Thirty-Nine Steps from Baker Street

by J. R. Trtek

  “Go!” shouted one of the officers at the table in a harsh voice, causing the VAD to hesitate.

  “It is just their cribbage match, Finch,” I assured her. “He is not talking to you.”

  She nodded and then murmured, “I can handle Lieutenant Blaikie from now on if you like, sir.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw another figure at the entrance to the ward: Vespera Cochrane, her eyes full of concern.

  “Very well,” I said to Nurse Finch, giving Blaikie over to her care.

  I approached Miss Cochrane.

  “It was my fault,” she whispered to me as we watched the VADs calm both officers and set them to rest. “I was attempting to carry too much and dropped—”

  “There is no need to apologise, Miss Cochrane,” I said, recalling my own recent carelessness with the chair leg. “We are all examples of human frailty.”

  “I, in particular, am evidence of that.”

  “Oh? Quite to the contrary, you appear to have become an uplifting source of strength at Isham, by all accounts. And I cannot recall observing any instance of frailty in you whatsoever.”

  “It is but an appearance,” she confessed. “You, on the other hand, have found the strength to endure this and more for the past three years. I doubt that such reserves lie within me.”

  “Truly?” I said as we left the ward and strolled down the principal hallway. “At Fosse Manor, you impressed me as a woman who could face any challenge,” I ventured.

  “Your deductive powers are not as reliable as those of your friend,” she replied. “In truth, Colonel, before these past few days, I would have agreed with your perception of me. Seeing the full torment of souls like those, however, has set me straight concerning my limitations.”

  “We all have our limitations,” I said.

  “And what are yours?” she asked.

  It was on the following Wednesday that I was to have my interview with Frederick Shaw, the publisher. The evening before, I had given Holmes a letter addressed to me that had arrived from the fictitious Mr. Sigerson. I noticed, however, that the handwriting differed from the earlier messages presumably sent by the same person.

  “Yes,” said my friend, putting on spectacles to read the outside of the letter. “This is Frank Farrar’s hand.” He eagerly tore open the envelope. “Let us see if he has any more information on Mr. Shaw, prior to your anticipated audience with the publisher tomorrow.”

  I sat down in my armchair and stared out the window of the sitting room at the low sunlight striking a thicket of trees in the distance.

  “Aha,” said Holmes quietly. “I curse myself.”

  “A disappointment?” I asked, reaching for my pipe and Arcadia mix.

  “No, a piece that fits,” said he. “Any disappointment I show is disappointment with myself—and my slowness of wit.”

  “I assume you will explain yourself someday, if not this evening.”

  “What?” said Holmes, looking up from the letter. “Oh, I speak of a small but telling detail in Mr. Shaw’s habits. I believe I have related them, some of which you knew already.”

  “Yes,” I said, filling my pipe. “The daily trips to his London office, the valise he keeps close to himself, the regular journeys to Praed Street…”

  “A good, brisk enumeration.”

  “His misanthropy,” I said.

  “Ah, Watson, you stumble there,” chided Holmes. “Mr. Shaw does not shun the human race.”

  “He avoids society, does he not? Has his refusal to join us for dinner at Fosse Manor slipped from your memory?”

  Holmes tossed Frank Farrar’s letter upon a table. “His avoidance is selective, Watson, and it has been a function of time. You admit that the first time you observed the man, he was in the company of friends with whom he had been golfing, do you not?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “And I believe you characterised him as charming and talkative.”

  “He was all that, yes,” I admitted. “Of course, I never spoke to him directly. Indeed, I was never introduced to him, for Launcelot Wake almost ran us down with his bicycle, and Shaw marched off in anger with his friends immediately after. I doubt the man even remembers I was there.”

  “And that is to the good,” said my friend cryptically.

  “What does that mean?”

  “He is hardly the withdrawn person you believe him to be,” Holmes declared, ignoring my question. “He avoids contact only with Biggleswick society, and that reluctance took hold rather suddenly, just after the war had begun. That is what Letchford told us, if you recall.”

  “I do.”

  “It was his money that built Moot Hall, and he attended meetings there regularly at first.”

  “Yes, that is all true,” I agreed.

  “If a man’s refusal of society depends upon location and time, it suggests his supposed misanthropy is not an aspect of character but rather the result of happenstance and surroundings. The question in Mr. Shaw’s case is this: what are the events and conditions that have caused him to cut his ties with Biggleswick since the war began?”

  “And do you now have an answer?”

  “Oh, I have always had several. The task has been to identify the correct one.”

  “And something in Frank Farrar’s message allows you to at last make that distinction?”

  “Well, my suspicion is now supported by a fresh detail—fresh only because I was remiss in not asking about it earlier.”

  I reached for a vesta. “And will you tell me about that detail and its relation to the problem, or shall you tease me without mercy, as is your usual custom?’

  Holmes smiled and reached for a copy of the latest edition of The Critic.

  “Mr. Shaw wears a poppy,” he said, “but he does so only in London.”

  I lit my pipe and waited for my friend to elaborate. As Holmes turned page after page of the newspaper, however, I gathered that he would not offer more illumination that night. I exhaled audibly and glanced outside, where the sunlight upon the trees had now faded.

  “Apparently, some abnormal behaviours are rooted in permanent defects of character,” I sniffed. “Specific events and external conditions notwithstanding.”

  “So I am given to understand,” replied Holmes, lifting The Critic to disappear behind its pages.

  § § §

  The following morning, I called at the house of Frederick Shaw in the company of Sherlock Holmes. At the request of my friend, I wore my military uniform, and also at his insistence, we arrived at Shaw’s residence more than a half hour in advance of our scheduled appointment time. When a servant greeted us at the door, Holmes spoke before I could introduce myself.

  “If Mr. Shaw is at home, would you please inform him that a representative of the army is here to see him?” my friend requested.

  The servant waited to receive a card from either of us, but when none was forthcoming, he closed the door, leaving us standing outside. The detective turned to me and smiled.

  “I indulge you far too much, Holmes,” I said. “Will Shaw not be put off by this premature arrival, not to mention the failure to properly identify ourselves?”

  “It is quite possible,” he said. “However, I seek to coax a particular response from him.”

  “But will this not endanger the case for the book?”

  “Do you mean to say that you have now become serious about The Crimson Rat?”

  As I grasped for a reply, the door opened once more.

  “Please follow me,” requested the servant.

  We entered Shaw’s home and were led alongside a flight of stairs and down a hallway that ended in a large ground floor study. Amid books, framed pictures, paintings and piles of paper, Frederick Shaw stood beside his desk, hands clasped together before him.

  His eyes fell immediately upon me.

  “I am prepared to receive the news, sir,” he declared. “I had believed all such ill tidings were relayed by telegram instead, but if this is to be the man
ner in which my own personal tragedy is revealed, I am prepared.”

  I stood at the door to the study and glanced at Holmes, uncertain how to respond.

  Shaw let both arms drop to his side and then nervously lifted one to take hold of his dark beard. With his other hand, he took his spectacles from his face and briefly closed his eyes before once more staring firmly into mine.

  “Do not waste the time,” he begged. “Please, I am ready.”

  “Mr. Shaw,” said Sherlock Holmes in a casual tone. “We have most terrible news.”

  “Oh God!” moaned Shaw. “It is what I feared.” He turned away from us and leaned upon his desk. “I should have insisted that Freddy find instead some—”

  “Mr. Shaw,” Holmes said, “I fear you may misunderstand. This man is Colonel John H. Watson, who wrote you the other week regarding a novel based upon one of my cases. I am Sherlock Holmes.”

  Shaw turned and stood, mouth open, for several seconds, before his face betrayed a sense of relief, which was almost at once replaced by a stern frown.

  “How dare you mislead me!” he barked.

  “I admit that we have been most impolite by arriving well in advance of our scheduled interview,” Holmes went on. “I thought I had identified ourselves to your servant. Perhaps I did neglect to give him our cards, however.”

  “You should show some remorse for having—”

  “I fear it is all my fault, you see.” Holmes said. “During breakfast, I realised that I must take a train into London later this morning, and I did not expect to be able to board on time should I attend your meeting with Colonel Watson at its scheduled hour.”

  “Why do you—”

  “And I did wish to be present when the two of you discussed prospects for his book, since I am, of course, a principal in it.”

  “What insufferable cheek,” said Shaw, now gaining confidence from his growing anger. “If you believe that I will now even consider publishing that—”

  “Of course,” Holmes added, “I apologise most profusely for causing you anxiety. I quite understand how you might think that we were bringing you sad news concerning your son.”

  Frederick Shaw’s demeanour suddenly changed. His anger dissipated at once, and concern again washed over his face, though of a different nature than before.

  “Who said anything about a son?” he asked.

  “Why, I just did,” replied Holmes with an innocent air.

  “I have two daughters,” Shaw asserted cautiously. “Only the two young daughters in this house.”

  “You and your wife have two daughters,” the detective answered. “You, in company with another, have a son who currently serves our nation in the trenches, do you not?”

  Shaw opened his mouth, perhaps intending to refute Holmes’s claim, but as the detective’s grey eyes bore down on him, the publisher relented.

  “How do you come to think—?”

  “Know.”

  Shaw dipped his head and gathered his thoughts. “How do you come to know this, Mr. Holmes? Are you in the employ of one who seeks to blackmail me?”

  “I am the servant of no one individual,” declared Sherlock Holmes. “And I have always been the avowed enemy of blackmailers, never their ally. I can state only that I am pursuing an investigation of national importance that, nonetheless, is of no concern to your reputation. However, in the course of that endeavour, I chanced upon information which, on the surface, implicated you in this matter. Further study has exonerated you but also yielded the fact that you have, in addition to your two legitimate daughters, a son who resides elsewhere.”

  Shaw sighed deeply and then silently indicated that we should be seated. Holmes and I took to chairs as the publisher slowly walked behind his great wooden desk and also sat down.

  “It is true,” Shaw said. “I am the father of a young man whose mother is a woman other than my wife. His birth preceded my marriage, you see. Moreover,” Shaw said, “my wife has always been aware of the child. We choose not to speak of the matter, as one might expect.”

  “You would not have acknowledged the young man as your son, then, had I simply enquired about him?” Holmes asked.

  “Without proof on your part, I would have denied him, yes.”

  Holmes nodded grimly.

  “Well,” the detective said, in a tone that belied his words, “I again apologise for the errors that led to your admission, Mr. Shaw. Rest assured that both I and Colonel Watson are most discreet.”

  “I appreciate your assurances, gentlemen.”

  “We compliment you on your son’s service,” Holmes added with sincerity, “and we pray for his continued good fortune.”

  Shaw smiled timidly. “Again, my heartfelt appreciation, sir. Now then,” he said, “as to the proposed book—”

  “You have been prescient in rejecting it, as I believe you were about to do a moment ago,” said Sherlock Holmes. “You see, Mr. Shaw, that is the terrible news that we bring. Colonel Watson now understands that the events chronicled in his prospective novel include certain facts that must remain secret, in the interests of our nation’s safety, until the present war is ended. And of course, from a personal point of view, the Defence of the Realm Act makes publishing those facts punishable.”

  “Yes,” I added earnestly, seeking to reinforce my friend’s impromptu fiction. “I do apologise most sincerely, Mr. Shaw, for this change of fortune. It was never my intention to lead you on and then withdraw my proposal.”

  “I understand,” said the publisher awkwardly, obviously eager to see us leave his house. “Though I do somewhat mourn the loss of the opportunity, I confess I do feel relief for my son’s safety.”

  “Miss Lamington had alerted me to the fact—which you had independently noted—that Shaw travelled to London every day with a well-guarded valise,” Holmes recounted as we walked back to my cottage. “That was sufficient to prompt further investigation, and so, shortly before leaving for Biggleswick, I assigned Frank Farrar to follow Shaw once he arrived at Paddington Station each day. The publisher’s movements were intriguing: on Tuesdays and Thursdays, he invariably travelled on foot to a block of flats in Praed Street, near the station.”

  “A habit that no doubt heightened suspicion of him,” I noted.

  “Of course. Farrar eventually determined that Shaw visits the block in order to meet with a woman who lives in one of its flats. She was then investigated by Inspector Magillivray, but nothing out of the ordinary was discovered about her, other than the fact that she has a son twenty-two years of age who enlisted in the army in September 1914, and a husband who had abandoned her years earlier. Observation of the woman’s movements strongly suggested she was unlikely to be a German agent.”

  “And you surmised Shaw was the boy’s father.”

  “It was merely a possibility, but my intuition leaned that way. It was then that Farrar, in his recent letter, mentioned that Shaw regularly wore poppies purchased in Covent Garden.”

  “That is odd,” I said. “I have never seen his jacket so adorned when espying him in and around the Biggleswick train station.”

  “That is because he wears the flowers only in London.”

  “And what did the poppy suggest to you?”

  “Why, that at the least, Shaw supports the war effort, and that perhaps he has a relative serving in France—hence, my assumption that the son of the woman in Praed Street was fathered by Shaw.”

  “Ah, yes,” I said. “He is a native Canadian, is he not?”

  “He is, though I do not know if his nation of birth had any great influence upon his manner of showing support for his son. To display the poppy in Biggleswick might have caused argument and disruption, however, given the strong anti-war sentiment there. And no doubt, his anguish would have increased had he continued to attend the discussions in Moot Hall or had maintained constant contact with his neighbours, the vast majority of whom oppose the war. Hence his withdrawal from Biggleswick society.”169

  “I see. B
ut was your method with Mr. Shaw not rather callous?” I asked.

  Holmes shrugged as we approached my cottage.

  “I had no other rapid means at my disposal, and so I decided to employ the stratagem I did. The story I told him was, of course, false in that it reversed cause and effect: I did not discover that he had a son in the course of exonerating him; rather, I asserted he had fathered the boy, knowing that his confirmation would explain those facts which had falsely suggested he might be a spy.”

  “And fortunately, he believed that news of his son’s death was being delivered in person, rather than by telegram,” I said, “causing Shaw no small distress, if only for a moment.”

  Holmes sighed. “Perhaps he should consider publicly acknowledging his son,” he remarked with some indignation. “In any event, Watson, I claim the cause of King and Empire as excuse for my blunt approach. We must get to the core of these matters expeditiously, and few methods are too low for us to stoop in employing them. Though not impossible, I think it now unlikely that Shaw is our German agent.”

  “Leaving Ivery or Wake or Letchford or Aronson as remaining possibilities.”

  “Or more than one in combination,” Holmes corrected before adding, “I intend to return to London, Watson. To remain any longer in Biggleswick would prompt suspicion, I believe, and in any event, I believe I have made sufficient initial observation of our principal suspects.”

  “And what is to happen in the meanwhile?”

  “Perhaps we must simply wait and hope that our false newspaper article gives us the identity of our German spy,” answered the detective.

  Two days later, Sherlock Holmes departed Biggleswick.

  “We may have largely eliminated but one man from consideration thus far,” my friend declared as I stood with him before his carriage. “However, a seed of decision has been planted in Glasgow by Shinwell Johnson, and I have made clear my expectations of you in the coming weeks.”

  “Attend the discussions at Moot Hall.” I sighed. “I do not relish the prospect, but I will do my duty.”

  “It is possible that a discussion related to the false newspaper article planted with Gresson will arise there,” Holmes said. “Should it, be certain to listen with care to any comments made by anyone who repeats the contents of the article. I have related those contents to you in sufficient detail?”