I could see that Holmes was becoming impatient with the turn the conversation had taken. He tutted and drew Mrs Schell’s eyes towards him again.
“That is all very well, but I assume that your husband’s awareness would not stretch so far as to ignore proven infidelity?”
“No, it would not,” the lady replied, and her lip trembled for the first time since we had arrived. “Frederick could not abide public humiliation. It would be the end of our marriage, and the end of the comfortable life I have created for myself. But no matter the consequences, I love James and it would be wrong of me to keep quiet, when all it takes is a word to remove suspicion from him entirely.”
“You can vouch for Captain Hopkirk during the period he was absent from his room?”
“Yes,” she said simply. The admission seemed to give her new strength, and her voice was stronger as she continued. “You see, he and I were… together… when Mr Salah was killed. That was why he was not in his room.”
Holmes did not seem surprised. “I see,” he said. “As he was not in his room, I assume you too were not in your own. Were you not concerned that your husband would notice your absence?”
She shook her head. “My husband takes a sleeping draught every night, which I prepare for him. I simply doubled the dose, and there was no chance he would wake before morning.”
“You have done this before, then?”
She did not speak, but gave a tiny nod.
“At what time did you leave your room? And where did you arrange to meet Captain Hopkirk?”
“We had agreed to meet at eleven thirty. My husband is a creature of habit and takes his draught at eleven fifteen at the latest. James had identified a room in the east wing, overlooking the rear of the house, which he said he had made comfortable for us. We met there.”
“He was punctual?”
“I was early, but he was waiting for me when I arrived. I heard a clock chime a quarter to the hour as I opened the door.”
“And how long did you stay in the room together?”
“Over two hours. I returned to my room a little after two in the morning.”
“You were never separate during that time?”
“Not for a second.” She looked up and ran a finger along the bottom of her eye, catching the unshed tears there without spoiling her make-up.
“Does the captain know you are speaking to us?” asked Holmes.
“Of course not!” she bridled instantly. “James is not the sort of man to shelter behind a woman’s skirts!”
“I did not mean to imply that he was, Mrs Schell, merely to ascertain whether, having kept your assignation secret until now, he too is willing to expose your relationship to public scrutiny.”
As though piercing a thin surface with a pin, Holmes’s final words seemed to unleash something in Julieanne Schell. Perhaps, for all her brave talk, she only now realised that her world truly was about to be turned upside down. Whatever it was, she reacted as though she had been struck. Her already pale face turned white and she sagged at the knees, only preventing herself from falling completely by reaching out a hand and grasping the side of the cave wall. Even then, such was the force of her collapse that her hand slid down the rough stone, scraping the leather glove and causing it to tear at the seam of one finger. She hung there for the briefest of moments, then let out a single, quiet sob. And that was the only sign of genuine distress that I saw. A moment later, she straightened up, already nearly composed. She examined her glove then removed both it and its partner and dropped them both to the ground at her feet.
“I am willing to swear all of this on oath, Mr Holmes, regardless of the consequences,” she stated flatly.
Holmes looked at the house, then back to Mrs Schell. “I hope it will not come to that,” he said finally. “But it will be necessary for the inspector to know what you have told us. Would you prefer that I speak to him, or would you rather do that yourself? Or perhaps Captain Hopkirk…”
He left the question unspoken, and Mrs Schell gave no reply.
Instead, she walked past him without a word and began the slow trudge back to the house. I watched her for a moment, and wondered about her nature. She was a complex woman, more complex than I had believed, and one experienced in hiding her true self. I now knew she was not really the timorous wife of a successful, elderly businessman, but was she a hard-faced gold digger, as the Americans phrase it, or simply a woman who had found true love too late, after she had committed herself to a different life altogether? Whatever the truth, I felt nothing but pity for her as she grew smaller and smaller in the distance.
“Captain Hopkirk is an innocent man, it seems, Holmes,” I said as she disappeared inside the house.
“Perhaps, Watson, perhaps,” my friend replied thoughtfully.
“What… of course he is,” I began; then, grasping his meaning, acknowledged the truth of his statement. “Ah, I take your point, Holmes. Innocent in the matter of the death of Salah, then, even if his behaviour otherwise leaves much to be desired.”
“No, he did not kill Salah,” Holmes agreed. “Of that I am convinced.”
“For what it’s worth, Holmes, I agree,” I said, but he did not react.
“We must tell the inspector what Mrs Schell has told us,” he said, and stalked off towards the house without another word. I stooped and retrieved Mrs Schell’s gloves and hurried to catch up.
Chapter Fifteen
The Love Nest
There was no sign of Mrs Schell by the time we reached the house. My assumption was that we would immediately seek out Inspector Fisher and appraise him of recent developments. Holmes, however, had other ideas.
“That would be premature, I think,” he explained. “At the moment, all we have is the unsupported word of Mrs Schell. The inspector is unlikely to accept that as proof that the captain was not involved in Salah’s murder.”
“Come now, Holmes,” I protested, “you are surely not suggesting that Mrs Schell is lying? Why should she leave herself open to public humiliation if she were not involved, as she claims, in a relationship with Captain Hopkirk?”
“I do not say that she is not the paramour of Captain Hopkirk,” Holmes countered calmly, “but I do require more evidence that she was in his company last night when Salah was killed. The inspector has made it clear that he does not welcome our interference in his case; I should be more comfortable approaching him with some material facts, which support Mrs Schell’s claim.”
I could not argue with Holmes’s logic. “Very well, Holmes, but how can we obtain such evidence?”
“Most obviously, by examining the room in which their tryst took place. With luck, there will be something to be found, which argues persuasively that both Mrs Schell and Captain Hopkirk were present there, even though it is unlikely we can pinpoint an exact time.”
“The east wing, then?”
“Exactly. One of the rooms must contain some indication of recent residence. Our job is to find it.”
* * *
The east wing was connected to the main part of the house via a second staircase, which was itself accessed via a large door at the end of the corridor containing all our rooms. The staircase was not long, amounting to only eight steps, and opened out onto another corridor, which ran the length of the building at right angles to the central part of the house. Another staircase led downstairs to the ground floor, from which one could exit through either a side or a rear door, though Buxton had informed us that both had been nailed shut since the late Lord Thorpe had taken to a life of seclusion.
There were not very many rooms, as it turned out, and Mrs Schell had mentioned that the one in which she had met Hopkirk looked out upon the back of the house. It did not take us long to find it.
The contents of the room barely differed from any other in the east wing. It was merely their state that made them stand out.
In each of the other rooms in the abandoned wing, everything was draped in sheets and layers of dust, so that
the interior of the house in many ways appeared to echo that of the fields outside: an expanse of rolling white shapes, their precise nature blurred by soft coverings. Only in this single room had any colour intruded. A dust sheet had been pulled back and dropped on the floor, exposing a dull maroon chaise longue and a matching footstool.
Holmes stood in the doorway, taking in the scene, his cigarette burning down unnoticed between his fingers. He ambled across to the footstool and, from the floor behind it, picked up a wine glass by its stem. As he angled it against the light, a single red lipstick print could be seen to stand out starkly at its rim. He crouched down on his haunches and peered beneath the chaise longue.
“The other in the pair has rolled out of reach,” he said, carefully replacing the glass in his hand on the footstool. He rose to his feet and slowly walked around it, pointing down at the floor as he did so. “A man’s footprints, leading from the seat to the window,” he went on, following their path as he spoke. “Perhaps he wished to…” He reached the window and slid it open. “Ah, yes,” he said, “this moves smoothly. It has been opened recently, I think.” He glanced down at the cigarette in his hand, then flicked it through the open window. “There is no ashtray, so Hopkirk came over here to dispose of his cigarette butt.”
I had followed in Holmes’s wake, but there was nothing to see in the room other than that which he had described. Even the view from the window was nondescript, comprising merely a small stretch of the rear of the house, with everything beyond occluded by a stand of trees to the right and a high wall to the left. Holmes stood there in thought for a minute or two, breathing in the crisp, cold air, then slid the window down.
“Where to now, Holmes?” I asked. “This confirms that Mrs Schell was telling the truth about her assignation with Captain Hopkirk, but she was hardly likely to tell so damaging a story if it were untrue, was she?” I frowned. “We are rapidly running out of points of enquiry.”
“Not at all, Watson,” said Holmes grimly. “Far from being the end of our enquiries, this room has revealed to me several points of interest.” He glanced out of the window again, and stiffened suddenly. “One of which I think we should investigate without further delay. Come, Watson, we have not a moment to waste!”
With that, he slipped past me and headed into the corridor. I hurried along behind, pulling the door closed after me. Holmes was already ten yards ahead of me, his long stride causing him to pull away, and I was forced to run to catch up with him. I reached him just as he arrived at the top of the small flight of stairs, which led back into the central part of the house, and put my hand on his arm to stop him.
“Wait a moment, Holmes!” I cried, puffing slightly with the unexpected exercise. “Where exactly are we going? What did you see in that room which necessitates such haste?”
“Not in the room, Watson. Outside it!”
He pulled his arm away and bounded down the stairs, taking them two a time and hitting the landing at their base already at a trot. I could make no sense of what he had said, but knew from past experience that when Holmes was energised in this manner, there was always good cause. Not knowing our destination and thus unwilling to allow him out of my sight, I hastened after him.
* * *
I caught up with him as he reached the bottom of the main staircase and swept round its corner, heading towards the servants’ area. Frederick Schell stood in the entrance to the main hall with a query on his lips but Holmes bustled past him and pushed open the heavy kitchen doors.
“This way, Watson,” he called over his shoulder.
Obviously, he had seen something out of the window, but what it could be eluded me. Somebody in the trees perhaps, who would be gone if given half the chance but whom, if we were quick, we might hope to subdue? In any case, I would know soon enough what Holmes had seen, for as he careered through the back doors, I heard him thunder down the outside steps with a shout of “Get away! You there, get away!” Seconds later, there was a loud smash and an unearthly howl of rage, followed by a series of bangs and crashes.
* * *
I had left my army revolver in London, on the assumption that there would be no call for it on a holiday in the country, but not for the first time I reproached myself for my naivety. Whenever I was with Holmes, there was always the possibility of trouble. Even the walking stick I had taken from Salah would have been useful, but there was no time to go back for that now. Instead, I clenched my fists, barged the back door open with my shoulder and readied myself for whatever threat waited outside.
Holmes knelt at the bottom of the stairs, one arm draped loosely around the neck of a thin, curly-haired dog and the other engaged in tickling it behind the ears. To his side lay a metal bucket, tipped on its side, and immediately beyond that several old garden rakes and spades, similarly knocked askew. I grabbed at the stair railing to bring myself to a peremptory stop, for otherwise I would have tumbled down the stairs and landed on top of Holmes and his new friend.
Both parties looked up at me as I did so, the dog with a look of mild disdain, as though I had done something truly foolish of which I should be ashamed, and Holmes with one more quizzical in nature, as though he were not entirely sure why I had been hurrying at all.
“Are you quite all right, Watson?” he enquired solicitously.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak until I had taken a second to catch my breath. Having done so, I descended the stairs and stood beside Holmes and the dog.
“I’m fine, Holmes,” I said as calmly as I could. “But perhaps you could tear yourself away from your pet for long enough to explain why we tore through the house in such a frenzy if, once outside, there seems to be no need for haste whatsoever?”
Holmes kept hold of the dog, but gestured at a patch of snow about ten feet away, at the edge of the stand of trees I had seen from the window of the room. “My apologies, Watson. I realise how peculiar this must look, but I assure you that there is good reason for my actions. If you would step over there carefully and take a close look at the ground, I will be happy to explain.”
I did as Holmes asked. Once viewed in closer proximity, the area he had indicated clearly stood out against the remainder of the snowy ground. Where everywhere else was smooth and uniform, here the snow had been churned up and, at its centre, flattened into a winding, elongated tube. More dramatically, however, at one end of the tube was a lengthy slash of scarlet; a thick line of what I was certain was blood, staining the pristine whiteness of the snow. I remembered the chaise longue against the dust sheets upstairs and realised that this was what Holmes must have seen from the window.
At that moment he came up behind me, the dog now in his arms, and confirmed my thought.
“When I looked out of the window, I saw the bloodstain quite clearly against the snow – and also this little fellow nosing about in the area. Dogs have many admirable qualities, but tidiness is not one of them, and I was fearful that he would disturb the snow in his quest for food, hence the necessity of getting down here before he did so. As it happened, I only just succeeded. He was on the verge of tramping right across the bloodied patch when I arrived and I’m afraid I gave him quite a start when I kicked over the bucket to distract him. He ran straight into that set of garden tools and from there directly into me.” He ran his hands along the little animal’s sides. “I suspect he is a stray. His ribs are quite pronounced and he is obviously in need of a good feed. Hold him for a moment, there’s a good fellow,” he concluded, thrusting the dog into my arms. “I should prefer it if he were not running around while I make a closer examination of the ground here.”
Unmindful of the wet ground, he squatted down and bent low over the snowy indentation, shuffling carefully along one side and then down the other, stopping for several minutes at the bloody mark. Finally, he pushed himself to his feet and stepped into the copse of trees. Thinking I might release the dog, who was now squirming in my arms, I followed him, but there was little to see. The copse amounted to no more tha
n a dozen mixed birch and alder trees and, behind them, a rough path which extended along the side of the house and had presumably been used for deliveries in happier times. Holmes obviously agreed, because he was already on his way back to me as I entered the little wood.
He glanced at the dog with a puzzled look. “Are you intending to keep that animal, Watson?” he asked. “I must say that I do not think Mrs Hudson would be keen on our keeping a dog in Baker Street. It would be better, I think, if you were to give it to the maid, and ask her to look after it.”
Any rejoinder I might have made would have to wait, for the little dog’s efforts to escape my grasp had become more marked and he had begun to growl deep in his throat. I satisfied myself with an annoyed growl of my own, therefore, and quickly skipped past Holmes and up the stairs, back into the house. From behind me, Holmes called out that now would be an apposite moment to involve Inspector Fisher – could I find him and ask him to join us in the garden?
* * *
By the time I had located Alice and deposited the dog with her, then convinced Fisher that he should come with me, ten minutes had passed. Holmes had not been idle in my absence, however.
From some wooden trellis slats he had constructed a fence around the patch of ground, enclosing and concealing both the bloodied snow and the entire flattened area. He stood over it, smoking and staring back at the stand of trees with a thoughtful countenance. Behind me, Fisher gave a low whistle at the sight, though whether in approval or ridicule, I could not say.
“Well, Mr Holmes, what have you to show me?” he asked. “Dr Watson was less than forthcoming in his description, and merely said that you and he had uncovered an important item of evidence.”
Pulling on a pair of gloves against the cold, the inspector followed me down the stairs, complaining under his breath about wasting police time. Once he had taken a few steps, however, and could see over Holmes’s impromptu fence, he gave a sharp intake of breath and hurried forward.
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--Sherlock Holmes and the Crusader's Curse Page 15
