Séance for a Vampire by Fred Saberhagen (top ebook reader TXT) 📗

only for posterity. by Holmes’s own instructions it must go, with a small number of other manuscripts similar in subject matter, into the most secure repository of the Oxford Street branch of the Capital and Counties bank. And there these pages must remain, for years or decades, for centuries perhaps, until a certain extraordinary password is presented for their removal.

The case, like many another of peculiar interest, began for us in a routine way. It was an oppressive day in early July of 1903. My wife had been called out of town by family necessity, and was paying relatives an extended visit. In her absence I had returned for a time to my old lodgings.

Holmes, in a restless and energetic mood, had begun that morning’s activities before dawn, with some more than usually evil-smelling chemistry experiment; he had followed that, as if to make amends, by an interlude of sweet violin music. When I came down to breakfast he had scissors, paste, and notebooks arranged upon a table, together with a sheaf of loose newspaper clippings and other documents, and was cross-indexing his collection of criminal information. My friend looked up to inform me that a Mr. Ambrose Altamont, of Norberton House, Amberley, buckinghamshire, had made an appointment for a professional consultation and was soon due to arrive.

“Altamont–surely the name is familiar.”

“The family has been very recently in the newspapers–the drowning tragedy of last month.”

“Of course.” before the client appeared, I had found the relevant clippings in Holmes’s files, and by reading them aloud refreshed both our memories with regard to the affair, which had taken place on the twentieth of June. Holmes had already noted several points about the case which struck him as peculiar.

By all reports Louisa Altamont had been an attractive and lively young lady, engaged to be married later in the summer to an American journalist. She had perished tragically when the small boat bearing her, her fiancé, and her sister had inexplicably capsized upon a tranquil river.

Their outing had seemed, up to its disastrous conclusion, to have been a routine boating excursion upon a long June evening. Her fiancé, being a good swimmer, had survived without difficulty, and had readily enough rescued Rebecca Altamont, the younger sister.

“Does the girl’s father suspect foul play?”

Holmes shook his head. “I doubt that, Watson–if he did, he would not have waited two weeks to consult me.”

Ambrose Altamont arrived punctually and was shown up to our sitting room. He was a well-to-do gentleman of forty-five or thereabouts, of average size and unremarkable appearance, save for the black armband of mourning which he wore. At first glance he gave the impression of being both energetic and worried.

As soon as the introductions had been completed, Holmes and I naturally expressed our sympathy in our client’s recent bereavement. I received a strong impression that our visitor’s natural grief had been compounded by some fresh worry.

He acknowledged our condolences in a perfunctory way, delaying no longer than was necessary before getting down to business.

“Gentlemen, my daughter has now been dead for approximately two weeks. Already there have appeared swindlers, vultures seeking to prey on the grief-stricken. I refer to the Kirkaldys, the well-known brother-and-sister spiritualist mediums.” The speaker’s tone was utterly contemptuous.

“I have heard something of the pair.” Holmes was now leaning far back in his chair, loading his pipe while he regarded our visitor through half-closed eyes.

“Then perhaps you will understand. These cheats have managed to convince my wife that Louisa is not really gone. I mean they would have Madeline believe that conversation with our dear, dead girl–even a face-to-face encounter, even physical contact–is still a possibility.”

“Indeed,” Holmes commented quietly. Something in his tone caused me to glance in his direction, but he did not look at me.

Altamont continued. “Despite the fact that I have often expressed to Madeline my unalterable opposition to any such ghostly carryingson, my wife has not only invited these charlatans, these fortune-tellers, into our house but has allowed them to establish a most pernicious influence over her. They have convinced Madeline, who is all too ready to be persuaded, that our sweet girl that we have buried survives in spirit-land, and that she is still within our reach. Only last night, while I was absent, they overwhelmed her with some trickery.” Altamont paused; his voice had fallen to no more than a whisper filled with loathing.

“Pray give us the details.”

Our visitor regained control of his own emotions, and resumed. “As I have mentioned, Abraham and Sarah Kirkaldy are a brother and sister team. You will know, if you know anything of society, that they have established quite a reputation in their field. both are quite young. The name sounds Scottish, but I know almost nothing of their past.”

“That may be discovered, if it becomes necessary. Continue, if you will.”

“Business kept me in London until late last night; when I returned home, my wife met me, in a state of terrible excitement, and I heard the story from her. The Kirkaldys had prudently taken themselves away before I returned.”

“Then you have never actually met the couple?”

“That is correct.”

“Continue, if you will.”

Holmes and I listened with close attention as our client repeated his wife’s story of the séance, which, according to the usual method of such affairs, had been conducted in a darkened room, ostensibly with all doors and windows locked. The sitting had culminated in the apparition which had so affected her.

According to her husband, Mrs. Altamont described the phenomenon as a solid materialization of the dead girl. In the darkness of the séance room, the mother had not only exchanged a few words of conversation with this barely visible figure, but had actually kissed and embraced it, in the perfect conviction that her own Louisa had come back across the border of death to visit her.

“I can only think,” Altamont concluded bitterly, “that this apparition must have been actually some partner, or hireling, of the mediums, whom they had brought stealthily into the house. There may have