‘It’s hard to see how,’ Gregson observed practically, peering up at the second-floor balcony. The metal railing looked as if it would come up to a little below waist height. ‘Unless he was blind drunk, of course.’
‘If so, it is hardly likely that the servants would have admitted him,’ said Holmes. ‘Did you find anything else, Watson?’
‘Well, if his hands are any guide, he’s no gentleman,’ I said. ‘The fingers are calloused and the fingernails roughly trimmed, and there’s a strong smell of carbolic soap about them. Though he’s scrawny, his muscles are well developed. I’d say he was some kind of manual labourer – the scratch might well be from a nail or a thorn.’
Holmes knelt beside me and leaned close to sniff the dead man’s face. The suddenness of the action made me recoil a little. ‘I detect no odour of alcohol,’ my friend observed coolly. ‘Bring your lantern nearer, will you, sergeant?’ Lifting the man’s right hand, he pulled the sleeve up slightly, then quickly loosened the tie and unbuttoned the collar of the shirt. ‘His hands and wrists are rather darker than his arms, as is his face. It is early in the year for a suntan to appear, yet this suggests the beginnings of one. It continues somewhat below the neckline, as if he habitually wears an open shirt or smock. A soldier might catch the sun on the parade ground, but that would stop strictly at the collar. An outdoor worker, then, though he lacks the muscular development of one whose main work is hefting and carrying.’
He sat back on his heels. ‘Though cheap, the suit is new. The shave and haircut are also recent. He had a little money, saved from his wages perhaps, and wished to present himself well.’ He ran his quick, deft fingers across the man’s body, probing his pockets, but his search turned up nothing out of the ordinary: a handkerchief, matches, a few loose coppers.
‘A labouring man, washed, trimmed and turned out neatly in a suit, calling at a gentleman’s house in the evening and asking to speak to him,’ Holmes repeated. ‘Whoever he was, he must have felt he had some compelling reason to seek out Ernest Moncrieff, and something to say that would command his attention. Or was it Algernon Moncrieff he expected to see?’
Gregson checked his own notebook and conferred with his sergeant, but neither of them could be clear on this point. ‘It sounds as if we’ll need to talk to the fellow who let him in,’ the inspector said.
‘Then let us turn our attention from his hands to their contents,’ suggested Holmes. He gently prised from the dead man’s left hand the cloth with its jewellery. The material was a delicate white lace, torn raggedly free from some larger garment, and the brooch, which had been mostly hidden by the fabric and by the corpse’s fingers, now shone in the moonlight with a bright, clear, faceted light.
Despite his previous comment, Holmes scrutinised the corpse’s hand carefully before allowing it to fall. He then stood and showed us all the brooch.
It was six-sided, with radial spokes of silver set with diamonds, and parallel strings of similar stones forming a hexagonal spiral around and across them, from the centre to the outer edge. In that centre sat an eight-legged spider, intricately constructed from darker metal and sapphires. It was a beautiful piece, despite the perverse choice of subject matter, and I thought that any young woman not prey to a fear of the species would be delighted to wear it.
‘It is an heirloom piece,’ Lord Goring noted, ‘belonging to my mother’s family. It’s valuable, of course, but not scandalously so. I would wager that it was not the most expensive item being worn here tonight.’
‘Worth stealing, even so,’ Gregson pointed out.
‘Oh, undoubtedly, Inspector.’
‘And the lace?’ Holmes asked. ‘It is from a lady’s shawl, if I am not mistaken. Had Lady Goring such an article of clothing with her tonight?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Goring again. ‘She was wearing the shawl, and the brooch was pinned to it.’
‘And is that the rest of it?’ Holmes asked, pointing.
So focused had my attention been on the ground where the corpse lay, and the balcony from which we assumed he had fallen, that I had barely glanced in the other direction, towards the grounds of the neighbouring house. Had I done so, I could hardly have failed to notice the white shape hanging, like a ghost’s discarded shroud, from the tall beech tree which in daylight must have shaded most of Number 148’s garden.
‘It could well be,’ Lord Goring agreed. ‘I should have to see it more closely.’
‘Perhaps an adventurous constable might be prevailed upon to retrieve it, Gregson?’ Holmes suggested, oblivious to the nervous glances this provoked from the uniformed policemen. ‘In the meantime, I should like to inspect that balcony.’
As we returned to the house, he confided to me, ‘I do not think that the late Mr Bunbury tore the brooch from the shawl himself. The corners of the spider’s web are sharp, but he had no scratches on either of his palms, only the partially healed one you found on the back of his right hand. Nor were there any strands of lace beneath his fingernails.’
The Moncrieffs’ butler had been waiting to assist, and he now showed Holmes and myself up to the second floor of the house. On this level the space above the garden end of the ballroom was occupied by a rather fine library, three of its walls lined with shelves of books and periodicals in leather-bound editions. A fire burned low in an ornate fireplace, and the faint sound of music drifted up from beneath us. There were two armchairs and a sofa, upholstered in the softest red leather, a writing desk and a table bearing an antique globe. The fourth wall bore pictures and two sets of floor-length curtains in red velvet, the nearer of which Holmes drew aside to reveal another pair of French windows.
He tried the handles, and tutted. ‘Locked.’ Crossing to the other pair of curtains, he threw them open to find the second set of windows slightly ajar. He pulled the handles and they opened easily. ‘Merriman, has this room been used during the ball?’
‘No, sir,’ the butler replied. ‘That is to say, it has not been locked, but the guests have not been directed here. The music room has been in use,’ he added, gesturing to the room beneath us, the door of which had stood wide open as we passed to show empty chairs, ‘but the string quartet has now left. Mr Moncrieff is fond of music.’
I said, ‘But someone who knew the house could have found their way in there?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Holmes said, ‘Are these windows normally kept locked?’
‘As a rule, but Mr Moncrieff smokes on the balcony when the mood takes him. He keeps his own key. I generally check them last thing at night, sir, and lock them if necessary.’
‘I saw another balcony, up on the third floor,’ Holmes said. I had too, but it had been much smaller and projected from the foremost wall of the garden, facing directly to the rear. Bunbury would have had to have leaped, not merely fallen, to have reached the flagstoned area from there.
‘The master bedroom, sir. That room is locked, and the floor is out of bounds to guests.’
‘Yes, I see. Thank you, Merriman. Wait here a moment, will you?’ Holmes stepped through the curtains onto the balcony and I joined him, not without a certain reluctance to plunge back into the cold night air. Beneath us in the narrow garden the body had been covered with a blanket, and two of the policemen were assembling a stretcher.
I said, ‘It sounds as if anyone could have been up here with Bunbury. The servants as well as the houseguests. Even the musicians.’
Holmes nodded. ‘Some will be accounted for, of course. The musicians will have been in view for most of the time, and the absence of any of them would have been audible as well as visible. An event like this is an onerous affair for servants, and they too will have been kept occupied for much of the time. It would also have been noticed if the host or hostess, or any of the more conspicuous guests, had been out of the view of the others for very long. But nothing we have seen here narrows the possibilities significantly.’
We peered down at the lawn again, perhaps eight yards below us. One of th
e constables had found a ladder and a rake, and now was balanced above the garden wall, gingerly trying to hook the shawl down from the neighbour’s tree. Gregson stood nearby, calling up with helpful advice. The music from the ballroom was louder out here, a ghoulishly cheery accompaniment to the scene below.
‘It’s a survivable fall if one landed on the grass,’ I said.
‘Quite,’ Holmes agreed. ‘A lucky man might even escape injury. But… face me, Watson. I want to recreate the scene.’
At his instruction, I turned my back upon Bunbury’s body and faced the French windows. He positioned me leaning back upon the metal railing balustrade, which, as I had supposed, ended a little below my waist. ‘Let me see,’ he said. ‘If a man were standing there… and were pushed – thus…’ Suddenly, to my alarm, his palms were against my chest, and pressing hard. The force was not great, but it was inexorable, and I immediately felt myself overbalancing.
‘Steady on, Holmes!’ I cried, clutching at his lapels to steady myself. The pressure relented immediately, and Holmes stepped back from me. I moved away from the edge at once.
‘Yes, quite,’ Holmes said, calmly. ‘Forgive me, Watson. If I had warned you of my intentions, your response would not have been the spontaneous one I needed to see. I think a man pushed thus would try, as you did, to save himself from falling by seizing his attacker’s clothing. If that failed, he would have no further opportunity to arrest his fall. He would topple backwards over the balustrade, and would, I submit, end up exactly where we found Bunbury, and with equivalent injuries.’
‘And if his attacker’s clothing were flimsy, with some of it in his hand,’ I agreed, shivering slightly. Though I was used by now to Holmes’s occasional need to re-enact crimes for his own satisfaction, I wished he had felt less need for psychological realism.
Holmes nodded, oblivious to my continuing discomfiture. ‘Whether he would have had time to grasp it if he were pushed more sharply is not a question we can safely test,’ he noted. ‘And there is the matter of Bunbury’s unscratched palms.’
We stepped back into the library, where Merriman had been joined by a very nervous youth whom he introduced as Peter, the pageboy who had let the deceased into the house. He had, the butler explained to us, just completed his statement to the police, and had come to tell us what he had told them.
‘The poor bloke come to the tradesmen’s entrance, sirs,’ the boy stammered. ‘Down in the area, what you get to through the gate in the railings next to the front door. He said as his name was Mr Bunbury, and how I should be sure to tell Mr Moncrieff that.’
‘How did he speak?’ Holmes asked.
‘Not sure what you mean, sir,’ said Peter.
‘Did he sound like an educated man? Had he any noticeable accent?’
‘No, sir, nothing like that. He just sounded like an ordinary bloke.’
‘A working Londoner, then. Did he appear drunk to you?’ Holmes asked.
Peter shook his head. ‘Not to notice, sir. For all I’d know he could have had a couple before he came, but he wasn’t talking funny or wobbly on his pins or nothing.’
‘Which Moncrieff brother did he ask for?’ Holmes continued.
Peter hung his head. ‘I didn’t even think to find out, sir – I just thought it must be the master he wanted. I clean forgot Mr Algernon was here for the do.’
‘Peter has only been with us a few weeks, sir,’ Merriman explained, a little defensively.
‘Did you suggest that Mr Bunbury should wait here in the library?’ Holmes asked.
Peter smiled gratefully. ‘That’s right, sir. He said as he didn’t want to get mixed up with the guests, though that would never have been allowed in any case, sir. I remembered when a tailor’s man came here last week with some bills to pay, Mr Merriman asked him to wait in the library. Then he told the master the bloke was here, and the master went straight out to his club.’
The butler had been clearing his throat loudly during this last, but Peter ploughed on, oblivious. ‘So I put Mr Bunbury in here, sir, see, then I went to see if I could find the master, only then Lady Caroline Pontefract wanted her coat, sir, and when Lady Caroline wants something you don’t keep her waiting, so I went to deal with that and—’
‘Yes, well, never mind all of that, Peter. Did you tell Mr Moncrieff that he had a caller waiting for him?’
‘Well, sir, what with one thing and other, sir, I didn’t get to it, no. I did tell Mr Merriman, and he said I should find the master and let him know, but then cook needed some fetching and carrying done, and then – well, like you say, sir, never mind all of that – as I says, what with one thing and another I… well, I forgot about it all. I did remember later on, see, but that was only after someone had shouted about finding a body and I’d gone out to the garden to see, and it was him. And by then it was too late, of course.’
‘Yes, I see,’ said Holmes. ‘Merriman, did you tell either Mr Moncrieff that this man was in the library?’
‘I did mention it to our employer, sir, but he was with several of his guests at the time. He told me he had no intention of interrupting pleasure for business. Mr Moncrieff has views on such things.’
Holmes turned his attention back to the pageboy. ‘Peter, this may become important. Do you remember noticing what time it was when Mr Bunbury arrived?’
‘Why yes, sir. The kitchen clock had just chimed the quarter past ten, sir.’
‘And when was the body found, Merriman?’
‘Quite close to quarter to eleven, sir.’
I fished out my pocket-watch and glanced at it. It was half past midnight now. From what I understood of such things, the Moncrieffs’ ball would normally have had at least an hour left to run.
Holmes thanked both servants and we went down past the music room to the ground floor, hoping to confer with Gregson in the garden. Once again, however, before we could reach the back door the ballroom door opened to disgorge one of the revellers.
This time it was a woman who emerged, in her late twenties, with a strikingly attractive face to which I imagined laughter and hauteur would come equally readily. She fixed us with a stern glance and said to us, ‘Mr Holmes, Dr Watson, I am Gwendolen Moncrieff. You are so busy that I cannot bear not to interrupt you. Won’t you join me for a while and meet our guests? I have already promised them that you will, and I am sure you would not wish me to disappoint them again this evening.’ She softened the admonishment with a charming smile.
Holmes looked annoyed, but he knew as I did that it would be as well to obtain what information we could from talking to the guests, or at least those who remained. Indifferently, he replied, ‘It would be an honour, madam,’ and allowed himself to be led into the ballroom while I tagged along awkwardly behind.
Though inevitably small as such venues go, the room was much longer than it was wide, with a polished floor and intricate gold curlicues on the ceiling and walls, draped here and there in the red velvet that curtained off the French windows to the garden. It could comfortably have accommodated several dozen guests, but only a few were left, and on the dais at the far end the band were packing away their instruments. Among those present I saw Lord Goring, speaking to a couple of markedly differing ages, and Lord Illingworth with a pretty blonde woman.
‘Mr Holmes,’ said Ernest as he and Algernon sidled up to us. ‘Have you any idea who my mysterious houseguest is? Or I suppose I should say “was”, now that he has been good enough to vacate my garden. Although I see there are still multiple policemen occupying my flower beds.’
‘Please forgive my husband’s impatience, Mr Holmes,’ Gwendolen suggested smoothly. ‘He is very protective of his borders.’
‘So far we know very little,’ said Holmes. ‘He came here to speak to either you or your brother, we believe, giving the name Bunbury. Does that name mean anything to either of you?’
I could tell that Holmes was watching closely for a reaction, but even without his powers of observation it did not escape me that t
he brothers exchanged a startled look. Ernest glanced also at his wife, and then said carefully, stroking his moustache, ‘I have certainly never known anyone of that name. What about you, Algy?’
Algernon said lightly, ‘Frankly, I doubt that any such person exists. Bunbury? It is quite the unlikeliest name I have ever heard.’
‘Well, it may yet prove an alias,’ Holmes acknowledged.
‘If so, it is a very feeble one,’ opined Algernon. ‘I consider it an insult to the intelligence.’
‘I’m sure that makes you very clever, Algy,’ Ernest replied, rather shortly.
Gwendolen was still discharging her hostess’s responsibilities. ‘Mr Holmes, Dr Watson, I do not think you know Algernon’s wife, Cecily.’
The blonde girl stepped up, slipped her arm into Algernon’s and smiled charmingly at us. Cecily was by far the youngest of the Moncrieffs, a sweet-faced lass surely no more than twenty. She wore a dark blue-green ballgown that seemed to me alarmingly décolleté, although doubtless my views on such matters were terribly out of date. It was plain that she was also expecting a child, though in my professional judgement the happy event remained several months away.
‘Mr Holmes,’ said Cecily Moncrieff née Cardew, ‘and Dr Watson. I am very excited to meet you. I always read your adventures in The Strand with great interest. I do not believe I have met any literary characters before.’
‘As a status, it has its drawbacks,’ Holmes replied, with a stern glance at me.
‘My governess, Miss Prism, used to tell me that in fiction, the good end happily and the bad unhappily,’ said Cecily Moncrieff. ‘I am glad that I live in real life, not in a book, for many of my friends are very bad people and I should hate them to come to equally horrid ends. Dear Lord Illingworth, for instance, is excessively wicked.’
Sherlock Holmes--The Spider's Web Page 4