“Miss Crabb,” he said. “I must see your father immediately!”
“Mr Holmes,” she replied, “why the sudden hurry?”
“Because this is a most grave matter, Miss Crabb, and it must come out in the open once and for all.”
Miss Crabb rose from her chair. “Mr Holmes, will you tell me what you have discovered?”
Holmes looked at her, then at me, calming down slightly, as if my presence reminded him of his manners. “Will you both please come with me into the billiard room?”
He led us into the adjoining room, and walked across the floor to a small nook in the wall next to the opposite door.
“Do you know what this picture represents?”
He was pointing at a medium-sized oil painting of a ship, rather crudely executed in a manner that I had seen a hundred times, and which is quite common for marine paintings. It was placed in a dark corner nestled in between a bookcase and a door frame, and it was unassuming to say the least.
Miss Crabb studied it closely. “No, Mr Holmes, I cannot say that I do. This house is full of paintings, some of which come from my father’s collections and some of which came with the house when we purchased it.”
“I see. And your father has never spoken of it?”
“No. I don’t see why he should. He is not a sailor. As far as I know, he has hardly been on a boat.”
Holmes chuckled and looked at the picture. “I am afraid you have been slightly misled in that aspect, Miss Crabb. For you are looking at the vessel on which your father served as shipmate.”
The young woman frowned and took two or three steps back.
“Mr Holmes, what are you saying?” she said despairingly. “This is simply not true.”
“I’m afraid it is. You see, there never was a scholarship that funded your father’s university education. He went through it on his own endowment.”
“I am sure I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Perhaps it would be better to sit down. Let us move over to these little easy chairs. There. Are you comfortable, Miss Crabb?”
“Please don’t fret, Mr Holmes. Will you explain yourself?”
“I will. The name of the ship in the picture is the SS Cordelia. It is rather a famous ship, actually, which is why even I, who am not really much informed in nautical matters, have heard of it. I am an expert in crime, Miss Crabb, and I know of that ship because it was connected to a crime some years ago. It was before any of us were born, actually, but the story of it still lingers as one of the most ingenious swindles in recent history, and I remember making a close study of it in younger days when I was something of an amateur student of criminology. It was a merchant ship sailing in 1829 for Caracas, on a cargo of coal, and returning back to England with a cargo of rubber. The captain was a man named Morris Addleton, a promising young mariner who had already been on several trips to the Caribbean. He was a well-liked and skilled seaman with an experienced crew, which is all the more remarkable considering the outcome of the journey. For on its way back, the Cordelia went missing, and about a month after its expected return to England, it sailed into Liverpool Docks with only a third of its original crew remaining and one of the mates acting as a substitute captain.
“It was said that the Cordelia had sailed into a violent storm somewhere in the Antilles, in which it had almost capsized, and that this was where the crew had suffered its catastrophic loss. An investigation showed, however, that there were no reports of storms from other ships who had sailed in that area at the same time, and that only a week after the ship had left Caracas, one of its lifeboats had gone ashore on the island of Martinique, bearing a small portion of the ship’s crew, including Captain Addleton. Addleton had claimed that some insurgent men of the otherwise loyal crew had stirred up into mutiny, which had evolved into a fight between the mutineers and those that remained supportive of the captain. In the end, Addleton and his followers had been forced to abandon the ship. This whole story was much reported in the newspapers of the time, and everyone expected a great and dramatic trial to follow, but for some reason Captain Addleton never returned to England to testify, and there was never a substantial enough case to hold the returning sailors, and so the whole thing just faded away.
“Since then, however, new information has come to light. One of the sailors who returned with the Cordelia confessed in his dying days that the reason for the scuffle between the men was that word had been spreading among them that their captain was bringing home with him a treasure chest that he had somehow acquired while the ship was at port. One of the men, a Mr Robert Stroke, had stirred menace by persuading his fellow sailors that they all had equal part in this treasure by making sure it came safely back to England, and the ensuing mutiny was all about this treasure. The treasure did actually exist, as the mutineers found out after Addleton and his men had left the ship. It was a chest full of nuggets of pure gold that Addleton’s brother, who was an explorer and anthropologist in South America, had collected on his travels in the Andes, and which he had asked his brother to bring home to their father’s estate for safe keeping. But when the ship came to Liverpool, there was no sign of the chest, even though several of the men would later confess to having seen it during the trip, and that they even managed to open it and confirm its alleged contents.
“So what happened to it? It is very simple. In the small hours of the morning before the Cordelia was about to sail into Liverpool, Stroke carried the chest up on deck, tied it to a long rope with a float at the other end and threw it over the side. He took a great risk, dumping the loot in such a heavily trafficked sea, but this way only he knew where it was and how to get it. He also managed to make away with the evidence that the motive for the mutiny was anything other than a sense of injustice.”
I glanced at Miss Crabb, whose face did not try to hide that she had been quite gripped by Holmes’ story.
“What happened to him?” she said.
“He disappeared from view.”
“So how do you know about how he hid the chest?”
“Because a long time ago when studying this case, I spoke to the old fisherman who rowed him out to the place to pick it up.”
“Remarkable!” I cried.
“But I still don’t understand,” said Miss Crabb. “If it is a famous ship, then there must be hundreds of pictures of it.”
“Not really,” said Holmes. “Paintings of that sort are not usually reproduced or copied.”
“So you mean to say that my father was on board the Cordelia?”
“I mean to say more than that, Miss Crabb. I mean to say that he is Robert Stroke.”
“Surely you are taking this a bit too far, Holmes,” I protested. “Only because of that painting?”
“No, not only because of that. I instantly recognised that painting because I have seen it before quite recently.”
“Where?”
“In the empty house in the village. I looked in through the windows and that painting looked familiar. It was only when I saw it once more here that I recalled the story. And then, of course, there is the evidence of the cawing crow.”
“The crow?” said Miss Crabb. “What of it?”
“You see, when you said that your father walked over to that fence at the sound of a cawing crow, it seemed strange to me, and I was certain that something more significant had made him go over there. Then on our walk back from the village we heard it again, only to me, it was not the sound of a common crow. So I looked up into the treetops and saw something truly remarkable.”
Holmes paused and studied our faces. Miss Crabb’s eyes were fixed on him. I myself was eager to hear the rest of his reasoning.
“What was it, Holmes?”
“It was a parrot.”
“A parrot?” said Miss Crabb.
“Quite so. You see,
in the newspaper reports on the Cordelia affair, Captain Addleton is repeatedly described with one conspicuous attribute - a parrot. When I saw the parrot flying about in the tree tops, I understood that this was a vital clue, but I only appreciated its meaning when I saw the picture here.”
“What do you mean, Mr Holmes? This is still not quite clear to me.”
Holmes rose.
“Miss Crabb, I think it is high time that I spoke with your father. Will you escort us upstairs?”
Miss Crabb did as he asked, even though she continued mumbling that he was unlikely to see us. As we came to the door, Holmes stopped Miss Crabb’s hand in mid-air as it was about to knock.
“Please,” he said. “Allow me.” And then he turned towards the door, exclaiming: “Robert Stroke, open this door!”
It only took five seconds before there was a rustling sound and the door was opened wide. Behind it stood a man of advanced years, but whose mixture of curiosity and guilt made him look like a young man, nay, a boy. He looked at us as if he recognised in us old acquaintances, but acquaintances that he had no wish to be reunited with.
“Mr Stroke, I perceive?” said Holmes.
“Where have you heard that name?” said the old man.
“It was all over the front pages a few years ago.”
“Many years ago! Nobody remembers.”
He was just about to close the door again, when his daughter stepped up and put her hand on it.
“Father? It’s me, Madeleine. Will you not explain to me what is happening? I deserve to know the truth.”
Crabb hung his head and when he looked up again there were tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Madeleine. I am so very sorry.”
“But Father, what is the matter?”
“Stay away from me, Madeleine. I am a bad man.”
“I don’t care what you did when you were young.”
“What about what he did two weeks ago?” said Holmes.
Miss Crabb looked at him, then at her father, demanding an explanation with her anxious gaze.
“Two weeks ago,” said Holmes, “your father committed murder.”
“What?” cried Miss Crabb. “Is this true, Father? What am I saying? Of course it is not true! Mr Holmes, how dare you!”
“Your father cannot deny it. Two weeks ago, you and he were walking when he was drawn to the fringe of the woods by the sound of a bird, a sound that he recognised all too well but had hoped never to hear again. It was the sound of Captain Addleton’s parrot. Peering into the woods, Mr Crabb saw him. Addleton had come to Bridle to settle matters once and for all with Robert Stroke, and so he walked daily in the woods, hoping one day to encounter his mortal enemy. And when he did, they agreed to meet in the night and confront each other. I do not know exactly what Addleton had planned for Stroke, but whatever it was, it misfired, and the avenger once more became the victim of the resourceful Stroke, leaving the bird to fend for itself in the woods. What did you use, Stroke? Was it one of Brookshaw’s gardening tools?”
“Holmes,” I said, “you are forgetting one thing. There is no dead body.”
“No, there isn’t. Stroke had it all planned, as usual. Only the day before he had assisted the vicar in excavating one of the barrows on the moor. He knew that the earth there was still loose. It would not be too difficult to drag the body there. Perhaps you even agreed to meet there, thus making the whole thing easier for yourself?”
Mr Crabb’s eyes had turned black, and he looked upon Holmes with what I feared was murderous intent.
“But why the dead animals?” asked Miss Crabb.
“A most necessary distraction. Firstly, it established once and for all that your father had become mad and was sacrificing animals - a ruse that was essential, both so that he could bury the body at night and avoid the one person before whom it would be difficult to lie. Secondly, the hanging animals deterred the people in the house - you especially, Miss Crabb - from walking through the woods and out on the moor until the traces of the murder were gone. Connecting his madness to his previous interest in the local archaeology was also a way of making it seem credible, you understand. But, ironically, it was the dead animals that put me on the right track to begin with, for they had been tied up with a very special knot known only to sailors.”
When Holmes concluded his explanation, there was a second when we all looked at each other in some form of anticipation, as if we were both wondering what would happen and expecting something to happen. Mr Crabb slammed his door shut as he had threatened to do a few minutes before, and Holmes tried to push it open in vain.
“This is ominous to say the least. Miss Crabb, is there any other way into this room?”
“Only through the window, but we are one floor up.”
“That would be the western wall. Unless I am mistaken it is covered in ivy?”
“Yes, but it is old and perishing.”
“Cannot be helped, there is no time to lose. Watson, come with me!”
And I rushed with Holmes out into the garden, leaving the poor young woman to bang on her father’s bolted door. I knew just what Holmes was fearing, and if he was right it was only a matter of minutes before it would be too late to save the old man from death by his own hand. As we reached the western wall, I saw that the ivy did reach up to the first floor, but it was only a leafless skeleton of a trunk and I doubted that it would hold for climbing. Holmes did not hesitate, however, and was halfway up it before I could stop him. He found a foothold on a ledge just by the window in question, which allowed me to climb up after him. It was not such a precipitous effort as I had thought, and as I came to the window I saw the sight that had stopped Holmes from climbing in.
The door that Mr Crabb had bolted was now open again, and father and daughter were standing on the threshold, locked in each other’s embrace. Somehow, in the time it had taken Holmes and me to go out of the house and climb the ivy, Miss Crabb had persuaded her father to open the door, and, with the aid of her female powers of conciliation, generated by herself the idyllic family reunion that we were now witnessing.
Holmes would say to me, when we were reminiscing over this case a few days later, that Miss Crabb’s pacifying abilities had an equal share to his own logical reasoning in seeing the case to a fulfilling conclusion. Had it not been for Wilfred Crabb’s love for his daughter, he might very well have completed his regression to the devious plotting shipmate that his reunion with Morgan Addleton had triggered, but in between his sailor youth and his autumn-years murder, Robert Stroke had become Wilfred Crabb, a decent and good-natured politician and family man, and it was this second nature that made the man confess his deeds and give himself up to the local police. It was never reported in the newspapers at the time, however, that the unexpected return to public life of shipmate Robert Stroke sprung from the retirement of the Right Honourable Wilfred Crabb, and it was for the benefit of his daughter that this connection was never made known. Sadly, however, Crabb only survived a year in the harsh conditions of Dartmoor prison. His daughter eventually changed her name and emigrated to Canada where I understand she married and now lives in blissful obscurity.
It always seemed to me curious why Wilfred Crabb should go to such extreme and strange lengths to divert the attention from his crime and give him time to bury the remains of Captain Addleton, but although his madness was a deception, the thing it was designed to hide was a madness in itself, of sorts. The ancient barrow on Pettigrew moor was eventually excavated by the police, and Addleton’s corpse retrieved so that it could be given a proper burial. To my great surprise, his anthropologist brother was still alive, and attended the funeral along with Madeleine Crabb, who insisted upon compensating him from her own inheritance for the gold that her father had once stolen from him.
The Adventure of the Deprecated Publican
One spring evening - I think t
he year was ninety-six - Holmes made a suggestion I believe he had never done before.
“Do you want to go to the pub, Watson?”
I was a bit taken aback by this query, but since I was well aware that Holmes was the most unpredictable person one could imagine, my surprise was only mild.
“Are you thirsty?” I said. “If it’s a drink you want, my club…”
“I have no interest whatsoever in the beverages provided by public houses,” he replied.
“What induces your proposal, then?”
“Only this.”
He handed me a crumpled piece of paper. It read:
“Please Mr Holmes, if you would pay a visit to Princess Louise in the near future, I promise to provide you with a problem that might satisfy your thirst for the unusual. A. Winstanton.”
I looked over the curious message a few times, but it puzzled me and it seemed like the person who had written it was being deliberately obscure.
“Well,” I said, “I would venture to say that, since this is obviously a royal commission, the messenger - this Winstanton fellow - has written it in some sort of code, which I am sure is apparent to you, but completely baffles me.”
Holmes knitted his brow. “Code, you say? And wherein lies the code?”
“I have no idea. But the message has virtually no information in it, so I fancied the real message was somewhere between the lines. In the amount of words or something of that sort.”
“Ha! What an interesting interpretation, Watson. You never cease to astound me.”
“Am I anywhere near the truth?” I asked, exposing my lack of belief in my theory.
“Afraid not, old man.” Holmes took back the paper. “Your theory of a royal commission is most intriguing, not to say flattering, but if this really was a commission from the actual Princess Louise, then why would the only real piece of information in the message be the stating of her name? No, I am more inclined towards the simple interpretation.”
“I thought mine was the simple interpretation.”
The Sensible Necktie and Other Stories of Sherlock Holmes Page 6