The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [12]
"Why don't you tell Mr. Conan Doyle about your most recent episode, Captain?" said Mrs. Saint-John, flashing a nervous smile, eyes blinking rapidly.
"This has happened earlier this evening," said Hoffner with a shrug, lowering his voice.
"After we set sail?"
Hoffner nodded sharply. "A passenger hears some strange noises from the cargo hold; a series of shrieking cries, a repeated knocking sound...."
"Any other witnesses?" asked Doyle.
"No; just this one woman," said Hoffner.
"It is a classic haunting," said Mrs. Saint-John, her hands nervously fidgeting her napkin ring. "I'm sure you would agree with my diagnosis, Mr. Conan Doyle; footsteps in an empty hall, thumps, raps, mournful voices. And a sighting of a large, looming gray figure in a cargo hold passageway."
"None of this I am ever seeing myself, you understand," said Hoffner, minimizing; there was clearly no room for a bona fide ghost on his ship.
"Captain, have there been any tragedies aboard the Elbe?" asked Doyle.
"This ship is now ten years at sea; I am sailing with her every one of those days. Whenever there is such a regular gathering of human lives tragedy must inevitably, sadly, play a part in the experience," said Hoffner.
"Sadly true," said Doyle, surprised at how near Hoffner's observation had approached eloquence. "Are there any that stand out particularly? Any violent murders or brutally memorable suicides?"
The burghers and their wives seemed slightly taken aback.
"Pardon my bluntness, ladies and gentlemen, but there's no point in our mincing any words; phenomena of the sort described by Mrs. Saint-John usually result from some terrible unhappiness that cannot be wished away by our tiptoeing around the facts in the interest of propriety."
At last, thought Doyle happily, a subject I can take to the bank.
"In former times," the Captain said cautiously, "there have been a few such instances."
"Just so; I shan't trouble you over mixed company at dinner for the details. I'll offer one interesting theory about ghosts, meine Damen und Herren, and the most credible to my way of thinking if you credit the phenomenon at all: The specter constitutes the emotional residue of a life that ended unexpectedly or in great spiritual confusion—this is why sightings are frequently related to murder or accident victims, or suicides—the equivalent, if you will, of a footprint left on a sandy beach, a remnant that lives on outside our perception of time, with no more actual connection than that footprint has to the person who leaves it behind...."
"Oh no. No, no, no; what one encounters is the immortal soul of the poor unfortunate itself," said Mrs. Saint-John. "Trapped between heaven and earth, in a purgatorial void...."
"That is another point of view entirely," said Doyle, annoyed to have been so aggressively knocked off his rails. "One I'm afraid I cannot wholeheartedly endorse."
' 'But I can assure you, Mr. Conan Doyle, that this is indeed the case. It has been our experience with them time and again...."
"Our experience?"
Mrs. Saint-John smiled assuredly at the other guests. "I refer to my companion, largely, and myself to a much more limited degree."
"Companion."
Oh dear; not one of those invisible spirit guides that certain slightly hysterical middle-aged women allege to have trotting around after them like a Pekingese dog. Definitely a nutter, thought Doyle.
"I'm afraid Sophie wasn't feeling well enough to join us for dinner tonight," said Mrs. Saint-John. "She's just completed an exhausting lecture tour of Germany and we're traveling on to America without a stop at home."
"It sounds as if you and your friend are very much in demand," said Doyle, relieved that at least her "friend" currently resided in a human body.
"Yes. We were introduced three years ago, not long after my husband died. I was quite naturally bereft. Inconsolable, really, because I felt then very much like you apparently do now, Mr. Conan Doyle: that my