The Haunting of Torre Abbey (2 page)

Our ruminations were interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Come in,” Holmes called from the couch, and the door swung open to admit the short, stalwart figure of our estimable, long-suffering landlady.

“Ah, Mrs. Hudson, right on cue,” Holmes remarked amiably.

“I don’t know about that,” she replied, “but a telegram’s just arrived for you and I thought I’d better bring it up quickly.” Her red face and laboured breathing were a testament to how quickly she had rushed up the stairs.

“Indeed,” said Holmes, flicking an ash from his sleeve. “What urgent business, I wonder, would bring someone out on a night like this?”

“That’s what I said to the poor fellow who delivered it,” she answered, fanning herself with the paper as she waded through the pile of discarded newspapers to where Holmes sat on the sofa. “You should have seen him—soaked to the skin he was—I thought he must be crazy and said as much, but he told me there was half a crown in it for him if he delivered it to you straight away.”

She stood, hands on her ample hips, her broad face still flushed from her efforts.

But Holmes was not listening to her. He sat studying the telegram, his whole body motionless, in an attitude of deep concentration. Then he stood up abruptly and thrust the telegram at me.

“There is no time to waste, Watson,” he said, his voice suddenly clear and sharp. “We must leave immediately.”

“Leave? Where to?” Mrs. Hudson said, a bewildered expression upon her kindly face.

“To the West Country—Devon, to be exact,” Holmes replied, striding off in the direction of his bedroom.

“Good Lord, why would you need to be going there on a godforsaken night like this?” she said, taking a few steps after him.

“Because someone’s life may very well depend upon it,” Holmes replied, and disappeared into the bedroom.

Mrs. Hudson turned to me. “What’s he on about, Dr. Watson?

I stared at the paper in my hand. The message was clear and yet cryptic:

FEAR WE ARE ALL IN DANGER STOP

PLEASE COME AT ONCE STOP

It was signed “Charles Cary, Torre Abbey, Torquay, Devon.”

“Good Lord,” I said as Holmes came back into the room. “It’s the Cary family again.”

“Who are the Cary family?” Mrs. Hudson said.

“A family that has the misfortune of owning a haunted house,” Holmes replied. “And now, Mrs. Hudson, might I impose upon you to pack us some sandwiches for our trip?”

Our good landlady stood still for a moment, then she threw her hands straight up into the air.

“I don’t know,” she muttered. “Sometimes I just don’t know how I stand it.”

“Has the boy left yet?” said Holmes.

“Well, no—he was soaking wet, and I brought him inside to give him a cup of—”

Holmes interrupted her. “Send him back with a telegram to Lord Cary that we will arrive tonight if at all possible.”

“We may just catch the last train out of Paddington tonight, Watson,” Holmes called after me as I hurried upstairs to pack.

Torquay was just coming into its own as a resort town, and as it turned out, there was a six forty-five train leaving from Paddington, scooping up the last of the London businessmen hurrying out to join their families at the country houses dotting the coastline of Tor Bay.

And so, less than half an hour later, I found myself seated beside Holmes in a railway carriage speeding through the darkened English countryside.

“How long do you think this will take to sort out?” I said as I hungrily devoured the cold roast beef sandwiches Mrs. Hudson had provided us.

Holmes stared out the window at the darkened landscape rushing by. “It’s difficult to say, Watson,” he replied, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Lord Cary provided so little information in his telegram.”

He turned back to the window, his profile sharp in the flickering gaslight. We sat without speaking, surrounded by the sounds of the train: the low, rhythmic pulse of the engine, the chunk-a-chunk beating of pistons in their chambers, the clatter of metal wheels on the rails, and the squeaking and groaning of the wooden carriage as it swayed to and fro. Holmes sat looking out the window, his dark eyes narrowed, his brows furrowed, his long fingers fidgeting with an unlit pipe. Finally he spoke.

“A curious thing, the human imagination, Watson. As far as I know, it is one of the things separating us from the rest of the animal kingdom.”

“I suppose so,” I replied, staring out the window at the dim landscape. “I’ve never heard of a wildebeest imagining the presence of a lion when none was there. On the other hand, perhaps we just don’t know enough about animals.”

“Perhaps,” Holmes answered, shrugging. “Speaking of animals, Watson, you could always give the cat to one of your patients.”

I stared at him. “How did you know about the cat?”

He dismissed my astonishment with a wave of his hand. “Oh, come, Watson. When you arrived at Baker Street tonight you were sneezing; rubbing your eyes and wheezing—and you are still wheezing slightly, I can hear it. What am I to deduce but that you have an animal singularly noted for producing allergic reactions even among fanciers of the breed?”

I shook my head. “Really, Holmes, you might have come to the conclusion that I have a cold.”

He shook his head. “You rarely get colds, Watson—you seem to be blessed with an iron constitution—and besides, the symptoms you display are of an allergic reaction, not a viral infection.”

“Very well, Doctor,” I said somewhat brusquely. “Then I suppose you can give me a full description of the animal in question.”

Holmes smiled. “Really, that would be asking too much. I’m afraid I shall have to disappoint you on that score. I can only say that it is of a suspicious, violent disposition, is a rather small calico, oh—and that it is of course a female.”

I threw up my hands. “Very well; I should have known better than to challenge you. Of course you are right, and now do me the kindness of describing how you arrived at your conclusions.”

“Well, the scratches on your left hand, which you have dressed with iodine, were the first clue as to the animal’s disposition. As to the coat, I can just make out three colours of hairs clinging to your overcoat—hence my conclusion the cat is a calico. And, as you may know, calicoes—and the closely related tortoiseshells—are always female. Females tend to be smaller than the males of the species, and since this was most probably a stray cat and therefore undernourished, I gambled that it was not a large cat.”

“Very well, Holmes, once again you are correct.”

“I only hope I am so fortunate with the Cary family,” he replied, turning again to look out the window.

“Holmes, you don’t think . . .” I began. He turned to look at me, his eyes keen in the dim light. “Before, when you asked me if I believed in ghosts,” I continued, “you didn’t seriously think . . .”

He smiled grimly. “What I think,” he said slowly, “is that the Cary family is in danger—and that I take very seriously indeed.”

I nodded and turned away; I had nothing else to say. We sat for some time in silence as the train hurtled through the night toward its dark destination.

The city of Torquay lies tucked away in a wide pocket of the English Channel where the coastline is curved inward—the convex shape on a map is rather like the outer rim of a scallop shell. Protected from the treacherous currents for which the channel is famous, this part of Devon’s coast is distinguished by a series of bays—Start Bay, Babbacombe Bay, and of course Tor Bay, on the southern end of which stands the city of Torquay. Blessed with a deep natural harbour, Torquay is sheltered from the harsher climate of its neighbouring Cornish coast, and in the last few years has been gaining a reputation as a fashionable resort town.

The streets of the town rise sharply from the harbour up into the bluffs surrounding the shoreline, offering many opportunities for grand views of the harbour. Taking advantage of these natural geological features, builders of recent years have begun to exploit the financial possibilities of a location deemed more fashionable than a middle-class resort such as Brighton. Situated more or less midway between Dartmouth and Exeter, Torquay has a history which dates back to Roman times and beyond—and by far the oldest and most distinguished building in this historic city was Torre Abbey.

The abbey was a short drive from the train station, past an apple orchard and down a wide sweeping boulevard lined with majestic elm trees. The rain had stopped by now, and I inhaled the salt sea air as Holmes and I alighted from the cab in front of the main gatehouse of Torre Abbey. It was an imposing medieval tower of thick Normanesque architecture, and in the moonlight its massive limestone façade loomed three stories above us. As Holmes paid the driver, the heavy wooden door swung open and a tall man emerged whom I took to be Charles Cary. He held a gas lantern, and approached us with a vigorous stride, his right hand outstretched.

“Oh, Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson, thank you for coming!” he cried, shaking first Holmes’s hand and then my own. His grip was as forceful as his handwriting, bespeaking a man of firm and decisive character. Over our protests, he insisted on helping us with our luggage, and, handing the lantern to me, seized both bags and led us into the interior of the gatehouse.

“Our butler Grayson would normally have been here to greet you, but it’s late and he’s not as young as he once was,” our host said, closing the heavy door behind him. The sound echoed through the vaulted chamber of the gatehouse with a dull thud. He led us through the gatehouse and into an enclosed courtyard. Passing through the courtyard, we entered what appeared to be the main living quarters of the abbey, a vine-encrusted three-story structure. It was a long building, lower than the gatehouse, with second-floor balconies opening up onto the courtyard.

“He wanted to stay up, but I insisted he retire at his normal time. Grayson’s been with us since I was a child,” Cary continued as we entered the dimly lit foyer. He turned up the gaslights, and I was able to get a better look at our host. To my surprise, he was very fair, with blue eyes and delicate facial features; for some reason, I had expected a shorter, darker man. He spoke quickly, gesturing rapidly with his hands, the fingers of which were long and white—the hands of a surgeon or an artist, I thought. His skin was the kind that burns and freckles in the sun, and his eyelashes were so blond they looked almost powdery in the gaslight. His hair was darker, a coppery-red colour, thick and curly, and he wore it rather longer than the fashion of the day, so that it curled over his collar in the back.

“It’s so good of you to come,” he said as Holmes and I stood in the foyer looking around. He rubbed his hands together briskly, and I noticed that the room was cold and damp. It occurred to me that the climate was ideal for bronchial infections, the humid seaside air combining with the natural moisture of the stone and brick buildings.

“You must be hungry after your journey,” said our host. “If you like, we can leave your luggage here and get you something to eat.”

Holmes deferred to me, and I nodded quickly. It had been some hours since our roast beef sandwiches, and I was quite famished.

“I let the staff retire for the night, but I believe my sister is still up and about,” he said as we entered a long hallway lit by a few scattered wall sconces. Our steps reverberated hollowly down the chamber as we followed our host.

“You did not explain in your telegram the urgent matter that caused you to summon us tonight, Lord Cary,” Holmes remarked as we followed our host.

“It’s Elizabeth, Mr. Holmes,” he replied. “She’s seen it again.”

“The ghost, you mean?” I inquired.

“Yes, and she’s in quite a state about it. I am seriously concerned about her. When I told you she was excitable, Mr. Holmes, I was not exaggerating. Elizabeth is easily agitated, and this has all been terribly difficult for her.”

“I see,” Holmes replied as we turned a corner.

I held the lamp aloft, casting rather sinister shadows as we walked single file down the hallway. The abbey was elegantly appointed, with all the comforts of a grand country house—carpets upon burnished wooden floors, curtains of the finest lace, beautifully carved furniture and stuffed leather armchairs, but I could just imagine ancient monks in procession down the dusky passageways, chanting in low voices, their brown robes swinging from side to side.

“You know,” remarked Lord Cary as he led us from room to room, “the locals will tell you that Torquay is as full of ghost stories as London is of hansom cabs.”

“You are familiar with London?” Holmes inquired as we stood in an elegantly furnished room, which I took to be a study of some kind. On the wall was an impressive medieval tapestry, a hunting scene of a deer being chased by a pack of hounds.

“Well, I’ve been there but I’m not sure I’d say that I know it,” Cary replied. “Oh, that’s one of my ancestral legacies,” he said when he saw me studying the tapestry.

“I believe you said your family has owned the abbey for some two hundred years?” said Holmes.

“Yes, since the seventeenth century.”

“And the estate passed on to you following the death of your father?”

Lord Cary nodded. “Yes. In addition to the abbey itself, the Cary family has amassed a rather extensive art collection over the years.”

“So I see,” Holmes replied, examining an elaborate gilt framed portrait of a Cavalier on horseback. The man was very elegantly dressed all in black, in the style of the seventeenth century, with long leather boots and a tall feathered hat. He sat astride a huge black stallion frothing at the bit, showing its gleaming white teeth.

“Oh, that’s one of my ancestors, so they say—Hugo Cary,” Lord Cary said. “There are all sorts of stories about him.”

“Hmmm,” Holmes murmured, “very impressive. I can’t say there’s much family resemblance, however,” he added, studying Charles Cary’s face.

Our host shrugged. “He looks more like my father. I take after my mother.”

“I see. Was your father—”

Cary fixed Holmes with his striking blue eyes. “Pardon me, but I must ask you this. You do believe that I saw something, don’t you, Mr. Holmes?”

Holmes smiled. “It is of no importance what I do or do not believe, Lord Cary. Belief is better relegated to matters of religion than science—and I use methods which I believe to be as scientific as possible, as my friend Dr. Watson here can confirm.”

But our host would not be deterred. “It is important to me, Mr. Holmes, that you not think I am mad or delusional,” he said earnestly, but Holmes dismissed this with a wave of his hand.

“Oh, I think nothing of the kind, Lord Cary. The question is not one of your sanity; please rest assured of that.”

Cary appeared somewhat placated, and turned to me.

“I am a man of science myself; in fact, I am studying medicine at Oxford, with the aim of becoming a doctor. As a physician yourself, Dr. Watson, do you think it possible my sister and I are suffering some form of—hallucination?” He pronounced the word with the greatest disgust, as though he were speaking of leprosy or the bubonic plague.

“Well, the fact that you both saw something makes it more unlikely,” I replied slowly, weighing my words carefully. “However, matters of the brain are not my area of specialty.”

“I see,” he replied, leading us from the tapestry room into a large, drafty dining hall. Sitting at one end of a long oaken table was a young woman of about eighteen years of age.

“May I present my sister, Elizabeth,” Lord Cary said as she rose to greet us. “This is Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who have come to help us,” he said gently, taking her hand, which, even in the dim light, I could see was shaking.

“Oh, thank you for coming,” she said, with a nervous glance at her brother. Her voice was low and smooth, with a pleasing, bell-like cadence to it, even distraught as she obviously was.

Holmes took her hand and held it for a moment, an uncharacteristic gesture for him, but it was clear the girl needed comforting.

“Don’t worry, Miss Cary, I shall do everything I can to solve this troublesome situation.”

She nodded and turned again to her brother. It was evident that she relied upon him greatly for moral strength.

Elizabeth Cary was swarthier than her brother, with a broad, sensuous face and lustrous, dark curly hair, which she wore pulled back from her face; it hung in a shiny cascade down her back. She wore a simple white dress with a high neck; it was old-fashioned-looking, and suited her admirably, I thought. I am no connoisseur of women’s accoutrements, but there was something old-fashioned about Elizabeth Cary which the dress brought out, a sense of centuries gone by . . . or perhaps it was the setting and I was just imagining it to be the girl herself. Standing in the dusky dining hall of Torre Abbey, it was hard to imagine we were in the middle of this modern age of gaslighting and telegraphs; the walls themselves seemed to contain within them the spirits of ancient times.

I shivered and drew my ulster closer around me.

“Well, let’s get you something to eat—something hot, I think, Dr. Watson?” said our host.

We followed Lord Cary and his sister into the kitchen, which was situated just in the other side of the dining room. It was a large, tidy room festooned with every type of cooking implement, all hanging on hooks from the whitewashed plaster walls. Brightly polished copper saucepans hung next to wire whisks and silver colanders; sets of blue china serving plates sat neatly stacked in a grand armoire in one corner of the room. At the far side of the main room was a door leading to what appeared to be a butler’s pantry, and next to it was a line of bells, one for each room of the house.

As we entered the kitchen I heard footsteps in back of us and turned to see a stout woman standing behind us. She was dressed in a white robe and nightcap and stood with her arms folded, as if waiting for an explanation for our presence.

“Ah—may I present my cook, Sally Gubbins,” Lord Cary said. “Sally, this is Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said politely, but my greeting was met with only a grunt by way of reply.

“Humph. I suppose you’ll be wanting something to eat,” the cook muttered, brushing past us with hardly a glance. It was clear she regarded us as intruders in her terrain.

“Don’t trouble yourself, Sally—Elizabeth and I can manage,” Cary protested, but his comment was met with another, louder grunt.

“Humph! And make a mess of my kitchen? No, thank you, sir,” the cook grumbled as she set pots and pans to clattering upon the stove, jangling my already thin nerves. As she bustled about, I studied her.

Sally Gubbins was a large, round woman with the kind of sturdy, comfortable body I had seen so often in English women of her class. She had a brisk, preoccupied manner, as though she had a million things to attend to; she did not so much enter the kitchen as storm through it, rather like a weather pattern. She expressed her irritation with the rest of humanity in the heavy shrug of her shoulders and the constant shaking of her head, all the while muttering under her breath. The occasional word or phrase was audible in her low mumblings; as she stood at the stove warming up the soup, I made out the phrase “outrageous behaviour,” and “too much to bear.”

Evidently the arrival of Holmes and myself, though welcomed by our host, was not by his cook. Lord Cary seemed aware of her attitude, because he went out of his way to placate her, thanking her profusely for her efforts.

“It really is good of you to do this, Sally,” he commented as she plunked plates of bread and cheese down on the kitchen table. “Really, you didn’t have to bother.”

“Yes, I did,” she replied, a great sigh escaping her generous bosom. “They would have made an utter mess of my kitchen,” she added with a roll of her eyes, addressing me for some reason.

She trundled back to the stove on her heavy legs, thick and solid as mooring posts.

“It’s no good saying you can look after yourself, because you can’t,” she muttered, turning the gas down under the soup kettle before expertly ladling it into blue china bowls. “Now go along with you,” she said, handing each of us a bowl of steaming soup. “Go eat your soup so I can clean up my kitchen. Just pile the dishes in the sink when you’re done. Don’t leave them lying about in the house or you’ll attract vermin,” she added darkly. “I’m going back to bed—that is, unless there’s anything else I can do for you, sir?”

“No, thank you, Sally, you’ve been most helpful,” Cary replied.

With a final sigh and rolling of her eyes, Sally withdrew into the butler’s pantry, where I could hear her clanging pans about as we carried our soup from the kitchen.

“You see who runs the household, Mr. Holmes,” Lord Cary remarked as we made our way through dim hallways to the parlour.

Holmes allowed himself one of his dry little laughs.

“I do indeed, Lord Cary, I do indeed.”

Cary shook his head. “It’s hard to believe sometimes a woman like that has a son.”

“Oh?” said Holmes. “Does he live with you, too?”

“Yes.”

“And the father?” I said. “Where is he?”

“Apparently she became pregnant by some local roué, now long gone, moved on to greener pastures, no doubt.”

“So the boy never knew his father?”