Sherlock Holmes 01: The Breath of God (7 page)

We followed Mann to the room in question and he stepped back to allow Holmes access. Both myself and the inspector watched from the doorway as Holmes went about his usual investigation. Watching Holmes at work, I am often reminded of the descriptions of how Native Americans went about the tracking of animals. They read volumes in the depth of mere dust, in the angle of a paw print or the quantity of shed hair. For Holmes the drawing room or front lawn were the more likely sites of his hunt than the plains of Utah or the green fields of the Midwest. But he went about it with alacrity, throwing himself into the scene of the crime and studying it on the most intimate level of which his senses were capable. He plotted traffic on the hearth rug by inconsistencies in its pile, identified a brand of furniture polish by a single hearty sniff and could analyse the emotional state of the char by a brief analysis of the mantel.

It was an act that I never failed to enjoy watching. It seemed that Mann was also an eager spectator. He observed silently, not interrupting as many of his fellows frequently did, determined to promote their own observational abilities rather than take note of Holmes’. At one point he removed his notebook and jotted a few observations down. I smiled – Holmes had found himself an eager student.

“The room offers several points that prove there was more to Ruthvney’s final hours than a fit of madness,” Holmes announced. “The fire was smoking abnormally as is shown by the tarry deposits on the tiles around the grate. I would want to analyse the powder I’ve collected from them before committing myself, but the soot certainly contains more than the simple remains of an open fire,
something
abnormal was burned there.”

“Something that could have caused Ruthvney’s behaviour?” I asked.

“You’re thinking of the
Radix pedis diaboli
?” my friend replied with a smile.

I confess I was. A recent case where the root of an African plant had been burned in a sealed room, the smoke it released causing madness and death to those who inhaled it.

“It could certainly have been something along those lines,” Holmes admitted. “Something affected Ruthvney unfavourably enough for him to start dining on his collection.” He poked delicately through the shattered glass with the toe of his boot. “And, given the bloodstains on this glass, numbed his pain sufficiently for him to pay his wounds scant attention.”

“So it’s a matter of poison then you believe, sir?” Mann asked.

Holmes held up his hand. “Please, Inspector, these are initial impressions. While further investigation may prove them to be facts, it would be a grievous mistake to treat them as such for now. Tell me, did you or your men take anything from this room?”

“No sir, I was particularly determined to avoid such a thing, I knew that you would wish to examine everything just as it was.”

“Most kind, and it is immediately useful in that it confirms one thing for us: someone removed something from Ruthvney’s desk after his death.”

“How can you be so sure?” I asked.

“Because there are four letters and five envelopes,” he said, sitting down at the desk. “He was clearly going through his correspondence just prior to his unfortunate attack. The desk is tidy, he is not a man who leaves his letters lying around. Here we have a pile of letters. An invitation to a play and one to a dinner party, a letter concerning his position as governor of a school, and a request for a charity donation. The latter, you will notice, opened first and destined for refusal, filed as it was beneath the five envelopes.” Holmes looked around. “There is no basket for waste paper and yet he is a tidy man so presumably he intended to throw them in the fire. The fact he didn’t do so means that he was interrupted. So where is the fifth letter and what was it?”

“Surely a man would go through his correspondence at the start of the day?” I asked.

“That rather depends whether the man in question cares to respond. Lord Ruthvney clearly felt he could keep people waiting. He was also,” Holmes gestured to the pile, “a man who received exceedingly boring post.”

He lowered his face to the desk, and grinned. “There was also a sixth envelope!” he announced. “And presumably therefore a sixth letter.” He looked to Mann. “He had nothing on him?”

“Not in the sense you mean, sir,” Mann replied. “Certainly he had nothing which could have been posted to him.”

Holmes removed his small leather tool pouch from his jacket pocket, untied it and removed a pair of tweezers. He picked up a small triangle of black paper from the surface of the desk. “A fragment of the envelope. You’ll note he didn’t use a letter opener – one often tears off the first piece of an envelope when one opens it by hand. Black paper, portentous as well as pretentious.”

“Who writes using a black envelope?” I asked.

“Someone wishing to seem satanic!” Holmes dropped the paper fragment into a small envelope of its own, sealed it and placed it in his pocket. It then occurred to him that perhaps, as it was evidence, he should have offered it to Inspector Mann. “Oh,” he said, somewhat awkwardly, “perhaps you should...”

The Inspector smiled. “Consider yourself a specialist drafted in under my authority. All I ask is that you share whatever you learn. I shall, of course, show you the same courtesy, though I suspect you will have more to tell me than I you.”

Holmes clapped his hands and patted the envelope where it rested in his pocket. “I shall wring it dry of all it offers,” he promised, “and send you my findings. He sat back at the desk, spreading out his hands on the soft green leather. He was, I knew, putting himself in the position of the now absent Ruthvney. “So,” he said after a moment, “tell me what you have managed to glean with regard to the chain of events.”

Mann smiled and flipped open his notebook, clearly he had been awaiting this cue. “According to Stevens, the butler, his master was often in the habit of going through his correspondence in the evenings. He observed that Ruthvney had not yet done so just prior to dismissing him for the evening. Ruthvney also complained that the chimney was smoking, asking Stevens to remonstrate with Mrs Pritchard, the housekeeper, for what he saw as a lack in her duties. Stevens insists that the chimney was cleaned regularly, indeed it had been done not eight weeks ago. Though he did make the point that as his master insisted on burning a great deal of paper in it, the soot was prone to build up.”

Mann looked at Holmes and smiled, pleased to have been able to endorse several of the detective’s assumptions.

“Stevens was dismissed at a quarter past eleven, I estimate Ruthvney was dead only a short time later. Say half past the hour, quarter to twelve at the latest. All evidence points to his being left to his own devices for only a short time. He was a voracious drinker and yet the brandy decanter – filled by Stevens that evening – shows only a fifth consumed. The fire was also not built up beyond the state the butler left it in and, as you rightly say, he had time to consult his correspondence and yet not burn it.

“It seems to me that he was disturbed in his reading by someone appearing at the patio door. You will note it was opened at some point in the evening as there are leaf fragments blown in from outside, and I am assured that – whatever the opinion of her master – Mrs Pritchard is fastidious in her duties and would certainly not have allowed a maid to leave such detritus on the carpet.”

“So it must have been blown in later, a fair assumption,” Holmes said. “What was the weather like here last night? Could the doors have blown open of their own volition?”

“Funny you should ask that,” Mann replied, “it was, by every account, a calm night. My house is in fact not far from here and I can assure you that it was a temperate and gentle evening. However, Stevens commented that he heard no noise coming from here after his retiring but that...” Mann consulted his notes so as to be precise, “‘given the violence of the storm, the master would have had to make a racket worthy of cannon fire in order to be heard over it.’”

“A storm, eh?” I said. “Not impossible, there could have been a localised bout of bad weather.”

“The hall is protected on all sides by trees,” Mann said, “plus it is built in a slight dip in the land. If there is a residence more sheltered hereabouts then I don’t know of it.”

“Your explanation?” Holmes asked.

“I don’t have one,” Mann admitted. “I’ve asked the rest of the staff and they all confirm that there was a enough of a storm outside to shake the house to its foundations. A walk in the gardens tells an interesting story also.”

Holmes inclined his head. “You are an intriguing fellow, Inspector! Do you wish me to make my own conclusions before you elaborate?”

“All the better to ensure your opinion is objective,” Mann said with a broad smile.

Holmes got to his feet. “Then by all means let us walk!”

We left the house via the study, striding across the well-kept lawns in the direction of the forest that faced the rear of the house. Either side of the building was built up into terraces of the sort wealthy landowners like to use to host parties. These terraces were lightly gravelled and monitored by mournful statuary wood nymphs and water-bearing maidens whose shrewish countenances made it clear they would brook no ill behaviour. For all its age and architectural beauty, Ruthvney Hall was a house that made an art out of the death of amusement. It was seriousness personified in every brick, every rectangular window, every perfectly shorn privet hedge. One simply couldn’t imagine having a good time there.

It was this prim neatness that ensured the path we had to follow was obvious. Certainly Holmes didn’t need encouraging as he set foot upon the wide trail of scattered leaves and branches, a swathe of natural untidiness that seemed to swoop down from the woodland to collide with the bricks of the house itself.

“Remarkable!” I said, stopping in the middle of the lawns to better appreciate the absurdly methodical line of destruction. “I’ve heard of cyclones of course, particularly in America, but I’ve never seen anything of the sort here.”

“Indeed not,” agreed Mann. “But the most bizarre detail is yet to come.”

As we reached the edge of the woodland, a mix of evergreens that darkened considerably beyond the periphery, Mann’s point became clear.

“It started here,” Holmes said, gesturing at a clear circle pressed into the ground as if something heavy had flattened the grass and earth, “then chased forth in a gentle arc towards the house itself.”

“You make it sound as though it were alive,” I said.

“Yes,” he admitted, “or controlled.”

“Which is impossible,” Mann said.

Holmes nodded. “It is, isn’t it? Completely impossible.” He tapped at his chin with the crook of his cane, deep in thought. Then he looked up at us both, a big grin on his face. “This is certainly a case worthy of great interest isn’t it?”

He began to pace around, scanning the ground. After a few moments he pushed into the forest, eyes always fixed a few feet in front of him as he made his way through the undergrowth.

“On the trail?” I asked, only too aware of the signs that indicated Holmes had a scent in his nostrils.

“As far as I can tell,” he replied, “three men gathered around that bizarre circular patch. I’m trying to retrace their steps. A shame our inexplicable wind didn’t bring a few rain clouds with it, the ground here is so dry that it’s a devil’s job to follow their tracks.”

I smiled. I knew only too well that Holmes could read every detail, with or without the ease of a muddy surface. I have always placed a complete belief in Holmes’ abilities, and for all his occasional announcements of fallibility, I have yet to be disappointed.

“Is there a road near here?” Holmes asked as we got deeper and deeper into the forest.

“Yes,” Mann replied, “some way to the east. It’s the road we used earlier to get here from the station.”

“I thought as much, we will likely find ourselves there before long,” Holmes said.

I had moved slightly ahead during their discussion and a glint in the grass ahead of me caught my eye.

“I say! There’s something here.” I reached for it, gritting my teeth as I scratched my hand and arm on a cluster of brambles that were in the way. As carefully as I could, not wanting to lose all my skin in the attempt, I pulled out a small signet ring. It was onyx with a five-pointed star engraved in white.

“Do be careful with it!” snapped Holmes, reaching for a pair of tweezers.

He pinched it carefully and held it up to the light. “To S.L.M.M.,” he said, “engraved on the inside.” He dropped the ring into another one of the small envelopes he used to store evidence safely and stepped in front of me. “I’d better stick to the front, I think,” he said, jogging ahead. “We don’t want you contaminating all the evidence, do we?”

“Thank you, Watson,” I muttered under my breath, “a singularly important clue, Watson.”

I put on more speed in order to keep up with Holmes, but lost my balance due to the persistent weakness in my left leg (the result of muscle damage cause by a jezail bullet during my time in Afghanistan). With considerable embarrassment I found myself falling onto my side in the dense bracken. Mindful of what an idiot I must look to the following Inspector Mann, I pulled myself to my feet with a defensive bluster. I needn’t have made the effort, since quite impossibly I was alone in the forest. Mann had been right behind me, I had been sure of the fact, Holmes only a few feet in front. And yet, turning on the spot, I could see no other soul in that dark forest but me.

As I turned, the meagre light that fell through the thick branches of the pine trees appeared to pulse like the flickering of sunlight on the sea. The repetitive flashing was somehow both terrible and yet compelling, making my head spin. The thick scent of loam came to me and I seemed surrounded entirely by wet rot and the soft, masticating crunch of dead wood and pulped leaves. There was an animal scent there too, perhaps the long-dead cadaver of a fox or badger, its skin dry, its mouth pulled back in that final grin of the corpse. There was a sweet musk of flesh that has liquified and begun to seep into the soil.