The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (41 page)

“I’ve racked my brains for ten years,” he said. “I know no more about that disease now than I did then, except one thing. As well as the deaths we had a few cases that were milder. When the deaths and the sickness stopped we thought it had gone, but then there came the births you have heard about. I didn’t see how it could have been the same thing, but now I’m sure it was.”

“And what made you so sure?” asked Holmes.

“Geography,” said Leary. “Lewis died in the ‘Goat’ the boot boy died in the ‘Goat’, McSwiney drank in the ‘Goat’, those who had the sickness drank in the ‘Goat’, though not so much as McSwiney, Lord save him. When the stillbirths and the deformities occurred I saw the same pattern. They were all at that end of the village, close to the ‘Goat’. And I’ll tell you one more thing. All of the women were already pregnant when Lewis died.”

He knocked out his pipe on the fender. Holmes steepled his fingers in front of his face for a moment, then looked up at the Irishman. “Is it over?” he asked.

“Oh yes. It’s over – for now. But we don’t know what it is or how it came here. I can’t tell my people that it won’t happen again.”

“I hope,” said Holmes, “that I can give you that assurance in the very near future. Is there anything else at all that you believe may help us?”

Leary laughed. “They say there’s a bright side to everything. You won’t have seen it in the papers, for they only deal in bad news, but we did have two miraculous cures at the same time.”

“What were they?” said Holmes.

“One was Mary Cummins, the daughter of the landlord at the ‘Goat’. She was seventeen at the time, a sweet, pretty thing, but she started with blinding headaches, dizziness, fainting. This was before the barrow was opened, when there was no thought of a new sickness. Nothing I could do for her made any difference. Soon she had spells when her mind wandered. I began to wonder about a tumour on the brain, but do you know that while others were sickening she suddenly got well? She lost all her symptoms and she’s as right as rain to this day.

The other was old Mrs Henty, next door to the pub. Her daughter-in-law was the mother of one of the deformed babies, but Mrs Henty had a persistent eczema on both forearms. She’d had it all her life, she told me, but it vanished in days.”

“Astonishing,” said Holmes. “Now, Doctor, we have taken up enough of your time. I assure you again, that I believe I am well on the track of this thing and will let you know my conclusions.”

We dined that night at our inn and had the good fortune to be waited upon by the same Mary Cummins that Dr Leary had mentioned to us. Whatever her difficulties of ten years ago, she was now a buxom, raven-haired countrywoman in her middle twenties, vigorous and witty.

After dinner we established ourselves beside the fire in the back parlour, where Mary brought us our drinks.

“Miss Cummins,” said Holmes, “may I ask if you know why Dr Watson and I are in Addleton?”

She smiled. “ ‘Tis no business of mine,” she said, “but I hear tell you’ve come about the Black Barrow.”

“Perhaps you would sit with us for a moment,” he suggested. “You are right that we are investigating the singular disease that affected the village when the barrow was opened.”

She took a chair and he continued. “I believe that, so far from being one of the sick, you actually recovered from an illness at that time. Would it embarrass you to tell us about it?”

“Not at all, sir,” she replied. “I had been ill for nearly two years and getting worse all the time. First it was giddy spells, then faints, then cruel headaches and sometimes I seemed to lose my wits altogether. Dr Leary tried all sorts but it kept getting worse. He said I should have to have an operation on my head and I was rare frightened, but then, so fast as it came, it was gone, and as true as I’m sitting here I’ve never known a day’s sickness since.”

“Remarkable,” said Holmes. “And to what do you attribute you cure?”

“Well, they say as all the sickness came out of that old barrow, and if it did, I say as my cure came out too.”

Holmes eyed her, thoughtfully. “You remember young Mr Lewis?” he asked.

“Indeed I do,” she said. “Poor young man. He was all in trouble with his father and then to die like that.”

“Did you know him well?”

She blushed prettily. “Well, sir, when he was well he would make up to me. No more than was proper, though. And I daresay I was younger then and looked after him a bit special because of it.”

“Did he ever show you, or tell you, what he had in his possession?” asked Holmes.

“How did you know about that?” she asked. “He said as no one knew he had it and I must keep his secret.”

“You need not fear my knowing, Mary,” said Holmes. “May I ask what it was?”

“Well, I had gone to his room one day, to tidy up, you know, and he came in. Now father’s always been very strict about me not lingering in guests rooms when they’re there, so I made to go, but Mr Lewis said, ‘Let me show you something.’ He pulled his trunk out from under his bed and he took out a great old pot, a big round earthenware pot with a lid. ‘What’s that?’ I said, and he smiled and said, ‘That’s the strangest thing in the world. It’ll be the making of me,’ then he took my hand and put it on the pot and it was warm outside, like a brick that’s been in the oven.”

“I pulled my hand away, but he turned the lamp down and says ‘Look at this, Mary.’ He lifted the lid off that pot and there was a beautiful blue light came out of it, all shimmering like water. It took my breath away, I tell you. ‘Whatever’s in there?’ I said, and he smiled again and said ‘My fortune, Mary. No matter what my father may do,’ and he closed the lid again.”

“And what did you think it was?” enquired my friend.

“To tell the truth, I thought it was magic. I’ve never seen the like before or since.” She got up from her chair. “I’ll tell you something else, Mr Holmes, that I’ve never told nobody – sometimes I think it was what he had in that funny old pot that cured my brain. Now that’s daft, isn’t it?”

“You may very well be right, Mary,” said Holmes. “If we might ask one more favour – is Mr Lewis’s old room occupied?”

“No, sir,” she said. “Did you wish to change?”

“Not at all,” said Holmes, “but I would like a glimpse of that room.”

She offered to take us up at once, and led us to a room at the end of the main landing. Holmes stood in the middle of the little, low-ceilinged bedroom, then stepped to the casement. “You can see the Moor from here,” he observed, “and whose is that cottage next door?”

“That’s old Mrs Henry’s,” said Mary. “She had a cure too. All her skin trouble went. Poor Mr Lewis, and little Georgie the boot boy and old McSwiney, they all went and all them others was sick, but Mrs Henty and me we seemed to get the good side. Funny, isn’t it?”

“It is certainly strange,” said Holmes, and led the way out of the room.

Holmes was down early in the morning, at the breakfast table before I joined him. He was in high good humour, though a cold snap in the night had brought a sprinkling of snow to Addleton.

“What next?” I asked him, having virtually abandoned any attempt to understand his enquiries.

“I told you, Watson. We have come here to view the
locus in quo
, and once the village photographer arrives, we shall pay a visit to this ill-famed barrow.”

We had finished our breakfast when Mary informed us that Mr Swain, the village photographer, awaited us in the parlour. He greeted us cheerfully and offered the opinion that it would be pretty on the Moor in the snow.

We took the inn’s pony-trap and, loading Mr Swain’s equipment, set out for the Moor. Although the top of Addleton Moor lies at about 1,100 feet above sea level, a decent track winds up from the village at one corner and, even with a slight covering of snow, we had no difficulty in reaching the top.

On the exposed top the snow lay thicker, a blanket of white that glittered in the morning sun. All around us hummocks in the snow revealed the presence of burial mounds, each casting a pale lilac shadow in the white. Holmes stood up in the trap and gazed around him.

“Ah! There it is!” he exclaimed, and pointed.

Ahead of us and to our left a dark mark broke the whiteness and, as we moved towards it, we could see that it was another tumulus, bare both of snow and vegetation, exposing raw earth.

“Have you ever photographed the Black Barrow before?” Holmes asked the photographer.

“No, sir. That would be a wasted plate. Nobody hereabouts would pay for a picture of that thing,” he replied with some vehemence.

We drew to a halt close to the Black Barrow and Mr Swain set up his camera under Holmes’s directions. I walked around the mound, finding it nothing more than a heap of compacted soil, unrelieved by any blade of grass. Its lower edge was ringed with flat stones and, looking closely at its surface, it was possible to see where Sir Andrew’s men had cut their trench through its centre. Apart from its nakedness, there was nothing to distinguish it from any of the forty or fifty mounds round about. One did not have to be superstitious to find something disturbing in that patch of dead, dark, soil.

I stepped aside while Mr Swain exposed half a dozen plates and then we were back in the trap and returning to the village.

Holmes was still in good spirits over luncheon, so that I queried his mood. “I have every right to be cheerful, Watson. This morning’s excursion gave me the final piece of evidence. Nature has assisted my enquiry, though I made assurance doubly sure and asked Mr Swain for his photographs.”

Mr Swain joined us over coffee, rather nervous and apologetic. “I do not know what has happened, Mr Holmes,” he said. “The general views of the Moor are crystal clear, as they should have been with this morning’s light, but all four plates of the barrow are spoiled. Look,” he said and laid the box of plates on the table.

Holmes took each plate in turn and held it up to the window, passing each to me when he had done with it. Two were fine panoramas of the snowclad Moor but each of the others was just a swirl of fog.

“But this is exactly what Edgar said happened to his plates!” I exclaimed.

“Precisely,” declared Holmes, “and thereby our case is closed. I am deeply grateful to you, Mr Swain.”

The confused photographer took the money that Holmes offered, thanked him and left rapidly, as though he feared my friend would change his mind.

When the coffee was done Holmes drew out his watch. “We might”, he said, “catch the mid-afternoon express to London. Would you be so kind as to ask the boy for our bags and the reckoning?”

On the way back to London Holmes discoursed wittily on anarchists and poisoners, on underworld argot and a dozen different topics, but I heard him with only half an ear for my mind was churning in its attempts to make sense of what Sherlock Holmes evidently regarded as a successful enquiry. At length I could stand it no longer.

“Holmes!” I exclaimed, “I have never been so completely at a loss to understand one of your enquiries. What in Heaven’s name has this all been about?”

He laughed. “Do you recall”, he said, “that when we had not known each other long you took issue with me over my proposition that, by logical deduction, it should be possible to infer the existence of an ocean from a single grain of sand?”

“Well, yes,” I said, “but I was not then so familiar with your remarkable methods.”

“I fear,” he said, “that you are not yet familiar with them. I have been engaged in one of the most enjoyable enquiries that I can recall, enjoyable because I have had to infer the existence of something which I have never seen and to construct the pattern of its movements and assess its influence by pure reason.”

“You have left me a long way behind,” I grumbled.

“Consider the patterns, Watson,” he said.

“The patterns on the casket?” I asked. “What of them?”

“No, Watson,” he sighed. “The patterns of the evidence as it unfolded.” He leaned forward.

“Let us begin at the beginning. The newspapers told us that snow would not lie and grass would not grow upon the Black Barrow. I admit I took that for folklore or exaggeration, but you heard Edgar say that it was the case. What did that suggest to you?”

I confessed to no idea at all.

“Watson!” he expostulated. “You have been in mining districts; you have seen heaps of coal waste on which grass will not grow nor the snow lie.”

“But that is caused by fires smouldering within the heaps,” I said. “Ordinary soil does not smoulder, Holmes.”

“No indeed, Watson, but that analogy led me to believe that something within the barrow might be emitting some influence or emanation that warmed its surface yet discouraged growth.”

“Such as what?” I asked.

“I admit that, at first, I could see no solution along that line, but then I recalled pitchblende.”

“Pitchblende?” I echoed. “What on earth is that?”

“It is an ore, of uranium, found in several places. For centuries German miners have been aware of it and afraid of it, for they knew that it could cause burns and sickness. Now, you will recall my telling you of my experiments in coal-tar derivatives at the Montpelier laboratories in France, earlier this year?”

“Certainly.”

“Among my colleagues there was a French scientist, Jacques Curie, a specialist in electro-magnetism. He introduced me to a remarkable group of people who have theories about that substance. One was a Monsieur Bacquerel, another was Curie’s own brother, Pierre, and another was Pierre’s assistant and fiancee, a determined and intelligent young Polish lady called Marie Sklodovska. All of them believe that pitchblende emits some influence that can affect its surroundings.”

“Good Heavens!” I said. “This sounds more like witch-craft than science.”

“I assure you that they are all very fine scientists, Watson, and it occurred to me to proceed on the basis that they are right and that pitchblende, or something like it, had been hidden in that barrow when it was first set up.”

He paused. “That would neatly explain our first few facts, but what of the disease? Well, Mr Edgar gave us the answer to that, with his clear proof that the bronze casket had been rifled in the night. Edgar’s spoiled photographs were also the proof that something was in the barrow that spoiled his plates. He failed to realize it, but the later success of his photography was also the proof that something had been removed from the mound. He was sadly wrong about Sir Andrew’s guilt. It was, of course, the younger Lewis. No doubt, as Edgar described, he waited at the inn for his father’s return, and Sir Andrew, fresh from his discovery, would certainly have mentioned it to his son. And so Anthony Lewis robbed the Black Barrow that night as a revenge on his father for refusing to meet his debts, and by so doing he brought about his own death.”