Sherlock Holmes Edwardian Parodies and Pastiches II

by Bill Peschel

  “Take night train town O— — —; government Z— — —; meet you station; prospect excellent sport; bring furs.”

  To any one acquainted with Sherlock Holmes’ methods and habits this seemed to signify that his ever-restless brain was once more on the scent of some thrilling mystery or some baffling crime. After spending the day at Moscow, I took the night train, as directed, and I arrived the next morning at O— — — . I found my friend awaiting me at the station, muffled in a thick shouba, and smoking a pipe of more than usually strong tobacco.

  “I hope you have brought a warm coat, Watson,” was his greeting; “we have got a thirty-mile drive before us;” and giving orders to a porter to carry my bag, in Russian, which he spoke fluently, he led the way through the station to where a sledge drawn by three horses, harnessed abreast, awaited us.

  “Jump in,” he said, “we have no time to lose. We are driving,” he continued, as we made ourselves comfortable in the straw and wrapped ourselves up with a thick fur rug, “to the property of Prince B— — — , whose acquaintance I made in Transbaikalia, and who invited me to stay with him for a few days’ wolf shooting. The Prince is expecting you.”

  During the first half-hour of the drive Holmes discoursed learnedly on old violins and Elzevir editions, interrupting his discourse to point out from time to time the effects of light on the snowy plain, or to make some pregnant comment on the manners and customs of the villagers whom we passed. Then, when we had driven for about half an hour, he said, “You will now oblige me, Watson, by not talking to me until we arrive at our destination. I am engaged in following a train of speculation which requires all my attention.”

  Knowing my friend’s habits I showed neither surprise nor annoyance, and it was not long before I fell into a deep sleep.

  When I awoke we had reached the property of Prince B— — — . Prince B— — —’s home was situated at a stone’s-throw from a long straggling village composed of log-built huts, and now mantled in a thick covering of snow.

  The houses, for there were two, were situated in the midst of a garden plentifully wooded with pine trees and Siberian firs. The houses were separate, although close to each other; both of them were two-storeyed, the first, at which the horses pulled up, being built of wood painted red, the second, and farther one, of white bricks.

  “You have already been here two or three days?” I ventured to ask, as we drove through the garden gate.

  “Watson, you are incorrigible,” replied Holmes. “Had you observed the name of the station whence my message was despatched you would have known that I myself arrived this morning from the town of A— — — , which a glance at the map would have shown you is a twelve hours’ journey from O— — — . This is the first time I have the pleasure of enjoying the Prince’s hospitality, and when the Prince invited me he begged me, if possible, to persuade you to accompany me. I am glad you have come, for who knows but that I may need your assistance before long.”

  I could not help thinking that the reproach was in this case scarcely justified, since, being entirely ignorant of the Russian language, I could not be expected to decipher the name of a telegraph station, but I merely replied: “You have at present no immediate problem on hand?”

  “Watson,” said Holmes, as we reached the front door, “every fresh human being we meet is a possible problem.”

  We were met and warmly welcomed by the Prince, and after we had been shown to our rooms, which were in the further stone house, we were conducted to the drawing-room in the wooden house, where the Prince and his family awaited us. The Prince was a middle-aged man with silver-grey hair and mild grey eyes; he wore a grey undress military tunic, and Holmes remarked, as we washed our hands upstairs, that he supposed I had already noticed the Prince was a general adjutant of the Emperor’s suite; that he had served in Turkestan before he had been in the Far East; that he was at present suffering from a slight toothache; and that he had been on two big game expeditions in Africa.

  I confessed that all this had escaped me, and Holmes said that he hadn’t time to detail to me the links of the chain, but if I would glance at the Prince’s uniform, the spots on his forehead, the iodoform stain on his upper lip, and the antelope horns in the front hall, with their respective dates, perhaps all would be clear to me. The Prince’s family consisted of his wife, his eldest son, and his daughter. The Princess was a dark, thin, young-looking woman, with large grey eyes, and the son, Prince Alexander, a tall, dark young man of about twenty-three, dressed in an ordinary tweed shooting suit; the daughter, Princess Barbara, was a girl of nineteen, very fair, with blue eyes. The whole family talked English with the greatest fluency.

  As soon as the Prince had presented us to his family, he led us into the dining-room, where lunch awaited us.

  “You have been having a busy morning practising the flute,” said Holmes to Prince Alexander. “I hope we may have the pleasure of playing some duets together. I have brought my violin with me.”

  “Yes, I have been playing this morning,” answered the young man; then he paused in amazement, and added, “But how on earth did you—you couldn’t have seen my flute, because it’s in my room.”

  “Your forefinger, my dear sir,” answered Holmes, “has the dent which is peculiar to flute players; that you have been playing this morning I concluded from the fact that you have not been out of doors, and that the music—music for piano and flute on the drawing-room piano had been evidently quite recently ransacked by someone in a hurry to find a particular piece of music.”

  “Your reputation does scant justice to your powers,” answered the young man; “but I doubt if you can guess what my sister has been doing all the morning.”

  “I never guess,” answered Holmes; “but the problem is an extraordinarily simple one. The Princess has been occupied in making green pottery, and this morning has fired a kiln.”

  “It’s quite true; how could you know it?” said the young Princess.

  “In the drawing-room,” answered Sherlock Holmes, “I could not help noticing a certain tray. On this tray were a quantity of small green pots which were evidently just finished, and had, moreover, that particular grace peculiar to an amateur’s work. Your left hand, Princess, you will observe, is faintly tinged with red lead glaze, your cheeks are slightly flushed, and I noticed as you entered the room the smell of smoke which necessarily clings to a person who has been standing all the morning close to a kiln. You see how childishly simple are my methods.”

  The Prince and his family expressed surprise and delight. During the rest of luncheon Holmes kept his guests delighted with his varied knowledge.

  As soon as luncheon was over we repaired to the drawing-room, in a corner of which an open card table had been placed,

  “We always play cards after luncheon,” said the Prince; “I hope you and Mr. Watson will join us. It is no use telling you, Mr. Holmes,” he added, as he stuffed tobacco into a long cherry-wood pipe, “what game we play, because I am sure you know already, only I shall be curious to see how you arrived at the knowledge.”

  “Certainly,” said Holmes; “it is true I have drawn certain conclusions, but I dare say I am mistaken. I exclude bridge, vindt, whist, and all kindred games, because your packs are obviously not full packs. I know, on the other hand, that more than two play, for you said we, and asked me and Watson to join you, I exclude piquet, therefore, and all kindred games. There remain préférence and the national German game, skat. As your nephew, who has been on a recent visit here, is studying at Heidelberg, I concluded that he had introduced the game of skat, of which German students are exceedingly fond, to you.”

  “Perfectly correct,” said the young Prince; “but how did you know I had a cousin, and that he was at Heidelberg?”

  “The photograph of a young student in the dress of the Saxo Berussen Korps, which is in my bedroom, and the group of students, both signed Fritz von Interlacken, dated October 1907, told me that a student had been here recently; the inscr
iption on the bowl of your pipe, Prince, ‘Fritz, S.L., Onkel Peter, July 1907,’ told me the rest.”

  “Wonderful,” said the Prince; “and how simple it seems when one is told; but will you and Watson join us and cut?”

  “Watson,” said Holmes, “plays nothing but whist, and I, although I know the principles of many card games, am an indifferent player in practice.”

  “Papa,” broke in the young Princess, “the skat-book has gone.”

  “Ring,” said the Prince. “We are new to the game,” he added, “and a small book, which contains the rules, and is, moreover, a scoring book, is of great assistance to us.” The butler entered the room, and declared that Prince Alexander took the book every evening to his room in the other house, and left it in the front hall in the morning.

  “I take it to learn the rules,” said Prince Alexander, “but I always bring it back.”

  “You can look in my room,” he added, to the butler, “but I know it isn’t there.” The butler went out.

  “Did you bring it back this morning?” asked his father.

  “I didn’t take it away last night. It was on the table, and I think I left the money I won in it, nine roubles in paper.”

  “Then,” said the Prince, laughing, “this is a matter for Mr. Holmes, and, by the way, we forgot to tell him, at least I didn’t forget, but I purposely didn’t mention it at luncheon, that last night we had a robbery here.”

  “Indeed,” said Holmes, folding his hands and looking up to the ceiling, “you interest me extremely.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not very interesting,” said the Princess, “but it’s rather comical. Our four best kitchen saucepans have been stolen, two or three of the Prince’s shirts, two or three of Alexander’s, and some inexpensive silver links belonging to him.”

  “Would you like me to try and find the thief?” asked Holmes.

  “We would be delighted if you could find the kitchen saucepans,” said the Princess, “as it is inconvenient for the cook. It doesn’t matter about the thief.”

  “Do you give me leave to cross-examine the members of your household and your servants?” asked Holmes.

  “Of course,” said the Princess, “we know it is no one in the house, but we have several bad characters in the village.”

  The butler now entered once more, and said that he had searched everywhere in both houses and the book was nowhere to be found.

  “Then we must play without it,” said the Princess. “Alexander, get some paper to score on; the book,” she added, “was most convenient, as it had blank leaves at the end, perforated at the edge, which one could tear off for the score. And one saw the score at a glance. You won’t play, Mr. Holmes?”

  “I prefer to look on,” said Holmes, and when I had likewise declined to play, the Prince and the Princess and Princess Barbara sat down at the table. Prince Alexander also declined to play, on the ground that he was too busy.

  “As you are not going to play, Prince Alexander,” said Holmes, “perhaps you will help me presently to conduct my preliminary investigations.”

  “Certainly,” said the young prince.

  “Nobody can possibly have stolen the skat-book, in any case,” said the Princess.

  “I’m not so sure,” said Prince Alexander, “if I left my money in it, as I think I did.”

  Holmes took no notice of this remark, but after he had watched three games in perfect silence he suddenly addressed the Princess: “You said you had several bad characters in the village; is there any one whom you would particularly suspect? Who, for instance, is the worst character?”

  “There are several in the village,” said the Princess; “and one of the clerks in our office—what we call the ‘Kontora’—an educated man, is suspected of carrying on social revolutionary propaganda, but there is no evidence against him. They say, too, that he steals—only not saucepans.”

  “Yes, but that’s all rubbish,” said the young Prince. “He’s an honest, hard-working man.”

  “Why don’t you send him away?” asked Holmes.

  “Oh, he would burn our house!” said the Princess, laughing. “Besides, he’s quite harmless.”

  “Most interesting,” said Holmes. “And can I see this gentleman?”

  “Oh, certainly,” said the Princess. “Alexander will take you to the Kontora.”

  “Let us go to the other house,” said the young Prince to Holmes, “and you can begin your investigations. It will be great fun.”

  “May Watson come too?” asked Holmes.

  “Of course,” said the young Prince; “the investigations would have no value without Dr. Watson’s presence.”

  “Before we do anything else,” said Holmes, “will you show me the kitchen, and we will solve the question of the saucepans?” The kitchen was in a building by itself, separate from both houses, and situated on an elevation beyond the further stone house, in which were our rooms and that of the young Prince.

  We went there, and the white-frocked Parisian cook explained in precise phrases exactly what had disappeared, ending up his narrative with an exclamation of disgust. Sherlock Holmes was soon on all fours beneath the kitchen window. He examined the wall, the windowsill, and the ground with a strong magnifying glass; then, like a hound following a strong scent, he walked swiftly from the kitchen into the garden, and stopped before a heap of snow beside a clump of trees.

  “If we could have a spade”—a spade was soon brought, and Holmes, after a few vigorous strokes, revealed to the astonished gaze of the Prince, the cook, and a crowd of moujiks, four large kitchen saucepans.

  “Now,” said Holmes to the young Prince, “I will continue the investigations, if you permit it, in your room.” And we went into the stone house together.

  As we entered the house, a young man approached the Prince and said a few words to him; he wore top-boots, long hair, a dark blue sarsenet shirt without a collar, buttoned at the side, a pince-nez, a black jacket, and an astrakhan cap.

  The Prince said something to this man in Russian, and led us into a room on the ground floor adjoining his own sitting-room, saying: “I beg your pardon, Mr. Holmes, but do you mind waiting here one moment? I have to speak to a man on business; it is a matter of a few minutes only.”

  The Prince then went into his sitting-room, which was connected with the room in which we were by a door; the door was ajar, and appeared, indeed, to be one of those doors which never shut, so that fragments of the conversation which took place between the Prince and the young man were audible. They were, of course, speaking Russian.

  Holmes lit a pipe and sat down on a divan; presently one of the voices next door sank to a whisper, and the opening and shutting of a drawer were heard. Then the young man took his departure, and the Prince, opening the door, invited us into his room.

  “Please sit down,” he said, pointing to a divan, and he himself took a seat at a writing-table which was placed sideways in the middle of the room. “Now that we have found the saucepans, I suppose all further investigations are needless, Mr. Holmes?” he said.

  “We have not yet found the thief,” replied Holmes.

  “That, I am afraid, will be more difficult,” said the Prince.

  “Nor have we found your skat-scoring book,” said Holmes.

  “Oh, that’s sure to turn up!” said the Prince. “I will send for the maid who cleans our rooms and you can examine her. She is an old peasant woman who has been with us ever since I have been born,” and saying this the Prince went to the door and shouted, “Mavra!”

  An elderly woman dressed in a peasant’s dress, consisting of a blue cotton petticoat and a large apron, and a black handkerchief over her head, entered the room, and smilingly greeted the company. What followed I was unable to understand, but Holmes later in the afternoon dictated to me at my request what took place in detail. The Prince asked Holmes to examine her, and Holmes did not allude to the saucepans, but asked her whether she had seen a small green book anywhere.

  Sh
e said she had seen it, she had seen it every day. It was there.

  “In the other house?” asked Holmes.

  “Yes, in the other house,” she answered.

  “Did you see it yesterday?”

  “Yes, yesterday it was lying there.”

  “In this house?” asked Holmes.

  “Yes,” she replied. “There.”

  “Somebody said,” interrupted the Prince, “that some books were left on the window-sill upstairs in this house, and that they had got wet and had been taken to be dried?”

  “Yes,” said Mavra, smiling cheerfully, “they say some books got wet and were taken to be dried.”

  “Where?” asked Holmes.

  “They were lying there. And then to-day I said to Masha: ‘Where are those books?’ And she said: ‘What have I got to do with books, and what have you got to do with books?’”

  “In this house?”

  “Yes, there.”

  “Who dried them?” asked Holmes.

  “I cannot know,” she answered; “perhaps Andre knows.”

  “Who is Andre?” asked Holmes.

  “The night watchman,” answered the young Prince.

  “And after the books were dried did you see them?” asked Holmes.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “They were lying there,” she replied.

  “In the other house?”

  “Yes, there.”

  At that moment the butler entered, and the Prince asked him whether the skat-book or any other books had got wet from being left on the window-sill and had been dried. He replied that there were two books on the window-sill upstairs; they were still there, but nobody had dried them, because they had never been wet, and the skat-book was not among them. The young Prince repeated that they had played skat the preceding evening and had used the scoring book, which had been left on the drawing-room table.