The Secret Notebooks of Sherlock Holmes

by June Thomson

  At this point in his account, he stopped abruptly and looked uncharacteristically flustered, a reaction I had never before witnessed on the part of my old friend, who was always in such complete charge of his feelings to the extent that, at times, I wondered if he were not entirely devoid of human emotion.11

  However, he quickly recovered from this momentary break in his narrative, the thread of which he picked up again in his usual imperturbable manner.

  ‘—informant telling me of a similar case that had happened to one of his colleagues ten years earlier. This colleague’s wealthy grandmother, who was crippled by rheumatism, had taken into her employ a charming young man called Edwin Farrow, as a secretary who came with excellent references and soon made himself indispensible to the old lady whom I shall call Mrs Knight. They played piquet12 together, he took her out for walks in her invalid chair, he read aloud to her in the evenings. But Mrs Knight’s female companion, who took care of the old lady’s more personal needs, gradually grew more suspicious of Farrow. Money and jewellery went missing and, what was more sinister, Mrs Knight became more and more confused, as if she were taking some form of drug, although none was prescribed by her doctor.

  ‘Her suspicions were confirmed when she found a small glass bottle in the dust-heap, which she took to the local chemist’s. He analysed the few drops of liquid found in the bottom of the bottle and discovered that it contained morphia.’

  At this point, Holmes paused and turned to Miss Cresswell, who had been sitting in silence, her veil raised, listening to my old friend’s account, her plain and pleasant features quite calm, only her black gloved hands, which were tightly locked together in her lap, expressing the inner distress from which she must have been suffering.

  ‘But it is your story I am telling, Miss Cresswell,’ Holmes remarked. ‘Perhaps you would care to take up the narrative yourself, if it would not cause you too much pain.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Holmes,’ Miss Cresswell said gravely. ‘There is, in fact, little more to tell. As soon as I received the chemist’s report, I sent a telegram to my mistress’s grandson, who arrived soon afterwards with his solicitor. I had sent Farrow on an errand to the village and, as soon as he had left the house, Mrs Knight’s grandson and the solicitor searched Farrow’s bedroom, where they found the missing money and jewellery hidden in his wardrobe. These were together with various pills and powders which no doubt he intended to give to Mrs Knight, for I strongly believe he had murder in mind once he had persuaded her to change her Will when she was under the influence of the morphia which he had secretly been giving her. This suspicion was confirmed by a piece of paper also discovered among Farrow’s effects on which he had written down a rough draft of an alteration to her Will, leaving five thousand pounds to himself in gratitude for what he called his “kindness and devotion”.’

  At these last words Miss Cresswell almost broke down but, with commendable courage, she pulled herself together and continued.

  ‘In the meantime, Farrow had disappeared. I think he may have returned to the house and seen the carriage in which the grandson and the solicitor had arrived standing outside the front door, which made him suspicious. Or my own conduct may have alerted him, for I confess I found it difficult to disguise my loathing of him when I had spoken to him earlier.

  ‘The police were sent for and made a further search of his room. They also made enquiries in the district, hoping to discover his whereabouts, and heard of a man resembling him who was seen at the local station buying a ticket to London. That was the last that was seen of him to my knowledge.’

  Her voice began to falter and she fell silent. Holmes, perceiving her distress, quickly took up the narrative once more.

  ‘When I made enquiries of my informant,’ he continued, this time making no hesitation over the word, ‘I learnt that, by great good fortune, Mrs Knight’s grandson was still in correspondence with Miss Cresswell and so I was able to call on her. Once I had explained my interest in the affair, she most generously agreed to fall in with my plans. For it was obvious when we compared the descriptions of Farrow and Adams that they were one and the same man, down to the peculiarity of the earlobes.

  ‘Enquiries of Inspector Lestrade at Scotland Yard also confirmed the fact that, despite the lapse of time, the police were still anxious to arrest Farrow, alias Adams. They suspected him of not only carrying out similar frauds and attempted frauds on three other rich, elderly people, but the murder of a bedridden widow from whom he had netted the huge sum of twenty thousand pounds in her Will.

  ‘By the way, Lestrade has alerted the Sussex constabulary by telegram and we will be met at the station by an Inspector Bulstone and his sergeant Cox, as well as two constables. The police will carry out the arrest once Adams has been identified by Miss Cresswell who, I must add,’ Holmes concluded, turning one of his most engaging smiles on the lady, ‘has shown the most exemplary courage in this sordid affair.

  ‘I have also sent a telegram to Mr Maitland, Sir Reginald’s great-nephew, who first alerted us to Adams’ activities. He will already be at the manor house when we arrive. I thought that, as his great-uncle was a potential victim, he ought to be present to witness the coup de grâce as well as to take charge of his great-uncle’s affairs once Adams has been removed from the house.’

  As Lestrade had arranged, four members of the Sussex constabulary were waiting for us at Chichester station: Inspector Bulstone, a blue-eyed, fair-haired giant of a man with a soft local accent; his sergeant, Cox, short and dark, in complete contrast to his colleague, and two young, fresh-faced constables who regarded the three of us as we alighted from the London train with considerable curiosity, as if we had just arrived from a foreign country.

  Bulstone had already commandeered two vehicles for our use, the station fly and an ancient four-wheeler, and we set off for Holbrook, Bulstone accompanying us in one vehicle, the others following behind in the second.

  It was a beautiful early summer’s day of unblemished blue skies and a soft breeze on which was carried the mingled scents of the countryside; of warm grass and wild flowers. After the heat and dust of London, it was indeed good to breathe in such delicious fragrances. I noticed that Holmes himself seemed to be indulging in these sensuous delights, for he sat with his eyes closed and his head thrown back in much the same attitude I have seen him adopt when listening to an opera by Wagner.13

  I wondered again at the remark he had made the last time we had driven along this road about the pleasures of rural life, but dismissed the thought as fanciful. Holmes and London were inextricably linked and I could not imagine him in any other setting than among the busy streets and teeming multitudes of our capital city with all it had to offer in the way of excitement and stimulation.

  The manor house, which we had only glimpsed before in the distance, proved to be a handsome eighteenth-century mansion of cream-painted stucco with tiers of glittering sash windows, each crowned with its own stone pediment. Our vehicle drew up under an imposing pillared canopy where Holmes, leaping out, ran up the steps to ring the bell.

  Mrs Grafton, who had evidently been forewarned of our arrival by a message sent via the vicar, opened the door immediately and we entered a large hall, floored with marble and lined with pictures. More pillars supported a semi-circular gallery where the staircase, sweeping up towards the first floor, divided into two.

  Hardly had we entered than Edward Maitland emerged from a doorway to our left, looking relieved to see us as well as anxious about the outcome of our visit.

  There were hurried, low-voiced introductions and then, at a nod of the head from Bulstone, Mrs Grafton knocked on the door of the room from which Mr Maitland had emerged and disappeared inside.

  We could hear voices; one a little louder than the others seemed to be protesting but, after a few anxious moments, the door re-opened and a man came out; Adams, I assumed.

  Although I estimated he must have been in his middle forties, he appeared much younger, for there was
a vivacious air about him, particularly in his movements and his smile, both of which I suspected had been deliberately assumed to give himself a boyish air. For all that surface vitality, however, he was suspicious of our unexpected arrival and kept his distance as he eyed us up and down, trying to calculate the reason behind our visit. His glance flickered first towards the four policemen, whose professional standing he seemed to guess despite their civilian clothes, for the muscles in his shoulders immediately grew tense. But his glance rested the longest on Holmes’ face, as if he were more alarmed by the presence of this tall, lean-faced stranger with the piercing, cold, grey eyes than by anyone else. The veiled figure of Miss Cresswell seemed not to attract his attention, for she remained at the back of the group. It was only when Holmes spoke her name and she stepped forward, at the same time raising her veil, that Adams became aware of her.

  The effect on him was dramatic. Ashen-faced, he staggered back, his eyes rolling wildly like a horse about to bolt as he looked about for a means to escape. But the two broad-shouldered constables barred his way to the front door, while the passage behind him which led into the house was blocked by Inspector Bulstone and his sergeant who had stepped briskly forward to cut off his line of retreat. He was, in short, cornered like a fox.

  And like a fox, he was wily. Quickly recovering his composure, he demanded, ‘What is the meaning of this intrusion? Unless you leave the house immediately, I shall inform Sir Reginald who will order you off the premises.’

  I saw Holmes give a little smile as if amused by Adams’ effrontery. Inspector Bulstone, however, was not impressed.

  Having given Adams a glance heavy with disapprobation, he turned to Miss Cresswell.

  ‘Do you recognise this man, madam?’ he asked.

  ‘Indeed I do,’ she replied in a cool, clear voice. ‘He is Edwin Farrow, who stole jewellery from my employer, Mrs Knight, and who deliberately drugged her with morphia, intending, I believe, to persuade her to change her Will.’

  Bulstone cleared his throat and, taking a few steps forward, said in his best official voice, ‘Edwin Farrow, I am arresting you for assault and for the theft of various valuables belonging to Mrs Knight.’

  The conclusion to this drama followed as briskly as if it had been rehearsed. After Sergeant Cox had snapped a pair of handcuffs on Adams’ wrists, the two constables seized him by the upper arms and he was bundled out of the house to be driven away to Chichester police station. There he was to await the arrival of Inspector Bulstone and his colleagues, who would escort him back to London where he would later stand trial, together with his accomplice, a certain Arthur Crossman, on various charges, including the murder of Mrs Godfrey Hamilton, an elderly bedridden widow, for which they were later hanged.

  Holmes and I, together with Miss Cresswell, departed shortly afterwards, having taken our leave of Mr Maitland, who intended staying on at the manor house, caring for his great-uncle, until a suitable replacement could be found for Adams. The old gentleman was, we were assured, in good hands with both his great-nephew and Mrs Grafton to tend to him.

  There remained two minor mysteries connected to the Manor House affair, the first of which Holmes was able to solve for me that very same day on our return to Baker Street.

  ‘Tell me, Holmes,’ I asked. ‘Why did that first anonymous letter convince you so completely of Adams’ guilt as soon as Maitland showed it to you?’

  Holmes lowered the Evening Standard which he had opened in readiness to read.

  ‘This, my dear fellow,’ he replied briefly, shaking the pages of the newspaper at me.

  ‘The Standard? But I do not see how …’

  ‘Not the newspaper itself!’ he exclaimed a little impatiently. ‘The newsprint! I have made it my business to study the different types used by the daily press14 and as soon as I saw that anonymous letter, I knew Maitland could not have sent it and that therefore Adams had to be guilty. Now, if you recall, it was formed from words and letters cut from one particular newspaper, which I recognised as the Daily Gazette,15 a popular paper with a bias towards the more sensational scandals, hardly the choice of Maitland whose reading tastes almost certainly would have been more inclined towards The Times or the Morning Post. Hence my conviction that Adams, a much more likely reader of the Gazette, was guilty.’

  And with that, he opened the paper with a vigour which told me that the conversation was over.

  The second mystery regarding the case was one which, though it had puzzled me at the time, I had forgotten about until Holmes inadvertently reminded me of it.

  One evening not long after the conclusion of the case, we were talking in a desultory manner about a number of topics ranging from the design of warships to the migration of birds when the subject turned to the question of how far an individual’s character and aptitudes were decided by his ancestry and how far by his upbringing.

  I made the point that I thought Holmes’ peculiar gifts of observation and deduction were probably the result of systematic training on his part.

  To my great astonishment, Holmes began to speak of his own ancestry and early life, a topic which he had never referred to during the years16 I had known him. In particular, he put forward the theory that his artistic talents were probably inherited from his grandmother, who was the sister of Vernet, the French painter.17

  On my asking how he knew this side of his nature was inherited rather than the product of his education, he came out with an even more astonishing statement which I will repeat using his own words.

  ‘Because,’ said he, ‘my brother Mycroft possesses it in a larger degree than I do.’

  He then went on to give me further details about this brother of his whom he had never mentioned before, speaking of his powers of observation which he asserted were superior to his own but which he lacked the energy and ambition to follow up. Later, during the investigation into the theft of the Bruce-Partington plans,18 Holmes was to confide in me further details of his brother’s background, how, although holding only a relatively lowly post as an auditor, Mycroft, because of his great capacity for storing and relating facts, had become indispensible to the Government and indeed, on occasions, actually was the Government.

  On being introduced to Mycroft Holmes in the Strangers’ Room at the Diogenes Club,19 I was further astonished by the lack of similarity between the two brothers. My old friend is ascetic in appearance, with the lean, high-nosed features of a Red Indian. In comparison, his brother was so stout as to be positively corpulent, with a massive face and hands so broad and large that they put me in mind of a seal’s flippers. Yet, on closer inspection, I was aware of certain likenesses between the two brothers, especially in the sharpness of their expression, which suggested they shared the same formidable mental powers.

  It was shortly after the introduction was made that the other minor mystery concerning the Manor House affair was solved to my satisfaction. During the subsequent conversation, Mycroft Holmes referred to the case, mentioning the fact that Holmes had consulted him about it only the week before.

  ‘It was Adams, of course?’ Mycroft Holmes enquired, to which my old friend replied, ‘Yes, it was Adams.’

  At that moment, I made the connection. When Holmes had hesitated so uncharacteristically over the word ‘my’ when discussing the case with me earlier, he had not intended to refer to ‘my informant’, which he had so quickly inserted into his statement. Instead, he had meant to say ‘my brother’ or perhaps even ‘Mycroft’, the first syllable of which is the same as the personal pronoun.

  This small deduction on my part gave me enormous satisfaction and I sat back to enjoy to the full the subsequent thrust and parry of the brothers over the identities of two men they observed through the window coming down the street.20

  For a glorious moment, I felt I had something in common with this extraordinary pair of brothers whose powers of observation and deduction outrival those of any other experts in the country, if not in the whole world.

  It is
therefore with a touch of sadness that I must accept Holmes’ prohibition over the publication of this account for the sake of Sir Reginald Maitland, who is still alive and whose reputation might be damaged should the truth be known. However, given the choice, I would have dearly loved to display before my readers my own small success in the field of deductive endeavour which at the time had given me so much personal satisfaction.

  1 Mr Melas was a Greek linguist who acted as interpreter for foreign tourists in London and also at the Law Courts. He was asked to interpret for Paul Kratides and his kidnappers. Vide: ‘The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter’. Sherlock Holmes was introduced to the case by his brother Mycroft. See footnote below for further details. Dr John F. Watson.

  2 Mycroft Holmes was Sherlock Holmes’ elder brother by seven years. Although ostensibly employed as a Government auditor, he was in fact a Government adviser on important issues. He was a founder-member of the Diogenes Club in Pall Mall, not far from his lodgings. Vide: ‘The Adventure of the Bruce Partington Plans’. Dr John F. Watson.

  3 Midas was the king of Phrygia, part of Anatolia, and was said to have married the daughter of Agememnon. According to Greek myth, he was granted his wish that everything he touched should turn to gold by the god Dionysus, a wish he came to regret when food turned to gold as he picked it up, as did his daughter when he embraced her. His name became a by-word for extreme riches. Dr John F. Watson.

  4 A tantalus was a wooden stand containing decanters of spirits, e.g. whisky, which could not be removed until a bar holding them in place was unlocked. It was named after Tantalus, a mythical king of Phrygia, who was condemned to stand for ever in Tartarus surrounded by food and drink which he could not reach. Dr John F. Watson.

  5 Cabs could be summoned by blowing a whistle, one blast for a four-wheeler, two for a hansom. Some Londoners carried a special whistle with them for this purpose. Dr John F. Watson.