Dust and Shadow

Prologue

FEBRUARY 1887

“My dear Doctor, I fear that I shall require your services this evening.”

I looked up quizzically from an article on the local elections in the Colwall Gazette. “With pleasure, Holmes.”

“Dress warmly—the barometer is safe enough, but the wind is chill. And if you don’t mind dropping your revolver in your pocket, I should be obliged. One can never be too careful, after all, and your revolver is a particularly businesslike argument.”

“Did I not hear you say at dinner that we would return to London by the morning train?”

Sherlock Holmes smiled enigmatically through the gauzy veil of pipe smoke which had gradually enveloped his armchair. “You refer to my remarking that you and I would be far more productive in the city than here in Herefordshire. So we shall be. There are three cases of variable interest awaiting us in London.”

“But the missing diamond?”

“I have solved it.”

“My dear Holmes!” I exclaimed. “I congratulate you. But where is it, then? Have you advised Lord Ramsden of its whereabouts? And have you sent word to Inspector Gregson at the inn?”

“I said I had solved it, not resolved it, my dear fellow.” Holmes laughed, rising from the damask chair in our elegant guest sitting room to knock his pipe against the grate. “That work lies ahead of us. As for the case, it was never a very mysterious business, for all that our friend from the Yard appears to remain bewildered.”

“I find it just as inexplicable,” I admitted. “The ring stolen from a private vault, the absurd missing patch of lawn from the southern part of the grounds, the Baron’s own tragic past…”

“You have a talent of a sort, my dear Watson, though you make shockingly little use of it. You’ve just identified the most telling points in the whole affair.”

“Nevertheless, I confess myself all in the dark. Do you intend this evening to confront the criminal?”

“As it happens, no actual lawbreaking has yet been committed. However, you and I shall tonight don as much wool as we can lay our fingers on in order to witness a crime in action.”

“In action! Holmes, what crime can you mean?”

“Grave robbing, if I have not lost all my senses. Meet me upon the grounds at close upon one o’clock, if convenient—the staff will be largely abed by that time. I would not be seen exiting the house, if I were you. Needless delay could prove very unfortunate indeed.”

And with that, he disappeared into his bedroom.

At ten to one I quit the manor warmly bundled, for the night was bitter indeed, and the stars were mirrored by frozen moisture upon the grass. I spotted my friend with ease as he wandered down a stately path groomed with an almost Continental exactitude, apparently engrossed by the prospect of Nature’s constellations strewn across the sky with perfect clarity. I cleared my throat, and Holmes, with a nod, advanced in my direction.

“My dear Watson!” he said quietly. “So you too would prefer to risk a chill than to miss the Malvern Hills by night? Or so the housekeeper must assume?”

“I do not believe Mrs. Jeavons is awake to assume anything of the kind.”

“Marvelous. Let us see, then, what a brisk walk can do to combat this frigid weather.”

We followed a path which at first pointed toward the gardens but soon banked to trace the curvature of the nearby bluffs. It was not long before Holmes led us through a hinged gate of moss-covered wood, and we left the grounds of Blackheath House behind us. Feeling at a severe disadvantage regarding our intentions, I could not help but inquire, “You have somehow connected grave robbery with a recently stolen heirloom?”

“Why recently? Remember, we have very little evidence as to when it disappeared.”

I considered this, my breath forming ghostly miasmas before my eyes. “Granted. But if there is any question of grave robbery, should we not prevent rather than discover it?”

“I hardly think so.”

Though I was entirely inured to Holmes’s adoration of secrecy at the closing moments of a case, on occasion his dictatorial glibness grated upon my nerves. “No doubt you will soon make clear what a bizarre act of groundskeeping vandalism has to do with the defilement of a sacred resting place.”

Holmes glanced at me. “How long do you suppose it would take you to dig a grave?”

“Alone? I could not say. Given few other constraints upon my time, a day perhaps.”

“And if you required utter secrecy?”

“Several more, I should think,” I replied slowly.

“I imagine it would take you nearly as long to undig a grave, were the need to arise. And if it were imperative that no one discover your project, I presume your native cunning would suggest a way of hiding it from public view.”

“Holmes,” I gasped, the answer suddenly clear to me, “do you mean to tell me that the missing patch of sod—”

“Hsst!” he whispered. “There. You see?” We had crested the top of a wooded ridge perhaps half a mile from the estate and now peered down into the rough depression forming one of the boundaries of the nearby town. Holmes pointed a slender finger. “Observe the church.”

In the vibrant moonlight, I could just make out through the trees of the cemetery the stooped figure of a man laying the final clods of dirt upon a grave graced with a diminutive white headstone. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand and started directly for us.

“It is Lord Ramsden himself,” I murmured.

“Back below the crest of the ridge,” said Holmes, and we retreated into the copse.

“He is nearly finished,” my companion observed. “I confess, Watson, that my sympathies in this matter lie squarely upon the side of the criminal, but you shall remain behind this outcropping and judge for yourself. I intend to confront the Baron alone, and if he proves reasonable, so much the better. If he does not—but quick, now! Duck down, and be as silent as you can.”

Settling onto a stone, I lightly grasped my revolver within the pocket of my greatcoat. I had just registered the hiss of a vesta being struck and caught a whiff of Holmes’s cigarette when muffled footsteps all at once thudded against the incline. I found that Holmes had chosen my hiding place with great care, for though I was concealed in the lee of the rock, a crack between it and the adjacent boulder afforded me a contracted view of the scene.

The Baron came into sight as he crested the ridge, perspiring visibly even in the frosty air, drawing his breath in great gasps. Glancing up into the woods before him, he stopped in horror and drew a pistol from his fur-lined cloak.

“Who goes there?” he demanded in a rasping voice.

“It is Sherlock Holmes, Lord Ramsden. It is imperative that I speak with you.”

“Sherlock Holmes!” he cried. “What are you doing about at this hour?”

“I might say the same to you, my lord.”

“It is hardly any business of yours,” the Baron retorted, but his words were brittle with panic. “I have paid a visit. A friend—”

Holmes sighed. “My lord, I cannot allow you to perjure yourself in this manner, for I know your errand tonight dealt not with the living but with the dead.”

“How could you know that?” asked the Baron.

“All is known to me, my lord.”

“So you have discovered her gravesite, then!” His hand wildly trembling, he waved his pistol at the ground in small circles as if unsure of its purpose.

“I paid it a brief visit this morning,” Holmes acknowledged gently. “I knew you, upon your own confession, to have loved Elenora Rowley. There you thought yourself wise, for you reasoned that too many trysts and too much correspondence had occurred between you for utter secrecy to be maintained after her death.”

“I did—and so I told you all!”

“From the instant your family realized the ring was missing, you have played the game masterfully,” Holmes continued, never moving his hypnotic grey eyes from the Baron’s face, though I knew his attention as well as my own was firmly fixed upon the pistol. “You summoned Dr. Watson and myself to aid the police; you even insisted we remain at Blackheath House until all was settled. I extend my compliments to your very workmanlike effort.”

The Baron’s eyes narrowed in fury. “I was forthright with you. I showed you and your friend every imaginable courtesy. So why, then, did you do it? Why would you ever have visited her grave?”

“For the very simple reason that you claimed not to know where it was.”

“Why should I have?” he demanded. “She was the entire world to me, yes, but—” He took a moment to master himself. “Our love was a jealously guarded secret, Mr. Holmes, and I abased myself once already by mentioning it to a hired detective.”

“Men of your station do not venture upon painful and intimate subjects with strangers except out of dire necessity,” Holmes insisted. “You gambled that employing complete sincerity at our initial conference in London would terminate my interest. Your candour would indeed have bought you time enough to complete the affair had you been dealing with a lesser investigator. Even your tale of rebellious village boys vandalizing the grounds by night was a plausible fabrication. Much was revealed to me, however, by the condition of your clothes last Sunday evening.”

“I’ve told you already—my dog went after a pheasant and was caught in one of the villagers’ snares.”

“So I would have thought if your trousers alone had been muddied,” Holmes replied patiently. “But the soil was heaviest on the back of your forearms, just where a man rests his elbows to pull himself out of a hole in the ground nearly as high as he is himself.”

With a crazed look, Baron Ramsden leveled the pistol at Holmes, but my friend merely continued quietly.

“You loved Elenora Rowley with such a passion that you removed your grandmother’s wedding ring from the family vault, which you knew to be secure enough that it is scarcely ever inventoried. You then bestowed the gift on Miss Rowley, fully intending to marry a local merchant’s daughter whose beauty, or so I have been told, was matched only by her generosity of spirit.”

Here the Baron’s eyes dimmed and his head lowered imperceptibly, though the pistol remained trained on Holmes. “And so I would have done had she not been taken from me.”

“I had a long conversation with Miss Rowley’s former maidservant this morning. When Elenora Rowley fell ill, she sent you word she had departed with her parents to seek a cure on the Continent.”

“The specialists could do nothing,” the Baron acknowledged, his free fist clenched in his misery. “When she returned, the strain of travel had only hastened the course of her illness. She sent a note through the channels we’d created, telling me she loved me as she ever had—since we were both children and she the daughter of the dry-goods supplier to our household. Within three days she—” A spasm seemed to shake him and he passed a hand over his brow. “Any fate would have been better. Even my own death.”

“Be that as it may, the lady died,” my friend replied compassionately, “and before it could occur to you in your grief that she had kept your token sewn into the lining of her garments, it had been buried with her. When you regained your senses, you realized, no doubt, that the heirloom had passed beyond your reach.”

“I was ill myself then. I was mad. For the better part of a month I was the merest shadow of the man I had been. I cared for nothing and no one,” the Baron stated numbly. “Yet my brother’s many follies follow each other like days upon a calendar, and our family is not as wealthy as my mother would have us suppose.”

“A matter of accounting, then, brought the missing jewel into the public eye.”

“I would never have taken it back from her else—in life or death. God help me! All the woes my brother has brought upon our heads are as nothing compared to my own. What will the appellation ‘grave robber’ do to the name of Ramsden?” he cried. Then, calming himself with all the reserve he could muster, Lord Ramsden drew himself up to his full height, his blue eyes glimmering eerily. “Perhaps nothing,” he continued, with a new and chilling precision to his speech. “Perhaps the only other person who knows of the matter will perish this very night.”

“It is not a very likely circumstance, is it, my lord?” my friend remarked evenly.

“So you may think,” his client snarled, “but you have underestimated my—”

“I am not so foolish as to have arranged this meeting in total solitude,” stated the detective. “My friend Dr. Watson has been good enough to accompany me.”

I emerged cautiously from behind the stony outcropping.

“So you have brought your spies!” cried the Baron. “You mean to ruin me!”

“You must believe, Lord Ramsden, that I have no intention of causing you the slightest harm,” Holmes protested. “My friend and I are prepared to swear that no word shall be breathed of this business to any living person, provided the ring is returned.”

“It is here.” The Baron placed his hand over his breast pocket. “But do you speak in earnest? It is incredible.”

“My little career would soon enough suffer shipwreck if I neglected my clients’ best interests,” my friend averred.

“Not the police, nor my family, nor any other person will ever hear of the matter now I have retrieved the ring? It is far more than I deserve.”

“They shall not on my account. I give you my word,” Holmes declared gravely.

“As do I,” I added.

“Then that is enough.” The Baron’s head fell forward as if in a daze, exhausted by his grief.

“It is not the first felony I have commuted, and I fear it is unlikely to be the last,” confessed my friend in the same calming tones.

“I shall be eternally grateful for your silence. Indeed, your discretion has been unimpeachable throughout this affair, which is far higher praise than I can apply to my own.”

“There I cannot agree with you,” Holmes began, but the Baron continued bitterly.

“Ellie died alone rather than betray my trust. What have I offered her in return?”

“Come, my lord. It is hardly practical to dwell on such matters. You acted in the interests of your family, and your secret is safe, after all.”

“No doubt you are right,” he whispered. “You may proceed to the house, gentlemen. It is over. I shall be more silent hereafter, you may trust.”

I had turned to go, but suddenly an inarticulate cry from Holmes swung me round again. The pistol fired just as Holmes, in a desperate leap, reached the Baron. My friend caught him round the torso and laid him on the frozen ground. I was beside them in an instant.

“Quick, man! He breathes—can you not—”

But Lord Ramsden had already passed beyond the aid of any man. As I loosened his collar, he emitted a low, shuddering sigh and was still.

“Holmes, he—”

“He is dead.” My friend passed a hand over the Baron’s eyes, his suavity of movement dulled in the shock of the tragedy. “If only I had—but Lord Ramsden would surely have revealed himself otherwise! No, no, Gregson is an ass, but he can see a brick wall when it is in front of him. Only I could have returned it in safety.” He descended quickly and removed a glittering band from the upper waistcoat pocket of the dead man.

“What he must have seen to retrieve it,” I muttered in horror.

“God help us, Watson.” My friend, though outwardly serene, was as shaken as I had ever before seen him. “I would not wish his history on any man.”

We knelt in silence under the black shadows of the trees, slowly growing cognizant once more of the piercing cold.

“What are we to tell them?”

“There, at least, our course seems clear,” Holmes considered. “You and I heard a shot from just beyond the grounds and, considering the hour, went to investigate. We found the Baron already beyond assistance. That is all.”

I nodded. “I suppose the pressures of financial ruin could account for suicide in a man of sensitive nature, but what of the ring?”

“As for the ring, I am prepared to go rather further,” Holmes replied softly. “The Baron thought his life a threat to his secret, and I have no intention of allowing his death to be one likewise.”

The grief which seized the household when we returned with our sad burden and raised the alarm was pitiable to behold. The lady of the house, in the loss of her eldest son, seemed to forget her mother’s ring had ever existed. Finding ourselves quite useless amid the chaos, we arose early the next morning to stop at the inn and bid farewell to Inspector Gregson and the constable he had brought from London to aid in the investigation; they had taken over a suite of rooms, using the simple parlour as an office. The inspector, in his own unique way, expressed considerable distress at our sudden departure.

“Well, well, you’re quite right, I suppose. Once you know a thing is over your head, you may as well act the man and own up to it. I intend to play the game to the end, though, Mr. Holmes. Simply not capable of leaving a case half finished with so much to go on.”

“You’ve unearthed fresh leads, then?” my friend responded coolly.

“Well, there’s that brother of the late Baron’s—a gambler and a rake, if you listen to my sources.”

“I hardly think it likely that—”

“And now this suicide!” Inspector Gregson proclaimed. “Under the circumstances, very black indeed.”

“How so?”

“Why, guilt! What does a man have to kill himself over if not guilt? Really, with all these developments, Mr. Holmes, if you remained, you might yet get a hint of what’s going on.”

“I have word of the gem in London.” Holmes shrugged one shoulder dismissively. “A stonecutter friend of mine has given me reason to return to the city, and I find the evidence meager enough here in Colwall to justify following this fresh lead.”

“Excuse me, sir,” interjected a voice from the side of the room. “Surely there is a great deal of evidence.”

Holmes swung his head to regard the young constable who had ventured this remark. “Do you think so?” he queried dryly. “I call solving a crime a near impossibility when one cannot even fix the date of occurrence within a twelvemonth.”

This retort elicited a chuckle from Gregson, who added, “Now, now, my boy, I brought you down so that you could watch a true professional in action. And Mr. Holmes here may have the odd tip as well. But you’d do better to listen, I think, and keep your opinions mum.”

The officer appeared unperturbed. “But what of the vandalized grass plot?”

“The grass plot?” Gregson laughed. “What can you see in that? As if gardening had anything to do with the matter!”

“I thought it rather queer myself, before I met the boys responsible,” Holmes said swiftly. “Yesterday a brief walk through your inn’s stable yard brought me into personal contact with young Fergus MacArthur and his several associates. They were busy rubbing the guests’ saddles with tallow while the groomsman lay snoring. If creativity alone ensured success in this world, that young gang would soon enough rule the Commonwealth.”

My friend rose gracefully and retrieved his hat from a small bench by the door. “I shan’t hesitate to forward you any news I may manage to unearth in London.”

“Ah, well. I have no doubt but that we’ll have solved the whole matter by the time we hear from you again, but despite that—my thanks.”

“Farewell, Inspector Gregson, and farewell to your staff. They are more promising than you realize.” Holmes gave a final nod and shut the door firmly behind us.

“Back to London,” I mused.

“Yes, Herefordshire has no further use for the two of us,” my friend replied. “However, I have every confidence of locating the ring through its mysterious buyer.” He patted his own breast pocket and the ghost of a smile appeared on his somber face.

We had not been long in London before Holmes telegraphed Lady Ramsden with the news that her mother’s ring had been found. Not only was the household’s joy at the ring’s return buried under their misfortune, but to my friend’s evident satisfaction, so was their curiosity at its initial disappearance. Gregson’s case thus remained regrettably inconclusive, but once the ring had safely arrived via Scotland Yard escort from London at Blackheath House, the good inspector’s spirits had risen enough to compliment the private detective on his “extraordinary luck.”

Stretched upon the settee two weeks later, I was engaged in a medical journal when I heard Holmes’s familiar step bounding up the stairs and into the sitting room. He held a letter to the lamp bemusedly, then with a motion of indifference tossed it onto a formidable stack of documents near the bookshelf.

“Holmes, I do believe you’ve Irregulars* who are shorter than that monstrous pile,” I observed.

“Mmm?” he queried distractedly. “Oh, I hardly think so. Little Graves has had an extraordinary bout of growth since you saw him last.”

I smiled. “What was it, then?”

“The letter?” Holmes stretched his sinewy arm to retrieve it, paused over it for a moment longer, and passed it to me. It was written in vivid red ink in an oddly erratic script, and it read:

Mr. Holmes,

You are a clever one. Arent you? No matter that you may be devillish clever you may be the very devil, but not so clever that Mr. Nobody doesn’t see you. Yes, I see you clear enough, and I may also

See you in Hell

Sooner than you think, Mr. Holmes.

I looked up in chagrin. “Holmes, this letter is an outright threat!”

“The tone is rather unfriendly,” he conceded, digging for tobacco in the depths of his Persian slipper.

“What do you intend to do?”

“Do? Nothing. Your correspondence is not, perhaps, quite as vivid as is my own. When I inspect the mail, desperate for a case worthy of my time and my talent, I all too often find instead the ramblings of the fanciful spinster or the lyricism of the bored newlywed. I’d a priceless example from Brighton last week which I must show you—”

“You have not the slightest interest in this bizarre missive?”

“To my deep discredit, I’ve known far too many criminals not to expect this sort of thing occasionally,” Holmes countered irritably. “It is written on cheap foolscap, posted in the East-end of London, no marks of fingers or other identifying features. What am I to do with it? Queer enough hand, though. I’ve hardly seen one like it.” He scrutinized the page.

“What steps can you take?” I asked once more.

“The best of all steps, my dear Watson—to throw it in the dustbin.” He tossed the paper in the general direction of his desk and forcefully steered the conversation to Richard Owen’s work in the realm of philosophical anatomy.

It was only the next afternoon, when I noticed Holmes’s commonplace book open on his desk, that I realized the letter had not been discarded but pasted carefully under “Miscellaneous Posts.” I meant to inquire of Holmes whether he had discovered any clue to the matter, but my fellow lodger’s abrupt arrival with an urgent appeal from Camberwell drove the matter from my mind entirely.