The Clairvoyant Curse (34 page)

The passengers had been allowed
to have their breakfast in peace and quiet. He now intended to
address them en masse in their native tongue to save time and to
see how they reacted to each other before interrogating them
individually. He had heard they were a queer bunch. A bizarre group
of clairvoyants and carnival freaks: a Hungarian gypsy, a Chinaman,
an American astrologer, a Ukrainian Countess and the main suspect –
Dr John Watson – the man who played second fiddle to the famous
London consulting detective, Mr Sherlock Holmes. The superintendent
had warned him to tread warily – Don’t step on any toes; Mr Holmes
has swept dirt under the
moquette
for several royal houses
of Europe!

Inspector Didier de Guise was
the seventh son of an impoverished noble family that had gradually
lost their fortune and their vast estate after they backed the
wrong side at every battle since Agincourt. He looked nothing like
Napoleon or Clemenceau or Zola; neither a military man, nor a
statesman, nor a man of letters. His features were forgettable -
his hair brown, his eyes like toasted hazelnuts, but out of them
shone something rare: sincerity.

He had reached thirty-nine
years of age and was intelligent enough to earn his living using
his wits by legal means, the first of his kind to do so. It meant
being disowned but he didn’t have much time for his feckless
famille
anyway. The Surete was his family and if he wanted
to rise to the position of superintendent he needed to keep getting
it right. He was diligent, clever, hard-working and thorough, as
honest as the day was long – much to the disappointment of the
noble name of Guise, a name that had been won in a game of cards
when things like honour still mattered, except to those whose
highest ideal was cheating at cards. Guise had a nobler ring to it
that Grosseteste and came with the self-important
de
. He
could spot an embezzler, a blackmailer, and an aristocratic
prostitute at a glance. His family was littered with them.
Murderers were trickier. His family was not very imaginative or
subtle. A dose of arsenic in the
sirop de cassis
usually did
the job.

The wind had dropped overnight
and the day had dawned cold but sunny. He’d organized for deck
chairs to be arranged on the aft deck so as not to upset anyone’s
constitution during breakfast. The passengers were being ushered
forth. He waited patiently, wearing an affable face. No need to
upset the queers too early. There would be time for that later.

He had memorized the passenger
list and had no trouble putting a face to a name as soon as the
weird cast of characters assembled. There were no surprises. He had
just finished introducing himself when
la comtesse
pushed to
her silky-shod feet.

“May I have a word in private,
Inspector?”

“Not right now,” he rebuffed,
wondering if she charged by the hour or the night.

“I really must insist.”

He recalled tender toes – the
crushing of - and drew breath. “Very well, Countess Volodymyrovna.”
He reeled the name off like a throwaway line from Chekov as he
exhaled, wondering if she’d won it in a card game.

She steered him toward the
stern where they would not be overheard. They had an uninterrupted
view of the Bay Basque. He studied the azure waters with feigned
interest rather than look at her. He had already noted her
titillating vanity and didn’t intend to puff it up by ogling her
like an adoring lap dog. There was a large vessel sailing out to
open sea and dozens of fishing boats bobbing on the water.

“Yes?” he said, remembering to
smile courteously.

“I know who the murderer is,
Inspector, and if you will allow me to explain how the murder was
committed and so forth I think we should have this terrible
business neatly wrapped up by the time we drop anchor in
Biarritz.”

He stared at her open-mouthed –
by the hour, he decided.

“Scotland Yard may work that
way but at the Surete we do things differently – we prefer the find
the killer for ourselves rather than taking someone’s word for
it.”

“And I’m sure you are very
successful in your own way but the last thing the Surete needs is
to arrest the wrong man. This could turn out to be a high profile
case, especially with the World Spiritualist Congress underway.
Likewise, the kudos for solving the crime in record time will be
enormous, and let me assure you, the credit will be yours
entirely.”

She was right about one thing –
the murder on board the SS Pleiades had already made the front page
of every Paris newspaper. He couldn’t afford to make
le
gaffe
.

Reluctantly, he conceded to her
request though it was unorthodox and went against his gut instinct.
“Tell me who you think is the murderer and I will decide what to do
from there.”

“I meant you should allow
me
to address everyone, Inspector, and then
you
can
decide what to do afterwards.”

He tried not to laugh. “I think
not,
la comtesse
.”

“You will save yourself a lot
of trouble, Inspector. The people gathered here are master
manipulators, dealers in obfuscation. Their notion of truth is not
the same as yours and mine. They inhabit a world of magic,
make-believe and fantasy, the supernatural is their specialty,
their stock-in-trade is Death. Take a look,” she invited
breezily.

He angled a backward glance
over an insubstantial shoulder that was made broader by the padding
in his coat and there, before his unsentimental eyes, unfolded
every sort of trickster, scoundrel, charlatan, cad,
crapule
,
canaille
and criminal, including two Marxist provocateurs.
The wretched suspect was the odd man out, wrung out like a tattered
rag and hung out to dry. He would last less than six months in a
French prison; six weeks on Devil’s Island. The gallows would be a
godsend.

“I will grant you ten minutes
and not one minute more.”

Her titillating smile came
wreathed in gratitude.

“The murder of Madame Moghra
appears to be spontaneous but on the contrary it has been many
years in the planning. It includes the death of Sissy in Glasgow
but started long before that. It started with the death of someone
called Elodie, whose stage-name was Antoinette, killed when a
guillotine act went horribly wrong.”

The Countess spoke quickly and
clearly, pausing every now and again so that the facts could be
digested in small bites rather than huge gulps.

“All the passengers on this
ship, with the exception of me, would have rejoiced to see Madame
Moghra dead. First and foremost, Monsieur Croquemort because Madame
Moghra was responsible for ruining his previous magic show and was
soon to ruin his current magic lantern show by retiring to Monte
Carlo. Reverend Blackadder, likewise, who discovered he was about
to be cast aside and replaced by a more virile lover. Mr Ffrench,
who had been engaged to be married to Elodie, blamed Madame Moghra
for his fiancé’s death. Miss Morningstar, whose career was thwarted
and character denigrated by a jealous Madame Moghra. Then there is
Dr Hu who wanted to avenge the betrayal of his uncle during the
second Opium War during which time Madame Moghra acted as a double
agent. Madame Sosostras stole from Madame Moghra (and later
returned) the silver thistle brooch. Mrs Merle harboured animosity
toward Madame Moghra for the ruination of her marriage and the
premature death of her faithless husband. And lastly, Dr Watson
regarded Madame Moghra with unnatural loathing for reasons he did
not wish to share.”

Inspector de Guise managed to
maintain a flat featureless face but in every way he was astounded.
Such knowledge, and thus motivation, would have taken him
painstaking months to gather. He’d watched each suspect squirm as
the finger was pointed yet remained none the wiser. Perhaps they
were all guilty. He indicated for the Countess to continue.

“Each person had a reason to
want Madame Moghra dead but who had the means? When Madame Moghra
retired to the library that fateful night what was the order of
events? Monsieur Croquemort went first into the library. He could
have killed her with the blue dart which we know is the murder
weapon, possibly laced with some paralyzing poison. Each subsequent
visitor to the library may have assumed Madame Moghra was asleep.
Second was Mr Ffrench – the same scenario – and so forth followed
by Miss Morningstar, Reverend Blackadder, Mrs Merle, Madame
Sosostras, Dr Hu and Dr Watson. However, when Madame Sosostras
stole the brooch she noted that Madame Moghra was already dead.
Miss Morningstar who was sitting in the darkness of the card room
was witness to her startled reaction. Thus we can rule out Dr Hu
and Dr Watson since they came later.”

A gust of wind lifted Mrs
Merle’s preposterous hat. It flew across the aft deck and was
caught by the Inspector in the nick of time. Gallantly, he returned
le grand chapeau
to
la grande femme
and the Countess
continued her monologue as though nothing had happened.

“Anyone could have stolen the
blue darts after Dr Watson played a game with Fedir. But not
everyone had a chance to slip them into the pocket of Dr Watson’s
herringbone coat the morning after the murder. We know the darts
could not have been slipped into the pocket during the night
because Madame Sosostras hid the brooch inside Madame Moghra’s wig
when Dr Hu entered the library and a dart was still stuck in the
skull - the killer had not removed it. Why not? Probably because
they did not have time. This murder was carried out swiftly in full
public view. Did the killer know Madame Moghra wore a wig? We can
assume they did. It was not a secret and her heavy use of Venetian
ceruse was evident for all to see. The killer may have assumed the
dart would stay hidden until such time it could be retrieved, which
was done the morning after the murder, and then disposed of. Again,
we thank Miss Morningstar who saw a bluebird outside her porthole
window flying neither east nor west but straight down into the
Irish Sea. Unlikely. Even more unlikely considering there was a
wild storm. What Miss Morningstar saw was the blue dart being
thrown into the water at the time that Dr Watson was still in his
cabin asleep, attended at all times by my personal maid. I will
return to the blue dart later.”

Dr Watson straightened his back
and shoulders. A healthy hue had returned to his bloodless cheeks
and he began to draw breath as if for the first time since being
suspected of murder and wondering if it were possible that he
was
guilty. When a man does not believe in himself it is
generally impossible to have others believe in him but the Countess
had not given up the ghost. She had believed in him all along and
it now gave him self-belief in spades.

“Let me now briefly touch upon
homicidal somnambulism. When I observed Dr Watson in the library
that fateful night I thought he appeared to be sleepwalking. This
played beautifully into the hands of the killer. Dr Watson,
himself, could not refute it. How was this effect achieved? By use
of camera obscuras, of course, three cardboard cameras to be
precise, which would have been easy to carry, set up, and return to
the billiard room table afterwards, where, by the way, three glass
slides had mysteriously disappeared some time earlier. Why three?
It was three times that I observed Dr Watson sleepwalking that
night: descending the main staircase, departing the billiard room,
and standing lifelessly in the library. Whoever used the three
camera obscuras painted three slides of the doctor. The slides were
used to make it seem as if the doctor was out and about when in
fact he was sleeping in his cabin having imbibed too much whiskey
and taken too many cough drops laced with valerian. The cameras
were strategically positioned in such a way as to reflect an image
in a mirror, even a double reflection from one mirror to another.
The camera operator could thus remain unobserved behind the green
baize screen, the jib door, and the square pillar in the library.
Everyone had gone to bed. There was no one about except me, oh, and
Miss Morningstar sitting in the dark in the card room; no chance of
being seen. Quite ingenious! Though if it had not been me who
observed Dr Watson, someone else would have sufficed. What else
alerted me to the fact it was not the real Dr Watson sleepwalking?
In the images he was wearing his tweed suit. It is unlikely a man
would remove his pyjamas and put on his tweed suit to go
sleepwalking. Why not just put on a dressing gown or even go about
naked! My ten minutes are up, Inspector.”

“Have you finished?” he asked,
astonished at her grasp of details, still none the wiser.

“Not yet.”

“Then please continue.”

“Back in Glasgow Madame Moghra
told me she saw a ghost from the grave. She even predicted her own
death. I took this to mean she believed she had had some sort of
supernatural experience or premonition but I see now she recognized
someone from her past. She recognized Elodie. But Elodie was long
dead. Of course, she recognized the inherited features of Elodie in
another face. She even wrote the word l-o-d-i with her planchette –
guilty conscience or vague recollection or genuine spirit writing?
We will never know but what we do know is that it goes back to
Elodie. It is about vengeance. In the same way, Sissy was killed in
Glasgow for the simple reason she either unwittingly stepped into
Elodie’s shoes or because she was Madame Moghra’s dresser and it
was necessary to remove her in case she might witness something she
shouldn’t. Sissy was not an attractive girl and it would have been
easy to lure her out late at night with the promise of a romantic
tryst. Constable MacTavish may be able to confirm the name of her
killer once we reach Biarritz.”