The Whole Art of Detection

by Lyndsay Faye

  My friend’s eyes shone with mischief. “The next day I was knocked up by the police at my lodgings in Montague Street because Plaid Charlie had been murdered the previous night.”

  Gaping at him, I lowered my brandy to my lap. “Good heavens, Holmes! Your lodgings? Whatever for?”

  “You see, they had already taken a culprit for the murder into custody.” Holmes’s expression was as aloof as a statue’s, but his entire torso wriggled with anticipation. “The suspect stridently insisted that he was innocent, and that the only man who could help to save his character was Inspector Athelney Jones. So who should arrive at my wretched little hovel but . . .”

  “Inspector Athelney Jones and Mr. Sherman!” I exclaimed, and then we both collapsed into laughter once more until we had quite exhausted ourselves.

  “Oh, you can’t imagine it, Watson,” Holmes crowed, sweeping his arms wide. “It was delicious. I only wish you could have been present. There were my seedy digs, with their chemical apparatus, a bed, a desk, a wardrobe with two suits in it, and a chair, and there was poor Mr. Sherman and an apoplectic police inspector.

  “ ‘What’s this, now!’ Jones cried. He was only slightly thinner then, Watson, and his face already as red and shiny as an apple. ‘Oh, here’s a fine business! I arrest a fellow for murder, and I have my name thrown in my face!’

  “ ‘Let me—’ I began.

  “ ‘ “Athelney Jones,” he says! “Athelney Jones will set it right!” Then I ask him to describe this Athelney Jones, and—’

  “ ‘Just a moment—’

  “ ‘A moment, my eye, Sherlock Holmes! Then he says he has the address of this Athelney Jones, and—’

  “ ‘I can explain everything!’

  “ ‘Explain impersonating a police inspector you’ve met once in your life, and harassed with your crackbrained theories no less!’ he cried. ‘Oh, ho, ho! Now, here’s a pretty business!’

  “ ‘This gentleman was being threatened by one of the cracksmen you are seeking in Lambeth, Inspector,’ I attempted. The odds were against me, Watson, but this time the fates blessed my enterprise and I was able to complete a few sentences. ‘I intervened, and as they fled, I shouted that they would rue the day they crossed Athelney Jones. So you see it is actually quite a flattering mistake.’

  “ ‘Is this true?’ the policeman demanded of Old Sherman.

  “I won’t pretend I wasn’t quaking in my boots a bit by this time, Watson. But Mr. Sherman said yes, there must have been some error, and when he winked at me, I understood that the kind old fellow had thought me only an eccentric good Samaritan, never a policeman at all. He had merely played along with the ruse out of a reluctance to insist on my real identity after I had helped him. Inspector Jones walked up and down booming and flailing his arms a while longer before he finally turned to speak with a constable and I had the chance to corner Sherman.

  “ ‘I’m innocent as snow, but I dread to say where I was last night and there’s no one as witnessed me anyhow,’ the poor soul whispered. The shadows beneath his blue glasses were dreadful to look at, my dear fellow, and his steady artisan’s hands were all atremble. The change that had been wrought in him from the time of our pleasant impromptu tea the day before was most alarming. I could tell the man honestly feared for his life, and when I think of Jones’s acumen, not to mention his bluster, I cannot fault his keen instinct for self-preservation. ‘You’re a right sharp young lad. I ’eard what you said to those villains about the crib they done cracked. God knows we’re strangers, but I’ve a feeling about you, a feeling it’s ’ard to put into words fer all I’m old enough to be yer father. Please, fer ’eaven’s sake, try to solve this or I’ll swing for it.’

  “It had been so long since I’d sat down to a friendly table with anyone, Doctor—come to think of it, it must have been since college, and my brief acquaintance with Victor Trevor before he went abroad to try his luck at tea farming in faraway Terai—that I never considered refusing, nor stopped to warn myself that an utter greenhand could potentially have done poor Mr. Sherman more harm than benefit. I was all eagerness, arrogance, and optimism. Of course I promised him I should do all I could, and after Athelney Jones had wagged his finger in my face a few more times, and bullied poor Old Sherman into a police wagon, I was off like a rabbit.”

  “To Sherman’s?”

  “No, to the news-agents’ at the corner.” Holmes shrugged sheepishly. “I hadn’t the money to subscribe to every edition then, and so had no notion what the true facts of the murder were, and I’d no desire to listen to another word of Jones’s unparalleled poppycock. Briefly, the case went as so: Plaid Charlie was found knifed in his rooms. The knife was peculiar, the sort used for delicate work with wild game, and had ‘Sherman’ carved on the handle. The word ‘VENGEANCE’ had been scrawled on the wall above, and a stuffed rat was left on the dead man’s chest. It did not take Athelney Jones long to knock up the neighbors and learn Old Sherman was threatened that day, and the inspector drew his version of the natural conclusion.”

  “But that’s entirely preposterous. Why should—”

  “Oh, I know,” he assured me, chuckling. “Then I raced to find Mrs. Sherman. She related the following conclusive facts, though she was so upset at first I could hardly understand her. First, that Plaid Charlie had been not merely a cracksman but a notorious fence of stolen gems. Second, that Mr. Sherman had been passionately poring over his records of late to see where the birds Jack o’ the Devil worked on had been delivered. And third, that there had been another house broken into the night before. So now you must see everything.”

  I did not, but the atmosphere was so congenial, I felt in no hurry. Sherlock Holmes often sat up all night untangling the threads of a ­problem—why should not I follow his expert example? My friend smoked placidly, and I watched giddy sparks fly away up the flue, and I had just despaired of the attempt when I cried, “By Jove!”

  “I ought not to be so free with my methods,” Holmes affected to grouse. “I shall be out of a profession.”

  I sat up fully in my excitement, gripping his sinewy shoulder. “Plaid Charlie needed a better way to rid himself of recently stolen jewels and hatched a scheme with Jack o’ the Devil to sew them into taxidermy.”

  Sherlock Holmes fairly beamed at me. “Go on.”

  “They then waited until the stones were thought forever lost and acted as cracksmen, taking a number of items so as not to arouse suspicion when the real object was the decorative bird. And Old Sherman was right. It was Jack o’ the Devil who stole Mrs. Sherman’s brooch,” I continued breathlessly. “He sewed it into another bird before he lost his position.”

  “I shall not contradict you.”

  “Mr. Sherman had been trying to discover its whereabouts and foolishly made his own first attempt at housebreaking, likely because he knew his story preposterous on the face of it and feared to peach on such a dangerous duo to the Yarders. That is the reason he was loath to give you an alibi. He had wanted his wife’s keepsake back but was embarrassed of his method—telling the truth only meant confessing to a second crime.”

  “And?” my friend prompted, waving his pipe in enthusiastic circles. “Who in fact killed Plaid Charlie?”

  “Well,” I puzzled, reclining again, “it must have been Jack o’ the Devil, fabricating evidence which pointed to Old Sherman, but why?”

  “Ah.” Holmes nodded. “Because he supposed that with her husband in the dock, Mrs. Sherman would lose her livelihood, and would hire him back, enabling him to hide his plunder in the fowl again. The man was utterly mad, Watson—killing Plaid Charlie was proof of it. He wanted to become the greatest fence in London and so slaughtered his favorite income source without even blinking. His nasal, grating voice, that leering smile like a gash, the endless servile ducking—he is the seventh most abhorrent man I have ever put behind bars.”

  “What did you do?�
� I asked avidly.

  “Nothing of consequence.” My friend affected complete nonchalance. “I tracked Mr. Sherman’s path the previous night with Molly the spaniel.”

  I held up my hands. “Just a moment—you mean to tell me that after Sherman had already left his house thousands of times, Molly could trace only the most recent—”

  “Oh, she could have, undoubtedly—but she didn’t.” Holmes smirked. “I provided a reverse demonstration, as I thought the good Inspector Jones might appreciate a dramatic conclusion, and I was already developing something of a taste for them. We started at the house Sherman had broken into the night before, with one of his boots—it was child’s play for Molly to trace his steps backward and discover the stolen bird hidden at the rear of the shop. I whisked off the tarp he had hid it in, opened the carcass, found Mrs. Sherman’s brooch, et voilà. Alarms for the murder and the theft happened five minutes and two miles apart, so Old Sherman’s alibi was proved.”

  “Wonderful!” I marveled. “But how did it turn out?”

  “Rather splendidly. I was able to cause Jack o’ the Devil’s arrest and subsequent prosecution—his cockiness was so absolute, he had neglected to notice blood on his own clothing, and Molly the spaniel handily proved he had been in Plaid Charlie’s rooms the night previous, which added a bit of circumstantial reinforcement if nothing more. Athelney Jones called me a lucky young rake and told me to join the Yard to learn my craft, which offer I declined. Old Sherman was charged with housebreaking; when we returned the repaired bird, that was reduced to trespass, happily. I visited his jail cell as quickly as I could and told him everything.

  “ ‘Oh, bless you!’ he cried, wringing me by the hand. ‘You’ve cleared my good name, sir.’

  “ ‘I cleared it a trifle,’ said I, dubiously.

  “ ‘Now, never say as Old Sherman don’t know a friendly turn when it’s done ’im. I’ll have six months’ stint at most, likelier four. What’s your real moniker, lad?’

  “ ‘Oh, I beg your pardon. Sherlock Holmes,’ I answered. ‘And forgive me for—’

  “ ‘Not another word about that!’ he exclaimed. ‘Whatever I can do for you in future, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I shan’t ’estitate a single tick o’ the clock. And you’ll ’ave as many lessons in zoological anatomy and naturalism as that great brain o’ yours can sponge up, by God, for who can say what use such might prove to a criminologist? I’ll teach you everything I know, lad, and gladly too.’

  “ ‘Shall you?’ By this point, my dear fellow, I confess myself to have been somewhat perplexed. ‘But you’re impris—’

  “ ‘I’ll not ’ear a single syllable against it!’ he shrieked. ‘Ye’ve done a service, ye have, ye noddle-headed thing, and ye’ll take some hearty home-cooked meals and a serving of education fer it if me wife and I have to shove it down yer scrawny neck like I’d stuff one o’ me dressed weasels, so ’elp me.’

  “So there you have it, Watson. Old Tom Sherman taught me every­thing I know about practical naturalism as applies to detection after his parole, his wife taught me all about canine tracking and training and made us tea on countless occasions, and whenever I need a dog’s nose, I have the very best in London at my disposal.”

  We fell into a comfortable silence, Holmes meditating upon the last of his smoke rings and I upon the ceiling.

  “Holmes, was Molly the spaniel Toby’s mother?”

  “Grandmother,” he corrected.

  “Did Jones take the credit?”

  “Of course. It was in all the papers, but I was quite content with adding another obscure branch of knowledge to my rainbow array of studies.”

  Another thought occurred. “Who helped Mrs. Sherman with bird-stuffing while her husband was incarcerated?”

  “How the deuce should I know?” he retorted, and then stretched extravagantly and rolled to his feet.

  “It was you,” I accused him, chuckling.

  My friend said nothing, and said it with his back turned to me, which was every bit as good as an affirmative.

  “What fresh work have we tomorrow?”

  Holmes lounged at the mantel refilling his pipe, and his languid expression brightened instantly. “Oh, you’ve just reminded me, I’ve a lovely problem for us tomorrow. Come to think of it, we’re lucky the Viking manuscript lot are dragging their heels so dreadfully. Are you well enough to be ready at half ten? Someone has been anonymously mailing Lady Marianne Chandler a lock of hair every day for a fortnight—and according to her letter, each lock is from a different person. She insists every individual cutting is entirely unique and is needless to say quite disturbed in mind over it. Of course, the regular force can do nothing in the absence of any crime, so she has turned to us to study over the collection. Picturesque, don’t you think?”

  “It is.” More meaningfully I added, “Thank you. For the story, and for the work.”

  Sherlock Holmes’s deep-set eyes narrowed as he frowned. “Not at all.”

  “Come now, Holmes. I may not be a detective, but it is obvious what you were just doing.”

  “And what I was doing was nothing significant.” He lifted one shoulder coolly. “I can offer only the sole anodyne which brings me such vivid scraps of relief from the doldrums—a crime to solve or accounts of crimes past. Twisted puzzles, shocking revelations, a solution tied up with a ribbon and placed in a tin box. A slender consolation indeed. Surely my personal choice of distractions is ludicrously inadequate under the circumstances. Is it not? Well, well, never mind answering that. I shouldn’t, if I were in your place. As regards your own situation, you know I have no experience of such emotions, and thus would be the worst candidate on earth to entrust with your confidences. I can now ring for your soup, and there my usefulness ends.”

  Sighing, I finished my brandy. I wanted to contradict him, for he was egregiously wrong on two counts. First, he was not the worst person on earth to trust with confidences, for he never pitied the giver of them, only listened with focused impatience or silent sympathy, which is why such a hubbub of strangers continually clattered up and down our staircase begging for his help. He was, in fact, the foremost keeper of confidences in London—and he had created the profession, no less. Second, be the person a mother, a brother, a sister, a friend, or some other beloved ghost, I by 1897 knew him to be mistaken in suggesting he lacked for feeling entirely.

  The discussion ended there, however; Sherlock Holmes rang for my soup and then launched into a detailed and lively account of Lady Chandler’s mysterious follicular woes. So I poured us more brandy and held my peace as ever on the subject of his own sorrows, and the letter which had started it all sat forgotten on the mantelpiece next to my friend’s jackknife.

  The Adventure of

  the Vintner’s Codex

  During the lengthy period when I lodged with my celebrated friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes, our habit by common consent was to celebrate the holiday season in as quiet and Bohemian a manner as possible. As our establishment was a thoroughly bachelor one, we had little use for the more frivolous trappings of Yuletide, and my companion—when not frenetically engaged upon some dark and enigmatical criminal investigation which would drag us both into most un-Christmas-like environs—had a marked tendency to indolence during the winter months. The ennui which has always plagued him in the absence of brainwork was not, I fear, ever any lessened by grey skies and the soot-blackened snow beneath our sitting room window. Nor could I fail to notice that he made extra use of his Baker Street Irregulars as the banks of the Thames crusted over and made scavenging perilous, continually sending the urchins on petty errands and paying them at double rates during the storms. I myself have on occasion found London a strain upon the senses during its darkest months and had cause to reflect that, for a man of my friend’s minutely pitched sensitivities, the bleakness of its icy Decembers must have been grating in the extremest degree.

  During one
such period, upon New Year’s Eve to be precise, I was returning home after a well-bundled evening constitutional and found myself veering in the direction of the dim and cozy wineshop we frequented in Marylebone Road. Though the hour was early enough yet that the skies gleamed a clear eggshell blue, the wind bore sharp fangs, and the holiday revelers were largely at home before their punch bowls or else in pubs before roaring hearthstones. The streets were therefore all but barren despite the festive date, and I slipped a coin into the tin cup of a bearded beggar as I turned the corner, feeling pensive and a trifle outside myself in the eerily calm thoroughfare. Stepping into the muted light and warmth of Eaker’s Festive Spirits revived me somewhat, and Mr. Eaker was his usual ebullient self, but I failed to linger there, instead selecting my purchases and at once making my way back to Baker Street, taking care not to slip on the slick cobbles in my renewed haste.

  It had been a circuitous outing which was of absolute necessity upon my part and which Holmes had dismissed with the barest flick of his agile fingers when I suggested it to him. He had not, I believe, quit the flat in some five days, having taken up semipermanent residence before the fire with his tobacco and his articles, interrupting himself only so far as to fling annoyingly peaceful pages of newsprint into the flames or to recline with an expression on his aquiline face of the utmost listlessness. When I poured tea, he drank it, and when I urged food upon him, he caustically suggested I volunteer in a soup kitchen so as to satisfy some of my more irritating quirks of nature outside the house. None of these signs were the least encouraging. I was, in short, growing concerned for his health, and it was this worry which propelled me back up our staircase with more alacrity than my chilled form would otherwise have attempted.

  “I’ve been round to Eaker’s for a bottle of Imperial Tokay, and he assures me that this is the specimen required to toast the coming year properly,” I called from the doorway. I hung my hat upon its peg as I stamped, urging the blood to return to my extremities. “I must say, it’s appropriately dusty. We’ll lose no time in testing its reputation—just after I’ve polished it, I think. My gloves are positively filthy.”