She remained so composed under this warning that, had we not known of her distance from the two men, I should at length have thought Miss Chastelnau quite without feeling.
“I have had little to do with them, Mr Holmes, but that is not a matter of indifference. Like many brothers and sisters, our lives have been lived apart, in different worlds. Yet I will be frank with you. I am aware that they have not been popular in the district. I believe there was once a quarrel and some violence. As to their dispositions, both my brothers are by nature reclusive. Abraham prefers his own company and Roland resents any curiosity on the part of those around him.”
“And how do they come to be keepers of the Old Light?”
“Their troubles began after my father’s death, more than ten years ago. His oil-cake manufactory did not long survive him. The old building by the river bridge stood empty for a while and then became a warehouse. After that my brothers were employed at the Old Light. For many years now it has only been in use as a simple beacon. Abraham and Roland have acted as keepers and in return they have had a roof over their heads. It is a strange life. They are hardly a mile from the village and yet surrounded only by mudflats and quicksands, cut off by the sea for several hours out of every twelve.”
“Perhaps,” I suggested, “you could tell us something more of the Old Light.”
“It is a foreshore light, on the silt at the mouth of the estuary. The wooden supports raise it some eighteen feet above the low-water mark. It stands a mile or so downstream from the bridge. There is an iron ladder from the beach to a door at the level of the barrack-room. The area around it is marsh and sandbanks, with quicksand here and there. They call that part of it ‘the quivering sands:’”
“And what of the village?” I asked.
“Sutton Cross is built on the old Roman sea wall. It had the first road bridge across the river estuary, built fifty years ago. Before that, the river could only be crossed by fording it. Now there is also a new iron bridge, carrying the Midland and Great Northern Railway from Spalding in Lincolnshire into Norfolk. Everything downstream from the bridge is marsh and sandbank, dangerous to boats and hunters alike. The village has grown a good deal since the river was bridged, though the inn and the old church were there centuries ago.”
Holmes slipped his hand into his pocket and stared thoughtfully at the fire. He smiled.
“I was once a visitor at Sutton Cross for several days, Miss Chastelnau. It was one of Professor Jebb’s undergraduate reading parties from Cambridge. Just before the final examinations for the Classical Tripos. I recall that there is a river-bank footpath on the Lincolnshire side of the bridge, just by the inn. It follows the stream as far as the mudflats of the estuary. At that point, I recall, there used to be a light on either bank, both in Lincolnshire and in Norfolk.”
Miss Chastelnau nodded.
“Until fifty years ago two lights were needed to guide vessels from the sea into the river as far as up as Wisbech. Now the silt and the receding sea have made such navigation impossible. With a bridge standing across the river a mile from its mouth there is no scope for coastal trade and little demand. Only the Old Light on the Lincolnshire bank is kept in use. It has a single beam directed seaward to advise ships at anchor in the Boston Deeps to stand clear. Even in that anchorage there are few enough vessels of any size nowadays.”
“And the church beacon?” Holmes inquired, “I recall from my visit a quite charming medieval parish church with a high turret forming one corner of the old tower. There was a spiral staircase in the turret and a lantern at the top of the tower which must have pre-dated any lighthouse. Is that still in use?”
“Not as a guide to shipping. It would not carry so far. Its purpose, in conjunction with the Old Light, is as a landmark for eel-catchers and wild-fowl hunters on the mudbanks. The sands are dangerous, particularly after dark or in fog.”
“Very good. Now may we return to your brothers and my question, which I think you have not quite answered? What manner of men are they?”
“Roland is the younger,” she said simply, “The young people in the village taunt him as a stilt-walker.” She turned to me. “Perhaps you know what that means on the coast of the Wash, Dr Watson?”
“I have no idea.”
“Roland is called a stilt-walker because he is an enemy to change, even when others welcome it. The sea on that coast has been receding for centuries. Land is reclaimed from time to time by warping, as they call it. Sections of the marsh and sands are enclosed and dried out. They become pasture in the possession of sheep breeders or dairy farmers. They are lost to those who have always treated them as common land. The old fowlers, fishermen, goose-breeders. Centuries ago these men roamed the treacherous flats and sands by going on stilts. For years now they have been a dying breed. Their territory is stolen from them, even by the railway companies who have built embankments across the marsh and caused large sections of it to dry out. In short, to be called a stilt-walker is to be despised by the younger men.”
“And what of your elder brother, the author of the letter?”
Miss Chastelnau thought for a moment and then spoke carefully.
“I know he is lonely. I fear that John Bunyan’s giant, Despair, is his companion. There is nothing of Roland in him. They both live by what they can get, by what they can make, hunt and catch. Yet Abraham also lives in a world of dreams and legends, scraps of history and romance. Would that he could find comfort in such things but they all seem to fail him.”
“Yet it is admirable that he should dream,” said Holmes abruptly, sitting upright, “Are they loving brothers?”
“No,” she said quietly, “I think they are not. Force of circumstance obliges them to share a single life in the barrack-room of the Old Light. I have no close knowledge but I think it is a life of indifference at the best.”
She drew herself up in her chair as though she had come to the end of the matter. There was a pause.
“That will not quite do.” said Holmes gently, “Unless I am much mistaken, there is something more to this mysterious disappearance. Something which you know and which, as yet, we have not heard. That will not do, Miss Chastelnau, if we are to be of service to you. Come now, pray let us have the rest of this most interesting account. ”
She blushed a little but looked straight at him.
“Mr Holmes, you have already mentioned the old church at Sutton Cross, the turret tower with a winding staircase to the roof and the beacon. After dark it still guides hunters and fishermen going to their nets or traps on the mudflats or the marsh. If a man can see that lantern and the foreshore lighthouse, he can judge his position on the flats long after dark. He can find his way home even when the tide is racing at his heels or in the fog. Men depend upon those two lights. By this time of autumn, fog and mist are as much the enemy as the incoming sea and the quivering sands.”
She paused and for the first time showed a moment’s difficulty in continuing her story. Then she resumed.
“Last Sunday, after Evensong, the sexton and the rector went up the tower in the dusk to light the lantern. Twilight was coming on but it was not quite dark. A mist was gathering with the incoming tide, coming down like a curtain across the shore. It had not quite reached the level of the marsh. As the two men began to climb the stone steps of the winding stairs, they heard a gunshot.”
“A shot of what kind?”
“A shotgun, Mr Holmes, fired from somewhere on the marshes. It is not uncommon by daylight but unusual in the dusk, except as a signal. By the time the two men came out on to the lead of the flat roof, the incoming tide was running fast, as it does across the mud-banks. The narrowing of the estuary channels it in. Yet the worst of it, Mr Holmes, is that the marsh and the mudflats may look level but they seldom are. You may stand on a stretch of uncovered sand, where the sea is a hundred yards out, and you may think yourself safe. But the ripples have outflanked you. Your retreat is already cut off by the depth of water gathering at your back or by the softness of the flats where the tide has percolated below, undermining the firmness and turning it into quicksand. Then the sea comes rushing in on either side of you, sometimes as fast as a man can run. All this is a hundred times worse in the dusk. You see?”