“Still and all,” Holmes mused, “an interesting little fabulation.”
“But that’s all it is, mark my word,” said George. “If you really wish to know more, then my Uncle Jasper is your man. He worked with my father on his investigations: he is just as besotted with the story.”
“I understand that at one time your father and your uncle were in dispute over the former’s will?”
George said, “This was many years ago, following the death of my grandfather, who left the estate to my father, despite my uncle being the elder of his sons.”
Holmes frowned. “Did your grandfather explain the reason for this decision?”
The young man shrugged. “I understand that my uncle was, at the time, given to drink, and so earned the mistrust of my grandfather.”
“But a rapprochement between your father and uncle has been achieved?”
“To the point where they now happily work side by side,” said George.
“Do you happen to know the provision of your father’s will?” Holmes enquired. “I take it that you, as his only son, are his main beneficiary?”
The young man inclined his head. “So I understand, Mr. Holmes, though I am assured that adequate provision has been made for my sister.”
My friend stared through the mullioned window to the darkening skies, lost in thought for the moment. At last he stirred himself and rose to his feet. “We will keep you no longer, young sir; I thank you for your time.”
We moved to the door, whereupon Holmes turned and asked, “I wonder…we are dining with your sister this evening: will you be able to leave your bed and join us?”
“From time to time I make the effort,” said George, “and on this occasion, with such esteemed guests at the table, it will be my honour to dine with you.”
“Capital,” said Holmes as we took our leave.
We made our way downstairs and along the gloomy corridor, then stepped outside and crossed the snow-covered lawn toward the stand of bare trees at the far end of the garden.
“You asked George about the provision of his father’s will,” I said as we entered the margin of trees and proceeded through the woodland; “but surely you can’t suspect George of doing away with his father?”
He stopped beneath a dripping elm and stared at me. “If we rule out a supernatural cause, which we have,” said he, “and if we allow that foul play is possible, then one of the suspects must therefore be George, and the others Jasper and Amelia—if, that is, the culprit is not someone from beyond the Grange itself.”
“Good God, man!” I cried. “You don’t seriously think that Amelia might be behind this, do you? Why, she’s a mere slip of a thing!”
“You are making the grave mistake of allowing your emotional bias to blind you to the very real possibility that Amelia might be responsible. I have said before, Watson, that the fairer sex are capable of crimes just as heinous as, and worse than, any male.” He pointed through the trees. “And this must be our destination.”
We had passed several tumbledown outbuildings in our progress through the woods, and now before us, in a clearing, stood a tiny cottage with a low thatched roof and the illumination of a welcoming oil-lamp burning behind a mullioned window.
Our summons was answered by a tall, perilously thin, and cadaverous man I judged to be in his eighties; he wore a smoking jacket and a high-collared shirt, with a pair of half-moon glasses perched upon the bridge of his thin nose.
“Miss Amelia told me that she had hired the services of the illustrious Sherlock Holmes,” said he by way of a greeting, though with a touch of acerbity in his tone.
We followed the old man into a tiny front room which, like Oswald Carmody’s study, was packed with ancient books. In the middle of the room stood a small table piled with leather-bound volumes and scrolls; evidently we had interrupted Jasper Carmody in the process of writing, for a quill stood in a pot of ink and a square of blotting paper covered a quarto of vellum.
“If you would care to take a seat, gentlemen—”
He stopped abruptly as Holmes, with unaccustomed clumsiness, stumbled into the table. In doing so he brought down the folding leaf, sending an avalanche of books and papers to the floor.
“My apologies!” my friend cried. “How clumsy! Please, allow me to…” Bending down, Holmes picked up a pile of books, along with a bundle of papers, and restored them to the table. Fortunately the pot of ink did not spill, and, order restored, we took our proffered seats before the fire.
“It’s a pretty problem and no mistake,” Holmes began. “Amelia ascribes her father’s disappearances to some supernatural agency while, conversely, her brother will have no such truck with the idea. I understand that you,” Holmes went on, “subscribe to the former?”
The old man’s skeletal face gave a thin smile. “I know full well the fate of my brother, Mr. Holmes.”
“Ah, the ‘portal ultimum’…?” Holmes said.
“So you have been reading Oswald’s journal? Stirring stuff, is it not?” The old man stared at us, excitement visible in the light of his bright blue eyes. “We have been working toward this for well nigh a decade, and soon the world will be cognizant of the true facts of the case.”
“I take it,” said Holmes with ill-concealed amusement, “you refer to the Curse of Carmody Grange? If you might enlighten me as to the exact nature of the curse, my friend?”
“In the 1600s, a distant forebear of ours, one Geoffrey Carmody, dabbled in the dark arts and summoned a demon. It was this demon, so the story goes, that cursed the man and took him thither, never to be seen again. A curse was placed on the family: whosoever dabbled in the dark arts would be likewise taken. In 1790, Sir Pelham Carmody met a similar fate…”
“And yet,” said Holmes, “this did not deter your brother—or indeed yourself?”
“Far from it, sir! Unlike our forebears, we are well versed in magicks black and white, and Oswald judged that the time was upon us—was it not a century since Sir Pelham Carmody vanished from the very woodland behind the Grange? From our exhaustive investigations, we knew that soon the portal would open, and Oswald ensured that he would be present when it happened.”
“Do you mean to say…?” I began, staring from my friend to the ecstatic visage of the old man.
“I saw it, sir, with my own eyes, on the morning of the twentieth. An effulgent glow of lapis lazuli light emanated from the mighty oak not half a mile north of this very cottage, and with a cry of elation my brother stepped through the portal, embraced by its lambency…”
“But, confound it, man,” I cried, “what the deuce happened to him?”
The look that Jasper Carmody bestowed upon us confirmed to me that indeed the man was out of his mind. “He stepped across the threshold of this world,” he said in trembling tones, “and into the next.”
“The next?” Holmes said, sitting back in his chair and regarding the old man with dispassion.
“The reality that underpins the material world as we know it,” he said, “the realm of spirits, sprites, and, yes, the undead.”
“I take it that you did not worry Miss Amelia with this?” Holmes said.
“I thought it wise to remain silent on the matter,” Jasper said. “When she rushed here to inform me of her father’s disappearance, I did my best to calm her. I returned with her to the Grange, assuring her that all would be well and that soon her father would return.”
Holmes leaned forward. “Return? How could you be certain?”
Jasper smiled and pointed across the room to a small table before the window. A mortar and pestle sat upon it, and next to them a pack of Tarot cards. “I have been in contact with those from beyond,” he said, “and they have reassured me of Oswald’s safe return to this world.”
Doing his best to hide his smile, Holmes asked, “And when might this be, Mr. Carmody?”
/> “When the time is auspicious,” the old man said; “I suspect within the next day or so.”
“I would be grateful if, when you have precise intelligence of his return, you would kindly inform me,” Holmes said, his tones larded with sarcasm. “I should like to be on hand to witness this…miracle.”
The old man inclined his head. “It would be my pleasure, sir.”
Shortly thereafter, Holmes thanked Jasper Carmody for his time and we took our leave. As we hurried through the darkness toward the Grange, I said, “What did you make of that, Holmes? Confirmation, if any were needed, that Jasper is quite clearly insane, what?”
“On the contrary, Watson, I think friend Carmody is quite remarkably sane—as we shall find out in due course.”
Holmes would vouchsafe no more on the matter, and we arrived back at the Grange in time to dine with Miss Amelia and George. Talk was desultory at first, with all parties reluctant to broach the very topic that had brought us here; I regaled our hosts with a story or two of my service in Afghanistan, and it was only toward the end of the meal that Amelia brought herself to enquire as to the progress of the investigation.
“It proceeds satisfactorily,” said Holmes; “and I very much hope that the affair might reach its resolution on the morrow.”
Citing an early start in the morning, Holmes would not be drawn to elucidate, and soon thereafter he bade our hosts goodnight and retired; I followed him shortly thereafter.
I spent a sleepless night, kept awake not only by all the recent talk of ghosts and ghouls, but by the manse’s ancient timbers creaking and groaning like those of an old galleon on the high seas. It was well into the early hours by the time sleep at last claimed me.
I was awoken from a fitful slumber at seven the next morning by an intemperate tapping at the door. I opened it to find Holmes fully dressed and impatient to be away. “Come, Watson,” said he; “we are leaving.”
“Leaving?” I said, casting about for my clothes and quickly dressing.
“I have told Miss Amelia that we will continue our investigations elsewhere,” he said, “and she is rousing Jefferies to ready the trap to take us to the station.”
I saw, from the damp state of my friend’s brogues, and the droplets covering his cape, that Holmes had ventured out that morning. When I questioned him, he said, “We’ll make a detective of you yet, Watson! You’re right—I had a little job to conduct in the woods. But more of that later.”
Within fifteen minutes, having consumed a hurried breakfast of coffee and crumpets, we took our leave of Miss Amelia and boarded the two-wheeler. I was surprised to see that the snow had vanished during the night, washed away by a drizzle that still precipitated and soaked the land.
My friend was silent until Jefferies reined us to a halt before the station, turned the trap, and cantered off. Holmes consulted his pocket watch and exclaimed with satisfaction, “Not yet eight—we are in time, Watson, to meet the four o’clock slow train from Waterloo.”
“What is all this, Holmes—our hurried departure, and now this? You said we are to meet the train?”
“Or rather someone who will be upon it,” said he, and proffered a small sheet of paper by way of explanation.
It was a telegram, and in some state of confusion I read the short message thereon: INTRIGUING! ARRIVING AT EIGHT. CHESTER ATKINS.
“I noted the edge of the telegram obtruding from beneath the pile of books on the table in Jasper’s cottage yesterday, with Atkins’s name upon it,” said Holmes. “My curiosity piqued, I contrived the trip to dislodge them and pocket it.” He waved the telegram. “Note the name—Chester Atkins.”
“The reporter from the Times?”
“No less. The very same young fellow who assisted us in the Pendlebury Poisonings just last year,” Holmes said, as we hurried onto the platform in time to meet the slow train pulling into the station.
Chester Atkins, a rubicund young man with ginger pork-chop sideburns and an ebullient manner, descended from the carriage and hurried, panting, along the platform. “As I live and breathe!” he cried in pronounced Cockney tones. “If it ain’t Sherlock Holmes hisself, and Dr. Watson! But what in heaven’s name brings you to this Godforsaken place?”
“The very same that brings you, young sir,” said Holmes. “Come, I will apprise you of the situation on the way to the Grange.”
We boarded a four-wheeler in the station forecourt, and minutes later were barrelling back the way we had come, Holmes in hushed confabulation with the young reporter. The fellow could barely contain his amazement at my friend’s account. “A singular tale and no mistake!” declared Atkins; “but not quite the story I was expecting.”
We arrived at the Grange, and Holmes led the way around the house and through the woods to the cottage of Mr. Jasper Carmody. The old man whipped open the front door and greeted us with elation. “Mr. Atkins! And Holmes and Watson—you’re just in time. Oh, the miracles you are about to witness, sirs! The veritable wonders that are about to assail your senses! But there is no time to lose—I have had confirmation from the spirits themselves that the portal ultimum will open within the hour! If you would kindly follow me this way…” So saying, he pulled on a greatcoat and hurried from the cottage, with young Atkins giving Holmes a startled look as we gave chase through the woodland.
“As I mentioned in my original missive, Mr. Atkins,” Jasper said breathlessly over his shoulder, “four days ago my brother Oswald entered the portal ultimum—the very portal through which passed his ancestors.”
“I understand that those ancestors never returned,” Atkins panted as he attempted to keep pace; “so what I want to know is, how come Mr. Carmody has managed to elude the ghostly horde on the other side?”
“Because,” said Jasper, “my brother went forewarned, with a vast knowledge of the occult and the means with which to best those that dwell thither!”
We plunged ever deeper into forest, the trees crowding together and shutting out the daylight, and if ever a stage had been designed for the culmination of our eldritch investigation, then this was it. We came at last to a clearing, in the centre of which stood a vast stunted oak: its great bole had split into two, and over the decades one trunk had contrived to bend over to form a perfect parabola, an archway fully ten feet high and just as wide.
Jasper Carmody halted and spread his arms. “Behold!” he cried. “The portal ultimum! The gateway connecting this world to the next!”
As his words rang around the clearing, despite myself, I shivered: there was an almost palpable atmosphere of imminent menace in the air. The oak appeared at the same time mighty and yet stunted, resembling one of the grotesquely contorted growths that grace the illustrations of Arthur Rackham, and I half expected a phalanx of ghosts and ghouls to come tumbling through the arch at any second.
Startling me, Jasper gave a cry in Latin, whipped a long dagger from beneath his greatcoat and, raising it into the air before him, stepped slowly but with purpose toward the oak tree, chanting as he went.
He then proceeded to move widdershins around the tree three times, all the while beseeching the demons to release his brother in magic. He disappeared around the contorted bole for the third time, and from behind the tree we heard his heartfelt cry: “Behold!”
I took a step forward, my heart beating wildly, quite taken with the old man’s theatrics.
“Look!” said Atkins, pointing toward the arched trunk.
As he spoke, I beheld what I can only describe as a feeble splutter of sparks from around the archway such as might be produced by defective fireworks; indeed, the phrase “damp squibs” comes to mind. At the same time, still hidden behind the tree, Jasper intoned, “Behold, the portal opens, and Carmody returns triumphant!”
To say that the culmination of his pronouncement was anti-climactic would be an understatement. As the feeble sparks spluttered out, silence reigned
, and the portal signally failed to open. All was as it had been before Jasper’s portentous words and the sad display of fireworks.
Sherlock Holmes stepped forward, clearing his throat. “You can come out now, Jasper—the game is up.”
Jasper Carmody emerged from behind the tree, his smile now sickly. “I…I cannot fathom what might have happened. The spirits were specific—my brother was to return! What can have become of him?”
“If you would care to follow me,” said Holmes, “I will show you precisely what has become of Mr. Carmody. Watson, be so good as to take a firm grip on friend Jasper’s arm so that he might not elude us. This way!”
Doing as he said, I marched Jasper Carmody through the woods in pursuit of Holmes and young Atkins, the old man muttering pitifully as we went. We moved toward the Grange and came at last to the tumbledown outbuildings. A small stone building stood in their midst, the only one still quite whole, and an odd sight then greeted our gazes.
The building possessed no windows, only a single door, and to the handle of this door was attached a rope which stretched from the handle to a nearby tree, around which it was securely tied. That the rope was an effective means of keeping the door securely shut was attested to by the curses and thumpings that issued from within the rude stone prison.
Holmes stepped forward and, taking a pen-knife from his pocket, sliced through the rope and pushed open the door.
The dishevelled figure of a bald-headed man, in a febrile state of rage, stood upon the threshold.
“Gentlemen,” Holmes announced, “I present to you none other than Oswald Carmody.”
“It was a cruel and feeble ruse you attempted to play,” Holmes declared. We were in the front room of Jasper Carmody’s cottage, with Oswald and Jasper seated side by side on the settee like a pair of miscreant schoolboys.
Atkins sat to one side, eagerly taking down Holmes’s words in his notebook.
“How you came upon the idea,” Holmes said, “is a matter of conjecture. Did a decade of investigations into the Curse of Carmody Grange come to nought, Oswald? Did you thus decide, with the aid of your brother, to stage the little pantomime in the hope of convincing Mr. Atkins, and the world, of your miraculous sojourn in the netherworld? Did you then plan to write up your escapades in a tawdry volume for the scurrilous delectation of a gullible and feeble-minded public?” He waved this away. “Whatever, it was a cruel jape to play on Amelia and George. You thought nothing of their consternation at your disappearance, only of the glory you would attain upon your miraculous return.”
The Return of Sherlock Holmes Page 5
