“What if you had missed the shaft’s opening? What if you had failed to grab me?”
“Then one or both of us would have been consigned to a watery grave. The aquifer would have carried us further on into the depths of the earth, where our drowned corpses would remain forever interred with no headstone to mark their location and no funeral service to commemorate our passing. We would, however, provide Sophia Tompkins with company for all eternity. There is that.”
“How so?”
“Her mortal remains were dumped down the shaft. Don’t you see? This is where Sir Philip disposed of her and would do likewise for any other Elysian who died in his labyrinth. Tartarus is a burial ground.”
“My God. Hence Sophia’s necklace being found not far from the entrance to the grotto.”
“Indeed. It must have fallen off her neck as the body was being brought to this place. The person or people carrying her didn’t notice.”
“Given that the installation of the door pre-dates her death by almost a year…”
“Then it stands to reason that she was not the first to perish during graduation,” said Holmes with a nod. “That, in turn, confirms the impression we received from the conversation between Sir Philip and Fairbrother. Sir Philip must have had prior experience of the rigours of the labyrinth proving fatal.”
“Simms and Kinsella.”
“Indeed, and in expectation of that contingency arising again, he chose to add the secret door to Tartarus and sink the shaft down to the aquifer. A handy method for getting rid of the evidence without trace.”
“The man is a scoundrel,” I declared. “Tossing the dead away as though they were so much household detritus.”
“A scoundrel he may be, but at heart a pragmatic man. He had a problem and he devised what to him seemed an expedient solution. Now, my friend, are you sufficiently recovered from your ordeal that you feel capable of walking? For the night is not yet over and neither are our labours. Principally, we must wrest Hannah from Malachi Hart’s clutches.”
Those last words of Holmes’s were as effective on me as any tonic. I launched myself to my feet.
“I’ll have at the blackguard,” I growled. “You see if I don’t.”
Holmes guided us out of Tartarus and along the tunnel towards the mouth of the grotto. We had the merest glimmer of light to navigate by – the glow of the outside world seeping in. It resolved itself into the silvery gleam of pre-dawn as we emerged from the grotto’s entrance. Here was the copse, and the statues of Hades and Cerberus, and a spectral ground-mist coiling through the undergrowth, and the first tentative chirrups of waking birds as night receded. The earth was coming back to life, and I felt much as though I was too.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
AN UNEXPECTED SAVIOUR
Across the dewy grass we went, at a fair lick. I had thought our destination would be the main body of the house, but in the event we skirted it and made for the servants’ wing.
“Why are we going this way?” I asked Holmes. “To find a back entrance?”
“No,” came the reply. “We must locate Dr Pentecost before we do anything else.”
“Dr Pentecost? But I thought you said we must rescue Hannah.”
“Subduing Dr Pentecost is our priority. He has no idea that we are alive and at large. He is under the impression that we are breathing our last in the Wrath of Poseidon chamber, if not fully expired by now. He will be waiting, biding his time until he is sure we must be dead before he drains the chamber, opens the door and checks for our corpses via the periscope situated just outside. The fact that we are no longer in the labyrinth is our main advantage. It gives us the element of surprise.”
“Then your mention of Hannah’s name back in Tartarus was merely a ruse,” I said, “a goad to get me up and going.”
My friend shot me a crooked grin. “It worked, did it not?”
I scowled at him in return.
“Think about it this way, Watson. We do not know where precisely Hannah is. Hart could be holding her anywhere on the premises. It is a big house and we are a search party of but two. In the time it takes us to find her, Dr Pentecost could well discover that we have cheated death and raise the alarm. On the other hand, if we grab Dr Pentecost first, then to coax him into surrendering up her whereabouts should not be difficult. I imagine you would be happy to do the coaxing yourself, would you not?”
“It might be fun,” I allowed, mentally picturing myself brandishing a fist in front of the classicist’s alarmed and frantic face. “But then, we do not know exactly where Dr Pentecost is either.”
“I believe I do.”
“Where?”
“Consider that the knot garden overlies the labyrinth.”
“It does.”
“And that Dr Pentecost is ensconced in some kind of hub from which he can oversee and govern all that occurs within the labyrinth. There has, therefore, to be a control room of some nature. It cannot lie in the house itself, since it must be in close enough proximity to the labyrinth that the periscopes and speaking tubes may function.”
“The octagonal building,” I said. “The one that lies in the centre of the knot garden. Is that what you are referring to?”
“If it is not the control room itself, it must afford access to one.”
We rounded the far end of the servants’ wing, whereupon the knot garden itself and the small building in question came into view. No sooner had we taken a few steps in that direction, however, than a cry from within the house reached our ears. I recognised the voice instantly. It was Hannah’s.
Without hesitation I deviated towards the source of the cry.
The next instant, an external door in the servants’ wing was flung open and Hannah came rushing out. She threw her arms around me, seeming to care little about my sodden, dishevelled state.
“Oh, Dr Watson!” she exclaimed. “I despaired of ever seeing you again. I could hardly believe it when I caught sight of you and Mr Holmes rushing by outside. Hence my rather indecorous shriek.”
I, overcome with relief and joy, was incapable of speech. That was until I spied a hulking figure sidling from the house in Hannah’s wake.
It was Quigg.
I cast Hannah to one side, somewhat more roughly than I might have liked, and squared up to the bald, cauliflower-eared Hoplite.
“Halt right there, sir!” I said, closing on him. “You shall not have her back, unless it is over my dead body.”
“Dr Watson, no,” Hannah said, but I scarcely heard her. My blood was up. So were my fists.
I aimed a punch at Quigg. He, surprisingly light on his feet for one so large, ducked out of the way. I put up my guard, for fear of retaliation, but none came.
Puzzled, but not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, certainly not during a fight, I pivoted round and swung at him again. Quigg swatted my fist aside with a meaty forearm like W.G. Grace flicking the ball past the slips. The ease with which he deflected my blow is, in hindsight, not a little embarrassing.
It was then that I recalled that Quigg was a former prizefighter, and I felt a queasy sensation in the pit of my stomach. I had bitten off more than I could chew. Quigg was humouring me. He could lay me out flat whenever he wished, with those fists of his and the walnut-like calluses on their knuckles.
Nevertheless, I gamely drew back my fist for a third punch.
A hand caught hold of my wrist. Hannah, gripping my arm, interpolated herself between me and the Hoplite.
“Stop it,” she said. “You have got the wrong end of the stick. Mr Quigg means me no harm.”
“But he was chasing you.”
“No, Dr Watson, he was not. It may have looked that way, but nothing can be further from the truth. He was merely accompanying me. Mr Quigg is on our side. I might even go so far as to call him my saviour.”
I eyed the Hoplite, who nodded as if to confirm the veracity of Hannah’s statement.
“Were it not for him,” Hannah continued, “I would still be
Malachi Hart’s captive. Whereas now, instead, I am free and Hart is the captive.”
“Tied him up good and proper, I did, with a length of window sash cord,” Quigg said. “Sailor’s knots to secure it. Same ones as I used on you and Mr Holmes a month back. He won’t get out of ’em. That’s assuming he comes round any time soon to try.”
“Well, that is good to know,” said Holmes briskly, “but, delightful though this reunion is, time is wasting. We must get on.”
“Hannah is safe, Holmes,” I said. “The urgency of apprehending Dr Pentecost is somewhat diminished.”
“True, but we must also consider the fact that, standing out here like this, one of the other Hoplites might remark upon us and be moved to intervene.”
“I am sure, in that event, Mr Quigg will be able to deal with it,” said Hannah.
Holmes looked exasperated but could see that we were not to be deterred. “Very well. From this position, we do at least have a clear view of our quarry’s lair.” He pointed in the direction of the octagonal building. “Should he emerge, we shall see him.”
“Dr Pentecost is still down in the panopticon?” said Quigg.
“If that is the name for the labyrinth’s control room, then yes. If he is elsewhere, I should be very surprised. Let us keep watch on that door and be prepared to move with all haste.”
Addressing Quigg, I said, “So you are Hannah’s saviour, eh?” I did not know whether to be pleased or envious. “Then why have you been acting so aggressively towards her?”
“Oh, that is not what he has been doing at all, Watson,” said Holmes. “Is it, Able Seaman Quigg? On the contrary, you have been watching out for her. You have been repeatedly expressing concern for her, although she has misconstrued your intentions. I see it now. Where you meant to caution her against enquiring into Sophia Tompkins’s disappearance, she took you to be trying to intimidate her.”
“Yes,” said Hannah. “Mr Quigg has just explained as much to me, and I deeply regret my past behaviour towards him.”
“I was only trying to help,” said Quigg. “I had to be subtle about it, but I wanted Miss Holbrook to realise that she was playing a dangerous game.”
“I have told you, Mr Quigg. It is ‘Miss Woolfson’.”
“Oh yes. Pardon me, miss.” He turned back to Holmes. “It is simply that Miss Woolfson’s behaviour had aroused my concern. If she wasn’t careful, I thought, she might wind up the same way as Miss Tompkins. I couldn’t come right out and say so. In this place you never can tell who might be listening, and I had my position to think about. I only hoped that, by acting a bit menacing, muttering vague but dire warnings, I might get her to take the hint and leave. It would have been better for her if she had.”
“You even followed her to Waterton Parva one day, did you not?” said Holmes. “She told us about sensing the presence of an unseen pursuer. It was you.”
“I was curious to know what she was up to. I could not follow her all the way to the village; she would have spotted me then for sure. Already, in the woods, she seemed wary, forever casting looks over her shoulder. Out on the road I would have had almost no cover. I knew, at least, that she was going to Waterton Parva and that she did not stay there long. My hunch was that she was reporting to someone.”
“You are not far off the mark.”
“I thought this ill-advised of her. Just as I thought her consorting with Edwin Fairbrother” – Quigg winced with distaste as he spoke the name – “was also ill-advised. He is a malign influence, that lad. Rotten to the core. I have no proof, but I am sure he talked Sir Philip into setting Miss Tompkins up for graduation, something she was hardly fit for.”
“He did,” said Holmes. “Out of pique more than anything. He did not mean for her to perish the way she did. He simply wished to teach her a lesson.”
“That was my reading of it too. And who was to say he might not arrange something similar for the young lady here, were she to cross him?” Quigg nodded at Hannah. “The more I have seen of this place, the less comfortable I have become with its practices. What happened to Miss Tompkins took me to the tipping point. She was the third.”
“The third to die during graduation.”
“Yes, in that weird labyrinth of Sir Philip’s. Hart and I lugged her body across the grounds under cover of darkness into the cave over yonder – the one outside which we ambushed you and Dr Watson that night. Sir Philip had a kind of shaft built in the cave last year. We tipped the body down that hole into an underground river like it was a bag of old laundry. The two previous ones…”
“Simms and Kinsella,” said Holmes.
“Yes, I believe those were their names. Them we simply buried in the grounds, far from the house. Sir Philip must have been keen not to repeat that practice, for a grave, however well dug, may always be discovered. Hence the shaft. I shudder to recall how the two fellows looked as we shovelled earth over them. Their lips purple, tongues protruding, their faces so white…”
“It sounds as though they asphyxiated,” I said.
“Medusa got them, both at once, in the labyrinth’s second chamber,” said Quigg. “By all accounts they got into a right pickle. Couldn’t fathom the solution to the puzzle, and when the darts started flying they panicked. Both ended up riddled.”
“Such a high dose of curare would have brought on respiratory paralysis. Their lungs would have stopped working within a couple of minutes.”
“Sir Philip saw what was happening and disengaged the workings of the chamber, but it was too late. When Hart and I went in to retrieve them, they were stone cold dead.” There was a distinct tremor in Quigg’s voice, all the more notable coming from so large and loutish-looking a man. “Sir Philip was all casual-like about it, at least after we had put them six feet under. They were both quiet types, no friends or family to speak of. He said he doubted anyone would come looking for them.”
“And no one did.”
“No one did. He was the same with the girl, Miss Tompkins. An orphan, with hardly a friend in the world – she would not be missed. The impression I got was that, to him, people perishing in the labyrinth was something that could not be avoided, just bumps on the road to success. Hart did not have any difficulty with it either, but then he is made of flint. I, on the other hand, did. I still do. I’m no angel, and Lord knows I have done some bad things in the past, but even I have my limits. If those three deaths are not murder, they are as near as, and I, heaven preserve me, have helped cover them up.”
The man looked genuinely contrite, his face contorted with guilt.
Holmes laid a hand upon Quigg’s shoulder. “You have redeemed yourself, sir. You have made amends.”
“I have tried, sir. When Miss Woolfson supposedly fell ill, that was when I truly began to worry for her. It was so sudden, and Dr Pentecost claimed he was looking after her and it was a touch of brain-fever, but I had my doubts. She never struck me as the sort. Then, tonight, Sergeant-Major Hart was absent from patrol, without explanation. My instinct was that Dr Pentecost and he were up to something. I went to investigate, but had all but given up hope of finding her when I heard a commotion on an upper floor. I found Miss Woolfson struggling with Hart in an attic room.”
“He was keeping me prisoner there,” said Hannah. “I had just broken free from him and was attempting to run, but he caught me again.”
“She was battling him gamely but there could be only one outcome. Hart was in a fury and his hand was bleeding.”
“I had bitten him as he attempted to muffle my cries for help.”
“And he had raised the other and was about to strike her.”
I gasped.
“That was it, for me,” said Quigg. “The final straw. I manhandled Miss Woolfson a few days earlier, but the intent behind it had been noble. Hart’s was anything but. I demanded that he let her go. Told him it was a disgrace. He responded that it was none of my business. But I made it my business. Hart is no weakling, and for a time it was touch-and-go which o
f us would win out. My experience told, though. I had him on the ropes and was about to finish him off, when…”
“When I intervened,” said Hannah.
“A lovely hit, it was. She had picked up a chamber pot, of all things.”
“Hart had brought it to the room for my convenience. And convenient it proved to be.”
“Nice, heavy piece of solid porcelain, it was. Miss Woolfson approached Hart from behind while he was busy with me. Wham! – to the back of his noggin. Knocked him cold.”
If I hadn’t already been besotted with Hannah, I would have adored her right then.
“Much though I’d have liked to put him on the deck myself,” Quigg said, “I could not begrudge her that. Hart deserved what he got. And here we all are.” He spread out his arms. “Miss Woolfson has told me everything, her real name, what she has been doing here. Not to mention why you two came and how Pentecost sent you into the labyrinth. We were coming to help when we spied you from a window.”
I extended a hand. “Mr Quigg, it would seem I owe you an apology, and a debt of gratitude.”
His grip, as his hand enfolded mine, was painfully crushing, and I could tell he was exercising only a small fraction of his full strength.
“If the apology is for attacking me, Dr Watson, then none is necessary. I did not feel I was in any danger.”
I bridled at that, and felt somewhat less magnanimous towards him than before.
Turning to my friend, Quigg said, “Mr Holmes, I am aware that I have done criminal acts. I am prepared to face the consequences. I can only beg that you will vouch in court that I have done what I can to atone.”
The Labyrinth of Death Page 27
