Holmes for the Holidays Read online

  "Very much so. It is the quality which drew my attention to her in the first place. I met her when she came to work for me as a typist. Her suggestions for the improvement of the firm were inspired, and as she was of good family I soon realised that she was the woman to bring order to my existence away from the office. We were married within a year. From time to time, when the firm is shorthanded due to illness or personal emergency among the staff, she still comes in to help out."

  "I assume she works well with Richard."

  "They make an ideal team. Often I have seen them in conference, with many nods and expressions of agreement. But what has this to do with my ghosts?"

  "Probably nothing. Perhaps everything. Let us return to this will. Were you persuaded to make it out?"

  "My solicitor was in this morning. I signed the documents and Richard witnessed my signature. My wife is chief beneficiary, and Richard is executor; he is a reliable man, and the fee will come in handy should his financial difficulties continue."

  "I commend Your Lordship upon his generosity. You had the dream again last night?"

  "Yes, and I'm not certain it was a dream. I was cold sober, having gone straight home from the office without stopping at the tavern, and retired at a decent hour. A cup of tea with Lady Chislehurst before bed was my only indulgence. I shall not repeat myself, for the visitations were the same, including the redundant striking of the hour of one upon the clock, the shades of Christmases Past, Present, and Yet to Come, and the visions which accompanied them. This time, however, it was all much more vivid. I awoke this morning with the conviction that it had all been true. And there was something else, Mr. Holmes: the condition of my bedroom slippers."

  "Your bedroom slippers?"

  "Yes." He leaned forward, placing his palms upon his desk. "They were soaked through, Mr. Holmes, exactly as if I had been walking in snow the whole night."

  This intelligence had a profound effect upon my friend. Face thrust forward now, his eyes keen and his nostrils flaring, he said, "I must prevail upon Your Lordship to invite Dr. Watson and myself to be your guests tonight."

  The earl frowned—less perturbed, I thought, by the inconvenience of entertaining two unexpected houseguests as by the impropriety of Holmes having made the suggestion himself. "You deem this necessary?"

  "I consider it of the utmost importance."

  "Very well. I shall send a messenger to inform my wife."

  "That is precisely what I must ask you not to do. No one must know that we are in residence."

  "May I ask why?"

  "Everything depends upon the outward appearance that your nightly routine remains unchanged. I assure you I am not being melodramatic when I say your life is in danger."

  "But of what, Mr. Holmes? By whom?"

  Holmes stood, ignoring this reasonable question. "I will need time to lay my trap. Will it be possible to ensure that Lady Chislehurst and your servants are all away from home this evening between the hours of eight and nine?"

  "That should not be difficult. Our cook will have left by then, and our maid is away visiting relatives for the holiday. I shall suggest my wife call upon her friend Mrs. Wesley down the street. She was widowed last spring and faces a lonely Christmas."

  "Excellent. Pray inform her that you are exhausted and will probably have retired by the time she returns. Dr. Watson and I shall be watching from cover. Expect us immediately after she has gone. It is extremely important that you share none of these details with anyone, especially your clerk."

  The earl agreed, and provided us with directions to his London lodgings, whereupon we moved towards the door. Upon the threshold I turned and said, "I should like to ask Your Lordship one question, a personal one."

  "I have no secrets, Doctor."

  "Is your family name by any chance Cratchit?"

  He appeared surprised. "Why, yes, it is. I was born Timothy Cratchit. Did you read that in Brook's?"

  "No, Your Lordship; in Dickens."

  Lord Chislehurst scowled. "That meddler! I personally have not read his invasive little story, yet I cannot escape from it. Until I entered the nobility I could go nowhere without some new acquaintance hailing me as Tiny Tim, and thinking himself quite the clever fellow."

  After we had been shown out of the counting-room by Richard, who seemed a personable sort, well groomed and dressed within the limitations of a clerk's salary, Holmes asked me the meaning of the last exchange. I was stupefied. "Surely you are familiar with Charles Dickens's 'A Christmas Carol'! Every English schoolboy has had the story force-fed to him each December."

  "I was an uncommon schoolboy, and I haven't the faintest notion to what you are referring."

  Briefly, in the hansom on the way back to Baker Street, I summarised that most English of Christmas tales and its unforgettable cast of characters: Ebenezer Scrooge, the miserly, holiday-loathing banker; Bob Cratchit, his long-suffering clerk; Cratchit's loveable, crippled younger son Tiny Tim; and the three ghosts who visited Scrooge and brought about his conversion to the season of love and forgiveness. Holmes listened with keen interest.

  "I recall telling you once that it is a mistake to imagine that one's brain-attic has elastic walls, and that the time will come when for every new shipment of information one accepts, another must be sacrificed," he said when I had finished. "However, I rather think I have an uncluttered corner still, and it seems to me that literature would not be an unwise thing to deposit there. What one man can invent, another can subvert. If you and I are not careful tonight, Watson, your Mr. Dickens may well be an unwitting accomplice before the fact of murder."

  "Whom do you suspect, and what is the motive?" "Chiefly, I suspect Lady Chislehurst and Richard, the clerk. Whether their alliance is amorous or strictly mercenary has yet to be determined, but I am convinced they are in it together, and that Lord Chislehurst's estate is their object."

  "But why the clerk? The wife is the sole beneficiary." "It was he who planted the suggestion in the earl's mind which led to his Christmas Present vision of strife in Richard's household. Our client was not aware of his clerk's dire financial situation before their most timely conversation. There is nothing so effective as a little haunting, combined with a wife's reminder of one's fiscal responsibilities to his family, to bring a man to a contemplation of his mortality, and consequently his last will and testament." "Are you suggesting Lord Chislehurst was mesmerised?" "I suspect something even more ambitious and diabolical. You may count upon it, Watson, there is skullduggery afoot. I am reminded most acutely of that business at the Baskerville estate during the early years of our association. If there is a ghost involved here at all, it is Stapleton's."

  At this point Holmes fell into a dark reverie, from which I knew from long experience he would not be drawn until the hour of our appointment with our endangered client. As we clip-clopped homeward through those streets laden with snow, the seasonal spirit was significantly absent inside that cab.

  Big Ben had just struck eight, and the resonance of its final chime was still in the air when a well-built woman in her middle years bustled out the doorway of an imposing pile not far from Thread-needle Street and started down the pavement wrapped in a heavy cloak. This, I assumed, was Lady Chislehurst; and she had not been out of sight thirty seconds when Holmes and I emerged from the shallow doorway across the street where we had stationed ourselves five minutes previously.

  Holmes did not ring the bell right away, but paced the length of the front of the building, swinging his cane in the metronomic manner he often used to measure distance. Presently he climbed the front steps with me at his heels.

  The bell was answered almost immediately by our client, whose attire of nightcap and dressing-gown assured us he had followed Holmes's advice and convinced his wife that he was retiring. Once we were admitted to the rather dark and gloomy foyer, the detective repeated the procedure he had observed outside, pacing the room deliberately from the left wall to the right.

  "An interesting buildi
ng/' he said when he was standing before the earl once again. "James the First, is it not?"

  "James the Second, or so I was told when I acquired it from the Scrooge estate. It was a depressing old place, neglected and in disrepair. Lady Chislehurst has done much to improve it, although much remains to be done. The very first thing she did was to see to it that the hideous old door-knocker was removed. The lion's head frightened our nieces and nephews when they came to visit."

  "It is admirable of you both to take the trouble to preserve the place. The loss of such an unusually substantial example of architecture would be a great tragedy. There is a discrepancy of six feet in the width of the building between the outside and the inside. One seldom encounters walls three feet thick so far past the medieval period."

  "Indeed. I never noticed."

  "I am always intrigued by how little attention we pay to familiar things, which are to us the most important. May we inspect your chamber?"

  The earl led us up a narrow flight of stairs to a large room on the first floor, equipped with a huge old four-poster bed and a stone fireplace nearly large enough to walk into upright, with a bearskin stretched before it on the hearth. Above the mantel hung a huge old painting in a gilt frame of a medieval noblewoman languishing on the floor of a dungeon, with light streaming down upon her from a barred window high on the wall.

  "An outside room," observed Holmes. "Do you not find it draughty?"

  "No; the window was bricked in years ago."

  "Convenient."

  "How so, Mr. Holmes?"

  "Darkness, of course. There is nothing less conducive to sleep than an unwanted shaft of light. Is that the corner in which you saw the apparitions? Yes, that is where they would be most visible to someone sitting up in bed. Where is Lady Chislehurst's chamber in relation to yours?"

  "Just down the hall. Do you wish to see it?"

  "That won't be necessary." He swung upon the earl, eyes bright as twin beacons. "Dr. Watson dabbles a bit in Jamesian architecture. Would Your Lordship object to conducting him upon a tour while I complete my inspection? I thought not. Thank you for your hospitality."

  "Curious fellow, your Mr. Holmes," said Lord Chislehurst when we were in the gaslit hallway outside the room where Holmes could be heard rummaging about. "Is he always this unusual?"

  "Usually."

  "Do you know anything at all about Jamesian architecture?"

  "Only that it is uncommon to find walls so thick, and I didn't know that until a few minutes ago."

  He produced two cigars from the pocket of his dressing-gown and gave me one. "Curious fellow."

  "He is the best detective in England."

  We had smoked a third of our cigars when the door opened. Holmes appeared sanguine, as if he had spent the time stretched out upon the earl's bed. "There you are, Watson. Does Your Lordship have a spare bedroom?"

  "I have several. Would you and the doctor like to share one, or would you prefer separate quarters?"

  "With your permission, we shall share yours. I am suggesting that you sleep in the spare room."

  "Whatever for?"

  Holmes smiled and placed a finger to his lips. "As Dr. Watson has no doubt told you, my methods are my own and I seldom confide them. Pray do as I ask, and do not venture out under any circumstances. By morning I hope to have laid your ghosts to rest."

  "See here, Holmes," said I when our host had left us alone in the room, "I have known you far too long to accept this nonsense about architecture as an adequate explanation for keeping secrets from me. What were you about while I was out upon that fool's errand?"

  My friend had removed his boots and stripped to his shirtsleeves and was making himself comfortable upon the big four-poster. "Forgive me, dear fellow. You know full well my weakness for theatrics. In any case your own mind is too active for you to continue to assist me in these little problems if I fail to occupy it. I have come to depend upon my amanuensis. What was lightning before Franklin arrived with his kite and key? Merely a pretty display."

  My disgruntlement was only partly relieved by this academic apology. "What do we do now?"

  "Nothing."

  "Nothing?"

  "Turn down the lamp, will you? There's a good fellow." Whereupon, in the dim orange glow of the lowered wick of the lamp upon the bedside table, he closed his eyes. Within moments his even breathing told me he was asleep.

  I did not join him in the arms of Morpheus. Although nothing had been said, I knew from past experience that one of us must remain vigilant, and so I stayed awake in the room's one chair, feeling the reassuring solidity of my faithful service revolver in my pocket.

  At length I heard the front door open and shut, and divined that Lady Chislehurst had returned from her visit. Presently, light footsteps climbed the stairs, paused briefly outside the room as if waiting for some sign of movement within, whilst I held my breath; then they continued down the hall, where the snick and then the thump of a door opening and closing told me that our client's wife had retired to her room. Then silence.

  The night wore on. The room was chill without a fire, for which I was grateful, as it kept me alert. The shadows thrown by the nearly nonexistent light were monstrous, and in my imagination I peopled them with all sorts of mortal terrors.

  I must have dozed, despite the cold, for I was suddenly aware of a pale light in a corner of the room where before there had been only darkness, and I had the impression it had been there for some little time. I started, and reached instantly for my revolver. However, a sudden sharp sibilant from the direction of the bed halted me. Holmes was sitting up, his attention centred on the light in the corner. His profile was predatory in its silver reflection.

  As we watched, the light changed, assuming vaguely human shape. Now we were looking at a tall, gaunt figure seemingly wrapped in a cloak as black as the shadows that surrounded it. Its face was invisible in the depths of the cowl covering its head, but its skeletal wrist protruded from a loose sleeve, and as the image shimmered before us, its crooked, bony finger appeared to beckon.

  My heart hammered in my breast. Clearly, this was the most frightening phantasm of the three that had been described to us: the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, with its cold, silent promise of a lonely grave for he who encountered it.

  "Quick, Watson! The light!"

  I hesitated but briefly, then reached over and turned up the lamp. Immediately the ghost vanished. I leapt to my feet, starting in that direction. Holmes, however, moved to the wall adjacent, which contained the huge fireplace. The grate was supported by an enormous pair of andirons of medieval manufacture, one of which he seized by its Iion's-head ornament and pulled towards himself. There was a pause, followed by a grating sound, as of a rusted gate opening upon hinges disused for decades. Then the entire back of the fireplace, which I had assumed to be constructed of solid stone, slid sideways, exposing a black hollow beyond.

  "A passageway!" said I.

  "I surmised as much from the beginning. You will remember I remarked upon the discrepancy between the inside and outside measurements of the building. Hand me the lamp, and keep your revolver handy. Remove your boots. We don't want them to know we're coming."

  I did as directed. Holding the light aloft, Holmes stepped over the grate and into the blackness, with me close upon his heels.

  The passage was narrow, dank, and musky smelling. Once inside, Holmes exclaimed softly and lifted the lamp higher. A great metal contraption equipped with a glass lens stood upon a ledge at shoulder height. I smelled hot wax.

  "It looks like a lantern," I whispered.

  "A magic lantern." Standing upon tiptoe, Holmes reached up with his free hand, groped at the contraption, and slid a pane of glass from behind the lens. He examined it briefly, then handed it to me. When I held it up against the light from the lamp, I recognized the image of our old friend the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come etched upon the glass.

  "The image is projected through the lens when the candle is lit," Holm
es explained. "When I examined the room earlier, I found a small hole in the painting above the mantel, just where the light streams through the window to fall upon the lady in the dungeon. That is where our ghost gained access to the room. When I found the mechanism that opens the fireplace, I knew my suspicions were correct. I daresay if we look, we shall find similar panes bearing the likenesses of the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present as they were described to us."

  "But Past and Present spoke to the earl!"

  "It might surprise you to learn what a ghastly effect the echoes in a narrow passage such as this will lend to the human voice. But come!

  I was forced to hasten lest he outrun the light from the lamp. When I caught up with him several yards down that gloomy path, he was peering at a small bottle perched in a niche in the wall. Presently he removed it and held it out, asking me what I made of it.

  "'Radixpedis diabolic' I read from the label." "Where have I heard that before?"

  "Have you so soon forgotten the grim affair of the Tregennis murders, and the rather melodramatic title under which you published your account of them?"

  I shuddered. " 'The Adventure of the Devil's Foot'! But the Devil's-foot root is a deadly poison!"

  "It is also a hallucinogen in small doses. Small enough, let's say, to escape notice once it has been introduced to one's glass of sherry."

  "Richard," I whispered. "Lord Chislehurst told us his clerk accompanied him to his tavern for a glass the night the ghosts first visited."

  "I suspected him the moment the earl told us how Richard had taken him into his confidence about his financial situation. That, and the picture of Richard's wife in the counting-room, planted a suggestion in Lord Chislehurst's mind which under the influence of the root tincture came back to him in his dreams, convincing him that Christmas Present was allowing him a peep into his employee's private life."

  "How do you explain the look Christmas Past gave him into his own childhood?"

  "Christmas is a time of remembering, Watson. No doubt our client was reminded of his own impoverished origins, which sprang forth as a vision at the mere mention of the word past. Post-mesmeric suggestion is a fascinating scientific phenomenon. I should like to know how Richard came by his expertise. It would make an interesting subject for a monograph."