The Adventure of the Angel's Trumpet

Carolyn Wheat, ASH

Really, Watson," Sherlock Holmes exclaimed in a deprecating tone as he peered over my shoulder, "the affair you have chosen to chronicle can scarcely be termed an adventure. I did little more than sit in a drafty courtroom listening to an interminable series of lies. Indeed," he went on, "my brother Mycroft could have solved the case perfectly well without ever leaving his chair at the Diogenes Club."

"But, Holmes," I protested, "without your presence in the case, an innocent young woman would surely have hanged. And the fact that you managed to clear her name even though you were not called in until the eleventh hour is the most remarkable fact of all. Surely such circumstances qualify as an adventure of a particularly intellectual sort."

"Perhaps you are right," my friend agreed with a sigh. "I fancy I played a small part in the satisfactory outcome of the affair of the angel's trumpet. And the case itself was not without points of interest and even of instruction."

The events that precipitated Miss Charmian Carstairs's trial for the murder of her grandfather began in December and culminated in the week in which Christmas festivities were at their height. During that time, Holmes and I were engaged in a most delicate business on the Sussex downs; we knew little of the events which would later catapult my friend into one of the most bizarre cases of his distinguished career. Thus it was not until some six months had passed and the young lady stood in the dock facing a charge of murder that the affair thrust itself onto his consciousness.

"Yes, Watson, you are correct," Holmes remarked, seemingly apropos of nothing. My friend and fellow lodger lounged upon the sofa in an attitude of extreme languor, wearing his purple dressing gown and smoking a pipeful of the most unpleasantly aromatic tobacco ever imported from Virginia. I had lately finished reading the morning papers, which lay scattered at my feet.

"It is a terrible business," he went on, speaking in low, drawling tones, as if the very formation of words were too much for him, "this murder of a grandfather by his newly discovered granddaughter. One would think the natural bonds of filial piety would overcome even the most mercenary motives, and yet we see the young woman in the dock."

"But, Holmes," I protested, "I have said nothing concerning the case in question. However did you know I was contemplating that horrible business?"

"You had lately put down the morning paper, which carries a very full if only marginally accurate account of the affair. You then directed your gaze at the miniature of your own grandfather, which reposes upon the secretary. You proceeded to heave a sigh. Surely the meanest intelligence could ascertain that you were thinking of the Carstairs case and wondering how any grandchild could be so unnatural."

"Yes," I admitted. It seemed absurdly simple now that Holmes had explained the reasoning behind his remark. "It appears a wholly cut-and-dried affair, does it not? There appears no room for doubt that Charmian Carstairs poisoned her grandfather immediately upon being informed that she was to be his sole heir."

"No room for doubt indeed, Watson, and yet I fancy the barrister defending Miss Carstairs will exert himself to the utmost to obtain an acquittal."

"Mr. O'Bannion is celebrated for his eloquence," I remarked. "Some call him the Great Defender."

"He is equally well known," my friend amended, with a touch of acerbity, "as 'that confounded Irishman.' "

I have seldom attempted to duplicate my amazing friend's ability to deduce facts from the most insignificant of details, but I attempted a foray into such a deduction on this occasion. "You have had dealings with Mr. O'Bannion, I take it."

"Excellent, Watson," Holmes replied. "I have not wasted my talents on your education after all. Yes," he continued, his face becoming grave, "I had the misfortune to be in the witness box when Mr. O'Bannion was counsel for the defence. I gave my evidence in a most straightforward and logical manner, while he proceeded to twist and obfuscate and generally obscure the truth. In the end, he was responsible for the acquittal of the most accomplished jewel thief in London."

"Well," I replied stoutly, "he will have his work cut out for him if he intends to do the same for Miss Carstairs."

The doorbell rang. As it was still quite early in the morning, I raised an inquiring eyebrow. "A client, at this hour?"

"Pray instruct Mrs. Hudson to send the visitor away, no matter what his name or how urgent his errand," Holmes said in a voice that brooked no disagreement. "I have worked night and day for the past fortnight and am disinclined to exert myself on another case at the moment."

Mrs. Hudson led the visitor into the room. His curly brick red hair and humorous face marked him an Irishman; his severely cut black coat and trousers marked him a professional man.

"Mr. Holmes," the visitor began, "you must help me. A young lady's life depends upon it."

"And you are . . . ," I inquired, drawing myself up and glaring at the man who would command my friend's services without so much as stating his name.

"Why, Watson," Holmes cried, "I cannot believe your obtuseness. Surely you recognize our visitor from the accounts you have lately read in the Globe-Dispatch. For he is none other than the legal pettifogger who succeeded against all reason in convincing a jury of twelve good men and true to disregard my testimony, the man who held me up to ridicule before that same jury, the man who holds the fate of Charmian Carstairs in his dishonest hands."

The Irishman bowed as if Holmes's words were the most fulsome compliments. He smiled broadly and finished the introduction.

"Kevin O'Bannion, at your service, sir," the Irishman said, turning his attention to me. There was but a hint of brogue in his speech; he had taken a first at Oxford and could speak when he chose with an accent worthy of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

"At my service, indeed," Holmes scoffed. He waved the visitor away with a petulant hand. "Pray remove yourself from my doorstep at the earliest opportunity, Mr. O'Bannion. I have neither the time nor the inclination to bandy words with you."

"I've not come here to bandy words, Mr. Holmes," the barrister cried, his florid face reddening. "My visit here is a matter of life and death to the young woman I have the honour to represent."

"Life and death, indeed," Holmes replied. He jumped from the sofa with remarkable agility for someone who had appeared so lacking in energy, and stood before the fire, rubbing his hands. "Your client will most assuredly hang if she is convicted of murdering Sir Wilfred."

"Mr. Holmes, she is innocent," O'Bannion replied. He placed a large hand over his heart and repeated the words in thrilling tones that would have done justice to an organ. "She is innocent, sir, as God is my witness."

"Well," Holmes replied briskly, "that must make a nice change from your usual clientele."

The Irishman's ruddy face fell with comic swiftness. "You must help me, Mr. Holmes. Only you can unravel this tangled skein of evidence and help me prove that Miss Carstairs did not poison her grandfather."

"You seek my help?" Holmes inquired in a tone of injured acerbity. "You seek the help of a man you described to a British jury as 'an interfering, meddling amateur?' "

O'Bannion had the grace to blush. As he was very fair of skin, the blush was a deep rose that suffused his entire face. Although he dressed like a Regency dandy, his features and build were those of a common hod carrier.

"Mr. Holmes, I beg of you," he said earnestly, "do not refuse Miss Carstairs the aid she requires because of ill feeling between us."

Holmes raised a single eyebrow. "Ill feeling? Do you think permitting a criminal to go free rouses in my breast nothing more significant than ill feeling, sir?"

The Irishman waved away Holmes's words and said, "Come, Mr. Holmes, all I ask is that you and Dr. Watson attend the trial and listen to the evidence. I confess I can make nothing of it that will help my client, and yet I am convinced that she did not poison her grandfather."

"She is the sole beneficiary of her grandfather's will," Holmes pointed out. "He had but lately altered that will in her favour, disinheriting his other relations. She alone had the motive to poison Sir Wilfred."

"Mr. Holmes," the barrister proclaimed, "I would stake my not inconsiderable reputation on the fact that that pure, sweet angel did nothing of the kind."

It did not require the powers of a Sherlock Holmes to deduce that the celebrated barrister had fallen victim to the spell of the fairer sex. I found myself looking forward to meeting the object of O'Bannion's admiration.

Holmes knotted his brow in thought. "I will admit," he said at last, "the case presents some features which are not entirely devoid of interest."

"But, Holmes," I cried, "the trial begins this very morning. How is it possible to conduct a proper investigation six months after the murder?"

"There is, I fear, no question of an investigation, Dr. Watson," the Irishman explained with an air of apology. "I daresay I should have sought your assistance sooner, but only now do I realize the overwhelming extent of the evidence against my client. I urge you to come to court and hear the testimony, to suggest lines of questioning I may pursue on cross-examination, and to assist me in conveying to the jurors a true explanation of the baffling events that occurred on the night of December twenty-second last."

"Do you mean to suggest," I inquired, my breast swelling with indignation on my friend's behalf, "that Holmes investigate this crime six months after it has occurred, with no opportunity to visit the scene of the crime or to interrogate witnesses directly?"

O'Bannion had the grace to look abashed. "I agree the case is a difficult one," he began, "but under the circumstances—"

"Difficult?" I repeated. "It is more than merely difficult, man. It is impossible!"

Holmes turned his attention from the fire; for the first time since the unsatisfactory conclusion to the curious affair of the Cypriot banker and the seven pug dogs, the light of battle gleamed in his dark eyes.

"Impossible, Watson?" he echoed. "Surely nothing is impossible where human intelligence is applied."

Less than an hour later Holmes and I sat in a drafty room in Holloway Prison. Seated across from us at the plain wooden table was a spirited young woman with glossy black hair and speaking gray eyes. She wore a shapeless gray smock and was without adornment of any kind, yet her face was as exotically lovely as a tropical flower growing against all odds in an English garden.

"Miss Carstairs," Holmes began, "I have agreed to place my small talents at the disposal of your attorney." He nodded at O'Bannion, who stood in a corner, arms folded, having agreed with bad grace to remain in the background while Holmes questioned his client. "But before I undertake to examine the evidence against you, I wish to hear your story from your own lips."

The young woman nodded. "It is a story well known to the newspaper-reading public by this time, I believe," she said, "but I will recount it as briefly as I can."

Her voice was low and well modulated, marred only by her American accent, which tended to flatten the vowels and elide some of the consonants. "I was born in California," she began, "but my father came from England. He was the son of the late Sir Wilfred Carstairs, but he and my grandfather quarrelled, so he immigrated to America when he was a young man. He travelled extensively and held a great number of jobs in the West. Sowing his wild oats, Mother always used to say."

"Your mother was an American?" Holmes inquired.

Miss Carstairs nodded. "Her people were French," she explained. "Her name was Madeleine Duclos, and her father owned a vineyard in the Sonoma Valley. When my father married her, he went to work for Grandpere in the winery. Papa was very fond of growing things, and became great friends with Mr. Burbank in Santa Rosa."

The expression on Holmes's face was one of disappointment. "Then your father had nothing to do with gold mining?" he inquired. We had but lately made the acquaintance of a lady from San Francisco named Hatty Doran, and Holmes had been quite taken with her accounts of claim jumping in the American West.

"Really, Mr. Holmes," Miss Carstairs replied with evident amusement, "you have formed the most outlandish ideas about my homeland. I live in a fertile valley studded with lovely little towns and crisscrossed by farms and vineyards. There may be gold in the mountains," she went on, "but for us the gold is on the vines. California will someday produce the best wines in the world."

Holmes said nothing to this extraordinary boast, but a quirk of his mouth indicated serious doubts about the young lady's knowledge of vintage wines.

The dark Mediterranean eyes took on a faraway cast. "I miss my home," she said with a simplicity that touched me deeply. "I miss the scent of redwood trees at night. I miss the sunshine gleaming off the grapevines. I miss the blue skies and the cool mornings and the misty fog between the hills. I don't know how you can bear to live in this damp, gloomy place—but then, of course, you have never seen California."

As the only place on earth that might be considered damper and gloomier than England was Kevin O'Bannion's native land, I doubted the Irishman's evident infatuation with his client would bear fruit unless the man was willing to consider expatriation.

"Your father never renewed contact with his family, Miss Carstairs?" Holmes asked, bringing the conversation back to the terrible events of December 22.

The young woman shook her head. "No," she replied sadly. "It was the dearest wish of his life that he would someday be reconciled with his father. Indeed, he talked of it often, particularly during the Christmas season. He told me all about the grand Christmas feast his family prepared every year. All the servants and tenants would be invited into the dining hall, where glasses of wine would be poured and a toast drunk."

The girl's face glowed when she talked of her father. "Papa loved California," she said, "but he was always a little bit melancholy at Christmastime. He wished more than anything else for a real English Christmas like the ones he'd known as a child."

"Your father did not live to fulfil this wish," Holmes said with deliberate bluntness.

Charmian Carstairs shook her head. "My parents died when their carriage plunged off a narrow road into a canyon near our home," she explained.

"When your parents died, you wrote to Sir Wilfred," Holmes continued. His elbows rested on the scarred table between us and the young lady; his slender fingers were steepled. "Pray tell me what made you do that."

"I thought my grandfather should know that his son was dead," the American said. "And I was curious. I wanted to know my father's family in the same way I knew my mother's. I suppose I was searching for a part of myself."

"Sir Wilfred's reply to your letter included an invitation to visit him in London," Holmes prompted.

"Yes," the young woman replied. "I was to stay a month, through the Christmas holidays."

"It would appear you and your grandfather became quite fond of each other," remarked Holmes.

The pale face lit with pleasure. "Oh, yes, Mr. Holmes," she said with enthusiasm. "We took to each other at once. He loved hearing me talk about Mr. Burbank's work and about the interesting plants we have in California. And I enjoyed spending time in the conservatory with him."

"You brought him several treasures from your native land," Holmes said. "That was most kind of you."

"I brought dates and dried figs and walnuts—I could not bring fresh fruit, of course. And I brought cuttings and seeds from Mr. Burbank."

"There were seeds from the plant known as 'angel's trumpet,' were there not?"

The young woman nodded. "Its botanical name is Datura sacra. It is, strictly speaking, not a native of California. It was introduced from Mexico, and it is very showy. The blossoms are quite large and they hang from the branches like great golden trumpets. Grandfather particularly requested that I bring him seeds so that he could grow his own angel's trumpet in his conservatory."

I entered the conversation for the first time. "The seeds are quite poisonous," I remarked. "Were you aware of that fact when you brought them from America?"

"Of course," she replied. "Any competent horticulturist knows the properties of the plants she works with. Angel's trumpet is related to jimsonweed and nightshade. The entire plant is toxic, but the seeds are particularly so."

Holmes turned to the barrister and explained, "The toxicity of Datura sacra, commonly known as sacred datura, results from the presence of the alkaloids hyoscyamine, atropine, and scopolamine."

O'Bannion nodded. "The celebrated Dr. Hopgood is expected to testify for the prosecution," he replied glumly. "I do not anticipate that his testimony will be favourable to the defence."

"He is England's premier toxicologist," I remarked. "I shall be quite interested in what he has to say."

"The symptoms of datura poisoning are particularly horrible," Holmes remarked, in a manner that might have been considered callous by one who did not know him. "The sufferer feels a dryness of mouth and a great thirst. The skin reddens, the pupils dilate. The patient suffers hallucinations and disturbed vision. The pulse races, the patient grows increasingly delirious and may appear insane. The final stages involve convulsions and then coma and death."

The young lady's face paled; she swayed slightly, but did not flinch. "Mr. Holmes," O'Bannion cried, abandoning his post in the corner and rushing to his client's side, "kindly remember that you are speaking to a lady."

The lady in question was made of sterner stuff than her defence counsel believed; she waved away his protests and said in a calm tone, "Indeed, the plant is called Datura sacra because the natives of Mexico use it in their rituals. Taken in minute quantities, it produces visions. Taken in larger quantities, it produces death."

"It is a horrible way to die," I remarked.

"It is a death no man should endure," Holmes replied. His eyes remained fixed on Charmian Carstairs's beautiful, exotic face.

"It is a death I did not cause," the young lady said with calm firmness.

"And yet you profited from it," Holmes persisted. "You were your grandfather's sole heir, and you were aware of that fact because the late Sir Wilfred announced the change in his will to all at the dinner table the night before he died."

"He said something of the kind, but I didn't believe he really meant to do it," she protested. "I thought if I talked to him, he might change his mind. I had no need of his money; my father left me well off and my Grandpere in California promised me a share in the family vineyard as my dowry when I marry. So I had no need of Grandfather Carstairs's money, and I was sorry to see the true heirs cut out of the will."

"Were you, Miss Carstairs?" Holmes asked with palpable disbelief. "Had Miss Letitia Carstairs and Mr. Cyril Carstairs been so good to you that you felt obliged to intercede on their behalf?"

"No, on the contrary, they were horrid to me, as you well know," she replied with a show of that spirit one associates with the daughters of the former colonies. "Miss Carstairs referred to me as ^ka baggage' and Mr. Carstairs called me an 'Amazon from an uncivilized country.' But they had lived with Grandfather for years and had expectations of him, and I didn't think it was right for them to be left with nothing."

"But before you could discuss the matter with your grandfather, he died by poisoning," Holmes retorted. His tone was so palpably sceptical as to border on the offensive. O'Bannion, who stood next to his client in an attitude of protectiveness, bristled but remained silent.

"Yes, but I had nothing to do with his death!" the young woman cried. Tears sprang into her eyes; she turned her face away and said, "If you do not believe me, then leave me alone to face my fate in the courtroom. I can endure this questioning no longer."

"Mr. Holmes, this is enough!" the barrister cried. "I did not invite you here to badger my client but to help her."

"And what of the box, Miss Carstairs?" Holmes inquired with deadly gentleness. His eyes bored into Charmian Carstairs's face; he ignored totally the indignant Irishman.

"What then of the box and the things it contained?"

The lovely oval face paled and the large, dark eyes widened as the young woman gazed earnestly into my friend's face. "As God is my witness, Mr. Holmes," she said in a low, thrilling voice, "I knew nothing of that box, nothing at all."

"And yet you brought it to your grandfather," Holmes persisted.

"I brought it," the young lady whispered at last. "I brought it, but I was ignorant of its contents. I did not know what that box contained until the morning my grandfather's body was discovered in the study. And even now, Mr. Holmes," she continued, her eyes pleading for understanding, "even now that I know what items were in the box, I still do not know what they mean."

"And what of the legend on the box itself?" Holmes persisted. "What of the letters O.G.D., which appeared on the cover? What do they signify?"

The Irishman could stand it no longer. He drew himself up and signalled his client to say nothing. "Mr. Holmes," he said in ringing tones that resonated through the bare room, "it is clear from your cross-questioning technique that the bar lost a valuable asset when you chose to exercise your talents elsewhere. You would have made a fine prosecuting counsel. But the fact remains that my client will have to answer such questions as Sir Bartholomew Anders chooses to put to her when she testifies in court. I will not have her subject to cross-examination twice.''

Once again, O'Bannion's client refused to shield herself behind her defender's skirts. "I had never seen the box before," she explained. "I found it among my father's effects, along with a letter indicating his desire to send the box to his father should they ever reconcile. And so I brought it when I came from America." She drew a ragged breath. "Please, Mr. Holmes," she begged, "find the meaning of the things in the box and I have no doubt you will find the person who killed my grandfather. But as God is my witness, I did not know, Mr. Holmes. And I did not kill my poor grandfather, whom I had grown to love very much."

"Not the most promising of defences, Mr. O'Bannion," Holmes commented as we stepped into the misty spring air after leaving the prison.

O'Bannion said nothing, but his expressive face indicated a profound gloom. "Mr. Holmes," he said in a tone heavy with irony, "I thank you for a most instructive morning. I now feel the case against my client is even more daunting than I believed before I enlisted your aid."

He stepped into the street and raised his hand as a signal to passing cabdrivers. Holmes followed; the three of us piled into a hansom.

"You need not continue with this case," O'Bannion said, "since it is obvious you have no belief in my client's innocence of the charges against her."

"My beliefs signify nothing," Holmes replied in a mild tone. "It is the evidence and the evidence alone which should be examined. I have every intention of continuing with this case, and of hearing that evidence from the mouths of the witnesses."

The Irishman appeared less than pleased by this intelligence, but he instructed the driver to take us to the Old Bailey with all possible speed.

The first witness for the prosecution was our old friend Lestrade. He took the oath with an air of pompous determination, as if to say he was a plain man who would speak plain truth no matter what questions fancy Irish lawyers might think up to ask him.

Sir Bartholomew Anders, an impressive figure in his silk gown and immaculate white wig, elicited from Lestrade the particulars of his career in the Metropolitan Police Force. He then asked Lestrade to elaborate upon his part in the events of December 22 last.

"I was called," Lestrade said, warming to his subject under the prosecutor's friendly interrogation, "to the house of Sir Wilfred Carstairs by the butler, who said his master had been locked in his library since the night before. I proceeded to assist the butler in opening the door, which had been locked from the inside."

There was a stirring in the crowd at these words; next to me, a man leaned over and murmured something, then pointed a bony finger at the prisoner in the dock. Charmian Carstairs stood still as a statue, dressed in her plain prison gown, regarding the events in the courtroom with a detached air, as if watching the trial as a mere spectator.

"When we succeeded in opening the door," Lestrade continued, "I saw the body of Sir Wilfred lying on the floor beside his desk. He appeared to have died in a horrible convulsion," the inspector intoned, "and so I arranged for a doctor to be sent for. The doctor said it looked like poison, so I instructed the servants to give an account of the events of the night before, with particular emphasis upon what was eaten and drunk in that house."

Beside me on the hard pew of the first row of spectators, Holmes leaned forward intently. He seemed to make a mental inventory of the testimony, and nodded with satisfaction when Lestrade stated, "In the opinion of the chief toxicologist, the poison was administered in a cup which sat on a small table next to Sir Wilfred's desk."

The cup itself sat on a corner of the table used by the prosecuting attorney. It was a large silver cup of medieval design, almost a chalice, of a type rarely seen in our modern age. But Charmian Carstairs had spoken of an old-fashioned Christmas with ceremonial toasts; perhaps this cup was a family heirloom used to drink the health of the season.

Lestrade was permitted, over O'Bannion's vigorous objection, to testify that the means of death was a little-known plant poison whose Latin name was Datura sacra.

"And was there a time when the seeds of the datura were found in the house where Sir Wilfred died?" the prosecuting counsel inquired. He directed his gaze at the prisoner as he spoke, as if silently accusing her with his eyes.

"I obtained a warrant and searched the whole house from top to bottom," Lestrade replied. "In the bedroom occupied by the accused I found a box containing datura seeds along with a note and a picture," he went on.

Holmes pulled a small notebook from his pocket and sat poised to take notes; there had been speculation regarding the contents of the mysterious box in the newspapers, but none of the accounts had contained a definitive list of the items therein.

Crown Counsel handed Lestrade a piece of paper; he identified it as the note he'd found in the box in Charmian Carstairs's room. It was marked and entered into evidence; Lestrade was asked to read its contents into the record.

The tension in the courtroom was palpable. Lestrade held the piece of paper in his hand and in ringing tones read the words thereon: "When the angel's trumpet sounds, then shall you cross the abyss."

There was no sound in the crowded courtroom; all who heard the words were struck by their ominous intent. Sir Wilfred Car-stairs had ingested those poisonous seeds and he had indeed "crossed the abyss" from life to death.

"And the picture?" Sir Bartholomew persisted. "Can you describe for the jury the picture you also found in the box that contained the seeds and the note?"

"It was of the Last Trump," Lestrade said. He shifted in the witness box; he had been standing for the past half hour.

Beside me, Holmes drew in a sharp breath. "I must see that picture," he muttered. "And the note as well."

"It showed the Archangel Michael," Lestrade explained, "blowing a golden trumpet and summoning the souls of the dead to judgement. Under the picture was the single word: Judgement."

Once again all eyes in the courtroom turned to Charmian Car-stairs. Once again, she stood immobile as a marble effigy, her beautiful, exotic face expressionless.

The picture was marked and entered as well, then passed among the jurors. One or two of them handled the small rectangle and passed it along, but most looked up from the pasteboard to the young woman in the dock, shaking their heads as if in no doubt as to her guilt.

Charmian Carstairs claimed to have no knowledge of the items in the box she had carried from California, but to the jurors, as to everyone else in the courtroom, the contents of the box signified a day of reckoning for past wrongs. And the young woman on trial was the daughter of a man disinherited by his father, a man who might well have imbued his child with the desire for revenge and instructed her in the means to take her grandfather's life.

At a signal from Holmes, O'Bannion rose and requested a recess. It was granted; within moments we sat in a small panelled conference room with the barrister, who paced the floor with ill-concealed impatience.

"I must see the picture in question," Holmes began. O'Bannion nodded and dispatched an assistant to fetch it. "And I have questions I should like answered."

"Have you an idea, Mr. Holmes?" the Irishman asked with an almost pathetic eagerness. "Have you discerned a pattern in this seemingly incomprehensible testimony?"

"I have a glimmer," Holmes replied. "I feel it is imperative to know the exact contents of Sir Wilfred's study. Were there objects besides the fatal cup on the small table next to the desk? And what lay upon the desk itself? Was there a book, and if there was, what did it contain?"

O'Bannion drew in a long breath and regarded Holmes as one might a dangerous animal. "Mr. Holmes," he began, "the putting of questions to a witness on cross-examination is considered an art in my profession. One does not ask questions in order to obtain information, particularly information which may be detrimental to one's client."

"Mr. O'Bannion, I assure you," Holmes replied, his tone grave, "the answers to these questions could be vital to the discovery of the truth."

"The truth?" O'Bannion's voice rose in disbelief and his words took on the rhythms of his native land. "Is it the truth you're after wanting, Mr. Holmes?" He pulled a white handkerchief from the sleeve of his gown and mopped his brow. "It was a dark day indeed when I sought help at your door, Mr. Holmes," he muttered. "The truth, is it? God help me and my poor young lady now."

The assistant returned with the picture of the Last Judgment. Holmes studied it; I looked over his shoulder. It was an ordinary picture, with bright colours and crude lettering.

"I hadn't realized the late Sir Wilfred was a Roman Catholic," I remarked, hoping to hear a word or two of praise from Holmes for my deduction. The picture was not one a worshiper of the Church of England would have carried in his Book of Common Prayer.

Holmes grunted. "This card is no relic of the Church," he replied, his tone grim.

"Do you recognize it, then?" I asked.

"Is it important?" O'Bannion demanded.

"It is of the utmost importance," my friend replied. "Indeed, its significance cannot be overstated."

The butler, Reginald Bateson, was the next to testify. He attested to the fact that there had been a small, intimate gathering at Sir Wilfred's house on the evening of December 21. In celebration of the Christmas season, a toast had been drunk, with Sir Wilfred raising the medieval cup to his lips. The house had been decked with holly and ivy; it was truly the old-fashioned English Christmas Charmian Carstairs had been promised.

On cross-examination, O'Bannion asked the butler about the curious items on the table next to Sir Wilfred's desk.

"A queer lot, they were, that's certain," the butler replied. "There was a sword that usually hung over the mantelpiece, along with a stick and the drinking cup and a gold coin."

"Let us," O'Bannion suggested, "take these items one by one, shall we. Please tell the jury about the sword, Mr. Bateson."

Crown Counsel objected, but His Lordship permitted the question. The butler puffed himself up like a turkey cock and proceeded to satisfy the court's curiosity.

"It was a family heirloom," he explained. "A sword from the time of Cromwell, it was. Hung over the mantelpiece from the time I first came into service, it did. And the day after Sir Wilfred died, there it was on the table with the other items."

"And the stick?" O'Bannion continued.

"A walking stick," the butler stated. "A plain staff, such as a man might take on a tramp through the woods. Brought from the country, I daresay, though I'd never seen it before that morning."

"Can you describe the cup, Mr. Bateson?"

"Old-fashioned, it was," replied the butler. "Like something out of the Middle Ages. A heavy metal cup with no handle. Never seen the like myself, but there it was on the table with the other things, plain as day."

"Please tell us about the coin," O'Bannion urged.

"Well, now, I'm not altogether certain it was a coin," the man said, shaking his head. Next to me. Holmes leaned forward in the pew, his eyes alight.

"What do you mean by that?" O'Bannion asked. There was a slight frown between his eyes. "It was either a coin or it wasn't, Mr. Bateson."

"I mean it wasn't money, not proper English money, any road," the butler retorted. "It was gold, right enough, just like a sovereign, but no picture of our queen on it. Just a queer design, a star, like."

Holmes leaned forward in his place with a suddenness that had one of the bailiffs rushing toward him. He held up a warning hand, then pulled a piece of paper out of his breast pocket and scribbled a note. He handed the note to the bailiff and pointed toward O'Bannion. The attendant took the note and walked to counsel table.

O'Bannion had all but finished his questions, but he read the note and raised his eyes to the bench. "If I might ask one more question, Your Lordship?" he asked.

His Lordship glared, but nodded assent. "Very well, Mr. O'Bannion."

"How many points did the star have, Mr. Bateson?"

The butler frowned. "It had five points. Five, but there was something queer about the star. It was crooked-like."

O'Bannion thanked the witness, but it was clear to me he had no idea what the man had said that was important. Yet next to me, Holmes nodded and smiled as if he'd just heard the name of the true murderer.

The next witness was the deceased's nephew, a foppish young man who claimed to have taken his uncle's change of will with equanimity.

"Where there's life, there's hope," Cyril Carstairs said jauntily. "He couldn't very well change his mind and put me back into the will once he was dead, now could he?"

Holmes stirred in his seat, then stood and made for the door. I followed.

"We must visit the house where Sir Wilfred died," Holmes insisted. "I cannot confirm my hypotheses without a glimpse of the study where the events took place."

"But, Holmes," I protested, "we shall miss the testimony."

"That young man knows less than Miss Carstairs about what happened," Holmes replied with some acerbity. "No, Watson, we shall do our client more good by going to that house than we could by any other means."

Sir Wilfred's London house was a large, airy Georgian mansion situated near Green Park. In the absence of the butler, the door was opened by a housekeeper, who invited us to enter. Holmes asked to be directed to the library; the housekeeper inclined her head and led us along the hallway in silence.

The library was crammed with leather-bound volumes, some of which looked to be of great antiquity. Holmes ran his slender fingers along the leather bindings. Then he gave a cry and pulled a volume from the shelves. "Here it is," he cried, brandishing it aloft in triumph. "I knew I should find it. We must take it to O'Bannion at once."

"What is it, Holmes?" I asked. "What single book could possibly explain these bizarre events?"

"It is called The Book of Thoth," Holmes replied. "It was written by a man called Aleister Crowley, and it is the bible of an organization known as the Order of the Golden Dawn."

"O.G.D.," I said, repeating the letters on the cover of the box Charmian Carstairs had brought from America. "Then O.G.D. stands for Order of the Golden Dawn. But what is this order, and how is it connected with the murder of Sir Wilfred?"

"It has nothing whatever to do with his murder," Holmes answered, "but it has everything to do with his death."

There was a japanned box on top of the desk, next to an elaborately decorated inkwell with a design on it of a cross with a rose in the centre. Holmes opened the box and drew out a square object wrapped in black silk. He lifted the silk away with a flourish and revealed an oversized pack of cards.

"I hadn't realized Sir Wilfred was a gambler," I said. "Perhaps he was murdered by someone to whom he owed money."

"These are not playing cards, Watson," my friend said. He turned over the deck: instead of ordinary suits and numbers, these pasteboards were painted with bizarre designs. The one Holmes showed me was of a man hanging upside down, a golden aureole around his head. It was a grotesque image, but its horror was soon surpassed by the other images Holmes revealed in the deck: a man lying facedown with ten swords sticking out of his back; a woman with a blindfold holding two crossed swords; a tower struck by lightning. The most unnerving card of all portrayed Death on a black horse.

"What do you think you are doing here?" an imperious voice said. I looked up, startled, to see a formidable woman standing in the doorway. She was of an age with the late Sir Wilfred, and the way she bore herself told me she must be the deceased's sister.

"Miss Carstairs," Holmes began, "I must apologize for presuming to enter your brother's study. I had thought you were attending the trial, or I should have begged your housekeeper to make you aware of my presence."

"If you had, Mr. Holmes," the old woman replied stiffly, "I should have had her deny you access. My home is not a place where riffraff may come whenever it pleases to satisfy its curiosity."

"I am here for a far different purpose than that. Miss Carstairs, as you must suspect if you know my name," Holmes replied in a tone that might almost have been called gentle. "I am in search of evidence that will support the defence contention that your grand-niece did not murder your brother."

The old woman sniffed. "Then you have come on a fool's errand, Mr. Holmes, for no such evidence exists. That girl killed my poor brother and no amount of fiddling by that Irishman is going to help her escape the fate she so richly deserves. She will die on the gallows, Mr. Holmes, and justice will finally be served."

"You did not approve of your brother's change in his will, did you, Miss Carstairs?"

"I make no secret of the fact that I considered my brother besotted on the subject of his granddaughter," the woman announced.   "She   had   no   manners   whatsoever,   no   pretence   to gentility. I sincerely hoped my brother would recover from his infatuation with this uncivilized young woman who was the product of the most ill-advised union two people ever entered into."

"What about the gathering on the night your brother died, Miss Carstairs?" Holmes inquired, changing the subject with an abruptness that caught me by surprise. "You were the hostess, I believe."

"It was a gathering in honour of the season," the lady replied dismissively.

"Yes, but which season were you celebrating, Miss Carstairs?" Holmes persisted.

"I do not know to what you are referring, Mr. Holmes," the woman replied, but there was a spark, of fear in her eyes.

"I refer to the season," Holmes said. "I refer to the reason for your gathering. I refer to the night upon which your brother died. It was a celebration, and the house was decorated with the traditional holly and ivy, but was it in point of fact a celebration of Christmas?"

The old woman raised a trembling hand to her throat; she fingered a brooch which fastened her collar. In the centre of the brooch was a rose, and in the centre of the rose, a small cross. The design was similar to the one on her brother's inkstand.

"You will leave my home at once," she said in a shaking voice, "or I will summon the police."

"I shall leave, madam," Holmes answered with a bow, "but I shall take with me this book and these cards, for they are vital pieces of evidence that must be laid before the court without delay."

"There are one or two points to which I should like to draw your attention," Holmes said. We sat in the small panelled conference room, the japanned box and The Book of Thoth resting on the table between us.

"I should be grateful if you did, Mr. Holmes," the barrister replied, "for a less promising series of accounts I have seldom encountered."

"Have you ever heard of the Order of the Golden Dawn?" Holmes asked. O'Bannion shook his head; it was clear he was as much at sea as I myself.

"It is a branch of the Rosicrucian sect," Holmes went on. I parsed out the meaning of this new term, and a chill went through me as I realized Rosicrucian meant "rose cross." I remembered the brooch the elder Miss Carstairs had worn at her throat, and the strange design on Sir Wilfred's inkwell. Both were variations on the theme of cross and rose.

"The Order of the Golden Dawn, which is an offshoot of the Rosicrucians, bases its belief system upon the Tarot. Those were the cards we found in Sir Wilfred's desk, Watson."

"And the curious items on the table. Holmes?" I cried. "What can they have to do with this strange business?"

Holmes set the deck of gaily painted cards on the table and spread them in a fan-shaped array. He reached in and pulled one out, then held it up for us to inspect.

The card showed a young man wearing a red robe, holding one hand aloft and standing before a table. On the table were four items: a stick, a sword, a chalice, and a coin.

I shivered; the table in Sir Wilfred's study was an exact duplicate of the table depicted in the strange card.

"This is the Tarot card known as the Magician," Holmes explained. "The four items on the table represent the four suits of the Tarot deck: swords, wands, cups, and pentacles."

"The five-pointed star!" O'Bannion exclaimed. "The gold coin with the star was a pentacle."

"Precisely," Holmes agreed.

"But what is the meaning of all this?" I cried. "Why should Sir Wilfred place such objects on his table?"

Holmes answered my question with a question. "Watson," he asked, "what was the exact date upon which Sir Wilfred died?"

"Why, early in the morning of December twenty-second," I replied, astonished that my friend should have forgotten so elementary a fact. "Three days before Christmas."

"No, Watson," Holmes admonished, with a shake of his head. "Sir Wilfred did not die three days before Christmas. He died instead on the holiday he had chosen to celebrate in its place: the winter solstice, which occurs between December twenty-first and December twenty-second. He hid the pagan symbols of that holiday beneath the trappings of an English Christmas, but the true meaning of holly and ivy precede the Christian era in England.

He invited others of his sect to partake of the holiday, and when they left, he embarked upon his own initiation as an adept, setting forth the items on the table and ingesting the sacred seeds."

"Then there was no murder after all?" O'Bannion exclaimed.

"There was no murder," Holmes repeated. "The late Sir Wilfred was an adept of the Order of the Golden Dawn, and as such, he aspired to an even higher state of spiritual knowledge and power. He prepared his study for a ritual that would take him, in the words of the note, 'across the abyss.' "

"Then the abyss does not refer to death, Mr. Holmes?" O'Bannion inquired; the relief in his voice was almost comical.

"In a way, it does," Holmes answered. His face was grave. "Do you know why the angel's trumpet is known as the sacred datura?" he asked. I shook my head, as did O'Bannion.

"Because it produces a type of mania that is believed to be conducive to spiritual visions."

Holmes stood and began to pace the small room. "I have read accounts of shamans who have ingested the seeds of the sacred datura," he went on. "They fall into a deep trance and appear to be dead. Then they rise from the dead and claim to have witnessed extraordinary visions and to have obtained occult knowledge. It is my belief that Sir Wilfred took the seeds of his own free will, seeking to 'cross the abyss' from worldly to otherworldly knowledge. The note was indeed written by Miss Charmian Carstairs's father, but it was not a symbol of revenge, but of a spiritual bond between father and son."

"But what of the angel, Holmes?" I cried. "Surely the angel with the golden trumpet must be a Christian symbol?"

Holmes shook his head. He lifted a slender hand and moved the Tarot cards about. At last he lifted one and showed it to me. It portrayed an archangel blowing a trumpet while gray figures emerged from their coffins. Underneath the card was written the single word Judgement.

"It is a card of the Tarot deck," Holmes stated. "Lestrade had never seen it before; he assumed it was a Christian picture."

"But, Holmes," I protested, "the brooch Miss Letitia Carstairs wore was of a rose and cross; do you mean to imply that she, too, was a member of this Golden Dawn? And if she was, why did she not come forward and make the truth of the ritual known to the police?"

"That question is easily answered, Watson," Holmes replied with a grim smile. "Mr. O'Bannion can tell us what happens to an heir who is convicted of murdering the testator."

"She would be disinherited," O'Bannion explained, "and the inheritance would pass to the residuary legatee."

"I think you will find that Miss Letitia Carstairs occupies that position in her late brother's will," Holmes said. "She not only hated her grand-niece, she intended to keep her brother's fortune for herself by refusing to explain that Sir Wilfred took the datura seeds of his own free will."

The testimony of Sherlock Holmes in the trial of the American heiress was a nine days' wonder. Kevin O'Bannion's motion to dismiss all charges against his client was granted amid much clamour in the courtroom. The headlines in the morning papers trumpeted the news of the Great Defender's latest courtroom triumph to an admiring public.

To Kevin O'Bannion, she was always the woman.

Or perhaps not. Holmes and I attended the opera last night (the incomparable Goldini was singing), and who should we see in a box but the Great Defender himself, escorting a lady whose raven hair and large gray eyes were reminiscent of the California poppy he had defended with such skill. But a closer look revealed her to be a pale copy of her American predecessor, whom I later learned had taken the first boat for New York as soon as she was released from prison.

We received a case of wine only last week. It bore a label showing rolling hills and the name Duclos Winery, Sonoma Valley, California. Holmes proclaimed the vintage, which bore the improbable name zinfandel, undrinkable (without actually tasting it), solely on the grounds that no vintage produced in the New World could possibly please an educated European palate. I, on the other hand, sampled a glass with last night's chop and found it most satisfactory, if a trifle young and forward, a quality that renders it not unlike the daughters of the great republic from which it came.