“I met her at a party. She was not prettier than the other girls, she hadn’t read many books, she hadn’t travelled at all… Maybe her hair looked softer, and I liked her voice; the next day I woke up thinking of her and tried to locate her through my friends. I asked her to lunch, then we went for walks in the park, and almost without noticing it, I was engaged. Violet didn’t have any family and earned her living as a typist. We married last summer and spent a few days in Edinburgh. When we came back, we lived in our house in Hampshire. I hired the couple who had worked for my family years ago and still lived near the village. They gave Violet a puppy, a curly-haired spaniel we called Jasper. She didn’t seem lonely when I spent a few days in London. She would welcome me in one of her new dresses, Jasper would jump at me, and Mrs. Danvers would have a nice dinner prepared for us. We were perfectly happy.”
“And yet, and yet…”
“About a month ago, something happened. I had been in London the whole week and returned on Friday afternoon. I arrived at dusk, and I walked home as usual. It is a beautiful walk, and it was autumn… Everything was submerged in yellow leaves: the path, the bridge, the spring. I noticed the wooden gate of the cottage had been painted afresh. The garden was full of autumn roses. Danvers was clipping some hedges and greeted me as usual. I could see Mrs. Danvers through the kitchen window; I could even smell dinner. I went in, and Violet came downstairs to meet me.”
“And…” said Holmes.
“It wasn’t Violet. At least Violet as I remembered her.”
“You don’t mean you had forgotten your wife’s face in a week, Mr. Mason.” But Holmes wasn’t smiling now.
“No… You see, Violet, as I remembered her, was a brunette, with a round face, not very tall… The woman that came to meet me was as tall as I, slim, with long copper hair and the bluest eyes I had ever seen.”
Holmes remained silent for a few minutes, with his fingertips still pressed together, his long legs stretched out in front of him.
“You had never seen her before?
“No.”
“Are you certain?”
“She isn’t easy to forget.”
“Ah!”
“Mr. Holmes, when I was a boy, I got lost in the fog twice. I liked to walk for hours, follow the streams, discover hidden waterfalls. And plants. To find a rare flower and bring it to my mother. And I got lost. The first time for a few hours. The second, an evening and a night. They had been looking for me, and I arrived at dawn. The strange thing is I couldn’t remember what had happened. I mean, I had no notion I had been away for so long, I had small bruises on my knees and I didn’t remember falling… I couldn’t understand why everyone was making such a fuss. That’s how I felt that day. I was arriving home, but everything before that was vague, uncertain.”
“Your sense of reality was gone.”
“Yes. I went upstairs and changed, then I came down for dinner. Mrs. Danvers looked perfectly natural, the dog was under the table, and I was telling the woman I didn’t remember which books I had bought during the week, what novel I had been reading at night, what play had just opened in the closest theatre.”
“Mrs. Danvers and her husband were behaving as if everything was normal?”
“Yes. I was tired and went to my room early; I think I fell asleep almost at once. The next morning there was a girl sleeping in the bed next to mine, her hair was in disorder and she smelt nice.”
“And life went on…”
“In a way. It was as if I was playing a part, and the actress had changed. And the whole world seemed different.”
“The whole scenery.”
“Well…yes. The lighting was different. Then I was in London and things were normal, too. Are you familiar with Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, Mr. Holmes?”
“Fairly.”
“All we see and all we seem are but a dream… That’s how I felt.”
“You’ll soon be quoting Alice in Wonderland.”
“I guess.”
Holmes said slowly, as if he was thinking aloud, “But who was dreaming all that?”
“And the dream lasted a month?” I asked.
“Almost a month.”
“What happened to wake you up?” asked Holmes.
“Last Saturday, I brought her to London to see a play. She looked lovelier than ever, with a string of pearls and a red dress. That’s…what made me regain consciousness, Mr. Holmes. My wife would never wear a red dress.”
Holmes was silent for a moment.
“I see. What do you expect me to do?”
“I am going to Hampshire this afternoon. I wonder if you would come with me. And Dr. Watson, if he wants to. I’ll send a cable saying we have two guests for dinner.”
“I think we can arrange that. Watson?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for anything in the world.”
The young man seemed relieved.
“I’ll be at the station a few minutes before seven. It’s a nice journey.”
That evening, we had a carriage just for us on the seven o’clock train. Holmes seemed absorbed in the papers but, from time to time, I noticed him looking through the window. The phantom beauty of the English countryside is always touching; but maybe he was wondering about the criminal impulses of the people living in the scattered cottages. Our young friend had opened a blue-covered book, but he, too, glanced occasionally at the landscape, with the familiar fondness of an owner. We finally saw the tower of the Winchester cathedral.
The train left us at a small station with the customary beds of red geraniums. After engaging two rooms at the inn, we walked to Mason’s cottage.
It was twenty minutes’ walk among trees and hawthorn, and fugitive curlews; at a certain point we crossed a stone bridge. Holmes, who claims to be completely indifferent to landscapes, has a strange fondness for bridges. This one was very old, and the water under it was clear and bluish, perhaps because of the grey stones and the moss.
“Have you ever noticed how certain words seem to coincide with the things they name? Bridge, water, stone, moor, fog,” said Holmes.
I looked at him, astonished. But Mason seemed to find those thoughts familiar.
“It’s the same thing with certain plants, certain birds.”
I sometimes wonder if Holmes was already under the spell of the woman we were going to meet. As Mason undoubtedly was. Even though I am an admirer of the fair sex, I think I was the one who remained almost untouched. As if she were an actress playing on a stage. Something very personal, but only for a while.
The cottage was quite isolated but looked cozy. Just as in some streets of London we have the impression of being in the country and almost expect to hear the sound of the church bells around the corner, this cottage gave the impression of being in a village street, with neighbours across the hedge, children playing, and laundry drying in the air. The red tiles, the pink walls, almost covered with red leaves, the garden, where some plants were blooming even now.
“Violet said she was in love with the garden.”
“Which Violet?” asked Holmes.
Our young friend shuddered.
“The woman who is pretending to be my wife. I have to call her something.” He was clearly defensive.
A middle-aged man appeared behind a fence. He was tall and well-built and limped a little; he saluted us with a quick movement of the head. A woman with grey hair and vestiges of beauty appeared at a window and gave us a tense smile. It was as if we were reviving Mason’s arrival on the day his life had changed. For a moment, I wondered if the girl who was coming downstairs to meet us could be the small brunette he had married months before. And what we were going to do if that happened. Take Mason to a psychiatrist in London and consider the case solved?
But the girl who came downstairs was not a small brunette “not prettier than the others.” She was tall and slender,
her copper hair cut short in front and almost touching her waist in the back. She wore a simple blue dress that played with the violet of her eyes. Her mouth was small, and her slightly irregular teeth gave her smile an endless charm.
I looked at Holmes and for a moment I saw his face as it was years before, when I first met him. Good-looking and young, still open to new things, new changes, that never came. I wondered what he would be like if he had met this girl then. The only time I had seen Holmes taken by a woman was in the case of Irene Adler, and even then I suspected it was really her photograph that seduced him. The photograph he still kept in a drawer of his desk. Perhaps to remember that he once had felt something.
The dog that followed the girl was a spaniel, little more than a puppy, and responded to his owner’s caresses with a wave of tail.
“It’s nice to meet you Mr. Holmes,” said the girl. “I’ve read some of the reports Dr. Watson wrote of your cases.”
“I have a feeling they didn’t impress you.”
“Oh, not as much as the adventures of Prince Florizel of Bohemia.”
“I thought young ladies just read Jane Austen.”
“That was years ago. I’m more interested in Mr. Bram Stoker.”
Holmes told me, when we were taking our overcoats off, “That girl is laughing at us.”
“I’d say at you, Holmes.”
“Perhaps. She is not stupid, so she must be extremely clever.”
We had a drink in the drawing room. I noticed how cozy it was, with curtains and pillows that could have been brand-new, some nice paintings, vases of red autumn roses.
“You have a lovely home, Mr. Mason,” I observed.
“Violet has bought some paintings. And she has green fingers, just like Danvers. It’s as if the garden was transformed these last few weeks.”
Dinner was good, the wine well chosen. Holmes was staring at our hostess in a way that bordered on indiscretion, but she was clearly a woman used to being looked at by men.
They talked about London theatres and plays. The girl seemed to have seen most of them and even to be acquainted with the actors and the original books when they happened to be adaptations. No common typist. Remembering a girl who had been our client some time ago and the way Holmes had deduced her profession because of the spatulate finger-ends, I examined Violet’s hands. This girl was neither a typist nor a music teacher. An actress? Could she be acting even now? A member of the Diogenes Club, who happened to be a well-known actor, had told me once the secret was not acting at all but becoming the character. Had she become Violet? But she made no attempt to be like the young quiet woman she had replaced.
She put a red shawl on her shoulders when she came to say goodbye to us.
“So, we expect you tomorrow for lunch, Mr. Holmes. And you too, of course, Dr. Watson.”
“It’s an offer difficult to resist. Your cook makes wonders,” I said.
“I give her a hand, Dr. Watson.”
“That’s easy to believe.”
“I think you can do anything, Mrs. Mason,” remarked my friend. “That’s amazing in such a young woman.”
“That’s not how we measure a life, Mr. Holmes. In years.”
For a moment, I thought he would ask how we do measure a life. But he didn’t.
Lawrence came with us part of the way to the village. He and Holmes looked grim and immersed in their thoughts.
“Well, Holmes, what did you think of the second Mrs. Mason?” I finally asked.
“Does she sing often?”
Mason didn’t look surprised.
“Yes, all the time, around the house and the garden. Sometimes she is just humming, but other times she does sing. She has a beautiful voice.”
“As if it had been trained?”
“I suppose so. I…I remember her singing when she was putting up the curtains.”
Holmes gave him one of his half-smiles.
“The curtains are new?”
“Yes. She bought the cloth and made them with the help of Mrs. Danvers.”
“Was there anything wrong with the other ones?”
“I don’t think so. They weren’t even old.”
“That perfume she wears…is it the same your wife used?”
“No. My wife used a faint lavender cologne.”
“This one is a mixture of orange and some flower. Very pleasant, but not discreet.”
“I suppose so. I like it.”
“Just one more question. Do you think she is happy?”
“Sometimes she seems tense, almost scared. But yes, she is definitely happy.”
He said goodbye at the bridge. We stood there for a minute, watching him go at his fast pace. Then we made the rest of the way. When we entered the inn, Holmes said, “Watson, before you go to sleep, I want you to send a cable to Inspector Lestrade.”
“Do we really need to get the police involved?”
“You know we do, Watson. There’s been foul play.”
“Yes. But I won’t sleep well tonight.”
“I’m afraid I won’t sleep at all. It’s the first time I have been hired to break a spell. And I don’t like it.”
The next morning a light but persistent rain was falling. Holmes didn’t come for breakfast, and I thought he was still in his room. But when I was having a last cup of coffee, I saw him arriving, his overcoat slightly wet, his dark blue scarf carelessly loose on his shoulder. He sat and asked for a coffee and grumbled, “Why do people who don’t have murder in their nature decide to attempt it?”
I closed the newspaper.
“Because they have a chance to get away with it?”
“They won’t, if it’s not in their nature.”
“I thought you believed anyone could be a murderer.”
“Nonsense, Watson. I never said that.”
He drank his coffee and stood up.
“Hurry up, Watson. I have a cab waiting for us.”
The cab couldn’t go by our shortcut, so it took us about half an hour to arrive. Mason and the girl came to the door. I couldn’t help thinking they made a beautiful couple, more or less the same age, more or less the same height. The girl was wearing a simple red dress that brought up the colour of her hair, loose as ever.
“We weren’t expecting you so soon,” said Mason. “Lunch won’t be ready before one.”
“It doesn’t matter. Could you tell the Danvers to join us in the drawing room?”
“Yes, of course. But Mrs. Danvers is busy with lunch.”
“I don’t know if any of us will be in the mood for lunch, my dear friend. At least not lunch as a celebration, as I think yours are.”
Mason looked at the girl and his eyes softened.
“Yes. A celebration.”
A few minutes later, we were all in the drawing room. There were fresh roses on the table. Heavy, scented. The scent of the girl was there too. I thought sadly that it would be there long after she was gone.
“There are so many scents in this house,” said Holmes, as if he could read my thoughts.
“I’m afraid I have common tastes,” said the girl. “I like dense perfumes, strings of fake pearls…”
“And red dresses.” said Holmes.
She stared at him.
“Yes, Mr. Holmes. I like lovely dresses. Blue and red are my favourite colours.”
“Maybe your life would be different if you hadn’t worn a red evening dress a week ago.”
“Oh, so that was my mistake!”
“As strange as it may seem…yes.”
She looked at Mason.
“You don’t like me in red?”
“I do.”
Holmes interfered. He had to.
“This morning, Inspector Lestrade from Scotland Yard and the local police found your wife, my friend. Your fi
rst…your real wife.”
Mason’s lips tightened.
“Where?”
“In the cottage that belongs to Mrs. Danvers and her sister. Don’t worry. She was frightened, but otherwise quite well. And Jasper is there, too.”
Mason looked at the dog sleeping on his feet.
“This is not Jasper. I suspected that from the first day. Jasper was crazy when I got home. This one was just friendly.”
“They are probably from the same litter. And very much alike. But Jasper would miss his owner and look for her.”
“I see.”
“Haven’t you noticed the resemblance between Violet and Mrs. Danvers?”
“Yes… I think so.”
I looked at the two women and suddenly it became quite obvious. The same bone structure, the same tall figure. The girl’s eyes were of a rarer colour and the mouth plumper, as if an artist had perfected his picture.
“She is your daughter, isn’t she, Mrs. Danvers? Mr. Danvers.”
Nobody answered.
“And I suppose she has been living in London these last few years. Working in the theatre, perhaps some musicals? What happened? She was unemployed? She lost the sympathy of a generous lover?”
The girl’s face didn’t move.
“Both.”
“So, you planned everything. To get rid of the young bride and take her place.”
“But that makes no sense, Holmes,” I said. “They don’t look at all like each other.”
“That was the touch of genius, Watson. If this young lady was plump and had brown hair, there was no possibility of success. Mason would just go to the police. But like this…”
“Like this…” repeated the girl. She stood up and went to the window. The rain had stopped and the garden was full of autumn light. There was a small tree outside covered with peach blossoms. I noticed the new curtains, of a darker peach colour, were a perfect frame.
“Like this,” Holmes went on, “Mason was faced with the inexplicable. He started to doubt his own mind. Don’t forget, Watson, that Mrs. Danvers had known him since he was a child. She knew how dreamy he was. If unreality was a disease… He would suspect foul play, of course. But he would hesitate. And that hesitation would give them time.”
The Return of Sherlock Holmes Page 14