Guthrie spluttered like a blocked drain. “You have no right… I mean, to bandy about such baseless accusations… It is unconscionable, sir. Unconscionable!”
“I am merely a vessel for the spirits, Mr Guthrie. They are the ones purveying these truths, not I. And the spirits have a truth for you too, Miss Efralstein. I hear a lone voice coming through now. It is calling to me from far away, as though deep underwater. It belongs to… to your son, madam. Your son, Jim. Jim Leinster.”
“No!”
Ellen Efralstein did not shout the word so much as scream it. The séance collapsed into chaos. There was a massed hubbub of yelling and objections. Ventnor Brown accused Swami Dhokha of slander and threatened legal action. Mrs Potts broke down in tears. Lapham shook his fist, averring that he would take this sort of calumny from no one, least of all “a curry-eating colonial”. He invited the Swami to step outside so that they could settle things “like men”.
Guthrie, meanwhile, boomed complaint, his enormous double chin quivering like jelly.
“Fakir?” he said. “Faker, more like! You have summoned us all here under false pretences. You are no medium. You are quite the humbug. Take it from me, if you meant to discredit us and usurp our position, if that has been your plan all along, then you have failed. Failed dismally. Mark my words, you will never hold another séance in London. In all of England, for that matter. I shall see to it personally. No self-respecting spiritualist will give you the time of day. You will be drummed out of the country.”
Swami Dhokha sat serene throughout this barrage of vituperation, his mouth twitching as though he were having difficulty suppressing a smile.
At that point, Alec Carstairs re-entered the room, as if taking his cue from the ruckus. He turned up the gas, and the increase in light proved to have a calming effect. All at once the mediums felt exposed, in more senses than one. Tempers abated. Puffed-up chests subsided. Furtive glances passed among them, in a way that reminded me of children who have been caught stealing sweets.
“Ladies, gentlemen,” Swami Dhokha said, “it is time to confess all. I am no medium. My name is not Dhokha, which, you will find, is the Hindi word for deception. My name is, in fact, Ishaan Bakshi. I am a full-time barrister at the Inns of Court with a part-time passion for amateur dramatics. Both activities, advocacy and acting, have stood me in good stead for this particular role.”
I gaped at him. Swami Dhokha was not Holmes? Then where was—?
As if in answer to this unspoken question, Aloysius Guthrie reached up to his own face and tore away from it several layers of rubber. Gone were his double chin and piggy cheeks. In their place were those gaunt, intelligent features I knew so well.
“And my name,” said he, “is Sherlock Holmes. I am no medium either. It is my business to know what other people do not know, but I do not require the souls of the dead to supply that knowledge. All I require is observation, research and analysis.”
“Mr Holmes.” This came from Miss Efralstein, couched in a tone of cool reproach. “I should have realised.”
“I pride myself on being able to alter my appearance to the point of being unrecognisable,” said Holmes. “But then, in that respect I am not alone, am I, madam?”
Miss Efralstein, ignoring the remark, turned to me. “And I suppose you, Dr Watson, are in on this charade with him?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Not as much as you might imagine.”
“No, indeed,” said Holmes, “if anyone here may be said to be my collaborator, it is not even Mr Bakshi, for all that he has discharged his thespian duties with the greatest of aplomb. It is young Mr Carstairs.”
Carstairs gave a nervous bow. “I trust I have done my bit.”
“Admirably, sir. Admirably.”
“But what is this all about?” said Ventnor Brown, jabbing an accusatory forefinger at Holmes. “What in the name of God have you been hoping to achieve?”
“Primarily, to show up the four of you for the swindlers you are,” said Holmes. “Mr Bakshi has, with very little trouble, been able to perform feats of mediumship as convincingly as any of your kind. Under my tutelage he has learned how to play musical instruments without appearing to touch them. He has made the table levitate. He has produced ectoplasm. He has made glowing ghostly entities move around. These are the simplest of conjuring tricks. You mediums may dress them up in paranormal trappings and mutter mumbo-jumbo about ethereal emanations and the like, but they are nothing a stage magician could not replicate with ease.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” said Ventnor Brown. “I cannot speak for anyone else here, but everything I do at a séance, I do under the influence of the spirits. Even I am not sure how my abilities work. I just let the spirits’ power flow through me. Whatever effects ensue are wholly spontaneous.”
“Oh come now, Mr Ventnor Brown,” Holmes scoffed. “Don’t talk rot. Your methods may not be exactly the same as those I have employed, but I am sure you are familiar with the basics. Mr Bakshi? Perhaps you can demonstrate.”
The man who had purported to be Swami Dhokha produced a false arm from under the table.
“This is the wrist which Dr Watson was holding throughout the sitting,” said he. “It belongs to a tailor’s mannequin. I substituted it for my forearm at the last second, and Dr Watson clung on to it blithely, quite unawares, while my real left arm was free to emerge from a slit in the back of my robes, thus.”
So saying, Bakshi slipped his arm out behind him through the folds of the robe.
“By this means I was able to carry out various operations surreptitiously. Here, you will see, is a length of fishing wire, attached to the tambourine.”
He plucked at the slender, near-invisible thread, and the tambourine shook.
“Here is another. It is stretched across the strings of the violin. Sawing it back and forth, like so, yields a thin-sounding note or two. As for the bell…”
“That was me,” said Carstairs, brandishing a hand bell identical to the one in the jar. “Peering through a chink in the door curtain, I waited for my moment, then rang this bell. The clapper is wrapped in ribbon to muffle it. The sound that seemed to be coming from the bell in the jar was actually coming from the adjacent room.”
“In order to create the illusion of the table levitating,” Bakshi said, “all I had to do was lodge a pair of false legs, one atop Dr Watson’s foot, the other atop Mr Ventnor Brown’s. Then I lifted the table using the knees of my real legs.”
“It really is a quite elementary piece of legerdemain,” said Holmes. “The ectoplasm likewise. One pulls a volume of cheesecloth from inside one’s collar in such a way that it seems to be coming from one’s nose, shuddering all the while in order to conceal the sleight of hand and make it look as though strenuous effort is entailed. Mr Bakshi, you are to be commended on the dexterity and flair with which you pulled it off.”
“You are too kind, Mr Holmes.”
“As to the glowing apparitions… Well, it is wonderful what one can do with a bit of phosphorescent paint, some card, a balloon, and a willing accomplice padding about the room in his socks. Eh, Mr Carstairs?”
The young fellow, grinning sheepishly, showed that he had no shoes on. He held up pieces of card with eyes and a sprite painted on them, and a balloon draped in muslin.
“There are any number of other stunts that could have been arranged,” Holmes said. “Thumping one’s knees on the underside of the table, perhaps, or cracking one’s toe joints, for spirit ‘knocking’. I understand there is some business one can do with a writing slate, a cloth and a sliver of chalk lodged beneath the fingernail, to produce written messages. Pincers on extendable arms may be used to make objects seem to fly around. I could go on, but there is no need. You know as well as I do, ladies and gentlemen, the full panoply of methods available to you for gulling your victims.”
There was no denying that the four mediums were chagrined. Whether they would admit it or not, Holmes had demonstrated a clear understanding of the tri
cks of their trade. Clifton Lapham made one last vain attempt at protest, but even he seemed to know the game was up.
“But why stoop to divulging secrets about us?” he said. “What did you hope to gain by that?”
“Beyond hurting our feelings,” said a tearful Isolde Potts.
“Not that I’m saying there is any substance in your assertions,” Lapham added. “I mean, Violet Yelland and I… Well, I barely know the girl.”
“Why did I do it?” said Holmes with asperity. “I shall tell you why. To give you a taste of your own medicine. Frankly, to shame you, if that is possible with people so devoid of shame. You mediums disgust me. You toy with your clients’ sensitivities. You prey upon the weak. You lead them on with false hopes, and that can be damaging.”
“Damaging?” said Ventnor Brown. “How can it be damaging to bring consolation to the grieving?”
“I am all in favour of consoling the grieving, but not by feigning communication with the dead, and not with the aim of lining one’s own pockets. What you do is an affront. If I had my way, it would be an offence against the law, in common with other forms of fraud, but as things stand the only punishment I can mete out is humiliation. I chose the four of you carefully. You may be foremost exponents of your profession, but a little checking into your backgrounds yielded skeletons in the closet. Detective work is my profession, you see, and I use it, I hope, for the benefit of all, and not for personal gain.”
“You are a cruel, cruel man,” said Mrs Potts, “and I cannot bear to be around you any longer.” She gathered up her skirts and flounced out of the room, handkerchief to mouth.
David Ventnor Brown was close on her heels.
“And you, Mr Lapham?” said Holmes. “Are you still spoiling for a fight with Mr Bakshi, this ‘curry-eating colonial’ as you so insultingly put it? Or would you rather engage in combat with your true tormentor, me? I should have you know, I am adept at the martial art of baritsu, and quite handy, too, when it comes to good old-fashioned fisticuffs. Perhaps you are less inclined to bully an Englishman whom you must see is your physical superior, rather than a man of Indian origin whom you assume to be your inferior in every way.”
Lapham harrumphed, and then he, like the other two, quit the flat in high dudgeon.
This left just Miss Efralstein. Of all the mediums, she seemed the one least offended by Holmes’s tirade against their profession. That is not to say that she was not upset.
“Jim,” she said softly. “You used my son, Mr Bakshi. You used my own dear son against me. How could you?”
“Do not blame Mr Bakshi, madam,” Holmes interjected. “That was my doing, not his. And you must forgive me for it. It was perhaps unnecessary, but it made the point, did it not?”
“And what point would that be?”
“That I know who you really are, Miss Ellen Efralstein. Or should I say, Mrs Fenella Leinster.”
* * *
“There is no need for this any longer, then,” said the woman, lifting her veil. The face it had masked was not unhandsome, albeit etched with lines that betokened sorrow more than age. “Nor this.” She grasped her hair and pulled it off, revealing it to be a wig. Beneath those luxuriant black tresses her real hair, which lay pinned tightly to her scalp, was ash-blonde with streaks of grey.
“Neatly done, that disguise,” said Holmes. “The veil, the wig, the exotic surname, posing as a medium – all of it a trap to ensnare Sir Hubert Cole.”
“I did not mean for him to die, Mr Holmes,” said Mrs Leinster. “Please be assured of that.”
“You are not wholly sad that he did, though.”
“It was as much as he deserved. You must think that makes me sound like a hard woman, but I am not.”
“No, on the contrary. You are a wronged woman, Mrs Leinster,” said Holmes. “Sir Hubert took your son from you. Even Mr Carstairs here, who is blood kin to him, would have to admit as much.”
Carstairs gave a soft murmur of assent.
“As good as murdered my Jim, that’s what that vile man did,” said Mrs Leinster. “Him and his ships that ought not to be at sea. All Jim wanted, growing up, was to be a sailor. His father, the Lord rest his soul, was an officer with the Mediterranean fleet. He was killed aboard HMS Sultan during the bombardment of Alexandria in ’eighty-two – one of the few British casualties of that exchange. Still, Jim could think of no other life for himself but that of a seaman, and I could not dissuade him from it. All I could do was insist that he sign up as a merchant mariner rather than a naval rating, so that he would never face enemy guns. A life at sea is hazardous enough without the added peril of cannon fire.”
She paused a moment.
“Not that it made much difference, in the end,” she said bitterly. “My lovely lad. He was beside himself with joy when the Pole Star Line took him on as a deckhand. He thought a job crewing with the nation’s most prestigious shipping company would be the making of him. There he was, barely nineteen, and off he went, sailing round the world aboard the Eagle of Enterprise, supposedly the flagship of the line.”
Into my mind flashed the phrase Ellen Efralstein had flung repeatedly at Sir Hubert: “Remember the eagle.”
“His letters home, gentlemen, were full of excitement,” Mrs Leinster continued. “The sights he was seeing, the things he was discovering… He wrote about the turquoise waters of the tropics, so clear you could see through them to a depth of several fathoms, and about the natives of the South Sea Islands, the lascars he shared quarters with, how dolphins would sport in the Eagle’s bow wave. Every word thrilled with novelty and delight. It was a tough life but, notwithstanding, he was happy.”
“Until, regrettably, his ship met with disaster,” said Holmes. “October ’eighty-seven, was it not?”
“Two years ago, almost to the day. Typhoon season in the western Pacific was coming to an end. The Eagle was hauling cargo from the Philippines – tobacco, sugar, Manila hemp – and, as is usual for a Pole Star merchantman, there was far too much of it on board. She got into difficulties in a storm in the South China Sea. The winds were gale force, the waves towering. She was last seen by another ship, a Spanish frigate, making a run for harbour at Macau. The Spanish captain said that the Eagle was already riding too low in the water and he feared for her safety. She never did reach Macau.”
“I learned as much at Lloyd’s,” said Holmes. “Even a fully shipshape vessel might have struggled in those conditions, and the Eagle of Enterprise, as with her sister vessels in the line, was not only overloaded but in a state of some disrepair. According to the reports, she went down with all hands.”
“She would have sunk fast, that’s what I’ve been told,” Mrs Leinster said. “It is the one saving grace. Everyone aboard would have drowned quickly.”
“My goodness,” I said. “You poor thing.”
“I did not even have a body to bury,” said she, choking back emotion. “The ocean is my Jim’s grave.”
“It is understandable that you would have resented Sir Hubert,” said Carstairs. “I am not going to defend him. I knew he was unprincipled; I simply never appreciated to what extent. When Mr Holmes laid before me the facts of your tragedy, it brought home the consequences of my employer’s neglect. Perhaps I myself am to blame.” He scratched at his sore-encrusted wrists. “Had I known, I might have done something about it, although I can’t think what. Badgered him to mend his ways? But Sir Hubert was hardly a man to listen to reason.”
“Not from anyone living, that’s for certain,” said Mrs Leinster. “I tried it myself. I confronted him one morning outside his house. I wanted him to know how I felt, to understand the agony his irresponsibility had caused. He brushed me aside as though I was not there. The sheer indifference of him! He did not even recognise my surname, the surname of one of the many men who went down with the Eagle. That was how little he cared about his employees, towards whom he surely had a duty of care. They were nothing to him. I and others lost their nearest and dearest, and Sir Hubert
received not a prison sentence, nor even a fine, but rather a handsome insurance pay-out. Where is the justice in that?”
“Speaking of justice,” I said, “I am surprised nobody sued him over the sinking of the Eagle.”
Mrs Leinster shook her head. “I considered it, but I am a woman of modest income, living on a navy widow’s meagre pension. Besides, who would dare take on someone as rich and powerful as Sir Hubert Cole in court? One may as well sue a mountain, for all the good it would do one. No, Doctor, I knew that if I wished to gain redress from him in some way, I would have to be clever about it. For a time I racked my brains as to what to do.”
“Then you hit upon the idea of pretending to be a medium,” said Holmes. “You had learned that Sir Hubert was a spiritualist, and so a plan began to form.”
“Just so, Mr Holmes. What is the line from Hamlet? ‘The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.’ I would turn Sir Hubert’s beliefs against him. I would undermine him using that which he held most dear. I could not destroy him from the outside in, but maybe I could from the inside out.”
“You were more successful in that ambition than perhaps you might have hoped.”
“As I said, it was not my intention he should die. I would much rather he had lived, to be plagued constantly by doubt and remorse. I wanted him to suffer just a little of the pain I was suffering. How was I to know that, after my séance, he would perish that very night?”
“Yet the one thing surely led to the other,” said Holmes. “So tormented was Sir Hubert by the wrathful entreaty to ‘remember the Eagle’, his heart gave out under the strain.”
“For so heartless a man, there is a certain poetry in that,” Mrs Leinster said. “Tell me, Mr Holmes, how did you divine the truth about me? What gave me away?”
The Manifestations of Sherlock Holmes Page 29
