Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #10

by Arthur Conan Doyle

  I opened the door to look into the harried face of a uniformed policeman.

  “Please, sir,” he said. “I must see Mr Holmes at once.”

  I stepped back to allow him passage. He took the steps up to the den two at a time, reaching the top stair before I had closed the door.

  “Mr Holmes, sir,” he said with a slight bow.

  “Yes, my good man. Chief Inspector Mudd of Scotland Yard has sent for me, I see.”

  The policeman creased his brow in a puzzled frown. “How did you…”

  Holmes waved his hand. “There would be no other reason for you to be here. My carriage is not parked illegally, and if anyone is in need of my services they will come to me directly. Only the Chief Inspector would send a policeman to solicit my help. How may I be of service?”

  “Chief Inspector Mudd was most insistent. A murder has been committed at the Barrington mansion. Mr Barrington himself has been brutally murdered. Chief Inspector Mudd requires your help immediately. If you would be so kind as to come with me.”

  Holmes greeted the news with his characteristic stoicism. He nodded briefly to the constable, who was nervously shifting from one foot to the other, his face flushed with excitement.

  “Yes, of course, Constable,” Holmes said. “My good friend Mudd must not be kept waiting.”

  Motioning for me to follow, Holmes took his deerstalker cap from the hat rack and placed it on his head. He threw his cloak around his shoulders, clenched his pipe in his teeth and patted his waistcoat pocket. Satisfied that his tobacco pouch was there, he stepped aside and waved for me to precede him. Together we descended the stairs and out to the sidewalk where a horse and carriage awaited. With assistance from the policeman I managed to climb into the hansom. Holmes hopped in behind me, took his seat by the window and sat back.

  The ride to the Barrington mansion was made in silence. Holmes fussed with his pipe, not once looking at the policeman or me. Lost in his thoughts, he seemed in another world. I had learned not to engage him in conversation when he was in such a mood.

  Arriving at our destination, we were ushered inside by a stern looking matron who, I later learned, was the deceased’s older sister. She led us down the short hallway to the library.

  On the floor of the library lay the body of Myron Barrington, a knife protruding from his back. A book was clutched in his hand. His sightless eyes stared at the plush carpet. Although I had seen many bodies in my lifetime, I never became accustomed to them. I stood back while Holmes approached the body, knelt down and removed the book from Barrington’s hand.

  “A book of poetry by Yeats,” he said. “How dastardly clever.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked.

  “It is obvious he is pointing to the killer,” Holmes replied.

  “Do you mean that Yeats killed him?”

  “No, Watson,” Holmes said in a voice that hid annoyance at my disingenuous remark.

  “But the use of his name is pertinent. Perhaps you are unaware that Yeats’s middle name is ‘Butler’.”

  “Ah,” I said, catching the significance of his remark. “So the butler did it?”

  “That is what we are being asked to believe.”

  “But you don’t agree.”

  Holmes straightened up, dropped the book to his side and expelled a puff of smoke.

  “It isn’t possible,” he said.

  “What isn’t possible?”

  Holmes pointed to the bookshelf at the far side of the room. A gap appeared in the third shelf, apparently made by the removal of the book.

  “Barrington was killed instantly. His body is across the room from the bookshelf. He would not have been able to crawl over to the books, remove this one, and then crawl back. It makes not a particle of sense. This is elementary, my dear Watson. Elementary indeed.”

  I had to agree. “Then who…”

  “Whoever killed Barrington had to have placed the book in his hand. He was certain that we would connect the name to the killer. The butler was being framed.”

  “Ah, yes,” I said. “I see. But a rather poor attempt, I should say.”

  “Not at all,” Holmes replied. “The killer was certain we would see through this and conclude that he was indeed trying to frame the butler.”

  “But why should he want to do that? And who?”

  “The ‘why’ is simple. He wanted us to believe that the butler is innocent. By convincing us that the book was a rather feeble attempt to frame the butler, we would turn our attention to others. As for ‘who’, why who better than the butler himself.”

  “You mean he wanted to…” I said. Confused, I fell silent.

  “Yes,” Holmes said. “By calling attention to himself, he was removing himself from our list. Ingenious.”

  “Remarkable,” I said. “But he is dealing with Sherlock Holmes. You are much too clever to be taken in by this bit of subterfuge.”

  Holmes nodded a brief acknowledgement and turned to Mudd. “Arrest the butler.”

  “Are you quite certain of this, Mr Holmes?” the Chief Inspector asked.

  “I will stake my reputation on it, Sir.”

  Mudd nodded approval. “That is a most compelling guarantee. Now where do you suppose I might find him?”

  “He will be in the kitchen explaining to the cook what happened to the knife he borrowed.”

  Mudd bowed stiffly and departed, leaving Holmes and me alone with the deceased.

  “Amazing,” I said. “Holmes, you have done it again. You solved the case in less than five minutes.”

  Holmes shrugged. “Not so, Watson. I knew the butler did it before we arrived here.”

  “How could you possibly know that?” I asked.

  “Elementary. If you were an aficionado of mystery stories, you would realize that in murders such as this the butler is always the guilty one. It is a basic rule that writers follow religiously.”

  I could only shake my head at my friend’s wisdom.

  We took our leave. I offered my condolences to Barrington’s sister, who sniffed at my remarks and left.

  “She had no love for her brother,” Holmes said as we stepped outside. “He had disinherited her and was giving his money to charity. He had ordered her to leave as he wanted to remarry and wanted privacy for his new bride.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked. “Surely it is not possible to deduce this simply by observing the poor woman.”

  Holmes shrugged. “How, indeed,” he replied. “She told me. How else would one know?”

  We arrived back at Holmes’s residence as night was falling. A light fog had settled over the neighborhood. Holmes paid the hansom driver and we trudged up the short walk to his doorstep.

  As Holmes was fumbling with the key, a shadow fell across the shades in the library window. I nudged Holmes. “We have a visitor.”

  Holmes peeked through a crack at the figure. “A ballerina,” he said.

  “Ballerina? Holmes, I must ask how you came to that conclusion.”

  He turned away from the window and put the key in the lock. “The tilt of her chin. The arch of her back. The way she moves when she walks.”

  I nodded.

  “And then,” he added, “there’s the tutu and the ballet slippers.”

  As always I was impressed by his deductive powers. But there was another mystery which I was tempted to pose to Holmes. How did the lady get into the house?

  I resisted the temptation. I was certain that his explanation would be profound and, quite frankly, a little wearisome. There are times when silence is truly golden. I said nothing.

  THE CASE OF THE TARLETON MURDERS, by Jack Grochot

  Now living back at Baker Street with my fellow-lodger Sherlock Holmes, I awoke early on this particular morning in 1895 with an ache in my left shoulder, where the Jezail bullet struck and shattered the bone during my service in the Afghanistan campaign. Holmes already had finished breakfast, evidenced by the crumbs scattered on his plate, and had gone off to the hospita
l chemistry laboratory to achieve a breakthrough in his latest scientific experiment, or so said the note protruding from under the lid of the half-empty coffee pot. Still lingering, the dull pain in my shoulder brought me thoughts of Murray, my brave orderly in the war, who saved me from falling into the hands of the treacherous Ghazis. Where was Murray today, I wondered, as I flipped Holmes’s note onto the tabletop and saw, on the reverse side, an invitation to join him to witness his discovery.

  Mrs Hudson, our landlady, must have heard me stirring, because she soon appeared with two soft-boiled eggs, bacon, and toast, which I ate with haste so I would not miss out on Holmes’s moment of truth. I walked briskly part of the way to the lab, which seemed to ease my suffering. I glimpsed an empty hansom on Great Orme Street near the British Museum, so I flagged down the driver and comfortably rode for the remainder of my journey. I made my way down the labyrinth of freshly white-washed hallways of the great hospital, familiar with each intersection, until I reached the dissecting room. This I entered and cut through, because the rear exit opened into the chemistry section, where I had first met Sherlock Holmes several years earlier.

  Presently, on this glorious summer day, I found Holmes hovering over a large glass globe, under which was a Bunsen lamp, a sheet of foolscap, and a vial with red liquid suspended over the flame. “Now, Watson,” said he, as if I had been there the whole time with him, “we shall see if my theory proves correct. The iodine solution will produce a gas that should form the effect I am anticipating.”

  In a matter of a few moments, the paper began to change colour to a pinkish purple. Then, coming into view, as if by magic, was a latent palm print, with the ridges and furrows, loops and whorls distinctly detectable now. “Voila tout!” Holmes exclaimed as he wrung his bony, acid-stained hands. “This surely will inspire the tongues to wag at the nascent fingerprint bureau of Scotland Yard! Imagine what this development could have accomplished in the Yard’s failed prosecutions of the scoundrel Jeremy Conway or the international swindler Benito Zito. I should think my finding will receive prominent mention in your chronicles, Watson.”

  Holmes could hardly contain his excitement, so he persuaded me to help carry the glass globe, the burner, and the vial of iodine solution to Scotland Yard, where, with his flare for the dramatic, he recreated the scene in the hospital laboratory and demonstrated the technique for the incredulous fingerprint bureau personnel and a handful of skeptical inspectors. They were astonished, to say the least, at the result. “I shall hazard a guess that one or two of you might find this somewhat useful in the future,” Holmes predicted, an understatement he intended for emphasis.

  * * * *

  Little did we know then that Holmes’s new method would play a key role in the adventure that awaited us upon our return to the flat at Baker Street, a ghastly case that took us to the sleepy farming village of Tarleton in the marshy Lancashire District, three hundred kilometers to the northwest of London.

  When we arrived home, Mrs Hudson greeted us at the door to inform Holmes that a young special constable from the distant country town was in our sitting-room with a problem he chose not to discuss with her. “I can’t tell you what it’s about because he wouldn’t confide in me,” she sniffed. “His name is Hubert Roddy.”

  We went up the stairs and into our apartment, Holmes extending his hand and introducing himself. He told Roddy who I was and said I was helpful in many of the investigations Holmes had undertaken. Roddy, standing erect and alert, told Holmes no introduction was necessary because he had read my accounts of the exploits and admired how Holmes had solved the crimes.

  “I hope my visit here will cause the same successful consequences in Tarleton,” he began. “I implore you, Mr Holmes, to lend your assistance in an urgent matter.” Roddy explained that what appeared to be a routine missing person enquiry had evolved into a grisly murder mystery over the last several weeks.

  “Tell me more, Constable Roddy, I am all ears,” Holmes commented. “I am unoccupied for the time being and a trip to the hinterlands could be invigorating as well as challenging.”

  Roddy continued: “This is my first exposure to a killing, Mr Holmes, and I am afraid that I must admit I am at a total loss as to how to proceed. If only the victim, James Harley Carroll, could talk, I wouldn’t be here to trouble you. But he can’t talk for two reasons, the first being that he is dead, of course, and the second because he has lost his head. Mr Carroll, one of our most prosperous grain farmers, was decapitated when his body washed up on the shore of the River Douglas to the east of the village.”

  “Without a face to recognise,” Holmes interrupted, “how did you come to learn the identity of the remains?”

  “As I said, Mr Carroll had been reported missing two weeks prior to the torso washing ashore,” Roddy answered, “and our town doctor who examined it noticed a fresh surgical scar on the abdomen. He reported that the incision had been made by him when he operated on Mr Carroll to repair a hernia just two months before. In addition, the clothing on the body was identified as what Mr Carroll was wearing when he was last seen.”

  “Last seen by whom?” Holmes wanted to know.

  “By the stable boy at Mr Carroll’s farm, a lad eighteen years of age—the person who filed the missing person information.”

  “Pray tell,” Holmes went on, “what have you learned of Mr Carroll’s history?”

  “He had led an interesting life, Mr Holmes,” said Roddy, “and only a fraction of it in Tarleton. Mr Carroll was raised there as an only child. His parents died of the plague when he was in his early twenties, and they bequeathed to him the expansive farm of nearly five hundred hectares. He left it in the care of a neighbour, who treated it as his own, while Mr Carroll went off to America to seek his fortune. He prospected in the western state of Utah and located a rich silver deposit, becoming the owner of a mine and a man of wealth.

  “Mr Carroll bought cattle ranches in the Wyoming territory and eventually retired a millionaire, returning to his estate in Tarleton to spend the last of his years as a country gentleman.

  “When Dr Brem performed the autopsy, Mr Carroll’s signature leather wallet, made from the hide of one of his steers and engraved with his initials, was not in his pocket, nor was there on his hand a gaudy silver ring with the letter C on the top. I have been working on the theory that the motive for this homicide was robbery, but I have no suspects. In a nutshell, that is where the case stands. Needless to say, I am experiencing severe pressure from community leaders and my superiors in the county police force to make an arrest, which is why I am turning to you, Mr Holmes.”

  “Your dilemma,” Holmes informed the special constable, “arouses considerable curiosity in me. But before I agree to assist you in your probe, please answer some basic questions. One, did Mr Carroll have any enemies or feuds with anyone in the village?”

  Roddy paused to think, then: “No enemies, for certain, Mr Holmes, but he was on the outs with Mr McNaughton, the local grain merchant, over the amount Mr McNaughton paid Mr Carroll for ten wagon-loads of oats.”

  Holmes asked if Mr Carroll had associated with others in the village.

  “He was friendly with everyone, but he was particularly close to his neighbour, Sir Ethan Tarleton, a boyhood friend whose ancestors founded the village. Mr Tarleton is in extremely poor health and Mr Carroll would visit with him frequently to cheer him up. It was Mr Tarleton who acted as caretaker of Mr Carroll’s farm while he was in the United States. Mr Tarleton has a son who lives with him and cares for his needs, along with a sister who lives in the village. The son, Zachary, is very protective of the family heritage and has held the family farm together ever since Sir Ethan’s health failed.”

  “Did Dr Brem establish the cause of death to be anything prior to the beheading?” Holmes asked.

  “There were no other fatal wounds or marks on the torso,” Roddy responded, “but without the head the autopsy was rendered incomplete.”

  Holmes enquired if Mr Carroll le
ft any heirs or a last will and testament.

  “He was a man alone in this world, Mr Holmes, with no descendants or kin. I personally searched thoroughly his home and effects, but found nothing to indicate who would inherit Mr Carroll’s farm and his money. I suppose it’s a matter for the lawyers to haggle over as to who will benefit from Mr Carroll’s demise.”

  Holmes concluded the interrogation with this question: “Was the neck wound jagged, as if the head had been hacked off with an axe, or was it a single, clean cut, such as what might be dealt by a sharp instrument, a knife or a wire perhaps?”

  “Mr Holmes, it was as if he had been executed with a guillotine,” Roddy revealed.

  “This puzzle beckons me to find the missing pieces,” Holmes said. “You are welcome to have dinner with Dr Watson and me, rest here tonight, and accompany us on the train tomorrow.”

  Roddy politely declined the invitation, saying he had been away long enough and that he would board a train leaving Clapham Junction that evening. “I had best be on my way if I am to be on time—and thank you both for your attention to my problem,” he said, adding as he departed: “You won’t find a hotel in Tarleton, but you may take up lodging in Mr Carroll’s empty house, because it is still in my custody. I shall leave the key in the postman’s box.”

  Afterwards, Holmes said little. He was deep in thought. Once, he blurted: “As I have said before, Watson, there is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before.” And later, during supper at Simpson’s: “As in the case of the killer Jefferson Hope, what is out of the common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance. In solving a difficulty like Constable Roddy’s, the grand thing is to be able to reason backward.”

  That night we packed our luggage while Holmes studied the train schedule aloud. “The train for Birmingham leaves at ten o’clock in the morning, and if it is not late arriving there, we can make a connection to Stoke-on-Trent, then Manchester, and finally to Southport, near Tarleton, a trip of five hours total duration. We shall likely find it necessary to hire a drag to take us from Southport to Mr Carroll’s former home.”