The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (49 page)

I looked at the field before me but saw only the grey outlines of cattle. Even Holmes, as he narrowed his keen eyes, looked puzzled.

‘I see nothing,' I said gruffly.

‘Of course you do not!' said Miss Pierce angrily. ‘Not here! Over there! Take these! And stand up there!'

With that she handed me a pair of binoculars whose variable lenses included a pair for night vision. They were such glasses as would only be used by a serving officer on campaign—or a troublesome crone determined to spy on the world after dark. She also indicated a stout wooden shoe-box, necessary to increase her own diminutive height as observer but scarcely for us.

What Holmes and I saw—through a glass most darkly—was a foggy impression of Dougal and his rustic wenches two or three hundred yards away. There was an occasional call or cry and a fleeting drift of laughter. What I saw might have been libidinous, had it not been so absurd and indistinct. Half a dozen clod-hopping young females were riding bicycles with a little difficulty over the fenland turf.

At this distance, it seemed that each young equestrienne had been chosen for her ample or muscular form, each pair of haunches more than overlapping the saddle while strapping legs strove to drive the pedals. From time to time, one or other of these rustic valkyries would attempt to perform some mildly acrobatic feat in response to the command of her ringmaster, and several fell off. Since the turf was soft, I suppose it was little hardship.

At the centre of this ensemble stood a tall and portly man with dark hair and an abundant beard. He was completely naked and, unless my eyes deceived me in such obscurity, both his face and his loins suggested a state of priapic frenzy.

Though I am conscious that I may already have described too fully a scene which would better remain veiled, some account of it is necessary to an understanding of what followed. Our hosts retired, leaving Holmes and me to perform the rest of this ridiculous sentry-go. From our observation, it was supposed that we were to present a complaint against Dougal—in our own names, so that the modest cheeks of Miss Pierce or Mr Coote should not be brought to the blush. What fools they were making of us!

As soon as we were alone together I swore to Holmes that I should return to London the next morning. If necessary, I would go alone. My friend was convulsed with laughter, struggling not to allow his eruptions of mirth to be heard all over the house.

‘That woman cannot see so far as her own end of the field but by climbing up a window in the attic,' I said furiously. ‘Even then she can make nothing out except with military binoculars. Do not tell me, Holmes, that her maiden modesty is insulted! She has done everything to ensure that she may not miss a single lewdness! I daresay the whisper of her conduct has got round the neighbourhood, so we are now brought in to save her reputation.'

For reasons which I could not have anticipated, however, we did not go back to London the next day. At breakfast, while the servant was replenishing the coffee-pot, I remarked to Holmes that the case against Dougal was a fuss about nothing. I did this in the hope that Miss Pierce, who was in the adjoining parlour with Mr Coote, might hear me—or that if she did not hear herself, the honest servant would repeat my words to her. The servant, a round-faced aproned body, put down the pot and said, ‘Never mind those young trollops on the bicycles, sir. You ask him where that poor gentle soul Miss Holland went to. She's gone a year or two now and never been seen nor heard from since.'

The change in Sherlock Holmes was characteristic. His back straightened, his features were as still as carved ivory while he listened to her. Then he said softly, ‘Tell me about Miss Holland, if you will.'

The woman looked towards the parlour, where lurked Miss Pierce and the lawyer.

‘I can't tell you more, sir. All I say is that such a refined and gentle lady as she was, she went unaccountably away without a word and never came back. Not a word of warning. As if she'd been swept off the face of the earth.'

‘Will you not, at least, tell me who she was?'

Now there was no mistaking a mixture of triumph and contempt in the servant's face.

‘Mrs Dougal, she liked to call herself, until the real Mrs Dougal come and put a stop to it all.'

‘Then it is scarcely surprising that she should vanish, is it?' I suggested.

But the woman would say no more, beyond murmuring significantly that she knew the value of her place and the cost of an action for slander with which Captain Dougal had threatened others. Miss Pierce, when asked about Miss Holland, professed to know nothing about the dealings of the captain with any of his women.

‘Such creatures come and go at Coldhams week by week! How should anybody know which is which? Mrs Dougal? They'd all be Mrs Dougals, if they had their way. As it is, there's half a dozen that must have borne his children but don't bear his name.'

Breakfast had been little more than bread and gruel, accompanied by coffee whose odour was chiefly of dandelions and chicory. Nothing would persuade me to spend another day under Miss Pierce's roof. I had gone to pack my overnight things. Holmes announced his intention of taking his morning pipe out of doors, smoking being forbidden on Miss Pierce's premises.

I finished my preparations and waited. A full hour passed as I stood at the window of that uncarpeted and unpainted box-room, staring morosely across the fenland that glimmered in the morning sun. The dark trees screened Captain Dougal's property and his rustic harem from the world. There are those who, in the smoking-rooms of their clubs, might chaff one another about the captain's midnight romps with country lasses. To such vulgar souls, the promiscuous intercourse of Dougal and his bicyclists seems no more shocking than the couplings of bull and cow. Perhaps it was my mood that morning, or perhaps it was the flat and unfrequented countryside before me, that made Coldhams Farm appear at that moment one of the darkest and most sinister retreats upon this earth.

It was quite an hour and half before I heard Holmes climbing the attic stairs. He threw open the door, looking extraordinarily pleased with himself.

‘I think we shall move on,' he said cheerfully.

‘Do you mean to return to London?'

He sat down on the only chair, an abandoned relic of the dining-room, and began to refill his tobacco-pouch.

‘Not quite, Watson. However, I have found a far more agreeable lodging from which we may continue our observation.'

‘Why continue it? Have we not seen everything there is to see?'

He frowned and put away the pouch.

‘I should have thought so until this morning. Yet something in my bones forbids me to abandon this investigation just yet.'

‘Miss Holland?'

‘Precisely.'

‘But what have we to do with Miss Holland?'

‘Possibly nothing, Watson. Ladies may vanish and never be heard of again in the place where they were. That is quite true. The naked cyclists are exciting only to a sterile soul like Miss Pierce and a pompous buffoon like Mr Coote. Put it all together, however, add the gloomy spirit of Coldhams Farm, and I should never rest quite easily if I returned to London today.'

‘Then you feel it?' I asked eagerly. ‘The sinister air that the place has, so remote, so enclosed, like something out of …'

‘A gothic romance?' he suggested with a laugh.

‘But where shall we find rooms? We must be miles from anywhere.'

‘It is arranged. Moat Farm takes in paying guests. I am to be Professor Holmes, holder of a chair of entomology at Cambridge, here for a few days' holiday, and you—well, naturally, my dear fellow—you are Dr Watson.'

‘Where is Moat Farm?'

‘Very close. We passed it yesterday.'

For a moment I was puzzled and then a doubt clouded my mind.

‘You don't mean …'

‘Moat Farm,' said Holmes simply, ‘is the name that Captain Dougal gave to Coldhams when he purchased it.'

III

‘Impossible!'

‘Hear what I have to say,' Holmes suggested soothingly. ‘Dougal is not the particular villain that Coote and Miss Pierce have painted, though he seems to have arrogated the rank of captain to himself. In many respects, he is thought to have led a blameless, even estimable, life. He is spoken of at Quendon, in the Hare and Hounds, as a very decent fellow.'

‘He did not seem so last night!'

‘You have never seen the man. Can you swear that the creature was Dougal? Perhaps, if it was he, there is still a better side to the man. Even you, Watson, can scarcely believe that those bicycling antics amount to devil worship! That is all Coote's nonsense.'

‘A better side to him?'

Holmes stood up and crossed to the window.

‘What would you say as an army man, Watson, to a fellow who had served for twenty-two years in the Royal Engineers, earned a pension for it, and was described on his discharge sheet as being of excellent character?'

‘How have you seen his discharge sheet? Or how do you know what is said about him in a public house?'

‘I spoke to the landlord, with whom I fell in during my stroll. As for the discharge sheet, Dougal himself showed it to me.' Holmes turned from the window. ‘He takes in paying guests, has rooms vacant, and produces his army record to seal the bargain.'

Despite my misgivings over Coldhams Farm, I relented a little towards its owner.

‘I have still half a mind to go back to London this morning.'

Holmes sighed.

‘One more thing, before you do. On my little walk, I spoke to two other folk who happened to pass me. They do not seem to like Captain Dougal much. For that matter, nor are they much smitten with Miss Pierce. One of them, however, also recalled Miss Holland and the abrupt manner of her departure from Dougal's household. If my informant is correct, there was talk of foul play at the time and the matter was investigated by the local police. They were convinced that there was nothing sinister in Miss Holland's departure.'

I moved towards my leather bag.

‘Then it is high time we were on our way.'

Holmes touched his finger to his lips.

‘One moment, friend Watson. Do I assume that you now regard a rustic police force as the last word upon a lady's disappearance?'

‘Unless there is evidence to the contrary in this case.'

‘There is a further puzzle in this, more suited to the alienist than to a police officer. I am told that Miss Camille Holland was a genteel spinster, quite fifty, older than Captain Dougal. In religion, she adhered to the quaint London sect of the Catholic Apostolic Church in Gordon Square. A devout lady of some means, her family consisting of two nephews with whom she rarely communicated.'

‘Scarcely surprising, then, that no one knows where she went.'

‘One moment more. There was, it seems, another side to Miss Holland. She was quite fifty. Yet her hair was coloured and styled, her face was improved, in such a way that she looked some ten years younger. She strove also, they say, to wear the trousers. Our fading spinster relished equally the roles of vamp and martinet. Aphrodite and a dash of Juno.'

‘My dear Holmes, this is nothing. A woman of some maturity may surely try to make herself look less than her age. As for the martinet, women who are uncertain with men, or lack experience, sometimes take refuge in a maternal authority. Miss Holland's type is not at all uncommon. I see no puzzle.'

‘The puzzle,' said he, ‘is what such a ladylike, refined, devout creature was doing in the arms of a reprobate like Dougal.'

‘Perhaps she was not in his arms.'

‘Why, then, did she bother to present herself as Mrs Dougal to everyone in the neighbourhood?'

I shrugged and gave it up.

‘Unfortunately, Holmes, you and I have reason to know that refined, ladylike creatures are not infrequently drawn to reprobates and ruffians rather than to men of their own kind. I can tell you no more than that.'

He stared from the window at the wide sky and the vast fenland horizon.

‘It is true,' he conceded, ‘that the most abandoned female lusts often thrive more vigorously in the school-house or the rectory than in any den of thieves. How curious, however, if she should be buried somewhere out there.'

‘If it is so, and if we stay under that fellow's roof, we may soon be buried out there ourselves. We have already missed the best morning train from Bishop's Stortford. At this rate, we shall miss the 1.30 from Cambridge to Liverpool Street as well.'

But even as I spoke, I knew that Holmes would not leave matters as they were. I knew also that I could not return to London without him.

IV

Closer acquaintance with Dougal and Coldhams Farm did not reconcile me to either. He was a large man with an abundant head of hair, a brown pointed beard somewhat streaked with grey, brows high and slanting. His eyes were almost Mongolian in shape and had a cruelly humorous look. I fear he laughed at the world rather than with it. Despite Holmes's suggestion, he was at once identifiable as the figure standing among naked bicyclists the previous night.

No doubt this owner of the farm, with a little money in hand, would be thought a good fellow in the public house where he stood drinks to the locals. At home, two lumbering young servants, Sally and Agnes, attended the captain and his guests. I cannot say that I witnessed improprieties between the young women and their employer, yet the glances between them were more eloquent than spoken assignations or invitations. The nocturnal orgy in the field was not repeated during our stay. Even Dougal was not blatant enough to amuse himself a few yards from the windows of his guests. I supposed that he took his bicycling troupe elsewhere for the duration of our visit.

I concede at once that the food and accommodation proved in every way superior to Miss Pierce's joyless fare. Captain Dougal ate separately but our table was plentifully supplied with well-cooked dishes and local ale.