Sherlock Holmes and the Ravenclaw Codex

Chapter Four: Marchmont Holmes

My friend Sherlock Holmes, though charming enough and even gregarious when the fit was on him, was intensely reserved in his private life, and although I understood Holmes as well as any man living, I knew almost nothing of his family background or early life. To be sure, I had met his elder brother Mycroft on one or two occasions, all related to Holmes's occupation, but for the rest, they might have both fallen from the sky or hatched from an egg for all I knew to the contrary. The news of this new bereavement left me stunned.

"Your late brother?" I said. "My dear fellow, I am so sorry - I had no idea!"

"Don't concern yourself, Watson," said Holmes with what was no doubt mean to be an airy wave of the hand, though it faltered somewhat in mid-stroke. "You need have no fear - there is no danger of my giving way to my feelings. To be sure, my grief at the time was intense, and I have few reasons to remember the time that followed with any great affection, but since Marchmont died when I was nine years of age, I hope you will not think me deficient in human warmth if I do not appear to suffer unduly now."

"In that case," I said after a pause, "I would like very much to hear more about him."

"Very well," Holmes continued. "My people, as you know, were county squires, living in one of the remoter parts of Worcestershire. My mother, who was something of an invalid, gave birth to three sons at widely spaced intervals. Mycroft, as you know, is seven years my senior, and Marchmont was three years older again.

"Marchmont had all the attributes that should have fitted him for an easy path in life - good looks, engaging manners, a brain that was keen without being over-strung as Mycroft's and mine are, an easy-going, affable nature that made all about him his friend, and a talent for sports. My parents delighted in him, and I am told that my father's grief as Marchmont left for prep school for the first time was a sight to behold. At school he continued to excel, delighting tutors, sports masters and fellow-pupils alike.

"Then, early one summer, a fortnight after his eleventh birthday, the letter came."

Holmes paused ominously at this point.

"What letter?" I asked. "Was your brother being threatened by some sinister outsider, or even blackmailed? But surely not - what possible reason could anyone have to menace such a fine, upstanding young chap?"

Holmes gave a dry smile.

"I see that you have become tarnished by your association with me, Watson," he said. "I will admit that I have seen many shocking things in the course of a long career, but never the blackmail of an eleven-year-old schoolboy! Indeed, at the time, Marchmont seemed delighted to get that letter. It was from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He had been accepted as a pupil there, and was instructed, without so much as a by-your-leave, to report to an address in London at the end of August, after which his schooling in magic would commence.

"Marchmont, as I said, was delighted, but my parents had their reservations. They were country people, unaccustomed to the big city. They would have hesitated to send their promising son off alone to London at such a young age, let alone to a school they had never seen in the far north of the country, in the care of people they had never met."

"You mean to say that your parents - people of some education and considerable means - were seriously contemplating sending their first-born son to a school for fakirs and conjurers?" I exclaimed in horror. "Deplorable! You astound me!"

"Do not underestimate the power of wizards, Watson!" my friend hissed with a vehemence I had not heard since he had dispatched the villainous Moriarty. "You may not see them every day; you many never see them or feel their presence; they may never have hurt a hair on your head, but they are present nonetheless - a secret, highly organised, ruthless power that lurks deep in the shadows of our everyday world. Oh, they will tell you that they bear our kind no ill will - that they would never attack unprovoked - but they guard their secrecy with a ferocity that it is hard for us to comprehend, and if that secrecy is threatened, then they will snuff out your memories, or even your life, with less compunction than you would blow out a candle. No, Watson, those who ran Hogwarts School were no mere conjurers or jugglers, but real, potent magicians. They had spotted the seeds of magical talent in Marchmont, and made up their minds that he was a wizard too. All that remained was for him to take his rightful place among them.

"My parents, as I said, were initially most resistant to the notion. Much to Marchmont's chagrin, the first letter was left unanswered. More letters followed, some clutched in the talons of a huge bird of prey, others drifting from the sky or blasted from an unlit fireplace in a cloud of steam. This was disconcerting enough for my parents, but I think they might have held out for some time but for the change in Marchmont himself. It was only to be expected, perhaps - tell even the most amiable eleven-year-old schoolboy that he may have talents of the more arcane sort, and there can only be one result. The luminous cattle my parents were able to dismiss as a mishap with a chemistry set; the singing umbrella stand as mere servants' tittle-tattle; but when he levitated the vicar in the middle of an overlong sermon it was plain that something had to be done. At last Marchmont got his wish, and at the end of that summer he took the train for London."

With some difficulty I found my voice.

"And that was the end of the matter?" I croaked. "Did you ever see your brother again?"

"Oh many times," replied Holmes. "Wizards are fierce and ruthless in protection of their secret, but like many predators, they have a certain tenderness towards their young. And so it was with Marchmont. Although it was made plain to him at school that he would do much better to remain there during the holidays, the better to absorb the manners and customs of the wizarding world, his affectionate nature would never allow him to abandon his family. I saw him for part of the holidays every summer and most Christmases, and there is no doubt that he brought life and cheer to a house that sometimes seemed decidedly lacking in both. I remember his visits as great festivals and holidays - he would show me his schoolbooks, full of the most incredible diagrams and illuminated in scarlet and gold leaf - and he always brought me the most marvellous sweets and toys, each with a tale behind it better than anything told by the brothers Grimm. He was even permitted - as special concession - to attend our mother's funeral when she died of a chill some four or five years later.

"In the meantime, Mycroft and I grew up in the old house, and while Mycroft's indolence and my fits of uncontrolled curiosity were far more of a trial to our parents than Marchmont's carefree good nature, we filled at least in part the gap that he had left. In time Mycroft went away to school, and we were troubled by no mysterious letters for him. A few years after that, Marchmont finished school and was permitted to stay on at Hogwarts, to train as a junior sports master of some kind. He continued to write and visit, and all seemed well with him. Then one day, shortly before I was due to start school in my turn, the visitor came.

"I had been outside, investigating a break-in. The dairymaid swore that gypsies were responsible for the massacre in the hencoop, but I had found a hole in the wire and clawed footprints that strongly suggested a member of the weasel family. With a tracing of the evidence in my hand I approached the library, where I hoped to find evidence in the encyclopaedia to prove my hypothesis, but before I had touched the door handle I heard an anguished cry from my father: 'Sweet Christ, no! Marchmont! My son!' before he burst into agonised sobs.

"There was somebody else in the room. I could hear him pacing to and fro, urging my father to control himself - to no avail. His voice took on an increasingly threatening tone, and finally I heard it raised in an incantation. There was a flash of white light and a crash and my father felt silent. I had just the wit to conceal myself before the man swept out of the office, tucking his wand into the pocket of his cloak. Hidden as I was, I only caught a glimpse of him in the hall mirror, but that glimpse was enough, for I had seen that stern, implacable face before in Marchmont's photograph album. It was his old history master, Phineas Nigellus Black.

"My first concern was for my father. I rushed through the open study door to find him lying insensible on the floor. The footmen carried him to bed while the doctor was sent for. The doctor could find very little physically wrong with him and prescribed complete rest. I was banished from the sickroom until the evening before I was due to depart for school, when I was allowed a brief visit. The room was all in darkness, and my father had barely the strength to raise his head. Tears poured down his cheeks as he whispered to me that my brother was dead, but when I asked him which brother and how it had come about, he could recall nothing whatsoever, and soon became so agitated that I was ordered out of the room.

"To this day I do not know if I am more relieved or sorry that I was not present for most of the two years that followed. Suffice it to say that my father never recovered his memory of what had happened to Marchmont, and the loss tormented him. All his efforts to contact the school failed, no registry office in Scotland held so much as a scrap of proof that Marchmont had ever existed, and such provincial law enforcement agencies as existed in those days were even more ineffectual than our friend Lestrade. At last, in desperation, he turned to supernatural means, but being effectively excluded from those who actually knew something of these matters, he soon fell into the hands of the worst kinds of charlatans - spiritualists, stage wizards, mediums, tricksters... To anyone who claimed to know what had become of my brother, however obviously fraudulent, he would give anything at all. The house was full of the basest kind of impostors while his estate fell to rack and ruin around him and his friends and servants deserted him. His death, when it came some two years later, came as a relief not only himself but to those who cared for him and remembered what he had once been.

"Only Mycroft and I were present at the funeral, and it was then that I told him of Black's visit and the probable consequences. As we stood over our father's grave, we swore that we would find those responsible and - if ever we could - bring them to account. You might ask, Watson, how two mere boys hoped to succeed where our father had failed. We knew that we could never hope to defeat them by magic, and we dared not attempt a direct approach, so we decided to approach the problem by deduction and reasoning - for there we excel, but wizards are weak.

"And so we carried on with what remained of our lives. Luckily our education was provided for in our mother's will, otherwise we might have found ourselves in difficulties - for our father's money was all gone, and no magical letter ever came for either of us. Mycroft and I finished school and university, came to London and commenced living by our wits. Most of my time was devoted to my life's work, the study and practice of detection, but I kept my eyes and ears open, and I learned much. Bound as they are by their iron code of secrecy, no wizard would ever openly betray himself to one not of his own kind, but I remembered Marchmont's tales from school, and traces of such incidents could often not be completely hidden from me. And - much as with the criminal fraternity - there are weak links in even the strongest chain. Still, for all that, I had not been knowingly addressed by another wizard in all those years until the so-called professor Weaselby appeared in our chambers the day before yesterday."

"Holmes, my dear fellow!" I cried, aghast. "This is monstrous! Despicable! And what do you mean to do now? For you have surely delivered yourself into the hands of a most powerful and implacable enemy!"

"I do not fear them," Holmes replied. "They have magic at their command, to be sure, but their brains are feeble. Gifted as they are with powers that can change the fabric of the earth to suit their whims, the higher skills of analysis and deduction are of little account to them - and there lies their great weakness. What I mean to do can be simply stated. I mean to discover the manner of my brother's death. And then, if necessary, I mean to bring the person or persons responsible to justice."