Sherlock Holmes and the Telephone Murder Mystery

by John Hall

  ‘And the house was similarly quiet?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘I suppose you would not have noticed anyone looking out of a window, say?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Gregson unexpectedly. ‘I was sketching the house, you see.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It is not my usual sort of subject, I must confess. I favour the more modern school. But the old place looked so quiet and peaceful – just like a sepia plate in a popular magazine, with some trite caption – “Does dear old England slumber still?” – that kind of drivel. I could not concentrate on anything more complicated by way of a subject, and so I did a rather rapid but nevertheless elegant sketch of the place. I will swear that there was no-one at any of the windows whilst I was out there working, Mr Holmes.’

  ‘And when you came inside?’

  Gregson paused. ‘Well, of course, then I put my sketch aside.’

  ‘And would not have particularly noticed anyone looking out of a window?’

  ‘Probably not. No, not then.’

  ‘And when Morgan came into the dining room, and you left to smoke a cigarette at the front door, you are certain there was nobody else in the house, so far as you could tell?’

  ‘Quite certain. I have told you that I could swear to that. The house was empty, at least downstairs.’

  ‘You see,’ said Holmes in his gentlest tones, ‘the problem which faces Watson and myself is just this – you might well have been seen entering the porch from the garden, but having once closed the outer door, you could not be seen leaving the porch. Nor could anyone in the garden have seen Morgan going in. And you have just said that you would swear that no-one inside the house saw you leave the dining room. Presumably, then, no-one inside the house would have seen Morgan go in.’ And he put his hands together, and sunk his head on to them.

  ‘I do not –’ Gregson hesitated. He thought about it for a long moment, then said, ‘Good Lord! Are you suggesting that it was I, and not Morgan, whom the murderer planned to kill?’

  ‘Well, that would certainly be one theory,’ said Holmes.

  ‘But – ! Still,’ said Gregson thoughtfully, ‘it would make a damned sight more sense. After all – well –’ and he lapsed into silence.

  ‘Have you reason to believe that anyone here wished to see you dead?’ asked Holmes.

  ‘Good Lord, no!’

  ‘You know most of the other guests here quite well?’

  ‘Most of them. I’ve known James Davenport for years, and Pountney and Tomlinson as well. I first met Morrison when he became secretary, three, or possibly four, years ago.’

  ‘And Lane? Had you met him before?’

  ‘I met him only last week, this is his first visit.’

  ‘And you have no dark secrets in your past that might account for any animosity?’

  ‘Oh, dozens. Hundreds. But no Jeremy Lanes among ‘em, thank Heaven!’

  ‘And yet you said that it made more sense? More sense to think that the murderer was planning to kill you, than that he planned to kill Morgan? Is that what you meant?’

  ‘Well.’ Gregson gave a sort of shamefaced laugh. ‘I was only thinking that there are probably more people here with reason to – to dislike me, than there are who disliked Ben. That was all.’

  ‘And again, would you like to be more specific?’

  Gregson sat in silence for a while. ‘No, sir,’ said he at last with what seemed a sudden access of resolution, ‘quite frankly, I should not. I will not deny that I have had some small differences of opinion with others who are staying in the house, but there is, I am certain, nothing that would have caused any of them to wish me dead – or at least, to wish for it so badly that they would attempt to hasten the process. I would insult them – and myself – if I thought as much.’ He hesitated. ‘Tell me,’ he added, ‘do you really believe that I am in some sort of danger?’

  ‘It is certainly a possibility, if indeed you were the murderer’s intended victim,’ said Holmes. ‘However, we may be able to mitigate the danger to some extent. We – Watson and I – shall keep an eye on you until dinner this evening.’

  ‘And thereafter?’

  Holmes smiled. ‘I shall not spoil the surprise.’ His face grew serious again. ‘But I must ask you to trust me implicitly. Whatever happens – however grave it may seem, however startling – you must not lose hope, but have confidence that everything is for the best. Can you do that, do you think?’

  ‘It is a little awkward, without knowing just what you have in mind for me,’ said Gregson. ‘But, yes – I believe that I can put a brave face on it.’

  ‘Well said!’ and Holmes shook Gregson’s hand vigorously.

  ‘I think I may go up to my room,’ said Gregson.

  I half-rose. ‘Shall I –’

  Gregson smiled. ‘I hardly think it necessary, Doctor. I shall be very careful. And I shall lock my door, you may be certain of that.’

  I glanced at Holmes, but he waved me to my chair. ‘We shall call for you towards the dinner hour,’ he told Gregson. ‘Meantime, although I would not wish to over-state the possible danger, or to alarm you unnecessarily in any way, I should keep my door bolted, as you say, until we do call for you.’

  Gregson, looking rather worried and nervous, nodded without speaking, and left the room.

  ‘Holmes,’ I said, ‘Gregson’s remark about someone disliking him, and its making more sense if they’d tried to kill him – I recall that Tomlinson said much the same sort of thing –’ and I broke off as there was a tremendous crash from the hallway.

  Holmes leapt to his feet and dashed outside. I followed, and was horrified to see Gregson huddled all in a heap at the foot of the stairs.

  Chapter Eight

  Holmes reached Gregson before I did. It was immediately obvious that the great clatter that we had heard had been caused by the umbrella stand’s being knocked over, for it lay on its side, along with a great heap of sticks, on the floor beside Gregson. But I could see that Gregson himself was already starting to get unsteadily to his feet, and there was no sign of any blood, so that I had no immediate fears for his life.

  Holmes had evidently reached much the same conclusions as I had. ‘Quick, Watson! The front door!’ he said. ‘Observe, if you have never observed before, but do nothing, and say nothing – only return and tell me what you see.’

  I rushed at once to the heavy front door, opened it, and went outside. There was no-one in the front garden but Morrison, staring gloomily at the plants, and occasionally lashing out at the lawn with his stick.

  ‘Hullo!’ he said, as I went outside. ‘Having a breath of fresh air? Me too! I am stifled inside, I confess. Not so much lack of air as lack of occupation, or perhaps lack of any apparent end to this dark business.’

  Mindful of Holmes’s admonition, I said only, ‘That gardener fellow – Evans, is it? – he is not here, then?’

  Morrison’s gloom deepened noticeably. ‘I sent him off home,’ he said shortly.

  This was something out of the ordinary; Holmes would not, I was sure, have let it go without further inquiry. ‘Indeed?’ I said.

  ‘Indeed. He had the nerve to turn up here at well after two, and plainly the worse for drink! When I very properly admonished him, he told me that some damn fool – only Evans said “kind gentleman” – had given him money to drink his health!’

  ‘I see!’ Secretly delighted, but still wanting to help the investigation, I asked, ‘Quiet out here, is it not?’

  ‘I find it very restful,’ said Morrison pointedly.

  ‘Nobody else been this way at all lately?’

  Morrison regarded me with some suspicion. ‘No. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh, no reason. Just making conversation, that was all. Well, I shall see you later, no doubt,’ and I left him staring after me, and returned to the hallway.

  Holmes and Gregson were still there, and Mrs Welsh – evidently alarmed by the noise – had joined them. ‘Mr Gregson unfortunately tripped ov
er the umbrella stand,’ Holmes was telling her as I approached, ‘but there is, as you see, no great harm done. Dr Watson will confirm that.’

  I had a hasty glance at Gregson’s head, but could see no sign of any injury. ‘There seems nothing serious, certainly,’ I said.

  Mrs Welsh sniffed in a disapproving manner. ‘Well, sir, if you say so. I’ll just set the sticks back –’

  ‘No, no!’ said Holmes quickly. ‘You have, I am sure, more than enough work in the kitchen at this hour. Dr Watson will arrange them all in orderly rows – as Virgil so deftly puts it – not merely that their vistas may charm a frivolous mind, but so that no-one else will have a similar accident. Sticks are something of a hobby of his, is that not so, Doctor?’

  ‘Oh, indeed. Absolutely. Fascinated by ’em, from being a boy,’ I said, wondering vaguely what the devil he was driving at.

  ‘And meantime, I shall take Mr Gregson into the library, so that he may rest and recover somewhat before dinner,’ Holmes went on, ‘and Dr Watson will join us as soon as he may, and check more thoroughly that all is well.’

  I suspect that Mrs Welsh felt something of the same bewilderment that I did, for she stared after Holmes as he escorted Gregson back to the library. Then, prompted doubtless by Holmes’s mention of dinner, and thoughts of preparations for the meal still to be carried out, she too disappeared through the kitchen door.

  Holmes had evidently intended me to study the distribution of the sticks carefully, and I did so accordingly, but I must confess that I was none the wiser. The stand had been pushed over when Gregson fell against it, that much was obvious, and the sticks had spilled out. Only one, the same great ash plant that I had borrowed earlier, lay a little apart, in the nook formed by the staircase and the kitchen wall.

  Still without the least idea of what I was to observe, I set the stand upright again, and replaced the sticks in it, before returning to the library.

  ‘Just take a closer look at his head, would you, Watson?’ Holmes asked as I went in.

  I examined Gregson’s head more carefully than I had done a moment before. ‘No, it is just as I thought. No break in the skin, not even any bruising that I can see.’

  ‘I took the worst of the blow on my arm,’ Gregson told me. ‘It merely glanced off my head. I was dazed for a moment, but not seriously injured, as you can see.’

  ‘Oh? Then I had better see the arm as well. No,’ I said, as he rolled up his sleeve, ‘nothing to speak of there, either.’

  ‘It hurts like the very devil!’ said Gregson. ‘It seemed as if he were using a huge club.’

  ‘It was a formidable weapon,’ I said. ‘I borrowed it – that is, I noticed it – the other day. Well, you may find that a bruise will appear on your arm later, and perhaps your head, but nothing is broken, and no great damage seems apparent.’ I straightened up. ‘Holmes, if I might have a word with you?’

  ‘In a moment, Doctor. This is surely more pressing. What exactly happened?’ Holmes asked Gregson.

  ‘I was on my way upstairs, as you know. I had reached the bottom of the staircase, when I heard some noise in the angle formed by the stair and the wall of the servants’ quarters. I started to look in there, and someone struck me with that stick.’

  ‘Where was he standing?’

  ‘He must have been behind me, or to the side. I was suddenly aware of his presence, and I threw up my arm to ward off the blow, but the force of it sent me flying into the umbrella stand.’

  ‘And your assailant made off?’

  ‘Obviously!’

  ‘You did not see who – ?’

  Gregson shook his head.

  ‘He must have moved fast!’ I said.

  ‘Indeed he must,’ said Holmes thoughtfully.

  Gregson cleared his throat delicately. ‘It rather looks as if you were right, Mr Holmes,’ he said.

  Holmes did not reply, but went over to the window and looked out. ‘We had best accompany you to your room, when you are ready, that is,’ said he at last.

  We remained in the library for a while – Holmes busy with his own inward thoughts, and Gregson rubbing his head and staring moodily out of the window. I did wonder at Holmes’s reaction, but I have learned over the years not to be surprised at anything he does, so after one or two attempts at general conversation – which were rebuffed rather curtly – I picked up the Strand which Holmes had thrown back on the shelf, and was soon absorbed in its pages.

  When the hour was sufficiently advanced to think of changing for dinner, we went upstairs together in a little party. Holmes and I left Gregson at his door, but we stayed until we heard his bolt go across, and then set off down the corridor.

  Holmes’s room was somewhat further along the corridor than mine, and as we reached my door he said, ‘I should be grateful for a private word, Watson.’

  ‘I rather thought you might,’ and I ushered him in, and waved him to a chair.

  Holmes filled his pipe, and threw his tobacco pouch over to me. ‘What think you to the attack on friend Gregson?’ he asked me. ‘Is it not a strange coincidence, Doctor? Fancy his being set upon like that so soon after we had warned him.’

  ‘Coincidence be damned!’ I said. ‘The whole thing was stage-managed.’

  ‘What!’ said Holmes in mock surprise, ‘you do not mean that he arranged it himself to corroborate our theory that he was the intended victim?’

  ‘Of course he did! Had he been hit with that ash plant, he’d have known about it all right! There was no sign of any injury at all, Holmes!’

  Holmes clapped his hands in admiration. ‘Well done, Watson! I confess, the suddenness of it threw me for the moment – I did not expect anything so audacious.’

  ‘Like a respectable clergyman in your railway compartment, who suddenly starts doing conjuring tricks?’

  Holmes laughed, and set a match to his pipe. ‘That was why I asked you to look outside. For a moment I genuinely thought that there might have been an attacker, and of course he could not have gone through the kitchen, as Mrs Welsh and the cook were in there. He must needs have gone through the front door, or be hiding in the cloakroom. I sent you to see what you might see in the garden, while I made a point of staying in the hallway with Gregson, so that the exit from the cloakroom was blocked.’

  ‘By the way, Holmes, Morrison –’

  ‘But I can at least boast that a very hasty second glance aroused my suspicions. If Gregson had been attacked from the front, by someone hiding in the angle of stair and wall, Gregson could not fail to see and identify his assailant. What is more, an assailant in there would have been trapped by Gregson’s inert form, and the litter of sticks.’

  ‘Ah, but then he might have clambered over the obstruction?’

  ‘True,’ said Holmes, ‘but that would have delayed him. We were, I think, pretty quick off the mark when we heard the noise, Watson – I was certain we should have seen anyone who had been lurking in the corner.’

  ‘But Gregson said the attack came from behind, that is to say, it was committed by someone in the hallway.’

  ‘I knew that he would say that before he did say it! He could hardly say that he had been face to face with his attacker, but not seen him, now could he? And I knew it was untrue – you saw for yourself that the sticks had been knocked over so that they all pointed into the house. Now, the stand was far enough into the angle of wall and stair to mean that it could only be knocked over that way by someone falling back out of that corner. And I knew that was not the case, as I have explained.’

  ‘It was a bold deduction, Holmes! A man who has been hit by a heavy stick does not look round to see which way he will fall! He might have staggered against the banister, hit the wall, and thus sent the sticks flying?’

  ‘He might,’ said Holmes with another laugh, ‘I suppose he might, but then he would be lying pointing in the same direction, as it were. Gregson was not – his head was pointing into the angle of the stair. In other words, he had fallen one way, and the umbrella
stand the other. Again, it may have happened that way in a rough-and-tumble attack, but it was the cumulative effect which told against it. It was, as you say, too much like a stage set – why, I tell you, Watson, I half expected the director to come prancing across the hallway and call out, “No, no, dear boy, I want much more drama in it!” As a last point, why did the supposed attacker not finish the job with a well-placed blow of the stick as Gregson lay helpless? Instead, he threw the stick into the angle of the wall! Ridiculous!’

  ‘He might have been confused by the racket and not thinking?’

  ‘Oh, come, Watson! After taking the enormous risk of attacking Gregson in broad daylight, with the house full? And then, where was this attacker just before the attack? Not on the stair, nor yet in the hallway, or Gregson must have seen him there! He was not in the kitchen, or the servants would have seen him. He might have been lurking in the downstairs cloakroom, or by the front door, but then he must needs have moved across the hallway – which is on a generous scale – with a turn of speed that would have attracted the attention of the most unobservant!

  ‘And again, what noise in the angle of the wall made Gregson look in there, if the attacker were behind him? And finally – and perhaps most telling – where were the injuries one might expect from such an assault? That “formidable weapon”, that “great club”, should surely have left one or two small bruises evident even to my layman’s eye! His hair was not even disarranged – he takes a pride in it, and you noted, by the by, that he colours it, very discreetly? No? He does. Then there was no pallor, his breathing was regular, no sign that he was even shaken by the supposed attack, much less injured! It did not fool me, much less a qualified doctor!’

  ‘I did not suspect, until I examined him,’ I said.

  ‘But when you did, it did not take you very long to reach the correct conclusion, did it? Fancy his having the nerve to try to fool us like that, Watson! No, I may have been unsettled initially, but I soon saw that the whole thing was patently a fake. He threw the ash plant into the corner with his right hand, at the same time knocking the stand over – backwards – with his left, and stretched out alongside the sticks – not among them, you observed, no doubt, he was careful not to hurt himself – in a leisurely and gentlemanly fashion.’