“I see. At my little show earlier at the expense of Madame Farr, you were outraged that the spiritists had been ‘dipping into your private business’. I take it by that you meant your finances?”
Langton wiped a hand over his face. “I have a few letters—final demands, actually—in my bag. It was my intent to speak with Uncle about them; see if he could help me out, you know? Damn it all. My father was a self-made man. We never needed the Crain money, and now a few mistakes have knocked me all out of sorts.”
“You understand this gives you motive for murder?”
“What, because Uncle Theobald threatened to name me his heir? But he didn’t, did he? He couldn’t have had time. It would have been deuced stupid of me to do the old man in before he changed the will. And senseless entirely to harm a hair on Esther’s head. She was the best thing about this family by a long chalk. Dr Watson understands—I saw the way he looked at her. A breath of fresh air, and now…” Langton sniffed, and rubbed at his face again. “Look, Mr Holmes, I’m guilty of a good many things, but murder is not one of them. I’m ashamed, more than you can know. My wife is no longer being kept in the manner to which she has become accustomed, and I think it is only the promise of my inheritance that reassures her of our future. Not that she would wish ill on the Crains, you understand. It’s just that, well, if money is tight, we can always call on ‘position’, so to speak.”
I felt a pang of guilt at taking money from Langton over billiards, even if it were just a few shillings.
“And yet you still like to make the odd wager,” Holmes said, apparently reading my mind. “These investments, I take it, were not all of the business variety.”
“Look, a chap has to speculate to accumulate, Mr Holmes. A few good wins and I’ll have recouped enough to settle some bills, maybe even enough to reinvest.”
“Your important meeting in Exeter,” Holmes said. “Presumably this was not a business meeting, but a race meeting? There is no sport at Ascot this week, just a stone’s throw from here, but the afternoon races at the Exeter tracks are noted for their prize coffers.”
“You have me again, Mr Holmes. Yes, and yesterday I was meeting the groom, Benson, for some inside information. He stabled some of the runners here over winter; knows the ones that’ll defy the odds. All wasted now, of course.”
“You have my apologies, but this investigation must take precedence until the killer is exposed.”
“You keep talking about murder, Mr Holmes. I still can’t bring myself to think my sweet cousin was killed. I mean… why would anyone do such a thing?”
“That’s what I am here to find out, Mr Langton. Now, back to your various smoking sessions…”
“All right, but when I tell you what I saw yesterday afternoon I hope you’ll understand why I was reluctant. It has nothing to do with Esther’s death, but rather a lot to do with Cousin James’s behaviour.”
“Go on.”
“Yesterday afternoon, shortly after we arrived, I went out to find Benson. I met him last time we visited, and his knowledge of the horses is as good as any Irishman’s. Anyway, he was pretty busy at the time, but promised to meet me later. So I had a smoke, and saw Sir Thomas arrive. That put my hackles up a bit, because there’s some family history there, the sort we don’t speak of.”
“Will you speak of it now?”
“If I have your word it is in confidence.”
“You have it,” Holmes said.
“Well then. Sir Thomas keeps a rather impressive glasshouse at home, in which he grows all manner of… exotic plants, if you take my meaning. And rumour has it he’s a dab hand at using said plants to make various potions and preparations—tricks he learned in Africa from some shaman or other. Anyway, after dear Aunt Agnes died, Cousin James went to pieces, and Sir Thomas was the dutiful godfather, very supportive, you know? James must have been desperate indeed, because Sir Thomas furnished him with some root, which is as powerful as any opiate, and it got him through the dark times. But he was hooked, you see; couldn’t give the stuff up without an awful time of it. I thought that was ages past, but it looks as if Cousin James has succumbed to temptation again.”
Whilst Langton spoke, Holmes’s eyes lit up like lamps, and I knew he had gleaned something of great significance.
“You think Sir Thomas has provided more of this African drug to your cousin?”
“Certain of it, Mr Holmes. Minutes after Sir Thomas arrived, I saw him and James take a stroll. They didn’t spot me. I was going to greet them, but they began to remonstrate over some private matter. Sir Thomas thrust a small bag into James’s hands, and then they walked off in opposite directions. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who saw this—that’s when I noticed Simon. But he saw me, also, which is what I didn’t mention before, and he gave me the queerest smile, as though he had caught me in some illicit act and might use it against me later.”
“Did he try to?” I asked.
“I suppose he didn’t get the chance, but I half expected him to.”
“And you say your cousin had defeated the addiction once?” Holmes said. “But succumbed again?”
“I think so. Madame Farr was a good influence on him in that respect. But with everything that happened…”
“That’s just it: Sir Thomas arrived before anything happened. Which would suggest your cousin had need of the drug before the death of his sister.”
“Oh yes, in all the confusion that hadn’t occurred to me. It looks as if he rather pulled the wool over our eyes, then. There is none so wily as an addict.” There was something in Langton’s eyes that suggested he spoke from personal experience, and I reckoned his own gambling habit had the potential to cost him as dear as any opium fiend’s dependence.
“And what about last night?” Holmes asked. “You were smoking before dinner, and met Benson again. He was awfully reluctant to reveal your name.”
“I did, and he’s a good fellow, though I’m damned if I deserve much in the way of loyalty. To answer your question, I did not see much at all. I had a smoke, and then went to rap on the foot of Benson’s hut. He’d promised to find out if Rascal’s Crown was still running in the 3.30 today. Ten to one, and to hear Benson talk it was a sure thing. Alas! Anyway, we heard a carriage approaching, and Benson was going to run out, but I kept him from his duty a few minutes longer. When he went outside, I saw him scratching his head because the vicar’s fly was in the coach-house, and there was no sign of the horse. He made some remark about it being a strange state of affairs, when we both looked up and saw the vicar fair running around to the east wing. I realised I had tarried too long—that was my cue to leave. I cut through the back door and beat the vicar to dinner—I expect he had to freshen up first after all that running about. Not in the best physical condition, our man of the cloth.”
We were interrupted by a noise from outside, the crunch of boots on gravel. Holmes dashed at once to the window, threw it open and looked outside.
“Who was there, Holmes?” I asked.
“I only caught sight of a boot heel and trouser leg, but I think it was Lord Berkeley,” Holmes said, closing the window fast. “Confound it all, Watson! The walls really do have ears in this house.”
“Well we all know what’s got into Cousin James,” Langton said. “I say, you don’t think he’ll tell Constance any of this?”
“Who can tell,” Holmes said, though his thoughts were patently elsewhere.
“I’ll go after him,” Langton said. “It’s about time someone talked some sense into him.”
“I would appreciate that very much, Mr Langton,” Holmes said.
Once Langton had gone, Holmes turned to me. “Watson, did you know about Sir Thomas’s botanical interests?” He sounded as serious as ever I had heard him.
“Yes, Holmes, but not in such a euphemistic fashion. A passing mention of his collection, that is all.”
“Watson, your failure to mention this fact has hindered the investigation more than you could know. But
you are not wholly to blame: I should have summoned Sir Thomas and the Reverend Parkin as soon as I arrived, and questioned them earlier.”
“Sir Thomas supplied some addictive drug to his godson,” I said, “but I cannot believe him a murderer.”
“Nor I, Watson; you do not follow at all. Whoever left the house last night in the vicar’s carriage may well have gone to fetch poison. A very exotic African poison, one that would provoke an agonising death, and doubtless be undetectable by any but an expert.”
“Someone entered through the passage and poisoned her…” I muttered.
“Most likely.”
“But how? Presumably she was asleep. Those needle marks were too old for it to have been injected. Was she forced to imbibe it? Is that why she screamed?”
“All possible. I think it is past time we paid a visit to Sir Thomas. I believe in doing so we will not only find the cause of your friend’s strange behaviour, but also at last reveal the cause of Lady Esther’s death. Come, let’s disturb that fellow Benson again, and see if he will drive us.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
SIR THOMAS GOLSPIE
“If you’ve come to see my collection, Dr Watson,” said Sir Thomas, “I cannot stress highly enough the inconvenience of your timing.”
Sir Thomas did not look himself. His hands shook, and his eyes darted this way and that, as though he were seeing some threat in every shadow. And his house, cluttered with trophies and ephemera from his many expeditions, had more than its share of shadows.
“That is not why we have come, Sir Thomas. And I can only apologise for the hour, and the unfortunate timing of our visit. We rather hoped you might be able to help us. It’s about Crain… and Lady Esther.”
“Ah.” Sir Thomas wiped a broad hand across his chin. “Then I suppose you’d better come in.”
He shuffled along the carpeted hall, leaving Holmes and me to close the door behind us, and follow. We entered a sitting room, in which every wall was covered almost entirely in mounted animal heads, racks of antlers, exotic weaponry, and tribal masks and shields. An antelope hide hung athwart the couch. The floor before the hearth was adorned with the pelt of a lioness, on which an old, white-muzzled deerhound lay, barely concerning itself with our arrival. I wondered if the rug had once been the lion from the stories about Golspie’s feats.
“You keep no servants, Sir Thomas?” Holmes asked. I, too, had wondered why Sir Thomas, perhaps not in the best state of mind at present, had answered the door to us himself.
“Just occasional staff. The maid comes in three times a week, and the gardener lives nearby. Mrs Griggs serves as both cook and housekeeper—she lives here, but she’s already abed, I imagine. I’ve no patience with butlers and footmen and all that pomposity. I am a private man, Mr… Holmes, wasn’t it?” He poured himself a brandy, and offered us the same. Holmes declined with a raised palm. I accepted thankfully, for the evening had grown cold. “I never had much time for servants,” the old explorer went on, a wistful look in his eyes. “You know, on one expedition, to Fuuta Jaloo, there was one chap—Jago Kettering, Watson will know of him—who would not leave camp without a valet in tow, and a butler to serve us all meals under a silver platter. We weren’t halfway up Mount Loura before the valet slipped whilst trying to retrieve Kettering’s shaving bag from a precipice. We managed to save him, but his leg was broken in three places. Cost us four bearers and two days’ trekking, by which time the butler had come down with dysentery. Bet you didn’t read about that in Mackenzie’s damn book. This is the problem, y’see. Every man on an expedition is selected for his skills. But servants are there to serve, both our whims and our vanity. They don’t have the training or the experience for anything beyond service. I found long ago that a bit of local knowledge and the sweat of one’s own brow is all a man needs to get by.”
So visceral and vibrant were Sir Thomas’s recollections—so personal—that it was hard to see him as anything other than an intrepid, steely explorer, rather than the elderly, troubled man who stood before us now.
I sipped my brandy. Holmes was, in his usual way, taking in every detail of our surroundings.
“I must offer my condolences, Sir Thomas,” Holmes said. “I understand you were close to both Lord Berkeley and his daughter, Lady Esther.”
“Known them for many years, since before Esther was born,” Sir Thomas said, his eyes full of sadness. “Theo was a good friend. One of the very best of men. He helped me through some difficult times… and Esther, that wonderful girl. What a waste.”
“You understand that she was murdered?” Holmes said, rather too bluntly.
Sir Thomas glowered. “I don’t doubt it. James told me the circumstances, and I damned near marched to the manor at once to arrest those ‘spiritists’ myself. I trust that Farr woman is in police custody by now?”
“She is, though not for murder. Not yet.”
“Why the devil not?” Sir Thomas shouted, setting down his glass so forcefully I thought it might break.
“Because there is yet more to this case than meets the eye, Sir Thomas,” Holmes said, unbowed. “You have heard the circumstances of Lady Esther’s death, I presume? We believe her unusual condition was caused by a drug of some sort. Something that caused her to pass away in a fit of sheer terror. Unless, of course, you believe, as your godson does, that she was scared to death by the sudden appearance of a ghost.”
Sir Thomas’s rage faded. “No…” he muttered, though I was not entirely sure he was answering Holmes’s question. He took a gulp of his brandy.
“This mask… it is peculiar to the tribes of West Africa, is it not?” Holmes said, showing a remarkable knowledge of African exploration that I had hitherto not known he possessed. “It is from your last expedition?”
“It is,” replied the old man. “And it is not only the mask of a tribe. It transcends tribal divisions. It is the death mask of the Tagullah.”
“I have heard of them,” I said. “A secret society, who transform boys into hardened fighting men. I thought they were just stories told by explorers to frighten each other silly.”
“I wish they were stories, Doctor. But then again, if the Tagullah were not real, perhaps I would not be here today.”
“This did not make it into the Mackenzie Accounts,” I said.
“And few people know the story at all—few living at least. Mackenzie is dead, and he was the last of the men on the expedition to know the truth. Theobald knew, but he’s gone now. So I suppose that just leaves young James.” He poured more brandy, and took a drink. “It was ’67. The last time I ever set foot in that region, as it happens. We’d been nine months conducting our survey, and had been dragged into every conceivable danger. We had found ourselves lost in hostile territory near Angola. We were caught in a rockslide that decimated our supplies. We were almost swept away in flash floods on the banks of the Shiloango. One man was so riddled with Guinea-worm he could travel no further with us. You name it, sir, and it befell us. Some whispered that the expedition was cursed, and it put the wind up our bearers, I can tell you. But we came through it all with great resolve. There are new species of plant and animal in the British Museum that are there because of us. There are treatments for yaws, ophthalmia, and even yellow fever that did not exist before we embarked on our expedition. Ten of us set out in the spring of 1866, and all ten of us made it back in the face of extraordinary odds. I was the only one who almost did not.
“We were skirting the edge of the Kalahari, following a known track, with good guides at our disposal. Without warning, we found ourselves caught in the middle of a battle. A large number of Wasimbu warriors had tracked a party of slavers—depraved men willing to sell their own kind for a little coin and a few good rifles. They had captured a goodly number of women and children under the protection of the Wasimbu, with the aim of sailing them up the coast and selling them to the Portuguese. It was a daring business, so close to the British Cape, and had it not been for the appearance of the Was
imbu, I expect they would have succeeded.
“The battle was bloody, and prolonged. We fought to defend ourselves, and tried to flee. Our baggage was scattered, our party separated. I was chased into the desert by a horseman, taking a bullet to the shoulder as I ran. In desperation, I shot his horse from under him. The beast fell upon me, and the man would surely have killed me had it not been for the intervention of a Wasimbu warrior. I remember looking up into the eyes of my attacker, certain he would be my slayer, only for a spear-tip to pierce him through the mouth. I passed out from pain, and I still do not know exactly what happened next.
“When I came to—the first time, at least—it was night. I was lying on a hard bed, strapped down, beside a blazing fire. There were trees all around. Drums were beating, men and women were whooping and singing in a tongue I did not recognise. I began to hallucinate—the shadows came alive. Tribal masks took on a life of their own, and I remember being gripped by utter terror. I do not know how many days and nights passed in this fashion—I would wake invariably to find some demonheaded shaman rattling bones about me, or a group of wailing women beside me. Once, a man cut off the head of a chicken and dashed its blood over me. I was fed strange herbs that contorted my feverish visions into nightmares beyond imagining. Those nightmares became as real as anything I could discern. It took a long time before I gleaned the extent of my predicament; that although my wound had been treated, in my weakened state I had contracted malaria, and might well die.
“In my fleeting lucid moments, I found someone with whom I could converse, at least a little. A young warrior named Uuka told me that the spirits had come to the tribe’s witch-doctor, and bartered for my soul. I belonged to the ‘Hungry Night’, and should I die, the tribe would pay a thousand times over in misery. My condition was beyond the witch-doctor’s power to heal, and there was only one way he could think of to stave off my death. He named four brave warriors, Uuka at their head, and carried me deeper into the jungle, to find the Tagullah society.
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