Buxton frowned. “There is no policeman in the village, Mr Holmes. The nearest one is in Stainforth, which is the next station up the line. We can telegram, but if the track’s still blocked, they’ll need to come by road and that could take some time.”
“If you could see to the telegram as soon as possible, then, that would be excellent. And perhaps another to Mr Thompson, apprising him of the situation?”
“But what shall I say, Mr Holmes?” The little historian actually wrung his hands in anguish. “I’m afraid that I’m more comfortable with murders where everyone has been safely dead for centuries.”
“I quite understand.” Holmes placed a hand on his shoulder. “If you can provide me with the appropriate details, I shall go down to the village myself and send the telegrams. Watson,” he turned to me before I could say a word, “perhaps you and Captain Hopkirk could move the body? Mr Watt, if you and Judge Pennington—” He looked about but if the judge had followed us down, he had returned upstairs in the meantime. “In any case, Mr Watt, could you find the maid and ask her to brew up several pots of strong tea and serve them in the dining room? And Mr Reilly, if you could inform the Schells?” He coughed. “At this point, I think it would be best if we were simply to describe Mr Salah’s death as a tragic occurrence.” He glanced over at Reilly. “That is, after all, the most we can state with absolute certainty.”
Each of us nodded our agreement and I turned to Hopkirk to ask him if he would go and fetch a blanket from one of the bedrooms, with which we might transport Salah’s body. By the time I turned back, Holmes was already chivvying Buxton up the stairs, keen to be on his way to the village. In a sudden fit of curiosity, I walked across to the door to the catacombs and tried the handle. It swung open easily enough, but I could see nothing inside but darkness. The smell of wet rock and decay was carried on a cold breeze from the depths of the caves and drifted over me. Recalling my thought back in Baker Street that a criminal case was just what Holmes needed, I shivered, and then closed the door again.
* * *
I was unsurprised to find Holmes waiting for me upstairs in the hallway. Everyone else had dispersed to carry out his or her allotted task, and I knew he would wish to speak to me.
“When exactly did you come across Salah last night, Watson?” he asked quietly, pulling me inside the library in order to ensure complete privacy.
“A little after a quarter to midnight,” I replied. “I was dozing in the main hall just before, and it was sound of the clock chime that woke me and sent me to bed.”
“And he was in good health?”
“Yes, though as I said before, he had been drinking.”
“And he was aggressive?”
“Very much so.”
“What about time of death? I know you cannot be exact, but any guide you can provide…?”
I had had too little time to perform more than a cursory examination, but he had not been dead long, which made precise timings a little easier. “This is only an estimate, you understand, Holmes. But, allowing for the cold of the cellar, and judging by the lividity of the flesh at the extremities and the degree of movement in the limbs, I would say he was certainly dead by one this morning.”
He nodded firmly, as though satisfied in some way by my words, then wordlessly indicated that I should follow him back into the hall.
“What is it, Holmes?” I asked him.
Rather than reply, he crouched down on his haunches and pointed at the floor beside him. “Something I noticed while I was waiting for you. The markings are faint but unmistakable, Watson. Do you see them?”
I squatted beside him, and stared for all I was worth, but in truth, I could see nothing unusual. “Footprints?” I ventured eventually, still uncertain.
In reply, he indicated that I should follow him as he strode behind the main staircase and back into the servants’ quarters. He bypassed the stairway to the cellars as I hurried behind him, quickly moved through the kitchens and then stopped suddenly.
“Footprints,” he said, tracing the shape of one, clearer on the less frequently swept kitchen floor. “Faint, but fresh. And extremely instructive.”
He paused and raised an eyebrow, in the manner he occasionally exhibited when he intended that I should hazard a guess as to an item’s significance.
“They are certainly a man’s prints, by their size,” I suggested after a moment’s thought. “So they do not belong to the maid. Salah’s killer?”
“That would be a logical inference, Watson. We can go a little further yet in support of my supposition from downstairs though, I think. These footprints lead into the house. Someone came inside last night or early this morning. There is only one set of prints and no sign of dragging, so the killer was already carrying Salah’s body. And yet the print itself is relatively faint.” He laid a finger across his lips thoughtfully. “I wonder…” he muttered to himself.
Like a hound on a scent, he followed the trail of faint smudges to the back door of the house and pushed it open. Due to the angle and design of the rear of the building, which acted as an inadvertent buttress against the weather, little snow had gathered on the steps directly outside and so no further prints were visible. Holmes gave a small cry of triumph, however, and went immediately to the boot scraper attached to the top step. He prodded at it with his finger, and a long, wet sliver of ice-specked mud fell away, to land atop the small heap of frozen dirt beneath it.
“Whoever it was, he had the sense to thoroughly clean his boots of dirt before he entered.” He cast about the surrounding area, his eyes flicking around quickly, never resting on one place for long.
He would have said more, but just then I heard someone calling my name through the open cellar doors. I had completely forgotten that I was supposed to be helping move Salah’s body!
“Better that nobody knows any of this yet,” Holmes cautioned, already moving back up the stairs. “In retrospect, it was a mistake for me to conjecture at all in the cellar just now. We cannot forget that, though we have no official role here, everyone bar you and I is a suspect. For now, you should go and assist Captain Hopkirk, and I shall take myself to the village. I have something of my own to do at the post office, in any case.”
With that, he disappeared into the house. I kicked the snow from my boots and followed him, just in time to hear the front door slam shut. Hopkirk shouted again, so I lit a lantern and trudged down the interior stairs to the cellar, to help with the unsavoury task of transporting Salah’s body to his room.
* * *
Salah had been a large man, and I suspected that it would be a difficult task to move his body in a decorous fashion. Hopkirk, however – for all his apparent dislike of the Ghuridian while he was alive – was commendably solicitous of his dignity in death. When I arrived back in the cellar, he was busily clearing the more cumbersome obstacles from the path to the stairs. It took some time, but eventually we laid Salah’s body on a plank of wood, wrapped in several blankets. Hopkirk took one end of the plank and I the other and, between us, we slowly moved him up first the cellar stairs and then those in the main hall, before laying him on the bed in his room.
We removed the blankets and the plank and, as his coat remained wet and stained, I slid it too from his frame, exposing a canary-yellow jacket underneath. Hopkirk suggested we give the ruined coat to Alice to dispose of, but I knew Holmes would wish to examine it more thoroughly later.
As I opened the cupboard door to hang it up, however, something fell from a pocket and rolled under the bed. I crouched down and reached for it in the darkness.
It was a pocket watch, an expensive one of excellent manufacture, but the front was smashed and the hands stopped at a minute to one. I handed it wordlessly to Hopkirk.
“Cometh the hour, eh?” he said, turning the timepiece over in his hand and running a finger across the gold of the back. “It’s got his initials on it, ‘A.S.’, so it was his, true enough.”
“It must have smashed when he fell,” I said, holding ou
t a hand to take it back.
“When he was attacked,” Hopkirk stated with conviction. “We’ve both seen service, Doctor. We know the difference between deliberate and accidental death.”
On reflection, I was not sure that I did. I had encountered a number of people whom I had assumed to have died due to misadventure only for Holmes to uncover their murder, and assumed a criminal cause for several corpses which had turned out to be nothing but sad accidents. There was no point in saying as much to Hopkirk, though, so I satisfied myself with an equivocal grunt and dropped the watch in my pocket, to show Holmes later.
When I opened the cupboard to hang up Salah’s coat, however, we were treated to a second surprise in as many minutes. The cupboard (and, on further investigation, the chest of drawers under the window) was entirely empty, nor was there any sign of suitcase or bags in the room. There was no hairbrush on the dressing table, and no shaving kit in the small sink in the corner. It was as if Salah had never been in the room before we carried him there.
Hopkirk whistled between his teeth. “Well, that’s a rum state of affairs!” he declared after I showed him the empty drawers. “Where’s all his fancy coats gone, eh?”
I shook my head. I remembered Reilly’s claim that Salah might have been looking for the entrance to the catacombs – if nothing else, the fact that his clothing had disappeared ruled that unlikely possibility out. Reilly could hardly claim the dead man had planned to find the long-lost ruby at his first attempt and then to abscond like a thief in the night!
“I think perhaps we should gather the others and go back downstairs to await Holmes’s return,” I said, as I pulled a sheet over Salah’s face.
Hopkirk nodded his agreement. “Capital idea, Doctor,” he said cheerfully. “Always best to have the troops in one place in times of peril, eh?”
He was an odd fellow, this Captain Hopkirk. I remembered his earlier attitude and the manner in which he had fought Salah, and then contrasted it with his current bonhomie and his sensible and helpful attitude to recent events. I told myself that a soldier was far less inclined to be troubled by sudden death, but even so, he was surely due credit for the level-headed way he had reacted. I had to admit, I found myself warming to him.
* * *
We did not have long to wait for Holmes to return, which was fortunate, for as I entered the main hall, I was buffeted by questions from all sides. Buxton had, it transpired, taken it upon himself to tell everyone that Holmes and I worked for Scotland Yard, and that we would be investigating Salah’s untimely demise. I glared at him in annoyance, but if he noticed, he gave no indication, instead giving me a small, happy nod, as though he had done me a great favour.
Mr Schell, whom I had all but forgotten was even resident in the house, was the first to speak, using his age as a weapon by which to push his query to the front of the queue.
“I hope you can assure me that Mrs Schell and I are in no danger, sir!” he barked. “I do not myself read fiction, but Mr Buxton informs me that you are a writer of novels of criminal affairs, and your companion, Mr Holmes, an investigative agent? I cannot deny, I would prefer the involvement of more qualified men, but until they arrive, I place our safety in your hands, sir!”
His speech complete, the old man seemed uninterested in any response from me. He breathed heavily and stumbled backwards, until his wife caught him by the elbow. She led him to one of the fireside chairs, into which he carefully lowered himself. She stood at his shoulder and watched as Judge Pennington stepped forward to fill the gap her husband had vacated.
“The captain says that Salah’s clothing is missing?” he began in a hectoring tone more suited to handing down a sentence from the bench than speaking to a fellow guest. “Is this true, Dr Watson? Well, speak up, man!”
I would have preferred to keep that information quiet until I could speak to Holmes but I had not specifically told Hopkirk as much, so I could hardly blame him for discussing it. I should be pleased, I supposed, that he had not mentioned the broken watch. Fortunately, I had no opportunity to reply, for at that moment Holmes walked in.
His face was red with the cold, but he was unmistakably pleased about something. The beginnings of a smile played about his mouth as he pulled off his gloves and hat and placed them on a table. He shrugged off his coat and laid it alongside them, then smoothed back his hair with his hands.
“Gentlemen – and Mrs Schell, of course – if I might have your attention for a moment!” he said loudly, drawing every eye in the room towards him. “I have been to the village and sent telegrams to both Mr Thompson, the Thorpe family solicitor, and to Inspector Fisher in Stainforth, as requested by Mr Buxton. Given the urgent nature of the present situation, I requested an immediate reply from both, and can report that the inspector hopes to be with us tomorrow morning, and that as I have had some experience with the police in the past, Mr Thompson has asked me to carry out whatever preliminary investigations I deem fit in the meantime.”
There was a flurry of comments and complaints as everyone in the room spoke at once, but Holmes ignored it and continued in the same tone.
“With that in mind, and for reasons of safety, may I ask that everyone return to their rooms for the moment, and I shall speak to each individual in turn, primarily to ascertain their location at the probable time of Mr Salah’s death.” He held up a hand to stop a fresh wave of noise. “Of course, I will not be acting in any official capacity, thus anyone is entirely within his rights to refuse to speak to me, should he prefer to await Inspector Fisher’s arrival.”
I scanned the room as Holmes spoke, eager to spot anyone who reacted suspiciously, but it seemed that everyone was too shocked by events to do anything more than murmur softly to their nearest neighbour, then turn and quietly leave the room.
The only exception to this rule was Judge Pennington, who immediately marched up to Holmes and, from a distance of no more than two feet, declared that he had no intention of being interviewed by anyone other than a professional policeman.
“We have no guarantee that the killer will not strike again,” he announced loudly, “and I hardly think Mr Holmes can protect us.” He looked about for support, but the only person still left in the room was Amicable Watt, who shrugged and smiled non-committally. Pennington, temporary bereft of an audience, snapped, “I shall be in my room until morning. Please arrange for the girl to bring me sandwiches and tea at six,” and stalked from the room, his held high as though he had just won an important point.
I watched him go, then, once the room was empty, handed Holmes the broken watch. He crossed to the window to take advantage of the better light there and twisted it this way and that in his hands, screwing a jeweller’s loupe in his eye to examine the watch for telltale marks. After a minute of this, he slipped both loupe and watch into his pocket.
“We must find somewhere private in which to interview everyone,” he said. “In a house of this size, there is bound to be a suitable location.”
Chapter Ten
Interviews
We set up a table in one of the empty rooms in the deserted east wing and while Holmes sat and considered his questions, I led each guest in to see him. As I remarked to him at one point, it must be very like Lestrade’s daily police life at Scotland Yard. He did not smile.
My role in the proceedings was to watch each guest as he answered Holmes’s questions and to detect, if I could, any obvious signs of nervousness or prevarication. Thompson’s telegram had been very clear: he would be grateful for anything which Holmes could do to bring matters to a conclusion as quickly as possible, but he was to remember that these were guests of Thompson’s employer and act accordingly. The unspoken intimation was clear – one of these people would, it was to be hoped, make a successful offer for the manor, and it would be impolitic for Holmes to jeopardise that with any over-aggressive questioning. In London, I have no doubt that Holmes would have washed his hands of the whole affair, rather than work under such strictures, but marooned as
we were in the country, he had grudgingly agreed to ask only very general questions.
* * *
The first guests to be interviewed were the Schells, who arrived together, Mr Schell having insisted that his wife was not to be spoken to alone by “two young men”. I smiled at the description – it was several years since I had been described in such terms – but in the absence of any objection on Holmes’s part, invited them to be seated.
As had been the case earlier, Mr Schell wasted no time. “I suppose you want to know where Mrs Schell and I were last night and this morning? We were in our room the whole time. I was feeling unwell, and could not sleep, so when my wife returned from her walk, she read to me briefly, and then I took a sleeping draught. We were asleep by about a quarter past eleven, I should say. We awoke at seven this morning, as is our normal practice, and my wife supervised my morning exercises before breakfast. Afterwards, I sat in the hall and my wife read to me again. We were together the entire time.”
He sat back and glared at Holmes, as though daring him to contradict his statement. The change in the man since our initial meeting seemed, at first sight, to be marked. Then he had been quiet, frail and confused, apparently barely aware of his surroundings, but now it was possible to see the shadow of the man who had built a commercial empire. Yet, on closer inspection, it was plain that a shadow was all that it was. His liver-spotted hands lay flat on the table as he spoke but, as I watched him, I saw them twitch very slightly whenever he spoke. His eyes were rheumy, and his lips dry as paper, even though he licked them unconsciously as soon as he stopped speaking. I respected him for the effort, but this new, stronger Frederick Schell was as much a performance as any I had seen on the stage.
Conversely, Mrs. Schell, so vivacious and full of life at dinner on our first evening in the house, was quiet and submissive, saying nothing and deferring to her husband entirely. When Holmes leaned forward and asked her if everything he had said was as she remembered it, she nodded, but not before her husband peevishly snapped in Holmes’s direction, ‘Will you call me a liar, sir!’
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--Sherlock Holmes and the Crusader's Curse Page 9
