A Case of Insanity

Chapter Nine

In the tiny churchyard of Tredannick Wollas, the most constant of visitors was the wind.

Salty breezes, unchecked by natural barriers, swept straight across the expanse of moor land from the ocean to buffet the tiny Norman church of St Petroc and tug at the tattered flag atop the stunted tower. They brought with them rain, in the form of heavy clouds rolling in from the Atlantic, stealing light from the sky and painting the land in dusky hues of grey and drab browns. It seemed appropriate, somehow, as though Nature had conspired to match her colours to my sombre state of mind and offer her consolation by a meeting of moods.

For here, on the rise of the hill keeping silent vigil over the straggling line of whitewashed cottages, only the hardy survived in company with the dead. Misshapen trees, their white arms reaching skywards in a silent plea for succour, clung to what leaves they could and offered scant protection from the gusts for the few birds whose plaintive calls were lost to the groans and howls of the perpetual wind. Shards of rock, weathered, worn and crumbling, lurked in the brambles ready to pitch the unwary into a premature appointment with the gravedigger.

In a quiet corner, where the mesh of tangled grasses awaited the attention of the farmer's sheep, three graves lay side by side. The oldest had a grey headstone showing the first attentions of lichen and inscribed with black lettering, which stated name and age, and ended with a line from the scriptures, expressing the departed's hope of life eternal. On either side, bare patches of clotted earth, sparsely peppered with strands of yellowing grass, showed where the newest arrivals had been interred. Simple wooden crosses had been planted at their heads, in anticipation of the time when they would be replaced with grander memorials to match that of the sister who had preceded them.

For the present, they faced eternity with little else but their names for company. Inadequate, perhaps, but enough for me to identify them as Owen and George Tregennis.

I had left London basking in the early glow of dawn and journeyed nearly 250 miles before most people had had their breakfast. My expectations had been high and my intention sound, namely to gain some idea of the progression of Holmes's condition before he was sent into foreign exile and thereafter into faked oblivion. If there was the remotest chance of recovery, his brother had to be told. If he was beyond redemption, then I would be happier in my mind – or at least reconciled to the fact – that no avenue had been left unexplored.

One way or another, whether for good or evil, I had to know.

The Helston public asylum had been everything that Lullingfield Manor Hospital was not: home to over a thousand patients crammed into a turreted, red-brick building with windowless outer walls and a heavily-barred entrance. Built ten years previously, already it was struggling with the problems of having too many patients and too few staff. The lack of money told. There were no gardens for the benefit of the residents, no afternoon teas or gingerbread to make their time there moderately comfortable. Through the crack in the wicket gate, I had glimpsed a cobbled courtyard, around which the patients milled in noisy confusion with barely a blade of grass between them.

I was not at all surprised to find that my inquiry had been met with rank suspicion, and the thin-faced phlegmatic doctor who came to answer my question positively exuded resentment. Yes, the Tregennis brothers had been inmates, said he, but they were not there any more. Where might I find them, I had inquired.

When he told me they had been taken home, my elation was indescribable. I fear I made rather a poor impression on the man, for I laughed with a sense of relief and hope reborn, and implored him to tell me what manner of treatment or medicine had been used to achieve this remarkable recovery. The doctor regarded me oddly and said that the remedy was the only one certain to cure all ills. With that, he slammed the door in my face.

I could have cursed him for his insolence. Instead, when it became clear that he had no intention of returning to answer my insistent jangling at the bell, I gave up the unequal task and lost no time in hurrying to the village of Tredannick Wollas some six miles distant. Whatever this miracle cure was, I told myself, the Tregennis brothers would be able to tell me what the obstreperous doctor would not. I would convey that information back to London and Holmes too would recover. How simple it had sounded, how also too good to be true – and like most things that claim that title, it was only when I reached the village that the doctor's true meaning began to dawn upon me.

Thus it was that I found myself in the gusty churchyard, among the wind-bent trees and toppled tombstones, listening to the call of the skylark as it spiralled higher and higher above the head of a tawny-winged merlin. To sing in the face of almost certain disaster seemed foolhardy, but the skylark knew what I did not, that as long as it stayed above the predator it were safe. Slip below his talons, and it would never sing again.

As a metaphor for the human condition, it seemed to say that one should never accept defeat, not even when the odds appeared insurmountable, for opportunities were wont to present themselves in the unlikeliest of places. I could find little reason to join the skylark in his optimistic song, however. What had started in Cornwall had ended here. Our journey had taken us from uncertainty to despondency, and what remained of our hopes was buried beneath the tormented grass.

Strange how it is that one is always aware when the final moment has lapsed. So much anguish and excitement precedes it that one expects a tremendous outpouring of fury or some great rending of Nature. Yet resignation is a creature of solitude. Alone with my thoughts, it was left to the wind to raise a sob as it swept on over the silent sleepers to the blasted moor beyond, and to the skylark, singing its song of triumph to the thickening heavens as the merlin gave up its assault and withdrew from the field to perch, panting heavily, wings held from sides, on the apex of the church roof.

My gaze turned again to the leaning wooden crosses. Taking up a stone, I knelt, righted the nearest and hammered it deeper into the solid earth. I had finished with the other when a cry rose up behind me, shrill and petulant.

"You there, what do you think you're doing? Leave that alone, d'you hear me!"

The voice, familiar even after the distance of several months, made me turn. The vicar, Mr Roundhay, as was ruddy-cheeked and untidy as ever, although there was a certain wariness about his manner now that had not been present before.

He blinked, started and his generous features folded into a plethora of wrinkles and creases as he smiled broadly in recognition.

"My word, Dr Watson," said he, shaking my hand in enthusiastic greeting. "This is a pleasant surprise. Do forgive me, sir, but I thought you might one of those godless trophy hunters. We've had no end of trouble from them since the press made much of what they called 'The Cornish Horror'."

"Good to meet you again, vicar," said I. "Trouble, you say?"

"Oh, these people think nothing of stealing from the dead. Positively ghoulish, it is. Five crosses I've erected here and everyone has gone missing. Do you know I even caught two ladies trying to steal earth and pebbles from the churchyard to use as charms against evil? What is the world coming to, when people think nothing of desecrating sacred ground in such a manner?"

His ire spent, his small eyes flickered with interest in my direction.

"But I am being most impolite," said he. "What brings you again to my little parish and so soon? Another holiday, perhaps?"

"I was passing," I lied.

"Indeed," said he, blithely unquestioning of my reasons. "Well, you are most welcome, sir, always. Mr Holmes is with you?"

He let the question hang and glanced about expectantly as though he expected him to spring pixie-like from behind the nearest tree.

"No, Mr Holmes is abroad." Had I had time to think about it, I might have been concerned at how easily I was finding it to deviate from the truth. "I am here alone, as I have had business in Helston. While I was there, I remembered our unfortunate friends and inquired at the hospital. I was told they were here, although I did not expect to find them in your churchyard, Mr Roundhay."

The vicar gazed unhappily at the new graves, his face contorted into a spasm of sorrow. "A most regrettable business," said he. "That such wickedness should thrive in men's hearts is scarce beyond belief. To kill one's own siblings, Doctor, and in such a manner – why, it speaks of excessive cruelty of the worst kind. And then, what savage horror, to join them in their fate? Was it remorse or was it madness, as the newspapers said? I fear we shall never know."

Since Holmes had allowed Dr Sterndale to go his own way, a suitable explanation had been needed to account for the death of Mr Mortimer Tregennis. Whether by good fortune or a little prompting from Holmes himself, his had coincided with that put forward by the police, that Tregennis had killed himself with the same toxic agent – the county coroner had been at a loss to say quite what it might have been – as that he had used on his brothers and sister while the balance of his mind was disturbed. They had appeared satisfied with that theory, and Holmes had felt no obligation to advise them otherwise.

"To have been so mistaken about the man," the vicar went on. "I always thought him reserved, but sly, and with murderous intent in his heart? Why, Doctor, the man lived beneath my roof. We sat at the same breakfast table. Good heavens, he even read The Times. Well, it just goes to show how wrong you can be. He seemed so moral and upright."

I sympathised with his plight. "Appearances can be deceptive, Mr Roundhay."

"Oh, you do not need to tell me that," said he, with relish. "Only last week I made the capital error of confusing a Saxon burial with a Roman – and all because of one misplaced piece of tessera. Quite unforgiveable." He pursed his lips as though remembrance of the incident had brought a bad taste to his mouth. "As it was, the grave was that of a warrior buried with his weapons, or what remained of them. I have retained several of the artefacts, if you would care to see them."

"Another time, perhaps," said I.

The last time we had accepted such an invitation from the amateur archaeologist, he had been flattered, and we had spent a long evening pouring over broken pieces of pot and tile while the vicar enthused about the differences between Iron Age and Roman pottery. Even Holmes, with his own, not inconsiderable store of knowledge about the subject, had been defeated into silence by Roundhay's fervour, and later declared that any good effects he had derived from the good Cornish air up to that point had been dispelled after several hours in the vicar's wearisome company.

That aside, however, my interest was less in the Saxon dead than in the recently departed.

"Such a tragedy," said he, when I inquired as to the cause of their deaths. "Truly is the life of man short and full of misery. In the circumstances, when I heard of Owen and George's demise, I felt it only right that they be interred here with their sister. Mortimer is elsewhere."

His gaze turned to the north end of the church, where a rectangle of yellowing grass showed the location of the grave of the other member of the unfortunate Tregennis family.

"We are taught to forgive," said he, shaking his head in sorrow, "but I fear I have found it most difficult. I visited them several times, you know. Their condition never improved. More like wild animals than men they were, snarling and uttering terrible profanities. Owen died but a month ago. A seizure, so they said, some strange apoplexy that came upon him quite suddenly. George followed several days later."

His face paled as he called upon the memory of the event.

"I was in Helston at the time, making the arrangements his brother's funeral. They told me George had been found dead in his room. When I got there…" He swallowed heavily. "I shall never forget the sight of it, like a scene from the slaughterhouse. The blood, Doctor, so much blood. Do you ever become used to the sight of it? Poor George, it seemed he had been insisting there were devils in his room and that after dark they would emerge to torture him. His doctors had been forced to restrain him, but that night he slipped his bonds. In a misguided attempt to escape their attentions, he had gnawed through his wrists and opened his veins."

He drew out his handkerchief and mopped his brow. "I have seen many things in my time," he continued unsteadily, "but never anything like the horror of that room. What madness, what derangement of the senses would drive a man to such lengths?"

Most likely the sort, I reflected, that started with a man obsessing about the roots of an extinct language and deteriorated into his seeing thieves and robbers in the looking-glass.

The vicar was welcome to his speculations, but I had heard enough.

I am ashamed to say that I terminated our conversation rather abruptly after that. I had come with questions; that I did not like the answers was not the fault of Mr Roundhay, although he it was who bore the brunt of my brusqueness that day. I left Tredannick Wollas, dejected and depressed, having learned nothing of advantage, save that a grisly end awaited my friend. Looking back, I saw the bemused figure of the vicar waving to me from the sagging porch of his moss-covered church. The skies above rumbled, the merlin took flight from its vantage point atop the roof and the skylark ceased to sing. It was time to return to London.

As the train pulled away from Helston station and rain started to lash the glass in long vertical lines, I tried not to dwell upon what I had discovered. I tried to find some interest in the newspaper, some distraction in the watery landscape, and some escape from the dark turn of my thoughts. The task was an impossible one, and I saw that certain facts now had to be faced.

Two months after exposure, the brothers were dead, either by organic failure or by some macabre act of misadventure. I would have to tell Mycroft Holmes, who would pass the news on to Dr Rochdale. What then for my poor friend? More soporifics, more forced feedings, more confusion and delusion until the progression of the illness took its natural course. Worst of all, he would have to endure it alone, in some foreign clime, separated from friends and family. Not even his most irreconcilable enemy had wished such a fate upon him. As much as I hated it, I caught myself hoping that the end, inevitable as it was, would be sooner rather than later, to end his suffering – and mine.

Whether it was the rocking of the train, the tedium of the journey or my weariness of mind, at some point as we rattled through the grey countryside I was overtaken by sleep. By the time I awoke we were long past Richmond and pulling into Victoria. The hour was growing late, and the thought of the hike back to Surrey was less than appealing. My thoughts turned to Baker Street, and I was ceased by that irrational impulse of those who teeter on the verge of upheaval and wish to cling to the remnants of the past. I was in need of one last evening in our old rooms, if only to pretend that at any moment I would hear that confident step upon the stair and know that all was well.

The gaslight was on in the hall when I entered, although I knew Mrs Hudson would be out, as she invariably visited her sister on Sunday evenings. As a means of fooling opportunistic burglars into thinking that the house was not empty, it had been surprisingly effective, despite my reservations when Holmes had suggested it. I divested myself of hat and coat, and took myself upstairs with some effort, feeling that I had aged a good ten years in the last few days. I wandered into our sitting room with a carelessness of thought – and came to an abrupt halt when I saw an unmistakeable figure seated at the table.

"Holmes!" I cried. "Is that really you?"

I took several steps towards him, but he did not acknowledge me. He sat motionless, his gaze fixed in a glassy unblinking stare in the direction of the door through which I had come. I passed a hand in front of his eyes and still gained no response. Then it was that I became aware of another presence in the room, a portly gentleman in his shirtsleeves wearing a checked yellow waistcoat, with one of my journals in his hand and cluster of files around his feet.

"Dr Gordon?" I said, uncertainly. "What are you doing here?"

"Come to that, Doctor," said he, "I might ask you the same question."

"I live here."

"As does your alleged 'cousin'. Oh, yes, Dr Watson, I know who Mr Holmes is, even without your kindly confirming it when you entered just now. I must say, sir, it was a poor attempt at subterfuge. The Strand is popular with the residents at Lullingfield Manor. There is something about those simple, self-pitying stories of yours which appeals to the addled and weak-minded. Without the resemblance and the coincidence of the names, I should have dismissed Mr Holmes's attempts to tell me who he really was as nothing more than the ravings of a lunatic."

He placed the journal he had been browsing almost reverently on the pile and stood to face me with a bold air of defiance. The genial demeanour had gone, and the features that had previously danced with merriment now bore a smirk of contempt. Deep lines of cruelty were riven about the mouth and the beetling brows gave his eyes the appearance of a bird of prey.

"What is it you want?" I demanded.

"A life of luxury," he stated wryly. "Isn't that what everyone wants? If my patients are good enough to make the occasional 'donation' to my cause, then who am I to deny them that right? After all, I have to listen to their self-indulgent complaints. It is only right that I receive some compensation for having to tolerate this parade of hysterical women and distressed gentlemen."

I could not contain my disgust, both at this sickening revelation and my own failure to have been so utterly mistaken about the man. "What sort of doctor are you that you would exploit your patients in this manner?"

"A wealthy one, thanks to the generosity of certain individuals. Mr Holmes was kind enough to suggest a more lucrative avenue for my consideration." He tapped the uppermost file. "You have recorded some very delicate cases, Dr Watson. I cannot help but feel that the personages involved would pay very highly to keep their sordid affairs out of the papers."

"Blackmail," I said. "So, that is your game, Dr Gordon. Am I right in supposing that it was you who sent the ransom demand to Mr Mycroft Holmes?"

"Ah, that was not my doing," said Gordon, almost apologetically. "Most inconvenient for me, because I have had to alter my plans somewhat. Mr Holmes is going on a journey tomorrow and we had to secure his files and papers before that happened. He's been so very worried about them failing into the wrong hands. Isn't that right, Mr Holmes?"

A single word of affirmation was uttered in answer to Gordon's question. It pained me to hear Holmes's voice robbed of its strength and mastery, and reduced to the flat, monosyllabic replies of one who seemingly has no will of his own. He remained quite still in his chair, his unseeing gaze never wavering from the door, as though the energy required for movement was either beyond his power or command.

"What have you done to him?"

Gordon's eyes narrowed. "I do not like your tone, Dr Watson. I have helped him, which is more that what you did or anyone else for that matter. He came to me a deranged wreck of man; now he is calm and manageable. All I have done is to plant a suggestion in his mind."

I stared at Holmes, suddenly understanding his trance-like, unresponsive state. "You hypnotised him?"

"If you wish to give it a name, then yes, I did. It is all very well for the French psychologists to speak of its efficacy in treating hysteria, but I have found a much more lucrative use for the technique. I saw the potential in Mr Holmes from the outset." He tapped the side of his head. "All those dirty little secrets hidden away in that formidable brain of his – too good to waste, don't you agree? He proved a most receptive subject. It really was most satisfying. He trusts me implicitly, did you know? He told me that I was to have all his papers, and, well, here I am. I hope you don't mind."

It was all I could do to keep my temper. To have this unctuous, odious little man taking advantage of the patients entrusted to his care and to see him now, laughing at my poor friend was more than I could bear.

"This, Dr Gordon, is outrageous," I declared.

"Come now, Dr Watson," said he, all too reasonably for my liking. "You say this only because you had not the imagination to think of it first. Admit that it has a touch of genius about it."

"It is an abuse of the trust placed in you by your patients and their families."

Gordon frowned. "I find it strange that you of all people should take that position when you appear to have little scruple in recording the sins of Mr Holmes's clients for posterity. And do not tell me it is for anything but your own profit, or do you pretend that you had an altruistic motive for penning those tales of yours?"

"You cannot defend your behaviour by defaming me," said I. "The police shall hear of this."

"I'm afraid I cannot allow that." A small pearl-handled pistol had appeared in his hand and was not pointed in my direction. "The secrets in these files will make me a very rich man indeed. If you tell the police, why, they shall take them away from me."

"And you will go to prison."

"I think not," said he. "On what charge could they hold me? I shall say that I was attempting to treat Mr Holmes by returning him to his home in the hope that the comfort of the familiar might spark some return of sanity. But of course that would mean revealing the extent of his condition, and I suspect certain parties would wish that to be avoided at all costs."

"Those 'certain parties', as you call them, shall hear of your conduct in either case."

Gordon shook his head, slowly, patiently. "It is never a good idea to threaten a man who holds a gun, Dr Watson, especially as you have now placed me in somewhat of a dilemma. I shall have those files and you will not stand in my way."

Keeping the pistol levelled at my chest, he backed towards the desk and delved into the unlocked drawer. When his hand emerged, he was holding another weapon, Holmes's own pistol, and on his face was set the most malicious and abominable smile that it has ever been my misfortune to witness.

"You should not have come back," said he, turning the revolver over in his hand. "For by so doing, you present me with something of a problem. I shall be taking some of these files with me – just the more sensational cases, I think; I am not a greedy man – but I can hardly go about my business with you knowing what I have done. I am afraid, sir, that you have become a nuisance, and I cannot abide a nuisance. If you were a patient of mine, I should simply drug you and leave to you to quietly expire of your own accord. But, here you are, very much alive." His small eyes sparkled. "Very much in my way."

"A problem, as you say."

"I'm glad you understand, for you are likely to find the next few minutes most vexing. You see, I'm going to have to shoot you and create the impression that you disturbed burglars in the act of ransacking Mr Holmes's rooms. In many ways, it will be to my advantage in dispelling any doubt in the mind of my potential 'donors' that my information is genuine and my intent sincere. Nor would any suspicion fall on me from official quarters as those involved shy away from sharing their financial arrangements with outsiders. Yes, a most admirable solution."

Gordon inched his way across the room and pressed the weapon into Holmes's hand, folding his fingers around the trigger.

"I'm going to let your companion do the honours," said he. "My own pistol, although a deterrent to the average footpad, is no weapon for a clean kill. And the practical side of the business I do find most disagreeable."

"You have my sympathies."

He chuckled. "Oh, I do admire gallows' humour. Who was it refused a glass of beer before his beheading on the grounds that he would never be able to keep it down? Most amusing. As for you, Dr Watson, I thought you would appreciate the gesture. Murder is such a personal affair, and much better handled between friends than enemies."

With that, he placed a hand under Holmes's arm and helped him to his feet. "Mr Holmes," said he in an authoritative voice. "Look who is here. It is Professor Bennett come to steal your manuscript. He will stop at nothing to discredit you and your work. You must shoot him, Mr Holmes."

To my consternation, I saw some spark ignite in his dulled eyes. He saw, not me, but some figment of his imagination. He had held a gun to my head before and I had believed then, as I believed now, that he meant to use it.

"Do it, Mr Holmes," Dr Gordon urged. "Shoot him now!"

Continued in Chapter Ten