8 October-We were joined at dinner tonight by a gentleman Father had met that morning. Sherlock and I observed him with some interest from the door of the dining room, ourselves as yet undetected. He was a man of about forty with a short moustache and beard and an impressive, straight-backed presence.
“Military,” said Sherlock, as if that were not obvious to anyone.
“From his air and bearing,” I pointed out, “he is surely an officer of some rank. A colonel, I would think.”
“And yet not a field officer,” Sherlock murmured thoughtfully. “Look at his hands. No outdoor life or physical labor has roughened them.”
He looked very smug as he said this, and I was forced to concede that he had a point. Fortunately, before I actually had to say so, Father noticed and beckoned us over. He introduced his companion as Mr. Henry Olcott, a reporter for
“But with a military background, surely,” said he.
“Possibly as a colonel,” I added.
I regret to say that we rather displeased Father. He does not like us to “show off,” as he puts it, and in this case went so far as to apologize for our rudeness. But when we hurried to voice our own apologies, Mr. Olcott genially waved them off. “They are completely correct,” he said to Father, “and I would only like to know how on earth they worked it out.” Father sighed, but told us to oblige him. “You will see,” he remarked to our guest, “how simple it all is once they explain it.” I believe Sherlock’s vanity must have been tweaked at this, for he had the temerity to add, at the end of our account, “And you were a staff officer, sir, were you not?”
Father opened his mouth reprovingly, but before he could speak, Olcott exclaimed, “But that is wonderful. You are absolutely right. I was a Special Commissioner to the War Department, in charge of investigating fraud in arsenals and shipyards.”
This time Sherlock and I refrained from exchanging glances; indeed, we froze, pinned by the same certainty. But any questions we had were wiped from our minds by Father’s next remark:
“And Colonel Olcott also served on the panel that investigated the murder of President Lincoln.”
Needless to say, all else was forgotten as we listened to his account of the fate of that great and tragic man-of his assassination by the villain Booth, a sometime actor who knew well the interior of the theatre in which he committed his terrible crime. We listened as Colonel Olcott told us of Booth’s broken ankle as he leapt to the stage; his escape by horseback; and his vanishing for twelve days while his fellow assassins-one of whom had attacked the secretary of state, one of whom was meant to kill the vice president but lost his nerve-were apprehended. He also told us of the murderer’s eventual death in a burning barn, of the executions of the other conspirators. Colonel Olcott grew more and more somber as he recalled his story; even after nearly a decade, the sorrow and horror of it clearly have not left him. He spoke with great clarity and attention to detail, leaving an overall impression not only of inbred decency but of hard common sense. Indeed, as he went on, it seemed to me that I had injudiciously jumped to a conclusion-such a man could never be involved with the foolery of something called the Ghost Shop.
I said so to Sherlock later as we were preparing for bed, and he acknowledged as much. “Still,” said he, “it seems almost too much of a coincidence that there should be two investigators of fraud here in this out-of-the-way part of the world at the same time,” and I must agree that the odds of such a thing strike me as high.
9 October (midmorning)-The problem with Sherlock is that he has no respect for the other fellow’s privacy. It never seems to occur to him that a man should be left alone, to smoke and read and mull and go about his business. He is always bustling about
I am a man who likes to enter the day gradually, and I did not immediately follow him. “Who?” I inquired irritably. “And whence this penchant for gnomic announcements, Sherlock? It’s very irritating.”
“I do apologize.” He glanced at his watch. “I realize that I am all but waking you in the middle of the night.”
“Go away.”
He sat down. “I mean that Olcott is our expert on fraud! He has reserved a place on the afternoon train to Rutland and then a carriage to Chittenden-the town in which, my enquiries inform me, this socalled Ghost Shop is to be found.”
I was dismayed at his industry. He must have been up since dawn, bothering people with questions and checking transportation timetables. “Well,” said I, closing my eyes and hoping he would take the hint, “I gather from this enthusiasm that you’re going to look into the matter after all. It sounds a fascinating hoax.”
He did not immediately reply. I opened my eyes and saw that his expression was thoughtful. “It must be a very sophisticated one to have taken in Colonel Olcott. He really does not strike me as a man easily or willingly deceived.”
“Nor I.”
“So of course you will come to Chittenden with me to uncover the heart of this mystery.”
I was actually rendered speechless for a moment. Finally, I sputtered, “Have you quite taken leave of your senses, Sherlock? Can you give me one good reason I should leave this comfortable porch for a train and then a jolting carriage ride into the wilds? These forests demoralized Burgoyne, you recall-”
“One hundred years ago,” he scoffed, “and there has been at least one total deforestation since then. The trees are on average hardly twenty-five inches around.”
“That is hardly the point-”
“The point, dear brother, is that if you are here this evening, you get to join Father at dinner with some gentlemen he has met who are up on all the latest theories of scientific agriculture.”
Perhaps the journey will not be so bad.
9 October (late evening)-It was appalling. The train was primitive and the journey sooty-and as to the carriage ride, all I can say is that the American understanding of what is meant by “road” varies considerably from the English definition of the word. These rutted tracks must be nothing but mud when it rains. At present, there has been a drought for several weeks, so they are little but dust. And stones. At one point, there was concern we had broken a wheel. At another, we all had to dismount and ford a stream
Still, I must admit the unpleasantness was considerably lightened by the story the colonel told us on the train. Sherlock had been a bit unsure how to approach him, but as soon as he found out we had heard about the events in Chittenden, he was immediately forthcoming. He began with the history of William and Horatio Eddy, the men who, with their sister, Mary, run the Ghost Shop. It is in fact a large, two-storey farmhouse built about thirty years ago- the brothers lately added a wing so as to convert the place into an inn they call the Green Inn, doubtless to echo the name of the surrounding mountains. The brothers were raised there in what appear to have been horrible circumstances, comparable to something out of Dickens. The father was a religious zealot and tyrant who, when his sons began experiencing trances and visions, attempted to beat them-and at one point burn with scalding water- into normalcy. When this treatment proved ineffectual, he “leased” them to a traveling mountebank who exhibited them as mind readers and fortune-tellers-a dangerous business, as they were frequently mobbed, shot at, and run out of town. “The children got all the kicks and he got all the ha’pence in this transaction,” the colonel observed with dry disgust.
When the father died, the brothers, now young men, returned to Chittenden to manage the family farm. Occasionally, they held mediumistic sessions in a large parlour. As time passed, these sessions became more frequent, and at last they decided to enlarge the house and become innkeepers-in good part because, after the war, the area became a popular holiday destination and the audiences for their seances grew in number. Still, Olcott assured us, though they may make a better living than they did as farmers, the inn is not big enough for them to be earning much, and the expense of faking such elaborate manifestations would be beyond their means. In any case, they do not charge admission.
Despite the absurd subject of his story, there was something about the colonel’s frankness and lack of pretension that made me unwilling to mock him. I could tell that Sherlock felt the same, for he had on his face that
