Sherlock Holmes and the Beast of the Stapletons

by James Lovegrove

  In spite of the ship’s lurching, my hand was steady, and the suturing was, even if I say so myself, exemplary.

  By the end of it, Grier had fully regained his senses. “It seems, Doctor, that you and I have very different definitions of the verb ‘to smart’. But thank you all the same.”

  “I have done the best I can,” I said, “but you are going to have an impressive scar.”

  “I shall tell people I got it in a sabre duel with a Prussian nobleman over some matter of personal honour.”

  “Fine, but perhaps you can tell me honestly how you came by the injury.”

  “My impression is,” said Grier, narrowing his eyes in thought, “that it was all just an awful accident. I was out on deck, near the front of the ship. I was clinging to the rail, feeling the sheer might of the storm pounding through me, and I as small as small can be, a speck of dust in the face of God’s might. It was exhilarating. Then all of a sudden I glimpsed something out of the corner of my eye. An object hurtling towards me. On instinct, I ducked to one side. This enormous weight crashed into my head. I fell to the deck, stunned. After that, I don’t remember anything until I came to. I have no idea how long I was lying there. I only knew that I must get up and go inside, else the cold and the wet would be the death of me. As I got to my feet, I saw something lying nearby. It was a heap of cable, with a wooden hook block in the middle of it. Big, heavy thing, that hook block. Must have weighed thirty pounds or more, including the cast-iron hook itself. The cable was dangling down from one of the ship’s cranes that stood right above.”

  “One of the guy derricks.”

  “If that’s what they’re called. The jib of the guy derrick was swinging to and fro with the motion of the ship. I think the hook block must have come at me at head height and struck me a glancing blow, after which it fell to the deck.”

  “Thank God it was only a glancing blow. If you hadn’t ducked and it had hit you full on, it would have stoved in your skull.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I was born with a very hard head.” Grier sheathed the sentence in a small smile.

  “I suppose it was the tip of the hook that gave you that gash,” I said. “Are you quite sure, though, that the whole thing was an accident?”

  “Why ever not? One of the sailors didn’t tie down the derrick as tightly as he ought to. The storm worked its tether loose. The reeling of the ship and sheer bad timing did the rest.”

  “I’m simply wondering if it might not have been foul play.”

  “You have spent too much time in the company of Sherlock Holmes, Watson. You see intrigue and malfeasance everywhere.”

  “But think about it, Grier,” I said. “You do, after all, have an enemy aboard the Aegean.”

  He used the coffee magnate’s name. “Him, you mean? He is a blowhard, yes. He certainly takes a dim view of my kind. But is he the sort to attempt murder? I doubt he would have the guts or the gumption. It would mean dirtying his hands, and a fellow like that hasn’t got his hands dirty a single day in his life.”

  “Still, I cannot let it lie. Stay here. You are in no fit state to do anything but rest.”

  “If my head were not sizzling like a skillet, I might argue. As it is, I shall do as I’m told.”

  I roused Holmes in his cabin. I told him about Grier’s mishap and voiced my concern that it had been not accident but assault. Holmes did not disagree – at least, he reckoned it a possibility – and presently he and I were out on the port deck, making our way for’ard. Black waves roiled and seethed around the Aegean. Rain pelted, seeming to come from all directions at once. The deck planks were slick underfoot, and what with that and the slamming gusts of wind and the ship’s pitch and yaw, every step one took was treacherous. It felt as though one’s legs might be whisked out from under one at any moment.

  Eventually, after much slithering and striving, we reached the foredeck. There was the hook block, just as Grier had said, nestled amid a spill of cable like the head of a curled-up snake amid the coils of its own body. The guy derrick from which the cable hung slackly was rotating with the ship’s motion on its pivoted base. Its angled jib described a ponderous to-and-fro arc several feet above our heads.

  Holmes commenced one of his examinations. He looked over the scene, moving cautiously because of the conditions, with none of his usual darting, terrier-like zeal. He studied the hook block, the cable, the base of the guy derrick, and the derrick’s winch with its double-handed crank. Here, his eye alighted on something lodged amid the winch’s cogs. He extricated the item in gingerly fashion, held it close to his face, then slipped it into a pocket. It was a tiny, glittering object the nature of which I could not make out just then.

  There was no point in talking. The howling of the squall made communicating, even at a shout, a futile exercise. Holmes signalled with a wave of the hand that we should go back inside, and this met with no protest from me.

  Returning to our quarters was like going from the thick of war to a ceasefire. Although the storm raged on, we were out of it, our ears delivered from the wind’s roaring barrage, our bodies no longer assaulted by salvoes of rain.

  As we dried ourselves off in Holmes’s cabin, my companion fixed me with a portentous stare.

  “There is malice afoot here, Watson,” said he.

  “I feared as much. Grier was not merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “No. Someone swung the hook block at him, having lowered it beforehand to the level of his head. The aim was clearly to cause harm, and most probably to kill. The culprit, however, has done his best to make it appear as though it was all just misadventure.”

  “How?”

  “In the normal course of events, when the guy derrick is not in use the cable is reeled in so that the hook block sits at the tip of the jib, some twenty feet above the deck. A ratchet is then applied to the winch to lock the mechanism. If, as we are meant to believe, the derrick broke loose from its tether of its own accord and started to swing, then in order for the hook block to be level with Grier’s head, the winch ratchet would have to have come undone too, and the cable would have to have begun unspooling.”

  “So that as the jib came towards Grier, the hook block would have been descending and, when it reached him, it was at exactly the height it needed to be to brain him.”

  “One might well assume, if one were the assuming type,” said Holmes, “that somehow the ratchet was jarred, perhaps by the juddering action of the jib as it butted up against its stops, and this was how the cable was released. The hook block landed on the deck after it had struck Grier, and the cable continued to pay out until there was enough of it lying on the deck to achieve equilibrium with the amount remaining on the reel. Sufficient slack still remained in the cable for the jib to continue its swinging. This is how we found things, is it not?”

  “It is.”

  “However…” My friend wagged an admonitory finger. “It is altogether too much to accept that the hook block just so happened to be at the right height when it reached Grier, and that the jib just so happened to be swinging over him at that same moment, and above all else that Grier just so happened to be standing in precisely the right spot for this collision to take place, especially given the way the ship is moving around so unpredictably. The layers upon layers of chance stretch credulity. It is much easier to infer, if less palatable, that the derrick had been untethered beforehand and the hook block lowered, ready to be launched at Grier manually, with considerable force, by an unseen assailant. Said assailant then undid the ratchet and allowed the cable to run free. This, he hoped, would lead everyone to think, as Grier himself did, that the whole thing was a tragic concatenation of disasters.”

  “But if the intent was murder, would the culprit not have checked to see that he had done the job properly?” I said. “It would not take much to establish that Grier was not dead but had only been stunned.”

  “Having contrived this elaborate method of despatch,” said Holmes, “the felo
n had painted himself into a corner. If the hook block did not kill Grier outright, he could not strike him a second time. That would negate the entire ‘accident’ aspect of the plan. Even if he knew Grier was still alive, he had no alternative but to leave him as he was and trust that his injuries were so severe that he would die of them, or else that exposure to the elements would finish him off. For what were the odds of someone coming across Grier until after the squall had blown itself out? Even the ship’s crew won’t go out on deck in this weather.”

  “It was our millionaire friend with the coffee plantations who did it, isn’t it? I know it was. Grier embarrassed him in full view of several other First-Class passengers, including his wife and son, after he interrupted our chess game. He was there in the dining room earlier tonight when Grier announced he was heading outside, and he saw a chance to get his own back. Perhaps simply injuring Grier was all he was after. A man like him might not countenance murder, but badly hurting someone – especially someone he considers no better than an animal – would trouble him little.”

  “Granted, he seems a plausible suspect,” said Holmes. “There is another, however, who is as likely to have done the deed.”

  “And who is that?”

  Holmes produced from his pocket the tiny object he had retrieved from the winch.

  It was a gold cufflink, the type that uses a hinge pin to hold it in place.

  “This could well have fallen from the culprit’s shirt cuff into the winch mechanism as he was releasing the ratchet,” he said. “Hinge-pin cufflinks are notorious for coming loose and slipping off.”

  “I would not be surprised if” – the coffee magnate – “has a cufflink like that. It looks to be pure gold and rather expensive, just the sort he would wear.”

  “But are these his initials?”

  Holmes held the cufflink out to me so that I could see its face.

  A pair of letters were engraved into it in a stylish serif font:

  HB

  “They are not,” I admitted.

  “They are, however, the initials of someone else known to us,” Holmes said. “In point of fact, I spied this cufflink and its mate adorning that person’s sleeves a little over an hour ago. I saw them at very close hand, what’s more.”

  “Whose sleeves?”

  “Watson, must I spell out everything for you?”

  “My God.” A chill ran through me. “‘HB’. You mean to say…?”

  “Sir Henry Baskerville,” said Holmes.

  Chapter Thirty

  A VIVID PICTURE OF FRIENDSHIP GONE AWRY

  “I cannot believe it,” I said. “Sir Henry? But he and Grier are bosom friends. He would no more attack him than you would me.”

  “Yet the evidence would seem compelling, would it not?” said Holmes, twirling the cufflink between thumb and forefinger.

  “Suppose it fell from his sleeve. Hinge-and-pin cufflinks often come loose. You said so yourself. Somebody picked it up and seized an opportunity.”

  “An opportunity to…?”

  “To kill Grier, or maim him,” I said, “and make it look as though another was to blame – in this instance by planting the cufflink in the winch, so that when it was found, the obvious inference would be that Sir Henry Baskerville was behind the attempt.”

  “I presume that the person responsible for this cunning deception is the coffee magnate. You persist with your belief that he is the guilty party.”

  “He despises Grier. He might also want to pay me back for hitting him by striking at a friend of mine.”

  “Ah yes, your second confrontation with him. It was most intemperate of you, Watson, lashing out at the fellow like that.”

  “I don’t regret it.”

  “Nor should you,” said Holmes. “But it is not wise to make enemies of the wealthy. What if he takes you to court for common assault?”

  “Let him,” I replied. “I will deny it. It will be his word against mine.” Then, my defiance wilting somewhat, I said, “You don’t think he will sue me, do you?”

  “It might prove very costly for you if he did, whether or not he can prove the offence. He is able to afford far better legal representation than you and could have you tied up in litigation for months, if not years. I feel that that is a likely response to being punched, for someone such as him, who is hardly a man of action. Far likelier than devising this rather intricate scheme of hurting Grier and trying to pin the blame on another. One must also bear in mind the fact that when Sir Henry went to bed this evening, both of his cufflinks were present and correct in the appropriate place. I recall it distinctly.”

  “The cufflink could have fallen off in the corridor, somewhere between the dining room and his cabin. The coffee magnate stumbled across it when going to bed himself a short while later.”

  “But surely if one wished to frame somebody else for a crime, one would not choose a person who is obviously a close friend of one’s intended victim. One would look for an enemy of his instead. Moreover, the whole artifice of the hook block was designed to look like an accident. Why, then, go to the trouble of placing evidence that would confirm it was a deliberate act?”

  “In case someone such as Sherlock Holmes saw through the trick. The coffee magnate had an inkling you might investigate, and so made provision against that possibility.”

  “You so desperately want the man to be guilty, Watson, that you are espousing a theory which pays no heed to the facts.”

  “It was not him, then?”

  “I can say so with almost complete definitiveness.”

  I was deflated. I had been looking forward to watching Holmes convincingly and publicly accuse the coffee magnate of attempting murder and causing actual bodily harm. To see him get his just deserts would have been delicious.

  “But it cannot have been Sir Henry either,” I said.

  “And why not?” said Holmes. “Has his behaviour not been erratic lately? Has he not been drinking heavily?”

  “To the point where he might wish ill upon a longstanding friend, though?”

  “A man may get so drunk that he is not responsible for his actions. He and Grier are longstanding friends, indeed, but might there not have arisen some animosity during that time? A rift which, although amends have been made, has not fully healed? Sir Henry’s new-found wealth, for instance, could have upset the balance of their relationship. Grier might have asked him for a loan and it was refused, or, conversely, Sir Henry offered to bale Grier out of a financial tight spot and Grier was too proud to accept the help. Sir Henry has been dwelling upon it, this past insult, and now tonight, when he is in his cups, the old resentment comes welling up. Grier heads outside. Sir Henry pretends to go to bed, but actually follows Grier onto the deck to have it out with him. There is Grier, standing at the bow. Sir Henry’s drink-addled brain is overcome by rage. But Grier is a big man, far outclassing Sir Henry in terms of sheer physical strength. It would be hopeless to try to beat him in a fair fight. Nor, for the same reason, would it be an easy thing to wrestle him over the rail into the sea. Then Sir Henry’s eye falls upon the guy derrick. Eureka. Stealthily, his movements disguised by the din of the storm, he untethers the derrick and lowers the hook block. He swings it at Grier with all his might, then undoes the ratchet and quits the scene. He has been quite cunning, he feels. Little does he realise he has left behind a telltale cufflink.”

  “You paint a vivid picture,” I said.

  “And an all too plausible one,” said Holmes.

  “Then what must we do? Do we tell Grier who his attacker was?”

  “No. He might wish to retaliate against Sir Henry, and if he did, who of us could stop him? You? Me? Against that giant of a man?”

  “True. But we cannot leave Sir Henry unchaperoned. He might try again with Grier, or even, if he is becoming so deranged, visit similar violence on one of us.”

  “You are absolutely right, Watson. We must also consider the possibility that tomorrow Sir Henry may have no memory of tonight�
�s events. It could be that he was so drunk everything will be a blank. So we must be careful not to alert him to the fact that we know what he has done.”

  “For fear that his remorse would be so great, his madness might turn inward,” I said, nodding. “He might do himself harm.”

  “Exactly.”

  “All the same, he cannot be allowed to get away with it.”

  “We will deal with that after the business with Beryl Stapleton and Harry is resolved. Once Sir Henry has his son back, safe and sound, he will be a much more malleable proposition. We can then reveal what we know and find some way of achieving reconciliation between him and Grier. I’m sure it is possible. In the meantime, however, we must contain him and curb his excesses. Any thoughts as to how we might accomplish that?”

  I deliberated. “What if I were to monitor him? As a doctor, I mean. I could claim to have observed symptoms in him of a condition that requires round-the-clock medical supervision. Jaundice, for instance. Then I could confine him to his cabin and keep an eye on him at all times.”

  “What an excellent idea,” said Holmes. “I was thinking along those lines myself, but you have crystallised what was nebulous. Jaundice. A drinker’s ailment. Perfect.”

  “The symptoms are not always easy to spot. Sir Henry’s eyes are permanently bloodshot at present. I can tell him I have noticed a slight yellowing of the whites, and he might well confuse the one thing – their bloodshot state – with the other. Additional symptoms include fatigue and weight loss. He, in his current state of heightened tension, is exhibiting both.”

  “The power of suggestion will do the rest. When a qualified physician tells you he thinks you are ill, you are apt to believe him.”

  “It is unethical,” I said, “but, in the name of the greater good, it is acceptable.”

  “However, you cannot be expected to stay at his bedside twenty-four hours a day. I propose bringing Mortimer in on the plan. That will halve the burden. Do you think he will go along with it?”

  “I should imagine so. He is an amenable sort, and Sir Henry is his friend. Should I tell him why we are practising the fraud?”