“It said, ‘The snake is from Diana.’”
Holmes laughed softly, even as he shook his head. “Not terribly original, but rather clever all the same.”
“I left at once, Mr. Holmes! I closed the door and told the servants to keep out of my room.”
“That was very wise of you, Mr. Selton.”
“Do you think…?”
“We shall see. We shall see.”
We walked to Lesser Hill in record time. Holmes paused before the oaken door to Adam’s bedchamber. He had taken off his hat, but he still had his walking stick in hand. The room was on the ground floor, and someone outside could have easily climbed in. “I shall just have a look.” He set his hand on the brass knob.
“I shall come with you,” I said.
“As you wish. If we see a snake, keep well back and do not irritate it.”
I laughed. “‘Irritate it!’”
“I’ll… I’ll come too.” Adam obviously did not want to come too.
“You needn’t trouble yourself, Mr. Selton. It isn’t necessary.”
Holmes opened the door and went in. The room was small and on the spartan side. The bed had a metal frame, but it and the mattress were obviously custom-made, much longer than normal. A braided round wool carpet was by the bed, and there was a wardrobe, a tall dresser and a desk. Holmes went to the desk and lifted a sheet of paper.
“Cheap paper and a rather flowing hand. Doesn’t tell us much.” His eyes swept the room, seemed to see under and into things. He tapped lightly at the floor with the tip of his stick. “An adder’s bite might kill a dog, a child or an elderly person, but we three are too large and healthy to suffer that fate. However, it would be most painful.”
I felt something slithery trying to work its way up my spine. “How reassuring.” Adam seemed fixed in the doorway.
“There is one most logical place for the snake to be.”
Holmes stepped forward, then knelt down on the rug. The bed was set against the wall. Staying well back, Holmes raised the bedspread from the floor with his stick even as he bent over to look underneath. He held the spread up for a few seconds, then lowered it, nodded, and stood up.
“Well?” I asked.
“It is a male adder, quite a beauty, I think, although it was hard to tell because of the shadow. The contrast between the black and silver was striking.”
“I have a revolver,” Adam said. “We can… we can shoot it.”
Holmes laughed. “You would damage your bed, the wall, who knows what else. That is not necessary. Would you please get me a laundry basket and a sheet.”
Adam stared at him, his blue eyes opened a little too wide. “What?”
“A wicker laundry basket. If you have the rectangular kind with a top that opens and closes, that would be ideal. We would not have to worry about the handles. And any sort of sheet will do.”
Adam nodded, then stepped back. “You’re going to try to trap it?”
“Certainly.” He stared closely at me. “How are you doing, Henry?”
I laughed. “Snakes are actually one of the things that do not particularly frighten me. Now if it was a giant cockroach, that would be another matter.”
“Excellent! You can assist me.”
Adam soon returned with the desired laundry basket and a sheet. “You may remain outside, Mr. Selton.”
“I can stay if…”
“No need for that, and the fewer people in here, the better. Just close the door behind you.”
Holmes opened the basket, then took out his pen knife and cut the leather straps that held the top on, leaving him with an open wicker box. “Help me move the bed. I want it out from the wall only an inch or so. Just slide it, ever so gently.” He took one of the metal posts, I another, and we shimmied it out. “Very good. I want you to get onto the bed, then strike at the floor two or three times with the end of my stick. I believe that will flush him out.” He had taken the basket and held it upside down.
I climbed up on the bed, which was rather spongy, then took his stick. I raised it up with my right hand, got the end into the space between the wall and the mattress and looked at Holmes. “Wait until I give the word, Henry. You should be safe there. A little further to the left. Lower the stick and feel about the floor before you strike hard. He should still be nearer the other end, but we want to make sure he has not moved.”
I slowly lowered the stick and felt about with the end. “Nothing but wall or floor,” I said.
Holmes nodded. “Excellent.” He squatted slightly, balancing on the balls of his feet, the basket held on either side between his long fingers. “Whenever you are ready.”
I raised the stick, brought it down hard. A loud clunk, then another and another. Holmes had stepped back, his gray eyes fixed on the ground—with his beak of a nose and those fierce eyes he truly resembled some bird of prey. He seemed to dance back, even as he almost hurled the basket down. “I have you!” His voice was exultant, and he smiled at me. He ran his fingers back through a lock of black hair which had come loose.
I climbed down off the bed.
“Can I come in?” Adam asked from behind the door.
“Not quite yet.” Holmes took the sheet, unfolded it until it was about three feet square. “This will be akin to trapping an insect under a glass with a piece of paper. I will hold down the basket and take one end of the sheet. You take the other, and we shall work it under the basket. We’ll be able to tell when we come to the snake, but it should be easy if we keep the sheet taut to keep the cloth under the snake.”
He laid out the sheet next to the basket, then bent over, put one hand on the basket and took a corner of the sheet. I took the other corner. We pulled it tight, then started pulling it under the basket. I could tell when we came to the snake, but we kept the cloth tight and soon managed to keep going. Again, I could feel when we had come to the end of the snake. Soon the basket sat with the white sheet forming a neat frame around it.
“Very good, Henry. Now we must turn it over very carefully, making sure the sheet stays tight. We can then just substitute the basket top.”
This was the trickiest part, and although I wasn’t exactly frightened, I was tense. We each tried to keep the sheet taut on the two sides of the basket we held. I could tell as we moved the basket that the snake must be fairly good-sized! When it was done, Holmes seized the square lid and covered the basket, leaving the sheet in place.
“Bravo!” he said. “Well done, Henry. Mr. Selton, you may come in.”
Adam stepped into the room, then glanced down at the basket. “You have him in there?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s get him out of the house. Then we can dispose of him.”
Holmes’s brow creased. “We shall take him to the trees and release him.”
Adam shook his head. “He should be exterminated. He’s venomous!”
Holmes sighed. “As I told you before, adders only bite if provoked—as this one surely was. He is as much the victim as you, Mr. Selton. I must insist that you oblige me in this matter. After all, it is I who have taken care of the serpent for you.”
Adam drew in his breath slowly. “All right, Mr. Holmes. I am certainly in your debt. You may do as you please.”
Holmes smiled. “Very good! I’m certain the poor beast has had more than enough of bedrooms and wooden floors for the day.”
Holmes and I carefully carried the basket outside, each with one hand holding a handle, the other the top. Occasionally I felt the adder moving about. We came out into the sun, then walked across the grass toward the trees.
We set down the basket, then Holmes gestured for me to step back. He bent over, then like some magician, quickly wrenched away the sheet which also sent the wicker top flying. We were in the shade, but I could see the adder curled in the basket’s interior, a vivid black and silver-gray, with that distinctive zigzag pattern along its back. The snake’s head reared up, it’s split tongue flickering out, even as Holmes backed away
and kicked over the basket with his boot. The snake slithered out, moving remarkably fast as it swerved away into the trees, soon to be lost amidst the jagged green leaves of a large fern.
Holmes smiled at me. “Very well done, indeed, Henry. A good day’s work.” He glanced at Adam. “That was certainly better than trying to beat the poor creature to death with a stick.”
Adam shrugged, then shook his head. “Who… who is doing this?”
Holmes’s smile faded. “I have some idea.”
“Tell me—then tell me.”
“It is too soon, Mr. Selton. But I am very close. I think I can promise that you will know… by next Monday.”
I frowned. “May Day?”
Adam pulled off his hat and ran his fingers through his black hair. “Someone has just tried to kill me.”
Holmes shook his head. “No. They only wanted to frighten you.”
“But they put a venomous snake in my bedroom!”
“And left you a warning note. If they really wanted to kill you, they would not have left the note. Besides, as I said, an adder bite would be unlikely to kill any of us—especially you given your weight and size.”
Adam stared into the trees. “This is all… a nightmare. I…” He drew in his breath. “I must get away—London—Derbyshire, somewhere else. They don’t want me in Yorkshire. They don’t want me… with Diana.”
“If you run away, you will be giving them what they want.”
Adam looked at him, his eyes suddenly angry. “Oh, so what? Who cares? I am just weary of this all. Enough is enough!” He turned and started back for the house, his steps gargantuan. “I can spend the night in Whitby—I can take the first train out in the morning.”
Holmes followed him. “Wait—wait!” Adam reached the doorway, then turned to face Holmes. “I cannot pretend it is safe here for you, but someone else is actually in much more danger. She is the real target, and she is much likelier to be killed than you.”
Adam seemed to freeze for a moment, even as he grew pale. “You cannot mean Diana?”
“I do mean Diana.”
“But why would anyone want to hurt her? I don’t understand, Mr. Holmes.”
“I cannot tell you, Mr. Selton, not yet. You simply have to trust me. Things are coming to a head, and all should be resolved shortly.”
“But—but—I shall take Diana with me! I shall protect her.”
“You cannot. Our adversary is clever and resourceful. Danger would follow Miss Marsh wherever she goes. The best thing you can do for her is to stay here and pretend nothing has happened. I shall be watching and waiting. I have it all, almost all, but I have no proof. I must catch them in the act. That is the only way.”
Adam hurled down his woolen cloth cap, then put both of his huge hands in his curly black hair, clutching at his head. “Oh Lord—Lord.”
“It is for Diana, Mr. Selton. Only a little while longer. Help me save her.”
He lowered his hands and took in a massive breath that went on and on forever. A brief smile pulled at his lips. “I always said I would do anything for her. I wanted to prove that I loved her. Well, now I have my chance, it seems. This hardly… seems so much. Surely not. I shall stay.”
Holmes smiled, then reached out and gripped Adam’s upper arm. “Very good, Mr. Selton.” He glanced at me. “Come, Henry.” He started toward the path that led along the cliffs facing the sea back to Diana’s Grove.
I followed silently until we were well away from the house. “It is time you told me a thing or two.”
“Surely you must have some idea?”
I gazed briefly at the earth, then the sea: clouds hung over the moors and Castra Regis atop its peak; the deep blue of the waters was broken up by whitecaps. “Arabella. It has to be Arabella.”
Holmes laughed softly. “Oh very good, Henry. We shall make a detective of you yet.”
“But I don’t understand any of it! It is only… I don’t like her, and I don’t trust her. From the first moment I met her… But I hardly imagined her as a murderer.”
“Sometimes our instincts can serve us better than our reason. Or rather, they are the precursor to reason.”
“You must explain.”
“And so I shall, but not yet, not quite yet. And there is still that one piece. We have to see Edgar Caswall. We have put it off long enough.”
“But there is hardly time today.”
“Tomorrow then. Tomorrow. Then I shall explain.”
When we came through the trees and saw Diana’s Grove before us, a tall woman in a blue dress was waiting in the shade before the doorway, her arms folded. Michelle lowered her hands and started forward when she saw us. Her smile was brief, tentative. I reached out to take her hand, and she squeezed tightly.
“There you are at last. I need to talk to you.” She glanced at Sherlock, her eyes worried.
“I shall be inside.”
“Wait.” Michelle’s voice was very soft. “I… Let me talk to Henry first, and then… we may want to talk to you.”
His gray eyes stared closely at her, then he nodded.
“We won’t go far.” She took my hand and started down the path Holmes and I had just taken.
“What’s the matter? Are you all right? Is Diana all right?”
“Nothing has happened. Everyone is all right.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
She looked at me, her eyes troubled. “I need to—I need to speak to you about it. Then you can decide if we should tell Sherlock. It seems so… base. Unworthy.”
“For God’s sake, Michelle, what is wrong?”
She drew in her breath deeply. Her hand still held mine. “It is about Arabella. And Angela.”
“What about them?”
She stared closely, her eyes questioning me.
“What about them?” I repeated.
“You haven’t noticed anything?”
“Noticed what?”
A quick humorless smile pulled at her lips. “Sherlock said he was looking for a missing piece. A lover, the one who drove Lord Verr to kill himself. A black-haired lover.”
I suddenly stopped walking. Michelle and I stared at one another. “What are you saying?”
Again an uncomfortable smile pulled at her mouth. “I am talking about a Sapphic lover, Henry. You do know about… Sapphic lovers?”
I drew my breath in slowly. “Yes. I do.”
“Have you never noticed how Angela looks at Arabella? And she is hardly… a typical maid. Oh, perhaps I’m only imagining it, but…”
I gave my head a fierce shake. “No. No, you are not.”
“I… I have seen such things before. In high society. Some women are so miserable, their husbands cold and indifferent. It is hardly surprising that they turn elsewhere for love, and women are, perhaps by nature, kinder and more affectionate. I knew a very well-bred lady who also had… feelings for her maid. Feelings which were reciprocated. Oh Henry, should we tell Sherlock? It seems like mere gossip, like malice, like…”
“We have to tell him.”
She drew in her breath slowly, then nodded. We turned and went back toward the house. We had not gone far, and he was waiting for us. We three started walking. Michelle turned to me. “You tell him.” I was much more direct than Michelle had been.
As he listened, Holmes’s steps slowed, became more and more deliberate—briefly he was paralyzed, one foot in the air—then he set it down, clutched at his chin with his long fingers, and raised the other hand to silence me. We were all quiet. Somewhere in the woods a squirrel chattered, and we could hear the faint wind stirring the new green leaves in the trees all around us.
At last a sort of groan of laughter slipped from Holmes’s lips. He smiled at us both, his eyes fixed on Michelle. “I am the greatest of all imbeciles. Thank God you have come, Michelle, to save me from my own colossal stupidity. We all have our blind spots. Who, after all, would have thought…? But I should have considered the possibility. It was a failure of the imaginat
ion. But it is my job to go beyond what is normal, what is conventional!—to consider all the alternatives.”
She stared at him, her eyes troubled. “You think it is true, then?”
“Of course it is true. It accounts for everything—everything—including the peculiar behavior of Lady Verr and Angela for the last couple of days.” His lips twitched briefly upward, and Michelle’s cheek began to redden. “But most of all, it perfectly explains Lord Verr’s suicide. Bad enough to discover that your wife has been cheating on you for years—but cheating with her maid under your own roof? What could possibly be more humiliating?”
Michelle seemed to wince, and she looked away.
“Little wonder he shot himself. Of course she was goading him, encouraging him.”
I sighed softly. “Poor devil. I can only imagine…”
Michelle clutched for my hand. “Oh Henry, surely…”
“I know, Michelle—I know. I do have my share of unreasonable fears and worries, but that is not something that will ever keep me awake at night. I trust you, my darling—I trust you absolutely.”
One side of her mouth rose in a half smile. “As well you should. I feel the same way.”
Holmes shook his head. “I could not possibly tell Mr. Selton my suspicions. He would be incapable of hiding anything from anyone—least of all Lady Verr. I probably should not have said anything even to you, Henry. Regardless, you must both try to pretend nothing has changed, that things are the same as always. You must do this for another day or two at least. Lady Verr came back in good spirits today, but I am certain she is deluding herself about Caswall’s intentions.”
“How can you know that?” I asked.
“Because she is dealing with a lunatic! A lunatic who seems more interested in the niece than the aunt. There is little time. I must convince Lady Verr of her error about Caswall to flush her out. If she thinks things are finished with him, then she will act, once and for all.”
“Act?” I said. “What do you mean.”
Holmes’s smile was icy. “She will try to kill Miss Marsh. She will offer her as a sacrifice to the White Worm.”
Michelle looked dismayed, and I shook my head wildly. “But you said—you said there is no White Worm!”
The White Worm Page 22