Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Demon

by James Lovegrove

  In all, the castle looked not to have been constructed so much as to have grown, coral-like, from the lake island upon which it perched and whose surface it fully covered. Ribbons of snow lying atop lintels, eaves, copings and buttresses did something to soften the stark cheerlessness of it all, but not much.

  The track wound downward through woodland, emerging from which we had a much better view of the castle. Nearer to, however, Fellscar Keep was only the more oppressive-seeming. It loomed gracelessly against the glowering sky, as though its architect desired any who came before it to feel small. Its overall demeanour was that of a brooding, hulking thug challenging all comers to engage in fisticuffs.

  As the brougham approached the gateway that afforded access to the causeway connecting the castle to land, a gunshot resounded from close by. Our horse, startled, bucked within the traces, and the coachman cried out, “Whoa there!” and was obliged to steady the beast with a tug on the reins and a tap of the whip.

  A second gunshot followed, louder than the first, and the anxious nag came to a complete halt, whinnying.

  As Holmes and I peered out of the cab windows, we saw a pair of men stride out from the woods to the left of us. Each was dressed in tweeds and bore a double-barrelled 12-gauge shotgun – a Purdey, if I did not miss my guess. Neither, I noted, was carrying his weapon broken as he ought.

  They walked towards the four-wheeler with a purposeful air, and I, overcome by a growing unease, wished that my service revolver was immediately to hand, rather than outside the brougham, packed in my holdall on the back. Holmes, sensing my agitation, patted my arm.

  “We are in no imminent danger,” said he. “Do you not recall Miss Allerthorpe telling us that her father and uncle go out shooting together? These two, I am certain, are they, indulging in that very pastime. Their age and dress marks them out as wealthy landowners, while their self-confident bearing announces that they are masters of their domain, with every right to be here.”

  “Yet they fired their guns, when they must surely have seen us coming,” I said. “They knowingly frightened the horse. That bespeaks hostile intent, does it not?”

  He shook his head. “A certain casual meanness, perhaps. I believe that you and I are being greeted in a manner meant to intimidate. Let us not give these fellows the satisfaction of thinking they have succeeded.”

  With that, Holmes stepped out of the brougham, putting on a broad grin and lofting a hand in salutation. I followed, somewhat more circumspectly, darting a glance up at the coachman as I did so. His face showed resigned stoicism, as though this wasn’t the first time his employer had subjected him and his passengers to such a stunt. I fancied I saw a similar expression on the face of the horse and heard disgust in the little snort it gave.

  “Do I have the pleasure of addressing a Mr Allerthorpe, or even two such?” Holmes said.

  “I am Thaddeus Allerthorpe,” growled one of the men, whose luxuriant muttonchop whiskers hid fully half of his face.

  “My name is Sherlock Holmes.” My friend extended a hand towards Thaddeus Allerthorpe, who took it only after evincing the greatest reluctance. “And you,” he added, turning to the other man, “must be Shadrach Allerthorpe, unless I am much mistaken.”

  The second man was clean-shaven but shared certain distinctive features in common with his brother, in particular a prodigious nose and a pair of cold, piercing blue eyes. They were both the same height, but Shadrach was not quite as sturdy as Thaddeus, being leaner of frame, with a slight hunch to his shoulders.

  Holmes shook Shadrach’s gloved hand. “I surmise that you wished to acknowledge our arrival in a suitably demonstrative manner by firing into the air,” he said. “A two-gun salute, as it were.”

  The Allerthorpes exchanged wry glances.

  “If you choose to put such a construction on it,” said Thaddeus, deadpan, “then indeed, Mr Holmes, that was our intent.”

  “Then Watson and I consider ourselves welcomed. Don’t we, Watson?”

  I, for my part, was never fond of gunfire, especially when it was aimed my way. I had experienced all too much of that in Afghanistan, at personal cost. Even if the Allerthorpes had only shot at us in jest, their goal not to harm but only to alarm, I did not find this in any way amusing; nor did I wish to pardon it any time soon.

  In emulation of Holmes’s example, however, I forced a smile and made polite noises.

  “My daughter Eve has only lately returned from the capital,” said Thaddeus Allerthorpe. “She warned us to expect an additional pair of houseguests in the form of Sherlock Holmes, the famed London sleuth, and his colleague. I may as well let you know now, sirs, that your presence is not appreciated in my home. If Eve had not been so insistent that you stay with us, I would order Winslow here” – he gestured at the coachman – “to turn around and take you straight back to the station. For one thing, the Allerthorpe Christmas gathering is a private affair. Relatives and in-laws only. For another thing, it would seem that Eve has invited you on the flimsiest of pretexts. This nonsense about birch twigs! The lass is fretting needlessly over what is, to my way of thinking, a foolish practical joke. Yet she has extended hospitality to you, and, seeing as she is my flesh and blood, I cannot deny her that invitation, even if I cannot endorse it.”

  “Trust me, Mr Allerthorpe,” Holmes said, “Watson and I will make ourselves as unobtrusive as mice. You shall hardly know we are here.”

  “I hope so,” came the dubious reply.

  “I am confident, too, that whatever misdemeanours we uncover, if any, will be dealt with in a swift and discreet fashion. I cannot foresee that we will darken your threshold for any more than a day or two.”

  “See that you don’t.” Thaddeus turned to his brother. “Well, Shadrach, we have an hour or so’s daylight remaining to us. I spied grouse prints in the snow back in the woods, heading towards Poacher’s Hollow. What say we follow them and bag ourselves a brace or two before dusk?”

  “Why not?” As Thaddeus stalked off towards the trees without so much as a fare-thee-well, Shadrach Allerthorpe nodded wryly at us and touched finger to forehead. “Gentlemen.”

  “Well,” Holmes said as he and I climbed back into the brougham, “at least we now know which of those brothers is the more reasonable, if only by a small margin.”

  “Shadrach Allerthorpe does appear to have the better manners of the two.”

  “And it wasn’t he who shot at us. Both the hammers on his shotgun were cocked, whereas the ones on Thaddeus Allerthorpe’s were in the closed position. All the same, Shadrach seemed infected by his elder sibling’s antipathy towards us.”

  “He lives in his brother’s shadow.”

  “And in his brother’s house by his brother’s good graces. I daresay, were he to offend Thaddeus, he might find himself thrown out on his ear. Therefore whatever his personal feelings, he must curry his brother’s favour and be ever in agreement with him. Not an enviable position.”

  Winslow the coachman lashed the reins, and the horse, still somewhat skittish, proceeded through the gateway. The brougham trundled between the causeway’s two low parapets with a scant eighteen inches of clearance on either side. Ahead, an arched entrance in the castle’s outer walls rose like some vast, yawning black maw. A pair of stout oak doors stood wide open, with a wicket gate inset into one of them. Beyond lay a cobbled courtyard some twenty yards in width and a little greater in length. Here the four-wheeler halted once more, and Holmes and I again disembarked.

  Having retrieved our bags from the back of the brougham, we were instructed to wait. Winslow led horse and carriage off through a smaller arched aperture, presumably to a stable. We anticipated his swift return, but in the event we stood there in the bitter cold, stamping our feet for warmth, for a good ten minutes. Dozens of windows peered down at us in the courtyard, and in none did there appear the face of someone curious to learn whom the brougham had brought. Nor, for that matter, did Winslow grace us with his presence again.

  Eventuall
y Holmes snatched up his suitcase and mounted the broad flight of steps, which led to what appeared to be the castle’s front door. In the absence of any bell pull, he grasped an iron knocker that must have weighed in the region of six or seven pounds and gave a firm rat-a-tat-tat on the wood. The knocks echoed vastly within, like peals of thunder.

  In time we heard footfalls indoors, and at last the door was opened by a young liveried footman, who eyed us with a certain wary bafflement.

  “Are you expected?” he enquired.

  “Sherlock Holmes. Dr John Watson. We are guests of Miss Allerthorpe. Eve Allerthorpe, that is, in order to avoid possible confusion.”

  Without ushering us in, the footman closed the door and disappeared.

  “They really are an unfriendly lot,” I observed.

  “On current showing, yes. Great riches are a boon but they can also be isolating. The majority of those around you regard you merely as a resource to be plundered, and it erodes your trust in your fellow men.”

  “So you build a castle like this and hide away in it, cut off from the very world that has provided you with your wealth.”

  “And, thus self-segregated, you begin to lose sight of how to behave amongst other people. A quality which, it would seem, extends to your servants as well.” Holmes saw that I was starting to shiver. “We have been left to freeze out here long enough,” he declared, raising a hand to the door knocker once more. “I have a good mind to—”

  The door reopened, and the footman bade us enter.

  “I am to show you to your rooms,” he said, not offering to carry our bags, as he ought. “This way.”

  An enormous hallway vaulted around us, the floor flagstoned, every wall panelled to the ceiling in dark hardwood. In a fireplace that could have accommodated an entire roasting pig on a spit, and may well have been built for that purpose, a large log fire blazed, radiating just enough heat to mitigate the gelidity of the air. Oil paintings gazed down at us on all sides, their sombre subjects clad in clothes ranging from ruffs, capes and cross-garters to more modern attire – these were portraits of ancestors, no doubt – while above the fireplace’s mantel hung a shield adorned with three gold stripes angled down to the right on a scarlet background, this design surmounted by a rearing, gape-mouthed lion. The Allerthorpe family coat of arms, I presumed.

  Ahead, a curving staircase swept upward, and at the footman’s invitation, Holmes and I ascended to a balustraded gallery at its apex and followed him thence along a labyrinth of winding corridors, past door after door and up and down countless other flights of stairs, some short, some long. It was a good five minutes, by my estimate, before we arrived at what were to be our quarters, by which point I had thoroughly lost my bearings. Even though I had done my best to keep track of landmarks along the way – a suit of armour, for instance, or a stuffed and mounted stag’s head – I did not think I could make it back to the central hallway without the aid of map and compass, or better yet a guide.

  Holmes and I had been given bedrooms on opposite sides of the corridor, mine facing out towards the lake, his overlooking a small quadrangle, with both of us sharing the use of a bathroom several doors down. The accommodations were well-appointed but cold. “Central heating is not, it appears, a feature of Fellscar Keep,” Holmes averred, while I was unpacking my holdall. Wisps of vapour curled from his mouth as he spoke.

  “Can you imagine how many miles of pipe and how much hot water would be required to keep a place this big warm?” I said. “Let alone the size of the boiler, which would be something akin to that on an ocean liner. At least we have fireplaces and may hope that someone lights fires for us before we retire to bed.”

  We re-entered the corridor outside, anticipating that the footman would be waiting to escort us wherever we might require to go. We should have known better. The man was gone, and so we wended our way rather trepidatiously through that vast building, I trusting that Holmes’s sense of direction and powers of recall were greater than mine. This faith was borne out when, presently, we found ourselves back in the gallery overlooking the hall.

  Below I saw, to my relief and delight, Eve Allerthorpe. She was with a younger man whom I judged, by his age and the clear familial intimacy between them, to be her brother Erasmus.

  “And you’re sure there was no recurrence of the twigs while I was away, Raz?” Miss Allerthorpe was saying.

  “Not a one,” replied he. “I’m sure, had there been, someone would have reported it. If not a family member, one of the staff.”

  “That is something, I suppose.”

  “Is that what compelled you to leave? The twigs?”

  “I’m afraid so. I could not bear the suspense of waiting for the next bundle to turn up. It was driving me to distraction.”

  “But your departure was so unexpected, sis. Until we received your telegram, I was worried. We all were.”

  “You make sudden, unannounced trips to London. Why cannot I?”

  “We didn’t even know London was your destination. When Winslow returned from Bridlington, all he could tell us was that you had boarded a train. He had no idea to where. Papa was furious at him for not being more inquisitive.”

  “Papa needs little excuse to be furious these days.”

  Miss Allerthorpe couched these words in a wistful tone, which Erasmus Allerthorpe matched as he said, “To be honest, he was short-tempered even when Mama was alive.”

  “But it was never this bad.”

  At that moment, Holmes decorously cleared his throat.

  “Ah, there you are!” Eve Allerthorpe cried out, with a little clap of the hands. “I was beginning to wonder whether I should send out a search party. Jennings was supposed to bring you to the drawing room once you had settled into your rooms. Clearly that instruction slipped his mind. I shall have words with him.”

  “It is of no great consequence,” Holmes said, descending the stairs.

  “He is new and inexperienced, but that is no excuse. What good is a forgetful footman? Still, you are here, and I am glad to see you. Both of you.”

  “Us likewise to see you,” I said, thinking that Miss Allerthorpe appeared marginally more relaxed than she had in London. Was it because she was back on home turf, or was it the arrival of Sherlock Holmes, with its implied promise of a solution to her conundrum? The latter, I reasoned. From what she had told us, Fellscar Keep was not a place of sanctuary for her at present.

  “Allow me to introduce my brother,” she said. “Erasmus, this is none other than Sherlock Holmes, whom I spoke of to you, and of course Dr Watson.”

  “Yes,” said the young man with a small bow. “An honour.”

  I must say Erasmus Allerthorpe was making a mixed impression upon me. His speech was a louche drawl, as though the effort of proper diction was too much for him, and now that I was close to him I discerned the strong whiff of alcohol on his breath, which may or may not have had some influence upon his speech patterns. I recalled his sister referring to him as “boisterous” and saying that he was an habitué of the gossip columns, which further inclined me towards disfavouring him.

  For all that, he had a handsome, personable face, and his smile was charming and his handshake firm. He also seemed to genuinely care for his sister.

  In terms of physical resemblance between the two of them, whereas Eve Allerthorpe had the blue eyes of her father and uncle, Erasmus’s were hazel. His hair, though brown like hers, was several shades lighter, and overall his features were that little bit finer. He was as slimly built as she was, but whereas it could be said that Eve’s slenderness was attributable to her recent, marked loss of appetite, in his case I ascribed it to dissipation. There was, indeed, scarcely a spare ounce of flesh on his frame, suggestive of someone who preferred to take his nourishment in liquid form rather than solid.

  “This business with the birch bundles,” Erasmus continued. “It’s a rum do, and no mistake. When I found those twigs outside my own window… well, I couldn’t make head or tail of it. N
ot till Eve mentioned the Black Thurrick, and then it all came rushing back. The fairytales Mama used to tell. The legend of the Thurrick. I was taken aback, for certain. It crossed my mind that maybe the beast was real after all. Only for a few moments, though.”

  “You are not of that opinion now?” Holmes said.

  “Oh no, Mr Holmes. I mean to say, how ridiculous! No, now I reckon it’s all just a bit of a hoot. Somebody’s playing games. Those ragamuffins from Yardley Cross, isn’t that what you think, sis?”

  Eve Allerthorpe nodded noncommittally.

  “Such little rapscallions, they are,” her brother continued. “Wouldn’t put it past them. The nerve of them, trespassing on our property. They often stray onto Allerthorpe land, but onto the island itself? That’s unheard of. Yet it can be the only logical explanation.”

  “It is one logical explanation, of that there is no question,” said Holmes. “There may yet be others. I wonder if I might prevail upon you, Miss Allerthorpe, to show me the three locations where the birch twigs were discovered. I see no reason not to begin my enquiries as soon as possible.”

  “Of course, Mr Holmes.”

  “I shall come too,” said Erasmus Allerthorpe. “I cannot pass up the opportunity to watch the great Sherlock Holmes at work. And you will need access to my bedroom.”

  Eve Allerthorpe led us first to her study, the little room she had described to us, where she composed her poetry. It was on the ground floor and was pleasantly snug, its walls lined with bookshelves whose contents formed a small but enviably well-chosen library. A writing desk faced the diamond-leaded window, which in turn faced the lake.

  Holmes opened the window’s sole casement, letting in a thin breeze, and peered out. The ledge was thick with snow, and below it the outer wall of the castle dropped sheer to the rocky fringe of the island. It was, I estimated, a distance of some twenty feet from the window to the lake’s frozen surface.