Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years

by Michael Kurland

  Freud studied the corpse, then glanced up at Fritzi. “You are right. It’s too high. It should have avoided the heart and lungs and passed through the shoulder. The amount of bleeding indicates that it struck no major organ or artery. Maybe the poor fellow died of shock.”

  “Maybe not,” Fritzi said. “And this small prick of blood on his neck?”

  “There are plenty of brambles in the area. If he was intent on following a stag, he could easily have become entangled in them. See, he has a scratch on his hand, too.” He stared hard at the servant. “What exactly are you hinting at? You don’t believe that anarchists were waiting in the woods? You have another explanation?”

  Fritzi turned to stare back along the trail to the hunting lodge.

  “Mein Gott. You think one of the party did it? But that’s impossible, man. They were in a line. Whoever shot the count was facing him—square on. If any of the members of the party had been in a position to shoot him, he would have been observed by all.”

  “And yet the count was shot in the chest, at close range,” the manservant said. “I think another search of the area might disclose proof of my theory.” He moved the body and sifted through the pine needles, then shook his head. “No, the assassin found it and retrieved it. Of course. This has been very well planned.”

  “You mean the count was shot on purpose? He wasn’t mistaken for the Prince of Wales?”

  “That is exactly what I mean. I will go even further, Doctor. I think the count was brought here to be killed.”

  “Good God, man. By whom? Can you prove it?”

  “Probably not, but I shall try.”

  Dr. Freud stared at him. “This is the most remarkable transformation I have ever witnessed. You are obviously a man of fine intellectual powers, suppressed and deadened by a blow to the head and by lack of language facility. I should like to conduct further tests on you when we return to the inn. Then, by your leave, I shall write a paper on this subject when I return to Vienna.”

  “Let us hope these further tests may unlock the mystery of my identity,” Fritzi said. “At least I can return to England now. Somebody there may be looking for me, have reported me as missing.”

  “Home to the bosom of wife and family, eh?” Freud raised an eyebrow.

  “I don’t picture myself with wife and family somehow, but there is one name that echoing inside my skull. What was the major called?”

  “Watling-Smythe.”

  “That’s the one. Something about that name is familiar to me. But we should leave my sad case until later, until we have solved this mystery. Here come the bearers with a stretcher. I will leave you to supervise their work while I hasten to the lodge to apprehend a murderer.”

  “I say, be careful, won’t you,” Freud called after him. “You have barely escaped death once in your life.”

  “I’ll be careful.” He set off down the path with long, fluid strides. “I suspect that I have faced danger more than once before.”

  When he reached the lodge, he found the party assembled in the drawing room, seated around a roaring fire, sipping hot toddy. They sat in silence, appearing to be in a state of shock. They didn’t notice him as he stood in the doorway, and a quick assessment of the group revealed that the countess was not among them. He moved away from the door and mounted the stairs. A frightened chambermaid gasped as she saw him approaching.

  “What are you doing up here?” she demanded.

  “The countess—which room is hers?” he demanded.

  “The one to the right of the stairs, but she is in shock and resting,” the maid said. “The mistress said she was not to be disturbed.”

  “I must deliver an important message that she will want to hear,” Fritzi said, pushing past the maid. He knocked gently on the door, then let himself in. The countess was standing at the window, her hands clutching at the heavy velvet drapes. She spun around when she heard the door opening.

  “What the devil do you mean by coming in here, unbidden?” she demanded in German.

  “You may speak to me in English since you are more at home in that language,” Fritzi said. He closed the door gently behind him and approached the woman at the window. “I came to compliment you on your little scheme. It was very well thought out and executed. In fact it would have succeeded, had not I been here.”

  The countess’s eyes widened, but her face remained expressionless. “What are you talking about? Now get out of my room before I call for help.” She swept past him as if to open the door.

  “Would you really want the others to hear what I am going to say to you?” he said quietly. “Would you want them to know how you killed your husband?”

  The countess spun around. “Killed my husband? Are you mad? I was here, in the house, all the time.”

  The manservant shook his head. “Not all the time, Countess. When you appeared, wearing your cape, your cheeks were flushed. Usually fear turns the cheeks pale. And as the baroness led you into the drawing room, you left specks of mud on the polished floor. There was no mud on the baroness’s shoes from crossing the lawn. Your cheeks were flushed because you had just run down the path and slipped into the house through a back entrance.”

  “What rubbish you talk,” she said. “You are insinuating that I was able to run through the forest to a point in front of the hunting party, without being noticed, and then to shoot my husband as he approached? Rather an impossible theory, don’t you think?”

  “Quite impossible,” the servant replied, “but that is not how it was done, is it? Your scheme required great cooperation and perfect timing. I’d imagine a major in the British army would know quite a lot about battle strategy.”

  For the first time the look of arrogant defiance faltered, and she looked wary. “You are trying to say that Major Watling-Smythe was involved in killing my husband? How could he? The baron told me that none of the party could have been responsible for my husband’s death. He said they were in a line, advancing side by side, in full view of the other hunters and the bearers. And the only shots fired were at the stag as it tried to flee.”

  She was still staring at him with defiant confidence.

  “As I said, the timing had to be perfect. I might not have figured it out had I not noticed a small puncture wound on your husband’s neck. I was curious about it. A scratch from a bramble? But there were no brambles growing that high. Then I remembered that you met the major when you were both in Brazil. You see, I had lost my memory, but this encounter has brought some things back to me. The major’s face was familiar to me. I recognized him when I first saw him at the inn. When he mentioned Brazil it came back to me in a flash—I was at a lecture at the Royal Geographic Society in London. The major spoke about his expedition. He explained how the natives used poisoned darts to bring down large animals. He demonstrated the use of the blow pipe. It is silent and deadly accurate. I must say he was most proficient. Curare, isn’t that the poison’s name? It paralyzes the nervous system instantly. The count would not even have had time to cry out.”

  The countess turned away and stared out of the window again.

  “The major waited until the stag was sighted,” Fritzi continued. “He knew that all eyes would be focused on the animal. It only took a second to raise the blowpipe to his lips, and he administered the fatal dart just as the prince fired the first shot so that the noise of your husband falling to the ground would be masked by the sound of shots and the thrashings of a wounded animal. I hunted for the dart on the ground, but he got to the body first, of course and retrieved it. As the party fired their guns and rushed toward the stricken animal, the count had already fallen unnoticed to the ground. And who had been waiting in the woods, hidden well by a long green cloak, but you, Countess?

  “You stepped out, took a pillow from your needlework bag, and fired through it into your husband’s chest just as the last shots were being fired at the stag. You probably didn’t notice that a few feathers from the pillow were strewn around the area. I suspect th
ere might have been feathers in the wound, too, but your Major Johnny got there first and removed them. Very efficient, Countess. Well planned. Top marks.”

  The countess turned and looked at him coldly. “This is all most interesting, but you have no proof, do you? No evidence, no witnesses, nothing.”

  “I can have the police examine the pillow through which the shot was fired, and the gun itself.”

  “If they are still to be found by the time the police arrive,” she said, this time with a smile.

  “And I did find this.” He held up a fragment of green fabric. “From your cloak, madam, caught on a bramble near the body. I had wondered at the time why you chose such an unfashionable, unflattering garment when your other clothes are all at the height of fashion. It was to make you invisible as you moved through the forest, was it not?”

  “I walked through the forest yesterday,” she said. “My cloak must have caught on a bramble then. Enough of this. I grow tired.”

  “Should I summon them, then, and repeat my story to the entire party?”

  “And who will listen to you?” she demanded. “You’re only a servant, an idiot servant at that. We will dismiss your ramblings and have you sent to an asylum. You don’t even know your own name.”

  “Ten minutes ago that was true, Countess,” the servant said, “but as I worked on this case, I realized that this was a situation I had been in many times before. I know now that I am a detective by profession—not just a detective, madam, but maybe the greatest that ever lived. Regard your nemesis, madam. You are looking at none other than Sherlock Holmes.”

  The woman gasped and ran for her needlework bag. Holmes dived at her just as she produced the revolver. He grabbed her wrist, and the shot flew into the wooden ceiling. There were shouts and feet came running up the stairs. The baron and his party burst into the room.

  “He’s a madman. He tried to attack me. Have him arrested,” the countess screamed.

  Holmes stepped forward and held up his hand commandingly to halt their approach.

  “I thank you, madam. You have now given me the proof I lacked,” Holmes said calmly. “If you retrieve the bullet from the ceiling, Herr Baron, you will find that it matches the bullet in Count von Strezl’s chest. They were fired from the same revolver. And if we analyze the poor man’s blood, it will reveal curare—a native poison found only in Brazil. Am I not right, Major?”

  Major Watling-Smythe looked at the countess. “It was worth a try, wasn’t it?” he said. “We fell in love at her house in Brazil. When I saw how miserable she was, trapped in the jungle with that selfish brute, I’d have done anything to set her free.”

  “It would have worked, too,” the countess screamed, “if you hadn’t poked your nose in. Curse you, Sherlock Holmes.”

  “What did you call him?” the baron demanded.

  “I am delighted to inform you that my memory has returned,” Sherlock Holmes replied. “And it was you who started me on the road to recovery, Major. I heard you speaking English, and your name was somehow familiar to me. It made my brain connect to my old friend Watson. Then when you uttered those words about letting the quarry get away, it was as if veils fell from my mind. By the time I had solved the intricacies of the case, I knew at last who I was.”

  “You really are Sherlock Holmes?” the major asked. “But everyone in England believes you died.”

  “I barely escaped death. And with all respect to Dr. Freud and his analyzing, I knew my name all the time, at least in my dreams. It was staring me in the face. What did I dream about but locked homes? Not only locked homes, but they were secured with a most modern safety lock. Its name could be clearly read, if I had bothered to read it. Sure Locks.”

  He gave the company a triumphant smile and strode from the room.

  The Bughouse Caper

  Bill Pronzini

  1

  The house at the westward edge of Russian Hill was a dormered and turreted pile of two stories and some dozen rooms, with a wraparound porch and a good deal of gingerbread trim. It was set well back from the street and well apart from its neighbors, given seclusion by shade trees, flowering shrubs, and marble statuary. A fine home, as befitted the likes of Elmer Truesdale, senior vice president of the San Francisco Maritime Bank. A home filled with all the playthings of the wealthy.

  A home built to be burglarized.

  Thirty feet inside the front gate, Quincannon shifted position in the deep shadow of a lilac bush. From this vantage point he had clear views of the house, the south side yard, and the street. He could see little of the rear of the property, where the bulk of a carriage barn loomed and a gated fence gave access to a carriageway that bisected the block, but this was of no consequence. His quarry might well come onto the property from that direction, but there was no rear entrance to the house and the method of preferred entry was by door, not first- or second-story windows; this meant he would have to come around to the side door or the front door, both of which were within sight.

  No light showed anywhere on the grounds. Banker Truesdale and his wife, dressed to the nines, had left two hours earlier in a private carriage, and they had no live-in servants. The only light anywhere in the immediate vicinity came from a streetlamp some fifty yards distant, a flickery glow that did not reach into the Truesdale yard. High cirrostratus clouds made thin streaks across the sky, touching but not obscuring an early moon. The heavenly body was neither a sickle nor what the yeggs called a stool-pigeon moon, but a near half that dusted the darkness with enough pale shine to see by.

  A night made for burglars and footpads. And detectives on the scent.

  The combination of property and conditions was one of the reasons Quincannon had stationed himself here. The other was the list of names in the pocket of his chesterfield, provided by Jackson Pollard of the Great Western Insurance Company—a list that was also in a housebreaker’s pocket, obtained from an unscrupulous employee or through other nefarious means. Whatever the burglar’s expense, it had rewarded him handsomely in two previous robberies. Tonight, if all went according to plan, it would be Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, who would reap the list’s final reward.

  Aye, and the sooner the better. A raw early-May wind had sprung up, thick with the salt smell of the bay, and its chill penetrated the greatcoat, cheviot, gloves, neck scarf, and cap Quincannon wore. Noiselessly, he stomped his feet and flexed his fingers to maintain circulation. His mind conjured up the image of steaming mugs of coffee and soup. Of a fire hot and crackling in his rooms on Leavenworth Street. Of the warmth of Sabina’s lips on the distressingly few occasions he had tasted them, and the all-too-brief pressure of her splendid body against his, and the heat of his passion for her—

  Ah, no. None of that now. Attention to the matter at hand, detective business first and foremost. Why dwell on his one frustrating failure, when another of his professional triumphs was imminent? Easier to catch a crook than to melt a stubborn woman’s resistance: Quincannon’s Law.

  A rattling and clopping on the cobbled street drew his attention. Moments later a hack, its side lamps casting narrow funnels of light, passed without slowing. When the sound of it faded, another sound took its place—music, faint and melodic. Someone playing the violin, and rather well, too. Quincannon listened for a time, decided what was being played was passages from Mendelssohn’s Lieder. He was hardly an expert on classical music, or even much of an aficionado, but he had allowed Sabina to draw him to enough concerts to identify individual pieces. Among his strong suits as a detective were both a photographic memory and a well-tuned ear.

  More time passed at a creep and crawl. The wind died down a bit, but he was so thoroughly chilled by then he scarcely noticed. Despite the heavy gloves and the constant flexing, his fingers felt stiff; much more time out here in the cold, and he might well have difficulty drawing his Navy Colt if such became necessary.

  Blast this blasted housebreaker, whoever he was! He was bound to come after the spoil
s tonight; Quincannon was sure of it, and his instincts seldom led him astray. So what was the scruff waiting for? It must be after nine by now. Wherever Banker Truesdale and his missus had gone for the evening, chances were they would return by eleven. This being Thursday, Truesdale’s presence would surely be required tomorrow morning at his bank.

  Quincannon speculated once more on the identity of his quarry. There were dozens of house burglars in San Francisco and environs, but the cleverness of method and skill of entry in this case narrowed the field to a few professionals. Of those known to him, the likeliest candidates were the Sanctimonious Kid and Dodger Brown. Both were known to be in Bay Area at present, but neither had done anything else to attract attention, such as immediately fencing stolen jewelry and other valuables. And if the man responsible was a newcomer, he was of the same professional stripe. In any case, the swag had surely been planted for the nonce, to be disposed of after the thief had gone through most or all of the five names on the target list.

  Or so the yegg would believe. Quincannon relished the prospect of convincing him otherwise, almost as much as he relished the thought of collecting the fat fee from Great Western Insurance.

  The violin music had ceased; the night was hushed again. He flexed and stomped and shifted and shivered, his mood growing darker by the minute. If the burglar gave any trouble, he would rue the effort. Quincannon prided himself as a man of guile and razor-sharp wits, but he was also a brawny man of Pennsylvania Scots stock and not averse to a bit of thumping and skull dragging if the situation warranted.

  Another vehicle, a small carriage this time, clattered past. A figure appeared on the sidewalk, and Quincannon tensed expectantly—but it was only a citizen walking his dog, and soon gone. Hell and damn! If by some fluke he was wrong about the place and time of the next burglary, and he was forced to spend another evening courting pneumonia or worse, he would demand a bonus from Jackson Pollard. And if he didn’t get it, he would damned well pad the expense account whether Sabina approved or not.