by David Marcum
Laws rubbed his hands over his face, and shook his head once more.
“As soon as we discovered the necklace was gone, we immediately retraced our steps to Park Lane.”
“Had you taken a cab from the ball?”
“Yes - after walking a bit, we found a hansom. We did contact the company-”
“But without knowing the cab’s number,” I interrupted, “you got nowhere.”
“That’s right, Mr. Holmes. Believe me when I say that we searched high and low. Matilda remembered that it had a strong clasp; it couldn’t have simply fallen away. No, in the end, we were forced to conclude that the necklace had been stolen.”
“I take it that you went to the police with your suspicions.”
“Indeed. But since no other guests had offered similar complaints, Inspector Goforth preferred to blame the entire matter on my careless wife.”
I knew the policeman. “Goforth,” said I, “a good man, but lacking imagination. Of course, he’d blame it on an innocent. What about your wife’s friend, Mrs. Forrest? How did she react upon hearing the news of her missing necklace?”
James Laws smiled. “My wife hasn’t told her yet. Matilda wrote to her that the clasp had broken and that we were going to have it repaired before returning it.”
“And what was her response to this presumptuous offer?” I wondered if Mrs. Forrest sensed that too much was being made over a string of glass baubles.
“Matilda told me that her friend seemed more vexed about the clasp than the delay.”
“Quite so,” I said again.
I informed James Laws that I might have information that could shed new light on the matter. If he and his wife could wait but a day or so, this matter might reach a happy conclusion.
“I hope to hear from you as soon as possible, Mr. Holmes. We must be certain about the value of the necklace. This afternoon Matilda went to the jeweller whose name appeared on the inside cover of the black satin box the necklace had been in. She could only show him the drawing, of course, but assuming the stones to be real diamonds, the salesman put the price at one thousand pounds. One thousand pounds, Mr. Holmes! The news was devastating. Matilda is a proud woman, sir, and we both are honest people who will undertake to do whatever is required to repay such a vast sum to Mrs. Forrest. I need not add, of course, that raising so much money will ruin our lives for the next ten years.
“I understand completely, Mr. Laws.” Without the necklace in hand, I dared not offer confirmation of my suspicions that the gems were false, but at the same time I hoped to convey my sympathy. “I’ll do whatever I can for you and Mrs. Laws to get to the bottom of this.”
Following these words, we both stood up and shook hands. Mr. Laws, uncertain whether he should be exuberant or apprehensive, gave me a final nod, and walked out on to Montague Street. It would take him just a few minutes to return to his wife with my report.
III
The next morning, I visited Inspector Goforth at Scotland Yard. A professorial figure behind round spectacles, Goforth stood tall with a bald head and red side-whiskers. Whenever the light reflected off the lenses of his glasses, his eyes seemed to disappear, and it was difficult to imagine what he might be thinking. Still, in previous dealings, he had showed that he was willing to pay attention to a young man like me for whom his colleagues usually had little time. This occasion was no different. Accompanied by his curious habit of waggling the fingers of each hand in the small pockets of his waistcoat, he listened to my description of the potting shed in Russell Square. The story of the cat and the faraway bowler, however, did not interest him at all.
“We’ll put a man near that shed,” said he when I’d concluded my story. “We’ll watch the cache night and day, and when that rogue returns for his loot, we shall have him.”
“With all due respect,” said I, “such a plan could take days - even weeks, or longer.”
“Do you have an alternative solution?”
I did, actually, but I thought better of announcing it. “Not as yet, Inspector. I was merely lamenting the amount of time to be spent in Russell Square by your men. Personally, I will try another approach.”
With a storefront of small, square windows and dark brick, Lock’s Hatters is an unassuming establishment at 6 St. James’s Street. Outside, its most noticeable attraction is the round sign hanging above the door. The name and address of the shop appear in the same lettering as the printing within the crowns of Lock’s hats. Inside, the shop is watched over by smartly dressed salesmen in frock coats, starched collars, and silk cravats who are surrounded by walls piled high with white, oval-shaped pasteboard boxes. These containers are filled with the top hats and bowlers that have maintained the company’s reputation for more than two centuries.
A look of dismay greeted the well-worn bowler I extracted from my Gladstone. The gentleman producing the aforesaid look, however, became more sympathetic upon learning that I was a consulting detective in search of a solution. I have found it to be true that more often than not, when people discover they themselves are neither the presumed targets of an investigation nor the possible victims of any danger, they become most eager to lend their expertise to solving a puzzle. I have even been advised that playing such a role provides a vicarious thrill. Whatever the cause, Mr. Robbins proved extremely cooperative.
“How can I be of service to you?” he asked.
I told him of my history with the bowler and wondered if Lock’s, being so traditional an establishment, might have some way of tracing the hat’s owner.
Mr. Robbins smiled and motioned me to follow. We proceeded to the end of a long mahogany counter where he exhibited a strange looking device made of metal - a piece of machinery, in fact.
“This, Mr. Holmes, is our conformateur.”
The machine resembled a short-top hat with a brim fashioned of dark metal and a rounded crown that consisted of some fifty vertical, flexible arms. As Mr. Robbins demonstrated on my own head, when the lid of the crown was pushed upon, the arms - the bottoms of which now tightly encircled my skull - activated tiny pins at their upper ends that perforated a sheet of paper at the top of the device. In such a manner, a precise impression of a person’s head - bumps, ridges and all - was conveyed through pinpricks.
From the perforations in the paper, an accurate block of one’s head could be fashioned. And after steam had been applied to the interior band, the hat could be moulded to the shape of the newly formed block. When the hat was transferred from block to head, the resultant outcome was a perfect fit.
It was quite a clever device and put me in mind of the French savant, Bertillon. He was just then developing his system of body-measurements called anthropometry, and I couldn’t help wondering how he might employ such a machine to further his hypotheses about the contours of criminal skulls. I, however, needed more practical information.
“What happens to the perforated paper once the hat is purchased?” I asked, fearing the pages might be discarded.
Mr. Robbins’ answer, however, was exactly what an investigator loves to hear: “We keep them in files. That way, should a customer desire another hat, he can avoid undergoing the tiresome fitting process a second time.”
He directed me to a wooden cabinet whose shelves were stuffed with boxes of those perforated pages. The files were organized by surname, but, of course, I did not possess that titbit related to the man I was seeking. In a quarter of an hour, however, Mr. Robbins, working backwards from the bowler I’d brought in, was able to create a newly perforated sheet. All I needed to do was sort through the files to find the paper with the tiny holes that lined up with those of the head that fit the bowler.
With the hatter’s permission, I proceeded to employ what the Americans call “legwork” - that is, good, old-fashioned labour - to match the pinpricks in my sheet with those in one from the boxes of files. To de
termine if the holes coincided, I held up to the light one file page after another, placing it over my unknown hat-wearer’s pattern. It should not be a laborious task, I reasoned, just a tedious one. During the course of its long history, Lock’s had accumulated a great many customers.
Fortunately, the matching holes belonged to a surname near the front of the alphabet - “Dimweather” - and the work took less time than I had feared. Albert Dimweather was the man I sought.
I thanked Mr. Robbins for his help and even promised to return some day to purchase a tweed deerstalker for myself. Once outside the shop, I hailed a hansom and was soon rattling down St. James’s Street on the way to Scotland Yard.
IV
“Dimweather” turned out to be a name familiar to Inspector Goforth. The man had been arrested before on burglary charges, but recently had seemed to be succeeding with temporary employment in service. The police knew where he lived - in a boarding house just off Tavistock Square near the British Museum. To no one’s surprise, it was an address not far from Russell Square.
“Care to join us, Mr. Holmes?” asked Goforth, his fingers dancing in the pockets of his waistcoat.
“Of course,” said I and followed him out the door.
The police van actually drove down Montague Street on its way to gather up Dimweather, and once we arrived at the suspect’s building, I walked in behind Goforth and two uniformed constables. The landlady gave us the directions to Dimweather’s rooms.
Goforth pounded on the door. “Open up!” he commanded. “Police!”
The door was opened by a tall, thin man in formal black livery, the uniform of a footman dressed for an evening’s work. He was holding the brim of a black short-top hat, which was turned in such a way that I could discern the name of Lock’s Hatters inside the crown. A number of other fashionable hats sat on little posts positioned on a cherry-wood side-table near the door. I couldn’t help noticing that one post remained empty. Confronted by the police, Dimweather stood at attention like the most disciplined of military men. His middle-parted black hair was neatly combed, his cheeks, clean-shaven.
The inspector placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Albert Dimweather,” Goforth proclaimed, “I am arresting you for the theft of various pieces of valuable jewellery too numerous to itemize at this time. Anything you say may be taken down in writing and used against you at your trial.”
There was no slumping in Dimweather’s stature as he listened to this announcement. In spite of being manacled, he managed to place his hat atop his head. Then, accompanied by the two constables, he marched stiffly out the front door and into the police van.
I learned later from Inspector Goforth that Albert Dimweather had committed his thefts whilst masquerading as a footman. Ironically, once arrested, the man maintained his subservient attitude. During his trial at the Old Bailey, he freely confessed to pickpocketing wallets and watches and snatching necklaces and bracelets at various social gatherings, including the ball in Park Lane for the Committee of the Privy Council of Education.
“I’d just walk in and pretend to go to work, sir,” he told the bewigged barrister. “Nobody bothered me as long as I looked like I knew my way round. All I had to do was act like a footman, didn’t I? I’d help ladies and gentlemen into their coats and wraps and then slip a hand into a pocket or unfasten a jewellery clasp. Nobody noticed, did they? The police never caught Albert Dimweather in the act.”
Near the end of his testimony, he admitted to managing the cache which I’d uncovered.
“Better a hidey-hole in Russell Square,” said he, “than some nook in my boarding house where any busybody might peek in.”
Not to mention the odd cat in Russell Square, I mused.
To no one’s surprise, Dimweather was pronounced guilty and sent off to prison. Once the trial had ended, the police returned to James Laws and his wife the necklace that Dimweather had taken, confirming in the process the relative worthlessness of the piece. Though Dimweather had illegally acquired some highly-priced gems, the false necklace he had stolen from Matilda Laws had obviously fooled him as much as it had fooled the couple. Mrs. Laws did finally return the necklace to her friend, but I don’t believe the lady ever learned it had served as evidence in court.
In fact, according to Matilda Laws, the only comment Mrs. Forrest made about the necklace was, “You surely took your time returning it. What if I had wanted to wear it in the interim?” She never checked to see how well the alleged broken clasp had been mended - let alone if the necklace that was restored to her was the same necklace she had loaned out. In short, she treated the necklace like the cheap piece of jewellery she knew it to be.
The story of Albert Dimweather, the man who loved hats, was not the most dramatic of my cases, and yet in the manner of drawing conclusions, its unusual aspects rendered it most instructive.
V
“An intriguing tale indeed, Holmes,” said I exhaling a cloud of smoke. The hearth fire danced lower though now the room was full of tobacco haze. “But you haven’t told me how M. Maupassant liked it? You’ve neglected to wrap up the aspect of your story that seems to have bothered you the most.
Holmes flashed a quick smile.
“Oh, he listened to the story with great attentiveness. But the features that I considered the most compelling - the psychological nature of the cat, the strange elements in the garden soil, the mechanical workings of the conformateur - these seemed to interest him not at all. In fact, M. Maupassant ignored my feats of ratiocination and, leaning forward with a most maniacal gleam in his eye, asked me but a single question: ‘What if the innocent couple didn’t know that the diamonds were false?’”
I raised my brows in horror at the thought of two lives ruined in an unnecessary effort to pay back a virtual fortune.
“But you said James Laws and his wife had learned the truth,” I reminded Holmes, “that the jewels were glass. And you said the police confirmed it.”
“Of course, they learned the truth, Watson, and mighty happy were they both as a result. But surely you can understand that a truthful story in the hands of a fabulist like Guy de Maupassant is a recipe for disaster. If you could only see it, the concerns I express about your writings are my humble attempts to prevent you from making the kinds of distortions that writers of his ilk do.”
I resented being grouped with authors Holmes thought couldn’t be trusted. But before I could say anything in my defence, he stood up, reached for a green-covered book from a nearby shelf, and handed it to me. The Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant was printed on the spine.
“It took him a few years to twist the plot into the form he desired,” observed Sherlock Holmes, “but read the abomination called ‘The Diamond Necklace’, and then talk to me about the wisdom of putting true crime stories into the hands of fiction writers!”
He left the room in a huff whilst I leaned back, pipe still in hand, and opened the pages to the narrative in question. The fire crackled in the background.
The Case of the Rondel Dagger
by Mark Mower
London, 5th March 1880 - It is unlikely that you will have heard of me prior to this, my first published narrative. For the past eight years I have worked as a research fellow at the British Museum in Bloomsbury, having graduated from Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge some years earlier with a First in Classics. While my choice of career has been rewarding and engaging to a point, it has not placed me at the forefront of academia in the way that I might have hoped for when I first left university in that long hot summer of 1865, a fresh-faced youth aching with ambition. And to the very great disappointment of my family, it has often been observed that I have failed to live up to their considerable expectations of me. As such, I would be very surprised to learn that anyone, of any particular standing, was already familiar with the name Charles Stewart Mickleburgh. And yet, with the events I am about to rela
te, I have every confidence that this will change rapidly - my story emanating from a chance encounter earlier this year with an extraordinary young man by the name of Sherlock Holmes.
The adventure began on a snowy and bitterly cold morning in late January. I was the first to arrive at work that day, my rented house in Montague Street being but a five minute walk away from the annex of the museum in which I work. Being one of the more senior fellows, I am trusted with my own key, and was about to use it to unlock the side door of the building when I halted abruptly. I could hear someone approaching from behind, their crunching footfall on the virgin snow ringing out audibly across the quadrangle. In the half-light of the early dawn, I turned quickly and saw a tall, thin-faced man in a long, dark Ulster jacket and top hat striding towards me, a silver-topped cane swinging freely in his left hand. As he came to a halt, a thin smile radiated across his pale face and a gloved right hand was extended towards me. His look was one of evident intent; his bright, penetrating eyes and aquiline nose giving him an eager, hawk-like countenance, and the rich timbre of his clear, clipped voice adding to the evident gravitas of his stature. I shook his hand, briefly, but courteously, as he spoke. “Forgive me, Mr. Mickleburgh. I can see that I have startled you. I grant you that it is indeed an odd hour to make your acquaintance, but I do not, at present, have the luxury of time. I am currently engaged in a pressing matter of international significance, and believe that you have some knowledge which might assist me. I had sought to call on you at home, for I reside only a few doors from you, but your early start had the better of me. As I set out along the icy and treacherous pavement of Montague Street, I could already see you heading off around the corner towards the museum. My only course of action was to follow you.”
“Indeed, sir,” I replied, desperately trying to process all that he had said, bewildered as to how he should know my name, and speculating wildly on the nature of the international affair he had alluded to. “But you clearly have the upper hand, since you seem to know so much about me, and yet I have no idea who you are.”
