Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures

I had to admit that it did not, and he shook his head again in wonderment, but offered no further explanation.

"What will be your next move?" I asked, seeking some indication that might help me.

"I should have thought," he said, "that that also would have been obvious to you. We must go to Addleton and view the locus in quo, indeed the scene of the crime."

"But I thought you believed there was no crime here!" I exclaimed.

"I set out," said Holmes, "to solve a medical mystery, but we have stumbled across crime on our path. There has been a crime, Watson. One with very far-reaching consequences."

The next afternoon found us in Addleton, a stone-built village which consisted largely of one long street with an inn at either end, huddled deep beneath the great square bulk of Addleton Moor. Once we had settled our baggage at the Goat and Boots Holmes sought out the village's only doctor. Doctor Leary was an affable Irishman in his forties, who welcomed us into his surgery.

"And what," he asked, when we had introduced ourselves, "brings a famous consulting detective all the way from London to Addleton? We have no murders here, Mr Holmes, and apart from a bit of head-thumping among the quarrymen on pay nights we have no other kind of crime."

"But you have a mystery," said Holmes.

"A mystery? Ah, surely a man of reason and logic like yourself is not looking into the Curse of the Black Barrow?"

"Certainly not," said Holmes. "I am, however, looking into events which have led the popular press to allege that the Curse is real, namely the death of Anthony Lewis, the deaths, sicknesses, stillbirths and deformed births that have occurred here, and the recent death in London of Sir Andrew Lewis. Would you deny that they create a curious pattern?"

"There certainly seems to be a connection though, like you, I reject the supernatural explanation," said Dr Leary. He groped in his pocket for his pipe and lit it. When it was well alight he continued.

"I came here, you know, fresh from Medical School. I thought I'd found a nice pitch", he said. "A pretty village, a bracing climate, clean water, nice people and nothing much to worry me or them except old age and quarry accidents. And so it was for the first few years, then they opened the Black Barrow, and if it wasn't cursed then it certainly deserves to be so."

"What did you make of the sickness that affected the excavators?" Holmes asked.

"Very little, I admit. It was not serious and it might have had a number of causes. They were sweating away up on the Moor in the summer sun, some of them young fellas who were more used to a pen than a pick. I thought it could be a touch of the sun and I treated it as such."

"And young Lewis?" said my friend.

"That, of course, was different. At the time I made no connection with the archaeologists. He came to me first with burns on his hands. I thought he had picked up something too

hot with both hands. He said that he had not, that he had red patches appear on his hands for no reason and then open up like burns. I treated him with salves and wondered if it was some foreign skin disease, for he told me he had been abroad as a child."

The doctor puffed at his pipe, reflectively. "Then it got worse. He had fainting fits, headaches, nausea – soon he was too weak to leave his bed. His father sent the best of Harley Street to help me, but they were helpless. We could only watch him fade away."

"And how did the sickness spread?" enquired Holmes.

"Very quickly," said Leary. "Though it was never as fierce as in young Lewis. The next was the boot boy at the Goat. He died some weeks after the young man. It seems he had been in the habit of slipping into Lewis's room in his spare time and listening to tales of soldiering and the silly lad must have caught his death from Lewis. Then there was old McSwiney. He was a retired peeler who spent all his time in the Goat. He was old enough to go at any time if he hadn't pickled himself in alcohol, but he'd never had much in the way of sickness until the end. He had the vomiting and that, but not the burns, but it was clear it was the same thing."

"That was when I called in the County Officer of Health. We went over everything, the food and drink at the Goat, the water, the bedding, everything. There was nothing to find, the place was as clean as a whistle."

"Your Medical Officer seems to think the disease is waterborne," said Holmes.

"Rubbish!" said Leary. "He says that because he can't think of anything else. We have deep limestone wells here. I've had the water under a microscope, Mr Holmes. There's nothing in it except a few extra salts that people pay for in fancy spas."

"And what do you make of it, Dr Leary?"

"I've racked my brains for ten years," he said. "I know no more about that disease now than I did then, except one thing. As well as the deaths we had a few cases that were milder. When the deaths and the sickness stopped we thought it had gone, but then there came the births you have heard about. I didn't see how it could have been the same thing, but now I'm sure it was."

"And what made you so sure?" asked Holmes.

"Geography," said Leary. "Lewis died in the 'Goat' the boot boy died in the 'Goat', McSwiney drank in the 'Goat',

those who had the sickness drank in the 'Goat', though not so

much as McSwiney, Lord save him. When the stillbirths and the deformities occurred I saw the same pattern. They were all

at that end of the village, close to the 'Goat'. And I'll tell you one more thing. All of the women were already pregnant when Lewis died."

He knocked out his pipe on the fender. Holmes steepled his fingers in front of his face for a moment, then looked up at the Irishman. "Is it over?" he asked.

"Oh yes. It's over – for now. But we don't know what it is or how it came here. I can't tell my people that it won't happen again."

"I hope," said Holmes, "that I can give you that assurance in the very near future. Is there anything else at all that you believe may help us?"

Leary laughed. "They say there's a bright side to everything. You won't have seen it in the papers, for they only deal in bad news, but we did have two miraculous cures at the same time."

"What were they?" said Holmes.

"One was Mary Cummins, the daughter of the landlord at the 'Goat'. She was seventeen at the time, a sweet, pretty

thing, but she started with blinding headaches, dizziness,

fainting. This was before the barrow was opened, when there was no thought of a new sickness. Nothing I could do

for her made any difference. Soon she had spells when her mind wandered. I began to wonder about a tumour on the brain, but do you know that while others were sickening she suddenly got well? She lost all her symptoms and she's as right as rain to this day.

The other was old Mrs Henty, next door to the pub. Her daughter-in-law was the mother of one of the deformed babies, but Mrs Henty had a persistent eczema on both forearms. She'd had it all her life, she told me, but it vanished in days."

"Astonishing," said Holmes. "Now, Doctor, we have taken up enough of your time. I assure you again, that I believe I am well

on the track of this thing and will let you know my conclusions." We dined that night at our inn and had the good fortune to be waited upon by the same Mary Cummins that Dr Leary had

mentioned to us. Whatever her difficulties of ten years ago, she was now a buxom, raven-haired countrywoman in her middle twenties, vigorous and witty.

After dinner we established ourselves beside the fire in the back parlour, where Mary brought us our drinks.

"Miss Cummins," said Holmes, "may I ask if you know why Dr Watson and I are in Addleton?"

She smiled. " 'Tis no business of mine," she said, "but I hear tell you've come about the Black Barrow."