It was a clear night. A three-quarter moon shone brightly through the bedroom window, falling full upon my tails laid out on the counterpane exactly as I had left them. Mary wasn’t there. To her pillow was pinned a note in her hand on her personal stationery:
John,
We’ll have a good laugh over this message if we read it together. Otherwise, you will find me at the Anstruthers’ in the morning and we shall revisit your relationship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
M.
I spent a sleepless night in pursuit of some gesture that would repair the rift; but here at last was one problem even my friend, the world’s first (and so far the greatest) consulting detective, could not solve. Bright and early I bathed and shaved carefully, put on the morning coat that was Mary’s favourite, and hastened to the Harley Street home of Dr. and Mrs. Anstruther, stopping along the way to buy the showiest floral display in Piccadilly and a five-pound box of Vienna chocolates. The bell was answered by Gloriana, their maid from South America, who informed me her master and mistress had left for a holiday in Scotland by the first train.
“Is Mrs. Watson alone, then?” I was somewhat relieved to know my self-abasement would be private.
The girl’s brow creased. “She is not here, sir. It’s just me and Cook.”
“When did she leave?”
“Sir, she was never here. Doctor and the missus came home alone from the theatre.”
II.
At Scotland Yard
I proceeded directly to New Scotland Yard, where a sergeant informed me that Inspector Lestrade was away on an investigation but that his colleague, Inspector Gregson, was at his desk.
Tobias Gregson, a large, bluff, red-faced mastiff of a man, more given to immediate action than his counterpart—and almost invariably misdirected—sat behind a mountain of papers and ledgers, muttering over the necessity of an active soldier in the war against the criminal classes being reduced to the duties of a clerk. So involved was he in his plaint, several moments lapsed before he noticed my presence.
“Humph! Chang without Eng. I should think Barnum would have the whole force out looking for you.”
“Holmes and I are not joined at the navel, nor are we Siamese,” I retorted. “Might it not have occurred to you—even you—that I might be here upon my own behalf as a British subject?”
As is frequently the case with bullies, my sharp tone put him into retreat. He rose, his face assuming a deeper shade of scarlet, and turned his great bear’s-paw of a palm towards the chair facing the desk. “There’s no reason to take on so, doctor. It’s just that with Lestrade gallivanting off on another of his fool’s errands, I’m left with his paperwork as well as my own. Have a seat.”
I ignored the invitation and gave him a full account of the reason for my visit. Moment by moment his colour faded to its normal shade of ruddiness. He lowered himself back into his seat, interlaced his fingers across his broad middle, and heard me out.
“I shouldn’t be alarmed if I were you,” he said when I’d finished. “Where you see a tragedy, I see a tiff between a man and his wife. Odds are she’s gone to stay with her mother.”
“Her mother died long ago. She has no blood relatives. Will you issue a bulletin?”
“My hands are tied. When an adult goes missing, regulations require twenty-four hours must pass before action is taken.”
“Anything could happen in twenty-four hours! Inspector, I entreat you.”
“I can’t go about flaunting the rules as a favour to a personal acquaintance.”
“Shall I go to the superintendent?”
“You’ll hear the same from him.”
I straightened, seething. “Holmes once said you and Lestrade were the best of a bad lot. He was being diplomatic.”
His face darkened again. “At least neither of us has gone and lost track of his wife like an old umbrella.”
III.
I Become Holmes’s Client
“One moment, Watson.”
When I entered the sitting room we once shared at 221B Baker Street, Holmes was perched on the stool before his acid-scarred deal table, looking for all the world like a gigantic bird of prey. He wore his old mouse-coloured dressing gown and was pouring a bilious-looking liquid from one test tube into another, staring intently at the reaction. A greenish cloud of thick vapour rose from the freshly filled vessel, further staining the plaster ceiling directly above the table, a palimpsest created by dozens of chemical experiments and at least one explosion. For a moment after he returned the empty tube to its stand he continued to watch the phenomenon until the last wisp vanished, then to my horror lifted the phial to his lips and drank down the contents at a gulp.
“Holmes! Whatever—?”
“Rest easy, old fellow,” said he, touching a handkerchief to his mouth. “The criminal situation isn’t so stagnant that I’ve chosen the Socratic method to escape it. It’s a mixture of pulped avocado and quinine, with soda for effervescence.” He belched delicately into his handkerchief. “I beg your pardon. I suspect a bad oyster at Simpson’s to be the culprit.”
“Promise me you’ll never do such a thing again without warning me first.”
“You have my word. I trust you’ve made amends with Mrs. Watson for last night’s desertion.”
“I never told you we’d quarrelled.”
“Supposition, aided by evidence. I’ve prevailed upon your leisure frequently of late. A domestic contretemps seemed as inevitable as the lingering odour of violets and bird-of-paradise on your person. You buy her flowers only when you’ve transgressed. Old friend, what’s happened?”
I’d collapsed into my old armchair, alarming him out of his musings. He was on his feet and halfway towards me in a lunge.
“For once,” said I, “I wish you’d deduced it all at a glance. Might I trouble you for a whisky at this improper hour?”
He reached for the siphon at once and poured a stiff tot. I seized the glass and drank off half. “I scarcely know where to begin.”
“At the beginning is not only customary but the most conducive to understanding.” He sat in his basket chair, tented his long narrow hands, and closed his eyes, as I had seen him do so many times when a problem was being placed before him.
I told all, starting with Mary’s disapproval when Holmes’s summons came and finishing with my expulsion—polite, but final—from the office of the superintendent of Scotland Yard. Holmes listened without interruption, then:
“Have you the note she left?”
I took it from a pocket and leaned forwards to hand it to him.
“You’re certain this is her writing?”
“Yes. I know it as well as my own.”
“Not hurried, and I should say not particularly upset. I know from firsthand experience that she is not easily rattled. The affair of the Four might have unsettled the Queen herself.” He returned the note. “What say the Anstruthers?”
“Nothing, of course. They’re in Scotland, as the maid reported.”
“You’re distraught. You rarely leave that level head of yours at home with your nightcap. You must wire your friends and ask if Mrs. Watson attended the theatre with them. Then we shall know whether our trail begins when they parted company, or hours earlier when she left the house.”
“Of course. I’m a fool not to have considered it.”
“You are not Newton, but neither are you Punch. You have had no practise in separating your head from your heart.”
I rose. “What will you do in the meantime?”
He smiled thinly. “I shall give you a full accounting in an hour or so.”
“Shall we meet here?”
“Wait for me at your house. For all we know your wife is there now, awaiting your apology.”
IV.
Mr. Lysander P. Gristle
The Anstruthers kept a country home near Aberdeen. I sent them a brief explanation along with my question, and directed them to address their response to my house. With a quickening heart
I returned home, but Mary was still absent. I unstopped my brandy decanter, but deciding that I was no good to anyone in a state of inebriation, I put it back. As the hands crawled round the clock on the mantel, I attempted to interest myself in The Times, The Telegraph, and finally the Bible, but could not concentrate upon the news of the day and found no solace in scripture. I smoked a cigar without tasting it and paced through all the rooms—all the empty, echoing chambers of my lonely house—until at last someone pulled on the bell.
I tore open the door, but instead of Holmes discovered a lumpy-faced stranger on my doorstep, wearing a loud chequered suit and a flat-crowned straw hat at an insolent angle. His eyes were hidden behind blue-tinted spectacles, and a gold tooth winked in his greasy smile. He smelled offensively of lavender and lime, in which, judging by the strength of the odour, he appeared to have bathed.
He tipped his hat, exposing momentarily a head glistening with pomade. “Beg pardon, guv’nor,” said he in a voice that was both high-pitched and unctuous. “Lysander P. Gristle at your service. It is my h’intense pleasure to acquaint you with the h’inwention of the century.”
As he spoke, he produced from a voluminous side pocket a slender silver-coloured cylinder.
“I’m afraid someone beat you to it long ago,” I said. “It’s a pen.” I began to push the door shut.
He stopped it with a foot shod in square-toed leather and a bright yellow gaiter. “I ’aven’t finished, guv’nor. This pen contains its own supply of h’ink in a sealed reservoir, rendering it as portable as a pencil and making the h’inkwell a fing of the past.”
“I’m not interested. Please remove your foot.”
“’Old on, ’old on, there’s more.” He placed the ball of his thumb against the nib. “H’inside ’ere is a steel sphere one-tenth the size of a pea, h’allowing the h’ink to glide onto the page like a duck in a pond. No more blobs or scratches, and the pen does all the work. You can write h’all day wifout a cramp. See for yourself.” Thrusting the device into my hand, he retrieved a fold of foolscap from another pocket, snatched off his hat, cradled it in the crook of his arm, and spread the sheet on the crown.
Seeing that there was no other way to get rid of the fellow, I placed the nib against the page and began to write my name. It split on contact, spurting ink and staining my cuff.
I cursed—and stopped in mid-syllable upon recognising the sardonic laugh of the stranger at my door. Lysander P. Gristle unhooked his coloured spectacles, exposing the sharp grey eyes of Sherlock Holmes.
“Good Lord! Whatever—?”
“Rest easy, old fellow. It’s vanishing ink, made according to my own formula. In five minutes your laundress will be none the wiser.”
I opened the door wide and turned to follow him as he entered, peeling away the putty that had altered the shape of his face. “I am at my wit’s end, and you stoop to a practical joke?”
Without awaiting an invitation, he threw himself into a parlour chair, pried the gold cap from a perfectly sound tooth, and poked it into his waistcoat pocket. “You must pardon an amateur actor’s conceit. Once immersed in a role, I find that time alone can bring me back to the surface. I’m fresh from a successful tour of Harley Street and the stately home of Dr. and Mrs. Anstruther.”
“Why? Have they returned?”
“No; and I was glad of that event. It gave me the opportunity to audition my act in private with the maid.”
“Are you telling me she knows something she didn’t tell me?”
“Not at all. She knows everything and said nothing. When you told me her name is Gloriana and that she is South American, I remembered a certain domestic from Argentina whose modus operandi was to join the staff of a wealthy household—armed, naturally, with glowing references, expertly forged—take inventory of the house’s contents, and conveniently neglect to latch the back door when her masters weren’t at home. She managed this feat no fewer than three times at three different houses before a constable happened upon her companion, one Archie Munch, grappling a Chippendale cabinet down the back stairs with the maid helping to steer it from above.
“Even so,” he continued, “I might have misplaced the memory had she not in those days travelled under the nom de crime Celeste. It’s no great leap from heaven to glory. If we British weren’t so insular we would all benefit from a healthy exposure to languages other than our own.”
“Pray come to the point, Holmes.”
“Forgive me; but at the risk of offending my bent towards the dramatic, please trust me when I say you need have no fear for the safety of Mrs. Watson. No.” He stopped me in mid-pounce with an upraised hand. “Without suspense, you will hear nothing of what I have to say. It’s critical that you understand.”
“Dash it all.” I opened the cabinet and poured us both a brandy. When he had his, I perched on the edge of the settee and took a medicinal sip to flatten my nerves.
“Capital. The sun is already under the yardarm in Lhasa.”
But he set his glass down untasted and reached inside yet another pocket. By what great powers of organisation he knew which of those many patches and pouches contained the item he sought, I cannot say. He produced a wicked-looking object that appeared to be a cross between a nutcracker and a corkscrew, with a polished wooden handle.
“’Ere, madam,” he said, resuming his Cockney cant, “is the h’answer to an ’ousemaid’s dream: an instrument that will render everyfing else in the kitchen h’obsolete. It’s a h’inwention of my own, which I’m proud to ’ave christened the Gristlizer.”
“What does it do?”
“I haven’t the foggiest.” The device had vanished along with Mr. Gristle’s nasal drawl. “On a sudden inspiration I pinched it from the evidence room at the Yard, where it was no longer required after the defense had exhausted every appeal. It was sufficient to get my persistent flogger’s foot in the Anstruthers’ door, and to steal a moment alone with Señorita Celeste-Gloriana-Paraiso; the last being the name she used in Buenos Aires. I helped Lestrade make his original case with a bit of research.
“Abandoning my pose, I put the thing to her quite simply: the truth in return for a head start, and the chance to avoid arrest and deportation to Argentina, which has unfinished business with her, our system having given her her freedom for peaching on Archie Munch. It did not take much persuading, as she feared the wrath of her current companion more than the law in either country. It developed that he had his eye upon your friends’ silver candlesticks and a teak chest that had sailed round the world with Drake, and he wouldn’t be any too pleased to learn she’d blown them both just when her master and mistress were away and unable to prevent their removal.”
“But what have two petty thieves to do with my wife?”
“I shall come to that in due course.”
“Holmes, I really must insist.”
He sighed. “Very well. If I’m to be forced to leave my tale unfinished, I shall yield the floor to another.”
He stood up abruptly, and in three strides was at the door, which he flung open to give my dear Mary entrance to the house we shared.
V.
The Ordeal of Mrs. John H. Watson
She was dressed for the theatre, in her emerald-coloured ball gown, white fur cape, and pearls. As out of place as she looked in broad daylight, at that moment she was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. I fell in love all over again, if anything more intensely than I had at the time of the affair of the Agra treasure, which had brought us together the first time.
She nearly fell into my arms. I held her so tight I wonder now how I didn’t break some delicate bone. I kissed her feverishly. Only when we separated ourselves by a few inches, some full two minutes later, did I realise that we were alone in the room. Holmes had absented himself, discreetly and as in a puff of smoke.
I apologised for my careless behaviour; she stopped me by placing a gloved hand against my lips.
“John, I don’t care. Since I thought I shoul
d never see you again, I can hardly hold you to account for an evening’s desertion. You were impetuous, I was churlish; please, dear, let us leave it at that. Do you suppose you could pour me some brandy?”
Although I had rarely known her to drink anything stronger than tea—and never even that, at that early hour—I wasted no time in escorting her to a chair and filling another glass. As she touched her lips to it, I saw that although she seemed physically unharmed, she had been through a harrowing ordeal. The tiny fissures at the corners of her eyes, which she loathed and I adored, were etched deeply as if with an engraving tool, and she was as pale as candle-wax.
This was the story she told, when the spirits had helped her to place her thoughts in order:
As arranged, she’d taken a cab to the Anstruthers, still in high dudgeon over my failure to return from my assignation with Holmes in time to accompany her; from there, our party was to proceed to the Lyceum aboard the couple’s own coach-and-four. No sooner had the cab pulled away when Gloriana told her at the door that her employers had already left. She could (or would) offer no explanation as to the change in plan. Thereupon, Mary returned to the street to hail another cab. One pulled up immediately, as well it should; for the maid’s own accomplice in crime sat in the driver’s seat. Somewhere in their association, the partners had agreed to broaden their activities to include abduction.
When the passenger realised the vehicle was heading in the wrong direction, she called out to get the driver’s attention. Instantly a whip cracked, the horse broke into a gallop, and she found herself hanging onto the seat with both hands to keep from spilling out onto the cobblestones. She could no more follow the swaying coach’s course, or identify the buildings streaming past, than could a seed in a gourd.
When at last the vehicle came to a jarring stop, nearly pitching her forwards over the dashboard, the driver leapt down and, before she could recover herself enough to alight, threw his arms round her in a death-grip.
The Adventure of the Plated Spoon and Other Tales of Sherlock Holmes Page 19