“What will you tell him?”
“About the pendant, nothing. About the ring, only that I have been unable to locate it, and believe that, as his wife stated, she has put it somewhere. I am retained only to find and recover that object you have in your hand, not to furnish any explanations. The fundamental cause of this whole business, Watson, lies in the relations between Viscount Latchmere and his wife, and that is a problem they must solve for themselves.”
The Adventure of
THE RICHMOND RECLUSE
PART ONE: A NIGHT AT HILL HOUSE
IN PUBLISHING THIS SERIES OF MEMOIRS, my constant aim, however imperfectly realized, has been to illustrate the remarkable mental qualities of my friend, Mr Sherlock Holmes. In most of the cases he took up, his involvement was decisive: without it, it is likely that the problems would have remained unsolved, and the truth for ever unknown. In a few cases, however, the part he played was less pronounced, and it is possible that the truth would eventually have come to light without his intervention. In the main I have passed over these cases when selecting those which were to be published. Yet among this group are some in which the facts of the matter are in themselves of sufficient interest to warrant publication, despite offering my friend few opportunities for the exercise of those gifts of observation and deduction that he possessed in so high a degree. Especially memorable among cases of this kind were the affair of the Purple Hand, and the Boldero Mystery. It is the latter case I now propose to recount. Regular readers of the Surrey County Observer will need little reminding of what that newspaper termed “The Richmond Horror”. But the press accounts of the time were all very brief, and concentrated solely on the dramatic conclusion of the matter, to the exclusion of what had gone before, so that even those who are familiar with the case are unlikely to be aware of what lay behind those shocking events.
Our introduction to the matter came on a pleasant afternoon in the early spring of ’84. Sherlock Holmes had received a letter from Farrow and Redfearn of Lincoln’s Inn, the well-known firm of solicitors. He glanced over it, tossed it across to me and returned to the papers he had been studying before the letter’s arrival had distracted him. I read the following:
Sir,
We beg to advise you as follows: that our client, Mr David Boldero, is desirous of learning the whereabouts of his elder brother, Mr Simon Boldero; that the whereabouts of the latter having been unknown for some three months and the circumstances being unusual, we have recommended that our client consult you, which he proposes to do at four o’clock this afternoon, when he will be able to apprise you of the details of the matter.
We remain, sir, your obedient servants,
Farrow and Redfearn
“They have put a number of choice cases my way in the past,” remarked Holmes as I finished reading. “Let us hope that it is not too troublesome a matter. I am somewhat preoccupied at present with this business of Archduke Dmitri’s diamonds.”
“It does not sound a very desperate affair,” I remarked, aware of my friend’s oft-stated rule that one case should not be allowed to intrude upon another. This was not from any fear that his mental capacities might be over-stretched, for in truth there was little doubt that, like a chess master giving an exhibition, he might successfully have handled half a dozen separate cases at once had he so wished. It was rather that his neat and logical mind preferred above all things an orderly, concentrated mode of thought. Yet it was also true of him that he rarely declined a case that had succeeded in capturing his interest, so that, despite his preference, this, of all his personal rules of work, was the one he most frequently set aside. As I waited for Holmes’s client to arrive, I speculated idly as to the nature of his case, and wondered if it would provide any of those touches of the outré that so delighted my friend’s intellect. The dry communication he had received from the solicitor did not appear to presage a case of any very great interest, I judged. But in this opinion, as it turned out, I was quite mistaken.
Mr David Boldero arrived on the dot of four. He was a tall, broad-shouldered and strongly built young man, of about seven-and-twenty, with wavy black hair and a determined set to his strong, clean-shaven features.
“I see you are smokers,” said he, observing the wreaths of blue smoke that spiralled in the air above my companion’s head. “I will venture to fill my own pipe, then, if I may.”
“By all means,” responded Holmes, waving our visitor to a chair. “Pray make yourself comfortable and let us know how we can help you. It is always a pleasure,” he added after a moment, “to greet a member of the diplomatic corps, newly returned from overseas.”
Boldero looked up in surprise as he lit his pipe. “Now, how on earth do you know that?” said he. “I can hardly suppose that my return to England warranted a paragraph in the morning papers!”
“Your suit, Mr Boldero, while of excellent quality, is of a distinctively continental cut. The top button is a touch higher than English tailors are wont to place it. You have evidently bought the suit abroad. The same, I might add, applies to your boots. Nor has your period abroad been merely a brief excursion, for your tobacco, too, is very characteristic of continental mixtures. Most English travellers, in my experience, take with them sufficient home-produced tobacco to see out their journey. You have clearly been abroad long enough to acquire a taste for the native variety. It is not Dutch and it is not French, but could possibly be Danish. You do not have the cut of a man of commerce, and the pallor of your skin precludes any prolonged exposure to the Mediterranean sun. I am therefore inclined to place you as an attaché at one of our embassies in the north of Europe.”
“Well I never!” cried our visitor, leaning back in his chair.
“To be precise,” said Holmes, “you have been at the British Embassy in Stockholm for over two years.”
Boldero’s mouth fell open in astonishment.
“You have a small medallion on your watch chain,” explained Holmes, “which I observed as you sat back. It is a decoration – the Order of St Margaret, I believe – which is conferred by the Court of Scandinavia on all foreign diplomats who have served there for a period of at least two years.”
“That is amazing!” cried Boldero.
“On the contrary, it is perfectly elementary,” said Holmes. “Now, if we might hear the details of your problem? I know only that you wish to discover the whereabouts of your brother.”
“He has disappeared without trace in the most mysterious circumstances,” returned our visitor, his features assuming a grave look. “But there is more to the matter than that, Mr Holmes. Last night, so I believe, an attempt was made upon my life.”
“How very interesting! Pray, let us have the details!”
“My brother and I have seen little of each other in recent years. Circumstances have obliged each of us to pursue his own individual course through life. We were left very poorly off when our father died. There is great wealth elsewhere in the Boldero family, but little of it came our way. I was fortunate enough to secure a post in the diplomatic service some four years ago, but it has meant that I have spent much of that time abroad, after my posting to Stockholm. My brother, meanwhile, has been pursuing a career with a firm of solicitors. I last saw him three months ago, in January, on the occasion of my engagement. He attended the little celebration we had, and seemed at that time to be in excellent spirits.”
“He had no pressing financial concerns?”
“He has never been very well off, if that is what you mean. Neither of us has. But it did not appear to be causing him any particular anxiety. On the contrary, he seemed more cheery than I had seen him before.”
“His health?”
“First rate.”
“He is not married?”
Our visitor shook his head. “He lives alone in a little house just off Camberwell High Street. It was to there I went to look him up when I returned to England last week. We have never corresponded with any great regularity, but during the last three month
s he has not replied to any of my letters, and I wished to know why. If he was in difficulty of some kind, I wished to help him if I could. I have a key to the front door of his house, so I was able to let myself in. Inside, the apartment resembled the Marie Celeste: everything was in perfect order, the table in the dining room neatly laid for a meal, but of my brother there was no sign. The only circumstance that gave indication that Simon had not simply stepped out of the house five minutes before my arrival was the large number of letters lying in a disordered heap upon the doormat. All the letters I had sent in the previous three months were there, together with dozens of others. I quickly sifted through them and established that Simon had not been in the house since the third week in January.”
“Your brother kept no domestic staff?”
“He lived very simply. A local woman came in once a day to attend to cleaning and similar duties.”
“Did she have her own key?”
“No. My brother always admitted her himself in the morning before he left for town, and when she had finished her work she would lock the door with a spare key, which she then posted through the letter-box. I found that key on the doormat.”
“No doubt you have interviewed her?”
“I have tried to, but without success. It appears she left the area some time in February, and no one there could tell me her present address. They did tell me, however, that she had been more annoyed than puzzled by my brother’s disappearance. She presumed that he had simply gone away on business and forgotten to inform her of the fact, and he had left owing her a little money, according to the local sources.”
“You say you found the table laid for a meal,” interrupted Holmes. “Could you tell, from the disposition of the cutlery and so on, what sort of meal this was likely to be?”
“I am afraid I did not notice,” returned Boldero, his features expressing surprise at the question.
“That is a pity,” remarked Holmes, shaking his head.
“I cannot see that the point is of any significance.”
“Nevertheless, it is. It might, for instance, have indicated whether your brother’s housekeeper had expected him to return that day, or to stay away for the night. Were you able to establish more precisely the date of his disappearance?”
Boldero nodded. “In his study was a copy of the Daily Telegraph, dated Thursday, 17 January, which had clearly been read; and on his desk was a note he had written to remind himself to do certain jobs on Friday, 18 January. Simon often left himself such aides-memoires. When he had done the jobs in question, he would cross off the items on the list. None of the items on the note I found had been crossed off. I take it, then, that he was last in the house on the seventeenth.”
“Excellent!” cried Holmes. “Your observation is commendable! Were everyone so thorough in their attention to detail I should soon find myself without work!”
“I have the note here,” said Boldero, producing a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. He passed it across to Holmes, who studied it for a few moments, then handed it to me. The items listed were all of a domestic nature and unexceptional: “Baker – see again. Pay wine merchant – enquire about sherry. Settle butcher’s bill for the month”.
“I have spoken to all the tradesmen mentioned in the note,” Boldero continued. “None of them could recall seeing Simon on the day in question, which confirms what I thought.”
“That may be interesting,” remarked Holmes in a thoughtful voice.
“I should hardly have called it ‘interesting’,” responded Boldero in a tone of surprise, “except that it indicates that my brother had the same mundane concerns as everyone else at the time of his disappearance.”
“That was not my meaning,” said Holmes. “Pray continue. You have made enquiries, I take it, at your brother’s professional chambers?”
“Indeed. There I learned that he had informed his colleagues he would be taking two weeks’ leave of absence from 14 January. He did not say why he required this, but they understood that he was engaged upon some legal research. They could shed no light whatever on his prolonged disappearance, and had all the time been expecting to hear from him with an explanation. I subsequently made thorough enquiries at the police station and at all the hospitals, in case Simon had met with an accident, but learned nothing. It appeared that my brother had simply disappeared off the face of the earth. Then Beatrice – that is to say, Miss Underwood, my fiancée – suggested that I try my cousin Silas, to see if he had any information on the matter. I thought it unlikely, as Silas is practically a recluse, going out very little and receiving visitors even less, and I was not aware that my brother had had anything to do with him for years; but in the absence of any other direction for my enquiries, I agreed to take myself off to Hill House, at Richmond upon Thames, which is where Silas lives.
“I perhaps ought to tell you a little about Cousin Silas, and about the family in general, so you will understand the situation. You may have heard of my great-grandfather, Samuel Boldero. He was one of the last of the great eighteenth-century merchants, and made a fortune in trade. Indeed, he was reputed at the time to be the second wealthiest commoner in the country. At his death, all his wealth passed equally to his two surviving sons, Daniel and Jonathan. Each of these two had, in turn, one son, Enoch and Silas respectively. Enoch Boldero was my father.
“Unfortunately, my father and grandfather quarrelled and became estranged, and when my grandfather died, when I was an infant, it was found that he had virtually cut my father out of his will altogether, and had left almost all he possessed to his nephew – his late brother’s only son, and thus my father’s cousin, Silas.
“Cousin Silas, as you will therefore appreciate, is very wealthy, having inherited the entire Boldero fortune, half from his own father and half from his uncle, my grandfather. My brother and I hoped, without being at all avaricious, that a little, at least, of this enormous wealth might perhaps find its way to us, especially after my father’s sadly premature death, which left us in some difficulty. By the time we had established my mother and my sister, Rachel, in a small house at Tunbridge Wells, near to my mother’s relations, we were left with practically nothing. Simon was endeavouring to pursue a career in law, and was attached to Nethercott and Cropley, a firm of solicitors in Holborn, but he was finding his lack of money a distinct handicap. Recalling that Silas had himself followed a similar career for a time in his younger years, Simon thought that his cousin might feel some sympathy for his position. He therefore appealed to Cousin Silas’s generosity. Unfortunately, Silas does not have any. Every excuse one could conceive was brought in to explain why he was unable to help. The best he felt able to offer my brother was a small, inadequate loan, offered for an inadequate period of time and at such an extortionate rate of interest that one could easily arrange a more favourable loan any day of the week in the City. Needless to say, Simon did not take up the offer. That was about four years ago, since which time, so far as I am aware, there has been no communication between them. I have myself seen Silas but once in that period. Last August I took Miss Underwood and her mother boating on the Thames, and knowing that our way would take us past Richmond, I proposed to Silas that we pay him a call. He received us into his house for an hour, but I cannot honestly say that he made us welcome. Miss Underwood formed a very poor impression of him, and the whole episode was an acute embarrassment to me. I had wanted her to meet Silas, as he is the senior member of the Boldero family, but my chief concern afterwards was whether, having seen what my relations were like, Miss Underwood would be permanently prejudiced against me.”
“Does your cousin have any family of his own?” Holmes interrupted.
Boldero shook his head. “He never married,” he replied. “He has always led a completely solitary life, and for the last twenty years has lived in almost total seclusion. As far as I am aware, his last appearance in public was about fifteen years ago, when he read his monograph on ‘The Dragon Lizards of China’ to the Society fo
r Snakes and Reptiles – or whatever the body is called. This society was formerly his chief interest in life, but about ten years ago, so I understand, there was a disagreement between Silas and the other members. He could not get his way over some matter and resigned.”
“As I understand your account, then,” said Holmes, “you and your brother are Silas’s only kin, and will inherit whatever he has to leave when he dies.”
“That is correct, but our inheritance is by no means assured. Cousin Silas is quite likely to will all his money away, if not to the Society for Snakes and Reptiles, then to some similar body. I have certainly never founded my plans on any bounty I might receive from that direction!”
“From what you have told me, you are probably wise not to do so. Pray continue with your narrative.”
“I went down to Richmond yesterday afternoon, having notified Silas that I was coming for the night. Hill House is a strange, rambling old place, near the top of Richmond Hill. It is a dark and unattractive building, and has been made more so by the various additions and extensions that have been made to it over the years. It stands in its own very large grounds, which are entirely surrounded by a massive eight-foot-high brick wall. From the stout wooden gate, a gravel path runs dead straight for thirty yards or so to the front porch of the house, and this path is entirely enclosed, both above and at the sides, by a curious glass structure, something like a narrow, elongated greenhouse. This is not, as you might suppose, to protect visitors from the weather, but rather to prevent the denizens of Silas’s garden from escaping, for his grounds are alive with all sorts of odd and unattractive creatures, which he has imported from the tropics: lizards, snakes, anteaters and other things even less appealing. I have used the word ‘garden’, but that is perhaps misleading. The grounds of Hill House are a complete wilderness, and must be the nearest thing to a jungle outside of the tropics. I shouldn’t think that they have benefited from any human attention in forty years. I was taken there once as a small boy, by my father, and I can still recall the horrified fascination with which I regarded that tangle of luxuriant weeds and brambles, and the slimy creatures that slithered and crept about in the darkness beneath them. Now the place is even more overgrown than it was in those days, and the glass veranda over the path is covered with green mould and slime, so that practically nothing can be discerned through its murky panes.
The Mammoth Book of the Lost Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes Page 21