Holmes looked over the accused at their table, only Birling was able to meet his gaze. “It is the judgement of this court that each of you is guilty of causing the death of Adam Bellamy. The court will forgo punishment provided you respect Adam Bellamy’s last will and testament.”
“What?” Schrader said. “Bellamy’s sister was at my office just the other day, it is almost complete –”
“Not that will, “ Holmes interrupted. “You will respect Bellamy’s amended will, the one granting a portion of his estate to Eric Birling.”
“Outrageous!” Birling cried, knocking his chair backwards as he stood to face Holmes. “I will not allow it!”
“That is your choice.” Holmes spoke as if it made no difference to him what Birling said. “Then the punishment of court falls on each of you.”
Nodding, Birling turned and started marching down the aisle, ridiculous walking stick in hand. At the table Gillis and Jenkins shared a look of dismay while Schrader, wiping his eyes, looked up at Holmes.
“What sort of punishment?” Jenkins asked timidly.
“These envelopes,” Schrader voice was a whisper. “What’s in them?”
“The envelopes contain your punishment,” Holmes answered Schrader’s question. Birling paused partway down the aisle, looking back over his shoulder at Holmes. “Defying the court will naturally cost each of you your honour. Before I summoned you here I indulged myself by investigating your lives, hoping to discover some item, some scandal, capable of causing each of you some inconvenience. The letters within your envelopes summarise the results of my investigations as well as detailing exactly how I intend to use what I discovered. Blackmail, gentlemen, the same tool you employed against Bellamy. When I undertook my investigation I expected it would be difficult to uncover useful information from four seemingly upstanding gentlemen. Imagine my surprise. You will recall I cautioned you each to protect the contents of your letters from your classmates. I had no wish to expose any of you to the risk of further blackmail. Now there’s no need for further secrecy. The contents of your letters will be public knowledge soon enough. Gentlemen, I cannot say it has been a pleasure but I do feel I owe you a debt of professional gratitude. In my career as a detective I have encountered a wide variety of murderers. I thought I had seen killers of every stripe but you gentlemen introduced me to an entirely different, entirely loathsome type of murder.”
“Wait,” Jenkins said, raising from his chair and casting panicked looks at his fellows. Gillis had already torn open his envelope, his eyes wide as he read the letter. Schrader simply stared at his envelope. Jenkins turned to Birling, who stood frozen in the aisle.
“For God’s sake, Birling!” Jenkins implored his classmates. “We need to discuss this.”
“There is nothing to discuss,” Birling insisted. “He is bluffing.”
Gillis responded to Birling with a sharp bark of humourless laughter.
“He has nothing on me,” Birling continued. “I will not release my nephew to depravity simply because this man claims to knows something.”
“At least look at your letter,” Jenkins begged.
“He has no need to read his letter,” Holmes informed the doctor. “He already knows what is written there. A daughter, born out of wedlock.”
“Which is not against the law!” Birling shouted at Holmes. “You cannot bring charges against me for that!”
“Quite true,” Holmes agreed. “But you forget, this is not a court of law. Allow me to explain how this court operates. You married well, Mr Birling, fortunately, as your own holdings suffered under your management. I will ensure your wife learns of your daughter. Furthermore I will make certain others of her circle also learn of her. I will provide your wife and her family ample scandal to force your departure should they wish it. To my eye your wife does not seem to…”
“You leave her out of this!” Birling bellowed, his walking stick raised over his head.
Holmes did not rise from his chair. Leaning forward, closer to the weak light of the candle, Holmes spoke his words sharply. “The same mercy you showed Bellamy? This court simply follows your precedent. Do I make myself clear, Mr Birling? If you wish to speak with your fellow accused you may do so. This travesty has gone on too long already. Decide your fates.”
As if pressing against a wind only he could feel Birling walked back to the table and snatched up his letter. He ripped the envelope open and unfolded the letter. Even in the dim light it was clear how his hand shook. For a moment I thought he would swoon and I wondered – in a curious, detached way – if he would fall. I made no move to help him. By his own actions Birling had placed himself outside my compassion.
“Damn you!” Birling barked.
“You’ve decided then?” Holmes asked. “Do you accept the will of this court?”
“We do,” Birling said, to the relief of the others. Turning, he threw his walking stick into the shadows. I knew as well as Holmes how much the man wished to hurl his weapon at the detective. My hand reached for my service revolver but there was no need to raise it. The expression on his face, the posture with which he held himself, left me no doubt the fight had been drained from Arthur Birling.
“There will be no further summons, gentlemen. If word of any interference in the execution of Bellamy’s will, or of any attempts to meddle in Eric Birling’s affairs, reach my ears I will act swiftly. I trust you understand the evenings you’ve spent writing summons and convening secret trials are at an end? Very good. The court grants you liberty to leave.”
They rose. Schrader tucked his still unopened letter into his jacket pocket, Birling held his crumpled in his fist. They had entered together but they walked away without meeting one another’s gaze. I sat on the stage, watching them leave, filled with a grim satisfaction. My plan had worked as I had hoped, yet in the end it had accomplished very little. For what it was worth Bellamy’s last will, the will that had started all the trouble, would be respected. Yet he was still gone, his secrets buried with him.
Behind me I heard the scrape of a chair as Eric Birling stood. He walked over to me. The candlelight revealing tears on his handsome face. I was not surprised.
“I didn’t know,” Eric Birling said. “Adam’s death is my fault. If I’d –”
“Nonsense!” Holmes interrupted. “In no way did you contribute to Bellamy’s death. Such talk is utter foolishness.”
“Holmes is quite correct,” I remarked. “He usually is.”
“Why did you do this?” Eric Birling asked. “Did you even know Adam? I don’t mean to sound ungrateful – without you I would never have learned the truth – but why you would help someone like –”
I looked at the man in confusion. “Yes?”
“Come now, Watson,” Holmes chided me. “Surely you are not yet so removed from society you fail to recognize why Adam Bellamy chose death over revelation? My apologies, Mr Birling. I assure you Watson meant no offence. It is just that, like myself, he has seen more of the evils of the world than most. While we don’t mean to diminish your difficulties, such scandals seem very small indeed once you have looked into the eyes of a murdered innocent. You have lost a dear friend and you have our condolences.”
“Well said, Holmes,” I agreed. “If we have helped, Mr Birling, it has been our privilege. I do hope you will visit Mr Bellamy’s sister, I know she would find comfort in meeting another who mourns her brother. How much you reveal to her is a matter for your discretion, however, for what it is worth, she seems to me a most trustworthy and compassionate woman.”
A double investigation is at the heart of this story in which Holmes comes to the rescue of a gay man whose lover has disappeared. Tanny is a man with a history, a very interesting history, which Holmes and Watson absorb with interest. Holmes, astute as ever, instantly grasps everything about the situation and determines what must be done. Watson, intrigued by Tanny and Tanny’s attraction to Holmes, determines he must initiate his own investigation. What he and Holmes disco
ver is yet another tale that Watson kept hidden from the public until now.
The Well-Educated Young Man
by William P. Coleman
Our visitor was an exceedingly alert man, thirty years of age, dressed in a quiet tweed suit, but retaining the erect bearing of one who was accustomed to official uniform. I recognised him at once as Stanley Hopkins, a young police inspector for whose future Holmes had high hopes.
– Dr Watson, in A.C. Doyle: “Black Peter”
1. The Introduction
Those who in their kindness read these tales will have noted that Sherlock Holmes depended on his acute observation of physical evidence. Until his results were clear, he was reluctant to tell his thoughts and would leave me to guess haltingly his own, finer intuitions. I would like to turn to a case that depends on emotional nuance as much as physical events, a case that had a lasting effect on Holmes and on me. It is also unusual in that, while Holmes investigated the case itself, I puzzled out a hidden, unexpected, parallel issue.
This manuscript is not to be read during Sherlock Holmes’s lifetime or those of Inspector Stanley Hopkins, Mr Arthur Tanner, Sir Eric Soames, or Mr John Wright CBE. If the duty of publishing it should fall to my executors, I rely on their honesty to transmit it exactly as is here to be given. My words report what after consideration I judge needs to be said on a certain subject, no more and no less, and I take responsibility for them.
It was in the late spring of 1894, on a night that Holmes and I began by attending the opera. We, like multitudes of others, were admirers of the great Adelina Patti, who returned that evening as Zerlina after a season abroad in America. Following the performance, we began our walk back to Baker Street with strolling through the Covent Garden market. Holmes, during his periods of activity, had an appetite for incidents, for observing, and crowds gathered densely here.
It had been the first truly temperate day after a cold winter. People craved escape. They invented errands or they idled and talked, whatever came to mind as long as it brought them out of doors. The sun had lasted late in the evening. After it set, the air was still pleasantly warm, and people lingered near the flickering market gaslights and wood fires that sought to penetrate the dark.
As we walked and Holmes watched them, he whistled snatches of the duet that Patti had performed in the opera:
…Vorrei, e non vorrei…
and
…Mi trema un poco il cor…
Happy at seeing my friend so absorbed, but wishing no less to poke fun at him for it, I hummed the answering part that Victor Maurel, as Don Giovanni, had sung:
…Partiam, ben mio, da qui…
My humming made Holmes conscious of his whistling. He looked at me and smiled. Our progress through the market had slowed as the observations reaching him accumulated and, I suppose, required deliberation to process. I did not know what they concerned – fragments of stories involving cheese mongers and flower vendors – but he found his impromptu work worth doing.
He whistled again, and this time I sang the words, softly but aloud, to the notice of some passers-by and much to Holmes’s amusement and distraction. People stared, wondering were we perhaps a well-dressed but under-rehearsed pair of buskers who would soon ask payment for our performance.
Holmes said to me, “Notice how Mozart makes da Ponte’s words repeat endlessly, so we no longer regard the characters as speaking realistically, for the purpose of informing each other.”
Our walking came to a complete stop, it finally being beyond even Holmes’s great powers simultaneously to analyse the varied, rapidly succeeding scenery of the market and also to lecture me on the subtleties of musical drama while ensuring my sufficiently dutiful attention.
He continued, “Eventually the words reach such heat in their reiteration that they melt and transform. At first the Don and Zerlina sing a ristorar le pene, but it changes to le pene a ristorar.
“In Mozart, words aren’t merely accompanied by music; they turn into music. I don’t say they lose their meanings, but they attenuate to be only tokens of them. They carry their meanings along with them and spin them into patterns, intertwining and exchanging them with the pure tones of the orchestral instruments in a higher art form than Wagner has imagined.”
This was no more abstruse or less comprehensible than lectures Holmes had given me in the past – about the chemical properties of bisulphates, or about patterns of wear on coat sleeves.
He did not accord me his complete attention but went on scrutinizing the activities at the market stalls. I was content to enjoy him. He was himself, in his element. He was after all a detective and also, when he chose to explain his conclusions, an interesting, unusual speaker.
I too looked around the market, and I noticed, some feet away, a neatly dressed, exceptionally handsome young man of about twenty years. He might have been a university undergraduate, although then he ought have been away at university. He must have attended the opera that evening, as we had. Like us, he apparently had no specific business in the market. What held my attention was that, among the people he watched in the crowd, the one he often looked at was my friend Holmes. I couldn’t divine the cause of his interest, but he was not a criminal. Holmes, alert to everything else, acted unaware of him.
There broke out a cry from a booth opposite, and a figure jostled me as he swiftly made away. The young man near us gave a rapid, startled, appealing look to Holmes, then ran after the fugitive.
Others took up the chase.
Soon a constable arrived. From the excited conversation we gathered that the pocket of a customer at the booth had been picked and his wallet taken.
The policeman blew his whistle but then saw the pursuers straggling back discouraged, with no captive pickpocket to show for their pains. He opened his notebook. “Tell me what happened.”
The angry victim argued with the constable, who plainly was prepared to do nothing more than to record the story and turn it in at the end of his shift.
At that minute we heard a voice, out of breath but proud, announce, “I have it!” We turned and saw the young man returning.
“All right, you!” growled the constable, who pushed his way through the crowd toward him. Rather than accepting the wallet, the officer grabbed it roughly and, seizing the boy by the collar, dragged him to the booth. “I’ll teach you to nick an honest man’s pocketbook.”
Holmes, with his calm authority, spoke up: “Officer, I can vouch for this man. He did not steal the wallet. On the contrary, he retrieved it from the thief and deserves be commended.”
“None of that, you. Just move along and go about your business.”
I was surprised to observe a member of the Metropolitan Police speak so rudely to a man dressed as well as Holmes was. There seemed no good reason for his fury against the young man or against Holmes.
By now, other officers had arrived from the nearby Bow Street station in response to the policemen’s whistle. Along with them came Inspector Stanley Hopkins.
Holmes stood his ground. “It hardly makes sense that, having stolen the wallet, he would return and proclaim his possession of it. He is innocent.”
Enraged, the constable wheeled on Holmes. “And what are you, his punter? I’ll run you –”
He was interrupted by Inspector Hopkins. “Constable, are you completely stupid that you fail to recognize the man you are insulting?”
“Oh, I know what he is, right enough, Inspector, and his friends too. Just let me take care of them.”
Hopkins stepped forward, his face inches from the other’s. “This gentleman is the famous Mr Sherlock Holmes who has often been of decisive aid to Scotland Yard investigations, including my own and those of Inspector Gregson and Inspector Lestrade. You will release the young man, and you will apologize humbly to him and also to Mr Holmes.”
The constable ventured a sneer of derision. “I don’t apologize to their kind. Never.”
“Then you’ll not represent the police. Give me your badge.”<
br />
There was a vast inequality in station between the constable and the inspector. The contest of wills between them lasted longer than might have been expected, but the badge was soon enough handed over.
The other policemen dispersed, the crowd returned to their business, and Hopkins smiled sweetly to us.
“Holmes, I’m terribly, terribly sorry, and I formally apologize on behalf of the Metropolitan Police.”
“It’s certainly not your fault, Inspector. Thank you for rescuing us. I hope that man will not cause too much of a row for you at Headquarters.”
Hopkins gave a short laugh. “I don’t think he will be able to justify using such public discourtesy to you.”
The young man who had been the policeman’s captive came over to us, and Hopkins apologized officially to him as well. He asked, “Are you a friend of Mr Holmes?”
“No, sir. I’ve not met him. I would like to make his acquaintance. My name is Arthur Tanner, or just ‘Tanny’ to my friends.”
“Then, allow me to introduce you. Mr Tanner, I am Inspector Hopkins, and these are Mr Sherlock Holmes and Dr John H. Watson.”
“Yes, so I guessed. I’ve read every word of Dr Watson’s stories.”
I shook his hand and thanked him for his interest in my writing. Like the inspector, I chose to call him “Mr Tanner.” Holmes, however, in the perverse way he had of being friendly at unexpected times, accepted the invitation to call the young man “Tanny.”
A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes Page 9
