He usually had difficulty approaching strangers or talking to them, but bracing himself he did what had to be done, and ended up talking to one-eyed Charlie. Poor fellow had also lost most of his teeth. He looked like a scarecrow, but had the most gentle voice, if a little sibilant, as the absence of some front teeth gave his speech a whistling sound. They sat on a fallen log of chestnut in a small area earmarked for construction, and the wheelwright started telling him about the supernatural manifestations which everybody had witnessed, and he was quickly joined by a small crowd consisting mainly of women. They all confirmed the occurrence of the nightly wails and moans, the flames shooting up the west turret and the rattle of gunfire. Holmes decided that he would come back just before the witching hour. Most of the villagers were too afraid to join him, but Charlie and his wife Molly were game.
So it was that after a tiring day, Holmes and his two companions took position under a giant oak not fifty yards from the west turret and waited. The man from London had refused to entertain conjectures, believing them to be counter-productive when based on hearsay, but in spite of himself he formed the opinion that the expected shooting flame might have been man-made, although he could not guess the reason for its appearance. He was not expecting anything to happen before midnight, which was what everybody had said. He had not borne in mind that the poor peasants did not possess a single clock between them. His heart missed a beat when all of a sudden, a weird rattle tore the midnight silence. It was like a stammering thunder. He had heard from Mycroft about the War Office negotiating the acquisition of a Belgian gun which could fire bullets in quick succession, which would account for the rattling sound, but he knew that they had not yet concluded the deal. So that was something contradicting a half-formed conjecture. He had imagined that the flame might come from gunpowder, but if it did, the tell-tale odour of sulphur would confirm this notion. However, after the short burst of rattling, when the flame shot up, when he sniffed the air, he detected no smell of sulphur, and emitted a low curse. It was then that the clearest sign of something occult occurred. The wailing moan. No humans could produce this heart-wrenching moan, on their own. No instrument was able to sound like this. No animal or animals either. The nearest he could describe it was a Greek chorus of wounded furies bemoaning the killing of their valiant armies and its echo. Any doubt that he may have had now proved unsustainable. No human counterfeit manifestations these!
______
Having decided that they were not going to put money into the pocket of the sinister Lord Leopold Augustus Sternton, they still had to find the means of getting the castle which had seduced all of them. They all sat down round the big round table in the sitting room one evening and over a banquet prepared by Armande and Algie, both priding themselves on their culinary expertise. Everybody was invited to contribute one idea. Anatole Frunk, who looked after their finances suggested that as they could easily afford to pay the asking price, the best thing was to buy the place, and then set about ruining his despicable lordship by aiming at his assets. He had some sound ideas to that effect. Vissarionovich was for a fatal accident to befall the tyrant. Bartola, who developed an interest and expertise in poisons after she was accused of murder, suggested poisoning the man who had killed his wife and gone unpunished. The Bishop spoke out against committing murder. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. None of the ideas had an immediate appeal, until Irene spoke.
‘The core of a foolproof project is already in existence,’ she said. As a rule, anything she said was received with great attention, as she had illustrated often enough in the past that her ideas were as cogent as they came. As nobody seemed to guess what she was driving at, she elaborated. The villagers were already convinced of the ghost of Lady Sternton haunting the castle with a group of sympathisers from the underworld.
‘Excellent idea,’ exclaimed Traverson, ‘but people aren’t sure how much credence to put in these stories. In a few months maybe the rumours might become more credible-’
‘Or fizzle out altogether,’ said Bartola.
‘No, we can’t just sit and wait, we need to act.’ But how? A few voices chorused.
‘In Alabama,’ began Coleridge, ‘my father’s master could not sell his house because people said that a slave he had hung in the barn returned every night demanding justice.’
‘That’s the sort of thing I meant to work upon. People in the village already believe Lady Sternton’s ghost roamed the castle at midnight, we can work on this.’
‘I see,’ said Frunk, ‘bribe some people to spread the rumours.’
‘No,’ said Irene, ‘that’s not good enough. We need to precipitate matters and convince the villagers that ghosts and spirits have been unleashed upon them. The tittle-tattle becomes more potent when the rumour-mongers are convinced they are peddling the truth.’
This was the plan she put forward: they would devise a few spectacular happenings and let the villagers make their own conjectures. Clearly if the eye-witnesses arrived at the conclusion we want by themselves, that’s the best thing we can hope for.
It was with this in mind that they rented a large cottage between St Ives and Carbis Bay, and moved there for two weeks, combining a holiday they had once all planned to take together with the business of organising some spectacles for Sternton.
The bungalow was perched on a hill facing the Bristol Channel, with the nearest neighbour a whole mile away in St Ives proper. At night the winds howled and the waves threatened to invade. They loved the raw elements and exulted in the precariousness of the situation. Besides, the natural clamour and uproar were ideal covers for the noise they were going to produce in their own experiments. Vissarionovich had challenged himself to produce a machine gun. These were not yet available to the British army, although there were some negotiations with the Belgian manufacturers of the Montigny mitrailleuses. The Russian, once a military adviser to the the Tsar, had seen the blueprint of that lethal rapid fire serial killer. His cousins had been negotiating the acquisition of a thousand units, to be deployed against the people when they would inevitably rise. Vissarionovich was certain that he could make one from pieces that could be picked in scrapyards in London. He obviously needed to test his product, which explained why it was necessary to move to faraway Cornwall. Before leaving London he had scoured the metal merchants of the Dock area and was quite sanguine about having found everything he needed.
Gunpowder was easy to make, but there was one big problem. Irene insisted that no chances were to be taken. They had to imagine that Lord Sternton was not going to just admit that his property was haunted. He was going to look into it to discover if the manifestations were not man-made. He would employ the most knowledgeable people to prove that it was a hoax. We must do everything in such a way that even if Lord Sternton hired Mr Holmes to investigate the strange manifestations we’d still be able to pull the wool over his eyes. Having emitted that supposition, she became convinced that Holmes would indeed be involved, and, as has been seen, she was right.
Vissarionovich, a mechanical genius, as he kept assuring the Club, assayed his little toy in the night, and everybody suggested improvements. The Russian easily retuned the revolving barrel to fit the consensus, and they got the rattling that everybody approved of. Very ghostly, they all pronounced.
The other trick was the flames shooting up. That was something which could be easily done with the help of black powder. The pugnacious and militaristic Russian knew exactly how to arrange this, but there was a big obstacle: Gunpowder or black powder needed sulphur, and as the stuff burned, it produced sulphur dioxide with its characteristic smell, which would indubitably lead Holmes to smell a hoax. Coleridge suggested that they could experiment with sulphur-free alternatives, and this is what they did. After trying a variety of other products, they found that sugar would do the trick. They tested the new synthesis the same night, when a storm roared outside, and the visual effect was perfect, and to their delight, smell was there none.
Having an i
dea that they needed to produce a ghostly wail, they had asked Anatole, a talented amateur bassoonist to bring all three of the cherished instruments that he had brought with him from Geneva, and Irene thought of including the didgeridoo that her friend (lover?) Bilongong had given to her as a parting gift. Whilst the elements roared like smitten beasts outside, under Anatole’s guidance they mastered the elements of the fagotto, as Bartola called it. They all took turns, but although they agreed that the sound they wanted was close enough, they suggested that it was recognisably coming from musical instruments. Irene’s contribution made a lot of difference, but they all agreed that there was room for improvement.
‘It nids somsing like zis, I sink,’ said Armande, producing a coloratura. The orchestra immediately seized upon this, each one contributing some sort of trill. Everybody agreed that in conjunction with the three bassoons and the Australian aerophone, the sound was getting nearer and nearer to what was required. They rehearsed every night, and needless to say had a lot of fun. After a few nights, they agreed that they had got there. They now had three trump cards in their hand: the ghostly rattle, the fire, and the wails. Enough for a grand slam.
After the two weeks which they greatly enjoyed, they made their way back to Water Lane. They prepared everything, and when they were ready, shortly after supper, they jumped into their own hansom and reached Sternton Castle shortly after midnight. Irene was not the only one who knew how to tame safes and locks, but she it was who made sure that they could gain entry into what looked increasingly likely to be their future home. Not that they planned to relocate there en bloc. Those of the Club who chose to could do as they liked of course, but the idea was that they would use the place as a secondary home, for relaxation and for holidays.
It was near midnight when they reached Castle Sternton, and obviously not a single villager was abroad. In silence they drove in and took possession of the premises, their presence undetected. They had naturally prepared themselves like for a siege and had brought ample provisions.
The very first night, they inaugurated their spectacle, and not one single villager found it easy to go back to sleep. The village was terrified out of their skins after witnessing something which they had not really believed in themselves: that ghosts roamed round the castle in the night. After just one night, all doubts vanished like the flame that shot up in the air and was only visible for less than three seconds. The talk of ghosts spread around like the influenza epidemic. One day the whole of Sternton were talking about it, the next, it had reached Tring and Aldbury. From there, it took days to reach Wheathampstead, Whipsnade, Dunstable, Luton. Finally The Times sent a reporter who described what he called manifestations from the fifth dimension that he had personally witnessed. And drove the nail in the coffin of Lord Sternton’s dreams of selling his property.
A second nail was provided by the vicar of St Mary & Joseph, who after going abroad one midnight, confirmed that spirits from the netherworld had occupied the Castle, and used this in his sermon to warn his flock of the fires of hell awaiting sinners. When Crackspill enquired if he would contemplate an exorcism, he declined. ‘This is something our Roman Catholic enemies claim they can do. We accord no credence to this. But we will pray for those poor tortured souls.’
Not satisfied, Crackspill paid a visit to the Corpus Christi Church in Tring. Father Tomelty said he would happily undertake the exorcism himself, but not before he gained the approval of The Vatican. He indicated that such a sanction was usually granted four months after its application.
It was then that Sherlock Holmes had arrived on the scene, as has been described already. It was not that he was gullible, but the mise-en-scène was so perfect that he fell into the trap. As anticipated, he was sniffing for the odour of sulphur, and odour of sulphur was there none. He opined that it was not a man-made phenomenon. A chemist of no mean ability, he was aware of alternatives to sulphur, but felt sure that whoever might have been behind the hoax, if indeed it was one, would not have succeeded in finding a substitute of such a high quality. Being a violinist of near professional calibre, his first thought on hearing the “wail”, was that it was being produced by some musical instrument, but the combination of the three bassoons, the didgeridoo and the chorus of coloraturas was something which was entirely alien to his ears. Besides, he could not imagine how such a sound might be synthethised. He felt very confident when he sent a report to Sternton, expressing his conviction that it was indeed a supernatural phenomenon. He had no compunction in enclosing a bill for a further twenty guineas for his services. In later years, he often found himself invoking the wailing sound and wondering whether he could not detect the didgeridoo among its components. And he knew of Bilongong’s gift.
Lord Sternton had to yield to what he ended up witnessing himself. It was clear that nobody would want his Castle. He even admitted to himself that it had been wrong to strangle his poor wife. All she had done was take a lover. He could have kicked her out, or get her committed to a Home for the Insane, like his friend Mordaunt had done to his wife Harriet. It was going to remain a millstone round his neck. He gave up on the idea of selling it.
One day, as he stepped out of his coach outside Westminster to attend a session at the House of Lords, a Gypsy woman approached him. She was tall and slim and had a multi-coloured flowing skirt. Round her neck were attractive glass beads, and in her ears extravagantly large attractive earrings. His first reaction was to shoo her away, determined that if she drew any nearer, to use his boot on her. But when the woman was less than three feet away, she stopped, raised her two hands, and recoiled in horror.
‘No,’ she wailed, ‘must not get nearer, leprosy lurks.’ The August Leopold was stunned. ‘What mean you, woman?’ he asked angrily. ‘Why Sir, as all knows, we folks can see into the future-’
‘Stuff and nonsense,’ he spat out, ‘out of my way.’ But the woman would not budge, and instead clung to his boots.
‘The affliction is not present yet, but unless you do something, it’s going to strike soon. Your whole body will rot away, your lordship. Unless you lift the curse upon you.’ She could see that unease was spreading over his face like a drifting cloud bringing a shadow.
‘W-what curse, woman, I command you to answer me.’
‘Not unless you cross my palm with silver first,’ the Gypsy woman quoth. He threw a silver shilling at her. She picked it up, looked at it lovingly, but said nothing.
‘I think you’re not a good man, I won’t help you.’
‘I command you woman, answer me.’
‘Why sir, you committed a big sin...’
‘Tell me what must I do, hag?’
‘Your lordship has something which is accursed. The place where thou didst commit a foul deed in. Get rid of it. Get it of it by all means, if you do not wish to end up with your flesh dropping from your bones, sir, if you do not wish to see your nose give way to two small holes in your face, sir. Sell it, auction it.’
‘But, but, my good woman...’
‘Time is short, your lordship.’ He stopped in his tracks, turned round and made for his carriage, where the coachman had not yet moved away. Irene winked to Bartola who was watching this little comedy from a safe distance.
______
The auction took place within a week, and Lord Clarihoe put in a bid for one shilling. No one else joined in.
By the same author
The Case Book of Irene Adler
The Memoirs of Irene Adler
The Adventures of Irene Adler
Sarah Bernhardt: My Erotic Life
All available on Amazon
The author can be contacted at: [email protected]
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Sherlock Holmes Vs Irene Adler: A Duel of Wits (The Irene Adler Series Book 4) Page 21
