The Dead Assassin: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (2 page)

In the welcome warmth of the Palm Room, Conan Doyle dropped into his dinner companion’s vacated seat and waited patiently until Detective Blenkinsop finished sipping his brandy, the color flushed back into his face, and the spark of intellect burned once again in his eyes.

“Obviously it’s a murder,” Conan Doyle ventured. “An extremely bloody one judging by the state of your raincoat.”

The hand holding the brandy snifter tremored visibly. “It’s a murder all right, sir. But not like nothing I ever seen before.”

“It must be something truly dire to have distressed a detective used to witnessing the worst of humanity’s deeds.”

Blenkinsop shook his head. At just twenty-six, he was alarmingly boyish-looking. He had been promoted to detective just six months previously, in recognition of a feat of bravery: a deranged gunman walked into the crowd gathered outside the gates of Buckingham Palace and began firing his pistol at random. Two people had been shot dead as other constables looked on helplessly. Blenkinsop single-handedly tackled the madman to the ground and disarmed him. In recognition of his valor, he had been promoted to detective, the youngest ever on the force. Although he had grown the wispy suggestion of a moustache in an attempt to look older, he still more closely resembled a fresh-faced schoolboy summoned to the headmaster’s office to receive a caning.

“I’d rather say as little as possible,” Blenkinsop said. “I figured to fetch you so you can see for yourself.” He tossed back the dregs of his liquor, nostrils flaring as he exhaled brandy fumes. “You might have a stiff ’un yourself, afore we go. I reckon even a doctor’s nerves will need steadying.”

Stepping into the chill night was like an open-handed slap across the face. For days, a pestilential fog, known in the popular vernacular as a “London Particular,” had suffocated the capital city beneath a yellow-green blanket. Appearing each evening at the mouth of the Thames, the fog oozed up the river and spilled over onto the surrounding streets, submerging all but the tallest church spires. Fogs were common at this time of year, but rather than abating after a few days as most fogs did, the mephitic cloud seemed to worsen with each evening. After a full week of such fogs, the night air was cold and abrasive, a gritty cloud of pumice swirling with ash, soot, and firefly-like embers that burned the lungs and needled tears to the eyes. The fog muffled sound and shrank the sprawling metropolis to a murky circle of visibility, scarcely twenty feet in any direction.

Detective Blenkinsop snatched wide the battle-scarred rear door of the Mariah and gestured for the Scottish author to step aboard. “Forgive the means of transport, sir. Uncomfortable, I admit, but she’ll get us there, no bother.”

As Conan Doyle climbed into the boxy carriage, a strangely familiar smell assailed his senses—Turkish tobacco smoke—and he was surprised to find that the Mariah already had an occupant.

“Ah,” spoke an urbane voice, “it appears I am not the only prisoner tonight. I bid you welcome, fellow riffraff.”

It was only then Conan Doyle realized that the shadowy shape he had at first mistaken for a small bear was in fact a large Irishman.

“Oscar!”

Oscar Wilde wore a gorgeous fur overcoat with an enormous fur collar and cuffs. Atop his head perched a muskrat hat—a trophy fetched from his North American travels. Conan Doyle had ridden in Black Mariahs before, which invariably bore an aura of abject despair and reeked like public urinals in the worse part of London, but Wilde’s expensive cologne and piquant tobacco smoke bullied the air of its malodorous stink while his insouciant gravitas commandeered the space and made it his own. A small oil lantern swung from a hook in the ceiling, and in the wan pulse of amber light the Irish wit resembled the sultan of some exotic country being carried to his coronation in an enclosed sedan chair.

Conan Doyle slid in beside his friend, and Detective Blenkinsop dropped onto the bench opposite. The door of the Mariah banged shut and a constable standing outside locked them in. The horses were gee’d up and the Mariah rumbled away on wobbly axles squealing for a lick of grease.

“I am always happy to see you, Oscar,” Conan Doyle said. “But I confess you are the last person I would expect to meet in a Black Mariah.”

The hot coal of Wilde’s cigarette flared red as he drew in a lungful and jetted smoke out both nostrils. “Scotland Yard’s best have been combing the city for you. Detective Blenkinsop recruited me to assist in the search. We stopped at The Savoy, Claridge’s, and then your club. When you were discovered at none of them, given the hour, I plumped for the Tivoli and am gratified to see my guess was correct.” Wilde swept Conan Doyle’s dress with an appraising gaze and his full lips curled in a supercilious smile. “And now I understand why you were avoiding your usual haunts.”

Conan Doyle stiffened in his seat. “I, ah … I was supping with a friend. A fellow member of the Society for Psychical Research.”

“A fellow member, but not a
fellow,
per se?” Wilde remarked in a deeply incriminating voice. “You are quite the dog, Arthur. I suspect you were entertaining a lady!”

Conan Doyle blanched as Wilde pierced the bull’s-eye with his first arrow.

“I … how on earth did you know that?”

Had it not been so gloomy, Conan Doyle’s companions would have seen him blush.

“Your dress reveals much, Arthur. You are wearing a very fine bespoke suit—beautifully tailored might I add—rather than your work-a-day tweeds. You sport a beaver top hat, a fresh boutonniere, and have obviously spent a great deal of effort on your toilet, including taking the time to wax your extravagant moustaches, which I must confess positively coruscate in the light. Were we actually heading to jail you would be the talk of the prison yard. A man as practical as Arthur Conan Doyle does not take such pains with his attire to dine with an old school chum or a chalk-dusted academic. You have clearly dressed for a lady friend. A young and fetching lady, I would wager. Another good reason to dodge your usual haunts to avoid wagging tongues—”

“Yes, thank you, Oscar,” Conan Doyle interrupted. “And I think that’s quite enough. I assume you were carousing at The Savoy, as usual?”

The Irishman trilled with laughter. “Au contraire. It is scarcely ten o’clock. Oscar Wilde does not
begin
to carouse until midnight at the very earliest. No, I was visiting the Haymarket Theatre. My new play is in its third week. I look in on the production from time to time. To boost company morale. To thrill my audiences with a personal appearance … and to count the box office receipts. Plus I am a great aficionado of my own work. I love the sound of my own voice. And I love to hear the sound of my own voice coming out of someone else’s mouth. It is the primary reason for my connexion with the theater; it ensures I am never far from the thing I love most.”

“Well now you’ve found me,” Conan Doyle said, and turned his attention to the policeman sitting opposite. “Can you reveal, Detective Blenkinsop, what has prompted Scotland Yard to search for me so diligently?”

Blenkinsop drew the homburg from his head and held it slackly in his hands, turning it slowly by the brim. “There’s been a murder—no, not a murder. That ain’t right. I guess you’d properly call it … an assassination.”

Conan Doyle and Wilde exchanged stunned glances.

“Are we permitted to know whom?” Wilde asked.

The young detective’s expression grew tragic. “The whole world will know soon enough: Lord Howell.”

Both Wilde and Conan Doyle grunted as if gut-punched.

“The prime minister’s secretary for war,” Conan Doyle muttered in shocked tones.

Wilde leaned forward, his expression tense. “An assassination, you say? Do you suspect the party or parties responsible for such an act?”

Blenkinsop shook his head. “Not a clue. Right now all we got is the body. But it’s not just the murder. It’s
how
he was murdered. The murder scene…” A gasp tore loose from Blenkinsop, whose eyes lost focus as he stared blankly into space. “I can’t tell ya no more. I can’t describe it. I seen some dark doings in me days as a copper. But I ain’t never seen nothing like this. When I shut me eyes, I can still see it.”

With Blenkinsop unwilling to reveal more, the men fell into a tense silence for the rest of the journey. Held to a slow walk by the fog, the horses clop-clopped through deserted streets, at times narrowly avoiding horseless, abandoned carriages that loomed like shipwrecks in the fog. And so the Black Mariah took thirty minutes to travel less than a mile to reach its destination. When Conan Doyle and Wilde finally climbed out, the fog had grown thicker still, caging the streetlamps in tremulous globes of light.

Conan Doyle, who knew London intimately, looked about, utterly lost, and asked in a baffled voice, “Where the devil are we?”

“Belgravia, sir,” Detective Blenkinsop answered. He nodded toward the limestone fa
ç
ade of a handsome residence where two constables stood guard on either side of the front gate. “That there is Lord Howell’s residence.”

As he spoke, a third constable came staggering out of the house. He wobbled a rubber-legged path to the pavement where he doubled over and vomited explosively into the gutter. Conan Doyle and Wilde jumped back to avoid having their shoes splashed as a second wave hit and the officer gargled up the remainder of his dinner. As he sagged to his knees, clutching the railings for support, the young constable looked up at them, his face wretched with horror, and moaned, “Don’t go in there!”

Conan Doyle shared a look with Wilde, whose eyes were saucered, his complexion waxen and ghastly in the otherworldly throb of gaslight.

“Oscar, perhaps it would be better if you remained outside. As a medical doctor, I am used to such sights—”

“No,” Wilde shook his head. “If I do not see for myself then you shall be forced to describe it to me, and I fear my imagination excels when it comes to fathoming horrible things from nothing.”

“Right then,” Conan Doyle said. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Boyle! Jennings!” Blenkinsop called to the two officers posted on either side of the gate. Lend the gentlemen your rain capes,” he fixed the two friends with a dire look. “You’ll be needin’ them, I reckon.”

With their fine clothes protected beneath long police rain capes, Conan Doyle and Wilde cautiously stepped up to the front door—or rather, what remained of it. A solid chunk of milled and planed English oak, the door had been smashed violently inward, tearing the mortise lock completely through the doorframe and wrenching two of the three hinges loose. Once painted ivory, the door gleamed crimson with spattered gore. The two friends stood goggling at the site, which bore mute testament to an act of extreme violence. Although the door had been solidly locked—they could see the exposed brass tenon—something with the force of a steam locomotive had smashed straight through it. They entered the house and found the marble tiles of the entrance hall slippery with blood. The footprints of every police officer that had entered the space tracked in all directions, like macabre steps in a dance studio from hell. Conan Doyle cast a doubting look at his tall Irish friend. “Really, Oscar, I don’t think there’s a need for you to see this.”

Wilde, who had yanked a scented handkerchief from his breast pocket and pressed it over his nose and mouth, shook his head. “No,” he said in a muffled voice. “Proceed. I have witnessed the dreadful prologue. I must see how the act ends.”

Their feet slithered across blood-slick tiles to a front parlor where the same maniacal force had also ripped the lighter parlor door to splinters. Inside the room, toppled chairs and broken furniture testified to a dreadful struggle. The tepid air of the parlor roiled with the ferric tang of blood. Beside an overturned divan, a body lay on the floor. Conan Doyle stepped around a broken end table to inspect it.

The corpse had a face both men recognized from the newspapers: Lord Montague Howell, hero of the battle of Alma and the siege of Sevastopol—amongst a score of Crimean campaigns. Miraculously, the handsome features had escaped unscathed; the blue eyes retained a calm gaze, the lids drooped slightly, a rictus-smile drawing back the lips, showing strong white teeth beneath a scrupulously groomed brown moustache. However, Lord Howell’s head was unnaturally kinked upon his neck.

With his years of medical experience, Conan Doyle was used to blood and death, but as he stepped closer, his gorge rose and invisible needles tattooed his face as he saw, to his horror, that the body was lying chest down.

The head had been twisted one hundred and eighty degrees, so that it pointed in the wrong direction.

“Dear God!” he gasped. “His neck has been wrung like a pigeon’s.” He crouched down to examine ten finger-sized bruises, five tattooed on either side of the neck. “And by someone with a demon’s grip.”

Wilde made a dry heaving sound and gripped a drinks cabinet to steady himself. “I think I shall look for clues outside,” he said in a squeezed-tight voice.

“Yes,” Conan Doyle agreed. “Detective Blenkinsop, please help Mister Wilde.”

The young detective took Wilde firmly by the arm and walked him out of the room.

As they left, two new constables crowded in through the parlor door, gawking at the corpse.

“Lumme! What’d I tell ya, Alfie?” the first said, elbowing his companion.

“Yer right, Stan. Won’t nobody be sneakin’ up on him from behind now!”

The prospect of the horrifying tableau becoming a macabre attraction struck a nerve with Conan Doyle. He rose to his feet and bellowed at the young constables: “Show some respect, damn you! This man was a hero of the British Empire. He was at the Charge of the Light Brigade and earned the Victoria Cross for valor!”

Detective Blenkinsop stepped back into the room just in time to hear. He threw a scowl at the two constables and jerked a thumb at the door, saying, “Right, you two, hop it!”

The young constables skulked out, heads lowered in shame. Conan Doyle took in a deep breath, bracing himself, and then dropped to his knees and rolled the body over. Once turned upon on its back, he took the noble head in both hands and turned it the right way around. The corpse wore evening dress, the once-elegant tuxedo jacket glutinous with congealing blood.