The Clairvoyant Curse

The

Clairvoyant

Curse

ANNA LORD

Book Four

Watson & The Countess

Series

Copyright © 2015 by Anna Lord

Melbourne, Australia

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

1

Camera Obscura

Fake Sherlocks! Here’s another one! The third sham Sherlock this week!

Countess Volodymyrovna tossed her copy of Tatler on the breakfast table in the manner of someone throwing down a gauntlet in the hope of catching Dr Watson’s deliberately downcast eye. She wanted answers to this latest outbreak of Sherlocks and she was not about to be fobbed off with the usual twaddle. If Sherlock had truly perished at Reichenbach Falls how was it that he was being spotted all over London? And not just skulking in the shadows like some phantom of the night but out and about in broad daylight, in full public view, solving crimes, settling cases, catching criminals, being hailed the hero in at least three London newspapers of good repute!

First it was The Times then The Spectator and now Tatler. Okay, two. Surely all three couldn’t be making it up? But where did the stories spring from? It was maddening not being able to follow them up first hand but by the time she travelled by train from York to London the stories would be yesterday’s news. She had always felt there was something missing regarding the death of Sherlock in Switzerland. No eye witnesses. No bodies ever recovered. Death by waterfall was a bit too wishy-washy for her liking. So it wasn’t exactly surprising when stories had started surfacing about the great detective suddenly turning up in London and carrying on business as usual.

But she had visited his little sitting room at 221B Baker Street. And though she had seen the proof of his existence for herself – the slipper stuffed with shag, the meerschaum on the desk, the Stradivarius in the corner, they were like items in a museum, a bit like a collection of Egyptian antiquities – the tools, the artefacts, the trappings from the tomb, everything but the actual living person who would have used them. She couldn’t help feeling that the little sitting room had been set up like a carefully arranged mise en scene with the items belonging to Sherlock like props on a stage with the main actor missing from the performance. A perfect diorama with everything in its perfect place except for one thing – there was no sense of him being there.

Who was feeding the newspapers this misinformation? Who was hoaxing the public? And why? Who stood to gain from perpetuating the myth that Sherlock had survived Reichenbach Falls? Was it Dr Watson hoping to keep his lucrative writing career flourishing by fictionalising cases that had never happened? Or perhaps Mycroft Holmes, hoping that to have a famous brother die in spectacular circumstances and then be miraculously resurrected might perpetuate his own godlike sense of infallibility and lend credence to his mystical political persona? Or perhaps Inspector Lestrade because it might boost his standing with Scotland Yard, yes, to continue to be associated with the greatest consulting detective who ever lived might earn the bumbling inspector a promotion within the new Detective Branch. Or could someone from clan Moriarty be concocting the rebirth of Sherlock Holmes for his or her own vengeful ends? Or that ruthless rogue, Colonel Sebastian Moran – a handsome scoundrel with a talent for mendacity – how might it profit him?

Or was she looking at this from the wrong angle?

Perhaps Sherlock was alive! Perhaps he had never died in the first place. She had been sixteen years of age, travelling with her peripatetic step-aunt, Countess Zoya Volodymyrovna, when the incident at Reichenbach Falls took place and news of the death of the famous British detective shook the world. What little she knew of it she had gleaned well after the event, most of it from the pen of Dr Watson. There was no other version save his, no one to verify what really took place, and even he had not been an eye witness to the tragedy. Was the good doctor now rewriting his own fiction to suit himself?

Was Sherlock dead or alive?

Was he dead and was some clever impersonator merely pretending to be him in order to cash in on his fame? Or was he alive but choosing to live as though he were dead to his family and friends in order to avoid endangering their lives?

Well? she said interrogatively, staring fiercely across the breakfast table.

We are moving into the Age of Fakery, the doctor responded with diverting simplicity, sensing the ferocity of her scrutiny without even lifting his bleary eyeballs from his broadsheet, compliments of another sleepless night battling bronchitis. Lunatic asylums are full of fake Sherlocks, fake Queen Victorias, fake Jack the Rippers and fake Napoleon Bonapartes. These days everyone wants to be someone else.

"Except this fake Sherlock isn’t in an asylum, she pointed out with the same sort of belligerence that usually started a war. He’s on the streets! And on page three! How do you account for it, Dr Watson?"

I don’t. I’m not an editor. I’m not responsible for the things newspapers print.

So you’re saying it’s another bogus story?

He warned himself against meeting her curmudgeonly gaze. It would be like the foolhardy charge of the Light Brigade but even more disastrous, and he didn’t even have the energy to mount his high-horse. I’m not saying anything. I haven’t read the article.

I suppose you didn’t read the other two articles this week either?

As a matter of fact I didn’t.

Suddenly it struck him that she never referred to Sherlock as ‘father’. Lack of sleep was making him slow-witted, or perhaps just slower-witted. To her he was always Sherlock. The only other people who referred to him that way were Mycroft and himself. He wondered if she referred to her mother as Irene. Come to think of it, apart from the first night they met, when she announced matter-of-factly that her mother was Irene Adler, he could not recall her referring to her mother at all.

Was it common for children adopted-out at birth to refer to their biological parents by their first names? Perhaps, not having much experience with such things, it was less unusual than he imagined. She was already an adult when she discovered the names of her birth parents and she was currently twenty-four years of age. On the tongue of a grown woman the epithets ‘father’ and ‘mother’ might have sounded impossibly twee. He also imagined them jarring with his own perspective – Sherlock as a father! Heaven forbid! It was possibly better for all concerned that she desisted from employing such quaint endearments.

Even supposing for a moment that Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler really had been her birth parents, there had been no emotional bond, no close attachment, none of the things that go to make up the sum of cherished childhood memories, so why imply otherwise? Moreover, Slavs were well known for their love of family and she had certainly been well-loved by her adoptive father and his unmarried sister, so why negate all that now? Yes, all in all, she had been extraordinarily lucky. Her up-bringing had been better than anything any child born out of wedlock could have hoped for. In fact, much better and much luckier than if she had been raised either by her so-called real mother or real father. He shuddered at the thought of any child being saddled with a diva for a mother and having Sherlock for…

One fake Sherlock is creative licence, she declared hotly, two is careless journalism, but three in one week and I start to smell a rat!

Good grief! If Mycroft didn’t pull his head in, she would soon hit the nail on the noggin and crack their little game wide open. He made a mental note to dispatch a telegram to the Diogenes Club as soon as practicable. In the meantime a bit of creative licence was called for.

I say! Look at this! It’s an advertisement for -

Stop trying to distract me!

Very well, don’t look.

Deliberately, he placed the page face down on the breakfast table as he prepared to pour himself a fresh cup of Earl Grey tea to clear the phlegm gumming the sides of his throat. He knew the ploy would ignite burning curiosity like touch paper to a live flame. He stirred in some sugar and took a gulp of tea without thinking…Hell’s bells! He tried not to yelp.

Tonight you can wear that Tharvet travelling thuit I’m tho fond of, he managed to lisp after a few moments had passed and his scalded tongue felt slightly less numb and thick. I will purthath thome ticketth firtht thing thith morning and treat you to a night at the theatre to thelebrate the thuthethful concluthion of the penny dreadful murderth.

She regarded him oddly. What’s wrong with your articulation? You sound as if you have had a stroke. I hope your bronchitis is not a precursor to something more serious such as lymphatic disease or brain fever. You should get your chest seen to by a specialist. The walls in this hotel are paper thin. Your coughing kept me awake half the night.

My lymph and brain is fine, as for my cough, I apologise unreservedly, and I intend to get it seen to as soon as we return to London, but about tonight.

"Throw in a champagne supper and I’ll say oui, she assented, selecting a slice of toast from the silver rack and absently applying a slather of golden butter. But I have something far more chic than my Charvet. You have not yet seen my new winter ensemble – an emerald green, velvet costume edged in ermine. It arrived the day before yesterday, all the way from la rue de la Veuve. Madame Coquelicot is a genius with a needle and thread and always sends me the best of her Parisian couture prior to the commencement of each saison. The women of York will be green with envy. And the men will say: Who is that delightful creature on the arm of Dr John Watson? Which theatre do you have in mind? Friargate? The York Barbican? Or the Theatre Royal?"

I have in mind the Unitarian Church Hall.

Oh spare me! Surely you are not hoping to save my soul? The last thing I need is a lecture on hellfire and damnation.

Smiling cagily, he flipped the newspaper with the sort of cavalier insouciance he had always secretly admired in others. Read for yourself.

PHANTASMAGORIA

Monsieur Champollion Croquemort

Master of Ceremonies

invites you to a

MAGIC LANTERN SHOW

featuring amazing tri-unal lens

with piano accompaniment by

Mr Crispin Ffrench

Singalong to all your favourite melodies

and witness the paranormal powers of the incomparable

MADAME MOGHRA

The most famous medium in all of London

At her final performance in York

Unitarian Church Hall

Spen Lane

7 o’clock

Well spotted! she gushed. That’s a nice stroke of luck. I can give Madame Moghra the thistle brooch. Is that the plan?

Yes and no. You can let her know you have a gift from Lady Moira Cruddock to pass on to her – though I don’t think the old fraud deserves such a valuable keepsake - and then arrange for a more suitable time to deliver it. A silver and amethyst ornament is not the sort of thing to take into a bawdy house swarming with pickpockets. Have you ever been to a magic lantern show?

She shook her head. My education regarding bawdy houses has been remiss. I will be happy to rectify that tonight. I can see now why you suggested the Charvet suit. Green velvet edged in ermine will make me stand out like an elegant swan in a farmyard full of ugly ducklings, frowsy old chooks and seedy looking roosters.

Her vanity barely registered. What did Sherlock once say? A man cannot think logically and be held to ransom by false modesty. A man cannot be tortured by poor esteem and trust in his superior powers of deduction concomitantly. Notions such as modesty and humility are for those who are prisoner to their emotions. They are not for the rational man.

Or woman!

Indeed, he murmured. I will treat your lady’s maid and manservant, Xenia and Fedir, to some tickets too, he added magnanimously, feeling rather pleased with himself for pulling off that rummy bit of insouciance.

2

Laterna Magica

A singalong was in full swing by the time they pulled up in a hired landau on Spen Lane and joined the queue stretching around the corner. The Unitarian Church Hall had once been a Masonic Lodge, evidenced by the insignia above the door, but had become surplus to supply when the freemasons moved to grander premises on the other side of the River Ouse. It was an austere, windowless, grey stucco cube and the last place you would expect would play host to the celebration of all things godless.

Despite his croaky cough, Dr Watson was soon swept up in the gay abandon of the raucous chorus:

"Oh, come all you thoughtless men,

A warning take by me,

And think upon my unhappy fate,

To be hanged upon a tree …"

What is the song called? interrupted the Countess.

The Murder of Mary Marten, he wheezed asthmatically, gathering breath.

How do you know the words?

Everyone knows the words.

I don’t.

Another omission in your education, he teased.

It sounds extremely merry for a murder song.

No sooner had the singsong stopped than it started up again. It was clearly a favourite with the theatre crowd. The mood was buoyant, full of excited anticipation, and they hadn’t even passed through the doors yet.

Who was Mary Marten? she asked.

The daughter of a mole-catcher.

Mole-catcher? Is that a profession?

Certainly.

What sort of girl was she?

A chaste young milkmaid, much loved by her family.

Who killed her?

A young man, her beau, is singing the verse. He is repenting of his wickedness.

Merry murder and jolly repentance – what next!

People regard the story as they do a fairy tale or moral fable. They have sugar-coated the good character and blackened the bad. The crime was originally called The Red Barn Murder. You may have heard of it. The murder was solved when Mary’s step-mother had a dream about where the body of Mary was buried.

Oh, that sounds rather suspicious. That flies in the face of rational understanding. If I had been investigating the crime I would have suspected her immediately. Was she ever charged with being an accomplice?

Of course not! She became a heroine!

Really? How queer. People’s thinking is so odd.

He croaked out a few more bars as they shuffled to the front of the queue and passed into the church hall.

"Adieu, adieu, my loving friends,

My glass is almost run,

Monday next will be my last,

When I am to be hanged,

So all young men who do pass by,

With pity look on me,

For murdering Mary Marten,

I was hanged upon a tree…"

The exterior of the church hall was no predictor of the interior. The outside had been bland and grey, the inside was like stumbling into Van Gogh’s studio straight after he’d sliced off his ear. The balcony of the upper gallery was painted blood red. The walls were sponged in sickly mauve. The smoke-stained ceiling was mottled in a nauseating yellow and the mouldings were vomit-orange. The doors were lurid pink, the architraves were putrid green and the skirting boards were a deranged shade of purple. At the front of the hall was a dais which had been transformed into a stage hung with gold and silver gaufraged velvet curtains. An old black piano stood to one side of the stage and at the keyboard sat a young man with a whirlwind mane of blond hair that kicked wildly against his collar as his fingers flew back and forth furiously, pounding out the notes. A quartet of singers was leading the singsong, two men and two women. They were clearly meant to be dressed as characters from the ballad of Mary Marten. The cute one with bright yellow plaits that curled outward in such a way as to defy gravity was obviously Mary. The one wearing a transparent negligee over some silken corsetry was probably the step-mother. An older gent with one hand locked manfully around a shovel and the other hand clutching a furry toy which was probably meant to be a mole was most likely the father. And the fourth had a hangman’s noose dangling around his neck - clearly the remorseful beau.

Dr Watson had managed to purchase two tickets for the upper gallery and two for downstairs. He and the Countess opted for the gallery while Xenia and Fedir went to locate their seats in the wooden pews. The hall was already packed and there were at least another fifty hopefuls lined up outside. A new singsong started up - The Cat Who Ate the Canary! Everyone bar the Countess knew the words to that one too. The quartet had shuffled off the stage and a duo had emerged to replace them. They were dressed as a cat and a canary and performed a vaudevillian pantomime to the accompaniment of the words much to the hilarity of the audience who clapped their hands, stamped their feet and screeched with gusto. It was like no theatre the Countess had ever encountered. From Odessa to Vienna, from Paris to Milan, theatre-goers arrived elegantly attired, moved decorously to their allocated seats and whispered amongst themselves until the curtain went up and a collective hush descended. Here, it was the mayhem of the marketplace run amok.

Is it always this noisy? She shouted to be heard above the din.

Dr Watson, busy humming along, nodded enthusiastically.

The hall was packed to the brim. Whoever had sold the tickets must have known there would not be enough seats. It was a case of first come-first served. Scuffles broke out but the threat of eviction was ever present and several young women agreed to perch on men’s laps to keep the peace. The aisles were as packed as the pews and many preferred to stand so that they would have a better view of the stage.

The singsong finished abruptly. The audience cheered and stamped their feet so violently the floor vibrated and the mauve walls shook, and just when the Countess thought the mottled yellow ceiling was about to come crashing down a gaunt figure dressed like an undertaker but resembling a spider in a top hat - specifically a daddy long legs which wasn’t really a spider at all though everyone imagined it as one and the description suited him so perfectly because he moved like a daddy long legs, like a double-jointed man on stilts, rather than a scuttling spider - appeared on the stage. The hush the Countess never expected came suddenly. The mortuary-spider projected his voice using a megaphonic mouthpiece and it was like the voice of the damned speaking from the grave, dry as dust, vibrating through the centuries. He made ‘good-evening’ sound like a curse. Half the audience shivered with fear and the other half froze with fright. It was Master of Ceremonies: Monsieur Croquemort.

He used to be a magician, someone behind them whispered loudly.

I thought he was a mesmerist, came the rejoinder.

I meant the last time he did a show in York. He don’t do magic now.

Why not?

Something happened.

What?

All I know is that it was something bad.

I heard tell he was a hypnotist? interjected a third.

That’s the same as a mesmerist.

His name means death-eater, a fourth added ominously.

Don’t look into his eyes, warned another. He has the evil eye.

Monsieur Croquemort possessed a soporific monotone with just the hint of a French accent that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end as it lulled you into dreamy somnolence. How else to explain the extraordinary effect his voice had on the rioters as he outlined the order of proceedings for the evening in the tone of a doomsayer predicting the end of the world.

At the same time, the wild-haired young pianist removed himself from the stage and busied himself with setting up the magic lantern at the foot of the stage. A small fence, a bit like a sheep-fold, had been erected around the camera to deter incursions of curious lunatics.

Dr Watson and Countess Volodymyrovna had a bird’s eye view of the wonderful contraption being set up on tripod legs. This was for two reasons. The first as already mentioned was because the hall was not as large as a theatre and the distance from the upper gallery to the stage was not vast. Moreover, Dr Watson had paid a premium for the tickets, ensuring a superlative vantage spot.

Bravo, Dr Watson, praised the Countess, watching with mounting interest as the painted backdrop of a red barn planted in a rural idyll disappeared from view and a plain white sheet unfurled to take its place just as the magic lantern flamed to life. We have the best seats!

First up was another old favourite called: The Ratcatcher. Everyone except the Countess was familiar with the bizarre sketch and they all shrieked in anticipation of the big black rat that would scamper across the bed of a sleeping man snoring heavily, and scurry down his open gorge. The comical effect was achieved using painted slides that the wild-haired young man inserted into an aperture, which was then projected via the lens onto the white backdrop, creating a moving image. The audience fell about in paroxysms, clutching their sides and slapping their knees, and did not seem to grow tired of watching the same scene over and over and over. It was cleverly done but once was enough for the Countess. She found the chuckleheads more riveting than the show. Their expostulations of childish glee were astonishing, especially as they knew what to expect.

The death-eater reappeared to announce the next act – a ghost story.

This is what magic lanterns did best. They lent themselves rather wonderfully to the supernatural. Whatever their original purpose, this is what they had become – ‘lanterns of fright’.

An eerie country churchyard came into focus. Hoary gravestones and an old yew framed the foreground while in the background stood a village church with a slender steeple. A full moon began rising behind the old church. The scene was rife with ominous foreboding and everyone felt the unnerving thrill of fear. Soon there appeared the lone figure of a young man traversing the spook-haunted yard. He came to rest by one of the graves, head bowed in quiet contemplation. This was where the beauty of the tri-unal lens worked its occult magic best, projecting one image over another, layering the effect, creating stillness and movement at the same time. Everyone watched with bated breath as the moon sailed slowly across the night sky, tracing a golden arc, compliments of some clever lighting to aid imagination. When the moon disappeared behind some riffling clouds in the shape of gauzy shrouds lowered by means of invisible wires that sometimes caught the light to no ill effect, a pale shroud appeared to emanate from the grave where the man stood. It hovered momentarily above the young man’s head before fluttering back and forth across the graveyard to the haunting accompaniment of a harp, ably played by an ethereal young woman who emerged from behind the curtain and now sat on the edge of the stage strumming some harp strings, and as the cloth floated to and fro the image of a female ghost miraculously appeared on the shroud.

How the deuce is that ghost image being projected onto the moving cloth? whispered Dr Watson who was au fait with magic lanterns of the bi-unal and tri-unal type.

Magic, teased the Countess whose imagination was now totally electrified.

Not possible, he muttered.

Shhh! someone hissed.

He lowered his tone accordingly. "One lens is projecting the churchyard, the second is projecting the young man, and the third