The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part X

by Marcum, David;

  Having refused Harrison’s offer of telegraphing for a dogcart to transport us to the village, Holmes got down to business. “The bicycle in the rack outside. To whom does it belong?”

  “Is this part of a case you’re investigating?” asked Harrison, his eyes positively gleaming as he poured the tea. “I don’t see what Charlie Dayton’s bicycle could have to do with a Sherlock Holmes case, though.”

  Using our client’s name for the first time, Holmes said matter-of-factly, “Charles Dayton has been murdered.”

  The railwayman paused in mid-pour, then lay down the teapot on the crude wooden table. “Murdered?” he ejaculated. His shock was momentary, however, for in the next instant he was bustling about, almost beside himself with joy that such an illustrious person as Sherlock Holmes was investigating Elmswell’s very own murder.

  “We were wondering,” said I, rather put out by Harrison’s jubilant demeanour, “what you can tell us about Mr. Dayton.”

  “Charlie Dayton is the foreman at Sebastian Merridew’s farm. Only yesterday, I sold two train tickets to Charlie and Mr. Merridew - return tickets for today’s early train to King’s Cross.”

  “Did both men take that early train?” asked Holmes.

  Harrison shrugged. “What with the railway company’s cutbacks and all, I’m only on duty from nine to nine, Monday to Friday. Mind you, we’re not as undermanned here as they are at Blinxworth. There the station’s only manned three days in a week.”

  “Would anyone have seen Mr. Dayton arriving at the station at such an early hour?”

  “It’s possible that Randolph saw him.”

  “Randolph?”

  The station master’s mood became suddenly less genial. “Randolph Gatts,” he spat, “is the filthy beggar sitting outside the train station, whose presence makes the place an eyesore.”

  “You mean the gentleman of the road we saw sitting in the entranceway?” I ventured.

  “That’s him,” said the railwayman. “And he’s no gentleman. Gatts is little more than a London rough. Came up from the city, did Gatts, and chased poor Thaddeus Chad away.”

  “And Thaddeus Chad is...?” Holmes enquired.

  “An old timer. A genuine gentleman of the road. This train station was Thaddeus’s patch for donkeys’ years. Then, along comes Randolph Gatts, who bullies Thaddeus until he ups and leaves. Went to Blinxworth Station, Thaddeus did, though the pickings are leaner there. The Blinxworth folk seldom travel down to London.”

  I could see by the swiftness with which he drank down his tea that Holmes had gleaned all the information he needed from the station master. So taking my friend’s lead, I gulped down my own beverage and thanked Mr. Harrison for his time. Picking up our overnight bags, we made to set off on the mile-long walk to the nearby village.

  We didn’t get far, however.

  “Before we take our leisurely perambulation through the English countryside,” said Holmes, “I suggest we consult with Mr. Randolph Gatts, who has so recently adopted Elmswell railway station as his favoured begging spot.”

  It must have been a lucrative patch of begging turf, for on closer inspection I noticed that Gatts was the least grimy tramp I had ever encountered. Clean-shaven, his newly-cut hair glistening with lemon-scented cream, he sat with an air of superiority in front of the station’s decorative flower boxes, his nose angled arrogantly skywards. Gatts’s clothes were not at all unstylish, either, as well as being crisply ironed and redolent of washing detergent.

  “A singular chap, indeed,” said Holmes before introducing himself to the imperious tramp.

  Gatts looked at us along his upturned nose. “Yes, I’ve ’eard of you, Mister Sherlock ’Olmes. Or is it ’Olmes the Meddler?” he sneered, his accent purely Cockney.

  “Quite,” said Holmes, not in the least put out by Gatts’ insolent tone. “We were wondering if you might answer one or two questions for us.”

  In reply, the tramp smiled unpleasantly, presenting us with a set of stumpy black teeth. Rubbing his thumb and forefinger meaningfully together, he said, “Information don’t come for nuffin’, guv’na.”

  When Holmes produced a florin from his wallet, Gatt’s looked upon the coin with undisguised disgust. In the end, nothing short of a crown would do.

  “This morning,” asked Holmes, “did anyone come to the station and board the early London train?”

  “Aye! They did at that. Charlie Dayton parked his bicycle in the shed over there. Then ’e went onto the platform. Didn’t give me nuffin’, neither.”

  “And was Mr. Dayton the only passenger?”

  “He might’ve been.”

  Taking the hint, Holmes fished out a half-crown from his wallet.

  “Mr. Merridew came storming up on foot, his face all angry and red.”

  “By Mr. Merridew, you mean Sebastian Merridew, Charles Dayton’s employer.”

  Gatts rolled his eyes as though he were dealing with a dunce. “Sebastian Merridew’s as meek and mild a man as God ever made. He wouldn’t say ‘boo’ to a goose. No, I mean his brother, Bartholomew. Chalk and cheese, those two are. The one is as quiet as a mouse, the other’s a raging devil.”

  “So, when Bartholomew Merridew arrived on the platform,” said Holmes, “did he and Mr. Dayton talk?”

  “Talk? They had one of them verbal altercations, so I steered well clear. Even when Bartholomew Merridew’s temper isn’t ’ot, ’e’s more likely to give me a taste of ’is riding crop than a miserly farthing.”

  Holmes readied a further half-crown. “One last question, Mr. Gatts. What was Bartholomew Merridew wearing when he boarded the London train this morning?”

  “A black greatcoat wiv a woollen collar and a brown ’at wiv a brim that covered ’is eyes.”

  “You’ve been most helpful,” said Holmes, tossing the tramp the half-crown.

  * * *

  We strode along an arrow-straight lane, hemmed in by wayside hedgerows. The road was speckled with pieces of clunch, the chalk-like rock which had set us on the trail of Bartholomew Merridew, the man apparently implicated in Charles Dayton’s murder.

  “What did you think of our friend, Mr. Gatts?” Holmes asked.

  “I must admit,” I said, puffing as I attempted to keep up with Holmes’s enthusiastic pace, “the man seems as pampered and perfumed as any London dandy.”

  “Which makes me wonder how such an unlikable beggar could be so apparently successful at his profession. And what did you make of his testimony?”

  “If Bartholomew Merridew did indeed follow Charles Dayton to London, that would explain why Dayton tried to shake him off and come to us via Waterloo.”

  “So it would appear. All we need do now is make the acquaintance of this Bartholomew chap, and I do believe our sojourn in the countryside will come to a successful end. But we must hurry, for even if Lestrade doesn’t discover identification documents on Charles Dayton’s body, he can’t fail to find the stub of a return ticket to Elmswell on the dead man’s person.”

  Strangely enough, our meeting with Bartholomew Merridew occurred sooner than expected. The lane to Elmswell took a sharp dog-leg, and there ahead of us was a fine village church dating from Elmswell’s pre-eminent era as a market town. While I admired the architecture of the medieval church, Holmes was eying a gang of men digging out a drainage ditch at the side of the road. The excavation disappeared under a field entrance that ended at a farm gate. Evidently the drainage pipe running under the entranceway was blocked. Yet what had really gained Holmes’s attention was the greatcoat lying over the top bar of the gate and the floppy brown hat hanging from the gatepost.

  Leaving his overnight bag in the middle of the road, Holmes jumped the drainage ditch, much to the bemusement of the labourers. He was examining the hat when its owner - munching on a sandwich and disturbed in the mi
dst of his lunch - suddenly stood up on the other side of the hedgerow.

  “What the devil’s this?” cried a man with the most villainous features I had ever seen. His hair was jet black, his eyebrows long pointed triangles, and his moustache was a pencil-thin affair, twisted upwards at either end.

  As amiably as could be, Holmes said, “Bartholomew Merridew, I presume.”

  “You seem to have the drop on me, sir,” the man snarled back. His response was made all the more threatening when he slapped a riding crop across the top of the hedgerow.

  “The name’s Holmes. Sherlock Holmes. And this is my associate, Dr. Watson.”

  “Really? Then I do know you two - but only by reputation. You’re a couple of London toffs, busy-bodies, probably sent for by my spineless brother Sebastian to accuse me as the vandaliser of his property.”

  I was about to inform Bartholomew Merridew that the case was far more serious than one of simple vandalism, but Holmes stayed me with an all but imperceptible shake of the head.

  Turning his attention to the greatcoat lying across the farm gate, Holmes said, “I perceive this is a garment of quality,” and he ran his fingers down the material of the coat.

  Bartholomew Merridew rushed to the gate, his riding crop held high. “I don’t know what jackanapes trick you’re playing, but touch my greatcoat again and I’ll thrash both of you within an inch of your lives.”

  With a disarming gesture Holmes backed away, picked up his overnight bag, and we continued our brisk walk to the village. Behind us, Bartholomew Merridew was cursing the ditch diggers, threatening them with his riding crop if they didn’t put their backs into the work.

  “The man’s an absolute brute,” I said, but Holmes was not listening. Introspection had once again overtaken him as he examined the fingers with which he had touched Bartholomew Merridew’s greatcoat.

  “What have you discovered?” I enquired, and Holmes showed me a set of clean, but otherwise unremarkable, fingertips.

  “This case is a curious one,” said Holmes, then added: “I think we should find somewhere to stay for the night.”

  * * *

  After our frankly bizarre meeting with Bartholomew Merridew, a further surprise was in store. On the outskirts of Elmswell, set amidst a row of labourers’ tenements, we came across the Penny-Farthing public house. The sign hanging above the doorway bore a painted likeness of the obsolete conveyance of the same name.

  Holmes tugged at my sleeve, pointed to the pub sign, but the import of Holmes’s gesture took some time to register.

  “This seedy looking establishment explains why Charles Dayton, with his dying strength, extracted a penny and a farthing from his wallet,” said Holmes. “He was guiding us here. It’s too dilapidated a public house to cater for board and lodgers. However, let’s enter under the pretext of asking for directions to an inn which does offer such accommodation.”

  The Penny-Farthing turned out to be as rough on the inside as it looked from outside. Dressed in our city clothes and weighed down by our luggage, Holmes and I were much out of place as we crossed the sawdust-strewn floor. In spite of the sudden hush, we gave our hearty hellos to the rustic labourers who sat huddled around the pub’s roughly-hewn tables.

  At the bar, Holmes ordered two glasses of beer from a pretty-faced barmaid, then pushed a half-sovereign coin across the counter.

  The girl looked down at what must have seemed to her a small fortune. “We have no change for that, sir.”

  “For a little information,” said Holmes. “I shall need no change.” And in hushed tones, having gained the young woman’s attention, Holmes proceeded to conduct his interrogation.

  As we drank our beer, the barmaid informed us that the Penny-Farthing was owned by Bartholomew Merridew. This was a fact I reckoned to be of the utmost significance, since our dead client had led us here. Under Holmes’s further questioning, she told us that the influence of the Merridew brothers had divided Elmswell. For it transpired that Bartholomew was somewhat of a Luddite, averse to the machinery that was revolutionising England’s agricultural landscape. In the village, he drew his support from the rural poor who feared being replaced by machines. His brother Sebastian, on the other hand, was more forward thinking and had recently streamlined his workforce through the acquisition of a mechanised seed planter and a baling machine. He drew his support from the budding population of gentleman farmers in Elmswell, men who were usually to be found ensconced in the Wheat Sheaf Inn, a public house owned by Sebastian Merridew. This public house was situated on the High Street, and was apparently a place where two weary travellers could rest up for the night.

  We finished off our beers, wished good health and prosperity to our hostess and the pub’s raggedy patrons, and made our way to the High Street, a street that boasted a great variety of architectural designs, including everything from timber-framed Tudor to Victorian Gothic.

  The Wheat Sheaf Inn was housed in a red-brick building of Queen Anne style. Inside, the structure had the air of a museum about it, for the interior walls were adorned with nostalgic photographs from Elmswell’s historic past. The clientele of the Wheat Sheaf Inn, however, were dressed in the most modern gentleman farmer’s attire and spoke in refined accents.

  Holmes soon got into friendly repartee with the men at the bar. He explained away our presence in Elmswell by saying that we were writing a guidebook on the Hertfordshire countryside and that we wished to speak to Mr. Sebastian Merridew, the owner of the Wheat Sheaf Inn, with a view to including his establishment in our book.

  When asked how he liked Elmswell so far, Holmes was in his element, using the opportunity to subtly elicit from those around him the information he deemed pertinent to the case of our deceased client.

  “My first impression of your village,” said Holmes, “has been somewhat coloured by the unique though surly gentleman of the road who demands charity from his pitch outside your train station.”

  There was an angry murmur, then one gentleman farmer said, “Randolph Gatts is a poor mascot for our village. Anything short of sixpence he throws back in the giver’s face. Yet surely someone’s spoiling him, for he boasts a veritable wardrobe of nearly new clothes.”

  “Not to mention his twice-weekly bath and shave at the Penny-Farthing,” a second farmer added.

  “Rumour has it,” said a third, “that Gatts has discovered a horde of Roman treasure, turned up by a ploughshare. I hear he could give up begging any time if he wanted.”

  “And how we wish he would be off,” the first farmer said. “Oh, that we could have old Thaddeus Chad back again.”

  “Thaddeus is now panhandling at Blinxworth Station, I hear,” said Holmes.

  “Aye! And Thaddeus is a gentleman of the road who deserves that appellation of ‘gentleman’.”

  Holmes ordered a round of drinks for everyone in the public house, and in the ensuing atmosphere of bonhomie, continued fishing for information. “We met up with Bartholomew Merridew on our way over from the train station. He was not very welcoming.”

  Our drinking companions found this last comment most amusing. “You’ve been unlucky,” said the second gentleman farmer, “in having run into the two least desirable denizens of Elmswell since your arrival.”

  “Is that so? And what makes Mr. Bartholomew Merridew so undesirable a character?”

  The first farmer explained. “Bartholomew is in constant conflict with his brother, Sebastian. Between them, the Merridew brothers own more than half of the land and property around Elmswell, and the conflict comes about over how to manage it. Bartholomew enjoys nothing more than exerting power over his fellow man. He treats his labourers like slaves, and has nothing to do with the new agricultural devices that can make agriculture less labour intensive.”

  “And Sebastian Merridew?” asked Holmes.

  “Sebastian, meek and mi
ld though he is, does stand up to his brother’s bullying ways when he steels himself. A very progressive man is Sebastian, a man who puts efficiency and profit first - as he should. But he’s seen his plans of agricultural advancement dashed time and again by his stubborn brother.”

  “There’s been some vandalism, perhaps?” Holmes prompted.

  “That’s so, indeed,” said the third farmer. “There’ve been threats from Bartholomew, agricultural machinery sabotaged, even cows poisoned. Only yesterday, we heard Sebastian suggesting to Charlie Dayton, his foreman, that he should call in a London detective to consult on the matter.”

  At that moment, the door to the Wheat Sheaf Inn swung open and in staggered a tall gentleman in a cream suit and a panama hat. He looked about himself in some agitation, spotted Holmes and myself at the bar, and lurched towards us on legs so wobbly that I thought he might collapse on the floor.

  “Is it true, Mr. Holmes?” he cried. “Is it true that Bartholomew has murdered my foreman? The station master says it is so, and that Charles was killed on his mission to engage you.”

  The man whom we rightly assumed to be Sebastian Merridew sat heavily in a vacant chair. Holmes immediately ordered the hysterical man a glass of brandy. Such was the shocking effect of the news of Charles Dayton’s murder that none of the patrons in the Wheat Sheaf Inn seemed to notice the subterfuge Holmes had played on them in claiming to be writing a guidebook to Hertfordshire.

  “We were so careful in our plans,” cried Sebastian Merridew, wringing his hands in desperation. “We were to have travelled to London together. We had even bought the tickets, but at the last minute decided I should stay behind and protect my property from Bartholomew. Charles was to shake off Bartholomew if he had the slightest suspicion the villain was following him.”

  As I administered brandy to the nerve-stricken man, Holmes said, “It appears, Watson, that Mr. Dayton was acting on behalf of Mr. Merridew as his agent.”

  “’Twas futile!” Sebastian Merridew wailed. “’Twas futile!” And with that he burst into tears.

  Once more the door to the Wheat Sheaf Inn suddenly burst open, and the dirty face of a village idler peered around the jamb. “It’s Scotland Yard,” he shouted over the hubbub caused by the revelations of Dayton’s murder. “They’re arresting Bartholomew Merridew at the Penny-Farthing.”