The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (40 page)

“What were they?” I asked.

“You might have seen those, too, in the Barnard Museum,” he said. “A pair of fine bronze mirrors, brooches, beads, knives, cups, a strange quartz pebble mounted in a bronze holder, knives and the usual bone fragments and ashes contained in two handsome pottery urns. A very satisfactory find, or so my colleagues thought it, but they were wrong.”

“Why was that?” enquired Holmes.

“Because there was nothing there that had not been seen in other excavations, nothing at all to justify those sinister decorations on the outside of the container, and thereby I knew that something had been removed.”

He drew a deep breath. “Only Sir Andrew and I had even known of the casket’s existence overnight, but someone had opened it, disturbed the leaden lining and removed something, and that someone could only have been Sir Andrew.”

He closed a slide-box with a snap. “As I said, we came away, Sir Andrew distracted by his son’s illness and the necessity to leave him at Addleton and I appalled by the looting of our excavation by the man who had been my friend and mentor. The rest you know.”

“There is really only one more question,” said my friend.

“Which of Addleton’s inns was Sir Andrew’s lodging?”

Edgar stared at us blankly for a moment. “The Goat and Boots,” he said shortly and turned away.

The next morning found Holmes and me on the doorstep of the late Sir Andrew’s home. Like Edgar, the butler was disposed to believe we were journalists and drive us away, but my friend’s card gained us an introduction to Sir Andrew’s daughter.

She received us in the morning room. Lady Cynthia was a tall, fair, young woman, on whom sombre black sat well.

“Mr Holmes, Doctor”, she said. “My father would have welcomed the opportunity to meet you. He read your accounts, Doctor, of Mr Holmes’s cases, with great pleasure and approved of your application of logic.”

“It is kind of you to say so,” said Holmes, “and I could have wished to meet in happier circumstances, but it is about your father that we have called.”

“About my father?” she queried. “Surely you do not believe that there is anything suspicious about his death? Sir William Greedon believed the cause to be an old infection from his Egyptian explorations, similar to that which carried off my poor brother.”

“You must not assume that my involvement indicates a crime, Lady Cynthia. The press has linked Sir Andrew’s death with the so-called Curse of Addleton …”

“That is mere vulgar sensationalism,” she interrupted. “We experienced the same nonsense at the time of Anthony’s death.”

Holmes nodded, sympathetically. “Nevertheless,” he said, “I have reliable information that Addleton has suffered some strange infection since Sir Andrew opened the Black Barrow.”

“Surely you do not believe in the Curse, Mr Holmes!”

“No madam, not for one moment, but I have often observed that what the superstitious or the lazy-minded call supernatural or coincidental is, in fact, the occurrence of two striking events which have a common cause or share a connection. I believe that such may be the case here.”

“If it will prevent deaths such as my brother’s and my father’s,” said Lady Cynthia, “then of course I will assist your enquiries. How can I help you?”

“You might tell me what it was that occupied Sir Andrew’s mind in his last days, Lady Cynthia.”

An expression of pain passed across her features. “When he first fell sick,” she began, “he became anxious to write up his paper on Addleton. He had never published it, you know, because of the row with Edgar. But he never completed it, for he would fall into strange excitements and sudden obsessions.”

“And what form did they take?” asked Holmes.

“He began to blame himself for my brother’s death. When his own health was already failing, he insisted on travelling alone to Addleton, saying that he must ask Tony’s forgiveness. I pleaded to travel with him, if he must go, but he said that he must go alone.”

She gazed at the handsome portrait of her father which hung above the fireplace.

“After that his health deteriorated rapidly. While he was not yet confined to his bed he sat in his workshop, scribbling endlessly.”

“Do you have any of his scribblings?” asked Holmes.

“No, Mr Holmes. I looked at them after his death and they were unconnected nonsense. I destroyed them.”

“Might we see his workshop?” asked my friend.

“By all means,” she replied and rose from her chair. We followed her to the rear of the house, where she led us into a long room, lit by three tall windows that overlooked an attractive garden. Its walls were lined with bookshelves and down the middle ran a long, solid table, littered with tools and scraps of various materials. In one corner stood a writing desk.

“This was always my father’s working place,” said Lady Cynthia. “Please feel free to make any examination that you wish. If you will join me in the morning room when you have done, I shall arrange some tea,” and she withdrew.

Sherlock Holmes looked about him. “I think you had better take the books,” he said.

“How do you mean?” I queried.

“Examine the bookshelves, Watson, for anything which occurs to you as out of the ordinary.”

“But I am not sure that I know what an eminent archaeologist would ordinarily read,” I protested.

He ignored me and began to pace around the big central table. I turned to the bookshelves and attempted the task that Holmes had set me. There were shelf upon shelf of archaeological journals, some in foreign languages, there were works on history, legend and folklore, but nothing that struck me as anomalous. Eventually I turned back to Holmes who was looking at some objects at one corner of the bench.

“He seems to have nothing here but professional reading,” I observed.

“Very well,” said Holmes. “Then we must make what we can of his work-bench,” and he passed to me a small dark pad.

“Moleskin,” I said, as soon as my fingers touched it, “A piece of moleskin folded over and stitched into a – a pin-cushion perhaps?”

“Moleskin,” confirmed my friend, “but not a pin-cushion, I think. Smell it, Watson.”

I lifted the little pad and my nostrils wrinkled. “Faugh!” I exclaimed, “it reeks of rancid tallow.”

“Precisely,” said Holmes, “and what about this?”

He picked up from the bench a curious wooden object and I took it from him. It was about eighteen inches long and rounded at one end to form a handle such as one would find on many tools, but above the handle it widened out, one side being flat and the other curved. The opposite end from the handle was cut quite flat. It was evidently a manufactured object and had been stained, though the curved and flat surfaces bore signs of impact.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I said. “Are you sure it is complete?”

“Oh, it is quite complete,” said Holmes, “and exactly what I expected to see. Now, I think it only remains to examine the writing desk.”

The desk yielded little. The pigeon-holes had been cleared and there were two note-pads on the desk from which the upper sheets had been removed.

“Nothing here, Holmes,” I said.

“I do not know,” he replied, and slipping his lens from his pocket began an examination of the blank note pads. “Have you a cigarette, Watson?” he asked, suddenly.

I took out my case and opened it. “I see,” said Holmes, “that the horses have not lived up to your expectations. You are reduced to cheap Virginias. Still, they will suffice,” and he took one and lit it.

After a few vigorous puffs he leaned over the desk and tapped his ash onto one of the note-pads, rubbing it into the paper with his forefinger. After a moment he smiled.

“See,” he said, lifting the pad, “the ash has darkened the paper, except where it has been compressed by the weight of a pencil on the sheet above. Now, what have we here?”

He held the paper to the light. “We have some decipherable words, Watson, and they seem to be ‘poor Tony’s death’. Now, what will the second pad reveal?”

Soon he had applied his process to the second pad and examined it. “ ‘Lead? Lead? Lead?’ ” he read from it, “Each time with a question mark. That-seems to be all on this one.”

He crumpled the two ash-stained sheets into his coat pocket and straightened up. “I think,” he said, “we should take our farewells of Lady Cynthia.”

While we took tea with Lady Cynthia, Holmes assured her that he expected to unravel the mystery of her father’s death and would communicate with her when his researches were complete. I, however, had been growing more mystified at each of my friend’s moves and, in the cab back to Baker Street, I said so.

“Watson, Watson,” he said, shaking his head. “It was you who drew my attention to this pretty little puzzle. Since then I have merely pursued a completely logical investigation into the mystery and have been able to acquire certain data which will, I firmly believe, lead me to a successful conclusion. You should know my methods well by now. Surely you have some inkling?”

I shook my head.

“Then consider these important facts,” he said, striking them off on his fingers as he announced them. “Firstly, the people of Addleton believe the Black Barrow to be accursed because grass does not grow and snow does not lie upon it; secondly, the County Medical Officer confirms that a strange disease struck the village after the opening of the barrow; thirdly, Mr Edgar believes, with good reason, that something was removed from the barrow illicitly. Does none of that assist you?”

I had to admit that it did not, and he shook his head again in wonderment, but offered no further explanation.

“What will be your next move?” I asked, seeking some indication that might help me.

“I should have thought,” he said, “that that also would have been obvious to you. We must go to Addleton and view the
locus in quo,
indeed the scene of the crime.”

“But I thought you believed there was no crime here!” I exclaimed.

“I set out,” said Holmes, “to solve a medical mystery, but we have stumbled across crime on our path. There has been a crime, Watson. One with very far-reaching consequences.”

The next afternoon found us in Addleton, a stone-built village which consisted largely of one long street with an inn at either end, huddled deep beneath the great square bulk of Addleton Moor. Once we had settled our baggage at the Goat and Boots Holmes sought out the village’s only doctor. Doctor Leary was an affable Irishman in his forties, who welcomed us into his surgery.

“And what,” he asked, when we had introduced ourselves, “brings a famous consulting detective all the way from London to Addleton? We have no murders here, Mr Holmes, and apart from a bit of head-thumping among the quarrymen on pay nights we have no other kind of crime.”

“But you have a mystery,” said Holmes.

“A mystery? Ah, surely a man of reason and logic like yourself is not looking into the Curse of the Black Barrow?”

“Certainly not,” said Holmes. “I am, however, looking into events which have led the popular press to allege that the Curse is real, namely the death of Anthony Lewis, the deaths, sicknesses, stillbirths and deformed births that have occurred here, and the recent death in London of Sir Andrew Lewis. Would you deny that they create a curious pattern?”

“There certainly seems to be a connection though, like you, I reject the supernatural explanation,” said Dr Leary. He groped in his pocket for his pipe and lit it. When it was well alight he continued.

“I came here, you know, fresh from Medical School. I thought I’d found a nice pitch”, he said. “A pretty village, a bracing climate, clean water, nice people and nothing much to worry me or them except old age and quarry accidents. And so it was for the first few years, then they opened the Black Barrow, and if it wasn’t cursed then it certainly deserves to be so.”

“What did you make of the sickness that affected the excavators?” Holmes asked.

“Very little, I admit. It was not serious and it might have had a number of causes. They were sweating away up on the Moor in the summer sun, some of them young fellas who were more used to a pen than a pick. I thought it could be a touch of the sun and I treated it as such.”

“And young Lewis?” said my friend.

“That, of course, was different. At the time I made no connection with the archaeologists. He came to me first with burns on his hands. I thought he had picked up something too hot with both hands. He said that he had not, that he had red patches appear on his hands for no reason and then open up like burns. I treated him with salves and wondered if it was some foreign skin disease, for he told me he had been abroad as a child.”

The doctor puffed at his pipe, reflectively. “Then it got worse. He had fainting fits, headaches, nausea – soon he was too weak to leave his bed. His father sent the best of Harley Street to help me, but they were helpless. We could only watch him fade away.”

“And how did the sickness spread?” enquired Holmes.

“Very quickly,” said Leary. “Though it was never as fierce as in young Lewis. The next was the boot boy at the Goat. He died some weeks after the young man. It seems he had been in the habit of slipping into Lewis’s room in his spare time and listening to tales of soldiering and the silly lad must have caught his death from Lewis. Then there was old McSwiney. He was a retired peeler who spent all his time in the Goat. He was old enough to go at any time if he hadn’t pickled himself in alcohol, but he’d never had much in the way of sickness until the end. He had the vomiting and that, but not the burns, but it was clear it was the same thing.”

“That was when I called in the County Officer of Health. We went over everything, the food and drink at the Goat, the water, the bedding, everything. There was nothing to find, the place was as clean as a whistle.”

“Your Medical Officer seems to think the disease is water-borne,” said Holmes.

“Rubbish!” said Leary. “He says that because he can’t think of anything else. We have deep limestone wells here. I’ve had the water under a microscope, Mr Holmes. There’s nothing in it except a few extra salts that people pay for in fancy spas.”

“And what do you make of it, Dr Leary?”