The Clairvoyant Curse (12 page)

Madame Moghra flushed red and
looked around to make sure they were still alone in the saloon car
before leaning forward, a cold-blooded glimmer in her unblinking
eyes. “I implore you not to mention your discovery, Countess. I
will not be travelling to America at all. I will soon bid
adieu
to the menagerie. I have not yet informed Monsieur
Croquemort. I fear he will not take it well. I will need to pick my
moment carefully. I would appreciate it if you did not mention my
secret to Dr Watson. Once a secret is out there is no stopping
it.”

The Countess promised to keep
it to herself and saw an opportunity to delve into a secret of
another sort.

“Tell me about the séance in
London, the one attended by Dr Watson.”

Madame Moghra leaned back and
regarded her shrewdly. “That was shortly after the much publicised
death of his friend, Mr Sherlock Holmes, and the less public death
of his wife. She died of consumption. He desired to make contact
with their departed souls. I was the conduit for the spirit world.
The spirits conveyed some news that shocked him, news for which he
was ill prepared and which he refused to accept. It upset him
terribly and he stormed out. Regrettable, of course - he cannot
accept the truth even to this day.”

“The truth being…?”

“Professional prudence
precludes me from divulging such a confidence.”

The Countess was forced to
respect the medium’s silence however much she disliked it –
professional pretension, more like it!

Dr Watson was buried behind his
broadsheet when the Countess finally returned to their compartment.
He didn’t even wait for her to sit down.

“Listen to this,” he pitched,
sounding excited and a touch neurotic. “It’s an article from
yesterday’s
Times
all about that feather-brained,
pompadour-poufed, poison pill pusher. Her full name is Mrs
Evangeline Merle and she is quite the popular celebrity in New
York’s star-struck society.”

“
Tout a fait
, she was
telling me all about herself and has offered to cast my natal
horoscope for a modest fee.”

“Did she mention she does
consulting work for the Detective Branch of the New York Police
Force?”

The Countess was taken aback.
“No, she didn’t mention that.”

“It says here, on page three,
that when the New York police have a baffling case that they cannot
solve they call her in. She is a consulting detective! Can you
believe it! Can you credit it! That star-struck seer solves crimes!
The newspaper likens her to Sherlock Holmes! Last year she solved a
kidnapping case involving a missing heiress: The Case of the Green
Velvet Glove! And earlier this year she proved that the accidental
death of a bishop killed by falling masonry was actually a nasty
murder: The Case of the Wingless Gargoyle! And a month ago she
finally put an end to a series of disturbing burglaries plaguing
the summer mansions of Rhode Island: The Curious Case of the Cat in
the Night! What’s worse – she claims to use astrology to help her
solve the cases!”

The doctor threw his crumpled
copy of
The Times
down in disgust and waited for a response
that affirmed his disdain.

“Well, she cannot be as stupid
as she seems,” concluded the Countess blandly.

“Sherlock would turn in his
grave!”

“Presuming he had one.”

The doctor coughed and composed
himself. “Er, yes, indeed.”

“I wonder how she does it,”
muttered the Countess, lighting up a cigarette and falling back
into her seat, her brow corrugating under the weight of
contemplation. “Mrs Merle, I mean. How would astrology help solve
cases as diverse as kidnapping, murder and burglary?”

“Lucky guesses!” he
sneered.

“Three lucky guesses in a row
is more than dumb luck.” The Countess retrieved the newspaper and
read the article for herself. After a few minutes she replaced it.
“A pity the article doesn’t explain how she does it.”

“A pity the article doesn’t
question
how she does it. Gone are the days when journalists
had brains. These days they are merely reporters. They just rehash
each other’s stories. Mark my words, tomorrow morning the same
article will appear in
Tatler
.”

The Countess was not deterred.
“It’s an interesting theory – astrology and crime. Have there been
any serious studies? Has anyone ever found a link?”

“If they have they’ve got a one
in twelve chance of being right.”

“Mmm, I suppose that’s true.
The fact that most murderers have brown eyes doesn’t mean that
children with brown eyes will grow up to be murderers. There’s no
actual cause and effect between eye colour and propensity to
murder.”

“I have brown eyes and I have a
propensity to murder!” he quipped mordantly. “I might murder the
psychic fraud before we reach Biarritz!”

“Shhh,” she warned, glancing at
the door, “you never know who is listening.”

“I don’t care who hears
me!”

“Mrs Merle has been right at
least three times,” said the Countess, returning to the topic and
thinking about the three cases she had recently solved. They had
taken hours of painstaking fact-gathering, the intelligent
elimination of irrelevant information, a careful analysis of human
nature, in other words, the sifting of the improbable from the
impossible and seeing what was left.

The doctor seemed to read her
thoughts. “Don’t forget the police only call her in after they’ve
done all the hard work. Most likely she just notices a small detail
they’ve been too busy to notice and then she takes all the credit.
She reminds me of those so-called psychics who come forward to help
the police, claiming to know where a body is buried.”

“You mean like the mother of
Mary Marten?”

“Not her specifically, but,
well, yes, that sort of thing. They say something general like: the
body is buried somewhere near water. That covers just about
everywhere you can imagine. Rivers, lakes, ponds, wells, horse
troughs, puddles, and the entire coastline of the world.”

“Speaking of water,” said the
Countess, gazing out of the window, “there’s the Firth of
Clyde.”

As the train pulled into
Glasgow station and they prepared to disembark, the Countess
noticed the packet of Dr Dreadnought’s Cough Drops poking out from
under the discarded newspaper. She picked it up and slipped it into
the pocket of the doctor’s tweed jacket without him noticing. He
would thank her later.

“Do you believe in Fate?”

Dr Watson and Countess
Volodymyrovna were dining in the restaurant of the Mungo Arms Hotel
and were just rounding off their meal with a coffee when the doctor
posed the question to his counterpart.

She did not answer immediately.
It signalled she was not about to dismiss his question out of hand
as he feared she might. She was weighing her response
carefully.

“Not really, no,” she said
thoughtfully. “I realize I am going against the grain here since
most cultures around the world have a word for it and if you have a
word for something you generally accept the concept of it – karma,
kismet, luck, destiny, and of course the will or whim of the gods.
The notion has been with us since the dawn of time. It is my view
that people believe in Fate when life is difficult. They tend to
attribute bad luck to forces outside themselves. Good fortune is
attributed to innate skill, personal talent or a deserving
disposition. But of course bad things happen to good people and
vice versa. Still, the concept persists. I think Sherlock would
have derided the concept of Fate, preferring the ‘character is
destiny’ argument, but the fatalists would have replied that he was
fated to succeed while simultaneously deriding the concept of Fate.
Really, Fate is whatever you want it to be. And since we are
discussing esoteric subjects – what star sign are you, Dr
Watson?”

He was still ruminating
meditatively on her response, especially the bit about Sherlock,
and how well she seemed to understand the man without ever meeting
him, when the question caught him by surprise. “I have no idea,” he
shrugged unconvincingly.

“Oh rubbish! Everyone knows
their own star sign - a rabbi, an imam and a cardinal would know
their star sign.”

“Why do you want to know?” he
rebounded defensively.

“No reason, but the fact you
refuse to answer shows just how much credence you really put on
star-quackery despite your protestations to the contrary.”

“Nonsense! I simply prefer to
keep my birth date to myself!”

“Why?”

“Well, for starters, I know how
you much of a fuss you will make about the date and how you will
probably want to throw a huge surprise birthday party to celebrate,
or how you will start reading things into my character, or possibly
even have my horoscope cast by that horror-scoper and then start
turning random events into self-fulfilling prophecies to prove the
astro-logicalness of the starry heavens!”

“How prescient of you,” she
said, lacing her tone with sarcasm. “But what leads you to think we
will still be together long enough for me to throw you a surprise
birthday party?”

“There is no escaping we will
be together for the next few days. The next bit of my destiny is
preordained. After that, I admit it is all wide open to
chance.”

“So solly to intellupt.”

The doctor and the Countess
almost gave themselves whiplash. The folding screen standing
alongside their dining table, affording them some privacy between
their table and the next, suddenly folded back and a benign
oriental face appeared.

“Please to excuse me,” the
Chinaman addressed their way, smiling ebulliently and bowing his
head politely. “I cannot help but hear your vely interlesting
conversation. I enjoy your wisdom words on subject of Fate,” he
smiled effusively and inclined his head specifically toward the
Countess, “and I like vely much your discussion on the mystelies of
western zodiac. If you will permit me to say – in my countly once
you know the year of birth the sign of zodiac is also known. There
can be no seclecy. Allow me to intloduce myself.”

He procured an exquisite ivory
box and extracted two cards, handing one to the doctor and one to
the Countess. He had small, feminine hands with long slender
fingers and exceedingly long fingernails. The cards read:

Dr Hu – Advisor to the Empress
of All China

Master of Feng Shui, Shengxiao
and the I Ching

Geomancer

Dr Hu was a small man with a
smooth hairless face apart from two long strands of hair that
sprouted from his top lip and hung down either side of his small
mouth well past a small chin. He had thin lips and twinkly black
eyes. On his head sat a small black silk hat not unlike a Fez but
with a brim that stood upright. No hair was visible from the front
view but reflected in the mirror on the wall behind him one could
observe a long dark plait hanging down his back. His ears, though
small, stuck out from the side of his head and gave him a slightly
comical appearance.

“Pleased to make your
acquaintance,” said Dr Watson, relieved to have some diverting
conversation even if that meant meeting another nutter who would
most probably be cruising on the ship of fools to Biarritz. Unlike
the vast majority of his countrymen he did not dislike foreigners
at first sight, perhaps because he had served in Afghanistan and
India and had noticed that human suffering was universal. Or
perhaps he did not harbour the same prejudices as his compatriots
because he was a medical man and had met all nationalities in the
course of his doctoring. “I am Dr John Watson and this is my
travelling companion, Countess Varvara Volodymyrovna.”

The Countess pocketed Dr Hu’s
card in her evening purse. “What animal is this year?”

Dr Hu pulled his chair around
the edge of the screen to better enable him to converse with ease.
“1899 is Year of Pig.”

“Your zodiac, I believe, is a
true zodiac since it is twelve animals, unlike the western zodiac
which features signs which are not all animals, such as the scales
of Libra.”

“Your observation is collect,
Countess. We have twelve animals: Lat, Ox, Tiger, Labbit, Dlagon,
Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Looster, Dog, Pig.”

“There are so many animals in
the world - how were the twelve animals chosen?” asked Dr Watson,
signalling for the waiter, not because he wanted the bill but
because he thought a post prandial drink would go down well with
their coffee. He recalled how Mary had begun to express an interest
in I Ching shortly before she fell ill and how he occasionally
found her arranging queer little tiles with strange symbols on them
on the kitchen table and trying to read something into them or from
them, yet he had never bothered to take an interest. Guilt gnawed
at him almost constantly now for the things he had omitted to do
before she died.

“Ancient Han Empelor summon
animals to his loyal court and this twelve animals allive in order,
starting with Lat who is fastest.”

When the waiter rushed across
to them Dr Watson ordered a whiskey for himself, the Countess opted
for a Cointreau and Dr Hu chose a sweet sherry.

“What is Shengxiao?” asked the
doctor.

“It is meaning ‘birthlikeness’.
You are light, Dr Watson, not to leveal your zodiac sign. To leveal
your zodiac sign is to leveal your inner nature, your seclet
chalacter. We Chinese call the birth animal the
‘birthlikeness’.”

There was a bit of commotion on
the other side of the dining room when the Magic Lantern menagerie
finished their evening meal and all six stood up at the same time,
pushing back their chairs, shuffling about, gathering their evening
bags and cigarette cases, preparing to retire to their rooms for
the night. Dr Hu acknowledged Monsieur Croquemort with a slight
inclination of his head as the other passed by his chair on his way
out. The latter bowed stiffly in return but did not stop to
exchange a greeting.