“To remove the bullet itself from the casing, unaided by tools, takes some doing. A pair of pliers would help, but I appear to have left mine in my other trousers.”
“How curious. I, too, neglected to bring a pair of pliers with me. I am appalled by my own lack of foresight.”
“I have, however, seen soldiers do it with their teeth. I just hope these old gnashers of mine are up to the task.”
As I reached into my pocket for the Eley’s box, sounds of activity came from the other side of the door leading to the rest of the house. A key turned and the door opened.
I was crestfallen. Just when Hannah and I had hit upon a course of action, we had been pre-empted. My spirits sank further still as I saw Malachi Hart appear at the top of the staircase. He looked tense and alert, and I knew that even at my best I would not have been able to beat him in a straight fight. The man was tigerishly dangerous, that scar on his face testament to his indomitability. He would make mincemeat out of me.
Dr Pentecost was visible just past him, and I spied my Webley clutched in his hand. Hannah was correct in suggesting that he wielded it with no obvious expertise or familiarity. His forefinger was nowhere near the trigger, for one thing, but that was probably just as well, since he held the gun canted at such an angle that the barrel was pointing almost directly at his face. Still, it galled me that he had the revolver and not I. To have one’s own sidearm arrayed against one feels deeply wrong.
“In you go,” Dr Pentecost said, addressing a third individual as yet out of my line of sight. He gestured with the Webley in a way that made me think of a diner at a restaurant summoning the waiter over.
Who was this unseen party? Buchanan, perhaps? Fairbrother? Was Dr Pentecost tying up some loose ends? Did either of those men know too much and need to be eliminated alongside Hannah and myself?
“Ah, Watson.”
In stepped a person I was not expecting to see and had indeed despaired of ever seeing again.
“Holmes!” I cried.
PART III
CHAPTER THIRTY
A PENCHANT FOR ALL THINGS DAEDALIAN
Sherlock Holmes sidestepped around Hart and descended the staircase. He looked arch and slightly abashed, much as though he were arriving late for a soirée and anticipating censure from the hostess and his fellow guests.
“And Miss Woolfson, of course,” said he. “We can dispense with the ‘Shirley Holbrook’ pseudonym in this company, can we not, Hannah? How delightful it is to be reunited with you both. I only wish it were under more auspicious conditions.”
“But how are you here?” I said.
“If by ‘how’ you mean ‘through what method of conveyance’, the answer is prosaic enough: the West Country post train. It leaves Paddington at midnight and performs the most tedious and monotonous journey known to mankind, stopping a hundred times along the way, or so it seems. Someone who is not an employee of the rail company or the Royal Mail may obtain a berth for himself on said train as a passenger, provided that that someone befriends the guard. The guard, in this instance, was not known personally to me beforehand but happened to be an old ally of yours. It was he who brought Victor Hatherley to your house some years ago, the hydraulic engineer who lost a thumb in most singular circumstances. I, through our mutual association with you, was able to present a good argument for travelling on his train, namely that I needed to get to Dorchester as swiftly as possible in order to deliver you from harm. He declared that you had done him a fair few favours in the past, and regulations be damned. He even cooked me tea and crumpets on the stove in his van. Excellent fellow. Thereafter, I hitched a ride to Waterton Parva on a milk cart.”
“That is all very well,” I said, “but—”
Before I could finish, Dr Pentecost said, “You two may catch up at your leisure. You will have a few minutes to do so while I make preparations. Miss Woolfson? It seems your Shirley Holbrook alter ego is surplus to requirements now, so I shall call you that instead. I would appreciate it if you would join me up here.”
Hannah rose stiffly to her feet, shooting me a worried glance.
“Dr Pentecost,” I said, “and you too, Sergeant-Major Hart. I have no idea what you propose to do with Holmes and me. Frankly, I do not want to know. But let me tell you this. That young lady is no danger to you. She deserves to go free, unmolested. Promise me you will honour this request. Give me your word as gentlemen.”
The classicist emitted a rattle of hollow laughter. “If I were you I should be more concerned about myself than Miss Woolfson, Doctor.”
“Then you are obviously not me.”
“At any event, I need the girl where I can keep an eye on her. Mr Holmes’s not entirely unexpected appearance has forced me to alter my plans somewhat, but not to their detriment. Rather, to their benefit. In Miss Woolfson I have, now, not bait but a hostage. Concern for her welfare will ensure your acquiescence – yours and your colleague’s – during that which lies ahead.”
Hannah gave me one last plaintive look as she climbed the steps to join Dr Pentecost. I reciprocated with a gaze that I trusted was steady and nerveless, to impart reassurance. If only I had felt as optimistic as I tried to appear.
“There we are, my dear,” said Dr Pentecost condescendingly, yoking an arm around her shoulders. “Just continue to behave with the meekness traditionally associated with your sex, and all shall be well.”
She shrugged the arm off, but he replaced it, more emphatically. This time she took the hint and let it remain.
Then they were gone, Dr Pentecost, Hannah and Hart. The door was shut and locked, and Holmes and I were left to our own devices in the gloomily lit antechamber.
“Well, old friend,” said he, “here we are again.”
“Yes. Captives in a room below ground at Charfrome Old Place.”
“That and side-by-side once more, facing what I fear will be a daunting and possibly life-threatening test of our mettle. But tell me. I saw the look Hannah gave you just now, and the one you gave her in return. She seems to be reciprocating the attraction you have to her. Is that so?”
I declined to reply, not sure myself what the answer was.
“It was only a matter of time, I suppose,” Holmes continued. “Your charms, bluff and hearty as they are, do seem to tell in the end when it comes to the ladies. Naturally your concern for her wellbeing overrode your caution when you read that last letter from her. Hence your hasty departure from Baker Street, without waiting to consult me.”
“I knew it was a trap.”
“That is something.”
“I did not know the true originator of the trap, however,” I added sheepishly. “I thought it Fairbrother.”
Holmes clapped his hands in incredulity. “Fairbrother? With a quotation from Plutarch appended to the letter? In Greek script, moreover?”
“Why not? Would he not think it an appropriately Elysian touch?”
“Fairbrother is patently a dunderhead. I highly doubt he could conceive of such a ploy, not least as he told Hannah that he barely paid attention during his Classics lessons at school. I might understand if you had thought Sir Philip Buchanan the instigator of the letter, but not Fairbrother. Never him.”
“Sir Philip!” I declared. “I must say, the idea had not occurred to me, but now that you mention it…”
“But it was not him either. I imagine he is blissfully ignorant of all that is going on under his own roof right now.”
“Then he has no part in this affair?”
“As far as our immediate predicament goes, no. Sir Philip is, in fact, just as unlikely as Fairbrother to have been the one who made Hannah write the letter. He told us himself that his Ancient Greek was ‘somewhat deficient’ and that he was more familiar with the culture than the language. No, the only really credible perpetrator was the man who cannot help but make Classical allusions, the man whose daily discourse is littered with the things.”
“I was not thinking clearly,” I said.
“
Or indeed at all. Your heart overpowered your head.”
“I refuse to be ashamed of that.”
“Just as I refuse to be ashamed for racing after you through the night, sure in the knowledge that you would become a victim of Dr Pentecost’s machinations.”
“You do me an injustice. It was by no means a given that I would wind up his captive.”
“But it was predictable. And, when all is said and done, that is precisely what happened, is it not? Now then…”
Holmes began pacing the length of the antechamber, back and forth. To some this might have appeared the restless prowling of a caged animal, but I could tell that he was appraising our place of confinement, gauging its dimensions and purpose. I hoped he was also evaluating its strengths and weaknesses with a view to fathoming a way out.
Finally he halted beside the steel door. He rapped upon it with a knuckle a few times. It rang like a gong.
“Yes,” he said to himself. “Yes.” Then, jerking a thumb at the door, he said, “You do realise what lies beyond, don’t you?”
“I have not a clue.”
“Yet clues there have been aplenty. Hannah’s correspondence was as burdened with them as an apple tree in season. The position of this antechamber we are in, for instance.”
“What of it?”
“We are in the servants’ wing, and the antechamber points towards the exterior of the house. This door therefore leads to an area outlying the footprint of the house. And what is to be found in the grounds immediately adjacent to the servants’ wing?”
“I cannot readily recall at this moment.”
“The knot garden,” said Holmes, “the maze of low privet hedge where Hannah attempted to interrogate Edwin Fairbrother about the Delphic Ceremony and then had a sobering encounter with the Hoplite Quigg.”
“I see. The door connects to the knot garden.”
“To something that lurks below the knot garden. Something whose nature is reflected in what lies above.”
“Another kind of garden?”
“Sometimes I wonder if you are wilfully dense, Watson, out of a kind of misplaced charity, so that I may appear all the cleverer.”
“Holmes, I really do not understand what you are trying to describe.”
“I even used the word ‘maze’,” Holmes said with exasperation, “as did Hannah in her letter. Think, man!”
“I am thinking,” I protested, although in truth I was thinking predominantly about Hannah and about what I would do to Dr Pentecost and Hart if they so much as laid a finger on her.
“Then let me make it easier for you. Whom does Sir Philip Buchanan admire most? Who is his inspiration?”
Here was a query I could answer. “Daedalus.”
“At last. Progress. And what is Daedalus most renowned for?”
“Making wings from wax and feathers that allowed him and Icarus to fly free from imprisonment.”
“Aside from that.”
“Building the Labyrinth at Knossos.”
“The great subterranean maze that housed the Minotaur,” said Holmes, nodding. “The one that Theseus penetrated in order to slay that monster and rescue the young Athenians who were due to be sacrificed to it.”
“You mean on the other side of that door there is a replica of that Labyrinth?”
“Of some sort, yes. Buchanan has constructed it in tribute to his hero. I inferred as much from the evidence Hannah provided. Of particular value in this deduction was the small windowless octagonal structure she mentioned that sits at the centre of the knot garden. It seemed to me an odd horticultural addition, entirely out of keeping with its surroundings and of no obvious purpose, until I hit upon the notion that it might not be for storage or even for ornament, but rather for access.”
“Access to beneath the ground.”
Holmes nodded. “That was when I began to extrapolate the existence of this underground labyrinth of Buchanan’s. Further, I descried that it might have some exotic function, something beyond being simply another manifestation of his penchant for all things Daedalian. But what, I asked myself, might that function be?”
“I believe I can help you in that regard,” I said. “Dr Pentecost told Hannah about a trial that graduating Elysians must undergo.”
“I had already imagined as much myself,” Holmes said. “It was Dr Pentecost’s anecdote about the seashell and the ant that set my thoughts straying in that direction. It struck me that a man like Buchanan, so in thrall to Hellenic myth and tradition, would wish to put his Elysians through a similar sort of trial. That, in conjunction with a labyrinth – well, the two suppositions mesh together like watch parts.”
“So you realised that the Delphic Ceremony is not the be-all and end-all of an Elysian’s tenure at Charfrome?”
“From its name alone I fancied it an occasion of prophecy and mysticism.”
“One of animal sacrifice as well.”
“Proving that the rumours shared by landlord Scadden were not as absurd as we thought after all. Buchanan, of course, assumes the role of vatic priest, inhaling laurel smoke.”
“You deduced that too?”
“The eyes. The lips. I am surprised you did not diagnose the symptoms accurately yourself.”
“I did,” I said, adding, “belatedly.”
“Yet, given that I had divined the existence of a labyrinth on the estate, it seemed to me that the ceremony alone must be mere preamble. What would be the point of such an installation if it were not to be used? And what might it be used for but as a proving ground for those selected in the ceremony?”
“Holmes, I must say it is marvellous that you have been able to put so many diverse and seemingly opaque facts together and come up with these answers. I can corroborate them with intelligence I have received lately from Hannah in person. You are correct in practically every detail. The only thing I cannot vouch for is the labyrinth, but your postulation makes sense, especially in the light of other snippets of information I have learned during this past hour.”
“What a relief it is to hear that.”
“It does beg a question, however.”
“Let me have it.”
“Did you know all along that Dr Pentecost was not the harmless, amiable old duffer he purported to be?”
“Ah. There, I must confess, I was wrong-footed. With only the content of Hannah’s letters to go on – her limited and very subjective viewpoint – I had no cause to believe that he was to be feared. It is something I regret deeply and will rebuke myself over to my dying day. You must remember, Watson, that I am not infallible, pace the impression people have of me, promulgated somewhat by your published chronicles. It was only when I saw the Greek phrase in that last, inordinately suspect letter from Hannah that the light dawned and I apprehended what a monumental blunder I had made. You should have seen me, old fellow. I literally hit myself. I am surprised there is not a bruise upon my forehead to show for it.”
Somewhere, well embedded in this speech of Holmes’s, lay an apology. I could hear it, although a less experienced ear might not. He was admitting that he had been wrong to have left Hannah to fend for herself at Charfrome, and I had been right to be concerned for her.
“To be met by Dr Pentecost at the gates of the estate, brandishing a gun…” he went on, “that, I will say, put the seal on it. The man was quite insouciant. He asked what had kept me and averred how rare it was, indeed unheard-of, for Dr Watson to blaze the trail while Sherlock Holmes tagged along in his wake. This while aiming at me a weapon I instantly recognised as yours. I was tempted to try to disarm him. It would not have been too difficult.”
“Why did you not?”
“Because I had no way of knowing your and Hannah’s situation. Were you alive? Dead? In either case, where? It seemed sensible to play safe and allow Dr Pentecost to lead me to you. Besides, while I have seen toddlers wielding spoons with greater dexterity than he did your Webley, there was always the remote chance that he might loose off a shot, and that I might
be in the bullet’s path. The better part of valour won the day.”
“Now at least you know what sort of a man he is,” I said.
“Desperate. Cunning. And, I would submit, some sort of confidence trickster.”
“A blackmailer.”
“Ah, indeed.”
Briefly I imparted the new intelligence about Dr Pentecost that Hannah had supplied while she and I were alone together in the antechamber.
“Yes,” said Holmes, shaking his head. “Again, curse me, I should have spotted it. The willingness to befriend others. The constant mention of how good he is at keeping secrets. Dr Pentecost is an inveigler, a spider who entices flies into his web before pouncing and sucking them dry. We have encountered his like before and shall doubtless encounter his like again. I have not given this affair my fullest attention, Watson, as I should have. I have been too distracted by other cases or too sunk in self-absorption. It is not too late, however, to remedy the oversight.”
“Is it?” I said. “Even now that we are both at Dr Pentecost’s mercy?”
“I am of the view that we are, in fact, about to be at the mercy of Sir Philip Buchanan’s ingenuity,” said Holmes. “And it is an ingenuity which, although motivated by the best of intentions, has claimed lives.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
INTO THE LABYRINTH
I was about to ask Holmes to qualify that remark. Then, however, the steel door abruptly began to move. It slid sideways with a low grinding noise, exposing a darkened passage that was walled and flagged with smooth stone. There was no one behind the door. Some automated mechanism had opened it.
A moment later, a voice spoke. It reverberated from the passage, an echoing, weirdly attenuated version of Dr Pentecost’s.
“Gentlemen. Before you lies a challenge of your skill, your intellect, your endurance and your resilience. Enter and excel. Never before has Sir Philip’s labyrinth played host to quite so illustrious a pair. I trust you will find it sufficiently engaging and improving. There is an old Greek saying, ‘pathemata mathemata’: ‘sufferings are teachings’. The labyrinth purifies people through hardship, just as metallic ore is purified through smelting and water through boiling.”
The Labyrinth of Death Page 21