The Sherlock Holmes Megapack: 25 Modern Tales by Masters: 25 Modern Tales by Masters

by Michael Kurland

  “Lye?” I exclaimed, looking up from a copy of The Echo I had procured from a vendor on our way home. “Mr Vamberry or his wife must have used a perfectly aged wine barrel to make soap, of all things.”

  “Or perhaps something sinister,” Holmes guessed. He tinkered with several decanters for about an hour, saying nary a word, then he cried loudly: “It is so! We haven’t a second to waste, my good man. Get your hat and coat—we’re about to roust Constable Thornburgh out of his bed-clothes for the second time this week.”

  Without protest, I complied with anticipation, for I knew the climax of Holmes’s investigation was not far off. In the darkness, through patches of fog, we made our way to the Underground and were aboard the night-express to the far West End for another foray into Hampshire. We awakened the manager of the livery stable and hired another carriage that would take us to the constabulary headquarters. There, Holmes stunned the officer in charge by declaring he had crucial evidence in the homicide of McHugh and the death of Mrs Vamberry.

  “The death of Mrs Vamberry?” the officer challenged. “You say she’s dead, do you? Well, we have a suspect in custody who can lead us to her alive, mister.”

  “May I speak with him?” Holmes implored.

  “Not without the permission of Constable Thornburgh, and I’m not disturbing him in bed again,” the officer contended, his voice raised. “You’ll have to wait until morning. He’ll be here at eight o’clock sharp.”

  The officer was unrelenting, even when Holmes argued that morning might be too late.

  “Here! Here! What’s all this fuss about?” came another booming voice from across the squad room. It belonged to Special Constable Isaac Thornburgh, who, as it turned out, had been unable to sleep, thinking that his prisoner might have had a change of heart and decided to come clean about the whereabouts of Mrs Vamberry. Constable Thornburgh addressed the officer in charge, sarcastically:

  “McGee, this is no way to treat Scotland Yard’s most indispensable assistant. Mr Sherlock Holmes has come all the way from the city at an ungodly hour to lecture us on how to proceed.” He turned to Holmes and bowed with a flair in mock respect. “Tell us, Mr Holmes, what have we done to get it wrong?”

  Holmes contained his anger admirably and informed the special constable that the man in custody was not guilty of a kidnapping.

  Constable Thornburgh laughed. “But we have incontrovertible evidence, you see. He was in possession of a diamond-studded brooch that Mrs Vamberry was wearing the day she was abducted. Dan Fullen, a common thief until he joined a higher class of criminals, tried to sell the brooch to a pawn broker in Winchester. We had circulated a description of Mrs Vamberry’s jewellery to all the merchants and were notified when Fullen attempted to turn the brooch into cash. We apprehended him red-handed, so to speak. He denied any knowledge of Mrs Vamberry, but now we are waiting for him to sing a different tune.”

  “What tune did he sing when you arrested him?” Holmes wanted to learn.

  “Oh, he claimed to have snatched the brooch off the blouse of an elderly woman shopping at Berkeley Square in London,” Constable Thornburgh related, shaking his head and clucking.

  “Have you made an effort to verify or discredit his story?” Holmes asked, adding: “Scotland Yard surely would have a report—I presume the woman exists—and she could easily identify this scoundrel Fullen, as well as the brooch he stole.”

  “There is no need, Mr Holmes. Heathcliff Vamberry has confirmed that the brooch belongs to his wife,” Constable Thornburgh insisted.

  “And what if Dan Fullen is not the prevaricator, only a strong-arm robber?” queried Holmes, a question which Constable Thornburgh greeted with disbelief.

  “There is another way to make certain who is telling the truth,” Holmes continued. “Accompany Dr Watson and me to the winery tonight. There is no time to lose.”

  Constable Thornburgh resisted, saying it was too late at night and that if Holmes were off-course with his hunch, the wine maker would be justifiably resentful of the police because of the unwarranted intrusion.

  “Then follow us there and stay in the background,” Holmes proposed. “Dr Watson and I will confront Mr Vamberry alone.” This the special constable found acceptable, and we departed at once.

  We arrived to find the winery and house in pitch darkness, and there was no response when Holmes banged the knocker on the front door of the residence. We were about to leave when Holmes stepped to the rear of the building. “Come here, Watson, and tell me what you see,” he cajoled, pointing into the vastness of the vineyard. To my surprise, there was the glow of a lantern off in the distance.

  “Tell Constable Thornburgh to join us this instant, for we are in the nick of time to witness the completion of the crime,” Holmes ordered. I walked quickly to the end of the drive and persuaded the special constable to follow me to where Holmes stood vigil.

  We moved stealthily along the rows between the bare vines toward the stationary light. “Quietly, now,” Holmes whispered as we drew nearer. When we got to within ten paces of the lantern, we watched in amazement as Heathcliff Vamberry worked with a digging iron and shovel to enlarge a hole for the barrel that sat on a wheelbarrow behind him.

  “The bereaved husband is preparing to lay his beloved wife to rest, in peace,” Holmes bellowed, sending the man slumping to his knees.

  “Oh, Lord, forgive me for what I have done,” he moaned. “She was an abominable nag, always wanting more than I could provide, but I loved her so. I only meant to silence her—yet my grip on her neck was too strong and she died in my arms, her beautiful brown eyes open. How did you know, Mr Holmes?”

  “I suspected you almost from the start, Mr Vamberry,” Holmes told him. “When I learned at your bank that you had not, in fact, withdrawn thirty thousand pounds for your wife’s ransom, I deduced that you had constructed the first bogus note from the kidnappers as a ruse to cover your tracks and to defraud your brother-in-law of a part of his fortune. Every turn of events after that merely defined my theory. And today I also discovered this barrel, and I noticed where you had spilled the lye in your effort to hasten the decomposition of the remains and mask a tell-tale odour.”

  “Please get up off your knees, Mr Vamberry,” Constable Thornburgh requested, holding out a pair of handcuffs.

  Vamberry, still shaken, leaned on the wheelbarrow for balance and accidentally tipped it over, hurling the barrel onto the ground with a terrible impact, which caused the lid to break apart. To our horror, the head and shoulders of an emaciated, tiny woman landed in the shallow grave.

  “Oh, my precious Phoebe,” Vamberry lamented.

  Constable Thornburgh clasped Vamberry’s wrists in the handcuffs and we strode without speaking toward our vehicles. When we reached the winery, Holmes stopped and wondered aloud if Vamberry wanted to make a clean breast of the entire affair. “Since there were no kidnappers,” said Holmes dryly, “would you care to tell us how you killed Bascomb McHugh?”

  “But I didn’t—” Vamberry began to say.

  Holmes interrupted him in mid-sentence. “If you would unlock your safe, it will prove your innocence.”

  “The money is all there—seventy thousand pounds, twenty thousand from the first night on the bridge, and fifty thousand from the second,” Vamberry confessed. “He was an interfering, arrogant buffoon and I hated every bone in his body.”

  “It was an obvious crime of passion,” Holmes explained to Constable Thornburgh, “because of the numerous mortal wounds. That the victim was seated in the brougham, and not slain on the deck of the bridge while fighting off an attacker, led me to conclude that the murder was committed by a passenger on his right. The killer could only have been his confederate in the delivery of the ransom money.”

  “What becomes of me now?” Vamberry asked, overwrought, his head drooped in a display of contrition.

  “If I have anything to say about it, I’ll see you get a short drop at the Old Bailey,” Constable Thornburgh answered v
enomously. “As for you,” he said proudly, turning to Sherlock Holmes, “I shall make mention of your assisting the police when I meet with the press in the morning to announce that I have solved two murders at one time.”

  A HOUSE GONE MAD, by Sherlock Holmes as edited by Bruce I. Kilstein

  It was near winter in 18__ that a strange case afforded my colleague and friend, Dr John Watson, yet another opportunity to lend his medical expertise to one of my investigations. We had just finished our breakfast and had drawn near the fire against the chill of the damp November morning. Watson perused the morning papers while I lit my first pipe of the day, and the caseload being light, prepared to finish a monograph on the identification of footprints, when Mrs Hudson announced a visitor. The poor woman had barely enough time to utter Lestrade’s name before the boorish inspector from Scotland Yard burst past her and into our study.

  “Lestrade,” I said, barely glancing up from the preparation of my meerschaum, “so good of you to visit on such a bitter morning. Mrs Hudson, be a dear and fix the inspector a strong cup of your Turkish coffee. He has not slept for nearly two days, although he has managed not to miss a meal, however hurried, and he will be in want of a stimulant before returning to his wife, who, by now, will be fretting over his apparent disappearance from his investigation in the East End.”

  I took a long draw on the pipe and savoured both the sweet aroma of the tobacco and the shocked look on Lestrade’s face as he struggled to comprehend the nature of my deduction.

  “But, Mr Holmes,” he stammered, “how could you know the nature of my movements, let alone when I have taken meals or contacted my wife? I have just entered your chamber and you have barely even gazed up from your pipe.”

  Watson looked up from the Times with amusement. “Yes, Holmes,” he said, “do tell us how you could know the chap’s whereabouts?”

  “Elementary, my dear fellow.” I used my pipe to point out the salient features on Lestrade’s person that led me to my deduction. “First, one will note the rumpled condition of the gentleman’s suit. We see several stains in varying degrees of coagulation which represent several hurried meals: two meat pies and a plate of bangers, I should think, by looking at the marks on his cuffs and sleeve. About eight hours between meals will put us between breakfast and the noon meal yesterday. He had no time for tea or I would expect some other traces of that repast. The fact that he has bits of food on his collar and shirt would indicate hasty dining without a proper serviette. He has traces of mud on his braces of a particular colour and stench which would indicate a location near the river on the East End. The partially concealed note in his coat pocket is a telegram meant for his wife, which he neglected to post, to inform her of his delayed return.”

  Lestrade reached into his pocket and removed the telegram. “The wife will be upset,” he admitted. “You are correct in what you say, Mr Holmes.”

  “You have been busy, Lestrade. Pray take a seat and tell us how we may be of assistance,” I said.

  Lestrade sat at a small table, and thankfully accepted the hot coffee that Mrs Hudson had prepared. “Strangest thing I’ve seen in a long while, sir. I was called yesterday to investigate the death of a Mr Joshua Wadsworth of Brick Lane. He was a man of sixty-three years age, retired merchant, widower, living on his savings and a modest inheritance that had been his wife’s, and residing with his daughter and a small staff. He was found dead by his servant. There was no sign of violence.”

  “I should hardly think that cause for alarm,” Watson said. “Chap probably died of a coronary.”

  “Well, that was what the servant thought, doctor, until he went to inform the other members of the household. He found them in the dining room. The son, Ernest, who was at home on holiday, had gone stark raving mad. The daughter, Eunice, was in a catatonic state. The maid was clutching her throat, eyes popping near out of her head, according to the servant.”

  “Interesting, Lestrade,” I said. “And what is it you wish from us?”

  Lestrade stared into his coffee. “Naturally, with any suspicious death, Scotland Yard was called in. I have examined the premises, interviewed the servant, a Mr Warren, as well as the young Wadsworth’s fiancée, Lilly Brevant, and have spoken to the doctor caring for the unfortunate children and maid.”

  “Small wonder you look so tired,” Watson said. I admired and envied my friend’s endless capacity for compassion.

  “Sirs,” Lestrade continued, “I can find no motive for, or concrete signs of foul play, but still I have to admit, without an explanation for the condition of the others in the house, I am at a loss to exclude some type of poisoning. I remember too well the case of E. J. Drebber1 Mr Holmes.”

  “True,” I admitted. “But in that case there was a clear motive for the poisoning. You have no doubt concluded that the Wadsworths had no immediate enemies and that the doctors have no explanation for the condition of the others.”

  “Quite correct, Mr Holmes. Daresay I could use your medical expertise in this matter as well, Dr Watson,” a tired and deflated Lestrade said.

  Watson looked out the window and we followed his gaze to the blowing rain that soaked the few hurried passersby who had ventured out upon Baker Street. “I suppose if you think it necessary, my dear fellow. Haven’t been down to the Royal London Hospital since we investigated the case of the Jezail bullet. Fresh air will do us all a bit of good.”

  “Go home to your wife and have a rest, inspector,” I encouraged. “The doctor and I will delve into the situation and see if we can shed a bit of light on your little mystery.”

  Lestrade took his leave and I jotted the facts of the case and addresses in my notebook. I had Watson pack his medical bag and had Mrs Hudson fetch a boy to secure a hansom and send a telegram to the hospital.

  * * * *

  We soon found ourselves hurtling through the streets across London to the East End. Watson had known my methods well enough by now to have refrained from conversation during the ride, in order to allow me to compose my theories. What must have taken the better part of an hour seemed mere minutes to me, lost in thought as I was, but we arrived in good order at a house off of Brick Lane, Spitalfields. We instructed the cabbie to wait, and were shown in by Lestrade’s man posted inside the door.

  “The inspector told me to expect you, Mr Holmes,” the bobby said. “The butler and fiancée are in there.” He gestured to a drawing room off the small entrance hall.

  We entered the room and found the two staring at a low fire in the hearth. Neither rose in greeting; the woman, obviously in shock, continued her stare while the man looked at us with suspicion. “You must be Miss Lilly and Warren,” I said.

  “And who might you be?” asked the butler.

  “I am Sherlock Holmes and this is Dr Watson. We have been asked by Scotland Yard to look into the matter of the death of Mr Wadsworth. Watson, have a look at the young lady, she seems in need of medical attention.”

  Watson located a small carafe of sherry on a nearby table, but appeared to recall the strange warning of poison by Lestrade, thought better of pouring the young woman a drink. I withdrew a small flask from my coat and handed it to him as a substitute.

  While Watson attended the young woman, I began an examination of the room. I knelt on the carpet near the hearth and examined a fine layer of ash with my glass. “This is where you found Mr Wadsworth, is it not?” I asked Warren.

  The man looked surprised. “Yes,” he said hesitantly. “But how can you know that? I didn’t tell that to the police.”

  “I am sure there is much you haven’t told them,” I replied. “Like the fact that you moved the body and smoked one of your master’s cigars before sounding the alarm.”

  This comment, as well as Watson’s ministrations, filled our female companion with new animation. “Is this true, Warren?” she asked. The servant did not reply.

  “You see, Miss Lilly,” I explained, “there is a faint outline of ash on the carpet near the hearth. Your once future fathe
r-in-law had collapsed here, shortly after his meal I should think, while he was smoking his evening cigar. If one looks closely, one sees that there are no less than three separate specimens of ash on the carpet. The first, this dark grey ash, is the residue of the gentleman’s cigar. Jamaican, I should think. Covering this first residue is a finer layer, no doubt, from the settling of ash from the hearth. This section of the rug without the residue was covered by the body as the dust settled. But this third specimen is interesting. It is the same colour as the first, indicating that it came from the same type of cigar, but it has landed, in part, on the area covered by the body. This indicates that a second smoker must have been in the room.”

  Watson and the woman had now drawn near to the deposit on the carpet, yet Warren remained seated. I continued, “From the account given by Mr Warren to Inspector Lestrade, Wadsworth was alone in the room when his body was discovered. This last bit of ash is undisturbed, indicating that it was deposited after the body had been moved.”

  “The ash would have been smeared if the body fell on it,” Watson clarified, as Lilly was looking puzzled.

  “Correct, my man,” I said to my friend. I turned to the taciturn Warren. “Seems you were in no hurry to alert the authorities to what must have seemed strange developments in the household, Mr Warren.”

  Warren met my glance with the determination of a man who had faced interrogation before, but he could not disguise the shade of red his face had taken. “Nothing you can prove, guv’nor,” he said.

  “We shall see,” I replied. I called for the policeman. “Sergeant, see that this man is not let out of your sight for the next hour or so. Are there any other servants in the Wadsworths’ employ?”

  “With pleasure, Mr Holmes,” the policeman said with a small salute and a reassuring pat of his truncheon. “An old woman, Mrs Spline, is the cook. Went to do the marketing.”“Very well. We shall need to talk with her. Dr Watson and I have business at the hospital, but shall return. Miss Brevant, would you do us the kindness of accompanying us to visit Master Ernest?”