Sherlock Holmes In America

GHOSTS AND THE MACHINE by Lloyd Rose

Lloyd Rose, former chief drama critic of the Washington Post, has written for the New Yorker and the Atlantic and is the author of three Doctor Who novels for BBC Books.

Excerpts from the journal of Mycroft Holmes, autumn 1874

25 September-Sherlock is bored.

This condition is not my doing, as I keep reminding him. I no more wanted this educational trip to the green wilds of American New England than he, but if between us we could not dissuade Father, then there’s an end to it. I have accommodated myself most comfortably. This agreeable inn-a spacious, rambling, white-frame structure-has a number of airy porches furnished with wicker armchairs of generous proportion. While Father explores the golf links, I sit and admire the mountains, now shifting from green to crimson and gold, and concentrate on my Adam Smith.

Note: the Americans do whiskey atrociously but tobacco very well indeed.

29 September-I managed to talk my way out of a “delightful” hike to a local waterfall today while Sherlock did not. This was amusing.

2 October-“Even the people here are dull,” he complains to me. I could retort that they are not much duller than the folk of the English countryside, but honesty compels me to admit he is not entirely wrong. The guests are almost exclusively members of the upper-middle classes from New York and Boston-pleasant enough, but intellectually limited, and with much the same sort of lives. Of the late war they appear to try to remember as little as possible, though I am certain that among the older generation many lost sons. Sherlock tells me that in a few of the local cemeteries he has explored for their native plant life, there are numerous graves of men who fell in battle ten and twelve years ago.

5 October-I overheard a ridiculous but nonetheless rather interesting conversation today. As a rule, I am fortunate enough to find a corner of the porch where I can be more or less by myself, but today a party invaded the area, taking over a table and ordering lemonade and a light lunch. There were two of them, both in banking, one a collector of ancient Byzantine (or perhaps, just perhaps, late Roman) coins and the other with a recent history of tuberculosis and an overdeveloped anxiety about rabbits. The former, whom I would have assumed to be the steadier of the pair, was regaling his companion with an extraordinary tale.

“I assure you,” said he, “I am not inventing this. Nor have I succumbed to some delusional illness. And I was quite as sober as I am now.”

“Nonetheless,” replied his friend, “you can understand that I find your story difficult to believe.”

“I should not have believed it myself if I had not seen. I scoffed when I first heard of the place.”

“Which is called the Ghost Factory-”

“Ghost Shop.”

“Oh, indeed!”

“That’s only the derisive title of some of the natives who resent the invasion of so many tourists into their quiet town. The place is actually an inn run by a pair of brothers who, several evenings a week, hold mediumistic sittings in an upstairs room.”

“My dear Daniel-”

“I know, I know, but hear me out!”

“I have heard you out. You say that musical instruments play themselves-”

“-are heard to play when no human hand could touch them-”

“-and that dozens of spirits of Red Indians appear-”

“Chinamen too! And child spirits.”

“Popping up through a hidden trapdoor, no doubt.”

This was my private opinion as well, but the storyteller shook his head emphatically.

“No indeed. That’s part of the wonder of the thing. The place has been investigated by an expert in the detection of fraud who has had the floors and walls examined and is prepared to swear there are no secret entrances.” At this point, regrettably, two young ladies joined the gentlemen, and the conversation veered off in a duller direction. I own myself intrigued. The idea of spirits is absurd, of course, but this sounds like quite a complicated hoax. If I can inquire without actually seeming interested in the nonsensical matter, I would like to find out more. Perhaps I can set Sherlock on the scent.

Later-Sherlock uncooperative. “Twaddle!” sniffed he, and proceeded to give me a patronizing lecture on human gullibility. He really can be most tiresome.

8 October-We were joined at dinner tonight by a gentleman Father had met that morning. Sherlock and I observed him with some interest from the door of the dining room, ourselves as yet undetected. He was a man of about forty with a short moustache and beard and an impressive, straight-backed presence.

“Military,” said Sherlock, as if that were not obvious to anyone.

“From his air and bearing,” I pointed out, “he is surely an officer of some rank. A colonel, I would think.”

“And yet not a field officer,” Sherlock murmured thoughtfully. “Look at his hands. No outdoor life or physical labor has roughened them.”

He looked very smug as he said this, and I was forced to concede that he had a point. Fortunately, before I actually had to say so, Father noticed and beckoned us over. He introduced his companion as Mr. Henry Olcott, a reporter for The Daily Graphic. Sherlock and I exchanged glances.

“But with a military background, surely,” said he.

“Possibly as a colonel,” I added.

I regret to say that we rather displeased Father. He does not like us to “show off,” as he puts it, and in this case went so far as to apologize for our rudeness. But when we hurried to voice our own apologies, Mr. Olcott genially waved them off. “They are completely correct,” he said to Father, “and I would only like to know how on earth they worked it out.” Father sighed, but told us to oblige him. “You will see,” he remarked to our guest, “how simple it all is once they explain it.” I believe Sherlock’s vanity must have been tweaked at this, for he had the temerity to add, at the end of our account, “And you were a staff officer, sir, were you not?”

Father opened his mouth reprovingly, but before he could speak, Olcott exclaimed, “But that is wonderful. You are absolutely right. I was a Special Commissioner to the War Department, in charge of investigating fraud in arsenals and shipyards.”

This time Sherlock and I refrained from exchanging glances; indeed, we froze, pinned by the same certainty. But any questions we had were wiped from our minds by Father’s next remark:

“And Colonel Olcott also served on the panel that investigated the murder of President Lincoln.”

Needless to say, all else was forgotten as we listened to his account of the fate of that great and tragic man-of his assassination by the villain Booth, a sometime actor who knew well the interior of the theatre in which he committed his terrible crime. We listened as Colonel Olcott told us of Booth’s broken ankle as he leapt to the stage; his escape by horseback; and his vanishing for twelve days while his fellow assassins-one of whom had attacked the secretary of state, one of whom was meant to kill the vice president but lost his nerve-were apprehended. He also told us of the murderer’s eventual death in a burning barn, of the executions of the other conspirators. Colonel Olcott grew more and more somber as he recalled his story; even after nearly a decade, the sorrow and horror of it clearly have not left him. He spoke with great clarity and attention to detail, leaving an overall impression not only of inbred decency but of hard common sense. Indeed, as he went on, it seemed to me that I had injudiciously jumped to a conclusion-such a man could never be involved with the foolery of something called the Ghost Shop.

I said so to Sherlock later as we were preparing for bed, and he acknowledged as much. “Still,” said he, “it seems almost too much of a coincidence that there should be two investigators of fraud here in this out-of-the-way part of the world at the same time,” and I must agree that the odds of such a thing strike me as high.

9 October (midmorning)-The problem with Sherlock is that he has no respect for the other fellow’s privacy. It never seems to occur to him that a man should be left alone, to smoke and read and mull and go about his business. He is always bustling about discovering things and drawing conclusions that invariably lead to his coming to me with some involved plan of action that involves stirring ourselves to a completely unnecessary degree. So, this morning, he popped up on the veranda just as I was settling in with my after-breakfast cigar, and announced, “It is he!”

I am a man who likes to enter the day gradually, and I did not immediately follow him. “Who?” I inquired irritably. “And whence this penchant for gnomic announcements, Sherlock? It’s very irritating.”

“I do apologize.” He glanced at his watch. “I realize that I am all but waking you in the middle of the night.”

“Go away.”

He sat down. “I mean that Olcott is our expert on fraud! He has reserved a place on the afternoon train to Rutland and then a carriage to Chittenden-the town in which, my enquiries inform me, this socalled Ghost Shop is to be found.”

I was dismayed at his industry. He must have been up since dawn, bothering people with questions and checking transportation timetables. “Well,” said I, closing my eyes and hoping he would take the hint, “I gather from this enthusiasm that you’re going to look into the matter after all. It sounds a fascinating hoax.”

He did not immediately reply. I opened my eyes and saw that his expression was thoughtful. “It must be a very sophisticated one to have taken in Colonel Olcott. He really does not strike me as a man easily or willingly deceived.”

“Nor I.”

“So of course you will come to Chittenden with me to uncover the heart of this mystery.”

I was actually rendered speechless for a moment. Finally, I sputtered, “Have you quite taken leave of your senses, Sherlock? Can you give me one good reason I should leave this comfortable porch for a train and then a jolting carriage ride into the wilds? These forests demoralized Burgoyne, you recall-”

“One hundred years ago,” he scoffed, “and there has been at least one total deforestation since then. The trees are on average hardly twenty-five inches around.”

“That is hardly the point-”

“The point, dear brother, is that if you are here this evening, you get to join Father at dinner with some gentlemen he has met who are up on all the latest theories of scientific agriculture.”

Perhaps the journey will not be so bad.

9 October (late evening)-It was appalling. The train was primitive and the journey sooty-and as to the carriage ride, all I can say is that the American understanding of what is meant by “road” varies considerably from the English definition of the word. These rutted tracks must be nothing but mud when it rains. At present, there has been a drought for several weeks, so they are little but dust. And stones. At one point, there was concern we had broken a wheel. At another, we all had to dismount and ford a stream by foot so as to lighten the carriage for safe passage. Altogether, it was a miserable trip, not in the least helped by Olcott’s good-natured stoicism and Sherlock’s heretofore unexpected penchant for what I can only characterize as an exorbitant curiosity about the wilderness.

Still, I must admit the unpleasantness was considerably lightened by the story the colonel told us on the train. Sherlock had been a bit unsure how to approach him, but as soon as he found out we had heard about the events in Chittenden, he was immediately forthcoming. He began with the history of William and Horatio Eddy, the men who, with their sister, Mary, run the Ghost Shop. It is in fact a large, two-storey farmhouse built about thirty years ago-the brothers lately added a wing so as to convert the place into an inn they call the Green Inn, doubtless to echo the name of the surrounding mountains. The brothers were raised there in what appear to have been horrible circumstances, comparable to something out of Dickens. The father was a religious zealot and tyrant who, when his sons began experiencing trances and visions, attempted to beat them-and at one point burn with scalding water-into normalcy. When this treatment proved ineffectual, he “leased” them to a traveling mountebank who exhibited them as mind readers and fortune-tellers-a dangerous business, as they were frequently mobbed, shot at, and run out of town. “The children got all the kicks and he got all the ha’pence in this transaction,” the colonel observed with dry disgust.

When the father died, the brothers, now young men, returned to Chittenden to manage the family farm. Occasionally, they held mediumistic sessions in a large parlour. As time passed, these sessions became more frequent, and at last they decided to enlarge the house and become innkeepers-in good part because, after the war, the area became a popular holiday destination and the audiences for their séances grew in number. Still, Olcott assured us, though they may make a better living than they did as farmers, the inn is not big enough for them to be earning much, and the expense of faking such elaborate manifestations would be beyond their means. In any case, they do not charge admission.

Despite the absurd subject of his story, there was something about the colonel’s frankness and lack of pretension that made me unwilling to mock him. I could tell that Sherlock felt the same, for he had on his face that expression of polite interest with which he hides skepticism. Still, Olcott sensed our attitude and addressed it candidly. He recited his own doubts and described in detail the way he and a carpenter-not a local man but one he hired at his own expense from New York-went over the room inch by inch, pulling up floorboards, tapping walls, searching for secret doors. They found nothing. Olcott personally climbed into the eaves above and discovered them to be so thick with cobwebs that no one could have hidden there to make noises or pull strings.

He was charmingly forthcoming about the possibility that he would be perceived as a mere gull. “It is the most natural reaction,” he said simply. “Nor can I pretend to bring any special skills to my task-neither the profundity of the scientific investigator nor the acuteness of the police detective. I represent the layman of ordinary intelligence whose sole object is to discover the facts. Still,” he could not help adding, “I am representing one of the great New York dailies. I take it for granted that my editor would not have engaged me if he had supposed me either of unsound mind, credulous, partial, dishonest, or incompetent.

“Now,” here he leaned forward, “I am aware that your own Mr. Home in England has been caught out on occasion resorting to mere tricks. So, I must tell you, have the Eddy Brothers. But does it necessarily follow that they are fakes? The powers behind these manifestations are notoriously uncontrollable. On occasions when they fail, what should the poor medium do, with his audience so expectant and needy? He tries to smooth things over with some harmless bits of stage illusion and sleight of hand. How much of a generalization should be drawn from these petty subterfuges? I am not, I am happy to say, of that class of pseudo-investigators which rejects the chance of finding truth in these marvels because mediums sometimes cheat. The circulation of counterfeit coin is no proof that the genuine does not exist.”

It seemed to me that those circulating counterfeit coin should not be depended on to provide the genuine, but I declined comment.

Olcott described in detail the room in which the séances are held-a large one on the first storey, at one end of which a platform and spirit cabinet have been constructed. In this chamber, nightly except for Sundays, audiences of up to thirty gather. Inside the cabinet, which is actually a small room some seven by three feet built entirely along one wall, Horatio Eddy is bound to a chair and the door shut. William Eddy stands on the platform to address the audience and take their questions. The spirits-old, young, white, Indian, male and female-emerge from the cupboard one at a time to speak or sing or answer questions. Apparently, they glow with an “unearthly light,” the room itself being illuminated only by a single lantern at the opposite end from the cabinet and platform. As they speak, throughout the crowd, the ghostly touch of a cold hand will be felt on this shoulder or that wrist-but nothing seen. Empty chairs move across the room, but any impulsive fellow who grabs one finds no string attached. Musical instruments are heard to play…

“How far away are these apparitions?” Sherlock asked neutrally.

“No more than four feet from those on the front benches. I myself have sat there often.”

“You say these spirits have their own light,” I said. “What are their skins like?”

“Well, the Indians have their usual hue. The whites are a bit grey to our eyes, even the children. I do not mean to imply that they shine like lanterns; the light flickers from their skin as they move.”

“They are translucent, or solid?”

“As solid-looking as you or I.”

“Are their voices unusual?”

“No. There is nothing ‘spectral’ about them, and they are appropriate to each spirit’s apparent age.”

“Clothing?” murmured Sherlock. His eyes had half shut.

“Also appropriate. Somewhat old-fashioned, of course.”

“And have you touched them?”

Olcott emphatically shook his head. “They will not allow themselves to be touched. The Eddys have apologized for this to me, but of course they must do what the spirits request.”

“And what do you think of the Eddys?”

Sherlock is sometimes quite inspired. It was exactly the right tack-away from the unreal, about which Olcott was intellectually defensive, and into the personal and emotional. The colonel was not expecting the question, and for a moment he hesitated. You could see on his face the struggle between his desire to be loyal to these strange friends and his commitment to a truthful account. “They are… difficult,” he said at last. “With such a childhood, it is hardly surprising. My first weeks here were extremely unpleasant. I was snubbed, near-ignored, made to feel unwelcome. It was a slow process, gaining their trust. I do not blame them. They are too used to ridicule and disrespect.”

“But of their character… ” Sherlock persisted gently.

“They are honest, of that I am convinced. But you must understand,” he continued earnestly, “that the character of the medium, his moral nature as a person, is irrelevant. These people have been endowed with a wonderful gift-an extra sense, if you will. They have no more control over their attraction of these powers than they have over seeing when their eyes are open. As the eye is a machine for receiving light, so they are machines for receiving otherworldly energies. A person of this kind may be a very bad man but a very good machine.”

Sherlock smiled faintly-involuntarily, I thought-and asked no more questions. As for myself, I felt we had what we needed: Olcott’s impression of what he had witnessed. There was no sense speculating further until we had seen these phenomena for ourselves.

After all this, I rather expected the Green Inn to be a gloomy, gabled manse out of some gothic novel. But upon arrival, we found a weathered but ordinary white clapboard house with a pleasant roofed porch along its front. There was no garden, but the expanse of grass was clipped and tidy, with here and there a hen pecking among the brilliant fallen leaves. The sun, though sinking towards the mountaintops, was bright, the air crisp, and the whole scene as far from ghostly as one could imagine. Visitors wandered the premises, talking animatedly. I could see no one who seemed to be our hosts, but on the porch a woman serving tea responded to Olcott’s wave and he identified her as the sister, Mary Eddy.

Olcott led us round the wing accommodating the “séance room.” This is a two-and-a-half-storey addition that gives the building a T-shape. The room in question is on the first floor; the end containing the “medium’s cabinet” sits above the kitchen and a pair of butteries, and boasts a small but accessible window that Sherlock pointed out.

Olcott chuckled. “Yes, it is the first thing most people spot,” he said. “But no ladder is owned on the premises. And I have covered the opening with mosquito netting and secured that with wax stamped with my own signet. The seals have never been broken, nor the netting torn except once during a windstorm.”

It seemed to me that on such an extensive property there might be a ladder hidden somewhere, particularly as the forest started a mere fifty yards from where we stood. Sherlock must have shared my doubts, for as we walked past, he gave a quick, searching glance at the ground beneath the window. The drought had made the earth hard as iron, however, and he turned back to me with a shrug, shaking his head.

Dinner was a regrettable concoction of boiled beef and vegetables served with a harsh, tart apple cider. The experience so dispirited me that I paid little attention to our fellow diners but sought the porch and a cigarette as soon as possible, in spite of the gentleman on my left having clearly spent several interesting years in Kyoto, a city I would be tempted to visit had I any inclination to travel. (Sherlock, for some curious reason of his own, has always expressed a desire to see the fjords.)

Mary Eddy helped serve, but our hosts themselves had not appeared. Preparing for the evening’s performance, no doubt. As I was musing in spite of myself on the form this might take, a figure came around the corner of the house. As he drew closer, the porch lanterns showed me a tall, strong-looking, sullen-faced fellow with deep-set dark eyes and a thick moustache. He looked to be in his early forties and had remarkable hands-calloused with farm labor, but long-fingered and strangely sensitive in appearance. I knew who he must be. “Mr. Eddy?”

He stopped and eyed me indifferently. “Ayuh.”

“I look forward to this evening’s-” I almost said “entertainment” but caught myself-“visitations.”

He snorted. “English, are you?”

“Yes.”

“We made a fool of you in ’76.”

“That wasn’t me, I’m afraid,” I said. “Perhaps you are confusing me with one of my great-grandfathers.”

He only stared.

“I am here with Colonel Olcott,” I continued. “I was hoping to see the room in which these mystic experiences occur, before the séance starts properly.”

“The devil you were,” he said coarsely, and went inside, pushing past Sherlock who was just coming to join me.

“Pleasant fellow,” he observed. “A nice attempt, Mycroft, but he seems unlikely to cooperate. However,” he moved a few feet along the porch to peer in the dining room window, “I see that both brothers have deigned to join their guests for coffee. We have a few moments. Quickly now.” He took my elbow. “We must have a look at that room.”

I shook him off. “You are not seriously suggesting that I sprint nimbly up some dark staircase to sneak around looking for clues?”

He looked me up and down. “You’re right. Sprinting nimbly isn’t in it for you. You return to the dining room and distract them.”

And before I could object to this high-handed order, he was gone, silent as a cat, I’ll say that for him. I hurried back to the dining room, aware that, as it is beneath the séance chamber, Sherlock was in danger of being heard at some point, no matter how softly he tried to move. I confess I was at something of a loss. Rapidly improvised actions are not my forte. I am a man who values careful planning. The best I could do when I rejoined the diners was request-impolitely, as they were just finishing-that I might also have coffee.

The Eddy I had met had been joined by his brother. He was a bit younger and had a higher forehead and a tiny patch of beard beneath his lip, but otherwise they were enough alike almost to have been twins. Both stared at me obstinately and were on the point of denying my request when, by a stroke of fortune, a young lady at the table requested a second cup for herself. Grudgingly, Mary Eddy returned to the kitchen while the brothers glowered at me. Olcott, whom my rudeness clearly embarrassed (greatly to my regret, but it couldn’t be helped) introduced me, but they responded with little better than grunts. Attempts at small talk were met with the same response.

An uncomfortable silence took over the table, and I expected any moment to hear the thump of a footfall from above. So, like a buffoon, I rose from my seat, saying with forced jollity, “Perhaps your sister could use some help carrying the cups,” and rushed into the kitchen. This bizarre act stunned both my fellow diners and Mary Eddy, who regarded me with alarm as I bustled in. In truth, even before I rose, it had occurred to me that a look at the kitchen ceiling might be in order. Now I saw that it was simple plaster over lathe, obviously impenetrable. In the opposite wall, the doors of the two small butteries stood darkly open. “Some more milk perhaps?” I inquired idiotically and dashed through the right-hand door, followed by Miss Eddy’s “Here now!” A glance upward showed me that the family had economized on the ceiling. It was not lathe and plaster but only naked beams, on which the platform and cabinet above sat, the underside of their shared floor exposed. I turned instantly back to the kitchen with a fatuous, “Dear me, it’s dark in there, isn’t it?” and returned to the dining room just as the brothers were rising to come after me. “My apologies,” I said sincerely, for I had not enjoyed making such a fool of myself. “The lady did not need my help.”

“Where’s the other one?” said William Eddy (the brother who had met me on the porch) suspiciously, and to my relief, Sherlock’s voice replied from outside, “Here,” and we saw the glow of his cigarette through the window. He entered a moment later, not a hair out of place, and coolly took his former seat beside the colonel, to whom he leaned over with a whispered apology. I heard the words “too much cider at dinner,” and, truly, if it had not been seven miles of bad road, I would have walked out then and there and gone straight to a hotel in Rutland. Instead, I sat where I was, inanely praising the very poor coffee Miss Eddy brought in, while the people around me exchanged embarrassed glances and the Eddys looked thunderous. A more unpleasant quarter hour I have never spent.

We were all ushered to the porch while the Eddys ascended to the upper room to prepare, and no doubt to see if there were any traces of meddling. Knowing Sherlock, I was certain there would not be. He had lit another cigarette and looked altogether too pleased with himself. I took him down into the yard to tell him what he could do the next time he thought of involving me in one of his silly adventures, but he disarmed me by saying, “Well done, Mycroft. I know how unpleasant you must have found that, yet you did splendidly,” and offered me a cigarette.

I took it.

We smoked for a few minutes. The stars were brilliant in the clear, cool night, and here in the mountains there seemed to be many more of them.

“Is it the window?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “The seals are in place, and the window frame is secure in the wall.”

“They might have made an impress of the signet and reproduced it.”

“I think it more likely that-”

But at this point we were summoned to the séance.

The upstairs chamber was a large one. Though distance was difficult to judge in the very poor light (as the colonel had said, there was but a single lantern, and that in a corner farthest from the cabinet and platform), I would hazard it was a good thirty feet from the rear wall to the edge of the platform, which itself appeared to be five or six feet deep. Sherlock whispered to me that there was roughly a yard between the door of the cabinet and the back wall of the house with its little window. “But I don’t think they bothered with the window. The nailheads in the floor of the cabinet are much battered.”

I nodded. All had become clear.

The Eddy brothers mounted the platform. With their deep-set eyes and surly faces, they looked grim enough, if not particularly spiritual. William gave a short speech about spirits and their nature and the responsibility of the medium and so forth; then he and Horatio entered the chamber, where he bound Horatio to a chair with thick rope. The audience was invited to come up one by one to observe this and to test the final result, which took several minutes, as there were nearly thirty people present. The dress of these revealed most of them as visitors, but there were several who appeared to be residents of the town. The latter did not bother to check the binding, and neither did Sherlock and I: no doubt the trick would be done well. Colonel Olcott too kept his place, up near the front and to one side, expectant but relaxed.

Finally, everyone was seated again. A curtain was drawn across the cabinet door and William Eddy repeated most of his speech. He moved to the center of the platform and shut his eyes. He swayed slightly. The room was hushed. From the cabinet, all was quiet. Then, from within, a violin began to play.

Sherlock winced. Whoever the spirit was, the violin was not his or her first instrument. The rest of the audience did not seem to notice the quality of the music, but gasped and murmured. They were equally impressed by the rattling of an invisible tambourine. However, the spirits did not seem to be in the mood for physical contact tonight. I saw no one flinch or start at a ghostly touch. Indeed, the presentation felt rather paltry. I suspect that mistrust of Sherlock and me had something to do with this.

Suddenly, William Eddy moved to the far right of the platform. The violin and tambourine fell silent. A tense moment passed before the curtain moved aside. The doorway was dark. Then a figure appeared and stepped solemnly out.

I found myself, quite unexpectedly, embarrassed. Embarrassed for the figure on the platform, for the audience around me, and for Colonel Olcott. I heard Sherlock sigh softly and realized he had had a similar reaction. Morosely, I examined the “apparition.” It was a tall man clearly meant to be a red Indian, though a combination of wig and headdress so obscured his face that he might have been Chinese, or a woman. His hands were indeed, so far as it was possible to tell in the shadows, reddish, as if some rouge had been rubbed over a deep tan. And I suppose one could say that his face glowed if a couple of smudgy gleams from the half-hidden face could be called a glow. He began to chant nonsense syllables in a deep voice. William Eddy stood with his head respectfully bowed. My embarrassment faded to be replaced by boredom. If I could have left without notice, I would have.

But I was trapped for the evening.

And a long evening it was. “Spirits” trouped in and out of the cabinet, William Eddy pacing the platform and making some brief remarks between each appearance. There were more red Indians and a number of white people in clothing from a few generations past who, indeed, had slightly greyish skin where it wasn’t streaked with phosphorous-some attempt to make them look misty, perhaps, though a more solid bunch I never saw. The audience had begun to recover from its dumb wonder, and a few bold souls ventured questions. Some of the “spirits” ignored them. Others nodded and then turned to William Eddy, apparently communicating with him through some thought process, for he was the one who answered. Still others answered, in a variety of voices, almost all of them bearing traces at the very least of the local accent.

The questions were what I suppose are the usual sort at these affairs. Will my crop yield be high or poor? Should I invest in this or that? The answers to these questions, I noted, were vague and “mystical,” sometimes in rhyme. The otherworldly visitors were more specific when someone asked about a deceased relative: the loved one was always happy and always wished the survivor well. A few people, not all of them female, wept at this information. I felt myself growing angry and rather hoped Sherlock would have one of his impulsive urges and dart forward to unmask the impostor, but he remained still, indeed almost rigid, his attention fixed on the proceedings.

Apparently to vary the mood, some of the apparitions performed a trick by agreeing to improvise in rhyme on any subject. A number of these efforts were surprisingly agile and amusing, but most were on the level of these few lines, which I regret to say have stuck in my head:

Corn

Is when summer is born

On a hot July morn

Or earlier too

Depending on rain.

And it comes without pain

As a gift from the loving Lord to us.

At one point, a child “spirit,” a little girl of seven or so with fluffy golden hair and dressed all in white, attempted to rhyme on the word “love” but, charmingly I must confess, collapsed in giggles and had to be led by William Eddy back inside the cabinet. Afterward, Colonel Olcott asked us whether we had not found her endearing: “I am always delighted by her.”

“She comes often, then?” said Sherlock politely.

“Indeed, yes. She is a playful little thing.”

We were on the porch again, with people hurrying to their horses or conveyances, as the Green Inn has only eleven rooms and most of the visitors were lodging with other residents of Chittenden who had a bed and a corner to spare. The night had grown chilly, and in the lantern light the colonel’s face was flushed with cold as well as excitement. I did not know what to say to him, and I’m sure neither did Sherlock, but fortunately he was surrounded by people eager for his conversation. Soon, he was quietly but passionately addressing a small crowd, speaking of the “self-complacent disdain” of scientific men: “Last summer, at a meeting of this country’s most prestigious scientific association, hours were devoted to a discussion of the habits and characteristics of the tumble-bug. A nice subject to be used as an excuse for neglecting to observe and analyze the unknown occult laws by which a spirit may clothe itself with a material form. These men bend in their laboratories to study wriggling insects and squirming reptiles, blind to the field of research that lies before them in the direction of the Inner World.”

10 October-Sherlock and I did not have much to say to each other as we retired last evening in a small stuffy room at the Green Inn. I wrote in this journal while he went immediately to bed. This morning, the Colonel stayed on at Chittenden and we returned to Manchester on our own, though surrounded by enthusiastic and wondering spectators from the night before. It was not until we were walking from the train station back to our inn in Manchester, that Sherlock spoke. I was by now frankly bored with the whole matter, but he appeared disturbed, or at least distant. As we talked, he exhibited none of his usual eagerness and kept his eyes uncharacteristically down, watching the yellow leaves we scuffed from our path.

“The whole village is in on it,” said he, “because the whole village benefits.”

I nodded. “The Eddys’ inn isn’t large enough to accommodate or feed all the visitors, and the other residents take them in-”

“-And charge them well for a hard bed and a plain meal. Some of the villagers sit in the audience and assist with the ‘ghostly’ touches-”

“-Probably accomplished by nothing more complicated than an extending rod. Horatio Eddy escapes from his ropes with the ease of the practiced conjurer-”

“-And plays, after his fashion, the violin, as well as the tambourine. The spirits, in their costumes and phosphorus makeup, are the populace of Chittenden.”

“They don’t use the window, you say.”

“Unnecessary. They come up through the floor in the cabinet.”

“A possibility the colonel thought he had eliminated when he discovered no trap doors.”

Sherlock snorted impatiently. “He looked for what he thought he ought to find and then didn’t find it. It’s a classic case of overcomplicating a situation. What need of trapdoors when you can merely lift the floorboards? The nailheads were worn, and the wood around them scarred, from repeatedly being hammered in again.”

“Doubtless the nails had been shortened so that the boards pulled up as easily as opening a box.”

“I am certain that was the case.”

“The ceilings of the butteries were open to the beams above that supported platform and cabinet, you know.”

He smiled at me. “Excellent, Mycroft. That answers the last of our questions. The ‘spirits’ climbed up on the beams and out through the floor, after being smuggled into the kitchen while everyone was upstairs. William Eddy, with his pacing and speeches, made enough noise to cover any sounds from below.”

We walked on for a moment in silence.

“Well,” said I at last, “no great mystery there.”

“On the contrary,” said he soberly, “there is a very great mystery indeed.”

11 October-Much against my will, Sherlock inveigled me into accompanying him on a walk. I could tell he had something on his mind and was perfectly willing to hear him out, but I saw no reason we could not sit comfortably, possibly enjoying cigars, while he unburdened himself. He, however, was restless and tense and no sooner would he sit then he would be up and pacing, so I finally got up myself and we went through the village and south along the verge of the road.

Having got me to go with him, he perversely fell silent. I put up with this for a few minutes before coming to the point. “It’s this Olcott business, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “I cannot understand it.”

“But you’ve explained everything.”

“Not that,” he said irritably. “That sham and paste!”

“Then what?”

He looked at me seriously. “Surely you agree that Colonel Olcott is a highly educated and intelligent man.”

“Of course.”

“Nothing of the flighty about him.”

“Nothing at all. Except this strange belief in spiritualism.”

“Exactly! It hardly seems in character, does it?”

I acknowledged that it did not. “But most people are not rational, Sherlock.”

“This is worse than that,” he insisted. “Here we have a man who rose to the rank of colonel as an investigator of fraud, whose observational and analytical skills were so prized that he was chosen to serve on the committee that investigated a president’s assassination. He clearly has a first-rate mind. And a mind is a machine. You cannot gum it up with shoddy ideas and expect it to keep functioning optimally. This is some morbid form of self-betrayal.”

The passage along the main road was not particularly pleasant, the verge being narrow and the traffic heavy and dusty, so when we came to a pair of gateposts surmounted with marble figures of a sorrowing angel and a mourning woman, we turned in immediately. “Dellwood Cemetery,” a sign read, and we found ourselves in a place more like a park than a graveyard, with winding lanes and handsome trees and example after example of memorial statuary: angels wept, families prayed, small children gazed down at stone lilies in their hands. Nothing further from the crowded church and city cemeteries of England could be conceived, and we wandered among the tombs in uneasy fascination. Somehow, I was not surprised when, in the distance, we saw Colonel Olcott.

He was standing in front of a pair of simple stones, and his attitude suggested contemplation rather than personal grief. I made to turn aside and leave him with his thoughts, but he saw us and waved in a comradely fashion. I glanced at Sherlock as we approached; his profile was hard and set. I sighed to myself. He had decided the colonel deserved the truth.

“Look at this, boys,” said Olcott as we approached. His voice and manner were subdued as he gestured to the twin gravestones. Both were of young men, siblings by their name, who had died in 1863. Someone had recently left purple wildflowers on each grave. Olcott gestured across the expanse of the cemetery. “Dozens of them. And yet, that is nothing. In the graveyards of Pennsylvania, of Maryland and Virginia… ” He trailed off for a moment. “I saw very little active duty, you know,” he finally continued. “I am not ashamed; I had my job to do. I’m not like so many in the North who bought their way out of service so that some poor Irishman could die in their stead. I have been shot at in my time. I’m not such a fool that I wish I had been shot at more.”

He fell quiet again, staring at the graves. We waited on his silence. “Over six hundred thousand men were killed in the war,” he said softly. “I think it is important to use the word ‘killed’ rather than ‘died’. They were shattered. Blown apart. There were battles in which twenty thousand were slain in a day. Even two days after, there would yet be… pieces of men lying in the bloody dirt. Or in mud. Dust. There were bodies no one will ever recognize. Those who loved them will never know… ”

He squinted at the sky for a moment. “If I can demonstrate the genuineness of these phenomena,” he said very quietly, “then all mankind may be assured that the sting of death and the grave’s victory have passed away. Death itself will have died. No,” he said fiercely, lowering his eyes again to the gravestones, “death itself will have been killed. And all the weeping will dissolve in joy. And all the blood will be as dew.”

He stood there, still as the stones around him, and I realized he had forgotten us. I touched Sherlock’s arm and we moved quietly away. I looked back as we reached the gates. Colonel Olcott had not moved.

All the way back to the inn, I waited for Sherlock to say something. But he never did. At last, as we mounted the steps, I could keep still no longer. “Well,” I challenged him, “what of your plan to enlighten Colonel Olcott and save him from himself?”

He neither paused nor looked at me as he stepped ahead through the doors.

“A bad machine,” he said, “may be a very good man.”

Afternote:

The story of Henry Olcott and the Eddy Brothers is true. Three days after this tale ends, he met Madame Helena Blavatsky, and they went on to found the most far-reaching of the Victorian-era occult institutions, the Theosophical Society. Olcott wrote an account of his experiences in Chittenden, People from the Other World, which I used as my main source; indeed, some of Olcott’s words in my story, including “Such a person may be a very bad man but a very good machine,” are direct quotes from that book. However, all speculation into his reason for belief in the Eddys are my own: the colonel remains a mystery.