“Tell me, Brackenridge, when did your sister start wearing blue?”
“About eighteen months ago,” he answered, “It was quite peculiar, really. She travels to London by steam train on her own once a month to visit the art galleries, as she had a particular fondness for paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. She would take an empty portmanteau with her to shop for garments. That particular morning she left miserable as usual but returned positively ebullient. I’ve never seen her like that, as her propensity is to exist in a permanent state of enmity. It was after that trip she began wearing only blue.”
“Your sister fritters away her allowance does she not? Her wardrobe is full of unworn clothing and shoes.”
“Quite correct, Mr Holmes. She rarely seeks society but is still rather vain. Despite the fact there is no one to impress here except the servants and me, she still always dresses for dinner.”
“My dear fellow,” said Holmes, addressing Ingram but staring at Brackenridge, “If I am to make sense of what happened here I’d like to examine the evening dress she was wearing last night.”
Brackenridge gulped.
“We’ll inspect it together at the hospital where it’s my understanding it has been secured,” said Ingram, “No doubt it’ll provide crucial evidence of what happened here.”
“No doubt indeed,” said Holmes.
He moved on and then stopped at a dresser, opened a drawer and peered inside. All the while I was feeling most uncomfortable…the dead man’s corpse was calling to me to attend it. It was nearly beyond toleration and I had to restrain myself from bursting forth and seeing to the poor fellow.
“It would be more seeming, Dr M, for you to search amongst these undergarments as you are here as a representative of the hospital. Run your hands over the back and underside of the drawers and tell me what you discover.”
I slid out each drawer one at a time, glanced inside and gently ruffled everything with my hand to see if there was something present that should not be.
“Corsetry and other undergarments and nothing more…” I replied, “…but, what is this?”
I pulled out a cosmetic palette, containing a white powder. I carefully prised open the lid but before I knew it, Holmes had leaned in, and touched the substance. I saw a momentary gleam in his eyes…a sense of exhilaration. I began to understand.
“This may explain why your sister always looked like death,” said Holmes, “Rice powder. “Tell me, Brackenridge, do you have a herb and vegetable garden?”
“Oh, yes,” said the young man from the doorway, “I’m a keen gardener. We have some beautiful trees on the estate and oh so many birds…I do my best to attract them. We have nightjar and stonechat, pheasants, quail and lots of other game birds, although I baulk at hunting…and, oh, we still even have a nesting robin in the chestnut tree so late in the season…”
“Yes, yes, but did your sister ever accompany you?
“She rarely ventured outside during the day unless it was overcast or dawn or dusk. She was sensitive to light you see.”
“Tell me, did she ever eat beets?” asked Holmes.
“I spotted her carrying a beet in a basket once. I asked her why she hadn’t asked the cook to make a salad for her for luncheon, and she mumbled something unintelligible. I didn’t pursue it.”
Holmes whispered to me, “I occasionally inhabit the thespian world and am familiar with stagecraft and theatrical makeup. It’s considered most improper for respectable women to use cosmetics, as it remains the domain of prostitutes and actresses. Where young women cannot access them freely, they create their own. Young Sophie has been using lemon juice and rice powder to obtain a pale complexion, and red beet juice to emphasise the lips without appearing obvious or garish. The blue circles under her eyes are an affectation as well. It’s considered highly fashionable in some quarters to look like an ailing woman with consumption.”
Holmes seemed satisfied and then strode towards the raised wooden platform in front of the window. Now we could finally see everything in close detail. And by everything I meant the blue-faced, dead-eyed man lying in a pool of blood around his head underneath a heavy ornamental mahogany cabinet with shattered glass and objets d’art scattered all around.
Holmes gave the body a cursory glance then exclaimed, “It’s a very irregular way to arrange furniture would you not say, Dr M?”
“I suppose.”
“Look at the chaise longue…”
I turned my attention to the sofa, which sat in the middle of the raised platform. It was covered in a delicate, pink flowered and blue bird patterned chintz. A fringed wrap was draped over it. There was a circle of beeswax votive candles and strewn rose petals around the exterior that had been disturbed and trampled.
“It’s facing the window, which is nothing strange in itself, as a méridienne is intended for day rest and its directionality would mean there was ample sunlight across the seasons,” continued Holmes. “But if she was sensitive to light, why would she place it here? A conundrum.”
“Our theory is that she let in this stranger for an assignation,” said Ingram. “It was to be all romantic like. That’s why she locked the room all the time…she sneaks him in while everybody is either at dinner or serving dinner. She sneaks him out in the wee hours of the morning and nobody would be the wiser.”
“That’s simply not true!” protested Brackenridge from the door. “I’ll ask you to withdraw that statement. Sophie had no interest in the young men who came to court her and, dare I say it, she considered them all without exception to be frightful bores.”
“Well, something interested her in this one,” continued Ingram, “She must have met him in London. I’d say she’s known him for eighteen months to be exact. Blue must have been his favourite colour. He rejected her and then she stabbed him. As he fell, he grabbed onto the edge of the cabinet and it toppled on top of him.”
“There are more subtleties to this case than a simple intrigue gone wrong,” said Holmes, “Besides…there would have been a deep incision in the palm of her hand had she been the perpetrator.”
He suddenly slid his hand along the lengths of the chaise longue and withdrew not the expected coin or hairpin but two objects—a letter in a crumpled envelope and a small vial with a stopper that only had a few drops of liquid remaining in the bottom.
He opened the letter carefully then gently shook out some of the contents onto his palm. Grainy. Crystals. Sweet. Sugar.
He read out the scrawling on the correspondence which said, “I know who you are and what you done and have took back what is mine.”
The letter lacked a signature.
“Fascinating wouldn’t you say?” said Holmes, “This letter was enough to panic her and have her dash upstairs but what was it of value that would cause her such consternation?”
“Seems like we may have another theory,” postulated Ingram, “This man is either a blackmailer or dare I say it…something worse. It stands to reason that whatever happened, it happened either last night or eighteen months ago.”
“Now, look here,” cried Brackenridge in a pained voice, “I told you before. My sister did not keep the company of men.”
“But perhaps last night this one kept company with her,” replied Ingram.
Brackenridge emitted another howl of protest.
“This case is getting more intriguing by the minute,” said Holmes, holding up the vial to the light. “If I’m correct, she’s been using belladonna drops to dilate her pupils to give them that misty-eyed look. It’s a common tool used for the purposes of seduction. That’s why she finds it difficult to be out in bright sunlight.”
“There…it’s just as I said before,” insisted the police sergeant, shifting his ever-malleable theory with every revelation of a clue.
“Ingram, you’ll need to send this to Dr Lambert at once, as its contents
will impact on Miss Sophie’s treatment; if she hasn’t already passed away. She is most certainly the victim of a poisoning—now all we have to deduce is whether it’s self-induced or administered by a third party. For I believe she swallowed the entire contents of this bottle.”
“What did I tell you!” exclaimed Ingram, “He either tried to hush her up and forced it down her throat or she did it herself out of shame. We’ll get it examined at once, Mr Holmes. Constable?”
Bennington stepped inside the wardrobe, pocketed the vial and then walked out.
Brackenridge had now slumped to the floor and was holding his head in his hands in obvious distress.
“I see your sister never finished anything she started,” Holmes called out to Brackenridge without any thought to comforting him.
“Yes…” stammered the young man, “How did you stumble on that?”
“My dear fellow, I stumble on nothing,” said Holmes caustically, “I painstakingly deduce as you also could you if you paid attention.”
“Oh, come, Holmes. The man’s in shock,” I said. “Anybody’s attention span would be compromised in circumstances such as these.”
“But you’re not in shock. Your faculties are uncorrupted and yet you’ve not gleaned an iota of detail from this crime scene. Take this, for example,” he said, indicating a stack of books by the chaise longue, “There are seven books here. Each one of them has a bookmark that extends no further than a quarter way through. There’s a thick layer of dust on the top book and any other covers that protrude out from underneath. This indicates they’ve been here for some time and that she has not been compelled to either return them to her library or to finish reading them.”
“You’re right, of course,” I replied with a sigh, “You make it sound so easy in hindsight but it evidently is not.”
My capitulation seemed to satisfy him momentarily, and then his features took on that hard edged look again as he moved carefully from here to there.
“Miss Brackenridge would lie here, staring out of this window. What is out there that could be so enchanting?”
He inspected the sash windows. It also had interior shutters like the bedroom window and was similarly locked from the inside. I followed his gaze. Outside in the drizzle, stood a chestnut tree. Its branches extended from the trunk like the long necks of a Hydra. The foliage was yellowing and the leaves were dropping to the ground. Beyond that was a sunken garden.
“Come now, Holmes, isn’t it time to address ‘the elephant in the museum’, if I were to invoke Dostoevsky?” I said, pointing to the dead man.
“And he was invoking Krylov, yes, Dr M? So, perhaps it would be apt to let metaphors flourish…Our dead man is not quite ‘a skeleton in the cupboard’ but he could very well be the ‘skeleton in HER cupboard’,” said Holmes wryly. He did not appear to accord any sympathy to the young woman who lay in the hospital, possibly dying.
I didn’t laugh but turned my attention, at last, to the deceased man.
The glass doors in the cabinet had shattered—he was lying in a puddle of coagulated blood that had pooled and spattered around his head. A shard of glass penetrated the side of his neck, dividing the jugular vein and the carotid artery. His bald head and his puffy blue-tinged face were clearly distinguishable. There were haemorrhages on the surface of his blue vacant eyes. I couldn’t see anything below his throat.
His life force had corroded but I still felt a tingling sensation and I saw something that Holmes didn’t—a faint glow, like a will-o’-the-wisp. It stayed for nary a second then faded away like water droplets rapidly evaporating into the atmosphere. I also felt an energy signature of another sort that made me stop in my tracks. Wickedness. It bore investigating, but not now.
In the interim, Holmes had been examining the back of the cabinet with a magnifying glass he had withdrawn from his coat pocket.
“Ingram, has the crime scene been sketched and photographed?”
“Yes, Mr Holmes. We’ve been quite thorough.”
“So we can lift this cabinet up now?”
“Indeed.”
“Well then, do your duty, my fine fellows.” he continued casually, “Oh, and be careful not to cut yourself on the smashed vodka bottle in his pocket.”
The cabinet was extremely heavy but Ingram and I managed to lift it off the corpse and ease it back under the window, matching the legs to the scuff markings on the floor where it had previously stood.
The dead man wasn’t exactly dirty but he was dishevelled. He wore a creased, fur-lined coat over a smudged, side-fastened shirt. He had tight drawstring trousers on his legs and scuffed boots on his feet. Ingram searched the corpse’s coat pockets and withdrew a broken bottle and some fragments of glass. We exchanged a look and shrug of the shoulders that was less about incredulity and more a sheer acceptance of Holmes’s skills.
“If I didn’t know better, Mr Holmes, I would say you witnessed this yourself or have an all-seeing eye trained over the world.”
Holmes didn’t reply. He was absorbed in scrutinising the velvet-lined cabinet shelves carefully, after which he turned his attention to the floor. Amongst the scattered objects was a gold brooch, an unopened packet of pastilles, a turtle-shell comb, a ruby ring, a pair of red leather gloves, opera glasses, a silver bracelet, a bauble necklace, and an illustrated children’s picture book. I could not make out the connection between them.
“Hand me one of those candles will you, my good man?” said Holmes.
I handed him one of the votive candles and he withdrew a box of matches from his obviously deep pockets that probably also held four-and-twenty blackbirds, a cake that said “eat me” and more. But I am being ridiculous and I digress.
He lit the wick and peered into the cabinet for a few minutes, sweeping the candle side to side over the shelves so the flame illuminated something…I was not sure what. Then he reached for the scattered objects and began to install them again in a very precise order.
“How do you know which one goes where?” I asked.
“There is a slight indentation in the velvet which defines the shape of where each object rested. But more importantly, even though the cabinet faces away from the window and towards the chaise longue, the pervading sunlight will still cause fabric to lighten over time. Therefore, the velvet around each object has faded ever so slightly leaving a deeper shadow in the shape of each object. ”
“Brilliant.” I could not help myself. I uttered the word spontaneously.
“Yes. I know.”
“But look…this children’s illustrated book is the first object she placed in this cabinet. Why? Nothing seemingly has a relationship yet this object is probably the most important.”
Holmes opened up the book onto its front pages and read an inscription. He held it up and called out, “Brackenridge, what do you know of this?”
The young man peered around the side of the door and his features changed from worry to surprise.
“I can’t swear it to be so but it looks like a book that belonged to me that disappeared when I was about ten or eleven. Whatever is it doing here?”
Holmes didn’t respond but his eyes swept over all the items.
“There’s something missing. Can you tell me what was standing right here?” he asked, pointing to an empty spot on the top shelf.
“I don’t know,” said Brackenridge from the doorway, “She never let me in here.”
“It was oval shaped.”
“I’m sorry, Mr Holmes, I really don’t know.”
“Have a look at the order in which these objects were arranged. The cheapest and oldest, to the most expensive and newest, yet this oval shape had pride of place.”
Holmes’s face suddenly brightened. He scribbled a few words onto a note pad with a pencil he withdrew from a pocket of his coat and then tore out a piece of paper, folded it and handed it to the
policeman by his side.
“Ingram. Our work here is done. If you would be so kind as to despatch a telegram to Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard, I would be exceptionally grateful. This note will provide the contents of the telegram.”
“Yes, of course. We’ll clear the body first though.”
“Well, I’m done,” said Holmes, turning to go.
“Mr Brackenridge,” said Ingram, “You’re only permitted to travel between the hospital and these premises until we resolve this matter to my satisfaction.”
“Yes, of course. Right now, my place is at my sister’s side.”
“Very well then. I’ll be off. Mr Holmes, please escort your client downstairs and tell him he’s under strict instructions not to enter this room again until we pronounce it habitable.”
“I’m sure my client only wants to get to the bottom of this matter and will comply with your request.”
Ingram moved out of the bedroom and down the hall towards the stairway and Holmes feigned to follow. However, as soon as the police sergeant was out of sight, Holmes doubled back, seized Brackenridge by the sleeve of his coat and demanded with a hiss, “Now tell us the whole truth. Where’s the real dress Sophie was wearing when you found her?”
Toby’s face fell. “How did you know?”
“You mentioned you had discovered your sister not much after eight. The hospital is five miles away so allowing for thirty minutes of search and discovery you should have got there no later than 8:45, travelling at forty-five miles an hour. Yet you got there at 9:30: that leaves forty-five minutes unaccounted for. Now, show me where you placed the items.”
We returned to Sophie’s bedroom and Toby reluctantly climbed into the cold fireplace, then put his arm up the chimney. He withdrew a slightly sooty pair of shoes with blood on their soles, and a ruffled blue lace dress with dried blood on its front. Holmes laid the dress on the bed and stretched it out.
Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not Page 25
