The Clairvoyant Curse (13 page)

“You are acquainted with
Monsieur Croquemort?” observed the Countess.

“We met once in Palis.”

“Do you mean Paris?” confirmed
the doctor.

“Yes, Palis. Monsieur
Cloquemort was then magician - Le Gland Maestlo.”

The Countess decided to play a
game to liven up the conversation. “What animal would you say each
person who is leaving the dining room is in the pantheon of Chinese
animals, Dr Hu?”

“Meaning birthlikeness?” he
clarified.

“Yes, what birthlikeness would
you attribute to each of them?”

Dr Hu studied the people
noisily exiting through the double doors and waited until things
quieted down and the drinks waiter came and went.

“Monsieur Cloquemort, he is
Looster.”

“You don’t think he is a
Dragon?” questioned the Countess.

Dr Hu shook his head. “Dlagon
is lucky - he has not the luck of the Dlagon.”

“Why has he not the luck?”
pursued Dr Watson, taking a sudden interest in the party game and
entering into the poltroonery of the thing the way an adult enters
into the spirit of Hallowe’en for the sake of the child but ends up
enjoying bobbing for apples and carving jack-o-lanterns just as
much or even more. “I mean, why do you think he has no luck?”

“His magic act close after
misfortunate death.”

“Death?”

“Assistant die on stage duling
magic act.”

“During a magic act?’

“Yes, duling the act - her head
chop off.”

“How extraordinary!” exclaimed
the doctor. “Miss Morningstar told a similar story but I thought
she might be telling tales. It sounded most unlikely.”

Dr Hu took a sip of his sherry
and met the doctor’s incredulous gaze. “It is tlue. I see with my
own two eyes. Head bounce into basket. Much blood evelywhere.
Ladies scleam! I am shocked! Monsieur Cloquemort, he is shocked
too!”

“I’m not surprised! What sort
of magic show would attempt to pull off such a dangerous stunt?”
the doctor huffed. “A guillotine is not for messing about
with!”

“A guillotine?” said the
Countess, looking for confirmation from the Chinaman.

He began nodding. “Guillotine,
yes, with sharp blade – thwack! It chop off pletty head of pletty
assistant. Much blood!” he repeated with relish. “Evelywhere!”

“Did Croquemort go to prison?”
pressed the doctor.

“He is allested by police but
he no go to plison. It is all tellible accident. Blade not meant to
chop head. But Monsieur Cloquemort, his magic act it is finished.
His magic show, it close down in shame. He go to England and make
the Magic Lantern Show. Vely popular. He do the hypnotism now. He
is good but Madame Moghla is big star now, not him.”

“Mesmerism,” corrected the
Countess. “He is a mesmerist not a hypnotist.”

Dr Hu appeared to marvel at the
distinction. There was a quizzical puckering of his thin lips and
long moustache as he processed the difference.

“Speaking of Madame Moghra,”
continued the Countess, “what birthlikeness do you attribute to
her?”

Dr Hu took another sip of
sherry and gazed up at the coffered ceiling as if looking to the
heavens for inspiration. “Madame Moghla, she is Goat.”

“Not a Snake?” quizzed Dr
Watson.

Dr Hu shook his head. “Goat,”
he repeated with certainty.

“What about the handsome young
man with the longish hair?” pursued the Countess.

“Dog.”

They all agreed that Mr Crispin
Ffrench had the appearance of a lovable yet mangy cur, unbrushed
and underfed. The way the hair fell permanently over his eyes
reminded them of a long-haired hound or perhaps a scruffy
spaniel.

“What about the lovely young
lady with the fair hair?” asked Dr Watson.

“Monkey,” Dr Hu said without
hesitation.

“You don’t think she is more
like a soft, cuddly, vulnerable bunny, er, I mean Rabbit?” quizzed
the other.

“Monkey,” repeated Dr Hu with
unequivocal resolve.

“And the Theosophist, Reverend
Blackadder?” asked the Countess. “Don’t tell me he is the
Snake?”

“Lat,” Dr Hu said with
conviction. “He is Lat.”

“Oh, you mean Rat?” said Dr
Watson, cottoning on to the mispronunciation.

“Yes, I say Lat.”

“Well, that makes for an
interesting circle of animals – Rooster, Goat, Dog, Rabbit and
Rat,” pronounced Dr Watson, concluding that ‘menagerie’ was
definitely a more appropriate description for the zodiacal zoo than
troupe. “A Magic Lantern Menagerie!”

“That only makes five,” the
Countess noted. “We forgot the maid, Sissy. She left the table a
few minutes after the others because she was retrieving something
that had fallen under the table – the handkerchief of Madame
Moghra, I think. Did you notice her, Dr Hu?”

“I notice all things. That one,
she is Tiger.”

“That makes six in all,” said
Dr Watson, satisfied they had covered them all before changing the
subject. “Will you be sailing on the SS Pleiades to Biarritz, Dr
Hu?”

“Yes, I go to World
Spilitualist Congless. You make tlavel to Bialitz tomollow?”

“Yes,” replied Dr Watson
morosely.

Dr Hu stood up to go, bowing to
his newfound friends. “I thank you for the shelly and I look
forward to our coming journey.”

They watched him shuffle out.
He moved across the parquetry like someone walking on water, his
splendid blue silk gown rippling in the scattered light of the
chandelier.

“Perhaps Dr Hu will explain the
art of Feng Shui to me,” observed the Countess. “I have always
meant to study eastern philosophy in more depth.”

“And Geomancy to me – whatever
that is!”

They both laughed.

“1854 – the year of the Tiger,”
she said blithely.

“1875 – the year of the Pig,”
he tossed back.

They laughed again.

As they were crossing the foyer
of the hotel the Countess slipped her arm through the crook of the
doctor’s elbow. The gesture felt so light and natural the doctor
hardly noticed until she stopped dead and almost yanked his arm
off.

“Look at that,” she said,
indicating a large painted sign resting on an easel planted outside
the double doors leading to the reading room:

Madame Sosostras

The Magnificent Gypsy Queen

Tarot cards. Palm reading.
Phrenology.

Enter if you dare!

Dr Watson groaned. “Absolutely
not!” he declared, reading her mind. “If it is my destiny to murder
Madame Moghra I don’t want to know in advance. It might encourage
me!”

“Stop tempting Fate,” she
admonished, cutting a glance at the wall clock above the reception
desk. “It’s just gone ten. You realize who Madame Sosostras is,
don’t you?”

“Another shameless charlatan,”
he returned tongue-in-cheek.

She tried not to laugh. “She is
the final member of our sailing party. Remember when Sissy said
there would be the troupe plus three extra passengers on the SS
Pleiades. We have met Mrs Merle and Dr Hu, well, here is the
mysterious third. We simply must go in and meet her.”

Brusquely, he dropped her arm.
“I don’t want to tempt Fate! You’ll have to go it alone…if you
dare!”

The moment the image of the
Hanged Man appeared the Countess knew she’d made a mistake. But it
was too late to withdraw and too late to flip the card and return
it to the pack. The twelfth card of the Major Arcana was hers.

She studied the doomed figure,
appalled at his dumb suffering and the casual cruelty. Not even
having the dignity of being hanged right-side up but dangling
upside down, and dangling not by two feet but one. Too cruel, too
awful, it did not bear thinking about for too long. Of all the
random chances, the shuffled possibilities, the turns of the cards
– why did she draw this one?

Fate? Fortune? Destiny?

What were they really? Why
would anyone choose to know their future? What good would come from
it? Why do people seek out clairvoyants and fortune tellers? Why do
they seek to interpret the stars, the constellations, the planets?
Astro-logical quackery or natural astronomical configurations and
mathematical alignments? Venus conjunct with Mars. Jupiter trine
the Sun and Moon. What did it really mean? And could the starry
heavens really affect the here and now on planet Earth?

Life? Luck? Love?

Too cruel for some, too kind to
others. The deserving did not always get what they deserved and the
underserving did not always get their just desserts. Who
decided?

A toss of the dice, a four leaf
clover, a horseshoe, a lucky number – who decided it? And what
about the opposite - an unlucky number and bad luck – did some
attract it more than others? How did you attract bad luck? Was
misfortune like a magnet, a lodestone, an invisible millstone
around your neck? Like the noose around the Hanged Man’s foot?

She had always been lucky.
Things always worked out just as she expected. But lately she had
started to doubt her luck. Things had not gone according to plan.
Here she was in Scotland, no nearer to meeting Uncle Mycroft, no
closer to solving the conundrum of her father’s so-called death at
Reichenbach Falls.

Was she charting her own course
or was Dr Watson leading her on a clever goose chase – keeping her
out of London and away from the questions she wanted answered?

The Countess’s thoughts were
full of random constructions, endless hypotheses and inexplicable
yearning – the burning need to feel that she belonged somewhere to
someone, that she and Dr Watson were not just ships in the night,
that she had a purpose in life...a destiny.

The heavy velvet drapes were
drawn. The double doors were closed. The little reading room was
smotheringly warm. A sliver of golden gaslight from the street lamp
beyond the window leaked in through a gap in the curtains. It
quivered on motes of smoke from incense sticks. Phosphorescent
haloes of ghostly candlelight dotted the room, sending ribbons of
smoke up to the smoke-stained ceiling.

Madame Sosostras, mistress of
the Arcana, sensed the Countess’s unease but misinterpreted it.
“The Hanged Man is not what he seems,” she said in a low, plangent,
accented voice that reverberated around the closeted bookroom full
of scented fumes and ghostly vapours.

A skilled fortune teller, the
gypsy queen waved a sacerdotal hand in the murky air then ran a
bright red fingernail around the rim of the ominous, ill-omened,
tarot card, tapping a sharp talon on the vitals of the doomed man
lying on the purple velour cloth.

“He is not Death… not La
Mort.”

Oddly, it sounded less
distressing in French. French was the language of noblesse oblige,
laissez faire, courtly verse, fluent intonation and amour. But the
gypsy queen was not French, not a queen, not even a proper gypsy.
She was Hungarian, though she had the gypsy’s love of colourful
clothing and jangly jewellery – adorning her neck, fingers, ears
and wrists were bangles, necklaces, rings and hooped gold earrings.
Khol smudged her sorceress eyes, emphasising their saucer-size, a
beauty spot above her lip, which may have been artificially
applied, added to the Romany theatricality.

The Countess found some
momentary comfort in the exotic but not for long. The configuration
on the table was not positive whatever the language. Death was
death. Hanging was never good. The image conjured up gibbets and
scaffolds, carcasses swinging in the wind, eyes pecked out by
ravens, flesh like shredded rags…no it was never good.

Of all the cards of the Major
Arcana: the Hierophant, the Priestess, the Magician, the Chariot,
the Lovers – why did she draw the Hanged Man? What did it mean? Did
it mean anything at all? She knew she would not be hanged. The
meaning was more obscure than that, less literal, steeped in
ancient symbolism and sacred lore and esoteric understanding. The
meaning eluded her like a secret. Like all the other secrets that
lately eluded her.

Madame Sosostras, keeper of
secrets, watched closely. “The Hanged Man is not as helpless as he
seems.”

The Countess was not entirely
reassured. The unknown, the unknowable, had become a worry since
the sudden death of her step-aunt and then three years later her
husband. Until then she had been confident and carefree. She was no
longer so careless.

She used to laugh at
superstition. She was young, rational, educated. She had read Jung
and Freud. She understood Fate was another word for habit. She
comprehended self-fulfilling prophecy. She had always been
determined to cut a swathe to her own destiny.

Madame Sosostras’s voice droned
in the background like a dirge. “The Hanged Man is not to be
feared, he is not catastrophic.”

The hot, stuffy air in the book
room was adding to a feeling of claustrophobia. The Countess’s eyes
were beginning to water from all the perfumed vapours. She asked
the gypsy if she would mind her opening the window and door to
allow a cross current of air to clear the fumes. After a few
minutes the air became breathable.

She picked another card…

All the guests travelling on
the SS Pleiades had woken earlier than was their wont and were
taking breakfast with more haste than was their custom. Bags were
already packed and lined up in the foyer of the Mungo Arms Hotel,
ready to transport to the ship standing ready to set sail with the
outgoing tide. Everything was going according to plan until
Constable MacTavish arrived to deliver the news to Madame Moghra in
the dining room that a member of the Magic Lantern Show had been
found at first light floating face-down in the Clyde.

The medium took the news well.
She appeared only mildly shocked. She had assumed her maid, Sissy,
had woken early, breakfasted, and was running some last minute
errands for Monsieur Croquemort. It was not unusual for the maid to
eat before the others. Madame Moghra was accustomed to doing things
for herself on travelling days because there was always something
else for the maid to get on with. Sissy was a reliable and punctual
girl. No one thought to enquire why she did not appear at
breakfast. They all expected to see her prior to their
departure.