Holmes Entangled

by Gordon McAlpine

  “I have no appointment Miss,” I said. “But it would be much to Sir Charles’s advantage if he saw me immediately.”

  She glanced me up and down. “He has no opening in his schedule,” she answered dismissively. She feigned returning her attention to an ordinary invoice on her desk. “Perhaps if you called on us again next month we could get you an appointment.” She trailed off, finished with me.

  I looked around. As the building had not been designed as an office but a house, her desk was located in what would ordinarily have been the foyer, which featured fine Carrara marble and an exquisite chandelier. A tight, circular staircase rose up to the first floor. At either side of the foyer were sets of double doors, closed. The society appeared to be more than merely solvent.

  I pointed to the invoice before her. “Castor and Sons,” I said, reading the letterhead. The figures on the page beneath were of no consequence. “Well-known custom cabinet makers,” I continued. “That does not seem like an invoice you’d want the general public to see on your desk, Miss. After all, we mediums are often accused of fraudulently using specially manufactured, ‘trick’ cabinets in our séances.”

  She looked at the invoice.

  “This is for bookshelves recently built in Sir Charles’s office,” she snapped, turning her gaze up at me with disdain. “Entirely legitimate. Only a fraud himself would imagine that the public would be so suspicious of a mere invoice.”

  I lowered my eyes as if chastised. Nonetheless my suspicions had been confirmed. Castor and Sons was no cabinet maker, but a supplier of office goods, familiar to every real office worker in the city. She was as much a fraud as Siddhartha Singh.

  But I still didn’t know what game we were playing.

  “I am a medium of great importance,” I said.

  “I haven’t heard of you, Mr. Singh,” she answered, her cultured voice expressing an impatience that seemed almost unbearable to her. “And I am familiar with all the important mediums in this city.”

  I thought this true, as she’d likely studied the membership roles of the society.

  “As I said before,” she continued, literally shooing me away with one hand, “Please come back next month and maybe then . . .”

  I interrupted: “Doubtless, you would have heard of me if your organization was not so Anglocentric. Mysticism has been an integral part of my culture for untold centuries.” I was unwilling as yet to leave the premises. After all, I hadn’t delivered my intended message.

  “That’s an impertinent charge,” she snapped, quite convincing in her role as offended acolyte. “Some members of our society and many contributors to our journal are not English. Some are even East Indian, such as yourself.”

  I bowed in apology. “I meant no offense, Miss.”

  “Oh? What else could you possibly have meant, Mr. Singh?”

  “I meant only that your organization’s work to date has been admirable, but incomplete. I am here today to help you complete it. To paraphrase your great bard, ‘there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”

  She huffed. “That quote could be the very motto of this organization, my good man.”

  “Yet the thesis of your work is that psychic mediums communicate with the dead.”

  “Of course.”

  “True, but that is only part of it,” I said. “Very recently, for example, I conducted a séance in which, quite unexpectedly, my contact on the ‘other side’ was an astral body of a man whose physical body is still quite alive, here in London! The same man, yet not the same. You see, my spirit contact had become a desperate drug user, his life one of squalor, whereas his still-living counterpart had avoided the addiction and was a successful businessman. How to explain such a thing! Naturally, I am committed to publicizing this strange phenomenon. But first I want to discuss it all with Sir Charles. As soon as possible, Miss.”

  By now, her expression had changed, her disinterest replaced by the tightest concentration. Likely, such a report was what she had been sitting here awaiting. “Your strange psychic experience is indeed of the utmost importance, Mr. Singh. So I will arrange for you to speak with Sir Charles, who arrives back in London this very evening from a voyage abroad.” She paused, considering the situation. “As he can’t be here much before midnight, may I ask you to return here tonight at that hour to meet with him? Unusual, indeed. But for a matter of such importance, I know he would not want to let even one evening pass without consultation. Will that do?”

  “I can come back tomorrow during normal operating hours,” I offered.

  “Oh no. I think for a matter of this importance Sir Charles would want to meet with you as soon as humanly possible.”

  The séance was scheduled for nine o’clock. The timing would just work. I nodded. “Midnight will do.”

  Yes, midnight would do to give them sufficient time to set an ambush.

  But sometimes a mouse must tap at a trap to find the exact spot at which it will spring. A mouse of extraordinary acumen, that is. The danger is only in being caught unawares, a habit I have assiduously avoided lo these many years.

  “Thank you, Miss,” I said, exiting.

  And just who did I believe was preparing such a trap? Not the Society for Psychic Research. While I did not share their tenets about an afterlife or the ability of mediums to make contact with its spectral inhabitants, I found highly unlikely the possibility of such a group of ardent believers wishing to quash any new aspect of their controversial “science,” which thrived precisely on the continual development and publicizing of novel theories and marvels. Even less probable was their resorting to violence (Conan Doyle’s gunshot wound, for example). Instead, the fraudulence of the receptionist suggested that the authentic leadership of the society, including Sir Charles himself, had been “removed” from the scene, to be found neither at midnight nor anytime soon. To confirm this, I spent the remainder of the afternoon and much of the evening, still in the guise of Siddhartha Singh, seeking the other officers and board members of the society, ultimately confirming that each was away from England for unspecified periods, traveling on diverse matters either personal or business related. The decades-old society had effectively been disbanded, at least temporarily, without the general membership or even the families of the absent leaders noticing.

  I marveled at the feat.

  Remember, the society was not without powerful members. Conan Doyle himself did not lack for influence, and he was but a small fish in the larger pond of notable or aristocratic members of the society. So what organization or individual was capable of compelling the movements of powerful men as if they were mere chess pieces, ultimately removing them completely from the board without anyone even taking note?

  Once again my old nemesis, Moriarty, the Napoleon of crime, came to mind.

  But wait.

  Perhaps with that last comment, I inadvertently may be inserting into this true account a “red herring” of the sort indulged by Miss Christie and other contemporary mystery novelists of her ilk, which is not my intention. To avoid such claptrap, allow me to confirm here and now that Professor James Moriarty indeed died many years before these events. No Oriental wrestling trick saved him from the churning waters of the Reichenbach Falls. Be assured then that he plays no part in this mystery, however many times I suspected his evil genius during the investigation. Of course, Watson would likely scold me for breaking the chronological sequence of my narration in the manner of this paragraph. (“How could you be sure at such an early stage of your investigation that Moriarty had not somehow faked his death, just as you once faked yours?” he’d press, if he were looking over my shoulder now as I write. “Remember, Holmes, you should reveal in the course of your first person narrative only what you knew at the time,” he’d insist, “as that is how professional writers sustain suspense! So why rule out the intriguing possibility that Moriarty might have been alive and behind the plot, even if he weren’t?”)

  Ah, but I am a
consulting detective, not a professional writer, however many scholarly monographs I have published under assumed names.

  And I find “red herring” most distasteful.

  Still, I acknowledge your good suggestion, Watson.

  So I will make no habit of nonsequential intrusions in my narrative, though neither will I swear off them entirely. Does that satisfy you, my old friend?

  Silence.

  It is peculiar how sometimes I can hear John’s voice in my head and other times I cannot find it.

  Now, where were we? I seem to have lost my place.

  “Come Mrs. Watson, the game’s afoot,” I said that night when I arrived, disguised as an American millionaire, at her house.

  She looked quite dignified attired as my wife.

  I offered her my arm, which she took as we proceeded to the cab I had hired for the evening.

  “I’ve never been to a séance,” she said brightly.

  I had been to a few, all of which I had revealed as fraudulent. “Well, dear wife, you’ll find it most interesting,” I answered in my clipped, American accent.

  “Hey,” she snapped. “It hardly seems fair that just because you’re famous you get to speak in a false accent and I don’t get to use my Cockney, which I’ve always been told was quite convincing, Sherlock.”

  “My name tonight is not Sherlock but Norman Johnson,” I answered. “And you may use your accent if it pleases you, Watson.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A fraudulent séance (is there any other kind?) is not merely a theatrical exercise, though acting, costumes, lighting, and illusory stage and sound effects are essential. A good séance also requires that a medium interpret and manifest with as much specificity as possible the deep wishes and fears of his or her participants. Also, a séance must seem a proper social occasion, making individuals feel not only welcome but privileged to be included, a rite of aristocratic pomp and particulars, even as it functions at an actual social level that is no more exalted than the shady doings inside a fortune telling wagon at a camp of Romanies. Taking these diverse demands into account, which together make putting on a successful West Side theatrical seem simple by comparison, a good séance might be almost worth the sterling spent on it, authenticity be damned, were it not that at its core is a manipulation of human frailty that preys not on greed, as do most confidence games (whereupon the victim’s own failing spells his downfall), but upon grief, victimizing those whose only shortcoming is a broken heart.

  “But mightn’t Spiritualism, even if false, still sometimes offer comfort for such broken hearts?” Mrs. Watson inquired in response to my dark characterization of the practice.

  “If false?” I challenged. We were riding in the back of the motor cab from Mrs. Watson’s townhouse in Belgrave Square to the home of Madam Du Lac, which was located near St. John’s Wood. It was there that the medium offered most of her sittings, including ours tonight (that the séance Conan Doyle had attended was held in the luxurious abode of Lady Vale Owen was an exception). “You must be very clear, Mrs. Watson, that whatever you see or hear tonight during the séance is false. There is no if about it. Do not be taken in by mere craft. It is all a trick.”

  I could not afford for my partner to become bedazzled by whatever lay ahead.

  “We’re here as investigators,” I added. “Not acolytes.”

  She nodded. “Fine, fine. But you still haven’t answered my question, Sherlock. What if Spiritualism, even though it is a fraud, is also the only way that some people’s grief can ever be eased? Doesn’t that give it value?”

  “You’ve a warm heart, Mrs. Watson.”

  “And you’re not answering my question.”

  I shrugged. “What you suggest is possible. There may be value in deception.” After a moment, I attempted to make a joke. “Just consider marriage . . . where would that be without deception?”

  Unsmiling, she fired me a sharp look.

  “Of course, I’m not referring to your marriage to John,” I said, reprimanded.

  “I should hope not, Sherlock.”

  I had planned to further brief her during the motor cab ride on the history of Spiritualism, its practices here and abroad, the societies formed both in support and in opposition to it, celebrated public figures who engaged in the belief, the common techniques and effects of the séance room. But the look on her face suggested that she was already sufficiently briefed.

  She was a smart woman, quite capable of following my lead.

  So, instead, I reviewed the day’s activities to keep her abreast of the case. First, I recounted that morning’s more-than-suspicious visit to the Society for Psychic Research; next, I described my afternoon interview of Lady Vale Owen, the dowager who’d hosted the séance that had initiated these events. She had described her interest in Spiritualism as little more than curiosity; however, she admitted the appearance of an “alternate” Stanley Baldwin, a diaphanous, crippled version of our living PM, “took her rather aback.” I determined that Lady Vale Owen served no further role in the adventure. The same was true of the handful of other attendees, as well as her servants. Afterward, I called on Conan Doyle, who’d settled himself in my safe house in Bloomsbury. He had taken from my bookshelf a volume of the letters of Cicero, whose prose he admired but whose morality he found somewhat too libertine. Tossing the book aside upon my entrance, he reverted almost immediately to his usual, blustery form, pacing the floor like a caged panther as he complained about feeling a coward for not showing his face on London’s streets. So I reiterated to him the necessity of his concealment. Finally I returned to my rooms to prepare my disguise for the séance, and to pack a small bag with make-up and clothing for the different identity I would assume for my midnight appointment at the Society for Psychic Research. “Which brings you up to speed,” I said to Mrs. Watson, as the motor cab neared our destination.

  “Yes, and now we’re on our way to a real séance!” she responded.

  I didn’t think the words “real” and “séance” belonged in the same sentence but said nothing.

  She looked out the window in wonderment.

  Her wealth had not changed the fine and humble woman I had known for so long as Mrs. Hudson. We made the rest of the journey in anticipatory silence, broken only when she announced:

  “Well me Deary, it looks like we’re ’ear,” in her not unconvincing Cockney accent, as we pulled up to the address I’d given the driver.

  I looked at her.

  What a retired American millionaire would be doing married to a Cockney woman was beyond me. But I felt quite certain that Madam Du Lac had entertained stranger clients. I wasn’t worried about being exposed as a fraud by Madam Du Lac. Rather, it would be the other way around.

  I told the cabbie to park across the street, having engaged him for the entire night. After he switched off his motor, I climbed out, walking around the back of the cab to open Mrs. Watson’s door.

  She took my hand. “Thank you, Norman,” she said.

  “My pleasure, Emily.”

  She looked up at me. “That’s the first time you’ve ever called me by my given name and . . .” She lowered her voice, “Well, it isn’t even me real name. Blimey!”

  But that’s who we were just then:

  Norman and Emily Johnson; he originally from the stylish Nob Hill district of San Francisco, she from the hardscrabble London neighborhood of Stepney, located just a few miles east of this comfortable street but economically and socially about as distant from either St. John’s Wood or Nob Hill as the planet Mars. Our contrived history, should we be called upon to recite, was that we’d met while on respective, solitary holidays in Brighton, or, as Norman Johnson would say, “vacations.”

  In any case, ain’t love strange?

  She wrapped her arm in mine and we started toward the house, which was a red-brick Edwardian, its front garden an explosion of floral color, and its windows alight with a soft, inviting glow. The neighborhood was familiar to me. Thomas Huxley,
an acquaintance from the last century, the biologist who became known as “Darwin’s Bulldog” for his support of evolution theory, once lived just around the corner (late in Huxley’s life, I’d regularly visit his residence, helping him to get the organic-chemical equations correct in his monographs). It was strange to consider that I was now older than Huxley had been when I helped him with his figures so long ago. And he had seemed ancient then.

  Surely I had held up to time better than he, hadn’t I?

  A majordomo welcomed us into the house. He led us through the vestibule and into the sitting room, announcing us to four other couples, all appearing as middle- to upper-class Londoners, who had already gathered in the comfortable environs. Each of our fellow spiritual sitters held a glass of sherry or, in the instances of two teetotaler ladies, dandelion and burdock soda. The Missus and I took sherry and mingled with the others who, unbeknownst even to Mrs. Watson, were all in my employ (more on that later). The light socializing didn’t last long before the majordomo returned in what now seemed a role more akin to a Master of Ceremonies.

  “If I may please have your attention, ladies and gentlemen,” he requested. “An experience of profound mystery and wonder awaits you.” His manner bespoke a confidence and dramatic bearing beyond his supposed station in the household. A life in service, which values reserve above all else, does not give a man the ability to switch on such immediate, theatrical verve. I strained my memory. Had I ever seen him before, treading the boards in a West End theater, provincial playhouse, or music hall? (I maintained a mental file of professional actors, as Scotland Yard keeps files on convicts, not so much because theatricals are any more or less honest than others, but because, in my experience, their ability to inhabit roles, their itinerancy, and their not uncommon financial predicaments make them naturals as bit players in the confidence games of professional criminals.) However, I’d not seen this face before. Perhaps he had developed his charismatic manner far from the capital, as the ringmaster of a small circus or as a local politician, both endeavors that serve as criminal breeding grounds even more fertile than life in the theater.