Séance for a Vampire by Fred Saberhagen (top ebook reader TXT) 📗

One result of this announced change in attitude was that the Kirkaldys were now established in the house as guests.

We were about halfway to our destination, approaching a bridge spanning a small river, when our driver slowed the motor. “This is the Shade,” he informed us tersely. “One of the tributaries of the Thames. If we were to follow it downstream from here, we should come, within a quarter of a mile, to the place where the thing happened last month. Follow the stream a mile or so farther, and we’d be at the boundary of the grounds of Norberton House.”

In response to a request from Holmes, Armstrong stopped his automobile just past the bridge. My friend was obviously interested, and dismounted from the car. In a moment we had joined him at the stone balustrade, overlooking the river that was here fifteen or twenty yards in width. Pointing downstream, Armstrong informed us in a low voice: “The exact spot where our boat capsized cannot be seen from anywhere along the road. but it lies only a few hundred yards from here.”

Sherlock Holmes gazed thoughtfully in the indicated direction. “It is almost impossible that there should be any real clues discoverable after such a lapse of time; still, I should like to see the place.”

“Easily managed. We can reach it by this footpath.”

Leaving the automobile standing clear of the bridge at the edge of the road, we walked along a grassy, lightly-worn riparian path, which curved in accordance with the river’s bends. Presently a noise of violent splashing reached us from ahead, along with a cheerful outcry in childish voices. Moments later I caught a glimpse of white bodies through the greenery, and we came upon a small pile of discarded clothing. Two young lads were engaged in diving and swimming from the bank. Holmes hailed a pair of wet heads bobbing in the water, put them at ease with some remarks about the hot weather and their sport, then asked several questions. Wide-eyed the boys protested that they had been nowhere near the river on the day when the lady had been drowned.

“Is it deep here, then?” Holmes inquired.

“Not at all, sir. I can touch bottom anywhere,’cept right here in the channel.” Raising both hands above his head, the speaker, who was near the center of the stream, disappeared from view by way of demonstration.

We waved farewell and moved along. When we had gone another forty yards or so, to a position halfway around another bend, and the sounds of childish innocence had resumed behind us, Armstrong informed us that we were now looking at the exact place where the boat had tipped.

Here both green banks were lined with trees, willows in particular, among which our path followed a twisting course. Insects droned among the leaves and branches, many of which closely overhung the water. There were no natural hazards visible, and certainly no turbulence in the placid flow, beyond that caused by a small fish jumping. Thoughtfully my friend surveyed the opaque surface of the stream, brown with the soil it carried, then scooped up a little of the water, which looked clear in his palm.

“Was the level much different three weeks ago?” he asked.

“No.” Armstrong, standing with arms folded and head down, was naturally subdued.

“The water at this point cannot be much deeper, I suppose, than it is upstream where the lads are bathing?”

“Perhaps a little; not enough to matter. The channel all along this part of the river is certainly deep enough to drown in, eight or ten feet I’d say, and it lies everywhere near the center of the stream. but for most of its width the stream can be waded.”

“You have been boating on it frequently?”

“Even swimming in it several times. And boating, with Louisa, on two earlier occasions, before...”

Holmes nodded sympathetically. He looked upstream and down. “Nowhere does the current seem particularly swift.”

Armstrong shook his head. “It’s not, of course. Not anyplace within miles of here. I’ve made a rough measurement, pacing beside it with my watch; no more than two miles an hour. A man can walk a great deal faster than that. That’s one reason why the whole business is still–” he gestured awkwardly “–still so hard to understand. And wait till you see the boat we were in! Not a punt or a canoe, but a regular, solid, broad-beamed craft of the dinghy type. Quite difficult to tip. There was some talk at the inquest of a possible collision with a submerged log, which I thought made little sense.”

“Was that the coroner’s conclusion?”

Armstrong shrugged. “No one was able to produce a log, either sunken or afloat. The verdict was just’death by misadventure’–the officially accepted theory seemed to be one of jolly horseplay among the boaters getting out of hand, that we’d all crowded to one side and turned her over. That might easily explain what happened–except it isn’t true.”

“You did not publicly dispute the accepted theory?”

“I tried, at first, but gave up. What was the use? In any case the ruling was essentially that Louisa died by accidental drowning–what else could it have been?”

“But when her body was eventually discovered, it lay far downstream from here.”

“Yes–very far. Almost a mile.”

Holmes’s attitude and voice were sympathetic. “As I understand it, there were only the three of you aboard the boat?”

“Yes. Louisa and myself–I was manning the single pair of oars, at least during most of the outing–and Louisa’s younger sister, Rebecca, was with us.”

My friend looked at our companion keenly. “How do you explain the boat’s capsizing, Mr. Armstrong?”

The young man uttered a small, bitter sound, not quite a laugh. “Do you know, Mr. Holmes, I believe you’re the first one to come straight out and ask me that question. Many people...look at me as though they are certain I must be somehow at fault, that someone aboard must have been doing something foolish at the time, to tip the boat. but very few have said so. And not even the