The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part IX

by Marcum, David;

  Holmes said, “Watson, in addition to what you will have just observed, you might avoid making the leap to identifying his professional position as that of a law clerk, based upon the legal-looking paper peeking from his pocket. In fact, I can see that he actually works in the book publishing trade - although in the dreary business side - and that those documents you see instead relate to the matter at hand. Additionally, his nervousness is not typical, for his nails are newly chewed to the quick, and not those of someone who has an ongoing need to pursue that habit. Finally, he has had a rough night. The stains on not only your shoes, sir, but your suit from shoulders to feet indicate that you have spent some time, probably unplanned, in the woods.”

  The young man appeared surprised for just a moment, and then smiled. “The inspector said to expect as much,” he said. He glanced at his fingertips. “You are correct about being outside and in the trees. And I am not normally nervous. But the events of last night were certainly enough to knock me off my regular perch.”

  “Pray, enlighten us then, Mr....?”

  “Hayden. Jerrold Hayden.”

  Holmes nodded, and the man began his tale. “I’ve only just returned on the train from Exeter. I should have been back sooner, but there was a track fire along the way. I walked straight from Paddington to speak with you, Mr. Holmes, and I-”

  Holmes held up a hand. “You were returning specifically from Exeter, Mr. Hayden, or one of the surrounding areas?”

  “Ah. I’m sorry. From Exeter, and before that just west of Chudleigh, in Devonshire. Near the River Teign.”

  “Yes, I know the place,” replied Holmes. “I was able to be of some service to the family at Hams Barton, back in ’78. As I recall, that area you mention is just a mile or three northeast of where I visited.”

  “As you say, Mr. Holmes. Before I went down, I did a bit of research on the countryside, and I recall reading of that place.”

  “And why were you in that location?”

  “I had been notified that I am the heir to a house and some land there.”

  “Indeed. Was this expected? I perceive that it may have been a surprise.”

  “Oh, I was very much surprised. I received a confidential letter on Tuesday, informing me that I had been located by a firm of West Country solicitors, seeking individuals that had been named in the will of one Clark Helverton, in order to dispose of his estate.”

  “Sent to your place of employment.”

  “That’s right. How did you know?”

  “From the address on the legal papers protruding from your pocket, care of the publishing firm where you are employed. You say that you had no previous knowledge of this man, Helverton?”

  “You are correct. I’d never heard of him before. According to the letter, he had married my great-aunt, late in her life, and as he had no close relatives of his own, he had willed the house and land to his wife’s heirs. It turns out that she also had no other remaining family but myself. I should mention that I have no personal memory of this great-aunt, as she had drifted beyond the sphere of my own family long before I was born.”

  “And you have no brothers, sisters, or cousins who might have also benefited from this unexpected windfall?”

  “I do not. My father, who was apparently my great-aunt’s only other relation, died when I was but a small child, and my late mother never remarried. I am an only child, and apparently my great-aunt - as far as I ever knew - had never married before Mr. Helverton. Thus, she had no children, and therefore my father had no cousins on that side of the family. Therefore, I am the end of that particular branch. And this was confirmed by the solicitor’s representative.”

  Holmes leaned back. “Perhaps you need to tell me more about the circumstances.”

  “But don’t you need to know what happened at the house last night? I can-”

  Holmes smiled and shook his head. “All in good time, Mr. Hayden. Lay the proper groundwork. Surely your own experiences in the book publishing profession have taught you the importance of assembling of each element in the proper order.”

  Hayden nodded, took a deep breath. I again offered a tot of whisky, but he thanked me and declined.

  “As I said, I received a letter early this week from the firm of Stoddard and Stoddard, of Exeter, informing me that I was the heir to the property.”

  “May I see the letter?”

  “Certainly.” Hayden retrieved the previously mentioned letter from his pocket and handed it to Holmes. “After the events of last night, I was reading it on the train, and I had also showed it to the police inspector. As you can see, it rather specifically describes the nature of the inheritance, the research showing I am the only remaining heir, how I was located, and also the suggested arrangements for journeying to the West Country this weekend.”

  Holmes turned the sheet this way and that before reading it. “Curious,” said he after a moment. “The paper and letterhead appear to be rather aged, based upon the spotting. I see that the writer, one Ethan Stoddard, had already determined that you are unmarried, and he suggested that you keep the matter secret, even from your employers.”

  “That is true. As he wrote, the story of the discovery of a long-lost heir might be of interest to the press, and would bring undue attention upon the matter.”

  “And did you keep it secret?”

  “I did. I obtained leave from my employers on Friday, yesterday that is, without telling them why, and traveled down to Exeter by the late morning train, whereupon I made my way to the law offices, as suggested in the letter.”

  “And what of the Stoddards? I confess that, while my knowledge is not extensive upon the subject, I did have reason a few years ago to learn a bit about the legal firms of that part of the world, and I don’t recall them.”

  “I gathered from my visit to their offices that they are a rather small concern, dealing with just a few old and established clients. I must say that I found them to be quite humble indeed. There was no clerk, and the offices are on a side street beside a haberdasher’s shop. They had a feeling of neglect - an excess of dust about the place and so on, if you follow me.”

  “I do, indeed, Mr. Hayden. Did you have the sense that the firm had been in that location for a while, or had moved there quite recently?”

  “Oh, quite a while, Mr. Holmes. I see what you are getting at, but it is a real firm, and not a quickly rented room with the intent to fool me. The sign on the wall by the front door was ancient looking and well established, and there were various certificates and photographs on the walls that testified to the long-standing presence of Stoddard and Stoddard in that area. In fact, one of the framed documents near the entryway had become crooked upon the wall, perhaps from someone brushing against it or from the vibrations of the nearby closing door, and a less-faded patch matching that object was revealed, running alongside the frame. Clearly, it had hung there for a long time. The document itself was quite faded as well.”

  Holmes clapped his hands. “An observant man after our own hearts, Watson!” he cried. “Clearly then, that evidence, coupled with the age of the paper, establishes their legitimacy. Do go on, Mr. Hayden. What about this Ethan Stoddard, who summoned you to Exeter?”

  “He is a young fellow, about our age I would think. He apologized for the condition of the office, explaining that the original Stoddard and Stoddard had been his two uncles. One died years ago, and the other only recently became incapacitated due to apoplexy. His prognosis is not good, and Ethan, himself a lawyer, moved down from London just a few weeks earlier to take over the practice.

  “We made conversation for a bit, about living in Exeter versus London and so forth, before turning to specifics, and that was when he told me that the firm had been established long ago to manage the affairs of just a few well-placed clients with interests in and around Exeter - including this Clark Helverton. A
week or so ago, just after Mr. Ethan Stoddard came down to assume his new duties, he received a letter informing him of Mr. Helverton’s death in New York.

  “Although the old man had left England years before, he’d maintained ownership of the house near Chudleigh, out along the river, and it was this that he’d willed to any relatives of my great-aunt. In fact, in this particular case, managing the care of the old house - maintenance, taxes, and so on - was really the only thing that Stoddard and Stoddard ever did for Mr. Helverton, as the rest of his affairs were handled in America. Ethan Stoddard informed me that for a long time, the house had been rented, but sadly it has stood empty for a number of years, partly due to the decline of the elder Stoddard who ran the firm - he had been lax in finding a new tenant. As I mentioned, Ethan Stoddard’s researches had revealed that I was the only heir to this particular bequest, and thus he had summoned me down to get a look at my inheritance.

  “He gave me a look at both the letter from America, and the old documents from the Stoddard files - letters with instructions, previous rental records, and so on. It was confusing but seemed to be legitimate.”

  “Did you see the envelope for the recent letter from the United States?”

  “I did. It had an American stamp and a recent post mark.”

  “Excellent. Pray continue.”

  “After making sure that I had eaten on the train, Mr. Stoddard suggested that we depart. He had a small dog-cart rented and waiting around the corner, and we set out. It was an amiable enough trip as we traveled west, the miles rolling away and the weather much like today. We wandered down ever smaller and narrower roads until we finally crossed the river and reached a ragged drive, turning and winding out of sight between two mossy pillars.

  “As we proceeded down the overgrown lane, covered with fallen leaves and identifiable as a roadway only by its relative straightness and slight elevation from the surrounding woods, I had my first view of the house. It’s a rambling structure, just two stories tall with an attic, but quite wide, with a sheltered landing that surrounded it on several sides. It looked incongruous there, like something I’ve seen in photographs of homes in the American South. The dark grounds, choked with black-trunked trees and wild abandoned shrubbery, slope down toward the river, and there is the suggestion that the scene should have swags of the Spanish Moss that grows in America, hanging from the trees.

  “The house itself is in great disrepair. It is of a light-colored stone, but stained with mildew. Mounds of leaves and other detritus from the surrounding trees have piled along the foundation, and I could see a number of dead limbs protruding from over the edge of the roof high above us, remaining where they had fallen, possibly years earlier. We approached the front side of the house, as indicated by the imposing door centered there and the nearly obscured walkway approaching it from the drive. It has a heavy black door, quite wide. All of the window shutters were closed, but some were hanging loose from their hinges, and one was knocking against the wall in the slight breeze from the river. There are a number of dormer windows lined across the attic, and they are just high enough to catch some of the rare sunlight that penetrates the thick canopy of the trees, which themselves seemed fancifully to me as if they were somehow angry at having been disturbed from their long and ponderous isolation.”

  I glanced at Holmes, and I saw his mouth purse slightly. If I had been relating these events, he would have long before snapped something to the effect of sticking to the facts, or “Cut the poetry, Watson.” However, he was striving to remain polite, and I for one appreciated the sense of the place that Hayden was constructing.

  Our visitor, however, was not unaware of Holmes’s reaction, and he strove to come back to the point. “It was then, looking at the overwhelming neglect of the house and grounds, that I began to have further questions, and just a few qualms, about whether this inheritance would actually be of any benefit to me. I hadn’t really thought much about what to do before that point. Mr. Stoddard had explained that there was a small cash income associated with the house for its upkeep, but otherwise there would be no additional inheritance forthcoming.

  “I was aware from our conversation that there was a bit of land along with the building, and when I saw the house and its condition, I began to calculate whether any buyer might be found to take this heap off my hands, in the condition in which it stood. It was fairly certain that the funds that Mr. Stoddard had described for upkeep were probably just enough to pay the taxes, and possibly hire someone to check the place a few times per year to ascertain that it hadn’t burned. There was no way that I could fund a full restoration on my own, and I have grave doubts that I could find employment in that area, allowing me to abandon my current profession, move down from London, and set myself up as some sort of country squire.

  “After we stopped, we walked a bit here and there, while I obtained different views of the house. It was in the same state of neglect upon all sides, and I suppose that my despair was becoming obvious, as Mr. Stoddard tried to cheer me up, saying that he was certain things would work out. He neglected, however, to specify exactly how that might be accomplished.

  “Finally we arrived at the front door, which he opened with an age-stained key. We stepped inside, and if our eyes hadn’t already been accustomed to the tree-darkened approach to the house, we wouldn’t have been able to see the interior at all. As it was, I could dimly make out the hallway and stairs in front of us, and various doorways on either side. However, the smell of neglect was enough to bring tears to our eyes, and any view that had been initially obtained was quickly lost.

  “We lit a couple of lamps, standing conveniently beside the door and apparently left by the irregular caretaker, and began to explore. I was happy to see that the place still benefited from the quite solid construction of the previous century. The floors were sound, and amazingly, there was no sign of leakage on the upstairs ceilings or down the walls. I quickly became confused at the upstairs layout, and was glad to find my way back down to the entry hall.

  “I felt that I had seen all that there was to see, when I was shocked to find Mr. Stoddard standing in the entry way, holding a basket and telling me that he must leave, as night was approaching, and that he had brought enough food to see me through until morning. I recalled then that I had seen that same basket in the dog-cart, but I had paid it no mind.

  “‘Whatever can you mean?’ I cried, for it was plain that he meant that I should remain there while he planned to depart.

  “He apologized, saying that he thought he had mentioned that - although I knew that he had not. ‘A requirement of the will,’ he explained. ‘Mr. Helverton stated that you must take possession of the house immediately, or it will be auctioned, with the proceeds turned over to a charity. I have consulted with my uncle,’ he added, ‘and we felt that some leniency in the interpretation of the document allows for you to claim the house by simply spending one night here to serve as your tenancy. Afterwards, you can declare your intent to return, an event which can be delayed indefinitely.’

  “He said it all so matter-of-factly that I didn’t see a way to disagree. I pointed out that, in spite of his basket of food and drink, there was nowhere for me to sleep. He seemed to think that easily solved, and led me to a side room, where the furniture was covered, and pulled a dusty sheet from a deep chair. Then, with the comment that it was getting dark and that he would be back for me in the morning, he bustled outside, ignoring my ill-formed arguments against remaining there. He pressed the old key into my hand-” and with that, Hayden pulled it from his waistcoat and handed it to Holmes, who looked at it and then placed it on the table beside him - “telling me not to lose it, as it was the only one. Then, with a warning to stay indoors, he stepped outside, pulling the door shut behind him.

  “I immediately followed Stoddard to the door, opening it to see him already jumping blithely back into the dog-cart. With a wave, he turned the
horse smartly and was gone.

  “As you can imagine, I was stunned at how quickly this had occurred. I had gone from the despair of seeing the condition of the house and grounds to being abandoned there in the space of a few short minutes. After a time, while I stood in the doorway and considered simply trying to walk back to town, pondering that I would simply have to follow each smaller road to a larger, I realized that I hadn’t paid attention to the turnings. I could certainly get out to the mossy pillars that marked the edge of the estate, but after that, I might end up walking farther from Chudleigh, and as Mr. Stoddard had pointed out, night was coming. Of course, I could always throw myself on the mercy of a neighboring farmer, provided I came across a house in my wanderings, but I couldn’t even be sure of that.

  “In the end, I decided I must stay. I picked up the basket and set it onto a nearby table. Opening it, I saw that it was filled with a generous supply of food - various tins and jars, a cold woodcock, a few bottles of water, and another of wine. I never eat a heavy meal in the evening, and, feeling neither hungry nor thirsty, I decided to explore the house a bit more. Taking up the lantern, I began a more systematic evaluation of the place. Some of the furniture was actually quite nice, when one ignored the dust. Upstairs, I was able to work out the initially confusing arrangement of the rooms, and I even went up to the attic, which was filled with additional old furniture, as well as numerous boxes and trunks. I heard the rustle of mice, which was not surprising, but everything seemed to be salvageable, and I was curious about what might be found amongst all the abandoned items, and frankly, how much I could get for it.

  “I went back downstairs and made a light snack of some of the basket’s contents. There was much more than I could eat, and I confess that I didn’t open the wine, as I am a teetotaler. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was actually a bit later than I had thought. I considered pulling one of the dusty books off a shelf in the room in which I’d eaten, but first I decided that I wanted to get a breath of fresh air.