“The following evening, Mrs Prentice went to bed before her husband, but could not sleep. As she lay awake, worrying what he was up to, she heard a tap at the front door and, putting her head out of the bedroom window, she saw that ‘One-eye’ Vokes was standing there. Then her husband came to the door, and spoke to Vokes for some time, but she could not hear any of their conversation. Eventually, Vokes turned away and walked off up the street. When her husband came upstairs shortly afterwards, she asked him what Vokes had wanted.
“‘They wanted me to do something for them,’ he replied, ‘but I told them I’m not interested.’
“On Monday evening of this week, Prentice again loitered downstairs after his wife had gone to bed, and again she did not fall asleep straight away. After a while she heard someone moving about downstairs, and thought she heard voices, so she put on her dressing gown and went to see what was happening. She found her husband alone in the tap room, sitting at a table, writing something on a sheet of paper. On the table next to the paper was an ornate gold ring containing a large purplish stone. As his wife entered the room, Prentice quickly picked up the ring and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket.
“‘What’s that ring?’ she asked sharply.
“‘It’s an amethyst,’ he replied.
“‘I mean,’ she persisted, ‘what are you doing with it?’
“‘Nothing. Someone asked me to tell them what it’s worth, that’s all.’
“‘Give it back, Jack. Don’t get involved.’
“‘I’m not involved in anything,’ he protested. ‘I’ll give it back, Annie, don’t you worry.’
“Something in his tone reassured her, and although she was still anxious, she went back to bed and fell fast asleep. In the morning, when she woke, she saw to her surprise that her husband was not in bed, and when she went downstairs she found that he was nowhere about and the front door had been unlocked. There are two keys for the front door. One of them is usually left in the lock, and the other, the spare one, is kept on a hook behind the bar. Both keys were in their usual places that morning. All that day, Mrs Prentice waited for her husband to return from wherever he had gone, but he never came. This, she says, is very unlike him. For the last dozen years – ever since his spell in prison, in fact – he has been diligent and hard-working and always attentive to his wife’s concerns. He has never before taken himself off Without telling her where he was going.
‘‘By the late afternoon she was very anxious at his continued absence and went along to the local police station, which is not far away, to enquire if they had heard anything. They were unable to shed any light on the matter, but took down all the details she gave them and recorded her husband as a ‘missing person’. When she got home, however, and gave it all more thought, she decided she was not satisfied with the police response. She suspected that, because of her husband’s criminal record, they would do nothing, but simply wait for him to turn up. She therefore determined to take the matter into her own hands. No doubt, like the Carter-Smythes, she had heard my name mentioned somewhere, so she left Maria in charge of the pub and came to consult me.
“It was too late that evening for me to do anything much, but I made a note of the main facts, and the following morning – that is, yesterday – I went down to Rotherhithe to look into the matter. As you will imagine, I questioned Mrs Prentice closely on any aspect of her husband’s affairs that might prove relevant, and stressed to her that she must answer me truthfully.
“‘Do you believe that Elias Dack and his cronies have been trying to get your husband to help them dispose of stolen goods?’ I asked her.
“She nodded her head. ‘It must be that,’ said she. ‘You see,’ she explained, ‘although Jack himself hasn’t been to sea for a dozen years or more, he knows an awful lot of men as do make their living that way. It’s not just the men he knew when he was a sailor himself, neither. We gets all sorts coming in The Seven Stars, and Jack’s a good landlord and often stands talking to them in the tap room for hours on end. I doubt there’s anyone who knows more seafarers – both straight and crooked – than Jack, and I’m sure there’s plenty as would do a job for him for a small consideration, no questions asked.’
“‘Have you come across that amethyst ring anywhere?’ I asked.
“‘No, I haven’t,’ she replied, ‘and I’ve had a good look round. Jack must have taken it with him. To tell the truth, I hope he has taken it and given it back. But I’m worried that if he’s told them he doesn’t want anything to do with them, there might have been violence done and Jack might be hurt. I wouldn’t put anything past Dack, or that evil devil, Vokes.’
“‘Did you see what Jack was writing on that paper on Monday night?’ I asked her.
“‘Not at the time I didn’t; but I found it the next morning, where he’d left it in the tap room. I can’t make any sense of it, though,’ she added, as she handed me the sheet of paper. ‘As you see, Mr Holmes, it’s just ticks and odd letters.’
“This is the paper, Watson,” said Holmes, taking a folded sheet from between the pages of his notebook and passing it to me. “It is a singular document, is it not?”
I unfolded the sheet upon my knee and studied it for a few moments. There were five rows of symbols, as follows:
V I I I I I I – B C O
V I I I I I – M N A B
V I I I I – H B L
V I I I – A R H A R
V I I – O L G M
“I can’t think what it might mean,” I said at last.
“I think we may safely dismiss Prentice’s claim that he was estimating the value of the ring,” said Holmes. “That was, I take it, the merest humbug, something he made up on the spur of the moment for his wife’s benefit. Yet it is evident he was working something out.”
“The marks at the beginning of each line look rather like Roman numerals,” I suggested, “in which case the first group would represent eleven, the second, ten, and so on.”
“I agree,” said Holmes, “although, of course, as ‘eleven’ is usually represented by an ‘X’ followed by an ‘I’, and ‘ten’ simply by an ‘X’, his use of the numerals must be non-standard in some way. What do you make of the other letters, Watson?”
“They may be the initials of something, or of someone, I suppose,” I responded. “Perhaps if – despite what he told his wife – Prentice was considering helping Dack to smuggle stolen goods abroad, he was listing the initial letters of ships that he knew would be setting sail shortly. In which case,” I added, “the figures at the beginnings of the lines may represent dates – the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh of next month.”
Holmes nodded. “It is possible,” said he, “although I doubt whether even Prentice – however well informed he may be about sailors and ships – would know the departure dates of so many different vessels several weeks hence.”
“What then?” I asked. “Do you regard this paper as of any significance to the case?”
“Yes, I do, Watson. It was, after all, the last thing Mrs Prentice saw her husband attending to before his mysterious disappearance. I have a hypothesis, but it is somewhat tentative at present, and it is this I am hoping to either confirm or reject today. But, to continue my account, Mrs Prentice showed me a brass candlestick which stood on a shelf above the fireplace in the tap room.
“‘There should be two of these here,’ she said, ‘but when Jack went off, he took the other one with him.’
“I picked it up and examined it. The base was hollow, and I wondered for a moment if Prentice might have hidden something in the base of the missing one – something, perhaps, which he did not wish his wife to see. But, of course, that would not explain why he had needed to take the candlestick with him; he could simply have removed whatever he had hidden there, and put it in his pocket, before leaving the house.
“I then took myself along to the local police station, where I am fairly well known, especially after the help I was able to give Inspector Quirke
in a forgery case last year in Lavender Yard. Quirke was on duty, and when I mentioned Prentice’s disappearance to him, he admitted to me that they were taking an interest in the matter, although he said they knew no more about it than they had heard from Prentice’s wife. However, information they have received in recent weeks has led them to believe that Rotherhithe is once more becoming a major staging post in the disposal of stolen goods, and he suggested to me that Prentice’s disappearance might be connected with that in some way. Although our conversation was an affable one, I sensed as we spoke that the inspector was holding something back, and I strongly suspect that the police have some plans afoot, which he did not feel able to confide in me. What they might be, I do not know. Anyway, having exhausted that source of information, I spent the rest of the day making general enquiries in the district, and interviewing people whose names Mrs Prentice had given me, without advancing my knowledge to any significant degree. It was only when I was on my way home, and was able to consider the whole business afresh in a detached manner, that I began to see my way to forming a hypothesis. It is this that I shall shortly put to the test, for we are nearly there.” As he spoke, our train plunged into a long dark tunnel, where the thud and clank of the engine boomed around the close brick walls. “This is the Thames tunnel,” said he. “We shall be at Rotherhithe in a minute.”
As we left the station and turned east, the fog seemed even thicker and dirtier than at Paddington, and with a shiver I turned my coat collar up and followed my companion through the greasy, swirling coils, which drifted like a sea about us. We had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile at a fairly brisk pace when Holmes indicated a narrow side street on the right. “The Cocked Hat is along that way,” said he. A little further on, we turned off left, down a lane that led to the river, where the dank, pungent smell of the waterside competed with the stench of the fog. Immediately ahead of us, revealed through brief rifts in the filthy veil, lay the great heaving breadth of the Thames. Close by the riverside, Holmes stopped before a low grey building on the right. Above the heavy oak door hung a grimy, weather-worn wooden sign, on which I could just make out seven faded yellow stars. Holmes pushed open the door and I followed him inside, glad to be out of the fog.
Inside The Seven Stars, several lamps were lit, and the brightness seemed at first almost dazzling after the gloomy murk outside, but even in here the reek of the foggy river seemed to fill one’s nostrils. A cheery fire was blazing away in a very large old fireplace, however, and we stood for a moment warming our hands before it. As we did so, two women emerged from a doorway behind the bar. The first was a broad, comfortable-looking middle-aged woman whom Holmes addressed as Mrs Prentice, and behind her was a slightly shorter young female of perhaps seventeen or eighteen. She was dark-featured and raven-haired, and was evidently the Spanish girl, Maria, of whom Holmes had spoken. They were wearing their hats and coats, and carrying baskets, and Mrs Prentice explained that they were on their way out to the market. Holmes introduced me as a professional colleague with whom he wished to discuss the case, which seemed to satisfy her, and it was evident from her manner that my companion had made a very favourable impression upon her the previous day, although her face fell when he informed her that he had as yet no news of her husband.
“We’ll get off now,” she said, peering out of the window at the murk outside. “It’s not going to get any better. We’ll not be more than forty minutes, Mr Holmes. I’ll lock the door so you won’t be bothered by customers while we’re out. If you do need to go out, you can use the spare key on the hook behind the bar.” A moment later, the two women had gone and we were alone.
“Having the place to ourselves makes things somewhat easier,” said Holmes in a brisk tone, as he took off his coat, then reached up and took down a brass candlestick from the mantelpiece. “This is the partner of the one that has disappeared,” said he. He lit a spill in the fire, then lit the candle with it. “I’m going to take a look downstairs in the cellar, to test the hypothesis I mentioned to you,” he continued. “You had best wait here, Watson, in case the women come back.”
I sat down on a chair by the fire, wondering what was in my friend’s mind. Perhaps, I conjectured, he considered it possible that the first candlestick had been used to illuminate something in the cellar, and had then been left down there. That certainly seemed more likely than that it had been used as a hiding place for something. I had very little time for reflection on the matter, however, for in less than two minutes Holmes had returned.
“It is as I thought,” said he. “The hypothesis is confirmed. Now,” he continued, as he snuffed out the candle and replaced it on the mantelpiece, “I have another task for you, Watson, if you would be so good. I shall look after things here, if you would kindly run along to the police station. Ask for Inspector Quirke, or whoever is in charge today, and give him my card, with the message that the matter is most urgent.” He took a visiting card from his pocket and scribbled something on the back, then handed it to me. A moment later, after he had given me directions, I was hurrying along the road, back the way we had come. The fog seemed particularly cold and unpleasant after the friendly warmth of the fireside, and I drew my muffler up over my nose and mouth. As I passed a brightly lit shop window, I turned Holmes’s card over, to see what he had written on the back, and read “New development in Prentice case. Come at once. S. H.”
At the police station, I handed the card to the officer on duty, who disappeared through a doorway with it, but returned a moment later and conducted me to Inspector Quirke’s room at the back of the building. There, a large uniformed police inspector was seated behind a desk; but it was the other occupant of the room who caught my attention, for, with a start of surprise, I recognized our old friend Inspector Athelney Jones of the detective division of Scotland Yard.
“Dr Watson!” said he, rising to his feet and shaking my hand. “I did not know you were still hunting with Mr Holmes! We heard that you had thrown yourself entirely into medical matters since your marriage.”
“So I have,” I returned, “but Holmes needed a companion today, and I was glad to be of assistance. I am to tell you that the matter is very urgent,” I added, sensing that Jones was about to enter upon a leisurely general discussion of life.
“I don’t doubt that,” interrupted Inspector Quirke, tapping Holmes’s card on the edge of his desk. “I must say, I have never once known Mr Holmes to waste anyone’s time. The difficulty, however, is that we have something of our own planned for this afternoon, and that, too, is very urgent. I wouldn’t want this Prentice business to interfere with the other. What do you think, Mr Jones?”
Jones considered the matter for a moment. “You understand exactly what you are to do this afternoon?” he asked his colleague at length.
“Perfectly.”
“Very well, then. What I propose is this: I shall go with Dr Watson and leave everything else to you. I should like to take one of your men – Constable Griffin, if you can spare him – but I think I shall ask him to follow us at a distance so as not to excite curiosity in the street. No doubt I shall get the matter sorted out in a few minutes and be back here before you leave, but if I am not, you go ahead as we agreed, and I shall see you later.”
A minute later, Inspector Jones and I were making our way through the fog to The Seven Stars, with a very large constable following some distance behind us, his footsteps a dull, muffled echo of our own. As we walked along, I told Jones all I knew of the matter, which was not very much, and he nodded his head sagely. “They believe hereabouts,” he remarked, “that Prentice has been on the straight and narrow for the last dozen years or more, but perhaps it’s not so. Perhaps he’s been deceiving them all along.”
Our knock at the pub door was answered by Holmes. He then lit the candle once more, and the three of us descended to the cellar. Even halfway down the cellar steps, it was much colder than upstairs, and in the cellar itself the icy cold seemed to rise up from the old flagstones and penetrate
to one’s very bones. Holmes led us to a dark corner behind two very large barrels, where he lifted a tarpaulin sheet to reveal what he had discovered. With a thrill of horror, I saw it was the body of a man.
“Is it Prentice?” asked Jones, rubbing his chin.
“Yes,” said Holmes, “and here, I think, is the weapon that struck him down – which solves another little mystery.” He picked something up from the floor beside the body, and I saw it was the second brass candlestick. As he held it up, I could see that it was bent slightly out of shape and smeared with what looked like blood. “How long would you say he has been dead, Watson?”
“This is certainly the cause of death,” I said as I examined a savage wound on the side of his head, where the hair was darkly matted with blood. “His skull has been fractured. As to the time of death, I am no expert, but it is evident that rigor mortis has already begun to dissipate, so he must have been dead at least forty-eight hours, I should say, and probably longer, as the cold air in this cellar will have slowed the whole process down.”
“My conclusions precisely,” said Holmes. “Let us get the body upstairs now, before the women return.”
Between us, we carried the body of poor Jack Prentice upstairs and laid him out on the tap-room floor, covered in an old dust sheet we found in a cupboard.
“What made you suspect that Prentice’s body might be down in the cellar?” I asked Holmes.
“The door to the street, Watson. Mrs Prentice found it unlocked on Tuesday morning, and it was supposed that Prentice had risen and gone out early. But at the time he was supposed to have left, the night would still have been pitch black. I could not believe that he would have left the door to the street unlocked when it was dark and the other occupants of the house were still asleep in bed upstairs. He would instead have locked the door on the outside and taken the key with him, knowing that there was a spare key behind the bar which his wife could use. It was possible, of course, that Prentice had been taken from the house by force, but it was equally possible that he had never left the building at all, and that the door was unlocked simply because he had never got round to locking it the night before. And if – dead or alive – he was still here, the cellar seemed the likeliest place to find him. That was the hypothesis I wished to test.”
The Mammoth Book of the Lost Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes Page 31