The Mammoth Book of the New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes

by Denis O. Smith

  ‘I noticed there didn’t seem to be much going on in his studio at the moment.’

  ‘Not only at the moment, Watson. From the state of his brushes and other equipment, it is clear that no work has been done there for some considerable time, possibly several months. All these things I observed yesterday, but I did not act on my observations for one simple reason.’

  ‘What reason is that?’

  ‘That I am an idiot.’

  ‘But at the time you saw Philips, you knew nothing of the diamonds,’

  ‘That is true. But once we had learnt from Inspector Lestrade of Cosgrove’s brother and the Bellecourt robbery, I had ample time to review all I had learnt during the day in the light of that new information. This I did not do. I was so pleased with myself for solving the cryptogram and working out the location of the diamonds that I gave no thought to anything else. That is what makes me an idiot – almost as big an idiot as Philips himself. It is clear to me now that once his suspicions had been aroused, he must have made it his business to find out what lay behind those eccentric tomb-inscriptions. He would soon have discovered the connection between Henry Cosgrove and the Bellecourt diamonds, and then no doubt solved the cryptogram and worked out where the diamonds were hidden. At which point the fool clearly yielded to the temptation of wealth that the diamonds represent. There is nothing that corrupts and destroys a man’s life so certainly as sudden wealth, especially if that wealth is unearned. But in this case the danger is yet more serious than usual, for I rather fear that Albert Cosgrove has reached the same conclusion as I have and I doubt that Philips has any conception of the kind of man he is up against. Let us hope we are not too late!’

  We had reached Higham’s Park station as Holmes had been speaking, where the police van stood waiting for us. ‘It will be quicker if we take the train,’ said Holmes. He hurried into the station to consult the timetable, but was back again in a moment. ‘There is a train to Liverpool Street in five minutes,’ said he. Lestrade quickly explained matters to the other policemen, instructing them to notify Scotland Yard at once as to what had happened and where we were going, to arrange for men from the nearest police station to meet us at Philips’s cottage and to post a constable in front of Mrs Cosgrove’s house in case her brother-in-law returned. A minute later we were in the train.

  The traffic in central London was dense and slow-moving, and it took us some time to get across to Waterloo station, Holmes fretting and shaking his head in frustration all the while, but once there we were fortunate enough to find that a suitable train was just about to leave, and soon we were rattling along the viaduct through Lambeth and out to the south-western suburbs. As we alighted at Barnes, the only passengers to do so, the common seemed even colder, foggier and more desolate than on our previous visit. At least on this occasion, as Holmes remarked, we knew how to find Philips’s cottage, so could avoid wasting our time tramping hither and thither across the heath, as we had done the previous day.

  ‘I doubt if Cosgrove has been down here before,’ remarked Holmes, as he led the way along a rutted track, ‘so if he is here it will have taken him some time to find the cottage, and although he still leads and we still follow, we are therefore closer behind him now than we were at Higham’s Park. As I told you then, Lestrade, we may still trail behind him, but the game is not yet over!’

  We turned from the track into a narrow road, where there was not a soul about. It took us little time to reach the old cottage, where icicles hung from the gutters, and the side wall and the bushes growing by it were covered with frost-whitened cobwebs. We approached cautiously, but saw no movement at any of the windows. At the front door, Lestrade was about to knock, but Holmes put his hand on his arm and indicated the step, where the muddy imprint of a large boot was clearly visible. Without speaking, Holmes then pointed to his own shoe and I at once saw his meaning: our shoes were not muddy; whoever had made the footprint on the step had clearly spent some time tramping about the heath, looking for the cottage. As he put his hand on the door, I saw there was a narrow gap at the edge of it and it was apparent that the door was not closed properly. He pushed gently and the door swung silently inwards. Putting his finger to his lips, he led the way into the house. As we made our way carefully through to the studio at the back, some slight sound from upstairs came to my ears. Then, as we passed through the open doorway of the studio, I stopped in astonishment. If the studio had seemed untidy and disordered upon our previous visit, that was as nothing compared to its appearance now. Every item of furniture that could possibly be upended was lying on the floor, everything that could possibly have been knocked off the shelves and other surfaces was strewn about, smashed and broken, and there on the floor, in the midst of this scene of chaos and destruction, lay Andrew Philips.

  I quickly bent down to him, but it took me only a moment to establish that the body was lifeless. Philips was dead. I indicated some severe bruising on the neck which suggested he had been strangled, and as I did so there came a louder crash and clatter from upstairs, as if someone were pulling the drawers out of a tallboy and throwing them on to the floor. The door to the staircase stood open and Lestrade pointed at the stair, but Holmes shook his head and intimated we should wait where we were.

  Abruptly, the racket ceased and there came the softer sound of footsteps moving about in the room above us. For a moment, that, too, ceased and all was silence, then there came heavy footsteps on the wooden stair. Holmes stepped back slightly, behind the door to the staircase, and drew his revolver from his pocket, as Lestrade quietly drew out a truncheon from an inside pocket of his coat.

  With a heavy, rapid tread, the footsteps clattered down the steep, narrow staircase and in an instant a large, heavily built man appeared before us. He stopped abruptly when he saw us, a look of surprise on his large, coarse face. Then his features twisted into an expression of contempt, vicious and brutal.

  ‘Albert Cosgrove, I am arresting you—’ Lestrade began, but he got no further. Cosgrove let out a fearsome roar and started forward. But even as he made to launch his violent attack upon us, Holmes stepped out from behind the door and clapped his pistol to the side of his head.

  For a split second Cosgrove stopped, then in a flash he had brought his arm up and knocked Holmes’s revolver out of the way, at the same instant drawing a pistol of his own from his pocket and firing it wildly in our direction. There came a sharp cry of pain from Lestrade, but he launched himself forward, striking out with his truncheon and knocking the pistol from Cosgrove’s grasp. I flung myself forward and the three of us crashed to the ground in a heap. For a few moments we struggled wildly, then Holmes brought the butt of his revolver down sharply on Cosgrove’s head, his whole body went limp and he lay still.

  Lestrade quickly snapped a pair of handcuffs on Cosgrove’s wrists, then he rose to his feet, grimacing with pain. ‘That shot he fired caught me on the left shoulder,’ he said. I helped him slip off his coat and jacket, picked up a chair for him to sit on, and examined the wound, which was bleeding profusely.

  ‘You were very lucky,’ I said after a moment. ‘The bullet has passed clean through your upper arm. It will certainly be painful for a time, but I don’t think it has done any lasting damage.’ I picked up the cleanest piece of rag I could see on the floor and tied it tightly round his arm. ‘You’ve lost a fair amount of blood,’ I added. ‘We’ll have to get this dressed properly as soon as possible.’

  Holmes had been feeling in Cosgrove’s pockets while I was examining the policeman and now he held up a small leather pouch, an expression of triumph on his face. ‘Here, I think, are your diamonds, Lestrade!’ He loosened the top of the pouch and carefully tipped it up, and out on to the palm of his hand tumbled a mass of sparkling gems.

  At that moment there came the sound of horses’ hooves and a vehicle drawing to a halt outside the front of the house. A moment later a police sergeant entered, followed closely by three constables.

  ‘You’re a bit late, Se
rgeant,’ said Lestrade in a tone of bitter humour. ‘You’ve missed all the action. Here’s your man, anyhow,’ he continued, wincing with pain as he indicated Cosgrove’s motionless body on the floor. ‘It’s Albert Cosgrove. He may look peaceful now, chiefly because he’s unconscious, but I’m warning you, when he wakes up, he’ll be like a madman in the body of a bull.’

  ‘Inspector Lestrade needs immediate medical attention,’ I interrupted, as he rose unsteadily to his feet. ‘Is there a doctor’s surgery anywhere near here?’

  The sergeant informed me that there was one very close, at the west end of Putney, and instructed one of his men to help me get Lestrade there.

  ‘What are we charging Cosgrove with, sir?’ asked the sergeant as we made our way out of the house.

  ‘You tell them, Mr Holmes,’ said Lestrade in a weary voice. He was now leaning heavily on my arm, and his face had turned an ashen grey.

  ‘You may take your pick,’ said Holmes. ‘Cosgrove has murdered that man on the floor over there, whose name is Andrew Philips, he almost certainly murdered Billy Padgett in Whitechapel last night, he committed a very serious assault on a woman earlier this morning after breaking into her house, and he has just made a murderous attack on Inspector Lestrade and shot him through the arm. Oh, and while you’re reporting all this, you might also mention to your superiors, to lighten the tone a little, that the Bellecourt diamonds, for which half of London has been searching for the last dozen years, are now safely in our hands!’

  The Adventure of the Purple Hand

  In the year 1890 I saw little of my friend, Sherlock Holmes. From time to time I was able to follow his progress in the columns of the daily press and he appeared from all accounts to be as busy as a man could wish to be, but I missed the close involvement with his cases that I had enjoyed before my marriage, and which a variety of circumstances, both on his side and on mine, now prevented. In one respect at least, however, I was fortunate: that on each of the few occasions I was able to renew our acquaintance, I gained a new story for my records which was the equal in interest of any which I had entered in my note-book in the days when we shared bachelor chambers in Baker Street. Holmes himself observed with amusement on more than one occasion that I was for him the stormy petrel of adventure, and if fate had indeed cast me in that role, I was not one to complain of the fact.

  It was a gloriously sunny afternoon towards the end of June. I had had a busy day, but having no further calls upon my time I dismissed my cab in Portman Square and walked the short distance to my friend’s lodgings. He was not at home, but the landlady expected him back for tea, so I sat down to wait. I was not the only caller he had had that afternoon, I observed, for a card had been left upon the table, bearing the gilt inscription, ‘Star of Kandy Tea Company, 37A Crutched Friars; Mark Pringle, Proprietor.’ Across the reverse of the card was printed ‘The Company employs only one salesman: His name is Quality’ and beneath that, in pencil, ‘Vital to consult you. Will call back later’, to which the initials ‘M.P.’ were appended.

  Holmes was not long in arriving and it was with evident pleasure that he greeted me. He seemed in high spirits and tossed across to me an old leather-bound volume he had just purchased at a shop in the Strand. It was a German book, a black-letter edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy, its binding cracked and faded with age.

  ‘Printed at Mainz, some time in the sixteenth century,’ remarked my friend. ‘According to the bookseller, there is a curious error on page 348, where “honey” is for some unfathomable reason rendered as “rags”; but I know the man of old and there is no more barefaced rogue in the whole of London. He invents these freaks of printing himself, you see, to excuse his exorbitant prices, and in the hope of attracting the custom of those whose only interest is in such oddities and who are unlikely ever to actually read the books they buy from him. Unfortunately, he himself neither speaks nor reads any language but English and, like the crow in the fable, is evidently incapable of conceiving that anyone else can do what he cannot, so he was somewhat discomfited when I was able to point out to him that neither word occurs on the page in question. But it really is very good to see you, my dear fellow! Indeed, the arrival of a doctor in my consulting-rooms rather completes my cosmopolitan day, for my morning’s visitors, if you would believe it, were a Member of Parliament, a lighterman, a coal-heaver and a theologian!’

  ‘There is yet another,’ I remarked, indicating the card upon the table by the window.

  ‘Hum! Tea-merchant! Smoked a cigar while he was here. Has helped himself to a drink, too, I see! Why soda water, I wonder? Hum!’

  ‘No doubt a wealthy, comfortable, City type,’ I suggested with a chuckle, ‘who sells tea from the Orient, but has never been farther east than Ramsgate in his life and would not recognise a tea plant if one were growing in his own garden. It is not difficult to picture him sitting at that table an hour ago, a stout, florid-faced man, with a glass in one hand and a cigar in the other, the very picture of a well-fed, easy life. An impatient and possibly self-important fellow, too,’ I added, ‘if he could not wait for your return.’

  ‘There is such a type,’ replied Holmes, smiling, ‘but I very much fancy that Mr Pringle is not of it. If you were to dip your finger into this glass of soda water, Watson, you would taste upon your finger-end the unmistakable bitterness of quinine. What would that suggest to you, as a physician, bearing in mind that the man who has been dosing himself with it includes upon his visiting-card the name of Kandy, in Ceylon?’

  ‘Malaria!’

  ‘Precisely. Now, malaria is not contracted west of Ramsgate with any great frequency, as I’m sure you would agree, and nor are its unfortunate victims generally marked for their stoutness or their florid faces. Mr Pringle has evidently spent some time in Ceylon, where he has picked up this most tenacious of diseases, but whether it be his illness or some less tangible worry which disturbs him so today, we cannot tell.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You observed the used matches that he left us?’

  ‘I believe I saw one in the dish, with the remains of his cigar.’

  ‘Not one, Watson, but five; five matches for one cigar, mark you. Now, while there is some truth in the popular notion that the pleasure of a good cigar helps one to forget one’s troubles, it is also true that one must already be untroubled to some extent, in order to derive any pleasure from the cigar in the first place. Anyone who can let a cigar go out, not once, but four times, is very evidently not in the appropriate state of mind. He has also been pacing the floor and has dropped cigar-ash in several places, as you no doubt observed, which also indicates a mood of distraction.’

  ‘Perhaps he is simply careless,’ I suggested.

  ‘I think not, for you can see that where he noticed that he had dropped the ash – just by the corner of the hearth-rug – he has made some attempt to pick it up with his fingers. As to the impatience you ascribed to him, we cannot say; but it seems at least possible that he went out chiefly to get a little fresh air into his lungs, one of the unavoidable effects of quinine being, as you are aware, an unpleasant sensation of nausea.

  ‘You must admit, Watson,’ continued my friend, seating himself by the window and gazing down into the street below, as he proceeded to fill his pipe, ‘that the balance of probability has swung against your snug, rosy-cheeked City man, and in favour of my perturbed and ague-cheeked tea-planter.’

  ‘No doubt you are correct,’ I conceded. ‘You almost make me regret that ever I opened my mouth! But, come,’ I continued, laughing, ‘you have constructed so much of the unknown Mr Pringle; surely you can round out the picture a little now. What age, for instance, would you put upon the fellow and how would you say he is dressed today?’

  ‘He is, I should say, about forty years of age and wearing a tweed suit.’

  ‘Well I never!’ I cried in astonishment. ‘How in the name of Heaven can you tell that?’

  ‘Quite simply because I see the fellow standing
on the front doorstep at this moment,’ replied Holmes drily.

  The man who was shown in a few moments later accorded in every respect with the inferences my friend had drawn. A tall, handsome, well-built man, he had, nevertheless, an air of weakness and debility about him, as one worn down by a chronic disease. His face was unnaturally lined and leathery for one his age, his cheeks were sunken and of a sickly, yellowish hue and his hair was quite grey. But his grip as he shook my hand was firm and strong, and there was a spark in his blue eyes which showed that the disease had not broken his spirit, at any rate.

  ‘Are you quite recovered?’ asked Holmes in a kindly voice; ‘or is there perhaps something we can offer you? I observed that you had been dosing yourself with quinine and I know how horribly that can affect the stomach.’

  Pringle shook his head. ‘It is not the nausea so much with me,’ he replied, ‘as the infernal ringing in the ears that the stuff gives me. But I’ve walked about a bit, and looked in a few shop-windows to take my mind from it, and I’ll be all right now. Don’t ever consider yourselves unlucky,’ he added with a flash of his eyes, ‘until you’ve had what I’ve got. No man ever had a more implacable enemy than malaria, I can tell you: no matter how many battles it may lose against you, it will never give up the war. But I did not come here to discuss pathology with you, gentlemen, and in any case I have learnt recently that there are things which can strike you harder than any disease. I wish your advice, Mr Holmes.’