The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories

by Otto Penzler

  “Very good, Mr. Holmes!” Edgewick said. “I see you’re well versed in military ordnance.”

  “It sounds a fiendish device,” I said, imagining those revolving barrels spewing death to man and beast.

  “As war itself is fiendish,” Holmes said. “Not at all a game. But do continue, Mr. Edgewick.”

  “Landen and I were staying at the King’s Knave Inn in the town of Alverston, north of London. To be near the Oldsbolt estate. You see, we were trying to sell the idea of the Gatling gun to Sir Clive Oldsbolt for manufacture for the British forces. The gun had passed all tests, and Sir Clive had offered a price I’m sure the American manufacturer would have accepted.”

  Holmes pursed his thin lips thoughtfully, then said, “You speak often in the past tense, Mr. Edgewick. As if your brother’s wedding has been canceled. As if now Oldsbolt Limited is no longer interested in your deadly gun.”

  “Both those plans have been dealt the severest blow, Mr. Holmes. You see, last night Sir Clive was murdered.”

  I drew in my breath with shock. Holmes, however, leaned forward in his chair, keenly interested, almost pleased. “Ah! Murdered how?”

  “He was returning home late from the King’s Knave Inn, alone in his carriage, when he was shot. A villager found him this morning, after hearing the noise last night.”

  Holmes’s nostrils actually quivered. “Noise?”

  “Rapid gunfire, Mr. Holmes. Shots fired in quick, rhythmic succession.”

  “The Gatling gun.”

  “No, no. That’s what the chief constable at Alverston says. But the gun we used for demonstration purposes had been cleaned and not fired again. I swear it! Of course, the local constabulary and villagers all say that Landen cleaned it after killing Sir Clive.”

  “Your brother has been arrested for his future father-in-law’s murder?” I asked in astonishment.

  “Indeed!” Edgewick said in great agitation. “That’s why I rushed here after he was taken into custody. I thought only Mr. Holmes could make right of such a mistake.”

  “Does your brother Landen have any motive for murdering his fiancée’s father?”

  “No! Quite the opposite! Sir Clive’s death means the purchase of the Gatling gun manufacturing rights has been canceled. As well, of course, as Landen and Millicent’s wedding. And yet…”

  Holmes waited, his body perfectly still.

  “Yet, Mr. Holmes, the sound the villagers in the inn described could be none other than the rattling, measured firing of the Gatling gun.”

  “But you said you examined it and it hadn’t been recently fired.”

  “Oh, I’ll swear to that, Mr. Holmes—for all the good it will do poor Landen.”

  “Perhaps a different Gatling gun.”

  “There is no other in England, Mr. Holmes. Of that you can be sure. We crossed the Atlantic just last week with this one, and Mr. Gatling knows the whereabouts of all his machines. Understand, sir, this is a formidable weapon that threatens the very existence of nations if in the wrong hands. It will change the nature of warfare and isn’t to be taken lightly.”

  “How many times was Sir Clive shot?” Holmes asked.

  “Seven. All through the chest with large-caliber bullets, like those fired by the Gatling gun. The village doctor removed the two bullets that didn’t pass through Sir Clive, but they became misshapen when striking bone, so their precise caliber can’t be determined.”

  “I see. It’s all very interesting.”

  “Will you come at once to Alverston, Mr. Holmes, and determine what can be done for my brother?”

  “You did say Sir Clive had been shot seven times, Mr. Edgewick?”

  “I did.”

  Holmes stood up from the wing chair as abruptly as if he’d been stuck by a cushion spring. “Then Watson and I shall take the afternoon train to Alverston and meet you at the King’s Knave Inn. Now, I suggest you return to your brother and his fiancée, where you’re no doubt sorely needed.”

  Edgewick smiled broadly with relief and stood. “I intend to pay you well, Mr. Holmes. Landen and I are not without means.”

  “We’ll discuss all that later,” Holmes said, placing a hand on Edgewick’s shoulder and guiding him to the door. “In the meantime, tell your brother that if he’s innocent he need have no concern and might well outlive the hangman.”

  “I’ll tell him that, Mr. Holmes. It will comfort him, I’m sure. Good day to both of you.” He went out the door, burst back in momentarily, and added, “Thank you, Mr. Holmes! For me and for Landen!”

  Holmes and I stood listening to his descending tread on the stairs.

  Holmes parted the curtain and looked after our visitor as he emerged onto Baker Street. The shouts of vendors and the clattering of horses’ hooves drifted into the room, along with the pungent smells of London. “An extremely distressed young man, Watson.”

  “Indeed, Holmes.”

  He rubbed his hands together with a glee and animation that would have been impossible to him fifteen minutes ago. “We must pack, Watson, if we’re to catch the afternoon train to Alverston.” His gaunt face grew momentarily grave. “And I suggest you bring along your service revolver.”

  I had fully intended to do that. Where a member of nobility is shot seven times on his way from inn to home, any act of the direst nature might be possible.

  —

  The King’s Knave Inn was but a short distance from the Alverston train depot, just outside the town proper. It was a large tudor structure, bracketed by huge stone chimneys, one at each end of its steeply pitched slate roof.

  Wilson Edgewick wasn’t among the half-dozen local patrons seated at small wooden tables. A beefy, red-faced man, with a thinning crop of ginger hair slicked back on his wide head, was dispensing drinks, while a fragile blond woman with a limp was carrying them to the tables.

  I made arrangements for satisfactory rooms while Holmes surveyed the place. There was a young man seated at a nearby table, looking disconsolate, as if he were too far into his cups. Two old-timers—one with a bulbous red nose, the other with a sharp gray hatchetlike face—sat at another table engrossed in a game of draughts. Three middle-aged men of the sort who work the land sat slumped about a third table, their conversation suspended as they mildly observed us.

  “Now, you’d be Mr. Holmes, the famous detective,” the red-faced pub owner, whose name was Beech, said to Holmes with a tinge of respect as he studied the guest register I’d signed; “or my guess’d be far wrong.” Alcohol fumes wafted on his breath.

  Holmes nodded. “I’ve enjoyed my share of successes.”

  “Look just like your pictures drawed in the Daily Telegraph, you do.”

  “I find them distinctly unflattering.”

  One of Beech’s rheumy eyes was running, and he swiped at it with the back of his hand as he said, “Don’t take a detective to know why you’re here, though.”

  “Quite so,” Holmes said. “A tragic affair.”

  “Weren’t it so!” Beech’s complexion got even ruddier, and a blue vein in his temple began a wild pulsation. A conspiratorial light entered his eyes. He sniffed and wiped again at the watery one. “We heard it all here, Mr. Holmes. Witnesses to murder, we was, here at the inn.”

  “How is that?” asked Holmes, much interested.

  “We was standing here as we are now, sir, late last night, when we heard the infernal machine spitting its death.”

  “The Gatling gun?”

  “That’s what it was.” He leaned forward, wiping his strong, square hands on his stained apron. “A sort of ‘rat-a-tat-tat-tat,’ it was.” Spittle flew as he described the sound of the repeating-fire gun. “Well, we’d heard the gun fired before and knew the noise right off, sir. But not from that direction.” He waved a hand toward the north. “In the morning, Ingraham Codder was on the north road to go and see Lord Clive at the house. Instead he sees one of the lord’s gray geldings and the fine two-hitch carriage the lord comes to town in. The other gelding
somehow got unhitched and was standing nearby. Lord Clive himself was slumped down in the carriage dead. Shot full of holes, Mr. Holmes. Seven of ’em, there was.”

  “So I’ve heard. Did anyone else hear this ‘rat-a-tat-tat’ sound?” Holmes managed to describe the gunfire without expectorating.

  “All three of us did,” spoke up one of the farmers at the table. “It was just as Mr. Beech described.”

  “And what time was it?” Holmes asked.

  “Half past eleven on the mark,” Beech said. “Just about ten minutes after poor Sir Clive left here after downing his customary bit of stout.” The patrons all agreed.

  The young man alone at his table gazed up at us, and I was surprised to see that he wasn’t as affected by drink as I’d assumed by his attitude. His gray eyes were quite clear in a well-set-up face; he had a firm jawline and a strong nose and cheekbones. “They’ve got Sir Clive’s murderer under lock,” he said. “Or so they say.”

  “And you are, sir?” Holmes asked.

  “He’s Robby Smythe,” Beech cut in. “It’s horseless carriages what’s his folly. If you can imagine that.”

  “Really?” Holmes said.

  “Yes, sir. I have two of them that I’m improving on and will soon manufacture and sell in great numbers, Mr. Holmes. In ten years everyone in England shall drive one.”

  I couldn’t contain myself. “Everyone? Come now!”

  Holmes laughed. “Not you, Watson, not you, I’d wager.”

  “Young Robby here’s got a special interest in seeing justice done,” Beech said. “He’s engaged to Sir Clive’s youngest daughter, Phoebe.”

  “Is he now?” Holmes said. “Then you know the Edgewick brothers, no doubt.”

  Smythe nodded. “I’ve met them both, sir.”

  “And would you say Landen Edgewick is capable of this act?”

  Smythe seemed to look deep into himself for the answer. “I suppose, truth be told, under certain circumstances we’re all capable of killing a man we hate. But no one had reason to hate Sir Clive. He was a kind and amiable man, even if stern.”

  “Point is,” Beech said, “only the Edgewick brothers had knowledge and access to the Gatling gun. I say with the law that Landen Edgewick is the killer.”

  “It would seem so,” Holmes acknowledged. “But why Landen Edgewick? Where was Wilson?”

  Beech grinned and swiped again at the watery eye. “Up in his room at the top of them stairs, Mr. Holmes. He couldn’t have had a fig to do with Sir Clive’s murder. Had neither the time nor the opportunity. I came out from behind the serving counter and seen him step out of his room just after the shots was fired. He came down then and had himself a glass of stout. We told him we’d heard the gun, but he laughed and said that was impossible, it was locked away in the carriage house him and his brother had borrowed out near Sir Clive’s estate.” He snorted and propped his ruddy fists on his hips. “Locked away, my eye, Mr. Holmes!”

  “Very good, Mr. Beech,” Holmes said. “You remind me of my friend Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard.”

  Looking quite pleased, Beech instructed the waitress and maid, Annie, to show us to his best rooms.

  Wilson Edgewick arrived shortly thereafter, seeming overjoyed to see us. He was, if anything, even more distraught over the plight of his brother. He had been to see Landen’s fiancée Millicent Oldsbolt, the daughter of the man his brother had allegedly murdered, and the meeting had obviously upset him. A wedding was hardly in order under the circumstances.

  Wilson explained to us that Landen had arrived here from London two days before he and had taken up lodgings at the inn. The brothers had declined an invitation to stay at the Oldsbolts’ home, as they had final adjustments and technical decisions to make preparatory to demonstrating the Gatling gun to Sir Clive.

  The night of the murder, from Wilson’s point of view, was much as had been described by Beech and the inn’s patrons, though Wilson himself had been in his room at the precise time of the shooting and hadn’t heard the gun.

  “The next morning, after Sir Clive’s body was found,” he said, “I hurried directly to the carriage house. The Gatling gun was there, mounted on its wagon, and it hadn’t been fired since the last test and cleaning.”

  “And did you point this out to the local constable?” Holmes asked.

  “I did, after Landen was taken in for the crime. Chief Constable Roberts told me there’d been plenty of time for him to have cleaned the Gatling gun after Sir Clive had been shot, then return on the sly to his room. No one saw Landen until the morning after the murder, during which he claimed to have been asleep.”

  Holmes paced slowly back and forth, cupping his chin in his hand.

  “What, pray God, are we going to do?” Wilson blurted out, unable to stand the silence.

  Holmes stood still and faced him. “Watson and I will unpack,” he said, “then you can take us to examine the scene of Sir Clive’s murder, and to talk to the victim’s family.”

  The rest of that afternoon was spent gathering large as well as minute pieces of information that might mean little to anyone other than Sherlock Holmes, but which I’d seen him time and again use to draw the noose snug around those who’d done evil. It was a laborious but unerringly effective process.

  We were driven out the road toward Sir Clive’s estate, but our first stop was where he’d been killed.

  “See this, Watson,” Holmes said, hopping down out of the carriage. “The road dips and bends here, so the horses would have to slow. And there is cover in that thick copse of trees. A perfect spot for an ambush.”

  He was right, of course, in general. The rest of the land around the murder scene was almost flat, however, and any hidden gunman would have had to run the risk that someone in the vicinity might see him fleeing after the deed was done.

  I got down and stood in the road while Holmes wandered over and examined the trees. He returned walking slowly, his eyes fixed to the ground, pausing once to stoop and drag his fingers along the earth.

  “What’s he looking for?” Wilson Edgewick whispered.

  “If we knew,” I told him, “it wouldn’t mean much to us.”

  “Were any spent cartridges found?” Holmes asked Edgewick, when he’d reached us. He was wiping a dark smudge from his fingers with his handkerchief.

  “No, Mr. Holmes.”

  “And the spent shells stay in the ammunition belt of the Gatling gun rather than being ejected onto the ground after firing?”

  “Exactly. The belts are later refitted with fresh ammunition.”

  “I see.” Holmes bent down suddenly. “Hello. What have we here, Watson?” He’d withdrawn something small and white almost from beneath my boot.

  I leaned close for a better look. “A feather, Holmes. Only a white feather.”

  He nodded, absently folding the feather in his handkerchief and slipping it into his waistcoat pocket. “And here is where the body was found?” He pointed to the sharp bend in the road.

  “Actually down there about a hundred feet,” Edgewick said. “The theory is that the horses trotted on a ways after Sir Clive was shot and the reins were dropped.”

  “And what of the horse that was found standing off to the side?”

  Edgewick shrugged. “It had been improperly hitched, I suppose, and worked its way loose. It happens sometimes.”

  “Yes, I know,” Holmes said. He walked around a while longer, peering at the ground. Edgewick glanced at me, eager to get on to the house. I raised a cautioning hand so he wouldn’t interrupt Holmes’s musings. In the distance a flock of wrens rose from the treetops, twisting as one dark form with the wind.

  After examining the murder scene we drove to the carriage house and saw the Gatling gun itself. It was manufactured of blued steel and smelled of oil and was beautiful in a horrible way.

  “This shouldn’t be allowed in warfare,” I heard myself say in an awed voice.

  “It is so terrible,” Edgewick said, “that perhaps eventually it
will eliminate warfare as an alternative and become the great instrument of peace. That’s our fervent hope.”

  “An interesting concept,” Holmes said. He sniffed at the clustered barrels and firing chambers of the infernal machine. Then he wiped from his fingers some gun oil he’d gotten on his hand, smiled, and said, “I think we’ve seen quite enough here. Shall we go on to the house?”

  “Let’s,” Edgewick said. He seemed upset as well as impatient. “It appears that progress will be slow and not so certain.”

  “Not at all,” Holmes said, following him out the door and waiting while he set the lock. “Already I’ve established that your brother is innocent.”

  I heard my own intake of breath. “But Holmes—”

  “No revelations yet,” Holmes said, waving a languid hand. “I merely wanted to lessen our young friend’s anguish for his brother. The explanation is still unfolding.”

  When we reached the house we were greeted by Eames the butler, a towering but cadaverously thin man, who ushered us into the drawing room. The room took up most of the east wing of the rambling, ivy-covered house, and was oak-paneled and well furnished with comfortable chairs, a game table, a Persian carpet, and a blazing fire in a ponderous stone fireplace. French doors opened out onto a wide lawn.

  Wilson Edgewick introduced us around. The delicately beautiful but sad-eyed woman in the leather chair was Millicent, Landen’s fiancée. Standing by the window was a small, dark-haired girl of pleasant demeanor: Phoebe Oldsbolt, Millicent’s younger sister and Robby Smythe’s romantic interest. Robby Smythe himself lounged near the stone fireplace. Standing erectly near a sideboard and sipping a glass of red wine was a sturdily built man in tweeds who was introduced as Major Ardmont of the Queen’s Cavalry.

  “Sir Clive was a retired officer of cavalry, was he not?” Holmes asked, after offering his condolences to the grieving daughters of the deceased.