Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes (10 page)

“Thank you, gentlemen,” said our host, relief sweeping across his face. For a moment the look of anxiety left him, and I was able to see traces of the good humor which I suspected his countenance usually wore. “I cannot tell you how relieved we both are to hear this. Of course, we really must explain why it is that…”

“Yes, we must,” interrupted Mrs. Fitzgerald, firmly but kindly. “However I do not think, John, that the front drive is the place for explanations.”

“Of course; you are quite right, my dear.” He turned and smiled at us. “Forgive me once more; my manners have quite escaped me. The maid will show you to your rooms, and then we will lay all the facts before you, in hopes that you will see light where we see only darkness.”

Less than half-an-hour elapsed before we were assembled in a pleasantly furnished sitting-room with our host and hostess, and provided with refreshments. Both Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald seemed to take pleasure in the everyday ritual of pouring tea and passing cakes, and for a moment their cares and anxieties seemed to fade in the flow of casual conversation around them.

“Yes,” said Mr. Fitzgerald, in answer to a question of Low’s, “there was an abbey here, although nothing of it now remains apart from a few relics housed in the parish church. Most of it was destroyed in 1539, and what little was left — mainly stables and the Abbot’s lodging, from what I gather — has long since vanished. Some outlying domestic buildings were the last to go; according to village gossip there was an old man who, early in the eighteenth century, could still point out the sites of some of the buildings, but this knowledge appears to have died with him. I cannot think of another similar monastic house which has disappeared so completely from the ken of man.”

“You are a student of such things, then?” enquired Holmes.

“In a very modest way. Being a gentleman of leisure, I have the time and opportunity to indulge myself in that way; and have a natural inclination towards such subjects, tinged with melancholy as they are. Parts of this house were built very shortly after the abbey was dissolved, and I suspect that many of the stones from the original monastic building found their way into the construction of it, hence the house’s name. Inigo Jones added to it in the seventeenth century, so we find ourselves in possession of a very interesting piece of our country’s history.”

“And in possession of something else, it appears,” said Low. “Your letters, however, provided little by way of information on that point.”

Mr. Fitzgerald’s face clouded, and there was a sharp clatter as his wife placed her teacup somewhat unsteadily in its saucer. “Yes,” our host replied after a moment’s pause, as if summoning up strength. “The truth is, gentlemen, that I — we — found it very difficult to convey the facts of the case in a letter.”

“What my husband means, I think,” said Mrs. Fitzgerald, “is that the recent … events here sound, on paper, so inconsequential that they would appear laughable to someone who has not experienced them.”

“I assure you, Mrs. Fitzgerald,” said Low earnestly, “that none of us are inclined to laugh. I know something of the man who lived here before you, and informed Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson of the facts surrounding him, and the manner of his death. It is not a laughing matter.”

Husband and wife glanced at each other. “We are agreed,” said Mrs. Fitzgerald, “that Julian Karswell — or rather something to do with him — is in some way responsible for the events which are taking place; but we do not agree as to how or why this should be. My own feeling is that there is a logical explanation behind everything, whereas my husband feels that—” Here she stopped, as if uncertain how to proceed, or unwilling to give voice to what her husband thought. Mr. Fitzgerald took up the thread.

“Elizabeth is trying to say that I feel Mr. Karswell, although dead, is still influencing the events in his former house.” He gave a somewhat hollow laugh. “My father was Irish and my mother Welsh, gentlemen, so I have inherited more than my fair share of willingness to believe in what others disdain.”

“Perhaps,” said Holmes, with a touch of asperity, “we might hear of these events, so that we may have some idea of why, precisely, we have been invited.”

“Of course, Mr. Holmes,” said Mrs. Fitzgerald. “Shall I begin?”

“Please do, my dear,” replied her husband. “We are in no disagreement as to the facts, and you will tell the story so much better than I.”

Low and Holmes both leaned back in their chairs; Low with his hands clasped behind his head, Holmes with his fingers steepled in front of him and his eyes half-closed. I settled back into my own chair as Mrs. Fitzgerald began her tale.

“As you gentlemen know, we have not lived here very long. My family comes from Warwickshire, and I longed to return here, and when we heard that Lufford Abbey was available — well, we fairly jumped at the opportunity. It did not take us long to realize that there was considerable ill-feeling in the village towards the previous owner, about whom we knew little more than that he had died, suddenly, while on holiday in France, and that in the absence of next of kin his house and effects were being sold. We attended the sale of his possessions, as did many of the people from the immediate neighborhood; largely, I suspect, in order to see the house for themselves, as the late owner had guarded his privacy to a quite extraordinary extent, and had not been known for his hospitality towards his neighbors. There was also, I believe, some talk of great treasures in the house, although nothing that was sold struck us as being deserving of that name.

“When Mr. Karswell’s things had been disposed of we were, quite naturally, anxious to take up residence, but events conspired to make this impossible. The house, while in good repair for the most part, needed a certain amount of work done to it, particularly the rooms in which it was apparent that Mr. Karswell chiefly lived. He appeared to have kept a dog, or dogs, and they had scratched quite badly at the paneling in one of the rooms, so much so that it needed to be replaced. Some of the furnishings, too, proved difficult to dispose of; more than one person who had purchased items had a change of mind after the event, and declined to remove them, so in the end we kept one or two of the larger pieces and disposed of the rest as best we could.”

“And the workmen, my dear; do not forget them.”

Mrs. Fitzgerald shuddered. “How could I forget? We had no end of difficulty with the workmen we had employed to carry out the repairs. What should have been a very straightforward piece of work, according to the man who was in charge, became fraught with difficulty. Some of the men took to turning up late, or not at all, and there were delays with some of the materials, and scarcely a day went by without some accident or other. Oh, they were very minor things, we were assured, but troubling nonetheless, and at one point it seemed the work would never be completed. At last we resorted to offering a larger sum than initially negotiated, and eventually all was finished and we were able to take up residence.”

“One moment,” said Low, at the same time that Holmes interjected with “A question, if I may.” The two detectives looked at each other; then Low smiled and waved his hand towards my friend. “Please, Mr. Holmes.”

“Thank you.” Holmes turned to the Fitzgeralds. “The workmen who were employed: were they local men, or from further afield?”

“There were a handful of local men, Mr. Holmes,” replied Mrs. Fitzgerald, “but the man in charge had to obtain most of the workforce from further away, some as far as Coventry. As I mentioned, there was some considerable ill-feeling towards the late owner of Lufford Abbey.”

“Considerable indeed, if it extended even after his death,” remarked Holmes. “Were you both here while this work was being carried out?”

“No; it would have been far too inconvenient. We had regular reports from the man in charge, and my husband would come by on occasion to check on the progress — or rather the lack of it.”

“Thank you,” said Holmes. “Mr. Low?”

“I was going to ask about the dogs,” said Low, “the ones which you felt were responsible for the damage. Do you know for a fact that Karswell kept dogs?”

“No,” replied Mr. Fitzgerald slowly. “Indeed, it did strike me as odd, as from what we knew of him he seemed unlikely to be a man who kept pets.”

“This damage they caused; was it general, or confined to one particular place?”

“Again, it is very odd, Mr. Low. One would not expect dogs to be particular as to where they caused damage, yet it all seemed to be located in the one room, on the first floor. It is a very fine room, with views out over the park, and we understood that Karswell used it as his study.”

“What sort of damage was caused?”

“Well, as my wife said, it appeared that the animals had clawed around the base of the wooden paneling in the room. Quite deep gouges they were, too, which is why the wood needed to be replaced.”

“Do any of the marks remain?”

Mrs. Fitzgerald drew in her breath sharply, and Mr. Fitzgerald’s already pale face seemed to go a shade whiter. It was a moment before he answered.

“When we took up residence my answer would have been no, Mr. Low; none of the marks remained. However, since then they … they have returned.”

“Returned?” said Holmes sharply. “What do you mean?”

“I will come to that in a moment, Mr. Holmes,” said Mrs. Fitzgerald. She paused, as if to gather her thoughts, then continued with her tale.

“As I say, we took up residence; that was in early March. At first all was well; we were busy settling in, and there were a hundred-and-one things to do and be seen to, and anything odd we put down to the fact that we were in a very old house that was still strange to us.

“Gradually, however, we became aware that things were happening which were not at all usual. It began with a sound, very faint, in the room above us…” She broke off with a shudder, and Mr. Fitzgerald looked at her with concern.

“Margaret, would you like me to continue?”

“Yes please,” she said in a quiet voice, and her husband took up the tale.

“At first we both thought that it was one of the maids, cleaning; it was only later that we realized the sounds were heard at times when there should not have been anyone in the room. You will forgive us, gentlemen, for being somewhat slow to remark on this fact, but at first it seemed such a trifling matter that we gave it little thought.

“The next thing that occurred was a cold draught, which always seemed to play about the room. Now one must, I fear, expect draughts in a house as old as this, but we did not notice such a thing anywhere else; indeed, the house was, as my wife said, very sound, which made it all the more odd that it should be confined to this one room. We examined the windows and walls and around the door, and could find nothing to account for it. It began to be quite uncomfortable to be in the room, which I used, as Mr. Karswell had, as a study. I had hoped that as the spring approached the draughts would stop; but if anything they seemed to get worse.

“The sounds had continued all this time; not constant, by any means, but frequent enough to become unnerving. We told ourselves that it was some trick, perhaps related to the draughts; but one evening we heard the sounds more distinctly than before. They seemed changed, too; if we had heard them like that from the first we would not have mistaken them for the footsteps of a person. It was a dull, heavy, dragging sound, rather as if a large dog was moving with difficulty about the floor. I would go to investigate, but I never saw anything, although I found that I did not care to be alone in that room.

“Then, one day, one of the maids came to us, almost in tears, poor thing, because she said that she had been in the room to fill the coal scuttle and had heard what she thought was a growl, as of a large dog. She said that she had a careful look around the room, thinking that perhaps some stray animal had got in, but could see nothing untoward, and was continuing with her work when she felt distinctly something large and soft brush heavily against her, not once but twice, as if a dog had walked past her quite close and then turned back.

“Of course we went to look — it was all we could do to persuade Ellen to go back in, even though we were with her — but found nothing. We reassured the girl as best we could, and my wife took her down to the kitchen so that she could have a cup of tea, and I took one last look round; and it was then that I saw the marks on the wall.”

“These are the claw marks to which your wife has alluded?” asked Holmes.

“Yes. As we explained, the paneling in that room was ripped out and completely replaced, and I remember thinking to myself what a fine job the men had done. So you can imagine my surprise and consternation when I saw marks on the woodwork. At first I thought that perhaps they had been caused by something being bumped against the wall accidentally, but when I examined them I saw that they were quite deep, and identical in every way with the marks which had been there before. I must admit, Mr. Holmes, that I was startled, to say the least, and I was glad that my wife had left the room, particularly in light of what happened next. For as I stood there, trying to make sense of it, I heard a soft, shuffling noise, such as a dog or other large animal might make, getting up and shaking itself. And then, before I could move, I felt something brush against me; something heavy, and soft.”

“Did you see anything?”

“No, I did not; nor, I will say, did I stay to look about more closely. I was on the other side of the door, and had closed it, before I could think clearly once more. When I did, I locked the door, and later told the servants that we would not be using that room for a time, and that they need not bother with it unless we told them otherwise.”