Sherlock Holmes

by Lyn McConchie

  “Mr. Holmes, I swear to you most earnestly that none of what he describes happened. Poor Canlon almost certainly revealed our intentions and Wimbledon took the opportunity to get in ahead of us. But that’s no more than business, monkey-business surely, but not illegal. Nor was what we did against the law. You may not know, but I met the building’s original owner once. He was a decent man, full of his plans to travel and see the world. He asked me many questions as to places I had been and what I could recommend.” His gaze met ours squarely. “I liked him, nor am I a murderer.”

  He leaned forward. “There is this, too. Wimbledon claimed that I spoke of his rockery, whatever that may be. From the context of what you said, I presume that this is something found in the garden?” Holmes nodded. “Good, then let us have my wife in and you may ask her what questions about such matters as you deem fair.”

  He went to the door and called, to be answered by a tall, fair woman in her forties, clad in the sort of dress that proclaims it to have been relegated to hard, dirty work. She had a smudge of earth on one cheek, and the whole of her hem showed muddy stains.

  “What is it, Edmund?”

  “My dear, these are Mr. Holmes and his friend Dr. Watson. They have come upon a most serious matter, so please answer any question they may put to you.” He turned to us. “Gentlemen, this is my wife, Lillian.” The lady sat, looking at us expectantly.

  Holmes promptly inquired about her gardening. “For I see that you are busy transplanting young carrots. Surely that should be the work of your gardener?”

  The lady smiled. “I do not see how you know that, but you are right. My husband is extremely fond of baby carrots cooked in a certain way. Our gardener is prone to provide the larger ones, having thrown away those he thinned out. Therefore, I have spent the morning thinning the carrots where necessary and transplanting the baby ones to a patch of ground where they may be left to grow for a short while before they are the right size. But tell me, sir, how is it that you know I was transplanting carrots?”

  Holmes nodded. “You have,” he said, leaning forward and picking from her skirts a tiny fragment, “a portion of leaf adhering here. I recognized it at once, and from the size I knew it to be that of the vegetable being thinned. There is also a smudge of white on your hem. From the granular appearance, it is a fertilizer recently advertised as being particularly suitable for root vegetables.”

  Lillian Pembroke clapped her hands. “But that is marvelous, sir. What else can you deduce?”

  “That your husband is no gardener.”

  She laughed. “Oh, that is true, entirely too true, Mr. Holmes. Why, he barely knows an oak tree from a willow.”

  “He would not build you a rockery?”

  “A rockery?” Her laughter pealed forth. “My dear sir. We do not have one, but I daresay should one be built he would think it only a pile of stones awaiting disposal and would ask me when it was to be removed. As for building me one, I should have to make long explanations of what it was and the purpose, and then he would still count it as odd that I should wish a heap of stone instead of pretty flowers.”

  “And his friends, are any of them disposed to garden?”

  She stared. “Which friends?”

  “Mr. Canlon…”

  “Is dead,” she concluded. “While he lived he had no interest in gardens, or even in his food to any great degree. He dined with us on a number of occasions and never seemed to notice what he ate.”

  “Major Tilden? Mr. Elseworth? Mr. Nanton?”

  Mrs. Pembroke appeared puzzled. “The Major lives in rooms and has done so since he left the army. To my knowledge he is not interested in gardens. Nor is Mr. Elseworth, who also lives in rooms, being unmarried. Mr. Nanton likes pot plants and his home is quite a bower, but his plants are of the type that can only survive in warm places. His home is paved outside, with no more than a small lawn, a pond, and a seat or two. He has no flowerbeds, no trees, no flowering shrubs, so I would suppose him also to be uninterested in gardening.”

  “Who keeps up the lawn and pool for him?”

  “He has a chauffeur who does that as well.”

  “I see. I thank you for your assistance then, Mrs. Pembroke.” Pembroke waved for his wife to leave and she did so, with a final puzzled glance as she shut the back door behind her. Pembroke turned to us.

  “Are you satisfied?”

  Holmes considered. “Yes, I think I may say that I am. I must speak to your friends still, and I would ask your promise that…”

  All went as our earlier conversation after that, and once we were outside again I hailed a cab and we were driven to a comfortable eating house. We lunched on lamb with mint sauce, followed by fresh fruit, before being driven to the home of Mr. Nanton, where we found Mrs. Pembroke’s description to be accurate.

  7

  Nanton was a fine-looking man, with a full head of white hair and an upright figure. His home was, as Mrs. Pembroke had told us, a bower of pot plants including many ferns, and the warmth within would have encouraged any plant to grow. In my case it made me wish that I was wearing a suit of lighter weight, and I had no hesitation in accepting the offer of an iced drink. Holmes, too, accepted an offered glass and we sat where indicated, while Nanton eyed us with interest once Holmes had introduced us.

  “I know who you are, Mr. Holmes. You once assisted a friend of mine. What can I do for you?”

  Once again Holmes read the diary entry. This time there was no obvious effect. Nanton pursed his lips as he listened and once Holmes was done he nodded calmly.

  “I presume you are approaching all four of us? Well, I can only tell you what they would doubtless have said: that we threatened to expose Wimbledon, not as a murderer, but as a man who plied another with drink and then used the knowledge gained to cheat those of his club. We could blackball him for that, for the club rules allow that if four men list such an intention, the committee are to meet to hear their complaint.”

  He sat back, draining his glass. “Both Tilden and I are on the committee. I have never been quite satisfied that the membership proposal for Wimbledon was as it should have been, in any case.” He saw my look and nodded. “Yes, Doctor. The young man who proposed Wimbledon as a member killed himself a bare month after Wimbledon joined the club. It was said that he had gambled away all he had and was destitute. But I was certain that was not the entire truth.”

  “Why?” I asked, interested.

  “Because he could not have done so,” was the reply. From the corner of my eye I saw my friend tense.

  “Let us continue with the original discussion, Mr. Nanton,” Holmes said. “But if you have no objection, I would wish to return to the subject of the young man once the other subject is concluded.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “You say that Wimbledon lied when he wrote this entry?” Nanton indicated agreement. “What could be his motive? I do not ask if you know of a motive, unless you do. I ask for conjecture, for any suspicions you may have.”

  I could see that Nanton seriously considered this question, and for several minutes we sat in silence before the man spoke.

  “Wimbledon,” he said, “was an odd man. He never mentioned family, and he seemed to have no friends beyond those at the club who were acquaintances, rather than close friends. He never spoke of his life before he came to London. For some of our members it became almost a sport, to try to find out something of him, to have him reveal even the smallest fact of a previous existence. He never did so. For them it also became an amusement, to try to guess. I have heard it suggested that he was an army deserter, a retired highwayman, an ex-smuggler, or the illegitimate son of a Scottish Lord.”

  His gaze met ours earnestly. “The truth is that I could have seen Wimbledon in any of those roles. There was a whiff of the mountebank about him, as if whatever he did or said did not ring completely true, the hint of a cracked bell in the notes of his existence. When I found that he had seduced poor Canlon into revealing our plans I was unsur
prised. Nor, I find, am I astonished to find that for some reason he wrote in his diary entries that are utterly false. I cannot give you a motive, but I can say this.” His gaze intensified. “I never knew that man to do anything that did not profit him in some way, nor did he ever act without a reason that satisfied him. The entry is false. Therefore in some way it must have done or be doing something he wished to have done.”

  Holmes inclined his head. “I agree with you. Would you therefore say that other entries could be false?”

  Nanton shrugged. “I am not willing to say so; I can only repeat that the entry regarding us is a lie, nor, because of that, would you find any evidence to support it.”

  “That may be so. Now, what can you tell us of the young man who proposed Wimbledon as a member of your club? How did he explain his knowledge of the man, and what did he say of him? Were any checks made as to the facts given?”

  Nanton leaned back and smiled. “You know more of a gentlemen’s club than that, Mr. Holmes. Our system was to accept a proposed member on probation. The proposed member would be admitted as a guest for three months, and if at that time he appeared a true gentleman and it was thought that he would suitably add to our number, the committee would vote. If he received no black ball, then he was admitted. However, if at any time four members of the general membership or two of the committee should raise a question, a vote would again be taken. If he received any black ball at that vote, he would be asked to resign his membership.”

  “So if you and Tilden, being committee members, had demanded Wimbledon’s resignation, he would have had no choice?”

  “That is correct, since at the vote we would have blackballed him.”

  “But,” Holmes said thoughtfully, “at the time he was proposed you accepted him for three months, and later you agreed him to be suitable?”

  “That is so. It was after young James Barker’s death that I became more and more uneasy. The facts of the matter were these. When he proposed the man, James said that he had known Wimbledon for some months and thought him suitable as a member. After probation, Wimbledon was accepted into our club, and a month after that James shot himself. It was said at the time that the boy had played too deep in one of those gambling hells that come and go, and that he was destitute and desperate, but I know this to be untrue. Apart from anything, I had seen him only days earlier, and he was as cheerful and optimistic as ever.”

  He leaned forward again. “The lad’s father had been a good friend of mine for most of our lives and I was James’s godfather. James knew that even if he were ruined he could have come to me. I would have found him employment, as I have two estates near Edinburgh and I would have sent him to manage one of those. He could have entered Edinburgh society without a stain on his reputation and as a gentleman born. Nor, in any case, could he have been as ruined as was claimed.”

  We waited.

  Nanton smiled—a hard, unpleasant look despite the curve of his lips. “Because, gentlemen, I happened to know that an untouchable income was left in trust for the boy. Not great, but sufficient to pay the costs of his estate—also inherited together with the trust income—and to see him fed. His mother’s grandmother had money of her own and on her death she left it to James’s mother. In turn she passed the income on to James, not as a sum of money, but as a trust to be left to James’s daughter, the income to be hers either when she married or when she turned eighteen. The trust could only be wound up and the capital fall to the current recipient or an heir should the line fail of a daughter. It is said that the originator of the trust thought a woman should have money of her own, so that if she were betrayed she need neither starve nor sell herself on the streets.”

  He snorted. “There is some long tale as to that, which you will not with to be bothered hearing. The long and the short of it is, gentlemen, that for whatever reason James may have killed himself, it was not because he was ruined. He had a small but permanent income from the trust, and he was aware that his father and I had been on such terms, and James and I also, that he could apply to me for aid and receive it.”

  Holmes raised an eyebrow. “If it would not pain you too greatly, would you recount to us how James died?”

  “I will do so. While there is no absolute proof he killed himself, all believe it.” He grunted. “I do myself; I merely question why he should have done so. Nor did the boy leave a letter or give an explanation to anyone. To be blunt then, he went shooting over a weekend on the property of a friend, and when he had not returned for dinner the friend’s sister went in search of him and found James lying dead. The gun was in his hands, the muzzle beneath his chin, and his head was—well, you will know the result of that, the both of you, I daresay.”

  “He could not have tripped and fallen, climbing over a stile, perhaps?” I questioned.

  “He wasn’t near any stile, and he’d been walking along a smooth track in the woods. His friend went back and looked. He could find nothing over which James could have stumbled, nor any marks in the earth to confirm that. Besides, the lad was too sensible to be carrying a cocked and loaded gun in such a way; he knew the dangers.” Nanton sighed. “No, I have no choice. It must have been suicide, but for what reason I have never been able to ascertain, and it bothers me still.”

  “How long after Wimbledon joined the club did this occur? Is that taking into account the time that he was a guest?”

  “No, it is not. If you add that it would have been three months and then three weeks and five days after he was accepted that James died.”

  “I see,” was all that Holmes said, but looking at him I thought that he was indeed seeing—something. He fixed his gaze on Nanton again. “My request will be painful, but I must ask that you describe James’s appearance upon his death. You say that the gun was pressed firmly under his chin?”

  Our host flinched. “I regret my words, for I only repeated what I was told by those who found his body. I saw it for myself a day later when his body was washed and ready for burial. If you desire such an account you will need to travel to the home of James’s friend.” He gave the address and I noted it carefully.

  “Thank you,” Holmes said. “And where did James live? Are his rooms likely to be available to me to look over?”

  “Yes, a cousin inherited the remaining country estate. It is only a few acres with a small cottage, and of course, the trust income, but she lives there happily, I am told.” He listed that address as well—not far from where James had died—and again I wrote it down. “Now, if that is all I can do for you….”

  Holmes stood and held out his hand. “Thank you for your assistance in this,” he said. “I can only ask that you do not speak of my visit to your other friends until I have had a chance to find out more.”

  Nanton agreed and we departed. Once in the cab and bowling towards our fourth address I looked at my friend.

  “You think he is right, and the entry is a lie?”

  “I think that it may be.”

  “And Barker’s death, you have doubts on that?”

  “I do. Young men do kill themselves for many reasons, but not usually because they are bored or think it an amusing pastime. You heard Nanton. The lad was ‘as cheerful and optimistic as ever,’ he said. Does such a boy, with other resources available to him even were he ruined, kill himself, and moreover on a friend’s land, leaving the friend or a member of the friend’s family—as happened—to discover that unpleasant scene? I think not, Watson.”

  Upon consideration I thought him to be right. It would be ill-done, a breach of hospitality. If a gentleman felt his existence was insupportable he might decide to slay himself, but he would not do it where a girl he knew might come upon the body.

  “He may not have thought that the sister would find him,” I offered.

  “If she was within the house it must always be a possibility,” Holmes retorted. “I think we should go to that address and ask there of the circumstances. At present I am inclined to think it unlikely that James died by
his own hand.”

  “Accident or murder?”

  “Murder is also more likely.”

  “But by whom?”

  Holmes merely looked out of the window without a direct reply to my question. “We appear to have arrived, Watson.”

  Our fourth interview was short and entirely fruitless. Holmes read the diary entry. Mr. Elsworth was outraged, Holmes attempted to question him, and we were summarily shown the door.

  “And do not return! I don’t know what your idea is, blackmail most likely, and I’m no man to play that game. Wimbledon was a liar, and if you come here again I’ll call the police.” The door shut with a slam and Holmes and I were left standing on the pavement.

  I laughed. “I have a feeling that the man is innocent.”

  “Yes. If he had any consciousness at all of guilt he is not like to be so cavalier. It could be a bluff, but like you, Watson, I think him to be innocent. Which brings us to an interesting conclusion. All four of the men Wimbledon accused of knowing about the murder appear to be unaware of that event.”

  “There’s that lad’s death.”

  “As you say. I think that tomorrow we shall inquire further on it.”

  I hailed a cab, giving 221 Baker Street as our destination, and as we drove away I turned to Holmes. “As to James’s death. What relevance can that have?”

  “Only this, Watson. Wimbledon—or Jarvis as we know him to have been originally—had been accepted as a gentleman and had joined a gentleman’s club. There is some evidence that he was using that membership to obtain information that allowed him to become wealthy and fulfill his boyhood wishes. Nanton and the others did not become suspicious of Wimbledon for three years, and then they took no action. But how if James had uncovered the deception earlier? What if some slip on Wimbledon’s part allowed the boy to guess that his supposed friend was a deceiver and no gentleman?”