by Ron Weighell
‘Watson, once more you have performed the function for which you are so eminently suited: a conductor of light. Your words have made the whole puzzle much clearer.’
Turning away, he stood for some moments with fingertips to his lips.
‘Yes,’ he muttered ‘Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. It does fit the facts——’
‘Holmes, I do not see——’
‘Oh you see, Watson, and, more to the point, you hear, but as yet you do not understand. Perhaps it is better that you do not. If I am correct, our adversary is a fearful one. Oh yes, Watson, I know the identity of the murderer: the difficult, indeed the vital, question still to be answered is not who, but where?’
‘You have lost me, Holmes.’
‘I sincerely hope not, Watson. Before this night is out your presence may prove invaluable. Yes,’ he went on, looking up into the sky, ‘yes, it must be tonight, or we can do nothing for another month.’
As we made our way back to the door, Holmes became quite excited.
‘You know, Watson, I have given my life to rationality, suppressing the animal in order to raise the intellect. So in this case I have failed miserably. Deductive reasoning will not entirely serve our turn here, Watson. Sometimes one must assume the thought processes of one’s quarry. Often that has meant thinking like a thief or a murderer, a traitor or a thug. In this case it means descending to the level of the beast.’
‘A beast, Holmes?’
‘Or as Miss Sturleson so perceptively named it, a werewolf.’
The change that came over Holmes as he uttered these incredible words was remarkable. He began to pace the house restlessly, dropping to all fours at times to examine the carpets. I swear he sniffed his way around the scene of the first murder like some predator on the hunt for blood. Suddenly he stiffened and froze. Nothing but his eyes moved for perhaps thirty seconds. Then he smiled grimly and stood up.
‘I think I understand it all now, Watson. We have the last part of our solution. Do you still have your revolver about you? Good, then let me take a swordstick from the hall. There is no time to lose.’
It soon became clear that we were making our way to the attic studio.
‘But Holmes,’ I exclaimed, ‘these rooms were thoroughly searched at the time.’
Holmes seemed not to hear me. We entered the studio, now foul with the smell of blood.
‘It is so simple, when the mind is applied in the correct way. Think like a wolf, Watson. You need a suitable hiding place: where do you go? A world of snow-clad valleys, crevasses, icy peaks.’
‘But Holmes, where is this world?’
‘In the sky, Watson, in the sky.’
Dragging a table across the floor, he leapt on to it, pushed open the skylight, and was gone. An arm reappeared and helped me up into a blast of icy flakes. By the time I climbed unsteadily to my knees, Holmes was already walking up the slope of the roof. I crawled after and found him looking down at a wide expanse of rooftops. Through the blizzard I could discern chimney stacks encrusted with glittering crystals; broken water pipes hung with fantastic stalactites of ice; the steep cloven ways between the roofs already half-filled by the wind-blown drifts. Holmes leant close and shouted over the blast.
‘Icy peaks, Watson. Snow clad valleys. Deadly crevasses. We have entered the secret world.’
Then began a search of the roofscape of Tarn Lodge. No one could have guessed from the ground how many ridges, valleys, sloping expanses of icy tile, and chimney stacks lay concealed from sight. It was indeed a hidden world in the sky, a treacherous terrain offering many hiding places for a deadly adversary, bounded on every side by a sheer drop to reward a misplaced step.
That occasion was perhaps the only time I have seen Sherlock Holmes truly afraid. Who can say what memories of his encounter in the fastnesses of Tibet were rekindled by the skyscape around us? Gaunt and pale, he bared the blade of the swordstick and edged down into the first valley. I drew my revolver and followed. Knowing from my army experience that it would be impossible to flush out a hidden enemy if we kept together, I gestured to Holmes that we separate.
I went to the right, and descended a gully. On all four sides towering chimney stacks and roofs, glittering with moonlit ice, loomed over me. Snow, feathered off the slates by the wind, stung my eyes. I felt exposed as I trudged along the length of the gully. It was like marching through a Wadi with the silent threat of tribesmen waiting behind the ridge.
I stopped and listened. Keening wind, stinging snow, and nothing else. I could have been alone on the face of a frozen planet. Mounting the next ridge, I looked down a steeply sloping roof of snow to the point where it fell away as a sheer drop. Edging along the ridge, I felt my feet slip and realised just how treacherous a place this was.
With the gusting wind as sharp as a knife, swirling snow, and encrustations of ice on all sides, it was an alien and forbidding place, and I realised how infinitely worse the experience of Holmes on Everest must have been, and just what he must have been feeling in those moments of despair.
When the snow eased I saw the vista of a valley half filled with mounting drifts, and a downpipe reduced to an explosion of stalactites. I trudged through, and as I did so the peaks and declivities of encrusted snow were flailed by fresh falls of flakes.
A figure passed briefly across my view. I calculated that Holmes should still be roughly level with me, not far ahead, and concluded that I had glimpsed our quarry. Making for the spot where I had seen the figure, I stepped into a blast of wind that took my breath away.
Gasping and flailing for balance, I slid down a long incline and came to rest not far from the edge of a sheer drop. To right and left cascades of ice hung from the roof line, bulging and thickening as they swelled downwards, pointing with frozen fingers at the lace network of the formal gardens far below.
A gust could have plucked me from the roof. I edged carefully backwards, turned, and froze in my tracks. At the top of the slope I could see in the swirling blizzard a grotesquely misshapen outline, all shoulders and head. It seemed to observe me. I released the safety catch on my revolver, but as I did so the figure turned and disappeared into the haze of whiteness.
I made my way up the nearest ridge and squinted my eyes against the stinging flakes to survey the expanse before me. Visibility was very poor, and every shadow might conceal—what? A madman; or an animal? Or would we encounter something worse? Directly below me, a convergence of pitched roofs formed a crooked valley that turned this way and that. I slid down into it and trudged forward, revolver at the ready.
How small a space would accommodate our quarry? I moved forward with painful slowness, expecting to be attacked at every turn. Emerging on to a flat stretch of roof commanding a wider prospect, I glimpsed a movement behind a chimney stack. Was it Holmes closing in from the other side? I could not risk a shot until I was certain. A stronger flurry of snow blinded me momentarily, and when my vision cleared, the shape was gone.
Edging onwards, I came to a wide valley floor, as it were, between high roof peaks. The swirling flakes were beginning to make my vision swim. Was it a crouching form that became visible, so briefly, by the ice-encrusted stack?
I struggled forward and stood on safer ground. Only a few yards away I saw Sherlock Holmes, his eyes fixed on a spot among a cluster of chimney stacks. The strange form that had watched me was moving towards his unprotected back. I raised my revolver and took aim.
Holmes turned, saw the thing that was approaching, then raised his hand palm outwards towards me.
‘Don’t shoot, Watson! For the love of God, don’t shoot!’
‘It is the killer,’ I cried. ‘I know who it is. You are in danger.’
‘No, Watson, you only have half the solution. You have not considered all the facts. Consider the virulence of poisons, Watson; consider the dead flowers in the conservatory. Ask yourself if you would go for comfort to someone you hate and fear. Above all, consider the lesson of Moriarty
on Everest, and the footprints in the snow.
I could only conclude sadly that Holmes’s mind had collapsed under the strain, and that he was babbling incoherently. I aimed again at the crouched, snow covered figure.
As I did so something rose up on my left and leapt upon Sherlock Holmes. I caught only a glimpse through driving snow, so I am not certain to this day what I saw. Was it an emaciated, naked human figure, matted about the head and shoulders with a massive growth of hair? Or something whose upper torso and head were abnormally large and furred with a thick white pelt? Was it a grizzled head or the muzzle of a wolf? Whatever it was carried a mantle of snow upon it, concealing much of its shape.
The impact sent Holmes skidding helplessly down the roof with such force that I feared he would go right over the edge; but he slewed to a halt not far from the guttering, and struggled to his feet. At once the snarling figure was upon him again.
They fell in a heap, too close together for me to risk a shot. I was further confounded when the crouching form I had taken for our enemy ran to Holmes’s assistance, and plunged something into the chest of the snarling beast. It fell back and squirmed. I slithered forward on unsteady legs and looked down at the fallen creature. There in the snow, a silver knife jutting from her heart, lay the frail body of Freya Sturleson.
An hour later we were seated in the drawing room of Tarn Lodge, opposite Mrs Sturleson, who held in her arms the subdued, blanket-wrapped form who had saved the life of Sherlock Holmes.
‘I have deceived you, gentlemen, and for that I apologise. I can only say that I did it with the best of intentions. Perhaps if I tell you my story you may understand.
‘I worked for years as the first Mrs Sturleson’s nurse. She was a fine woman and a good friend, but suffered constant ill-health. Although I was employed for my orthodox nursing skills, I had, as I told you, learned of Tibetan medicine in my travels with my father, and was able to relieve her pain with my potions, even bringing her short periods of relatively good health.
‘Mr Sturleson was a man of dark and brooding temperament even then. He lived in constant fear that the shadow of the wolf would fall on him. His only delight was his daughter Freya. She was a lovely child, the favourite not only of her father but of her mother and brothers too. One night, when Mr Sturleson was away, Freya had been allowed to sleep in her mother’s bed. I was awoken by terrible screams. Rushing to her room, I found Mrs Sturleson hysterical, driven mad by the sight of a ravening dog-like creature crouched upon her pillow. I snatched up a chair and drove the thing into a cupboard, and locked the door.
‘Freya’s nightdress lay on the floor, torn, and she was nowhere to be seen. The house was searched without result. It was only in the morning when the cupboard door was opened that we found the sleeping form of Freya.
‘I had locked a wild animal in that cupboard, Mr Holmes. All it contained next morning was a sleeping child. I could no longer doubt that her father’s worst fears had been realised, although ironically it was his beloved daughter, and not he himself, on whom the curse had fallen.
‘My first thought was that he should be protected from this knowledge. Here I was aided by my herbal knowledge. There is, in Tibet, a formula to produce Moon Balm, a fabled cure for all lunar maladies. It is distilled from a rare relative of the mountain poppy called Mecanopsis Horridula. I was able to produce enough to administer a dose to Freya at the time of the next full moon.
‘I succeeded, Mr Holmes. Freya was untroubled. I continued to nurse Mrs Sturleson, who never regained her sanity, and administered the drug to Freya by slipping it into her food. No one knew my secret.’
‘It was a fearful burden,’ said Holmes gently.
‘I did it for him. By that time I had come to love him, though I told no one. And yet I failed him. I accidentally spilled some of the potion, and did not have enough when the full moon came.
‘Freya was playing with her brother Karl here,’ she continued, stroking the head of the gaunt silent man by her side. ‘They did not return at sunset. It was a childish game, but the consequences were disastrous.
‘After a desperate search we found Karl covered in blood, crouched over the body of one of their playmates. Karl could not speak, and the continued absence of Freya encouraged them to conclude that he had killed her too. When she was found next day, alive but unable to remember anything, it only seemed to confirm her innocence. Only I had reason to know that she had committed the atrocity, leaving Karl, who had witnessed the horror, frozen with shock.
‘Her father was convinced that the curse had fallen on his eldest son. I remember him thanking God that Freya had been spared. How could I have told him the truth, Mr Holmes? It would have destroyed him.
‘As it was he fell into an even blacker depression. Only Freya could make him happy. I was able to distil more Moon Balm which held Freya in a state of relative normality for years. Mrs Sturleson died, and in time I took her place in the household.
‘All this time I had visited Karl, who was being held at St Anthony’s. For all the years I went there he neither spoke nor responded, but I felt that it might do him some good. So things went on, in an uneasy truce, until this winter. One morning I found that most of the poppies essential for my distillations had died. Some blight or pest had wiped them out. Once more my supply of the potion would run out, but this time I feared I could produce no more. You know what followed.
‘On my last visit to Karl, I had poured out all my troubles, as I always did, and told him of my fears. Before the end of my visit he had begun to show signs of distress, though there was no way of knowing the cause. I now realise that he had understood, and sought the first opportunity to escape and make his way here.’
‘Too late,’ croaked a hoarse, faint voice, dry with years of unuse.
Sherlock Holmes showed no emotion but shook his head and replied in a level tone.
‘Not too late. I would say just in the nick of time.’
Once more in the warmth and comfort of Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes stirred up a good blaze in the hearth and settled back in his favourite armchair.
‘Your conclusions concerning the other unmentioned son were right as far as they went, Watson, but left certain questions unanswered. Freya claimed her stepmother was trying to kill her. Why would it take so long? She could have been poisoned in days or weeks, and would not still be healthy after decades. Clearly her interpretation that the drugs she was being given had harmful intent could not be correct. It seemed more likely to be treatment for some regularly occurring malady. Do you remember how upset Mrs Sturleson was when she told us of the death of her Tibetan blossoms? More than she would have been over a mere hobby. And the death of those flowers occurred around the time when the “werewolf” began to appear.
‘My memories of Tibet may have been prompted by Mrs Sturleson’s clothing and conservatory, but a mind trained to analyse goes on analysing even when one is not conscious of the process, and rarely fixes on anything that is not germane to the matter in hand. I simply applied my Everest experiences to the present matter.
‘For instance, my vision of Moriarty was so real, but it was a symptom of my own mental state. Freya had claimed to “see” a werewolf, but was it any more external to her than Moriarty was to me? What if it were a symptom of her malady? I also considered the general assumption that the mountain man of Tibet was a dangerous monster. That had proved false. In fact the killer was a quite different, and altogether unexpected, person. What if the “werewolf” was not the person you suspected, and had been blamed for the clandestine activities of another less likely culprit?
‘The theft of a knife made of silver, the material traditionally anathema to werewolves, and faint marks of dirty wet soles on the floor by the cutlery cabinet, forewarned me that someone had arrived from outside, and was taking an extreme hand in the matter. You prompted my realisation of the significance of the silver knife by your comment that no one would steal a single item among so many if it were merely for gain.
Only after I realised there was a world unseen and unexplored above our heads did it occur to me that Freya, devoted, doting Freya, had a room next door to her father. In other words, on the top floor and only a short scramble from the roof.’
‘One thing still haunts me, Holmes. Can there really be such a thing as a werewolf? The body on the roof was that of a young girl, yet only seconds before, the thing that attacked you was more like a ferocious beast than a human being. I have sought for a rational explanation, but I can think of no more fitting description for what I saw than a werewolf! How can that be?’
‘Oh Watson, Watson! The vanity of Humankind! Our time on this planet has been but the blink of an eye. Only yesterday our ancestors emerged from caves and gazed out over dense forests and endless plains that teemed with the claws and teeth of sudden death. Every living thing was a potential threat or a potential victim, every day a struggle for survival which depended upon the ruthless wielding of deadly weapons. I say to you, Watson, that each of us stands hardly more than a hand’s span from nature red in tooth and claw. The real wonder is not that there was indeed a curse of Tarn Lodge, but that such things are not more common. There are depths in each of us, labyrinths wherein the beast still lurks.’
Holmes paused to light his pipe, blew out the pungent smoke luxuriously, and smiled.
‘You have commented before upon my poor knowledge of literature, but this is a good example of what little help such things may be in my work. Even so great a poet as Lord Byron was a little misleading in two respects at least when he wrote:
“‘Some people have accused me of Misanthropy;
And yet I know no more than the mahogany
That forms this desk, of what they mean;
—Lykanthropy I comprehend, for without transformation
Men become wolves on any slight occasion.”’
The Curse of Nectanebo