Sherlock Holmes by Barbara Hambly

Author:Barbara Hambly
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: cthulhu mythos, sherlock holmes
Publisher: Barbara Hambly
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Holmes at first refused to hear of me accompanying him to the borders of Wales, sending instead a note to Carnaki with instructions to be ready to depart by the eight o'clock train. But when Billy the messenger-boy returned with the information that Carnaki was from home and would not return until the following day, he assented, sending a second communication to the young antiquarian requesting that he meet us in the village of High Clum, a few miles from Watchgate, the following day.

It puzzled me that Holmes should have chosen the late train, if he feared for Colby's life should the young man return to fetch his fiancée from the hands of the two monomaniacs at Depewatch Priory. Still more did it puzzle me that, upon our arrival at midnight in the market town of High Clum, Holmes took rooms for us at the Cross of Gold, as if he were deliberately putting distance between us and the man he spoke of – when he could be induced to speak at all – as if he were already dead.

In the morning, instead of attempting to communicate with Colby, Holmes hired a pony trap and a boy to drive us to the wooded ridge that divided High Clum from the vale in which the village of Watchgate stood. “Queer folk there,” the lad said, as the sturdy cob leaned into its collars on the slope. “It's only a matter of four mile, but it's like as if they lived in another land. You never do hear of one of their lads come courtin' in Clum, and the folk there's so odd now none of ours'n will go there. They come for the market, oncet a week. Sometimes you'll see Mr. Carstairs drive to town, all bent and withered up like a tree hit by lightnin', starin' about him with those pale eyes: yellow hazel, like all the Delapore; rotten apples my mum calls 'em. And old Gaius with him sometimes, treatin' him like as if he was a dog, the way he treats everyone.”

The boy drew his horse to a halt, and pointed out across the valley with his whip: “That'll be the Priory, sir.”

After all that had been spoken of monstrous survivals and ancient cults, I had half-expected to see some blackened Gothic pile thrusting flamboyant spires above the level of the trees. But in fact, as Carnaki had read in William Punt's book, Depewatch Priory appeared, from across the valley, to be simply a 'goodly manor of gray stone,' its walls rather overgrown with ivy and several windows broken and boarded shut. I frowned, remembering the casual way in which Colby had thrown his sack of guineas onto Holmes' table: Feed a cur and he'll shut up barking…

Yet old Gaius had originally turned down Colby's offer to help him bring the Priory back into proper repair.

Behind the low roof-line of the original house I could see what had to be the Roman tower Carnaki had spoken of – beyond doubt the original “watch” of both priory and village names.

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