Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures

"In what way?" asked Holmes.

"They were all fogged, Mr Holmes. Every one. Icould 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, ash-

like 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.