Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Tainted Canister

by Thomas A. Turley

  “Well,” I chuckled ruefully, “I’ve no doubt of it in your case. Don’t forget to come to Christmas dinner.”

  “I shan’t fail the feast. What is Mary serving?”

  “Goose, I believe.” With a sadder smile, I added, “It’s in honour of an absent friend.”

  “Ah, yes, poor Holmes. I’m sorry that I never got to meet him. Oh, I say, John, wait a moment!” He dashed from the room and returned with a small, square box, neatly wrapped and tied up with red ribbon. “I almost forgot my final present to you.”

  “That’s hardly necessary, Richard; you’ve been more than generous already.” Shaking the package in the approved pre-Christmas manner, I heard a rustling within. “May I enquire what it contains, or must I wait for the appointed day?”

  “Oh, I don’t wish to make a mystery. It’s a canister of Darjeeling tea, grown on my father’s estate in the foothills of the Himalayas. He always sends a new supply to me at Christmas. It’s practically the only time that we communicate all year.”

  “Well, thank you. I, at least, promise to enjoy it.”

  “Yes, I remember Mary’s un-English aversion to our national beverage. Pray give her my apologies.” We shook hands again as closer friends, I felt, than we had ever been before.

  “How horrid of him!” laughed my wife, when we unwrapped the package. “Still, if it’s from his family’s home in India, I suppose that I must drink one cup. Please take it in to Millie, dear, and ask her to serve it in the breakfast room. There will be more light there on such a gloomy day.”

  Shortly afterward, our young kitchen maid (whose inexperience, Mary assured me, would soon progress to ineptitude) struggled in with the heavy tray. She managed to pour her mistress a cup of the Darjeeling without spilling it; but as she turned to me, a log fell in the grate, landing with a loud pop that startled her. The pot slipped from Millie’s hand and shattered on the table’s edge, and within a moment Anstruther’s gift had soaked into our carpet. My ill-disguised amusement earned a stern look from my wife, so I began to mop up while she soothed the flustered girl.

  “Please leave that, John. Millie will take care of it, and there’s another teapot somewhere in the kitchen. You shall have a cup tomorrow with your breakfast.”

  “Very well, my dear. But you must drink yours now, for I’m sure that poor Anstruther will never persuade you to accept another.”

  “Oh, very well,” she sighed; and thus, at my behest, drank down the Darjeeling.

  That night, Mary began to complain of a headache and retired early to bed. When I stopped to bid her good-night, she smiled up at me with even more than her wonted sweetness, confiding that we might expect a son by summer’s end.

  “Or a daughter,” I replied, taking her hand, for as a physician I had already noted certain signs that allowed me to anticipate her news.

  “Oh, no, my dear. I think you must respect a mother’s intuition, even a mother so new to motherhood as I am. I feel quite sure that it will be a son.”

  “What shall we call him, then?”

  “Anything you like—except ‘Sherlock!’”

  But neither my wife’s joyous expectation nor our hope of raising the child together was destined to be realized. The next morning, Mary awoke with a high fever. She passed the day in agony and, late that afternoon, went into convulsions. By nightfall, she was dead. Our son, if son there was, died with her.

  Perhaps inevitably, my wife’s death presaged the end of my friendship with Richard Anstruther. On the morning of her illness, I naturally, in view of his experience with fevers, sent an urgent message to his door, only to learn that he had been called away from London. He did not arrive until the following morning, after my wife’s body had already been removed, and I had collapsed in grief upon my bed. Our own physician (who had been as helpless to save Mary as I was) explained the situation to him but declined to disturb me. At the funeral, Richard stood alone and ashen-faced, and I heard nothing from him afterward for nearly a fortnight. When we finally discussed Mary’s symptoms, he questioned me sharply, and I had the impression that he considered our treatment to have been at fault. Whether intentionally or not, my colleague made me feel that the woman we both loved would have survived, had he been there to save her.

  From that day, we saw each other with decreasing frequency. Richard sent word, in early spring, that he had decided to sell the Paddington practice. His plan was to abandon general medicine for good and devote himself entirely to research. Hastening to bid him farewell and offer my congratulations on this long-sought outcome, I enquired how it had come about. Rather coldly, he informed me that he had received a large inheritance following his father’s death. In later months, I visited Anstruther twice at his elegant new residence in Brook Street, but he showed such constraint that it was obvious our relationship was at an end. Only Mary’s shining presence had united us, enabling us to bridge our differences and find a common ground. Without her, our continued intercourse served only to remind us of the angel we had lost. Before the end of 1892, I had fallen out of contact with him altogether.

  Thus, deprived of both my wife and my two closest friends, my life had suddenly become a lonely one. For awhile, I found consolation in my work as medical examiner for Scotland Yard; but Lestrade’s infrequent summonses, and invariable condescension, seemed to mock the intimate, exciting partnership I had enjoyed with a far superior detective. My practice also had grown stale, so I too left Paddington (not without regret for the house where Mary and I had been happy) and purchased a smaller practice in Kensington. It was, in fact, the same one that had once belonged to Anstruther. His successor was by no means thriving, but I lacked the energy to attempt much of an improvement. Although I treated my new patients conscientiously, they must have sensed my weariness, for their numbers steadily declined. In every way, therefore, this period was the nadir of my existence.

  During those long months, Holmes was seldom absent from my thoughts. The necessity of defending his memory from the calumnies of Colonel Moriarty (brother of the “Napoleon of Crime”) compelled me to lay before the public a full and accurate account. As I have noted elsewhere, my “last words” of the great detective—for so I thought them then—were written “with a heavy heart.” Yet, they provided a sense of purpose that I badly needed and kept me from despair. Anger, as I would come to learn, is a powerful restorative.

  Then, on an April evening in 1894, while desultorily investigating a murder in Park Lane, I collided with an elderly, deformed book collector. After railing at me for my carelessness, he followed me to Kensington; and, five minutes later, I found myself reunited with Mr. Sherlock Holmes. By midnight, we were ensconced inside a darkened, empty house in Baker Street, watching as Mrs. Hudson (unseen on her hands and knees) pushed a waxen model of my friend’s distinctive profile through the well-lit chambers at 221B. The shadow of “Holmes” was clearly illuminated on the window blind; and Lestrade, with a crowd of policemen, waited in the alley. My heart, no longer heavy, sang within me. A miracle had happened, and my life had been renewed.

  Readers of my chronicles will recall the man we caught that night: Colonel Sebastian Moran, former commander of the 1st Bangalore Pioneers, the finest big-game shot in India, and the murderer—with Von Herder’s air gun—of the Honourable Ronald Adair. For Colonel Moran had also been (as I would learn from Holmes’ biographical index of crime) the late Professor Moriarty’s second-in-command—“the second most dangerous man in London”—and was as well the only follower of note to survive his master’s fall.

  So much my companion told me as we lounged once more in our familiar sitting-room, after Lestrade had taken the murderer away to Scotland Yard. Yet, as I listened, I was in possession of one fact that had eluded even Sherlock Holmes. When Moran had lain struggling in our clutches, and those fierce, grey eyes had bored again into my own, I recognized the ogre I had met in Richard Anstrut
her’s courtyard on the day before my Mary died. During the remainder of that sleepless night, my mind for once assembled facts and drew conclusions with a speed and precision that would surely have astounded my friend Holmes. By the hour that morning dawned in Baker Street, I knew what I would do.

  However, a considerable time passed before I was able to put my plan into effect. Of more immediate importance were the plans that Holmes and I must make for our own future. We agreed that very morning that I would sell my practice and return to our old quarters, and thereafter I found myself in Baker Street more often than in Kensington. Naturally, I was soon drawn again into Holmes’ investigations. Over the following weeks, there were several cases of unusual interest to keep us occupied. I see (on reviewing my notes for this period) that we thwarted the wicked machinations of the Norwood builder; enquired into the singular experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles; and went aboard the ill-fated Dutch steamship Friesland, where we nearly lost our lives. There was also the strange transformation of the Covent Garden flower girl, the details of which were too horrific to set before the public even now.

  Late in June, Sherlock Holmes was called away to Paris. He had responded to a plea from the French government to apprehend the Boulevard assassin, and his eventual success would be rewarded with the Order of the Legion of Honour. For my purposes, Holmes’ absence afforded a long-awaited opportunity for independent action. Although vague, as always, regarding his intentions, he had allowed that he expected to be gone at least a week. I had, therefore, that much time to complete my own investigation, which concerned the murder of Mary Morstan Watson by Dr. Richard Anstruther.

  My obvious beginning point was to learn something of Anstruther’s current habits. For such a task, my work with Sherlock Holmes had given me a keen appreciation of the value of disguise. I decided to pass myself off as an invalided soldier in search of employment. Taking the oldest and most tattered of my army jackets, I removed the rank insignia and sewed on corporal’s stripes. With tousled hair, an untrimmed mustache, and a little added dirt, the effect, as I surveyed myself before my bedroom mirror, was reasonably convincing. My attempt at an East End accent might earn me one or two queer glances; but some of my patients in Paddington had come from the labouring classes, and on the whole I felt that I could manage fairly well.

  Making my way to Brook Street, I spent that morning and the next among cabbies, carriers, and servants on their off days, besides the mere loafers who haunt every wealthy London suburb. By the second day, I had become friendly with an unemployed carter named Wilson, although of course I called him “Bill.” Once he trusted me—or at least appeared to—he introduced me to an ex-footman of Anstruther’s, who was but recently discharged.

  “’ere, Joe,” Bill called out to his comrade. “This gent’s a private dick. ’e wants you to tell ’im all about the great Doc H’anstruther.”

  “No, I assure you—“ I began, then caught myself, for my companions were regarding me with knowing grins. Afterward, over a number of pints at the local establishment (naturally paid for by myself), Joe told me everything that I could wish to learn concerning Anstruther.

  It seemed that since arriving in Brook Street, the doctor seldom socialized and had few visitors. “Mostly doctors, when anybody comes,” said Joe. “No women—nor boys, neither,” he acknowledged, with a judicious nod. “Old Merrick says ’e’s given up soci’ty since the lady died.”

  “His wife?” I could not forebear asking.

  “No, mate, someone else’s!” Joe had the temerity to wink at me, and my heart dropped to my boots.

  “Aw, h’it wasn’t wot yer thinkin.’ She loved this other doctor bloke, y’see, more than she’d loved H’anstruther, and married ’im h’instead. Merrick said h’it drove our doctor fairly wild. Cursed the fellow h’every day, ’e said, though I never ’eard ’im. Swore ’e’d ’ave ’er back again, and damn the cost! But then she died, y’see, and ’e upped and moved to Brook Street.”

  I had, it seemed, learnt something that day about servants’ gossip. “How did you come to lose your place, Joe,” I enquired, “if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Well, sir, where the women are concerned, I’m not such a saint as the good Doctor H’anstruther. There was this little upstairs maid, y’see, named Elsie—”

  “Now, Joe,” warned his companion. “You don’t want to go tellin’ no private dick about all that. ’e’ll ’ave you in the clinker, too.”

  It appeared that Monday was the only night on which Anstruther routinely left his house. On those occasions, he usually returned quite late. Three days must pass, therefore, before I could take action. That evening, when I returned to Baker Street, Mrs. Hudson advised me that she had received a telegram from Holmes, announcing his arrival home on Wednesday.

  Over the week-end, I strongly considered abandoning my plan altogether and laying the matter before Holmes when he returned. I knew, of course, that he would be of great assistance, if only to protect me from the errors that I, acting alone, was bound to make. On several previous occasions in our partnership, one of us had lain in hiding while the other extracted a confession from an unsuspecting criminal. If we could turn the trick again, Anstruther could be charged with murder. It would be one more triumph for the team of Holmes and Watson, one more arrest for Scotland Yard. My wife’s death, and the apprehension of her killer, would become the final episodes (the dénouement, if not the climax) in our destruction of the criminal gang of Moriarty. Then the woman I had loved could pass into the pages of my case book, avenged—like so many others—by the great detective, Sherlock Holmes.

  Somehow, this thought only filled me with depression. Yet, there was another reason why I balked at what should have seemed the only proper course to take. Suppose that Anstruther was brought before the bar, based on a confession that Holmes had overheard. Would he be convicted? In any other case, the testimony of so trustworthy a witness would be unimpeachable; but—as any competent barrister for the defence was bound to argue—Holmes was my closest friend. Suppose that Anstruther, in the dock, denied making any such confession. The defence could plausibly dismiss it as a fantasy of my imagination, the product of some wild delusion or vendetta against a former rival for my wife’s affection. And what other evidence had we? The tainted canister of tea (for by now I had surmised that Anstruther had infused its leaves with some poison or infection) had disappeared almost three years ago. Moran, already charged with one murder, would not readily confess to his part in another. In short, there seemed better than an even chance that Richard Anstruther would walk away from Mary’s murder a free man.

  No. I had been Mary’s husband, and it was intolerable.

  Having reluctantly come to this conclusion, I left early on that rainy Monday morning, bound for Pinchin Lane, near the river’s edge in Lambeth. Here there resided an eccentric old fellow named Sherman, whose dog Toby (“a queer mongrel with a most amazing power of scent,” as Holmes described him) had been of assistance to us in tracking down Jonathan Small, during that memorable case in which Miss Mary Morstan lost one priceless treasure and I gained another as my wife. On other occasions, Mr. Sherman had taken custody of the more exotic creatures we encountered during our investigations. He was a kind and gentle caretaker; but an elephant might easily have vanished among his vast, disorderly menagerie.

  I considered disguising myself again for the trip to Lambeth, before recalling that on my initial visit as a stranger, Mr. Sherman had threatened to “drop down a wiper” on my head. On the whole, it seemed better to retain my credentials as Holmes’ agent, even though on this occasion I was acting for myself. It was as Dr. Watson, therefore, that I called at No. 3 Pinchin Lane, where old Sherman was as cooperative as I could have wished. I obtained what I needed without question and returned to Kensington, where I had several patients to see that afternoon before another visit in the evening.

  It was shortly befor
e half past nine when I arrived at the imposing Brook Street residence. I rang the bell and wondered what I should say if Anstruther (on that of all nights) had varied his usual procedure and remained at home.

  “Why, it’s Dr. Watson!” cried Merrick, upon opening the door. Anstruther’s manservant, now butler, looked even more elderly and frail than I remembered; but his livery was of a quality that he had never worn in Paddington. “How long has it been, sir? It’s good to see you.”

  “Good evening, Merrick. I had a call this evening in the neighbourhood” (here I brandished my medical bag for his inspection) “and decided to drop in uninvited. As you say, it’s been far too long since I visited your master. Is he here?”

  “Bless you, sir, you’ve come on the only night all week that he goes out. This time it’s whist at the Bagatelle Club, and he’s been gone since seven.”

  “What time do you expect him to return?”

  “Well, sir, that’s difficult to say. If he wins, it’s usually early, so he might be in at any moment. But these past few months, it’s later and later every week. Some nights, he comes home looking black as thunder!” Too late, Merrick realized that he might be transgressing butlerly discretion. “You’ll pardon me, I’m sure, sir, seeing as how you and Dr. Anstruther are old friends.”

  “Of course, Merrick. So you really can’t say when he’ll be home?”

  “No, sir.” He added, with a slightly anxious look, “Usually, with your permission, the doctor tells me to go up to bed.”

  “By all means,” I agreed. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll wait for Richard in the library for, let’s say, half an hour. You can leave a key with me. If he’s not home by then, I’ll let myself out and put the key under the doormat. Will that be acceptable?”

  “Oh, yes, sir! Dr. Anstruther will have his key. I’ll say goodnight, then, if there’s nothing more that you’ll be wanting. You remember the way to the library, Dr. Watson?” This last was an afterthought, thrown over Merrick’s shoulder as he tottered down the hall.