Mark Hodder - The curious case of the Clockwork Man

Burton crossed to the window and drew aside the curtain. The room was brilliantly reflected in the glass, and he could make out nothing beyond. Twisting the catch open, he drew up the sash a little, bent over, and peered through the gap. A solid wall of white vapour collapsed inward and began to pour over the sill and into the room.

Hurriedly, he closed the window and pulled the curtain across it.

Behind him, the room fell silent.

A glass hit the floor and shattered.

He turned.

Swinburne, Lushington, Hawkins, Jankyn, Tichborne, and Bogle were all standing motionless. Even through the blue haze, he could see that the blood had drained from their faces. They were staring wide-eyed at a corner of the room.

Burton followed their gaze.

There was a woman there-or, rather, a column of denser tobacco smoke that had taken on the form of a thickset, heavy-hipped female.

She raised a nebulous arm and pointed a tendril-like finger at Sir Alfred Tichborne. Black eyes glared from her head.

Tichborne shrieked and backed away until he was pressed against the wall, banging into a rack of billiard cues which clattered noisily to the floor.

“Lady Mabella!” he moaned.

To either side of him, the haze suddenly congealed, forming two ghostly, indistinct, top-hatted figures. They wrapped transparent fingers around his arms.

“Bloody hell!” Hawkins breathed.

Bogle let loose a piercing scream, dropped to his knees, and covered his eyes.

“For God's sake, help me!” Tichborne wailed.

Before any of the men could move, the wraiths had dragged the baronet across the room. Lady Mabella surged forward, wrapped her swirling arms around him, and plunged through the door, taking him with her. The door didn't open, nor did it smash; the ghostly woman, wraiths, and man simply disappeared through the wood as if it were nothing but an illusion.

A muffled cry came from the corridor beyond: “Save me! Oh, Christ! They mean to kill me!”

“After him!” Burton barked, breaking the spell that had immobilised them all.

In three long strides, he reached the door and wrenched it open in time to see Tichborne being hauled through another at the far end of the passage. Again, the flesh-and-blood baronet passed straight through the portal without it opening or breaking.

Burton hurtled along the hallway with the others trailing behind, threw open the door, and ran into the drawing room.

Tichborne's terrified eyes fixed on him.

“Burton! Please! Please!”

Lady Mabella levelled her black eyes at the king's agent, and he heard in his mind an accented female voice command: “Do not interfere!”

He stumbled and clutched his head, feeling as if a spear had jabbed into his brain. The pain passed in an instant. When he looked up again, the ghost and Tichborne had vanished through the door leading to the main parlour.

“Are you all right?” Swinburne asked, catching up with him.

“Yes! Come on!”

They burst into the parlour, paced across it, and tumbled into the manor's entrance hall.

The two wraiths, led by Lady Mabella, were pulling Sir Alfred up the main staircase. He screamed and pleaded hysterically.

A gun boomed and plaster exploded from the wall beside him. Burton looked around and saw Lushington with a pistol in his raised hand.

“Don't shoot, you fool!” he shouted. “You'll hit the baronet!”

He started up the stairs.

Sir Alfred was dragged around a corner, his cries echoing through the house.

Burton, Swinburne, and the others followed the fast-moving wraiths down the hallway leading to the rear of the mansion, through the morning room, into a small sitting room, then to a dressing room, and into the large bedchamber beyond.

Burton stumbled into it just as Lady Mabella gripped Tichborne around the waist and disappeared with him through the closed window. His body passed through the glass without shattering it. A short scream of terror from outside ended abruptly.

The two wraiths hovered before the glass. One of them turned, reached up, and raised its phantom top hat. The figures dissipated.

Stepping to the window, Burton slid it up and looked out. About three feet below, swells of impenetrable white mist rose and fell like liquid.

“Jankyn!” he bellowed, spinning on his heel. “Follow me! The patio! Quickly, man!”

The physician, who'd been lagging behind the others and had only just entered the room, found himself being tugged along, back down the stairs, and through the house to its rear. The rest of them followed.

“What's happening?” Lushington demanded. “Where's Sir Alfred?”

“Come!” Burton called.

They entered the hunting room and the king's agent pulled open the door to the patio. Dense mist enveloped the men as they stepped outside.

“I can't see a thing!” said Jankyn.

“Over here.”

Burton knelt beside Sir Alfred Tichborne, who lay broken upon the pavement, blood pooling from the back of his head.

Jankyn joined them.

“He was thrown from the window,” Burton explained.

Tichborne looked up at them, blinked, coughed, and whispered: “It hurts, Doctor Jankyn.”

“Lie still,” the physician ordered.

Sir Alfred's eyes held Burton's. “There's something-” He winced and groaned. “There's something I want-I want you to-do.”

“What is it, Sir Alfred?”

A tear slid from the baronet's eye. “No matter who claims this-this estate tomorrow, my brother-my real brother-he and I were the last Tichbornes. Don't allow anyone else to-to take the name.”

He closed his eyes and emitted a deep sigh.

Jankyn leaned over him. He looked back at Burton.

“Sir Alfred has joined his mother.”

Even though it was near enough midnight, Burton took a horse and trap and galloped to Alresford, where he hammered on the door of the post office until the inhabitants opened a window and demanded to know what in blue blazes he thought he was bally well doing. Displaying the credentials granted to him by the prime minister, he quickly gained access to the aviary and gave one of the parakeets a message for the attention of Scotland Yard.

Early the next morning, an irregular ribbon of steam appeared high over the eastern horizon and arced down toward the estate. It was generated by a rotorchair, which landed with a thump and a bounce and skidded over the gravel on the carriageway in front of Tichborne House.

A burly figure clambered out of it, pulled leather-bound goggles from his eyes, and was mounting the steps to the portico when the front door opened and Burton emerged.

“Hello, Trounce. Glad to see you!”

They shook hands.

“Captain, please tell me the parakeet was joking!”

“Joking?”

“It told me murder had been done-by ghosts!”

“As bizarre as it sounds, I'm afraid it's true; I saw it with my own eyes.”

Trounce sighed and ran his fingers through his short, bristly hair.

“Ye gods, how the devil am I supposed to report that to Commissioner Mayne?”

“Come through to the parlour, I'll give you a full account.”

Some little time later, Detective Inspector Trounce had been introduced to Colonel Lushington, Henry Hawkins, and Doctor Jankyn, and had taken a statement from each of them. He then examined Sir Alfred's body, which lay in a small bedroom, awaiting the arrival of the county coroner.

Trounce settled in the smoking room with Burton and Swinburne.

“It's plain enough that he was killed by the fall,” he muttered. “But how am I to begin the investigation? Ghosts, by Jove! It's absurd! First Brundleweed and now Tichborne!”

“That's a very interesting point,” Burton said. “We can at least establish that the two crimes are linked-beyond the presence of a ghost, I mean.”