Elementary Read online

  Keene gave me a resentful glance.

  “Trust me, Mr. Keene, Holmes has his methods, and it does no good to question them. The murderer will be found.”

  He replied, “I will not lose any sleep that the man is dead. I only wish to restore our good name and get a bit of retribution for my sister. Now, it seems, my hopes for either will not be seen through.”

  I endeavoured to keep Keene’s spirits up and fulfill the expectations Holmes placed upon me before he left. I asked, “Did you happen to see anyone either on the train or perhaps here that looked familiar to you?”

  Keene thought a moment then shook his head, “No, why?”

  “Well, he either had an accomplice besides your sister, or he told someone else about the money. He would not have been killed had he been the only one with the knowledge of the money’s location. So, either he came with someone, in which case, since you’ve been following him for some time, you might have seen someone you recognize, or he had a confidant here at the hotel or nearby. I was told that he had stayed here on other occasions.”

  “I assure you he has not been here in the time that I have been following him,” Keene replied steadfastly. “This man was shrewd, confident, and patient,” he went on in a tone of almost undesirable awe. “He knew if he just waited for his moment, he could just disappear with all that money. He needed to be sure there was no hint that he was under any investigation. He had waited forbearingly for a year. That is a lifetime to be without when you know riches are at your fingertips. His will was made of iron. But alas, that unbridled tongue of his was his downfall.”

  The young man looked around the room and sighed. “So, we just sit here until Mr. Holmes comes back?”

  I wanted to stay stagnant as much as he did and felt I was wasting time doing nothing. I rose and said, “No, I feel we need to do something. I do not want my friend to come back without some kind of a breakthrough and his faith in me shall have been wasted.”

  “By Jove, I’m all for that. Where shall we go? What shall we do?”

  “I am not sure precisely why, but my inclination is to go back up to the observation room at the top of the hotel. From there you can see off in any direction. I feel as though I’ve been missing something up there, and it has been gnawing at me for some time.”

  “I’ve not been there myself. Lead the way.”

  “We have to be careful,” I said as we left his room. “To get there is beyond normal guest access unless we are on a tour of the manor house. I am sure Mr. Jones, the manager, would give me access, but I cannot say the same for the constabulary, should they be skulking about.”

  “I’ve been using subterfuge for some time, now. It is nothing new to me.”

  When we descended the great Jade staircase the double glass doors were to our front, and several uniformed men were sentried either at the door or in the gravel drive making conversation. To our left, Mr. Jones, wearing a critical expression, was speaking in hushed tones to the front receptionist, and to our right several guests were either sitting at the pub or the tables in the restaurant, all with the same worried look and same intense divulgences as the manager.

  “It is this way,” said I, as we left the open area of the vestibule and made our way around to the great wall of weapons. I was going to point out where the longbow had been taken when we stopped in our tracks. Standing in front of the door at the end was a tall, thin constable. He hadn’t yet noticed us, for he was playing with what appeared to be a loose button on his uniform.

  We hid ourselves around the corner near one of the suits of armour as we weighed our options.

  “Should we just go up and tell the constable to let us through?” Keene asked. “You are the articulator of the great Sherlock Holmes. Surely, they will let you through.”

  “Possibly, but under no circumstances am I to throw any light in your direction with regards to the police. Holmes wants you to stay as unremarkable and unnoticed until his return.”

  “Surely, my being with you can only help my cause.”

  “One thing you might find curious about our professional counterparts is that many who only know Sherlock Holmes by name do not wish for his intrusion into their investigations. Those who know him intimately will come to him with no pretense. We all want the same outcome—the guilty behind bars, but career narcissism has let many a man go free when Holmes’s overtures are rebuffed.”

  Keene gave me a turned brow. “They refused his help?”

  “It has happened more than you might think.”

  We both thought a moment in silence. Finally, Keene smiled and said, “I have an idea. Stay here. I will draw him away from the door.”

  Before I could object, he was out in the middle of the hall acting as though he were drunk.

  “Hey,” said the constable. “Hey! You can’t be down here. You need to stay back in the hotel section of the property.”

  Staggering, Keene replied in a slur, “I—I’m looking for the loo. The a-ale’s goin’ right through me.”

  With that, he fell onto the floor.

  “A little help h-here.”

  “Bloody hell,” replied the annoyed constable. “It’s barely passed nine, and you’re already bladdered.”

  He helped Keene to his feet.

  “Can you at l-least get me to the loo? I won’t be a bother after that. I’ll go t-to me room and sleep this bugger off.”

  “Alright, alright. I think it’s down this way.”

  As he helped Keene along, I took the opportunity to sneak my way down the hall and into the residential area. It was empty. I made my way up to Josephine’s Room then up the stairs to the observation room. The day was a bright and beautiful one. The fog had completely dissipated, but the winds coming off the Atlantic were still robust.

  I was unsure what I was looking for but felt I was missing something right in front of me. The gravel drive meandered off into the distance. The garden stretched out to the east and south for a few hundred yards, the tops of arborvitae and yews swirling in the breezes not rebuffed by the pine windbreak.

  And there it was hiding in plain sight. The abandoned Wheal Kerrek. The old tin mine. I had been so focused on the house proper for the whereabouts of the money that it had never occurred to me until just now that it might just be somewhere on the property. The abandoned tin mine would make the perfect spot to hide ten-thousand pounds.

  Rejuvenated at the thought, I ran back down the stairs. In Josephine’s Room, something caught my eye which stopped me in my tracks. I stared up at the large tapestry of the property. Something I had never noticed before now stood out painfully obvious. The tapestry showed all the veins of the mine spidering out from Wheal Kerrek to the surrounding area. One of those veins ran straight from the mine to Kerrek House.

  I needed to find out where that tunnel was and knew precisely the person to ask.

  Slowly opening the door back out into the great hall of weapons, I had hoped and so it was granted that the guard was not yet back at his post. It seemed that Mr. Keene was an admirable diversionist.

  I began in haste back down the hall when the constable reappeared from around the corner ahead of me. I did the only thing I could think to do—I turned and began to examine the implements on the wall.

  “Say, you cannot be down here,” said the constable.

  “My apologies,” I replied. “I was bored, and, having remembered this impressive display from a tour of the house last night, thought I would come down and take in the exhibit with a more leisurely eye. I had no idea that this area was off-limits.”

  He motioned for me to leave. “I’m afraid so, sir, so please keep yourself confined to the front of the hotel or your room.”

  I nodded acquiescence and removed myself. I found Keene sitting on the staircase awaiting my return.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “Come with me. I think I might have found something.”

  I approached the manager, who was still at the front desk with the receptioni
st, with Rory Keene in tow.

  “Mr. Jones, I was wondering if you happened to know if that tapestry in Josephine's Room is a true rendering of Wheal Kerrek and its various tunnels?”

  Nodding, the man replied, “Yes, it is. Several tunnels have collapsed over the years, but that tapestry is an accurate depiction of all the working veins of Wheal Kerrek when it was made in 1763.”

  “Then there is a tunnel that runs under Kerrek House?”

  “Under, no. It ends at the east end near the kitchen.”

  “Is it accessible?” I asked.

  He thought for a moment. “Not without some trouble. That part of the lower portion of Kerrek House was converted to a wine cellar. I believe there are wine racks in front of the door that leads to that vein. It hasn’t been used in over a hundred years. I’m not even sure the door could be opened if you could get to it.”

  With a hopeful vigor, I said, “Please take us there.”

  “Us?” he asked looking around. “I don’t believe Mr. Holmes is back yet from Newquay.”

  “Mr. Keene is with me. I take full responsibility for him.”

  Jones shrugged. “Whatever you say, doctor.”

  He led us down some service stairs at the back of the restaurant which ended in a large room filled with ovens and counters with a myriad of cooking utensils hanging from the ceiling. Several workers were busily going about their day preparing dishes of all sorts.

  “Would anyone have been down here cooking at six this morning?” I asked.

  Jones replied, “No. Our food staff normally do not start preparing for the day until 7:00 for an 8:30 breakfast unless we are at full occupancy, which we are not.”

  At the far end of the kitchen was a small doorway on the right and wide archway with a dark hallway that lay beyond on the left.

  “This way, gentlemen,” said Jones going under the archway. We found ourselves in a long, cool, dark corridor that gradually opened into a small, open area with curved walls and ceiling. Racks of wine bottles lined the walls on three sides.

  He turned on an electric light switch, bathing the area in a sour yellow hue. Pointing, Jones said, “The door to the tunnel is on the other side of those far wine racks, but as I said, I’m not even sure…” His voice trailed off for he saw what was very obvious to all: one of the wine racks had been pulled forward. There were scratches on the floor and disturbances in the dust in an arcing pattern left when the heavy wine rack was pulled forward. It had been partially pushed back into place but was still slightly ajar.

  “By Jove, you were right, Doctor Watson!” exclaimed Keene. “Someone has gone into the tunnel.”

  Jones asked, “Do you think the murderer escaped by this route? I can hardly believe it myself.”

  “It seems the evidence is pointing in that direction,” I replied. “Can you currently account for every guest at the hotel?”

  “I cannot,” he replied. “Most, I assume, went back to their rooms. Some are in the restaurant and some in the library.”

  Is there another way to this spot besides going through the kitchen?”

  Jones replied forlornly, “There is. It is a servant’s entrance. It was that doorway to the right of the archway. You can gain access to it at the end of the first-floor hallway in the east wing.”

  Keened interjected, “And the guests were interviewed first. All the staff would have still been in the restaurant, waiting their turn, so no one would have been downstairs to see the scoundrel leave.”

  I turned and faced Jones directly. “Do you have access to any lanterns?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you procure one, please.”

  “You aren’t going in there, are you?”

  “What would you have me do?”

  “Tell the police.”

  “I will leave you to your conscience. In the meantime, we must make haste to find this blackguard. There is more to this murder than you are privy to Jones, and no time can be wasted.”

  Jones ran back down the hall while Keene pulled out the wine rack to make room to open the door.

  “It is a bit heavy, but I don’t think it entirely impossible that the murderer could have pulled the rack back as he closed the door.”

  Using my experience with untold cases with Holmes and the methods he used, I disagreed. “Sometimes, the simplest answers are the best ones. It is more probable that he or she had help, and it was the person on this side of the wine rack that pushed it back in place.”

  “Since it wasn’t completely pushed back,” Keened offered, “Then maybe the person was not strong enough to push it completely back against the door.”

  “Or they were interrupted. As my friend would say, we need more data.”

  Jones returned with a lantern, already lit. “We keep lanterns strategically placed throughout the hotel in case of a power failure. There are several in the kitchen.”

  He handed it to me.

  “Thank you,” said I.

  “I feel it my duty to inform the constables of this discovery,” Jones replied.

  “Do as you see fit,” I said. “I do not know how long we shall be in here. Should Sherlock Holmes return before us, let him know what we’ve discovered the second he steps foot into the hotel.”

  “I shall.”

  By this time, Keene had pulled back the wine rack enough to open the old door with a whining screech to the point that we could both squeeze through sideways.

  “Are you ready, Dr. Watson?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Let us see if we can find that murderer.”

  “Let’s see if we can find that ten thousand pounds,” Keene replied dryly.

  I saw Jones’s countenance register an unexpected shock as we disappeared behind the door. I heard him exclaim, “Wait, what? What ten-thousand pounds?”

  . . . . .

  We made our way cautiously down the tunnel. Our shadows, distorted with jagged lines from ancient, pick-axe-marked walls, followed clumsily along. I thought perhaps our presence would echo in the surrounding area, but the walls only seemed to deaden our footfalls.

  “How far does this tunnel go?” Keene whispered to me.

  Recalling the tapestry, I did my best at using recollection, trying to put into practice what Holmes and I had discussed on the train ride to Cornwall. “I believe it will go on for a few hundred yards before it reaches the main tunnel. That will take you right to the entrance to Wheal Kerrek at the edge of the cliff. There are four tunnels that branch off this one, two on either side, but not until we get closer to the main tunnel. From there, a multitude of smaller veins branch off.”

  I could hear Holmes’s sarcastic “Bravo, Watson! Except…” in my ears for I was sure that I was wrong in my remembrance on some point.

  After a minute or two, I could see the vein opening a few hundred feet ahead, which probably meant we were coming upon the other branches of the tunnel. There was something odd as I squinted into the inky spaces beyond my lanternlight. It seemed something was moving.

  I held out my hand for Keene to stop.

  “Do you see something?” he asked.

  “Possibly. I am going to douse my light. Do you see it down there, now?” I asked pointing.

  Keene squinted. “Yes, what is it?” He looked harder. “It’s light.”

  “Yes,” I replied. “We need the element of surprise, so we shall go blind from here.” I turned off my lantern and placed it on the ground. The two of us proceeded in darkness from there with only the faint glow of light ahead of us as a marker to our destination.

  We finally reached the open area, and I had been correct—the light was coming from here. Its brilliance was just enough to illuminate our surroundings. We were now in a large carved-out section with a ten-foot ceiling and was twice that in width. Ahead of us the tunnel stretched into an inky darkness. There were two smaller veins hewn into the right wall that were just high enough for anyone under six feet tall walk without crouching. The light was emanating through the second of th
ose veins.

  As we crept past the first vein, I noticed that at about thirty feet in there was an opening, connecting the two tunnels. There, at that opening, crouching, was a large man. He looked thick in the shadows, formidable, but his entirety was obscured in darkness. I could not tell, exactly, but it looked as though he was facing away from us. I could see no more in the gloom, other than he seemed hunched over, possibly inspecting the ground at his feet.

  Silently, I pointed at the figure to Keene, and he acknowledged seeing the person, as well. “Our murderer,” he whispered.

  Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, the figure was no longer in his spot. I had just looked away for a moment to acknowledge Keene, and when I looked back the hunched figure was no longer there. “Where did he go?” I asked.

  “I didn’t see him get up,” Keene said softly. “I can barely see my hand before my face, and this gloom can be disorienting. Do you think he went back into the other tunnel?”

  “Let’s find out,” I replied.

  We inched over to the second tunnel. I stealthily peered around the rock wall. The tunnel curved to the left, and the light was radiating from somewhere out of my line of sight. I could also hear what sounded like digging in the distance.

  Shortly, Keene was by my side. “I think we need to go into that other tunnel to get a clearer picture of what he is up to,” I said.

  “I think you are correct. I don’t think the person knows exactly where the money is hidden. I think they are digging helter-skelter in different areas trying to find the right spot.”

  “That may have been the reason for Newbury’s murder,” I murmured. He would not give up its exact location. The killer might be digging in here for weeks before finding the money.”

  We then retreated quietly and made our way down the first tunnel. About ten feet from the opening between the two small tunnels where we had seen the shadowed rogue, in absolute darkness, Keene lost his balance behind me. The hard scuffling of his feet made me think he had tripped and fallen.

  “Careful,” I whispered over my shoulder.