It was, in every way, decidedly sinister. It carried a whiff of burning and brimstone, prompted by which odours one might all too easily imagine demons abroad in the streets – creatures of the pit gleefully cavorting and waylaying, their malign activities masked by the fog’s writhing yellow coils.
I made the mistake of expressing this very sentiment to my good friend Mr Sherlock Holmes one evening when I had called round at 221B Baker Street. I was at the time married, but I would make regular pilgrimages to the rooms Holmes and I had formerly shared, however inclement the weather. I not only relished his company but could not resist the lure of potential adventure, for he was usually in the throes of an investigation and would invariably invite me to join him in pursuing it. I was no longer a carefree bachelor but, like the foxhound, my ears were ever pricked for the old view halloo.
“Demons!” Holmes snapped scathingly, his lip curling. “Hark at you, Watson. Next you will be telling me you believe in ghosts, when you know full well my views on that subject. There is no room in the rational mind for contemplation of the existence of diaphanous spectres, chain-rattling phantoms and the like. They belong in the pages of fiction and nowhere else. The same goes for sprites, imps, fairies, elves, devils, boggarts, and all their ilk. Pure poppycock.”
I sighed. “Yes, Holmes. My remark was mere fancy, an exaggeration designed to confer a sense of infernality upon the miasma that presently surrounds us. My authorial tendencies came to the fore. I shall do my utmost never to introduce imagination into any future conversations.”
Holmes appeared impervious to my heavy sarcasm. “I would be obliged if you refrained from introducing it, too, into any further chronicles you may write of my cases,” said he. “Your habit of playing up the more lurid aspects of our adventures has manifested both in your one published novel to date and in its successor.” He patted the manuscript of The Sign of Four lying amidst the sheaves of newspaper and correspondence that littered the sitting-room floor.
“You have read it,” I said. I had lent Holmes the manuscript a few days ago. I was keen to hear his verdict, and at the same time reluctant.
“Yes, and may I compliment Mrs Watson on her handiwork? The hours she has put in, slaving at her typewriter to create this fair-copy, have been well spent. I especially commend her on being able to decipher your penmanship.”
“That is it? Your only compliment? How legible Mary has made the thing?”
“You have to admit, your handwriting is atrocious, Watson, even by the standards of the medical profession. Your wife has, to her further credit, succeeded in producing a text blissfully free from spelling errors. That is some achievement, and I salute her for it.”
“But Holmes, did you enjoy the book?”
“I am prepared to give it my grudging approval,” Holmes allowed. “It certainly commands the attention.”
“Thank you.”
“All the same,” he added, “it does show a deplorable lack of fidelity to fact. There is nothing I dislike quite so much as inaccuracy, and you, with your propensity to sacrifice truth on the altar of sensationalism, are guilty of it.”
“I have done as good a job as I can of turning the events of the Sholto case into an entertaining narrative. If you wish for a dry, journalistic rendering of your investigations, look elsewhere.”
“Oh, Watson!” My companion chuckled heartily, exhibiting one of those fits of brash good humour which were wont to overcome him like a sudden burst of sunshine that breaks through the clouds on an overcast day. “You are too, too sensitive to criticism. Perhaps, if you have an insufficiently thick skin, a career as a writer is not for you after all. Reviewers can be brutal, you know.”
“Well, the book is to be published in Lippincott’s next spring. We shall let my readers, both here and in the United States, be the judges of its worth.”
“I shall await their opinion with bated breath. At any rate, you will doubtless be delighted to hear that a fresh case is in the offing. More grist to your literary mill.” Holmes glanced at the mantel clock above the roaring hearth. “Indeed, I am expecting my client at any moment. He is ten minutes late, but given the conditions I am not surprised.”
“One is hard pressed to find a cab out there,” I said, nodding. “They are as rare as rubies on a night like this.”
“Do fetch out your pipe, my friend, as shall I my own, and let us pass the time while we wait in a profitable manner.”
At that moment there came hurried footfalls outside the house, the sound somewhat muffled by the fog. This was followed by an urgent ringing upon the doorbell and a brief conversation in the hall between Mrs Hudson and our visitor.
“Hum!” Holmes set down his briar, which he had been on the point of lighting. “The Fates decree that we must postpone the pleasure of smoking, at least until we have made our guest comfortable.”
“The Fates?” I said.
“Merely a figure of speech.”
I withheld comment, yet could not help but chafe at the irony. Holmes, it seemed, could upbraid me for making reference to supernatural entities but was himself permitted to do so.
Through the door came a young fellow, no more than five and twenty years of age, in a clear state of distress. His clothing, from his silk cravat to his camel-hair topcoat to his patent leather boots, announced him a man of some means, yet his hair was as dishevelled and his features as haggard as any beggar’s.
“Which of you gentlemen is Mr Holmes?” he demanded.
My companion bowed his head and indicated that the new arrival should take a seat.
“Mr Alec Carstairs, I presume,” said Holmes. “You know of my close confidant, Dr Watson?”
Carstairs directed the briefest of nods towards me. “Mr Holmes, I come to you importunate. The rumours about me. The utterly unfounded rumours! The accusations folk are levying at me. But I did not kill him; I can assure you of that. They say I did, but I did not. I would never. I am not that sort of person. I did not even know about the legacy until this morning.”
“I pray you, sir, calm down,” said Holmes. “Your lack of composure may be forgivable, but it serves no purpose. You are babbling, telling me everything and nothing at once. Who is it you did not kill? Who are these rumourmongers? What is this legacy you speak of? Settle yourself and put your thoughts in order. Here, allow Watson to pour you a brandy. That’s a good fellow, Watson. Now drink, Mr Carstairs, and then let us attempt to untangle this knot you seem to have tied yourself in.”
As Carstairs set down the empty brandy glass, I observed that his wrists and the backs of his hands were riddled with eczema. The inflammation was severe, a condition not aided by the way he was evidently prone to scratching the various blooms of redness. Scabs abounded, and in several places he had scraped the skin raw.
“You see before you a man whose world has been turned upside down,” he said. “A week ago, I had a good position and excellent prospects. Now all that has gone. Financially I am better off than I could ever have imagined, but personally I am worse off than I have ever been.”
“I shall tell you what else I see before me,” Holmes said, steepling his fingers beneath his aquiline nose. “I see before me a graduate of Oriel College, Oxford, who is left-handed, who is the private secretary of a wealthy individual, who is prone to nervous attacks yet a diligent worker, and who is in need of a decent meal because he has not eaten since breakfast.”
Our guest’s eyes widened in astonishment. “You have conducted research. That can be the only explanation. I sent you my card this afternoon, and in the interim you have made enquiries about me.”
“I have done no such thing. I have simply looked at you.”
“Then how came you by these insights?”
Holmes counted off his deductions on his fingers. “First, your Oxford background. You wear cufflinks bearing the crest of Oriel College, three lions on a shield. People often forget their small sartorial flourishes. One puts on cufflinks every morning, an action so routine that
one scarcely thinks about their design, which in your case means the emblem that pair happens to bear. Second, your left-handedness. Ink stains upon the tips of the index and middle fingers of your left hand denote that you write with that hand, thus it is the dominant one. A quite elementary deduction. Third, your occupation. The sheer quantity of ink smudged about the aforementioned fingers tells me you must write a great deal. Some of the blotches are fainter than others, so it would appear to be a regular custom. You are no journalist, otherwise you would not be as well dressed as you are. Newsmen are notoriously shabby. Nor are you a novelist. Very rarely does wealth accrue from that profession, and were you a great success in the field of publishing, Watson here – being far better versed than I in such matters – would have heard of you and remarked upon it when he learned your name. So, by the elimination of alternatives, a clerical position. Whoever you work for pays you well, and must therefore himself be affluent, which inclines me to reckon you a private secretary. Fourth, the susceptibility to nervous attacks. Your current state of anxiety, I’m afraid, attests to that. More tangibly, it is manifest in the rash that covers your wrists. The latter is a glaring signal. And yet you hold down a job in spite of the inner tensions that bedevil you. That in turn suggests you are a hard worker, a quality which makes up for any defects of character.”
“And the fact that I have had nothing to eat since breakfast? It is true, but how did you know?”
“You are, it seems, something of a messy eater – or perhaps an agitated one. At any rate, crumbs of toast and a few tiny fragments of boiled egg adorn your shirt collar. Had you had lunch, you would have put on a napkin, which would almost certainly have dislodged those morsels. Their presence, and your evident lack of appetite, are consonant with your overall mood of disquiet. Now, to the nub of the matter. Begin at the beginning. Whom are you alleged to have killed?”
“My employer,” said Carstairs.
“Who is?”
“Sir Hubert Cole. You have heard of him?”
“The shipping magnate? Owner of the Pole Star Line? Who has not?”
“I recall that he died last week,” I said. “It was in the papers. The cause of death was reported to be a heart attack.”
“And so it was, Doctor,” said Carstairs, raking his fingernails up and down one wrist. “So it was. Yet there are whispers that it was something else. Poison, to be precise. Poison I am supposed to have administered.”
“Tell me more,” said Holmes. “How long have you been employed by Sir Hubert?”
“I gained the position of his private secretary directly upon graduation. Sir Hubert is – was – a distant relative on my mother’s side, and I accept that I was offered the job in the first place through nepotism, albeit tenuous. I have, however, hung on to it over the past eighteen months by simple virtue of being very good at it. That, and I have withstood Sir Hubert’s frequent temperamental outbursts, whereas his previous private secretaries found them intolerable and resigned one after the other.”
“Yes, from what little I have heard about him, I gather he was not an easy man to get along with.”
“He could be quite the monster,” Carstairs admitted. “His quickness to anger was equalled only by the ferocity of his rage. There were several occasions when he vented his spleen upon me full force, and it was like being in the teeth of a hurricane. I am not sure how I was able to bear it. I have a tenacious streak, I will say. I may be prone to worry, but that same habit drives me to excel. Perhaps, in that respect, my curse is a blessing. I am conscientious to a fault, and loath to disappoint. Thus, while others capitulate, I endure.”
“How have these rumours arisen that you may have been the agent of Sir Hubert’s demise? Does it have something to do with this legacy you mentioned?”
“I am, it so happens, the sole named beneficiary of his will. I learned this just the day before yesterday, when I was summoned to the offices of Sir Hubert’s solicitors on Chancery Lane and informed of the fact, much to my astonishment. Once probate is granted, everything that was Sir Hubert’s goes to me. His property, his share portfolio, his company, the lot.”
Holmes whistled softly. “Then you are about to become one of the richest men in England.”
“I know,” said Carstairs forlornly.
“You sound none too happy about it.”
“Oh no, I am pleased. How could I not be? Honoured, too. Sir Hubert, as you may be aware, was unmarried and without issue. It would seem that, over the period I worked closely with him, he came to regard me as a surrogate son and perhaps even held me in affection, although he gave precious little sign of that. He altered his will just a few months ago. Before, the estate would have been divided in equal shares among his kin. Now it is mine alone, lock, stock, and barrel.”
“I doubt this has made you popular.”
“Far from it. There has already been a great deal of grumbling from various quarters of the extended family. As word has spread that I am heir to Sir Hubert’s fortune, so have a number of relatives begun to voice their complaint. As a matter of fact, this morning I received a trio of letters sent by cousins several times removed, two of whom I have never even met. The content was acrimonious, each letter stating more or less frankly that I ought to share my windfall with the correspondent, who is as deserving of it as me, if not more so.”
“Nothing can divide a family quite like money,” I observed. “The larger the sums, the greater the divisions.”
“It made me feel quite unwell, reading those words at the breakfast table. I found I was trembling all over. Hence, I suppose, the lapse in my usually fastidious table manners.” Carstairs gestured at his food-besmirched collar. “I have yet to recover my appetite.”
“And this talk of you poisoning Sir Hubert?” said Holmes.
“It originates from his household staff. They, too, are embittered. They are concerned for their livelihoods, of course. Now that Sir Hubert is dead, they will have to seek positions elsewhere.”
“You are not going to keep them on?”
“I have not really thought about it. I have no plans to move into his house, that I do know. I will most likely sell it. It is an enormous premises near Hyde Park, much too large and grand for the likes of me. The same goes for the Pole Star Line. I cannot possibly run such a huge business. I am sure there will be candidates eager to take it off my hands. But I believe his staff’s resentment towards me runs deeper than that. It would appear they thought they might be in line for generous disbursements out of Sir Hubert’s estate and they consider me to have deprived them of those. In their eyes, I inveigled myself into our employer’s favour solely in order to become his legatee, when of course nothing could be further from the truth. As I told you, until two days ago I did not have even the faintest idea he had rewritten his will to my benefit.”
“Hence they have taken to casting aspersions.”
“The valet, Deakins, is being particularly acrimonious. Yesterday afternoon he drew me aside and said, ‘It would not be difficult for someone who works in close proximity to Sir Hubert to have slipped a certain substance into his nightly sleeping draught – a certain substance injurious to his health.’ I am paraphrasing. He did not put it in quite such bald terms, but the implication was clear nevertheless. No less clear is the fact that many of Deakins’s colleagues below stairs share his view. I have been on the receiving end of countless glares and suspicious glances from them, to such an extent that today I did not visit the house at all. The atmosphere there is now quite obnoxious.”
“One can hardly blame you,” I said.
“What everyone seems to be overlooking, in their rush to condemn me, are the circumstances leading up to Sir Hubert’s death.”
“Which were?” said Holmes.
“It is widely known, if not well publicised, that Sir Hubert was a committed spiritualist,” said Carstairs. “Frequently he would attend séances and consult the spirits for advice on business decisions.”
“Surely not!” m
y companion expostulated.
“It seems incongruous, I grant you – the hardnosed, ruthless businessman availing himself of the services of psychic mediums. Yet Sir Hubert was ever a man of contradictions. For all that he avowed himself a pragmatist, he always kept upon his person the very first shilling he earned as a young actuary working at Southampton docks. It sat in his pocket in a velvet pouch and he would refer to it as his ‘good-luck charm’. I remember one day he mislaid it, and we turned the house upside down looking for it, Sir Hubert cursing like a navvy all the while. He was near apoplectic until it was found. One might have thought his entire shipping empire was going to collapse unless he got that talismanic shilling back. The same goes for his spiritualism. He would not consider purchasing a freighter or investing in a new trade route without first seeking reassurance from ‘beyond the veil’ that he was doing the right thing.”
“I presume the spirits were never less than approbatory.”
“What makes you say that?”
“It stands to reason,” said Holmes. “Such beings are entirely of the medium’s manufacture. Put yourself in that individual’s shoes when Sir Hubert Cole comes to call. A man as eminent, as prosperous as he, sitting down at your parlour table? You are unlikely to intimate that he is anything other than wise and sensible. You will see to it that the spirits, for whom you purport to act as a mouthpiece, concur with his every proposition and flatter his ego. It ensures repeat patronage. His silver will continue to cross your palm.”
“That is a dashed cynical view,” said Carstairs.
“Am I wrong? From what I understand about mediumship, the intent is to offer guidance and succour to the living by means of communiqués from the souls of the departed. It is blatant charlatanry, but it provides its practitioners with an income, and they would not endanger that by off ending their clients. Hence any counsel the alleged spirits give is going to be nothing but heartening and positive.”
The Manifestations of Sherlock Holmes Page 25
