The Ghost of the Mary Celeste (26 page)

“Yes,” she agreed. “That’s my poor idea of a little joke. Are you comfortable now, Dr. Doyle?”

“I am,” he said.

She leaned forward in her chair and for a moment he thought she might reach out to take his hand, as he understood some mediums did. But instead she flattened her hands over her thighs and allowed her gaze to travel the length and breadth of the room, pausing here and there as if taking note of important details. “We stand at the gate,” she said softly, opening her hands and closing her eyes. “The spirits of our loved ones are among us.”

In the pause that followed, the two men exchanged a nervous glance. As Dr. Bishop had experienced whatever it was Miss Petra had on offer many times—seventeen was it?—the trepidation in the older man’s expression puzzled Doyle. Was a cold hand about to grasp him by the throat? He studied Miss Petra, who, as far as he could tell, had not moved a muscle. As he watched, she brought the fingertips of her left hand to her left eye, massaging it gently beneath the lid. “Is there someone who will speak to me?” she inquired.

But there was, evidently, no one.

After a moment she said, “Oh, dear, it’s as silent as the tomb.” Then, with a chuckle she added, “That should rile them up.”

As he watched her, Doyle allowed the antipathy he felt for her to expand unchecked, so that his senses seemed to swell with it. If she were at all sensitive, she would feel the pressure of his hostility bearing down upon her. Growling at her, he thought, and though he didn’t growl, the idea amused him and he smiled his inward smile that no one could read.

“No one?” she asked the air, with her eyes still closed. “Wait. Yes. Dr. Bishop is here.”

Dr. Bishop uncrossed his legs—it was odd for a man to sit like that, huddled at the fire like an old woman—and leaned over his chair arm, turning his good ear toward the medium.

“This is a young woman, very dignified and serious. She says would I please say that you’ve nothing to reproach yourself for. Yes. I’ve told him. She insists I say it again. You have nothing … Oh,
Dr. Bishop, here is your uncle again. He is still anxious about that investment in the railway.”

Dr. Bishop nodded gloomily. “As well he might be,” he said. “I’ve lost a bundle.”

“Well,” said Miss Petra. “He warned you. Perhaps you’ll think twice about future investments. He recommends the gas. He thinks the gas would be an excellent investment.”

“I don’t see it,” said Dr. Bishop. “The electric is the thing. Everyone agrees on that.”

“He repeats that he recommends the gas.”

“Does he?”

Doyle looked from one to the other. It was absurd, he thought. Too banal for words.

“Here is another person, a tall gentleman with a long beard. He has such gentle eyes. He is timid, I think. He is anxious. Yes. Dr. Arthur Doyle is here. I can certainly give him a message.”

“Who is he?” asked Doyle.

“He says he has been having a delightful picnic with the most charming fairy. She lives beneath a Chinese primrose and she is no bigger than his thumb. Her wings are gossamer and her hair is a golden cloud. She was frightened by a rude crow; it was after their sandwiches.”

Doyle felt a tightening in the skin at his temples and a chill in his chest. He couldn’t look at the dreadful woman, and so he allowed his eyes to settle on the still moist tweed sticking to his thighs. Dr. Bishop, listening with all his energy, said, “He is seeking Dr. Doyle?”

“Oh, yes,” Miss Petra replied. “He has a message. But it isn’t for Dr. Doyle. No. He entreats Dr. Doyle to carry the message to this person. It is a doctor. Dr. Rud. Dr. Rudder. No.”

Doyle’s eyes flickered up, bright in the pale skin of his blood-drained face. “Dr. Rutherford,” he said, looking back at his knees.

“Is that it?” asked Miss Petra. “Is it Rutherford? Yes. Yes. He wants to be sure the doctor has been paid for his services. He wants you to remind him—something about gold.”

“The gold dust,” Doyle said gloomily.

“Yes. That’s it. The gold dust.” Miss Petra paused, and the only sound was Miss Whitaker’s scratching away. “He’s tired now,” continued Miss Petra. “He says it’s very tiring to send messages. He hasn’t done it before and hopes he won’t have to again. But he’s thinking of Dr. Rutherford, who was so kind. Now he’s going.” She paused. “He’s gone,” she said. “Is there no one else? No?” Again she paused; Dr. Bishop coughed. “No, they’re gone.”

Miss Petra fell silent, but Doyle didn’t look up to see her open her eyes and fold her hands in her lap. He sat with his head bowed over his chest, and as Dr. Bishop mumbled some appreciative remark, he raised one hand, spread it across his forehead, and rubbed his temples. His mother had shown him the letter from Rutherford describing his father’s last days. The patient, he said, was uncomfortable, suffered from cold hands and feet, and wanted, as always, to be home with his family. Very near the end he’d seemed to improve and had brought the doctor a piece of folded white paper in which, he explained, he’d gathered gold dust left by the sunlight on his bed. He offered it in payment for the doctor’s services to him.

Why here? Why in America?

He closed his eyes, blinking back an unwonted gathering of tears. Miss Petra was speaking, her voice gentle, full of tenderness. When he looked up, she was standing before him, her hands clasped loosely at her waist, a small spectral figure, and her unearthly eyes bathed him in a warm, maternal sympathy that required nothing in return. “Are you well, sir?” she said.

He gave his travel-weary head a little shake, raising and lowering his shoulders, resuming his clear-headed, strong-minded, medically trained, observant and indulgent identity, braced and bracing, a man who offered support, but never required it. “I’m well,” he said, not meeting her eyes. She was, he understood, as observant as he was, possibly more so. As she stepped back, remarking to Dr. Bishop that she found his drawing room a particularly conducive environment, the fierce antipathy Doyle had felt for her subsided like a tide going out, and what came in on the next wave was a solid
and committed devotion. He would, he vowed, go to the wall for this woman. He would wire Lodge and Myers as soon as possible and arrange to have her brought over. Violet Petra, he would tell them, was the one they had been searching for. She was the white crow.

My last interview with Violet Petra took place in the lounge of a small, barely respectable Philadelphia hotel in November 1894. She had sent me a message at my newspaper office asking if I would be willing to see her, as she had something to discuss with me, which she could only do in person. My curiosity was aroused, as it always was by Violet, and I replied that I would meet her the following afternoon.

The desk clerk, a pallid, lifeless individual, repeated my name as if it were a puzzle he hadn’t the energy to solve. He then ordered a gloomy-looking boy of twelve or so to run up the dim, thinly carpeted stairs to advise Miss Petra of my presence in the hotel. I wandered into the lounge, where I assumed our interview would take place.

After half an hour of waiting, and having examined the meager collection of books on the shelf over the writing table, I accosted the boy, who had returned to lurk sullenly near the front desk, and ordered tea. He informed me that tea had to be transported from the shop two doors down and I must expect an extra charge for the
delivery. “Very well,” I said. “I’d like a pot and two cups, milk, and if there’s brown bread to be had—”

“There isn’t,” interrupted the boy.

“Well, milk and sugar at least.”

“You’re wanting a full service,” he proclaimed, which brought up the head of the somnolent desk clerk, who slid from behind the counter literally wringing his hands. “Be assured, madam,” he cajoled me. “We can provide anything you’d like, including …”—here he rapped the boy sharply on the shoulder—“brown bread, with, I may add, an excellent comfiture of wild strawberries.”

“That sounds very fine,” I said. “I’ll expect it in the lounge.” Which refuge I reclaimed, leaving them to muddle out a scheme for the provision of an “excellent comfiture.”

The newspaper I discovered on the sideboard was a scurrilous rag no person of decency would be caught reading, with the additional noninducement of being two days old. I heard the boy banging out the front door, the desk clerk retreated to his domain behind the counter, and a gloomy stillness fell upon the scene. I pulled a small table in place between a pair of threadbare chairs, took my seat, removed my gloves, and resigned myself to waiting for Violet to make her appearance. We were close in age, both in our fifth decade, and I hadn’t seen her in ten years.
But she hasn’t changed
, I thought. She still made everyone wait.

I’d had my tea, read the competition, and been stared at secretively for several minutes by a shabbily dressed former gentleman who came in and dashed off a letter at the writing desk. I amused myself with imagining who might be the recipient of his urgent message: a potential employer, a disillusioned wife, a wealthy relative, a friend who cared for him before his fall from grace? He went out and I finished off my bread. At last I heard a step on the stair, and in the next moment Violet stood leaning against the doorsill, holding a small brown parcel against her skirt. “I knew you’d come,” she said.

I hadn’t seen her in ten years, but this echo of her first words to
me on that long-ago morning when she opened her hotel room door and welcomed me so confidently into her mad little world made me smile. I had no idea how she’d passed the intervening decade, but my own life had not been unrewarding. I’d carved my little niche in the profession I love; I worked with men and women who admired me and whom I admired. I still lived in a rooming house, but it was a well-kept, bright, and airy house in a respectable street, and my comfortable sitting room was adequately heated in winter and in summer the long windows looked out on a flower garden that perfumed the air.

Violet took a step into the lounge and paused, resting her hand on the edge of a table. The step was unsteady, but she gathered herself with a stiff, determined smile and made the rest of the journey to the chair facing mine without incident. I glanced at the clock over the mantel—it was three fifteen and she was evidently either very late from bed or early to the bottle. “I’m afraid the tea has gone cold,” I said. “Shall I send for a fresh pot?”

“Tea?” she said, sliding into the confines of the chair and cradling the package in her lap. “I didn’t think they served it here.”

“They send out for it,” I said.

Her eyes, after trailing over the china service, the crumb-strewn plate, and the open jam pot, settled on me. “You’re such a resourceful person, Phoebe,” she observed. “I’d forgotten that.”

I ignored this empty flattery. “You’re looking well,” I said.

Which was true. In spite of her muddled entrance, she was still a lovely woman. She’d changed her style from flowing to fitted and it suited her; her figure was lithe, her back straight. Her elegant long neck was exposed at the nape by an upsweep of her black hair, which cascaded in gay ringlets over her forehead. She didn’t, as I knew I did, look her age.

“You haven’t changed,” she said.

She meant my style, I thought. My everlasting skirt and blouse. “I’m still the same,” I said. “But how are you? How long have you been staying here?”

“Can you believe it?” she said, casting a horrified eye over the furnishings of the room. “It’s even more dismal upstairs.”

“It’s not so bad,” I lied.

“I’ve been here a month, but thank God, I’m leaving on Friday. That’s why I asked you to come.”

“You’re leaving Philadelphia?”

“I’m being investigated,” she announced, as if the prospect delighted her.

“Investigated?” I said.

“They try to figure out exactly how I do what I do. They bring in different people and invite me to different rooms. They took me to a graveyard one night; that was horrific. There’s a secretary who copies down every word I say and she types it all up and they send it around to their colleagues.”

“Who are they?”

“They call themselves the Society for Psychical Research. They’re mostly doctors.” She paused, gauging my response to this sudden outpouring.

“Did Mr. Babin tell them about you?”

“Oh no. Jeremiah and I parted company several years ago, just after the Fox sisters’ fiasco. I think that business killed poor Virginia, or at least it drove her to stronger medication and that killed her. Jeremiah remarried a young woman, quite an heiress too. They have a little son now. But he didn’t desert me. He was kind enough to introduce me to Mrs. Bitters, very aptly named as it turned out, whose daughter had died in childbirth. After that there were several others—I won’t bore you—and then Dr. Bishop got wind of me and persuaded me to be a subject for the Society. They’re very keen on me.”

“And have they figured you out?”

“Oh, they’ve given up on that,” she said. “Now I think they’re just trying to kill me.” She made this surprising statement with an air of amused indulgence; wasn’t it silly what she had to put up with. Her eyes sought mine, then darted away. There was something hectic about her, something false. I said nothing, which forced her to
lurch on. “You’ll never guess who’s taken an interest, a very great interest, I must say.”

“Someone I know?”

“Someone you’ve heard of,” she said gaily. “Someone everyone’s heard of.”

“Who could that be? The president?” I asked.

“It’s Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle.”

I stared at her. It occurred to me that she’d been shut up in the dismal hotel so long she’d lost touch with reality. “The author?” I said. Even as I spoke, I recalled that this gentleman had passed through our city in the last week—the papers were full of his American tour, and of his audiences’ insistence that he bring back his famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, from the grave. “You’ve seen him?” I asked gently.