Cordially yours,
S.H.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A SUICIDAL SOLICITOR
Holmes, as before, dictated a reply. I, as before, redrafted and modified it so that it became less the Ten Commandments, more the Sermon on the Mount.
The gist of it was that Hannah had made good progress and must persevere. She should search, if she could, for some evidence of the people mentioned by Sir Philip and Fairbrother, Simms and Kinsella, and also Nithercott. All three were, on the balance of probabilities, former Elysians. She should not, however, make open enquiries in that connection. It would, Holmes averred, be unwise to seem too inquisitive. It was enough that she had been asking people about Sophia Tompkins. Add a further three names to that list, and suspicions would mount.
She should, also, look for the compasses-and-feather symbol, as she herself proposed. Were it appended to a door in some obscure corner of the house, somewhere it seemed either portentous or incongruous, so much the better.
“What if there is no such symbol?” I said.
“Hannah is observant. If she thinks she saw it, then in all likelihood she did. And if the impression I am starting to form of this affair is accurate, then the symbol’s situation will be highly pertinent.”
“Holmes, you know something, don’t you?”
“I know nothing, as of this moment. But I am beginning to grasp the shape of something. A sketch is forming in my mind’s eye of Sir Philip Buchanan’s mentality and the lengths he will go to in order to realise his vision. Hannah, through her continued diligence, should be able to help me fill in the details.”
“Do you think those two whose names Fairbrother brought up – Simms and Kinsella, was it? Do you think they are germane to the affair?”
“Whether they are or not, it certainly bears looking into.”
“And the third one – Nithercott. Might he be considered a useful lead too?”
“An unusual surname, Nithercott,” Holmes said musingly. “Do you recall that a fellow answering to that name killed himself a month ago? It was in the papers. Pass me down the most recent scrapbook, would you? I believe I took a clipping.” He leafed through page after page adorned with rectangles of pasted-in newsprint. “Ah yes, here it is. From The Telegraph. ‘Mr Tobias Nithercott, aged 35, of Bolton Gardens, Chelsea, was found in his drawing-room yesterday, dead by his own hand. Neighbours reported hearing a gunshot circa four AM, whereupon the alarm was raised and a collective decision was made to break into the house, in order to furnish any assistance necessary. The body was discovered within, gun in hand. Mr Nithercott, a solicitor and a bachelor, had lately returned from a sabbatical and was said to have been in depressed spirits since resuming his London life, prompting concern for his wellbeing. Police have confirmed that there are no suspicious circumstances and they are not looking for anyone else in connection with the incident.’” He closed the scrapbook. “Well, what do you make of that?”
“Seems like a clear-cut case of suicide.”
“Really? Nothing odd about it at all?”
“I would say no, but you obviously felt it of sufficient intrigue to be worth clipping out of the paper.”
“Who, Watson, comes back from a sabbatical ‘in depressed spirits’? A sabbatical traditionally refreshes mind and body and leaves one better equipped to face the rigours of daily life again.”
“Does it not depend, though, on the individual’s frame of mind prior to the sabbatical? Could Tobias Nithercott not have been in an even worse state beforehand, which a leave of absence did something to mitigate, albeit not enough?”
“Well, at any rate, I was happy to abide by Scotland Yard’s judgement that there was nothing worth investigating. Had any significant anomaly cropped up relating to the suicide, doubtless Lestrade or Gregson or another of their ilk would have come knocking.”
“But now, of course, we have Sir Philip and Fairbrother alluding to Nithercott.”
“Alluding to a Nithercott. Not necessarily Tobias Nithercott.”
“It is a suggestive coincidence all the same.”
“Yes,” said Holmes, “and according to Fairbrother, Nithercott ‘took what he knew to the grave with him’. If, as seems more than possible, it is the same Nithercott and his so-called sabbatical was in fact a sojourn as an Elysian at Charfrome Old Place, something may have occurred there which weighed heavily upon his conscience – so heavily that it became unbearable and he took his own life. We must also not ignore Fairbrother’s comment to Sir Philip that ‘it is not the first time it has happened, is it now?’”
“Other Elysians have committed suicide? Simms and Kinsella perchance?”
“Not necessarily. I need more data, Watson. Until then, I cannot arrive at a firm conclusion. I can only hazard guesses. More data!”
CHAPTER TWENTY
DEPTHS OF DECEPTION
During the next few days Holmes’s career experienced one of its periodic lulls. After the roaring tempests of the previous week he found himself in the doldrums. No clients called. No telegram came from Scotland Yard requesting urgent consultation. This ebb and flow of cases – feast followed by famine – was typical, but the discrepancy between the one and the other was seldom so marked as then.
London simmered in the midsummer heat and Holmes quietly stewed in our rooms, falling into that lassitude of body and spirit that habitually plagued him when his brain was not occupied. He smoked incessantly and indulged in his cocaine habit, pipe alternating with syringe. He scarcely moved from his armchair and ate only the bare minimum to stave off starvation. The nearest he got to any form of activity was gazing out of the window with a wistful, almost forlorn air, as though willing some passer-by or cab to halt at the front door.
I, meanwhile, was on tenterhooks. I busied myself with my rounds, such as they were. I listened as attentively as I could to my patients’ litanies of woe and ministered to their needs with all the skill that was mine to summon. Yet my mind was always at least partly elsewhere, down in the bosky folds of Dorset, imagining what Hannah Woolfson was up to and wishing I could be there to look after her. She might have found an ally in Dr Pentecost, but he could never be as steadfast a champion as I would have been, nor as willing a one.
Each evening I came home hoping for a new missive from Hannah. I would enter an apartment so fogged with tobacco smoke that it seemed a London particular had taken up exclusive residence in our rooms. I would attempt to rouse Holmes from his torpor, fail, and console myself that if Hannah’s letter had come during my absence he would surely be more enlivened than he was. Then I would change into evening dress and venture forth alone in search of diversion, to a West End theatre or else to a gaming club where faro and hazard were played.
Such was the pattern of my existence for four days, broken on the fifth by the arrival of the much-anticipated letter. It came by first post, and I demanded that Holmes unseal the envelope even before he and I had embarked upon breakfast. With an insouciant smile, he obliged.
My dear Mr Holmes, and of course Dr Watson,
First of all, I must tell you that I was followed on my journey from Charfrome to Waterton Parva and back when going to pick up your previous letter from the post office. I am certain of it. Almost certain. I had not even a glimpse of a pursuer but one knows when one is not alone. Both ways through the woods I had the distinct impression of stealthy footfalls behind me. Or was I imagining it? Conceivably I was. The mind can play tricks, not least when it is in a constant state of heightened tension. I am doing my best to remain calm and collected, but it is not easy when an awareness of peril dogs my every waking moment. There may well have been no pursuer, only a phantom projection of my own anxiety. And yet…
Our Antigone, for what it is worth, went off without a hitch. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed taking part – except me. It was a riot of masks and masquerade and exaggerated acting, but all I could think throughout was that Charfrome itself was a stage where performances were being given and where certai
n people were pretending to be that which they were not. (I include myself among them.) We players paraded back and forth across the amphitheatre’s proscenium beneath a balmy evening sky, intoning Sophocles’s doom-laden verse about death and burial and suicide, and to me it was both a hollow experience and one all too fraught with connotation. Antigone is prepared to defy royal edict and give her brother Polynices, slain on the battlefield, a proper funeral. For that she suffers the punishment of being interred alive in a tomb. Might a similar dark fate lie in store for me if I persist in my efforts to delve into Sophia’s disappearance? Must doing what feels right inevitably incur a penalty?
Our audience was sparse – just Sir Philip, Fairbrother, Dr Pentecost and various of our other tutors and instructors. They all lapped up the play and applauded lustily enough at the end that it felt as though the auditorium was packed. Again, though, as we thespians took our bows, there seemed a falseness to it all. On both sides, dissimulation. Behind Sir Philip’s ready grin and bonhomie lies, I am sure, depths of deception. Behind Fairbrother’s too. And who else’s amongst the staff at Charfrome? Who else is privy to the secrets this place hides? Could one of those audience members have been my unseen stalker in the woods? Assuming that stalker ever existed. For heaven’s sake, nothing is certain any more…
“Good Lord, Holmes!” I exclaimed, looking up from the letter. “The girl is becoming half unhinged from the strain. Her every word proclaims it. Even her handwriting is erratic. I really must insist that we intervene. We should pull her out of there right away. Her sanity is at risk.”
“She is merely undergoing a crisis,” replied Holmes. “It is to be expected.”
“Merely!? I have seen how crises like this can damage even the hardiest constitution, sometimes irreparably.”
“Have faith. Hannah will endure. Look. The very next page of the letter finds her in more sanguine mood. The handwriting neatens again, too.”
As to Simms, Kinsella and Nithercott, I regret to say I have drawn a blank. There is, as far as I can gather, no paper record of Elysians’ comings and goings, no ledger, no visitors’ book, at least none known to me or generally available. Sir Philip himself may log the names of Charfrome residents past and present, but if so, it is not in any documentation to which I have access. And since I am denied the recourse of asking other Elysians or members of staff about the three, it leaves me with little option. I am sorry.
On the other hand, with regard to the compasses-and-feather symbol, you will be glad to know that I have had greater success. I have, in fact, found it. After a comprehensive hunt through every nook and cranny of the house, I at last hit upon its location. You suggested that the symbol might seem either portentous or incongruous in its placement, and I would aver that it is both, for it adorns a door adjacent to the scullery. It is carved into the panelling, which to my mind implies that the door – though otherwise ordinary and unremarkable – is an addition of Sir Philip’s to the house. Why, though, has he inserted it in the servants’ wing, where only domestic drudgery is carried out?
Naturally I tried the handle. Naturally the door was locked. I put my ear to the wood but heard nothing through it. I had had the vague notion that the room beyond might be a prison, with some miserable wretch – Sophia, perchance – confined within.
All I can say about that room is that it is small. By poking my nose into the scullery on the left and into the laundry whose entrance lies on the right-hand side of the door, and seeing the internal dimensions of both, I can estimate that the space between them cannot be wider than about five or six feet, while the depth of the room presumably matches theirs. In other words, it is not dissimilar in size to a pantry. But the house already has a pantry elsewhere. So what is this room used for?
Charfrome’s irascible Grecian chef, Labropoulos, happened to pass by as I was surveying the door. He came bustling purposefully along the corridor, clutching an object in both arms: a large glass jar with a tea towel draped over it. No sooner had he laid eyes on me than he challenged me in a fairly aggressive manner, asking what I was doing there. The reason for this upbraiding, it seemed, was broadly territorial. The kitchen parts of the house were his domain. I did not belong.
There was alcohol on the man’s breath, which doubtless contributed to the lowering of his inhibitions and the heightening of his temper. It contributed also to my eagerness in apologising to him and absenting myself from his vicinity. As I made to take my leave, however, my eye was caught by movement within the jar. The vessel was, it seemed, host to something alive. A number of living things, in fact. Beneath the lower edge of the tea towel I glimpsed several small creatures moving about, crawling over one another. Insects of some sort, each an inch long, predominantly brown, with long rear legs and waving antennae.
“What are those?” I said. “They look like crickets.”
“Is not your business,” Labropoulos replied curtly.
“Where are you taking them?”
“Never you mind. Is not for you to know. Now go.”
He flapped a hand at me a fraction of an inch from my face, much as though he was miming a backhand slap. I felt the waft of its passage.
I took the hint and stepped back to let him proceed on his way. In the event, Labropoulos stood his ground and waited for me to depart. Once I started moving, he refused to take his eyes off me until I gained the end of the corridor. I imagine he continued to stare long after I was out of sight.
I can only speculate what that jar of crickets was for. Labropoulos is a chef, so could it perhaps be food? But, if so, food for whom? I am not sure I want to know the answer. I have a feeling crickets were an Ancient Greek delicacy. I hope we Elysians will not be expected to eat them too.
“Ugh,” I said with a shudder. “I hope not either. Makes me feel queasy even at the thought of it.”
It is now only three days until the full moon. Finally people are beginning to murmur about the Delphic Ceremony. It remains a taboo subject, but here and there it is mentioned in hushed tones, Elysian affirming to Elysian its imminence, a wry look often accompanying the remark. Those who already know what the event entails stay tight-lipped, making those who don’t all the more curious to find out for themselves.
I have pressed Dr Pentecost on the subject more than once, but even he, my newfound confidant, is less than forthcoming.
“It is just a ritual, my dear,” he said to me yesterday when I engaged him after a Greek language lesson. I waited until all my fellow pupils had filed out of the classroom and we two were alone. “Bizarre to a degree, gruesome too, but oddly affecting, and essentially harmless.”
“Bizarre? Gruesome?”
“Trust me, it is nothing you need concern yourself over.”
“You might at least give me some hint as to the ceremony’s nature. It is connected with graduation, yes?”
“It is a winnowing process,” Dr Pentecost said. “It assists Sir Philip in choosing from those who have excelled themselves as Elysians. Three evenings hence, we staff members are getting together, as we do each month the night before the full moon, to consult together and draw up a shortlist of potential candidates. We discuss various names, but Sir Philip has final say. A half-dozen are selected, and the Delphic Ceremony then, a day later, singles out two of them as graduates. A bit of mummery, a bit of mumbo-jumbo, a few Hellenic flourishes, and that is that.”
“What becomes of the lucky two?”
“They may stay on at Charfrome if they wish, but the great majority of them leave, as is expected of them. The outside world beckons. They take the skills they have acquired here, and the cultural lessons they have learned, and apply them in their daily lives. Spreading the Elysian gospel, as it were, amongst the great unwashed.”
More than that I could not prevail upon him to reveal. It so happened, anyway, that we were interrupted by Polly Speedwell, who knocked tentatively on the classroom door.
“Dr Pentecost,” she said. “Sorry to trouble you. May I have a word?”<
br />
“Of course you may, my dear.”
“On a private matter.”
“Absolutely. Miss Holbrook was just leaving. Weren’t you, Miss Holbrook?”
“I was,” I said, somewhat puzzled. I had not been aware that Polly had any sort of relationship with Dr Pentecost beyond that of student and teacher.
Polly must have registered my mild bafflement. “Dr Pentecost is such a good listener,” she said confidingly as I passed her by. “I feel as though I can talk to him about anything.”
“And it shall never go further than me,” the man himself chimed in. “You can guarantee that.”
He added, for my benefit, a surreptitious wink, implying that the secrets that I had shared with him were perfectly safe.
I left the classroom feeling obscurely jealous. I had believed my friendship with Dr Pentecost was an exclusive one, special. It seemed, however, that Polly shared a closeness with him which rivalled if not surpassed mine. Perhaps it was because he is just that kind of person, one who engenders trust, especially in women.
In that respect, his opposite is Edwin Fairbrother, who only seems trustworthy and is in truth anything but. Regardless, in my quest to glean information about the Delphic Ceremony I tried my hand with him – and met with no more success than with Dr Pentecost. Fairbrother, incidentally, has spent the entire past week at the house. This is unusual for him, as I understand it, and I believe, without immodesty, that I am the reason. He does his best to engage me at every available opportunity, intercepting me between lessons and pouncing on me whenever I am alone. How I managed to evade him long enough to conduct my house-wide search for the symbol, I shall never know. It was some kind of miracle.
At any rate, Fairbrother is persistent in his attentions, and I am under no illusion as to what he wants from me. Beneath that suave exterior lurks a savage. I can no longer bear to feign interest and so I brush him off at every turn, but this serves only to make him the more ardent, and the more irksome.
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