‘If there’s one thing to be learned from all this,’ said Gordon, ‘it’s that nothing much good comes from mixing fact with fiction.’
‘No,’ said Francis, ‘but sometimes it may not altogether be a bad thing.’
Gordon sighed and gave him a playful shove. He wondered sometimes if Francis would ever learn.
‘When did you find out the truth?’ asked Gordon.
‘Perhaps I just stopped trying to be Sherlock Holmes and turned back into me,’ replied Francis. ‘It was so simple. It was the overlapping.’
‘The what?’
‘The overlapping. You may remember that Miss Dean smelt horribly of some probably very cheap floral perfume. When the reporter came, I noticed the same smell, much less strong, but Miss Dean hadn’t washed it completely away before turning into her Fleet Street character. I think she’d already prepared herself for another visit when she decided it was time for the Professor to appear, and changed into the disguise without remembering to wash off the floral scent that Miss Dean was so fond of. ‘
‘I see!’ exclaimed Gordon. ‘Mrs Evans remembered that Moriaty had a poor sense of smell.’
‘Yes,’ said Francis. ‘Anatomically fascinating: an Achilles heel of the nose. And then the reporter, who had a Woodbine behind his ear, smelled not of Woodbines but of French cigarettes!’
‘Of course!’ shouted Gordon. ‘The reporter had just been the man in the street, smoking under the lamp-post.’
‘And Gauloises didn’t really go with the heavy floral scent’ explained Francis. ‘And as for the man in the street. We saw him, of course. The Professor told us he had seen him. Miss Dean told us she had seen him. The reporter told us he had seen him. But we never saw the man in the street when we were with any of the others. And when you told me about the old man near the Balmoral Guest House I recognized the description perfectly fitted Professor Faversham, who certainly didn’t have any sort of Charlie Chaplin walk. No, our visitor was doing that comical walk in the street because he was so pleased with himself and all his disguises, and didn’t realize you were watching him.’
‘And yet you checked up that the newspaper reporter really was from the Daily Sketch, and that Professor Faversham really was on his way to see you.’
‘Yes. Moriaty left hardly a stone unturned. He had got himself taken on at the newspaper as a reporter, probably months before. As for our expert from the British Museum, I think we shall be hearing in a few hours that the real Professor Faversham has been found, bound and gagged, his clothes and identity stolen for those few necessary hours when Moriaty needed to impersonate him. My belief is that the professor intended to warn me that something was very wrong, and Moriaty had to prevent that at all costs if he was to convince me that the exercise book was genuine. If he could do that, his wish, to once and for all destroy the reputation of Sherlock Holmes, would be fulfilled.
‘But I still had to be sure. When Professor Faversham paid a call, I knew things were coming to a head. I was almost being forced against my will to expose poor old Holmes. It was like being caught in a whirlwind in which I had no way to turn. But let the next bit be a lesson to you, Gordon. Read as much as you can!’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Gordon.
‘The professor was supposed to be an expert, perhaps the world’s greatest scholar, concerning Holmes. He must know everything, have read everything. So, I began a discussion with him about some of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes’s stories. I even held up the book and showed him the stories. I asked, what did he think of Sir Arthur’s The Adventure of Foulkes Rath? He wasn’t quite sure. No wonder! That, and the other stuff I mentioned, wasn’t by Sir Arthur! Only last year I got this birthday present from Mum and Dad : The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes, not by Sir Arthur at all, but by his son Adrian. The book is quite new. And I’d muddled up the information about the stories as well. I reminded him that Colonel Addleton had been suspected of the murder of his nephew Percy Longton, when in fact it was the other way round. And the supposedly leading authority on Conan Doyle hadn’t a clue!’
‘Moriaty wasn’t well read enough!’ laughed Gordon.
‘Well, if that doesn’t prove what I tell you – read as much as you can!’
‘Point taken. But what would have happened if it had all been true?’
‘That’s what worries me, ‘ said Francis, and his eyes looked deep into the diminishing fire. ‘It would have ruined Sherlock Holmes, and probably ruined me. I ask myself, would I have told the story? Would I have kept it from the world?’
‘Whatever you would have done,’ said Gordon, ‘it would have been right, because you’re back to being you.’
They stood silently for a moment or two, each with his own thoughts, and then Francis snapped out of it.
‘It’s cold,’ he said. ‘Those chestnuts should be ready by now.’
They had been cooking slowly in the glowing shreds of the bonfire, where Francis had placed them carefully above a small green exercise book.
‘Coo … these are delicious,’ said Gordon, hopping one of the chestnuts around in his mouth.
‘They should be,’ said Francis. ‘They have been roasted in the embers of truth.’
The First and the Last
The first shall be last and the last shall be first. Time and its tricks,
thought Francis Jones. He had never imagined he would come back, but here he was, watching fields and lanes and sudden patches of woodland scudding past the car window, and then the signpost, Blackton 2 miles, pointing him back twenty years.
‘I’m glad you came, Francis,’ said the driver. ‘Pleased we met.’
It had happened by chance. Edward Pember had travelled north from London the previous day, booking in at the County Hotel in readiness for his aunt’s funeral the following morning. Two days earlier, a friend of Francis had remembered to ask ‘Did you see that obit in the Telegraph? I thought of you. Didn’t you know her? Alicia Ackington?’ Then, it hadn’t occurred to him that he might be at the final farewell, but that evening, sitting in his garden as the late summer night’s gloom deepened, he made up his mind, telephoned the County and booked a room. He and Edward had literally bumped into one another in a corridor, and discovered over a drink in the deserted bar that they were on the same mission. Francis didn’t drive, but Edward had come by car, and offered Francis a lift to St Benedict’s.
‘Aunts can be very time consuming,’ said Edward, breaking a silence.
‘Sorry?’
‘Aunts. You were telling me about your aunt. Winifred, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh, yes. Auntie Winn. A jovial soul. There was always an abundance of aunts when I was growing up.’
‘In Norfolk?’
‘Yes. Branlingham. Do you know it?’
‘No, but it sounds Norfolk.’
‘Auntie Winn tended to be daring, married a Northerner and moved up here. Every summer I was packed off to spend some of the school holidays with her.’
‘So, you know Blackton well?
‘I think I must have, once,’ said Francis, but as the green approach to the town gave way to the first dribble of ramshackle houses, he wasn’t sure. It wasn’t the physicality of the place he remembered, but the atmosphere of it, the feelings that even now, twenty years later, he could summon up. ‘And I can’t get used to calling it Blackton,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Edward. ‘It’s not often that a town changes its name.’
*
Since winning a painting competition in the Eagle, Gordon Jones had become something of a personality in its pages, having been featured in ‘Hobbies Corner’ as a collector of cheese labels. He was now a proud member of the Fromologists’s Circle, and had just swopped a surplus-to-requirements label for Caerphilly Minor for an elusive Double Gloucester Minor. His suggestions for new plotlines for P.C.49 had also borne fruit, for ‘The Case of the Bruised Avocado’ (one of 49’s most baffling problems) had been based on his idea. The end of the summer holidays promised
to be exciting, too, for he was to be a special guest, as an ‘Eagle Friend to All’, at Hulton’s Boys and Girls’ Exhibition at Olympia. The one disappointment of the summer was that he couldn’t join his cousin Francis at his Auntie Winn’s house up North. Auntie Winn had assured Gordon that as he was now famous, he owed it to his admirers not to desert them, and if (which was most unlikely) he should not be so famous next year he was very welcome to come to stay then.
At ease with not being so famous as his younger cousin, Francis knew he would enjoy himself away from home. Much as he enjoyed living with his mother and father at Red Cherry House, there was a different sort of pleasure awaiting him at Auntie Winn’s, the little house perched on a hill above the dirty town, somehow keeping itself above the fray, and smelling of Lurpak and furniture polish.
Uncle Eric, Auntie Winn’s husband, was a college lecturer, and always made Francis welcome, ready for a walk through the woods, or an excursion to the yachting pool, or playing a gramophone record that he particularly wanted Francis to hear, but that morning he had to go to London on business. It was a spankingly bright day licked by a warm breeze, and Francis was surprised by how homesick he felt. His spirits hardly lifted when Auntie Winn’s daughter-in-law, Ivy, called in for a cup of tea.
Auntie Winn had tuned in to Francis’s doubtful mood. ‘Lovely day for it,’ she said. ‘Too nice to sit about indoors.’ As if under instruction, the sun strode across the back garden that sloped down the hill, giving the lolloping tulips a technicolor gleam. ‘Dad’s old bicycle is rusting in the shed, just waiting for a run out.’
‘It’s a death trap, that bike,’ said Ivy. ‘Why don’t you come out with me? I’m off to The Vale. Francis would enjoy that, wouldn’t he, Mum?’
The fact was that as the years passed Auntie Winn grew increasingly unsure of what a growing boy might or might not like, but she thought it best to sound encouraging. ‘Oh, the Vale. You’d love it, Francis. It’s a lovely drive, and the garden’s out of this world.’
‘We can stop off on the way back and have a grand tea somewhere,’ Ivy added, and five minutes later Francis was sitting beside her in her green Morris Minor.
‘What’s The Vale?’ he asked.
‘One of the oldest houses around these parts. I work there as a part-time companion to Miss Ackington. The Vale’s a special place.’
It must have been, compared to the dreary rows of terraces that surrounded it. Like a shy old lady who had gathered her skirts around her and retreated into a world of her own, the house was hidden from the road by high brick walls and abundant laurels that spilled out over them, so green that they were almost black. Turning into the drive between the stone pillared gates, it seemed to Francis as if the very air he was breathing had somehow changed in an instant. It was absurd. The approach was only two hundred yards or so, but it wound its way, each bend accentuating the loneliness of the house that waited at the end of the twisting journey. The little car might have been a vehicle from outer space, from which this place appeared as something distinct. Although the sun shone here, just as it did at Auntie Winn’s, a quiet coolness enveloped him as he got out of the car and stood looking up (for it had a tallness, like an imposing person) at the house. So, this was The Vale.
‘You’ll enjoy the garden,’ said Ivy, wrenching back the hand brake. ‘Miss Ackington doesn’t like visitors in the house, but she’ll be delighted for you to explore the grounds. I’ll be about an hour.’
Francis felt angry, as if he’d been sent to the Tradesman’s Entrance, although according to Ivy he wasn’t even going to get as far as that.
‘Rose will look after you,’ said Ivy.
‘Who’s Rose?’ Francis was trying not to sound surly.
‘Miss Ackington’s housekeeper. She’ll be on the outlook for you. There’s plenty to see. Don’t go too near the stream at the bottom of the garden. There’s a huge rat run there. Now, let’s synchronize.’
Ivy pulled back Francis’s cuff to reveal the Ingersoll Eagle issue wristwatch that Gordon had bought him for his birthday.
‘I’ll be finished at half past three. Have a good time.’
*
‘You were privileged to get to know my aunt,’ said Edward Pember. ‘Few people did.’
‘But not that first day,’ said Francis. ‘Ivy had made it quite clear that I wouldn’t get beyond the kitchen.’
‘And a cup of Rose’s tea?’
‘Exactly. I suppose I felt miffed at being so ignored, but the garden … well, it sort of overcame me. It was the first garden to have that effect on me. It wasn’t that it was spectacular, or had magnificent waterfalls. Thinking of it now, I suppose it was quite neglected, but the wildness had got into the heart of it. Something about it got to me as I wandered through it. It seemed to welcome me. Do you know what I mean?’
‘I think I do.’
‘I was glad that I’d been dumped there, and, sorry to use such a tired phrase, time stood still. Something changed in me that day, and it began in that garden at The Vale. It’s difficult to explain.’
‘No, go on.’
‘Naturally, the first thing I did was the forbidden thing. I had to find the stream. Sure enough, it was only a moment or so before I saw the first plump rat, sleek and nimble, skidding into the water. The stream was overhung with willows and trees. It was an intensely private place, where the sun had blotted out, and the liquid sound of the water trickling in from wherever it was sourced. It was as if there could be no other sound in the world, but I was to find out later that everything about The Vale seemed only to belong there, different from everything that was happening outside its walls. When I’d had enough of the shade and the rats, I wandered through the grounds, the greenhouses filled with decaying fruit because nobody had bothered to collect it, the walled garden where most of the plants had run to seed. The path across the lawn led me back towards the terrace that ran off the back of the house, and that’s when I heard the voice. A scratchy sound cutting across the air.
‘It was Rose, calling from a window at the East side. “Boy!’ she called. I remember, she reminded me of an old blackbird I’d seen once, waiting on the railing of a church. “You boy! Tea!”
She had gone from the window when I got up to the house. Being a polite boy, of course I knocked at the nearest door. It must have been on the latch, because the door swung open and there she was, standing against the old stove of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. It wasn’t only her head that was bird-like. She wore a long black dress that finished just above her ankles, and she was short, with tiny feet tucked into flat black shoes that fastened across the top with a button, and small hands. Her grey hair scraped the top of her head. She told me to come in and sit down. “What’s your name?” she asked.’
‘Francis. Francis Jones.’
‘It makes no odds to me,’ she said, ‘but she’ll want to know. Would you like a lump of cake?’
She pointed to a shelf, and to a tin that had ‘Cake’ helpfully embossed on its side. I took down the tin. She prised it open and cut a thick slice of sultana loaf.
“‘You can pass me the tea caddy as you’re up,’” she said, nodding at another shelf. I picked up a caddy and was handing it to her when she almost shouted, “No, not that one.” She snatched it from me and set it back on the shelf. “The one with flowers on it.”
‘I’m not sure what else she said at that first meeting. Nothing much more, as I recall. I just sat there and ate the cake and drank the tea with her sitting there across the table. It should have made me feel uncomfortable, but it didn’t.’
‘Well,’ Edward laughed, ‘Rose wasn’t exactly known for her scintillating conversation.’
‘When I’d finished the tea, she looked at me quite strongly and said “Francis, wasn’t it? She’ll want to know. You’d best go back to the garden now, until Miss Bannister collects you.”’
‘It must have been another half hour before Ivy – Miss Bannister – collected me. I suppose I did
feel as if I were a parcel. It was pretty obvious that Rose hadn’t spent much time around sixteen year-old boys.
‘Anyway, I wandered back through the grounds, cut through to the stream, watched a rat or two going about its business. It began to grow dark. I made my way back up to the house. I’d made up my mind to knock on the door and jolly well let Ivy know that I was fed up with being kept in the garden like a dog let out without a lead. Even so, I was too timid to march up to the front door, and I certainly didn’t intend finding that Tradesman’s Entrance.
‘Just as I reached the side steps onto the terrace, I heard music. Nothing unusual in that. Mum and Dad always had the wireless on when I was a boy, and Uncle Eric never thought a day complete unless he’d sat me down to listen to something, Elgar or Delius or one of those. But this music was different. It was the first time music had stopped me: I can only put it like that. Just stopped me, as if it had taken me over. It was a piano I could hear, and a melody that made me shiver. Not those frightening shivers you get when it’s suddenly cold; this was quite different. The music waved over me, soft as a breeze. It was only when I heard the melody hesitate, then stop and start again, that I knew it couldn’t be the wireless or a gramophone. No. Someone in the house was playing the piano. I crept a little down the steps, standing with my back against the rhododendrons, just to listen and keep out of sight.
‘And then Ivy came out and we drove off. At the last moment, the housekeeper ran up to the car and presented me with a little parcel of goodies: ginger snaps, I seem to remember. I don’t suppose I’d have given The Vale a second thought. After all, I’d been treated as a nuisance and a nonentity, which of course in itself is a useful lesson in life. But the next day Rose telephoned Auntie Winn and told her that Miss Ackington wanted to meet me.’
THE BOY DETECTIVES Page 10
