by George Mann
“Meaning that he is unlikely to have committed suicide, if indeed he did so, for reasons of penury,” said Holmes.
“Exactly. That is one motive the police have advanced, and of course it is utterly absurd. Another is that he has become embroiled in some financial scandal and the shame has proved too great to bear. But that is not the case either. I have checked. His accounts at Carstairs and Buckingham are all in excellent order. At my urging, the bank has had its actuaries go over the books and not a penny has gone astray. Both in his personal and his professional dealings Jacob is impeccably in the black.”
“Interesting,” said my friend. “How long is it that your husband has been missing, Mrs Markinswell...?”
“A week now,” came the reply from the distraught woman. “We have a place here in town, you see. Most of the year we live in Kensington, but for the summer we like to come down to the coast.”
“I find the South Downs climate congenial myself, and I speak as one who spent the best part of his life in London and whose lungs are probably still grey from constant exposure to an urban atmosphere.”
I refrained from mentioning that Holmes’ propensity for his beloved shag tobacco was doubtless still leaving its own inward mark on his vitals.
“Jacob always looked forward to coming down,” said Mrs Markinswell. “He often spoke about selling our London home and relocating permanently. It wasn’t until this year that I began to wonder whether that might be such a good idea.”
“Explain.”
“Well, we arrived in late May as usual, and my husband began his customary practice of taking the train up to London every weekday. It is a lengthy journey but he prefers to commute like this so that he can enjoy the benefits of being on the coast during his leisure time. However, it wasn’t long before I noticed a change in him. He grew withdrawn and irritable.”
“As a result of the constant travelling?” I ventured. “Exhaustion?”
“So I thought. It had never bothered him before, though. I asked him repeatedly if something was the matter but received only evasive answers and vague reassurances that all was well. I was reluctant to press him too hard. Jacob is a mild-mannered, biddable man but does not take kindly to being nagged. A decade of marriage has taught me that.” Mrs Markinswell gave a brief, stiff smile.
“Might I enquire how suspicions arose that he killed himself?” said Holmes.
“He was last seen in the vicinity of Beachy Head,” said Mrs Markinswell. “He was acting erratically, according to eyewitnesses.”
“Hmmm. Beachy Head, you say.”
A glint had entered Holmes’ eye. I knew my friend well enough to recognise the signs. He was intrigued. Something in Mrs Markinswell’s account had piqued his curiosity.
“Beachy Head is well known, notorious even, as a place for suicides,” he continued. “It has almost become a cliché, the frequency with which people throw themselves off the cliffs there. You believe, however, that your husband is not amongst their number, Mrs Markinswell.” This was framed more as a statement than an interrogative.
“I am quite certain of it, Mr Holmes. I imagine you frown on the notion of woman’s intuition. I have read enough of your exploits, courtesy of Dr Watson here, to know that you are an arch rationalist. You would no doubt dismiss as superstitious poppycock the idea that the female of the species is sensitive to certain indefinable factors hidden from the male.”
“On the contrary,” said Holmes. “Often what is called woman’s intuition is nothing more than an acute, if subconscious, awareness of the subtle visual and verbal cues given out by others. I have contemplated writing a monograph on the subject but disqualified myself on grounds of gender.”
“Suffice to say that were Jacob dead, something in here would have told me.” She thumped her chest.
“You suspect foul play, then?” said I.
“Dr Watson, I don’t know what to suspect,” said Mrs Markinswell. “The police have their line of enquiry, and that is the only one they will pursue.”
Holmes gave one of his sharp, contemptuous laughs, like the bark of a dog. Regular readers of mine will know of the low esteem in which he held members of the constabulary. Even those he thought well of, such as Inspector Lestrade, were accorded a grudging admiration at best.
“But you wish to learn the truth?” said Holmes.
Mrs Markinswell nodded adamantly. “It goes without saying. Wherever my husband is, whatever has happened to him, I cannot bear this agony of uncertainty any longer. I have scarcely slept, Mr Holmes. I am going out of my mind with worry. If this were blackmail, I would have been sent a ransom note, would I not? If Jacob really were dead, surely his body would have washed ashore by now. I need some kind of resolution, and I pray you are the man to bring it. Your fee, of course, is not a problem.”
Holmes waved this aside. “In my retirement, money is no longer a consideration or a motivation, Mrs Markinswell. I will take on your case pro bono. But I should reiterate that I will get at the truth, and you must be prepared for it to be unpalatable.”
Mrs Markinswell steeled herself, dabbing her swollen eyes with a lace handkerchief and firming her jaw. “I am ready, come what may.”
“Good,” said Holmes. “First, Watson and I shall visit the scene of the alleged crime. After that, if we may call on you at home, Mrs Markinswell...?”
She gave us her address, a house in Eastbourne’s prosperous Meads area, and we took our leave of her.
During our walk to Beachy Head, Holmes was in a rare garrulous mood, although he talked about everything—the floral displays on the seafront, the geology of Sussex chalk soil, the various species of butterfly we saw—save the disappearance of Jacob Markinswell. Eventually, after an hour, we crested the steep brow of the Head itself. At our feet spread a panorama of glittering aquamarine sea, dotted with yachts and fishing vessels, leisure and commerce commingling. A warm onshore breeze stirred the rough grass and the thickets of gorse and hawthorn. The town of Hastings shimmered whitely across the bay
It was a beautiful spot, yet I shivered to recall that it was near here that Holmes had watched a schoolteacher, Fitzroy McPherson, die a horrible death from a jellyfish sting, a case he narrated to me and which I have chronicled as “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane”; nor were we far from the stately home wherein had occurred those terrible, almost incredible events which I have yet to set down in writing but may one day do, under the putative title of Gods of War.
Holmes echoed the dark turn of my thoughts when he said, “Ironic how, even when presented with a natural prospect as pleasing as this, someone could nonetheless go ahead with terminating his own existence. I am aware that the mind, when in an extreme state of depression, is hardly in a position to appreciate aesthetics. Even so, it seems paradoxical. Such beauty ought to restore one’s faith that life is worth living.”
“Holmes, are you getting maudlin in your old age?”
“Perhaps, perhaps. As death encroaches, I to tend to cherish all the more the majesty and glory of creation. Now, to work.”
He ferreted around for some time, crawling on hands and knees to the cliff edge and peering over, and examining in minute detail various clumps of vegetation. I, for my part, took advantage of the opportunity to rest my weary legs, seating myself upon a small hillock. I may even have briefly nodded off, for I became aware that Holmes had entered into conversation with a stranger of whom I had no recollection arriving on the scene.
His interlocutor was a tweedy sort, out walking an amiable, stocky black Labrador. As I strode over to join them, I heard this fellow say to Holmes, “Why yes, it so happens I did see the gentleman. He was agitated and no mistake. Hurrying back and forth to the clifftop, like he couldn’t make up his mind. A horse repeatedly baulking at a fence, that’s what he put me in mind of. I was going to go up and accost him, ask him what was the matter. But no sooner had I come to this decision than, damnedest thing, suddenly he wasn’t there any more. I took my eyes off him for just a
moment — Cicero here had scared up a rabbit and I had to call him back for fear he’d run away and never return — and when I turned to look back, blow me if the chap hadn’t gone. Just vanished. Only living beings I could see were a young lady, a farmer mowing that field over there, and two brawny lads hiking.”
“Most singular,” said Holmes.
“I said as much to myself,” agreed the stranger. He spoke with a distinct Sussex burr, a local born and bred. “I even went and checked the cliff, in case he’d finally gone and chucked himself off. I couldn’t see anything on the beach below, but the tide was fully in. It’s conceivable, I suppose, that he hit the water and was swallowed up by the waves. I raised the alarm right quick, anyway, and soon enough we had a search party going, but no sign of him could be found.”
“The others present, they all saw the man too?”
“The young lady certainly did. Pretty little creature. She agreed with me that the fellow had been acting peculiar. She wouldn’t swear to it, but she was almost sure he had taken a running jump. Awful business. The poor so-and-so. To be in such depths of despair as to do that to yourself.”
Holmes seemed inordinately glad to have met this person, whom he thereafter referred to, not without justification, as the Country Squire. “What luck!” he exclaimed as he and I made our way back into town. “It would have taken time and effort to track down eyewitnesses, and one comes along just when needed. Turns out our squire friend exercises his dog regularly, always taking the same route each day along the ridge of the Seven Sisters from Cuckmere Haven. Sometimes the smooth advance of an investigation hinges on such fortuitous encounters. Now to the Markinswell homestead.”
* * *
The Markinswells owned a fine, large villa on an elm-lined avenue. After a brief exchange of pleasantries with Mrs Markinswell, Holmes and I were given free rein of the house, permitted to look where we wished and speak to any of the domestic staff we chose to.
In the event, Holmes was interested only in two locations: Jacob Markinswell’s dressing room and his study. In the dressing room he went through the closets, scrutinising Markinswell’s suits. In the study, he pored over the contents of the desk, turning up personal correspondence, some bills, all of which had been paid before due, and a well-balanced chequebook. In other words, nothing of particular interest, until his attention fell on an item half hidden under the ink blotter.
“This, now,” he said, holding it up, “may be a clue of some significance.”
It was a playbill for a show that was running all season at the Hippodrome Theatre—a variety revue featuring a dozen acts ranging from a ventriloquist to a conjuror to a spirit medium to a small chorale offering a selection of songs from the comic operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan. I scanned the list of performers, but nothing leapt out at me.
Holmes and I went to the drawing room, where he asked Mrs Markinswell if she and her husband were devotees of the theatre.
“Myself, no,” she said somewhat frostily. “I don’t mind a concert and the opera but I’m not in the habit of exposing myself to lowbrow entertainment.”
“But Jacob is?”
“I believe he has attended at the Hippodrome once or twice. On his own, of course. He claims to find it relaxing. He works hard, so I allow him such indulgences, however trivial and mindless.”
“Well now, Watson,” Holmes said as we departed. “This all becomes somewhat clearer.”
“It undoubtedly does, Holmes,” I said. “I have seen no evidence so far that contradicts the theory that Jacob Markinswell took his own life. The facts, indeed, seem to point inescapably to that conclusion.”
“What about the lack of a suicide note?”
“That, I admit, is problematic, but then suicide can often be a spur-of-the-moment decision, not premeditated—a sudden and catastrophic descent into utter despondency.”
“Quite,” said Holmes. “But I must show you these threads which I gathered from a hawthorn thicket up on Beachy Head while you were in a state of deep repose. They are worsted wool, and the fibre matches exactly, in colour and weight, the material of Jacob Markinswell’s suits, all of which were made by the same tailors, Quiller and Son of Chancery Lane.”
“So?” said I. “All that indicates is that Markinswell was up on Beachy Head and snagged his sleeve on a twig. I would say it bolsters rather than disproves the suicide hypothesis.”
“I should have specified that I found the threads inside the hawthorn thicket.”
“Ah. Is that important?”
“Important? My dear chap, it is crucial.”
“How so?”
“In place of an explanation, allow me to treat you to a matinee.” He waved the playbill. “What do you say?”
* * *
We took our seats in the stalls at the Hippodrome on Seaside Road, just in time to catch the start of the revue. Holmes was being his usual infuriating self, in possession of the key to solving a mystery but loath to share it with anyone—even his old comrade and fellow veteran of many an investigation—until such time as he saw fit. I itched to ask him to reveal all, but knew better than to try. I would be met with a stone wall of silence and a gleeful twinkle in those wise, grey eyes.
I resigned myself to watching the revue, which was, in the manner of these things, good in parts and less good in others. The conjuror was impressive, making objects appear from where they could not possibly be and disappear into places they could not possibly go. The spirit medium, by contrast, was dull, unable to convince that she was in contact with spectral entities from beyond the veil, her pronouncements too nebulous and all too often patently guesswork to sway any but the most gullible. The conjuror made no pretence that what he was doing was fakery. The medium, in her clumsy efforts to persuade the audience that she was genuine, came across as nothing but a fraud. With the former we willingly suspended disbelief, colluding in his illusions. With the latter we could not conquer our scepticism.
The Gilbert and Sullivan singers were polished, if a tad amateur, and a dog act, in which trained poodles were required to jump through hoops and perform other tricks and stunts, descended into inadvertent farce as the animals collectively decided not to heed their master’s commands and turned on one another. The curtain was rung down on a scene of canine combat and anarchy, the trainer rushing to and fro in a vain attempt to separate antagonists and reimpose order.
Last on the roster was a girl by the name of Jenny Volteface— a stage pseudonym if ever there was one—who combined quick-change artistry with sketch routines. I have to say she was the star of the show. A slip of a thing, with a delightful rounded face, she ran through a series of impersonations, each more sophisticated and convincing than the last. One moment she was Henry VIII, stamping stoutly across the boards and demanding cake, ale and wives. Next she was Milton’s Lucifer, reciting a soliloquy from Paradise Lost with a mixture of terrible hubris and wounded pride. She delivered an amusing and somewhat scurrilous skit on Parliament, switching from one side of the House to the other, pretending to be alternately Conservative then Liberal, and showing how narrow a distinction there was between the two parties and their policies. Then followed a retelling of the myth of Persephone, told from the point of view of the reluctant wife of Hades and detailing the niceties and drawbacks of domestic life as the spouse of the ruler of Hell. The whole thing was rounded off by a recitation of Bassanio’s soliloquy from The Merchant Of Venice, the one beginning “So may the outward shows be least themselves...” and a haunting rendition of the story of Pocahontas, featuring an aria especially composed for the occasion.
Miss Volteface brought the house down. It wasn’t just the speed at which she slipped between roles, passing behind a screen in one costume and emerging scant seconds later in another. It was the commitment she put into her acting, the way she could transform herself into any character, evoking the person with her entire body, every gesture and mannerism devoted to becoming someone else. You could believe she was Henry VIII, despite
her being of the fairer sex, no less than you could believe she was a fallen archangel, or a puffing popinjay parliamentarian, or a young Venetian man daring all to win the heart and hand of his lady, or a Red Indian chief’s daughter pining for love. The audience rose to their feet in approbation, and I don’t mind admitting that I joined them.
Before the applause had died down, with Miss Volteface still taking her bows, Holmes grabbed me by the sleeve.
“Now, Watson,” he said urgently. “Let us go backstage.”
“Backstage? Why?”
Even as I said this, I had an inkling. I was not always as slow on the uptake as Holmes liked to make out.
We left the theatre via the main entrance and slipped round the side to the stage door. A silver half-crown from Holmes’ pocket secured our ingress past the stagehand who was posted there as a rather lacklustre sentry. In no time we were knocking on the door of the dressing room marked with Miss Volteface’s name.
The person who greeted us was not the actress herself but a gruff and disagreeable man with a coarse thick beard and the manners of a navvy.
“What do you want?” he growled, fixing us both with a suspicious glare.
“To pay our respects to Miss Volteface, naturally,” said Holmes in his gayest and most charming voice. “I am an ardent admirer of her work, as is my colleague.”
“Wonderful stuff,” I enthused, not insincerely. “A remarkable turn.”
“Well, you can both—” Here the man invited Holmes and me to leave the premises in an unrepeatably crude fashion.
“Not even an autograph?” said Holmes, unabashed. He brandished the playbill. “Surely the good lady can spare us a moment for that.”
A voice came from within, Miss Volteface’s, and while I didn’t catch her words, the gist was clear.
The man grumbled but let us in.
Miss Volteface was busy removing her makeup in the mirror, still in her Pocahontas outfit. Close up, she was even more beguiling than onstage. She reminded me in many ways of my dear departed Mary—the same broad intelligent forehead, the same flash of wit and hint of mischief in the eyes. I found myself wishing that I were several decades younger, a single man again in the prime of life. These were foolish thoughts, but the sight of an accomplished, attractive young girl makes fools of all men, whatever their maturity or marital status.
