The Revenant of Thraxton Hall: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (12 page)

Conan Doyle felt his pulse quicken. He could not look away. The woman seemed to gather herself and then stepped into the light. As she entered the room, no one spoke. She advanced a few more steps, the veiled face scanning left and right.

Oscar Wilde leaned close to Conan Doyle’s ear and whispered out the side of his mouth: “I feel like a worshiper in Ancient Greece, come to consult the Oracle of Delphi.”

The Scottish author did not answer but continued to stare in rapt fascination. The woman brought her hands up to her veil but hesitated, torturing her audience a moment longer, and then merely smoothed the veil in place without lifting it.

Somehow, he had imagined an older woman. But it was clear Lady Thraxton had inherited the title at a surprisingly young age. Even through the veil, Conan Doyle could tell she was a young girl of barely more than twenty years … and very fetching.

“I welcome you all to my home,” she said in a sonorous voice—the same musical voice he had heard in the darkened room. Her eyes fixed momentarily on Wilde, and her brows arched in surprised recognition. Then her gaze fell upon Conan Doyle and lingered meaningfully, and he felt his stomach somersault. She broke the gaze first and moved forward to offer her hand to Henry Sidgwick.

“No,” Conan Doyle murmured to his friend, never taking his eyes from her Ladyship. “She is more than an oracle, she is the goddess incarnate.”

“’Strewth!” Wilde said, throwing his friend an astonished look. “You are truly smitten, Arthur. You’ve lapsed from prose into poetry!”

Conan Doyle flushed and spluttered “Ah, no … no … I … no … not at all.” He had no time to finish the thought as Sidgwick conducted Lady Thraxton to meet them.

“We have a surprise guest,” Sidgwick said by way of introduction. “Mister Oscar Wilde, playwright and wit.”

“Your Ladyship, I am entranced,” Wilde breathed. And with his usual drama, he bowed and, taking the young lady’s hand, lightly kissed her gloved knuckles. The Lady preened with clear delight at such a flamboyant display of gallantry.

Even through the veil, the exquisite almond curve of Hope Thraxton’s eyes set the Scottish doctor’s knees quivering. And then they were face-to-face as Sidgwick introduced them: “This, milady, is Doctor Arthur Conan Doyle, famed author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries.”

Hope Thraxton met his eyes squarely and extended her hand to Conan Doyle, who, cursing his own shyness, timidly gripped her hand for a moment and then relinquished it.

“I have read all your Holmes stories,” she said, in her girl’s voice. “I very much enjoyed them. I don’t know how you think of such clever plots. I find them quite mystifying.”

Conan Doyle bowed modestly. “I am flattered to hear it, your Ladyship.” He had feared she would give away their prior meeting with a comment or a look, but when she moved on instantly, he felt crushed.

Further introductions were interrupted as the head housekeeper, Mrs. Kragan, appeared at the open door, her black eyes glinting like nail heads driven into wood. She cleared her throat and announced in an abrasive squawk, “Dinner is ready, milady.”

Amid an excited smatter of conversation, the group drifted from the parlor into the hallway and then filed into a large dining room. This part of the house, if still irrefutably ugly, was opulent with gilt, gold leaf, and sterling, and spoke of the kind of wealth accumulated through generations. From the dining room’s green leather walls, more of the Thraxton ancestors glowered down upon a long table set with fine china and three enormous silver candelabrums.

Conan Doyle and Wilde took two seats at one end of the table, and the Scotsman was disappointed to see that Hope Thraxton took her place at the head of the table, with the Count seated at her right and Sidgwick and his wife seated on her left. His neighbor was a young man in his mid-twenties. With an unruly mop of brown hair, a dense brown beard, and an intense dark-eyed gaze, he reminded Conan Doyle of a ratting terrier he had once owned as a young boy.

“I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” the Scottish doctor said jovially, extending his hand. “I am Arthur Conan Doyle.”

The young man shook Conan Doyle’s large hand with a clammy grip. At first the doctor surmised that his dinner companion had suffered a stroke, for the corner of his mouth was tilted awry. Soon, however, he would conclude that it was a permanent sneer the small man was quite unconscious of.

“Doyle?” the young man repeated in a nasal midlands accent. “That is an Irish surname, is it not?”

“I was born a Scots, but the family roots are in Ireland. Do you find a difficulty with that?”

The young man shook his head disinterestedly. “I confess I really don’t care.” He seemed to remember his manners and volunteered, “I am Frank Podmore.”

Wilde leaned across his friend to speak to the young man. “This is
the
Conan Doyle of the Sherlock Holmes stories.”

Podmore’s expression never wavered. “I’m afraid I do not know what you speak of.”

Wilde slumped back in his seat, a hand clamped to his heart in a pantomime of shock. “Sherlock Holmes, the detective. You must have read the stories in
The Strand Magazine
?”

“Stories?” Podmore repeated, without the faintest gleam of recognition lighting his eyes. But then the penny dropped and his sneer deepened. “Ah,
fiction
,” he said in the tone of a man who has trodden in something nasty. “I am a scientist. I don’t have time for stories about things that never happened. All my reading is devoted to bettering my mind.”

Wilde and Conan Doyle shared a look. “Well,” Wilde said. “I suspect that explains our predicament, Arthur. All our reading is apparently devoted to worsening our minds.”

All eyes were suddenly drawn by a penetrating chinking sound that set everyone’s teeth on edge. At the foot of the table, Henry Sidgwick had risen from his chair and was rapping his spoon against a wineglass. “I would be remiss if we began our dinner without expressing gratitude to our gracious host, Lady Thraxton, for opening her wonderful home to us for the first meeting of the Society for Psychical Research. I am sure this will be a week we shall all long remember.” He raised his glass in a toast. “Please raise your glasses to Lady Thraxton.”

Everyone stood, except for the Lady, who lowered her veiled head demurely. Her shyness struck Conan Doyle.
Please, dear lady, be at ease
, he thought.
You are among friends
.

Instantly, she raised her head and fixed him with a soft gaze that radiated gratitude.

Conan Doyle’s heart tumbled. It seemed as though he had transmitted the thought and she had received it. He dropped his eyes to his wineglass.
What if she can read my thoughts? She is, after all, a medium
. He shifted his feet and plumbed his mind for an image of his wife, Touie, but found only the image of the young woman’s exquisite, almond-shaped eyes.

“To Lady Thraxton.”
The room responded, with Conan Doyle joining in a moment too late.

Lady Thraxton raised her head and said, “Thank you. Thank you all,” in a small voice. Her nervous glance flitted from one person to the next, but when her look fell upon Conan Doyle, it lingered a moment longer before moving on.

“The Lady seems to be taking special notice of you, Arthur,” Wilde muttered close to his ear.

“Yes. I’m sure it’s about the letter and the, er, circumstances that brought us here.”

Wilde mused a moment and said, “Hmmn, I think not. I have seen that look in a young woman’s eye before, and I believe it concerns danger of a very different kind.”

“Nonsense!” Conan Doyle blustered, trying to laugh it off. He lifted the champagne to his lips and took a sip, but found to his own surprise that his hand trembled and that his heart was softly pounding.

CHAPTER 10

THE LEVITATION

It was several hours later when the members of the Society for Psychical Research reassembled in the second floor music room: a generous space with a high ceiling of ornate plasterwork, a grand piano, and a fire roaring in the large stone hearth. By now it was fully dark outside the windows and the hammering rains had finally abated.

Most of the men smoked—Wilde seldom did not have a Turkish cigarette dangling between his thick fingers. The Count, enigmatic behind his mask, sat enthroned in a winged armchair, a large cigar clamped in his jaws. Even Conan Doyle puffed away at an after-dinner pipe. Several of the windows had been opened at the top and cracked at the bottom to allow smoke to escape and cool night air to enter. Daniel Dunglas Hume, one of the few nonsmokers, had chosen a seat near the open window, so as he said, “to taste the sweetness of the fresh air.” Lady Thraxton, veiled as before, had chosen a seat beside him.

Conan Doyle sat in a cane chair, while Oscar Wilde lounged next to him on a divan and, with his red fez, somehow managed to resemble a wealthy camel trader idling in a Moroccan hashish bar. The gaslight in the room had been dimmed at the request of Lady Thraxton to “entice the spirits to draw near.”

Sidgwick addressed the group with his back to the firelight, which kindled his wispy white hair and beard into a fiery corona. “At my special request, Mister Hume has agreed to attempt the levitation.” He beckoned the American forward with a wave. “Mister Hume, if you would please join me.”

Daniel Dunglas Hume rose from his window chair, strolled to the center of the room, and stood beside Sidgwick. “I shall endeavor to do my best,” he said, tossing out a theatrical bow and a wave of his handkerchief. “Hopefully, my powers shall prove equal to the task this evenin’.”

The sitting members clapped appreciatively. Conan Doyle noticed that Frank Podmore, lurking behind his sneer at the back of the room, did not. Lady Thraxton perched in a seat in the shifting light and shadow next to the fire. Though she never turned to look his way, a smile lingered on her lips and Conan Doyle sensed her attention constantly upon him. Then he felt the gaze of another—the Count. Though most of his face was hidden behind the mask, Conan Doyle caught the liquid gleam of one eye, and knew that the Count was staring straight at him.

Sidgwick clapped his hands together, beaming with enthusiasm. “And as we are here to perform a scientific study of paranormal phenomena, could I have two volunteers come forward to observe the levitation at close quarters?”

Conan Doyle was about to rise from his cane chair, but the Count was already on his feet, and then Sir William Crookes, who was sitting closer, juddered up from his armchair and shambled forward, together with Sidgwick forming an equilateral triangle about Hume.

“I shall now attempt the levitation,” Hume boomed in a theatrical voice. “Ya’ll should know, it is the most physically taxing of all my abilities. I believe it relies upon the alignment of the celestial spheres. Some evenings, it comes real easy. But on some occasions, I cannot manifest it.”

A short, barked laugh made heads turn. Feigning innocence, Frank Podmore sat casually adjusting his cuffs, a sardonic smile smeared across his face.

Hume pressed the handkerchief to his mouth and cleared his throat, then dropped his head dramatically. “Please allow me a moment to prepare myself.”

Conan Doyle heard Frank Podmore, sitting somewhere behind him, give a derisive snort and mutter a single word beneath his breath: “Charlatan.”

Wilde also heard it, and flung Conan Doyle a disbelieving look. Dunglas Hume, standing another fifteen feet away, should not have been able to make it out, but he raised his head, opened his eyes, and stared straight at Podmore. For once the American’s good humor deserted him, and he scorched the younger man with a look of pure hatred. But then he recomposed himself, closed his eyes, and dropped his head once more. Hume fell into a pattern of deep respiration, so that his sonorous breathing filled the room. He raised his arms like a pagan worshiping before an idol, his brows knitted in intense concentration.

The room held its breath. Members watched, rapt. A minute passed, but nothing happened. And then another. And another. After a full five minutes had elapsed, Sidgwick raised a hand to halt the proceeding. But then a tremor passed through Hume’s body, his face convulsing with effort. A vein pulsed in his forehead.

He seemed to straighten his posture further, but then Conan Doyle noticed that his shoes no longer touched the carpet. A collective gasp rippled through the room as he ascended, slowly at first, and then faster, until he hovered fifteen feet above the floor, the crown of his head bobbing within inches of the plaster ceiling.

It was a miraculous sight. SPR members looked from one to the other, mouths agape.

But it was just the beginning. Hume lowered his arms until they were against his sides. His body began a slow backward rotation until he lay supine. Then he floated silently over Conan Doyle’s and Wilde’s heads until he reached the open window—the gap was barely two feet—and glided straight out into the night.

Cries of surprise and alarm filled the room as members leapt from their seats and rushed to the windows. Dimly illuminated by the light spilling from the music room windows, Hume floated twenty feet from the building, stopped, and rotated back into the vertical. His eyes remained shut the whole time. The music room was on the second floor and Hume hung suspended motionless forty feet above the stone flags of the courtyard. Then, after perhaps a minute, he rotated to a supine position and drifted back toward the house. He floated in through the far window and reached the middle of the room, where he revolved into the vertical, arms raised above his head, and floated gently to the floor. His feet touched down and he stood, once again, between the three observers.

No one spoke or made any sound. Finally, Hume lowered his arms, raised his head, and opened his eyes.

The members of the SPR burst into wild applause. Sidgwick leapt forward and seized Hume’s hand, pumping it wildly and slapping him on the back. “Astounding, old chap,” he said. “That was simply astounding.”

Conan Doyle threw a look of amazement at Wilde, who returned it and applauded loudly, a cigarette drooping between his lips.