Sherlock Holmes and the King's Evil: And Other New Tales Featuring the World's Greatest Detective

by Donald Thomas

  “And what of any miraculous powers?” I persisted.

  “Medieval people lived wretched lives and met early deaths. Typhus, scurvy, scrofula, bubonic plague, which are mercifully rare now, were common then. The healing of these widespread afflictions was the greatest object of their prayers. Heaven alone knows what may drive a man or a woman to pray for relief.”

  “You do not know of any cause that might have driven Abraham or Roland Chastelnau?” Holmes asked.

  “Unfortunately I knew neither of them well enough for that. Nor, I think, could anyone else answer your question.”

  Like so many local historians, Roderick Gilmore was not only delighted to provide us with information which might assist us but also to encumber us with a good deal that we could have done without. All the same, as we made our way through the churchyard yew hedges once more, towards the road that led back to the Bridge Hotel, I felt that our host had been suggestive rather than informative. Was there something he was holding back?

  8

  In the hours that followed, Holmes was kind enough not to remind me that so far as the strip of ancient metal and the “pebbles” were concerned, “my case” appeared to have run into the sand. I daresay he felt that with both the brothers dead, whatever evil possessed Abraham according to the poor fellow’s own account, was no longer a threat to those around him. My friend seemed content that I had provided a solution to the mystery of the Chastelnau brothers’ disappearance.

  That evening, as we sat at dinner in the hotel dining-room, the beam of the Old Light shot fitfully across the dark sea. The new keepers of the wooden lantern and barrack-room were now in place. Whatever part that remote beacon had played in murder or tragedy was over. Holmes looked up from his mutton chop, which along with potatoes, green peas and a bottle of indifferent St Emilion was the table d’hôte of the establishment.

  “What is to become of our questionable relic?” I inquired, “The fragment of the Chester Cross—or not, as the case may be.”

  “I have given the matter a little thought.” he said, “It should, of course, be yielded up to Her Majesty’s Treasury, like all treasure trove. Far the best person to act as go-between would be Brother Mycroft. He knows these Treasury fellows and will save us a good deal of bother.”

  “Unless it should be a copy or a fake. In that case, you might keep it among your souvenirs.”

  He looked at me thoughtfully.

  “You know, Watson, I believe that if it were not part of the Chester Cross, I should not care to have it among them. I have made it a habit to be selective. If it is genuine, on the other hand, it would be a symbol of faith and innocence, therefore out of place in such a menagerie.”

  I let this pass and watched the beam of the Old Light illuminate the horizon once more.

  “There is one thing further,” he said significantly.

  “What would that be?”

  He laid down his knife and fork and glanced into the darkness beyond the window.

  “Whatever lies out there in the quicksands, this is your case not mine. You have done it admirably and, as I say, I am sure Lestrade will commend you. However, were it my case, I should now feel it incumbent on me to present the findings to Miss Alice Chastelnau.”

  “Of course I shall! Once we are back in Baker Street, I shall set out the entire course of the investigation. Naturally, I cannot tell her precisely what happened to her brothers. No one could. In the circumstances it would be preposterous to accuse one alone of murdering the other. However, she may draw her conclusions privately from the evidence. Then I shall let the matter drop.”

  Sherlock Holmes tapped the table with his spoon and turned a little in his chair. The waiter came towards us, bearing a cheese board occupied solely by a large slab of farmhouse Stilton under a blue-and-white willow-pattern cover. When the man had gone, Holmes let the corners of his mouth turn down.

  “It is beyond my comprehension why these establishments insist upon ruining a Stilton cheese by soaking it in port wine! As to the other matter, Watson, I fear that a letter to Miss Chastelnau and a private report will not quite do. At least I should think so if this were my case, and if I were as close as we are now to Mablethorpe. I would feel obliged to call upon the lady. I should break the news to her as tactfully as one may in a quiet talk—and as one cannot do in a formal letter.”

  It was difficult to argue against this, except in terms that would have sounded unchivalrous or downright caddish. Had Holmes not raised the matter in this way, however, I should have returned to London next day. I was still in medical practice. Though I left a locum in charge of my consulting rooms on these occasions, there were patients to be seen by me and hospitals to be visited.

  “If you think it right,” I said a little gloomily, “but I cannot stay in Sutton Cross for ever, waiting for an appointment with Miss Chastelnau.”

  He was undismayed by this.

  “I do think it right,” he said in a kindly tone, “and I do not think an appointment will be necessary. We are, after all, performing a service. It may be a greater service to her than can at the moment be supposed. The early morning train will get us to Mablethorpe well before lunch. The evening train will bring us back here before the dining-room closes. The day after tomorrow you will be back in London. Your grateful patients will doubtless applaud your return.”

  9

  So it was that our pilgrimage to Mablethorpe began next morning, after an early breakfast. Holmes had sent a telegram to Miss Chastelnau, advising her of our visit, though how he could be sure the lady would be at home was not revealed. The three carriages of the stopping train from King’s Lynn to Cleethorpe, pulled by something no grander than a shunting engine, rattled and jerked their way out of the little wooden platform at Sutton Cross. We traversed the expanse of the fens, their pastureland gathering the October rains in wide pools. After branching off the main line at Willoughby, a single track followed the flat coastline. Broad sands and paths among the dunes were fringed by tall grass and grey-leaved buckthorn with its orange berries. At a little distance out to sea, parallel with the shore, a series of sandbanks stretched in either direction as far as one could see.

  I had no clear idea of what to expect from Mablethorpe. There was a church and two or three inns. Elegant houses, precisely of the kind that might contain a school for young gentlewomen, stood half-concealed in groves of fir trees and oaks. Elsewhere, brightly-painted boarding houses and something approaching a promenade suggested all the makings of a popular seaside bathing-place or “resort.” A brisk salty wind blew from the North Sea.

  Holmes and I made the best of it, taking lunch at one of the inns, the so-called Book-in-Hand. Then we set out on foot towards what was once Miss Openshaw’s academy. Nowhere in a place the size of Mablethorpe is far from anywhere else. The school house, at least, was very much what I had expected. It was a substantial family dwelling, classical or at least square-looking. Its crescent-shaped gravel drive entered between one set of stone gate-pillars and exited between another pair a little further up the suburban road. The gravelled way was flanked by laurel bushes and other shrubs. A front elevation showed us a house on three levels with a bay and two large sash windows on either side of its stone porch. It had no doubt been built in brick but was coated with pale stone rendering, painted white, as befitted the neo-classical ambitions of sixty years ago. With a long seat in a grey wooden summer-house on the lawn, it seemed precisely the residence to house ten or a dozen genteel pupils. I cannot believe that their instruction required anyone but Miss Chastelnau herself.

  It seemed to me, as Holmes rang the bell, that there was very little sign of the young ladies. However, that was neither here nor there. A maid in cap and apron answered the door and Holmes announced us. Without hesitation we were admitted into the hall with its black and white tiling and an inner door of red and blue glass panels. From there we proceeded to what I suppose I must call the sitting-room of the headmistress.

  Miss Chastelnau
was evidently expecting us. She stood with her back to the bay window and her face in shadow. She was the same neat and restrained person who had visited us in Baker Street. Yet I sensed that her family tragedy had inspired her with anxiety rather than grief.

  The sitting-room was just what I would have expected. The sun filled its chintz curtains at the window and, on a small table, stood a Chinese vase adorned with green dragon-handles. The hearth, where Holmes and I faced one another with Miss Chastelnau upright between us on a yellow settee in the Egyptian style, was lined with William De Morgan tiles portraying centaurs, the phoenix and other mythical creatures of the ancient world. I thought afterwards that the entire room was a curious shrine of the non-existent.

  As succinctly as I could, because that was kinder, I explained the details of my solution to the mystery of her two missing brothers. I added that there had, of course, been no inquest as yet. What its verdict would be I could not say. Miss Chastelnau sat quite still and listened in silence. When I had finished, she thanked me with every appearance of sincerity. If she showed little emotion, it was surely because she remained in that state of shock which precedes any outbursts of grief.

  “And you, Mr Holmes,” she said quietly, turning to him, “thank you for coming to see me also.”

  Throughout all this, he had been sitting with his head lowered a little, as if reading the mythology of the hearth tiles. Now he was straight-backed in his chair and looking her directly in the eye.

  “I fear you are in error, madam. I did not come here to see you, for that is Dr Watson’s business. I am here to see Mr Abraham Chastelnau.”

  If a bomb had gone off in that ornamented and genteel room, it could not have produced a more stunned and silent aftermath than his words. I had not the first idea what he was talking about. Our hostess could only say, as if in a dream,

  “I do not understand you, Mr Holmes.”

  “Do you not? Then I will explain.”

  “He is not here!” The desperate cry was so unlike her habitual composure that I felt the skin of my back creep with cold.

  “If you mean,” said Holmes, “that he could not be here without your knowledge, I will go so far as to accept that. I beg you, however, do not torment yourself by denials until you hear what I have to say.”

  She made no reply but stared at him, as if one or the other of them had gone mad. Holmes continued.

  “We are asked to believe that your brother Abraham, at the allotted time of no later than 7.45 on Sunday evening, cranked up the chain of the lantern mechanism in the Old Light at Sutton Cross. At the same time, he must have wound up the clock and the governor which controls the mechanism in order that it should continue to run correctly. Somewhen soon after that, he was summoned by a gunshot from the darkened beach. We do not know precisely what happened there between your brothers but soon afterwards Roland Chastelnau died. We presume that he drowned, from whatever cause.”

  “I know that, Mr Holmes,” she said with quiet reproach.

  “Abraham, it appears, attempted to return to the lighthouse. That should have been straightforward enough. However, it is alleged that Roland meant to ensure, whatever happened on the beach, that his elder brother should never reach the Old Light alive. Earlier that day, he had therefore adjusted the position of the iron shutters across the glass panes of the lantern dome. No one would have gone up there to check them, for the glass was cleaned that morning. No one would have seen the direction of the beam by daylight.”

  She was holding a pocket handkerchief to her mouth and her head was bowed.

  “The truth, Miss Chastelnau, is best. The altered direction of the beam, shining through the darkness a little closer to King’s Lynn and further from the Boston Deeps, was surely intended to lure its victim into the estuary and the quicksands. That would explain why his body was never found. If Roland had succeeded in such a plot, he had only to return to the Old Light as the tide ebbed and adjust the shutters to their original position. Unfortunately, he himself was drowned before the ebb. The misalignment of the shutters was therefore discovered by Dr Watson and myself. That was intended to be conclusive evidence of Roland’s guilt.”

  “Intended?” she cried, looking up suddenly, “I do not understand. What Dr Watson has just told me is surely the truth.”

  “And I have to tell you that it is quite impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “For two very simple reasons. Abraham could not have wound that clock at a quarter to eight, or at any time until after nine o’clock. Look at any simple grandfather clock, which the face of this one resembles. There are two keyholes which are covered when the hour hand is between the numerals for three and four—or eight and nine. The clock cannot be wound during those periods.”

  “It may have been done earlier!”

  “When the mechanism of the Old Light was inspected on the following morning, the timer had run down, as it would do after eight hours. The chain would be too heavy for the man who had to crank it up again if it ran longer. Indeed, the skipper of a collier in the Deeps noted in his log at quarter past five that morning that the signal of the Old Light was no longer being transmitted.”

  “What has that to do with it?” she insisted.

  “It has this to do with it, Miss Chastelnau. This indication of foul play was not that the beam of light failed after five o‘clock but that it had not stopped before. Had the mechanism been wound as early as eight o’clock the previous evening, the hour hand would then cover the keyhole until after nine. Next morning, the mechanism would have stopped and the Old Light would have failed an hour and a quarter earlier than it did. Someone had returned to the Old Light and wound the mechanism an hour or more after Abraham Chastelnau went down to the sands in response to his brother’s gunshot.”

  She stared at him now with a look of dread which came from trying to guess how much more he knew.

  “What happened on the beach,” he continued, “may be murder, accident, or misadventure. We can only be sure that Roland drowned, from whatever cause. Abraham lived and knew his brother was lost. He returned safely to the Old Light at about nine o’clock.”

  “Why was he not trapped in the river by the altered beam of light?” I asked.

  “Because it had not yet been altered. Whatever the cause or the outcome of the struggle on the sands, Abraham believed that he might face trial and execution for his brother’s death. He had not a single friendly witness to prove that he was guilty only of innocent self-defence, rather than premeditated murder. No one to prove that it was not he but Roland who fired the shot which signalled the beginning of the tragedy. Afterwards, he sat alone in the barrack-room, no doubt in distress and dread. He was alive and Roland was dead. He had very probably seen two figures on the church tower, witnesses of the struggle. The sound of the sexton’s rook rifle confirmed it.”

  Neither of us spoke and Holmes continued.

  “Who will believe him? He sees the stern-faced officers setting out from King’s Lynn. ! He sees the dock at the assizes and the black cap put on by the judge who assures him that he will be hanged by the neck until he is quite dead. Worst of all, he sees the dreadful weeks in the condemned cell, hears the hangman’s knock and imagines the last walk across the prison yard to the tall shed with its thirteen steps leading up to the waiting noose.”

  At last there was a sob from Miss Chastelnau. Holmes ignored her.

  “The Old Light became a trap as the tide rose. He had only minutes to escape before the flood cut him off from the land. He went up to the lantern-room and wound the mechanism. It must run for as long as possible to conceal his absence. Then he altered the iron shutters to misdirect the beam of white light so that he might appear to have been its victim. Desperation sometimes breeds inspiration. You follow me? Those who inquired into the mystery would of course find the shutters altered. With luck, however, Roland would be found drowned. Abraham would have vanished. Where else was he but deep in the shivering sands, lured there by someone who ha
d altered those shutters? What other man could have done that but his brother? Abraham would be searched for no longer. He did all this and then he made his escape across the fens or the beach, as the tide filled the sandbank under the Old Light. He knew that the longer he was missing, the more certain it would seem that he had been decoyed into the quicksands by the river’s edge and had died in their embrace.”

  “Suppose Abraham set the trap of the shutters for Roland?” I asked.

  “Then Abraham need not have fled. Accidental death by drowning would be the verdict. Abraham need only slide the shutters back to their usual angle and there would be no case against him. This is something more.”

  “And what of the evil that he confessed to?” I asked, “What has he done?”

  “I cannot tell you in his absence. I beg you, Miss Chastelnau, bring him in. I promise that I wish no ill to either of you and that I will help you if I can.”

  This was extraordinary! Had Sherlock Holmes tracked down a murderer only to offer him help?

  The poor woman at the centre of the drama stood up and went to the door. Almost at once she returned, followed by a tall loose-limbed man with a ruddy complexion. He did not look like a fellow of great intelligence as his eyes flicked at each of us in turn. Holmes stood up and held out his hand.

  “Mr Abraham Chastelnau?”

  Miss Chastelnau intervened, as if protecting a wild animal from those who hunted it.

  “My brother watched you come into the hall and feared that you were police officers who had come for him.”

  “No,” said Holmes calmly, “he need not fear that. Pray, Mr Chastelnau, stand over here in the bay of the window. Face the light. Watson too, if you please. Have no fear, Abraham, my friend is a doctor. Perhaps he is the doctor for whom you composed your letter, and then could not bring yourself to send it.”

  I stared at Chastelnau’s face. It was strong-featured but round. The jaw-bone and, indeed, the neck had been disfigured by small and inflamed lumps or swellings, long healed over. I would have expected to find similar marks on his chest and shoulders, had I examined them. The infections had come, suppurated and healed over but they had never disappeared.