Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Demon

by James Lovegrove

  “Yes, and if you think that the current crop have their flaws, they are nothing compared with him. It is said that he and likeminded cronies would hold wild orgies at his castle where Satan himself was allegedly in attendance, presiding over the revels. They would steal sheep and cattle belonging to nearby villagers and smallholders and sacrifice them to their dark lord in hideous rituals. They would abduct young women from their homes and subject them to the worst kind of depredations. Eventually the locals had as much of this as they could stomach, and there was an uprising. They stormed the castle and burned it to the ground, and Sir Mansfield with it. He died heirless and intestate, and his estate passed to the Crown. The island, the lake and the surrounding property were designated common land, and the locals merrily grazed their livestock there for the next few decades, some compensation for the abuses inflicted upon them by its former owner. That was until Alpheus came along.”

  “Alpheus cannot have bought the island and made it the family seat once more out of sympathy for his ancestor, can he?”

  “On the contrary. He did it in order to expunge the stain left upon the family name by Sir Mansfield, who was his second cousin twice removed. Where ‘Allerthorpe’ had come to be associated with the misdeeds of his forebear, and likewise the island, Alpheus was determined to erase the past and write the family history anew. Allerthorpes would, he hoped, be remembered thereafter not for Sir Mansfield’s depravity but for a respectable grandeur, symbolised by Fellscar Keep.”

  “Fascinating though I’m sure this all is, I don’t see the relevance.”

  “I am coming to that. Let me tell you about the Hell Stone.”

  “The what?”

  “You will recall Eve Allerthorpe’s account of a meteorite that fell to earth at Wold Newton.”

  “Yes. She said something about a stagecoach whose passengers fell unconscious as the meteorite flew overhead.”

  “It happened in 1795,” said Holmes. “Sir Mansfield Allerthorpe, still alive then, took an immediate interest in the meteorite, in no small part because of the queer effect it had reportedly had upon those people in the stagecoach. He judged this visitor from the skies to have infernal connotations. The meteorite was, in his view, an omen – nothing less than a sign from Lucifer, who himself fell blazing from the heavens and to whom Sir Mansfield had, as I have mentioned, pledged his fealty. He went to Major Edward Topham, the playwright and newspaper proprietor who owned Wold Cottage Farm where the meteorite came down, and asked to buy it from him. Topham had plans to profit from the rock by exhibiting it to the public, but being a good businessman was amenable to the idea of selling Sir Mansfield, if not the whole thing, then a portion. The meteorite, which is the type known as a chondrite and weighs the best part of sixty pounds, resides today in the British Museum. Shadrach Allerthorpe showed me a lithograph of it in an East Riding guidebook, and while the majority of its surface area is pitted and uneven, with a dark colouration, one side is perfectly smooth and light-hued, as though part of the meteorite has sheared off. Purportedly the rock broke in two mid-flight, the lesser segment coming to earth miles from where the majority landed, never to be found. The truth is that Topham and Sir Mansfield arranged for a stonemason to chip away a slab of the meteorite, for which Sir Mansfield parted with the princely sum of fifty guineas. This became his Hell Stone.”

  “And what, dare I ask, is a Hell Stone?”

  “Sir Mansfield engaged the stonemason to carve into the piece of meteorite an oath of loyalty to the Prince of Lies, which he himself had composed in Latin. He then gave the slab the name Hell Stone and had it embedded in one wall of his castle, with the inscription facing out for all to see.”

  “That demonstrates a rare commitment to unchristian values,” I remarked.

  “Sir Mansfield was, it would seem, quite brazenly shameless. His so-called Hell Stone signalled his defiance of convention and the Church. And it was the final straw as far as the locals were concerned, providing the catalyst for the uprising I mentioned earlier. When word got around about the Hell Stone’s existence, outrage finally spilled over into action. People roused themselves to form a mob and march on the castle.”

  “Serves him right, I’d say.”

  “To answer your question, finally, the relevance is this. When the residual heat of the conflagration at the castle had cooled, Sir Mansfield was buried amidst the rubble. Needless to say, he did not receive a Christian interment. Those responsible for his comeuppance simply dug a shallow grave and tossed his charred remains in it. The Hell Stone was smashed into pieces and interred along with him. Now then, Watson, where on the island do you think his gravesite might be?”

  I had a fairly good idea, but Holmes’s enquiry was rhetorical.

  “Beneath Fellscar’s east wing,” he said.

  “Of course it would be,” I said. “Where else? And if there were a ghost haunting the castle…”

  “Watson, really.”

  The fresh piece of intelligence regarding the devilish Sir Mansfield Allerthorpe and his Hell Stone had awoken in me fears I thought I had put to bed. “But if there were a ghost,” I persisted, “who is it more likely to be than Sir Mansfield? His wretched soul is surely not at rest and roams the part of the castle built over the spot where his body lies.”

  “I have already made it clear that the east wing ghost was never anything more than a lie promulgated by Goforth,” Holmes said testily, “in order to ensure that her and Fitzhugh Danningbury Boyd’s trysts would go undiscovered.”

  “But what if, after all, she did not fashion it out of whole cloth? What if she genuinely did experience something uncanny and simply embroidered upon the event? Then Mrs Trebend’s own ghost sighting becomes that much more explicable. Nothing to do with suggestibility, everything to do with –”

  “Hush, Watson. Not another word. You are lapsing into credulity, and I will not have it. Stiffen your sinews, or I shall ask you to turn around and go back to your room. I cannot conduct a night-long surveillance with someone who is going to be jumping at shadows and seeing non-existent wraiths everywhere.”

  We continued on in silence – in my case a somewhat sullen silence – until we arrived at our destination. We were in the same ground-floor corridor where we had fetched up the night before, drawn by Goforth’s dying scream. Holmes ushered me into the bathroom halfway along, which was to be where we would lie in wait.

  For what? Beyond stating that he anticipated a “manifestation”, my companion still had not vouchsafed why we were there, and when I attempted to press him on the subject he gave me very short shrift.

  “No more talking,” he hissed. “We must be quiet as monks from now on.”

  We settled down, I on the floor with my back to the claw-footed bath, Holmes beside the door, which he left open a crack. I drew my revolver.

  Time crawled. In spite of Holmes’s ardent rationalism, I could not dispel thoughts of Sir Mansfield Allerthorpe from my mind, try though I might. Perhaps all along it was he, rather than Perdita Allerthorpe, whom Becky Goforth and Mrs Trebend had variously encountered; his shade that had moaned at and breathed upon the former, and had brushed the latter’s arm with icy fingers before allowing her a brief glimpse of his spectral self. Miserable sinner that he had been in life, why should he not continue to promote fear and upset even in death? I pictured his ghost, a hunched, tatterdemalion thing, still bearing the marks of immolation, groaning and muttering malevolently as it slouched along the castle’s corridors.

  Once this image became lodged in my brain it was hard to pry loose. I sought comfort from my revolver. The weapon had stood me in good stead many times in the past. With it in my hand, I normally had little to fear.

  Yet on this occasion its hefty metallic solidity was not so reassuring. Holmes had joked about ammunition that could damage ectoplasm, but just then I rather wished there was such a thing. Against ghosts, a Webley Pryse top-break was unlikely to be effective. One might as well try to ward off a marauding lion by dancing.


  Minutes became hours, and Fellscar Keep bombarded us with its nocturnal panoply of creaks and whispers, rustles and sighs. The bathroom’s water pipes ticked and gurgled softly. A man in a nearby bedroom cried out in his sleep, pleading with someone in his dream, “Don’t leave me! Give me another chance! I love you!”

  Holmes remained attentive at the door. Outwardly he appeared calm but there was discernible in his eyes a fierce, glittering intensity. I thought of a cat outside a mousehole, poised to pounce the moment a twitching nose showed itself.

  Midnight came and went. I shifted position in order to ease a cramp in one leg, then the other. My state of tension did not diminish with the passage of time and the uneventfulness of the vigil. It only increased, like a bowstring being drawn ever more taut. I speculated – and rather hoped – that this was to be our final night at Fellscar. Holmes and I would at last lay hands on Goforth’s killer, and Holmes would then produce an explanation that tied together the murder, Jocasta Keele’s will, the Black Thurrick’s birch twig bundles, the mystery of Erasmus’s missing signet ring, and much else besides, showing how each element dovetailed immaculately like the best Chippendale joinery. Not only was I looking forward to a satisfying resolution to this adventure, I was eager to return to London, see my Mary once more, and put behind me the Allerthorpe family, their castle, and the turbulent past and present of both.

  Then the night air was rent by a bloodcurdling scream.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  MRS TREBEND’S TERROR

  It was not a short, truncated scream like Goforth’s. It was long, drawn out, and it echoed piercingly through the castle, being repeated once, then twice, before dwindling into a series of ever fainter wails.

  I was frozen in place, stupefied by the suddenness and unexpectedness of the initial scream. It was as though every sinew in my body had been shocked stiff, along with every hair on my skin. I daresay it would have taken me a good minute to stir myself to move, had Sherlock Holmes not darted from the bathroom while the sounds still continued. His swift response galvanised me into action. I hurled myself after him. He dashed through the castle, and I trailed in his wake, gun in hand.

  Around us a hubbub grew. Doors were flung open. Various Allerthorpes emerged from their rooms in their nightwear and descended staircases, blinking dazedly. Several of them threw queries at us as we passed, but Holmes rushed on, heedless, and I followed his example.

  The hue and cry was loudest in the servants’ quarters, and that was where we found the source of the screams. It was Mrs Trebend, who lay sprawled on a first-floor landing, with her concerned husband bending over her and various other servants looking on.

  One glance told me the woman was in a dire state. Her face was extraordinarily pale and coated with a sheen of perspiration, and she was trembling all over. Pocketing my revolver, I felt her wrist and discerned that her pulse was racing. With my ear to her sternum, I registered an erratic heartbeat.

  “Mrs Trebend,” I said, and then, more forcefully, “Mrs Trebend.”

  There was no response, so I patted her cheek. Her eyes rolled in their sockets, found mine and gained focus.

  “Dr… Watson?”

  She could speak. That was something. Her voice was faint but her speech was not hampered, nor was there a slackness to her mouth. I picked up her left hand, then her right, requesting that she squeeze my own hand with each. She managed to do so.

  “What has happened to her, Doctor?” Trebend asked. His customary inexpressiveness had been replaced by a rictus of anxiety.

  “She has not had a stroke, that much I can tell you,” I replied. “A heart attack, however, remains a possibility.”

  “My goodness. She only stepped out of the room for a moment, in order to go to the kitchen. She remembered she hadn’t put the bread away in the breadbin, she said. She was worried the mice might get to it.”

  By now a sizeable crowd had assembled around us, made up not only of servants but of Allerthorpes too, including Thaddeus and Shadrach. I entreated them to back away and give Mrs Trebend some room.

  “Everyone, you heard Watson,” said Holmes in an imperious tone. “If you have no good reason to be here, kindly return to your rooms. Not you, of course, Mr Allerthorpe,” he added somewhat more deferentially, addressing Thaddeus. “Nor your brother.”

  As the throng began to disperse, Mrs Trebend said something.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” I said.

  Her voice was a husk of its usual self. “I saw… it, Doctor. Again.”

  “Saw what, Mrs Trebend?”

  “The ghost. It was… there.” She raised a quivering forefinger. “Right there.”

  She was indicating the corner of the landing by the window.

  Beside me, Holmes gave a very audible tut of exasperation. I shot him a reproving look. His answering look conveyed a distinct lack of remorse.

  “Its eyes,” Mrs Trebend said. “Oh, its eyes. The emptiness… in them. The despair.”

  “Please, madam, do not talk,” I said. “You must not tax yourself.”

  “So lonely. So angry. It… despises us. It wishes we were none of us here.”

  Those few servants still within earshot murmured amongst themselves. I saw one man make the sign of the cross.

  “Let us get you to your bed,” I told Mrs Trebend.

  “A capital idea,” said Holmes. “The fewer who hear this twaddle, the better.”

  “Holmes!”

  My friend was allowing his contempt for belief in the supernatural to overmaster his natural compassion. Yet he was unrepentant. “Every utterance about a ghost serves only to foment superstition and sow unrest, and at this juncture that is something we can sorely do without.”

  With aid from her husband, I helped Mrs Trebend to her feet. Between us, he and I bore her to their room and laid her down. I made a cold compress out of a washcloth and draped it across her brow. For the next hour I watched over her, regularly taking her pulse and monitoring her breathing. Little by little her condition improved. Her heartbeat strengthened and stabilised, and my concern that she had suffered a coronary thrombosis abated. Her face regained some colour. Soon she was well enough to sit up and take a sip of lime cordial.

  Yet she remained in an enfeebled state, and I resigned myself to yet another wakeful night of supervision.

  Trebend, however, volunteered to look after her.

  “Margery is my wife,” said he. “I can do no less.”

  I consented to leave her in his care, with the proviso that if she took a turn for the worse he was to fetch me immediately, whatever the hour.

  When I returned to my room, Holmes was waiting for me there.

  “The gallant medic now has a fourth invalid to tend to,” said he wryly. “And how is Mrs Trebend after her latest brush with a hideous ethereal apparition?”

  “Much better. But do you know, Holmes, this cynicism of yours is becoming dashed tedious. The woman was in a very bad way. Her heart was arrhythmic and tachycardic, resulting in acute hypertension. For a time I feared she might not pull through. You cannot tell me that so severe and adverse a physical reaction was triggered by some mere trick of the eye or mind. Mrs Trebend must have seen something – something truly frightening.”

  “You detected, no doubt, a strong odour of oranges about her? No? I did.”

  “I was more preoccupied with her wellbeing than how she smelled. What of it, anyway? She makes marmalade. Obviously she had been preparing a fresh batch shortly before she went to bed, and the oranges’ aroma still clung to her.”

  “Obviously. That must be it.” Holmes yawned. “Well, I shall leave you to your rest, old friend. One thing you should know. We depart from Fellscar tomorrow morning.”

  “Depart…?”

  “For good. London calls. We have done all we can here. Nothing is to be gained by staying.”

  “What?” I exclaimed. “But Goforth’s murderer is still at large. And what about Eve? The will codicil? T
he Black Thurrick? Erasmus’s ring? The ghost, even? You cannot let all these things go unresolved.”

  “I can if I want.”

  “This is not like you at all, Holmes.”

  “Perhaps you hold me in too high esteem. My powers of ratiocination and logical analysis are useless here, too mundane to prevail against otherworldly creatures. I yearn for a good old burglary or blackmailing, something commonplace without any fantastical folderol attached, and London offers an abundance of those. Yes, back to the Great Wen you and I shall go in the morning, Watson. My mind is made up. Nothing you can say will dissuade me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  DEPARTURE FOR LONDON

  I went to sleep fuming and awoke fuming. How could Holmes be so capricious? So pig-headed? There was work still to be done at Fellscar Keep, and he was simply walking away?

  I resolved to have it out with him before breakfast. Now that he had had a chance to sleep on his decision, which seemed to have been made in the heat of the moment, perhaps he might be more willing to recant.

  He was not in his room, however. I found him downstairs in the dining hall, where it was clear that he had just formally announced his intention to leave.

  Thaddeus and Shadrach Allerthorpe were both present, and neither man appeared any too bothered. They were under the impression that it was the imprisoned Danningbury Boyd who had slain Becky Goforth. As far as they were concerned, Sherlock Holmes had more or less fulfilled his remit at Fellscar. The main matter, the murder, had been dealt with. Any other business, ghostly manifestations included, was of minor consequence.

  “I will have Winslow prepare the brougham and horse,” said Thaddeus. “He can get you to Bridlington in time to catch the nine-fifty train to York.”

  “Thank you,” Holmes said. “You may feel free to summon the police at any time, to take Mr Danningbury Boyd away. Here is the key to his room.”

  “I heard him stamping around in there a short while ago,” said Shadrach. “It would seem he has at last regained consciousness. He sounded disgruntled, to put it mildly. Thumped on the door a few times. Uttered a few choice oaths.”