by David Marcum
“They are almost identical.”
“Dr. Watson,” said Holmes, “kindly place your service revolver on the table.”
I took out my gun and laid it on the table. It was a standard issue Webley, carried by tens of thousands of men who had served in Her Majesty’s army. The captain laid the major’s gun beside mine. They were identical models.
“There are at least a hundred of those guns in Trinco,” said Major Garton. “This proves nothing. Now, end this nonsense immediately.”
“Ah, yes,” said Holmes. “There are many such guns. You are correct. But there is only one that is owned by the last man to have seen Geoffrey Atkinson alive; by the man who was accused of gross indecency by Geoffrey Atkinson; and by the man who has the rare skill to hit a small moving target from a significant distance. To that, Major, I would add that as we speak, the members of both the junior and the senior cricket teams are being removed from their classes at St. Joseph’s and brought to a private location for questioning by the police. Once they know that you can no longer harm them, and they are advised of the consequences of lying to the police, I expect they will be quite forthcoming. What you considered to be your affection for them, a court would view quite differently. The game is up, Major. You may have served your country with distinction, and what you do in private by mutual agreement with a man or a woman is none of anyone else’s concern. But throughout your career you took advantage of your position and betrayed the trust of the children and families you were called to protect. I advise you to obtain a good barrister.”
“And I advise you to do the same,” said Garton. “Enough of this bloody drivel. I have classes to teach.”
He turned and began to leave the patio.
“Major Garton,” said the police captain, leaping to his feet. “I am so sorry, Major, but I am afraid that you must come with me.”
Three police constables had emerged from just within the hotel to block the major’s path. They escorted him through the hotel and out to a waiting police carriage.
George Atkinson, claiming a need to attend to the stricken Miss Lipton, also departed.
That left me, Holmes, and Miss Morag Douglass sitting on the patio. Holmes stared at her, and she met his gaze, unflinching, and clearly not the least intimidated.
“Perhaps another cup of tea, Miss Douglass?” asked Holmes.
“One perhaps, yes. Do you have more questions before I leave?”
“I admit that admire your imagination,” said Holmes, “even if your morals are somewhat suspect. However, would you mind terribly, as a favor from one imaginative person to another, explaining what took place that brought you to your current situation on a patio in Trincomalee? Your story, Miss.”
“Have you been to the Gorbals, Mr. Holmes? The poorest, most utterly miserable part of the city of Glasgow? That is where and I were born and raised, and where I learned to look after myself. As a six-year-old school girl, I met another child, one who was kind and pure and generous beyond belief. My father had died in an accident in the shipyards. Elspeth Linton’s father had abandoned her and her mother. The two of us became as close as sisters. Whatever Elspeth had, she would always give a portion of it to me. In turn, I protected her.
“We continued that way through our schooling. Then, one day, she confided in me not only the identity of her father but also that she was expecting to receive a considerable portfolio of securities and title to properties upon her marriage. I feared that once she was married to some ambitious and possessive young man, she would be forced to abandon me. So, I took her to a week of evangelical revival meetings and convinced her that God was calling us to go and serve on the mission field. Ceylon was her suggestion.
“Once here, we soon met the Atkinson brothers. At first, I had no use for Mr. Tweedledum and Mr. Tweedledee, but it came to me that here was a solution to my fears. If she were to marry one and I to marry the twin brother, we would be inseparable for the rest of our lives. Maybe we would become the wives of successful gentlemen, live in Colombo, and eventually move to Belgravia.
“It was all going perfectly until Geoffrey passed on to George what two of the boys on his senior cricket team had told him about Major Garton. George told me, and I urged Geoffrey not to make an issue about it. I had learned in the Gorbals that it is not wise to poke a bear. But Geoffrey was sure that an honorable soldier would never act against the law, so he confronted the major and immediately paid the price, as did both of the students.”
“How,” asked Holmes, “did you manage to avoid becoming the major’s victim yourself? You blackmailed him to send highly biased reports to the governor concerning the potential of the Lipton plans for the tea industry. I suspect he did not take kindly to that.”
“Oh, you can say that again. What I did, Mr. Holmes, was to furiously write out all possible accusations against the major, with detailed evidence, and make four copies. Three I immediately sent to solicitors in New York, Paris, and London with instructions to pass them along to The Times in both London and America and The International Herald-Tribune in Paris should they hear of anything untoward happening to me, or Elspeth, or George. Then I gave a copy to him. And, auch, he was not happy with me. I told him that I would not demand any money from him, as I would never stoop to blackmail, but that from then on, he had to be the biggest booster of the Lipton invasion of Ceylon that could be imagined. He could not very well let on that it was Geoffrey he had shot and not George. He complied. I had far more to gain by having his serve my purposes than having him hung.
“So, that is my story, Mr. Holmes. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to come up with a plan that will ensure that Elspeth marries and stays married to George, but I will need to find an exceptionally clever young man to be George’s indispensable business partner as well as my husband. You would not happen to know any men who fit that description?”
Try as he might, Holmes could not resist smiling at her. “No, my dear, I do not and, if I did, I assure you, I would recommend that he never come to Ceylon.”
She laughed, smiled radiantly, and departed.
Holmes sat in silence, absently smoking a cigarette.
“How,” I asked him, “did you know about the Major’s problems?”
“It was you, my friend, who put me on to it. A highly successful officer on his way to the top does not up an quit because of some religious epiphany. A telegram sent to Whitehall was answered immediately with the details of the litany of accusations that had been made against him.”
We both sat in silence for several more minutes and were about to get up, pack our baggage, and prepare to depart when Captain Devasenapathy returned. He was looking horribly distraught.
“Good heavens, man!” I said. “What is it?”
He collapsed his body into one of the chairs.
“Major Garton had a second revolver on his person.”
“Did he shoot your men and escape?” asked Holmes.
“No. He waited until we had placed him in a room in the station. Then he shot himself. Mayor Garton is dead.”
For a full minute not one of us spoke. Then the captain stood, nodded a quiet good day to us, and departed.
“I suppose,” I said to Holmes, “that it was a better way for him to go the way he did than face the shame and humiliation that would precede a certain trip to the gallows.”
I could tell that Holmes wasn’t listening to me.
“Watson,” he said whilst looking out to the endless, beautiful expanse of the Indian Ocean, “when you were a schoolboy and had to attend chapel, did you ever sing a hymn that beings with the words From Greenland’s icy mountains?”
“I did.”
“Does not the second verse make some reference to Ceylon?”
“It does.”
From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings... of his cle
aring up of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee...
Dr. John H. Watson - “A Scandal in Bohemia”
Colonel Warburton’s Madness
by Gayle Lange Puhl
I have written elsewhere of the fact I was twice able to bring to the attention of my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes cases of interest to his extensive study of crime. One I published as “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”. The other I hesitated to release to the public because aspects of the story were personal to me. However, under Holmes’s encouragement, I have decided to put down the facts at last, in order to clear the name of a courageous and honorable man from the dark clouds that formed about him during his last years.
My friend was away from London on that early spring day of 1888. He had journeyed to Madrid the week before at the behest of a high government official to investigate the disappearance of certain pieces of art from the Palmatoria Museo. The thief had been seen escaping by jumping from a second-story balcony. Soon afterwards, a small fire broke out in one of the galleries. The police were baffled, and so Sherlock Holmes was consulted.
Holmes had sent a wire that day that he would return the next morning. I was alone in our sitting room at 221b Baker Street when a young woman was shown up by Mrs. Hudson.
She looked up at me with bright, intelligent blue eyes. She appeared to be in her late twenties, below the average height, but with a determined air. She was dressed in a walking suit of dark green, with a wisp of a hat on her wavy blonde hair, and a package wrapped in brown paper in her neatly gloved hands.
“Doctor Watson? Doctor John H. Watson, who served at the fatal Battle of Maiwand in Afghanistan?”
“I am. But madame, you have the advantage of me.”
“I am Miss Katherine Warburton, the daughter of Colonel Jeremiah Warburton.”
I ushered her in at once. “My dear, I remember your father well. Please, sit down. The last I heard of the colonel, he had retired and moved to the family home in the Lake District.”
She accepted the glass of brandy I offered her from the sideboard. I never claimed to have Holmes’s skills at observation and deduction, but the signs of her having been on a long railway journey were evident in the state of her clothes, her obvious fatigue, and the ticket she had thrust halfway up the wrist of her left glove. At my remark, she patted the wrapped bundle beside her and tears welled up in her eyes.
“I come on a sad errand, Doctor Watson. My father devoted his life to Her Majesty’s service. He endured many hardships over the decades and never faltered from his duties. But his final posting, to lead the 66th Berkshires during the second war in Afghanistan, broke him.
“He came back to our family estate at Lake Windermere a shell of the man who had left from home just three years before. He didn’t move into the main house, which he as head of the family was entitled to do. Instead, he retreated to a small cottage on the grounds. He refused to accept visitors, withdrew from those who loved him, and seldom left his ‘quarters’, as he called the tiny cottage. My father was content to continue the arrangement, begun years ago, whereas his brother administered the estate as he had done during the colonel’s long absences.
“The entailment with which the estate had been set up long ago specified that no female could inherit the land or property, and that it descend to the oldest surviving son. I am given a generous allowance, but everything will eventually go to my oldest cousin. Fenton was a brilliant success at university, and has since found fulfillment as headmaster of our local school.
“My father, meanwhile, settled into the life of a recluse. He seemed to tolerate my presence, but still at times refused to admit me. He became more solitary. He desired no company. Often, for days and weeks at a time, he would refuse the society of a single human being. The signs of deep melancholia were obvious. This went on for years. The only time he seemed even moderately cheerful was when he spoke of you, Doctor Watson.”
“Of me?” I exclaimed. “I think we met only a half-dozen times, and then only briefly before the battle.”
“Yes. It was about the only thing in which he showed any interest after his return. When your story about Mr. Sherlock Holmes came out in the Beeton’s Christmas Annual last year, he bought a copy and read it over and over. It was the only thing he wanted to take with him and he was heart-broken when that one small kindness was denied.”
“What happened to Colonel Warburton?” I asked. I remembered a stocky, bluff commanding officer with a flowing blonde mustache and a head of hair to match, his battle uniform always crisp and neatly ironed.
“His health, both physical and mental, has declined steeply during the past year. Finally, about three weeks ago, I was forced, on the advice of his doctor and my uncle, his brother, to sign the papers to have him committed to a private sanitarium in Carlisle.”
I sat stunned. What a sad ending to a long and honorable career! After a minute, I looked again at the young woman before me. She was watching me expectantly. There was something else she had to say.
“Miss Warburton, I cannot tell you how much your story upsets me. Is there anything I can do for you or your father?”
She picked up the paper-wrapped package. “I wish you to take his diary, Doctor. He had kept it for nearly thirty years, starting just before his marriage to my mother. He entered notes haphazardly, as his circumstances permitted. He continued his entries after his retirement to The Fortress, as our estate is named. Before his commitment, he was making wild and unbelievable accusations about the people around him. I thought that you, being a doctor, could study his record of his own decline and perhaps find out why his illness changed from a deep melancholia to a violent madness that endangered his own life.”
“Why don’t you give his diary to his own physician?”
“That would be my Uncle Isaiah. According to the quick reading I gave the last pages, he wrote harsh things about Uncle, and I am afraid he would not be impartial to the slurs. Uncle Isaiah has been ill, and I think the knowledge of his brother’s accusations would further undermine his health.”
“I am sorry to hear of your uncle’s troubles, Miss Warburton.”
“Yes, he was diagnosed last year. The disease is terminal and we are very upset. His older son Fenton has given up his own educational duties and moved into The Fortress to take some of the burden of running the estate from his shoulders. My other cousin, Farley, Fenton’s brother, visits often from Durham, where he is at university. Besides, Father did enjoy your story, Doctor, and I think he would like you to have his writings.”
What could I do but agree to take them? Miss Warburton refused any more help and announced she had made arrangements to return to Ambleside in Cumbria the next day. I insisted upon hailing her a cab. Then I returned to our rooms and contemplated the paper-wrapped bundle.
I reflected for a time upon Colonel Warburton’s circumstances, the war, and upon the concerned daughter who had left his diary with me. Finally I drew the lamp closer and unwrapped the package.
Sherlock Holmes returned the next day. I had left the loose-leaf diary on my desk. As Holmes roamed about the room, touching items and looking through the windows into Baker Street, he spied the manuscript. He picked up the diary and flipped through the pages with a lazy curiosity.
“This is not your handwriting, Watson,” he drawled.
“No,” I replied. I told him the story of the diary and the daughter of my former commanding officer. “I have read it. As a military document it is interesting, spanning a recent period of time in British history. However, I found the most fascinating part to be what the colonel experienced after his retirement.”
Holmes took the manuscript and settled into his armchair. He thumbed through the pages, giving particular attention to the last twenty. Those pages covered the last years before Colonel Warburton’s confinement. He read those carefully as
I lit my cigar and rang Mrs. Hudson for tea.
It was quite twenty minutes until Mrs. Hudson brought up the tea and Holmes spoke. He accepted a cup from me and I nodded to the papers now stacked on the table beside him.
“What do you make of it, Holmes?’ I asked.
“As a history of a man’s mental decline it has some interest, but I am more drawn to the crime it describes.”
“Crime? The poor man relates from his perspective a slow slide into madness, but I saw no sign of crime.”
“On the contrary, Watson, there is ample evidence of a crime, and a dastardly one at that.”
“Please explain.”
“You know I have little interest in military matters. Therefore I only skimmed through the accounts of his exploits on the battlefield. My attention was piqued by his description of Maiwand and its aftermath. Although the causes of the battle were later firmly established by a military investigation, Colonel Warburton blamed himself. Guilt crippled him, and shortly after the results became known, he retired. He retreated to the family estate in the Lake District. He refused to move into The Fortress, the main house. Instead he took over an old gamekeeper’s cottage and shut himself away from the world.”
“Yes, his melancholia was well-developed by then. His symptoms were typical, craving solitude, showing poor eating habits, exhibiting self-neglect, and lack of interest in things he normally would have enjoyed. Then he believed that his mind cracked after the sightings began.”
“The sightings?” Holmes reached for his pipe.
“Yes, the delusions. He heard voices, saw spirits in the night, and experienced sleep walking. All signs of a deep mental upset.”
“I think the clues he left in his diary do not support the idea that he suffered from delusions, Watson. I think he really experienced all those effects. I think someone close to him used his circumstances to drive him mad.”
“That would be diabolical! If true, how can it be proven? To what purpose would such a thing be done?”