The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part I

by David Marcum

  “Rupert, this is nothing but speculation and exaggeration,” protested Lord Sternfleet.

  But if the Graf even heard him, it was impossible to tell, for his focus remained on his wife, who quailed on seeing the pleading in his eyes. Even so, she shunned the chair I offered her. “I shall stand, if you please. I have been nesting in that bed upstairs for days, afraid to come out. I now stand before you all, and I admit that, yes, I once was the paramour of Francois Lefalque. Before you and I ever met, my dearest Graf, when I was but a reckless, imprudent girl, and he a wildly charming fellow. But the charm masked spite and jealousy, and when I met a decent man, an honourable man, I recognised that what I had thought of as love with Francois was as shallow an approximation of that sensation as his charm was an approximation of goodness. This was again the mask he wore when he vowed we could remain friends, even if no longer lovers. And, it tears at my heart to admit, it was the charm he used those shameful times when I forgot my own goodness - until he reminded me by his lack of warmth what it was I risked losing. He persisted, playfully, slyly, but I was strong, and finally he saw that his patience was never to be rewarded. I see this only now, after what I heard and saw when last I was alone with him. But before, I had not known that his passions burned so cold, and in this coldness was born that distancing between us as friends.”

  “Natascha had confided, long ago, of the excitement and danger of her affair,” offered Lady Verity. “Two overgrown schoolgirls giggling in the dark over forbidden confidences. When Herbert spoke of the growing distance between us, I was reminded of this thrilling affair. I realised that a dash of spice might be added to entice Francois from his chateau, and perhaps a rekindling of old flames may have been what was necessary to thaw our cooled friendship. So I used my letter of invitation to suggest to Francois how keenly our mutual friend anticipated his affirmative response.”

  “You used my wife as bait?” hissed Graf von Schellsberg coldly.

  “Rupert, I knew nothing of this insinuation,” insisted the Grafin. “I believed Francois to have forgotten our past. We were the friends we all once were. You drank and sang together, and then, when you tired, he helped you to your room, and I was delighted to see the young friends of happy memory still peering out from within those more careworn, mature faces. Yet it was not until I was in my own room and dressing to retire that I saw the message someone had pushed beneath my door. The opening lines puzzled and then chilled me, for they were words I had written, so long ago, in a private letter. I shall not tell you what these innocent words were, or how they read when removed from their setting, but beneath these were written, ‘I have kept the originals all this time, and they are even now close to my heart. We will discuss these long departed sentiments - and establish whether they truly are departed? If you do not call on me in my room, I shall know you await me in yours, and you will hear my knock before the clock strikes the next hour.’ The scheming devil had left me little choice but to face him and find out for myself what mischief he meant.

  “Almost as I closed the door to his room, the sly, smiling welcome was gone from his face and he was upon me, grabbing at my shoulders, at my wrists, tearing my dressing gown from me and dragging me to him, an all the while pleading, ‘Why did you ignore me so over dinner? Since when were your glances only for your husband? Is it a game to you, to hold my heart in your hand like one of the trinkets I won for you? Do you feel it pound for you?’ His strong grip pressing my hand to his chest. His face red and looming over mine, the alcohol fumes of his breath filling my own breathing! ‘This heart beats for you, the blood it pumps is for you, and if you have no use for my heart, what use have I of my blood?’ And then the blade was in his hand, weaving so close to my face I still feel the chill of its passing on my skin. I beseeched him to think of his own Claudine, but he used such words to describe her, how little she truly meant to him, and how it should have been us who had made our match! I told him that my husband was a hundred times the man he was. ‘Then, as his is the knife within my heart, let his blade be the one to still it, and let my blood forever stain what is his.’ And when I saw the razor’s handle and Rupert’s crest emblazoned there, I understood that the purpose of his supposed kindness in helping Rupert to his chamber had been to steal this deadly thing. He meant to ruin us both, for who would believe the husband innocent when his wife is found covered in his rival’s blood, and his razor is in that rival’s throat?”

  “I would have wielded it myself, had I known the kind of man he was,” swore the Graf, moving rigidly to his wife and placing an uncertain arm around her.

  The rush of anger instilled by this dreadful testimony giving way to a surge of protectiveness that made me wish only to be by my own beloved wife’s side, and I grimly admitted, “There are many who would feel you justified!”

  “No, you should not wish this,” cried his wife, pulling him tighter to her. “You saw him dead, but I saw the life leave his eyes as they grew as wide as his mouth and his throat grew wider yet. Then I was only aware of such heat soaking through me, and the warmth on my face. As his grip loosened and I saw the blood upon me, I thought it was I who had been killed! Then he fell, and I cannot now remember what was in my mind as, even while he lay in that spreading darkness on the floor, I propped his head on pillows lest he choke on his own blood, and tore sheets and blankets from the bed to wrap round him and bring warmth back to his cooling body. But to no avail! Those white sheets so quickly bloomed dark and red. Perhaps his strength and madness had poured into me, for I dragged and heaved him across the room in his scarlet shroud and onto that bed, as if hoping to make comfortable what no longer had any sensations. I sat for long minutes, turning over and over what might have been had I just surrendered to his demands. His game won, he would have bored of his quarry easily in his satisfaction. None but I would have been the wiser, and I would have crept back to my own room to deal with my own guilt, so my beloved Rupert would never have been hurt by the knowledge of what I was.”

  “You must not consider that any alternative, Grafin. Not ever! Nor should you torture yourself with any possibility you may have spared your husband pain,” I insisted, finally grasping Lefalque’s instruction that the maid, Tanner, was to simply walk in to rouse him at so early an hour and what scene he had wished witnessed. “He intended your private shame to be discovered and shared, no matter what.”

  “You sat traumatised, only gradually comprehending that he was dead,” said Holmes gently. “But the floor was awash with his blood while he sat up in bed. Even in your dazed condition you understood this was no natural scene. Whose notion was it to mop up the blood on the floorboards to ensure it looked like he had ended his life where he lay?”

  “When I was wakened by a figure sobbing quietly at my bedside, white-eyed and scarlet from head to foot, I genuinely believed in that moment that the legends of the Red Widow of the Sternfleets were true after all. How I wish now that it had been that malicious old ghost!” declared Lady Verity. “Natascha confided all that you have just heard, and it was plain that neither the Grafin’s reputation and marriage, nor whatever standing our late companion had once enjoyed, even undeservedly, would be served by deeper investigation of these matters.”

  “Thus the empty water jug, as I’m sure the jugs and basins from your rooms saved traipsing up and downstairs with pails. Also the ransacked linen closet, for towels to scrub those floors as clean as you hoped your consciences might appear.”

  “My own maid, dearest sweet Mathilda, was roused from her sleep in the antechamber next to my room. On seeing Natascha’s pitiable state she fetched one of her own shifts to replace that ghastly sullied nightdress. As I helped my poor friend wash away the traces of that man, the precious girl did the same on the floorboards, even having the vigilance to wipe clean those spatters that had followed Natascha along the hall to my door. I would have burned the towels and the nightdress, and my own which now bore his blood. But
none of us are calculating criminals with any notion of what might betray us, and it was clever Mathilda who realised that the loss of the towels might be noticed and queried, while the disappearance of so singular a nightdress might alert the Graf to some irregularity. Any tiny thing might be our downfall. The towels might go unnoticed for days, but if we were to turn Natascha’s very genuine shock to serve us, she need only stay bundled up in bed for a day or so while Mathilda stole the items away to wash and then quietly return them. I would not send a girl scurrying into the night with a sack of blood-soaked garments, but it was her notion and her insistence. I was so grateful I pressed my dearest treasure - the ruby brooch Herbert had given me when first we were engaged to marry - on her. I wanted her to know how grateful I was for her loyalty, and though she tried to refuse it and to wave it away, it was this token, truly meant, that damned her when she sought to return it.”

  “Yet it may well provide her salvation,” said Holmes. “I watched you plead your devoted servant’s case, and I have no doubt your winning ways would have inspired your husband eventually to relent in his judgement. But ponder on this, your Ladyship. Such a case as this could be the making of a man like Highford, and well he knows it. But what only we know is that he will never find his murderer. So when there is none to be found, he may look closer at the bird already in his cage, and if he looks closely enough, he might just find that one speck of blood on those towels that her hands failed to wring out, and then he will have found as good a murderer as any. The thieving maid, caught red handed stealing from her betters, who strikes back at her wealthy, noble captor and murder is done? What use would it then be for her to plead her convoluted case?”

  “If it had come to that, I would have spoken for her.”

  “And brought the Grafin the infamy she had sought to escape? An old friend, or a loyal servant? I wonder if the choice would have been so easily made.”

  With a chastened look settling across her fine features, her Ladyship sighed, “You do not think much of us, Mr. Holmes.”

  “On the contrary, you have created a situation I never had encountered before, and one which may be unique - a suicide which has all the appearance of a murder which is attempting to disguise itself as a suicide. Now, looking out I perceive the approach of the police carriage in the drive, so little time remains. I will summarise what I believe to have then occurred, and you must correct any deviation from the truth.

  “The maid smuggled the stained garments home, soaking and scrubbing them and leaving them to dry, before creeping back just as the horror was exposed. If your late night revels had not caused Miss Tanner to sleep on, the alarm may have found a missing lady’s maid, but she slipped back in the confusion and it was only her kindness in offering her coat that might have betrayed her nocturnal departure and return. You two, meanwhile, having transformed the room to how you imagined a suicide scene should look, removed the last items which might incriminate you, such as the razor bearing the von Schellsberg coat of arms.”

  The nobleman raised a trembling hand to his stubble-flecked throat. “No wonder you clung to me, Natascha, calling me back when I attempted to leave you to make myself presentable! If it were not that my hand shook so much at the thought of putting a blade to my skin, I would have caressed my own neck with the very steel that pierced his!”

  “As to the letters Lefalque had brought with him that spoke so charmingly of this past entanglement, your Ladyship concealed them in her own chamber. But when it dawned on you that there may yet be a search, you chose to burn them, hence the unseasonal fire in your grate. I have missed nothing so far, I think, but even in your thoroughness it was you that missed something.”

  Lady Sternfleet nodded solemnly. “I had Lefalque’s own razor, but had not summoned the courage to put it in his hand. After settling Natascha, I found myself poised at the door of her room, my hand on the handle, my nerves steeled, when that scream went up. I ran out, hoping to reach that room before anyone else, but it was too late! My husband never saw that the chamber I had come from was not my own, but it was also he who prevented my placing the concealed razor into the blood beneath the bed, where it may plausibly have fallen. I had to bide my time, hoping my pounding heart would not burst as I awaited my chance to slip into the room and hide the bloodied blade somewhere it could then be found, for I could not simply leave it in plain view where it had not been before.”

  “And the blood that was on the blade when it finally was found?” I asked.

  “Her own. A few drops, easily spilled. Watson, I recall your puzzled glance as I identified my earlier visitor as a char. It was her gloves that made it a likelihood. While she had scrubbed her face and donned the most respectable clothing she owned in order that she not be found lacking in our company, the gloves in such weather were too much. Thus she was concealing her hands, and the reddened, raw ravages of the hard work they were put to. And while her ladyship may also strive to maintain a respectable mode of dress, the gloves too are misplaced. You wince now as you wring your hands, Lady Verity.” Removing her left glove in silent reply, she revealed the bandage wrapped inexpertly around the heel of her hand. With her nodded assent, I quickly examined the cut, confirming that it had not become infected, before reapplying the dressing. “You concealed the razor as close to the bed as you could, then arranged to stumble and bring about its revelation. But it was clear that this was not the only time that cabinet was moved, and it certainly was not to dust the floor, as there were several recent tracks from the casters in the dust still lying below it. This may also have occurred to even Highford in his murder hypothesis, and this too should be to our advantage.”

  “You hint repeatedly of salvation and advantage,” protested Lord Sternfleet, “but what can you mean? Where is our advantage, and what salvation can we expect?”

  “You alone, between yourselves, can decide how these events shall affect you, and if the deceptions and betrayals now brought to light are to be punished or absolved. But there is no good purpose served by staining your names as a consequence of an atrocious and selfish act by one who has deceived and betrayed you all in turn. However, this is not the only stain that must be lifted, and this one may not be as easily washed away as blood from a garment! While you may decline in your social standing, perhaps finding your official duties diminished, your places lost at a few dinner tables and functions, I talk of a deeper, darker stain which threatens absolute destruction of an innocent’s future and a blight on the lives of those closest to her. Now, here is the inspector and his prisoner. Co-operate, and all will be as well as can be, but go against me and nothing is more certain than that which you most fear.”

  VI. The Adventure of the Second Statement

  The anxious young lady escorted brusquely into the room by Inspector Highford was unmistakably kin to the girl who had fled from Baker Street scant hours before. There was the same clear complexion, the same sharp but pleasant features, and, alas, the same bright eyes rimmed red through the rubbing away of tears. As Holmes indicated that this Miss Lodge be seated, it struck me that even so simple an act as her sitting in this drawing room, surrounded by what society declared as her betters, was one that would be impossible under any other circumstance. It was evidently a prospect that caused her no little unease, although Holmes’s generous smile and courteous tone swiftly eased most of her nerviness. “Now, Miss Lodge, you have no need to look so frightened, or to fear that we are going to bombard you with more questions than you have already endured, for all is known. No, you need not look to your mistress. She has told all. We know that you are guilty of no more than loyalty, and of putting this before the truth, and before your own best interests.”

  The girl was struck silent by incomprehension, yet the same could not be said of Inspector Godfrey Highford, who blazed around the room, issuing demands to know “what everyone else obviously damn well does!” His impatient outburst drew forth quiet, shuddering sobs fr
om the utterly wretched maid, though these sobs subsided as my friend wove his chain of detail and event. I have on many occasions watched Holmes silence a room while he used every aspect of his innately theatrical soul to present the facts in a case with a clarity made startling by his dramatic emphasis on each salient point. Yet here was a performance beyond even those, for he delivered the steps toward his conclusions with so little artifice or guile that they took on the banal solidity of a grocer’s list or railway timetable, rendering each detail mundanely realistic, even to the ear of one who already knew the truth.

  There were, of course, truthful elements to this statement, as he spoke of Francois Lefalque’s occasional streaks of violence and instability, and of a simmering, unfathomable resentment that he had nurtured for his erstwhile friends, weaving these facts seamlessly toward the moment when, to her horror, Lady Verity had discovered her trusted guest stealing from her home. Why would such a wealthy man do such a thing? That was for an expert on mental disorders to establish, but Holmes insisted that a perusal of the gendarmerie records from Lefalque’s home province may show a history of similar acts. There had come a confrontation, with Lefalque declaring his intent to leave at the earliest opportunity in the morning. Yet, alone in the fastness of night, in all likelihood contemplating his loss of honour and the estrangement of his friends, he had opted to make a more drastic departure.

  “But the razor, Mr. Holmes,” insisted a smugly grinning Highford, “could not have been found below the cabinet if he had inflicted this upon himself. Surely that undermines your whole argument?”

  “Place yourself in Lefalque’s position. Your path is set, your anger and shame guiding you, and the mortal blade is in your grasp. But your drunkard’s hand is shaking so badly you cannot hold the blade straight. No, neatness of the cut does not come into it. It is not an aesthetic qualm, but Dr. Watson may tell you of the results that are inflicted when a straight razor does not deliver the finishing stroke.”