We had been walking for fifteen minutes at least, and I was beginning to wonder if we would ever reach our destination, when Buxton suddenly left the path entirely and trudged off into deeper snow. We followed him for a further few minutes, then he stopped and pointed straight ahead, announcing grandly, “Robert Thorpe’s Folly!”
Through a stand of tangled elm and beech I made out a strangely familiar glass and stone edifice half hidden by ivy and fallen branches. Taken out of context I could not put my finger on what was so familiar about it, but Holmes had no such problem.
“The Crystal Palace,” he murmured in my ear. “It is a scale model of the Crystal Palace.”
Now that he had given a name to the building, I could see it clearly. The two stepped sides of layered glass flanking a central column surmounted by a semi-circle of glass were unmistakable. The original, built to house the Great Exhibition of 1851, had been torn down before I was born, but I had visited the rebuilt version at Sydenham and, with the exception of the middle column, which was made of solid stone rather than glass, this miniature version was an extremely close likeness. What I could not understand is why anyone would build it here.
I wondered if Holmes was thinking the same thing. He walked along the front of the structure, cupping his hands now and then to see through the glass (I could have told him from where I was standing that there was nothing between them but a plain stone floor). Then he walked back again, stopping only once to run his hands carefully across the central stonework, which had been carved in the shape of the same panes of glass, each six inches square, that made up its two wings. Presumably due to its sheltered location, the carvings remained recognisable, though coated in grime and mould, even after the best part of half a century in the garden. Holmes traced a finger around those “panes” he could reach and peered upwards for several seconds. He took several steps away from the building, the better to see the roof, until his back was flat against the nearest tree. Suddenly, in a flurry of unexpected movement, he reached above his head and pulled himself up into the branches. The snow had not penetrated beyond the tree’s higher reaches so he was in no danger of slipping, but as he levered himself into a standing position, holding fast to the next highest branch, I wondered how long that would be the case. Snow fell from the tree, showering us all, as Holmes stretched on tiptoe to examine the very top of the Crystal Palace. I heard him mutter something to himself then, without warning, he leapt back to the ground.
“Holmes!” I berated him, but he paid me no attention. He stalked back to the central section and ran his hands over the wall again. After a minute of this, he frowned in disappointment and stepped back from the model palace, brushing dirt and mould from his hands.
“Did Lord Thorpe ever explain why he chose to recreate this particular building?” he asked Buxton.
“Unfortunately not. From the date of its construction, he effectively cut himself off from human contact, dismissing almost all the servants, closing down the east wing, and having his food and drink delivered from the village. He never left the manor house again; and until he contacted me and asked me to write a history of the family, I do not believe anyone had spoken to him in four decades.
“I did ask him on one occasion when the matter of the various follies came up in our conversation, but the question raised an ire in him such as I had never witnessed before, and he as good as told me that should I ask again, it would be the last time I set foot in the house.
“Lord Thorpe could be a difficult man.” He shook his head at the memory and sighed. “It is hard to believe that he was ever as young and carefree as the painting above the great fireplace suggests.”
Holmes raised an eyebrow. “His Lordship is one of the figures in the painting?”
“He is, Mr Holmes. He can be seen throwing the ball on the right-hand side of the painting, in front of his parents. The other boy, the one with the bat, is his younger brother, who pre-deceased him by a half a century, while the baby on the grass is Lady Jane Thorpe, who was sadly killed in a horse-riding accident at the age of fourteen. It was not a fortunate generation.”
He kicked at a tree stump to dislodge packed snow from the tread of his boots. “I had thought this might be a good starting point for… well, whatever is that you are investigating, Mr Holmes. But I am entirely at your disposal. However, I suspect we might be best to postpone any further exploration of the grounds for the moment.” He pointed through the cluster of trees to the lawn. While we had stood under the protection of the little grove, fresh snow had begun to fall in heavy, slow flakes.
I had no desire to stay out in a snowstorm if I could avoid it and so, before Holmes could say a word, I hurriedly agreed with Buxton that returning indoors was definitely the order of the day. I thought for a moment that Holmes would object but instead he gestured that Buxton should lead the way. I allowed Amicable Watt to go before me, and quickly fell into step alongside Holmes, in the direction of the manor.
Chapter Seven
Arguments
We arrived to find Stephen Reilly just setting out to look for us.
“Buxton!” he called from the doorway as soon as we came into view. “Buxton! A word with you!”
He was still wearing the fur coat and flapped hat that he had had on when we left him, but now his normally tanned face was red with fury.
“Is it true, Buxton? Is what Mr Salah told me true? Is the railway line closed?”
I heard Buxton tut to himself at my side and then mutter something under his breath. Holmes, on the far side of him, must also have heard the noise, for he stopped Buxton by the arm, still twenty yards from Reilly.
“Is it true?” he asked. “Presumably by more than mere snow, though, or it would not have been worth mentioning. A tree down onto the tracks from the storm last night seems more likely.”
“More than one, Mr Holmes. I saw Bert, the station porter, on my way here, and he asked me to pass on the message that several trees have fallen on the tracks and with the snow blocking some of the roads, it might be Tuesday before the train to Thorpe-by-the-Marsh is running again. I first approached Salah to tell him, but in the excitement following his outrageous threat, it completely slipped my mind to mention it to anyone else. If you will excuse me.”
He hurried forward to speak to Reilly – and to Hopkirk and Mrs Schell, who had appeared at his shoulder, drawn by the shouting. With Watt – who I was beginning to think could not bear to miss out on anything of potential interest – bringing up the rear, they disappeared into the house as Holmes stopped to light a cigarette.
“As late as Tuesday,” he said, blowing smoke rings into the air. He sounded extremely pleased. “Why, that is excellent news, Watson. That will prove most convenient.”
“Do you believe you will complete your investigations by then, Holmes?” I asked in wonder. If, in the space of a mere three days, he managed to locate a gem missing for the greater part of a millennium or a cache of missing artwork, it would rank among his most impressive work, in my opinion.
“My investigations, Watson? I am not sure they are worthy of quite so grand a title yet.”
“Not sure…? Holmes, I think that if you have the ruby to hand by Tuesday that will be a near miraculous achievement.”
“The ruby…? Why, my dear Watson, you surely do not think that I refer to that trifling matter?”
“What else, Holmes?”
“Why, I already know exactly where the missing ruby is to be found. That puzzle was barely worth the effort of coming into the country at all. But I may have stumbled upon something far more interesting.”
I was astonished by Holmes’s claim, and was about to enquire further, when a loud crash from within the house, followed by a female voice crying for help, caught both my attention and his and we ran inside.
* * *
The sight which greeted us was one better suited to the streets of Whitechapel on a Saturday night than the hall of a great country house.
Captain Hopkirk
had Alim Salah’s emerald jacket bunched in one hand, and was endeavouring with the other to land a series of punches to his opponent’s midriff. Salah, meanwhile, had torn the collar from Hopkirk’s shirt and, if the livid red mark across the captain’s cheek was any indication, had landed at least one significant blow himself. An occasional table had been knocked over in the struggle and the vase that had stood on it now lay strewn across the floor in a dozen jagged pieces. Buxton and Julieanne Schell stood at the bottom of the stairs and the little maid Alice in the doorway to the dining room, her hand to her mouth, about to scream again for help.
“You will take back that slander, sir, or by God, I will kill you where you stand!” Hopkirk was shouting into Salah’s face as we entered.
In response, Salah pulled his head back and thrust it hard into Hopkirk’s, striking him flush on the forehead and knocking him to the ground. Instantly Salah was on top of him, his fingers digging into his opponent’s throat. Bad enough, but to my horror Hopkirk’s flailing hand reached out for a broken shard of pottery and, finding one within reach, grasped it tightly and swung it in an arc, wickedly jagged point to the fore, towards Salah’s neck.
Holmes took two quick steps forward and kicked the weapon from Hopkirk’s hand. At the same time, I grabbed Salah by the shoulders and heaved him to one side, breaking the deadly hold he had on his opponent’s throat. Hopkirk gasped and rolled onto his side, breathing heavily. Salah pushed himself against the wall and glared across at me. He rose slowly and pulled the hem of his tunic sharply to straighten it, but the garment was ruined, ripped at the collar and sleeve. He ran his hands across his thick black hair and looked carefully around the room, finally focusing his attention on Hopkirk, whom Holmes had helped to his feet.
“The story of English manners is famous the world over,” he said, still a little short of breath, “but in my experience,” and here he unconsciously ran a finger along the scar on his face, “the fiction and the reality are often two different things. So it has proven today. If I were in London, I should be contacting both the police and my solicitor and reporting this assault, but as we are not, I will satisfy myself with purchasing this house and its lands for Ghurid, and then take great pleasure in having all of you thrown off the estate as trespassers!”
He pushed past Reilly and Mrs Schell, then stopped at the top of the stairs for a final word. “I intend to change out of these rags and go down to the village, where I will send a telegram to my uncle’s representatives, informing them that we should spend whatever is necessary to purchase Thorpe Manor. And I think you will find that Ghurid has deeper pockets than any of you!”
In the pause that followed this announcement and Salah’s departure upstairs, all I could hear was Hopkirk’s laboured breathing. I was reminded that damage could be done by even a brief compression of the throat and offered to examine him, but he angrily shrugged my hand from his arm and, with little more grace than Salah, bundled past the figures on the stairs and scurried up to his room. I heard his door slam and the sound echoed round the hall. Mrs Schell, who had not moved since we had come through the front door, gave a start at the noise and, without saying a word, also turned and fled upstairs.
“I’ll just get a brush and pan and sweep this up, sir.” Alice the maid gave a little bob in our general direction and left for the servants’ area, behind the main staircase. Suddenly, where all had been riotous noise mere moments before, the hall was quiet, and only Reilly remained alongside Holmes and I.
“What can you expect of a damned foreigner!” he declared angrily. “Did I not say that he was an impertinent upstart?” He walked towards us and dropped his voice somewhat. “I did not hear exactly what was said, but I understand from Mrs Schell – who was quite shocked, and rightly so – that Salah made a most improper suggestion concerning an innocent stroll she and Captain Hopkirk took around the grounds this morning. I personally don’t understand the appeal of tramping about in the snow, but young people like that sort of thing, I believe.”
He made a small noise in the back of his throat which was either an amused laugh or a snort of derision at the foolishness of the young, then remembered something which caused his brow to furrow in undoubted irritation.
“More important, though, is the news of which Buxton belatedly informed me, that there will be no trains back to London for several days. That is extremely inconvenient. I had intended to leave in the morning.”
“So soon?” Holmes made no attempt to hide his surprise. “I understood from our conversation this morning that you intended to bid on the estate?”
“I did. But my walk in the garden did much to open my eyes to the fact that I am not suited to living in England. It is too cold and too wet for me, Mr Holmes.” He tutted to himself. “And now I must brave the cold and the wet again and go down to the village to send a telegram to reschedule my passage home.” He checked the time in the clock in the hall. “The post office closes in half an hour, so if you will excuse me…”
He nodded a goodbye, and went upstairs, leaving Holmes and me alone in the hall. We went through to our already familiar seats by the fire and each lit a pipe.
I was impatient to hear Holmes’s views on the recent goings-on. “Well, what did you make of that?” I asked as soon as we were comfortable.
“I think that this weekend shows every sign of being a less relaxing break from London than you had hoped, Watson,” Holmes gently mocked me. “I fear that your old wound will not be getting the rest you so desired.”
“I shall endeavour to cope, Holmes,” I replied with a matching smile. “But I mean the scuffle between Hopkirk and Salah, as I’m sure you know.”
“If Reilly is to be believed, it was simply a case of the good captain defending a woman’s honour.”
“If Reilly is to be believed? You think he might be lying?”
The thought had not occurred to me, but I recognised in myself a willingness to assume the best of a fellow army man, and Reilly’s testimony had suited that tendency well.
Holmes blew smoke rings towards the ceiling and watched them float for a moment before replying. “I did not say quite that, Watson. He did after all only report what Mrs Schell had told him. But a lady’s honour may be impugned with cause, and a man may react violently to the imputation without necessarily acting from good intentions.”
“Captain Hopkirk and Mrs Schell? Involved romantically?”
I consider myself a man of the world and was not shocked at the suggestion in and of itself, so much as by the fact that such an affair of the heart was being conducted essentially under the nose of Mr Schell. The risk of exposure was great, and that to her name and his career (though I was suddenly aware that I knew nothing about the latter, even to the extent of knowing if he was still on active service) greater still.
“Do you have any evidence to support such a claim?” I asked Holmes uncertainly.
“The evidence of my own eyes is enough in this case, Watson. At dinner, they acted the very image of young lovers, cutting out all their fellow diners in favour of exclusively private jokes of their own. That is the behaviour of a couple who are more than friends.”
I had noticed the pair’s swift recourse to topics into which no outsider could intrude, and the easy familiarity with which they had spoken, like two old friends re-commencing a conversation only interrupted by time apart, not ended and now begun anew. Even so, I would not have considered this to be evidence of improper behaviour, were it not for Holmes’s certainty. For a man who did not welcome romantic dalliances of any kind, he had a keen eye for them in others.
“And Reilly would naturally assume that Salah was in the wrong, and so believe Mrs Schell,” I mused aloud. “He has made no secret of his dislike of him.”
“Indeed. Though Reilly’s honesty, too, is suspect.”
Holmes’s earlier comment regarding Reilly’s honesty had been open to misinterpretation. This, however, was a statement allowing of no such ambiguity. I remembered, too, his claim
that he had found something worthy of his attention, and hoped he was not creating a mystery from whole cloth simply in order to give himself some affair to investigate. I gave myself a moment to consider my reply by slowly re-lighting my pipe. “How so?” I said finally, hoping that any hesitancy was not evident in my voice.
I was not wholly successful. “You doubt it, Watson?” Holmes chided me. “Then you must consider why Reilly had already booked passage home for tomorrow, when he says that his decision to leave early was only made today.”
I was annoyed with myself for failing to notice the same thing, but I could think of one relatively comprehensible excuse for Reilly’s lie. “Perhaps he did no such thing, but rather wants to telegram his bank about the bid he will make for the estate, in similar fashion to Salah? It is not unreasonable to suppose that he would prefer his opponent to remain unaware of that fact.”
Holmes shrugged. “That is certainly possible, Watson. But if Reilly is not keen for Salah to know his business, it is strange that they are even now standing together in the hallway, about to leave together to send their telegrams.”
I twisted round in my armchair to obtain a view of the doorway into the hall and, sure enough, Alim Salah was standing holding the front door open, the Wellington boots he wore at odds with his scarlet tunic. Beside him, Stephen Reilly, wrapped in his voluminous furs, had plucked a walking stick from a stand by the door and was swinging it back and forth impatiently. If the look on Salah’s face was any indication, he was at best a grudging companion for the older man (neither was Reilly wreathed in smiles, to be fair), but there was no doubting that they intended to walk down to the village together. Now suitably shod, they passed out of sight behind the wall and a second later the front door slammed shut.
* * *
There was no hot meal that evening. Alice did not work on Sunday afternoons, but she had prepared sandwiches, which Buxton laid out in the main hall. Reilly and Salah had returned from their trip to the village in exactly the sort of sullen bad temper that I should have predicted would be the result of prolonged time in each other’s company. Both men took a plate of sandwiches to their rooms, barely uttering a word to the rest of us.
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--Sherlock Holmes and the Crusader's Curse Page 6
