The Lammas Curse (11 page)

“Yes,” Lola smiled agreeably.
“That’s it in a nutshell.”

“Let us proceed,” interrupted
the dowager impatiently. “This is not the time to discuss costume
fittings. Remove the extra chair, Carter. Finish your whiskey,
Duncan. Everyone else, take your seats as you please and remain
silent. I sense that the spirits are restless. They wish to
communicate with the living and they will not be denied. Join hands
and then place them on the table so that the sceptics amongst us
will have no cause to doubt that what they are about to witness is
genuine and real. Whatever happens, do not speak.”

Ten pairs of hands joined up
and rested on the table as instructed by Lady Moira who closed her
eyes and began to hum plaintively. Gradually, the mnemonic humming
turned into a tuneless chant as she began to sway from side to
side. Before long she appeared to fall into a sort of self-induced
hypnotic trance. Flickering firelight silhouetted her pale head and
shoulders but the effect was anything but halo-like. The wispy
white bird’s nest hair seemed to stand on end as if
electrified.

Dr Watson remained sceptical.
During the last few years many so-called spiritualists or mediums
had been exposed as charlatans and fraudsters. Every form of
magical trickery and clever chicanery had been employed to deceive
and defraud a gullible public desperate to communicate with
deceased loved ones. When his beloved Mary had died he too had
toyed with the idea of visiting a medium. The chance to say the
things he did not have the courage to say when she was dying was
overwhelming. And then when his best friend died so unexpectedly
and violently at Reichenbach Falls the overwhelming need to
communicate a last goodbye became unbearable. He sought out the
most famous medium in London – Madame Moghra.

He had wanted to believe and it
was this wanting that transcended not only his rational sense but
plain old common-sense as well. When someone cried out that the
table was levitating, and those around him voiced their accord, he
had believed it too even though he knew the table top was exactly
level with the point of his body where it had been when he first
sat down. When a phosphorescent green cat appeared at the window
sill and a chorus of shocked gasps followed he thought of
Stapleton’s trick with the gigantic hound, but still he wanted to
believe. When a ghostly image of a child appeared in the mirror he
thought about Sherlock’s old friend, Dr Savernake, and the amazing
feats he could achieve with his photographic equipment. But still
he wanted to believe. And so he convinced himself it was all above
board. It was a full three years later that he discovered he was
not only being deceived but was in fact deceiving himself. Madame
Moghra had done her homework. Her accomplices had been thorough and
played their parts well. The Spiritualist knew everything that
anyone could know. But she did not know what she could not. In 1894
he promptly joined the Ghost Club.

He wasn’t sure what to expect
with Lady Moira, but if she had an accomplice it could only be his
wife’s niece, Miss Adeline Lambert. That notion both upset and
distracted him. He spent much of the time watching the young lady
from the corner of his eye when he should probably have been
watching elsewhere. However, there did not appear to be any hidden
wires for the purposes of levitation, no ghostly images were
reflected in the mirror, there materialized no phantom
phosphorescent cats, neither did any invisible vapours waft through
the darksome air, nor did any strange smells infuse the library.
There was not even any rapping – a sure-fire favourite of credulous
devotees. Lady Moira appeared merely to serve as a simple conduit
for the spirit world. Her humming and swaying increased in tack and
pitch like a tempest-tossed yacht in a squall until she almost
pitched herself out of her chair. There was a collective gasp but
everyone heeded the warning not to speak and pulses were quickly
calmed.

And so it started – Lady Moira
channelled the spirit world:

“The Pictish Raven croaks
hoarse,

Blueblood o’er runs the
course,

Weep for the woad,

Reap what you sowed.”

The voice grew more strange and
cobwebby.

“The Celtic Raven croaks
hoarse,

Redblood o’er runs the
course,

Weep for the dead,

They will warm your bed.”

The voice was now so feeble it
was barely audible and almost disappeared down its own throat like
a dying echo under water.

“The Sacred Raven croaks
hoarse,

Holyblood o’er runs the
course,

Weep for the bones,

Buried mid the stones.”

Lady Moira did a commendable
job changing her voice for each spirit but there was no denying
that the sentiments expressed by the spirit world were her
sentiments too. She wanted the golf tournament halted and the
Lammas moor turned back to how it was when she first set eyes on it
as a young bride. It was widely understood that the old disliked
change but change was inevitable. Time and tide and life move on
whether one liked it or not.

Dr Watson hoped the séance
might move on too. He suppressed a yawn as his mind drifted. He
thought about Graymalkin and his bedroom at the top of the peel
tower around which the wind whistled like a lonely banshee, where
he had left a fire crackling in the ancient stone hearth so that
the room would be toasty warm for his return. He yearned for the
bed, the tower, the room, the fire and…

Something cold brushed the back
of his neck. He put it down to a draught and checked to make sure
the doors were still closed. Indeed they were, yet he could have
sworn the room was suddenly colder, and not just by a few degrees.
The library felt like an ice house. He checked the fire. It was
still faintly flickering but the coals seemed to be giving off no
heat.

He felt it again, a cold
sensation on the back of his neck. This time it travelled down his
spine like a creeping spider, no, more like a hundred spiders, yes,
as if a hundred spiders had crawled inside his clothes and were
scuttling down his back. Without moving his head, his eyes roved
around the circle of faces. He could see everyone clearly except
the two people either side of him – his lordship and the Rajah of
Govinda. Each face looked pale and ghost-like, all eyes were
transfixed on Lady Moira who had fallen silent and whose white head
suddenly sagged forward as though she were dead, the eerie glow
behind her was like the deathly hallows surrounding a corpse.

For a brief moment he wondered
if perhaps she might in fact be dead when she gave a demented cry,
louder than any mythical banshee, and lifted her head. Her eyelids
flew open. Everyone gasped and caught their breath, including
him.

Suddenly she began to speak,
but not in any voice they had previously heard. This voice was
portentous and deep, like the booming voice of someone stuck down a
well, crying for help.

“The whitebird calls
tomorrow,

The redbird smiles hollow,

The blackbird cries sorrow,

The bluebird will follow.”

Miss O’Hara suddenly clutched
at her own breast and cried out as if in pain. She appeared to
swoon and would surely have tumbled sideways out of her chair but
for the fact the chairs were grouped so tightly together. She
slumped sideways and was caught by Carter Dee. He supported her by
the shoulders until her fiancé could rush around the table. Lord
Cruddock then scooped her up and transported her to the nearest
armchair where he continued to kneel anxiously by her side, patting
her hand and murmuring soothing platitudes.

Dr Watson hurried to her side
to check for a pulse but without his medical bag which housed his
stethoscope and some smelling salts there was nothing more he could
do. He held her other wrist and counted the faint beats.

Miss Dee, practical as ever,
ran to the bell pull to summon a servant then began to light the
candles.

Mr Dee threw a log on the fire
then lit two cigarettes and handed one to his sister.

Mr Larssensen puffed nervily on
a cigarette as he paced the bow window.

Countess Volodymyrovna and the
Rajah exchanged concerned glances as they too lit up some
gaspers.

Miss Lambert, who did not
smoke, fanned her flushed face with her hand.

No one remembered Lady Moira
until they heard a clunk.

“Oh, good heavens!” cried Miss
Lambert as her mistress banged her white-coiffed head on the table.
“Is she, er, is she dead, Uncle John?” she stammered when Dr Watson
rushed back to the séance table.

“It’s alright,” he said in a
reassuring tone, discerning a weak pulse in Lady Moira’s carotid
artery. “No one is dead. The two ladies have merely fainted.” He
glanced down the length of the room and realized that the icebox
had turned into an oven full of acrid fumes. His sights shifted to
the Norwegian pacing the bow window. “For goodness sake, man! Open
a window! Fresh air and ventilation is what we need!”

By the time the butler arrived
with a tray of refreshments the panic had passed. The two ladies
had been revived and Dr Watson began to breathe easier. He was
loath to admit it to anyone but he had believed, albeit briefly,
that perhaps one or both of the ladies had indeed died.

Miss O’Hara, slightly dazed and
dizzy, waved away the glass of brandy proffered by Mr Larssensen
and managed with the help of her fiancé to climb the stairs to her
bedroom.

Lady Moira, however, insisted
on downing a large brandy before undertaking the short carriage
drive to Mawgate Lodge. “Did the spirits speak?” she asked of Miss
Lambert.

“Oh, yes, Lady Moira,” the
young woman gushed. “They were quite magnificent!”

“What did they say?” the old
lady quizzed.

“You mean you don’t know?” said
Dr Watson incredulously, helping himself to a generous measure of
brandy to fortify himself for the cold journey home.

“Of course I don’t know!” Lady
Moira returned indignantly, rubbing her forehead. “What sort of
doctor are you? I was in a catatonic state. I had hypnotized
myself. How could I possibly know what was said after I went into a
trance!”

“There were three spirits,”
explained Miss Lambert quickly. “A Pict, a Celt and I think the
last one was a monk from Lammas Abbey. They spoke in rhyming
couplets. It was very poetic and exciting! They pleaded to be
remembered and pitied. And then…”

“Yes?” prompted the old
lady.

Miss Lambert’s auburn brows
drew down in a very pretty bother. “Well, it is hard to describe
what was said next. It was very cryptic. I’m not sure that I
understood it.”

“Repeat it,” directed the other
sternly. “Verbatim.”

“It was something about birds.
Oh, dear, I cannot remember exactly. When Miss O’Hara swooned it
gave me a fright and everything just flew right out of my
mind.”

The Countess, who was enjoying
a coffee and a quiet conversation with the Rajah of Govinda,
remembered it perfectly and recited:

“The whitebird calls
tomorrow,

The redbird smiles hollow,

The blackbird cries sorrow,

The bluebird will follow.”

Lady Moira nodded knowingly and
smiled strangely.

“What did you make of our
evening at Cruddock Castle?” Dr Watson put to his companion when
they were in the landau trundling back to Graymalkin under the
cover of midnight clouds that blotted out the astrological
vault.

“I hardly know where to
start.”

“Start with the dramatis
personae, I mean, the cast of characters, I mean, the other guests.
What impression did you gain?”

“Well, the Rajah of Govinda has
set his sights on making me his fourth wife.”

“What! That is not even
relevant! Not to mention totally absurd! How could you possibly
know something like that after spending a few hours in the man’s
company?”

“A woman always knows.”

“Ah, of course! Female
intuition!”

“That term which you just
trotted out so derisorily is more or less a way of explaining how
the subconscious mind overrides the rational part of the brain,
picking up signals that would otherwise pass unnoticed by the five
senses which are busy keeping up with logical thought.”

He did not want to get
embroiled in an argument about suffragette-ist mumbo-jumbo at this
late hour. “I will yield to your definition for the time being.
Let’s get back to your impression of the other guests.”

“Lola O’Hara is pregnant.”

His jaw dropped. “Did she
confide in you after dinner?”

“I surmised it for myself.”

“Oh, this is too much! You are
trying to rile me!”

“
Pas du tout
. If I
wanted to rile you I would tell you that she slipped upstairs with
her lover after dinner for
un moment d’amour
while everyone
else was distracted.”

“That is scandalous! It borders
on slander! What lover? And, and, even if it were true why should
it rile me?”

“Because you were panting after
her like a lovelorn puppy.”

“Now you are being deliberately
provocative!”

“I cannot help it if you cannot
accept the truth when you hear it.”

He drew a deep breath and
exhaled slowly. “Very well, tell me how you could possibly know she
slipped upstairs with her lover?”

“Both she and Mr Larssensen
arrived late to the library but from separate doors so as not to
invite suspicion by arriving together via the same door. Both had
their hair and clothes in slight disarray. The first person she
looked for when she entered was the Viking and then her
fiancé.”

“That is false and I can prove
it,” he said with conviction. “Mr Dee arrived straight after Miss
O’Hara and announced they had been checking the costumes
together.”