He relit his lantern, narrowing the shutters so that only a thin beam of illumination was emitted. With it, he examined the large, heavy padlock which secured the hasp which in turn secured the barn doors.
“Ah yes,” he said. “Alas, it is a Chubb four-lever detector, the bane of lock pickers everywhere, designed to jam automatically if anything but the correct key is inserted. Even if my fingers were as nimble and sensitive as they used to be, tickling open this particular brand of padlock would be the work of hours, perhaps even days. Which is why I have brought along someone for whom no gap, however slender, is impassable. Smith will be effectively our living lockpick. All we need do is apply brute force to one of the doors, like so, pushing it inwards as far as the bolt will allow. Watson? Your help, please. Put your shoulder to this with me, will you?”
I weighed in beside him, shoving against the door with all my might. Between us we contrived to create an aperture of perhaps seven inches in width.
“Quick, Smith!” Holmes urged. “Watson and I cannot keep this up forever. Slide yourself through while you can.”
Reptilio inveigled his body into the gap in that sinuous, sinewy way of his. For several moments he appeared to be stuck, but with a bit of torsion and deft manoeuvring he contrived to wriggle further in, and then all at once, like a mouse into a crack in the wainscoting, he was inside, gone.
Holmes passed the lantern through to him. “You are my eyes now, Smith.”
Reptilio retreated into the depths of the barn and returned almost immediately bearing a lump of firewood. This he inserted between the doors to keep them wedged apart, thus relieving Holmes and me of the strain of pushing.
“What do you want me to look at?” he asked.
“The biplane,” came the reply. “I want you to inspect it carefully from end to end, every inch of it.”
“To find what?”
“Anything that appears out of place. Anything that strikes you as abnormal.”
“Abnormal?” Reptilio said. “I don’t know the first ruddy thing about flying. How am I supposed to tell what’s abnormal and what’s not?”
“Try nonetheless. Make a mental record of all that you see, then report back.”
Reptilio disappeared back into the barn, and was there for the next few minutes. Occasionally I caught glimpses of the Grahame-White as he shone the lantern beam over its framework. He was doing his best to be methodical, in accordance with Holmes’s request: first the biplane’s nose, then the wings, the cockpit, the propeller, all the way to the tailfin and back again.
The night’s chill began to seep into my bones as Holmes and I waited. Many a long vigil had the two of us shared over the course of our acquaintance, staking out a room, a house, a lonely stretch of road. But I was older now, and more susceptible to cold and cramp. I could not stand stationary for lengthy periods as once I had been able. I was obliged to rub my hands together to warm them, and stamp my feet to keep the circulation going.
This irked Holmes but he withheld from voicing complaint. He himself flexed his fingers now and then, and shifted almost imperceptibly from foot to foot. His powers of self-regulation were tremendous even in old age. He once told me that, as old age encroached, plenty of fresh honey and royal jelly helped keep him in trim and preserve his stamina and constitution. “As a dietary supplement, Watson, nothing can beat the produce of the little striped gangs in my beehives.” He had indeed devoted an entire chapter of his magnum opus, The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen, to the physiological benefits of honey, and had lectured on it to an audience made up of apiculturists and dieticians at the Royal Society, to some acclaim.
At last the discomfort grew intolerable, and I said, “Does he have to be much longer? I am anxious about being discovered here, loitering on someone else’s property, but I am still more anxious about developing pneumonia. Damp night air is not kind to the pleural membranes, you know.”
“Smith is being thorough,” Holmes replied. “We must applaud him for that, and exercise patience.”
“Your patience will render us hospital patients if we’re not careful.”
“If you’re well enough to make dreadful puns, old chap, you’re well enough to stay put a few minutes more.”
“I am sure my puns would improve were I not –”
“Hsst!” Holmes dropped his voice to a barely audible whisper. “Did you hear that?”
I shook my head.
He cast his gaze about, peering into the darkness. I likewise scanned the vicinity. The grassy field, the low black band of forest, the distant sparks of the manor house lights… Nothing. Nothing unusual. Nothing different.
“Perhaps you were mist–” I began, but Holmes stopped my mouth with his fingertips.
It was then that I grew truly concerned. Thanks to my exposure to the din of rifle and cannon fire in Afghanistan, my hearing had always been less acute than Holmes’s. If his ears had detected some unexpected sound, then I had no doubt but that it must exist.
His next four words were as faint as sighs, yet for all that they sent a shudder through me.
“We are not alone.”
“Someone is watching?” I hissed.
“Yes. Someone practised in the art of stealth. He is but twenty yards from us.”
The only place of concealment at that range was the stand of oaks.
“No. Do not look in his direction,” Holmes warned.
“But he must realise we know he is watching.”
“Not necessarily. Keep perfectly still. The lantern light in the barn is giving away Smith’s presence, but we two are in the barn’s shadow. He may not have noticed us yet.”
My hand went reflexively to my pocket, groping for the service revolver that was not there and had not been there in nigh on a decade. I felt its absence more keenly then than if it had been a lost limb. How often had I relied on the gun to rescue me from trouble? I owed it my life several times over, all the way back to Kabul where I stopped one of the Khan’s men in his tracks while I was in the midst of tending to an injured Sikh infantryman during the Siege of the Sherpur Cantonment. The Sikh later died of his wounds, and I would have joined him in oblivion had that sword-wielding Afghan maniac managed to plunge the blade of his pulwar into my breast, as he was so eager to do.
Sans revolver, I had no choice but to stand motionless as a statue. Holmes did likewise. Both of us hardly dared breathe.
Our only hope, as I saw it, was that our observer, whoever he was, did not belong on Mallinson’s land any more than we did. Perhaps he was a poacher and was surprised to find someone else engaged in nocturnal activities that were obviously as illicit as his own. His natural impulse would be to beat a hasty retreat. Certainly he would have no inclination to confront or challenge us.
This line of thinking, though mildly cheering, could not mitigate the fact that with poachers there was a tendency towards firearms.
Moments ticked by, and I waited for Holmes to relax and lower his guard, a signal that I might do so too. The tension that I was feeling at least made me forget about the cold and its effect on my person. With my heart racing and the adrenaline pumping, I was in fact almost warm.
Inside the barn, Reptilio had finally completed his examination of the biplane. He came to the doors to announce this fact, and though he addressed us sotto voce, he may as well have been shouting at the top of his lungs. Sound carries far at night, and our observer doubtless had his ears pricked, so that all at once he knew that the lantern-carrying man in the barn was not alone – he had associates outside.
In short, Reptilio had unwittingly given the game away.
“No alternative,” said Holmes. “We must make a run for it.”
He seized my elbow in order to drag me along with him. Meanwhile a startled Reptilio demanded to know what the matter was.
Then, from the oaks, a rough voice ordered us to halt, and the command was reinforced by the deafening blast of a shotgun.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE GAMEKEEPER
Buckshot peppered the wall of the barn just above our heads. Holmes and I froze to the spot.
“And there’s plenty more where that came from,” the voice by the oaks growled. “Don’t move a muscle, any of you. That includes you in the barn. This is a full-choke shotgun and I’m a damned good shot. I can clip a partridge at sixty yards, and I can take your head off even through that narrow gap.”
A figure appeared from amid the trees, moving with easy, swaggering purpose. His shotgun, a double-barrelled twelve-bore, was aimed at us, levelled unwaveringly at our chests. I made out a bowler hat, knee-length boots and a leather pouch slung at the hip. The man’s attire and authoritative bearing made it clear that this was no poacher. Rather, it was the poacher’s nemesis, a gamekeeper.
“Devil knows what business you three are up to with Mr Mallinson’s aeroplane,” he continued, “but whether it’s stealing or sabotage, you aren’t getting away with it.”
“It’s neither, as a matter of fact,” said Holmes. “We’re acquainted with Craig Mallinson, as it happens, and if you were just to take us to him, I’m sure we could straighten the whole thing out.”
“Acquainted, eh? Is that the truth?”
“Yes, so there’s no need to keep pointing that weapon at us,” I said. “This is all a misunderstanding, and we should deal with it like civilised people.”
“Oh, I think there’s every need to keep my gun trained on you,” the gamekeeper said. Now that he was close to us I could see he was a medium-height fellow with a stocky build and extravagant muttonchop whiskers. His eyes were small and ferocious, and his nose was longer and sharper-tipped even than Holmes’s own. The animal he most resembled physiologically was perhaps his commonest prey – a fox. “For all your fine gentlemanly talk, you look like squirrels ready to scarper. I don’t intend to allow that to happen.”
“You have one cartridge remaining,” Holmes pointed out. “There are three of us. No matter how swiftly you reload, at least two of us would be able to get away.”
“One of you dead is good enough.” The gamekeeper swivelled the gun from me to Holmes to Reptilio in quick succession. “Which one wants the face full of pellets? Come on. You choose. It’s no bother to me which.”
“Very well,” said Holmes. “You have us at your mercy. At the least, may we meet with Mr Mallinson, as I asked? You could march us to the house at gunpoint, and I give you my word we won’t attempt to flee.”
The gamekeeper cocked his head. “Your word? And is that worth much?”
“I am,” said Holmes, “Sherlock Holmes. That must count for something.”
“Not for me it doesn’t. Never heard of you.”
“Obviously no great reader,” Holmes muttered aside to me. “Probably illiterate.”
“What’s that?” said the gamekeeper, scowling.
“Nothing, my good man. Nothing.”
“Remember who has the gun here.”
“How could we possibly forget?”
“So don’t go cheeking me. I kill you, and no court of law will convict me. It’s legitimate defence of property.”
“Yes, don’t antagonise him, Holmes,” I said. “I for one prefer my brains where they are, in my head.”
“Me too,” said Reptilio. “I’m not with them, by the way,” he told the gamekeeper. “I mean, I am, but not with them, if you follow.”
The gamekeeper’s frown said he didn’t.
“I mean, yes, we’re all of us in the same location, together in that sense, but I didn’t come willingly. They forced me into it. Twisted my arm, like.”
“You know what?” said the gamekeeper. “I don’t care. Come out of the barn, and then we’re all going down to the big house to see the boss.”
“A capital idea,” said Holmes. “Clever of you to think of it. Why didn’t I come up with that?”
“Hoy! Quiet, you, Mr Hemlock Jones or whatever your name is. What did I tell you about cheeking me? Any more of your lip and it won’t go well for you.”
“Of course. One of my rules is that the man with the gun always sets the rules.”
“Too right,” said the gamekeeper. “Now move, all of you. And no funny business.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SETTLEHOLM MANOR
Settleholm Manor was a sprawling baronial hall, parts of which dated back to the 1700s. The main body of it was constructed of granite blocks and imposingly crenellated like a castle. Newer brick-built wings extended off to either side. Ivy covered most of its frontage, and the light spilling from the windows of the reception rooms picked out the leaves’ autumnal blood-red hue. A large automobile was parked on the drive, a Humberette, its coachwork and brass trim giving off a host of gleaming reflections.
I would not call the manor beautiful by any means. Its size and grandeur, however, could not help but stir up in one a sense of appreciation. A sense of belittlement too, which perhaps was the point. We were all Davids before this architectural Goliath. It was a house designed to impress upon visitors its owner’s lofty status and their comparative lowliness.
Up some stone steps we went to the porticoed entrance, and thence indoors, into a galleried hallway that was probably larger in itself than my and Mrs Watson’s entire house. Certainly Holmes’s cottage could have slotted snugly inside.
A staircase of oak, with matching banisters, swept to the upper storey like a soaring dragon. At its foot two suits of medieval armour stood sentinel, posed with their steel gauntlets resting on the pommels of their inverted swords. Portraits in gilt frames lined the walls, but none of the faces depicted resembled Craig Mallinson’s. I imagine the paintings had come with the manor when he purchased it, generations of aristocracy immortalised in oil on canvas, held eternally hostage in their ancestral home, like ghosts.
The gamekeeper positioned Holmes, myself and Reptilio in the centre of the hall’s chessboard-patterned floor, using the shotgun much as a shepherd might his crook when rounding up the flock. Then he called out to Mallinson in a loud voice.
“Sir! Intruders for you. What would you have me do with them?”
His employer appeared moments later. Mallinson was fully dressed rather than in nightwear, which bore out the supposition that he had been pacing the manor, unable to sleep; so, too, did his tired, reddened eyes. A black silk armband cinched his left sleeve.
“What’s this, Jenks? Intruders you say?”
“Trespassers,” the gamekeeper, Jenks, elaborated. “Found ’em snooping around your aeroplane up at the barn. Tampering with it, they seemed to be, and maybe liking to nick it.”
“My God,” said Mallinson, taking his first good look at us. “It’s you, Mr Holmes. And your friend. And who’s this other queer-looking fellow?”
“Someone who’s got nothing to do with them, that’s who,” said Reptilio. “An innocent victim.”
“Innocent to the tune of twenty-five shillings,” I groused.
“And I am not queer-looking,” Reptilio added, pouting.
“Jenks, drop your gun,” said Mallinson. “These men are no threat to us.”
“But sir, I caught them at it,” Jenks protested. “Red-handed, as it were. Crept up on ’em and halted ’em in their tracks with a warning shot.”
“That would account for the report I heard from out in the grounds just now. I assumed you were potting rabbits. But, whatever these men were doing, I will not have you waving that thing at them.” Mallinson grasped the shotgun by the barrel and pushed it downward so that it pointed at the floor. “Could go off by accident, and then where would we be?”
Reptilio sighed audibly in relief, and I cannot deny that I felt like doing the same.
“We are grateful to you, sir,” said Holmes. “And if I may be permitted to explain myself…”
“You’d damned well better had,” said Mallinson crisply, “because, while I don’t hold with shooting as prestigious a person as yourself, Mr Holmes, the fact remain
s that you are on my land without invitation and engaged in clandestine shenanigans of some sort, and I am not best pleased. It seems like a damned impertinence, if you ask me.”
“I can see that that is how it might appear, but in as much as I am pursuing the matter of your son’s death on your behalf, one could argue that I therefore, technically, am here by invitation.”
“‘Son’s death’?” said Reptilio with a roll of the eyes. “This just gets worse and worse.”
“Don’t waste your sophistry on me, Mr Holmes,” said Mallinson. “It won’t wash. What, so your findings have led you to my door? Is that it?”
“To your aeroplane, strictly speaking. If we’re going to be accurate.”
“Ah,” said the mining magnate. “And is there something about my Grahame-White that is germane to Patrick’s death?”
“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t yet had a chance to confer with my colleague Mr Smith here about the state of the aircraft.”
“I didn’t see nothing,” said Reptilio, addressing Mallinson. “Not a thing, sir. It was just a plane, and I’d be willing to swear that before a beak. Just a big old flying machine. Nothing peculiar about it at all.”
“But you must reckon there is, Mr Holmes,” said Mallinson. “You have suspicions – suspicions that have prompted you to come and take a look at the plane during the dead of night. Why is that, I wonder. Could you not have called round in the daytime and requested to see it? I’d have been more than willing to show you, and then there’d have been no need for any skulduggery, nor for Jenks to abandon his nocturnal patrol of the estate to bring you in.”
“My motives were noble, I assure you,” said Holmes suavely. “I had no wish to cause you further distress. I have at the moment only the merest glimmering of a theory about how Patrick died, and I hoped to furnish myself with proof or disproof without your ever knowing. Discourteous as it was for me and my associates to search your barn without permission, it would, I felt, have been a greater discourtesy to pay a call on you at such a sensitive time and give you cause to believe that I somehow suspected you of involvement in your son’s demise.”
Sherlock Holmes - Gods of War Page 11
