by Carole Bugge
“That may be, but—”
He dismissed me with a wave of his hand. “We are wasting time on trifles. The point is, Watson, that if our antagonist wanted the Cary family dead, he would have carried out that scheme long ago. He clearly has both the resources and required ruthlessness to do so. We must therefore ask ourselves, what does he want? And the answer, I believe, is that he wants them gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes, gone from Torre Abbey, that is.”
“I see. So you think whoever is behind this is trying to scare them out of the abbey?”
“Precisely. And our intervention has only slowed down the process. Therefore, if we leave—or pretend to leave—he will finally play out his hand, therefore laying all his cards upon the table, to use a perhaps trite but useful analogy.”
I nodded slowly. “I see. So we’ll pretend to go back to London—”
“Yes; we’ll invent some excuse or other, pressing business at Baker Street or some such thing, and then we will go so far as to get on the train—but when the train leaves we will not be upon it.”
“Hmm. I only hope we will not be placing the Cary family in further danger.”
Holmes rubbed his forehead. “Who can say? I only know that I am tired of playing cat and mouse, and that it is time to confront our opponent.”
Holmes insisted that no one be in on our scheme; that even if the members of the family could be trusted, it was best we not reveal ourselves to them for their own safety.
“You remember, perhaps, Watson, that I allowed you to believe I died at Reichenbach Falls, partly for your own safety, and partly because I did not believe you could convincingly act the part—”
I cut him off. “Yes, I remember, Holmes; there’s no need to remind me.” Though my relief upon his unexpected “resurrection” had been great, his actions of those years still rankled; I was still hurt that he had let his brother Mycroft into his confidence instead of me. But I agreed to go along with him and pretend we were really leaving, even though it was difficult. I was not the natural actor Holmes was, and furthermore, I feared the family’s reaction when we told them the news.
* * *
As I expected, the Cary family did not receive the news of our imminent departure well. Charles Cary was angry, and Marion Cary just stared at us with those blue eyes, and I felt shame creeping up my neck to my face. Holmes had invented an excuse involving a telegram and “urgent business pertaining to the government”; I tried my best to lie low and not answer questions as we prepared to leave. It was all I could do to avoid blurting out the truth as we climbed into the brougham, with Grayson waiting to drive us into town that evening. We were to catch the last train to London, and though we had promised to return as soon as we could, I knew our departure was wreaking havoc upon the mental state of the family. Of course, as Holmes pointed out, we might just be witnessing some very good acting performances, though he still would not tell me which member of the family he suspected.
We boarded the train as Holmes had arranged, and watched through the window as Grayson drove away from the station; we even went so far as to buy one-way tickets to London to further the ruse. But shortly after the final boarding call we slipped out of the last car and secluded ourselves behind a copse of trees until the train left. After it had chugged away into the night, belching blue smoke from its smokestack, Holmes stepped out from behind the tree.
“Good, Watson,” he said, looking around. “I don’t think anyone saw us.” The platform was indeed empty, and the station house was closed and deserted. “We must now make our way back to the abbey on foot.”
We had packed light, and I slung my overnight bag over my shoulder and followed Holmes.
It was not far from town to Torre Abbey, and as I walked down the country lane alongside Holmes I could hear the crickets chirping and the woodland creatures scuttling about in the bushes all around us. The call of a hoot owl came from a grove of birch trees, their white bark shining silver in the moonlight. We soon reached the edge of the Cary property, and the abbey loomed in front of us, dark and heavy-set against the clear October night sky.
To my surprise, Holmes did not go directly to the abbey, but headed in the direction of the stables.
“We must be prepared to meet fire with fire, and in this case that means being ready with mounts of our own,” he said as he fetched a saddle and bridle from the tack-room. He saddled and bridled Richmond, and I did the same with the little chestnut mare, Ariel. My heart pounded as I tied up the girth under her; I did not know what Holmes expected to happen, but resolved to prepare myself for whatever might be required. To that end, I had placed my revolver in my coat pocket before leaving the abbey, and now I was glad to have it.
We led the horses around to the side of the abbey and tethered them to a small tree, then Holmes led me up the stairs to the Abbot’s Tower, where a shaft of moonlight shone in through the window.
We sat huddled in the darkness for some time, listening to the soft chorde of doves outside the window give way to the slow cascade of night noises. The sounds were so different from the ones I was used to in London that I found myself listening to them with intense interest. The movement and murmurings of the night creatures came together in a symphonic blend of cooing, clicking, rustling and cawing, a nocturnal concerto which was as mysterious as it was foreign to me. I peered out of the window at the sliver of pallid moon which hung in the starless sky.
I looked at Holmes, crouched besides me in the semi-darkness. Pale moonlight fell upon his aquiline face, his profile sharp as the crag of a wind-swept hill. A cloud passed over the moon, leaving us in its shadow. I could hear in Holmes’s steady breathing the tension of every coiled muscle in his body. Hours passed, and we sat, speaking in whispers, until I began to wonder if my friend was wrong, and that whatever we were waiting for would not happen after all. But I was wrong, and Holmes, as usual, was right.
The first sign that something was happening was the sudden silence of the nocturnal creatures. All at once, there was a pause in their clatter and chatter; the air itself seemed to pause and hold the stillness within the breath of a breeze. I glanced at Holmes as I felt his body stiffen beside me. My fingers closed around the cold metal handle of my revolver. In spite of the chill in the air, my palm was clammy with sweat. My index finger sought the reassuring feel of the trigger; I checked to see if the safety was on and removed my hand from my pocket. My forehead, too, had begun to sweat, and I wiped a few drops from my temples.
At that moment I felt Holmes’s hand upon my shoulder.
“What is it?” I whispered as a thin thread of fear wormed its way through my stomach.
“It is time!” he hissed, and crept soundlessly to the window.
I followed behind him, and looked down onto the lawn in front of the abbey, where, to my astonishment, I saw the shadowy figure of a man on horseback. A sudden parting of clouds from the moon revealed details of his elaborate seventeenth-century attire: it was the Cavalier! He looked up toward the Abbot’s Tower, and I was afraid he had seen us, but he continued to sit silently upon his horse, a huge gelding, black as pitch. I couldn’t make out the features of the man’s face, but I had the same queasy feeling I had experienced when I saw the horseman at the edge of the woods during the hunt.
However, I had no time to contemplate my response.
“Come, Watson, we have no time to lose!” Holmes cried, and sprang toward the stairs. I followed after him, stumbling down the dimly lit steps as I fumbled for the handrail. Within moments we were pushing open the heavy wooden door, emerging into the courtyard, only yards away from the man on horseback. Our sudden appearance frightened the animal, who shied and began to rear, but the rider immediately controlled his mount, shifting his weight forward and reining the animal in so that it could not easily rear. He then wheeled the horse around and took off at a dead run.
“Quickly, Watson!” Holmes cried, dashing to where Richmond and Ariel stood waiting. Though Holme
s had not explained his plan to me in detail earlier, I now knew why we needed them.
Vaulting into the saddle, Holmes urged Richmond forward; the big horse needed little urging, so charged was the air with excitement. The little mare was equally excited, and my feet were barely into the stirrups when she took off after Richmond at a gallop.
The mystery horseman headed in the direction of the apple orchard, past the ruins of the old church, whose crumbling stones shone a dull grey in the pale moonlight. Holmes and I followed after him, our horses’ hooves kicking up clods of soft dirt as they raced across the lawn. Veering around the edge of the ruins, I saw a large fallen stone right in our path just as I rounded the corner, and was forced to jump it. Throwing my weight forward at the last moment, I nearly lost my balance, but Ariel gathered herself without stumbling and sailed over the rock. I landed heavily upon her neck on the recovery, almost losing the reins.
“Sorry, old girl,” I muttered, regaining my seat as we thundered after the others. The orchard was just ahead, and I had to duck as we entered the thicket of low branches, heavy with late-fall apples still clinging to the trees. Ariel slowed to a brisk trot, head erect, ears pricked forward, her breath coming in excited little puffs. I could barely make out Holmes ahead of us, threading his way through the trees in pursuit of our quarry. Branches scraped across my face, scratching my cheeks; finally I buried my head in Ariel’s mane and let her carry me through the dizzying maze of branches, which seemed to reach out to snag us at every turn. As we bounced along over the uneven ground, trotting jaggedly over exposed tree roots, I blessed the herding instinct of the horse; I knew Ariel would follow Richmond without my urging, and that all I had to do was hang on as best I could.
Finally we cleared the orchard, and took off once again at full speed across the farm fields surrounding the abbey. When she saw open land stretched out in front of her, Ariel put her head down, flattened her back and ran at a dead gallop, her sturdy legs churning up the soil beneath us. The little mare soon caught up to Richmond, following so close behind that I could feel my face being pelted by bits of dirt thrown up by his hooves. The land lay spread out in front of us, illuminated by moonlight. Even with the moonlight, I was afraid the horses would stumble on unseen obstacles, but they raced across the fields as if their hooves had eyes in them.
Ahead of us loomed the jagged cliffs just outside the town of Torquay, where meadows gave way to the rugged rocky landscape overlooking the harbour. To the left was the road leading into town; to the right woods, and straight ahead the sheer cliffs overlooking Tor Bay. I expected our mystery horseman to turn at any minute in the direction of town, but to my surprise he continued straight towards the cliffs. We followed doggedly after him; the only sound in my ears was the pounding of horses’ hooves upon the ground combined with the heavy breathing of my chestnut mare. I was beginning to worry about her, and hoped we would soon slow our pace. She was no racehorse, and I did not want her to injure herself in the chase. She showed no signs of slowing down, however, and galloped along after the others.
Suddenly, a shot rang out and I felt a thread of fire tear through my left shoulder. At first I didn’t know what had happened, but then I realized I had been shot. I grasped my shoulder with my right hand, somehow managing to hang on to the reins with my left. My shoulder was wet, and I knew it was blood; I could feel the ripped place in my jacket sleeve where the bullet had torn through it. At the same time, I did not think the bullet had hit bone. I felt dizzy and disoriented, though, as we galloped over the field, but it would take more strength than I had now in my hands to stop Ariel; the chase was hot in her blood, and she raced after the other two horses as if her life depended upon it. I resolved, therefore, to hang on as long as I could.
My left arm was beginning to go numb, so I grasped a piece of Ariel’s mane with my good hand and bent down low over her back, so that if I fell I could roll, lessening the impact. My gun was still in my pocket, but there was no question of using it now; I had only one good hand, and my aim would be poor even if we were not riding at such a clip and it were not dark. It was pure chance, I thought, that our quarry’s bullet had found its way to my shoulder, and I cursed his good luck as I held on to my galloping horse, trying not to faint.
The edge of the cliffs loomed closer and closer, and my heart began to race as I contemplated our quarry’s next move. Did he plan to charge off the edge of the cliff into the sea, some forty yards below? I couldn’t see how anyone could survive such a fall, and was about to call ahead to Holmes when suddenly the man on the big black horse pulled abruptly on the reins, attempting a sharp turn to the left, towards the road leading into Torquay. His horse tried to adjust and make the turn, but was going too fast, and, thrown off balance, stumbled and fell heavily onto his side.
I watched as the man fell along with his mount, landing under the entire weight of the enormous animal as rider and horse hit the ground with a loud thud. The horse seemed momentarily stunned, but soon clambered onto its feet; however, the man remained motionless on the ground where he had fallen. Holmes reined in his horse and leaped from the saddle, going over to where the fallen rider lay unmoving upon the ground. I followed suit, looping my reins together quickly so that my horse would not stumble over them.
We bent over the still figure. He lay on his back, his face drained of all colour in the pale light of the moon, eyes wide open, his head twisted at an odd angle from his body. I had seen those staring eyes before, both as a physician and as a soldier, and knew immediately that I was looking at the face of death.
“Broken neck, Watson?” Holmes said softly as I felt for the pulse that was gone forever from the inert body which only minutes ago was so full of life.
I stood up and wiped the dirt and sweat from my hand. “I think so—it certainly looks like it.”
It was only then that I took a closer look at the face, a face I had never seen but whose features were somehow familiar even in death. I knew Holmes was right the instant he said it.
“So, Watson, at last we meet Victor Cary.”
I believe it was then that I fainted.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I awoke to see Holmes bending over me, a look of concern on his face.
“Watson, you’re hurt. Why didn’t you say something?”
I sat up slowly. “I meant to, but somehow… is it really Victor Cary, Holmes?” I said, staring at our dead antagonist.
“Do you recognize him as the man you saw at the theatre in London?” said Holmes, tearing off his own sleeve to make a tourniquet for my arm. It was, as I had surmised, not a deep wound, but it continued to bleed.
“Well, he’s a much younger man,” I remarked. “Was that really him I saw?”
“I believe it was. With the aid of his confederate, who was something of a virtuoso at theatrical makeup, he was able to move about freely in the alias of an old man,” he replied, tying the tourniquet.
“Well,” I said slowly, “I supposed it could be the same man. I can’t really say.”
We did not stay long over the body of Victor Cary. I expressed misgivings about leaving him lying there upon the ground, but Holmes observed that the Torquay police would conduct an investigation into his death, and it was perhaps best not to move the evidence. We turned our horses around and headed back towards the abbey.
“It’s about time they were brought in,” he remarked as we trotted back across the fields. Cary’s horse followed us; stripped of its rider, the big black wanted nothing more than to join its companions.
“Are you sure you are all right, Watson?”
“Yes, quite,” I replied. “So how did you know he would come tonight?”
“Do you remember the message in the letterbox Father Norton found?” he answered.
“Yes… it was Monday—4. I see—Monday 4 a.m.!”
“Yes. Communicating with his confederate was tricky, and rather than take the chance he might be seen, Victor Cary fell upon using the back-up plan of letter
boxes.”
“I see,” I said as the stone walls of the abbey loomed in front of us. I was dying to ask him who Victor Cary’s confederate was, but I was to find out soon enough.
When we rode up to the gatehouse, Grayson was waiting for us with a lantern in his hand. If Holmes was surprised to see him there, he showed no sign of it. “Your master’s dead, Grayson,” he said solemnly.
“I thought as much when I saw the two of you returning alone,” the old butler replied. “So your trip to London was a ruse after all.”
“Loyalty is a commendable virtue, is it not, Grayson?” Holmes said. “However, in this case you were willing to do things in the name of loyalty which no virtuous man would contemplate. Isn’t that so?”
I looked at Holmes, surprised. “Holmes, do you mean that Grayson…?” I stared at the old butler, his furrowed face grim and haggard in the dim light. A cloud had passed in front of the moon, and the single lantern provided the only illumination.
The old man stared Holmes straight in the eye. “What I did I did for a man who was much wronged,” he replied, his voice dry as the brown leaves swirling at our feet. “I had a debt to him that could never be repaid.”
“Ah, yes,” Holmes murmured. “It isn’t often a man saves your life, is it?”
Grayson drew himself up to the full extent of his height. “When he gave me my life, I pledged it to serve him always. I could do no less,” he replied proudly.
“Even when it meant taking the lives of innocent women and children?” Holmes said sternly.
“Innocent!” Grayson scoffed. “Sally was hardly innocent. She seduced my master, and then, when she was with child, he took her in and cared for them both.”
“But then he killed them,” Holmes replied. “And still you stood by him.”
“I could do no less—I was bound by my oath!”
I looked at Holmes. “Sally—and William? Victor Cary killed them both?”