Mammoth Book The Lost Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes (Mammoth Books)

by Smith, Denis O.

  “Let us all share whatever information we possess,” said Holmes, who had taken charge of the situation, “and see if we cannot shed some light on what has happened here today! I shall begin by recounting what befell your husband,” he continued, addressing Mrs Claydon, “and no doubt he will correct me if I go astray.

  “His arrangement to travel to Manchester was cancelled at the last minute, owing to ill-health in the northern office. This occurred just before he was leaving work, so he thought it unnecessary to notify you of the change as he would be home himself shortly. On the way home, however, he had a mishap which resulted in a glass of beer being spilt all over him, and during which he also received a series of accidental blows to the face – he can give you the details later – the upshot of which was that his appearance slipped somewhat below his usual standard. When he arrived home, he found that his key would not turn in the lock. As it has since worked perfectly well, it is probable that someone had simply engaged the safety catch inside the door, but he had no way of knowing that at the time. When he knocked at the door, it was answered by a parlour maid he had never seen before, who was shortly joined on the threshold by her mistress, a woman who was likewise unknown to him. They refused to admit him to the house, which they claimed was their abode, and dismissed his own claim upon the house as a lie. A passing policeman was summoned to aid them in getting rid of him, who, seeing the respectable appearance of those in the house and the somewhat less respectable appearance of Mr Claydon, incorrectly, but perhaps understandably, took the part of the former against the latter, and threatened Mr Claydon with arrest if he did not absent himself promptly. Realizing that further protest was useless, he did as the policeman requested, arriving to consult me some time later in a state of bewilderment and shock.

  “Mr Falk, meanwhile, who is employed by the Standard as a parliamentary and general reporter, received a letter this morning, signed by someone calling herself Mrs Robson, which informed him that if he wished to learn something of great public interest, he should call at this house at five o’clock in the afternoon. When he arrived, he was shown into this room and offered a cup of tea. Some narcotic had evidently been added to his cup, however, for he quickly fell into a deep sleep, from which he did not awaken for several hours, at which time he found himself lying on the lawn in the garden.

  “When Dr Watson and I arrived here, with Mr Claydon and Inspector Spencer from Brixton Police Station, we found the body of a man upon the dining-room floor, who was subsequently identified as Percival Slattery, the well-known radical Member of Parliament for New Bromwich. There was no clear indication of how he had met his death. In this room, a strange, unknown picture had been hung upon the wall above the fireplace, and a framed photograph placed upon the piano. Some flowers had also been removed from a vase and placed upon the breast of the dead man in the other room, as a mark, no doubt, of respect. Nothing else in the house appears to have been touched.

  “Now, Mrs Claydon,” Holmes continued after a moment. “Pray, give us a brief account of your day.”

  “Very well,” said she. “At about ten o’clock this morning, I received a telegram from my brother, Lenny. It had been sent from Portsmouth.”

  “But that cannot be!” interrupted Claydon. “Lenny is in New York, studying law!”

  “I know that as well as you do,” returned his wife in a pathetic tone, “but I thought that perhaps some sudden misfortune had befallen him and driven him back home. The telegram asked me to come at once to Portsmouth, where he would meet me at the railway station and explain to me then how matters stood. Concerned that he might be in some terrible difficulties, I set off within the quarter-hour and reached Portsmouth in the early afternoon. There was no sign of Lenny there, and after waiting fretfully on a bench on the platform for nearly forty minutes, I gave my name to an official, and asked if any message had been left there for me. After hunting about the office for a while and consulting with his colleagues, he at length was able to show me a note which had been handed in late that morning, addressed to ‘Mrs Claydon, passenger – care of the station master’. I opened it and found it was from Lenny. He expressed regret for the trouble he was causing me, but said that he had been obliged to go on to Southampton, and asked that I join him there, when he would explain what was afoot. I did as he asked, reaching Southampton about teatime. There I waited for a further hour and a half, but there was no sign of my brother, nor any message left for me. Eventually, I gave up all hope of seeing him, and caught a train back to London. When I reached Waterloo station, I met Rosemary, who had recently arrived there herself, and we came home here together.”

  “Do you have the telegram your brother sent?” asked Holmes.

  Mrs Claydon shook her head. “The last time I can recall seeing it was when I was waiting at Portsmouth, so I think I must have left it there.”

  “No matter,” said Holmes. “Do you have the note he left for you at Portsmouth?”

  “Yes, I have that,” said she. “Here it is.”

  She handed a folded sheet of paper to Holmes, who glanced at it for a moment and then held it up so we could all see it. It was a very brief missive, containing the message she had described to us and no more.

  “Is this definitely your brother’s hand?” asked Holmes, examining the script closely.

  “I believe so,” replied Mrs Claydon. “Are you suggesting that it might be a forgery?”

  “Well, it is possible, is it not, that the sole purpose of the telegram and note was to get you out of the house and keep you away from London for as long as possible? Do you have a recent letter of your brother’s from America, so that we could compare the handwriting?”

  Mrs Claydon opened the top of the bureau, extracted a long white envelope, and passed it to Holmes. He took out the letter and held it up beside the note.

  “It is close enough,” said he, “although it would not be too difficult to counterfeit your brother’s hand in so short a note. However, the issue is not a crucial one: if you hear nothing further from your brother, as I suspect, we may take it that, however cleverly done, this note is indeed a forgery. Let us move on now to our last witness, Miss Rosemary Quinn.”

  “My account will not take long, sir,” began the housekeeper. “About three hours after Mrs Claydon had left, a telegram arrived here, addressed to me. It was, I found, from Mrs Claydon herself, and had been sent from Portsmouth railway station. It instructed me to take five pounds from the tobacco jar on the mantelpiece and bring it at once to Portsmouth. I packed the maid, Susan, off to her parents’ house at Battersea – she is a mere slip of a girl, and I could not leave her here alone all day – and set off at once. I caught the first train I could, but when I reached Portsmouth, there was no sign of Mrs Claydon. I waited for nearly an hour by the station entrance, then I enquired at the booking office if they knew anything of the matter. Eventually someone there remembered that a woman of that name had waited there for some time about lunch time, but had eventually left for Southampton. I asked if she had left any message for me, but was informed that she had not. I could not think what to do for the best then. I waited a little longer, but eventually decided I would have to give up and return home. It seemed pointless to follow Mrs Claydon to Southampton, for I did not know whereabouts she might be there, and I thought it very unlikely that I would find her. When I got back to Waterloo, I saw that a train was due from Southampton shortly, so I decided to wait and see if Mrs Claydon was on it. To my relief, she was, but I could see at once that her day had been even more tiring and fruitless than my own.”

  “Presumably,” said Holmes, addressing Mrs Claydon, “you sent no telegram from Portsmouth.”

  “No, I did not,” returned she with emphasis.

  “Do you have the telegram?” Holmes asked Miss Quinn.

  The housekeeper shook her head, an expression of regret upon her face. “I took it with me,” said she, “but I think I must have left it on the train, for now I can’t find it anywhere.”


  “Well, well, it is not important,” said Holmes. “Does anyone else have anything to add?”

  There was a general murmuring of voices. The housekeeper went to make a pot of tea, as a discussion of the day’s happenings began.

  “If you ask me,” remarked Claydon at length, “the whole business is sheer lunacy! These strange people come in here, take over my house for a while, and then leave again. What could be more pointless and insane than that?”

  “They didn’t all leave again,” interjected Inspector Spencer. “One of them was still here when we arrived, if you recall, lying on the dining-room floor.”

  “That’s horrible!” cried Mrs Claydon.

  “Horrible or not, madam, it is true, nevertheless. It may be that while they were here, these people fell out for some reason, there was violence, and the man, Slattery – if it is indeed he – was murdered.”

  “But there were no signs of violence on him,” observed Claydon.

  “Well, perhaps they poisoned him,” returned the policeman in a vague tone. “After all, poisoning was rather in their line, seeing as how they slipped something unpleasant into Mr Falk’s drink – or so he says.”

  “That’s what puzzles me,” said Falk, “why they should summon me here, only to give me some kind of sleeping-draught almost as soon as I arrived, and then dump me unceremoniously in the back garden!”

  “That’s part of the lunacy of it all,” agreed Claydon, nodding his head. “None of it makes any sense!”

  “Anyhow, I’d best be off, if no one objects,” said Falk, rising to his feet and looking enquiringly at the policeman. “I’ll have to write a report on Percy Slattery’s death pretty quickly, otherwise I’ll not get it into the morning edition. What is it, Mr Holmes?”

  My friend had held his hand up as the housekeeper entered the room with a large tray containing two teapots and a pile of cups and saucers.

  “Stay a moment,” said Holmes, “and take tea with us.”

  “I don’t know,” replied Falk in a dubious tone. “The last time I had tea here, it didn’t entirely agree with me.”

  “I think the experience this time will be somewhat more stimulating,” said Holmes with a chuckle.

  I had observed that while the others had been discussing the day’s events, Holmes had remained in silent thought, as if weighing the matter up. Now, as was clear to me who knew his habits well, it was as if he had reached a decision. What he was about to do or say, I had no idea at all, but that the next few minutes would be highly interesting, I could not doubt.

  I watched as the housekeeper poured out the tea and passed round the cups. She had also brought in a plate of small cakes, which she placed on the little table by my chair. For some moments Holmes regarded these cakes, a thoughtful expression upon his face.

  “Surely you have made a mistake,” said he abruptly to the housekeeper, as she made to withdraw from the room.

  “Sir?” responded she in a puzzled tone, looking from Holmes to the plate of cakes.

  “No, not in the confectionery,” said he, shaking his head. “They appear excellent, and I am sure they are, for I understand that you are a first-rate pastry cook.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “But in your account of the telegram you received.”

  “Sir?”

  “You mentioned that the telegram instructed you to remove a sum of money from the tobacco jar on the mantelpiece and take it to Portsmouth. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is that the jar in question?” asked Holmes, indicating a small barrel-shaped jar made of two different types of wood, which stood on the corner of the mantelpiece.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, the instruction about the tobacco jar might seem reasonable if the telegram in question had in fact been sent by Mrs Claydon, but we know that it was not. It was therefore sent by a stranger, intent, presumably, on luring everyone away from the house. But how could this stranger know that Mrs Claydon kept a reserve of money in the tobacco jar on the mantelpiece? It is hardly a general rule in every household in the land.”

  “No, sir. I don’t know, sir,” responded the housekeeper, glancing at her employer.

  “It’s no good anyone looking at me,” remarked Mrs Claydon. “I can’t shed any light on it, for I didn’t send the telegram.”

  “Have you told anyone about the money in the tobacco jar?” asked Holmes.

  “Certainly not,” replied Mrs Claydon.

  “Then how could anyone know about it?” Holmes asked the housekeeper again.

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Is it possible, do you think, that you have misremembered the matter, and that the telegram did not actually mention the tobacco jar at all?” queried Holmes. “Perhaps it merely instructed you to bring some money, without specifically mentioning where the money was to be found. Could that have been the case?”

  I saw the housekeeper hesitate and frown, but I could not tell what was passing in her mind.

  “Perhaps, sir,” said she at length.

  “But you are not certain upon the point?”

  “No, sir, I am certain. I remember now: it did not mention the tobacco jar, but of course I knew that was where Mrs Claydon kept the money.”

  “I see. Some people might think it surprising that in a communication which was doubtless less than a dozen words, you should have been unsure as to whether the words ‘tobacco jar’ occurred or not, but I pass over that. The message instructed you to take five pounds from the jar. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And was that amount in the jar?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “In sovereigns?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Here is another mystery, then: how could a stranger to the household have known that such a sum would be available? There cannot be many households in which a sum as large as five pounds is left in an unlocked jar on a mantelpiece.”

  “No, sir; it is a lot of money. I was anxious all the time I had it with me, in case I lost any of it, and gave it over to Mrs Claydon as soon as we met, at Waterloo station. I took very great care of it, sir.”

  “I do not doubt it, but that is not the point at issue, which is, rather, how anyone outside of this household could have known of the money. Of course, if such a telegram had in fact been sent by Mrs Claydon, the question would not arise, as she must be presumed to know how much money is in her own house, but Mrs Claydon did not send the telegram. You see the problem?”

  “Yes, sir,” responded the housekeeper, nodding her head.

  “Fortunately, I have a solution.”

  “Sir?”

  “Yes. What I suggest is that the telegram stipulated neither the tobacco jar nor the sum of five pounds, nor, for that matter, Portsmouth, nor anything else that you mentioned, for the simple reason that the telegram never existed. It is a figment of your imagination, designed to explain your own apparent absence from the house this afternoon.”

  “No, sir!” cried the housekeeper in protest, taking a step backwards.

  “I imagine that you waited until the maid, Susan, was busy elsewhere in the house, then you opened the front door and rattled the knocker yourself. Moments later, you informed her that a telegram had arrived for you, necessitating a journey to Portsmouth, and that she would therefore have to return home for the day. She is very young, I understand, and would accept what you told her without query. Once she was out of the way, your plan could proceed.”

  “No, sir! It’s not true!” cried the housekeeper.

  “I further suggest that you did not travel to Portsmouth at all, but were busy in London all afternoon. Later you went down to Waterloo station specifically to intercept Mrs Claydon, which you thought would help to confirm your make-believe story.”

  “Madam!” cried the housekeeper, turning to her employer in entreaty. “This is unjust! Why is this gentleman accusing me?”

  “You have a sister, I believe
?” continued Holmes, ignoring the woman’s protest.

  At this she hesitated. Her mouth opened, but she did not speak.

  “Come, come,” said Holmes in a genial tone. “It is no crime in this country to have a sister. You need not fear arrest on the grounds of having a sister. You have a sister?”

  “Yes, sir,” responded the housekeeper at length, in a reluctant tone.

  “Her name, I believe, is Violet,” continued Holmes.

  The housekeeper’s jaw dropped, her eyes opened wide with surprise and fear and she flung her hands up to her face.

  “How can you know that?” asked she in a strained, cracked voice.

  “It is my business to know things,” responded Holmes calmly, regarding her face very closely. “They are pretty names, Violet and Rosemary. Your parents must have been very fond of wild flowers. Your sister, Violet, was, I believe, married to Percival Slattery in 1870, that is to say, seventeen years ago. He later deserted her and treated her very shamefully.”

  For a moment, the housekeeper seemed to sway unsteadily on her feet, then she fell to her knees on the floor, clutched her head in her hands and burst into a storm of sobbing.

  “Is this true, Rosemary?” asked Henry Claydon after a moment.

  She tried to answer, but was sobbing so heavily and loudly that she was unable to form the words. Instead, she nodded her head vigorously.

  “Perhaps you could describe to us exactly what occurred today,” suggested Holmes in a soft, kindly tone, “and then we might understand it a little better.”

  Again the housekeeper nodded her head, but it was several minutes before she had composed herself sufficiently to begin her account. Then, seated on a chair that Claydon had brought in for her from the dining room, she made the following statement:

  “My sister, Violet, is two years older than me. She and I were born and raised here in London, the only children of Patrick and Mary Quinn. When she was fourteen and I was twelve, the family moved to Melbourne, Australia, where my father had hopes of good employment in the gold fields. I became a kitchen maid, then later cook, in the household of Colonel Hayward, who was posted out there at the time. When he and his family returned to England, he asked me to accompany them, which I agreed to do. My sister, meanwhile, had married Percival Slattery at St Paul’s Church in Melbourne when she was twenty-one. Percy was a fine figure of a man, I must say, and I could not fault her decision in that respect. But although fine to look at, and a grand talker, he never achieved anything. He was always speaking of great schemes, and making glorious predictions for their future, but nothing ever seemed to come of any of it. Then, when they had been married a little over two years, he took himself off to some newly discovered gold fields, hundreds of miles from Melbourne, declaring that he would return home a wealthy man. Alas, he never returned at all, and my sister heard a year later that he had been killed in an avalanche. By that time she had a baby girl, for she had been with child when he left her. Her life in Melbourne, where she worked as a nurse, was not an easy one, as I learned from her letters.