The Secret Documents of Sherlock Holmes

by June Thomson

  ‘It was over half an hour before there was any sign of activity and I had begun to believe that nothing further would happen, when the front door of number 19 opened and Miss Holland emerged, accompanied by a man, a woman and a little boy.’

  ‘The family in the second photograph!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Indeed so, Watson. In no apparent haste, they set off on foot to Battersea Park to where I followed them at a discreet distance and where, like other families on that summer Sunday afternoon, they strolled about on the grass, enjoying the sunshine and the fresh air. The man, the father of the child I assumed, had brought a ball with him and he entertained his small son by throwing it to him or kicking it to and fro across the grass.

  ‘They were joined shortly afterwards by a tall, dark-haired young man who shook hands all round and proceeded to accompany them on their afternoon walk. He was particularly assiduous, I noticed, in his attentions to Miss Holland, walking beside her and engaging her in conversation. She, in turn, seemed modestly appreciative of his company, not spurning it but not actively encouraging it either. In short, Watson, I had the impression that while he was strongly attracted to Miss Holland, she was not so certain of her own feelings towards him.

  ‘After about three quarters of an hour, the second man took his leave and the family, including Miss Holland, returned to the house in Clifford Street where I, too, left them and made my way back to Montague Street. I felt I had seen enough and gathered together sufficient information about Miss Holland’s Sunday excursion to follow up my own inquiries at some future date.

  ‘I began at the Battersea end of the investigation. As well as the public house, the Bunch of Cherries, on the comer of Clifford Street, there was also on the other side of the road a small grocer’s shop which served the housewives in the neighbourhood. On the pretext of having to deliver a message to the family at number 19 whose surname I had embarrassingly forgotten, I learned they were the Chapells. The grocer’s wife, a garrulous lady, pleased to be diverted from the boredom of weighing out sugar and cutting cheese, added a little more information to this stark fact. So it was from her I learned that they were a respectable family, the husband being a clerk at Morgan and Whitestone’s, the tea importers in Ludgate Circus, while Mrs Chapell had been employed before her marriage as a governess.

  ‘Having found out all I could at Battersea, the following day I retraced Miss Holland’s steps to the churchyard of St Margaret’s in Banham Cross and there added a few more facts to my growing collection.

  ‘The grave at which Miss Holland had prayed so earnestly the previous Sunday afternoon had inscribed on its headstone the name Henry Charles Grayson and the dates 1847 to 1876 from which I deduced that Henry Charles Grayson had died at the relatively early age of twenty-nine.

  ‘For some reason which I could not then define, the name Henry Grayson seemed oddly familiar to me although I could not recall where I had read it, for I seemed to associate it with a written source. While I was pondering on this elusive reference, I was approached by a middle-aged, strongly built man, a gravedigger I assumed from his attire and the fresh earth on his boots and hands, who was curious to know why I, a stranger, should be interested in that particular grave.

  ‘Thank God for human curiosity, Watson! While one might deplore the habit of neighbours spying on one another’s activities, as a private consulting detective I have to confess that on occasions their observations have proved invaluable to my inquiries. It was so in this case.

  ‘“I am an amateur genealogist, interested in tracing my family history,” I replied. “I believe Henry Grayson could be a distant cousin of mine. I see he died tragically young.”

  ‘“Tragic!” said he. “You’re right there, sir.”

  ‘In a strong country accent, which I shall not attempt to reproduce, he went on to tell me that Henry Grayson had been a fine, well-set-up young gentleman, a solicitor in the town, who was knocked down and killed by a two-horse van one February morning when he was crossing the road to his office, leaving a widow with one small child. Not long after his death, she took the baby and went to live in London to be near her sister.’

  ‘Holmes!’ I interjected. ‘That explains everything!’

  ‘Does it, Watson?’ he inquired, leaning back in his chair and regarding me with an amused indulgence. ‘Pray expound your theory.’

  ‘Well,’ said I, warming to the task and thinking that Holmes was being a little obtuse in not coming to the same conclusion, ‘Mrs Grayson left the child in the care of her sister, the Mrs Chapell who lives in Battersea. When I examined the photographs, I thought there was a strong family resemblance in the two women. She then reverted to her maiden name, Miss Emma Holland, and took up the post of governess with Mrs Cecil Forrester in order to support the child. It is not an uncommon practice, I believe, for married women to use their maiden names under such circumstances. As governesses, single ladies are usually preferred to married women, even widows.’

  ‘An ingenious theory!’ Holmes exclaimed. ‘However, you have failed to take into account one important piece of evidence.’

  ‘Have I, Holmes? And what is that?’

  ‘The fact that the Miss Emma Holland who was employed by the Honourable Mrs Gore Hamilton was not the same Miss Emma Holland whom Mrs Forrester appointed as governess to her children. If you remember, Watson, that Miss Holland always wore a high-necked dress whereas the first Miss Holland rarely did so.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I see, Holmes,’ I said, considerably abashed. ‘What then is the explanation? I assume there is one.’

  ‘Of course there is, my dear fellow. All apparent mysteries of human contrivance, however complex, may be solved, providing in this case one has enough evidence and asks the right questions, in this case which Miss Emma Holland was which? The lady using that name had clearly set out to deceive Mrs Forrester about her true identity. The next question was: why should an apparently respectable young lady wish to carry out such a deception? I felt it was not merely her marital status she wished to conceal. Why go to such lengths if that were the only motive? It was not the child either; that was evidently legitimate. It therefore had to be something else in the young lady’s past.

  ‘As you know, Watson, I have a retentive memory and can store information, even the most trivial, in my mind on which I can draw later when the need arises.* It was so in this case. As I told you earlier, the name Henry Grayson had seemed strangely familiar to me although the exact date eluded me. I suddenly recalled that it had featured in a newspaper report I had read comparatively recently.

  ‘It was my custom then, as now, to keep copies of old newspapers, especially those which contained interesting reports about crime and its punishment.† I had the date of Henry Grayson’s death which was February 1876. I also knew that his widow had moved to London shortly after the funeral. I therefore deduced this removal had taken place almost certainly in the same year. In addition, Mrs Forrester had told me that the governess calling herself Miss Emma Holland had been in her employment for about a year. As Mrs Forrester had consulted me in 1879, I now had enough information to compute the simple sum and from it to conclude that whatever I had read containing the name Henry Grayson, it must have been in that two-year period between 1876 and 1878.

  ‘A search through my newspaper archives which covered these dates was eventually successful although it was a tedious business. It was in one of the more popular daily papers which I had kept because it contained a report on the arrest of William Carpenter, the notorious bigamist. On the same page was a short report under a general heading of “Life at the Bar”, a facetious title for the article contained amusing or sensational snippets about cases heard at criminal courts; I often read it because its contents were sometimes unusual. In it there was an item concerning a Mrs Henry Grayson who on 4th March 1877 was found guilty of attempted suicide and was sentenced to six months in prison.’

  ‘Oh, Holmes!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘You may well be horrified, W
atson. Although I do not for a moment defend the act of felo de se,* I consider it a blot on a civilised society that any poor wretch who is driven by circumstances to make an attempt on his or her own life should be so hounded by the law.†

  ‘Later, I was to hear the full story from Mrs Grayson’s own lips. It was a tragic account. After the death of her husband, Mrs Grayson, whose Christian name incidentally was Elizabeth, had decided to move to London where her older sister Emma, her only living relative, was employed as governess by the Honourable Mrs Gore Hamilton. Before her marriage, Mrs Grayson had herself been a governess to a family in Banham Cross which was how she had met Henry Grayson. In London, Mrs Grayson took lodgings in Chelsea where at first she was able to support herself and her child from the money left her by her late husband. However, because he had not been very long in practice, the legacy was not large and Mrs Grayson was soon forced to move to cheaper lodgings and to attempt to earn a living by taking in sewing and giving piano lessons.

  ‘As a society, Watson, we pay too little regard to the Mrs Graysons of this world, impoverished gentlewoman who, left without a breadwinner, struggle to maintain themselves and their children, only to find that, however great their efforts, they are slipping deeper and deeper into poverty and despair.

  ‘It was this despair which drove Mrs Grayson to attempt to take her own life. Leaving the child in the care of her landlady, she took a room in a cheap hotel where she tried to hang herself. Fortunately, in view of subsequent events, she was discovered in time. A chambermaid, who happened to be passing the room, heard a crash as the chair was kicked away and curious to find out what was happening – thank God once again, Watson, for that human inclination to pry into other people’s lives! – used her pass key to open the door. Her screams brought the manager running. Mrs Grayson was cut down, revived and taken to Charing Cross hospital where she made a full recovery, apart from a scar left by the rope on the right side of her throat. Hence her custom always to wear a high-necked dress to cover up the mark which she regarded as an indelible stigma of her shame.

  ‘For the manager of the hotel, an officious man who was anxious to keep within the law, had reported her attempted suicide to the police and handed over to them a letter she had written, addressed to her sister. No sooner had she regained her full health than she was arrested, tried and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment.

  ‘Her sister was, of course, informed and visited her regularly in prison. It was this same sister, Emma, who made arrangements for the care of the child and found a suitable foster-mother. It was also she who contrived the deception.

  ‘Miss Holland had a fiancé to whom she was secretly engaged and whom she planned to marry a little later in the year. As she did not want to jeopardise her position in the Honourable Mrs Gore Hamilton’s household, she had said nothing to her employer about these personal arrangements.

  ‘When Mrs Grayson was released from prison, she would need to find employment in order to support herself and her child. Why not exchange identities? her sister suggested. She, Miss Emma Holland, would give in her notice to Mrs Gore Hamilton and ask for a reference. Mrs Grayson could then, using that reference and the name Emma Holland, apply for a post elsewhere. In the meantime, the real Miss Emma Holland would marry, set up home with her husband and care for her sister’s child.

  ‘It seemed an admirable solution to the problem.’

  ‘And you heard all this from Mrs Grayson’s own lips?’ I inquired.

  ‘Yes; at least those parts of the account which I had not already deduced from my own investigation. On the Sunday following my discovery of the report in the newspaper, I presented myself at 19 Clifford Street at four o’clock, the time I estimated Mrs Grayson would have returned from visiting her husband’s grave. Mr George Chapell answered the door and, when I gave my name and asked to speak privately with Mrs Grayson, he showed me into a small sitting room where she soon joined me.

  ‘At that time, I had not been long in practice and the name Sherlock Holmes was not known to her. Besides, when she had first met me at Mrs Forrester’s, I had been introduced to her as Clement Stanley, a family friend. Once this confusion had been resolved, I told her the reason for my visit and those facts I had already discovered. She listened without speaking, her eyes cast down and her hands clasped in her lap.

  ‘At the end of my account, I added, “I shall not, of course, pass any of this information to Mrs Forrester without your permission. She came to consult me not out of idle curiosity but from a natural desire to find out the truth in case it affected her children’s well-being. If it is your wish, I shall simply tell her that I have made some inquiries and that I can assure her there is no need for her to feel any alarm.”

  ‘You spoke earlier, Watson, of the young lady’s obvious intelligence. To that accolade, I would add two other qualities: her remarkable fortitude and honesty. After I had finished speaking, she sat for a few seconds in quiet contemplation and then, raising her eyes, looked me straight in the face.

  ‘“Thank you, Mr Holmes, for your offer to keep silent about my past history,” she replied. “But I feel it is my duty to speak to Mrs Forrester myself. As she has been so very kind to me during the year I have spent in her employment, it is time I told her the truth, as I should have done at the very beginning. Had I not been so desperate to earn a living, I would have admitted everything and thrown myself on her mercy.”

  ‘She then went on to give an account of those aspects of her past life which I had not already deduced, including confirmation of one small detail which I had, in fact, already guessed. The clue to it may be seen in her photograph.’

  ‘The wedding ring?’ I ventured.

  ‘Exactly, Watson. As Miss Holland, she could not wear it openly on her finger so she carried it on a chain about her neck.’

  ‘What happened to her afterwards?’ I inquired eagerly.

  ‘As she had declared to me, Miss Holland, or rather Mrs Grayson, confessed everything to Mrs Forrester who, being, as you know, a most kind-hearted lady, kept her on as governess for a further year.’

  ‘That is so typical of her,’ I said warmly. ‘And after that? Did you hear nothing more of Mrs Grayson?’

  ‘I had a letter from her shortly after she left Mrs Forrester’s employment. It was to announce her marriage to James Fairclough, the tall, dark-haired young man she had met in Battersea Park on that Sunday afternoon. Fairclough was a fellow clerk of her brother-in-law, George Chapell, at Morgan and Whitestone’s which is how Mrs Grayson had made his acquaintance.’

  At this point Holmes stopped as if he had come to the end of his narrative. But there still remained one aspect of the case for which he had so far not offered an explanation. I was puzzled by this as Holmes was usually so meticulous in laying out all the facts, however small. Although in this particular instance the omission did not affect the outcome of the inquiry, I nevertheless thought it strange that Holmes had not referred to it.

  Moved by the same curiosity which my old friend had himself commented on during his account, I decided to put the question directly to him.

  ‘How were you able to acquire the photographs?’ I inquired.

  ‘Oh, those!’ he replied in a dismissive manner as if the subject had no significance whatsoever. ‘In my letter of congratulations to Mrs Grayson, or rather Mrs Fairclough as she now was, I happened to remark in passing that I would keep her letter as a memento of the case and its successful conclusion. It was meant, of course, as nothing more than mere civility. But Mrs Fairclough must have taken my remark seriously for, by return of post, she sent me those two photographs. I have kept them in my tin trunk* along with all the other records of my cases purely as a relic for, as you know, Watson, unlike you. I am not the least romantic.’

  ‘Of course not, Holmes!’ I agreed stoutly, suppressing a smile. Although in the past I have had cause to comment on Holmes’ lack of emotion, describing him on one occasion as ‘a brain without a heart,’* he was also capabl
e of finer feelings, even of moments of sentimentality for he kept the sovereign Irene Adler had given him as payment for acting as witness at her marriage to Godfrey Norton, and wore it on his watch-chain as a memento.†

  No doubt, Holmes would claim that this was intended only as a wry reminder of the one case in which he had been beaten by a woman. Nevertheless, I like to think that his heart may also have been touched, if only a little, by the former Mrs Grayson’s tragic plight and her courage in facing adversity.

  Although I never met her, I had my own reasons for feeling grateful to Mrs Grayson for it was because of her retirement from Mrs Forrester’s household that Mary Morstan was employed as governess in her place which, in turn, had led to our meeting and subsequent marriage.

  When looking back at the past, I have frequently been struck by the thought that, despite our freedom of will, it is often mere chance which is a major factor in determining our fate, whether for good or ill.

  Because of the strong link this case has had with my own past, I have decided not to publish my account of it. I have also in mind the people who were involved in the inquiry, in particular Mrs Fairclough and her small son, who I hope have found happiness at last and who deserve to live out their lives in privacy, as no doubt they themselves would prefer.

  * Mr Sherlock Holmes considered the case of the Red-head League to be so difficult that it would take him three pipefuls of tobacco to ponder successfully over the problem. Dr John F. Watson.

  † Dr John H. Watson first met Miss Mary Morstan, his future wife, in 1888 when she asked Mr Sherlock Holmes to inquire into the disappearance of her father, Captain Arthur Morstan. Vide: ‘The Sign of Four’. Dr John F. Watson.