Then he heard a voice behind him cry out: “Get down, Inspector!”
Glancing over his shoulder, Clayton saw Colonel Garrick aiming a pistol at him. He instantly flung himself to the floor. He heard a shot ring out and saw the old lady’s frail, seemingly lifeless body slump in front of him.
Then someone switched on the lights. Clayton hurriedly leaned over Mrs. Lansbury. To his relief, he discovered she was still breathing and did not seem to be seriously injured. He sprang to his feet, crashing into Nurse Jones, who had come to their aid.
“Try to resuscitate her!” he commanded.
Nurse Jones nodded and called out in a quavering voice to Doctor Ramsey, who was standing quietly in a corner, furiously jotting in a tiny book. Clayton looked anxiously around for the apparition. He saw a dazed Captain Sinclair, his face caked in blood, struggling to his feet with the aid of Burke and Crookes, who were holding him by both arms. The Hollands were clasping each other, both pale faced, close to swooning, although Mrs. Holland seemed to be the one holding her husband up so that he wouldn’t collapse. From the other side of the table, Count Duggan was waving his arms frantically in the air, gesturing toward the screen, in front of which Colonel Garrick was resolutely brandishing his still-smoking gun. Clayton ran over to him, catching the pistol Sinclair threw as he hurtled past. He reached the colonel, who looked at him with a frown.
“I think the fellow’s hiding behind there!” he whispered, nodding at the screen.
Clayton agreed, and, communicating their intentions to each other through gestures, the two men, weapons at the ready, proceeded with caution, each approaching one end of the screen. Then they heard muffled noise coming from behind it, like someone or something scratching a wall. As they drew closer, they made out a woman’s voice repeating what sounded like a nonsensical prayer. Clayton turned to the colonel, signaling to him to pull back the screen carefully; but, judging from the violent kick he gave it, Garrick misinterpreted his gestures. There was a deafening crash as the screen toppled to the floor, and when the cloud of sawdust settled, the two men were confronted with a harmless clothes hanger, from which Madame Amber’s clothes hung limply, in an empty corner. However, the mysterious noises went on, even more clearly now. There was no question about it—somebody was scratching at a surface— and Clayton thought he could hear Madame Amber’s voice repeating the same desperate appeal over and over:
“Open up, let me in, open up, I beg you . . .”
The inspector went over to the corner made by the two converging walls and examined it carefully. He discovered that, thanks to a clever optical illusion, the wallpaper concealed a tiny crack—a small opening that hadn’t been there during the exhaustive inspection they had carried out. But now it was. Inserting one of his metal fingers into the gap, Clayton discovered a tiny spring, which he pressed. The walls instantly parted, creaking on invisible hinges, proving they were mere partitions. And there, in the hollow concealed by that ingenious feat of carpentry, appeared Madame Amber. She was crouching, her face red from crying, scratching at the floor with bloodied fingernails as she repeated over and over the same demand: “Open up, let me in . . .”
As soon as the light revealed her hiding place, she began to scream, arms outstretched as though fending off the figure leaning over her.
“No, no, no! I didn’t summon you! Why have you come back? Be off with you and never return! Go back to the hell from whence you came!”
Clayton grabbed her roughly by the arms and flung her at Colonel Garrick, whom Sinclair had now joined.
“Hold her!” the inspector commanded, his eyes flashing wildly, not realizing that he was issuing orders to his own captain.
At that moment, Clayton was only interested in the area of floor Madame Amber had been scratching moments before. He bent down, sweeping aside the remnants of sawdust, blood, and even a few bits of broken nail that the medium had torn off in the heat of her folly. He studied the parquetry closely but could find nothing odd about it. Granted, it was an exquisite piece of work. But the inspector already knew what was beneath it. He rapped on the floor with his metal fist.
“I know you can hear me!” he shouted. “This is Inspector Cornelius Clayton from Scotland Yard’s Special Branch. In the name of Her Majesty, I command you to open the trapdoor and show yourself immediately. Whoever you are, come out quietly and with your hands up.”
A dense silence ensued. Clayton’s fist was poised to rap on the floor again when they heard a man’s faint voice reply almost meekly.
“It won’t open. The catch is stuck and . . . it only opens from the inside . . . I’m trapped down here.”
“Who are you?” Clayton demanded, trying to match that timorous voice to the powerful figure he had grappled with moments before.
Silence. And then, at last, they heard from the depths: “My name is Sir Henry Blendell, architect to Her Majesty the Queen, gold medalist of the Worshipful Company of Engineers, honorary automaton creator of the Society of Watchmakers and Designers of Prague, renowned creator of the secret passageway in the castle at . . .”
Clayton was altogether too astonished to notice the growing murmur behind him. The Sir Henry Blendell? He conjured up the image he had of Her Majesty’s architect, a corpulent man, in good shape despite his advanced years, of medium height and with white hair . . . Yes, it was possible that with the right disguise he might pass for the mysterious specter that had just terrified the wits out of them all. He glanced sideways at the phonograph, to make sure it was still working despite all hell having broken loose in the room. He placed both hands on the floor and, drawing closer, spoke in a stentorian voice.
“Sir Henry, do you confess to being Madame Amber’s associate?”
“Please, I can’t breathe . . .”
Clayton banged on the floor with both fists.
“Do you confess that you used your knowledge to aid the medium known as Madame Amber, that you conspired to contrive each and every one of the fraudulent spiritual séances she performed and knowingly certified the conditions in which said séances were carried out, and that you and she committed repeatedly and with malice aforethought the crimes of hoax, deception, and false pretense?”
“Yes, yes . . . But please, I beg you, lift the floorboards with a crowbar or a chisel. I suffer from claustrophobia . . .”
“Do you also confess to having rigged today’s séance, on the twelfth of September in the year of grace 1888, at the residence of Madame Amber, located at number twelve Mayflower Road?” Clayton bawled.
“Inspector Clayton,” Sinclair intervened, “for the love of God, is this really necessary?”
“Yes, yes . . . I confess to everything! But please, get me out of here . . . I’m suffocating.”
Clayton straightened up, a slightly crazed grimace of triumph on his lips. His feverish gaze sought out Madame Amber’s innocent blue eyes. He wanted to look straight at that her and spew out all his contempt, to tell her in no uncertain terms that her naïve attempts to beguile the public might have worked on pathetic little men like the one slowly suffocating beneath his feet, but not on Cornelius Clayton of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch. I’m sorry, dear woman, he wanted to tell her, but you aren’t as good as you thought, or perhaps you haven’t been evil enough. One can’t always get what one wants, and it was high time someone taught you that inevitable lesson . . .
But Clayton couldn’t say those things to Madame Amber, for the simple reason that she was lying in a faint on the floor. Her head lay in Colonel Garrick’s lap, and one hand was clasped between those of Captain Sinclair, who was trying to bring her round by tapping her gently on the back while crying out for a hammer and chisel.
6
DESPITE NOT HAVING SLEPT A wink that night, Inspector Cornelius Clayton strode out early next morning toward number 3 Furnival Street. He hoped the chill air would clear his thoughts, or at least dislodge the niggling pain that had taken root at the base of his skull at some point during that endless night.
After leaving Scotland Yard, he had decided not to take a cab and had instead made his way down to the river. The streets were shrouded in a damp fog that obliged him to turn up the collar of his coat and bury his hands in his pockets. He slowed his pace as he reached the Victoria Embankment, intending to stroll along the Thames as far as the Strand. He liked seeing the dawn lazily cast its light over the water, as though sketching it with an unsteady hand among the city’s edifices. At that hour, still obscured by swirls of mist, the river allowed the first barges to cleave its waters, like derelict floating castles with their brimming cargoes of coal, oysters, and eels. A crowd of boats, sloops, and small vessels jostled on both banks of the river, disgorging onto its quays baskets filled with squid, shellfish, and other treasures snatched from the sea, whose foul odors the wind wafted through the neighboring streets. Before reaching Waterloo Bridge, which the dawn light outlined in greyish hues in the distance, Clayton crossed the Strand and wandered into Covent Garden market. Unconsciously, he adjusted his pace to the steady rhythm of the tradespeople who had been laboriously setting up their stalls since four o’clock and disappeared among the noisy labyrinth lined with barrows brimming with cabbages and onions, flower baskets, beer barrels and fruit stalls, where, regardless of the early hour, a mob of ragged beggars, children robbed of their childhood, and picturesquely skinny cats were competing for the stall holders’ scraps. Unperturbed by these sights, Clayton soon slipped through the gap between a stall selling shiny apples and one with gladioli, clashing in the breeze like fantastical rapiers. He stepped absentmindedly through puddles, where the reflections from streetlights glinted and were then extinguished as he passed, heralding another of those cold, dreary days typical of London in autumn.
Finally he crossed the Aldwych and drew near to his destination. However, despite his resolute stride, Inspector Clayton remained far away. In fact, he was still in the interview room in Scotland Yard, where for the past few hours he had been taking statements from Madame Amber, whose real name was Sarah Willard, and from Sir Henry Blendell, architect to Her Majesty, the most honorable, trustworthy man in the realm, at least until the ill-fated day when the beautiful medium with platinum-blond hair and deep-blue eyes had crossed his path.
For the umpteenth time, Clayton went over in his head the lengthy confession he and Captain Sinclair had finally dragged out of them. First they had put them in different rooms and, aiming to wear them down and unsettle them, had subjected them to the same cross-examination, over and over, laying small traps for them among the torrent of questions. They had even resorted to the old trick of assuring each of them that the other, in the safety of the adjacent room, had betrayed them to save his or her own skin. Then, just before dawn, they had confronted them both in the same room, in the desperate hope one of them would break down. But it had all been in vain. All night long they had repeated the same version of events, identical down to the last detail: they acknowledged their personal relationship and their criminal association; they confessed to having carried out hundreds of deceptions during the past few years, which had made them very rich; Sarah Willard possessed none of the powers she claimed to have as Madame Amber; she had possessed them as a child (she swore on the Holy Bible) but had lost them when she reached puberty and since then had been incapable of summoning spirits of any kind whatsoever, nor had she experienced any paranormal phenomena; however, inspired by the growing vogue for spiritualism, she had fraudulently resuscitated her childhood powers, determined that the memory of those past horrors should not only give her nightmares but also line her pockets with silver; she had decided to drag herself out of poverty by posing as a medium, and not just any medium, but the greatest and most famous medium of all times; she had planned it all carefully, including her seduction of Sir Henry, since she realized her beauty and talent for acting were not enough and that she needed an accomplice who could help her with the technical aspects; despite his unimpeachable personal integrity, Sir Henry had been far easier to seduce than she had expected; the poor old man had fallen madly in love after one kiss and had instantly consented to all her proposals, driven by an inflamed passion and his lustful desire to possess her (this was the only time during the interrogation where their two confessions diverged, for Sir Henry insisted he had acted purely out of a Christian desire to help a lost soul overcome the sufferings that afflicted her); the knight of the realm had placed the extraordinary wealth of his knowledge at her service, transforming her town house, and any venue he was sent to inspect, with a maze of ingenious hidden devices designed to evade any scrutiny: trapdoors, springs, pulleys, false floors, nylon threads, powerful magnets, tubes emitting fluorescent gas, stuffed gloves that resembled floating hands, rubber masks, imprints of ghostly faces and bodies. As for Madame Amber, she confessed to being an accomplished regurgitator who could use her stomach to conceal an astonishing number of objects, thus slipping past even the most thorough examinations, even those stooping to the outrageous discourtesy of violating her most intimate cavities; the previous night, for example, disguising what she was doing with violent spasms, she had succeeded in regurgitating a rubber capsule containing hydrogen phosphide, which she had then bitten; exposed to air, the gas had created the will-o’-the-wisps and the luminous cloud. After that she had regurgitated several yards of fine gauze, onto which a face had been painted, and which gave the appearance of a ghost as it wafted above her thanks to the current of air coming from a tiny pipe under the table (the ghostly breath Colonel Garrick had felt on his hand).
Until then, the interrogation had been plain sailing for the two inspectors, but once they reached that point in the confession, both Miss Willard and Sir Henry had proved obstinate. They were willing to sign a confession and prepared to face the accusations that would be hurled at them in the coming days; they would plead guilty to fraud and be publicly derided. But they had no intention of being tried for the attempted murder of Mrs. Lansbury. That was where they drew the line. The final apparition, the menacing figure that had tried to throttle the old lady, was none of their doing. They might be charlatans, but they were not murderers. They weren’t responsible for that thing.
Clayton kicked a loose cobblestone in his path. The affair was fiendishly complicated. None of the pieces slotted together. Who, or what, was that figure he had managed to seize before Colonel Garrick fired his gun? He was almost persuaded that the sinister apparition was another trick of the performance. It had knocked into him and he had felt its muscles when he trapped it in a stranglehold, the texture of its clothes, the heat from its body, even the sour odor of sweat . . . It was true that for a moment he had the impression the apparition possessed a strange transparency or invisibility, but with hindsight he wasn’t so sure. The stranger was completely human, that much was certain, and it could not have been anyone but Sir Henry, who must have been wearing a disguise. Or perhaps he had soaked his costume in some chemical or other, possibly ether, which had created that curious illusion of transparency. And then, for some unknown reason, he had threatened the poor old lady, fled through the trapdoor, and gotten rid of the costume somewhere in the house. Yes, all the facts pointed in that direction, although Clayton had to admit there were still far too many unanswered questions. So many in fact that it almost drove him to distraction. For example: If the fictitious apparition was part of the séance, why had they decided to include it? And why assault a defenseless old lady instead of sticking to their usual fairground act, which had brought them so much success? If it was simply another trick, why then deny it? Had things got out of hand, and were they now trying to limit the damage, or did they have some motive for attacking Mrs. Lansbury? But if that were the case, doing so in front of witnesses wasn’t very wise. On the other hand, Clayton couldn’t forget what had seemed to him Madame Amber’s genuine terror. And was it precisely that terror that had made her force the trapdoor from the outside, thus breaking its delicate mechanism and throwing away many months’ work? It made no sense . . . Clayton shook hi
s head abruptly, like a dog irritated after a sudden downpour. He felt compelled to find the missing piece in the puzzle that would finally give it meaning.
If he accepted that Miss Willard and her accomplice were telling the truth, then who was the mysterious man who had appeared out of nowhere? A murderer who was pursuing Mrs. Lansbury and had decided to kill her during a séance where two Scotland Yard detectives were in attendance? The idea was absurd, and yet it tallied with the mysterious words the figure had addressed to the old lady, and above all with the expression on her face, for she seemed to recognize him, despite denying it afterward. But how could anyone have entered that sealed room without Madame Amber’s or Sir Henry’s help? Were all three of them involved in the attempt on the old lady’s life?
There was one final possibility, the only one that would make the case worthy of being investigated by Scotland Yard’s Special Branch: the apparition was a genuine spirit that had come from the Hereafter. But one spirit summoned during a fraudulent séance by a medium who possessed no supernatural powers? And yet Miss Willard claimed to have had them as a child. Should he then believe her version and accept that Sarah Willard’s former talent had been restored that particular night, as the terrified young woman had assured him, allowing her to summon the evil spirit? As dawn approached, Sinclair had announced that, for the time being, this seemingly absurd theory was the least absurd of all, but Clayton had pursed his lips and said nothing. Old Sinclair was welcome to see ghosts on every corner if he wished, but in the recent past the inspector had learned many lessons, and foremost among them was never to underestimate the powerful combination of an ingenious disguise and an exceedingly beautiful woman.
The Map of Chaos Page 13