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charleygirlTitle: The Hand of Seth 11/?
Author: charleygirl
Rating: PG
Type: Gen, mystery, angst
Characters Involved: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson, Inspector Lestrade
Summary: A return to Harcourt House, and some explanations...
Disclaimer: These characters are out of copyright but still don't belong to me. Doctor Who elements are the property of the BBC
Author's Note: Holmes and Watson as they appear in this story are based on the performances by Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke in the Granada TV series. This fic is ostensibly set between The Sign of Four and The Devil's Foot in the Granada run.
Apologies for the delay!
Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten
THE HAND OF SETH
CHAPTER ELEVEN
In little more than ten minutes we were in a cab on our way to Grosvenor Square.
“It seems that the earl has reconsidered his decision to dispense with your services,” I remarked.
“I am hoping that he has finally come to his senses and decided to tell me exactly what occurred on Thursday night,” Holmes said, to my surprise. “I have almost all the information – all that is needed is for Lord Harcourt to fill in the gaps.”
“Thursday night? But we now have a new mystery!”
Holmes shook his head. “The only mystery here is why the earl did not destroy the statue while he had the chance, and save his family this misery.”
***
We had barely entered the marble hall before Lestrade appeared, looking more than a little harassed.
“Thank you for coming so quickly, gentlemen,” he said. “I’ll admit I’m at a loss to understand this case at all. One minute I have the earl denying you access to the house, and the next he’s fair demanding your presence! And I’m no closer to discovering who killed Lord James. Makes no sense to me!”
“It makes perfect sense,” said Holmes. “The earl is a man much tried. Blackmail and threats play havoc with a man’s nerves. Where is his lordship?”
“In the study. We have quite a little party here,” the inspector told me as once more we trailed behind Holmes. “Seems there’s much more to this than meets the eye.”
“There usually is,” I said, and we entered the study. Gathered there were Lord and Lady Harcourt, Lady Amanda Barrington, and Duncan, the earl’s valet. The room was a positive mess, the display cabinet in shattered pieces on the floor, the furniture overturned, books torn from the shelves. The only items left standing appeared to be the chairs upon which the ladies sat.
The earl stood in the window embrasure, leaning upon the frame, his aspect that of a man defeated. Gone was the belligerence of two days before – as we entered he cast a glance our way that was not unlike the gaze of a drowning man sighting a life-belt. “Mr Holmes,” he said, moving forwards to meet my friend amid the debris, “I cannot thank you enough for coming. I must apologise for my behaviour on Friday – it was reprehensible of me.”
“Indeed it was, my lord, but I can forgive you. The accusations were an attempt to protect yourself and your family,” Holmes replied. “I could, however, have assured you that you would have been equally secure had you confided in me.”
Harcourt nodded. “I see that now. Mr Mycroft Holmes called me foolish, and he was quite correct. Had I not been, I would not have lost another son to these madmen.”
The countess’s eyes filled with tears, and she bit her lip, a far cry too from the woman we had met on Friday. Lady Amanda took her hand and held it tightly, her own face pale and drawn above her black mourning gown.
“Mr William Ravensley is not dead, and nor, I hope, will he be at any time in the near future.” Holmes glanced around the room as though he had only just noticed the devastation, something I knew well to be an act. “I see you had visitors last night. They were not so circumspect this time.”
The earl could not look at his ruined collection. “They came in search of something.”
“That much is self evident. I take it that something was a small wooden hand, barely an inch long, holding an Egyptian symbol of life commonly known as an ankh?”
“Good God, Mr Holmes,” said Harcourt, staring at my friend in amazement. “How did you know?”
“It was discovered in the palm of your son James’s hand. He had tried to prevent the theft, only to lose his life in return,” Holmes said.
“Ah, yes, I’ve been meaning to ask you about that, Mr Holmes - ” Lestrade began, but Holmes cut him off.
“I presume that they are demanding the surrender of the hand before they will release your younger son,” he said to Harcourt, who nodded again. “Why do they need it so badly?”
“It is a matter of belief, Mr Holmes,” the earl replied. “Without the complete statue, their god will be unable to take corporeal form. It is an avatar, a true representation of Seth. There is, I believe, no other like it in existence.”
“It is a hideous thing,” the countess declared. “We should have sold it while we had the opportunity!”
“That would simply have transferred the burden to some other poor soul who did not know what awaited them,” her husband responded with a touch of impatience. I sensed that this was an argument which had been gone through many times in the past.
She rounded on him. “At least we would have been free of it! Jamie would still be alive, and we would not have lived through such torment all these years! How could you put your obsession with that…that…thing above the happiness of your family!” Her voice cracked and she broke into noisy weeping. Lady Amanda put an arm around her, rubbing the poor woman’s back and murmuring soothing words. The girl was remarkably calm, considering the depth of her feelings for the missing man.
Holmes had listened to this exchange between husband and wife with a frown. He moved amongst the remains of the Egyptian collection which littered the carpet, reaching the window and perching casually upon the sill, as there were no more chairs in the room. “Lord Harcourt,” he said when the countess had composed herself, “How long have you been plagued by the followers of Seth?”
The earl placed a hand upon his wife’s shoulder. “Since this man Namin came to London some years ago. He made himself a nuisance, following me all over, turning up at my clubs, lingering outside the house. His diatribes quickly became wearing, and I attempted to have the police restrain him.”
“And so they did do,” said Lestrade, “but until a man commits a crime it’s difficult to restrain him for long.”
“I believe the British Museum have had a similar problem with him,” I told the earl.
Harcourt nodded. “The constant harassment began to take its toll on my nerves. Where once I had encouraged study of the statue by interested academics, I could no longer take the risk of allowing strangers into the house to view it in case this man inveigled his way inside. I could think of nothing but the statue – it dominated my every waking moment. When James began to become vocal about his own fears, I could not deal with more worry.”
“And so you quarrelled,” said Holmes.
“I am not proud of the fact. But he would not let the matter drop, convinced that a curse was upon him. Such things are preposterous – we have had bad luck within the family, it is true, but those deaths were accidents, not murder! When he told me that an Egyptian was following him I could take no more, knowing that Namin had transferred his attentions to my son in the hope that he would have more success.”
“Perhaps you should have taken your son into your confidence and revealed the demands that were being made upon you,” I suggested.
“It is doubtful that he would have listened, Doctor,” said the countess sadly. “He wanted one thing, and one thing only: the removal of the statue and thus of his own fears.”
“He fairly demanded that I burn the statue that night in the grate,” said Harcourt. “He would have done it himself had I not bodily prevented him from reaching the cabinet. What he could not understand was that the statue is a family heirloom, and I cannot dispose of my past so easily, no matter what the cost.”
“Not to mention the threat of retribution hanging over your head,” Holmes said. “At some point in the last few months the Egyptian ambassador visited you, did he not?”
“Have you been watching my movements as well, Mr Holmes?” asked the earl. When my friend did not reply, he continued, “Yes, and I was much surprised by the visit. He was very cordial, though not what I would have expected from such a dignitary, and he came with just one man – an official, I presumed. I did not see that I could refuse his request to see the statue of Seth, and we spoke for some time. He admired my collection.”
“And asked you about the forthcoming eclipse.”
Harcourt nodded. “I was shocked when barely a few days later he began to demand the return of the statue. It put me in an impossible position.”
“They were turning up the heat. So,” said Holmes, “on Thursday night, when they came to make their final demand for time was beginning to press upon them, what did you do?”
“I refused, as I have refused each time. They have money, but I have told them repeatedly that the statue is not for sale at any price. They became angry, issued threats – I myself threatened to summon the police, but they laughed in my face. As they left they proclaimed that Sutek would have his vengeance upon me for prolonging his unjust imprisonment. For my crimes, Sutek’s gift of death would be visited upon me.”
Lestrade looked baffled. “Is this another person I have to look for? Must be a rum cove with a name like Sutek!”
“He is indeed, but I doubt if you will catch him, Lestrade,” said Holmes.
“Sutek is one of the many names given to this unpleasant god,” I explained to the unfortunate inspector. “Set, Seth, Sutek, the Typhonian Beast…all refer to the same deity.”
“Have you considered how they came to find you on the roof of the house?” Holmes asked Harcourt.
The earl looked astonished, and Lestrade’s confusion increased.
“On the roof?” he squeaked incredulously.
“How in the world did you know that, Mr Holmes?” Harcourt exclaimed.
Holmes smiled slightly. “Architecture and observation, my lord. You are a keen astronomer – I have recently read your monograph, and found it fascinating.”
“Thank you. I was indeed upon the roof that night, observing the moon. There is an eclipse due this very evening - ”
“ – which also happens to occur on the eve of one of the festival days of the god Seth. That fact is not unknown to you.”
“I did my best to discount it, though I had guessed the reason for their timing,” Harcourt admitted. “They came upon me suddenly, from where I know not unless they climbed one of the trees in the garden, and from there scaled the drainpipe. I sent them away, and they issued their threats.”
“But they did not leave you immediately, as they observed the entrance to the secret stair.”
There was a pause. Lady Harcourt looked at her husband in shock; Lady Amanda looked as confused as poor Lestrade. The earl bowed his head and nodded. “An oversight on my part, though the door was locked and bolted from within as always. But that did not stop them gaining entry to this room.”
“That is because, on the first attempt at least, they did not use the staircase,” said Holmes. He stood up and walked slowly through the litter on the carpet to the chimney breast. “The smaller of the two confederates, our false ambassador – or, to give him his real name, Nahir Naseem – climbed down the chimney itself. They had of course been watching the house, and knew that the chimney had been swept the day before. It is his footprint I found upon the carpet on Friday morning. He broke open the door that leads to the staircase – if you care to observe, Lestrade, you will see the marks made by the inexpert use of a lock pick.” He gestured towards a door I had not even noticed, set beside the chimney and designed to blend in completely with the bookshelves. The keyhole was barely visible – only someone looking for it would know that it was there. As Lestrade took Holmes’s glass and examined the lock, my friend continued, “He opened the door that leads onto the roof, allowing Namin to join him, and between them they gained access to the cabinet. It must have been while they were in the act of removing the statue that Lord James came upon them, letting himself into the study with his own key. There was a struggle – the statue’s hand broke – and one of them, probably Namin, set the creature upon Lord James which would cause his death.”
The countess stifled a gasp and her eyes filled with tears once more. “He was trying to protect your accursed statue!” she told her husband.
“My apologies, Lady Harcourt, but I do find that unlikely. Why should Lord James seek to retain an object for which he felt such revulsion?” said Lestrade, grasping this part of the conversation at least.
“I think we may assume that at the crucial moment Lord James surrendered to instinct and sought to protect his family’s property,” Holmes countered. “Destroying the statue himself may have been acceptable, but to have it simply taken by two men who had broken into the house is not likely to have sat well with him.”
“So they killed him,” said Lady Amanda softly. “He would not have been able to stop them – I doubt if Jamie had ever fired a gun in anger in his life.”
“I do find it curious that he was the only one to awaken when the thieves made their entrance,” mused Holmes, leaning against the bookshelves and regarding his stick as he idly held it before him. “The rain that Lady Amanda heard on the roof can be explained as the miscreants taking flight, but someone surely must have heard the man descending the chimney.”
“We all had rather too much to drink that night, Mr Holmes,” said Harcourt, “hence tempers running high. Jamie was always a light sleeper, and frequently found that reading aided him in that respect. I assume that he was awake and intending to retrieve a book from the library when he heard them.”
“Was it his habit to keep a loaded revolver in his bedroom?” enquired Lestrade.
“Of late, I can believe it. He was becoming dreadfully fearful,” said the countess. “We should have listened to him.” She dabbed at her eyes again. I marvelled at her ability to keep her composure on Friday morning, and put it down to the shock of what had just occurred.
“Now,” Holmes announced after a suitable pause for everyone to take this in, “We come to Friday morning. You, Lord Harcourt, when summoned to the study discovered the door leading to the secret stair ajar, the thieves naturally unable to lock the door behind them without wasting valuable time. They did, however, take Lord James’s key to the study, presumably as insurance should they need to return. The door was not open when Lestrade arrived to investigate, or he would certainly have mentioned it. Therefore there can only be one reason why it was closed: that you closed it yourself, my lord, to hide its existence.”
Harcourt opened his mouth, but before he could speak Duncan, the valet, cut across him. “I closed and locked the door, sir. It’s his lordship’s private business, no need for the police to know about it.”
Lestrade rounded on the man. “No need? I’ll have you know, my man, that we call such an act withholding evidence, and it carried serious penalties!”
“We had no choice,” said Harcourt. “Duncan found a note pushed into the keyhole, promising retribution if we said anything about Namin and his confederate to the police. I had just seen what they did to my son, they possessed a way to enter the house…I had to do all I could to protect my family. However, by the time the note was found I had already despatched William to Mr Mycroft Holmes. I could not tell the full story for fear of what they would do when they discovered my actions, and so when you arrived, Mr Holmes, I did my best to put you off the scent. It was done for the best of reasons, though I am not proud of my actions.”
“I understand,” Holmes said, “but, had you told me the truth, your son might not now be in danger.”
“I know it, Mr Holmes, I know it,” said the unhappy peer.
“What now, Mr Holmes?” Lestrade asked, still quite obviously itching to arrest Duncan, who stared at him defiantly.
“We can do nothing until tonight,” my friend replied, “so we must wait.”
“Tonight? Would it not be more prudent to go and arrest them now?”
“And find the statue gone, the birds flown? No, Lestrade, that would never do. Tonight is when their plans will come together. When the sun and the moon are in their correct alignment, then we shall have them.”
“Sun and moon? Are you feeling quite all right, Mr Holmes?” said the inspector, giving Holmes a concerned glance as though he feared the detective to have quite suddenly run mad.
“Astronomy, Lestrade.”
Lestrade shook his head. “I’ll take you word for it, but I’ll have you know that I’ve never made an arrest based on the phases of the moon before!”
Holmes smiled. “In that case, Lestrade, I believe I can promise you something rather special.”
TBC
Author: charleygirl
Rating: PG
Type: Gen, mystery, angst
Characters Involved: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson, Inspector Lestrade
Summary: A return to Harcourt House, and some explanations...
Disclaimer: These characters are out of copyright but still don't belong to me. Doctor Who elements are the property of the BBC
Author's Note: Holmes and Watson as they appear in this story are based on the performances by Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke in the Granada TV series. This fic is ostensibly set between The Sign of Four and The Devil's Foot in the Granada run.
Apologies for the delay!
Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten
THE HAND OF SETH
CHAPTER ELEVEN
In little more than ten minutes we were in a cab on our way to Grosvenor Square.
“It seems that the earl has reconsidered his decision to dispense with your services,” I remarked.
“I am hoping that he has finally come to his senses and decided to tell me exactly what occurred on Thursday night,” Holmes said, to my surprise. “I have almost all the information – all that is needed is for Lord Harcourt to fill in the gaps.”
“Thursday night? But we now have a new mystery!”
Holmes shook his head. “The only mystery here is why the earl did not destroy the statue while he had the chance, and save his family this misery.”
***
We had barely entered the marble hall before Lestrade appeared, looking more than a little harassed.
“Thank you for coming so quickly, gentlemen,” he said. “I’ll admit I’m at a loss to understand this case at all. One minute I have the earl denying you access to the house, and the next he’s fair demanding your presence! And I’m no closer to discovering who killed Lord James. Makes no sense to me!”
“It makes perfect sense,” said Holmes. “The earl is a man much tried. Blackmail and threats play havoc with a man’s nerves. Where is his lordship?”
“In the study. We have quite a little party here,” the inspector told me as once more we trailed behind Holmes. “Seems there’s much more to this than meets the eye.”
“There usually is,” I said, and we entered the study. Gathered there were Lord and Lady Harcourt, Lady Amanda Barrington, and Duncan, the earl’s valet. The room was a positive mess, the display cabinet in shattered pieces on the floor, the furniture overturned, books torn from the shelves. The only items left standing appeared to be the chairs upon which the ladies sat.
The earl stood in the window embrasure, leaning upon the frame, his aspect that of a man defeated. Gone was the belligerence of two days before – as we entered he cast a glance our way that was not unlike the gaze of a drowning man sighting a life-belt. “Mr Holmes,” he said, moving forwards to meet my friend amid the debris, “I cannot thank you enough for coming. I must apologise for my behaviour on Friday – it was reprehensible of me.”
“Indeed it was, my lord, but I can forgive you. The accusations were an attempt to protect yourself and your family,” Holmes replied. “I could, however, have assured you that you would have been equally secure had you confided in me.”
Harcourt nodded. “I see that now. Mr Mycroft Holmes called me foolish, and he was quite correct. Had I not been, I would not have lost another son to these madmen.”
The countess’s eyes filled with tears, and she bit her lip, a far cry too from the woman we had met on Friday. Lady Amanda took her hand and held it tightly, her own face pale and drawn above her black mourning gown.
“Mr William Ravensley is not dead, and nor, I hope, will he be at any time in the near future.” Holmes glanced around the room as though he had only just noticed the devastation, something I knew well to be an act. “I see you had visitors last night. They were not so circumspect this time.”
The earl could not look at his ruined collection. “They came in search of something.”
“That much is self evident. I take it that something was a small wooden hand, barely an inch long, holding an Egyptian symbol of life commonly known as an ankh?”
“Good God, Mr Holmes,” said Harcourt, staring at my friend in amazement. “How did you know?”
“It was discovered in the palm of your son James’s hand. He had tried to prevent the theft, only to lose his life in return,” Holmes said.
“Ah, yes, I’ve been meaning to ask you about that, Mr Holmes - ” Lestrade began, but Holmes cut him off.
“I presume that they are demanding the surrender of the hand before they will release your younger son,” he said to Harcourt, who nodded again. “Why do they need it so badly?”
“It is a matter of belief, Mr Holmes,” the earl replied. “Without the complete statue, their god will be unable to take corporeal form. It is an avatar, a true representation of Seth. There is, I believe, no other like it in existence.”
“It is a hideous thing,” the countess declared. “We should have sold it while we had the opportunity!”
“That would simply have transferred the burden to some other poor soul who did not know what awaited them,” her husband responded with a touch of impatience. I sensed that this was an argument which had been gone through many times in the past.
She rounded on him. “At least we would have been free of it! Jamie would still be alive, and we would not have lived through such torment all these years! How could you put your obsession with that…that…thing above the happiness of your family!” Her voice cracked and she broke into noisy weeping. Lady Amanda put an arm around her, rubbing the poor woman’s back and murmuring soothing words. The girl was remarkably calm, considering the depth of her feelings for the missing man.
Holmes had listened to this exchange between husband and wife with a frown. He moved amongst the remains of the Egyptian collection which littered the carpet, reaching the window and perching casually upon the sill, as there were no more chairs in the room. “Lord Harcourt,” he said when the countess had composed herself, “How long have you been plagued by the followers of Seth?”
The earl placed a hand upon his wife’s shoulder. “Since this man Namin came to London some years ago. He made himself a nuisance, following me all over, turning up at my clubs, lingering outside the house. His diatribes quickly became wearing, and I attempted to have the police restrain him.”
“And so they did do,” said Lestrade, “but until a man commits a crime it’s difficult to restrain him for long.”
“I believe the British Museum have had a similar problem with him,” I told the earl.
Harcourt nodded. “The constant harassment began to take its toll on my nerves. Where once I had encouraged study of the statue by interested academics, I could no longer take the risk of allowing strangers into the house to view it in case this man inveigled his way inside. I could think of nothing but the statue – it dominated my every waking moment. When James began to become vocal about his own fears, I could not deal with more worry.”
“And so you quarrelled,” said Holmes.
“I am not proud of the fact. But he would not let the matter drop, convinced that a curse was upon him. Such things are preposterous – we have had bad luck within the family, it is true, but those deaths were accidents, not murder! When he told me that an Egyptian was following him I could take no more, knowing that Namin had transferred his attentions to my son in the hope that he would have more success.”
“Perhaps you should have taken your son into your confidence and revealed the demands that were being made upon you,” I suggested.
“It is doubtful that he would have listened, Doctor,” said the countess sadly. “He wanted one thing, and one thing only: the removal of the statue and thus of his own fears.”
“He fairly demanded that I burn the statue that night in the grate,” said Harcourt. “He would have done it himself had I not bodily prevented him from reaching the cabinet. What he could not understand was that the statue is a family heirloom, and I cannot dispose of my past so easily, no matter what the cost.”
“Not to mention the threat of retribution hanging over your head,” Holmes said. “At some point in the last few months the Egyptian ambassador visited you, did he not?”
“Have you been watching my movements as well, Mr Holmes?” asked the earl. When my friend did not reply, he continued, “Yes, and I was much surprised by the visit. He was very cordial, though not what I would have expected from such a dignitary, and he came with just one man – an official, I presumed. I did not see that I could refuse his request to see the statue of Seth, and we spoke for some time. He admired my collection.”
“And asked you about the forthcoming eclipse.”
Harcourt nodded. “I was shocked when barely a few days later he began to demand the return of the statue. It put me in an impossible position.”
“They were turning up the heat. So,” said Holmes, “on Thursday night, when they came to make their final demand for time was beginning to press upon them, what did you do?”
“I refused, as I have refused each time. They have money, but I have told them repeatedly that the statue is not for sale at any price. They became angry, issued threats – I myself threatened to summon the police, but they laughed in my face. As they left they proclaimed that Sutek would have his vengeance upon me for prolonging his unjust imprisonment. For my crimes, Sutek’s gift of death would be visited upon me.”
Lestrade looked baffled. “Is this another person I have to look for? Must be a rum cove with a name like Sutek!”
“He is indeed, but I doubt if you will catch him, Lestrade,” said Holmes.
“Sutek is one of the many names given to this unpleasant god,” I explained to the unfortunate inspector. “Set, Seth, Sutek, the Typhonian Beast…all refer to the same deity.”
“Have you considered how they came to find you on the roof of the house?” Holmes asked Harcourt.
The earl looked astonished, and Lestrade’s confusion increased.
“On the roof?” he squeaked incredulously.
“How in the world did you know that, Mr Holmes?” Harcourt exclaimed.
Holmes smiled slightly. “Architecture and observation, my lord. You are a keen astronomer – I have recently read your monograph, and found it fascinating.”
“Thank you. I was indeed upon the roof that night, observing the moon. There is an eclipse due this very evening - ”
“ – which also happens to occur on the eve of one of the festival days of the god Seth. That fact is not unknown to you.”
“I did my best to discount it, though I had guessed the reason for their timing,” Harcourt admitted. “They came upon me suddenly, from where I know not unless they climbed one of the trees in the garden, and from there scaled the drainpipe. I sent them away, and they issued their threats.”
“But they did not leave you immediately, as they observed the entrance to the secret stair.”
There was a pause. Lady Harcourt looked at her husband in shock; Lady Amanda looked as confused as poor Lestrade. The earl bowed his head and nodded. “An oversight on my part, though the door was locked and bolted from within as always. But that did not stop them gaining entry to this room.”
“That is because, on the first attempt at least, they did not use the staircase,” said Holmes. He stood up and walked slowly through the litter on the carpet to the chimney breast. “The smaller of the two confederates, our false ambassador – or, to give him his real name, Nahir Naseem – climbed down the chimney itself. They had of course been watching the house, and knew that the chimney had been swept the day before. It is his footprint I found upon the carpet on Friday morning. He broke open the door that leads to the staircase – if you care to observe, Lestrade, you will see the marks made by the inexpert use of a lock pick.” He gestured towards a door I had not even noticed, set beside the chimney and designed to blend in completely with the bookshelves. The keyhole was barely visible – only someone looking for it would know that it was there. As Lestrade took Holmes’s glass and examined the lock, my friend continued, “He opened the door that leads onto the roof, allowing Namin to join him, and between them they gained access to the cabinet. It must have been while they were in the act of removing the statue that Lord James came upon them, letting himself into the study with his own key. There was a struggle – the statue’s hand broke – and one of them, probably Namin, set the creature upon Lord James which would cause his death.”
The countess stifled a gasp and her eyes filled with tears once more. “He was trying to protect your accursed statue!” she told her husband.
“My apologies, Lady Harcourt, but I do find that unlikely. Why should Lord James seek to retain an object for which he felt such revulsion?” said Lestrade, grasping this part of the conversation at least.
“I think we may assume that at the crucial moment Lord James surrendered to instinct and sought to protect his family’s property,” Holmes countered. “Destroying the statue himself may have been acceptable, but to have it simply taken by two men who had broken into the house is not likely to have sat well with him.”
“So they killed him,” said Lady Amanda softly. “He would not have been able to stop them – I doubt if Jamie had ever fired a gun in anger in his life.”
“I do find it curious that he was the only one to awaken when the thieves made their entrance,” mused Holmes, leaning against the bookshelves and regarding his stick as he idly held it before him. “The rain that Lady Amanda heard on the roof can be explained as the miscreants taking flight, but someone surely must have heard the man descending the chimney.”
“We all had rather too much to drink that night, Mr Holmes,” said Harcourt, “hence tempers running high. Jamie was always a light sleeper, and frequently found that reading aided him in that respect. I assume that he was awake and intending to retrieve a book from the library when he heard them.”
“Was it his habit to keep a loaded revolver in his bedroom?” enquired Lestrade.
“Of late, I can believe it. He was becoming dreadfully fearful,” said the countess. “We should have listened to him.” She dabbed at her eyes again. I marvelled at her ability to keep her composure on Friday morning, and put it down to the shock of what had just occurred.
“Now,” Holmes announced after a suitable pause for everyone to take this in, “We come to Friday morning. You, Lord Harcourt, when summoned to the study discovered the door leading to the secret stair ajar, the thieves naturally unable to lock the door behind them without wasting valuable time. They did, however, take Lord James’s key to the study, presumably as insurance should they need to return. The door was not open when Lestrade arrived to investigate, or he would certainly have mentioned it. Therefore there can only be one reason why it was closed: that you closed it yourself, my lord, to hide its existence.”
Harcourt opened his mouth, but before he could speak Duncan, the valet, cut across him. “I closed and locked the door, sir. It’s his lordship’s private business, no need for the police to know about it.”
Lestrade rounded on the man. “No need? I’ll have you know, my man, that we call such an act withholding evidence, and it carried serious penalties!”
“We had no choice,” said Harcourt. “Duncan found a note pushed into the keyhole, promising retribution if we said anything about Namin and his confederate to the police. I had just seen what they did to my son, they possessed a way to enter the house…I had to do all I could to protect my family. However, by the time the note was found I had already despatched William to Mr Mycroft Holmes. I could not tell the full story for fear of what they would do when they discovered my actions, and so when you arrived, Mr Holmes, I did my best to put you off the scent. It was done for the best of reasons, though I am not proud of my actions.”
“I understand,” Holmes said, “but, had you told me the truth, your son might not now be in danger.”
“I know it, Mr Holmes, I know it,” said the unhappy peer.
“What now, Mr Holmes?” Lestrade asked, still quite obviously itching to arrest Duncan, who stared at him defiantly.
“We can do nothing until tonight,” my friend replied, “so we must wait.”
“Tonight? Would it not be more prudent to go and arrest them now?”
“And find the statue gone, the birds flown? No, Lestrade, that would never do. Tonight is when their plans will come together. When the sun and the moon are in their correct alignment, then we shall have them.”
“Sun and moon? Are you feeling quite all right, Mr Holmes?” said the inspector, giving Holmes a concerned glance as though he feared the detective to have quite suddenly run mad.
“Astronomy, Lestrade.”
Lestrade shook his head. “I’ll take you word for it, but I’ll have you know that I’ve never made an arrest based on the phases of the moon before!”
Holmes smiled. “In that case, Lestrade, I believe I can promise you something rather special.”
TBC
