Colin Dexter

by Morse's Greatest Mystery;Other Stories

  (Was there, I occasionally wondered, just the hint of competitive envy between those two unprecedented intellects?)

  I had just called at 221B Baker Street on a fog-laden November afternoon in 188–, after taking part in some research at St. Thomas’s Hospital into suppurative tonsilitis (I had earlier acquainted Holmes with the particulars). Mycroft was staying with Holmes for a few days, and as I entered that well-known sitting room I caught the tail-end of the brothers’ conversation.

  “Possibly, Sherlock—possibly. But it is the detail, is it not? Give me all the evidence and it is just possible that I could match your own analyses from my corner armchair. But to be required to rush hither and thither, to find and examine witnesses, to lie along the carpet with a lens held firmly to my failing sight … No! It is not my métier.”

  During this time Holmes himself had been standing before the window, gazing down into the neutral-tinted London street. And looking over his shoulder I could see that on the pavement opposite there stood an attractive young woman draped in a heavy fur coat. She had clearly just arrived, and every few seconds was looking up to Holmes’s window in hesitant fashion, her fingers fidgeting with the buttons of her gloves. On a sudden she crossed the street, and Mrs. Hudson was soon ushering in our latest client.

  After handing her coat to Holmes, the young lady sat nervously on the edge of the nearest armchair, and announced herself as Miss Charlotte van Allen. Mycroft nodded briefly at the newcomer, before reverting to a monograph on polyphonic plainchant; whilst Holmes himself made observation of the lady in that abstracted yet intense manner which was wholly peculiar to him.

  “Do you not find,” began Holmes, “that with your short sight it is a little difficult to engage in so much type-writing?”

  Surprise, apprehension, appreciation, showed by turns upon her face, succeeded in all by a winsome smile as she appeared to acknowledge Holmes’s quite extraordinary powers.

  “Perhaps you will also tell me,” continued he, “why it is that you came from home in such a great hurry?”

  For a few seconds, Miss van Allen sat shaking her head with incredulity; then, as Holmes sat staring towards the ceiling, she began her remarkable narrative.

  “Yes, I did bang out of the house, because it made me very angry to see the way my father, Mr. Wyndham, took the whole business—refusing even to countenance the idea of going to the police, and quite certainly ruling out any recourse to yourself, Mr. Holmes! He just kept repeating—and I do see his point—that no real harm has been done … although he can have no idea of the misery I have had to endure.”

  “Your father?” queried Holmes quietly. “Perhaps you refer to your step-father, since the names are different?”

  “Yes,” she confessed, “my step-father. I don’t know why I keep referring to him as ‘father’—especially since he is but five years older than myself.”

  “Your mother—she is still living?”

  “Oh, yes! Though I will not pretend I was over-pleased when she remarried so soon after my father’s death—and then to a man almost seventeen years younger than herself. Father—my real father, that is—had a plumbing business in the Tottenham Court Road, and Mother carried on the company after he died, until she married Mr. Wyndham. I think he considered such things a little beneath his new wife, especially with his being in a rather superior position as a traveller in French wines. Whatever the case, though, he made Mother sell out.”

  “Did you yourself derive any income from the sale of your father’s business?”

  “No. But I do have £100 annual income in my own right; as well as the extra I make from my typing. If I may say so, Mr. Holmes, you might be surprised how many of the local businesses—including Cook and Marchant—ask me to work for them a few hours each week. You see” (she looked at us with a shy, endearing diffidence) “I’m quite good at that in life, if nothing else.”

  “You must then have some profitable government stock—?” began Holmes.

  She smiled again. “New Zealand, at four and a half per cent.”

  “Please forgive me, Miss van Allen, but could not a single lady get by very nicely these days on—let us say, fifty pounds per annum?”

  “Oh, certainly! And I myself live comfortably on but ten shillings per week, which is only half of that amount. You see, I never touch a single penny of my inheritance. Since I live at home, I cannot bear the thought of being a burden to my parents, and we have reached an arrangement whereby Mr. Wyndham himself is empowered to draw my interest each quarter for as long as I remain in that household.”

  Holmes nodded. “Why have you come to see me?” he asked bluntly.

  A flush stole over Miss van Allen’s face and she plucked nervously at a small handkerchief drawn from her bag as she stated her errand with earnest simplicity. “I would give everything I have to know what has become of Mr. Horatio Darvill. There! Now you have it.”

  “Please, could you perhaps begin at the beginning?” encouraged Holmes gently.

  “Whilst my father was alive, sir, we always received tickets for the gas-fitters’ ball. And after he died, the tickets were sent to my mother. But neither Mother nor I ever thought of going, because it was made plain to us that Mr. Wyndham did not approve. He believed that the class of folk invited to such gatherings was inferior; and furthermore he asserted that neither of us—without considerable extra expenditure—had anything fit to wear. But believe me, Mr. Holmes, I myself had the purple plush that I had never so much as taken from the drawer!”

  It was after a decent interval that Holmes observed quietly: “But you did go to the ball?”

  “Yes. In the finish, we both went—Mother and I—when my step-father had been called away to France.”

  “And it was there that you met Mr. Horatio Darvill?”

  “Yes! And—do you know?—he called the very next morning. And several times after that, whilst my stepfather was in France, we walked out together.”

  “Mr. Wyndham must have been annoyed once he learned what had occurred?”

  Miss van Allen hung her pretty head. “Most annoyed, I’m afraid, for it became immediately clear that he did not approve of Mr. Darvill.”

  “Why do you think that was so?”

  “I am fairly sure he thought Mr. Darvill was interested only in my inheritance.”

  “Did Mr. Darvill not attempt to keep seeing you—in spite of these difficulties?”

  “Oh yes! I thought, though, it would be wiser for us to stop seeing each other for a while. But he did write—every single day. And always, in the mornings, I used to receive the letters myself so that no one else should know.”

  “Were you engaged to this gentleman?”

  “Yes! For there was no problem about his supporting me. He was a cashier in a firm in Leadenhall Street—”

  “Ah! Which office was that?” I interposed, for that particular area is known to me well, and I hoped that I might perhaps be of some assistance in the current investigation. Yet the look on Holmes’s face was one of some annoyance, and I sank further into my chair as the interview progressed.

  “I never did know exactly which firm it was,” admitted Miss van Allen.

  “But where did he live?” persisted Holmes.

  “He told me that he usually slept in a flat on the firm’s premises.”

  “You must yourself have written to this man, to whom you had agreed to become engaged?”

  She nodded. “To the Leadenhall Street Post Office, where I left my letters poste restante. Horatio—Mr. Darvill—said that if I wrote to him at his work address, he’d never get to see my envelopes first, and the young clerks there would be sure to tease him about things.”

  It was at this point that I was suddenly conscious of certain stertorous noises from Mycroft’s corner—a wholly reprehensible lapse into poor manners, as it appeared to me.

  “What else can you tell me about Mr. Darvill?” asked Holmes quickly.

  “He was very shy. He always preferred to w
alk out with me in the evening than in the daylight. ‘Retiring,’ perhaps is the best word to describe him—even his voice. He’d had the quinsy as a young man, and was still having treatment for it. But the disability had left him with a weak larynx, and a sort of whispering fashion of speaking. His eyesight, too, was rather feeble—just as mine is—and he always wore tinted spectacles to protect his eyes against the glare of any bright light.”

  Holmes nodded his understanding; and I began to sense a note of suppressed excitement in his voice.

  “What next?”

  “He called at the house the very evening on which Mr. Wyndham next departed for France, and he proposed that we should marry before my step-father returned. He was convinced that this would be our only chance; and he was so dreadfully in earnest that he made me swear, with my hand upon both Testaments, that whatever happened I would always be true and faithful to him.”

  “Your mother was aware of what was taking place?”

  “Oh, yes. And she approved so much. In a strange way, she was even fonder of my fiancé than I was myself, and she agreed that our only chance was to arrange a secret marriage.”

  “The wedding was to be in church?”

  “Last Friday, at St. Saviour’s, near King’s Cross; and we were to go on to a wedding-breakfast afterwards at the St. Paneras Hotel. Horatio called a hansom for us, and put Mother and me into it before stepping himself into a four-wheeler which happened to be in the street. Mother and I got to St. Saviour’s first—it was only a few minutes’ distance away. But when the four-wheeler drove up and we waited for him to step out—he never did, Mr. Holmes! And when the cabman got down from the box and looked inside the carriage—it was empty.”

  “You have neither seen nor heard of Mr. Darvill since?”

  “Nothing,” she whispered.

  “You had planned a honeymoon, I suppose?”

  “We had planned,” said Miss van Allen, biting her lip and scarce managing her reply, ‘a fortnight’s stay at the Royal Gleneagles in Inverness, and we were to have caught the lunchtime express from King’s Cross.”

  “It seems to me,” said Holmes, with some feeling, “that you have been most shamefully treated, dear lady.”

  But Miss van Allen would hear nothing against her loved one, and protested spiritedly: “Oh, no, sir! He was far too good and kind to treat me so.”

  “Your own opinion, then,” said Holmes, “is that some unforeseen accident or catastrophe has occurred?”

  She nodded her agreement. “And I think he must have had some premonition that very morning of possible danger, because he begged me then, once again, to remain true to him—whatever happened.”

  “You have no idea what that danger may have been?”

  “None.”

  “How did your mother take this sudden disappearance?”

  “She was naturally awfully worried at first. But then she became more and more angry; and she made me promise never to speak to her of the matter again.”

  “And your step-father?”

  “He seemed—it was strange, really—rather more sympathetic than Mother. At least he was willing to discuss it.”

  “And what was his opinion?”

  “He agreed that some accident must have happened. As he said, Mr. Darvill could have no possible interest in bringing me to the very doors of St. Saviour’s—and then in deserting me there. If he had borrowed money—or if some of my money had already been settled on him—then there might have been some reason behind such a cruel action. But he was absolutely independent about money, and he would never even look at a sixpence of mine if we went on a visit. Oh, Mr. Holmes! It is driving me half-mad to think of—” But the rest of the sentence was lost as the young lady sobbed quietly into her handkerchief.

  When she had recovered her composure, Holmes rose from his chair, promising that he would consider the baffling facts she had put before him. “But if I could offer you one piece of advice,” he added, as he held the lady’s coat for her, “it is that you allow Mr. Horatio Darvill to vanish as completely from your memory as he vanished from his wedding-carriage.”

  “Then you think that I shall not see him again?”

  “I fear not. But please leave things in my hands. Now! I wish you to send me a most accurate physical description of Mr. Darvill, as well as any of his letters which you feel you can spare.”

  “We can at least expedite things a little in those two respects,” replied she in business-like fashion, “for I advertised for him in last Monday’s Chronicle.” And promptly reaching into her handbag, she produced a newspaper cutting which she gave to Holmes, together with some other sheets. “And here, too, are four of his letters which I happen to have with me. Will they be sufficient?”

  Holmes looked quickly at the letters, and nodded. “You say you never had Mr. Darvill’s address?”

  “Never.”

  “Your step-father’s place of business, please?”

  “He travels for Cook and Marchant, the great Burgundy importers, of Fenchurch Street.”

  “Thank you.”

  After she had left Holmes sat brooding for several minutes, his fingertips still pressed together. “An interesting case,” he observed finally. “Did you not find it so, Watson?”

  “You appeared to read a good deal which was quite invisible to me,” I confessed.

  “Not invisible, Watson. Rather, let us say—unnoticed. And that in spite’ of my repeated attempts to impress upon you the importance of sleeves, of thumb-nails, of boot-laces, and the rest. Now, tell me, what did you immediately gather from the young woman’s appearance? Describe it to me.”

  Conscious of Mycroft’s presence, I sought to recall my closest impressions of our recent visitor.

  “Well, she had, beneath her fur, a dress of rich brown, somewhat darker than the coffee colour, with a little black plush at the neck and at the sleeves—you mentioned sleeves, Holmes? Her gloves were dove-grey in colour, and were worn through at the right forefinger. Her black boots, I was not able, from where I sat, to observe in any detail, yet I would suggest that she takes either the size four-and-a-half or five. She wore small pendant earrings, almost certainly of imitation gold, and the small handkerchief into which the poor lady sobbed so charmingly had a neat darn in the monogrammed corner. In general, she had the air of a reasonably well-to-do young woman who has not quite escaped from the slightly vulgar inheritance of a father who was—let us be honest about it, Holmes!—a plumber.”

  A snort from the chair beside which Holmes had so casually thrown Miss van Allen’s fur coat served to remind us that the recumbent Mycroft had now reawakened, and that perhaps my own description had, in some respect, occasioned his disapproval. But he made no spoken comment, and soon resumed his former posture.

  “ ’Pon my word, Watson,” said Holmes, “you are coming along splendidly—is he not, Mycroft? It is true, of course, that your description misses almost everything of real importance. But the method! You have hit upon the method, Watson. Let us take, for example, the plush you mention on the sleeves. Now, plush is a most wonderfully helpful material for showing traces; and the double line above the wrist, where the type-writist presses against the table, was beautifully defined. As for the short-sightedness, that was mere child’s play. The dent-marks of a pince-nez at either side of the lady’s nostrils—you did not observe it? Elementary, my dear Watson! And then the boots. You really must practise the art of being positioned where all the evidence is clearly visible. If you wish to observe nothing at all, like brother Mycroft, then you will seek out the furthest comer of a room where even the vaguest examination of the client will be obscured by the furniture, by a fur coat, by whatever. But reverting to the lady’s boots, I observed that although they were very like each other in colour and style, they were in fact odd boots; the one on the right foot having a slightly decorated toe-cap, and the one on the left being of a comparatively plain design. Furthermore, the right one was fastened only at the three lower buttons ou
t of the five; the left one only at the first, third, and fifth. Now the deduction we may reasonably draw from such evidence is that the young lady left home in an unconscionable hurry. You agree?”

  “Amazing, Holmes!”

  “As for the glove worn at the forefinger—”

  “You would be better advised,” suddenly interposed the deeper voice of Mycroft, “to concentrate upon the missing person.”

  May it have been a flash of annoyance that showed itself in Holmes’s eyes? If so, it was gone immediately. “You are quite right, Mycroft! Come now, Watson, read to us the paragraph from The Chronicle.”

  I held the printed slip to the light and began: “Missing on the 14th November 188-. A gentleman named Mr. Horatio Darvill: about 5 feet 8 inches in height; fairly firmly built; sallow complexion; black hair, just a little bald in the centre; bushy black side-whiskers and moustache; tinted spectacles; slight infirmity of speech. When last seen, was dressed in—”

  “But I think,” interrupted Holmes, “he may by now have changed his wedding vestments, Watson?”

  “Oh, certainly, Holmes.”

  There being nothing, it seemed, of further value in the newspaper description, Holmes turned his attention to the letters, passing them to me after studying them himself with minute concentration.

  “Well?” he asked.

  Apart from the fact that the letters had been typed, I could find in them nothing of interest, and I laid them down on the coffee-table in front of the somnolent Mycroft.