by David Marcum
The man looked out of the window with a dreamy gaze long after he had finished his story, giving me time to sort out the many impressions and questions that it had left in my mind. When he finally turned his eyes to me, my first question was evident:
“Do you believe the maiden in the woods to be the ghost of the one that Sir Roderick rode out to rescue?”
Dr. Purkiss pursed his lips.
“Yes, I cannot deny it. She is undoubtedly a ghost, and who else would it be? There are no records of any other crime in this part of the world, and the only instance of civilisation here is this cottage. I know it sounds incredible, and you are right to be critical, but if you had seen her like I have, you would feel the same conviction.”
“Is she dressed in Elizabethan clothes?”
He smiled.
“She is dressed in undergarments which are torn to pieces, making it quite impossible to judge what period they come from.”
“I see. Have you made any attempts to walk around the perimeter of the copse, to see if the tower can be seen from the other side?”
“I have had plenty of time this summer to get acquainted with the area enough to be able to draw up a detailed map of it. On the other side of the woods there is a lake which has a reputation for being exceedingly deep. When you observe the woods from the other side of the lake, you can see that the land rises and that the woods are growing on a large hill upon which it is perfectly possible that there has once been a manmade structure, but no documentation in the Marchmont archives, or indeed the village archives, make mention of such a structure. The legend may very well have exaggerated this particular ingredient, as it has been passed down through the generations. I do not expect it to reflect reality completely.”
“What do you intend to do?”
“I suppose I will have to leave sooner or later. I have made arrangements with my college to allow me to remain here for a longer period than I had intended, but I cannot prolong my stay indefinitely, and come October, my time here must be terminated.”
I found the company of Dr. Purkiss stimulating, and I stayed for another hour while we chatted about other matters - a pastime he seemed to be in desperate need of - but when it started to grow dark, I decided I would not stay to see what would emerge from the woods, and started on my way back to the hotel in the village. That evening, I had dinner on my own in my room and found time to ponder the strange story I had been told. There was something unfulfilled about it, as if Dr. Purkiss had not exactly told me the whole truth, or his supernatural experiences had discouraged him from investigating the matter in full. But above all, it was the fearful images his narrative had evoked that stayed in my mind, and as I went to bed, I found that my brain was at work trying to shed some light on it, making it quite impossible for me to fall asleep.
Instead, I rose from my bed and sat down at the writing-desk by the window, trying with the help of ink and paper to disentangle the jumble of impressions in my head. I started making a list of the various factors of the problem, and as I did so, I realised what would put my mind at rest. I promptly crumpled up my list and produced a fresh sheet of writing paper, immediately starting on a letter to Sherlock Holmes that related Dr. Purkiss’ story in detail. I knew deep down that whenever a mystery like this came my way, old habits had taught me that laying the matter before Holmes was the only certain path to peace of mind. I remembered that Dr. Purkiss had, in passing, given me permission to communicate the story to Holmes, and although this remark might have been an unreflected impulse of courtesy, my insomniac self seized upon this vague consent to be able to obey its natural instincts. I consequently gave a full description of the story I had come in contact with that afternoon, using a few months of silence between me and my friend as an excuse to write to him.
The next morning I posted the letter in the village, before embarking on a new walk that would circle the boundaries of the haunted copse. As I trudged the wild terrain, my mind wandered, and the legend of Sir Roderick made me think of that strange and mysterious poem by Browning, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, about a young knight on an aimless quest, approaching a dark tower at the edge of an inhospitable wasteland. The parallels were not obvious, but I suppose it was the way Dr. Purkiss had called the witch’s dwelling a “dark tower” that made me recall the poem from long ago, and especially the passage that went-
What with my whole world-wide wandering,
What with my search drawn out through years, my hope
Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring,
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
My heart made, finding failure in its scope.
-which to me conjured up the same sense of hopelessness that distinguished both Sir Roderick’s undertaking and Dr. Purkiss’ research. My walk did not produce any knowledge beyond what Dr. Purkiss had already told me, except that I was allowed to see for myself the lake on the other side of the woods, and the difficulty one would meet by trying to penetrate it from that side. I forced myself to devote the afternoon to my article and continued with my writing the next day, which eventually made me think less about my visit to Inchwood Cottage. Two days after my meeting with Dr. Purkiss, the girl at the hotel reception stopped me on my way from breakfast to tell me I had received a letter. It was from Holmes of course, and I rushed up to my room to see what he had written. The letter read as follows:
My dear Watson,
Glad to hear you are well and everything, but more importantly, I must thank you for bringing the Inchwood case to my attention. Your report was most detailed, and I have gone over the basic facts several times since I received your letter. On the whole, however, I must conclude that you could have posed much more probing questions to Purkiss than you did. Firstly, when it comes to his willingness to accept a supernatural explanation, we must ensure that there is nothing in his background that facilitates this, such as the loss of a loved one, or a history of supernatural belief in his family.
What exactly is his experience of women? His reaction to seeing a frightened and helpless girl in the woods seems most ungentlemanlike. Secondly, what can we really know about what is going on in the woods beyond what the legend would have us think? It is very easy to view a problem from one side without being able to imagine the completely different appearance it would have were it viewed from another angle. This lack of imagination is usually what divides us from our fellow man. I therefore encourage you to go back to your feebleminded historian and ask him to describe more fully what he has actually seen. Then write to me again as soon as possible.
Holmes’s sparse but sober words reassured me that there were still avenues of inquiry that needed to be explored before a supernatural explanation should be seriously considered. At the same time, I think that Holmes’s physical distance from the scene hindered him from appreciating the non-verbal nuances of the case - Dr. Purkiss’ way of telling the story, the grim and unwelcoming atmosphere of the copse - thus being less inclined to see it the way I did. Always taking my friend’s advice, however, I followed his instructions and paid another visit to Inchwood Cottage.
I found Dr. Purkiss as I had the previous time, hard at work on the rose bushes, a hobby that seemed to take his mind away from the sad reasons for his continued tenancy. There is no need for me to put down the words that passed between us on this occasion. It was a pleasant visit, and Dr. Purkiss was delighted to see me again. Much of our conversation was devoted to other matters, but I did press him on the details of his narrative, and he was most insistent in defending his interpretation of the events. I left him none the wiser than when I came, and feared that my next letter to Holmes would be dissatisfying to him. However, when I returned to the hotel, I learned that a new letter had arrived. It was from Holmes, written only the day after the previous one:
My dear Watson,
I had just sent Billy to the post office with your letter when I sat myself down with the task of pasting the week’s newspaper clippings into my scrapbook, and came upon a most tantalising but brief report from the Gazette of the 15th inst. The connection to your story was not clear, but the outline of this followed too closely the outline of yours to keep me from investigating further. I ran off to the library to consult the regional newspapers of that particular part of the country.
My findings confirmed my suspicions and stirred vague thoughts about this case at the back of my mind that I had been unable or too lazy to verbalise in my letter to you. For instance: what invisible border allows a woman to appear inside a forest but keeps her from appearing outside it? The way she - or they - appeared at the edge of the woods seemingly beckoning to passers-by made me increasingly suspicious. The state of her hands will, I am sure, provide the key to this. And then there was that word she had used when encountering Purkiss: “Bedrock.” This constitutes nothing short of evidence, Watson!
My following course of action was to purchase as comprehensive Ordnance Survey maps of the area as I could find, and I have now spent a few stimulating hours in their company, exploring the region in much the same fashion as I have no doubt you have been doing for the past few days. The expedition reveals something quite extraordinary. In an old 18th-century book on the Marchmont family that I found at Cecil Court, there was a reproduction of an old map of the estate. It was done by a visiting surveyor, which explains why it would not have been in the family archives, and it shows the copse much as it looks on modern maps, apart from one thing. There is a building in the middle of the woods that has disappeared in the later maps. Now, why is this? Has it been demolished? Is someone trying to hide its existence?
I think the real answer is more prosaic. No one has bothered to look at this map when drawing up the new ones, and the resurrected legend might explain why no 19th-century surveyor has felt the urge to penetrate the woods, while a Georgian man of the Enlightenment found little reason for apprehension. After all, if one disregards the legend, it is just a boring grove of trees.
So where does this lead us, Watson? It leads us to a very exciting development. There is something in the woods, but not what Dr. Purkiss thinks. And the circumstantial evidence of the newspaper reports tells us to act, with speed and determination. It is a matter of life and death, and I fear you would not forgive yourself - if I know you correctly - should you be too late to avert a tragedy, or at least to prevent a tragedy from progressing further. By Heavens, I wish I was there to assist you! Pressing engagements and a lack of time prevents me, but I wish you luck, my friend, and good hunting.
The letter explained nothing further, but enclosed with it were two newspaper clippings, which Holmes would have thought would be sufficient data for me to put two and two together. In the upper corner of each of them, I recognised his handwriting giving the date and name of the publication from which it was cut. The first one was two weeks old and came from The Times:
MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCES IN HEREFORDSHIRE.
The Echo reports that another local girl has vanished in the area of the town of Great Rumsey in northern Herefordshire. Readers may recall the mysterious disappearance last summer of Jenny Mayle, 19, who worked as a milkmaid at Crossways Farm. She lived in a stable building adjoining the main house and vanished overnight, the farmer and his family having heard no suspicious sounds. According to a witness statement from a farmhand, it was as if she had been dragged away from her bed and out into the night. Although the police initially suspected the farmer and his family, no evidence could be found against them, and it seemed increasingly likely that the crime had been perpetrated by an outsider.
This case was elicited by the locals in late May of this year, when a similar incident took place. The victim was a Miss Millicent Ellis, 23, the daughter of a local butcher, who walked home one evening from the village of Bramhurst to her family home two miles away, but never arrived. As no traces have been found in over three weeks of searching, the police are beginning to abandon the possibility that Miss Ellis has been the victim of a crime, instead believing that she has met with some sort of accident, possibly drowning in one of the treacherous meres hidden in the surrounding forests. The similarity of the two cases is striking, and the newspapers are starting to speculate on whether they might be related, but the local police insist that there are still too few indications of a shared culprit.
After reading this account, I was beginning to see what Holmes was driving at in his letter, but when I read the second clipping, things started to fall into place. It was from a local paper, dated the previous spring:
ESCAPE FROM GLOUCESTER
A dramatic escape took place yesterday at Gloucester County Gaol of the notorious criminal Julius Bedrock, who was caught three years ago on suspicion of assaulting several young women in the area of Ledbury, Herefordshire, including his own former wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Bedrock, who subsequently died of her injuries. Only a lack of evidence saved Mr. Bedrock from a death penalty, but now that he is once again at large, the police fear that he will continue his rampage, and possibly commit even more heinous crimes than before. The escape was carried out by means of a rope that had been secured to the prison wall, but it could only be successfully executed through the willful neglect of one or several members of the staff, which is why the director has ordered a full investigation and interrogation of the guards on duty at the time of the escape.
There was only one thing that related this item to the story of Dr. Purkiss, but it was enough to make me see it in an entirely new light. It was, of course, the name of Bedrock, which was not unique, but uncommon enough to consider the possible parallels. The evidence that Holmes had provided me with indicated several things: that this man Bedrock was in some way connected to whatever was going on in the woods, that there was possibly a building in the woods, and that the spectral maiden or maidens that Purkiss had seen were, if not ghosts, then the ghostlike manifestations of young girls abducted from the surrounding area.
Whether they were alive or not, I was still too committed to Purkiss’ perspective to say, but there were no doubts that I should contact the local police immediately. I chose to do this without contacting Purkiss or Mr. Marchmont, and I feared that the men at the sleepy little provincial station would dismiss me as a highly-strung city dweller overreacting on my encounter with something rural and uncivilised, but to my delight they listened to my story and sensed my earnestness. The Superintendent looked at the newspaper clippings that I had brought with me, and ordered that all his men be rounded up to assist us in investigating the matter.
Daylight was beginning to fade as we arrived at Inchwood Cottage and the ford that constituted the main entrance into the copse. I saw no light in the windows of the cottage and concluded that Dr. Purkiss had gone to bed, deciding that it would be unnecessary to worry him with what was going on until we had been able to acquire some answers. The Superintendent led the way into the woods, and although I was prepared for it, I was a startled as the policemen to see the grotesque scarecrows of animal bones that lined the path up the hill. Some of the men suggested we do it in the morning, but the Superintendent urged them not to mind about attempts at deterrence, and we continued on our way.
Eventually we came upon something resembling a bundle of clothes lying by the foot of a birch tree. As we came closer, it turned out to be the lifeless body of a young girl, wearing nothing but her petticoat. One of the men kneeled beside her and declared that she was still breathing. I examined her quickly and concluded that she had been starved and assaulted, but thanks to her youth she was not dying. What struck me most of all, however, was her hands, which had been bound up so that her fingers could not be separated, just as Dr. Purkiss had described. I also noticed that there was a strong rope tied around her waist which led away from her body, snaking up the hill through the trees. I call
ed the policemen’s attention to this, and we followed the rope up the hill.
It led us twenty yards onwards, to a small clearing in which was standing some sort of structure. In the fading sunlight, it appeared to me like a wide and crooked tower, about three stories high, but ruined, suggesting that it had once been higher. At this moment, a curious and not particularly pleasant sensation was roused in my stomach. It was the presentiment of darkness, not physical night-time darkness, but human darkness, the bottomless pit of the diseased human soul. And I was once more reminded of Browning and his pathetic knight, who was beginning to prefer the prospect of failure to the potentially overpowering chance of consummation.
Was this consummation, the confrontation with the fact of the matter, too horrendous to imagine? Was it perhaps better to revert to unworldly fantasising, interpreting the grim consequences of human actions as signs of the wondrous and supernatural, instead of having to acknowledge what they really were? I let the professional policemen walk ahead of me into the building, which, I suppose, was nothing more than an old cowshed or hay barn, preserved in this remote corner since a time when this copse was a field, but turning in my defensive fantasy into something more romantic and more manageable.
Julius Bedrock was brought out of that building screaming and kicking, and it took three strong policemen to be able to hold him down and convey him to the prison wagon. Inside were also found the remains of Jenny Mayle, the lost milkmaid, who had been abducted by Bedrock the previous summer and kept in his secret hideaway for as long as her powers allowed her. The other girl was identified as Millicent Ellis, the butcher’s daughter, and in spite of her delicate state, she eventually managed to regain her strength and her health was restored, although the mental scars that her experiences at Bedrock’s lair would take much more time to heal.