The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--The Counterfeit Detective

by Stuart Douglas

  He stared uncomprehendingly for a moment or two, then collected himself enough to answer. “To the servants’ hall. Downstairs. The other end is on the wall in an alcove off the kitchen.”

  “Splendid! Watson, give me two minutes to reach the other end of this tube, then stand here by the fireplace and speak for a minute or so, on a topic of your choice.”

  With that, he departed the room, leaving Hoffmann and myself in an awkward silence. I could think of no way to make Holmes’s behaviour seem any less eccentric, so, in the absence of anything else to do, I took up position by the fireplace and, for the next minute and a half, recited a Burns poem I had learned at school.

  I broke off as Holmes reappeared in the doorway, pleasure plain on his face.

  “Weel done. ‘Cutty-sark’, indeed, Watson!” he exclaimed. “Pastor, one final matter, if I may?”

  Hoffmann gave no reply beyond an indifferent shrug, which Holmes decided to treat as agreement.

  “Very good,” he said. “Would you object if we paid the shortest of visits to the kitchen staff on our way out? I should like to satisfy my own curiosity, if you have no objection.”

  Once again, Hoffmann’s only response was a fleeting movement of his shoulders.

  “Thank you,” he said, as he and I left the pastor’s study. The sound of sobbing followed us as we made our way towards the stairs.

  * * *

  There was only one servant who interested Holmes. He was a pale-faced young man of about twenty, engaged a half year previously as a general footman and answering to the name Jonathan Eales.

  Holmes began by asking him about the speaking tube.

  “Tell me, Eales, how long have you known that you might eavesdrop on your master, simply by listening through the speaking tube that connects the servants’ area with the pastor’s study?”

  I thought Eales would say nothing, but after some thought he shook his head. “I knew nothing of that sort, sir.”

  Holmes affected exaggerated surprise. “Really? You have never noticed? It is a most striking effect, you know. Why, I myself have spent the last few minutes suffering through the worst reading of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ known to man, every word carried via that tube to the kitchen. Now what have you to say to that?”

  The smallest of shrugs was the only sign that Eales had even heard Holmes.

  “You intend to say nothing, then? Very well, I shall speak for both of us. Do stop me if you believe I have misrepresented anything. One, you are newly employed at Pastor Hoffmann’s, the only new employee for several years. That is fact. Two, you are in the habit of listening in to your master’s conversations via the speaking tube. That, I grant you, is conjecture, but conjecture with strong evidence at its back. Three, you made a little extra money recently by passing a name and address you had so overheard to an interested party, leading to the commission of a murder. That is cause for hanging.” His brow furrowed with concern as he laid a hand on the youngster’s shoulder. “Tell us what you know, Eales, and in return we will do all we can to intercede on your behalf with the police.”

  “You can’t prove anything!” The words tumbled angrily out of the young man’s mouth and were then bitten off as he retreated once more into dumb silence.

  “Quite correct, though poorly expressed. We can prove nothing at the moment, but rest assured, that will not always be the case. And as soon as we can prove your complicity in the murder, any help we can give you will disappear.”

  “Come now, lad, help yourself.” I added what weight I could to Holmes’s plea, but if the words either of us spoke had an effect on Eales, he kept it close to his chest and would not be convinced.

  “I’m saying nothing,” he muttered, not sullenly or resentfully, as one might expect from a youthful miscreant caught red-handed, but almost proudly.

  “Perhaps not,” said Holmes, obviously realising he would get no information from Eales for the moment. “But that may not always be the case.” He picked up his hat and gloves from the table on which he had dropped them. “Rest assured, Eales. We will be back.”

  In truth, there was little we could do to him. We would give his name to Inspector Bullock and, with luck, Bullock would arrange someone to watch him, but if he would not talk, all we had was supposition and conjecture.

  “If we cannot convince Hoffmann to divulge the friend he sacrificed,” he mused as we looked for a cab, “nor Eales to tell us to whom he spoke, then we must look elsewhere for a further avenue of investigation.”

  “You have something in mind, Holmes?”

  “I do.” Holmes shrugged on his jacket and ran a finger down the list of names in front of him. “If Rawlins’s earlier victims remain a closed book to us, perhaps the last may prove less obstructive.”

  His finger rested upon the name typed at the very bottom of the list. “I think we should pay Mrs Elizabeth Lockhart a second visit,” he said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I was beginning to feel that we were unwelcome at every door in New York. Mrs Lockhart would, I believe, have refused us entry altogether had we not asked Inspector Bullock to accompany us. It was only the sight of his police identification card that eventually convinced her to see us, though even then her reluctance was plain.

  “I was under the impression, Inspector, that I had answered all of your colleagues’ impertinent questions when last they chose to invade my home, and yet now I find myself once again wasting time in idle gossip.”

  “Not idle gossip, madam,” Bullock assured her. “My colleagues simply wish to clarify a single matter that has come to light since last they called.” He gestured to Holmes. “If you would be so good…”

  Holmes wasted no time in prevarication. He stepped forward and, ignoring Mrs Lockhart’s sniff of disapproval, laid out his theory regarding Noah Rawlins’s blackmail operation.

  “Which is why,” he concluded, “we find ourselves at your door for a second time, Mrs Lockhart. It is improbable in the extreme that you would have invited this man to investigate a simple matter of domestic pilfering, in light of his activities with every other client to whom we have spoken. Will you not make a clean breast of it, and in doing so help bring a dangerous criminal to justice?”

  Holmes had not mentioned Rawlins’s death, allowing Mrs Lockhart to believe that the criminal we now sought was he. Any hope we might have had that such a deception might render the lady more forthcoming, in fear that the blackmailer might yet return to her door, proved fruitless, however.

  “Do you call me a liar, sir?” she exclaimed. “Do you dare to say so?”

  She reached for a hand bell on her desk, perhaps intent on summoning the butler. Before she could do so, however, Bullock leant over and laid a hand over it.

  “That won’t do, I’m afraid, Mrs Lockhart,” he said firmly. “We know that the man you spoke to, the man to whom you paid a large sum of money, is no detective. Furthermore, we know that he has carried out a campaign of blackmail against the good people of this city, and that you are numbered amongst his victims. Finally, you should know that he lies dead in the city morgue as we speak, murdered most brutally by persons as yet unknown to us.”

  Mrs Lockhart’s hand remained poised over the desk, then moved to her mouth as the full import of Bullock’s words hit her.

  “Murdered?”

  “The same. Shot to death in his own home. And thus we fear for the safety of those recently in contact with him, such as yourself.”

  Still the lady hesitated. I could easily imagine the mental struggle in which she was engaged. With Rawlins dead, perhaps she really was in danger. She had, after all, spoken to him very recently, and had paid him a substantial sum of money. Though on the surface of it, that should not make her a target, she could not be sure, and the protection of the police could prove key to her own survival.

  Alternatively, with Rawlins dead, it might be that she had no more worries at all. The one man who knew her secret had been silenced, and if she had betrayed a friend to save hers
elf, then it was best if that fact too was allowed to die.

  The path she would have chosen remained a mystery, however, for Bullock was taking no chances. “I should make it very clear, Mrs Lockhart, that if you are unwilling to help us in this case, I shall be left with no choice but to march you from this house to the police carriage outside, in handcuffs, charged with obstructing the police in their duties.” There was no hint of a smile on his face as he concluded, “Your friends in society would make hay with such an occurrence, I imagine.”

  The threat of public humiliation was enough to break down her reserves, though not her spirit. She glared with real hatred at Bullock as she made her confession.

  “It seems I have no choice but to acquiesce,” she began. “I trust it fills you with pride to threaten and browbeat a lady so. But you are all English, of course, so I should expect no less.”

  She drew herself even more upright in her chair before going on, the contempt in her voice heavy and unrelenting. “You are quite correct. I did not engage Mr Holmes to catch some petty thief. I did not engage him at all, if truth be told. Instead, he presented himself at my door, as bold as you like, and asked – no, demanded – to speak to me. I would have sent him on his way, had he not asked the maid to present an envelope to me before I made any decision. I do not deny that I am a curious woman by nature and, seeing no harm in it, I agreed to look at the contents. Inside…”

  She faltered at that point, closing her eyes as she relived that moment.

  “The envelope contained disturbing, even horrific, images?” Holmes prodded gently. “There is no need to go into details, if you would just confirm that what I say is correct.”

  To everyone’s surprise, however, Mrs Lockhart shook her head. “Images? Sketches and the like, you mean? No, nothing of that sort. Inside was a sheet of paper, typed on both sides, relating… events from my life that I am not willing to discuss with you, even if that means I am to be marched from my own home like a common burglar.”

  I did not doubt that she spoke the truth. She would go so far in order to save face and honour, but no further, and we had reached her limit. Fortunately, we were not interested in her old sins, but only in the new.

  “You need not say what was in the envelope, Mrs Lockhart,” Holmes replied before Bullock could say a word. “That is a matter most properly left between yourself and your God, but there is one question that I must insist you answer, or the inspector will have no alternative but to arrest you. Will you answer this one question?”

  Without looking in his direction, Mrs Lockhart gave the smallest of nods. “If I can,” she said.

  “What name did you give the blackmailer in return for leaving you alone?”

  Like Hoffmann before her, Mrs Lockhart’s defiance evaporated in the face of this simple query. “Henry Craggs,” she said simply. “I knew his parents, of course. Back in the ’sixties, this was, and the two of them were idiots even then. So much in love, everyone said. Too much in love, perhaps. Certainly too much in love to wait for a minister to bless their union. She gave herself to him, the harlot, and he, like the rake he was, accepted her gift. Of course, they rushed to get married before the babe in her belly began to show, and when Henry was born, seven months later, there was much talk of premature births. But I knew, and I remembered when everyone else chose to forget.”

  “And you told the blackmailer when he asked?” Bullock pressed.

  “I did! I would do so again too, if the situation were the same. I could not allow the contents of that sheet of paper to get out. I told the man that the second I read it.”

  “Thus removing the need to terrify her into submission with photographs of Donaldson’s death,” Holmes murmured to me in an aside, as Bullock continued his interrogation.

  “You know the sort of trouble Henry Craggs is now in, Mrs Lockhart?” The inspector had made no bones before of his dislike of Mrs Lockhart, but now he seemed almost bemused by her. “You know he is accused of the murder of his fiancée?”

  “I do. Even less reason for me to regret naming him. The man is obviously as morally corrupt as his father before him!”

  “Whether that is true or not, is a matter for a jury to decide, Mrs Lockhart. I would advise you to confine your answers to matters germane to Inspector Bullock’s questions, rather than wandering off in flights of self-justifying fancy.” It was rare – indeed, almost unknown – for Holmes to extend any discourtesy to a lady, but he had evidently come to the conclusion that there was nothing to be gained by further pandering to our hostess. The two of them glared at each other, neither of them blinking, until Mrs Lockhart shifted her eyes away.

  “Now,” Holmes continued, “I would be grateful if you would tell us exactly what the blackmailer said when you offered him Mr Craggs like a sacrificial lamb.”

  In lieu of a direct reply, Mrs Lockhart turned to Bullock and addressed her remarks to him. “Do you imagine, Inspector, that a criminal takes his victim into his confidence regarding his future plans? He does not, I assure you. The sole thing he said to me was to thank me for being so helpful.”

  “A polite blackmailer,” Holmes smiled, “that makes a pleasant change. But did he say nothing else? He gave no hint of his future plans?”

  Mrs Lockhart was icy in her disdain. “None, sir. I would have said so, if he had. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a great deal to do and no time to waste explaining myself any further.”

  She had committed no crime, though her behaviour had been reprehensible, and so we had no choice but to bid her good day and make our way back outside onto the street. Bullock signalled for the police carriage, which had parked some distance down the road, and, while we awaited its arrival, quizzed Holmes.

  “So, did you believe her, Mr Holmes?”

  “That Rawlins told her nothing of his plans? Certainly. I asked the question from a desire to be thorough, and nothing else. Criminals do not, in my experience, regale their victims with the details of their schemes, else they would soon be captured. No, Mrs Lockhart told us all she knew, I’m sure.”

  “So where to next? We appear to have a growing number of corpses and fewer and fewer suspects.”

  I had been considering that very fact, and wondered if an earlier, rejected suggestion of mine might not find more favour now.

  “Were we perhaps too quick to dismiss Algy Hinton from our thoughts?” I asked nobody in particular. Holmes had declared the love-lorn drunkard too short and unfit to move Mrs van Raalte’s body, but I could not forget the venom in his diary as he wrote of Rawlins, and no physical prowess was required to fire a gun. “Perhaps he believed a genuine assignation had taken place between Mrs van Raalte and Rawlins and, in a drunken rage, struck her down? Later, he tracked down Rawlins – the man he blamed for many of the ills in his life – and shot him. He may have had assistance in disposing of Mrs van Raalte’s body,” I went on quickly, before Holmes could object, warming to my theme. “A handcart, an old blanket and a willing assistant are all he would have needed.”

  Holmes considered my theory for barely a moment before dismissing it completely. “‘An angel in earthly form’ and ‘a veritable saviour’ were the phrases Mr Hinton used to describe the lady, were they not? You met the late Mrs van Raalte, Watson. Did she strike you as especially angelic? A woman of many sterling qualities, I’m sure, but not one who would generally be compared to the seraphim, you would agree? Such a comparison would occur only to a man in love – and a man in love would never leave the body of his beloved in a stinking hovel, even if he had killed her in an unthinking and brutish frenzy.”

  Put like that, it did seem unlikely. I admitted as much as the police carriage pulled up alongside the pavement, and I would have said more on the subject had another two-wheeler not come round the corner at that moment, halting directly alongside us.

  The newcomer’s horse was lathered in sweat. The uniformed figure of a young policeman leapt from the driver’s seat and hurried across to Bullock.

  “I
nspector Bullock, sir, I have been sent to inform you that Mr Henry Craggs has surrendered himself at the station and is now in custody awaiting questioning by yourself in the matter of the murder of Miss Millicent Crane.”

  His message delivered, the youngster stood at attention while we exchanged surprised glances. Finally, Holmes broke the silence.

  “It would seem that your presence at least is required, Bullock. I hope you have no objection to Watson and myself accompanying you?”

  Without waiting for a reply, he pulled himself up and into our carriage, where he sat, eager to be off.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Henry Craggs was not at all as I had expected. The brief newspaper reports I had read, and the various descriptions of his situation we had encountered, had led me to expect a frivolous man, madly and foolishly in love. Instead, the figure that presented itself at the police station was that of a man in his late thirties, a fraction over six feet tall, who held himself with a proud military bearing. The first flecks of dark silver peppered his hair and neatly trimmed beard and matched the grey of his eyes. I saw little sign that this was a man who had been on the run for weeks; a slight reddening of the whites of the eyes and a general paleness were likely caused by his recent lifestyle, but beyond that he could easily have stepped directly from the Army List. I felt instinctively that this was a man to be trusted.

  Holmes too seemed to warm to him at once. As soon as Craggs entered Bullock’s office, Holmes offered our visitor a cigarette and extended our condolences for his recent tragic loss.

  “Thank you, sir. That is something I have rarely heard these past weeks.” Craggs’s voice was quiet but not timid. Bullock’s character sketch had described a man of great self-assurance, as befitted a former army officer and self-made millionaire, but in many such men that assurance could shade into arrogance. Not so with Henry Craggs. Clearly control in everything was a quality he treasured.

  Only when he spoke of his late fiancée did his resolve falter, affording us a glimpse of the inner man. “Millicent – Miss Crane – was a wonderful woman, everything a man could hope for in a wife. She was more than that to me, however. She was my greatest friend, also. Gladly would I have given my life for hers.”