I let this pass and watched the beam of the Old Light illuminate the horizon once more.
“There is one thing further,” he said significantly.
“What would that be?”
He laid down his knife and fork and glanced into the darkness beyond the window.
“Whatever lies out there in the quicksands, this is your case not mine. You have done it admirably and, as I say, I am sure Lestrade will commend you. However, were it my case, I should now feel it incumbent on me to present the findings to Miss Alice Chastelnau.”
“Of course I shall! Once we are back in Baker Street, I shall set out the entire course of the investigation. Naturally, I cannot tell her precisely what happened to her brothers. No one could. In the circumstances it would be preposterous to accuse one alone of murdering the other. However, she may draw her conclusions privately from the evidence. Then I shall let the matter drop.”
Sherlock Holmes tapped the table with his spoon and turned a little in his chair. The waiter came towards us, bearing a cheese board occupied solely by a large slab of farmhouse Stilton under a blue-and-white willow-pattern cover. When the man had gone, Holmes let the corners of his mouth turn down.
“It is beyond my comprehension why these establishments insist upon ruining a Stilton cheese by soaking it in port wine! As to the other matter, Watson, I fear that a letter to Miss Chastelnau and a private report will not quite do. At least I should think so if this were my case, and if I were as close as we are now to Mablethorpe. I would feel obliged to call upon the lady. I should break the news to her as tactfully as one may in a quiet talk-and as one cannot do in a formal letter.”
It was difficult to argue against this, except in terms that would have sounded unchivalrous or downright caddish. Had Holmes not raised the matter in this way, however, I should have returned to London next day. I was still in medical practice. Though I left a locum in charge of my consulting rooms on these occasions, there were patients to be seen by me and hospitals to be visited.
“If you think it right,” I said a little gloomily, “but I cannot stay in Sutton Cross for ever, waiting for an appointment with Miss Chastelnau.”
He was undismayed by this.
“I do think it right,” he said in a kindly tone, “and I do not think an appointment will be necessary. We are, after all, performing a service. It may be a greater service to her than can at the moment be supposed. The early morning train will get us to Mablethorpe well before lunch. The evening train will bring us back here before the dining-room closes. The day after tomorrow you will be back in London. Your grateful patients will doubtless applaud your return.”
9
So it was that our pilgrimage to Mablethorpe began next morning, after an early breakfast. Holmes had sent a telegram to Miss Chastelnau, advising her of our visit, though how he could be sure the lady would be at home was not revealed. The three carriages of the stopping train from King’s Lynn to Cleethorpe, pulled by something no grander than a shunting engine, rattled and jerked their way out of the little wooden platform at Sutton Cross. We traversed the expanse of the fens, their pastureland gathering the October rains in wide pools. After branching off the main line at Willoughby, a single track followed the flat coastline. Broad sands and paths among the dunes were fringed by tall grass and grey-leaved buckthorn with its orange berries. At a little distance out to sea, parallel with the shore, a series of sandbanks stretched in either direction as far as one could see.
I had no clear idea of what to expect from Mablethorpe. There was a church and two or three inns. Elegant houses, precisely of the kind that might contain a school for young gentlewomen, stood half-concealed in groves of fir trees and oaks. Elsewhere, brightly-painted boarding houses and something approaching a promenade suggested all the makings of a popular seaside bathing-place or “resort.” A brisk salty wind blew from the North Sea.
Holmes and I made the best of it, taking lunch at one of the inns, the so-called Book-in-Hand. Then we set out on foot towards what was once Miss Openshaw’s academy. Nowhere in a place the size of Mablethorpe is far from anywhere else. The school house, at least, was very much what I had expected. It was a substantial family dwelling, classical or at least square-looking. Its crescent-shaped gravel drive entered between one set of stone gate-pillars and exited between another pair a little further up the suburban road. The gravelled way was flanked by laurel bushes and other shrubs. A front elevation showed us a house on three levels with a bay and two large sash windows on either side of its stone porch. It had no doubt been built in brick but was coated with pale stone rendering, painted white, as befitted the neo-classical ambitions of sixty years ago. With a long seat in a grey wooden summer-house on the lawn, it seemed precisely the residence to house ten or a dozen genteel pupils. I cannot believe that their instruction required anyone but Miss Chastelnau herself.
It seemed to me, as Holmes rang the bell, that there was very little sign of the young ladies. However, that was neither here nor there. A maid in cap and apron answered the door and Holmes announced us. Without hesitation we were admitted into the hall with its black and white tiling and an inner door of red and blue glass panels. From there we proceeded to what I suppose I must call the sitting-room of the headmistress.
Miss Chastelnau was evidently expecting us. She stood with her back to the bay window and her face in shadow. She was the same neat and restrained person who had visited us in Baker Street. Yet I sensed that her family tragedy had inspired her with anxiety rather than grief.
The sitting-room was just what I would have expected. The sun filled its chintz curtains at the window and, on a small table, stood a Chinese vase adorned with green dragon-handles. The hearth, where Holmes and I faced one another with Miss Chastelnau upright between us on a yellow settee in the Egyptian style, was lined with William De Morgan tiles portraying centaurs, the phoenix and other mythical creatures of the ancient world. I thought afterwards that the entire room was a curious shrine of the non-existent.
As succinctly as I could, because that was kinder, I explained the details of my solution to the mystery of her two missing brothers. I added that there had, of course, been no inquest as yet. What its verdict would be I could not say. Miss Chastelnau sat quite still and listened in silence. When I had finished, she thanked me with every appearance of sincerity. If she showed little emotion, it was surely because she remained in that state of shock which precedes any outbursts of grief.
“And you, Mr Holmes,” she said quietly, turning to him, “thank you for coming to see me also.”
Throughout all this, he had been sitting with his head lowered a little, as if reading the mythology of the hearth tiles. Now he was straight-backed in his chair and looking her directly in the eye.
“I fear you are in error, madam. I did not come here to see you, for that is Dr Watson’s business. I am here to see Mr Abraham Chastelnau.”
If a bomb had gone off in that ornamented and genteel room, it could not have produced a more stunned and silent aftermath than his words. I had not the first idea what he was talking about. Our hostess could only say, as if in a dream,
“I do not understand you, Mr Holmes.”
“Do you not? Then I will explain.”
“He is not here!” The desperate cry was so unlike her habitual composure that I felt the skin of my back creep with cold.
“If you mean,” said Holmes, “that he could not be here without your knowledge, I will go so far as to accept that. I beg you, however, do not torment yourself by denials until you hear what I have to say.”