THE ALLERTHORPES OF FELLSCAR KEEP
Not half an hour later, we three were ensconced in the first-floor drawing room at 221B. Mrs Hudson had banked up a roaring fire, which did much to dispel the chill, and had drawn the curtains against the onset of dusk. I had relieved Miss Allerthorpe of her overcoat, mantle and sable muff and pressed a glass of brandy into her hand.
Now Holmes, having allowed the young woman a few moments to compose herself, embarked upon a gentle interrogation.
“Miss Allerthorpe,” said he, “am I to take it that you hail from that distinguished clan whose family seat is Fellscar Keep, in the East Riding?”
“You would be correct in that assumption,” she replied with a nod.
I saw Holmes bristle somewhat at her use of the word “assumption”. It was a particular source of pride to him that he never assumed anything. However, tact and his customary politeness towards the gentler sex prevented him from upbraiding her.
In the event, the woman herself realised she had committed a solecism. “But of course, I am familiar enough with Dr Watson’s writings to know that you possess a knack for gleaning information about a person upon first acquaintance, much as though reading a page of a book. That was the case here, was it not?”
“The trace of a Yorkshire accent was a clue,” Holmes said. “Those flattened vowels, discernible even in one who is otherwise well-spoken. But also the surname Allerthorpe is an uncommon one, and given your evident affluence, it seemed more than likely that you are one of those Allerthorpes.”
“Our renown has obviously spread further than I thought.”
“It would be hard not to have heard of one of the richest families in the north, if not all of England, whose collective wealth derives from coal mining and wool, in which trades Allerthorpes became preeminent during the Industrial Revolution.”
“I wonder what else you can tell about me,” Miss Allerthorpe said. “Something more obscure, perhaps.”
“Well, since you have thrown down the gauntlet, madam, allow me to accommodate you. Judging by your youth – you can be no more than twenty years of age – you belong to the most recent generation of the Allerthorpe dynasty. You are as yet unmarried, as you wear no wedding ring. You are also fond of poetry.”
Miss Allerthorpe’s eyes widened. “How on earth can you know that? Outside of my immediate circle of acquaintance, there can be no one aware that poetry is my passion.”
Holmes flapped a dismissive hand. “As Watson took your overcoat and hung it up, I spied the slim, well-thumbed volume of Keats protruding from the pocket. That was all the evidence necessary. You write poems of your own, what is more.”
Her surprise at his deduction was this time not as great. “I suppose that is obvious. The odds are high that those who read poetry are versifiers themselves.”
“Odds have nothing to do with it,” said Holmes. “I observed you at your table in the coffee house. Thanks to our relative positions I could not see precisely what you were writing in your journal, but the distance your pen covered when moving from left to right was shorter than the full breadth of the page by some margin. Short lines customarily denote poetry. Added to that, you crossed out and rewrote several times, actions suggestive of someone in the throes of creative composition.”
“I see. Anything further?”
“I would submit that you are in a state of high tension and have been for some days.”
“I already told you that I am under great strain.”
“And it is plain not only in the slight tremble that attends your every gesture, but in your recent significant weight loss.”
“It is true I haven’t had much of an appetite in the past few months,” Miss Allerthorpe confessed. “I scarcely dare ask how you divined that.”
“Your blouse has been recently taken in, as is evident from the thickness of the new seams. A woman of your means and background would not wear an item of clothing that was not tailored to her figure. Her blouse would neither be borrowed nor hand-me-down. Yours has been altered because it no longer fits you as once it did, a state of affairs which must be recent, else you would by now have purchased a whole new wardrobe better suited to the slimmer you. And would I be mistaken in inferring that you have a younger sibling? A brother?”
“I do. Erasmus.”
“I thought as much.”
“Perhaps you have read about him in the society pages. Raz has been known for his boisterous activities, reports of which sometimes appear in the gossip columns.”
“No, I had not the faintest idea about his existence until I observed the small scar on your face.”
“You mean here?” Miss Allerthorpe’s hand went to her left eyebrow, just above which lay a small, all but imperceptible blemish.
“The very one. Its faintness bespeaks a wound sustained some years ago, in other words in your early youth, when, as the good Doctor here will attest, the body heals more quickly and efficiently than in adulthood. Your brother is the one who inflicted it upon you during a bout of horseplay.”
“It is absurd that you could know that.”
“I will admit I was somewhat chancing my arm with the deduction,” said Holmes. “I felt moved to venture it regardless, and the gamble paid off. You see, my own brother, Mycroft, has a very similar scar in almost the exact same spot, and I was the culprit. I gashed him with the tip of a wooden sword while we were playing at pirates one afternoon. It seemed at least plausible that your wound was inflicted in a similar manner. It tends to be younger brothers who are to blame for such malfeasances, and older siblings their victims.”
“I was ten, Erasmus eight,” Miss Allerthorpe said. “He was pretending to be Saint George, riding a hobby horse and wielding, like you, a wooden sword. I was saddled with the role of the dragon he was bent on slaying. Raz was always a bumptious boy, lacking in self-restraint, and his enthusiasm for the game got the better of him. He has marred my features but I have forgiven him.”
“Hardly marred!” I declared. “Why, if Holmes had not mentioned the scar, Miss Allerthorpe, I would never even have realised it was there. Your looks are quite undiminished for its presence.”
“Thank you for saying so, sir.”
“Watson’s gallantry exceeds mine,” said Holmes, feigning chagrin. “Consider me rebuked for my temerity in raising the subject at all. But now that I have discharged my duty by making these few small observations about you, Miss Allerthorpe, perhaps you are ready to expand upon the nature of this ‘deadliest and most serious set of circumstances’ in which you find yourself.”
“Where to begin, Mr Holmes?”
It was a rhetorical question but Holmes answered it anyway. “You mentioned that your mother is dead and that this heralded the onset of your woes. There might be a good place to start.”
Eve Allerthorpe steeled herself with a sip of brandy and commenced her narrative.
“My mother passed away a year ago almost to the day,” said she. “She was never what one would call the most stable of characters. Her temperament was mercurial, her mood as changeable as the weather over the Yorkshire Moors. Some might even go so far as to call her mad. She could be angry and vituperative, downright venomous at times. Yet she could also be tender and loving, and on the whole was devoted both to Papa and to her two children. That made her death in one sense surprising and in another sense not surprising at all.”
“How so?”
“Mama took her own life, you see.” Miss Allerthorpe faltered. “Even now it is difficult for me to discuss.”
“I understand. Take your time.”
“Our home – Fellscar Keep, as you have said – is an immense, rambling edifice of towers, wings and battlements, perched on an island in the middle of a lake. One evening last December, my mother was in a particularly volatile frame of mind. She had endured some minor setback during the day – a maidservant had, as I recall, accidentally scorched one of her favourite dresses with the smoothing iron – and it threw her into a fit of rage and recrimination, as such things were apt to. Her anger, though it could often be visited upon others, was just as often visited upon herself, and so it was in this instance. Mama somehow blamed herself for the damaged dress, saying that it was no better than she deserved and that a wretch like her should not expect anything ever to go her way. All my father’s efforts to placate her were to no avail. Eventually she went to her room and locked herself in.”
“Her own bedroom? She and your father slept separately?”
“She was a restless sleeper. Papa preferred his slumber not to be disturbed by her wakefulness. At any rate, from past experience we knew we were unlikely to see any more of her until the following morning, when she would doubtless emerge all smiles and laughter, as though nothing untoward had occurred. Around midnight, however, she was heard rushing along the corridors of the castle, wailing at the top of her voice, and…”
Miss Allerthorpe strove to maintain her poise.
“And then,” she said, “she took herself to the top of the tallest tower, which lies in the castle’s east wing, opened a window and threw herself out, into the lake. The servants dragged the water all night, under Papa’s supervision, but it wasn’t until first light that the… that the body was eventually recovered.”
I made sympathetic noises, while Holmes quietly steepled his long fingers and pressed their tips to the groove above his upper lip.
“You can well imagine the horror of the incident,” Miss Allerthorpe said, “and the shock Mama’s death wrought upon us. Erasmus and I, in particular, were distraught with grief. Our mother would never have abandoned us in this way if the equilibrium of her mind had not been seriously disturbed, we knew that. But looking back, we had perhaps known all along that it was not unlikely she might meet such an end. Often when Mama’s depressions became profound, she would cause harm to her own person, by pricking her arms with a hatpin, for instance, and raking her fingernails down her cheek. My father had consulted the best alienists in Harley Street, to no avail. There seemed no cure, no hope of change. All any of us could do was accept and endure. Yet it was never wholly bad. There were happy times, too. When she was in one of her ‘up’ phases, my mother had the sunniest of dispositions and there was nobody whose company I would rather have kept.”
“A tragedy is no less appalling when one can see it looming,” I said.
“Quite the opposite, Doctor. The inevitability makes it worse. I will not say that my present difficulties stem directly from Mama’s suicide. I will say, though, that the death has cast a pall over the household, which has yet to lift fully. Put simply, none of us has been the same since. Papa, always a rather remote person, has become positively aloof, and his temperament, once equable, now tends towards the irascible. Erasmus… Well, his behaviour was troublesome to begin with, and has done anything but improve. It was hoped, though, that this Christmas might bring about a change in our fortunes.”
“Why should that be?” asked Holmes.
“If there is one thing that unites the Allerthorpes, Mr Holmes, it is a love of Christmas. At this time of year, the wider family travels from near and far, converging on Fellscar Keep to celebrate the season. It is a tradition going back a good five decades, instituted by my grandfather, Alpheus Allerthorpe, and rigorously, one might even say religiously, maintained ever since. The castle opens its doors and plays host to a week-long revel. There is feasting, carolling, gift-giving. There is also an opportunity to renew family ties and mend any fences that might need mending. Only once has the event ever been cancelled.”
“Last December, in the wake of your mother’s death.”
“Precisely. This year, it is hoped we may resume as before. Or rather, it was hoped. But before I get to that, Mr Holmes, I must furnish you with one last detail which may or may not be of relevance.”
“Pray do.”
“As you surmised, I am twenty years old. My twenty-first birthday falls this coming Wednesday.”
“Christmas Eve,” I said.
“That is right. I was born on Christmas Eve.”
“Hence your first name.”
“Again, that is right.”
“Watson,” Holmes remarked to me superciliously, “never let it be said that your powers of deduction are not at least the equal of mine.”
I rewarded him with a dusty stare.
“When I turn twenty-one,” Miss Allerthorpe said, “I am in line for a sizeable inheritance. It is a legacy left me by my aunt Jocasta. She died when I was very young. I hardly remember her, beyond a few vague impressions. Mostly I recall a rather formidable woman, brusque but well-meaning, with a voice that could be heard several rooms away. Although she was my mother’s sister, her senior by just over a year, the two of them could scarcely have been less alike. Mama, as I have made clear, was anxious and neurotic. Aunt Jocasta was as down-to-earth and dependable as they come. In terms of physique, Mama was tall, thin and brittle-seeming; Jocasta was short and sturdily built, practically as wide as she was tall. Mama did not concern herself with matters beyond the domestic sphere, whereas Jocasta was engaged in politics and a staunch advocate of the rights of women. She believed that women should be educated as men are and given the vote, and she was not afraid to voice her opinions. I am told she once stormed a general election campaign meeting being held by her local Member of Parliament and chanted demands for universal suffrage. Her protest caused disarray and brought the proceedings to a premature halt, resulting in her forcible eviction and an arrest for breach of the peace. I cannot attest to the truth of that. It may just be a family fable. I do know that Jocasta was reviled as a troublemaker in some quarters, and in others considered a radical heroine.”
“And you are the sole beneficiary of her will?”
“Yes. Her husband was a prominent sugar plantation owner, Sir Cyril Keele, who died a few years into their marriage. He contracted typhus while visiting one of his estates in the Caribbean. Upon being widowed, Aunt Jocasta sold off his holdings and invested the capital in stocks, living very comfortably thereafter on the interest. She was childless, and her portfolio and cash savings have been held in trust for me since her death. Everything, minus a few small disbursements to charities, will become mine in just a few days’ time.”
“It is unusual for a legacy to be passed down the distaff line,” said Holmes. “Yet, if your aunt was as favourable towards the advancement of her own sex as you say, then it makes sense. You, I imagine, are her nearest female kin, aside from her late sister.”
Miss Allerthorpe nodded. “Jocasta, by all accounts, regarded my mother as sufficiently well-off already, for she had married into the Allerthorpe family. She knew, moreover, that my father, as husband, would gain control of the money if it went to Mama, and Mama herself might derive no direct benefit from it at all. She chose to confer it on me instead. You must appreciate that, as a daughter, I will profit in no way whatsoever from Papa’s estate. Upon his death, his money will be passed to my brother in its entirety, as will the title to the castle and Allerthorpe lands, which are extensive. Jocasta felt I ought to be of independent means, beholden to no one – no man – for my living. I believe there is an additional reason, too, why she did not regard my mother as a suitable recipient for the legacy. It is implied by a codicil in the will.”
“Which stipulates…?”
“That I am to receive the money only if, upon reaching the age of twenty-one, I am ‘sound in mind’. Otherwise, I do not see a single penny.”
“She deemed your mother not ‘sound in mind’, then.”
“With some justification. And it would seem she feared the possibility that I might follow in Mama’s footsteps. Madness is often hereditary, is it not?”
Miss Allerthorpe aimed this question at me. I replied, “Current medical thinking has moved on from the belief that mental aberration arises from social background and ‘sinful’ behaviour. According to Henry Maudsley, the eminent psychiatrist, just as a propensity towards certain diseases may be passed on through the blood, so may a propensity towards certain abnormal mental traits. It is not axiomatically the case, however, that the child of a mad person will likewise become mad. The trait may stay dormant.”
“Aunt Jocasta would certainly seem to have made provision for the possibility that, in me, the trait is not dormant,” said Miss Allerthorpe. “I imagine she felt that if I ended up like my mother, I would be incapable of properly handling my newfound wealth and thus lay myself open to criticism and exploitation. It would set a bad example if a woman were seen to lack the wherewithal to manage large sums of money. It would undermine all that Jocasta strove to prove during her life.”
“What would happen to the legacy if, heaven forfend, you were to be certified unsound in mind?” said Holmes.
“In that instance, the totality is to be apportioned equally amongst family members of my generation. That comprises a number of my cousins and, of course, Erasmus. Each would receive currency and shares worth in the region of four thousand pounds.”
Holmes gave a low whistle. “A tidy sum. Yet, with just five days remaining, it does not strike me as likely that you will be considered unfit to receive your legacy, Miss Allerthorpe. Although at the coffee house you implied that your sanity is imperilled, I see scant sign of it myself. You are anxious and agitated, yes. But mad? Hardly.”
“Little do you realise, Mr Holmes, how close I am to losing my wits,” said the young woman, her hand fluttering to her throat. “There have been times over the past few days when I have truly doubted the evidence of my own eyes, and on one occasion I have been visited by such terror that I can barely bring myself to think about it, let alone talk about it.”
“Yet you must talk about it, if I am to help you.”
“I know. Dr Watson, would you be so kind as to recharge my glass?”
I helped Miss Allerthorpe to more brandy, which she drank almost to the bottom before carrying on.
“When I relate to you now, gentlemen, the series of incidents that have lately befallen me,” she said, “you will perhaps be incredulous and dismiss it all as nonsense. If, on the other hand, you believe me, then you could be forgiven for thinking that I have indeed taken leave of my senses. I am being haunted, you see. Doubly haunted.”
“By a ghost?” said Holmes.
“By a ghost, and by a creature from nightmares.”
