Chapter 3 ― The Disappearance of Rachel Musgrave (Part 7)

When Irene Adler and I returned to Hurlstone, Brunton was waiting to usher us in. The hands of the great clock in the foyer pointed to 3 o’clock. To our inquiry Brunton replied that Madame Richborough had avoided any great injury and was resting in her chambers; Professor Moriarty and Mary had also retired to their respective rooms. After answering our questions, a probing look came to Brunton’s face, but Irene Adler did not seem inclined at all to mention our interview with Sir Musgrave.

“Good night, Brunton,” she said brusquely, and then mounted the stairs to the second floor.

Brunton’s shoulders sagged as he disappeared down the hall.

“One more thing, Brunton,” I called.

“Sir?” he responded, turning around.

“Did you really have faith that Sir Musgrave would be able to bring Miss Rachel back?”

I detected a flicker of hesitation on the butler’s face.

“I did.”

“Very well.”

“Miss Rachel was a remarkable young lady. If there was any chance we could save her, I believed we must take it.”

After he had taken his leave, I looked around the many displays that filled the dimmed foyer. The scale model of the Crystal Palace which had once attracted so many marvelling stares at the Great Exhibition glimmered in the moonlight like a fairy tale castle come to life.

All the greatest scientific achievements of the empire had been on parade at Robert Musgrave’s Great Exhibition; it had been a national point of pride to raise aloft the banner of Progress and Harmony. How ironic then, that beneath the modern facade of the Musgraves was concealed the occult secret of the Chamber of the East of the East.

As I climbed the stairs I noticed that Irene Adler was paused at the landing. Her profile was bathed in the moonlight which streamed through the tall windows. She was gazing at the portraits of the previous heads of the Musgrave house.

“What’s the matter?”

I went up and stood beside her, and realized that her gaze was fixed on one portrait in particular. It was painted in the classical style, and depicted two gallant youths standing on a lawn in an elegant garden. Beyond the foliage could be seen the grey shadow of the old wing of Hurlstone. The features of the young men shared not a few similarities, and I suspected that they must be brothers. In another moment I grasped why Irene Adler was so enthralled with the portrait: the younger of the two looked quite familiar. With a slovenly beard upon the face, and a darker tint of the skin―

“I was sure when I met William that I had seen his face before,” said she, and with a deep sigh she listlessly trudged up the stairs.

Alone I returned to my room and buried myself in blankets, but the strange events of the day kept repeating themselves in my head, and sleep eluded me. Each time I closed my eyes I found myself once more in that bamboo-enclosed clearing with Holmes and the others, huddled at the bonfire like we were stranded on the surface of the moon.

Had they been telling the truth? What on earth was the Chamber of the East of the East? Both Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler had been involved in the case of Miss Rachel’s disappearance twelve years earlier. And Professor Moriarty had known the Musgraves through his work. Was it really coincidence that we had all been brought here tonight? Or was there some unknown magic at work? It was as if the hole which had been bored into the world by Miss Rachel’s disappearance was there even now, drawing in by some dreadful attractive force all who had been there at its creation?

I roused myself up from my thoughts when a soft knock came yet again at the door.

“Mary?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

Her pale silhouette crossed the room and slipped into bed, throwing her arms around me and heaving a deep sigh. She must have been waiting for my return from the grove. Mary asked no questions, and I did not offer any answers. We simply lay there feeling each other’s warmth, and gradually all of those ghastly whirling notions faded from my mind.

Good night, whispered Mary tenderly.

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Mary had already risen when I awoke the next morning. A servant brought in a basin of hot water, and after washing my face I opened the window and leaned over the sill, taking a deep breath of chilly air into my lungs. The early winter sky was crisp and unclouded, and the stunning bamboo grove stretched beyond the sparkling lawn.

In the light of a new day, the events of the night seemed like nothing more than a bad dream. Spiritualism, seances, the Chamber of the East of the East… How had I allowed myself to be taken in by such fanciful ghost stories?

On the rooftop of 221B Teramachi Street, Mrs. Hudson must be going through her usual dumbbell routine as she did every morning; bleary-eyed workers must be trudging up the stairs to their offices; at Shimogamo Shrine the chief priest must be solemnly offering up prayers in the serenity of the Tadasu Forest. The world went on as it always had.

Mary and Irene Adler called as I was finishing getting dressed. Irene’s eyes were bloodshot, and Mary could not suppress her yawning.

“Should we call on the professor?”

“Let him be. He has not slept well for some days now; what he needs is rest.”

Together we went down the stairs to the dining room, to which Sir Musgrave and Cartwright had preceded us. Both still seemed to be dazed by what had occurred the previous night; we greeted them and took our seats. Morning light shone through the wide windows and fell on the rolling lawns outside.

By and by Madame Richborough arrived. “Good morning,” she murmured, as though she might faint at any moment. She was completely transformed from the night before; her hair was tousled, her ashen face devoid of makeup, her cheeks hollow and sunken, her eyes glassy. Here was someone who had clearly lost her pluck and vigor; her experience last night must have broken something within her. She slumped into a chair and stared blankly in front of her.

Brunton came in and whispered something into Sir Musgrave’s ear. Sir Musgrave nodded and with a curt, “Your pardons,” swept from the room.

The rest of us stared anxiously at Madame Richborough.

“Perhaps the time has come to retire,” she whispered. “I once was a real spirit medium. My powers were true; I could converse with the spirits as freely as I wished. But as my fame grew, my powers receded. Miss Adler is right. For many years now I have relied on deception and fraud to sustain my name. The Chamber of the East of the East was my last hope; by opening a gateway to the spiritual realm I hoped that my powers would return to me. But it seems in the end I was only deceiving myself.”

Horror was evident on her face as she concluded, “I have learned my lesson. I will never tempt fate again.”

“But what of our dream?” asked Cartwright dispiritedly.

“Dream?”

“Of a fusion of science and the soul.”

“There are better things on which to pour your exertions. You might fall in love, perchance.”

Just as the madame said this we heard the sound of many footsteps coming down the hall. As we glanced at each other, a troubled Sir Musgrave came through the door, followed by a troop of uniformed policemen led by none other than a grey-coated Inspector Lestrade. Tension filled the room.

Lestrade was astonished to see us.

“Why, if it isn’t Doctor Watson! And Mary and Miss Adler, to boot.”

“What’s going on here, Lestrade?” I asked.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your breakfast, but as you can see I’m here on official business. Ah, and there is the madame.” Lestrade cleared his throat gravely. “Madame Richborough, you are under arrest.”

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Our morning drama concluded without incident. All the while that Lestrade was giving her the usual cautions, Madame Richborough sat there meekly without offering a word of defense, a shadow of her former commanding self. Lestrade remained after she had been led off, and explained why the warrant had been issued.

“At Miss Adler’s suggestion I quietly made a little investigation of my own,” he said. The recent spiritualist fad had led to a proliferation of self-styled spirit mediums all over Kyoto, Madame Richborough being one of the most well-known. With influential patrons such as Lord St. Simon at her back, she established her residence at the mansion near Nanzenji, and what with holding seances and personal consultations soon was flush of money. But she also seemingly had a hand with some questionable establishments on Shijō Karasuma, and so with the urging of Irene Adler, Lestrade began to dig into her dealings. What he uncovered was a web of fraud, blackmail, and underhanded real estate acquisitions, and before long he had gathered enough evidence to bring her in.

“I’ll admit that I thought she would put up more of a fight,” said Lestrade with a frown. “But you saw how she came in as docile as a lamb.”

“Well done, Inspector,” said Reginald Musgrave to the official detective, who responded with a gratified bow.

“Your servant, sir. I am extremely grateful for your cooperation in the matter.”

“I can only hope that this will put a lid on the spiritualist fad.”

“I am afraid that this may only be the beginning of it. Lord St. Simon will certainly not let Madame’s arrest go unanswered, not if his lawyers have anything to say about it. And as we well know she has many other friends in high places. Who would have dreamed that spiritualism would attract so many followers?”

Lestrade basked in his success, but the rest of us were clearly of the mind that the victory rang hollow. True, one of our immediate problems had been brought to a resolution. But who among us did that really help? Reginald Musgrave’s little sister was still missing, Irene Adler now faced a great conundrum in her detective career, Cartwright’s dreams of a scientific-spiritual union had been dashed, and Sherlock Holmes was determined to live out the rest of his days as a hermit. We had all of us been soundly vanquished by the Chamber of the East of the East.

“You all look exhausted,” remarked Lestrade. “And what are you doing here anyways, Dr. Watson?”

When I informed him that Holmes had cooped himself up in the bamboo grove on the estate grounds, Lestrade’s expression clouded.

“I suppose he is still angry,” he said. “He summoned me when he learned that I had joined forces with Miss Adler, and called me a traitor. But what was I to do? As an agent of the government I must act in the public interest.”

“Holmes understands that, even if he won’t admit it.”

“I hope you are right,” replied Lestrade with a sigh, looking out the window. “I still believe that Mr. Sherlock Holmes will rise again. He cannot spend the rest of his life in a bamboo grove. He is too great a detective for that. Ah, but you know that better than most, Watson. Why, I remember―”

He paused mid-sentence and narrowed his eyes.

“Now what can that girl be doing there, I wonder.”

Brunton had been stationed by the door, and now he approached the window. We all turned to follow Lestrade’s gaze out the great window.

On a rising slope beneath the bright rays which bathed the broad lawn of Hurlstone stood a young girl in a white dress. Her arms were spread out to her sides, as if she were enjoying the simple pleasure of being alive, and as an onlooker I could not help but feel a smile tug at my face. The oak leaves sparkled as though they were made of pure gold, and the girl’s breath puffed out pale white as she stood there upon the sea of grass. Here was a scene bright, and wholesome, and full of life.

“Mr. Musgrave, sir!” cried Brunton, his voice rising almost to a shriek, and simultaneously Sir Musgrave bolted from the room.

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We ran after Sir Musgrave, through the foyer and out onto the lawn which was overlooked by the dining room. When we reached that side of the estate Sir Musgrave was already running up the slope, while Brunton waddled along behind him. From atop the hillock the girl watched them, her hands clasped at her breast.

“Is that Miss Rachel?” I gasped. “Is it her?”

“It’s her, I’m certain of it!” said Mary. Irene Adler was struck speechless.

When he reached Miss Rachel Reginald Musgrave paused, panting white clouds of steam. Brunton came up to stand quietly at his master’s side, his face screwed up in what I might in other circumstances have mistaken for anger. Once Reginald had caught his breath he extended a hand to the girl and said, as best as I could make out, Welcome home. An astonished blush rose to the girl’s face; only then I supposed did she perceive the vast gulf of time which separated them now. She was still a youthful girl of fourteen, as she had been when she vanished, but the intervening twelve years had left her brother’s countenance lined and worn.

After a moment’s pause she took his hand.

I’m home, she said, and smiled at Brunton, who covered his face in his hands and sobbed.

“Miss Rachel has returned,” I said to Lestrade, who had caught up to us.

“Impossible!” he muttered. “It’s been twelve years! Where has she been, and how has she survived all this time?”

“Magic, Inspector Lestrade,” said Irene Adler in a dazed voice. “It can only have been magic.”

As we murmured amongst ourselves, a steady stream of servants and housekeepers came out from the mansion. A few of them had served the house for many years, and some of those had met Miss Rachel before. An excited hubbub broke out when they saw Miss Rachel standing there, and they fairly pushed us out of the way to race to her side. In no time at all a crowd had gathered around her, and Brunton’s bawling could scarcely be heard above the cries of jubilation.

Two figures appeared at the edge of the lawn among the bamboo stalks. One was Sherlock Holmes, and the other was William, and at a nod from William the pair began to advance towards the gathering.

Holmes detached himself from his companion and marched directly to us.

“Holmes!” I shouted. “Miss Rachel’s come back!”

But Sherlock Holmes’s face was grave. What could possibly weigh on him so heavily when the case which had gnawed at him for twelve years had finally been unraveled?

His answer, when it came, sent a shiver through us.

“Where is Professor Moriarty?”

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The professor’s room was empty, and there was no sign that his bed had been slept in. It felt as if we were walking through the still halls of an empty shrine as we hastily made our way to the Chamber of the East of the East in the old wing. The sun shone peacefully through the windows down onto the round table in the center of the room, on which Professor Moriarty’s cherished walking stick had been placed.

“It seems our friend came here again last night,” observed Holmes.

Beneath the stick was a hastily scrawled letter, which seemed to have been torn out of a notebook.

“It’s to me,” said Holmes, picking it up, and he began to read it aloud.

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MY DEAR SHERLOCK HOLMES:

Do not be sad―you, or Dr. and Mrs. Watson, or Miss Adler―that I have chosen this path. I believe that, ever since I fell into my slump in the autumn of last year, my fate has been ordained―that every path has led me here, to the Chamber of the East of the East.

It is regrettable that I could not discuss with you the astonishing truth which I have discovered, but I am certain that this is the only way to save Miss Rachel. Please convey to everyone my heartfelt gratitude. I leave my remaining belongings at 221B Teramachi to young Cartwright; my collection of treatises on mathematics and physics will surely be of use to him. I could not have asked for a finer protege, and my only wish is that he devote himself to his calling.

Last of all, sincerest thanks to you, my dearest friend. You were like a ray of light out of the heavens, illuminating a path out of a dark and despairing world. I am afraid that I was not an agreeable neighbour, and we may not have solved our slumps despite our best efforts; yet I am sure that I will not forget the many hours we spent in conversation together at 221B Teramachi Street.

May good health and every happiness be yours. Farewell, my friend.

Yours faithfully, JAMES MORIARTY.