Echoes of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon(38)

“One of the dead was your son, Kingsley. Please accept my sympathy,” Holmes said.

“He was the second child that Touie and I had,” Conan Doyle managed to say. “By then, my relationship with Kingsley wasn’t the best. He went to war to defend our nation, of course, but I suspect that he also took risks to prove himself to me. He was wounded at the battle of the Somme. He seemed to be recovering, but then the Spanish Influenza took him down. And my brother, Innis, died in the war. And my brother-in-law, Malcolm. And another brother-in-law . . .” He didn’t have the strength to say the name. “And two nephews. And . . . So many of them gone. Surely it couldn’t be forever. Surely their souls hadn’t merely ceased to exist. At séances, my son contacted me, assuring me that he was contented and that he’d met my brother over there and . . .”

Again, Conan Doyle’s voice dropped.

“Perhaps that’s when your true conversion to spiritualism occurred, not many years earlier,” Holmes suggested. “Could your intense grief have made you want to believe desperately that your son and your brother and all the others weren’t truly dead?”

“It was more than my emotions playing tricks on me.” Conan Doyle pointed angrily. “Do you see those wax gloves of a spirit’s hands?”

“Indeed.”

“Prior to a séance, an associate and I prepared a container of heated wax. A dim red light allowed us to see the medium lapse into a trance. Suddenly a spirit’s hands plunged into the heated wax. As suddenly, when the hands emerged, they disappeared, leaving these wax gloves on the table. Look at the cuffs on the gloves. They’re the size of a man’s wrists. If the hands were those of an ordinary person, the gloves couldn’t have been removed without being damaged. The only way these gloves could have survived in the perfect way that you see them is if the hands became disembodied.”

“Master illusionist that he is, Houdini would perhaps—”

“Don’t mention his name.”

“—suggest the following: The hands that plunged into the heated wax were those of the medium’s assistant. The assistant withdrew his wax-covered hands into the darkness beyond the pale red light, leaving wax gloves that had been prepared in advance.”

“You sound exactly like Houdini. But I anticipated his usual smug objection. The gloves couldn’t have been prepared in advance. I put an identifying chemical into the wax, and the wax of these gloves contains the same chemical.”

“When did you obtain the chemical?”

“The day before the séance.”

“If I had been the medium’s assistant, I’d have observed your activities for a few days before the séance. When you went to the shop to buy the chemical, I’d have followed. When you left the shop, I’d have entered the shop and found a pretense to persuade the shopkeeper to tell me what you’d purchased.”

Conan Doyle stared at him. “But you don’t know for certain that such a thing happened.”

“That is correct.”

“Then you haven’t disproved the validity of these wax gloves, any more than you disproved the validity of these photographs.”

“Granted. Earlier, you said that Houdini insulted your wife.”

“My second wife, Jean, is herself a medium. She receives messages from an Oriental spirit named Pheneas. These visitations began five years ago. With her deep honesty, Jean at first resisted the impulses, wondering if perhaps she subconsciously self-willed them. But eventually, through her inspired automatic writing and through a process in which she lapsed into a trance, Jean and I became convinced that the visitations were authentic. Through Pheneas, we received messages from my mother and my brother and our son and all our other dear departed loved ones.”

“I gather that Houdini is skeptical about your wife’s ability,” Holmes said.

“If the wretch had expressed his doubts to me personally, I would have perhaps made allowances! But instead he did it publicly, telling American newspapers—the newspapers, mind you—that my wife’s . . . that she’s . . . a fake! Equally unforgivable, he accused me of thinking I was a Messiah come to save mankind through the mysteries of spiritualism. He claimed that I misled the public with teachings that are, to use his words, ‘a menace to sanity and health.’ I never spoke to him again.”

“Understandably,” Holmes said.

“Pheneas has been immensely helpful. He warned me that if Jean and I went on a proposed trip to Scandinavia last year, the consequences would have been dire, perhaps a horrible accident. But through Jean, Pheneas approved of a resort in Switzerland for the same vacation. Pheneas also approved of the new country house that I bought for Jean to stay in while I’m here in London, doing what I can to attract people to this shop.”

“You mentioned that your mother, brother, son, and other dear departed loved ones visited you through Pheneas. Did that include your first wife?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t that seem strange?”

“Touie didn’t approve of my interest in spiritualism.”

“But now your first wife would know that you’re right. She ought to be happy to tell you so. What about your father? Was he one of the loved ones who visited you from the afterlife?”

“No.”