“In particular anything that would reveal where she has escaped to...”
“Precisely. Look, he laid down the duffle bag here; the grass is flattened and the dew has been displaced. The footsteps of course lead to the gate.”
The heather-covered gate led out to a dirt road, around the corner from the main access routes. The view of it was blocked by hedges and trees, hence the police officer had not seen them flee.
“A car was waiting for them here,” said Holmes, stroking his chin. “No doubt she had it parked here at the ready. The footsteps go no further. According to the tire tracks in the soil it is a common Model T Ford. And the trail is lost on the main road.”
Even my friend’s genius could no longer follow the trail.
“My man no doubt noticed the car turning from the dirt road,” said Mycroft, who had again joined us. “Evidently he did not attach any significance to it. He did not see the lady and assumed the car was just driving past.”
“Yes, he assumed,” said Holmes, “a common problem among policemen.”
“She cleaned up after herself thoroughly,” I said, sighing.
“Not as well as she thinks,” said Holmes.
He walked across the garden to the main entrance of the villa and its marble staircase. I locked the gate behind us and ran after him and Mycroft. I had my work cut out to catch up to them, they had such long strides.
We rushed into the drawing room where we had first met Alice and where she had received us a few days earlier. The detective went straight to the display of family photographs. He stopped before the photograph depicting the lady with her brother and the Silver Ghost.
“She left the most important thing behind,” the detective exclaimed.
“What is that?”
“A map to her hideout!”
He removed the photograph from the frame and pointed to the castle in the background.
“Where else would she escape to? I presume it will not be hard to find.”
“I thought that was Darringford!”
“No, Darringford is an old manor house,” said Holmes, placing the photograph in his breast pocket. “It does not correspond to the description, location, architectural style or size of this place. Nor is she foolish enough to run home. After all, Scotland is full of potential hideouts.”
He looked around once more and then headed back to the garden, where most of the policemen had returned to their work.
The bushes they had pulled up lay in a heap behind the gazebo, above which buzzed angry bees, as though attempting to gather as much pollen as possible before the flowers dried out. At the edge of the beech grove was a mound of earth and the men were taking turns digging and shovelling the soil.
The hole was already quite deep.
“Nothing yet, sir!” the sergeant said to Mycroft.
“Please continue, the body must be there,” said the detective’s brother.
“How is the work proceeding?” Holmes asked.
“Quite well,” answered the sergeant. “The soil is loose and not overgrown with roots.”
He was not accustomed to manual labour and was sweating.
“Excellent!” said the detective happily. “That means someone was digging here recently.”
He sat down with us in the gazebo. From there we eagerly watched how the dig progressed. The work indeed was going well. With each strike of the shovel we became tenser with excitement.
After a while Holmes could no longer stand idly by. He borrowed a spade from an old corporal and started digging. Presently, whether by luck or fate, his spade hit a solid wooden board.
Those of us sitting in the gazebo could easily distinguish the dull sound.
We ran over and peered into the six-foot pit at the bottom of which Holmes was clearing away the last layer of dark, wet clay with his bare hands. Finally, under the layers of soil, a cracked lid appeared.
Holmes felt for the edge of the board and with the help of one of the officers gave it a mighty yank and threw it aside. Below us lay something wrapped in a canvas. Based on the shape it was not hard to guess what it was.
“A knife!” the detective cried, extending his hand without taking his eyes off his find. His nails were filthy and the tips of his fingers were raw from the digging.
The sergeant handed him a knife. Holmes plunged the blade into the canvas and we heard a ripping sound.
I crossed myself.
There was no doubt that we were standing over the grave of Lord Bollinger, although it was impossible to distinguish any specific features from the remains. They had remained hidden in Lady Darringford’s garden for too long and the body had begun to decompose.
The canvas and the dead man’s clothes were stuck together, and when the detective pulled them back we could see the worms swarming and feasting on the body. Some of the men immediately turned away from the pit. The rest of us took off our hats.
“His watch,” whispered Mycroft hoarsely. “Give me his watch.”
The detective obediently slid his hand under the rotting wet jacket and pulled out the dead man’s watch chain. His brother leaned over and grasped it in his handkerchief.
“There is no longer any doubt,” he said. “The coat of arms belongs to the royal family. Gentlemen, pay your respects to Lord Bollinger.”
We straightened up and remained for a moment in silence.
Then my companion climbed out of the ditch and the policemen covered it up. Later that day police investigators arrived at the scene as well as a hearse to pick up the remains.
There were now no more surprises in the opulent villa and its magnificent garden. We returned to my house, from where we would continue the search for Lady Alice. I, however, after the physically and emotionally harrowing experiences of the morning, retired for the remainder of the day.
Holmes too disappeared into his room. Unlike me, however, he did not need to rest his nerves. He simply wanted to remove his disguise.
“It is such a relief to be able to shave,” he said to me on the way home. “I am looking forward to being myself again!”
XII: The Adventure Continues
My friend’s true resurrection occurred when he finally discarded the beard, the pomade in his hair, the glasses and the Cedric-style clothes. For the first time since his coronary several weeks ago, he stood before me as I and his admirers knew him. With his lightly shaved pointy beard he was now ready to confront any enemy and to pursue the Darringfords as himself. The newspapers printed an official denial of his death in bold letters, and we immediately afterwards received letters, telegrams and cards from well-wishers as well as people with various requests.
Journalists bombarded him with requests for interviews. But the detective had never granted any before and stayed true to his convictions. His time was too precious to devote to prattle and to the disingenuous questions of these riffraff.
Our work again moved from the field to the dusty archives of register offices. The day after Alice magically vanished from her house and Holmes appropriated the photograph of her and her brother standing in front of the stone castle, we launched an investigation in search of this mysterious fortress.
It was painstaking work. It took us two days just to find all the available photographs of Scottish castles and strongholds in the historical institute and royal library, and we spent the next day endlessly comparing them with the castle in the Darringford photograph. I never knew how many castles there were in Scotland! Our work was frustrated by the fact that our photograph of the castle was only from one angle, so we sometimes had no recourse but to refer to our spatial imagination.
“The circle has narrowed to twelve possible locations,” said Holmes late in the afternoon of the third day, when we had examined the last of the archival photographs.