The Tale of Holly How (10 page)

13

“
Not
an Accident?”

Captain Miles Woodcock did not park his motor car in the Tower Bank stable after he brought Miss Potter back to the village. Instead, he drove on to Hawkshead, where he located Dr. Butters, the physician who served the area. The doctor, a tall, thin man with a gaunt face, reddish hair, and a gingery moustache, listened to his description of the situation, nodded twice, and said, “I’ll get my horse. But it may be a while, I’m afraid. I have to look in on Mrs. Rice, who will be delivering in another week.”

“I don’t suppose there’s much hurry,” Miles said. “It’s not a criminal matter.” He pulled his brows together. “Although there is that puzzling bit about the tobacco pipe. He was holding it in his hands when he fell.”

Frowning, the doctor picked up his black bag. “Ben? With a tobacco pipe? That’s odd. He left off smoking some while ago, on my advice. I’d be mightily surprised if he took it up again.” He sighed. “Anyway, I’ll see you there.”

“There” was the large stone shed behind the captain’s stable where Constable Braithwaite and Mr. Jennings had brought Ben Hornby’s body. By the time the doctor arrived, dark had fallen, the bats were flitting out of the stable, and the nightjar’s eerie call (considered an ill omen by superstitious villagers) rattled through the meadow. Inside, the scene was illuminated by several lanterns and a half-dozen flickering candles. The old man, respectfully covered with a sheet from Dimity Woodcock’s linen cupboard, was stretched out on a wooden table.

The doctor took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and went over old Ben’s body with great care and attention, humming between his teeth as he worked and making occasional quiet comments, which the constable dutifully wrote down in his notebook. The captain looked on, Mr. Jennings having gone home to his supper as soon as the body was safely delivered.

The examination went on longer than might have been expected. When it was over, the doctor beckoned to both Miles and Braithwaite.

“I want both of you to look at this,” he said, pointing to a welt about an inch wide, across the whole of Hornby’s back, just below his shoulder blades. It was outlined on both sides by a large, dark bruise, the width of a man’s arm. “This bruise is fresh,” the doctor said. “From the degree of lividity, I’d estimate that it was inflicted immediately prior to death.” He paused, then repeated, “
Immediately
prior to death,” glancing at them to make sure they took his point. “In living tissue, bruises have a way of repairing themselves quickly. If Ben had been struck—oh, say, two days before he died, we’d see a different coloration.”

Miles let out his breath in a slow whistle. “And what kind of instrument would inflict such a bruise? A walking stick?”

“P’rhaps,” the doctor said. “It’s impossible to say. Show me the instrument, and I’ll tell you whether it’s a candidate for our weapon.”

“Weapon!” the constable exclaimed in surprise, breaking his silence for the first time. “You’re sayin’ that this was
not
an accident?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Butters replied grimly. He glanced at Miles. “Did you search the place where he fell?”

“The constable and I went up there,” Miles said, “and had a good look around. Of course, if he was struck by a walking stick—”

“It went home with whoever used it,” the doctor said, finishing the captain’s sentence. “I’m afraid that there are a great many uncertainties here, gentlemen.” He began to roll down his sleeves. “But one thing is clear. Faced with this evidence, I cannot certify Hornby’s death as accidental. Harry will have to convene an inquest.”

“Harry” was Harry Lamb, the King’s Coroner for the district. “I agree,” Miles said soberly. “I’ll get word to him first thing tomorrow.” The coroner would summon a jury as soon as possible, and charge it to return one of three verdicts: homicide, suicide, or misadventure—and if the evidence warranted none of these, they would return an open verdict.

The doctor pulled the sheet over Ben Hornby’s face. “Damn shame,” he said sadly. “Ben Hornby wasn’t everybody’s friend, p’rhaps, but he was a good man.”

Miles nodded. Not everybody’s friend.

And somebody’s enemy.

14

In Which the Professor Joins the Search

The summer night had grown dark by the time Tabitha, Crumpet, and Rascal went trekking off to Holly How. The moon had not yet risen as they reached Holly How Farm and began their search for the sheep, but the stars were shining like tiny beacons in the heavens. Rascal led the way up the rough track, since he was a dog and got out and about a great deal more than the two village cats. And anyway, he knew the territory and was acquainted with the sheep and felt confident that, under his leadership, they would quickly find Tibbie and Queenie and the lambs.

But their search was futile. Climb as high and call as loudly as they might, up one side of Holly How and down the other, even as far afield as the ominous edge of Cuckoo Brow Wood, where the dark trees rose up in an impenetrable wall of shadows, Tibbie and Queenie and their lambs were nowhere to be found. The moon had flung its silvery veil over the meadows by the time they gave up and started wearily back down the zig-zag path.

“It’s all your fault, Rascal,”
grumbled Crumpet, whose paws hurt from walking over the sharp stones.
“You should have made Tibbie tell you what she knew straightaway.”

“Crumpet’s right,”
Tabitha put in sourly, pausing to catch her breath.
“If you’d done that, we wouldn’t have had to come looking. And we’d know what really happened to old Ben.”

“Oh, give it up, will you?”
Rascal replied in a weary tone.
“Even if I’d asked, she mightn’t’ve said anything useful. You know how sheep are, all dithery and doltish. Terrible gossips, and half the time, they don’t get their facts straight.”

“Better than no facts at all,”
Tabitha retorted stiffly.
“Really, Rascal, you—”

The rest of her words were drowned out by a great rushing sound in the sky above them, as a menacing shadow with outstretched talons sailed low over their heads.

“OWL!”
shrieked Tabitha hysterically, and dove for the hedgerow.
“Run for your lives!”

There was a thud in a nearby oak and the whole tree seemed to shudder as an enormous owl settled himself onto a branch, shook his feathers, and gave out a fierce, interrogative
“Whooo goes there? Stop and declare yourselves immediately!”

Taken completely by surprise, Rascal had flattened himself against a large rock with his paws over his eyes. Tabitha had gone headfirst under the hedge, so it was left to Crumpet to reply. She screwed up her courage, tried to steady her voice, and said respectfully,
“Good evening, Professor. It’s Crumpet, Tabitha, and Rascal, from the village. I trust you are well, sir.”

The professor—for this was none other than Professor Galileo Newton Owl, D.Phil., a very old, very large tawny owl—was known by every animal in the Land between the Lakes, and by a great many of the Big Folk, as well. He lived in a great hollow beech tree at the top of Cuckoo Brow Wood, where it spreads out over Claife Heights before tumbling down the steep slope to the very edge of Lake Windermere. The professor enjoyed an international reputation for his scholarship in celestial mechanics, with a particular emphasis on navigating by the stars. And this with very good reason, for he spent the hours from midnight to dawn searching the sky with the telescope he had installed at the very top of his beech-tree observatory, and making notes in his celestial logbook.

The professor was also widely respected for his studies in applied natural history, with a special interest in the nocturnal habits of scaled, winged, and furred creatures, and their particular tastes. He carried out this research from dusk to midnight, high above the fields and woods. There was not much in the Land between the Lakes that escaped his observation—or so he thought, at any rate.

“I am perfectly aware of whooo youoo are,”
the professor said in a tone of great aggravation.
“What I mean tooo know is why youoo village animals are bumbling about on Holly How at this time of night.”
He turned the flat disc of his face from one side to the other, and the light seemed to gleam behind his eyes.
“What is the exact nature of your business?”

Rascal stood up and wagged his tail, only a little braver now that he knew to whom they were speaking. The professor was a commanding bird with a very low tolerance for impudence and a very great willingness to employ his powerful claws and razor-sharp beak. But he might also be a helpful bird, and it was entirely possible that he could further their search.

“We are looking for five Herdwicks, sir,”
he said.
“Tibbie and Queenie and three lambs—the sheep that old Ben Hornby sold to Miss Potter. We are hoping that they can clear up the mystery of what happened to him.”

The owl raised his great wings and flapped them twice, ferociously. “What
happened tooo Ben Hornby?
” he screeched. He always became very angry when one question was answered by reference to a previous question. It was an impertinent fallacy that he simply could not tolerate.

Rascal cleared his throat and told the professor the same story he had told to Crumpet and Tabitha earlier, although with a great deal more hesitation and much less confidence, for the owl’s fierce, unblinking gaze unsettled him. But at last he came to the end of his tale, took a deep breath, and sat back on his haunches, waiting.

There was a long silence, whilst in the distance another, lesser owl hooted and nearer by, a pair of frogs began to trade insults. Finally, the professor spoke.
“Yooou are telling me that old Ben Hornby is dead?”
he demanded wrathfully, his round, luminous eyes growing even rounder and more luminous. If there was anything more infuriating than impudence, as far as the professor was concerned, it was the discovery that an important event had occurred without his knowledge or consent.
“How did he die? Was it an accident?”

“That’s exactly what we want to know, sir,”
said Rascal nervously.
“We were hoping the sheep could tell us, since they were grazing nearby, and may have seen what happened. But we looked all over Holly How and couldn’t find them, and—”

“Gooo hooome, all of yooou,”
commanded the professor in a tone of weary exasperation.
“Gooo straight home and straight tooo bed, where yooou belong.
I
will look for the sheep. And when I find them, yooou can be sure that they will tell me what they know about Ben Hornby’s death.”

And with that, he raised his professorial wings, flapped them heavily, and lifted himself into the night sky above Holly How, where he sailed for several hours, surveying the fellsides and valleys for the five missing Herdwicks. But to his annoyance and puzzlement, he was no more successful in his search than had been the village animals, for no matter how far he flew or how hard he looked, the sheep were nowhere to be found.

At last, the professor solaced himself by pouncing with an unnecessary violence upon a young and unwary vole who had ventured too far from his den under the rocks. He bore the vole home to his beech tree, which could be distinguished from the other beech trees at the top of Cuckoo Brow Wood both by its size and by the fact that it bore a painted notice board beside a low wooden door at the base of the tree, announcing:

G.N. OWL, D. PHIL.
OBSREVER AT LARJE
MIND YR HED!

The door, and the interior stair onto which it opened, were designed for the convenience of those of the professor’s guests who could not fly, and he rarely made use of them. Now, he flew straight up to his sitting room, high above the mossy forest floor, where he got out the best white tablecloth and spread it on the table, which he laid with the best china, silver, and crystal. Then he lit a fat beeswax candle, poured a glass of elderberry wine, and sat down to enjoy a hearty midnight supper of fresh vole, along with a tin of sardines and some pickled eggs and cream crackers.

After this entirely satisfactory repast the professor retired to his library and looked up a scientific paper he remembered having read a year or so earlier, “The Deleterious Effect of Voles (
Microtus agrestis
) upon the Vegetation of the Lake District.” The paper argued that voles were bad for meadows because they dug up the turf, exposing the grass roots to the air, and that too many voles could completely ruin a meadow in only a few days.

Yes, indeed, the owl thought with satisfaction, replacing the volume on the shelf and preparing to fly up to his observatory for a night’s examination of the stars, he had done a very good thing by reducing the vole population, if only by one. Tomorrow night, he would make it two voles, and leave off the sardines.

Upstairs in his observatory, the professor pointed his telescope at Venus, very large and bright, which seemed to hang just out of reach above the lake. And then, by accident, he happened to hit the telescope with his wing and knocked it askew, so that it pointed elsewhere. He looked through it as he bent to straighten it, and blinked in great surprise.

The professor had found the missing sheep.