by June Thomson
‘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 sheet
ed, 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.’
‘What covert, Holmes?’
‘Why, the one where our fox has gone to earth, of course.’
‘You seem very sure.’
‘Indeed I am, my dear fellow.’
‘How is that?’
‘From our observations last night, coupled with what we have seen this morning.’
‘But we have been shown nothing except a large number of empty rooms.’
‘Oh, we have seen a great deal more than that, including the fingers on the right hand of his lordship’s secretary. Did you not notice that they were stained, not with ink, as one would suppose, but with …?’
He broke off as the spaniel we had encountered earlier rose from the rug where it had been sleeping and came to the foot of the stairs, wagging its tail with the same eager air.
‘A canine assistant!’* Holmes declared and, snapping his fingers at it over the banisters, called it up to join us.
It obeyed with alacrity, bounding up the steps and following at our heels as Holmes led the way down the passage and into the Tudor wing of the house which, only shortly before, we had, to the best of my belief, thoroughly examined.
We halted outside the door to Barker’s room, Holmes tapping on the panel as if expecting that, in our absence, its owner would have returned.
In this assumption he was correct for, having received permission to enter, we opened the door to see Barker in the act of laying aside a book and rising to his feet from a chair by the window, his expression full of consternation at our unexpected appearance, the spaniel at our heels.
It was apparent that the creature had never before been inside the room for it halted just within the door, uneasy at finding itself in such unfamiliar surroundings.
Barker had stepped towards us as if about to object to our presence when Holmes sent the dog forward with the words: ‘Go, Handel! Seek your master!’
At this command, the spaniel ran towards the great oaken press to sniff eagerly at its closed doors, its tail thumping against the carpet.
It was at this moment that Lord Deerswood appeared silently in the open doorway behind us, our first intimation of his presence being Barker’s stammered apology.
‘I’m sorry, my lord. I had no idea Mr Holmes or Dr Watson would return …’
Lord Deerswood advanced into the room and, ignoring Barker’s attempt at explanation, addressed Holmes directly, his expression no longer supercilious but full of a brooding melancholy.
‘I can see, Mr Holmes, that it is impossible to deceive you, a fact I should have recognised, knowing your reputation.’
Making a slight bow in acknowledgement, Holmes replied, ‘My inquiries have led me this far, Lord Deerswood, but, without your permission, I shall proceed no further than the doors to this press. Although I am retained by Miss Russell, whose concern in this affair is, I should add, solely on behalf of your nephew, I have her agreement that she will desist from all further inquiries should you so desire it. If you wish Dr Watson and myself to withdraw, we shall do so immediately.’
For several moments, Lord Deerswood considered this proposition without speaking. And then he seemed suddenly to come to a decision for, turning to Barker, he inquired, ‘Is all well?’ On receiving the man’s assurance that it was, his lordship continued, ‘Then show them the Paradol Chamber.’
At this, Barker crossed to the cupboard and opened its double doors.
As I have already described, the press was large and its commodious interior was divided up into two sections, in one of which clothes were hanging on hooks. The other was entirely taken up by a set of shelves on which some shirts and underlinen were lying.
Stretching one arm inside the cupboard, Barker released some hidden catch at which the whole set of shelves swung inwards like a door.
With a silent gesture of one hand, Lord Deerswood invited us to enter, which we did, followed by his lordship.
Beyond lay a room of a similar size to the one which we had just vacated but so different in its furnishings and appearance that it was like entering another world. In place of the plain drugget, a thick carpet lay upon the floor while hangings of a similar richness disguised the shutters a
t the window in front of which stood a small reading table and an armchair. Other luxuries in the form of paintings and bookcases occupied the walls and the chimney alcoves where, on the hearth, a bright coal fire was burning.
The only incongruous fittings in this otherwise comfortably appointed chamber were the high iron guard which stood before the fire, the fine mesh screen over the window which would have been invisible from outside, and, most disturbing of all, a pair of leather straps fastened to the frame of a bed which was placed against the wall to the immediate right of the doorway.
On the bed, under the linen sheets and the thick embroidered quilt, lay a young man, so heavily asleep that I suspected he had been drugged. He neither stirred nor opened his eyes as we entered but lay immobile, his head resting on the monogrammed pillows.
It was a tragic face despite its youthfulness for the man was only in his mid-twenties, but so ravaged that the features appeared those of someone much older who had endured many dark and bitter experiences.
‘My nephew, the Marquis of Deerswood,’ his lordship announced.
He was standing at the foot of the bed, gazing down at the motionless figure, his face as drawn and as haggard as the young man’s with an expression of agonised compassion.
‘If you have seen enough, gentlemen,’ he continued as Holmes and I remained silent, ‘I suggest we retire to the library where I shall give you a full account of how my nephew came to be reduced to this pitiable state. I know I may trust your discretion. Your reputation in that respect has also followed you.’
Again Holmes inclined his head and, preceded by Lord Hindsdale, to accord him his proper title, we vacated the chamber and returned downstairs to the library where, on his lordship’s invitation, we seated ourselves before the fire.
III
However, it was Holmes who opened the interview, pressed to do so by Lord Hindsdale.
‘Before I begin my own account,’ he said, ‘I should prefer to hear yours, Mr Holmes. It might save my having to repeat certain facts with which you may already be acquainted. Besides, I am curious to know by what methods you have so far proceeded in discovering the truth.’