The Map of Chaos (13 page)

C
LAYTON'S LEFT ARM WAS
eventually fitted with a hand fashioned from metal and wood, a sophisticated device with rivets and screws and bronze spokes extending from the wrist and tapering off into jointed fingers. It also contained a newfangled mechanism whereby each time the inspector tensed an arm muscle the gesture was translated into a movement of his mechanical hand. The invention had been a gift from Her Majesty, who had commanded her private surgeon, together with a celebrated master armorer and one of Prague's greatest automaton makers, to join their skills with those of the Special Branch's scientists to ensure that Captain Sinclair's most promising novice needn't go round like a useless cripple. Overwhelmed, Clayton had shown his gratitude the best way he knew how, by practicing for days on end to be able to clasp the monarch's hand with his shiny prosthesis before planting on it the customary kiss. In spite of all that, it hadn't been the most elegant of greetings, for his metal hand scarcely responded with the same precision as his original hand. And things had not improved much since then, he realized with regret each time he tried to carry out the simplest domestic task. He had just discovered he wasn't very skilled at sealing windows either. Still, in time he would learn to use the thing more naturally, he reflected with a sigh. If he kept practicing, he would soon be able to hold a beer glass without smashing it, or take a queen's hand without fracturing a couple of her fingers. After all, he had only had it just over seven months. Seven months since the Countess de Bompard had chewed off his real hand, leaving him mutilated in more ways than one.

“Are you all right, Inspector?” Sinclair asked, noticing Clayton gazing dreamily at the window it had taken him so long to seal.

“Er . . . yes, quite all right, Captain . . . This one's finished.”

Sinclair gave a nod of satisfaction and went over to the window, where, as representative of the investigating committee, he added his flamboyant signature to the seal. Then he nodded to Clayton, and the two men approached the center of the spacious room, where the other members of the committee were waiting to take part that evening in the séance led by Madame Amber.

“Good. Everything has been set up so that we can verify the authenticity of the events under the strictest possible conditions,” announced Sinclair, casting a stern eye over the gathering. “As you are aware, Sir Henry Blendell, architect to Her Majesty the Queen, whose integrity is unimpeachable, and the creator of the most celebrated secret passageways and trick furniture in history, having examined Madame Amber's mansion from top to bottom, and in particular this room where the séance is to take place, has signed a document stating that he has found no evidence of mechanical jiggery-pokery in this house. There are no trapdoors or hidden springs in this room, or in any part of the house, and no false bottoms or rotating panels in any of the furniture. As for the table we will sit at during the séance, it has been thoroughly checked over for wheels or pulleys or any other kind of lifting device. Furthermore, Inspector Clayton and I have boarded up the fireplace and sealed the only two windows in the room. We have likewise placed bells on the bottoms of the curtains and scattered sawdust on the floor, so any trapdoors that might have escaped Sir John's attention will be impossible to open without our becoming aware of it. Doctor Ramsey and Professor Crookes, both of whom are with us today, have set up their equipment around the room. These include recording thermometers, light-measuring machines, and infrared devices. In addition, the séance will be recorded on a phonograph, whose cylinder will be kept in our archives should anyone wish to consult it at a later date . . . In light of all this, I think it is safe to say that never before has the stage for a spiritualist séance been so thoroughly examined. I'm afraid that any spirits wishing to make an appearance here tonight will have to be genuine.”

Everyone received the captain's words with nods and grunts of approval, and some even giggled nervously, unable to contain their excitement.

“Good, we only have to wait for the ladies to finish examining Madame Amber, and the séance can begin,” Sinclair said finally, glancing toward the partition at one end of the room.

It was an exquisite Japanese screen made of mahogany and bamboo, about twenty feet wide and divided into four embroidered silk panels representing the four seasons. The gentlemen members of the committee were staring at it, not so much entranced by its delicate appearance as by the suggestive rustle of garments behind it. For on the far side of its panels one of those scenes was taking place that men usually had to pay to see: the only two lady members of the committee were busy undressing Madame Amber. Through the latticework running along the bottom of the screen, the medium's small, pale feet were visible, like two little white mice at play amid the women's hulking shoes.

Clayton was also observing the screen, almost without seeing it, though for quite different reasons. As he did so, he was imagining his voice as he unmasked Madame Amber being captured for eternity on the phonograph cylinder. He was fascinated by the idea that his words might endure so long, remaining imprinted on that roll of paraffined cardboard while he grew old and turned into someone who no longer resembled the youth who had uttered them. Assured that the cylinder would imbue his words with a modest degree of immortality, he merely would need to clear his throat and pronounce his accusations in a clear, loud voice, as though projecting from a stage. For he would succeed in unmasking Madame Amber, of that he had no doubt.

Given his intentions, Clayton could not help but feel his presence in the commission was rather deceitful, since someone at some ministry or other had suggested Captain Sinclair and his finest detective in the Special Branch join it in order to do exactly the opposite. Ever since the year 1848, when in a small American town called Hydesville the Fox sisters had contacted a spirit by means of a crude method of sounds and spirit raps, a veritable plague of mediums had spread all over the planet. So much so that toward the middle of the century there was hardly a soirée where the guests didn't clear the table after dinner, eager to try communicating with the dead. Indeed, around that time, according to what Clayton had read in
The Yorkshireman,
invitations to “tea and table turning” became all the rage in the United States, reaching the shores of England in the 1860s with the arrival of the medium Daniel Dunglas Home, who decided to settle in England to seek a cure for a lung ailment. At the time, Home was considered the greatest medium the world had ever seen. There were currently more than a hundred mediums in London alone: ferrymen without a ferry eager to transport the living over to the other shore so that they could communicate with their dead, for rather more coins than the single one Charon charged for the passage.

Because so many charlatans had taken advantage of the situation to try to make their fortunes at the expense of the credulous, it was inevitable that committees would be formed to separate the wheat from the chaff. The problem was that, although the members of such committees were noteworthy men and women, known for their moral rectitude, most had only one goal: to expose charlatans. According to defenders of the cause, this created a wall of negative vibrations through which spirits were unable to pass, resulting in some mediums feeling obliged to resort to trickery. To Clayton it seemed like the most childish excuse, yet he couldn't deny they were right about the attitude of most committee members. When they stumbled on the fantastical, they refused to recognize it as such, however much irrefutable evidence they were confronted with. Clayton had read a few of their curious reports, which alternated between an almost offensive disdain for the medium or a dismissive shrug of the shoulders when they failed to prove he or she was a sham. Occasionally, they would proffer explanations for some psychic phenomena that were even less credible than the involvement of spirits themselves. Anything was preferable to acceptance. Moreover, it was absurd to create a research group to study spiritual phenomena made up of people who were prejudiced against the subject they were supposed to be investigating. That was why he and Sinclair had been invited to join the committee: to act as a counterbalance to the intransigent skepticism of the majority of its members with their openness toward the supernatural as a possible explanation for such happenings, assuming there was no other, of course. After all, the assumption was that the two inspectors from Scotland Yard's Special Branch, who rode on unicorns and danced with fairies, were far less reluctant when it came to accepting the forays that spirits made into our world. And that was the position Clayton had decided to adopt. Until he saw for the first time the poster of the beautiful, ethereal Madame Amber inviting her clientele to visit her salon with a false air of dreamy innocence. From that moment on, he realized it was his duty to unmask her, to bring to an end her peaceful reign of deception; of parading through the smartest salons in London, leaving everyone in awe; of living like a goddess in the midst of the poor, foolish mortals, whose pockets she emptied with a smile on her face. Yes, it was his duty, because only he could see the cunning self-interest oozing from her beautiful eyes. Because only he could see the truth behind the pretty face of a woman who was always used to getting what she wanted.

•  •  •

T
HE INSPECTOR TOOK ADVANTAGE
of everyone gazing at the screen to examine the other members of the committee once more. He had already checked their backgrounds, since it was common practice for bogus mediums to rely on accomplices during their séances. However, none of them had aroused his suspicions, since most of them had published an article or taken part in a debate that was critical of spiritualism. The various members consisted of Ramsey, a lanky doctor with a horsey face, who was not only a professor at the School of Medicine but also a celebrated surgeon, an eminent chemist, and a brilliant biologist who apparently had a penchant for cracking his knuckles at regular intervals; the burly, dynamic Colonel Garrick, in charge of sanitation at the Ministry of Defense; the discreet engineer, Holland; the frail Professor Burke, who lectured at the School of Law; an aristocrat turned magician who called himself Count Duggan, and whose eccentric presence in the group owed itself to the fact that the main psychic phenomena of the medium world could be reproduced artificially by sleight of hand; and last but not least a scientist with curly whiskers and a bushy beard named William Crookes, awarded a gold medal by the Royal Society in recognition of his numerous and valuable discoveries.

Besides the two inspectors, and one other member of the committee who will be introduced shortly, Crookes was the only one with an open-minded attitude toward spiritualism, although that hadn't always been the case. The eminent scientist had begun his research into psychic phenomena driven by the moral necessity of exposing the deceit they involved, a gesture that was much lauded by his colleagues, who were keen for someone of his stature to teach the members of that burgeoning sect a lesson. However, after investigating Home, Crookes had not delivered the hoped-for verdict. In an article he wrote for
The Quarterly Journal of Science,
he had conceded the existence of a new power, to which he had given the pompous name “psychic force.” His conclusions had thrown the scientific establishment into turmoil, condemning Crookes to an icy professional ostracism. Only a few of his closest friends, like Doctor Ramsey, who was also on the committee, had remained loyal to him, although they chose to maintain a reserved silence with regard to his enthusiastic claims. But Crookes had seen Home float his armchair up to the ceiling and trace in the air a little girl's hand, which then plucked the petals from the flower in his lapel, and so what else could he have said?

However, the most shocking incident was still to come. After his studies of the celebrated Home were published, Crookes received a visit from the no-less-famous Florence Cook, a fifteen-year-old girl of humble origin who had gained considerable prestige as a medium thanks to her ectoplasmic materializations: more precisely, those of a spirit named Katie King, who claimed she was the daughter of the legendary pirate Henry Morgan. For three years, Florence had been summoning Katie in front of numerous witnesses, and, as was frequently the case, the more miraculous a medium's exploits, the more the shadow of suspicion hung over him or her. Ridding herself of that shadow was what brought Florence to Crookes's elegant house in Mornington Road to make him the following proposal: if he could demonstrate that her powers were false, he was free to expose her publicly to the press; if on the contrary he proved they were genuine, he would likewise make it public. Crookes accepted the young girl's challenge and invited her to live with him and his large family for as long as it took to carry out the experiments. It was a bold gesture that had caused a stir, not only among the scientific establishment, but also in society at large, as one can imagine. Crookes spent three months examining Florence in his study and also organized several public séances, to which he invited half a dozen of his fellow scientists. The séances always followed the same course: young Florence, with her hands bound, connected to a galvanometer by a few slender wires, would lie on Crookes's study floor, her black velvet dress pinned down and her face covered with a shawl so that the light in the room would not distract her. A few moments later she would go into a trance, and to everyone's amazement a beautiful young girl dressed in white would appear, claiming she was the ghost of Katie King. With a coquettish laugh, Katie would agree to be photographed by Crookes using one of his homemade cameras; she would stroll arm in arm with him, recounting stories of India, where she had lived an earthly life full of adventure; and she would even perch on the laps of the most skeptical gentlemen, mischievously stroking their beards. As there were plenty who claimed that, owing to their striking resemblance and the fact they were never in the same room together at the same time, Katie and Florence were one and the same person, Crookes was obliged to carry out further experiments to establish a series of differences between them. Katie, unlike Florence, did not have pierced ears; she was also taller than Florence, had fairer skin and hair, and there was no small scar on her neck. One day when Florence was suffering from a cold, Crookes had listened to her chest with a stethoscope and discovered she had a wheeze, whereas Katie's lungs presented no such symptoms to his ears. As if that were not enough, Crookes convinced Katie to remain in the same room as the medium and be photographed beside her, and although he made no attempt to uncover Florence's face for fear it might bring her out of her trance, it was clear these were two different women.