Mammoth Book The Lost Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes (Mammoth Books)

by Smith, Denis O.

  “This wall marks the boundary of the East Harrington estate,” remarked my companion as we walked along. “If I have read the map correctly, one of the main entrances to the estate should lie just ahead. Yes, there it is!” cried he as we rounded a bend in the road and a large imposing gateway came into view. The pillars on either side of the entrance must have been nearly twenty feet tall, and were surmounted by large carved figures, which appeared to be winged lions. The gates themselves, which were standing open, were of ornately wrought ironwork, and were, I think, the largest such gates I have ever seen.

  “It appears a wealthy estate,” I remarked.

  Holmes nodded. “And yet,” said he, “we know that its owner is in financial difficulties and is desperate for all the income he can garner.”

  “Of course, expenditure has a habit of rising in line with income,” I remarked, “and usually manages to keep one step ahead.”

  “Quite so,” returned my companion with a chuckle. “It was ever thus. The man who has no money believes that just a little would undoubtedly secure his happiness; the man who already has a little dreams of having a lot; and the man who has a lot feels confident that if he had yet more his situation might be immeasurably improved. This consideration alone should suffice to discredit the suggestion that there is any significant relation between money and happiness. But,” he continued, putting his finger to his lips, “we had best keep our reflections on the subject to ourselves while we are on the estate!”

  We passed through the wide gateway and beneath the menacing stare of the winged lions. Immediately behind the right-hand gate was a small brick-built lodge. In a little vegetable plot to the side of it, a man was digging with a spade.

  “A bright day to you, sir!” called Holmes as we passed by. “If anyone challenges us,” he added to me in an undertone, “just follow my lead.”

  The drive before us was almost as wide as a city street. It made a long, gentle sweep to the left, to avoid a rushy mere on which hordes of ducks and moorhens were busy, and then curved to the right and resumed its original direction. Ahead of us now it lay dead straight and level, as far as the eye could see. Once past the mere, it was flanked on either side by woods, and far in the distance, a focal point for all travellers on the drive, stood a very tall obelisk. So very long and straight was the drive that after we had been walking briskly for almost ten minutes, the obelisk at the end of it appeared scarcely any closer than when we had begun. I was remarking on this fact to my companion when, far in the distance, a closed carriage came into view by the obelisk, making its way at some speed towards us.

  “Now who, I wonder, is this?” murmured Holmes.

  So great was the length of the drive that although the carriage was clearly travelling at a great pace, and we were walking briskly, it was several minutes before it reached us. As it came closer, a man leaned from the window on our side and called something to the driver. The latter at once reined in his horses and brought them to a slow trot, and at this rate they approached us, until the driver brought the carriage to a halt next to where we were standing.

  A large, powerful-looking man leaned from the window of the carriage and surveyed us. His features were large and coarse, his brows were heavy and his chin seemed to jut forward aggressively. The look in his eye as he glanced from one to the other of us was not a friendly one.

  “Who are you?” he demanded in a belligerent tone.

  “The name is Hobbes,” said Holmes, stepping forward and extending his hand. “This is my companion, Mr Wilson.”

  “What are you doing here?” demanded the other, ignoring Holmes’s outstretched hand. I glanced past him, at the other two occupants of the carriage. Seated opposite him was an obese, rather stupid-looking man with puffy lips, whose chin seemed sunk in rolls of fat. He was playing the fool with what appeared to be a pair of antique duelling pistols. The woman I recognized at once as Miss Rogerson. For the briefest of moments, as my glance passed over those mean features that I remembered from our previous encounters, our eyes met. I looked away quickly.

  “My companion and I are enthusiastic naturalists,” Holmes was saying. “We have been informed that the flocks of migrating geese are worth seeing at this time of the year.”

  “Oh, have you? Have you also been informed that this is private property?”

  “Indeed,” said Holmes, pulling the map from his pocket. “But my information is that there is a public right of way along this drive, and to the river.”

  “So some people claim!”

  “Anyhow, I am sure that the owner of this land would have no objection to our seeking to witness such a fascinating spectacle.”

  “Oh, you’re sure, are you? Well, let me inform you that the owner of this land does not give a tuppenny damn for your ‘fascinating spectacle’! For two pins he would fling you both in the river with the damned geese!”

  “Oh, leave ’em, Lessingham!” called the other man in the carriage in a bored drawl. I glanced his way and saw that he was making a play of aiming one of the pistols at me and squeezing the trigger. “Bang!” said he. “That’s one of ’em gone, anyhow. Leave ’em, I say,” he repeated to his companion. “Let ’em go on their wild goose chase. Perhaps they’ll fall in the river!” He and the woman laughed loudly at this.

  The large man was still leaning from the carriage window. Now he raised his fist to us. “You have the right of way marked on your map there?” he demanded.

  “Certainly,” said Holmes.

  “Well, then. You stray one inch from it and you’ll find yourself in court faster than you can say goose! Do you understand?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Drive on!” cried the other and leaned back into his seat, as the coachman lashed his horses and they sped away at a gallop.

  “That was a somewhat unlooked-for encounter,” remarked Holmes to me after a moment in a wry tone. “What a very unpleasant brute he is! If he were a dog, he would probably be put down by order of the court!”

  “That other fool – Captain Legbourne Legge, I presume – pointed a pistol at me and pretended to fire it,” I cried angrily. “I can scarcely believe that an ex-Army man could ever do such a stupid thing!”

  Holmes turned and looked at me. “My dear fellow!” said he in a concerned tone. “You look quite white! Those idiots have upset you!”

  “I don’t mind admitting it,” I replied. “When a man has had the muzzle of a gun pointed at him in deadly earnest, in the heat of battle, it ceases for ever to be amusing.”

  “I understand,” said Holmes, clapping me on the shoulder. “Let us stand here a moment and recover our composure before we proceed! I tell you this, Watson, if I had the slightest compunction before this incident of trespassing upon this man’s land and interfering in his business, I have none now. The time will come when he will regret having spoken to us in that way!”

  There was a look of hardened determination upon my companion’s face such as I had rarely seen there, and I knew then that he would not rest until he had seen this business through to the bitter end.

  “Are you ready to continue?” he asked me after a moment.

  “There is something else troubling me.” I answered.

  “Oh?”

  “I fear the woman may have recognized me. I did not believe, on either occasion this week when I saw her, that she had taken any notice of me, but just now, when our eyes met, I thought I detected a flicker of recognition in them.”

  “Ah! That is unfortunate,” responded my companion in a thoughtful tone. He glanced back the way we had come. “They have gone now, anyway. Let us hope her memory fails her. Meanwhile, we must make all haste to the Hall!”

  We resumed our brisk pace, but it was another fifteen minutes before we reached the obelisk, where four roadways, like the points of the compass, went off at right angles to each other. Set atop the tall pillar was a gigantic stone pineapple. Holmes glanced up at it as we paused for a moment.

  “I understand
that such a symbol is supposed to indicate hospitality and a warm welcome,” he remarked with a chuckle; “items which are conspicuous only by their absence at East Harrington!” He glanced again at his map. “Up to this point,” he continued after a moment, “we were on solid ground, legally speaking. From here, however, the public right of way goes off that way, to the left, through the woods to the river, whereas we must go straight ahead. According to the map, East Harrington Hall lies just beyond that belt of trees. Are you ready to step beyond the law?”

  “I am,” I replied.

  “According to legal tradition,” Holmes continued as we followed the drive ahead, “an Englishman’s house is his castle, and a very sound rule it is, too, in most circumstances. But, like all sound rules, it yields before another rule, when that other rule is one that possesses greater moral force, as in the present instance.”

  “I quite agree.”

  “Unfortunately, that consideration will not do us much good if we are stopped by anyone. And nor, of course, will the story of the wild geese, for we are past the point where that would be credible. If we are challenged, our best course now is probably to speak the truth: that we are here to see Miss Borrow. As she is a minor, legally speaking, I am not sure that her invitation to us to enter into Hartley Lessingham’s property is of any substance in the eyes of the law, but I see no alternative. We must press on with our intended business so long as ever we are at liberty to do so, and just hope that we do not end the day in a police cell. But surely that is Miss Borrow there now!”

  We had passed quickly through the narrow belt of trees and found ourselves atop a slight rise. Spread out a little below us, about a hundred yards further on, was the red-brick Georgian splendour of East Harrington Hall. In front of it lay a broad smooth lawn, around which the drive curved, and in the very centre of the lawn a girl in a pink dress was sitting at an easel, facing towards us, painting. Holmes raised his cap, and she made an answering gesture with a long paintbrush. “Come along!” said he, and we left the drive and set off across the lawn.

  “Oh, I am so glad that you have been able to come!” cried the girl, hurrying towards us, her eyes shining with tears. “I sat here that I might see you as soon as you arrived, but I scarcely dared hope that I would see you at all!”

  “Now that we are here, we must waste no time,” returned Holmes in an urgent tone. “We have had an unfortunate encounter with your guardian on our way here, and it is possible that he will send back his coachman, or some other servant, to see what we are up to. You must take us to your brother’s room at once!”

  Miss Borrow put down her painting things and ran before us across the lawn and up a broad and shallow flight of steps to the ornate front door of the house. We followed her into the entrance hall, where a maidservant was polishing a large, gleaming piece of green marble statuary, and looked at us with curiosity as we passed. Miss Borrow paid her no heed, but led the way up a wide, thickly carpeted staircase and into a first-floor corridor, where the scent of beeswax polish filled the air. As she turned in to another, steeper flight of stairs, a manservant in livery came round a corner, stopped and stared at us in surprise, but we ignored him and pressed on. A third flight of stairs, steeper and less extravagantly carpeted than the others, brought us to the top floor. Here was the same gleaming, polished woodwork, but on a smaller and more modest scale than on the floors below.

  “This is my brother’s room,” said Miss Borrow, indicating a dark, panelled door, halfway along the corridor. We tried the handle, but the door was locked and no key was in sight. As Holmes was bending down, squinting through the keyhole to see if the key was on the inside, another door was opened further along the corridor, and a large, fat, slatternly-looking woman emerged. Miss Borrow let out a little cry, stepped back in alarm and pressed herself against the corridor wall. “It is Mrs Hard-castle,” said she in a whisper.

  This, then, was the woman who had been charged with taking care of Miss Borrow’s brother, and of overseeing his return to full health. She was, I must say, every physician’s nightmare of a nurse, and the expression upon her coarse features spoke only of brutality and ignorance.

  “Who might you be?” asked this unpleasant apparition in a rude and impertinent tone, addressing Holmes.

  “I am the man that is going to enter this room,” returned Holmes in a sharp tone. “Where is the key?”

  “That’s none of your business,” said she, but there had been a momentary flicker of her eyes towards the doorway through which she had just emerged. Holmes had evidently observed this, too, for in an instant he had stepped past the woman and into the room behind her. In a moment, he emerged again with a large iron key in his hand. She tried to snatch it from him as he passed, but he evaded her and bent to the lock with it. A low, muffled moan came from beyond the door, as if the rattle of the key had roused the occupant of the room from slumber.

  A cry from Miss Borrow made me turn, to see that Mrs Hardcastle had darted into her room and re-emerged with a large stick in her hand. She moved with remarkable speed for such a large woman, and now, in what appeared to be a blind rage, dashed forward before I could stop her and struck Holmes a sharp blow across the shoulders. He turned, eyed her coldly for a moment, then stood up and wrenched the stick from her grasp. In a slow, deliberate fashion, he snapped the stick across his knee and tossed the broken pieces onto the floor.

  “If you are not out of my sight in two seconds,” said he in an icy tone, “I shall personally throw you down the stairs.”

  For one second she stood there, defiance struggling with fear upon her face, then, as Holmes made some slight motion towards her, fear gained the upper hand and she turned and ran into her room. The door slammed shut behind her and I heard the key turn in the lock.

  “Quickly,” said Holmes, returning to the lock of the boy’s room. “We have no time to lose! There may be others in the house who will present us with more formidable opposition!” He turned the key and pushed open the door, and as he did so Miss Borrow dashed forward and into her brother’s room. It was dark within, for a heavy curtain was drawn across the window, but the light from the open doorway sufficed to illuminate a scene more shocking than anything I could have imagined. Upon the bed, under a single dirty sheet, the little boy lay still, his head upon a filthy pillow, and the eyes which turned in our direction were wide with fear. But what riveted my attention was that the lower part of his face was completely covered by the windings of some bandage-like cloth.

  Quickly I untied the knot behind his neck and unwound this filthy cloth, as Holmes drew back the curtain to admit the grey light of that dull September day into the room. Beneath the bandage, a further clump of rag had been forced into his mouth. There appeared nothing whatever wrong with his face and it was evident that the cloth was nothing more than a gag, designed to prevent him crying out. As I removed it, he began to sob, although the gaze of his dark-ringed eyes never left his sister. For a moment I was puzzled as to why he did not sit up, or extend his hand to her, but as I drew back the filthy sheet that covered him, the reason became plain. Beneath the sheet, several lengths of stout cord had been passed across his chest and under the bed, binding him fast. Further lengths of the same cord had been tied tightly round his wrists, and secured to the frame of the bed. These I at once set about unfastening. As I did so, I noticed with horror that his arms and legs were covered with livid bruises. It was apparent that he had been beaten, repeatedly and severely.

  “Here,” said Holmes, unfastening his clasp knife. “I’ll cut the bonds. It will be quicker. Never mind about your medical instruments, Watson. The boy comes with us. See if you can find him some outdoor clothes!”

  In two minutes I had the lad dressed. He offered no resistance to this, but nor did he take any active part in the process. His manner was one of strange, silent passivity. Several times, I spoke to him, to ask a question or make some reassuring remark, but although he appeared to follow all that I said, he never uttered a soun
d, and it was clear that he was in a state of shock. As I pulled some clothes onto his thin little figure, I had made a rapid assessment of his condition. In my opinion, there was very little physically wrong with him – or nothing that a few solid meals would not cure anyway – but probably as a result of the treatment he had endured, and the lack of food, his temperature was up and his brow was clammy, so I wrapped him in an old blanket I found in a cupboard.

  “I’ll carry him,” I said as we prepared to leave the room.

  “Good man!” cried Holmes. “Now, Miss Borrow, is there a way we can reach your guardian’s study without passing through the main hall?”

  “This way,” said she, and led us quickly along the corridor to the other end, where there was a second staircase, narrower than the one by which we had ascended. “This leads all the way down to the ground floor,” said she, “and comes out directly opposite the door of Mr Hartley Lessingham’s study.”

  As we followed her down the stair, I could hear the sound of hurrying footsteps and urgent voices calling from elsewhere in the house, but we reached the study without encountering anyone, and shut the door firmly behind us. It was a large room, situated at the back of the house, with a tall window overlooking a broad terrace. Beyond the terrace, a smooth lawn sloped gradually down to a large ornamental lake, perhaps two hundred yards away. Three of the study walls were lined with bookshelves, and in the centre of the room was a very large mahogany desk. I laid the boy gently on a couch, and watched as Holmes rapidly pulled open the drawers of the desk.

  “It was not my original intention to search this desk,” said he, without looking up, “but we have already laid ourselves open to a charge of aggravated trespass – not to mention kidnapping when we get the boy away from here – so that whatever else we do will scarcely make our guilt any worse in the eyes of the law. We may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. Ah!” cried he all at once, pausing in his rapid survey of the contents of the desk. “This is interesting! It is as I suspected!”