by Andrew Lane
‘He was an excellent police officer,’ she said, ‘and that is why he and I are in the state we are in now. I would have preferred him to be a gardener or a baker, I think.’ She shook her head violently. ‘But then he wouldn’t have been the man that I fell in love with and married. Life can be so very cruel sometimes. You can never plan what is going to happen to you – or, rather, you can plan your life, but it will never go the way you planned. We should have had children by now, and Ferny should be a superintendent of police. Instead . . .’ She gestured at the bed. ‘Instead this.’
‘Man makes plans and God laughs,’ Sherlock said. ‘My Uncle Sherrinford used to say that. It’s an old proverb apparently.’
‘And a very true one,’ Marie Weston said. ‘Your uncle was a wise man.’
‘Oh, I dunno,’ Matty interjected. ‘I always wanted to be on a barge on the canals, an’ ’ere I am.’
Sherlock gazed at him sceptically. ‘That’s not really a plan,’ he pointed out.
While Matty glowered, Sherlock’s gaze was attracted by something on the wide table by Marie Weston’s left arm. It took him a moment to work out what it was. ‘That’s the paper and string that the parcel was wrapped in, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘The one containing the . . .’ He hesitated, not wanting to say the words ‘body part’ out loud in case it offended Mrs Weston. She was obviously of a delicate disposition.
‘It is part of Ferny’s work,’ she said. ‘For his collection. Every so often a parcel arrives in the post for him. He allows me to unwrap it, because I have so little else to occupy my time in this house, but he does not allow me to open the box inside in case the contents disturb me. I know they are only wax copies, but even so – he worries about the shock.’
‘She insists on unwrapping the parcels,’ Weston said, re-entering the room. ‘I think it reminds her of Christmas.’
Sherlock smiled automatically, as Weston went across the room to his wife, but his gaze was still fixed on the brown paper and string. There was something odd about them, something that snagged his attention, but he wasn’t sure what it was.
‘George is resting,’ Weston said as he kissed his wife on the forehead. ‘The poison did not get into his system, thank the Lord. Given a good night’s rest, he should be fine.’
‘Dear George,’ Mrs Weston murmured. ‘What would we do without him?’
Weston perched himself on the edge of the bed. ‘Now,’ he said, glancing from Sherlock to Matty and back again, ‘we have a discussion, you and I. Let us go downstairs and talk like gentlemen.’
‘No, Ferny,’ his wife said, placing her hand over his, ‘please – stay here and talk. It is so rare that I get to hear a voice other than yours or George’s, and these boys are delightful company.’
He nodded. ‘Very well.’
‘You mentioned a case,’ Sherlock prompted. ‘You said you wanted us to look into it for you.’
Weston nodded. ‘Indeed. It is connected with the work I was doing as a policeman, but I am unable to complete the investigation now. The police force themselves are not interested – they have already decided that the man in question is hallucinating and that there is nothing to investigate. I, however, beg to differ. I think something very odd is going on, and I also think that a man’s sanity, if not his life, is at stake. If I told anyone else this story then they would either think that I was making it up or they would blame supernatural elements – ghosts or some such – but from what I can see of you two boys, you are level-headed and intelligent, and you will not leap to conclusions.’ He glanced from one to the other. ‘Do you want me to go on?’
Sherlock looked at Matty, then back at Weston. He felt strangely excited. ‘Tell us everything,’ he said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘Where to begin?’ Weston said. ‘Well, let’s start with Mortimer Maberley himself.’
‘Dear Mortimer,’ his wife said. As Weston’s hand came down on to the bedspread she put her own hand on top of it. ‘What a lovely man he was. What a good friend. Sherlock was saying just now that he had seen a photograph of the two of us with Mortimer, and with Sherlock’s brother.’
Ferny frowned. ‘That’s the one with –’ He stopped abruptly, then looked up at Sherlock and continued as if nothing had happened: ‘Mortimer and I were in the Oxford Police Constabulary together. He was my sergeant. A very good officer, fair and even-handed. Older than me he was. His family was an old established family in the area, going back generations, right to the Civil War and before. They had once been rich, but a lot of the money vanished during the Interregnum, between the reigns of Charles I and Charles II, when Oliver Cromwell and his Roundheads controlled England with an iron fist. By the beginning of this century all the Maberleys had left was a large house twenty miles west of here and an adjoining orchard.’ He smiled – a disquieting twist of his twisted lips. ‘I recall that Maberley’s father and grandfather had tried to make cider from the apples in the orchard, but the fruits were small and stunted, and the brew was like vinegar. It never sold, and they never became the cider millionaires they expected. Maberley joined the police force because it was a regular job that would at least provide some income to the family. Unfortunately his mother died of influenza when he was in his thirties, and his father of a heart attack a few years later, leaving him alone in the house. He never married.’
‘Wasn’t there some family legend of a treasure?’ Marie Weston asked suddenly, straightening up in her bed. ‘I recall he came to dinner one night and mentioned it.’ She smiled. ‘He brought two bottles of cider with him as a gift.’ She giggled. ‘We ended up emptying our glasses into a flowerpot while he wasn’t looking.’
‘Yes,’ her husband said, his scarred forehead twisting in remembrance, ‘there was something about a trove of gold and jewels that had been given to them by Prince Charles when he was on the run from the Roundheads back in 1651. Apparently, so the family legend went, they had hidden the Prince and his companions for several weeks when the Roundheads were scouring the countryside for them. In his gratitude, when he finally gained the throne, Charles II as he became gave them riches, but by Maberley’s time nobody in the family knew what had happened to the gold and the jewels. I was always inclined to believe that there was little truth and much exaggeration in the story, but Maberley believed it. At least, he wanted to believe it, but no search of the house or the grounds ever turned anything up.’ He shook his head, banishing the memories. ‘Anyway, that is irrelevant. The point is that we worked together, and I owed him my life.’
‘Because he pulled you from the collapsing building?’ Sherlock ventured. ‘The one that had been blown up with you inside?’
Weston nodded. ‘Yes, he did – at great risk to himself – and then he went back in for Marie. That action is the bravest deed I have ever known anyone undertake.’ He paused momentarily, eyes misting with emotion, then continued: ‘He retired from the police shortly after I was invalided out, and retreated to his family home. He couldn’t afford to take on any servants. He just potters along in that big house, all by himself, trying to do the cooking, the cleaning and the gardening. Once a week a boy from the village drops off a box of vegetables and meat, which the local tradesmen supply on a tab that keeps on growing and is never going to be paid off, but they don’t care. They remember the Maberley family, and what they did for the village in times past. We correspond, intermittently. And then, less than a year ago, I got the strangest letter from him. He seemed . . . anxious and unsettled, if his handwriting and choice of words was anything to go by.’
Weston paused, almost seeming to be embarrassed by the story he was telling. Sherlock prompted him, asking, ‘What was in the letter?’
‘He wrote that he was under the impression that every night, while he was asleep, his house moved.’
Sherlock felt a chill run through him. A moving house? He suddenly remembered the words of Charles Dodgson, at their first meeting, talking about the Russian legend of Baba Yaga – the witch whose hut ha
d legs, and could walk around by itself. Was that a coincidence, or did Dodgson know something about Maberley’s problems and was trying to warn Sherlock in advance?
‘What did he mean, his house moved?’ Matty asked, leaning forward.
‘You recall that I said all his family had was the house and an orchard?’
Matty nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘The house was set by itself, in a small area of lawn,’ Weston continued. ‘On the south side of the lawn the orchard began, and ran for several acres. What Maberley told me was that sometimes, if he woke up in the small hours of the morning, he found that his house was not on the edge of the orchard at all – it was in the middle of the orchard!’
‘In the middle of the orchard?’ Sherlock repeated, wanting to be absolutely sure what Weston was saying.
‘Indeed. He swore that if he looked out of his bedroom window then he could clearly see apple trees surrounding the house, rather than being all at the south end of the grounds. Somehow his house had slipped several hundred yards, as though it was trying to get somewhere. Maberley said that the shock of the sight normally sent him into a faint, and when he woke up the house was back where it was supposed to be, surrounded by lawn.’
‘It was a dream,’ Matty said firmly. ‘I get dreams like that – ones that keep coming back. I always dream that—’
‘And did this happen every night?’ Sherlock interrupted.
‘Not every night, no.’ He turned his head to gaze at Matty. ‘And he said that it couldn’t be a dream, because every night that it happened he wrote down exactly what he saw, and in the morning the notes were still there, in his journal.’
‘And did he ever try to force himself to stay awake to see what was actually happening?’ Sherlock pressed.
‘He said that he frequently tried to stay awake, using all kinds of methods to stave off sleep, but that whatever he tried, sleep managed to creep up on him, and if he woke up later on then it was to find himself in the middle of the orchard. And in addition—’
‘Those evenings when he tried to keep himself awake,’ Sherlock interrupted, ‘did they always end up with him falling asleep?’
Weston frowned, and thought for a minute. He turned to his wife and said, ‘You read the letters too, my dear – what exactly did he say?’
‘As I recall,’ Marie replied, closing her eyes and frowning, ‘he said that there were some evenings when he managed to stay awake all night, and nothing happened, but there were some evenings when he fell asleep and then awoke to find that the house had moved.’ She gazed at Weston with sympathy in her expression. ‘You must face it, Ferny – the balance of his mind was disturbed. It was obvious that he was hallucinating – probably after drinking too much of his family cider.’
Weston shook his head. ‘Mortimer Maberley was the most stable of men. I do not see him as someone in the grip of mental imbalance – even now, given what he said in the letter.’
‘It does look,’ Matty said slowly, ‘as if, on the evenings when he was awake, keeping watch, that he managed to somehow stop the movement of the house from happening, perhaps just by being awake.’ He glanced at Marie Weston apologetically. ‘If he was in his right mind.’
‘Or,’ Sherlock pointed out slowly, ‘the reverse is true – that he only went to sleep against his will when some force decided to move the house.’ He shrugged. ‘We have two alleged facts – Mr Maberley unwittingly falling asleep despite his precautions and the house apparently moving. We do not yet know which event caused the other – if indeed they are linked.’ He smiled. ‘If, of course, either event is true.’ He turned to Weston. ‘Did you write back?’
‘I did.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I was sympathetic, and I asked many of the questions that you have asked. He wrote back with the answers that I have given you. His letters since then have become increasingly frantic. He fears to leave the house now, in case it isn’t there when he returns. I fear that he may do something drastic if this situation is not resolved.’
Sherlock was about to ask what Weston thought he could do about it, but then a thought struck him. Actually, not so much a thought as a memory. The theatre, in London, a few weeks back, where he and his brother Mycroft had spent an evening listening to the violinist Pablo Sarasate. He remembered in particular the intermission between the halves of the performance, when he had left his brother sitting in a window seat in the theatre’s bar. A man had come up to Mycroft and handed him a letter, and Mycroft had said – Sherlock had to ransack his brain to retrieve the errant memory – ‘The Mortimer Maberley problem again – I don’t know what he thinks I can do!’
The Mortimer Maberley problem. Mycroft knew about it!
‘You told me,’ he said to Weston, tightly controlling his tone of voice and his words, ‘that you used to drink in a tavern with my brother Mycroft. Did Mortimer Maberley drink with you?’
‘He did,’ Weston replied. ‘They got on very well. Why do you ask?’
‘Because,’ Sherlock said bitterly, ‘I am beginning to realize that I am not here by accident.’
‘Perhaps you are here as part of God’s great design,’ Weston said firmly. ‘Mortimer Maberley needs my help, but I am unable to give it. I cannot travel more than a few miles from this house without provoking attention, and I cannot investigate Maberley’s situation in a manner that might solve his problems. It may require discussion with local villagers, or liaison with the local police, and I am not able to do that.’ He indicated his face with a wave of his hand. ‘The minute people see my face they stop listening to what I say.’
‘And you want Matty and me to investigate for you,’ Sherlock said levelly.
‘You have broken into my house, you have wreaked havoc among my specimens and you have invalided my servant George. I think you owe me.’
‘You have broken the law by stealing body parts from the mortuaries at Oxford and elsewhere,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘Whatever we might owe you is cancelled out by the fact that we were investigating your wrongdoings.’
The two of them stared at each other for a long moment, neither willing to back down. Eventually Marie Weston exclaimed, ‘Oh, Ferny – this is foolish! You cannot involve these two children in a problem that isn’t even yours! It would be wrong to send them to Mortimer’s house.’
Weston opened his mouth to answer, but Sherlock beat him to it.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I think it’s an interesting problem. I wouldn’t mind visiting Mr Maberley and having a look around. I can’t promise anything, but—’
‘Are you serious?’ Matty asked.
‘Perfectly.’ Sherlock turned to look at his friend. ‘Doesn’t it strike you as interesting? I mean, a house that moves?’
‘No,’ Matty said honestly, ‘it strikes me as being mad.’
‘So you don’t want to come with me?’
‘That’s a trick question, isn’t it? Of course I’ll come with you.’ He glanced at Mrs Weston. ‘Someone has to keep ’im out of trouble. ’E can be so single-minded ’e can see right what’s in front of ’im in great detail but ignore all the dangerous stuff that’s creepin’ up on ’im.’
‘In which case he sounds just like Ferny when he was on a case,’ Marie replied with a wan smile.
‘So,’ Matty said brightly, ‘what’s the pay like?’
Sherlock and Weston both turned to stare at him. ‘Pay?’ they both said in unison.
‘Yeah, pay. You want Sherlock ’ere to do a job, so you gotta pay ’im for it. You don’t expect a gardener to work for free, or a plumber.’
‘I thought we had established,’ Weston said patiently, ‘that you two have trespassed in my house, assaulted my servant and have been responsible for the death of several of my animal specimens. I’ll deduct your “pay” from the damages you owe me.’
‘I thought we also established,’ Matty said, equally patiently, ‘that you’ve been engaged in illegal activities which we was investigatin’, that your s
ervant attacked us, not the other way around, an’ that your precious specimens had to be destroyed to stop them from killin’ people – like us an’ your servant. I think we’re the ones who are due damages – an’ that’s before we even discuss payment for services.’
‘Matty, what are you doing?’ Sherlock hissed.
‘Establishin’ your market worth,’ his friend replied.
‘Mr Weston and his wife don’t have any money. Look around. They have no wages coming into the household.’
‘They can afford a servant, and that bloke with the monkey,’ Matty pointed out reasonably, ‘an’ presumably those wax body parts don’t come free. I doubt you can just pick up a poisonous snake in Oxford market, so someone has to be paid to find the specimens, collect them and send ’em ’ere. All that takes money, but ’e’s expectin’ you to work for free?’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Sherlock, you need an agent.’
‘It’s true,’ Ferny murmured, ‘that I receive a generous pension from the police force, and my dear wife manages all our finances in such a way that we never seem to be short of money – I don’t know how she does it. I cannot, however, say that we are rich.’
Sherlock went to say something, but Matty shushed him.
‘We can discuss suitable remuneration when you return,’ Weston continued after a long pause. ‘When we see how much progress you have made towards a solution.’
‘That sounds fair,’ Sherlock said before Matty could argue further.
‘I will write a letter to Mortimer Maberley,’ Weston said, ‘explaining who you are and what you hope to achieve. That way he will at least let you inside his house. I will also lend you two horses from the stables so you can ride there.’
‘’Orses, eh?’ Matty said brightly. ‘They don’t come cheap neither.’
‘When do you wish to set off?’
Sherlock glanced at Matty. ‘I think tomorrow morning, after breakfast.’
Marie Weston beamed. ‘Then you must stay here the night. We have spare beds. Ferny will cook a fine breakfast for you before you set off.’
