‘The second set of prints, made by shoes which were of a similar size to the first but of a slightly different shape, began just outside the study window. From there they followed the side of the house to the corner of the building, where their owner appeared to have remained standing for a moment – to judge from the large number of prints close together there – and then proceeded to the gate. Between the corner of the house and the gate, the impressions of this second pair of shoes were very much lighter, and hardly ever showed the heel distinctly, from which I inferred that the owner of these shoes had been moving with great haste. These footprints I could only regard as those of Professor Arbuthnot himself. Evidently, he had left the study – taking with him, incidentally, all the papers relating to his current work – just as his sister arrived and rang the bell at the front door. From the corner he must have signalled to her to return to her carriage, which was waiting in the street. No doubt puzzled by this strange behaviour, she nevertheless complied with his request and had almost reached the gate when the front door was opened by the parlour-maid, Ruby. Lady Boothby turned, but as she could see – which the maid could not – that her brother was urging her to leave at once, she did not respond when the girl spoke to her. When she raised her arm and pointed at the house, in the way that the maid found so menacing and frightening, she was no doubt simply trying to indicate to her brother that the front door had been opened and someone was standing there. Then she turned away and went out at the gate. Thereupon, the maid hurriedly shut the front door, Professor Arbuthnot no doubt left his hiding-place round the corner of the house, and ran across the lawn to join his sister in her carriage and furnish her with an explanation of this strange behaviour.
‘To sum up the matter, then,’ Holmes continued after a moment: ‘Dr Zyss probably arrived shortly before six, saw Arbuthnot in his study, had a quarrel with him and was stabbed. Although Mrs Arbuthnot stated that she had heard nothing of what had taken place in the study, that was an obvious lie. When I was in the study, I asked Dr Watson to put some questions to her in the drawing-room and I listened as he did so. Although I could make out few individual words, I could hear both their voices quite clearly, as Mrs Arbuthnot must have heard the voices of her husband and Dr Zyss. Knowing that Lady Boothby would probably be arriving shortly, the Arbuthnots made the plan to smuggle the professor away in his sister’s carriage, pretend that a note had been received from Dr Zyss to say that he could not come and make out that it was Arbuthnot himself that had been murdered. Of course, there was in reality no message from Zyss, no message from Mrs Arbuthnot to Lady Boothby and the messenger himself did not exist.’
Inspector Gregson nodded his head. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You must be right, Mr Holmes. That must be how it happened. But what made you so sure that Arbuthnot was at his sister’s house?’
‘That seemed to me practically certain,’ replied Holmes. ‘In the first place, according to my theory he had left Holly Grove in her carriage with her on Wednesday evening. In the second place, our information was that he had had little social contact with anyone else in the past ten years, so where else could he be? In the third place, when one of those elderly ladies thought she had seen Dr Zyss in Hampstead, I considered that it must in fact have been Arbuthnot she had seen and this indicated that he was in the vicinity of his sister’s house, for Hampstead High Street is, of course, only a short walk from Belsize Park. In the fourth place, Lady Boothby’s servants were, as you informed us, all elderly and long-serving, which made it less likely that they would question Arbuthnot’s presence there, or betray him to the authorities. In the fifth place, on our first visit, I heard someone pacing backwards and forwards on the floor immediately above the drawing-room. They were certainly not, I judged, the footsteps of a servant. I believe that Lady Boothby realised that we might hear her brother moving about in the room above the drawing-room and that was the true reason she elected to receive us in the dining-room; the fire had nothing to do with it. In the sixth place, when we first saw Lady Boothby, she did not ask you, Gregson, if you had any news, or if you had caught the murderer, which, it seems to me, would have been very natural questions, but instead presumed that you simply wished to interview her again. The reason, of course, that it did not occur to her to ask you if you had caught the murderer was because she already knew you had not, as the murderer was at that moment upstairs in her own house.’
Gregson shook his head ruefully. ‘You have me there with that last point, Mr Holmes,’ he said. ‘I should have noticed that. People often give themselves away not by what they say, but by what they don’t say because of what is in the back of their minds.’
‘But what of the evidence of the porter at the Belvedere Hotel?’ I asked. ‘He stated quite clearly that Dr Zyss had returned to the hotel in the evening, before subsequently disappearing again.’
‘It seems a certainty that the callers at the Belvedere Hotel on Wednesday evening were in fact Professor Arbuthnot and his sister.’
‘But surely the porter would have realised that the man before him was not Dr Zyss?’
‘Not necessarily, Watson. You must remember that the porter in question was the night porter, and as Dr Zyss had previously left and returned to the hotel only during the daytime, this particular porter had probably never seen him before at close quarters. Professor Arbuthnot would have been wearing Dr Zyss’s spectacles, hat and overcoat, to improve the likeness. You will recall also from the porter’s account that the man did not approach the desk, but sent his companion to ask for his room-key. After the two of them had ascended to Dr Zyss’s room, if you remember, the lady returned to the entrance hall of the hotel, where she remained seated for some time, as if waiting for someone. After a while, the porter was called away from his desk for a few moments and when he returned the lady had gone. What I suggest is that all she was in fact waiting for was the porter’s absence, so that Professor Arbuthnot, who was no doubt loitering on the stairs, could take the opportunity to pass through the hall unseen, and thus leave the hotel without being observed to do so.’
‘But why did they go there at all?’ I asked in puzzlement. ‘Why risk discovery in that way?’
‘Evidently there was something in Dr Zyss’s room that the professor wished to get his hands on, no doubt papers of some kind, and probably something that Dr Zyss had mentioned in the course of their quarrel. If that is so, then that brief period of the evening, between the death of Dr Zyss and the murder becoming general knowledge, was the only opportunity there would be. But, yes, it was a dangerous course of action and we can only assume that the professor’s desire to acquire whatever it was he sought was a strong one. More than that we cannot say at present. It may be that Mrs Routledge will be able to cast some light on that aspect of the case, as she had spoken to Dr Zyss at some length earlier in the day.’
Holmes’s supposition proved correct. Mrs Routledge was startled to see us back so soon after our previous visit, and there was a look of fear in her eye; but once my friend had told her of the arrest of Professor Arbuthnot, and had explained what we had learnt, she recovered her composure.
‘Although I cannot say that I expected such an outcome,’ said she in a sombre tone, ‘I am not altogether surprised. Professor Arbuthnot was always such a dogmatic, fanatical man. Indeed, I have often thought recently that that was the fundamental cause of the trouble between us. There was something in his nature which prevented him from ever admitting that he might be wrong about anything, or that he had ever made a mistake in his life. You are certain that your account of this dreadful crime is the true one?’ she asked abruptly.
‘We are,’ replied Gregson. ‘Professor Arbuthnot has been arrested and charged with the crime. All that remains for us now is to secure a positive identification of the deceased, in which melancholy task I shall have to ask for your assistance, madam. Of course,’ he continued, as Mrs Routledge nodded her head, ‘we did not seek any corroboration of the identification before. As Mrs Arbuthnot had st
ated that it was her husband that had been murdered, we naturally assumed that that was true and no further thought was given to the question of his identity.’
‘We should be obliged now, madam,’ said Holmes, ‘if you could provide us with a little more detail as to your discussion with Dr Zyss on Wednesday morning and also tell us what you know concerning the black owl we showed you earlier.’
‘The two things are intimately connected,’ responded Mrs Routledge after a moment. ‘I had read in the newspaper that Dr Zyss was visiting England and staying at the Belvedere Hotel, and I ventured to write to him there, in the hope that I might be able to discuss with him for a few minutes the case of my son, Nicholas. My attempts to discuss the matter with Professor Arbuthnot had ended only in failure, as he had simply rebuffed all my overtures, sometimes in the rudest, most insulting terms imaginable; but I thought that I might get a little further with Dr Zyss, who had always been the more reasonable and pleasant of the two men.
‘To my great delight, Dr Zyss replied by return, inviting me to come to the hotel on Wednesday morning. And nor was his courtesy merely a superficial one. He listened patiently to everything I had to say, never interrupting, save only to clarify some point or other. When I had finished, he shook his head.
‘“I wish we had had this talk ten years ago,” said he, in a voice tinged with regret.
‘“What do you mean?” I asked.
‘“The view of your poor son’s case that you have just expounded is very close to my own view,” he explained. “Indeed, this meeting seems to me a remarkable chance. I am delivering a paper to the British Psychiatric Association at the end of the week on the diagnosis and treatment of certain unusual mental conditions, including that from which, I believe, your son suffered. I may tell you, my dear madam, that your son’s case was an epoch-making event in my own professional career.”
‘“Whatever do you mean?”
‘“It was over your son’s case that Professor Arbuthnot and I first fell out very seriously. Our views had been diverging for some considerable time, but we had continued to work together. Looking back on that period now, it seems to me that I was the one who compromised his beliefs and intuitions; Arbuthnot never once admitted the slightest doubt or reservation concerning his own views. In the case of your son, Arbuthnot’s opinion was that Nicholas was motivated in his irrational moods by a deep-seated resentment of you and his father.”
‘I nodded my agreement, for Professor Arbuthnot had often expressed this opinion to me very forcibly.
‘“I, however, was of quite a different opinion,” Dr Zyss continued. “My interviews with your son had convinced me that, on the whole, he had nothing but a normal affection for his parents. His problems, as I saw it, stemmed from certain irrational urges to which he was subject, and which, in his more rational moments, he regretted bitterly. The most notable of these was what has been termed ‘kleptomania’ – an urge to steal things. I cannot pretend to fully understand or explain this, but in the course of my conversations with Nicholas, I became convinced that this strange, aberrant urge arose from some innate cause within him, and bore no relation whatever to anything you or your husband had ever said or done. The bouts of kleptomania would always be followed, sooner or later, by periods of the very deepest remorse, when, as I knew from what Nicholas had told me, he would become bitterly unhappy and frequently almost suicidal. On one occasion that I recall, he confessed to me that he had attempted to steal some trifling bauble from a shop in Holborn. He had been discovered in the act, the manager had been called and there might well have been an unpleasant scene. But fortunately, Nicholas apologised, the manager took a lenient view – I dare say he saw that your son was not well – and the matter blew over. When Nicholas recounted this to me, he was deeply ashamed and begged me not to mention it to you.”
‘“It is a strange thing,” I said, “that you should have spoken of these things, Dr Zyss, for I had two reasons for wishing to see you today. The first was to discus my son’s case with you. The second was to return this.” I took from my bag the little black-painted brass owl you showed me earlier. “I believe,” I said, “that Nicholas took it from your consulting-room. I found it among his belongings some time after his death. By then, you had left the country, so I was unable to return it to you, but it was the first thing I thought of when I read that you were visiting England once more.”
‘At this, Dr Zyss sprang from his chair and paced the floor in an agitated manner.
‘“But this is remarkable!” he cried at length. “Astounding! You may not be aware, Mrs Routledge, how rare it is in my profession to receive good solid verification of one’s theories. But your production of this paper-weight confirms my diagnosis almost beyond doubt! I remember missing it at the time and wondering where it had got to. I assumed in the end that the maid had accidentally knocked it off my desk and that it had fallen into a waste-paper basket and been inadvertently thrown away. But it is evident now what really occurred: your son must have taken it from my desk while my back was turned and put it in his pocket. Why he should want such a dull-looking little thing, I cannot imagine. He had never expressed any interest in it before. But, of course, to ask the reason ‘why’ in such cases is perfectly pointless. For sufferers from kleptomania, there is no reason, other than a momentary, irresistible urge. It saddens me to say it,” Dr Zyss continued after a moment, “but I consider it quite possible that it was shame at having stolen this trifle from me – his friend – that led your son to take his own life. When I go to see Arbuthnot, I shall take this little owl with me and explain to him how it vindicates my theory. Bah! That dogmatic old fool! I shall teach him a lesson in humility! I shall rewrite my notes this afternoon, and when I deliver my lecture on Saturday evening, I shall incorporate the story of this little black owl into it to emphasise my point!”
‘I left soon after that and that was the last I saw of Dr Zyss,’ concluded Mrs Routledge.
‘So presumably,’ said Inspector Gregson, ‘he called on Professor Arbuthnot, as Mr Holmes suggests, showed him the paper-weight, and no doubt crowed a little about what he felt it proved. They had a quarrel, exchanged insults, and then the professor grabbed his paper-knife and stabbed his rival through the heart.’
‘It must be so,’ said Holmes. ‘Arbuthnot seems to have been a very arrogant man, who could not bear to be disagreed with. No doubt it was Dr Zyss’s rewritten lecture notes that he wished to get his hands on at the Belvedere Hotel. I believe,’ he continued, turning to Mrs Routledge, ‘that you are acquainted with Professor Arbuthnot’s nephew, Mr Terence Chalfont.’
‘Yes. He came to see me some time ago. He was doing research for a play he was writing and we met on several occasions. We discussed Nicholas’s case and related matters at some length, and I always found him very thoughtful and understanding. One day, he introduced me to a friend of his, Martin Ferris, who he said would be playing the leading part of the young man in the play and I must say I found him a very pleasant young man, who reminded me a little of my own son. When our discussions were eventually concluded, Mr Chalfont promised me solemnly that he would never tell anyone that he had spoken to me, to avoid bringing the glare of unwelcome publicity upon me again.’
‘I don’t imagine you mentioned the black owl to him.’
‘No. It never occurred to me to do so. I was not aware then of its significance.’
Holmes nodded. ‘I think, Mrs Routledge, that you should now tell Mr Chalfont about the black owl, and suggest that he incorporates the incident into his play. He may find it is the one telling moment which, he informed us, the play currently lacks. Then, when the play at last opens, you and your son will finally receive a kind of justice, and this whole unfortunate business will have reached its conclusion.’
The Adventure of the XYZ Club
‘It is a singular fact,’ said Sherlock Holmes to me one morning, as we sat either side of the fire after breakfast, ‘that although mankind advances in the sphere of
material accomplishments with almost every day that passes, his progress in the moral sphere is somewhat less marked.’
‘At least we are less likely nowadays to be attacked in the street by someone wielding a battle-axe,’ I responded in some amusement.
‘No doubt,’ said my friend, ‘but I often suspect that that is only because of the increased likelihood of apprehension and punishment. If it were not for the forces of law and order, we should probably have battle-axe-wielding villains bursting in upon us two or three times a week. Our modern life may seem one of civility and relative peace, but it often strikes me as but a fragile shell, beneath which the urge to evil-doing is as strong as ever.’
‘But, as you yourself have frequently observed, Holmes, human nature is much the same from one age to another and there is nothing any of us can do about that. Besides, the material advancement to which you refer, while it would no doubt have seemed like magic to our distant ancestors, often consists, when one examines it closely, of simply putting substance “A” on top of substance “B”, rather than the other way about, and discovering to our very great surprise that the result is more effective or agreeable in some way.’
Holmes chuckled. ‘That is certainly true,’ said he. ‘Nothing changes in its essential nature. We simply arrange things in different patterns and produce different results. These patterns are then recorded and the details passed on to our successors. No one trained in a scientific discipline can fail to see the worth of such records. On moral questions, however, there is no such agreement.’
The Mammoth Book of the New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes Page 6