“I suppose so.”
“It all seems so petty, in its way,” Holmes said, “and none of it would matter in the slightest if not for that singular codicil in Lady Jocasta’s will. That is the reason I think these apparently inconsequential goings-on may mask something more insidious, and that is the reason you and I, Watson, must remain at Fellscar at least until Eve’s birthday. For her sake, too, it would be wise to keep this latest incidence of Thurrick activity just between us – us and whoever perpetrated it.”
“You are worried that, as far as her mental health is concerned, it could be the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
“You have a way with a proverb, old friend, as befits a wordsmith of your calibre.”
Compliment? Or not? With Sherlock Holmes, it was sometimes hard to tell.
Chapter Eight
THE MONOLITH IN THE GLADE
The prospect of spending another three days and nights in that cold, inhospitable Yorkshire castle with that cold, inhospitable Yorkshire family was not one I relished. My reluctance was, however, somewhat mitigated by the breakfast I ate that morning. The dining-room sideboard groaned with edible delights. There was kedgeree, kippers, venison pie, cold ham, black pudding, fried bread, and eggs prepared in several different ways. There was toast with a range of curds and jams to spread on it. There was a local delicacy known as Easter-Ledge pudding, a cake of nettles, sorrel, onion and barley fried in bacon grease. There was coffee and tea aplenty. If I were to single out any item on the menu for praise, however, it would be the marmalade, which was remarkably good – so much so that I felt moved to convey my compliments to the cook.
To that end, I made my way to the kitchen. There was no one there, but I heard noises in the adjacent scullery, where I found a scullery maid, hard at work scrubbing dishes. I enquired of her whether the cook was around.
“Mrs Trebend, sir? She’s just this moment stepped out. Gone to the larder. Would thah like me to fetch her for thee?”
“I would, very much.”
The maid scurried off and returned shortly with Mrs Trebend in tow. The latter proved to be a plump, not unattractive woman in cap and apron, who greeted me with an obliging smile. She was carrying two hefty legs of mutton which, I presumed, were for lunch.
“Forgive the imposition, madam,” I said. “I simply wished to tell you how much I enjoy your cooking, especially that marmalade of yours.”
“You are too kind, sir,” Mrs Trebend said, laying the mutton down on the kitchen table and folding her meaty arms in a gratified manner. “My marmalade is good, even if I do say so myself. The secret lies in choosing only the best oranges – Seville, of course – and throwing in a little grapefruit as well, for added tanginess. Also, I shred the peel extra finely. It brings out the flavour better and is more pleasant on the palate. Mr Trebend – that is, my husband – allus says he could never find another woman who can make marmalade the way I do. Such a romantic he is, my Robert. Goforth! What were that?”
This last remark was directed through the doorway to the scullery, from where there had come a loud clatter.
“It were nowt, Cook.”
“Didn’t sound like nowt.”
“A plate slipped from my hand. It’s fine. Not broken.”
“Clumsy minx!” Mrs Trebend scolded. “You need to be more careful. Any piece of china in this house is worth more than you make in a month, and if you break summat, it will be coming out of your pay.”
“Yes, Cook. Sorry, Cook. Won’t happen again, Cook.”
“See that it doesn’t.” Mrs Trebend turned back to me, her scowl easing. “Will there be owt else, sir? Only, I am rather busy.”
“No, madam. I simply wished you to know that your efforts are much appreciated.”
“And your appreciation is, likewise, much appreciated,” said the Allerthorpes’ cook, bobbing a curtsey.
I returned to the dining room for one last fortifying cup of coffee. Up until then, it had been only Holmes and I at the table. Now, however, Shadrach Allerthorpe joined us, to make it three. His cheeks were ruddy and he was rubbing his hands together and blowing into them to warm them up. I did not need the analytical prowess of my friend to determine that he had just come in from outdoors.
“Been for a stroll?” I said.
“Yes, Doctor. Yes, that is just what I have been doing. Nothing gets the blood pumping quite like a brisk walk on a cold morning. Makes you feel like you’ve earned your breakfast.”
“Sounds like a fine recommendation,” said Holmes. “How about it, eh, Watson? Fancy some exercise?”
I would have demurred. However, something in Holmes’s tone suggested I was not being presented with a choice but, rather, an edict.
Thus several minutes later, suitably bundled up against the weather, he and I sallied forth from the castle. We had not gone more than a dozen paces from the landward end of the causeway when my companion paused and began inspecting the snowy ground.
“What are you looking for?”
“Tracks, old fellow. What else?”
“What sort of tracks?”
“Footprints. The human kind, I hasten to add, in case you were wondering whether I am seeking any left by some loathsome child-stealing beast.”
“I see a fair few sets of human footprints.” There were a dozen at least, angling this way and that across the open countryside, alongside the neatly dotted tracks left by animals – fox, rabbit, perhaps badger. In combination these criss-crossing stippled lines reminded me of sutures on a severely lacerated patient; and then I chided myself for likening an innocent winter’s day scene to something so unpleasant. Perhaps more than a decade as a medical man had so accustomed me to injury and illness that I saw those things everywhere. I wondered, though, whether the castle’s darkly gloomy atmosphere was somehow contaminating my thoughts, and this and the lack of a decent night’s sleep were making me inclined towards morbid fancies.
“The ones I am interested in are the freshest,” Holmes said. “Older footprints, even from yesterday, will not have the same crisp edges as any that have been made during the past hour or so. There will always be some small amount of erosion, either through wind or the melting effect of sunshine or a combination of both, which will make them appear, for want of a better word, blurry.”
I put two and two together. “You are trying to work out where Shadrach Allerthorpe went on his walk.”
“Really, Watson, I can well see you abandoning general practice one of these days, in preference for the role of consulting detective. Your skills are coming along nicely. Tell me, did you notice the tiny appendage Shadrach bore in his trouser cuff?”
“I did not.”
“Then you still have a little way to go, alas.”
“What was it?”
“The appendage? A fragment of twig had become lodged in the cuff. Birch twig,” he added, with dry emphasis.
“My goodness,” I said. “You mean to say Shadrach was out this morning on a foraging expedition? Gathering material for yet another Black Thurrick bundle?”
“I might not necessarily leap to that conclusion myself, but it certainly bears following up on, wouldn’t you agree? A-ha! There!” Holmes pointed to a line of footprints that stretched all the way to the woods and to another that ran practically parallel with it. He made a wild gesticulation which, under the circumstances, I thought unwarranted. “Yes. Yes. These must be his. I have observed that Shadrach Allerthorpe takes a size nine shoe, and these prints are size nine. Furthermore, the tread pattern of the sole matches that of a pair of size nine walking boots I spied on the mat by the front door, caked with snow and awaiting the ministrations of the boot boy. One of them was lying on its side. You saw this too? No? Ah well. Your progress towards setting up your own detective agency lengthens a tad further. Now, if we consider the position of heel and toe, in tandem with the slight ‘drag’ at the rear of each print, it tells us that these tracks are heading towards the castle, while these are heading away. Al
l we have to do is follow this dual spoor and it will lead us along the route Shadrach took.”
Accordingly, we started retracing Shadrach Allerthorpe’s journey. For the first few minutes Holmes was in such a transport of delight, flailing his arms and cavorting, that I began to wonder if there was some deeper significance to the discovery of the tracks than appeared.
He calmed down once we were deep in the woods and trudging through snow that sometimes came up to our shins. It was a bright, breezeless morning and the hush around us was profound. All we heard was our crunching footfalls and the occasional soft patter of loose snow tumbling from a tree branch. I was put in mind of the wintry march my regiment had undertaken through the Shivaliks, the Himalayan foothills, amid forest just as dense as this and just as breathlessly still. I felt, again, the tingle of fear that had come with the knowledge that the enemy might be lurking behind any tree; that hostile eyes could be upon me, and gunsights too. I doubt I shall ever be free of my memories of the war. They will haunt me to my grave.
Holmes kept his gaze fixed downward, keen not to lose the trail. On occasion, however, he would dart a glance over his shoulder. This did little to assuage my feelings of unease. Was he merely being cautious, or was somebody following us? If the latter, I myself saw no indication of it, but then my friend’s senses were far keener than mine. I began to wish I had had the foresight to bring my service revolver with me. Holmes had given no hint that a weapon might be needed, however, and generally speaking, when it came to making provision for danger, I took my cue from him.
After we had gone perhaps two miles, I said, “We have passed countless birch trees, each with an ample sufficiency of fallen twigs around it. If Shadrach’s remit was collecting such twigs, he need not have travelled quite so far, surely.”
“Indeed,” Holmes replied. “His morning walk must have had some ulterior motive.”
“Or else none at all, save that which he claimed for it.”
For the most part Shadrach had followed pre-existing paths through the woods, but then, abruptly, his tracks veered off across rougher terrain, showing that he had ascended a steep, root-riddled slope and subsequently descended it along much the same course. Holmes and I toiled uphill, now and then losing our footing and sliding back, until eventually we came to a ridge.
Just beyond, we found a natural glade that occupied a shallow, bowl-like depression. At its centre stood a single, upright stone, some two and a half yards tall and roughly conical. The ground around the stone, for a radius of approximately ten feet, had been cleared of most of its snow, revealing leaf mould and glimpses of bare soil. The removed snow lay banked up around the perimeter of this circle.
“Well now,” said Holmes, “this is a curio indeed. You will recall the standing stone mentioned by Miss Allerthorpe, the Rudston Monolith. Here we appear to have another such monument.” He walked around the stone, studying it by eye and even running a hand over its lichen-speckled surface. “There are carvings which, from their weather-worn faintness, can only be several centuries old. The patterns are not all of them familiar to me. However, I detect a distinct Celtic influence. Here, for example, we find the particular kind of ornamentation known as a Celtic knot, and here the triple spiral, also of Celtic origin, which I believe is known as a triskele. This is not my field of expertise at all, but one may safely assert that the stone was erected in accordance with some ancient pagan tradition, as a locus of worship, perhaps, or as a place of ritual sacrifice.”
I affected a nonchalance I did not feel. All at once the glade seemed less innocent, the grey, rough-hewn monolith pregnant with foreboding. Had dark, heathen ceremonies been held at this spot, long, long ago? Had blood been spilled here on that standing stone? Perhaps even human blood?
Next Holmes began to examine the patch of ground that was more or less free of snow.
“This has been swept,” he concluded. “A consistent circular motion has been used. You see the grooves in what little snow remains? They rotate around the stone in a clockwise direction, concentrically. The utensil employed, however, was no common-or-garden broom. The width of the stroke is too broad, while the grooves are too irregular to have been left by evenly-spaced bristles. Something more natural was involved. Something such as…”
He cast an eye around him, and suddenly let out a little chuckle.
“Yes, there you are, my beauty,” said he, skipping to the edge of the glade. He picked up a large branch, which had been leaning propped up against the trunk of a tree. It was a slender birch bough, with a fan of smaller stems spreading from one end like a river delta. In a spirit of experimentation, Holmes raked the fan-shaped end across the ground, following the course of the circular grooves already there. “A perfect match. This is the ‘broom’. I would wager good money on it. The only question is why Shadrach Allerthorpe has been out here this morning, engaged in this peculiar piece of forest husbandry.”
“It does seem a dashed odd thing to do,” I observed.
“I concur. Perhaps the man himself would be willing to explain his reasons.”
I made sceptical noises.
“As it happens, we can ask him right now,” Holmes said. “Can’t we, Mr Allerthorpe?”
My friend was looking off into the forest, and I, following the line of his gaze, perceived someone skulking behind a tree, half-hidden. The hackles rose on the back of my neck. How long had this person been loitering there, secretly spying on us?
The skulking figure, as if acknowledging that the jig was up, stepped out into the open. It was, as Holmes had conveyed, Shadrach Allerthorpe. He looked chagrined and also somewhat sheepish.
“You knew I was following you?” said he to Holmes.
“Knew? I lured you out, sir! My sudden decision to go for a walk would have aroused your curiosity, and so I was unsurprised when I caught sight of you watching furtively from a window as Watson and I were leaving the castle. I made quite a song and dance about locating the tracks you had left earlier. All that arm-waving and gambolling when I found them – I was practically begging for your attention. And I am most grateful that you have obliged by shadowing us all this way. It has saved us a great deal of trouble. You visited this glade not an hour ago and performed some kind of formal sweeping with a birch branch. What, pray, was the purpose of that?”
Shadrach pondered, then said gravely, “I shall tell you. But before I do, be so good as to promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“Once I have explained my actions, you will not mock me and you will not breathe a word about it to anyone.”
“Very well.”
“You too, Doctor.”
Taking my lead from Holmes, I gave my word.
“Thank you.”
And so Shadrach Allerthorpe embarked upon a brief but most curious narrative.
Chapter Nine
SHADRACH ALLERTHORPE’S BRIEF BUT MOST CURIOUS NARRATIVE
“I am, as my brother told you, an historian,” Shadrach Allerthorpe began, “although I suppose you might more correctly call me an antiquary. My knowledge of history is fairly wide-ranging but, if I were to be said to have a speciality, it is pre-Christian culture and society. I am fascinated by the ancient world in all its forms, whether it is the might and majesty of imperial Rome, the Hellenes, with their wit and sophistication, or the Egyptians, as brilliant as they were cruel.
“However, what interests me as much as any of those civilisations, if not more, is the civilisation that existed in our own country prior to the Norman Conquest, prior even to the Roman invasion. Britain in the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, and earlier still. It is an era shrouded in a fog of mystery through which we obtain occasional, tantalising peeks at the truth. Contemporary documentation is sparse, and so we must rely upon rare archaeological finds – a burial barrow here, a collection of potsherds there – and extrapolate from these.
“It is the opacity of our nation’s distant past that is so intriguing to me. The challenge is to make the most
of the few clues one has. In that respect, I suppose you could liken it to detective work, eh, Mr Holmes? Sifting through the data, examining the minutiae, eliminating the impossible, and so forth.”
Holmes inclined his head to one side, as though he did not wholly agree with the comparison but did not disagree with it either.
“At any rate,” Shadrach continued, “I have devoted many hours to the study of ancient Britain, and during the course of my researches I have developed a fascination for the customs and conventions of the Celtic druids.
“A druid was not just a tribal religious leader. He was a diviner of auguries and a healer, and served as arbiter in judicial matters as well. He could start a war against an enemy tribe, and stop it. His word, in every sphere of life, was final.
“The druids left no written record of their lore, which was communicated from one to another orally alone, doubtless in order to preserve secrecy. According to the writings of Caesar and Pliny the Elder, among others, they conducted certain barbaric rites in which the immolation, drowning or decapitation of sacrificial victims was not unheard of.”
“Human victims?” I said, casting an uneasy look at the standing stone.
Shadrach nodded. “The purpose of the death was not only to appease the gods. The very manner in which the victim perished, from the way the blood flowed out to the convulsions of his limbs, could be used to prophesy the future.”
“Ghastly.”
“By our lights, yes, but to the Celts it was just how things were. Above all else the druid had a close connection with nature. The world around him was pregnant with meaning. He understood the cycles of the moon, the sun and the seasons, and observed these religiously. Plant life was, to him, particularly important. Every tree, every shrub, every flower was sacred in some way or other and had a power that he could harness.”
Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Demon Page 8