“Evidently not. No doubt he forebode from rifling through his wife’s recent correspondence, lest he leave his own finger marks on any incriminating envelopes.”
Holmes produced his oily black clay pipe, filled it with black shag, and applied a match. Soon he was smoking thoughtfully and peering it up at the ceiling with an increasingly dreamy expression.
I enquired, “Are you not going to open the letter?”
“No, not at this time,” replied Holmes in that distracted tone I knew so well.
“I imagine that it may contain the ultimate solutions to this maddening mystery.”
“No doubt you are correct, Watson. But I prefer to apply my own intellect to the remaining skeins of the problem at hand. To open this envelope now would be to cheat me of one of the most challenging schemes I have ever attempted to unravel.”
“Understandable, I suppose. But to open it later would be anticlimactic.”
“Perhaps. But if it contains what I suspect it might, any threads that escape me will be tied up neatly. But I prefer to do my own spinning, just as does the lowly spider.”
With that, Sherlock Holmes fell into a reverie of intense contemplation. Seeing the direction in which his attention trended, I quietly bid him a goodnight, promising to return if summoned before then.
“I do not think I will require it, but I thank you for your kind indulgence, Watson.”
I left without another word.
* * *
Holmes rang me up less that twenty-four hours later. His tone was a trifle disappointed, I thought, as he asked if I would come round to see him.
“I shall be over directly,” I promised.
Upon my arrival, I discovered Holmes seated in the identical posture as the day before. His attire was different, although his thin hair was somewhat unkempt. I imagine he had not slept in the interim, but I could never determine the truth of that assumption.
“You appear to be in a less-than-enthusiastic mood,” I suggested as I took a chair facing my friend.
“It is all dreadfully dreary,” he proclaimed in a subdued voice.
“The fact of murder?”
“The now-tattered cobweb that underlies this particular chain of useless destruction,” he returned, offering the now open letter written by the deceased Mrs. Gideon Chandler.
Before I could read it, Holmes offered, “The key to the whole thing lay in the detestable lie that Mr. Chandler told during our brief association. Namely, that his wife’s maiden name was Dowling.”
“You suspected otherwise?”
“Only in the sense that I am always on the lookout for deceit, even in the most innocuous statements. It did not take me a very long prowl through official records to determine that Mrs. Chandler had, during infancy, briefly borne the last name of Chalmers.”
“Ah! She is related to the first victim then?”
“And the second. It appears that Nathan Chalmers and Arthur Chambers were brothers, who were separated at a very young age, as was Virginia Chalmers, who happened to be an infant at the time. When they were separated, their names were changed, apparently by the parent who surrendered them to the orphanage. Chandler was the last name assigned to the brother who in time became Gideon Chandler, chemist.”
“Peculiar.”
“Sordid,” corrected Holmes. “Merely sordid. The mother had died of consumption after giving birth to four children, all of whom were scattered to the winds by their father, an importer named Crowninshield, who did not care to raise them alone, nor bestir himself to find a proper wife to carry on in the stead of his first spouse. As is often the custom in these matters, the newly renamed Virginia Chalmers was given the name of her adoptive parents, and grew up never suspecting that her last name was not Dowling.”
“Then Chandler did not lie.”
“He lied, for he had lately discovered the awful truth - namely, that he had accidentally married his own sister.”
“My word!”
“Yes. It is a tragedy from start to finish. But it grew more horrible in the unfolding, for when the recalcitrant father had at last slipped into his dotage, he commenced a search for his abandoned children. Unfortunately for all concerned, he uncovered Gideon Chandler first. Learning of his true origins, Chandler plunged into the dusty records of a certain orphanage and was staggered - and no doubt horrified - to discover that he had wed his unsuspected sister, whom he had not beheld since her infancy. But that was not the worst of it. He and the other three Crowninshield siblings stood to come into a great deal of money once the repentant father rewrote his will accordingly.
“Promising to help locate the other three former foundlings, Mr. Chandler instead formulated a rather diabolical scheme to do away with them all, leaving him the sole Crowninshield heir - and incidentally burying from public discovery his acute marital embarrassment, which, I suspect, was his overriding motivation.”
“Ghastly,” I gasped out.
“Merely sordid,” reminded Holmes. His tone was listless. I imagine he had suspected more exotic motivations underlay the situation, before it had resolved itself.
“But how did the wife uncover the truth?” I enquired.
“It is all in her letter. You may read it for yourself. For myself, I am both sickened and bored by the whole grotesque affair. Would that the criminal mind be as ingenious as I sometimes imagine it to be. In this case, the ingenuity at work is overwhelmed by the banality of the parties involved, as well as by their respective motivations.”
“What of the poisons? You can scarcely deny the cleverness with which the poisoner operated.”
“Nor do I. The problem was as engaging as any I have ever encountered. That it led to such ugly doings is what I object to. The poison was, as I suspected, a salt of ferrocyanic and carbonate. The clever chemist had merely added differently colored dyes to the gum mucilage in order retard the poison’s effects long enough for the doomed recipient to post the completed survey. This was where experimentation played a significant role. The choice of blue substances was doubtless intended to create an effect that the villain hoped would confuse the inevitable police investigation.”
“He reckoned without Sherlock Holmes,” I commented.
“I have learned that Gideon Chandler died without speaking further. Not that there is any significant loss attending his passing. Now, you may read the letter Watson. If you are so inclined.”
I remain captivated and intrigued, so I did exactly that.
It was a tangle, one not worth recapitulating in full.
Mrs. Chandler had been oblivious to her own origins at the start. It happened that her husband belonged to that group of people who are afflicted with nightmares. Once, she was startled to be aroused in the deepest part of night by Chandler’s thrashing about wildly, crying out on his sleep, “Sister! I married my own sister!”
She woke him and repeated the blurted outcry, but Chandler professed ignorance, dismissing the words as the product of a bad dream.
Thereafter, she noticed a creeping aloofness in his manner, which gradually shaded into a sullen coldness. In short order, insomnia overtook them. One night, Mrs. Chandler awoke to discover herself alone in the martial bed. Creeping downstairs, she found him pacing his study, muttering over and over, “My own sister - my lawful wife! How could such a queer fate befoul my existence?”
Unnoticed, she crept back to the bed chamber, where she resolved to seek her own origins, in which she had hitherto showed scant interest, having lived up until then a fortunate life.
Virginia Chandler’s private investigations concluded just days before Arthur Chambers was found dead. The matter of the blue-tinted tongue suggested to her an exotic poison, and her thoughts inevitable careened in the direction of her chemist spouse. Naturally, she could scarcely credit her theory. Then Nathan Chalmers was d
one away with. Straight away, she resolved to write Sherlock Holmes and lay all facts before him - but alas, too late. She sensed that she might be the next to turn up with a discolored tongue, and took precautions with her food and drink, but did not imagine that an innocent survey might be the deliverer of her own doom - as it had for the others, her unsuspected brothers.
The rest was merely lamentations and questions. She, too, was aghast at the realization that her husband was in truth her oldest brother. In her despair, she wrote to Holmes, requesting assistance in the queer affair.
Folding the note, I wondered, “Why, on that murderous morning, didn’t Chadler post the fatal letter, thus disposing of the murder weapon?”
“Evidently, the wife attended to her correspondence very late, presumably well after her faithless husband’s bedtime, for he was a working man who rose at an early hour, and she a late riser. As with all schemers, his brain was filled with mental rehearsals of how he would act upon discovering the cold corpse in the morning. Chandler neglected to consider the possibility that his carefully-executed scheme would have been penetrated in its essential details.”
“He expected an opportunity to post the deadly letter after the body was carried off, I take it.”
“Goaded by me, in his agitation Chandler handed the evidence over,” noted Holmes with satisfaction.
“I suppose that no other fatal letters were intercepted.”
A slow, tired sigh carried with it the essence of pipe tobacco. “No, Watson. Presumably, there are none. The circle has been closed.”
“What of the repentant father?”
“Mercifully, Mr. Meldrum Crowninshield passed away in his sleep the very night his last surviving son succumbed to his own diabolical poison. I am informed that the tip of Crowninshield’s own tongue was also an exquisite Turquoise.”
“Remarkable. The circle has indeed been closed. There will be no need for Fleet Street to learn all the dreary details.”
“Why add to the common misery?” murmured Holmes. “Especially when so many are so industriously dedicated to multiplying it.”
I could think of no suitable rejoinder, and so let my silence speak for me.
The Parsimonious Peacekeeper
by Thaddeus Tuffentsamer
The winter of late 1902 was a particularly brutal and nasty affair that plunged many into violent moods of depression and despair. My practice saw a noticeably propitious incline of clientele due to the general mood overhanging the city. While that did well for me, my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was not so fortunate.
His consulting had seen decline both personally, as well as from the Yard. The general consensus was that it was simply too cold for the nefarious lot of the greater London area to engage in such said activities.
I found these times to be the most harrowing, as I knew all too well his need for mental stimulation, as well as the depths he would plunge to in order to relieve himself of the burden of boredom.
I decided to close my practice for the day and impose myself upon him, hoping to provide a suitable distraction, if only to get him outside.
As I entered 221 Baker Street, Mrs. Hudson was just coming down the steps leading from my old flat.
“Good to see you, Doctor.”
“And you as well, Mrs. Hudson.”
“The breakfast table is set with an extra place for you this morning.”
I stopped short, surprised by this. “Why is that?”
“Mr. Holmes told me to. He said that you would be round this morning for breakfast.”
I must have looked a sight to her with my eyebrows furrowed so tightly together. I then let out a short sigh and, relaxing my eyebrows, smiled. “Of course, he did,” I replied.
She turned her head away and then quickly looked upon me again. “Something looks different about you, Doctor.”
“Indeed, something is.”
She continued to study my face and then gave way to a smile, as what she had been looking for revealed itself. “You’ve restyled your moustache. You’ve gone and trimmed the side tips off.”
“You are correct, Mrs. Hudson. I decided to try a straight edged look for the time being.”
“You look like an American,” she said and went back into the rear of the house.
I traversed the seventeen steps leading up to my dear friend. No sooner had I reached out for the doorknob then I heard his voice from the opposite side.
“Come in, Watson.”
I did as I had been instructed and gladly removed my coat and bowler, hanging them on the hooks. I walked to the mantel and looked to see if there was anything of interest jackknifed to it. Satisfying myself that there wasn’t, I joined Holmes at the table.
He gestured grandly to the food before me. “Help yourself to breakfast, Watson, as you have not yet eaten.”
I did not question as to how he knew that. I simply acknowledged the fact that he did. I made a plate of eggs and meat and poured myself a cup of coffee to accompany it. I ate happily.
“You have plans for today?” he asked.
I leaned into the back of the chair. “Nothing special,” I said, trying for the entire world to seem nonchalant. “I was simply passing by and decided to drop in.”
“That, my dear Watson, is untrue. Let me expound. You have made plans for spending time with me today. You have, in fact, closed your practice and have no doubt planned to present some little problem for me, hoping I would become intrigued so as to go off with you and thereby avoid turning to my... box.”
“Why ever do you say that, Holmes?”
“Simple. Your shoes give you away.”
“My shoes?”
“Indeed. Those are not the shoes you wear to your practice. They are old, though not worn through. You would never present them to your patients in a professional setting. You aren’t ready to discard them just yet, as there is still life in them, so you have relegated them to the ones you wear when you plan to spend the day walking. So be it. You have decided to come see me and drag me away from here,” he said, gesturing the expanse of the sitting room.
“I admit that you are correct on all accounts, but may I ask how you knew that I would be here today? How did you know to have Mrs. Hudson set a place for me?”
“You are predictable.”
“Indeed, and how so exactly?”
“We have not communicated for the past several days. Yesterday, you sent me a general note to express your wishes and inquire about my well-being. I have not ignored you, by the way. I simply saw no need to respond. Since I did not, you would have no choice in your mind but to follow through with your concerns and come to see how I’m doing in person.”
I simply stared at him.
“I am fine, by the way,” he added.
“Again, you are correct on all accounts. With that so, can I get you out of these rooms?”
He stretched out his long legs turned his face away from me, looking toward the window. “No.”
“So be it. But I dare say, my dear fellow, that your observational skills are suffering at the moment...”
He cut me off with a wave of his hand. “There was no reason to mention the manner in which you have groomed your moustache. You are aware that you have trimmed it, and looking at you, I am likewise aware of it. Why waste either of our words in a superfluous observation over your personal hygiene?”
“There are times when your logic can be infuriating!”
“I will not challenge that,” he said, a wide smile spreading out over his lips.
“So, you will change your mind then and accompany me?”
He slowly turned his head back round to look at me. “No.”
“I give up!” I said with frustration in my tone.
“In that case, you have gotten the point.”
Holmes rose, walked to his chair by the fireplace, reached out to his pipe, and picked it up gingerly. He slowly twirled it between his long fingers, not committing to filling and lighting it. “For a few more minutes, at least,” he said finally.
“How is that, then?”
“I am expecting a client in a moment.”
“And here I came to distract you, Holmes.”
“Rather, you came upon my request to assist me with a client.”
I began to ask him how that could be the case, since he could not possibly know I was coming. But, looking at the plate of food in my hand, combined with yesterday’s note that he’d just mentioned, I knew better than to even ask the question.
No sooner had the thought run through my mind than Mrs. Hudson ushered in his client.
He was a short, thin, nervous-looking individual. He came in bowing and wringing his hat in his hands. He was not a peasant, but neither was he a man of means. Though not slovenly in appearance, his clothing had seen better days. It was also obvious that shaves and haircuts were few and far between.
Holmes pointed to the chair opposite his. “Pray, good fellow, sit down and tell me what is troubling you.”
The man did as he had been instructed. He had a meek demeanor and sallow countenance. He placed his hands in his lap. “Thank you, Mr., ’Olmes. Me name’s Neuburry, Reginald Neuburry. I am in sore straights, Mr. ’Olmes. Sore straights, indeed, sir.”
“You are a flower seller in the lower Islington district.”
Neuburry looked up, startled. “Yes, guv’nor, but how could you be in knowledge of that?”
Holmes smiled reassuringly at him. “Your vocation is obvious, as you have pollen all over your coat. That does not come from someone who has purchased a bouquet to bring home to his wife, but rather from someone who constantly has flowers clutched to his breast. It is winter, and yet you have been around flowers - a great deal of them. Finally, you have dried petals under your lapels which also add to the confirmation of your career.”
The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories - Part X Page 46