Sherlock Holmes and the King's Evil: And Other New Tales Featuring the World's Greatest Detective

by Donald Thomas

  “Did their animosity extend to each other?”

  “I was once told that they fought like two ferrets in a sack. That was the exact phrase used to me. I cannot believe it was as bad as that. Of course, they subsisted by tending the Old Light. I understand they were paid out of the county rate. Their accommodation was provided by the barrack-room under the lantern.”

  “And what else?” I inquired, “How did they feed themselves?”

  Mr Gilmore looked as if he thought I might have known without asking.

  “Roland was the hunter and fisherman. Even for those who are not hunters by profession, the snaring or shooting of wild-fowl, geese, or the eel-catching and fishing nets for small fry commonly become additional trades. Abraham was the brother who usually took the watch and kept the light flashing out to sea. He also cultivated a vegetable plot just above the river bridge on the far side. How they lived otherwise, I cannot say.”

  “They had no inheritance?”

  “I do not think they had anything except debts from the oil-cake works when the business was sold. They belong to that class of our nation, Dr Watson, who live like serfs on next to nothing but never quite fall to the level of the workhouse. They seldom attract the attention of their betters until some mean crime or scandal breaks open in the columns of the press. Let us hope this is not a case of that kind.”

  “And what of their sister, Miss Alice Chastelnau?”

  Mr Gilmore brightened up at her name. He gave a brief smile and his voice became more buoyant.

  “I know little of Alice Chastelnau, though I met her when she attended her father’s funeral, and also concerning the arrangements made for it. I met her again at the death of her step-mother several years later. Miss Chastelnau lived in the village before my time and left it when she was still a girl. Indeed, I cannot recall that I have ever met her apart from those two occasions. Her health was a little delicate. She seems by all accounts an admirable young woman and has fulfilled her promise in the little school at Mablethorpe.”

  “There has never been a young lady in the lives of either of the two brothers?” I asked carefully.

  Mr Gilmore inclined his head.

  “Not that I am aware of. I believe I should know of it, for gossip of that kind spreads very quickly through a village.”

  There was a finality in these words which indicated that the Rector of Sutton Cross had said all that he proposed to say on these matters. As we stood up and thanked him, however, Sherlock Holmes inquired,

  “May we see the tower and the beacon? I believe it would help us to get the lie of the land and I should not wish to trouble you a second time.”

  Mr Gilmore did not quite slap us on the back. However, the expression on his face suggested that the opportunity to show off another of his treasures was entirely welcome.

  I had been conscious during our discussion in the rectory study that Holmes had said nothing whatever about the pebble which Miss Chastelnau had left for our examination. As we now walked back towards the church, my friend inquired,

  “Were either of the brothers treasure hunters, Mr Gilmore? I imagine you must get a great many such people here in the holiday season.”

  The rector stopped and laughed among the gravestones. He was far happier on such topics.

  “You have been reading far too much romance, Mr Holmes, or possibly the Bard of Avon’s famous play. What dreadful news was brought to King John upon his deathbed in the year 1216! If you recall, his jewels and royal ornaments—the coronation regalia, as tradition has it,

  Were in the Washes all unwarily

  Devoured by the unexpected flood.

  Not two miles from here, on 12 October in that same year. Perhaps it was the greatest loss of royal treasure in our entire island story.”

  “So I believe.”

  “It happened, you know, when the king was campaigning here during the Barons’ War, a few days before his death. He and his party had gone on ahead, making for Swineshead Abbey that night. The baggage train with all the royal treasure and the furnishings of his chapel, set out to cross the estuary here at low tide. Just before noon. Of course, the line of the coast was different seven centuries ago but the river was where you see it now. In those days, however, the uncovered estuary was several miles across at low water. The quicksands were everywhere and the sea could come in at a terrifying speed in October with the neap tides, as it still does. A little before noon, the foolish baggage train tried to cross the mudflats and the stream without a guide. A guide would have probed the mud with his pole to find a path where the ground was firm. ‘Moses’ they called him, you know, after the crossing of the Red Sea.”

  “So I understand.”

  “Then you have read the old chroniclers, perhaps? The Abbot of Cogershall and Roger of Wendover? Matthew Paris in his Historia Anglorum a century after the tragedy? How the rushing tide caught the column in mid-stream? The quicksands were flooded at once and swallowed up men, pack-horses, baggage-wagons, jewels, crowns, ornaments and chapel furnishings. Much of it was booty seized by King John in his campaigns across the country. It was a time of long civil war between the Crown and the nobles. Such was the tragedy that happened in our estuary all those years ago. Even now, if you stand alone out there in the quietness of the ebb tide, it is said you may sometimes catch the cries of men or horses, the pandemonium of the lost ones. It is a story that every schoolboy knows!”

  “What I wondered,” Holmes insisted mildly, “was whether you get treasure hunters?”

  The rector laughed again.

  “They come, and they go away disappointed. The sea has withdrawn and the land has been reclaimed. All that remains of King John’s treasure is probably deep down in the silt or the clay that has formed, a mile or two inland under the fields. Do not waste your time, Mr Holmes.”

  “Nothing has ever been found?”

  Roderick Gilmore frowned slightly.

  “That is not quite correct. In the later Middle Ages, and almost up to the present day, discoveries have been made. These generally consist of a few items which were first discovered a century or so after the disaster. Then they were hidden away, forgotten and so lost once more. A handful of these trinkets have been found for a second time. The great collections, including the coronation regalia, seem to have been lost for over.”

  “Most interesting,” said Holmes politely, “Most, most interesting! ”

  As the rector told his story among the tombstones, and as I thought of the blue pebble, I felt a prickling along my spine. Had the Chastelnau brothers been treasure hunters after all? Was there a secret along the windswept shore of the Old Light which mingled murder with such majesty?

  We climbed the winding stone steps and came out from the darkness of the tower shaft into the sunlight of the square leaded roof with its medieval battlements and flagstaff. The lantern of the beacon was supported against this staff. I had begun to get my bearings in the brightness, taking a birdseye view of the flat green fenland stretching inland and the mudflats at low water running down to the sparkling tranquil sea. On such a fine afternoon as this, it was hard to imagine that any danger could lie there. Then I heard Mr Gilmore behind me and saw several figures stooping over an object on the foreshore.

  “Dear me,” said the rector apprehensively, “I believe they have found something after all. It is when the tide withdraws that such discoveries are usually made. About the third or fourth day the sea gives up her dead, if she gives them up at all. I wonder which of the Chastelnau brothers it can be?”

  4

  Inspector Albert Wainwright’s appearance, like his Christian name, recalled the late Prince Consort. His was a somewhat heavy face with large and mournful brown eyes. There was a doglike reproof in his habitually melancholy expression. Sometimes such features hide a wry but lively personality. In Mr Wainwright’s case, they concealed nothing. Indeed, his dark hair and his trim whiskers seemed like a deliberate attempt to copy those early daguerreotype photographs of her Pri
nce Albert whose untimely death Queen Victoria still mourned.

  “I have exchanged wires with Scotland Yard, as our superintendent requested,” he said sadly, “for one never knows where these cases may lead. My instructions from Chief Inspector Lestrade are quite plain, gentlemen. I am to show you every courtesy but not to let you overreach yourselves. You are to have the run of the Old Light, now that you have been retained by Miss Chastelnau. I cannot say that such a thing is usual but, to speak frankly, I would rather allow you that privilege than have Mr Lestrade coming down from Scotland Yard himself, which he was otherwise threatening to do. We shift for ourselves quite well as a rule.”

  Holmes smiled pleasantly.

  “I am quite sure Mr Lestrade did not mean to suggest that I am employed to remedy deficiencies in such an admirable body of men as the Lincolnshire police force.”

  Inspector Wainwright seemed unsure how to take this. He resolved the difficulty by breathing out heavily without actually saying anything, as if the heavy breath alone constituted a reply.

  Holmes and I had left Mr Gilmore and made our way along the village street to the river bank and the Old Light. The white-painted wooden structure with its black under-surfaces and ironwork stood raised on nine substantial square “stilts.” It was a round beacon standing almost forty feet high and capped by a windowed dome. Beyond it, across the sands, reeds and mudflats, I could see that the afternoon tide was on the turn from ebb to flood. The black iron ladder, which we had climbed to the door of the barrack-room, had the knobbly texture of metal that is regularly and inexpertly painted but never rubbed down beforehand. It smelt strongly of sand and algae.

  Presently we stood with Inspector Wainwright in the cramped barrack-room, where the prevailing smell was of damp woollen clothing and oilskin. It was more than anything like the cabin of a yacht, every space taken by cupboards, shelves, a table and two chairs with black seats of horsehair padding. There was a curved bunk built against the wall at one side and a door leading to a smaller space where the second keeper evidently slept. A wooden ladder fixed against the wall and a trapdoor in the plain ceiling indicated the way to the lantern-room above.

  “What information we have is not much,” said Wainwright, “but such as it is you shall have it before you go down to the sands. Dr Rixon is there but we may assume from the details that the body is Roland Chastelnau, the younger brother. They’re bringing him up on a hurdle. A further search has been made of the sands and the dunes, as high as the tide might reach. We have found a broken lantern and a damaged shotgun, empty and soaked by sea-water, not far from where a body would be swept away. Whatever may have passed between the brothers, it looks very much as if both of them died at flood tide last Sunday night. A great tragedy.”

  The inspector frowned. Then he added, “You notice, gentlemen, I say ‘died’ and not ‘drowned.’ If Abraham Chastelnau went down in the quicksands we shall never have a certain verdict.”

  “And in that case,” I said, “you will never know if he died—or how.”

  “We are not likely to see him again, doctor. If we do happen to find him alive, of course, I shall have some strong questions to put to him. He may be the murderer of his brother Roland. That would be something, as they say, in a place like this.”

  By this time I could not help feeling grateful that we enjoyed the protection of Lestrade. In consequence, the Lincolnshire officer acted as if the case had been taken out of his hands and put into ours. Had Abraham Chastelnau survived, I believe Albert Wainwright would have been well-pleased to bring a charge of murder against him. As that seemed unlikely, he lost interest.

  The inspector opened the barrack-room door and stepped out on to the small iron platform with its ladder to the sands. He paused, framed by the lintel of the door.

  “As to the lantern-room, gentlemen, the mechanism is clockwork, as it is in all these beacons. Similar to an old-fashioned grandfather clock but on a larger scale. A stout iron chain bearing a weight is cranked up to the top. Its gradual descent for eight hours is controlled by a governor, as is the case with a pendulum in a clock. And just as the weight in a clock turns the minute and the hour hands, so the descent of the weight here turns the banks of reflectors which direct the light of the lantern as a single beam across the sea. Until we have new keepers, a deputy keeper will come over from Freiston Shore to crank it up, to wind the clock and governor. He will also ensure that the reservoir tanks are full of paraffin oil to keep the lantern burning. They will send new keepers from Lynn in a day or two. Until full tide, my constable will be at hand to answer your questions and help you as you may require.”

  “One moment if you please, Mr Wainwright,” said Holmes courteously, “What were the duties of the keepers while they were here?”

  “One man is on watch at a time. He notes the speed of the wind, the pressure of the barometer and so forth. One of them must polish the lenses of the reflectors every morning. He also cleans the panes of the lantern windows when necessary. Of course, ours is nothing but a local beacon. Not much shipping comes near us.”

  “As Mr Gilmore says,” remarked Holmes, “It is like the church tower, a beacon for those on the shore and the mudflats after dark.”

  The inspector left us the run of the Old Light, with a uniformed constable at the foot of the iron ladder. Presently we climbed down and trudged over the marsh to a broad ribbon of sand where the discovery of Roland Chastelnau’s body had been made. Dr Rixon had finished his examination and four men were bringing the corpse up the beach on a white sheep-hurdle.

  Of the two men following the hurdle, one was Mr Gilmore and the other was recognisable as Dr Rixon himself, if only because he wore a tweed suit and cap, and carried a black medical bag. I introduced myself. On such a coast, this could not have been the first time he had been called to the scene of a drowning. He appeared to regard the duty as an entirely impersonal matter and had no objection whatever to discussing it.

  “It would seem that the poor fellow was drowned,” I ventured.

  “The inquest will find it so,” he said readily, “Of course, we must see what an autopsy reveals.”

  “He was not marked about the face or head?”

  “No. There was post-mortem staining, as one might expect, but he would scarcely be dashed against rocks on such a shore as this. Not with the flood tide as quiet as it usually is in these parts.”

  Sherlock Holmes joined us.

  “Permit me to ask, Dr Rixon, does there exist a photograph of either of the two brothers?”

  Rixon put on a scowl of perplexity.

  “I do not think so—Mr Holmes, I presume? I should be most surprised if there were. They were alike in many features as most brothers are but this is Roland and not Abraham. We have known them all their lives.”

  “And his pockets? Is there nothing there to prove his identity.”

  My friend tapped the pockets of the faded and bedraggled jacket on the corpse. It seemed evident from his face that his fingers felt nothing.

  “No,” said Dr Rixon, disinclined even to issue a reprimand as Holmes slid a hand into each of the side-pockets, “No, Mr Holmes. I think under the circumstances, whatever Scotland Yard may consider ...”

  “Only relics of the beach such as this?” Holmes asked innocently. He was holding between his finger and thumb a dun-coated pebble that might have been the twin of the one presented to us by Miss Chastelnau. “Or this?”

  There were three or four of these objects altogether. Yet even before Dr Rixon could reply, Holmes dismissed the matter for him.

  “It is common enough,” my friend added with a shrug, “the detritus of the beach and its shallows will easily find its way into the folds and wrinkles of clothing, after several days of washing to and fro by the tides.”

  I was sure he had thrown the pebbles away. They were no longer in his hand. On reflection, I had no doubt that they had been transferred subtly from the pocket of Roland Chastelnau to that of Sherlock Holmes.

&nbs
p; 5

  In the absence of Albert Wainwright I assumed that we might spend much of the coming night searching the drawers and cupboards of the Old Light before the inspector’s return. I did not anticipate that in the meantime we should come close to sharing the fate of the unfortunate Roland Chastelnau.

  On our return to the foreshore lighthouse, with only a uniformed constable standing temporary guard on the wet sand below, we climbed the iron ladder again. The constable called up and informed us that he would be leaving shortly. In another hour or so the sand on which he stood would be covered by the tide. Holmes thanked him and then moved across the room to the wooden ladder under the trapdoor of the lantern. His feet disappeared and I heard him moving about above me. Then his face reappeared in the opening of the trap.

  “Come up, Watson! The pebbles can wait until later. See what a wonderland is here!”

  I followed him up to the tall lantern-room. It was, in effect, two rooms in one, the upper level occupied by the machinery of the powerful reflectors. Within its glass dome, formed by the large window-panes, the air was still warm from the autumn sun, the heat reflected by silvered metal. The space was also filled with a strong mineral tang of paraffin oil from the iron reservoir tanks below the apparatus.

  To do justice to the intricate design would test the reader’s patience. At the lower level of the lantern room, where we stood, there was a table with the keepers’ log-book. On a central shaft a heavy iron weight on its chain descended slowly through the eight hours of its cycle, turning the banks of reflectors overhead steadily. When cranked up, the chain was wound on a large drum above us. A tall case in plain wood with a white enamelled dial and two keyholes, like a long-case “grandfather” clock, controlled the mechanism. The hole on the left appeared to be for winding up a weight whose descent turned the clock hands of a dial, while on the right, the same key wound a governor of some kind, which kept the mechanism of the reflectors at an even pace.