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

by Smith, Denis O.

  “Many years passed. My employer, Colonel Hayward, died, but I was by then very experienced and had no difficulty in finding fresh employment, first with a family at Greenwich, and later with Lord Elvington, who kept a very grand establishment in the West End. His connections with the very highest level of society were extensive, and many great and noble guests would grace his table of an evening. Sometimes I would hear the gentlemen discussing politics, and although I cannot claim that I really understood all that they were saying, I was fascinated by their manner of discourse, and by the weighty matters under discussion. One evening, I heard a visitor mention the name of Percy Slattery, and comment upon something he had said in a recent speech. The name struck my ear with a particular resonance, as you will imagine, but I could not really believe that the man referred to was the same as I had known all those years ago.

  “A few days later, however, Lord Elvington gave a dinner for a large number of parliamentarians, and among the names on the guest list was that of Percival Slattery. Impelled by curiosity, I contrived to get a view of this man without being seen myself, and almost fainted with shock when I did. He was somewhat more stolid in appearance now than when I had known him as a young man, but there could be no doubt in my mind that this was indeed my sister’s husband, long presumed dead. It seemed clear what had happened: he had failed in his search for fortune in the gold fields and, no doubt unable to bear the shame, as he saw it, of returning home empty-handed, had taken himself halfway round the world to seek anew for fame and fortune in England. That his personal pride at failing in the gold fields should have been a weightier consideration for him than any bond, either of duty or of affection, for his wife, was entirely consistent with what I knew of his character.

  “I hesitated for several weeks before informing my sister of this discovery, for I knew how deeply it would shock and grieve her to think that her husband, and the father of her daughter, was living comfortably in England without a thought for her, while she endured a hard, struggling existence in Australia. Eventually, however, I decided that the truth must be told. What my sister’s feelings were upon learning this news, I will not burden you with. Suffice it to say that she poured out her heart to me in many, many letters. From that day forward, she was determined that she would one day come to England, and confront her faithless spouse.

  “More time passed, then, six months ago, having saved up sufficient money to pay for the passage of herself and her daughter, Victoria, my sister arrived in England. After some time spent fruitlessly seeking employment in Southampton, her experience as a nurse eventually helped her secure a position at a doctor’s dispensary in Portsmouth. At the same time, she succeeded in placing her daughter as a tweeny in the household of a retired admiral there. Since then, we have met and discussed the question of her husband several times. The chief difficulty in approaching him lay in what we knew of his character. He has always had such grand social aspirations, such a keen nose for sniffing out the wealthy and titled, among whom he had always desired to move, that to approach him with an appearance of beggary would, as likely as not, elicit only scorn, if not contempt. But if Violet could present herself as comfortably off, then she would, she felt, possess a greater influence over him.

  “My employment with Lord Elvington ended, as he took up a post as governor of one of the Indian provinces, and I did not wish to leave England. Mr and Mrs Claydon very kindly offered me employment here, and it was then that Violet and I had the idea that if, on some occasion when my employers were away, Violet could invite Percy here and pretend that it was her own residence, it would exactly suit her purpose. Of course, having devised this scheme, we were impatient to put it into practice. Then, when I learned that Mr Claydon would be absent from home this evening, it seemed the very chance we had been waiting for. If it could be arranged that my mistress, too, was absent for a few hours, then Violet would have the perfect opportunity to meet her husband here.

  ‘‘I had heard Mrs Claydon speak often, with some concern, of her brother, Leonard, in America, and knew that she would respond readily to any communication from him. My sister therefore sent the telegram this morning from Portsmouth as if from Leonard. Before catching the train to London, she also handed in at the station the brief letter that Mrs Claydon was later given there. I had previously written this myself, copying his hand as well as I could from his letters, which are in the bureau, and sent it down to my sister. She, meanwhile, had composed a letter to her husband, which she sent to me here, so that I could post it at the local post office.

  ‘‘It was still possible, we thought, that Percival would treat my sister in a high-handed and scornful manner, would adopt a brazen attitude and simply dare her to make any accusation against him. But if he had cause to fear that the whole story of his desertion would inevitably become public knowledge, then he might act differently. To this end, I wrote a letter to Mr Falk, inviting him to come here today, a little after the time set for Percy’s appointment. I had seen Mr Falk’s name in the newspaper, and knew he was a parliamentary reporter, for Mr Claydon generally takes the Standard, and I have sometimes glanced through it when he has finished with it, looking for any mention of my sister’s husband. Mr Falk’s presence here would, I felt, force Percy to act more decently than he otherwise might.”

  At this point, Miss Quinn abruptly stopped and burst once more into a torrent of sobbing.

  “I am sorry,” she cried at length in a heartfelt tone, her eyes brimming with tears. “I am sorry for all the trouble and anxiety I have caused to everyone. Would that I had never heard the name of Percival Slattery! Would that my sister had never clapped eyes on him again after he had left for the gold fields!”

  “Your scheme did not go quite as planned,” remarked Holmes after a moment, as the housekeeper sobbed quietly before us.

  “That is correct, sir,” responded she after a moment. “Percival Slattery arrived on time, I stayed out of sight and Violet received him in this room. She had brought with her the old picture of the church, which you see on the wall there. It is the church in Melbourne where they were married. She had hoped that such a reminder of the vows he had made might stir some embers of decency in his soul, but I think that the hope was a vain one. Then she reminded him of the presents they had given each other when they became engaged to be married, and she showed him the little jewelled brooch that she still wore, and asked him if he still had the watch she had given him. Reluctantly, he pulled his watch from his waistcoat pocket and she saw that it was indeed the very one she had given him, inscribed with their names, all those years ago. At that point, Violet’s daughter, dressed in her maid’s uniform, brought in a tray of tea for them.

  “‘There is something that you don’t know,’ said Violet to her husband then.

  “‘Oh?’ replied he in an unconcerned manner. ‘And what might that be, pray?’

  “‘You have a daughter,’ said she.

  “At first he dismissed what she said and would not believe her, but as she gave him the details of the matter, he fell silent, and it was evident that he accepted she was speaking the truth. After a moment, she spoke again:

  “‘It is she who just served you with your tea.’

  “‘No!’ cried he. ‘That was your maid.’

  “‘That is she,’ said Violet, and called Victoria back into the room. ‘Percival, meet your daughter! Victoria, meet your father!’

  “At this, he sprang to his feet, but the shock of the occasion proved too much for him. He coughed and spluttered and began to weep, but then all at once clutched his chest and cried out in pain. A moment later he had fallen to the ground in a heap.

  “I dashed into the room as Violet cried out in alarm, but it was clear at once that there was nothing we could do for him. He had stopped breathing, his eyes were wide and staring, and he was stone dead.

  “At that very moment there came a sharp knock at the front door. ‘It must be Mr Falk, the newspaperman,’ said Violet in alarm. ‘Quickly!
Help me get Percy into the back room!’

  “We dragged him through there as quickly as we could, then Victoria went to admit the visitor. Violet had brought with her from the dispensary at Portsmouth a small bottle of chloral, in case of emergencies, and she decided at once that she would put some into Mr Falk’s tea. ‘It will not hurt him,’ said she. ‘It will just put him to sleep for a little while.’

  “A minute or two later, she joined Mr Falk in the sitting room, and shortly afterwards Victoria took in the tea, with a few drops of chloral already in one of the cups. Within a few moments, Mr Falk had fallen into a deep sleep, and we were just carrying him out into the garden when there came another sharp rap at the front door. Victoria ran to answer it as we laid Mr Falk out on the lawn, then Violet joined her daughter at the front door, and found to her horror that the caller was the rightful occupier of the house, Mr Claydon, who had come home after all. Not only that, but she saw that a policeman was at that moment passing down the street. She decided, on the spur of the moment – Lord forgive her for her lies! – to brazen it out. Well, as you know, she succeeded and Mr Claydon departed. Then the three of us, Violet, Victoria and myself, left by the back door, through the garden and out into the back lane behind the house. So hurried was our departure that we forgot to remove the pictures Violet had brought with her, as you will have noticed. I travelled with Violet and her daughter as far as Waterloo, and saw them onto the train there. Then, seeing that a train from Southampton was due within the hour, I waited there until it arrived, when I met up with Mrs Claydon.”

  “What did you intend to do about the body of Mr Slattery?” asked Holmes.

  “I thought that Mrs Claydon and I could find it when we got back here, and then notify the authorities,” replied Miss Quinn. “As everything that could have gone wrong with our scheme seemed to have done so, I did not think that anything further could go amiss, until we reached Kendal Terrace and saw a police van waiting there and a huge crowd of people in the street.”

  “This is a very grave business,” said Inspector Spencer, rising to his feet. “I must ask you to accompany me to the station and make a full statement there,” he continued, addressing Miss Quinn. “Failure to notify the authorities of a death is a very serious offence.”

  “I was going to do so,” returned the housekeeper.

  “So you say. But so everyone says who is arrested for not doing so. Then there is the question of the wilful assault on the person of Mr Falk by the administration of a dangerous drug, not to mention a possible charge of blackmail, extortion or demanding money with menaces from the deceased.”

  “The woman was his wife, Spencer,” interjected Holmes, “and as such was surely entitled to some claim for financial support from him.”

  “Perhaps so – if she really was his wife,” returned the policeman in his most official tone, “but that will be for others to consider. I will make my report and pass it to my superiors and they will decide what action should be taken.”

  “Well, I’m off, anyhow,” said Linton Falk, springing to his feet. “What a story! I am obliged to you, Mr Holmes, for suggesting that I delay my departure. I thought I had a story then, but I have an even better one now!”

  “You just make sure you stick to the facts, young man!” said Spencer in a stern tone, as the newspaperman made to leave the room. “You reporters are all the same: give you one fact and you make up three!”

  A minute later, Holmes and I had left the house that had been the scene of such mysterious and surprising events, and were walking up the main road in the twilight.

  “You can hardly maintain, after the events of this evening,” I remarked, “that the present age has ceased to produce interesting mysteries.”

  “That is true,” conceded my companion. “And yet, after all, it was a simple affair.”

  “I confess it did not strike me in that way,” I returned with a chuckle.

  “Well, of course, it possessed a certain superficial complexity, but beneath the surface it was simple enough.”

  “What do you think will become of Miss Quinn?”

  “It is hard to say. Claydon strikes me as a decent and forgiving soul, so I don’t imagine he will press charges of any kind; but I doubt he will keep her on, for the bond of trust, which is essential between those sharing a household, has been broken. Besides, he has his wife’s opinion to accommodate, and she is, I perceive, made of somewhat sterner metal than her husband.”

  “You are probably right,” I concurred. “What led you to suspect that the housekeeper was at the bottom of it all? And how on earth did you know she had a sister called Violet, and all the rest of it?”

  “Ah! There you touch on the one really interesting point in the whole business,” replied my friend with enthusiasm. “Should you ever include an account of this case in that chronicle of my professional life which you have threatened for so long, Watson, you must ensure that you stress the importance of the slivers of glass on the sitting-room carpet, and the fact that there were two clocks in the room. These things constitute a perfect example – a text-book illustration, one might say – of the maxim that the solution of a problem is generally to be found by a close examination of its details.

  “You see,” he continued, “when we entered the sitting room for the first time, upon our arrival at the house, Claydon remarked almost at once upon the unknown picture on the wall, the photograph upon the piano and the missing roses. But the first thing that caught my own eye was a reflected glint of light from something upon the floor. When I examined it, I found that it was a tiny sliver of glass. Then I saw a second, and a third, nearby, beneath one of the chairs. The glass was thin, but seemed fairly strong, and each of the slivers had a slight curve to it. It struck me that they might be from a broken wine glass, but I kept an open mind on the matter.

  “When we discovered Slattery’s body, a quick investigation revealed that the glass on the face of his watch was broken. As I examined what remained of it, I could not doubt that the particles of glass in the sitting room were from the same source. Clearly the damage to the watch had occurred in the other room. I tried to close the cover of the watch, which was open, and found that I could not do so, as it had been twisted slightly on its hinges. This would have required some force, and I conjectured that the damage to the watch had been caused when its owner had fallen unconscious to the floor. I tried the watch in the waistcoat pocket. It was a tight fit and would not have slipped out as he fell. Therefore he had had it in his hand at the time he fell. This was suggested also by the damage to the hinge, which must have occurred while the lid was open.

  “The shards of glass informed me that it was in the sitting room that Slattery had fallen. But why did he have his watch in his hand in the sitting room? For in the sitting room there is not one clock, but two, both working and both showing the correct time.”

  “He might have taken it from his pocket by sheer force of habit,” I suggested, “oblivious to the presence of other timepieces in the room.”

  “Yes, that is possible. It is also possible that he had taken it from his pocket not to see the time but to make a gesture, to indicate, say, that he was a busy man, whose time was of some value. But what seemed equally possible was that he had been consulting the watch for some other purpose altogether.”

  “I cannot imagine what that could have been.”

  “No more could I. But one must always allow in one’s calculations not merely for the unknown, but for the unimagined. I inspected the watch closely, with the aid of a lens. Upon the underside of the lid, rubbed almost to invisibility, was an inscription. At the top were two large letters, ‘P’ and ‘S’, twined together in a monogram. These initials, of course, matched those I had already observed on the dead man’s cuff-links. Below the monogram was a date, 1870, and, below that, two lines of writing, which I deciphered only with considerable difficulty. The first said ‘fond affection’, and the second ‘Violet Q’. Of course, the initial ‘Q’ at once su
ggested the surname ‘Quinn’, and the fact that ‘Violet’ and ‘Rosemary’ are both flower-names seemed too much of a coincidence to be the result of mere chance. I therefore conjectured that the woman, Violet, who had evidently given the watch to the dead man, was the sister of Rosemary Quinn, the Claydons’ housekeeper. There was one other possibility, I considered, which was that these two were one and the same person, namely Violet Rosemary Quinn, who had perhaps been known as ‘Violet’ when she was younger, but chose now to be known as ‘Rosemary’. But considering that there was definitely another woman involved in the matter – the woman whom Claydon had found to be in possession of his house when he returned from work – I discounted this possibility. The suggestion that that woman was indeed the sister of Claydon’s housekeeper was given added support by his observation that her appearance struck him as vaguely familiar. So already, you see, I had established a probable link between one of the usual members of the household and the apparent strangers who had taken possession of the house this afternoon.”