Now’s the chance for Dot and Mr Holmes to have a real look deep inside Fernbank Cottage, the hideaway home of Giles Langton the inventor… and what a fantastic place it is…
Giles’ underground room was certainly worth the visit – even though Dot had suddenly felt VERY hungry, having had a glimpse of the totally yum tea that Giles’ sister had prepared.
As Dot and Mr Holmes followed Giles down the steps into the cellar, beneath the main room of the cottage, an extraordinary sight met their eyes.
It was a long, low room, lit by oil lamps all along the walls – so many that it was
as bright as day down there, even though there were no windows.
At the far end of the cellar, they could see Laetitia’s kitchen – a big old stove with a fire crackling away behind a little door, and shelves with patterned plates and cups neatly arranged in them. Above an old–fashioned white sink were cupboards, each with doors painted in a fern pattern, green and cream.
Down both sides of the room, and running along the middle, were three heavy workbenches. Each one had a big white bowl in the middle, with what looked like a big old fashioned tap, curving over the bowl with a brass handle attached to it.
“Water is no problem here!” said Giles, reaching out to one of the handles and pumping it up and down. A jet of water poured into the sink. “There’s a well beneath our feet! And to send it away – we just pump it out!” He pointed to another handle, a black iron one this time, under the sink.
On the centre bench was a clutter of machinery - it was hard for Dot to tell what it all did, but one machine with lots of round casings all in a row had on it the words ‘The Suprema Lathe – Worley and Sons, Sheffield 1892’.
“So” said Mr Holmes, tapping it. “You can shape wood and metal with this lathe for your inventions, Mr Langton?”
“Indeed!” said Giles. He slid his foot underneath the bench and pushed up and down on something out of sight on the floor. A wire round a drum at the far end of the machine began to turn, and as it did so a shiny steel shaft holding what looked like a chair leg turned too.
Giles picked up a tool from the bench with a sharp edge and touched it on the chair leg. A little shaving came off.
“Not an invention” he said, with a grin. “I broke my book table yesterday!”
“I see you are something of a chemist, too!” said Mr Holmes, pointing to four long shelves over the workbench on the left, covered with literally hundreds of bottles, all labelled with mysterious names that Dot found hard to read, let alone understand.
“Be careful with this one!” said Mr Holmes, pointing to a big blue bottle. Written on a stained label was the word ‘Chromated Copper Arsenate’ – under a big black skull and crossbones! When Dot looked, she could see that may of the other bottles had the same sign on them.
“Ah, yes” said Giles. “Very good for treating wood so it doesn’t rot, though.”
“What is it, Mr Holmes?” asked Dot.
Mr Holmes eyes’ narrowed. “That chemical compound has arsenic in it, my dear” he said. “The very same deadly poison that Randolphus Dibbs, the Holloway poisoner, used to kill his victims! But I caught him in the end!”
“A remarkable case indeed!” said Giles. “I read about it in Dr Watson’s account! By the way – where is the good doctor? I thought you never took on cases without him!”
“Ah, he had to stay back to care for his patients!” said Mr Holmes, in a slightly cross way. “Couldn’t find anyone to stand in for him. A confounded nuisance! Still, at least this case won’t end up in one of his fanciful stories!”
“A shame!” said Giles. “I’d like to meet him, as a man of science. Now” he said, waving towards the workbench on the right, “here, I do my - ”
“The tea’s getting cold!” came Laetitia’s voice from above them.
“Oh dear!” said Giles. “Up we go!”
It wasn’t that cold though thought Dot, wondering if she could have another scone with jam and cream. Better not, she thought!
But then suddenly, the conversation – which had got very complicated, with lost of technical and scientific stuff Dot didn’t understand – took a different turn.
“But that’s your trouble Giles!” Laetitia was saying angrily. “You’re just too trusting! When I think of what happened about the - ”
“Sister!” said Giles firmly, suddenly speaking very firmly, quite different from the way he’d talked to her before. “We said we would never talk about that, ever again!”
“It makes me so angry though!” Laetitia went on, her eyes sparkling, with two red patches on her pale cheeks. “I’d give anything to tell them!”
“And lose our little hidey-hole here? After all we’ve done?” said Giles sharply. Dot saw Mr Holmes lean forward to look at the inventor, his eyes full of interest. “No! Absolutely not!”
“One day!” said Laetitia, half under her breath. “One day! You’ll see!”
