The Map of Chaos (17 page)

Clayton banged on the floor with both fists.

“Do you confess that you used your knowledge to aid the medium known as Madame Amber, that you conspired to contrive each and every one of the fraudulent spiritual séances she performed and knowingly certified the conditions in which said séances were carried out, and that you and she committed repeatedly and with malice aforethought the crimes of hoax, deception, and false pretense?”

“Yes, yes . . . But please, I beg you, lift the floorboards with a crowbar or a chisel. I suffer from claustrophobia . . .”

“Do you also confess to having rigged today's séance, on the twelfth of September in the year of grace 1888, at the residence of Madame Amber, located at number twelve Mayflower Road?” Clayton bawled.

“Inspector Clayton,” Sinclair intervened, “for the love of God, is this really necessary?”

“Yes, yes . . . I confess to everything! But please, get me out of here . . . I'm suffocating.”

Clayton straightened up, a slightly crazed grimace of triumph on his lips. His feverish gaze sought out Madame Amber's innocent blue eyes. He wanted to look straight at that her and spew out all his contempt, to tell her in no uncertain terms that her naïve attempts to beguile the public might have worked on pathetic little men like the one slowly suffocating beneath his feet, but not on Cornelius Clayton of Scotland Yard's Special Branch. I'm sorry, dear woman, he wanted to tell her, but you aren't as good as you thought, or perhaps you haven't been evil enough. One can't always get what one wants, and it was high time someone taught you that inevitable lesson . . .

But Clayton couldn't say those things to Madame Amber, for the simple reason that she was lying in a faint on the floor. Her head lay in Colonel Garrick's lap, and one hand was clasped between those of Captain Sinclair, who was trying to bring her round by tapping her gently on the back while crying out for a hammer and chisel.

D
ESPITE NOT HAVING SLEPT A
wink that night, Inspector Cornelius Clayton strode out early next morning toward number 3 Furnival Street. He hoped the chill air would clear his thoughts, or at least dislodge the niggling pain that had taken root at the base of his skull at some point during that endless night. After leaving Scotland Yard, he had decided not to take a cab and had instead made his way down to the river. The streets were shrouded in a damp fog that obliged him to turn up the collar of his coat and bury his hands in his pockets. He slowed his pace as he reached the Victoria Embankment, intending to stroll along the Thames as far as the Strand. He liked seeing the dawn lazily cast its light over the water, as though sketching it with an unsteady hand among the city's edifices. At that hour, still obscured by swirls of mist, the river allowed the first barges to cleave its waters, like derelict floating castles with their brimming cargoes of coal, oysters, and eels. A crowd of boats, sloops, and small vessels jostled on both banks of the river, disgorging onto its quays baskets filled with squid, shellfish, and other treasures snatched from the sea, whose foul odors the wind wafted through the neighboring streets. Before reaching Waterloo Bridge, which the dawn light outlined in greyish hues in the distance, Clayton crossed the Strand and wandered into Covent Garden market. Unconsciously, he adjusted his pace to the steady rhythm of the tradespeople who had been laboriously setting up their stalls since four o'clock and disappeared among the noisy labyrinth lined with barrows brimming with cabbages and onions, flower baskets, beer barrels and fruit stalls, where, regardless of the early hour, a mob of ragged beggars, children robbed of their childhood, and picturesquely skinny cats were competing for the stall holders' scraps. Unperturbed by these sights, Clayton soon slipped through the gap between a stall selling shiny apples and one with gladioli, clashing in the breeze like fantastical rapiers. He stepped absentmindedly through puddles, where the reflections from streetlights glinted and were then extinguished as he passed, heralding another of those cold, dreary days typical of London in autumn.

Finally he crossed the Aldwych and drew near to his destination. However, despite his resolute stride, Inspector Clayton remained far away. In fact, he was still in the interview room in Scotland Yard, where for the past few hours he had been taking statements from Madame Amber, whose real name was Sarah Willard, and from Sir Henry Blendell, architect to Her Majesty, the most honorable, trustworthy man in the realm, at least until the ill-fated day when the beautiful medium with platinum-blond hair and deep-blue eyes had crossed his path.

For the umpteenth time, Clayton went over in his head the lengthy confession he and Captain Sinclair had finally dragged out of them. First they had put them in different rooms and, aiming to wear them down and unsettle them, had subjected them to the same cross-examination, over and over, laying small traps for them among the torrent of questions. They had even resorted to the old trick of assuring each of them that the other, in the safety of the adjacent room, had betrayed them to save his or her own skin. Then, just before dawn, they had confronted them both in the same room, in the desperate hope one of them would break down. But it had all been in vain. All night long they had repeated the same version of events, identical down to the last detail: they acknowledged their personal relationship and their criminal association; they confessed to having carried out hundreds of deceptions during the past few years, which had made them very rich; Sarah Willard possessed none of the powers she claimed to have as Madame Amber; she had possessed them as a child (she swore on the Holy Bible) but had lost them when she reached puberty and since then had been incapable of summoning spirits of any kind whatsoever, nor had she experienced any paranormal phenomena; however, inspired by the growing vogue for spiritualism, she had fraudulently resuscitated her childhood powers, determined that the memory of those past horrors should not only give her nightmares but also line her pockets with silver; she had decided to drag herself out of poverty by posing as a medium, and not just any medium, but the greatest and most famous medium of all times; she had planned it all carefully, including her seduction of Sir Henry, since she realized her beauty and talent for acting were not enough and that she needed an accomplice who could help her with the technical aspects; despite his unimpeachable personal integrity, Sir Henry had been far easier to seduce than she had expected; the poor old man had fallen madly in love after one kiss and had instantly consented to all her proposals, driven by an inflamed passion and his lustful desire to possess her (this was the only time during the interrogation where their two confessions diverged, for Sir Henry insisted he had acted purely out of a Christian desire to help a lost soul overcome the sufferings that afflicted her); the knight of the realm had placed the extraordinary wealth of his knowledge at her service, transforming her town house, and any venue he was sent to inspect, with a maze of ingenious hidden devices designed to evade any scrutiny: trapdoors, springs, pulleys, false floors, nylon threads, powerful magnets, tubes emitting fluorescent gas, stuffed gloves that resembled floating hands, rubber masks, imprints of ghostly faces and bodies. As for Madame Amber, she confessed to being an accomplished regurgitator who could use her stomach to conceal an astonishing number of objects, thus slipping past even the most thorough examinations, even those stooping to the outrageous discourtesy of violating her most intimate cavities; the previous night, for example, disguising what she was doing with violent spasms, she had succeeded in regurgitating a rubber capsule containing hydrogen phosphide, which she had then bitten; exposed to air, the gas had created the will-o'-the-wisps and the luminous cloud. After that she had regurgitated several yards of fine gauze, onto which a face had been painted, and which gave the appearance of a ghost as it wafted above her thanks to the current of air coming from a tiny pipe under the table (the ghostly breath Colonel Garrick had felt on his hand).

Until then, the interrogation had been plain sailing for the two inspectors, but once they reached that point in the confession, both Miss Willard and Sir Henry had proved obstinate. They were willing to sign a confession and prepared to face the accusations that would be hurled at them in the coming days; they would plead guilty to fraud and be publicly derided. But they had no intention of being tried for the attempted murder of Mrs. Lansbury. That was where they drew the line. The final apparition, the menacing figure that had tried to throttle the old lady, was none of their doing. They might be charlatans, but they were not murderers. They weren't responsible for that
thing.

Clayton kicked a loose cobblestone in his path. The affair was fiendishly complicated. None of the pieces slotted together. Who, or
what,
was that figure he had managed to seize before Colonel Garrick fired his gun? He was almost persuaded that the sinister apparition was another trick of the performance. It had knocked into him and he had felt its muscles when he trapped it in a stranglehold, the texture of its clothes, the heat from its body, even the sour odor of sweat . . . It was true that for a moment he had the impression the apparition possessed a strange transparency or invisibility, but with hindsight he wasn't so sure. The stranger was completely human, that much was certain, and it could not have been anyone but Sir Henry, who must have been wearing a disguise. Or perhaps he had soaked his costume in some chemical or other, possibly ether, which had created that curious illusion of transparency. And then, for some unknown reason, he had threatened the poor old lady, fled through the trapdoor, and gotten rid of the costume somewhere in the house. Yes, all the facts pointed in that direction, although Clayton had to admit there were still far too many unanswered questions. So many in fact that it almost drove him to distraction. For example: If the fictitious apparition was part of the séance, why had they decided to include it? And why assault a defenseless old lady instead of sticking to their usual fairground act, which had brought them so much success? If it was simply another trick, why then deny it? Had things got out of hand, and were they now trying to limit the damage, or did they have some motive for attacking Mrs. Lansbury? But if that were the case, doing so in front of witnesses wasn't very wise. On the other hand, Clayton couldn't forget what had seemed to him Madame Amber's genuine terror. And was it precisely that terror that had made her force the trapdoor from the outside, thus breaking its delicate mechanism and throwing away many months' work? It made no sense . . . Clayton shook his head abruptly, like a dog irritated after a sudden downpour. He felt compelled to find the missing piece in the puzzle that would finally give it meaning.

If he accepted that Miss Willard and her accomplice were telling the truth, then who was the mysterious man who had appeared out of nowhere? A murderer who was pursuing Mrs. Lansbury and had decided to kill her during a séance where two Scotland Yard detectives were in attendance? The idea was absurd, and yet it tallied with the mysterious words the figure had addressed to the old lady, and above all with the expression on her face, for she seemed to recognize him, despite denying it afterward. But how could anyone have entered that sealed room without Madame Amber's or Sir Henry's help? Were all three of them involved in the attempt on the old lady's life?

There was one final possibility, the only one that would make the case worthy of being investigated by Scotland Yard's Special Branch: the apparition was a genuine spirit that had come from the Hereafter. But one spirit summoned during a fraudulent séance by a medium who possessed no supernatural powers? And yet Miss Willard claimed to have had them as a child. Should he then believe her version and accept that Sarah Willard's former talent had been restored that particular night, as the terrified young woman had assured him, allowing her to summon the evil spirit? As dawn approached, Sinclair had announced that, for the time being, this seemingly absurd theory was the least absurd of all, but Clayton had pursed his lips and said nothing. Old Sinclair was welcome to see ghosts on every corner if he wished, but in the recent past the inspector had learned many lessons, and foremost among them was never to underestimate the powerful combination of an ingenious disguise and an exceedingly beautiful woman.

Clayton scowled disdainfully as he recalled Sarah Willard's face when he had left her at dawn. The conceited medium, who had beguiled almost the entire male population of England with her beauty, had been reduced to a trembling little girl in the cellars of Scotland Yard. When the interrogation was over, she had grabbed the inspector by the lapels and, looking straight at him with her deep-blue eyes, had begged him to lock her in the darkest cell if he so wished, but please to keep the spirits away from her, not to let them haunt her . . . She had assured him, amid moans, that she couldn't face reliving the horrors of her childhood: the panic that used to seize her when she felt a cold, transparent form slip between her sheets, seeking the heat from her body as she lay completely still, reciting every prayer she knew while the phantom's icy breath on her neck made her shiver; and the mirrors—the horror when she looked at herself in a mirror and saw the pale reflection of a figure behind her, of someone gazing at her intently, even though whenever she turned around there was no one there; and the voices, the incessant voices . . . She had begged him in this way as she struggled to control the hysteria threatening to overwhelm her, and her voice had sounded so desperate that even the guard at the door had gulped. But Clayton had simply looked at her impassively for a few seconds and then, holding her wrists firmly, plucked her tiny clenched fists from his jacket. After sitting her down in a chair where she went on sobbing, he left the room without a backward glance.

She was lying. They were both lying, he was certain. Clayton didn't know whether spirits existed or not—he didn't have enough information as yet to arrive at any conclusion—but one thing he did know was that the figure in Madame Amber's drawing room was made of flesh and blood the same as he. Sinclair was welcome to go hunting ghosts if he so wished, but he, Clayton, knew exactly the direction in which to take the investigation: he had to find Sir Henry's costume, and if that meant dismantling Madame Amber's house brick by brick, then so be it. But before he started demolishing buildings, he needed to have a little chat with the old lady who had a penchant for spiritualism. Clayton sensed that Mrs. Lansbury knew more than she was admitting. He was convinced the key to unraveling the whole business lay behind those kindly yet mocking eyes that had so defiantly contemplated the apparition, and for that reason he had decided to go directly to her house, without even stopping off for a few hours' sleep.