The Accursed (43 page)

“I will help them. I am the only one, I must persevere.”

Yet often it happened, when Pearce locked himself away in his study late at night—(indeed, “locked” is accurate: for, initially, his concerned wife might dare to open the door at 3 a.m., seeking him out with a plaintive
Pearce? Why are you up so late?
)—that he lost track of time; discovered himself elsewhere in the house, wandering in the dark with a lighted candle; more strangely, Pearce had several times discovered himself outside, in the quite chilly night air, shivering in a wind that lifted from the river like a cruel caress. By moonlight, teeth chattering, in the ruin of an old rose garden, with no idea how, or why, he’d come here.

“To clear the cobwebs from my brain. That must be it.”

So we invent reasons for the unreasonable. We are rationalists of the irrational. It is very hard for me to write this chapter for, to be frank, as historians are so rarely frank,
I am writing about my own dear departed father and in so doing, though I am totally sympathetic with him, as with my dear mother, it seems very wrong: a violation of something primary, not unlike Oedipus’s terrible sins.

This night, after the intellectually stimulating dinner with his young, former student, Pearce had intended to work until at least 4 a.m., then to sleep on the divan in his study, covered by an old, moth-eaten but warm comforter; for he needed to be near, physically near, the Scheme of Clues, in recent days; it was his great fear, that something would happen to the chart, as to his hundreds of pages of accumulated notes—a fire, for instance. Electricity was erratic in this part of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and so kerosene lamps, candles, and wood fires were necessary; with her air of girlish optimism, that countered but did not quite eradicate her underlying anxiety, Johanna liked to say that Quatre Face was
romantic
—“We are like people in a gothic novel!” (Yet Pearce knew very well, the West End ladies of Princeton would far rather inhabit a novel by Jane Austen.)

And so this night, nerves strained by excitement no less than by anxiety, Pearce found himself, suddenly, not at his desk, not in his study, but, he knew not how,
outside
. The air was very chill, for May; on the wide, dark Delaware River, less than one hundred feet from where Pearce stood in the ruined garden, moonlight rippled and shivered; he was in shirtsleeves, and had opened his collar, while working and perspiring; now, his teeth chattered with cold.

Fortunately, Johanna would not know! And Josiah would not know.

Precisely how late it was, Pearce had no idea. Perhaps 3 a.m.—nowhere near dawn. Behind him, rising above him, the solid, foursquare house of weatherworn limestone, with darkened windows. Wind rustled vines attached to the house, that had not revived with spring but were dead, and very dry; the sound was like voices, whispering. Yet, Pearce could not decode what the voices were saying. A short distance away were several statues that, dimly white by moonlight, seemed both lifelike and paralyzed: slender, tall Diana with her noble hounds close beside her, whose tongues protruded from their fanged mouths; the chastely entwined couple Cupid and Psyche; and, farthest away, the comely youth Adonis poised on tiptoe. Johanna had laughed at the statues, and had wiped tears from her eyes, saying that the inheritance of Quatre Face, from a great-grandfather of Pearce’s, was a mixed blessing, indeed; for, to revive the house, and to make it halfway livable, they would have to spend thousands, many thousands of dollars; and they would have to get rid of such singularly ugly statuary, executed by one or another sculptor-friend of Pearce’s ancestor; almost, they would have to devote themselves to it, and abandon their Princeton lives—“It would eat us alive, Quatre Face.”

Pearce had been annoyed, in fact rather insulted, by his wife’s careless remark. Quatre Face was
his property,
and not
hers.

A woman could not inherit such property, that was the law. A woman might go to court, these days; the suffragettes were clamoring for law reform, for women’s rights; but that day had not yet arrived, and women had few legal rights, as they had no voting rights—none. As a university liberal, as reform-minded as any Princeton professor, Pearce van Dyck was in favor of such changes in society; yet, privately, it pleased him that so little happened, and so slowly.

And perhaps it would never happen, in fact—
women’s rights
.

“There are more urgent matters. The ‘problem of evil,’ for one.”

Softly Pearce spoke aloud. In the nocturnal silence there was no sound except of the wind, and an underlying sound of the river, that was sometimes audible from inside the house, on still nights. Pearce was resolved not to stare at the statues, that seemed to be staring at him; for even Diana’s hounds seemed to be staring, with a sort of secret canine derision, at
him
. “Next, I will be talking to them—these stone creatures. And
they
addressing
me
.”

Johanna was correct: the statues were ugly, and ridiculous; worst of all, pretentious. They could never invite their Princeton friends to visit Quatre Face until the old estate was, as Johanna said,
revived
.

“But nothing can be done in any of our lives until it—the Curse—is lifted.”

Thinking such thoughts, Pearce turned to re-enter the house—he saw an opened door, that led to his study; obviously, in a kind of sleepwalking trance, he’d come outside through that doorway—and at the top of a short flight of stone steps he paused, seeing—was it a horse-drawn carriage approaching Quatre Face, at such an hour of the night?

“Another visitor? Impossible! A second unexpected—uninvited—guest?”

Yet, Pearce hurried to greet the carriage, as it swung smartly along the front drive, and pulled up before the granite portico of the house; for, as he reasoned, none of his small staff of servants would be up at this time of night, and it fell to him to offer hospitality.

“Yet, I’m sure we are expecting no one. Johanna would not dare invite anyone, without asking my permission.”

So, we can imagine Pearce van Dyck’s astonishment, shading into awe, and a kind of dread, as a tall hawk-nosed gentleman in a Scotch plaid cape leapt down lightly from the carriage—a gentleman whose fame, no less than his striking physiognomy and figure, were already better known to the philosopher than his own mirror-likeness.

For the unexpected and uninvited visitor was none other than Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the world’s sole
consulting detective.

REMARKABLE AS THIS
late-night visit was, and mysterious, the motive was quickly explained to Pearce van Dyck.

Lounging with aristocratic insolence on the leather settee in Pearce’s study, the Englishman told his rapt American host that Conan Doyle, a companion of his from medical school days, had passed along Professor van Dyck’s several admiring letters to him, as well as his request for several monographs; and though “Sherlock Holmes” was certainly not lacking for clients in London, the situation in Princeton and environs, as it was set forth in the letters, struck him as irresistible. “So, Professor, I made the decision to sail from Liverpool as quickly as possible, with the possibly selfish hope,” the Englishman smilingly said, as he employed an antiquated iron tong to lift a glowing coal from the fireplace, to light his pipe, “that you wouldn’t have solved the mystery by your own devices, before I arrived!”

At this, Pearce van Dyck blushed deeply; and murmured in confused embarrassment that, unfortunately, he
had not
solved the mystery; and found himself at an impasse. As to Mr. Holmes—

“Excuse me, Professor: I am not ‘Holmes.’ ”

“You are—not?”

“Certainly not. ‘Sherlock Holmes’ is a fictitious character, and a pseudonym. My name is private, and will never be revealed, as Conan Doyle has promised.”

The languid Englishman went on to explain that he both was, and was not, the “Sherlock Holmes” of the popular mystery stories. Unlike the glamorous Holmes, he was very much ensconced in
terra firma,
with “marital” responsibilities; an old, sprawling, quasi-ruin of a country estate inherited from English-Scots ancestors in Craigmire, in West Dorset, near Lyme Regis; and a “quite modest
pied-à-terre
” on Baker Street. “So erratic is my income as a very private consulting detective, I must supplement my income as a part-time pathologist at the University of London medical school; for I never completed my medical studies and got my degree, which youthful recklessness seems to me now a distinct mistake. In 1906 we are none of us quite so young and idealistic as we once were . . .” Shaking his head bemused, and drawing hard on his pipe, which Pearce noted was a straight pipe and not a calabash, as he’d have expected, the hawk-nosed Englishman said with a sigh, “How I wish that I were blessed with the freedom of ‘Sherlock Holmes’! Nothing would please me more, and exercise my talents better, than to be a full-time connoisseur of crime, and to ply my wits against the most brilliant criminals in the world. For I feel, like my friend Conan Doyle’s character ‘Sherlock,’ that the art of cerebral detection is the supreme art, and that beside it other human actions and
divertissements
appear rather pallid. A healthy mind
does
rebel at stagnation; and I am so ill-equipped for the common round of existence that I should soon go mad, or slash my throat, out of sheer boredom. If it were not for my private profession, how should I live? I glory, as you do, Professor, in mental stimulation—in the pursuit of Truth—in the most deeply absorbing of ratiocinative processes. And though I have been married for a number of years, in fact, in a ‘private’ sort of marriage, of which the world knows nothing, I’m inclined to believe, with my mythical alter ego, that the connubial life”—at this, the Englishman gestured condescendingly toward the interior of the house, enveloping, it seemed, all of Pearce van Dyck’s marital and domestic history—“indeed, the life of emotion and sentiment, is largely contemptible; and a sheer waste of time.”

Shocking words! Pearce felt his heated face grow warmer still; and though he drew breath to rebut such a statement, he could think of no adequate words in defense of his position.

For—was it true? The private life, the life of emotion and sentiment, was
contemptible
? A
sheer waste of time
?

How embarrassed he would be, to confess to this elegant English gentleman that he had lately become a father . . . That is, his dear wife had lately had a baby, after years of having failed to become pregnant . . .

Speaking in a cultivated drawl the Englishman continued along the same lines, sensitive to his American host’s social awkwardness, and awe in his presence: explaining that while his old classmate Doyle had greatly romanticized him, and given him “near-omnipotent” powers, as writers of fiction are wont to do, yet Doyle had more or less presented the essence of the detective’s personality—“Uncannily, in fact.” The author had even exposed certain habits of his which he’d hoped were known to himself only . . . (Here, “Holmes” quite surprised Pearce van Dyck by sliding up his sleeves to reveal lean, sinewy, and badly scarred forearms.) “My cocaine habit, you see—the injection of liquid cocaine into my bloodstream, until my more serviceable veins have dried up. This, I view with more alarm and remorse than Doyle suggests, rather irresponsibly, I think. An author must present a
morally coherent universe,
else he is likely to pervert the weaker and more vulnerable of his readers.” The Englishman sucked at his pipe rather contently, however. One could see that he quite liked Pearce van Dyck’s company, and may have been impressed, Pearce thought, at the size and style of Quatre Face, which appeared less weatherworn by moonlight; and its interior rooms, naturally darkened, less shabby. “Any man of rational principle would wish to be freed of addiction, surely—do you agree, Professor? I think you indicated that you were a ‘Kantian’—a very moral, very primly pious and Germanic philosopher, indeed.”

Pearce wracked his brains for a suitable response, that might exhibit sympathy, yet some intelligent censure; for the Englishman seemed to invite this, as one friend might with another. But before he could speak, the Englishman continued to develop the parallels, and differences, between himself and the fictitious detective, which he believed might be of interest to his American admirer.

So far as physical appearance went, he granted that he and Holmes were virtually twins: being six feet three inches tall, and weighing one hundred sixty pounds—thus “lean to the point of gauntness.” Yes, his chin was rather sharp, and his nose distinctly long and narrow; as to his eyes—whether they were “uncommonly keen and piercing,” he could not say. His hands were, indeed, stained indelibly with ink and chemicals; his clothing, more or less as Doyle described—“Though my spouse—my ‘partner,’ as it were—tries to dress me more fashionably, on our limited budget.” Yet, in other respects, the Englishman said, frowning, “my alleged hagiographer has rather libeled me. He knows that since boyhood I’ve been fascinated by the workings of the solar system yet, out of playfulness, he has turned my interest upside down, so that ‘Holmes’ is known as a man of genius who boasts of neither knowing nor caring what Copernican theory means!—and takes a haughty tone in rejecting the latest discoveries of science, except as they relate to his field. So narrow is the fictional ‘Holmes,’ scorning an interest in art, history, politics, and music apart from the occasional squeaking of his own fiddle—the man is just another English eccentric, which I rather resent.”

Touched by such candor, Pearce van Dyck could only murmur a polite assent. Shyly then, for the gesture seemed belated, he offered his guest a small glass of brandy, which was accepted with a curt nod of the head, in thanks, and downed in a single shot.

Pearce, meaning to mirror his guest, downed his glass in a single shot as well, but fell to choking, and coughing; at such length that his guest queried him, if he was all right—“Your cough is ‘bronchial,’ I think. Have you been ill?”