Sherlock Holmes: The Alder King Mystery Ch 7

Mrs. Sumner led us through the house to the upstairs bedroom where the children slept. The door was locked and Mrs. Sumner had to pull out her key which she kept tethered to a string around her neck to unlock it.

"I can't be too careful." She told us as we stepped inside. "The police told us to keep everyone out of the room, so naturally I keep the door locked."

"So no one can enter this room but you?" I asked.

"That's right, doctor."

Holmes carefully looked over the room, starting with the doorknob itself and slowly moving inward. He had lapsed into silence and though his lips were moving he no longer mumbled. His countenance had become that of someone focused on an abstract problem, and I could see his mental absorption had taken him far away from the room.

The children's bedroom walls were a light eggshell color which reflected the light from the afternoon sun beautifully and paintings of flowers were hung on each wall. Two small wooden cribs were placed in the center of the room and were filled with small soft toys and blankets.

Holmes approached the window and looked down upon the yard where we'd been standing moments earlier he made an exclamation of discovery as he tried to open the window, but the pane would not budge.

"The window is locked as well." I caught him muttering as he pulled on it and pushed against it in various fashions.

"I told you it was Mr. 'olmes." Mrs. Sumner said. "This room was totally sealed when I left it."

He knocked against the glass and the wood around the window and he stroked the wood with the tips of his fingers. Finally he asked her to open the window for him. Mrs. Sumner had begun to look strangely at the detective, unaccustomed as she was to his energetic methods of investigation, and she hesitated slightly wearing a face that bore her full skepticism at his unusual though common request.  

When it was unlocked he opened the window and leaned out, uttering a brief syllable of excitement as though he'd found what he'd been looking for. He pulled out one of his envelopes and hurriedly brushed some dust on the sill into it.

It was at this point he turned to me and beckoned me over with a wave of his hand. Without saying anything he pointed to the window sill and I saw why the area was of such intense interest to him. Upon the window sill, carved right into the wood by the use of some knife, was a small circle with a cross cutting through it; the same mark that had been present in the drawings of Susan and Anne in the Market street abductions.

I looked at Holmes incredulously, but he did not meet my gaze. Something had caught his eyes about the cribs in the center of the room and he was examining them minutely. From elsewhere in the house I heard the chortling laughter of another babe and I felt a bit ill remembering the brother who was left behind after the abduction.

Holmes only spent a few more seconds examining the room and when the light rain began to tap against the window pane he brushed his hands together and turned to us.

"Now I think it would be a good time to question the family, don't you agree?" he said retaining a mysterious glimmer in his eyes.

"The atmosphere certainly couldn't set the mood any better." I said glancing at the dark gloom beyond the window.

"Perfect." Holmes said. "You know I have something of a flair for the theatric. Mrs. Sumner, would you kindly introduce us to your colleagues? I recall your mentioning of one other governess besides yourself."

"Mrs. Amsel? She should be with John in the toy room now."

"If I am much mistaken, I feel I may have met a Mrs. Amsel before. She wouldn't happen to be a particularly short woman with a pleasing French dialect, would she?"

"Not at all Mr. 'olmes, she's of normal 'eight but fairly obese and she 'as a strong German accent, though for the most part she speaks English fairly well. She often lapses into whole dialogues in German where she'll talk to 'erself and no one can engage her, save in 'er native tongue."

"German, no I don't suppose I'd know her then." He said smiling.  

Mrs. Sumner led us out of the children's room and locked the door carefully behind us. To our surprise another door at the end of the hall slammed shut at the same moment, startling me and causing Mrs. Sumner to drop the key which clattered to the floor noisily. The cause of the slammed door was not hard to find, for she charged down the hall and was upon us in a mere moment.

Mrs. Amsel was a motherly woman whose large, capable arms were wrapped around a small, dark haired child that she also balanced on one of her massive hips which rocked dangerously as she sped down the hallway to meet us. She had an altogether pretty face, even contorted as it was in an exaggerated expression of concern and fear.

"Herr Holmes." She bellowed glancing from him to me with uncertainty. Finally with the infallible sense of woman's intuition she turned to my friend and addressed him.

"I know what took the kinder, twas Der Erlkonig! I'm certain!" She exclaimed all at once, her face slowly flushing until she was a shade redder than her skirt. "He's followed me from my Vaterland all the way here, just for the kinders!"

"Calm down madam." He said.

"I can't calm down!" she wailed and the child in her arms took notice of her distress and began to sob. Mrs. Sumner sighed with a hint of annoyance and stepped forward with the intention of taking and soothing the child, but Mrs. Amsel would not her take him from her iron grip.

"Der Erlkonig came from Schwarzwald to take the kinders! It was my fault! He followed me!"

She was breathing heavily like a hound in heat and I turned to Holmes uncertain of how to handle her in the grips of hysterics. He ------.

**Word has been smeared, I can't make it out**

"He's followed me since I was young, he's tortured me all these years; I thought I could escape, but it has been my ruin! He comes from the shadows of the trees! He comes to me in my dreams! He's always and never there!"

In my mind she was clearly having some kind of mental break. There was no other explanation for her erratic behavior and wild story, but she seemed far from collapse, rather she was just building momentum as she spoke.

"Since times unknown Der Erlkonig has lingered on the fringes of humanity stalking the little children and stealing them in the night! He's a monster, a terrible monster who tortures his victims slowly and by degrees until they themselves feel that they are mad, truly mad! I've known him since adolescence, when I saw him a ways off from my Vater's farm. I never thought that mein Märchen jemals geworden…" The strange woman broke off her narrative in English and began pleading with my friend in German.

He listened attentively nodding every few seconds and Mrs. Amsel calmed down noticeably, speaking clearly and coherently now that she felt she was being validated.

Finally Holmes nodded and to my surprise spoke in German soothingly to the exhausted Mrs. Amsel.

"Beruhigen Madame." His voice rumbled with a believable German accent.

Mrs. Amsel panted and her face was pale with fatigue. For a moment I feared she would faint, but she took a few soothing breaths and collected herself expertly, allowing little John to be taken by the grateful Mrs. Sumner.

"You believe me Herr Holmes?" she asked wearily. "All I wish for is to be believed."

"Gehe zu entspannen." My companion said kindly.

Mrs. Amsel nodded, looking stronger and happier as she turned to walk down the hallway in search of a place to rest, still swaying like a boat rocked by waves. She looked over her shoulder at Holmes reverently before disappearing into one of the rooms with a heavy sigh.

"I didn't know you spoke German." I told him as we stood in the hallway waiting for Mrs. Sumner to finish soothing the still sobbing baby boy.

"I don't." He said chuckling. "I know a few phrases in several languages and I find that they can help me in a myriad of situations."

"What did she say?" I asked.

"I heard something about her childhood, a forest, her dog, a ghost and murder, but otherwise I found it quite impossible to understand her."

"One would suppose that she is under the impression that a monster took the child."

"It would appear that way." He said quietly.

"We appear, then, to be investigating a fairy tale."

"We cannot give such serious attention to such things!" He waved his hands as though dismissing the matter with a brief gesture. "I am a man who, popular superstition aside, remains flat-footed upon the ground! Let mediums and story tellers make you fanciful if you please, I shall remain under the impression of a human agent for all manners relating to crime."