Sherlock's Sisters

by Nick Rennison

  EAVESDROPPING AT INTERLAKEN

  I have sometimes thought that this gift of mine for reading words as they issue from people’s lips places me, with or without my will, in the position of the eavesdropper. There have been occasions on which, before I knew it, I have been made cognisant of conversations, of confidences, which were meant to be sacred; and, though such knowledge has been acquired through no fault of mine, I have felt ashamed, just as if I had been listening at a key-hole, and I have almost wished that the power which Nature gave me, and which years of practice have made perfect, was not mine at all. On the other hand, there have been times when I was very glad indeed that I was able to play the part of eavesdropper. As, to very strict purists, this may not sound a pleasant confession to make, I will give an instance of the kind of thing I mean.

  I suppose I was about seventeen; I know I had just put my hair up, which had grown to something like a decent length since it had come in contact with the edge of that doughty Scottish chieftain’s – MacGregor’s – knife. My mother was not very well. My father was reluctant to leave her. It looked as if the summer holiday which had been promised me was in peril, when two acquaintances, Mr and Mrs Travers, rather than that I should lose it altogether, offered to take me under their wing. They were going for a little tour in Switzerland, proposing to spend most of their time at Interlaken, and my parents, feeling that I should be perfectly safe with them, accepted their proffered chaperonage.

  Everything went well until we got to Interlaken. There they met some friends who were going on a climbing expedition, and, as Mr and Mrs Travers were both keen mountaineers, they were very eager to join them. I was the only difficulty in their way. They could not say exactly how long they would be absent, but probably a week; and what was to become of me in that great hotel there all alone? They protested that it would be quite impossible to leave me; they would have to give up that climb; and I believe they would have done so if what seemed to be a solution of the difficulty had not turned up.

  The people in the hotel were for the most part very sociable folk, as people in such places are apt to be. Among other persons whose acquaintance we had made was a middle-aged widow, a Mrs Hawthorne. When she heard of what Mr and Mrs Travers wanted to do, and how they could not do it because of me, she volunteered, during their absence, to occupy their place as my chaperon, assuring them that every possible care should be taken of me.

  In the hotel were stopping a brother and sister, a Mr and Miss Sterndale. With them I had grown quite friendly. Mr Sterndale I should have set down as twenty-five or twenty-six, and his sister as a year or two younger. From the day on which I had first seen them they had shown an inclination for my society; and, to speak quite frankly, on different occasions Mr Sterndale had paid me what seemed to me to be delicate little attentions which were very dear to my maiden heart. I had some difficulty in inducing people to treat me as if I were grown up. After a few minutes’ conversation even perfect strangers would ask me how old I was, and when I told them they were apt to assume an attitude towards me as if I were the merest child, of which I disapproved.

  What attracted me to Mr Sterndale was that, from the very first, he treated me with deference, as if I were at least as old as he was.

  On the third day after Mr and Mrs Travers had left Mrs Hawthorne came to me with a long face and a letter in her hand.

  ‘My dear, I cannot tell you how annoyed I am, but I shall have to go to England at once – today. And whatever will become of you?’

  It seemed that her only sister was dangerously ill, and that she was implored to go to her as soon as she could. Of course, she would have to go. I told her that it did not matter in the least about me; Mr and Mrs Travers would be back in a day or two, and now that I knew so many people in the hotel, who were all of them disposed to be friendly, I should be perfectly all right until they came. She must not allow any consideration for me to keep her for a moment from obeying her sister’s call. She left for London that afternoon; but, so far from everything being perfectly all right with me after she had gone, the very next day my troubles began.

  They began in the morning. I was sitting on the terrace with a book. Mr Sterndale had been talking to me. Presently his sister came through an open French window from the lounge. Her brother went up to her; I sat still. She was at the other end of the terrace, and when she saw me she nodded and smiled. When her brother came up to her, he said something which, as his back was towards me, of course I did not catch; but her answer to him, which was very gently uttered, I saw quite distinctly; all the while she was speaking she was smiling at me.

  ‘She has a red morocco jewel-case sort of a thing on the corner of her mantel-shelf; I put it under the bottom tray. With the exception of that gold locket which she is always wearing it’s the only decent thing in it; it’s full of childish trumpery.’

  That was what Miss Sterndale said to her brother, and I saw her say it with rather curious feelings. What had he asked her? To what could she be referring? I had ‘a red morocco jewel-case sort of a thing’, and it stood on a corner of my mantel-shelf. I also had a gold locket, which, if I was not, as she put it, always wearing, I did wear pretty often. Certainly it was the only article in my jewel-case which was worth very much; and with a horrid sort of qualm I owned to myself that the rest of the contents might come under the definition of ‘childish trumpery’. She said she had put something under the bottom tray. What bottom tray? Whose bottom tray? There were trays in my jewel-case; she could not possibly have meant that she had put anything under one of them. The idea was too preposterous. And yet, if we had not been going to St Beatenberg, I think I should have gone straight up to my bedroom to see. I do not know how it was; the moment before I had been perfectly happy; there was not a grain of suspicion in the air, nor in my mind; then all of a sudden I felt quite curious. Could there be two persons in the house possessed of ‘a red morocco jewel-case sort of a thing’, which stood on a corner of the mantel-shelf, in which was a gold locket and a rather mixed collection of childish trumpery I wondered. If I was the only person in the house who owned such a treasure, what did she mean by saying that she had put something under the bottom tray? The case was locked; I had locked it myself before leaving the room, of that I was sure. Had she unlocked it – with what key? She could not have broken it open. Was the something which she had put under the bottom tray a present which was meant to be a surprise to me?

  The evening before, we had arranged to make an excursion to St Beatenberg on the Lake of Thun – five or six of us. I was dressed ready to start when Miss Sterndale came through that French window. She also was ready, and her brother. Presently the others appeared. I was feeling a little confused; I could not think of an excuse which would give me an opportunity of examining my jewel-case. Anyhow, I kept trying to tell myself it was absurd. I wished I could not see what people were saying merely by watching their lips. What Miss Sterndale had said to her brother had nothing at all to do with me. I had unintentionally heard something which I had not been meant to hear, and I was being properly punished for my pains.

  My day at St Beatenberg was spoilt, though I kept telling myself that it was all my own fault, and nobody else’s. Everyone was gay, and full of fun and laughter – everyone but me. My mood was so obviously out of tune with theirs that they commented on it.

  ‘What is the matter with you, Miss Lee?’ asked Mrs Dalton; ‘you look as if you were not enjoying yourself one little bit.’

  I did not like to say that I was not; as a matter of fact, when they rallied me I said that I was – but it was not true.

  When I got back to the hotel and was in my bedroom, I went straight up to that ‘red morocco jewel-case sort of a thing’ and looked at it. It was locked, just as I had left it. Clearly I had been worrying myself all day long about nothing at all. Still, I got my keys and opened it; there was nothing to show that the contents had been touched. I lifted the two trays – and
I gasped. I do not know how else to describe it – something seemed all at once to be choking me, so that it was with an effort that I breathed. In the jewel-case, under the bottom tray, was a pendant – a beautiful circular diamond pendant, of the size, perhaps, of a five-shilling piece. It was not mine; I never had anything so beautiful in my life. Where did it come from? Could Miss Sterndale have put it there? Was that the meaning of her words?

  I took the pendant out. It was a beauty; it could not be a present from the Sterndales, from either the sister or the brother. They must have known that I could not accept such a gift as that from strangers. And then, what a queer way of making a present – and such a present!

  As I looked at it I began to have a very uncomfortable feeling that I had seen it before, or one very like it, on someone in the house. My head, or my brain, or something, seemed to be so muddled that at the moment I could not think who that someone was. I had washed and tidied myself before I decided that I would go down with the pendant in my hand and, at the risk of no matter what misunderstanding, ask Miss Sterndale what she meant by putting it there. So, when I had got my unruly hair into something like order, downstairs I went, and rushed into the lounge with so much impetuosity that I all but cannoned against Miss Goodridge, who was coming out.

  ‘Good gracious, child!’ she exclaimed. ‘Do look where you are going. You almost knocked me over.’

  The instant I saw her, and she said that, I remembered – I knew whom I had seen wearing that diamond pendant which I was holding tightly clasped in the palm of my hand. It was the person whom I had almost knocked over, Miss Goodridge herself – of course! One of the persons in the hotel whom, so far as I knew anything of them, I liked least. Miss Goodridge was a tall, angular person of perhaps quite thirty-five, who dressed and carried herself as if she were still a girl. She had been most unpleasant to me. I had no idea what I had done or said to cause her annoyance, but I had a feeling that she disliked me, and was at no pains to conceal the fact. The sight of her, and the thought that I had nearly knocked her over, quite drove the sense out of my head.

  ‘Oh, Miss Goodridge!’ I exclaimed, rather fatuously. ‘You look as if something had happened.’

  ‘Something has happened,’ she replied. ‘There’s a thief in the house. I have been robbed. Someone has stolen my pendant – my diamond pendant.’

  Someone had stolen her diamond pendant! I do not know if the temperature changed all at once, but I do know that a chill went all over me. Was that the explanation? Could it possibly be – I did not care to carry even my thought to a logical finish. I stood there as if I were moonstruck, with Miss Goodridge looking at me with angry eyes.

  ‘What is the matter with the child?’ she asked. ‘I did not know you dark-skinned girls could blush, but I declare you’ve gone as red as a lobster.’

  I do not know if she thought that lobsters were red before they were boiled. I tried to explain, to say what I wanted to say, but I appeared to be tongue-tied.

  ‘Can’t you speak?’ she demanded. ‘Don’t glare at me as if you’d committed a murder. Anyone would think that you had been robbed instead of me. I suppose you haven’t stolen my pendant?’

  She drew her bow at a venture, but her arrow hit the mark.

  ‘Oh, Miss Goodridge!’ I repeated. It seemed to be all I could say.

  She put her hand upon my shoulder.

  ‘What is the matter with the girl? You young wretch! Have you been playing any tricks with that pendant of mine?’

  ‘I – I found it,’ I stammered. I held out to her my open hand with the pendant on the palm.

  ‘You – you found it? Found what?’ She looked at me and then at my outstretched hand. ‘My pendant! She’s got my pendant!’ She snatched it from me. ‘You – you young – thief! And you have the insolence to pretend you found it!’

  ‘I did find it – I found it in my bedroom.’

  ‘Did you really? Of all the assurance! I’ve always felt that you were the kind of creature with whom the less one had to do the better, but I never credited you with a taste for this sort of thing. Get out of my way! Don’t you ever dare to speak to me again.’

  She did not wait for me to get out of her way; she gave me a violent push and rushed right past me. It was a polished floor; if I had not come in contact with a big armchair I should have tumbled on to it. My feelings when I was left alone in the lounge were not enviable. At seventeen, even if one thinks oneself grown up, one is still only a child, and I was a stranger in a strange land, without a friend in all that great hotel, without a soul to advise me. Still, as I knew that I was absolutely and entirely innocent, I did not intend to behave as if I were guilty. I went up to my room again and dressed for dinner. I told myself over and over again as I performed my simple toilette that I would make Miss Goodridge eat her words before she had done, though at that moment I had not the faintest notion how I was going to do it.

  That was a horrid dinner – not from the culinary, but from my point of view. If the dinner was horrid, in the lounge afterwards it was worse. Miss Sterndale actually had the audacity to come up to me and pretend to play the part of sympathetic friend.

  ‘You seem to be all alone,’ she began. I was all alone; I had never thought that anyone could feel so utterly alone as I did in that crowded lounge. ‘Miss Lee, why do you look at me like that?’ I was looking at her as if I wished her to understand that I was looking into her very soul – if she had one. Her smiling serenity of countenance was incredible to me, knowing what I knew. ‘Have you had bad news from home, or from Mr and Mrs Travers, or are you unhappy because Mrs Hawthorne has gone? You seem so different. What has been the matter with you the whole of today?’

  I was on the point of giving an explanation which I think might have startled her when I happened to glance across the room. At a table near the open window, Mr Sterndale was sitting with Miss Goodridge. They were having coffee. Although Miss Goodridge was sitting sideways, she continually turned her head to watch me, Mr Sterndale was sitting directly facing me. He had a cigarette in one hand, and every now and then he sipped his coffee, but most of the time he talked. But, although I could not even hear the sound of his voice, I saw what he said as distinctly as if he had been shouting in my ear. It was the sentence he was uttering which caused me to defer the explanation which I had it in my mind to give to his sister.

  ‘Of course, the girl’s a thief – I’m afraid that goes without saying.’ It was that sentence which was issuing from his lips at the moment when I chanced to glance in his direction which caused the explanation I had been about to make to his sister to be deferred.

  Miss Goodridge had her coffee cup up to her mouth, so I could not see what she said; but if I had been put to it I might have made a very shrewd guess by the reply he made. He took his cigarette from his lips, blew out a thin column of smoke, leaned back in his chair – and all the time he was looking smilingly at me with what he meant me to think were the eyes of a friend.

  ‘It’s all very well for you to talk. I may have had my suspicions, but it is only within the last hour or two that they have been confirmed.’

  She said something which again I could not see; his reply suggested that she must have asked a question.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I mean by saying that my doubts have been confirmed. A man was passing through this afternoon with whom I have some acquaintance – the Rector of Leeds.’ I wonder he did not say the Bishop of London. ‘He saw – our friend – ’ He made a slight inclination of his head towards me. ‘At sight of her he exclaimed: “Halloa, there’s that Burnett girl!” For a parson he has rather a free and easy way of speaking; he’s one of your modern kind.’

  I believed him!

  ‘“Burnett girl?” I said. “But her name’s Lee – Judith Lee.” “Oh, she calls herself Lee now, does she? That settles it.” “Settles what?” I asked, because I saw that there was something in his tone
. “My dear Reggie,” he said (he always calls me Reggie; I’ve known him for years), “at the beginning of the season that girl whom you call Judith Lee was at Pontresina, staying in the same hotel as I was. She called herself Burnett then. Robberies were going on all the time, people were continually missing things. At last a Russian woman lost a valuable lot of jewellery. That settled it – Miss Burnett went.”’

  Miss Goodridge turned so that her face was hidden; but, as before, his reply gave me a pretty good clue as to the question she had asked.

  ‘Of course I mean it. Do you think I’d say a thing like that if I didn’t mean it? I won’t tell you all he said – it wouldn’t be quite fair. But it came to this. He said that the young lady whom we have all thought so sweet and innocent –’

  Miss Goodridge interposed with a remark which, in a guessing competition, I think I could have come pretty near to. He replied:

  ‘Well, I’ve sometimes felt that you were rather hard on her, that perhaps you were a trifle prejudiced.’

  Miss Goodridge turned her face towards me, and then I saw her words.

  ‘I’m a better judge of feminine human nature than you suppose. The first moment I saw her I knew she was a young cat, though I admit I didn’t take her to be as bad as she is. What did your clerical friend say of her, of the Miss Burnett whom we know now as Miss Lee?’