Mrs Hudson and the Spirits’ Curse

by Mrs Hudson

  ‘Ah, Mrs Hudson!’ Holmes declared. ‘I perceive from your basket that you have delivered supper to our two sentinels.’

  ‘Not yet, sir. I’ve only just arrived. We were just about to go up.’

  ‘There’s no need for that now. I can take the basket. You may both get back to Baker Street for a well-deserved rest.’ He peeped under the gingham cloth and nodded approvingly. ‘I’m sure Watson will appreciate this greatly. He is probably thinking about supper even as we speak.’

  An unlucky prediction, for even as he spoke a shot rang out from somewhere above us. Mrs Hudson was the first to move, dropping her basket and leaping to the stairs with surprising agility. Holmes was after her in an instant, and overtook her on the first floor landing, his face working with anguish. Gregory followed them three steps at a time and I, the slowest to react, pursued him grimly. For all my efforts I was still toiling on the last landing when I heard Holmes reach the upper apartment. The front door banged open and I heard him shout his friend’s name, his voice trembling with fear.

  As Gregory and I reached the door, Holmes spoke again, but this time his tone was suddenly different, his voice bland with confusion.

  ‘Great heavens!’ he exclaimed, and I saw he had come to a halt in the frame of the door that led away from Moran’s sitting room into the rest of the apartment. Coming up to where he stood, Mrs Hudson at his side, I looked into the room beyond and the sight I saw brought me to an abrupt and shocked halt.

  For stretched out on the carpet, eyes fixed open and shattered skull pouring blood, lay the body of Nathaniel Moran. And standing over it, a revolver clutched in one hand, was the dazed and swaying figure of Dr Watson.

  The Sealed Room

  †

  For one fraction of a moment there was complete silence. The four figures in the doorway gaped mutely at the scene before them while the doctor looked at us in total confusion. Suddenly he dropped the weapon onto the rug and stepped back, away from the body.

  ‘Holmes,’ he cried desperately. ‘Holmes, what has happened?’

  Seeing the gun fall, Gregory moved forward smartly and picked it up while Holmes followed Mrs Hudson to the stricken doctor. While Gregory tried to find a pulse in Moran, Mrs Hudson pulled out a chair and with Mr Holmes’s help lowered the doctor into it.

  ‘Watson, my dear friend!’ he whispered. ‘Speak to us. Tell us what has passed here.’

  But while Watson was still shaking his head silently we were joined by the uniformed force in the shape of the constable we had spoken to earlier. Close behind him, from his vantage point across the road and still breathing heavily, came O’Donnell, the much put-upon plain clothes man.

  Gregory, still kneeling by the body, was quick to take charge. ‘Search these rooms, men! I want to know for certain if anyone is concealed here.’ They leapt to the task with alacrity but Watson, watching them go, continued to shake his head.

  ‘It’s no good, Gregory. There’s no-one else here. It was just Moran and me.’

  ‘Hush, sir,’ responded Mrs Hudson soothingly. ‘You’ve had a shock and you should just take a moment to recover.’

  ‘Quite right,’ agreed Holmes, who remained crouched anxiously by his friend, his hand on the doctor’s arm, while the search of the flat was carried out around them.

  My experience at the St James Hotel on the night Carruthers died must have taken a deep hold, for while the others looked to Mr Moran or Dr Watson, I found myself taking a detached inventory of the room where the body lay. It was furnished as a dining room and one half of the room was taken up by a dining table and its attendant chairs. The table was laid with the remains of a meal for two, dirty plates and crockery still lying where they had been abandoned. A bottle of claret stood half full in the centre of the table and an empty glass stood by each place. The other half of the room was spread with a dark rug, where Moran now lay dead. Two further doors opened from the room, one apparently to the bedrooms where the searches of both policemen were now concentrated. The other, standing open, revealed a tiny, rudimentary kitchen and a window facing out to the back of the building. The position of the kitchen meant the dining room had no window of its own, relying for light on a dirty skylight above our heads. Heat from the kitchen range filled the room, making the atmosphere doubly oppressive.

  Any further study of my surroundings was halted by the return of the two policemen.

  ‘There’s no-one here excepting ourselves, sir,’ reported O’Donnell. ‘We’ve been through the place inch by inch, like. There’s nowhere much to hide though. There’s no attics or trapdoors, nothing.’

  ‘Very well.’ Gregory was again displaying the energy that I had witnessed at the scene of Carruthers’s murder. ‘O’Donnell, I want you to check the flats below. The doors should have been secured. Go and take a good look at them and see if they’ve been touched or tampered with.’

  As O’Donnell parted with a salute, Gregory rose and went into the little kitchen that looked over the blind alley at the back of the building. The window was open and, leaning out, he scrutinised the scene below. Then he joined us again and addressed the remaining policeman with crisp decisiveness.

  ‘Jenkins, this afternoon I placed a man at the entrance to the alley behind this building. Fetch him up here as quickly as you can.’

  While this exchange was taking place, Mrs Hudson left Dr Watson to Holmes’s ministrations and took a shrewd, appraising look around her. I watched her repeat Gregory’s visit to the kitchen where she too looked out of the window. Her curiosity satisfied she returned to the dining room, but not before she had examined the kitchen thoroughly and had sniffed interestedly at a pile of pans that had been left lying next to the tiny sink. While Gregory returned to his examination of the body and while Holmes and Watson conversed in low tones, she crossed the room and joined me.

  ‘This is an unusual little apartment,’ she commented. ‘It really is neither one thing nor the other. These are gentlemen’s rooms and it was never intended that there should be a kitchen here at all. At some point someone has seen fit to modernise and at considerable expense has created that cramped and impractical little room. The arrangement is most irregular and I imagine it was intended to allow a gentleman’s gentleman to prepare very simple meals.’

  Before I could nod wisely at these domestic observations, the two policemen returned together, accompanied by another uniformed member of the ranks.

  ‘This is Flynn, sir. He’s been on duty in the alley since four o’clock,’ Jenkins reported briskly.

  ‘Thank you, Jenkins. Now, Flynn, I want you to answer very carefully. Has anyone been in or out of the alley in the last hour?’

  ‘No-one, sir. I’d stake my life on it.’

  ‘And could anyone have been concealing themselves there at any point during that time?’

  ‘No, sir. There’s nowhere to hide, sir.’

  ‘Did you hear the shot from where you were?’

  ‘No, sir. I must have been up by the main street, sir, where there’s a bit of noise.’

  ‘And there has been no other disturbance to divert your attention at any point? I’d rather have the truth, man, even if the truth is that you may be in error.’

  ‘On my life, sir.’

  ‘Is there any way anyone could have entered or left the alley without passing you?’

  ‘No, sir. The facing wall is the back of the old stable block. There was a bad fire there last year, sir, and now all the doors are boarded up. I checked them myself when I came on duty. Apart from these three flats, sir, there’s no other windows or doors opening on to it.’

  ‘And no-one could possibly have dropped down to the alley from one of these windows without you noticing?’

  ‘No, sir, most definitely not.’

  ‘Thank you, Flynn. I want you and Jenkins to go back to that alley and search it again. I want to know of absolutely anything that seems suspicious.’

  As the policemen shuffled out, Mrs Hudson watched them thoughtfull
y.

  ‘Of course, Flottie,’ she remarked, apparently at random, ‘every cook knows it’s no good boiling the water after you’ve made the tea.’

  While she continued to look slightly worried at this perplexing thought, Gregory was carrying on briskly.

  ‘Now, O’Donnell, tell us about those doors.’

  ‘Sealed as tight as a Dutch purse, sir. Padlocked from the outside. Police locks. No sign of tampering.’

  ‘Hmm …’ Gregory began to look worried and he cast a nervous glance in the direction of Dr Watson. ‘Tell me exactly what happened when you heard the shot just now, O’Donnell.’

  The policeman contorted his face in thought. ‘Well, sir, from where I was you couldn’t be sure it was a shot. I heard a bang from somewhere and I was just wondering what it was when I saw Jenkins here charging towards the door. He being much nearer to the shot than me, you see, sir.’

  ‘Yes, quite. Go on.’

  ‘Then I didn’t waste any time, sir. I rushed over the road, straight through the outer door and up the stairs. I’d caught Jenkins up by the time we got up here, sir.’

  ‘And did anyone come out of the outer door after the shot?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘There’s no possibility you might have missed somebody in the hallway or on the stairs as you came up?’

  ‘None, sir. You’ve seen it for yourself, sir. There’s nowhere to hide.’

  ‘Thank you, O’Donnell.’ Gregory paused, at a loss for what to ask next. ‘I’d like you to remain downstairs for now. Don’t let anyone in or out.’

  As the policeman departed, a tense hush fell upon the room. Watson, his colour a little returned, was looking at Holmes who had begun to pace the edge of the rug, parallel to where Moran lay. Mrs Hudson, seated beside me near the dining table, appeared to be examining the pattern on the dirty plates.

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ Gregory began. ‘It seems the problem is a simple one after all. Since we know there is no-one else in the building, and no-one has left since the shot was fired, it is clear that Moran has taken his own life. He did, after all, have a great deal on his conscience. Presumably, Dr Watson, you came into the room on hearing the shot and picked up the gun from where he had dropped it?’

  Dr Watson, still puzzled and anxious, shook his head. ‘I’m sorry to say it, Gregory old man, but there’s one difficulty. As you say, I was seated next door by the fire. Moran had cooked us a bit of supper and had just stepped back in here. He said something about tidying up a few things. I was just thinking that another drop of Scotch would go down well when, blow me, a blasted gunshot goes off next door. Well, I hauled myself out of my seat and got in here as fast as I could and, when I got here, there’s Moran spread out like that and I think to myself, ‘The coward’s shot himself.’ So I got down to see if there was anything I could do to save him for the gallows but it was pretty clear right away that it was all over. It was only then I realised. There was no gun.’

  Gregory stared at him, his face a study of mystification. Beside me, Mrs Hudson, after running her forefinger across one of the dinner plates, nodded slightly.

  ‘Go on, Watson,’ prompted Holmes.

  ‘Well, Holmes, it all happened a lot quicker than it takes to tell. At first I thought the gun might have fallen from his hand but one glance told me it wasn’t nearby. I stood up and looked around, and there it was – placed carefully on the edge of the dinner table at least three yards away. I’d just picked it up when you came rushing in.’

  ‘But Dr Watson,’ cried Gregory, ‘how can we possibly explain that?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, I’m afraid. I may be a bit slow sometimes but I knew straightaway that what I was seeing was impossible. Moran couldn’t have put the gun there after he shot himself. But who else could have done? I’m afraid it will take a better brain than mine to explain it all. I do know it looks dashed black for me, though.’

  ‘Chin up, Watson!’ Holmes thumped him vigorously on the shoulder. ‘None of that defeatist talk. This has been quite a shock to all of us but I shall now bring my faculties to bear on the problem and I’m sure we shall have an answer in no time.’

  There followed half an hour of strange unreality. Mr Holmes produced two magnifying glasses of different sizes and proceeded to subject each room to the most minute scrutiny. Working with only his uninjured arm, he examined each wall from the skirting board to the picture rail, clambered on a chair to study the skylight, and even descending the stairs to check the doors to the lower apartments. He too examined the view from the kitchen window into the alley below. While all this went on, Dr Watson circled around the whisky decanter and occasionally helped himself to another glass of Scotch. Mrs Hudson, after a careful sniff at the decanter, decided to join him and, after some desultory wanderings through the bedrooms returned to her station next to the dinner plates. Gregory, now thoroughly deflated, went through the motions of investigation for a short while and then joined the rest of us in the dining room, staring morosely at the whisky glasses. All this was watched by the sightless eyes of Moran from his final vantage point in the middle of the room. The fire in the kitchen had gone out and the room was beginning to grow cool.

  Finally Mr Holmes rejoined us, his eyes still hazy with concentration. He stepped over Moran without apparently noticing him and pulled out a chair from the dinner table. The rest of us watched him settle down and waited in silence.

  ‘This case presents certain difficulties,’ he announced at last.

  ‘Well, Holmes?’ asked Watson eagerly. ‘Can you put us all out of our misery?’

  Holmes had taken out his pipe and was contemplating it so carefully he appeared not to hear the question.

  ‘I suppose, Gregory, that all your men are to be trusted.’

  ‘I can see no reason why not, Mr Holmes. O’Donnell and Jenkins are certainly honest and while I don’t know Flynn so well, all his brothers are in the force and they are all generally well spoken of.’

  ‘Hmm. I feared as much.’ Holmes took out a small pouch and, holding his pipe between his knees, used his good hand to stuff it with a dark, rather pungent tobacco. ‘As I say, the case presents certain difficulties. Gregory, when you entered the kitchen to look out into the alley, did you happen to notice if the window was already open?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Holmes, it was. At first that struck me as important. But, on reflection, the heat from the range made that little room uncomfortably hot so the open window was only to be expected.’

  ‘Hmm. You will notice that the only other windows that give onto the back of the house, those in the bedrooms, are secured from the inside. It would be fanciful to consider the windows at the front of the house as a means of egress as they are high above a busy thoroughfare and, besides, Dr Watson was in the living room from the moment the shot was fired until he entered the dining room and found our assailant vanished. Similarly, my scrutiny of the skylight confirms that it has not been opened or interfered with for many years. We ourselves were at the bottom of the stairs when Moran was shot, so can testify that no-one left the building that way. So we are left with the kitchen window as the only possible means of escape.’

  Gregory nodded wearily.

  ‘Yes, sir. And the drainpipe that runs down the back of the house might be reached from that window. It would be a hazardous descent but a daring man might make it. Yet Flynn was on guard in that alley until some minutes after the shot was fired and the alley offers no place of concealment. I can’t see how the window helps us, sir.’

  Again there was a silence. Everyone was looking at Mr Holmes expectantly, with the exception of Mrs Hudson who was licking the tip of her finger thoughtfully.

  ‘Have you another theory, Gregory?’ Holmes asked.

  ‘Well, sir, if there was no way in or out, perhaps the shot was fired from outside. The roof of the old stable block across the alley overlooks these rooms and if the window were open …’

  Holmes and Watson both sprang to their feet. Holmes took up a
position in the centre of the room, his feet on each side of Moran’s body. Holding his pipe at arm’s length and pointing it at the open window, he closed one eye and squinted down the line of his arm. Watson stood slightly behind him, stooping so that he too could follow the direction in which Holmes was pointing.

  ‘My word, Gregory,’ commented Holmes after a moment of consideration, ‘it is possible that you have excelled yourself. Your colleagues at Scotland Yard are not noted for their imagination but the scenario you suggest, although unlikely, is actually possible. If Moran was of roughly my height and was standing about here, then a marksman hidden beside those chimneys would have a clear line of fire. And, purely by chance, his bullet would pass through the open window.’

  ‘It would be a damned fine shot, Holmes,’ said Watson, still peering into the dark, ‘but I’ve known Pathans out in Afghanistan who could shoot the face off a penny piece from a distance not much shorter than this one.’

  For a moment all three men seemed to swell with shared gratification until a small cough from Mrs Hudson brought them back to the scene of the crime.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, but how does that theory explain the revolver on the dining table?’ She had risen from her chair and out of polite curiosity was also examining the line through the open window that had so excited Mr Holmes.

  ‘Well, Mrs Hudson,’ he replied, ‘there is nothing to tell us for certain that the fatal shot came from that gun.’

  ‘Of course not, Holmes,’ added Watson. ‘If Moran was nervous for his safety it is highly likely that he should have armed himself with a revolver. He might have been carrying it all along and happened to place it on the table the minute before he was shot.’

  ‘Do you have a better idea, Mrs Hudson?’

  ‘Well, sir, if I may be so bold I should like to ask Mr Watson a little more about how he spent the evening.’