So saying, he opened the bag he held and tipped its meagre contents into his hand. Several tiny white fragments adhered to the skin of his palm. “Crumbs from a meringue, if I am not mistaken. An expensive confection to find in a rundown single room, would you not agree?”
“Perhaps the lady brought it with her?” Lestrade offered.
“A meringue is a fragile object, Inspector. It has scarcely survived the passage from hand to mouth; how do you imagine an infirm old woman in her night things would transport it across London? No, it is but one part of a larger enterprise, the elements of which are clear as day to anyone who cares truly to observe.”
He waited less than a second for a response from either Lestrade or myself then, getting none, continued his explanation.
“Watson? You have been exposed to my methods more than anyone. I refuse to believe that no good habits have rubbed off on you in all that time. Come – look about you. What do you see?”
I slowly turned in a full circle, studying every aspect of my surroundings. The bed was as I have described it, comprised of rusted and stained metal, and surmounted by two thin pillows. The wardrobe, table and water jug were as I had seen them previously. I walked over to the picture on the wall. It was a poor copy of what I thought was probably a garish original, and showed a young man tying a bag to the horns of a deer, with a castle gatehouse in the background. I could see nothing in the picture that might aid us in our investigation and, glancing out of the corner of my eye at Lestrade, I could tell that he was similarly baffled.
Something Holmes had said nagged at my mind, however, and it was only as I turned back to the bed that I realised what it was.
“The bed linen was of good quality, Lestrade said. Too good to belong to this hovel. Therefore, the killer brought it with him!”
“Very good! We will make a detective of you yet. But why? High quality bed linen is as alien to this place as the meringue, yet both are here – or were, in any case. Why should that be?”
Here I stuttered to a halt, and was forced to admit that I was at a loss.
“No?” said Holmes. “You disappoint me, Watson, but very well, if I must explain every little thing…” He rubbed his hands together, and allowed the meringue dust to fall to the floor. “The meringue and the linen serve the same purpose, as do the execrable print on the wall and the candles which were preferred to the gas light. Someone prepared the room in advance for Miss McLachlan, like a stagehand placing props before a performance.
“Consider this room as it must have looked to that unfortunate lady. Elderly and infirm, with failing eyesight – the lorgnette, you remember? – and a wandering mind, she cleaves to the familiar as a drowning man would to a lifebelt, and is disturbed by anything which deviates from that. With her eyeglasses removed, however, and in the flickering candlelight, tucked beneath good, clean sheets, she will feel comfortable, at home even. I suspect you will find that meringue was the late Miss McLachlan’s favourite sweet, incidentally, Lestrade. And of course there is the print…”
“What about it, Mr. Holmes? Perhaps you’re making sense to Dr. Watson, but I admit, you’ve lost me.”
Holmes glared at Lestrade, irritated anew by the interruption.
“Obviously,” he replied, dryly. “But it is a vital part of the charade constructed for Miss McLachlan. There is an old – and, I must say, improbable – legend that when the Scottish king Alexander III ascended the throne in 1249, he ordered every clan chief to send him tribute by the fastest messenger possible. Lachlan Mor, chieftain of the McLachlans, angered by this peremptory command, tied his money bags to the horns of a roebuck, literally the fastest messenger on his lands. For that reason, the crest of the clan remains, to this day, that of two bucks holding the clan coat of arms. Major McLachlan is known to be proud of his family history, and there is no reason to suspect that his aunt was any less so. The presence of such a print would help to reassure her that all was well, and that she was among friends.”
I marvelled again at my friend’s ability to retain the most trivial and arcane knowledge, but Lestrade was less impressed.
“That’s all well and good, Mr. Holmes, but how does it advance our investigation, or bring Dr. Watson any closer to the restoration of his good name?”
“Try to use your mind, Lestrade, such as it is! We know – and more importantly can prove – that Watson was with a patient not half an hour before Constable Howie discovered him, at an address approximately fifteen minutes’ walk from Linhope Street. That barely leaves enough time to create this tableau and carry out the murder.”
“It does leave just enough time though, Mr. Holmes,” Lestrade corrected him. “Fifteen minutes plus seven minutes taken for Howie to break down the room door. That still leaves eight minutes to kill the victim.”
“I did say ‘barely’, Inspector,” Holmes snapped. “The alternative is to assume that Watson brought Miss McLachlan here, having arranged the room in advance, then killed her. Far more likely that whoever added these decorations did so because they needed the lady quiescent and amenable for a period of time prior to her murder. While they waited for Watson to pass and then be lured into their trap, for instance.”
Lestrade responded with a grunt, admitting the sense in Holmes’s words but reluctant to give them too much weight. “An interesting theory, Mr. Holmes, but at the Yard we prefer hard evidence.”
“And you shall have it,” Holmes replied confidently. “But in order that I may provide you with proof I must have facts to build upon, and at the moment—” He stopped suddenly, and cocked his head to one side. “But here is Inspector Potter, if I am not mistaken. Perhaps the package he carries will smooth the path from conjecture to certainty.”
Chapter Twelve
It took no great analytical powers to recognise that Potter was displeased with Holmes’s presence at what I am certain he considered his murder scene. He stormed through the open door, trailed by a harassed-looking police constable, and came to a halt in the centre of the room, where he stood, silently glaring at the three of us.
Lestrade broke the ensuing silence by asking whether Potter had brought the photographs.
“I have,” the inspector replied, addressing his remarks to Holmes rather than his fellow policeman. “Though what good they will do you, I cannot say. My men and I had access to this room when it was still splattered in gore, and we were unable to discover anything of a specific nature. What hope have you of achieving more with only three blurred photographic images to aid you? Schell,” he barked at the waiting constable. “Give it to him then, man!”
If Potter’s attitude concerned Holmes, he gave no sign of it. He reached out a hand to accept the folder proffered by the young policeman, then spread the contents out on the battered table. Lestrade hurried forward to observe, but I hesitated, unwilling to revisit a horror I had already experienced once. I knew I had no choice, however, and so – after a moment’s pause – I too stepped alongside Holmes and stared down at the images laid out below me.
There were, as Potter had said, three images in total. The first had been taken from the door, I suspected, and encompassed the entirety of the room. Whether thanks to the size of the area thus included or because of some flaw in the photographic process of which I had no knowledge, the photograph was grainy almost to the point of inscrutability. The bulk of the bed could be made out as a dark rectangle to the right-hand side of the frame, and the window as a smaller, lighter square directly facing the camera, but otherwise all I could discern were clumps of grey and black which could as well be flaws on the lens as the specific contents of the room.
My heart sank. If the other images were of the same poor quality, what chance had we of uncovering the new evidence Scotland Yard required?
Holmes obviously agreed. “Useless,” he muttered and pushed the photograph angrily off the table.
The image underneath was fortunately far clearer, though that only made its subject more upsetting.
Take
n close to, it showed the late Miss McLachlan’s injuries. I was grateful to see that the technician who had created the image had taken the time to cover much of the poor woman, including her face, but the stab wounds were crisp and surprisingly clear. Too clear for my liking, in fact.
Somehow, the permanence which the photograph bestowed upon the grisly scene rendered it more repellent than it had been in life. Obscene was the word that came to mind.
Not so Holmes, who gave a grunt of obvious satisfaction. “This is splendid,” he murmured, bending low to examine the detail of the wounds with his glass.
Not for the first time I marvelled at my friend’s ability to set to one side any extraneous emotional response. There was little doubt that it made him a more effective investigator, but his lack of feeling could be difficult to appreciate at times like these.
“Splendid in what way?” I asked, more sharply than I intended.
“The shape of the wounds, Watson!” He pointed to several narrow incisions. “A common kitchen knife leaves a distinctive pattern at its point of entry, with a noticeably pointed edge on one side where the blade is sharp, and a square edge on the other, from the blunt flat of the blade. But these wounds have pointed edges on both sides. They were made by a two-sided knife – or perhaps a bayonet. Certainly not by any blade one would expect to find in the average household.”
“A bayonet?” Lestrade murmured thoughtfully. “I’d advise keeping that to yourself, Mr. Holmes, what with Dr. Watson being an ex-army man.”
“He was an army medic, Lestrade,” Holmes replied firmly. “He is hardly likely to have brought an old bayonet home as a souvenir. Besides,” he continued more evenly, “Watson is not the only military man intimately involved in this case.”
Lestrade shook his head in confusion, but Potter was quicker off the mark. “You don’t mean Major McLachlan?” he exclaimed. “Can you actually be about to suggest that Sir Campbell McLachlan murdered his own aunt? For what possible reason? And how? If that is the best you can do to save your friend, Holmes, then he might be better dispensing with your services altogether!”
Holmes ignored Potter altogether, and addressed his reply to Lestrade. “Naturally, I am not saying that Major McLachlan is the killer. That would be preposterous, and the very suggestion is idiotic. However, the major is well known as a collector of military memorabilia. I would be interested to know if he has a weapon in his collection whose blade matches these wounds. Though he may not have killed his aunt, the knife used to do so may have originated in his home.”
“Brought along by the killer, you mean?”
“Quite so. Clearly, the killer brought Miss McLachlan to this room somehow. Why should the murder weapon not have come from the same location?”
Potter had listened patiently enough to this exchange, but now interrupted to point out that the police had been unable to find a single witness to the abduction of Miss McLachlan, or her presumed passage across London to Linhope Street.
Holmes waved a hand dismissively in Potter’s direction. “Do not berate yourself too much, Inspector. It does no good to dwell upon such failures. For that matter, it may be that there simply were no witnesses to be found. Even so, I would be grateful if you would send one of your men to speak to the major, to establish whether he has recently lost a suitably sized bayonet or knife.” He did not wait on a response, but quickly turned his attention back to the table in front of him. “In the meantime, let us turn our attention to the final image.”
The third photograph fell somewhere between the preceding two in terms of scope. In an image taken from the foot of the bed, the photographer had captured the full length of the body, demonstrating the position in which it had been discovered. My heart sank as Holmes bent over it; like the first it was blurred and heavily grained, and I could scarcely imagine even Holmes uncovering some vital clue from it. I fancied I saw the hint of a smile on Potter’s face as Holmes picked it up and tilted it in the light.
Suddenly Holmes gave a strangled cry and darted to the bed, the photograph gripped in his hand.
“The bedding, Lestrade!” he exclaimed. “The list that you had. Read from it again, if you would be so kind.”
The two inspectors stared at him as though he had taken leave of his senses, but I felt a surge of hope at Holmes’s obvious excitement. Evidently he had spotted something.
Lestrade fished his notebook from his pocket, and flicked to the appropriate page. “Good cotton sheets, a cotton pillow case and a bed cover,” he said, casting a puzzled look in my direction. “Does that help you at all?”
Holmes gave no reply. He crossed to the window and peered closely through the glass, then pulled it open and stretched his head out into the drizzling air. A moment, no more, passed, then he withdrew his head and turned to Potter.
“I believe that a witness across the street saw a man signalling from this window some fifteen minutes before the police arrived?” he asked.
“He did.”
“Thereby further constricting the possible time available for Watson to commit murder! But let us put that to one side for now. This man’s view – is it from a window directly opposite, or one set at an angle?”
“His home is six doors down the road.”
“So, an oblique angle?”
“I suppose so.” Potter was becoming more irritated by every question, I could tell, even if Holmes appeared oblivious.
“Do you wish to speak to the witness, Mr. Holmes?” Lestrade asked, obviously as aware as I of the tensions in the room and wishing to defuse them if he could.
“Hmm?” Holmes was distracted, lost in thought, and took a moment to consider the inspector’s question. “No thank you. The man is plainly unreliable, and it is more important that we retrieve the murder weapon than waste time on his half-glimpsed misunderstandings.”
“Indeed, Mr. Holmes,” Potter sneered, “that would be most helpful. Unfortunately, we have no idea where the murder weapon might be. If,” he concluded maliciously, “it is not one of the knives found in Dr. Watson’s bag.”
Holmes shook his head and tutted, as though he were a teacher chiding a disappointing pupil who he knew could do better. “If you will be so good as to follow me, Inspector Potter, I shall demonstrate that the victim was not killed by one of the tools of Watson’s trade.”
“And how will you do that?”
“Why, by presenting you with the actual murder weapon, of course!”
He spun on his heel and headed for the stairs. A moment later, we three observers came to our senses and hurried after him.
* * *
Holmes was already in the street by the time we caught up with him. The rain had turned into a mist of tiny wet drops which seemed to hang in the air like spider’s silk, dampening my face even as Holmes came to an unexpected stop in front of the house next door, the one shrouded in scaffolding. Seen from the front, little of the building itself was visible, with only occasional glimpses showing through the heavy cloths that covered the poles, ropes, boards and ladders which otherwise obscured the brickwork. An overgrown garden to one side, and a heap of abandoned and rotting glass and wood, which might once have been a potting shed, added to a general feeling of long-term neglect.
“This house has stood empty for a decade at least,” Lestrade said, as though confirming my unspoken question. “It was bought by a builder six months ago. He started work on it only two weeks past, but we’ve had his men stood down since… well, since the incident.”
I took a step towards Holmes, who had paused at the base of the scaffolding. Evenly spaced ladders led from the ground into the cloth-covered gloom at three spots, and as I reached out to tap him on the shoulder, he moved to the furthest one and began to climb.
“Here!” Potter shouted. “Where do you think you’re going? That house is private property and you’ve no right to enter it!”
“I am not entering it,” Holmes shouted back over his shoulder. “I am simply inspecting the space directly in f
ront of it.”
He disappeared beneath the nearest cloth, and could be heard moving about above us. A full minute passed, in which all I could make out was a series of muffled thumps, then he descended the ladder again, a look of satisfaction on his face.
“As I thought,” he muttered to himself then, without a word to any of us, he ascended the middle ladder.
Again, a minute passed, then another. I thought at one point I heard Holmes jumping and at another a bulky shape appeared in one of the cloths as he pressed against it, but soon after we all heard him give a cry of triumph, and scant seconds later he was back on the ground, clutching a dirty, wet, grey bag in his hands.
His hands and face were filthy, his trousers soaked through at the knees, and he had a small cut above his right eyebrow, but even so, he paused to open the bag and reveal the wicked-looking, curved dagger hidden in its folds, before walking past us and back into number sixteen.
* * *
Holmes had tipped the knife onto the table, and tossed the sack in which it had been hidden onto the bed. Alongside the knife he placed the third photograph and, with a long finger, tapped the pillows at the top of the image.
There was a pair of them, thin-looking objects, one darker than the other where blood had soaked into the material. I glanced at the bed, where the same two pillows still lay, one again darkly stained, and the other relatively untouched. As to what Holmes had seen in them, and how that had enabled him to recover the murder weapon, I was at a loss, and said as much.
“Every part of the bedding is of high quality, Watson,” he explained with exaggerated patience. “Cotton sheets, and a cotton pillow case. An expensive bed cover. Care was taken to make Miss McLachlan’s final repose as comfortable – and as comforting – as possible. Why then was there but a single pillow case?”
I heard Potter snort behind me, but I knew Holmes did not often ask idle questions. Lestrade too knew enough to take Holmes seriously.
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--The Improbable Prisoner Page 9