Sherlock Holmes--The Monster of the Mere by Philip Purser-Hallard

Author:Philip Purser-Hallard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags:  
Publisher: Titan

CHAPTER TWELVE

“Could it be true?” I had asked Holmes once we were alone. “Could Henry Gramascene have been the rightful Lord Wermeston?”

“If he was a Wermeston at all, then his descent was through the female line,” Holmes had cautioned me. “Any claim he might have had would not have superseded that of Lady Ophelia. She, though a woman, inherited by virtue of her male ancestors. But, if there is any truth in this family legend, then he might have stood to inherit the estate, if not the title, on her death. I shall telegraph Mrs Hudson and have her make enquiries at Somerset House.”

I imagined that our landlady might have more pressing calls upon her time, even in our absence. But I knew also that she was devoted to her celebrated lodger, and would carry out this favour with only a token complaint. She was probably the most able of our regular associates to carry out such research in Holmes’s absence: our friends at Scotland Yard would be too busy with their regular work, Langdale Pike too indolent, and Holmes’s brother Mycroft too inflexible in his routine. Shinwell Johnson specialised in entirely different kinds of information, and this was not the sort of task at which the Irregulars excelled.

For a moment I regretted leaving London, where so many excellent friends were available to assist and advise us, for such a backwater as Wermeholt, where we were surrounded by strangers more familiar with the lie of the land than we, and had to rely upon the likes of Constable Batterby and Sir Howard Woodwose, neither of whom seemed unambiguously willing to help us. But then I remembered my relief when I had seen Holmes the previous day. In his presence I could hardly feel isolated.

We also had Professor Summerlee, of course, whom I trusted despite his disinterested manner. When we had approached him with the plan that Holmes and I had concocted, in pursuit of which I was now loitering, unobtrusively I hoped, behind the Serpent’s Arms, he had been game enough. If all was proceeding according to plan, the two of them would even now be sauntering into the bar, in search of a companionable drink together.

As I stood at the inn’s rear, listening to the murmured voices drifting through the open kitchen doorway from the bar, I wondered who, if Henry Gramascene was indeed the heir to the Wermeston family estate and fortune, might have benefited from killing him. Not Lady Ophelia, surely, unless her isolation had made her so insane she could not bear the thought of a successor. Even then, she would not have acted personally, more probably sending the insolent manservant Modon.

Most likely, however, it would be whoever stood to inherit under her will, gaining her holdings if she died without familial heirs. Woodwose had suggested that that person might again be Modon. I wondered whether his jest had been nearer to the truth than I had imagined; if it was perhaps, indeed, no joke but an informed guess.

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