19. THE CASE OF THE SPIRIT GUIDE

Holmes is consulted by a widow on the possibility of a psychic medium being a charlatan

“Now, Watson, I want you to give this your full consideration. What’s your opinion of psychic phenomena?”

“Meaning what, Holmes?” I asked.

“Mediums. Those who contact the deceased and convey messages between what they describe as two states of being. Seances. That kind of thing.”

“My opinion, as you probably know full well, Holmes, is that those who claim to be able to communicate with the dead are charlatans at best and confidence tricksters in general,” I said. “When a person is dead I am afraid that he is dead. I’ve seen too many poor souls blown to pieces in needless conflicts to believe anything else.”

“Yet you call them souls, Watson, and souls must surely belong to another universe,” he said, with an annoying smile on the corners of his lips.

“It is a phrase, a euphemism, that’s all,” I told him.

“Then you will be happy to accompany me to Sister Maria’s Paranormal Meet,” he suggested.

“Who in the name of goodness is Sister Maria?” I asked, confused.

“Listen, Watson. I have had a communication...”

“Not from the dead, I hope,” I interrupted.

“Don’t be silly, Watson. In this morning’s post I have had a communication from one Peggy Minecroft of this parish. She is a widow and has at her disposal a not inconsiderable sum of money that she inherited from her late husband Ernie, who had done well in leather goods. She has been informed that her late spouse wishes to communicate with her via the good offices of Sister Maria’s Paranormal Meet, and has beseeched me to discover whether it would be worth her while to invest a heavy sum of hard cash in such a venture.”

“It’s a confidence trick of the worst kind,” I declared. “If there were spirits hovering here, there and everywhere, which I deny, then hard cash would be of no use to them at all seeing as it is currency used by the living in exchange for physical goods and not, I assume, the worth of such esoteric goods as white fluffy clouds!”

“You maybe assume too much, Watson,” he said. “But with your approval you are to attend the Meet of Sister Maria this very evening, by appointment, in the company of a weeping widow woman.”

“I am?” I ejaculated, “you could have asked me first! And who is this widow woman?”

“I can’t hide it from you, Watson. With a little close attention with my razor and a fetching grey wig I can look the very image of a weeping widow woman if I don widow’s weeds,” he said, smiling, and, in an almost convincing falsetto, “I am so poorly, ma’am, poorly with fear of the future and needs to know...”

“Very good, Holmes,” I muttered, doubtfully.

But that evening, and after considerable tutting and hawing, Holmes appeared before me in so convincing an appearance that even I thought that maybe he was no longer my friend but a bereaved soul in the very pits of grief.

“Come on, Mr Watson,” he warbled, “I’ve a ‘pointment with a good sister and mustn’t be late for I needs to greet my Alfie an’ be guided by him...”

I think I’d already said it earlier in the day, but “Very good, Holmes,” I repeated.

The Meet, as it was described in a cheaply printed leaflet, was in the back-room of the Pince-Nez public house, an institution not normally visited by men of my position, but I have great reserves when it comes to lowering my standing in society for a case, and happily accompanied my weeping widow woman. And to his credit Holmes was playing the part well. He was bent over, the curls of his grey wig concealing much of his face and his gait that of a woman consumed by grief. As we walked into the Pince-Nez I found his leaning heavily on my arm, and stumbling as if his eyesight was dimmed by the presence of tears.

Don’t overdo it, Holmes, I hissed almost silently.

But he did nothing to reduce the debility of his grief.

There were a dozen or so others there, and to my chagrin I was the only man. The others were all women of a certain age, as they like to put it, and one or two were weeping, though none with the over-riding distress displayed by Holmes.

Then Sister Maria entered after a brief delay. She was a tall woman wearing a shawl and hat pinned neatly on top of a dark bob. Her face was the colour of an embarrassed blush, either through the injudicious use of make-up or from an unpleasant natural condition usually associated with the partaking of excessive strong drink.

Her accomplice, if that’s the right word, introduced her. She was a much shorter woman with a mean face and chiselled nose and chin.

“Ladies,” she said in a wavering voice, and then, glancing my way, “and gentleman, let me introduce Sister Maria, our Clairvoyant for this evening. She has been consulted by kings and princes, and even our Prime Minister has sought advice on many occasions regarding a lost one. Is there anyone in this Meet who wishes to ask a question of the Sister while the air is thronging with the invisible voices of the dead?”

Holmes stood up.

I might have wept myself if I hadn’t know who it was. His voice, at first breaking as if with grief, was only just audible and I swear genuine tears were rolling down his cheeks.

“I am called Peggy Minecroft,” he wavered, “and my better ‘alf passed over but a month ago, ‘e did. Oh bless me, my good sister, but I needs to know … ‘e left me comfortable, like, and it don’t seem right me hangin’ on to all that money, pilin’ it into banks and so on, when ‘e might want me to do summat with it that might do good in the world he jus’ left… ‘e was such a good man, carin’ for me through thick an’ thin ‘til the Lord took ‘im...”

“You poor soul,” murmured Sister Maria with a voice so like a man’s I was instantly convinced that she was one.

“”Can you accost ‘im in the other world an’ ask ‘im?” asked Holmes, still weeping visibly. How, I wondered, can he produce tears in such a volume when he is doing little more than play-acting?

“Give me his name, you poor weeping widow woman,” begged the medium, “and I will send my waves across the mighty void and seek him out for one in such desperate need as yourself.”

“’E was Ernie as ever was,” wept Holmes, “my own sweet Ernie, an’ he got that cough of ‘is, that ‘ackin’ cough, an’ the Lord took him barely a month since...”

“Ernie, Ernie, are you there?” called the medium in a slightly more womanlike voice, the sort that might emerge from the mouth of a man feigning femininity.

Then the medium jerked in a huge spasm, her head rocked back and forth, and she spoke in a gruff, distinctly masculine voice. “Is that you, my own sweet Peggy,” it said.

“’Ere, you never called me that, not ever in my nat’rel!” squawked Holmes, “that ain’t you, Ernie, it must be some other Ernie...”

“No, ‘tis me, Peggy,” intoned the medium, sounding, if anything, slightly annoyed at being challenged. “I am in the great beyond, and am cleansed from the way I was when we were bolted together in wedlock...”

“Cleansed?” squawked Holmes, “tell me ‘ow, my Ernie, ‘ow was you cleansed when you was always allergic to water?”

“I went into the great celestial river, and it washed over me and took all my old sins away,” intoned the almost irate medium. “I am not the man I was, Peggy, but a perfect version of the man I was.”

“’Oo would’a thought that!” screeched Holmes, then “what does I do wiv the money you left me, Ernie? The thousands? The piles of notes? What does I do wiv them?”

“Trust Sister Maria,” soothed the tall cloaked creature whose head was still bobbing. “She will guide you … she will do everything for you and all will be well. It will be my guiding hand and she will go the right way. Trust me, Peggy. Now, is there anything else, my dearest Peggy?”

“Yes,” said Holmes, “Ernie, where is it? I know we had loads of notes, but where did you secrete them for safety? Tell me where I can put me hands on ’em… I’ve looked bloomin’ everywhere an’ there’s no sign of any cash anywhere. I’ve even unpicked the mattress...”

At this the medium stood up, an expression of barely suppressed fury on her ruddy face. “You mean you don’t know?” she barked, “you mean you’ve come ‘ere expectin’ me to know where your dead man hid his wad ‘cause you don’t know? Well I don’t, and that’s a fact … and I need a drink! The Meet’s over for the night!”

At that she stormed off, out of the public house back room and into the bar where she ordered a very large gin in a voice we could all hear.

“Well, that answers Peggy’s question,” grinned Holmes as we stepped back out into the street.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I muttered, shaking my head, “a man disguised as a woman upstaging a man disguised as a woman! Incredible.”

“But … what’s the word, Watson? Elementary...” he said.

© Peter Rogerson 06.08.17