The Labyrinth of Death

by James Lovegrove

  “I said servicemen, not soldiers. At least one of them used to be in the navy, judging by the knots I am currently exploring with my fingertips. I have identified a bowline, and the other is, I think, a double overhand. They are unmistakably the handiwork of a sailor – our ‘bluejacket’ – and very well tied they are too. Even if my range of manual movement were not constrained I would find them hard to unpick. As things stand, they are utterly beyond me.”

  I growled with frustration. “Then we cannot escape?”

  “I am afraid not. We are stuck. We are trapped, like two Jonahs, in the belly of the whale.”

  “How damnable.”

  “Chin up, Watson. This may still work out to our advantage.”

  “I do not see how. If only I had managed to get off a shot…”

  “It would not have changed a thing. We would have been overpowered regardless, and I suspect we would have suffered a brutal reprisal from our subjugators had you wounded one of their number – a lethal reprisal had you killed him. You being disarmed before you could cause harm was probably a saving grace. We are intact and retain the full use of our wits. What we must do now is exercise patience. Sooner or later someone will return for us, whereupon we shall, God willing, get the chance to turn the tables.”

  It was undeniably an attractive proposition, the thought that we might yet be able to gain the upper hand and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat; it also seemed highly implausible.

  “You are not just saying that to keep my spirits up, are you?” I said.

  “Perish the thought. I would prefer it, though, if you did not slip into despondency. I need my Watson in full fighting fettle, ready to leap into the fray should the necessity arise.”

  I did my utmost to stay positive, but as the night wore on it became harder and harder. I estimate that we were in that cellar for the best part of seven hours, all told, and every minute of those hours ticked by with glacial slowness. As if my shoulder were not torment enough, I was afflicted by a series of muscle cramps owing to the awkward hunched position I was forced to adopt. First my right calf seized up, then my lower lumbar region. I was able to ease the discomfort in both instances through counter-flexion, but not so when the adductors in my thighs went into spasm simultaneously. Straightening my legs was impossible. All I could do was grit my teeth and endure the pain until eventually it subsided of its own accord.

  Meanwhile a train of thought repeatedly careered through my brain. People came to Charfrome Old Place and were never seen again, so Scadden had said. If that were true, were Holmes and I about to become the latest additions to the tally of the disappeared? Former servicemen would surely have no qualms about executing us and discreetly disposing of our bodies. Someone only had to give the word, and Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson would be summarily eliminated, gone without a trace.

  It was, for me, the proverbial dark night of the soul. I knew then how the condemned prisoner must feel as he awaits his appointment with the scaffold or the guillotine. Unlike him, though, I was not facing the just penalty for a heinous crime. Rather, I was due to be the victim of such a crime. I was tempted several times to express my apprehensions aloud, but refrained, not wishing to appear lacking in courage. I took what crumb of comfort I could from Holmes’s silent composure. If he could remain stoic in these circumstances, then so could I.

  By the time our captors came back for us, I was fully convinced that all was lost. A marrow-deep resignation had set in. I was cold, tired, plagued by pain, abjectly miserable. The likelihood that Holmes and I might reverse our fortunes seemed so remote as to be invisible.

  The hessian sack was whipped from my head. I sucked in my first unimpeded breath in what felt like an age. I blinked, dazzled by the dim light that filtered down into the cellar from the doorway at the top of the stairs. Opposite me, Holmes likewise had just been relieved of his makeshift hood. It was a pleasure to see his face again – those gaunt, ascetic features I knew so well. He flashed me a smile, which, though grim and sardonic, nevertheless kindled a tiny ember of courage in the ashes of my heart. If I were to die today, I thought, at least I would not die alone. By my side would be the best and the wisest man whom I have ever known. It was some solace.

  With us now in the cellar were two men. One was burly and powerfully built, with luxuriant moustaches and a military bearing. A jagged scar traversed the right side of his face, extending from upper cheek to jawline. It had healed in such a way that it permanently pulled down the outer corner of his eye, so that he seemed constantly to be leering in a skewed, somewhat sinister fashion.

  This man, in his mid-thirties, was the younger of the two. The other was perhaps three decades his senior and had an altogether more polished, patrician air. His grey hair was receding at the front, sweeping back from a pronounced widow’s peak, and a pair of bloodshot but piercingly intelligent eyes looked out from beneath his rounded promontory of a forehead, while a straight, severe nose hung over lips that were thin and curiously bluish, almost to the point of being purple. He was exceptionally tall, several inches over six feet, and slender with it. For someone of his advanced years he appeared to be in excellent physical condition, well-preserved, with few wrinkles and nary a trace of loose skin around the jowls. He was dressed stylishly, too. His suit looked to be Savile Row’s finest, cut from an expensive worsted cloth and tailored immaculately. His tie was glossy silk. His tiepin and cufflinks twinkled with inset diamonds.

  “Good grief, Hart,” said the elder man in refined, mellifluous tones. “Do you realise who we have here?”

  “Intruders, sir,” said the other. I recognised the voice instantly. It was he, this Hart, who had overseen our waylaying and detention last night. “Caught them, as I told you, sauntering through the grounds, casual as you please, like they owned the place. Reckon they’re journalists, by the looks of them.”

  “Representatives of the yellow press were bound to become interested in our little society sooner or later, scenting a juicy story. These are not they, however. Tell me, do you take The Strand?”

  “Can’t say as I do.”

  “Well, if you did, you might recognise this distinguished-looking chap here.” The well-dressed man pointed at Holmes. “Sidney Paget presents a good likeness of him in his illustrations. And his comrade over there, I’ll wager, is the author of the narratives.”

  “I’m not sure I’m any the wiser, sir.”

  “Hart, you and your fellow Hoplites have incarcerated none other than Sherlock Holmes, the famous consulting detective, and his bosom friend Dr John Watson.” The tall man’s expression turned severe. “And I would be much obliged if you would release them immediately, without delay.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE LOCAL ECCENTRICS

  Holmes and I sat together alone at a large mahogany dining table in a room lit by the slanting rays of the morning sun. On a sideboard nearby was a spread of hard-boiled eggs, barley porridge, raisins, figs, honey, thick-sliced bread and some kind of pancake, of which we were taking advantage, I with alacrity, Holmes only somewhat more circumspectly.

  It was a remarkable turnabout. A mere thirty minutes earlier I had been at an absolute nadir, convinced that death was imminent. Now I was enjoying a hearty breakfast and feeling as revived as Lazarus. My shoulder continued to hurt and my wrists were chafed from the cords that had bound them. Sensation was only just returning to feet and hands rendered numb by constricted circulation. But these seemed minor afflictions under the present circumstances. Never had food tasted quite so delicious or the touch of sunlight been so appreciated.

  Holmes, for his part, was taking it all in his stride. Glancing across the table at me, he said, “Journalists, eh? I have been insulted before, but that is a new low.”

  “It is easy to make jokes now, Holmes, but I for one thought that we were goners. Don’t tell me it did not once cross your mind that we were destined for a bad end.”

  “Frankly, no. I anticipated that we would be forcibly evicte
d come the morning, perhaps sent on our way with a clip round the ear and a boot from behind, but I did not foresee any worse than that. What would have been gained by killing us?”

  “Our silence? Dead men tell no tales, after all.”

  “The living tell none either, if they have not seen anything untoward. All we were guilty of, as far as Hart and his men were concerned, was straying onto Buchanan’s land. To kill us for that seems hardly warranted. Besides, any execution, if it were going to occur, would have been carried out under cover of darkness, during the small hours. I was already certain that we were going to survive, and the longer we were left in the cellar, the greater the certainty became.”

  “You never had even a twinge of doubt?”

  “Not one. How much more inconvenient is it to kill two people and cover up the deaths, than it is to give them a bit of a thrashing and toss them out on their ear. These Elysians ‘keep theirselves to theirselves’, remember.” Ever the amateur thespian, Holmes’s mimicry of landlord Scadden’s West Country inflection was spoton. “They would not want the police to come sniffing round on the trail of two absent Londoners last seen in the neighbouring village, would they?”

  “But Scadden said people go missing here. And what about Hannah Woolfson? Where is she? And, for that matter, Sophia Tompkins?”

  “Scadden’s claims seem predicated on the flimsiest of evidence. Casual garden labourers are far from credible witnesses. As for the two young women, we still do not have irrefutable proof that either has even been on the premises. I fear you let your imagination run away with you last night, Watson. Is it a propensity of authors, I wonder, always to neglect logic and construe the most catastrophic outcome possible?”

  I bristled at the jibe, but would have taken greater affront had I not been distracted by my stomach, which was demanding a second helping of porridge.

  As I deposited several liberal dollops from the tureen into my bowl and slathered it with honey, the door opened and in came the tall, refined man.

  “I trust you have been well catered for, gentlemen,” said he. His manner was both gracious and rueful. “I really cannot apologise enough for the rough handling you have received. Please allow me to introduce myself formally. I am, as you must already have deduced, Sir Philip Buchanan, and not only am I your host but I hope to become your friend, if you can see your way to forgiving this upsetting and regrettable incident. I come from having just delivered a stern dressing-down to my employee Sergeant-Major Malachi Hart. He and his subordinates were overzealous in the extreme, and I would be forever in your debt if were you willing, both of you, to let bygones be bygones.”

  He extended a hand to each of us in turn, and Holmes and I shook it, as if sealing a compact.

  “There is nothing worse,” Sir Philip Buchanan continued, “than a grievous misunderstanding – unless it involves one of the prodigies of our era. Then it is a tragedy. You may infer from that, Mr Holmes, that I am an admirer of yours. In fact, I follow your adventures avidly. Every edition of The Strand that boasts your name on the front cover, I snap up with an eager hand. And much of that eagerness is down to you, Dr Watson. I devour every word you write, and often I will read your stories twice through in succession, the first time to experience the unravelling of the mystery, the second to see how cunningly you have embedded the clues and, where necessary, hoodwinked the reader. In you, Mr Holmes has found not only a staunch friend but a biographer capable of doing his deeds literary justice.”

  “Holmes might disagree with you on that last point,” I said, “but for myself, Sir Philip, I thank you. Your compliments honour me.”

  “It is merely a statement of the truth,” said Buchanan. “The moment Hart revealed your faces, I felt sick with shame. Sick, I tell you. ‘What have I done?’ I said to myself. Of course I take full personal responsibility for what befell you. Hart and company had a job to do, they were following instructions, but that is no excuse.”

  “You called them Hoplites, these men,” said Holmes.

  “After the heavily armed and armoured infantrymen of Ancient Greece. They are Charfrome’s private paladins.”

  “Indeed. And your instructions are for them to apprehend trespassers and treat them like prisoners of war?”

  Buchanan sighed. “Overzealous, as I said. But certainly they are under orders to detain anyone who should not be on my property and present them to me at the earliest convenience. You two, as it happens, are the first to have breached our boundary since I hired Hart last spring and invited him to recruit a small complement of men from a similar background to serve under him. He had no idea what the appropriate etiquette was. I have set him straight. He and his men behaved as their military instincts decreed. They will not be quite so heavy-handed from henceforth.”

  “For the sake of future interlopers, I am glad to hear it.”

  “You may be wondering why I have engaged someone like Malachi Hart, previously of the Somerset Light Infantry, to supervise my domestic security.”

  “It did cross my mind.”

  “The reason, Mr Holmes, is that I genuinely do foresee the gentlemen of the press turning their jaundiced eye upon us. It is only a matter of time. We try to conduct our affairs discreetly here, but journalists have a habit of making other people’s business their business and thence the business of the general public. I would wish to prevent that occurring, to which end I have taken the precaution of installing vigorous defensive measures: our Hoplites. It is not only my privacy I am safeguarding but that of various prominent guests who are adherents to my philosophy.”

  “Interesting,” said Holmes. “And by ‘philosophy’—”

  Buchanan raised a finger to forestall him. “Before you launch the inevitable salvo of questions – and I will satisfy any and all enquiries you have, I assure you – might I ask you something?”

  “Be my guest.”

  “Why were you and Dr Watson here, on my land, at night?”

  I looked at my friend, curious to know how he would play his cards.

  “A reasonable enough request, I think you would agree,” said Buchanan.

  “Quite, quite,” said Holmes. “I could aver that it was pure error. We lost our way.”

  “And I would believe that assertion,” said Buchanan genially, “were anyone but Sherlock Holmes making it.”

  Holmes laughed. “The truth is that we are conducting an investigation.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “An investigation that has led us to this remote rural backwater.”

  “To my doorstep, indeed.”

  “There or thereabouts,” said Holmes. “I cannot, in the name of the same discretion that you yourself so prize, Sir Philip, furnish any more detail than that.”

  “I understand. You have a duty of care toward your client. Confidentiality is paramount.”

  “A trail of clues has taken me to Waterton Parva, that much I can reveal, and your estate borders the village.”

  “I see. The implication being that if something untoward happens in Waterton Parva, somehow the people up at Charfrome Old Place must be behind it.” A pained and weary expression contorted Buchanan’s face. “Yes, that is typical. We are the local eccentrics. We have, to outward appearances, a lifestyle that would seem nonconformist, even outlandish. Naturally, then, accusing fingers will point at us whenever there is a misdeed in the area. Back in March, for example, a number of sheep were taken from a farm not far from here.”

  I recalled Scadden telling us about the sheep that were “stoled”.

  “Police came from Dorchester to interrogate us,” Buchanan continued. “A constable sat where you are, Mr Holmes, in that very chair, and queried whether I might be behind the theft. Me!” he snorted. “As if, should I have a hankering for mutton stew, I would steal a sheep, rather than order meat from the butcher. As if a man of obvious substance like myself would resort to petty larceny. It was this incident that prompted me to seek out someone to act as my strong right arm, and in S
ergeant-Major Hart I found him.”

  “If you were not the culprit, then who?” said Holmes.

  “Gypsies. They were camped, at the time, on common land just to the north. I politely suggested the constable might train his sights on them, and sure enough fresh sheep carcasses were found in their possession. The gypsies maintained that they had bought them fair and square, and unfortunately there was nothing to prove they had not. They had sheared off the fleeces and disposed of them, so that the farmer’s dye mark on the wool, which would have identified the flock the sheep belonged to, was nowhere to be found.”

  “You fell under suspicion first, before gypsies?”

  “Seems inconceivable, does it not? But such is the prejudice towards us around these parts. Just for what we are, there is an ever-present underlying animosity.”

  “And what are you?” said Holmes. “I have heard the word Elysians used in connection with Charfrome Old Place. You talk of ‘adherents’ and a ‘philosophy’. Watson and I last night saw statues and follies betokening a fascination with all things Ancient Greek. The picture I am beginning to form is of some sort of pagan cult. Would I be correct in that surmise?”

  Buchanan offered a congratulatory nod. “You would, in essence. And yet I like to think that we are so much more. We Elysians, although we derive our inspiration and iconography from the past, are the future of this nation!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE ELYSIANS IN THEIR NATURAL HABITAT

  “Let me expound on that remark,” said Sir Philip Buchanan, a lively look brightening those eyes of his with their capillary-webbed whites.

  “I would be delighted if you would,” said Holmes.

  “Better still, let me show you. Do you have time?”

  “Our current investigation is a pressing matter, but I am sure we can spare an hour or so. Watson? Do you think you can tear yourself away from your repast long enough?”

  I gulped down a last mouthful of honeyed porridge. “Ready.”