“I very much doubt that Lord Thorpe would use either his own name or the word ‘ruby’ as the code, old friend,” he said. “But we should hurry back, in any case. Buxton said half an hour, and he strikes me as a punctual man.”
Holmes was right on both counts, of course. I brushed the dirt from my hands and struck off towards the house, with Holmes bounding ahead of me in excellent fettle.
* * *
Holmes’s discovery of the stone lock at the Crystal Palace had the effect of re-energising him entirely. He pushed his way through the trees and onto the path with fresh vigour, and strode back to the house as though there were no snow on the ground at all. I followed behind as well as I could, but I admit that in my case the distance seemed no shorter.
Buxton was nowhere to be seen when we arrived back at the house, but Hopkirk was standing at the bottom of the stairs, wearing heavy hiking boots with thick socks, which covered the bottom of his trousers.
Holmes cast a quick sidelong look at me, then announced that he needed to change his trousers, and bounded up the stairs, leaving me alone with the captain. It was my first opportunity to speak to the man, and recalling my conversation with Holmes the night before, I determined to draw him out about his army career. I began in time-honoured English fashion.
“I don’t think I’ve seen such snow since I was briefly stationed at Michni Fort in Afghanistan in ‘79. It was cold enough then to freeze the chai in your cup!”
It was true – it had been bitterly cold on the Karapa Pass, and I had been glad to leave after only a few days, but though I had yet to meet a British soldier who would pass up the chance to compare experiences of severe weather abroad, Hopkirk offered up no reply beyond a drawled, “Really?”
“Did you ever see service in Afghanistan?” I tried again, more directly.
Hopkirk seemed suddenly to come to life as he considered the question. “Forgive me, Doctor, I’ve a lot on my mind just now, what with one thing and another, but that’s no excuse for rudeness! No, I never have served in Afghanistan, nor anywhere in that neck of the woods, truth be told. I’ve spent most of my time pottering about Old England, I’m afraid.”
His grin was an infectious one and I immediately found myself smiling back.
“No matter,” I said. “This is just as cold as any corner of the Empire.”
He laughed and pulled a cigarette case from his jacket pocket. “Unfortunately, I shall need to brave it, nonetheless,” he said, lighting one. “These can be quite nasty and I don’t want to stink out our host’s hallway.”
With a wave, he stepped through the door and closed it behind him. Just then, Buxton strolled out of the dining room with Pennington at his side and explained that Amicable Watt would not be joining us. Forced to choose between following the soldier and speaking to the historian, I reluctantly decided that manners decreed that I converse with Buxton. My chat with Captain Hopkirk would have to wait.
* * *
The mausoleum was quite a distance from the house, across a steep dip in the ground and at the far side of a small lake. By the time we reached the steps leading down into it, I was quite fatigued and beginning to wish we had never left our armchairs.
Not that it was an unremarkable building. Unlike most of the other structures in the grounds, there was no hint of the fake or the frivolous about the large, round (or more strictly, I later learned, hexagonal) edifice that stood in front of us. Even with snow piled up against it, there was a real sense of solidity in the high stone walls, and the door which Buxton slowly pushed open seemed to have the weight of history behind it.
In contrast to the still blustery weather outside, the interior was quiet and still, the light sandstone of the walls clean and somehow calming. A short flight of stairs led down to a rectangular space lined by niches in the wall, in the shadows of which I could make out what I took to be coffins. Four further caskets, these built of stone with a figure carved on each lid, were laid out, two to each side of the room. A doorway was built into the long wall directly opposite us, and it was to this that Buxton led us.
“The inner crypt,” he said, pulling open the door. “There is an admittedly rather stylised likeness of the third Baron de Trop on the wall, and of course his figure is carved more accurately on his sarcophagus.”
Pennington groused that tombs were no place for the living and that he would wait in the outer crypt, but the rest of us willingly followed Buxton. The interior of the inner crypt had been designed in a pentagonal shape with long, narrow windows set high up, through which the blue sky could be seen like slashes of paint across the otherwise pale stone. In the centre of the room sat three imposing sarcophagi, eight feet or so in length apiece, and each topped with a life-size carving of its occupant, depicted in repose with his arms crossed over an impressively wrought broadsword.
On each facing wall was a painted mural, still in good condition in spite of the centuries. Upon close examination, I discovered they were all of the infamous third baron. Of his early years, there was no sign: the first panel showed a knight in full armour kneeling before a figure wearing a crown whom I took to be the king. The king’s hand rested on the knight’s in a benediction. The second panel – presumably the one Buxton had mentioned – showed the knight with no helmet, in Crusader’s garb riding alongside other Christian warriors in battle. The final panel was a more detailed version of the carving we had seen in The Silent Man and depicted a tableau of a horribly wounded knight holding off a dozen men with scimitars, blood pouring from a multitude of wounds to his face and body. Grotesquely, what was clearly intended to be the man’s tongue lay in a pool of blood to his side. I shuddered, and Holmes walked across.
“Hmm, that is rather vivid, Watson,” he commented, though with no real interest. He examined each panel briefly, then stood and stared up at the windows, twenty feet above us.
“This crypt dates back to the time of the first baron, I believe you said, Mr Buxton? Yet these panels each relate to the third?”
“Yes, Mr Holmes. The murals were added during the Reformation as the coming-of-age contribution of the Thorpe heir of the time. The third baron is quite famous locally, of course,” he explained.
“And which of this trio of caskets contains his remains?”
Buxton pointed to the far right-hand side.
Holmes immediately strode across to the sarcophagus indicated, pulled out his magnifying glass and knelt down before it. He shuffled around the entire length and breadth of the Crusader’s last resting place, then repeated the exercise on the other side, pausing occasionally to dust at the stone with his fingertip. Apparently satisfied, he rose and did the same with the other two caskets. Finally, he stared at the windows again, reaching his hands into the air as if he thought he could leap up to them.
“Everything seems in order,” he eventually declared, though I could not say what he had expected to find out of place. Surely he had not seriously thought to discover evidence that de Trop’s restless spirit had indeed ever left its tomb?
He glanced quickly around the walls once more, but seemed already to have lost interest in the mausoleum. Hopkirk stood in the inner doorway smoking, and as Holmes strode towards him, turned and led the way back through to Pennington and from there to the snowy grounds outside.
Chapter Nine
Death in the Cellar
The manor house was considerably busier on our return than it had been on our departure.
The Schells were in the main hall, where Mrs Schell was reading Scott’s Ivanhoe to her husband, who sat before the fire with a rug on his lap. Reilly was in the dining room, drinking tea, the empty plate that had once held his breakfast before him. He looked up as I popped my head around the door and gave a nod of greeting. Like Buxton earlier, he looked tired and out of sorts, and I found myself agreeing with his own earlier claim that his constitution was perhaps not well suited to English weather. Watt was seated at the other end of the table, so absorbed in an enormous pile of sausages a
nd eggs that he did not even acknowledge my presence. Of Salah there was no sign, but given that Hopkirk had settled himself by the window in the main hall, I was not overly disappointed by his absence. A repeat of the previous day’s violence was to be avoided if at all possible.
Holmes had taken himself off to his room, and Buxton informed me that he had some preparations to make in the cellars for an afternoon tour of the catacombs, which the solicitor Thompson had asked him to conduct. At a loose end, therefore, and having no wish to interrupt Reilly’s gloomy reverie, I lit a gasper and stood in the main doorway, watching a family of small birds cavorting in the eaves.
I had just finished my cigarette and flicked it into the snow, when I heard the heavy sound of running footsteps behind me and then felt a hand grip my arm.
“Dr Watson!” Buxton gasped loudly in my ear. “You must come at once! There has been the most terrible accident!”
Behind him, the other guests – roused by Buxton’s obvious panic – had begun to gather. Captain Hopkirk, used to command, was the first to react.
“An accident?” he asked. “What kind of accident?”
Buxton’s face was white as chalk and his mouth trembled as he spoke. “It is Mr Salah. I fear he is dead!”
I heard Mrs Schell gasp from the door of the main hall, and then her husband’s voice, calling from within the room, asking her what was going on. She went to tell him, which was for the best, as Buxton went on, “He is in the cellar, with his head split to the bone!”
The tumult had plainly reached the upstairs rooms, for at that moment Holmes came down, with Pennington close behind, just in time to hear Buxton’s description. He did not break his stride, but quickly moved past the little crowd of people and headed for the door behind the main stairs, which Buxton had earlier told us led down to the cellars.
* * *
The cellar was accessible from within the house by a staircase that began at the rear of the deserted servants’ quarters and came out in a musty, dark space. Buxton edged past us with a muttered apology. “There is no light down here, I’m afraid, Mr Holmes. If you will wait here for a moment?”
He laid his lantern down on the ground and attempted to push open a pair of wooden doors on the right-hand wall. The weight of the snow outside was sufficient, however, that it was not until Captain Hopkirk and Mr Watt added their strength that they were able to force them ajar. Fresh air and natural light entered the room but, even then, the sunken position of the cellar meant that only the area immediately in front of the doors was illuminated.
Not that there was a great deal to see. The room was heaped with rubbish, and almost entirely covered in mould and dust. As Buxton raised his lantern and moved further inside, I made out the shapes of rusted machinery and heaps of rotting wood which had been dumped against the walls, and some old chairs, missing legs and backs in most cases. Wooden barrels were stacked on one side of the door and what appeared to be an old sideboard on the other. In other words, the common detritus of a country estate that had been all but abandoned for half a century.
Through the open doors I could see a stone wall with a metal railing at its top. Presumably there were stairs at the sides providing access to the rear of the house. The only other exit, save the one that we had used, was through a smaller door in the far corner.
“The body is just here,” Buxton said, pointing to the other corner, behind a collection of metal parts, at whose original purpose I could not even begin to guess. Holmes took the lantern, which he held aloft for additional light, and we gingerly made our way across the damp stone floor to examine poor Salah’s remains.
He was dressed in a long coat and boots, much as he had been when last I saw him, standing at the front door with Reilly. Now, however, he lay on his back with his arms splayed and his legs crossed over one another. His head was turned to one side and, as Holmes leaned across and the lantern light shone directly on his face, it was easy to see the wicked gash on the back of his skull and the pool of blood underneath.
“If you could hold this,” Holmes said, handing the lantern back to Buxton. I watched as he steadied himself with one hand then climbed gingerly over the rusted metal. Once on the other side, he retrieved the lamp and knelt for some time in minute examination of the corpse. Only after several minutes had passed did he stand and announce himself satisfied, and Hopkirk scrambled over to help lift the body across the clutter of the room and lay it out on a clear patch of floor by the double doorway.
There could be no doubt that the gash on his skull was the cause of death. It was deep and wide and the collar of his shirt and coat were heavy with blood. It was not, however, the only mark of violence on Salah’s head. Several more shallow abrasions surrounded the main injury, extending to the top of his neck.
“What could Mr Salah have been doing down here?” Buxton asked querulously. “The only thing of interest is the entrance to the catacombs.” He pointed to the small door in the corner. “He should have told me, if he wished to view them.”
He seemed already to have forgotten his earlier anger with Salah, and his fear that the man would steal his research from him. Or, perhaps, wished us to do so.
Holmes’s voice was scathing. “I very much doubt that he came into this cellar of his own accord – or under his own steam, for that matter.”
“Not of his own accord?” I had not noticed that Reilly had joined us, but he nudged Buxton out of his way and bent over the body. “Are you suggesting he was brought down here? And then killed?”
“I cannot be quite so precise at the moment, Mr Reilly,” Holmes replied. He crouched on his haunches by Salah’s waist and grasped a portion of his coat in his hand. He squeezed, and a thin stream of water trickled from it to the floor. “As you can see, Salah was dressed to go outdoors, and the fact that his coat is wet indicates that he did so. It was not snowing last night, so he would not have become this wet by simple walking, thus I suggest he fell in deep snow at some point and the snow became trapped inside his coat and afterwards melted.
“Had he done so and then later been inveigled into coming to the cellar, he would surely have changed out of his wet things first. That he came – or, I suggest, was brought – to this place through the house and not directly from outside via these cellar doors is indisputable: we all saw how difficult it was for you to open them against the snow that has built up outside. No, he was carried here, I believe. Whether he was already dead when this happened, or merely about to die, I cannot say for certain.”
In the dim light, it was impossible to see clearly the expression on anyone’s face, but Reilly muttered something I could not make out as Holmes concluded his summary, and Buxton took a step backwards, as though to distance himself from the body. Hopkirk, I realised, was nowhere to be seen.
He could be heard behind us, however. “See here, Mr Holmes,” he called. “There’s blood on this cutter.”
He was crouched over a sturdy iron pipe from which protruded a series of curved metal blades. As we came over, he dropped his lantern to the outermost blade. In its light, I saw a line of blood running down one blade, largely dried but as I discovered when I reached down, still tacky to the touch.
“It’s quite fresh, Holmes,” I said quietly. “It’s been there no more than a few hours, I’d say. Certainly since last night.”
To my surprise, Reilly suddenly laughed. There was a definite note of hysteria in the sound. “Well then, Mr Holmes,” he said, “it seems that your guess has gone astray!”
“How so, Mr Reilly?” Holmes replied.
Reilly was still chuckling. The sound rang hollowly in the large empty space. “Why, surely, it’s plain enough? Mr Salah admitted he wished to discover the lost ruby. Believing it to be in the catacombs beneath the house, he dressed for exploring and sneaked down here in the dead of night. He had already said that he intended to stroll the grounds at night – but, not wishing to alert anyone to his specific actions, he brought no lantern and stumbled in the darkness, ba
nging his head on this machinery. Disoriented and confused, he stumbled further into this death trap of a cellar and fell again, expiring where we found him.”
“And the wet clothes, old man?” Hopkirk asked.
Reilly paused for only a second. “Perhaps he intended to come in by way of the cellar doors. Finding them impassable, he was forced to re-route via the main house. It would be easy enough to slip on the path to the back door.”
Holmes said nothing, but Hopkirk caught my eye and smiled. “That seems a trifle far-fetched to me,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t get me wrong; I’ve seen more than my fair share of men groggy from a head wound, and they can do funny things. But even if we were to accept that anyone would come down here without a lantern – and I, for one, have my doubts about that – even if we were to accept that, I won’t have it that anybody who measured his length in a dark room would press on, rather than just heading for home with his tail between his legs!”
Holmes shook his head. “I am sure that what you say is true, Captain Hopkirk, but I do not think we need concern ourselves with anything so imprecise as individual human responses to refute Mr Reilly’s contention. The shape, thickness and direction of the stain on the blade all point to a heavy drop of blood falling from a height and catching its edge rather than the smaller amount that would be deposited should someone have fallen and cracked their head against it. Or,” he went on in the same measured tone, “someone barking their shin against the metal while carrying a heavy object inside.”
“Like a body!” exclaimed Buxton in alarm.
“Indeed,” confirmed Holmes. “Which is unfortunate for us, as the killer would be considerably easier to identify if all we had to do was ask everyone to roll up their trouser legs. In any case, we need to take Mr Salah’s body up to his room. Mr Buxton, how can we best contact the authorities?”
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--Sherlock Holmes and the Crusader's Curse Page 8
