J.M. Barrie leaned over and slapped a hand on Wilde’s shoulder. “You were right, Oscar,” he commented sardonically. “That was quite inexplicable.”
CHAPTER 4
THE GHOST OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
The Doyle family home in South Norwood was asleep when Conan Doyle let himself in with his key. He crept up the stairs and paused halfway, listening to the soft surf of light snores emanating from the bedrooms of his children. The peace was broken by a jagged, hacking cough, like broken glass shaken in a sack. He noticed that a light still glimmered beneath the door of his wife, Louise’s, bedroom. He ascended the stairs and rapped softly at her door. A moment later, her wearied voice called from inside: “Come, Arthur, darling.”
Conan Doyle creaked the door open and slid inside. The bedroom was dimly lit: a single lamp, turned low, pulsed softly on the bedside table.
“Hello, Touie.”
His wife’s face, pale and drawn, appeared above a clutch of bedclothes. She smiled wanly up at him. The bed creaked beneath his weight as he sat down and reached to stroke her cheek with the back of his hand. Her skin was cold and clammy.
“How are you, my darling wife?”
“Much as always.” Her eyes searched his face. “So it’s done then? The world knows?”
He nodded sagely. “The deed is done.”
“You are upset, Arthur?”
He shook his head. “Pah, no!”
She reached an icy hand from beneath the sheets and squeezed his own. “You cannot hide your feelings from me, Arthur. I sense that your soul is in turmoil. The world is unhappy with you?”
Conan Doyle nodded, forcing a sardonic smile. “As you predicted.”
“Are you mourning, too?”
“Me? No—not a jot! No, I feel the loosening of shackles. Now I may write what I please. Now I am free to create the works that will live on—” He caught himself. “The works that will make my name.”
“Yes, Arthur. You will be famous the world over. You are famous. My husband, the famous writer!”
“Touie, I love you so much,” he said, his voice tightening. He reached down and attempted a clumsy embrace.
He felt a small hand push back against his chest.
“No, Arthur!”
“Come now, Touie, might a husband not embrace his own wife?”
“No!”
Conan Doyle drew back.
“We cannot be close,” his wife said. “We have agreed. You already risk too much coming in here so often.”
“I don’t care about the risk—”
“The children will need you,” she interrupted, her voice steely. “You will be all they have after I…” Her voice evaporated, leaving the unspeakable truth hanging.
“We’ll have no talk of that kind,” he gently chided.
Louise Doyle paused a moment, and then spoke what was clearly on her mind. “Arthur, I understand a man’s … appetites. I have loved you these many years and I know that you are a very physical man. I would never hold it against you should you find the need to … to avail yourself—”
“Touie, do not speak of this.”
“Discreetly, of course. I know you would be discreet—”
“I made a vow to you, Touie, on the day we wed. I stand by that vow.”
“Yes, you love me. I never doubt your love. But you are still a man, Arthur. A very handsome, vigorous man. I know you must long for that … for that intimacy I am no longer able to give you.”
Conan Doyle touched his wife’s lips with two fingers and gently shushed her. “May I bring you anything?”
She sank back into the pillows, resignation on her face. “Nothing. No.” She paused. “Yes. A sleeping draught.”
He nodded, choked down the sob in his throat with a forced smile, and left the room.
The Scottish doctor retrieved his Gladstone bag from the entrance hall table and carried it into the kitchen. First he sifted some white powder into a glass, added water and then a few drops of laudanum. After a moment’s consideration, he took down another glass and mixed one for himself, a small one. Conan Doyle normally slept like a hibernating bear, but after the day’s events his thoughts were in turmoil. He downed his sleeping draught on the spot, and then took the second in to his wife.
* * *
When Conan Doyle entered his ground floor study, a lamp had been left burning on his writing desk as he had instructed his domestic staff. (One never knew when a bout of insomnia would turn into a new character or short story idea.) He paused on the way to his desk to touch some personal totems scattered about the room: a battle-worn cricket bat with the script Thunderer painted on the blade; a harpoon he kept as a souvenir of a youthful foray as ship’s doctor aboard a Greenland whaler; an African mask from a sweaty and miserable year on the Dark Continent.
He flopped in his chair and undid several buttons of his waistcoat. The whirlwind day had left him enervated, but his nerves were too inflamed for sleep. His scalp prickled and it gradually occurred to him that he was being watched. He looked up at the portrait hanging on the wall beside his desk. It was one of Sidney Paget’s original drawings of Sherlock Holmes, commissioned for The Strand Magazine. In it, the hawk-nosed, gaunt-cheeked Holmes was drawing on a cigarette, peering suspiciously out at the viewer.
Conan Doyle had never particularly cared for the illustration. Feeling the sting of reprimand in that stare, he got up, lifted the portrait from its hook, and set it against the bookshelves out of his immediate line of sight.
Then he settled himself at his desk, snatched open a desk drawer, and took out his writing journal. Lying beneath the journal was his old service revolver. He lifted it from the drawer and hefted its steely mass in his hand. It had been many years since he’d last fired it. But even unloaded, the Webley .455 was a formidable weapon that exuded an aura of lethal potential. He set the pistol back into the drawer and pushed it shut.
He flipped open his writing journal, drew the fountain pen from his jacket pocket, and unscrewed it. For a moment the pen nib hovered over the blank expanse of paper, and then a quiver of excitement ran through him as he began to jot down ideas, lines of dialogue, a few rough sketches of a new character that had been fulminating in his mind for some time—a character called Brigadier Gerard. By the time he had filled the first page with his tidy blue handwriting, fatigue settled upon his shoulders like a lead apron. He blinked, rubbed his straining eyes, and turned up the wick of the desk lamp.
It was then he noticed a letter sitting in the middle of the desk blotter. Clearly one of the servants had placed it there for him to read. He could not imagine how he had failed to notice it sooner.
The stationery was of the finest quality, and he felt a slight sense of déjà vu as he picked it up and ran the blade of a letter opener beneath the flap. He drew out and unfolded a sheet of vellum. The paper was printed with a header: SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.
Dear Doctor Doyle,
Your name has been proposed for membership of our newly formed Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Our organization has been founded to promote the scientific investigation of Spontaneous Phenomena such as hauntings, apparitions, mediumship, thought transference (or “telepathy”), and all forms of “psychic” manifestation. Our first meeting will take the form of a four-day retreat at Thraxton Hall in the County of Lancashire. In addition to some of Britain’s most respected psychics, many leading scientific and learned persons of unimpeachable character will also be in attendance. As a man of independent thought, keen intelligence, and with a doctor’s training, we should be honored to have you as a member.
Yours respectfully,
Henry Sidgwick.
Conan Doyle flushed with excitement. He had envisioned just such an organization himself: a body of sober, yet open-minded individuals dedicated to a rational, scientific study of the supernatural. Now it had happened. He raised the letter to read it one more time, but found that the neatly written sentences had transformed to meaningless gibberis
h. He blinked his tired eyes. For a moment, he went dizzy as electric ants scurried across the surface of his brain. He smelled smoke, cigarette smoke—he could even name the particular brand of tobacco—and looked up in alarm.
The study remained empty, but then he noticed a wraith of silver smoke curling in the air. Strangely, it seemed to come from the portrait of Sherlock Holmes leaning against the bookshelves. Had it somehow caught fire? The fire in the fireplace was not lit. How then?
More smoke jetted into the air as the surface of the portrait began to bulge. It stretched farther and farther, and then ripped open as the head and shoulders of a man emerged. Conan Doyle watched, slack-jawed, as Sherlock Holmes squeezed himself up from two into three dimensions and stepped from the canvas into the room.
“Wu-what? What the devil!” Conan Doyle stammered.
The Baker Street detective puffed at his cigarette, his steely eyes gazing back at his creator. “To answer the question you have not asked,” Holmes said in his dry, ironic voice, “yes, I am real.”
“This is impossible!” Conan Doyle hissed.
Holmes crossed to a leather armchair and sat down, never taking his eyes from Conan Doyle. “Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
“I wrote that,” Conan Doyle said, indignation beginning to replace his fear. In fact, he was surprised at how unsurprised he was. “Just as I wrote you. You are nothing more than a phantasm of my brain. That is the truth!”
Sherlock Holmes seemed to reflect upon that for a moment. “Yes, you created me. And now I exist in the minds of thousands of readers. Tell me, Arthur, how many minds do you exist in?” He crossed his legs and brushed a fleck of ash from his trouser leg. “That summons you answered this morning, the one that bore a distinctive watermark.”
“The phoenix?”
Holmes nodded. “Of course, you know that the phoenix is the heraldic symbol of a famous English family?”
Conan Doyle did not know that. He nervously combed his fingers through his short brown hair.
“The Thraxton family,” Holmes said. “The meeting of the Society for Psychical Research will take place at Thraxton Hall in two weeks’ time. At which time the current Lady Thraxton will be murdered. Shot twice in the chest at close range.”
“At a séance,” Conan Doyle breathed, finishing the thought. He looked up. “Then Hope Thraxton is the medium of some renown I have read of in the papers?”
“The game is afoot my boy,” Holmes said. “The question is—are you ready? Will you take up this challenge? Or will you turn away, as a lesser man might?”
Conan Doyle shook his head. “No. This isn’t real. None of it.” He looked back at his writing desk for the letter. It had vanished. He gasped and threw a quick look back at Holmes. The leather armchair was empty, but retained a human-shaped dent.
Conan Doyle started awake. He was slumped over in his chair, the fountain pen in his limp hand trailing a blue smear across the page. He blinked. Rubbed his numb face. He had fallen asleep at his writing desk. Then he dimly remembered the soporific he had taken.
“Damnation!” he cried. The dream had seemed so real and he had slid into it imperceptibly. He scanned the desk and his eyes eagerly pounced upon the page of fresh writing in his notebook. He wanted to reread what he had written. But instead of amusing dialogue and apt character descriptions, he found only the same word scribbled over and over in his own handwriting:
Elementary.
Elementary.
Elementary.
When he turned the page, the Elementarys continued.
He slammed the notebook shut. There had been no letter. No spectral projection of Sherlock Holmes. It had all been a dream, an hallucination brought on by a soporific of his own concoction. He wobbled to his feet, gripping the armrests for support.
Nothing, he thought, just a silly dream. But as he made to leave the room he noticed the curling arabesques of cigarette smoke hovering near the ceiling.
The next morning, a letter from the Society for Psychical Research arrived in the first post.
CHAPTER 5
THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS
Conan Doyle awakened with the mysterious woman’s words—A medium of some renown—echoing in his head. The phrase jogged loose the memory of a news cutting he had read somewhere. After an hour’s search, he found the article in a recent issue of The Strand Magazine. Triumphant, he slipped the magazine into his leather portfolio and determined to read it on the train to London. He was heading back to the capital city with a specific mission in mind: he would return to number 42 ______ Crescent. Only this time he would be forearmed with something he lacked upon the first visitation—knowledge.
* * *
As he enjoyed the privacy of an empty carriage on the ten fifteen to Waterloo Station, Conan Doyle pulled out The Strand Magazine and paged through it until he came upon a headline: “Medium Communes with the Dead.” Beneath the banner-black type was a photograph of a medium seated at a séance table holding the hands of two sitters on either side whose faces could not be seen. The medium was a young woman in a black silk dress. Her hair was pinned up and she wore a sheer black veil that shadowed her face. The photograph had been taken without the benefit of flash powder, and the lengthy time exposure required in the dimly lit room had caused the image of the medium’s face to be blurred by motion. It gave a rather uncanny effect: a main image and then a secondary ghost image—as if the camera had captured her soul leaving her body. Beneath the photo was a caption: The medium Lady Hope Thraxton conducting a séance.
He stared at the image for a long time. He had craved to see the young woman’s face ever since his dark interview. But now, even though he possessed a photograph, her true likeness remained tantalizingly out of reach. The article’s author, whose name he did not recognize as a regular Strand contributor, gave a rather breathless account of a séance he had attended at a “fashionable London address.” No doubt this was the Mayfair residence Conan Doyle had recently visited. Here the medium supposedly contacted her spirit guide, providing a conduit that allowed direct communication with several relatives who had passed over to the other side. The author claimed to be an expert investigator into the supernatural who had unmasked many false mediums and charlatans, and who remained convinced that Lady Thraxton was the most gifted psychic he had ever encountered.
The train whistle blew, signaling the station ahead. Conan Doyle returned the magazine to his portfolio. Minutes later, he stepped from the echoing vault of Waterloo Station into the clamor of Waterloo Road: the clatter of carriage wheels on cobblestones, the cries of costermongers hawking “fresh fish” and “posies, a penny a bouquet,” street urchins begging “spare a farthing for a poor young lad”—his mind so distracted he imagined he could hear his name being called: “Arthur! I say, Arthur!”
Then he noticed an inconspicuous black carriage pacing him with an extremely conspicuous Oscar Wilde hanging out the carriage window waving a white handkerchief. Conan Doyle stepped to the curbside as the carriage pulled up.
“Been calling your name for ages, old fellow,” Wilde said. “Daydreaming about some new character, eh? Someone to replace the redoubtable Sherlock Holmes?”
“Something like that,” he answered—it was easier to go along with the lie.
Conan Doyle informed Wilde that he had an errand to run in Mayfair and the Irish playwright insisted on giving him a ride. When the writer climbed inside, he found that Constance, Wilde’s handsome wife, was seated opposite. Sitting beside her was a strikingly beautiful young woman. Conan Doyle plumped himself onto the leather cushion next to Wilde and hurriedly doffed his top hat in deference to both ladies.
“Hello, my dear Constance,” Conan Doyle said. “You are looking lovely as ever.”
“You are an inveterate flatterer, Arthur.” Constance Wilde smiled and added, “That is why you are my favorite amongst Oscar’s friends.” She paused a moment before asking in a soft v
oice, “How is Touie?”
“She endures,” Conan Doyle answered with a pained smile.
Constance Wilde reached forward and squeezed his hand. “Our thoughts are with her always … and with you, dear Arthur.”
Conan Doyle nodded, but could not summon a reply as the words were lodged somewhere in his throat.
“You’ve met George, of course,” Wilde said offhandedly. Despite the presence of two ladies, he had a cigarette dangling slackly between his large fingers and the carriage was fugged with smoke.
Conan Doyle peered at the young woman, fighting the urge to waft a hole through the curtain of silver smoke. She was a young, slim, ravishing beauty with long ringlets of ash blond hair cascading down about her shoulders—quite unforgettable. Conan Doyle was certain he had never before clapped eyes on her. “No. No, I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure.”
He leaned forward and grasped the young woman’s hand, which was fine-boned and weightless as a bird pecking seed from his palm.
The carriage rumbled away with a jerk, and for the next five minutes Wilde filled the space with the sound of his own voice, gesturing grandly as he told a very funny story about something his youngest child had said that morning. Suddenly, he noticed something out the window and rapped at the carriage roof with his walking stick, saying, “Ah, here we are, ladies; Harrods awaits.”
The carriage lurched to a halt, and Wilde threw open the door. Constance offered her hand once again to Conan Doyle. “So nice to see you, Arthur. Do give my love to Touie.”
“Of course.”
The ravishing young woman gathered her skirts and leaned forward, bringing her face close to Conan Doyle’s. Her eyes met his for a moment and the drownable depth of their blueness snatched the breath from his lungs.
“Who was that exquisite creature?” Conan Doyle asked, watching the women disappear through the front doors of Harrods.
“You’ve already met. Come along, I know we imbibed a few glasses of champagne last night, but you were your usual sober self when we parted.”
The Revenant of Thraxton Hall: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Page 4