Sherlock Holmes Stories of Edward D. Hoch

by Edward D. Hoch

  “I found it under Blackthorn’s body when I lifted it. I believe it slipped out of his pocket.”

  I studied the notations. “They seem to be a list of boot sizes.”

  “My dear friend,” said Holmes, “have you ever seen boot sizes expressed in just three numbers like that?”

  “What else could it mean?”

  “I have a suspicion.” He turned to our host. “Come now, Mr. Dobson. Isn’t it time you told us what you know about all this?”

  “I know nothing!” the man insisted.

  Just then, we were interrupted by a knock at the study door. It opened just a crack, allowing Samuels, the butler, to announce the arrival of Constable Wallace.

  As the door was closing again, Holmes called out, “Samuels, could you come in for a moment?”

  The tall butler entered the room with some reluctance, his eyes downcast. “Yes, sir?”

  “I’d like to ask you about the pillow that went with the Father Christmas costume. I assume it was used if the wearer of the costume needed more girth up front.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And the pillow came from one of the upstairs bedrooms?”

  “What has this got to do with Blackthorn’s murder?” Edgar Dobson wanted to know. “Of course the pillow came from a bedroom, probably one of the guest bedrooms. Why do you ask?”

  “Because when the killer stabbed Blackthorn and ripped the pillow, he had to replace it. He had to go up to the second floor of this house and procure another pillow, so the original slashed one could be hidden. That is not something a guest would do, nor one of the servants hired for the party. Certainly your cooks were far too busy in the kitchen at meal time.”

  “Are you accusing me…”

  “You seemed to be very involved with your guests during the crucial period. There’s also the question of your size. If we assume the two men tussled before Blackthorn was fatally stabbed, it seems unlikely you could have overpowered him, Mr. Dobson. Whereas we have seen Samuels here do exactly that this very evening.”

  The butler’s face had gone white at those words. He uttered an oath and turned toward the door, but Holmes was already upon him.

  “What is this?” he demanded.

  “It was you who killed him, you who replaced the torn pillow. But the police are here now, and your conspiracy is at an end!”

  I was astounded by this turn of events. “Holmes, are you telling us the butler did it?”

  Holmes ripped away the flesh-colored skullcap and fake hair, revealing the head of a much younger man.

  “Only in a sense, Watson. You see, Samuels the butler is really William Ascott, engaged not in fighting the Boers, but in swindling his wife out of her land.”

  It was not until later, when he was explaining it all to a devastated Elvira Ascott, that I learned the full story from Holmes. Edgar Dobson had been arrested along with Ascott, and we were at the station awaiting the last train back to London when Holmes repeated what he’d told the police.

  “My first clue to your husband’s involvement was your meeting with Jules Blackthorn at the ballet on the very day that Dobson had made his offer for your land. You insisted you’d not told Dobson of your plans, yet this bogus solicitor was there to accost you. It seemed to me that only your husband, who’d planned to accompany you, knew in advance that you’d be at the ballet. When you said his group of volunteers had only recently departed, and after Erskine Childers indicated he believed he was in the first group, leaving just after New Year’s, I began to wonder. Was it possible that your husband was still secretly in London, and his New Year’s departure was the reason Dobson wanted the land deal completed before that date?”

  “I…I can’t believe that was the case. What did William hope to accomplish?”

  “He and Edgar Dobson had entered into a conspiracy with Blackthorn to get that land from you, one way or another. I regret to say this, Mrs. Ascott, but the conspiracy may have existed more than a year ago, even before your marriage.”

  A sob caught in her throat at his words. “You mean he married me to gain control of that piece of worthless property?”

  “It was not worthless to him. Blackthorn was offering a good deal of money for the land. But William learned, to his sorrow, that even in the case of your death, the land would pass to your sister’s children in America.”

  “Do you believe he would have killed me for it?”

  “Thankfully we never had to face that question.”

  “But how did you know the butler was really my husband?”

  “There were a number of things. Chief among them was my observation that he frequently averted his face when in your presence. Even with the false hair and makeup he used in his days as an amateur actor, he feared recognition. Then there was the obvious fact that he was left-handed, demonstrated when he was cutting the meat and when he grabbed Blackthorn with his left hand. In the photograph of your husband that you showed us, he was tall like Samuels and he was firing a pistol with his left hand.”

  “If Blackthorn was in league with them, why was he killed?” I asked.

  “Dobson said it was because they were taking too long to complete the transaction. Blackthorn had been patient for a year, and now his orders were to force you to sign the contract by any means possible. Your husband opposed that. This evening, when he forcibly removed Blackthorn from our presence, instead of showing him to the door, he took him to that sitting room and stabbed him, using the pillow to protect himself from blood stains. Then, of course, he had to replace the pillow for the Father Christmas costume.”

  “But why was William disguised as a butler in the first place?”

  “I believe he’d grown truly fond of you during the year of your marriage. As I indicated, he opposed the use of any force against your person, and insisted on being present while you were at Dobson’s house. The butler disguise seemed most practical for his purpose and, indeed, he did protect you from Blackthorn.”

  “Why were they so anxious to buy that worthless land from me?” Elvira Ascott wanted to know.

  “It wasn’t worthless to Dobson. It provided him with a connecting link to the sea. Any boats bringing men to Dobson’s estate needed that strip of land to deliver the men without raising a premature alarm.”

  “Boats?”

  “Blackthorn was an agent of the German government. He carried a list of the boat numbers in his notebook. The word ‘boot’ means ‘boat’ in German.”

  “You mean Germans would have been landing here?” I asked.

  Sherlock Holmes nodded. “In large numbers. Our dinner companion tonight, Mr. Childers, suggested that very thing. He was more correct than he knew. But, here, I believe our train is approaching at last!”

  Ascott and Dobson were convicted of murder and conspiracy, and the German angle to the investigation was never made public. It was not until three years later that our dinner companion, Erskine Childers, wrote a fictionalized version of his suspicions involving a German invasion titled The Riddle of the Sands. It became his most successful novel.

  THE ADVENTURE OF

  THE ANONYMOUS AUTHOR

  IT WAS A BLEAK April afternoon in 1902, ten days after our early Easter and the first full year into King Edward’s reign, and Holmes and I had remained close to the fire. I was reading the latest issue of Strand Magazine, while he puttered in the next room with one of his scientific experiments.

  It was Mrs. Hudson who announced our visitors in her usual manner. “A man and a boy to see Mr. Holmes on a business matter,” she said, after knocking on the door and presenting him with a calling card.

  Holmes frowned at the interruption, but instructed her to send the visitors up. He quickly slipped on his dressing gown to cover a shirt stained with chemicals and said to me, “Well, Watson, this appears to be an acquaintance of yours.”

  “Of mine?”

  “Mr. Rutherford Wilson, a sub-editor of that magazine where your literary agent has placed several of your fl
amboyant accounts of my cases.”

  “You mean the Strand?” I asked, holding up the issue I was reading. But, by that time, there came a second knock and the door opened to admit a middle-aged man wearing pince-nez and an obvious toupee. Accompanying him was a red-haired boy, perhaps ten or eleven years of age, his hands almost hidden by the sleeves of a grey winter coat.

  “Mr. Holmes,” the man said, managing a nervous smile as he thrust the boy ahead of him into our parlor. “I hope you’ll excuse my bringing Roddy along, but he so wanted to meet you. He’s read about all of your early adventures in our magazine. Roddy, this is the famous Mr. Sherlock Holmes. And you must be Dr. Watson.”

  I acknowledged the fact and shook his hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met, though I have lunched with my literary agent and Mr. Greenbough Smith on occasion at the Café Royal.”

  Rutherford Wilson quickly nodded. “I am a mere sub-editor at the Strand. Mr. Smith is our chief editor, as you know. He dearly wishes there would be more of your stories, Doctor, now that Mr. Holmes is truly back among us.”

  “Perhaps there will be,” I replied, glancing at Holmes, “though there is some reluctance on his part to allow the recording of his more sensational cases.”

  Ever since entering our rooms, the boy had not taken his wide eyes off Holmes. He seemed at a loss for words, so Holmes bent to shake his hand. “So good to meet you, Master Roddy. Might I offer you a cup of hot cocoa while your father and I talk?”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Holmes smiled and rang for Mrs. Hudson. Then he addressed our visitor. Your older son did not wish to accompany you?”

  Wilson was taken aback. “Do you know of my family, Mr. Holmes?”

  “No, but I observe that young Roddy’s coat seems a bit long in the sleeves, the sort that would have been handed down by an older brother.”

  “And you are quite correct. Richard is thirteen and away at school, or I am sure he would have wanted to meet you, too.” He smiled in admiration. “Dr. Watson has not exaggerated your powers of observation, Mr. Holmes.”

  When Mrs. Hudson returned with the boy’s hot cocoa, I gave him a picture book to look through while we talked with his father. “What brings you to us, Mr. Wilson?” Holmes asked.

  “It is a matter of one of our authors at the Strand. If you read the magazine regularly…”

  “I leave that for Watson,” Holmes assured him.

  “Well then, Dr. Watson,” he said, turning to me with a bit of reluctance. “Perhaps you remember a long story, ‘The Missing Passenger,’ that appeared in our Christmas issue. It was almost novel length and was published anonymously. I have brought you a copy to read.”

  I remembered it vaguely. “A man vanishes from a train…”

  “That’s the one! You know some authors prefer to publish anonymously, for one reason or another. Your own literary agent, Dr. Doyle, published an anonymous story in the Strand many years ago.”

  “I never knew that.”

  “Oh, yes. Our problem now is that the story has proven so popular a leading publisher wants to bring it out in book form. But we have no idea as to the author’s true identity.”

  “How is that possible?” Holmes wanted to know. “Surely someone submitted the story. Surely someone was paid for it.”

  “The author gave the name Catherine Birlstone, but, since she was using a post office address, I suspected it was a pseudonym. Later, she instructed me to publish it anonymously.”

  “Where did you send the payment?”

  “To a Miss Catherine Birlstone in care of the Croydon post office. She collected her mail there but, when I visited them, they knew nothing more about her. I realize this isn’t a criminal matter, but you’re our last hope of finding her, Mr. Holmes. I thought you might discover some clue to her identity in reading the story. I’ve brought you a copy.”

  “Have you written her about the book offer?”

  “Of course. Several times. I explained that the publisher wanted to issue it under her own name and that it would bring her a certain amount of fame, as well as money. She replied that she wasn’t interested in the offer and, since then, she has simply ignored my letters.”

  Holmes considered that. “Tell me something. How soon after your first letter did this mysterious Catherine Birlstone respond?”

  “At once. The very next day.”

  “So, she probably calls at the post office for her mail each day,” he mused. Then, surprisingly, he turned to the boy. “Master Roddy, if you have read about some of my investigations, as written up by the good doctor here, you are no doubt familiar with my Baker Street Irregulars.”

  He nodded at once. “They are local street urchins you sometimes recruit to search for clues. Their leader is young Wiggins.”

  Holmes allowed himself a smile. “Wiggins is grown to adulthood now, but the spirit of the Irregulars remains. Unfortunately, their ungainly appearance makes them ill-suited to the working class borough of Croydon. Whereas you, Master Roddy, would be perfect.”

  “What…what would I have to do?” he asked uncertainly.

  “We will send Miss Catherine Birlstone a letter to her Croydon post office address. It will be some sort of bogus flyer in a brightly colored envelope that is easily recognized. If you can manage to linger at or near the post office and follow the woman who picks up the envelope, I believe we can locate your mysterious author with a minimum of effort. Dr. Watson can accompany you there and see that you return safely.

  “A brilliant plan!” Rutherford Wilson exclaimed. “You can follow her right to her lodgings, Roddy. Once we know her true name and address, I will make an effort to convince her that she should allow publication of the book.”

  When we were alone, I asked Holmes what had attracted him to such a mundane matter. “After all, no crime has been committed.”

  “Birlstone,” Holmes said simply. “It has been more than a dozen years, but you must remember Birlstone Manor House, the residence of Mr. John Douglas. You should write up that affair, involved as it was with Moriarty, one of these days. Birlstone is an unusual name, and I wonder why our author would have chosen it as a pseudonym, or if it really is a pseudonym.”

  The letter was dispatched the following afternoon in a bright blue envelope and, on Friday morning, I took a hansom with young Roddy to the borough of Croydon on the southern edge of the city. It was an area of factories with nearby houses for workers and their families. The post office itself was located in a soot-stained brick building near an old cemetery. While I lingered in a tea shop across the road, the lad positioned himself near the door of the building. Luckily the weather had improved for the day and London was experiencing a rare morning of April sunshine.

  After a full hour of this, I was prepared to give it up. A postman leaving in his red, blue and gold uniform, carrying a large sack of mail for delivery, gave Roddy a suspicious glance. Surely Holmes could not expect us to remain there for the entire day, watching for a woman who might never come. I ordered another cup of tea and some biscuits, deciding to give it a half-hour more.

  Then the lad seemed to disappear for a moment among some more postmen departing on their rounds. When I saw him again, he was talking to a young girl who couldn’t have been too much older than he was. Even as I watched, the two set off together down the road. I paid my bill and hurried outside. What had happened to cause Roddy to desert his post and go off with a girl?

  I fell into step about fifty yards behind them, feeling just a bit like a foolish uncle keeping track of his wayward nephew. Then I saw a sudden flash of blue and all became clear. Roddy had struck up a conversation with the girl because it was she who had called for the mail. She was carrying it now, protruding from the top of her small purse. I guessed correctly that she had not come far, and she turned in at the first house beyond the cemetery, giving a little goodbye wave to Roddy. The front door opened and I saw a young blond woman greet the child, keeping a wary eye on Roddy as he hurried away.
<
br />   I kept walking, trying to seem inconspicuous, until both the lad and I had rounded a corner out of sight of the house. When he realized I was following, he waited for me to catch up.

  “That girl picked up the mail,” he told me excitedly. “Her name is Jenny and she lives with her big sister Catherine. I told her I’d just moved in down the road.”

  “You did very well,” I assured him. “Holmes will be pleased.”

  I was able to gather some information of my own by speaking with a neighbor down the street who happened to be out in her yard. She eyed me with some suspicion at first, but finally informed me that Catherine Crider and her younger sister Jenny indeed lived in the house by the cemetery. Miss Crider was a teacher at a private school in the neighborhood.

  On Saturday morning, when Rutherford Wilson paid a second visit to our lodgings, Holmes was able to tell the Strand editor everything we’d learned.

  “Roddy was a great help,” he informed the boy’s father. “I would welcome him into my small band of Irregulars at any time.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you, sir! I will call upon Miss Catherine Crider this very afternoon.”

  While I had been out the previous day, Holmes surprised me by reading the magazine Wilson had brought for us. It was one of his rare ventures into popular fiction, and he said now, “Her tale of the man who disappears on a train to Rome is a really good detective story. I would very much like to meet the author sometime.”

  Rutherford Wilson took up the suggestion at once. “Come with me now, Mr. Holmes. And Dr. Watson, too! Perhaps the three of us together can convince her that ‘The Missing Passenger’ deserves book publication under her own name.”

  Holmes pondered the suggestion and then, to my surprise, he agreed. He had become convinced that this singular case warranted his attention. In a moment, he had donned his greatcoat and deerstalker against the chill April air and we were on our way to Croydon by carriage.

  The blond young woman who answered the door to face three strange men was the one I’d glimpsed briefly the previous day, though her face seemed older when viewed up close. Wilson identified himself and asked to speak with her. She ushered us into a plain sitting room with some reluctance.