The Revenant of Thraxton Hall: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (5 page)

The audience burst into cheers. Hume took a modest bow.

But then the chants began: “Levitate … Levitate … Levitate…”

Hume raised both hands in an appeal to quiet the crowd, but his minor miracle had only made them hungrier for a big miracle: they wanted to see a man rise from the stage.

The shouts of “
Levitate
 …
Levitate
 …
Levitate
…” grew louder and masked the sound as Hume clamped the lace handkerchief to his face and his body was wracked with a coughing fit, his face visibly paling.

Conan Doyle turned to Wilde and had to shout to be heard. “The fellow’s not well!”

On stage, Hume had managed to stifle his coughing attack. He wiped his mouth with the handkerchief and waved a hand to silence the crowd. When the hubbub finally abated, he spoke in a ragged voice. “Very well, then. I shall attempt the levitation.”

The crowd roared with approval and burst once more into applause. Hume dropped his head, seeming to gather his energies. Silence fell as he raised both arms and lifted his gaze to the ceiling.

Moments passed. Nothing happened. A bead of sweat trickled from Hume’s hairline and ran down his cheek.

And then, slowly, imperceptibly, he seemed to grow taller. A cascade of gasps rippled from the front to the back rows of the theater as empty space appeared between the stage and the soles of Hume’s shoes. He rose slowly, hesitantly, into the air: a foot … two feet. When he reached three feet his ascent started to waver. His face was strained, running with sweat, a vein bulging on his forehead.

And then he began to sink. Slowly at first, and then he dropped the last foot to the stage, landing heavily. He forced a smile, dabbed at his sweating face with a handkerchief, and tried to make a showman-like flourish, but then his eyes rolled up into the back of his head as his legs buckled and he slumped to the boards.

Women screamed. The audience surged to its feet, as did Conan Doyle and his companions.

The manager, Mister Purvis, ran to the lip of the stage as several stagehands helped carry off Hume’s limp body. “Not to worry,” he flustered. “Mister Hume is simply tired from his travels. He will be topping the bill again tomorrow night, after he has had time to properly rest.” Purvis waved a frantic hand at the orchestra, which sought to cover Hume’s awkward departure with a cheerful blare of music.

J.M. Barrie leaned over and slapped a hand on Wilde’s shoulder. “You were right, Oscar,” he commented sardonically. “That was quite inexplicable.”

CHAPTER 4

THE GHOST OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

The Doyle family home in South Norwood was asleep when Conan Doyle let himself in with his key. He crept up the stairs and paused halfway, listening to the soft surf of light snores emanating from the bedrooms of his children. The peace was broken by a jagged, hacking cough, like broken glass shaken in a sack. He noticed that a light still glimmered beneath the door of his wife, Louise’s, bedroom. He ascended the stairs and rapped softly at her door. A moment later, her wearied voice called from inside: “Come, Arthur, darling.”

Conan Doyle creaked the door open and slid inside. The bedroom was dimly lit: a single lamp, turned low, pulsed softly on the bedside table.

“Hello, Touie.”

His wife’s face, pale and drawn, appeared above a clutch of bedclothes. She smiled wanly up at him. The bed creaked beneath his weight as he sat down and reached to stroke her cheek with the back of his hand. Her skin was cold and clammy.

“How are you, my darling wife?”

“Much as always.” Her eyes searched his face. “So it’s done then? The world knows?”

He nodded sagely. “The deed is done.”

“You are upset, Arthur?”

He shook his head. “Pah, no!”

She reached an icy hand from beneath the sheets and squeezed his own. “You cannot hide your feelings from me, Arthur. I sense that your soul is in turmoil. The world is unhappy with you?”

Conan Doyle nodded, forcing a sardonic smile. “As you predicted.”

“Are you mourning, too?”

“Me? No—not a jot! No, I feel the loosening of shackles. Now I may write what I please. Now I am free to create the works that will live on—” He caught himself. “The works that will make my name.”

“Yes, Arthur. You will be famous the world over. You
are
famous. My husband, the famous writer!”

“Touie, I love you so much,” he said, his voice tightening. He reached down and attempted a clumsy embrace.

He felt a small hand push back against his chest.

“No, Arthur!”

“Come now, Touie, might a husband not embrace his own wife?”

“No!”

Conan Doyle drew back.

“We cannot be close,” his wife said. “We have agreed. You already risk too much coming in here so often.”

“I don’t care about the risk—”

“The children will need you,” she interrupted, her voice steely. “You will be all they have after I…” Her voice evaporated, leaving the unspeakable truth hanging.

“We’ll have no talk of that kind,” he gently chided.

Louise Doyle paused a moment, and then spoke what was clearly on her mind. “Arthur, I understand a man’s … appetites. I have loved you these many years and I know that you are a very physical man. I would never hold it against you should you find the need to … to avail yourself—”

“Touie, do not speak of this.”

“Discreetly, of course. I know you would be discreet—”

“I made a vow to you, Touie, on the day we wed. I stand by that vow.”

“Yes, you love me. I never doubt your love. But you are still a man, Arthur. A very handsome, vigorous man. I know you must long for that … for that intimacy I am no longer able to give you.”

Conan Doyle touched his wife’s lips with two fingers and gently shushed her. “May I bring you anything?”

She sank back into the pillows, resignation on her face. “Nothing. No.” She paused. “Yes. A sleeping draught.”

He nodded, choked down the sob in his throat with a forced smile, and left the room.

The Scottish doctor retrieved his Gladstone bag from the entrance hall table and carried it into the kitchen. First he sifted some white powder into a glass, added water and then a few drops of laudanum. After a moment’s consideration, he took down another glass and mixed one for himself, a small one. Conan Doyle normally slept like a hibernating bear, but after the day’s events his thoughts were in turmoil. He downed his sleeping draught on the spot, and then took the second in to his wife.

*   *   *

When Conan Doyle entered his ground floor study, a lamp had been left burning on his writing desk as he had instructed his domestic staff. (One never knew when a bout of insomnia would turn into a new character or short story idea.) He paused on the way to his desk to touch some personal totems scattered about the room: a battle-worn cricket bat with the script
Thunderer
painted on the blade; a harpoon he kept as a souvenir of a youthful foray as ship’s doctor aboard a Greenland whaler; an African mask from a sweaty and miserable year on the Dark Continent.

He flopped in his chair and undid several buttons of his waistcoat. The whirlwind day had left him enervated, but his nerves were too inflamed for sleep. His scalp prickled and it gradually occurred to him that he was being watched. He looked up at the portrait hanging on the wall beside his desk. It was one of Sidney Paget’s original drawings of Sherlock Holmes, commissioned for
The Strand Magazine
. In it, the hawk-nosed, gaunt-cheeked Holmes was drawing on a cigarette, peering suspiciously out at the viewer.

Conan Doyle had never particularly cared for the illustration. Feeling the sting of reprimand in that stare, he got up, lifted the portrait from its hook, and set it against the bookshelves out of his immediate line of sight.

Then he settled himself at his desk, snatched open a desk drawer, and took out his writing journal. Lying beneath the journal was his old service revolver. He lifted it from the drawer and hefted its steely mass in his hand. It had been many years since he’d last fired it. But even unloaded, the Webley .455 was a formidable weapon that exuded an aura of lethal potential. He set the pistol back into the drawer and pushed it shut.

He flipped open his writing journal, drew the fountain pen from his jacket pocket, and unscrewed it. For a moment the pen nib hovered over the blank expanse of paper, and then a quiver of excitement ran through him as he began to jot down ideas, lines of dialogue, a few rough sketches of a new character that had been fulminating in his mind for some time—a character called Brigadier Gerard. By the time he had filled the first page with his tidy blue handwriting, fatigue settled upon his shoulders like a lead apron. He blinked, rubbed his straining eyes, and turned up the wick of the desk lamp.

It was then he noticed a letter sitting in the middle of the desk blotter. Clearly one of the servants had placed it there for him to read. He could not imagine how he had failed to notice it sooner.

The stationery was of the finest quality, and he felt a slight sense of déjà vu as he picked it up and ran the blade of a letter opener beneath the flap. He drew out and unfolded a sheet of vellum. The paper was printed with a header: S
OCIETY FOR
P
SYCHICAL
R
ESEARCH
.

Dear Doctor Doyle,

Your name has been proposed for membership of our newly formed Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Our organization has been founded to promote the scientific investigation of Spontaneous Phenomena such as hauntings, apparitions, mediumship, thought transference (or “telepathy”), and all forms of “psychic” manifestation. Our first meeting will take the form of a four-day retreat at Thraxton Hall in the County of Lancashire. In addition to some of Britain’s most respected psychics, many leading scientific and learned persons of unimpeachable character will also be in attendance. As a man of independent thought, keen intelligence, and with a doctor’s training, we should be honored to have you as a member.

Yours respectfully,

Henry Sidgwick.

Conan Doyle flushed with excitement. He had envisioned just such an organization himself: a body of sober, yet open-minded individuals dedicated to a rational, scientific study of the supernatural. Now it had happened. He raised the letter to read it one more time, but found that the neatly written sentences had transformed to meaningless gibberish. He blinked his tired eyes. For a moment, he went dizzy as electric ants scurried across the surface of his brain. He smelled smoke, cigarette smoke—he could even name the particular brand of tobacco—and looked up in alarm.

The study remained empty, but then he noticed a wraith of silver smoke curling in the air. Strangely, it seemed to come from the portrait of Sherlock Holmes leaning against the bookshelves. Had it somehow caught fire? The fire in the fireplace was not lit. How then?

More smoke jetted into the air as the surface of the portrait began to bulge. It stretched farther and farther, and then ripped open as the head and shoulders of a man emerged. Conan Doyle watched, slack-jawed, as Sherlock Holmes squeezed himself up from two into three dimensions and stepped from the canvas into the room.

“Wu-what? What the devil!” Conan Doyle stammered.

The Baker Street detective puffed at his cigarette, his steely eyes gazing back at his creator. “To answer the question you have not asked,” Holmes said in his dry, ironic voice, “yes, I am real.”

“This is impossible!” Conan Doyle hissed.

Holmes crossed to a leather armchair and sat down, never taking his eyes from Conan Doyle. “Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable
, must be the truth.”

“
I
wrote that,” Conan Doyle said, indignation beginning to replace his fear. In fact, he was surprised at how unsurprised he was. “Just as I wrote you. You are nothing more than a phantasm of my brain.
That
is the truth!”

Sherlock Holmes seemed to reflect upon that for a moment. “Yes, you created me. And now I exist in the minds of thousands of readers. Tell me, Arthur, how many minds do
you
exist in?” He crossed his legs and brushed a fleck of ash from his trouser leg. “That summons you answered this morning, the one that bore a distinctive watermark.”

“The phoenix?”

Holmes nodded. “Of course, you know that the phoenix is the heraldic symbol of a famous English family?”

Conan Doyle did not know that. He nervously combed his fingers through his short brown hair.

“The Thraxton family,” Holmes said. “The meeting of the Society for Psychical Research will take place at Thraxton Hall in two weeks’ time. At which time the current Lady Thraxton will be murdered. Shot twice in the chest at close range.”

“At a séance,” Conan Doyle breathed, finishing the thought. He looked up. “Then Hope Thraxton is the
medium of some renown
I have read of in the papers?”

“The game is afoot my boy,” Holmes said. “The question is—are you ready? Will you take up this challenge? Or will you turn away, as a lesser man might?”

Conan Doyle shook his head. “No. This isn’t real. None of it.” He looked back at his writing desk for the letter. It had vanished. He gasped and threw a quick look back at Holmes. The leather armchair was empty, but retained a human-shaped dent.

Conan Doyle started awake. He was slumped over in his chair, the fountain pen in his limp hand trailing a blue smear across the page. He blinked. Rubbed his numb face. He had fallen asleep at his writing desk. Then he dimly remembered the soporific he had taken.

“Damnation!” he cried. The dream had seemed so real and he had slid into it imperceptibly. He scanned the desk and his eyes eagerly pounced upon the page of fresh writing in his notebook. He wanted to reread what he had written. But instead of amusing dialogue and apt character descriptions, he found only the same word scribbled over and over in his own handwriting:

Elementary.

Elementary.

Elementary.