The Curse of Christmas Read Free Page B

feel
that Langdale Pike may be helpful in getting to the bottom of this
strange business in Southwark I defer to you.”
    Defer to you! Mycroft was
jesting, surely!
    Dr Watson ruminated on the high
honour. “Yes, well, no, if it comes to that I would much prefer to
call on Dr Gregory’s assistance. He is likewise a member of the
Ghost Club and a chum from rugby days when we both played for
Blackheath. He was a brilliant winger and might have made his
fortune but for a knee injury. I think he would be my first choice.
I don’t think we need things getting into the newspapers before
we’ve had a chance to verify them. Dr Gregory was instrumental in
debunking that extraordinary haunting in Smithfield last year.
Someone rigged a camera obscura inside a carcass of beef in order
to make it seem as if the meat market was haunted by a Minotaur.
Two butchers managed to steal twenty-five carcasses from under
everyone’s noses. It was quite ingenious. They were making a tidy
profit supplying meat to the best hotels in London. Several meat
workers were so terrified of the mythical monster they refused to
enter the abattoir even after the camera obscura had been found and
the scam exposed.”
    “Yes, quite ingenious,” agreed
Mycroft, recalling the incident. “I concur we can do without
newspapers fomenting fear and confusion. Discretion is the better
part of valour. That is precisely why I called you in. You have
gained a reputation, both of you in fact,” he paused and smiled
briefly at the Countess, “as occult detectives.”
    While the doctor reddened, the
Countess, eager to capitalize on the fulsome praise, was quick to
seize the moment. “We should pay a visit to the cemetery first
thing tomorrow. We need to explore the possibility of staking it
out after dark. Dr Gregory sounds fairly imaginative. He might have
some helpful suggestions in that regard.” She was keen to start on
a new case before Dr Watson thought it best to go his separate way,
and now that she had settled into the house in Mayfair Mews and had
given instructions for getting rid of the green flock arsenical
wallpaper in the drawing room and replacing it with flame red
damask she had nothing to keep her occupied. She had no special
friends and acquaintances in London that she particularly wanted to
catch up with and the mindless prattle of the demi-monde bored her
to tears. A new case, a baffling mystery, a dangerous adventure was
what she craved. She craved it as much as those of her sex craved a
triple-stranded pearl choker or a juicy social scandal.
    “We?” challenged Dr Watson
gruffly, trying not to picture green velvet smoking jackets with
crimson collars and chartreuse cords. “Don’t you have Christmas
shopping to do?”
    “All taken care of while we were
vacationing in Biarritz and Paris,” she parried cheerfully,
picturing the gorgeous velvet smoking jacket being stitched in
Savile Row this very minute. “That’s what servants are for. I
telegraphed a shopping list from across the Channel and Ponsonby
took care of it, a marvellous man, much more than a butler. My aunt
knew how to choose the right help. So, here I am, at your disposal,
gentlemen.”
    She could afford to feel
confident. It was not the doctor she had to win over, it was
Mycroft, the imperious civil servant, who held the reins of power
and issued the diktats. And she didn’t for a minute believe a
demigod of his standing was seriously concerned about the ghostly
goings-on in an unconsecrated boneyard in an obscure banlieu like
Southwark. There was something much bigger at stake than keeping a
lid on public panic. But she knew how to play along and her voice
was spun-sugar spiced with sage.
    “What puzzles me about the
article penned by Mr Langdale Pike is that resurrectionists should
be back in business at all. I presumed their ‘graves’ were dug back
in 1832 when the Anatomy Act came into being.”
    “Quite right,” agreed Mycroft.
“The last official report of