The Book of the Dead Page 14

  ‘Your revolver, Watson! Shoot, for the love of God!’ Holmes shouted.

  I raised the weapon, but in the gloom the squirming turmoil of screaming man and screeching bird was too confused to risk an immediate shot. As I ran on, I heard the hoot of an owl. Immediately the bird rose, hovered above its victim for a moment, then swept back over the mere. In the blackness it was immense and hideous and I could clearly see two great curved horns rising from its head against the cold light of the moon. In a great emotion of rage, I raised my gun again and blasted away at the loathsome apparition. By some chance—I take no credit for any marksmanship in the situation—one bullet found its target. The bird squawked and spun round then crumpled and fell like a broken kite into the freezing waters below. From the far side of the water came a howl of anguish.

  Holmes was crouching over Braithwaite as I rushed up to them. Down the side of his face was a savage cut, deeper than the gashes caused by the talons of the bird.

  ‘Thank God, he is not seriously hurt,’ Holmes said. ‘He is a brave man indeed to have risked himself that this devilry might be exposed.’

  He looked across the lake to where a dark mass of feathers was floating, concentric circles of ripples spreading across the shining water towards the shore.

  ‘A notable shot, Watson,’ he commented. ‘That abused and dangerous creature had to be destroyed.’

  ‘Pure chance,’ I said. ‘But what of its human agents?’

  ‘They will not get far. I shall ride back on Braithwaite’s horse and sound the alarm. Attend to him until I return with assistance.’

  ‘But who are they?’ I demanded as he rose to leave.

  ‘The so-called Alice McGregor and her brother,’ he replied as he mounted into the saddle. ‘They were enacting a terrible revenge for a dead man.’

  BROTHER AND SISTER

  Holmes returned with Painter and Johnson the groom and together we carried Braithwaite back to Meldred Hall. While I treated his wounds—the cut was deep, but the rest little more than superficial, the bird having retreated within seconds of striking—word reached us that farmer Lowman, aroused by my shots, had hurried out and found Alice McGregor and her brother trying to take two of his horses. He and his two sturdy sons had taken them captive and were holding them until they received further information. Holmes ordered that they should be kept secure and brought to Meldred Hall in the morning when the police would be called.

  Shortly after dawn, the stable lad was dispatched to Kendal for the constabulary and Holmes instructed Johnson to retrieve the remains of the bird from the mere. He returned with Lowman, his shotgun pointed at the guilty couple. Alice McGregor was dressed in shabby rags and her face was streaked with dirt; she had made herself look artificially old with theatrical make-up. Her brother, some years her senior, was a sour-looking bearded individual, face narrow and furtive, wearing what had once been a gentleman’s Norfolk jacket.

  Holmes turned his attention first to the bird which Johnson had laid in the yard outside the kitchen. The groom had also brought a wooden cage which he had discovered—as Holmes had suggested—near the edge of the lake.

  ‘A golden eagle.’ Holmes knelt down and removed the sodden leather hood with the horns of a ram attached which had been fixed to its head. ‘A noble bird used for an ignoble deed.’

  We went back into the Hall where Braithwaite was in the sitting-room with his sister who had insisted on being present. Holmes told Lowman to bring the criminals in.

  ‘There is your bird of the Firewitch,’ he told Braithwaite grimly, showing him the hood. ‘Trained to attack at the smell of blood by this man in a crime planned with his sister.’

  ‘But Alice McGregor has been…’ Braithwaite began. Holmes held up his hand and interrupted him.

  ‘Not Alice McGregor,’ he corrected. ‘Alice Fleming and her brother Duncan, next of kin of Stuart Fleming, the murderer who was executed in Carlisle four years ago after you led for the prosecution.’

  He swung towards the couple standing before us with heads bowed.

  ‘Do you dispute this? Then your silence confirms it.’ He turned back to Braithwaite. ‘When I learned in our conversation the other evening that it was among your cases, the last pieces of the puzzle fell into place. When you first told me of this strange great bird, I wondered if it was some exotic species with a large crest resembling horns in the darkness. An examination of the reference books in your library contained nothing in world ornithology that fitted and then my mind turned to other possibilities. The largest bird in these islands is the great golden eagle, most commonly found in Scotland. Even then I did not see my way clearly until I remembered that this Scotswoman who called herself Alice McGregor joined your household three years ago. When you told me Fleming was one of a large family, the picture became complete.

  ‘These two planned to have their vengeance on you for your part in their brother’s conviction. The first stage was when she came to Meldred Hall and would have learned the story of the Attwater Firewitch and together they hatched this diabolical scheme. Fleming here must have taken an eaglet from its nest in the Highlands and trained it as it grew to maturity. It would attack anything that smelled of blood but would return when he gave the signal—the hoot of an owl, which you, Miss Braithwaite, heard just before you fainted.

  ‘Nothing could be done until the bird was trained, which is why the so-called Alice McGregor remained as a satisfactory servant for the period that would take. Then Fleming himself moved to the district, living rough somewhere in the foothills of the mountains. My enquiries among the hill shepherds revealed that they had seen an eagle in recent months. The cage was his means of transporting it to the woods.

  ‘The disappearance of whisky from your decanter—for which the luckless Adams was blamed—was also the work of this woman. Apart from a Scotsman’s natural affinity for the drink, it would have been of great assistance to her brother as he lived out in the winter cold.’

  As Holmes was speaking, I observed increasingly resentful and bitter looks filling the faces of the guilty brother and sister.

  ‘All the attacks of the bird had to be preceded by the victim being brought into contact with blood,’ my companion continued. ‘In the case of your dog, some creature had been left in the grass—a rabbit perhaps—to which it ran when it caught the scent. Fleming then released the bird and it killed the dog in order to get the original prey. In the other instances, Alice always struck first, leaving blood on your faces. In your case, Braithwaite, she adopted the legendary manner of the Firewitch in her cell. The blood she held in her mouth was from the self-inflicted cut on her hand, explained as the result of an accidental fall. Your sister, she struck with a bramble.’

  Braithwaite looked at the couple with revulsion.

  ‘But why did they call the bird off?’ he said. ‘They could have left it to kill either of us.’

  ‘I do not pretend to understand their minds fully,’ Holmes replied. ‘There are dark sides to many human souls comprehensible only to those whose bodies they inhabit. Anyone capable of planning and executing such a crime will be irrational in other of their attitudes.’

  Eleanor Braithwaite leaned forward in her chair.

  ‘Alice, look at me,’ she said softly. The woman raised her eyes sullenly. ‘In this house you have received nothing but kindness. How could you do this dreadful thing to us?’

  The servant’s face flared with hatred.

  ‘What kindness did this man show in that courtroom?’ she cried, pointing at Braithwaite. ‘Our brother was hanged because of what he said that day. He had no mercy then and we can never forgive him.’

  ‘He was carrying out his duty as a Crown Prosecutor under the law,’ Holmes said sternly. ‘Your brother was rightly convicted of the murder of a defenceless man in pursuit of theft and deserved his fate. You cannot set yourself above such things.’

  ‘Love is above such things,’ the woman replied defiantly. ‘And we loved our brother.’

&nb
sp; ‘I love my brother,’ Eleanor Braithwaite responded gallantly. ‘But if he were guilty of a wicked crime then I also would have to condemn him.’

  ‘Then heaven help you for a heartless…’

  ‘Enough!’ cried Holmes. ‘You will not compound your iniquity with insults against this lady in my presence. Deliver them to the police, Lowman.’ He watched the pair leave the room, then turned to Eleanor Braithwaite. ‘I was not happy about you being present this morning. There was no need for you to face such creatures.’

  ‘I cannot comprehend her,’ she replied, shaking her head. ‘Of what manner of love does she speak?’

  Holmes shrugged. ‘It is among the emotions to which I am a stranger, but I have had occasion to observe its power more than once. And it has been my conclusion that love destroys as often as it blesses. In this instance, we can only conclude that their feelings for their brother led them to want to extend their own sense of suffering to you both, not by causing your deaths but by perhaps driving you to madness.

  Holmes’s face, which had grown very grim, took on a sudden smile.

  ‘However, it is now over and you can advise your staff, Braithwaite, that you intend to continue living here with them all around you.’

  ‘There will be great joy when they hear it,’ he replied feelingly. ‘But why did you wish me to suggest that I was leaving?’

  ‘When Alice McGregor heard she was to be dismissed, I calculated that she and her brother would arrange one final—probably murderous—attack. I told you to give all of them a day’s liberty after breaking the news, which would allow her time to communicate with him and make the arrangements. Then it only remained for you to announce your intention of riding to Lowman’s Farm in the evening and the trap was set. I was satisfied that the presence of Watson and myself would ensure your safety. I greatly regret that we were not able to reach you before the bird actually struck.’

  ‘My injuries are nothing compared to my sense of relief,’ Braithwaite assured him. ‘If you will excuse us, I will summon my staff.’

  Eleanor Braithwaite left the room with her brother and a short while later we heard a cheer from the direction of the study.

  ‘And Johnson the groom was quite uninvolved,’ I remarked.

  ‘As much as poor Mad Meg,’ Holmes replied. ‘They faked the attack by her, in which Fleming must have struck his own sister, to deflect suspicion when I announced I was nearing the solution.’

  ‘And the paper that Bates discovered was irrelevant,’ I commented.

  ‘On the contrary, it was of critical importance,’ said Holmes, ‘although the suggestion that it was a code led me in the wrong direction when my own ingenuity deceived me. By chance, the word “Kirkby” could be unravelled from the numbers and I was immediately persuaded that was the path to follow . Only when you told me that there had been a passing circus in the town on the fourteenth of the month did I realise that the numbers were simply dates. In fact they are the dates in each month since last October which Painter later advised me were Alice Fleming’s days off. I knew that it was Braithwaite’s practice to give his staff a day off each month because Mrs Johnson said she and her husband visited his relations in Kendal on his. Alice must have written down her free days and given the paper to her brother who inadvertently lost it in the woods.

  ‘Remember also something that Mrs Broom told us. On the afternoon Eleanor Braithwaite was attacked, Alice begged for additional time off. She did not of course visit friends, but perpetrated the attack upon Miss Braithwaite.’

  ‘But how did she communicate with her brother on that occasion?’ I asked. ‘He would not have expected her to be available until her next day’s leave.’

  ‘You will remember that her room is at the rear of the house,’ Holmes replied. ‘When we saw her there after the alleged attack by Mad Meg another occasion when she had to summon her brother unexpectedly of course—you may have observed that the room was singularly cold. I commented on the fact to you later. As on previous occasions, she had left her window wide open for most of the day, a visible signal to anyone in the mountains using a telescope, just as Johnson watches passing ships looking in the opposite direction towards the coast.

  ‘As we made our way here, Watson, you will remember that I stopped to look at Meldred Hall through the binoculars. As I had anticipated, the window of her room was open again and I knew Braithwaite had carried out my instructions and his intentions had been believed.’

  Braithwaite and his sister invited us to stay at Meldred Hall for as long as we wished, but Holmes insisted he must return to London.

  ‘This case has meant that I have had to allow other most urgent matters to go unattended,’ he told them. ‘While I have been away, a certain Professor of my acquaintance will not have been idle.’

  He spoke lightly, but now, as I mourn my greatest friend and one of the most remarkable men England ever bore, I constantly reproach myself for not being more alert to the ultimate danger he was facing. On the twenty-fourth of the following month he asked me to accompany him on that fateful journey to the Continent. The mystery of the Attwater Firewitch was his last investigation before the final, deadly encounter with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls.

  8

  It was half past one before Maltravers turned off the light and lay in the darkness, the spell of The Attwater Firewitch fading to be replaced by the returning, tantalising facts surrounding Charles Carrington’s murder. Faced with such a case, Holmes would have made some runic comment about an apparently irrelevant scrap of evidence and later demonstrated how it solved everything: ‘I draw your attention to the curious incident of…’ Maltravers told himself he was being fanciful and went to sleep.

  In the morning his half-awake mind dangled an idea in front of his consciousness. He stared at the bedroom ceiling, trying to piece it together like fragments of a dream, then sat up abruptly and grabbed the manuscript, flicking through it urgently. After a few moments he lowered the pages and smiled.

  ‘Could that really be it? If it is, thank you, Sherlock.’ He leapt out of bed, pulled on his dressing gown and hurried downstairs to the kitchen where Lucinda was preparing breakfast and Malcolm was opening the post.

  ‘Where’s Jennifer?’ Maltravers asked.

  ‘She’ll be down in a minute,’ Lucinda replied. ‘What are you so excited about?’

  Maltravers held up The Attwater Firewitch. ‘I think I know the code for that safe.’ He turned to Malcolm, staring at him with a half-opened envelope in his hands. ‘Have you ever read this?’

  ‘No. I was going to when you’d finished. Why?’

  ‘Look here.’ Maltravers put the photocopy on the table as Jennifer Carrington entered the room. ‘Good. I won’t have to explain this twice.’

  He pointed to a paragraph. ‘One of the clues Holmes solves in this involves a series of numbers. There are six of them, but isn’t it possible that Charles used the first four for the safe combination? He’d have had to choose something.’

  They looked at the passage he was indicating.

  ‘Which means that if he did…’ Malcolm paused as he began to grasp it for himself.

  ‘Which means that only someone who had read the book would have been able to try these numbers.’ Maltravers waited for them to catch up.

  ‘I don’t understand. Is this important?’ Jennifer Carrington appeared confused.

  ‘It could be critical,’ Maltravers told her. ‘If I’m right, it’s a very damning piece of evidence against Duggie Lydden. The night Charles showed me this book, Lydden admitted he was one of the people who’d read it. Which means he could have guessed the combination and tried it.’

  ‘What should we do?’ Jennifer asked, looking again at the numbers as though still unable to grasp their significance.

  ‘I thought of going to Carwelton Hall and testing them for myself,’ said Maltravers. ‘But if I’m wrong, off goes the alarm, someone calls the police and they get tetchy. Tempting though it is, I think I’d
better go straight to them with it.’

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘Give me five minutes to get dressed.’

  In Kendal police station, they were taken straight through to Moore after Maltravers had explained the reason for their visit. The sergeant listened carefully, then asked to examine the photocopy himself.

  ‘How did you work this out?’ he asked.

  ‘I have nothing to confess but my genius,’ Maltravers replied. ‘But I’m quite prepared to be exposed as an idiot when you try it.’

  ‘It’s certainly worth trying.’ Moore looked up at him and smiled. ‘I take it you’d like to be there.’

  ‘Very much.’ Having had more time to think, Maltravers had become determined to find a way of being present when the police operated the dial; he wanted to see Jennifer Carrington’s reaction. Moore followed them in his own car to Carwelton Hall.

  ‘I’ve advised the safe makers to ignore any alarms from here in the next half-hour,’ Moore said as he consulted the photocopy in the library. ‘We don’t want unnecessary panics. Right, first four numbers.’

  He took hold of the dial and began to turn it. ‘Sixteen…twenty-one…eighteen…and back to sixteen.’

  There was a rattle of tumblers then Moore pushed down the handle and pulled the door open. Jennifer Carrington reached forward and touched it in disbelief. Maltravers had placed himself so he could see her face and visible triumph flickered across it and vanished. Triumph over what?

  ‘Congratulations, Mr Maltravers,’ Moore said appreciatively. ‘First you point out the problem, then you solve it. We’ll need another statement from you of course.’