by Merry Murder
“I don’t know it.”
“It’s a very posh shop. I found the advert in some fashion magazine.” He had already taken the box from the carrier and was unwrapping the pink ribbon.
“You’d better not. It’s gift-wrapped.”
“Tell me what you think,” he insisted, as he raised the lid, parted the tissue, and lifted out the gift for his wife. It was a nightdress, the sort of nightdress, Fran privately reflected, that men misguidedly buy for the women they adore. Pale-blue, in fine silk, styled in the empire line, gathered at the bodice, with masses of lace interwoven with yellow ribbons. Gorgeous to look at and hopelessly impractical to wash and use again. Not even comfortable to sleep in. His wife, she guessed, would wear it once and pack it away with her wedding veil and her love letters.
“It’s exquisite.”
“I’m glad I showed it to you.” He started to replace it clumsily in the box.
“Let me,” said Fran, leaning across to take it from him. The silk was irresistible. “I know she’ll love it.”
“It’s not so much the gift,” he said as if he sensed her thoughts. “It’s what lies behind it. Pearlie would tell you I’m useless at romantic speeches. You should have seen me blushing in that shop. Frilly knickers on every side. The girls there had a right game with me, holding these nighties against themselves and asking what I thought.”
Fran felt privileged. She doubted if Pearlie would ever be told of the gauntlet her young husband had run to acquire the nightdress. She warmed to him. He was fun in a way that Jim couldn’t be. Not that she felt disloyal to Jim, but this guy was devoted to his Pearlie, and that made him easy to relax with. She talked to him some more, telling him about the teaching and some of the sweet things the kids had said at the end of the term.
“They value you,” he said. “They should.”
She reddened and said, “It’s about time my husband came back.” Switching the conversation away from herself, she told the story of the mysterious invitation from Miss Shivers.
“You’re doing the right thing,” he said. “Believe me, you are.”
Suddenly uneasy for no reason she could name, Fran said, “I’d better look for my husband. He said I’d find him in the bar.”
“Take care, then.”
As she progressed along the corridor, rocked by the speeding train, she debated with herself whether to tell Jim about the young man. It would be difficult without risking upsetting him. Still, there was no cause really.
The next carriage was of the standard Intercity type. Teetering toward her along the center aisle was Jim, bearing two beakers of tea, fortunately capped with lids. He’d queued for ten minutes, he said. And he’d found two spare seats.
They claimed the places and sipped the tea. Fran decided to tell Jim what had happened. “While you were getting these,” she began—and then stopped, for the carriage was plunged into darkness.
Often on a long train journey, there are unexplained breaks in the power supply. Normally, Fran wouldn’t have been troubled. This time, she had a horrible sense of disaster, a vision of the carriage rearing up, thrusting her sideways. The sides seemed to buckle, shattered glass rained on her, and people were shrieking. Choking fumes. Searing pain in her legs. Dimly, she discerned a pair of legs to her right, dressed in dark trousers. Boots with crepe soles. And blood. A pool of blood.
“You’ve spilt tea all over your skirt!” Jim said.
The lights came on again, and the carriage was just as it had been. People were reading the evening paper as if nothing at all had occurred. But Fran had crushed the beaker in her hand—no wonder her legs had smarted.
The thickness of the corduroy skirt had prevented her from being badly scalded. She mopped it with a tissue. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me— I had a nightmare, except that I wasn’t asleep. Where are we?”
“We went through Reading twenty minutes ago. I’d say we’re almost there. Are you going to be okay?”
Over the public-address system came the announcement that the next station stop would be Didmarsh Halt.
So far as they could tell in the thick mist, they were the only people to leave the train at Didmarsh.
Miss Shivers was in the booking hall, a gaunt-faced, tense woman of about fifty, with cropped silver hair and red-framed glasses. Her hand was cold, but she shook Fran’s firmly and lingered before letting it go.
She drove them in an old Maxi Estate to a cottage set back from the road not more than five minutes from the station. Christmas-tree lights were visible through the leaded window. The smell of roast turkey wafted from the door when she opened it. Jim handed across the bottle of wine he had thoughtfully brought.
“We’re wondering how you heard of us.”
“Yes, I’m sure you are,” the woman answered, addressing herself more to Fran than Jim. “My name is Edith. I was your mother’s best friend for ten years, but we fell out over a misunderstanding. You see. Fran. I loved your father.”
Fran stiffened and turned to Jim. “I don’t think we should stay.”
“Please.” said the woman, and she sounded close to desperation, “we did nothing wrong. I have something on my conscience, but it isn’t adultery, whatever you were led to believe.”
They consented to stay and eat the meal. Conversation was strained, but the food was superb. And when at last they sat in front of the fire sipping coffee, Edith Shivers explained why she had invited them. “As I said, I loved your father Harry. A crush, we called it in those days when it wasn’t mutual. He was kind to me, took me out, kissed me sometimes, but that was all. He really loved your mother. Adored her.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Fran grimly.
“No, your mother was mistaken. Tragically mistaken. I know what she believed, and nothing I could say or do would shake her. I tried writing, phoning, calling personally. She shut me out of her life completely.”
“That much I can accept,” said Fran. “She never mentioned you to me.”
“Did she never talk about the train crash—the night your father was killed, just down the line from here?”
“Just once. After that it was a closed book. He betrayed her dreadfully. She was pregnant, expecting me. It was traumatic. She hardly ever mentioned my father after that. She didn’t even keep a photograph.”
Miss Shivers put out her hand and pressed it over Fran’s. “My dear, for both their sakes I want you to know the truth. Thirty-seven people died in that crash, twenty-five years ago this very evening. Your mother was shocked to learn that he was on the train, because he’d said nothing whatsoever to her about it. He’d told her he was working late. She read about the crash without supposing for a moment that Harry was one of the dead. When she was given the news, just a day or two before you were born, the grief was worse because he’d lied to her. Then she learned that I’d been a passenger on the same train, as indeed I had, and escaped unhurt. Fran, that was chance—pure chance. I happened to work in the City. My name was published in the press, and your mother saw it and came to a totally wrong conclusion.”
“That my father and you—”
“Yes. And that wasn’t all. Some days after the accident, Harry’s personal effects were returned to her. and in the pocket of his jacket they found a receipt from a Bond Street shop for a nightdress.”
“Elaine Ducharme,” said Fran in a flat voice.
“You know?”
“Yes.”
“The shop was very famous. They went out of business in 1969. You see—”
“He’d bought it for her,” said Fran, “as a surprise.”
Edith Shivers withdrew her hand from Fran’s and put it to her mouth. “Then you know about me?”
“No.”
Their hostess drew herself up in her chair. “I must tell you. Quite by chance on that night twenty-five years ago. I saw him getting on the train. I still loved him and he was alone, so I walked along the corridor and joined him. He was carrying a bag containing the nightdress
. In the course of the journey he showed it to me, not realizing that it wounded me to see how much he loved her still. He told me how he’d gone into the shop—”
“Yes,” said Fran expressionlessly. “And after Reading, the train crashed.”
“He was killed instantly. The side of the carriage crushed him. But I was flung clear—bruised, cut in the forehead, but really unhurt. I could see that Harry was dead. Amazingly, the box with the nightdress wasn’t damaged.” Miss Shivers stared into the fire. “I coveted it. I told myself if I left it, someone would pick it up and steal it. Instead, I did. I stole it. And it’s been on my conscience ever since.”
Fran had listened in a trancelike way. thinking all the time about her meeting in the train.
Miss Shivers was saying, “If you hate me for what I did, I understand. You see. your mother assumed that Harry bought the nightdress for me. Whatever I said to the contrary, she wouldn’t have believed me.”
“Probably not,” said Fran. “What happened to it?”
Miss Shivers got up and crossed the room to a sideboard, opened a drawer, and withdrew a box—the box Fran had handled only an hour or two previously. “I never wore it. It was never meant for me. I want you to have it, Fran. He would have wished that.”
Fran’s hands trembled as she opened the box and laid aside the tissue. She stroked the silk. She thought of what had happened, how she hadn’t for a moment suspected that she had seen a ghost. She refused to think of him as that. She rejoiced in the miracle that she had met her own father, who had died before she was born—met him in the prime of his young life, when he was her own age.
Still holding the box. she got up and kissed Edith Shivers on the forehead. “My parents are at peace now. I’m sure of it. This is a wonderful Christmas present,” she said.
THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLUE CARBUNCLE - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season. He was lounging upon the sofa in a purple dressing-gown, a pipe-rack within his reach upon the right, and a pile of crumpled morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand. Beside the couch was a wooden chair, and on the angle of the back hung a very seedy and disreputable hard-felt hat, much the worse for wear, and cracked in several places. A lens and a forceps lying upon the seat of the chair suggested that the hat had been suspended in this manner for the purpose of examination.
“You are engaged,” said I; “perhaps I interrupt you.”
“Not at all. I am glad to have a friend with whom I can discuss my results. The matter is a perfectly trivial one”—he jerked his thumb in the direction of the old hat—”but there are points in connection with it which are not entirely devoid of interest and even of instruction.”
I seated myself in his armchair and warmed my hands before his crackling fire, for a sharp frost had set in, and the windows were thick with the ice crystals. “I suppose,” I remarked, “that, homely as it looks, this thing has some deadly story linked on to it—that it is the clue which will guide you in the solution of some mystery and the punishment of some crime.”
“No. no. No crime,” said Sherlock Holmes, laughing. “Only one of those whimsical little incidents which will happen when you have four million human beings all jostling each other within the space of a few square miles. Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to take place, and many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and bizarre without being criminal. We have already had experience of such.”
“So much so,” I remarked, “that of the last six cases which I have added to my notes, three have been entirely free of any legal crime.”
“Precisely. You allude to my attempt to recover the Irene Adler papers,
to the singular case of Miss Mary Sutherland, and to the adventure of the man with the twisted lip. Well, I have no doubt that this small matter will fall into the same innocent category. You know Peterson, the commissionaire?”
“Yes.”
“It is to him that this trophy belongs.”
“It is his hat.”
“No, no; he found it. Its owner is unknown. I beg that you will look upon it not as a battered billycock but as an intellectual problem. And, first, as to how it came here. It arrived upon Christmas morning, in company with a good fat goose, which is, I have no doubt, roasting at this moment in front of Peterson’s fire. The facts are these: about four o’clock on Christmas morning, Peterson, who, as you know, is a very honest fellow, was returning from some small jollification and was making his way homeward down Tottenham Court Road. In front of him he saw, in the gaslight, a tallish man, walking with a slight stagger, and carrying a white goose slung over his shoulder. As he reached the corner of Goodge Street, a row broke out between this stranger and a little knot of roughs. One of the latter knocked off the man’s hat, on which he raised his stick to defend himself, and swinging it over his head, smashed the shop window behind him. Peterson had rushed forward to protect the stranger from his assailants; but the man, shocked at having broken the window, and seeing an official-looking person in uniform rushing towards him, dropped his goose, took to his heels, and vanished amid the labyrinth of small streets which lie at the back of Tottenham Court Road. The roughs had also fled at the appearance of Peterson, so that he was left in possession of the field of battle, and also of the spoils of victory in the shape of this battered hat and a most unimpeachable Christmas goose.”
“Which surely he restored to their owner?”
“My dear fellow, there lies the problem. It is true that ‘For Mrs. Henry Baker’ was printed upon a small card which was tied to the bird’s left leg, and it is also true that the initials ‘H. B.‘ are legible upon the lining of this hat; but as there are some thousands of Bakers, and some hundreds of Henry Bakers in this city of ours, it is not easy to restore lost property to any of them.”
“What, then, did Peterson do?”
“He brought round both hat and goose to me on Christmas morning, knowing that even the smallest problems are of interest to me. The goose we retained until this morning, when there were signs that, in spite of the slight frost, it would be well that it should be eaten without unnecessary delay. Its finder has carried it off, therefore, to fulfil the ultimate destiny of a goose, while I continue to retain the hat of the unknown gentleman who lost his Christmas dinner.”
“Did he not advertise?”
“No.”
“Then, what clue could you have as to his identity?”
“Only as much as we can deduce.”
“From his hat?”
“Precisely.”
“But you are joking. What can you gather from this old battered felt?”
“Here is my lens. You know my methods. What can you gather yourself as to the individuality of the man who has worn this article?”
I took the tattered object in my hands and turned it over rather ruefully. It was a very ordinary black hat of the usual round shape, hard and much the worse for wear. The lining had been of red silk, but was a good deal discoloured. There was no maker’s name; but. as Holmes had remarked, the initials “H. B.” were scrawled upon one side. It was pierced in the brim for a hat-securer, but the elastic was missing. For the rest, it was cracked, exceedingly dusty, and spotted in several places, although there seemed to have been some attempt to hide the discoloured patches by smearing them with ink.
“I can see nothing,” said I, handing it back to my friend.
“On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see. You are too timid in drawing your inferences.”
“Then, pray tell me what it is that you can infer from this hat?”
He picked it up and gazed at it in the peculiar introspective fashion which was characteristic of him. “It is perhaps less suggestive than it might have been,” he remarked, “and yet there are a
few inferences which are very distinct, and a few others which represent at least a strong balance of probability. That the man was highly intellectual is of course obvious upon the face of it, and also that he was fairly well-to-do within the last three years, although he has now fallen upon evil days. He had foresight, but has less now than formerly, pointing to a moral retrogression, which, when taken with the decline of his fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably drink, at work upon him. This may account also for the obvious fact that his wife has ceased to love him.”
“My dear Holmes!”
“He has, however, retained some degree of self-respect,” he continued, disregarding my remonstrance. “He is a man who leads a sedentary life, goes out little, is out of training entirely, is middle-aged, has grizzled hair which he has had cut within the last few days, and which he anoints with lime-cream. These are the more patent facts which are to be deduced from his hat. Also, by the way, that it is extremely improbable that he has gas laid on in his house.”
“You are certainly joking. Holmes.”
“Not in the least. Is it possible that even now, when I give you these results, you are unable to see how they are attained?”
“I have no doubt that I am very stupid, but I must confess that I am unable to follow you. For example, how did you deduce that this man was intellectual?”
For answer Holmes clapped the hat upon his head. It came right over the forehead and settled upon the bridge of his nose. “It is a question of cubic capacity,” said he; “a man with so large a brain must have something in it.”
“The decline of his fortunes, then?”
“This hat is three years old. These flat brims curled at the edge came in then. It is a hat of the very best quality. Look at the band of ribbed silk and the excellent lining. If this man could afford to buy so expensive a hat three years ago, and has had no hat since, then he has assuredly gone down in the world.”
“Well, that is clear enough, certainly. But how about the foresight and the moral retrogression?”
