Chapter 3 ― The Disappearance of Rachel Musgrave (Part 4)

I hastily attended to the professor. His present condition was the result of days of insomnia as much as it was due to the psychological effect of the seance, and I assessed that this mild spell of vertigo would have no long lasting effect upon my patient. A few deep breaths, aided by a glass of brandy brought by Brunton, gradually restored the colour to his cheeks.

“What happened?” asked Sir Musgrave to Madame Richborough.

“Professor Moriarty’s demeanour raised the ire of the spirits,” she replied with a chiding tone. “Whatever drove you to that behaviour, professor? I distinctly instructed you not to move. The experiment lies in ruins now, thanks to your petty suspicions.”

Professor Moriarty hung his head.

It was clear at any rate that we had been overmastered by the Chamber of the East of the East. Not one of us proposed to resume the seance, and Sir Musgrave declared an end to the proceedings. Madame Richborough did not quite look satisfied, yet she withdrew without raising much fuss. Perhaps she was content to have silenced her skeptics with that irrefutable display.

“You will not forget your promise of backing, I am sure,” she remarked to Sir Musgrave.

We retraced our steps back to the modern wing of the mansion. Madame Richborough and Cartwright retired first to their respective guestrooms.

Sir Musgrave invited the remaining participants to his study, for a post-mortem of sorts. Yet none of us could bring ourselves to speak, and we huddled in silence in our chairs around the fireplace for some time. None of us could come up with a logical explanation for what had just transpired in that chamber; Professor Moriarty was as white as a sheet.

“I cannot see how Madame Richborough could have had an opportunity to arrange any of her tricks,” mused Sir Musgrave aloud. “I trust Brunton and the manservants completely. Once the seance had begun, Miss Adler and myself did not take our eyes from the madame for a moment. She could not have engineered what we witnessed. Your opinion, Miss Alder?”

“I regret that I am unable to offer any opinion at the moment,” said she, gloomily.

“Madame Richborough is a far more formidable opponent than I had imagined,” Sir Musgrave blandly continued, “Miss Adler, Holmes, and Professor Moriarty: a more seasoned panel of skeptics I could not have hoped to assemble, and still she has completely pulled the wool over our eyes. I promised the madame that if tonight’s seance was a success, I would throw the resources of the House of Musgrave behind her endeavours to spread her spiritualist gospel. We have little time now, and I have no doubt that if we are not able to expose her sham, she will certainly claim her debt.”

“Yes, I am only too aware of it,” replied Irene Adler, still downcast.

Sir Musgrave stood up and gazed pensively at the fire.

“That was Rachel, of that I am certain. She has not aged a day.”

In the pained silence that followed those words, Sherlock Holmes paced blithely around the study. Here he flipped through books from the shelves, there he ran his fingers across the giant map of the moon along Mare Fecunditatis. True it was that he had renounced worldly affairs, but surely it was not unreasonable to ask him to retain a measure of decorum.

“Don’t just stand around, Holmes, help us think!” I said sharply.

“Trying to solve the mystery? That will never do,” he replied, his back still turned to us. “The world is full of the strange and unexplainable, and magic is among them.”

We all exchanged astonished glances. Where was the Holmes who had once so prized evidence, logic, the laws of reality? If one were to dismiss every strange or bizarre thing in the world with that one word―magic―then there would no longer be any need for the detective.

Miss Adler rose to her feet angrily.

“What do you mean by that, Holmes?” she snapped. “Am I to understand you have become a believer in spiritualism?”

“That is not it. I am no more a believer than I ever was.”

Miss Adler scowled at his turned back, though that did not seem to make him any more inclined to offer an explanation.

“I’m afraid I must bid you all good-bye for the night,” he said; “I have a moon gazing appointment with William and a bottle of libations. You are of course most welcome to join us, Musgrave.” And with a short bow he strode from the room. I pursued him to the foyer, where Brunton had just handed him a square lantern.

“Stop!” I insisted, taking him by the arm. “How can you be so ungrateful after all that Sir Musgrave has done for you?”

“Did I not invite him as well?”

“A paltry token of gratitude!”

“That’s quite enough, Watson,” said he, shaking my hand off and turning away. “I hope you will not make me say it again: I am a detective no longer!”

There was a note of sorrow in his voice, and I could not find it in me to continue berating him.

Holmes lifted the lantern and walked off into the night, his silhouette dipping in and out of the billowing rows of shrubbery until he was lost from sight.

I dejectedly returned to the study. Neither Sir Musgrave nor Irene Adler nor Mary had anything to say. We were at a dead end. Unless Miss Adler pulled an epiphany out of thin air, Madame Richborough would prevail.

“Perhaps tomorrow will bring better tidings,” said Sir Musgrave as we each returned to our rooms.

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For an hour afterward I stared out the window in my night-clothes. The hush of night had fallen over Hurlstone; I supposed everyone had already gone to bed. But I was in no state to go to sleep, for the shock of the seance still reverberated in my mind. From my window I had a view of the lawns, washed in the pale moonlight, and beyond them the mournful bamboo forest.

There was a hesitant knock at the door.

“Dear?” I heard Mary say. “Are you awake?”

I quickly strode to open the door, and Mary slipped inside. She wore a robe over her nightgown.

“I thought you might still be up,” I said; “I can hardly bring myself to close my eyes.”

We sat on the bed side by side, and for some time neither she nor I said a word. Our cold war, which had been sparked by Sherlock Holmes, had been carried over to Rakusei. I had hardly spoken to her here in the manor: not at our unexpected reunion, not at the dinner, and not at the seance. But as I leaned upon her, I sensed the high walls which had been erected between us crumbling away. It was not only I who was filled with doubt.

I put my arm around her shoulder, and felt her lean back into me.

“I’ve wanted to apologize to you,” I admitted.

“What for?”

“For the reckless way I’ve gone about trying to save Holmes.”

I stared into the window, where both she and I were reflected in the glass.

“I was willing to do whatever it took, even if it required sacrificing our marriage. Sometimes I’d wonder myself why I was so desperate, and then I would be reminded of the treasure-box. You remember it: the one which contained the great Agra treasure.”

“How could I forget the most important event of my life?” she smiled.

Mary and I had met during the case of the Sign of Four. She had been governess in the household of Mrs. Cecil Forrester when she knocked on the door of 221B four years ago. Her simple visit had developed into a most fascinating adventure filled with the intriguing and the bizarre: murder by poison dart, a man with a wooden leg, and an Indian treasure-box hidden in the attic of an old manor. And as Holmes tracked down the truth of the case, so had the relationship between Mary and I blossomed, for the first time I laid eyes on Mary I had instantly fallen in love.

“What a fine opportunity this investigation has presented for you,” Holmes had observed drily upon my proposal to Mary. Certainly I had been quite eager to put my best foot forward before her. As we sped along the Kamo River in pursuit of the fugitive craft towards Osaka Bay, my heart was speeding along in pursuit of Mary. Part of the treasure that the criminals had stolen away belonged to her, and I was determined to recover it no matter the cost.

We overtook the thief where the Kizu, Uji, and Katsura merge to become the Yodo River.

“You should have become one of the richest women in Kyoto then,” I lamented.

“Yes, I suppose.”

“But the box was empty.”

The thief had scattered the contents of the treasure chest into the river just before we caught them, and even now I still remember the shock I felt when I opened the lid.

“In place of that treasure you gained only me, and every day since I have striven to become a man worthy of those riches. If I lost Holmes I was afraid that I would lose whatever worth I had. I was afraid that I would lose you.”

“Whether you have Holmes or not, you are still you.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I know so.”

“But I cannot bring myself to believe it. I am afraid.”

Mary frowned and sighed, though she didn’t seem angry. Together we stared out the window in silence.

“What Holmes said after the seance was strange,” she said, after a time. “Irene believes there is some deep meaning in what he said.”

“Did she? I wouldn’t have expected her to put much stock in anything he says.”

“Irene still esteems him highly. Her powers and reputation may long since have outstripped his, but her respect for him is too deeply ingrained for her to forget. I believe she was quite eager to show her mettle before him. That she could not explain what occurred in the Chamber of the East of the East was quite a blow to her confidence.”

Mary sighed deeply again, then continued sadly.

“I would like nothing more than for Irene to be her usual assertive self. We may not have been schoolmates for very long, but I remember that she was always self-assured. Whenever we were together it felt like there was nothing we couldn’t do.”

“I know the feeling, Mary,” I nodded. “I know it very well.”

My wife abruptly turned to look at me very seriously.

“I’ve been keeping something from you, John.”

“What’s that?”

“Irene and I were here, the night that Miss Rachel vanished.”

I looked back at her, amazed. There was a strange gleam in her eyes.

Almost as if it had been pre-arranged there came a knock at the door.

“Pardon the disturbance, doctor. Is Mary inside?”

I got up and opened the door to find Irene Adler standing in the darkened hallway.

“Mary’s quarters are empty, and I suspected she might be here. I hope I am not interrupting your conversation. But I’m afraid I am well and truly in a bind…”

“Not at all. Come in.”

Irene Adler walked slowly into the room as though she were in a reverie. I had often seen Sherlock Holmes pacing the room with that somnambulist’s gait when he was deep in thought about a particularly intractable case. I supposed that her mind had run itself into a loop overanalyzing everything that we had seen and heard.

She lowered herself with an air of exhaustion into the chair which I offered her. She was still wearing the outfit which she had on at dinner, but the confidence which had been on full display had dissolved like the mist, and she seemed altogether shrunken and worn.

“I can see you’ve had quite a time of it,” said Mary.

“I give up,” cried Irene petulantly. “It’s maddening. None of it makes any sense!”

She buried her face despairingly in her hands. Mary got up from the bed and knelt beside her friend, putting a soothing hand on her shoulder.

“I was just telling John what happened, and what we saw 12 years ago.”

“You mean the day that Miss Rachel vanished,” said Irene Adler in a small voice, and so she began to tell the tale of that fateful day.

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It had been almost exactly 12 years to the day, early in December. Mary and Irene had been pupils at the Shishigatani boarding school, for which each successive head of the Musgrave family served as trustee. The biannual Musgrave tea party stemmed from this long-held relationship. Twice a year, a selected group of students would be invited to a salon at Hurlstone. It was considered quite an honour, and each occasion was cause for fierce competition to determine who would be among the chosen few.

“We hardly imagined that we would ever be chosen,” said Mary, to which Irene nodded her strong agreement.

“It was always the daughters of the most well-connected families, or the ones who stood head and shoulders above the rest in academic accomplishment. Of course we were neither. We were always stirring up some trouble or other at the student paper, and the instructors never thought of us as anything but a nuisance. Stuffy old Principal Appleyard would never have willingly allowed us on the list.”

Yet on the day of the tea party, the two rabblerousers found themselves at Arashiyama Station, boarding a carriage bound for Hurlstone Manor. In part due to her opposition to the very existence of the tradition, Mary presumed that the as-yet-unseen Miss Rachel must be a deeply unpleasant person.

When the carriages emerged from the vast swath of bamboo, then, she was quite surprised to see Miss Rachel waiting at the entrance of the mansion to greet them. Contrary to the image of the entitled brat she had assembled in her head, Miss Rachel was soft-spoken and mild-mannered, and over the course of teatime her suspicions melted away.

Miss Rachel was not arrogant; in fact she was kind and courteous to each and every student, and curious to boot. If there was anything peculiar about her, it was only that she would occasionally stop talking quite abruptly and stare off into the distance. Looking into her eyes at those moments was like catching a glimpse into an empty room.

Miss Rachel was particularly keen to hear of Mary and Irene’s adventures at the school paper. One special issue in particular had drawn her attention, in which the daring duo had laid bare, with the help of Irene’s particular skill in lockpicking, chambers into which no student was permitted to step foot, including repositories for confiscated items, smoking rooms for the teachers, and even Principal Appleyard’s hidden wine stash. The students showered them with thunderous applause. The administrators suspended them.

“How ever did you learn to pick locks, Miss Adler?” asked Miss Rachel.

“I practiced every day,” responded Irene, puffing her chest proudly. “One never knows when something will come in handy.”

Miss Rachel next guided them to the manor library. Both Mary and Irene were awed by its sheer extravagance, to which the school library could hardly compare. Save for the windows, every wall was hidden by bookcases which soared up to the ceiling, each filled from end to end with the spines of books whose gold-lettered titles sparkled in the light. In the center of the room was a grand table on a lavish Persian rug, covered with half-read books and reading lamps.

“It is my job to manage the collection,” said Miss Rachel.

As Mary and Irene looked around them in wonder, Miss Rachel flitted through the room like a butterfly and stopped in front of a particular bookcase, where a history book jutted out from an upper shelf. When she pulled on its spine the bookcase swung open, revealing a tunnel which concluded in a small repository containing rare and precious tomes. From among them she removed a large leather bound volume.

“This illustrated copy of the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter has been passed down through our family for generations.”

Miss Rachel laid the volume on the table and began to slowly leaf through its pages for the two. As they reached the last page Mary let out an involuntary gasp.

“What is this poem?” she wondered.

At the end of the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, the emperor orders his envoys to ascend to the peak of Mount Fuji and burn the elixir of immortality left behind by the Princess Kaguya at the peak: the smoke from their labours can still be seen to this day. However, the manuscript before them contained a mysterious addendum:

Whose was it?

Theirs who are gone.

Who shall have it?

They who will come.

What shall we give?

All that is ours.

Why should we give it?

For the sake of the great awakening.

The text had not appeared when Mary had studied the tale in school. Miss Rachel commended her on her studiousness; indeed, this addendum appeared only in the copy which belonged to the Musgraves. The catechism was recited as part of a ritual undertaken by each master of the household as he came of age, but as to its meaning no one was clear.

“They say that Princess Kaguya ascended to the moon from somewhere in Rakusei,” said Miss Rachel in a provocative whisper. “What do you think?”

“It’s very interesting,” said Mary in a whisper of her own.

“There is a room in the old wing of this mansion called the Chamber of the East of the East,” continued Miss Rachel; “Many strange things have happened in that room, and everyone gives it a wide berth. The key has long been lost. But I was reading the diary of one of my ancestors here in the library the other day when I came upon something most interesting. It said that the Chamber of the East of the East conceals a passageway to the moon, and it was by this route that the Princess Kaguya returned home.”

Irene hung on Miss Rachel’s every word. The tale seemed tailor-made to pique her detective’s spirit.

“I can open the door. My tools never leave my side.”

Miss Rachel smiled.

In the twelve years that had passed since that day, Mary had often wondered whether everything that had transpired had not all been part of Miss Rachel’s design. Had she invited them to the tea party personally so that they would unlock the chamber? It seemed too convenient to have been sheer coincidence.

Evading the watchful eye of the butler, the girls stole away and rendezvoused at the gloomy staircase in the old wing.

The door of the Chamber of the East of the East lay at the end of the second floor corridor.

“Here it is,” whispered Miss Rachel, a flicker of uncertainty in her voice.

There was the bamboo and moon, the Musgrave crest, engraved in brass upon the ancient door. Otherwise there was little of note about it, and yet Mary felt a chill when she saw it, though it may have only been Miss Rachel’s warning about the strange things that had happened in the room, and the preternatural silence of the old wing. But Irene was not one to be daunted by such things. She knelt in the dusty hallway to do battle with the old lock, and in no time she stood and nodded to Miss Rachel.

“It’s open.”

Miss Rachel nodded back nervously, and placed a hand on the doorknob.

As she opened the door, there was a sound like a rippling stream. Warm air flowed through the doorway and whispered past us. When the door was fully open Mary was lost for words, for before her, through the doorway, was a vast bamboo grove, rustling in the breeze.

“Simply fascinating!” swooned Miss Rachel, and she proceeded inside. Mary and Irene followed after her, full of trepidation.

Miss Rachel felt the trunks as she passed. “They’re real!” she gasped. Instead of wooden floorboards they walked upon loamy earth covered with fallen bamboo leaves; roots raced through the earth like the veins of a leviathan. Yet they could also make out a faint light coming through a narrow window in the distance, and above them, beyond the treetops, could be seen that antique, painted coffered ceiling. They were still inside the building.

Curiously, Miss Rachel did not seem to be afraid. It was astonishing that she remained so calm under the circumstances. She reached out, taking hold of a bamboo stalk in one hand, and swung round and round. “Whose was it?” said she in a low, sing-song voice, reading from that strange catechism at the end of her storybook. A sense of unease rose up in Mary, yet Miss Rachel continued to blithely sing, “What shall we give? All that is ours…”

Irene suddenly pointed into the thicket.

“Look, Mary!”

There she saw a grand old staircase. They crept toward it. It was a dignified, darkly gleaming edifice, exactly the kind of staircase one would expect to find in a mansion like this, and the bannister was cool to the touch. What was queer about it was that it did not lead anywhere. It ended just above the treetops, right before it touched the ceiling.

While Mary and Irene dithered at its base, Miss Rachel passed by them and slowly began to ascend it. With each step she took, the breeze which agitated the bamboo grew stronger. Where could it be blowing from, when they were clearly indoors? It was unpleasantly tepid, as if it were not air but the hands of another human being which caressed their skin.

The rustling of the bamboo grew ever louder, and the very air tingled, as though the Chamber of the East of the East itself was trembling in wondrous expectation. Mary had a premonition that something terrible was about to occur, that something very wrong was happening in front of her.

She had to stop Miss Rachel! Driven by sheer impulse she bounded up the stairs and dragged Miss Rachel back down.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” shouted Irene, and they dashed through the grove, which wriggled now as though it had a mind of its own. They didn’t dare to look back, for it felt as though something was reaching out to snatch them up. When they had reached the exit and slammed the door behind them, a vast sound echoed like a giant sighing.

All was quiet once more, as though it had all been a dream.

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You must not tell anyone what happened.

On the way back to the modern wing, Miss Rachel had been quite insistent that they keep mum. When she did not make an appearance at the closing of the tea party, Mary suspected that she had snuck back to the Chamber of the East of the East without them. But the students were hastily bundled off back to school, and she did not learn of Miss Rachel’s disappearance until Shinchō Yard began to question them about what had occurred.

“Did you tell the police about what had happened in the chamber?” I inquired of Irene.

“Only the parts that they might believe,” she answered. “They searched the chamber and found nothing. But I could not let things stand without investigating the chamber myself. So I snuck out in the middle of the night, stole a horse from the school stable, and went back to Rakusei.”

“Without telling me, I might add.”

“I didn’t want to drag you into trouble, Mary.”

Irene’s circumspection saved Mary from being thrown out of school. She succeeded in sneaking back into Hurlstone manor under cover of darkness, but there her investigation of the Chamber of the East of the East reached a dead end, for the door had been tightly boarded shut.

“And to top it all off, Reginald had hired a detective to prowl the halls of Hurlstone. Holmes, of course. He mistook me for Miss Rachel and raised a great hullabaloo.”

“So you were the would-be detective!”

“I suppose Holmes has long forgotten. I bear him no ill will; after all, he was simply doing his job. I was summarily caught and hauled before Robert Musgrave.”

Her interview with the former head of the Musgraves took place in a dimly lit study on the first floor. Then at the height of his powers, Robert Musgrave was a ruddy-faced, imposing man, with bushy hair grown out long like a lion’s mane. The fire crackled as he stared at Irene, his eyes smouldering with anger.

“I know you,” he growled. “You are the one who enticed my Rachel into sneaking into that room. And now you are sniffing around again.”

Irene eyed him back silently. Infuriated by her intransigence, Robert stamped his feet and paced before the fireplace like a bear.

As she watched him, it slowly dawned upon Irene that he was afraid. But what could the man who had been dubbed the Lion of Rakusei possibly be afraid of?

The image of that boarded-up door flashed through her mind.

“You’re afraid of the Chamber of the East of the East!” she accused.

Her words clearly struck a nerve, and for a moment it seemed like he would keel over on the spot. His jaw hung slack, and his face turned ashen. He closed his eyes, as if to restrain the pain heaving in his chest.

“Get out. Never show your face here again.”

Irene ran out to the waiting carriage, which transported her back to school accompanied by Brunton. Once they arrived at Shishigatani, Brunton summarily drummed Principal Appleyard out of bed and informed him that Lord Musgrave, in his capacity as trustee, would not be taking action against the school for Irene Adler’s intrusion. In exchange, the school would expel the named student; they would speak of the matter to absolutely no one.

Irene left the school one week later. Save Mary, no one saw her off at the gate. Irene told Mary that she would be staying with her uncle, who was a stage actor.

“I’m sure I’ll find something to keep myself amused.”

“Will we ever see each other again?”

“Of course we shall. The next time we meet we’ll have a grand old adventure, you and I!”

And twelve years later, their promise was fulfilled.