“Well,” Holmes resumed. “So you should be able to tell whether he was a happy man.”
“As I just pointed out, I was Mr Cavendish’s physician. I deal with bodies, Mr Holmes. And I can state with confidence that my patient was in reasonably good health for his age, suffering the odd attack of gout, but nothing about which to become unduly concerned.” The doctor interrupted himself and seemed to reflect. Then he continued more cautiously: “As regards the state of his mind, I can advance no professional opinion. I will say this much, however: the passing of his wife three years ago was a severe blow. He responded as manfully as you might expect from someone with his career, but you can never tell what lingering effects such a shock might have on the system. Occasionally, he would remark that he missed her dearly, but I’m afraid he never unburdened himself to me.”
Holmes eyed the doctor narrowly. “As his physician and friend, shouldn’t the whole man have been your concern, not merely his joints?”
At this provocation, Dr Lanyon drew in his breath sharply. “Mr Holmes,” he said in a stentorian voice. “As you are surely aware, we all have our areas of expertise. You have yours, I have mine. We do what we can within the confines of our abilities to improve…”
Plainly, he had not yet had his say, but my companion broke in. “I am not persuaded your abilities are entirely sufficient, Dr Lanyon.”
I was aghast; Holmes is not the most tactful of men, but rarely in the many years of our acquaintance had I seen him to be positively rude.
“And I am not persuaded your intellect deserves its reputation!” shot back the doctor. “I have seen to tens of thousands of cases in my lifetime.”
“Seeing is one thing, Dr Lanyon. Success is another.”
“I believe my patients’s gratitude testifies to my abilities!”
“Ah yes, gratitude” replied my companion. “Did you receive it in sufficient quantities?”
“What do you mean, Mr Holmes?!”
“We stretch our capacities to the breaking point, don’t we, and we have a right to our just desserts. What is that Latin phrase? Damus petimas…”
“Damus petimus!” shot back the doctor with such vehemence one might have thought Holmes had mispronounced holy writ, “Damus petimus que vicissim—we give and expect in return.”
There was a long pause in which the two men stared at each other. Something had just occurred, yet no one else in the room seemed to comprehend its full relevance.
Lestrade spoke up to end the awkward silence: “Whatever may have been the Major General’s state of mind of late, surely our inquiry is not concerned with this issue. It is the gold and the diamonds that provide the trail we must follow.”
“The gold and the diamonds,” Holmes said flatly, “might very well be at the bottom of the river. They hold no value to the man who stole them.”
Lestrade looked at me confusedly, but all I could do was shrug my shoulders.
* * * *
And then we all noticed it, perhaps me first, since I was standing next to Lanyon: the colour was draining rapidly from his face. Within seconds it had assumed the chalky whiteness of his hair. To the right of the doctor Miss Cavendish took a step back as if in horror, and the butler gasped. They too were observing the transformation. I looked to Holmes, who stood facing Lanyon. My companion’s features were taut, his lips a pale line. Suddenly, he lunged forward. I spun around to see the doctor’s hand moving towards his mouth. Between thumb and index finger, he was holding a phial. As if by reflex, I struck out, hitting the side of his hand. Holmes came to an abrupt halt as the phial flew across the room and shattered on the marble fireplace. Instantly, the scent of bitter almonds suffused the room.
The doctor gave a rattling sigh, and his knees buckled, as if a crushing weight had suddenly been deposited on his shoulders. Holmes turned to Lestrade, who had remained motionless. My companion lifted his two wrists in a gesture and nodded towards the doctor. Somewhat hesitantly the inspector stepped behind the shaking figure. He pulled back Lanyon’s arms, and after receiving another nod of encouragement from Holmes fastened the handcuffs with an audible click. We all stood in silence as the doctor sank to the floor and curled up into a foetus-like position, while sobbing uncontrollably.
“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind explaining what just occurred,” the inspector said to my companion.
There was a muffled cry, and we all looked up to see the housekeeper in the doorway. Holmes stepped up to the old woman and laid a conciliatory hand on her forearm; then he led her out of the room. I scanned the faces of the others. Miss Cavendish’s beautiful features showed disgust as she studiously avoided looking at the crumpled figure at her feet; both Fitzsimmons and Lestrade appeared almost in shock at the sudden course of events.
After a few minutes, Holmes re-entered the room. “Lestrade, you may want to call in that constable who is standing guard over the Major General’s premises. He can keep an eye on the prisoner, while we clear up this mystery.”
The inspector did so, and as soon as the constable had arrived, Holmes motioned for the lady, Lestrade, Fitzsimmons, and me to follow him. We walked back into the narrow hallway and then began to ascend a winding staircase.
“Like all servants, Dr Lanyon’s housekeeper knows where the master has hidden his treasure,” Holmes said as we reached the first landing.
He turned left into the doctor’s library. Floor to ceiling, the walls were covered with book shelves, not an inch of open space in them for additional volumes. In the centre of the room stood a comfortable looking, damask covered winged back chair. Beside it, on a small table lay a box of cigars, some matches, and an oddly shaped pair of tweezers.
Holmes stepped behind the chair and scanned the titles. Finally, he began pulling out what I was able to discern were the volumes of Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He laid the tomes on the chair, then reached into the open space and extracted three large stamp albums. We all clustered around him as he brought them to the table.
The first thing I realized while watching Holmes turn the pages of the top album was that the collection appeared complete. In the Major General’s albums there had been the odd white gap between the rows of stamps. In this one the lines of little coloured rectangles proceeded unbroken, line upon line upon line, stamps from every speck of land that was joined to Great Britain by bonds of mutual friendship and common advantage.
In the second album, Holmes found what he was looking for. He picked up the pair of tweezers, and with its flattened tip carefully detached from the album’s cardboard a brownish coloured specimen. Save for the fact that it was octagonal in shape, the stamp seemed unremarkable to me. Holmes laid it on the table’s polished surface.
“This, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “is the reason why Neville Cavendish had to die.”
Lestrade leaned forward to decipher the inscription on the stamp. “Damus petimus que vicissim,” he read. “I can’t believe it.”
“The British Guiana one cent magenta,” Holmes declared. “Issued in 1856. You are looking at one of the rarest objects in existence. There can’t be more than a handful of them left.”
“But how on earth were you able to trace the murder to Lanyon?” I asked.
“Oh, it was really quite elementary, Watson,” said Holmes. “You see, I only had to look at the kitchen door to Cavendish’s house to understand that we were in pursuit of an amateur. You might recall that there were two marks produced by a crowbar. One at the lock, the other roughly at the height of a man’s shoulder. An understanding of basic mechanics will tell you that the most advantageous point at which to situate a crowbar while prizing open a door is the lock. This the intruder understood after his failed first attempt; he had evidently never been engaged in such a task before. My conviction that this crime was not committed by a professional criminal was further borne out when we inspected the safe. There, too, failed attempts preceded success, pointing to an absence of experience. Incidentally, t
he fact that the kitchen door was broken open also made Mr Fitzsimmons a more unlikely suspect, since he undoubtedly owns a key, though breaking open the door could, of course, have been a ruse. But I had already ruled him out beforehand.” At this point, Holmes nodded to the man in question. “I was confident that no person’s whereabouts and movements, acquaintances and friends, personal history and character had been more thoroughly investigated by the police in the course of the inquiry than his.”
“That is cogently reasoned, Mr Holmes,” interrupted Miss Cavendish. “But still, Dr Lanyon would hardly have sprung to my mind.”
“A few easy steps will take us to the doctor.” Holmes smiled, but without much joy, it seemed to me. “Imagine the scene, the Major General walks into his study, revolver at the ready. The burglar is kneeling in front of the safe, some five yards away. Cavendish was first brought down by a blow to the face. How was that effected? The burglar could have thrown a tool and hit him. That is possible, but is it likely? I should say no. It is not an easy task to throw a tool that distance and hit a man’s head. It seemed far more likely that the scene unfolded as follows: Cavendish surprised the burglar, a conversation ensued, in the course of which the burglar crossed the room to be within arm’s length of the Major General, and then suddenly, deceptively, struck his blow. But such a course of events presupposes familiarity between the owner of the house and the intruder. Otherwise, it is hardly to be believed that Cavendish, a man who had evaded death many times through circumspection and shrewdness, could have been duped this time. I am sure, Lestrade,” Holmes said, turning to the inspector, “that Lanyon will eventually make a confession to that effect.”
The inspector nodded quietly, and Holmes continued: “I was pondering this fact of an acquaintance between murderer and victim while I examined what had remained of the contents of the safe. The pictures of the young lady in dishabille appeared to hold no special significance in the matter at hand. We will probably never find out why the Major General kept them. I would guess their age to be upward of twenty years, and they may have had what one might call sentimental value. Things were very different, however, regarding the stamp collection. Perhaps you are familiar with a slight monograph on the subject of stamp forgeries I put forth some years ago. I am therefore very familiar with the value attached to certain of these items, and I could tell immediately that the Major General’s collection was a fine one indeed. There were some gaps, to be sure, but here was the result of many years of dedication. At this point my suspicions were beginning to take me in a certain direction. You might recall that I touched the gaps in the album left for the addition of stamps yet missing from the collection. In all cases, the surface of these gaps was entirely smooth; no stamp had ever been mounted there. There was only one exception, where the surface was slightly roughened; at one point a stamp had been mounted there, and had been carefully removed. And this gap was where by the order of the collection the British Guiana one cent magenta, a priceless treasure, would have found its place. At that point the motive of the crime became clear. It was not the gold and the jewels; the murderer only took those as a decoy, to lead the police astray. The true objective of the crime had been the theft of this one stamp, the absence of which might very well have never even been noticed.”
“I guess I can tell the chaps they no longer need to keep an eye on ships to Belgium,” said Lestrade. “And I better get in touch with the Belgians, so they no longer expect a jewel thief to show up in Antwerp.”
“That would be collegial, indeed,” remarked Holmes, lighting one of Dr Lanyon’s cigars from the box on the table. “After discovering the removal of the stamp, I had no doubt that the case would be solved. That it was solved so fast required a bit of luck. Three things were evident: the murderer was a friend of the victim, he was not a hardened criminal, and he was a stamp collector. Lestrade, you mentioned that Fitzsimmons called in Lanyon after discovering the body because the doctor lived close by and that he was also a good friend of the deceased. I decided to have a look at the man. The doctor had himself under control quite well, at least initially. But after a little prodding, it became obvious that his nerves were frayed. You will recall that I nettled him with that nonsensical insinuation that the Major General might have been suicidal and that he himself had been neglectful of his patient. Perhaps you observed the doctor’s reaction. His first impulse was to reject the suggestion. But then, once it dawned on him that there could be hardly any better outcome for himself than if the death should be ruled a suicide, he changed his position and intimated that his friend’s grief over his wife’s death may have shaken his firm grip on life. At that point, I was sure of my case. I continued the provocation, and deliberately mispronounced that not particularly well-known Latin phrase; it is the colony’s motto. You might point out that Lanyon might have simply been objecting to my faulty grammar, yet the force and instantaneous nature of his objection was revealing. He must have reflected on this motto a thousand times, must have imagined gaining possession of that piece of paper which carries the line night after sleepless night. He could not help himself and blurted out the correction, ‘Damus petimus que vicissim.’ At that very moment, he also realized that he had walked into my trap and betrayed himself. A fast and easy death seemed the best option.”
Holmes fell silent and looked down at the tiny piece of paper lying on the table.
“All because of this,” said Lestrade.
* * * *
We were taking breakfast at our quarters some months later; at the accustomed time Mrs Hudson stepped into the room to hand us each our post. Holmes leafed through his letters without much interest, but stopped when he came to a plain, cheap envelope. He tore it open; it contained a single sheet, which he read out loud:
Mr. Holmes,
These are the last lines I shall ever write. In twenty minutes, my gaolers will open the door to this cell. They will lead me through a maze of hallways to the scaffold. I will go to my death knowing that I deserve it. I also know that the act I committed was the result of a compulsion alien to my character. This is no apology and no explanation. You are not the person who deserves my apologies, and an explanation I do not have. Had our lives not intersected, I might very well today be a free man, with years ahead of me. They would not have been happy years, I am certain of that. Perchance they would have been even more miserable than the years I lived knowing that the object of my desire was only a stone’s throw away, but yet unreachable. Damned are those who lack good choices.
H. Lanyon
“He believes he had to commit this crime,” I said, shaking my head. “Who forced him?! Fate, the three witches, the dark lord himself?”
Holmes folded the letter and reinserted it into its envelope. With a thin smile he handed it to me, the faithful chronicler of his adventures.
When he did not reply to my question, I persisted: “Well, Holmes, what do you think? Why write such nonsense so shortly before your execution?”
My companion set down his cup of tea. “Dr Lanyon was a collector, Watson. Why do you think people collect?”
“It can be a pleasant way to spend your leisure time,” I replied with some exasperation, for I did not understand why Holmes was taking our conversation in this direction. “It can also be educational, perhaps even remunerative, if you’ve got a good eye.”
Holmes nodded and seemed to be studying the contents of his cup. Then he raised his eyes.
“You’re right, Watson. Collecting can be enjoyable, you may learn many things, and yes, one day your collection might be worth a small, even a big fortune. But those are not the reasons why men like Dr Lanyon collect. For them, the motive force behind collecting is a wish or a need for completion. To own all of something. First editions of all of Daniel Defoe’s works, say, or specimens of all the species in a genus of insects, or original Hogarth prints, all of them. Or all the stamps of the British Empire. The objects the individual chooses to collect may in fact be of less importance, but the sens
e of lack occasioned by a gap in the collection appears to be unbearable. The desire to fill this gap overrides the dictates of a person’s conscience, his attachments, his values and beliefs.”
“Holmes, are you suggesting that Dr Lanyon is not responsible for his actions, like a madman?! Even he himself states that he deserves his punishment!”
Holmes rose from the table and pushed in his chair. “I do not know. There lies a chasm between guilt and responsibility, which to fill is not my task. I believe that in the future mankind will learn to think with scientific rigour about the human soul. It is a subject worthy of thought. But for now your questions must remain unanswered, old boy.”
And with that, the great detective retired to his room, and soon afterwards the sublime melody of Brahms’s Concerto in D began to waft through our flat.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE LUNATICS’S BALL, by Adam Beau McFarlane
When you stroll through the National Gallery of British Art, you walk through history. Testaments to beauty created over the centuries hang on the walls and stand on pedestals, but there is a darker, more recent history unknown to most visitors. It’s the history of the notorious Millbank Penitentiary. Not long ago, it stood on the north bank of the Thames, the same site where the gallery was built and was once the largest prison in London. Holmes sent many prisoners to Millbank, including its very last one. This last prisoner was a woman arrested in a case that tested the powers of modern medicine and almost extracted the ultimate price from Holmes.
* * * *
Late one afternoon, a knock came upon our door. Our house page, Billy, opened it and introduced our visitor. His footsteps in his canvas boots were light, and his thinning hair and curled mustache were dark yellow. He clutched a strongbox in both hands. “I seek an appointment on a matter that I do not wish to call to the attention of the police,” he said.
Holmes ushered him in. “Hello, doctor. This is my good friend and a fellow sawbones, John Watson, in whom I place my strictest confidences. How may I be of service?”
Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #10 Page 14
