Seance for a Vampire

Two

On the appointed day, exactly a week after our first meeting with Ambrose Altamont, Holmes and I in response to our client’s invitation journeyed to his country house. At Victoria Station we boarded a train to the sizable village of Amberley in buckinghamshire.

We arrived in midafternoon. Martin Armstrong, who had come down from London a day earlier, had promised to meet us at the local station with his motorcar. For some reason I had rather expected an American machine–perhaps one of the new Oldsmobiles–but in fact the journalist was driving one of the Mercedes-Simplex models of 1902, a two-seater capable of carrying five or six passengers easily. According to some notes that I jotted down at the time, this vehicle was rated at forty horsepower, and equipped with the patented scroll clutch and four gears forward. Clearly Armstrong had so far recovered from his tragic loss as to take a proud interest in his new automobile and to discuss some of its finer points with us.

Only now, confronted by this evidence of material prosperity, did I fully realize how successful Armstrong must be in his chosen profession. Later I was to discover that he had successfully published one book in America and was at work upon a second.

Norberton House, as Armstrong informed us, was about three miles from the village, set in fine farming and hunting country. The day was still sunny and warm, recent rains had left the countryside fresh and green, and as we rode we enjoyed the sight of summer fields and hedgerows.

As we traveled, we queried our companion as to whether there had been any new developments relating to our business; as far as Armstrong knew, there had not.

Holmes also asked whether Armstrong had observed any new indication that he was being followed, either here or in London; and the American replied in the negative.

We learned also that neither Mr. nor Mrs. Altamont had changed their respective, and diametrically opposite, positions with regard to the mediums; but Mr. Altamont had managed to convince his wife that he was now ready to approach the subject with an open mind. One result of this announced change in attitude was that the Kirkaldys were now established in the house as guests.

We were about halfway to our destination, approaching a bridge spanning a small river, when our driver slowed the motor. “This is the Shade,” he informed us tersely. “One of the tributaries of the Thames. If we were to follow it downstream from here, we should come, within a quarter of a mile, to the place where the thing happened last month. Follow the stream a mile or so farther, and we’d be at the boundary of the grounds of Norberton House.”

In response to a request from Holmes, Armstrong stopped his automobile just past the bridge. My friend was obviously interested, and dismounted from the car. In a moment we had joined him at the stone balustrade, overlooking the river that was here fifteen or twenty yards in width. Pointing downstream, Armstrong informed us in a low voice: “The exact spot where our boat capsized cannot be seen from anywhere along the road. but it lies only a few hundred yards from here.”

Sherlock Holmes gazed thoughtfully in the indicated direction. “It is almost impossible that there should be any real clues discoverable after such a lapse of time; still, I should like to see the place.”

“Easily managed. We can reach it by this footpath.”

Leaving the automobile standing clear of the bridge at the edge of the road, we walked along a grassy, lightly-worn riparian path, which curved in accordance with the river’s bends. Presently a noise of violent splashing reached us from ahead, along with a cheerful outcry in childish voices. Moments later I caught a glimpse of white bodies through the greenery, and we came upon a small pile of discarded clothing. Two young lads were engaged in diving and swimming from the bank. Holmes hailed a pair of wet heads bobbing in the water, put them at ease with some remarks about the hot weather and their sport, then asked several questions. Wide-eyed the boys protested that they had been nowhere near the river on the day when the lady had been drowned.

“Is it deep here, then?” Holmes inquired.

“Not at all, sir. I can touch bottom anywhere,’cept right here in the channel.” Raising both hands above his head, the speaker, who was near the center of the stream, disappeared from view by way of demonstration.

We waved farewell and moved along. When we had gone another forty yards or so, to a position halfway around another bend, and the sounds of childish innocence had resumed behind us, Armstrong informed us that we were now looking at the exact place where the boat had tipped.

Here both green banks were lined with trees, willows in particular, among which our path followed a twisting course. Insects droned among the leaves and branches, many of which closely overhung the water. There were no natural hazards visible, and certainly no turbulence in the placid flow, beyond that caused by a small fish jumping. Thoughtfully my friend surveyed the opaque surface of the stream, brown with the soil it carried, then scooped up a little of the water, which looked clear in his palm.

“Was the level much different three weeks ago?” he asked.

“No.” Armstrong, standing with arms folded and head down, was naturally subdued.

“The water at this point cannot be much deeper, I suppose, than it is upstream where the lads are bathing?”

“Perhaps a little; not enough to matter. The channel all along this part of the river is certainly deep enough to drown in, eight or ten feet I’d say, and it lies everywhere near the center of the stream. but for most of its width the stream can be waded.”

“You have been boating on it frequently?”

“Even swimming in it several times. And boating, with Louisa, on two earlier occasions, before...”

Holmes nodded sympathetically. He looked upstream and down. “Nowhere does the current seem particularly swift.”

Armstrong shook his head. “It’s not, of course. Not anyplace within miles of here. I’ve made a rough measurement, pacing beside it with my watch; no more than two miles an hour. A man can walk a great deal faster than that. That’s one reason why the whole business is still–” he gestured awkwardly “–still so hard to understand. And wait till you see the boat we were in! Not a punt or a canoe, but a regular, solid, broad-beamed craft of the dinghy type. Quite difficult to tip. There was some talk at the inquest of a possible collision with a submerged log, which I thought made little sense.”

“Was that the coroner’s conclusion?”

Armstrong shrugged. “No one was able to produce a log, either sunken or afloat. The verdict was just’death by misadventure’–the officially accepted theory seemed to be one of jolly horseplay among the boaters getting out of hand, that we’d all crowded to one side and turned her over. That might easily explain what happened–except it isn’t true.”

“You did not publicly dispute the accepted theory?”

“I tried, at first, but gave up. What was the use? In any case the ruling was essentially that Louisa died by accidental drowning–what else could it have been?”

“But when her body was eventually discovered, it lay far downstream from here.”

“Yes–very far. Almost a mile.”

Holmes’s attitude and voice were sympathetic. “As I understand it, there were only the three of you aboard the boat?”

“Yes. Louisa and myself–I was manning the single pair of oars, at least during most of the outing–and Louisa’s younger sister, Rebecca, was with us.”

My friend looked at our companion keenly. “How do you explain the boat’s capsizing, Mr. Armstrong?”

The young man uttered a small, bitter sound, not quite a laugh. “Do you know, Mr. Holmes, I believe you’re the first one to come straight out and ask me that question. Many people...look at me as though they are certain I must be somehow at fault, that someone aboard must have been doing something foolish at the time, to tip the boat. but very few have said so. And not even the coroner has put that question to me in so many words. To hear it actually comes as something of a relief.” With a swift movement he bent, picked up a pebble from the muddy margin of the stream, and hurled it violently into the water.

“Well?”

Armstrong faced us and spoke calmly. “The only answer I can give you is that I am as puzzled as everyone else. I was rowing–quite gently, I assure you–sitting in the middle of the center seat and facing the girls, who were both sitting in the stern. None of us were trying, either playfully or in earnest, to capsize our vessel. No one was leaning over the side. One moment we were cruising along as smooth as you please– and the next we were tipping violently, and a moment after that we were all three in the water.”

“‘Tipping violently,’ you say?”

“Very much so. The only way I can describe it, gentlemen, is that it was as if something–something on the order of a giant seamonster perhaps–had seized the boat and shaken it. Rebecca agrees. but of course that makes no sense at all.” The young man shrugged. It was as if, with the passage of time, his attitude had become hardened and fatalistic.

“Had you been out in the rowboat long?”

“Something less than an hour.” Armstrong paused to sigh, then proceeded, in the tone of a witness repeating a story already told a hundred times. “It was getting late, and soon it would be dusk, and we decided to go back. We had come upstream some distance, between half a mile and a mile I’d say, from the little dock at Norberton House.

“I had just turned the boat around and had rowed a few more strokes–gently, as I say, because we were now starting to go downstream. I was preparing to ship one oar and let the current carry us back–keeping one oar in the water as a paddle, to steer with and fend off the bank as necessary, you understand?”

“Of course. Go on.”

Armstrong hesitated momentarily. “Then there was...”

Holmes waited a moment before prodding. “There was what?”

“Nothing, nothing at all. I mean there was only the violent shaking, from some invisible cause, and we capsized. For which I have no explanation, reasonable or otherwise.”

My friend shot me a glance. “Could Louisa swim?”

“Not at all.”

“How can you be certain?”

“Well, that’s not a skill possessed by many women, particularly in this country, or so I’m told. but I’m certain in her case, because when we were setting out in the boat she even joked a little about it. She said something, in a light-hearted way, about having to rely on me to... rescue her, if there was trouble. And then when it actually happened...”

The young man’s mask of near-indifference cracked, and he found it necessary to pause for a moment.

Presently he continued: “When the thing happened, the idea even passed through my mind–while I was diving, again and again, trying to find her–it even occurred to me that there ought to have been some chance that the big skirts and petticoats, you know, the things women wear, that those garments might have trapped air, and could keep a girl afloat for a time. but nothing–” Again our witness was compelled to halt.

“But nothing of the kind happened,” I concluded for him.

Armstrong nodded, his face once more downcast.

“I take it,” Holmes remarked after a moment, “that the boat was not visibly damaged in the accident? And that it was later returned to the family dock? Just so. I should like to see it.”

Armstrong blinked at him. “I’m sure there will be no difficulty about that.”

“When you first swam or waded ashore: did you come to this bank or the opposite?”

“This one.”

“And in helping Rebecca ashore?”

“This one again. That only needed a moment or two. Then I went back into the water, looking for Louisa. I dove, and dove again...”

Holmes raised a hand; for the moment, no more need be said. One look at the muddy shoreline was enough to convince him that no trace could still endure of the events of three weeks ago.

Presently we began in silence to retrace our steps along the path, and soon regained our motor. Armstrong had no difficulty in cranking the machine to life. Only a short drive remained to bring us to our destination.

The manor called Norberton House stood on what Armstrong told us were approximately twenty acres of partially wooded, parklike grounds. Judging from the design of the house, which was constructed of mellow red brick, I thought it had been built in the late eighteenth century, or at least remodeled and enlarged at about that time. Two wings, each two stories high, extended west and east of a central hall.

“The family has a private burial ground?” Holmes inquired, as our machine swung in from the public road to the gravel drive.

“Sir?” Young Armstrong, turning his head, seemed to doubt that he had heard the question accurately above the roar of the motor.

“I am asking about Louisa’s interment–was it nearby?”

“Yes–the cemetery is no more than about half a mile away.” The driver, both hands momentarily busy with controls, indicated a direction with a nod.

“Below ground, or above? Pray forgive what must sound like great impertinence; I have my reasons.”

“In the old family mausoleum,” replied young Armstrong wonderingly, and favored my friend with a strange look indeed.

Holmes expressed a wish to see the cemetery as well as the boat. “before dark this evening would be best, but if that proves inconvenient the matter can wait until the morning.”

“If you wish, I am sure there will be no objection.” but the young man was frowning; plainly he did not understand.

Upon our arrival at Norberton House...