The Curious Affair of the Somnambulist & the Psychic Thief Read online

  The truth is that I was afraid she would seek me out. Ever since I’d left I’d imagined her on my trail. I’d kept expecting her to turn up, to resume the argument I had run away from. She liked to have the last word, and given enough time, she would wear me down, convince me I had misunderstood, that she had done nothing wrong, or—and this was worse—that it didn’t matter. Perhaps she would say that the ends justified the means. There was no benefit to us in proving a house was not haunted, but a story about a haunted house was something we could sell—and we needed that.

  But that had ended. I wanted never to see her again, never to feel the buffeting force of her personality against mine, when my certainties would be forced to weaken and yield.

  I counted the weeks since our parting and realized it had been more than four months. Was that long enough for her to have lost interest, to decide I no longer mattered, even if one of her friends were to tell her where I was? Knowing Gabrielle as well as I had, I thought she might still feel driven to seek me out in order to explain herself, to persist until she had won me over again. On the other hand, she was such a restless soul that she surely had moved on to other projects by now, missions far more deserving and demanding of her time than an old friend who had fallen by the wayside.

  I had no wish to return to the fold, but it was absurd not to use my few contacts with the sort of wealthy and intellectually adventurous people who just might find themselves in need of a private detective agency.

  Mr. Jesperson had done his bit toward finding work for us, and now it was my turn. Leaving him absorbed in his reading, I went upstairs for my address book.

  Writing that first letter was like walking blindfolded into a room full of people not knowing if they were friends or foes. Because I did not wish to contradict anything Gabrielle might have said to excuse my absence, I could only apologize in the vaguest terms for my long silence and pray that Lord Bennington, Lady Florence, Mrs. McWhortle,and Mr. and Mrs. Traill would forgive my bad manners in not writing before now.

  I went on to inform each of my former colleagues of my new circumstances, to enclose a business card, and to express the wish that if they, or anyone in their circle of friends, should ever find themselves in need of the services of someone who could provide a discreet and successful investigation into any sort of mystery, crime, or puzzling circumstance, could they please think of Jesperson and Lane, 203A Gower Street, London.

  I wondered as I sealed the last envelope and set it, with a sigh, on the pile to be posted, if there had been any point to the exercise. I could imagine Lord Bennington reading through to the end with a puzzled frown, only to throw the page onto the fire. Detectives? What would he, what would any of the well-bred, well-behaved gentlefolk of his acquaintance, ever want to do with such snooping, spying, vulgar creatures as that?

  Chapter 5

  Cake in Kensington

  The Creeveys lived in a fine house on a quiet street in Kensington. When we arrived, the glossy white front door was opened to us by a rosy-cheeked girl who looked so pleased with herself as she took our names and ushered us within that I fancied she was only playing at being a maid. She walked with a bounce and paused to smooth down her skirt and apron before she opened the inner door to announce, in a high, strangulated voice: “Mr. Jesperson and Miss Lane to see you, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Creevey had a homely face with a prominent, square jaw and a nose with a bump in it, but her brown eyes were meltingly lovely, and she looked so honest and sympathetic that it was impossible not to like her.

  She was quite taken with the idea of a lady detective, exclaiming that if she had known such a career were possible, before her marriage, she might have considered it for herself: “For I do love to read about crimes in the newspaper, especially when they are unsolved, and I try to figure out the answer. Only there is seldom enough information to go on—they don’t give you all the clues, unlike in a novel.”

  “True,” said Mr. Jesperson. “The newspaper reporters don’t know what’s important—nor do the police. What unsolved crime has your attention at the present, may I ask?”

  “The jewel thefts,” she said promptly. “I don’t know if you noticed, but there were three burglaries in private homes in October, and the second was only a few streets from here.”

  “Yes, I have read the reports. But it has not been suggested that there is a definite connection between them. You think the same hand is behind them all?”

  “Don’t you? It seems likely to me. Surely the police must think so.”

  He smiled. “You are thinking like a detective, Mrs. Creevey! Well done! I’m sure that with your help we’ll manage to solve your own mystery quite quickly.”

  She blushed and put a hand to her cheek. As she turned away, flustered, she seemed to realize that in her eagerness she had overlooked the formalities. We were all three still standing in a little semicircle on the slate-colored carpet near the sitting room door, never having made it as far as the sofa and chairs grouped near the fire. She quickly invited us to sit down, and hardly had we done so before the door opened, and the maid came in, almost staggering under the weight of a large silver tea tray.

  Mr. Jesperson leaped to his feet and relieved the girl of her burden, to be rewarded with much giggling and eyelash-fluttering.

  “Thank you, Sukie, you may leave us now,” said Mrs. Creevey. “We’re not to be disturbed until Mr. Creevey returns, is that understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am. You want me to show Mr. Creevey in?”

  Eyebrows raised, she replied, “I imagine Mr. Creevey will find his own way in his own house. You are not to announce him.”

  “No, ma’am. Yes, ma’am.” She backed away. “What should I do now?”

  “Ask Mrs. Moyle. I’m sure she’ll find something for you.”

  When the maid had gone out, Mrs. Creevey explained: “This is her first position.”

  As she poured out the tea, I took the opportunity to look around the spacious sitting room, decorated in shades of gray, with striking touches of white and black. It was simply, even rather sparsely, furnished, without any clutter. There was a sofa, on which I sat beside Mr. Jesperson, and several armchairs, as well as a few small tables. There were no pictures hanging on the walls, which were covered in dove-gray silk. The curtains, floor-length, of a silvery-gray fabric with a pattern of linked rings in black and white, had been drawn against the early dusk. The whole effect might have been chilly and unwelcoming, but I found it attractive, calming, and elegant, and the fire blazing so cheerfully in the hearth kept us warm enough.

  There were two cakes—cherry and lemon drizzle. Mr. Jesperson took a slice of each; I declined and sipped my tea as we waited for Mrs. Creevey to begin.

  “I don’t know what my brother has told you…”

  “Nothing at all,” replied Mr. Jesperson. “We thought it would be best to hear all the details directly from you.”

  “I see. Of course.” Our hostess took a deep breath. “My husband suffers from recurrent bouts of somnambulism. It began in his childhood. It happened less often when he grew older, but never stopped, not entirely. Even after he was a grown man, Mr. Creevey would wake to discover evidence that he’d been abroad in the night. On occasion, someone else would see him, and he would learn about it that way. His eyes were wide open, you see, and he moved with such confidence that no one would suspect he was not in a perfectly normal waking state, unless you attempted to engage him in conversation. He came close to being arrested once, for not responding to a policeman’s questions, but fortunately the constable had seen a play featuring a sleepwalker, and he knew not to risk waking him too abruptly, and instead followed him for the next hour, making sure he came to no harm, until he saw him return safely to his own rooms.

  “But by the time I met him, Mr. Creevey had not walked in his sleep, to the best of his knowledge, for almost three years. He was thirty-five years old, and it was natural to think that somnambulism had been a problem of his youth. He had moved up
in the world, established his own business, had his own home. By his own efforts, he had risen out of poverty and become a man of substance. He was able to think of marriage.” She looked down shyly, her plain face pinker than ever. “He proposed to me.”

  “Did he warn you about his problem?” I asked.

  “It was not a problem. Not then. Our only problem was my brother, Henry. We have always been close, especially so since the death of our parents. Henry did not approve of my association with Arthur and could not countenance the idea of a marriage between us. He said hurtful things.” She stared at the gray carpet for a moment before raising her dark, shining eyes. “But my brother has changed his mind. He has come to see what a good man Arthur is, and admits he was unfair and that he spoke too hastily, out of fear for me. And, to some extent, I think, from the fear of losing me. I did not need his permission to marry, but I did not like to go against his wishes—since the death of our parents, he was my only family.”

  “I understand,” I said quickly, as she struggled for words.

  She gave me a grateful smile. “That is why, when Arthur proposed, I asked him to give me time to think. I already knew my mind, of course, and I didn’t like to tell him the real reason I was hesitating—that my brother disapproved, and I was hoping to change his mind. But it was very hard on poor Arthur, who did not know he’d already won my heart.

  “One night, I awoke suddenly in the certain knowledge that I was not alone.

  “It was a warm night, and I had gone to bed with my window open—my room was at the back of the house, overlooking an enclosed garden. There was a full moon that night, so my room was well lit, and the moment I opened my eyes and turned my head, I saw Arthur Creevey sitting in a chair in the corner.”

  “You were certain it was he?”

  She smiled. “I knew him too well to mistake him. But what was I to think? He made no response when I spoke to him. I got up and found that although he was sitting upright, his relaxed posture and slow, steady breathing made me think he slept.

  “After some time, he stood up, went to the window, and without pausing even when I spoke his name, he swung one leg over the sill and then the other and—vanished.

  “How I kept from screaming, I shall never know. I raced to the window and looked out, and there he was on the ground, moving away from the house. As I watched, he scaled the fence at the bottom of the garden and was lost to my sight.

  “Next morning, I sent a telegram asking Arthur to meet me. When he heard what had happened, he explained about his somnambulism—a trouble he had believed was in the past. Now that he knew he still suffered from it, he told me that of course he could not expect to marry.

  “But something had changed in me. I knew, then, that I could never be happy without him. Henry would have to accept it. Together, we would find the answer to his problem.”

  Mr. Creevey had consulted a doctor, an alienist called Dr. Linton, who had studied under Charcot, in Paris. His advice was to marry without delay. He claimed that the sleepwalker went in search of something he was denied in his waking life. And what had Mr. Creevey sought but the woman that he loved—in her bedroom! The answer was obvious. His nocturnal wanderings would cease when he had made Miss Sims Mrs. Creevey.

  “And he was right,” she told us simply. “Marriage was the answer. At least, it was until a month ago, when his old affliction returned.”

  She turned her head and gazed into the fire.

  “Pardon me for asking,” said Mr. Jesperson, his voice very gentle, “but was there anything—”

  She cut him off. “Nothing. We are still as happy together as on our honeymoon—I should say happier, except for this problem.”

  “Trouble at work?” I hazarded.

  She shook her head. “Nothing that preys upon his mind.”

  “What does the alienist think?” asked Mr. Jesperson.

  Her expression changed to a scowl, although she tried to smooth it away, and she moved as if her position in the well-upholstered chair had become uncomfortable. “Dr. Linton is no use. Arthur has given up on him.”

  Although he scarcely moved, my friend became more intent. “Indeed? And yet he was right about your marriage.”

  “He is not right about our marriage now,” she responded fiercely. “When Arthur told him how happy we were together, he smirked and asked the most intrusive and intimate questions—and then refused to accept Arthur’s replies as truth. The man has a bee in his bonnet about…about conjugal relations. He believes that something about me, or our marriage, makes Arthur so unhappy that he is driven to roam the streets of London in search of…of something else.” As she spoke, her face suffused with blood, and she pressed her hands to her bright red cheeks either to hide or to cool them.

  “Thank you for being so frank with us,” said Mr. Jesperson gently. “I am sure you are quite right to disregard the alienist’s conclusion. But he had one good idea: If we can find out where your husband goes at night, the answer to what drives him may reveal itself.”

  He then asked if she could recall anything that stood out about the days before her husband walked in his sleep. Had anything unusual happened? Did his mood change?

  She shook her head helplessly. “Not to my knowledge. But you had better ask him.” With a glance at the pyramid-shaped clock on the otherwise bare mantelpiece, she said, “He will be here any minute now. He always telephones to me to say if he will be late.”

  Mr. Jesperson’s gaze swept the room, and I guessed he was looking for the telephone, having been much taken with the compact, elegant model on the desk of Mr. Sims.

  “Mr. Creevey has a telephone at his work? Was that your brother’s idea?”

  “My brother?” She smiled. “Oh, no, he would never have thought of it. That was down to my husband. It was not long after our marriage that he became enamored of the idea. He said that we must have one in the house, and he must have one at work—he soon convinced Henry that he had better get one for his office or risk being old-fashioned. Now Henry has joined my husband in his evangelistic fervor. In the future, they like to declare, everyone will conduct business in this way. Telegrams and letters will fall out of favor.”

  I could not suppress a smile. Mrs. Creevey caught my eye and I saw we shared a common understanding. Just then the door opened, and a most striking vision of manhood entered the room.

  Tall—even taller than Mr. Jesperson—and built on a massive scale, with broad shoulders and powerfully muscular limbs, he wore his blond hair long and sported an impressive beard. He was handsome in a rugged, Nordic fashion that seemed somewhat at odds with his modern clothes and out of place in this London drawing room. He would have looked more at home in a Viking longboat or on the battlefield clad in a suit of armor. He was like a hero out of an old-fashioned storybook.

  When I saw the look, ardent yet protective, that he turned on the homely, unprepossessing figure of his wife, I liked him even more, and could not imagine how Mr. Sims had dared to object to their marriage. She basked in his love, and it gave her an unexpected radiance. I felt certain, even before he began to speak, that there could be no truth in Dr. Linton’s notion regarding any marital unhappiness.

  As was usual with somnambulists, Mr. Creevey had no memory of where he went or anything else that happened while he slept. In the past, he said, his somnambulism had been caused by stressful events: the death of his younger brother, the death of his mother, hard times at school, money problems, the fear that the woman he loved would reject his suit.

  “But I have nothing that troubles me now. I am entirely comfortable,” he concluded.

  Mr. Jesperson said, “Your wife has told us that the first incident took place the night of the third of October. Then the thirteenth, the twenty-fifth, and finally the twenty-ninth. In all, you went out on four separate occasions.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Can you think of anything—however seemingly insignificant—that links those four days—or nights?” Before he could
answer, Mr. Jesperson said sharply, “Give it careful thought. There will be something—of that I feel certain—but it may seem so trivial as to be unworthy of consideration. But even if it is as small a thing as what you ate for breakfast on those days, or a recurring dream, I want to know about it. Do you keep a diary?”

  “For appointments—I keep it in my office.”

  “Nevertheless, take a look, see if it jogs your memory. I’d like you to think about those particular dates and write down everything you remember of what happened on the day before. Every detail that comes to mind, no matter how seemingly insignificant.”

  Mr. Creevey agreed to try.

  “Another thing—I want you to keep a personal diary, recording your experiences and impressions each day.”

  The big man shifted in his seat. “I’m not much for writing.”

  “Writing is not the issue—pictures would do as well. Record the facts as you like, as an aide mémoire. It may help us to see why you sleepwalk on one night but not another.”

  “I could help, my love,” said Mrs. Creevey. “You know how we sit and talk over the events of the day of an evening…I could take notes, and afterwards write it up. After a little while, we may notice a pattern.”

  “That’s it exactly,” said Mr. Jesperson.

  “And if there is no pattern?”

  “There will be,” he said confidently. “But we will not rely solely on your memory to solve this case. I suspect that when we know where you are going, we should be able to deduce why.”

  Mr. Creevey looked him in the eye. “You intend to follow me?”

  “With your permission.”

  He sighed, his shoulders slumping, and then nodded. “You must do whatever you think necessary.”

  “I shall feel better knowing someone is keeping an eye on you,” said his wife. She stood up. “I’ll see to it that the guest room is made up. Will you stay for dinner, Mr. Jesperson?”