Trollheart

III:

Having settled Mrs. Fraser and left her in the care of a neighbour, we returned to Baker Street to ruminate on the events we had just witnessed. It took several glasses of brandy before either of us were able to speak, and when he did, Holmes' voice was missing the usual self-confidence and arrogance, the certainty and belief in his own talent that usually characterised it.

“I am not a man, as you know Watson, to place any faith in higher powers,” he told me, his eyes somewhat haunted. “Yet I must admit I have no logical explanation for what we have just seen. Had it been reported to me, I could have given you any number of possible causes; indeed, when I entered Mrs. Fraser's room and beheld the writing I was already turning over solutions in my mind. But having seen that writing appear before my very eyes, having ascertained that there was no physical agency present, having smelled the very stone burning as the letters appeared – I don't mind telling you, my friend, I am willing to entertain notions I would otherwise normally dismiss.”

I nodded, my own hand on the glass not quite as steady as I would have had it.

“At least we both saw it,” I noted. “I confess, had it only been yourself that had been a witness I might have been tempted to wonder if you had somehow imagined it, and I am sure you would likely have had similar thoughts about me, had the positions been reversed. But there is no getting away from it, Holmes.” I leaned forward, my voice betraying something of a tremble. “Something wrote those words, something we could not see, or feel, and it happened right before our very eyes.”

Holmes was on his third pipe, the room almost choked with thick dark smoke. I was finishing my second. Had Mrs. Hudson come in at that time, she would possibly have considered sending for the fire brigade.

“You assume the writing to be connected to the case?” It was not really a question, but Holmes nodded gravely.

“Having recovered somewhat from the initial shock, I have been considering the import of the words. I took notes of course.” He flipped open a note book, where the messages had been reproduced by him by much more earthly means on paper with pen and ink.

“First,” he said, in his methodical way, we have the initial message.

This is not a difficult message to understand. Although for some reason our – hmm – our ghostly writer has not completed some of the words, it clearly should read GO SEE SHERLOCK HOLMES. Perhaps this phantom hand was prevented writing my surname, or perhaps it considered the first name sufficient. There are not, I believe, many men named Sherlock in England, let alone London.”

Just the mention of the spectral message sent a cold shiver down my spine again, and I tipped back my brandy glass.

“So it was advice.”

“Or an order. Or a suggestion. At any rate, the message told Mrs. Fraser to come to me, so we can assume that whoever – or whatever – wrote it was acquainted with me, or at least, with my reputation.”

I forced a laugh. It sounded cold and hollow.

“Why, Holmes!” I expostulated. “Half of London is by now acquainted with your reputation. You are famous.”

He gave me a hard look.

“Hardly that, Watson, hardly that. However it is true that my name has been in the newspapers and the police reports, even if I have shied from taking credit for most of my cases. The knowledge that I am involved in any such is usually a good indication, both to the public and to the official police, that it will be cleared up. So in theory, anyone could have written that message.”

I shivered. “Not in the manner in which it was written,” I pointed out. He shook his head.

“No,” he agreed. “There is no agency I know of which could have created it, which is why, very much against my better judgement, Watson, I am forced to look beyond the material world and perhaps consider that the answer may lie elsewhere.”

“A ghost?”

“Let us say rather, some agency which we are as yet unable to understand.” He seemed naturally reluctant to admit to any supernatural involvement. We had of course had cases which had seemed, on the surface, to be rooted in matters other than earthly, but they had always proven to be explainable by this world's logic. So far, I could see no manner in which this could be put in the same category.

“Some agency,” I noted, “which is not only familiar with your work but also with Mrs. Fraser.”

He pointed at me. “That is very important indeed, Watson,” he agreed, approvingly. “Whatever this – agency – might be, it is in some way intimately connected with our client. So much we have established. Let us look, then, at the message which appeared while we watched.”

I felt a cold thrill of fear run through me again, as I am sure did Holmes, though he made sure not to let it show.

“We have more unfinished or incomplete words. Let me see: REVE. Well, we saw the N begin to be written, so we may with some confidence assert that word to be “revenge”. I doubt any other word fits?”

He looked over at me enquiringly. A thought had come to my mind and I snapped my fingers.

“Revenant!” I ejaculated. “Isn't that another word for a ghost?”

He frowned, made a note in his pad.

“Revenant. We will add that as a possibility, and giving the, ah, somewhat supernatural origin of the writing in question, a definite possibility. I ask you this though, Watson: if the agency was trying to tell us it was a ghost – or, if you will, a revenant – why write that? Would it not be obvious, to any other than I, who refuse to believe in the existence of such things, that what they were looking at was, as I think you called it, ghostly writing? Why force the point? No, on the whole, given the tenor of the message I feel we are on firmer ground with revenge. By the by, we shall leave that to one side. I have also committed a sin I castigate others for, which is to fail to begin at the beginning, going, rather like an impatient reader – or client – to the end without first examining the beginning. So.”

He traced back up along the line of letters and words; I could see his pen slide up the pad, where he tapped it meaningfully.

“We begin with this word: CIRC. This is obviously an incomplete word, but could be many things. Circle? Circumference? Circumlocution?”

“Circe?”

“Watson!” He thrust the pad down on his knee, tapped it irritably with the pen.

"I do apologise, my dear Holmes.” I had not realised I had spoken aloud.

“It is highly unlikely,” he said through gritted teeth, a grimace I felt – or hoped – was more for the problem than directed at me, “that a witch from Greek legend is likely to figure in this message.”

And though I knew it was a mistake, I could not help but point out the obvious.

“The word Adonis is used later.”

He sighed. “Indeed. I have my own ideas about that, but we will get to it in due course. If you would be so kind? Thank you. Now, let us assume the most obvious thing. Whatever this – oh damn it to blazes!” His irritated shout made me wonder what I had done now, but this time the fault did not seem to lie with me. “Let us just call it the ghost, for the sake of narrative, shall we? I despise allowing superstition and folklore into my reasoning, but I tire of calling it the agency. So, for now, and reserving the right to continue to disbelieve in such beings until their existence can be scientifically proven, or at least not disproven, our ghost is surely likely to have chosen the shortest words they can for their message.”

“And why is that, Holmes?”

He looked at me with that withering gaze, the one that said don't you see it?

“Was it not evident to you, Watson? Jumping the yawning chasm between the real world and that of the supernatural in order to allow the existence of the latter in the former, did it not seem to you that this ghostly hand which gave us the message did so with some difficulty?”

I had to confess I had not noticed that.

“Consider.” He leaned back, steepling his fingers again and closing his eyes. “Once more, reserving judgement as I do on the existence of spirits, were a man with a bad hand to write such a message – someone who had injured themselves, or who was perhaps close to death – would the words flow with ease and rapidity, or would they seem to appear in a somewhat sporadic, haphazard manner? The words we witnessed came slowly, and seemingly, to me at any rate, with a great amount of effort, as if it was painful, or at least hard to do. Loath as I am to speculate upon matters of which I have not the least experience, I might consider it similar to a man trapped behind a sheet, trying to push through to write with a sharp pen on the wall.”

He shrugged, clearly uncomfortable with the analogy but still believing it was the best one.

“If we were to again stretch the bounds of our own credulity and assume that this – this ghost had to struggle to reach through from, as the clairvoyants are so fond of calling it, the other side, then might not those efforts come in a sporadic manner? If, for whatever reason, this was so, would not then the, ah, ghost, wish to expend the minimum effort, this best being achieved by using the shortest words?”

I had to admit that what he said seemed as likely as anything I could come up with. Holmes went on.

“So then, we have a short word, let us say, six letters at most. Circle? Circa? Circus? Well, we shall come back to that. The next in line is CRO. I think we can safely assume this to be CROW, especially as it is followed by BAT. So, for some reason, a crow and a bat.”

“Could be,” I offered, “a cricket bat.”

Holmes pursed his lips, looked at the words.

“Possible,” he allowed. “However, coming directly after crow, I would rather imagine the word would refer to a bat of the flying kind. For now, this will be our working hypothesis. It may of course change, should we receive updated data. So. Can, add, a – these words seem complete, and if taken together do indeed form a phrase, can add a, though unfortunately we are not told what can add what to what. It seems improbable that the message is that a crow and a bat can add a something. Hmm. Could it be a clue? Can add a clue? I wonder... Watson! Hand me down my book of heraldry, would you?”

In sudden excitement, Holmes scoured the pages, turning each over and peering at them through his glass.

“Wyvern, dragon, lion, unicorn, fish – wait a moment!” He examined the page he had stopped at closely, then shook his head in disappointment. “Nay, there is a crow on the crest of the DeForge family, but no bat, nor anything resembling one. In fact, I don't believe there are any bats on any of the family crests in England. Bah!” He shut the book with a gesture of irritation, laid the lens aside.

“Perhaps we are approaching this from the wrong direction,” he suggested.

Something occurred to me. I pointed with the stem of my pipe at the ceiling.

“The other words, Holmes?”

He shrugged. “Save her is crystal clear,” he said, “given whose house we were in. Whatever this – ghost – is , it is aware of the connection between Mrs. Fraser and Mrs. Liebert, and must somehow know of the charge against her. There is no other reason it would have summoned us, using the sister as the means of getting us there. Save her. Save Mrs. Liebert. What connection, though, could a spirit have with... unless!” He clicked his fingers. Giving me a very serious look, he sat back.

“Watson, what I am going to say to you now flies in the face of everything I have believed for as long as I have lived, but it is perhaps time for me to take heed of my own advice. If we do not – cannot, in fact – discount the existence of a spirit which can communicate with the living as impossible – since we have seen evidence of this with our own eyes, and there is no other explanation – then the existence of such a being becomes only improbable.”

I nodded, pointing my finger at him.

“And you always say that whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth!”


“So the only logical – if one can apply logic to such a seemingly illogical idea – answer has to be that this is, somehow, the ghost of Mrs. Francesca Liebert's dead husband!”

“By Jove, Holmes!” I felt both an impulse to applaud his reasoning and a wish to wake up, as if this were all a horrible dream. “He's trying to help us!”

Holmes looked again at the writing.

“Save her...”

“But what of the other word, Holmes? Adonis?”

“Greek god of beauty.” There was a strange look on his face. “Perhaps our ghost had a poetic turn of mind?”

He sighed, and picked up his violin, regaling me for the rest of the evening with old Greek tunes, and would speak no more of the case.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018