by Otto Penzler
“His valet says his eyes were quite good,” Lestrade said. “One of the first things I asked.”
“Bravo, Inspector,” Holmes said softly, and Inspector Lestrade favored him with a jaundiced glance.
“So he looked round,” I said, and suddenly I could see it, and I supposed this was also the way with Holmes; this reconstruction which, while based only upon facts and deduction, seemed to be half a vision, “and he saw nothing but the study as it always was, empty save for himself. It is a remarkably open room, I see no closet door, and with the windows on both sides, there are no dark nooks even on such a day as this.
“Satisfied, he closed the door, turned his key, and shot the bolt. Jory would have heard him stump his way across to the desk. He would have heard the heavy thump and wheeze of the chair-cushion as his father sat down—a man in whom gout is well-advanced does not sit so much as position himself over a soft spot and then drop into it, seat-first—And then Jory would at last have risked a look out.”
I glanced at Holmes. “Go on, old man,” he said warmly. “You are doing splendidly. Absolutely first rate.” I saw he meant it. Thousands would have called him cold, and they would not have been wrong, precisely, but he also had a large heart. Holmes simply protected it better than some men do.
“Thank you. Jory would have seen his father put his cane aside, and place the papers—the two packets of papers—on the blotter. He did not kill his father immediately, although he could have done; that’s what’s so gruesomely pathetic about this business, and that’s why I wouldn’t go into that parlour where they are for a thousand pounds. I wouldn’t go in unless you and your men dragged me.”
“How do you know he didn’t do it immediately?” Lestrade asked.
“The scream came at least two minutes after the key was turned and the bolt drawn; I assume you have enough testimony on that to believe it. Yet it can only be seven paces from door to desk. Even for a gouty man like Lord Hull, it would have taken half a minute, forty seconds at the outside, to cross to the chair and sit down. Add fifteen seconds for him to prop his cane where you found it, and put his wills on the blotter.
“What happened then? What happened during that last minute or two, which must have seemed—to Jory Hull, at least—all but endless? I believe Lord Hull simply sat there, looking from one will to the other. Jory would have been able to tell the difference between the two easily enough; the parchment of the older would have been darker.
“He knew his father intended to throw one of them into the stove.
“I believe he waited to see which one it would be.
“There was, after all, a chance that his father was only having a cruel practical joke at his family’s expense. Perhaps he would burn the new will, and put the old one back in the safe. Then he could have left the room and told his family the new will was safely put away. Do you know where it is, Lestrade? The safe?”
“Five of the books in that case swing out,” Lestrade said briefly, pointing to a shelf in the library area.
“Both family and old man would have been satisfied then; the family would have known their earned inheritances were safe, and the old man would have gone to his grave believing he had perpetrated one of the cruellest practical jokes of all time … but he would have gone as God’s victim or his own, and not Jory Hull’s.”
Again, that look I did not understand passed between Holmes and Lestrade.
“Myself, I rather think the old man was only savoring the moment, as a man may savor the prospect of an after-dinner drink in the middle of the afternoon or a sweet after a long period of abstinence. At any rate, the minute passed, and Lord Hull began to rise … but with the darker parchment in his hand, and facing the stove rather than the safe. Whatever his hopes may have been, there was no hesitation on Jory’s part when the moment came. He burst from hiding, crossed the distance between the coffee-table and the desk in an instant, and plunged the knife into his father’s back before he was fully up.
“I suspect the autopsy will show the thrust clipped through the heart’s upper ventricle and into the lung—that would explain the quantity of blood expelled from the mouth. It also explains why Lord Hull was able to scream before he died, and that’s what did for Mr. Jory Hull.”
“Explain,” Lestrade said.
“A locked-room mystery is a bad business unless you intend to pass murder off as a case of suicide,” I said, looking at Holmes. He smiled and nodded at this maxim of his. “The last thing Jory would have wanted was for things to look as they did … the locked room, the locked windows, the man with a knife in him where the man himself never could have put it. I think he had never forseen his father dying with such a squall. His plan was to stab him, burn the new will, rifle the desk, unlock one of the windows, and escape that way. He would have entered the house by another door, resumed his seat under the stairs, and then, when the body was finally discovered, it would have looked like robbery.”
“Not to Hull’s solicitor,” Lestrade said.
“He might well have kept his silence,” Holmes said, and then added brightly “I’ll bet Jory intended to open one of the windows and add as few tracks, too. I think we all agree it would have seemed a suspiciously convenient murder, under the circumstances, but even if the solicitor spoke up, nothing could have been proved.”
“By screaming, Lord Hull spoiled everything,” I said, “as he had been spoiling things all his life. The house was roused. Jory, probably in a panic, probably only stood there like a nit.
“It was Stephen Hull who saved the day, of course—or at least Jory’s alibi, the one which had him sitting on the bench under the stairs when his father was murdered. He rushed down the hall from the music room, smashed the door open, and must have hissed for Jory to get over to the desk with him, at once, so it would look as if they had broken in toget—”
I broke off, thunderstruck. At last I understood the glances between Holmes and Lestrade. I understood what they must have seen from the moment I showed them the trick hiding place: it could not have been done alone. The killing, yes, but the rest …
“Stephen testified that he and Jory met at the study door,” I said slowly. “That he, Stephen, burst it in and they entered together, discovered the body together. He lied. He might have done it to protect his brother, but to lie so well when one doesn’t know what has happened seems … seems …”
“Impossible,” Holmes said, “is the word for which you are searching, Watson.”
“Then Jory and Stephen were in on it together,” I said. “They planned it together … and in the eyes of the law, both are guilty of their father’s murder! My God!”
“Not both of them, my dear Watson,” Holmes said in a tone of curious gentleness. “All of them.”
I could only gape.
He nodded. “You have shown remarkable insight this morning, Watson. For once in your life you have burned with a deductive heat I’ll wager you’ll never generate again. My cap is off to you, dear fellow, as it is to any man who is able to transcend his normal nature, no matter how briefly. But in one way you have remained the same dear chap as you’ve always been: while you understand how good people can be, you have no understanding of how black they may be.”
I looked at him silently, almost humbly.
“Not that there was much blackness here, if half of what we’ve heard of Lord Hull was true,” Holmes said. He rose and began to pace irritably about the study. “Who testifies that Jory was with Stephen when the door was smashed in? Jory, naturally. Stephen, naturally. But there were two others. One was William—the third brother. Am I right, Lestrade?”
“Yes. He said he was halfway down the stairs when he saw the two of them go in together, Jory a little ahead.”
“How interesting!” Holmes said, eyes gleaming. “Stephen breaks in the door—as the younger and stronger of course he must—and so one would expect simple forward motion would have carried him into the room first. Yet William, halfway down the stairs, saw Jory ent
er first. Why was that, Watson?”
I could only shake my head numbly.
“Ask yourself whose testimony, and whose testimony alone, we can trust here. The answer is the fourth witness, Lord Hull’s man, Oliver Stanley. He approached the gallery railing in time to see Stephen enter the room, and that is perfectly correct, since Stephen was alone when he broke it in. It was William, with a better angle from his place on the stairs, who said he saw Jory precede Stephen into the study. William said so because he had seen Stanley and knew what he must say. It boils down to this, Watson: we know Jory was inside this room. Since both of his brothers testify he was outside, there was, at the very least, collusion. But as you say, the lack of confusion, the way they all pulled together so neatly, suggests something more.”
“Conspiracy,” I said dully.
“Yes. But, unfortunately for the Hulls, that’s not all. Do you recall me asking you, Watson, if you believe that all four of them simply walked wordlessly out of that parlour in four different directions at the very moment they heard the study door locked?”
“Yes. Now I do.”
“The four of them.” He looked at Lestrade. “All four testified they were four, yes?”
“Yes.”
“That includes Lady Hull. And yet we know Jory had to have been up and off the moment his father left the room; we know he was in the study when the door was locked, yet all four—including Lady Hull—claimed all four of them were still in the parlour when they heard the door locked. There might as well have been four hands on that dagger, Watson. The murder of Lord Hull was very much a family affair.”
I was too staggered to say anything. I looked at Lestrade and saw a look on his face I had never seen before or ever did again; a kind of tired sickened gravity.
“What may they expect?” Holmes said, almost genially.
“Jory will certainly swing,” Lestrade said. “Stephen will go to gaol for life. William Hull may get life, but will more likely get twenty years in Broadmoor, and there such a weakling as he will almost certainly be tortured to death by his fellows. The only difference between what awaits Jory and what awaits William is that Jory’s end will be quicker and more merciful.”
Holmes bent and stroked the canvas stretched between the legs of the coffee-table. It made that odd hoarse purring noise.
“Lady Hull,” Lestrade went on, “would go to Beechwood Manor—more commonly know to the female inmates as Cut-Purse Palace—for five years … but, having met the lady, I rather suspect she will find another way out. Her husband’s laudanum would be my guess.”
“All because Jory Hull missed a clean strike,” Holmes remarked, and sighed. “If the old man had had the common decency to die silently, all would have been well. He would, as Watson says, have left by the window. Taking his canvas with him, of course … not to mention his trumpery shadows. Instead, he raised the house. All the servents were in, exclaiming over the dead master. The family was in confusion. How shabby their luck was, Lestrade! How close was the constable when Stanley summoned him? Less than fifty yards, I should guess.”
“He was actually on the walk,” Lestrade said. “Their luck was shabby. He was passing, heard the scream, and turned in.”
“Holmes,” I said, feeling much more comfortable in my old role, “how did you know a constable was so nearby?”
“Simplicity itself, Watson. If not, the family would have shooed the servants out long enough to hide the canvas and ‘shadows.’ ”
“Also to unlatch at least one window, I should think,” Lestrade added in a voice uncustomarily quiet.
“They could have taken the canvas and the shadows,” I said suddenly.
Holmes turned toward me. “Yes.”
Lestrade raised his eyebrows.
“It came down to a choice,” I said to him. “There was time enough to burn the new will or get rid of the hugger-mugger … this would have been just Stephen and Jory, of course, in the moments after Stephen burst in the door. They—or, if you’ve got the temperature of the characters right, and I suppose you do, Stephen—decided to burn the will and hope for the best. I suppose there was just time enough to chuck it into the stove.”
Lestrade turned, looked at it, then looked back. “Only a man as black as Hull would have found strength enough to scream at the end,” he said.
“Only a man as black as Hull would have required a son to kill him,” Holmes returned.
He and Lestrade looked at each other, and again something passed between them, something perfectly communicated which I myself did not understand.
“Have you ever done it?” Holmes asked, as if picking up on an old conversation.
Lestrade shook his head. “Once came damned close,” he said. “There was a girl involved, not her fault, not really. I came close. Yet … that was one.”
“And these are four,” Holmes returned. “Four people ill used by a foul man who should have died within six months anyway.”
Now I understood.
Holmes turned his gray eyes on me. “What say you, Lestrade? Watson has solved this one, although he did not see all the ramifications. Shall we let Watson decide?”
“All right,” Lestrade said gruffly. “Just be quick. I want to get out of this damned room.”
Instead of answering, I bent down, picked up the felt shadows, rolled them into a ball, and put them in my coat pocket. I felt quite odd doing it: much as I had felt when in the grip of the fever which almost took my life in India.
“Capital fellow, Watson!” Holmes said. “You’ve solved your first case and became an accessory to murder all in the same day, and before tea-time! And here’s a souvenir for myself—an original Jory Hull. I doubt it’s signed, but one must be grateful for whatever the gods send us on rainy days.” He used his pen-knife to loosen the glue holding the canvas to the legs of the coffee-table. He made quick work of it; less than a minute later he was slipping a narrow canvas tube into the inner pocket of his voluminous greatcoat.
“This is a dirty piece of work,” Lestrade said, but he crossed to one of the windows and, after a moment’s hesitation, released the locks which held it and raised it half an inch or so.
“Some is dirtier done than undone,” Holmes observed. “Shall we?”
We crossed to the door. Lestrade opened it. One of the constables asked Lestrade if there was any progress.
On another occasion Lestrade might show the man the rough side of his tongue. This time he said shortly, “Looks like attempted robbery gone to something worse. I saw it at once, of course; Holmes a moment later.”
“Too bad!” the other constable ventured.
“Yes, too bad,” Lestrade said. “But the old man’s scream sent the thief packing before he could steal anything. Carry on.”
We left. The parlour door was open, but I kept my head as we passed it. Holmes looked, of course; there was no way he could not have done. It was just the way he was made. As for me, I never saw any of the family. I never wanted to.
Holmes was sneezing again. His friend was twining around his legs and miaowing blissfully. “Let me out of here,” he said, and bolted.
An hour later we were back at 221B Baker Street, in much the same positions we occupied when Lestrade came driving up: Holmes in the window-seat, myself on the sofa.
“Well, Watson,” Holmes said presently, “how do you think you’ll sleep tonight?”
“Like a top,” I said. “And you?”
“Likewise,” he said. “I’m glad to be away from those damned cats, I can tell you that.”
“How will Lestrade sleep, d’you think?”
Holmes looked at me and smiled. “Poorly tonight. Poorly for a week, perhaps. But then he’ll be all right. Among his other talents, Lestrade has a great one for creative forgetting.”
That made me laugh, and laugh hard.
“Look, Watson!” Holmes said. “Here’s a sight!” I got up and went to the window, sure I would see Lestrade riding up in the waggon once more. Instead I saw
the sun breaking through the clouds, bathing London in a glorius late afternoon light.
“It came out after all,” Holmes said. “Top-hole!” He picked up his violin and began to play, the sun strong on his face. I looked at his barometer and saw it was falling. That made me laugh so hard I had to sit down. When Holmes looked at me and asked what it was, I could only shake my head. Strange man, Holmes: I doubt if he would have understood, anyway.
A KNIFE BETWEEN BROTHERS
THE VERSATILE AND PROLIFIC Manly Wade Wellman (1903–1986) began writing, mainly in the horror field, in the 1920s and by the 1930s was selling stories to the leading pulps in the genre: Weird Tales, Wonder Stories, and Astounding Stories. He had three series running simultaneously in Weird Tales. They featured Silver John, also known as John the Balladeer, the backwoods minstrel with a silver-stringed guitar; John Thunstone, the New York playboy and adventurer who was also a psychic detective; and Judge Keith Hilary Pursuivant, an elderly occult detective (Wellman wrote this last series under the pseudonym Gans T. Fields).
His short story “A Star for a Warrior” won the Best Story of the Year award from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1946, beating out a story by William Faulkner, who wrote an angry letter of protest. Other major honors include Lifetime Achievement Awards from the World Fantasy Writers (1980) and the British Fantasy Writers (1985), and the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection for Worse Things Waiting (1975).
Several of his stories have been adapted for television, including “The Valley Was Still” for The Twilight Zone (1961), “The Devil Is Not Mocked” for Night Gallery (1971), and “Larroes Catch Meddlers” (1951) and “School for the Unspeakable” (1952) for two episodes of Lights Out.
Wellman also wrote for comic books, producing the first Captain Marvel issue for Fawcett Publishers. When DC Comics sued Fawcett for plagiarizing their Superman character, Wellman testified against Fawcett, and DC won the case after three years of litigation.