We rang the doorbell and were admitted by a footman who led us through the hall and into a drawing room of truly baronial proportions. The walls were partly wood-panelled with family portraits hanging above, and a ceiling so high that no visitor would dare raise his voice for fear of the echo. The windows were mullioned and looked out onto a rose garden with a deer park beyond. Some chairs and sofas had been arranged around a massive stone fireplace — there was the raven once again, carved into the lintel — with green logs crackling in the flames. Lord Ravenshaw was standing there, warming his hands. My first impression was not entirely favourable. He had silver hair, combed back, and a ruddy, unattractive face. His eyes protruded quite conspicuously and it struck me that this might be due to some abnormality of the thyroid gland. He was wearing a riding coat and leather boots and carried a crop tucked under his arm. Even before we had introduced ourselves, he seemed impatient and keen to be on his way.
‘Mr Sherlock Holmes,’ he said. ‘Yes, yes. I think I have heard of you. A detective? I cannot imagine any circumstances in which your business would connect with mine.’
‘I have something that I believe may belong to you, Lord Ravenshaw.’ We had not been invited to sit down. Holmes took out the watch and carried it over to the master of the estate.
Ravenshaw took it. For a moment he weighed it in his hand, as if uncertain it was even his. Slowly, it dawned on him that he recognised it it. He wondered how Holmes had found it. Nonetheless, he was pleased to have it back. He spoke not a word but all these emotions passed across his face and even I found them easy to read. ‘Well, I am very much obliged to you,’ he said, at length. ‘I am very fond of this watch. It was given to me by my sister. I never thought I would see it again.’
‘I would be interested to know how you lost it, Lord Ravenshaw.’
‘I can tell you exactly, Mr Holmes. It happened in London during the summer; I was there for the opera.’
‘Can you remember the month?’
‘It was June. As I climbed out of my carriage, a young street urchin ran into me. He couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen. I thought nothing of it at the time, but during the interval I looked to see the time and of course discovered that I had been pickpocketed.’
‘The watch is a handsome one, and you obviously value it. Did you report the incident to the police?’
‘I do not quite understand the purpose of these questions, Mr Holmes. For that matter, I’m rather surprised that a man of your reputation should
have troubled to have come all this way from London to return it. I take it you are hoping for a reward?’
‘Not at all. The watch is part of a wider investigation and I hoped you might be able to help.’
‘Well, I’m afraid I must disappoint you. I know nothing more. And I didn’t report the theft, knowing that there are thieves and scoundrels on every street corner and doubting that there was anything the police would be able to do, and so why waste their time? I am very grateful to you for returning the watch to me, Mr Holmes, and I am perfectly happy to pay you for your travel expenses and time. But other than that, I think I must wish you a good day.’
‘I have just one last question, Lord Ravenshaw,’ Holmes said, with equanimity. ‘There was a man leaving here as we arrived. Unfortunately, we just missed him. I wonder if I was right in recognising an old friend of mine, Mr Tobias Finch?’
‘A friend?’ As Holmes had suspected, Lord Ravenshaw was not pleased to have been discovered in the company of the art dealer.
‘An acquaintance.’
‘Well, since you ask, yes, it was he. I do not enjoy discussing family business, Mr Holmes, but you might as well know that my father had execrable taste in art and it is my intention to rid myself of at least part of his collection. I have been speaking to several galleries in London. Carstairs and Finch is the most discreet.’
‘And has Mr Finch ever mentioned to you the House of Silk?’
Holmes asked the question and the silence that ensued happened to coincide with the snapping of a log in the fire so that the sound came almost as a punctuation mark.
‘You said you had one question, Mr Holmes. That is a second and I have had enough, I think, of your impertinence. Am I to call for my servant or will you now leave?’
‘I am delighted to have met you, Lord Ravenshaw.’
‘I am grateful to you for returning my watch, Mr Holmes.’
I was glad to be out of that room, for I had felt almost trapped in the midst of so much wealth and privilege. As we stepped onto the path and began to walk back down to the gate, Holmes chuckled. ‘Well there’s another mystery for you, Watson.’
‘He seemed unusually hostile, Holmes.’
‘I refer to the theft of the watch. If it was taken in June, Ross could not have been responsible for, as far as we know, he was at the Chorley Grange School for Boys at that time. According to Jones, it was pawned a few weeks ago, in October. So what had happened to it in the four months in-between? If it was Ross who stole it, why did he hold on to it for so long?’
We had almost reached the gate when a black bird flew overhead, not a raven but a crow. I followed it with my eye and as I did so, something made me turn and glance back at the hall. And there was Lord Ravenshaw, standing at the window, watching us leave. His hands were on his hips and his round, bulging eyes were fixed on us. And although I could have been mistaken for we were some distance away, his face, it seemed to me, was filled with hate.
NINE
The Warning
‘There is no helping it,’ Holmes said with a sigh of irritation. ‘We are going to have to call upon Mycroft.’
I had first met Mycroft Holmes when he had asked for help on the behalf of a neighbour of his, a Greek interpreter who had fallen in with a vicious pair of criminals. Until that moment, I had not the remotest idea that Holmes had a brother seven years older than himself. Indeed, I had never thought of him as having any family at all. It may seem strange that a man whom I could quite reasonably call my closest friend and one in whose company I had spent many hundreds of hours had never once mentioned his childhood, his parents, the place where he was born or anything else relating to his life before Baker Street. But, of course, that was his nature. He never celebrated his birthday and I only discovered the date when I read it in his obituaries. He once mentioned to me that his ancestors had been country squires and that one of his relations was a quite well-known artist but in general he preferred almost to pretend that his family had never existed, as if a prodigy such as himself had sprung unaided onto the world stage.
When I first heard that Holmes had a brother, it humanised him — or at least, it did until I met the brother. Mycroft was, in many ways, as peculiar as he: unmarried, unconnected, existing in a small world of his own creation. This was largely defined by the Diogenes Club in Pall Mall where he was to be found every day from a quarter to five until eight o’clock. I believe he had an apartment somewhere close by. The Diogenes Club, as is well known, catered to the most unsociable and unclubbable men in town. Nobody ever spoke to each other. In fact, talking was not allowed at all, except in the Stranger’s Room, and even there the conversation hardly flowed. I remember reading in a newspaper that the hall porter had once wished a member good evening and had been promptly dismissed. The dining room had all the warmth and conviviality of a Trappist monastery, although the food was at least superior as the club employed a French chef of some renown. That Mycroft enjoyed his food was evident from his frame, which was quite excessively corpulent. I can still see him wedged into a chair with a brandy on one side and a cigar on the other. It was always disconcerting to meet him, for I would glimpse in him, just for a moment, some of the features of my friend: the light grey eyes, the same sharpness of expression, but they would seem strangely out of place, translated, as it were, to this animated mountain of flesh. Then Mycroft would turn his head and he would be a complete stranger to me, the sort of man who somehow warned you to keep your distance. I did sometimes wonder what the two of them might have been like as boys. Had they ever fought together, read together, kicked a ball between them? It was impossible to imagine, for they had grown up to become the sort of men who would like you to think that they had never been boys at all.