The Execution of Sherlock Holmes

by Donald Thomas

  Gardiner himself had to admit sending two letters to Rose during this time, although when read in public they contained only the most unobjectionable account of the measures he was taking to seek justice for them both. The most damning letter, said to be Gardiner’s, was an anonymous lover’s assignation note. This came to Rose Harsent by post not many hours before her death. The writer asked her to leave a candle in the window of her attic room at ten P.M. that night. If this signal told him the coast was clear, he would come to her at midnight, by way of that back kitchen, where her body was afterwards found. The great courtroom expert, Thomas Gurrin, held that this note and its envelope were in Gardiner’s writing. Two humble bank examiners of suspect signatures swore that the script was not Gardiner’s. It seemed to me, as they say, six of one and half a dozen of the other.

  Undeniably, it was a case of the most sordid kind. Holmes and I seemed well out of it. All the same, I was not the least surprised that it made headlines in the local papers or that before the end of our visit William Gardiner had been arrested and charged with the young woman’s murder. The evidence, such as it was, pointed only at him. Holmes said little or nothing about it, contenting himself with the antiquities of Suffolk.

  On the last Saturday of our visit, however, my friend suggested that we might make a railway excursion to the nearby coast and enjoy a little sea air. Great Yarmouth was the destination chosen for our day by the sea. It was a pleasant enough place, though inclining a little too much toward a resort for trippers, in my view. That need not have mattered, had Sherlock Holmes not noticed a gaudy placard on the promenade for a beach sideshow. It was a fly-by-night affair in a canvas booth, and it promised a tableau of ‘The Dreadful Peasenhall Murder.’

  Poor Rose Harsent had not been dead a week, and the man accused of her murder had been arrested only a few days ago. Already some rascal was taking his profit from their misfortune. All the same, Holmes must visit this disgraceful display. It was evident that the proprietor of the waxwork had never heard of laws relating to contempt of court or indeed the presumption of innocence. Neither the setting nor the persons of the display resembled reality, of course. Yet there before us was a makebelieve Rose Harsent in the pose of having her throat cut by a makebelieve William Gardiner—all in wax. The whole thing was a trap to fleece idlers and muckrakers.

  Holmes said not a word as we stared at this outrage. I am pleased to say that the police had already been informed. The exhibition was closed down and the proprietor taken into custody a few hours later. It was only when we had left the booth and walked a few yards by the sea that my friend turned to me and remarked:

  ‘Unless I am very much mistaken, Watson, we shall hear more of this wretched matter. As yet, we know far too little to judge the case. Curious, is it not, how so many ignorant people believe that creating a scandal will draw the veil from some hidden truth? In reality, scandal obscures the truth more effectively than anything else. For the present, however, William Gardiner may thank his lucky stars that the law of Judge Lynch does not yet operate in the fair county of Suffolk.’

  2

  Why Holmes or I should hear more of this hateful business was beyond me. The trial of William Gardiner for the murder of Rose Harsent came on before Mr. Justice Grantham and a jury at Suffolk Assizes in Ipswich, and neither of us received any summons to appear as a witness for either the prosecution or the defence. I had not even been called to give medical testimony at the inquest. Dr. Lay could say all that had to be said about such matters. It was Holmes who brought up the case six months later, after breakfast in Baker Street, on a dank November morning.

  ‘I trust, Watson, you have no pressing engagements for the next few hours. I believe we are about to have a visitor, and I should greatly appreciate your company.’

  ‘Oh, has someone made an appointment? I thought the day was free.’

  ‘No appointment has been made. Indeed, I and the gentleman in question are complete strangers.’

  ‘Then who the devil is he to come here in such a manner?’

  ‘His name is Mr. Ernest Wild and he is the author of a successful operetta, The Help, and a widely praised volume of verse, The Lamp of Destiny.’

  ‘My dear Holmes, perhaps you would tell me why in thunder this librettist and versifier, unmet by either of us, is to descend upon us unannounced. If he is to descend at all!’

  My friend chuckled.

  ‘Because, Watson, Mr. Ernest Wild is also a young barrister of the Inner Temple and defence counsel to William Gardiner of Peasenhall in his trial for the murder of Rose Harsent. The famous Marshall Hall should look to his laurels, for Ernest Wild has already defended thirty murder cases and saved twenty-seven clients from the gallows.’

  I was impressed by this and said so.

  ‘He did not, of course, obtain acquittals in all twenty-seven cases but, at the very least, murder was reduced to manslaughter and his client lived to fight—possibly to kill—another day. Mr. Ernest Wild is what they call a coming man.’

  ‘And why should he visit us?’

  ‘For a reason known to all the world but you, old fellow. I was up unaccustomedly early this morning and have had the advantage of reading the Morning Post long before you came down to your breakfast. Two trials of William Gardiner have come and gone. The result is that two juries could not agree upon a verdict and he must be tried again. The worst is that at present eleven jurors would hang him but one held out. Even that man did not think Gardiner innocent. However, he has a conscientious objection to capital punishment and has written to the paper to say so. Had I not a distaste for puns, I should say it is only thanks to that one man that Gardiner’s life still hangs by a thread rather than by a rope. Ernest Wild knows very well that the likely outcome of another trial will be the hanging of his client. As a defender, he has done almost everything within his power and it has been too little. Where else should he look for assistance?’

  ‘Yet how can you be sure he will come to us?’

  ‘Wait and listen!’ he said softly.

  We did so for several minutes and heard nothing. Then, as I was thinking what nonsense the whole thing was, there came the unmistakable jangle of the Baker Street doorbell.

  ‘Voila!’ said Holmes with a smile of insufferable smugness.

  It seems he had advised Mrs. Hudson of this likely visit. The door of the sitting room opened and with ‘Mr. Wild to see Mr. Holmes, sir!’ she ushered in a dark-haired man in his earlier thirties. His wide-boned face, strong features, the firm line of his mouth, and the penetrating gaze of his pale eyes gave him a look of solemnity and determination. Yet the line of the mouth and the hard gaze of the eyes could turn in an instant into the most charming and boyish smile. At present, there was no occasion for a smile. He shook hands with us both, took his seat almost without waiting for an invitation, and came straight to the point. He nodded at the Morning Post which lay on the table, a little the worse for wear after Holmes’s attentions.

  ‘Gentlemen, it is good of you to receive me at such short notice. I observe you have read the morning paper. No doubt you have seen the outcome of the murder trial at Ipswich yesterday. William Gardiner has evaded the hangman briefly by virtue of a single juror’s whimsy. Unfortunately, he has not escaped for long, if the Crown persists in trial after trial.’

  ‘As they will most certainly do,’ said Holmes, reaching for his pipe with a weary gesture. ‘They cannot do otherwise, if eleven jurors are already of one mind.’

  ‘Just so. All he has gained is three more months in a squalid prison cell. He eats, sleeps, and breathes next to the room where he will be hanged. The gallows remain so close to his bunk that, were it not for the wall, he might reach out and touch them. Mr. Holmes, I speak as a man and not as a lawyer. I believe William Gardiner to be innocent, upon my life I do, while most of Suffolk prefer him to be guilty. He will never be found innocent at Ipswich assize court in the face of such prejudice and insinuation as he now faces.’

  ‘Surely,
’ said Holmes, drawing his pipe from his mouth, ‘surely he is fortunate in his defender.’

  Our visitor smiled awkwardly and shook his head.

  ‘No, Mr. Holmes. I have taken on more than I should in a case like this. Gardiner needs more than a junior barrister; at the least his case requires a man who has taken silk and is a King’s Counsel. That was why I came straight to London last night after the verdict and called upon Sir Charles Gill and Sir Edward Clarke. If either of them would lead for the defence of Gardiner at a retrial, I should be honoured to act as their junior counsel.’

  ‘And they will not?’ Holmes raised his eyebrows, though scarcely in surprise. ‘There again, Sir Charles and Sir Edward are two of the busiest men at the bar. I see that Sir Charles is leading counsel in the Marylebone Railway inquiry and Sir Edward Clarke leads for the defence in the Dunwich by-election petition. As for Sir Edward Marshall Hall. …’

  ‘Mr. Holmes, the retrial will come on in a few weeks. Such men are fully booked, as they say, for many months and cannot alter their arrangements. They say that they could not give Gardiner’s defence the time and attention it deserves, nor could they get up the facts of the case as thoroughly as I have already done. Yet, as you will know, a junior counsel without a leader carries less weight with a jury and far less weight with a judge.’

  Holmes laid down his pipe and nodded sympathetically.

  ‘Mr. Justice Lawrence had no business to make those interjections of his during your speech to the jury yesterday. However, I do not see how I can be called to the bar and equipped with a knighthood as a King’s Counsel before the retrial of Gardiner takes place.’

  Wild folded and unfolded his hands.

  ‘No, sir. Yet it remains within the power of the solicitor-general to call a halt to the prosecution of William Gardiner. In other words, to enter a writ of nolle prosequi.’

  I saw Sherlock Holmes tighten his nostrils, one of those small gestures of skepticism.

  ‘I cannot believe that the solicitor-general will abandon a case in which eleven men out of twelve have found the accused guilty of murder—a murder that was little less than butchery. Suppose for a moment that Gardiner was the murderer and is now set free—and murders again?’

  Wild shook his head.

  ‘My hope is that Gardiner may be judged in a tribunal quite different to that which he has faced so far. One that may persuade the solicitor-general to stay his hand. The case against this man is based entirely on a mass of circumstantial evidence and scandal. There is not a shred of direct evidence that connects the accused man with the murder of Rose Harsent. Yet circumstantial evidence has been fueled by a previous scandal. That is enough to prejudice any jury and carry the day against him. Even his own good character may destroy him.’

  Holmes contracted his brows sharply.

  ‘But is not your defence based, in part, on the fact that Gardiner is a man of principle and morality, a man of religion who is assistant steward, Sunday school superintendent, and choirmaster in his Methodist congregation?’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Wild, bringing his hand down on his knee. ‘A rogue would be easier to deal with! Among the malicious, his nickname in the village before the scandal was Holy Willie, and I can see why. When Gardiner is in the witness-box, he is almost master of the courtroom as a revivalist preacher might be. That is the problem. He believes he is master and will endure no insinuation. When I questioned him in the witness-box about Wright’s story of the alleged misconduct with Rose Harsent at the Doctor’s Chapel, Gardiner fairly rounded on me and told the court it was a vicious lie from beginning to end. Very well. I daresay it was. Then I asked him about the evidence of Mr. Rouse, the preacher who said that he had seen Gardiner and Rose Harsent walking quite innocently along the road to Peasenhall together. “A downright lie!” he said. His neighbour recalled that Gardiner had lit a fire in his washhouse the morning after the murder. “A deliberate lie!” snaps Gardiner.’

  He paused and then resumed.

  ‘You see where this leads, Mr. Holmes? He will brook no contradiction. Gardiner will never say that a man or woman may be in error, that his neighbour must have mistaken the day on which the fire was lit in the washhouse, for example. The village folk are all downright or deliberate liars when they contradict his account. Small wonder if he was unpopular. But imagine the effect of all this on a jury.’

  Taking the pipe from his mouth, Holmes began quietly to play act a courtroom scene of cross-examination. As I listened, I thought, not for the first time, what a ferocious antagonist my friend might have been, had he chosen a career at the criminal bar.

  ‘“I see, Mr. Gardiner,” says the cross-examiner gently. “So all these other witnesses are liars, are they, including some who have been your friends in the past? Tell me, what reason have all these good people for telling lies about you? You cannot name a single reason—and yet they are all liars! You alone are telling the truth? And you ask my lord and the jurors to believe that?”’

  Holmes put down his pipe and then continued in the voice of an imaginary prosecutor.

  ‘“Unlike those whose evidence is against you, the truth that you alone tell has hardly a shred of corroboration? And you ask my lord and the jury to believe that?”’

  He paused again, for effect, and then concluded in the same voice.

  ‘“All these people, some of whom, like Mr. Rouse, have supported you in the past, now combine together to tell lies about you for this mysterious reason that you cannot name? And you also ask my lord and the jury to believe that, do you?”’

  Mr. Wild winced and Holmes inquired sympathetically, ‘It goes something along those lines, I suppose, Mr. Wild?’

  ‘It goes like that almost word for word, sir.’

  ‘Of course it does,’ said Holmes with a sigh.

  ‘The facts of the case, sir, are becoming lost in slander and innuendo—and I almost fear that I may become lost with them!’

  The facts of the Peasenhall murder! Such as they were, they became our constant companions in weeks to come. Indeed, there were now embellishments of the original story, all of them to William Gardiner’s prejudice. Skinner had claimed he went to a hedge near the Doctor’s Chapel with Wright and had listened to a couple engaged in an immoral act. He now remembered that the man and woman had jokingly discussed passages from the Book of Genesis, which may have a lewd interpretation in certain minds. He and Wright had already recalled that, as they waited, they saw quite plainly Rose Harsent come out after some time, followed by Gardiner a little while later. It was not only the voices of the guilty couple, but their appearances as well, to which these wretched youths were prepared to swear.

  Whatever was believed in court, the ‘truth’ that circulated in the neighbourhood, through the little villages, seemed to be unquestioned. The Peeping Toms were believed. Gardiner had been the girl’s lover. She had conceived a child by him, and, in order to conceal his guilt and avoid a paternity summons, he had murdered her in the most brutal fashion. This also carried the comforting hope that if William Gardiner could be made to bear the guilt, the rest of the neighbourhood would breathe freely again.

  I have put the facts that Mr. Wild gave us into a nutshell, for it took him a good hour and more to explain the entire case. When he had finished, he sat back in his chair and looked at each of us in turn. Sherlock Holmes got to his feet, crossed to the sideboard, and refilled his pipe from the tobacco jar.

  ‘I sympathize entirely, Mr. Wild. I see the threat of a great injustice here, though I am not convinced of Gardiner’s innocence. I do not entirely see, however, what it is that you would like me to do.’

  The young man looked him straight in the eyes.

  ‘I would ask you to fight a duel, Mr. Holmes.’

  Despite the solemnity of the case, my friend threw back his head and laughed as he took his seat once more.

  ‘Would you have singlestick or pistols for two?’

  Ernest Wild did not smile.

  ‘I do
not believe that William Gardiner can receive justice at the assize court where he now stands, though it is heresy for me to say so. His only hope must lie in another arena.’

  ‘Of what possible use would that be?’ I interposed.

  The young lawyer turned to me.

  ‘Dr. Watson, William Gardiner’s last hope may lie in the Crown withdrawing the prosecution because they see that the man is innocent. It is in their power to do that, whatever local prejudice may say.’

  I almost gasped at the audacity of it.

  ‘The Crown has won eleven of the twelve jurors to its side and might have got the other had he not been an eccentric! Why should they withdraw from the case?’

  ‘One moment,’ said Holmes. ‘Tell us, if you please, Mr. Wild, a little about this other arena, where it seems I am to fight my duel.’

  The young advocate let out a long breath, as if he knew that he had won my friend to his side at last.

  ‘Mr. Holmes, it is no secret that you count among your associates—if I may call them that—some of the best men at Scotland Yard.’

  ‘They would not have to be so very good to be the best of a bad bunch. No matter. Pray continue, sir.’

  ‘Let their best man be chosen. Let the two of you sift the evidence and the witnesses, free from all slander, prejudice, intimidation. Work together if you wish, fight it out if you must. When that is done, your findings shall be presented to the Director of Public Prosecutions or the solicitor-general, or the Home Secretary himself for that matter. If you can carry the day, your reputation is such that I believe a plea of nolle prosequi may be entered by the Crown and the agony of William Gardiner brought to an end. No less than that, the agony of his wife and children too.’

  ‘And if I do not carry the day,’ said Holmes nonchalantly, ‘my reputation and much else shall end in the mud. And I must warn you that if I investigate the evidence, you, Mr. Wild, may not get the answer you are hoping for.’