Sherlock Holmes--The Devil's Dust Page 14

  At that, all three Fanthorpes bristled.

  “How dare you, sir!” barked Sebastian, the eldest.

  “The impudence!” said Stanley.

  “To come to our headquarters and insult us to our faces,” grumbled Samuel. “You have a nerve.”

  “What I have,” said Holmes, “is a handful of newspaper articles, culled over a half-dozen years, all of which indicate that at Silasville your workforce, which is composed almost wholly of native Africans, has been subjected to systematic harsh treatment. The miners are paid a pittance and made to work long hours in conditions that are at best precarious, at worst lethal. The ground in the locale is made up of notoriously unstable strata, and this has resulted in a number of cave-ins, with attendant loss of life. In addition, the—”

  “May I stop you there, Mr… Holmes, is it?” said Sebastian Fanthorpe. “Before you go on with this rant of yours, understand that mining is far from a risk-free proposition. In our business, loss of life is a fact of life. Men go underground, hacking away at the bare rock, entirely at the mercy of whatever geological faults and anomalies may lie in wait for them. A fissure here, a sinkhole there, and disaster strikes. It is as tragic as it is unavoidable.”

  “Then there are the pitfalls associated with the use of dynamite in enclosed spaces,” said Stanley.

  “Not to mention the danger from unexpected flooding,” said Samuel, “and from pockets of methane gas which may be ignited by the merest spark. You must know this.”

  “Think of the coal mines in these very isles,” said Sebastian, “the product of which our nation depends upon to power its factories and transport, to heat its homes. Accidents happen at those all the time. Just the year before last there was a vast methane explosion at the Trimdon Grange colliery up in County Durham. Sixty-nine miners were killed.”

  “Not all died in the explosion itself,” Stanley added. “Some were asphyxiated by afterdamp, the mixture of toxic gases that is given off by such a conflagration.”

  “Not a man went down that mine unaware that an incident of this nature might well occur,” said Samuel. “Would you not have them do so? Would you deny thousands of British miners the opportunity to make a living and keep the heart of the empire beating, simply because there is a chance some of them might die?”

  The three Fanthorpes looked at one another as if in smug agreement. They had, they thought, presented a convincing rebuttal to Holmes’s accusations.

  “I am not talking about mining in general,” said Holmes. “I am talking about Silasville in particular, where the death toll is conspicuously higher than average. Then there is the manner in which labour disputes are handled – or, I should say, mishandled. It is not unknown for individual miners to be cudgelled with a knobkerrie or whipped with a sjambok when they express discontent. On one occasion what amounted to a riot was put down by the mine overseers using rifles. Eight miners were shot dead. That is a matter of record. You cannot deny it.”

  “Nor will we,” said Samuel. “Silasville has been problematic, we accept that. There have been shortcomings on both sides, workforce and management alike, although more egregiously with the former than the latter. We have taken steps to address the issue.”

  His brother Stanley chimed in, likewise adopting a passable impression of a conciliatory tone. “The use of small arms in a disciplinary capacity was perhaps ill-advised. The site foreman would not have authorised it, however, had he not felt that his and his fellow overseers’ lives were in genuine jeopardy. They were facing a mob, outnumbered ten to one. They had to redress the balance somehow.”

  “Besides,” said Sebastian, “the events you mention all took place some while ago. For the past eighteen months Silasville has been free of trouble. The workers have been behaving in exemplary fashion, docile as cattle. Not one voice has been raised in complaint. What does that tell you, Mr Holmes?”

  “It tells me that you have found some other means of subjugating them,” replied my friend, “something subtler than brute force.”

  As one, the three brothers heaved irritable sighs.

  “There is no reasoning with some people,” said Sebastian Fanthorpe. “They will believe only what they choose to believe.”

  “That other fellow was just the same,” said Samuel. “The one who stormed in last week and caused a fuss. Quarterstaff, was it?”

  “Quatermain,” said Stanley. “Dratted old fool. He barged in here just like you, Mr Holmes, full of bluster, pointing the finger, levying all sorts of allegations. Something about his son. He became quite heated. He said if we were ‘real men’ we would own up to what we had done. The trouble was, we had no idea what it was we were supposed to be guilty of.”

  “Clearly we had committed some manner of offence,” said Sebastian, “but we couldn’t for the life of us think what.”

  “Still can’t,” said Samuel. “It didn’t help that Quatermain was barely coherent. He came across as quite unhinged, in fact. His son had died of a disease at Silasville, he said, yet it could not have been a disease. How is one to make sense of that? Very cryptic. A disease that is not a disease. Like a riddle, almost.”

  A contemptuous little titter passed amongst the three Fanthorpes. I found it somewhat unnerving, the way they displayed emotion like that, in unison, and the way they spoke too, playing pass-the-parcel with their comments, one to the next. They put me in mind of the Graeae of Ancient Greek myth, those three crone-like sisters who shared a single tooth and eye, which they took turns using.

  “He would not be placated,” said Stanley. “Nor would he leave the premises when asked to. He declared he would not budge until he had had satisfaction. In the end we had to send for the police.”

  “That did the trick,” said Sebastian. “Quatermain was gone like a shot, before any constable arrived. Proof, if it were needed, that he was a scoundrel. Who but a scoundrel flees at the merest mention of the law?”

  “I should hope, Mr Holmes, that we shan’t have to do likewise for you,” said Samuel. He glanced over at a mahogany longcase clock with an ornately filigreed dial. “Well, your five minutes are up. Will you leave quietly?”

  Holmes gave each brother an appraising look, then nodded.

  “Good day, gentlemen,” said he, and made for the door, beckoning me to follow.

  * * *

  Outside, in the street, Holmes was in ebullient form.

  “What a fascinating threesome!” he said. “Cocooned by wealth, they seem incapable of feeling the slightest affinity towards their fellow men. Human lives are just statistics to them, numbers on a sheet of paper. As long as the profit margin remains fat, naught else matters.”

  “Did their protestations of innocence ring true to you, Holmes?”

  “Was it innocence or ignorance? The two are oft en hard to distinguish from each other. Similarly ignorance and wilful blindness. It strikes me that the brothers Fanthorpe would rather not know what goes on at a place like Silasville. As long as the gold keeps coming out of the ground, they do not care how it keeps coming out of the ground. The day-to-day administration is left to the likes of site foreman Marius van Hoek, Umslopogaas’s boorish Boer. The Fanthorpes are happy to delegate the dirty work to underlings. That way their hands stay clean.”

  “And their consciences.”

  “Assuming they have any, which is debatable.”

  “I still cannot see what you hoped to accomplish by confronting them,” I said, “besides earning their enmity. You seemed to know a considerable amount about their mining operations already, Silasville in particular, beforehand. Did you glean anything further from talking to them?”

  “Not a great deal. Provocation, however, can sometimes precipitate retaliation, and retaliation can be illuminating.”

  “You mean they might lash out at us somehow, in response to our visit?”

  “They might, if they consider us sufficiently threatening. Equally, they might not. But if they do, it could be taken as a mark of culpability – the act of
men with something to hide. Then there was the appointments diary I sneaked a look at. That, too, afforded some interesting information.”

  “Namely?”

  In place of an answer, Holmes yawned. “How about a coffee, old friend? I don’t know about you but after the trying night we have had, and the attendant lack of sleep, I could do with a pick-me-up. There is a coffeehouse just round the corner, I believe.”

  I knew I was not going to get anything more out of him than that, at least for the time being, so I accompanied him to the coffeehouse. Thence I embarked upon my rounds, while Holmes repaired to Baker Street, where, he said, he had some thinking to do.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  BAT AMONGST THE PIGEONS

  A soft, muffled fluttering awoke me. I must have been sleeping lightly, or perhaps it was that the sound was an uncommon one, something I was not accustomed to hearing late at night.

  I lay in bed, ears pricked, wondering if it would recur.

  It did. Its origin was somewhere in the room, but it took me a moment to determine where exactly. It emanated from the fireplace.

  The third time it came, the sound was quite insistent. It was quite obviously caused by a bird’s wings.

  I lit the lamp and clambered out from under the covers with something of a sigh. This was hardly a novelty. We had had birds become stuck in the chimney flue before. The creature – a pigeon, most likely – had carelessly toppled down through the chimneypot and was now trapped. I would have to free it, otherwise the flustered thing would flail around for hours until it died of suffocation or fright.

  I thrust up the window sash, in time to hear the clock of St Marylebone Church strike three. Then I went down on hands and knees beside the hearth. The fire had long since gone out. I reached up inside the firebox to grasp the handle of the damper, which was open only a couple of inches. As soon as the bird emerged, I would shoo it towards the open window. With luck, I would be able to return the pigeon to its rightful place outdoors without it leaving too much of a sooty mess behind.

  As soon as I swung the damper fully open, out the bird flew, straight into my face. I reeled back, half blinded by soot, coughing and spluttering. An oath or two escaped my lips.

  When I regained my poise, I saw that the bird was indeed a pigeon and that, far from making for the window and freedom, the damned thing had instead settled atop one bedpost. From there it eyed me beadily, every so often spreading its wings and flapping them, which sent a shower of black dust onto the bedclothes.

  I waved my hand at the bird. “Be gone with you!” I hissed. “Go and pester someone else!”

  Any normal pigeon would have taken the hint. They are not, as a rule, bold creatures, and in London they have learned to steer clear of humans, even as they weave around amongst us, living on our litter and debris.

  This member of the species, however, seemed to regard my actions not as intimidation but as invitation. It continued to stare at me, utterly untroubled.

  Cursing under my breath, I set about trying to evict the pigeon with a will. I was hampered by the need to move slowly and tread delicately so as not to disturb the other two residents of the house. I lunged for the bird with a kind of stealthy exaggeration, waving my arms and uttering a throaty snarl.

  The pigeon took the hint and flew off from the bedpost. Alas, it went no further than my chest of drawers. Thence, after another bout of intimidation from me, it made for my dressing table mirror, after which it revisited the bedpost. Throughout this process its steady orange gaze remained fixed on me, giving an impression of both insouciance and contempt.

  The soot stains the bird was leaving everywhere were bad enough, but I feared that if I could not get rid of it soon, the inevitable might occur and some item of furniture or clothing would be besmirched with droppings. The thought lent urgency to my task, yet still the pigeon eluded me. Every time I got near, it flapped across the room to a fresh perch. The only place it seemed not to want to go was the gaping window. Its natural habitat apparently held no attraction.

  So far, this episode would seem to constitute a farcical interlude, no more than that: Dr Watson attempting to oust an intrusive fowl from his room at three in the morning, and failing.

  Then things took a turn for the strange. A second pigeon gained ingress to the room via the fireplace. It joined its comrade roosting upon my bedstead.

  Berating myself for not having closed the damper – not that I could have foreseen that another bird might be so foolish as to follow the first down the chimney – I flapped my arms aggressively at the pair of them. The second pigeon was no less imperturbable than its comrade. Both of them took off and alighted side by side atop the bookcase.

  When a third pigeon flew in and stationed itself beside the other two, that was when I felt a distinct stirring of unease. Together the three birds regarded me from the bookcase, all lined up in a row. They seemed to me speculative, as though like Poe’s raven they were judging me and found me wanting. Not a single purr or coo escaped them. Now and then one of them would preen or run a beak through its soot-begrimed plumage, but otherwise they seemed content just to sit in silence and stare.

  “Right, you feathered vermin,” I said, low-voiced. “That’s it.”

  I closed the damper, in case yet more pigeons chose to invade. Then I fetched up the cricket bat which was leaning behind the door. Although a rugby man through and through, I have been known to enjoy a spell at the crease. Like my fellow physician W.G. Grace, I am an all-rounder, although of course I cannot claim to be anywhere near as proficient at either batting or bowling.

  “I will have no qualms about bashing you flat,” I told the trio of pigeons, raising the bat. “The exit is over there.” I gestured to the window. “Now is the time to use it.”

  The birds remained infuriatingly imperturbable.

  “Fair enough. You cannot say you weren’t warned.”

  I swung for them, and the pigeons scattered in different directions to various vantage points. I beleaguered them with the cricket bat, whisking it this way and that, doing my utmost to avoid damaging anything inanimate. My hope was that, even if I did not make contact, my frantic flailing would convince the pigeons to seek sanctuary outdoors, away from the madman in his pyjamas with the whirling slab of willow.

  At last the birds seemed to get the message. They grouped themselves upon the windowsill. Determined to make the most of the opportunity thus presented, I drew the bat back for a sweep shot, as though a bowler had just delivered a slow ball square on the leg side that I was going to knock for six. I planned to take out all three pigeons at a stroke.

  That was when I saw it. Outside the window, looming from the darkness, were dozens more pigeons. A flock of them. A swarm of them. They were hurtling towards me, a great cloud of plump grey bodies and whirring wings.

  I acted on reflex. In a flurry of horror and incomprehension, I leapt for the window and slammed it shut.

  Onwards, before my incredulous eyes, the birds came. The three already in the room had retreated to the wardrobe as I brought down the sash. The multitude outside dived for the window at full speed. One after another they hurled themselves at the panes. Impact after thudding impact resounded through the frame. Glass cracked. Cracks multiplied. Glass broke. Fragments sprayed in, even as I stumbled backwards.

  Then, through the hollow, shard-fringed gaps between the mullions and transoms, pigeons insinuated themselves. Squirming, struggling, sometimes cutting themselves in their eagerness, they spilled into the bedroom in their droves. I was surrounded all at once by an airborne horde, buffeted by wings, scraped by talons. I wielded the cricket bat one-handed like a swordsman, not aiming, caring little what I hit as long as I hit something. Repeatedly I felt the thump of wood striking flesh and often heard the crunch of tiny bones fracturing. Dead pigeons fell to the floor, yet plenty more remained alive and aloft.

  In some distant corner of my mind I wondered whether I was actually still asleep and dreaming. Such was the sheer
phantasmagorical absurdity of this pigeon incursion.

  Regardless, I swung and swung again with the bat until I perceived that I was beginning to whittle down the pigeons’ numbers. The room was littered with their corpses while increasingly few remained active.

  The realisation galvanised me. My strength had been flagging, but now I found new reserves of stamina and pitted myself against the invading birds with ever greater vigour. Whereas before I had had no trouble hitting one since there were so many of them, now I had to take specific aim. It required accuracy to bring each down. I had got my eye in by then, however. With almost machine-like precision I walloped pigeons in mid-air and had the satisfaction of seeing them slam sideways against the wall, stone dead. Others caught only a glancing blow, spiralling down to flutter and hop uselessly on the floor, perhaps with a wing or leg broken, or else just stunned. Polishing them off was the simplest of tasks.

  Soon a mere handful of the creatures remained, and these I dispatched methodically and mercilessly until at long last the weird battle of man versus beast was over. Panting hard, I leaned upon the handle of the bat and surveyed the aftermath. Feathers filled the air, a swirling grey blizzard, and I stood ankle-deep in a sea of dead fauna. I estimated the tally to be nothing short of two hundred birds. The sight of them was repugnant, as was the smell, which consisted of the pigeons’ natural musty odour overlaid with the tang of spilled blood and burst entrails.

  I myself had sustained a few superficial scratches but was otherwise unhurt. As I struggled to bring my laboured breathing under control and gather my wits, there came a knock at the door, swiftly followed by the entrance of Sherlock Holmes.

  “Watson. By the living Jingo! Are you all right?”

  “I have been better. And you? I see you have had tribulations of your own.”

  Holmes looked as harassed and dishevelled as I must have. His pyjamas were shredded in several places and he was bleeding from a number of cuts that looked suspiciously like tiny bite marks.