"Oh, Mr Holmes!" William wailed. "The most terrible thing has happened. Just shocking business! Evil walks among us! Thank heavens you came when you did! It's Providence – Providence! - that you're here."
Whatever had fractured John and Sherlock in the previous few minutes was swept away by the old man's call to action. Their eyes met, and in an instant they were a team again, better than their individual halves.
John took the man by the elbow and guided him to a seat. He nearly tripped the vicar by stepping on the untied, muddy shoelaces dragging behind him, and he noticed as well how badly he'd mis-buttoned his cardigan, how hay-like his uncombed hair. William refused a cup of tea on the grounds that there wasn't time.
Mortimer, barely noticeable behind the flurry of William, trailed in behind, grim-faced, but collected and neat about his person. He was the first to speak when they were all seated.
"Perhaps I should explain why we're here, Mr Holmes."
"Well," Holmes declared, "as you seem to have made the discovery, Mortimer, whatever it was, and William to have had it from you, yes, you should explain. Quickly."
"How did you know it was him who found out first?" William posed, prepared to be astonished yet again.
"Just look at you," John blurted while Sherlock was gathering breath.
Holmes turned to John with a look that would strengthen him throughout the horrific day that would follow: surprise, certainly; pride, and something akin to ownership shone in those sea-green eyes.
"You're right. It was me!" Mortimer confessed, unable to delay sharing his terrible news a second longer. "Oh, God! What I've seen today – I'll be haunted…Haunted! Forgive me, Mr Holmes." Mortimer broke off, pressing the heels of his hands to his eye sockets, unable to speak more.
John's thoughts went instantly to his unnerving experience the previous night. He had convinced himself that he saw nothing in the corner of the room but tricks of the light, and he had been so well satisfied by that explanation that his memory and fear had fallen away from his mind until Mortimer's words recalled them.
"William, you know the full details of what's happened?" Sherlock snapped, turning on the vicar.
"I believe so, as far as—"
"Then speak quickly, but leave out nothing. The important and the unimportant facts are indistinguishable at this early stage of the game."
"The game, Mr Holmes?"
"He means the case," Watson interjected, clearing his throat.
"I mean the case."
"Do you remember that Mortimer was to spend last night having dinner with his brothers, Owen and George, and his sister, Brenda, at their house, Tredannick Wartha? The very house I wrote about in my letter to you?"
"I remember."
"Well, they had dinner, just as planned, and he left them shortly before ten o'clock, playing cards. They had a lovely time!" William paused to breathe and they heard the quiet sound of Mortimer gathering himself.
"Mmmm…nothing standing out so far," Holmes urged. It was Mortimer himself who carried on.
"I went for a walk this morning just after dawn, Mr Holmes. I never sleep late, even at the weekend. I was out on the bypass road when a car pulled up behind me, beeping its horn…gave me a fright. It was our local GP, Dr Richards. He said he'd just had an urgent call to my brothers' house. I got in the car, and we drove off."
"Why was he called?"
"Well, when we got to the house, we found…we found that my two brothers and my sister were seated at the table exactly as I'd left them, the cards still on the table in front of them and their wine glasses still full. My sister, God, my poor sister was dead-dead in her chair—"
"What?" Watson breathed, shocked.
"—while Owen and George sat on each side of her laughing and shouting, and singing… like they were out of their minds! The horrible things they were saying…!"
"All three of them," the vicar continued, "had a look of horror on their faces – night-nightmarish looks, says Mortimer."
"How awful," Watson murmured, thoughts of his own haunting the previous night intensifying in his mind and giving him gooseflesh.
"Is this true, Mortimer?" Sherlock pressed.
"Yes, Mr Holmes."
"I must ask you a few more questions before we leave."
"Only if you feel up to it, Mortimer," John added.
"He has no choice if he wants our help," Holmes cut.
Mortimer was wringing his hands unconsciously, and already his pale knuckles were red and sore. "Ask what you like, Mr Holmes."
"Tell me exactly how the evening progressed."
"Well, after we ate, my brother George suggested we play a game of gin rummy in the parlour. It was a cold night and they had the gas fire going in there; it was more pleasant than in the kitchen. That was always too big—"
"So you were in the parlour," Holmes pressed.
"We-we discussed my brother's upcoming marriage, and our neighbour's - Dr Sterndale's - plans for his stay in Africa, and the break-in at his house, which made my sister a bit nervous." Emotion began to well again in the back of Mortimer's throat, thickening his gentle voice. "It was only conversation to digest over, nothing important. We sat down about nine o'clock. It can't have been an hour later when I said I had to go. I left them still playing cards at the table, as happy as could be – happy as could be."
"Who let you out?"
"No one. I let myself out. I shut the hall door behind me, and the main door, too. I made sure it was locked. Even though I don't live there, I have my own key. The windows were all shut… Well, you saw the weather last night."
"Tell me exactly what you saw when you went back there with the doctor this morning."
"The house looked just the same from the outside. The doors and the windows were all still shut and locked, just as I'd left them. Not like at Sterndale's where the window got smashed in. I don't know, but, the halogen light pots in the ceiling must have overheated and switched themselves off at some point. The gas fire was still burning, and the room was hot and airless. The three of them, my sister and my two brothers, must have been sitting there in the dark until… The doctor said Brenda must have been dead at least six hours. It didn't look like anyone had… She just lay across the arm of the chair with that look on her face." Mortimer began to cry, and William put a fatherly hand across his shoulders. "George and Owen were singing bits of rude songs and making noises like animals. Oh, it was terrible to see! I couldn't stand it. Even the doctor went as white as a sheet the moment he stepped into the room. He fell into a chair in a sort of faint, and we nearly had him dead on our hands as well. He left me…to-to find them first!"
"And no signs of intrusion at all?"
"With everything that's been happening lately – the peeping tom, the burglary - I'm a careful man, Mr Holmes. As upset as I was, I saw no reason to think that a stranger had been in the house."
"Who phoned for a doctor?"
"That was Mrs Porter, the neighbour. She's over there most mornings. She looks after things, thinks they need a bit of mothering, or some such thing. She's a good woman. The state she was in this morn—"
"I see."
"I can only say that…that they looked as though they went mad with fear, Mr Holmes, and it looked like Brenda died of fright! I'll never get the sight of that room out of my mind as long as I live!"
"Wonderful!"
Mortimer began crying in earnest.
"Sherlock!" John chastised, rising.
"I have no idea what could have happened to them!" Mortimer wailed, barely coherent.
William could remain silent no longer. "Some horror, then - who can say what it was? - has frightened a woman to death and two strong young men out of their senses. And that's the whole of it. Oh, what are we to do?"
"The whole? I think not, William - far from the whole of it."
"That poor woman," John whispered.
"How far to the house?" Holmes asked.
"About a mile," the vicar answered. "The house stands by the old stone cross on the moor. Oh! Is that significant do you think?"
"No."
"It's devilish, all the same, devilish! It's not of this world. Something went into that room which caused them to lose their minds, something which can go through locked doors and windows. What human or natural cause could there be?"
"William, if the explanation is beyond humanity and nature then it's certainly beyond me and I'm best left to my breakfast."
"Oh, you wouldn't leave us now!"
"I only mean that we have to consider everything else before we come to the supernatural."
"Yes. My apologies. You-you're right, of course."
"As for you, Mortimer. Isn't it strange that three of four siblings enjoy the use of a large modern house, while their brother is left to find the cheapest sort of housing?"
"I try to keep a fair house…I do…" murmured the vicar, with a troubled brow.
"Sherlock means no offence," John whispered, "he's just making a point."
"I-I won't deny that money came between us, a while back. My parents owned some property, and after they died, that property was sold off. Sure, there were family disagreements, but that's water under the bridge, Mr Holmes. I just prefer a simpler life, that's all."
"And not a single unusual thing stands out in your memory from yesterday."
"I hardly like to mention it but, my sister, she, at one point, she thought she saw someone through the window, a dark figure, not one she could see at all clearly."
Watson's stomach sunk to his shoes. He knew he was being irrational. He knew that what he had seen in the corner of the sitting room and what happened at the house had nothing in common…he knew. He knew.
"Where?"
"In the garden, around by the bushes. I turned around to look, but by then…I saw nothing."
"Again, Mortimer?" William said. "Oh, what could it be, Mr Holmes?"
"When was this?"
"It might have been eight…ten past eight. We were in the middle of dinner."
"When did you return home?"
"Ten o'clock, or thereabouts."
"Yes! Yes, Mortimer, you did. I remember you coming in just as the news was coming on the telly."
Holmes steepled his fingers. "Remarkable…most remarkable!"
All four rose to their feet without another word. They would go to Tregannick Wartha, and quickly, before the police made their merry way from Penzance. The one thing Holmes was thankful for about police presence in such a rural area was the total lack of it. It gave him the necessary time.
"And…Doctor Watson's coming, too?" the vicar enquired.
"Oh, he must," answered Holmes. "Doctor Watson is invaluable to me." As they squeezed through the door, Holmes pressed a hand into the small of John's back. "And I think he's starting to learn the trick."
"He's learning to what?"
