“Holmes,” I said, “we are in a burning building. Perhaps now is not the time for a lengthy disquisition on morals.”
The smoke was drifting down through the posts of the gallery’s balustrade. My eyes were beginning to sting.
“Yes, yes,” said my friend impatiently. “Mallinson, the duration of life remaining to you may be counted in seconds. Miss Vandenbergh has you at her mercy and will have no compunction about executing you. I cannot prevent her. The least you can do is admit the error of your ways.”
“I was not wrong,” Mallinson declared. “I am never wrong.”
So saying, he reared up. The ceremonial dagger flashed in his hand. He plunged it backward, catching Elizabeth in the leg.
Then he was off at a run, even as Elizabeth sagged, the dagger protruding from her thigh.
“Curse me for a fool!” Holmes ejaculated, smacking his forehead. “I ought to have confiscated that thing from him. Watson, attend to Miss Vandenbergh. Raise the alarm, too. The domestic staff are all sequestered in the east wing. Get them out before the fire spreads. I, for my part, will see if I can salvage something from this.”
With that, he hastened off in pursuit of Mallinson.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT
Mallinson had left the house by the front door. Holmes disappeared after him.
I helped Elizabeth to her feet.
“We must go outside,” I told her. “Can you walk?”
“I can try.”
She hobbled along beside me, even as the smoke in the hallway grew eye-wateringly thick.
Once we were out on the front steps, I guided Elizabeth across the turning circle to a patch of lawn some distance from the house. I lay her down, making a pillow of my jacket for her head.
“Back in a moment,” I told her, then hurried round to the east wing of the manor. Already a handful of servants were emerging from a side door in their nightclothes, awoken by the rumble of the fire and the odour of burning. I exhorted them to rouse the rest of the staff, and when I was confident that they appreciated the urgency of the matter, I returned to Elizabeth’s side.
Examining her wound, I determined that it was unpleasant but not life-threatening. The rate of blood flow indicated that neither the femoral nor the genicular artery had been cut. Unlike with Jenks, the blade in this case could be safely removed, once precautions were taken. I fashioned a tourniquet from my belt, lacing it around her upper thigh. Then I tore off strips of my shirt to use as bandages and wadding. I warned her that I was about to extract the dagger.
She made not a sound as I pulled it out, nor as I applied pressure to the wound to stem the bleeding. Her fortitude was remarkable. I had seen battle-hardened soldiers sob like infants at such pain.
“Will I live?” she asked.
“With the appropriate treatment and care, I don’t see why not.”
“I don’t know that I want to any more,” she said wanly. “I thought that if I became Kali, if I pretended to be something other than myself, it would be easier to commit murder. But now that I have done so, now that the heat of the moment has passed, I am overwhelmed by remorse.”
“I should not concern myself about that right now, if I were you.”
“They deserved it, though,” she said. “Mr Holmes explained to me what they’d done. How could they? How could they have been so callous, so heartless?”
“Please compose yourself, Miss Vandenbergh. I am attempting to apply a dressing.”
“And my Patrick, what’s more. My dear, sweet, innocent Patrick. When Mr Holmes came to me this morning, it was to tell me that my life was in peril. They were willing to kill anyone, he said, not just their sacrificial victims. There had been a Harley Street physician, apparently. Someone who might potentially have caused trouble. They eliminated him. Mr Holmes feared for me. He also begged my help. I fitted him out to look like an elderly gardener. Then I asked him what I should do. He advised me to lie low, hide until the whole affair was resolved. After he had left, I hit upon a way of doing so which would also free me to even the score with Patrick’s murderers.”
“The fire at the shop…”
“I set it,” she confirmed. “If they assumed me dead, they would not be expecting retaliation from me. They would not even think to look for me. I escaped via the back yard once the blaze took hold. All I salvaged from the shop was the materials for a Kali costume. I wanted to teach those men a lesson. I wanted to show them that gods were not to be trifled with. Goddesses too. It seemed fitting.”
“Holmes knew of your intentions, did he not?”
“Yes. I told him what I was going to do, in so many words.”
“Did he condone it?”
“You would have to ask him that yourself. Possibly he felt that justice would be best served by someone who had a personal stake in the matter. All I know is that I was happy to destroy my shop – my life – if it meant that I might avenge Patrick. I do not know if I shall sleep easily from henceforth, though. You and Mr Holmes may feel obliged to turn me in to the police for my crime. If so, I shall not resist. I have done what I have done. Kali has destroyed. The defender of wronged women has left her mark. See?”
She was looking at the house. The entire upper storey of the manor’s main section was aglow from within. Flames flickered in every window on that floor. A pane shattered from the heat with an explosive crack, and smoke billowed out between the empty mullions.
“But there were four of them,” she said. “I accounted for two. A third has escaped. Where is the fourth?”
I did not have the heart to tell her that Lord Harington was already dead. It was ironic: the man who had been most guilty of the death of her lover, the actual murderer, had met his own end before she could get to him.
“You must rest,” I told her. “You have lost a lot of blood.”
She put her bloodstained hand on mine, also bloodstained. “You are a good man, Dr Watson. A good, good man. Your wife is lucky to have you.”
The light from the burgeoning fire brightened. Deep within the manor, timbers groaned. Flames roared. The servants were huddled nearby, and I heard them gasp in horror and despair. They realised, as I did, that summoning the fire brigade was fruitless. The house was beyond rescue. It would burn to the ground long before help arrived.
I looked around, wondering what had become of Holmes and Mallinson.
Then, rising into the sky from somewhere in the grounds of the estate, I saw a point of incandescence. It gained height, growing larger and brighter, expanding.
All at once it burst like a firework, with a low boom.
It fell like a comet.
It plunged to earth and was extinguished.
The fire at the house raged on.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
BRANDS OF JUSTICE
Friday dawned cold and cheerless, grey and gloomy. A drizzle set in that would last the whole of the rest of the day.
Holmes and I sat facing each other in the sitting room of his cottage. Both of us were so exhausted, so utterly enervated, we could scarcely move, let alone speak.
At last my friend stirred himself to fill and light his pipe, whereupon I felt emboldened to broach a conversation.
“So that’s it, is it?” I said. “Nothing happened?”
“Oh, it all happened,” said Holmes. “But we were never there.”
“And you think Inspector Tasker will find that acceptable when he interviews us, which he is doubtless going to at some point?”
“Tasker will believe as much as his limited imagination will allow him to.”
“But the events of tonight will cause a furore. Four of the country’s top businessmen dead, and in dramatic circumstances too. Great pressure will be put on the police to account for it all and make arrests.”
“I confess there will be interest in the matter from many quarters. The gentlemen of the press will have a field day, once they get wind of what’s gone on. Our best recourse, you an
d I, is simply to play dumb. If asked, we shall tell Tasker that we gave up on the case, as he had been advising us to do, and yesterday went to Settleholm Manor in order to inform Craig Mallinson of our decision. What occurred there occurred without our involvement and is beyond our comprehension. We arrived in time to see the fire take hold, we assisted in making sure the domestic staff were safely out of the building, and that is all. We shall say the same to anyone else who may care to question us.”
“You think Tasker will swallow it?”
“If we stick adamantly to the story, he will have no choice. No one can testify to the contrary, save for two individuals, neither of whom, for their own reasons, will aver otherwise.”
“You’re certain about Jenks?”
“Quite certain. We saved him, after all. Had we not driven back to Windover Hill in the Humberette and taken him thence to All Saints’ Anglican infirmary, he would in all likelihood have died.”
“It is remarkable that he did not. He lay there in that field with your jack-knife in his guts for over an hour. The man’s constitution is formidable.”
Holmes nodded. “His compliance is assured, in that as long as he remains silent about the truth of who stabbed him and why, you and I will remain equally silent about his role in the plans of Mallinson and friends. It is a kind of mutual blackmail, or, if you rather, an armistice. Each party could land the other in hot water, and therefore neither will.”
“It seems somehow wrong, though,” I said. “Jenks ought to stand trial. The number of times he tried to kill us…!”
“I have long come to regard death as an occupational hazard, Watson.”
“And he was an accomplice in Patrick Mallinson’s murder.”
“He was, all said and done, a stooge. Besides, consider his situation. He is hardly in a position now to be able to claim the significant financial reward Mallinson promised him. He is out of a job. He has an injury which will continue to plague him for months to come, if not years. And perpetually hanging over him is the threat that his misdeeds might be exposed. He is not a man with a bright future. I would say he has received a satisfactory degree of punishment.”
“And what of Mallinson himself?” I said. “You have not yet vouchsafed what transpired after you set off in pursuit of him.”
“There is little to tell,” said Holmes. “I knew where he was headed. The barn.”
“His biplane.”
“Exactly. All was lost. His only recourse was to fly the scene.”
“Literally.”
“When I caught up with him, the barn doors stood wide open and he was already in the cockpit with the engine running. I considered throwing myself aboard the aeroplane to subdue him, but that seemed an almost suicidally reckless course of action. So instead I picked up a canister of the naphtha gel that was used to fill the firepots. I hurled that at the Grahame-White even as Mallinson was taxiing out of the barn. It splashed its contents all over the machine. I thought this would be an incentive for him to stop and disembark, but he either felt otherwise or was too bent on escaping to perceive the hazard to himself.”
“The plane caught fire.”
“A spark from the engine exhaust ignited the naphtha. The fuselage was well ablaze as Mallinson took off. He was doomed the moment his wheels left the ground.”
I remembered the fireball I had seen rising into the night sky, then falling to earth.
“It is poetic justice, I suppose,” I said.
“Yes. As was the justice which Elizabeth Vandenbergh visited upon two of his cronies.”
“You knew she would be at the manor that night. You knew what she had in mind to do. Is that not a case of taking the law into your own hands?”
Holmes exhaled a lungful of tobacco smoke in such a way that I could not see his face. It temporarily obscured his expression, making him inscrutable.
“Watson,” he said, “do you honestly think that the likes of Craig Mallinson, Sir Josiah Partlin-Gray, Victor Anstruther and Lord Eustace Harington would ever have faced any other kind of justice? Men that powerful, that intimately and inextricably connected with the establishment? They are part of an elite, untouchable, above the law. Their money and status would have seen to it that, even if any team of Crown lawyers had been able to build a watertight case against them, it would have been thrown out of court. These are people who can do as they please, with impunity. However heinous the crimes they have committed, no judge in the land would convict them. Chances are they would never even be brought to stand in the dock.”
“What a dim view you take of our legal system.”
“Realistic only, my friend. They would have got away with it. You know that. They themselves knew that. Whatever bribery it took, whatever favours had to be called in, they would have got away with it. I made the decision to allow them to face another brand of justice, one they would be less able to cozen or cheat their way out of. Or rather, I let that brand of justice take its course and did nothing to hinder it.”
“Miss Vandenbergh… Where is she now?”
We had left Elizabeth at Settleholm when we went to fetch Jenks and drop him off outside the infirmary. She had not been there when we returned. Holmes made a few careful, probing enquiries among the staff, but with the fire roaring away, their home going up in flames before their very eyes, none of them had even registered the presence of anyone else at the scene, let alone seen a woman sneaking away.
Holmes shrugged. “Who knows what has become of her?” said he. “One thing is for certain. If anybody happened to lay eyes on her this morning, they wouldn’t recognise her. They would see only someone disguised as Kali the destroyer. Perhaps she will find her way back to southern India and the arms of her princeling lover. Wouldn’t that be a happy ending for all concerned?”
Holmes puffed on his pipe.
“Of course, I do not foresee a happy ending for the rest of us,” he said bleakly. “War beckons. It is unavoidable. I would say that in a year from now, maybe sooner, hostilities will have broken out. There will be some instigating incident, some spark to ignite the spreading oil slick. Who knows what or where it will be? When nations are spoiling for a fight, it doesn’t take much to give them an excuse to take up arms. Perhaps just the death of some prominent individual is all that’s needed, and then – conflagration.”
I thought of Patrick Mallinson and the smouldering ruin that Settleholm Manor had become, and a despondency settled upon me.
“I wonder whether there is something to this gods business after all,” I said. “Might the four blood sacrifices genuinely have had an effect? Could Horus and the others be influencing the political situation from their various otherworldly realms? Are they what is driving nations to this madness?”
“Tush, Watson! Don’t blame the divine for something that is inherent in all of us: the bloodlust men so often fall prey to, the desire of one nation to prove its superiority over another through military might and massacre. It’s our nature to wage war, and we seldom need prompting in that regard, least of all from deities.”
“I am minded to go down on my knees and seek intervention from a higher power myself, if I could only bring myself to believe He might avert what’s coming.”
“Well put,” said Holmes. “But let us try not to dwell on such sombre matters, when there is so much about them that is beyond our control. You have one more day and a night on the coast, Watson. I will endeavour to make it more enjoyable for you than the rest of this week has been. I hear that a good meal is to be had at the Grand Hotel. What do you say to a late luncheon there? My shout.”
With effort I roused myself from my depression.
After all, none of us truly knows what the future holds. As long as there is today, and companionship, and fine food, we must be thankful for that and try not to be fearful of what tomorrow may bring.
AFTERWORD
Inspector George Tasker did indeed quiz Sherlock Holmes about the events at Settleholm Manor not long after they occurred. He ev
en journeyed up to London to interrogate me too. It was a bootless endeavour. For all his suspicions, he could not prove conclusively that my friend and I had any direct connection with the fire or the deaths of Craig Mallinson, Sir Josiah Partlin-Gray, Victor Anstruther and Lord Eustace Harington. It must have been terribly frustrating for him, the way we stonewalled him, yet it was necessary, if only so that Elizabeth Vandenbergh’s role in the proceedings might remain undiscovered and she might stay, as it were, “dead”. I remember Tasker railing at me quite vituperatively, insisting that I was a liar. I denied the accusation with vigour, which was of course a lie in itself.
The press, naturally, made hay. Some of the yellower papers were so enthralled by the story, with its intoxicating mixture of wealth, celebrity and unexplained, gruesome death, that for a whole week their front pages mentioned little else. Speculation was rife, and the theories which some journalists came up with to explain it all bordered on the harebrained. There was talk of a suicide pact, mass insanity, a drinking game gone badly awry, even the involvement of a German spy ring. In the absence of hard facts, the vacuum was filled by imagination.
In the end, however, interest waned, as it always does. Soon enough people forgot the name Settleholm Manor. There were other things to think about, and indeed worry about.
Less than a year later, Europe was hopelessly enmeshed in war.
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