The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (104 page)

Holmes had been staring at him with a curiosity that was discourteous, if not hostile.

‘Unfortunately, Mr. Milner, what you know her to be is not the issue. Let us keep to the facts. If Miss Deans is as bad as Jezebel, it matters nothing so long as she was not there and did not enter that room. If she was there and did enter it, she may be as good and truthful as you like, but she was guilty of the fact and was properly dismissed. Let us have no more of Sunday school, if you please. It will not get us very far.'

Holmes was in an unfortunate mood. He should never have mentioned Jezebel, to judge by the look on the face of Mrs. Deans and the flush that rose from her neck to her cheeks. No Baker Street detective was to say such a thing of her daughter. Before Milner could add a word, she let fly.

‘See here, Mr. Holmes! It's not just that my Effie is a good girl and wouldn't have done it. She was at home all night and
couldn't
have done it!'

He admired her spirit.

‘Excellent, madam! You have, if I may say so, an unerring grasp of the laws of evidence. Pray continue.'

The Reverend Mr. Milner was out in the cold now.

‘Well, sir,' Mrs. Deans went on, ‘she come home as usual close on half past eight that evening. Don't take my word for it. We had the Todgers.'

‘Todgers, madam?'

‘Them that live next door. Had them in for a hand or two of whist and Beat-Jack-out-of-doors, also a glass of shrub and a pipe.'

I swear I saw in my mind Mrs. Deans smoking her pipe with the rest.

‘I assume they were not with you until two in the morning?'

‘Near midnight. They saw her all the time. Then we went to bed. She went to her little room in the attic. To get out, she comes down through the room where Alf and I sleep. I laid awake an hour and more with my stomach after the shrub. How could she come down and I not see nor hear her? How could she unbolt the downstairs door and go out without I hear her—or without Alf seeing it when he gets up at three? Which he must do to go on early turn at the railway goods yard at four. And don't tell me, Mr. Holmes, that I can't prove what I say. Do I look the sort that'd let her daughter go out on the streets at one or two in the morning and never say a word?'

‘No, madam,' said Holmes uncertainly, ‘indeed you do not. In any court proceedings, however, you will be asked the following question: Why should this porter, whoever he was, say that he saw your daughter entering a guest's room at one or two o'clock that morning, if he could not have done so?'

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him.

‘Yes, Mr. Holmes! Oh, yes! I'd like him asked that question! I'd like him asked good and proper, in such a way as he wouldn't forget being asked for a very long time!'

If ever a woman had captivated Holmes in a quarter of an hour, it was Mrs. Deans. The Reverend Mr. Milner had given up. His parishioner was doing his job far better than he could have done it for himself. Holmes stretched out his long thin legs, and when he looked up, his eyes were brighter than I had seen them for a long time.

‘It seems,' said Mr. Milner hastily, ‘that the night porter said he recognized her in part by her uniform, the black dress, white apron, and white cap. Of course, that might have been worn by someone else, though it is not clear why anyone else wishing to enter the room should have bothered to put the uniform on. Whoever did so can hardly have expected to do it without disturbing the occupant.'

‘Quite so,' said Holmes thoughtfully. ‘What do we know of the gentleman who occupied the room? He was alone, I take it?'

‘He was talked about in the town during the weeks since he came there.' Mrs. Deans had once again got in ahead of the Reverend Mr. Milner. ‘A spiritual gentleman. Always seeing ghosts, he said. Something to do with the Society for Cyclical Research.'

‘Society for Psychic Research,' Mr. Milner said quickly. She stared at him, then turned back to Holmes.

‘They say he saw that many ghosts, he had to put himself to sleep at night with clarasomething from a smelling bottle. My girl could still smell it next morning. And he had a rumpus with the showfolk at the Brighton Aquarium. Professor Chamberlain and Madame Elvira that do tricks with ghosts and guessing. He thought he was superior to all that tommyrot. The Brighton papers wouldn't print his letters nor theirs for fear of being took to court.'

I looked at Holmes. An extraordinary change had gradually come over his face during these exchanges with their hints of ghosts and fraud. His eyes were shining like two stars with a hint of enthusiasm ill-contained. His hands gripped the arms of the chair and I almost thought he might spring from it. The Reverend Mr. Milner got in his twopenny-worth at last.

‘The gentleman in question is a spiritualist,' he said quickly. ‘Mr. Edmund Gurney is a scholar and a gentleman who resents the cheapening of his beliefs by the mind-reading entertainments, mesmerism, and trances at the Aquarium, as do all those who take a sincere interest in such matters. His own work for the Psychical Research Society is at a far superior level. He is, I understand, a classical scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, a friend of Dr. Frederick Myers and his circle. He is certainly a musicologist and has written upon the theories of sound. His particular interest appears to be in what are called phantasms of the living. That is to say, the possibility that we may have a vision of those we know or love at a crisis in their lives, not infrequently at the moment of their deaths. It is the case of a man who sees at the end of his garden path the figure of a friend whom he had believed to be still in India. He then hears that the friend was, indeed, still in India and that he had died at the moment of the apparition.'

Holmes had listened to this last revelation with eyes closed and fingertips pressed together. He now looked up.

‘Mr. Edmund Gurney sounds an admirable gentleman. I cannot believe that it is any of his doing that Effie has been dismissed. Indeed, if what you say is true, Mrs. Deans, it seems that he sleeps with the aid of a soporific and may well not have known anything of this incident. This is a curious and, indeed, intriguing inconsistency. My dear Mr. Milner! My dear Mrs. Deans! My dear Miss Effie, if I may so address you. You may count upon this difficulty of yours receiving my fullest and most immediate attention. This enigma is almost more than I had deserved!'

‘You will take the case?' Milner asked nervously.

‘Mr. Milner, I could not do otherwise. Indeed, you may depend upon Dr. Watson and myself being in Brighton by this evening. You yourselves must return there forthwith. I shall ask Mrs. Hudson to summon the boy. A wire must go to the post office at once engaging rooms for us.'

Milner eased his starched clerical collar with a forefinger.

‘In the matter of your fee, sir. My friends are scarcely in a position.…'

‘We will not talk of a fee, if you please. Some things, my dear Milner, are more than money to me.'

‘Then where shall we find you? Where will you stay?'

Holmes, mystified by the question, looked at him.

‘Where else should we put up but at the
locus in quo?
'

This stumped all three of them.

‘Why,' said Holmes blithely, ‘at the Royal Albion Hotel, Mr. Milner. We may even learn to relish its cuisine.'

The change that had overtaken Sherlock Holmes since his sullen mood after breakfast would hardly have been believed by those who did not know him well. He had pined for adventure and challenge. Now that this had presented itself, if only in the form of a dismissed chambermaid, he was transformed by an excess of energy. Though he sometimes used to talk of retiring to the Sussex downs and keeping bees, I swear he could not have endured it for more than a fortnight.

That afternoon we took tea in the Pullman car of the express that whirled us to Brighton, the sunlit fields and downs of Sussex spinning away from us, the sun glittering on the sea ahead. The light was in his eyes again. He hummed or sang quietly some battle hymn of his own throughout the journey until our train drew into Brighton and we felt a light ocean breeze on our faces.

2

So it was, upon my friend's impulse, that we had left the comforts of our quarters in Baker Street for an indefinite spell of indifferent cooking and the sound of breakers on shingle carrying to our ears at the Royal Albion Hotel. Within two hours of leaving London, we had moved into our suite, a spacious sitting-room with our bedrooms to either side. Its windows enjoyed a view across the busy esplanade to a broad expanse of waves that stretched between us and the coast of France sixty miles way. At this time of year, the edge of the sea was a promenade for mothers in full skirts, blouses, and straw boaters, fathers in their best suits and hats. Children gathered excitedly before the puppet booth of the Punch and Judy show on the beach when its little trumpet announced each performance.

We soon accustomed ourselves to the daily round. Each morning, several ponies drew the wheeled cabins of the ladies' bathing machines down to the water's edge and pulled them back up at sunset. The regimental band of the Coldstream Guards played briskly every afternoon at two
P
.
M
. on the far end of the old Chain Pier, while bearded fishermen mended their nets on the lower esplanade. Fishing boats and yachts lay drawn up on the shingle, except for a few jolly little craft like the
Honeymoon
and the
Dolly Varden
, which bobbed and twisted in the swell with their apprehensive passengers.

Within an hour of our arrival, we were sitting down to an early ‘theatre' dinner provided by these seaside hotels for patrons who have booked seats at some theatrical performance. Holmes, in one of those infuriating moods which took him from time to time, would say nothing beyond remarking, ‘There is not a moment to be lost.' On the contrary, I thought, we seemed to have all the time in the world. He withdrew behind the
Evening Globe
while the waiter attempted to serve us
turbot a la mayonnaise
. The Royal Albion was a large, solid building, now past its best, which qualities were reflected in its menu. Holmes ate rapidly but in silence, evidently turning over possibilities in his mind. Even before the coffee was served, he pushed back his chair and stood up.

‘Come, Watson. I think it is time we were on our way.'

As we came out into the evening sunlight of the esplanade, I was about to ask him what our way might be. Before I could do so, he very pointedly drew a deep breath, swelled out his chest, tapped his cane sharply on the paving of the esplanade and said, ‘How good it is to breathe sea air again after a winter of London fogs. What was it that they called this town in the days of the good King George III? They nicknamed it Doctor Brighton, I recall. And not without reason.'

‘I daresay I should breathe a lot more clearly if I knew where the blazes we were going.'

He looked at me in astonishment. ‘But you must have known, my dear friend. You heard the tale told this morning, of second sight and phantasms of the living. Where should we go for entertainment on our very first evening in Brighton but to the lecture-room of the Aquarium, apparently disapproved of by Mr. Gurney, for a display of Professor Chamberlain's magical accomplishments with the talented Miss Elvira. Their names are on the bill over there.'

So that was it. Why such vulgar entertainment should be of the least use to our defence of Effie Deans was quite beyond me.

If you have ever visited Brighton, you will know that the Aquarium has less to do with sea creatures than with popular entertainment. It stands under its famous clock tower just at the landward end of the Chain Pier with its strings of colored lanterns. We paid our sixpences and passed through the turnstiles to a land of fairy lights and fireworks. Among the shows and exhibitions advertised, its theatre offered Madame Alice Barth's Operetta Company in the Garden Scene from
Faust
and ‘Dr. Miracle,' a one-act piece never performed before. Holmes led the way to the plainer fare offered by the lecture theater which was placarded by ‘Professor Chamberlain's Experiments in Mesmerism and Thought-Reading.'

At the door, a newspaper review was displayed under glass. It was a cutting from the
Brighton Herald
, praising the excitement of last Saturday's performance, when ‘Dr. Mesmer' had hypnotised a youth and a girl. The youth was subjected to kickings and prickings, the girl to abuse and mockery. When brought back to consciousness, each of the dupes smilingly acknowledged the applause and confessed to having no memory of the ordeal. A heckler in the front row who had denounced the display loudly as a ‘put-up job' was thrown out of the hall by several members of the large and excited audience. I cannot pretend that this was the entertainment I should have chosen for my first night in Brighton.

Across a bill advertising the show was a more recent banner still damp with paste. It announced that Professor Chamberlain and his medium, Madame Elvira, had been retained by other managements to provide ‘select high-class seances for the popularizing of phenomenal science.' In consequence, this week must be the last of their present season in Brighton. It seemed that they had been in residence at the Aquarium during most of the summer so far.

We paid a further shilling and were ushered to seats near the front of what was not so much a lecture hall as a music hall or a palace of varieties. It seemed less crowded than on a Saturday night, but the buzz of excitement was still unmistakable. Professor Chamberlain, playing the role of Dr. Mesmer with an electrical magnet, first invited several victims onto his platform and made some magic passes over them. They then submitted to a few blows without apparent resentment. Among roars of approval from the onlookers, they also performed as though they believed themselves to be dogs or cockerels, infants at feeding time, or soldiers at drill. They finally woke up at the snap of their master's fingers, remembering nothing. For half an hour we endured this sort of thing. Nothing would have been easier to counterfeit.