Mrs Hudson and the Lazarus Testament

by Martin Davies

‘I just remember hearing that ghastly train coming,’ she went on, ‘and then realising I couldn’t shift the great heavy basket, and suddenly it struck me that I could at least save one or two of the pots. And as I looked at them, all wedged in like beer bottles, and practically in the shadow of the train, a bit in that dreadful book suddenly came back to me. I’ve no idea how. I mean, I only read a few lines of it, and it really was the most tedious thing I’d ever come across. And then, just when I thought I was going to die, there it was, clear as crystal in my head! Can you imagine, Flottie? Moments from death, and instead of thinking about all the wonderful things that have happened to me, I’m thinking about ancient Mesopotamian pottery. It was too terribly gruesome! And, of course, the bit I’d been reading had gone on and on about the different lips on the wretched things, so that was what I found myself looking at, and, well, one of them was different from all the others, so obviously that was the one, and I just had time to snatch it out before poof! Everything was white and I thought I was dead, but then I started choking, and it seemed to me that if I was choking to death I must still be alive…’

  She stretched blissfully and beamed at me.

  ‘Oh, Flottie, I’m so happy! I’ve always dreamed that one day I’d actually help Mrs Hudson, instead of just getting in the way. And now there’s going to be a world famous discovery, and it’s all down to me! I think that nice French chef at the Mecklenburg ought to name a dish after me, don’t you? After all, he named one after that frightful Johnson woman who saved her maid from drowning even though we all know that she makes her maids so miserable they’d probably rather drown. Of course, I don’t believe her dish will ever really catch on, you know. I mean, Chicken Ethel just doesn’t sound very nice, does it, Flottie? Anyway, the best thing of all is that Rupert will be forced to confess how utterly despicable he’s been. I mean, he might know lots of things, but, really, he’s never rescued a priceless biblical document from certain destruction, has he?’

  I was spared having to reply by the appearance of Mrs Hudson with the news that Sir Percival and the other gentlemen had arrived at the Angel and were waiting downstairs for the opening of the urn.

  ‘Mr Fallowell seems to think Mrs Garth’s parlour will be a suitable place for the unsealing,’ she told us. ‘Dry but not too warm. There had been some talk of doing it at Mr Verity’s house but of course I made it clear that you two had done enough gadding about for one day, and certainly weren’t going out in weather like this.’

  It was certainly true that the weather had taken an inclement turn, and in the Angel’s snug the gentlemen’s coats were steaming slightly in front of the fire. Everyone who had been involved in our Alston adventures was there: Sir Percival and Mr Fallowell, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, Mr Spencer and Mr Verity. Even Viscount Wrexham was there, having won the respect of the entire company by the sporting way he’d accepted his defeat. When Mrs Hudson ushered us into the room, Sir Percival rose to his feet and bowed.

  ‘Before we proceed to the main business of the day,’ he announced gravely, ‘I should tell you that I have just received word of Mr Summersby. He was apprehended earlier today trying to board a train for Newcastle. It turns out his real name is not Summersby at all, but Braddock, and under that name he is wanted in America for any number of acts of violence. He broke down completely when he realised his wife had escaped without him, and told us everything. It is as you said, Mrs Hudson, his wife cultivated Mr Baldwick’s company when he was in the United States and fleeced him of a great deal of money. Such was her skill in the matter, they parted with Baldwick on good terms.

  ‘The Summersbys relocated to the South of France, with the intention of preying on similar individuals, and it was there they received a letter from Mr Baldwick, a letter written only hours before his death. Baldwick told them that the Lazarus Testament was at Broomheath Hall, but he didn’t mention where. So they came here at once to find it and to make their fortunes, but after weeks of looking, they grew desperate. There had been a line in Mr Baldwick’s letter about taking the secret to his grave, and they began to think he had meant it literally. Hence that gruesome business in the ruined chapel. But Archie Crummoch came across them as they dug up Baldwick’s grave and declared he would denounce them to the rector. Summersby admits striking him, but claims that he never intended to kill. If he can convince a jury of that, he might just escape the noose.’

  ‘And his wife?’ Miss Peters asked. ‘Flottie says Mrs Hudson locked her in the belvedere when the rest of us went chasing off onto the moors.’

  Sir Percival appeared to flush slightly.

  ‘Yes, that is true. Very quick thinking, I’m sure, Mrs Hudson. Unfortunately, the local constable was unaware of this. When he arrived at Broomheath this morning to resume his watch in the Home Barn, he found the house deserted and the treasure gone, but he did hear a knocking from the building you call the belvedere.’

  ‘You don’t mean he let her out?’ Miss Peters gasped.

  ‘Regrettably, yes,’ Sir Percival confirmed. ‘She told him such a very moving story about brigands and kidnappers that he even agreed to drive her to the doctor in Alston before raising the alarm. Of course she didn’t visit the doctor. It appears she went straight to the station and took a ticket for London, but we don’t believe she’s travelled that far. No one noticed her changing trains at Haltwhistle and, to tell the truth, we don’t really know where she is. But I daresay we shall pick her up shortly. A woman on her own like that… She can’t get far.’

  This prediction was met with a general nodding of heads but Mrs Hudson did not nod.

  ‘A very clever and resourceful woman,’ was her only comment, but something in the way she said it seemed to anticipate the young lady’s eventual escape – although even Mrs Hudson could surely not have predicted the route by which she would achieve it, in a journey that was later to become notorious: by farm carts to South Shields, thence by collier to Aberdeen; by fishing smack to the Färoes; by whaler to East Greenland; by sled to West Greenland; on a sloop to Newfoundland amongst a cargo of seal furs; and thence by stages to New York, where under a different name she was to have such a glittering criminal career.

  But although this was not the last time my path was to cross Mrs Summersby’s, that day at the Angel Inn my thoughts were only of the Lazarus Testament and of the opening of the urn that had been sealed for so many centuries. And it was clear from the eyes of my companions and from the tense atmosphere in the room, that I was not alone in this. Mr Fallowell favoured us all with a few words about the history of the famous parchment and about the fragility of ancient documents in general, and then, finally, led us into the front parlour where we came face to face with the urn itself.

  It had been placed on a small incidental table in a room full of chintz and china and prints of children holding puppies, but even these surroundings seemed somehow altered by its presence. I don’t know how it came about, but in the parlour that day there was something of the long-fermented silence of an ancient cathedral, and I would no sooner have laughed or fidgeted there than I would have pulled faces in a chapel. Looking around, I saw Mr Holmes looking very grave. Dr Watson had discarded his pipe in a show of reverence.

  ‘And now,’ Mr Fallowell continued, ‘I shall break the seal…’

  We had formed a close semi-circle around him and not one of us made a sound as he went to work. I noticed that his hands trembled slightly as they neared the urn and more than once he stopped to wipe his palms against his waistcoat.

  ‘The seal is likely to be a combination of beeswax and other substances. To be honest, we aren’t sure of its exact composition. But I can vouch for its efficacy,’ he went on, beginning to turn the stopper with some difficulty.

  ‘There!’ he declared at last, stepping back a little. ‘It’s done.’ He looked around at our eager faces. ‘When the elders of the Church caused this seal to be made, little would they have imagined the place or circumstances of its opening.’

  ‘
And its contents, sir?’ demanded Sir Percival, his patience creaking under the strain.

  ‘Let me see…’

  Mr Fallowell reached into the urn until his arm disappeared up to its elbow. And as we watched, breathless with suspense, we saw his expression change from a frown of concentration into a look of puzzlement and then slow-dawning horror.

  ‘I… I… There’s nothing there!’ he stammered. ‘Only this…’ And pulling out his hand, he revealed a fistful of ashes – pale grey, crumbling fragments that turned to dust at the touch of his fingers.

  ‘Burned!’ he gasped. ‘The document is burned!’ And thumping down the ashes upon the table he began to search the urn again, pulling out handful after handful of the same dull substance.

  By now our circle had broken and we were all crowding around him, anxious to see for ourselves. I reached out and ran my fingers through the light, flaky ash. On one fragment, a little less than half an inch across, I thought I could make out traces of an ancient script, but the whole thing, writing and all, dissolved into dust at my touch.

  ‘This cannot be! It cannot!’ Mr Fallowell was insisting. ‘The seal was unbroken, I swear it!’

  ‘So this cannot be Mr Baldwick’s work?’ Mr Spencer asked. ‘We know he was very unbalanced…’

  ‘No!’ Mr Fallowell was adamant. ‘The seal was unbroken, just as it would have been a thousand years ago!’

  ‘In that case,’ Mr Holmes observed, ‘there can only be one explanation. It would seem–’

  ‘Aha!’ Mr Fallowell’s fingers had touched something and very, very slowly he pulled his hand from the urn. Between his fingers rested a small rectangular tablet of clay, no more than an inch high and two inches across. From where I stood I could see there were words engraved on it, and these, I saw, were in a more familiar script.

  ‘What does it say?’ Sir Percival barked.

  Mr Fallowell read for a moment before replying, then straightened and looked around him.

  ‘It’s in Latin,’ he told us, ‘and if I may translate, the message reads something like this…’

  He cleared his throat.

  ‘In the name of God, our Father, and for the preservation of the divine mystery, Vespasian decreed that this document should be burned. Thanks be to God.’

  In the silence that followed, Viscount Wrexham let out a low whistle.

  ‘So it seems my old man was right. The Lazarus Testament really was dynamite, after all! I wonder what it said. It must have been pretty devastating for them to destroy it outright like that…’

  ‘Wait!’ Unnoticed by the rest of us, Mr Spencer had continued to search the urn while Mr Fallowell was busy with the tablet and now he pulled from it a handful of ashes in the middle of which, brittle and charred but still legible, lay one small surviving fragment of parchment.

  The room fell silent at the sight of it and we watched Mr Spencer lower it to the table and lay it down with the most tender care. Mr Fallowell seemed almost too awed to approach it, pausing to clear his throat again before moving closer.

  ‘Can you read it?’ Miss Peters asked, her voice trembling a little, as if from the effort of holding in check for so long her natural exuberance. ‘Goodness!’ she added. ‘Perhaps we’re going to learn the secret after all!’

  Mr Fallowell stooped to examine it but did not dare to touch it with his fingers.

  ‘The writing is in Aramaic,’ he informed us, ‘and yes, I can make it out. Let me see…’

  He composed himself for a moment or two, his face only inches from the scrap of parchment.

  ‘Unfortunately the flame has left certain lacunae in the text,’ he explained. ‘That is to say, there are some gaps. But what I can make out reads thus.’

  And in a slightly hoarse voice he began to read.

  ‘Yesterday I took dispute with the seller of fish. His goods are expensive and of poor quality … As I have repeated ten thousand times in these pages, manners are assuredly not as they were in the days of my childhood. The tax collector is a boy with pimples, his mother a … Young men respect not their elders, neither their experience nor judgement … I was forced to complain about the quality of the candles … the cost of mules …a good horse for that and money left over … When I was a youth …’

  The scholar’s voice trailed off. ‘I’m afraid that’s all,’ he concluded a little lamely.

  ‘That’s all?’ Dr Watson looked bewildered. ‘But that’s hardly the stuff of ancient mystery! It sounds more like the ramblings of a retired colonel from Tunbridge Wells. And believe me, I’ve met a few.’

  ‘Indeed, Watson.’ Mr Holmes straightened and there was something in the manner of the movement that spoke of finality, of a chapter drawing towards its close. ‘It seems we shall never know the full details of the reminiscences Lazarus committed to writing, nor why it was decided they needed to be destroyed. But from the fragment remaining to us, I should say there’s a distinct possibility that Lazarus did not, after all, compose an explosive account that threatened the foundations of Christendom. Perhaps the elders of the Church simply found his diatribe something of an embarrassment. Who can say? Now, Sir Percival, I take it that you consider my work here done? This morning I received a telegram about a fascinating strangulation off Fleet Street and I rather think my presence is required.’

  ‘Why, of course, Mr Holmes.’ Sir Percival nodded. ‘But first, perhaps Mr Fallowell and I might have a few words with you in private? You see, we shall be expected to produce a full report for the Prime Minister and we would value your thoughts…’

  With a bow to the rest of us, the old gentleman took his leave and ushered Mr Holmes from the room. Mr Fallowell bobbed politely in our direction and scurried after them.

  ‘So that’s that, then?’ Viscount Wrexham asked, his voice sounding rather indignant. ‘My word, what an anti-climax! I’d been thinking all this would make a rather good drama for the stage. But an ending like that rather scuppers things, doesn’t it? Not at all what the public wants. No sensational denouement, no ancient curse, no supernatural forces at work – only some rather grumpy memoirs about the price of fish! It’s a pity. I’m told there’s a lot of money to be made in the theatre nowadays.’

  He reached out and touched the urn. ‘In a way I’m rather glad my old man never did get his hands on it. It would have been a bitter disappointment for him. And now I think it’s time I came up with a new plan to restore the family fortunes. There’s a race meeting at Carlisle tomorrow, I believe, and a fellow has to start somewhere.’

  He pulled a watch from his waistcoat pocket and I recognised the silver timepiece that Mr Swan had been holding that fateful day in Baker Street.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he went on, noticing my reaction. ‘Pauncefoot’s watch. He’ll be pleased to have it back. I had the devil of a time persuading him to give it up. The poor fellow! I understand he’s terribly upset about his old friend’s death. I think he rather blames me for it. What about you, Flotsam? Do you?’

  So direct and frank was his gaze, that for a moment I struggled to know what to say.

  ‘Well, sir,’ I began, ‘I suppose accidents do happen. All the time. But then again, if you hadn’t tried to mislead Mr Swan… Oh, sir! I really couldn’t say.’

  A shadow seemed to pass over his face and he bowed his head.

  ‘I stand condemned, Flotsam. Perhaps if I were to make it my mission in life to do nothing but good works from this day forward, you might learn to think better of me. Now that would be an end to the drama that would warm the audience’s heart! Nothing like a bit of redemption, eh? But I fear I should only disappoint you. My spirit is willing but it is also famously weak, especially when faced with any sort of temptation. Perhaps it would be wiser simply to assure you that my offence was unintentional and my regret genuine. Now, if I hurry I may be able to catch the afternoon train and be in Carlisle by supper time. With the honest wages of domestic service in my pocket, I have some sort of stake to play with. And if I can’t teach these nort
h-country farmers a thing or two about horseflesh, things will have come to a pretty pass!’

  He too left us with a bow. As he departed, a small eddy of air from the closing door stirred the ashes on the table and caught up the one remaining flake of legible parchment. Light though the draught was, it was enough to lift the fragment from the table, and in attempting to catch it, Mr Verity succeeded only in crushing the charred remnant into tiny pieces.

  ‘My goodness!’ The solicitor’s face was the very picture of dismay. ‘The only remaining piece… A priceless shard of history…’

  Mr Spencer smiled. ‘I don’t think you need to be too hard on yourself, sir. It was too fragile to survive for very long. And besides, no one seems very interested in it anymore, do they?’

  Rather huffily, Miss Peters began to scoop the little pile of fragments from Mr Verity’s hand back into the urn.

  ‘Well, I must say, Rupert, I think it’s a bit rich of Sir Percival! Some of us have risked their lives to rescue these little bits because he was making such a fuss about them, and now he simply doesn’t care! Just because old Lazarus wasn’t writing about angels and things. And, really! If those fusty old bishops were going to burn it all those years ago, I do think they might have said so! Think of all the trouble they’ve caused. And anyway, if they knew the document was just ashes, why did they take so much trouble looking after the urn?’

  Mr Spencer looked down at the traces of ash still clinging to one of Mrs Garth’s lace doilies.

  ‘I suppose in more religious times, even the remains of the document had some significance, Hetty. After all, they had been in the possession of Lazarus himself, which would make them a pretty remarkable relic in their own right.’

  This aspect of things seemed to strike Mr Verity for the first time and he hurriedly brushed some grey smuts from his waistcoat.

  ‘Dear me!’ he exclaimed. ‘I suppose that’s true. And here’s me, covered in relic, as you say. Most lacking in respect.’ His attempt to brush it away had merely pressed the ash further into the fabric, and he began to look rather anxious. ‘Yes, most disrespectful. Can’t wander around like this… If we’re finished here, perhaps you’d excuse me? I might just nip home and change…’