It is to the very great credit of my friend Mr Sherlock Holmes that his willingness to enter into an enquiry was never motivated by financial considerations. Indeed, I saw him often reject the possibility of large fees in cases which did not arouse his interest and at least as often I witnessed his involvement for no fee in matters which stimulated his curiosity and offered him the opportunity to pit his logical processes against some complicated pattern of events.
I have remarked elsewhere that 1894 was a busy year for Holmes, my notes of cases filling three large volumes, yet even in that year he took up an enquiry from which he had no hope of profit.
We sat at breakfast one morning that autumn, reading our way slowly through the many daily papers to which Holmes subscribed.
“Did you not say”, he asked suddenly, “that your friend Stamford was treating Sir Andrew Lewis?”
“Yes”, I said, “Stamford told me that he had had to call in Sir William Greedon and even that eminent gentleman was baffled by the symptoms.”
“Really!” said Holmes. “Do you recall what they were?”
I cast my mind back to the conversation I had had with Stamford over a game of billiards a couple of weeks previously.
“Apparently Sir Andrew was the victim of a general debility with lesions of the skin, headaches, fainting spells, loss of hair, attacks of vomiting. In addition the poor fellow’s mind seems to have been affected – he believed he was the victim of a curse.”
“And what did Stamford believe it was?”
“He admitted to me that he hadn’t the least notion. Greedon believed it was some obscure tropical disease that Sir Andrew picked up during his work abroad. Apparently Lewis’s son died in his twenties of something similar, though it took him more swiftly. Greedon thought that they had both been infected abroad and that the son, having caught the disease as a child, was more vulnerable. Why do you ask?”
“Because”, Holmes replied, “the combination of Stamford and Sir William Greedon has failed to save Lewis. His obituary appears this morning,” and he passed me his newspaper.
The article recited the dead man’s academic honours and titles, described some of his more famous archaeological explorations and listed the many museums which displayed items that he had discovered. It referred to the controversy which had clouded his career and caused him to withdraw from public life in recent years.
“Good Heavens!” I exclaimed as I drew towards the end of the article, “Perhaps he was the victim of a course.”
“Why do you say so?” asked Holmes, raising one eyebrow.
“Because it is suggested here,” I said, “Listen,” and I read him the relevant passage:
The accusation concerned his conduct during the excavation of an allegedly cursed barrow at Addleton, and must have been the more painful for coming at the time of his son’s death. Sir Andrew made no defence against his attacker, save to state that he acted honourably at Addleton. Fellow archaeologists were unanimous in decrying the attack, but Sir Andrew evidently felt it very deeply, for he took no further part in any excavation, confining himself to writing a definitive series of papers and presenting occasional lectures. The shadow which he at least, perceived as clouding his career now followed by his death from a condition which has defeated the best medical brains in Britain might perhaps encourage the villagers of Addleton to believe that their barrow was truly cursed. Sir Andrew leaves one unmarried daughter.
“What do you make of that?” I asked. “What was the accusation against him?”
“That”, said Holmes, emphatically, “is journalism of a kind that one would hope not to find in an allegedly responsible paper. As to the accusation against Lewis, it was brought by his assistant on the Addleton excavation, one Edgar. He published a letter which raised what he claimed was a mysterious difference between the curious decorations on a sealed container found in the barrow and its contents which, though valuable, were in no way unusual. He contrived to imply, without saying so, that a valuable item had been removed from the container overnight, after it had been discovered and before it had been taken from the excavation.”
“As you have read,” he continued, “the academic world was outraged and supported Lewis to a man. Edgar’s own career certainly suffered. He was well thought of until the Addleton affair but is now, I believe, a lecturer at a suburban institute.” We returned to our newspapers. Holmes was now into the more popular papers, which he read closely for their reports of crimes and accounts of Police Court proceedings. As he finished one he passed it to me and I was turning to the racing page when a heading caught my eye:
I started the article out of idle curiosity, but as I read on I became more engrossed.
“Stamford should read this,” I said, when I had done.
“Really,” said Holmes, in a voice that suggested a total lack of interest.
“Yes,” I persisted. “Do you know what it says here?”
My friend sighed and laid down the Police Gazette. “No doubt you are going to tell me, eh Watson?”
“This article”, I said, “states that the Addleton barrow had been the subject of evil legends as long as anyone can recall. It stood on Addleton Moor, surrounded by many smaller burial mounds. It seems that light falls of snow never covered it and even in the hardest winter the snow always melted on that barrow first. The locals called it the “Black Barrow” because the grass would not grow on it.”
“Watson,” interrupted Holmes, “the grave on which the snow melts soonest and where the grass will not grow is a commonplace of rural legend. Half the country churchyards in Britain claim such a grave.”
“I know,” I said, “but that’s not the interesting part. They say here that after Sir Andrew Lewis opened the barrow the village of Addleton was struck by a strange disease. It’s symptoms were similar to Sir Andrew’s but it was not always fatal. Since then the area has suffered many stillborn children and numbers of deformities. The villagers insist that it resulted from Lewis tampering with the Black Barrow. What do you say to that Holmes?”
He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Sadly, that is not the most reliable of our public prints, but if its report is true then the matter is a singular one. What is your medical opinion, Watson?”
“Perhaps Greedon was right. Maybe Sir Andrew picked up something peculiar during his years in Egypt and passed it on to the people at Addleton. Maybe it’s hereditary. Lewis’s son died of it. It could be that his father acquired the infection before his son’s birth. Perhaps it’s one of those unpleasant diseases that can lie dormant for years and then become active.”
“Perhaps so,” he said. “Watson, be a good fellow and pass me my writing case will you?”
He busied himself with a letter and I believed that the Addleton affair had passed from his mind until he reverted to it at breakfast a couple of days later.
“Do you recall our conversation about the death of Sir Andrew Lewis?” he asked.
“Certainly,” I replied.
Holmes lifted a letter from beside his plate. “The press accounts of the affair excited my curiosity,” he said, “to the extent that I dropped a line to the County Officer of Health.”
“Did you indeed? And what does he have to say?”
Holmes referred to the letter. “While deploring any attempt to suggest that a curse is at work, he confirms that, in the year following Sir Andrew’s excavation of the Black Barrow, the village of Addleton suffered a number of deaths from what appeared to be an obscure form of anaemia and a number of stillbirths and deformed births. He suggests that there is no connection between these misfortunes and the archaeological expedition and that the source of the problem may be some effect of the local water supply.”
“And what do you believe?” I asked.
“My disbelief in curses is only matched by my disbelief in coincidences. Those who have most occasion to be concerned – the people of Addleton – associate their tragedies with Sir Andrew’s excavation. They may be wrong in believing that one is the cause of the other, but that does not mean that there is not a link between the two phenomena. As to the water supply, Addleton stands in a valley surrounded by hills of limestone. In such areas the water is famously pure. One recalls that the villages of south Derbyshire hold ceremonies every summer to celebrate the purity of their limestone streams which, they believe, saved them from the Great Plague.”
“And have you any alternative explanation?” I enquired.
“It is far too early for that,” he replied. “It would be a serious error to attempt an explanation when we have so little data. Our next effort must be to acquire further information so that the full pattern of these curious events reveals itself.”
It was the afternoon of the following day when he enquired, “Have you any engagement this evening, Watson?” When I replied in the negative he said “I thought we might take in this evening’s lecture at the Aldridge Institute. Mr Edgar, of Addleton fame, is lecturing on ‘The Stones and the Stars’, apparently a dissertation on Sir Norman Lockyer’s theory that ancient religious monuments were constructed in relation to the movements of heavenly bodies.”
The Institute turned out to be in a remote part of south London and Mr Edgar’s lecture was not well attended. Nevertheless it was an interesting evening. Edgar was a man of about forty, with the long hair of a scholar and owlish spectacles that imparted a solemn aspect to his face though his lecture revealed a ready wit. His lantern slides, from photographs which he himself had taken, were not only informative but in some cases strikingly attractive. I recall particularly a picture of the great trilithon at Stonehenge lit from behind by the rising sun of midwinter. His arguments in favour of Lockyer’s theory, though complex, were lucidly explained for a lay audience and convincing.
As the small audience trickled out at the lecture’s end Holmes rose and approached Edgar who was giving some instruction to the lantern operator.
“We have enjoyed your talk,” said Holmes,
“Thankyou, gentlemen,” said the lecturer, “but I hope you are not journalists.”
“Why should you think so?” asked Holmes.
“Because I have received a deal of attention from that profession since the death of Sir Andrew Lewis, and I have nothing to say to the press.”
“You may be assured that we are not journalists,” said my friend. “I am Sherlock Holmes, and this is my colleague, Dr Watson.”
The lecturer’s eyes widened behind his round spectacles. “The consulting detective!” he exclaimed, “What, may I ask, is your interest in archaeology?”
“You may have read”, said Holmes, “my papers on ‘Logical Deductions from Strata’ and ‘Early English Charters as a Guide to the Keltic Principalities’, though they were not published under my own name, but it is not those that bring us here. I would welcome your assistance in my enquiries into the death of Sir Andrew Lewis.”
“The death of Sir Andrew!” repeated Edgar. “Surely it is not thought that …”
Holmes raised a hand. “No, Mr Edgar. This is not a matter of murder. Sir Andrew, so far as anyone can tell, died naturally, but the manner of his death bears a strange similarity to the deaths and sicknesses that struck Addleton after the opening of the ‘Black Barrow’.”
“You believe in the so-called Curse of Addleton, then?” asked Edgar.
“Certainly not,” said Holmes, “but I have reliable information that the village has suffered a strange disease since the excavation and it would be in the interest of Addleton’s people to determine the cause.”
“I know nothing of medicine, Mr Holmes. How can I help you?”
“Simply by telling me what you recall of the excavation at Addleton Moor,” said Holmes.
The archaeologist began packing his lantern-slides away in their long wooden cases, while he spoke.
“It was a favourite project of Sir Andrew’s,” he began. “As a student he had been on Addleton Moor and seen that snow did not lie on the Black Barrow and grass did not grow upon it. He did not, of course, believe in the Curse, but he did believe that there was something unique about that barrow.”
“So we went up there, that summer ten years ago, to see what we could find. The weather was fair and Addleton is a pretty village, but I tell you Mr Holmes, before we’d been there long I could have believed in the curse.”
“Why was that?” asked Holmes.
Edgar indicated his slides. “One of my functions”, he said, “was to take photographs for Sir Andrew. I had no difficulty taking pictures of the Moor, of the other tumuli upon it or anything except the Black Barrow. On the first day I took a group of all the party standing by the barrow. It did not come out. I thought it to be merely a faulty plate, as all my other pictures that day were successful, but, as the excavation progressed, I found that every single plate of the barrow failed.”
“In what way?” asked Holmes.
“They were all fogged, Mr Holmes. Every one. I could have a bright, sunny day, an exposure timed to the second, and the picture would come out looking as if it had been taken in a London pea-souper.”
“Have you any idea of the cause?” Holmes enquired.
“None whatsoever. It went on for days and then it ended as mysteriously as it began.”
“It ended!” exclaimed Holmes.
“Oh yes,” said Edgar. “I have pictures of the barrow. Suddenly the fogging was gone and everything was all right. I never knew what caused it.”
“You hinted,” said Holmes, “that there were other difficulties.”
“There were indeed,” said Edgar. “In the early stages Sir Andrew and several other members of the party became ill.”
“With what?” I asked.
“Nothing the village doctor could put a name to. There was sickness and itchiness. At first we tended to blame the beds or the food at the inns, but they were two different pubs at opposite ends of Addleton. Then people started saying it was some disease of the local cows or sheep, but that was madness, just the irritability of fellows who were not up to par. Then that passed off, just like my photographic problem.”
“And was there anything else?” said Holmes.
“There were Sir Andrew’s personal problems. His son arrived from London. He was in the army, you know, and the young idiot had got himself cashiered for debt. His father was furious at the disgrace and there was his son bothering him for money. He was a wretched nuisance, hanging about the inn where his father stayed and, when Sir Andrew wouldn’t give him his time, he’d turn up at the digging and hang about pestering his father. It was all very distracting for Sir Andrew.”
He paused. “Then he fell ill,” he said. “Not like the rest of us, something really serious. We were just finishing up and Sir Andrew had to come back to London, leaving his son sick in Addleton. He sent the best doctors up from London, but they did no good. The lad was dead in weeks. Do you wonder that I said it was easy to believe in the Curse?”
“No,” agreed Holmes, “and when you returned there was the row in the papers.”
“I hope you do not blame me,” said Edgar, sharply, “though I blame myself for the timing of it. But I thought about it for weeks before I wrote my letter. I could not believe my own thoughts, but in the end, in all conscience, I had to say what I thought, and it appeared just as Sir Andrew’s son died. I felt wretched, attacking at such a time a man I had admired and looked up to. It was all pointless, anyway. There was a wave of sympathy for him, the profession closed ranks and nobody gave any serious attention to what I was saying. They say I destroyed his profession.” He gave a mirthless laugh and waved a hand around him. “It didn’t exactly do mine much good.”
“What was it about?” I ventured, for I had not completely understood Holmes’s remarks on this aspect of the matter.
“Have you seen the Addleton casket?” Edgar asked. “It was in the Barnard Museum, though they withdrew it from display when the row started, to avoid attracting vulgar sensation-seekers.”
I shook my head and he continued.
“It was at the heart of the barrow, at ground level. Now usually you find a small stone chamber with ashes, or pots with ashes, bits of burned bones, a few funeral artefacts, that kind of thing. When we reached the bottom and uncovered the top of the casket we were delighted. We knew we’d found something utterly unique. We had come to the usual box of stone slabs and, when we removed the top slab, there was this magnificent casket. It was oval, made in bronze, with silver and enamelled decoration all over it, the finest work of its kind I’ve ever seen.”
He paused and his eyes turned beyond us. “There was just Sir Andrew and myself that evening. The sickness was at its height and the other fellows had gone down from the Moor at tea-time, but sick or not you couldn’t keep Sir Andrew from his work. I stayed on with him because I didn’t like the idea of him up on the Moor alone. It’s a creepy sort of place, you know.”
“Well, it was late, almost dark when we uncovered the casket. We went to lift it, but it was infernally heavy and in the end Sir Andrew said to cover it up and leave it, let the other fellows see it in situ in the morning. Before we put the slab back I recall crouching in the pit with a lantern, for it was twilight, peering at the decorations on that wonderful thing and trying to make sense of them, and when I did I shuddered.”
He shuddered slightly again at the recollection.
“Why was that?” asked Holmes.
“Death,” said the archaeologist. “That splendid casket was covered in symbols of death. I have never seen anything like it, Mr Holmes. Those old peoples were like us, they believed in rebirth. If there are decorations connected with their burials they are always signs of life, sun wheels, spirals, plants, animals, but this was completely different. It was covered in skulls and bones.”
“And what did that suggest to you?” asked Holmes.
“I was excited. I believed that the casket would contain something remarkable, something that its creators regarded as of great importance. Because we could not lift it, Sir Andrew and I covered it up and went down from the Moor. We knew no villager would venture onto Addleton Moor after twilight. It was dark when we got back to our lodgings, and the other fellows had turned in, but I could scarcely sleep for wondering what lay in that bronze box.”
“Next morning we returned to the excavation and carefully lifted the container and opened it. As soon as the lid was removed we knew why it had been heavy and I knew that it had been tampered with. Apart from being constructed from very thick bronze, the casket had been lined with a layer of lead. Now lead, as you may know, can decay into a powdery, ashlike form, and parts of the lining had done so. Pieces crumbled away as we lifted it, and fell into the box, and, while the rest of them gazed at the contents, I became aware that those dusty fragments of lead had been disturbed by human fingers. The marks were clear.”
“I could not understand it. We were the first, or so it seemed, who had looked into that casket since it was placed under the barrow, but then I looked at the contents.”
“What were they?” I asked.
“You might have seen those, too, in the Barnard Museum,” he said. “A pair of fine bronze mirrors, brooches, beads, knives, cups, a strange quartz pebble mounted in a bronze holder, knives and the usual bone fragments and ashes contained in two handsome pottery urns. A very satisfactory find, or so my colleagues thought it, but they were wrong.”
“Why was that?” enquired Holmes.
“Because there was nothing there that had not been seen in other excavations, nothing at all to justify those sinister decorations on the outside of the container, and thereby I knew that something had been removed.”
He drew a deep breath. “Only Sir Andrew and I had even known of the casket’s existence overnight, but someone had opened it, disturbed the leaden lining and removed something, and that someone could only have been Sir Andrew.”
He closed a slide-box with a snap. “As I said, we came away, Sir Andrew distracted by his son’s illness and the necessity to leave him at Addleton and I appalled by the looting of our excavation by the man who had been my friend and mentor. The rest you know.”
“There is really only one more question,” said my friend.
“Which of Addleton’s inns was Sir Andrew’s lodging?”
Edgar stared at us blankly for a moment. “The Goat and Boots,” he said shortly and turned away.
The next morning found Holmes and me on the doorstep of the late Sir Andrew’s home. Like Edgar, the butler was disposed to believe we were journalists and drive us away, but my friend’s card gained us an introduction to Sir Andrew’s daughter.
She received us in the morning room. Lady Cynthia was a tall, fair, young woman, on whom sombre black sat well.
“Mr Holmes, Doctor”, she said. “My father would have welcomed the opportunity to meet you. He read your accounts, Doctor, of Mr Holmes’s cases, with great pleasure and approved of your application of logic.”
“It is kind of you to say so,” said Holmes, “and I could have wished to meet in happier circumstances, but it is about your father that we have called.”
“About my father?” she queried. “Surely you do not believe that there is anything suspicious about his death? Sir William Greedon believed the cause to be an old infection from his Egyptian explorations, similar to that which carried off my poor brother.”
“You must not assume that my involvement indicates a crime, Lady Cynthia. The press has linked Sir Andrew’s death with the so-called Curse of Addleton …”
“That is mere vulgar sensationalism,” she interrupted. “We experienced the same nonsense at the time of Anthony’s death.”
Holmes nodded, sympathetically. “Nevertheless,” he said, “I have reliable information that Addleton has suffered some strange infection since Sir Andrew opened the Black Barrow.”
“Surely you do not believe in the Curse, Mr Holmes!”
“No madam, not for one moment, but I have often observed that what the superstitious or the lazy-minded call supernatural or coincidental is, in fact, the occurrence of two striking events which have a common cause or share a connection. I believe that such may be the case here.”
“If it will prevent deaths such as my brother’s and my father’s,” said Lady Cynthia, “then of course I will assist your enquiries. How can I help you?”
“You might tell me what it was that occupied Sir Andrew’s mind in his last days, Lady Cynthia.”
An expression of pain passed across her features. “When he first fell sick,” she began, “he became anxious to write up his paper on Addleton. He had never published it, you know, because of the row with Edgar. But he never completed it, for he would fall into strange excitements and sudden obsessions.”
“And what form did they take?” asked Holmes.
“He began to blame himself for my brother’s death. When his own health was already failing, he insisted on travelling alone to Addleton, saying that he must ask Tony’s forgiveness. I pleaded to travel with him, if he must go, but he said that he must go alone.”
She gazed at the handsome portrait of her father which hung above the fireplace.
“After that his health deteriorated rapidly. While he was not yet confined to his bed he sat in his workshop, scribbling endlessly.”
“Do you have any of his scribblings?” asked Holmes.
“No, Mr Holmes. I looked at them after his death and they were unconnected nonsense. I destroyed them.”
“Might we see his workshop?” asked my friend.
“By all means,” she replied and rose from her chair. We followed her to the rear of the house, where she led us into a long room, lit by three tall windows that overlooked an attractive garden. Its walls were lined with bookshelves and down the middle ran a long, solid table, littered with tools and scraps of various materials. In one corner stood a writing desk.
“This was always my father’s working place,” said Lady Cynthia. “Please feel free to make any examination that you wish. If you will join me in the morning room when you have done, I shall arrange some tea,” and she withdrew.
Sherlock Holmes looked about him. “I think you had better take the books,” he said.
“How do you mean?” I queried.
“Examine the bookshelves, Watson, for anything which occurs to you as out of the ordinary.”
“But I am not sure that I know what an eminent archaeologist would ordinarily read,” I protested.
He ignored me and began to pace around the big central table. I turned to the bookshelves and attempted the task that Holmes had set me. There were shelf upon shelf of archaeological journals, some in foreign languages, there were works on history, legend and folklore, but nothing that struck me as anomalous. Eventually I turned back to Holmes who was looking at some objects at one corner of the bench.
“He seems to have nothing here but professional reading,” I observed.
“Very well,” said Holmes. “Then we must make what we can of his work-bench,” and he passed to me a small dark pad.
“Moleskin,” I said, as soon as my fingers touched it, “A piece of moleskin folded over and stitched into a – a pin-cushion perhaps?”
“Moleskin,” confirmed my friend, “but not a pin-cushion, I think. Smell it, Watson.”
I lifted the little pad and my nostrils wrinkled. “Faugh!” I exclaimed, “it reeks of rancid tallow.”
“Precisely,” said Holmes, “and what about this?”
He picked up from the bench a curious wooden object and I took it from him. It was about eighteen inches long and rounded at one end to form a handle such as one would find on many tools, but above the handle it widened out, one side being flat and the other curved. The opposite end from the handle was cut quite flat. It was evidently a manufactured object and had been stained, though the curved and flat surfaces bore signs of impact.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I said. “Are you sure it is complete?”
“Oh, it is quite complete,” said Holmes, “and exactly what I expected to see. Now, I think it only remains to examine the writing desk.”
The desk yielded little. The pigeon-holes had been cleared and there were two note-pads on the desk from which the upper sheets had been removed.
“Nothing here, Holmes,” I said.
“I do not know,” he replied, and slipping his lens from his pocket began an examination of the blank note pads. “Have you a cigarette, Watson?” he asked, suddenly.
I took out my case and opened it. “I see,” said Holmes, “that the horses have not lived up to your expectations. You are reduced to cheap Virginias. Still, they will suffice,” and he took one and lit it.
After a few vigorous puffs he leaned over the desk and tapped his ash onto one of the note-pads, rubbing it into the paper with his forefinger. After a moment he smiled.
“See,” he said, lifting the pad, “the ash has darkened the paper, except where it has been compressed by the weight of a pencil on the sheet above. Now, what have we here?”
He held the paper to the light. “We have some decipherable words, Watson, and they seem to be ‘poor Tony’s death’. Now, what will the second pad reveal?”
Soon he had applied his process to the second pad and examined it. “ ‘Lead? Lead? Lead?’ ” he read from it, “Each time with a question mark. That-seems to be all on this one.”
He crumpled the two ash-stained sheets into his coat pocket and straightened up. “I think,” he said, “we should take our farewells of Lady Cynthia.”
While we took tea with Lady Cynthia, Holmes assured her that he expected to unravel the mystery of her father’s death and would communicate with her when his researches were complete. I, however, had been growing more mystified at each of my friend’s moves and, in the cab back to Baker Street, I said so.
“Watson, Watson,” he said, shaking his head. “It was you who drew my attention to this pretty little puzzle. Since then I have merely pursued a completely logical investigation into the mystery and have been able to acquire certain data which will, I firmly believe, lead me to a successful conclusion. You should know my methods well by now. Surely you have some inkling?”
I shook my head.
“Then consider these important facts,” he said, striking them off on his fingers as he announced them. “Firstly, the people of Addleton believe the Black Barrow to be accursed because grass does not grow and snow does not lie upon it; secondly, the County Medical Officer confirms that a strange disease struck the village after the opening of the barrow; thirdly, Mr Edgar believes, with good reason, that something was removed from the barrow illicitly. Does none of that assist you?”
I had to admit that it did not, and he shook his head again in wonderment, but offered no further explanation.
“What will be your next move?” I asked, seeking some indication that might help me.
“I should have thought,” he said, “that that also would have been obvious to you. We must go to Addleton and view the locus in quo, indeed the scene of the crime.”
“But I thought you believed there was no crime here!” I exclaimed.
“I set out,” said Holmes, “to solve a medical mystery, but we have stumbled across crime on our path. There has been a crime, Watson. One with very far-reaching consequences.”
The next afternoon found us in Addleton, a stone-built village which consisted largely of one long street with an inn at either end, huddled deep beneath the great square bulk of Addleton Moor. Once we had settled our baggage at the Goat and Boots Holmes sought out the village’s only doctor. Doctor Leary was an affable Irishman in his forties, who welcomed us into his surgery.
“And what,” he asked, when we had introduced ourselves, “brings a famous consulting detective all the way from London to Addleton? We have no murders here, Mr Holmes, and apart from a bit of head-thumping among the quarrymen on pay nights we have no other kind of crime.”
“But you have a mystery,” said Holmes.
“A mystery? Ah, surely a man of reason and logic like yourself is not looking into the Curse of the Black Barrow?”
“Certainly not,” said Holmes. “I am, however, looking into events which have led the popular press to allege that the Curse is real, namely the death of Anthony Lewis, the deaths, sicknesses, stillbirths and deformed births that have occurred here, and the recent death in London of Sir Andrew Lewis. Would you deny that they create a curious pattern?”
“There certainly seems to be a connection though, like you, I reject the supernatural explanation,” said Dr Leary. He groped in his pocket for his pipe and lit it. When it was well alight he continued.
“I came here, you know, fresh from Medical School. I thought I’d found a nice pitch”, he said. “A pretty village, a bracing climate, clean water, nice people and nothing much to worry me or them except old age and quarry accidents. And so it was for the first few years, then they opened the Black Barrow, and if it wasn’t cursed then it certainly deserves to be so.”
“What did you make of the sickness that affected the excavators?” Holmes asked.
“Very little, I admit. It was not serious and it might have had a number of causes. They were sweating away up on the Moor in the summer sun, some of them young fellas who were more used to a pen than a pick. I thought it could be a touch of the sun and I treated it as such.”
“And young Lewis?” said my friend.
“That, of course, was different. At the time I made no connection with the archaeologists. He came to me first with burns on his hands. I thought he had picked up something too hot with both hands. He said that he had not, that he had red patches appear on his hands for no reason and then open up like burns. I treated him with salves and wondered if it was some foreign skin disease, for he told me he had been abroad as a child.”
The doctor puffed at his pipe, reflectively. “Then it got worse. He had fainting fits, headaches, nausea – soon he was too weak to leave his bed. His father sent the best of Harley Street to help me, but they were helpless. We could only watch him fade away.”
“And how did the sickness spread?” enquired Holmes.
“Very quickly,” said Leary. “Though it was never as fierce as in young Lewis. The next was the boot boy at the Goat. He died some weeks after the young man. It seems he had been in the habit of slipping into Lewis’s room in his spare time and listening to tales of soldiering and the silly lad must have caught his death from Lewis. Then there was old McSwiney. He was a retired peeler who spent all his time in the Goat. He was old enough to go at any time if he hadn’t pickled himself in alcohol, but he’d never had much in the way of sickness until the end. He had the vomiting and that, but not the burns, but it was clear it was the same thing.”
“That was when I called in the County Officer of Health. We went over everything, the food and drink at the Goat, the water, the bedding, everything. There was nothing to find, the place was as clean as a whistle.”
“Your Medical Officer seems to think the disease is waterborne,” said Holmes.
“Rubbish!” said Leary. “He says that because he can’t think of anything else. We have deep limestone wells here. I’ve had the water under a microscope, Mr Holmes. There’s nothing in it except a few extra salts that people pay for in fancy spas.”
“And what do you make of it, Dr Leary?”
“I’ve racked my brains for ten years,” he said. “I know no more about that disease now than I did then, except one thing. As well as the deaths we had a few cases that were milder. When the deaths and the sickness stopped we thought it had gone, but then there came the births you have heard about. I didn’t see how it could have been the same thing, but now I’m sure it was.”
“And what made you so sure?” asked Holmes.
“Geography,” said Leary. “Lewis died in the ‘Goat’ the boot boy died in the ‘Goat’, McSwiney drank in the ‘Goat’, those who had the sickness drank in the ‘Goat’, though not so much as McSwiney, Lord save him. When the stillbirths and the deformities occurred I saw the same pattern. They were all at that end of the village, close to the ‘Goat’. And I’ll tell you one more thing. All of the women were already pregnant when Lewis died.”
He knocked out his pipe on the fender. Holmes steepled his fingers in front of his face for a moment, then looked up at the Irishman. “Is it over?” he asked.
“Oh yes. It’s over – for now. But we don’t know what it is or how it came here. I can’t tell my people that it won’t happen again.”
“I hope,” said Holmes, “that I can give you that assurance in the very near future. Is there anything else at all that you believe may help us?”
Leary laughed. “They say there’s a bright side to everything. You won’t have seen it in the papers, for they only deal in bad news, but we did have two miraculous cures at the same time.”
“What were they?” said Holmes.
“One was Mary Cummins, the daughter of the landlord at the ‘Goat’. She was seventeen at the time, a sweet, pretty thing, but she started with blinding headaches, dizziness, fainting. This was before the barrow was opened, when there was no thought of a new sickness. Nothing I could do for her made any difference. Soon she had spells when her mind wandered. I began to wonder about a tumour on the brain, but do you know that while others were sickening she suddenly got well? She lost all her symptoms and she’s as right as rain to this day.
The other was old Mrs Henty, next door to the pub. Her daughter-in-law was the mother of one of the deformed babies, but Mrs Henty had a persistent eczema on both forearms. She’d had it all her life, she told me, but it vanished in days.”
“Astonishing,” said Holmes. “Now, Doctor, we have taken up enough of your time. I assure you again, that I believe I am well on the track of this thing and will let you know my conclusions.”
We dined that night at our inn and had the good fortune to be waited upon by the same Mary Cummins that Dr Leary had mentioned to us. Whatever her difficulties of ten years ago, she was now a buxom, raven-haired countrywoman in her middle twenties, vigorous and witty.
After dinner we established ourselves beside the fire in the back parlour, where Mary brought us our drinks.
“Miss Cummins,” said Holmes, “may I ask if you know why Dr Watson and I are in Addleton?”
She smiled. “ ‘Tis no business of mine,” she said, “but I hear tell you’ve come about the Black Barrow.”
“Perhaps you would sit with us for a moment,” he suggested. “You are right that we are investigating the singular disease that affected the village when the barrow was opened.”
She took a chair and he continued. “I believe that, so far from being one of the sick, you actually recovered from an illness at that time. Would it embarrass you to tell us about it?”
“Not at all, sir,” she replied. “I had been ill for nearly two years and getting worse all the time. First it was giddy spells, then faints, then cruel headaches and sometimes I seemed to lose my wits altogether. Dr Leary tried all sorts but it kept getting worse. He said I should have to have an operation on my head and I was rare frightened, but then, so fast as it came, it was gone, and as true as I’m sitting here I’ve never known a day’s sickness since.”
“Remarkable,” said Holmes. “And to what do you attribute you cure?”
“Well, they say as all the sickness came out of that old barrow, and if it did, I say as my cure came out too.”
Holmes eyed her, thoughtfully. “You remember young Mr Lewis?” he asked.
“Indeed I do,” she said. “Poor young man. He was all in trouble with his father and then to die like that.”
“Did you know him well?”
She blushed prettily. “Well, sir, when he was well he would make up to me. No more than was proper, though. And I daresay I was younger then and looked after him a bit special because of it.”
“Did he ever show you, or tell you, what he had in his possession?” asked Holmes.
“How did you know about that?” she asked. “He said as no one knew he had it and I must keep his secret.”
“You need not fear my knowing, Mary,” said Holmes. “May I ask what it was?”
“Well, I had gone to his room one day, to tidy up, you know, and he came in. Now father’s always been very strict about me not lingering in guests rooms when they’re there, so I made to go, but Mr Lewis said, ‘Let me show you something.’ He pulled his trunk out from under his bed and he took out a great old pot, a big round earthenware pot with a lid. ‘What’s that?’ I said, and he smiled and said, ‘That’s the strangest thing in the world. It’ll be the making of me,’ then he took my hand and put it on the pot and it was warm outside, like a brick that’s been in the oven.”
“I pulled my hand away, but he turned the lamp down and says ‘Look at this, Mary.’ He lifted the lid off that pot and there was a beautiful blue light came out of it, all shimmering like water. It took my breath away, I tell you. ‘Whatever’s in there?’ I said, and he smiled again and said ‘My fortune, Mary. No matter what my father may do,’ and he closed the lid again.”
“And what did you think it was?” enquired my friend.
“To tell the truth, I thought it was magic. I’ve never seen the like before or since.” She got up from her chair. “I’ll tell you something else, Mr Holmes, that I’ve never told nobody – sometimes I think it was what he had in that funny old pot that cured my brain. Now that’s daft, isn’t it?”
“You may very well be right, Mary,” said Holmes. “If we might ask one more favour – is Mr Lewis’s old room occupied?”
“No, sir,” she said. “Did you wish to change?”
“Not at all,” said Holmes, “but I would like a glimpse of that room.”
She offered to take us up at once, and led us to a room at the end of the main landing. Holmes stood in the middle of the little, low-ceilinged bedroom, then stepped to the casement. “You can see the Moor from here,” he observed, “and whose is that cottage next door?”
“That’s old Mrs Henry’s,” said Mary. “She had a cure too. All her skin trouble went. Poor Mr Lewis, and little Georgie the boot boy and old McSwiney, they all went and all them others was sick, but Mrs Henty and me we seemed to get the good side. Funny, isn’t it?”
“It is certainly strange,” said Holmes, and led the way out of the room.
Holmes was down early in the morning, at the breakfast table before I joined him. He was in high good humour, though a cold snap in the night had brought a sprinkling of snow to Addleton.
“What next?” I asked him, having virtually abandoned any attempt to understand his enquiries.
“I told you, Watson. We have come here to view the locus in quo, and once the village photographer arrives, we shall pay a visit to this ill-famed barrow.”
We had finished our breakfast when Mary informed us that Mr Swain, the village photographer, awaited us in the parlour. He greeted us cheerfully and offered the opinion that it would be pretty on the Moor in the snow.
We took the inn’s pony-trap and, loading Mr Swain’s equipment, set out for the Moor. Although the top of Addleton Moor lies at about 1,100 feet above sea level, a decent track winds up from the village at one corner and, even with a slight covering of snow, we had no difficulty in reaching the top.
On the exposed top the snow lay thicker, a blanket of white that glittered in the morning sun. All around us hummocks in the snow revealed the presence of burial mounds, each casting a pale lilac shadow in the white. Holmes stood up in the trap and gazed around him.
“Ah! There it is!” he exclaimed, and pointed.
Ahead of us and to our left a dark mark broke the whiteness and, as we moved towards it, we could see that it was another tumulus, bare both of snow and vegetation, exposing raw earth.
“Have you ever photographed the Black Barrow before?” Holmes asked the photographer.
“No, sir. That would be a wasted plate. Nobody hereabouts would pay for a picture of that thing,” he replied with some vehemence.
We drew to a halt close to the Black Barrow and Mr Swain set up his camera under Holmes’s directions. I walked around the mound, finding it nothing more than a heap of compacted soil, unrelieved by any blade of grass. Its lower edge was ringed with flat stones and, looking closely at its surface, it was possible to see where Sir Andrew’s men had cut their trench through its centre. Apart from its nakedness, there was nothing to distinguish it from any of the forty or fifty mounds round about. One did not have to be superstitious to find something disturbing in that patch of dead, dark, soil.
I stepped aside while Mr Swain exposed half a dozen plates and then we were back in the trap and returning to the village.
Holmes was still in good spirits over luncheon, so that I queried his mood. “I have every right to be cheerful, Watson. This morning’s excursion gave me the final piece of evidence. Nature has assisted my enquiry, though I made assurance doubly sure and asked Mr Swain for his photographs.”
Mr Swain joined us over coffee, rather nervous and apologetic. “I do not know what has happened, Mr Holmes,” he said. “The general views of the Moor are crystal clear, as they should have been with this morning’s light, but all four plates of the barrow are spoiled. Look,” he said and laid the box of plates on the table.
Holmes took each plate in turn and held it up to the window, passing each to me when he had done with it. Two were fine panoramas of the snowclad Moor but each of the others was just a swirl of fog.
“But this is exactly what Edgar said happened to his plates!” I exclaimed.
“Precisely,” declared Holmes, “and thereby our case is closed. I am deeply grateful to you, Mr Swain.”
The confused photographer took the money that Holmes offered, thanked him and left rapidly, as though he feared my friend would change his mind.
When the coffee was done Holmes drew out his watch. “We might”, he said, “catch the mid-afternoon express to London. Would you be so kind as to ask the boy for our bags and the reckoning?”
On the way back to London Holmes discoursed wittily on anarchists and poisoners, on underworld argot and a dozen different topics, but I heard him with only half an ear for my mind was churning in its attempts to make sense of what Sherlock Holmes evidently regarded as a successful enquiry. At length I could stand it no longer.
“Holmes!” I exclaimed, “I have never been so completely at a loss to understand one of your enquiries. What in Heaven’s name has this all been about?”
He laughed. “Do you recall”, he said, “that when we had not known each other long you took issue with me over my proposition that, by logical deduction, it should be possible to infer the existence of an ocean from a single grain of sand?”
“Well, yes,” I said, “but I was not then so familiar with your remarkable methods.”
“I fear,” he said, “that you are not yet familiar with them. I have been engaged in one of the most enjoyable enquiries that I can recall, enjoyable because I have had to infer the existence of something which I have never seen and to construct the pattern of its movements and assess its influence by pure reason.”
“You have left me a long way behind,” I grumbled.
“Consider the patterns, Watson,” he said.
“The patterns on the casket?” I asked. “What of them?”
“No, Watson,” he sighed. “The patterns of the evidence as it unfolded.” He leaned forward.
“Let us begin at the beginning. The newspapers told us that snow would not lie and grass would not grow upon the Black Barrow. I admit I took that for folklore or exaggeration, but you heard Edgar say that it was the case. What did that suggest to you?”
I confessed to no idea at all.
“Watson!” he expostulated. “You have been in mining districts; you have seen heaps of coal waste on which grass will not grow nor the snow lie.”
“But that is caused by fires smouldering within the heaps,” I said. “Ordinary soil does not smoulder, Holmes.”
“No indeed, Watson, but that analogy led me to believe that something within the barrow might be emitting some influence or emanation that warmed its surface yet discouraged growth.”
“Such as what?” I asked.
“I admit that, at first, I could see no solution along that line, but then I recalled pitchblende.”
“Pitchblende?” I echoed. “What on earth is that?”
“It is an ore, of uranium, found in several places. For centuries German miners have been aware of it and afraid of it, for they knew that it could cause burns and sickness. Now, you will recall my telling you of my experiments in coal-tar derivatives at the Montpelier laboratories in France, earlier this year?”
“Certainly.”
“Among my colleagues there was a French scientist, Jacques Curie, a specialist in electro-magnetism. He introduced me to a remarkable group of people who have theories about that substance. One was a Monsieur Bacquerel, another was Curie’s own brother, Pierre, and another was Pierre’s assistant and fiancee, a determined and intelligent young Polish lady called Marie Sklodovska. All of them believe that pitchblende emits some influence that can affect its surroundings.”
“Good Heavens!” I said. “This sounds more like witch-craft than science.”
“I assure you that they are all very fine scientists, Watson, and it occurred to me to proceed on the basis that they are right and that pitchblende, or something like it, had been hidden in that barrow when it was first set up.”
He paused. “That would neatly explain our first few facts, but what of the disease? Well, Mr Edgar gave us the answer to that, with his clear proof that the bronze casket had been rifled in the night. Edgar’s spoiled photographs were also the proof that something was in the barrow that spoiled his plates. He failed to realize it, but the later success of his photography was also the proof that something had been removed from the mound. He was sadly wrong about Sir Andrew’s guilt. It was, of course, the younger Lewis. No doubt, as Edgar described, he waited at the inn for his father’s return, and Sir Andrew, fresh from his discovery, would certainly have mentioned it to his son. And so Anthony Lewis robbed the Black Barrow that night as a revenge on his father for refusing to meet his debts, and by so doing he brought about his own death.”
“By Jove!” I said, “I begin to see. Everyone who came near was affected in some degree, but he slept with it beneath his bed,” and I shuddered at the thought of the luckless youth asleep while the malign emanations that Holmes had described seeped into him hour by hour.
“Exactly, Watson. I told you that we had stumbled upon a crime in our enquiries, but it brought with it its own fearful sentence. Sadly, the presence of that baleful urn at the ‘Goat and Boots’ was also responsible for the deaths and other effects in the village, though I suppose we should rejoice at the good fortune of Mrs Henty and young Mary. Evidently the influence of the substance is not entirely malign and, if my friends on the Continent, can refine and control it, it may yet prove a blessing.”
“If it can destroy a malignant tumour it will be an enormous blessing,” I said. “But how came Sir Andrew to die of its effects and why does the snow still not lie on the Black Barrow? Is there more of the stuff still in there?”
Holmes shook his head. “Sir Andrew would have realized his son’s crime when he saw what was in the dead man’s trunk, and to spare his dead son further shame he hid the urn. Somewhere secure, apparently, for it took ten years for the influence to affect him. When it did he will have realized the significance of the unique decoration on the outer casket. It was a warning that nobody heeded. He could not leave that deadly urn to destroy others. His notes prove that he connected it with his son’s death and also suggested to me the remedy that he devised. The bolster confirmed it.”
“Bolster?” I said, “Where was there a bolster?”
“A wooden implement, Watson, known as a bolster or lead-dresser, used by plumbers for knocking sheet lead into shape, as a moleskin pad impregnated with tallow is used to wipe the joints of leaden pipes and containers. Sir Andrew evidently recalled the leaden lining of the bronze casket and reasoned, perhaps, that it had some inhibiting influence on the ore’s emanations. This morning’s visit and Mr Swain’s photographs confirmed my deduction. Sir Andrew’s last visit to Addleton may have been to stand at his son’s grave, but it was also to return the stolen urn to the Black Barrow. He was quite right. No one will re-open that mound, the locals keep away and there will never be a road or railway or houses on the Moor. Its poisonous influence is as harmless there as if it was at the bottom of the ocean.”
“I admit that it all makes sense,” I said, “but it still seems very theoretical to me.”
“Theoretical!” he snorted. “The pieces of my puzzle have been the words of witnesses who had no cause to lie. All I have added is the unproven, but entirely reasonable, theory of a number of eminent scientists. In the absence of data, Watson, it is permissible to theorize in directions which do not conflict with such data as does exist. It seems that my application of their theory has provided Curie and his friends with further data. In connection with which, Watson, I must ask you not to add this case to your published stories if only because publication might prematurely disclose the reasoning of my French friends and rob them of their just triumph in due course. But I must really write and tell Curie this singular tale.”
I confess that I had no intention of publishing an account of the Addleton affair. I could not fault Holmes’s reasoning, but I could not quell a suspicion that it was all rather too logical and was not capable of proof.
Holmes wrote to Lady Cynthia and to Dr Leary, assuring them that the Addleton disease would never occur again and also to Edgar, explaining his understandable error. That fair-minded man wrote at once to the papers saying that, in the light of new information, he wholeheartedly and entirely withdrew any implication he had made against Sir Andrew Lewis.
Twenty-five years have elapsed since the Addleton tragedy and science has moved on. I owe my friend an apology for doubting him and I make it here. It was less than two years after Holmes had explained his reasoning to me that Becquerel established the existence of an emission from uranium ore which affected photographic plates. Miss Sklodovska, or Madame Curie as she is now widely known, realized that pitchblende contained something that emitted “Becquerel rays” more strongly than uranium and, thereby, discovered radium, the medicinal use of which has saved countless lives. The Curies and Becquerel have richly deserved their Nobel prizes for their efforts in turning a freak of nature to the advantage of mankind, and it seems to me that my friend Sherlock Holmes deserves recognition for having made what must surely have been the earliest practical application of their theories.
As to the deadly aspects of “Becquerel rays”, they are now well understood by scientists. Now we know their dangers and, unlike our primitive forefathers, we do not have to fear that they will ever be carelessly unleashed upon the world.