The Sensible Necktie and Other Stories of Sherlock Holmes

by Peter K Andersson

The colonel invited us to sit in a pair of leather armchairs. “Now then, gentlemen.”

  “I think you know why we are here,” said Holmes.

  The colonel smiled benevolently, the picture of innocence. “Do I?”

  “Your trick was very well executed, if I may say so, but I am afraid you underestimated the power of reason.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “Then perhaps you will let me give you my version of what took place?”

  “If you think it will help.”

  “Your scheme was cunning indeed, considering it was improvised in a short time and was an adaptation to the situation at hand. Professor Parkins did react on your devout religiosity, since he is a man of science, but it is nothing out of the ordinary, so he would never suspect it to be the motive of a crime. But in fact your plan started to take shape just after that very first conversation after dinner, did it not? At least you must have decided early on that you would prove your point to him in no uncertain terms, and perhaps even convert him in the process. The first thing you did was to follow Professor Parkins after you had parted on the golf course. He went to examine an old ruin, and you looked for an opportunity to scare him, but did not get the chance until he started walking back to the hotel in the fading light. Then you hit upon the idea of making yourself visible on the beach but at such a distance he would not be able to identify you in the gloom. It was a safe plan, for you knew he thought you were resting in your room and would not disturb you when he came back to the hotel.

  “In the night, you crept into the professor’s room, making sure you were hiding in the shadows all along, and upset the bed clothes in the unused bed. This nocturnal visit also gave you an opportunity to examine the room, upon which you came across the gas radiator. Parkins’ sleep was uneasy due to the sight of you on the beach, not to mention the way you banged his window open with your walking stick to make it seem they had been blown open by the wind. As your room was above his, there were a number of things you could do to frighten him. The detail of the old whistle that Parkins had found only served to make your hauntings more eerie.

  “You started to enjoy having this man in your power. You bribed a little boy to tell you about the ghost, since you knew that he would only fall for it if was seen by another. You could of course have found a more respectable witness, but he played the part admirably. Everything was set for the finishing touch, the next night. By this time, you had become a bit carried away, but you were enjoying it too much. Besides, it was all in a good cause. Your plan was brilliant because it was so simple. A ghost is invisible and immaterial. It is made of air. Or, in this case, gas. Yes, you really managed to fool Professor Parkins, and when he came to see us, he was quite convinced that he had seen a ghost. But there were points in his story that did not fit in with the way he had interpreted it. And it took me a while to realise how I was going to interpret it. All the time, I knew that the curtains were the key to the mystery, and by removing the curtains in the professor’s room, you both bothered the professor and found the last ingredient in your plan. The curtain rod. By connecting it to the sconce that supplied the radiator with gas, you could lead the gas up to the other bed, concealing the rod underneath the bed clothes. You then turned the gas up and quickly left the room. There were no certainties about the plan, anything could happen, but it gave the best possible results. The gas turned the sheet into a hot-air balloon, inflating it, and even making it rise up from the bed, giving the impression of a spectral figure hovering over the floor. When you had heard the professor’s screams, making sure the illusion had produced an effect, you bolted into the room and immediately turned down the gas. Luckily, Professor Parkins fainted, which gave you the time to remove the rod from the gas sconce, and put it back in the window. There was no chance the professor would look through this, since his reaction to the ghost had reassured you of its effect. Perhaps seeing his reaction even made you feel that you had gone a bit too far?”

  Colonel Wilson’s face had changed during Holmes’ narrative, from mild complacency into a resolute frown. “What do you want from me?” he said, betraying a slight tremor in his voice.

  “Only your confession, Colonel. Perhaps even a note stating as much addressed to Professor Parkins.”

  “That would only serve to inflate his smugness. He was the archetypal self-righteous scientist, looking down on ordinary churchgoing people. I only wanted to teach him a lesson.”

  “Your lesson turned him into a broken man. And it seems to have turned you into the archetypal self-righteous churchgoer.”

  Wilson’s gaze flickered. “How did you manage to piece all this together?”

  “By noting all the things Professor Parkins told me that he did not attach any importance to. The gas radiator, your room being above his, the curtain rod. It all pointed in one direction. I may have made some guesses, but the reactions in your face when I explained it proved me right. Oh, and, by the way; the whistle.”

  “What about it?”

  “If you will hand it over to me, I will return it to the professor.”

  I was just as startled as the colonel.

  “Are you implying that I am a thief? I threw it into the sea!”

  “Stuff and nonsense, Colonel. Your interest in that religious artefact inspired your plan just as much as your will to teach the professor a lesson. You never threw it away.”

  Holmes held out his hand. The colonel leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees. Then he stood up, nodded to us and left the room. In less than a minute he returned, walked round the back of Holmes’ chair, paused and handed him something, before walking back to his own seat. Holmes now held in his hand a short, smooth-surfaced metal pipe with a few holes along the side.

  “Thank you, Colonel. We will wait while you write that note.”

  Holmes rose and led the way out of the room. A few minutes later, Colonel Wilson emerged, and handed Holmes an envelope.

  “It was never my intention to break the man completely. I was, as you say, carried away by the venture. But I maintain that my mission all along was to smash his scientific pride.”

  “Just as mine is to smash religious pride,” replied Holmes. “Good evening.”

  It was a relief to come outside into the fresh and crisp air, such a change from the stifled atmosphere of the club. Holmes expressed a wish to walk back, which I readily seconded.

  “I cannot think how you ever hit upon the idea of the curtain rod and the gas radiator,” I confessed.

  “The curiosity of the curtains struck me from the beginning, but I could not fit it into any likely scenario. The rest of the story, I must admit, I put together through pure conjecture, but it was only a matter of deciding upon a natural explanation and that the colonel was the culprit, and all the parts of the story fell into place. There were really no other way of interpreting the events once Parkins’ supernatural perspective had been eliminated. But the way he had done it eluded me until the last moment. It wasn’t until we were on our way here that it hit me. Do you remember the cab stopped at a crossing, and there was quite a large crowd of people on the pavement?”

  “I do, yes. That was when your mood changed so dramatically.”

  “I looked out through the window of the cab, and saw the reason for the commotion. There is a ventilation shaft connecting to the Central London Railway which opens up into a grid in the pavement near Bond Street, and just as we were stopping next to it, a train must have blown past in the tunnel, for a stream of air suddenly came up through the grating and got hold of a lady’s gown, resulting in rather an unseemly incident, if you take my meaning. The lady could not help but scream, and a couple of gentlemen rushed forward to remedy the problem before it had attracted too much notice. I saw it, however, and immediately I realised how Wilson had done it! A stream of air, or, in this case
, gas, which is lighter than air, and would have the effect of turning the bed clothes into a balloon. But to anyone not aware of the actuality of it, it would be interpreted as a ghost. It is interesting, is it not, how even though ghosts do not exist, when we see its likeness, we instinctively assume it is one. In the words of the bard: ‘Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.’”

  The Adventure of the Empty Box

  “Watson?”

  “Yes?”

  “How do you hide something in an empty box?”

  I looked up from my newspaper. Holmes was sitting on the other end of the breakfast table, going through the first post.

  “How do you mean?”

  “If I were to say to you that I had put something in a box, and you went and opened that box and found that it was empty, how would you account for it?”

  I leaned back in my chair and gave the matter some thought. “Well, I suppose the only possible solution would be that you had hidden it in the walls of the box. Perhaps its insides are lined with cloth, and you have hidden whatever it is behind the cloth.”

  “Yes, that sounds reasonable, does it not?”

  Holmes went back to studying a small piece of paper in his hand.

  “What have you there?” I inquired.

  “Oh, only a note that was sent to me. It concerns just such an empty box.”

  He pondered it for another short while, then tossed it to me across the table. I picked it up and read it:

  “Dear Mr Holmes, I seek permission to visit you in the morning concerning a mystery that has puzzled me greatly of late. I am in possession of an old wooden box which is supposed to contain something very dear to me, but upon examination, the box proves empty. If you will see me, I would like to lay the matter before you and explain the details. Yours, M. Broker.”

  “Well, Watson.” Holmes looked at me. “What say you?”

  “It sounds intriguing.”

  “Yes. It is almost as if Mr Broker has gone out of the way to describe his problem so that it is certain to awaken my curiosity.”

  “Are you suspicious of it?”

  “Well, the situation certainly raises a lot of questions. If the contents of the box are so precious to him, why does he not inspect the box in detail, perhaps even smashing it so as to see what is hidden in its walls?”

  “Maybe the box is just as dear to him as its alleged content?”

  “Yes. But the most likely hypothesis is probably that whatever he is looking for is not in the box at all. Theorising from so little information is useless, however. What more concrete conclusions can you draw from the letter?”

  I turned the paper over a few times. “It is written in a neat hand, possibly that of an academic. It is curiously folded, which would indicate a man of eccentric qualities, and the strangely subservient tone of his writing adds to this impression. Apart from that, I think there is little to induce.”

  “And if I were to say to you that our Mr Broker is a man of an extremely nervous disposition, on what would you think I based that conclusion?”Holmes smiled as if he were a little devil.

  I concentrated and examined the letter once more. “On the handwriting?”

  “Precisely, Watson! Look at the careful and tidy printing. He has been writing so slowly and neatly that the shaking he is endeavouring to evade instead becomes visible in the unsteady appearance of his lines. At first glance, the writing is exquisite, and I would agree with you that our man is an academic, but he writes so slowly that, when scrutinised up close, the pen strokes look like little zigzag patterns.” Holmes clapped his hands and bolted from his seat. “Now then! I believe our Mr Broker will be here any minute.”

  “You mean to say you’ve already answered his letter?”

  “Of course. It arrived yesterday afternoon. I sent him a telegram last night. His letter was postmarked in Ealing, which would mean that if he went on the morning train from Ealing Broadway, he will be here within ten minutes.”

  And sure enough, only five had passed before we heard the sound of the bell and our visitor being greeted by the landlady. By then, Holmes and I had advanced from the breakfast table to the group of easy-chairs by the fire, and our leisurely dressing-gowns had been replaced by morning coats. The visitor was a robust type of medium height, looking much less the scholar than the athlete, and his shoulders were considerably broader than his waist. His face, however, was covered by a wild beard that lent him some of the air of the book-learning man.

  “Mr Broker?” said Holmes.

  “Masterman Broker at your service,” said the man in a foghorn-like voice.

  We introduced ourselves and the man was invited to sit down.

  “I thank you for receiving me, gentlemen, although I know the matter that I described briefly in my letter to you may seem to be of a much too trivial nature to warrant your valuable time.”

  Holmes grabbed the armrests of his chair. “Trivial - yes. Uninteresting - absolutely not!”

  “Well, perhaps you will see when I have explained further, that what appears trivial on the surface hides something very crucial.”

  “Such is, according to my experience, generally the case.”

  Broker’s eyebrows changed into a formidable dark wall as his face assumed an air of gravity and he began his narrative:

  “As I said, my name is Masterman Broker and I live in Ealing in a large detached villa in one of the suburb’s leafier areas. I work as a school teacher and sometime private tutor, and am married since two years. I met my wife Eleanor while on a walking tour in the Swiss Alps, and we took an instant liking to each other. We are very happy together although our marriage is as yet childless. The house we live in is called Peregrine House and has belonged to my wife’s family for some years. You see, it dates back to the time when that area was still just a country village, and since then suburban houses have sprung up all around it, altering the appearance of the district entirely. Since it is such a large house, and since my income is moderate, we live there together with my wife’s brother and their elderly aunt, both their parents being deceased since a few years. In spite of this, we live comfortably and I get along very well with my brother-in-law. His name is George Falmer, and he works in the City. In fact, when I met my wife in Switzerland, she was holidaying there with him, so my acquaintance with George goes back just as far as my attachment to Eleanor.

  “I tell you these things mainly to draw you a picture of my comfortable life and make you understand why the recent events strike me as so odd and inexplicable. Peregrine House lies surrounded by a large garden which has a high fence and thick shrubberies, making it virtually impossible for a thief to gain entrance to the house unnoticed. You see, I am not a wealthy man, and though my wife’s father ran a prosperous shipping company which allowed him to build the house, their fortunes lie in the past. Therefore it came as a very welcome surprise to us all when I received the news that a distant cousin of my late father who emigrated to New Zealand at an early age and made a fortune in the gold rush of the ’60s, is coming to London to spend his old age in his country of birth and settle his will which, as he made quite clear in his letter, will make me, being his only living relative, the sole benefactor. His letter was meticulous in its detailed instructions on how our meeting upon his arrival will be arranged, and how I will make myself conspicuous in order that he, having never met me before, will recognise me. The instructions involved me wearing a special type of flower native to New Zealand as a buttonhole, standing in a special pose, and other little eccentric details that I cannot now recall.

  “I will now explain to you as clearly as I may how this vital letter disappeared right under my very nose. I am in the habit of opening my letters in my study, a large murky chamber that used to belong to my wife’s father. The contents of that room are mainly his old things, including his desk, his chair, h
is bookcases, and a small sideboard upon which stands an old wooden box which I believe is of oriental manufacture. It was given to him as a present from one of his associates and everyone who has seen it ensures me that it is most exquisite and probably quite valuable. My father-in-law was in the habit of keeping valuable documents in it, and I have taken up the tradition. Yesterday afternoon I was in the study together with George, who sometimes keeps me company after coming back from work. We were chatting about commonplace matters while I dealt with my correspondence, and suddenly I had in my hand the letter from Uncle Bertrand. I read it to myself while George impatiently wondered why I had gone quiet. When I had finished reading it carefully, I explained to him in outline what it had said. He reacted in his usual rumbustious way, getting up from his chair, congratulating and embracing me. Realising that everything depended upon this letter, the instructions it contained and my uncle’s demand that I produce it upon our meeting as a final proof that I am who I claim to be, I grew anxious and wanted to hide it.

  “George calmed me, walked across the room to the sideboard and took the oriental box. He brought it over to the desk and lifted the lid.

  “‘This old thing has proved trustworthy for a long time,’ he said.

  “I tossed the letter into the box.

  George closed the lid and carried it back to the sideboard. Then he turned to me with a beaming smile.’ I will run down to the corner and pick up a bottle of champagne!’

  “I smiled in response and he disappeared from the room. I sat there in my chair for a good while, pondering the sudden fortune that had fallen upon me. Then I began to nurture feelings of apprehension, and an impulse made me rise from my chair and walk over to the box. I knew I would feel a lot safer if the letter was in the inside pocket of my jacket. It was not that I doubted the safety of the box, but I knew that once I had left the room, I would start feeling nervous. Furthermore, there is no way of locking the box. In the unlikely event of a burglary, the letter was completely exposed.