Mark Hodder - The curious case of the Clockwork Man

“Another sleepless night?”

“Yes. I've been having a lot of them since this blasted Claimant affair began. Anyway, I was walking along the corridor when, all of a sudden, the air in front of me thickened, a mist formed, and it took the shape of Lady Mabella. She seemed to be facing the other way, for when I took a step backward, a board creaked beneath my feet and the mist whirled, bringing her eyes around to face me. They pierced me through, then suddenly the ghost rushed forward and wrapped me in such an intense chill that I passed out on the spot. When I awoke, perhaps thirty minutes later, I returned to my room, collapsed onto my bed, and passed out again. In the morning, I found that my hair had turned entirely white.”

“Good lord!” Burton exclaimed. “You mean to say it turned white overnight?”

“Jankyn and the colonel will attest to it. The day before yesterday, my hair was dark brown in colour.”

Burton looked at Jankyn and Lushington. They both nodded.

For a few moments, the men ate in silence. The maids had withdrawn, and only Bogle moved about the table, keeping the diners well supplied with wine and water.

“May I ask you about another matter?” Burton enquired of Tichborne.

“Of course, Sir Richard. Anything.”

“Would you tell me about the family legend-the one concerning a fabulous diamond?”

“My goodness, how do you know about that?”

“Henry Arundell mentioned it. What's the story?”

“Oh, there's nothing much to it. It's whispered that my grandfather found a large black diamond in South America. It's utter nonsense.”

“But how did it arise?”

“From idle gossip. When Sir Henry returned from his travels, he stopped the dole and became something of a hermit, banning everyone from the estate. In an attempt to explain this behaviour, the locals came up with idea that he'd brought a fabulous jewel back with him and was scared to let anyone near it. Utter bunkum, of course. There's no such diamond, of that I'm certain.”

“Then how do you account for his actions?”

“It's all very prosaic, I'm afraid. The annual gift of free flour was attracting hordes of beggars to the area, which is why he stopped it. As for keeping people off the land, that's not entirely accurate, for he had a gang of builders coming back and forth. The truth is, the old house was falling down so he had it demolished and replaced with this one. Banning people from the estate was simply a safety precaution while the construction took place.”

“Ah. I see. As you say, very humdrum.”

“Yet by stopping the Dole,” Swinburne commented, “he invoked the witch's curse.”

“Yes, the old fool!”

After supper, they spent the rest of the evening in the main parlour, where they smoked, drank, and made plans. It was decided that Burton would patrol the house from midnight until three in the morning. Swinburne would then take over and patrol until dawn.

By ten o'clock, Sir Alfred, who'd been drinking without cease, was nodding off.

“I haven't slept well for days,” he slurred. “Perhaps tonight the bloody spook will give me some peace!”

He made his apologies and stumbled off to bed.

At eleven, Bogle showed the two guests upstairs to their bedchambers, which faced each other across a narrow hallway. The king's agent and his assistant then convened for an hour in Burton's room.

Laying the Tichborne poem on a table, Burton took an eyeglass such as jewellers use from his pocket and peered through the lens at the parchment.

“As I suspected.”

“It's not genuine, is it?”

“It certainly hasn't been handed down through generations of Tichbornes, Algy. As I'm sure you recognised, the language is entirely wrong for anything predating the current century. I can confirm that the paper and the ink are more recent than Sir Alfred thinks, too. In fact, I'd lay money on this having been written by his grandfather, Sir Henry.”

“He should have been horsewhipped,” Swinburne opined. “Such doggerel is a terrible crime.”

“I can't disagree.” Burton put aside the parchment and looked at his assistant. “Sir Alfred believes this poem is about the Lady Mabella, but it's obvious to you and me that it actually concerns the South American diamond. No matter how vociferously our host denies its existence, the Eye of Naga is real. I suspect that when his grandfather stopped the dole and cut off the estate, it wasn't just to rebuild the house-it was to construct a hiding place.”

He held up the parchment.

“And this is a treasure map!”

S ir Richard Francis Burton, with a clockwork lantern in his hand, walked quietly through the chambers and passageways of Tichborne House, his ears alert for any sound, his eyes scanning every shadowy corner, nook, and cranny.

Having just inspected the smoking room, he entered a corridor and moved toward the ballroom.

He pondered the facts of the case. He was thinking about Sir Alfred's claim that he'd been hearing the knocking around the house for “nigh on a month.” That meant the haunting began soon after the Francois Garnier Choir Stones vanished from Brundleweed's safe, and both those events occurred mere days before the emergence of the Tichborne Claimant.

He looked at his pocket watch. It was half-past two in the morning.

“Coincidences?” he muttered. “I wonder.”

The ballroom was a big, empty, gloomy space, and his footsteps echoed as he crossed it and passed beneath a heavy chandelier. He opened an ornate double door and stepped into another hallway. It took him to the rear part of the house and the gunroom, which he examined with an ill-suppressed shudder, unnerved by the glass-eyed gazes of its wall-mounted trophies. There were stags, deer, and boar in profusion, a tiger and two lions, and above a row of gun cases, the massive head of a rhinoceros.

It occurred to Burton that John Speke would be in his element here.

A thick curtain hung over a glass-panelled door in the opposite wall. He went over, pushed it aside, and peered out past a paved patio to the lawn beyond. Beneath the light of a full moon, a white mist was flowing around the house and down the slope, clinging closely to the grass and accumulating in the lake's basin. The willow trees beside the water humped grotesquely out of it like shrouded monks huddled together in malignant contemplation. There was, thought Burton, something horribly sentient about them.

He sneered contemptuously. Idiot! They're just trees!

He turned away and traversed the length of the chamber to a door at its end. The portal creaked open onto a small parlour, through which he passed to the music room. This was long and rectangular in shape and, like the hunting room, had a curtained door that gave access to the patio.

As Burton entered, his lantern wound down and its light stuttered and died. Thankfully, he was not plunged into pitch darkness, for, through a chink in the curtains, a ray of moonlight angled across the chamber. Vaguely, in the faint radiance on either side of the bright shaft, Burton detected the outlines of violins, mandolins, and guitars hanging on the walls. A cello stood on a stand in one corner and, in the middle of the floor, there was a grand piano with a cloth draped over it and an elegant candelabrum on top. Jacobean armchairs stood around the sides of the room.

He rewound his lantern. Its glare threw everything into stark relief, the light somehow feeling like a terrible intrusion.

A full-length portrait of Sir Henry Tichborne hung over the wide fireplace. He was pictured with three hunting dogs at his feet, a riding crop in one hand, and a tricorn hat in the other. He wore a long beard and a severe and haughty expression.

Burton raised the lantern higher, looked at the hard, cold face, and stepped back.