by David Marcum
“Hampstead it is, then, Holmes,” I replied, and in a moment, all three of us had left behind the comfortable warmth of 221b Baker Street and were hurtling in a four-seater brougham through the streets of a bleak, grey London toward the Heath.
“Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson,” said our client after we had settled down in the brougham, “I trust you will not object to my smoking? I have been deprived of tobacco for some time now, and the exigencies of my circumstance make for a strong desire to smoke. Ah! You will join me? I am afraid all I have to offer is a Woodbine: My taste in tobacco is harsh.” So saying, he fished out a fresh packet of Wild Woodbines from his pocket. Unsealing the packet, he offered a cigarette each to Holmes and myself, while lighting one up himself, before he resumed his narrative.
“I should tell you, Mr. Holmes, that I do not know yet that a crime has been committed, nor even that there is a mystery which awaits our investigation. Nevertheless, let me begin with an account of how I came to be acquainted with the Addletons. This happened through the younger of the Addleton sisters, Mabel, whom I met for the first time, almost exactly two years ago, shortly after the publication of my monograph on Cognition. She attended a lecture I delivered on some of the salient aspects of my work to a group of people who had gathered together under the auspices of the Society for the Friends of Philosophers.
“The lecture is an event of communication, debate, and exchange which takes place once every two months on the premises of the British Museum. It is uncommon to encounter women at the Society’s meetings, and I was much impressed by the relevance and penetration of the queries which Miss Mabel Addleton addressed to me at the conclusion of my lecture. I was pleasantly surprised to see her at the second meeting as well, and by the time of the third meeting, she had invited me to visit her and her sister Violet at their home in Hampstead.
“Thereafter, I became a regular visitor at The Elms. The Addleton sisters, I discovered, have few friends and relations. Their mother had died when they were yet children, and they had been raised by their father, a successful physician, with the assistance of governesses and home-tutors. Upon the death of their father some five years ago, they inherited their home, a large, rambling house in Hampstead which derives its name from the many stately trees of that species upon its garden and grounds. The sisters, for reasons of both circumstance and inclination, had little exposure to the outside world, save the occasional literary meeting or artistic convention. With few opportunities to encounter potential suitors in the ordinary course of their lives, they remained unmarried. They are now in their middle-to-late thirties.
“From the first, I was attracted to the sisters as they, I presume to believe, were to me. Lonely and reserved as we were, with a common disposition toward a life of the mind, we sought and found both pleasure and comfort in one another’s company. While it was the younger sister who was the instrument of our coming together, it was the older one that I grew to specially love and cherish, for those qualities of the mind which she shared with her sister, and even more so those qualities of the heart - of grace and kindness and compassion - which she possessed in such ample and unique measure.
“I should tell you that the great tragedy of the Addletons’ lives was Violet Addleton’s illness, for she has been diagnosed as being consumptive, and has, despite the best care which rest and diet and attention can secure, been gradually wasting away over the last year. It is with a sadness I can barely manage to suppress that I must reveal that Violet is not long for this world. Even so, and for whatever length of time she is vouchsafed a presence upon this earth, I resolved that I would spend all of that time with her, if she would but have me. It was only a week ago that we became affianced. In her noble and unselfish way, she at first resisted my proposal of marriage, that I may be spared the sadness of an all-too-brief wedded life, but in the end, my purpose and determination prevailed, and she consented to become my wife.
“We have since planned on being married by the end of the month in a modest ceremony at the little church of St. Bartholomew round the corner from The Elms. It is also part of our plan to spend some weeks, immediately after the wedding, in the little Swiss village of Meiringen in the Alps, in the country home of an old Swiss philosopher friend of mine who has been so kind as to offer his summer retreat for our stay. It is my trust and hope that the bracing air of the mountains will help Violet to improve the quality of her life and extend her longevity.
“I spent all of last afternoon with her, and despite the cloud that hangs over our head, we could not suppress the happiness and excitement which the prospect of our imminent marriage and travel holds out for us. I have prepared myself for a life without Violet, but the suddenness of Mabel’s news of this morning, which has now brought the three of us together in this cab, undoes me. I know not what awaits us, Mr. Holmes.”
Our client buried his face in his hands with a groan. Sherlock Holmes said gently: “We are about to find out, for here, if I mistake not, is our destination. It is not for me to inspire you with false expectations, Mr. Prescott. Be brave, and hope for the best while being prepared for the worst.”
Through a long driveway surrounded by extensive grounds dense with trees, our brougham brought us to the doorstep of a large and rambling house. Our arrival had only just been preceded by that of the official police force. At the doorway was the familiar, pugnacious figure of Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard, in the company of the usual assortment of officials of the law, including the local C.I.D. officer, the police-surgeon, and a constable. “What brings the celebrated theorist of Baker Street here?” enquired Lestrade, with a sneer. “An invitation from Miss Addleton, did you say? Well, well, the official police must do its plodding work, while you, Mr. Holmes, are free to air your fancy speculations. Sergeant Dickson of the local constabulary has already been awaiting us here. Ah, Miss Addleton, will you lead us to your sister’s room?”
As Lestrade was speaking, a tall elegant woman in her mid-thirties had emerged from within the house. Her sensitive and refined face reflected her over-wrought emotions, even as she made an effort to hold them in check. Hurrying toward us, she took our client by the hand, and said, “I am glad to see you, Sylvester, though I greatly fear sadness awaits us. Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson, it is kind of you to accompany Mr. Prescott here. My sister’s room is upstairs, and visible from the front of the house.” From just outside the front door we could see the room in the upper storey to which Miss Addleton pointed. A part of the room projected out, and was equipped with large curtained glass windows, all shut, and surrounded by the sturdy branches of an elm that grew out of the soil some yards away and leant towards the windows.
Leaving our hats and outer garments upon the cloak-rack, we followed Miss Addleton up a flight of stairs which terminated in a short corridor leading to one room on the left, and a number of others on the right. The room on the left was the one occupied by Miss Violet Addleton. It was locked on the inside, and also curiously bolted on the outside: the bolt was a heavy affair which made an exceedingly heavy noise when withdrawn from its hoops. This double-latch system was apparently a measure of abundant security which the younger sister customarily implemented, to allow for the possibility that the older one might have forgotten to latch the door on the inside - in which case, entering the room from without could not be accomplished without the accompaniment of a good deal of noise.
Eliciting no response to Lestrade’s knocks nor to Miss Mabel’s calls, the police decided to break open the wooden door which, as I have mentioned, was latched on the inside. The hefty shoulders of the sergeant and the constable made short work of it. As we filed into the room, I took in a water closet flush with the door. To its left, a large desk with a type-writer, and books and papers strewn on it, a chair in front of the desk, a cot in the centre of the room, a book-shelf against the far wall at the head of the cot, and, to the side of, and parallel to the cot, the set of four windows we had seen fro
m below. Three of the window curtains were drawn, and the windows themselves were shut and latched from the inside. Through the transparent glass of the one window against which the curtain was undrawn, one could see the stout branches of an elm abutting on the window. The walls of the room were covered with pictures.
These details were not, naturally, the order in which the eye took them in, or the brain registered them. For what dictated the beholder’s immediate and complete attention, in the dim half-light of the room, was the tragic sight of the unmoving figure upon the cot, now all too obviously beyond the power of human help. With a little cry of anguish, Mabel Addleton rushed to the cot, bent over her sister’s body, and held it in a close embrace, even as she rocked it gently in her arms. Sylvester Prescott sank into the chair between the desk and the cot, his face buried in his hands in a posture of complete abandonment to grief.
By and by, the younger sister regained her composure, to the point where she found herself able to offer comfort to her putative brother-in-law.
“Come, Sylvester, one must be brave. Violet was always the fragile one, while you were the one who was supposed to be strong and sturdy.”
“Of body, yes, Mabel, but not necessarily of the spirit.”
“Then you must get your spirit to borrow some of your body’s robustness. It will not do for a famous athlete to collapse like a house of cards!”
“Athlete?” enquired Holmes’s with curiosity.
“Why, yes,” replied Miss Mabel Addleton. “During his days at the University, Sylvester Prescott nearly achieved the distinction of running the mile in four minutes! He has always seemed to my sister and me to be an exemplification of the maxim mens sana in corpore sano. In the Platonic ideal, the philosopher is one who takes sport and physical exercise seriously. As one who has ever lived up to that ideal, I beseech you, Sylvester, to continue to live up to it in this hour of crisis.”
It did not require the expert intervention of the police-surgeon to deduce the cause of death. On the cot and by the side of the pillow lay an open and empty phial bearing the legend Laudanum on a strip of paper pasted across it. That Violet Addleton had died from an overdose of the opium was evident from the features of the dead face: The flared nostrils indicating the compromised status of her respiration caused by the poison, the unmistakable sign of inadequate oxygenation reflected in cyanosis of the facial skin, the dreadful staring effect caused by distension of the pupils, a typical symptom of laudanum toxicity. After a brief but thorough examination, the surgeon placed the hour of death between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m.
As Miss Mabel Addleton excused herself, Sherlock Holmes sought the permission of Inspector Lestrade to subject the room to investigation. He examined the dead woman’s body and its environs thoroughly with the help of his magnifying class. He then went minutely through the papers on the desk, which contained many written notes, including laundry lists and impromptu reviews of books, presumably in Miss Violet Addleton’s hand.
“Miss Violet, I take it, was left-handed?”
“Indeed, yes,” confirmed Sylvester Prescott. “In every single activity of life. But how - ?”
“The smudges of ink caused by ‘writing from above’ are a characteristic feature of a left-hander’s calligraphy. Look also at the crossing of the ‘t’s: The point of the nib departs from the paper at the left rather than right tip of the crossing.”
“Is her left-handedness of any particular significance?”
“One never knows when these tit-bits of data may not be of use in one’s researches. And now the windows.”
The large, unbarred windows opened inward. Holmes unlatched one of them, and a strong and sturdy branch of the elm without nearly obtruded itself through the open breach. He leaned out of the window and examined the branch minutely. A few feet below the windows was a very vast expanse of sun-shade, which, too, Holmes’s subjected to a searching scrutiny from his vantage at the window. I was standing directly behind him, and Lestrade, from the other side of the cot, watched with an air of amused endurance. It is possible that I obstructed his vision of Holmes, whom I observed suddenly stiffening. He had noticed something on the tree. He extracted a pair of tweezers from an inner pocket with which he deftly picked up what looked like two pieces of brown thread from an overhanging branch, before transferring them to an envelope that disappeared into another of his pockets.
“I have now seen what there is to be seen in and from this room,” observed Holmes. “Do you, Lestrade, still stick to your verdict of suicide?”
“Why, do you challenge my inference, Mr. Holmes? Is there any reason for not seeing it as the only possible rational explanation of the victim’s death?”
“Well, since you ask me, Lestrade, here is my opinion, for whatever it may be worth. In response to your first query, I do not necessarily challenge your conclusion of suicide. In response to your second query, however, I beg to differ from the view that suicide is the only possible explanation of the victim’s death - setting aside for the moment the question of motive.”
“What do you mean? Is there any peculiar feature of the case to which you might wish to draw my attention?”
“To the peculiar feature of the stopper on the laudanum phial.”
“But there is no stopper.”
“That is the peculiar feature.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning just this: Why and how would the stopper from the suicide’s phial of laudanum disappear from the room? I suppose she could have thrown it out of the window after ingesting the contents of the phial, and then shut and latched the window again. Why on earth she should do such a thing is more than I can imagine. Even if she had done so, for whatever reason, the stopper would have had to fall within the confines of the sun-shade, which is large enough in its dimensions to stretch the outermost reach of Miss Violet Addleton’s frail throwing arm. As it happens, there is no sign of a stopper anywhere on the surface of that sun-shade. We must look to some other explanation for the missing stopper.”
“Do you have such an explanation?”
“Yes, I do have an alternative construction that would fit the facts of the case. It is, no doubt, what you would call a fanciful theory, but it is one that is proof against the objection of the vanished stopper. The theory is one that must allow for the withdrawal of the stopper from the room by an outside agency. But how is an outside agency compatible with death in a locked room? Consider the following. There is a mode of entry into and egress from the room that does not depend on the door to the room. I mean climbing the tree outside the windows, and making one’s way along one of its many robust branches through the window into the room, and out the same way.
“This is work for a man - and not particularly arduous work for a man with a history of athleticism who keeps himself physically fit. Let us call this person Mr. X. An additional required qualification for Mr. X is that he should be known to, and have the trust of, the room’s occupant. So it is possible for us to imagine that sometime in the early hours of the day, X climbed the tree, tapped on the window, drew the attention of Miss Violet Addleton, got her to open the window to him and let him in on the grounds that he did not wish to awaken the entire household at this hour, spun some tale of absolute urgency to explain his presence, spent some time in the room, persuaded her, on some pretext, to ingest the poison (perhaps through some such artifice as suggesting that he was offering no more than a medicinal dose of a sleeping draught to assist slumber,) and got the lady, thereafter, to let him out of the window and latch it on the inside, as he made his way out again by climbing down the tree.
“The following morning, the only and inevitable conclusion would be death by suicide - the conclusion you yourself arrived at, Lestrade. All would have been well for our hypothetical Mr. X but for that stopper, which we may imagine Mr. X to have slipped unthinkingly into his pocket and walked away with. Once alerted to
the possibility of an alternative construction of the facts such as I have just sketched, the next logical step for the trained investigator - one which you regrettably overlooked, Lestrade - would have been to examine the tree outside for any evidence it might bear of X’s climb up and down it. I did not omit to carry out that investigation, even if it occasioned you some amusement in the bargain. It may interest you to see what I discovered.”
Holmes removed the envelope he had earlier tucked into his pocket, and held out the two threads of brown fibre from within, for all of us to see.
“I am sorry, Mr. Holmes, if I appeared to be sceptical of your methods. I see now that I owe you an apology. You have done as workmanlike a job on this case as I am ever likely to witness. And now, we do not have to look far for Mr. X. He is a man known intimately to Miss Addleton, he is a person of athletic ability who would face no serious difficulty in shimmying up and down a tree, and he is the owner of a brown overcoat to which, I would wager, those two threads found on the tree belong. Ah, would you? Hold him, constable!” said Lestrade, as he turned a terrible eye upon our client Sylvester Prescott, who had risen slowly from his chair by the desk, with a hunted look upon his face as the evidence against him mounted.
“Shouldn’t we be looking for more evidence on that tree, Lestrade? As also, indeed, for motive?” said Sherlock Holmes, as we made our way downstairs, with Sergeant Dickson and the constable on either side of the entrapped philosopher. While two policemen stood guard over the wretched man in the main hall, a small contingent of us walked toward the place in the garden from which the elm tree grew. It was a spot on the right angle formed by the pathway by which we had approached, and another, perpendicular to it and flush with one side of the house. The pathway being cobbled and paved with stone, the ground in the neighbourhood of the tree was hard, and despite the rain and the sleet, it betrayed no signs of footprints. At the foot of the tree, near a protruding root, was the stub of a cigarette. Holmes’s examined it minutely under his magnifying glass. “A Woodbine,” he observed.