Sherlock Holmes Investigates. The Case of Lady Chatterley's Voodoo Dolls
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nothing there. I see nothing.” I cried.
“If this is not a failure of the machine, then we have struck something not visible from our elevated position within the vehicle,” said Holmes.
“The tortoise!” cried Green. “Let’s hope it’s not injured. The drabarni will be angry.”
“Of course,” said Holmes. “Such a creature is extremely solid, but low to the ground, and probably covered in road dust.”
“Seems like he do prefer our company, and our ponies and donkeys, to roaming the Forest alone,” said Green. “We got quite used to his company. Some of the childer do ride on him, like one of the ponies, except he moves a bit slower. Course, you can see from the dust and mud on him he’s been trudging along this road for some time. Slow and steady, like the story tells.”
Green, quite unaccountably, began to laugh. I was not amused. “What is this levity, Green? Here we are stranded in the ditch of a desolate forest track, miles from succour with our conveyance, no, worse. His Lordship’s vehicle, totally disabled. I fail to share your light-hearted enjoyment of the situation.”
Holmes, meanwhile, had exited the passenger seat, and was patting the dusty shell of the creature. “A fine specimen of the Galapagos tortoise. From the Santa Cruz Island race, I think.”
Around half the size of a wine barrel, with a high rounded shell and sturdy legs, the beast had small eyes, a beak like a parrot, and the general appearance of a most reptilian bad temper. Notably, however, though it hissed in a manner reminiscent of a steam boiler, it made no move to attack or indeed, to move its legs at all. There was blood on the left foreleg, but no large wound.
Green noticed this, and his coarse amusement vanished. He was now horrified. Personally, the sight of his astonished gape restored my own good humour to a degree. Misery, as ever, loves company.
“I declare, Holmes, our guide seems quite disconcerted by sight of slight injury to the beast, while not at all concerned with the damage wrought to property and danger to our very lives that it presented. He might have cautioned us of possible unseen hazards in the right of way.”
“Come now, I believe he did utter some such caution, Watson. In fact you moderated your speed in deference to the warning he offered. Had we been at high velocity this could well have ended tragically. Let us muster such strength as we may, and attempt to restore our carriage to a proper road position.” With that, Holmes took off his jacket and placed it on the seat. He then stepped into the ditch, fortunately quite dry, and inspected the wheel.
With application of our concerted strength our carriage was rapidly on the roadbed, and but a short time later Green bent back the metal from against the wheel, so that we could proceed. The engine started after some effort, and I prepared myself to drive.
Green took a grip under the beast’s carapace on one side, and said, “Mr Holmes, sir, if you please, lend your strength to hoist the poor creature up, so we may return it to the camp. Our encampment is only a short distance from here.”
Within a few minutes we were met by a bouncing tide of ragged children who emerged from the tents clustered in a clearing by the side of the track. Several brightly painted wagons stood a bit further back. Near those, some piebald ponies stood together with some rather shabby donkeys, at the edge of the trees. They jostled to get at rotten turnips in a heap tipped out from a basket by one of the women of the tribe.
The beast sniffed loudly as it scented the feast, and turned that way as soon as it was once more on the ground. Green let it go, saying, “Go eat yer turnips, then. Can’t be bad hurt. Bit of a limp, that’s all. Soon mended.”
I recognised the old woman who awaited us by the fire, the very same we had met on Dartmoor some years before, though somewhat shrunken with age. The black pipe stuck firmly in her now toothless jaw, she wore possibly the same bright patterned smock, though faded from its former brilliance.
She looked at us, spat copiously in the fire, and said, “Gentlemen. Welcome by our fires. Step near, for we have matters to discuss.”
Two wooden chairs appeared, and were placed with some care on the rough ground. When we were seated, Holmes spoke, “My profound apologies, but I fear we may have inflicted some injury on your tortoise. Most fortunately, it seems but superficial abrasion and bruising. The beast strayed into our path, and our carriage hit it with some force.”
“Not strictly our beast, Mr Holmes, though he has been with us these fifty years now. A gentleman left the creature in my care, and said he would return to fetch him again on his return from a sea voyage of some duration. By our rule, the beast is his at any time he might wish to claim it. Others may have different views, much as your people claim to own the earth, which is next thing to ownership of the air, the water, or even the ether. I never heard that the Creator had given up ownership of those. Ridiculous, the very thought.” She scowled, and stared into the flames.
A silence ensued for several minutes. Finally, Holmes said, “Night has fallen, and we have yet to find lodgings. I must request, Madam, you tell us forthwith about this treasonous conspiracy against Her Britannic Majesty.”
“Madam, is it, hey? I’m Old Norah. Norah Lee, Mr Holmes. No Missus or Madam in my name. Address me as Mother Lee, if you will assign me a station to suit your ways. I am mother, grandmother, and great granny to most all of these gathered here.”
Holmes made no response, but nodded and awaited her further reply.
“This is a matter of voodoo. I don’t rightly know what that may be, save a foreign type of sorcery. Some sort of strong magic, in this case directed with evil intent against our Royal Family theirselves. Last week I felt a great threat building like a thundercloud, and used my powers to seek out what this threat might be.”
She paused, looked at each of us in turn, and then continued, “I saw a centaur, which changed to a prince and swam away, though pursued by a strange brown and grey bird, which carried a doll in its beak. I know it was a True Dreaming, but I am greatly puzzled by it.”
She continued, “I could make no head nor tail of this, until a lady came to see me in some distress three days ago. There had been a burglary at her house near here, and she thought perhaps our people were in some way involved. She was in company with another, who had some parts of this puzzle to tell. Together we began to see the nature of the thing. It is to do with some voodoo dolls, recently in the keeping of Lady Violet Chatterley, and stolen away with the intent to use them in execution of a curse.”
At that very moment I looked up, and saw a hideous face behind Mother Lee, lit by a flicker of firelight. It seemed to float bodiless in the dark.
Black as a fiend from the deepest pits, savagely distorted into a mere semblance of a human visage, with a red tongue apparent between coarse parted lips, framed by two teeth on either side of the gaping mouth. The nose, already broad, was split in two by the white cicatrice of a healed wound that extended through the lips down to the chin. The cheeks were slashed by raised lines of scar tissue, and the wild curly hair sported several ostrich plumes, and was only slightly restrained by a band of spotted animal skin about the brow.
I gasped, but was unable to articulate, so pointed wordlessly at the apparition.
Mother Lee said, “Now Doctor, fear not. I must introduce you to our informant in these matters. Hercules Zungo is of a quite amiable disposition, despite his appearance. He has journeyed from his home in the area of the Kafue River in Africa, a long and dangerous way, for the dual purposes of honouring Her Majesty at the Jubilee last year, and of reassuring himself as to the safe custody of those Voodoo Dolls.”
Zungo came closer, and spoke with only a trace of an accent, “Good evening, gentlemen. We really appreciate your prompt response to our request for assistance. Indeed, had you delayed an hour more, matters would have been critical. As it is we must act at once.”
Holmes said, “Good evening to you, Mr Zungo. I must ask more details of this business before we jump into possibly misdirected action.”
We sat and sipped
tea from incongruously elegant chinaware while Zungo told his story.
“When I was very young, perhaps four years old, slavers came up the river from the coast. My grandfather laid an ambush for them on the track up from the river landing, and several were killed. The rest got back in their boats and left.”
“None of this seems in any way related to treason against Her Majesty. Your home is beyond the boundary of the Empire, and these slavers surely were not British.”
“Correct, Mr Holmes. These were a mixed party, by their appearance and language. Some were from the Portuguese coastal settlements and some from further east, from Asia. What is significant are the several dolls or figurines we found in possession of one clad in the ritual clothing of a magic practitioner from the West coast of Africa. He was killed by a bullet from the musket wielded by my father’s cousin, our great Inyanga, our own healer and magician. What you term a Witch-doctor.”
“These were objects used in the practices of the West African Voodoo cult? How could you know anything of this, being isolated by many hundred miles, on the far side of Africa, from such beliefs?”
“Many miles, many tribes and different languages between us, as you say, but travellers range widely, and people talk. Some time after the raid we were visited by a trader from the area of the