The Perfect Murder

by Ruskin Bond

  ‘It would be injustice to hesitate,’ said he. ‘You will, however, I am sure, excuse me for taking an obvious precaution.’ With that he seized my hair in both his hands, and tugged until I yelled with the pain. ‘There is water in your eyes,’ said he, as he released me. ‘I perceive that all is as it should be. But we have to be careful, for we have twice been deceived by wigs and once by paint. I could tell you tales of cobbler’s wax which would disgust you with human nature.’ He stepped over to the window and shouted through it at the top of his voice that the vacancy was filled. A groan of disappointment came up from below, and the folk all trooped away in different directions, until there was not a red head to be seen except my own and that of the manager.

  ‘My name,’ said he, ‘is Mr Duncan Ross, and I am myself one of the pensioners upon the fund left by our noble benefactor. Are you a married man, Mr Wilson? Have you a family?’

  ‘I answered that I had not.

  ‘His face fell immediately.

  ‘Dear me!’ he said, gravely, ‘that is very serious indeed! I am sorry to hear you say that. The fund was, of course, for the propagation and spread of the red heads as well as for their maintenance. It is exceedingly unfortunate that you should be a bachelor.’

  ‘My face lengthened at this, Mr Holmes, for I thought that I was not to have the vacancy after all; but, after thinking it over for a few minutes, he said that it would be all right.’

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  ‘In the case of another,’ said he, ‘the objection might be fatal, but we must stretch a point in favour of a man with such a head of hair as yours. When shall you be able to enter upon your new duties?’

  ‘Well, it is a little awkward, for I have a business already,’ said I.

  ‘Oh, never mind about that, Mr Wilson!’ said Vincent Spaulding. ‘I shall be able to look after that for you.’

  ‘What would be the hours?’ I asked.

  ‘Ten to two.’

  ‘Now a pawnbroker’s business is mostly done of an evening, Mr Holmes, especially Thursday and Friday evenings, which is just before pay day; so it would suit me very well to earn a little in the mornings. Besides, I knew that my assistant was a good man, and that he would see to anything that turned up.

  ‘That would suit me very well,’ said I. ‘And the pay?’

  ‘Is four pounds a week.’

  ‘And the work?’

  ‘Is purely nominal.’

  ‘What do you call purely nominal?’

  ‘Well, you have to be in the office, or at least in the building, the whole time. If you leave, you forfeit your whole position forever. The will is very clear upon that point. You don’t comply with the conditions if you budge from the office during that time.’

  ‘It’s only four hours a day, and I should not think of leaving,’ said I.

  ‘No excuse will avail,’ said Mr Duncan Ross, ‘neither sickness, nor business, nor anything else. There you must stay, or you lose your billet.’

  ‘And the work?’

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  ‘Is to copy out the ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica.’ There is the first volume of it in that press. You must find your own ink, pens, and blotting paper, but we provide this table and chair. Will you be ready tomorrow?’

  ‘Certainly,’ I answered.

  ‘Then, goodbye, Mr Jabez Wilson, and let me congratulate you once more on the important position which you have been fortunate enough to gain.’ He bowed me out of the room, and I went home with my assistant hardly knowing what to say or do, I was so pleased at my own good fortune.

  ‘Well, I thought over the matter all day, and by evening I was in low spirits again; for I had quite persuaded myself that the whole affair must be some great hoax or fraud, though what its object might be I could not imagine. It seemed altogether past belief that anyone could make such a will, or that they would pay such a sum for doing anything so simple as copying out the ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica.’ Vincent Spaulding did what he could to cheer me up, but by bed time I had reasoned myself out of the whole thing. However, in the morning I determined to have a look at it anyhow, so I bought a penny bottle of ink, and with a quill pen and seven sheets of foolscap paper I started off for Pope’s Court.

  ‘Well, to my surprise and delight everything was as right as possible. The table was set out ready for me, and Mr Duncan Ross was there to see that I got fairly to work. He started me off upon the letter A, and then he left me; but he would drop in from time to time to see that all was right with me. At two o’clock he bade me good-day, complimented me upon the amount that I had written, and locked the door of the office after me.

  ‘This went on day after day, Mr Holmes, and on Saturday the manager came in and planked down four golden sovereigns for my week’s work. It was the same next week, and the same the week after. Every morning I was there at ten, and every afternoon I left at two. By degrees Mr Duncan Ross took to coming in only once of a morning, and then, after a time, he did not come in at all. Still, of course, I never dared to leave the room for an instant, for I was not sure when he might come, and the billet was such a good one, and suited me so well, that I would not risk the loss of it.

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  ‘Eight weeks passed away like this, and I had written about Abbots, and Archery, and Armor, and Architecture, and Attica, and hoped with diligence that I might get on to the Bs before very long. It cost me something in foolscap, and I had pretty nearly filled a shelf with my writings. And then suddenly the whole business came to an end.’

  ‘To an end?’

  ‘Yes, sir. And no later than this morning. I went to my work as usual at ten o’clock, but the door was shut and locked, with a little square of cardboard hammered onto the middle of the panel with a tack. Here it is, and you can read for yourself.’

  He held up a piece of white cardboard, about the size of a sheet of note paper. It read in this fashion:

  ‘THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE IS DISSOLVED. 9 Oct. 1890.’

  Sherlock Holmes and I surveyed this curt announcement and the rueful face behind it, until the comical side of the affair so completely overtopped every consideration that we both burst out into a roar of laughter.

  ‘I cannot see that there is anything very funny,’ cried our client, flushing up to the roots of his flaming head. ‘If you can do nothing better than laugh at me, I can go elsewhere.’

  ‘No, no,’ cried Holmes, shoving him back into the chair from which he had half risen. ‘I really wouldn’t miss your case for the world. It is most refreshingly unusual. But there is, if you will excuse my saying so, something just a little funny about it. Pray what steps did you take when you found the card upon the door?’

  ‘I was staggered, sir. I did not know what to do. Then I called at the offices around, but none of them seemed to know anything about it. Finally, I went to the landlord, who is an accountant living on the ground floor, and I asked him if he could tell me what had become of the Red-headed League. He said that he had never heard of any such body. Then I asked him who Mr Duncan Ross was. He answered that the name was new to him.’

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  ‘Well,’ said I, ‘the gentleman at No. 4.’

  ‘What, the red-headed man?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘his name was William Morris. He was a solicitor, and was using my room as a temporary convenience until his new premises were ready. He moved out yesterday.’

  ‘Where could I find him?’

  ‘Oh, at his new offices. He did tell me the address. Yes, 17 King Edward Street, near St. Paul’s.’

  ‘I started off, Mr Holmes, but when I got to that address it was a manufactory of artificial knee-caps, and no one in it had ever heard of either Mr William Morris or Mr Duncan Ross.’

  ‘And what did you do then?’ asked Holmes.

  ‘I went home to Saxe-Coburg Square, and I took the advice of my assistant. But he could not help me in any way. He could only say that if I waited I should hear by post. But that was not quite good enough, Mr Holmes. I did not
wish to lose such a place without a struggle, so, as I had heard that you were good enough to give advice to poor folk who were in need of it, I came right away to you.’

  ‘And you did very wisely,’ said Holmes. ‘Your case is an exceedingly remarkable one, and I shall be happy to look into it. From what you have told me I think that it is possible that graver issues hang from it than might at first sight appear.’

  ‘Grave enough!’ said Mr Jabez Wilson. ‘Why, I have lost four pound a week.’

  ‘As far as you are personally concerned,’ remarked Holmes, ‘I do not see that you have any grievance against this extraordinary league. On the contrary, you are, as I understand, richer by some thirty pounds, to say nothing of the minute knowledge which you have gained on every subject which comes under the letter A. You have lost nothing by them.’

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  ‘No, sir. But I want to find out about them, and who they are, and what their object was in playing this prank—if it was a prank—upon me. It was a pretty expensive joke for them, for it cost them two-and-thirty pounds.’

  ‘We shall endeavour to clear up these points for you. And, first, one or two questions, Mr Wilson. This assistant of yours who first called your attention to the advertisement—how long had he been with you?’

  ‘About a month then.’

  ‘How did he come?’

  ‘In answer to an advertisement.’

  ‘Was he the only applicant?’

  ‘No, I had a dozen.’

  ‘Why did you pick him?’

  ‘Because he was handy and would come cheap.’

  ‘At half wages, in fact.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is he like, this Vincent Spaulding?’

  ‘Small, stout-built, very quick in his ways, no hair on his face, though he’s not short of thirty. Has a white splash of acid upon his forehead.’

  Holmes sat up in his chair in considerable excitement. ‘I thought as much,’ said he. ‘Have you ever observed that his ears are pierced for earrings?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He told me that a gypsy had done it for him when he was a lad.’

  ‘Hum!’ said Holmes, sinking back in deep thought. ‘He is still with you?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir; I have only just left him.’

  ‘And has your business been attended to in your absence?’

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  ‘Nothing to complain of, sir. There’s never very much to do of a morning.’

  ‘That will do, Mr Wilson. I shall be happy to give you an opinion upon the subject in the course of a day or two. Today is Saturday, and I hope that by Monday we may come to a conclusion.’

  ‘Well, Watson,’ said Holmes, when our visitor had left us, ‘what do you make of it all?’

  ‘I make nothing of it,’ I answered frankly. ‘It is a most mysterious business.’

  ‘As a rule,’ said Holmes, ‘the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify. But I must be prompt over this matter.’

  ‘What are you going to do, then?’ I asked.

  ‘To smoke,’ he answered. ‘It is quite a three-pipe problem, and I beg that you won’t speak to me for fifty minutes.’ He curled himself up in his chair, with his thin knees drawn up to his hawklike nose, and there he sat with his eyes closed and his black clay pipe thrusting out like the bill of some strange bird. I had come to the conclusion that he had dropped asleep, and indeed was nodding myself, when he suddenly sprang out of his chair with the gesture of a man who has made up his mind, and put his pipe down upon the mantelpiece.

  ‘Sarasate plays at St. James’s Hall this afternoon,’ he remarked. ‘What do you think, Watson? Could your patients spare you for a few hours?’

  ‘I have nothing to do today. My practice is never very absorbing.’

  ‘Then put on your hat and come. I am going through the City first, and we can have some lunch on the way. I observe that there is a good deal of German music on the programme, which is rather more to my taste than Italian or French. It is introspective, and I want to introspect. Come along!’

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  We travelled by the Underground as far as Aldersgate; and a short walk took us to Saxe-Coburg Square, the scene of the singular story which we had listened to in the morning. It was a poky, little, shabby-genteel place, where four lines of dingy, two-storied brick houses looked out into a small railed-in inclosure, where a lawn of weedy grass, and a few clumps of faded laurel bushes made a hard fight against a smoke-laden and uncongenial atmosphere. Three gilt balls and a brown board with JABEZ WILSON in white letters, upon a corner house, announced the place where our red-headed client carried on his business. Sherlock Holmes stopped in front of it with his head on one side, and looked it all over, with his eyes shining brightly between puckered lids. Then he walked slowly up the street, and then down again to the corner, still looking keenly at the houses. Finally he returned to the pawnbroker’s and, having thumped vigorously upon the pavement with his stick two or three times, he went up to the door and knocked. It was instantly opened by a bright-looking, clean-shaven young fellow, who asked him to step in.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Holmes, ‘I only wished to ask you how you would go from here to the Strand.’

  ‘Third right, fourth left,’ answered the assistant, promptly, closing the door.

  ‘Smart fellow, that,’ observed Holmes as we walked away. ‘He is, in my judgment, the fourth smartest man in London, and for daring I am not sure that he has not a claim to be third. I have known something of him before.’

  ‘Evidently,’ said I, ‘Mr Wilson’s assistant counts for a good deal in this mystery of the Red-headed League. I am sure that you inquired your way merely in order that you might see him.’

  ‘Not him.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘The knees of his trousers.’

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  ‘And what did you see?’

  ‘What I expected to see.’

  ‘Why did you beat the pavement?’

  ‘My dear doctor, this is a time for observation, not for talk. We are spies in an enemy’s country. We know something of Saxe-Coburg Square. Let us now explore the parts which lie behind it.’

  The road in which we found ourselves as we turned round the corner from the retired Saxe-Coburg Square presented as great a contrast to it as the front of a picture does to the back. It was one of the main arteries which convey the traffic of the City to the north and west. The roadway was blocked with the immense stream of commerce flowing in a double tide inward and outward, while the footpaths were black with the hurrying swarm of pedestrians. It was difficult to realize, as we looked at the line of fine shops and stately business premises, that they really abutted on the other side upon the faded and stagnant square which we had just quitted.

  ‘Let me see,’ said Holmes, standing at the corner, and glancing along the line, ‘I should like just to remember the order of the houses here. It is a hobby of mine to have an exact knowledge of London. There is Mortimer’s, the tobacconist; the little newspaper shop, the Coburg branch of the City and Suburban Bank, the Vegetarian Restaurant, and McFarlane’s carriage-building depot. That carries us right on to the other block. And now, doctor, we’ve done our work, so it’s time we had some play. A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness, and delicacy, and harmony, and there are no red-headed clients to vex us with their conundrums.’

  My friend was an enthusiastic musician, being himself not only a very capable performer, but a composer of no ordinary merit. All the afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness, gently waving his long thin fingers in time to the music, while his gently smiling face and his languid, dreamy eyes were as unlike those of Holmes the sleuth-hound, Holmes the relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal agent, as it was possible to conceive. In his singular character the dual nature alternately asserted itself,
and his extreme exactness and astuteness represented, as I have often thought, the reaction against the poetic and contemplative mood which occasionally predominated in him. The swing of his nature took him from extreme languor to devouring energy; and, as I knew well, he was never so truly formidable as when, for days on end, he had been lounging in his armchair amid his improvisations and his black-letter editions. Then it was that the lust of the chase would suddenly come upon him, and that his brilliant reasoning power would rise to the level of intuition, until those who were unacquainted with his methods would look askance at him as on a man whose knowledge was not that of other mortals. When I saw him that afternoon so enwrapped in the music at St. James’s Hall, I felt that an evil time might be coming upon those whom he had set himself to hunt down.

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  ‘You want to go home, no doubt, doctor,’ he remarked, as we emerged.

  ‘Yes, it would be as well.’

  ‘And I have some business to do which will take some hours. This business at Saxe-Coburg Square is serious.’

  ‘Why serious?’

  ‘A considerable crime is in contemplation. I have every reason to believe that we shall be in time to stop it. But today being Saturday rather complicates matters. I shall want your help tonight.’

  ‘At what time?’

  ‘Ten will be early enough.’

  ‘I shall be at Baker Street at ten.’

  ‘Very well. And, I say, doctor! there may be some little danger, so kindly put your army revolver in your pocket.’ He waved his hand, turned on his heel, and disappeared in an instant among the crowd.

  I trust that I am not more dense than my neighbours, but I was always oppressed with a sense of my own stupidity in my dealings with Sherlock Holmes. Here I had heard what he had heard, I had seen what he had seen, and yet from his words it was evident that he saw clearly not only what had happened, but what was about to happen, while to me the whole business was still confused and grotesque. As I drove home to my house in Kensington I thought over it all, from the extraordinary story of the red-headed copier of the ‘Encyclopaedia’ down to the visit to Saxe-Coburg Square, and the ominous words with which he had parted from me. What was this nocturnal expedition, and why should I go armed? Where were we going, and what were we to do? I had the hint from Holmes that this smooth-faced pawnbroker’s assistant was a formidable man—a man who might play a deep game. I tried to puzzle it out, but gave it up in despair, and set the matter aside until night should bring an explanation.