The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (48 page)

It is seldom that two people look so absurd, side by side, as this couple appeared. Mr Coote, with his ample watch-chained waistcoat, large head, mournful moustache, and a soulful superiority in his brown eyes, brought to my mind Mr Chadband in
Bleak House
: ‘A large, greasy, self-satisfied man, of no particular denomination'. Whether the lawyer's baritone voice sounded unctuous or melodious must be a matter of taste.

Miss Pierce was a starveling sparrow paired with a glossy crow. She was a lady of middle years, slight and frail, the type who is destined to outlive us all. She wore a grey old-fashioned bonnet, trimmed with mauve and white silk flowers, a specimen of headgear whose very fit was tight and mean. Her features were strict and almost motionless. Such movement as there was came principally from the glint of her spectacle-lenses in gold-wire frames.

After Holmes had waved them to their chairs, Mr Coote presented his client's complaint. Miss Pierce said little, except that she had a curious habit of echoing softly what she considered the most important word in the lawyer's previous sentence, lest Holmes should miss it. Sometimes she gave sound to the word. Where the utterance was repugnant, her pursed lips formed the syllables with significant emphasis but no voice. Mr Coote cleared his throat deeply and significantly, as if to launch into an aria beside a piano and a fern.

‘Miss Pierce, as I indicated in my letter Mr Holmes, has been much troubled in past weeks—months I might say—by the indelicate conduct of her neighbour.'

‘Indelicate,' mouthed Miss Pierce in her slight, bird-like tone, ‘yes.'

‘My client is a maiden lady, living alone, but for the company of a single servant-woman.'

‘Servant,' Miss Pierce murmured, with an eye to the niceties of social class.

‘My client's residence lies in a remote part of Essex, separated by a field and a rivulet from the adjoining property of Coldhams Farm. It is six-and-a-half miles from Saffron Walden, eight-and-a-half from Bishop's Stortford. From the railway at Audley End, it is four miles, twelve hundred and twenty-seven yards.'

I guessed that these meticulous measurements would prove a useful means for Mr Coote to run up a tidy little bill at Miss Pierce's expense.

‘I find it curious,' said Holmes quietly, ‘that such care has been taken over these distances and none at all as to that between your client and the house at Coldhams Farm.'

Mr Coote gave a faint but satisfied smile.

‘Mr Holmes, we should require permission to go upon Captain Dougal's land. My client would rather not make such a request.'

‘Rather not,' echoed Miss Pierce nervously.

‘Very well,' Holmes shrugged, as if it did not much matter, since he might give Coote his marching orders at any minute. ‘Pray continue if you wish to.'

‘Captain Dougal,' said the lawyer, frowning at such levity, ‘is the proprietor of Coldhams Farm, scarcely more than a small-holding. The offence alleged is one of the most blatant indecency.'

‘Blatant!' Miss Pierce mouthed the word silently but with a significant nod.

‘I venture to think,' said Coote in a silkier Chadband voice, ‘that it may in all probability be a case of devil-worship.'

At this point, Holmes ceased lounging and sat up.

‘Pray do continue, Mr Coote.'

‘Dougal is a man of bad character and evil reputation with young women. In the three years he has lived at the farm, no less than four paternity summonses have been served upon him on behalf of young women of the labouring class.'

‘Summonses!' Miss Pierce gave a satisfied nod at the memory of seeing justice done.

‘Female servants have come and gone. Respectable girls are soon fetched away by their families. Those of no character remain until they depart to childbed. It is common knowledge that while there were two sisters in his employ, he had his way with one of them in the very presence of the other.'

Miss Pierce looked quickly at the three of us, finding no word that could be decently echoed.

‘Forgive me,' said Holmes with the faintest hint of malice, ‘I take it that your client does not seek a post as servant in Captain Dougal's household. Nor is she of the labouring class. I daresay that Captain Dougal is as you paint him. However, there is surely nothing in law that even such a man as he may not live on land adjoining Miss Pierce's.'

‘It is a matter of the bicyclists in the field, Mr Holmes, if it is not indeed something worse,' Mr Coote said abruptly.

Miss Pierce looked at us significantly. Holmes stared at Mr Coote.

‘I see—or, rather I do not see. What bicyclists in which field?'

The solicitor assumed the expression of a man weighted with grief.

‘This scoundrel, Dougal, leads a life of unrepentant viciousness and unexampled impiety. In such a remote part of the county, it is not difficult for a rascal of a little wealth and plausible manner to entice the ruder and more rustic young women into his repellent practices. I concede that what he does in his own house is something difficult to control. What he does in the open air, in the public view, is quite another matter. I speak of Captain Dougal and a dozen of the village girls, as they perform their lewd ceremonies in the field adjacent to Miss Pierce's land.'

Miss Pierce gave us a flash of her spectacles.

‘Like Satan at a witches' coven,' Mr Coote continued, ‘this man spends his nights training these female clodhoppers as a team of naked bicyclists!'

‘Naked!' Miss Pierce's lips formed the word soundlessly but with great vigour.

Holmes and I avoided one another's eyes, though I confess I was reduced to the expedient of vigorous nose-blowing.

‘Dear me,' said Holmes at length, addressing Mr Coote and avoiding Miss Pierce, as seemed to be her wish. ‘Then you already have the remedy at hand, my dear sir. The rural constabulary, though slow in acting upon information received, may generally be relied upon in the long run. There are laws of public nuisance, are there not? There are statutes to punish indecent display.'

‘Exactly!'

‘Then surely, my dear sir, you have your answer.'

Mr Coote shook his head.

‘No, Mr Holmes. You misunderstand me. If Miss Pierce were to lay an information in that way, she must be drawn into the centre of the scandal, for these particular activities in the field affect only her. Publicity could scarcely be avoided. Suppose that it should be, as I suppose, some form of diabolism! Greatly though I sympathize with my client …'

Miss Pierce nodded emphatically.

‘… it would scarcely do for the name of a legal adviser to the National Vigilance Association to be quoted in such a context. There are not wanting those who would mock, Mr Holmes!'

There was a silence while Miss Pierce looked round at us all and waited.

‘Am I to take it,' said Holmes slowly, ‘that you propose my name as the centrepiece of this bicycling scandal?'

Mr Coote had the grace to look a little embarrassed.

‘You are known as a detective, Mr Holmes. Your name has been associated with murder, robbery, blackmail, adultery, espionage. It would do you no harm and, I say without doubt, you would put a stop to these insults easily enough.'

‘Indeed!'

‘Chivalry will remind you, Mr Holmes, how much a lady of gentle ways like Miss Pierce would suffer. The local esteem in which she is held would be compromised by association with such proceedings. Of course, if you will not take the case, you will not. I urge it as a matter of respect for gentility, sir.'

Miss Pierce performed a brief cat-like and confidential closing of the eyes.

Sherlock Holmes reached for his pipe. Miss Pierce uttered a quick cough-like sound of alarm. He withdrew his hand.

‘Tell me, Mr Coote. What precisely takes place in the field at night?'

‘As I understand it, Mr Holmes, these women are entirely naked. They disport themselves in gross rituals, forming a circle about the evil one, if I may so term him. Captain Dougal stands at the centre and commands their depravities.'

‘I do not quite follow you. How does he command them?'

‘I believe he shouts at them,' said Mr Coote self-consciously. ‘He tells them what to do.'

‘And what do they do?'

‘I understand that they perform lewd acrobatic postures upon bicycles,' said Mr Coote, a little angry at this continued cross-questioning.

‘Postures,' Miss Pierce confirmed.

‘Dear me,' Holmes said, as if the outrage were beyond anything he had supposed, ‘and what costume does Captain Dougal wear?'

‘None,' said Mr Coote snappishly. ‘He stands there quite naked!'

‘Quite!' said Miss Pierce, sharp in her turn.

‘In a state of gross and rude excitement,' added Coote portentously.

After twenty minutes more of this sort of thing, Mr Coote and Miss Pierce took their departure. Sherlock Holmes had yet to commit himself but assured them that he would give their request, that he should make an immediate visit to the neighbourhood of Coldhams Farm, his most careful consideration. As soon as they had gone, I turned to my friend in some indignation.

‘I call that the most infernal cheek! To come with such a story, when they had only to go to the police-station at Saffron Walden! Do they suppose we have nothing better to do with our time than follow a goose-chase of this kind?'

Holmes was lounging in the old-fashioned chair, filling his pipe in earnest.

‘You are quite right, my dear fellow. It is absurd, is it not? That is half its attraction. It verges upon the pathological. Indeed, there is an item in the works of the great German baron upon
equus eroticus
. Unless I am much mistaken, Watson, there lurks in that bleak fenland a criminality of which Mr Coote and Miss Pierce have never dreamt. I doubt if there could be better use of our time than a visit to this bucolic Lothario and his bumpkins.'

I feared there would be something like this, as soon as I heard a suggestion of devil-worship.

‘I don't see it,' I said impatiently.

He chuckled.

‘I daresay not, my dear old Watson. We will reflect, and then discuss it again this evening. For the moment, let us just take the precaution of consulting Bradshaw upon the trains between Liverpool Street and Bishop's Stortford. In this instance, I believe the Cambridge line will prove the most convenient.'

II

After so much scoffing at the absurdity of Miss Pierce's complaint, I do not think that in all my life I was so occupied as in the next few weeks. Two days later, Holmes and I stepped from the train at Bishop's Stortford to be met by Henry Pilgrim's pony and trap, commandeered as a cab in this flat desolate country. We drove through summer fenland for several miles, the hedges white with hawthorn blossom, at first following the railway line where it ran northwards to Cambridge. Then our driver veered briskly into a lane, which soon forked into a smaller lane, then into a track that was scarcely a lane at all.

Ahead of us I glimpsed, through a screen of trees, the outline of a modest farmhouse with a steep dark roof, diamond-patterned by tiles of a lighter red. There was a yard in front of the door. A narrow water-filled moat appeared to surround the property, with a screen of dark firs and stunted apple-trees that made a gloomy enclosure even on a sunny afternoon. I supposed that this must be Miss Pierce's residence but our driver pointed his whip as we clattered past and said confidentially, ‘Captain Dougal, Coldhams Farm.'

I suppose a further half-mile passed before we turned into a by-way of trim hedges and clipped verges, ending at our client's porch.

‘It seems a good distance between the properties for her to see from one to the other, with the light failing,' I said to Holmes sceptically.

He glanced round.

‘I daresay it does. If you will observe the lie of the land, however, the field surrounding Coldhams Farm comes out almost as far as this.'

So much for our arrival. As I feared, the grim outer landscape of fens and drainage ditches was a pinprick compared to the comfortless domestic economy of Miss Pierce. Supper was a spartan celebration of boiled cod and hard peas, which I should prefer to forget and could not eat. When I murmured a complaint to Holmes, he merely said, ‘Since the mental faculties become refined and sharpened by starvation, I suppose one should not object to such a bill of fare. It has often crossed my mind, Watson, to remind you that what the digestion gains from the blood supply is lost to the brain.'

It was then almost ten o'clock and we were led by Miss Pierce and Mr Coote to a room at the attic level. From this vantage, we were to keep observation that evening, and all night if need be.

‘Forgive me,' said Holmes, as he passed to a round-arched landing window at the level of the main bedrooms, ‘surely one's view of Captain Dougal's field is blocked at this height by the lime tree and the beech?'

Mr Coote looked as if he were dealing with a simpleton.

‘Of course it is, Mr Holmes. It is from the top floor that one sees the performances of Captain Dougal and his harlots.'

Holmes and I glanced at one another but made no reply. We followed our guides up a narrower set of bare wooden stairs to a box-room at the level of the attics. A single camp-bed with three army ‘biscuits' as a mattress was the sole concession to sleep. At this level, it was true, a window looked directly across the field to the little moat and the dark stifling fir trees of Coldhams Farm, almost half a mile away. In the foreground a waning half-moon glimmered on reedy pools and patches of mud in the intervening pasture. Black trees stood low on a vast horizon and the dim figures of cattle were visible here and there.

I do not know how long we waited, with the intense silence of that landscape weighing upon us. I thought of Baker Street and how we should now be taking a glass of something warm in the company of Inspector Lestrade and hearing news of Scotland Yard. At length Mr Coote said, ‘See for yourself!'