by Andrew Lane
They stayed awake for a while longer, talking not about the Mortimer Maberley case but instead discussing Weston’s theories about the effects of occupation or career on the human body, and the symptoms caused by various poisons. While they talked, Weston took a sheet of paper from a desk in the bedroom and set about writing the letter of introduction to Mortimer Maberley that he had promised.
‘You should read it,’ he said, ‘just in case you think I might be putting secret instructions in there.’
‘Like in Hamlet,’ Sherlock said, ‘where Claudius sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to the English court carrying a letter that asks the King to kill their friend Hamlet, who is with them.’
‘Except that Hamlet has rewritten the letter so that it is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who are executed.’ Weston grinned. ‘I remember Hamlet being your brother’s favourite Shakespeare play when he was here. You have obviously picked up his love of the Bard.’
‘It’s a family thing,’ Sherlock said.
He scanned the letter, which just contained a set of initial salutations and then a paragraph where Weston told Maberley that he was sending two boys – Sherlock Holmes and Matthew Arnatt – to help sort out Maberley’s problems. Forestalling any protests on Maberley’s part, Weston added that although the boys might appear young, they were intelligent and tenacious.
‘It looks fine,’ Sherlock said, handing it back. Weston sealed it in an envelope with some wax and passed it back to Sherlock.
When Weston went to sort out the bedding in their rooms, his wife looked beseechingly at Sherlock. ‘Please tell me that you won’t go ahead with this,’ she said piteously. ‘Dear Ferny gets these obsessions in his head and cannot let them go. Supporting him merely reinforces his obsessions. He needs to be able to let go of them.’
Sherlock was torn. On the one hand he wanted to aid Marie Weston in whatever way she needed, but on the other hand he was intrigued by the potential mystery. ‘I promise,’ he said eventually, ‘that we will do our best to prove that Mr Maberley is imagining things, and that there is a simple explanation.’
The next morning they ate a huge breakfast of bacon, eggs and fried bread, they were introduced to the horses and they set out before the sun had climbed very far in the sky. Sherlock had the letter to Mortimer Maberley tucked inside his jacket, while Matty had a hand-drawn map tucked inside his. Strangely, the house looked nowhere near as threatening in the warm morning light. Its lines and angles appeared charmingly eccentric rather than sinister. Or perhaps it was just the knowledge of what was really inside that made it less malevolent.
‘How are you feeling?’ Sherlock called as they rode.
‘Could’ve done wiv a better night’s sleep,’ Matty called back. ‘I kept thinkin’ I could hear somethin’ slitherin’ under the bed. An’ then, at breakfast, I was fine until I started wonderin’ if that was really bacon or if that Weston bloke had just fried up the meat from one of ’is snakes, so as not to waste it.’
‘You really do have an active imagination, don’t you?’ Sherlock said.
‘I say that, but if it was snake then we’re missing a trick ’ere in England. It was very tasty.’
The ride took nearly an hour. Eventually Matty announced that they were approaching Mortimer Maberley’s house. The countryside there was lush and green and relatively flat, with fields interspersed with copses of beeches and the occasional orchard of apple or pear trees. There were low hills on the horizon.
The Maberley house was set back from the road, nowhere near any other properties. A fringe of bushes in the overgrown grounds hid the building from sight until Sherlock and Matty had tied their horses up, made their way through the rusty gate and pushed through the shrubbery.
‘This must be the place,’ Matty said, looking at it aghast.
‘Do you think so?’ Sherlock responded.
The house was small – two storeys, with rooms either side of a central front door. It was also badly maintained – the thatched roof was mossy, and some of the bricks were crumbling at the edges. What made it unique, however, was the wooden beams that had been set up at one end of the house, bracing it diagonally from roof to ground.
‘’E’s serious about this house-moving lark then?’
‘Serious enough to do something to stop it,’ Sherlock agreed.
‘Can’t be workin’, or we wouldn’t be ’ere.’
‘Let’s take a look around before we knock on the front door.’
Matty followed Sherlock as he headed towards the corner of the house where the wooden bracing beams were fixed. Standing there, Sherlock gazed out across the wild lawn to where the apple orchard began – hundreds of trees about twice his height, spaced ten feet or so apart in a regular pattern. The lawn continued out under the trees and through the orchard without a break. There were no apples on the trees – it was too early in the year for that.
He let his gaze fall to the grass between the house and the first row of trees. If the house had moved – if it had, he emphasized in his mind, rather than the whole thing being an invention of the overheated mind of Mortimer Maberley – then there should be traces on the lawn. He could see nothing – no drag marks, no scuffing, nothing to indicate that anything heavy had been pulled or pushed across there. In fact, looking back at the house, it was obvious that it didn’t just rest on the surface. No house ever did. There would be foundations dug into the ground, if not a coal cellar as well. If the house did move, then what happened to all those underground parts – did they stay where they were, or did they move too? No, the whole thing was just too stupid.
He glanced back at the lawn. Kneeling down, he looked straight at the apple trees, trying to establish if there was any slope to the ground. He supposed it might just be possible, if the house was flat on the surface of the ground, and if the ground was muddy enough and sloped enough, that the house could slide towards the orchard, but that would require some kind of triggering event, like an earthquake, that would be more suited to a foreign country than to England. It would leave traces as well – gouge marks in the earth. The trouble was that even if all of those things were true, the house might well slide in one direction, but how could it possibly slide back again? And do so repeatedly?
He stood up, sighing. The whole theory was improbable, if only because the ground did not slope in the slightest.
‘Get out!’ a voice shouted from behind him. ‘I said, get out!’
With a deafening bang! a patch of overgrown lawn beside Sherlock suddenly exploded in a spray of earth and bits of leaf. He felt moisture from the grass splatter his cheek. He turned – slowly, so that he didn’t spook the man who had shouted. ‘I’m sorry,’ he called, ‘but we’re here to help. Ferny Weston sent us! We have a letter from him!’
As he turned, he saw a man leaning out of an upstairs window. He was pointing a gun at Sherlock – a massive fowling piece with a long barrel. It would shoot lots of small lead balls, Sherlock knew – making a mess of whatever they hit.
The man with the gun was unshaven. His wild white hair stuck out in all directions, and his small, round glasses were askew on his nose. His eyes, behind the glasses, glared wildly at Sherlock and Matty.
‘You, boy!’ the man cried, waving the gun in Matty’s direction. ‘Go and stand beside your friend. I want you close enough that I can hit you both with a single shot! You say you have a letter?’
‘Yes.’ Sherlock pulled it from his jacket and waved it. ‘Are you Mortimer Maberley?’
‘I might be. Wait there.’ He vanished from the window. Sherlock and Matty just stood there as he made his way through the house, eventually appearing at the front door. ‘Come over here and let me see.’
Sherlock and Matty made their way to the front door, painfully aware that the gun was pointed at them again, and equally aware that Mortimer Maberley was not the most stable of men. Sherlock handed the letter across and they waited while Maberley opened it, squinted at it, adjusted his glasses so they were nearly straight
and then read it again. Eventually he put it down and stared at them.
‘So, Weston sent you to help, eh?’
‘Sherlock ’ere is very good with puzzles an’ stuff,’ Matty boasted, ‘an’ I’m good with scams an’ confidence tricks. Whatever’s goin’ on, we can solve it!’
‘Neither of you has any expertise in the field of evil spirits then?’
The boys looked at each other.
‘No,’ Matty said. ‘Why?’
‘Isn’t it obvious? Demons are trying to drag this house to hell, but the angels keep stopping them and moving it back again.’
‘Why would demons want to drag your house to hell?’ Sherlock asked reasonably.
‘If I knew that,’ Maberley snapped, ‘then I wouldn’t need the services of an expert, would I?’ He realized that he was still pointing the gun at them and swung it away. ‘You’d better come in. I can make some tea, or there’s cider if you prefer. A lot of cider.’
‘Tea would be wonderful,’ Sherlock said.
Maberley led them into a living room that was cluttered with bric-a-brac, old furniture and books in piles. There was a smell to the house that Sherlock found familiar – a medicinal smell that made his flesh creep for some reason. He filed that information away for later consideration.
Once Maberley had vanished off into what Sherlock presumed was the kitchen, Matty glanced at Sherlock. ‘’E’s crackers,’ he muttered. ‘I think we know what the story is ’ere.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ Sherlock replied. ‘Let’s keep our minds open until we know more.’
Maberley came back with a pot of tea and three mismatched cups, and they all sat down wherever they could find a space. Maberley read Weston’s letter again, and then gazed at them over the top of his glasses.
‘You must think I’m mad,’ he said directly.
‘Yes,’ Matty responded.
‘No,’ Sherlock said.
Maberley gazed at the two of them through eyes that were bloodshot and watery. ‘You’re just kids,’ he said softly. ‘What can you do to help?’
Matty bristled, preparing to make a strong retort, but Sherlock gestured him to silence. ‘We can be witnesses,’ he said softly. ‘We can see what happens, and if what you say is right then we can tell people. We can corroborate your story.’
Maberley nodded. ‘That is good enough for me,’ he said soberly.
‘Now,’ Sherlock continued in a deliberately businesslike tone, ‘tell us everything.’
‘Did Ferny Weston not tell you himself?’
‘He did, but I want to hear it from your lips. There may be things that you forgot to mention to Ferny, things that seemed so simple or so obvious that you left them out, but which could prove the key to the whole affair. Or there might have been things that he skipped over in your letter because they were trivial details, but which might help unravel the mystery. It’s always better to go to the original source for a story, rather than rely on it being told second-hand.’
Maberley nodded. ‘You know that I used to be in the Oxford police?
Sherlock nodded.
‘Well,’ he continued, ‘that attitude of yours was one that Ferny and I tried to get our constables to follow, but they rarely did. They would far prefer to believe a story if it was colourful and it backed up their prejudices than if they had tracked it back to an original, and probably more boring, source.’
‘Not,’ Sherlock said, ‘that I think your story will be boring.’
‘I hope not. Very well – I will tell you everything as if I have never told it before and you have never heard it before.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
The story was, to be fair, pretty much the same as the one that Ferny had told them, with some changes in emphasis, but in Mortimer Maberley’s voice it took on an added immediacy. He had lived through these events, and it was obvious from his tone, and his expression, that he completely believed that they had happened. When he came to talk about the sight of the tops of the apple trees waving outside his bedroom window, in a place that they should not have been, his voice was filled with a kind of uncomprehending horror. The natural order of things had gone awry – nature was not as it should be, and he was scared.
‘You say that you tried to keep yourself awake, to see these things start,’ Sherlock asked. ‘How exactly did you do that?’
‘One night I tried making a pot of strong coffee,’ Maberley answered, ‘and drinking one cup every half hour, regularly. Another night I held a bell in my hand, so that if I became sleepy and my hand dropped then the bell would ring, or if it hit the floor then the same thing would happen. A third night I stood up all the time.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘A fourth night I tried balancing a tumbler of water on my head, but that was a failure from the start. But no, it didn’t matter what I tried – on the nights when the house moved into the orchard I would invariably fall asleep, only to wake up for a little bit, then fall back asleep again.’
‘Or,’ Sherlock pointed out, as he had done earlier to Ferny Weston, ‘the nights when you fell asleep despite your best efforts were the nights when the house seemed to move. We do not know, as yet, which one caused the other – if they are linked at all.’
‘You think they are,’ Matty said excitedly. ‘I know that expression. You know what’s going on.’
‘I know some of it,’ Sherlock said. ‘The rest I am beginning to work out. I just need to ask two questions, and then my friend and I need to look around.’
‘Very well,’ Maberley said.
‘Firstly, on those nights when the house does appear to move, and you sleep heavily, do you feel rested when you wake up?’
Maberley thought for a moment. ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘When I wake I actually feel as if my head is filled with a heavy weight and I find it difficult to move.’
‘Ah – very interesting. And can I ask about the windows in the house – do they open easily?’
‘They used to, but I think the wood of the frames has warped. It must be something to do with moisture in the atmosphere. I cannot get them open now, no matter how hard I pull. If I need to air the house, then I open the front and back doors and let the breeze do the job.’
‘Just as I thought,’ Sherlock said. ‘He glanced at Matty. ‘Right – can you check all around the outside of the house while I check inside? Give it an hour and then we can swap. If one of us has missed something then the other one will find it.’
‘What am I looking for?’ Matty asked.
‘Anything out of the ordinary.’
‘Do you want to narrow that down?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘And I,’ Maberley announced, ‘will make some sandwiches. Will fish paste do?’
‘Over the next sixty minutes, Sherlock visited every room in the house. Some were as filled with stuff as the sitting room, while others were virtually empty. All of them had that faint medicinal smell to them.
Remembering the story that Ferny Weston had told him and Matty about Cavalier refugees hiding in the house from Oliver Cromwell’s Roundhead forces during the English Civil War, Sherlock checked all the walls and floors, looking for secret passages or hidden rooms. He carefully paced out the length of each room, and then checked those dimensions against the lengths of the corridors outside, but there were no discrepancies. As far as he could tell – and he’d had a lot of experience – there was nowhere in the house that even one person could have been hidden, let alone several. No priest’s hole, nothing. Either he was missing something, or the family legend just wasn’t true.
Sherlock also checked all of the windows in the house as he was going around. He found, as he had expected, that the windows had been nailed so that they could not be opened, with the nails passing through the bottom of each frame and into the wood of the sill. The heads of the nails had been dabbed with a brown paint so that they could not be seen unless you knew to look for them. Working on the assumption that Maberley hadn’t done it himself and then forgotten about it, som
eone had been inside the house without his knowledge, and for some time as well.
Sherlock also found holes in the wooden skirting board of every room. They looked, at first glance, like mouse holes, but they were strangely regular – as if they had been drilled, rather than nibbled or scratched. There were no signs of mouse droppings either.
He passed Maberley on the stairs at one point – him going down, Maberley going up. ‘Did you ever think,’ he asked, ‘that any of your possessions had been moved around, or made more untidy?’
‘Quite the reverse,’ Maberley said, running a hand through his wild white hair. ‘Before all this bizarre stuff started happening with the house moving at night, there were a few days when I thought that the place was tidier than usual. Very strange it was.’
A little later, when Sherlock was searching through the kitchen, Maberley entered to make another cup of tea.
‘Do you have much of a problem with mice, or cockroaches, or any other kind of vermin?’ Sherlock said over his shoulder.
‘I used to.’ Maberley shrugged. ‘They seem to have all vanished now. I think the moving of the house has scared them off.’
‘That’s one explanation,’ Sherlock muttered.
‘Pardon?’
‘I’ll explain later.’
At the end of the hour he met Matty in the hall. ‘Anything?’ he inquired.
‘’Oles in the walls,’ Matty said. ‘They ain’t natural either.’
‘Yes, I found the other ends inside the house. Anything else?’
Matty nodded. ‘A couple of things. Come and look at this.’
He led the way outside the front door, to the scruffy mass of grass and weeds that counted as a lawn. He gestured at a particular patch that appeared no different from the rest.
‘What do you make of that?’ he asked.
Sherlock looked closer, but he could see nothing. ‘Make of what?’ he asked.
Matty glanced around, frustrated. ‘Come over here,’ he said, pulling Sherlock’s arm. ‘It’s easier to see if the light from the sun is behind you.’
