The Dead Assassin: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (35 page)

Constance, Sheridan, and the two boys were halfway out the front door when Wilde dashed from the breakfast room into the hallway.

“Stop!” he demanded.

“Whatever is it, Oscar?”

“You and the boys are to stay home.”

Constance was accustomed to Wilde’s role as casual, just-passing-through husband and father. Now, his adamant tone astonished her.

“Oh, you are joking again, Oscar—”

“I assure you I am in deadly earnest, Constance. You and the boys are to remain home. I forbid you to leave this house.” He glared at Robert Sheridan, who was hovering in the open door. “And you, Robert, must go home.”

“But, Constance and I—” Sheridan started to protest.

“Go home!” Wilde said and propelled him roughly across the threshold with a violent shove and banged the door shut in his face.

“Oscar! Are you mad? What is wrong? Have you forgot yourself?”

Wilde showed her a face she had never seen before in all their years of marriage. “No,” he said in a voice pitched to a low rumble. “I had forgot, but now it seems I have finally remembered myself.” He gripped his wife’s hand with frightening force. “Things are happening, Constance. It is not safe to go out.”

“Is this about last night?”

“I will not distress you by sharing the horrid details, but know this: there is a darkness descending upon this country. For once you must do as I bid and keep the children and yourself at home. I have never demanded anything from you in this marriage.” His eyes blazed with intent. “But now I am demanding this.”

Constance Wilde’s eyes grew wide. Her lips quivered. “Yes, Oscar,” she replied in a torn voice.

Wilde turned to the waiting boys, recomposing his face into a fatherly smile. “But as you boys are all dressed up, Papa will take you into the garden and play cricket. And then we shall come inside, drink hot cocoa, and I will compose a new fairy story for you.”

The boys cheered and jumped up and down with glee. “Smashing!” Cyril cried. “What will our story be about, Papa?”

“Yes,” Vyvyan echoed. “What kind of story?”

Wilde considered a moment. “It will be a story about a beautiful young man who sins against nature … and becomes a monster.”

*   *   *

When Conan Doyle stumbled into the drawing room, still struggling to fasten the studs of his collar, his wife was propped stiffly in the corner of an armchair. Miss Jean Leckie perched upon the Doyles’ excruciatingly uncomfortable horsehair couch. Both women had teacups sitting in their laps, but neither seemed to be drinking. Or chatting. Or making eye contact.

Or giving any indication they both occupied the same room.

“Arthur,” his wife said. “You have finally bestirred yourself. I have been entertaining your city friend, Miss Leckie. I am afraid to say your description did her a great injustice, she is in no way a rather plain, or
spinsterly
type.”

His wife drowned a cruel smile in her teacup. Jean Leckie fixed him with a look that pleaded
help me
.

Conan Doyle shifted his feet, dithering. Rather than take the unoccupied seat on the couch next to Miss Leckie, he drew up a hard-back chair and sat in the no-man’s-land between the two. “Oh, I don’t think I said any such thing, Touie.”

“Yes, you did, Arthur. I remember it distinctly. Plain. Spinsterly. Those were your exact words. So when Miss Leckie showed up at our front door unannounced, bag in hand like a homeless vagrant, I could not imagine who this striking beauty was.”

Conan Doyle colored. His wife was making them both squirm. Jean Leckie dropped her eyes to the rug, face burning with shame. The teacup in her trembling hand chinked against its saucer.

He could see where the situation was likely to lead and decided that candor was the only path. He rose and stood with one hand on the chair back. “I must explain why I asked Miss Leckie here. It is not for the reason you imagine. Nor could ever hope to imagine. I urged her to join us here because it is no longer safe in London. For her. For myself. For no one.”

“Whatever do you mean, Arthur?” Louise Doyle asked.

“I mean that our nation teeters on the brink of revolution. Even as I speak, there is a secret struggle between opposing factions to assassinate the queen and replace our government with a new regime.”

Suddenly both women’s expressions mirrored each other’s: mouths agape, eyes wide.

“And what has this to do with you and Miss Leckie?”

“Lately, a number of high ranking government officials and leaders of commerce and industry have been the target of assassins. I was recruited by an agent of the crown to investigate. My dear friend Oscar has been assisting me. Last night we ran afoul of some of the conspirators … and barely escaped with our lives.”

His words drew gasps from both women and Conan Doyle beamed with a strange satisfaction. “Miss Leckie is quite the innocent party in all this. I invited her to dinner after our monthly SPR meeting. I did not know it at the time, but I was under surveillance.”

Louise Doyle stiffened in her chair. “Surveillance? You mean … you were being spied upon?”

Conan Doyle nodded. “By agents of the crown, and agents hostile to the crown. My innocent invitation to supper inadvertently brought Miss Leckie to the attention of unsavory elements who may wish to do her harm.”

Touie’s eyes filled. “Oh, my dear Miss Leckie. I am so sorry to hear it. Of course, you must stay with us until the danger is passed.” She looked up at her husband. “But what is to become of the country, Arthur? What is to become of us all?”

The Scottish author shook his head ruefully. “I cannot say.” He walked to the window and gazed out. Beyond the front garden’s swathe of green lawn, the hedgerows and farmer’s fields of Sussex formed a vista of bucolic tranquility. “We live in parlous times. Oscar and I have been warned to lay low and let events play out as they may. We can only pray that our nation endures.”

*   *   *

The hearse slowed as it passed number 16 Tite Street, and then the driver, anonymous in a black top hat and funeral frock coat (anonymous, apart from the port-wine stain running down one cheek), whipped up the horses. The hearse spun onto a side road and then turned hard left into a narrow alleyway and drew up directly behind Wilde’s home. The funeral grooms jumped down and flung open the glass door at the rear of the hearse.

A man clambered out. Or rather, something that had once been a man. Dressed in rumpled clothing, the reanimated corpse shambled to the garden wall and stood looking up.

On the other side of the garden wall, Wilde puffed at one of his Turkish cigarettes as he watched his boys play cricket.

“I’m cold, Daddy. May we go inside now? You promised to tell us a fairy story about a monster.”

“In a moment, Cyril. Papa has not yet smoked his last cigarette and you know how Mama disapproves of your father smoking in the house. And this despite the fact that Papa bought the house for Mama and pays all the bills.”

“But, Daddy, why is it Mummy’s say-so?”

“Men have been asking themselves that very question for thousands of years, Vyvyan. If you have the misfortune to marry one day it is likely you shall be asking yourself the same question.”

Constance Wilde appeared at the back door, a shawl thrown about her slender shoulders. “Five more minutes boys,” she called and went inside.

“Did you hear that, lads? The voice of authority has spoken.” Wilde rummaged his pockets for a box of matches, but found none. “Vyvyan, let Cyril have a turn at bat whilst Papa pops inside. I’ll just be a tick.”

In the alleyway, the dead man crouched down and then sprang up, easily vaulting the ten-foot wall. He landed with a heavy thump in the corner of the yard, screened from sight by an overgrown wisteria bush.

In the parlor, Wilde called out, “Constance, do we have any matches?” as he rummaged drawers in the sideboard.

In the yard, Vyvyan bowled an easy underhand to Cyril, who whacked the ball and sent it bouncing.

“Third drawer down,” Constance called back. “Are the boys still outside?”

“We’re coming in after the last is over.”

Constance entered the parlor. “You smoke too much, Oscar.”

“Fortunately, I have you to remind me of that—ah, here we are.” Wilde snatched up a box of lucifers and shook it. A faint rattle told him that it still contained a few matches. He smiled triumphantly and pocketed it.

Vyvyan scampered after the ball, which rolled across the grass into the far corner of the yard where it bumped into a pair of feet in battered leather boots. The young boy ducked under the dense branches of the wisteria in pursuit. When he bobbed up again, he found himself face to face with a terrible stranger. The man smelled horrid and looked very queer. His eyes were vacant and unblinking, the whites, a sickly yellow color. The man released a gurgling sound and plumes of steam jetted out both nostrils. Vyvyan went wide-eyed and rigid. His head tremored atop his neck. The boy opened his mouth and tried to scream but nothing came out. The grisly man raised his huge hands, showing nail beds blackened with filth. He rumbled a guttural moan and lunged for the boy.

Constance moved to the parlor window and looked out. The light was failing fast and the garden was steeped in gloom. “Where’s Vyvyan?” she asked in a voice strained with motherly worry.

“He’s bowling to Cyril.”

“I don’t see him.”

“He’s probably gone to fetch the ball.”

Wilde joined his wife at the window and the two of them peered out. Cyril was standing at the wicket, shouting for his brother to come back and bowl. But Vyvyan was nowhere to be seen. Husband and wife exchanged a look and then rushed outside together.

They were just in time to see a tall figure lurking in the shadows at the bottom of the garden. From behind he resembled a shabby tramp.

“You there,” Wilde shouted. “Who the devil—?”

The figure turned at Wilde’s shout. It was the monster. He was clutching Vyvyan to his chest, a large hand clamped over the boy’s mouth; Vyvyan’s wide, terrified eyes sparkled with tears. And then, with the dreadful suddenness of a nightmare, the figure crouched low and leaped over the garden wall in a single bound, taking their eldest child with him.

Constance’s scream shattered the air.

Wilde flailed out, grasping, but failed to catch her as she swooned to the cold ground.

*   *   *

Supper had been consumed in a strained, scrape-of-fork-upon-plate silence. Now the family had retired to the big parlor where the red coals of a fire throbbed in the hearth. As the Doyle family were entertaining a visitor, the children had been allowed to stay up and now sat on the floor flanking their mother’s chair—as close as they were allowed to come, given her disease. Conan Doyle stood leaning upon the mantelpiece, smoking his pipe. This left Miss Leckie alone on the love seat, an item of furniture whose very name seemed so incriminating he dare not sit down upon it.

“Such lovely children,” Miss Leckie said. “And so polite and well-behaved.”

“Yes,” Conan Doyle agreed, “Touie is a model mother.”

“I should so like to have children of my own…” Miss Leckie said, and then realized she had strayed into a dangerous territory, adding weakly, “… someday.”

“I’m sure you will soon meet a handsome
young
man,” Touie said, and then twisted the blade. “Someone closer to your own age.”

A movement outside the window caught Conan Doyle’s eye. He moved to the glass, where he stood looking through his own reflection into the gathering twilight.

“What is it, Arthur?”

“I thought I saw a carriage on the road outside, but it’s gone now. Vanished behind a hedgerow.”

“Just a farm cart, perhaps?”

“Awfully late for a farm cart, and the road sees so little traffic.”

“Someone lost, then?”

Conan Doyle turned from the window, puffing thoughtfully at his pipe. “Yes, I imagine you are right. Just someone lost.”

The Surrey rental house was isolated. He had chosen the locale for its clean rural air, but it was remote. He didn’t say anything, but at such moments he wished they had a dog to guard the house. A large, ferocious hound. However, Touie’s respiratory difficulties forbade the owning of pets.

Miss Leckie suddenly brightened. “Oh, but I quite forgot. I brought gifts for the children.” She reached down and opened the bag at her feet, drawing out two packages wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. Conan Doyle instantly guessed where the presents had come from, but said nothing, biting down on the stem of his pipe to suppress a smile.

“Presents? How generous of you,” Louise Doyle said in a peevish voice. Conan Doyle saw the flash of jealousy in her eyes. “Unfortunately, we must not allow our children to be spoiled. They already have plenty of toys.”

“Oh please may we have them, Mummy?” Mary Doyle asked, looking up at her mother.

“Yes, we want our presents!” Kingsley importuned. “Please, Mummy, please!”

Faced with the prospect of breaking her children’s hearts, Louise Doyle had no choice but to acquiesce. “I suppose,” she said with obvious reluctance, “under the circumstances. Oh … very well.”

The children pounced on the packages and tore them open with glee. Kingsley danced with glee at his windup monkey. He plopped down on the rug and instantly began to wind the key. The monkey made a comical chuttering sound as it backflipped and then flipped again, bringing squeals of childish delight from the young boy.

Mary tore open her present and gasped. She looked up at Jean Leckie, her eyes pooled to overflowing. “Oh, thank you! Thank you! Thank you! It is quite the loveliest doll I’ve ever seen.”

“Show us your doll, Mary,” Conan Doyle urged.

Mary held up the doll for all to see. It was the very one Jean Leckie had been so drawn to at Jedidiah’s Emporium of Mechanical Marvels.

“But she has a secret,” Jean Leckie said mysteriously. She gestured, and Mary brought over the doll and knelt at her feet. Jean Leckie lifted the doll’s petticoats, causing a moment of embarrassment, but then all noticed the key dangling from its blue ribbon. She wound the key fully and handed the doll back. The music box whirred and began to play an aria. The silver notes touched Conan Doyle’s heart. He glanced at Touie and saw that his wife was looking intently at Jean and the children gathered at her feet, her eyes liquid and gleaming.