“Yes.”
Vera Scott gave one gasping sob. “And now you’ll get a rope! Oh, Billy.”
“I’m sorry, Ma. I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t bear not to get that scholarship. You can’t afford it, and he could.”
“We’d have found the money somehow.”
Billy drew himself up, his face hard. “No, Mum, you couldn’t. I’m sorry I got caught, but I’m not sorry I killed him. All he had to do was be fair, listen to me, and check. But he was like you said,” turning to Montgomery. “Self-righteous. It was as if he wanted me to be a cheat, so he could tell me how bad I’d been, but if I admitted it, he’d overlook it. I’d just have to pay, but he’d forgive me, and he seemed to think that’d be worth me not getting my scholarship.”
Eustace Montgomery looked wearily at us. “That was Melrose. You were right, Mr. Holmes. You said to me that the character of one who is murdered can often explain why he died. I do not condone murder. I will never do so. But how different the outcome if only Melrose had been less rigid and more fair. Why could he not have told this boy that Melrose himself entertained some doubts and that he had applied to me for another opinion?”
“Because,” Holmes said quietly, “he enjoyed wielding the power of judgement too much. And because of it, one has died, and another will do so when the time comes.”
12
And two did die: Melrose at the hands of a passionate boy, and the boy at the hands of the law. There was no trial. Before witnesses Billy Scott admitted his guilt and was taken up by the law. He confessed again to a judge, rather than put his parents through a trial. He’d done it, he said, and if everything were the same, he’d do it again. He died, straight-backed and unrepentant, and I think that truly his great regret was the loss of his time at university, and only a little for his mother’s tears, his father’s white-faced grief, his little sister’s weeping.
Miss Bibi grieved, too, for her friend who died, and also, I believe, for the flaws revealed in his character.
Her father spoke privately to us the day after Billy Scott paid the price. “I have your cheque, Mr. Holmes. You did a fine job, although it was a pity Bibi had to find out so much about Melrose’s character.”
Holmes eyed him. “You were not surprised?”
Arthur Paget sighed. “I knew Collin all my life. His parents were narrow in their views, and his mother was older than usual when she bore him. He was their only child, and as the twig is bent, so the tree grows. I’ve heard his lectures and I understand how they could drive a boy like that to madness, the more so as he was innocent. But Bibi must have justice—and now she has it.”
“How is she?” I asked.
“Well enough. Give her time and she’ll forget the rough and remember only the pleasant. She was residuary legatee, and as Melrose hadn’t altered his will and Billy can’t inherit, she does. She’s decided to give half of Collin’s savings to Montgomery’s scholarship fund. The doctor she summoned arrived with his wife and small child, has taken up the cottage, and is already practicing. The other half of Collin’s savings will go to improving the cottage, adding a carriage-house, and fencing in the land.
“Oh, and the trove you found in that chair, Mr. Holmes? She’s given that to Susie Scott. I think the mother would have refused it, but the child’s father and I talked sense into her. The girl will inherit the farm, and there’s sufficient in that trove for her to add more land. In fact, Bibi said that so long as Susie inherits the farm, the Scotts may use that to buy more land immediately, if there’s an opportunity.”
And that was that. A man was found dead in a kitchen chair, and we uncovered a murderer. He paid the penalty, and life went on. But I wondered now and then, while doing my rounds, how often it was that the flaws in a man’s character so clearly brought him to the grave—and if, the next time I assisted my friend, that would prove to be true again. I hoped not, but then, as I have cause to know, nothing and no one, is perfect—and I thank heavens for it, else we would all be quite unbearable.
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
1
The start of this case was a good fifteen years before my friend and I ever met those involved. Even after the case began, it was nine days before Holmes was called in. However, the woman who brought the case to us told us everything, and I begin the story at her arrival.
The Isle of Sheppey, in the estuary of the Thames River, has a small population of mostly working-class folk, many of whom make their living from the sea or from the flocks of sheep that graze on the island. Amongst the inhabitants was a man named Alistair Johnson, richer than his fellows. While originally of fisherman stock on his mother’s side, he had attained a decent education, and made money in London thereby. Now in his sixties and beginning to fail in his full health and strength, he returned to his childhood home and settled there, hiring a local woman, a widow, to live in and care for him.
Lily Klimpton, née Habbert, had a daughter, Florence by name, who married a carpenter and boat-builder, Robin Simes, who was in a fair way of business. And there the matter stayed for almost fifteen years. The problem was, that while on the surface things may jog along, often there are deep currents that boil unnoticed, and so it was in this case. Alistair and Lily, having no one to please but themselves, became lovers. He promised she would inherit his house and savings, swearing that once he was dead she would never have to work again. Moreover, she would have that advantage desired by anyone who has risen from being poor, that she would have a property to pass on to her daughter in turn.
Alistair demanded Lily say nothing of that to anyone, including her own family, but after a dozen years she broke that vow, and Florence and Robin knew that in time the Johnson house would pass to them. They continued to work hard since, as Florence told her husband, “there’s many a slip t’wixt cup and lip, and we’ve twins. If we inherit ma’s house, better we have one of our own to leave to the other child.”
Alistair was eighty-one when he died, and Lily, now sixty-seven, walked behind his coffin, weeping. She had been fond of her lover and would miss him. Her grief, however, was tempered by the knowledge that she would inherit. The will was read, and the next day the lawyer called on her. To his horror, he found her dead, lying upon her bed. A letter in a sealed envelope, addressed “To Whom It May Concern,” lay beside her upon the bedside table.
A coroner’s verdict was brought in as “suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed,” and there it would have rested, but for her daughter Florence Simes, and her son-in-law, Robin. Neither believed the verdict nor the act—which was where Holmes entered the story.
Florence and her husband called upon him nine days after Johnson’s death, six days after his funeral, five days after her mother was found dead, and the day after her mother was laid to rest.
Florence was a tall, sturdy woman, at that time in her late forties, and her blue eyes were dark with grief and outrage. I sat quietly in my chair, listening and observing. Her husband said little. Robin Simes was similar to his wife in coloring and looks, having medium-brown hair, blue eyes, and a tall and strong build. It was my opinion, watching them, that it was customary for Florence to talk, Robin to listen, but I thought that at need he would be more likely to act.
Florence was talking as she was shown in, Robin at her heels. Mrs. Hudson showed plainly from her demeanor that she approved her conversational companion.
“Yes,” Florence was saying, “adding a little seawater is an easy method of salting a fish-stew.”
She stopped speaking and smiled as Holmes came forward. A look of surprising sweetness lit her face, changing it from careworn to almost beauty.
“Mr. Holmes, I am Florence Simes, and this is my husband, Robin. We have come to consult you over the death of my mother.”
Holmes said all that was proper, and Mrs. Hudson disappeared for a moment, returning with a tea-tray. We settled into our various chairs, each with a cup of tea and a plate of cake.
Holmes began, “You believe yo
ur mother’s death to be murder, I see. Do you suspect anyone?”
“Aye, his brother, Kyle Johnson.”
Holmes nodded. “Begin at the beginning and go on to the end, Mrs. Simes.”
And that was what she did, starting with the retirement of Alistair Johnson to the island fifteen years earlier.
“He’d a fair education, had Alistair, made money in London, then came home, bought a house, had it furnished, and settled down with ma as his housekeeper. Them having known each other as children—well, he were fourteen years older than she was but her brother and him were best friends, and he knew her well—and being together in that big old house, they got to being more than master and housekeeper. After five years, when they saw it were likely to last that way, he told her he’d made a will leaving her all he had, bar a few trifles going to his brother and a couple of his friends.”
“Did she see that will?” Holmes asked sharply.
I expected to hear that she had not, that Johnson may have only said that to bind her beyond any wish to leave—but no.
“Aye, she did, and now and again she’d look at it there in his writing desk, ma saying that a woman needed to know how she were placed. Never changed, it didn’t, even if he did rewrite it a few years afore he died.”
And in reply to Holmes’s question: “No, she read well enough, did ma. Her granddad’s family had money ’til they had reverses. He said as a person always benefitted from knowing how to read, write, and figure. And it’s a tradition for us Habberts, as ma was before her marriage. I can, too…”
“Aye, she can,” Robin Simes corroborated abruptly. “It’s the reason we make money. I know my work, but Flo does the bills and such, and she costs the materials. We’re paying off a house to be our own, and we’ve savings and will have more. She’s a sharp woman is my Flo, and a good wife to me.” He subsided into his chair again while a faint flush showed across his wife’s cheekbones at this encomium.
I was impressed. Men of that class do not easily commend a spouse to other men. His words were the equivalent of a young man’s talking of love, writing a sonnet to her, and speaking of his adoration.
Holmes nodded. “Such learning is useful to anyone,” he agreed. “Your mother, Mrs. Simes, was she as able as you at reading?”
“She were,” was the decisive reply. “If she said she read the will, then she did, and if it were what she told us, then that’s what she read.”
Holmes sat back a little. “I see. What exactly did she tell you that it said?”
“She said that it left everything to her, but before that it left Mr. Johnson’s library to his brother, Kyle. His pipes, any of his clothes that he wanted, and any drink that remained in the house, went to old Arly. That’s Arlen Parker—they were friends when they were children—and the sum of ten pounds went to Abraham Little, as was gardener. Also, it said that Abe could take cuttings of any plants he wanted. And there were another ten pounds left to the Sea Shore Inn, to stand drinks the night of his funeral. He asked that they drink to his safe voyaging into calm waters; ’tis an old custom, sir.”
“And you say that this will was made ten years ago or more?” Holmes mused.
“That’s when he told ma he’d made it, and she told us she saw it not more than a few weeks after that.”
“Did he know she had read it?”
Florence Simes reddened. “No. Maybe she shouldn’t have done that, but she said she wanted to know the truth, not just for her but for us. No harm done, she thought, but it could be our future. When she saw Mr. Johnston putting the envelope away in a secret drawer in the writing desk, she sneaked down in the night and read what was written there.”
“So he first told her that he was making the will, and that this was what it would say,” Holmes clarified. “Then he went to the lawyers, signed the will, and brought it home. When she read it some days later, it said precisely as he’d claimed?”
“Aye, sir.”
“And in the following years, to her knowledge, the will was never changed substantially?”
“No. She read it about once a year, just checking, like. She told me it were the same will always, save that about five years after that, that was when he added Arly to it.”
“But when it was read after Alistair Johnson’s death, it was not the will she had always seen?”
“No.” Florence glowered. “She said the lawyer told her she weren’t in it. When he read it to others, it was them that told her that old Arly, Abraham the gardener, and the brother got what the will had always said. But then, where she’d always got his house and money, it said that his brother got all that, too.”
Holmes stiffened. “You mean that your mother received nothing?”
“Aye, nothing at all. Fifteen years she’d looked after him, been his lover from almost the month when he hired her on. Said he loved her, and he was leaving her what’d see that she was never in want when he were gone. And never a hard word between them, she said, right to the day he died. Then he makes another will, only days before he dies it must have been, and leaves her not so much as a penny-piece. It broke her heart, Mr. Holmes. Not just losing the money, ’though that cast her down, but she cared for him and she believed he’d felt the same. It fair made her cry. He didn’t even leave her as much as the gardener got.”
“Would it make her kill herself?” Holmes demanded bluntly, and she fired up immediately.
“No, that it wouldn’t. I said to her she’d always have a home with us. We’d the room, and my man, he agreed.”
Robin Simes nodded. “Aye, I did. She were a good woman, were Lily. We always got on, and what that man did to her were shameful. Wouldn’t have believed it of him hadn’t the lawyer said so.”
“What did the lawyer say?”
“That his client made the will near fifteen years ago, and that was what it said.” His brow wrinkled. “Strange, that. He said he couldn’t recall the wording exactly, but it were all in his own writing, and with the witnesses’ signatures right enough. They were still living, and they could swear they’d signed. But then, I suppose he sees so many wills he wouldn’t recall all of them, nor what they said.”
“And everyone thought it reasonable that your mother-in-law killed herself over such a disappointment?”
“Aye,” Robin Simes agreed. “None the less, we didn’t see it, sir. While it were a great disappointment to her, that will, she wouldn’t have killed herself. She had us, her health still, and her grandchildren. She loved them, and wouldn’t have grieved them that way, nor us. And that letter she wrote, sir. It were…” His hands wove signs in the air as he groped for a word.
“Unlike her?” I offered, and he glanced at me gratefully.
“Aye, that’s it, sir.”
Florence dug into her handbag and produced a crumpled envelope. “You see for yourself, Mr. Holmes.”
My friend accepted the envelope, extracted a single sheet of paper and read aloud the few short sentences.
To whoever finds this. Lawyer says I have to be out in two days, and I can’t go on. I’ve no money, I won’t be a burden to my family. Tell them I’m sorry.
Lily
Holmes considered. “I see that she merely signed her Christian name. Would you expect that?”
Florence shook her head firmly. “No, Mr. Holmes, that’s one of the things that’s wrong. Ma was formal for that sort of thing. Surprised the lawyer—or so he said—what she’d written on the envelope. Didn’t surprise us. Did she write that letter, we’d expect her to address it that way. But the other, no. If she’d written that and meant us to understand that she’d done away with herself, she’d have signed her whole name, Lily Klimpton. I told the lawyer.” Her eyes glittered.
“He said who knows what her class of person might do. I told him, her family does, and ma wasn’t ‘that class of person.’ She had education, she’d have written out her whole name. He said I had no proof, and it was like the coroner said, that she was unbalanced. I said she wasn’t, and he sai
d of course she was, she killed herself, didn’t she? That proves it.”
I bit back a snort of amusement. The Simeses would not appreciate it, but the lawyer’s protest was a perfect circle. Mrs. Klimpton had killed herself because she was mad. She was mad because she had killed herself. It reminded me of my schooldays when I was told that just because A equals B, B does not always equal A. That is, if the bird on my lawn is yellow, that does not mean that all birds on my lawn will be yellow. The lawyer seemed not to have learned that lesson.
Robin Simes added, “Aye, I said he didn’t know my ma-in-law. She knew she’d a home with us any time. So she did have somewhere to go. And as for no money, that weren’t true, either. She’d money put by, and we could prove it.”
Florence continued, “Aye, and he said, he doubted it’d add up to a house and Mr. Johnson’s money, and anyway, verdict had been given. She were buried now and it were all over. If we’d excuse him, he had clients to see.”
Holmes pursed his lips and remained silent for two or three minutes while they waited. “How did you come by her letter?”
“Coroner gave it to us when we asked.”
“Is he a local man?”
“Aye, sir, he is.”
“He knew your mother?”
“Since they were children, Mr. Holmes. Sheppies they call those that’s born and bred on the Isle, and he’s one of them, too. Sir, will you take the case? We’ve money, and ma had more put by than we used for her funeral. We’d give it all if you could show she didn’t kill herself.”
Holmes leaned forward and met their gaze. “Mr. and Mrs. Simes, think about this: if your mother would never have killed herself, then either she died by accident, or she was murdered. If I come to the Island and make inquiries, that latter possibility will eventually occur to everyone there. Many will be angered against you, others will spread gossip that will distress you and your children. The police will be unhappy. And what of the Church?”
“What of them?” she asked harshly.
“Did your minister allow you to bury your mother in the churchyard?”
Sherlock Holmes - Found Dead Page 15