FRAGILE ICE
Holmes motioned me to crouch down. He was excited but doing his best to suppress the emotion. I was excited, too, but with reservations. The figure on the frozen lake remained just a dim outline. I knew it must be a human being, but my mind was still partly adrift, unmoored from reason. My thoughts had become a jumble of ghosts, demons and dead souls. At that particular moment, it would not have surprised me if the thing slouching towards us turned out to be a fiend from folklore after all.
Holmes lay a hand upon my shoulder. His grip steadied me, anchoring me back in reality. I reached into my pocket for my revolver.
The silhouette of the Black Thurrick was becoming sharper and clearer by the second. His garb was purest black. His face was a pale oval speckled with dark blotches, somewhat like a brindled cat’s.
As quietly as I could, I cocked the hammer on my pistol.
The Thurrick reached the edge of the lake and rested his sack upon the bank, preparing to clamber up.
“Now, Watson!” Holmes cried, springing upright.
The Thurrick’s eyes widened in startlement. His mouth gaped.
“Got you!” my friend declared.
He lunged for the Thurrick, seizing him by the arm.
The Thurrick backpedalled and, with a desperate, mighty wrench, tugged himself free of Holmes’s grasp. Holmes lost his footing and slithered down the bank onto the ice. The Thurrick turned and began to run.
“Watson, a warning shot, if you will,” Holmes said.
I fired just over the Thurrick’s head, so close to my target that I fancy he must have felt the round waft his hair as it hurtled by. Certainly he would have heard it buzzing past him like some angry hornet.
“The next one goes into you,” I said. “Don’t think that I did not miss deliberately just now.”
The Black Thurrick, still just visible through the mist, came to a halt.
“The game is up,” Holmes said. “Watson has remarkable aim, as you have discovered. Had he wanted to fell you, he could have easily. He is also a medical man, and knows where to put a bullet so that it may incapacitate without doing lasting harm. Not that that matters much. The severity of an injury is ultimately meaningless to one who has an appointment with the hangman – as you do, Mr Trebend.”
The Thurrick bowed his head in submission, then turned back round.
I had been expecting Erasmus Allerthorpe, but in fact it was that very person whom Holmes had addressed by name, Trebend. The butler’s features were eminently recognisable for all that they were besmeared with what looked like dirt or soot.
“I should have known you would try something like this, Mr Holmes,” he said. His expression was rueful and embittered. “When you said you were leaving the castle and returning to London, I thought it was too good to be true. Yet I dared hope you had given it up.”
“So that you would be able to resume your nocturnal activities as before,” said Holmes. “That was exactly what I wanted you to think.”
“A nice trap.”
“I like to think so.”
“But I am left in something of a quandary,” said Trebend. “You are right. Now that you have me at your mercy, my quest to obtain what is rightfully mine is over. I’ve nothing to look forward to except the scaffold and the noose. Why, then, should I care whether you take me alive or not? The ice on the lake is noticeably more fragile tonight than it has been over the past few days, what with the slight warming in the weather. On my way across I came upon patches where it felt perilously thin indeed. I hear that drowning in freezing-cold water is one of the more pleasant ways to go. You just sort of… fade.”
With an abrupt, surprising turn of speed, Trebend spun on his heel and started to run again. I was taken aback, and in the split-second it took me to collect myself, the butler had disappeared into the mist. I fired, more in hope than expectation of hitting him.
“Dash it all!” Holmes said. “But we can still catch him.”
“You heard what he said, Holmes. The ice is thinner than before, and he is slight, whereas both of us are larger and heavier. It would be unwise to give chase.”
“So he wishes us to think. He could quite easily make it to the other side of the lake and get away scot-free. After him!”
Holmes hastened off in pursuit of Trebend. I lowered myself gingerly down the bank and onto the ice, and began to run too. Straight away, one foot skidded out from under me and I almost fell flat on my face.
I set off again at a somewhat more measured pace. In no time, I could no longer see the bank behind me. A little further on, I realised I had entirely lost my bearings. I did not know where I was on the lake, where the bank was, where the castle was. All I could see was mist and ice.
I forged onward. Several times the ice sagged suddenly where I trod, a web of fissures radiating outward from my foot. Each time I leapt backward, my heart in my mouth; then I would make a detour around the damaged area, giving it a wide berth, and carry on.
Still nothing but mist and ice. No sign of Holmes or of the Thurrick.
Eventually, in desperation, I called out to my friend.
“Over here, Watson,” came the reply. The mist made it hard to tell how close he was. He could have been ten feet away or a hundred.
I ventured in the direction of his voice, my revolver to the fore. All at once there came a loud, splintering crack from somewhere up ahead, followed immediately by a mighty splash. I made a beeline towards the sounds, praying they signified that Trebend had fallen through the ice and not Holmes.
The mist billowed, becoming more impenetrable than ever.
“Hullo?” I said. “Holmes? Are you there? Holmes! Please tell me you are all right.”
All of a sudden, two strong arms encircled my waist in a powerful hold and threw me roughly to one side. I reeled to my feet, lifting my gun. My assailant loomed before me. It could only be Trebend. My finger tightened on the trigger.
“Please don’t shoot, Watson,” said Sherlock Holmes. “I cannot imagine the agonies of guilt you would suffer, knowing you had slain your greatest friend. Not to mention,” he added archly, “the tremendous loss my death would be to the world.”
I lowered the revolver. “Good Lord, man! That was a close thing. But why did you attack me? Did you mistake me for Trebend?”
“Not in the least. And it was not an attack. It was a rescue. Look there. Just to your left.”
I peered and was able to make out a jagged, roughly circular hole in the ice, mere inches from my left foot. The hole was a yard in diameter. Dark water lapped and swirled within its circumference.
“You were walking straight for it,” Holmes said. “Another step and you might have plunged in.”
“Dear God in Heaven. I didn’t even see it. If you had not intervened…”
“Well, quite.”
“And Trebend? Is it safe to say…?”
“You heard the splash. What do you think?”
“I think,” I said, eyeing the hole, “that he got his wish. He cheated the hangman, and this marks his final resting place.”
“I concur,” said Holmes. “Our Black Thurrick has gone to a watery grave.”
“And I would prefer not to share his fate. Our work here on the ice is surely done. The sooner we get off the lake, the happier I shall be.”
As we trudged off towards what I hoped was the nearest bank, I asked Holmes what Trebend had meant when he had spoken of a quest “to obtain what is rightfully mine”.
“If you can bear the suspense a little longer,” he replied, “all will be revealed.”
