There was no danger of such a man descending into unmanly tears, but I fancied I heard the slightest of cracks in his voice as he described his betrothed, and his hand shook a fraction as he raised a match to his cigarette.
Under cover of lighting my pipe, I glanced over at Holmes, but for all our years of comradeship, I could no more read the look on his face at that moment than I could a statue’s. His fingers were steepled beneath his chin, his eyes half-closed, and the merest hint of a smile played around his mouth.
“You are not here to confess.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Not in the way you mean, no. I am here, in the main, because you continue to waste your time chasing me, rather than the guilty parties. I have done no wrong and no harm, least of all to Miss Crane, and would have you direct your investigation towards those who have. My fiancée has been killed, yet no man rots in your cells for the killing, nor does a rope beckon the killer to his end.”
Craggs had an old-fashioned way of speaking, but his tone was as measured as his subject was grave.
“That is true, sir, but you must know that you have taken a grave risk in presenting yourself to us. Unless you can provide proof—” Bullock began, but Craggs was not finished.
“If you will forgive the interruption, Inspector, might I be granted a brief indulgence, the better to tell the whole of my story? I promise you, it will be worth the time you expend.”
With that, he fell silent and stood before us, apparently willing to wait as long as it took to be granted permission to continue.
“Pray, be seated and carry on, Mr Craggs,” said Holmes. “We would all, I think, be fascinated to hear your tale.”
Bullock growled his own approval and, my permission not being required it seemed, Craggs sat and commenced his version of recent, tragic events.
“I would first impress upon you, gentlemen, that I am not a man one might expect to find in regular correspondence with the police, nor am I a man to flinch in the face of justified punishment. I was a United States Army officer for ten years before resigning my commission and going into business, my trade that of a supplier of goods to that self-same military force. I prospered – and do still, in that respect at least – making me a wealthy man before I was yet forty.
“Still, I was not content. I felt an absence in my life – an absence nullified by the companionship of Miss Millicent Crane, whom I met at a charity ball a year past January, since which time we have been inseparable. We engaged to marry in March of this year. Much of this I am aware that you know, gentlemen, and I have no intention of wearying you with the recitation of old facts. That said, I think it best to place each of the actors in this tragedy in their correct setting before the villain of the piece enters.”
“The villain?” Holmes’s eyes snapped open.
“The same, Mr Holmes. Two villains, in fact. One tall, in a good suit and boots, his hair brushed back much as your own, his accent English, his manner ingratiating and friendly. The other taller still, his suit less expensive, his features rougher, his voice silent entirely. They approached me as I went about my business, a month or so since, and fell in alongside me as I walked.”
“Was either man known to you?”
“I had seen neither before, to my knowledge, but there was no doubting that they had knowledge of me. ‘Might we stroll with you a while, Mr Craggs?’ the first man said. In truth, I expected this to be but the preamble to a request for a charitable donation of some sort, but I agreed to accompany them to a nearby coffee house.”
“That proved not to be the case, I presume?” asked Holmes.
“To my grave misfortune, no indeed, though for a time I continued to labour under that misapprehension. We took our seats and ordered coffee, before the smaller man made formal introduction of himself and his silent colleague; Messrs Holmes and Watson, he said, then placed an envelope on the table.
“Spying it, my heart fell, I admit it. To be frank, my main thought was one of concern that overmuch time would be wasted; often before have I been obliged, for courtesy’s sake, to examine reams of documents, recounting this horror or that tragedy, and each designed to encourage the maximum contribution from any prospective donor. I feared the envelope contained something very like.
“To my surprise, however, Mr Holmes did not make reference to the envelope. Far from it, in fact. Instead, he asked after my parents – an oddity in itself, for they have been dead these two decades past, and neither man before me seemed older than myself. ‘I am afraid they have long since passed over,’ I said, thinking perhaps that they merely made polite conversation, but Holmes laughed, and said that I misunderstood. I began to wonder if I had misread the situation, then he said something that I cannot repeat now but that rendered me speechless. A secret, sirs, that I thought dead and buried, but which these men sought to resurrect. I hope that you will not require—”
“Yes, yes, you were born out of wedlock, Mr Craggs. Take it as read that we are aware of this fact and move on, I beg of you.” I could scarcely believe my ears as Holmes interrupted with a painful lack of civility, but Craggs seemed relieved that he would not himself have to speak the words.
“That is indeed the case, sir – my parents did not marry until two months after my conception. My primary consideration then, as now, was to consider the impact such a revelation, made public, would have on those closest to me. As I said, my parents are dead, and so beyond any shame in this life, which left only Miss Crane to be taken into account.
“You do not know her, of course, but perhaps one of you might have read of Miss Millicent Crane in the newspapers? The Crane family are supreme philanthropists, and she no different to the others. She is… she was a good woman, gentlemen, wise beyond her years and with a heart so large it could encompass the world. I knew that she loved me for the man I am and that her love would not be lost due to the misjudgements of my parents.”
“And society as a whole?” Holmes asked. “Did you not fear their opprobrium?”
“No, sir, I did not. I am a man of means, beholden to nobody. If society – to the extent such a thing is entirely monolithic – rejected me but Miss Crane did not – as I knew she would not – then I would remain in every way the victor and they the losers. I told my two would-be blackmailers this and would have stalked from the coffee shop at once had the taller man not grasped me by the collar while the other whispered in my ear. ‘Twenty-four hours,’ said he. ‘I give you twenty-four hours to raise our ransom. And do not worry. We will collect it from your home, though rest assured there will be no tongues set wagging by that. Nobody will think it strange that Mr Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson should come calling.’ But I was having none such and told him so. No Craggs has ever stooped so low as to entertain the threats of the criminal classes.”
Only then did his voice truly break, the last few words indistinct and coloured by pain and loss. “It is not as though I were not warned unmistakably, and swiftly also. With the taller man, Watson, holding me in place, the other pulled something from his coat and pushed it across the table to me. ‘Look at it,’ he said, for whatever it was, it had been folded in two, in order, I supposed, to better fit the coat pocket. It was a photograph of a room I did not recognise. The man before me, the smaller, the one who called himself Holmes, was there, crouched down by the body of a dead man, his eyes glassy and unseeing in death, the pistol that killed him in his own hand.”
While he had been speaking, Craggs’s head had fallen lower and lower until by the end his chin all but touched his chest. As he described one of the photographs seen by Hoffmann, and discovered by me at Rawlins’s house, however, he raised it again and caught the gaze, in turn, of each of us.
“I was warned so clearly and yet remained deaf. I scorned the image before me, and the men who presented it, and told them that I would be with the police within the hour if I ever saw or heard from either of them again. Indeed, to my eternal regret, I went further still. I grasped that revolting photograp
h and stuffed it into the breast pocket of Holmes’s jacket. What was I thinking?!”
It took Craggs a moment to compose himself, but we could all see that he was desperate to tell everything he knew. “I know what you are all wondering,” he went on. “Why did I not take myself to the police immediately, for a murder had been committed? All I can say is that I had a wedding to plan and no wish to become involved in an unwholesome investigation. I shall regret that decision until my dying day.”
Bullock had been writing down everything that was said, but laid down his pencil as Craggs’s voice descended to a whisper, racked with grief.
“Is this the picture you were shown?” he asked quietly, passing him the photograph I had discovered in Rawlins’s breast pocket.
The shudder that passed through Craggs was indication enough, but he also nodded before handing it back to Bullock.
“How did you—?” he began, but Holmes held up a hand for silence.
“You were describing your regret at not reporting the threats you received to the police?” Had anyone stopped by Bullock’s office at that moment, he would have struggled to identify the man accused of a terrible murder, so much compassion was there in my friend Holmes’s voice. Craggs evidently appreciated it, for he gave a nod of gratitude.
“Within the hour, Miss Crane was snatched from the street. Within two hours, I found myself in possession of a note from her kidnappers, to say that my debt was now double the sum previously intimated, and that Miss Crane’s life relied upon my keeping a good distance from the police and delivering the money twenty-four hours hence.”
“Which you did.”
“Certainly, Inspector. What assurance did I have that the police would even be able to help? None. But I did have the certain assurance of the death of my beloved if I so much as spoke to you or any of your people. So it was that I took myself to the dirt road mentioned in the note and, once there, awaited my tormentors. The evening was dark and storm-racked, the moon hidden by clouds and the lighting thus non-existent. I have the inclement weather to thank for my life, I think, though I can muster little enthusiasm for that particular mercy.”
“You intended to pay the ransom?”
“I did, sir. And I had not long to wait – a matter of a few minutes at most. They appeared on the road in front of me. Watson held a lamp up high, casting a weak, yellow light that penetrated the rain only enough to illumine the heads and faces of the two men – and my beloved Millicent. She appeared unharmed – I remember thanking God – and so I approached, a bag filled with banknotes under my arm. ‘Let Miss Crane go free,’ I said, but, ‘No,’ said he. ‘Throw the bag to us,’ he shouted, and I – having little choice but to obey – did so.”
Craggs brought his hands up to his face. We three sat around him watching his shoulders shake, for several long minutes, before Holmes coughed softly.
“Did they shoot Miss Crane before they collected their money?” he asked.
Craggs’s eye snapped in Holmes’s direction. “How—?”
“We know Miss Crane is dead. We have your word that you did not kill her. For that to be true, she must have been killed at this moment – had she been returned to you and killed later, you would have begun your tale closer to that point. But I am not certain, hence the question.”
Over the years of our acquaintance, I have seen many people struggle to accept Holmes’s idiosyncrasies. His alleged lack of courtesy has often been the cause, but Henry Craggs gave every indication that he welcomed Holmes’s plain speaking.
“Yes, then,” he said simply. “I threw the bag containing the ransom across to them. I can yet see it hitting the wet ground, water spraying up around it, then toppling over and the rain hammering down on its exposed side, the whole scene lit by one flickering lantern. It feels like a dream brought on by a fever to me now. The fear in Millicent’s eyes as I looked at her and smiled, hoping to engender some degree of reassurance in her. And the shattering bellow of the pistol shot, so unexpected…”
Craggs was looking at nobody now. His eyes had lost focus as he recalled the events of that evil night, and if he spoke to anyone, he spoke to himself – or the woman he had failed to protect.
“She fell,” he continued. “One moment she was before me, though indistinct, the next, gone entire. In my confusion, I could not locate her. I believe I shouted her name, but for a time thereafter, all is blurred and unclear. I think I might have pulled out the pistol I secreted on my person, and run towards the two men, but the attempt was a vain one, for a white light flashed around me and all I can bring to mind is a great pain in my head and the sensation that I was falling…
“When I came to, it was morning. I lay in a tangle of dense thorn bushes, at the base of the steep hill along which the dirt road runs. With no way to easily climb back to the road, and no confidence that I would find anything even if I did, I thought it best to make my way back into town, there to report the events of the previous night.”
“You failed to do so, however, Mr Craggs. Why was that?” I had all but forgotten Bullock’s presence, but he had evidently been listening closely. He laid his pencil and paper to one side and repeated the question. “Why did you not report this terrible assault to the authorities at once?”
“Do you really wonder, Inspector, or do you merely sport at my expense? Have you not also seen the newspaper reports from that day? The very first place I stopped, hoping to find directions to the nearest telegraph office, there was a newspaper on the counter. ‘Millicent Crane slaughtered. Fiancé accused,’ it read, so I bought a copy. My Millicent had been dumped like an old rug on some waste ground, with my calling card crushed in her hand. There were no other suspects.”
I would not say that Bullock was completely convinced by Craggs’s explanation, but he took his pencil back in hand and gestured that he was ready to hear more. Craggs obliged, in a voice a little stronger now that he had moved beyond the recollection of that awful murder.
“My choices were limited. The police believed me a killer, my likeness was in every newspaper, and I did not know who had divulged the family secret that had started the chain of events whose culmination was the death of my fiancée. At first, I contemplated the sin greater than any other, but my spirits rallied when I thought to engineer a meeting with an old and trusted servant who, I believed, would know me to be no murderer.”
“A servant?” Bullock asked, underlining a line in his notebook.
“Yes, Edwin Thomas, who had been with my family since a boy. I saw him leave my house as I skulked in the vicinity, and I followed him until there was nobody else to be seen and I could be sure we would be unobserved. ‘Thomas,’ I said, and he walked at once straight across to me, with a great smile of relief on his face. ‘We thought you lost,’ said he, ‘killed by the same brutes as murdered Miss Crane.’ You cannot comprehend the joy, gentlemen,” he said, with the first smile we had seen on his face since his arrival, “to find that you are believed when you thought that never to be the case again. I took Thomas in my arms as if we were brothers, then went with him to a nearby house belonging to a friend of his, and there we made our plans.”
“And what were those plans?”
Holmes had said nothing since asking about the shooting of Millicent Crane, but now it seemed that Craggs had entered an area of his narrative in which he had an especial interest. He lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of his previous one and leaned forward in his chair, almost willing Craggs to reveal something that would aid us.
Craggs, I think, sensed the change in Holmes. Until that point he had addressed his remarks almost exclusively to the scribbling Inspector Bullock, but now he shifted in his seat and spoke directly to my companion.
“My sole desire was to hunt down and slay the filth who had killed my fiancée. With that foremost in my mind, I asked Thomas to choose a half dozen of his most trusted fellows from within my household, and set them adrift, to seek out those friends and acquaintances employed in homes where previous
ly this Sherlock Holmes had been seen. ‘Find me these two men,’ I said to Thomas, ‘and bring me to them, and I will make you rich beyond the dreams of avarice.’ But ‘No,’ said he in return, ‘I will do this because it is right.’ And so it was, and has been since then.”
“Until a few days ago.”
“Why do you say so?”
“One of your spies spoke to a Mr Jonathan Eales, currently in the employ of Pastor Hoffmann, and he reported that he had overheard his master speaking to Sherlock Holmes. That is true, is it not?”
“It is.”
“And with that information you were able to ascertain an address for your quarry?”
Craggs nodded. “The coachman was happy to tell Thomas’s man where he had driven Hoffmann in exchange for a few coins.”
“And you went to that address and there killed Noah Rawlins!”
Bullock’s intervention pained Holmes in the extreme. I could tell from the way in which his lips pursed that he judged it ill-timed and likely to lead to this promising line of evidence being summarily closed off. However, Craggs seemed once more to appreciate straight talking from his interrogators and showed no sign of displeasure.
“Rawlins? That is Holmes’s real name, then? Yes, I went there to kill him; that I will not deny. Him, and his Watson also. I have wandered New York in beggar’s guise for all this time so that I might have the chance to end their miserable lives. But when I arrived, someone had already robbed me of my prize. Holmes… my pardon, Rawlins lay slain upon the floor.”
“And the other? Was the other man present?”
“He was not, Inspector. Though I waited half an hour, he did not appear, and seeing a policeman pause on his beat outside the house, thought it best to withdraw for the time being.”
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--The Counterfeit Detective Page 19
