The Mammoth Book of the Lost Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes

by Denis O. Smith

  “The two people I have been closest to in the last year!” she cried in anguish, clinging on to me for support. “Both dead! Who could have done such a terrible thing?”

  “Have no doubts,” I replied, “Mr Holmes will find out. He always does. Justice will prevail, Miss Calloway, and the guilty shall not escape!”

  Once in the kitchen, I settled her in a chair, found some brandy in a cupboard and poured out a tot for her and one for myself. I am not ashamed to say that my nerves, too, seemed shot to pieces. It had been a tremendous shock to suddenly come upon those lifeless bodies lying in that peaceful woodland glade, and I could scarcely comprehend the matter any more than my distraught companion could. I found a piece of paper in the professor’s study, wrote a brief note, in which I mentioned Holmes’s name, and gave it to the gardener, then returned to the kitchen. The fire there had all but gone out, so I set about rekindling it with paper and sticks, so that I could boil a kettle. While I was doing this, and Miss Calloway sat watching me in a sort of numb silence, the cook, Mrs Wheeler, returned. I explained to her briefly what had happened and, after coping with her momentary hysterics, left Miss Calloway in her care and hurried down the garden again to see what Sherlock Holmes was doing.

  When I surmounted the ridge immediately before the woodland glade, I saw that Holmes was down on his hands and knees at the far side of the clearing, inspecting something on the ground. For some time he moved about in this fashion, like a hound following a scent, then he eventually stood up and turned to me, a slight frown on his face. “I have made a broad sweep round the whole area,” said he, “to verify one or two points.” I told him that Mrs Wheeler had returned and was looking after his client, and he nodded his head. “I am glad you have come back, Watson. You can hold the fort here, if you wouldn’t mind, as I wish to look at something in the house. I shouldn’t be more than five minutes.”

  It gave me a strange, eerie feeling, to be left alone in that silent, fog-shrouded glade, with two men lying dead on the grass at my feet. Why had these two – an old man and a young man – been killed in this strange, unforeseen way? What was the meaning of that sinister hangman’s noose that hung, like a symbol of death and retribution, over this terrible scene? Backwards and forwards I paced round the edge of the clearing, unable to rest, either mentally or physically. What, I wondered, did Sherlock Holmes make of it all? What could anyone make of it? Would this be the one occasion when even Holmes was lost for an answer, when the mystery was too dark even for his great analytical skills to unravel?

  My friend was away a little longer than he had predicted, but when he returned the frown had gone from his face and he seemed almost relaxed. “I have found what I was looking for,” said he in answer to my query. “My case is complete.”

  “What do you mean by ‘complete’?” I asked in amazement.

  “Simply that I believe I now know all that there is to know about the matter.”

  “What! You know who killed Professor Palfreyman?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Martin?”

  “Yes.”

  “And why they were killed in different ways?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the meaning of that hangman’s noose?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do we do next, then?”

  “We sit on that log and smoke our pipes, Watson! We can do nothing further until the police arrive, and must hope that they send someone with more than just sawdust in his head! There is nothing I find so wearying and tiresome as having to explain everything ten times over before I am understood!”

  “I will not ask you any more questions, then, until the police arrive,” I said.

  “Good man!” cried my friend, filling his pipe with tobacco and putting a match to it. “That is considerate of you!” I lit my own pipe, and we sat smoking in silence for some time.

  “It seems so unfair,” I said at length, “that Miss Calloway should be involved in this dreadful business when it is really nothing whatever to do with her.”

  “Ah!” said Holmes. “The fair Georgina! I rather fancied that that was the way your thoughts were tending, old boy. But as a matter of fact she is not quite as irrelevant to the case as you perhaps suppose.”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “I’ll tell you in a moment. I think I hear the heavy tread of regulation police boots!” He knocked out his pipe and sprang to his feet. “I must warn them to avoid obliterating the footprints on the path,” he called over his shoulder as he hurried off to meet them.

  A few moments later, he reappeared in the company of four uniformed policemen and a tall, flaxen-haired man whom I recognized at once as our old friend Inspector Gregson, the Scotland Yard detective. He greeted me amiably and we shook hands. “You have arrived very promptly,” I remarked. “Were you already at Beckenham?”

  “No, Penge. But I got a message that something was afoot down here, and when I heard that Mr Holmes was involved, thought it would be worth my while to take a look. I’m now officially in charge of the case.” The policeman surveyed the scene for a moment, then he bent down and examined each of the bodies in turn. “This older man seems to have had his skull crushed in at the back,” said he. “This large stone near his head has blood on it, so that appears to be what killed him. This younger man – why, bless my soul! – he’s been shot through the heart!” He stood up and shook his head. “It looks as if there is some kind of homicidal maniac on the loose!”

  “I think not,” said Holmes. “Things are not quite as they appear.”

  “You don’t think the murderer is likely to strike again?”

  “No.”

  “You sound very sure.”

  “I am. Incidentally, Gregson, the revolver that fired the shot that killed the younger man is over there on the ground, near the edge of the clearing. I have not moved anything, but left it all for you to see.”

  The policeman walked over, picked up the pistol and examined it for a moment. “Only one shot discharged,” he said aloud. “I wonder why the murderer left it here for us to find?” He turned to Holmes, with a frown of puzzlement on his features. “What on earth has been happening here, Mr Holmes?” he asked. “Who are these men? What are they doing here, lying dead in the middle of this wood? Who killed them? And what the devil is that noose doing there?”

  “I will tell you,” said Sherlock Holmes, “but it will take me a few minutes, so you must be patient.”

  Gregson nodded. He dismissed the four constables, instructing two of them to guard the front gate of the cottage and not let anyone in or out, and the other two to perform a similar duty at the gate leading from the back garden to the wood. “And don’t trample down any of those footprints on the path!” he added with a glance at Holmes. “Now, Mr Holmes,” he said, “I am all ears.”

  Briefly, then, Holmes described for the policeman Professor Palfreyman’s career, his colleagues at the university and the enduring, if unjustified, guilt the professor had felt for the death of his colleague, John Strange, thirty-odd years previously, which had caused him such mental anguish. He then explained Georgina Calloway’s connection with the professor, how she had come to move into Bluebell Cottage the year before, and the chief incidents during the year, including the arrival in the post of the anonymous letters and the tile. Finally, he mentioned the account that the professor had written for Miss Calloway of what had occurred in Western Macedonia.

  “I see,” said Gregson, taking off his hat and scratching his head. “In the light of all that, things are beginning to look a little different. If we try to reconstruct what has happened here, then, it seems that after writing his account for Miss Calloway to read after his death, the professor changed his mind and left it for her to read now. That suggests to me the possibility that he felt he had had enough of life, and had decided to end it. He therefore came here, to what you tell me was his favourite spot in the woods, and rigged up that noose with the intention of hanging himself. It’s a sad
business, but not so unusual, if truth be told. A lot of the bodies fished out of the Thames each year are of those who felt they had had enough of life, and had deliberately flung themselves into the river.”

  “No doubt. But in this case, of course, the professor did not in fact hang himself, so the analogy with bodies in the Thames does not really apply. What do you make of the presence of the younger man, Timothy Martin?”

  “I’m not sure. Do you know anything about the gun that killed him?”

  “Not specifically. But Miss Calloway mentioned to us that Professor Palfreyman had a small pocket pistol, which is what that is, so I take it that that is the professor’s.”

  “I see. Although, of course, just because the gun is his, it doesn’t prove that he fired it.”

  “No,” said Holmes, “but other evidence strongly suggests it. If you examine the professor’s right hand, with your nose as well as your eye, you will detect a strong smell of gunpowder. It is an old gun, and he was using old cartridges, and the powder has leaked backwards out of the chamber. There is a slight burn on his index finger, near where it meets the thumb.”

  Inspector Gregson did as Holmes suggested, and after a moment nodded his head. “You are quite right, Mr Holmes. I agree completely. There is a singe mark in the crook of the thumb. Therefore Professor Palfreyman fired the shot that killed Mr Martin. I think we must conclude then,” he continued after a moment, resuming his seat on the log, “that, as Professor Palfreyman was about to hang himself, Martin arrived and tried to dissuade him. But by then, I suppose, the professor was so determined to do away with himself that he resented the other man’s interference, drew his gun and threatened him with it. Martin probably persisted – as anyone would in the circumstances – and the professor lost his temper and shot him. These would-be suicides can be uncommonly determined, you know. Then I think what must have happened is that the burn on the professor’s hand caused him to fling the gun away – which is why it was lying several yards over there – as well as causing him to stagger backwards, trip over and crack his skull on that little rock. Do you agree with that analysis?”

  “No. The only part I agree with is that the burn on his hand caused him to drop the gun, and that the burn and slight recoil of the gun may have contributed to his falling backwards. But why did he not break his fall with his hand or his elbow? And although his head undoubtedly struck that stone – the fresh blood on it declares as much – such a blow would not, in my opinion, have caused such a terrible wound as the back of his head displays. But let us leave that for a moment, and consider something else. How was it, do you suppose, that Martin arrived here just as Professor Palfreyman was about to hang himself?”

  “I don’t see that as a very important point,” Gregson replied in surprise. “No doubt he called at the house, and someone there told him the professor had taken a walk into the woods, so he followed him and found him about to hang himself.”

  “But there was no one in the house then, Gregson. Miss Calloway was in Baker Street, consulting me, and the cook was away visiting her sister in Norwood. The house was empty.”

  “Then perhaps seeing that the professor was not at home, Martin guessed where he might have gone to, and came this way.”

  “But as I showed you earlier, there was only one set of footprints on the muddy path before we arrived here.”

  “Then one of the two men must have come by a different route from the house.”

  “There is no other route. There is a fence at the bottom of the garden, and anyone wishing to pass from the garden to the wood must pass through the wicket gate in that fence.”

  “Then one of them – Martin, I suppose – must have come not from the house at all, but directly through the woods from the road.”

  “Why should he do that?”

  “Because he heard something from the woods, or saw something.”

  “The wood is very dense between here and the road. It is not possible to see this spot from the road, and although the road is not far away, it is too far, in my opinion, for any but the loudest of sounds to be heard there. Besides, this speculation is superfluous, for I have made a very wide sweep of the whole area around this glade, and there is not a single footprint anywhere about, not one. Believe me, Gregson, when I say I would stake my reputation – my entire life’s work – on it!”

  “If you say so, Mr Holmes,” said Gregson after a moment, “then that is good enough for me. But do you realize where your argument leads? We have two men murdered in this isolated spot, and yet we have, according to you, not three sets of footprints leading here, as I had first expected to find, being those of Palfreyman, Martin and their murderer, nor yet two sets of prints, which according to my later theory would be those of Palfreyman and Martin, but only one set of prints. It is completely impossible! Indeed, it is not only impossible, it is absurd!”

  “Yes,” said Holmes, in a dry tone. “It does appear on the face of it to be impossible. You’re a good man, Gregson, one of the best, and I have gone carefully through all the evidence, so that when I tell you what really happened here, you will understand and believe me. With a lesser man, I probably shouldn’t have bothered.”

  Inspector Gregson took a small cigar from his waistcoat pocket, struck a match and lit it. “Go on,” he said. “I am still all ears.”

  “Very well,” said Holmes. “What we have here is a clear case of murder.”

  “Well, yes, of course,” returned Gregson. “We know that Professor Palfreyman murdered young Martin. As you yourself agreed, the professor shot him with his pistol.”

  Holmes shook his head. “No,” said he, “you have it the wrong way about. Palfreyman did not murder Martin. On the contrary, Martin murdered Palfreyman.”

  “What!”

  “It is one of the most callous, calculated, cold-blooded murders I have ever encountered. What you see here before you is, apart, of course, from his own death, the culmination of Martin’s scheme for murder which I believe he planned many months ago.”

  “You amaze me, Holmes!” I cried. “I cannot believe what you are saying! How on earth do you arrive at that conclusion?”

  “I will tell you my reasoning, Watson, and you can see if you can find any flaw in it. First, let us return to the matter of the footprints. As you remarked, Gregson, the fact that there appeared to be but one set of footprints leading here seemed an impossibility. There is, however, one way in which it could have come about, and that is if one of the two men was in fact carrying the other. Now, in what circumstances might that occur? Surely only if one of them was incapacitated, probably by being unconscious.

  “I had noted the single set of footprints earlier, when the three of us first came along the path, but gave it little thought at first. I assumed the footprints were those of the professor, and the fact that there were prints leading into the wood, but none coming back, suggested that – unless he had gone further afield – we might find him sitting smoking his pipe in the woods, as Miss Calloway had told us he often did. Then, however, I noticed an odd thing: the footprints in question were unusually deep – much deeper than either Dr Watson’s or my own – with the heels especially marked. This suggested that the man that made them was carrying an exceptionally heavy burden of some sort. My attention having been drawn to this curious feature, I then observed that although, to judge by his shoe size, the man was of roughly average stature, the footprints were often much closer together than one would expect, which also suggested that he was struggling with a heavy burden.

  “When we reached this clearing, and found the two dead men, I examined their shoes and established that the footprints on the path had been made by Martin. There were no other footprints anywhere about in the woods surrounding the clearing, so it was evident that, as I suspected by then, Martin had carried the professor here. The more I considered the matter, the more it seemed crystal clear that Martin had intended to murder the professor by hanging, to make it appear to have been a case of suicide. Mart
in had often visited Bluebell Cottage, and would be familiar with the routine of the household, so he would know that the cook always went over to Norwood to see her sister on Wednesday morning. When Miss Calloway told him that she was going to consult me this morning, he would have realized that there would be no one but the professor in the house, and he would thus have the opportunity he needed to put his evil scheme into effect. He must therefore have called in at the cottage on some pretext or other, and been let in by the professor himself. But how did he manage to subdue the professor in order to get him out here? Clearly, by striking him on the back of the head, probably as the professor sat at his desk. This is what would have caused that very severe wound to the professor’s head, which simply falling over and banging his head on that stone over there could never have done.

  “What I think must have happened when they reached the clearing here is that Martin dropped the professor to the ground while he rigged up that noose on the branch of the tree. But the professor, who was, in a sense, dying at that moment, and would probably not have lived another ten minutes under any circumstances, must have regained consciousness sufficiently to see what Martin was doing. When Martin turned back to him, the professor had drawn his pistol – it is very small and weighs little, which would explain why Martin failed to notice that it was in the professor’s jacket pocket – and shot his assailant with it at point-blank range. The recoil and the burn on his hand made him fling the gun to one side and stagger backwards, where he fell to the ground and struck his head on that stone, which finished him off. It is because he was so severely injured, and probably scarcely conscious, that he was unable to break his fall. He may even have been dead before his body struck the ground. Therefore, to sum up: Martin murdered Palfreyman, and although Palfreyman undoubtedly shot and killed Martin, that was not, legally speaking, an act of murder, as he was acting in self-defence. That, I believe, is what happened.”