Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Demon

by James Lovegrove

  The meal provided respite, but then we were back to staring into the mist, and soon enough the chill was worming its way ever deeper into my bones and I was once more seeing those flitting, hallucinatory shapes and feeling that horrid sense of disorientation and oppression.

  Gradually the far-off glow from Fellscar Keep dwindled. The Allerthorpes were going to bed. By ten, there wasn’t a light left burning at the castle, and the mist seemed to revel in this fact, as though it had won some kind of victory. It grew denser and teemed with evanescent humanoid forms in still greater number. When they became too abundant, too overwhelming, I found myself having to close my eyes for short periods. This would dispel them, at least for a while.

  Time continued to drag by, and more and more the feeling was creeping up on me – the certainty, in fact – that I had become trapped in limbo. It seemed I had been standing there amidst that numbing, cloudy nothingness since the dawn of creation and would continue to do so until the end of days.

  It was then, just as my thoughts were commencing a spiralling descent into out-and-out existential panic, that Sherlock Holmes plucked at my sleeve. He nodded towards the lake.

  Out there on the ice I descried a dim silhouette. A moving figure.

  At first I was convinced it was just another of the mist’s mirages. I blinked a few times. The figure was still there. It was moving closer, hunched, lumbering. It was spindly and dark. It had a sack slung over its back.

  The Black Thurrick was here.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  FRAGILE ICE

  Holmes motioned me to crouch down. He was excited but doing his best to suppress the emotion. I was excited, too, but with reservations. The figure on the frozen lake remained just a dim outline. I knew it must be a human being, but my mind was still partly adrift, unmoored from reason. My thoughts had become a jumble of ghosts, demons and dead souls. At that particular moment, it would not have surprised me if the thing slouching towards us turned out to be a fiend from folklore after all.

  Holmes lay a hand upon my shoulder. His grip steadied me, anchoring me back in reality. I reached into my pocket for my revolver.

  The silhouette of the Black Thurrick was becoming sharper and clearer by the second. His garb was purest black. His face was a pale oval speckled with dark blotches, somewhat like a brindled cat’s.

  As quietly as I could, I cocked the hammer on my pistol.

  The Thurrick reached the edge of the lake and rested his sack upon the bank, preparing to clamber up.

  “Now, Watson!” Holmes cried, springing upright.

  The Thurrick’s eyes widened in startlement. His mouth gaped.

  “Got you!” my friend declared.

  He lunged for the Thurrick, seizing him by the arm.

  The Thurrick backpedalled and, with a desperate, mighty wrench, tugged himself free of Holmes’s grasp. Holmes lost his footing and slithered down the bank onto the ice. The Thurrick turned and began to run.

  “Watson, a warning shot, if you will,” Holmes said.

  I fired just over the Thurrick’s head, so close to my target that I fancy he must have felt the round waft his hair as it hurtled by. Certainly he would have heard it buzzing past him like some angry hornet.

  “The next one goes into you,” I said. “Don’t think that I did not miss deliberately just now.”

  The Black Thurrick, still just visible through the mist, came to a halt.

  “The game is up,” Holmes said. “Watson has remarkable aim, as you have discovered. Had he wanted to fell you, he could have easily. He is also a medical man, and knows where to put a bullet so that it may incapacitate without doing lasting harm. Not that that matters much. The severity of an injury is ultimately meaningless to one who has an appointment with the hangman – as you do, Mr Trebend.”

  The Thurrick bowed his head in submission, then turned back round.

  I had been expecting Erasmus Allerthorpe, but in fact it was that very person whom Holmes had addressed by name, Trebend. The butler’s features were eminently recognisable for all that they were besmeared with what looked like dirt or soot.

  “I should have known you would try something like this, Mr Holmes,” he said. His expression was rueful and embittered. “When you said you were leaving the castle and returning to London, I thought it was too good to be true. Yet I dared hope you had given it up.”

  “So that you would be able to resume your nocturnal activities as before,” said Holmes. “That was exactly what I wanted you to think.”

  “A nice trap.”

  “I like to think so.”

  “But I am left in something of a quandary,” said Trebend. “You are right. Now that you have me at your mercy, my quest to obtain what is rightfully mine is over. I’ve nothing to look forward to except the scaffold and the noose. Why, then, should I care whether you take me alive or not? The ice on the lake is noticeably more fragile tonight than it has been over the past few days, what with the slight warming in the weather. On my way across I came upon patches where it felt perilously thin indeed. I hear that drowning in freezing-cold water is one of the more pleasant ways to go. You just sort of… fade.”

  With an abrupt, surprising turn of speed, Trebend spun on his heel and started to run again. I was taken aback, and in the split-second it took me to collect myself, the butler had disappeared into the mist. I fired, more in hope than expectation of hitting him.

  “Dash it all!” Holmes said. “But we can still catch him.”

  “You heard what he said, Holmes. The ice is thinner than before, and he is slight, whereas both of us are larger and heavier. It would be unwise to give chase.”

  “So he wishes us to think. He could quite easily make it to the other side of the lake and get away scot-free. After him!”

  Holmes hastened off in pursuit of Trebend. I lowered myself gingerly down the bank and onto the ice, and began to run too. Straight away, one foot skidded out from under me and I almost fell flat on my face.

  I set off again at a somewhat more measured pace. In no time, I could no longer see the bank behind me. A little further on, I realised I had entirely lost my bearings. I did not know where I was on the lake, where the bank was, where the castle was. All I could see was mist and ice.

  I forged onward. Several times the ice sagged suddenly where I trod, a web of fissures radiating outward from my foot. Each time I leapt backward, my heart in my mouth; then I would make a detour around the damaged area, giving it a wide berth, and carry on.

  Still nothing but mist and ice. No sign of Holmes or of the Thurrick.

  Eventually, in desperation, I called out to my friend.

  “Over here, Watson,” came the reply. The mist made it hard to tell how close he was. He could have been ten feet away or a hundred.

  I ventured in the direction of his voice, my revolver to the fore. All at once there came a loud, splintering crack from somewhere up ahead, followed immediately by a mighty splash. I made a beeline towards the sounds, praying they signified that Trebend had fallen through the ice and not Holmes.

  The mist billowed, becoming more impenetrable than ever.

  “Hullo?” I said. “Holmes? Are you there? Holmes! Please tell me you are all right.”

  All of a sudden, two strong arms encircled my waist in a powerful hold and threw me roughly to one side. I reeled to my feet, lifting my gun. My assailant loomed before me. It could only be Trebend. My finger tightened on the trigger.

  “Please don’t shoot, Watson,” said Sherlock Holmes. “I cannot imagine the agonies of guilt you would suffer, knowing you had slain your greatest friend. Not to mention,” he added archly, “the tremendous loss my death would be to the world.”

  I lowered the revolver. “Good Lord, man! That was a close thing. But why did you attack me? Did you mistake me for Trebend?”

  “Not in the least. And it was not an attack. It was a rescue. Look there. Just to your left.”

  I peered and was able to make out a jagged, roughl
y circular hole in the ice, mere inches from my left foot. The hole was a yard in diameter. Dark water lapped and swirled within its circumference.

  “You were walking straight for it,” Holmes said. “Another step and you might have plunged in.”

  “Dear God in Heaven. I didn’t even see it. If you had not intervened…”

  “Well, quite.”

  “And Trebend? Is it safe to say…?”

  “You heard the splash. What do you think?”

  “I think,” I said, eyeing the hole, “that he got his wish. He cheated the hangman, and this marks his final resting place.”

  “I concur,” said Holmes. “Our Black Thurrick has gone to a watery grave.”

  “And I would prefer not to share his fate. Our work here on the ice is surely done. The sooner we get off the lake, the happier I shall be.”

  As we trudged off towards what I hoped was the nearest bank, I asked Holmes what Trebend had meant when he had spoken of a quest “to obtain what is rightfully mine”.

  “If you can bear the suspense a little longer,” he replied, “all will be revealed.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS

  Holmes pounded on the main door to the castle, yelling loudly. At last, after several minutes, a footman came. He peered out through a peephole set into the wicket gate.

  “Mr Holmes?”

  “Jennings, isn’t it? Kindly let us in, Jennings.”

  “It is very late, sir, and the household are all abed.”

  “And my friend and I are frozen to the bone and losing patience. It is important. I would not be knocking at this hour if it was not.”

  Reluctantly Jennings opened the gate to let us in. He was wearing slippers and dressing gown.

  As we entered the courtyard, Holmes said to him, “Awaken the family, would you? There’s a good fellow. No need to trouble the extended Allerthorpe clan. The permanent residents of the castle – the inner circle, as it were – will do. Tell everyone to meet us in the drawing room.”

  “At this hour of the night?”

  “Believe me, they will want to be up for this. You would do well to rouse Mrs Trebend, too.”

  The footman blinked in confusion. “Mrs Trebend?”

  “Don’t ask questions, Jennings. Just do as I say.”

  By now we were indoors, in the central hallway. The embers in the enormous hearth were still giving off plenty of residual heat, and I paused a while to warm my hands until, at Holmes’s insistence, he and I made for the drawing room. Jennings, meanwhile, had gone upstairs to discharge his orders.

  Ten minutes later, nightwear-clad Allerthorpes began filing into the drawing room. Thaddeus was first, followed shortly by Shadrach and Olivia, her hair pinned up beneath a silk nightcap. Eve was next, then Erasmus, yawning hard, and finally Mrs Danningbury Boyd.

  Thaddeus Allerthorpe was livid bordering on apoplectic. “Mr Holmes, it is half past one in the morning!” he thundered. “What is the meaning of this? You aren’t even supposed to be here. Winslow dropped you at Bridlington station. You should have been back in London hours ago.”

  Holmes answered this choleric tirade with a phlegmatic smile. “A necessary subterfuge, Mr Allerthorpe, as you will see. I shall make everything clear in due course, and you will, I trust, be satisfied that I have not got you out of bed for nothing.”

  “Am I wrong,” said Shadrach, “or did I hear a couple of gunshots somewhere outside not so long ago? I could have sworn I did, but Olivia said I must have imagined it.”

  “You are not wrong. I shall account for that, too.” Holmes turned to Eve. “Miss Allerthorpe. May I be the first to wish you a happy birthday, and many happy returns.”

  She looked bemused. “Yes. I suppose it is Christmas Eve, technically.”

  “Twenty-one years of age. Congratulations on achieving such a milestone. And on successfully coming into your legacy.” Now Holmes turned to Mrs Danningbury Boyd. “Your husband, madam, is not in a position to join us, I take it.”

  “He is presently in police custody,” said the wronged wife, with some satisfaction.

  “It may surprise you to hear that I shall be wiring the police station in the morning to recommend his release.”

  “What?”

  “Mr Danningbury Boyd remains an adulterer and, to that extent, despicable. He more than deserves a night on a wooden cot in a police cell. But he is not a murderer. My accusation was false. Another necessary subterfuge. Ah! Last but not least, here is Mrs Trebend.”

  All eyes fell upon the cook, whose usual formidable demeanour gave way to something akin to alarm as she entered the room and spied Holmes and me. She seemed to understand that we bore news of her husband and that it was not good – or so I assumed.

  “Don’t be shy, my good woman,” said Holmes. “Your presence is required at this little gathering as much as anyone’s.”

  “I can’t imagine why.”

  “Oh, but I think you can. No, don’t cringe so. It ill befits you. Come over here.” He beckoned to her. “Take a seat beside me. That’s it. Everyone else should make themselves comfortable too. I have something of a tale to tell and it may take some time.”

  His tone brooked no refusal, and the various Allerthorpes acceded to his request either out of curiosity or through a grudging complacency. Even Thaddeus set aside his outrage, for the moment at least, and sat. Erasmus helped himself to a glass of Madeira, then joined Eve on a sofa. He reached for his sister’s hand and clasped it. Mrs Trebend fixed her face in an impassive expression, staring off into the middle distance.

  Holmes put his palms together as though in prayer, bent his head, then raised it again.

  “This has been an unusual case,” he said, “by turns fascinating and frustrating. It had so many disparate facets that, in the initial stages, I was having trouble reconciling them all. Until, that is, I realised I was dealing with two discrete but intertwined sets of events rather than one – two threads braided around each other so tightly, it was hard to distinguish each from the other.

  “But to begin at the beginning. In town, young Miss Eve Allerthorpe came to me in a woeful state. She told me about her plight. A tragic suicide, a sizeable legacy, a creature from folklore, a haunted castle, with herself at the heart of it all, a maiden so beset with fear she was starting to question her own sanity. Material there to gladden the heart of any writer of penny dreadfuls.

  “Agreeing to take her case, I proceeded from the premise that all of the aforesaid supernatural elements were to be taken with a pinch of salt. I am pleased to say that events have borne out that assumption. There is no ghost. Nor is the Black Thurrick real. Having eliminated these two impossible creatures from my thinking, I was left with the somewhat more probable notion that the handiwork of both could be ascribed to human agency.

  “To take the Thurrick first, whose actions appeared to have no goal other than to terrify Eve. What was to be gained by frightening this girl other than to leave her so bereft of reason that it would invalidate the codicil of her Aunt Jocasta’s will? If she did not inherit the money, it was to be divided up between family members of the same generation. Each of them would receive monies worth in the region of four thousand pounds. That includes both Mrs Danningbury Boyd here, and Erasmus.”

  “But I had nothing to do with it!” Kitty Danningbury Boyd declared.

  “You cannot say you have not shown jealousy towards your cousin.”

  “Only as far as Fitzhugh’s behaviour regarding her was concerned, and I deeply regret that. I am sorry, Eve, that I slandered you in front of everyone the other night. It was unwarranted and unkind. I was just so infuriated by Fitzhugh. I was teetering on a precipice already, and seeing him pay court to you, in his usual unctuous manner, tipped me over the edge. Can you forgive me?”

  “I can,” said Eve.

  “Thank you, cuz.” To Holmes, Mrs Danningbury Boyd said, “As to Eve’s legacy, I am pleased for her. She is a lucky woman, and I wish her
nothing but the best.”

  “I am sure that is true,” said Holmes. “If only the same were true of her brother.”

  Erasmus Allerthorpe spluttered into his fortified wine. “What are you saying?”

  “I am saying, quite simply, young man, that it is you who have been leaving bundles of birch twigs strategically placed around the castle in emulation of the Black Thurrick. The reason? Greed. No, perhaps greed is too strong a word. Acquisitiveness. You were trying to drive your sister mad because you wanted a cut of Lady Jocasta’s money.”

  “Well, that is about the absurdest thing I have ever heard.”

  “And that is about the most predictable response I have ever heard. Denial does not obviate the obvious.”

  “But what would I want the money for? I have an allowance.”

  “That is very true,” said Thaddeus. “I am generous to all my immediate dependents, whose number comprises everyone in this room. You had better have something to back up this accusation, Mr Holmes.”

  “I do. What you may not be aware of, sir, is that your son has got himself into serious debt with a pair of local rogues, the Dawson twins of Yardley Cross.”

  Erasmus paled visibly. “I – I have no idea who you are talking about,” he blustered.

  “That is queer, Erasmus,” Holmes said, “because they seem to know you rather well. As does a certain Stanley Dobbs, pawnbroker by trade, to whom you have hocked various trinkets appropriated from Fellscar. Mrs Danningbury Boyd’s ring tree, for one. Your own signet ring, for another.”

  “His own…?” Thaddeus scowled at Erasmus’s hand. “Goodness gracious, boy! Your ring. I hadn’t noticed. Your mother and I gave you that ring for your eighteenth birthday. What has become of it? Is Mr Holmes right? You have pawned it?” He sounded appalled.

  “No. I… lost it. It fell off by accident. Down a drain. I was going to tell you.” Erasmus was growing more and more despondent and his refutations were becoming increasingly lacklustre. “And I don’t know about Kitty’s ring tree, or any paperknife, or anything.”