by Carole Bugge
I lit a lamp and browsed through the dusty stacks of ancient books until my eye was caught by a tide: Folk Legends of the West Country. Perhaps it was the grey day, or maybe the abbey itself, its gloomy rooms made even more so by the weather, but whatever the reason, I was drawn to the book. I had not noticed it the day before when Holmes and I perused the books in the library.
The room was not particularly cold, yet I shivered as I pulled the book from the ancient stacks. My hand trembled as I turned over the crumbling leaves, the pages brittle and brown with age. Turning up the lamp on the table, I settled down in a soft red leather armchair to read.
I really did not believe that the events which had transpired in Torre Abbey were of supernatural origin. I was quite certain, in fact, that some person or persons were playing a nasty trick on the Cary family, and that eventually Holmes would discover who it was. I wasn’t thinking of this as I opened the cracked leather binding of the book, however; I just wanted something to pass the time. I leafed through the pages until a title caught my eye: “The Demon Hunter of Devon.” My hands trembled as I held the book and read.
The Demon Hunter
At the hour of the moon the Demon Hunter is abroad
On his black stallion o’er the fields he does ride
As an ardent lover comes galloping across the moors
In search of his beautiful young bride
The lover hears the pounding hooves and urges his steed on
He senses danger but does not dare to look
Still the Demon Hunter gains on him, as the day is gone
They ride across glen and dale and over broiling brook
The lover gallops toward the sea, beyond the round face of the moon
But alas, he is too late and night arrives too soon
As over darkened plains the silver moon begins to rise
From his horse the hapless lover falls, and upon the ground he dies
The Hunter goes to claim the widowed bride but finds it is too late
In despair she hangs herself at the castle gate
The lovers now lie buried in the deep dark glen
But the Hunter on his great black steed will ride, and ride
—and ride again
I sat for some time staring at the page. The poem sent a chill through my spine, and the image of the Demon Hunter was as clear in my mind as if I had seen it myself.
All of a sudden I was aware of someone standing at the door. I turned to see Grayson, a tray in his hands.
“I thought you might like some refreshment, sir,” he said, entering the room and placing the tray on the table in front of me. A plate of sandwiches sat next to a steaming bowl of soup.
“A day like this calls for soup, I believe, sir,” he said, turning up the gas lamp, which had begun to dim and flicker.
“That’s very thoughtful of you, Grayson,” I replied, “but I’m not very hungry.”
“You must eat to keep your strength up, sir. And be sure to keep warm,” he added, taking a blanket from the sofa and wrapping it around my feet.
“I don’t know what would become of this place without you, Grayson,” I said warmly. “You think of everything.”
“I do my best, sir.” Noticing the book I was reading, he smiled. “That was one of my master’s favourites, sir. I’m glad there’s someone else to appreciate it.”
“Devon seems to be full of ghostly legends,” I replied.
“Oh, indeed it is, sir. There are those who believe they are true, too.”
“And you, Grayson? What do you believe?”
“I believe in what I can see, sir,” he replied solemnly. “I leave superstition to those who need it.”
“That’s an interesting notion,” I said. “I never thought of anyone as needing superstition.”
He tucked the blanket in around my feet and unfolded a napkin on my lap. “People seem to need religion, and to my mind it’s the same thing.”
“So you’re not a religious man?”
He shook his head. “As I say, sir, I leave that to those who need it. And now, if there’s nothing further you need, I’ll get on with my duties.”
“No—thank you very much.”
“Be sure to eat your soup while it’s hot, sir,” he said, leaving the room as soundlessly as he had entered it.
I took a few sips of soup, then sat watching as the rain slanted onto the window panes. I dozed off after a while, and dreamt of the Demon Hunter riding, riding over the moors of Devon in the driving rain.
* * *
By the time everyone returned from Sally’s funeral that evening, I was feeling better. The fever had broken, and although Holmes expressed concern about me, I insisted that I would be well enough to attend the upcoming séance the next day.
Holmes remarked that everyone in the surrounding villages seemed to know the Cary family, and that the turnout had been good. “Whether they came to gape or to sympathize is unclear—some of both, I expect,” he observed, wrestling with a cuff link. I sat in a rattan chair in the corner of his sitting room, wrapped in a blanket, while he dressed for dinner. “But gossip about the family is flying about town fast and furious, from what I can see.” He looked at me, concern written upon his aquiline face. “But are you certain you’re quite all right, Watson?”
“Yes, yes,” I replied.
By nightfall the rain had lifted, revealing a brilliant starry sky and a moon so bright that the grounds of Torre Abbey were bathed in its paleblue light. It shone in through the windows of the east parlour, falling softly upon the corners of the room, combining with the gaslight to lend even everyday objects a ghostly brilliance.
After dinner I was feeling well enough to join the others for coffee and cognac in the parlour. Elizabeth did not drink coffee, and Grayson had made her a cup of cocoa. Lady Cary, it seems, had retired to bed after dinner. Elizabeth rose and went to the window, the moonlight falling upon her shoulders. As she stood by the half-parted curtain, her face turned towards the window, her lustrous black hair seemed to absorb the pale rays of light. It seemed to be lost somewhere among those thick dark curls, held hostage within the raven tresses. She heaved a deep sigh and closed the curtains.
“I don’t know why moonlight always makes me feel so melancholy,” she said, “but it always does.”
Her brother rose from his chair and put his arms around her shoulders. “Never mind,” he said in a soothing voice. “Come along and have your cocoa, there’s a good girl. It’ll help you to sleep.”
“There is no sleep for us, not we who he in the dreary deep—only the eternal sleep of the dead,” she murmured in an expressionless monotone, as though she were reciting a long-memorized text.
Charles Cary looked at Holmes and then at me. “She gets like this sometimes,” he said apologetically.
Elizabeth Cary turned to us and spoke as though she hadn’t heard her brother’s words at all. “It was in the moonlight I died, and in the moonlight he stood beside my grave and cried.” Holmes and I exchanged a look as Cary gently led his sister from the room.
“Come now,” he said. “It’s time for bed.”
He returned shortly. Pouring himself another cognac, he took a swallow before speaking. “I really must apologize for my sister’s behaviour. She’s gotten it into her head that she is a Spanish girl who died three hundred years ago.”
Holmes raised one eyebrow. “Oh?”
Cary sighed. “Yes. There is a legend that among the prisoners taken from the Armada galleon was a Spanish girl who disguised herself as a sailor in order to be near her lover. But they were separated when the ship was taken and she died of the fever without ever seeing him again—or so the story goes.”
I leaned forward. “She died in your ‘Spanish barn,’ then?”
“So they say.”
Holmes unfolded his long body from his chair and walked to the window. He looked out into the moonlit night, the glow of the moon so bright that the trees cast long shadows across the abbey lawn.
The moonlight fell upon my friend’s lean profile, so sharply etched that it could have been cut from glass.
“Lord Cary,” he said slowly, “you must find a way to wean her from her drug addiction.”
Cary’s face went red. He opened his mouth to speak but Holmes cut him off.
“Whatever the poor girl is going through is undoubtedly aggravated by whatever she is taking. What is it, by the way? Watson and I agreed that laudanum was the most likely choice.”
Cary nodded, all the fight gone out of him. “Yes. At first it was just every few days, you know, when things seemed unbearable to her… but now she seems unable to do without it for more than a day.” He hung his head, and I felt sorry for him.
“I have no particular reason to doubt you,” Holmes replied icily. “However, that does not change her predicament. I’m sure Watson can describe to you the long-term effects of drug addiction.”
It was my turn to go red in the face. I didn’t know if Holmes was referring to his own battle with cocaine, but if he was, I certainly had firsthand knowledge of its effects, living with him as I had off and on all these years.
“Lord Cary,” I said carefully, “you really should listen to what Holmes says. The longer one remains addicted to a substance, the more painful the withdrawal symptoms can be.”
“Yes, yes,” he replied. “I know you’re right, and I promise you I’ll do something about it when this is all over.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but Holmes silenced me with a look.
* * *
I awoke sometime in the middle of the night shivering, and as I got up to get another blanket I heard a sound in the hall outside my room. I crept to the door, opened it slowly, and looked out. To my surprise, I saw Elizabeth Cary walking down the hall towards me, carrying a lantern. I opened my mouth to address her, but the expression on her face stopped me cold.
She walked, eyes fixed straight ahead, her long white nightgown trailing after her. When she passed by without seeming to notice me, it was clear to me that she was sleepwalking. I had heard of cases of somnambulant wanderings, but had yet to see one myself. Concerned as I was for her safety, I confess I also felt a thrill of anticipation at the chance to observe the curious phenomenon firsthand. I followed her down the hall, resolved to waken her at the first sign of danger to her person. She walked ahead with slow but confident steps, as though she knew exactly where she was going.
I followed her down the central staircase to the first floor, and when she headed for the door leading to the outside, I almost put out a hand to stop her. Something stayed my arm, however, and I continued to follow her. She unbolted and pushed open the heavy front door as though it were nothing, and stepped out onto the front lawn. Without hesitating, she continued walking directly south, and I had a sinking feeling I knew where she was headed—the Spanish barn.
I had little desire to go near that structure again, filled as I was with a sense of its tragic past, and yet I followed after her as though I had no will of my own, curiosity driving me on. What could she possibly have in mind to do, asleep or not, at the old tithe barn? She walked quickly across the expanse of yard, going straight as the crow flies rather than taking the curving dirt path to the barn.
My legs trembled as I followed her. The building loomed in front of us, long and low, silent as a tomb. To my surprise, the door was unlocked. She pushed on it and it swung open with a loud creak. I stood upon the sill as she went inside, the flickering light of her lantern creating ghostly shadows on the interior of the vaulted ceiling. Still apparently unaware of my presence, she walked to the far window and gazed out at the dark branches of the old oak tree. And then she began to sing, not in English, but in a foreign tongue which I recognized as Spanish.
As I stood watching her, my head began to swim, and I felt the same sense of creeping dread which had overcome me the first time I entered this place. I put my hand to my head, and as I did, I thought I caught a movement out of the corner of my left eye. That end of the barn was almost entirely in darkness, however, and as I peered through the shadow I thought I could just make out the outline of a person moving towards me. I stepped back instinctively, but at that moment I lost consciousness, falling into an even more profound blackness than the one surrounding me in the Spanish barn…
* * *
“Watson! Are you all right?”
I opened my eyes to see Holmes kneeling over me in the semi-darkness. I felt a damp cool sensation at the back of my neck, realized it was grass and that I was lying on my back upon the lawn. I looked up at Holmes’s face, framed by a full moon hanging high in the sky.
“What happened?” I said.
The back of my neck hurt, and I felt stiff and sore, as though I had been lying on the cold wet grass half the night.
“I was hoping you’d be able to tell me,” Holmes replied with a sigh. “I only arrived in time to find you lying here.”
“Where’s Miss Cary?” I said, struggling to sit up.
“Steady on, Watson,” Holmes murmured, laying a hand upon my shoulder. “Take it easy and don’t try to get up too quickly. You don’t know yet the extent of your injuries.”
“I’m quite all right,” I replied, but my words belied how I felt. There was a ringing in my head, and my neck ached. I felt a lump forming at the back of my head.
I told Holmes everything I could remember—following Elizabeth Cary out to the barn, listening to her sing, and then losing consciousness.
“Did you just faint, or did someone hit you?” Holmes inquired, helping me to stand up slowly.
I felt the rising lump on the back of my skull and shook my head. “I’m not sure. I could have sustained this bump when I fell. I can’t really say—all I know is that suddenly everything went black, and the next thing I knew I was lying here.”
Holmes frowned. “You’re not well, Watson, and shouldn’t be out at night wandering around. Someone moved you from the barn. I wonder if a young woman could drag a man weighing—what, thirteen stone…?”
“Twelve and a half.”
“Even so, it is a distance of approximately twenty yards or so.”
“I suppose she could.”
“Perhaps, but it would be a fair accomplishment. And you’re quite certain she was sleepwalking when you followed her?”
“Either that, or she wanted me to believe she was.”
Holmes paused to consider it. “Well, the plot thickens, as they say. Come on, let’s get you back to bed,” he said, putting an arm around me and helping me to walk back towards the house.
“By the way, Holmes,” I said, “what are you doing up at this hour?”
“Thinking,” he replied offhandedly. “And actually, I am concerned about young William, so I thought it wise to keep watch over him tonight.”
“That’s all very well,” I remarked. “But you can’t keep watch over him every night. There’s an extra bed in my room—why not put him in with me?”
“When you are feeling better, Watson,” Holmes replied. “I shall catch a catnap later on. As you know, I require little sleep.”
This was true enough; however, even in the moonlight I could see the fatigue in my friend’s face, the circles under his eyes. Our stay at Torre Abbey, it seemed, was beginning to take its toll on both of us.
Chapter Twelve
The next day I slept late, rising only in time for lunch, which I had in my room. I still did not have much appetite, and was only able to finish half of my soup before dozing off again. I awoke to a knock on the door.
“Come in,” I said sleepily.
The door opened and Holmes entered quietly. He walked across the room and stood over my bed, shaking his head. “You never should have been wandering around last night. However, I wish I had been with you, to see what happened.”
“I’m only sorry I didn’t see more,” I said with regret. “Are you going to tell the Cary family?”
“I think we should mention that you saw Elizabeth sleepwalking, then w
atch their reaction. It’s best not to offer any details other than that, and see what they do.”
But when we mentioned it to Charles and Marion Cary, they appeared utterly nonplussed; both claimed they were unaware of any such behaviour on Elizabeth’s part. Charles actually seemed very concerned, and said he would speak to his sister about it, but that he would wait until after the séance.
That night we consumed a light dinner of soup and cheese. It seems our medium, Madame Olenskaya, had told Father Norton that too much food could cloud the mind and make communication between this world and the next more difficult.
By eight-thirty we had retired to the west parlour with our coffee. In spite of his evident concern about his sister, Charles Cary made no secret of his contempt of the proceedings. He stood in front of the fire glaring into the flames, an island of isolation, lost in his own thoughts.
Father Norton arrived at precisely nine o’clock, accompanied by his sister Lydia. Lydia Norton was tall and straight in the way Scottish women are, as slim at fifty as she no doubt was at twenty, with sandy hair and a handsome, taut-skinned face (“Good bone structure,” my anatomy professor would have said). Her profile was as sharp and clean as the prow of a boat, her eyes bright as a terrier’s. All in all, she gave the impression of extreme alertness—the kind of schoolteacher that children would not even try to outwit.
Lydia Norton shared the same ironic half-smile as her brother, except that on her it was not so much droll as a bit arch. It was as if one of them had borrowed it from the other, in a kind of unconscious imitation. In spite of their natural sardonicism, though, even Lydia and her brother looked apprehensive as we awaited the appearance of the medium.
Everything came to a halt with the entrance of Madame Olenskaya. She entered the room with all the theatricality of an opera diva. She was a large, florid woman, with loose folds of skin at her jowls like the dewlaps of a basset hound, and she lumbered into the west parlour of Torre Abbey with an authoritative air, as if unimpressed by its wealth and grandeur.