The Strange Case of the Pharaoh's Heart, page 2
I would probably be seasick for most of the journey and confined to my cabin, anyway. No dining at the captain’s table for me. Of course, we might be booked in steerage, for all I knew. For all I knew, we could be booked aboard a tramp steamer and be forced to swab the decks for our passage. But then, I was certain to be more familiar with the business end of a mop than Sir Sherlock was. He had mentioned a boat, or I might have pictured us in a camel caravan, bouncing our way across the deserts of North Africa all the way to the pyramids. I wondered how long our voyage would really take. The man was so secretive. Ah, well, all would be revealed. It was no use fretting. I fretted. Oh, it was starting to rain.
At that time I was still quite new to public exhibitions and prone to butterflies in the stomach at the best of times. But I always settled myself with the thought that my audiences were not there to hear me. They were there to hear the spirits who jostled round me. They were always eager to communicate, to be reunited with their loved ones still on this mortal shore. Nor was I the guide; that was the province of Red Cloud. I was no more than a conduit. My only mandate was to be sensitive, to be receptive, and to be honest.
It was still raining, the kind of cold, thin early-February rain that creeps into the crevices of your collar and drains into your shoes; the spirits seemed to huddle together as if for warmth. The audience was restless, with the rain pelting steadily against the roof. Mr. Penderecki held the floor; I was weary of him. He had been a morose type during his life, but now that he had crossed over, he nattered on incessantly, mostly about the haberdashery he had left behind and especially his fine cambric handkerchiefs; his wife seemed thrilled merely by the sound of his voice, or at least Red Cloud’s impression thereof. The sentences drained away like dishwater. No one ever admits it, but the task of a sensitive can often be dreary. Red Cloud had not put me into a full trance; how I wished that he had! But perhaps you’re not familiar with Red Cloud? He is my spirit guide, an American Indian who lived some four or five hundred years ago. No, I don’t know which tribe he belonged to. Does it matter? We are all part of one tribe.
Where was I? Oh, yes. As the Pendereckis continued, a man scuffled into the back of the hall, and at the mere sight of him an electric thrill went through me—not because of his looks, for he was plain as a poker in that stolid little Englander fashion that was mercifully fading away after the war, and he was old enough to put me in mind of my father. But my skin burned in a flash fire and went icy cold at the same time. I had only experienced such a powerful emanation twice before, but I had not forgotten her, no, not for a second: Madame Louise. Though I had only encountered her twice, each time far away in the rolling meads of Sussex, there was no mistaking the commanding force of her anima. Nor was there any forgetting in whose name I had summoned her.
Madame Louise swept Mr. Penderecki aside effortlessly as royalty. She pinned my gaze to the newcomer. He had taken a seat at the back of the room, with his rain-spotted trilby pulled down to his ears as though trying to remain inconspicuous. Yet I felt drawn to him like a magnet to true north. I was compelled to move down the steps toward him. He was hardly prepossessing as I drew nearer: an old man in his sixties, with a bushy white moustache and a look of alarm in his rheumatic eyes. Not a believer, that much was obvious. What could Madame Louise want from this sad specimen?
I stopped before him.
“There is a lady named Madame Louise,” I told him. “She has red hair framing a heart-shaped face and eyes grey as rain. The light from a fire flickers in her face. She speaks with a slight accent—a French accent. She wishes to speak with a doctor. His name is John . . . Dr. John Watson.” I looked for affirmation in his eyes.
He stiffened. Then he rose and doffed his hat. Rainwater dripped off onto the floor. “I was supposed to meet a Mrs. Roberts here. Please don’t tell me you are Mrs. Roberts.” He was a bluff old campaigner with the air of a professional man, but his face was tomato-red with indignation.
“Are you Dr. Watson, sir?”
“I’m Dr. John Watson, but I’m sure you knew that,” he said with asperity.
“Have we met before, Dr. John Watson? Have you come seeking a loved one, perhaps your wife? Mary, is that her name?”
He stepped back as if I had struck him. I had hurt him somehow. I immediately regretted it. He was a man of deeper feeling than I’d taken him for.
“Did Holmes tell you that? Look here, what kind of flummery is this? I came because Sherlock Holmes wired me, told me to come to this address and introduce myself to you, if you are Mrs. Roberts. I didn’t expect an audience.”
“Ah.” I was beginning to see my way clear. All the while, she was drumming insistently at the back of my mind. I was reluctant to give up control to her. The pain when Louise took over was dreadful. Her death had not been a peaceful one.
“You could have met me in a tearoom. Did he not tell you more?” I inquired.
He took a telegram from his pocket and unfolded it. “He said you would introduce me to a woman named Louise. He said to follow this woman Louise’s instructions. To the letter. Although it seems a roundabout way of going at it. Don’t know why he couldn’t just wire instructions himself. Or have this Louise step round to my office.”
“No doubt all will be made clear.” I felt an upwelling of emotion, which was difficult to tamp down. She was dangerous, I remembered all too well.
“Where is this Miss Louise?” he questioned, casting about in his ignorance.
“Louise is here. She is anxious to finally meet you, Dr. Watson.” Indeed, the pounding in my head was becoming intolerable. “There is a message coming through. She says that you are about to embark on a long journey. Her instructions are that you will take me with you.”
His voice cracked. “This is entirely preposterous. And an unsuitable request. By the ring on your finger, I take it you’re a married woman, are you not?”
This evoked a salacious titter from the crowd.
“She says we are to leave here and go straight to Victoria Station. I hope you mean to take me somewhere warm. I haven’t packed for cold weather.”
“I know no one named Louise. Who is she? Where is she?”
“She is a spirit, one who knows you quite well, though you don’t know her.”
“Oh, a bit of hocus-pocus, is it? She seems quite high-handed for a dead person. What happens next? Do you go into a trance? Levitate? What humiliation does Holmes have in store for me? I should just go home.” He plumped his hat back on his head.
“Sometimes I do go into a trance. But this spirit is so commanding—”
There was no holding her. She flung me aside. A film came over my eyes. I could hear my own voice, but soft and deep, with a melodious French accent, curling up my throat.
“You do not know me, John, but well do I know you. I am Madame Louise Vernet-Lecomte Holmes. You are the intimate friend of my only living son, Sherlock.”
He blanched. His eyes went blank. At last, he found his voice, and he roared his anger:
“What kind of blasphemy is this? Louise Holmes has been dead these twenty-five years. Cease this playacting at once, Madam!”
“Please, I come from far away to speak with you and have little time allotted me. I know you are a skeptic. But my son is going into great danger—not merely of his life, but of his soul. He needs you by his side—at the Reichenbach Falls.”
I knew nothing of the Reichenbach Falls then. I had followed little of Sir Sherlock’s career before he became the great champion of the spiritualist movement. Indeed, I had only a shadowy idea at that point who this Dr. John Watson was. But I could see in his face that the Reichenbach Falls was a name of evil omen to him. I could feel the evil myself as the words passed my lips, like sharp shards of glass.
“The Reichenbach Falls! Now you’ve gone far too far with this game, Madam. Madam! Sherlock Holmes will never set foot upon that accursed path again.”
“Need will drive him, and he will need you there. You must swear not to leave him.”
Now he looked insulted. “I have already given my word to accompany him. I don’t give my word lightly. I don’t need all this tomfoolery to convince me. Quite the opposite.”
“To Reichenbach he must go, and he will need you by his side,” she said insistently.
“Yes, yes, yes! What I tell you three times is true!” he fairly spat.
I could feel her presence beginning to withdraw, like the tide drawing back from the shore. I was gasping for breath, groping for the stones on the beach. But still she said in a desperate whisper:
“Don’t leave him!”
“I won’t leave him,” said Dr. Watson irritably, as if he were being nagged at by a tram conductor for his ticket.
“Merci. And you must take Mrs. Roberts with you.”
And without another word, she had sped away like a falcon making for the distant reaches of the sky. I nearly fainted as I felt her abandon me. Dr. Watson had to reach out and steady me. My demonstration was definitely concluded for the day. I felt hollowed out. My mind was a blank. I dismissed the crowd with a wave of my hand and sank into an empty seat. Though there was much grumbling and protest, I think mainly because of the rain, the crowd slowly filed out. My course was clear.
“But this is madness!” exploded the doctor. “Yes, I was to meet a woman here named Louise, but not the Louise who burned to death twenty-five years ago.”
I leaned over, my face in my hands, still trying to clear my head. “Burned? Yes, that explains the flames. Sir Sherlock never told me. I suppose I was meant to introduce you to her, and she in turn to introduce me to you. And you’re to take me with you. I assume we are going on some sort of trip.”
“You mean you don’t know where we’re supposed to go?” A vein in his forehead started to throb.
Of course, I knew perfectly well, but it wasn’t my habit to share secrets with the acquaintance of a moment. How much had Sir Sherlock confided in him? Ah, but here was someone . . .
“Perhaps he can tell us,” I replied.
He wheeled round to find a telegraph boy standing directly behind him with a note in his hand, as if I had conjured him out of the air. The light frosting on his overcoat and uniform cap told me the rain was turning to snow.
“Dr. John Watson?” asked the boy timidly.
Watson gave me a sidelong look, as though he suspected skulduggery on my part. “Only coincidence,” I told him. I had no intention of embellishing the truth. I am a seer, but I do not lay claim to magical powers.
He read the note and took out two railway tickets. “It appears we’re to meet Sherlock Holmes at Dover. That almost certainly means a trip to the continent. I hope you can pack quickly. We have little more than an hour before our train departs.”
“I’m already packed. My bags are in the coatroom.”
Again he gave me the look of one who has swallowed too much bilge water. But after all, there were two tickets. There was no time for further niggling. Dr. Watson still had to pack. He dashed into the street, heedless of rain or snow, while I collected my bags. Sooner than I would have credited, he had secured a taxi. He tossed my bags in the back, a trifle cavalierly, I thought. They were old valises made of canvas, and I had a horror of them splitting open and my unmentionables tumbling out. Next he handed me in and called out his address to the driver. He lived on Queen Anne Street. A medical address, though not quite Harley Street.
Apparently he had instructed the driver to go at breakneck speed. There were corners we took so sharply that I sucked in my breath, sure we would overturn like turtles. The taxi threw up walls of water on either side, leaving drenched pedestrians shaking their fists in our wake. I noticed that Dr. Watson gripped the seat with all his might, as if he feared being thrown out the window. Soon we lurched to a stop at his Queen Anne Street address. The doctor slid out with a celerity that belied his age.
I thought I would catch forty winks while he packed since I had been up early that morning packing myself, but I had hardly closed my eyes when he returned with his bags. I’ve since educated myself on their exploits and learned how often he and Sir Sherlock had stuffed their valises with the necessities and galloped to the station. He was an old hand at packing at a moment’s notice.
And in fact, he seemed to relax among the crowds of the railway station, as though the coal soot were a tonic to him, the clouds of steam were a spring shower, and the din of humanity a lullaby. Once we were boarded in our compartment and properly situated, he kept his eyes glued to the window like a ten-year-old boy on his first train trip. Or perhaps he was simply avoiding meeting my eyes. He seemed a bit shy, which I found oddly charming.
But my nerves were still burning after my encounter with Louise. I recalled the first time I had been confronted with her personality. I had been invited to Sir Sherlock’s villa in Sussex, a great honor for such a novice medium as I was. She was so powerful I nearly drowned in her. What I hadn’t known was that she had never appeared to him before, though some of the greatest sensitives of the age were put to the test. He was grateful beyond words, and we bonded immediately. He was a remarkable man.
And yet this man, who Madame Louise had pronounced Sir Sherlock’s intimate friend? Ordinary enough. Yet even in the awkwardness of our silence I could sense something comforting about the doctor, something solid. I could see perhaps why Sir Sherlock wanted him by his side. They were alike somehow. Not that he was sharp-edged and alarming in the way of Sir Sherlock, but he was protective and solicitous—a very parfait knight, as they used to say. That was what they had in common, I guessed.
The rain cleared and the moon rose. I began a letter to my husband briefly sketching out the events of the afternoon. I missed him terribly already, even as I looked forward on tenterhooks to the journey.
As the hours ticked by, Dr. Watson became restless, again like a little boy. I suggested he take a stroll down the aisle. (I might have suggested dinner, for I felt a sudden growl in my stomach, but I’m sure he would have felt himself obliged to pay. I had no wish to impose upon him.) He seemed immediately released by my words. I think he had felt responsible for me, as though I were a package he was delivering to Sir Sherlock. I confess I felt something of the same. And I could not help but sense we were going into danger, and it would take all our talents to defeat it—if we could.
Chapter Three: Dr. John Watson
The cold air in the passage hit my face, rousing me from my torpor. I made my way toward the observation car. I will admit Mrs. Estelle Roberts had set me on edge with all her chicanery. Why all these ludicrous attempts to convince me of her powers? What would be her next trick? Did she have a deck of marked cards? And then there was her constant cold-eyed stare, as though trying to examine my insides. I wondered how far she would accompany us; indeed, how far would we go. Surely not—
“Well, what do you think, Watson?”
I turned slowly. I was floored. It was him. His hair was thinning and what there was had turned snow-white. A pair of rimless glasses was perched upon his nose. One almost expected him to tear off his disguise and reveal the Sherlock Holmes of forty years ago. Yet he had the same hawkish profile and fierce, concentrated gaze.
“Holmes! Where did you get on?” I cried.
“London.”
“What? What farce is this now? I’ve had enough—” And indeed my temper was boiling over. I perceived that I was being treated shabbily.
“I wanted you to get to know Mrs. Roberts on your own. A charming woman, is she not?” he asked lightly.
“Why on earth did you saddle me with her?”
“She’s magnificent. Psychic, medium, clairvoyant, clairaudient, healer, psychometrist—there’s nothing she can’t do.”
“A mountebank, like all the others. When will you drop this nonsense? How far must we drag her along?”
“All the way.”
“All the way to where, for God’s sake?”
“Didn’t I tell you? All the way to Luxor.”
“Luxor, Egypt?” I asked, incredulous.
“Of course. Where the curse originated,” he stated matter-offactly. “The tomb of Tutankhamun.”
“But . . . but no one died in Luxor. Most of your victims seem to have shuffled off this mortal coil right here in merry old England. Have you interviewed Lady Almina? Or Princess Marguerite? Wouldn’t that be much the simpler course? We certainly know how Prince Ali died, however the jury cocked up the verdict.”
Had I mentioned that Princess Marguerite had been acquitted of murdering her husband, even though she had certainly done the deed? You probably remember the case as well as I do—fraught with improprieties from the defense, including counsel pointing a gun at the jury, which the court let fly by as if it were the Gloucester cheese roll.
“Idle minds are the devil’s playthings, and we are hemmed in by devils. The lady Almina has wed that scoundrel Colonel Dennistoun before her husband is cold in the grave and has no time for anyone else. As for Princess Marguerite, she played me like a concert grand. She’ll get her comeuppance eventually, but for now she is inviolate.”
This was a remarkable admission coming from him, who had always been able to enlist the ladies to his cause without ever becoming entangled with one. Well, those sleepy bedroom eyes, full lips—how old was the princess? Probably thirty? And Irene Adler would be sixty by now if she had lived. There was more than a passing resemblance. Yes, it could be. Stranger things had happened.
But to the matter at hand. “Thus we journey three thousand miles or more to a barren desert, where no one at all has died, save the savage natives forced to subsist there?” I was still out of sorts.
