"First, the pistol. Where is it?"
He looked as if he were about to protest, but he went to a desk and pulled open a desk drawer. He made a sound of surprise and started opening other drawers. "It is not here! I don't understand."
"I think I do," Holmes murmured. "Tell me, you are acquainted with a chemist named Curtis?"
"Yes, indeed. Mr. Curtis is a member of the Merchants Association committee that administers the Christmas Charities Fund."
"A committee of which you are also a member."
"My partner and I both are members."
"Piaget also?"
"Piaget assumed the duties of another member who recently passed away."
"Mr. Stoddard, you mean."
Wickham looked more puzzled than ever. "You are correct. Mr. Holmes, I really must insist upon an explanation."
Holmes's dark eyes bored into his. "Curtis was murdered early this morning. A pistol shot to the heart and another to the head."
Wickham staggered. "Mr. Curtis ... is dead?" After a long moment, he sank into the nearest chair and buried his head in his hands. A minute or so later he raised a tormented face and said hoarsely, "Oh, Mr. Holmes, you don't know what doleful news you bring me! I. .. my father and I are estranged. I have often suffered from the lack of his sage advice." He ran one hand nervously through his reddish brown hair. "But when I first joined the Merchants Association, two older men welcomed me and encouraged me, even directing new business my way. Without even knowing they were doing so, they took the place of the father that is lost to me. And now... now they are both gone!"
Stoddard and Curtis. I moved over next to him. "I am sorry, Mr. Wickham."
He acknowledged my sympathy with a nod. "Was it a burglary?" he asked.
"Nothing was taken," Holmes replied, watching Wickham narrowly. "It was a heartless, deliberate murder."
"But why?" Wickham cried, rising shakily from his chair. "Mr. Curtis was the kindest-hearted of men! Who would want him dead?"
"The man who was stealing from the Christmas Charities Fund," Holmes answered with a cold deliberation.
Wickham looked dumbfounded. "Stealing? From the Christmas Fund? Who?"
"Do you not know?"
"I? No! Are you certain there has been a theft of funds?"
"Not I," Holmes replied. "But Curtis suspected someone of chicanery. And that seems to be the only reason for removing him from the scene. Our Mr. Curtis was a threat to someone's continuing safety."
"Oh, dear God!"
I asked, "Curtis said nothing of this to you?"
"Nothing! Oh, the poor man!"
Holmes changed his tack. "Monsieur Piaget is not present, I see. Where may we find him?"
Wickham had to force himself to concentrate on the question. "He is presently stopping at the Red Lion near Piccadilly Circus. But he sails to Bordeaux tomorrow."
"Aboard the Mary Small"
Wickham was beyond further surprise. "If you already know the answer, why do you ask the question? Yes, he has passage on the Mary Small. Is there something ominous in that?"
"Well," I began, "he did say he saw—"
"Watson." Holmes's voice cut me off. "Mr. Wickham, I daresay we will meet again. But we will leave you now." Without further ado he opened the door and started down the stairway. I cast a glance at the stricken young man whose peace of mind we had disturbed, murmured something, and closed the door behind me as I left.
Holmes was waiting for me in Coldharbor Lane. "Well," he said with an air of exasperation, "that is the most likable young murderer I have ever encountered. Ethical, industrious, respectful. Did you notice his hands, Watson? Heavily callused. Our wine merchants cannot afford to pay warehouse workers. Young Mr. Wickham has been doing the heavy labour of loading and unloading crates himself."
"Do you still think he is a murderer?" I asked. "Surely his grief over Curtis's death was genuine."
"Either that, or that young man more properly belongs in the Lyceum as a member of Sir Henry Irving's company of players."
"Do you think he was acting?"
Holmes did not answer immediately. "Curious," he finally said. "I knew instantly this morning that Curtis's clerk Grimes was not acting. Yet with Wickham, I could not be certain. He seemed truly distressed—yet we cannot ignore what we know about him. The Mary Small, the passage he had Miss Stoddard copy in her father's handwriting."
"Holmes, why did you stop me from mentioning that Piaget said he'd seen a steamship ticket lying on Wickham's desk?"
"Ah, my friend, because the only way we would know about that was if we'd heard it from Miss Amy Stoddard. And we don't want Wickham knowing we'd visited him on her behalf, do we? Not so long as there is the slightest chance that she is in danger from him."
"Oh. Of course. You're right."
"Now, where are we?" We'd left Coldharbor Lane, but there was not a hansom cab in sight. "Let's try down this way." He strode off at a brisk pace. "Watson, we must divide our efforts at this point. Do you think you could learn from Inspector Lestrade whether Curtis had told his wife whom he suspected of pilfering from the Christmas Fund?"
"Yes, certainly."
"Good. When you have done that, return to Baker Street and dose your ear with more of that sweet-smelling oil. I shall be along later and we can share what we have learned."
"Where are you going?"
"To the Red Lion in Piccadilly. Monsieur Piaget and I are due for a little chat."
I returned to Baker Street in a state of nervous excitement. Lestrade had related to me that Curtis had not told his wife the name of the man he suspected, but had instead referred to him only as a wine merchant. Ah! Wickham or Piaget? There was no real question. I was convinced that Wickham's grief over Curtis's death was authentic and not simply a performance staged for our benefit. Piaget was the villain we were seeking.
It was teatime before Holmes made his appearance. When I told him what I had learned from Lestrade, he nodded thoughtfully. "I myself have discovered a matter that would support your somewhat emotional declaration of Wickham's innocence."
"Indeed? What did Piaget have to say?"
"I did not speak to him. Monsieur Piaget is no longer stopping at the Red Lion. He settled his account this morning and told the innkeeper he was returning to France."
I frowned. "But Wickham said Piaget was sailing tomorrow, on the twenty-third."
"And Piaget said the steamship ticket he saw on Wickham's desk was made out for the twenty-third."
I shook my head in confusion. "I don't understand."
"Nor did I," Holmes admitted. "One of the two men was clearly lying. That there is a ticket for passage aboard the Mary Small on the twenty-third of December, there is no doubt. But which one of them bought it? It was essential to find out. So I paid a visit to the steamship ticket offices."
"Excellent, Holmes!"
"There I had a stroke of luck. The Kerward line, which owns the Mary Small, is not a large company, as steamship lines go, and only one ticket-seller is employed for the entire line. He is a most agreeable fellow who told me straightaway that yes, he had sold a ticket for December twenty-third on the Mary Small... to one Thomas Wickham."
"What?" I was so startled that I spilled my tea.
Holmes handed me a napkin. "I questioned him closely, but he showed me the passenger list and Wickham's name was right there. That seemed to settle the matter, but then the good man said, ' 'Oi remember 'im all roight, Mr. 'Olmes. Oi couldn't hardly maike out wot 'e was saiyin', with that frog accent an' all.' "
I put down my cup. "A French accent?"
"Indeed. So I asked him if Wickham was thin, clean-shaven, and with hair that was a reddish brown. He answered no, he was average-sized and had black hair and a mustache."
"It must have been Piaget," I gasped. "He bought the ticket in Wickham's name!"
"Exactly, Watson. And now we have a rough description of what Monsieur Piaget looks like. But where is he? There are dark enterprises afoot, Watso
n, of which we have caught only glimpses. I fear Miss Stoddard may be in even graver danger than first I anticipated."
"But not from Wickham," I insisted. "It's clear Piaget's purpose was to make Miss Stoddard suspicious of her fiancé. First he buys the steamship ticket in Wickham's name, and then he tells her a lie about seeing the ticket on Wickham's desk. Surely Wickham is exonerated?"
"Only half-exonerated. There is still the curious passage that Wickham had Miss Stoddard copy in her father's hand."
I poured us both another cup of tea. "Yes, alas, there is still that."
Holmes ignored the tea and began to pace. "Doesn't anything strike you as peculiar about that passage, Watson? 'It is my intent that the governance of my affairs be placed in the hands of one who is most qualified to oversee them,' " he quoted from memory. 'A simple declaration of intent, followed by: 'Determining who that person is has occupied much of my attention during the past year.' A statement of what he has done toward realizing that intent. But where is the conclusion? He names no one, he specifies no instructions for how his wishes are to be carried out. Don't you see it, Watson? What Miss Stoddard copied was merely an excerpt from a longer document!"
I failed to see his point. "But to what purpose?"
"A test, Watson! It was a test! To see if she could indeed reproduce her father's eccentric writing!" Holmes pulled up a chair close to mine and perched on the edge. "The plan is to come up with a document, perhaps a will, that was written after the will that leaves Mr. Stoddard's entire estate to his daughter. It is a plot to disinherit Amy Stoddard! But how ironic! The villain is thwarted in his plan by a species of penmanship that no one can either read or reproduce—except the very person he is trying to rob of her inheritance!"
I looked him directly in the eye. "Are we speaking of Piaget or Wickham?"
"Aha! That's the puzzle, isn't it! Since Piaget tried to discredit Wickham with his lie about the steamship ticket, perhaps he had designs on Miss Stoddard himself and was trying to eliminate the competition? Yet it was Wickham who asked Miss Stoddard to copy the excerpt from the new will, not Piaget."
"But Wickham has no need to disinherit the young lady. She has promised to marry him."
"Perhaps he fears she will change her mind. Piaget may be nothing more than an underhanded suitor who is now crawling back home, defeated, having lost the lady to his partner and rival. I was careless, Watson. I should have recognized Piaget's story about the steamship ticket as a lie the moment I heard it."
"How so?"
Holmes leaned forward from the edge of his chair. "Put yourself into a real situation similar to that fabricated by Piaget. Say you make a social gaffe by mentioning to Miss Stoddard that you saw Wickham's steamship ticket. She is astounded! 'Why, what do you mean?' she cries. 'He is spending Christmas Eve with me!'" Holmes's eye gleamed. "Now, W7atson—what do you say?"
I raised my eyebrows at him. "I say I must be mistaken."
"And? What else?"
What else? "That I'm sorry."
"And?"
The man really could be exasperating. "And ... nothing else! I was mistaken and I'm sorry. That's all."
"Exactly!" Holmes cried in triumph. "You say nothing else. You do not, for example, name the ship. Nor do you casually let slip the day of the month on which that ship is scheduled to weigh anchor. Piaget wanted to plant a doubt in Miss Stoddard's mind. He wanted her to know the ship and the date... in the hope that she would check at the ticket office and find young Wickham's name on the passenger list!"
"Ah, I see!" What a wicked thing for Piaget to have done. "But instead of going to the ticket office, she came to you."
He sat back in his chair, a satisfied smile on his face. "Precisely. Piaget may have had some additional depraved plan in mind, to culminate before the twenty-third of the month—in addition to pilfering from the Christmas Fund. But if all his plotting were to fail, he has ready and waiting a steamship ticket through which he can effect his escape."
Now it was I who leaned forward in my chair. "So you do believe in Wickham's innocence?"
"It would appear that Wickham has been more the victim of a deception than the perpetrator of it—except for that one unexplained detail. It was Wickham who had Miss Stoddard copy the excerpt from what has every appearance of being a fraudulent will. Piaget did not do that, Watson."
Nor did he. There was no explaining that away.
It was almost dark when we left shortly after for Grosvenor Square, where Mr. John Fulham maintained a residence. "Mr. Fulham is in a position to verify or refute one detail of Thomas Wickham's story," Holmes said as we rode in the brougham we had hired for the evening. "He will know whether his good friend Stoddard stood in loco parentis for the young man or not."
John Fulham was a handsome man in his mid-fifties who welcomed us cordially. When Holmes said he had been consulted by Miss Amy Stoddard, Fulham was immediately concerned.
"Is she having difficulties?" he asked worriedly. "I have been trying to watch out for her as well as I can, for her dear father's sake as well as her own."
"You and Stoddard were close friends?"
"Yes, quite close. We knew each other for near to thirty years. But why did Amy consult you, Mr. Holmes?"
"She was experiencing a few last-minute doubts about her fiancé," Holmes answered glibly. Not a total untruth. "That is why I am here, Mr. Fulham. You are, of course, acquainted with Mr. Thomas Wickham."
"I am." Was there a note of disapproval in his voice?
We were seated in an attractive drawing room, drinking the best glass of sherry I had tasted in many a month. Mr. Fulham wore his success easily, a man used to living well.
Holmes said, "Mr. Wickham claims that Mr. Stoddard took him under his wing when the former joined the Merchants Association. Is that true?"
"Yes, he and Curtis both became his mentors." Fulham suddenly frowned. "That is a terrible business about poor Curtis. The Times claims the police are baffled as to who could have killed him and why."
"For the moment," Holmes said. "That will soon change, I warrant. But you say both Stoddard and Curtis did help young Wickham to establish himself in business."
"That they did." Our host sighed deeply. "I'll confess, Mr.
Holmes, that they saw something in Wickham that I could never see. Do you know where he maintains his offices? In a neighbourhood I would not venture into even in broad daylight!"
I coughed.
"A young merchant just starting out cannot be expected to maintain fully appointed offices, surely," Holmes said mildly.
"No, of course not. But there are certain standards to be maintained, standards that are endorsed by the Merchants Association, I might add. But Wickham struck me as merely a well-mannered opportunist willing to take advantage of two soft-hearted men in a position to be of assistance to him." He shook his head. "I don't know, Mr. Holmes. Perhaps I do the young man an injustice. I have nothing to go on except my own instincts."
"And your instincts tell you ... ?"
"That young Wickham is not to be trusted. As you may imagine, I was not overjoyed when Stoddard informed me that Amy and Wickham were to be wed."
"Did you attempt to dissuade him from permitting the union?"
"Only once. Stoddard made it quite clear that such argument was unwelcome, and I never repeated the attempt."
There was something I had to ask. "Do you know, Mr. Fulham, if Wickham's partner was equally interested in marrying Miss Stoddard?"
"Piaget?" Fulham smiled. "That's not very likely, Dr. Watson, not with a wife waiting for him in Bordeaux. Why do you ask?"
I felt my face redden. "I didn't know Piaget was married."
"For some years. It's my impression that he and Amy barely know each other."
Holmes asked if Fulham had anything to do with the administering of the Christmas Charities Fund; Fulham said no. "One final question, Mr. Fulham, if you don't mind, and then we'll leave you in peace. If Amy Stoddard were your daughter, would yo
u forbid her to marry Thomas Wickham?"
"Forbid?" He thought about it. "No, she is of age. But what I would do is find a way to persuade her to postpone the wedding until I had consulted you, Mr. Holmes—to discover everything about the young man that you possibly could."
Holmes nodded in acknowledgement. True to his word, he asked no more questions. We bade Fulham good night and took our leave.
Back in our hired brougham, I said, "That was a curious interview. Fulham both cast doubts upon Wickham's character and verified his claim that Stoddard and Curtis had acted as his mentors."
"I am interested only in Fulham's facts," Holmes replied, "and they say that Wickham told the truth about Stoddard and Curtis. Mr. Fulham's opinions, on the other hand, we need not treat as of equal import. Now we shall pay a brief visit to Miss Stoddard, to inform her of what we have learned. And then our day's work will be done."
But when we reached the Stoddard house in Bayswater Road, we found something of a ruckus at the door. Thomas Wickham was pounding at the door, red-faced, agitated, the very picture of the frustrated lover. "Why will you not let me in, Amy?" he cried.
"She will not let you in, Mr. Wickham," Holmes said, stepping out of the brougham, "because I instructed her not to."
Wickham whirled around. "Mr. Holmes! Why are you here?"
"All in good time." He stepped up to the door. "Miss Stoddard! Are you there?"
"Mr. Holmes?" came her voice through the door. "Is that you?"
"It is I, and Dr. Watson is with me. You may open the door now."
We heard the sound of a bolt being drawn, and the door opened slightly and Amy Stoddard's worried young face peered out at us. "Is Thomas still there?"
"Amy!" he cried, and tried to push his way in.
I held him back. "All in good time," I admonished.
"You have nothing to fear, Miss Stoddard," Holmes reassured her. "I have one question to ask Mr. Wickham—to which I think I know the answer—and much should be made clear. May we come in?"
Holmes for the Holidays Page 5
