The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part III

by David Marcum

  I walked slowly back to the workshop.

  “Poetic justice?” Holmes mused as I got to the doorway.

  “Perhaps.” I sighed. “At least you have proved the innocence of Mycroft’s agent. Do you want to convey the news to him in person?”

  Holmes shook his head. “I shall send him a telegram informing him of the outcome of my investigations.”

  I glanced inside the workshop, at the various disassembled simulacra. From behind me I could hear the sounds of the fake, recreated battle. I found myself comparing the automata and simulacra that I had seen with my friend and his brother - two men who never showed emotion and regarded logic as being the most important of characteristics, and who believed that the world ran along predictable, rational lines. And I found myself wondering if there was really a difference between them.

  Holmes reached out to take my shoulder. “Come on,” he said quietly, “let’s head back. I’ll treat you to dinner at Simpsons in the Strand. They have some particularly fine bottles of Beune at the moment.”

  “And will you tell me more about your childhood, and this case when you saved your brother from a charge of murder?” I asked.

  He pursed his lips. “Almost certainly not,” he said.

  The Adventure of the Dark Tower

  by Peter K. Andersson

  Inchwood Cottage sat on the edge of a large field, just where it sloped down towards a small brook and gave way to scattered shrubs that were the beginnings of a dour copse. It had a thatched roof, looking slightly too big for the building underneath it, and the two stories of the house were so low-ceilinged that, when one examined the rows of windows from the outside, it seemed that there was barely enough room for a grown man to stand upright in both floors together. I came upon it on one of my walks during a brief holiday in the farther reaches of Herefordshire, where I had gone to finish a few long-overdue articles for a medicinal journal, while my wife was holidaying elsewhere visiting friends.

  The sight of the cottage startled me somewhat, for I had been walking for a good twenty minutes, through woodlands and across fields, without seeing any signs of civilisation, and so I was led to believe that this part of the area was totally uninhabited. I conjectured that it was the dwelling of some gamekeeper or poacher, but as I came nearer, the sight of a man in the garden, busy pruning the rose bushes on the gravel path, forced me to alter my assumption. He was in his mid-thirties, dressed neatly in tweeds similar to my own, and with a head of pomaded hair and cropped side-whiskers that suggested a respectable townsman rather than a man of the wilderness. His appearance contrasted starkly with the rugged moss-grown look of some of the more colourful characters I had encountered in the village. The neglected state of the lane made my approach quite audible from some distance, and the man had had time to react to my advent and walk leisurely down to the gate of his garden before I had arrived at it. His look was not entirely pleasant - there was something akin to anxiety in his eyes - but the faint smile he met me with was more than I had come to expect from these suspicious country dwellers.

  “Have you lost your way, perhaps?” he said, absentmindedly hooking a thumb in the pocket of his waistcoat.

  “Not particularly. I have been wandering aimlessly for a few hours, and am not really going anywhere.”

  “Well, this lane leads nowhere. It continues down to the brook and a few yards into the woods, and then it just stops.”

  “Can one not walk on through the rough country?”

  “Hardly. The woods are thick and virtually impenetrable. My best advice to you would be to turn back and take the first turning at the fork in the road, about half a mile up the hill.”

  “I would, only this road seemed to me to be a shortcut back to the village. It cannot be far beyond the trees.”

  “Many people think so, but the lay of the land is deceiving. One hardly notices that the lane bends to the north here, leading in the wrong direction. In fact it is the other road that leads to the village.”

  By this time, I had sensed that this man had a reason for deterring me from going further, a reason that did not have anything to do with the fact that the road ended, but as he was so adamant, I did not wish to infuriate him by insisting, and replied that I would return and go the other way. This news relieved him noticeably, and he became more friendly, asking me whether he could help me in any other way. I told him I thought the cottage was most attractive and that it was partly the sight of it that had encouraged me to continue this way. He seemed delighted, and told me it was over two hundred years old.

  “In the old times, the people who dwelled here earned their living on sheep farming, but now the house is owned by a local squire who lets it to people in need of a secluded getaway. Nobody seems to know where the name Inchwood comes from, however, and most likely it descends from a place name associated with the area since medieval times.”

  “I see. So you lease the cottage? For the season?”

  “You might say that.”

  My question appeared to have made him watchful once more, and I realised that I had overstepped the boundary.

  “Well, I can certainly understand why one would want to retreat from the world to a place as peaceful as this,” I said, in order to return to the discourse of small-talk. “I have done the same thing, if only for a few weeks.”

  Seeing an opportunity to steer the conversation away from himself, he enthusiastically inquired about the reason for my holiday, and when he eventually understood who I was, he proclaimed with delight that he was familiar with my name and was an admirer of my accounts of the work of Sherlock Holmes. This naturally led to a series of slightly awkward but heartfelt exchanges of courtesies, and I was both surprised and glad to come across a reader of my work in such a remote place. My identity seemed to sweep away the last remnants of reserve in the man, and the conversation resulted in an invitation into the house, a suggestion that me and my weary limbs were only too glad to accept.

  He introduced himself as Elmsley Purkiss, and continued questioning me about my holiday and the walks I had made in the last few days, seemingly most interested in where I had been and just how much of the area I had actually seen. It was not until we were both comfortably seated in two easychairs by a back window overlooking the bordering field that I was given the opportunity to pose similar questions to my host.

  “How long have you been living here?”

  He sipped his tea, looking into the air with a distant stare.

  “A bit too long, perhaps.”

  “Are you here on holiday?”

  “It began as some sort of holiday, I suppose. It then evolved into an obsession. Eventually it turned into a curse.”

  “You interest me, Mr. Purkiss. If my human experience is anything to go by, I would say that you are a man with a heavy heart.”

  “Either a heavy heart or a heavy head.” He put down his teacup with something akin to resolution. “I feel I want to tell you about my predicament, Dr. Watson, since I trust you and know you to be a man of knowledge and wisdom. One could hardly have hoped for a better receiver of my confession than a man whose writings have convinced me of his honesty and decency. Very well then, I shall tell you my story, but only on the condition that it travels no further than this room, unless of course you should someday wish to share it with your detective friend.

  “I am a scholar by profession, a historian as a matter of fact, and I am attached since several years to the University of Cambridge. I came here at the instigation of the squire I mentioned earlier, who is the owner of this cottage and the surrounding land. His name is Marchmont, and I met him at a function in Cambridge about six months ago. We struck up a conversation for no apparent reason, and he seemed genuinely interested in my work, researching the late-medieval tax registers of northern Shropshire. As the hour grew late, our discussion turned to more personal matters, an
d eventually he put his brandy down on the table and looked at me with a more grave look than before.

  “’I wish to tell you something, Dr. Purkiss, a certain personal quandary that a man of your learning might make heads or tails of.’

  “I was intrigued, still enthused by our conversation, which had until now remained quite lighthearted, and I encouraged him to continue.

  “‘There is on my land,’ he said, ‘not three miles from where my garden gives way to wild unfarmed countryside, a small cottage overlooking a small stream and the edge of a copse. It is a charming and picturesque place, and I have several times let it to holidaymakers with much success, but it is also connected with a piece of local folklore that has a tendency to ward off prospective tenants. It is said that the ford across the stream where the path enters the woods is haunted, and that several people who have walked down that path and crossed the ford have never returned. The story goes that sometime in the sixteenth century, when Marchmont Manor was in the possession of one of my ancestors and his two sons, a local maiden was abducted by a woman who was rumoured to be a witch and taken to an old medieval turret in the midst of the woods. One of the Marchmont sons, Sir Roderick, swore to the locals that he would bring back the girl, and entered the woods on his horse by crossing the stream that bordered it.’

  “‘From that time, nothing was heard or seen of him for over a year, until suddenly one day he staggered out of the woods at exactly the place where he had entered it, weak and stripped of his armour, walking up to the little cottage where the shepherd and his wife had stepped out on the front steps, curious of the strange, ostensibly tramp-like, wanderer. Sir Roderick collapsed before their feet and they took him in, nursing him for several days. It was clear, however, that he was too enfeebled to regain his strength, and he died there, although not without first providing undeniable proof that he was who he claimed to be by producing the sword branded by the family crest that he had once carried with him into the woods. The shepherd and his wife took the sword to his father and brother at the manor and told them what he had told them, that he had spent a year searching for the maiden but being perpetually misled by the witch, whose magic transformed the woods into a bewildering maze, constantly changing appearance and form.’

  “‘Sir Roderick’s brother, upon hearing the sad news, swore that he would avenge the witch by putting her on the stake, and rode off himself into the woods, only to disappear completely. His father declared that no one was to enter these woods again, and the matter was laid to rest. Since that time, however, there have been continuous reports of strange events in connection with the woods, especially concerning the ghost of a pale-faced maiden who has been seen standing on the other side of the ford, beckoning to passers-by. It is said that this is the girl whom Sir Roderick originally set out to rescue, only now she is seen as a decoy, luring innocent men and women into the woods to become victims of the evil witch.’

  “‘This would all have been nothing but a colourful piece of folklore, if it had not been for the events of the recent past. Last year, I let the cottage to a newlywed couple who were looking for a romantic hideaway from the bustle of their metropolitan lives. They decided to go home after only a week. The husband came to me and claimed that they had been harassed at all hours of the day by strange screams, and whenever they approached the woods on their walks, the sight of a spectral young girl following them on the other side of the brook, in among the trees, made every attempt at peace of mind futile. Inclined to ascribe the incident to the personalities of the tenants rather than something in the physical reality of the place, I shortly thereafter let the cottage to a young ornithologist who had a special interest in the owls of that region of Herefordshire. But pacing the terrain at night in search of nocturnally active birds only served to make the experience more tangible, and he only lasted a couple of days.’

  “Marchmont paused in his narrative and removed his spectacles to wipe the sweat from his eyelids. I was intrigued by his tale rather than unnerved, and the details appealed to my historical interests. I asked him about the continuing fate of the dead knight’s family, and he answered as I had suspected.

  “‘Sir Roderick was my ancestor, and I am now the resident at Marchmont Manor, where my family has lived since the sixteenth century. Somehow I feel a sense of responsibility now that the old family curse has reared its head again, and I feel I should do something, but at the same time I am afraid. You are a scholar and a historian, Dr. Purkiss. What do you suggest I should do?’

  “My brain had already begun to make plans for a new research project, and I saw a potential for making exciting new discoveries in the Marchmont family archives that would make me the envy of my peers.

  “‘I suggest, Mr. Marchmont,’ said I, ‘that you invite me down to Marchmont Manor this spring. I will come and have a look in your family papers, and maybe even spend a night or two in the cottage. I am certain that some light will be shed on this mystery.’

  “Marchmont was hesitant. ‘This is a very bad business, indeed, Dr. Purkiss. I would not want to lead you into anything you might regret.’

  “‘Come now, Mr. Marchmont. Your previous tenants were obviously impressionable and weak-minded people. I hardly expect that a man like myself would react to such events in the same way. My impulse is towards reason and investigation. You forget that you are talking to a Cambridge man!’

  “In the course of the following minutes, I managed to persuade him, and arrangements were made for me to come to Herefordshire after the end of term. I looked forward to a peaceful and not too demanding break from my daily routines, but the moment I arrived in this area, it seemed that a cloud of misapprehension appeared above my head.

  “You know how it is, Doctor, when you travel and the sensation of actually being in the strange place you have been looking forward to visiting makes you feel much more quaint and bewildered than you could ever have anticipated. This feeling tends to wear off in the first few days, but with this place the process was the opposite. The longer I stayed at Marchmont Manor - a grim Elizabethan mansion in a dreadful state of disrepair - the clearer I felt this unease, and so when it was suggested I go out and stay at Inchwood Cottage for a couple of days, I welcomed the change of scenery. To this point, I had been searching the Marchmont archive for anything that either pertained to the legend of Sir Roderick, or that simply attracted my interest, but to my great disappointment, all I could find were bills, deeds, and dreary farming accounts. I fancied that if I came out to the cottage, I could study the landscape instead, and perhaps even indulge in a bit of amateur archaeology. But whatever self-confidence I may have felt before relocating to the cottage was swept away quickly after the first night here.

  “It was not exactly the cottage itself that filled me with dread. You can see for yourself that it is a pleasant and well-kept house, and Mr. Marchmont has made sure it is fitted with the most modern conveniences. The curious feelings were from the beginning connected to the woods. Whenever I glanced out of the window at it, or walked down to the brook, I felt a cold creeping sensation running through me. I decided at first that it was all nonsense, and set out one morning, determined to find my way through the woods and learn whether any remains of a witch’s tower could be seen on the other side. I must say, Dr. Watson, that it was probably the most horrendous experience of my life. The screams that I had intermittently heard the previous night were as nothing compared to the terrors of the woods. The first thing that met me after I had crossed the ford and walked up the slope on which the copse was located were the scarecrows. Not ordinary scarecrows, made of straw and old clothes, but scarecrows made of the bones and skulls of animals, tied together and placed on poles that had been driven into the ground at various places.

  “These macabre creations seemed to have been erected for the purpose of warding off intruders, and the sight of them made me change direction several times, causing me to lose my way
. I believed I had finally come upon a path that would lead me in the right direction, when I look up the hill and saw a human figure standing twenty yards ahead of me. It was like no human I had ever seen before. To all aspects, it was a young girl, but she was emaciated and gaunt, her cheeks sunken as if from starvation, and her eyes contorted into a haunting dark stare. Dressed in nothing but her undergarments, which were tattered and torn, she stretched her long thin arms out towards me, with hands that seemed to have been bound up so that she could not separate her fingers, and she whispered in a voice that imitated the restless wind in the treetops a word that sounded strangely like ‘bedrock.’ She repeated it a few times, and the last time the uttering of the word transformed into a piercing scream, so full of terror that my nerves failed me, and I ran away from there as fast as I could. I am not proud of my capitulation to supernatural speculations, Dr. Watson, and I trust that your friend Mr. Holmes would be even less proud of me, but that evening, I started to wonder whether Marchmont’s story was not true after all, and concluded that what I had encountered in the woods could be nothing other than a ghost, as clear and as horrifying as one might appear.

  “My realisation led the way to harrowing contemplations that forced me to question the very foundations of my beliefs. I suppose there was some particle in me that refused to give in to the acknowledgment of the supernatural, and so I decided to stay on in the cottage, to see if anything further could be concluded from the matter. I could not bring myself to enter the woods again, however, and was condemned to wander along its borders like a dog around a cat in a tree. On several occasions, I saw the spectral maiden peering out at me from among the trees, stretching out her arms and calling to me with a strange high-pitched screech reminiscent of some birdcall, and every time I saw her, I ran all the way back to the cottage, my nervous state forcing me to lie down for the rest of the day. Now I have been here all summer, and I have come no closer to an answer in this matter, having little doubt that this obsession will eventually steal away what little reason I have left in me.”