The Labyrinth of Death

by James Lovegrove

  “We are on Buchanan’s property, then,” I said.

  “Indubitably,” came the reply. “And henceforth we must keep our voices low, Watson, and our movements stealthy. All said and done, we are trespassing, and who knows what lengths the Elysians will go to in order to preserve the sanctity of their realm.”

  I felt for the Webley in my pocket. The revolver’s cold metal was comforting to the touch.

  On we went, and shortly passed another folly. This one sat beside a small round pond and was a full-size replica of a Greek temple, complete with porticos and stylobates, architraves and cornices. Close by lay a third structure, built into the slope of a hillside – a theatre in the classical style with raked seating, a semicircular orchestra and a stage backed by a skene. It was smaller by some margin than the great theatres of antiquity, capable of accommodating an audience numbering in the dozens, no more than that; but it was still impressive and enchanting.

  A winding path took us through a glade of aspens, between whose dappled trunks peeked statues of nymphs, satyrs, and an Aphrodite in a decorous state of semi-disrobement. Further on we entered an olive grove at the heart of which stood a rather forbidding-looking Zeus. The patriarch of the Greek pantheon was posed with one hand aloft clutching a thunderbolt, as though braced to launch it at some unsuspecting mortal below. His brow was imperiously knotted, his feet widely spaced on the plinth beneath him, every muscle in his physique tensed. All of the statues we had seen so far were well-made, but the sculptor in this instance had executed his craft with singular skill. His Zeus was uncannily lifelike, down to the fine curls of the hair and beard. I had the unnerving sense that at any moment he might loose the thunderbolt at me for having had the temerity to intrude upon his repose.

  We were not far past the Zeus when Holmes plucked at my sleeve, indicating I should halt as he just had. For a span of several seconds he canted his head, as though listening. His face was a mask of concentration.

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  “Perhaps nothing,” he replied.

  I did not like the sound of that “perhaps”. It left room for the possibility of a something.

  We proceeded at a snail’s pace. When I was in Afghanistan a Sepoy in the Bengal Native Infantry, an expert at tracking tigers, taught me how to tread more or less soundlessly by placing down each foot toe first and rolling along the sole to the heel before picking it up. I employed the trick now, all the while casting wary glances about me. What I was looking for, I was not sure. Holmes seemed to suspect that we were not alone. If so, whoever or whatever was stalking us was keeping well concealed. I saw nothing but the undulating moonlit wonderland that was the grounds of Charfrome Old Place. Here was a towering elderly oak beneath the boughs of which a set of stone benches were arranged in concentric circles, as though for a symposium. Here, a narrow finger of manmade lake in whose placid waters tritons and naiads cavorted, their play watched over by Poseidon. There a Hermes in winged cap and matching sandals, clutching his caduceus and poised on tiptoe, frozen in the act of running some divine errand. How many tens of thousands of pounds had Buchanan spent? To realise such an elaborate vision must have cost more money, I estimated, than I would ever earn in a lifetime.

  Now, ahead, Holmes and I caught our first glimpse of Charfrome Old Place, the house itself. It sat at the head of a horseshoe-shaped valley, in the lee of a ridge of hills, and was a sprawl of projecting casements, towering chimneys and cater-corner pitched roofs. There was so much of it, such a profusion of wings and annexes, that it was nigh impossible to take it all in, even at a distance. The core portion dated, if I had to guess, back to the sixteenth century, but successive owners had added to that over the years, extending what would have been an already grand edifice into something palatial.

  Lights burned in several of the windows but not in enough of them to make the house look welcoming. The vast majority of it was dark, suggestive of untenanted rooms, lonely corridors, entire unvisited floors.

  Holmes paused again, his head twitching from side to side. This posture of alertness made him look especially birdlike, an impression accentuated by the beaky aquilinity of his nose. I still could not tell if he was merely scanning the area for potential danger or had discerned an actual threat, a foe as yet unseen and unheard by me. As a result of my military service I had developed a fairly reliable intuition about such things. The country around Kabul and the Khyber and Michni passes were rife with lurking Ghazi snipers, and after a while one became attuned to their presence. Some instinct, a prickling of the nape hairs, told one to beware and take precautions. Holmes, however, had powers in that respect which put mine to shame. He had an almost preternatural gift for registering anomalies in his surroundings, as if he could read the very air currents and determine from them whether all was as it should be or not.

  In short, if Holmes was perturbed, then I had reason to be too.

  Abruptly he caught my elbow and tugged. We moved, quickly but surreptitiously, towards a small copse. Once amongst the shelter of the trees, we withdrew further into this refuge, padding along backwards so that, were anyone pursuing us, we stood a chance of spotting them. I wanted to ask Holmes how certain he was that we were under observation – that our footsteps were being dogged – but knew better than to break silence. Sherlock Holmes did nothing without justification.

  The deeper we retreated into the copse, the thicker the canopy of leaves overhead grew, and the darker and danker the atmosphere became. The ground was spongy with moss underfoot. Soon I was straining my eyes in order to see. Holmes was a featureless profile beside me, like a cameo silhouette.

  Then I felt a sudden stabbing pain in the small of my back. Startled, I let out an involuntary yelp. Something had prodded me, hard.

  I turned to find a man behind me. The hand with which he had prodded me was still reaching for me, fingers stiffly extended. In his other hand he held a weapon, a spear of some sort. And at his side crouched a large dog, jaws agape in a fearsome snarl.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE BELLY OF THE WHALE

  Terror coursed through me. Every nerve ending in my body jangled. I groped for my pistol. I fumbled it out of my pocket. Cocking the hammer, I began backing away from the stranger and his hound. The moment he moved, I would fire. If he let slip that dog, I would kill it without hesitation or mercy.

  The man remained stock-still. The dog likewise was motionless. It must be perfectly trained, I thought. It was not even quivering with anticipation or straining at the leash.

  I butted up against a hard surface. At my back I felt rough, damp rock. I was cornered. If providence was kind I would pull the trigger before the beast got me.

  “Watson…” Holmes hissed.

  I barely heard him. My focus was on the man and his canine accomplice. Why was he so static? Why had he not even spoken? His immobility was unnatural. It was almost as though…

  My whole body relaxed, like a bowstring slackening after the archer has chosen not to let the arrow fly. I heaved a sigh that was equal parts relief and embarrassment.

  The stranger was, of course, a statue, another of the many that dotted the estate. In the pitch darkness of the copse I had mistaken him for a living creature, and what had felt like his hand prodding me was in fact me reversing onto it.

  As for the dog, by dint of brushing aside some low-hanging fronds I discovered that it possessed not a single head but rather three; the branches had obscured two of them from view. It was, in other words, a representation of the famous three-headed sentinel of the underworld, Cerberus. That meant that the figure whom it accompanied must be the god Hades, Lord of the Dead. Now that I looked more closely I could see that his spear was in fact a kind of trident, albeit one tipped with a pair of prongs rather than a trio. From the recesses of my memory I dredged up the name for such a weapon, learned during Classics lessons at school: a bident. Hades was often depicted carrying one, his signature armament.

  I had an urge to laugh and at the
same time to berate myself for my foolishness. In the event, I simply sagged against the rocks. They were part of a large outcrop reaching some twenty feet in height, and just next to where I stood, I perceived an aperture in the sloping wall they formed, a jagged, arched fissure that was tall and broad enough to accommodate a man. It appeared to be the mouth of a cave. Was this supposed to be the entrance to the underworld? Was that why Hades and Cerberus were standing guard outside?

  Holmes hissed my name again, bringing me back to my senses. He beckoned to me with a flurried wave of the hand. Pushing myself off the rocky wall, I moved to join him. Just as I did so, I saw two shapes detach themselves from the tree shadows on either side of him.

  They were swift, those shapes, like black phantoms, and before I could utter a cry of alarm they converged upon Holmes, pouncing on him.

  He reacted speedily, but alas not speedily enough. His assailants – both large, bulky men – seized his arms and twisted them backwards with vicious force. Holmes struggled, to no avail. He aimed a sideways kick at the fellow to his right, and his instep connected with the man’s shin, but he was off-balance and delivered only a glancing blow, not the crippling strike he might have hoped for. The man grunted in pain but did not let go.

  In riposte, his colleague drove a foot into the back of Holmes’s legs, and my companion collapsed heavily to his knees. His assailants wrenched his arms higher behind him, forcing his head and trunk forward at a more acute angle. Holmes continued to writhe, but now that he was on the ground he had even less leverage against them than before. Nor could he bring his baritsu skills to bear on the situation, since the martial art required the free use of all four limbs to be effective.

  A third assailant emerged into view, this one clutching a lumpy object of some sort. The subduing of Holmes had taken no more than five seconds, during which time all I could do was stare, dumbfounded. As the third man brandished whatever was in his hand above Holmes’s head, however, I collected my wits and galvanised myself. I still had my Webley and it was primed to fire. I raised it, calling out, “You there! Stop this instant or I will shoot!”

  I was principally addressing the man with the lumpy object, which I took to be a cudgel or cosh. He was undeterred by my challenge, however. The thing in his hand unfurled, showing itself to be a piece of fabric, roughly rectangular.

  “I mean it,” I said. “This is your last chance. Move away from my friend – now – or one of you gets a bullet, and I do not much care which one it is.”

  The man just laughed, as though he knew something I did not. Sure enough, the very next instant I felt something small but hard pressing into my temple, creating a distinct circular impression. I recognised it as the end of a pistol barrel.

  “Who is getting a bullet?” said a guttural voice right by my ear, mockingly. “I think it may not be one of us after all.”

  I froze. The gun ground more insistently into the side of my skull.

  “In case you don’t understand,” said the man, “that means hand over the barker. Unless you want your grey stuff all over the ground…”

  I thought about spinning round and firing at him, but sensed that he would be quicker on the draw than I. All I could do was let go of my revolver with all but my forefinger and hold it up by the trigger guard. A hand retrieved it from me. Then further hands seized hold of my person. I put up some resistance. My captors, though, outnumbered me, and each was sizeable and remarkably strong. The game of rugby had made me tough, army training tougher still, but even so, in no time I was wrestled to the ground and rendered helpless, with someone’s knee in the small of my back.

  I heard a rustle of cloth, and a small hessian sack was slipped over my head. Pure blackness enveloped me. My arms were yanked behind my back and a length of cord was lashed around my wrists, fastening them together. Thus securely bound and incapacitated, I was hoisted to my feet.

  “Both of them done up good and proper, bluejacket fashion?” said the same guttural voice as before. “All right. Excellent work, lads. Let’s go. Hop to it. On the double.”

  A hand shoved me roughly between the shoulderblades and I staggered. Another hand took my elbow, and its owner, maintaining a vicelike grip, steered me forwards.

  So began a lengthy, stumbling march. I trudged along, effectively blind, with the hessian sack pressing against my face, half suffocating me. The smell of the material was pungent, reminiscent of a farmyard. To add to my woes, my shoulder throbbed horribly. My old war wound had flared up, exacerbated by the maltreatment it had just received. The worst I could usually expect from it was a dull rheumatic ache on cold damp days, but now I was experiencing a gruelling agony, as though a drill were boring into my scapula.

  “Holmes?” I said at one point, desiring both confirmation that he was still with me and reassurance that he was well.

  “Belt up, you!” said the same gruff voice as before. “No talking.”

  Several times I missed my footing and nearly fell. The hand clamped to my elbow then served as support as well as guide, keeping me perpendicular. It was confoundedly unpleasant, not to mention unmanning, to be forced to walk without being able to see where I was going. The terrain was anything but even, its inclines and declines hard to predict, and we were moving at a brisk lick.

  After twenty minutes of this I was thoroughly disorientated and beginning to succumb to despair. I could hardly bear to go another step.

  At that moment came a small reprieve. The sound of our footfalls changed, as did the texture of the ground. We were now crunching across gravel, a level pathway of some sort. Echoes suggested we were adjacent to a large structure. Everything indicated that we were approaching the house.

  Sure enough, I heard a door open. Another hand attached itself to me, and I was manhandled through the doorway and into an interior space. It was cool and airy. Our footfalls became shuffling and resonant. I registered bare floorboard beneath my soles.

  We crossed what I could only assume to be a hall and passed along a creaking corridor. Another door opened.

  “Staircase down,” said the only one of our captors to have spoken so far. “Mind your step. And your heads.”

  I descended, half crouching, sidelong, with a man fore and aft. At the bottom I was pushed to a corner and made to sit on the floor. My wrists were untied but I did not have a chance to massage them or stretch my arms, because almost immediately they were drawn in front of me and retied. This time the cord was wound around my ankles as well, for good measure. I was left bent double, trussed like a Christmas goose.

  A brief bout of further activity followed, ending with the clatter of the door closing and a key turning in a lock.

  All was quiet.

  I took stock. Without doubt I was in a cellar. Even through the sack I could smell mustiness, and a clammy subterranean chill permeated my clothing, most of it radiating from the floor, which felt to be bare earth.

  “Holmes?” I ventured in a low tone.

  “Here, old fellow.”

  “Oh, thank goodness. I feared I was alone. How are you faring?”

  “As well as can be expected. You?”

  “My shoulder hurts like the devil and I can hardly breathe through this damned sack, but all things considered I could be worse. We are inside the house, I take it.”

  “One must presume so.”

  “What do you think our captors have in mind for us?”

  “I cannot say. The fact that we were taken prisoner and have not been abused too badly, however, bodes well. No punishment has been meted out.”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Perhaps our fate is being decided right now.”

  “I should not be surprised if it was. As long as we are alive, though, we have hope.”

  His bravado did little to dispel my gloom. “This is all my fault,” I said.

  “How do you arrive at that conclusion?”

  “When I backed into that statue of Hades, I let out a cry. The noise must have told them where we were.”

/>   “They had already narrowed down our position by then. It was only a matter of time before they sprang their ambush. All you did was hasten the inevitable. No, if anyone is to blame for this mess, Watson, it is I. I am the one who took us blundering onto the estate.”

  “It was not ‘blundering’. We were cautious.”

  “Not cautious enough.”

  “You were not to know the place would be so well guarded.”

  “That certainly is true. I anticipated that someone might patrol the grounds after dark, but I thought that it would be a single individual at most, a gamekeeper or a night watchman, not half a dozen former servicemen.”

  “Former servicemen?”

  “Can you not tell? Dear me! The way they closed in on us from several quarters at once, herding us – the organisation of it, the precision – they could not be anything else. These are men well accustomed to working as a unit. Did you not notice, too, how they automatically fell into step while escorting us here?”

  “Your presence of mind, under duress, is a marvel. I must confess I was paying more attention to staying upright than to them.”

  “It is an unconscious habit they will have picked up from hours of drill practice. Nor did any of them once question the authority of the fellow giving the orders – the one who used that distinctly military phrase ‘on the double’ and also ‘bluejacket’, army slang for a sailor. There was no debate, no demur. He told them what to do, with officer-class officiousness, and they complied. Respect for the chain of command is ingrained in them, as natural to them as breathing.”

  “It seems strange – excessive, even – for Buchanan to hire armed soldiers to protect his property.”