Between the Thames and the Tiber (24 page)

The priest seemed troubled this evening. Signor Barca brought him a liter of his favorite wine. The priest sipped it slowly, but none of his humour or affability came forward. He smiled wanly and sat as if waiting.

Holmes and I were the next to enter. Holmes looked at the priest, smiled at him, and we took our seats at an appropriate distance. Except for the two of us and the priest the
osteria
was empty, for it was still an early hour to sup by Roman standards.

The priest paid little attention to us but stood up as a woman entered. He greeted her warmly. They smiled at each other and began speaking in German. They ate quickly and left.

Holmes and I followed them discreetly and watched as they stopped at a door near the Porta d’Ottavia. As they prepared to enter, Holmes approached them.

“
Scusi
,” said Holmes, “I would like a word with you.”

“
Dica
,” said the priest.

“Cardinal Corelli, the Pope has asked me to ascertain your whereabouts and your safety. My name is Sherlock Holmes and this is my friend, Dr. Watson.”

Visibly taken aback, the Cardinal motioned us through the door.

“I know who you are. I knew that you would eventually find me. This is my long-lost sister, Maria Teresa,” said the priest.

We climbed to the first floor, where we entered a small flat which, judging by its sparse furniture and general shabbiness, looked more like a way station than a residence.

“These have been my quarters since I left the Vatican on Good Friday. Tell me, Mr. Holmes, I have heard recent rumours of my death and the discovery of my body floating in the Tiber. Is it so? All arranged by Spontini, of course, as a warning to me not to return.”

“Quite right, Your Excellency. I can assure you, however, that Spontini is well taken care of. The Pope has removed him from the Cardinalate and assigned him to work in a poor house in Isernia, a fitting coda to a misspent career in the Church. But tell me, how did you come to this decision to leave the Vatican, as if you left the Church itself?”

The Cardinal’s sister spoke.

“I am to blame,” she said in English, “for much of the disturbance to my brother. I am his older sister and in that terrible earthquake in which we lost our parents and two other brothers, I was also presumed to be dead. I was found wandering in a daze and brought to an orphanage in Benevento, where I was raised. I had no idea that my brother had survived nor he that I had. When I was thirteen, I was traced by relatives and brought to Vienna, where they had moved from Italy. I was raised there in good circumstances but always hopeful that, as I had, one or more of my brothers had survived. Then not long ago, I saw a picture of Cardinal Corelli in a Viennese newspaper. His resemblance to my youngest brother was astonishing. I thought long and hard about trying to see him. You see, we were a Jewish family, and he a prince of the Church. I decided, however, that I had to know the truth. I came to Rome and went to St. Paul’s to offer my confession to the Cardinal. It was the only place where I could meet him secretly. I entered as any parishioner, frightened but hopeful of what I might learn. In a few minutes, we had established our relationship beyond a doubt. You can imagine with what joy we discovered each other after so many years. My brother accompanied me to this place and returned to the Vatican. It was Ash Wednesday.”

“There,” said the Cardinal, “as I was about to turn the Virgin’s picture to the wall, an action which I had done without thinking all my life, Suor Angelica entered. She was distraught, and I knew it was over my sister, about whom she had made erroneous assumptions. I tried to calm her without telling her anything, for I was afraid Spontini would learn of my Jewish ancestry and use it against me.

“On Good Friday, I returned to my room after hearing confessions to find that my quarters had been entered. The Christ with the vermilion face had been hung above my bed. Its message was not lost on me. I became angered. I threw my ring onto the table, tried to crush it in my hand, and tore my rosary in pieces. My missal had been opened to the lines from an Easter hymn of praise to the Lord, but they had been tampered with so that they brought to mind Satan and his chewing of Judas Iscariot, the great Jewish betrayer. I left in anger and did not know whether I would ever return. I knew I could not fight Spontini, for he had his evil ambitions that drove him forward. I chose to live here in the ghetto with my sister. Free from the cares of the Church for the first time in my life, I began to debate whether or not I should leave. I still have not decided.”

“The Pope was gratified to learn that you were alive and well,” said Holmes.

“I shall speak to him in the morning,” said the Cardinal.

We took our leave and returned to our quarters.

“Well, Holmes, what do you think he will do?”I asked.

“I do not speculate, Watson. Either way, it is a difficult decision.”

A few days later, it was announced that Cardinal Corelli had decided to remain in his position in the Church. The news was greeted with joy by the people of Rome.

Not long after, Pope Leo XIII succumbed to old age and ill health. The world waited for the wisp of white smoke from the Vatican that would indicate that a new pope had been chosen. It came after three days. The new Pope greeted the crowds in St. Peter’s Square.

To his great relief, Cardinal Corelli was not elected.

“Y
OU ARE QUITE RIGHT, DEAR
W
ATSON, IT IS AN
absurd doctrine.”

As he had so many times in the past, Holmes had read my inner thoughts as I sat relaxed in my chair. He did this so regularly now that I was no longer taken by surprise. At times I thought I had begun to comprehend how he did it. In this case, however, I was taken aback, for he had appeared to be sound asleep on the couch.

“As usual, Holmes, you are quite apropos. But how did you deduce my thoughts this time? I thought that you were asleep.”

He lay there motionless, his eyes closed, as if he were still well into his nap. He sat up, and lit a cigarette.

“I was, Watson, at least until a few minutes ago. Again, it is child’s play if one pays attention to details. If I recall, two nights ago you were reading Bishop Berkeley’s famous essay on tar water and its benefits, correct?”

“Indeed, I was.”

“The volume which you were reading also contains, if I am not mistaken, Berkeley’s essay on perception. Since the volume is arranged chronologically, I noted before my nap that you had reached this essay by where you had placed your bookmark. I was certain that you were then reading the good bishop’s remarks on the notion that ‘to be is to be perceived,’ ‘esse est percipi’ in Latin, and the old weary problem of whether or not something exists if no one perceives it.”

“Quite right. He makes a convincing case for it.”

“Berkeley is quite clever. You awakened me, however, with your sigh of frustration when you loudly opened and closed your desk drawer repeatedly, hoping to catch a change in its contents, perhaps something amiss not only in your drawer but in the universe. Your sigh of frustration only underlined to me your lack of belief in the notion. The bishop had raised a clever but silly point, clever because it is difficult to refute outright, silly because it matters not in the least.”

“I am not totally convinced that he is wrong.”

“My dear doctor, what the good bishop is talking about is not whether someone removed an object or it fell into a dark corner, but that the object simply dropped out of existence because there was no perceiver. But the world of nature, Watson, has two characteristics that the good bishop may have forgotten: it does not forget, and it does not forgive. A miscalculation in favour of the good bishop’s theory could prove disastrous. And so, dear Watson, you may rest assured that whatever is in your desk drawer right now will be there all night, tomorrow, and perhaps forever, if we can fathom such a term, whether or not you or I or a third person observes it.”

We continued our conversation that evening through a late supper, branching off into Holmes’s ideas of perception, hallucinations, mirages, and what inevitably makes the ordinary person quite gullible, willing to believe anything.

“It is not just the average person, Watson. Take the great Lombroso himself, one of the great minds of Europe, taken in by this tawdry medium, Isadora Persano.”

Holmes had mentioned La Persano, as she was known, on previous occasions, and indeed it was through Professor Cesare Lombroso that the name of this now famous lady first came to the attention of my friend. As the reader may know, Lombroso had become interested in spiritualism in his later years, and he and Holmes were often allied in their relentless exposure of those cases that involved fraud and chicanery. Holmes, of course, was of the opinion that all cases of reported spiritualism were by their very nature fraudulent. In this way, he differed from Lombroso, who felt more and more that there were realms of supernatural experience that went beyond the conventional and therefore were without the ability of science to explain them. In following assiduously one of the cases that had come to him in recent months, Lombroso had heard the name of Isadora Persano, a medium whose powers had begun to spread her fame beyond the confines of her native city, Naples. He then participated in several séances with her and became convinced that of all the mediums that he had met, she was by far the most gifted. Perhaps the most telling episode was how she brought the spirit of Lombroso’s own mother to one of her séances. In every detail of speech and family history, according to Lombroso, La Persano was absolutely accurate. Lombroso told Holmes that he had come away from the séance emotionally overwhelmed by his conversation with his mother, who had died three years before. So taken was he with the abilities of this young medium that he refused even to listen to Holmes’s irrefutable explanations.

“For reasons of his own, Watson,” said Holmes to me that evening, “Lombroso wants to believe this nonsense.”

“The woman must be extremely clever,” I said.

Holmes smiled. “And quite beautiful, judging from Lombroso’s hymns of praise. I am sure,” he continued, “that if I investigated I would find that some old family records were closely studied and relatives of Lombroso were carefully interviewed and paid off handsomely by Persano’s agents. No medium I know in Europe or England exists without a large group of paid supporters. In this, the mediums resemble the divas of the opera. Couple this with the inevitable dimming of one’s memory over time—Lombroso would be no exception to this—and we have a most convincing and cunning course of fraudulence. But how to persuade Lombroso, who is already abandoning his scientific career for these pernicious forms of skullduggery?”

Our discussion ended there for the time being, and I heard little more of Isadora Persano at the time. A week later, I left for England to attend to business, leaving Holmes alone with two cases that he wished to complete before his own return to London.

My return to England had been occasioned by letters received from lawyers of a deceased uncle of mine who wished to discuss some points of law before his estate could be finally disbursed. They thought a face-to-face meeting necessary since my signature would be required on a new sheaf of papers the case had generated. I confess that I knew nothing of this uncle, Mr. Peter Tomkins by name, but the terms of the estate were so favourable to me that I deemed it would be foolish of me to ignore the communications from his lawyers. And so, a few days after my arrival in London I found myself seated in our quarters on Baker Street, before Mr. Charles Herriot, a rather rotund and prosperous-looking gentleman, the senior partner in the distinguished firm of Combs and Herriot.

“I hope that I haven’t inconvenienced you in asking you to return to London, but there are some aspects of the Tomkins estate that warrant discussion. In fact, Dr. Watson, your uncle’s will stipulates that certain portions of it be communicated to you orally.”

“I understand,” said I. “I take it that my inheritance is still intact, however.”

“Indeed, as far as I can see it is, though it may be smaller than we had previously calculated. But let me leave that for the end of our conversation.”

The conversations went on for several hours and I was touched by the care that Mr. Herriot displayed with regard to the substantial estate I was about to inherit. It was but a week after I had arrived in England that an urgent telegram from Holmes asked that I return to Italy at once. His message read in part:

You will recall the name of Isadora Persano. Her influence has grown, and I have decided to stop her. Some of her supporters are well placed and will try to do me in. Already the Roman press is on the attack. Will need your help. Come at once.

Holmes

I did not relish the sudden return journey, but I could not ignore my friend’s entreaty. And so once again, putting my practise into the hands of two trusted colleagues, I left for Rome, arriving three days later. Holmes was at the station to greet me.

“Just in time, dear Watson, for we leave for Florence in the early morning.” Holmes appeared excited. As the cab took us to our lodgings, he related the latest developments.

“Lombroso is making a fool of himself, and I am almost powerless to stop him, but I must try. Last week I attended a séance with him at La Persano’s. She began by explaining one of Lombroso’s dreams. So accurate was she that he almost fainted on the spot. He said that it was as if he had been invaded by the woman and that she knew his most intimate thoughts, things that he had confided to no one. She is most clever, and so are her mentors. She has now challenged me to expose her in one more séance. It is to take place in Florence tomorrow night. I will then be asked to prove her a fraud. I suspect that I shall be severely restricted in my investigations.”

“Little do they know what they are up against,” said I.

“My blushes, dear fellow,” said he with his usual chuckle.

The morning train was on time. Lombroso greeted us at the station. He was a tall man, now stooped and hunched after so many years of reading and research. He appeared elated to see us.