The Adventure of the Plated Spoon and Other Tales of Sherlock Holmes

by Loren D. Estleman

  The light of the tapers, gleaming on a blood-spattered steel blade buried in the lunette, reached beyond to touch, as with a halo, the red-gold hair of the woman who sat beside that dreadful, headless form. Regardless of our approach, she remained motionless in her high, carved chair, her features an ivory mask from which two dark and brilliant eyes stared into the shadows with the unwinking fixity of a basilisk. In an experience of women covering three continents, I have never beheld a colder nor a more perfect face than that of the chatelaine of Castle Arnsworth, keeping vigil in that chamber of death.

  Dawlish coughed.

  “You had best retire, my lady,” he said bluntly. “Rest assured that Inspector Gregson here and I will see that justice is done.”

  For the first time, she looked at us, and so uncertain was the light of the tapers that for an instant it seemed to me that some swift emotion more akin to mockery than grief gleamed and died in those wonderful eyes.

  “Stephen is not with you?” she asked incongruously. “But, of course, he would be in the library. Faithful Stephen.”

  “I fear that his lordship’s death—”

  She rose abruptly, her bosom heaving and one hand gripping the skirt of her black lace gown.

  “His damnation!” she hissed, and then, with a gesture of despair, she turned and glided slowly from the room.

  As the door closed, Sherlock Holmes dropped on one knee beside the guillotine and, raising the blood-soaked cloth, peered down at the terrible object beneath. “Dear me,” he said quietly. “A blow of this force must have sent the head rolling across the room.”

  “Probably.”

  “I fail to understand. Surely you know where you found it?”

  “I didn’t find it. There is no head.”

  For a long moment, Holmes remained on his knee, staring up silently at the speaker. “It seems to me that you are taking a great deal for granted,” he said at length, scrambling to his feet. “Let me hear your ideas on this singular crime.”

  “It’s plain enough. Sometime last night, the two men quarrelled and eventually came to blows. The younger overpowered the elder and then killed him by means of this instrument. The evidence that Lord Cope was still alive when placed in the guillotine is shown by the fact that Captain Lothian had to lash his hands. The crime was discovered this morning by the butler, Stephen, and a groom fetched me from the village, whereupon I took the usual steps to identify the body of his lordship and listed the personal belongings found upon him. If you’d like to know how the murderer escaped, I can tell you that too. On the mare that’s missing from the stable.”

  “Most instructive,” observed Holmes. “As I understand your theory, the two men engaged in a ferocious combat, being careful not to disarrange any furniture or smash the glass cases that clutter up the room. Then, having disposed of his opponent, the murderer rides into the night, a suitcase under one arm and his victim’s head under the other. A truly remarkable performance.”

  An angry flush suffused Dawlish’s face. “It’s easy enough to pick holes in other people’s ideas, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” he sneered. “Perhaps you will give us your theory.”

  “I have none. I am awaiting my facts. By the way, when was your last snowfall?”

  “Yesterday afternoon.”

  “Then there is hope yet. But let us see if this room will yield us any information.”

  For some ten minutes we stood and watched him, Gregson and I with interest and Dawlish with an ill-concealed look of contempt on his weather-beaten face, as Holmes crawled slowly about the room on his hands and knees, muttering and mumbling to himself and looking like some gigantic dun-coloured insect. He had drawn his magnifying glass from his cape pocket, and I noticed that not only the floor but the contents of the occasional tables were subjected to the closest scrutiny. Then, rising to his feet, he stood wrapped in thought, his back to the candlelight and his gaunt shadow falling across the faded red guillotine.

  “It won’t do,” he said suddenly. “The murder was premeditated.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The cranking-handle is freshly oiled, and the victim was senseless. A single jerk would have loosed his hands.”

  “Then why were they tied?”

  “Ah! There is no doubt, however, that the man was brought here unconscious with his hands already bound.”

  “You’re wrong there!” interposed Dawlish loudly. “The design on the lashing proves that it is a sash from one of these window-curtains.”

  Holmes shook his head. “They are faded through exposure to daylight,” said he, “and this is not. There can be little doubt that it comes from a door-curtain, of which there are none in this room. Well, there is little more to be learned here.”

  The two police agents conferred together, and Gregson turned to Holmes. “As it is after midnight,” said he, “we had better retire to the village hostelry and tomorrow pursue our enquiries separately. I cannot but agree with Inspector Dawlish that while we are theorizing here, the murderer may reach the coast.”

  “I wish to be clear on one point, Gregson. Am I officially employed on this case by the police?”

  “Impossible, Mr. Holmes!”

  “Quite so. Then I am free to use my own judgment. But give me five minutes in the courtyard, and Dr. Watson and I will be with you.”

  The bitter cold smote us as I slowly followed the gleam of Holmes’s dark lantern along the path that, banked with thick snow, led across the courtyard to the front door. “Fools!” he cried, stooping over the powdered surface. “Look at it, Watson! A regiment would have done less damage. Carriage wheels in three places. And here’s Dawlish’s boots and a pair of hobnails, probably a groom. A woman now, and running. Of course, Lady Cope and the first alarm. Yes, certainly it is she. What was Stephen doing out here? There is no mistaking his square-toed shoes. Doubtless you observed them, Watson, when he opened the door to us. But what have we here?” The lantern paused and then moved slowly onwards. “Pumps, pumps,” he cried eagerly, “and coming from the front door. See, here he is again. Probably a tall man, from the size of his feet, and carrying some heavy object. The stride is shortened and the toes more clearly marked than the heels. A burdened man always tends to throw his weight forward. He returns! Ah, just so, just so! Well, I think that we have earned our beds.”

  My friend remained silent during our journey back to the village. But, as we separated from Inspector Dawlish at the door of the inn, he laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “The man who has done this deed is tall and spare,” said he. “He is about fifty years of age with a turned-in left foot and strongly addicted to Turkish cigarettes, which he smokes from a holder.”

  “Captain Lothian!” grunted Dawlish. “I know nothing about feet or cigarette holders, but the rest of your description is accurate enough. But who told you his appearance?”

  “I will set you a question in reply. Were the Copes ever a Catholic family?”

  The local inspector glanced significantly at Gregson and tapped his forehead. “Catholic? Well, now that you mention it, I believe they were in the old times. But what on earth—!”

  “Merely that I would recommend you to your own guidebook. Good night.”

  On the following morning, after dropping my friend and myself at the castle gate, the two police officers drove off to pursue their enquiries further afield. Holmes watched their departure with a twinkle in his eye.

  “I fear that I have done you injustice over the years, Watson,” he commented somewhat enigmatically, as we turned away.

  The elderly manservant opened the door to us, and as we followed him into the great hall it was painfully obvious that the honest fellow was still deeply afflicted by his master’s death.

  “There is naught for you here,” he cried shrilly. “My God, will you never leave us in peace?”

  I have remarked previously on Holmes’s gift for putting others at their ease, and by degrees the old man recovered his composure. “I take it that th
is is the Agincourt window,” observed Holmes, staring up at a small but exquisitely coloured stained-glass casement through which the winter sunlight threw a pattern of brilliant colours on the ancient stone floor.

  “It is, sir. Only two in all England.”

  “Doubtless you have served the family for many years,” continued my friend gently.

  “Served ’em? Aye, me and mine for nigh two centuries. Ours is the dust that lies upon their funeral palls.”

  “I fancy they have an interesting history.”

  “They have that, sir.”

  “I seem to have heard that this ill-omened guillotine was specially built for some ancestor of your late master?”

  “Aye, the Marquis de Rennes. Built by his own tenants, the varmints, hated him, they did, simply because he kept up old customs.”

  “Indeed. What custom?”

  “Something about women, sir. The book in the library don’t explain exactly.”

  “Le droit du seigneur, perhaps.”

  “Well, I don’t speak heathern, but I believe them was the very words.”

  “H’m. I should like to see this library.”

  The old man’s eyes slid to the door at the end of the hall. “See the library?” he grumbled. “What do you want there? Nothing but old books, and her ladyship don’t like—oh, very well.”

  He led the way ungraciously into a long, low room lined to the ceiling with volumes and ending in a magnificent Gothic fireplace. Holmes, after strolling about listlessly, paused to light a cheroot.

  “Well, Watson, I think that we’ll be getting back,” said he. “Thank you, Stephen. It is a fine room, though I am surprised to see Indian rugs.”

  “Indian!” protested the old man indignantly. “They’re antique Persian.”

  “Surely Indian.”

  “Persian, I tell you! Them marks are inscriptions, as a gentleman like you should know. Can’t see without your spyglass? Well, use it then. Now, drat it, if he hasn’t spilled his matches!”

  As we rose to our feet after gathering up the scattered vestas, I was puzzled to account for the sudden flush of excitement in Holmes’s sallow cheeks.

  “I was mistaken,” said he. “They are Persian. Come, Watson, it is high time that we set out for the village and our train back to town.”

  A few minutes later, we had left the castle. But to my surprise, on emerging from the outer bailey, Holmes led the way swiftly along a lane leading to the stables.

  “You intend to enquire about the missing horse,” I suggested.

  “The horse? My dear fellow, I have no doubt that it is safely concealed in one of the home farms, while Gregson rushes all over the county. This is what I am looking for.”

  He entered the first loose box and returned with his arms full of straw. “Another bundle for you, Watson, and it should be enough for our purpose.”

  “But what is our purpose?”

  “Principally to reach the front door without being observed,” he chuckled, as he shouldered his burden.

  Having retraced our footsteps, Holmes laid his finger on his lips and, cautiously opening the great door, slipped into a nearby closet full of capes and sticks, where he proceeded to throw both our bundles on the floor.

  “It should be safe enough,” he whispered, “for it is stone-built. Ah! These two mackintoshes will assist admirably. I have no doubt,” he added, as he struck a match and dropped it into the pile, “that I shall have other occasions to use this modest stratagem.”

  As the flames spread through the straw and reached the mackintoshes, thick black wreaths of smoke poured from the cloakroom door into the hall of Arnsworth Castle, accompanied by a hissing and crackling from the burning rubber.

  “Good heavens, Holmes,” I gasped, the tears rolling down my face. “We shall be suffocated!”

  His fingers closed on my arm.

  “Wait,” he muttered, and even as he spoke, there came a sudden rush of feet and a yell of horror.

  “Fire!”

  In that despairing wail, I recognized Stephen’s voice.

  “Fire!” he shrieked again, and we caught the clatter of his footsteps as he fled across the hall.

  “Now!” whispered Holmes and, in an instant he was out of the cloakroom and running headlong for the library. The door was half open but, as we burst in, the man drumming with hysterical hands on the great fireplace did not even turn his head.

  “Fire! The house is on fire!” he shrieked. “Oh, my poor master! My lord! My lord!”

  Holmes’s hand fell upon his shoulder. “A bucket of water in the cloakroom will meet the case,” he said quietly. “It would be as well, however, if you would ask his lordship to join us.”

  The old man sprang at him, his eyes blazing and his fingers crooked like the talons of a vulture.

  “A trick!” he screamed. “I’ve betrayed him through your cursed tricks!”

  “Take him, Watson,” said Holmes, holding him at arms’ length. “There, there. You’re a faithful fellow.”

  “Faithful unto death,” whispered a feeble voice.

  I started back involuntarily. The edge of the ancient fireplace had swung open, and in the dark aperture thus disclosed there stood a tall, thin man, so powdered with dust that for the moment I seemed to be staring not at a human being but at a spectre. He was about fifty years of age, gaunt and high-nosed, with a pair of sombre eyes that waxed and waned feverishly in a face that was the colour of grey paper.

  “I fear that the dust is bothering you, Lord Cope,” said Holmes very gently. “Would you not be better seated?”

  The man tottered forward to drop heavily into an armchair. “You are the police, of course,” he gasped.

  “No. I am a private investigator, but acting in the interests of justice.”

  A bitter smile parted Lord Cope’s lips.

  “Too late,” said he.

  “You are ill?”

  “I am dying.” Opening his fingers, he disclosed a small empty phial. “There is only a short time left to me.”

  “Is there nothing to be done, Watson?”

  I laid my fingers upon the sick man’s wrist. His face was already livid, and the pulse low and feeble.

  “Nothing, Holmes.”

  Lord Cope straightened himself painfully. “Perhaps you will indulge a last curiosity by telling me how you discovered the truth,” said he. “You must be a man of some perception.”

  “I confess that at first there were difficulties,” admitted Holmes, “though these discovered themselves later in the light of events. Obviously the whole key to the problem lay in a conjunction of two remarkable circumstances—the use of a guillotine and the disappearance of the murdered man’s head.

  “Who, I asked myself, would use so clumsy and rare an instrument, except one to whom it possessed some strong symbolic significance, and, if this were the case, then it was logical to suppose that the clue to that significance must lie in its past history.”

  The nobleman nodded.

  “His own people built it for Rennes,” he muttered, “in return for the infamy that their womenfolk had suffered at his hands. But pray proceed, and quickly.”

  “So much for the first circumstance,” continued Holmes, ticking off the points on his fingers. “The second threw a flood of light over the whole problem. This is not New Guinea. Why, then, should a murderer take his victim’s head? The obvious answer was that he wished to conceal the dead man’s true identity. By the way,” he demanded sternly, “what have you done with Captain Lothian’s head?”

  “Stephen and I buried it at midnight in the family vault,” came the feeble reply. “And that with all reverence.”

  “The rest was simple,” went on Holmes. “As the body was easily identifiable as yours by the clothes and other personal belongings which were listed by the local inspector, it followed naturally that there could have been no point in concealing the head unless the murderer had also changed clothes with the dead man. That the change had been effected
before death was shown by the bloodstains. The victim had been incapacitated in advance, probably drugged, for it was plain from certain facts already explained to my friend Watson that there had been no struggle and that he had been carried to the museum from another part of the castle. Assuming my reasoning to be correct, then the murdered man could not be Lord Jocelyn. But was there not another missing, his lordship’s cousin and alleged murderer, Captain Jasper Lothian?”

  “How could you give Dawlish a description of the wanted man?” I interposed.

  “By looking at the body of the victim, Watson. The two men must have borne a general resemblance to each other or the deception would not have been feasible from the start. An ashtray in the museum contained a cigarette stub, Turkish, comparatively fresh and smoked from a holder. None but an addict would have smoked under the terrible circumstances that must have accompanied that insignificant stump. The footmarks in the snow showed that someone had come from the main building carrying a burden, and had returned without that burden. I think I have covered the principal points.”

  For a while, we sat in silence broken only by the moan of a rising wind at the windows and the short, sharp panting of the dying man’s breath.

  “I owe you no explanation,” he said at last, “for it is to my Maker, who alone knows the innermost recesses of the human heart, that I must answer for my deed. Nevertheless, though my story is one of shame and guilt, I shall tell you enough to enlist perhaps your forbearance in granting me my final request.

  “You must know, then, that following the scandal which brought his Army career to its close, my cousin Jasper Lothian has lived at Arnsworth. Though penniless and already notorious for his evil living, I welcomed him as a kinsman, affording him not only financial support but, what was perhaps more valuable, the social aegis of my position in the county.

  “As I look back now on the years that passed, I blame myself for my own lack of principle in my failure to put an end to his extravagance, his drinking and gaming and certain less honourable pursuits with which rumour already linked his name. I had thought him wild and injudicious. I was yet to learn that he was a creature so vile and utterly bereft of honour that he would tarnish the name of his own house.