“Now ’old on…” said Simon, pulling anxiously against Hardacre’s grip.
“Death could not be certain,” I said, “and the poisoner would have to administer the dose expertly. But… I confess it is not impossible.”
Before more could be said, Crain screamed an unearthly cry of anguish and grief and rage, flying at Simon like a man possessed, overcome at last by the succession of shocks to his system.
“Watson!” Holmes shouted.
I leapt forward, wrestling Crain away, as Hardacre pushed Simon back along the servants’ corridor.
“Calm yourself, Crain!” I said. “If he is indeed a murderer, he’ll swing for it.”
Crain fought against me, shouting unintelligibly. Several servants popped their heads from side-rooms to see what the commotion was, and hurriedly vanished whence they had come upon seeing their master’s state. Finally, Crain’s struggles ceased. The strength palpably drained from his limbs, and he broke down in heaving sobs.
“That’s a good fellow,” I said, soothingly. “Come on, let us go somewhere to talk.”
No sooner had I released him, than he stood bolt upright, and looked at me with wild eyes, like a cornered animal.
“No. I’ve had enough,” he said. “Do you hear me? Enough!” He turned and ran.
To my relief, he pushed past Hardacre and Simon, and fled in the direction of the back door. I was about to follow, but Holmes put a hand on my arm to stay me.
“Leave him, Watson. I estimate he is in no fit state to reason.”
“I daresay you’re right, Holmes,” I muttered. “I daresay you’re right…”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ULTERIOR MOTIVES
Holmes asked the policemen to keep a close watch on the house, ensuring that the spiritualists in particular did not leave. Many of the house-guests grew more agitated at their confinement.
“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” Hardacre said, “but this case is a deal too thick for us. When is that inspector due?”
“Do not worry, Constable, everything is in hand,” Holmes said. “Assuming that the mystery is not solved before he arrives, we should have one of Scotland Yard’s finest with us by nightfall. Now, Watson, will you walk with me? We must sift through the details, for there is surely something we have missed.”
I followed Holmes to the morning room. With the spiritualists under watch, there was less need for circumspection as we discussed the intricacies of my experiences over the past days. We again went over the manner of Lady Esther’s death, though I could shed no more light than I had the first time. Through it all, Holmes pressed his fingers to his temples and squeezed his eyes shut, as though he might summon the answer through sheer force of will.
Eventually, he said, “There are two possibilities for the circumstances of Lady Esther’s poisoning. Either someone entered her room by means of the elusive secret passage, or she was poisoned before entering her room, but only felt the effects later. But the latter scenario does not account for the scream, nor for the terrible fright she seems to have received moments before her death. Then there is the writing desk, and the question of what she had been writing before she died; but there was no sign of a letter, a diary, or anything else in the room. As you suggested earlier, it may be that we are looking for something that never existed, and that there was no letter. But then why move the lamp? It makes no—” He stopped abruptly.
“Holmes?” I prompted.
“Watson, what a fool I’ve been!” Holmes stood up, and flew from the room, so swiftly it was all I could do to chase after him.
When I caught up with Holmes, he was striding with purpose towards the nightstand nearest the door to the defunct stair.
“Lady Esther did not move that lamp to provide light for her writing,” Holmes said as I caught my breath. “She moved it to get at something behind it, and the bureau was the most convenient place to put it.”
“There is nothing behind it,” I said. “I checked all along the wall for a secret passage, and found nothing.”
“It is not a passage I am looking for—not exactly.”
Holmes rapped along the wainscoting all around the nightstand, then began to prod and poke at it with his long fingers. Finally he set his hands on two points on a small wooden panel, and pushed.
There was a soft click, and a panel around eight inches square swung outwards. Holmes reached into the cavity that had been revealed and pulled on something, and then pulled again, harder. A louder click echoed from somewhere behind the wall.
“The entrance to the passage is not in this room, Watson,” Holmes said. “But the release mechanism is. It is an old chain pulley, which opens a door in that side-room.”
“The tricks during my reading…” I muttered. “This is how they were done. One of those blasted twins was lurking in the passage!”
“Quite so. And now that we have found one, we shall find the others.”
“Others?”
“I would stake a wager even against our inveterate gambler Mr Langton that there are at least four entrances to the secret passage. One must be in your room, a second downstairs where the Red Woman mysteriously vanished, and a third right here.” As he said this, Holmes threw open the small door to his side, stepped into the dark space beside the stair, and pulled at part of the timbered wall behind the old staircase, which opened upon aged hinges with a grating creak. “There should be a fourth door leading outside, because what purpose would such a passage serve if not as a secret means in or out of the property? Now, light that lamp, Watson. It’s time to walk in the footsteps of ghosts.”
I followed Holmes into a cramped space, which he negotiated well enough, though I had to turn sideways to manage it. Steep, winding stairs descended sharply, threading around the tower’s circumference. Dust and humidity made the simple act of breathing unpleasant, such that I had to press a kerchief against my mouth and nose to keep from wheezing. Finally, the ground levelled out at a small landing, before more steps circled down again into darkness.
“If I have my bearings correct,” Holmes whispered, “we should be standing right by your room. Hold the lamp higher, Watson. Ah, here you can see signs that the floor has been hastily swept. A-ha! And here is the reason why. You see that, Watson?”
“I do,” I replied, rather angrily. As we neared the end of the passage, smudges of luminous paint shone along the floor, and here and there the unmistakable forms of small, bare footprints were evident.
“They vanish before reaching the stairs,” Holmes observed. “Either our ghost put on her slippers, or the paint rubbed off before she got any further. But here on the wall are hand-prints. The spiritualists did their best to clear traces of paint from your room, but there was no need to clean this filthy old passageway. Their carelessness will be their undoing, for later I may be able to capture a clear thumb-mark from this cluster, and that will identify the ghost with near certainty. Now, let me see… here we are.”
Holmes reached into a gap revealed by some missing bricks, and yanked on another chain. There followed the click of a lock, and as before a slim section of the wall, perhaps two feet wide by five feet tall, clicked open. Holmes pushed at the newly revealed door, and sure enough my bedroom lay beyond it.
The door bumped against something, and would not open fully. Holmes poked his head around to see what caused the obstruction.
“The wardrobe,” he explained. “Whoever used this passage was slight indeed, for I could barely squeeze through there. The position of the furniture was sufficient to throw me off the scent, and it all but confirms the story that the current members of the Crain family likely did not know of the existence of this door. Passages like these are invariably used as escape routes, so we may assume that the release mechanism can be reached from a panel, as in the room above, but it is hidden behind the wardrobe.”
“So the door must have been opened from this side in order for my ghost to escape.”
“Very good, Watson. Someone—Cole, I im
agine—would have waited for Judith to finish her performance. When her act was over, Judith would have changed into slippers and robe, and handed the luminous clothing to Cole to dispose of. The sack containing the costume was probably left here, to be reclaimed earlier today by one of the twins. It is possible there were other props stashed here, too, but my arrival put an end to further games of that sort. On the night in question, however, Cole and Judith would have been able to hide in here, or in the tower room, but more likely they made their escape through a third secret exit, near the servants’ quarters. And that, I imagine, is where they were seen.”
“Seen?” I asked. “By whom?”
“By the Red Woman, of course,” Holmes said facetiously. “But that revelation, my dear Watson, requires a further examination of evidence. Come, let us seal this door and continue down.”
We closed the secret door, and Holmes bade me follow him down the second staircase. I had taken only two steps before cursing as I snagged my jacket on a nail.
“Wait,” Holmes said. “You’ve found something here, Watson.”
“I can’t think what,” I grumbled, “other than the need to have my jacket mended.”
“In such a tight space, you are not the first to catch yourself here. Look: a fragment of cloth. Blue silk, by the looks of it.”
“What does that mean?”
“I am not entirely sure yet, but a hypothesis is beginning to form in my mind. Come, let’s finish what we started, and we can discuss this later.”
The stairway was even narrower than the first, and markedly rickety and uneven. At the bottom was a dirty, musty chamber, with a low ceiling and rotted, broken floor revealing the foundations beneath. The brickwork was blackened with soot, the smell of which still hung thick in the dusty air, causing us both to cough.
“It looks as though Eglinton was correct,” Holmes said. “This chamber has not been used for a long time. There is a bricked-up door which must have once led outside, and beside it… yes, there is a cavity in the wall there, suggesting another passage. This has to lead into the servants’ wing. That is where the Red Woman disappeared—presumably, like the others, it must be opened from this side. Ah, look over there.”
By the light of the lamp, we observed a selection of tools, from picks and shovels to a large sledgehammer. “The spiritualists, I take it?”
“Most likely. If they really were hunting for buried treasure, they would have been disappointed. That much is surely a legend, or else it would have been discovered after the fire. I imagine the Cole twins brought these tools down here, piecemeal, although they would not have been able to work overmuch for the noise it would create. If they had found anything, the spiritualists would hardly be here still.”
“But perhaps the discovery of the passage alone provided inspiration, to use the legend in committing a deadlier crime,” I suggested.
“Inspiration, yes. But again, you jump to conclusions, Watson. I think the passage itself is treasure enough for our charlatans, for by means of its very existence, Madame Farr is able to bring patronage and belief to her little ‘church’, through fraud. I still assert she has no motive for any greater crime than that. Now, there is one more door, and that is the one used by the Red Woman.”
I turned about to the right-hand door, holding up the light.
“A simple catch this time, Watson,” Holmes pointed out. “There is no need for a mechanism, because the door opens only from this side. If one were seeking escape, and the outside exit was not safe, one could steal through here and try to escape through the back door.”
“But that would mean… the Red Woman had an accomplice.”
“Right again.”
“So the method of both materialisations was identical. They both used a woman in costume, and both had someone on hand to assist them. And yet you don’t believe the same culprits were behind both?”
“Once more, Watson, a capital summation. But shall we leave this rather unwholesome environment, rather than stand around in it all day? I’d like some fresh air.”
Holmes twisted the catch, and a large panel came free, sliding aside to reveal a small opening. There came a sudden scream, causing me to jump. We stepped out of the passage to see Mrs Langton and Mrs Cavendish, their nerves clearly frayed.
“Mr Holmes! Dr Watson!” Mrs Cavendish exclaimed. “We half thought you were… well…”
“Ghosts?” Holmes proffered. “Not we, not yet.”
Holmes took out his magnifier and examined the walls around the passage door, which had been perfectly disguised as a tall, thin panel in the wainscoting, in the cavity between my room and the neighbouring one.
“We came to see the place where the Red Woman vanished,” said Mrs Langton, in some embarrassment. “Then we heard voices from behind the walls and… well, you gave us such a fright!”
“For that, I apologise, dear ladies,” Holmes said. “You must also forgive me, but we must discourage further exploration of these passages until needs require it. They are most unsafe… I am afraid your ghost hunting must be confined to the more conventional portions of the house.”
The ladies did not look terribly disappointed by this, for the passage was not in the least inviting. Instead they watched as Holmes shut the secret entrance; even though we knew where it was now, it was still impossible to detect with the naked eye once closed, and when Holmes pressed upon it to ensure it was secured, it did not give an inch.
With that, we left the ladies to discuss this exciting development, and met again with Constable Hardacre, who was remonstrating with a somewhat bad-tempered Langton in the hall. Langton ceased his arguments as we approached.
“We have found the secret passage, Constable,” Holmes explained, ignoring the scene we had interrupted. “We now know how the Red Woman made her escape, and where the spiritualists were hiding their theatrical props. We shall need to venture soon to the village to find the evidence, but I think there is more that we may have missed here at the house.”
“You still think the spiritualists innocent of murder?” Langton said.
“I would not say that yet, Mr Langton; only that they have no solid motive for the crime, beyond ensnaring James Crain even further in their fantasies. Still, I cannot rule out that the motive was a financial one, though I cannot yet see how or why. The elder Lord Berkeley’s sudden demise has rather muddied the waters, for now suspicion naturally falls on the beneficiaries of his will as suspects.”
“Look here, Mr Holmes, I have already told you—”
“Calm yourself, Mr Langton. If I were accusing you, I would do so directly. I do not accuse you of anything—not yet. But so many threads in this case appear snipped off at the ends whenever the matter of money is raised. The threats Lord Berkeley made at dinner—people have been murdered for less; Melville’s admission that James Crain had threatened to disavow his sister of her title; the argument between Cavendish and the vicar. And it is the Reverend Parkin who intrigues me the most right now.”
A figure appeared behind us, a cigarette smouldering in a trembling hand. It was Crain, looking most agitated; almost haunted.
“Parkin?” Crain asked. “Why?”
“Because, Lord Berkeley,” Holmes said, “of an observation you yourself made. You say the Reverend has his own fly, which he drove to the house yesterday afternoon presumably? But he did not take it this morning? He was following Cole, you think?”
“I… I think so,” Crain said.
“And Watson tells me that there were two people late for dinner last night, and both of them were flustered upon their arrival. One was Melville, apparently nursing a headache, and the other was the vicar.”
“I hardly see the importance.”
“Perhaps we soon shall, if there is anything to see. Might I ask, do you have the key to your father’s study?”
“Of course.”
“Then may I take a look?”
Crain nodded nervously. We parted company with the others and followed h
im up to the study. Crain inserted a key into the lock, frowned, and pushed open the door.
“That’s strange,” he said. “It wasn’t locked.”
“Are you sure it was locked to begin with?” Holmes said.
“Father always locked it.”
“And are there other keys?”
“This one, Father’s, and Eglinton’s.”
“Could the room have been left unlocked by the maid this morning?”
“The maids never enter Father’s study unbidden.”
Holmes nodded. “And where last did you see your father’s keys?”
“By his bedside when… when…” Crain’s voice cracked.
I placed a hand on Crain’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Crain. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“Lord Berkeley, if it is not too difficult a time, could you please check that your father’s keys are where they should be. It is of great importance.”
Crain sniffed, nodded, and hurried at once down the corridor.
Holmes entered the study and beckoned me in. It was a large room, though surprisingly gloomy, with only a single window, before which stood a grand pedestal desk. A glass-fronted bookcase against one wall, I noted, was filled with accounting ledgers, finely bound and meticulously ordered. The opposite wall was dominated by a large tribal mask of African design, adorned with feathers and grasses, around which were hung a collection of photographs of Lord Berkeley in his younger days, with his wife Agnes, their two young children, and Sir Thomas Golspie.
“I doubt he will find the keys,” Holmes said. “Because if what I suspect is true, the person who took them left the house in a hurry, and was not in the right state of mind to replace them.”
“You suspect the Reverend Parkin of breaking into Lord Berkeley’s study, don’t you?” I asked. “A man of the cloth?”
“I always find it remarkable just how the human mind can rationalise any misdeed if the cause is important enough. I hear tell even pious men are not above such folly.”
Holmes strode to the desk and looked through the few papers present. I peered over his shoulder, but saw nothing more interesting than bills of lading and orders for agricultural and building supplies.
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