The Revenant of Thraxton Hall

CHAPTER 12 DARK ENCOUNTER

After the first SPR meeting adjourned for the evening, it took the two friends twenty minutes of wrong turns and backtracking before they finally located the third floor landing where their rooms were located. As they trudged along the hallway, each carried a glowing paraffin lamp (this older part of the house had never been plumbed for gas jets). Both men sagged with fatigue, and even Oscar Wilde’s continuous narrative of the day’s events had dried to dust. When he arrived at his room, Conan Doyle fumbled in his pockets and brought out his large key. It turned in the lock with a brassy clunk. But as he pushed the door open his eye was drawn to a folded sheet of paper lying on the rug.

A note.

He quickly deduced someone had slipped it under the door. Bending, he scooped it up, unfolded the paper with one hand, and held it close to the lamp glass. The note was short. A few brief sentences. He recognized instantly the feminine hand.

Conan Doyle’s heart lurched at the words. The next line fired a jolt of excitement through him.

He tilted the paper to the light. A phoenix watermark floated up from the surface.

“Ah, one more thing, Arthur!”

His head snapped up. Wilde had not gone into his room after all and was sauntering toward him. Conan Doyle crumpled the note and jammed it into a jacket pocket, but his friend had already seen it.

“What was that note you were reading?”

“Note? Ah… nothing, nothing. Just… some ideas I was jotting down… for a story.”

The Irishman cast an insinuating look at Conan Doyle’s pocket and raised his bushy eyebrows; a supercilious smile twitched the corners of his mouth. “Ah, I see. Notes for a story. I think I know exactly what kind of story.” He tapped the side of his ample nose with two fingers, throwing Conan Doyle a knowing wink. “Don’t worry, shan’t ask again.”

Conan Doyle felt his face flush hot. Wilde turned toward his room, but then turned back again. “Ah yes, I was going to remind you that I’m leaving in the morning. If you hear a strange noise coming from my room, do not be alarmed. It will be me stripping the wallpaper from the walls. It is far too loud to permit any sleep.”

Conan Doyle lay on the bed fully dressed, pocket watch laid on his chest, waiting for time to push the hands around to midnight. As he rested, the stuttering light of the paraffin lamp on the bedside table made the creatures watching from the wainscoting jerk and tremble. When the Witching Hour finally struck, he slid from the bed, pulled on his tweed jacket, and stole quietly from the room.

He had only a vague idea of where the ballroom was: in the ruined west wing of the house that guests were encouraged to stay away from. He crept down the grand staircase to the first floor, stepping on the very edge of the treads to avoid creaks.

In the entrance hall, a single lamp had been left burning. Conan Doyle stood still for several long minutes, listening, but nothing stirred. Even the servants were abed at this hour. He liberated the lamp from the hallway table — the house would be unnavigably dark without it — and crept down a long gallery lined with portraits of dead Thraxtons, whose luminous eyes followed his progress. The portrait gallery terminated in a set of massive double doors. He gratefully noted that the key had been left in the lock and the handle turned freely in his hand. He stepped through into a large, dark, echoing space — the ballroom. Conan Doyle paused a moment, setting the lamp down at his feet to peer around.

Moonlight, milky and diffuse, flooded in through the tall windows. And then he noticed a glowing white figure standing at one of the windows, looking out.

The white lady, he thought, believing, for a heart-stopping moment, he was looking upon a specter, but then the woman turned from the window and looked straight at him.

It was no ghost. It was H—Lady Hope Thraxton.

Instead of her black lace dress, she wore a diaphanous white nightgown. Lit from behind by moonlight, it glowed translucent, revealing that she was quite naked beneath; he could see the contours of her body, the pert, small breasts, curvy hips, and shapely legs.

He reasoned she must not realize how exposed she was. He knew that, as a gentleman, he should protect her modesty by averting his gaze. But his heart was drumming and he could not tear his eyes away. Her face illuminated with happiness when she saw him. She broke free of the window and floated across the ballroom floor to meet him, as silent and light as a filament of smoke. The white nightgown, without the backlit moonlight, regained its opacity and became, once again, just a white nightgown.

Her long hair was unpinned for bed and fell in a cascade of auburn ringlets about her shoulders. She reached the glow of his paraffin lamp, and for the first time he saw her face unconcealed. He knew she was young, but without the veil he could see she was still a girl: a fetching beauty with pale skin, fine cheekbones and full lips, elegantly arched brows, and the most astonishing violet eyes. In the dim light, her pupils were madly dilated, and when he raised his lamp to splash light across her face, she winced and turned away as if in pain.

“So bright!” she cried.

He apologized and lowered the lamp. “I forgot… your condition.”

“As you may have guessed, I must needs be a creature of the night.”

“Yes. Of course—”

She dropped her head, looking discomfited, and he realized he was staring. He tried to allay any concerns she might have had about his motives. “I returned to your Mayfair residence the day after our meeting, but you had removed to Thraxton Hall.”

“Yes.” She kept her gaze on the floor. “I knew you would have a change of heart. That you would wish to help me. But then I had the new vision. The one in which I saw—” She stopped as if afraid to speak the words aloud. “You received my second letter?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And still you came?”

“How could I stay away when a beautiful young woman’s life was threatened?”

Her eyes gleamed liquid as she looked up at him with something more than mere gratitude. “You are very brave, but…” She trailed off, emotions rippling across her face. After a moment, she composed herself enough to ask, “Doctor Doyle, do you believe in Fate?”

He searched himself a moment, and then answered: “Honestly? I do not know. I became a doctor because I wanted to heal people. But my own wife is dying from consumption and I am powerless to save her.” It was the first time he had admitted the truth — even to himself — and now he realized that his motives in coming to Thraxton Hall had not been entirely selfless. He was running away from a death he could not prevent.

She seemed to read his thoughts and touched a hand to his. “You do believe in Fate. You believe we cannot change our destinies.”

He did not want to answer, lest she abandon hope. Instead he asked: “Have you had a subsequent vision?”

“Yes. Just last night.”

“And was it the same as before?”

She nodded, her chin quivering. But then her eyes widened and she looked up into Conan Doyle’s face. “No! It was not the same. I saw the séance room. Again I could not make out the faces of the sitters except for you and one other.”

Conan Doyle’s heart leapt in his chest. “Who? Who was the other sitter?”

Her eyes flashed. “He was seated on my left, holding my hand—”

“Yes?” Conan Doyle urged.

“It was your friend… Mister Wilde.”

Conan Doyle took in the news, his mind racing. “And Oscar has never been in your dream before?”

She shook her head. “Never.”

“Then, perhaps, the future has been altered. I am not entirely certain I believe in Fate. But I do believe in Free Will. I believe our actions can shape our destinies.”

“But you just told me of your wife.”

A flash of pain swept Conan Doyle’s face. “Yes, it is true, I have been unable to cure her disease, but I believe my efforts have greatly prolonged her life.”

“But her Fate is the same, nonetheless. I have suffered from my adversity to the light since I was a child. It killed my mother. I knew it would one day kill me. Even so, I had not expected to die so young. But if it is my Fate to be murdered in the next few days, then I must accept it.”

Conan Doyle was struck by the maturity of the young woman. Her fearlessness. He did not speak for some time as his mind worked at the problem like restless fingers probing a knot reefed tight. Then the beginnings of a notion began to stir in his mind. “It may not be possible to overcome Fate, but we may be able to hoodwink it.”

She smiled. “You are an irrepressible romantic, are you not, Mister Doyle?” She held out a slender hand to him. “The family history of the Thraxtons does not bode well for me.” She slipped her tiny hand into his. “Come, I must show you what you are up against.”

They left the ballroom by the far door and penetrated farther into the hall’s west wing. Conan Doyle allowed himself to be led, one hand holding aloft the glowing lamp, the other lightly held in Hope Thraxton’s cool grasp. If Thraxton Hall’s east wing was ugly and eldritch, the west wing was something clawed from a nightmare. The space had been abandoned to decay: peeling wallpaper hung in curls from the walls, fallen plaster crunched underfoot, doorways swollen with damp hung ajar on twisted hinges. Most of the rooms were stripped bare, apart from, here and there, a rusted iron-clawed bathtub, a listing chair, a broken-backed table. And the deeper they went, the more ruthless the hand of entropy had been.

“When I was a child,” Hope said, her voice light and lyrical, “I was forbidden to enter the west wing; my grandfather said it was too dangerous.” She laughed. “So of course, I would sneak in to play with my friend.”

“A friend?”

“Seamus, the son of the housekeeper. Of course, I was also forbidden from fraternizing with the domestic staff. I was nine years old; Seamus was fifteen.”

Conan Doyle tried to sound casual as he asked, “And your play was completely innocent? Childhood games? Did he? I mean… were you—?”

“Interfered with?” She looked uneasy. “No. Or at least, I have no recollection.”

“You played hide and seek?”

“Oh no!” she said, smiling impishly. “Even as children, we knew the reputation of the house. We would wander through the rooms, calling out to the ghosts to show themselves.”

Conan Doyle stopped and studied her face. “And did you ever see anything?”

“Not at first. Not until we found… the special room.” She read the interest on his face and smiled. “It is a place that resonates with ghosts.”

They climbed a rickety stairway that rose steeply to a turret room. As they topped the landing, Conan Doyle froze. At the far end of the hall, a doorway hung slackly ajar and the glowing figure of a woman stood watching them. It raised an arm, and he suddenly realized that it was Hope Thraxton’s image, reflected in a mirror, its silvering flaking loose and mottled with black patina so that it tore her reflection into ghostly ribbons.

“This is the room,” she announced. “As children we called it the mirror maze.”

Conan Doyle paused at the threshold. A vague sense of dread made him reluctant to enter, but she tightened her grip on his large hand and pulled him inside. When he raised the lamp and looked around, an astonished gasp ripped from him. The room was filled with mirrors — dozens and dozens of mirrors — an odd jumble of all types and sizes: cheval dressing mirrors in their pivoting frames, oval wall mirrors leant up against scabrous plaster walls. Mirrors pointing this way and that so they caught the glow of his lamp and juggled the light back and forth between them, their beveled edges refracting like prisms and flinging jagged shards of rainbow against the walls. He saw himself and the small woman beside him reflected from a dozen dizzying angles — even the back of his head.

“I loved mirrors even then,” she said, abandoning his hand as she stepped forward to the large cheval mirror and gazed dreamily into its depths.

“After grandmother died, grandfather had all the mirrors in the house taken away. Although the fashion may seem quaint now, the tradition then was to cover the mirrors after someone died, lest the spirit of the departed see their own reflection. But grandfather’s mania persisted. I was permitted only a small hand mirror for tying bows in my hair. Of course, I was a vain young girl, and when my grandfather caught me looking at myself he would grow angry and wag his finger and say, Look long enough in the mirror and you will see the devil. Of course, such a belief was a dangerous thrill to young people, so when Seamus and I found this room we spent hours gazing into the mirrors waiting for the devil to appear.”

“And did you ever see him?”

She laughed softly. “No. But one day I did see my spirit guide. She was kind to me and after that I would steal away every day to come and talk to her. She was lonely…” Hope tilted her head dreamily. “… so very lonely.”

Conan Doyle thought of the story Madame Zhozhovsky had related, of Mariah Thraxton’s murder — in this very room — shot dead by her husband armed with a brace of pistols. “You are speaking of Mariah Thraxton?”

“Yes,” Hope replied, her voice brittle as a handful of autumn leaves.

“Did Seamus see her, too?”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure. I was very young. And it was so long ago. But he told his mother what we were doing. And the next time we visited the mirror maze, Seamus stayed outside and locked me in.”

“Why would he do such a thing?”

Hope Thraxton’s lips tremored. Her vision seemed to retreat inward as her mind journeyed back to that day. “His mother told him to. I was locked in here for five days. I had no food. No water. I became weaker and weaker. When I finally hovered on the edge of death, I heard a voice calling to me. Though I had barely enough strength to move, I crawled to the mirror and looked in. The lady in the glass was young and fine and very beautiful. She was dressed in an antique style. I instantly recognized her. Her portrait hangs in the entrance hall.”

“Mariah Thraxton?”

“Yes. It was she who taught me how to speak to spirits.”

“And what of Seamus? Was he punished? What he did was unspeakably wicked.”

“I cannot hate him. He thought he was doing right because his mother had poisoned his mind. She thought my affliction, and the affliction of my mother before me, was part of the curse upon this house. I crouched in this room for hours, which became days. Meanwhile my grandfather and the servants searched the woods and the fields for me, convinced I had run away, but I was in the house all the time.”

“What happened? Did Seamus finally free you?”

She shook her head. “No. Mister Greaves broke open the door and found me lying on the floor. Close to death. But for him, I would have perished.”

“Wait. You said Seamus’s mother was the housekeeper? Is Mrs. Kragan the same housekeeper?”

She nodded. “My grandfather wanted to sack her. To cast her out. I begged him not to. In the end, after I wept many tears, he relented. But Seamus was banished forever and sent to live with relatives in Ireland.”

“But why would you take her side after she nearly murdered you?”

“She was the closest I ever had to a mother. And a mother who hates you is better than no mother at all. Had my grandfather sacked her, she would likely have starved on the streets. Part of her is grateful to me for saving her, but the other part hates me for what happened to her son.” She turned from the mirror and gazed at him levelly. “And that, Doctor Doyle, has ever thus been the story of Thraxton Hall. It is a house that teeters on a knife’s edge between happiness and despair.”

A loud, ominous banging interrupted them like some malevolent force hurling itself against the walls of the house, trying to break free. Startled, Conan Doyle looked about him — the booming seemed to be coming from all directions.

“The front door!” Lady Thraxton said, breathlessly. “Someone is knocking!”

“At this hour?”

Scarcely able to contain her agitation, she pushed Conan Doyle toward the door. “Hurry,” she said. “Return to your room. We must not be seen together.”

Conan Doyle snatched up the lamp and fled the room. He paused at the top of the stairs and looked back for Hope, but she had vanished. He tore himself away and bounded down the stairs and along the corridor. His footsteps echoed as he sprinted across the ruined ballroom, the paraffin lamp swinging wildly at his side, throwing the grotesque shadow of a giant striding across the walls. The maniacal pounding continued as he raced through the portrait gallery. He reached the entrance hall, where the knocking was deafening. He quickly set the lamp back on the entrance hall table and then froze as he saw a tall, thin figure shambling toward him.

Mister Greaves.

Conan Doyle tried to think of an excuse to explain his presence in the entrance hall at nearly one in the morning, but then he remembered that Mister Greaves was blind.

“Yes! Yes! I’m coming!” Greaves shouted as he ambled to the door. He had obviously dressed in haste. His jacket was misbuttoned. His collar was unattached at one side and dangling. He reached the door and groped along it until he came to the large iron bolt and shot it loose. As he fumbled with his key in the door lock, Conan Doyle crept past and began to tiptoe up the stairs.

“Good night, Doctor Doyle,” Mister Greaves announced in a loud voice.

Conan Doyle froze and looked behind him. The aged butler had paused in his efforts to unlock the door. Despite Conan Doyle’s stealth, Mister Greaves had sensed a presence — but how had he known who it was? The young doctor realized he was being given time to make good his escape and sprang up the stairs. He was climbing the second flight when he heard the front door open and footsteps entering the house. When he reached the third floor landing, he moved to the nearest window and looked out.

Illuminated by intermittent moonlight, rain fell in slanting shafts, needling the standing puddles on the forecourt. A carriage had drawn up at the front steps of the mansion. Its shape seemed vaguely familiar, and then Conan Doyle recognized it for what it was: a hearse. Seen obliquely through the rippling window glass, rain-blurred figures milled around the open front door. He heard voices, snatches of shouted conversation. A figure swept out of the front door and skipped lightly down the steps. A tall man — a gentleman by his dress — top hat, a rain cape swirling about his shoulders. He strode quickly to the hearse, where two men were unloading something heavy: he watched them heave at a rectangular shape he first assumed was a large steamer trunk, but it looked uncannily like a coffin.

A hand touched him on the shoulder, and Conan Doyle started violently, spinning around. A shadowy figure stood before him. It took several long seconds before Conan Doyle identified Frank Podmore. He must have crept up silently.

“You gave me a start!” he said, his heart vaulting.

“Sorry,” Podmore said in a tone that suggested the opposite. “I saw you standing there.”

“I could not sleep.”

“I never indulge in sleep.”

“Never?” Conan Doyle asked skeptically.

“I have trained myself not to crave sleep. It is a waste of valuable time that is better spent advancing my mind.” Podmore turned his face to the window, staring down at the figures in the courtyard below. In the darkness, his terrier eyes gleamed.

“Do you know who is arriving at this late hour?” Conan Doyle asked.

“Our final guest.”

“Final guest?”

“Lord Philipp Webb.”

“And who is Lord Webb?”

Podmore laughed mirthlessly. “Another charlatan, like all the rest.” And with that he walked off into the shadows without bothering to say good night.

As Conan Doyle trudged the gloomy hallway to his room, the events of the night carouseled in his head. Struck by a sudden revelation, his steps slowed and he stumbled to a halt. He had been watching Hope Thraxton’s reflection in the cheval mirror as the cacophonous knocking began, and she had spun around, startled by the din. But it seemed now, as he reviewed the action in his mind, as if the reflection in the mirror had lagged a moment behind. He recalled the double-image photograph of Hope Thraxton in The Strand Magazine. There were something elusive and otherworldly about her that even the laws of optics could not capture. And then a further thought occurred to him. Hope had harried him from the west wing, while she had stayed behind. How else could she return to her rooms, if not by the same route? As his hand closed on the cold brass doorknob, he dithered, fighting a strange compulsion to turn on his heel and retrace his steps back to the mirror maze, half-convinced he would find Hope Thraxton’s image trapped behind the glass, a prisoner screaming to be set free.