Sherlock Holmes and the Lady in Black

by June Thomson

  ‘That is indeed the question. Where exactly does their relationship stand now?’

  I said bluntly, ‘He is very possessive.’

  ‘I know, Watson. Not a good basis on which to build a marriage, if that is what he has in mind. The only ray of hope is Maud Bellamy’s strength of character. I do not think she would tolerate being dominated by anybody. She is very much her own person. I think you caught a glimpse of that side of her this evening. In the meantime, my dear fellow, there is nothing we can do but cross our fingers and hope for the best because the best she undoubtedly deserves.

  ‘Now to turn to the other matter we planned for this evening: the crypt at St Botolph’s. Perhaps that will take our minds off Ian Murdoch and his intentions towards Maud Bellamy. I suggest we walk to the church. It is much quieter than going in the car and I also recommend that we change into something more suitable for exploring an old crypt. By the way, did you bring the soft-soled shoes I mentioned in my letter?’

  ‘Yes, Holmes. In fact, I bought them specially.’

  I said it with a touch of irony, thinking: so that was why Holmes advised me to bring them. He had already decided to examine the crypt and had wanted me to be present when he did so; to what end I was not quite sure. As a witness? Or was it to serve again as a sounding board on which to try out his ideas?

  ‘You are game?’ Holmes inquired with an uncertain tone in his voice that I had never heard before and I hastened to assure him.

  ‘Game? Of course I’m game, Holmes! When have I ever been otherwise?’

  He laughed out loud as he slapped me on the shoulder.

  ‘Good old Watson!’ he cried. ‘So let the chase begin!’

  It took us less than a quarter of an hour to change into more suitable clothes for the night’s expedition, Holmes returning from his room with two objects that he laid down on the table.

  ‘Do you recognise either of these?’ he asked.

  I did indeed; in fact I recognised both of them. One was a bundle of metal rods of various sizes rolled up in a soft leather case, part of a first-class burglary kit. He had bought it during the investigation concerning Charles Augustus Milverton whose safe he broke into to retrieve certain letters that Milverton was using to blackmail one of Holmes’ clients, Lady Eva Brackwell. The rods were a set of picklocks, known among professional thieves as ‘bettys’. Holmes had used them on several occasions and was quite an expert with them.

  The other item was a small lantern called a ‘bullseye’, a pocket version of the type a policeman carries strapped to his belt as part of his equipment. A shutter could close off the light from the bullseye or focus the beam on any particular object that the officer wished to examine in more detail. Burglars also used them when they were ‘cracking a crib’, that is breaking into premises or a safe, say, after dark.

  ‘So,’ Holmes was saying, ‘if you are ready to act as my colleague or, in this case I suppose “accomplice” would be a better word to use, shall we set off?’

  ‘Ready for anything, Holmes,’ I assured him.

  ‘That’s my Watson!’ he exclaimed as we made for the door.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was quite dark when we set out on the twenty-minute walk to the end of the lane where it joined another narrow byroad that ran across the top of the cliffs, past the Fisherman’s Arms, its windows dark. About a quarter of a mile further on, we reached the entrance to the grounds of Fulworth Hall, also in darkness, its gate closed.

  A few minutes later, the silhouette of St Botolph’s loomed to the left, dominating the horizon, the oblong of its tower obliterating part of the night sky.

  The moon was clouded over so there was only the faint light of the stars to illuminate the scene, and the great mass of the sea had slipped away into the darkness apart from a pallid sheen that shifted restlessly to and fro. We could hear it, though: a deep breathing sound like that of a sleeping giant laid out at the foot of the cliffs.

  By the time we had reached St Botolph’s my eyes were becoming used to the darkness. So, too, were Holmes’, I assumed, for he had no difficulty in finding the gate to the churchyard. Unlatching it, he set off at a brisk pace.

  As far as possible we avoided the gravelled path and kept to the grass verge where our footsteps were inaudible. Indeed there were no sounds I could discern except for the gentle exhalations of the sea as it crept up the shore all those many feet below us. Even the wind was hushed as if it understood the need for silence.

  A little further on we turned to the right, skirting round the bulk of the tower and, after a few more yards, we reached the place where the two small flower beds edged with stones marked the position of the steps leading down to the low wooden door set in the church wall. Holmes lit the little bullseye lantern and its beam illuminated an area big enough to confirm that the rose briars that Holmes had so carefully rearranged earlier in the day had not been disturbed. I heard him give a small sigh of relief and I felt my own muscles relax.

  So far, so good. We had not yet been discovered.

  ‘Keep cave, Watson,’ Holmes murmured under his breath and, as I turned away to face the path, I heard the faint clink of metal as Holmes opened the leather pouch and took out the picklocks. Hearing this, I risked a hurried glance over my shoulder and saw he was crouching down in front of the low door, inserting one of the rods into the keyhole by the narrow light of the lantern. It was apparently not the right one for the lock did not yield and it took several more attempts before I heard the wards give way at last and the door swing loose.

  Risking another backward glance, I saw Holmes’ face, his eyes glittering in triumph, as he eased the door fully open.

  It was one of those occasions when one’s senses are raised to a much higher pitch of awareness. Sounds were amplified and the sea no longer seemed to whisper but appeared to pound as the waves struck the shore. I could even smell it quite strongly: a salty tang mingled with the odour of seaweed and wet sand. But beneath these scents there was another aroma that at first I could not identify except it reminded me of the church; that same musty odour of damp stones and decaying plaster.

  ‘Watson!’ Holmes whispered urgently and I quickly transferred my attention to him. He was standing, shoulders hunched, in the low doorway, beckoning vigorously to me to join him.

  The light from the little lantern, fluttering like a pale moth as Holmes moved it to and fro, lit up the edges of the three steps leading downwards and I followed it gingerly, inch by inch, until I could feel a flat paved area in front of the door where Holmes was waiting. I joined him and the two of us shuffled forward, heads bent low, into the darkness beyond that seemed to be a black, floorless abyss, much to my alarm. And then, as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I was able to pick out some details of our surroundings.

  We were standing at the entrance of a low-ceilinged vault or crypt, floored with rough paving slabs in the centre of which was a large, oblong tomb like a stone dining table, the edges of its lid carved with an inscription that I could not decipher in the wavering light of the lantern. Before I had time to fix my eyes on it, the beam from the lamp had moved on. It passed rapidly over the rest of the interior and lit up walls that were lined with shelves, on which were resting what I thought at first to be several old wooden boxes until I suddenly realised they were coffins, each bearing a brass plate screwed to the lid.

  However, it was the odour of decay that occupied my attention more than the contents of the crypt. It was so pungent that it seemed not only to fill my nostrils but also the bony cavities of my skull. It had even soaked into my hair and the pores of my skin so that I could smell it on my hands. It was a loathsome odour and for a few seconds I felt panic-stricken, desperate to get out of the place before the miasma of mortality suffocated me.

  Holmes appeared to be unaffected. Lantern in hand, he was stooping low over the floor following some tracks in the dust, careful, I noticed, not to step on them and waving me back when I started to approach them. So I remained motion
less, watching his movements and silently begging him to lead the way out of this sepulchre of shadows and old bones.

  As if he had heard my silent plea, he turned and stepped back towards the door, motioning me to do likewise. I needed no encouragement. A few paces later and I was backing out through the doorway into the open air, which I gulped down like a drowning man coming to the surface.

  I scrambled up the steps on my hands and knees, leaving Holmes to close and lock the door behind us.

  ‘Are you all right, my dear fellow?’ he asked with genuine concern, seeing me crouching there.

  ‘Yes, Holmes; at least I think so.’ I replied, struggling to my feet and trying to make my voice sound as normal as possible.

  ‘Splendid!’ came his reply. ‘Then we shall set off for home.’

  Pausing for only a few moments, he turned the lantern’s beam towards the steps while he bent the rose briars back into place. That done to his satisfaction, he started off the way we had come, through the churchyard and down the lane to his cottage, striding along so fast that I had difficulty in keeping up with him. Once inside the house, he lit the lamps and drew the curtains over the window before pouring both of us a glass of whisky and soda. I accepted mine gratefully.

  The walk and the fresh air had cleared my head of any lingering effects of the putrid odour in the crypt and I was ready now to confront Holmes, a challenge he seemed aware of, for he looked across at me directly, his eyes very bright and searching.

  ‘I know exactly what you are going to say, Watson,’ he began. ‘I invite you down here for a holiday by the sea and then involve you in a situation that you do not understand and which I make no effort to explain. No, please do not say anything, my dear fellow, just oblige me by sitting there and finishing your whisky.’

  I did as I was told. There was no gainsaying Holmes when he was in one of his masterful moods.

  ‘I admit I invited you here not entirely for unselfish motives,’ he continued. ‘If you remember you once referred to yourself as the “whetstone” for my mind. It was an unusual but perceptive simile. I do indeed need your presence to sharpen my own mental processes. I think more clearly when I have someone else to whom I can express my thoughts. And I still do. So let me start again, my old friend, and explain my reasons for inviting you here. You remember the walk we took along the beach?’

  ‘Yes, very clearly,’ I replied. As we seemed to have reached a point in which honesty was to be the touchstone of our conversation, I decided to follow his example and speak my own mind. So I continued, ‘To be frank, Holmes, at the time I felt there was some other motive behind that walk.’

  ‘Really?’ Holmes seemed astonished. ‘How perspicacious of you! There was indeed another reason. Although I genuinely wanted to introduce you to my new surroundings, I also wished you to see the setting of a strange sequence of events. It was this that persuaded me to send for you in the first place. You remember that large, flat rock on the left of the beach?’

  ‘Indeed I do. In fact, I sat on it. It was like an armchair made of stone but comfortable all the same and with a wonderful view of the sea.’

  ‘Good! Now let me explain its significance. About three weeks before you came, I was walking along the clifftop path overlooking the cove. For some reason, I had found it difficult to sleep that night so at about one o’clock I got up, dressed and went for a walk, thinking it might help me settle down. I reached a point on the cliff path where there is a gap in the hedge and from where one has an uninterrupted view of the cove and I stopped to admire it.

  ‘It was a clear night and there was no difficulty in picking out the details of the shoreline. While I was looking, I saw a figure crossing the beach to that flat rock and sitting down on it. It was quite obviously a woman who was dressed in a long black cloak that was hooded so I could not see her features, but I could make out certain details of her appearance. She was of medium height and build, not young but not old either for she held herself upright and walked easily. I was mystified by her presence there on the beach for she seemed to do nothing but sit there looking out to sea.’

  ‘But, Holmes!’ I protested, thinking that, unusually for him, he was making far more of the situation than it warranted. ‘Perhaps like you she couldn’t sleep and had decided to go for a walk.’

  ‘Of course that was my first thought,’ Holmes corrected me. ‘But that does not explain what happened later. So pray, allow me to continue. The following night I still could not sleep, so I went out again for a stroll. To be honest, the mysterious lady in black was still very much in my mind. Who was she? Where had she come from? What was she doing there? I was therefore oddly relieved to see her again, sitting on the same rock and looking out to sea just as she had done the night before, only this time there was a change in the circumstances. You remember that flight of steps on the far side of the cove?’

  ‘Those you said led down from Fulworth Hall and were private?’

  ‘Exactly so. Well, as I stood there looking out over the cove, a man came hurrying down those steps and ran across the beach towards the woman. As soon as I saw him, I drew back behind the hedge so, should he glance up, he would not see me.’

  ‘And?’ I prompted him, curious now to hear the full story.

  ‘He bent down over the woman and was obviously trying to persuade her to get up and go with him, all the time glancing around to make sure no one was watching. This went on for several minutes until at last she seemed to agree for she stood up and, taking his arm, allowed him to lead her across the beach and up the steps. At the top, the pair of them disappeared behind the shrubs in the garden so I did not see exactly where they went after that.’

  ‘To Fulworth Hall?’ I suggested.

  ‘That was my conclusion. So I assumed that is where she must live, but that is only part of the answer to the puzzle. I still do not know her name nor who the man is nor what connection they both have to Fulworth Hall.’

  ‘What sort of man was he?’

  ‘Middle-aged, short, stockily built. Judging by the way he spoke to the woman, he was a servant of some kind.’

  ‘A butler?’

  ‘No, not distinguished enough for that. I would suggest a gardener or a handyman. But he seemed very solicitous towards our lady in black, as if she were a child or an invalid. Whoever he is though, that still does not explain the matter of the crypt.’

  Something about his tone of voice prompted me to ask, ‘You think they may be connected?’

  Instead of replying directly, Holmes got to his feet and crossing to his desk, took out a slim pamphlet, which he handed to me.

  ‘Read that, Watson,’ he said, ‘and tell me what you make of it.’

  It was one of the booklets, priced sixpence, which I had noticed on a rack just inside the door of St Botolph’s together with a wooden box for contributions. Flicking over the pages, I noticed briefly that the contents covered a general history of the church, including a reference to its Saxon origins, together with a list of the clerics who over the generations had served as rectors of the parish.

  ‘Page fourteen!’ Holmes instructed me, watching me with a curiously intent gaze.

  Page fourteen, I discovered, was devoted to an account of a local family, the Trevalyans, who it seemed were regarded almost as Lords of the Manor.

  Originally from Cornwall, it stated; made their money from tin mining; one of the younger sons, Henry, had moved to Fulworth at the turn of the century. It was he who had the original Fulworth Hall, a Jacobean house, pulled down and had the present building erected in its place.

  There followed a brief account of the Trevalyan family history up to the year 1901, the date when the booklet was published. Henry, it stated, had married and produced two sons, George, the eldest, and a younger son, Charles, who had died in childhood. In his turn, George also married but in his case had only one son, Henry, presumably named after his grandfather. There were two daughters, both of whom had died young.

  The second Hen
ry Trevalyan’s progeny was even more limited to a daughter, christened Henrietta, perhaps a token reference to the non-existent son who would have carried on the family tradition of nomination. There was no further mention of this daughter. Perhaps like her uncle, Charles Trevalyan, and his two anonymous sisters she, too, had died young.

  Brief though it was, this genealogical record struck me as tragic. Like the gradual decay of the original Fulworth village, from a thriving Saxon settlement with its imposing church to mere scattering of cottages, the Trevalyans had also dwindled away to the last Henry who had died in 1898, ten years earlier, apparently leaving no one to carry on his bloodline, his once elegant home, Fulworth Hall, slowly disintegrating on the clifftop.

  There was another relic mentioned in the last paragraph – the family tomb installed in the crypt of St Botolph’s where Henry Trevalyan had been laid to rest among his deceased ancestors, the last of the lineage.

  ‘You see the connection?’ Holmes asked, as I closed the booklet and laid it down on the table. ‘There seems to be a link with the Trevalyan family that could suggest the likelihood that whoever oiled the lock and entered the crypt had access to it; a key in other words.’

  ‘But according to this,’ I protested, tapping the booklet, ‘the family died out with the death of the last Henry Trevalyan who left no heir to carry on the bloodline.’

  ‘Apparently so,’ Holmes agreed but not very positively. ‘But I feel there is more missing information that we must inquire into. Do you recall the conversation we had with Maud Bellamy?’

  ‘Yes I do, but I do not see—’

  ‘She recommended a person who knows about local history,’ Holmes continued brushing aside my intervention.

  ‘Did she?’ I asked, having forgotten to whom he was referring.

  ‘Someone who was born and brought up in Fulworth.’

  The penny suddenly dropped much to my astonishment.

  ‘You mean Mrs B, Holmes?’

  Holmes gave me a wry smile and nodded.