The Secret Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes (3 page)

The lawn, and anyone walking on it, would have been instantly visible to an observer travelling along the road in a carriage, a point which Holmes made when, having drawn level with the gates, we passed beyond them.

‘I am convinced, Watson, that Miss Russell was not mistaken.’

A few minutes later, he rapped on the panel, a signal to the coachman to halt. We climbed down and the empty brougham proceeded on its return journey, leaving us standing by the roadside, the carriage rugs over our arms.

I had expected Holmes to walk back to the entrance to Hartsdene Manor. Instead, he followed the road a little distance in the opposite direction until, finding a gap in the thick hedge, he scrambled through.

Beyond lay a wood which must have formed part of the boundary to that side of the estate for, as we crossed it, I could see ahead of us through the trees the massive bulk of the Manor; or, rather, of a wing which, judging by its steep gables and irregular roof, formed the old Tudor part of the building of which Holmes had already spoken.

At the edge of the wood, from which point we had a clear view of this part of the house, Holmes halted and seated himself upon a fallen tree-trunk.

‘And now, my dear fellow, we must wait upon events,’ he announced in a low voice.

His manner dissuaded me from asking to which events he was referring and I sat down beside him in silence.

It was a long and bitterly cold vigil even though the carriage rugs kept out some of the night chill.

Eleven o’ clock passed and then half-past, signalled by the tolling of a bell from the stable-block.

It was nearly midnight before any sign of life appeared in the darkened wing of Hartsdene Manor.

And then, just as I had begun to think that our watch had been wasted, a yellow glow appeared in one of the mullioned windows, wavering at first and then steadying as if someone had carried a lamp into the room and had set it down. Shortly afterwards a similar glow shone out through the panes of the adjoining window and a figure appeared against the glass, even at that distance distinctive in its broad-shouldered silhouette.

The next instant, both windows were darkened in turn as if heavy curtains or shutters were closed across them, and the façade was once more left in darkness.

‘Come, Watson,’ Holmes said softly. ‘I have seen enough.’

The long wait, it appeared, was over.

We walked the half-mile to Windicot Villa at a brisk rate to get the blood moving again in our frozen limbs, Holmes striding out one pace in front of me, his long black shadow projected ahead of him in the moonlight.

He was silent and, knowing him in this abstracted mood, I made no attempt to interrupt his train of thought.

It was only when we reached the gates of Windicot Villa that he ventured any remark.

With his hand on the latch, he turned to me, his face sombre.

‘This case will end tragically, I fear, Watson. I must warn Miss Russell and Mr Lawson. But not tonight. I should not wish to give them an uneasy rest, the young lady in particular.’

Miss Russell and Mr Lawson, together with the housekeeper, a Mrs Henty, were waiting up for us in the drawing-room where a bright fire was still burning on the hearth and where hot soup and game pie were soon served.

Holmes said little about our night’s investigations, merely remarking that they had been satisfactory, before asking Miss Russell a question of which, at the time, I could not see the purpose.

‘Tell me,’ said he, ‘had the young Marquis of Deerswood ever travelled abroad to your knowledge?’

Her answer was quite positive.

‘No, Mr Holmes, he had not. He told me once that he had never been outside the country. Why do you ask?’

‘I am merely curious,’ Holmes replied with a dismissive air and said no more on the subject.

True to his resolve, he made no reference to his fears about the tragic outcome to the case until the following morning at breakfast when he finally raised the matter. Only the four of us were present, old Mr Russell preferring to breakfast in bed.

His expression grave, Holmes addressed Miss Russell and Mr Lawson across the table, expressing in the same words the anxiety he had already voiced to me the previous night.

‘I can give you no more detailed explanation,’ he concluded. ‘However, in view of my apprehension regarding the inquiry I can proceed no further with the case without your permission. Even then, unless the present Marquis of Deerswood agrees, I fear that the full facts may still never be revealed.’

Miss Russell listened with bowed head and then, raising her eyes, looked him directly in the face.

‘I should prefer to know the truth, Mr Holmes, however terrible it might be,’ she said quietly. ‘As far, that is, as Lord Deerswood permits it.’

‘A most remarkable young lady,’ Holmes commented when we set off once more for Hartsdene Manor, my old friend carrying in his pocket a letter of introduction from Miss Russell, countersigned by Frederick Lawson.

Coming from Holmes, it was a rare accolade indeed. There were no women he cared for and only one whom he had ever truly admired.
*

The rest of the journey was completed in silence, I preoccupied with turning over in my mind what tragedy Holmes had referred to and how he had reached his conclusion, while Holmes was sunk deep in his own thoughts.

On our arrival at Hartsdene Manor, he seemed to recover
some of his spirits, jumping down from the carriage and running up the steps to ring energetically at the bell.

The door was opened by a butler – Macey, I assumed – a solemn, portly individual who, on our presenting our cards and Miss Russell’s letter, showed us into the hall where he requested we should wait.

While we did so, I looked curiously about me.

The hall was large and sumptuously furnished but neither the portraits hanging on the walls nor the rich oriental rugs spread across the marble floor could quite dispel the air of chilly gloom which permeated the place. It seemed joyless, as if the sound of human laughter had been banished long ago.

In front of us, a broad, heavily carved staircase led to an upper gallery and, as we waited below, a white and liver-coloured spaniel came suddenly bounding down the steps to sniff eagerly at our legs.

‘Gilbert Deerswood’s dog looking for its master, I dare say,’ Holmes remarked.

His surmise seemed correct, for, having examined us and found us wanting, the dog slunk away disappointed to a far corner where it curled up on one of the rugs and went to sleep.

At this point, the butler returned to announce that Lord Deerswood would see us and we were conducted down a corridor to a pair of double doors.

They led into a library, also splendidly furnished although it was not the book-lined walls nor the gilt and leather chairs which caught my attention but the tall figure of Lord Deerswood who had risen from behind a desk at the far side of the room.

He was a thin, dark pillar of a man, very erect and rigid, dressed entirely in black with the exception of a high, white, starched collar above which his high-nosed, aristocratic face regarded us disdainfully as a well-bred racehorse might inspect creatures of a lower pedigree from across a five-barred gate.

‘I see,’ said he, tapping with one finger on Miss Russell’s letter which lay open on the desk in front of him, ‘that Miss Russell and her solicitor continue with their ridiculous assertion that my nephew is still alive. Very well, Mr Holmes. The truth of the matter shall be put to the test. You and your companion,’
and here he made a slight bow in my direction, for the first time acknowledging my presence, ‘are at liberty to search the house from attic to cellar although I can assure you that you will be wasting your time. You will find no one in residence apart from myself and the servants.’

With that, he turned his back on us and jerked on a bell-rope beside the fireplace.

We waited in silence for the butler to reappear, a deeply embarrassing few moments in which I sympathised with Miss Russell’s and Mr Lawson’s ordeal when they had faced this man at their initial interview.

It was Holmes, not at all put out, it seemed, by Lord Deerswood’s haughty manner, who finally broke the silence.

‘I understand,’ said he, ‘that Miss Russell saw two men in the company of the person she took to be your nephew. One was your butler. The other she did not recognise. May I inquire who he might be?’

Hardly had he finished speaking when there was a tap at the door and the butler entered.

Without so much as glancing in Holmes’ direction, Lord Deerswood addressed the manservant.

‘Bring Mr Barker here, Macey,’ he ordered, adding, as the butler left the room, ‘The man to whom you refer, Mr Holmes, is my secretary, Barker, who joined my staff only a few months ago which is no doubt why Miss Russell failed to recognise him. You shall meet him. I should not wish to give Miss Russell cause to believe that any circumstances concerning my household have been kept from her.’

He lapsed once more into silence which continued until the butler returned, accompanied by a tall, dark-featured man, immensely broad across the shoulders.

‘My secretary, Barker,’ Lord Deerswood said by way of an introduction at which the man bowed in our direction. ‘And now,’ his lordship continued, ‘if you care to accompany my butler, he will show you any rooms you care to examine.’

He regarded us with the same cold disdain with which he had first greeted us as Holmes thanked him and we turned to follow the butler from the room. For my part, although I cannot
speak for Holmes, I felt the man’s eyes boring into my back as I made the long retreat from the desk to the double doors at the far end of the library, preceded by the figure of Macey, who maintained a silence as intimidating as his master’s.

He broke it only when Holmes addressed him directly as we were mounting the stairs.

‘It is merely the bedrooms that we wish to examine.’

‘Very good, sir.’

We reached the upper gallery, a long passageway extending in both directions and with doors leading from it to at least twenty bedrooms, all of which we examined and all, with the exception of Lord Deerswood’s own bed-chamber, apparently unused, the furniture covered in dust-sheets.

The former Marquis of Deerswood’s room was similarly sheeted, the bed stripped down to the mattress and the curtains which surrounded the four-poster swathed in white cotton so that they resembled so many hanging shrouds.

As we entered the room, Holmes glanced down at the surround of polished boards which extended beyond the edge of the carpet, before raising a quizzical eyebrow in my direction. The implication was quite clear. The thin layer of dust on the floor, which had gathered since the room was last cleaned, bore no other signs of foot-marks than our own. It was evident that the room had not been recently occupied.

As the butler closed the door on the last room at the end of the passage, he announced, ‘You have now seen all the bedchambers, gentlemen. Do you wish to return downstairs?’

‘What of the other wing?’ Holmes inquired.

For the first time, I thought I detected a sign of unease on the butler’s part.

‘Only the servants and Mr Barker occupy that part of the house, sir.’

‘Nevertheless, I should like to see it.’

‘Very good, sir.’

We followed him down some steps and into another passageway. From its lower ceiling with its heavy beams, it was clear that we had entered the older part of the house, all that
remained of the original Tudor manor house in front of which Holmes and I had kept our vigil the previous night.

The passage ran haphazardly, turning several corners and ascending or descending by means of sets of shallow steps so that it was difficult to grasp the plan of the rooms and their relationship to one another.

The chambers themselves were smaller and darker than those in the main part of the house and several of them also appeared to be unoccupied. However, we examined briefly Macey’s own bedroom and those of the cook, the housemaids and Lord Deerswood’s valet.

It was the room belonging to Barker, his lordship’s secretary, in which Holmes lingered the longest although, at the time, I could not understand why this particular chamber should have aroused his interest.

There was nothing remarkable about it. Like the others, it was low-ceilinged with old, linen-fold panelling on the walls and with a single mullioned window, fitted with wooden shutters, which looked out towards the wood, on the edge of which Holmes and I had sat upon the fallen log.

The furniture was of the plainest, a single bedstead with a night-table beside it on which an oil lamp was standing and, opposite it, an old-fashioned press of time-blackened oak which occupied almost the entire wall. An armchair and a square of drugget on the floor completed the furnishings.

Nevertheless, Holmes remained for several long moments in the room, opening the door of the press to look inside it and examining the shutters before turning back towards the door.

There were other rooms to see – a windowless linen closet which adjoined Barker’s with the housekeeper’s bedchamber next to it but Holmes merely put his head in a perfunctory manner inside them.

The tour completed, we returned to the head of the main stair-case and went down it to the entrance hall which we crossed, it being clearly Macey’s intention to conduct us out of the house.

Indeed, he was halfway towards the front doors when Holmes suddenly announced, ‘There is one room I wish to re-examine.
I am sure Lord Deerswood would not object, having already given us permission to inspect the house.’

The butler seemed nonplussed and, as he stood hesitating, Holmes started back up the stairs, adding airily over his shoulder, ‘There is no need for you to accompany us, Macey. Dr Watson and I know the way.’

As we reached the upper landing, Holmes glanced down over the gallery rail.

The entrance hall was now empty, the butler having disappeared from sight.

‘Gone, no doubt, to inform Lord Deerswood of our intentions,’ Holmes remarked. ‘Come, Watson, the hunt is nearly over but we may not have much time to draw the last covert.’