am about to lodge my left foot on Dr Watson’s foot and my right on Mr Ventnor Brown’s. Gentlemen, will you both agree that I have just done so?”

  The weight of his foot bore down firmly upon mine. “I do,” I said.

  Ventnor Brown also affirmed it.

  “Should either of you feel any undue pressure placed upon your foot, as if I am using my knees to lift the table, I expect you to announce it to everyone. Do you promise?”

  We did.

  Swami Dhokha closed his eyes. “Come, beings from beyond,” he intoned. “Imbue this table with your evanescence, that it might defy gravity and rise.”

  Moments later, the table arose, hovering some six inches or so from the floor. I felt no exertion through Swami Dhokha’s foot. The piece of furniture appeared to be floating in mid-air, unaided. It was quite uncanny.

  After the table had returned to earth, Swami Dhokha informed us that the spirits were being unusually cooperative tonight. Indeed, he would not be surprised if visible manifestations appeared soon.

  And appear they did. First a pair of glowing eyes gazed down at us from somewhere near the ceiling. Then a five-inch-tall sprite flitted across the table, bright green in the darkness. Finally, a nebulous spectral apparition bobbed from one side of the room to the other, much as though it were dancing.

  This was followed by a great effusion of ectoplasm from the Swami’s nose. The viscous substance was just visible in the dim light, pouring out of him in pale, sticky coils. He shuddered as it emerged, as though producing the spirit secretion was deeply uncomfortable, which I could only imagine it was.

  At last, Swami Dhokha proclaimed that messages w
ere coming through from the dead. “It is a whole babble of voices. They have so much to say. For you, Mr Ventnor Brown, they have this to impart. You should be more honest when making your tax declarations. It is not right when others pay their dues and you do not.”

  “I beg your pardon!” Ventnor Brown exclaimed. “What did you just say?”

  “And you, Mr Lapham,” the Swami continued. “Is there not a certain lady whom you have left in an inconvenienced situation? I believe the phrase ‘doing the decent thing’ applies here.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about,” Lapham said, but I could tell, from his tone of voice, that he was taken aback. “Lady? What lady?”

  “Her name is… The spirits are telling me… Miss Violet Yelland.”

  I heard Lapham gasp, more in alarm than surprise.

  “And as for you, Mrs Potts,” Swami Dhokha said, “you should look to your husband. He is not as respectful of his marriage vows as you would believe. Or perchance you know this already and have chosen to turn a blind eye. Yes, that is what the spirits say. Publicly the two of you maintain the sham of wedded bliss, but privately all is awry. Mr Potts dallies with several women, not least your own housemaid, Sally.”

  A sob escaped the frail-looking little woman.

  “And Mr Guthrie—”

  “Stop this now, sir!” Guthrie thundered. “Stop this at once. What is going on here? This is no séance. This is a series of low personal attacks.”

  “Would that your appetites were confined to mere gluttony,” the Swami said, unabashed. “How many times have you visited clients at their homes, only to depart with more than just their money in your pockets? A trinket here, a valuable there. Anything your pilfering fingers may happen upon, while the client sits dazed by whatever revelations you have furnished from the spirit world. You count on your victims being too stunned to notice the thievery, and later they are likely to ascribe the loss to the actions of discarnate entities.”