Further Associates of Sherlock Holmes Page 26

  “And these children only started going missing after the death of the Harlingdon family?”

  “Why? Do you think it is a ghost from that family?”

  “Of course not, Miss de Merville! How does a non-physical entity remove a physical entity from a room with walls? How can these children vanish into thin air? How is a ghost that is only sighted outside the orphanage, taking children from within the orphanage? It’s not possible. You know this and you believe there is a rational explanation otherwise you wouldn’t have come to me. Is there somewhere Dr Watson and I can hide outside the manor house, where we can observe the cliff edge?”

  “There is a cottage on the grounds where the matron and her husband live and also the gardener’s shed.”

  “Excellent. Dr Watson and I will follow you to Bristol on a later train, but for now you must return, and when you get there, tell no one when we are coming.”

  * * *

  I returned to the orphanage and did as Mr Holmes asked. That night I couldn’t sleep. I stood in the master’s bedroom at the window, eagerly watching the cliff edge.

  Suddenly, a scream pierced the night.

  Movement, footsteps, outside my door. I ran out. Mr Trenor, one of the teachers who watched over the boys’ dormitory, was in the corridor, ghostly by his candlelight. Further down the corridor, the door to the girls’ dormitory opened.

  “What was that?” Miss Jenkins’ shaky voice called down to us.

  “It came from downstairs,” Mr Trenor whispered.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  “Miss de Merville! You shouldn’t go down there!”

  But I was already at the landing, flying down the stairs, and on the ground floor. It was pitch black except for the end of the corridor; a door was ajar, and light peeked through. The kitchen. Someone was crying.

  “Open up or we’ll break down the door!”

  I knew that voice.

  I dashed down the corridor and burst into the kitchen. Marie was quivering in the middle of the kitchen, holding an oil lamp, pointing at something on the wall.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  I ran past her to the door that led to the outside and threw it open.

  The tall figure of Sherlock Holmes stood in the doorway. He paused when he saw the scene, and smiled. Dr Watson followed, and faltered, shocked. “Holmes! How is that possible?”

  I turned.

  High up on the wall, written in blood, were the words: SHERLOCK LEAVE.

  Fear gripped my heart like an iron fist clutching a tiny bird. I took a step back.

  “How?” I said. “I told no one. You must leave – you are in danger!”

  “Danger?” Holmes stepped forward, a trace of amusement in his voice. “No. Closer to an answer? Yes.”

  Holmes took the oil lamp from Marie and held it up to the wall. He was tall enough to stretch out a hand and touch the substance the words were written with.

  “A child’s blood!” Marie sobbed.

  Holmes brought it to his nose and sniffed. “Paint,” he said.

  “Paint!”

  “Tell me. What ghost buys a pot of paint to ward off a detective? Now, we must rest. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow. Miss de Merville, if you don’t mind, I’d like to stay in the room where you heard the voice.”

  * * *

  I slept in a spare bed in the girls’ dormitory and found Holmes and Watson alive and well the next morning – with not a single child missing.

  I acquired a set of keys from the porter. Holmes took us to the corridor outside the master’s bedroom.

  “The fireplace,” he said, “connects to an attic.”

  “An attic?” I said. “And where are the stairs to this attic?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  He led us across the corridor to the strongroom. From the set of keys, he immediately chose the correct one and opened the door.

  “How did you—?”

  It was a small room, and compared to the rest of the building, it was surprisingly untidy. The room was bathed in light from the window.

  “Look!” Mr Holmes pointed to the floor excitedly and then to the wardrobe against the opposite wall. “What do you make of that, Watson?”

  “What do I make of what?”

  “Dust!” He pointed to the floor in front of us. “There are large footprints, a man’s; he was wearing boots.” He took out a magnifying glass and crouched down, then spun around and inspected the carpet behind us. “Tiny flecks of mud… came from outside.” Holmes then followed the trail into the strongroom and to the wardrobe. “The footprints stop here, and look, on that side of the wardrobe there is no dust, which means…” He pushed the wardrobe aside to reveal a door. “The wardrobe has been recently moved.”

  I was stunned. Holmes was too excited to notice. Again he selected a key and opened the door to reveal a set of stairs. We ascended. My astonishment mounted as there, indeed, was a large attic with windows that spanned the entire width of the building, full of furniture and bric-a-brac covered in sheets. All along the perimeter of the attic were the necks of chimneys and many had been fitted with grates.

  “Aha! I thought so.” Holmes made his way to an open grate. Beside it was a bucket with black ash and a watering can. Holmes lifted up the watering can and examined it before turning to the grate. “This chute leads down to the room you stayed in, to the fireplace. And this is how the culprit was able to put out the fire and call your name. The water would’ve extinguished the fire, and the ash would’ve masked it.” Holmes then put on a child’s voice, and called my name down the chute. It was horribly familiar. He took a coin from his pocket and dropped it. “If you require more evidence, you may go back down and take a look. You will find the coin in the grate. You said you also heard a thud…” He walked over to a sheet-covered chair nearby, lifted it and dropped it to the floorboards. Holmes looked at me. I nodded.

  “And now,” continued Holmes, “to the dormitories.”

  “Wait. If that person was up here… how did I see a ghost by the cliff edge?”

  “Because, my dear, the criminal wasn’t working alone.”

  I followed Mr Holmes and Dr Watson down the hidden attic stairs, and from thence we weaved our way through the rooms on the floor below. I was astonished as Holmes revealed a series of hidden doors and open doorways that connected the dormitories.

  “This is absurd!” I exclaimed, after Holmes had pushed aside a thin wardrobe in an unused room next to the boys’ dormitory to reveal a gaping hole in the wall.

  “There was a door here; look, hinge marks. But the door was removed quite some time ago now.”

  “How has no one noticed this?”

  “Well, I suspect it’s not common practice here to rearrange the furniture.”

  “But why are there so many interconnecting rooms?”

  “The person who built the house must have requested it. Perhaps some paranoid Harlingdon during the Civil War. And now I wish to see the orphanage’s accounts.”

  Incredulous, I followed Mr Holmes and Dr Watson to Lillian’s office. She was happy to show the detective the books.

  “These are just the records of purchases. Where are the rest of the accounts?” asked Holmes.

  “With Mr Pearson, our relieving officer, and Mr Jeffreys, the clerk,” Lillian replied. “They’re based in an office on Clifton High Street.”

  Holmes studied the written accounts with a ferocious intensity, taking out his magnifying glass and tracing his fingers along the letters.

  “What is this?” He pointed to a large sum for Jones & Co.

  “The pharmacist,” Lillian replied.

  “For what?”

  “For laudanum.”

  “Laudanum?”

  “For Marie, our cook. She has bad arthritis.”

  “I see. That’ll be all. Thank you.”

  Lastly – and with a strange sense of anticipation – I took them to the cliff edge. Approaching the scene, even in daylight, and even after Holmes had sho
wn me the attic, the fireplace and the dormitories’ secret doors, the hairs at the back of my neck stood on end.

  “Who lives there?” Holmes asked, pointing.

  I followed his gaze. “The matron. That’s the Eades’ cottage. Lillian lives there with her husband, Charles.”

  “That’s quite a lot of flowers for a cottage. Rather superfluous, isn’t it?” Watson commented.

  “I agree. It did make me wonder how much money and effort is spent sustaining them.”

  “Indeed,” said Holmes, deep in thought. “But the ghost.”

  “This was where I saw him,” I pointed. “Right at the precipice.”

  Mr Holmes dropped down, flattening himself against the grass, and took out his magnifying glass. He then slithered to his right and peered over the ledge. Without warning, he swung himself round and disappeared.

  I screamed.

  “Holmes!” Dr Watson shouted.

  “I’m quite alright,” came a voice not too far away.

  Cautiously, Dr Watson and I crept closer to the edge.

  Mr Holmes was standing on a clump of rock, which jutted out from the side of the cliff, low enough so that he was hidden. Below him were more protruding platforms of rock at regular intervals down to the Avon. Strange, faint white markings dotted some of the stones. Mr Holmes inspected the white mark closest to him.

  “It is as I suspected,” said he. “Now, both of you, go back to the orphanage. Do not tell anyone what I have found. Watson, search more rooms. Note anything unusual you find. I will be back by dinner.”

  Dr Watson started walking back to the orphanage, but I remained by the cliff edge for a moment longer.

  “Why has no one noticed that before?” I asked aloud. “Why has no one looked over the cliff edge?”

  “For fear,” came a voice from below that deceitful place. “If you want someone to stay away from something, teach them to fear it.”

  * * *

  I’d had dinner, and still Holmes hadn’t reappeared. Watson, too, had disappeared some time after lunch; I had not seen him since. The sun was setting. I decided to walk around the grounds, perhaps meet the detective on his way back to the orphanage.

  Just as I exited the house I saw, down the path towards the woods, two people carrying oil lamps walking hurriedly towards the trees. It looked like Lillian and Dr Watson.

  “Dr Watson!” I called out.

  He turned, as did Lillian, and I could tell, even from this distance, that both of them wore anxious expressions. I felt a knot tighten in my gut.

  I darted over to them. “What’s happened?”

  “We found a child,” Watson said, agitated. “In the woods. Bloodied. Barely alive. He’d escaped somehow. He’ll be able to tell us who the ghost is.”

  “Is Mr Holmes…?”

  “He ordered that you stay inside, Miss de Merville.”

  “But the child!”

  “Go inside. Do not leave. Holmes’s orders.”

  They half-jogged away from me, hastening to the trees. Holmes’s orders or not, I was about to follow them when—

  “Miss de Merville! Miss!”

  I whirled around. Through the darkness came Marie, puffing heavily, her oil lamp bouncing with her. “Mr Holmes requires you at the cottage.”

  “The cottage?”

  “Yes. He says there’s someone he wants you to meet.”

  “So Holmes is in the cottage? I thought he was in the woods?”

  “All I know is that early this morning he told me to find you after dinner and tell you to go to the cottage.”

  “What on earth is going on?” I said, but Marie just shrugged. Baffled, I made my way round the house and to the small cottage.

  It was overwhelmed with flowers of every colour, sprouting from the ground, hanging in baskets, spilling from pots. I walked up to the door to knock but found that it was already open. I stepped inside.

  It was decorated in a rustic fashion, yet quite lavish for the matron of an orphanage, even one as prestigious as Harlingdon. There were voices coming from upstairs. Male voices. I ascended the wooden stairs and followed the sounds to an open door to find Mr Holmes in his travelling clothes, standing in a cosy bedroom with a man in a bed, his leg up and encased in a cast.

  “—been like a father to her. This whole time. He actually gave her away at our wedding…”

  “Ah! Miss de Merville, do come in,” Mr Holmes genially gestured me into the room. “This is Charles Eade, Lillian’s husband. Charles, this is Violet de Merville, the one who inherited it all. Penny’s niece.”

  “Ah! Well, as my wife’s employer, a pleasure to meet you!” he laughed. He had a Bristolian accent.

  The sound of coins on wood. Holmes felt in his pockets.

  “Oh dear, I’ve dropped some change. I think it may have rolled under the bed; could you pick it up for me please, Miss de Merville?”

  I was about to decline but something in his eyes made me crouch down and look under the bed. I saw the coins. And I also saw—

  I froze.

  “Right, Charles, Miss de Merville and I will be back within the next hour. There’s someone else I’d like to speak to. Come, Miss de Merville.”

  I snatched up all the coins I could and handed them back to Mr Holmes.

  “Pleasure to meet you!” Charles called, as Holmes and I left.

  It was dark outside.

  “I knew we’d need these.” Holmes withdrew two short candles from his pocket, and then a box of matches. As he proceeded to light them with my help I was still thinking about what I had seen under Charles’s bed.

  “Please don’t tell me—” I began.

  “Wait,” he said, as he handed me a candle. “There’s something else.”

  He handed me his candle also, and then knelt by the flowerbed. He started digging with his hands in between two clumps of flowers. He didn’t have to dig long before he pulled forth a bottle.

  “Laudanum,” I read the label by candlelight.

  “There’ll be more,” he said, “given all this recently dug earth. There’ll be bottles and bottles. But another critical thing…” He dusted himself off and stalked around the cottage.

  There was a barrel full of water with a cup, and beside it a rope. There were white markings on the rope.

  “Why are you showing me this?” I asked him.

  “This is part of the crime scene. All will be revealed in time, but for now we must hurry, and time is of the essence before we confront the criminal. I need you to stay discreet and improvise. There’s just one more person we need to speak to.”

  We made our way as quickly as we could across the clearing towards the gardener’s shed, shielding our candles from the wind. Mine went out and so I closely followed Holmes.

  “The child,” I said, breathless. “Who is it?”

  “You’re going to tell Mr Duncan about the child,” was all Holmes said, knocking on the shed door. “From what Watson told you.”

  Mr Duncan emerged, holding up an oil lamp.

  “Who knocks at this hour? Oh. Miss de Merville. My apologies—”

  “We found a child,” I said, panting. “In the woods. Bloodied but alive.”

  Mr Duncan’s face dropped. He steadied himself. “Bloodied? What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. Watson and Mrs Eade are there now. The child’s alive, but barely; he escaped somehow—”

  “Barely alive?” Duncan nervously chewed his lip, and looked from me to Mr Holmes.

  “I know it’s awful but at least he’ll be able to tell us about the ghost.”

  Even in the lamplight, he looked frenzied.

  “I did it.” He looked me straight in the eye.

  “Sorry?”

  “It was me. I’ve been kidnapping those children.”

  “Duncan!”

  “It’s no use, Duncan,” Holmes said softly. “We know. We know who you did it for. All those years, her suffering in the orphanage, neglected, pushed aside with the arrival of a new
family. Only the sympathy and care of others such as yourself helped her. I know you were trying to be kind. But she has committed far too many crimes.”

  This was too much for Duncan; he started to cry. “She’s with child, Mr Holmes!”

  “Who is?” I asked.

  “Lillian,” Mr Holmes said.

  “Lillian?” I breathed.

  “You can’t turn her in! Not now! Not after everything that girl has been through—”

  “She should’ve thought of that before taking children from their beds,” Holmes remarked.

  The matron. She said she believed it was a ghost.

  “Lillian,” I said again in disbelief.

  “You don’t know what it’s been like for her. All these years in this wretched place, the torture of it all, worse than any orphan I’d ever seen! She’s the rightful heir.” Duncan looked at me with contempt. “Not you.”

  “Lillian? How can Lillian possibly—” I began.

  “Because of that man – Gregory Harlingdon – blaming that child for the death of his wife! No child wishes their mother dead in bearing them. None!”

  “Calm yourself, Duncan!” Holmes warned.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Duncan sobbed. “Gregory never stood up for her even when she was being bullied by the other children. All he cared about was Anna, as if Anna didn’t have enough! Brilliant, Lil was. Absolutely brilliant. Ask any teacher in this school who taught her! A genius if ever I saw one. When she taught chemistry Gregory didn’t even pay her properly, can you believe that? Who can blame her? Who can blame her for what she did…”

  “Talk sense, Duncan!” I cried.

  “You helped her, didn’t you, Duncan?” Holmes offered. “You helped her take the children. You hid in the attic, put out the fires with water and ash and pretended to be the voice of the ghost to scare people. You agreed to assist Lillian, but you wouldn’t kidnap the children yourself. Your conscience wouldn’t let you.”

  “It was to stop the children ending up on the street,” Duncan sniffed. “If the land were sold, the children would end up homeless.”

  “Is that what she told you? Feeding into your conscience to make you think you were doing a good deed?”

  Mr Duncan wailed. “She’s not normal, Mr Holmes, but she’s not a bad person!”

  “But she has done bad, if not terrible things. I think it’s time we talk to Lillian. Mr Duncan, we’ll escort you to the house, and someone should stay with you. Miss de Merville we need to find Mr Trenor and get back to the cottage immediately.”