“Anyway,” Thaddeus said, rising from the table, “the ladies have had plenty of time to themselves. Shall we join them?”
We made our way to the drawing room, where, it transpired, a loud argument was taking place. Shrill feminine voices were raised, and I recognised them as Eve’s and Kitty’s, although the sound was muffled and I could not make out any words.
Just as we arrived at the door, it was flung open and out came Eve, in floods of tears. She brushed past us and hurried down the corridor.
I looked at Thaddeus, Shadrach and Fitzhugh Danningbury Boyd. None of them seemed perturbed, or indeed greatly sympathetic, not even Eve’s own father. I turned to Holmes. He, intuiting from my expression that I desired to go after the girl, gave me the merest of nods.
I hastened along the corridor, catching up with Eve just as she reached the central hallway.
“Miss Allerthorpe,” I said, “whatever is the matter? What has upset you so?”
Her face was red, her eyes swollen. “It is nothing.”
“It is abundantly not nothing. I am happy to listen, if there is something you would like to get off your chest.”
“I have had a few sharp words with Kitty, that is all. She… She accused me of flirting with Fitzhugh at table.”
“But that is absurd! I was watching. You did nothing to encourage him. If there was flirting, it came from only one direction.”
“Fitzhugh is an incorrigible lecher,” Eve Allerthorpe said. “He always has been. It is his practice with every halfway presentable woman he meets. Kitty is well aware of this, and it isn’t as if he has never acted like that towards me before. She has borne his roving eye patiently during the three years they have been married. Perhaps this evening it just proved too much for her, and she snapped.”
“You must in no way shoulder any of the blame. Your cousin has been unfair. You should seek an apology from her.”
Eve sniffed hard in an effort to compose herself. “Maybe tomorrow I shall. Tonight, I am just too distressed. I am going to bed. Goodnight, Doctor. Thank you for being so kind and understanding.”
“You are more than welcome, Miss Allerthorpe. Goodnight.”
I returned to the drawing room, where Olivia Allerthorpe was consoling her daughter. Thaddeus, Shadrach and Fitzhugh, meanwhile, stood around in various attitudes of embarrassment and unconcern. Holmes, for his part, affected an amused detachment.
My dander was up, and I did not trust myself to speak temperately to our host or any of the assembled company. Rather, I excused myself and said I was going to bed.
“A capital notion, Watson,” said Holmes. “I shall do so too. Allerthorpes, Danningbury Boyds, I bid you all good evening.”
At Thaddeus’s instruction, Trebend the butler fetched an oil lamp for us, which Holmes carried as he and I navigated through the illuminated sections of the castle to the unilluminated area where our rooms lay.
Along the way, my friend said, “What did I tell you, Watson? Families! They never know contentment. Some of them will present a united front to the world, all smiles and ease, while the undercurrents of disharmony reveal themselves only in private. With others, the turbulence shows all too readily upon the surface, even before strangers.”
I was relieved to discover that the fire had been lit in my room and the air was not quite as frigid as it had been that afternoon. The bed, however, was old and extraordinarily uncomfortable. I say this as someone who has endured the meagre padding of a boarding-school pallet and, moreover, slept on the bare, rocky ground of the Hindu Kush with insidiously bitter winds whipping down from the Himalayas and only a thin blanket to cover him, and still in both instances managed a decent slumber. My bed at Fellscar Keep was an abomination of poking-out springs and mattress ticking so threadbare I could feel the coarse fibres of the horsehair through it. The bedstead rocked and groaned at the slightest movement of my body. It was a fitful night, and I rose at five o’clock feeling hardly at all rested.
As I dressed, I opened the curtains to look out at the lake and the countryside beyond. The moon had set, but the starlight scintillated, giving the scene of snow and ice an eerily beautiful lustre.
My eye fell to the window ledge, where sat a small, dark object, nestling in the layer of snow.
I let out an involuntary gasp.
It was a bundle of twigs, fastened with string.
Chapter Seven
A MARVELLOUS MEDIUM
“Evidence!” declared a jubilant Sherlock Holmes who, clad in a dressing gown, had just joined me in my bedroom. “And on our very doorstep, as it were. Most fortuitous.”
“I am pleased for you,” I said. “For myself, all I can say is that it gave me a dashed fright, seeing those twigs out there.”
“Come, come, Watson. A big, bluff bravo like you, scared of a few small scraps of wood and a length of string?”
“It isn’t the bundle of twigs itself, but what it represents.”
“The Black Thurrick?”
“Well, yes. We are on the second floor. The item appeared on the window ledge overnight.”
“How do you know it wasn’t placed there while we were at dinner?”
“Because when we came up, I noticed that one of the window casements was rattling. The latch was undone, and I secured it. The twigs were not there then. I would have seen them. Therefore it must have happened after I got into bed, sometime during the night, and I heard nothing. It isn’t even as if I slept soundly. I would have been aware of the smallest disturbance, I am sure, and yet silently, someone – something – crept up the wall outside and singled me out for its sinister attentions. Me, Holmes.”
“And have you been a wayward boy this year, Watson?” my companion enquired with a smirk. “Do you merit punishment?”
“Please do not belittle my feelings,” I said hotly. “I am quite aware how ludicrous it is to be as flustered as I am. On the other hand, it was not your window that received this visitation.”
“Which is, in itself, suggestive. You did right by coming to me first, by the way, rather than opening the window and fetching the bundle.”
“I thought it best to leave it in situ,” I said. “I know how you like your crime scenes undisturbed.” To be honest, I had no great desire to touch the object.
“Crime scene? Yes, I suppose it is one, after a fashion. Now then…” Holmes lit a lamp, for it was still dark outside, and passed it to me to hold. Then he eased one of the casements open. The bottom of the casement skimmed the top of the layer of snow that had accumulated on the ledge. Poking his head out, he peered to either side and upward. Then he bent to examine the ledge itself minutely.
“Look here,” he said, motioning me to bring the lamp a little closer. “Do you see these tiny marks in the snow, just beyond where the twigs lie?”
He was pointing to three small grooves on the outer edge of the snow layer. Two were thin and straight, like incisions, while the third was curved, more like a scrape. Each was separated from its neighbour by a distance of no more than quarter of an inch.
“I see them.”
“What do you make of them?”
“Could they have been left there by a bird?” I wondered.
“Or maybe by the talons of the Black Thurrick. I’m joking, Watson! Don’t grimace like that. The Black Thurrick’s talons would leave much larger marks. Again, joking! Really, old fellow, even if you think the creature is real, you must learn to be cooler-headed about it. Are you an infant whose parents have not left out a food offering? No? Then you are safe from the Thurrick’s worst depredations. Do you have a pen?”
I produced one from my jacket pocket.
Holmes inserted one end of the pen into one of the loops of the knot with which the string was tied, then lifted the bundle of twigs very carefully, carried it inside and deposited it on the dressing table. While I closed the window, he sat and studied the bundle from every possible angle by the light of the lamp.
“The twigs have been gathered to order,
” he said eventually. “The majority appear to have fallen from the tree through natural processes, and are of a more or less uniform length. Those that were longer have had one end broken off, so as to shorten them appropriately.”
“I see.”
“Obviously our Thurrick is that rare type of marauding fiend who likes things neat and tidy. As for the string, it is standard triple-strand sisal twine, the sort one might purchase from any stationers or newsagents. The trimmed ends show a slight compression. That tells us much, of course.”
“It does?”
“It tells us that the Thurrick uses scissors, rather than that less sophisticated utensil, a knife.”
“How can you be sure?”
“The compression I spoke of is the kind that scissors cause, whereas a knife leaves a more frayed result, thanks to the sawing action required, with the shorn ends of the fibres exhibiting a definite trend in one direction. So, we may infer that the Black Thurrick has access to items of stationery such as one might find in any moderately well-supplied household. Yet the creature is reputed to dwell in an underground lair, which is hardly indicative of domesticity.”
“This is all very well, Holmes, but the twigs were placed on a window ledge, high up, just as they were in the case of Eve Allerthorpe’s study and Erasmus’s bedroom.”
“And in each instance the room concerned faces outward from the castle, implying that the depositor of the bundles is from without the premises, rather than from within. That is why I remarked how suggestive it was that your room was chosen and not mine. Mine faces inward.”
“I do not follow.”
“Doesn’t it look, Watson, as though somebody is making a point? Rather clumsily, at that. This somebody wishes us to assume that the bundles are the work of an external agency, by dint of the fact that they only ever appear on outward-facing window ledges. I deem it clumsy because, according to legend, the Black Thurrick can come down chimneys. Why, then, would the creature restrict itself to the outward-facing window ledges of Fellscar Keep when it has the ability to scale roofs? When its agility is such that surely no part of a building is off-limits? When any window ledge in the castle is theoretically accessible to it? No, the locations of the bundles of twigs is pure misdirection. It is an attempt to reinforce the notion that the twigs are the Black Thurrick’s doing – an attempt, moreover, made by someone who is not as cunning as he thinks he is.”
“Unless it is the Yardley Cross children who are responsible. They could not get to any window ledges that are not outward-facing.”
“Children! Bah!” Holmes snorted. “I concede that it is just feasible a child might have gained access to the window of Eve’s study, but climbing to the window of Erasmus’s bedroom on the first floor, not to mention your window here which is something close to fifty feet up, would surely be beyond the capabilities of even the nimblest and most determined adult, never mind a youngster. No, this whole business, my friend, is what the criminal fraternity call an inside job. It has been, right from the very start. Consider this. The first bundle of twigs appeared by the gatepost. Anyone from the castle could walk along the causeway and place it there. The person might just surreptitiously drop it as he was passing. The second bundle was outside Eve’s study. It sat to the side of the casement, of which the window has just a single one. If it had sat directly in front of the casement, then there would be more of a mystery. Because it did not, it is easy to deduce that someone opened the casement from within to place the bundle on the ledge. He or she could not have shut the window again if the bundle had been in the way of the casement, for the twigs would impede the closing of it. It stands to reason.”
“What about Erasmus’s window ledge? He said the bundle was in front of one of the casements.”
“That’s just it. One of the casements. There is more than one, as here. A person need only open the left-hand casement to plant the bundle in front of the right-hand one, and vice versa.”
“All well and fine,” I said, “but nobody came into this room during the night and opened the window. I would swear to it.”
“No, nobody did,” Holmes agreed. “In this instance, a different method was employed. Note that while we may be on the second floor, we are not on the uppermost storey in this wing of the castle. There is another floor above us. I put it to you that the bundle was lowered onto the window ledge by someone at the window above.”
“Good gracious! And what leads you to that conclusion?”
“Here is where snow proves itself to be a marvellous medium for the detective’s purposes. Under certain circumstances it offers an abundance of clues, for it preserves the imprint of anything that rests upon it, however insubstantial. You will recall the three distinctive marks in the snow on the ledge. What is the simplest and likeliest method someone would use to lower a small, light object a distance of four or five yards and leave it behind? A fishhook and fishing line, surely. This castle is built upon a lake. It is hardly improbable that there will be fishing tackle on the premises. Now, picture our culprit leaning out from the window above and paying out a length of fishing line with the bundle of twigs suspended from the fishhook by one of the loops in the string. The bundle lands safely upon the window ledge here. Now the fellow has to extricate the hook from the loop. He pays out a tiny bit more of his line. It is not enough. He pays out a tiny bit more. This at last creates sufficient slack for the hook to slip free from the loop, and he reels the line back in. Does this seem a plausible sequence of events?”
“Eminently so,” I said. “But how are you able to state with such certainty that that is what happened?”
“The marks tell the story in every detail. The leftmost straight mark denotes where the slack in the fishing line first touched the snow. The middle mark, ever so slightly longer, denotes where the greater length of slack did so. The third mark, just to the right of that one, was left by the fishhook as it slid out from the loop of the knot. Can you gainsay this interpretation of the data?”
“It is hard to.”
“It is all but impossible to. If you’ll allow me, I will make my way upstairs to verify one last element of my postulation.”
“I shall come with you.”
“No, I would prefer you to remain here. I shan’t be long.”
Holmes was absent for ten minutes, and when he returned, all he said was, “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“That is all the answer I need.”
“I am glad, for your sake,” I said. “But perhaps you would care to enlighten me as to how I have managed to satisfy your curiosity.”
“I daresay you would have told me, when I prompted you with that ‘Well?’, if you had heard anything from the room upstairs. A creak, say, or a footfall.”
“I heard none.”
“Just so. Treading slowly and softly, I crossed the room and stood at the window. I even took the precaution of removing my shoes and going on stockinged feet, as our fellow with the fishing line may well have done. The floorboards did not give away my presence, as you have confirmed. I opened and closed the window. That, too, was an all but silent procedure. Likewise the opening and closing of the door as I came and went. The room is another bedroom, by the way, and is currently unoccupied but looks as though it will be shortly, which is a pity.”
“Why?”
“Because it has recently been made ready for occupation by, doubtless, one of the coming houseguests. That means, unhappily for our purposes, that the floor has been freshly swept. If only the room had been used for something else, as a storeroom, for instance. Then the floor would have borne a convenient coating of dust in which one might have found tell-tale footprints. Still, I have proved that a stealthy person could avail himself of the use of the window without alerting his intended victim below, and so my fishing line theory is corroborated. Or, at any rate, it is not undermined.”
“So you have disproved once and for all the possibility that the Black Thurrick is the one leaving bundles of birch
twigs everywhere,” I said.
“You still believe there even is such a creature?”
“Until you can account for what Eve Allerthorpe saw from her bedroom window, I am reserving judgement.”
“That is your prerogative.”
“But who, then, is conducting this campaign of harassment against the residents of Fellscar Keep?”
“One of those self-same residents, obviously,” said Holmes. “Perhaps even Miss Allerthorpe herself.”
“Really?”
“You were there when we overheard her talking to her brother in the hallway. He said there had been no mysterious twig bundles while she was in London.”
“Why would she, of all people, be behind it all? It makes no sense.”
“An unstable, fragile young woman pretending she is the target of inimical supernatural forces? It is as probable as it is pathetic. A plea for attention, maybe, or a cry for help.”
“If it were either of those, why did Eve beg Erasmus not to tell anyone she had seen the Thurrick on the lake? Surely, for the purposes of drawing notice to herself, she would wish everyone to know.”
“Unless she realised in that moment she had gone a step too far. It is one thing to place a few bundles of twigs around the castle, quite another to claim to have clapped eyes upon a mythical beast. The line between plausibility and absurdity is, in this instance, a fine one, and Eve felt that she had crossed it.”
“But then why drag Erasmus into it in the first place, by leaving the third set of twigs outside his window?”
“To deflect the very accusation I have just made. How could Eve be the guilty party if her brother is also a victim?”
“I do not like it. The kind of terror she exhibited to us at Baker Street, that cannot easily be falsified.”
“I merely air a possibility,” Holmes said. “Her father might equally be responsible. He exhibits a strong dislike for both of his children. Or it could be Kitty Danningbury Boyd, angered by the attention her husband pays to her cousin and keen to render Eve a less enticing proposition by driving her half mad. If Eve is to be believed, Fitzhugh Danningbury Boyd tries to seduce practically every woman he meets, but since he lives at Fellscar, Eve herself is the one likely to suffer his flirtatious behaviour the most consistently. Therefore his wife would be at some pains to spike his guns, would she not?”
Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Demon Page 7