The Mammoth Book of the Lost Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes

by Denis O. Smith

  We sat in silence for some time after Holmes had finished speaking. If his analysis was correct, what had happened here in this quiet woodland glade seemed both too terrible and too fantastic to contemplate, yet I felt sure that, on the evidence, he must be right.

  “If you require any further proof of the truth of my view,” said Holmes after a few moments, “then you could look in Martin’s jacket pocket. He trimmed the rope with which he made the noose, and there is a small length of the rope in his pocket, along with a sharp jack-knife. There is also a mark of blood on the back of his jacket, near the shoulder, which must have come from the professor’s wound when he was being carried out here. I also took a look in the professor’s study, to see if there was any evidence there to support my theory that it was there that Martin had attacked the professor, and found among the disorder that the poker in the hearth is smeared with blood and hair. That is clearly the murder weapon. I have left it where it was, in the hearth, for you to see, Gregson. No doubt Martin left the kitchen door unlocked because he intended to return to the house to tidy up the study and conceal what had happened there.”

  “But surely,” said Gregson, “if Martin’s scheme had succeeded, and we had found the professor hanged here in the woods, our suspicions as to what had really happened would have been instantly aroused by that savage wound on the back of his head. Martin could not have supposed that we would not notice that!”

  Holmes nodded. “I doubt that he originally intended to strike the professor quite so violently. Having done so, he would probably wait until he was sure his victim was dead by hanging, and then contrive to make it look as if the noose had slipped from the tree, and the professor had fallen and struck his head on a stone.”

  “Had you any suspicions of Martin before we arrived here and found them both dead?” I asked my friend.

  “I had noted that Professor Palfreyman’s really tangible troubles – the arrival of the anonymous, blank letters, and the tile – only began after Martin started calling at the house. Of course, that might have been mere chance – after all, the same observation could be applied to Miss Calloway herself. But it was also notable from Miss Calloway’s account that Martin seemed to take every opportunity he could to try to persuade her that Professor Palfreyman was dangerously insane, and that she should leave Bluebell Cottage. There was, moreover, one particular incident that I thought especially odd: when Miss Calloway mentioned her intention to consult me, Martin at first dismissed the idea as pointless, but when he changed his mind he said that perhaps I could somehow discover what lay behind the professor’s troubles. But there was no mystery there to be uncovered, nor had there ever been. Apart from the professor’s private feelings of guilt, what had happened in Macedonia all those years ago was a matter of general knowledge to all of Palfreyman’s colleagues, and thus, probably, to Martin, too.

  ‘‘No one, as far as we know, seemed to attach any blame to Palfreyman over the matter: the guilt he felt about it was simply his conscience prodding him with the thought that he could perhaps have acted differently. This feeling of personal guilt was, of course, exacerbated by the fact that – as he willingly admitted himself – he disliked Strange intensely. In other words, the trouble, up until this year, was really all in Professor Palfrey-man’s head, and there was nothing there that a detective could ‘discover’. The arrival of the letter and the tile, however, were quite different. They were not simply in the professor’s head, but definite, provocative acts, which any detective worth his salt would see as the starting point of his investigation.”

  “I quite agree,” said Gregson. “When you were describing the matter to me earlier, I at once thought that those things were the most important part of the case.”

  Holmes nodded. “And yet, Martin, a supposedly highly intelligent, and certainly highly educated young man, did not mention them to Miss Calloway at all, but referred simply to what had occurred many years ago. It seemed to me almost as if he was deliberately trying to deflect her attention from what was obviously the central part of the whole case – as indeed he probably was. It seems certain now that it was Martin himself who sent those things to Professor Palfreyman.’’

  “But why?” I asked. “What could his aim have been?”

  “He knew, as did everyone, that the professor was troubled in his mind – that he suffered from nightmares and so on – and considered, I imagine, that by persecuting him he might be able to drive him mad and suicidal. And if he couldn’t succeed in making the professor kill himself, then he would contrive to make it appear that he had – which is what this hideous and evil tableau was about. In fact, of course, the professor was nowhere near as unhinged as Martin seemed to think: guilt-ridden certainly, a little unbalanced perhaps, but otherwise, he was, for most of the time, as sane as anyone else.

  ‘‘When he dug out his little pistol from the old tin trunk in which it had lain for twenty-odd years it was not to use it on himself, but to protect himself against the threat he recognized was closing in upon him. I even wonder if he suspected that the threat might come from Martin. His questions to Miss Calloway concerning her future, and her feelings for Martin, were somewhat ambiguous, and it may be that he was in fact ‘fishing’ for information as to what she really thought about the young man.”

  “What of the person loitering in the woods?” asked Gregson. “Do you reckon that was Martin, too?”

  “It must have been. He would know when Miss Calloway was likely to catch her train home, and it would have been easy for him to take an earlier train and get down here before she did. His intention was no doubt to frighten her into leaving Bluebell Cottage altogether, as this would make it easier for him to pursue his scheme against the professor, and would allow him to portray himself as Miss Calloway’s ‘protector’, and thus advance his matrimonial prospects. In addition, if Miss Calloway was unsure of Professor Palfreyman’s whereabouts at the time of these frightening episodes, she might begin to suspect that the professor himself was responsible, which thought, to judge from her account, had already crossed her mind, and which was all to the good for Martin’s evil scheme to make the professor appear insane.’’

  “But why?” I repeated. “I understand all that you are saying about Martin trying to make Professor Palfreyman appear insane, but what could he possibly hope to gain by murdering the man or driving him to suicide? Was it simply some form of vengeance for the death of Strange?”

  Holmes shook his head. “I very much doubt it,” said he. “According to Professor Palfreyman’s account, no one really mourned Strange’s passing, let alone harboured any grievance about it. The professor wrote his account for Miss Calloway about thirty years after the events he described in it, and it is evident that in those thirty years he had not encountered any ill feeling over the matter, so I think we may take it that there is none. It seems apparent, then, that Martin was using the Macedonian business – ‘the Smiling Face’ – simply as a means of achieving his aim, and that his true motives lay elsewhere.”

  “But what on earth could those motives be?” I asked in some puzzlement.

  “There are certain facts you may be overlooking,” responded Holmes after a moment. “In the first place, Georgina Calloway is the professor’s only known relative, and as such would, upon his death, inherit anything he possessed.”

  “I admit that that hadn’t occurred to me,” I said.

  “In the second place,” Holmes continued, “you must remember that although Martin was working on his thesis under the guidance of the archaeology department, that had not previously been his principal field of study. He had studied art and history of art, and was no doubt something of an expert in that field. Perhaps, I speculated, while helping Miss Calloway to sort and catalogue the professor’s random heaps of paintings, sculptures and drawings, as she described to us, Martin had come across something which he, and he alone, recognized as being of immense value. If so, that might have provided the motive for his wicked plan. He would have
realized that he could not hope to get away with simply stealing what he wanted, but if he could get rid of the older man and persuade Miss Calloway to marry him, then he could get his hands on a possible fortune.”

  “It is certainly an interesting notion, and it would make sense,” said Gregson. “There is usually avarice at the bottom of this sort of crime. Do you have any evidence for it, Mr Holmes, or is it just speculation?”

  “I had a quick look through some of the things in one of the professor’s old tin trunks when I was examining the study earlier,” replied Holmes. “I am no expert on art, but there were a large number of sheets there which looked to me suspiciously like pages from a notebook of Leonardo da Vinci’s. He generally wrote backwards, you know, Gregson. I think he referred to it as ‘mirror writing’. It is quite distinctive. On another large, folded sheet there is what looks to me like a series of preliminary sketches for his celebrated painting, The Virgin of the Rocks.”

  “Great Heavens!” I cried. “That is incredible!”

  “Indeed,” said Holmes. “There are things in the professor’s battered old trunk that would probably fetch more at auction than we three could earn in a lifetime!”

  “Good Lord!” said Gregson. “That is, I suppose, enough to tempt some men to any sort of wickedness. But Martin was an intelligent, educated man,” he added with a shake of his head, “a young gentleman and graduate of Oxford University! You would have thought he would be above that sort of temptation.”

  “Perhaps there are things about his character that we don’t yet know,” said Holmes. “Now,” he continued, rising to his feet, “our investigation is completed, and we come to the most difficult part of the business.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I must explain the true facts of the case to Miss Calloway, Watson. It is undoubtedly my responsibility to do so, but it is not a responsibility I particularly welcome. You will come with me, old man?”

  “Of course.”

  “As to Martin,” Holmes continued, addressing Inspector Gregson, “I recommend a thorough investigation into his antecedents. There may be dark secrets there, unknown to anyone. But the terrible, simple truth is that once evil enters into the heart of a man, it cannot easily be eradicated, but will drive all else out, and poison every fibre of his being.”

  Sherlock Holmes’s speculations as to Martin’s character and antecedents were very soon borne out. Two days after the events recorded above, a firm of solicitors in the Temple handed in to Scotland Yard a sealed letter, which had been left with them the previous Friday by Professor Palfreyman, with the instruction that, in the event of his sudden death, it should be handed at once to the authorities. In this letter the professor mentioned that one of his valuable artefacts, a primitive oil lamp of Phoenician origin, was missing from the house, and although he had no proof, he could not see how anyone but Timothy Martin could have taken it. He also mentioned that he had seen Martin, believing himself to be unobserved, looking through other things in the house in what the professor described as “a sly and furtive manner”. The professor had therefore come to have strong suspicions about the man and his motives, but had felt unable, without further proof, to voice them, for fear of alienating the affections of Miss Calloway, who, he believed, had developed a liking for Martin, and whose affections he had come to value above all else.

  The suspicions the professor had harboured about Martin had led him to speculate that it was Martin who had sent him the tile and the letter with the face on it. Indeed, he was, he said, “practically certain” that the handwriting on the envelope of the first letter, although disguised, was Martin’s. As to why Martin should have sent these things to him, the professor admitted he had no idea. This had led him to speculate further that Martin was perhaps simply, as he put it, “one of those strange people one encounters occasionally, who have a warped and vicious cast of mind, who smile a lot, but seem devoid of all real human emotion, and who lie almost every time they open their mouths. ‘‘If so,” the professor concluded, “he keeps his true nature well hidden, especially from Miss Calloway.”

  Subsequently, when the police made a thorough examination of Martin’s lodgings in Bloomsbury, they found Professor Palfreyman’s Phoenician oil lamp there and, among numerous other things, a small early sketch by Poussin, later identified as having also been taken from Bluebell Cottage. Another surprising find was a small oval framed portrait by Nicholas Hilliard of the Earl of Essex, dating from around 1590, which was at length identified as having been stolen from St Aidan’s College, Oxford, three years previously, at the time Martin had been an undergraduate there. In the course of that robbery – which had remained a perfect mystery until this discovery – one of the college servants had been so severely beaten about the head that he had been unable to work again for nearly a year.

  Of Georgina Calloway, I am pleased to say, I have happier information to record. She eventually recovered from the shock and horror of what had taken place at Bluebell Cottage, and was offered a position with Professor Ainscow similar to the one she had held with Professor Palfreyman, which she accepted. She remained in that position for nearly three years, while at the same time pursuing her studies in botany. During this period we kept in touch, she dined with us a number of times, and I had the privilege of escorting her to the theatre on two or three occasions. Then, with the kind assistance of Professor Ainscow, she at last succeeded in gaining a position at the Royal Botanical Institute at Kew, where to the best of my knowledge she remains to this day.

  The Adventure of

  THE FOURTH GLOVE

  THE LATCHMERE DIAMOND is without doubt one of the most celebrated gems ever to have found its way to England. Unearthed in some remote corner of India, it is first recorded in Golconda, from where it passed to the trading post at Madras. There it was purchased, in 1783, by Samuel Tollington, later the third Viscount Latchmere, who had been travelling in the Far East with his uncle, Sir George Tollington, the well-known diplomat. Its arrival in England later that year created a sensation, for it was the largest diamond ever seen, and everyone, from the King downwards, wished to behold this prodigy. However, within six months of its arrival, the first of many attempts to steal it had been made. A second attempt was made in 1792, which cost the viscount his life, and a third in 1799, during which two of the robbers were killed. The tumultuous period of the Napoleonic Wars proved a relatively quiet time for the Latchmere Diamond, but in 1819 another attempt was made to steal it, and in 1834 yet another, which again cost the robbers their lives.

  In 1842, the fifth viscount had the diamond re-cut and mounted as a pendant, to be worn by each future viscountess on her wedding day, but this change in the diamond’s appearance brought no change in its violent history, for within six months it was stolen, and was not recovered for three years. In 1865, a further attempt was made upon the diamond, in which two of the robbers and one of Viscount Latchmere’s servants were killed. Throughout this history of violence, the diamond was also gaining the reputation of being an unlucky possession for the Tollington family. Indeed, the first tragedy had struck before the diamond even reached these shores, when Sir George Tollington was lost at sea in a terrible storm off the coast of Madagascar when returning from India, and, in addition to the viscount who was murdered in 1792, two more to bear that title also met an untimely end, one in a riding accident and one who was drowned while sailing on the Solent.

  Like most people, I imagine, I had read the history of this fabulous stone with mere idle curiosity, never thinking for a moment that I should ever have any personal connection with it. Yet, surprisingly, in early October 1885, that was precisely what happened, as a result of my sharing chambers with the renowned detective Mr Sherlock Holmes.

  We were seated at breakfast, on a fine, crisp autumn morning. The dawn mist had already cleared, and the bright sun gave promise of a fine day. But this attractive prospect outside our sitting-room window aroused mixed feelings in my own breast. The wo
und in my leg, which I had brought back with me as an unwanted memento of my service in Afghanistan, had begun to throb painfully in recent days and became worse whenever I tried to walk. I was thus condemned, on what promised to be the loveliest day of the autumn, to a day spent in a chair by the fire with my left leg raised up on a cushion. It will be readily imagined what a thoroughly depressing prospect this was, and why I applied myself with unusual zeal to the morning papers, in an effort to distract my mind.

  “It says here,” I remarked to my companion as a small paragraph caught my eye, “that the Latchmere Pendant has disappeared and is believed stolen.”

  Holmes looked up from the papers he was studying and raised his eyebrow. “Surely not again?” said he in a languid tone. “Was anyone injured?”

  “It doesn’t say so. It is thought that the pendant was taken during Saturday night from Lady Latchmere’s private dressing room.”

  “That is one blessing, anyhow! So great has been the violence done for the sake of that ill-starred lump of crystal that I have sometimes thought it should be mounted not in gold but in blood! Are there any details?”

  “Nothing of interest. It says that the viscount and viscountess were entertaining a small weekend party at Latchmere Hall in Hertfordshire, their guests being the Rajah of Banniphur, the Honourable Miss Arabella Norman, Mr Peter Brocklehurst and Miss Matilda Wiltshire – whoever they may be.”

  There had been a ring at the doorbell as I had been reading, and a moment later the maid entered with a telegram for Holmes. He tore it open and read the contents, then, with a chuckle, tossed it over to me as he scribbled a reply. I read the following:

  PENDANT MISSING. COME AT ONCE. LATCHMERE.

  “Will you go?” I asked.

  Holmes nodded. “Certainly. I just have time to do justice to these splendid-looking kippers,” he continued with a glance at the clock, “and then I can catch a fast train from King’s Cross and be there in half an hour!”