by Carole Bugge
After spending the morning tramping about the grounds of the abbey, Holmes and I sat over a late tea in the library that afternoon. Holmes wanted to research some of the Devon legends which floated about the abbey, and we sat pouring over any books we could find with information about Torquay. In addition to their extensive art treasures, the Cary family had an impressive collection of books, which they kept in the spacious library in the east wing of the abbey.
“Watson, what do you know about letterboxing?” Holmes said, pouring himself a cup of tea.
“Nothing,” I replied. “What is it?”
Holmes flicked an ash from where it had fallen on his sleeve. “It is a curious sport,” he observed, smiling. “No doubt it serves as an excuse for some otherwise sedentary gentlemen to tramp about the moors of a Saturday.”
“Oh?” I said, intrigued. “What sort of sport might that be?”
“I know little other than what I have read,” he answered with a shrug. “I believe it involves placing one’s card in a sort of container, or letterbox, that is to be found upon the moors—under rocks, trees, even buried in the ground—to show that one has been there.”
I reached for my pipe and began filling it with tobacco. “Really? It sounds an odd sort of activity—why do they refer to it as a sport, I wonder?”
“Well, the sport comes into it in following a rather complicated series of clues which lead you to the next letterbox.”
“I see. Sort of like treasure-hunting—only without any real treasure.”
Holmes nodded. “Just so. It exists mostly in the West Country, though I believe it is spreading slowly to other parts of the Great Britain.”
“Hmm,” I said, lighting my pipe. “What significance does it have to us?”
“Well, unless I miss my guess, Father Norton is a participant in this rather odd sport.”
“Really?” I replied. “How do you surmise that?”
Holmes smiled mysteriously. “Oh, come, Watson. Do I have to reveal my methods every time to you?”
I laughed. “No, of course not—it’s just that I’m curious.”
“Well, restrain your curiosity a little while if you can,” he said with a sideways glance towards the door. “It seems we have a visitor.”
We were indeed about to be joined by another person, though his entrance into the room was a strange one. I looked in the direction Holmes indicated and saw young William lurking just the other side of the door. He may have thought he was out of sight, but his shaggy dark hair was clearly visible, and I could see his pale face poking around the corner. He saw me watching him, though, and the face disappeared, only to reappear again moments later.
“There’s nothing to be frightened of, William,” Holmes said in a soothing voice. “Come have a cup of tea with us.”
The boy took a couple of halting steps into the room and then stopped, and I took the opportunity to study him. His appearance was one of rumpled disorder. His clothes, though clean and in good condition, looked ill-fitting and unkempt on him; it was not so much the clothes themselves as the way he wore them. His shirt-tail hung out on one side, his untied shoelaces trailed uselessly after him, one shirt-sleeve was buttoned, while the other flapped loosely about his wrist. His hair was a frightful tangle of dark curls, and looked as though it had not been combed for some days.
“Would you like some cake, William?” Holmes said softly, watching the boy greedily eye the plate of lemon cake.
William nodded silently in reply, and took a couple of steps towards the tea tray. Holmes reached slowly out for the cake plate, and with a steady, smooth gesture, handed it to the boy. I recalled seeing the same sort of careful movements back when I was serving in India—an Indian comrade had used the same fluid gestures, slow and hypnotic, as he approached a poisonous snake asleep in our path.
William’s eyes widened as he watched the plate of cake—then, with a speed so sudden it startled me, he grabbed the plate and began shoving a piece of cake into his mouth rapidly, as though he hadn’t eaten for a week. I looked at Holmes, who was observing the boy intently.
“Good, isn’t it?” he said softly.
William didn’t reply, but nodded vigorously as he ate, crumbs flying everywhere, floating down upon the carpet like tiny yellow snowflakes.
“You like cake, don’t you?” said Holmes.
By way of reply, William made a gurgling sound, neither quite human nor animal. It was as though he was trying to speak but couldn’t get the words out. Holmes leaned his head back, the fingers of one thin hand drumming restlessly on the arm of his chair. He looked at William through half-closed eyes. A casual observer might think he was napping, but I knew my friend well enough to realize that he was in fact observing the minutest detail of the boy’s behaviour.
William’s eyes darted around the room as he devoured the cake. He sat on the floor right where he was, stuffing cake into his mouth as fast as he could.
“Is that good, William?” Holmes said gently. “Did your mother used to give you cake like that?”
Suddenly there was a change in the boy. His eyes widened, and he sprang to his feet, gesturing wildly. He seemed to want to show us something, for he looked earnestly at us while making the tortured, half-human sounds which seemed to be his version of speech. Placing his cake on the sideboard, he pointed to himself, then, to my surprise, began stirring an imaginary pot with an imaginary spoon. I looked at Holmes—William was doing a very credible job of miming someone cooking. I began to speak, but Holmes laid a hand upon my arm.
“No, Watson—he’s trying to show us something,” he whispered.
William continued to stir the pot, adding ingredients from various invisible containers, and then suddenly he stopped, seeming to hear something. He put down his “spoon” and crept in the direction of what would be the outside door if he were indeed in the abbey kitchen. He hesitated, then opened the door. His face expressing utter horror at what he saw, he gave a terrified screech, which sent a chill through me, and fell abruptly to the floor, writhing in agony. So good was his performance that I was half out of my chair to come to his aid when he rose from the floor, evidently uninjured. He stared earnestly at us for a moment, then his face crumpled and he sat down at my feet rocking himself to and fro, moaning and whimpering. His distress was heartbreaking to see, and I reached out to lay a comforting hand upon his shoulder, but he pulled away and continued rocking himself. He then scooted across the floor to where the plate of cake sat upon the sideboard and resumed eating, all the while whimpering softly to himself.
I looked at Holmes. “Do you realize what we’ve just seen, Watson?” he said.
I nodded. The implication was clear: William had been present at his mother’s death!
What was not clear, however, was whether he was capable of identifying her “attacker”—it seemed from his re-enactment that poor Sally may have died of a heart attack, after all.
“I wonder if anyone in the household has seen this ‘performance,’” Holmes murmured as the boy continued to eat cake. The activity seemed to calm him, and before long his frenetic state evaporated and he sat contentedly upon the sofa, rocking gently back and forth and humming softly to himself, the kind of little wordless melodies a small child might invent.
“Are you going to tell any members of the Cary family about this?” I said.
“I think not,” Holmes replied. “I have not decided who can be trusted, and I wouldn’t want to do anything that would put William in danger.”
The boy looked up at the mention of his name and smiled. He really was a pretty child, with his head of curly dark hair, full red lips and smooth olive skin.
“Do you really think harm could come to him, Holmes?” I said, alarmed at the idea that anyone might think to hurt the poor lad.
Holmes shook his head. “I don’t know, Watson; I have many pieces to the puzzle, but so far they are not adding up to a coherent picture.”
* * *
I was feeling unusual
ly tired that night, and, excusing myself from supper with the family, went to bed early. I awoke in the middle of the night seized by a chill, shivering so violently that my teeth rattled. I piled every spare blanket on top of me that I could find, but to no avail; I continued to shake. My forehead burned and my eyes ached. Wrapping a blanket around my shoulders, I went over to where my medical bag sat on the window-seat and extracted a thermometer from it. The stone floor was like ice under my feet. Upon taking my temperature, which was a hundred and two, I realized that I had not escaped the flu epidemic after all. Cursing my rotten luck, I wrapped a wool scarf around my neck and returned to my bed, slipping in under the pile of blankets.
I lay there tossing and turning, alternately freezing and burning up with fever. My head felt swollen and fuzzy, and my muscles ached. Fevered images of the poor unfortunate Spanish prisoners invaded my thoughts. I imagined myself one of them, lying in the cold and cheerless barn, the dampness seeping into my bones as the fever ravaged my body…
I dozed off, awakening to the sound of voices in the hallway. It was still pitch-black outside, and I strained to catch the words, my head throbbing from the effort. It was a man and a woman; I wasn’t certain, but I thought the voices belonged to Lord Cary and his mother.
“Where is she?” the man whispered fiercely.
“I don’t know!” came the answer, equally tense.
Then there was the sound of footsteps departing in both directions. I listened for a few minutes more, until, hearing nothing but silence, I finally drifted off into a restless slumber, the blankets pulled up to my chin. I fell into a fever-induced dream state in which I imagined I was a Spanish sailor caught in a storm with the coast of Devon in sight. But the ship drifted farther and farther away from the coastline, until it faded away into the wind and fog. I stood upon the bow surrounded by a thick white mist, cut off from land, from rescue, from any hope of deliverance from the fierceness of the gale.
Chapter Eleven
I awoke to a thin grey dawn outside my window. A pale slice of sun was trying to break through the low cloud cover blanketing the rolling hills of Devon. I sat up in bed; once again I could smell the sea, which lay only about half a mile to the east. I had a sudden urge to go down to the water, through the orchard and down the hill leading to the sandy beach which was the western boundary of the abbey property. But a sudden fit of dizziness reminded me that I was sick, and I sank back upon the pillows and closed my eyes.
Just then I thought I heard the sound of a flute, faint and thin, drifting through the drafty halls of Torre Abbey. I wondered where it could possibly be coming from, and then I remembered what Holmes had said about Grayson. The melody was modal, some kind of Celtic tune, the song sliding smoothly onward like water rolling over stones, moving ahead even as it twisted and turned around itself. The flute had a ghostly sound, echoing through the ancient stone chambers of the abbey as though it were being played by a long-dead hand, a ghost sonata played by the dead for the benefit of the living. My mind turned to all the many rituals the living performed to honour the dead.
I mused upon the deep need we have to maintain contact with the dead. Once someone has passed from this world into the next, we think of ways to keep them with us: hoarding letters, pictures, mementoes, keepsakes, even clothing. Is it to smooth our own entry into this other world, I wondered, or because we cannot bear to say goodbye to dear friends? I had often thought religion was primarily man’s response to the catastrophe of death—his attempt to come to terms with Nature’s great final insult, to understand and control it, in a way. The upcoming séance, the funeral service—all were attempts to communicate in some way or other with the land of the dead.
And all of this done without the knowledge of whether our communiqués would ever hit their mark, as pure an act of faith as could be imagined, I supposed—love letters sent into the void without hope of acknowledgement. There was something touching about this, I thought; something touching but also disturbing. What a race of necrophiliacs we were, with our endless obsession over the dead. It seemed impossible for us to stick to the business of living; we simply could not leave the dead to lie in peace, quietly mouldering in ancient cemeteries. No, we had to visit their crumbling bones, festoon their rotting tombstones with flowers, and kneel upon the damp ground to show our obeisance to the past and to the certainty of our universal future.
Whether it was the strange Celtic tune that made me think these morbid thoughts, or the effect of the virus upon my weary brain, I could not say. But as I lay there listening to the intricate melodic strains of the flute, my mind looped over and through the music, like a counter-melody curling and twisting around the ancient-sounding Celtic air.
* * *
I must have dozed off, because I awoke some time later to the sound of rain outside. I didn’t know how long I had slept; it was impossible to tell from the dull grey sky what time of day it was. My body still ached, but the fever had broken; my forehead, though clammy, was no longer burning. Lying under the goose-down quilt, I was in fact rather comfortable.
Listening to the steady drumming of rain upon the window panes, my mind wandered to all the thousands of feet which had trod these halls in centuries past, coming and going with the same regularity as the raindrops falling so steadily upon my windowsill. I thought of all the monks and abbots searching for truth through the way of the Church, seeking in God what they had been unable to find in their fellow man. I had never quite understood the compulsion to live the cloistered life—London was such a hodgepodge of people, a veritable symphony of sensations, as stimulating an environment as one could imagine. I had lived there so long that it was strange now to be in the midst of such solitude, sequestered within the thick walls of this ancient monastery.
Now, lying in my weakened state in the seclusion of my room with only the rain to keep me company, I half-imagined myself as one of those ancient monks, wandering the halls in my long coarse robe, carrying a single candle, the wax dripping slowly onto the stone floors of endless passageways smelling of incense and tallow.
There was a knock at the door.
“Yes?” I called out.
“It’s Grayson, sir.”
“Come in.”
The door opened and the butler entered the room carrying a tray. “I though you might like a cup of tea, sir,” he said, placing the tray upon the nightstand next to the bed.
“Thank you, Grayson,” I replied, pulling myself up under the covers.
“Lord Cary always used to say there was nothing wrong in the world that a cup of tea couldn’t make better,” he said, arranging the things on the table to make more room for the tray. Large, knotty blue veins protruded from under the skin of his hands, hands which looked surprisingly strong for a man of his age.
“What was that melody you were playing, Grayson?”
“Oh, that was an old English air the master used to like, sir. It’s about lost love, I believe.”
“It’s very haunting.”
“Do you think so, sir?” he replied as he tucked the blankets in around my feet. “I always found it rather sad.”
“That too—yes, it is sad.”
“He was a lover of the finer things in life, my master,” Grayson added with a sigh.
“He certainly married a beautiful woman,” I replied.
Grayson looked at me as if he was about to reply, then turned away. I thought I sensed disapproval in the set of his shoulders, and wondered if he was about to disagree with my analysis of Lady Cary’s charms—or perhaps he knew something about the family which he thought better of telling me.
“What sort of man was Lord Cary, Grayson?”
The old butler took a deep breath and straightened his spine, which, though somewhat stiff with age, was still upright. He carried himself with an almost military vigour, his movements brisk and precise.
“Well, sir, he was the kind of man you would do well not to cross… he inspired loyalty, sir, and there’s nothing I wouldn’
t have done for him. If he asked for my firstborn, I would have given it to him.”
“He must have been extraordinary,” I said. “What a tragedy to die like that.”
“Any way to die is a tragedy, sir,” he replied solemnly, pouring my tea. “He was a man of the sea, and in the end it seems fitting that the sea took him at last.”
“Still, you must miss him.”
He paused to consider it for a moment.
“Miss him, sir? Yes, I suppose I do. Who you keep in your heart you never quite lose, though, sir, he used to tell me.”
“He seems unusually reflective for such a man of action.”
He handed me the tea. “He was a man of many facets, sir, both philosophical and otherwise. Milk, sir?”
“Yes, thank you.”
I poured milk into the cup and watched it billow in the hot tea, rolling up to the surface like approaching storm clouds. The tea was strong and smoky, an Assam blend, I thought. As Grayson busied himself fluffing the pillows on the bed, I sipped my tea and thought about the British Empire; how, in our rapaciousness, we appropriated not only the land but the customs of those we conquered, so that tea—unknown to our Anglo-Saxon ancestors—was now commonly regarded as typically British.
The day continued dull and grey, with a steady drizzle of rain pattering upon the window panes. Grayson told me everyone else had gone to Sally’s funeral, so I was left to myself for a few hours. Feeling restless, I roamed the draughty hallways of the abbey, finally wandering into the library. The library smelt of damp wood and dried rose petals. The dim light filtering in through the long narrow windows hung like a shroud over the silence of the room. The chirping of the sparrows I had heard outside my bedroom window did not seem to penetrate the ancient stones or thick lead glass of the library windows; all was stillness as I approached the stacks of books which lined the room from floor to ceiling. The smell of cracked leather bindings reminded me of my years at medical school, of days spent studying the thick textbooks which were my constant companions in those times.