“Then you don’t know for certain. The photograph of ectoplasm that you ridiculed—”
“I did no such thing. I merely implied doubt. Were you at the séance where the ectoplasm appeared?”
“I was.”
“Did you see the ectoplasm?”
“I did not. But the medium did and told my photographer to press the shutter on his camera.”
“After the plate was removed from the camera and developed, this image appeared?” Holmes asked, pointing.
“Yes.”
“Your friend Houdini would perhaps—”
“Mr. Houdini is no longer a friend. He insulted my wife.”
“—would perhaps suggest that the medium had prepared a photographic plate beforehand and substituted it for the plate that was in the camera.”
“But our plate was marked,” Conan Doyle emphasized.
“Perhaps an assistant to the medium had the opportunity to examine the photographic plate prior to the séance and apply an identical mark on the plate that was eventually substituted.”
“‘Perhaps’ is not proof.”
“Indeed.” Holmes reached into a pocket and removed a large, curved pipe.
“I didn’t give you a calabash pipe, either,” Conan Doyle said disapprovingly.
“But the great actor, William Gillette, used it as a prop when he portrayed me on stage. It looks more dramatic than an ordinary straight pipe. Illustrators took to including it in their depictions of me. Now people imagine it whenever they think of me. It’s as real as the deerstalker hat.”
Holmes tamped shag tobacco into the bowl of the calabash.
“Do you absolutely need to? There’s no ventilation down here,” Conan Doyle objected.
“The smoke will cover the odor of the mildew.” Holmes prepared to strike a match.
“Stop. These exhibits are delicate. The smoke will damage them.”
Holmes sighed. “Very well. But I suspect that the spirits wouldn’t mind the aroma. They’re probably desperate for a puff now and then.”
“That isn’t humorous.”
“No humor intended. Convince me, my dear fellow. Why did you suddenly believe that there are spirits in an afterlife—spirits who can communicate with us?”
“I don’t expect that a man who’s obsessed with the surface of things will understand, but my belief wasn’t sudden at all. When I set up my medical practice in Southsea, near Portsmouth—”
“Southsea. Aptly named. Almost as far from Edinburgh as it’s possible to go and still remain in Great Britain,” Holmes noted.
“And your point is?”
“Just an observation. Please continue.” Holmes gestured with the unlit pipe. “When you set up your medical practice in Southsea . . .”
“I had a friend there: Henry Ball. Southsea was a bohemian community that enjoyed discussing new ideas. Mediums and séances were a popular topic. Henry and I participated in several attempts to contact the other world—table rapping, automatic writing, and so forth. We decided that since thought transference was essential to communicating with the dead, we’d conduct an experiment. He and I sat back-to-back, with pencils and notepads in our hands. He’d draw something on his pad and concentrate on it. Then I’d try to imagine what he was thinking and draw it. Neither of us had any artist’s skill. What we drew were stick figures and geometric shapes. Amazingly I often reproduced what was on Henry’s pad, and Henry did the same with regard to shapes that I had drawn.”
“Fascinating,” Holmes said. “In what year did you conduct these experiments?”
“Eighteen eighty-six.”
“When you started to write your first novel about me: A Study in Scarlet.”
“As a matter of fact, now that I think of it, yes.”
“A creative period for you. And what was your marital status at the time?”
“I married my first wife the year before, in eighteen eighty-five.” Memories of Louise, of that long-ago innocent time—his fond nickname for her had been Touie—made him pause. He shook his head. “Where are you going with this?”
“I’m merely looking for context.” Holmes shrugged and sat in a chair next to a photograph of a ghost’s head floating above a man in a doorway. “Kindly continue.”
“Because of the successful experiments that Henry and I conducted, we were motivated to go to more séances. What made the difference for me was an evening when a medium spoke in several voices and then wrote frantically on a notepad, referring to me as a healer. But I hadn’t been introduced as a physician, so the medium couldn’t have known that. Then the medium astonished me by writing a note in which the spirit told me not to read Leigh Hunt’s book.”
“Why was that astonishing?” Holmes eased back in the chair, crossing his long legs.
“I had a book by Leigh Hunt next to my bed! I was just about to start reading it. How could the medium have possibly known this?”
“Perhaps . . .”
“Perhaps what? Say what you’re thinking.”
“When you arrived for the séance, did the medium’s assistant ask you and your friend to wait in an anteroom?”