“Our staff are only allowed to claim for a business newspaper, Mr Holmes,” explained Mr Marwood and we did not believe that a purchase of Revue de Bordeaux counted as such. You will note that lower down we have accepted a claim for the purchase of Le Soir.” Pointing further down on the form, he added “Our buyers may also only have one cup of coffee with their meals and hence this second cup has been disallowed.”
“So this is Mr Windibank’s claim for his trip from 14 to 30 April,” said Holmes, picking up one claim form with its attached documentation. “I note that there is a hotel bill here from 28 March.”
“It was probably a bill from his previous trip that he failed to submit with his claim for that journey.”
We looked at the claim covering the period 26 March to 4 April and found a bill covering the date 28 March and also one for 26 to 28 February.
“How extraordinary, sir!” exclaimed Marwood.
Holmes borrowed a piece of double analysis paper and entered the dates of Windibank’s trips across the top and the dates of occupation shown by the hotel bills.
Windibank had two bills for occupation for some nights in all of his trips and one occasion he had three different bills covering the same night. The bills covering the multiple claims were in each case spread across different expense submissions.
A silence came over us as we realised the import of our findings. Eventually Holmes spoke.
“This of course explains Windibank’s preference for tourist hotels. He has been making claims against bills he has obtained from other guests. If you ask a fellow guest in a business hotel if you could have his bill, he probably won’t give it to you because he needs it to reclaim the cost from his employer. There is much less likelihood of that in a tourist hotel where the guest is paying for the room himself and so has no further use for the bill.”
Mr Connors was called and he joined us with rather less of the superior air he had displayed previously.
“Your expense controls are excellent at ensuring the bills were arithmetically accurate,” continued Holmes, smoothly turning to Connors. “But no one seems to have asked themselves whether the total amounts claimed were reasonable.”
“I had better call Mr Westhouse,” said Connors, giving Holmes a venomous look. He glanced at his watch before disappearing from the room.
When Mr Westhouse entered the room, his fury was plain to see. He demanded that all Windibank’s expenses since he had started working with the company be produced and checked meticulously. The trick of submitting multiple bills for the same night of occupation had featured almost from the start of Windibank’s employment and Connors also pointed out a couple of instances where more than one cup of coffee had been claimed with a meal which had evaded his receipt checkers.
The amount over-claimed amounted to £120. On arriving at the total, Holmes, Connors and Westhouse held a conference to discuss the next steps, which I attended as an observer.
“We should fire him and call the police!” said Westhouse.
“Do you really want this matter to gain wide currency?” asked Connors. “Our company would look ridiculous in the courts. Far better to ask him to resign and offer him no prosecution on condition he repays the money.”
“If we go down that route, we may avoid looking foolish, but we will be obliged to provide references for Windibank in the future. That sticks in my craw. I would rather be an honest fool than a clever hypocrite. What is your opinion, Mr Holmes?” asked Westhouse, turning to my friend.
Holmes sighed and said “Mr Westhouse, this is your decision. You and Mr Connors have set out the main options very succinctly and you, as proprietor of the business, need to make the final decision. Irrespective of the decision you take, the final outcome is one I would hesitate to predict.”
“I will go to his house now and dismiss him personally. He has no effects here. I will tell him to expect a visit from the police. I know how to protect the company’s assets from this predator.”
“I understand your decision, Mr Westhouse,” said Holmes.
I could see that Holmes was uncertain about the wisdom of what Mr Westhouse was planning to do, but he made no move to dissuade him. Holmes and I went our separate ways, he to Baker Street and I to my home near Paddington Station.
It was just getting light the next morning when there was the sound of a furious pounding at the front door. I went down myself as I was worried it might be an urgent matter for a patient. Instead I found Holmes standing at the door with Inspector Gregson at his shoulder.
“Watson,” said Holmes. “Gregson has just called in on me and told me that there have been multiple violent deaths at Windibank’s house in Camberwell. I have also given him a brief account of our involvement with Windibank over the last two days and of Mr Westhouse’s declared intention to go down to Camberwell and dismiss Windibank from his employment. He has asked me to accompany him there and I asked him if we could come past your door as this seems to be the next step in the events we have been exploring over the last few days.”
I had never seen Holmes look so agitated. Even in the half-light of the dawn, his face was a deathly white and I noted that Gregson’s face was also ashen behind his tawny beard.
I had a swift word with my wife and with my neighbour, who had a practice next door and had been disturbed by the commotion. He agreed to mind my practice for the day just as I minded his when he goes away. On our way to Camberwell, Gregson explained what had happened.
“Lyon Place is a quiet square of terraced houses near Camberwell Station. Number thirty-nine is normally occupied by Mr James Windibank, Mrs Joanna Windibank and Miss Mary Sutherland. The latter is the twenty-five-year-old daughter of Mrs Windibank from her first marriage, which ended with the death of Mr Sutherland. Their neighbours report that they are a quiet family who appear seldom to go out. Mr Windibank is regularly away on business and is much younger than Mrs Windibank. Neighbours reported a noisy disturbance yesterday evening. First, an elderly man, who, from what you have said, Mr Holmes, I take to be Mr Westhouse, was observed forcing his way into the house and then extremely loud shouts and screams were heard, followed by a silence. Miss Mary Sutherland had been out placing further advertisements for her missing fiancé, but returned as neighbours gathered outside the door of number thirty-nine. She unlocked the front door and went into the house, where she came upon a scene of utter horror. From the banister railing hung the still-twitching bodies of Mr and Mrs Windibank. She had used a scarf to hang herself and he had hanged himself using a cravat. Her eyes were staring out as though looking at some unspeakable horror, but he had put a flour sack over his head before he had apparently jumped to his death. In the sitting room was the body of an elderly man whose brains had been beaten out with a life preserver which lay next to his body. Miss Sutherland fell into a faint. The local police were summoned. I happened to be at Camberwell Police Station yesterday evening, dealing with another case, so was able to assume responsibility for investigating what had happened. I had thirty-nine Lyon Place sealed off and left as it was because it was clear that all the people in it were beyond medical help. I then got myself as fast as possible to Baker Street to consult with you, Mr Holmes. I have told my officers that nothing should be touched before we return.”
Holmes’s face, if it were possible, had assumed an even more appalled expression as Gregson gave his account.
“Where is Miss Mary Sutherland now?” he asked.
“After she came to, it was established she has a grandmother who lives close by. She spent last night there, with a constable in permanent attendance.”
“Were the neighbours able to hear anything of what was said during the altercation between Westhouse and the Windibanks?”
“Two different neighbours said that among the shouts they understood the word ‘thieves’, which makes some sense, based on what you said about the even
ts of the last couple of days.”
Holmes said nothing, but I could see that he was dissatisfied by Gregson’s comments about the reference to thieves.
“What do you make of the flour sack over Mr Windibank’s head?”
“That’s a new one to me, Mr Holmes. It is hard to see this as anything other than a joint suicide. I have had to deal with many suicides by hanging, but none where the victim has covered his head as an executioner covers the head of a condemned man. Could Mr Windibank perhaps have wanted to make his suicide look like a formal execution?”
Again, I could see from Holmes’s face that he was dissatisfied with Gregson’s hypothesis although it was clear that he had none of his own to offer.
We had by now got to Lyon Place and went into number thirty-nine.
The living room was on the left by the front door. Westhouse lay where he had fallen. His skull was crushed right in and the floor was thickly spattered with both blood and brain tissue. The blinds in the room were closed to block the view of outsiders. Two officers were stationed in front of the windows and we drew back the blinds to enable us to conduct our examination in daylight.
The room looked like the normal, neat sitting room of a comfortable English house. There was a settee, and two arm-chairs with an occasional table between them. On the occasional table was some knitting. But in the middle of the room was Westhouse’s bloodied corpse. The head-wound had crushed his skull right in so that the brain was exposed and in the blood around his body were two sets of footprints and a black life preserver. When we examined the distended bodies hanging from the banister rail, their shoes were soaked in blood. Like the inspector, I too had seen hanged bodies before, but each time I see one, I feel that there is no more wretched way to end one’s days.
Holmes examined each body and each room minutely.
At first I thought he had found something that had helped him as he quickly identified that beside Westhouse’s body lay knitting needles which, we found on closer inspection, had been ripped from the knitting. But as his examination continued, I could see from the absence of any quickening in his pace or intake of breath, that he had seen nothing to contradict the version of events that we had been given - for all that it left much to explain. All the while we were in the hallway, Mrs Windibank’s eyes stared down at us lifelessly. This feeling of being watched by the dead was redoubled when Holmes gingerly removed the flour sack from the head of Mr Windibank, whose eyes seemed to be on the point of popping out of his skull.
Holmes then said he had seen enough. Two officers undertook the foul task of cutting down the hanged bodies and placed them with the corpse of Mr Westhouse in the sitting room, where the blinds had been redrawn.
Holmes, Gregson and I made our way into the small back garden of the house and sat down.
None of us said anything until Holmes broke the shocked silence.
“I have examined everything in the house and the only sequence of events which corresponds to the forensic evidence, Gregson, is the one you described. Westhouse forced an entry. There then followed a furious altercation in the sitting room, which ended in Westhouse being killed by repeated, savage blows to the head. Whether he was carrying a life preserver when he arrived which Windibank took off him and used on him, or whether Windibank had his own life preserver, is something we will have to establish. But it is clear that it was Mr Windibank who killed Westhouse, as Mrs Westhouse would not have had the strength to administer such a ferocious beating.”
“What do you make of the knitting needles being ripped out of the knitting and then discarded on the floor?” asked Gregson.
“I had not formed any theory before we came down on what came to pass last night in this house as I want to validate the sequence of events that you had elucidated from the evidence presented. This evidence does indeed corroborate what you have described. I can, however, find no place for the deliberate extraction of the needles from the knitting in the events we have surmised, nor can I formulate an alternative theory that explains their presence. As to the fatal attack on Westhouse - this would be an extraordinary reaction even to being summarily dismissed, as Westhouse said he was going to do to Windibank when we discovered Windibank’s fraud last night. But for Mr and Mrs Windibank then both to kill themselves seems inexplicable. Mr Windibank, from my observations, had an acute sense of self-preservation. Even the loss of his position from W&M would have left him and Mrs Windibank comfortably off as they would have been quite able to cover their financial needs from the income on the capital owned by his wife and daughter. When I somewhat fatefully forecast the day before yesterday that he would end on a gallows, the least likely way I thought it might happen was that it might be one of his own making. There is no sign of any additional intruder and it is clear from the time when Westhouse forced his way in and the state of the Windibanks’ bodies that there was only a very brief delay between the killing of Westhouse and the double suicide.”
Holmes lapsed back into silence before asking, “Have the bodies been formally identified?”
“Medical advice is that we cannot ask Miss Sutherland to do this, so her grandmother, a Mrs Carsten, will be here shortly to identify Mr and Mrs Windibank. A message has gone out to Mr Westhouse’s residence in Maida Vale to ask for a member of his family to come here to do the same for his body.”
At this moment a constable came out to us to advise that Mrs Carsten had arrived.
We went into the hallway where another constable was waiting with Mrs Carsten to go into the sitting room where the bodies lay. Mrs Carsten was a sturdy-looking but elderly lady dressed in black.
Holmes, Gregson and I accompanied her into the living room and the blinds were pulled back to let the light in. Just enough of the Windibanks’ bodies were visible to enable identification. Westhouse’s body was covered up, though I noted as we entered the room, this had been imperfectly done and I could see enough of a hand under the sheet to make out the initials of his signet ring.
A grim Mrs Carsten nodded that she could provide a formal identification of the bodies of her daughter and Mr Windibank. She was about leave the room when I noticed her eyes focus on Westhouse’s barely visible hand. Before anyone could stop her, she bent down and ripped back the covering over the body. When she saw Westhouse’s face she let out an eldritch scream and started a frenzied attack on his prone corpse. Such was her fury that Holmes, Gregson and I were hard-pressed to drag her away in spite of our superior strength, both in number and physical condition.
“Oh, the fiend!” she cried repeatedly as she struggled to evade our grasp and continue her attack on the body, “The fiend! The fiend!”
Eventually we managed to get her out of the room and were forced to drag her still struggling with all her force into the kitchen. Even when held by two burly officers, she continued to strain every sinew to break away to renew her attack on Westhouse’s body and eventually Gregson was forced to have her hand-cuffed.
None of us had any idea what was causing Mrs Carsten to want to mutilate Westhouse’s body. Only when Mrs Carsten was sat down cuffed to two officers did she start to quieten down, though even then periods of calm were interspersed with ferocious attempts to escape her bonds and repeated outcries of “The fiend! The fiend!” All attempts at questioning her were met with silence and a vacant stare.
Holmes, Gregson and I retired again to the garden to consider what to do next.
Gregson said “This case increases in complexity at each turn.”
“Do you have a theory on why Mrs Carsten has reacted in the way that she has?” asked Holmes.
“No sir, I do not - other than that she must have a strong personal reason to do so.”
“And what is to be your next step?”
“I do not know. The facts of the deaths of Westhouse and the Windibanks seem clear and there is no one against whom to bring a charge. The behav
iour of Mrs Carsten I cannot explain. I can see no point in proceeding against her for her attempts to attack Westhouse’s body. Even if it came before the court, no jury would convict a grandmother of a crime committed on a corpse in the aftermath of having to identify the corpses of her own child and son-in-law.”
“There seems so little to do and yet at the same time to be so much to explain,” remarked Holmes and lapsed again into silence. Eventually, a member of Westhouse’s family arrived and performed the formal identification. After that an undertaker came and took away the bodies.
Gregson said “I do not now know what to do. I cannot keep Mrs Carsten cuffed forever, I can charge her and take her into custody, but I fail to see what purpose that would serve. At the same time, I am most reluctant to have her at liberty as I do not know what her next act will be. I also cannot leave her alone with her granddaughter.”
We went into the living room where the blinds were now pulled down. The room was now empty of corpses and stuffy so Gregson pulled up the blinds to open the window to let daylight and fresh air in.
As he did so, there was a gasp from Holmes. “Of course! The blinds!” We looked at him in bewilderment and then he said to Gregson “Could I have your permission to question Mrs Carsten?”
“Of course,” said Gregson. “But I will need to be present.”
We went into the kitchen and Holmes spoke to the still-cuffed Mrs Carsten in a reassuring manner.
“Mrs Carsten! I think I understand the reason for your distress. Will you listen to me if I put to you what it is?”
Mrs Carsten looked straight ahead.
“Did Mr Westhouse seduce your daughter when she was a child?”
Tears welled up in Mrs Carsten’s eyes and she nodded as she wept.
“Mr Westhouse used to come to the same church as us. On the annual outing, when Joanna was thirteen, he made her pregnant,” she sobbed, sometimes choking in her violent emotion. “We did not think anyone would believe the word of a family of plumbers against that of a wealthy businessman. However, Mr Westhouse seemed to know what to do to avoid a scandal and arranged for the child to be adopted. We never saw it again. Soon afterwards he closed down the W&M business in Camberwell and moved away from the area. I have never been able to forgive him for what he did. I kept my counsel when Joanna wanted to marry someone from Mr Westhouse’s company, but I never thought I would see Mr Westhouse again. When I did see him, I lost control.”
The Redacted Sherlock Holmes, Volume 2 Page 5