The Revenant of Thraxton Hall: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (24 page)

“It could be pitch or tar,” he speculated, “something naturally occurring. Perhaps the hall was built on an ancient peat bog.”

He looked to Hope, but she had turned her back and was already gliding away, past the ranks of crumbling coffins. Back the way they had come.

He hurried to catch up and they returned in silence to the first chamber.

“Shall I show you something more?” she asked.

Conan Doyle was afraid of what she might show him next. “We have been gone for some time. We should go back.”

But instead, she grabbed his hand and rested it on one of the newer coffins.

“Whose coffin is this?” he asked.

She flashed him a mischievous smile and lifted the lid. It took a moment for Conan Doyle to gather his nerve and look down. Thankfully, the coffin was empty.

“I don’t understand—” He started to say, but then the young woman sat on the edge of the coffin, swung her legs up, and lay down inside. “It is mine,” she said gaily. “I often come down here to lie in it—to see what it will feel like.”

“Young lady, no! You must not!”

He reached into the coffin, slipped his arms around her waist, and began to lift her out. She put a hand on his chest as if to stop him, but then her hand grasped the lapel of his jacket and pulled him close until their faces were inches apart. He could feel her breath on his face and the warmth of her skin beneath the silken nightgown, the quickened pulsing of her heart. He saw up close, for the first time, the tiny crescent moon birthmark in the corner of her lips. He succumbed to the gravitational pull, and their lips brushed. But then—at the very last moment—Conan Doyle realized what was happening and pulled away.

“I—I…” he stammered. “We must get back.”

His words struck like an open-handed slap. A flash of shock and resentment swept her eyes. She sprang from the coffin without his aid and hurried from the crypt, never once looking back.

*   *   *

Even though it was close to two o’clock in the morning, a crack of light showed beneath the door of Oscar Wilde’s room. When Conan Doyle lightly rapped on the door, his friend’s voice immediately called, “Come.”

Conan Doyle shambled in to find the Irishman propped up on a mountain of pillows. He was wearing black silk pajamas and a magnificent gold brocaded dressing gown embroidered with Chinese dragons. Once again the red fez perched atop his head, tilted at a raffish angle. He had a hookah cradled in his lap, and now he placed the mouthpiece between his full lips and drew at it. Water burbled as he sucked in a lungful and then jetted silver smoke from both nostrils.

Conan Doyle looked skeptically at the water pipe. “What’s in that thing?”

“Do not ask,” Wilde answered, “or I shall be forced to lie and tell you it is tobacco.”

Whatever was in the pipe was evidently potent, for Wilde’s features were melting into a fleshy puddle of contentment.

Conan Doyle sniffed the air, nostrils flaring. “Smells like hashish. I wanted you sharp, Oscar. I’m counting on your quick mind.”

“I am salving my mind.”

“Embalming it, more like!”

“As a doctor you should know, Arthur, that one man’s poison is another man’s medicine.” A silly grin smeared across Wilde’s long face. “And your fellow, Sherlock
Whatshisname
, was a free user of cocaine.”

“Yes,
between cases
, not during one!” Conan Doyle harrumphed with irritation, but then his own guilt softened him. He sank onto the end of Wilde’s bed, and dropped his head into his hands. “Forgive me,” he said in a voice of utter defeat. “I apologize. I … have something to confess.…”

Wilde laughed gently. “I’m afraid I am quite the opposite of a priest.”

“Yes, but you are a man of the world. I don’t think I could tell another living soul.”

“Oh,” Wilde breathed, “my poor, dear Arthur. You are a doctor, a man of medicine, and yet you are powerless to save your own wife. No one could. And now … now there is this young woman who has come to you to save her. She is fresh and beautiful and has awakened feelings that even your strict Jesuit upbringing is unable to quash.”

Conan Doyle nodded, his eyes gleaming. “I have no excuses for my behavior.”

“Tush!” Wilde said. “Stay silent for a moment, Arthur, while I play doctor to your soul.”

The Scotsman said nothing, and acquiesced with a nod.

“Arthur Conan Doyle, you are the very best man I have ever known.” Wilde chuckled. “And likely ever will. Your beloved Touie has been an invalid for years. Any lesser man—no, strike that—
any
other man would have sought solace in the arms of a mistress, a paramour, a prostitute … or a close friend’s wife. You and I both have a code we live by. Two very different codes, admittedly—and I would add that my code is a good deal more elastic than yours—but codes, nonetheless. That is why I have admired you since the day we first met.”

“Yes, but I made a vow—”

“And what is a vow but a promise we make to our own vanity?” Wilde put a hand on Conan Doyle’s shoulder. “Touie is dying, Arthur, and that is precisely why you must live. You are still a young man. Do not squander life, when I know you understand how very precious it is.”

Conan Doyle shook his head with resignation. “We may fail. I realize that now, Oscar. We may be powerless.”

“Nonsense,” Wilde said. “You and I are two of the finest minds in England—nay, I’ll be immodest; after all, I have much to be immodest about. We are two of the finest minds
in the world
. Together, we shall prevent this murder. We shall save Hope Thraxton.”

Wilde’s words were encouraging, but as Conan Doyle trudged back to his bedroom, he thought about Hope Thraxton’s erratic behavior and relived the moment when Hope had shown him the coffin that she would lie in, imagining her imminent death. As these thoughts percolated in his mind, an unpleasant reality loomed, one that he had been unable to broach with Wilde—the possibility that Hope Thraxton’s porphyria had driven her into madness.

CHAPTER 20

DEATH COMES TO THRAXTON HALL

The sound of weeping dredged Conan Doyle up from a suffocating tangle of dreams. He lay still a moment, ears straining, uncertain whether the sound was real, or merely the residue of a dream evaporating from his mind.

And then he heard it again: a child’s sobbing, the faint scratching of nails on wood, and a small voice whispering a barely audible string of sibilants.

Beware.

Heart thumping, he sat up in bed. Holding his breath. Listening.

Beware.

He slipped quietly from bed and crept barefoot across the cold rug to the door, where he hovered motionless.

Nails scratched on the far side of the door.

Beware.

His hand tightened on the knob, slowly turning. When he felt the latch ease open, he tensed himself and snatched the door wide.

Shadows. Emptiness. Nothing.

He stepped out into the dark hallway and peered along its length. At the corridor’s end he could dimly perceive the shadowy silhouette of a small girl. As he moved toward her, she took a step backward into the light. The glow of a paraffin lamp left burning at the top of the staircase fell across her face. It was a young girl in a grubby blue dress: the ghostly figure he had seen in the coppice. But she was real, of that he was certain, for she was solid, and the lamplight gleamed in her eye.

“Who are you, little girl?” he called in a hoarse whisper.

She took a step backward.
Beware.

“Beware of what?” He took a step toward her, holding a hand out, beckoning. “I have children of my own. A little girl almost your age. Won’t you let me help you?”

Beware of the mirror.

“What mirror?” He eased a step forward. “Please tell me what you mean.”

It was the same girl in the blue dress he first spotted in the coppice. He was certain of it.

Find the mirror and you will find her
.

He took another step, but the child turned and bolted, running down the hallway that led to the grand staircase. Without thinking, Conan Doyle gave chase. As he thundered around the corner, she was thirty feet ahead. And she was definitely real: he could hear her small feet drumming as she ran away. She turned right down another corner and he followed, gaining ground until he was mere feet behind. This hallway ended in a blank wall and he knew he had her cornered. But the little girl continued running until she reached the end of the corridor …

… and went straight through the wall.

Conan Doyle slid to a halt, breathless and amazed.

*   *   *

The next morning, as he descended the grand staircase, still groggy from lack of sleep, Conan Doyle reached the fateful step that made the entire staircase shake like jelly. Unprepared, he missed his footing and barely avoided a breakneck tumble by seizing a banister. The shock was enough to jolt him fully awake. As he regained his footing, he looked down at the entrance hall and found it was not empty. Lord Philipp Webb stood beneath the extinguished candelabrum, staring up at the portrait of Mariah Thraxton. Although he was some distance away, Conan Doyle thought he could detect a look of sensual longing on the patrician face.

Just then, Mister Greaves shuffled into the entrance hall, startling Lord Webb. He straightened his posture, his face regaining its usual haughty expression as he hastily replaced the black pince-nez on his nose.

“You there—servant,” he snarled. “Where is breakfast being served?”

Mister Greaves paused. “In the conservatory, sir. If you like I could lead you—”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Lord Webb, cutting him off in mid-sentence. He turned on his heel and strode off down the hallway. Conan Doyle paused a moment and then followed at a distance. Webb was a fast walker, and Conan Doyle had a job to keep up as the aristocrat strode along the hallways, devouring the distance with his long legs, and swept into the conservatory. Conan Doyle lingered a moment outside and then entered. Once again, he was late arriving and most everyone else had already breakfasted, as evidenced by the wreckage of plates the domestics were clearing away. Lord Webb was already seated at a small table, giving his breakfast order to the maid, while a lone figure sat at a small wrought-iron table next to the windows: Oscar Wilde, who was scribbling in a notebook as the Scottish doctor flopped heavily into the chair beside him.

“What are you writing, Oscar?”

“A poem,” Wilde said. “Like the Romantic Poets, I am inspired by ruins, especially when I am residing in one.” He finished a line and looked up at his friend. “Good Lord, Arthur. You’ve been in a fight. Tell me, did you win?”

Conan Doyle shook a head spun full of cobwebs. “Once again I slept poorly. Keep having the most beastly nightmares.”

“Ask them to move you.”

Conan Doyle massaged his eyes with the palms of his hands until flocks of black crows swarmed his vision. “Oddly enough, I don’t want to. The dreams are quite fascinating. Much dross for future stories.”

Wilde responded with a baffled shake of his head. “Arthur, only you would find something good in nightmares.”

Conan Doyle glanced down at Wilde’s plate. A large fish, skeletal from the gills down, stared up reproachfully. “What are, or rather were, you breakfasting on, Oscar?”

“Trout,” Wilde replied. “Caught from the very stream that is currently holding me hostage.” He dabbed a linen napkin to the corner of his smirk. “I consider that a form of revenge.”

The only fish Conan Doyle ever ate at breakfast was kippers. He looked up as the head housekeeper, Mrs. Kragan, entered with Mr. Greaves at her shoulder. She scanned the tables, spotted him, and walked swiftly over.

“I’ll have porridge followed by bacon and—”

“Doctor Doyle,” she interrupted, “you are a medical doctor, are you not, sir?”

The question took him by surprise. “Uh, why yes. That is correct.”

A look of discomfort swept her haggard features. “Then we may have need of your services.”

Conan Doyle thought of the blue girl he had seen or dreamed of the night before—the spectral girl whose appearance presaged death—and felt a cold current of dread flood through him.

*   *   *

“It is Madame Zhozhovsky,” Mrs. Kragan explained as they hurried along the second floor hallway. “She asked to be awakened at seven
A.M.
each morning. I’ve knocked repeatedly and so has Mister Greaves, but there’s no answer.”

When they reached the room, Toby the gardener, a rustic chap in a stained smock, was holding a pickaxe, apparently ready to break the door down.

Conan Doyle had been present at a number of police investigations and immediately took command. “I take it the door is locked and you have no second key?”

“Alas,” Mr. Greaves said, “the second key to this room was lost forty years ago.”

“What’s more, the door is locked from the inside,” Mrs. Kragan interjected. “We have no choice but to break it down.”

Conan Doyle knelt and peered in through the keyhole. Fortunately, the key had not been left in the lock. He thought a moment and then addressed the head housekeeper: “Mrs. Kragan, I shall need two hairpins, the longest and stoutest you have.”

The matron blinked at the request, but after a moment’s hesitation pulled two such pins from her enormous pile of hair, releasing two long gray strands.

“Thank you,” Conan Doyle said, receiving them. “I will need to recompense you for these pins, as I’m about to destroy them.”

With practiced, deft moves, Conan Doyle inserted the ends of the hairpins into the lock and, with his strong hands and some grimacing, bent the ends. He then reinserted them into the keyhole, twisting one and vibrating the other in the lock. A moment later the lock snapped open to the surprise of everyone watching, earning him a round of applause and a clap on the shoulder and a “good show!” from Oscar Wilde.

He blushed at the response. “Research for my detective fiction,” he explained to all. “I swear I have never used this knowledge for untoward purposes.”

Conan Doyle turned the door handle, cracked the door six inches, and called inside: “Madame Zhozhovsky, are you decent?”