Sherlock Holmes and the Four Corners of Hell

by Seamas Duffy

  ‘How much water would there be by the wharf and slipway at low tide?’ he asked.

  ‘It is completely dry, Sir.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘For at least an hour or two.’

  ‘Therefore the slipway would be inaccessible by boat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How far from the wharf to the navigable channel at low water?’

  ‘Thirty or forty yards.’

  ‘And in what state is the foreshore?’

  ‘It silts up quite heavily. There is some gravel at the top of the bank, but beyond that it is mostly soft clay and mud.’

  ‘How difficult would it be for someone to make his way from the slipway to, say, a boat lying off in the stream?’

  ‘Impossible, Sir; not at low tide. You’d sink in it up to your waist.’

  ‘What was the state of the tide at about eight o’clock on Monday night?’

  ‘Let me see, now, it would be an hour or two before slack water.’

  ‘Then there was enough water to reach the wharf in a boat?’

  ‘Just enough for a very small boat, or at least one with a shallow draught.’

  ‘Then again, a man could have swum out to a boat waiting in the channel, could he not?’

  ‘By the sluice? I doubt anyone would do that, but it’s possible, I suppose.’

  ‘Thank you; I think we have seen enough.’

  ‘I have thought from the beginning,’ said Baynes when we had stepped ashore, ‘that the motive may not have been revenge, but private gain. As far as I can make out, Mrs Burdock is the only person who is likely to benefit directly from her husband’s death and she was the only person who did not know that he had left the wharf. I have already set one of my men on her track and I am going back down there now. I have told him to speak to the neighbours and find out what Mrs Burdock does when she is left on her own all day. The Burdocks are childless and she must have a lot of time on her hands.’

  ‘There is someone else who might benefit,’ said Holmes, ‘if a successful rival of theirs were to be put out of business.’

  ‘Yes, the Donovans,’ replied Baynes. ‘I have not completely eliminated them yet. I suppose in the event of Burdock’s death, they might buy up his stock, his land – perhaps the entire business. Esther Cromley and Richard Parlow, of course, both stand to lose an easy berth if anything were to happen to Burdock and the business were sold.’

  ‘Surely the motive of material gain on Mrs Burdock’s part is too obvious,’ I said.

  ‘Often it is the rather too obvious suspect who turns out to be the culprit. Criminals can have an exaggerated belief in their power to delude the police,’ replied Baynes.

  ‘It may be useful to confirm Parlow’s story about selling up the land and the subsequent failure of his investment,’ said Holmes.

  ‘He has no criminal record. Do you suspect him?’ asked Baynes.

  ‘No more than anyone else, but if this persecution is aimed at him, it may arise from the circumstances of this business investment which failed; there may have been some fallout amongst the partners.’

  Holmes sat with brows drawn as we made the journey back to Baker Street in a stony silence. He went out at four o’clock and returned without saying a word. He was in no better mood the next morning, where irritation and frustration ravaged his features, and an untouched breakfast spoke of his spoiled appetite. Finally, he sat down and lit a pipe.

  ‘I have turned the case over and over in my mind, Watson,’ he said. ‘As Baynes put it, the chief difficulty with the stories that we have been told is in the cumulative effect of a number of minor inconsistencies; those small, but invariably significant, awkward facts which tell you that something is not quite right. Why, for example, is no one at Burdock’s Wharf afraid for their lives? Parlow refuses the offer of a pistol and a bodyguard, despite having missed a killer’s bullet by a few feet; the maid comes in to work the next day and carries on as though nothing has happened, although she herself must know that she may have passed within a few yards of the assassin; and Burdock himself, perhaps most astonishingly of all considering he was the likely target, refuses to leave the lonely wharf where he could, as was pointed out to him, be picked off at ease.’

  ‘It begins to look as though they are all engaged in some elaborate deception.’

  ‘That’s just it, Watson! You have put your finger on it. I always look for consistency: where there is a want of it, we must suspect deception. There is no consistency, therefore all is deception. But it’s the question of motive, Watson, that’s the singular problem here. No one, apart possibly from Mrs Burdock, has one. As to Parlow, I have failed to find a single reason why anyone would want to kill him. Yesterday I sent a couple of wires to the land and company registration agencies: the replies confirmed that Parlow did sell a parcel of land in the district of Lampern from which he made three-hundred pounds; he then invested it in the Aerated Bread Company. The company failed for twenty-thousand in the autumn of last year, and as you may recall, the crash left quite a few investors licking their wounds. In the absence of any other suspect, only the Donovans remain, but frankly there are a number of objections to that, for I cannot believe that they would go so far as to commit murder either to eliminate a rival or to gain revenge.’

  We had a flicker of hope later that afternoon, when Inspector Baynes returned from Margate. ‘I told you I had intended to go down to see Mrs Burdock again and I had sent the woman a wire earlier in the day to let her know that I was coming. I now believe that was a mistake. I had already decided to visit the family solicitor first, as I wanted to be clear about the position regarding any possible inheritance in the event of Burdock’s death. However when Sergeant Cox and I got to the office of her solicitor in Union Row, Mrs Burdock was just leaving. It seemed a staggering coincidence, so I went straight back to the house with her, and had to drag it out of her as to why she had gone there. She was absolutely adamant that her visit was nothing to do with the shooting at the wharf. She repeated to me that her husband had not left the house on the night of the attempt on Parlow’s life, and reminded me both her maid and a manservant had already sworn a statement to the effect that they were both present until after the last train for London had departed on the night. Yet I thought that she was protesting rather too much, as though by emphasizing these points in her defence of her husband, she was drawing my attention from her own possible involvement in the episode. I felt she was playing cat-and-mouse with me.

  ‘When I went back to speak to the solicitor, Perry, I asked him about the reason for her visit, but he refused to disclose what he called his client’s private business. I pointed out to him that an attempted murder was police business and that his client had come under reasonable suspicion; when I also warned him that if he wished to risk prosecution for obstructing the law he was going the right way about it, he changed his tack a little. He said that he was prepared to swear on oath that the conversation he had with Mrs Burdock concerned a purely civil matter relating to the commercial aspects of the business at the wharf and had nothing whatever to do with the events of Monday night.’

  ‘I cannot believe that,’ replied Holmes.

  ‘Nor can I. However, without application to a magistrate, I can do no more. Perry did confirm to me that Burdock’s entire estate is willed to his wife. It amounts to several thousand pounds. By Burdock’s own account, his wife was insistent that he should not return to the wharf – that could be read as a wife’s natural concern, but there could be another reason for her not wanting Burdock to go back to the Wharf: forewarned is forearmed; therefore, Burdock would be on his guard there and had even taken a couple of pistols with him. In Margate perhaps he would not be quite so careful.

  ‘A reasonable inference,’ said Holmes. ‘Anything else to report?’

  ‘I found the villa at Margate to be tastefully furnished and elegantly decorated. Mrs Burdock is clearly a woman of taste and discernment who appears to have married well below
her class, and it was not difficult to appreciate her distaste with the hovel at Rotherhithe. As she is almost twenty years younger than her husband, it occurs to me that if we were looking for a motive, we may not have to look very far.’

  ‘Indeed. One question – when you met her at the solicitor’s office, did you notice if she had any powder on her nose?’ asked Holmes.

  Baynes burst out laughing heartily. ‘Oh, I’m sure I couldn’t say.’

  ‘I am perfectly serious,’ Holmes continued.

  ‘In that case, now that you come to mention it, I am quite sure that she had none – but what could you possibly deduce from that?’

  ‘The strong likelihood that she had not made any prior appointment with the solicitor and had dashed round to see him unannounced. It must have been a very pressing matter, and I have no doubt that it was your wire which set off some alarm in her.’

  ‘One wonders what it is she has to hide.’

  ‘Have you left anyone to watch her?’

  ‘There seemed little point, for she is a very sharp woman and my visit to her solicitor will have shown her that she is already under suspicion. If she is in any way implicated in this, I think it is unlikely that she would do anything incriminating. However, I have asked the postmistress to let me know if she sends anything from the Post Office and to make a note of any unusual letters or packages received by her.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘The first thing I did once I left Perry’s office was to go to the Pegwell & Cliftonville Bank, where Burdock has an account. I checked whether there had been any money passing from Burdock’s account to Parlow’s – nothing suspicious at all, only the three pounds, sixteen shillings odd, paid in fortnightly, which corresponds to the man’s wages. Then I looked into Parlow’s account at Deptford and again found no suspicious payments or receipts. Finally, I have had the report from Perrins, our gun specialist, who confirmed that the bullet found in the dresser was a very small bore, probably fired from a Webley’s No. 2, which is the most common make of small pistol. That may explain why Esther did not hear the gun go off. Burdock, incidentally, owns a pair of Adams centre-fire models Mark III. We searched but found no firearms either in the wharf house at Rotherhithe or in the villa at Margate.’

  ‘We have done all we can for the present,’ said Holmes with a shrug. ‘I have a few ideas of my own which I may decide to follow up. I shall let you know immediately if I make any progress.’

  Half an hour later, my friend turned up in the sitting room dressed in an old, tightly-buttoned pea jacket, a muffler and peaked cap. The whole effect was set off by a clay pipe, but despite the bushy eyebrows and the long side-whiskers, those keen eyes shone through.

  ‘Well, Watson, will I pass?’

  ‘As Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner!’

  ‘If anything turns up, a note to Cap’n Basil at the Fighting Téméraire, Rotherhithe, should reach me.’

  ‘Good Lord, not that disreputable dive we passed yesterday?’

  ‘The very same place, Watson,’ he chuckled. ‘I am afraid to say that is the best of the bunch. I suppose the district must have seemed quite forbidding to you, and indeed it may be dangerous to those who know little of its ways, but I am able to wander its darkest alleys and back courts without fear.’

  ‘All the same, I am not sure that I shouldn’t insist on accompanying you.’

  ‘There would be little point, Watson. The sudden appearance of two strange faces would, I fear, only draw unwanted attention and would not fail to be remarked upon.’

  ‘Shall you be gone long?’

  ‘I think not. A couple of days at the utmost. The malicious gossip of neighbours is often a most useful, if occasionally mildly exaggerated, source of information. Open any correspondence which may arrive and be prepared to act upon it as you see fit.’

  One of the most amusing facets of Holmes’s character was the almost childlike delight which he took in his various incognitos. Apart from his adopted persona as Captain Basil, as he was known in the riverside districts on both banks of the river, I knew that he often mixed with the ne’er-do-wells of Whitechapel and Bethnal Green under the cognomen of Solly Hyams, and was occasionally to be found circulating amongst the more sophisticated artistic cliques in the west end as Sigmund Holmqvist, the landscape painter. He must have struck a vein almost immediately for the next morning I received a note from him as follows: ‘A long shot, Watson – can you check the bankruptcy notices during the past year. Look for Burdock’s name. Captain Basil.’

  Whether he had at last alighted on some definite line of inquiry or was simply grasping at straws was impossible for me to tell, but it was a simple matter for me to browse the back copies of the London Gazette. I delved into the pile, and to my utter astonishment, I discovered the following notice had been published in the previous year:

  The Bankruptcy Act, 1869.

  In the County Court of Kent, holden at Rochester.

  In the Matter of Proceedings for Liquidation by Arrangement or Composition with Creditors, instituted by Elias Burdock, of 27, Imperial Villas, Margate in the county of Kent, Ship-breaker at Burdock’s Wharf, Rotherhithe, in the county of Surrey.

  NOTICE is hereby given, that a First General Meeting of the creditors of the above-named person has been summoned to be held at the King’s Head Hotel, High Street, Rochester, in the county of Kent, on the 13th day of August, 1895, at three o’clock in the afternoon precisely.

  Dated this 30th day of July, 1895.

  J. H. Perry, 117 Union Row, Margate, Kent,

  Solicitor for the said Debtor.

  I tried to apply Holmes’s own method to determine the best course of action. Should I go to Perry himself and ask him why he had kept this from Inspector Baynes, or should I be better off going to the company records office and try to ascertain whether the ownership of the business and the property at Rotherhithe had changed in the last year? I chose the latter course. The clerk at the counter confirmed that no change had been registered, but took some time to explain patiently to me that the insolvency proceedings may never have been enforced. He added that, depending upon the disposition of the creditors, it was not impossible for bankruptcy to have been avoided even after the insolvency notice had been issued, providing certain guarantees were made in favour of the bankrupt by a guarantor or similar. He had, however, no record of this and I must confess that I left the office more confused than ever. I returned to Baker Street in a welter of indecision as to what I should do next.

  Fortunately, Holmes had returned in my absence: embarrassment and annoyance were inscribed upon his features, and he was not long in explaining the reason.

  ‘I had gone down to the four corners,’ he said, ‘to put an ear to the ground. First I tried the Prince of Orange and the Armada Beacon and had drawn blanks there. Then I went into the Colleen Bawn, which is one of the rougher dives even by the standards of the dockside. On making my way into the snug, I had an accidental collision with one of the denizens – a fish porter, I should say from the smell. Nothing drastic, he had spilled some beer over me and then made a fuss of apologizing and cleaning it up. At least, I had thought the collision was accidental, but on later reaching my lodgings, I discovered that not only was I a few sovereigns lighter than when I had entered the tavern, but that my silver watch had disappeared along with my pocketbook.’

  ‘The fish porter?’ I asked.

  ‘Most likely one of his accomplices when my attention was diverted. I returned afterwards, but both the fish porter and the pocketbook had gone to ground. The silver watch I managed to retrieve from an ancient pawnbroker on the corner of Trident Street who swore blind not only that he had never set eyes before on the man who pledged the watch, but that he had not the slightest idea that it was stolen property when he bought it. He was also unable to give me a very clear description of the man who pawned it.’

  ‘Who lies with dogs shall rise with fleas!’ I remarked for it was seldom that I had the opportunity to chide
my friend for his folly. ‘Have you reported the theft to the police?’

  Holmes burst into a hearty laugh. ‘Not if it had contained my last penny,’ he said, as he began removing the last of his disguise, ‘for I could not suffer Lestrade’s or Gregson’s sarcasm on the matter. Still, Watson, should I ever fail as a consulting detective, I think I have amassed enough information now to set up as a reasonably proficient ship-breaker. Buy an old boat for two-thousand guineas, engage a few rough labourers and deal porters to break it up and store it, a marine engineer to dismantle the movable parts, and in six months you will have it sold for a clear of profit of five-hundred. Easy money, providing you have premises on the river and a steady supply of labour. The vessel which presently lies at Burdock’s moorings, the collier Strangford Lough, is being broken up following a case of barratry for which the master and first mate are now doing time. The Cromleys seem to be a very decent, if rather impoverished, family; the mother is a permanent invalid whom both the father and Esther look after. As far as Burdock is concerned, that frail exterior hides a sharp business mind. He picked the wharf up for a trifling sum from the previous owner, whose inclination to strong drink and disposition to choleric temper ruined his business prospects and hastened his death. I also discovered that when he was in the timber business at Seldovich’s he refused to take a few of the men back after the big dock strike. Some threats were made at the time, but that was over five years ago and I can hardly think that the rancour has lasted this long. The old fellow is generally liked, and the two men are thought to be on good terms. Parlow appears to have no strong vices; he neither drinks heavily nor gambles. Tahdg Donovan, it seems, did indeed go to look for a ship on the Downs. He left on the Northern Cross of the Blue Anchor Line from Dover two days before the shooting at the wharf. The story is that he got a girl into trouble and took the usual way out – via the merchant service.’

  I showed Holmes the copy of the bankruptcy notice and told him of my visit to the records office.

  ‘Excellent, Watson, you have not been idle. My visit to Colleen Bawn was well worth the loss of the pocketbook in the long run, for it contained only a few ten-shilling notes, and I picked up the scent in the saloon bar there. An old acquaintance of mine, or rather of Cap’n Basil’s, furnished me with the rumour that Burdock almost went bankrupt about a year ago; he managed to get out of the trouble by some means or other. How exactly is not known, though as you may imagine, the speculation was rife, and in some quarters, quite imaginative. Nevertheless, I was inclined to think there was no smoke without fire, and this notice confirms it in every respect. It throws up some interesting questions, does it not?’