The Mammoth Book of the New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes

by Denis O. Smith

  ‘“It is nothing,” returned he, in an angry voice. “I thought I saw someone I knew, at the railway station, that is all. Forget that I asked.”’

  Sherlock Holmes sat for a moment in silence. ‘I take it there was no letter in the parcel that contained the box,’ said he at length.

  ‘No, nor any label on the outside to indicate who or where it had come from.’

  ‘Did you observe where the parcel had been posted?’

  ‘Charing Cross Post Office.’

  ‘Unfortunately, that is not very helpful,’ said Holmes. ‘So many parcels are received there that our chances of tracing any one of them are practically nil. Tell me, Miss Montague,’ he added after a moment, ‘did it seem to you that the parcel was damaged in any way when you received it?’

  ‘Why, yes, it was,’ returned his visitor in surprise. ‘The brown paper it was wrapped in was torn in several places. I pointed this out to the postman, and he said that it had been in that condition when he had received it and must therefore have been mishandled at one of the central sorting offices. As no real damage appeared to have been done to it, however, I gave it no further thought.’

  Holmes nodded and I could see from the little smile of satisfaction upon his face that he had already begun to formulate a theory. ‘Did Captain Jex say where he was staying at present?’ he asked his visitor.

  ‘He mentioned that I might reach him at the Old Ship Inn at Greenwich,’ replied she.

  ‘Very well,’ said Holmes. ‘I shall look into the matter for you. Are you returning to Wharncliffe Crescent now?’

  ‘Yes. Mrs Eardley is coming today, as I mentioned, and I wish to be there when she arrives.’

  Holmes nodded. ‘I shall call at the house this afternoon, Miss Montague. Until then, you must put all thoughts of that wooden box out of your mind. Do not attempt to do anything with it. Indeed, it is probably best if you do not even enter the room which contains the box and you must keep the door firmly closed. Do you understand?’

  _______

  When his visitor had left us, I asked my friend why he was delaying his visit to Norwood until the afternoon.

  ‘Because,’ said he, ‘I wish to go somewhere else first.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Greenwich. Do you wish to come?’

  ‘Certainly. You think, then, that Captain Jex may be able to shed some light on the matter?’

  ‘“Shedding light” scarcely does his position justice, Watson. Captain Jex is almost certainly the pivot around which the whole of the case revolves. Surely that is apparent, if anything is! I doubt we shall get to the bottom of it unless we can lay our hands on him.’

  I was surprised at Holmes’s remark and confess I could not understand his great interest in this man, Jex. But my friend would say no more and I was left to ponder what might be in his mind. Forty minutes later, we boarded the Greenwich train at Charing Cross, and forty minutes after that we were speaking to the landlord of the Old Ship Inn. Our enquiries, however, were met with disappointment. The landlord remembered Captain Jex very well, but informed us that he had paid his bill on Monday, the twentieth, and left that day.

  ‘Did he leave a forwarding address?’ asked Holmes, but the manager shook his head.

  ‘He told me that if anyone came looking for him, I was to say that he had gone to stay with Captain McNeill; but he gave no address.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Holmes in a philosophical tone, as we walked to the railway station, ‘Captain Jex’s disappearance is no more than I had expected; but we could not neglect the possibility of finding him still here, however slight the chance. Now we had best get down to Norwood without further delay. You will come?’

  ‘Most certainly,’ I said. I was keen to see what my friend might learn at Norwood. He appeared to have some very definite theory as to what lay behind the facts we had heard from Miss Montague. What this theory might be, I could not imagine, but knowing my friend’s remarkable abilities as I did, I could not doubt that, like a ship following the Pole Star, his course was set unerringly for the solution of the mystery.

  A ten-minute walk from Norwood Junction brought us to Wharncliffe Crescent, a pleasant tree-lined road of attractive modern villas, set back a little behind neat front gardens. As we turned the corner, however, my friend stopped. Some way ahead of us, a small knot of people was assembled on the pavement and a uniformed policeman stood on duty.

  ‘Halloa!’ cried Holmes. ‘This looks a bad business, Watson! Surely Miss Montague has not ignored the instructions I gave her?’

  We hurried forward and, as we did so, a tall, burly man in a light raincoat and soft-brimmed hat emerged from the house in front of which the crowd was gathered, and I recognised Inspector Athelney Jones of Scotland Yard.

  ‘Mr Holmes!’ cried he in surprise, as we met him at the gate. ‘I don’t know how you got here so quickly, but, take it from me, you’ve wasted your time.’

  ‘What has happened?’ asked Holmes.

  ‘Another death. Heart failure again, by the look of it. There’s no reason for me to be here, really, but two deaths in three days sounded a little suspicious, so, as I happened to be at Norwood Police Station, I thought I’d best take a look. However, there’s nothing in it. It’s obviously just some sort of family weakness, because, of course, the dead man and woman were related.’

  I saw Holmes’s face fall. ‘Is it Miss Montague?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, no, she’s all right. She’s just been telling me what she told you earlier. It’s Furnival’s sister that’s died. Come inside and I’ll show you. Ask these people to move along, will you, Constable,’ he said to the policeman at the gate. ‘There’s nothing to see here.’

  We followed the inspector into the house and found Miss Montague in the drawing-room with a middle-aged woman, introduced to us as Mrs Loveday, a neighbour. In a few words, Holmes’s client described to us what had occurred.

  ‘Mrs Eardley arrived soon after I returned home,’ she began. ‘She seemed in an irritable mood, and declared that the house looked untidy and could do with a good dusting, which was not true. “There’s no point letting the house go to rack and ruin just because your uncle has died,” she said, and began brushing and dusting noisily. Shortly afterwards, Mrs Loveday called and, a little later, when she and I were talking in here, I heard Mrs Eardley open the dining-room door. I went out to speak to her. “That is the room in which Uncle died,” I said. “I wish the door to remain closed.” “Nonsense!” said she, and would not be contradicted, so I left her to do what she wished. For a few minutes, we heard her clattering about in there, then there came the most dreadful scream, like that of a soul in torment, followed by complete silence. We ran in there and found Mrs Eardley stone dead on the floor, laid out full length, as Captain Jex had been. I at once looked for that horrible box and saw that she had been doing something with it; for I had left it on the sideboard, firmly closed, and now it stood on the dining-table, with its lid flung back. I immediately sent for the doctor, and when he had examined Mrs Eardley’s body we carried it upstairs to the spare bedroom. I have not touched the box, Mr Holmes, and the dining-room door has remained firmly closed again since Mrs Eardley’s death.’

  ‘You have acted correctly, Miss Montague. Now, I hope, we can bring this unfortunate business to a close. Have you a cardboard box in the house, big enough, say, to contain the wooden box?’

  ‘I have a shoe-box, if that would suffice.’

  ‘That would be ideal. If you could also provide me with a ball of twine, a pair of scissors and a long-handled broom, I should be obliged.’

  Holmes and Miss Montague left the room, but were back again in a couple of minutes, with the items Holmes had mentioned; then he, Athelney Jones and I opened the dining-room door and entered that fatal room. It was a square room of modest size, with a window which overlooked the back garden. In the centre of the room was a table, to the left a sideboard and, in an alcove by the fireplace, a large, heavy piece of furniture,
consisting of a cupboard above and drawers below. Upon the table stood the carved box, the arrival of which at this ordinary suburban house had begun the series of mysterious and dreadful events.

  ‘I’m a busy man, Mr Holmes,’ said Jones in a self-important tone, ‘and I can’t afford to waste any more time on this business. So, unless you can show me in the next two minutes that there is something of a criminal nature involved in it, I shall be off, and leave you and Miss Montague to deal with her precious box!’

  ‘Very well,’ returned Holmes in an affable tone. ‘If you would stand over there with Dr Watson, I shall demonstrate the matter for you.’ He placed the items Miss Montague had given him on the table, then, taking the shoe-box, from which he had removed the lid, and the broom, which he held by the brush end, he crouched on the floor, in front of the large cupboard.

  For a moment, he peered into the dark recess beneath the cupboard, then, with a sudden movement, thrust the handle of the broom into the darkness. Jones glanced at me with a frown on his face and it was clear that he thought that Holmes had taken leave of his senses. Next moment, his expression changed to one of horror, as, at a fearsome speed, there emerged from beneath the cupboard the most monstrous, repulsive spider I have ever seen in my life. It was at least the size of a man’s hand, its black, hairy legs as thick as a man’s fingers and it ran at a terrifying speed along by the broom handle towards Holmes’s hand. But, quick as it was, Holmes was quicker and he clapped the shoe-box over the top of it just before it reached him.

  ‘For the love of Heaven!’ cried Jones in a dry, cracked voice. ‘What in God’s name is that?’

  ‘Tarantula Nigra,’ returned Holmes: ‘the black tarantula, the only one of the family whose bite is fatal to man – and a very striking specimen it is, too!’ He spoke in the detached tones of the enthusiastic naturalist, but there was a suppressed tension and excitement in his manner which told me that even Holmes was not entirely immune from the horror which the sudden appearance of that fearsome beast had provoked in my own breast. ‘Pass me the lid, Watson,’ he continued, ‘and let us see if we can slip it underneath the box.’ In a moment, he had done as he said, then, in one swift movement, had turned the box right-side up. ‘Hold the lid down, Watson, while I wrap the twine round it. Hold it down firmly, old man,’ he added quickly. ‘Tarantula Nigra is quite capable of pushing the lid off!’

  His warning came not an instant too soon, for even as I put my hand to the top of the box, I felt it lift against my touch. With a thrill of horror, I pressed down hard and in a minute Holmes had bound the box up securely with the twine. ‘We’d better give the creature some air,’ he remarked, as he poked half a dozen small holes in the top with the scissors. ‘We don’t want it to suffocate! Here you are, Jones!’ he continued, handing the box to the policeman. ‘Here is your evidence of criminality! This deadly spider was, with deliberate intent, sent to Furnival in that wooden box. Its sudden frightening appearance at his breakfast table undoubtedly brought about his death. Whether it also bit him, we cannot say until his body is examined afresh, but it certainly bit his sister, Mrs Eardley, for I took the opportunity of examining her wrist a moment ago and the mark is quite clear there.’

  ‘The doctor didn’t say anything about that,’ said Jones.

  ‘He didn’t know what he was looking for and the mark of the bite was under the cuff of her blouse.’

  ‘How did you know that you would find this horrible thing here?’ asked Jones. As he spoke, the spider evidently made some sudden movement inside the box, for he put it down hurriedly on the table, his face pale.

  ‘It seemed more than likely,’ returned Holmes. ‘Miss Montague had stated that the box her uncle received had been empty, but as she was not in the room at the moment he opened it, it was always possible that it had contained something able to move of its own volition, which had made itself scarce as she entered the room following her uncle’s cry of terror. If this were so, what could it be? The size of the box suggested a spider – although there were other possibilities – and this suggestion received some support from the fact that Furnival himself had spent over twenty years in the West Indies, where large spiders are not uncommon.

  ‘I asked Miss Montague if the parcel containing the box had appeared damaged when it arrived. As a conjecture, this was something of a long shot, I admit; but I was gratified to find that it was correct. The paper on the top of the parcel had been ripped when it arrived at the house. This confirmed the theory yet further: for it seemed to me likely that the sender of the parcel had deliberately ripped the paper, in a way which would appear like accidental damage, in order to ensure that air reached the parcel’s occupant during its transit through the post. The lid of the box itself, of course, was pierced in several places, as Miss Montague had mentioned and I had noted. Something else which was suggestive was that Miss Montague’s uncle had had all the climbing plants removed from the walls of the house; for it is a fact that one of the reasons that some people do not like such plants is because their stems provide an avenue for spiders to enter the house via the bedroom windows. Taking all these points together, it seemed very likely that Furnival was one of those who have a pathological dread of spiders and that someone, aware of this fact, had deliberately sent him a particularly terrifying specimen. Whether Mrs Eardley suffered from the same aversion to spiders as her brother, we cannot say. She was certainly bitten by the creature, as the police surgeon will doubtless confirm in due course, and may have died from that cause, as the venom of Tarantula Nigra is very potent and acts very quickly. In her case, it seems to have been her zeal to clean her brother’s house which led to her death. She must have been poking with a brush beneath that cupboard, much as I was, and the spider, considering itself to be under attack, would have sallied forth to repulse the attack, as you saw it do just now. Fortunately for me, I was expecting it; but Mrs Eardley was not.’

  ‘You have certainly confirmed your theory, anyhow,’ said Inspector Jones after a moment, eyeing the box on the table warily. ‘But who the dickens could have done it?’

  ‘I strongly suspect that Captain Jex, who called here yesterday, was the agent of these deaths.’

  ‘What – the gentleman who had the fainting fit?’

  ‘I think we may safely dismiss the fainting fit, Jones,’ replied Holmes in a dry tone. ‘It made sense to Miss Montague only because she was convinced that the box possessed some evil power, natural or supernatural. But if that is discounted as a possibility, as I had discounted it, then Jex’s actions appear in a somewhat different light. Clearly he had been down on the floor for some purpose, and only pretended to have fainted when Miss Montague entered and found him there. What could that purpose have been, but to find the spider? No doubt he had reasoned as I had done that the likeliest hiding place for the creature was in that dark recess under the cupboard. Spiders have their own fears and anxieties, you know, Jones, and finding itself in unfamiliar surroundings, it would naturally seek the darkest corner it could find. But if Jex was looking for the spider, then he must have known it was there; and how could he know of the spider’s existence except if he himself had sent it?’

  ‘He must be a cool customer,’ remarked Jones, ‘to return to the scene of his crime so soon. Why should he do so?’

  ‘It may be,’ replied Holmes, ‘that he had intended only to frighten Furnival with the spider and when he heard that Furnival had died, saw at once that if the spider were found it would put a noose round his neck. If, however, he could remove the spider, then that danger would be averted.’

  ‘You may be right,’ said Jones. ‘Anyhow, we must get after the villain as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Dr Watson and I have already made inquiries at the place he was staying last week,’ said Holmes, and described our visit to Greenwich. ‘He evidently left there on Monday, took the direct train to Charing Cross, where he posted his parcel and then took himself off elsewhere. You may be able to trace him through his purchase of the
box at a curio shop, or through Captain McNeill, the man whose name he mentioned at Greenwich; but I rather fancy that Captain Jex is a resourceful character and not likely to sit about, waiting to be apprehended.’

  ‘We shall see about that,’ said Jones in a determined tone. ‘If we haven’t collared him by this time next week, then you may call me an idiot!’

  _______

  This extravagant offer was politely overlooked, however, the next time Jones called in to see us at Baker Street. Three weeks had passed without any news and I had concluded that Captain Jex had slipped through the net. But Jones began by stating that he had some new information about the fugitive.

  ‘That is good news,’ said Holmes.

  ‘It’s not so good as you suppose, Mr Holmes,’ responded Jones in a gloomy tone. ‘We have managed to trace him, but he is dead.’

  ‘Ah! I see. When did it happen?’

  ‘Twelve years ago.’

  ‘What!’ cried Holmes and I in astonishment.

  Jones nodded his head. ‘We are certain we have the right man. Captain Abel Jex was murdered in 1874, on the island of St Anthony, in the West Indies, by a man called David McNeill.’

  ‘What became of McNeill?’ asked Holmes.

  ‘There were evidently mitigating circumstances in the case, for he escaped the gallows; but he did ten years in a penal colony and died shortly after his release.’

  For some time we sat in silence, too dumbfounded by this information to speak.

  ‘What on earth is the meaning of it all?’ I asked at length.

  ‘That is the question, Dr Watson,’ said Athelney Jones in a tone of puzzlement. ‘As to the answer, your guess is as good as mine.’

  _______

  No further progress was made with the case and it at length passed entirely from our thoughts, as new work took the place of old. In my own mind, I had long since consigned it to that list of cases which were unlikely ever to be cleared up satisfactorily, when, one morning, two years later, Holmes received a communication from Grindley and Leggatt, solicitors, of Gray’s Inn. This consisted of a sealed foolscap document, with an accompanying letter explaining that the document had been deposited with them two years previously by a Mr David McNeill, with the instruction that in the event of his death, it was to be forwarded to Sherlock Holmes. McNeill’s death, they informed us, had been reported within the past week. The enclosed document ran as follows: