I turned away so she wouldn’t see me frown. Stefan had been very chatty with her over the last couple of days and he had lost that worried air. I felt a little disappointed in him. It seemed even a serious man was easily distracted by a fragile-looking woman who made him feel important. And Amanda, I’d decided, was older than she’d first looked. I could see the fine lines at the corners of her eyes, even with her always perfectly applied makeup.
I snapped at Stefan the next time he spoke to me and he looked surprisingly hurt, but I’d begun to wonder just what sort of a bloke Stefan really was. Had he told me the truth about why he was spending the summer at Burns House? Or did he have a more nefarious purpose?
The next day dawned fair and the sky was a rain-washed, brilliant blue. The fields around the lodge were emerald, and on the moors the rain had brought out the heather in glowing, purple swaths.
“You know it will be muddy by the river?” Giles warned at breakfast when Amanda proposed her fishing picnic.
“I’m prepared.” She held out a foot clad in a pink designer wellie.
“I’ll take you down to the Avon in the Land Rover,” Giles said, but he didn’t sound happy about it, and neither was I. “Make certain you’re wearing bright colors. There will be guns out today.”
I met Amanda coming out of the kitchen as I was going in. “Just checking out the picnic basket,” she said with a smile. “Giles says he’ll put it in the Land Rover with the fishing stuff.”
I was blocking her way, but I was feeling contrary, so instead of letting her by I nodded at one of the prints. They were my friends now, those old freckled fish. “Going to land a big one, are you?” More fish guts for me, I thought.
“Mmm, I hope so,” said Amanda. “I adore trout.”
I stepped back and she swept past, wellies squeaking on the tiles.
I followed her out. Stefan waved at me from the Land Rover. He looked like an excited child going on an adventure.
I watched them pull away, all the while thinking furiously. Was I paranoid? Or really and truly mad? But if I was right . . . Going back to the kitchen, I told Morag I had to run an errand. Then, my message duly delivered to the gamekeeper, I tried to concentrate on scrubbing the breakfast things and starting lunch.
A half-hour later, I heard Giles come back. He called to Morag that he was going up the fields to check on the shooting party and a minute later I heard the Land Rover drive off again.
I couldn’t stand it any longer. “Go have a lie down,” I told Morag, who was looking decidedly peaky. “I’ll finish the lunch prep.”
“Right. Thank you, Sherry.” She gave me a quick hug. “You’re a gem.”
I felt guilty for deceiving her, but as soon as I heard the bedroom door close on the upper floor, I was out the front door like a shot. I knew the spot where Giles had left Amanda and Stefan. The river ran wide and shallow over a stone bed, then dropped into a deep pool where the trout liked to lurk, snapping for flies, real or false, on the surface.
I could make it, I thought. I ran across the field and down into the woods, glad now for all the stair-climbing and bed-making and scrubbing. When I came to the river I followed it downstream. It was running high and fast. There was nothing merry about the water rushing over the rocks today.
There was a flash of color through the trees—the bright picnic oilcloth, laid out on the high little ledge of grass above what before the heavy rains had been a pool, but was now just a wider place in the torrent. But where were they?
Then I saw them. Stefan, dutifully dressed in his red anorak and his waders, stood at the water’s edge, rod in hand. He was explaining something to Amanda, but I couldn’t hear him over the rush of the water. She nodded and patted his shoulder, as if encouraging him to demonstrate.
Stefan turned and cast his line over the pool in a beautiful shining arc. Then Amanda gave him a hard shove in the middle of the back.
Stefan twisted as he fell, the rod flying from his hand. His eyes and mouth were round with surprise, then the water closed over his face. He came up sputtering and shouting, but the current was strong and his waders were instantly filled. I could see he was being pulled towards the sharp fall at the end of the pool.
Amanda stood and watched.
I started to shout, then froze. Surprise was the only thing I had on my side. I ran towards her, hoping the rush of the water would cover the sound of my boots, hoping she would stay focused on Stefan and not turn around. Some small part of my brain wondered just how I was going to get him out even if I could knock her in, but there was no time for a better plan.
A deep woof rang out over the sound of the river. On the other side of the pool appeared Trevor, the military bloke, wolfhound at his side. Then, below me, two shadows raced out of the woods. Men, wearing camouflage. I skidded to a stop.
Amanda heard—or sensed—them, spinning round, her hand going to the pocket of her anorak. But the men were on her and in a flash her hands were cuffed behind her back.
Trevor had a rope coiled in his hands and as he reached the pool he spun it out across the water. As Stefan caught it, Trevor wrapped his end round a tree trunk and knotted it. Then Trevor reeled Stefan in, just like a bloody big fish.
There were more shouts as Giles and the gamekeeper came crashing through the woods. But things were all in hand. After a moment of spit and fury, Amanda had gone quiet, but I made certain her captors were keeping a close eye on her.
The gamekeeper gave me a wink. “All sorted, then?” he asked.
“Thanks to you,” I said. I’d caught him just as he was leaving to take the shooting party up on the moor.
He’d listened to me, then given me an assessing glance before nodding and agreeing to take my message. “Why didn’t you think I was bonkers?” I asked.
“Trevor there told me to keep an eye on you,” he answered.
Once we’d convoyed back to the lodge, Amanda bundled off in a military jeep and Stefan sent off for a hot bath, Trevor invited me up to his cottage for a cup of tea. Morag, still looking shocked, had waved me off my kitchen tasks.
“What gave her away?” he asked, when we were settled at his pine table with steaming mugs. He looked younger without the flat cap, but I was still getting used to the fact that his eyes were now brown rather than blue, and that there was something very odd about the shape of his nose and chin.
“Besides the fact that I didn’t like her?” I heard him give an appreciative snort into his tea. “She said she was an angler. But she said fishing stuff instead of tackle. And”—I thought back to my spotted friends—“when I showed her the fish prints in the house, I pointed right at a big old salmon and she said she loved trout. Any real angler would know a salmon from a brown trout.”
The dog, snoring beside Trevor on the flagged floor, lifted an ear and thumped his tail, then went back to sleep.
“She’s a professional,” said my godfather. “Improvising when she saw an opportunity. They will have sent her in because they thought Stefan would be vulnerable to a pretty face. But she should have done a better job on her homework.”
“But why Stefan? Or whatever his name is?”
“Stefan”—he put emphasis on the name—“has a meeting at Balmoral next week. It’s important that he keep it.”
“Important enough that you disappeared for a year? Without telling anyone where you were?” I meant him to know I was still mad.
“The balance of power in Eastern Europe may depend on decisions Stefan makes. And on who supports him.”
He didn’t apologize for worrying us. He never did.
“Okay,” I said. “I get it. But why the post card? Why get me here?”
He shrugged. “I thought you might be bored. And I missed your birthday.” Sipping his tea, he added, “Just how did you discover me, by the way? I thought the disguise was pretty good.”
“You were the only one who never spoke to me.”
“Yes, well. I couldn’t very well, could I? The voice is th
e hardest thing to change. But I think we should talk about what you are really going to do in your gap year.”
I stared at him. Then I grinned. I couldn’t help it. But turnabout was fair play. Looking at my watch, I said, “Could we have this conversation tomorrow? I have a date.”
“A date?” He couldn’t have looked more shocked if I’d said I had two heads.
“Yes. A date. With the beekeeper. His name is Malcolm, as I’m sure you know. He’s on his summer break from university, and he’s quite hot.”
“Oh. Ahem, I see . . .” Never had I seen my godfather at such a loss for words. “Well, good job today, Sher—”
“Don’t,” I said, giving him my sweetest smile. “You know how I feel about the name.”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE EMPTY GRAVE
by Jonathan Maberry
It was in the spring of 1894 that I experienced an encounter so strange and enigmatic that only now, many years later, I am committing it to paper. Had I shared this matter to anyone but a few confidents among the police I would surely have been called, at best, a liar, or at worst a madman. Perhaps now the world is ready for it.
It had been three years to the day since this world lost its champion and I my best friend. Surely you have read the many accounts in the papers, and perhaps my own feeble attempt at prose wherein I described the titanic and fateful battle between Professor James Moriarty and Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
As had become my habit on a Sunday, I sat in the cemetery on an iron bench and contemplated the many adventures I was fortunate enough to share with Holmes. Some of those have been committed to paper and thus shared with the public, while others remain unwritten and untold—a few because they revolve so heavily around the person of Sherlock Holmes that I do not have the heart to write them out, and others because I know that Holmes did not want them told. Perhaps he might have agreed in time, but he did not feel that the world was ready to shine a torch into some of the darkest and strangest corners of our world.
I occasionally brought the notes to some of those unwritten papers with me when I came to sit on my bench near the empty grave. It is perhaps a foolish and overly sentimental thing, and a case can be made that grief has to some degree unfastened the hinges of my reason, but I took comfort in being there, reviewing case notes as Holmes and I had done in our chairs on opposite sides of an evening fire. I would read through the notes I had made in pocket diaries, or on any stray sheet of foolscap that came to hand while we were engaged in the hunt. Some of those pages were smeared with ash, others with rainwater, spilled wine—even blood. And so it took some effort to decode my hasty and obscured notes, and in doing so I was with my friend again, and we were on the case.
On a particular Sunday morning I was deeply immersed in a set of extensive notes on a matter Holmes and I had left unfinished. He often had more than one matter in hand, and would advance each a little at a time when one of his experiments yielded reliable results, or the reply to a telegraph arrived, or information came from his network of spies. Even I, his closest friend and confidant, had but an inkling of all of the many problems which occupied Sherlock Holmes. More than once he would tell me that he had solved a crime about which I had no idea he was even considering, and we would while away an evening with wine and pipes while he recounted the details. Many times he would lay out the facts but withhold the solution, then challenge me to properly assess them and deduce the likely outcome. I pride myself on saying that more than a few times I was indeed able to come to the right conclusion, and in such instances Holmes would favor me with a smug smile, and I knew that he took pride in my ability to make sense of it all. And that is fair enough, for was our friendship not in many ways an apprenticeship wherein he attempted to school me on the finer points of observation and investigation? If I was a slow apprentice, in my own defense I say that any student may appear a dullard when the teacher is so exceptional.
Most often, I admit, even when he laid out the facts for me, there was some element, often an apparently trifling detail, that I dismissed and yet which proved crucial. In one such case it was the way rose petals had settled on the surface of spilled wine; in another the paucity of blowflies was the key. At times like those, I felt like a feckless and inexperienced knight seated next to Lancelot at the table.
Thinking about Holmes on that particular Sunday morning created an ache in my chest. Sometimes his absence is most keenly felt. Not merely because of the case notes in hand, but because of the flowers that lay on the green grass of the empty grave.
It was not unusual for someone to lay flowers on the grave of so great a man as Holmes. It was far more uncommon to find no bouquet or token, for there were very many people whose lives he touched. However the usual tribute is a clutch of hothouse flowers tied with ribbon and laid with a degree of ceremony before the marble headstone. Not so on this occasion. This morning, as on one or two other mornings over the last few months, I found a handful of wildflowers thrown haphazardly across the grass. They were of a kind I felt I should know but could not name. White petals surrounding anthers of a singular bright blue.
I bent to gather the flowers and did my best to arrange them into an acceptable bundle, but I am no artist with such things and the result was clumsy and inelegant. Even so, I placed the bouquet on the grass and stood for a moment with my fingers lightly touching the cold marble. Then, with a heavy sigh I turned, intending to reclaim my seat on the bench—only to discover that not only was a new occupant ensconced on my very seat, but he held my sheaf of case notes.
“Sir,” I cried as I hurried over, feeling quite cross and at the same time violated, for those papers were very precious and private, “those belong to me.”
The man looked up from the topmost paper and I perceived that he was a very elderly gentleman, perhaps eighty or even older. His wizened features were deeply lined and beneath his top hat a few thin wisps of snow-white hair escaped. His mustache was equally white but precisely trimmed. His smoke-grey topcoat was of excellent cut, though perhaps a few years out of step with current fashion. His eyes, however, were striking and the sheer force of them slowed me in my tracks and made my tirade falter before it had truly begun. They were like the eyes of a great predator bird, a peregrine or eagle. Very dark and intensely sharp.
“Dear sir,” he said, his accent clearly French and his voice surprisingly firm for so old a person, “I am most heartily sorry for such a bold intrusion. I merely caught these sheets as they began to blow away.”
While this may have been true, it did not explain why he had clearly begun to read those errant pages. My anger overmastered my surprise and I thrust out a hand for them. The old Frenchman surrendered them at once and even gave me a small bow of the head as he did so. I hope that I did not snatch them from him or clutch them petulantly to my breast, but I fear that any witness—had there been any—might have judged me harshly.
The Frenchman gave me a small smile in which I perceived no trace of genuine embarrassment for his faux pas. Instead, he half-rose, and moved a few feet sideways to allow me room to reclaim my own seat. He had a cane with a silver head fashioned in the shape of a leaping trout, and he placed both of his hands upon it.
I considered stuffing my papers into the Gladstone case in which I’d brought them, squeezed in among the powders and instruments of my trade, but I did not. Instead I turned and sat down, the papers on my lap. I was intensely aware of his scrutiny as I did so.
“You are a medical man, I perceive,” said he.
I looked at him coldly. “If your comment is intended as a joke, sir, it is in poor taste.”
“A joke . . . ?” he replied, eyebrows rising. “I do not understand.”
“You are in this place,” I said irritably, “and have only this moment finished rifling my personal pages. The conclusion is obvious and the joke offensive.”
The Frenchman shook his head. “I have offended you, sir, but without intent. And I make no joke, not here and never in the presence of one who is
troubled with grief both old and recent.”
“Enough,” I cried. “Even a person of venerable age should be mindful of manners.”
He placed his palm flat over his heart. “How am I being rude, monsieur?”
“You know who I am and yet pretend to deduce things about me in an imitation of a great man. That is—”
“—not what I am doing,” said the Frenchman. “Please, sir, calm yourself.”
“Then explain your comments.”
He folded his hands in his lap. “Which comments require an explanation, monsieur?”
“You claim to know that I grieve.”
“You are in a cemetery,” said the old man.
“Many people come here who are not torn by grief,” I said. “It is a quiet place.”
“You gathered the flowers on that grave and stood touching the headstone. The former is something a casual visitor would leave to the groundskeeper, and the latter suggests an intimate connection with the person who is presumed to be buried there.”
“We will come back to that,” I growled. “If you do not know who I am then what do you know of my recent grief?”
“I know that you lost someone very dear to you. Not a brother or sister, not parents and not a child.” He cocked his head for a moment, then nodded as if agreeing with his own thoughts. “You’re a new widower, of that I am reasonably certain.”
I felt my face turn to stone. “It was in the newspapers.”
“Perhaps it was,” said he, “but not in Paris, and I am recently come here from there. Too recently to have read about your wife’s death. And, before we proceed, let me offer my sincerest condolences.”
Echoes of Sherlock Holmes Page 30
