The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (39 page)

“Stamford should read this,” I said, when I had done.

“Really,” said Holmes, in a voice that suggested a total lack of interest.

“Yes,” I persisted. “Do you know what it says here?”

My friend sighed and laid down the
Police Gazette.
“No doubt you are going to tell me, eh Watson?”

“This article”, I said, “states that the Addleton barrow had been the subject of evil legends as long as anyone can recall. It stood on Addleton Moor, surrounded by many smaller burial mounds. It seems that light falls of snow never covered it and even in the hardest winter the snow always melted on that barrow first. The locals called it the “Black Barrow” because the grass would not grow on it.”

“Watson,” interrupted Holmes, “the grave on which the snow melts soonest and where the grass will not grow is a commonplace of rural legend. Half the country churchyards in Britain claim such a grave.”

“I know,” I said, “but that’s not the interesting part. They say here that after Sir Andrew Lewis opened the barrow the village of Addleton was struck by a strange disease. It’s symptoms were similar to Sir Andrew’s but it was not always fatal. Since then the area has suffered many stillborn children and numbers of deformities. The villagers insist that it resulted from Lewis tampering with the Black Barrow. What do you say to that Holmes?”

He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Sadly, that is not the most reliable of our public prints, but if its report is true then the matter is a singular one. What is your medical opinion, Watson?”

“Perhaps Greedon was right. Maybe Sir Andrew picked up something peculiar during his years in Egypt and passed it on to the people at Addleton. Maybe it’s hereditary. Lewis’s son died of it. It could be that his father acquired the infection before his son’s birth. Perhaps it’s one of those unpleasant diseases that can lie dormant for years and then become active.”

“Perhaps so,” he said. “Watson, be a good fellow and pass me my writing case will you?”

He busied himself with a letter and I believed that the Addleton affair had passed from his mind until he reverted to it at breakfast a couple of days later.

“Do you recall our conversation about the death of Sir Andrew Lewis?” he asked.

“Certainly,” I replied.

Holmes lifted a letter from beside his plate. “The press accounts of the affair excited my curiosity,” he said, “to the extent that I dropped a line to the County Officer of Health.”

“Did you indeed? And what does he have to say?”

Holmes referred to the letter. “While deploring any attempt to suggest that a curse is at work, he confirms that, in the year following Sir Andrew’s excavation of the Black Barrow, the village of Addleton suffered a number of deaths from what appeared to be an obscure form of anaemia and a number of stillbirths and deformed births. He suggests that there is no connection between these misfortunes and the archaeological expedition and that the source of the problem may be some effect of the local water supply.”

“And what do you believe?” I asked.

“My disbelief in curses is only matched by my disbelief in coincidences. Those who have most occasion to be concerned – the people of Addleton – associate their tragedies with Sir Andrew’s excavation. They may be wrong in believing that one is the cause of the other, but that does not mean that there is not a link between the two phenomena. As to the water supply, Addleton stands in a valley surrounded by hills of limestone. In such areas the water is famously pure. One recalls that the villages of south Derbyshire hold ceremonies every summer to celebrate the purity of their limestone streams which, they believe, saved them from the Great Plague.”

“And have you any alternative explanation?” I enquired.

“It is far too early for that,” he replied. “It would be a serious error to attempt an explanation when we have so little data. Our next effort must be to acquire further information so that the full pattern of these curious events reveals itself.”

It was the afternoon of the following day when he enquired, “Have you any engagement this evening, Watson?” When I replied in the negative he said “I thought we might take in this evening’s lecture at the Aldridge Institute. Mr Edgar, of Addleton fame, is lecturing on ‘The Stones and the Stars’, apparently a dissertation on Sir Norman Lockyer’s theory that ancient religious monuments were constructed in relation to the movements of heavenly bodies.”

The Institute turned out to be in a remote part of south London and Mr Edgar’s lecture was not well attended. Nevertheless it was an interesting evening. Edgar was a man of about forty, with the long hair of a scholar and owlish spectacles that imparted a solemn aspect to his face though his lecture revealed a ready wit. His lantern slides, from photographs which he himself had taken, were not only informative but in some cases strikingly attractive. I recall particularly a picture of the great trilithon at Stonehenge lit from behind by the rising sun of midwinter. His arguments in favour of Lockyer’s theory, though complex, were lucidly explained for a lay audience and convincing.

As the small audience trickled out at the lecture’s end Holmes rose and approached Edgar who was giving some instruction to the lantern operator.

“We have enjoyed your talk,” said Holmes,

“Thankyou, gentlemen,” said the lecturer, “but I hope you are not journalists.”

“Why should you think so?” asked Holmes.

“Because I have received a deal of attention from that profession since the death of Sir Andrew Lewis, and I have nothing to say to the press.”

“You may be assured that we are not journalists,” said my friend. “I am Sherlock Holmes, and this is my colleague, Dr Watson.”

The lecturer’s eyes widened behind his round spectacles. “The consulting detective!” he exclaimed, “What, may I ask, is your interest in archaeology?”

“You may have read”, said Holmes, “my papers on ‘Logical Deductions from Strata’ and ‘Early English Charters as a Guide to the Keltic Principalities’, though they were not published under my own name, but it is not those that bring us here. I would welcome your assistance in my enquiries into the death of Sir Andrew Lewis.”

“The death of Sir Andrew!” repeated Edgar. “Surely it is not thought that …”

Holmes raised a hand. “No, Mr Edgar. This is not a matter of murder. Sir Andrew, so far as anyone can tell, died naturally, but the manner of his death bears a strange similarity to the deaths and sicknesses that struck Addleton after the opening of the ‘Black Barrow’.”

“You believe in the so-called Curse of Addleton, then?” asked Edgar.

“Certainly not,” said Holmes, “but I have reliable information that the village has suffered a strange disease since the excavation and it would be in the interest of Addleton’s people to determine the cause.”

“I know nothing of medicine, Mr Holmes. How can I help you?”

“Simply by telling me what you recall of the excavation at Addleton Moor,” said Holmes.

The archaeologist began packing his lantern-slides away in their long wooden cases, while he spoke.

“It was a favourite project of Sir Andrew’s,” he began. “As a student he had been on Addleton Moor and seen that snow did not lie on the Black Barrow and grass did not grow upon it. He did not, of course, believe in the Curse, but he did believe that there was something unique about that barrow.”

“So we went up there, that summer ten years ago, to see what we could find. The weather was fair and Addleton is a pretty village, but I tell you Mr Holmes, before we’d been there long I could have believed in the curse.”

“Why was that?” asked Holmes.

Edgar indicated his slides. “One of my functions”, he said, “was to take photographs for Sir Andrew. I had no difficulty taking pictures of the Moor, of the other tumuli upon it or anything except the Black Barrow. On the first day I took a group of all the party standing by the barrow. It did not come out. I thought it to be merely a faulty plate, as all my other pictures that day were successful, but, as the excavation progressed, I found that every single plate of the barrow failed.”

“In what way?” asked Holmes.

“They were all fogged, Mr Holmes. Every one. I could have a bright, sunny day, an exposure timed to the second, and the picture would come out looking as if it had been taken in a London pea-souper.”

“Have you any idea of the cause?” Holmes enquired.

“None whatsoever. It went on for days and then it ended as mysteriously as it began.”

“It ended!” exclaimed Holmes.

“Oh yes,” said Edgar. “I have pictures of the barrow. Suddenly the fogging was gone and everything was all right. I never knew what caused it.”

“You hinted,” said Holmes, “that there were other difficulties.”

“There were indeed,” said Edgar. “In the early stages Sir Andrew and several other members of the party became ill.”

“With what?” I asked.

“Nothing the village doctor could put a name to. There was sickness and itchiness. At first we tended to blame the beds or the food at the inns, but they were two different pubs at opposite ends of Addleton. Then people started saying it was some disease of the local cows or sheep, but that was madness, just the irritability of fellows who were not up to par. Then that passed off, just like my photographic problem.”

“And was there anything else?” said Holmes.

“There were Sir Andrew’s personal problems. His son arrived from London. He was in the army, you know, and the young idiot had got himself cashiered for debt. His father was furious at the disgrace and there was his son bothering him for money. He was a wretched nuisance, hanging about the inn where his father stayed and, when Sir Andrew wouldn’t give him his time, he’d turn up at the digging and hang about pestering his father. It was all very distracting for Sir Andrew.”

He paused. “Then he fell ill,” he said. “Not like the rest of us, something really serious. We were just finishing up and Sir Andrew had to come back to London, leaving his son sick in Addleton. He sent the best doctors up from London, but they did no good. The lad was dead in weeks. Do you wonder that I said it was easy to believe in the Curse?”

“No,” agreed Holmes, “and when you returned there was the row in the papers.”

“I hope you do not blame me,” said Edgar, sharply, “though I blame myself for the timing of it. But I thought about it for weeks before I wrote my letter. I could not believe my own thoughts, but in the end, in all conscience, I had to say what I thought, and it appeared just as Sir Andrew’s son died. I felt wretched, attacking at such a time a man I had admired and looked up to. It was all pointless, anyway. There was a wave of sympathy for him, the profession closed ranks and nobody gave any serious attention to what I was saying. They say I destroyed his profession.” He gave a mirthless laugh and waved a hand around him. “It didn’t exactly do mine much good.”

“What was it about?” I ventured, for I had not completely understood Holmes’s remarks on this aspect of the matter.

“Have you seen the Addleton casket?” Edgar asked. “It was in the Barnard Museum, though they withdrew it from display when the row started, to avoid attracting vulgar sensation-seekers.”

I shook my head and he continued.

“It was at the heart of the barrow, at ground level. Now usually you find a small stone chamber with ashes, or pots with ashes, bits of burned bones, a few funeral artefacts, that kind of thing. When we reached the bottom and uncovered the top of the casket we were delighted. We knew we’d found something utterly unique. We had come to the usual box of stone slabs and, when we removed the top slab, there was this magnificent casket. It was oval, made in bronze, with silver and enamelled decoration all over it, the finest work of its kind I’ve ever seen.”

He paused and his eyes turned beyond us. “There was just Sir Andrew and myself that evening. The sickness was at its height and the other fellows had gone down from the Moor at tea-time, but sick or not you couldn’t keep Sir Andrew from his work. I stayed on with him because I didn’t like the idea of him up on the Moor alone. It’s a creepy sort of place, you know.”

“Well, it was late, almost dark when we uncovered the casket. We went to lift it, but it was infernally heavy and in the end Sir Andrew said to cover it up and leave it, let the other fellows see it
in situ
in the morning. Before we put the slab back I recall crouching in the pit with a lantern, for it was twilight, peering at the decorations on that wonderful thing and trying to make sense of them, and when I did I shuddered.”

He shuddered slightly again at the recollection.

“Why was that?” asked Holmes.

“Death,” said the archaeologist. “That splendid casket was covered in symbols of death. I have never seen anything like it, Mr Holmes. Those old peoples were like us, they believed in rebirth. If there are decorations connected with their burials they are always signs of life, sun wheels, spirals, plants, animals, but this was completely different. It was covered in skulls and bones.”

“And what did that suggest to you?” asked Holmes.

“I was excited. I believed that the casket would contain something remarkable, something that its creators regarded as of great importance. Because we could not lift it, Sir Andrew and I covered it up and went down from the Moor. We knew no villager would venture onto Addleton Moor after twilight. It was dark when we got back to our lodgings, and the other fellows had turned in, but I could scarcely sleep for wondering what lay in that bronze box.”

“Next morning we returned to the excavation and carefully lifted the container and opened it. As soon as the lid was removed we knew why it had been heavy and I knew that it had been tampered with. Apart from being constructed from very thick bronze, the casket had been lined with a layer of lead. Now lead, as you may know, can decay into a powdery, ash-like form, and parts of the lining had done so. Pieces crumbled away as we lifted it, and fell into the box, and, while the rest of them gazed at the contents, I became aware that those dusty fragments of lead had been disturbed by human fingers. The marks were clear.”

“I could not understand it. We were the first, or so it seemed, who had looked into that casket since it was placed under the barrow, but then I looked at the contents.”