A FROZEN PURGATORY
With the thaw came a mist. It began to build just as the sun was setting. Swirls of vapour rose from the ground, thickening into a gauzy miasma of white. It was not long before one could scarcely see a hand in front of one’s face. The white of the mist merged with the white of the snow, creating a world of overall whiteness. Trees and drystone walls were mere grey shadows. The sun itself was no brighter than a cue ball on a snooker table.
Holmes and I followed the road out of town that led to the junction with the fingerpost. There we took the Fellscar track. Before leaving Yardley Cross, I had fetched my revolver from the inn. Holmes had not had to suggest this. After our little contretemps with the Dawson twins, I was not going to be caught unarmed a second time.
Our footsteps sounded muffled, as did our breathing. The mist deadened all noise like the dampers on a piano.
“Holmes,” I said. My voice carried a weird, tight echo. “Before we were so rudely interrupted by the Dawsons, we were talking about Erasmus potentially being Goforth’s killer.”
“Were we? So we were.”
“You said my theory was unsound.”
“Well, it is.”
“Why? It seems to me that it holds water.”
“Then a sieve would seem to you to hold water. It takes but a moment’s thought to spot the fundamental flaw in your idea. Assume Goforth were to threaten Erasmus with blackmail. ‘I will tell your father you have been stealing valuables from the castle in order to fund your gambling habit’, or words to that effect. Erasmus, if he had any sense, would simply call her bluff. ‘Go ahead. Tell him. I shall deny it. See who he believes. A mere scullery maid, or his own son and heir.’ Her word against his. There would be no contest.”
“Even if Thaddeus and Erasmus do not see eye to eye?”
“They are still kin, and what is that saying about blood being thicker than water? Simply by accusing Erasmus of theft, Goforth might put her job in jeopardy, and she would be canny enough to know that.”
“Oh. Yes, I suppose so.”
“A valiant effort, Watson, but you are on a hiding to nothing with this one. By no means should we disregard Erasmus and his gambling debts, but they are not germane in this particular context.”
“Are they germane to the Black Thurrick?”
“Now there,” said my friend, “you may be on to something.”
The sun slipped from view, to be replaced by the moon, whose glow infused the mist with a fainter, more nebulous effulgence.
Presently we entered the woods adjacent to the lake. When we emerged on the other side, the castle would have been in full view were it not for the mist. All we could see were the lights of its windows, shimmering like rows of candle flames suspended in mid-air.
Holmes put finger to lips. From here on, there was to be no more conversation.
Passing the end of the causeway, we followed the perimeter of the lake round. We finally came to a halt on the side furthest from Fellscar. Somewhere to our backs, I judged, lay the copse where we had discovered the layer of soil which Holmes had suggested was deposited there by the Black Thurrick. Immediately in front of us was the lake bank and, just visible beyond, a rind of ice marking the edge of the lake itself. At this distance the lights of the castle showed as an indistinct lambent haze, like some polar aurora.
Now, in the lowest of voices, my companion said, “Nerve yourself and stay vigilant, Watson. You and I must tap our reserves of patience and endurance like never before. For tonight, unless I am sorely mistaken, we shall be meeting the Black Thurrick himself in person.”
What can I say about that long, cold watch? Shall I mention how the frigid air seemed to seep through my muscles into my bones and made them ache? Shall I relate how the silence filled my ears as though it had actual substance? Shall I talk about the continual, stealthy shifting of feet and wriggling of fingers that was required in order not to lose all sensation in my extremities?
What about the way that time, as though made torpid by the cold, crawled by? Or the way the mist writhed and coiled around us, thinning and thickening in response to the vagaries of barely perceptible breezes, so that sometimes I could see Holmes beside me, clear as day, and at other times he was all but hidden from view?
It was all these things and more, that vigil. It was, indeed, one of the most trying, enervating tests of resolve I have ever undergone, and that is taking into consideration the many hardships I endured during my time in the army, the many arduous medical challenges I have faced as a doctor, and of course the many similarly adverse situations in which I have found myself as part of my adventures with Sherlock Holmes.
Holmes himself stood rigid throughout the ordeal, as motionless as a statue. But for the regular puffs of vapour from his nostrils as he exhaled, one might have thought him dead. His gaze was fixed unwaveringly upon the lake.
Accordingly, I kept mine upon it too, as best I could. The longer I strained my eyes staring into the mist, however, the more I began to glimpse shapes in it – things that resembled faces, or monstrous figures, or huge gnarled hands reaching for me. Each was there for a fleeting instant, then gone again.
It was a kind of madness. Time and again I told myself the shapes were illusions, yet still they manifested. It was as though the mist was not only alive somehow but malevolent.
It came as some considerable relief when, around eight o’ clock, Holmes produced from his pocket the sandwiches that had been prepared for us by the innkeeper’s wife at the Sheep and Shearer. He unwrapped the wax paper around them, carefully so that it did not make a crinkling sound, and handed me one. The sandwich consisted of a thick slab of ox tongue between two no less thick slices of butter-lathered bread. My half-frozen fingers could scarcely hold it, and my jaws felt so immobile that I could chew only small morsels at a time. Still, the sustenance was warming and welcome, as were the nips of brandy I took from the hip flask that Holmes offered me.
The meal provided respite, but then we were back to staring into the mist, and soon enough the chill was worming its way ever deeper into my bones and I was once more seeing those flitting, hallucinatory shapes and feeling that horrid sense of disorientation and oppression.
Gradually the far-off glow from Fellscar Keep dwindled. The Allerthorpes were going to bed. By ten, there wasn’t a light left burning at the castle, and the mist seemed to revel in this fact, as though it had won some kind of victory. It grew denser and teemed with evanescent humanoid forms in still greater number. When they became too abundant, too overwhelming, I found myself having to close my eyes for short periods. This would dispel them, at least for a while.
Time continued to drag by, and more and more the feeling was creeping up on me – the certainty, in fact – that I had become trapped in limbo. It seemed I had been standing there amidst that numbing, cloudy nothingness since the dawn of creation and would continue to do so until the end of days.
It was then, just as my thoughts were commencing a spiralling descent into out-and-out existential panic, that Sherlock Holmes plucked at my sleeve. He nodded towards the lake.
Out there on the ice I descried a dim silhouette. A moving figure.
At first I was convinced it was just another of the mist’s mirages. I blinked a few times. The figure was still there. It was moving closer, hunched, lumbering. It was spindly and dark. It had a sack slung over its back.
The Black Thurrick was here.
