The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes (19 page)

‘Right.'

We had now reached the garden gate of Tetchwick Manor and had stopped and were looking into the grounds. Leaves had blown over the driveway. The place looked tranquil and lovely. On the small pond a duck cruised.

‘When we enter the place, Watson, we must be certain that we do not speak, and we must walk very softly. No noise. But before we go in, let us first have a look at Mr Simon Bart's cottage.'

We strolled along the path, up a little rise and into a copse of trees. On either side of the path we saw the high wire fences that Lestrade had mentioned. ‘So this is where the black-robed figure, supposedly seen by Mrs Davis, so utterly vanished,' I said.

‘Not supposedly,' said Holmes. ‘I am quite certain she actually saw a black-robed figure.'

‘Yet I get the impression the woman is a bit delusory,' I said.

‘She is no doubt delusory in many circumstances,' said Holmes. ‘But not in this one.'

We emerged from the leaf-fallen woods and descended into a little swale and soon we were passing a white cottage with red shutters and window boxes full of fading geraniums.

‘My heavens,' said Holmes. ‘What sort of a vehicle is that? I have never seen such a thing.'

‘Marvellous, isn't it?' I said. ‘An E-type Jaguar, vintage about 1965. I have always thought it the most beautiful car on the road. And that baby blue colour is absolutely striking.'

‘That is the missing piece,' said Holmes.

‘What?'

‘We now have everything we need, Watson, to solve the Mystery of the Black Priest, and the blood bath at The Old Vicarage!'

‘All the facts!' I said. ‘An E-type Jag tips the scales?'

‘Pretty much,' he said. He could not conceal a note of pride in his voice. ‘Before the night is out we shall have laid hands on The Old Vicarage murderer, and I hope we will have prevented a similar murder at Tetchwick Manor. Let us continue on around that hill ahead, and then make our way back to Tetchwick Manor without passing Simon Bart's residence again. I think I noticed a way, in looking at your map, that we can cut over to the side road. Let us pick up some food at that little shop we passed in the village, and then I must make a telephone call to Colonel Davis. And then, my dear Watson, we shall wait several hours in Tetchwick Manor and, with luck, bring this dangerous game to a close.'

TWELVE

The Torturer of Iraq

I
knew, from reading the old Watson chronicles, that it was Holmes's habit to keep his cards close to his chest. He would spread his astonishing revelations on the table only after he had safely in hand the whole sequence of startling events and deductions that would allow him to ‘go out' and end the game. To shift metaphors a little, only when he had found the last little stone in the mosaic, and was ready to cement it into place, would he reveal the whole picture to his breathless companion – in this case, me. I resolved to be patient.

We walked down a blowing road carrying paper bags containing bread, cheese and wine for supper. As we turned on to the Public Footpath, Holmes put in a call to Colonel Davis. I only heard bits of the conversation for my feet were crunching in leaves and the breeze was blowing and high overhead a small airplane was moaning through the gauzy sky. I heard Holmes ask where the car key could be found, and I got the impression that the colonel was supposed to call him back at a certain time. Holmes then gave me some careful instructions.

We soon reached the rear of Tetchwick Manor. This time we opened the gate and hastened to the house. Holmes inserted the key in the front door and a moment later we were inside. Instantly Holmes put his finger to his lips, reminding me that we must walk softly and not talk at all. We crept through the house. Holmes found a car key hanging on a hook. He pushed the garage opener button. We went out through a side door. Holmes instructed me to back Colonel Davis's yellow Volkswagen Beetle convertible out of the garage into the driveway, and to park it so it could be seen both from the public footpath behind the house and the road in front. This I did. The convertible top was down, which somehow made it appear as if someone had just jumped out of the car. We closed the garage door, entered the manor, and again stole through the house as silently as a couple of intruding field mice. Directly to the dining room we went. There Sherlock Holmes, with great care, silently lifted one of the silver candlesticks on the table and set it next to the matching candlestick. Very quietly we sat down to await the colonel's call. Holmes had told me he was to call at precisely three o'clock.

The phone vibrated, Holmes pushed the button. Instead of putting the phone to his ear he held it next to the two candlesticks. Colonel Davis's voice came loud and clear over the phone: ‘Hello, sir, thank you for calling. I just got home. Yes. Yes. I feel a bit tired . . . The chief inspector warned me to lock my windows, and the doctor warned me to eat sparingly and go to bed early. So I will follow doctor's orders. I plan to be in bed by ten o'clock. So if you need me, call me before ten o'clock, right? After that I'll be asleep. Right. Goodbye.'

Holmes closed the phone, looked at me, put his fingers to his lips. He motioned for me to open the door to the back of the house. I did so. He carefully lifted both candlesticks from the dining room table. He tiptoed past me and out into the garden, down the path, and to the pond. He submerged both candlesticks in the shallows at the edge of the duck pond. Then he returned to the house, seeming relieved. ‘So far so good,' said he.

Holmes specified a few other household arrangements that he felt must be made. When we had finished these chores he said, ‘Now, Watson, let us see if we can find a potato or two in the pantry, and add baked potatoes to our evening repast. Baked potatoes, brie, bread and Bordeaux – what could be a healthier meal?'

We retired to the great room with a bottle of wine and two glasses. ‘What pleasant surroundings Colonel Davis has managed to acquire for himself,' I said, waving my hand at the room in which we sat. It was a vast room with timbered ceiling, leaded windows, and a large fireplace that was, at the moment, dead. The setting sun threw red light through the windows and the light flowed grandly over the burgundy carpet like splashed wine. A few shelves of leather-bound books lined one wall. A large impressionist painting by Pissarro hung on another. These things gave the place a lived-in look, and warmed it considerably. The coffee table made of volcanic lava, the white Greek statue of a frenzied Maenad on the side table – these and many other
objets d'art
added interest to the room, lightened its Elizabethan darkness, and made it a most pleasant place in which to sit. A fire had been laid in the massive fireplace. Holmes added a match and the room instantly bloomed with heat and became more pleasant still. With potatoes baking in the oven and each of us holding a glass of wine, Holmes concluded that the time for talk had come. He sat languorously in a wooden-armed chair, his left wrist dangling limply beyond the end of the one arm, his right hand holding the wine. He said, ‘You are remarkably patient, Watson. Your restraint does you credit.'

‘Yes,' I admitted. ‘I have been wondering why all these strange rituals have been necessary – tiptoeing like children through an empty house, listening to phone calls to no one, flinging perfectly good candlesticks into the duck pond, not to mention drawing most of the curtains on the lower floor, turning on lights of the upper floor, and backing a convertible out of the garage so it can sit in the weather and fill up with leaves.'

‘Simply put,' said Holmes, ‘we are trying to make it look as if Colonel Davis has just arrived home and intends to go to bed at ten o'clock. We are, in short, inviting the intruder who intruded last week to intrude again.'

‘And who might that be?'

‘The same who committed the crime at The Old Vicarage.'

‘I do see that many elements are similar. The
modus operandi
is the same.'

‘Indeed,' said Holmes. ‘It is true that the book about Abu Ghraib is newly published, and so might be expected to turn up anywhere. No great coincidence there. But when both crimes also feature men in black robes – Mrs Ogmore's Father Pritchard, and Mrs Davis's tortured monk – the odds of coincidence decline considerably. And when both victims are American servicemen who have recently served in the Iraq-Afghanistan theatre of operations, the chances of coincidence drop nearly to zero.'

‘Would you like my amateur opinion of this affair?' I asked.

‘By all means,' said Holmes, as he lifted his wine glass as if to toast me, and took a sip.

‘What happened here,' I said, ‘was not a burglary attempt at all. Even as an amateur sleuth I can see that. My argument would run in this fashion: Davis came home from work and surprised an intruder who, when the doorbell rang, took advantage of the situation to knock Colonel Davis on the head, grab a few small items, and escape. But why grab so little? And why did he take only items so small that they could be put into a pocket or carried under a coat – the netsuke carvings, the Persian miniature paintings? If the colonel was out cold, and the visitors had left, why would he not take a few minutes more to fill the booty bag before decamping? We have seen, Holmes, that there are multitudes of
objets d'art
in the house to attract the interest of an art thief. So I will conclude that the intruder was here for some other purpose, that he was interrupted, that he grabbed a few easily hidden items to make the whole thing appear to be a bungled burglary.'

‘Excellent!' cried Holmes. ‘I quite agree.'

‘But you seem to suspect that Simon Bart, this man who lives down the footpath, was the intruder.'

‘I am certain of it,' said Holmes.

‘Come now,' I said, shaking my head. ‘Bart was surely after Davis's wife. He attended spiritualist meetings with her, walked the footpath with her, gave her a gift of two silver candlesticks, and it was he who suggested that she might be so frightened of a ghost that she ought to go away to a spiritualist retreat in California. I am willing to wager that at this moment Rebecca Davis is enjoying a month in seclusion with a man her own age.'

‘Possibly she is,' said Holmes. ‘But that man is not Simon Bart.'

‘I defer to your better instincts,' I said, smiling but feeling a little irritated at his positive manner. ‘But how do you figure it, Holmes?'

‘Bart has been paying special attention to Colonel Davis's wife, that is true. But the question is, why? Consider. According to the blithe Violet Anthem, the Davises moved here about a year ago. A month or two later Bart moved into his cottage. Bart began to attend the same church as the Davises. There he met them both and, as you say, homed in on the woman. He learnt she was interested in spiritualism. Lo and behold, so was he. He began to attend spiritualist meetings with her, and he managed to instil in this unstable girl the idea that her house was haunted – an idea she was particularly inclined to believe, for she believes entirely in the “world beyond the wall” where spirits dwell and are perfectly able to
talk back
.'

I laughed. ‘Holmes, you have a certain innocence about you.'

‘When you add to this the fact that Violet Anthem, who has lived here forty years, has never heard anything about the house being haunted, it becomes clear that Simon Bart was not trying to warn Mrs Davis, but to scare her. And why? To get her out of the house.'

‘It seems to me far-fetched that Simon Bart could accomplish all this,' I said.

‘It was certainly a long-shot wager, and one he had little hope of winning without being able to monitor conversations in Tetchwick Manor. He needed to know how well his scare tactic was working, in order to guess when he should make his tactful suggestion that Rebecca should get away for a while. And that is where the electronic surveillance device came in. I suspected it as soon as I heard about the candlesticks.'

‘Holmes!' I cried. ‘I thought electronic surveillance might be one realm beyond your expertise.'

‘I have been reading, Watson, I have been reading assiduously. I have been reading with no thought to expense. My wheelbarrow cost me fifty pounds.'

‘Touché,' said I.

‘The moment Colonel Davis told us about the gift of two silver candlesticks I thought it an odd gift to be given by someone who was so casual an acquaintance – and who, as we now learn, had moved into his house
after
the Davises had moved into theirs. One would have thought
they
would have been the ones giving housewarming gifts. In light of all the other things I knew, I immediately suspected a bug. And I was right, Watson. When I carried those candlesticks out to the pond I saw the bug as clear as day when I tilted one of the holders upside down and let sunlight shine into the hollow base.'

‘So all our tiptoeing was done before you were even sure there was a need!' I cried.

‘If the deception was to be done at all, it had to be done immediately,' said Holmes. ‘It was a small matter to have Colonel Davis call me and pretend to be talking to someone else. Anyone listening on the other end of a bug would seem to hear the colonel's voice here in the house speaking to someone at the other end of the phone line . . . or phone wave, or whatever one would call it. The colonel played his part sufficiently well. My guess is that Simon Bart has a sound-activated recorder that starts up whenever noise in this house reaches a certain level. So he will hear Davis's little soliloquy, will know he's home, will know Davis plans to go to bed tonight at ten.'

‘Except we will be here instead of Colonel Davis.'

‘Exactly.'

‘But don't you think, Holmes, that this is a matter for the police?'