‘For God’s sake, Heene, we can buy more damned plants,’ snapped Major Nepcote, with sudden and quite uncharacteristic vehemence. ‘Durrington’s dead, and we can’t buy him back. Now stop complaining and put your back into it.’ It was the first time I had been able to imagine the mild old gentleman as a commander of men.
After a minute or so more of begrudging digging, Heene’s spade hit an obstruction. He took up a trowel, bent down, and carefully uncovered a large package wrapped in oilcloth. It was larger than Durrington’s sheet of papers, perhaps the size of a photograph album or scrapbook.
The gardener passed it to Holmes, who seized it with a cry. He cut the string with some secateurs that lay to hand, and hastily unwrapped it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE REMINISCENCES OF A BUTLER
Northbrook commandeered a room for us in the main house, from which the servants and, despite Mrs Nepcote’s repeated attempts to join us on various pretexts, our hosts, were strictly barred. The worthy policeman even arranged for the kitchen to provide us with sandwiches, which we ate distractedly while Holmes and I inspected with him the contents of Timothy Durrington’s dossier.
The package, as I had guessed, contained a scrapbook, one that had never been expensive and the cloth binding of which was now threadbare with age. Peeling from its earliest pages were yellowing, faded cuttings from columns of newsprint dealing with the abduction of the Moncrieff baby in 1867.
‘Durrington couldn’t have collected these,’ I realised. ‘He was a baby himself at the time. And Sergeant Durrington was dead when they were published.’
‘The mother then, perhaps,’ said Holmes. ‘This Jane Bramber. Conceivably she assembled these papers as a record of the effect Timothy’s father had had on the world. If so, the boy must have inherited it when she died, which my tavern acquaintances tell me occurred when he was ten. The album is of an age with its earliest clippings.’
The newspaper stories contained few details that Holmes and I were not already familiar with, and nothing that challenged the facts of the case. The guilty nursemaid was mentioned, but not named as Laetitia Prism, and there was, as we expected, no reference at all to Thomas Cardew. A wholly separate item drew attention to the sad death of Sergeant William Durrington at Victoria Station, but made no connection between the accident and the Moncrieffs’ loss.
‘I say, though, Holmes,’ I remarked. ‘This report says that Durrington’s wife and infant son were with him at the time of the accident. Well, I suppose it was easier for them to refer to her as his wife.’ It seemed that Jane Bramber had taken young Timothy Durrington to visit relatives in Brighton, and that the child’s father had met them at the station. Reading between the lines, the journalist seemed to imply that a fellow passenger had made some lewd comment about Miss Bramber, and that this had provoked the brawl in which Sergeant Durrington had fallen to his death beneath an oncoming train. ‘Was that detail mentioned in the police reports?’
‘It was not.’ Holmes was frowning. ‘I suppose she may not have wished to make herself known to the police, especially if she knew that her mate had been present with criminal intentions. It does, I suppose, explain why Durrington wished Ernest deposited at Victoria rather than handed over to him elsewhere. I imagine Jane was there to help conceal the abduction from the public eye.’
‘But doesn’t that support the idea that Sergeant Durrington intended to swap the children?’
‘Hardly, Watson, hardly. A man carrying a single infant would be conspicuous, but a man and a woman carrying twins would seem less remarkable. If the scheme had been aimed towards exchanging the children, which I still doubt, it would have made more sense to do so later, once the ransom had been paid. Leaving young Durrington in a handbag at Victoria Station would have provided no guarantee that he would be mistaken for and brought up as Colonel and Mrs Moncrieff’s son, as the story of Ernest Worthing amply demonstrates.’
‘It looks as if Timothy Durrington believed it, though, Mr Holmes,’ Northbrook noted. While we were speaking he had leafed forward in the scrapbook, to its more recent contents. These were mostly newspaper stories from 1895 about the rediscovery of Ernest Worthing’s identity, and the subsequent reports of his engagement and marriage. These were meticulously dated, in a crude but careful hand which we took to be Durrington’s own.
As I have said, the story of Ernest Worthing had provoked a great deal of interest from the press at the time, and it seemed that Durrington had collected every report that he could find. As the pages turned, though, an eccentric interpretation of these events began to appear. At first this manifested in nothing more than occasional appearances of question marks, in Durrington’s hand, next to the name ‘Ernest Moncrieff’. Then a rather shoddy retrospective piece relating to the 1867 abduction was underlined and annotated with various comments calling attention to facts missing from this retelling of the story.
At the end of this excerpt, the biblically confused sentence, ‘Happily now, however, after many years wandering in the wilderness, the Moncrieff family’s prodigal son has at last been restored,’ had been heavily underlined and surrounded with a positive galaxy of question marks.
On the next page, in a society column mentioning the wedding, the name ‘Ernest Moncrieff’ was crossed out neatly and ‘Timothy Durrington’ written in its place. From this point, this amendment had been applied consistently.
Some of the articles included photographs: of Ernest, of Algernon and of the late General Moncrieff, among others. While resemblances within families are rarely straightforward, it was noticeable that Ernest had been passed over by the close similarity that his brother bore to their father. Durrington, on the other hand, had coincidentally shared their slight stature and their darker hair, a fact commented upon with great emphasis in the annotations.
‘It seems quite clear,’ said Holmes, ‘that Durrington developed an idée fixe about Ernest Moncrieff’s identity that was in itself irrational and quite independent of any truth in the matter. He believed quite sincerely that the babies were swapped, that the man now acknowledged as Ernest Moncrieff had been born to Jane Bramber as Timothy Durrington, and that he himself was General Moncrieff’s son, Ernest. Small wonder that he dreamed of exchanging his humble position with Ernest’s exalted one.’
Something occurred to me. ‘I say, though,’ I said again. ‘He seems only to have been interested in Ernest.’ Algernon and Cecily were mentioned, I realised, only in articles dealing primarily with Ernest’s own life. Though their story, that of a man marrying his famous long-lost brother’s ward, had also been of interest to the newspapers at the time, none of the column inches devoted to it had been collected by Durrington. ‘There isn’t even a report of Algernon and Cecily’s wedding.’
‘Very true, unless there is a second dossier which we have not found. It would appear that Timothy inherited his father’s specific ire against Ernest, rather than a grudge against the Moncrieff family at large.’
‘But that does not explain why he would have used the name Bunbury,’ I pointed out. ‘That related to Algernon’s shameful secret, not to Ernest at all.’
Turning the page again, we found the letter which Ernest had told us he had written to his blackmailer, objecting in jocular and evidently unconcerned terms to the idea that he was not himself, and warning Durrington that the Moncrieff family fortune was no longer available to be inherited.
‘Headed notepaper from his club,’ Holmes observed. ‘He must have written it there to avoid the eagle eye of Mrs Moncrieff.’
On the page after that was the final item in the scrapbook. It was, again, a letter written on printed notepaper, the heading this time bearing Ernest Moncrieff’s own address. The letter was unsigned, and the author had taken steps to disguise their handwriting by printing the words neatly in capital letters:
149 Belgrave Square
London
DEAR SIR,
PRESENT YOURSELF AT THIS ADDRESS AT 10.15 P.M. ON MONDAY WEEK, TO S
PEAK TO MR ERNEST MONCRIEFF ABOUT A MATTER TO YOUR MUTUAL ADVANTAGE. COME TO THE TRADESMEN’S ENTRANCE, AND GIVE THE NAME ‘BUNBURY’.
IF YOU FAIL TO APPEAR THERE WILL BE NO FURTHER OPPORTUNITIES FOR COMMUNICATION WITH THE MONCRIEFF FAMILY.
‘This paper is of notably fine quality,’ Holmes observed briskly. ‘As I have not had the honour of any written communication from the Moncrieffs, I cannot be positive that it is genuine, but neither, I presume, could Durrington. The writing is, I think, female, but the writer has made it deliberately difficult to be certain.’
‘Is it Gwendolen?’ I asked.
Holmes nodded gravely. ‘As the mistress of the house, she is undoubtedly a likely candidate. On the other hand, there is a chance that the paper is a forgery. Though it would make no difference to Durrington, it would tell us whether the writer of the note had access to the genuine article.’
‘It wasn’t Gwendolen on the balcony, anyway,’ I recalled. ‘She was wearing a powder-blue gown that evening. Unless she changed, but as the hostess she would hardly have had the opportunity. Holmes… whoever sent this note may well be the murderer.’
‘The point had not escaped me, Watson,’ he replied drily. ‘Whoever it was, they knew that Bunbury would be present and had every opportunity to plan his death.’
‘It was a strange venue to choose,’ I mused, thinking of Holmes’s comments about Lord Arthur Savile a few days earlier. ‘Why not ask to meet him somewhere deserted, where he might be made away with in secret?’
‘That we cannot know at present, unless it was with the specific intention of making Mabel Goring out to be a murderer.’
‘But surely the real killer’s Lord Illingworth, like Inspector Gregson’s been saying?’ asked Northbrook. ‘The inspector reckoned he wanted to bump off a blackmailer. Well, we know now that Durrington was a blackmailer. And even if that is a woman’s handwriting, Illingworth finds it easy enough to get women to do his bidding. Dora Steyne lives and works in the house – she could easily have got hold of the notepaper.’
‘I cannot rule it out,’ said Holmes, ‘but it leaves open a number of questions. Notably, the name Bunbury remains unexplained, though at a further remove. We now know that Durrington gave it because the note asked him to, but why the writer chose it we have no idea.’
‘We know the identities of Cecily’s blackmailer and of Ernest’s,’ I mused, ‘but not Algernon’s. That is to say, it doesn’t look like Durrington. Was it Illingworth?’
‘There was nothing at his house to suggest it was,’ Northbrook admitted.
‘I have an idea regarding that point,’ Holmes told us, ‘though it is one that concerns me greatly. This case may have ramifications that go some way beyond those we have appreciated so far. And if so, then I fear that Lord Illingworth is but a cog in a larger and more dangerous machine. I propose that you, Northbrook, convey this important evidence to Inspector Gregson with all dispatch.’ Closing Durrington’s scrapbook, Holmes wrapped it carefully in the oilcloth and retied the package. ‘Meanwhile, Watson and I shall endeavour to determine where the Moncrieffs keep their notepaper, and whether this is a specimen of it.’
We bade farewell to Major Nepcote and his wife, who by now was quite frantic with frustrated interest in what we had found out, and would doubtless spread her own imagined version of it throughout her acquaintance by the end of the afternoon, and stepped out into the cool spring sunshine.
‘Constable Northbrook,’ said Holmes, ‘we know that Durrington was operating a post office box. We do not have the number, but it seems likely that it would have been either in a post office near to here, or near to somewhere else he frequented, such as the Working Men’s College. You have his description. Could you see what you may find out?’
Northbrook promised that he would try, and set off to find a cab to carry him and Durrington’s scrapbook back to Scotland Yard.
From Eaton Square, Belgrave Square was but a short walk along Belgrave Place, and it was scarcely more than five minutes before we were approaching Number 149.
As we neared the house, a figure emerged from Number 148, the house belonging to Mrs Winterbourne, and I recognised it as Mrs Teville. She wore a coat over a fashionable dress in what, once again, looked like an attempt to recapture her lost youth. Over it was thrown the mink stole she had worn to the ball, unless it was another one; in full daylight it looked rather less pale and faded.
‘Mr Holmes, Dr Watson,’ she exclaimed. ‘I see your helpfulness to the police has not yet exhausted itself. Are you here to see dear Mr Moncrieff?’
‘If he is at home,’ Holmes replied, rather shortly.
Feeling a need to moderate my friend’s brusqueness, I added, ‘The police are grateful for your testimony regarding the night of the ball, Mrs Teville. You may have helped prevent a grave injustice.’
‘You are too kind,’ she replied. ‘I merely answered the inspector’s questions honestly.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Holmes, gazing at her with greater alertness, ‘you may have prevented suspicion from wrongly falling on an innocent young wife.’
I realised that he had carefully left possible the implication that it was Cecily Moncrieff whom she had protected – assuming, of course, that she had not heard about Mabel Goring’s arrest. I watched for any signs of concern for the safety of the woman who might be her daughter, but saw no untoward reaction.
I also searched her face for any family resemblance to Cecily Moncrieff, but her make-up disguised the contours of her visage too effectively.
Mrs Teville noticed my attention and averted her eyes coyly. ‘I hoped to visit dear Mrs Winterbourne, but I find that she is elsewhere. There is a solidarity between us widows, you know. We see the world in a way which other women cannot. Perhaps between widowers there is a similar freemasonry, Dr Watson? I am right that your poor wife is deceased, am I not?’
To my consternation, I realised that one of our potential suspects was flirting with me. Stiffly, I replied, ‘I have that misfortune, madam.’
‘It is harder for a man than for a woman, I think,’ Mrs Teville speculated. ‘We women must learn resilience early in life, whereas a man is often helpless without a woman to protect him.’
I have to confess that I felt a pang at this. The loss of Mary had been a hard blow to bear, and even five years later I remembered feeling for a while as if I could barely stand upright without her. Of course, during that time Holmes, the other chief support in my life, had also been absent and assumed to be dead.
‘Such has not been my experience,’ my friend told the widow firmly, whether in response to my distress or not I could not say. ‘The bachelor existence seems to me an eminently satisfactory state, and I would exchange it for no other.’
‘And I am sure that the housekeeper Dr Watson mentions so often yet so briefly in his stories plays her part in that, Mr Holmes. A woman need not be a man’s social equal to be indispensable.’
I said, ‘I should find widowerhood to be more supportable, I think, had Mary given me an heir. Has fortune favoured you with children, Mrs Teville?’
It was an ungallant ploy, perhaps, but the woman had shown little enough regard for my feelings. Her eyes narrowed and the enticing smile fell from her lips. Shortly, she said, ‘Sadly it has not. Perhaps one day I shall marry again,’ she added, defying me to make any comment about her age.
I said, ‘If that is your hope, then I hope you achieve it. Like Holmes, I find a single man’s existence to my preference for now.’
‘Then I wish you every joy of it,’ said Mrs Teville neutrally, and passed on her way down the street.
Holmes knocked on the door of Number 149 and Merriman the butler showed us up to the drawing room, where we found the missing Mrs Winterbourne being entertained by Gwendolen Moncrieff. They sat over tea, Gwendolen brisk and golden-haired and talkative, and Mrs Winterbourne dark in her widow’s weeds but no less cheerful in her speech.
‘Mr Holmes,’ said Gwendolen, smiling sternly as
she greeted us, ‘I understand that you have been making some most offensive insinuations to my mother.’ I recalled suddenly that this young woman was the only one of the younger Moncrieffs who was not, to our knowledge, being blackmailed. ‘Mama dislikes insinuations almost as much as she dislikes categorical statements. I must ask you not to do such a thing again, or at least not in my absence. I very much hope next time to witness her reaction.’
‘I can make no promises on that score, Mrs Moncrieff,’ said Holmes. ‘Since what Lady Bracknell unfortunately mistook for an insinuation was a simple statement of fact, I am unable to foresee how she may interpret any observation of mine in any future conversation.’
Mrs Winterbourne laughed unkindly. ‘One does not have a conversation with Lady Bracknell, Mr Holmes. You might as well say that a person coughing at a concert is in conversation with the orchestra. At most one can hope to punctuate, never to divert, the inexorable movement of the whole.’
Gwendolen frowned. ‘I do not think that you should speak of my mother in that way, Mrs Winterbourne. Mama does not care for it when people say true things about her.’
‘Whether she cares for the things that she hears depends on her opinion of the speaker, not on theirs of her,’ said Mrs Winterbourne carelessly. ‘Others’ opinions of Lady Bracknell affect her no more than that of a single blade of grass affects a hurricane.’
Much though I agreed with Mrs Winterbourne’s view, expressing it so bluntly to Lady Bracknell’s daughter seemed to me a trifle ungallant. Had the widow been a man I would certainly have remonstrated with her, but since the situation was one of a lady commenting on another lady to a third, I felt rather unclear as to where my chivalrous duties lay.
‘How poetically you express yourself, Mrs Winterbourne,’ Gwendolen observed placidly. ‘I suppose you have had a great deal of practice during your various courtships.’
‘I say, that’s rather below the belt,’ I began, then stopped in embarrassment at my appalling turn of phrase.
Sherlock Holmes--The Spider's Web Page 18
