Sherlock Holmes: Before Baker Street by David Marcum (warren buffett book recommendations TXT) 📕

the sitting-room floor and used it to escape. And where did they go, leaving Mrs. Rander and Miss Elizabeth Farrell in torment? Neither woman could furnish an explanation as to why.

I drew back the bolt and opened the door to my left. It led, as I expected, down to a cellar, with steps descending into darkness. I took a lantern from a hook on the wall and lit it with a vesta, holding it high and taking the steps slowly as shadows danced around me. I left the last step to tread on a solid brick floor and was obliged to turn to my right, as this would take me directly beneath the sitting-room.

I entered through a heavy door, and an intolerable smell of decay filled the air. Possibly invading rats had died here. The lantern’s meagre light did little to dispel the blackness, but I saw that a shallow channel had been dug across the cellar. It ran from where a brick had been removed from the base of one wall, to the opposite wall, where it disappeared. Also, I saw at once that there was a thickening to the walls which sealed the air in here and deadened all sound. I held the lantern higher to discover several deep vents, drilled deep into the same wall. I deferred my curiosity of these, in favour of further exploration, holding the lantern higher still in order to examine the ceiling

Again, the brickwork had been fortified with a kind of padding. Close beneath it was a mechanism of springs and weights, and in a moment I realised that I was looking at an oubliette, a device that I had read was employed in mediaeval French castles and elsewhere. This was confirmed by the metal axis across the ceiling, on which the entire floor had pivoted like a child’s seesaw, and by the polish that glinted in the lantern-light having formerly been uppermost as the floor of the sitting-room. This movement, I saw, would have occurred but once, and then the reversed floor would have been securely locked into place after tipping the occupants above into the abyss.

I moved the lantern again, its glow now illuminating a succession of vertical iron bars that divided the cellar. Behind these was the true horror of the place. The putrid smell was explained, and I shuddered at this discovery. Two partially decomposed bodies lay with arms outstretched between the bars, clawing at something beyond their reach. They were without question a man and a boy, Thomas Rander and his son, their faces agonised in their death throes. Bulging eyes stared at me in silent appeal, and a scuttling from a corner told me that rats had already fed here.

I turned back and found the stairs. My shadow was cast darkly upon the wall again as I climbed, and disappointment at my failure to interpret the facts and signs in this tragic affair weighed heavily upon me. I locked the house and left Carmody Alley, for there was nothing more to be learned here. After five minutes of brisk walking I hailed a hansom and journeyed to Montague Street in deep thought. By the time I was settled in my lodgings, I had attained a new perspective, and a final confirmation would complete my case.

Early the next day, I requested the driver of the cab to stop briefly, in order to send telegrams to Lestrade explaining my progress, and to Mr. Nathanial Pargeter announcing my arrival. I caught the early train to the Midlands from Euston with minutes to spare, and commenced a few hours of mesmerised observation through the compartment window as the evidence of a dying summer paraded before me. Skeletal trees amid carpets of shed golden leaves alternated with dulled and muddy fields. The smoke-grimed buildings and chimneys of towns large and small flashed past with hypnotic effect, so that I awoke from a peaceful doze as the train approached Darlaston Station.

No trap awaited me as I left the platform, but I was fortunate enough to be able to hire one for the morning and, after obtaining directions, I set off down lanes that had until recently boasted carpets of fragrant blooms.

Causewell House was but a mile or two distant. I reached it in the early afternoon, an unimposing structure that had once extended to a wing that now stood in ruins. I led the horse to a stone trough not far from the perimeter of the grounds, near topiary that had been sculpted into fantastical shapes.

A grim manservant answered the door to tell me that Mr. Pargeter was not at home, but when I sent a scrap of paper with the words “All at Slaughterer’s Lane has been discovered” written upon it, he quickly appeared in the doorway. He was much as I had imagined, a squat, blunt man with a full handlebar moustache and a brusque manner.

“My name is Sherlock Holmes,” I announced. “Did you not receive my telegram, Mr. Pargeter?”

“I did, Mr. Holmes, but did you not receive my reply forbidding you to come?”

“I regret that I did not, since I had already left, but it would have made little difference. You will already know what we have to discuss.”

I received a long appraising look. Finally, he seemed to make up his mind.

“Very well,” he said reluctantly. “You may enter.”

With that, he led me into a dusty room – probable evidence, I thought, of his wife’s demise – containing little more than a dining table and chairs. The fire was unlit and he offered no refreshment, but my spirits leapt as I saw the last obstacle to the completion of my case swept away: Along the walls were the paintings, the originals that had hung in the house in Slaughterer’s Lane!

“There is a fox,” he explained as he saw that I had noticed a long-barrelled rifle near an open window at the end