Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Volume 5

by Marvin Kaye

  We soon arrived back at the Wadsworth house and found the policeman enjoying tea and small sandwiches. He looked a trifle embarrassed to be found eating on duty, but we put him at ease and told him he could hardly be expected to stand guard over our prisoner without aid of sustenance. The man reported no change from Warren, who had remained the model detainee, seated by the fire.

  The cook had returned from market, which explained the policeman’s repast. Watson and Lilly accepted tea from the matronly Mrs. Spline. The woman, we learned, had been in the employ of Mr. Wadsworth for more than twenty years. She was badly shaken by the recent events and was quick to inquire about the health of Ernie and Eunice, whom she had attended since they were very young. Watson attempted to keep the news cheerful, but had to admit that there was no change in their condition. The death of the maid seemed a bad portent.

  “Miss Lilly,” I asked, “have you been dining with the Wadsworths these last few days?”

  “No, Mr. Holmes. Ernie and I went our separate ways upon our return to London. I went home to visit my mother and began plans for the wedding. I only arrived here yesterday as the…present crisis was unfolding.” She struggled to hold back tears. Mrs. Spline patted her on the shoulder and poured more tea in an attempt to comfort her.

  “Mrs. Spline,” I said, “you seem an excellent cook, if these sandwiches are any indication of your abilities. Had you prepared a special meal in honor of Master Wadsworth’s return?”

  The woman brightened at my compliment. “Why, yes, sir, I did. Yorkshire pudding, glazed plums and tenderloin of beef.”

  “And who is your purveyor of meats, madam?”

  “Cohen and Sons. They are just down the road.”

  I gazed at Warren, who had suddenly become quite interested in my line of questioning. “Do the servants dine on the same fare as the family?” I asked.

  “Would that they did,” Warren said. “Think they would share a bit of their happiness.” He turned bitterly back to the fire.

  “Why so interested in the cookery?” Watson asked, between brushing crumbs from his trousers and sipping tea.

  “It just might be the key to our mystery,” I said. Both Watson and the sergeant looked down doubtfully at their sandwiches.

  “Still think I killed the old man?” muttered Warren.

  “I think there is every possibility that the killer was Mrs. Spline,” I said. Before giving the company time to react, I headed for the door, “Come, Watson. Let us visit the local butcher.”

  * * * *

  Down a side street, off the main lane, we found a shop with a faded sign: Cohen and Sons, Kosher Butchers, with some Hebrew lettering below the English inscription. We entered to find the proprietor behind a counter, wiping a large cleaver on the bottom of an already blood-spattered apron. “Help you, gentlemen? Joint of mutton, slab of bacon, or perhaps some lamb?” he asked.

  “You wouldn’t be Mr. Cohen?” I asked, already confident of the reply.

  “Why, no, sir. Bradley is the name. Just purchased the business from the Cohens. Place is a bit rundown, but I hope to have the shop looking smart for the clientele shortly. I may retain the name on the sign for some time, though. Old Cohen had a good reputation in the neighborhood.”

  “You know Mrs. Spline, I should think.”

  “Cook for Wadsworth. She was here earlier today. Shame about the chap, though. Never had the chance to make his acquaintance.”

  “Is the tenderloin fresh?” I asked. Watson gave a start but held his tongue.

  “Nothing but the best, I assure you, my man,” Bradley said. He gestured to the back of the shop, where attendants were in the process of carving up a huge slab of meat. “Sold some to Mrs. Spline, special the other day. She seemed quite pleased.”

  “And do you perform the slaughter on the premises?”

  “No, sir, done by my men at the slaughterhouse.”

  “From which part of the animal is the tenderloin obtained?”

  “Generally, sir, it is from the large muscle of the neck,” he replied, gesturing to his own throat with the cleaver. “Any interest in the tenderloin? I can put in any special request you have. Have it here for you next day?”

  “Not this moment,” I replied. “We will be sure to keep you in mind. Thank you for your time.”

  “My pleasure, sirs,” he mumbled, and sunk the end of his cleaver into his chopping block.

  We took leave of the disappointed butcher and made our way back toward the Wadsworth house. “What do you know about kosher food, Watson?” I asked.

  “Something about the Jewish diet,” he said with a shrug. “Knew a chap at school, Marks, wouldn’t dine at the club. Wouldn’t eat pork.”

  “Precisely. The Jews consider the pig to be unclean. Our man Bradley at Cohen and Sons offered us bacon. Clearly he has retained the name but not the standards of the kosher butcher. It is not just the type of meat consumed that is proscribed by the kosher law, but how the meat is prepared is also of vast import. The slaughter of the animal is carried out in a humane fashion. The animal’s throat is slit and the blood allowed to slowly drain from the body over the course of the day.”

  “Sounds ghastly,” Watson said.

  “That is the Jewish law. Now, Watson, if the blood is allowed to drain from the animal before it is carved into the various cuts of meat, might not certain organs undergo a change in appearance as compared to those of a freshly slaughtered animal?” I allowed Watson to ponder the question as I continued my line of reasoning. “Is not the thyroid gland of the neck intimately associated with the strap-like muscles of the neck?”

  “The strenocleidomastoid muscles,” Watson agreed, “run from the base of the skull to the collarbone. The thyroid is suspended between them.” Watson stopped walking abruptly. The sudden dawning of recognition on his face seemed a light in the fading gray of the day. “I see, Holmes! You think the kosher butcher would easily be able to recognize the thyroid tissue from the muscles of the neck. The blood, having drained away, would render the gland a dull gray colour, while the meaty muscles of the neck would retain their red hue.”

  “It would be a simple matter to trim away the glandular tissue for the kosher butcher of experience, but perhaps quite another matter for our friend Bradley who is new to the business.”

  “I have to admit that all the tissue of the neck would look equally red and bloody in the newly killed animal, just as the various tissue types of the cadaver in the anatomy laboratory are much easier to discern than those of the living tissues in the operating theatre!” Watson cried.

  “And so, my good fellow, we must conclude that in Bradley’s haste to please his new customer, Mrs. Spline, he incorporated a generous portion of the thyroid in the tenderloin, thus poisoning the household with the various products of gland.”

  “The result,” Watson added, “would vary in each person who ate the meat depending on the quantity of glandular secretion ingested, and the relative constitution of the individual.”

  “Thus, we have the deaths of the fragile maid and Joshua Wadsworth. His children will fare better as they are no doubt, in more robust health. The maid must have sneaked a bit of the loin for herself when no one was watching. Warren and Mrs. Spline were not offered the meat and Miss Lilly was away visiting her mother, hence they have remained unaffected by the malady.”

  “You make it sound so obvious, Holmes.”

  “I could not have come to the conclusion without the aid of your medical expertise,” I complimented.

  “But what about Warren?” Watson asked. “Surely he must be up to no good; he seems very suspicious. And what of the fact that he moved the body and smoked the cigar over the corpse of his employer?”

  “Oh, rest assured he is not innocent. He had some plan in mind but was able to take advantage of a most unusual opportunity. He must have known that his employer kept a safe. With the impending wedding, Wadsworth must have kept or transferred some valuables to the safe for the return of the betrothed coupl
e. I should think there would be money and perhaps the jewelry of his late wife to bestow upon the bride-to-be in honor and preparation of the nuptials. Warren would have needed a way to obtain the key from his master, who would have kept it close to his person. I can only imagine what was in the mind of the criminal who so obviously had disdain for his employer.”

  “But when he found the whole family to be suddenly incapacitated…” Watson followed my reasoning.

  “He helped himself to a cigar while searching the body for the key,” I concluded. “I think we will find quite an empty safe when we return to the house.”

  The sound of the police whistle interrupted our discourse. There was a commotion and several policemen came up Brick Lane at the run.

  “Watson, did you bring your service revolver?”

  He patted the breast pocket of his coat. “I have learned by now to bring it along on these little forays, Holmes.”

  We hastened to the house to find that a crowd had gathered on the street by the Wadsworth house. Several policemen were forcing their way through the onlookers in an attempt at gaining access to the door. The policeman inside continued to sound the alarm and the crowd began to shout. I pulled Watson by the sleeve and shouted over the din, “Around the back, man! Quickly.”

  We raced to the rear of the house and found the tradesman’s entrance locked. With no time to force the lock, Watson drew his weapon, fired, and blew the hardware off the latch. We burst into the kitchen and found Warren holding a knife to Miss Brevant’s throat. The policeman had the whistle in his mouth and truncheon drawn; Warren was backed against a wall of shelves that stored a large assortment of crockery and cooking implements. Warren’s blade, poised to pierce the young woman, kept the officer at bay.

  “You’ll not pin the murder on me, Holmes!” Warren sneered.

  “I have no intention,” I said calmly. “But if you so much as put a nick in that young woman’s throat, I’ll see you swing. I will ask you for the contents of the safe.”

  For a moment, Warren seemed astonished that we had deduced the nature of his crime. “Never, not after the way that man treated me. I got what was due me. He promised me a share of the business. He never gave it, and I was reduced to a servant.”

  “That gives you no right to take his son’s inheritance.”

  Warren tightened his grip on Lilly. Watson’s second shot was deafening in the confines of the kitchen. For an instant, I thought that a shot at the assailant would be sure to injure the young lady as well, but my friend had aimed at the shelf immediately above Warren’s head. The projectile brought an array of heavy crockery, pots, pans, and shelving down on the pair. The blow was not enough to render the man senseless but the diversion was such as to separate hostage from captor.

  Warren lunged with his knife toward Lilly but was met with a stout crack to the head by the quick-acting officer’s nightstick. This blow forced Warren to surrender both knife and consciousness.

  * * * *

  By the time the police carted Warren away, Watson had attended the bruised Lilly Brevant and Mrs. Spline had begun the cleanup. Lestrade had been summoned from his bed. My second pipe of the day was long since due, and I enjoyed the tobacco and look of amazement on Lestrade’s face as I recounted the events of the day. We located Wadsworth’s safe and, as expected, found it empty.

  I credited Dr. Watson with the key elements in determining the cause of the illness that cost two their lives and saved Ernie and Eunice from committal in the lunatic asylum. The two would make a full recovery. Ernie and Lilly honoured us with invitations to their wedding. Sadly, Warren would never divulge the location of the purloined inheritance and would take this knowledge to his spiteful grave.

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE SECOND ROUND, by Mark Wardecker

  It is with much reserve that I begin this account of the mystery which awaited my friend Sherlock Holmes and me at Sherrinsthorpe Manor in Kensington. In fact, not since recording the tragedy of the Cushing sisters have I felt such misgivings about publishing one of Holmes’ cases, and in that instance, my reticence did finally prevent the story’s inclusion in most subsequent anthologies. Still, the masterful way in which Holmes illuminated such an obscure conspiracy demands no less than that a record be published. Only this and the fact that the passage of time has swept away many of this drama’s principal actors have moved me to finally set it down.

  It was late in the month of November, and though no snow had yet fallen, the frigid blasts of winter rattled every pane and resonated in every chimney in London. During one particularly bitter morning, I arose shortly before dawn and was surprised to find my friend awake and already dressed. What was even more surprising was that, in spite of the early hour and the forbidding, slate-grey frigidity which had permeated the city, Holmes was in remarkably high spirits. He was standing in front of a roaring fire and filling his morning pipe which was comprised of all the plugs and dottles left from his smokes of the day before, all carefully dried and collected on the corner of the mantlepiece. Upon my entrance, he picked up a letter which was also on the mantelpiece and turned to greet me.

  “Good morning, Watson. I am so glad you have already dressed.”

  “Good morning to you, as well, Holmes, but I must say that I am surprised to see you up and dressed so early.”

  “I was awakened about an hour ago by a messenger,” he said, as he handed me the letter. “Do you remember my mentioning an Inspector Nicholson of the Yard?”

  “Yes. He has called you in on a couple of cases within the past year, hasn’t he?”

  “Actually, he has enlisted my help on no less than three occasions. He is very young but has already made quite a name for himself in the press. He was the one who finally managed to apprehend the Spotts gang and that without my help. This time, however, he hasn’t wasted an instant in contacting me, which can only mean that he has stumbled upon something unusual.”

  At a nod toward the letter from Holmes, I unfolded it and, in my customary fashion, read it aloud:

  *

  “Sherrinsthorpe, Kensington

  “3:30 a.m.

  “My dear Mr. Holmes, I should be very glad of your immediate assistance in what promises to be a most remarkable case. It is something quite in your line. So far, I have been able to keep everything as I have found it, but I beg you not to lose an instant, as it is difficult to leave Lord Morris there.

  “Yours faithfully,

  “Geoffrey Nicholson.”

  *

  “Well, this leaves little doubt as to the result of the crime,” I remarked, “but I must confess that the name of the victim is unfamiliar to me.”

  “It is to me, as well. Since Mrs. Hudson has been kind enough to prepare breakfast, why don’t you have something to eat while I look him up.”

  As I sat down to breakfast at the table, Holmes retrieved a red-covered volume from one of the shelves and slumped down into his armchair. When, after several minutes, he stopped flipping through the pages and re-lit his pipe, I hazarded the question: “Well, what does it say?”

  “That the victim was noble … not that I doubted it. No, I am afraid we shall have to begin our investigation at the scene of the crime.”

  With that, I hurriedly finished Mrs. Hudson’s excellent breakfast, and in no time, we had abandoned the comfort of Baker Street for a west-bound cab. Holmes, obviously excited over the prospect of an interesting case, talked animatedly of music and the theatre, but I, uncharacteristically, became withdrawn once our growler entered High Street and the precincts of my old neighbourhood. Even Hyde Park and the Gardens looked lifeless on this relentlessly cold morning, and none but the hardiest tradesmen were out and about. Within an hour, we passed through a wrought iron gate and into a long drive, at the end of which stood Sherrinsthorpe Manor, a massive red-brick mansion of three floors. As we alighted and Holmes paid the driver, a moon-faced and somewhat disheveled young man emerged from the entrance, said a couple of words to a constable posted by the door, and
hurriedly walked over to us.

  “Mr. Holmes, I’m so glad you decided to accept my invitation!” he said smiling.

  “It is good to see you, as well, Nicholson. This is my friend and colleague, Dr. Watson.”

  “It’s good to finally meet you, sir. I hate to rush you both, but we should probably have a look at the scene before the coroner arrives to examine the body.”

  “That’s fine, but let me first congratulate you on the birth of your child,” said Holmes, causing Nicholson to suddenly turn around again.

  “Thank you. Our son Adam was born a few weeks ago. Did Inspector Lestrade tell you?” asked Nicholson with a hint of expectation in his tone.

  “No, there are several other indicators. In fact, when I first noticed the wrinkled condition of your suit and that you looked unusually weary, even for one aroused so early, I began to worry that your domestic fortunes had suffered a decline. However, once you turned, exposing the dried milk stain upon your left shoulder, I was glad to find that quite the opposite was true.”

  “Let’s hope Mr. Holmes can make such short work of this murder, Dr. Watson. Follow me, gentlemen.”

  And with that, we entered the main hall.

  “You will probably want to keep your coats on,” warned Nicholson. “As I stated in the letter, nothing has been touched, and the French doors of the study have been open all night.”

  Indeed, it was absolutely freezing in Lord Morris’s study, and I was able to feel a blast of wind the moment Nicholson opened its door, which was on the left-hand side of the hall. The French doors were directly across from the entrance, and the only other window, which was closed, was on our left and looked out upon the grounds in front of the mansion. Despite its rifled appearance, the room was neatly furnished, with some scattered Persian rugs, a few armchairs before the fireplace, and a large mahogany desk interposed between the entrance and the French doors. And it was here that Lord Morris sat with his head resting upon the desk’s bloodstained blotter. Also upon the desk lay a small pistol, directly in front of his right hand. The man’s hunched but tall form still retained its frock-coat with only a pair of black patent leather slippers indicating that his day’s exertions were coming to an end.