Denis Smith - The Mammoth Book of the New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes

In the latter part of August, 1887, the bright if uncertain glories of an English summer were succeeded by a period of heavy and stifling weather. With each day that passed the air seemed yet more still and close, until I longed for a fresh breeze to blow away the overpowering heat and stickiness. Throughout the day our windows were thrown open to their widest extent, but it did little to relieve the oppressive airlessness of our rooms.

I had descended to breakfast that morning to find Sherlock Holmes in a morose humour. Without comment, he passed across the table a letter he had received by the first post. It was addressed from Phillimore Gardens, Kensington, and dated the previous evening.

‘Shall call upon you at ten o’clock, tomorrow morning,’ I read. ‘The matter is most urgent and important, and will require your undivided attention.’ No details were given as to the nature of the problem, but the word ‘important’ had been underscored three times, the last one ripping the paper clean through. At the foot of the sheet was the signature ‘Amelia Davenoke’. I looked up to find Holmes’s expressionless grey eyes upon me.

‘The lady is perhaps a trifle imperious in her tone,’ he remarked, ‘but she may be permitted our indulgence, for she is evidently in some distress. The violent underlining has clearly not been done for the reader’s benefit, for her pen has run out of ink halfway through it and she has not troubled to re-ink it. We may take it, then, to be more an expression of her own anguish.’

‘I seem to remember reading that Sir John Davenoke died not long ago,’ I remarked. ‘Your correspondent is probably his widow.’

Holmes shook his head. ‘He himself had been a widower for some time,’ he replied. He took a heavy red-bound volume from his long shelf of reference-books and turned the pages over for a few moments. ‘Here we are,’ said he, seating himself upon an arm of the fireside chair: ‘“John Arthur Cavendish Davenoke: Sixth baronet; Member of Parliament for Shoreswood and Soham, ’84 to ’86. The family has held the manor of Shoreswood in East Suffolk for over five hundred years and was closely allied in the fifteenth century with the Pole family, former Dukes of Suffolk, prior to the downfall of the latter.” – a somewhat ancient claim upon our interest, I am afraid – “Arms: argent, gouttée de sang, a lion vorant sable in a bordure of the same.”’ Holmes shut the book with a bang. ‘There is one son who succeeds him, Edward Hurst Geoffrey. Amelia Davenoke is presumably his wife.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘If her punctuality matches the urgency of her letter, she will be here in ten minutes, Watson, so if you could ring for the maid to clear the breakfast things, I should be most obliged.’

I was seated by the window, reading The Times , when our visitor arrived. She was a slight, pretty, almost elfin young woman, with very thick hair of a reddish, copper colour, and seemed as she entered our little room, looking hesitantly this way and that, like an angel from a Renaissance painting. Her appearance would have been striking upon any occasion, but was the more remarkable now for the deadly pallor of her face and the dark, almost black shadows which surrounded her restless, haunted eyes, all of which bespoke some grave anxiety. Beneath the light grey cloak which she handed me, she wore a simple dress of plain moss-green, relieved only by a touch of butter-coloured lace about the neck and wrists. She took the chair which my friend offered her and sat a few moments in silence, her fingers nervously twining and untwining.

‘Well, well, Lady Davenoke,’ said Holmes at length; ‘I understand from your note that you wish to consult me upon a matter of some urgency.’

‘That is true,’ returned our visitor quickly, raising her watery green eyes to meet my friend’s steady gaze. I was surprised to hear that her accent was of the very richest North American. ‘Your name was mentioned to me last night by Lady Congrave,’ she continued, ‘who said she could not speak too highly of you. I gathered that you performed some service for her.’

‘A trifling affair, as I recall it, involving a little missing jewellery.’

‘I fancy that Lady Congrave herself would not dismiss the matter so lightly,’ Lady Davenoke replied with some emphasis. ‘I have come to you because I, too, have lost something.’

‘Jewellery?’

‘My husband.’

Holmes’s eyebrows went up in surprise. ‘Perhaps you could enlarge upon the matter,’ said he.

‘Do not misunderstand me, Mr Holmes, if I say that I have come to you as a last resort. My meaning is simply this: that if you fail, then all further hope is useless, for I fear that no one else can help me. Alone I can do nothing. My husband has vanished and left me in dread, surrounded by mysterious forces against which I am powerless to defend myself.’

‘My dear madam,’ interjected my friend in his most soothing tones; ‘it is plain to see that you have been under some great strain lately; but whatever can have occurred to cause you to speak in this fashion?’

She did not reply at once, but passed her hand across her face, as if in an effort to clear her troubled brow. ‘Mr Holmes,’ said she at length, her voice low and tremulous, ‘I have entered the realm of fear and horror, and it seems I may never return. I have, all unwitting, become party to some dark and hidden transaction, some hideous and nameless menace, which surrounds me even now as I speak to you.’ She put her hand abruptly to her throat and her eyes darted nervously round the room.

‘Lady Davenoke,’ began Holmes in a tone of mild reproof. But even as he spoke, her eyes rolled up to the ceiling, a faint gasp escaped her lips and she pitched forward upon the hearth-rug in a dead faint.

We bore her swiftly to the sofa, where I placed a pillow beneath her head. Her pulse was faint, her brow horribly cold and clammy, and for a moment I feared that she would require greater medical attention than could be provided in our small sitting-room. An application of brandy to the lips brought some colour to her cheek, however, and her eyelids flickered and indicated returning consciousness. Then, suddenly, with a startling abruptness, her eyes opened wide and she cried out in a terrible wailing voice.

‘The window!’ she cried. ‘There is something there, outside! Oh, close the window, for the love of God!’ Her cries ended in a dreadful, piteous sob and she sank back into unconsciousness.

‘Her eyes were not seeing us,’ remarked Holmes softly.

I nodded. ‘She was undergoing some strange delusion, but it appears to have passed now; her face is relaxed once more.’

We covered her with a blanket and rang for some hot tea. Our landlady was most concerned at the state of the poor young woman, for she had heard her terrible cries and she insisted upon sitting with her until she was fully recovered. Her pulse was steady now and her breathing smooth and regular, and after a short while she opened her eyes again and gazed weakly at us, a look of incomprehension upon her face.

‘You’ve had a faint, my dear,’ said Mrs Hudson in a kindly voice, taking the other’s hand in hers; ‘but you will be all right in a moment, when you’ve got some hot tea inside you.’

‘You are among friends, Lady Davenoke,’ said Holmes. ‘You have nothing to fear.’

‘Oh, if only that were true, Mr Holmes; if only that were true!’

‘Perhaps when you are recovered you can give us the details of the matter and then we shall see if we can’t set about allaying your anxieties.’

Thus it was that ten minutes later, fortified by strong tea and composed once more, Amelia Davenoke began her strange tale. She was, as my friend had surmised, the wife of Sir Edward Davenoke, who had recently succeeded to the baronetcy upon the death of his father.