Mr Holmes is setting a trap - to see if it really was Laetitia Dot met up in the
attic. Could she be involved in the ghostly disturbances at Dendringham Hall? It seems hard to believe! But he also has more important information...
Dot looked down at the dusty patches. How on earth could something like that solve such a strange mystery?
“Come this way!” whispered Mr Holmes. She followed him down the corridor, past her bedroom door and a big window that brought light into the passage way. Now, a moonbeam slanted through it, making Mr Holmes ghostly as he went through it.
They went down some stairs to the floor below – the first floor of the Hall - and Mr Holmes opened a massive oak door, all carved with strange animals and flowers. It swung silently on its hinges, and they stepped inside.
It was the “upstairs reading room” - Dot had heard Miss Walsingham talking about it. Floor to ceiling, it was lined with books on heavy wooden shelves, some of them covered with glass fronts.
There was a tiger skin rug on the floor which made her jump – the tiger had its mouth open as if it was roaring. It made Dot feel a bit sad – what a terrible thing to do, to shoot such a wonderful animal! But she reminded herself, again, that the Victorians did things like that. Terrible!
The room was lit with electric lamps – which were a bit dim and feeble, but it
was a welcome change from the darkness of the corridor outside.
“Now!” said Mr Holmes flopping down in a big chair next to the fire, which
was burning low in the grate. He was smiling – but it was a smile without much humour in it, the smile of a hunter on the track of his prey.
“What was that stuff!” asked Dot, sitting down on a little stool next to him.
“Powder of Alum, mixed with some chemicals” said Mr Holmes. “When it sticks to shoe leather, it won’t come off!”
“How will that help us though?”
“I have a very good friend below stairs, among the servants” replied Mr Holmes, nodding his head. “Young Bradshaw the Boots! He cleans the shoes of the whole house every day… and when he does so tomorrow morning, he and I will have a little conversation about the condition of the shoes he’s cleaning!”
“You mean… anyone who goes up those stairs tonight will get some of that stuff stuck to the soles of their shoes, so we’ll know who was there last night?” asked Dot excitedly.
“Yes indeed! Well done Dorothea!”
“But how do you know they’ll go up again tonight?”
“Well” said Mr Holmes, taking out is funny pipe and beginning to pack tobacco into it “I think that you disturbed Laetitia last night just as she was about to begin the ghostly manifestations again, and she will want to try again tonight. It’s been some time since the last disturbance, after all. But we have to prove she was there, my dear!”
“But why don’t we just wait for her up there?” asked Dot.
“Well, she might not come” said Mr Holmes, taking out some matches and striking one so that the yellow flame flared up, highlighting his keen, face with its hollow cheeks and dark brows. “But whenever she does – if it really was her, as we both think – my special mixture will be on the soles of her shoes, and then we can confront her!”
Dot fell silent. It was a good plan.
Oh – she’d almost forgotten!
“What do you think was the matter with Sir Charles tonight?” she asked.
“Ah!” said Mr Holmes, smiling again. “Now there I believe we have made real progress!”
He reached under his chair and pulled out a brown paper parcel, with the string that had been round it all messy and untied. He pulled it all off in quick, jerky moves, and took out what was inside.
“This came from my good friend Doctor Watson only today” he said.
It was a magazine – looked very dull, no pictures, just lots of print on yellowy paper. In big spidery lettering at the top it said ‘Chronicle of Physical Sciences’.
Mr Holmes leant forward and pointed at a tiny paragraph right at the bottom of the front page, headed in very small capital letters. They said:
‘The Majestic Horse Soother – A Retraction’. Below the title was a short paragraph in even smaller print.
But Dot didn’t read that – not at first.
Because all her attention was on three words at the bottom, which seemed to leap out at her as she read them.
“Signed: Giles Langton.”
