Holmes nodded. “Thank you for your assistance.”
He turned on his heel and I followed as he headed for the door. Once outside he glanced at me.
“What do you think?”
“I had come to like what I knew of Melrose,” I said. “But this casts him in a different light. Why, it sounds almost as if he collected those I.O.U.s for some other purpose.”
“Such as bringing pressure to bear on the signers in later years?”
I was distressed but could not deny that the thought had crossed my mind.
Holmes shook his head. “No, I think Montgomery has the right of it. The man was something of a hypocrite. He may have believed that, as an adult, his gambling was reasonable. He never wagered more than he could afford, but he thought a boy should not take such a risk, the more so as they had indeed come to grief.” He shrugged. “However, let us be on our way. I will just mention that we plan to return to London, and we can depart for the station now, since there should be a train sooner or later.”
In the event, we were not required to take a train. A car was provided, and in an hour we descended to the familiar pavement outside 221 Baker Street. Weary to my bones I headed upstairs, pausing only to let Mrs. Hudson know we were home and required sustenance as soon as it could be provided. We ate and drank when that arrived, both of us saying little beyond the commonplace before we retired to our beds. It had been an enervating day, and sleep could not come too soon, so far as I was concerned.
* * * *
The next two days I was out and about, seeing my patients, consulting with another doctor about one of his patients—whose father was a patient of mine with an ailment that seemed to run in the family—and that second night I was very late home, arriving after eight and disinclined to do anything but eat and fall into my bed.
Holmes saw my exhaustion and forbore to do more than nod a greeting and pour me a cup of tea.
When I rose the next morning, I had all my usual energy back, and greeted Holmes at the breakfast table with a smile and a request that he pass the marmalade. I saw his countenance lighten.
“You are yourself again, Watson. You know you should not overdo your work. I do not like to see you so debilitated.”
I shrugged. “Nor I to feel that way, but I am a doctor, Holmes, and there are times when the needs of the patients must come first. However, today I need not leave the house before this afternoon. Have you any news?”
“Of a minor nature, but that is still some gain. The final I.O.U., the one we could not trace, proved to be that of a John Elliot, the lad of whom Montgomery spoke. I was able to trace him. Montgomery said he had gone to India, and so he had. For many years he worked for the private company, Eastern Developments, that took the place of the old East India Company, and did well for himself. He married and has two children, but a year ago he retired to England, purchased a house in Folkestone, and now lives there with his wife.”
“You have the address?”
“I do, and am going there this afternoon. If you should wish to accompany me, Watson, I would be pleased.”
I stood up. “I planned to put off the few appointments I have until later, however, I can see patients this morning and leave the afternoon free. I can be back for lunch around midday and go with you after that. Will that suit, Holmes?”
An inclination of his head said that it would, and I hurried to gather up overcoat and medical bag. With those in hand, I trotted down the stairs and out into a pleasant day. A little chilly, but windless and fine. I went briskly though a morning’s appointments and found myself able to return home at the very time I said. Holmes was there, and food was on the table, so I set to with an excellent appetite.
Once I was done I looked at my friend. “The one-thirty train?”
“Yes, I purchased tickets while I was passing the station earlier this morning, so we have only to board and be on our way.”
We arrived in time to catch the train. Newspapers kept us occupied for the short journey and we emerged in Folkestone, where a taxicab swept us through the streets to our destination—which proved to be a large house in rather cramped grounds. I knocked on the door and we waited.
A short, stout woman opened it. From behind her a man’s voice enquired who it was, and she looked at us.
Holmes stepped forward. “I am Sherlock Holmes and this is Dr. Watson. We wish to speak to Mr. Elliot, Mr. John Elliot, if that is convenient?”
The man appeared behind the lady and moved her gently aside.
“I am John Elliot. What do you want?”
I spoke up. “We have been talking to an old acquaintance of yours, a Mr. Montgomery.”
Elliot, who was as short and stout as the lady we assumed to be his wife, looked blank. “Montgomery? I know no one of that name.”
Holmes intervened. “Then perhaps you recall a teacher named Collin Melrose, sir? He died recently and some of his possessions have come into the hands of one who desires us to make enquiries.”
He may not have remembered Montgomery, but we saw from his reaction that he recalled Melrose very well. He stiffened, drew himself up to his full height, and with eyes brightening in anger he surveyed us contemptuously, much as a man might look at aphids on his prize roses. “You may leave. If you do not, I shall call the police and lay a complaint against you,” he snapped.
Holmes regarded him coolly. “A complaint over what, Mr. Elliot? As for the police, we are well known to them. I am a consulting detective and have helped the police with their enquiries a number of times. Call them if you wish. Should they ask why I am here, I will tell them a murder was committed, and I have been requested to ask what you may know of it.”
John Elliot stared. The woman moaned in horror, and after a few seconds he swung the door open. “Whose murder?”
Holmes made no immediate reply, but walked past him, led me into an attractive parlor, seated himself, waved me to a seat and looked up at the householder. “Sit down, Mr. Elliot, and I shall explain.” Both seated themselves and gazed at Holmes, who asked, “Is this lady your wife?” The man nodded. “Then it is fitting that she also hear what I have to say.”
And with that he began the tale of Collin Melrose, his death, his bequest, and our investigations.
Elliot and his wife listened in silence until Holmes reached the I.O.U. that had been found. “It was for five pounds, and while it was marked as ‘paid in full,’ he yet retained it. We wish to know why. It took us some time, but at last we spoke to a Mr. Montgomery who had been another of your teachers at the time you signed the note-of-hand. He told us that Melrose insisted on retaining the note and that you had confessed your fear that this was for some unpleasant purpose. I must ask you now, was that so?”
Elliot shook his head. “At the time I could see no reason why he so adamantly refused to return it, and I admit to wondering if he planned to make use of it against me in some way. However, he never did.”
His wife made a sort of clucking sound that I realized was amusement. “Five pounds.” Her disgust was obvious. “We could have paid him ten times—no, a hundred times that—and never worried. Besides, it was a boy’s folly and no crime. The school may have forbidden their pupils to gamble, but the law never did. What could this man do that would bring down trouble upon us once my husband left the school?”
“He could have said to your employers that your husband was a gambler. He could have suggested they examine the accounts, for a man does not have to be a proven criminal to be suspected, and many employers are swift to do so,” Holmes suggested.
Her abrupt smile was wide and contemptuous. “He’d have caught cold at that, Mister. John came out to work for his uncle, met and married me, and my father, too, worked for the company. John rose because he works hard, and he’s clever. They knew that. You think they’d listen to some stranger? Some teacher out of his past saying that once, as a lad, he gambled and had to borrow to repay the debt? They’d have laughed him out of the city.”
�
�That may be so,” Holmes agreed. “It could yet have been embarrassing.”
“To this Melrose, maybe, not to my man. It would have been easy enough to suggest he was here to blackmail. Oh, yes, there’s things that could be said or done from our side as would have been even more damaging to this Melrose, and I’d have done them did he come to make trouble.”
My gaze slipped sideways to her husband. He looked at her with a compound of pride and amusement. I had no doubt that had Melrose been a blackmailer, Mrs. Elliot would have sent him to the right-a-bout without difficulty, and with no compunction whatsoever. A formidable lady—and her husband both knew that and approved.
Holmes surveyed them both. “I have no reservations that you would,” he agreed. “However, I do not think Melrose was of that kind, no matter what my questions. Your old teacher described him as a sanctimonious man, but not a blackmailer. And those in the village where he lived were fond of and trusted him. His savings were left for a scholarship, and he served on the board of a fund that provided assistance to a number of lads.”
Elliot stirred. “Yes, I could see that as likely. He wasn’t a bad man, not when I look back, yet it’s true he was one to demand that you did as he said and not as he did. He admitted to me when he called me into his study that he knew of my gambling because he knew those in that occupation. I asked then how it was that I should not gamble, and he should. He said that a man could do as he wished, and he could afford the amounts he spent. A boy must take advice, obey the rules of his school, and not spend money he did not have.”
“A lecture?” I asked, showing my amusement.
“A real jaw,” Elliot confirmed. “I resented it at the time, and I resented still more that he retained my vowel. He said very piously that he would hold it to be sure I did not revert to evil ways, and as I had given my word I would not, I was angry at the suggestion I would break it.” He looked at us. “However, I left school the year after, and never saw him again. Is it likely that so many years later I would hunt Melrose down the length and breadth of the country to commit murder? And for what?”
Holmes nodded. “It is unlikely, but we had to be sure. Paget was the man’s boyhood friend and held him in high esteem. Miss Bibiana Paget is his heir and was devoted to him as an almost-uncle.”
Mrs. Elliot glanced at him. “Tell her nothing of this, then. Let the girl believe her friend was a good man.”
“He was a good man,” I said firmly. “Perhaps he went about some things wrongly, but in the end he did no harm and some good.”
And on that note we parted: we for London, and the Elliots, as they told us, to a Bach recital in the hall nearby. I talked to Holmes in the almost-empty carriage as the train rattled over the rails.
“Where do we go from here? We know now of all the writers of the letters and the I.O.U.s. We know of Montgomery’s coming and goings and the reasons for those. Who is left, Holmes?”
And to that he could say only that when the impossible is excluded…. I knew the rest.
9
By the next morning I bethought myself of a remark heard some time ago. It had been no real evidence, merely an aside, spoken and cut off. Now I advanced it to Holmes, as a pawn is advanced in the opening of a game.
I poured myself a cup of tea, spread honey on my toast and took a large bite, watching my friend. His attention turned to me after several minutes and he laid down his newspaper.
“You have an idea, I see.”
“It may be nothing. It does not directly concern Melrose in any way. It is merely something mentioned by Charles Thompson, with no direct connection to the case. Yet last night I recalled it and I wondered if it might not… if it could…”
“If it could lead us to some item of interest,” Holmes concluded.
“Yes.”
“I think I know what you have recalled. It was mentioned at the time we were just about to depart Stafford Farm, when Thompson said that he and his brother had not been close since he and ‘Livvy D.’ At which point he stated that to be water under the bridge and demanded we leave.”
I nodded. “It was the way he broke off that name. As if the memory was painful, or as if whatever his brother had done was so egregious as to place him beyond the pale, so far as their friendship was concerned.”
Holmes looked thoughtful. “That was so. And before he ordered us to depart, he stated, too, that he and his brother were as chalk and cheese. I think it unlikely the breach between them involved Melrose. Thompson certainly did not suggest that, but it will do no harm to follow it up.”
“Charles Thompson isn’t likely to be helpful on that subject,” I commented.
“No, but while the Thompsons lived in a good suburb, it was bordered by tenements and squalor. Jeff Thompson, in some ways, moved between both such worlds, and I suspect that we may find those who still remember the family and may be able to tell us something.”
And, as we discovered, they could indeed.
* * * *
Late the following afternoon we were permitted entrance to the ramshackle tenement in which an old acquaintance of Jeff Thompson still resided. It was a bare hundred yards in a direct line—but a far greater distance in circumstances—from the Thompson’s former pleasant old house. If I knew anything of boys, the twins would have gravitated to those harsher streets, fairly safe even there, since their father was known to the inhabitants. The old man to whom we were directed acknowledged he had known Charles’s father, accepted a coin, and ushered us into a small room that reeked of tobacco, drink, and a complete lack of housekeeping. I gave no sign of my disgust, for such places are not unfamiliar to any doctor.
The host waved us to sit on the bed, an item frowsy beyond belief. Nevertheless, we sat and he looked us over, head cocked to one side.
“What you want of ole Tim? Sommat about Jeff Thompson, were it? I kin tell you all about him, oh, yes. What you want to know?”
Holmes produced a half sovereign and began to roll it over and over between his fingers. The old man’s gaze fastened on that and his eyes gleamed. “Tell us about Livvy,” Holmes said.
“Livvy?”
“The Livvy Jeff’s son Charles knew.”
A hand came out, crooked suggestively. “An’ if I tell yer, I get that?” His gaze went back to the gleam of gold.
“You do, so long as you tell us everything you know, and answer any questions we have.”
“I’ll tell yer. Yes, I knows who you mean. Livvy D we called her,” he cackled. “That were short for dustbin.” He cackled again. “She ate out’a them, found her drink in them, and at times in winter she slept in ’em. Charlie Thompson, he sort’a palled about wi’ her. She’d bin a scholar er sommat. They’d talk and talk, like a coupl’a old women. Young Frank, him as they called Tommy, he didn’t like it, no, he didn’t. Thought Charlie was his brother an’ should be wi’ him. Reckon he warned Livvy to stay away but she didn’t listen. Guess she should’a.”
“Something happened to her?” I asked.
“Did that. One morning there’s the rag an’ bone man screeching. He come to a bin to take out anything worth taking, and there’s Livvy lying there, blood all over her face and her head broken. A’course we thought she’d fallen down, then crawled into the bin, but young Charlie said it couldn’t a’ happened that way. Showed us the sides was too high, and where her head was broke, that were right across the back. Them as is drunk mostly falls on their face, he said, an’ that’s true.
“I dunno much more, misters. Young Charlie, he went about for ages lookin’ like a week o’ wet Mondays, had some kind a’ falling-out wi’ Frank, and they wasn’t never so close again. Livvy, she were buried on t’ parish, pauper’s grave, like. I know Charlie went there and put flowers a few times. Some’un tole me a while back as he had her dug up an’ moved somewhere else, an’ had a headstone done. Reckon that’d be when his ma died an’ him an’ Frank come inter money. Thas all I know. You gonna pay me now?”
We paid him, leaving him croon
ing over the coin. We tramped out of the building, where even the London air was far sweeter than where we had been. I matched my step to my companion’s, thinking of the tragedies that can be all around, although unknown to most of us.
“Livvy… I would suppose that to have been short for Olivia,” I said at last.
“It seems likely. And while he said that the D was short for her avocation, it may also have been the beginning of her surname. You know how such things arise, Watson. She says her surname as, shall we say, Dunlop, or perhaps Dunstan. And some wit says no, dustbin, and that is what sticks and is used.”
“And Charles liked her, while Frank was jealous. Holmes, do you think…?”
He nodded once. “I do.”
I said nothing. They had been no more than boys, yet out of jealousy one had smashed in the skull of an old woman because she spent more time with his twin that he liked. What had she and the boy discussed? What had they talked about that so engrossed Charles Thompson, that despite his twin’s objections he returned to listen to her over and over? The old man said she was some sort of scholar—I gasped.
“Holmes, this Livvy. What if she genuinely had been a scholar of some sort—and so known to Melrose?”
“That is possible. We need to know more about her, but as yet I see no connection.”
I must have looked downcast as I admitted that I, too, could see no connection.
Holmes rallied me. “More information must be found. If you will, Watson, seek out the parish records. They may give you a name, and then, too, they should say if she was indeed removed to another resting place. If so, her headstone, if there is one, may give us more. I shall ask of others what they may know of her. But first let us eat, for you have a ‘lean and hungry look’ about you.”
I laughed at his Shakespearean quote and pointed out a nearby café. To that we repaired and after eating a well-cooked dish of eggs washed down with strong tea, we parted. I to the parish records office, and Holmes to seek out others who had known either the Thompson family or Livvy Dustbin.
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