Sherlock Holmes and the King’s Evil

1

Of the letters addressed to our detective agency at 221 B Baker Street, almost all bore the name of Sherlock Holmes and very few came directly to me. I had remained in medical practice for some time after our first meeting and my patients necessarily had first call upon my services. When I encountered men and women in the critical moments of their lives, it was more often in my own consulting rooms. I was therefore all the more surprised, on an autumn morning in October 1884, when my services as a criminal investigator were requested by telegram.

Whatever distress had overtaken Miss Alice Chastelnau, mistress of the Openshaw Academy for Young Ladies at Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast, was plainly a matter of urgency. At the time, Holmes and I were not otherwise occupied. I replied to Miss Chastelnau at once by wire. Noting the distance she must travel to reach us, I proposed a consultation at Baker Street on the following day at 4pm.

Within the hour I received a confirmation of this. Her second message added that her two brothers had been missing since Sunday evening, two days previously, in very disturbing circumstances. If that were so, I thought it a little curious that she had not consulted Sherlock Holmes in the first place.

As I explained all this to my friend, pipe smoke continued to rise from behind the copy of the Morning Post which he was reading. At length he chuckled, though without lowering the newspaper.

“The disappearance of her brothers, indeed! That at least adds a little piquancy to an otherwise unpromising case. Have no fear, Watson, I shall vacate our sitting-room tomorrow afternoon upon your client’s arrival.”

“She might prefer you to remain,” I said hastily, “Unless, of course, the lady’s own medical condition is at issue. If that were so, I should be obliged to see her privately.”

He chuckled again but offered no further reply. As the hours passed, I felt increasingly that I would have preferred Miss Chastelnau to ask the advice of Holmes in the first place, thereby allowing me to play a supporting role in any inquiry. I could scarcely introduce him as my subordinate. In that case, I feared I could not introduce him at all. Holmes knew this as well as I did. Indeed, he was enjoying my predicament of being “senior man,” as he called it, relishing this far more obviously than was decent.

Miss Chastelnau was in good time to take afternoon tea with us on the following afternoon. Her manner was earnest, as befitted the occasion. In appearance, she was neat and dainty without being self-consciously elegant. There was a spinsterly attractiveness in the demure oval of her face, and in the old-fashioned style in which her light brown hair was pulled back tightly to frame it. She put me in mind of those portraits of Charlotte Bronte and the “bonnets” of the 1840s. I judged her to be more than forty years old but not yet forty-five.

Sherlock Holmes was at once courteous and courtly, bowing her to an armchair by the fireplace. As I had foreseen, he had no intention of vacating the sitting-room beyond saying,

“If you would prefer to speak to Dr Watson alone, you need only say so.”

Miss Chastelnau did not say anything of the kind. She produced an envelope from her bag and came at once to the point of her visit.

“I have brought a letter, addressed to an unnamed doctor by my half-brother, Abraham Chastelnau. I doubt if he knew any doctor well enough to put a name to it. I hope you will overlook my custom of referring to both my half-brothers as ‘brothers,’ for it stops speculation and gossip which might be painful to me.”

I thought that this certainly indicated a delicate and fastidious nature, such as became a mistress of Miss Openshaw’s academy. Our visitor continued.

“The letter in its envelope was found by me after both Abraham and Roland disappeared on Sunday night. I have shown it to no one. In the first place, I should like it to be read by a medical man. Even at Mablethorpe, I had heard something of Dr Watson who works in partnership with Mr Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street. The letter, combined with the disappearance of my brothers, persuaded me that I should come to you.”

She seemed an admirable young woman, polite but determined. If she appeared more composed than might have been expected at such an anxious time, I put that down to the inner strength of a quiet personality. I have seen such a balance of characteristics often enough in medical practice.

“First tell me a little about your brothers, Miss Chastelnau”

“They are the two keepers of the Old Light on the river estuary at Sutton Cross. It lies on the coast of the Wash about forty miles south of Mablethorpe and just above Kings Lynn. It is not a proper lighthouse but a beacon standing on nine wooden stilts. There is a barrack-room and a lantern-room above. It is on the mudflats near the river estuary and is cut off from the land for an hour or two each side of high tide.”

“And the letter?”

“it was before dawn on Monday morning that the mechanism stopped and the flashing beam from the lantern failed. The absence of my brothers was discovered soon afterwards and I was summoned from Mablethorpe later that day. I found the letter at the back of the barrack-room table drawer. I have naturally read the contents, Dr Watson, and I beg you to do the same.”

With that she handed me the envelope. I was at once struck by the disparity between the quiet but self-possessed manner of the schoolmistress and the deliberation of the ill-educated hand in her brother’s writing. I should hardly have thought them brother and sister unless I had been assured of it.

I read the single sheet of paper carefully. It certainly seemed like a letter, for the address of the sender was at the top. “The Old Light, Sutton Bridge, Boston Deeps.” It is common knowledge that the Boston Deeps remain the one navigable channel through the shallow and silted waters of The Wash. The sea has receded for centuries on that part of the Lincolnshire coast. The channel is little used now, I believe, except as a temporary anchorage for the coastal trade. I had supposed the land to be so flat, like the rest of East Anglia, as to make a lighthouse something of a rarity. Presumably, this light at Sutton Cross was a warning to ships of the point at which the Boston Deeps give way to treacherous sandbanks.

I glanced at the foot of the page and saw printed in uneven capitals the name of Abraham Chastelnau. It is an unusual surname for an Englishman. Yet it reminded me that East Anglia had become the home of Protestant Huguenot craftsmen, fleeing from France at a time of religious persecution two hundred years earlier. They were industrious and law-abiding folk who had done well in their new home.

The writer’s appeal was addressed to “Dear Doctor.” Who that might be, I could not tell.

I am a man that is afflicted with evil beyond endurance. I have lived with it many years and once or twice thought I had come out of. But I was wrong. I have heard that in days gone by a holy man might have helped me. I once thought I had found his secret but now it is lost again. If I could take a wife I might be better for it. The truth is I bear the brand upon me and no woman could tolerate the company of such a man. I cannot hide what I am and none will come near me. I need a physician who can do miracles. If you are that man please write what the cost will be.

Your respectful servant,

Abraham Chastelnau.

I read this through and then laid the paper down.

“I hoped when I read it that perhaps he had heard of you and your friend,” said Miss Chastelnau softly, “But I cannot tell who this was meant for. Surely it was someone like you, for he knew no doctor at Sutton Cross.”

I looked at it again. It was a strange letter in more ways than one. The handwriting showed a semi-literate deliberation. Yet the composition of the sentences betrayed a certain education. Here was a man who wrote “physician” rather than “doctor” or “afflicted with” rather then “suffering from.” No doubt Abraham Chastelnau lacked instruction. Yet he had heard of holy men in days gone by. From whom had he got this piece of history? Here was a man who could scarcely write and yet, on the few occasions when he did so, apparently expressed himself in a way that suggested some familiarity with those who had received a schooling. Had the letter been dictated to him in part?

“There are many unanswered questions here, Miss Chastelnau. If the letter was at the back of a drawer, how long had it been there? When did your brother write it, for there is no date upon it, and did he truly intend to send it to anyone? Will you allow my colleague Mr Sherlock Holmes to read these lines?”

Alice Chastelnau nodded. Holmes, in his turn, glanced down the page. He stretched his legs towards the fireplace while he read it again, more slowly. Before he could give an opinion, we were interrupted by Mrs Hudson’s knock and the arrival of the silver tray and table linen. After tea had been poured and the sandwiches handed round, our landlady closed the curtains against the gathering fog and retired. The gas was now lit and shone brightly on the white cloth, the glimmer of china and metal. Holmes, turned to our visitor.

“I think you must help us a little more, Miss Chastelnau. There are two distinct matters here. Your brother, if I may also call him so, is troubled in spirit. Hence the letter which we have just read. Since writing that, he and your younger brother have disappeared. Do you believe that these two things are connected? Or is it only one of them that requires our advice?”

She looked at him, directly and expressionlessly.

“I cannot tell you, Mr Holmes. That is why I am here. Because my brothers are my half-brothers, they are comparative strangers to me. My father, John Chastelnau, was an oil-cake manufacturer, supplying the dairy farmers with food for their cattle. He married a second time after my mother died. When Abraham, the elder half-brother, was born I was sixteen. I had been unwell for more than a year. A touch of consumption was suspected, the very illness which took my mother from us. My step-mother found lodgings on the coast near King’s Lynn and I recuperated there for several months. A little while later Abraham was born, she returned home and I left for instruction at Miss Openshaw’s Academy in Mablethorpe. I remained there subsequently as her assistant teacher. After she died four years ago, I was employed by her trustees.”

“You are to be congratulated,” said Holmes gently, “Pray continue.”

“My life has been very different to that of my brothers and our ages are some years apart. They remained in the little coastal village of Sutton Cross. At first they followed my father in the trade of making oil-cake for cattle. With the draining of the fens and the coming of dairy farming, his works at Sutton Cross had been profitable and he employed a dozen men. With such farming in decline and cheaper animal foods brought in by the new railway, my brothers found it a meagre inheritance.”

It seemed evident that there was no close relationship between the sister and the two brothers. This allowed Sherlock Holmes to slip the leash.

“If you wish us to investigate this disappearance, Miss Chastelnau, we should be obliged for whatever else you can tell us about your brothers. In the first place, what manner of men are they? I do not wish to be peremptory with you. However, if a search is to be successful, it must be pursued with urgency. In these mysteries the scent soon grows cold.”

She remained so composed under this warning that, had we not known of her distance from the two men, I should at length have thought Miss Chastelnau quite without feeling.

“I have had little to do with them, Mr Holmes, but that is not a matter of indifference. Like many brothers and sisters, our lives have been lived apart, in different worlds. Yet I will be frank with you. I am aware that they have not been popular in the district. I believe there was once a quarrel and some violence. As to their dispositions, both my brothers are by nature reclusive. Abraham prefers his own company and Roland resents any curiosity on the part of those around him.”

“And how do they come to be keepers of the Old Light?”

“Their troubles began after my father’s death, more than ten years ago. His oil-cake manufactory did not long survive him. The old building by the river bridge stood empty for a while and then became a warehouse. After that my brothers were employed at the Old Light. For many years now it has only been in use as a simple beacon. Abraham and Roland have acted as keepers and in return they have had a roof over their heads. It is a strange life. They are hardly a mile from the village and yet surrounded only by mudflats and quicksands, cut off by the sea for several hours out of every twelve.”

“Perhaps,” I suggested, “you could tell us something more of the Old Light.”

“It is a foreshore light, on the silt at the mouth of the estuary. The wooden supports raise it some eighteen feet above the low-water mark. It stands a mile or so downstream from the bridge. There is an iron ladder from the beach to a door at the level of the barrack-room. The area around it is marsh and sandbanks, with quicksand here and there. They call that part of it ‘the quivering sands:’”

“And what of the village?” I asked.

“Sutton Cross is built on the old Roman sea wall. It had the first road bridge across the river estuary, built fifty years ago. Before that, the river could only be crossed by fording it. Now there is also a new iron bridge, carrying the Midland and Great Northern Railway from Spalding in Lincolnshire into Norfolk. Everything downstream from the bridge is marsh and sandbank, dangerous to boats and hunters alike. The village has grown a good deal since the river was bridged, though the inn and the old church were there centuries ago.”

Holmes slipped his hand into his pocket and stared thoughtfully at the fire. He smiled.

“I was once a visitor at Sutton Cross for several days, Miss Chastelnau. It was one of Professor Jebb’s undergraduate reading parties from Cambridge. Just before the final examinations for the Classical Tripos. I recall that there is a river-bank footpath on the Lincolnshire side of the bridge, just by the inn. It follows the stream as far as the mudflats of the estuary. At that point, I recall, there used to be a light on either bank, both in Lincolnshire and in Norfolk.”

Miss Chastelnau nodded.

“Until fifty years ago two lights were needed to guide vessels from the sea into the river as far as up as Wisbech. Now the silt and the receding sea have made such navigation impossible. With a bridge standing across the river a mile from its mouth there is no scope for coastal trade and little demand. Only the Old Light on the Lincolnshire bank is kept in use. It has a single beam directed seaward to advise ships at anchor in the Boston Deeps to stand clear. Even in that anchorage there are few enough vessels of any size nowadays.”

“And the church beacon?” Holmes inquired, “I recall from my visit a quite charming medieval parish church with a high turret forming one corner of the old tower. There was a spiral staircase in the turret and a lantern at the top of the tower which must have pre-dated any lighthouse. Is that still in use?”

“Not as a guide to shipping. It would not carry so far. Its purpose, in conjunction with the Old Light, is as a landmark for eel-catchers and wild-fowl hunters on the mudbanks. The sands are dangerous, particularly after dark or in fog.”

“Very good. Now may we return to your brothers and my question, which I think you have not quite answered? What manner of men are they?”

“Roland is the younger,” she said simply, “The young people in the village taunt him as a stilt-walker.” She turned to me. “Perhaps you know what that means on the coast of the Wash, Dr Watson?”

“I have no idea.”

“Roland is called a stilt-walker because he is an enemy to change, even when others welcome it. The sea on that coast has been receding for centuries. Land is reclaimed from time to time by warping, as they call it. Sections of the marsh and sands are enclosed and dried out. They become pasture in the possession of sheep breeders or dairy farmers. They are lost to those who have always treated them as common land. The old fowlers, fishermen, goose-breeders. Centuries ago these men roamed the treacherous flats and sands by going on stilts. For years now they have been a dying breed. Their territory is stolen from them, even by the railway companies who have built embankments across the marsh and caused large sections of it to dry out. In short, to be called a stilt-walker is to be despised by the younger men.”

“And what of your elder brother, the author of the letter?”

Miss Chastelnau thought for a moment and then spoke carefully.

“I know he is lonely. I fear that John Bunyan’s giant, Despair, is his companion. There is nothing of Roland in him. They both live by what they can get, by what they can make, hunt and catch. Yet Abraham also lives in a world of dreams and legends, scraps of history and romance. Would that he could find comfort in such things but they all seem to fail him.”

“Yet it is admirable that he should dream,” said Holmes abruptly, sitting upright, “Are they loving brothers?”

“No,” she said quietly, “I think they are not. Force of circumstance obliges them to share a single life in the barrack-room of the Old Light. I have no close knowledge but I think it is a life of indifference at the best.”

She drew herself up in her chair as though she had come to the end of the matter. There was a pause.

“That will not quite do.” said Holmes gently, “Unless I am much mistaken, there is something more to this mysterious disappearance. Something which you know and which, as yet, we have not heard. That will not do, Miss Chastelnau, if we are to be of service to you. Come now, pray let us have the rest of this most interesting account. ”

She blushed a little but looked straight at him.

“Mr Holmes, you have already mentioned the old church at Sutton Cross, the turret tower with a winding staircase to the roof and the beacon. After dark it still guides hunters and fishermen going to their nets or traps on the mudflats or the marsh. If a man can see that lantern and the foreshore lighthouse, he can judge his position on the flats long after dark. He can find his way home even when the tide is racing at his heels or in the fog. Men depend upon those two lights. By this time of autumn, fog and mist are as much the enemy as the incoming sea and the quivering sands.”

She paused and for the first time showed a moment’s difficulty in continuing her story. Then she resumed.

“Last Sunday, after Evensong, the sexton and the rector went up the tower in the dusk to light the lantern. Twilight was coming on but it was not quite dark. A mist was gathering with the incoming tide, coming down like a curtain across the shore. It had not quite reached the level of the marsh. As the two men began to climb the stone steps of the winding stairs, they heard a gunshot.”

“A shot of what kind?”

“A shotgun, Mr Holmes, fired from somewhere on the marshes. It is not uncommon by daylight but unusual in the dusk, except as a signal. By the time the two men came out on to the lead of the flat roof, the incoming tide was running fast, as it does across the mud-banks. The narrowing of the estuary channels it in. Yet the worst of it, Mr Holmes, is that the marsh and the mudflats may look level but they seldom are. You may stand on a stretch of uncovered sand, where the sea is a hundred yards out, and you may think yourself safe. But the ripples have outflanked you. Your retreat is already cut off by the depth of water gathering at your back or by the softness of the flats where the tide has percolated below, undermining the firmness and turning it into quicksand. Then the sea comes rushing in on either side of you, sometimes as fast as a man can run. All this is a hundred times worse in the dusk. You see?”

“Entirely.”

“Anyone on the marsh or the flats by that time last Sunday evening was in peril. The sexton lit the beacon at once. The Old Light was already flashing. Then Mr Gilmore, the rector, and the sexton saw two men on the soft mud, below the mist that was coming with the tide. It was so far off that, with daylight fading, it was hard to tell who they were. But it seemed that they were fighting. One man appeared to seize the other and they fell together. The second man got up and ran off but the first caught him and threw him down again. Or so it seemed. The dusk thickened and the mist drew round them but a struggle of some kind went on. The mud was so soft and so slippery and they fell so often that, if there was a fight, neither seemed able to win it. There was nothing that the rector and the sexton on the roof of the tower could do, even at the risk of their own lives. They were too far off.”

“Did they think, perhaps, that these were two young fellows playing the fool?” I asked.

“No man who knew the sands would do so in such a place, Dr Watson.”

“Very well.”

“They were too far away by that time for Mr Gilmore or the sexton even to tell their ages. Yet, since then, neither of my brothers has been seen. It was the following morning, after the tide turned, that two policemen went to the Old Light. A Tynemouth collier, at anchor across the water, had seen the beam of the Old Light fail an hour or so before dawn. When I came from Mablethorpe, they helped me to climb the ladder and I was able to get into the barrack-room. There lay the letter in the table drawer.”

Now that she had come to the true end of her story, there was a moment’s silence, broken by Holmes.

“And there was nothing else that you noticed when you went into the barrack-room next day?”

“Abraham’s jacket was hanging behind the door. I went through the pockets. There was a piece of a pebble in one pocket.”

“What sort of pebble?”

“I should not have bothered with it-I should not even have noticed it-except that he had folded it carefully in a piece of paper. I thought at first that the paper might have a message on it. There was none, only a pebble.”

“Where is it now?”

“I took it with me. It could not possibly be of use to the police.”

“I fear you may be in error as to that, Miss Chastelnau. Do you have it with you now?”

She reached into the pocket of her dress and took out the folded paper which, as she had said, was quite blank. I got up and stood beside Holmes as he unwrapped the pebble. Before us lay what I can only describe as a small piece of clay-coated grit or possibly a rough pebble from the shoreline. It was the size of my thumb-nail, certainly no larger.

Holmes stared at it for a moment longer and then again spoke slowly to our client, as I may now call her.

“With your permission, Miss Chastelnau, I should like to retain this item for a few hours in order to examine it. You must return to Mablethorpe tonight, I believe. We shall see you safely to King’s Cross station. You may depend upon Dr Watson and I being in Sutton Cross by noon tomorrow. I will bring the pebble with me then. I fear that I cannot assure you what the outcome of this mystery will be. However, from what you have told us, I have every confidence that the riddle of your brothers’ disappearance will be resolved within the next three days.”

“Of what possible use to you can a muddy pebble be?”

“Had it not been wrapped with such care, I should probably have thought it of no use whatever. However, such careful treatment reminds me that this is hard stone, though it came apparently from a bed of soft clay to which it did not belong. I do not call that conclusive of anything-but in the light of all the other evidence it is suggestive of something.”

2

That evening, after we had seen Miss Chastelnau safely to her train, Sherlock Holmes ate his dinner from a tray beside him on his work-table. The table’s disreputable surface was stained by hydrochloric acid and the results of numerous chemical “experiments.” Scattered upon it now lay a lens and a pair of forceps, a stained penknife in a butter-dish, and a medical scalpel. A dismembered revolver had awaited his attention for two or three weeks. Close at hand were two skulls, whose owners had been hanged for murder at Tyburn a century ago and publicly dissected before a large public audience at Surgeons Hall. These two macabre fetishes now acted as book-ends for a brief row of well-thumbed reference volumes, required for immediate purposes. My friend had exchanged his formal black coat for the familiar purple of his dressing-gown.

It was after ten o’clock and his long back was curved once again over the Chastelnau pebble, as I had better call it. He had been examining it for several minutes by the aid of a jeweller’s lens screwed into his eye. Removing this eyepiece, he straightened in his chair.

“I believe we can do better, Watson. We are no common high street supplier of watches and bijouterie.”

He had scarcely spoken a word since we had returned from escorting our visitor to King’s Cross Station and he had certainly not invited conversation in the half hour since our return. Rising from his chair, he now went across to his “natural sciences” cupboard and drew out a piece of apparatus. This was a hydroscopic balance, cased in mahogany and stamped along its base in gold, “E. Dertling, London.” He sat down and placed it in front of him.

The device resembled an open-sided box of polished wood about ten inches in height, twelve inches long and six inches deep. Within it, the pivot of a brass balance was screwed to the centre of its floor. A minute weighing pan was suspended to either side of this. From the lower edge of the box protruded a small brass knob for the alignment of the scales. This had been calibrated to calculate weights to within one milligram.

“I believe we may allow for a room temperature of sixty degrees Fahrenheit, Watson. Would that be your guess?”

This was conversation at last.

“Certainly no lower than that, with the fire glowing as it is and the curtains closed.”

Holmes took Miss Chastelnau’s pebble. With a fine brush he worked over its surface to displace any loose substance that might still have adhered to it. Then, placing it in a loop of thin wire which was suspended from the pan on the right hand of the balance, he adjusted the mechanism and noted the weight of it in air. Next, taking the pebble with a pair of tweezers, he placed a small jar of water under the right-hand scale-pan, so that when he lowered the pan the pebble was immersed. Almost as an afterthought, he dipped the slender brush into the jar and went over the stone again, apparently to dislodge any bubbles of air which might give buoyancy to so small an object.

As I watched the intensity with which my friend worked I could not help thinking that Sherlock Holmes seemed less like the great consulting detective of Baker Street than a like happy child on Christmas Morning. Perhaps there was a slighter difference between the two types than I had supposed. Now he took his brass propelling pencil and made several notes on the immaculate starch of his white shirt cuffs. At length he had his answer.

“If our estimate of the room temperature is correct, Watson-and I do not think we can be far out-the specific gravity of this mineral is registered as 3.993. I do not believe it can be andradite, for I have tried it judiciously with a penknife and that will not produce a scratch upon it. Nor, I think can it be zircon of whatever type. I therefore deduce that what we are presented with appears to be a species of corundum. Only caborundum and the diamond are harder than this. Indeed, in the scale of hardness drawn up by the admirable Professor Friedrich Mohs in 1812, only the diamond exceeds it. This cannot possibly be a diamond for its specific gravity is far too high. That I believe is as far as we can go for the present.”

Holmes had given me the opportunity I had been looking for. I had not wished to annoy him or to suggest that a piece of grit picked up from the Lincolnshire fens was unlikely to be of any value or relevance to the case whatever. However, I had been thinking wistfully of sleep. A long journey lay ahead in the morning. I yawned, stretched, made my excuses and withdrew to bed.

I suppose it was about half-past eleven when my head touched the pillow. I was woken after several hours by a dreadful screaming. It might have been a banshee-or at least the sound which I had always assumed a banshee would make. I sat up with heart pounding and, at the same time, a sense of considerable irritation.

By the time I had lit a candle, the high-pitched sound came again. It was a demented shrieking from somewhere below me. Now that I was fully awake, I recognised that whatever its origins, they were mechanical and not animal. The time by my watch was ten minutes past three in the morning. It was plain that Sherlock Holmes had not yet gone to bed.

I had not the least doubt that this disturbance would be heard on every floor of the house, and more importantly throughout those of the houses on either side. Pulling on my dressing-gown, I tied its belt and made my way by candlelight to the stairs. I began to descend to our sitting-room. Half-way down, I was aware of a lone figure on the little chair outside the door of that room. The flickering candle showed me Mrs Hudson. She was wrapped in a shawl round her nightdress, rocking to and fro a little. With her face buried in her hands she uttered a repeated protest that was almost a dry sob.

“Oh, that noise! Oh, that dreadful, dreadful noise! Why will he not stop?”

She looked up and saw me with a candlestick in my hand, standing at the top of the staircase like Banquo’s ghost on the stage of the Lyceum Theatre.

“Oh, Dr Watson! None of my gentlemen, in all these years, has ever been such a trial as Mr Holmes! What am I to do? What am I to say tomorrow morning to Mrs Armitage next door?”

“This is too bad,” I said soothingly, “Go back to bed, Mrs Hudson, and leave this to me. I promise you that the noise will stop.”

I was becoming more impatient with every moment of delay. I tried the handle of the sitting-room door and found it locked. I hammered on the oak panel with all the majesty of the law. There was a pause in the din. I sensed Holmes coming towards me and a key rattled in the lock. He flung open the door and almost pulled me into the room, his eyes gleaming. I now saw that he had screwed his carborundum wheel to the edge of the work-table and that it was the friction of its hard grey stone cleaning a penknife blade that had caused the din. The wheel had apparently also been at work upon Miss Chastelnau’s pebble. On one side of the dun-coated stone was now revealed what looked like a dull speck of royal blue glass.

“Corundum, Watson! The stuff of rubies and sapphires. A blue sapphire fit for the crown of England! Lost in the muddy dullness of time and neglect! After I heard the good lady’s story, I suspected that something like this must be the truth, though I hardly dared to believe it. Once we had been given a specific gravity of 3.993, I was certain. The figure is sometimes a fraction higher but the room temperature would account for that.”

“Corundum?”

“Corundum yields the ruby or the sapphire, according to the form of its crystals. In white light, the ruby absorbs every shade but red and therefore it glows red. Sapphire reflects only blue, as in this case. Take the jeweller’s glass and look. You will observe that the crystals are quite clearly tall and pointed, as in the sapphire, and not shorter and rectangular as in the ruby.”

“It looks very little like a jewel to me.”

“Nor should it after so many centuries in the earth. That is something which skilled polishing will amend in due course.”

“But not tonight, unless you want Mrs Hudson to throw both of us out into the street.”

He chuckled, as if in a fit of mischief.

“Not tonight, then. We know enough now to put us on the track. Tomorrow will be soon enough to prove that we are right.”

“Meantime we are to assume that the Chastelnau brothers have been made away with for such a miserable little object as this?”

“Oh no, my dear fellow. I believe you have entirely failed to understand the nature of the problem. More is at stake than this. Far, far more.”

3

The next morning saw us on the train to Cambridge, Ely, King’s Lynn and finally across the new river bridge to Sutton Cross. The fog dispersed on the northern outskirts of London. A fine October day with a pale blue sky faded to a yellow edging at the horizon. One sees almost nothing of the Cambridge colleges from the railway and very little of the fine medieval cathedral towers of Ely. But Holmes was not concerned with the view. He had wired Inspector Lestrade at Scotland Yard, mentioning our interest in the case of the missing brothers and requesting him to smooth our path with the Lincolnshire constabulary as far as was possible. Lestrade’s reply suggested that if we wished to waste our time over a commonplace case of “missing from home” or “found drowned,” we were welcome to do so.

Holmes read a good deal on train journeys but always with a set purpose. I could never imagine him feeling that he should cultivate the charm of Jane Austen or the melodrama of Sir Walter Scott. On the other hand, he would immerse himself in certain works of Robert Browning or Thomas Hood. He admired their insight into macabre aberrations and the “morbid anatomy” in the personalities of men and women. If he read for pleasure, it would be with his pipe, a pouch of shag tobacco, and something like the Notable British Trials volume of Dr William Palmer, “The Rugeley Poisoner.”

He spent the journey to Sutton Cross dipping into several books which had been packed into his portmanteau. The subject-matter on such journeys was not designed to encourage conversation from our fellow passengers. In the past we had Maudsley on Insanity, Stevenson on Irritant Poisons, and on the most trying occasion of all, Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis. Holmes had perused this volume unremittingly for two hours in a corner seat, opposite a rural dean returning to his Oxford-shire parish.

On this occasion, his choice was unexceptionable. From Liverpool Street to Cambridge, his attention was held by Shakespeare’s King John. Thereafter, he was absorbed by Professor Plucknett’s edition of Pipe Rolls of the Plantagenets. I knew only that these were official records of the reigns of Henry II or King John.

At King’s Lynn, we changed from the London express. A local train ran unevenly along the last few miles of the Norfolk coast and across the wide estuary of the Wash into Lincolnshire. It paused at every little platform and country halt, under the vast open skies of the fens and among the numerous marshes and waterways that ran everywhere. Here and there were glimpses of creamy breakers and a brown tide drawing away across long gleaming expanses of sand. Such was the North Sea or “The German Ocean,” as some people still called it.

At length the carriages of this local train rattled over an iron bridge, across a wide river with flat muddy banks, and drew into the wooden platform of Sutton Cross. Holmes had wired for rooms at the Bridge Hotel, not because it was the best but because it was the only accommodation which the village could boast. It rose white, foursquare and a century old, beside the river, within a stone’s throw of the railway halt. This hotel was to be what he called our “base of operations.” We briefly made ourselves known there and deposited our possessions. I noticed that Holmes had brought his black leather Gladstone bag as well as his portmanteau. Its principal contents appeared to be the jeweller’s lens, the hydroscopic balance, and the carborundum wheel with a clamp which held it to the table-edge.

Had it not been for the case upon which we were embarked, I should have found a week or so at Sutton Cross very agreeable. The fresh wind from the North Sea and the tranquil pastureland made a pleasing contrast to Baker Street. As it was, Holmes had already wired for an appointment in an hour’s time with the Reverend Roderick Gilmore, rector of the parish. This good man was formerly a contemporary of Holmes’s elder brother, Mycroft, at Trinity College, Cambridge. That seemed enough to be going on with.

We found Mr Gilmore at home, a comfortable middle-aged man who owed his incumbency to the fact that the living of St Clement’s, Sutton Cross, was in the gift of Trinity College. He, like Brother Mycroft, had distinguished himself in the Mathematical Tripos but preferred a quiet living on the Suffolk coast to a college fellowship. He talked as if we were old acquaintances, showing off the fine nave of his church with its Norman bays and clerestory, its fourteenth century south aisle. As we sat at tea in his study, the lattice windows looked out across the yew-hedged churchyard towards a bright afternoon sky above a calm sea. I thought that had life called upon me to be rector of Sutton Cross, I should have been well content.

After we had complimented him upon his church and his grounds, he said meekly,

“We are also rather proud of our little railway bridge. It was built by Robert Stevenson, you know.”

We murmured our approval and then Mr Gilmore came quietly to the reason for our visit.

“It is a bad business altogether that we should have lost the two Chastelnau brothers in this manner. A very bad business. They were not greatly liked and, indeed, they refused to consider themselves my parishioners but that makes the tragedy all the more poignant.”

Holmes put down his teacup.

“We understand from Miss Alice Chastelnau that you and the sexton were on the roof of the tower last Sunday evening, when the beacon was lit. You saw two men fighting-or, at least, struggling?”

Mr Gilmore looked mournfully at us.

“I heard a single gunshot just as we climbed the tower. It was a shotgun without doubt, such as most of the hunters carry here. The Chastelnau brothers at the Old Light were the nearest inhabitants to the marshes and the mudbanks. Like many others, they sometimes used a gunshot as a convenient signal to one another. Yet it was far too late for a hunter to be out on normal business. The dusk and the mist were setting in. All the fishermen had already been out to their nets to retrieve their catch. The fowlers and the eel-catchers had long come in.”

“Which surely makes it strange that the brothers should still have been out there?” I said.

“Not exceptionally strange, doctor. It is true that one man should have remained to guard the Old Light-or at least should be absent for as short a time as possible. Yet it is not human nature for one brother to ignore a possible distress signal fired by the other. After all, they were never out of sight of the Old Light and its beam was in no danger of extinction at that time. Besides which, the Old Light is hardly a landmark like the Eddystone or the Bell Rock. It serves little purpose but to mark the river estuary for such vessels as pass. They no longer enter the river nor even approach it since the bridge was built to carry the railway across. Its lantern will be done away with before long, mark my words. Who would want the job? Who would choose to be a keeper, living well beyond any other habitation, surrounded by the marshes and the mudflats?”

Holmes interrupted this a little too brusquely.

“Tell me, Mr Gilmore, what did you and your sexton see from the tower?”

“See?” Gilmore shook his head. “It was difficult to see very clearly, Mr Holmes. They were some distance off, half a mile perhaps, and the light was almost gone. It was very hard, by then, even to tell the appearance of their clothing. The mist was coming in with the tide. If they were carrying lanterns, which surely must have been the case, they were not shining towards us. Though I could not swear to it, I believe there was a second gunshot-the second barrel perhaps. What I saw was not so much a prize-fight with fists, not a striking of blows. It was far more like a wrestling match, as if for the possession of some object.”

“Who possessed it in the end?”

Mr Gilmore shook his head.

“That I cannot tell you. I do not think we saw the end of the affair between them. It was not done with before the darkening twilight and the mist obscured them completely. It appeared to me as if the first man snatched at the second. That second man fell but struggled free and scrambled up again. Then the first man brought him down and this time pulled him up. There was too little light to see more. I explained all this to Inspector Wainwright, but I do not know how much I could swear to in court.”

“We expect to meet Mr Wainwright this afternoon, at the Old Light.”

“Wainwright is a good man, Mr Holmes. As to the nature of the struggle between the two brothers, the greater danger would be for them to get lost among the tide and the quicksands. But that could hardly happen with the beacon on the church tower lit and the Old Light clearly visible with its beam flashing out to sea in a constant direction. That was why I was most anxious to see our beacon lit upon the tower. Moreover, these brothers had known the sands and the mudflats all their lives. All the same, neither has been seen again and so we must suppose that the two men in the dusk were they.”

“And that was all?”

“There was one thing, Mr Holmes, which I told Inspector Wainwright. In the hope we could retain communication with them, the sexton went down from the tower and came up with a rook rifle. He fired a single shot into the air, in case they could reply and tell us where they were. I heard no more but a muffled shot or breaking surf can be much the same at that distance.”

I intervened in what was, after all, my case.

“Were they greatly disliked in the village?”

Mr Gilmore paused, choosing his words with care.

“I should rather say they were mocked, Dr Watson, and that a hatred of those who abused them was their response. Local people can be very cruel at a time of misfortune. After old John Chastelnau died, the oil-cake manufactory failed. You can still see the rough stone building, just opposite the Bridge Hotel. Those who had disliked the old man’s miserliness-and some who scoffed at his second marriage to a younger woman-took no care to conceal their satisfaction at the failure of the enterprise. There was a fight outside the Bridge Hotel one evening. Roland Chastelnau broke a man’s nose after insults were exchanged. Sir Walter Butt, the magistrate, discharged both men with a caution, for fear of making matters worse. After that neither of the brothers entered the inn or the church again. Indeed, they were already strangers to the church.”

“Did their animosity extend to each other?”

“I was once told that they fought like two ferrets in a sack. That was the exact phrase used to me. I cannot believe it was as bad as that. Of course, they subsisted by tending the Old Light. I understand they were paid out of the county rate. Their accommodation was provided by the barrack-room under the lantern.”

“And what else?” I inquired, “How did they feed themselves?”

Mr Gilmore looked as if he thought I might have known without asking.

“Roland was the hunter and fisherman. Even for those who are not hunters by profession, the snaring or shooting of wild-fowl, geese, or the eel-catching and fishing nets for small fry commonly become additional trades. Abraham was the brother who usually took the watch and kept the light flashing out to sea. He also cultivated a vegetable plot just above the river bridge on the far side. How they lived otherwise, I cannot say.”

“They had no inheritance?”

“I do not think they had anything except debts from the oil-cake works when the business was sold. They belong to that class of our nation, Dr Watson, who live like serfs on next to nothing but never quite fall to the level of the workhouse. They seldom attract the attention of their betters until some mean crime or scandal breaks open in the columns of the press. Let us hope this is not a case of that kind.”

“And what of their sister, Miss Alice Chastelnau?”

Mr Gilmore brightened up at her name. He gave a brief smile and his voice became more buoyant.

“I know little of Alice Chastelnau, though I met her when she attended her father’s funeral, and also concerning the arrangements made for it. I met her again at the death of her step-mother several years later. Miss Chastelnau lived in the village before my time and left it when she was still a girl. Indeed, I cannot recall that I have ever met her apart from those two occasions. Her health was a little delicate. She seems by all accounts an admirable young woman and has fulfilled her promise in the little school at Mablethorpe.”

“There has never been a young lady in the lives of either of the two brothers?” I asked carefully.

Mr Gilmore inclined his head.

“Not that I am aware of. I believe I should know of it, for gossip of that kind spreads very quickly through a village.”

There was a finality in these words which indicated that the Rector of Sutton Cross had said all that he proposed to say on these matters. As we stood up and thanked him, however, Sherlock Holmes inquired,

“May we see the tower and the beacon? I believe it would help us to get the lie of the land and I should not wish to trouble you a second time.”

Mr Gilmore did not quite slap us on the back. However, the expression on his face suggested that the opportunity to show off another of his treasures was entirely welcome.

I had been conscious during our discussion in the rectory study that Holmes had said nothing whatever about the pebble which Miss Chastelnau had left for our examination. As we now walked back towards the church, my friend inquired,

“Were either of the brothers treasure hunters, Mr Gilmore? I imagine you must get a great many such people here in the holiday season.”

The rector stopped and laughed among the gravestones. He was far happier on such topics.

“You have been reading far too much romance, Mr Holmes, or possibly the Bard of Avon’s famous play. What dreadful news was brought to King John upon his deathbed in the year 1216! If you recall, his jewels and royal ornaments-the coronation regalia, as tradition has it,

Were in the Washes all unwarily

Devoured by the unexpected flood.

Not two miles from here, on 12 October in that same year. Perhaps it was the greatest loss of royal treasure in our entire island story.”

“So I believe.”

“It happened, you know, when the king was campaigning here during the Barons’ War, a few days before his death. He and his party had gone on ahead, making for Swineshead Abbey that night. The baggage train with all the royal treasure and the furnishings of his chapel, set out to cross the estuary here at low tide. Just before noon. Of course, the line of the coast was different seven centuries ago but the river was where you see it now. In those days, however, the uncovered estuary was several miles across at low water. The quicksands were everywhere and the sea could come in at a terrifying speed in October with the neap tides, as it still does. A little before noon, the foolish baggage train tried to cross the mudflats and the stream without a guide. A guide would have probed the mud with his pole to find a path where the ground was firm. ‘Moses’ they called him, you know, after the crossing of the Red Sea.”

“So I understand.”

“Then you have read the old chroniclers, perhaps? The Abbot of Cogershall and Roger of Wendover? Matthew Paris in his Historia Anglorum a century after the tragedy? How the rushing tide caught the column in mid-stream? The quicksands were flooded at once and swallowed up men, pack-horses, baggage-wagons, jewels, crowns, ornaments and chapel furnishings. Much of it was booty seized by King John in his campaigns across the country. It was a time of long civil war between the Crown and the nobles. Such was the tragedy that happened in our estuary all those years ago. Even now, if you stand alone out there in the quietness of the ebb tide, it is said you may sometimes catch the cries of men or horses, the pandemonium of the lost ones. It is a story that every schoolboy knows!”

“What I wondered,” Holmes insisted mildly, “was whether you get treasure hunters?”

The rector laughed again.

“They come, and they go away disappointed. The sea has withdrawn and the land has been reclaimed. All that remains of King John’s treasure is probably deep down in the silt or the clay that has formed, a mile or two inland under the fields. Do not waste your time, Mr Holmes.”

“Nothing has ever been found?”

Roderick Gilmore frowned slightly.

“That is not quite correct. In the later Middle Ages, and almost up to the present day, discoveries have been made. These generally consist of a few items which were first discovered a century or so after the disaster. Then they were hidden away, forgotten and so lost once more. A handful of these trinkets have been found for a second time. The great collections, including the coronation regalia, seem to have been lost for over.”

“Most interesting,” said Holmes politely, “Most, most interesting! ”

As the rector told his story among the tombstones, and as I thought of the blue pebble, I felt a prickling along my spine. Had the Chastelnau brothers been treasure hunters after all? Was there a secret along the windswept shore of the Old Light which mingled murder with such majesty?

We climbed the winding stone steps and came out from the darkness of the tower shaft into the sunlight of the square leaded roof with its medieval battlements and flagstaff. The lantern of the beacon was supported against this staff. I had begun to get my bearings in the brightness, taking a birdseye view of the flat green fenland stretching inland and the mudflats at low water running down to the sparkling tranquil sea. On such a fine afternoon as this, it was hard to imagine that any danger could lie there. Then I heard Mr Gilmore behind me and saw several figures stooping over an object on the foreshore.

“Dear me,” said the rector apprehensively, “I believe they have found something after all. It is when the tide withdraws that such discoveries are usually made. About the third or fourth day the sea gives up her dead, if she gives them up at all. I wonder which of the Chastelnau brothers it can be?”

4

Inspector Albert Wainwright’s appearance, like his Christian name, recalled the late Prince Consort. His was a somewhat heavy face with large and mournful brown eyes. There was a doglike reproof in his habitually melancholy expression. Sometimes such features hide a wry but lively personality. In Mr Wainwright’s case, they concealed nothing. Indeed, his dark hair and his trim whiskers seemed like a deliberate attempt to copy those early daguerreotype photographs of her Prince Albert whose untimely death Queen Victoria still mourned.

“I have exchanged wires with Scotland Yard, as our superintendent requested,” he said sadly, “for one never knows where these cases may lead. My instructions from Chief Inspector Lestrade are quite plain, gentlemen. I am to show you every courtesy but not to let you overreach yourselves. You are to have the run of the Old Light, now that you have been retained by Miss Chastelnau. I cannot say that such a thing is usual but, to speak frankly, I would rather allow you that privilege than have Mr Lestrade coming down from Scotland Yard himself, which he was otherwise threatening to do. We shift for ourselves quite well as a rule.”

Holmes smiled pleasantly.

“I am quite sure Mr Lestrade did not mean to suggest that I am employed to remedy deficiencies in such an admirable body of men as the Lincolnshire police force.”

Inspector Wainwright seemed unsure how to take this. He resolved the difficulty by breathing out heavily without actually saying anything, as if the heavy breath alone constituted a reply.

Holmes and I had left Mr Gilmore and made our way along the village street to the river bank and the Old Light. The white-painted wooden structure with its black under-surfaces and ironwork stood raised on nine substantial square “stilts.” It was a round beacon standing almost forty feet high and capped by a windowed dome. Beyond it, across the sands, reeds and mudflats, I could see that the afternoon tide was on the turn from ebb to flood. The black iron ladder, which we had climbed to the door of the barrack-room, had the knobbly texture of metal that is regularly and inexpertly painted but never rubbed down beforehand. It smelt strongly of sand and algae.

Presently we stood with Inspector Wainwright in the cramped barrack-room, where the prevailing smell was of damp woollen clothing and oilskin. It was more than anything like the cabin of a yacht, every space taken by cupboards, shelves, a table and two chairs with black seats of horsehair padding. There was a curved bunk built against the wall at one side and a door leading to a smaller space where the second keeper evidently slept. A wooden ladder fixed against the wall and a trapdoor in the plain ceiling indicated the way to the lantern-room above.

“What information we have is not much,” said Wainwright, “but such as it is you shall have it before you go down to the sands. Dr Rixon is there but we may assume from the details that the body is Roland Chastelnau, the younger brother. They’re bringing him up on a hurdle. A further search has been made of the sands and the dunes, as high as the tide might reach. We have found a broken lantern and a damaged shotgun, empty and soaked by sea-water, not far from where a body would be swept away. Whatever may have passed between the brothers, it looks very much as if both of them died at flood tide last Sunday night. A great tragedy.”

The inspector frowned. Then he added, “You notice, gentlemen, I say ‘died’ and not ‘drowned.’ If Abraham Chastelnau went down in the quicksands we shall never have a certain verdict.”

“And in that case,” I said, “you will never know if he died-or how.”

“We are not likely to see him again, doctor. If we do happen to find him alive, of course, I shall have some strong questions to put to him. He may be the murderer of his brother Roland. That would be something, as they say, in a place like this.”

By this time I could not help feeling grateful that we enjoyed the protection of Lestrade. In consequence, the Lincolnshire officer acted as if the case had been taken out of his hands and put into ours. Had Abraham Chastelnau survived, I believe Albert Wainwright would have been well-pleased to bring a charge of murder against him. As that seemed unlikely, he lost interest.

The inspector opened the barrack-room door and stepped out on to the small iron platform with its ladder to the sands. He paused, framed by the lintel of the door.

“As to the lantern-room, gentlemen, the mechanism is clockwork, as it is in all these beacons. Similar to an old-fashioned grandfather clock but on a larger scale. A stout iron chain bearing a weight is cranked up to the top. Its gradual descent for eight hours is controlled by a governor, as is the case with a pendulum in a clock. And just as the weight in a clock turns the minute and the hour hands, so the descent of the weight here turns the banks of reflectors which direct the light of the lantern as a single beam across the sea. Until we have new keepers, a deputy keeper will come over from Freiston Shore to crank it up, to wind the clock and governor. He will also ensure that the reservoir tanks are full of paraffin oil to keep the lantern burning. They will send new keepers from Lynn in a day or two. Until full tide, my constable will be at hand to answer your questions and help you as you may require.”

“One moment if you please, Mr Wainwright,” said Holmes courteously, “What were the duties of the keepers while they were here?”

“One man is on watch at a time. He notes the speed of the wind, the pressure of the barometer and so forth. One of them must polish the lenses of the reflectors every morning. He also cleans the panes of the lantern windows when necessary. Of course, ours is nothing but a local beacon. Not much shipping comes near us.”

“As Mr Gilmore says,” remarked Holmes, “It is like the church tower, a beacon for those on the shore and the mudflats after dark.”

The inspector left us the run of the Old Light, with a uniformed constable at the foot of the iron ladder. Presently we climbed down and trudged over the marsh to a broad ribbon of sand where the discovery of Roland Chastelnau’s body had been made. Dr Rixon had finished his examination and four men were bringing the corpse up the beach on a white sheep-hurdle.

Of the two men following the hurdle, one was Mr Gilmore and the other was recognisable as Dr Rixon himself, if only because he wore a tweed suit and cap, and carried a black medical bag. I introduced myself. On such a coast, this could not have been the first time he had been called to the scene of a drowning. He appeared to regard the duty as an entirely impersonal matter and had no objection whatever to discussing it.

“It would seem that the poor fellow was drowned,” I ventured.

“The inquest will find it so,” he said readily, “Of course, we must see what an autopsy reveals.”

“He was not marked about the face or head?”

“No. There was post-mortem staining, as one might expect, but he would scarcely be dashed against rocks on such a shore as this. Not with the flood tide as quiet as it usually is in these parts.”

Sherlock Holmes joined us.

“Permit me to ask, Dr Rixon, does there exist a photograph of either of the two brothers?”

Rixon put on a scowl of perplexity.

“I do not think so-Mr Holmes, I presume? I should be most surprised if there were. They were alike in many features as most brothers are but this is Roland and not Abraham. We have known them all their lives.”

“And his pockets? Is there nothing there to prove his identity.”

My friend tapped the pockets of the faded and bedraggled jacket on the corpse. It seemed evident from his face that his fingers felt nothing.

“No,” said Dr Rixon, disinclined even to issue a reprimand as Holmes slid a hand into each of the side-pockets, “No, Mr Holmes. I think under the circumstances, whatever Scotland Yard may consider…”

“Only relics of the beach such as this?” Holmes asked innocently. He was holding between his finger and thumb a dun-coated pebble that might have been the twin of the one presented to us by Miss Chastelnau. “Or this?”

There were three or four of these objects altogether. Yet even before Dr Rixon could reply, Holmes dismissed the matter for him.

“It is common enough,” my friend added with a shrug, “the detritus of the beach and its shallows will easily find its way into the folds and wrinkles of clothing, after several days of washing to and fro by the tides.”

I was sure he had thrown the pebbles away. They were no longer in his hand. On reflection, I had no doubt that they had been transferred subtly from the pocket of Roland Chastelnau to that of Sherlock Holmes.

5

In the absence of Albert Wainwright I assumed that we might spend much of the coming night searching the drawers and cupboards of the Old Light before the inspector’s return. I did not anticipate that in the meantime we should come close to sharing the fate of the unfortunate Roland Chastelnau.

On our return to the foreshore lighthouse, with only a uniformed constable standing temporary guard on the wet sand below, we climbed the iron ladder again. The constable called up and informed us that he would be leaving shortly. In another hour or so the sand on which he stood would be covered by the tide. Holmes thanked him and then moved across the room to the wooden ladder under the trapdoor of the lantern. His feet disappeared and I heard him moving about above me. Then his face reappeared in the opening of the trap.

“Come up, Watson! The pebbles can wait until later. See what a wonderland is here!”

I followed him up to the tall lantern-room. It was, in effect, two rooms in one, the upper level occupied by the machinery of the powerful reflectors. Within its glass dome, formed by the large window-panes, the air was still warm from the autumn sun, the heat reflected by silvered metal. The space was also filled with a strong mineral tang of paraffin oil from the iron reservoir tanks below the apparatus.

To do justice to the intricate design would test the reader’s patience. At the lower level of the lantern room, where we stood, there was a table with the keepers’ log-book. On a central shaft a heavy iron weight on its chain descended slowly through the eight hours of its cycle, turning the banks of reflectors overhead steadily. When cranked up, the chain was wound on a large drum above us. A tall case in plain wood with a white enamelled dial and two keyholes, like a long-case “grandfather” clock, controlled the mechanism. The hole on the left appeared to be for winding up a weight whose descent turned the clock hands of a dial, while on the right, the same key wound a governor of some kind, which kept the mechanism of the reflectors at an even pace.

Above us was the white brilliance of the lantern. The light of each flame at its centre was intensified by being sealed in a glass funnel with a mirror behind it. This was surrounded in turn by square banks of parabolic reflectors in silvered glass like rows of shallow cups standing on their edges, turning slowly. A beam shone brilliantly out to sea, day and night, but was seldom visible during daylight, except in fog or adverse weather.

Black iron shutters in their runners were adjusted across many sections of the glass window panes. By this means, the revolving beam flashed out to sea intermittently, at one angle only. This corresponded with the markings of the Old Light on the charts of the Boston Deeps. After the silting up of the little ports and the building of the bridges at Sutton Cross, no shipping used this estuary. The corresponding light on the opposite bank of the estuary, which had once shown red and so measured the river mouth, was no longer in use.

Holmes finished his inspection of the gleaming apparatus.

“This, Watson, is the dioptric system of Augustin Fresnel. In other words, a stationary chandelier of white light surrounded by banks of Bodier Mercet’s silvered reflectors. The device is no longer modern, of course, but it is sufficient. Our French colleagues were pioneers in such matters. I daresay this one will be replaced before long or may be taken out of service altogether.”

Even if antiquated, it was a magnificent creation-a wonderland as Holmes had called it. The effect was almost hypnotic as the rows of reflectors rotated slowly, endlessly, and almost silently in the warm air, except for an occasional creak of wood at their axle. In the lower level of the lantern-room, standing before the tall wooden case with its clock dial and governor, Holmes opened the pendulum door. The mechanism of its smaller descending weights also controlled the flow of paraffin oil to the lamps. I noticed that a measuring scale of some kind had been carved on the interior of the case to indicate the progress of the weights. The length of time before the device must be wound again was clearly indicated.

To prevent the reflectors from coming to a halt, a metal strike-bell was attached a little above the base of this scale. Like the incessant striking of a clock, this alarm system would summon those in the barrack-room or nearby before the weight was fully unwound. According to Inspector Wainwright, “our man from Freiston Beach ” had attended to the winding early that morning and again while we were with Dr Rixon.

I turned to the little wooden table and opened the log-book. It was divided into columns for the date and time of winding, another for the point on the scale which the weights had reached before the winding took place, and a fourth for any comments to be read by the next keeper on duty. Underneath was the name of the keeper on watch.

These columns indicated that Abraham Chastelnau had wound up the weights for the night watch just before 8pm on Sunday evening. The time must have been almost immediately before Roland’s warning gunshot had lured him to their fatal confrontation on the flooded sands. An entry by the Freiston Shore relief on the following day confirmed that the Old Light had ceased flashing by 5.20 on Monday morning, according to the collier’s signal.

Holmes glanced at the entries and closed the book.

“The log and the pebbles can wait their turn. We have all night for them. Before it is too late in the day, it would pay us to take a stroll along the beach and visit the scene of the brothers’ last encounter.”

I looked out of the window across the ribbon of sand darkening to grey, and a tide that had already turned to the flood.

“I should have thought, Holmes, that it was already rather late. The sun has almost gone and the twilight will be upon us very soon.”

“All the better. It will be just as it was at the time of the quarrel. In our case, however, we are not going to quarrel and we shall have the strong beam of the Old Light to lead us back. Keep that in view and we shall not go far wrong.”

I noticed, however, that he had brought his redoubtable walking-stick, that “Penang Lawyer” which settled all arguments. We lowered ourselves down the iron ladder and stood upon the wet sands. The filling estuary was immediately to our right and the incoming tide lay ahead. I feared I might have better reason for my caution than I guessed. The pale yellow sun of that October evening had disappeared half an hour ago behind a silhouette of black Scotch firs which marked the flat inland horizon of Sutton Cross. Darkness was gathering across the wide sands with their low dunes and deserted shore. This impression of twilight was intensified by a contrast between the beam of white brilliance flashing out to sea, followed by sudden darkness as the silvered reflectors of the Old Light turned away from us behind their black shutters. They then shone only upon the interior of the iron, which covered the panes of the lantern on the far sides.

Holmes, swinging the stick in his hand, set off across the dark mud towards the point where Roderick Gilmore and his sexton had seen two diminutive figures struggling on Sunday evening. We were about half a mile seaward from St Clement’s church tower. Now, as then, a descending night mist was rolling in with the tide, progressively veiling the spot from onlookers ashore.

We had turned our backs on the Old Light and were walking away from its intermittent beam which shot across the waves. No ship’s light marked the horizon anchorage of the Boston Deeps. By comparison with the brilliance of the Old Light, even the beacon on the church tower was a mere glimmer confirming our position on the treacherous sands.

As soon as we had completed our reconnaissance, we need only walk back in a straight line until the Old Light shone straight in our faces. Then we should turn right at forty-five degrees and make our way steadily towards its iron ladder, along the raised path of the river bank. Or so it seemed. I could already feel the sand yielding more easily underfoot, as the tide seeped beneath us. By the yellow oil-light of my lantern, I could also see that each of my footprints now flooded progressively deeper and more quickly as my boot was lifted from the mud.

Holmes was at his most dogmatic.

“I think we need another half mile to reach the scene of their encounter. I should like to determine a direct line from St Clement’s beacon to the incoming surf.”

As he said this, I noticed that the blurred but luminous line of surf was now the only thing visible to our right between the darkness of sky and sea. We walked for about fifteen minutes more, scarcely exchanging a word. I felt the coldness of the October night coming in with the mist. Even the lemon afterglow of sunset had vanished from the inland horizon beyond the village. The rest of the shoreline was obscure and the descending mist which the rector had described now hung between us and St Clement’s beacon, condensing slowly into fog. I tried a cheerful note.

“The ground seems a little higher here, Holmes, a rib of firm sand. If we follow it back, when we turn, and keep Mr Gilmore’s beacon in view to the right, we should soon have the beam of the Old Light full in our faces.”

“I daresay,” he said impatiently but with no sign of turning back, “If I had been the survivor of that fight between the two brothers on Sunday night, I should have assumed much the same.”

“I thought we had agreed that there was no survivor of the encounter.”

“On the contrary. That is a matter which we are about to put to the proof.”

By this time, I had very little wish to put it to the proof. Indeed, with the light gone, I began not to like the whole business. We were not more than eight feet apart but it had become increasingly difficult to make out the gaunt purposeful stride of my companion or anything but the hazy flicker of his lamp. As if reading my thoughts, he added,

“We must keep together. It may be firm going here but it would be well not to get separated where the sands are more perilous.”

So we walked on until we were, at the very least, level with the beacon of the church tower. It seemed far away now across the flooding sands.

“We must take care that the tide does not get behind us,” I said a little breathlessly.

Holmes was not listening.

“Now stop a bit,” he said, “Let us have our bearings. We are the Chastelnau brothers. Here it is that either you or I kill the other. The killer may have carried out a long-prepared plan. Alternatively, it may have been provocation, a sudden heat and a terrifying accident. In either event, what would the survivor do next?”

“Get back to the Old Light! Where else should he go?”

“Very well, Watson. You have committed murder or, at the least manslaughter. Now, pray lead on.”

This was not what I had bargained for but I was relieved to be turning back before the flood tide encroached any further. As a soldier, I was not unprepared for the challenge. There was no light along the western horizon nor a moon in the sky. The lamps of the village were scarcely pinpricks. I heard an insistent murmuring from the dark billowing sea which was a good deal louder now than when we had set out. For the first time, I noticed a sharp north-east wind gathering at our backs, a light spot or two of cold rain. It was a reminder that, despite the pleasant sunlight of that afternoon, this was the season of equinoctial storms.

When I had joined the Army Medical Department a decade earlier and sailed for Afghanistan with the Northumberland Fusiliers, even a surgeon’s training for service overseas included a course of instruction in map-reading, compass-bearings, judging distances and identifying terrain. In my mind I now constructed a square map. In the top right-hand corner was the beacon of the church tower. In the top left-hand corner was the Old Light. Along the bottom was the line of the incoming tide. Holmes and I were in the bottom right-hand corner, walking parallel with the foot of the map.

We were following what I had judged to be a rib of sand six inches or more above the level of the dark beach around us and therefore firmer. The temptation was to cut a diagonal across the square map towards the Old Light. Fortunately, I had surveyed the terrain from the windows of the barrack-room that afternoon and had seen that such a diagonal would take us into lower ground, probably already flooded by the tide and possibly containing quicksand. The prudent line of march was still to follow the bottom line of the map until we were face-to-face with the lighthouse beam. Then we should know that we had reached the bottom left-hand corner and need only take a right-angle and walk straight into the beam to reach the safety of the iron ladder to the barrack-room.

The sand beneath our feet was softer but there was no doubt that we were still on slightly higher ground. I thought of Holmes’s question and my answer. Suppose I were my brother’s murderer, making my escape. In the first place, it was impossible that I should go anywhere but the Old Light. I assumed that I would not have intended murder when I set out. Therefore I would not have been prepared for immediate flight without returning to the barrack-room.

Holmes said nothing in all this time but appeared content to follow where I led. The light of St Clement’s beacon was dropping away behind us on our right. The beam from the Old Light was ahead but shining at an angle, slightly away from us. We seemed in danger of pulling inland behind it. That must be avoided at all costs for it was where I had noticed earlier that the mudflats lay and the treacherous “shivering sands” might be. It was easy enough to set a course a little further to our left. This brought us slightly closer to the tide but also took us further round on an angle that should put us in the lighthouse beam. Once there, we were safe.

I had begun to feel that a man could make too much of such difficulties as this beach had presented. Then I put my right foot forward and, before I could pull back, felt the leg sink half way up the shin in freezing mud.

“Stop! Stop, Holmes!”

We were almost level with the lighthouse beam but were somehow in the very terrain I had tried to avoid. To one side, among what was now fathomless mud rather than firm sand, I could see strands of grass, limp and wet. Fresh water could mean only the river, which we should not have encountered at all. Though we were still short of the lighthouse beam where it crossed our path, we had somehow come too far. How could that be? How could we be where we evidently were-and how had we got there? The doomed baggage-train of King John, all those centuries ago, had thought themselves secure. Had we made an error in common with them? I had dipped into the chronicles which Holmes had brought and now recalled with dismay a warning that the first step to destruction in shifting sands and estuaries is when the victims lose their way-as we had done now. The ground opened in the midst of the waters, wrote the medieval chronicler Roger of Wendover, and whirlpools sucked down men and horses. It was already too late. To those who might help us, our cries would be inaudible.

The true terror, in the darkness and the fast sinking mud, is to know that one has followed meticulously the path to safety but come only to the verge of a cold and cruel death. There was no explanation and, without that, we were done for. We must move instantly or the incoming tide would overwhelm us-but where was our path? There was nothing but the surf and the sinking sand around us, on every side.

By every calculation, we should be on a firm river-bank path. It must by any logic lead us directly and easily back to the Old Light and the village, both of them now lost in the mist. The intermittent beam which must be our salvation was drawing us ever deeper into the deadly chill of the river mud. This was surely impossible, which was only to say that we were utterly lost in the darkness and the sea fog. But now there was a quiet and sinister ripple of incoming water across the path behind us and nothing but the filling estuary about our legs in front.

Where, by all reason, there should have been firm ground, the softening mud offered no foothold but a fathomless trap.

I hope I should not have fallen into a panic but the cliché of not knowing which way to turn was never more true. The square map firmly in my head was now submerged as surely as the drowning Roland Chastelnau.

“I think,” said Sherlock Holmes, “you had better leave this to me after all.”

I was never more glad to do so. In that familiar voice there was assurance and a confidence which I was far from feeling.

“Step back!” he said.

His hand gripped my upper arm, as I performed a grotesque about-turn with my left leg, relying on his support. The last of the firm ground, from which I had stepped a moment ago, was under my right foot once more. I saw by the reflected light of the beacon that he was probing the mud with his walking stick. It was a painstaking business but after a dozen carefully chosen steps the fearful sense of bottomless silt became something which yielded a little but then held firm. But now we were walking away from the beam of the Old Light-surely in the wrong direction?

“A little further still I think, if my calculations are correct,” Holmes remarked casually.

What those calculations were, I could not say. By mine, we were heading straight into the shivering sands. Yet the mud underfoot was still turning to firmer ground. Presently, at each step that I took, the slush did no worse than engulf the lower portion of my boots. And yet the Old Light seemed to fall further behind us. This was no time to argue the matter, I took one more step and felt what seemed like compact earth under my boot.

“Now a little more to the left, I think,” said Holmes cheerfully.

Surely we were by-passing the Old Light and walking into the same quicksand that I had seen earlier? Yet it was still firm going and gradually I could just make out the ghostly contours of the Old Light with its heavy wooden supports and the round body of its barrack-room. Yet if that was so, then the beam which should have been directed out to the Boston Deeps was shining a little more in the direction of King’s Lynn. It was a discrepancy that might not be noticed at a distance where the beam was more widely reflected but was just enough to lead us a hundred yards out of our way across the mudflats. Was this not the sort of trick which a century earlier the wreckers had employed to decoy a ship on to the rocks and loot it?

Presently we found our way to the black-painted iron ladder and climbed it, the first ripples of the ebb swishing about our feet. Holmes lit the oil-lamp in the barrack-room. There was no policeman on guard on the sands below for the tide would soon have covered them. We should be undisturbed for several hours until the tide had turned and the Freiston relief arrived.

Holmes drew his silver flask from his pocket and the comforting spirituous aroma of whisky came to me as I sat down on one of the two black horsehair chairs. Reason returned where panic had prevailed.

“Roland Chastelnau was not the victim!” I exclaimed, “He was his brother’s murderer!”

Holmes said nothing. He was climbing the wooden ladder now into the lantern-room above us. There was a pause and then I heard his voice.

“It is as I supposed, though it was not obvious by daylight. The black metal shutters on the windows have been adjusted. The direction of the beam has been deliberately altered, not by much but enough to prove fatal. Any man trying to navigate the route back from the scene of the brothers’ struggle to the Old Light by using this beam would have walked into the river estuary with a floor tide running. Not the quicksands, Watson, but the river with its tidal undertow and currents.”

Then I saw the whole mystery clearly. Roland Chastelnau had decoyed his brother to the mudflats by a warning gunshot. There was a struggle, in which Roland had either died or escaped only to drown later on. The evidence of that was conclusive since this afternoon. But to make assurance doubly sure, before he went down to the beach leaving Abraham alone in the Old Light, Roland had moved the black iron shutters of the lantern in their grooves so that it shone several degrees or more in error.

No one who merely wound the mechanism, at the lower level, needed to climb to the top of the dome to check the iron shutters. The altered direction of the beam would not have been visible at all in daylight. To the Boston Deeps at night, it would be the usual distant glimmer. But whatever the outcome of the struggle on the beach, Roland intended that Abraham Chastelnau should never get back to the Old Light alive. The death which Holmes and I had avoided in the estuary at flood tide would have overtaken Abraham if all else failed.

Roland Chastelnau, had he escaped whatever death overtook him, need only have returned to the Old Light and slid the thin iron plates of the shutters to their original position. Roland cannot have expected that Mr Gilmore and his sexton should have seen the fight-or horseplay-on the sands but even that evidence was conclusive of very little. From the facts available, Abraham Chastelnau’s death would surely have been recorded as a tragedy of tide and darkness and of his own unaccountable miscalculation.

6

With that we have the whole story,“ I said, almost an hour later. By now the tide was rushing and swirling below us among the wooden legs of the barrack-room. Holmes looked at me thoughtfully.

“You are to be congratulated, Watson. It is your case and you have marshalled the facts in such a way that I am quite sure Inspector Wainwright and our friend Lestrade will be among the first to congratulate you upon your conclusions.”

There was something in his tone that I did not quite like, hinting a little too much at irony. Just then, however, I cared less about congratulations than the opportunity to sleep. There seemed to be no food in the barrack-room, other than cocoa made with hot water. However, I have long thought that a man can do without food for quite a while provided he has sufficient sleep-and he may do without sleep for a time so long as he is adequately fed. That being so, I made myself as comfortable as possible on the barrack-room bunk, which curved slightly to follow the wall of the lighthouse.

I was aware that Holmes was still moving about restlessly and I believe, before I fell into a deep sleep, that I was sufficiently conscious to know that he had made his way up the internal ladder to the lantern-room. I did not hear what he was doing, indeed he could have dismantled the entire lighthouse dome without disturbing me. When I woke again, it was after midnight and there was no further sound of water on the sand below us. By his own standards, Holmes had shown extreme patience in allowing me to sleep for what must have been an hour or two.

“Watson!” I think it was the sound of the bunk creaking which provoked this summons, “I should be obliged if you would come and give your opinion in a small matter.”

I sat up and looked for the shoes I had taken off. In a minute or two I climbed the ladder and was staring in some dismay at the dismemberment of the lantern-room clock-case. The mechanism was still functioning, so far as I could see, but Holmes had extracted several pieces of the wooden framework which were now lying on the log-book table.

It was plain that, as so often, he had not been to bed. His face was pale as parchment but his eyes in their dark sockets were all the brighter for that.

“Tell me, Watson, if you were possessed of some small treasure in such a place as this, where would you choose to hide it?”

“I suppose that would depend from whom I wanted to hide it.”

“From all the world-but most of all from your friends.”

“Holmes, is this some matter to do with the clockwork mechanism?”

“No. Why should it be?”

“Very well. I should not leave it in the drawers or cupboards. There are not many of them and it would quite soon be found. Perhaps I would hide it somewhere in the mechanism of the lantern but that mechanism must be in motion twenty-four hours every day and seven days every week throughout the year. Moreover, according to Wainwright, the lantern and the reflectors are usually cleaned every few days or so, even the panes of the glass dome are polished.”

“So far you have only explained where you would not hide it.”

“I should prefer a place where the mechanism which is never halted might conceal it. Since you have pillaged so much of the clock case, I suppose that is where I should choose.”

“Well done, Watson! We shall make a criminal investigator of you yet.”

I looked at the pieces of wood, the clutter of screws and little bolts, anonymous items of brass and iron on the table. Though the machinery which regulated the reflectors was working constantly, there were convenient spaces within the wooden case, as there are in any long case clock.

Holmes watched my eyes and read my thoughts.

“Put your hand up into the clock-hood, behind the dials and just below the drum that winds the clock-weight. You shall see what you shall see.”

I felt-and found a narrow wooden ledge that ran round four sides of the interior of the case.

“There is a ledge an inch or so wide but there is nothing on it.”

“What purpose does it serve?”

“There is nothing resting upon it. It helps to brace the structure, that is all.”

“Not of great interest?”

“I would hardly think so.”

“Put your fingers under the ledge, where it runs along the rear of the case.”

“It feels more like metal at that point, presumably to strengthen it. The other sides are made of wood.”

“Now push upwards on the metal piece.”

I did so, and felt that length of the ledge lifting clear. Holmes watched me closely as I brought it out.

“If I were to choose a hiding place,” he said thoughtfully, “I should choose also to make the object appear part of the structure of the building or the mechanism. An item that is regularly seen and therefore never examined. Something that, even if examined, would in this case appear as part of the clock case.”

I could feel that a man of modest ability as a carpenter might cut away as much of the wooden ledge at the rear as would accommodate the strip of metal I now held in my hand. Even someone who inadvertently lifted it out might think that it had been inserted merely to brace the inner support.

The length of corroded metal which now lay on the log-book table looked like a piece of scrap which had suffered from wind and weather. Corrosion had left the ends rough and uneven. It was a strut of some kind, six or seven inches long, an inch or so wide and a little less than that in depth. It was dirty and darkened. To judge by three regular indentations it appeared to have lost some screws which had presumably held it in place. It was too corroded to tell what metal it was made of. It might almost have been a neglected chisel with the end of its blade broken off. The rust of years had pitted the surface.

“I should hardly bother to hide that! It would disgrace the tool-bag of the most slapdash workman! One might almost think that the rats had been at its ends!”

“Precisely,” said Holmes, turning it over. I now saw a groove across the back, about a third of the way down, where a cross-piece might have fitted it. Plainly, this had been no chisel. I imagined the missing piece in place. It might have been many things but the image I had in mind was still in the form of a cross or, to be more accurate, a crucifix.

“How long had it been hidden there?”

Holmes shrugged.

“Not long, I should imagine. It might be a few years, perhaps a few months. Not before the Chastelnau brothers became keepers of the light.”

Keepers of the light! Combined with the idea of a crucifix, his description had the sound of a religious order!

I looked again and saw that what I had thought to be holes for screws were merely three depressions in the tarnished and corroded metal. Holmes took from his pocket a small wash-leather bag. He withdrew the blue stone-the “Chastelnau pebble,” that is-and placed it in each depression in turn. It fitted best at the head. Another, its hue resembling the mud on the beach and retrieved from Roland Chastelnau’s pocket, filled a second depression where the cross-piece might once have been fixed to the upright. A third, of the same muddy appearance, rested lower down in the upright. The remaining two he placed at either side, where a cross-piece might have been. I felt how chill the night air was in that unheated place.

“Why was this village called Sutton Cross?”

Holmes looked at the pattern he had created.

“Because it was where the river could be crossed-forded-before a bridge was built. Or perhaps because it was here that an item of royal treasure was believed to be lost, found, and then lost again.”

“Which item might that be?”

“According to one of the court parchments known as Pipe Rolls, when the tide and the quicksands overtook King John’s baggage train in October 1216, he had been engaged in a long war with his barons. As Mr Gilmore describes it, the king had commandeered treasure from all over the land. Among this was said to be the Chester Cross, a gold and sapphire pendant worn from a sash round the waist. It had formerly belonged to the Bishops of Chester. The cross was more than a thing of beauty, if we believe the chronicles. It had the reputation, when in the hands of a holy man, of performing small miracles of healing. There was a legend that it had been handed down from the time of Edward the Confessor.”

“Are we to assume that this unprepossessing piece of metal is part of the Chester Cross?”

Holmes shook his head.

“Alas no. I shall assume nothing. Imitations and fakes, masquerading as treasure trove from the baggage-train, were all too common after the disaster, according to the Pipe Rolls of the time. Yet I would give a great deal to know what either of the Chastelnau brothers assumed it to be.”

I glanced at the window and saw that a half-moon was braving the horizon clouds of the North Sea.

Early that morning I took my story of the brothers’ disappearance to Inspector Albert Wainwright, at the police office in Sutton Cross. I had been over it in my mind and I knew it was the only explanation that fitted the facts. From having felt the cold fear of being lost in the soft mud at night with a tide rushing in, I knew how easily a victim might be decoyed in that river estuary. There was no love lost between Abraham and Roland Chastelnau, yet it was surely Roland who contrived the death of his brother, not the other way round. It was Roland who had previously slipped those pebbles into his pocket and had adjusted the iron shutters before he left the Old Light. On the darkening beach, he had fired the shot which brought Abraham to him. There was a quarrel and afterwards, by accident or design, Roland was drowned. His brother, innocent or guilty of that death, even unaware of it, was drawn into the quicksands of the estuary as he followed the false promise of the altered lighthouse beam. How could it be otherwise on the evidence before us?

On Holmes’s instructions, I said had nothing to Wainwright or the Freiston keeper about the curious strip of corroded metal and the pebbles. Perhaps these had been the cause of a fight to the death between the two brothers but there was no evidence of it. Before such fragments could be evidence of anything, we needed proof of what they were.

7

Our last visit to the Reverend Mr Gilmore was no less convivial than the first, although somewhat more frustrating. It was eleven o’clock on a sunny autumn morning. The brightness touched his churchyard yews to make a shadow pattern of garden geometry. Its reflection sparkled on the tide at low water. The rector’s maid in her starched apron had brought a silver tray, upon which stood a cut-glass decanter of Blandy’s Madeira, Solera 1868, three glasses, and three plates with slices of yellow seed-cake upon them. If Mr Gilmore had distanced himself from Trinity College, Cambridge, he had certainly not forgotten its agreeable mid-morning ritual.

When the glasses had been filled with their sweet-smelling amber fluid, Holmes came immediately to the point.

“It must happen from time to time, Mr Gilmore, that items are discovered which may be claimed as part of the lost treasure of King John. The sea having receded a mile or two since the year 1216, some of the debris might now lie quite shallowly underground.”

The rector smiled the smile of one who has heard this story before.

“I doubt whether many such claims have been made good, Mr Holmes. Certainly not in recent years. As I said before, most of the baggage-wagons and their contents probably lie buried under the fields and pastureland, inland from this village. A few items of jewels and metalwork, if they had fallen loose, might have been carried here and there by the tidal currents at the time of the disaster and left closer to the surface.”

“And therefore might be found?”

Mr Gilmore chuckled.

“And therefore might be counterfeit. In the later Middle Ages, from the time of King John to the coming of the Tudors in 1485, there are records of rewards paid in the Court of Exchequer to men and women who had found certain trinkets and surrendered them to the Crown. They did not amount to very much. The Plea Rolls tell us of a man receiving as much as twenty shillings for precious stones from a collar worn by King John himself.”

“And there has always been a history of fabricated treasure?”

“To such an extent that after the disaster to the baggage-train, the scribe of the royal Patent Rolls was charged to make a careful inventory of all that had been lost. For some years subsequently, when it was claimed that an item was found, it was possible to check the description minutely against the entries in the parchments.”

“And now?”

The rector smiled.

“At that time, Mr Holmes, most of the land round here consisted of tidal mudflats. Where we are sitting now, St Clement’s Church and the ground immediately about it, was on a spit of land just above sea-level. At high tide, the church was on an island. In the reign of King John and his successor, Henry III, it would have been possible for fragments of wreckage from the baggage-train to be carried by currents. Scraps of wood may float and some items of jewellery are too light to sink far. But anything that was engulfed in the quicksands is not likely to have been washed out of them since.”

Holmes relaxed. His straight back and narrow shoulders reclined against the chair, the keen profile seemed to relax a little. He took his first sip from the glass of Madeira and said,

“Mr Gilmore, I would ask you to trust me.”

“Great heavens, Mr Holmes!” It was a burst of boyish amusement. “I am your brother Mycroft’s friend and I would certainly do more than that!”

“I will ask you to trust me and not to ask why. I will tell you this much. A man’s life, let alone a family’s reputation may depend upon your discretion.”

I had not the least idea what my friend meant. What man’s life? From his bag he now drew a length of folded yellow lint. From its soft covering he produced our slim length of metal with its corroded ends. From his pocket he took the leather pouch containing the five pebbles which were all that we had so far found. Using the lint as a surface, he laid the upright across the table and shook the pebbles from their bag.

“I have gone so far as to clean a minute area of surface with carborundum, Mr Gilmore. Unless I am much mistaken, the surface metal with which this strip is covered must be gold, though not of any great quality. I should like to know whether the object suggests anything to you.”

The rector stared for a moment. He drew a reading-glass from the breast pocket of his black clerical jacket. Opening it, he continued to gaze at the pieces, his amusement giving way to perplexity. Holmes took the five pebbles and placed three in the indentations. The other two he positioned at either side where the crossbeam of a crucifix would have been. Mr Gilmore put away his glass.

“One moment,” he said.

He stood up and crossed to his tall break-front bookcase. Opening its glass-panelled doors, he took out a handsome volume bound in red cloth and stamped in gold. I saw that it had been issued by the Lincolnshire and Norfolk Society of Antiquaries to its members and had been published a dozen years earlier. He laid it down on the support of his oak book-stand, open at an illustrated page. Holmes and I joined him.

The page contained a steel engraving of a cross. It was done from a photograph but the subject was described as merely a reconstruction.

“You will see at once,” Mr Gilmore drew his finger down the length of the engraving, the mark of an inlay made by the maker’s tool. It bears similarities to two lines on the piece that you have. Down the length of it and on either hand, the craftsman had embedded five stones. What they were was quite impossible to tell from a black and white engraving.

“What is the picture?” I asked.

Mr Gilmore held the book open firmly.

“It is a facsimile of a twelfth century bishop’s pendant in gold, sapphire and coral. The bishops donated it to the King’s Treasury during John’s war against the barons. It was said to possess miraculous powers. As with all such treasures, it carried a warning of the ill-fortune that would attend its loss. King John reached Swineshead Abbey, just up the road from here, on the day of the disaster to his baggage-train. When the news of it was brought, he fell into great distress of mind, followed by fever and heat. He died at Swineshead seven days later, robbed on his deathbed by those who attended him.”

“And this?” Holmes indicated the pebbles and the metal upright. Mr Gilmore shook his head.

“Impossible to say, Mr Holmes. There have been copies, similar pieces and downright fraud. The fraud, if it is one, may be Medieval or Tudor as easily as modern. It may have been an attempt to impose upon the superstitious or the gullible five or six centuries ago by producing a miraculous relic, just as Chaucer’s Pardoner sold pigs’ bones in a glass as relics of the Christian martyrs. Much would depend on how and where this remnant was found. When you are able to tell me that, I shall perhaps be able to pass better judgment. Until then, I will keep silence, as I have promised you.”

“That is all?” I asked.

“No, Dr Watson. I will say this. If anyone were to claim that this fragment had been found in the earth recently, I would think that it must be a fraud. It is a near-impossibility. If it has come to us in some indirect way, that may be a different matter.”

“In what other way?”

“During six and a half centuries, Dr Watson, an object may be lost, found, lost again, found again, lost and found once more. I should find that easier to believe.”

“And what of any miraculous powers?” I persisted.

“Medieval people lived wretched lives and met early deaths. Typhus, scurvy, scrofula, bubonic plague, which are mercifully rare now, were common then. The healing of these widespread afflictions was the greatest object of their prayers. Heaven alone knows what may drive a man or a woman to pray for relief.”

“You do not know of any cause that might have driven Abraham or Roland Chastelnau?” Holmes asked.

“Unfortunately I knew neither of them well enough for that. Nor, I think, could anyone else answer your question.”

Like so many local historians, Roderick Gilmore was not only delighted to provide us with information which might assist us but also to encumber us with a good deal that we could have done without. All the same, as we made our way through the churchyard yew hedges once more, towards the road that led back to the Bridge Hotel, I felt that our host had been suggestive rather than informative. Was there something he was holding back?

8

In the hours that followed, Holmes was kind enough not to remind me that so far as the strip of ancient metal and the “pebbles” were concerned, “my case” appeared to have run into the sand. I daresay he felt that with both the brothers dead, whatever evil possessed Abraham according to the poor fellow’s own account, was no longer a threat to those around him. My friend seemed content that I had provided a solution to the mystery of the Chastelnau brothers’ disappearance.

That evening, as we sat at dinner in the hotel dining-room, the beam of the Old Light shot fitfully across the dark sea. The new keepers of the wooden lantern and barrack-room were now in place. Whatever part that remote beacon had played in murder or tragedy was over. Holmes looked up from his mutton chop, which along with potatoes, green peas and a bottle of indifferent St Emilion was the table d’hôte of the establishment.

“What is to become of our questionable relic?” I inquired, “The fragment of the Chester Cross-or not, as the case may be.”

“I have given the matter a little thought.” he said, “It should, of course, be yielded up to Her Majesty’s Treasury, like all treasure trove. Far the best person to act as go-between would be Brother Mycroft. He knows these Treasury fellows and will save us a good deal of bother.”

“Unless it should be a copy or a fake. In that case, you might keep it among your souvenirs.”

He looked at me thoughtfully.

“You know, Watson, I believe that if it were not part of the Chester Cross, I should not care to have it among them. I have made it a habit to be selective. If it is genuine, on the other hand, it would be a symbol of faith and innocence, therefore out of place in such a menagerie.”

I let this pass and watched the beam of the Old Light illuminate the horizon once more.

“There is one thing further,” he said significantly.

“What would that be?”

He laid down his knife and fork and glanced into the darkness beyond the window.

“Whatever lies out there in the quicksands, this is your case not mine. You have done it admirably and, as I say, I am sure Lestrade will commend you. However, were it my case, I should now feel it incumbent on me to present the findings to Miss Alice Chastelnau.”

“Of course I shall! Once we are back in Baker Street, I shall set out the entire course of the investigation. Naturally, I cannot tell her precisely what happened to her brothers. No one could. In the circumstances it would be preposterous to accuse one alone of murdering the other. However, she may draw her conclusions privately from the evidence. Then I shall let the matter drop.”

Sherlock Holmes tapped the table with his spoon and turned a little in his chair. The waiter came towards us, bearing a cheese board occupied solely by a large slab of farmhouse Stilton under a blue-and-white willow-pattern cover. When the man had gone, Holmes let the corners of his mouth turn down.

“It is beyond my comprehension why these establishments insist upon ruining a Stilton cheese by soaking it in port wine! As to the other matter, Watson, I fear that a letter to Miss Chastelnau and a private report will not quite do. At least I should think so if this were my case, and if I were as close as we are now to Mablethorpe. I would feel obliged to call upon the lady. I should break the news to her as tactfully as one may in a quiet talk-and as one cannot do in a formal letter.”

It was difficult to argue against this, except in terms that would have sounded unchivalrous or downright caddish. Had Holmes not raised the matter in this way, however, I should have returned to London next day. I was still in medical practice. Though I left a locum in charge of my consulting rooms on these occasions, there were patients to be seen by me and hospitals to be visited.

“If you think it right,” I said a little gloomily, “but I cannot stay in Sutton Cross for ever, waiting for an appointment with Miss Chastelnau.”

He was undismayed by this.

“I do think it right,” he said in a kindly tone, “and I do not think an appointment will be necessary. We are, after all, performing a service. It may be a greater service to her than can at the moment be supposed. The early morning train will get us to Mablethorpe well before lunch. The evening train will bring us back here before the dining-room closes. The day after tomorrow you will be back in London. Your grateful patients will doubtless applaud your return.”

9

So it was that our pilgrimage to Mablethorpe began next morning, after an early breakfast. Holmes had sent a telegram to Miss Chastelnau, advising her of our visit, though how he could be sure the lady would be at home was not revealed. The three carriages of the stopping train from King’s Lynn to Cleethorpe, pulled by something no grander than a shunting engine, rattled and jerked their way out of the little wooden platform at Sutton Cross. We traversed the expanse of the fens, their pastureland gathering the October rains in wide pools. After branching off the main line at Willoughby, a single track followed the flat coastline. Broad sands and paths among the dunes were fringed by tall grass and grey-leaved buckthorn with its orange berries. At a little distance out to sea, parallel with the shore, a series of sandbanks stretched in either direction as far as one could see.

I had no clear idea of what to expect from Mablethorpe. There was a church and two or three inns. Elegant houses, precisely of the kind that might contain a school for young gentlewomen, stood half-concealed in groves of fir trees and oaks. Elsewhere, brightly-painted boarding houses and something approaching a promenade suggested all the makings of a popular seaside bathing-place or “resort.” A brisk salty wind blew from the North Sea.

Holmes and I made the best of it, taking lunch at one of the inns, the so-called Book-in-Hand. Then we set out on foot towards what was once Miss Openshaw’s academy. Nowhere in a place the size of Mablethorpe is far from anywhere else. The school house, at least, was very much what I had expected. It was a substantial family dwelling, classical or at least square-looking. Its crescent-shaped gravel drive entered between one set of stone gate-pillars and exited between another pair a little further up the suburban road. The gravelled way was flanked by laurel bushes and other shrubs. A front elevation showed us a house on three levels with a bay and two large sash windows on either side of its stone porch. It had no doubt been built in brick but was coated with pale stone rendering, painted white, as befitted the neo-classical ambitions of sixty years ago. With a long seat in a grey wooden summer-house on the lawn, it seemed precisely the residence to house ten or a dozen genteel pupils. I cannot believe that their instruction required anyone but Miss Chastelnau herself.

It seemed to me, as Holmes rang the bell, that there was very little sign of the young ladies. However, that was neither here nor there. A maid in cap and apron answered the door and Holmes announced us. Without hesitation we were admitted into the hall with its black and white tiling and an inner door of red and blue glass panels. From there we proceeded to what I suppose I must call the sitting-room of the headmistress.

Miss Chastelnau was evidently expecting us. She stood with her back to the bay window and her face in shadow. She was the same neat and restrained person who had visited us in Baker Street. Yet I sensed that her family tragedy had inspired her with anxiety rather than grief.

The sitting-room was just what I would have expected. The sun filled its chintz curtains at the window and, on a small table, stood a Chinese vase adorned with green dragon-handles. The hearth, where Holmes and I faced one another with Miss Chastelnau upright between us on a yellow settee in the Egyptian style, was lined with William De Morgan tiles portraying centaurs, the phoenix and other mythical creatures of the ancient world. I thought afterwards that the entire room was a curious shrine of the non-existent.

As succinctly as I could, because that was kinder, I explained the details of my solution to the mystery of her two missing brothers. I added that there had, of course, been no inquest as yet. What its verdict would be I could not say. Miss Chastelnau sat quite still and listened in silence. When I had finished, she thanked me with every appearance of sincerity. If she showed little emotion, it was surely because she remained in that state of shock which precedes any outbursts of grief.

“And you, Mr Holmes,” she said quietly, turning to him, “thank you for coming to see me also.”

Throughout all this, he had been sitting with his head lowered a little, as if reading the mythology of the hearth tiles. Now he was straight-backed in his chair and looking her directly in the eye.

“I fear you are in error, madam. I did not come here to see you, for that is Dr Watson’s business. I am here to see Mr Abraham Chastelnau.”

If a bomb had gone off in that ornamented and genteel room, it could not have produced a more stunned and silent aftermath than his words. I had not the first idea what he was talking about. Our hostess could only say, as if in a dream,

“I do not understand you, Mr Holmes.”

“Do you not? Then I will explain.”

“He is not here!” The desperate cry was so unlike her habitual composure that I felt the skin of my back creep with cold.

“If you mean,” said Holmes, “that he could not be here without your knowledge, I will go so far as to accept that. I beg you, however, do not torment yourself by denials until you hear what I have to say.”

She made no reply but stared at him, as if one or the other of them had gone mad. Holmes continued.

“We are asked to believe that your brother Abraham, at the allotted time of no later than 7.45 on Sunday evening, cranked up the chain of the lantern mechanism in the Old Light at Sutton Cross. At the same time, he must have wound up the clock and the governor which controls the mechanism in order that it should continue to run correctly. Somewhen soon after that, he was summoned by a gunshot from the darkened beach. We do not know precisely what happened there between your brothers but soon afterwards Roland Chastelnau died. We presume that he drowned, from whatever cause.”

“I know that, Mr Holmes,” she said with quiet reproach.

“Abraham, it appears, attempted to return to the lighthouse. That should have been straightforward enough. However, it is alleged that Roland meant to ensure, whatever happened on the beach, that his elder brother should never reach the Old Light alive. Earlier that day, he had therefore adjusted the position of the iron shutters across the glass panes of the lantern dome. No one would have gone up there to check them, for the glass was cleaned that morning. No one would have seen the direction of the beam by daylight.”

She was holding a pocket handkerchief to her mouth and her head was bowed.

“The truth, Miss Chastelnau, is best. The altered direction of the beam, shining through the darkness a little closer to King’s Lynn and further from the Boston Deeps, was surely intended to lure its victim into the estuary and the quicksands. That would explain why his body was never found. If Roland had succeeded in such a plot, he had only to return to the Old Light as the tide ebbed and adjust the shutters to their original position. Unfortunately, he himself was drowned before the ebb. The misalignment of the shutters was therefore discovered by Dr Watson and myself. That was intended to be conclusive evidence of Roland’s guilt.”

“Intended?” she cried, looking up suddenly, “I do not understand. What Dr Watson has just told me is surely the truth.”

“And I have to tell you that it is quite impossible.”

“Why?”

“For two very simple reasons. Abraham could not have wound that clock at a quarter to eight, or at any time until after nine o’clock. Look at any simple grandfather clock, which the face of this one resembles. There are two keyholes which are covered when the hour hand is between the numerals for three and four-or eight and nine. The clock cannot be wound during those periods.”

“It may have been done earlier!”

“When the mechanism of the Old Light was inspected on the following morning, the timer had run down, as it would do after eight hours. The chain would be too heavy for the man who had to crank it up again if it ran longer. Indeed, the skipper of a collier in the Deeps noted in his log at quarter past five that morning that the signal of the Old Light was no longer being transmitted.”

“What has that to do with it?” she insisted.

“It has this to do with it, Miss Chastelnau. This indication of foul play was not that the beam of light failed after five o‘clock but that it had not stopped before. Had the mechanism been wound as early as eight o’clock the previous evening, the hour hand would then cover the keyhole until after nine. Next morning, the mechanism would have stopped and the Old Light would have failed an hour and a quarter earlier than it did. Someone had returned to the Old Light and wound the mechanism an hour or more after Abraham Chastelnau went down to the sands in response to his brother’s gunshot.”

She stared at him now with a look of dread which came from trying to guess how much more he knew.

“What happened on the beach,” he continued, “may be murder, accident, or misadventure. We can only be sure that Roland drowned, from whatever cause. Abraham lived and knew his brother was lost. He returned safely to the Old Light at about nine o’clock.”

“Why was he not trapped in the river by the altered beam of light?” I asked.

“Because it had not yet been altered. Whatever the cause or the outcome of the struggle on the sands, Abraham believed that he might face trial and execution for his brother’s death. He had not a single friendly witness to prove that he was guilty only of innocent self-defence, rather than premeditated murder. No one to prove that it was not he but Roland who fired the shot which signalled the beginning of the tragedy. Afterwards, he sat alone in the barrack-room, no doubt in distress and dread. He was alive and Roland was dead. He had very probably seen two figures on the church tower, witnesses of the struggle. The sound of the sexton’s rook rifle confirmed it.”

Neither of us spoke and Holmes continued.

“Who will believe him? He sees the stern-faced officers setting out from King’s Lynn.! He sees the dock at the assizes and the black cap put on by the judge who assures him that he will be hanged by the neck until he is quite dead. Worst of all, he sees the dreadful weeks in the condemned cell, hears the hangman’s knock and imagines the last walk across the prison yard to the tall shed with its thirteen steps leading up to the waiting noose.”

At last there was a sob from Miss Chastelnau. Holmes ignored her.

“The Old Light became a trap as the tide rose. He had only minutes to escape before the flood cut him off from the land. He went up to the lantern-room and wound the mechanism. It must run for as long as possible to conceal his absence. Then he altered the iron shutters to misdirect the beam of white light so that he might appear to have been its victim. Desperation sometimes breeds inspiration. You follow me? Those who inquired into the mystery would of course find the shutters altered. With luck, however, Roland would be found drowned. Abraham would have vanished. Where else was he but deep in the shivering sands, lured there by someone who had altered those shutters? What other man could have done that but his brother? Abraham would be searched for no longer. He did all this and then he made his escape across the fens or the beach, as the tide filled the sandbank under the Old Light. He knew that the longer he was missing, the more certain it would seem that he had been decoyed into the quicksands by the river’s edge and had died in their embrace.”

“Suppose Abraham set the trap of the shutters for Roland?” I asked.

“Then Abraham need not have fled. Accidental death by drowning would be the verdict. Abraham need only slide the shutters back to their usual angle and there would be no case against him. This is something more.”

“And what of the evil that he confessed to?” I asked, “What has he done?”

“I cannot tell you in his absence. I beg you, Miss Chastelnau, bring him in. I promise that I wish no ill to either of you and that I will help you if I can.”

This was extraordinary! Had Sherlock Holmes tracked down a murderer only to offer him help?

The poor woman at the centre of the drama stood up and went to the door. Almost at once she returned, followed by a tall loose-limbed man with a ruddy complexion. He did not look like a fellow of great intelligence as his eyes flicked at each of us in turn. Holmes stood up and held out his hand.

“Mr Abraham Chastelnau?”

Miss Chastelnau intervened, as if protecting a wild animal from those who hunted it.

“My brother watched you come into the hall and feared that you were police officers who had come for him.”

“No,” said Holmes calmly, “he need not fear that. Pray, Mr Chastelnau, stand over here in the bay of the window. Face the light. Watson too, if you please. Have no fear, Abraham, my friend is a doctor. Perhaps he is the doctor for whom you composed your letter, and then could not bring yourself to send it.”

I stared at Chastelnau’s face. It was strong-featured but round. The jaw-bone and, indeed, the neck had been disfigured by small and inflamed lumps or swellings, long healed over. I would have expected to find similar marks on his chest and shoulders, had I examined them. The infections had come, suppurated and healed over but they had never disappeared.

“I believe, Mr Chastelnau, that you have been a martyr to scrofula, have you not?” I asked.

“I have heard it sometimes called that, sir. I do not quite know what it might be.”

“Your brother may have teased you unkindly?”

“He did sometimes, sir, but I would not kill a man for that-nor kill him for anything.”

Sherlock Holmes intervened.

“Dr Watson tells you that it is scrofula but have you sometimes heard it called the King’s Evil?”

“Mostly that, sir. I was taught how a king a thousand years ago, Edward the Confessor, was given power by the Pope to cure it. Afterwards a king or queen had only to touch a man or a woman. They might have such a curse as mine taken from them.

Ornaments blessed by a king might do it. There was King Edward III. He could cure poor people by giving them a gold coin with St Michael on one side and a ship on the other. An Angel, they called that coin.”

For the second time since our arrival in Suffolk, I heard a few lines of Shakespeare quoted, this time by Holmes.

“The King cured, did he not, what the Bard calls strangely-visited people? I daresay you are not familiar with the play of Macbeth.

The mere despair of surgery he cures,

Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,

Put on with holy prayers.”

“Who would look at me, as I am?” asked Abraham Chastelnau quietly.

“Because of the evil within you?”

“With the wickedness coming out through the sores, as I was taught, sir.”

I could not let this mumbo-jumbo go on.

“I had better tell you,” I said, “that what you have is not an evil curse but a chronic tubercular condition. It is not as grave as consumption but it will produce hard red swellings which commonly suppurate.”

“And what is all that, sir?”

“It is advice that you should seek a better diet, sunlight, exercise and bathing. All those together will take you a good long way.”

“And the Chester Cross?” Holmes inquired of Chastelnau, “If that is what it was.”

Light returned to the poor fellow’s eyes.

“I cannot tell, sir. It came from the oil-cake works in my father’s time. It had been thrown to one side, left in a drawer with the pebbles. I took them all when we came away. I cannot say where it was from. I heard it was bought with the pebbles as tinker’s magic for a shilling or two in my grandfather’s time. We never knew where the tinker had it from. But I hoped it might be the very one His Majesty King John had blessed all those years ago. For then surely its touch might cure me.”

Holmes led him to a chair and sat him down.

“Now, if you please, tell us the story of the sands.”

Abraham Chastelnau knew what was meant but looked up at us without a qualm.

“Roland and I never got on, sir, but the cross and the stones was the worst of it. Trumpery, he called them. When we first went to the Old Light he swore to throw them all into the sea.”

“And that was why you cut a gap in the ledge at the back of the clock case and slid the metal fragment in its place?” I suggested. Abraham Chastelnau nodded.

“And the pebbles I wrapped and pushed to the back of the table drawer. That Sunday night, I went to wind the mechanism of the clock and crank the chain of the lantern weight. It was just before eight o’clock. But when I opened the clock-case, I saw the metal piece had gone. I never bothered to wind anything but went to the table drawer. Four of the five pebbles had gone. He’d missed one of them because I always carried it with me for luck.”

“And the letter?” I asked, “Surely he would have taken that?”

Abraham Chastelnau shook his head.

“No, sir, for he was no hand at reading.”

“You heard the shot?”

“Just as I was looking in the drawer. I heard his gun and went straight down, not knowing what he might do. He always said I was a simpleton to believe such things. He’d throw them in the sea. It was dark and wet all round by then, no hard sand underfoot.”

“You fought him?”

“I went for him to get the piece of the cross and the pebbles back. He’d got them in his hands. As we struggled, I said where was the harm in them. I’m stronger than he was and he’d been drinking. He did sometimes. I got the better of him and threw him down but I thought the pebbles fell. He tried to sling the piece of the cross towards the sea but it never went far. When we broke away from each other, I went down on my knees to find the stones and the metal. Roland ran off, along the beach with the tide after him and the drink driving him on. I found no pebbles, after all. I still ran after him, not to do harm, but he turned and raised the gun. I was the stronger and he knew it but I daren’t get near his gun-not even to save him. He drew further off and further off.”

“Did he fire?” I asked.

“He kept making to. The distance between us seemed to grow. I tried to get closer, shouting at him to come back and not to be a damned fool, for he was in softer sand and almost to his knees in water. He might still have got back but then he fired in earnest. The sea was so far in I hardly heard the shot above the surf but I saw the flash. Something went wrong when he fired that seemed to knock him off his balance into the surf. The shot went well past me, but I jumped down and stayed down, for he might have reloaded the other barrel before this. When I looked up I couldn’t see him again, only the surf booming in. High tide and low tide there is miles apart. When it come in, that sea can move like an express train. With dark coming on, there was such water between us, all of a sudden, that I couldn’t get near him nor see him. Only the surf. And that was all.”

“Did you know that you were seen from the church tower?” I asked.

“I thought we must have been noticed when I heard the rook rifle. If they saw us fighting, not for the first time, and only one come back, they’d swear I’d choked him or chased him to his death. I’d never stand a chance. Better they should think we’d both gone into the sea, Roland in one of our fights and me on the way home. I went back to the Old Light, changed the shutters a little, wound up the chain, and then came away. I thought of everything, except the letter in the drawer.”

“And then you came here?” I Iolmes asked.

“I lived rough on the fens for several days. I know how to do that. When my sister came to you in London, she didn’t know I was alive. That’s true. I kept clear almost a week. Then I heard they’d found the body. After that I came to her, having nowhere else to go.”

From the settee, where she had been sitting with her face in her hands, Miss Chastelnau spoke at last.

“I do not own this house or much that is in it but I have a little money. I would give it all to him. I thought if he could get to Hull, with no one looking for him because he was believed drowned, he could find a crossing to Amsterdam and be safe there. It would take only a few hours.”

“But I could not do it,” Chastelnau said, “What was there for such as I in a place like that?”

“Admirable,” said Holmes sardonically, “Tell me Miss Chastelnau, how long would your little money last in Amsterdam? What would happen to your brother when it was gone? He does not speak Dutch nor does he know the people. He has no work. What is there then, except the danger that before long an inquisitive observer may put two and two together?”

There was a silence in the ornate little room with its view of the sunny garden and the gravel drive. Then Miss Chastelnau spoke again.

“If you do not propose to betray us, what would you have us do?”

My friend turned to the young man first.

“Because my name is Sherlock Holmes, there are people who believe I set myself above the law. On rare occasions that is true.

If I am to judge you now, I believe that what you have told us closely resembles the truth. I believe that you did not set out for the beach with murder in your heart. Your story of your brother having the pebbles appears to be true, for they were found in his pocket. Both barrels of the shotgun had been fired, though only one was reported as being used to summon you. He meant you harm but he drowned without injuring you. Perhaps the post-mortem will find that he was in drink. These facts are not conclusive evidence of your innocence but they are enough for belief. Yet even so they would be closely-fought.”

He got up from his chair and, as was his custom on such occasions in Baker Street, crossed to the window and continued.

“At the mercy of a skilled prosecutor you would do badly before a judge and jury. As a matter of law, perhaps you have a case to answer. Yet as a matter of justice I shall not betray you.”

Now he turned and spoke to both of them.

“A man travelling alone may be suspect when a couple is not. If you love your brother, Miss Chastelnau, travel across the Pen-nine hills with him to Birkenhead docks. Travel as a betrothed couple, if you wish. Take two berths on an emigrant ship. Single men and women are separated at either end of such a vessel but may associate for an hour or so in the evening. That will suit your purposes and your story. Among so many hundreds or thousands you are unlikely to be remarked. The voyage to Australia under sail will take three months. By then the Sutton Cross mystery will be stale news.”

They both watched him but neither spoke. Holmes continued.

“When you reach Queensland or New South Wales, the country you have left will have forgotten you. The one you have arrived in will know nothing of you and will not be looking for you. You can safely be brother and sister once more. You are both young enough to begin again. Such will be the last days of the old life and the first of the new.”

Miss Chastelnau thought for a moment.

“There are only three girls in residence at the moment, Mr Holmes. I have already communicated with their parents to explain the bereavement I have suffered. I have received an undertaking that they may all be transferred to the Abbey Close school in Lincoln. As for these premises, the lease has not long to run and the rent has been paid.”

Holmes nodded. He opened his leather bag and took out an object wrapped in lint.

“Abraham Chastelnau, this shall be yours. It may be a holy relic or, for all I know, a tinker’s trick. At least one of the pebbles is a sapphire and the metal upright is gold of a common quality, not in itself of great value. If it has lacked healing properties over the past centuries, may it assume them now for you.”

10

So it was that we left Mablethorpe and Sutton So Cross, returning to our quarters in Baker Street. The three months of an emigrant voyage passed and nothing more was heard or printed concerning the mystery of the Old Light. Several months later an envelope arrived by post with my name upon it. It bore two lines of thanks from Alice Chastelnau. There was no address but it had been stamped in Brisbane. I handed it to Holmes across the breakfast table. He read the lines and handed it back with a muted snort.

“Well, let us hope they will be happy. Curious, Watson, that you have surely noticed her partiality for Abraham over Roland and yet never remarked the possibility that she might not be his sister.”

I was thunderstruck by this.

“How can that be?”

“Because she is perhaps his mother?”

“Impossible!”

“Put together the little pieces of the puzzle. She left home suddenly, at fifteen, for her health. Her father’s new wife accompanied her to the seaside. Many months of convalescence followed, for a convenient touch of consumption. The two were visited by old John Chastelnau. Shortly before their return from the seaside, news was sent to Sutton Cross that Abraham Chastelnau had been born to the step-mother. Or was he?”

“Preposterous!”

“Is it? Suppose the mother remained in touch with the child and a little learning rubbed off. He may appear something of a Neanderthal but do you not recall how he wrote ‘physician’ for ‘doctor’ and ‘afflicted’ for ‘suffering from’? Not to mention his recollections of Edward the Confessor and Edward III.”

“Absurd!”

“Very well, old fellow, you have only to go the registrar of births, marriages and deaths in Somerset House. Look up the name Chastelnau and, in this case, the mother’s maiden name. I would not be surprised to find that it was also Chastelnau.”

“I shall do no such thing. Even were it true, there are some things which it is better not to know-and certainly better not to hunt after.”

He shrugged and sighed before opening the newspaper at a fresh page. He spoke from behind it.

“Very well. A hint to you, old fellow. I recall that in the lantern-room of the Old Light I congratulated you upon some little discovery and remarked that we should make a criminal investigator of you yet. It seems I was in error. There is a certain lack of morbid persistence in your method which must always be a handicap to your powers of detection.”