The Labyrinth of Death

by James Lovegrove

  Buchanan continued to deliver pronouncements in that eerie, otherworldly voice.

  “I speak for the gods,” said he. “I am their instrument. Through me they state their bidding. Two among you have shown themselves to be worthy of divine benediction this night. Two surpass the rest and deserve recognition for that. Two must be exalted.”

  He paused, and the air was pregnant with anticipation. Something momentous was coming. Every Elysian present, Hannah included, bent forward in eagerness. Who were the two? Who would earn the promised accolade?

  “They are,” said Buchanan, “Cedric Strickland… and William Dorr-Timperley.”

  Sporadic gasps greeted the announcement. Then, as though a dam had burst, there was an eruption of cheers and applause.

  At a gesture from Buchanan, the named pair stepped forward from the semicircle. Both, Hannah told me, were men of standing within the Charfrome community. Strickland, an insurance clerk from Greenwich, had played the part of King Creon in Antigone, a pivotal role, with aplomb. He had also excelled as a wrestler and come first in a long-distance run around the estate. He was a forceful personality. Dorr-Timperley, a curate’s son from somewhere near Northampton, was altogether milder-mannered. He had learned how to play the kithara from scratch, attaining a high degree of proficiency with the instrument, and had memorised the whole of Hesiod’s Works and Days, all eight hundred lines of the poem, in the original Greek. Whatever the definition of an Elysian was, each man might be reckoned to be it.

  “These two,” Buchanan said, “shall have bestowed upon them the mark of divine approval, so that they remember henceforth and for all time the values they have learned as Elysians and the transformation this education has wrought upon their lives.”

  With these words, Buchanan arose from the tripod and drew from beneath his cloak a dagger. It was a beautiful thing of silver and jewels, its blade a good ten inches long. Briefly Hannah thought that the “mark” he had just mentioned was one he himself was going to inflict upon Strickland and Dorr-Timperley with that knife. If so, neither of the chosen ones appeared particularly apprehensive about such a wounding.

  This was because both, having been at Charfrome for a while, were no strangers to the Delphic Ceremony. They knew what awaited them now.

  Labropoulos the chef appeared from the rear of the temple, bringing with him a young billy goat, which he led by a rope. The creature nickered nervously, flicking its ears. Possibly it was unsettled by the crowd of people and the torches everywhere, but Hannah wondered whether it was aware of the fate in store for it. Animals could sense the proximity of death, couldn’t they?

  “To you, oh gods,” said Buchanan, “we offer this sacrifice.” His voice had returned to normal, as had his demeanour, although there was still a tangible differentness about him. He remained weirdly disassociated, subtly altered, not quite the person he had been prior to his immersion in the laurel smoke. His movements were stiff and hesitant, as though he had to think hard before executing each.

  “The lingering effects of narcosis,” I said.

  Labropoulos grasped the billy goat by the horns, steadying its body between his knees and raising its head to expose its throat. Then Buchanan, with a swift sideways slash of the dagger, sliced open its neck. The beast kicked its hind legs even as its lifeblood gushed out over the temple floor. The Grecian chef kept a tight grip upon the goat as it vainly resisted succumbing to the inevitable. Seconds later the creature slumped, hot blood still pumping from the gash, steaming in the cool night air. Its eyes dulled. Its tongue lolled. Its chest ceased heaving and it lay still.

  Hannah said that she had been appalled by the slaughter of the goat but not as much as she might have expected. Somehow the deed seemed appropriate, a natural climax to the ritual. Looking at the Elysians around her she saw disgust on many a face but it was coupled invariably with a strange, beatific approval. The bloodletting had touched something deep and dormant within them, all of them, some inborn instinct. Even the coppery smell that reached Hannah’s nostrils, though rank and repugnant, carried a sort of primal message. It reminded her that she was alive, and what a fragile, cherishable thing that was.

  “We were warned, Holmes and I, that animal sacrifices were conducted here,” I said. “The landlord of the inn at Waterton Parva, Scadden, said so. We pooh-poohed the idea. How wrong we were.”

  “I would not have believed it either,” Hannah said.

  Buchanan raised the dripping dagger, ran a thumb along the flat of the blade to gather up some of the goat’s blood, and applied the thumb to the faces of Strickland and Dorr-Timperley in turn. He smeared the blood down their cheeks and daubed it in a line across their foreheads.

  “Death grants you a new lease of life,” he told them. “It is in death’s shadow that we discover how precious our lives are. Chilled by the draught from the beating of its wings, we realise we must make the most of the time available to us. You, Cedric, and you, William, must – and will – prosper as our anointed representatives. The future awaits you!”

  So the ceremony concluded, and the Elysians traipsed back to the house in dribs and drabs, chattering excitedly, while Labropoulos stayed behind to clean up the remains of the goat. Strickland and Dorr-Timperley received more than a few pats on the back and congratulatory embraces from well-wishers. As Hannah understood it, the two men’s tenure at Charfrome was over. This was their graduation. They were fully fledged Elysians, and from now on they would live in the world, to all intents and purposes as normal Englishmen, while subtly doing their bit to make an already great nation greater still.

  Dr Pentecost fell in step beside Hannah. “Do you know what, Miss Holbrook? After all that bloodletting and hullabaloo, I rather fancy a nightcap. How about you? I have a more than passable bottle of tawny port in my room, a Colheita. Matured fifty years, somewhat nutty, very tasty. Would you care to join me?”

  “Some would consider a lone woman going to a gentleman’s room unaccompanied to be unacceptable, Doctor, especially after dark.”

  “My study is, I would think, public enough not be considered private quarters. In addition, I shall leave the door to the corridor wide open. Surely then no hint of impropriety can attach itself to the assignation.”

  Hannah pondered the invitation. At that stage she still deemed Dr Pentecost an ally and trusted him. Moreover, were it to come to it, there was little that a man of his advanced years and indolent bearing could attempt that a young, physically capable woman could not successfully counter.

  All the same, she said no. Dr Pentecost was phlegmatic about the refusal, saying that if she changed her mind, she would still be welcome.

  Half an hour later, Hannah did change her mind – one little drink with a friend, what harm could it do? – and with that decision, her fate was sealed. And, by extension, so was mine.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  BLACK DROP

  As Hannah neared Dr Pentecost’s study, she heard sobbing coming from within. It was the sound of a woman in bitter distress. The door was slightly ajar, but as she raised a hand to knock, someone flung it fully open from the other side. It was Polly Speedwell. Polly’s eyes were red and swollen, her cheeks streaked with tears. She took one look at Hannah and wailed, “He is a monster, I tell you. A monster!” Then she thrust past her, shouldering her aside, and hastened off down the corridor, still wracked with sobs.

  Hannah entered the study to find Dr Pentecost standing with his head bent and his hands folded, the picture of solicitous concern.

  “Whatever has happened?” she enquired. “What is the matter with Polly?”

  “Poor girl,” said Dr Pentecost. “She has had an… upset.”

  “Who is this monster she spoke of?”

  “Who do you think?”

  Hannah uttered the first name that sprang to mind. “Edwin Fairbrother.”

  Dr Pentecost acknowledged it with a small bow. “None other.”

  “He has used her cruelly.”

  “So it
would seem. Polly came to me to complain about him. I have been a shoulder for her to cry on.”

  “I must say I had no inkling that she and Mr Fairbrother were even intimates. Having said that, I saw them together at the ceremony just now. Well, not together as such, but in close company. He looked to be ignoring her. Now that I think about it, he may have been cutting her, even as she fawned upon him. Oh, poor girl!”

  “Evidently she has been keeping from you what she has not from me.” Dr Pentecost motioned towards an armchair. “Why don’t you sit down and I shall tell you all I know.”

  “I think you better had,” said Hannah, seating herself. She was bristling with indignation on Polly’s behalf. “I should like very much to learn what that shameless rogue has done. Then I shall confront him. I shall report him to Sir Philip too.”

  “Spoken like the fine, redoubtable lass you are. How about some of that port first? Since that is why you originally came, doubtless having rethought my offer.”

  Without waiting for a reply, Dr Pentecost went to a side-table and busied himself pouring out two glasses of the Colheita from a decanter. His back was to Hannah, and she let her gaze rove around the room, taking in the densely populated bookshelves, filled with volumes of Tacitus, Catullus, Virgil, Sophocles, Plutarch and of course Homer, and the series of framed mezzotints depicting scenes from Classical myth. Her eye alighted upon a pair of earrings that lay on the desk blotter. She marked briefly this incongruity without querying it, then resumed her survey, which travelled as far as a second door that led, she assumed, to a bedroom.

  Dr Pentecost handed her a glass of topaz-coloured liquid and invited her to join him in a toast. “To our new graduates, Cedric and William. And to you and me, my dear, and a sound friendship.”

  Hannah took a deep sip of the port and found it as flavoursome as advertised, although it carried an aftertaste that she found a touch disagreeable. With a couple more sips, she became accustomed to it.

  “Well,” said Dr Pentecost, “now that you have seen the Delphic Ceremony for yourself, the apotheosis of Sir Philip’s project, what do you make of it?”

  “It was hard to take seriously, yet hard not to feel moved by.”

  “My sentiments exactly. You know, I shouldn’t really tell you this, but yours was one of the names that came up during our staff consultation meeting yesterday. You were on the shortlist.”

  “Me? Already? But I have been here barely a month.”

  “A mark of how impressed we all are with you. The gods inspired Sir Philip to select Cedric Strickland and William Dorr-Timperley from the list, but one of the nominees could quite easily have been Shirley Holbrook.”

  “The gods?” Hannah said with a dash of cynicism.

  “The Delphic Ceremony takes its cue from the ritual at the original oracle at Delphi,” the classicist said. “Sir Philip assumes a role similar to that of the Pythia, the priestess whose prophecies had the force of law. The Pythia communed with Apollo and delivered his verdicts in response to queries from petitioners, which more often than not were precisely the verdicts they wanted to hear. Did the god really speak to her, though? Or did she, having entered into a frenzied state of spiritual ecstasy, simply listen to her subconscious mind, the inner voice we all possess, and believe it to be Apollo?”

  “Or maybe it was all just a pretence, a grand charade.”

  Dr Pentecost shrugged. “Maybe it makes no difference. As long as the petitioners went away happy with the outcome, their endeavours given a divine seal of approval, the Pythia had discharged her responsibility.”

  “A rubber-stamp from on high.”

  “Ha ha! Quite. Some scholars, by the way, argue that it was not laurel branches that were burnt at Delphi but must rather have been oleander branches. Oleander is known to have a psychoactive effect, whereas laurel does not.”

  “So if Sir Philip is using laurel branches…”

  “His trance could therefore be bogus, or at any rate self-induced.” Again, Dr Pentecost shrugged.

  They discussed the ceremony a little further, then, as Dr Pentecost was recharging her glass, Hannah brought the subject back round to Polly.

  “So, what has Fairbrother done?”

  “What many a young man has done to many a young woman over the course of history,” replied Dr Pentecost. “He has toyed with her emotions, encouraged her to believe his feelings were greater than they are, strung her along, then spurned her.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Is it not enough?”

  “I thought, from the anguish she exhibited just now, that it was something far worse. To reject someone’s affections is hardly the act of a ‘monster’. Insensitive perhaps, if done unsympathetically, but not monstrous.”

  “Polly is a somewhat dramatic girl,” said the classicist with a sigh. “She has led a cosseted, sheltered life. This may well be her first experience of heartbreak.”

  “I should go to her,” Hannah said. “I can comfort her.”

  “Believe me, I have done all I can on that front, and you saw for yourself how successful I was. It may be some time before Polly is receptive to consolation. Ah, I see your glass is empty again. Another refill?”

  As Dr Pentecost returned to the side-table, Hannah glanced back at the desk blotter and the pair of earrings on top. It had struck her as odd that an item of women’s jewellery should be in a man’s room. Now, perhaps belatedly, she thought to ask herself why Dr Pentecost of all people would have such a thing.

  That was when she recognised them. They were not just any earrings but a particular pair of cabochon-cut sapphire earrings.

  “Those are Polly’s,” she said.

  “Hmmm?” Dr Pentecost followed her gaze. “Oh yes.”

  “She left them behind. Why?”

  “Carelessness, I suppose.”

  “They are one of her most treasured possessions. She would not discard them willy-nilly.”

  “Possibly not.”

  “Has she given them to you for some reason?”

  “And what reason would that be?” Dr Pentecost handed her the refreshed glass.

  “I… I cannot think.”

  It was no mere figure of speech. All at once Hannah was finding that she could, indeed, not think. Her mind was occluded, as though clouds were piling up around it on every side, dimming its light. Her vision swam. Her entire body felt weak, subsumed by drowsiness.

  “You look somewhat peaky, if I may say so,” said Dr Pentecost.

  “I am not… I am not sure what has come over me,” Hannah stammered. Her words sounded thick and muddled, even to her own ears.

  The third glass of port slipped from her fingers, but Dr Pentecost had a hand cupped beneath it, ready, and caught it neatly without spilling a drop.

  “Perhaps you have had too much to drink,” he said, going to the doorway. He checked the corridor, then gently closed the door.

  “I have not drunk much…”

  “Even so.”

  Hannah knew she must leave. Every instinct told her to. She tried to rise, but a wave of dizziness swept over her, leaving her unsteady on her feet. She crumpled back into her chair.

  “Dear me,” said Dr Pentecost. “You really are in a bad way. Well, there is always my bed. Let me help you to it.”

  “No, I… I could not possibly… It is…”

  “Tush! You can barely keep your eyes open. You will never make it back to your room. You are quite safe here. You have nothing to fear from me.”

  Hannah felt as though she were deep underwater. As Dr Pentecost assisted her across the study and through the door to the bedroom, her feet dragged and her limbs were sluggish, held down by invisible weights. It was how she imagined trudging over the sea floor in a diving suit must feel.

  “There you go,” the classicist said as Hannah stretched herself out on the bed. His voice seemed to be emanating from further and further away. “Let me pull the counterpane up over you. Nice and snug.”

  All at once, Hannah pl
unged into a bottomless black pit.

  Her sleep was dreamless except for interludes of waking, which felt like dreams.

  In one of them she was writing a letter. A pen was in her hand, moving across the page, and the words it inscribed came from her but also from elsewhere. From Dr Pentecost, who told her what she must say.

  She knew she should not be writing the letter but somehow she was powerless to do otherwise. Her will was not her own. And Dr Pentecost was her friend, was he not? If he wished her to inform Sherlock Holmes that everything was fine, then everything must be fine, yes?

  Dr Pentecost coaxed and cajoled, and soon the letter was drafted. All that remained was to sign it. Hannah wanted to show that it was not purely her own creation. Somehow she must communicate to Mr Holmes that she had mixed feelings about the letter. It was not quite right.

  So she signed her real name, to signify that the letter was false.

  Having made her address the envelope, Dr Pentecost said, “I shall take this to the village to post myself. Save you the inconvenience of trekking thither and back through the woods.”

  “I can… I can do it,” Hannah said. Her tongue was numb. Her brain seemed swaddled in cotton wool. Simply to frame a coherent sentence required every ounce of concentration she could muster.

  “Post the letter?”

  “Yes.” She had a vague inkling that, once at the post office, she might be able to amend the letter’s content; at the very least she could make it more explicitly clear that she was not its sole author. This struck her as important, although she didn’t know quite why.

  “But my dear, you are so tired, aren’t you?”

  “I am,” she admitted. “Really, really tired.”

  “There is only one thing you should do, and that is go back to bed. Sleep is the remedy, my girl.”