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

by Smith, Denis O.

  “‘I was wondering when someone of your type would show up,’ said he in a disagreeable tone, ‘now that a reward has been offered.’

  “I assured him that my presence there had been specifically requested by Viscount Latchmere himself, and that I had been perfectly unaware that a reward had been offered until within the last hour. This seemed to satisfy him and, from that point on, he became decidedly more genial. He is, in fact, a very genial man, but an absolute dunderhead as a detective. He described to me what he had discovered so far, which was, in truth, practically nothing.

  “‘As Lady Latchmere’s bedroom door was locked,’ he said, as we walked round the outside of the house, ‘and as the little dressing room that adjoins it can only be entered from that bedroom, it is clear that the thief must have climbed in through the open dressing-room window. It would not be very difficult for an intruder to climb up there: this part of the house is covered with ivy and other climbing plants, as you can see.’

  “‘Have you found any signs of such an intruder?’ I asked as we stopped below the window in question.

  “‘I cannot say in all honesty that I have,’ he replied. ‘It is this that makes me think it must be the work of some highly professional criminal gang; but the creepers are so intertwined and tangled just here that any such signs would be difficult to make out, in any case.’

  “‘Any footprints?’ I asked, as I surveyed a strip of bare earth by the house wall.

  “Inspector Sturridge shook his head. ‘As you can see, the ground is dry and hard just here. I had a good look round, but didn’t find anything – apart from the glove, of course.’

  “‘What glove is that?’ I asked in surprise.

  “‘Have they not told you? It is not of any significance, I am afraid, Mr Holmes. It is just one of Lady Latchmere’s own gloves. I found it on the ground, just here where we’re standing. The thief must have accidentally got it caught up in his clothing, I imagine, and dragged it out of the window as he was making his escape. The only other explanation I could think of for its presence here was that the thief had used it to signal to a confederate who was standing out here on the lawn, but that seems unlikely, for several reasons.’

  “‘Not the least of which is that it would have been pitch black at that time of night.’

  “‘Precisely. So, as I say, it is probably of no significance. The glove is lying on the chest in the entrance hall. They left it there in case I wished to see it again, but I don’t.’

  “Inspector Sturridge returned to the house then, to try once more to gain an audience with Viscount Latchmere, while I, thinking that I might have missed something during my first examination, applied myself again to the search for evidence that an intruder had been there on Saturday night. Fifteen minutes later I was obliged to conclude, as I had earlier, that there was not the slightest trace on the outside of Latchmere Hall that any intruders had been there at all, let alone that one of them had climbed up the wall below Lady Latchmere’s dressing-room window. Of course, I could be wrong – I occasionally am – but I have handled perhaps seventy-odd cases in which shrubberies or creepers on the wall of a house have played some part in the matter, and I cannot recall a single one in which I have been so completely unable to detect any sign of human presence. I even attempted to climb the wall of Latchmere Hall myself, and although I am reasonably agile, and certainly not heavy, I at once broke several small stems on the creeper – damage which, if anyone else had caused it, I could not possibly have failed to observe.

  “I then returned to the house. In the hallway, I examined the glove that Inspector Sturridge had mentioned. It was a woman’s right-hand glove, of a soft light-grey fabric, with small embroidered flowers on the back, very similar to the gloves I had seen upstairs in Lady Latchmere’s dressing room, except that the embroidery on those had included two little pink flowers, whereas the embroidery on this one contained two little blue flowers. There was nothing at all unusual about it, and no sign that it had been used for anything out of the ordinary. This glove intrigued me, Watson. The whole business was admittedly impenetrable, but over all the other mystifying points in the case, this glove reigned supreme. I could not agree with Inspector Sturridge that it had fallen or been dragged from the window accidentally. It had, I felt sure, been cast out deliberately.

  “Then it struck me that there was something which I had overlooked, namely the other glove of the pair. In Lady Latchmere’s dressing room I had seen a pair of grey gloves, a left hand and a right; here was a third glove, but where, then, was the fourth? I could not recall seeing it anywhere. I asked Yardley, who had been hovering about all this time, to conduct me once more to Lady Latchmere’s chamber, and I took the odd glove with me. There, I proceeded to make a thorough search for the fourth glove. It was nowhere near the other pair, nor, indeed, anywhere in the dressing room, but I did find it eventually. In the bedroom, immediately to the side of the doorway into the dressing room, stood an upright wooden chair, on the seat of which lay a large-brimmed straw hat. Beneath this hat lay the fourth glove. I asked the butler if the room had been cleaned or tidied since the robbery, and he shook his head.

  “‘Viscount Latchmere gave strict instructions that it should remain untouched until the police had completed their examination of it,’ he said, ‘and no instructions to the contrary have yet been received.’ Clearly, then, the glove I had found under the hat had been there since Saturday.

  “And that, Watson, is that!” said Holmes, leaning back in his chair. “I believe I have given you a reasonably accurate account of my morning’s work, if in a somewhat condensed form. It illustrates well,” he continued as he took up his pipe and began to fill it with tobacco from the old Persian slipper, “what should be the fundamental tenet of any detective’s work, that one should never make assumptions before beginning an investigation, but should follow with an open mind wherever the evidence leads. That genial dunderhead, Inspector Sturridge, having assumed at the outset that there were intruders at Latchmere Hall on Saturday night, is obliged to make more and more assumptions – as to the almost supernatural cleverness of these intruders, for instance – when the evidence fails to confirm his initial assumption. I, on the other hand, made no such assumption, and the evidence has led me to a quite different conclusion.”

  “What, then?” I asked in surprise.

  “There were no intruders at Latchmere Hall on Saturday night, Watson. The pendant was taken by someone staying in the house, someone who deliberately threw that glove out of the window to lead us astray.”

  I confess I was astonished at this suggestion. “But they are all highly respectable people, Holmes,” I protested.

  “Highly respectable they may be, Watson, but I am convinced that one of them is a thief. Incidentally, all those concerned are now in London. I have their addresses here,” he continued, taking his notebook from his pocket: “The Rajah of Banniphur is staying at Claridge’s Hotel, Miss Norman has an apartment in Ladbroke Gardens, Mr Brocklehurst is at an address in Curzon Street and Miss Wiltshire is at her parents’ house in Doughty Street. Lady Latchmere herself is also in town, staying at their house in Belgrave Square for a few days. I could, of course, go to see any of them in pursuit of my enquiries, but I do not think it will be necessary. They were not able to speak freely at Latchmere Hall – that much was clear – and may wish to amplify their answers to my questions in circumstances of greater privacy. I have given each of them my card, and strongly suspect that one or two of them will come to see me before the day is out.”

  I watched as he lit a spill in the fire and applied it to the bowl of his pipe, then leaned back once more in his chair, puffing away contentedly.

  “But we have heard that Lady Latchmere’s bedroom door was locked on Saturday night,” I said after a moment, “and there is no way into her dressing room save through that bedroom. So how could anyone in the house have got in there to take the pendant?”

  “Quite so. The evidence as we have it ha
s brought us to an impasse. It makes it equally impossible that the pendant was taken either by someone outside the house or by someone inside the house. And yet it was certainly taken by someone, Watson, as it is no longer in the jewel case. I believe I know the answer to this conundrum, an answer I have been led to by the evidence of the fourth glove. This not only suggests to me who has taken the pendant, but suggests also that at least two people – possibly more – have lied to me.”

  My friend fell silent then, and sat for several minutes with his eyes tightly closed and his brow furrowed with concentration. I knew better than to question him further. It was evident he was re-weighing all the evidence in his mind and verifying his conclusions to his own satisfaction. He would enlighten me when he felt ready to do so. As to my own thoughts on the matter, for some time I went over and over all that my friend had told me, but, despite my best efforts, reached no sensible conclusion.

  All at once, the silence in our room was broken by a sharp pull at the front-door bell. A moment later, the maid entered to announce that Mr Peter Brocklehurst had called for Sherlock Holmes, and a tall, angular, dark-haired young man was shown into the room. Holmes waved him to a chair, but for a moment he hesitated and glanced in my direction.

  “There is something I thought you ought to know,” he began, addressing Holmes. “I mean no offence to your colleague, but I would rather speak to you alone.”

  “Whatever you wish to say you may say as well before Dr Watson as before me. He is the very soul of discretion.”

  “I do not doubt it, but it is a very delicate, private matter, and I must insist that you do not repeat to a soul what I tell you.”

  “You have our word on that.”

  “Very well,” said the young man. “The fact is,” he continued, taking the chair that Holmes offered him, “that something rather odd occurred at Latchmere Hall on Saturday evening, which may perhaps have a bearing on your attempt to recover the pendant. Whether it does or not, I don’t know, but I didn’t want you to waste your time on a wild-goose chase. It is not really any concern of mine, and under other circumstances I should not have dreamt of interfering, nor of retailing unpleasant gossip. Nor should I have said anything – whatever the circumstances – if I had thought that you were one of those common enquiry agents who will snoop and spy on anyone for a few shillings. But I could see when we spoke earlier that you are a gentleman, Mr Holmes, and it is in that belief that I will entrust to you what may be extremely delicate information.”

  “I will endeavour to justify your trust in me.”

  “Then I will come straight to the point. I did not enjoy the dinner at Latchmere Hall on Saturday. The trouble was that I couldn’t think of a single thing to say to anyone. At Oxford I was considered something of a wit, but at Latchmere on Saturday I was like a block of wood. The conversation was dominated partly by matters to do with the Latchmere estate, and partly by the subject of education, and, to speak frankly, I was bored. I attempted to have a sort of side-conversation with Miss Wiltshire, but that was not successful. I also attempted to intervene in the main conversation with some humorous remarks, which I thought might draw Miss Wiltshire in – for she was almost as silent as I was – but my remarks fell flat, and that, too, proved a failure.

  “As a result of all this, I drank rather a lot of wine – there didn’t seem much else to do – and as I became more intoxicated, my attempts to join in the conversation became wilder and – I must be honest – more stupid. Matilda – Miss Wiltshire – whom I admit I had hoped to impress in the course of the evening, became even less interested in me than she had been earlier, if that is possible, and I saw a look of disdain written plainly enough on her face.

  “When the meal was finished and we had passed through the usual tedious and boring rituals, the three women took themselves off to their beds. This was some time between half past ten and a quarter to eleven. About fifteen minutes later, the viscount and the rajah did the same, leaving me mercifully to my own devices. I said I would find myself a book in the library, but when I got there, the room, which was in darkness save for the low glow from the fire, seemed warm and cosy, and I sat down in the big winged armchair by the hearth. I don’t know which made me feel worse, the large quantity of wine I had imbibed or the fact that I had made a fool of myself in front of Miss Wiltshire. Anyway, for one reason or another, I fell into a brown study and, not long after, fell fast asleep.

  “I was awakened some time later by the sound of the door being opened and quietly closed, which was followed by the rustle of a woman’s skirts and soft, rapid footsteps across the library floor behind my chair. Even though I was still half asleep, I knew at once, without really thinking about it, that it must be either Philippa – Lady Latchmere – or Matilda. Uppermost in my mind was the thought that she – whoever it was – might be badly startled to suddenly find me there when she had been in the room for some time, so I made to stand up at once and declare my presence. Before I could do so, however, there came the sound of a curtain being drawn back and a window being quietly opened. This was followed moments later by hushed voices, a man’s and a woman’s, too low for me to make out what was being said.

  “Of course, I had no idea what this was all about, but it was clear it was something secret and furtive. I at once saw what a dreadful position I was in. If my presence were discovered, the situation would be unendurably embarrassing for all concerned. These people – whoever they were – might even believe that I was deliberately spying on them. I could not think what to do. Carefully, I turned my head, and peered round the side of the chair, but could see nothing: the woman was on the other side of the curtain. I considered slowly rising to my feet, and tiptoeing to the door; but then I remembered how much the floor by the fireside chair had creaked earlier, and I decided against it. I should just have to stay in the chair and hope she didn’t see me. If she did, I would pretend to be asleep, and thus to have seen and heard nothing. I tried to make myself as inconspicuous as I could and waited. How long they continued speaking, I don’t know: probably not much more than five minutes, although it seemed like half an hour to me. Eventually, I heard the window being quietly closed, a movement of the curtain, then soft footsteps once more across the library floor. The door was opened and closed, and the room returned once more to silence. I was all alone! I cannot tell you what relief swept over me at that moment! I waited five or ten minutes, then made my way up to my room, remembering to go by way of the side staircase, to avoid the creaking floorboards on the landing outside the bedrooms. I looked at my watch when I got to my room, and it was then five minutes to midnight.”

  “Could you see if there was a lamp still lit in any of the bedrooms?” asked Holmes.

  “No, all were in darkness. I climbed into bed and went to sleep, and heard nothing further. I believe the rajah was snoring, but it didn’t bother me.”

  “Thank you for this information,” said Holmes after a moment. “I appreciate how uncomfortable the situation must have been for you, and how difficult to tell me. Whether it will have any bearing on my own investigation, I cannot say, but you need have no anxiety about such a delicate confidence: neither Dr Watson nor I shall ever repeat what you have told us.”

  Holmes’s manner was one of polite if subdued interest in Brocklehurst’s story, but when the young man had shaken hands and left us, looking greatly relieved at having unburdened himself of his secret knowledge, Holmes’s manner changed completely. He sprang to his feet and paced about the floor in silence for several minutes.

  “Was it Lady Latchmere or Miss Wiltshire?” I asked at length.

  “It was Lady Latchmere, Watson. It must be.”

  “Does this new information change your view of the case?”

  My friend shook his head vehemently. “On the contrary,” said he, “it confirms precisely what I had already deduced. I doubt Mr Brocklehurst appreciates the significance of what he has told me.” Then he resumed his silent pacing about, and would say no more.
At length he sat down at his desk with a frown, and took up a sheet of notepaper and a pen.

  “How best to proceed?” said he aloud, speaking as much to himself as to me. “If I go there, I at once place myself at a disadvantage, and everything I say is simply denied. If on the other hand, I send a summons to come to this address, then the recipient suffers all the anxiety of wondering what it is that I know, and how to respond.”

  He scribbled a few lines on his notepaper. “There,” said he after a moment: “‘If you bring the pendant, I may be able to save you from disgrace. If you do not, then the truth must come out, and you will be ruined.’ That should do it!”

  When he had sealed and addressed his letter, he rang for the maid and instructed her to send it at once by special messenger, then he curled up in his chair by the fire and closed his eyes, as if exhausted. An hour and a half later, the maid brought in a letter that had just been delivered. Holmes roused himself, tore open the envelope and scanned the contents, then tossed it over to me without comment. The note was a brief one, and ran as follows:

  Dear Mr Holmes – Propose to call on you this evening at nine o’clock.

  Banniphur

  At a quarter past eight there came a ring at the front-door bell. A few moments later, the maid announced the Honourable Miss Arabella Norman. She was a small, somewhat frail-looking elderly lady, with grey hair and a slight stoop. Holmes waved her to his chair by the hearth and brought up another chair for himself. For several minutes she sat there in silence, warming her hands at the fire, then Holmes spoke:

  “You have something to tell us, I believe,” said he, “concerning the events of Saturday night.”