Chapter Two

“Sorry to interrupt your dinners, gentlemen. I know Harry here puts on a fair spread but we’d really welcome your assistance on a wee matter that’s just now occurred up at the big house. We’re used to a little poaching, maybe someone borrowing a bicycle now and then, so we’re a wee bit out of our depth, I fear, with this happening. We’d be most grateful if you could take a look and give us your opinion, Mr. Holmes.”

And, in truth, Sergeant Drummond did look a ‘wee bit’ out of his depth for the rain that had been beating down ceaselessly for the past two days had left him bedraggled and looking somewhat forlorn. However, as his carriage bowled along the narrow country roads, he cheered up considerably, now that he had someone to share his burden, and began to tell us his story.

“Aye, Mr. Holmes—Doctor—it’s to the big house I’m taking you, for it’s there it happened. We called it The Manse in the old days but when the Briggs fellow moved in—him with his English Southern ways—he insisted on calling it The Hall. Behaved like a Southern gentleman, too, he did. He was ‘Sir’ down there, so he wanted us all to call him one up here …” Then his craggy face allowed itself a small grin. “But we’re awful forgetful in these parts.”

“I take it, Sir—”

“Simon.”

“I take it Sir Simon isn’t too popular with his neighbours, then?” I asked.

“Wasn’t, Doctor—wasn’t. You see the poor man’s dead. And nobody wished that upon him.”

Then, seeing my surprise, he went on—

“See, he came here about a couple of years ago now. Made his money in London, so they said, then decided to retire and become a Lord of the Manor. Picked the wrong spot, as I say, but that’s beside the point. He bought the big house, did it up, money no object. Then, when he found his London ways didna go down so well hereaboots, he started to keep hisself to hisself. He had his staff to look after everything. You wouldna see him from one month to the next.

“Then, a few days ago, he comes storming into my police station, bangs the counter and says he’s being spied on and he won’t have it. He pays his taxes—which is more than many around here do—and he wants it stopped. Well, I can tell you—I was fair taken aback. He wasn’t a popular man, that’s for certain, but I couldna believe anyone meant him any harm.”

“Had he seen any of the people who were spying?” asked Holmes from the dim depths of the jolting carriage.

“Aye, now there’s the even queerer thing,” Drummond replied, turning in his direction. “He claimed they were clever at hiding themselves but not quite clever enough. There were two of them and he’d caught a glimpse of them one night when he was watching and the moon suddenly came out from behind a cloud. One of them was an average looking sort of fellow …”

“And the other was an Indian?”

The sergeant peered even harder into the gloom that engulfed Holmes.

“Why, yes, Mr. Holmes, that’s just what he claimed. But how do you know? And what does it mean?”

“Possibly nothing. But I see the lights of what I presume to be the big house approaching. Perhaps you will be good enough to tell us how Sir Simon died, for I presume it is his death we are here to investigate?”

“Indeed, it is. Indeed, it is. His butler, Blackmore came to the station in a fearful state with the news. But here we are. He’ll best tell you about it hisself …”

The carriage had been rattling along a curved driveway and now came to a stop in front of what I suppose was an imposing granite house, though the driving rain made it difficult to discern the details and did nothing to relieve the air of gloom that surrounded it and which certainly extended to the gaunt figure of the man who had the door already open for us.

Blackmore was a tall, cadaverous man in his sixties. I leaned later that Sir Simon had brought him up from a London agency and at this moment—and, I suspect, for some time past—the man was regretting the move north of the border. At the moment he was clearly shaken and it is at times like this that Holmes comes into his own.

We were in a kind of baronial hall that led off into a series of other rooms and the place was clearly a rambling mausoleum distinctly lacking in charm of any sort. Briggs had imported his idea of traditional British aristocratic splendour of decor and dropped it piecemeal into a setting it ill fitted. I sensed that in many ways it was symbolic of the man’s failure to fit into his new environment.

Taking Blackmore gently by the arm, my friend led him to an armchair and sat him down, slightly apart from the sergeant and myself. Then, speaking very quietly, he said—

“Now then, Mr. Blackmore, I’d like you to tell me in your own words what happened here this evening. Omit no detail, however trivial, for it may be of the greatest importance.”

Holmes’s tone clearly had the desired effect, for in a moment the story came pouring forth.

“The Master’s been worried sick for days, sir,” he said—forgetting in his distress his professional accent and lapsing into what must have been his native Cockney. “What with these people watching the house. Oh, yes, I’ve seen them with me own eyes and it’s my opinion as how they wanted to be seen, wanted ’im to know they had their eye on him, like.

“When I told ’im I’d seen them too, the Master just looked at me and said—‘Blackmore,’ he said, ‘looking is all they’ll do. I’ll get the law on them, you see if I don’t. I’ve worked too ’ard for what I’ve got and no common burglars are going to take it from me.’”

“So that’s what he thought they were—common burglars?” This from Sergeant Drummond. Seeing that Blackmore was calmer now the floodgates had been breached, the sergeant and I had edged closer.

“What else could they be? We keep ourselves to ourselves here, we do. It’s no secret the Master’s got—had—a bob or two. Stands to reason. Wouldn’t be a ‘Sir’ and all otherwise, would be?”

An interesting social commentary, I thought.

“And then he’s got all these valuable collections from his travels. Coins, pottery, books and that. Course, he doesn’t just leave them lying around. Keeps—kept—the really good stuff in that special room he had built in the Library. And that’s where …”

For a moment the memory seemed about to overwhelm him but he continued as he pulled himself to his feet.

“I’d best show you, gentlemen. That’s what you’re here for, after all …”

He led the way to one of the side rooms and we found ourselves in what was obviously the formal Library. Expensive armchairs, fussy little side tables to go with them and the walls lined with book shelves on which the books appeared to be arranged in order of size and the colour of their bindings. It was some interior designer’s idea of what a club library should look like and somehow it failed in its effect, like the rest of the house. It was a self-conscious act of creation rather than the expression of an individual personality.

Blackmore was now leading us towards another closed door in the middle of one wall.

“When we moved in, the Master had this built special. Brought workmen in from down South, so that the locals wouldn’t know nothing about it …” Stress was doing nothing for the butler’s grammar. “Completely airtight, he said it was. ‘Just the right temperature, Blackmore, so that nothing will spoil. Don’t want this damned climate …’ and he cast an apologetic glance at Drummond—‘rotting the family fortunes, do we?’ He was joking, like, but he meant it, too.

“Then this evening he seemed particularly nervy. For days now he’d been most insistent that when it started to get dark, I should do my rounds and check all the locks on the doors and windows. Tonight he made me do it all over again. Then he said he’d have his supper in the Library—just something on a tray—and he didn’t want to be disturbed. When I’d brought it in and left it on that table there …” He indicated one of the small tables, where a brass tray with a plate of sandwiches and an opened half bottle of hock and wine glass stood, apparently untouched. “… then I heard him lock the door behind me.

“And that’s the last time I saw the Master alive.”

“And then what happened?” Holmes asked quietly.

“I went about my duties as per usual and about a couple of hours later I happened to be passing the Library. No, I tell a lie …”—he shot a defiant look at Holmes—“I made it my business to pass the Library more than I strictly needed to. I was worried about ’im, see? And at one point, about an hour or so after he’d gone in, I could have sworn I heard him talking to someone. Then it stopped and the next time I passed—nothing. So I reckoned I must have been mistaken.

“Another hour went by and then I took me courage in me hands and knocked on the door. I was going to say I’d come to clear his supper things but there was no answer and I knocked several times. That’s when I started to get the wind up. I’ve got a spare set of keys for the whole ’ouse …” and he produced a large key ring chained to his belt in proof—“So I fished ’em out and opened the door …”

“And found?” I interjected.

“Nothing. The room was empty. Then I noticed that one of the French windows was slightly open and there were wet marks on the floor. My first thought was—‘That’s how the devils got in and they’ve kidnapped ’im!’ But then …

His eyes turned to the closed door in the middle of the room …

“Now that I came to examine it more closely, I could see that, although it was painted to look like the mahogany of the rest of the room, it was in reality made of some heavy metal and fitted flush.”

In a few strides Holmes stood in front of it and turned the handle—but to no effect.

“A false face and a dead hand. A most interesting combination. This, I take it, is your master’s chambre privé?”

“That’s right, sir. His inner sanctum, he called it. And that’s what killed ’im. I thought it best to put it back just the way I found it. Let me show you but, if you don’t mind, I don’t think I’m up to going in there again.”

Blackmore moved over to the door and removed a small picture that hung next to it. Behind it was a control panel not so very different from that for a normal electric light, except that this one had buttons and dials instead of switches.

The butler indicated without touching a black button.

“This is what opens the door. This …”—he pointed to a red button—“… is the master lock that over-rides everything else … and this …” here he indicated a large metal dial—“this changes the air in the room to keep it fresh …”

Seeing my puzzled expression, Holmes interrupted.

“This, my dear Watson, is the very recent invention of a leading Swiss banking company. Its primary purpose—apart from providing literally cast iron security—is to keep the air in the chamber at a controlled temperature and humidity, in order to protect important documents from deteriorating. However, I very much fear that that purpose has been subverted on this occasion.

“You see this vent …?” He indicated a solid looking metal mesh about six inches square. “Its purpose is to allow the air in the room to be recycled at intervals. To that end it has built into it a fan that will efficiently remove the stale air from the room and replace it with a suitably filtered fresh supply. On this occasion, however, the delicate controls have been deliberately tampered with, leaving—I would suspect—the chamber a perfect vacuum.”

“And Nature abhors a vacuum,” I said. I’m not sure why. The line just came into my head.

“Indeed, it does, Watson. And I very much fear that Sir Simon came to share that dislike with Spinoza.”

As he spoke, Holmes was operating the controls with those long thin fingers, as if he had actually invented the infernal machine.

Suddenly there was a metallic click and the ‘door’ swung open. Crouched on the floor, almost in an attitude of prayer was the figure of a middle-aged man.

I heard Drummond behind me say in a frightened tone—“Aye, that’s Sir Simon, right enough. Poor man!” And then Holmes …

“Your department, I think, Watson?”

It took me no time to reach the body, for there was no doubt that was what we were dealing with and my search for any sign of a pulse was hardly necessary. If I had not heard the explanation and seen the locale for myself, I should easily have concluded that the man had died of asphyxiation. The face had that distinctive blue-ish tinge but it was the eyes that held you. They protruded and in them I swear one could see the horror that was passing through the victim’s mind in those last few agonising seconds, when he realised that he was to die in a trap of his own making, as the last of the air was sucked out of the chamber.

No bonds, no gags had been necessary. Just God’s natural elements or, in this case, the lack of them.

As I was pondering this irony and checking to see that there were no other telltale cuts or abrasions—there were not—I heard Blackmore say—

“That would account for that funny noise, sir, when I opened the vault. A sort of rushing noise, like air coming in. I though it might be from the window, like, but then I’d already pushed that to.”

“Correct. It was the air in the room filling up the vacuum,” said Holmes. “Now, Watson, I believe Sir Simon has told us all he has to tell. What do we deduce from the context?”

I closed the poor devil’s eyes and straightened up to look around me.

“It’s pretty obvious that whoever did this came in by that window. Even locked, it wouldn’t take much forcing for a determined man …”

“And I think we may take it that our friends were most certainly that,” said Holmes, who was by now over by the window in question.

“Three people entered this room through this window and left the way they came. As Dr. Watson rightly points out, the lock has been forced with a sharp instrument, probably a knife point. The heavy rain makes three sets of footprints clearly visible on entering, less so when they leave.

“Two of them are men—one of middle height, one of them possibly slightly less. The taller man’s prints are greatly blurred over by the vault, probably because he was struggling with Briggs …”

“And the third?” I asked and was surprised to see Holmes wore that opaque expression, which is his way of telling me not to pursue a line of questioning in public.

“That is not immediately clear to me.”

Then, moving back into the centre of the room—

“And what do we suppose happened then?”

“I should have thought that was pretty clear, Mr. Holmes.” This from Drummond. “They subdued their victim, while they ransacked the place for the valuables.”

“I think not, Sergeant. Certainly, they restrained Sir Simon, so that he could not interfere, but they were not looking for ‘valuables’ in the plural. This room is full of portable objects that your common or garden burglar would stuff his pockets with—objects that are easily disposed of. And yet, Sergeant, I would be prepared to wager the contents of this room against your pension that an inventory will show nothing is missing.”

As he spoke, we all found ourselves looking round the Library and through the open door to the vault beyond. Clearly, objects had been moved, drawers and cupboards left open, but there was no sign of vandalism such as is normally to be found at the scene of a robbery.

“Precisely. These people came here in search of one thing and did not find it. They thrust Sir Simon into the vault, then left. But one of them came back, because he had a further mission to fulfil—he came to kill Sir Simon …”

“But, Holmes, how can you possibly know that?”

“The footprints tell their own story, old fellow, thanks to the rain. One set—and one set only—is still wet, which indicates that they were made later than the rest. There is one other thing …”

“Chloroform!” I cried. “I caught a faint whiff of it when I examined the body but I was so taken with the look of the fellow …”

“And it was, indeed, now very faint. In fact, if the vault had not been completely airless, I doubt if such a volatile substance would still have been detectable at all. No, my guess is that Sir Simon was interrogated to no avail, then rendered unconscious while the intruders searched for what they had come to find. Failing in that search, they departed empty handed.

“Then … one of their number returned the way he had come on some pretext, bundled the still unconscious man into the vault and sealed it, effectively condemning its occupant to death. Before he did so, he left two small messages for us to find …”

“Messages?” said Drummond. “I didna see any notes left lying aroond. Did you, Blackmore?”

“Because there were none to find, gentlemen. No piece of paper saying—‘I confess to the murder of Sir Simon Briggs. Signed X.’ But there were messages, nonetheless, if we can only decipher them.

“Two, to be precise. This is one …”

He turned to the body and gently brushed the hair back from the forehead. There, roughly marked in what looked like soot from the fireplace, was a crude letter ‘A’.

“Someone has read their Hawthorne, gentlemen. The Scarlet Letter. If I recall, the heroine was marked by having a letter emblazoned on her forehead, so that the world should know what she was. Our murderer clearly wants us to know what he, at least, believes his victim to be. Something that begins with ‘A’.”

“You said there were two messages, Holmes.”

“Ah, yes. The second is by your elbow, Watson, on that occasional table. The framed photograph. Perhaps you will be good enough …?”

It was only then that I noticed among all the disarray a simple wooden frame. As I picked it up, I noticed that it appeared to be the only object that was actually damaged, for the glass had been broken.

It was a photograph of a group of young men—the kind of thing any of us might keep as a souvenir of a class or a team of which we were part in our youth. There were seven of them, standing somewhat self-consciously posed for the camera in two rows in what looked like some sort of courtyard. They looked to be all of an age—somewhere in their very early twenties—and were clearly good friends, for several of them had their arms linked.

The only distinguishing feature was that each of them—except one—was wearing a sweater with a large capital letter across the chest. But whereas in every team photo I can recall seeing, the symbols are identical, these were not.

One was wearing an ‘L’, another a ‘G’. Then there was an ‘R’, a ‘P’, an ‘E’ and … an ‘A’.

There was one other thing about the photograph that caught my eye.

“Good heavens, Holmes—the ‘A’…”

“Quite right, old fellow, the letter ‘A’ has been eliminated from the alphabet—in facsimile as in real life.”

Someone had crudely slashed across the face of the young man wearing the ‘A’ on his sweater.