THE IRREGULAR CASEBOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (6 page)

Holmes showed no more visible reaction to this than someone who had been bidden the time of day.

‘I am most interested,’ said Holmes. ‘Pray continue.’

‘I know it must sound insane to you, but she is a woman of remarkable powers. She once told me that each of us possesses a subtle body capable of assuming a form shaped by thought and emotion. My father is a bedridden invalid, and we are very close. My stepmother is a very jealous woman, and is envious of every call on his attention; she hates me, and knew that the loss of my pet would hurt me deeply. My brother’s recent return gave her another rival.

‘I live in fear of her, Mr Holmes. From my childhood she has sought to do me harm. She was my nurse when mother was alive. I saw her administering her drugs to my mother in the last days of her illness. For all I know she may have killed mother, and may hold my father in thrall with them. I do know that she has tried to poison me.

‘She began giving her potions to me when I was very young. The excuse she used was that I suffered nightmares and troubled sleep. For all I know it might have been the drugs that caused it. I would be locked up in a stupor for days at a time. When I refused her “medicines”, as she called them, she simply slipped them into my food and drink. But I suppose you will think me foolish and deluded.’

‘I think nothing, Miss Sturleson, save that the time has come to meet your father.’

She led us back through the hall and up the stairs to the very top of the house.

‘Forgive me,’ I said, ‘but if your father is an invalid, would it not be easier to locate his room on the ground floor?’

‘There is good reason for his choice of room, as you will see, doctor.’

She opened a door and gestured us in. The room was a species of studio, with a skylight that let in little radiance, as the expanse of glass was covered with snow. In the grey light stood many canvasses covered by dust-sheets. Under the skylight sat a giant of a man, lean-jawed, grizzled of beard and mane, staring at us balefully with deep-set eyes whose unhealthy, ivory-yellow tinge gave him the malevolent gaze of some beast of prey. He lay upon an upholstered reclining chair with winged dragons for front legs, double foot stools supported by gryphons, and a movable reading desk whose stem was a coiling serpent. The desk held a half-finished watercolour of the Fenris Wolf of Norse legend. Within arm’s reach on either side stood canvasses depicting in gruesome detail wolf packs at hunt and the kill. Miss Sturleson ran to him and they embraced tenderly. He whispered some words, and she left us with the words: ‘I will be next door in my room if you want me.’

‘Mr Holmes,’ bellowed the man, after she had gone, ‘welcome to my house. But I fear yours has been a wasted journey. My daughter meant well in bringing you here, but it is useless, unless you can defeat the power of an ancient curse.’

‘I make no claim to supernatural powers, yet I have helped in many cases where all hope seemed lost.’

‘Then hear this, Mr Holmes. In the dark forested regions of Norway an ancestor of mine was once savaged by an albino wolf. Thereafter his village suffered periodic depredations by some wild beast. When at last the creature was wounded, my ancestor was found maimed and bleeding in his bed. From that day my family has been under the shadow of the wolf. Mr Holmes, that curse has returned to plague this house, and I fear for my wife and daughter. I have done terrible things in my attempt to fight it, but to no avail. It was I who killed my son. Oh, I see the look on your faces. You do not believe in werewolves. Well, you will learn. I only wish my daughter might be spared this. All my children . . . it is too cruel. Please guard her, and my wife, Mr Holmes. And when the time comes, put an end to me.’

Holmes allowed himself the briefest of smiles.

‘Let us hope things may never come to such a pass. I have rarely had to resort to such action. By the way, Mr Sturleson, you have a rare gift for art. Might you not choose a less depressing subject? Excuse us.’

As we left the room, Holmes said quietly, ‘Yes, it has some similarities to that case, Watson, but this is a good deal simpler than the affair of the Hound.’

‘Would you say so? I would—but Holmes, how did you know . . .?

‘Not mind-reading my dear fellow. You could hardly fail to note that the ancestral curse and the savage beast were reminiscent of one of our strangest cases. But come, there is no time to be lost. We must make a search of the house and be certain that nothing has been overlooked.’

During the hours that followed, Sherlock Holmes stalked through every room, examining, measuring, comparing the internal and external dimensions of the house to eliminate the possibility of hidden spaces.

‘Do I take it from your search for a hiding place that you suspect some unseen hand in this, Holmes?’

‘I have reached no conclusions yet, Watson. I merely seek to exclude impossibilities.’

‘And whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’

Holmes shrugged. ‘I suppose so, Watson. Though when I said that I did not have werewolves in mind! Now as to our course of action, shall we watch the suspects? Mrs Sturleson? The Tantric path is a dark and sinister one, but hardly constitutes proof that she is a murderess. In any case, what use would we be against—what did she call it—an astral body? Is the doting father more mobile than he pretends? Is his obsession with a curse a harmless eccentricity, or a sign of dangerous unbalance? There are too many variables here. So let us forget the culprit and guard the most likely victim. Let us see. First Miss Sturleson’s pet is killed, then her beloved brother. It is not unreasonable to conclude that she is, herself, the next victim. I think we could do worse than to keep an eye on the young lady’s room tonight.’

We ascertained that a room close to Miss Sturleson’s was vacant, and it was agreed that I should wait there with my revolver at the ready. Holmes insisted on taking up a position outside the house, where he could watch the only other means of ingress, the window.

On taking up my post, I looked out of my window. It was a bitterly cold night, the moon large and bright against driving rags of cloud that ran before a north-east wind. There had been a light fall of snow earlier, deepening the carpet on the lawns to a frozen crust that broke with sharp detonations, audible through the panes, as Holmes trudged into view and took up his position by the wall.

Two hours later I looked again, and he had not moved an inch. Had I not seen his arrival, I would have taken him for a statue.

I fear that I had dropped into a fitful doze when a shrill cry rang through the house. I was on my feet and out of the room, revolver at the ready, before I had realised that the cry had not been that of a woman. Even as I stood undecided, Holmes came bounding up the stairs, the blade of an unsheathed swordstick glinting in the lamplight.

‘It came from the studio, Watson.’

Holmes was soon battering at the studio door. From beyond the unyielding panels came cries of agony and fear. We threw our combined weight against the door, but it held. Before our second assault a silence fell in the studio. Again the door withstood our charge. At our third attempt the frame splintered and we fell into the room. At once Holmes closed the door and jammed a chair under the handle to prevent anyone else from entering.

I will never forget the sight that met our eyes. I had thought Marie Kelly’s room in Mitre Square a shambles, but this was worse. Sturleson’s remains lay half on the floor, half on that weirdly magnificent couch. In the moonlight everything glittered blackly with blood. I have seen terrible injuries in war, but nothing to equal the carnage of that place. And on every side, the gaping jaws of wolves slavered from blood-spattered canvases. A superstitious dread fell on me then, for what had been done in that room was the work of a beast, not a human being.

Holmes looked even more shocked than I. Carefully skirting the growing blood pool, he peered out of the window and shook his head.

‘I do not understand Watson. This was not—well, it is too late now; we must go and check the house and grounds.’

Pausing only to tell Dodds to lock the door to prevent anyone from entering, we established that all the other servants were accounted for and free of bloodstains, as was Mrs Sturleson when she opened her bedroom door to receive the news. Though deeply upset, she asked if she might break the news to Freya, who had spent the night in her stepmother’s room and was still asleep.

We conducted another painstaking search of every room, then donned our overcoats and made a circuit of the ground outside the house, paying particular attention to the side overlooked by Sturleson’s window. Save for Holmes’s own prints, the unbroken surface of the snow made it clear that not so much as a bird had alighted there in hours.

‘This is incredible, Holmes. No one has left the house, and none of the occupants could have committed the act. It is impossible . . .’

I said this in the firm expectation that Holmes would chide me for overlooking some obvious clue, but he did not appear to hear me. He stood with head bowed, utterly crestfallen.

‘This has been my worst hour, Watson. I fear that the faculties hymned in those sensationalised accounts of yours have not been in evidence here, and a man is dead because of it. I have allowed my mental processes to be dulled by a shadow out of the past.’

‘The Hound, Holmes?’

‘No Watson, the shadow falls from a greater distance than Dartmoor: Tibet, Watson, Tibet. I had not intended to mention it, but you deserve an explanation. Let us go back inside.

‘As I may have mentioned, I had been in contact with Mycroft throughout the period of my disappearance, and was in fact engaged in work on his behalf, the nature of which I need not go into. It was required of me that I assemble men, animals, and supplies at Darjeeling for a journey into Tibet. My application for a permit was successful, and, to my surprise, it was accompanied by an invitation to speak to the Head Lama, who was representing the Dalai Lama himself.

‘After a six hundred foot descent into the Teesta River Valley, we crossed the Teesta Bridge and covered the last sixty miles to the Tibetan border. Torrential rains, suffocating atmosphere, and leeches made the trip intolerable. Men and animals alike were running with spilled blood. Following a pony track through Yalimpong to Rangpo, I reached Sikkim. We entered a region of tropical forests, a riot of hibiscus, bougainvilleas, and orchids. A place not unlike Mrs Sturleson’s conservatory in atmosphere. Climbing steeply through blazing rhododendrons we reached the Tibetan plateau and descended into the Chumbi valley.

‘On the high plateau of central Tibet, we travelled through a region of blue skies and searching winds. The way divided at Gyantse, but I pressed on and, a hundred miles further, crossed the Tsangpo by a narrow bridge suspended on yaks’ hair cables. Finally, having braved landslides and freezing nights, for the “long arm of Everest” was already reaching for us, we entered foggy Lhasa.

‘I was taken to the Jokhang Temple for an audience with the Head Lama, Abbot of the Ten-gye-ling monastery, who was acting Regent during the Minority of the Dalai Lama. Among the carved red pillars and tapestries, he made an impressive figure in his burgundy red robes. I presented him with the traditional gift of a white
Khata,
or scarf, and spoke with him for some hours. As you recorded in
The Sign of the Four
, I had at that time some knowledge of the Southern form of Buddhism, but was very keen to learn of the Northern form.

‘When eventually I asked why I had been summoned to Lhasa, I was taken deep into the temple and brought into the presence of the young God King himself.

‘He was a small child, but with the dignity of bearing and the intensely focussed gaze of the adept. When I was introduced his face broke into a wide smile so typical of Tibetan people, and he brandished some well-worn documents. One was my monograph on footsteps, the others—and I hate to say it, Watson, for I fear it will do little for the size of your head—were copies of
The Strand Magazine.

‘It seemed that he had read, and been impressed by, your accounts of my cases. I suppose there is no reason why spiritual enlightenment should bring improved perception of literature. However, he talked of a creature the sherpas called
Meto Khangmi
, or Demon Mountain Man; and Yeti, or Rock Animal. The Dalai Lama would not use these names. He called the creature
mi-teh
, or man-animal. The belief in the existence of this being is total. One of the names of the Everest area itself is
Mahalanggur-Himan
, or snowy mountains of the great ape.