The Ectoplasmic Man (14 page)

“Really Holmes, to make so much of a trifle! Can you be so certain of the mud?”

Holmes ignored the question.

“And the third irregularity, Holmes?” I asked. “You mentioned three.”

“The ground was dry that night. It had not rained for three days.”

“So there would not have been any mud puddles,” I reasoned.

“Precisely so.”

“Oh, come now!” cried Lestrade, growing quite irritated. “He may well have stepped into a flower-bed, Holmes. A flower-bed filled with moist earth which was not native to the estate. Have you considered that possibility? I don’t know what your game is, but I haven’t the time for it now. It’s all very well for you and Dr Watson to lose yourselves in these details, but I must have results; and in this instance I must have them before the diplomatic complications become unmanageable.” He took down his hat and ulster. “Thank Mrs Hudson for a lovely breakfast, gentlemen, but I must return to my duties.” He paused at the door and raised a finger in admonishment. “I welcome your insights, Holmes, but you must learn to address them to the facts, not your idle theories. They’ll lead you nowhere! Good day.” He turned and bustled down the steps, slamming the lower door behind him.

“That was an agreeably dramatic exit,” commented Holmes. “He is developing quite a flair.”

“A flair!” I scoffed. “He is intolerable! He grows more so by the year. Why do you abide him?”

“Actually, Watson, he and Gregson are the best of the lot, and of the two Lestrade has the virtue of honesty.” With this equable comment, Holmes began packing his after-breakfast pipe.

I hope the reader will indulge me in my dotage if I digress here for a moment, for I find that the mention of Holmes’s pipe affords an opportunity I have long awaited.

In the last twenty years I have seen countless drawings and other renderings in which a likeness of Sherlock Holmes is shown smoking a large, curved calabash pipe. He is generally seen puffing reflectively on this pipe while explaining some simple point to his elderly, easily befuddled companion. As Holmes and I are the same age, I pride myself that my mind is still keen enough to recollect that he never, to the best of my knowledge, owned a calabash pipe. It was, then, his disreputable old black clay that he smoked upon Lestrade’s departure that morning, filling it with all the dottles and plugs left over from his previous day’s smokes, lighting it with an ember from the fire, and tamping it down with Mrs Hudson’s silver butter-knife. I myself took a cigar, and waited patiently for Holmes to comment on the murder of the countess.

“Lestrade is correct on one point,” Holmes said, replacing the fire-tongs, “and that is that this business must be concluded quickly. No doubt he is under enormous pressure from his superiors to convict Houdini.”

“But why?”

“To have the case solved, and more importantly, to have it solved quietly and without scandal. Should it transpire that the countess was murdered by an Englishman, the relations between our countries would become even more strained.”

“That would be unfortunate, of course,” I said, “but the Yard is on the point of convicting an innocent man! Are the diplomatic worries so very great?”

Holmes did not appear to have heard. He walked to the window and stood motionless for a long while, staring down at Baker Street. But for the staccato puffs of smoke rising from his pipe, I should have mistaken him for the wax bust which briefly occupied that space some
years earlier.
^*

“Watson,” he said at last, turning away from the window. “Are you still as eager for the chase? Would you undertake a brief journey on my behalf?”

“Of course,” I answered. “I had planned to visit Houdini again, but seeing this morning’s headlines, I’m not sure I’d have the heart to face him.”

Holmes took the newspaper I held out to him. “’American Magician Accused of Murder’,” he read, “’Theft Suspect Already in Custody’. No, I don’t think he’ll like that.”

“Holmes, it will devastate him. You must solve this case immediately!”

“Very well then, Watson, I shall do as you instruct, but you must participate in the solution.”

“Gladly. What am I to do?”

“Fetch your coat, I shall explain in the cab.”

Within moments Holmes had secured a hansom and issued instructions to the driver. “Now then,” he began, as we lurched off towards Portman Square, “for the time being it will be necessary for me to devote my energies to this latest problem.”

“The murder?”

“The murder, yes, but the actual murder itself is not my central concern. What is even more compelling is this uncertainty which surrounds the countess’s identity and movements. Her final days must be reconstructed before we can proceed.”

“I see. And what is my part in all of this?”

“You shall approach the problem from the opposite direction. Remember, we initially came to this investigation by means of a threat against Houdini. Though the problem has now grown beyond that, we should not lose sight of our original concern.”

“’Tonight who the fraud is we shall see’?”

“Exactly. I have made some enquiries concerning this rival escape artist of Houdini’s, Herr Kleppini. I have satisfied myself that he is involved in the Gairstowe crime at least, if not the murder. At present, Kleppini is plying his trade from a booth on the Brighton Pier. I have determined that he performed there on the evening of the crime. I am also told that he conducted a seance the following afternoon. You must—”

Our hansom pulled up sharply. “Victoria!” shouted the driver from on top of the box.

“Come along, Watson,” said Holmes, leaping down, “your train leaves in a moment.”

“My train?” I asked, hurrying after him.

“Yes. You are going to Brighton,” he informed me, leading us through the arch. “If the theft of the letters occurred as I suspect, Kleppini could not have returned to Brighton in time to conduct his afternoon seance.” He pulled me along the platform, signalling to the conductor. “You must determine if it is Kleppini himself conducting his afternoon seance, and if so, whether or not it would have been possible for another performer to take his place. Do you understand? Good, off you go!”

“But, Holmes,” I said, considerably unsettled by the haste of these arrangements, “is this not a fool’s errand? If Kleppini did steal the letters, won’t he have disposed of them by now? Why has the scandal you fear not come to pass?”

“Because,” said Holmes, hastening me into a coach as two short whistles sounded, “I have discovered that there is one letter yet remaining in Lord O’Neill’s possession. A letter in the countess’s own hand, in which she denounces all the others. So long as we have this letter, all the rest are rendered harmless.”

“Then why—?” But it was too late, for the train had begun to pull free of the platform, and Holmes was already striding off in the other direction.

^*
Very briefly. It was almost immediately smashed by a bullet from Colonel Sebastian Moran’s airgun.

A S
EANCE
O
N
T
HE
P
ALACE
P
IER

T
He Journey By Train To Brighton Is A Pleasant One, Made More So By Anticipation Of The Hospitable Seaside Resort At Its End. When Mary Was Alive, She Would Frequently Bring Me Down To Take The Sun And To Visit The Brighton Lanes. There, In That Twisting, Narrow Course Of Antique Shops, We Would Spend Many Happy Hours Among The Dusty Bricà-Brac Of The Previous Century. It Was These Memories Which Engaged My Thoughts As I Alighted In The Brighton Station, Taking My Mind From The Less Congenial Purpose Of My Present Visit.

Leaving the station through the south gates, I strolled briskly dthe chamber had been sealedthe chamber had been sealede the room while the vault door was open. That way I could break out from inside once the chamberown the Queen’s Road, pausing only momentarily to glare at the monstrous Royal Pavilion,
^*
and soon I had arrived at the well-known Brighton seashore.

The better travelled of my readers may scoff at the very notion of England boasting a seaside resort, given our rather temperate climate; but on this day the sun was bright, if not actually hot, and I was pleased to find several hundreds of my countrymen disporting themselves there
upon the beach. While it is true that Brighton’s beach is composed of hard pebble and rock, rather than sand, if one lies out on a wooden deck-chair, wrapped in a wool blanket against the sea chill, it is possible to get a good bit of colour in one’s cheeks. Or so my wife always contended, and I never chose to dispute her.

The heavily trafficked section of the Brighton shore is flanked by two marvellous wooden piers, which extend some hundreds of feet into the Channel and are supported by stout wooden piles. The first of these is the West Pier, whose trim, elegant ballroom has housed some of society’s grandest summer affairs. The newer of the two, the Palace Pier, has attracted a less desirable patronage. Built at the turn of the century, it has become a haven for gypsies and charlatans, who, in hastily constructed booths ranging up and down the length of the pier, display dubious feats of skill or aberrations of nature, offered less for amusement than for the purpose of separating the labourer from his wages. It was here, amid this mean and squalid bluster, that I was to seek the mysterious Kleppini.

Paying my three shillings at the rotting turnstile, I pushed my way into the crowd and out onto the pier. Among the diversions available that afternoon, each heralded by a garishly painted signboard, were a “pulse-quickening” display of snake charming, a “mystic fakir” asleep on a bed of nails, and a burly fire-swallower whose demonstration carried the warning: “Not for the faint of heart.” Picking my way through the eager couples and boisterous youths, I had travelled nearly to the far end of the pier before locating Kleppini’s booth.

I had never before seen the man, but I could hardly mistake his signboard, for it proclaimed in bright red letters: “Kleppini! The Man Who Humbled Houdini!” Houdini’s name, I noted, was printed in larger letters than Kleppini’s own, and indeed the illustration showed a man who looked rather like Houdini, muscular and compact, bound in heavy irons but preserving a characteristically defiant tilt of the head. Leaning against
the feet of this illustration was a hand-lettered notice which announced a seance in ten minutes.

Pushing aside a musty grey curtain, I stepped into a booth which was lit by a single candle. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I made out the forms of three other persons seated about a low table in the centre of the room, apparently come to avail themselves of Herr Kleppini’s spiritualistic gifts. Finding no seats, I lowered myself onto a tattered cushion as the others had done and awaited the entrance of Kleppini. Below us the waves slapped against the supports of the pier, and the smell of rotting fish and algae wafted up through the cracks.

I need hardly say that but for my errand, undertaken on behalf of Sherlock Holmes, I should never have found myself in such a peculiar setting. But once there I awaited the proceedings with great interest, and took advantage of my timely arrival to examine the three others who had come to communicate with the dead.

To my right was a sallow-faced young man in a striped jacket and straw hat. At his side was a samples-case, and I was able to gather by his conversation that he was a commercial traveller making sales calls in Brighton. “These spiritualists,” he was explaining to his companion, “are fraudulent without exception, but they provide a certain” — he paused and laid a finger alongside his temple — “intellectual amusement for the truly incisive mind.”

His companion, a pale-complexioned schoolgirl of no more than seventeen years, giggled and clutched at his arm in nervous affirmation. “I don’t know about any of that,” she said, pulling a strand of hair out of her eyes. “I just know that it gives me a bad fright just to think about talking with dead people!”

“That’s all right,” laughed her young man, pulling her close to him. “That’s what I’m here for.”

Throughout this exchange the third member of our party sat by
regarding the pair with obvious distaste. This man’s dress and manner proclaimed him an active sailor, but his age and physical limitations suggested otherwise, for the bristles which covered his chin were stark white, and though he continually stroked and worried at them with one hand, the other — a hook — remained motionless at his side. As always when in later years I would encounter highly unusual characters in suggestive settings, I examined the sailor for any sign which struck me as familiar, but a scrutiny of several moments left me uncertain as to whether this old salt could possibly be Sherlock Holmes in another of his disguises. Could even Holmes have managed the hook?

My seat, if the crouching position I had assumed on the pillow could be called such, was set very near to a ragged grey screen in the corner of the room. Before long I heard whisperings and jostlings from behind the screen, followed by the sudden appearance of a plump, matronly German woman. This woman stood for some moments appraising our group with tight-lipped disapproval before stepping back behind the screen. The whispering renewed, with the words “
Vier? Nur vier?”
being plainly audible. Then, as if propelled by a shove, the woman reappeared and solemnly addressed the assembled patrons.