by David Marcum
“‘Anything else?’
“‘Well, about two-hundred feet down the road, we saw another car. This one was shiny, but just like the one we saw before, the rear end was lit up by a single tail-light, and it didn’t have no license. Once I heard about the murders out there, I told all this stuff to the cops here in Bound Brook. They promised they’d give my story to the dicks in Somerset County, but no one’s ever come to talk to me about it. From what I hear, others seen them cars too, but the cops told me that them other folks said the cars was there way later - that I must have been wrong about the time.’
“‘Couldn’t the cars have been out there for a few hours?’ I asked Csister. ‘That would explain why you and the others could see them at different times.’
“‘Sure. That’s why I thought my story was important.’ He sipped some coffee before making his final pronouncement. ‘Guess I was wrong.’
“Csister had no more to tell. I thanked him for his help, paid for the coffees, and returned with the taxi to my hotel.”
Staring into our own coffees, Fitzgerald and I both sat pondering the story. It was the writer who broke the silence.
“So what was it that you learned, Mr. Holmes?” he asked. “The apple seeds, the cross in the tree, the cars by the road. What gives?”
I had a good idea of what Holmes was suggesting, so I was prepared when he said, “Perhaps Watson can enlighten you. The answer lies within an old case of ours, one which he has already chronicled.”
“‘The Five Orange Pips’,” I announced for a second time that evening. “It was an adventure, Holmes, which you yourself labelled ‘grotesque’.”
“Yes, I did,” said he. “But you must not forget that on another occasion I also said that ‘there is but one step from the grotesque to the horrible’. And in this case - two killings, a slit throat, gunshots to the face - oh, I think that step has been taken.”
I had to agree. Staring nearly forty years into the past, I recalled more clearly the murder of John Openshaw. In spite of the orange pips, those harbingers of death sent out by the Ku Klux Klan, his was a death that Holmes and I had failed to prevent. And yet, horrible as it was, his drowning near Waterloo Bridge did not seem as awful as the ghoulish deaths in New Jersey.
“The Klan?” echoed Fitzgerald after I had pronounced the peculiar words. “What in the world could a bunch of clowns running around in white sheets have to do with these murders in New Jersey? The Klan was a nineteenth-century invention - an outgrowth of our Civil War. Its basic purpose was to terrorise Negroes in the South.”
“Quite so,” Holmes agreed, “but I’m sure that as an American, you must be aware of the group’s resurgence. In 1915, in your state of Georgia, a preacher named Joseph Simmons created a new version of the so-called ‘Invisible Empire’. No longer content with persecuting freed slaves, the Klan has targeted any kind of behaviour they deem immoral. When they find such sinners, they frequently administer corrective measures. What’s more, they do not confine themselves to what used to be the Confederacy. Today one can find this newly resurrected version of the Klan active throughout your East Coast and - more to the point - in New Jersey in particular.”
“When Zelda and I return home,” said Fitzgerald, “I suppose we should watch our backs.”
He flashed that ambiguous look again - half serious, half jocular - and one could not be certain if he was joking or sincerely considering their safety.
“It is my contention,” Holmes announced, “that the publicly known relationship between Mr. Hall and Mrs. Mills was exactly the kind of outré behaviour that would attract the Klan and which the Klan would desire to correct.”[2]
Holmes made no reference to the pips he had shown me in the taxi. It seemed clear enough that he had no intention of sharing that detail with Fitzgerald.
“But, Holmes,” said I, “in our earlier investigation, the Klan sent out warnings before they killed someone. It was the arrival of the five dried orange pips that brought poor Openshaw to our door in the first place. You never mentioned any such warnings regarding the murders in New Jersey.”
Holmes managed a chuckle. “There has been no discussion of warnings because the local authorities found none. Recall that the police said nothing about any apple pips, and they failed to regard the cross on the tree as a clue. They also chose to ignore the letters sent to Florence North, the lawyer for Charlotte Mills, the dead woman’s daughter.”
“The flapper,” Fitzgerald reminded us with a wink.
Holmes cocked an eyebrow, but continued his explanation. “One of the letters said that in order to discover the identity of the killer, the attorney should locate the Klan members in the church of the late Reverend. And when Miss North herself suggested that vigilantes might be responsible for killing her client’s mother, a letter-writer warned that, if the lawyer did not stop accusing groups like the Klan, then they just might have to give Miss North ‘a taste of the same medicine we gave to Mrs. Mills. Beware,’ they warned, ‘or you will see the fiery cross some night and get your due reward.’”
“My word,” I murmured. Not only did Holmes’s argument sound convincing, but it also rendered more ominous the threat to his own person conveyed via the apple pips.
“Motive, means, and opportunity,” said Holmes, ticking off each word on his fingers. “It seems quite compelling that outside forces were the instigators of the Hall-Mills murders. I’m sure you’ll agree, Mr. Fitzgerald, that thanks to the proliferation of motorcars to which you have already referred, the Klan can move quite easily across state boundaries and throughout the country. Hence, the dirty car observed by Csister. It would be no trouble at all for Klansmen to have committed these outrages and then fled to safer grounds. In such an instance, their tracks would be most difficult to follow.”
Fitzgerald ran his hand through his hair. “Blaming some amorphous outfit like the K.K.K. might be all fine and good for actually solving the case,” said he, his brow now furrowed, “but don’t forget that I’m writing a novel about thwarted love. It was precisely the romantic dilemma of the victims, Hall and Mills, that attracted me to these murders in the first place. But now you want to replace the love story with a mundane morality drama played out by some prudish thugs. Regardless of what you think may really have happened, Mr. Holmes, in my Trimalchio I hold a cuckolded lover responsible for the murders - maybe two such lovers now that I think about it.”
“It’s funny,” mused Holmes, “the prosecution in the Hall-Mills case was bent on proving exactly what you are suggesting. They couldn’t blame the hapless husband, so they turned their attention to the widowed Mrs. Hall.”
Holmes may have felt he had sounded too harsh, for when he spoke again, I detected a note of sympathy in his voice.
“If you try viewing the story through the eyes of the officials,” he suggested to Fitzgerald, “you might see the entire affair as a case of mistaken identities. The wrong suspects accused? The wrong witnesses believed? The wrong victims murdered...?”
Fitzgerald now looked directly at Holmes. “Of course,” said the writer, eyes flashing. “It’s exactly the sort of wrong-headed conclusion a dim-wit like the husband in my book would jump to. Mistaken identities - just the thing!”
Suddenly, he rose to his feet, tossed his serviette on the table, and turned to leave. “I must return to Villa Marie and resume my work on Trimalchio. You’ve made the resolution very clear to me, Mr. Holmes.”
With that, the young American threw some money on the table and bolted from the restaurant. Later we learned that he had returned to his room, collected his valise, and that very night departed for France.
“And the pips sent to you by the Klan?” I asked Holmes.
With the wave of a hand, he dismissed the question. “Whoever sent that message must believe a new investigation will soon be under way. No doubt they want to prevent my invo
lvement in it. But as I have already given my thoughts to Mr. Mott and have nothing left to say on the matter, I trust that I can safely ignore such threats. I am done with my part of the enquiry, Watson, and have already vowed to Mott - before I ever received those apple pips - to remain silent if the case is re-opened.”
I breathed more easily and now turned my attention back to the chocolate cake that had earlier been placed before me. A few minutes later, Holmes and I extended our evening in the plush environs of the Langham with a round of port and cigars.
V
As it turned out, Sherlock Holmes had correctly predicted a second investigation into the Hall-Mills murders. Completed before the proceedings began, however, Fitzgerald’s novel remained unaffected by the new legal developments. As most readers may know, Fitzgerald changed the book’s title yet again just before it was published on 10 April, 1925. The novel, formerly called Trimalchio, ultimately appeared in public as The Great Gatsby.
A few days after its publication, I received a copy by post from Scribner’s. Getting round even less dextrously than a few years before, I was relieved to have Miss Ross bring the package to my desk in the sitting room.
I am pleased to announce that the book was a gift from the author. It arrived complete with the haunting dust-jacket done by Spanish artist Francis Cugat, the dark-blue cover that features the disembodied face of a made-up woman from whose sad eyes falls a tear. Actually, there were two copies of the novel in the package - one intended for me, and the other to be sent to Sherlock Holmes.
A hand-written note (whose grammar and spelling I have taken the liberty to correct) accompanied the books. It read:
Hotel Tiberio, Capri
March 12, 1925
Dear Dr. Watson:
Along with this note, I asked Maxwell Perkins to send two copies of my latest novel to you once it was published. One is for you, and the other, if you would be good enough to pass it along, for Mr. Holmes. All in all, though I’m still not satisfied with the title, The Great Gatsby - I still think I should have named it Trimalchio - the book looks awfully good to me. In fact, I think that the chapters I reworked in light of your help are among the best things I’ve ever done. Oh, I may not have recreated the specific details of the actual murders, but I do believe that I was faithful to the spirit of the dead lovers. As for Cugat’s cover, I find it a delight, and Zelda agrees.
I hear that there are those in England who say that we Americans can’t write this sort of thing. Believing that you and Mr. Holmes are not among them, I offer you my thanks.
As ever,
Like the books themselves, it was signed, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
It might be comforting to believe - as Sherlock Holmes had hoped - that the publication of The Great Gatsby caused enough interest in the Hall-Mills case to account for the new trial that took place in ’26. Yet the fictional murders that appear at the end of the novel are so unlike the originals that not even the most perceptive reader could argue a connection. The truth is that Fitzgerald had written a tragic tale based on mistaken identities rather than a tawdry crime-drama dealing with a gang of vigilantes. I suspect such had been his intention from the start.
Would that I could report otherwise, but the new enquiry was initiated by no clarion call for justice. On the contrary, it was the testimony from a marital annulment case that prompted another look at the gruesome murders. Catalyst for the legal action had been the complaints of an aggrieved husband, who maintained that his wife had lied to him. What connected the issue to the Hall-Mills case was the fact that the wife accused of lying had been a maid in the home of Mr. Hall, and the lie she was accused of telling was her claim to her husband that she knew nothing of Mrs. Hall’s involvement in the murders.
The former maid was now admitting that four years earlier she had, in fact, heard incriminating statements from Mrs. Hall during a telephone conversation. The newly offered hearsay was all the authorities needed to get them started once more.
Resurrecting the testimony of The Pig Woman yet again, a fresh prosecutor charged Mrs. Hall, along with her two brothers and a cousin, with the double murders at the crab-apple tree. On this occasion, however, an actual trial was convened. And yet, though it lasted sixteen days, the ending turned out to be no different from the earlier Grand Jury’s failure to indict.
In point of fact, I learned of the dénouement from Holmes himself. Employing the news as motivation for a trip to London, he journeyed from the South Downs to share with me the information he had received from Joseph Mott, the former prosecutor of the case.
“All the defendants were found not guilty,” said Holmes simply as we sampled the tea and biscuits provided by Miss Ross. “Ultimately, the maid retracted her condemnation of Mrs. Hall.”
“So there’s an end to it,” said I.
“Hardly,” Holmes snorted. “Mott said that there are many who still believe the testimony of The Pig Woman. In spite of the fact that her mother denounced her as a ‘liar’ three times in the courtroom, people remain outraged that the suspects were acquitted. Some are urging the case be sent to the Governor for further prosecution.”
I shook my head.
“Still,” offered Holmes, “given my personal view of the actual perpetrators, I’m happy to say that the majority of the public seem resigned to the conclusion. As long as no new evidence had been disclosed, no one in the Hall family could be convicted of murder - let alone hanged for the killings.”
“Hanged! Surely it would never have come to that.”
“No, indeed,” said Holmes. “In spite of the Klan’s threat to me and my own oath to be silent - I would have interrupted the legal proceedings with my own findings to prevent punishment from falling on the wrong heads.”
“And yet,” I felt compelled to add, “the miscreants responsible for this double-murder, the killers from the Ku Klux Klan, have got away with the perfect crime.”
“Alas, Watson, that seems to be the case. But perhaps we can take comfort in the conclusion of our own previous brush with the K.K.K. You will remember that those men, having escaped the justice of an earthly court, had to face a Higher Judge much sooner than they had expected. Recall the shattered stern-post that had been seen floating in the waves, remnants of the Lone Star of Savannah, the ship upon which they attempted to make their escape. As the Latin proverb goes, ‘Res nolunt diu male administrari’.”
My eyes widened in hope of encouraging the translation.
“‘Things refuse to be mismanaged for long’,” he announced obligingly. “It is a concept cited by the American philosopher Emerson in making the case that the world is run according to compensation. What appears to go unpunished will indeed be punished in the end.”
Let the philosopher have the last word. To me, the whole idea sounded like a comforting fancy to tell oneself after playing a losing hand. Glancing out the window at the lingering twilight, I bit into a chocolate biscuit and put the entire business to rest. Better to spend whatever time I had left enjoying sweets in the company of my friend and colleague, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
1 Fitzgerald’s interest in the aforementioned murders is convincingly substantiated by Sarah Churchwell in her 2013 study titled Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby. It must be pointed out, however, that she makes no mention of Sherlock Holmes’s role in the investigation.
2 Holmes’s analysis closely predicts that of William Kunstler in his 1964 account of the Hall-Mills murders titled The Minister and the Choir Singer.
About the Contributors
The following contributors appear in this volume
The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories
Part VI - 2017 Annual
Hugh Ashton was born in the U.K., and moved to Japan in 1988, where he remained until 2016, living with his wife Yoshiko in the historic city o
f Kamakura, a little to the south of Yokohama. He and Yoshiko have now moved to Lichfield, a small cathedral city in the Midlands of the U.K., the birthplace of Samuel Johnson, and one-time home of Erasmus Darwin. In the past, he has worked in the technology and financial services industries, which have provided him with material for some of his books set in the 21st century. He currently works as a writer: Novelist, freelance editor and copywriter, (his work for large Japanese corporations has appeared in international business journals), and journalist, as well as producing industry reports on various aspects of the financial services industry. Recently, however, his lifelong interest in Sherlock Holmes has developed into an acclaimed series of adventures featuring the world’s most famous detective, written in the style of the originals, and published by Inknbeans Press. In addition to these, he has also published historical and alternate historical novels, short stories, and thrillers. Together with artist Andy Boerger, he has produced the Sherlock Ferret series of stories for children, featuring the world’s cutest detective.
Deanna Baran lives in a remote part of Texas where cowboys may still be seen in their natural habitat. A librarian and former museum curator, she writes in between cups of tea, playing Go, and trading postcards with people around the world. This is her latest venture into the foggy streets of gaslit London.
Brian Belanger is a publisher and editor, but is best known for his freelance illustration and cover design work. His distinctive style can be seen on several MX Publishing covers, including Silent Meridian by Elizabeth Crowen, Sherlock Holmes and the Menacing Melbournian by Allan Mitchell, Sherlock Holmes and A Quantity of Debt by David Marcum, Welcome to Undershaw by Luke Benjamen Kuhns, and many more. Brian is the co-founder of Belanger Books LLC, where he illustrates the popular MacDougall Twins with Sherlock Holmes young reader series (#1 bestsellers on Amazon.com UK). A prolific creator, he also designs t-shirts, mugs, stickers, and other merchandise on his personal art site at www.redbubble.com/people/zhahadun.