As the end of the old year rapidly approached, I even attempted to coax Holmes out for a drink to see in the new one, but his answer to that was, “One year is very much like the next, Watson. It does not expect a welcome, it merely is!” Then added, somewhat morbidly, “The passage of time waits for no man!”
All the more reason to celebrate while you still could, was my reasoning. Although on the one hand, I was very glad of that night with a mixture of old friends, mostly former-military pals, especially when I looked back on it in the months to come; at the same time – looking around me at the revellers, the singing and the drinking – I was incredibly aware that this would have been Holmes’ idea of Hell itself.
Little did I know that one of those people at the New Year’s Eve gathering would be in touch with me not a month later, as January marched into February. I had served with Alfie ‘Gunner’ Harris during my time in India with the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers and we had kept in touch ever since. He always called me by my middle name of Hamish, and had the annoying habit of ruffling my hair whenever he saw me, as an uncle might do to a younger nephew he hadn’t visited in a while.
I received a letter from Alfie, telling me about a quandary that the cousin of another friend of his was in – and they wondered if he might speak to me on their behalf with the intention of seeking the advice of Mr Sherlock Holmes.
I know this might be something of an imposition, Alfie wrote, but I don’t think she has anyone else to turn to. It was a line we heard all too often, but not even I was sure whether Holmes would respond positively to such a request at the moment. I was already gearing myself up to go alone, and employ his methods as best I could in his stead, when I read about the nature of the case.
I immediately showed the letter to Holmes and waited for him to finish it. “It is remarkably similar, do you not think?” said I when he was done.
He rubbed his chin and read through the letter one more time. “There are parallels, certainly. But without investigating further...” He paused. “Yes. Yes, I believe we will look into this one, Watson.”
We telegraphed ahead and the very next day were on our way to Essex, to the home of Alfie’s friend’s cousin. When we arrived, I saw that this was a smaller abode than that of the Cottons: a manor house with only two floors, but in leafy surroundings. There was a white gate set between two posts at the entrance, and a small drive leading to the front door.
It was the lady herself who answered our knock, a thin woman with a plain dress and her hair tied back. “Please, do come in, gentlemen. Thank you so much for making the trip,” she said, the relief palpable. “Can I get you something: tea, coffee?”
“Tea would be most welcome,” I told her, with Holmes himself plumping for the other option. She bid us follow her through to the kitchen, where she explained there was just her in the house. “I’ve always preferred to do for myself,” she stated. “Perhaps it’s my upbringing, the work ethic instilled in me by my parents. In any event, keeping the household running occupies – occupied me when Howard was abroad.”
Through the kitchen window, I could see out into quite a long garden, with a summerhouse at the end of it. It was not a big structure, more like a hut, but it would be the focal point of both our conversation and our enquiries that day. She served us the beverages as we took our seats at the table, then the woman joined us.
“Mrs Spencer,” said I. “Perhaps you could tell us in your own words what happened on the day of your husband’s disappearance?”
She blinked a few times, bit her lip, and began. “As Alfred might have already told you, Howard has not long been back home. He was injured in the line of duty, fighting in the Jandamarra Guerrilla War. As a lieutenant, he did not want to return before the conflict was over, to leave his comrades, but was left with no choice due to his leg wound.”
I saw flashes then of the Battle of Maiwand, where I had received a wound of my own akin to Lieutenant Spencer’s. Scenes that still haunted my dreams, along with Mary...
“...the same since he returned,” the woman was saying when I snapped to.
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” I said, ignoring Holmes rolling his eyes.
Mrs Spencer just nodded and said again: “Howard has not been the same since he was forced to come home eight months ago. It was obviously not his first time in combat – and I fretted so on every single occasion – but there was something very different about his mood upon his return. It was... it was as if he was still back there, still fighting. As if without that, he was nothing. Had nothing. Some days he would just stare right through me, as if I were a ghost.”
I thought about Holmes after he came back to me, the loss of Moriarty too much for him to bear. How the absence of a thing exposes how important it was to you when you had it.
“It was as if I was not enough for him. Ellie was not enough for him.”
“You have a child?” I asked. “Alfie never mentioned... Ellie; a daughter?”
She gave a small laugh. “A son, just turned twelve. Ellie’s a shortening of his name, it’s just what we... what I call him. Thank goodness he is away at boarding school at present, and was not here to see all this.” Mrs Spencer put a shaking hand to her mouth. “I haven’t told him yet. I do not even know how to! He idolises his father, wants to follow him into the military one day – become a decorated soldier himself. Given what has happened, I am not altogether sure that is the right path for him.”
“People must find their own way in life,” Holmes told her sombrely, taking a sip of his coffee. “No matter where it leads them. Do continue, Mrs Spencer.”
Composing herself, the woman carried on with her story. “He would be distant with me, with both of us. And... and there would be nightmares, horrible nightmares. Howard would thrash about so in the bed, screaming and shouting out. Once I tried to wake him from one of these night terrors, for I could stand the pain he was going through no more. My reward was to almost be struck by Howard’s fist.” She looked up at us both, tears collecting in the corners of her eyes as she described the stranger that had once been her loving husband. “Sometimes he would take himself off, I know not where – and he would provide no kind of explanation when he returned.”
Once again, I was reminded of Holmes and the times, even recently, when he went missing without telling anyone where he was going. He could have been lying dead in a gutter somewhere, for all we knew of it!
“I did not have the heart to follow him, in case I should find out there was someone else. I do not think I could have coped with that on top of everything. Either he would go out, or he would retreat to our summerhouse, regardless of the fact it is winter. I tried to get him to come indoors, but he ignored me; as if I wasn’t there. I would watch him from here, through the window – just sitting inside and staring into space. Or looking down as if he’d fallen asleep.”
“And that was where he was on the day he...” I let the sentence tail off.
Mrs Spencer nodded. “I could see him from the window here.” She rose and pointed at the view. If Lieutenant Spencer had been sitting in there, his wife would certainly have been able to witness the fact. But the man must have been freezing! Holmes got up and went to look through the window himself, and I joined the pair just as Mrs Spencer carried on with her tale.
“On this particular afternoon, less than a week ago, I was getting things together to start preparing dinner – although Howard has not had much of an appetite of late, I still liked to put a nice plate of food in front of him, to tempt him. Anyway, I was in here tenderising some steak, watching Howard through the window once more. He looked to have nodded off in the summerhouse, head down – eyes closed. But then the strangest thing happened.”
Holmes looked sideways at the woman, eager to hear the rest. “Go on.”
Her brow furrowed as she remembered. “Everything went dark.”
“You mean overcast?” I asked. “About to storm?”
Mrs Spencer shook her head. “I do
not mean the weather, Doctor. I mean inside the summerhouse itself.”
I glanced through the window at the hut. “It looks to be quite shadowy inside there anyway.”
“This was different. It was like when the moon passes over the sun, only inside the summerhouse itself. Completely black – but tinged with blueness. A sort of... black light. Yes, that’s the only way I can describe it to you. A black light.”
No-one said anything for a few moments; I think we were trying to digest the information.
Then Mrs Spencer took up her story again: “It did not last very long, and during this time I could not see any sign of Howard at all – but I could hear his screaming, plain enough. Just like when he was having his nightmares. Then it was brighter in there again, and my husband was gone.”
“Are... are you saying that this darkness took him?” I was trying very hard to hide the disbelief in my voice.
“I know how it sounds, Doctor – but I swear to you that was what happened.”
“And next?” asked Holmes.
“Well, I rushed out of the house, naturally, rushed into the garden and towards the summerhouse. The closer I came, the more it was apparent that Howard was gone. The summerhouse was completely empty, his chair overturned.”
“Is it not possible that he might simply have climbed out of one of the side windows?” I enquired, putting forward the obvious question.
Mrs Spencer shook her head again, more vehemently this time. “I was watching the summerhouse the whole time, I would have seen it. No, one minute he was there – then came the blackness and the screams – and the next he was gone.”
“But that’s not all, is it?” Holmes said.
“No. As I was looking in through the front of the summerhouse, I heard a noise off to my left – a rustling. I ran around the side, thinking perhaps it was Howard, though how he would have gotten around there is anyone’s guess. But it was not him at all – it was another man. His coat was ragged, shabby, and he was hunched over as if he could barely walk, let alone run. He had gloves that were cut off at the fingers; I noticed that because he was in the process of putting something in his pocket... I thought he must be some sort of a vagabond, here to steal something. It was at that particular moment he noticed me and turned, looked right at me. I remember shivering under that gaze. Those cold, blue eyes.”
“Could you describe him more fully to us?” Holmes was shifting about on the spot, agitated.
“He had a beard, which was unkempt. Wild hair and dirty skin... I thought about giving chase, even though I was scared for my very life – but in the moment that I thought about it, the man was gone too.”
“You mean he climbed over the back wall?” I said, nodding past the summerhouse to the brick barrier that ran along the rear of the garden.
“No, I...” Mrs Spencer shook her head, this time in bewilderment. “I do not know where he went, and that is the truth as well.” Then she seemed to go into a trance herself, mirroring her husband. “I recall hearing the sound of a bird’s wings flapping, but that is all. I was alone after that and have remained so ever since.”
Holmes asked to see the garden and the summerhouse, so Mrs Spencer took us outside, through the back door she had used when rushing to get to her husband. “Is it possible...?” began Holmes, then he stopped and stood still on the lawn.
“Yes?” asked Mrs Spencer.
Holmes looked up and down the garden, back towards the window, then ahead to the summerhouse. “I was just wondering... Well, the angle you were observing your husband from. Is it possible that he was not asleep, but rather looking down at something?”
“Something on the floor?” asked a baffled Mrs Spencer.
“Something in his hands,” Holmes corrected. “What was his expression like?”
She thought for a moment. “Serious, but then it always is of late. Nothing like the man I used to know.”
“Could it have been a look of concentration?” my friend enquired, but then didn’t even wait for an answer – he was striding off towards the summerhouse to carry out another survey.
“You went to the police, I gather?” said I to Mrs Spencer as we headed to join Holmes.
“Yes, but they were not very sympathetic. They did not believe Howard simply vanished... was taken. But rather he wandered off of his own accord – something that I can see would make sense, given his recent state of mind.”
I was not surprised. Miss Williams had been right not to contact them about Francis Cotton’s disappearance; they would have been of no use whatsoever.
“Oh, Doctor, I know something is wrong with him – but Howard is still my husband, and all I have apart from my son. Do you really think you and Mr Holmes will be able to help me get him back?”
I thought Mrs Spencer was going to break down right there and then on the lawn.
“We will do our best, as always,” I told her, but there was little or no assurance in my voice. We had got nowhere with the Cotton case – indeed, our clients had practically thrown us out. I hoped Holmes had learnt from this, and that if he suspected Howard Spencer to be dead as well, he might spare the poor man’s wife that knowledge; at least for the time being.
We reached him as he was emerging from the summerhouse, searching the area around it. “A pity we were not called in sooner,” he observed, staring at the ground, apparently following a trail to where Mrs Spencer said she’d seen the interloper. “But there is sufficient evidence remaining to corroborate your version of events, Mrs Spencer. The man’s tracks definitely end here, well before the wall.”
The relief was palpable on Mrs Spencer’s face. “Thank God someone believes me.”
“Then he must have covered up his tracks before getting away.” I have to admit, I myself was having trouble believing Mrs Spencer, as I had Miss Williams before her. People did not just disappear into thin air. Cotton, Spencer... the vagabond. Then I thought of a solution myself, thought about the trance both Howard Spencer seemed to be in and then how his wife had looked when remembering the event. “Is it possible that this man, this intruder, put both Mr and Mrs Spencer into some kind of hypnotic state? She mentioned his eyes...”
Holmes pondered this for a few moments. “It is certainly a theory worth exploring more fully. Mrs Spencer,” he said then, turning to her, “thank you for your hospitality – we will be in touch in due course.”
Holmes was already ushering me away from the summerhouse, towards the main house, and then – after we had said our goodbyes – to the street. “Holmes, why the sudden rush?” I asked my companion as we were hailing another cab, but he did not answer. Once again, it was as if he had gotten everything from the scene he needed and did not want to be around it one moment longer. Had there been an atmosphere about the place, as there had supposedly been about the room in the house on Lodovico Street? “What about Lieutenant Spencer?”
“He has suffered the same fate as Francis Cotton, I fear,” Holmes said coldly, and without a shred of doubt in his voice. So he had learned from his last outburst, after all, I thought to myself. “You were right to bring this to my attention, for it has all the same hallmarks: the smell of vanilla was present again, with an underlying scent of copper. Minute traces of blood, the scream. Lieutenant Spencer’s vanishment... and our friend from the attic room, the one who managed to get in and out of the place without unlocking the door. Here to retrieve the same item as before, I trust.”
“The ‘murder’ weapon,” I said.
“Indeed!” Holmes replied. “The two cases are definitely connected, I just don’t know how yet. Or why.”
But then a cab arrived, and he would speak about the summerhouse and Spencer no more that day.
All I could think about was that young boy; because if Holmes was right, he would grow up without a father now. Grow up and probably enlist in the Army for all the wrong reasons. I had to wonder about his fate.
About what would become of little Ellie.
CHAPTER FIVE
&
nbsp; The Summons
AS FAR AS I could determine, Holmes made as much headway with the Spencer case after our visit to Essex as he had with the Cotton case previously. And although I pressed him on it in the month or so after we’d visited Mrs Spencer – largely because she herself had been in touch to ask about progress, as had Alfie who made the original request – he could furnish me with no answers. So I could, in turn, give them none (and again, my thoughts turned to the Spencer boy – who must surely have been told his father was missing by now; a puzzle that looked like it would never be solved... I wondered if he himself might even take up the mantle later on in life).
All I knew was I would walk into the study on occasion to find books scattered about the place – as well as papers and drawings – and Holmes still in his robe, sitting cross-legged in the middle of it all, as I admit I’d seen him do before when deep into a problem. But nothing seemed to come of it this time; Cotton and Spencer themselves were not connected in any way.
There were no sudden revelations about the vagabond, about hypnosis – which I would still have bet on at that time – about ‘black light’ or the flapping of wings. I even ventured another theory, that perhaps some form of hallucinogen – similar to the one Holmes had told me about that a certain Egyptian cult favoured, delivered by means of a thorn and blowpipe – might be involved. But I knew myself I was just clutching at straws.
We appeared, for once, to have come across a case that stopped Holmes dead in his tracks.
To be fair, he was not at the top of his game at this point in his career. He was still going missing from time to time, although now I suspected it was to get away from the mystery surrounding these cases as much out of sheer boredom or to test himself. He was spotted, however, according to one of our mutual informants – a lad called Sam, part of the group of street urchins Holmes sometimes relied upon for data, the so-called Baker Street Irregulars – visiting a corner of London known to be rife with the sick and the plague-ridden. I have visited such parts of the city myself – taking every precaution, naturally – to do my bit as a medical man and try and comfort those dying from consumption. Holmes, it would seem, took no precautions whatsoever. According to Sam (who approached me not only because he thought the information might be worth a shilling, but also out of a concern for Holmes’ welfare), my companion was walking about amongst the worst cases without even a mask on; bending and talking to some of them as they lay in their cots. It was almost as if he was trying to catch the disease that had proved so rampant of late. Or maybe it was just another way of tempting fate?