The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 1 (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Mike Ashley

  “That is so,” he said. “But how did you know?”

  “Your stick is cut from Cuban ebony. There is no mistaking that greenish tint and the exceptionally high polish.”

  “It might have been bought in London since my return from, say, Africa.”

  “No, it has been yours for some years.” Holmes lifted the stick to the carriage window and tilted it so that the daylight shone upon the handle. “You will perceive,” he went on, “that there is a slight but regular scraping that has worn through the polish along the left side of the handle, just where the ring finger of a left-handed man would close upon the grip. Ebony is among the toughest of woods and it would require considerable time to cause such wear and a ring of some harder metal than gold. You are left-handed, Mr. Wilson, and wear a silver ring on your middle-finger.”

  “Dear me, how simple. I thought for the moment that you had done something clever. As it happens, I was in the sugar trade in Cuba and brought my old stick back with me. But here we are at the house and, if you can put my silly niece’s fears at rest as quickly as you can deduce my past, I shall be your debtor, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

  On descending from our four-wheeler, we found ourselves in a lane of mean slatternly houses sloping, so far as I could judge from the yellow mist that was already creeping up the lower end, to the river’s edge. At one side was a high wall of crumbling brickwork pierced by an iron gate through which we caught a glimpse of a substantial mansion lying in its own garden.

  “The old house has known better days,” said our companion, as we followed him through the gate and up the path. “It was built in the year that Peter the Great came to live in Scales Court, whose ruined park can be seen from the upper windows.”

  Usually I am not unduly affected by my surroundings, but I must confess that I was aware of a feeling of depression at the melancholy spectacle that lay before us. The house, though of dignified and even imposing proportions, was faced with blotched, weather-stained plaster which had fallen away in places to disclose the ancient brickwork that lay beneath, while a tangled mass of ivy covering one wall had sent its long tendrils across the high-peaked roof to wreathe itself around the chimney stacks.

  The garden was an overgrown wilderness, and the air of the whole place reeked with the damp musty smell of the river.

  Theobold Wilson led us through a small hall into a comfortably furnished drawing-room. A young woman with auburn hair and a freckled face, who was sorting through some papers at a writing-desk, sprang to her feet at our entrance.

  “Here are Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson,” announced our companion. “This is my niece, Janet, whose interests you are here to protect against her own unreasonable conduct.”

  The young lady faced us bravely enough, though I noted a twitch and tremor of the lips that spoke of a high nervous tension. “I am leaving to-morrow, uncle,” she cried, “and nothing that these gentlemen can say will alter my decision. Here, there is only sorrow and fear – above all, fear!”

  “Fear of what?”

  The girl passed her hand over her eyes. “I – I cannot explain. I hate the shadows and the funny little noises.”

  “You have inherited both money and property, Janet,” said Mr. Wilson earnestly. “Will you, because of shadows, desert the roof of your fathers? Be reasonable.”

  “We are here only to serve you, young lady,” said Holmes with some gentleness, “and to try to put your fears at rest. It is often so in life that we injure our own best interests by precipitate action.”

  “You will laugh at a woman’s intuitions, sir.”

  “By no means. They are often the signposts of Providence. Understand clearly that you will go or stay as you see fit. But perhaps, as I am here, it might relieve your mind to show me over the house.”

  “An admirable suggestion!” cried Theobold Wilson cheerily. “Come, Janet, we will soon dispose of your shadows and noises.”

  In a little procession we trooped from one over-furnished room to another on the ground floor.

  “I will take you to the bedrooms,” said Miss Wilson as we paused at last before the staircase.

  “Are there no cellars in a house of this antiquity?”

  “There is one cellar, Mr. Holmes, but it is little used save for the storage of wood and some of uncle’s old nest-boxes. This way, please.”

  It was a gloomy, stone-built chamber in which we found ourselves. A stack of wood was piled against one wall and a pot-bellied Dutch stove, its iron pipe running through the ceiling, filled the far corner. Through a glazed door reached by a line of steps and opening into the garden, a dim light filtered down upon the flagstones. Holmes sniffed the air keenly, and I was myself aware of an increased mustiness from the nearby river.

  “Like most Thames-side houses, you must be plagued by rats,” he remarked.

  “We used to be. But, since uncle came here, he has got rid of them.”

  “Quite so. Dear me,” he continued, peering down at the floor. “What busy little fellows!”

  Following his gaze, I saw that his attention had been drawn by a few garden ants scurrying across the floor from beneath the edge of the stove and up the steps leading to the garden door. “It is as well for us, Watson,” he chuckled, pointing with his stick at the tiny particles with which they were encumbered, “that we are not under the necessity of lugging along our dinners thrice our own size. It is a lesson in patience.” He lapsed into silence, staring thoughtfully at the floor. “A lesson,” he repeated slowly.

  Mr. Wilson’s thin lips tightened. “What foolery is this,” he exclaimed. “The ants are there because the servants would throw garbage in the stove to save themselves the trouble of going to the dustbin.”

  “And so you put a lock on the lid.”

  “We did. If you wish, I can fetch the key. No? Then, if you are finished, let me take you to the bedrooms.”

  “Perhaps I may see the room where your brother died,” requested Holmes as we reached the top floor.

  “It is here,” replied Miss Wilson, throwing open the door.

  It was a large chamber furnished with some taste and even luxury and lit by two deeply recessed windows flanking another pot-bellied stove decorated with yellow tiles to harmonize with the tone of the room. A pair of birdcages hung from the stove pipe.

  “Where does that side-door lead?” asked my friend.

  “It communicates with my room, which was formerly used by my mother,” she answered.

  For a few minutes, Holmes prowled around listlessly.

  “I perceive that your brother was addicted to night-reading,” he remarked.

  “Yes. He suffered from sleeplessness. But how – ”

  “Tut, the pile of the carpet on the right of the armchair is thick with traces of candlewax. But, hullo! What have we here?”

  Holmes had halted near the window and was staring intently at the upper wall. Then, mounting the sill, he stretched out an arm and, touching the plaster lightly here and there, sniffed at his finger-tips. There was a puzzled frown on his face as he clambered down and commenced to circle slowly around the room, his eyes fixed upon the ceiling.

  “Most singular,” he muttered.

  “Is anything wrong, Mr. Holmes?” faltered Miss Wilson.

  “I am merely interested to account for these odd whorls and lines across the upper wall and plaster.”

  “It must be those dratted cockroaches dragging the dust all over the place,” exclaimed Wilson apologetically. “I’ve told you before, Janet, that you would be better employed in supervising the servants’ work. But what now, Mr. Holmes?”

  My friend, who had crossed to the side-door and glanced within, now closed it again and strolled across to the window.

  “My visit has been a useless one,” said he, “and, as I see that the fog is rising, I fear that we must take our leave. These are, I suppose, your famous canaries?” he added, pointing to the cages above the stove.

  “A mere sample. But come this way.”


  Wilson led us along the passage and threw open a door.

  “There!” said he.

  Obviously it was his own bedroom and yet unlike any bedroom that I had entered in all my professional career. From floor to ceiling it was festooned with scores of cages and the little golden-coated singers within filled the air with their sweet warbling and trilling.

  “Daylight or lamplight, it’s all the same to them. Here, Carrie, Carrie!” He whistled a few liquid notes which I seemed to recognize. The bird took them up into a lovely cadency of song.

  “A skylark!” I cried.

  “Precisely. As I said before, the Fringilla if properly trained are the supreme imitators.”

  “I confess that I do not recognize that song,” I remarked, as one of the birds broke into a low rising whistle ending in a curious tremolo.

  Mr. Wilson threw a towel over the cage. “It is the song of a tropic night-bird,” he said shortly, “and, as I have the foolish pride to prefer my birds to sing the songs of the day while it is day, we will punish Peperino by putting him in darkness.”

  “I am surprised that you prefer an open fireplace here to a stove,” observed Holmes. “There must be a considerable draught.”

  “I have not noticed one. Dear me, the fog is indeed increasing. I am afraid, Mr. Holmes, that you have a bad journey before you.”

  “Then we must be on our way.”

  As we descended the stairs and paused in the hall, while Theobold Wilson fetched our hats, Sherlock Holmes leaned over towards our young companion.

  “I would remind you, Miss Wilson, of what I said earlier about a woman’s intuition,” he said quietly. “There are occasions when the truth can be sensed more easily than it can be seen. Good night.”

  A moment later we were feeling our way down the garden path to where the lights of our waiting four-wheeler shone dimly through the rising fog.

  My companion was sunk in thought as we rumbled westward through the mean streets whose squalor was the more aggressive under the garish light of the gas-lamps that flared and whistled outside the numerous public houses. The night promised to be a bad one, and already through the yellow vapour thickening and writhing above the pavements the occasional wayfarer was nothing more than a vague hurrying shadow.

  “I could have wished, my dear fellow,” I remarked, “that you had been spared the need to uselessly waste your energies, which are already sufficiently depleted.”

  “Well, well, Watson. I fancied that the affairs of the Wilson family would prove no concern of ours. And yet – ” he sank back, absorbed for a moment in his own thoughts – “and yet it is wrong, wrong, all wrong!” I heard him mutter under his breath.

  “I observed nothing of a sinister nature.”

  “Nor I. But every danger bell in my head is jangling its warning. Why a fireplace, Watson, why a fire-place? I take it that you noticed that the pipe from the cellar connected with the stoves in the other bedrooms?”

  “In one bedroom.”

  “No. There was the same arrangement in the adjoining room, where the mother died.”

  “I see nothing in this save an old-fashioned system of heating flues.”

  “And what of the marks on the ceiling?”

  “You mean the whorls of dust.”

  “I mean the whorls of soot.”

  “Soot! Surely you are mistaken, Holmes.”

  “I touched them, smelt them, examined them. They were speckles and lines of wood-soot.”

  “Well, there is probably some perfectly natural explanation.”

  For a time we sat in silence. Our cab had reached the beginnings of the City and I was gazing out of the window, my fingers drumming idly on the half-lowered pane, which was already befogged with moisture, when my thoughts were recalled by a sharp ejaculation from my companion. He was staring fixedly over my shoulder.

  “The glass,” he muttered.

  Over the clouded surface there now lay an intricate tracery of whorls and lines where my fingers had wandered aimlessly.

  Holmes clapped his hand to his brow and, throwing open the other window, he shouted an order to the cabby. The vehicle turned in its tracks and, with the driver lashing at his horse, we clattered away into the thickening gloom.

  “Ah, Watson, Watson, true it is that none are so blind as those who will not see!” quoted Holmes bitterly, sinking back into his corner. “All the facts were there, staring me in the face, and yet logic failed to respond.”

  “What facts?”

  “There are nine. Four alone should have sufficed. Here is a man from Cuba, who not only trains canaries in a singular manner but knows the calls of tropical nightbirds and keeps a fireplace in his bedroom. There is devilry here, Watson. Stop, cabby, stop!”

  We were passing a junction of two busy thoroughfares, with the golden balls of a pawnshop glimmering above a street lamp. Holmes sprang out. But after a few minutes he was back again and we recommenced our journey.

  “It is fortunate that we are still in the City,” he chuckled, “for I fancy that the East End pawnshops are unlikely to run to golf-clubs.”

  “Good heavens –!” I began, only to lapse into silence while I stared down at the heavy niblick which he had thrust into my hand. The first shadows of some vague and monstrous horror seemed to rise up and creep over my mind.

  “We are too early,” exclaimed Holmes, consulting his watch. “A sandwich and a glass of whisky at the first public house will not come amiss.”

  The clock on St. Nicholas Church was striking ten when we found ourselves once again in that evil-smelling garden. Through the mist, the dark gloom of the house was broken by a single feeble light in an upper window. “It is Miss Wilson’s room,” said Holmes. “Let us hope that this handful of gravel will rouse her without alarming the household.”

  An instant later, there came the sound of an opening window.

  “Who is there?” demanded a tremulous voice.

  “It is Sherlock Holmes,” my friend called back softly. “I must speak with you at once, Miss Wilson. Is there a side-door?”

  “There is one in the wall to your left. But what has happened?”

  “Pray descend immediately. Not a word to your uncle.”

  We felt our way along the wall and reached the door just as it opened to disclose Miss Wilson. She was in her dressing-gown, her hair tumbled about her shoulders and, as her startled eyes peered at us across the light of the candle in her hand, the shadows danced and trembled on the wall behind her.

  “What is it, Mr. Holmes?” she gasped.

  “All will be well, if you carry out my instructions,” my friend replied quietly. “Where is your uncle?”

  “He is in his room.”

  “Good. While Dr. Watson and I occupy your room, you will move into your late brother’s bedchamber. If you value your life,” he added solemnly, “you will not attempt to leave it.”

  “You frighten me!” she whimpered.

  “Rest assured that we will take care of you. And now, two final questions before you retire. Has your uncle visited you this evening?”

  “Yes. He brought Peperino and put him with the other birds in the cage in my room. He said that as it was my last night at home I should have the best entertainment that he had the power to give me.”

  “Ha! Quite so. Your last night. Tell me, Miss Wilson, do you suffer at all from the same malady as your mother and brother?”

  “A weak heart? I must confess it, yes.”

  “Well, we will accompany you quietly upstairs where you will retire to the adjoining room. Come, Watson.”

  Guided by the light of Janet Wilson’s candle, we mounted silently to the floor above and thence into the bedchamber which Holmes had previously examined. While we waited for our companion to collect her things from the adjoining room, Holmes strolled across and, lifting the edge of the cloths which now covered the two birdcages, peered in at the tiny sleeping occupants.

  “The evil of man is as inventive as it is immeasur
able,” said he, and I noticed that his face was very stern.

  On Miss Wilson’s return, having seen that she was safely ensconced for the night, I followed Holmes into the room which she had lately occupied. It was a small chamber but comfortably furnished and lit by a heavy silver oil-lamp. Immediately above a tiled Dutch stove there hung a cage containing three canaries which, momentarily ceasing their song, cocked their little golden heads at our approach.

  “I think, Watson, that it would be as well to relax for half an hour,” whispered Holmes as we sank into our chairs. “So kindly put out the light.”

  “But, my dear fellow, if there is any danger it would be an act of madness!” I protested.

  “There is no danger in the darkness.”

  “Would it not be better,” I said severely, “that you were frank with me? You have made it obvious that the birds are being put to some evil purpose, but what is this danger that exists only in the lamplight?”

  “I have my own ideas on that matter, Watson, but it is better that we should wait and see. I would draw your attention, however, to the hinged lid of the stokehole on the top of the stove.”

  “It appears to be a perfectly normal fitting.”

  “Just so. But is there not some significance in the fact that the stokehole of an iron stove should be fitted with a tin lid?”

  “Great heavens, Holmes!” I cried, as the light of understanding burst upon me. “You mean that this man Wilson has used the interconnecting pipes from the stove in the cellar to those in the bedrooms to disseminate some deadly poison to wipe out his own kith and kin and thus obtain the property. It is for that reason that he has a fireplace in his own bedroom. I see it all.”

  “Well, you are not far wrong, Watson, though I fancy that Master Theobold is rather more subtle than you suppose. He possesses the two qualities vital to the successful murderer – ruthlessness and imagination. But now, dowse the light like a good fellow and for a while let us relax. If my reading of the problem is correct, our nerves may be tested to their limit before we see to-morrow’s dawn.”

  I lay back in the darkness and, drawing some comfort from the thought that ever since the affair with Colonel Sebastian Moran I had carried my revolver in my pocket, I sought in my mind for some explanation that would account for the warning contained in Holmes’s words. But I must have been wearier than I had imagined. My thoughts grew more and more confused and finally I dozed off.