“Having already used the same plan at least three times before,” I interjected. “On those poor women. Surely you won’t tell me they were all just like you, eager to taste death? Or help him prove the worth of his invention?”
She grimaced. “No, of course not. Their reasons … They did it for love. That’s all. They were so crazy in love with Albert Smurl that they’d do anything he asked, agree to any crazy scheme that would allow them to live with him.”
“Afterwards, when they found they weren’t the only one, they still felt the same?”
“You heard them. They are strange, sad creatures, I agree! Love is a peculiar, powerful force, don’t you think, Miss Lane?” The look she gave me was disconcerting, a sudden connection that was the more unexpected after my earlier feeling about her.
“It does make some people act like fools,” I said.
“Albert Smurl is one of them.” She sighed. “He fell in love with me—I never invited his affection!—and then he was unable to resist temptation; especially, I suppose, as all his experience with women suggested that I was bound to return his feelings, that I would fall in love with him soon enough …” She gave me a pleading look. “He was always kind to me. I can’t blame him for loving me, Miss Lane, I truly cannot. What he did was wrong, certainly, but I am not blameless. I gave him my full cooperation, and now that I am free, I should like to say that is the end. I will not bring charges against the man.”
She sounded very sure—not like someone forced to act against her will by a canny hypnotist—but I am no expert on these matters. Still, we could discuss the matter of criminal charges later. We had other things to talk about.
As the train carried us ever farther from Smurl’s territory, the physical distance made it possible to raise the question of when and how Miss Travers might return to her own home, and for her to consider it without alarm. She told us that she did not know why, but the very act of moving towards her own street had made her heart pound uncomfortably hard and her breath come more shallowly: she seemed to be afraid of something she could not name.
Jesperson said, “I suspect Smurl planted a suggestion in your mind while you were in his thrall, to keep you from returning to your family in the event that you managed to escape. You would not know why but would simply feel an aversion to going to your old address. “
She looked distressed. “How dreadful! Does that mean I can never go home again? What if my family should move to another house? Could I go to them there?”
Jesperson smiled. “Hypnotic suggestions can be countered—especially once you are aware of them. I can teach you a simple technique, or, if you prefer, with your permission, I can easily rid you of the problems he created. I have studied the arts of hypnosis …”
Was there no end to his talents?
Although I thought I would not be so eager to allow yet another strange man access to my mind, there is something so likeable about Jasper Jesperson—and he is so obviously trustworthy—that I was not surprised that Miss Travers expressed her gratitude for the offer.
“But when I do go home,” she said, hesitantly, “whatever shall I tell them? They all think I am dead. How can I possibly explain? What story can I tell?”
“You must tell them the truth,” I said at once. “However improbable, however unlikely … the truth has a force that cannot be denied; much greater than any fiction you attempt to contrive.”
“But … then I should have to mention … his name.”
I wondered if her reluctance was entirely due to another posthypnotic command. There was certainly much to inhibit any well-bred young girl from admitting to abduction by a serial bigamist. She was undoubtedly sensible of the social consequences that would follow once her story became public. She might claim—it might even be true—that he had treated her with scrupulous courtesy, as a guest in his home, but still she would be regarded with suspicion, as “damaged goods” ruined forever in the marriage market. Society puts a heavy burden on its females. Some carry that burden without noticing, some are able to shrug it off, others manage to adapt in some way or another to the lot imposed upon them. I did not know Alcinda well enough to know if she would think her “taste of death” had been worth the lasting suspicion.
“You will have to bring Mr. Smurl into it. I don’t see any other way … After all, he has invented the device which allowed you to be released from your premature grave.”
“But no one would believe you had been entombed for weeks,” Jesperson added. “Not looking as well as you do.”
She flushed a little, and smiled up at him from under her lashes although I perceived nothing flirtatious in his manner.
He went on, “You must have been rescued soon after the burial although it was kept quiet. Perhaps Mr. Smurl’s wife—just the one, mind you; those other ladies must be her unwed sisters—tenderly nursed you back to health. They did not alert your family through fear that at any moment you would expire, and their reluctance to arouse false hopes.”
“Yes, yes,” she said eagerly. “That might do! I think that might be believed. It is close enough to what happened—we might say that only in the last few days have I been back to normal, truly well enough to risk going out … We might say that I awoke while my nurse slept, and did not recognize my surroundings and took fright …” She frowned, and her gaze turned inward; I saw her lips move as she rehearsed her careful lies.
We arrived at 203-A to be greeted by the most welcome smells of cooking. Without knowing when we might arrive, Mrs. Jesperson had made the best possible use of the beef, cooking it slowly in a large pot with onions, carrots, parsnips, turnips, and potatoes, producing a dish that could be reheated, as well as being substantial enough to feed a crowd.
We dined heartily on the ragout (so she called what, in my childhood home, had been simply stew) along with lightly steamed cabbage and a loaf of fresh, crusty bread. Afterwards there was cheese, and apple pie with cream.
It was the first meal of day for Jasper and me, and our guest demonstrated an appetite that matched ours, so that we scarcely said a word beyond “pass the salt” or “may I have more bread, please” until we were finished and, replete, sank back in our chairs to recover while Mrs. Jesperson went to put the kettle on.
Just then there was a knock at the street door. Jasper went to answer, and moments later, Felicity all but flew into the room.
“Is it true? You have found her? Oh, Cinda! My Cinda!”
Alcinda nearly overturned her chair in her haste to rise, and in an instant they were hugging each other and weeping with joy.
“But how? How did you know?” Pulling away from her younger sister a moment, Alcinda looked from her to us, bewildered.
I explained that Felicity was our client. “Surely you wondered how we had come to find you?” I did not find it strange that she had not asked, with so many other things to think about.
But she surprised me. “No. I felt certain it was Mama’s doing.”
“Your stepmother?”
She shook her head, smiling uncertainly. “I mean my own dear, departed mother. Departed from this plane, but not utterly gone. I know that now, because while I was … dead … I found her again.” She sighed. “I know you find it strange that I don’t feel angry and vengeful towards Mr. Smurl for what he did to me, but I can’t. This is not, as you may think, that I am afraid of him, or that I am under compulsion, but, truly, because I am grateful. Yes, really grateful for what he did, for the great gift he gave me. Perhaps I would feel differently if I had been kept there much longer, pressured to become another wife, but in that time the good still seemed to me to outweigh the bad. Every time he ‘put me under’ he enabled me to escape to another place—and my mother was there. I would have happily stayed there with her forever, but she told me I must go back, I was too young, and still had a life to live. She said I must escape.” She frowned and looked uncertain. “I know that I tried. I have a feeling I did manage to get away from the house, once, but then Mr. Smur
l found me and brought me back …” She shrugged off the incomplete memory. “I don’t know exactly what happened, but she said not to worry, she would send someone to save me.” She smiled at us. “And then you came.”
“Your Mama sent me,” said Felicity. “She came to me in a dream. It was a true dream—I knew it all along.” She smiled triumphantly, then added, “It was after I saw you in the cemetery that I had the dream.”
Felicity explained that Alcinda had somehow managed to get away, and described what she had seen. But when she repeated Smurl’s words to her, Alcinda exclaimed that it could not be true; she would not believe he would ever say such a thing, especially not to a child!
“Are you certain, my dear, that that was not a dream?”
Felicity glowered. “Of course it was not! I know very well when I am awake. But Papa would not believe me, either, even though he did not know it was Mr. Smurl I had met, and I did not know what to do, how to find you again and save you from that horrible beast.”
She carried on speaking over her sister’s objection. “I wished Mr. Sherlock Holmes was not just in stories, because if he was real, I could write him a letter. I thought he would surely recognize that I was telling the truth! That night I dreamt that he was real and that I had decided to visit him, so I took the train all by myself, up to London, and set off to find Baker Street. I was standing on a street corner, looking at a map that I couldn’t quite read, when a kind lady offered her help. She looked just like the picture on the wall above Alcinda’s bed, so I knew at once who she was. I almost said, ‘Aren’t you dead?” but then I thought that would be rude, so I thanked her and said I was looking for the great detective, at 221-B Baker Street. She told me that the address I wanted was actually 203-A Gower Street, and then she walked with me, all the way—it was the most extraordinarily detailed dream!—and she showed me the door—It was your door,” she said, nodding at us, “but in the dream it was different. You really only have a number on the door. In the dream, there was a brass plate on it with the names Jesperson and Lane. When I woke up, I remembered those names, as well as the address , and I knew that this was where I had to come—although it was a very long way from Sydenham. And expensive.”
“I did wonder how you came to find us,” I said.
“Did you know my mother, when she was alive?” asked Alcinda, obviously puzzling over the question. “Before she was Mrs. Eugene Travers, she was Maria Lessingham.”
Jesperson, who would have been a mere child at the time of Mrs. Travers’s death, said mildly, “I never had the pleasure.”
The name Lessingham provoked no more recognition in me than Travers had, but, before I said as much, I thought of the past few years in which I had spent so many hours in darkened rooms, in the company of men and women who claimed the ability to commune with the dead and act as conductors for their spirits. Many, if not most, were frauds, but I could not dismiss them all, even if I had sometimes speculated whether thought-reading, or telepathy, might not provide a more accurate explanation of their powers than the claims made by spiritualists. Maria was a common enough name; while I could be certain I had never met Alcinda’s mother in the flesh, I could not so easily dismiss the possibility that her spirit had encountered mine at some séance …
For a moment, recalling the excitement of my early explorations in psychical research, I wondered how I could have let myself be distracted from the great question of what becomes of us after death by smaller concerns, and I realized, too, that Alcinda Travers and I were not as different as I had thought. Perhaps, a few years ago, I would also have found Mr. Smurl’s strange proposal too tempting to refuse?
Mrs. Jesperson returned bearing a tea tray. For her son, she had prepared a small silver pot of very strong coffee (to revive his sleep-deprived brain), and for the rest of us there was a light and fragrant Chinese tea served in beautiful little blue-and-white China bowls.
Gulping down her tea without ceremony, Felicity was eager to go back home at once. Alcinda explained her concerns, and that Mr. Jesperson had offered his help. “Perhaps, if it is not too great an imposition for me to stay here overnight …”
Felicity interrupted her sister: “Why can’t Mr. Jesperson do it now?”
“Certainly I can, if it suits you,” said he, and drained the last of his coffee.
Alcinda was soon settled in the most comfortable chair, with Jesperson perched beside her on a stool.
“Would you like us to leave?” I asked.
“No, no. So long as Miss Alcinda is happy.”
“I am,” she said. “I do not wish to be parted from Felicity so soon!”
“You would like to go home with her?”
“Oh, yes!”
It occurred to me that the inhibition about returning was already gone, but Jesperson continued:
“I would like for you to envision the place, a very specific place, that means home to you.”
“My own bedroom,” she said promptly. “It is the smallest and the highest in the house, but I chose it for my own.”
“Think of it in as much detail as you can.”
“Oh, that’s easy. My little worktable and chair are beneath the dormer window. My bed is against the wall behind it. There are shiny brass knobs on the bedstead, and a patchwork quilt on the bed that I made with my two best friends. Over the bed is my favorite portrait of my mother. I look at it every day and night. I used to talk to it.”
“Focus on it. See it in as much detail as you can—you don’t have to speak aloud; just observe it for yourself.”
She closed her eyes.
“As you look at it, think of how happy you are to be back home again, how comfortable it makes you feel, to be in that room, looking at your mother’s face. You can see the love she felt for you in your mother’s face. She is the person who loved you the most, and has always kept you safe. There is nowhere else you would rather be; nowhere else you feel so warm, and protected, and loved, and safe. You are in your room, safe and happy, warm and well.”
He went on like that for some minutes more, in a voice so compelling and soporific that at one point I dozed off and dreamt I was in that room myself, a room I had never seen but felt was my own true home, looking at a picture of my own mother with a relaxed feeling of comfortable well-being that was very far from the reality of our relationship.
When he talked her—us—back to our present surroundings, I knew he had been successful. Without mumbo jumbo, his ordinary magic had worked. Most unexpectedly, it had worked on me; I felt as refreshed and relaxed as my partner told Alcinda she now felt.
Although Felicity and Alcinda said there was no need for us to accompany them all the way back to Sydenham, Jesperson insisted. What if Smurl should be lurking outside their home, with an accomplice, ready to seize his escaped prisoner? Perhaps Miss Travers might like to reconsider. We could go to Scotland Yard before we left London …
But she was adamant that she would bring no charges against Mr. Smurl and begged us to respect her decision.
We walked to the Holborn Viaduct Station, and from there bought tickets to Sydenham. It was just as well, really, that we had come, because although Felicity had a return ticket, she did not have quite enough money to buy a single for Alcinda. I wondered, as Jesperson dug into his pocket to pay for one first-class single and two returns, if we would ever make any money from the curious cases we took on.
Leaving the two sisters outside their house—they preferred to be alone with their family—I felt that we were being gently pushed out of the story; whatever explanation Alcinda had come up with would not feature the names of Jesperson and Lane. But if that was their decision, what right had we to argue? Sometimes good deeds must be their own reward.
No one was waiting for them with evil intent. The street was quiet; a few birds singing in the trees. After we had seen them go safely inside, my partner and I set off, without discussion, for Smurl’s house.
It was evening by the time we arrived; the streetlamps
were not yet lit, but most of the houses along the street now had warmly glowing windows, hinting at comfort within—except for Smurl’s. But someone was ahead of us, someone had pushed open the gate beside the laburnum bush, and was making his way, steps a trifle hesitant, towards the front door.
The figure looked familiar. In a moment, I recognized the cemetery’s caretaker, Eric Bailey.
We continued to approach the house, walking more slowly to observe him. He rapped several times upon the door: the sound carried clearly through the quiet air. We heard him call out to Mr. Smurl, identifying himself, but received no response. By this time, we were just outside the gate, so we were able to watch him try the door handle, and then bend to inspect the keyhole.
When he straightened, his manner had changed. I wondered if he had seen something through the keyhole that worried him. He rubbed his chin and fidgeted nervously, turning around on the spot. At this point, Mr. Jesperson opened the gate, and we walked through.
Giving a start of surprise, the man called out an uncertain greeting.
“Good evening,” said Jesperson, touching his hat. “We meet again, Mr. Bailey!”
Recognizing us, he relaxed a little. “Why, fancy! Have you come to call on Mr. Smurl?”
“Indeed. That brochure you gave me was very interesting. I thought I should like to hear more about his famous security coffin, from the inventor himself.”
He could not have looked more astonished if my friend had said he’d an invitation from Saint Peter to discuss his place in Heaven. “You don’t mean to say Mr. Smurl invited you here, to his house?”
“Why, is that so unusual?”
“Never heard of such a thing! Never for business, and not for anything else since his wife took ill—four, five, maybe six years now? I felt a bit strange coming here myself, but didn’t know what else to do. They haven’t seen him in the parlor since he left just before one. I expected him at three o’clock, but when he didn’t show up, didn’t think too much about it. He likes to show his face at the graveside, but I thought something must have come up. They told me he missed two meetings, and never a note, never a word of explanation—well, that’s not like him. He went home for his dinner at one o’clock; I thought, if his wife had taken a turn for the worse …” He mentally pulled himself back, looked sharply at Mr. Jesperson. “You had an appointment? You say he invited you here, to his own private abode, to talk business?”
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