The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures - Mike Ashley [243]
“Bags?” said I. “Plural?”
“Yes, bags. One was retrieved years ago from the mere, the other by us today from your catacombs, Musgrave. Brunton we know never left the crypt alive. The two bags could therefore have escaped the crypt in only one way: both were handed up by Brunton to his accomplice.”
“And that could only be Rachel Howells!”
“Just so,” said Holmes. Musgrave and I remained silent, our eyes riveted on Sherlock Holmes as he continued: “We can now reconstruct the precise sequence of events. Brunton, redoubling his efforts following his dismissal on a week’s notice by your cousin, discovers the site of the cache within two days. His problem is to retrieve the treasure he believes to lie below. He confers with the angry, and astute, Rachel Howells, who strikes a bargain: she is to share equally in the treasure as the price for her help – and her silence. She it is who provides the two linen sacks, one for each half share of the trove. Brunton takes them down into the crypt, fills one with half the treasure and hands it up to Howells. “The sceptre and the orb for you; the crown for me, Rachel! Fair enough, my dear?“I can almost hear the words. “What does Howells do then?” he continued. “Aware of the need for haste, she hastily stashes her bag in the nearby hiding place she has selected earlier: the sarcophagus from which we have retrieved it today. While doing so, she quickly examines the bag’s contents. Despite Brunton’s assurances she may well conclude that the discoloured old pieces of metal are worthless. I seem to hear her screaming imprecations down at Brunton, crouched below. Brunton, reaching up to raise himself from the dungeon, places his bag on the stone shelf beside the wooden billet. And then – murder!”
“You always suspected it!”
“Yes, Watson. Murder. No other hypothesis fits. Consider. Her means, and her opportunity, are all too close to hand. Of motives she has no lack! Revenge – for Brunton has recently wronged her – as I suggested before, perhaps much more than we know: passionate Celtic women do not take kindly to being thrown over for gamekeepers’ daughters; anger – for Brunton has undoubtedly promised her that a great treasure awaits them at the bottom of the pit as a price for her help in raising the flagstone; and avarice, for Brunton’s protestations that the trinkets are of immense value may – just may – be true.
“So she, the second bag lying at her feet, murders him: murders him by dashing away the wooden billet. The heavy slab crashes down. Her faithless lover is imprisoned in the tomb. In pace requiescat avidus!“
Musgrave and I had listened in fascination as Holmes’s words vividly brought this ghastly tragedy to life. I took a deep breath to escape the spell he had cast.
“But this can only be a hypothesis!” I heard myself cry in protest.
“It is more than that,” said Holmes. “Consider the significance of the second bag. A British jury might possibly have acquitted Howells for lack of evidence had she been brought to trial at the time of Brunton’s death: the butler had been found dead in the crypt; the Stuart crown in the mere. There was no evidence connecting Howells directly to either. She had in any event disappeared. But now the second bag has been found and Howells’s neck is in jeopardy for she, and only she, can have received it from Brunton’s hand. Brunton never left that crypt alive. It was Howells, a jury will reason, who threw the one sack into the mere – her footsteps, leading to the edge of the lake, proclaim as much – after first secreting the other in its hiding place, a few steps from where she stood. This is no hypothesis, Watson. It is proof. This second linen bag places a hempen rope around the neck of Rachel Howells.”
“I am sure you are right,” said Nathaniel Musgrave, his eyes still fixed on Sherlock Holmes. “The facts are indisputable. They admit of no other explanation. Murder was done