The Execution of Sherlock Holmes

by Donald Thomas

  It was a masterly cross-examination. He had them by the throat as perhaps only Sir Edward Marshall Hall might have done in a court of law. Neither of these surly young fellows could muster an answer, for they had expected only a repetition of the more kindly questions asked at the assize court. But still he had not quite done with them.

  ‘Before we are rid of you this afternoon, I will add one brief lesson in astronomy. The moon’s orbit is somewhat more eccentric than that of the earth round the sun, where sunset and sunrise have a more regular principle. In the autumn, the time of the moon’s rising will scarcely vary from one night to the next. Therefore, when it rises just after dusk, it is good moonlight to make hay by, the so-called Harvest Moon. In October it is Hunter’s Moon. Unfortunately for you, the springtime month of which you speak is one when the differences in the moon’s rising are far greater from day to day, sometimes more than an hour and often fifty minutes between one night and the next. The fact that the moon rose conveniently for you at seven thirty P.M. on Saturday means that it would not rise three days later until after ten o’clock. At nine twenty, in the darkness of that alley below the hedge, you could not have seen a single thing by moonlight to which you have sworn in court, even had those things taken place.’

  They hung their heads, but still he had not done with them.

  ‘Every item of your evidence taken together is now exposed for what it always was—a tissue of vindictive lies. At first you told these falsehoods for motives of malice, to ruin the lives of an innocent man and woman, a man whom you despised as “Holy Willie.” Then murder was done, and you dared not confess your slanders.’

  In the matter of his reputation, William Gardiner was triumphant. Sherlock Holmes had fought the two bullies to a standstill, and they stood silent before him.

  He spoke once more before Eli Nunn led them out.

  ‘Repeat your vicious allegations in court once more and you will find that you have gone to sea in a sieve. I will myself lay an information against you with Inspector Lestrade as my witness. I will seek a warrant for your indictment on charges of willful perjury, for which you may be sent to penal servitude upon conviction for a term of seven years. Think on that.’

  There was a silence in the chapel as the door closed upon them. Even Lestrade and Ernest Wild sat in awe. Presently Wild turned to the Chief Inspector.

  ‘I cannot anticipate what you will say to the solicitor-general, Mr. Lestrade, but I must tell you this. If there is a third attempt to try William Gardiner for murder, after all that you have heard and he has suffered, I do not think the Crown will offer those two scoundrels as witnesses on its behalf. However, I promise you that I shall subpoena them for the defense, as hostile witnesses, and treat them as Mr. Holmes has treated them this afternoon.’

  Lestrade got to his feet and shuffled his papers together. His bulldog gruffness had softened and he almost smiled.

  ‘It is not in my gift to decide such matters, Mr. Wild, only to make my recommendations. However, after what we have seen and heard this afternoon, I do not think you will be called upon to do anything of the kind.’

  7

  Whatever Lestrade’s failings as a detective, the inspector was a man of honour. He had given his word that his recommendation to the Metropolitan commissioner of police, and thence to the Director of Public Prosecutions, should be based upon the evidence. He was not to be influenced by the local prejudice that had brought William Gardiner so close to the gallows trap and the unmarked grave by the prison wall. My own part has been to reveal, for the first time, the role played in the famous Peasenhall case by Sherlock Holmes.

  The world knew in a day or two that William Gardiner would not be called upon for a third time to stand trial for the murder of Rose Harsent. Yet innocent though he was, he and his family were punished by public opinion. He was forced to leave his home in Alma Cottage and take his wife and children to London, where their future lives were hidden in its twenty thousand streets.

  At dusk on the day when the end of the prosecution was announced, as a soft January snowfall began to cover the stretches of Baker Street beyond the window, Holmes stood looking out at the smoky sky, from which the large flakes were falling slowly through the first yellow flush of lamplight.

  ‘Fiat justitia, ruat coelum,’ he said thoughtfully, drawing the velvet curtains and turning to the firelight. ‘“Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.” The heavens are certainly falling at the moment, rather pleasantly, and justice has been done to William Gardiner in ample measure.’

  He sat down and began to fill his pipe with the black shag tobacco that he habitually kept in a Persian slipper, a souvenir of some long-forgotten adventure.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘did you ever believe the man to be guilty? Was your promise to Lestrade of being willing to find him innocent or not anything but a blind, as they say?’

  He looked into the crackling logs of the fire and sighed.

  ‘You see, Watson? You are too quick for me, as usual. I decided at the outset that I could not appear to be a counsel for the defence, for that would have turned Lestrade into the prosecutor as well as the judge. It was obvious from the start that the slanders that Wright and Skinner spread about the poor fellow were false. They were demonstrably false upon common sense and deduction. It really mattered nothing whether one believed Gardiner and his wife. The importance attached to her evidence and his was the red herring in the case. It was the one crucial error committed by Ernest Wild that he made so much seem to depend upon it.’

  ‘It was not thought beside the point in court.’

  He waved this aside like the smoke of his pipe.

  ‘It was why the jury nearly convicted him, all but one man. The whole thing was settled in my mind by the impossibilities in the slanderers’ stories. Such people can rarely spread lies without giving themselves away. Mr. Wild did not quite appreciate the extent of this. He is good and we shall hear more of him, but after all he is not Sir Edward Marshall Hall and never will be. He never even suggested, I think, that Gardiner could not have left the chapel last and yet the door was found locked next morning. He did not point out that two hours after sunset it was pitch dark and yet Skinner claimed to identify two people, seen in total darkness through a hedge, on a path below him and a little distance away.’

  ‘It has been pointed out now,’ I said quietly.

  ‘When they were cornered, of course, they said there must have been a lantern and that was when I knew we had them! The whole story was an impossibility.’

  ‘And they were wrong about the moon.’

  He paused a moment.

  ‘There, Watson, I must confess a small subterfuge. I do not know when the moon rose that night, though the nightly intervals of its rising are certainly far longer at that time of year, more than an hour sometimes between one night and the next. I did not know that it was pitch dark rather than moonlight at the time they claimed to have seen such goings-on. Yet, faced with the challenge, nor did they. For me, that was the final proof of their malice, dishonesty, and stupidity.’

  ‘You used a trick?’

  ‘A trick if you care to call it that. What is in a name? Our friend Professor Jowett used to say much the same of logic. Logic, he said, is neither an art nor a science. Logic is a dodge.’

  Having had enough of this, he reached for his violin case.

  ‘While you were out yesterday, I made some small improvements to my prelude and fugue on the theme of “Pop Goes the Weasel.” It is, I believe, now ready for Messrs. Augeners’ attention. Ah! I see from your expression that I have played it to you before, I think?’

  ‘Just the other evening.’

  ‘Nonetheless,’ he said happily, ‘you might care to hear it again.’

  The Case of the Phantom Chambermaid

  1

  It was a cool midsummer morning, during the week in which the Poisons Bill was before a House of Commons select committee. After a glimpse of early sun, a thin mist had ga
thered over the pale blue Baker Street sky, even while I read a summary of the previous day’s proceedings from the parliamentary columns of the Times. I folded the paper and was about to say something to Holmes concerning the deficiencies of the new law, when he rose from his chair, stooped to the fireplace, took a cinder with the tongs, and applied it to the bowl of his cherrywood pipe. The red silk dressing gown made his tall, gaunt figure seem even taller and gaunter in the faint sunlight. Puffing at the pipe and staring down into the grate wit h his sharp profile, he spoke thoughtfully.

  ‘The season is passing, Watson, and it is high time we got away. Everywhere else the sun must be shining. In London, it might as well be February. Do you not feel it? Even the footpads of the East End will have deserted us for Margate sands. Life has become commonplace, the newspapers are sterile, audacity and romance seem to have passed for ever from the criminal world.’

  I was well used to these periodic outbursts of self-pity.

  ‘We might take lodgings for a week or two at one of the Atlantic resorts,’ I said hopefully, ‘Ilfracombe or Tenby, perhaps. There is also a standing invitation from the Exmoor cousins at Wiveliscombe.’

  He turned a tragic face to me and groaned.

  ‘One of those unwelcome summonses that call upon a man either to be bored or to lie.’

  I thought it best to ignore this passing dismissal of my family. I said, rather brusquely, ‘Once the matter in hand is dealt with, you have no further commitments. You may travel where you please and for as long as you please.’

  He groaned again.

  ‘The matter in hand! Oh, Watson, Watson! The Reverend Mr. Milner, Mrs. Deans, and her daughter Effie. A girl who was, I understand, a chambermaid at the Royal Albion Hotel in Brighton and was, I also understand, dismissed because someone saw her enter the room of a gentleman during the night. Really, Watson! Why should I care if a hundred chambermaids enter the rooms of a hundred gentlemen—or whether they are discharged from their employment or not? No one suggests that anything was stolen from this room—from any room, indeed. Merely that this young woman was seen entering during the night. That such a case should attract the least attention attests to the triumph of the banal in our society.’

  ‘You have often remarked, old fellow, that it is the banal and the commonplace that are the hallmarks of major crime.’

  ‘Well, well,’ he said grudgingly, ‘that, at any rate, is true.’

  He went off to his room and for several minutes I heard him banging about, making a quite unnecessary disturbance. When he returned he had changed his dressing-gown for a black velvet jacket.

  ‘The Royal Albion Hotel.’ He sat down and sighed. ‘I smell the tawdry odour of its brown Windsor soup from sixty miles away.’

  It was half past ten when a cab stopped below our windows and there was a sound of voices. When the Reverend James Milner had wired to make his appointment, he informed me that he and two members of his Brighton flock would take an early train from their seaside homes and be with us by eleven o’clock. He was, I gathered, superintendent of the Wesleyan Railway Mission in the town, ministering to the workers and families in the little streets that cluster round the lofty terminus of the London Brighton and South Coast Railway. Mrs. Deans and Effie had brought their trouble to him. In a most quixotic gesture, he had decided to announce the child’s trouble to the famous Sherlock Holmes.

  They were an odd trio. Mr. Milner in his black cloth suit and tall white clerical collar lacked the more exotic qualities of other clergy and could only have been a plain Methodist minister. His sleek hair was prematurely gray, but his spectacles gave him a youthfully studious look. Mrs. Deans, in a flowery summer dress, came up our Baker Street staircase like a cruiser under full sail. Her round face and porkpie bonnet gave her the air of one who could hold her own. I could imagine this doughty person with her sleeves rolled up to drub the washing in its bowl or give what-for to anyone who exchanged cross words with her. When I heard that the terrace of cramped little houses in which the Deans family lived was called Trafalgar Street, I saw her at once as one of those formidable women who had sailed on HMS Victory to Nelson’s famous battle and had loaded the great guns for their menfolk to fire.

  Effie Deans, the subject of this consultation, was probably no more than fifteen or sixteen, a chubby or cherubic girl with a cluster of fair curls under a blue straw boater. In the circumstances, it was not surprising that her prettiness was clouded by apprehension.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said Mr. Milner, once Holmes had sat us all down, ‘what may be a matter of sport to the rest of the world is life and death to the honor of Miss Deans and her mother.’

  Mrs. Deans nodded emphatically. The minister continued.

  ‘Effie Deans has been dismissed from a post that she had held for almost two years, sent away without a reference or a character, for an offence which she cannot have committed. The gentleman in question made no complaint against her—indeed, it seems he was not even questioned. A hotel porter claims that he saw her enter the room during the night. He reported the matter and she was dismissed next day, despite her most positive denials. I have known her as a good, honest, and truthful girl, who attended the Wesleyan Mission Sunday school every week of her childhood.’

  Holmes had been staring at him with a curiosity that was discourteous, if not hostile.

  ‘Unfortunately, Mr. Milner, what you know her to be is not the issue. Let us keep to the facts. If Miss Deans is as bad as Jezebel, it matters nothing so long as she was not there and did not enter that room. If she was there and did enter it, she may be as good and truthful as you like, but she was guilty of the fact and was properly dismissed. Let us have no more of Sunday school, if you please. It will not get us very far.’

  Holmes was in an unfortunate mood. He should never have mentioned Jezebel, to judge by the look on the face of Mrs. Deans and the flush that rose from her neck to her cheeks. No Baker Street detective was to say such a thing of her daughter. Before Milner could add a word, she let fly.

  ‘See here, Mr. Holmes! It’s not just that my Effie is a good girl and wouldn’t have done it. She was at home all night and couldn’t have done it!’

  He admired her spirit.

  ‘Excellent, madam! You have, if I may say so, an unerring grasp of the laws of evidence. Pray continue.’

  The Reverend Mr. Milner was out in the cold now.

  ‘Well, sir,’ Mrs. Deans went on, ‘she come home as usual close on half past eight that evening. Don’t take my word for it. We had the Todgers.’

  ‘Todgers, madam?’

  ‘Them that live next door. Had them in for a hand or two of whist and Beat-Jack-out-of-doors, also a glass of shrub and a pipe.’

  I swear I saw in my mind Mrs. Deans smoking her pipe with the rest.

  ‘I assume they were not with you until two in the morning?’

  ‘Near midnight. They saw her all the time. Then we went to bed. She went to her little room in the attic. To get out, she comes down through the room where Alf and I sleep. I laid awake an hour and more with my stomach after the shrub. How could she come down and I not see nor hear her? How could she unbolt the downstairs door and go out without I hear her—or without Alf seeing it when he gets up at three? Which he must do to go on early turn at the railway goods yard at four. And don’t tell me, Mr. Holmes, that I can’t prove what I say. Do I look the sort that’d let her daughter go out on the streets at one or two in the morning and never say a word?’

  ‘No, madam,’ said Holmes uncertainly, ‘indeed you do not. In any court proceedings, however, you will be asked the following question: Why should this porter, whoever he was, say that he saw your daughter entering a guest’s room at one or two o’clock that morning, if he could not have done so?’

  Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him.

  ‘Yes, Mr. Holmes! Oh, yes! I’d like him asked that question! I’d like him asked good and proper, in such a way as he wouldn’t forget being asked for a very long time!’


  If ever a woman had captivated Holmes in a quarter of an hour, it was Mrs. Deans. The Reverend Mr. Milner had given up. His parishioner was doing his job far better than he could have done it for himself. Holmes stretched out his long thin legs, and when he looked up, his eyes were brighter than I had seen them for a long time.

  ‘It seems,’ said Mr. Milner hastily, ‘that the night porter said he recognized her in part by her uniform, the black dress, white apron, and white cap. Of course, that might have been worn by someone else, though it is not clear why anyone else wishing to enter the room should have bothered to put the uniform on. Whoever did so can hardly have expected to do it without disturbing the occupant.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Holmes thoughtfully. ‘What do we know of the gentleman who occupied the room? He was alone, I take it?’

  ‘He was talked about in the town during the weeks since he came there.’ Mrs. Deans had once again got in ahead of the Reverend Mr. Milner. ‘A spiritual gentleman. Always seeing ghosts, he said. Something to do with the Society for Cyclical Research.’

  ‘Society for Psychic Research,’ Mr. Milner said quickly. She stared at him, then turned back to Holmes.

  ‘They say he saw that many ghosts, he had to put himself to sleep at night with clarasomething from a smelling bottle. My girl could still smell it next morning. And he had a rumpus with the showfolk at the Brighton Aquarium. Professor Chamberlain and Madame Elvira that do tricks with ghosts and guessing. He thought he was superior to all that tommyrot. The Brighton papers wouldn’t print his letters nor theirs for fear of being took to court.’

  I looked at Holmes. An extraordinary change had gradually come over his face during these exchanges with their hints of ghosts and fraud. His eyes were shining like two stars with a hint of enthusiasm ill-contained. His hands gripped the arms of the chair and I almost thought he might spring from it. The Reverend Mr. Milner got in his twopenny-worth at last.