Miss Moriarty, I Presume?, page 16
Directly beneath the eye stood a large altar shaped like a gourd, potbellied at the bottom, cinching in roughly three-fifths of the way up, and then bulging out a little again. After a moment she realized that it was meant to be a representation of the cucurbit, the lower portion of an alembic.
A canopy had been erected above the top of the cucurbit. Mrs. Watson stepped a little closer and asked with some hope, “Is the altar, by chance, shielded from the all-seeing eye?”
“Indeed not,” answered Mr. Peters who, alongside Mrs. Crosby, was lighting fat candles set on columns that rose four and a half feet from the floor. The columns were arranged in two concentric circles, two dozen in all, with the cucurbit altar at their center. “There is another iteration of the eye on the bottom of the canopy.”
Nothing occult, eh? Nothing occult, her foot. Mrs. Watson was beginning to yearn for a heavy cross to wave about.
When Mr. Peters and Mrs. Crosby finished illuminating the sanctuary, they bowed to each other and then to the altar.
“Now this next bit might seem a bit . . . unnecessary,” said Mrs. Crosby, “but it is simply part of the homecoming ceremony, during which those who have returned and those who have kept the fires of transformation burning in their absence unite to reaffirm their allegiance to the cause and to one another.”
Mrs. Watson forced a smile. “Please do not be hindered by our presence.”
A low table had been set before the altar with cushions to either side. Mr. Peters placed a large chalice on the table and poured what looked to be wine into it. Mrs. Crosby set an oil lamp beside the chalice. Now the two knelt down on cushions on opposite sides of the table and bowed to each other again.
Mr. Peters handed Mrs. Crosby a slender instrument. Mrs. Crosby passed the tip of the implement several times through the flame of the oil lamp and then jabbed it into the palm of her other hand.
Mrs. Watson’s gasp echoed in the sanctuary.
She gripped Miss Charlotte’s arm as Mrs. Crosby held her hand above the chalice. A drop of dark liquid fell inside. Mrs. Crosby passed the instrument back to Mr. Peters, who heated it in the lamp flame for two seconds and did the same to his own hand, squeezing out a drop of blood for the chalice.
Surely . . . the thought bounced wildly in Mrs. Watson’s head, surely they aren’t going to . . .
But they did. They shared the wine, emptying the chalice with three draughts each.
It wasn’t until Miss Charlotte caught her hand that Mrs. Watson realized that she was rubbing her stomach in an agitated manner, trying to calm her nausea.
Mrs. Crosby and Mr. Peters wrapped their injured hands with handkerchiefs and bowed to each other one last time. Mr. Peters rose and carried away the empty chalice, the oil lamp, and the pick. Mrs. Crosby got up more slowly and smiled at the interlopers.
“As I said, ladies, a simple little ceremony.”
* * *
“A simple little ceremony?” fumed Mrs. Watson. “They were only this far from human sacrifice.”
She held her thumb and index finger a bare inch apart.
She and Miss Charlotte were walking the yarrow-lined path that surrounded the former dining hall. Mr. Peters had—maliciously, in Mrs. Watson’s opinion—inquired whether they wished to see the library and the meditation cabin and Miss Charlotte had leaped at the chance. But out of consideration for Mrs. Watson, she had said that they would wait outside while Mr. Peters and Mrs. Crosby finished cleaning up inside the sanctuary.
In fact, she’d told Mrs. Watson that she needn’t come with them, but Mrs. Watson, as much as she wanted to be gone, refused to leave the girl alone with two unpredictable occultists.
“Were I anticipating human sacrifice, I’d have been sorely disappointed,” said Miss Charlotte with her customary sangfroid. “There wasn’t even a beheaded chicken in the mix.”
“They drank their own—and each other’s—blood.” Mrs. Watson shuddered. The sight made her not want to have wine ever again and she loved a glass of good claret.
Miss Charlotte remained unexcited. “Conceptually it isn’t that different from the Eucharist.”
“But the Eucharist isn’t done with the collected vital fluids of the congregation!”
Mrs. Watson managed to keep her voice down to a whisper, but she couldn’t help the movement of her arms. The light from her lantern, a circle of weak coppery glimmer, jerked to and fro as she gesticulated wildly.
“At least we’ve now seen the inside of the sanctuary. I no longer need to find a way to break into it without getting caught.”
Mrs. Watson sighed. Miss Charlotte had mentioned, once upon a time, that Miss Olivia did not find her a very satisfying partner in the airing of grievances: She frequently failed to vindicate Miss Olivia’s passionate feelings of dissatisfaction.
Mrs. Watson tried to explain herself better. “I don’t think it’s the blood and whatnot that I mind the most—although I do mind it greatly—it’s more that I’m now afraid these people might be fanatics under their seemingly rational and civilized veneers. What if they are? And what if Miss Baxter realized it much too late, wished to leave, but couldn’t?
“A simple rite of homecoming is already so . . . unconventional. What if there are other rituals that do feature the sacrifice of chickens, goats, and such? If word got out, what do you think would happen? I’m not saying that the residents of the Garden would be tarred and feathered, but do you think they’d still be allowed to have their heathen community and their little homecoming ceremonies in peace?”
Before Miss Charlotte could reply, a cheerful voice called out, “Mrs. Watson, Miss Holmes!”
Mr. Peters, coming to them with a sweet smile on his face.
With a similar smile, Miss Charlotte greeted him, “Why, good sir, how do you do? And will Mrs. Crosby not be joining us?”
“Mrs. Crosby wants a minute alone in the sanctuary and then she will be off to call on Miss Baxter, who, I’m sure, will be most interested in hearing her impression of you ladies.”
Mrs. Watson had not believed Mrs. Crosby’s claim that she saw Miss Baxter this very day. But with Mr. Peters’s fluent assertion that she would shortly see Miss Baxter again, Mrs. Watson began to wonder whether her judgment had been too premature—or whether she was somehow responding to the authority with which these lies were being repeated.
“Miss Baxter can take our measure herself,” answered Miss Charlotte. “We’ll be happy to meet with her anytime.”
“All in good time, I’m sure,” said Mr. Peters, still smiling. “All in good time.”
He indicated the side of the building. “Shall we?”
The former farmhouse had been a larger house and a smaller house divided by a shared wall. The bigger part had been turned into a mess hall and later, the sanctuary. The lesser part, when the place had been intended as a holiday village, had already been a reading room, a place for the guests to sit down with a book or to write letters and postcards to friends and relatives back home. Therefore, when Miss Fairchild took over the property, it had seemed natural to convert the space to a library to house the collection of Hermetic writings that the community intended to acquire.
This, Mr. Peters told them while they walked up to the door. As he put key to lock, Miss Charlotte said, “I’m looking forward to seeing the library—I enjoyed the sanctuary.”
Oh, this girl, grumbled Mrs. Watson silently. It would be just like her to have sincerely reveled in the spectacle, too.
Once inside, Mr. Peters lit a pair of sconces in quick succession, and Mrs. Watson very nearly stumbled at the sight of an enormous skull with a serpent emerging from one empty eye socket and a nearly naked young woman held between the grinning teeth.
It was a large painting, six feet wide and eight feet high at the very least, so eerie and macabre that after Mrs. Watson closed her eyes and reopened them, she still had to suppress a gasp: This time she noticed the blood dripping from the skull’s other eye socket, which eventually fell into the young woman’s long loose golden hair, dying it scarlet, before dripping off again from its tips.
“Fascinating,” said Miss Charlotte.
She walked forward. Mrs. Watson, unwilling to go any closer to the painting, but even more unwilling to be left alone, followed closely in her wake. She averted her gaze from the awful image, only to see, on the shelves that lined the walls, between books, manuscripts, and alembics, a great many more skulls, both animal and human.
And now that they stood immediately before the painting, Mrs. Watson had no choice but to witness the hundreds of tiny skulls that had been set into the large, ornate frame. She recoiled, her stomach feeling rammed through.
Miss Charlotte reached out one gloved finger and caressed the frame. “Are these rat skulls?”
“Indeed they are,” answered Mr. Peters, his easy smile remaining in place. Mrs. Watson had the sense that he was mocking her chagrin. “The painting was done by Miss Baxter, by the way, a masterpiece on the human condition and what we must overcome to achieve any measure of transcendence. She was very particular about how it was to be framed, and I had to go into Exeter and find a ratcatcher to obtain the number of skulls needed to cover the frame. But what effect, do you not think?”
“I think so indeed,” agreed Miss Charlotte readily. “But surely the other animal skulls did not come from an Exeter ratcatcher.”
There was a whole zoo’s worth of additional animal skulls, a big cat, a shark, a crocodile, all with their maws open and their sharp teeth pointing out. But these predators Mrs. Watson found less disconcerting than the score or so smaller skulls that must have belonged to cats and dogs.
“Most of those we inherited from Mr. Kaplan, who was an amateur naturalist,” answered Mr. Peters.
The name sounded familiar to Mrs. Watson—she had come across it in the dossier. Mr. Kaplan was one of the three who had died in rapid succession several years ago. She’d mentioned the deaths to Miss Charlotte and Lord Ingram, but Miss Charlotte had not thought them necessarily ominous. “The late Mr. Kaplan who passed away from pneumonia?”
“Yes, that estimable gentleman.”
“Did he bequeath to you the human skulls, too?”
There were a good dozen, grinning from everywhere. Miss Charlotte, as she asked her question, ran her finger directly over the incomplete teeth of one.
“Most of the human skulls are plaster replicas and will shatter if you drop them,” said Mr. Peters. “We only have one that is real—the one you are studying, in fact.”
Miss Charlotte lowered her head for a closer look.
“Someone gave it to Dr. Robinson long ago,” continued Mr. Peters, “and once he saw the interior of the library, he decided to deposit it here.”
Mrs. Watson had been married to a doctor who had boasted not only a plaster skull in his possession but an entire plaster skeleton. When they’d lived in India, her dear John had even kept an excised tumor in a jar of formaldehyde and they had clinked glasses and shared meals in its vicinity. Her niece, too, was a medical student and did not shy away from discussing what she witnessed during her coursework.
Human anatomy, on its own, did not disconcert Mrs. Watson. But here the human skulls did not exist so innocently. She didn’t believe Mr. Peters’s claim that most were plaster replicas. And if they weren’t, whose skulls were they?
She shuddered.
Miss Charlotte at last turned away from the “only” real human skull and swept a hand around the room. “Are skulls particularly important to the study of Hermetism?”
Mr. Peters shook his head. “We had the ambitious plan to fill this place with books and manuscripts, but despite our best efforts, there simply aren’t that many works to be acquired. To make the shelves look less empty we began to decorate them with alembic sets. And then, once Miss Baxter’s painting was installed, with its abundance of rat skulls, it became natural to add other skulls.”
He looked about. “I still wish we had more books, but since we don’t, this current collection looks very nice, too. I love spending time here.”
This last was said with a happy little sigh that made Mrs. Watson’s face feel as stiff as dried glue when she tried to smile.
The meditation cabin was once the chapel for the former holiday compound. Like the sanctuary, it, too, had a painted interior, except the hues were gradients of red, ending in a color on the ceiling that felt uncomfortably like clotted blood. Another eye looked down from the very zenith. Mrs. Watson quickly dropped her gaze, only to see a set of implements reminiscent of what Mrs. Crosby and Mr. Peters had used for their “simple little” homecoming ceremony.
She was, therefore, more than ready to depart from Mr. Peters’s company once Miss Charlotte had her fill of the meditation cabin. Mr. Peters, however, issued an invitation. “Would you ladies care to join me for a little promenade on the wall?”
“Oh, could we?” replied Miss Charlotte brightly. “I thought we’d need a special dispensation.”
“Of course not. Everyone here is welcome to go up and take in the view.” Mr. Peters smiled at her. “The stars can be breathtaking on a clear night. Sometimes the sea shimmers with starlight and I feel as if I am looking upon the very youth of the world, unpolluted by the passage of time or the advance of industry.”
Mrs. Watson blinked. Was she mistaken about Mr. Peters’s intentions? Was he taking them around not because he wanted to unnerve them but because he wanted to spend time impressing Miss Charlotte?
If Miss Charlotte thought the same, she gave no hint, but only looked up at the clouds that had rolled in since nightfall. “What a shame that there are no stars left tonight. Still, the air will be fresh and bracing up there.”
“I shall be delighted by the company, if nothing else,” said Mr. Peters, half bowing. “This way, please.”
* * *
The night had grown sharp. The wind almost whipped off Mrs. Watson’s hat.
Mr. Peters led them toward the west. “That’s my favorite building, the kitchen. I always go and get my own basket—it’s nice to anticipate one’s meals. I’m not sure whether you can see it when it’s so dark but there’s our kitchen garden, of which the gardeners among us are very proud. I’m not a gardener—not yet in any case. But Dr. Robinson is adamant that horticulture will sink its tendrils into every man at some point. Are either of you ladies interested in spring planting?”
Did they plant hemlock here? Or belladonna?
Miss Charlotte shook her head. “Is it already time for spring planting?”
“Not quite, but Dr. Robinson and Miss Ellery have some carrot seeds growing under cloches. And they’ve already loosened the soil.”
They walked all the way to the front gate, to either side of which was a wrought iron ladder sunk into the monstrously high wall. Mrs. Watson, who did not normally fear heights, had to grit her teeth to make herself set foot on the first rung. Two thirds of the way up, when a strong gust blew, she whimpered but kept going.
The top of the parapeted wall was just wide enough for one person. Dresses these days had a narrow profile from the front, so there was a bit of clearance to either side. But if Mrs. Watson were to turn around, the bouffant folds to the rear of her skirt would scrape against the masonry and possibly sustain damage.
So she walked forward in Miss Charlotte’s footsteps, one hand on the parapet.
The wind had become fierce; clouds tumbled across the sky like blown fleece—barely visible blown fleece. Inside the compound, half a dozen windows were lit. Little else could be seen. Even on the eastern ramparts, closest to the edge of the cliff, the sea remained a specter that could only be heard, the headlands a dark, silent solidity.
“Lovely,” said Miss Charlotte. “It’s all lovely. I like how the air smells brinier at night, as if the sea has come closer.”
They were back near the front gate, on the western wall. Miss Charlotte had her hand on the side rail of a ladder.
“Indeed,” said Mr. Peters. “We are all most fortunate to be here. I have never felt as safe and at peace as I have since I arrived in the Garden. And I am determined to do everything in my power to keep things as they are.”
And not let two women from London muck everything up?
His gaze flicked over Miss Charlotte, who leaned forward, looking down the length of the ladder. “You should be careful, Miss Holmes. That is a fatal drop.”
Mrs. Watson looked sharply at him. Was that a threat?
“My falling over would make no difference in the larger scheme of things,” said Miss Charlotte, responding directly to the threat. “Mr. Baxter would simply send someone else.”
“No matter how many people he sends, Miss Baxter will outlast them all.”
His tone sounded almost childlike in its unshakable faith.
“That is certainly our sincere hope as well,” replied Miss Charlotte, her voice cool and calm. “We have no quarrels with either Miss Baxter or the Garden of Hermopolis. We only wish to see that she is safe and sound.”
“Well, there she is,” said Mr. Peters.
As if on cue, down in the Garden, a dark window glowed from within.
“That’s Miss Baxter’s bedroom,” said Mr. Peters. “And this is the time of the day she usually goes to bed.”
Miss Baxter’s bedroom window was separated from the interior by only a layer of translucent fabric. A woman’s silhouette, clad in a dressing gown, appeared. She shut the heavier outer curtains and they could see no more of her.
Twelve
Mrs. Watson would have liked to part ways from Mr. Peters as soon as possible. As it turned out, however, they had to spend some more time with him, because at that moment, Miss Charlotte looked to the southwest and said, “Is that a vehicle approaching?”
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