Holmes for the Holidays

by Martin H. Greenberg (ed)

  He did not reply but I saw him shiver and, reproaching myself for my triumphant tone, I started to remove my coat, saying, 'Here, Holmes, take this. You've only just risen from your sick bed and your lungs could easily take an infection from this raw, dank air.'

  He smiled at me with real affection and said, 'Watson, you are more good-hearted than I deserve. Thank you, dear fellow, but I do not think that after all your sacrifice will be necessary.'

  I looked out of the window and saw that we had passed the narrow entrance to the Piazza San Cassiano and were coming to a halt outside a haberdashery before which a liveried flunkey was waiting to bow us out of the coach, after which he bowed us through the shop doorway, down a passageway, across a mean and shadowy courtyard, through another door, up several flights of stairs, and finally, with his deepest bow of all, ushered us into a spacious room across which advanced a tall, handsome, moustachioed man in his mid-twenties, showing dazzling white teeth in a wide smile.

  'Mr Holmes!' he cried. 'Welcome. After so many letters between us, I am delighted at last to make your acquaintance in the flesh.'

  'And I yours, Count,' said Holmes, taking his hand. 'May I present my dear friend and colleague, Dr John Watson.'

  'Delighted,' I said gruffly. To tell the truth I was feeling distinctly uncomfortable. There were many other people in the room, of both sexes, all dressed most elegantly. The room was heated by a large stove and already I was beginning to feel overwarm, but my main discomfiture rose from my knowledge that I had seen no reason to wear beneath my topcoat anything other than a pair of balding moleskin trousers and the leather-patched Norfolk jacket which has accompanied me on so many outdoor expeditions.

  'Dr Watson, the Boswell of the great detective!' cried Montesecco, wringing my hand warmly. 'It was through your writings that I first became acquainted with Mr Holmes's talents. You are the Vergil who has led me safe through the labyrinths of his mind.'

  I cannot say I cared much for the flowery style of the Italian Sherlock Holmes and thought of pointing out that Vergil did most of his ciceroning in the circles of Hell. But Holmes, alert to both my mental distaste and my physical discomfort, took my arm and urged me towards a window which opened onto a broad metal balcony, saying, 'I see we must brave the elements after all, Watson. Once again you have demonstrated that while I may lay some claim to superiority of insight, in matters of foresight, you are the master. The rest of us must shiver while you stay snug and warm.'

  'I have provided cloaks for everybody,' said the count petulantly.

  'Then we shall all be comfortable together,' said Holmes, stepping out onto the balcony.

  All concern about my comfort or discomfort vanished as I took in the scene spread out below.

  The house we were in stood at one end of the long and narrow Piazza San Cassiano, directly opposite the church of San Cassiano at the other end, some six hundred feet away. Already the square was full of people though not yet so crowded that they could not move freely about. It was a scene that an artist with our vantage point might have used as a model for a panorama of Bartholemew Fair. Hawkers hawked, tumblers tumbled, beggars begged, and the citizens of Rome strolled around in topcoats and tailcoats and long cloaks and short cloaks and some in no cloaks at all, wearing barely sufficient rags to cover their modesty. But all had that complacent air which says as clearly now as it must have done in Caesar's time, 'We are true Romans and may not be touched by any law but our own.'

  At the very centre of the square stood the instrument of that law. Over the trough of a dry fountain had been erected the scaffold, a ramshackle jerry-built platform of uneven, unpainted planks some eight feet high, with a rickety ladder leaning against it, the ascent of which looked perilous enough to despatch a condemned man without troubling the waiting axe, which gleamed sinisterly, high in its towering frame. The polished and, I hoped, finely honed blade contrasted powerfully with the ponderous rusting mass of metal attached above to provide the motivating force necessary to drive the cutting edge through the bone and sinew of a man's neck.

  The scaffold was ringed with foot soldiers, and a double line of them showed the route from the church by which the condemned man would be brought to his doom. The soldiers were stood at ease, which command is taken much more literally here than it would be by a similar escort from a British regiment. The men slouched, scratched, chatted with their neighbours, and even laid their weapons on the ground to stretch their arms in huge weary yawns, while their officers strolled around, smoking cigarillos and occasionally exchanging banter with some of the ladies of the town.

  'Tell me, Mr Holmes,' said the count, who had followed us onto the balcony, 'have you ever had the pleasure of following one of your cases to this last extremity?'

  'No, Count,' said Holmes. 'I am glad to say that in my country we have abandoned the practice of turning some poor devil's death into a sideshow.'

  'You are indeed a people of great restraint,' murmured the count, not making it sound like a compliment. 'But there is a certain completeness, a roundness if you like, in seeing a matter out to the bitter end, particularly when, as in this case, the investigator was present from the very beginning.'

  'Ah, you actually witnessed Strepponi committing the murder, then?' said Holmes. 'I should have thought that would have rendered my deductive methods somewhat redundant.'

  Someone laughed behind us. The count turned and the laughter stopped. This was clearly a man who did not care for contradiction.

  'I forget my manners,' he said. 'Come and meet my other guests.'

  He and Holmes stepped back inside. I remained on the balcony, partly for comfort, partly because from this vantage I could take close note of the room and its inmates without my being noted.

  It did not need my friend's sharp perception to remark that, though the room was elegantly furnished and made gay by the beribboned icons and silk-draped religious pictures with which these Papists mark the season of Christmas, its basic fabric was in an advanced state of dilapidation. I guessed that the count had hired the apartment purely as a vantage point for the execution and commanded his people to make it temporarily fit for fashionable society.

  The first guest in line was in something of the same condition as the room. In his sixties, cadaverous of face and skeletal of frame, he was clothed in colourful silk and mohair and his long bony fingers were banded with diamonds and gold.

  'No need for introduction,' said Holmes, offering his hand. 'Who could work within the law and not be acquainted with the famous Judge Pinelli? I trust Your Honour's respiration has improved from your recent voyage to the Holy Land on Count Montesecco's yacht?1

  The man's jaw dropped like Marley's when he unwound his scarf in the famous Christmas story. Recovering, he said in fair English, 'I see the count has given you my curriculum vitae, Mr Holmes.'

  'Not in the least,' replied my friend, smiling. 'As the principal trial judge, your likeness was in the newspaper cuttings which the count was kind enough to send me. As for the rest, your lip and jaw are slightly paler than the rest of your face, suggesting that you recently grew a moustache and beard during a period of exposure to wind and warm weather. From this I deduced a long voyage on a private rather than a public vessel, permitting you to indulge in not shaving without provoking the interest of other travellers. The count's evident gratitude to you for your conduct of the trial provoked me to guess that the vessel was his private yacht. And the enamelled medal you are wearing of Our Lady of the Rocks looks new enough to suggest recent visit to that particular shrine.'

  'And the respiratory problem, Mr Holmes?' asked a handsome blonde woman of about forty, clad in the kind of loose flowing garment ladies are wont to wear when they become self-conscious about their spreading figures.

  'Elementary, my dear Signora Masina,' said Holmes. 'I have heard the learned judge cough dryly several times since I entered the room. My good friend Dr Watson could have diagnosed much more precisely. But your pain at losing such a very dear frien
d is beyond mere medical remedy, and I think you are wise to have decided to go and live with your sister in America.'

  As he spoke, he bowed in the direction of another woman, dark and slim and wearing a long grey dress of rather old-fashioned cut.

  For a second Signora Masina looked disconcerted. Then she rallied and said, 'Now this is first rate, Mr Holmes. I daresay my likeness too appeared in the papers, but as for my sister and my debate about joining her in the United States, only a wizard could know of that. And don't tell me there's a family resemblance. As your proverb puts it, we are chalk and cheese!'

  'The dark and the bright, two different kinds of beauty,' said Holmes with greater gallantry than I had suspected he possessed. 'The accent of your English suggests a period already spent in America. This lady's dress is of a style more popular just now in New York than in Rome. She wears a brooch and you a ring which look to have been set by the same hand perhaps fifty years ago. It could be that you have a common jeweller, but it's more likely that these are part of a set of jewellery divided on inheritance, and a mother is the most likely source of such a bequest. What would be more probable than that a sister should rush to your side at your time of grief and offer you a permanent home in the bosom of her family.'

  'In other words, these deductions of yours are mere guesses, and your fame depends largely on folk tending to recall the few instances when you hit the mark and forget the many where you are wide.'

  This came from the lady in grey who spoke English with a very pronounced Yankee drawl and had a cynical eye to match.

  I waited to see how my friend's gallantry would survive this attack but the count came smoothly in.

  'I think, Mrs Jardine, that the occasion of our meeting here today shows that there is rather more to our methods than mere guesswork,' he murmured. 'Mr Holmes, would you like to make a further display of your powers with regard to any other of my guests?'

  This was clever, I thought. Our methods implied an equality of standing with Holmes while a further display of your powers suggested that such vulgar exhibitionism was Holmes's alone.

  Holmes glanced at me ruefully. Perhaps the count had hit a nerve. Or perhaps he had recollected the solemnity of the occasion.

  The introductions continued, confirming my impression that most of those present had some close connection with the murder of the last Count Montesecco. As well as Signora Masina and her sister, Mrs Jardine, there were present the family lawyer, Signor Randone; Captain Zardi, who had been in charge of the official investigation; Dr Provenzale, the attending medical officer; and a very beautiful young woman called Claudia Medioli, who stood in an ambiguous relationship to the count.

  Even the trio of servants who were constantly on hand with hot chocolate, cold champagne and a variety of little sweetmeats, turned out to have been in the employ of the dead man and present in his house at the time of his murder. There were two maids, Violetta and Susi, and in charge of them Serge Rosi, who had been the old count's and was now the new count's major-domo.

  Finally there was a group of some half dozen men standing a little apart who turned out to be representatives of the Italian press. Just as the introductions were completed, the door burst open and a young man of about the count's age entered. From his long unkempt hair, tied back in the peasant style, and his rather shabby suit, which stood out against the general elegance of the assemblage, I at first took him for another servant. But he came forward boldly, seizing a glass of champagne en route, letting his bright brown eyes run lightly over the other guests with a faintly mocking smile as he said in Italian, 'Sorry to be late, Montesecco, on such an illustrious occasion.' Then, switching to an accented but very correct English, he went on, 'And this must be the famous British Sherlock Holmes. How proud you must be that your influence now helps men to die in countries other than your own!'

  Even allowing for the fact that he spoke a foreign language, this came close to being offensive, but Holmes merely held out his hand and said, 'I find no man's death an occasion for pride, Signor Chiari. Like yours, my interest is solely in la verita, the truth.'

  For a moment the young man looked disconcerted, then the mocking smile returned and he said. 'So the count has warned you I am coming! Or are you going to claim it is the printers' ink on my fingers or the paper dust in my hair that helped you to make your conclusion?'

  'I could hardly warn Mr Holmes of your arrival, as you were not invited,' said Montesecco coldly. 'But now you are here I will not deprive you of this chance to see how real justice works.'

  Chiari bowed satirically. Holmes said nothing, but for once I needed no elucidation. It has long been his habit to study not only the English newspapers but also those of the main European capitals. 'The train and the steamship have made crime international, Watson,' he would tell me. 'It is no longer enough to know only what is going on in your own parish.' La Verita was an Italian weekly journal which I had often noticed lying around our chambers in Baker Street. All I knew of it was that its politics were radical, its style sensational, and its proprietor and principal reporter was Endo Chiari. I presume the magazine had at some time printed a picture of him, and of course Holmes never forgot a face.

  Chiari now turned away from the circle that had formed around Holmes and the count and began a flirtatious conversation with Susi, the prettier of the two maids, till Rosi, the major-domo, sternly commanded her to go and fetch more refreshment. Outside in the square there was a sudden blare of a trumpet and everyone hurried out onto the balcony in case this signalled that events were going to start early. How anyone could spend a day in this country. let alone be a native of it, and still believe this was possible, I do not know! The trumpeter turned out to be some enterprising showman eager to attract customers to enter and view what he claimed to be the mummified and pickled remains of previous executed felons. The chill wind soon drove the others back indoors, but when they had retreated I found that Chiari remained. Perhaps his shabby suit was made of sturdier cloth than their finery, but he showed no sign of feeling the cold and leaned on the rail of the balcony, looking down at the growing crowd below with a mixture of sorrow and disgust.

  'So, Dr Watson,' he said, 'and how shall you write of this spectacle you are to see here today?'

  'I do not know that I shall write of it, sir,' I said shortly.

  He turned his mocking gaze on and said, 'But surely you are the chronicler of all Mr Holmes's triumphs?'

  'Whether this be a triumph or no, sir, is not for me to say. But it is certainly not one of Mr Holmes's.'

  'You say so? The count certainly gives him a portion of credit. The name Montesecco does not yet have quite the same power to make the virtuous bow and the criminal tremble, and though it must irk him, for the time being at least he is content to pull in the same yoke as your master and let himself be called the Italian Holmes.'

  I drew myself up and replied, 'Sir, you may say what you like about your fellow countryman, though as he is your host and it is his champagne you are drinking, I should have thought common decency demanded some restraint. But I would have you know that Mr Sherlock Holmes is not my master, he is my close and trusted friend, and I will greatly resent any further slurs on his character.'

  He frowned and said, 'Is the truth then a slur in England?'

  'On the contrary, sir. It is our lodestone,' I declared.

  'Then let us without quarrelling about slurs accept this truth,' he said. 'The count has used your friend's reputation to help secure his own, and by his presence here today, Mr Holmes seems to confirm the close connection.'

  I naturally resented the implication but when I peered back into the room and saw how Holmes, like all the others, seemed to be hanging on every word the count said as he described the course of his investigation, I began to wonder whether my friend's recent nervous debility had temporarily impaired his fine judgement.

  This was the tale that we heard.

  The murder had been committed early on the last day of August in t
he Montesecco palazzo on the Via di Monserrato. At eleven o' clock in the morning a terrible scream (like the sound of a pig being butchered,' averred the maid, Susi, who came from country stock) was heard throughout the palace, bringing all who heard it rushing towards its apparent source on the first floor. Here they found Giuseppe Strepponi struggling to force open the door of Count Leonardo's study, which seemed to be locked on the inside. Rosi, the major-domo, was one of the first on the scene. He quickly produced his set of household keys, unlocked the door and he and Strepponi burst in to discover the count lying across his desk with his throat cut from ear to ear. The weapon, still lying on the desk, appeared to be an ornamental dagger honed to a razor edge, which the count used as a paper knife. Strepponi attempted to administer first aid, but it was far too late and the only significant result of his efforts was to cover himself with blood. Dr Provenzale was summoned and he confirmed what was evident to all present, that the old count was dead. The authorities were informed and Captain Zardi began his investigation.

  Zardi, a laconic man with an upright military bearing, here took up the story. The key to the study was found on a marble plinth supporting a statue of Marcus Aurelius just inside the door. The central of the three windows was wide open and on the sill was the print of a bloody hand. The window opened onto the inner court of the palace, which was laid out as a formal garden. Up the wall grew an ancient vine, its thick, gnarled branches easily capable of bearing a man's weight.

  From the courtyard garden there were many doorways and passages providing a wide choice of exits. Zardi immediately ordered a thorough search of the palace, but no fugitive was found, nor could any of the inmates recall seeing any stranger on the premises that morning.

  Zardi now questioned Strepponi, who told him that the count had sent him away when he reported for duty at his usual time of ten a.m., saying that he would not require his services for another hour at least, as he was expecting his lawyer, Randone. Strepponi retired to his room on the upper floor. At five to eleven he came down and was just approaching the study door when he heard the scream from within. He rushed forward and tried to enter but found the door locked. He could hear sounds of movement from within but of course by the time Rosi arrived and unlocked the door, the room was empty, save for the dying old man.