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charleygirlTitle: The Hand of Seth 7/?
Author: charleygirl
Rating: PG
Type: Gen, mystery
Characters Involved: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson
Summary: Visitors, explanations and clues...
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.
Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six
THE HAND OF SETH
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE HAND OF SETH
CHAPTER SEVEN
Holmes leaned forwards in his chair, a familiar gleam in his eye, and beckoned for the young man to continue.
“For more than three years now, my father and brother have not lived harmoniously,” Ravensley said. “They did once get on well, but of late my father has become…difficult. Jamie is…was of a much softer temperament, and sadly did not seem to measure up in my father’s eyes to all that an heir should be. This business over the curse and the statue just made relations worse between them.”
“Yes, I did perceive that the earl seemed less than grieved by your brother’s death,” Holmes remarked.
Ravensley blushed. “I can only apologise for his behaviour, Mr Holmes. It was completely unwarranted, and unacceptable, especially in light of his request for your assistance in the first place.”
“That matters little now, as I am no longer retained by your family to investigate the case.” My friend waved a telegram in the air, before throwing it onto his desk where it landed amid a pile of other papers.
“That may be the earl’s decision, Mr Holmes, but I can assure you it is not ours,” said the young lady at Ravensley’s side. “Jamie deserves justice, and you are the one who can make sure that he receives it.”
Holmes smiled slightly and inclined his head. “Your faith in me is most flattering, Lady Amanda. But if I am to have any success in this matter you both must be completely honest with me. There must be no concealing the facts purely to shield the family honour.”
“We understand that, Mr Holmes,” said Ravensley quickly. “Had it not been for my father’s express instructions I would have told you all this morning.”
“Then we must hope that later is indeed better than never.”
I readied my notebook as Ravensley and Lady Amanda exchanged a glance. She nodded encouragingly and he turned back to face us.
“There was a quarrel,” Ravensley said, “Last night, after we had all retired. I could hear the raised voices as I prepared for bed – my father had left the study door open and the house is not so vast as you have been led to believe. He was angry that Jamie had decided to consult you over a matter he believed to be of no importance. You must understand that my father has a deep hatred of the public gaze, and cannot countenance the idea of a stranger being privy to our family secrets.”
“And yet he chose to engage me himself, to investigate your brother’s death,” Holmes pointed out.
“I did think it strange at the time, but everything was in such an uproar that I had no time to query the decision. Later I supposed that as you already knew of Jamie’s fears he thought it better to involve just one person rather than many. And, as he knows Mr Mycroft Holmes a little I believe he assumed you would be as circumspect as your brother.” Ravensley smiled apologetically. “A little naïve of him, I will confess, but he was unaware of your reputation.”
Holmes glanced at me and smirked slightly. “It would seem that your readership is not so universal as you have led me to believe, Watson.”
I ignored him, knowing him to be twitting me and feeling that his timing could have been better. “Your father has this attitude towards your brother, and yet he agreed to put the Egyptian relic up for sale,” I said to Ravensley. “That is a little odd, is it not?”
“The statue being up for sale was my mother’s doing. She feared for Jamie’s safety and communicated with Christie’s auction house. When my father found out he was furious, and would have withdrawn the statue had it not been too late. Instead he insisted that the reserve price be raised to such a ludicrous amount that no one would bid. He did not want to be rid of the thing at all.”
“How do you believe your brother came to meet his death?” Holmes asked after a moment’s consideration.
“I cannot truly explain how it was done, Mr Holmes, but I believe that either Jamie’s mind turned and he did away with himself, or the quarrel with my father took a more sinister turn,” said Ravensley seriously.
I blinked in surprise. “You imagine your father capable of murder?”
“I imagine him capable of anything where the statue is concerned, Doctor,” he replied. “Two days ago a man called asking questions about it, and whether we had had an Egyptian lurking outside the house.”
“And had you?” Holmes asked sharply.
“Jamie swore that such a man was following him, but none of us ever caught sight of the fellow. The questions drove my father into such a passion that he threw the man out of the house with his own hand, despite their difference in size. The statue has some kind of hold over him. In latter years it has become an obsession.”
Holmes tapped a long finger against his lips, frowning. I could imagine his great brain putting the pieces together, discarding the ones that did not fit and finding connection where I could see none. “After the quarrel, did you hear anything more?”
Ravensley shook his head. “The door slammed, and that was the end of it all. I did slip down the landing to Jamie’s room to check that he was all right, but the door was locked and he would not answer my knocks.”
“And you thought nothing unusual in that?”
“He would frequently be incommunicative when he was in a temper. I assumed that if he wished to speak with me he would seek me out in the morning.”
“At what time did your father retire?”
“I do not believe that he did, Mr Holmes, at least not before I fell asleep myself. He frequently remains locked in the study until the early hours.”
Holmes nodded, and turned to the young woman seated on the sofa. “And you Lady Amanda? You heard nothing?”
“I have been residing with Lady Amelia in the east wing,” she replied. “We are separated from the main house by a stout door, and heard nothing at all save a little rain on the roof just after two o’clock.”
“I think, Mr Holmes, that Jamie may have been attempting to destroy the statue,” said Ravensley. “He had spoken of it many times before, of his desire to destroy it before it destroyed him.”
“Your father’s valet told us that your brother had a key to the study. Why so, when there was such animosity between the earl and his heir?” Holmes enquired.
“My mother insisted, in case anything should happen to my father when he shut himself away. He has suffered one apoplexy already, and she feared for his safety in a locked room.”
“Very sensible,” I said. “Vital seconds would be lost breaking down a door.”
“Did Lord James also have a key to the display cabinet?” Holmes asked.
Ravensley shook his head. “Only my father has that key, and it never leaves him.”
“Surely, then, if your theory holds true your brother would have been forced to break into the cabinet in order to dispose of the statue. The only evidence of tampering I observed was the work of an expert. Even if Lord James possessed the capability, which I doubt, the police would have discovered tools near his body, and they did not. And even if that were the case, where is the statue now. I take it that it has not been found anywhere in the house or grounds?” Ravensley shook his head. “Then are we to believe that your brother somehow broke into the case with his bare hands, got the statue out of the house and then returned to do away with himself in the study? And what of the loaded revolver found beside the body?” Holmes huffed sharply. “No, Mr Ravensley, it won’t do.”
The young man looked chastened, and bowed his head. Lady Amanda rested her hand on his arm and squeezed it gently. “There is the other matter, Will.”
Holmes’s ears pricked up like a foxhound’s. “Other matter?”
“Something was found in the study, Mr Holmes, but it was not the statue.”
“My grandfather brought back a great many curiosities from Egypt,” Ravensley explained, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing a cloth bundle which he handed to Holmes. “My father has continued the collection. I have never seen anything like this amongst his artefacts, however.”
Holmes took the bundle and carried it to his desk, where he carefully unwrapped it. I joined him to see for myself what it contained – lying there on the white material was what appeared to be a large black beetle, its shiny carapace gleaming with jewel-like colours in the gaslight, rather as a puddle of oil will do in the sun. It looked alive – Holmes gingerly prodded it with a pencil, but it did not move, for which I was unaccountably grateful.
“A scarab beetle,” he announced. “A native of Egypt, and certainly not of Mayfair.” He reached for his lens, which was lying on the desktop, and had to catch himself on the back of his chair. To his credit, he turned the stumble into an almost natural movement as he seated himself, but I had not missed the return of the weakness. “I take it,” he said, addressing Ravensley and Lady Amanda, “that nothing like this has even been brought to the house? Not even by a visitor?”
“Never,” Ravensley said firmly. “We found it in the grate, of all places. The police missed it entirely.”
“Now that is interesting. What caused you to disturb the ash in the grate?”
“My father insisted that we search for Jamie’s key. It was not on his…his body, and Duncan could find it nowhere else.”
Holmes nodded. He poked at the beetle again, and the thing flipped over onto its back, startling me with the abruptness of its movement. Something fell from its underside, to land with a clatter on the desktop. “What do you make of that, Watson?” Holmes asked after a brief study of the creature, handing me the glass.
I was not entirely sure what I was meant to be looking at, but I dutifully bent over the insect. Its innards had been revealed, and there were oddly-shaped pieces of metal filling its shell. As I looked closer, the muddled parts resolved themselves into a regular pattern that struck a chord in my memory. “Well, it looks as though…” I faltered, unable to bring the image I had in my mind’s eye close enough to define it.
Holmes slowly raised a hand and pointed towards the clock on the mantelpiece. I watched it blankly for a moment before another chord struck, and then another, and quite suddenly I had it.
“Clockwork!” I exclaimed. “This pattern – it is like the cogs and gears of a clock!”
Ravensley stared as though we had both run mad. “A clockwork beetle? That is preposterous!”
“Not entirely, Mr Ravensley. See for yourself,” said Holmes, and I handed the lens to the young man. He hunched over the scarab, and Holmes leaned back in his chair to address us all. “The workmanship is rather in advance of any technique with which I am familiar, but I can tell you that this insect, however real it may appear, has certainly never been alive.”
“But why would anyone go to the trouble of making a toy beetle?” I wondered.
“That is no toy, Watson. And I would not touch it if I were you,” Holmes added as Ravensley reached out a finger to prod the scarab’s carapace. “I firmly believe that secreted somewhere within that delightful creature is the poison which killed your brother.” Ravensley drew back as though he had been burned.
“Poison?” I repeated. “But Professor Litefoot could find no trace of poison!”
Holmes held up a finger. “No trace of any poison known to European science, as I believe I said before. I was expecting something of the sort. There are many poisons yet to be identified by our laboratories, Watson, a large quantity of them fast-acting and virtually undetectable. Had it not been for the bite on Lord James’s shoulder, I should never have made the connection.”
“Why would anyone wish to poison Jamie?” Lady Amanda asked, staring at the scarab on the desk in astonishment. “He never did anyone the least harm.”
“And yet you did not wish to marry him,” Holmes replied, much to my surprise.
She stared at him in shock for some seconds before lowering her eyes. “I see that the stories of your deductive abilities were not exaggerated, Mr Holmes. You are quite correct. The match was not for love, but arranged by our parents when we were both children. It was never distasteful to me, as I have known Jamie for most of my life, but I did not love him. I was intending to ask him to release me from our engagement, as I…find my heart is taken by another.”
“That other man being his brother.”
There was a nod in response. Ravensley coloured, but drew himself up. “We were not proud of the fact, Mr Holmes,” he said defensively. “Jamie cared for Amanda, and was happy about the approaching wedding. He would have been heartbroken when we told him, which is why we put it off for so long, but he had to know eventually.” He shook his head. “It was our intention to tell him once the stupid business with the statue was over.”
“He was a good, kind, man, Mr Holmes, and we bore him no malice,” said Lady Amanda, the idea that this new information might cause Holmes to regard them as suspects evidently occurring to her. It had occurred to me at almost the same moment. “We did not kill him, you must believe that.”
There was a long pause. The young couple regarded my friend much as prey might look at the hunter bearing down upon it. I watched him as well, but he was giving nothing away. Lady Amanda cast a desperate glance in my direction, but I could offer her no comfort. This new revelation looked bad for them, and, had Lestrade been the one listening to their story, I knew that they would swiftly have been making a trip to Scotland Yard, whatever the circumstances.
The pause stretched on interminably. I saw the colour drain from Lady Amanda’s face, and helped Ravensley to seat her once more upon the sofa, fetching a small glass of brandy from the sideboard which he persuaded her to drink. Still Holmes said nothing, wrapped in some deliberation of his own and oblivious to the poor girl’s distress.
At last I could stand no more. “Holmes!” I said loudly, making the young people jump and my friend to finally swing round in his chair to face us.
“Yes, Watson?” he asked, as though nothing important had been said that little time before.
“What is your verdict?” I demanded, seeing the wide eyes of Ravensley and Lady Amanda turned on him in a mixture of hope and trepidation.
He looked at them in surprise, and blinked. “Oh. I doubt the murder to have been calculated, and I do not think that either of you are capable of constructing a clockwork beetle to administer foreign poison. I suspect that Lord James was unfortunate enough to disturb the person whose aim was to remove the statue from the earl’s possession. Your father is interested in astronomy, is he not?” he asked Ravensley.
The young man just looked at him for some moments, no doubt trying to assimilate the flow of words which exonerated and questioned him at the same time. “Yes,” he said eventually, “he is fascinated by the heavens.”
“Would I be correct in thinking that he has made particular study of the phases of the moon?”
“You are, Mr Holmes. He has even written a monograph upon the subject.”
Holmes nodded, and lapsed once more into silence, eyes fixed on the fire.
“We must go,” said Lady Amanda when it became clear that he would say no more. “We promised Lady Harcourt that we would be no more than an hour.”
“Please say nothing about our dreadful conduct towards Jamie,” Ravensley said earnestly. “We will try to make amends, but I would rather no one heard about it except from ourselves.”
“Of course,” I promised him. “We have kept the secrets of kings, and will treat yours with the same discretion.”
They both seemed almost pathetically grateful for the assurance. I supposed that they had thought their relationship well-enough hidden that no one would guess, but then they had not before put it to the test of Sherlock Holmes. I saw them to the sitting room door – when they were about to depart Holmes said quite suddenly and without even turning,
“One more thing: have the chimneys at Harcourt House been swept recently?”
“Why, yes,” Lady Amanda replied, her pretty brow furrowed in confusion at the apparently irrelevant question, coming as it did a propos of nothing. “On Wednesday. There was a dreadful mess – her ladyship was most put out.”
When Holmes did at last look up, his face was creased by a satisfied smile. “That is exactly what I expected to hear. Thank you.”
***
We all pressed him, but he would say nothing more on the matter. It was infuriating – I for one could not see the connection that the sweeping of chimneys could have with Lord James’s death, and suspected him of being deliberately obtuse.
The clock struck nine as the young people left us. Ravensley wondered whether he should warn Mycroft of his father’s displeasure with the handling of the investigation.
“I think not,” said Holmes with a smile. “You would do better to warn the earl to beware of my brother.”
When they had gone he struggled up from his chair. “Ring for supper, Watson,” he said, and then grimaced, one hand pressed to his stomach. Recalling the empty soup dish I could guess what had happened: a sudden influx of food after so long an abstinence had upset his digestion. He tried to move, but his legs buckled and I grabbed his arm as he caught hold of the back of the sofa. Somehow he remained standing, braced awkwardly between myself and the furniture.
“No more food for you tonight, old man,” I told him.
“You told me to eat!” he protested.
“A little, yes, and gradually. You have not eaten properly in weeks – if you have any more you will overload your system and be sick. Your body cannot handle too much at present.”
“Honestly, Watson, you are never satisfied,” Holmes said peevishly as I led him off towards his bedroom once more. “I have done as you ordered, rested and eaten, and still you are not happy. And I feel little better.”
I could not help but smile at his childish expectation that he would be well again after an hour or two of sleep and a bowl of broth. “Rest and food over a period of weeks, not hours, is what I prescribed,” I said. “You expect too much of yourself.”
He groaned as he lay down on the bed, one hand flung limply over his eyes. “I must be rid of this infernal weakness, Watson. What use am I like this?”
I did not answer him until I reached the door. For a moment I paused on the threshold as I had done earlier that day. “I think you know what you have to do, Holmes,” I said, and turned out the light.
TBC
Author: charleygirl
Rating: PG
Type: Gen, mystery
Characters Involved: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson
Summary: Visitors, explanations and clues...
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.
Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six
THE HAND OF SETH
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE HAND OF SETH
CHAPTER SEVEN
Holmes leaned forwards in his chair, a familiar gleam in his eye, and beckoned for the young man to continue.
“For more than three years now, my father and brother have not lived harmoniously,” Ravensley said. “They did once get on well, but of late my father has become…difficult. Jamie is…was of a much softer temperament, and sadly did not seem to measure up in my father’s eyes to all that an heir should be. This business over the curse and the statue just made relations worse between them.”
“Yes, I did perceive that the earl seemed less than grieved by your brother’s death,” Holmes remarked.
Ravensley blushed. “I can only apologise for his behaviour, Mr Holmes. It was completely unwarranted, and unacceptable, especially in light of his request for your assistance in the first place.”
“That matters little now, as I am no longer retained by your family to investigate the case.” My friend waved a telegram in the air, before throwing it onto his desk where it landed amid a pile of other papers.
“That may be the earl’s decision, Mr Holmes, but I can assure you it is not ours,” said the young lady at Ravensley’s side. “Jamie deserves justice, and you are the one who can make sure that he receives it.”
Holmes smiled slightly and inclined his head. “Your faith in me is most flattering, Lady Amanda. But if I am to have any success in this matter you both must be completely honest with me. There must be no concealing the facts purely to shield the family honour.”
“We understand that, Mr Holmes,” said Ravensley quickly. “Had it not been for my father’s express instructions I would have told you all this morning.”
“Then we must hope that later is indeed better than never.”
I readied my notebook as Ravensley and Lady Amanda exchanged a glance. She nodded encouragingly and he turned back to face us.
“There was a quarrel,” Ravensley said, “Last night, after we had all retired. I could hear the raised voices as I prepared for bed – my father had left the study door open and the house is not so vast as you have been led to believe. He was angry that Jamie had decided to consult you over a matter he believed to be of no importance. You must understand that my father has a deep hatred of the public gaze, and cannot countenance the idea of a stranger being privy to our family secrets.”
“And yet he chose to engage me himself, to investigate your brother’s death,” Holmes pointed out.
“I did think it strange at the time, but everything was in such an uproar that I had no time to query the decision. Later I supposed that as you already knew of Jamie’s fears he thought it better to involve just one person rather than many. And, as he knows Mr Mycroft Holmes a little I believe he assumed you would be as circumspect as your brother.” Ravensley smiled apologetically. “A little naïve of him, I will confess, but he was unaware of your reputation.”
Holmes glanced at me and smirked slightly. “It would seem that your readership is not so universal as you have led me to believe, Watson.”
I ignored him, knowing him to be twitting me and feeling that his timing could have been better. “Your father has this attitude towards your brother, and yet he agreed to put the Egyptian relic up for sale,” I said to Ravensley. “That is a little odd, is it not?”
“The statue being up for sale was my mother’s doing. She feared for Jamie’s safety and communicated with Christie’s auction house. When my father found out he was furious, and would have withdrawn the statue had it not been too late. Instead he insisted that the reserve price be raised to such a ludicrous amount that no one would bid. He did not want to be rid of the thing at all.”
“How do you believe your brother came to meet his death?” Holmes asked after a moment’s consideration.
“I cannot truly explain how it was done, Mr Holmes, but I believe that either Jamie’s mind turned and he did away with himself, or the quarrel with my father took a more sinister turn,” said Ravensley seriously.
I blinked in surprise. “You imagine your father capable of murder?”
“I imagine him capable of anything where the statue is concerned, Doctor,” he replied. “Two days ago a man called asking questions about it, and whether we had had an Egyptian lurking outside the house.”
“And had you?” Holmes asked sharply.
“Jamie swore that such a man was following him, but none of us ever caught sight of the fellow. The questions drove my father into such a passion that he threw the man out of the house with his own hand, despite their difference in size. The statue has some kind of hold over him. In latter years it has become an obsession.”
Holmes tapped a long finger against his lips, frowning. I could imagine his great brain putting the pieces together, discarding the ones that did not fit and finding connection where I could see none. “After the quarrel, did you hear anything more?”
Ravensley shook his head. “The door slammed, and that was the end of it all. I did slip down the landing to Jamie’s room to check that he was all right, but the door was locked and he would not answer my knocks.”
“And you thought nothing unusual in that?”
“He would frequently be incommunicative when he was in a temper. I assumed that if he wished to speak with me he would seek me out in the morning.”
“At what time did your father retire?”
“I do not believe that he did, Mr Holmes, at least not before I fell asleep myself. He frequently remains locked in the study until the early hours.”
Holmes nodded, and turned to the young woman seated on the sofa. “And you Lady Amanda? You heard nothing?”
“I have been residing with Lady Amelia in the east wing,” she replied. “We are separated from the main house by a stout door, and heard nothing at all save a little rain on the roof just after two o’clock.”
“I think, Mr Holmes, that Jamie may have been attempting to destroy the statue,” said Ravensley. “He had spoken of it many times before, of his desire to destroy it before it destroyed him.”
“Your father’s valet told us that your brother had a key to the study. Why so, when there was such animosity between the earl and his heir?” Holmes enquired.
“My mother insisted, in case anything should happen to my father when he shut himself away. He has suffered one apoplexy already, and she feared for his safety in a locked room.”
“Very sensible,” I said. “Vital seconds would be lost breaking down a door.”
“Did Lord James also have a key to the display cabinet?” Holmes asked.
Ravensley shook his head. “Only my father has that key, and it never leaves him.”
“Surely, then, if your theory holds true your brother would have been forced to break into the cabinet in order to dispose of the statue. The only evidence of tampering I observed was the work of an expert. Even if Lord James possessed the capability, which I doubt, the police would have discovered tools near his body, and they did not. And even if that were the case, where is the statue now. I take it that it has not been found anywhere in the house or grounds?” Ravensley shook his head. “Then are we to believe that your brother somehow broke into the case with his bare hands, got the statue out of the house and then returned to do away with himself in the study? And what of the loaded revolver found beside the body?” Holmes huffed sharply. “No, Mr Ravensley, it won’t do.”
The young man looked chastened, and bowed his head. Lady Amanda rested her hand on his arm and squeezed it gently. “There is the other matter, Will.”
Holmes’s ears pricked up like a foxhound’s. “Other matter?”
“Something was found in the study, Mr Holmes, but it was not the statue.”
“My grandfather brought back a great many curiosities from Egypt,” Ravensley explained, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing a cloth bundle which he handed to Holmes. “My father has continued the collection. I have never seen anything like this amongst his artefacts, however.”
Holmes took the bundle and carried it to his desk, where he carefully unwrapped it. I joined him to see for myself what it contained – lying there on the white material was what appeared to be a large black beetle, its shiny carapace gleaming with jewel-like colours in the gaslight, rather as a puddle of oil will do in the sun. It looked alive – Holmes gingerly prodded it with a pencil, but it did not move, for which I was unaccountably grateful.
“A scarab beetle,” he announced. “A native of Egypt, and certainly not of Mayfair.” He reached for his lens, which was lying on the desktop, and had to catch himself on the back of his chair. To his credit, he turned the stumble into an almost natural movement as he seated himself, but I had not missed the return of the weakness. “I take it,” he said, addressing Ravensley and Lady Amanda, “that nothing like this has even been brought to the house? Not even by a visitor?”
“Never,” Ravensley said firmly. “We found it in the grate, of all places. The police missed it entirely.”
“Now that is interesting. What caused you to disturb the ash in the grate?”
“My father insisted that we search for Jamie’s key. It was not on his…his body, and Duncan could find it nowhere else.”
Holmes nodded. He poked at the beetle again, and the thing flipped over onto its back, startling me with the abruptness of its movement. Something fell from its underside, to land with a clatter on the desktop. “What do you make of that, Watson?” Holmes asked after a brief study of the creature, handing me the glass.
I was not entirely sure what I was meant to be looking at, but I dutifully bent over the insect. Its innards had been revealed, and there were oddly-shaped pieces of metal filling its shell. As I looked closer, the muddled parts resolved themselves into a regular pattern that struck a chord in my memory. “Well, it looks as though…” I faltered, unable to bring the image I had in my mind’s eye close enough to define it.
Holmes slowly raised a hand and pointed towards the clock on the mantelpiece. I watched it blankly for a moment before another chord struck, and then another, and quite suddenly I had it.
“Clockwork!” I exclaimed. “This pattern – it is like the cogs and gears of a clock!”
Ravensley stared as though we had both run mad. “A clockwork beetle? That is preposterous!”
“Not entirely, Mr Ravensley. See for yourself,” said Holmes, and I handed the lens to the young man. He hunched over the scarab, and Holmes leaned back in his chair to address us all. “The workmanship is rather in advance of any technique with which I am familiar, but I can tell you that this insect, however real it may appear, has certainly never been alive.”
“But why would anyone go to the trouble of making a toy beetle?” I wondered.
“That is no toy, Watson. And I would not touch it if I were you,” Holmes added as Ravensley reached out a finger to prod the scarab’s carapace. “I firmly believe that secreted somewhere within that delightful creature is the poison which killed your brother.” Ravensley drew back as though he had been burned.
“Poison?” I repeated. “But Professor Litefoot could find no trace of poison!”
Holmes held up a finger. “No trace of any poison known to European science, as I believe I said before. I was expecting something of the sort. There are many poisons yet to be identified by our laboratories, Watson, a large quantity of them fast-acting and virtually undetectable. Had it not been for the bite on Lord James’s shoulder, I should never have made the connection.”
“Why would anyone wish to poison Jamie?” Lady Amanda asked, staring at the scarab on the desk in astonishment. “He never did anyone the least harm.”
“And yet you did not wish to marry him,” Holmes replied, much to my surprise.
She stared at him in shock for some seconds before lowering her eyes. “I see that the stories of your deductive abilities were not exaggerated, Mr Holmes. You are quite correct. The match was not for love, but arranged by our parents when we were both children. It was never distasteful to me, as I have known Jamie for most of my life, but I did not love him. I was intending to ask him to release me from our engagement, as I…find my heart is taken by another.”
“That other man being his brother.”
There was a nod in response. Ravensley coloured, but drew himself up. “We were not proud of the fact, Mr Holmes,” he said defensively. “Jamie cared for Amanda, and was happy about the approaching wedding. He would have been heartbroken when we told him, which is why we put it off for so long, but he had to know eventually.” He shook his head. “It was our intention to tell him once the stupid business with the statue was over.”
“He was a good, kind, man, Mr Holmes, and we bore him no malice,” said Lady Amanda, the idea that this new information might cause Holmes to regard them as suspects evidently occurring to her. It had occurred to me at almost the same moment. “We did not kill him, you must believe that.”
There was a long pause. The young couple regarded my friend much as prey might look at the hunter bearing down upon it. I watched him as well, but he was giving nothing away. Lady Amanda cast a desperate glance in my direction, but I could offer her no comfort. This new revelation looked bad for them, and, had Lestrade been the one listening to their story, I knew that they would swiftly have been making a trip to Scotland Yard, whatever the circumstances.
The pause stretched on interminably. I saw the colour drain from Lady Amanda’s face, and helped Ravensley to seat her once more upon the sofa, fetching a small glass of brandy from the sideboard which he persuaded her to drink. Still Holmes said nothing, wrapped in some deliberation of his own and oblivious to the poor girl’s distress.
At last I could stand no more. “Holmes!” I said loudly, making the young people jump and my friend to finally swing round in his chair to face us.
“Yes, Watson?” he asked, as though nothing important had been said that little time before.
“What is your verdict?” I demanded, seeing the wide eyes of Ravensley and Lady Amanda turned on him in a mixture of hope and trepidation.
He looked at them in surprise, and blinked. “Oh. I doubt the murder to have been calculated, and I do not think that either of you are capable of constructing a clockwork beetle to administer foreign poison. I suspect that Lord James was unfortunate enough to disturb the person whose aim was to remove the statue from the earl’s possession. Your father is interested in astronomy, is he not?” he asked Ravensley.
The young man just looked at him for some moments, no doubt trying to assimilate the flow of words which exonerated and questioned him at the same time. “Yes,” he said eventually, “he is fascinated by the heavens.”
“Would I be correct in thinking that he has made particular study of the phases of the moon?”
“You are, Mr Holmes. He has even written a monograph upon the subject.”
Holmes nodded, and lapsed once more into silence, eyes fixed on the fire.
“We must go,” said Lady Amanda when it became clear that he would say no more. “We promised Lady Harcourt that we would be no more than an hour.”
“Please say nothing about our dreadful conduct towards Jamie,” Ravensley said earnestly. “We will try to make amends, but I would rather no one heard about it except from ourselves.”
“Of course,” I promised him. “We have kept the secrets of kings, and will treat yours with the same discretion.”
They both seemed almost pathetically grateful for the assurance. I supposed that they had thought their relationship well-enough hidden that no one would guess, but then they had not before put it to the test of Sherlock Holmes. I saw them to the sitting room door – when they were about to depart Holmes said quite suddenly and without even turning,
“One more thing: have the chimneys at Harcourt House been swept recently?”
“Why, yes,” Lady Amanda replied, her pretty brow furrowed in confusion at the apparently irrelevant question, coming as it did a propos of nothing. “On Wednesday. There was a dreadful mess – her ladyship was most put out.”
When Holmes did at last look up, his face was creased by a satisfied smile. “That is exactly what I expected to hear. Thank you.”
***
We all pressed him, but he would say nothing more on the matter. It was infuriating – I for one could not see the connection that the sweeping of chimneys could have with Lord James’s death, and suspected him of being deliberately obtuse.
The clock struck nine as the young people left us. Ravensley wondered whether he should warn Mycroft of his father’s displeasure with the handling of the investigation.
“I think not,” said Holmes with a smile. “You would do better to warn the earl to beware of my brother.”
When they had gone he struggled up from his chair. “Ring for supper, Watson,” he said, and then grimaced, one hand pressed to his stomach. Recalling the empty soup dish I could guess what had happened: a sudden influx of food after so long an abstinence had upset his digestion. He tried to move, but his legs buckled and I grabbed his arm as he caught hold of the back of the sofa. Somehow he remained standing, braced awkwardly between myself and the furniture.
“No more food for you tonight, old man,” I told him.
“You told me to eat!” he protested.
“A little, yes, and gradually. You have not eaten properly in weeks – if you have any more you will overload your system and be sick. Your body cannot handle too much at present.”
“Honestly, Watson, you are never satisfied,” Holmes said peevishly as I led him off towards his bedroom once more. “I have done as you ordered, rested and eaten, and still you are not happy. And I feel little better.”
I could not help but smile at his childish expectation that he would be well again after an hour or two of sleep and a bowl of broth. “Rest and food over a period of weeks, not hours, is what I prescribed,” I said. “You expect too much of yourself.”
He groaned as he lay down on the bed, one hand flung limply over his eyes. “I must be rid of this infernal weakness, Watson. What use am I like this?”
I did not answer him until I reached the door. For a moment I paused on the threshold as I had done earlier that day. “I think you know what you have to do, Holmes,” I said, and turned out the light.
TBC
