“Did you find the answers you were seeking?” he asked mockingly.
“Yes.”
“As did I. While you’ve been floating about the netherworld I succeeded in solving this case.
“How?”
“It’s said that eyes are the windows of the soul but what if windows were the eyes to the heart of this crime?” he said obliquely.
I had no idea what he was talking about but I did see from the gleam in his eye and his self-important and gratified manner he had come upon an answer. I caught the corresponding vibrational energetic shift—what I could only describe as victory.
“You piqued my curiosity,” he said to me, “That rarely happens. I can usually discern a person’s makeup and character in minutes; merely by observing the intricacies in their gait, their countenance, state of dress and demeanour. You, however, are a delightfully complex and intriguing archetype I have not observed in such close quarters before. I’ll gladly add a new occupation and description to my catalogue—the Initiate. Bordering on the delusional, yet inexplicably promised to a path of healing.
“Come,” he said suddenly clapping his hands, “We must assemble the players, although in this instance, I won’t be inviting the constabulary until later. We should follow Miss Brackenridge’s example from yesterday and take a stroll through the garden.”
“I did not take you for a child of nature.”
“I couldn’t think of anything more detestable. In fact, I’ll not lament when I return to the gas lamps and sewers of London. “
“I thought you had retired to Sussex.”
“Under duress for a restorative stay.”
For the first time we chortled together.
Holmes, the Brackenridges and I stood in the sunken garden at the back of the house, surrounded by azalea and rhododendron bushes and two red oak trees. Beyond that behind the break wall were other mature trees, trimmed shrubbery and an apple orchard. Sophie was garbed in a charming apricot dress and seemed in good spirits.
Holmes had need of a ladder and the gardener’s was broken. He had determined that the nearest one was in the broom squire’s cottage not far up the road and had sent me to fetch it. I had entered a yard full of well-cared caged animals—rats, weasels, ferrets and stoats. Latch, the scruffy but friendly broom squire whose job it was to collect heather and birch twigs to make brooms for a living, was cooing to a mink sitting on his lap. He gladly lent me his ladder with comment, “Glad to help out, Mr ‘Olmes, for the favour he did me in bringing me precious Ellie back,” he said, raising the mink up in the air as if he was toasting an occasion.
I had staggered back to the house with the ladder and, under Holmes’s instructions, had propped it on the outside wall underneath the walk-in wardrobe. Sophie and her brother looked baffled.
“Miss Brackenridge, can you tell me what happened just before the incident in the wardrobe?”
She rubbed her neck and looked at us plaintively.
“No, Mr Holmes. I still have no memory of it. Everything in my mind is muddled and far away, as if I’m caught in fog and don’t know what direction to take to get back home.”
“I see. Well perhaps I can hasten your memory into recollection…but I fear you’ll need to sit down for this.”
We all sat down tentatively on the garden bench underneath the chestnut tree. The siblings looked fearful, clutching each other’s hands. Holmes remained standing. He calmly lit his pipe. I smelled the revolting acrid fumes of a black shag blend, and took in a few gulps of clean air in an attempt to clear the scent from my nasal cavity.
The tree was gradually stripping itself bare and so I could see its branches from underneath extending upwards, and slivers of sky where the canopy was broken. A rake was leaning on the tree trunk, poised over a large pile of autumn leaves the gardener had not yet swept up.
After a few minutes, Holmes spoke up again.
“How do I put this delicately, Brackenridge…Your sister is a thief and a murderer!” he declared with great forcefulness.
“Now see here…” cried Brackenridge, jumping to his feet, “I hired you to find out the truth; not to invent it!”
“And I’m giving it to you.”
“I don’t understand,” said Sophie forlornly, “How can that be? I promise you, Mr Holmes. I don’t have murder in my heart.”
“Everybody has the capacity to kill under the right circumstances,” said Holmes impatiently, with a look of contempt on his face, “Even I.”
“I’ll gladly be held accountable if it be so it but I simply don’t remember,” she pleaded.
“Then let me recount the days leading up to the murder for that is what it was.
“Miss Brackenridge, you have been petulant and aggrieved for most of your life. You had a sense of self-entitlement and extended no care towards others. And then you started wearing blue eighteen months ago. That was a turning point.”
Sophie sat quietly with a lost expression on her face. Brackenridge began protesting again but Holmes silenced him with a raised hand.
“You’ve done an admirable job of protecting her but you need to confront the truth.”
The young man looked shaken.
“You said yourself that Sophie found her life tedious. Her days were spent in idleness, searching for stimulation, rather than searching for meaning. And then one day she found it. She was about thirteen and you must have been about eleven. She asked you if she could have your book and you did not give it to her so when you weren’t watching, she stole it. That was when her crime spree began. She began to steal other things—a fan from a visitor, coins from the cook, a hair ribbon from the maid…Thievery excited her. It turned her towards even more sensation-seeking acts. Gave her a feeling of pleasure and power…albeit temporary. She needed to do it again. But pilfering from a brother or a servant was easy. If things went missing, one would just blame the help. What if she did it in the outside world? And so, once she was old enough to go on outings, she continued. At first it was a pack of pastilles from a corner shop. And then a handkerchief…Then gradually she became more brazen and the corresponding stakes and risks got higher.
“Once she grew up and sought some independence, I’m afraid that nearly every time she visited London she sought to steal something. She secreted the stolen items in her portmanteau. After all, nobody would suspect a lady of quality. And she was correct in this assertion. The blame would invariably fall on some innocent ragamuffin that happened to be in the vicinity.
“The curiosity cabinet became a resting place for her trophies. She would arrange the items in the order in which they were stolen, and every time she sat down and gazed at the objects from her chaise longue, she would relive the excitement of each deed.
“But there was one piece missing…this one had pride of place, and that is where the story begins anew.
“Eighteen months ago, Sophie Brackenridge performed the ultimate robbery. It was a crime of opportunity and one of great irony. She stole a package from an associate of the Sugarman Gang.
“The sugar in the letter…” I spluttered, making a connection.
“Yes, yes. We’ll come to that in a moment.”
“The Sugarman Gang is a burglary ring that fences jewellery, watches and other stolen goods. Scotland Yard has special interest in these blighters and has compiled a rogue’s gallery of sketches and photographs of anyone in league with them, including one bald-headed Russian jewellery thief named Vasily Korotkin, the dead miscreant in your wardrobe. The reason I know this is because I remember seeing a sketch of a stolen bracelet in The London Gazette a few years ago…one of the many items in the cabinet upstairs. I commit the most mundane things to memory in order to exercise it properly and improve my recall. Inspector Lestrade confirmed several of the items as being stolen from various London shops. He also confirmed the identity of the dead man in the wardrobe.�
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“But what would I want with a gang of thieves?” asked Sophie, “And for that matter, I’m not interested in precious stones. I’d rather gaze at a polished pebble from a stream than gaze into the eye of a diamond.”
Her brother turned towards her abruptly. He looked bewildered. And I knew why. The expensive contents in the jewellery case in her wardrobe spoke to the opposite of her claim.
“I’m coming to that…” continued Holmes,
“About two years ago you stole a precious object from Korotkin. I am surmising it would have been wrapped up in his pocket. He was passing a shop and saw he was about to be confronted by a gang of ruffians up ahead so he slipped inside and hid the package in a place from which he could easily retrieve it later. You happened to be there and witnessed him doing so. While he stepped outside for a moment, you took the opportunity to seize the item and stow it in your portmanteau. A few minutes later, with altercation avoided, Korotkin went to retrieve the object but it was gone. All he remembered was seeing a young woman to whom he had tipped his hat and smiled as he was going in and she was going out, and he knew you were the likely culprit.
“And correct me if I’m wrong…”
“I can’t correct you. This is new information to me.”
“When you returned home, you unwrapped the package and promptly became smitten with the object that lay inside, for it was the most breathtaking thing you had ever seen. It was blue.”
“But what was it?” I insisted.
“In time,” said Holmes, in such a way that I tapped my foot in impatience.
“It took all that time for Korotkin to track you down to Haslemere. He recognised you from a distance in London, and saw you were wearing a blue dress and carrying your familiar bag but he was too far away to pursue you. From then on, there were sightings in London of a woman in the blue dress that was always in the vicinity of a felony. The Sugarman Gang was apprised of this situation, kept an eye out for you and passed information on to him.
“And then a few weeks ago, he finally found you. He followed you to Haslemere by train. The broom squire told me he had hurried off a bald-headed itinerant a few days before the incident in the wardrobe, which leads me to conclude he had been watching and circumnavigating the house at night for an opportunity to get to you. The dilemma was that you rarely left your home.
“So several night ago Korotkin concocted a plan to get you to reveal where the object was hidden. He arranged for the letter to be delivered to you at precisely eight o’clock while you were at dinner. To intimidate you further, he put sugar in the envelope as a misdirect and a warning you were dealing with a highly dangerous criminal gang that had you in its sights. He knew you’d never give the object up willingly and, if he were found on the grounds, then he would invariably be arrested as a vagrant, a thief or even worse. He knew your first instinct would be to protect the treasure if you still had it in your possession. The reason the kitchen door was ajar at noon was because he slipped into the house and hid under your bed. He knew which room was yours by watching the gaslights being turned on and off at night and he must certainly have seen your silhouette in your upstairs third floor window.
“He had a small bottle of vodka with him to keep himself from falling asleep as he waited. Russians open their bottles by striking the bottom of it with the flat of their hand, which pops the cork. Contrary to popular belief that vodka is odourless; cheap vodka with its many impurities does have a rather unpleasant smell, similar to rubbing alcohol. Although it’s difficult to detect on the breath, vodka often emits an unpleasant aroma from the pores. I found this out when I looked under the bed where he lay hidden for nigh on eight hours, waiting for you. I also found the cork.”
He withdrew a cork from his pocket and held it up. We stared at it, voiceless and unmoving.
“Just after eight o’clock after you had received the letter, you rushed upstairs and unlocked the door to your walk-in wardrobe but forgot to lock it again behind you. You then climbed on top of the cabinet and pushed up the window, then crawled onto the branch of the chestnut and along the limb until you found your special hiding place. This was why your knees were scraped and why your stockings were torn and contained tiny splinters of bark. You also tore a fragment of lace from your dress when it snagged on a twig. I didn’t see it the first time I visited because the view was misty from the rain. But while I was staring out of the window the second time, I saw it fluttering in the breeze. It’s still up there if you care to look.”
We all looked up. I didn’t see a thing.
“Your little treasure was exactly where you left it. You must have been relieved. Then you crawled back and climbed onto the windowsill only to find Korotkin waiting to confront you.”
“I can’t remember, I can’t remember,” wailed Sophie with tears streaming down her face.
“You can’t remember or you don’t want to remember,” said Holmes coldly.
He continued. “Korotkin advanced. It is here we must understand that despite being a heavy drinker and used to alcohol, he was inebriated after eight hours with no food to line his stomach. He was probably not in complete command of his faculties when you did the only thing you could think of. You sat down on the windowsill and, with all your might, you pushed the heavy cabinet on top of him with your legs. The glass shattered. Nobody heard the cabinet fall because they were at the other end of the house and several floors down. So he wouldn’t survive, you then jumped on the back of the cabinet with all your weight. Indeed his sternum and several ribs were broken and a piece of glass was driven into his neck. He died in minutes from a combination of blood loss and crush asphyxia because the weight of the cabinet impeded his ability to breathe.
“You, Miss Sophie Brackenridge,” Holmes cried, “Are guilty!”
The young woman wept. Her brother held her tightly, comforting her and muttering darkly, “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. You can’t prove anything.”
“A close examination on the back panel on the cabinet clearly showed several faint shoe impressions, which I matched to the pair Sophie was wearing and which you later hid in the chimney. Furthermore, when she jumped off the fallen cabinet and onto the floor, she picked up some blood trace on her shoes and left some faint bloody footprints as she attempted to move away.”
“And now, Doctor, since you’re an amoureux de la nature and I clearly am not, I suggest you climb that ladder and onto that tree branch to where I’m pointing.”
I was speechless but did as he had commanded. Before long I was sitting on the sturdy limb that extended to the window of the walk-in wardrobe.
“What am I looking for?”
“The robin’s nest.”
“I won’t disturb a nesting bird. It’s sacrilege.”
“It’s time the robin flew south for the winter anyway. Isn’t that what you said to me once, Mr Brackenridge? It’s late in the season…”
I slid carefully down the branch towards the nest. The little red-breasted brù-dhearg flew away in fright. I pried the nest from the branch, clutched it to my chest, then clambered down the branch towards the ladder again and descended to the lawn.
Without a word, I handed the nest to Holmes. He moved some feathers and twigs aside, withdrew a blue egg and held it up to the light.
It was not a robin’s egg. This one was about three inches in height and looked more like an exceptionally expensive Easter egg. It was enameled and reeded in royal blue and encrusted with gold, rose-cut diamonds and sapphires, as well as a diamond pushpiece. It was simply exquisite.
“Magnificent,” I gasped.
The others looked stunned. I glanced over to Miss Brackenridge. She was mesmerised by the treasure in Holmes’s hand.
“This is the Blue Serpent Clock Egg, handcrafted by Peter Carl Fabergé himself and intended for the Tsar, Alexander III of the Russian Imperial family.”
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sp; “But there’s no clock in it,” I observed.
“That’s because there’s great confusion about this piece. There were actually two blue clock eggs. The second one in translucent blue was supposedly made and delivered to the Tsar in 1887. That one is currently held at the Anichkov Palace. It stands on a base of gold with an opalescent white finish and is about seven inches in height. It has three panels on its pedestal that feature motifs representing the arts and sciences. It has a diamond-encrusted snake coiling around the supporting stem and pointing its head and forked tongue upwards to the clock hour on a white, rotating ribbon of enamel that surrounds the egg. It also had gold handles.
“This one is the true 1887 Imperial Easter Egg, also known by the same name as the other. However, the more famous Blue Serpent Clock egg was crafted two years earlier by Mikhail Perkhin of Fabergé’s shop.”
“Then this is a fake.” Brackenridge said with relief.
“No, this is the second lost egg.”
“How do you know?”
“The 1887 egg had sapphires in it. This one has sapphires. The Tsar paid 2160 rubles for it instead of the expected 6000 rubles…why? Because it wasn’t finished yet and the money paid was an installment. He would pay the balance when it was complete and then would take possession of it. He didn’t get the opportunity to do so because it was stolen before Fabergé had a chance to add the pedestal and all its embellishments.
“Korotkin was the thief. He hid it for many years and then finally smuggled it across the continent eighteen months ago. He had made contact with the Sugarman Gang in London who were going to fence it for him, probably to a member of the English aristocracy who was prepared to pay a king’s ransom to add the coveted item to a private collection. Your sister stole it first.
“You had every intention of killing yourself that night, Miss Brackenridge, which is why you put on your favourite blue lace dress, which is why you sprinkled rose petals around your chaise longue and surrounded it with candles. You’ve wanted to die for a long time but you wanted to do it on your own terms like a heroine from a romantic poem or drowned Ophelia from a Millais painting. You sought death but you wanted control over your death. At first you thought to make yourself look like death. It was not the fashion affectation I first suspected—it was a rehearsal, which is why you put the rice powder on your face and exacerbated the blue circles under your eyes and dilated your pupils. You wanted to look beautiful in death as you did in life. The problem was that Korotkin forced you to change your plans. You hid the egg in the robin’s nest several weeks before your planned departure date, which is why the robin never left. She was still keeping that extraordinarily beautiful egg warm on instinct but it never hatched. Nobody would ever find it in a robin’s nest until well after you were gone and, if and when they did, it would be a grand mystery as to how it got there.
Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not Page 27
