Horne’s smirk faltered a little.
“I’m guessing you told her a tale of a family heirloom, a wedding band that was both sentimentally and monetarily irreplaceable to you perhaps. Maybe that was even true?”
Horne’s mouth was flat now.
“In any event, it was the perfect romantic wound for Miss Reynold’s to heal, and it allowed you to impress her with your own, not inconsiderable, artistic skill. Now you were in control, and you drew her further and further into illegal behavior, inch by inch, until she was fully enmeshed in your scheme. You used her good nature and independence to turn her against her own father, her own art, and her own best interests. Like a snare, everything she did just allowed you to squeeze tighter.”
“That’s right, I’ve had my fun with her. Let the law take its course, and let the devil take me,” Horne said to a very befuddled Constable Juno.
* * *
“I appreciate your discretion, Mr. Holmes,” Emily Reynolds said. To see her now, perched upon the chaise at Baker Street, restored in affect and appearance, was to appreciate how much she had wilted in the shadow of her oppressor.
“It was a personal satisfaction to me to catch the man in the act, and thus strike him where it would pain him the most, in his twisted pride. Unlike his other victims, the Whitshire sisters reveled in the infamy and were delighted to allow a case to be brought against the man. There was no need to draw you into it.”
“I’m sorry to be so much trouble to everyone,” Emily sipped her tea. “I feel like such a fool.”
“There, there,” I said. “It is a sad fact that people of conscience are always vulnerable to people without conscience.”
“Who was Nigel Horne? Why did he torment me?”
“The name is an alias, of course. Some wearisome afternoon I may delve into my lumber room and tease out his particular identity from my library, but for now it suffices that he was a man at loose ends and apparently without recourse to his specialized trade.”
“Why ever not? For all of his horribleness, he was truly gifted.”
“While I hesitate to guess, I do find his cruelty towards wealthy young women to be suggestive, but not definitive. I suspect that you were caught in a reenactment of sorts, though perhaps with the roles reversed. Mr. Horne was a man fixated on the past. My polar opposite in a way, and that was my blind spot.”
“How do you mean, Holmes?” I asked.
“After observing him at work, I now believe that his original vocation was in fact art restoration. What I took to be a new technique was in fact a very old one. It seems he took the art of Roman dichroic glass and applied it to paste.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow, Mr. Holmes,” Emily said.
“Nor I,” I said.
“Another test for paste is to examine the reflections within a jewel,” Holmes explained. “A natural gemstone, once cut, will reflect like a kaleidoscope, each face in a different direction. Paste, even when cut, does not share this property. All the reflections will be aligned.”
“Remarkable!” Emily said.
“And useful in detection for those times you can’t handle an item directly. However, the ancient Romans discovered that integrating gold powder into glass restores the kaleidoscopic effect. As you know, I spent a few years knocking about the British Museum before I found my calling. That collection holds several remarkable examples. Horne must have learned this old trick during his apprenticeship and then hit upon the idea to apply it to paste. Impurities in his gold dust interacted poorly with the lead oxide and potassium carbonate, causing a visible separation.”
“Too clever for his own good,” I said.
“At every step,” Holmes nodded.
“What have you told my father?” she hesitated.
“Nothing at all. I was quite clear that I would only give him such information as was needed to secure your safety.”
“Without calling upon him to pay you, which would betray my secret, I’m afraid I can only give you what little Nigel left of my earnings,” she produced a small purse.
“I’m sure you will meet people during your artistic rambles through the city that need that more than me,” Holmes said. “Another client will be padding my coffer presently.”
“Perhaps I might offer you a drawing, then?”
“There are quite enough portraits of me in The Strand.”
“What of your beloved Baker Street?”
I was surprised to see Holmes retreat wistfully into himself for a moment. “I would be glad to see it.”
As I escorted Miss Reynolds out, I warned her, “Mr. Holmes is most particular about details. Most particular.”
When I closed the door I noticed the post had arrived. As had become usual, there were two envelopes, one ivory, another a deep speckled grey. Each was perfumed, and each was written in an eccentric yet undeniably feminine hand. It seemed both Arietta and Minuet Whitshire remained quite charmed with Holmes, even after his ruse had been revealed. If anything, discovering the famous detective’s true identity only whet their appetites.
“Are you quite sure neither of them has the slightest interest in your biographer? I am a war hero, you know, and a bit of a sensation in the literary world.”
“Take them both, as far as I’m concerned,” Holmes embraced his violin and began sawing aimlessly. “As for me, I’ve been thinking of a Continental retreat. Do you believe two or three years would be long enough to throw them off my scent?”
The Problem of the Bruised Tongues
by Will Murray
It is the rarest of occurrences when I enter a mystery before my esteemed friend, Sherlock Holmes, has stepped into the picture. More commonly, I am drawn into his adventures - not entirely against my will, I readily confess.
On the morning of October 31, 1902 - mark the date - I was summoned to the home of Nathan Chalmers, who had been discovered in his bed, unresponsive. I hurried over to Chalmer’s residence, where I was greeted by a flustered housekeeper, who shakily told me, “When Mr. Chalmers failed to present himself at breakfast, I took the liberty of knocking upon his bedroom door. Receiving no response after numerous vigorous entreaties, I became concerned for his welfare and so took the liberty of entering. The poor man would not wake up. Since you are his physician, Dr. Watson, my first thought was to summon you.”
“I am sure that it is well that you did so,” I replied hastily as we mounted the stairs to the bed chamber.
The flustered maid stood outside the room while I entered and began an examination. It proved to be very short indeed. I had only to observe the pallor of my late patient and touch his brow and cheek to determine that he had been deceased for some hours.
Covering his face with the bed quilt, I turned gravely to the woman and enquired, “Had Mr. Chalmers been unwell of late?”
The maid was staring, her thin face stark. She did not appear to be of very high intelligence, but the meaning of my respectful gesture struck her with great force.
Her thick voice was a croak. “Not in the least, Dr. Watson. Not in the least. He - he has departed?”
“Sometime in the night,” I told her.
Although I last examined Chalmers three months ago, he had been in exceedingly good health at that time.
Turning her face away while attempting to get hold of her trembling arms, the poor maid replied as she stared up at the ceiling blankly, “Nor had he given me any reason to question his vitality.”
“Inasmuch as this is an unattended death, I must summon the coroner before the body can be removed from this house.”
Shaking, the poor woman pointed towards the telephone stand in the hallway and withdrew.
The medical examiner arrived within twenty minutes. He threw back the quilt, observing the dead man’s set features critically. Chalmers’ eyes were s
hut, his expression composed. His mouth lay open, but not excessively so.
The coroner moved the man’s head back-and-forth, evidently to determine if rigor mortis has set in and to gauge how long the deceased had been dead.
The head moved easily, but when the open mouth moved toward the morning light streaming through one window, a peculiarity was revealed. Sight of it caused the medical examiner to gasp.
“What is this?” he blurted to himself.
I had only a glimpse of what he had clearly seen, perforce I drew nearer to observe the yawning cavity of the open mouth, for the jaw dropped open under the coroner’s manipulations.
The poor man’s tongue had protruded as far as his bite, and the tip of it was as blue as if it had been bruised. It was a distinct blue against the dull enamel of his teeth.
Seeing this, I remarked, “I have never heard of a human tongue displaying signs of bruising.”
“Nor have I,” admitted that medical examiner. “I did not think such a thing to be possible,” he added.
“I daresay it is a rare sight,” said I.
“Grotesque,” snapped the coroner. “Nothing less. And fitting for a Halloween morning.”
I produced a tongue depressor from my medical satchel and offered it. The man accepted the tool wordlessly and used it to press down on Chalmers’ tongue, while simultaneously prying the jaws open. I assisted insofar as shining the beam of a pocket torch into the dead cavity.
Only the tip of the tongue showed blue. There seemed to be no injury, no laceration, no abrasion. The man had not bitten down on his tongue in a death agony, as sometimes happens. There was absolutely nothing to indicate what had discolored the member.
The medical examiner pried open the lids. The eyes were thus examined. There was nothing remarkable there, just a glassy sheen common in the newly dead.
“Most peculiar,” said he. “I have attended many deaths, but this symptom is out of my range of experience.”
“It’s new to me as well,” I confessed. “What do you make of it?”
The coroner was a long time in replying. “I can make nothing at all of it without going more deeply into the matter. But I am wondering if this might be a freak occurrence worthy of your good friend, Holmes.”
I was taken aback, admittedly. I blurted out, “Do you suspect foul play?”
The man turned to me and his expression was one of chagrin. “I only suggested that this may be a puzzle worthy of a greater brain than my own.”
“Well, if you are so firm in your opinion, I will summon him, if he deems the matter worthy of inquiry.”
“Well, tell him I am the most senior man in my field in all of London, and this is beyond my understanding.”
I attempted to ring Holmes, but received no answer. Reporting this to the medical examiner, I said there was no telling if Holmes was out for a stroll or off on some fox-and-hounds affair of his own.
“In that case,” said the official, “I must have the body removed to the morgue. Let us hope that Holmes returns in time to peer into this man’s mysterious mouth.”
At that, I took my leave.
* * *
It was evening before I caught up with Sherlock Holmes.
I found him in his usual preserves, and at first he seemed abstracted to the point of disinterest as he puffed way at his briar pipe, filling the room with the bluish smoke of black tobacco.
Beside him lay a calabash pipe unfamiliar to me, and next to it a small brass dish in which lay a cold bit of dottle, presumably knocked from the bowl of the pipe. The unburnt plug of tobacco was crumbled into the ashy remains of the rest. A scattering of slobber next to a pipe tool suggested that the bowl had been scrupulously scraped clean.
I have barely begun my recounting of the matter when Holmes cut me off and snapped, “Men die in bed every day. The fortunate ones at least. You say this fellow was a patient of yours?”
I nodded patiently. It was a patience that I did not keenly feel. “Nathan Chalmers. Not quite fifty years in age, healthy as the proverbial horse. An unlikely candidate to pass in his sleep.”
“And yet he did,” said Holmes. “Would that we be so fortunate in our own hopefully distant futures.”
Sherlock Holmes’s countenance was a severe mask, his austere grey eyes unfocused, as if attempting to peer into another world - the world perhaps of pure and untarnished mental machinery. For I could see that he was focused on another problem than the one I was attempting to lay before him.
Bluntly, I demanded, “Holmes, have you been engaged on another matter?”
He nodded. “One has been brought to my attention. A most puzzling case. I do not yet know what to make of it.”
“Perhaps the one I have in mind pales in significance against the one that is already on your plate,” I averred. “Perhaps it must wait.”
As if half hearing my words, Holmes murmured, “Perhaps, perhaps...”
“It is just that the medical examiner requested that I make clear to you that he had never seen such a thing in all of his professional years.”
Holmes waved my statement away with a careless gesture. “There is nothing new under the sun, Watson. Each man rediscovers what those who came before him first uncovered.”
“No doubt,” I said. “But a bruised tongue seemed to me to be to rise to the level of a mystery.”
My words did not appear to immediately impinge upon Holmes’s consciousness, so deeply was he immersed in his own problem. I was in the act of turning to go when his eyes seem to spring back into clarity, as if taking his notice of his surroundings in earnest. His head lifted and his gaze locked into mine.
“Would you repeat that, Watson? I am not certain I heard you properly.”
“I merely remarked that the deceased was found to have a protruding tongue whose tip was an unusual blue color.”
Those grey eyes were snapping now. His sere features swiftly shook off the fog of a restive night and deep contemplative thought.
I was shocked by the pointedness of his next question, not to mention its essential character. “What color blue?”
“I beg your pardon?” I retorted, somewhat taken aback by Holmes’s sudden vehemence.
Impatiently, he said, “Was the blue the color of a robin’s egg, or the hue of an unclouded sky? Quickly, Watson! Do not ponder it too long. Give voice to your initial impression. There are many shades of blue, both natural and unnatural. What shade was this?”
It was not something to which I had given any consideration prior to this. I hesitated. “Why, I would judge it to be on the order of an exceedingly pale blue.”
Holmes was rising from his chair. An eagerness seized his countenance. It was as if a fox was concentrating all of its being on what lay before it.
“Come, come, Watson. Name the exact shade of blue! Out with it!”
“Why, I would judge it to be in an Egyptian Blue.”
“Are you certain?”
“As certain as memory would permit certainty. I was so aghast at the sight I did not attempt to classify the exact coloration. It did not remind me very strongly of a bruise blue, nor did it have any purple or green attributes. It was if the tip of the tongue had been dipped in dye.”
“It was not a Prussian Blue?”
Irritation coming into my own tone, I responded, “I have already asserted that it was closer to an Egyptian Blue. Why do you press this point?”
“Because,” replied Holmes calmly, “before you entered this apartment, I was engaged in a problem. The problem had to do with a man named Arthur Chambers. Chambers was found dead late last night. He was at his writing desk slumped over. There was not a mark on him, Watson. Not even a bruise upon the forehead that had forcefully encountered the ink blotter. Yet when he was examined, it was found that the tip of his tong
ue was exceedingly blue. I have had the opportunity to examine it myself, and I can attest to the exact shade. It was a deep Indigo. Nothing less.”
“My word, Holmes that makes two men found in identical circumstances!”
Holmes shook his head violently. “No, no, certainly not identical at all. One man discovered at his writing desk, the other in his bed the following morning. There is nothing identical about either circumstance, except for the matter of the tongue. And the tongues in question were not identical either. Could there exist two shades of blue farther apart than Indigo and Egyptian Blue?”
“Two dead man found within hours apart with the tips of their tongue discolored blue strikes me as virtually identical,” I retorted.
“Similar, I grant you, Watson. But not identical. You know better to that use the word improperly.”
I was becoming agitated at my friend’s brusk manner. But his next words soothed my rising wrath.
“Watson, as you know, I have sometimes questioned you with asperity, but today you are a godsend. I have been up half the night pondering this question without results.”
“I rang you up earlier this morning.”
“I seem to recall the telephone ringing, but I was too absorbed in thought to heed it any mind.”
“Had you answered,” I pointed out, “you might have spared yourself some wasted effort, for only now are you learning that this matter of yours is assuming a greater significance. My only question is, what does it portend?”
Holmes was striding towards the door, where he put on a coat and hat. “It portends, Watson, a visit to the London morgue. Are you up to the rigors of such a visit?”
“I am undeterred by the prospect of dead bodies,” I replied coolly.
“Capital. Then be good enough to follow me. We are going to compare tongues.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Of course, I do not mean our own, for Mr. Arthur Chambers is also reposing in the London Morgue. No doubt the two men can be found in adjoining compartments.”
The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part X Page 43
