The Spaldings took turns explaining that they suspected a prominent member of the Theosophical Brotherhood of deliberately undermining the avocado experiment and the excellent apiary, which provided the group with a tidy profit as well as supplying honey and beeswax to the community.
“And I’m convinced she killed the silkworms, too,” Elizabeth Spalding said with a stubborn set to her mouth.
“Silkworms are delicate creatures, my dear,” her husband replied in a mild tone. “Give them one brown mulberry leaf, and they die. Let the temperature drop by one single degree, and they die. We are not the only community that has failed to bring the silk industry to these shores. I hardly think Mrs. Imbler can be blamed for the silkworms.”
“Mrs. Imbler is the lady you suspect?” Holmes asked.
“She is the chief beekeeper,” Spalding said. “It would be the easiest thing in the world for her to destroy the hives upon which our avocados depended.”
“But why would she destroy the hives?” I asked.
Mrs. Spalding leaned forward in her chair and opened her blue eyes wide. “She wants to supplant Mrs. Tingley. I’m certain of it. She has made cutting remarks about the way things are run and hints that she could do better. She has even dared to challenge Mrs. Tingley on matters of Theosophical thought.” She lowered her voice and almost whispered, “I fear for her life, Mr. Holmes. It pains me to say it, but I fear for Mrs. Tingley’s very life.”
This struck me as a wild exaggeration, but Holmes seemed entertained by the prospect of a visit to the Theosophists’ frontier utopia, so we agreed to set off the next morning.
We could see the outline of Point Loma from the pavilion at the Hotel del Coronado. It was a peninsula that jutted out from the mainland and curved southward like the trunk of an elephant. Our peninsula, Coronado, was the bulbous end of a long narrow sand spit nestled under the elephant’s trunk. Between Point Loma and Coronado, a sparkling bay separated the two land masses and opened out to the Pacific.
Our trip from Coronado to Point Loma required a train, a ferry, and a hired hack.
We bumped along a winding, dusty road in an open carriage drawn by a plodding horse, passing few cottages, several species of cacti, and huge swaths of scrubland. On the way, our driver regaled us with stories about Lomaland, as he called the Theosophical colony.
“Children torn from their parents, brought up by strangers,” he’d said, in between copious spittings of tobacco juice. “The parents worship Hindu gods. But that’s not the worst of it, sirs,” he said, lowering his voice. “It’s run by women, run by the Purple Mother, so called because she dresses in purple robes like a pagan priestess. It would be a disgrace-if it wasn’t such a popular tourist attraction.” He said the last with a tobacco-stained grin, and I realized with a start that we were no longer the only conveyance on the road. In the distance, charabancs and public omnibuses, filled with chattering visitors, stood in a line awaiting entrance.
“Some of them are staying at Camp Karnak,” the driver said, and explained that the Society operated a tent city similar to the one next to the Hotel del Coronado. I marveled at the ingenuity of these Americans, who offered lodging at budget rates to travelers who enjoyed the same magnificent views and ocean breezes as the wealthy, the only difference being sleeping under canvas instead of a roof.
Beyond the line of carriages, I could see a sliver of the blue Pacific. The carriages entered the grounds through a magnificent gate decorated in Egyptian motifs. To our right, inside the gate, several large white buildings with colored domes gleamed in the bright California sun. One dome was covered in purple tile, another in aquamarine. Atop the domes were smaller globes of tinted glass. It was a fairyland, reminiscent of the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, where I’d been taken on holiday as a child. I wondered what it was about the seaside that brought out the fanciful in architects.
The cabbie stopped the hack at the gate and asked directions to the Spalding house. The guard pointed to a structure I’d taken for one of the temples. Like the largest building, it had a purple dome topped with a purple glass globe; it also boasted a circular staircase on the outside of the building next to a portico. Spalding was, I decided, the most uxorious man I’d ever met. Few husbands would have indulged a wife to the extent of living in such a monstrosity.
The cabbie pulled in the reins with a flourish next to a walkway lined with stone urns filled with geraniums. I alighted and knocked on the front door, noting the lavender stained glass blocks in the upper section of the windows. A servant answered, and before I could announce myself, she welcomed us and bade the driver bring in our Gladstone bags.
Inside, the sun’s brightness was muted, and the large circular foyer glowed pale amethyst from the purple glass. Exotic bas-relief carvings decorated the columns in the foyer, which was circular and dominated by the rise of the dome.
Mrs. Spalding appeared on the landing and beckoned us upstairs to our rooms. We cleaned the dust of our journey from our persons and clothing and accepted our hostess’s offer of a light lunch with Mrs. Tingley. We were to meet the Purple Mother in the flesh.
Katherine Tingley was a formidable woman in her early fifties, although she stood a mere five feet two in height. She had raven hair, large dark eyes, a determined chin, and the firm voice of a captain of industry. She was not dressed in purple, but wore a perfectly proper Nile-green dress with a double ruffle at the throat. I smiled; my fiancee would have told me the ruffles were a deliberate attempt to soften the air of command, to add a feminine touch to Mrs. Tingley’s masculine directness. I wondered whether Holmes, unblessed by feminine confidences, would draw the same conclusion.
“I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Holmes,” the Theosophist said. “And yours, too, of course, Dr. Watson. I have enjoyed reading your accounts of Mr. Holmes’s amazing deductive feats.”
I made the proper murmurs of self-deprecation, but I felt a glow of pride that my writings should be known in the hinterlands.
We did not speak of the problems at Lomaland. Instead, Mrs. Tingley turned to Holmes and said, “I understood from Dr. Watson’s accounts of your adventures that you are a man who appreciates music. I should like you to know that at Point Loma music is regarded as much more than an amusement. It is a part of life itself, and it is one of those subtle forces of nature which, rightly applied, calls into activity the divine powers of the soul. Do you not agree, Mr. Holmes?”
Holmes did agree, warmly, and soon he was listening with great attention and respect to the methods of musical education employed at the Raja Yoga Academy. Only after the remains of our light luncheon were cleared away did the talk turn to the reason we had come. Mrs. Tingley said in her firm voice that she was grateful to the Spaldings for inviting Holmes to protect her, but that she had full confidence in Grace Imbler, the head beekeeper. “Indeed, she has promised me a treat tomorrow-fresh honey in the comb. We pasteurize most of our honey, but honeycomb is a special favorite of mine, and she always saves me some before she bottles the rest for the kitchen and the store.”
We stepped away from the lunch table, thanked the Spaldings, and stepped out onto the circular porch. Down the steep, chaparralovergrown canyon, a sliver of beach received silver-capped waves.
“I am eager to show you our community, Mr. Holmes,” Mrs. Tingley said. “I think you will find it to your taste as a man of intellectual pursuits.” Mrs. Tingley walked toward a large square building that from a distance looked like marble, but was wood covered in white stucco. Three smaller domes rose from the towered corners, and the edifice was topped by a huge aquamarine dome some three hundred feet in circumference.
“We call this the Homestead,” she told us. “It is our headquarters. The small round building is our Temple.” The Temple was no less impressive, and boasted two tiers of Greek columns, crowned by a spacious dome of amethyst.
Music sounded in the distance, but strange and discordant. I asked Mrs. Tingley about it and she smiled. “Our practice rooms,” she explained. “Our students practice together, but they do not always play the same pieces. It is part of their discipline, to play their own music without allowing themselves to be distracted by their fellows.”
I glanced at Holmes. A slight frown between his eyes gave evidence that he was disconcerted by the cacophony. What sort of music would the students play if they practiced in such chaos?
Children, young and old, passed us by, the younger ones walking in neat rows, attended by adults I assumed were teachers. They wore uniforms similar to those worn by any schoolchild, and I found myself almost disappointed that they were not in togas or saris or something equally outlandish.
Mrs. Tingley made up for the conventional costumes by referring to the young pupils as “Lotus Buds.” Holmes’s
