Encounters of Sherlock Holmes Part 12

Well, of course, you could have knocked me down with a feather. Our Nellie? Having adventures? Involved in investigations? Helping out a personage such as this Maude? For a second I experienced a slight dizziness. Did everyone I know get themselves involved in curious adventures behind my very back?

"Do you mean... crimes?" I asked, lowering my voice as we came within sight of Nellie's cottage.

"Crimes, indeed-" Maude nodded "-also supernatural and unexplained phenomena of all kinds. Whitby seems to be a kind of magnet for occult and devilish practices, schemes and unholy beings, y'know."

"Really?"

"Oh, yes-" Maude sniffed, giving me a very dark look indeed as I fumbled for my keys to Nellie's house "-it's to do with the presence of an interst.i.tial dimensional gateway known as the b.i.t.c.h's Maw in the grounds of the old Abbey, you see. A kind of gateway into h.e.l.l. Very nasty indeed."

I'm afraid my mouth dropped open at her words and I busied myself with letting us into the cottage, which smelled rea.s.suringly of newly brewed coffee and fresh wood smoke. Convinced I was bringing a raging lunatic to the rescue, I was delighted to see that my sister had risen from her bed. She was shuffling about in the kitchen in her nightie and pouring coffee for us all.

"I'm so sorry to call you out, Maude," she said, as her visitor produced the Victoria sponge from her shopping bag. "Ooh, lovely. I'll fetch plates. No, I thought I'd better call you over, because of this funny do that we had last night at the Exorcism Extravaganza."

"You were fools to go to such a thing," Maude growled, slicing the cake and dolloping wodges of it messily onto dainty china.

"I know, I couldn't help myself," said Nellie. "And we all know these things are about charlatans fleecing the public. But the thing is... I went there because Raphael was worried. He had felt a vibration. There was a genuinely powerful psychic up there at the hotel last night. He could feel them at work. They were malevolent. Harmful. Hiding their wicked selves away amongst the usual fakers. That's why we were there last night. So I could flush this person out."

I sat there with my wedge of cake halfway up to my mouth, staring at my sister. My malformed and shy younger sister, Nellie. Nellie with one eye, a crooked back and a clubfoot. Nellie who would never say boo to a goose. My poor Nellie was sitting there in her nightgown, eating cake for breakfast, and coming out with all of this gobbledegook, easy as you like. And that bullish Maude woman was simply nodding at her. Nodding as if they had little chats like this all the time. Nodding as if they were discussing something entirely reasonable.

Before they could carry on saying more to uproot my sense of the stability of all things, I broke in, "Erm, who is Raphael?"

My dear sister Nellie looked at me and I was astonished to see a hint of pity in her single eye. She was pitying me! "Oh dear," she said. "Well. I suppose needs must. After all these years, I must come clean. I must tell you the truth. After a lifetime of concealment."

"I think you're right," said Maude. "It's about time your sister knew the truth."

Nellie took a deep breath and looked at me dead in the eye. Both my eyes. With her single one. Which was wincing with pity. She said- in a very calm voice indeed-"You see, Raphael is my inner demon. And my spirit guide. He's been inside me all my life and he's been my little secret. And when that dreadful woman tried to exorcise him last night, it gave Raphael quite a turn, I can tell you."

I stared at her. I really didn't know what to say. What does one say, Dr Waston, in circ.u.mstances like these?

Yours, Mrs Hudson * * *

Dear Dr Watson, I hope both your good self and our mutual friend, Himself, are faring rather better than I am this week. I have been in a whirl of perturbation for several days. Never have I been so steeped in strangeness and such eerie goings-on. Well, it turns out that my malformed sister and her bluff and hearty best friend are very well accustomed to all manner of supernatural things. Things I a.s.sumed simply should not be. Being, like our good friend Himself, a creature of rationality and good, plain commonsense, I am having problems. Here in the north I am finding more things in my philosophy-as the Danish prince would say-than I could shake a stick at.

Today is Thursday-honestly, I don't know where the time is going; I'm pa.s.sively being led around by my sister, who seems to have a renewed vigour about her, now that she is embroiled in an investigation. I was compelled to attend an unveiling ceremony at the museum in the rather elegant park across the other side of town. This was for the stuffed squid that Maude's sisters had spent day and night st.i.tching back into some semblance of life. When we arrived for the sherry c.o.c.ktail reception this evening in that rather musty, dusty munic.i.p.al establishment, the squid was suspended in a delicate cat's cradle of silver threads, which gave it the appearance of swimming through the cavernous room. All of the guests-Whitby's great and good in their finery-stood milling underneath, gazing up at the frozen tentacles and the s.h.i.+ny carapace of its purple skin.

I nodded politely and smiled as my sister gabbled away at Maude's sisters, who were attired in suitably witchy-and rather scandalous-gowns for the evening. They smiled demurely and seemed to be the toast of the town. I wandered about the other display cabinets, finding a bewildering selection of mouldering dolls' houses and ragged bears. There were Valentine's cards from the previous century; tiny gloves and shoes; stuffed woodland beasts and seabirds. It was a shabby miscellany, I thought, with hardly any rhyme or reason.

Anyhow, there was a proper ballyhoo when the Mayor of Whitby got up in all his robes and chains and made his speech. He stood on a podium-this oleaginous Mr Danby, as they called him-and chuntered on about their town and its glorious heritage. I was staring into the eyes of the monstrous beast, but its celestial orbs had been replaced, naturally enough, with something less potent. They looked rather like green gla.s.s plates and, indeed, Maude leaned in to me and hissed that they were two expensive serving platters she had brought back from a holiday on the island of Murano, near Venice. Oh, my heart leapt up at the mention of Venice, dear Dr Watson. And then I s.h.i.+vered as I recalled some of the deadlier details of our adventure there, last autumn.

It was just as the Mayor was coming to the end of his windy speech that I noticed something rather odd happening to the suspended squid. One of its attenuated limbs seemed to flex and lash, of its own accord. There was a sharp cry as someone else noticed the same thing. Then, all of a sudden, its other limbs were moving and screams rang out inside the stuffy museum. It was at this point that I noticed it was all due to the wires which suspended the beast: they were snapping, one by one, and the thick, heavy body of the squid was swaying and then galloping about in mid-air. There was such a pandemonium at this, and I felt Nellie grab me by both arms and drag me backwards into the alcove where the s.h.i.+ps-in-bottles were tidily arrayed.

With a tremendous crash of breaking cabinets and gla.s.s displays, the giant squid came toppling down. Some innocent bystanders had been transfixed with horror-including the Mayor-and they were soon pinned and wriggling under that giant, piscine form.

After a few moments there was silence, and billowing clouds of dust.

I heard Maude Sturgeon cry out, "Sabotage...!"

And soon we were checking around to see who was hurt. Maude's witchy sisters were shaken, but not injured. The squid itself had barely a scratch on it. The Mayor's ancient, wizened mother was hyperventilating and had to be taken home.

Nellie and I went straight to the nearest hotel, where we sat in the bar and took a fortifyingly stiff nip of brandy. "Who would want to sabotage the unveiling of a squid?" I asked her.

She gave me a very dark look. "Perhaps it's not the squid itself. Perhaps it is all about what was inside the squid."

I raised my eyebrow at her as she downed her drink. "What could be inside a squid?" I laughed.

"Whatever it was, it isn't there now," she said cryptically. "The squid was, as we know, rammed full of stuffing."

She was mumbling rather drunkenly, and I thought I could detect a touch of Raphael, her supposed spirit guide, in her eyes. "Are you saying something was removed from the squid? By those who did the stuffing?"

She tapped her nose. "I am, indeed."

"Maude's sisters gutted the thing; what did they take out?"

"I don't know," she said primly. "I'm only surmising." Then she was peering across the elegant lounge bar of the Miramar Hotel at someone who had just stepped in, alone. "Isn't that Denise?" she said. "From Denise and Wheatley?"

And it was, Dr Watson. Away from the stage and out of her finery, Denise was a rather shabby genteel figure, all bundled up in worsted and tweed.

"She's entering the bar on her own," I observed.

"Oh, no one cares about that kind of propriety," said Nellie. "Not at the Miramar Hotel, anyway. Look, I'm going to call her over."

I wasn't sure I even wanted to be sociable with an exorcist, but voice my concerns about this I could not, for Nellie was on her feet and beckoning Denise by waving her skinny arms and winking at her with her one good eye.

"My life is in tatters." Denise wept copiously once my sister had started her talking.

"Why is that?" asked Nellie, agog at the spectacle of the blue-haired lady sobbing into her libation.

"He can be terrible, terrible-" her voice trembled "-when he's in a fury." Fear made her s.h.i.+ver and the brandy gla.s.s tinkled against her rotten stumps of teeth.

"Who, my dear?" Nellie pressed.

"Why, him. My husband. My terrible husband." Then Denise clapped a hand over her mouth, as if she had said too much.

Nellie was intrigued and kept badgering the old dear, and I felt myself growing uneasy. What was Nellie doing, getting so close? Hadn't Denise been one of the reasons Nellie had been up all night on Tuesday? All gut-churning and collywobbly as she was?

"There, there," Nellie kept saying, and the elderly exorcist burst into more violent tears. She put her head on Nellie's hump and gave full vent to her feelings as Nellie patted her wispy blue hair. I didn't know where to look.

"He makes me do heinous things," she said, through heaving breath and m.u.f.fled by Nellie's hump.

"Where is he now?" asked Nellie.

"In our room, upstairs," said Denise. "He has gone to bed in fury and disgust. All because of that fracas at the museum."

"The museum?" I asked. "You mean, the cephalopod's unfortunate collapse?"

She sniffed. "Yes, I saw you both there. But you left with the crowd, shortly afterwards. You never saw him, berating those sisters. Getting me to cut open the thing. Feeling around inside those slippery limbs... Looking for... looking for..."

Nellie was looking excited now. She had a fervid expression. Rather like Himself gets. You know, when "the game's afoot". "Looking for what, Denise?"

"Those blasted jewels," cried the exorcist. "The Eyes of Miimon. Smuggled here in the body of that behemoth. The rarest of jewels. Possessed of untold occult powers."

Now, this was a surprise to Nellie. "Jewels?' she said. "Where from?"

"From the islands of Finland, far away," said the old lady "And he has lost them forever, he fears."

"But-" I broke in, trying to grasp the situation "-the giant squid was stuffed, wasn't it? We saw Maude Sturgeon's sisters sewing it themselves in their backroom. Rather like a shroud. Surely, if there were jewels inside the beast's body, then..."

Denise Wheatley was staring at me and her eyes were hard and glittering with excitement. "Yes! Yes, you're right!"

I looked at Nellie and she was shaking her head at me fiercely "But, I just thought-" I began.

"We must go at once," said Denise, slinging back the last of her brandy. "Where do they live, these Sisters Sturgeon? Where are they hiding the Eyes of Miimon?"

And then, rather like your own dear self, Dr Watson, I was left to straggle in the wake of the others as they dashed from the bar area, and out of the Miramar Hotel, into something of a balmy evening.

Yours, Mrs Hudson Dear Dr Watson, I am writing this on the back of a laundry list I have found in my coat pocket and using a nub of pencil that has worn almost to nothing. This is possibly the most futile and hopeless message demanding help that you will never receive. Still, it seems preferable to write it all down, rather than sit here in the dark, doing nothing. At least my hands aren't tied, I suppose. That is something. I can twiddle my fingers at least.

Nellie is with me, absolutely furious at our predicament, for which she blames me. At this present time my malformed sister is refusing to speak to me.

"You had to blunder in, didn't you?" was one of the last things she said. "Everything was proceeding just as it ought, and you had to go and open your big fat trap."

Never have I heard such coa.r.s.eness from my sister's rather blubbery and unattractive lips. For a few moments I was convinced that the vile spook she claims to harbour in her soul was speaking through her, but alas, no: it was Nellie herself who was livid with me. It turns out that I had burst out with quite the wrong thing, and shouldn't have told Denise the exorcist about the Sturgeon sisters and their skills in the art of taxidermy. Everything, it seems, was already in hand, and Nellie was on the point of ensnaring the blue-haired woman in a trap. My sister and Maude Sturgeon had had everything worked out, and the idea was, apparently, to lure Denise Wheatley up to the ruined Abbey to meet and greet her ultimate fate, as befitting a being as magically powerful as herself. She was to be lured there by the promise of having these magical Finnish crystals handed over to her by Maude, as the senior Sturgeon sister. Such had been the idea, anyhow.

But because of me, everything has gone to the bad. I never could hold my tongue, could I?

This house is silent now. The pair of us have been imprisoned in one of the attic rooms. We've tried to break out, smas.h.i.+ng the few bits of old furniture against the solid door. We have shouted for help, but there is no one here. The Sturgeon house is quite empty. The lower rooms lie in messy chaos, following that terrible fight between the three Sturgeon sisters and Denise Wheatley. Shelves, jars, furniture and fittings-everything was smashed into smithereens by those... what would you call them? Lightning bolts? That they were all shooting out of their hands and eyes at each other. It was a terrible to-do. And all over a few bits of old jewellery that came out of a gutted fish.

LATER.

Maude Sturgeon eventually arrived to let us out. By then I was exhausted and in no mood for a long disquisition or inquisition about what had been going on. She was filling in her partner-in-crime, my sister Nellie, about the latest developments. How it turned out that Denise Wheatley was, in fact, a powerful sorceress, and the supernatural powers of all four Sturgeon sisters combined hadn't been enough to hold her back. She had stormed into their home and stolen away the jewels she was after.

Both Nellie and Maude gave me a hard stare at this point, for giving away their location. I merely tutted and set off down the stairs of the Sturgeon residence, eager to be out of that dusty deathtrap, filled with antiques and black-magic paraphernalia.

I can tell you, Doctor, I wasn't at all impressed by this talk of sorceresses and so on, for all I had seen of them shooting bolts every which way.

Maude told us that the Finnish jewels had been discovered by her sisters during the stuffing process. They had been hidden inside the dead eyes of the giant squid. Maude had cleaned them up and popped them into the safe in her bedroom, which Denise Wheatley had no compunction about breaking into, blasting it apart with those queer bolts of lightning she manifested out of her limbs.

This was all rather too much for me. I didn't care who got hold of the jewels, and said so. What did Finland matter to me?

Maude glared at me angrily. By now we were in the smashed-up herbalist shop downstairs. "With the Eyes of Miimon, a powerful sorceress like Denise could do untold damage to the world."

Nellie was biting her lip. "We were going to shove her in the b.i.t.c.h's Maw, up at the Abbey. The idea was to dispatch her to h.e.l.l."

"But now she's on the alert," said Maude. "There's no way she'd let us lead her there. She knows full well now that we are set against her."

I was seeing the extent to which I had scuppered their plans. "Oh well, never mind. I'm very sorry and all that. I think my sister and I ought to be going, actually. It's terribly late and we've been through a great deal. Ah... where are your sisters now, Maude?"

It turns out they were out hunting Denise, who had gone to ground. They didn't come back until the early hours of the morning, apparently absolutely furious. By then, however, I was safely asleep in Nellie's spare bedroom. I was trying not to feel guilty for messing up their plans, and listening to the m.u.f.fled voices of Nellie talking with her demon spirit guide, Raphael, in her bedroom. Really, it sounded just like Nellie talking to herself in a deeper, gruffer voice. I wasn't at all sure I believed in any of this occult stuff they were all talking about.

I went to sleep at last, and dreamed of those mesmerising squid eyes I had seen the other day.

Yours, Mrs Hudson Dear Dr Watson, Tonight we return to the Christmas Hotel for another night of exorcisms. I'm really not sure it's a good idea at all.

Nellie demands (she's become rather forceful of late, and I'm not sure it's all down to her purported spirit demon) that we both don our finest gowns for the evening. I have told her that I prefer something I can run in easily, given the danger element inherent in these evenings out in Whitby. Nellie replied that it is possible to be mobile and ready for action, as well as maintaining an attractive and glamorous appearance. I did think this a bit rich coming from a hunchback with a clubfoot, one eye and permanently greasy hair, but I didn't say anything.

I did, in fact, wear my nicest gown-the emerald green silk-for our second Tuesday with the exorcists and I think we made rather a splendid entrance into that festive foyer. Again the elves were serving their punch and taking coats, and again there was yuletide music and frivolity in abundance as we moved graciously through the crowd.

We saw the raddled Mrs Claus again, dolled up even more extravagantly and cackling madly. She drew Nellie closer and whispered something about the missing jewels and the stuffed squid. She seemed to find the whole thing hilarious. She is remarkably well informed about goings-on in this town, it seemed.

Through the crowd we caught glimpses of folk we have met in recent weeks. I spied the Mayor and his tiny mother, both looking none the worse for being crushed beneath the collapsing sea monster. I noticed the witchy Sturgeon sisters moodily browsing the occult bazaar in the ballroom, but they took no heed of us. Clearly they were most vexed by my involvement in the Eyes of Miimon affair.

All of this fuss over some foreign jewels! It is ludicrous, is it not?

Then a crowd formed for the exorcism part of the evening, and my sister and I stood near the back to observe the same species of shenanigans as we were forced to witness last Tuesday night. It was clear, upon second viewing, that it was all a piece of well-rehea.r.s.ed melodrama. We watched volunteers expelling quant.i.ties of ectoplasmic Scotch broth. Even the spinning heads and the forked tongues didn't impress me much, now that I was becoming a regular at these soirees at the Christmas Hotel. I knew it was all fakery and quackery.

Then, however, there was a hush of expectation, and the lights were lowered, as if for a special act. Mrs Claus trundled onto the stage, helped by two of her heftiest elves, and she made a rambling introduction for the winners of the Christmas Hotel's "Exorcist of the Year" compet.i.tion. This was the first, actually, I'd heard of a compet.i.tive element to the proceedings. There was even a small trophy-in the shape of a disembodied and demonic soul-which the proprietress presented to the winner.

Which turned out to be Denise and Wheatley. He-sweating and red-faced in his evening dress-shuffled onto the podium first in order to accept the award. He seemed especially pleased by the engraved plaque on the front of the thing. Denise was beatific in a lacy black gown, holding up her hands for applause. Her blue hair was teased out very glamorously, and she seemed so very different from the shambolic and distraught creature in the bar of the Miramar Hotel, when she had hoodwinked information out of me.

I think you'll agree, Dr Watson, that I am far too soft-hearted and ingenuous for these kinds of adventures and investigations.

The winning exorcists were persuaded to put on a little demonstration. A kind of jubilant, celebratory rite. The lights were lowered once again, and the husband fetched out his bible while Denise turned to the audience and considered who could do with her attention.

And thus it was that my sister was called, once more, ineluctably, onto the stage at the Christmas Hotel.

There was something very odd about Denise's eyes as she called my sister forth, and a gap opened up in the audience. Nellie started walking through that channel to the stage and I grabbed hold of her stick-like arm. "Nellie, no!" I cried. "Can't you see? Her eyes... her eyes are the Eyes of Miimon!"

And it was true, though no one else seemed disturbed by the fact. Her human eyes were seemingly gone and Denise had glittering jewels in her cavities instead.

Maude Sturgeon appeared as if from nowhere at my side and held me back. "There is nothing you can do. Poor Nellie is under the spell of the sorceress now."

I stood helplessly by as my sister galumphed her way onto the stage. She was fighting the influence with every iota of her strength, I knew-but it was to no avail. Denise Wheatley had the upper hand.

"Raphael... Raphael..." cooed Denise, once she had Nellie where she wanted her. "Come out of this broken body. Leave this pathetic form and manifest yourself for me. Raphael... come to me..."

Denise's crystal orbs lit up in her head and seemed to shoot beams of blue light that bathed my sister in a spectral glow. The audience cheered at this. They obviously felt they were getting their money's worth this week.

Maude grunted and said, "That's what she's after. She wants Raphael for herself, the scheming besom."

My sister cried out, and writhed painfully as the demon struggled within her. She cried out, "No! Raphael, beloved! Do not leave me...!"

But it was very plain that something drastic was going on inside of her. Under the baleful influence of the purloined Eyes of Miimon, my sister was being exorcised, even though-it turned out-that was the last thing she wanted.

But what could I do? Tell me, Dr Watson, what would you have done? What could you have done? What could any ordinary, mortal being do in such circ.u.mstances?

Well, just then, something very unexpected happened.

Remember the gypsy? The woman we had seen on the previous Tuesday? The one who had seemed possessed of the true magical powers, who had first called my sister's demon hence?