The Sensible Necktie and Other Stories of Sherlock Holmes

by Peter K Andersson

  “It sounds positively deplorable, Holmes. Although I must say I am a bit surprised to see you taking an interest in something based on sympathy.”

  There was a twitch in the side of Holmes’ mouth that could be interpreted as both amusement and ache. (Nice touch) “You do not think me sympathetic?”

  “Of course I do. But you have said yourself that it is the rational challenge and not the human aspect that draws you to your cases. Humans are mere factors in a problem, I think were your words.”

  “Did I really say that? Hm, well, I am an odd sort, am I not?”

  “You mean you have altered your opinion?”

  “Not quite, but I am surprised that I was so categorical in my statement. Perhaps we may attribute it to the folly of youth. Now I would say that the domain of ratiocination does not stop at the threshold of human passion. The emotions are also subject to the laws and systems of logic, and the close study of the minutes of details in an individual’s inner life will reveal the most fascinating patterns of cogent structures. I have always considered both the rational and emotional side of the human mind in my methods, but for a long time I struggled to reconcile the two. I devoted a paragraph to this problem in my article ‘The Book of Life’, if you recall.”

  “This sounds more like you,” I commented.

  “I strive for consistency, my dear Watson. Now then, will you accompany me to Tooting?”

  “Am I permitted to read this letter of yours?”

  “After we have left. I prefer that you base your decision upon your loyalty to me rather than your sympathy for a woman you have never met.”

  “Then I will be more than glad to come with you, if I can be of service.”

  Holmes patted me on the shoulder as he would an obedient child, we settled our bill, and stepped into one of the broughams that were waiting for fares outside the restaurant. Just as we were rattling down Waterloo Place in the direction of the river, Holmes produced an envelope from the inside pocket of his overcoat, and handed it to me. The letter was written in the neat and distinct style of someone who does not write very often, and read thus:

  “Dear Mr Holmes,

  I write to you on behalf of my employer, who is in great need of your help. Miss Dorothy Landseer is an old spinster and invalid. I have nurtured for her and cared for her since I was a young girl, first as a hired companion, and successively as a loving friend, which is why I wish to give her the assistance she requires and deserves. I have heard of your accomplishments and your habit of assisting those unfortunates who are otherwise unable to remunerate an external adviser, and if anyone can help my poor mistress, it is you. As she is old and infirm, we beg that you pay us a visit at your soonest available moment. The matter is most pressing and troubling.

  Yours faithfully,

  Miss Constance Brill

  Albany Place, Tooting.”

  “What do you say, Watson?” said Holmes as I looked up from the letter.

  “It is certainly pleading and piteous, but I cannot see how it has attracted your interest. You must receive dozens of letters like this each week.”

  “I do indeed. Only the other day I was asked by the Crown Prince of Denmark to help him retrieve a lost terrier, but the whole case was so obvious from his letter, that it only required a brief telegram to resolve the matter. Here we have something more promising, however. A well-composed although slightly awkward-sounding letter from a woman whose modesty seems to sit at the heart of her personality. And yet she feels so passionately for her employer that she mobilises the strength to write to Sherlock Holmes, the famous investigator, to ask for assistance. This Miss Landseer is her whole world. She probably meets very few other people, and so the bond between these two women, presumably separated in age by several decades, has grown exceedingly strong. If there is no interesting problem at the heart of this, there is a most fascinating relationship to be studied at close range.”

  “I agree with you. But how can you be so sure that the relationship is such a strong one? Certainly this Miss Brill seems to care for her mistress, but there is nothing unusual about that.”

  Holmes took the letter and held it up close to his eyes.

  “I have made a chemical examination of this paper at Baker Street, and there is reason to believe that the letter has been written on a dressing table. Upon the backside of the paper are traces of face powder and salicylic acid. The face powder is of a fabrication that has only just recently come into circulation, which suggests that it is the powder of a young woman, for an old one would surely use the trusted make that she has been using for decades. But when we add to this the little blotches of salicylic acid noticeable on one corner of the paper, a medication that is commonly used to prevent rheumatic pains, the presence of an old person in the same household is apparent. That they make use of the same dressing table for what are rather personal businesses to me indicates a very close relation between the two.”

  “I was not aware that you have made women’s face powder a subject of your research.”

  “My dear Watson, I cannot limit myself to varieties of cigarette ashes and moustache wax. If you look in my bookshelf, you will see a number of well-thumbed copies of the yearly catalogue from Derwent’s Lady’s Emporium. And, as you know, I have on several occasions put my knowledge of the female toilet to practical use.”

  “And with some success in the opposite sex, as I recall.”

  “Yes, yes. But how do you find my deductions?”

  “Reasonable, I suppose.”

  “I see no other explanation to account for these concurrences. And so the main mystery at this point is not what Miss Brill is referring to in her letter, but the imaginary quandary that has taken shape in her mind from mixing the actual problem with her impassioned sympathy for her charge. It will be quite a challenge to separate the one from the other.”

  As we rattled southwards, I began to get infected by Holmes’ enthusiasm, and was fascinated by his ability to extricate the enticing aspects of a case that, on the surface, looked commonplace and a little slight. When Holmes was in this mood, there was indeed very little that he could not cultivate an interest in, and I had seen him exercise this enthusiasm on everything from the construction of railway engines to the motets of Lassus. In due course, we arrived at the dispersed and slightly unfashionable suburb of Tooting, a place where few people with a wish to make a name for themselves would choose to reside for very long. I pondered over the fate that had caused a decrepit old lady to end up in such an odd corner of the outer fringe of suburbs, but when we approached Albany Place, I realised that the erection of the house predated with some years the erection of the suburb. It was surrounded on all sides by a wild and unattended garden, and a thick wisteria covered a large part of the exterior, with the exception of a slim turret rising from the heart of the edifice, giving it a peculiar tapered shape.

  “Someone has taken great care to draw and build a characteristic house, which someone else has taken great care to neglect,” mused Holmes as we walked up the front path.

  The ground floor of the building had barely any windows, and the two small stained-glass windows on either side of the front door did not show anything of the interior. We rang the door bell, having concluded that the door was too thick to allow the sound of knocking to penetrate it.

  “A ramshackle old house and impenetrable fortress at the same time?” Holmes commented.

  We were let in by a discreet and courteous young woman, looking quite plain in a muslin tea-gown and braided hair, but with a lustrous face that made us feel welcome.

  “I received your wire forewarning us of your arrival, Mr Holmes. We are most grateful that you have found time to look in on us.”

  “I try to find time for every pressing matter that comes in my way.”

  “And the matter is certainly most pressing. I am Miss
Constance Brill, companion of Miss Dorothy Landseer of the Dorset Landseers. I can see from your puzzled faces that you wonder how such an illustrious lady has ended up in this remote corner of the metropolis. It is a long story, but as I doubt that Miss Landseer is willing to tell it herself, I will say that her family was once very wealthy and renowned, supplying no less than three peers in the reign of George III, but due to an epidemic of tropical fever that was brought home from Africa by Miss Landseer’s explorer cousin, her whole family perished within months, and Dorothy, who was then away in Switzerland attending a girls’ school, was the only member of the family left untouched by the dreadful illness. There was only very little for her to inherit, however, as her father had been heavily in debt at the time of his demise, and it was only enough for her to purchase this house, which was already out of fashion at that time, and had been abandoned by its previous owners. Here she has lived in solitude for the past forty years, and I have been with her for fifteen years, caring for her. Now she is past ninety, and has not long to live, but she is much troubled by the events of the past few weeks, which she will tell you about herself.”

  “And what about yourself?” asked Holmes just as Miss Brill was about to take us further inside the house.

  “Myself? I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

  “What is your background, Miss Brill? Why have you stayed with your mistress for so long?”

  “Oh, there is precious little to tell about me, and I do not see that it is relevant in this matter, but if you must know I was born and raised only a few miles from here, and started coming here as a girl delivering groceries from my parents’ shop. Then Miss Landseer’s housekeeper passed away, and I was approached with the offer. At that time it was the only prospect for my future that I had encountered, and I gladly accepted. The reason why I stayed for so long is that I grew increasingly fond of Miss Landseer, as my letter indicated, and after a few years I had no interest in changing my life.”

  “But no suitors? No other offers?” I queried. “For such a delightful young woman there must have been numerous prospects?”

  “My work with Miss Landseer has made me a free woman. Much freer than I would have been with a husband, or in a regular household. We live together as friends.”

  “I see.”

  Her face was motionless when she spoke these honest words, and her placid confidence made it impossible for me to question the situation further. She escorted us through the hallway, a dark and gloomy interior dominated by oak panelling. We walked across a large Persian rug, up four steps, and then through a door that led into a rather more pleasant drawing room. By the side of a blazing fire that made the room almost a bit too hot even in this rough weather, sat a small and unassuming creature, at first just a vague movement within the depths of a large wing chair, made visible by the flicker of the flames, but as we moved forward a couple of wringing hands and a pale wrinkled face on the end of a strangely conical head, rather like the face of a sloth, became discernible. The only sound that reached our ears apart from that of the crackling logs, was the sound of the smooth ancient skin on her hands as she wrung them, over and over again.

  Miss Brill invited us to sit on two smaller armchairs placed in front of her mistress as if only for our benefit, as she placed herself on a simple footstool slightly behind her employer.

  “Welcome to Albany Place, gentlemen,” said the old woman in an unexpectedly youthful voice. “I wish I could have welcomed you as guests a few decades ago, when the world was different and this house was more alive than it is now. But we must all face our destiny with our heads held high, and I cannot say that fate has treated me unfairly. I accept my lot and have no complaints. I am alone and the world has grown too large for me, but I am blessed enough to have my dear Connie by my side, and together we lead a pleasant enough existence. The events of these recent days, however, have unnerved me, and I wish only to make heads or tails of them so that I may recover my peace of mind.”

  “Lay your matter before us,” said Holmes, “and spare us no details, however trifling or grotesque.”

  “Very well, Mr Holmes. But before I explain to you my reason for summoning you, I feel I ought to explain some things about our life here. Albany Place was built many years ago by an artist, who designed the curious structure that you see today. But he only lived here for two years before dying from a heart attack, and I bought the house after it had been deemed unfashionable and nobody but rats and pigeons had made use of it for some years. Now, however, I am too old and infirm to be able to enjoy the house in its entirety. I have no money to employ a staff of servants to keep the house in good order, nor would it be necessary for me to do so, as I am unable to climb the stairs, and am committed to live in this room and an adjoining bedroom that has been converted for my benefit from the old smoking room. Connie has taken up residence in the kitchen maid’s old room, but we have long since disposed of the conventional spatial and social divisions between master and servant. You must understand, therefore, that the rest of the house is virtually abandoned, and neither I nor Connie have been upstairs for years.

  “This state of things has bearing on the matter in hand. It began a week and a half ago. Connie and I retire late every evening, as we enjoy sitting by the fire, chatting and doing needlework. The evening in question, we were sitting here, when suddenly Connie said to me that she could hear a strange noise. We sat in silence for a while, and I tried to distinguish it myself, but was unable to do so with my impaired hearing. Connie said it was a faint but consistent creaking, didn’t you, Connie, dear?”

  Miss Brill leaned forward. “Yes. It was barely audible, but as it was so consistent, it was impossible not to notice it after a while.”

  “I naturally attributed it to rats,” continued Miss Landseer, “as I suspect there are quite a few in the upper regions of the house, and after a few minutes we forgot the matter and the sound seemed to disappear. But the following evening, there it was again. And this time, Connie went upstairs to investigate.”

  The old woman handed the tale over to her companion with a sweeping gesture.

  “The sound was coming from somewhere in the upper regions of the house,” Miss Brill said. “I have actually only been up the stairs on one or two occasions during my years here, and then only out of curiosity. In those instances, I was halted at the top of the first flight of stairs by my own fear, for, being an old and deserted house, it has many strange sounds that can make even the boldest of men tremble. I also think that this fear has grown in me since those first ventures up the stairs. On the occasion in question, though, I told myself that it would be foolish to fear whatever would meet me at the top of those stairs, and tried to ignore any fantasies that would run through my mind. When I had come to the top of the first flight of stairs, the sound was more distinct. It was a continuous scratching, and reminded me of the sound of someone scratching off paint from a wall. For a moment I paused, and considered the possibility that this sound came from inside my head and that I was going insane. But just then, the scratching became more frenetic and loud, and it was clear to me that it came from the first room on the left, an old bedchamber. I carefully trod the creaking floorboards up to the door and pushed it open. A bang, as of something dropping, could be heard, and the scratching ceased, only to be supplanted by a series of clanks and creaks. The source of all these sounds was undoubtedly the window, and I rushed up to it, my fear now overpowered by a relentless curiosity. I reached it just in time to see a figure emerging from the shadows of the lower outside wall and run across the lawn into the bushes.”

  “We were convinced,” continued Miss Landseer, “from what Connie had seen, that we had been the victims of a burglary attempt. We summoned the police the next day, and they examined the upstairs room and the wall leading up to the window, but could not find any clear signs of an intruder. The drainpipe was loose in a couple of places and the wiste
ria had been pulled at, but there was nothing that could be separated from the rest of the damage on the exterior that are only to be attributed to lack of maintenance. It was apparent from the countenance of the policeman that he considered our complaint unfounded, and he suggested that rats was the cause.”

  “But only two days later,” said Miss Brill, “the sound returned.”

  “This time, however, it was a different sound,” Miss Landseer added.

  “Different?” I said. “How so?”

  “It had changed from a scratching to a banging,” replied Miss Brill. “It was hardly a very loud banging, but enough to startle us. We first heard it in the middle of the night, and it woke us both up. I went up to investigate once more, but this time it came from even higher up, and so I had to climb two flights of stairs. The second floor is quite small, owing to the curious dwindling shape of the building, as I am sure you noticed upon arriving. There is barely a corridor, only four rooms entered through a diamond-shaped hallway. I fancied the sound was coming from the second door, and carefully opened it. In the moonlight that came in through the window, I could see the contours of furniture covered with old bed linen and a moth-eaten stuffed fox on a tabletop, but there was no movement. Just then, I was startled by the sound of the banging starting again just behind me. I turned around and concluded that it came from within the fourth room. The door creaked as I opened it, and I managed to glance into the dark room quick enough to see what I imagined to be a shadow sweeping past the window. I gathered that there was someone outside again, and this time I wanted to intercept him. I ran down the stairs as fast as I could and out of the front door. The window I had seen him in was on the north side of the house, and I positioned myself below it to catch him as he came down. But he was not there. Was I too late? It could not be. Climbing down the exterior of the house from such a height would take at least five minutes, and I had been down in thirty seconds. There was only one explanation. He had managed to get inside. So I ran inside once more, and went up to the first floor to listen for sounds. I could hear someone walking above me. What was I to do? We were only two defenceless women in an old house, the size of which became evident to me for the first time. Then I remembered the hunting rifle that hangs above the fireplace in our drawing room.” She pointed at a very old and surely quite useless weapon hanging from a few nails. “I entertained no illusions to the point that it would be able to fire this antique, but I went down and took it all the same, thinking that it could be used to intimidate the intruder.