The Irresistibility of Orbits, Part Two: The Forgetting of Things Past. Chapter Twelve.
The Irresistibility of Orbits, Part Two: The Forgetting of Things Past. Chapter Twelve. On Oxenhope Moor.
author: ghislainem70
word count: 4300
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: I own nothing. All honours to Messrs Gatiss, Moffat, BBC et al.
Summary: John returns from Afghanistan with amnesia.
Warnings: graphic violence, explicit sex, reference to mental illness, reference to neuro-motor disease, massive dose of hurt-comfort and angst.
Chapter Eleven. On Oxenhope Moor.
When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge. . .
Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all . . .
Ithaca has given you a beautiful voyage.
Without her you would never have set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.
Ithaca, Cavafy
There was an oil-smeared cloth laying on the floor that had been used recently to clean a gun. Sherlock wrapped it around his fist and broke the glass to Bateman’s gun case. He took a rifle and some ammunition and loaded it. Lady Holmes stood by anxiously, watching her son.
"Sherlock, don’t go. I don’t care what Bateman’s done. I don’t want anything to happen to you. I know you run to danger, you always have. But with you here, now, with me, I can’t bear it. Let the police take care of Bateman."
Sherlock was listening with only a fraction of his attention, but he did pause to kiss his mother on the cheek. "Mother, they are too far away. No one is closer to Oxenhope moor than I am right now. I have to go."
* * *
After leaving an anxious Lady Holmes at the Hall, Sherlock made for Oxenhope moor, some twenty miles distant through circuitous country lanes. The Land Rover dipped and rattled and the dust of a dry summer billowed behind him.
The question of Bateman and Janet’s ultimate aim consumed him. Somehow, it had to do with the Rexworth fortune. This led to unpleasant memories of Reggie Rexworth, the new heir. He and Reginald Rexworth had never been friends, but now he remembered one particular summer when he was up at the Hall. Sherlock and some admittedly dissolute companions had run into Rexworth in the village pub. Rexworth, even then, had been a vicious drunk.
"If it isn’t Sherlock Holmes! I hear your mother thinks mighty high of that James Bateman. Made him estate manager, I hear. Soon enough he’ll be up her skirts, if he isn’t already," Rexworth sneered loudly.
It was a classic Yorkshire pub moment: utter silence fell and the men put their pints aside, eager to see if this undeniable insult would have the desired result.
It did.
Sherlock flew upon Rexworth like a banshee. When they were finally pulled apart, Rexworth was barely conscious, with a broken arm, two black eyes, spitting up blood and teeth.
Sherlock emerged with a torn shirt, a scratch on his cheek, and split knuckles.
The boys in the pub muttered at first, the feeling being that Sherlock had gone beyond the bounds of a fair pub fight, but then the buzz was that Rexworth had insulted his mother, after all: it was ultimately adjudicated that no holds barred was quite right and proper under such circumstances.
Now, with Reggie Rexworth’s ancient insult ringing in his ears, the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. Bateman was a notorious Jack-the-lad, in those days; and when Vanessa came up to the country, she did not take a little local entertainment amiss after the rarified entertainments of the jet set. Surely Reggie Rexworth had been speaking from experience. His own mother, the glamorous Vanessa Rexworth, must have been taking her pleasures with Bateman herself, then. Why not now? Vanessa Rexworth was as glamorous as ever; and a vast deal younger than her departed husband.
And she was in residence with her son at Rexworth Park for the first time in more than a decade.
But this final strand of the mystery must wait.
Sherlock called Lestrade, telling him of Bateman and Janet, learning that the police now knew of Bateman’s lies and that John had finally been released. He was somewhat reassured to know that Mycroft was with John . "Tell them not to go to Riddleston Hall, I think Bateman did it all for Vanessa Rexworth. I’ll explain later. But Janet is expendable. He’s going to kill her."
He explained about the cottage on the moor. "Make for Oxenhope village, they’ll show you the way."
* * *
Oxenhope moor had largely escaped the tourism that swarmed nearby Haworth and other local parts associated with the Brontës. Oxenhope moor was part of the vast, timeless West Yorkshire moors that had inspired Wuthering Heights: seemingly endless rolling hills meeting low clouded blue sky; green and lush in spring, golden in the late summer, desolate under winter snow; dotted with stony crags and hillocks sheltering ancient barrows, crossed by the ruins of Roman roads.
The West Yorkshire moors had grimmer aspect, too, than their romantic Brontëan history: the site of the notorious Moors Murders, echoes of which sounded to the present day. A renewed hunt for the depraved couple’s last victim was even now underway in Saddleworth Moor.
Sherlock approached the Bateman farm and parked down the hill. The moor here was bleak and stony; the grasses of the hillsides fell away to inhospitable, rugged crags and unexpected dips and crevasses. Sherlock quietly exited the car with the rifle.
There was nothing here but vast sky, wind, and silence.
Sherlock ducked along rocky crags, straining his ears. The wind gusted and whipped his hair. He cautiously approached the rear of the cottage. Bateman’s car was here, he observed, his heart thudding and skipping in his chest. There was no sound within. He carefully looked through a narrow window in the back and saw no movement. But against an inner doorframe, he perceived a flash of color.
Fresh blood.
Sherlock was about to run to the front door when a distant thin sound floated toward him on the wind. It might have been the shriek of a bird, but the keening sound raised the hairs on his body. It was a woman, screaming. Out on the moor.
* * *
Weller and an officer with the armed response vehicle, Lestrade and Prentiss, and Mycroft and John in the Bentley approached the Bateman farm in a convoy. Weller was framing the scenario as reported by Sherlock as a kidnapping/hostage scenario, thinking ahead to the reports.
The small army strategically surrounded the crumbling cottage, but soon it was clear that it as empty. The blood on the door frame evidenced that someone had been recently attacked. A trail of smeared blood drops led out the door.
Prentiss was scanning the moor with binoculars. There was nothing but the wind-swept grasses and the occasional sheep.
"Fan out," Weller ordered.
The line of officers began marching steadily through the dry grasses, guns at the ready.
* * *
Sherlock followed the blood trail out into the moor. There was trampled dry grass here, showing where someone had recently passed. The woman’s shrieks grew fainter, farther away, then faded to nothing.
The trampled grass gave way to rocky undulations that left no discernible track. There was a hill in the distance, Hope Hill, one of the highest prominences upon the moor. He made for it, imagining that a fleeing woman might think it would offer shelter.
After a few moments, he was proved correct, as fresh blood drops on the rocks seemed to lead directly toward Hope Hill.
He hoped the blood was Bateman’s.
* * *
The officers quickly picked up the trail. After some tense minutes passed, Prentiss shouted, "There," pointing at a distant hill. Tiny figures were running across the moor. A woman with black hair streaming behind her in the wind was struggling along a rocky precipice along the side of the hill; a man, Bateman, was running fast after her up the hill, a huge rifle at his shoulder, trying to take aim; and closing in fast, Sherlock with his own rifle. Sherlock could be heard shouting, but was too far away for anyone to hear the words.
The figures were now picking their way amongst tall crags and John could see that Sherlock didn’t have a clear shot.
John was screaming at everyone not to shoot Sherlock; Weller was swearing heatedly because the running figures were too far away; and Prentiss and the ARV officer had sniper rifles from the armed response vehicle, took aim, and fired.
They missed.
Prentiss swore and tried again. The running figures were too far away, and getting farther. Prentiss got off a wild shot that was closer to Sherlock than Bateman, rock and dust flying into the air. John was astonished to see Mycroft aiming steadily and firing with his own pistol, but Sherlock was out of range.
With numberless long shots in Afghanistan and one spectacularly desperate shot through a window in London flashing through his mind, John reached for Prentiss’ rifle, turning to her without losing focus on the target.
"Give it to me, now," he said fiercely. When Lestrade nodded she permitted John to snatch away the rifle.
John began running across the moor, fast. His limp vanished. He ignored the searing, tearing fire in his abdomen.
The booming shout of Weller drowning out the other officers urging him to get back were unnaturally muffled as his concentration narrowed to only Sherlock and Bateman who, pinned between the urgent need to eliminate both pursued and pursuer, was swerving to confront Sherlock with his enormous rifle.
John had cleared the grass now, picking up speed, and was starting up the rocky slopes leading to Hope Hill, the rocks slowing him, seeming to grab at his feet.
The unique silence that surrounded a kill shot enveloped him and the only sound was his own breath, his own heartbeat as he stopped short, inhaled, exhaled. And squeezed the trigger.
Sherlock stumbled on the rocks. John’s heart stopped. Bateman crumpled back, arms flailing, the rifle flying from his hand as an explosion of shot burst from the huge barrel, and he rolled down the hill, screaming.
Sherlock stared back, rising and running a few steps toward John, eyes wide with astonishment, until the woman’s screams drew him back across the moor.
* * *
Sherlock and John withdrew from the murder investigation, having substantially solved the case between them.
Weller arrested Bateman as he was being taken off the moor to hospital, for attempted murder of Janet Oldfield, and on suspicion of the murder of Henrietta Trimble. Mycroft advised that reports should reflect that it was Prentiss, not John, who fired the saving shot.
It was not long before Bateman came to see that his clever plans were all for naught, and he willingly told his tale to Weller and Prentiss in exchange for vague promises of lenience by the Crown Prosecutor.
As Sherlock had deduced, Bateman had a long-standing relationship with Vanessa Rexworth. Aa well as a more recent dalliance with Janet Oldfield, a restless, recovering drug addict with too much time on her hands, willing to be flattered by Bateman’s still potent charms.
Shortly after the death her husband, Vanessa received a careful, dignified letter from Henrietta Trimble, announcing her claim on the Rexworth estate, and offering to settle matters quietly and out of the public eye to save the family embarrassment. Vanessa formed a plan to possibly buy the woman off.
To avoid any possibility of the claim becoming known in wider circles, she told her son that she fancied a visit to Rexworth Hall for the hunting season, and invited Henrietta to a quiet meeting at the Hall, a week before visitors would start flocking for the hunt when few people would be about. It had been Henrietta’s own idea to come up to the Hall a day early, to maintain the delicate confidentiality that she thought Vanessa Rexworth would appreciate. She had intended to telephone Lady Holmes after her meeting with Vanessa Rexworth and tell her that she did not need a ride from the station, that she would make her own way to Riddleston Hall.
Vanessa received Henrietta in the little study that she had refurbished to her own taste, gaudy gilded French antiques that made a grotesque contrast to the desolate ruin of Rexworth Park. She offered Henrietta a serious amount of money to drop her claim, but Henrietta surprised her by maintaining adamantly that even if she wished to, she felt compelled to respect the last wishes of her father, whom she had never known, but whom she now understood had deeply wished to make amends for a life lived on the wrong path.
And Vanessa, always impulsive, and possessed of a truly ferocious temper when crossed, waited for Henrietta to turn to retrieve her handbag before stabbing her in the chest with an exceedingly sharp letter opener that had formerly graced the desk of the Duchess of Windsor.
* * *
After staring at the copiously bleeding body for a long time, Vanessa realized she could not deal with this alone. She also knew without any consideration that Reggie would be of no help whatsoever.
She did the only thing she could think of.
She telephoned James Bateman, her old paramour, former Army man. He would know what to do.
And he had. He had thought of everything, so cleverly. He promised Vanessa he would help her cover up her crime to make it look like a hunting accident. If no one found the body for a while, possibly it would be thought that someone in the Rexworth shooting club had done it by accident.
Bateman knew better than to leave footprints or tire tracks in the forest floor. He brought out two horses from Rexworth’s stables, his great skill preventing them from making any protest; none of the Rexworth stable hands lived on the grounds to interfere.
Hauling Henrietta’s body onto one, he mounted the other and rode into the wood. At a likely spot, he tied the body up around the chest and dangled it so that he could blast the corpse in the chest with his largest bore rifle, obliterating the stab wound. The gun was a fine old heirloom given to him by Lady Holmes.
When he went back to the Rexworth house, he found Vanessa frantically trying to clean the massive amounts of blood that had issued from the body, destroying a pale Aubusson carpet.
"What if they don’t believe us? What if they think Reggie did it? He’s always drunk, and he’s mad for hunting, he’ll shoot anything that moves. What if they try to go after Reggie? He’s such a mess he won’t remember whether he did it or not. We have to think of something better," she insisted.
And so Bateman told Vanessa that he knew of a very convenient target. The brain-damaged, drunken, amnesiac paratrooper fresh from horrific missions in Afghanistan.
The local police would easily believe that he had gone off his nut and murdered the woman in a fit of delusion. And he knew just the perfect way to make it work.
But only if Vanessa promised to marry him. Which, under the circumstance, she did.
Bateman hauled off the bloodstained carpet from the scene of the murder and threw it in the back of his Land Rover. He helped Vanessa move an old, frayed and mismatched Turkish carpet from an upper floor to cover the bloodstained parquet floor of the study. And in the hours toward dawn, he approached his new friend, Janet, and offered that she would profit by doing a very simple thing - bring him the jumper that Doctor Watson had worn at dinner, replace it when he brought it back, and keep her mouth shut.
And Janet, bored, was up for a lark, and needed a bit of dosh. The switch was made, and when the jumper was given back to her with stains looking quite a lot like blood, she decided to pretend that it was some sort of practical joke and look the other way.
Later she realized it was no joke at all when Bateman tricked her into a ride into Liverpool that turned into a nightmare on Oxenhope moor. She had gotten her licks in, though, as it was his blood, not hers, staining the doorframe. She was a strong country girl and had a hard right hook. The police decided there was nothing with which to charge her.
* * *
When Weller and Prentiss went out to Rexworth Park, hunters were readying for the first shoot of the season. Weller didn’t have the heart to deprive them of their sport, but Prentiss would have called everything off if given the choice. As it happened, Weller didn’t give it to her. They found Lady Rexworth packing a bag for a long trip on a large yacht.
"Lady Rexworth, I’m so interested in these old houses. We’ve heard that you’ve done up your study so charmingly. Won’t you show us?" Prentiss asked coldly.
"Get out," Vanessa shouted. "I want my solicitor."
"Fine by me. I thought you might enjoy giving us the grand tour. Seeing as you won’t have another chance," she said.
Weller intoned the caution. The sound of hunters blasting away at pheasant filled their ears.
This time they brought out the cuffs.
* * *
In his valiant sprint up Hope Hill, John had re-torn his fragile abdominal muscles, not fully healed from the trauma in Afghanistan.
Doctor Foster was called back to Riddleston Hall to treat the patient; observing sagely that it was a universal truth that doctors made the very worst patients, and that John, unfortunately, was not the exception that proves the rule. Doctor Foster decreed that although no further surgery would likely be needed, that John should be kept quiet and wear a pressure bandage roughly the size of an old-fashioned girdle around his waist for the duration. "Rest and quiet, just a little walking every day; that is the best remedy," he decreed, shaking his head at the terrible scarring with pity mingled with respect.
The undignified and torturous bandage apparatus, together with the early autumn heatwave causing the skin under the bandage to itch terribly, made John hugely irritable. Confined to bed, or armchairs near windows with picturesque views of the grounds of Riddleston Hall, he fretted and fumed, and snapped even at the redoubtable McLeod as she brought him endless meals on trays.
Sherlock quietly kept him company, suppressing his own growing restlessness, reading stacks of his father’s interesting old research journals pertaining to rare and poisonous plants. He was relieved when one day, John finally asked for a laptop so that he could write up the shocking case of the court martial of Captain Monroe, and the bittersweet tragedy of the murder of Henrietta Trimble.
"I hid your old one, you know," Sherlock admitted. "You can have it back whenever you like. But it’s in 221b."
John glared at Sherlock. Another indignity. These seemed to be endless. Rather than snap at Sherlock for what he was sure, deep inside, had been well meant, he looked out over the terrace toward the stables.
"Let’s go for a walk," Sherlock proposed, following his gaze, hoping to improve John’s spirits. John fingered his cane momentarily, then put it aside. Sherlock deliberately did not draw any attention to this, and they made their way out onto the long green lawn that gave way to majestic views across rolling farmland. At the horizon, a darker smudge hinted at the wild boundary of the bleak moor, both embracing and threatening the ordered countryside.
John’s face seemed troubled, looking toward that darkness; and Sherlock suddenly wanted to remind him, all over again, that he knew how brave, how truly heroic, John was. "You saved my life again. On Oxenhope moor," Sherlock said, looking sidelong at John’s face.
"And you did, mine. In Afghanistan." John was walking a little taller now, his limp not troubling him. If he was hurting, he wasn’t showing it. So, this trouble was something else.
"Do you ever get the feeling . . . our luck must run out?" John said seriously. He genuinely seemed to want an answer.
"The only luck I’ve ever had, I have because of you," Sherlock replied.
The walked on in silence. John seemed to accept Sherlock’s cryptic answer. Their hands brushed and John realized that London was calling them both.
Now they were at the stables. Lady Holmes was here, watching the new Czech mare being put through her paces.
"Czarina was meant for Reggie’s Fascination," she sighed regretfully. Sherlock scowled at the mention of his old nemesis. Noting her son’s disapproval, she smiled. "But after all that has happened, I think I shall look at other options! Possibly even Mephisto, after all. What do you think of that, Sherlock?"
Sherlock watched the elegant Czarina, a dignified pearly grey with a precise gait, floating effortlessly over jump after jump.
"She’s a very different style to Mephisto," Sherlock said. "But do you know, Mother, I think you’re right. They’ll do very well. Balance each other out, perhaps. You may start something quite new."
Lady Holmes took John’s arm. "Come inside, Captain Watson. I want to show you something."
They went into the cool shade of the stables. In the corner, a bitch hound was nursing some healthy, squirming puppies.
"This is Tempest, one of my best foxhounds. The pups are almost ready to wean. Now that you’ve managed to keep Sherlock up at Riddleston Hall for the longest visit in - well, I don’t like to remember how long - I so hope you’ll make Sherlock bring you up often. Now don’t scowl, Sherlock, you can have alternate weekends with Mycroft if you really feel that way.
"Although at Christmas, I insist on everyone up to the Hall this year."
John and Sherlock exchanged looks, John happy, Sherlock resigned, but not quite as disapproving as he appeared.
"And so, Captain Watson, I thought you might choose one of the pups for your own. Sherlock really, must you be so negative. I don’t mean for London, of course. These are foxhounds, what do you take me for? We’ll train the pup up to run with the hunt. I think you might like to learn too, Captain. You’ve a fine seat, when you’re well nothing to stop you from learning to take a few fences. I can’t really ride anymore; and Mycroft detests anything resembling exercise, the aggravating creature. A throwback to his grandfather. But I thought you and Sherlock might come up to Yorkshire when you need - a break - from London. Do say yes," she said.
John recalled the afternoon, not so long ago, but seemingly a lifetime already, when Lady Holmes had swept him up from 221b and brought him to Yorkshire to restore his health. Despite his setback on Oxenhope moor, he realized that he truly was restored, in mind, body and soul.
He sat on the ground and let the puppies come wriggling into his lap. He chose one at random, a little clumsier than the others, but very bold.
Lady Holmes was beaming. "What shall you call him, Captain Watson?"
John’s heart was suddenly full of the sense of fresh life, new beginnings. He looked up at Sherlock happily, all of the cares of the past months falling away. Sherlock gave one of his rare smiles back.
"Lucky. I’m calling him Lucky."
The End.
back: Eleven
Author’s afterword:
There really is a Black Team of special operatives in New Scotland Yard, to which I have temporarily assigned Lestrade; they really did foil a spectacular armed attempt on the DeBeers Diamond at the Millenium Dome; and the Black Team and other special firearms operatives really did go on strike from using their firearms due to ongoing investigations regarding the discharging of weapons, as described by Lestrade in Chapter Nine.
The West Yorkshire police really are currently being sued by Leeds United over charging for stadium security, with the United actually threatening to halt matches unless the police give in. Currently, the owner of Leeds United is under investigation for irregularity in his acquisition of the team through means of offshore shadow companies.
Oxenhope moor is a real place in West Yorkshire, within the general area called Brontë country, on the outskirts of the authoresses’ home in Haworth:
The village of Cawton, Riddleston Hall, and Rexworth Park are products of the author’s fevered imagination.
Lady Eugenia Holmes is a member of a branch of the notorious Cholmondeley family, whose members settled in the Happy Valley in Kenya only to become involved in several murders across the generations. The film White Mischief documents some of these events.
The terrible Moors Murders by the depraved couple Ian Brady and Rebecca Hindley between 1963 and 1965, are still under investigation as the body of 12-year old Keith Bennett has never been found, but is believed to be in Saddleworth moor:
Searches of the moor are ongoing under auspices of volunteers as well as the Greater Manchester police:
Hindley is deceased, but Brady remains confined to a highly secure psychiatric unit, Ashworth Hospital.
The story of Fredericka Trimble and Richard Rexworth, and their illegitmate daughter Henrietta, is the author’s own invention, not a very original one. It was envisioned as an oblique tip of the hat to the unexpected inheritance of Jane Eyre to the Madeira fortune.
However, in researching current British law in this area, the author came across the 2006 case of Ashley Cusack, son of a former shopgirl whose father was Roger Clark, prominent millionaire and owner of Culverthorpe Hall:
a vast estate in Lincolnshire. Cusack won his court case, but was awarded a pittance when Clark’s widow persuaded the courts that the estate was land-rich but cash-poor. The case is up on appeal. Nobody has been murdered in connection with that case, however.
* * *
**How’d you like The Irresistibility of Orbits, Parts One and Two, LJ land? (If you’re a lurker, give me a shoutout! <3) Thanks for reading and keeping me company on this adventure!**
The adventures continue in "In the Footsteps of the Master: A Hitchcockian Thriller", here: One: Hard Lessons.
If you enjoyed this, I invite you to the boys' past adventures: ghislainem70's master fic list
author: ghislainem70
word count: 4300
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: I own nothing. All honours to Messrs Gatiss, Moffat, BBC et al.
Summary: John returns from Afghanistan with amnesia.
Warnings: graphic violence, explicit sex, reference to mental illness, reference to neuro-motor disease, massive dose of hurt-comfort and angst.
Chapter Eleven. On Oxenhope Moor.
When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge. . .
Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all . . .
Ithaca has given you a beautiful voyage.
Without her you would never have set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.
Ithaca, Cavafy
There was an oil-smeared cloth laying on the floor that had been used recently to clean a gun. Sherlock wrapped it around his fist and broke the glass to Bateman’s gun case. He took a rifle and some ammunition and loaded it. Lady Holmes stood by anxiously, watching her son.
"Sherlock, don’t go. I don’t care what Bateman’s done. I don’t want anything to happen to you. I know you run to danger, you always have. But with you here, now, with me, I can’t bear it. Let the police take care of Bateman."
Sherlock was listening with only a fraction of his attention, but he did pause to kiss his mother on the cheek. "Mother, they are too far away. No one is closer to Oxenhope moor than I am right now. I have to go."
* * *
After leaving an anxious Lady Holmes at the Hall, Sherlock made for Oxenhope moor, some twenty miles distant through circuitous country lanes. The Land Rover dipped and rattled and the dust of a dry summer billowed behind him.
The question of Bateman and Janet’s ultimate aim consumed him. Somehow, it had to do with the Rexworth fortune. This led to unpleasant memories of Reggie Rexworth, the new heir. He and Reginald Rexworth had never been friends, but now he remembered one particular summer when he was up at the Hall. Sherlock and some admittedly dissolute companions had run into Rexworth in the village pub. Rexworth, even then, had been a vicious drunk.
"If it isn’t Sherlock Holmes! I hear your mother thinks mighty high of that James Bateman. Made him estate manager, I hear. Soon enough he’ll be up her skirts, if he isn’t already," Rexworth sneered loudly.
It was a classic Yorkshire pub moment: utter silence fell and the men put their pints aside, eager to see if this undeniable insult would have the desired result.
It did.
Sherlock flew upon Rexworth like a banshee. When they were finally pulled apart, Rexworth was barely conscious, with a broken arm, two black eyes, spitting up blood and teeth.
Sherlock emerged with a torn shirt, a scratch on his cheek, and split knuckles.
The boys in the pub muttered at first, the feeling being that Sherlock had gone beyond the bounds of a fair pub fight, but then the buzz was that Rexworth had insulted his mother, after all: it was ultimately adjudicated that no holds barred was quite right and proper under such circumstances.
Now, with Reggie Rexworth’s ancient insult ringing in his ears, the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. Bateman was a notorious Jack-the-lad, in those days; and when Vanessa came up to the country, she did not take a little local entertainment amiss after the rarified entertainments of the jet set. Surely Reggie Rexworth had been speaking from experience. His own mother, the glamorous Vanessa Rexworth, must have been taking her pleasures with Bateman herself, then. Why not now? Vanessa Rexworth was as glamorous as ever; and a vast deal younger than her departed husband.
And she was in residence with her son at Rexworth Park for the first time in more than a decade.
But this final strand of the mystery must wait.
Sherlock called Lestrade, telling him of Bateman and Janet, learning that the police now knew of Bateman’s lies and that John had finally been released. He was somewhat reassured to know that Mycroft was with John . "Tell them not to go to Riddleston Hall, I think Bateman did it all for Vanessa Rexworth. I’ll explain later. But Janet is expendable. He’s going to kill her."
He explained about the cottage on the moor. "Make for Oxenhope village, they’ll show you the way."
* * *
Oxenhope moor had largely escaped the tourism that swarmed nearby Haworth and other local parts associated with the Brontës. Oxenhope moor was part of the vast, timeless West Yorkshire moors that had inspired Wuthering Heights: seemingly endless rolling hills meeting low clouded blue sky; green and lush in spring, golden in the late summer, desolate under winter snow; dotted with stony crags and hillocks sheltering ancient barrows, crossed by the ruins of Roman roads.
The West Yorkshire moors had grimmer aspect, too, than their romantic Brontëan history: the site of the notorious Moors Murders, echoes of which sounded to the present day. A renewed hunt for the depraved couple’s last victim was even now underway in Saddleworth Moor.
Sherlock approached the Bateman farm and parked down the hill. The moor here was bleak and stony; the grasses of the hillsides fell away to inhospitable, rugged crags and unexpected dips and crevasses. Sherlock quietly exited the car with the rifle.
There was nothing here but vast sky, wind, and silence.
Sherlock ducked along rocky crags, straining his ears. The wind gusted and whipped his hair. He cautiously approached the rear of the cottage. Bateman’s car was here, he observed, his heart thudding and skipping in his chest. There was no sound within. He carefully looked through a narrow window in the back and saw no movement. But against an inner doorframe, he perceived a flash of color.
Fresh blood.
Sherlock was about to run to the front door when a distant thin sound floated toward him on the wind. It might have been the shriek of a bird, but the keening sound raised the hairs on his body. It was a woman, screaming. Out on the moor.
* * *
Weller and an officer with the armed response vehicle, Lestrade and Prentiss, and Mycroft and John in the Bentley approached the Bateman farm in a convoy. Weller was framing the scenario as reported by Sherlock as a kidnapping/hostage scenario, thinking ahead to the reports.
The small army strategically surrounded the crumbling cottage, but soon it was clear that it as empty. The blood on the door frame evidenced that someone had been recently attacked. A trail of smeared blood drops led out the door.
Prentiss was scanning the moor with binoculars. There was nothing but the wind-swept grasses and the occasional sheep.
"Fan out," Weller ordered.
The line of officers began marching steadily through the dry grasses, guns at the ready.
* * *
Sherlock followed the blood trail out into the moor. There was trampled dry grass here, showing where someone had recently passed. The woman’s shrieks grew fainter, farther away, then faded to nothing.
The trampled grass gave way to rocky undulations that left no discernible track. There was a hill in the distance, Hope Hill, one of the highest prominences upon the moor. He made for it, imagining that a fleeing woman might think it would offer shelter.
After a few moments, he was proved correct, as fresh blood drops on the rocks seemed to lead directly toward Hope Hill.
He hoped the blood was Bateman’s.
* * *
The officers quickly picked up the trail. After some tense minutes passed, Prentiss shouted, "There," pointing at a distant hill. Tiny figures were running across the moor. A woman with black hair streaming behind her in the wind was struggling along a rocky precipice along the side of the hill; a man, Bateman, was running fast after her up the hill, a huge rifle at his shoulder, trying to take aim; and closing in fast, Sherlock with his own rifle. Sherlock could be heard shouting, but was too far away for anyone to hear the words.
The figures were now picking their way amongst tall crags and John could see that Sherlock didn’t have a clear shot.
John was screaming at everyone not to shoot Sherlock; Weller was swearing heatedly because the running figures were too far away; and Prentiss and the ARV officer had sniper rifles from the armed response vehicle, took aim, and fired.
They missed.
Prentiss swore and tried again. The running figures were too far away, and getting farther. Prentiss got off a wild shot that was closer to Sherlock than Bateman, rock and dust flying into the air. John was astonished to see Mycroft aiming steadily and firing with his own pistol, but Sherlock was out of range.
With numberless long shots in Afghanistan and one spectacularly desperate shot through a window in London flashing through his mind, John reached for Prentiss’ rifle, turning to her without losing focus on the target.
"Give it to me, now," he said fiercely. When Lestrade nodded she permitted John to snatch away the rifle.
John began running across the moor, fast. His limp vanished. He ignored the searing, tearing fire in his abdomen.
The booming shout of Weller drowning out the other officers urging him to get back were unnaturally muffled as his concentration narrowed to only Sherlock and Bateman who, pinned between the urgent need to eliminate both pursued and pursuer, was swerving to confront Sherlock with his enormous rifle.
John had cleared the grass now, picking up speed, and was starting up the rocky slopes leading to Hope Hill, the rocks slowing him, seeming to grab at his feet.
The unique silence that surrounded a kill shot enveloped him and the only sound was his own breath, his own heartbeat as he stopped short, inhaled, exhaled. And squeezed the trigger.
Sherlock stumbled on the rocks. John’s heart stopped. Bateman crumpled back, arms flailing, the rifle flying from his hand as an explosion of shot burst from the huge barrel, and he rolled down the hill, screaming.
Sherlock stared back, rising and running a few steps toward John, eyes wide with astonishment, until the woman’s screams drew him back across the moor.
* * *
Sherlock and John withdrew from the murder investigation, having substantially solved the case between them.
Weller arrested Bateman as he was being taken off the moor to hospital, for attempted murder of Janet Oldfield, and on suspicion of the murder of Henrietta Trimble. Mycroft advised that reports should reflect that it was Prentiss, not John, who fired the saving shot.
It was not long before Bateman came to see that his clever plans were all for naught, and he willingly told his tale to Weller and Prentiss in exchange for vague promises of lenience by the Crown Prosecutor.
As Sherlock had deduced, Bateman had a long-standing relationship with Vanessa Rexworth. Aa well as a more recent dalliance with Janet Oldfield, a restless, recovering drug addict with too much time on her hands, willing to be flattered by Bateman’s still potent charms.
Shortly after the death her husband, Vanessa received a careful, dignified letter from Henrietta Trimble, announcing her claim on the Rexworth estate, and offering to settle matters quietly and out of the public eye to save the family embarrassment. Vanessa formed a plan to possibly buy the woman off.
To avoid any possibility of the claim becoming known in wider circles, she told her son that she fancied a visit to Rexworth Hall for the hunting season, and invited Henrietta to a quiet meeting at the Hall, a week before visitors would start flocking for the hunt when few people would be about. It had been Henrietta’s own idea to come up to the Hall a day early, to maintain the delicate confidentiality that she thought Vanessa Rexworth would appreciate. She had intended to telephone Lady Holmes after her meeting with Vanessa Rexworth and tell her that she did not need a ride from the station, that she would make her own way to Riddleston Hall.
Vanessa received Henrietta in the little study that she had refurbished to her own taste, gaudy gilded French antiques that made a grotesque contrast to the desolate ruin of Rexworth Park. She offered Henrietta a serious amount of money to drop her claim, but Henrietta surprised her by maintaining adamantly that even if she wished to, she felt compelled to respect the last wishes of her father, whom she had never known, but whom she now understood had deeply wished to make amends for a life lived on the wrong path.
And Vanessa, always impulsive, and possessed of a truly ferocious temper when crossed, waited for Henrietta to turn to retrieve her handbag before stabbing her in the chest with an exceedingly sharp letter opener that had formerly graced the desk of the Duchess of Windsor.
* * *
After staring at the copiously bleeding body for a long time, Vanessa realized she could not deal with this alone. She also knew without any consideration that Reggie would be of no help whatsoever.
She did the only thing she could think of.
She telephoned James Bateman, her old paramour, former Army man. He would know what to do.
And he had. He had thought of everything, so cleverly. He promised Vanessa he would help her cover up her crime to make it look like a hunting accident. If no one found the body for a while, possibly it would be thought that someone in the Rexworth shooting club had done it by accident.
Bateman knew better than to leave footprints or tire tracks in the forest floor. He brought out two horses from Rexworth’s stables, his great skill preventing them from making any protest; none of the Rexworth stable hands lived on the grounds to interfere.
Hauling Henrietta’s body onto one, he mounted the other and rode into the wood. At a likely spot, he tied the body up around the chest and dangled it so that he could blast the corpse in the chest with his largest bore rifle, obliterating the stab wound. The gun was a fine old heirloom given to him by Lady Holmes.
When he went back to the Rexworth house, he found Vanessa frantically trying to clean the massive amounts of blood that had issued from the body, destroying a pale Aubusson carpet.
"What if they don’t believe us? What if they think Reggie did it? He’s always drunk, and he’s mad for hunting, he’ll shoot anything that moves. What if they try to go after Reggie? He’s such a mess he won’t remember whether he did it or not. We have to think of something better," she insisted.
And so Bateman told Vanessa that he knew of a very convenient target. The brain-damaged, drunken, amnesiac paratrooper fresh from horrific missions in Afghanistan.
The local police would easily believe that he had gone off his nut and murdered the woman in a fit of delusion. And he knew just the perfect way to make it work.
But only if Vanessa promised to marry him. Which, under the circumstance, she did.
Bateman hauled off the bloodstained carpet from the scene of the murder and threw it in the back of his Land Rover. He helped Vanessa move an old, frayed and mismatched Turkish carpet from an upper floor to cover the bloodstained parquet floor of the study. And in the hours toward dawn, he approached his new friend, Janet, and offered that she would profit by doing a very simple thing - bring him the jumper that Doctor Watson had worn at dinner, replace it when he brought it back, and keep her mouth shut.
And Janet, bored, was up for a lark, and needed a bit of dosh. The switch was made, and when the jumper was given back to her with stains looking quite a lot like blood, she decided to pretend that it was some sort of practical joke and look the other way.
Later she realized it was no joke at all when Bateman tricked her into a ride into Liverpool that turned into a nightmare on Oxenhope moor. She had gotten her licks in, though, as it was his blood, not hers, staining the doorframe. She was a strong country girl and had a hard right hook. The police decided there was nothing with which to charge her.
* * *
When Weller and Prentiss went out to Rexworth Park, hunters were readying for the first shoot of the season. Weller didn’t have the heart to deprive them of their sport, but Prentiss would have called everything off if given the choice. As it happened, Weller didn’t give it to her. They found Lady Rexworth packing a bag for a long trip on a large yacht.
"Lady Rexworth, I’m so interested in these old houses. We’ve heard that you’ve done up your study so charmingly. Won’t you show us?" Prentiss asked coldly.
"Get out," Vanessa shouted. "I want my solicitor."
"Fine by me. I thought you might enjoy giving us the grand tour. Seeing as you won’t have another chance," she said.
Weller intoned the caution. The sound of hunters blasting away at pheasant filled their ears.
This time they brought out the cuffs.
* * *
In his valiant sprint up Hope Hill, John had re-torn his fragile abdominal muscles, not fully healed from the trauma in Afghanistan.
Doctor Foster was called back to Riddleston Hall to treat the patient; observing sagely that it was a universal truth that doctors made the very worst patients, and that John, unfortunately, was not the exception that proves the rule. Doctor Foster decreed that although no further surgery would likely be needed, that John should be kept quiet and wear a pressure bandage roughly the size of an old-fashioned girdle around his waist for the duration. "Rest and quiet, just a little walking every day; that is the best remedy," he decreed, shaking his head at the terrible scarring with pity mingled with respect.
The undignified and torturous bandage apparatus, together with the early autumn heatwave causing the skin under the bandage to itch terribly, made John hugely irritable. Confined to bed, or armchairs near windows with picturesque views of the grounds of Riddleston Hall, he fretted and fumed, and snapped even at the redoubtable McLeod as she brought him endless meals on trays.
Sherlock quietly kept him company, suppressing his own growing restlessness, reading stacks of his father’s interesting old research journals pertaining to rare and poisonous plants. He was relieved when one day, John finally asked for a laptop so that he could write up the shocking case of the court martial of Captain Monroe, and the bittersweet tragedy of the murder of Henrietta Trimble.
"I hid your old one, you know," Sherlock admitted. "You can have it back whenever you like. But it’s in 221b."
John glared at Sherlock. Another indignity. These seemed to be endless. Rather than snap at Sherlock for what he was sure, deep inside, had been well meant, he looked out over the terrace toward the stables.
"Let’s go for a walk," Sherlock proposed, following his gaze, hoping to improve John’s spirits. John fingered his cane momentarily, then put it aside. Sherlock deliberately did not draw any attention to this, and they made their way out onto the long green lawn that gave way to majestic views across rolling farmland. At the horizon, a darker smudge hinted at the wild boundary of the bleak moor, both embracing and threatening the ordered countryside.
John’s face seemed troubled, looking toward that darkness; and Sherlock suddenly wanted to remind him, all over again, that he knew how brave, how truly heroic, John was. "You saved my life again. On Oxenhope moor," Sherlock said, looking sidelong at John’s face.
"And you did, mine. In Afghanistan." John was walking a little taller now, his limp not troubling him. If he was hurting, he wasn’t showing it. So, this trouble was something else.
"Do you ever get the feeling . . . our luck must run out?" John said seriously. He genuinely seemed to want an answer.
"The only luck I’ve ever had, I have because of you," Sherlock replied.
The walked on in silence. John seemed to accept Sherlock’s cryptic answer. Their hands brushed and John realized that London was calling them both.
Now they were at the stables. Lady Holmes was here, watching the new Czech mare being put through her paces.
"Czarina was meant for Reggie’s Fascination," she sighed regretfully. Sherlock scowled at the mention of his old nemesis. Noting her son’s disapproval, she smiled. "But after all that has happened, I think I shall look at other options! Possibly even Mephisto, after all. What do you think of that, Sherlock?"
Sherlock watched the elegant Czarina, a dignified pearly grey with a precise gait, floating effortlessly over jump after jump.
"She’s a very different style to Mephisto," Sherlock said. "But do you know, Mother, I think you’re right. They’ll do very well. Balance each other out, perhaps. You may start something quite new."
Lady Holmes took John’s arm. "Come inside, Captain Watson. I want to show you something."
They went into the cool shade of the stables. In the corner, a bitch hound was nursing some healthy, squirming puppies.
"This is Tempest, one of my best foxhounds. The pups are almost ready to wean. Now that you’ve managed to keep Sherlock up at Riddleston Hall for the longest visit in - well, I don’t like to remember how long - I so hope you’ll make Sherlock bring you up often. Now don’t scowl, Sherlock, you can have alternate weekends with Mycroft if you really feel that way.
"Although at Christmas, I insist on everyone up to the Hall this year."
John and Sherlock exchanged looks, John happy, Sherlock resigned, but not quite as disapproving as he appeared.
"And so, Captain Watson, I thought you might choose one of the pups for your own. Sherlock really, must you be so negative. I don’t mean for London, of course. These are foxhounds, what do you take me for? We’ll train the pup up to run with the hunt. I think you might like to learn too, Captain. You’ve a fine seat, when you’re well nothing to stop you from learning to take a few fences. I can’t really ride anymore; and Mycroft detests anything resembling exercise, the aggravating creature. A throwback to his grandfather. But I thought you and Sherlock might come up to Yorkshire when you need - a break - from London. Do say yes," she said.
John recalled the afternoon, not so long ago, but seemingly a lifetime already, when Lady Holmes had swept him up from 221b and brought him to Yorkshire to restore his health. Despite his setback on Oxenhope moor, he realized that he truly was restored, in mind, body and soul.
He sat on the ground and let the puppies come wriggling into his lap. He chose one at random, a little clumsier than the others, but very bold.
Lady Holmes was beaming. "What shall you call him, Captain Watson?"
John’s heart was suddenly full of the sense of fresh life, new beginnings. He looked up at Sherlock happily, all of the cares of the past months falling away. Sherlock gave one of his rare smiles back.
"Lucky. I’m calling him Lucky."
The End.
back: Eleven
Author’s afterword:
There really is a Black Team of special operatives in New Scotland Yard, to which I have temporarily assigned Lestrade; they really did foil a spectacular armed attempt on the DeBeers Diamond at the Millenium Dome; and the Black Team and other special firearms operatives really did go on strike from using their firearms due to ongoing investigations regarding the discharging of weapons, as described by Lestrade in Chapter Nine.
The West Yorkshire police really are currently being sued by Leeds United over charging for stadium security, with the United actually threatening to halt matches unless the police give in. Currently, the owner of Leeds United is under investigation for irregularity in his acquisition of the team through means of offshore shadow companies.
Oxenhope moor is a real place in West Yorkshire, within the general area called Brontë country, on the outskirts of the authoresses’ home in Haworth:
The village of Cawton, Riddleston Hall, and Rexworth Park are products of the author’s fevered imagination.
Lady Eugenia Holmes is a member of a branch of the notorious Cholmondeley family, whose members settled in the Happy Valley in Kenya only to become involved in several murders across the generations. The film White Mischief documents some of these events.
The terrible Moors Murders by the depraved couple Ian Brady and Rebecca Hindley between 1963 and 1965, are still under investigation as the body of 12-year old Keith Bennett has never been found, but is believed to be in Saddleworth moor:
Searches of the moor are ongoing under auspices of volunteers as well as the Greater Manchester police:
Hindley is deceased, but Brady remains confined to a highly secure psychiatric unit, Ashworth Hospital.
The story of Fredericka Trimble and Richard Rexworth, and their illegitmate daughter Henrietta, is the author’s own invention, not a very original one. It was envisioned as an oblique tip of the hat to the unexpected inheritance of Jane Eyre to the Madeira fortune.
However, in researching current British law in this area, the author came across the 2006 case of Ashley Cusack, son of a former shopgirl whose father was Roger Clark, prominent millionaire and owner of Culverthorpe Hall:
a vast estate in Lincolnshire. Cusack won his court case, but was awarded a pittance when Clark’s widow persuaded the courts that the estate was land-rich but cash-poor. The case is up on appeal. Nobody has been murdered in connection with that case, however.
* * *
**How’d you like The Irresistibility of Orbits, Parts One and Two, LJ land? (If you’re a lurker, give me a shoutout! <3) Thanks for reading and keeping me company on this adventure!**
The adventures continue in "In the Footsteps of the Master: A Hitchcockian Thriller", here: One: Hard Lessons.
If you enjoyed this, I invite you to the boys' past adventures: ghislainem70's master fic list