Title: On Ilkley Moor (1/3)
Author: Garonne
Warnings: Mild horror. Not supernatural, though
.. .. ..
There is something about the empty, windswept bleakness of moorland at dusk which I have always found pleasing. Our carriage rattled along a hard dirt road that seemed to go on forever through the moors, and I stopped thinking about the case which awaited us long enough to look around me and appreciate the stark lines of the hills, silhouetted against the fading light. Beside me, Watson gave a small shiver, and then smiled when I raised an eyebrow at this.
"I'm a little cold, that's all," he said. "Not that this barren landscape doesn't seem to hold hints of the oppressive and the frankly eerie. Particularly when one is on the way to visit a man who claims to be cursed."
I could not let this statement slip past. "Ashdown has claimed nothing of the kind. You forget he hasn't uttered a single word in over a month. You are relying on his wife's assumptions and attempts at deduction, when you ought to be approaching the matter with an open mind."
Watson wore the small smile with which he generally responded to my attempts to train and improve his mind. Earlier in our acquaintance I had feared it to be yet another manifestation of the discomfiture or impatience I usually provoked when I tried such a thing, but I soon realised my error. Indeed, I am bound to admit that I discovered Watson to have one of the most receptive intellects I ever met, and I was frankly impressed by his progress. I never told him so, however.
In fact, while I have done my best to form his mind in the years I have known him, I am forced to admit that the process has not been entirely one-way. Indeed the case I now describe led to events in which Watson influenced me more profoundly than I should ever have thought possible. Those bleak moors were the setting for a time in which I was forced to turn on myself the keen eye I preferred to use on others and to reassess convictions I had long held dear.
Night had fallen by the time we reached the Ashdowns' country residence and despite my best efforts I could only gather an impression of a long hulking building, surrounded by a park of dense pine trees that must have cast the house in permanent shadow even in daytime. Then we were ushered into a dimly lit entrance hall of vast proportions, where Lady Ashdown awaited us.
She was a frailly built young woman, the lines in her face and the shadows around her eyes testifying to the recent stresses of her situation. She greeted us briefly before leading us to see her husband.
"He spends all of his time in the library nowadays," she said in a low voice as we crossed the cold stone hall. "Working away at I know not what, and surrounded by books on the most horrible subjects, with the most terrifying illustrations. The servants refuse to enter the library any more, even when my husband is not there, because of the books he leaves lying open.
"At first I thought he had simply gone - " She stopped short, blushing awkwardly. "I mean to say, I thought he had simply been a little disturbed by the accident in his laboratory, but then certain occurrences led me to wonder whether - Well, perhaps you had better see for yourselves first."
She opened a door slowly and cautiously, and ushered us into the room beyond. The library was long and narrow, and in almost complete darkness, save for a candle burning on a desk at the far end. By its light, we could see the back of a man seated at the desk, surrounded by stacks of books, his head bent over his work.
I had already seen Sir Nigel Ashdown on several occasions, having attended a number of the string of lectures he had given at the Royal Society of Chemistry throughout his long and distinguished career. I remembered him as a strongly-built man of short stature, with a full-cheeked, bulldog-like face to go with his booming voice. With that picture in mind, I should have had a great deal of trouble recognising him in the man who turned his head silently to stare at us.
I had been prepared for some change, for I knew he had been injured in the explosion which had killed one of his laboratory colleagues, a month before. But the slight scarring on one side of his face was nothing compared with the transformation in the rest of it. The thin, skeletal face and the red-rimmed eyes which stared out of it bore no relationship to the jovial, well-fed man who had lectured on the reactions of nitric acid before proceeding with enthusiasm to the port and wine table. He stared at us for a long moment, his eyes blank, before returning abruptly to his books.
"Mr Holmes and Dr Watson have just arrived from London, dear," Lady Ashdown said in a thin, cheery voice.
The man continued to scrawl on the sheet of paper which fell into his circle of candle-light, his emaciated hand wavering across the page. He ignored us completely.
"I continue to try to speak to him," Lady Ashdown whispered to us, "but sometimes I despair. He has not uttered a single word in almost a month."
At the edge of my consciousness I heard Watson murmuring some kind, reassuring words. I was aching to examine the stacks of books and the contents of those scribbled papers, but that would have to await a more propitious moment. Lady Ashdown was already ushering us from the library. She closed the door softly on that silent, oppressive room.
"And this dates from an accident in his laboratory?" Watson asked, in the manner of an understanding medical practitioner, which I always enjoyed seeing him assume.
I had relayed to him the details of the case, and in particular Sir Nigel's reaction to witnessing the death of his colleague, and he had spent the evening before our departure reading up on the effects of mental trauma on the brain.
Lady Ashdown nodded. "He refuses to see a doctor. Of course, he saw many just after the accident, for his injuries. But whenever I tried to bring a mental specialist to the house, he simply locked himself away." She fidgeted with the fringe of her shawl, clearly ill at ease discussing her husband's health with two men who were practically strangers. "But I know you are not specialists in that field either. It is not for that that I asked you to come, but for - for another matter, though it is all seems to be connected." She came to another awkward halt.
"Related to the content of his work in the library?" I prompted.
She nodded. "I am quite convinced that he is - at least, that he believes he is cursed. As soon as he left his bed after the accident, he shut himself up in the library of our house in London and began to read and scribble like that. I - When he was not there I slipped into the library and read some of the notes he had made. My heart stood still; I could scarcely believe my eyes. And yet I am sure he himself believes it."
"And you, ma'am, what do you believe?"
She hesitated before replying, avoiding my gaze. "Of course I know the idea is nonsense. But - we left London soon after the accident, for him to recuperate in the countryside, and the strangest things have been happening ever since: accidents among the servants, noises and strange lights at night - and then yesterday far, far worse."
Over her shoulder, Watson met my gaze, and I read in his eye a warning not to make the dismissive remark which was already on the tip of my tongue.
In any event, Lady Ashdown recollected herself at that point, and apologised for keeping us standing after our long journey. "Perhaps I can tell you the rest at dinner?"
Before following the servant who was to show us upstairs, I turned back to our host once more.
"One last thing, ma'am. Your husband's colleague, who died in the explosion - was he well known to you?"
I did not miss the small start she gave before replying. "We moved in the same circles, that is all. He had been to dinner at our house several times."
Our evening meal that night was a sombre affair. Sir Nigel was not present. His wife began by trying to enquire politely after our journey, but it was clear that her entire being was possessed by one sole thought.
"Oh, it has been terrible!" she cried. "I am beginning to think I am going as mad as - " She stopped short, putting her hand over her mouth.
Watson leant forward to offer some kind words, and I added my own.
"I think you had better try to detail the events of the past month, in chronological order, as clearly as you can."
What followed was a litany of strange noises in the night, impressionable servants who saw shadows, livestock on the estate attacked by supposedly unnatural beasts and other such products of credulous minds, as had already been hinted at in her letter. Suddenly, however, her words made me sit up and pay closer attention.
"Until last night, though, I still wondered whether there might not be a rational explanation for all this. But then, when I saw the stable boy burning alive - "
Watson dropped his fork with a clatter.
"It was the most unnerving thing I have ever seen," she went on in a low voice. "I was retiring to bed when I heard a commotion in the hallway and a frantic screaming. I turned and saw a fiery light on the threshold of the front door. It was one of the stable boys, wreathed in flames, writhing and screaming in panic." She shuddered at the very thought. "I do not know how he survived. And yet once the fire had been extinguished, we found him alive and unharmed, his body untouched by the flames."
I met Watson's eye over the dining table. He looked quite shaken. I reclassified the affair in my mind as more interesting than I had first believed.
"The whole house has been in an uproar ever since," Lady Ashdown went on. "Only the reassurance that you had already been sent for and were arriving today prevented the servants from departing en masse."
Watson leant forward. "How is the boy now? He has been seen by a doctor, I presume?"
"Yes, of course. He was completely unmarked, physically, but his nerves were quite shattered. We have sent him home to Lancashire, to his family."
Several more courses followed after that, but I do not recollect what dishes they contained, and I do not believe I even noticed at the time. I was fully absorbed in thought, leaving Watson to make conversation.
.. ..
After dinner, I went to knock on Watson's door. His suitcase lay open by the bed, and he was lining up his things with military precision on the dresser.
He glanced over his shoulder at me as I came in. "I have been very much wondering what you make of all this, Holmes."
I sat down in a chair by the door, feeling in my pocket for a cigarette. "Sir Nigel needs an alienist, the servants are over-imaginative, and Lady Ashdown is rich and bored."
"But the stable boy!"
"I know," I said slowly. "That certainly gives me pause for thought."
I sat smoking and thinking, while Watson's suitcase emptied rapidly.
"I have been racking my brains all evening," he said over his shoulder. "But I cannot see how what happened to the stable boy can be explained as a natural phenomenon or a parlour trick."
"Watson, you know how often I have insisted on the fact that the most bizarre and grotesque of occurrences may be shown to have a very simple explanation, if only one is in possession of all the facts. Have I not demonstrated this time and again?"
"But it would be a logical fallacy to conclude that all such occurrences can be explained thus."
I could feel a frown start to gather on my brow. "Watson - "
He waved a hand impatiently. "No, of course I don't believe the household is cursed. I was speaking in general."
I was somewhat surprised, for Watson rarely ventured his own opinions to oppose mine. "To accept that there are things we cannot explain would be to abandon every task of logical reasoning at its outset. It would be almost as heinous a crime as to make conclusions without proof."
Watson laid another log on the fire, and then turned to face me. "There are things you accept without proof or without explanation, you know. My attachment to you, and your brother's, the existence of God, the impulse of a mother to protect her child." He paused, clearly trying to think of other examples.
"I concede the point, but they are almost always irrelevant to the matter at hand."
"Perhaps," he said, sitting down opposite me and changing the subject.
I had answered flippantly, but it was only later that I realised how serious he was being. I wished then that I had paid more attention at the time.
.. ..
The small clock by my bedside showed almost one o'clock in the morning when I decided it would be safe to attempt an investigation of the library. The house was dark and silent as the tomb as I crept downstairs, relying on my memory rather than a light. I thought to myself that it was not surprising how easily such conditions could suggest unnatural happenings to feebler, more credulous minds than mine.
As I carefully opened the door to the library, I heard rain suddenly start to batter down, and a distant roll of thunder rumbled through the house.
Still relying on memory, I made my way without mishap across the room, and lit the candle on the desk. I spent a few moment studying the books lying about in stacks, without disturbing their placement. They were a gruesome collection. Ancient books on mediaeval superstitions and witch hunting, their covers cracked with age, lay among more modern tomes no less imaginatively illustrated. I wasted little time on them, for I was more interested by the strange lack of paper on the desk. For the amount of time he spent scribbling away in the library, Ashdown ought to have produced mountains of pages filled with his writing. Indeed, there had been no shortage on his desk earlier in the evening. But now there were only a few sheets of paper with quotes copied from the books on the table, and the waste-paper basket was almost empty.
Frowning, I blew out the candle and left the room as silently as I had come. I climbed the stairs, deep in thought, with thunder rolling around me. As I reached the very top floor, my attention was caught by a dull thudding noise, as of something falling from a great height. Disturbed, I stopped to lean over the banisters and look down into the hall far below. I thought I could discern a dark bundle on the stone floor, about the size of a man. Then lightning flashed, illuminating the hall through the windows high up above the door. I saw more clearly, and my heart nearly stopped.
It was Watson, lying on his back on the stone floor, his limbs twisted out at unnatural angles. But it was his face that had made my heart clench. It was covered in blood, his head twisted horribly to one side. He was a long way away, and in the split-second I had seen him, I had not been able to make out the details of his injuries. I spun on my heel and began to race down the stairs, my heart pounding. Those stairs seemed a thousand times longer than they had when I had descended half an hour before.
I crossed the hallway in the dark, dropping to my knees beside the dark bundle that was Watson. He stirred as I reached out to touch his arm, and my breath came a little easier.
The storm was directly overhead now, and as I fumbled in my pockets for a match, another flash of lightning showed me his face, unmarked and bloodless, not even bruised.
I knelt there for a moment, doubting my own senses, my head spinning. Fumbling in my pocket with hands that were not quite steady, I eventually found a match and struck it. The light lasted long enough for me to see Watson's eyes flicker open.
I jumped to my feet and ran to the table by the door. Knocking off several ornaments in my haste, I grasped the candle and heavy ornate candlestick I had noted on our arrival, and hastened to light it.
When I returned to Watson's side, he was awake and struggling to sit up, clutching his head.
"Are you all right, Holmes?" he said, blinking vaguely at me in the candlelight. "You look white as a sheet."
"Never mind me," I snapped. "And stop moving. I heard something fall from a great height."
"Well, I don't think it was me," he said, already sitting up. "Ouch! I believe I've sprained something. Several somethings." He looked around vaguely. "What on earth is going on, Holmes?"
"I thought you - " I hesitated. Had I hallucinated, or been fooled by an optical illusion? And yet I was certainly I had seen quite clearly. There were some strange and suspicious things going on in this house.
I turned back to Watson, who was groaning and holding one arm cradled in the other.
"Close your eyes," I said, holding the candle close to his face. There was no trace of blood anywhere on him, however, and his skin was quite clean and dry.
"Your collar is damp," I said grimly. But I was unable to deny the moment of sheer panic I had felt, and the moments after I reached him in which I believed that anything could be true.