“Did he say anything to them?” asked Holmes.
“Indeed, he did. He says to the gent from next door, who is trying to stop the bleeding, he says ‘Tell Hattie and my children that I loved them’ and then he passes on to the great beyond or wherever it is that nobility goes if they refuse to associate with commoners in the next life as well.” He chuckled at his gallows wit.
“Pray continue, Inspector.”
“Well now, the staff are all trained, so they shoo the other guests away, and make sure nothing is touched, and keep the place as they found it, as much as they can until we arrive. We get here by just after eight o’clock and start to look around. The carpet has been trampled by the staff and guests so we cannot see anything in it, but there is no blood anywhere else other than on and around the body, so it looks as if he was shot and died where you saw him.”
Lestrade stopped his account and looked at Holmes as if he were seeking affirmation.
“A logical conclusion,” said Holmes, and Lestrade continued.
“The door was still locked, so the only way the culprit could have escaped is out the balcony, down the drain pipe, and then down the branches of the tree. My men went right away to the courtyard, and sure enough, in the earth around the base of the tree are some deep footprints, and then they turn and run out of the garden and over to the pavement. And we did a search, real careful and all, through the bushes, and lo and behold they find this.”
He reached down to the floor and lifted up a small canvas sack. Using just the tips of his fingers, he extracted a large revolver. Even without looking at it closely I could identify it as a Colt 45.
“The only other thing that we found, and have no explanation for yet, is the flakes of plaster and plaster dust lying around the body. There appeared to be some damage to a part of the wall and the ceiling, and we do not yet have a theory to account for it. But since you’re good at theories Mr. Holmes, what would you say?”
Holmes gave a small shrug and responded. “How many wounds were in the body?”
“Four.”
“And how many shots were heard?”
“As I said, most likely six. The gun held six bullets and they were all gone.”
“The two,” said Holmes, “not in the body were fired into the wall and the ceiling.”
“Right. I suppose that makes sense, though I cannot see why a murderer would do that. But if we get a ladder and check, I am sure that we will find what you said.”
“Once the murderer fled,” asked Holmes, “did anyone see him in the courtyard or on the street?”
“Well now, Mr. Holmes,” said Lestrade with a smirk, “what makes you so cocksure that the murderer was a him?”
“And why are you suggesting that it was not?”
“The sheets and blankets on both sides of the bed are pulled back. And, unless you know something about His Lordship that we do not, there was a woman in that bed. The pillow smelled distinctly of a woman’s perfume.”
“Mille Fleurs, I believe was the scent.”
“Good for you, Holmes. And that is something men do not wear. The footprints in the garden were either from a woman or a pygmy.”
“Ah, well then that is quite conclusive. No point arguing. Any thoughts on which woman it might be?” asked Holmes.
“Seeing as I believe in hard work and not sitting by the fire spinning fine theories, I am starting with his wife. Logical place to start, wouldn’t you say? It’s already known that the Lord and Lady were not getting along. She stands to get the estate clear to herself with him out of the way, and I would not be at all surprised if we found she had a lover on the side. So, she arranges to spend a night at the posh Metropole with the husband. Tricks him by spending hours in marital bliss, and then gets up in the morning and shoots him and escapes out over the balcony.”
“And,” added Holmes, “in her dress climbs down a drain pipe and then through a tree and runs off. Not much like a lady, is it?”
“There we have you, Holmes. You forgot that she’s an American, raised on the ranch, leaps on and off horses, and can handle a Colt like a gunslinger. It all fits. I’ve already sent the word out to find her, cause her arrest, and charge her with murdering her husband. And I will bet you a fiver that we’ll have nabbed the murderer.”
Holmes smiled back. “I am already down a fiver to Dr. Watson today, so putting another one at risk is too rich for my blood. If I think of anything that would be useful to you, Inspector, I will be sure to let you know. Now, though, since my client is definitely a was as you say, I have no more role to play here. I will, with your permission, take a look at the garden, and then be on my way. I wish you quick success in concluding this case. Good day, sir.”
He got up and walked out and I followed him. In the courtyard, he got down again on his hands and knees and examined the footprints. Even from a standing position I could see two distinct and deep prints of small boots. They had landed hard into the earth, as they would if someone had jumped from the last branch of a tree, and then they turned and walked out to the pavement. One of the constables directed Holmes to the place where the gun had been found, and I watched as he crawled into the thicket of the bushes, returning with an object in his hand.
“It would appear, constable,” he said to the chap standing guard, “that this item was overlooked.” He handed over a woman’s earring. It was a fairly large one, made of gleaming silver and inlaid with an oval of turquoise. The constable thanked him, and then Holmes turned to me.
“Come, Watson, there is no more to do here.”
“My dear fellow, I congratulate you. That was one of your shorter cases. It began only three days ago and now it’s over and done.”
“My dear, Watson. It has only just begun. The game is afoot. I do not take kindly to having my clients murdered, even if they are ones I do not like. We have found ourselves in the middle of a nasty business and I will get to the bottom of it. And please, do not dream of leaving. I am going to need your help.”
The lobby of the hotel had become a bustling beehive of activity. Onlookers mixed with police officers and a score of newspaper reporters. The word had gotten out that a noble lord had been murdered and the circumstances were possibly provocative, so of course the Press were aroused. On our way through the crowd, we were accosted by a short, wiry man with a notepad in one hand and thrusting his card in front of our faces with the other. “Howdy there,” he said. “Hey, ’ello there, you are the Mister Sherlock Holmes, are you not?” He had a heavy Russian accent and tried to put his body in front of Holmes and impede our exit. Holmes deftly stepped around him and kept walking. He persisted. “I am Mr. Sasha Beyeli, of Evening Star newspaper. You are helping Scotland Yard find the murderer, ya? Is this correct Mister Holmes? The murderer was his wife, ya? She spent the night in his bed and then killed him in the morning, ya? Is this correct, Mister Holmes? She is an American cowgirl and got away by climbing over the balcony, ya? Did she have a horse waiting for her to ride away on?”
Holmes ignored the questions, strode quickly away from the hotel and toward the Embankment. The reporter, apparently not wanting to leave the activity in the hotel, gave up and turned back. Once away from the commotion Holmes stopped, paused for a minute, and looked out over the Thames.
“Might I prevail upon you, my dear doctor,” asked Holmes as we stood in the cool autumnal breeze beside the river. “It is a long way out of your way, but could you hail a cab and drive along the Embankment all the way over to Knightrider, and spend an hour or two in the Doctor’s Commons?”
“You want to know the terms of the family’s wills?” I asked.
“Yes. When the scion of one of the oldest families in England is shot, and blame is placed on the wife who he has not seen for two weeks, and during which time both have been entertaining illicit couplings, there is something nefarious being hidden. The great ugly beast of inheritance is a good place to begin looking.”
I spent the rest of the morning and the early afte
rnoon in the shadow of St. Paul’s reading the documents that were on register. There were a few very odd provisions in the wills of both Lord St. Simon’s father and in his own, and I was eager to convey my findings to Holmes. It was a long cab ride back to Baker Street and we passed no end of newsboys hawking the afternoon papers. On the front page of the Evening Star was an artist’s rendering of Lady St. Simon wearing a cowboy hat and drawn as if it was a poster for the arrest of a villain from the wild American west. “WANTED” it read above her head and “FOR MURDER” below it. One lad standing in the middle of Oxford Circus had to be commended for his loud alliterative announcement. “Crazy cowgirl from Kansas cuddles Count and then kills him!” For shear imagination, he deserved the tuppence I gave him for a paper I would normally eschew.
On the second page of the paper was a series of artist’s sketches under the headline: “HOW SHE DID IT.” The first sketch showed a man and woman together in bed, the woman only partially covered in a thin nightgown. The caption read “First the young athletic cowgirl exhausted His Lordship.” The next sketch was of the woman, now dressed, wearing a western American cowboy’s hat and leaning over, with excessive cleavage exposed, to pull on her engraved leather boots. That was followed by one of His Lordship standing against the wall, dressed in his housecoat, contorted in terror and pain while his wife holds a Colt 45 and unloads it into him. The caption on that one read, “Lady St. Simon was known to be a sharpshooter in Oklahoma.”
The next sketch had her climbing over the balcony and grabbing onto the downpipe. Her Colt 45 was shown falling with the small caption written beside it, “She drops her gun into the bushes.” And the final sketch had her hanging by her hands from a branch of the tree and moving hand over hand toward the trunk. The final caption read, “American cowgirls are able to climb fences, ride horses, and wrestle calves. Tree branches are no problem.” The sketches all had her hair tied back behind her head with a single clasp and fluttering like the tail of a black stallion. Her long legs were consistently exposed in a manner that went well beyond the bounds of acceptable English standards.
The bold headline at the bottom of the page read, “HIS LORDSHIP’S DYING WORDS – TELL THE CHILDREN I LOVED THEM.”
I shook my head. Nearly seven hundred years had passed since King John signed the Magna Carta and guaranteed to all men, and to women for that matter, the rights of habeus corpus, a fair trial, and presumed innocence. The press, or, at least, this newspaper, already had her on her way to the gallows. Perhaps that is what it takes today to sell newspapers. I was about to consign the rest of the paper to fish-wrap when my eye caught the name of Sherlock Holmes in the text of the accompanying story. The paragraphs concerning him ran:
The famous consulting detective, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, was spotted trying to escape unseen from the hotel where the ghastly murder took place. The sharp-eyed reporter from the Evening Star caught up to him and demanded to know if Scotland Yard was paying for his services, and if he thought the inspectors from The Yard incompetent. He refused to deny that they had hired him. He also refused to deny that he knew that Lady St. Simon had murdered her husband and escaped over the balcony.
This newspaper objects yet again to Scotland Yard’s bringing in outsiders at taxpayers’ expense to solve what appears to be a straightforward murderous crime of passion.
Chapter Three
The Dramatis Personae
I ENJOYED WONDERING HOW HOLMES would react to his notoriety.
By the time I had finished reading the paper, the cab had arrived at Baker Street. I climbed our stairs and entered the room to see Holmes sitting cross-legged in his chair, his eyes closed and his pipe smoldering in the ashtray beside him. Scattered around him on the floor were several of the afternoon’s newspapers.
Holmes opened his eyes and looked up as I entered the room. I held up the Evening Star. “Well Holmes, what do you make of our cowgirl?”
“To whom are you referring?”
“Why to Lady St. Simon, of course.”
“What about her?”
“Well, for starters, her escaping over a balcony and down the drainpipe.”
“She did nothing of the sort.”
“Then how did she get away?”
“She did not have to. She was never there.”
I could not believe what I was hearing. “So, who spent the night in Lord St. Simon’s bed?”
“No one. He slept alone.”
“Holmes, that is madness. All of us could see that both sides of the bed had been occupied. How can you say he slept alone?”
Holmes gave me the same look that he has many times over the years when he wishes to convey his exasperated condescension. He unfolded his legs, stretched them out to the floor, and folded his arms across his chest.
“I am not saying, Watson, that Lady St. Simon did not have a hand in His Lordship’s murder. I have not yet sufficient data to support that conclusion. What I can say is that all the evidence that has been brought forward concerning his actions in the hotel room is utter and complete poppycock.”
I tossed my newspaper onto the pile and sat in my chair facing him. “Go on then Holmes. It looked more than a little convincing to me, and to Lestrade as well. Where did we go wrong?”
“Could you not see that the entire foundation of the case against her was impossible? Really, what woman spends an amorous night with her husband and then in the morning arises, gets fully dressed, right down to her boots, and then goes over to her husband and says, ‘Darling, would you mind ever so much getting up and putting on your dressing gown and standing over there by the wall so I can shoot you?’ Did that strike you as logical?”
“Now that you point that out, it would be unusual, but not impossible. The woman is, after all, an American, and goodness knows how they behave in the bedroom in the morning.”
Holmes yet again gave me the same look. “Yes. She is an American, and raised in the wild west, and highly skilled in the use of a Colt 45. So how many shots did she manage to land in His Lordship?”
“Four. Out of six. Not the best marksmanship, I’ll grant you.”
“And where did those shots strike his body?”
“Two in the abdomen and one on each side of his chest. Very well, not the most efficient way to do a fellow in, but they did the job.”
“And the other two shots?”
“As you pointed out, one in the wall above the chap, and one in the ceiling.”
“Exactly. That revolver is known to have, as the Americans say, a kick like a mule. Unless someone is skilled in its use and either has a powerful right arm or knows to steady the right hand with the left, the guns flies back and the next shot can easily be headed to the sky. Whoever shot His Lordship was not only a poor shot but a complete novice in using a powerful American revolver. Hattie Doran is neither. And, while we are still at the scene of the murder, when did you ever hear of a man in uttering his dying words asking that someone tell the wife who has just shot him that he loved her?”
“That is a bit hard to fathom, but he was an aristocrat, and who knows what honorable poses they like to strike when dying?”
“Oh heavens, Watson. Please. And did you look closely at the bed? Did you carefully observe it?”
Apparently I had not, so there was no use in attempting an answer to that question.
“Both sides,” lectured Holmes, “had the bedding pulled back and rumpled up. The left side, on which his Lordship slept, was wrinkled, had human hairs on the pillow, and the odor of a human body. The other was pulled out of shape, but the pillow was clean and starched and had not a wrinkle in it, nor did the bed sheets.”
“But the perfume.”
“Absurdly strong to have come from a woman who applied it to herself when she got up the previous morning. Mille Fleurs is a select brand, but even it cannot emit full strength twenty-four hours later. I could see the signs of droplets of it having been shaken onto the bed.”
“So, who then climbed over the balcony
, down the drainpipe, and along the branch of the tree?”
“No one came down that tree.”
“But…but, I could see the footprints where they landed. You did as well.”
“Honestly, Watson. Can your skull really be that thick? How much do you weigh, Watson?”
“About twelve stone, give or take a few pounds.”
“Lady St. Simon is a tall, athletic young woman. How much would she weigh?”
“Most likely not much less than I. Eleven stone perhaps,” I replied.
“And how thick were the branches of the elm tree?”
“Ah yes. The ends of those branches were no more than an inch in diameter.”
“And if you had stepped off a balcony while holding on to one?”
“It could not possibly have supported me. It would have bowed and broken and I would have ended up on the ground in a heap.”
“Precisely. Now then, the boot prints. Let us assume that the branches did not break and you went hand over hand like some great ape until you reached the trunk of the tree, and then let yourself drop to the earth below. Which way would you be facing?”
“Why toward the tree, of course. Ha. Yes. The prints we saw were facing away from it.”
“So,” said Holmes, “our Ladyship let go and did half a pirouette in the air before reaching the ground. And now, my good doctor, could you please stand in front of me with your feet apart; the same distance as the boot prints were.”
I did as Holmes requested, wondering what this exercise was going to prove.
“And now, turn one hundred and eighty degrees to your left and place your left foot in exactly the opposite direction that it was.”
I did so.
“Ah, but now do it again without letting your right foot move at all. Not the least little bit of a twist.”
I attempted. “It cannot be done unless someone is a contortionist.”
“Exactly, but did you see any evidence that the print of the right foot had been twisted?”
“None. It was clean. Evenly applied throughout. But how do you account for the gun and the earring?”
Sherlock Holmes Never Dies - Collection Three: New Sherlock Holmes Mysteries - Second Edition (Boxed Sets Book 3) Page 10
