The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

by edited by John Joseph Adams

  "MacDonnell found that the entire body of the boy had been coated in a waxy yellow substance; indeed, it was the cause of death, for it had so clogged the pores of his skin that the unfortunate child had simply been asphyxiated. Upon analysis, it was discerned that the substance was a form of natural phosphorus, found in the caves in the area. I immediately realized the significance of this.

  "The child, so I presumed, was one of the hapless and miserable wretches doomed to wander the byways of Ireland, perhaps orphaned during the failure of the potato crops in 1871, which had spread starvation and typhus among the peasants. Moriarty had forced or persuaded him to act the part of the wailing child whom we had observed. This child was our specter, appearing now and then at Moriarty's command to scream and cry in certain places. The phosphorus would have emitted the ethereal glow.

  "Having served his purpose, Moriarty, knowing well the properties of the waxy substance with which he had coated the child's body, left the child to suffocate and dumped the body in the mountains."

  I waited for some time after Holmes had finished the story, and then I ventured to ask the question to which he had, so far, provided no answer. As I did so, I made the following preamble.

  "Accepting that Moriarty had accomplished a fiendish scheme to enrich himself and that it was only in retrospect you realized how he managed to use the child to impersonate a specter—"

  Holmes breathed out sharply as he interrupted. "It is a failure of my deductive capabilities that I have no wish to advertise, Watson."

  "Yet there is one thing—just how did Moriarty manage to spirit away the body of James Phillimore after he stepped back inside the door of the house to retrieve his umbrella? By your own statement, Moriarty, Jack Phillimore, and yourself were all together, waiting for the colonel, outside his house. The family retainer, old Malone, swore the colonel did not reenter the house. How was it done? Was Malone in the pay of Moriarty?"

  "It was a thought that crossed my mind. The RIC likewise questioned old Malone very closely and came to the conclusion that he was part of no plot. In fact, Malone could not say one way or another if the colonel had returned, as he was in the kitchen with two housemaids as witnesses at the time."

  "And Agnes? . . . "

  "Agnes was in the cellar. She saw nothing. When all is said and done, there is no logical answer. James Phillimore vanished the moment he stepped back over the threshold. I have thought about every conceivable explanation for the last twenty years and have come to no suitable explanation except one. . . . "

  "Which is?"

  "The powers of darkness were exalted that day, and Moriarty had made a pact with the devil, selling his soul for his ambition."

  I stared at Holmes for a moment. I had never seen him admit to any explanation of events that was not in keeping with scientific logic. Was he correct that the answer lay with the supernatural, or was he merely covering up for the fact of his own lack of knowledge or, even more horrific to my susceptibilities, did the truth lie in some part of my old friend's mind which he refused to admit even to himself?

  Pinned to John H. Watson's manuscript was a small yellowing cutting from the Kerry Evening News; alas the date had not been noted.

  "During the recent building of an RIC Barracks on the ruins of Tullyfane Abbey, a well-preserved male skeleton was discovered. Sub-Inspector Dalton told our reporter that it could not be estimated how long the skeleton had lain there. The precise location was in a bricked-up area of the former cellars of the abbey.

  "Doctor Simms-Taafe said that he adduced, from the condition of the skeleton, that it had belonged to a man in midlife who had met his demise within the last twenty or thirty years. The back of the skull had been smashed in due to a severe blow, which might account for the death.

  "Sub-Inspector Dalton opined that the death might well be linked with the disappearance of Colonel Phillimore, then the owner of Tullyfane Abbey, some thirty years ago. As the next owner, Professor James Moriarty was reported to have met his death in Switzerland, the last owner having been an American who returned to his homeland, and the Phillimores being no longer domiciled in the country, the RIC are placing the matter in their file of unsolved suspicious deaths."

  A few lines were scrawled on the cutting in Dr. Watson's hand, which ran, "I think it was obvious that Colonel Phillimore was murdered as soon as he reentered the house. I have come to believe that the truth did lie in a dark recess of my old friend's mind which he refused to admit was the grotesque and terrible truth of the affair. Patricide, even at the instigation of a lover with whom one is besotted, is the most hideous crime of all. Could it be that Holmes had come to regard the young woman herself as representing the powers of darkness?" The last sentence was heavily underscored.

  The Vale of the White Horse

  by Sharyn McCrumb

  Sharyn McCrumb is the author of the Appalachian Ballad series, which includes the New York Times bestsellers She Walks These Hills, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, and The Ballad of Frankie Silver. Her novel The Rosewood Casket is currently in production for a feature film adaptation, and forthcoming novels include The Devil Amongst the Lawyers, and a book co-authored with NASCAR driver Adam Edwards called Faster Pastor. McCrumb has been honored with the Library of Virginia Award and her book, St. Dale, received the Book of the Year Award from the Appalachian Writers Association. In 2008, she was also presented with the Virginia Women of History Award.

  The Uffington White Horse is a giant prehistoric chalk carving cut into the bedrock of a hillside in southern England. McCrumb says that she is fascinated by British folklore and prehistoric landmarks, and when she visited Wiltshire and saw the Horse, she knew that she wanted to incorporate it into a story someday. "The Vale of the White Horse" is the result.

  This story is one of those rare ones in which we get to see the great detective Sherlock Holmes from the point of view of someone other than Watson. Of this character, the author explains, "Grisel Rountree is the English counterpart of a favorite character from my Ballad novels, the Appalachian wise woman Nora Bonesteel." She adds that the story is inspired in part by "my resentment of the urban know-it-alls who think that country people are less intelligent or sophisticated than city dwellers. I enjoyed making Grisel Rountree every bit as astute and eccentric as Holmes."

  Grisel Rountree was the first to see that something was strange about the white chalk horse.

  As she stood on the summit of the high down, in the ruins of the hill fort that overlooked the dry chalk valley, she squinted at the white shape on the hillside below, wondering for a moment or two what was altered. Carved into the steep slope across the valley, the primitive outline of a white horse shone in the sunshine of a June morning. Although Grisel Rountree had lived in the valley all seven decades of her life, she never tired of the sight of the ancient symbol, large as a hayfield, shining like polished ivory in the long grass of early summer.

  The white horse had been old two thousand years ago when the Romans arrived in Britain, and the people in the valley had long ago forgotten the reason for its existence, but there were stories about its magic. Some said that King Arthur had fought his last battle on that hill, and others claimed that the horse was the symbol for the nearby Wayland Smithy, the local name for a stone chamber where folk said that a pagan god had been condemned to shoe the horses of mortals for all eternity.

  Whatever the truth of its origins, the village took a quiet pride in its proximity to the great horse. Every year when the weather broke, folk would make an excursion up the slope to clean the chalk form of the great beast, and to pull any encroaching weeds that threatened to blur the symmetry of its outline. They made a day of it, taking picnic lunches and bottles of ale, and the children played tag in the long grass while their elders worked. When Grisel was a young girl, her father had told her that the chalk figure was a dragon whose imprint had been burned into the hill where it had been killed by St. George himself. When she became old enough to go to the village dances,
the laughing young men had insisted that the white beast was a unicorn, and that if a virgin should let herself be kissed within the eye of the chalk figure, the unicorn would come to life and gallop away. It was a great jest to invite the unmarried lasses up to the hill "to make the unicorn run," though of course it never did.

  Nowadays everyone simply said the creature was a horse, though they did allow that whoever drew it hadn't made much of a job of it. It was too stretched and skinny to look like a proper horse, but given its enormous size, perhaps the marvel was that the figure looked like anything at all.

  The hill fort provided the best view of the great white horse. Anyone standing beside the chalk ramparts of the ancient ruins could look down across the valley and see the entire figure of the horse sprawled out below like the scribble of some infant giant. Grisel Rountree did not believe in giants, but she did believe in tansy leaves, which was why she was up at the hill fort so early that morning. A few leaves of tansy put in each shoe prevented the wearer from coming down with ague. Although she seldom had the ague Grisel Rountree considered it prudent to stock up on the remedy as a precaution anyhow. Besides, half the village came to her at one time or another to cure their aches and pains, and it was just as well to be ready with a good supply before winter set in.

  She had got up at first light, fed the hens and did the morning chores around her cottage, and then set off with a clean feed sack to gather herbs for her remedies and potions. She had been up at the ruins when the clouds broke, and a shaft of sunlight seemed to shine right down on the chalk horse. She had stopped looking for plants then, and when she stood up to admire the sight, she noticed it.

  The eye of the great white horse was red.

  "Now, there's a thing," she said to herself.

  She shaded her eyes from the sun and squinted to get a clearer image of the patch of red, but she still couldn't make it out. The eye did not appear to have been painted. It was more like something red had been put more or less in the space where the horse's eye ought to be, but at this distance, she couldn't quite make out what it was. She picked up the basket of herbs and made her way down the slope. No use hurrying—it would take her at least half an hour to cross the valley and climb the hill to the eye of the white horse. Besides, since whatever-it-was in the eye was not moving, it would probably be there whenever she reached it.

  "It'll be goings-on, I'll warrant," she muttered to herself, picturing a courting couple fallen asleep in their trysting place. Grisel Rountree did not hold with "goings-on," certainly not in broad daylight at the top of a great hill before God and everybody. She tried to think of who in the village might be up to such shenanigans these days, but no likely couple came to mind. They were all either past the point of outdoor courting or still working up to it.

  Out of ideas, she plodded on. "Knowing is better than guessing," she muttered, resolving to ignore the twinge of rheumatism that bedeviled her joints with every step she took. The walk would do her good, she thought, and if it didn't, there was always some willow tea back in the cottage waiting to be brewed.

  Half an hour later, the old woman had crossed the valley and reached the summit where the chalk horse lay. Now that she was nearer she could see that the splash of red she had spotted from afar was a bit of cloth, but it wasn't lying flat against the ground like a proper cape or blanket should. She felt a shiver of cold along her backbone, knowing what she was to find.

  In the eye of the white horse, Grisel knelt beside the scarlet cloak spread open on the ground. She wore a look of grim determination, but she would not be shocked. She had been midwife to the village these forty years, and she laid out the dead as well, so she'd seen the worse, taken all round. She lifted the edge of the blanket and found herself staring into the sightless eyes of a stranger. A moment's examination told her that the man was a gentleman—the cut of his blood-stained clothes would have told her that, but besides his wardrobe, the man had the smooth hands and the well-kept look of one who has been waited on all his life. She noted this without any resentment of the differences in their stations: such things just were.

  The man was alive, but only just.

  "Can you tell me who did this to you?" she said, knowing that this was all the help he could be given, and that if there were time for only one question, it should be that. The rest could be found out later, one way or another.

  The man's eyes seemed to focus on her for a moment, and in a calm, wondering voice he said clearly, "Not a maiden . . . "

  And then he died. Grisel Rountree did not stay to examine him further, because the short blade sticking out of the dead man's stomach told her that this was not a matter for the layer out of the dead but for the village constable.

  "Rest in peace, my lad," said the old woman, laying the blanket back into place. "I'll bring back someone directly to fetch you down."

  "Missus Rountree!" Young Tom Cowper stood under the apple tree beside the old woman's cottage, gasping for breath from his run from the village, but too big with news to wait for composure. "They're bringing a gentleman down from London on account of the murder!"

  Grisel Rountree swirled the wooden paddle around the sides of the steaming black kettle, fishing a bit of bed sheet out of the froth and examining it for dirt. Not clean yet. "From London?" she grunted. "I shouldn't wonder. Our PC Waller is out of his depth, and so I told him when I took him up to the white horse."

  "Yes'm," said Tom, mindful of the sixpence he had been given to deliver the message. "The London gentleman—he's staying at the White Horse, him and a friend—at the Inn, I mean."

  Grisel snorted. "I didn't suppose you meant the white horse on the hill, lad."

  "No. Well, he's asking to see you, missus. On account of you finding the body. They say I'm to take you to the village."

  The old woman stopped stirring the wash pot and fixed the boy with a baleful eye. "Oh, I'm to come to the village, am I? Look here, Tom Cowper, you go back to the inn and tell the gentleman that anybody can tell him the way to my cottage, and if he wants a word with me, here I'll be."

  "But missus . . . "

  "Go!"

  For a moment Tom gaped at the tall, white-haired figure, pointing imperiously at him. People roundabouts said she were a witch, and of course he didn't hold with such foolishness, but there was a limit to what sixpence would buy a gentleman in the way of his services as a messenger. Choosing the better part of valor, he turned and ran.

  "Who is this London fellow?" Grisel called after the boy.

  Without breaking stride Tom called back to her, "Mis-terr Sher-lock Holmes!"

  Grisel Rountree finished her washing, swept the cottage again, and set to work making a batch of scones in case the gentleman from London should arrive at tea time, which, if he had any sense, he would, because anybody hereabouts could tell him that Grisel Rountree's baking was far better than the alternately scorched and floury efforts of the cook at the village inn.

  The old woman was not surprised that London had taken an interest in the case, considering that the dead man had turned out to be from London himself, and a society doctor to boot. James Dacre, his name was, and he was one of the Hampshire Dacres, and the brother of the young baronet over at Ramsmeade. The wonder of it was that the doctor should be visiting here, for he had never done so before, though they saw his brother the baronet often enough.

  A few months back, the young baronet had been a guest of the local hunt, and during the course of the visit he had met Miss Evelyn Ambry, the daughter of the local squire and the beauty of the county. She was a tall, spirited young woman, much more beautiful than her sisters and by far the best rider. People said she was as fearless as she was flawless, but among the villagers there was a hint of reserve in their voices when they spoke of her. There was a local tradition about the Ambrys, people didn't speak of it in these enlightened times, but they never quite forgot it either. Miss Evelyn was one of the Ambry changelings, right enough. There was one along in nearly every generation.


  By all accounts Miss Evelyn Ambry had made a conquest of the noble guest, and the baronet's visits to the district became so frequent that people began to talk of a match being made between the pair of them. Some folk said they would been betrothed already if Miss Evelyn's aunt had not suddenly taken ill and died two weeks back, so that Miss Evelyn had to observe mourning for the next several months. And now there was more mourning to keep them apart—his lordship's own brother.

  Grisel Rountree was sorry about the young man's untimely death, but it's an ill wind that blows nobody good, she told herself, and if the doctor's passing kept his brother from wedding the Ambry changeling, it might be a blessing after all. Whenever a silly woman sighed at the prospect of a wedding between Miss Evelyn and the baronet, Grisel always held her peace on the subject, but she'd not be drinking the health of the handsome couple if the wedding day ever came. It boded ill for the bridegroom, she thought. It always had done when a besotted suitor wed an Ambry changeling, and so Grisel had been expecting a tragedy in the offing—but not this particular tragedy. The baronet's younger brother dying in the eye of the white horse. She didn't know what it meant, and that worried her. And his last words—"Not a maiden"—put her in mind of the village lads' old jest about the unicorn, but how could a gentleman doctor from London know about that? It was a puzzle, right enough, and she could not see the sense of it yet, but one thing she did know for certain: death comes in threes.