Cthulhu Casebooks - Sherlock Holmes and the Highgate Horrors E-Book

James Lovegrove

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 779

Beschreibung

A brand-new thrilling tale of madness, murder and reanimated corpses in the Cthulhu Casebooks series, where Sherlock and Watson fight the fiendish plots of the terrifying and alien Mi-Go, from the New York Times bestselling author. It's 1929 and an ageing Dr John Watson, conscious of his imminent demise, finally sits down to write a fresh chronicle disclosing the true events behind his published accounts of Sherlock Holmes's exploits. In these pages, Sherlock Holmes and his stalwart companion encounter reanimated corpses in Highgate Cemetery; a very different, though ever elusive, Irene Adler; tales of madness and murder in the frozen wastes of the north; grotesque organic machines; and much more. Each case brings the illustrious pair ever closer to the dramatic and terrifying truth about the mysterious aliens, the Mi-Go, and their plans for Earth…

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also Available from James Lovegrove and Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Preface

A Note

Part I: Autumn 1888

Part II: Winter 1888

Part III: Summer 1895

Part IV: Autumn 1898

Part V: Autumn 1902

Part VI: Spring 1903

Part VII: Summer 1903

Part VIII: Autumn 1918

Afterword

About the Author

THE CTHULHU CASEBOOKS

SHERLOCK HOLMES

and the Highgate Horrors

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM JAMES LOVEGROVE AND TITAN BOOKS

THE CTHULHU CASEBOOKS

Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows

Sherlock Holmes and the Miskatonic Monstrosities

Sherlock Holmes and the Sussex Sea-Devils

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

The Stuff of Nightmares

Gods of War

The Thinking Engine

The Labyrinth of Death

The Devil’s Dust

Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Demon

Sherlock Holmes and the Beast of the Stapletons

Sherlock Holmes and the Three Winter Terrors

FIREFLY

Big Damn Hero

The Magnificent Nine

The Ghost Machine

Life Signs

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The Cthulhu Casebooks: Sherlock Holmes and the Highgate HorrorsHardback edition ISBN: 9781803361550Electronic edition ISBN: 9781803361574

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

First edition: October 20232 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2023 by James Lovegrove. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

PREFACEBY JAMES LOVE GROVE

IF YOU’VE READ THE CTHULHU CASEBOOKS TRILOGY, particularly the last volume of the three, then you’ll know that, for me, preparing those books for publication turned out to be a terrible ordeal. The strain of toiling over Dr Watson’s typescripts for months on end wore me down, and I ended up having some sort of psychotic break. Consequently, for my own wellbeing and that of those around me, I was detained under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act and sent to an NHS facility for treatment.

The place was situated deep in the heart of the East Sussex countryside, not far from the town of Crowborough, and was called Providence House. The associations between “Providence” and H.P. Lovecraft are not lost on me, although in this instance the name was surely chosen to evoke a sense of destiny and supernal protective care rather than the capital city of the state of Rhode Island, that author’s birthplace and hometown. Nor does it escape me that the celebrated Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who among his many accomplishments served as Dr Watson’s literary agent, spent the last couple of dozen years of his life in Crowborough at his house, Windlesham Manor, where he lies buried. There’s even a statue of the man in the town, at the central crossroads (it’s not life-size and makes him look very short when in fact he was tall). In all, then, Providence House would seem an ironically appropriate location for someone whose condition had been brought on by exposure to a confluence of Lovecraft and Sherlock Holmes.

I’d love to tell you that the building was a rambling Gothic mansion with elaborate wrought-iron gates and ivy crawling up its sides like a host of demonic dark green claws, and that the skies above it were perpetually overcast and threatening rain. In fact, Providence House was a linked set of modern low-rise blocks nestling among neatly cultivated grounds – more Premier Inn than Arkham Asylum – and during my time there, which lasted six months, the weather was largely pleasant, England in all its temperate glory.

The care I received within the walls of that establishment was second to none. Through a mix of counselling, group therapy sessions and pharmaceuticals, I was able to come to terms with the things I’d seen, or thought I’d seen, and the unusual behaviour patterns I’d exhibited, in particular crouching on a beach as though in prayer and incanting the phrase “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn” over and over. It was made apparent to me that, doubtless through stress and working too hard, my imagination had overridden the logical part of my brain and I’d lost the ability to distinguish delusion from reality. This is a commoner occurrence with authors than you might think (or perhaps you might not). We live in our heads so much that sometimes we get stuck inside them and can’t find our way out.

Towards the end of my spell of treatment the staff took some of us inmates on a day trip to nearby Groombridge Place, to give us a bit of an airing. As is the case with many a stately home these days, the grounds of the house have been turned into a tourist attraction, with various fun activities on offer and the inevitable gift shop and tearoom. But Groombridge Place also has special resonance for Sherlock Holmes fans, since it appears, thinly disguised, in The Valley of Fear, Dr Watson’s account of the events surrounding the seeming murder of John Douglas.

While roaming the gardens I got talking to someone who worked at the property, an archivist, and when he learned that I had a Holmes connection and had edited the three Cthulhu Casebooks, he got quite enthused.

“I have something I think you’d like to see,” he said, and once I’d obtained permission from one of the nurses, I went off with the man to the manor house itself, which is a private residence and not open to the public. We crossed the moat via a conventional stone bridge – not a drawbridge as Watson has it – and soon we were in a large library and the archivist was opening a locked cupboard, from which he took out an old, very scuffed and battered box file. The artefact exuded age and neglect, right down to the layer of dust that seemed ingrained in its cardboard and the splotches of mildew along the edges.

He placed the box file reverentially on a table and raised the lid. Inside lay a sheaf of brittle foolscap, bound with a ribbon. The paper may have once been white but it was now a pallid mushroom grey. Handwritten across the top page, in faded blue ink, were these words:

The   Highgate   Horrors

Being   an   accoun   by   Dr   John   H   Watson   MD   of   a   series   of   ghastly   eldritch   adventures   that   befell   myself   and   Mr   Sherlock   Holmes

NOT   FOR   PUBLICATION

I felt a little shivery thrill. “Is that what I think it is?”

“What do you think it is?” the archivist said.

“Well, ‘eldritch’ suggests it isn’t a conventional Holmes chronicle.”

“Quite.”

“It’s another Cthulhu Casebook.”

“That’s my own conclusion.”

I was both excited and apprehensive. “How come it’s here?”

“Conan Doyle used to visit Groombridge a fair amount,” said the archivist. “The story goes that one day, late in his life, he brought this manuscript along and asked for it to be looked after. He was Dr Watson’s agent, as you know. He said Watson had sent it to him recently and he wanted the thing out of his house and kept away from prying eyes. He especially didn’t want his executors to find it among his effects. This was a year or so before he died, and clearly notions of posterity were weighing on his mind. He spoke of the manuscript as though it was diseased, something rotten and dangerous.”

“‘Cursed’, perhaps?”

“If you’re being fanciful, then yes, maybe. Doyle expressed a wish that nobody should ever read it. There was some curiosity about this at the time within the family. Understandable, given how popular Watson’s works were.”

“And still are.”

“But when a gentleman of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stature makes a request, it’s respected,” said the archivist, “and so the manuscript has sat in this library ever since, locked away and more or less ignored, becoming just a scrap of odd family folklore. That’s how it stayed for nearly a century, until I came along. The current owners of Groombridge hired me to sort through their papers and their book collection, and when I chanced upon this thing, stashed in a cupboard, I couldn’t help but take a look and find out what I could about it. And now – lucky me – I’ve run into you, Mr Lovegrove. Someone who knows a fair bit about Dr Watson’s more esoteric output.”

“Too much for my own good,” I said, mostly to myself.

“Having read it myself, it seems of a piece with the other Cthulhu Casebooks, the same mix of straightforward sleuthing and outlandish supernatural shenanigans. Parts of it, in fact, made me somewhat uneasy even as I was leafing through. That ‘glancing over your shoulder’ feeling. You must know what I’m talking about.”

“I do.”

“And it occurs to me – just a thought – but now that I’ve met you, I’m wondering whether you might be willing to read it yourself and authenticate it for me.”

I shook my head, not so much a “no” as an “I’m not sure”.

“There’d be a fee involved,” the archivist said. “I can arrange that. And perhaps, if you do decide the manuscript is the genuine article, we could look into getting it published. I mean, the Cthulhu Casebooks have sold well, haven’t they? If this is another of them, it makes commercial sense to get it into readers’ hands. There’s always a market for newly discovered Dr Watson works, isn’t there?”

None of this I could argue with. I was hesitant only because the existing three Cthulhu Casebooks, although they’d benefited me financially, had cost me in other ways.

“You’ll consider it at least?” the archivist said, handing me his card.

I gave a noncommittal nod and slipped the card into my pocket.

A couple of weeks later I was discharged from Providence House with a clean bill of mental health. I went home, and I tried not to think about the archivist and that greyed, brittle manuscript. But the title had stuck in my brain – The Highgate Horrors – and I couldn’t help wondering what was contained within those pages. What story did Dr Watson have to tell that was so alarming, so unsettling, that he had designated it “NOT FOR PUBLICATION”? What was it about the manuscript that had compelled Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to ditch it at Groombridge Place like so much literary toxic waste?

In the end I called the archivist. I just couldn’t not. The compulsion was too strong.

A few days later a parcel arrived.

It took me a few further days to get around to reading the manuscript, and within a couple of chapters I knew that I was on familiar ground. The writing style was unmistakably Watson’s. More to the point, I could see that the material matched that of the existing three Cthulhu Casebooks. The narrative, in fact, dovetailed around the events in the trilogy. This was the real deal. The only difference was that the book was handwritten rather than a typescript, for reasons explained in Dr Watson’s covering letter to Conan Doyle.

So now, with the permission of all parties concerned, I’m presenting the work to the world, slightly retitled as Sherlock Holmes and the Highgate Horrors. I’ve deciphered Watson’s sometimes very shaky penmanship as best I can. I’ve cut several sections for length and pace. I’ve worked long and hard over it, and I’m hoping that this time there’ll be no negative repercussions for me.

Fingers crossed. Because, I tell you, after everything I’ve been through lately, I really don’t need any more bad stuff to happen.

J. M. H. L., EASTBOURNE, UKSeptember 2022

A NOTE

Paddington

May 1929

My dear Sir Arthur,

For many a year now, you have served faithfully and diligently as my literary agent. We have both profited from my histories of Sherlock Holmes’s investigations and, furthermore, we share the distinction of both being medical men, even if you retired from practice far younger than I. On several occasions, we have consorted convivially together in social circumstances. In short, I like to think that we have, over time, become more than colleagues; we have become firm friends.

By means of hints I have dropped, you are aware that the various narratives which I have produced pertaining to Holmes, and which you have sold on my behalf, are fictions. You may not be privy to the full facts that lie behind them – and for that you should be thankful – but you have at least some notion that while they purport to be reportage, each instead glosses over a true incident. The impressions of that incident may still be glimpsed beneath – “grinning through”, as it were, like the skull beneath the skin – by those with an eye for such things.

What you cannot know, for until now I have not told you, is that I spent the last year enshrining much of the real story behind Holmes’s and my adventures in three volumes, these going by the titles The Shadwell Shadows, The Miskatonic Monstrosities and The Sussex Sea-Devils. Feeling that the public need not be apprised of the shocking information they contained, I dispatched all three by transatlantic post to my American correspondent and fellow author Howard Phillips Lovecraft, for his safekeeping. He is as conversant as anyone in the subject matter they allude to and therefore less apt to be appalled and alarmed by it.

I have since compiled this fourth volume, The Highgate Horrors. The arthritis in my hands is now so bad that I can no longer manage the typewriter, hence I have resorted to the pen once more, the tool I used back in the days when I was a fledgling writer. Holding it pains my old gnarled knuckles still, but not as much as the repeated striking of keys.

I am sending the manuscript to you, rather than to Lovecraft, merely because I feel it is high time you understood more clearly what Holmes and I had to face over the course of our thirty-and-more years together. You will see that the narrative spans the entirety of that period and is comprised of a number of discrete-seeming sections which, in toto, constitute a single unit, rather as the segments of an orange form the whole. You will see, too, that certain familiar names and situations crop up throughout, albeit in unfamiliar contexts. I trust it will not be too disconcerting to learn how, in the past, I have ameliorated – one might say bowdlerised – some very dark and sinister personages and occurrences, and altered others, so as to be more or less unrecognisable. Likewise, I trust that the exploits contained herein will not seem too grotesque to a man such as yourself, who has, in both his life and his literary works, shown himself to be open-minded when it comes to the fantastical and the extraordinary.

I am not asking you, Sir Arthur, to submit this work to Greenhough Smith at The Strand or to whomever the current editor of Collier’s is (Chenery?), as has been your wont. Indeed, even were you minded to do so, I forbid it. I ask merely that you read the manuscript, digest its contents, and perhaps as a result feel more sympathetically disposed towards a frail old man, nearing the end of his life, who has done much and suffered greatly. Then, in whatever manner you deem fit, you may dispense with it.

I remain respectfully and amiably yours,

JOHN H. WATSON

MANY A SCOTLAND YARD OFFICIAL CROSSED THE threshold of 221B Baker Street during Sherlock Holmes’s tenure at that address. The majority came to consult him on some police matter or other and benefit from his expertise as a criminalist. A few wished to applaud him after he had aided them in foiling a felony or catching a culprit. Very rarely one might seek to upbraid him for involving himself in business that was not considered the rightful province of the amateur, or else to trumpet a perceived triumph of his own, the which, later, Holmes would invariably prove to be erroneous.

None, however, had any awareness of the investigations which comprised the bulk of Holmes’s life’s work, those forays into otherworldly mysteries where ghastly, ravening monsters and ancient, inimical gods were a prominent feature. None, that is, save Tobias Gregson. The unfortunate Inspector Gregson was drawn, against his will, into the murky supernatural waters in which my friend and I secretly swam; and indeed, many years after the events of the narrative I am about to relate, the man would perish in heroic yet tragic circumstances while assisting us in our endeavours, saving our lives at the expense of his own on an occasion when those same metaphorical waters threatened to drown us.

Of the rest, there was a single individual who may have developed some inkling about Holmes’s more esoteric pursuits, and that was Inspector Athelney Jones. Readers of my published works will recognise his name from The Sign of Four, a heavily amended account of a case involving a four-pointed version of the mystical sigil known as an Elder Sign. He also features in “The Adventure of the Red-Headed League”, although in that tale I mistakenly refer to him as Peter Jones, a slip of the pen for which I was often derided by him, and deservedly so. “It isn’t even as though Athelney and Peter sound similar,” he once said to me. “Could it be you have got me confused with the Sloane Square department store?”

The events behind The Sign of Four were too macabre and extraordinary for Inspector Jones to remain oblivious to their true origin, much though we tried to hide it from him. Perhaps, like many a Welshman, with both a devout Methodist upbringing and an innate Celtic superstitiousness coexisting within him, he was already highly attuned to the mystical side of life, and thus had less difficulty than most reconciling himself to the existence of powers and entities beyond normal human ken. Now, at any rate, whenever he stumbled upon something with a whiff of the weird or uncanny about it, Sherlock Holmes was always his first port of call.

So it was that on a brisk late-autumn afternoon in 1888, not long after the above-mentioned escapade, the man in question walked into our sitting room and heaved his burly, plethoric bulk into the basket-chair, which emitted several small protesting creaks as it accommodated his weight. Gratefully he accepted the offer of a cigarette and a snifter of brandy, and then, peering at us with eyes that glittered from within their puffy pouches like twin trinkets sunk deep in the velvet lining of a display box, he proceeded to inform us about certain recent nefarious goings-on at Highgate Cemetery.

Little did he, or we, realise, but the horrors in which he was to embroil us were the start of an enterprise that would occupy Holmes’s and my attention, off and on, over a span of some thirty years.

* * *

“Graves, Mr Holmes,” began Jones in that distinctive voice of his, which contrived to be both husky and mellifluous at once. “Graves,” he repeated. “Three of them.”

“What about these graves?” asked Holmes.

“Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? That’s the thing. Dug up they’ve been, sir, and the bodies that lay inside exhumed and absconded with.”

“Gone?”

Jones nodded. “Gone without a trace. Or no, perhaps not entirely without a trace.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Let me tell it to you in order,” Jones said, “and then we shall see what sense you can make of it all. Early this morning, a report reached us at the Yard concerning three graves at Highgate that had been interfered with.”

“A report from whom?”

“An undertaker, name of Dole, who was visiting the cemetery in preparation for a burial this weekend. Mr Dole spied the fresh excavations and knew straight away that there was something amiss, not least because he was recently responsible for laying to rest one of the graves’ occupants. He looked closer, found all three graves empty, and went to the nearest telegraph office to wire us.”

“Bodysnatchers?” I offered.

“Of course the notion crossed my mind, Doctor, even as a cab drove me to Highgate. ‘Jones-bach,’ I said to myself, ‘could we be dealing with some latter-day Burke and Hare types here?’ But then you, as a medical man, know as well as I do that bodysnatching just doesn’t happen any more, thanks to the Anatomy Act of 1832.”

“Yes, true. There simply isn’t a black market for dead bodies these days. By law, any unclaimed corpses go straight to the anatomists, with the result that they have all the cadavers they need, and more.”

“Quite so, Watson,” said Holmes, a measure of condescension in his tone. “Bodysnatching is highly unlikely to have been the motive for such a desecration, for the very reason you and the inspector have just stated. You really should have thought before you spoke. I can only assume you are so distracted by your forthcoming nuptials that your faculties are not as acute as they might otherwise be.”

“Ah yes,” said Jones, “the wedding isn’t so far off now, is it? And how fares the lovely Miss Morstan?”

“Full of plans,” I replied. “Every day, it seems, she has something she wishes to consult me about – the guest list, the wedding breakfast, the table decorations. I myself was hoping for a small, discreet ceremony, but Mary’s ambitions for the occasion just keep growing. I find myself saying yes to whatever she asks for, regardless of my own feelings or, for that matter, the welfare of my wallet.”

“And that is excellent practice for married life. Take it from someone who has been a husband for nearly a decade, Doctor: saying yes to your wife is the surest route to contentment. Besides, given your fiancée’s undeniable charms, how could you in all conscience say no?”

Jones appended his remark with a throaty chuckle, which I joined in with, albeit circumspectly.

“If we could perhaps return to the matter at hand…?” Holmes prompted.

“Yes. Of course. Quite,” said Jones. “Well, there I was at the cemetery, and bless me if there weren’t three graves, fully opened up. Each was in fairly close proximity to the others, and each contained a vacant coffin whose lid had been forcibly dislodged.”

“You said that Dole the undertaker had recently been involved in the funeral for one of the deceased.”

“I did.”

“How long ago did the interment take place?”

“A week, no more.”

“Which would indicate that the soil was newly turned, making the act of unearthing that much easier.”

“Which in turn,” I said, “makes the bodysnatcher theory that little bit more conceivable, don’t you think? A set of fresh corpses, readily accessible…”

“But what for, Watson?” said Holmes. “Why go to significant risk and effort to wrest three bodies out of the ground when, at least as far as illegitimate medical usage is concerned, there’s no chance of financial gain?”

“A prank, maybe?”

“A very unsavoury one.”

“Just for the sheer, perverted joy of desecration, then. How about that?”

“If so, it is suggestive of a very sick mind. More plausibly, we could be looking at grave robbing. The three deceased may have been buried with certain valuables on their persons, which others have sought to plunder. In that instance, though, why not simply grab the loot and have done with it? Why make off with the bodies as well?” Holmes turned back to Jones. “That said, Inspector, I am yet to be convinced this is anything more than a commonplace crime. No question, any right-minded individual would be repelled at the thought of disturbing the dead in their final rest, but I do not doubt the capability of Her Majesty’s constabulary to hunt down the perpetrators and bring them to justice.”

“Well now,” said the police official, his eyes twinkling all the more brightly, “in that respect I would agree with you, Mr Holmes. But here’s where it gets interesting.”

“By which I take you to mean unusual.”

“Exactly.”

Holmes leaned forward in his seat. “Do tell.”

“I ascertained from the cemetery’s records the home address of each of the deceased whose grave had been violated,” said Jones. “Then, back at the Yard, I sent constables to break the news to the relicts. It seemed better that they should learn what had happened to their dearly departed from someone in authority rather than read about it in the newspapers or hear of it by word of mouth – or, for that matter, witness the situation for themselves should they happen to visit the grave.”

“Such thoughtfulness is greatly to your credit,” I said.

Jones acknowledged the remark with a small bow. “One of the constables returned with a tale. He had gone to see a Mrs Thisbe Pickering, of Lanningbourne Common, whose husband Everard, an actuary with a Chancery Lane insurance brokerage, died less than a fortnight ago. Mrs Pickering was in a dire state when my man called, pale and trembling, and at first he thought that somebody must have got there before him and conveyed the dreadful news already. It turns out, however, that Mrs Pickering had seen her husband just last night.”

This was Jones’s coup, the bait with which he hoped to hook Holmes, and it worked. My friend was all at once a-quiver. Were he a cat, his ears would have been pricked, his tail twitching, his hindquarters swaying from side to side.

“Not in a dream, I take it,” he said. “Not as some imaginary phantasm conjured up by a grieving woman’s anguished brain.”

“From an upstairs window,” said Jones. “Lurking at the rear of the house. Her husband, standing there amid the shrubbery between her garden and the common behind the house, visible in the moonlight, gazing up at her. She caught only the briefest glimpse of him before collapsing in a swoon, but she would be willing to swear on the Bible that it had been he. So she said to my constable. Block, he’s called, and he’s as solid and dependable as his surname suggests, if also somewhat lacking in imagination.”

“In that respect, he is a fairly typical example of his species. Present company excepted.”

“Thank you, sir. I shall take that as a compliment. Constable Block, at any rate, was not persuaded by the widow Pickering’s claim. ‘If she saw her late husband, sir, I’m a Dutchman,’ were his words to me. ‘Yet for all that,’ he added, ‘she seemed quite certain about it. There was the light of utter conviction in her eyes as she related the incident. I can tell when a person is shamming, Inspector, and she was not. It may not have been true but neither was she making it up.’”

“Intriguing.”

“So I thought myself, Mr Holmes, and that is why I have come to you.” Jones held out his hands, palms upward, as though presenting a gift. “I know how fond you are of the outré and the inexplicable. You have rather a sweet tooth for it, I’ve observed. You enjoy confronting the irrational and rationalising it, and what could be more irrational than three missing corpses, one of which has, if Mrs Pickering’s account is to be believed, regained the power of locomotion and visited his erstwhile home?”

“It is certainly a singular conundrum,” Holmes replied in a careful manner, “and naturally I am curious to know more. What say you, Watson? A short trip up to Highgate? How does that strike you?”

* * *

Accordingly, Holmes, Jones and I made our way northward to that elaborate and rather wonderful necropolis known as Highgate Cemetery.

Anyone who has visited the place will know it to be full of winding alleys, imposing mausoleums and proud, ornate obelisks. It has avenues lined with vaults and lawns dotted with toweringly tall cedars, all set on a hillside with sweeping views across London. There is about it an atmosphere of gloomy, hushed grandeur. Those who have been laid to rest in its grounds seem to lie in a state of solemn splendour, as though death, for them, is a privilege. Here and there one finds headstones fashioned in shapes denoting the trades or hobbies that preoccupied the deceased in life – a hammer, a violin, a tennis racquet, a horse, an accordion – while, whichever way one turns, one is greeted by hosts of carved angels and cherubs, looking majestically downcast, their wings drooping in sorrow.

On Swain’s Lane, the narrow, walled thoroughfare that bisects the cemetery, our hansom deposited us at the gates to the graveyard’s eastern half. This is the more modest portion of its near-forty acres, where a plot may be secured for as little as £2 10s, and Jones led us along its pathways to the location of the first of the three ravaged graves. He had posted a constable here to stand guard, and the fellow saluted his superior officer as we arrived.

“Constable Gorham,” said Jones. “You know Mr Holmes, do you not?”

“By reputation only. An honour, sir.”

“And this is, of course, Dr Watson.”

Gorham touched forefinger to forehead. “Sir.”

“Anyone been by since I left you here?”

“A few random folk nosing around, curious. I’ve steered them off. Also that gravedigger chap. Coker?”

“Roker.”

“That’s him. Wanted to know when he could set to straightening things up again. I told him what you told me to say: not until Inspector Jones gives the word.”

“Good man.”

The grave itself was a pitiful sight indeed, a deep, ragged-edged cavity surrounded by heaps of scattered soil. At its head was a discreet wooden marker bearing the name of the person supposed to be interred beneath, one Marcus Knightley. This was a temporary token, there to serve as a placeholder until the ground had settled and a permanent memorial could be installed. The marker lay flat, clearly having been uprooted when the grave was disturbed.

Holmes fell to a squat and embarked on a close survey of the hole itself and the soil around it. Then he leapt down nimbly into the pit, landing in the open coffin, where he continued his examination, with much use of his lens on the coffin’s rim and lid. When he was done, he gestured to Jones and me, and we each took one of his extended hands and hauled him out.

“Next,” he said, and with Jones showing us the way we proceeded to the site of the second despoiled grave, leaving Constable Gorham at his post.

The second grave stood some thirty yards from the first, just within Gorham’s view, and there Holmes conducted a similar study. The marker identified the absent occupant as Miss Amelia Throckmorton. The third grave, a few dozen yards further on and also visible to Gorham from his vantage point, had belonged to Everard Pickering, and was in a similar condition to the previous two. Holmes scrutinised this one no less thoroughly.

At last, brushing dirt off his sleeves and trousers, he said, “There are certainly a number of singular elements worth noting here. For instance, I’m sure you will have spotted, Inspector, that all three of the deceased perished within the space of a week. So the dates on the grave markers attest.”

“I had not noticed that,” Athelney Jones admitted. “The three were all buried recently, that much we already knew, but the closeness of their death dates escaped me. Do you think it significant?”

“It may be. We have passed five other newly dug plots on our journey through the cemetery – none of them, of course, disturbed the way these three have been – and the dates on the markers of those display a considerably wider span of time. The oldest goes back nearly four months.”

“I believe it can take anything up to six months before a headstone may be laid,” I averred. “The ground is not stable enough until then.”

“The salient point, Watson, is that our trio of missing corpses met their ends a few days from one another. That may well be coincidence, but I am willing to bet there is something more to it. Then there is the matter of–– Oh ho, who’s this?”

Holmes’s attention had been caught by the rapid approach of a fellow in labourer’s clothing. The man strode towards us with the air of one who had a territorial right to be in the grounds of the cemetery, and the spade he carried slung over his shoulder seemed to justify this, affording as it did a clear indication of his profession.

“That,” said Jones, “is Jem Roker, the cemetery’s head gravedigger, as mentioned by Gorham. I should warn you,” he added, dropping his voice so that only Holmes and I could hear, “he is an irascible sort. Best not to antagonise him.” Turning, he hailed Roker. “Good day to you again, Mr Roker.”

“Good day indeed,” said the gravedigger. He was broad-backed and raw-cheeked, and his bearing was none too cordial. “Inspector Jones, you told me this morning that I and my men were to leave these three particular graves as they are, and we have done as you asked, all obliging like, out of respect for your rank and position. Now I’m telling you that they must be filled in and neatened, as soon as possible. We pride ourselves on keeping things all shipshape at Highgate. We’ve already received complaints from folk wanting to know how come there’s such a mess in this particular corner here and why there’s a uniformed policeman on duty. They don’t want to see dirty great holes yawning in the earth or bluebottles standing around.”

“It was, alas, unavoidable, Mr Roker,” said Jones. “I promise you, you and your men shan’t have to stay your hands for much longer. I needed the graves untouched so that my colleague here, Mr Sherlock Holmes, would have a chance to view them as is.”

“Ah yes,” said Roker, pivoting towards Holmes. “You. Didn’t I just see you clamber out of this very grave? I was looking on from up yonder, and I could swear I spied you ferreting around inside it.”

“Guilty as charged,” replied Holmes. “I was doing my best to determine what manner of foul play has occurred.”

“And jumping in and out of graves is how you go about that?”

“If you can think of a better method for gathering evidence in a case like this, I would be happy to hear it.”

“You don’t consider your actions might be disrespectful to the dead? Not to say downright ghoulish?”

“Given that the dead are not themselves present at this moment in any of the graves I have ventured into, I am not particularly concerned on that front.”

Roker’s eyes narrowed. “You have a pretty answer for everything, don’t you, sir?” He swatted irritably at a wasp that was buzzing about his face. “Well, let me tell you, I don’t take kindly to folk treating my cemetery as their personal gymnasium.” He flapped a hand at the wasp again. “Pesky jasper,” he growled. “Leave me be.” The insect seemed to get the message and flew away. Roker jabbed a forefinger at Holmes. “Tramping around inside graves like that – it’s not proper, not even with a copper’s say-so.”

“If an apology will placate you, Mr Roker,” said my friend in his suavest tones, “then by all means, I am sorry.”

“Yes, well…” The gravedigger harrumphed. “You just mind yourself. Who are you anyway? What’s your job?”

“Mr Holmes is a much-respected consulting detective,” said Jones.

“Consulting detective? Never heard of such a thing.”

“Perhaps because I am one of a kind,” said Holmes. “And in that capacity, I was wondering if you’d mind answering a few questions for me, Mr Roker.”

“Mind? Yes, I do mind, as a matter of fact. I have work to do. Proper work, unlike some.”

“I shan’t detain you long.”

“You shan’t detain me at all.” Roker spun on his heel and began to walk away at a brisk pace.

Holmes made after him. “Really, it will only take a minute or so,” said he. “As head gravedigger, you must be privy to all kinds of—”

He broke off because Roker had abruptly rounded on him. Unshouldering his spade, the gravedigger thrust it in Holmes’s direction, like a soldier attempting to impale his enemy with a bayoneted rifle. Had my friend not sprung smartly backward in the nick of time, the tip of the implement’s blade might well have penetrated his abdomen.

Roker thrust the spade again, but once more Holmes was too quick for him. This time, though, he not only evaded the blow but was able to catch the spade’s haft with both hands. With a sharp, powerful twist of his wrists, he yanked the tool free from Roker’s grasp.

The gravedigger, thus disarmed, appeared to weigh up his options. Should he fight or flee? He plumped for the latter, and all at once he was sprinting off at impressive speed, hobnail boots pounding the earth.

Tossing the spade aside, Holmes gave chase, as did Jones and I. I had no idea why Roker was so keen to avoid interrogation by Holmes. Perhaps it could be accounted for by his basic ill-temperedness: he resented my friend’s enquiries as an impertinence, a personal affront. It seemed more likely, however, that he had something to hide.

We pursued him along the mazy pathways of the cemetery, Constable Gorham joining the chase after a shouted summons from Jones. Holmes already had a head start over the rest of us, and he rapidly widened the gap, by dint of being fleeter of foot. Roker, alas, was swifter yet, for he soon vanished from sight. Holmes likewise disappeared ahead, and eventually Jones, Gorham and I stumbled to a halt. The heavily built Welshman was wheezing hard and in urgent need of a breather. The constable, similarly, was panting and red-faced, and as for me, it was either take a rest or else pass out from pain. Certain events in a cavern in the wilds of Afghanistan some eight years earlier had weakened my constitution and left me in a state of permanent physical debility. My shoulder was the principal source of enfeeblement and caused me no small discomfort whenever I overtaxed myself.

Once we three had recovered from our exertions, Jones suggested we split up. “Better chance of finding Roker that way,” said he. “Should anyone come across him, seize hold of him and don’t let go, and then yell and keep yelling until the rest of us arrive. I’ve no idea what the rascal thinks he’s up to, but we can have him up for assault on Mr Holmes, if nothing else.”

Alone, I picked my wary way through the necropolis. Now and then I heard oncoming footsteps and tensed up, only to encounter some innocent visitor wandering by, perhaps bearing a bunch of flowers to lay upon a grave.

I passed through the tunnel that ran under Swain’s Lane, connecting the two halves of the cemetery, and entered the older western portion. Here lay such noted landmarks as the colonnaded Circle of Lebanon, the imposing Egyptian Avenue, and the Terrace Catacombs with their tall, arched entrances. Here, too, was proof that death’s reputation as the great equaliser was unfounded, for only the wealthy could afford to be entombed thus, in such funereal high style.

I trod along sloping paths and up and down stone staircases, all the while keeping an eye out for Roker. I was nearing the cemetery chapel, and ready to give up the search altogether, when a hand seized my elbow from behind. I whirled round, fist clenched, all set to deliver a swingeing uppercut – until I realised that it was not the gravedigger waylaying me.

“Holmes!” I declared. “You should not sneak up on a fellow like that. I nearly hit you!”

“Apologies for startling you, Watson.” Holmes’s face bore a sheen of perspiration, and two livid dots coloured his gaunt white cheeks. “That was not my intention. I assumed you heard me coming.”

“Then you are stealthier than you think. I take it you have failed to apprehend our friend Roker.”

“He evaded me,” Holmes said ruefully. “He is faster than he looks, and, understandably, possesses an intimate knowledge of the cemetery’s layout, which he used to his advantage.”

At that moment, Athelney Jones lumbered into view, with Constable Gorham not far behind. “There you two gents are,” the inspector said. “No luck? Us neither. Seems Mr Roker has given us all the slip. He’s obviously mixed up in this business somehow, isn’t he? Why else would he be so aggressively uncooperative? My guess is he dug up the corpses himself.”

“But whatever for?” I said. “His own benefit?”

“Or another’s.”

“You mean someone paid him to exhume them?”

“That’s precisely what I mean, Doctor. After all, if you want that sort of work done, who better to employ than a gravedigger? A head gravedigger, no less.”

I nodded. “And he was agitated about filling in the graves because he wished to cover up any evidence of his own complicity. It wasn’t about professional pride at all, not really. Yes, that makes sense.”

“Well, he shan’t get away with it,” Jones stated through clenched teeth. “You mark my words. I am going straight to Scotland Yard and I will have half the force out looking for Mr Jem Roker. We’ll find out where he lives, and if he isn’t there, we’ll scour London until we’ve unearthed him. No pun intended. Come along, Gorham.”

With that, the two policemen departed, leaving Holmes and myself to our own devices.

My friend had a familiar sly expression on his face.

“What is it, Holmes?” I said. “I know that look. You think Jones isn’t quite on the money, don’t you? He’s missing something – some clue, some angle on the case that you yourself have identified.”

“Am I quite so easy to read?” came the reply. “Well, you’re not wrong. I don’t believe our Mr Roker is as guilty in this affair as the worthy inspector does. I believe someone has bribed the fellow for some purpose, that much is certain. But I am not so sure it was to dig up the three graves.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“Gladly, on condition that you are willing to repair with me to a nearby pub first, where we can refresh ourselves after all this haring about.”

“More than happy to,” said I.

* * *

As we slaked our parched throats with pints of porter, Holmes shared with me his thoughts regarding Roker.

“You noted, of course, the watch poking out of his waistcoat pocket? Ah. Your blank look is all the answer I need. It was a thing of beauty, that watch. Enough of it protruded that I could identify it as a gold-plated half hunter with blued steel hands. The casing was well polished, likewise the part-glassed lid. It was of European manufacture, a Junghans if I don’t miss my guess. What a contrast a watch like that made to the worn, threadbare nature of its immediate setting, and indeed, to the general coarseness of its owner. You really did not observe it?”

“Holmes, after eight years together, you surely know by now that my eye for such details is far inferior to yours.”

“But it stood out like the proverbial sore thumb. Well, regardless, one must ask oneself how the likes of Jem Roker, on a gravedigger’s salary, could afford a timepiece of such quality.”

“A family heirloom?”

“This was no scuffed, much-handled object that has been passed down through the generations. It was quite clearly new and in nigh-immaculate condition.”

“So a gift.”

“It was certainly given to him,” said Holmes, “and not long ago, I would wager, since he has not yet gone to the trouble of purchasing a chain for it. No, all in all, I think the watch was more in the nature of a bribe.”

“A bribe to dig up the graves?”

“But that’s just it, Watson. Roker did not do the digging.”

“To turn a blind eye, then, while someone else did?”

“Perhaps I am not making myself clear. There was no digging involved whatsoever. No spadework, at least.” Holmes frowned at me. “A blank look again. Really, it is becoming a bad habit. I see I shall have to explain as straightforwardly as I can.”

“Since you have so far been rather obtuse, that would be welcome.”

“My survey of the gravesites yielded three signal facts,” my companion said. “Firstly, the soil was not dug out with a spade. If it had been, it would surely have been piled up more neatly, or at any rate in a series of heaps rather than scattered any-old-how. In addition, the inner walls of the graves showed none of the flat, scraping impressions one might expect if a spade had been used. Secondly, the coffin lids were not jemmied off, otherwise I would have found marks around their rims in the squared-off shape typical of a jemmy’s tip. Thirdly, graverobbers might have taken the trouble to replace the earth they had dug up, in order to make their crime less readily detectable.”

“As to the last,” I said, “perhaps the perpetrators were pushed for time. Dawn was coming and they feared exposure.”

“That is possible, I grant you, but is undermined by the fact that, as I have been at pains to establish, no spades were used, nor jemmies, nor any other kind of tool.”

“But all that leaves is bare hands.”

“Precisely, Watson! Precisely!” Holmes took a long draught of his beer. “The disinterment was done with bare hands. I saw with my own eyes, inside the grave pits: plainly visible fingermarks. They presented clear evidence of a scooping action.”

“I cannot imagine graverobbers, bodysnatchers, resurrection men, whatever you wish to call people of that ilk, choosing to use their hands.”

“I should add that the scooping action tapered in such a way as to indicate it came from below rather than above.”

I mulled this over for several seconds before realising what he was getting at.

“It can’t be,” I murmured.

“Oh, but it must be,” replied Holmes. “The only reasonable inference one can draw from the data is that no external agency was involved. In other words, the three bodies were not dug up. On the contrary, they dug themselves up.”

Now it was my turn to take a long draught of my drink. “This is no longer one of your common-or-garden, bread-and-butter cases, is it?” The pub was none too busy, but I had lowered my voice, as had Holmes his, for fear of being overheard. “This carries the whiff of the supernatural.”

“Indeed. Athelney Jones has brought us something both sinister and anomalous. He really has a knack for it, doesn’t he?”

I shook my head. “The dead coming back to life and hauling themselves out of their graves…”

“The coffin lids were pushed up from within,” said Holmes. “The looseness of the soil above would have allowed that. Then the corpses clawed their way out into the open air, casting dirt all around them and in the process practically emptying the gravesites. Their movements thereafter are hard to discern. I found numerous footmarks in the vicinity of the graves, going in various directions, but they could have belonged to anyone: Jones, Roker, the undertaker Dole, Constable Gorham, and who knows how many others besides.”

A thought struck me. “Could we be looking at cases of premature burial?”

“You know as well as I do how unlikely that is,” Holmes replied. “Premature burial is rare enough, but three such, in immediate propinquity to one another? And even if it were so, our untimely-interred trio, having struggled their way up out of the ground, would not simply have disappeared without trace. At the very least they might have languished beside the graves, exhausted from the effort of liberating themselves, or else they might, if recovered sufficiently, have gone to seek medical attention or the aid of a policeman, whereupon the plight from which they had just escaped would quickly have become common knowledge. I wonder, moreover, whether anyone has actually ever survived premature burial. Surely suffocation within the airless confines of the casket would soon turn the error made by coroner or doctor into awful reality. We must consider, too, the sheer strength required to lever up a screwed-down coffin lid, especially with a significant weight of earth on top.”

“In panicked desperation, a man is capable of supreme physical feats.”

“True. But a reanimated dead body, immune to pain or terror or fatigue, would have the stamina to conduct a patient, sustained effort at freeing itself, much more so than would a living person. You seem eager to dismiss the notion of ambulatory corpses, Watson, yet this would not be the first occasion you and I have encountered the phenomenon. Remember the crypt beneath St Paul’s Shadwell?”

“Only too well,” I said, with feeling. “I was rather hoping never to repeat the experience.”

“Far be it from me to dash your hopes, my friend,” said Holmes, “but I fear I have no choice. Now, sup up.”

“Why? Where are we going?”

“Lanningbourne Common, to pay a call on the widow Pickering, of course.” Holmes rose from our table. “She has alleged that her late husband put in an appearance at his former home, the selfsame night he emerged from his grave. The least we can do is confirm, or otherwise, the veracity of her claim.”

* * *

Lanningbourne Common perched atop one of north London’s many hills and was a modest acreage of semi-wild public land with only a handful of streets backing directly on to it. Finding the residence of the lady in question, therefore, was easier than anticipated. By dint of knocking on a few doors in the neighbourhood, Holmes was soon able to glean her address. Nonetheless, by the time we stood outside her house – one of a terrace of bow-fronted red-brick buildings – the afternoon was starting to wane, the shadows lengthening, a chill creeping into the air.

Thisbe Pickering proved to be a woman in late middle age with tightly pinned grey hair and a bony, compact frame. The paleness of her complexion was accentuated by the dress of sombre black bombazine she wore, yet there was more to it than that. She had the blanched look of one who has lately suffered not just bereavement but a terrific shock. Her voice, accordingly, was a thin, reedy thing, and her every gesture was timorous and restrained, as though she did not trust herself to speak or move with vigour lest the effort induce further reaction.

Holmes, who could exercise a powerful influence over the fairer sex when he wished to, charmed his way across her threshold. Inside the house there were signs of mourning etiquette all around, over and above Mrs Pickering’s widow’s weeds. Pictures had been turned to face the wall. Black crepe ribbons had been draped on doorknobs. Clocks had been stopped.

Presently we were ensconced in the parlour and Holmes had inveigled the woman into telling us about the sighting of her husband some twelve hours earlier.

“I chanced to get up in the middle of the night,” said she. “I have not been sleeping well this past fortnight, not since my Everard… Not since he, you know, succumbed. I was crossing the landing and happened to glance out of the window, and there he was, at the far end of the garden, plain as anything. I know it was him. I’m sure of it. A moonbeam caught his face, and it was a face I know as well as my own. After nearly three decades of marriage, how could I not? Even with the recent disfigurement – or indeed because of it – I am in no doubt that it was my husband’s face.”

“Disfigurement?” said Holmes.

“Yes, alas. Everard was always a handsome man, but the disease which killed him ravaged his features.”

“What did he die of, may I ask?” I said.

“Cancer, sir. A terrible cancer that stole his health, his looks, his vigour, everything, and eventually his life.”

“I am sorry to hear of it.”

“Evil illness,” said she. “Not six months ago, he was in fine fettle. Then the cancer took hold, and it spread fast. He became riddled with tumours, including some within the flesh of his face, which left it distended and frightful to behold. His end was protracted and gruelling. I would not wish such a death upon my worst enemy. Everard suffered the torments of hell in his last few weeks, and it was a blessing, truly a blessing, when finally it was all over. I did my best to console him throughout and ease his pain, but it never seemed enough.”

“Rest assured, my good woman, you have the condolences of us both,” said Holmes. “Now, if it’s not too much trouble, might you be willing to show us where in the garden, exactly, your husband happened to be standing?”

“Of course.” Mrs Pickering sniffed hard and dabbed a handkerchief around her eyes. “You said you are with the police, am I right?”

“Affiliated.”

“Well, at least you seem to be taking me seriously. That constable, the one who came this morning to inform me that Everard’s body had been taken from his grave – what was his name? Block. He all but laughed in my face when I told him I had seen Everard myself during the night.”

“I like to think I am more open-minded than the average bobby,” said Holmes, “and sharper of intellect, too. Where the police are a rusty handsaw, I am a scalpel.”

Mrs Pickering invited us to follow her. We exited the house via a set of French windows at the back and traversed a well-kempt lawn. Halfway across, the lady halted. “I shan’t go any further. I do not feel comfortable approaching the spot. You carry on. There, just beneath the cherry tree – that’s where Everard was. In life, he used to like to sit beneath its boughs, of an evening. It brought him peace.” So saying, the widow turned and, her shoulders sagging as though burdened with a great weight, went back indoors.

The garden and the common behind it were separated by bushes and rough undergrowth, so that the division between the two was not clearly demarcated. The cherry tree itself was a splendid thing, just coming into blossom, tiny flowers emerging from their buds all over it like little pale pink exclamations of joy.

Holmes fell to his usual practice of investigating a scene minutely. He studied the bark of the tree trunk. He prowled on all fours through the long grass at its base. He pored long and hard over broken stems and snapped branches and over every small declivity or impression in the ground that his eye fell upon. For a time he ventured out into the common, casting this way and that along its footpaths and greenswards.

“Well,” he said when he returned, “Constable Block – or should that be Blockhead? – passed up a prime opportunity to do some proper police work. Rather than scoffing at Mrs Pickering’s account of a nocturnal visitation, he should have troubled himself to follow it up, whereupon he would have found ample substantiating evidence.”

“In his defence, his task was merely to deliver bad tidings. He could not have suspected that there is more to those empty graves than meets the eye.”

“Negligence is never excusable, Watson. At any rate, Everard Pickering was definitely here last night. See there? And there? Footmarks made by a man wearing size eleven shoes. There are several pairs of shoes and boots lined up in the hallway of the house. We passed them on our way in. The masculine pairs are size elevens and can only be Pickering’s. Furthermore, the spacing between the footmarks suggests a man of around six feet in height. A topcoat hanging from the coat rack in the hallway would fit someone just that tall.”

“It’s a good thing that Pickering’s death is still so recent that his widow has not yet got round to throwing out his personal effects,” I said.

“For our purposes it is fortunate indeed.”

“All the same, might it not be possible that the footmarks belong to another man who just happens to have the same physical proportions as Pickering?”

“But with the same facial disfigurement?” said Holmes with a dismissive flap of the hand. “Now then, let us consider the tale the footmarks tell. We see that Pickering entered the garden from the common and stood beneath the cherry tree for some while. The depth of the indentations when he was stationary suggest as much. He then departed, back the way he came, out onto the common. However, he did not depart alone. There is a secondary trail, made by a man with much smaller feet, size eights. In several instances that trail crosses Pickering’s as it comes in from the common, partly obliterating his footmarks when it does so. Thus we know that the other man was a subsequent arrival. Both sets of footmarks, though, leave the spot in tandem, side by side. From this we may infer that the second man came to fetch Pickering and either led him away or accompanied him. The trail then goes cold, I regret to say. The footpaths on the common are too dry for clear prints. Would that it had rained lately!”

“Could the second individual have been another of the three reanimated corpses?”

“A fair assumption, I suppose,” said Holmes, “but there is a notable difference in character between the two sets of footmarks. Pickering’s exhibit a dragging, clumsy gait, such as one might expect of a walking dead man – such, indeed, as we ourselves have witnessed in the past. The other person’s, by contrast, are footmarks of the type any ordinary living human being might leave.”

“So the mystery deepens,” I said. “Who is this other? Might it be Roker?”

“The second set of footmarks betray that their owner is not only short but pigeon-toed. Roker is neither.”

“Clearly, though, whoever it is, he has some connection with Pickering, and perhaps also a connection with the other two missing corpses.”

“The former is indisputable,” said my friend, “and the latter plausible.”

I chuckled mirthlessly. “You know, Holmes, sometimes I wonder at us. Here we are, talking about reanimated corpses as though they are an everyday, mundane occurrence. The type of thing that the rest of the world relegates to the realms of fantasy or myth, you and I treat as routine.”

“In a sense it is, to us. It has been eight years since my ‘dream-quest’.” He was referring to the drug-induced mental journey he had undergone on Box Hill near Dorking, which had served as his initiation into a terrible secret: the existence of ancient godlike entities bent on subjugating and destroying mankind. “It has been slightly longer since your expedition to the lost subterranean city of Ta’aa, where you fell foul of the last remnants of a race of human-reptilian hybrids. Following those discrete revelatory episodes, you and I have had many grotesque and terrifying experiences together, and we now know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that hideous dark forces swirl around mankind, lurking at the periphery of things, utterly inimical in nature, ever ready to sow havoc and harm. This has become our norm, we are accustomed to it, and hence it is no surprise if we should discuss such matters and related topics between ourselves with the same dispassion as you, I imagine, discuss case histories and the latest surgical techniques with your medical colleagues.”

“You might say we have taken the sane approach when dealing with insanity.”

“Well put,” said Holmes. “You really have a way with words, Watson.” He clapped his hands together. “Anyhow, it is getting dark, and we have accomplished as much as we can here. Let us pay our respects to the widow Pickering and be on our merry way.”

Indoors, Holmes thanked Mrs Pickering for her hospitality and said we would not impose upon her any longer.

“Mr Holmes,” the lady said, “tell me this. Did I truly see Everard? Or am I mad? Forgive my asking, but you must understand, he was not just my husband, he was my everything. We were not blessed with children and we lived only for each other. To think that he may not be dead, that we may be together again… It is inconceivable, yet I am filled with hope nonetheless.”