“Always.”
* * *
We returned to Baker Street that night, to get Holmes some much-needed rest. The morning found him in better health than I expected. Perhaps his repeated magical restructuring of his legs had helped put them back to rights. Or maybe—and this suspicion had been growing in my mind for some time—Holmes was only ever as wounded as he remembered to be. Distracting Holmes seemed always to be a strangely efficacious method of healing him.
When we arrived at the Foreign Office we were met by Detective Inspector Forbes, who had charge of the case. He’d been given instructions to be forthcoming and helpful, yet even the illustrious Mr. Phelps had no power to command him to enjoy our company. To Forbes, we were nothing more than the latest in a long line of ridiculous demands from the Phelpses—hampering a case he had long ago deemed hopeless.
And who could blame him? Eleven days of regular use had quite obliterated every clue the Foreign Office might once have offered. Forbes introduced us to Mr. Tangey, the much-abused commissionaire. In the absence of evidence against him, he’d been allowed to continue in his position, but it was clear that the close attention of Scotland Yard had weighed heavily on him. Forbes confided in us that the investigation against the Tangeys had utterly bogged down. Their inquiries had done nothing but waste the Yard’s time and afford the actual perpetrator ample time to pursue his agenda unharried.
We saw the hallway that ran past Percy’s office and examined the exits from the building. The only information they yielded was this: they were exits. Anyone who had left by either of those doors eleven days ago by any means fair or foul might by now be anywhere in London. Nearly anywhere in Europe. We could learn nothing.
Forbes informed us that Percy’s office had not been used since the night of the crime. Imagine my surprise when I entered only to find it had been positively ravaged. Papers lay strewn everywhere. Every lock on Percy’s desk had been forced, every drawer bottom pried off in search of hidden compartments.
“Is this the result of the investigation?” I asked Forbes.
He bristled at that. “Not my investigation. Lord Holdhurst saw fit to mount his own. Now and again, when he’s in his cups, he comes down here and mounts another one.”
Though it looked as if the room had been thoroughly combed, I nevertheless climbed up on a chair and examined the conduit through which the bell-pull entered the room. Oh, how I had hoped to come down off that chair waving the missing communication and tell Forbes, “Ha! Did you not think to look in there? Did you not realize the criminal stashed his loot before making good his escape? That is why the bell rang when Percy was berating the commissionaire! It was not bravado, not coincidence, but the natural result of a desperate man hiding treasure up against the bell-pull!”
But no. If ever the criminal had engaged in that particular obfuscation, he’d had days to return and claim his prize, and there was nothing to be found but dust and spiderwebs.
“Any luck, Watson?” asked Holmes.
“I fear not. Perhaps we’ll learn something from Lord Holdhurst.”
“Ugh. Politicians…” said Holmes. “Never liked them. All responsible and grown-up and huffy. But they do tend to be busy, at least. Maybe he won’t have time to see us. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Forbes grunted out a laugh. “Oh, I imagine he’ll make time. If he thinks there’s a chance you know anything of his missing secret, I promise you’ll not make it off these premises without seeing him. Go ahead: try and make a run for the door. See how far you get.”
Forbes was quite correct. As we exited Percy’s office, we were met in the hallway by a sallow-faced clerk who wondered how our inquiry was progressing and whether we might be prepared to report our progress to his superior. Two minutes later, we stood before the massive doors of Lord Holdhurst’s office, awaiting our summons. Though there were many petitioners waiting when we arrived, we were ushered straight past them and made to stand before the doors for exactly eight seconds while the clerk went inside to see if his Lordship was ready to receive us. A muffled, yet rough and husky voice from beyond the door shouted, “Yes, damn it! Of course!”
Lord Holdhurst’s office was not much better off than Percy Phelps’s. Again we saw papers in disarray, furniture out of place and drawers turned out. A surprising amount of clothing was discarded about the room and no small collection of dishes. No sooner had our names cleared the clerk’s lips than he turned and fled the room.
From behind his desk, Lord Holdhurst fixed us with a hungry gaze. The man looked practically feral. His hair was mussed, his clothing wrinkled into a most disreputable state. His shoulders heaved as if he’d just been running and his eyes bespoke total exhaustion. Though I’d never met him personally, I knew his reputation well and let me say that if I had not seen several pictures of him in the papers, I’d have never believed this could be Lord Holdhurst. Was this the bastion of traditional English propriety and decorum? He looked like a man ruined by anger.
“Have you found it?” he demanded.
I hesitated, overcome by surprise. Thus, it was Holmes who made our answer. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Then again, we don’t know exactly what it is.”
“No!” Lord Holdhurst roared. “We won’t be speaking of it! Don’t ask! It is a secret of the highest import! I’ll tell you the same thing I told that fool Scotsman, MacGuffin: it doesn’t matter what it is, only that we’re seeking it! You’ll know it if you see it! You… you haven’t seen it?”
“The only thing we’ve seen is your nephew, Percy Phelps,” said Holmes. “He’s suffering; did you know?”
“Not suffering enough! He lost it! He ruined everything! My sister won’t let me see the little squid! And it’s a good thing, too, for I know what I’d do! I’d kill him! I’d kill him with my own hands!”
Lord Holdhurst brandished those hands at us. They were soft and—until recently—well maintained. They were the hands of an upper-class, indoor worker: unused to wielding anything heavier than a pen and utterly devoid of strength, but for that which desperation lent them.
Something was very wrong with Britain’s foreign minister. Even Holmes recognized it, for he gave me a sideways glance, raised his eyebrows and cocked one thumb at our host, as if to say, “Would you look at this?”
I gave a nod of agreement and said, “Yes… well… we have nothing to report, so… perhaps we’d best go look for it, eh?”
“Good idea, Watson,” said Holmes, beginning to edge back towards the door. “No time to waste, is there?”
“Not a minute,” I concurred, beginning my own subtle retreat. “We’ll let you know if we find it, of course.”
“You bring it right here!” Lord Holdhurst bellowed.
“Oh. Of course. Right here,” Holmes agreed.
“Don’t look at it!”
“Why would we?”
“Don’t open the case! I’ll know if it’s been opened!”
“Of course you would,” said Holmes. “Well… that’s all, then. Goodbye. Good luck to us. And… er… we are dismissed.”
With that, he reached back and whisked open the door. The two of us leapt through, slammed it shut and leaned back against it.
“That’s a fairly intense statesman, Watson.”
“Agreed, Holmes. He seems quite unhinged. Probably lying, as well. Did you hear him say he’d know if the case had been opened? Yet he gave it to Percy and ordered him to open it. Has he seen it since he gave it to Percy?”
“How?” Holmes wondered. “Why?”
“Well, he was one of only two people to know Percy had the thing. And he clearly values it. I’d been wondering if Lord Holdhurst himself might be the thief.”
Holmes gave me a doubtful glance.
“I know… it seems unlikely. Yesterday I began to think: suppose Lord Holdhurst found himself in possession of a secret he wished might be lost, yet did not want to be the fellow to lose it. Might he not have given it to Percy then arranged for it to be stolen, just
to have a scapegoat in place?”
Holmes gave me an incredulous eye-roll and said, “A fine theory, Watson, and one I might congratulate you on if I had not just seen Lord Holdhurst. Let me tell you something I suspect you know: that man wants something. Whatever it is that’s missing, he yearns to have it back. He has lost control of himself and the thing that’s got control now is called desire.”
“I am forced to agree. And didn’t it seem… still fresh? He seemed acutely desperate. I cannot imagine how much energy it would take to maintain that level of anxiety for eleven days.”
A polite cough caused me to look up. The entire roomful of petitioners was staring at Holmes and me.
“Yes… well… perhaps we had best continue this discussion at Baker Street, eh, Holmes?”
“I think I’d rather continue it in Antarctica than right here. Let’s go.”
* * *
Waiting for us at Baker Street were the three undelivered letters Percy had complained of the day before. In addition, there were three more he’d written that morning. I would have ignored them all were it not for the fact that his father had written one as well. I cut the envelope, folded it open and in no time, gave a cry of alarm.
“What is it?” wondered Holmes.
“There has been an attempt on Percy’s life! Last night, as he slept!”
Holmes gave me a queer look, stern and searching at the same time.
“What is it, Holmes?”
“Watson… where were you last night?”
“I was here, with you!”
“The whole time? It’s not as if I had you in view all night long.”
“Holmes! You don’t suppose I—”
He leaned in and redoubled the intensity of his doubtful stare.
“I wouldn’t kill Percy Phelps, Holmes.”
If he leaned any further, he was sure to tumble over.
“No! Look… I may have chucked him in the duck pond once or twice… filled his cap up with figgy pudding… but I would never… Stop looking at me like that! See here, Holmes, if my word is not enough for you, check the train schedules! There is simply no way I could have made it all the way out to Briarbrae House, made an attempt on Phelps and returned here before you missed me at breakfast!”
“Bah! Very well!” Holmes cried. “Then your name is cleared by a happy technicality, and yet your guilt is plain to any who care to behold your face!”
“Good Lord, Holmes, you’re beginning to sound exactly like Scotland Yard. Anyway, I suppose we’ve got work to do. Heavy though it makes my heart, it seems we must hurry back to the bedside of ‘Tadpole’ Phelps and see if we can figure out who’s tried to bump the little blighter off.”
* * *
We returned to find Briarbrae House transformed to Briarbrae Fortress. It seems the old home had served as the regional arsenal some centuries ago. Thus every groom, every stable boy, every cook and scullery maid had been outfitted with ancient helmets and bracers, armed and sent into the field. The grounds were patrolled by gangs of bitter-looking chambermaids armed with sixteenth-century harquebuses, which were certain to be instantly fatal to anyone so foolish as to try to fire one. As we approached, Pixby burst from the front door, armed with a pike and clad in a droopy white surcoat with a red cross. The thing was worn so sere as to be nearly translucent and seemed as if it was old enough to have been used in the First Crusa—
Wait…
No.
No, it’s not possible…
Is it?
“Who goes there?” Pixby demanded. Yet, since we were standing right in front of him and he’d met us only the day before, he was in the perfect position to recognize exactly who went there. He therefore demurred, lowered his pike and said, “Ah! Dr. Watson. Mr. Holmes. So pleased to see you once more. The young master is intolerable. No! Ah! He’s in danger. Terrible danger. That is what I meant to convey.”
“Of course it is. Come on, Holmes.”
If the household staff of Briarbrae House had been pressed into service as an impromptu army, I might have guessed their general. Annie Harrison had properly fortified Percy Phelps’s temporary infirmary. She’d drawn a heavy wooden table across the doorway and stood behind it, ready to challenge any who approached. She’d placed a second table between the room’s two windows. Both were lined with a collection of England’s finest Brown Bess muskets. Unlike the weaponry on display outside, each of these had been seen to by Annie herself and lay cleaned, loaded, cocked and gleaming. It seems Miss Harrison had no patience for reloading but had piled ready weapons in such numbers that she could simply discharge one, cast it aside and grab the next with such alacrity as to murder an entire cavalry regiment if one should be so foolish as to try to charge her position.
She glared at me. Behind her, her brother leaned on the second gun table looking apologetic and glum. His eyes were baggy with… not just fatigue, clearly, but actual lack of sleep. I tried to remain calm and calming as I heaved aside the table and squeezed into Percy’s sick room/fortress keep.
“All right, Phelps?” I asked.
“Watson? Sweet Watson, is it you? Oh, you won’t believe it! As I slept, last night! A murderer! Horror! Confusion!”
“Holmes, would you be so kind as to lower Percy back down upon his pillows and stroke his fevered brow? If you don’t I’m sure he’s going to faint again and we’ll be stuck up here forever. Now tell me about this murderer of yours, Tadpole.”
“Well, as I lay, not quite sleeping, composing an ode on the subject of the unknowability of God’s plan and how it is unfairly stacked against England’s aristocracy…”
It actually was a good sign. As a doctor, hearing that Percy was turning his efforts back to the faux-artistic navel-staring of old was a sure indicator of recovery.
“…I thought I heard a noise! Just there, at the window! I pulled the covers up around my nose and waited. Sure enough, in only a moment more a dark figure lunged at my window from outside and smote it open with a sword!”
“No! A sword?” Holmes exclaimed, eyes alight with happiness. “Horror! Confusion!”
I rolled my eyes at the two of them and stepped to the window Percy indicated. Clearly, the thing had never been sword-smitten, yet I did find a few scratches near the latch. So, by “sword” Phelps was likely to have meant “some flat instrument, slid through the crack to lift the window latch”. A screwdriver, perhaps? No, it wouldn’t fit through such a narrow gap…
In the course of my investigation, I opened the window and looked down. Practically every flower in the bed below had been trampled and the earth that held them was crisscrossed with footprints. Whatever else, there seemed to have been a fairly impressive quantity of lurking done here, in the past few days.
I closed the window and turned back to Percy. “What happened next?”
“The fellow came straight at me, to that corner over there!” said Phelps, pointing to a dressing table on the far side of the room.
“Hmm… So, in an attempt to murder you with a sword, the attacker steps over here…” I muttered, walking away from the bed to the place he indicated. Next to the dressing table were a few water pipes, which had been poorly fitted when the ancient house gained running water. “What happened then?”
“Well, I knew I was cornered,” said Phelps. “What could I do? I knew I must stand and fight!”
“You?” I asked, archly. “Stood?”
“No, I didn’t actually have to. For, you see, I gave a mighty battle cry. Hearing that he wouldn’t have it all his way, my attacker’s courage broke. He flung aside his sword and fled through the window.”
“You have his sword, then?”
Joseph Harrison gave me a glance as if I were a complete fool and said, “No. We didn’t find a sword. Percy had a nightmare, that’s what I think.”
Harrison seemed to be at the end of his patience with the whole affair. I turned back to Percy and asked, “Did you get a good look at the fellow?”
“No. He wore a da
rk cloak, pulled up around his face.”
“Hmm… And what happened next?”
“Well, my mighty battle cry alerted the household. Annie, Pixby and one of the nurses were in here in a flash!”
“Wait now… There was nobody in the room with you? Joseph told me that either Annie or a flock of nurses were constantly at your side.”
Percy colored a bit and mumbled, “Well, yes. Until last night I was never unattended. But you gave me such hope, sweet Watson! I thought… with you on the case… perhaps I was well enough to be on my own.”
“So, the ‘murderer’ struck on the very first night you were alone? That is telling. Now, Annie, when you arrived, was the window open?”
She clenched her musket in both hands and gave me a grim nod which not only let me know that the window had been open, but also that if she ever found out who had opened it, she would gun him down that very instant.
“Unlikely to have been a nightmare, then,” I noted. “Unless it was one that could open a window.”
“Oh, there are plenty of those, Watson,” Holmes assured me.
“Nevertheless…”
I turned my attention back to the far corner of the room and was rewarded, in short order, by the gleam of silver from behind the water pipes. Leaning down, I extricated the culprit, held it up for all to see and asked, “Percy, is this your butter knife?”
“Yes. But I have no idea what it’s doing back there.”
“I think I might,” I said, with a smile. I looked about the room, carefully gathering my thoughts and vetting my theories. Yes… the case was coming together.
“What shall we do, Watson? How shall we protect Percy?” Annie demanded.
I gazed out the window at the failing light. December days are short and darkness, I knew, would soon hold sway. “This is what I suggest…”
* * *
The Briarbrae Militia was disbanded. As this was accomplished without any of the grooms blowing their fingers off, I consider it an unqualified success.
Warlock Holmes--My Grave Ritual Page 3
