Vi paused again, then continued. “That night, I ripped up all of her letters and threw them away. I regretted it later.”
“Do you recall your last conversation with her before that one?”
“We rarely spoke on the phone back then, before long distance plans and unlimited minutes. It was a big deal that she drove an hour each way for the meetings. Nowadays, an hour is nothing—plus, we have cell phones in case we break down. Back then, you were at the mercy of whoever might stop—if anyone came along at all. I always tried to get Ronnie to spend the night, but she wouldn’t do it.
“The month before, she stayed after the others left, long enough to tell me that the private eye she had hired several months earlier had located a younger sister. Turned out they were separated as toddlers when their parents were killed, and didn’t know each other existed. Ronnie’s paternal grandmother raised her, told her that there was no other family. When her grandmother passed, Ronnie found family memorabilia that indicated otherwise.
“Anyhow, she contacted the sister, and begged her to come to Portland for a visit. She was as excited as anyone can be. It was short-lived, though. I received one letter during that month between those two ASH meetings. Ronnie wrote that it wasn’t going very well between her and her sister, Vickie. She said that the woman hadn’t enjoyed a nice upbringing, like she’d had. Apparently Vickie drank a lot, and dressed a bit trashy. Ronnie also said that her husband had taken quite a shine to the woman, though, and that the more those two got along, the more she was being squeezed out.”
“You don’t think . . . ?”
“That there was some hanky-panky going on? It crossed my mind. Maybe that’s why Ronnie was so upset when I last saw her. She didn’t want to lash out at her newfound sister, and she didn’t dare lash out at her husband, so I was her scapegoat.”
“Or,” Jeff said, “she did lash out at him, and got her mouth mashed for her trouble.”
After a moment, Vi said, “I can tell you one thing: If those ashes in the urn you told me about are her husband’s, they’re probably still burning.”
Jeff let that thought settle, then told Vi that those who knew Ronnie in her later years said she was hard to get along with.
“I wouldn’t have believed it, if I hadn’t experienced that side of her firsthand. She always had the sweetest spirit. Whatever transpired during those weeks with her sister seems to have altered the rest of her life.
“Even so, a few weeks later I sent her a funny little card, hoping her actions were caused by hormones or the like. I didn’t hear back. I kept trying, though, but she never replied. My last one was returned stamped, ‘Moved. Forwarding Address Unknown.’”
She took a deep breath, as if she’d been physically chasing the story she relayed to Jeff, then blew it out in a gust. “It took me years to get over her. She was my best friend. Then, suddenly, she wasn’t my friend at all.”
Jeff touched the woman’s hand, then stood. From their conversation, he knew she had nothing to offer as evidence of whose ashes were in the urn.
Vi rose from her chair. “ASH has a motto: Gutta cavat lapidem, non vi sed saepe cadendo. It’s from Ovid. It means, ‘A drop carves the rock, not by force but by persistence.’ It was only after she moved that I realized I should’ve driven to her house when I had the chance. I should’ve been more persistent.”
During the drive back to Portland, the two men exchanged information. Jeff shared the high points from his conversation with Vi, then said, “Did you learn anything from Whitcomb?”
“He’s a wealth of knowledge—or could be, I believe. Unfortunately, he seemed always to be searching mental files for pieces of information. It was a sobering afternoon. A good one, too, but sobering.”
“The current ways are better,” Jeff said. “You’re our employee, not our servant. You’re not bound by an unreasonable loyalty, and you have the benefits of a retirement plan. Everyone should be prepared so they don’t have to work into their eighties, particularly if they aren’t able. I would never make you promise to stay with Sheila to the end if something happened to me.”
“Thank you, sir, but I assure you, the sense of loyalty is a part of who we are, a part that is honed, polished during our training. Whitcomb’s loyalty is as much to his oath and his station as it is to Mrs. Chilson.”
Jeff had never thought of it from that angle. Not knowing what else to say on the subject, he changed it. “I’m having second thoughts about our staying in Portland. By now, the funeral homes are closed, and calling them will take all day tomorrow.”
“That’s up to you, sir, but I would think you could just as easily find Richard Elder’s obituary in newspaper archives online.”
“You could just as easily, but it’s rare for me to have the kind of luck I had today when I found Vi Chilson’s number.”
“If you wish, sir, we can return home now. I’ll use my iPad and search for it while we’re on the train.”
“Greer, is there ever a time you aren’t prepared?”
“I hope not, sir.”
The next day, when Sheila entered the library and announced that lunch was ready, she found, instead of her husband, the very image most people have of Sherlock Holmes: a man wearing a deerstalker cap and Inverness coat, with a Calabash pipe clenched between his teeth and a magnifying glass in his grasp.
“Well, if it isn’t Jeffrey Holmes, Amateur Sleuth.”
Jeff looked up, smiled sheepishly. Something glinted in his right hand. “I thought the costume might help me find a clue. Besides, I need to occupy myself while Greer does some research for me.”
“Occupy yourself by joining me for lunch.” She started to turn, then said, “Just as soon as you shed the Sherlock.”
“Are you interested in this?” He held out a large rhinestone fur clip he’d found in one of the Bon Marché boxes. “It’s an Eisenberg.”
“If I went anywhere to wear it, I might. You’ll turn a good profit on it, since it’s a marked piece.”
Sheila left, and Jeff sighed. He held out little hope that his wife would ever attend a large event—whether or not it called for a fur or, indeed, a vintage fur clip. The Internet was a two-edged sword, and, although it gave his agoraphobic wife access to the outer world, he feared it also had further ensconced her inside the elaborate walls of his inherited mansion.
His mind wandered, pictured Sherlock Holmes deducing the solution to a mystery here among the labyrinth of rooms and hidden passageways.
“Jeff,” Sheila called from the kitchen, “your lunch is getting cold.”
“Be right there,” he said, then muttered, “I doubt it’ll ever get as cold as this case.”
He laid the pipe and glass on the library table, then walked around it to hang the hat and coat on the hall tree.
When he turned, he had a vantage point not before seen. Sunlight illuminated the right front corner inside the trunk, revealing what looked like a tear in the print fabric lining. Facing the trunk—one’s typical approach—made it all but impossible to see those deep, dark corners at the bottom.
Jeff picked at it with his fingernail and discovered that it wasn’t the lining at all, but a minuscule loop of dark green ribbon that blended into the greens of the foliage print. He grabbed a letter opener from his desk, used its tip to hook the loop, and pulled. A panel lifted, sucking the airless space as it did and causing a flutter of papers underneath.
A false bottom.
Jeff cursed under his breath. Why hadn’t he thought to check for one when they had emptied the thing? I just proved that I’m anything but a Sherlock Holmes, he thought.
He gathered the pieces and took them to his desk. It didn’t take long to conclude that they were reports from the private eye’s search for Ronnie’s sister, along with a few ticket stubs and photos Jeff knew must have been compiled during their brief visit.
He grabbed one of the photos, announcing where he was going as he loped through the kitchen.
Greer handed hi
m a printout, along with the statement that Richard Elder had not been cremated. Jeff seized the paper on his way past.
Sheila’s voice, asking about lunch, trailed him as he bolted out the back door.
Jeff swung open the door and stepped inside the Rose Trellis lobby. He had one more question for the housekeeper he had talked to before. He chastised himself for not remembering her name, and could almost feel Holmes’s disappointment in him once again. He would start with the corridors.
“I remember you.” Jeff turned toward the voice. A white-haired gentleman in a wheelchair sat alone in a room with two couches, several armchairs, and a piano. “This is the third time in a week you’ve been here, and you have yet to stop and visit.”
Not wanting to be rude, Jeff walked over and shook the man’s hand. “You’re right, sir. I apologize.” Jeff took a seat across from the man.
The gent waved him off. “Happens all the time. Most people think that just because our bodies fail us, our brains do, too. You’re the one who picked up Ronnie’s old steamer, aren’t you?”
“Not much gets past you, I’ll bet.”
“Helps keep me sharp, keeping an eye on the comings and goings.”
Jeff thought about that one. “You know, I never met her. Were you friends?”
The gent grunted. “Nobody was friends with her, she didn’t want that. But we’d talk on occasion, when she let her shield down. She was a pretty thing.” He leaned in a bit, said, “I would’ve made the moves on her, if she hadn’t been so danged bitter all the time.”
“A real looker, huh?”
“You got that right.”
“I’d like to show you something.” Jeff reached inside his breast pocket, retrieved the old photo, and handed it to the man.
“Is this some sort of joke?”
“No, sir, I assure you it’s not. I realize it was taken a long time ago. Is Ronnie in that picture?”
With a gnarled finger, the old man pointed to a knockout brunette, a beauty mark just above her lip. “Make no mistake, that’s her. Told you she was a looker.”
“Thank you. I wish I had met her.” Jeff stood.
“You’re leaving?”
“Afraid so. Duty calls.”
“Don’t be a stranger,” the old man called after him.
When Jeff returned home, he asked Greer to set up a blackboard and easel in the library. He wished he had done it sooner.
He sketched triangles and jotted findings. He drew circles and connecting arrows. He erased and re-grouped theories and bits of information until, at last, he was satisfied that he had conclusively solved the mystery.
After positioning two chairs before the blackboard, he called Sheila and Greer into the library.
“Before I left earlier to substantiate the final piece of this puzzle, I discovered a secret panel in the trunk.”
Both audience members leaned forward.
“Beneath it—” He held up a manila envelope. “—the results of the P.I.’s investigation.”
“As you both know, Veronica Elder—Ronnie—hired him after the paternal grandmother who raised her had died, and she learned that she had a sister. The girls’ parents were killed in a train derailment when the girls were toddlers.
“The private eye tracked down said sister, who had been raised by an aunt and uncle of the biological mother.
“They were born into this world as Veronica and Victoria Elder, identical except for one small difference: a mole above Victoria’s lip.”
“Twins?”
“Twins.” Jeff told them about his conversation with the old gent at the nursing home, then handed over the photograph he’d shown the man. It was of the two women on the day they were reunited.
Greer said, “They have just come from the beauty parlor, followed by a shopping trip for matching outfits. They’re exactly the same, except for the perfectly circular mole.”
“Greer, you’re absolutely right,” Sheila said, looking at the photo again before turning back to her husband. “How did your old gent react?”
“He thought I was playing a joke, but he quickly picked out the one with the mole, and said that was the Ronnie who’d been living in the nursing home all these years.”
“What about the ‘younger sister, older sister’ stuff?”
“Veronica was older—by three minutes. From everything I’ve learned, Victoria was a vain woman. Remember, the only info we had about one being older was what Ronnie told Vi the night before she met Victoria—Vickie.”
Sheila’s eyes widened. “Are you saying that she killed her own sister?”
“That’s what everything adds up to.”
Greer said, “Why do you think she kept the trunk with all those things of her sister’s—even her ashes—if she basically had no relationship with her?”
“In a way, they did have a relationship, built on remorse after experiencing firsthand the abuse of Richard Elder. It created a warped sense of camaraderie between Vickie and the sister whose life she had taken. Or the life the husband had taken—there’s not enough evidence to determine who killed her, and who was an accessory.”
Sheila waved her hands as if shooing away confusion. “So, you’re saying that the real Veronica Elder is in the urn?”
Jeff said, “I’m afraid that’s right.”
“Very sad story, sir.”
Sheila looked as if a fog had cleared. “I’ve got it now: The woman who died last week at the nursing home was Victoria Elder.”
“Right. No, wait.” Jeff searched the blackboard. “Actually, Victoria Larson. She was never an Elder. Her beauty mark, along with a lusty, bohemian approach to life, captivated her sister’s husband from the start. Ronnie alluded to it in a letter to Vi Chilson. Difficult to predict who seduced whom; probably a two-way attraction. They had an affair two short weeks after Victoria entered her married sister’s life.”
“How could you possibly know that?” Sheila asked.
He waggled the manila envelope and grinned. “The P.I. had met both women and, apparently, he was fascinated by their being nearly identical. He followed Vickie and her brother-in-law to a nearby town, saw them check into a motel.”
“As a wife, I must ask: Didn’t he report his findings to the wife?”
“He thought he did. There’s a note here stating that he went to the home and talked to Mrs. Elder. From what I have deduced, it was Vickie. She even fooled him.
“To continue the ruse after the murder, Vickie attended—as Ronnie—one last meeting of the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes. She concealed her face from Vi, remember, Greer? What she didn’t know was that Ronnie had always held a soft spot in her heart for Whitcomb. While Greer brought in the blackboard, he told me about a phone call he got from the old butler while I was gone.
“Whitcomb said that he remembers her visit that last night, and he never believed that the woman who came to the house was Veronica Elder. But he had nothing tangible to offer, nor the compulsion to step out of his station and question it.”
Jeff handed photos to them. “Here’s a pair of school pictures from when they were eighth graders—same pose, different clothing, different towns, of course. In Vickie’s, the beauty mark is already distinctive.”
“So is the ‘here comes trouble’ spark in her eye.” Sheila shook her head.
“Victoria Elder was masquerading as her deceased sister—and continued doing so in order to collect a widow’s pension when Richard Elder died of a massive heart attack shortly after. She effectively wrote her own life sentence, a most nefarious femme fatale who clearly didn’t look beyond her immediate desires.
“I wouldn’t doubt that Richard Elder had a bizarre existence during those few months between Ronnie’s death and his own.”
Sheila shuddered. “Can you imagine killing someone who has an identical twin, then . . . being with the twin? Creepy.”
Greer glanced at Sheila, then asked Jeff, “How do you suppose they were able to have her cremated?”
&
nbsp; “Good question. All I can figure is a pay-off of some sort.”
Greer and Sheila stood. She walked up and hugged her husband. “I’m impressed with both of you for your work on this. Somehow, I believe her soul can now rest in peace.
“One more question: What are you going to do with her ashes?”
“The way I see it, there’s only one proper thing to do, right, Greer?”
“Agreed, sir.”
“I’ve already called Vi Chilson, told her what we discovered.”
Greer said, “She must be quite relieved.”
“She is. And she said she’d be honored if we’d give her Ronnie’s ashes. She and the rest of her ASH group will conduct a ceremony, with a burial in the flower garden outside her sunroom.”
“Whitcomb will be quite pleased as well, sir.”
“I’d better get dinner started,” Sheila announced.
After she left the room, Jeff draped a shawl over the blackboard. He had a strange sense that Holmes would’ve wrapped up this case in similar fashion, since he often doled out his own sense of justice. There was no one to bring to justice in this situation, and he took some comfort in the fact that the bitter old woman had unwittingly delivered her own sentence—a life lived out as a lie, long after the principals were gone.
“I have to hand it to Sherlock Holmes and his keen skills of deduction. Can you imagine doing all of this during Victorian times?”
Greer said, “We’re fortunate. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle actually spurred the advancement of forensic medicine.”
“And to think, each clue in this mystery seemed to be just a trifle.”
“But there’s nothing so important as trifles.”
Jeff thought a moment. “I know that story. ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip,’ right?”
Greer smiled. “‘The Man with the Twisted Lip.’”
THE END
THE ADVENTURE OF THE DEADLY INTERLUDE
JAMES O’KEEFE
Essayist, novelist, short-story writer, and veteran of several scion societies of the national Baker Street Irregulars, James O’Keefe turns to pastiche for the first time in “The Adventure of the Deadly Interlude,” and one wonders what took him so long. This poignant story of a legendary friendship is both solid detective writing and textbook “buddy” fiction. Along the way, the author solves a mystery that has puzzled scholars for decades: Just when did Watson learn of the existence of Professor Moriarty? Published here for the first time, by permission of the author.
The Adventure of the Plated Spoon and Other Tales of Sherlock Holmes Page 14