Donald Thomas - Sherlock Holmes and the King’s Evil

“They had no inheritance?”

“I do not think they had anything except debts from the oil-cake works when the business was sold. They belong to that class of our nation, Dr Watson, who live like serfs on next to nothing but never quite fall to the level of the workhouse. They seldom attract the attention of their betters until some mean crime or scandal breaks open in the columns of the press. Let us hope this is not a case of that kind.”

“And what of their sister, Miss Alice Chastelnau?”

Mr Gilmore brightened up at her name. He gave a brief smile and his voice became more buoyant.

“I know little of Alice Chastelnau, though I met her when she attended her father’s funeral, and also concerning the arrangements made for it. I met her again at the death of her step-mother several years later. Miss Chastelnau lived in the village before my time and left it when she was still a girl. Indeed, I cannot recall that I have ever met her apart from those two occasions. Her health was a little delicate. She seems by all accounts an admirable young woman and has fulfilled her promise in the little school at Mablethorpe.”

“There has never been a young lady in the lives of either of the two brothers?” I asked carefully.

Mr Gilmore inclined his head.

“Not that I am aware of. I believe I should know of it, for gossip of that kind spreads very quickly through a village.”

There was a finality in these words which indicated that the Rector of Sutton Cross had said all that he proposed to say on these matters. As we stood up and thanked him, however, Sherlock Holmes inquired,

“May we see the tower and the beacon? I believe it would help us to get the lie of the land and I should not wish to trouble you a second time.”

Mr Gilmore did not quite slap us on the back. However, the expression on his face suggested that the opportunity to show off another of his treasures was entirely welcome.

I had been conscious during our discussion in the rectory study that Holmes had said nothing whatever about the pebble which Miss Chastelnau had left for our examination. As we now walked back towards the church, my friend inquired,

“Were either of the brothers treasure hunters, Mr Gilmore? I imagine you must get a great many such people here in the holiday season.”

The rector stopped and laughed among the gravestones. He was far happier on such topics.

“You have been reading far too much romance, Mr Holmes, or possibly the Bard of Avon’s famous play. What dreadful news was brought to King John upon his deathbed in the year 1216! If you recall, his jewels and royal ornaments-the coronation regalia, as tradition has it,

Were in the Washes all unwarily

Devoured by the unexpected flood.

Not two miles from here, on 12 October in that same year. Perhaps it was the greatest loss of royal treasure in our entire island story.”

“So I believe.”

“It happened, you know, when the king was campaigning here during the Barons’ War, a few days before his death. He and his party had gone on ahead, making for Swineshead Abbey that night. The baggage train with all the royal treasure and the furnishings of his chapel, set out to cross the estuary here at low tide. Just before noon. Of course, the line of the coast was different seven centuries ago but the river was where you see it now. In those days, however, the uncovered estuary was several miles across at low water. The quicksands were everywhere and the sea could come in at a terrifying speed in October with the neap tides, as it still does. A little before noon, the foolish baggage train tried to cross the mudflats and the stream without a guide. A guide would have probed the mud with his pole to find a path where the ground was firm. ‘Moses’ they called him, you know, after the crossing of the Red Sea.”

“So I understand.”

“Then you have read the old chroniclers, perhaps? The Abbot of Cogershall and Roger of Wendover? Matthew Paris in his Historia Anglorum a century after the tragedy? How the rushing tide caught the column in mid-stream? The quicksands were flooded at once and swallowed up men, pack-horses, baggage-wagons, jewels, crowns, ornaments and chapel furnishings. Much of it was booty seized by King John in his campaigns across the country. It was a time of long civil war between the Crown and the nobles. Such was the tragedy that happened in our estuary all those years ago. Even now, if you stand alone out there in the quietness of the ebb tide, it is said you may sometimes catch the cries of men or horses, the pandemonium of the lost ones. It is a story that every schoolboy knows!”

“What I wondered,” Holmes insisted mildly, “was whether you get treasure hunters?”

The rector laughed again.

“They come, and they go away disappointed. The sea has withdrawn and the land has been reclaimed. All that remains of King John’s treasure is probably deep down in the silt or the clay that has formed, a mile or two inland under the fields. Do not waste your time, Mr Holmes.”

“Nothing has ever been found?”

Roderick Gilmore frowned slightly.

“That is not quite correct. In the later Middle Ages, and almost up to the present day, discoveries have been made. These generally consist of a few items which were first discovered a century or so after the disaster. Then they were hidden away, forgotten and so lost once more. A handful of these trinkets have been found for a second time. The great collections, including the coronation regalia, seem to have been lost for over.”

“Most interesting,” said Holmes politely, “Most, most interesting! ”

As the rector told his story among the tombstones, and as I thought of the blue pebble, I felt a prickling along my spine. Had the Chastelnau brothers been treasure hunters after all? Was there a secret along the windswept shore of the Old Light which mingled murder with such majesty?

We climbed the winding stone steps and came out from the darkness of the tower shaft into the sunlight of the square leaded roof with its medieval battlements and flagstaff. The lantern of the beacon was supported against this staff. I had begun to get my bearings in the brightness, taking a birdseye view of the flat green fenland stretching inland and the mudflats at low water running down to the sparkling tranquil sea. On such a fine afternoon as this, it was hard to imagine that any danger could lie there. Then I heard Mr Gilmore behind me and saw several figures stooping over an object on the foreshore.

“Dear me,” said the rector apprehensively, “I believe they have found something after all. It is when the tide withdraws that such discoveries are usually made. About the third or fourth day the sea gives up her dead, if she gives them up at all. I wonder which of the Chastelnau brothers it can be?”

Inspector Albert Wainwright’s appearance, like his Christian name, recalled the late Prince Consort. His was a somewhat heavy face with large and mournful brown eyes. There was a doglike reproof in his habitually melancholy expression. Sometimes such features hide a wry but lively personality. In Mr Wainwright’s case, they concealed nothing. Indeed, his dark hair and his trim whiskers seemed like a deliberate attempt to copy those early daguerreotype photographs of her Prince Albert whose untimely death Queen Victoria still mourned.

“I have exchanged wires with Scotland Yard, as our superintendent requested,” he said sadly, “for one never knows where these cases may lead. My instructions from Chief Inspector Lestrade are quite plain, gentlemen. I am to show you every courtesy but not to let you overreach yourselves. You are to have the run of the Old Light, now that you have been retained by Miss Chastelnau. I cannot say that such a thing is usual but, to speak frankly, I would rather allow you that privilege than have Mr Lestrade coming down from Scotland Yard himself, which he was otherwise threatening to do. We shift for ourselves quite well as a rule.”