Purser-Hallard Sherlock Holmes - The Monster of the Mere

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-78909-927-0
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten

When Watson's holiday in the Lake District takes a sinister twist, he and Holmes must uncover the truth hidden by superstitious locals, folklore and rumours of prehistorical monsters far away from the familiar streets of London... A serene walking holiday in the Lake District becomes a far more sinister excursion for Dr Watson when disappearances and murders start occurring in the small town of Wermeholt. Local legends, rumours of large slithering reptiles and spooked palaeontologists have the denizens paranoid and terrified, so it is up to Watson and his inbound companion Sherlock Holmes to uncover the truth and discover what is really lurking in the lake...

Philip Purser-Hallard is the author of the trilogy of urban fantasy thrillers beginning with The Pendragon Protocol, and the editor of a series of anthologies about the City of the Saved. As well as writing various other books and short stories, Phil edits The Black Archive, a series of monographs about individual Doctor Who stories published by Obverse Books.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Purser-Hallard, Philip

Leseproben

CHAPTER TWO
Although it was but early afternoon, the sun was vanishing already behind the western slopes of the fell. In view of the information I had just received, I felt that I had better proceed to the Mereside Hotel and secure a room for the night. There had been no other walkers on the trail from Ravensfoot that morning, but others could have set out later, or have approached the town the other way, from Hartsdale. Accordingly I presented myself at the Mereside, and was rewarded with a serviceable enough room. “It’s all we have,” the proprietor told me. A melancholy man named Mr Dormer, he spoke with a mild local accent, lacking the telltale signs of dialect that Effie Scorpe had been struggling to shake. “We’ve a party taking up the rest. No view of the water, I’m afraid. You’re welcome to it if it serves.” I agreed that it would, and took up residence therein. As my host had warned me, the window looked back along the length of the high street towards the church, with little visible of the promised lakeshore. The prospect was entirely overshadowed by the fell. I washed and unpacked my haversack, then took my guidebook downstairs to a gloomy sitting-room, intending to make notes on prospective sights in Hartsdale and points beyond. My aim was to finish my tour at Ullswater, and to return home to Baker Street before the month was out. The lounge was somewhat threadbare, with a fireplace that might have been cosy in winter but on a summer’s afternoon seemed dismally superfluous. Shabby tapestry sofas and armchairs promised a little comfort, and a picture window gave a view across the garden to the lakeshore, with Glissenholm and Ravensfell beyond. Beneath the far hill’s slopes, Ravensfoot gleamed in sunshine above serene waters, a glimpse of a better world. As I was taking all this in, to my surprise a tall, gaunt figure sprang up from one of the armchairs, took the briar pipe from his mouth and calmly stated my name. “Dr Watson.” For a moment my heart leapt, thinking that Holmes had changed his mind about a holiday together and had thought to surprise me here, but this man was not he. It took me a moment to place him. “Dr Summerlee?” I said. “Summerlee, the anatomist?” He had been a junior lecturer at my medical school, and had instructed me sternly on the inferences to be drawn by comparisons between human and animal skeletons and organs. Though I admired his fierce intellect, I had never found him congenial company. “I am Professor Summerlee now,” he told me, shaking my hand. “I hold the Chair of Comparative Anatomy at University College.” It had easily been twenty years since I had last seen Summerlee, whose austere and precise manner had, despite his absolute adherence to scientific rationalism, earned him the nickname “the Jesuit” among his students. Though he was but a few years older than myself, his familiar goatee and moustache had gone quite grey. As ever, he carried about him a mingled smell of stale tobacco-smoke and other odours that suggested he had not washed for several days. “I have been following your own work with interest,” he told me. “I do not mean your medical career, which I understand is undistinguished, but your popular publications. Your accounts of Mr Holmes’s exploits are sensationalised, inevitably, but I find the records of his deductive technique and accomplishments to be inspiring.” “He would be gratified to hear it,” I told him. It was in keeping with Summerlee’s personality that what he most appreciated about my writing was the abstract intellectual theory Holmes himself was always encouraging me to emphasise, to my publishers’ despair. “Personally I enjoy the sensational events and details. They’re indispensable when selling the stories to publishers and readers.” Summerlee nodded. “As I said, such trivialities are inevitable. For my part I am not averse to adventure, but it is a means to scientific enquiry, not an end in itself.” I recalled being told that as a younger man he had joined a number of expeditions, both zoological and anthropological, to various uncivilised climes, and had returned professing a thorough indifference to his experiences, though never to the knowledge he had acquired by them. “I say, Professor,” I said, “I suppose you must be a friend of Sir Howard Woodwose. I heard there was a scientific party staying here.” Summerlee frowned. “To be frank, I am not very well acquainted with Woodwose. He is a friend of my colleague Professor Creavesey, the palaeontologist. But yes, it is at his invitation that I am here, along with Creavesey, his students Gramascene and Topkins, and Mrs Creavesey.” He stared at me, a little warily. “You have heard tell, then, of our investigative enterprise?” I shook my head. “Only that you are here. I must say, I found it difficult to imagine what you might find to investigate in such an out-of-the-way place. But if Professor Creavesey’s field is palaeontology, I suppose there must be fossils here.” I remembered passing a museum of such things in Ravensfoot, though I had not been tempted to visit. Summerlee snorted. “A fossil would be more concrete evidence than Creavesey has managed to amass so far. No, our errand is an absolute wild-goose chase, but a scientist must be as committed to falsifying theories as to proving them. Even so, it was frivolous of me to come during term time; that, I fear, has been a disservice to my students.” His beard bobbed self-censoriously as he spoke. “How intriguing.” I was conscious that I was echoing the prurient interest of Mrs Trice, but was unable to restrain my curiosity. “Can you tell me no more?” He sighed. “The secret of our purpose here is not mine to divulge. Perhaps Creavesey or Woodwose will take you into their confidence, although I doubt it. There will be an opportunity at dinner tonight, I believe.” There being some time still until then, I elected to walk a little way beyond the Mereside Hotel to the east. The professor declined to join me, pleading a paper he was to review, and I set off alone. There was little enough left of the town in this direction. Beyond it, a rough track led across more meadows towards the spur of hill that reached down almost to the stagnant water. Though I knew that the recommended route up the fell, which I should take on the morrow, lay to the west, I was curious to see whether or not there might be another approach to the summit from this direction. The fell’s shadow lay across all the land here, and the grass was sparser than it had been even on the other side of the town. As I approached, I saw that there was certainly no route up Netherfell this way. Along the ridge of the spur ran a drystone wall, constructed from large rocks settling together under their own weight without mortar, but that would be an easy enough barrier to pass. The problem would lie in reaching it, since the slope ahead was scree, a mass of dust and rubble that covered bare rock, and would make ascent all but impossible for any but the most experienced mountaineer. At the end of the ridge, where it sloped sharply down to meet the lake, the drystone wall met a more formal construction, and the track ahead was bisected by a high wall of cemented limestone that extended some distance beyond the shore into the lake itself. This wall was broken by a large gate, which from my vantage looked large enough for a cart or carriage. This, then, must be the way to Wermeston Hall, which I had been told barred the walker’s route on the eastern side of the lake. As I had been warned, it held no welcome for visitors, and I was not surprised that the locals saw fit to avoid it. I, too, turned back without going any closer, seeing no good reason to probe the shadows under the fell, and returned to the Mereside Hotel to dress for dinner. At dinner, Professor Summerlee introduced me to his colleagues, and also to Sir Howard Woodwose, who came from his cottage on the other side of the town to dine with us. I was the hotel’s only guest not of their party, and they seemed disinclined to be forthcoming on the nature of their undertakings. I did, however, gather that they intended an expedition onto Wermewater the next day, where they intended to circumnavigate Glissenholm, the wooded island out in the mere. To me this sounded more like a pleasure jaunt than a scientific endeavour, but I supposed that Creavesey and the rest must have their reasons, however frivolous Summerlee considered them. I had seen on my arrival that the hotel had its own mooring and a rowing-boat for the use of guests, but for my own part I had no intention of making use of the facility. In my mind boats have always been a necessary form of transport rather than a leisure pursuit. I was finding the dank shadows of Wermeholt oppressive, and frankly I was looking forward to quitting it for what I hoped would be the superior comforts of Hartsdale. Besides, I gathered that my dining companions intended to rise at six, and that in my view is no way to conduct oneself on holiday. “I say, though,” Henry Gramascene suggested, “if you’d waited a bit until old lady Wermeston pops off, whoever inherits the estate might have given us permission to land on Glissenholm, rather than just rowing around it. I must say I’m curious about what’s there.” The student was loud and hearty, and seemed tolerantly amused by both his elders and his friend, the quieter Topkins. Despite his irreverence, I liked him instinctively. “That is hardly respectful to Lady Ophelia, Henry,” suggested Edith Creavesey. “Her manservant explained to Sir Howard that her family burial plot...