by David Marcum
“And not if inconvenient, come all the same?” I asked with a smile, recalling my friend’s message from the day before.
“It was implied,” Holmes responded. “Cavenham and I were in the parlour, looking at the painting, when Clive bustled in. After introductions were made, under the baleful glare of my landlady, we explained in hushed tones – for there were several other boarders enjoying the cool October breeze coming in from the tall open windows – about the two paintings, the message, and the long-lost dagger. Clive unrolled the painting, held it wide between his outstretched arms, and compared it from different angles to the larger version above the mantel.
“He nodded and muttered for some time, and he was clearly onto something. I knew better than to interrupt, but Edward Cavenham was becoming increasingly impatient. Luckily, at the moment Edward was about the burst, Clive was ready to speak to us.
“‘Clearly, it’s by Ward,’ he said, lowering his arms. “Funny that it’s been so close, and no one has bothered to identify it before now.’
“‘What?’ asked my client. ‘Who?’
“Clive went on to relate what he explained earlier this morning, as to how James Ward had been commissioned by the Duke of Bedford to create a number of paintings in the early 1800’s. ‘Obviously, he was hired to create one here as well, although there’s no telling why in this particular house without further research. The Bedford Estate has owned this property since the mid-1600’s, long before the houses were built. No doubt, the Duke simply wanted to provide a painting for whomever lived here then, or to give Ward another job, or both.’
“‘Perhaps the Duke of Bedford was friends with Richard,’ said Edward Cavenham, almost hopefully. ‘Possibly that’s why Richard and Lisette came here to stay before going on to France. They may have intended to stay here permanently.’
“‘You forget your own evidence,’ I pointed out. ‘The letters indicate that this was simply a stopping point along the way. Lisette apparently gave no indication that they knew anyone at this location, or that there was anything special about it.’
“‘But the painting!’ he cried, pointing at the wall. ‘You can’t deny that connection between this painting in this house, and the painting sent to my great-grandfather Lloyd.’
“I turned to Clive with a little idea that had been in the back of my mind. ‘Is it possible that the dagger is concealed behind the painting?’
“He shook his head. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so. This one is painted directly onto the plaster. I can’t imagine that destroying a work of art would have been an acceptable price to pay in order to retrieve the dagger. After all, according to what you’ve told me is recorded in the letters, Richard Cavenham struck up an acquaintance of sorts with Ward while they were here, getting him to paint the second picture that was sent to his father after this one was finished. I don’t believe that Ward would have been party to anything that might lead to the future destruction of his work, should someone have to remove the plaster to get at the dagger.’
“Edward looked at the painting on the wall. ‘I know that my painting is of our family estate. Where is the setting shown in that painting? Could the house beyond the trees be the location of the dagger?’
“‘No,’ Clive answered with certainty. ‘The plaster painting is clearly the meadow lands near Camden Town, with the northern heights in the distance – at least how they looked sixty-five years ago.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve seen something of the sort before.’
“‘But perhaps the house in the painting . . . .’ Edward added hopefully.
“‘Not likely. If it was a real house, it looks as if it was headed for collapse, even then. And that area is greatly built up since those days. It certainly would have been pulled down long ago.’
“Edward looked as if the wind had gone out of his sails, but I had noticed something on the painting on the wall.”
“The little vertical lines in gold leaf in the right hand corner.”
“Ah, Watson, my bag of tricks is truly emptied. You see right through me. I can remain in Sussex, and you can take over here in London.”
“That role is already being capably handled by your protégé in Praed Street, not to mention our Belgian friend in Farraway Street and Thorndyke in King’s Bench Walk. No, I was able to see where this was going from years spent getting events down in my journal in a linear manner.”
Holmes smiled, drank the last of his beer, and continued. “As Clive and Edward had talked, I began to notice, in the last rays of sunlight streaming through the high windows, the glint of the lines to which you referred. Stepping closer, I saw, well, I saw this . . . .” And he put a finger on this sketch:
“Calling Clive over, I asked him what he thought. He leaned closer, and then stepped back, scanning the entire painting. ‘No, it only appears in that corner. I wonder what it could mean . . . .’
“A sudden thought occurred to me. ‘Top to bottom. Side to side. I wonder – ” Stepping over to one of the residents sitting in a deep chair underneath the window, an unhealthy looking student obviously from Aberdeen with three sisters and a secret shame that he wasn’t hiding very well, I asked to borrow a few sheets of paper. He nodded wordlessly and handed me these very sheets you see before you, upon which I sketched the lines and copied the little verse.
“Clive and Edward looked puzzled, but I reached and took the canvas painting, stepping to a side table. They quickly caught my intent, and joined me, each looking for matching gold-leaf lines on that picture as well. As it was much smaller, only about two feet square, it quickly became obvious that there was no golden glint whatsoever. But I did see another set of lines, the lines copied on this other sheet of paper here. Not in gold, but in blacks and browns. And not vertical, like in the mantel painting, but rather horizontal.”
“Side to side,” I said.
“Yes. On one of the rocks that were lining the stream.” He rearranged the sheets on the table, turning the second that I’d also placed in the vertical position on its side. “So now they looked like this from the parlour painting . . . .”
“And this from the canvas painting . . .” he continued, placing the other beneath it.
“They almost line up,” I muttered.
I examined them again, realized after almost grasping it that none of it yet made sense, and admitted as much. “Ah, Watson, remember the poem. It was the only clue that Richard sent to his father. There had to be enough there to solve it. Perhaps there was some shared reference point between the two in their past that Richard thought his father would understand. The first stanza clearly refers to the lines in the paintings – top to bottom and side to side – and the feud that had sprung up between father and son. The second and third elaborate on Richard’s division from his family and the taking of the dagger. But the last stanza – that was the answer.”
I read it again, aloud. “Not to be found ‘til divide is combined. The paintings are key. The treasure you’ll find.” And suddenly it made sense. Top to bottom, side to side . . . combined. Holmes smiled when he saw me catch up, and leaned back with a satisfied sigh when I picked up the two sheets and carried them over to the window. It wasn’t as bright as I would have liked out in Museum Street, as the morning light had still not quite illuminated it. But it was enough. Laying one sheet atop the other, I pressed them up against the glass and read the message, formed when the vertical and horizontal lines combined.
“‘BESIDE THE BOULDER’.”
“Precisely.”
Turning, I asked, “And did you hold the sheets up to the parlour window when you figured it out?”
“The sun had already set behind the Museum at that point. I positioned them in front of one of the lamps.”
I returned to the table, folding the three pages. Offering them to Holmes, he waved them back to me. “For the archives, Doctor.”
I resumed my seat, wondering about another beer. It was later than before, and listening was thirsty work. Not to mention following in
the footsteps of Sherlock Holmes.
My friend must have divined my thoughts, for he stepped to the bar, returning in a moment with two fresh pints. “Shall we adjourn in a bit for lunch at Simpsons?” he asked, checking his watch, and I agreed.
Wiping my mouth, I said, “I think I understand. Was it the boulder shown beside the stream in front of the manor house?”
He nodded. “Yes. In the canvas painting, where the horizontal lines are marked across the stone.”
“Without knowing about the second painting in Montague Street, in spite of the reference to paintings, plural, they never had a chance of solving it.”
“I expect that Richard intended to give his father further clues. Perhaps it was his unusual way of keeping the lines of communication open. Or possibly it was done in anger, to taunt him. But before he could elaborate, he died of the unexpected fever. Lloyd brought Lisette and the child, William, home, and they never knew that there was any more to the riddle. Only a chance visit by a gasfitter provided the link that brought Edward to London.”
“I presume that the dagger was found.”
“Yes, that night. Edward did not want to wait, and truth be told, neither did I. Clive, certainly an interested party by that point, would have put it off until morning, but he was outvoted. We caught a late train from Liverpool Street Station, and were standing on the bank of the stream before midnight.
“While we were traveling, a band of rough weather had been moving in, and by the time we arrived, the wind was moaning through the trees. You would have quite enjoyed the atmosphere, Watson, and could have certainly described the mood better than I. Nevertheless, we equipped ourselves with a brace of dark lanterns and crowbars from one of the out-buildings, set off across the estate toward the stream, and soon found the stone in question, right where it was memorialized in the painting. There is no doubt whatsoever that Clive had been right, and we should have waited until morning. But in spite of the wind and threat of rain, and finding no other way but to wade into the stream, it was a relatively straightforward procedure, once we found the rock in the dark, still covered with the horizontal markings, although somewhat effaced by sixty years of stream flow and weathering.”
“The stone was leveraged out with ease, and Edward had the honor of reaching into the resulting void, giving a satisfied gasp as his fingers closed upon something."
“Not exactly ‘Beside the Boulder’, was it? More like ‘Behind the stone’.”
Holmes grinned. “Richard was working with letters that would translate into vertical and horizontal components. The letter ‘n’ in ‘behind’ and ‘stone’ would have been problematic.”
He took a sip and continued. “As I was saying, Edward reached into the cavity and pulled out an oilskin packet, tied with rotting leather thongs, somewhat less than a foot in length. He started to open it right there, but then stopped, insisting that it should be his father who did the honors. There was no question but that we would join him, so we trooped back to the house and, in spite of our muddy and wet clothing and the old man’s nurse’s attempts to stop us, woke William up. Edward explained what had happened and how, and then, with reverence, placed the bundle in the old man’s hands.
“William Cavenham’s hands shook as he started to untie the thongs, whether from age, illness, or excitement, I could not tell. The old leather quickly crumbled away, and he proceeded to unwrap the cloth, first bound up over six decades before by his father, whom he never knew. There, in the flickering lights of his bedroom, quite likely the very bedroom where old Lloyd Cavenham had slept so many years earlier, the dagger was returned to the family.
“It was a curious thing – about nine inches in length, made of some dull alloy, and with a few awkwardly cut jewels pressed into it here and there with no apparent pattern. Ugly and plain as it was, however, it held a certain fascination nonetheless, simply knowing as we did whose it had been and some of the curious events surrounding it.
“It’s still there,” Holmes added, “if you want to see it. I’m sure they would be glad to show it to you.”
“And the canvas painting? What became of it? Grigsby said that it was lost.”
“It was destroyed in 1915, during a zeppelin attack that leveled Edward’s London house where he kept it. Sadly, Edward was also killed in the attack as well. He was in town, advising the Admiralty. Fortunately, his wife and son were at the country house in Bishop’s Stortford, and they were spared.”
We sat silently for a moment, recalling the terrible losses of just a few years before. I had never known Edward Cavenham, had in fact never heard of him until this past hour, but I was saddened at his passing nonetheless.
“‘From time’s flows . . . .’” Holmes said, returning me to the present.
“What? From the poem?”
He nodded. “Obviously, it was a play on the fact that Richard had hidden the dagger beside a stream. He must have slipped back to bury it there while he and Lisette were staying in Montague Street. Not only did he commission the canvas version, along with adding the gold leaf to the plaster version, but he also chiseled the clue onto the rock. All of that effort, and for what? To tweak his father? To jeer at him? To use it as a lure so that they could reconcile?
“Imagine how his actions rippled the flows through all of those lives. He went to all of that trouble. He was right there at the manor house when he went to hide the dagger. What if he’d simply gone inside and talked to his father instead? The family might have been reunited right then. If he hadn’t gone to France, he mightn’t have caught the fever and died early, leaving his son to grow up without a father.” He shook his head. “Suppose the squabbles between the English and French hadn’t been so fierce just then, and Lloyd had been able to reach France sooner? And generations later, if a stranger hadn’t noticed two similar paintings in different houses, the mystery still might not be resolved. Each man’s path leads to so many possibilities, and they are so often fraught with perils.”
I had seen Holmes spiral around these maudlin thoughts of fate before. I recalled once when he discovered the identity of the murderer, only to find that the man had really had no other choice than to kill. “God help us!” Holmes had said at the time, after letting the man go. “Why does fate play such tricks with poor, helpless worms?”
I could see that his thoughts were leading him that way again. But, I decided, Not this day! I finished the beer and set the glass down firmly. “Any number of alternatives can always be spun out. What if I hadn’t been shot at Maiwand? Or what if the bullet had been an inch to the right or left? Your foot might have slipped on the ledge at Reichenbach. The Titanic could have sailed fifty yards to the south and been spared. Perhaps things would have been much different if Franz Ferdinand’s car hadn’t taken a wrong turn, placing him in Princip’s sight. Who can know?
“That type of thinking,” I continued, “is a pointless path that should be avoided.” I stood up. “No one can know the end results of all the turns of his or her life. One can only make the best choice possible from all the available data, and then face forward bravely, and be willing to adapt as well as possible when the time comes.” I gestured toward Museum Street, now starting to brighten as the noonday sun illuminated it and the last of the clouds burned away. “It is too beautiful a day to ponder one’s missteps or might-have-beens. I believe that you mentioned lunch at Simpsons?”
He pulled his thoughts back from wherever they had been going, looked up, smiled, and nodded. Joining me, we stepped away from our table and out through the side door. I took a deep breath of the summer air. Beside me, Holmes pulled on his ever-present deerstalker, worn year after year in spite of season and social convention. Then, gesturing ahead of him with his stick, he said – as he had done on that night so many years before when we’d stood on this very same spot, that time on the path of another man’s poor choices and a Christmas goose – “Faces to the south, then, and quick march!”
NOTE:
The painting in the
parlour at No. 24 Montague Street, now a part of the Ruskin Hotel, is still on the plaster wall above the fireplace mantel, where it has been located for over two-hundred years. Sadly, as Sir Clive Bartleby predicted, the vertical gold leaf markings on the bottom right have long since flaked away. Fortunately, Watson’s notes upon the matter have survived.
“The Painting in the Parlour”
Photograph taken by David Marcum
while staying at
No. 24 Montague Street,
September 10th, 2016
The Incident of the Absent Thieves
by Arthur Hall
Now that my Watson has left me to become entangled in the coils of marriage, I find myself, especially as I await a new client, with increased time at my disposal. At our last meeting, my friend expressed an eagerness to transform more of my records of the problems that have been set before me and their solutions into the dramatic episodes that have found their way into popular periodicals. Therefore, as a respite from looking down into Baker Street on a particularly dark and stormy evening, I resolved to drag out my battered tin trunk in which are consigned many accounts of past events. I chose one, a few sheets of yellowed paper, from the years when I had rooms in Montague Street. By some, this will be deemed a tragedy.
I had no Boswell then to record the circumstances, and so it falls to me, for the sake of future reference and my friend’s ambitions, to put pen to paper.
I recall this as one of the few instances in my career when the client was already known to me. At least, I was familiar with Mrs. Joan Rander and her family by reputation.
