The Secret Notebooks of Sherlock Holmes (13 page)

‘“Who is this man, Inspector?” she demanded, looking straight at me.

‘Lestrade awkwardly introduced me. It was clear she had no intention of shaking hands with me, for her own hands remained clasped in her lap. It was also clear that she had never heard of me; not surprising, I suppose, Watson, for in those early days I was unknown except to a very few people in Scotland Yard and a limited circle of acquaintances I had made through my former Varsity colleagues, including that handful of clients whose cases I had already taken up.
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‘But she apparently accepted me as one of Lestrade’s minions, for she did not look at me again and, when she spoke, she addressed her remarks to Lestrade.

‘“Although I do not approve of your examination of my property, certainly not for a second time, Inspector,” she said coldly, “I suppose I am obliged by law to give my permission. However, I repeat the assertion I made on your first visit: you will not find my son in this house. As before, Norris will accompany you.”

‘At this she nodded abruptly to the butler who had remained, standing just inside the door, which he then opened to usher us out.

‘As we shuffled in an embarrassed silence out of the room, two aspects of the encounter struck me. The first was the manner in which she had phrased her reference to her son’s suspected presence in the house. She had not categorically denied it. Instead, she had referred to it more obliquely by stating that Lestrade would not find her son, thereby avoiding a direct lie. This equivocation convinced me that her son was indeed concealed somewhere in the building. The second was her insistence on the butler accompanying us. This pleased me. Lestrade had already told me that, during the initial search of the castle, Norris had been with them the whole time. It crossed my mind that, rather than being struck by some irrational conviction that Arnsworth was concealed in the house, this feeling might have been suggested to Lestrade by some involuntary movement
made by a member of the household, the effect of which the Inspector himself had not been fully aware of and which he had later ascribed to his own intuition. Norris could well have been the unwitting source of such a sensation. If Arnsworth was indeed hiding in the castle, who would be most likely to know this, apart from Lady Arnsworth, but the family butler?

‘I therefore decided to keep a close watch on Norris for any small changes in his demeanour which might lead me to the suspect.

‘I will not bore you, my dear fellow, with a detailed account of our search of the castle. At the time, it seemed interminable. We began at the top of the building and worked our way down, much as Lestrade had done on the first occasion and, as he had described, there were dozens of rooms, some large and well-furnished, others little more than cubbyholes containing nothing but dust. We did not, as Lestrade had done, hang sheets and towels out of the windows, although I could understand his concern to mark off each chamber as it was searched, for the place was like a labyrinth. And all the time, Norris accompanied us.

‘He was a tall, heavy-shouldered man with a long, lugubrious face, the colour of lard, which was difficult to read, for it registered no emotions whatsoever, not even the smallest flicker of impatience or weariness as he followed us from room to room or stood waiting as we made our searches. Only his eyes showed any sign of animation and even that was limited to a sideways
movement when Lestrade or one of his officers stepped too near a table or a cabinet on which were displayed ornaments or other small valuables which could have been knocked over or spirited away into a pocket. But no other feature so much as twitched.

‘However, I kept him under very close observation, trusting to my own instinct that eventually he would unwittingly betray his young master’s whereabouts. But nothing happened.

‘After about three hours of searching the upstairs rooms, we descended to the ground floor where we stood grouped together a little uncertainly in the main entrance hall, the walls of which were lined with a curious collection of weapons – swords, sabres, shields, flintlock pistols and halberds arranged into intricate designs of chevrons, triangles and concentric circles.

‘Lestrade hesitated over which room we should inspect next and I guessed from his manner that he was trying to postpone the inevitable moment when the drawing room would have to be searched for a second time and he would be forced into another encounter with the formidable Lady Arnsworth.

‘To help him make up his mind, I turned to Norris.

‘“Where does that passage lead to?” I asked, pointing to an archway to the right which led into a dim gallery hung with ancient banners and lined, like the hall, with suits of armour.

‘His response to my question was so controlled that, had I not been watching him closely, I could have
missed it altogether. He became even more impassive if that were possible. Even his eyes remained fixed, staring straight ahead at the wall opposite as if he had suffered a cataleptic seizure, and when he spoke his voice had the expressionless tone of an automata.

‘“To the family chapel, sir,” he replied, not looking at me but keeping his gaze fixed forwards.

‘At that moment, I knew exactly where Gilbert Arnsworth was hiding.

‘“Let us search there first,” I said to Lestrade and, giving him no time to protest, I led the way down the passage.

‘It ended in a heavy oak door, strapped with iron and furnished with a large metal ring as a handle. It was weighty and difficult to open but with the help of one of the constables, I managed to force it back and we stepped inside the chapel.

‘It was a long, rectangular chamber with a high vaulted ceiling supported on stone pillars. Although the fabric of this part of the building was probably of the same early date as the west tower and the other medieval features, it had clearly been refurbished at some later date, at which time the oak pews with their heavy carvings and red velvet cushions had been installed, as well as the magnificent reredos of green marble and gilded wood placed against the east wall.

‘The altar, which stood beneath it, was a comparatively modest fitting compared to its elaborate backdrop, for it consisted of nothing more than a simple table hung with
a green velvet cloth, trimmed with gold braid, and bore only a silver cross and a pair of elegant branched silver candle-sticks. On the steps of the altar stood two tall white marble vases containing lilies.

‘We halted just inside the door and I was aware of the response of both Lestrade and Norris. The butler stood like a statue; not even his eyes so much as blinked and his profile, when I glanced sideways at it, might have been chiselled from the same stone with which the chapel was constructed. In contrast, Lestrade’s uneasiness was all too obvious in the small movements of his head and hands and in his rapid, shallow breathing, as if he had run a long distance.

‘I knew immediately why he was showing such signs of distress and why he had not discovered Gilbert Arnsworth the first time he had searched the chapel. The good Inspector was intimidated by the atmosphere of religious sanctity about the place, manifested in the scent of flowers and beeswax, and in the silence that hung like a shadowy veil over the altar and its green and gold reredos. It had inhibited him from making a thorough search of the place. I was also convinced that, when Lestrade was in the chapel on that first occasion, or perhaps even in the passage leading up to it, Norris had made some slight, involuntary movement which had given Lestrade that apparently irrational conviction that Arnsworth was hiding somewhere in the building.’

‘But not necessarily in the chapel?’ I interrupted Holmes’ narrative to ask.

‘Obviously not, or he would have given orders for the place to be thoroughly searched,’ Holmes replied. ‘But Lestrade is a conventional man, subject to all the restraints which that implies, one of which is the fear of behaving inappropriately in a sanctified place, and that
tabu
overrode all other considerations.

‘Luckily, I do not suffer from the Inspector’s inhibitions and, once I was convinced that I had discovered Gilbert Arnsworth’s hiding-place, I proceeded to flush him out, using the same method which I was later to put to good effect in the Bohemian scandal case, namely the use of fire.
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‘The lesson of that inquiry, as I think I explained to you at the time, is that when a woman thinks her house is on fire, she will rush to the rescue of whatever she values most – her baby, in the case of a married woman, her jewel box if she is unmarried. As you know, Irene Adler immediately hurried to the secret recess in which she had concealed the photograph of herself and the King of Bohemia.

‘In the Arnsworth affair, the same principle applied,
except in that case the suspect had more to save than a mere photograph – his life, or so he thought. The fear of being trapped in a hiding-place during a fire would have caused most men, unless they had the courage of a lion, and Gilbert Arnsworth was not among their number, to make a bolt.

‘Before setting out that morning for Arnsworth Castle, I had taken the precaution of concealing in the pocket of my ulster a box of vestas
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together with a long taper made from twisted brown paper which I had liberally smeared with tar. It was the work of a moment to light it and hold it above my head, shouting “Fire!” at the top of my voice as I did so. Black smoke poured from it in a choking cloud.

‘There is a saying about all Bedlam breaking loose, an eventuality I have never witnessed, but I imagine it must be very similar to the scene my action provoked.

‘Norris dashed forward, showing a remarkable turn of speed for a man normally so stately in his bearing, and tried to seize the taper from me, assisted by Lestrade who, judging by his expression of scandalised outrage, must have imagined I had gone mad, while the two constables hung back, mouths agape at this scene of
unexpected pandemonium, for both Lestrade, Norris, as well as myself, were shouting as we struggled together.

‘In the midst of all this noise and confusion, I noticed that the green and gold cloth which hung over the altar had begun to move as if an unseen hand was trying to fumble its way through the covering.

‘I immediately flung down the taper and began to stamp it out, as I did so pulling on Lestrade’s arm and pointing towards the altar. As the two constables took over the task of trampling out the last fragments of smouldering brown paper, the Inspector and I, together with Norris, watched as a crouching form emerged from under the folds of fabric. A moment later, the figure of Gilbert Arnsworth stood upright and confronted us.

‘I recognised him at once from the description which the night porter at the hotel had given to Lestrade and which Lestrade had passed on to me; also from his physical likeness to his mother. They shared the same haughty bearing and handsome patrician features, spoilt in his case by a dissolute air, although, as we stared at each other in those first few seconds of disclosure, his face expressed mainly shock and terror.

‘Despite this, he was the first one of us to recover. Before I or Lestrade or either of his officers could stir so much as a finger, he was off like a hare, spurred on no doubt by a desperate need for self-preservation, vaulting over the pews as he made a wild rush for the door which had been left open.

‘Lestrade and I were hampered by the fact that we were still interlocked by our earlier struggle over the taper with Norris and it took us several seconds to free ourselves. Being younger and fitter than the other two, I was the first to disengage myself, but I was not prepared for Norris’s intervention. As I pushed past him to make my own dash for the door, he thrust out a leg causing me to trip and to lose my balance momentarily. It was only a matter of seconds before I recovered but it was long enough for Arnsworth to reach the door and pass through it, slamming it shut behind him. By the time I had wrenched it open and reached the passageway, there was no sign of him, although from the doorway, I had a clear view down this corridor as far as the main entrance hall, which Arnsworth could not have reached in those few seconds’ advantage he had over me. And yet he had disappeared as if by magic.

‘Now, my dear fellow, I know I have repeated to you before that old maxim of mine that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. No doubt you have grown tired of hearing it. But that does not lessen its validity. As I stood there contemplating the empty passage, logic told me there was only one explanation which had nothing to do with the supernatural. Arnsworth must have escaped through a hidden opening of some kind in the passageway itself, although none was immediately apparent.

‘However, halfway down on the right hand side stood a suit of armour, behind which hung a long curtain of heavy red velvet as if to serve as a backdrop for the figure. I noticed that the hem was swaying to and fro as if in a light draught, but there was no current of air that I could feel and everything else in the passage, the hanging lamps and the banners arranged crossways on the walls, remained motionless. Therefore, with Lestrade at my heels, I sprinted towards the curtain which I pulled to one side, revealing an ancient oaken door which stood ajar and, with its iron straps and studding, was very similar to that leading into the church.

‘This one, however, led on to a winding staircase, as I discovered when I pulled it fully open. It was, I surmised, the door to the west tower.

‘Up I went and round I went, following the tight spirals of the stone steps – a giddying sensation, especially as the staircase was so narrow that my shoulders brushed the walls on either side. At intervals, windows, little wider than slits, let in some much-needed fresh air and afforded me glimpses of the moat and the surrounding gardens, diminishing in size the higher I went until I could look down on the tops of trees and the sheet of water in the moat lying as flat and as still as a mirror in which were reflected the blue sky and the white, drifting clouds.

‘After what seemed like an eternity of climbing ever upwards, the staircase ended at a small semi-circular
landing with a low door which I pushed softly open and, crouching down, emerged at the top of the tower with Lestrade behind me.