by David Marcum
“Good man,” said my friend to me. “Your swift action saved us all. Are you all right?”
“I think I may have depressed the knuckle of my third finger,” I remarked as I examined my right hand, wincing with pain as I touched the spot. “It will probably need setting. I am not much used to fisticuffs.”
There came a cry from behind us. I turned, to see a young man hurrying towards us down the path from The Wild Goose. “Stop! Stop!” he cried, waving his arms in the air. As he came nearer I recognized him from pictures I had seen in the illustrated London papers as Prince Otto himself. “Stop at once!” he cried as he came up to us, breathing heavily, his cheeks flushed with effort. “I want no more violence on my account, Schnabel. I have decided to make a clean breast of everything. After all, it was an accident.”
“Be quiet, you fool!” said the other man in a harsh tone, as he struggled unsteadily to his feet. “How did you get here?”
“I learned late last night in London where you had gone, and caught the first train I could this morning.”
“Tell us about the accident you referred to,” said Holmes, covering both of them with his pistol. “It is, I take it, to do with Krankl, and Waldenstein’s foreign policy.”
“Don’t tell them anything,” said Schnabel quickly, but Stamm ignored him.
“You appear well-informed already,” said he to us, “so you may be aware that my country has recently been in discussion with Austria, with a view to linking our future to theirs. This is the course long favoured by my father and his chief minister, Franz Krankl. However, Herr Schnabel here has been arguing on behalf of the German Empire that the better course is for us to favour his country. My father is frail and may not have much longer to live. When he dies and I succeed him, the decision will of course be mine, so it is something I must think about now.
“I was in this part of the country anyway, for some duty I had to perform, so Herr Schnabel and I arranged to meet for secret discussions at the most remote spot we could find, The Wild Goose. Unfortunately, Herr Krankl, who was also in England, got wind of what we had planned, and hurried here to try to dissuade me from this course of action. He arrived one evening and we quarrelled. I had had too much to drink, I admit, and was quite drunk. In the heat of the quarrel, I am ashamed to say, I lost my temper and struck out at him, he fell from his chair and hit his head so hard on the corner of the hearth that it killed him. Herr Schnabel here ushered me from the room - I was in no fit state to do anything sensible - and said he would deal with the matter. He disposed of the body somewhere on the marsh, and later bribed the inn-keeper, Trunch, to say that we had never been here, and that Krankl had hired his boat, put out to sea alone in it, and appeared to have been lost overboard.”
“You have made a serious mistake,” said Holmes.
“I know,” returned Stamm. “I am ashamed of myself, both for being drunk, and for losing my temper with Krankl.”
“That was not my meaning,” said Holmes. “Your mistake was in permitting Schnabel to dispose of the body. Don’t you see that that places you completely in his power? At any time in the future he could, by threatening to expose the truth, blackmail you into doing precisely what he wished you to do.”
“Don’t listen to him, your Highness,” cried Schnabel.
“I imagine that that has been his intention all along,” continued Holmes, ignoring the other man’s outburst, “to have this hold over you, so that he could force you to do his bidding, as a puppet-master controls his puppets. On the night Krankl was here, he saw his chance and seized it.”
“It’s a lie!” cried Schnabel.
“You don’t even know for certain that Krankl was really dead when you left the room.” Holmes persisted. “Perhaps he was only stunned, and was finished off later by Schnabel, after you had gone to bed. It would of course suit his purposes perfectly to be rid of Krankl, who was a staunch proponent of the Austrian alliance.”
“That’s lie number two!” interrupted Schnabel, his voice hoarse, but Holmes’s words had evidently plucked a cord in the young nobleman’s memory.
“I had wondered about that,” he said, “wondered if I had really killed him or not. For even in my shamefully drunken state, I had noticed that Krankl’s wound did not appear to be bleeding at all, and nor was there any sign of blood on the floor the following morning.”
Abruptly, the infuriated Schnabel attempted to launch an attack on Holmes, but the latter levelled his pistol at him and he gave it up at once.
“The only way to decide the matter is to examine the body,” said Holmes. “Schnabel says it is buried out this way on the marsh. Will you show us where it is?” he asked, turning to the German.
“No. You can find it yourself,” Schnabel responded.
“Your lack of co-operation is disappointing,” remarked Holmes. “I had only permitted you to drag us out here in the hope that you would lead us to the remains of the unfortunate Herr Krankl. However, we shall find them soon enough. First, though, I think we’ll all get back to the inn, and notify the authorities of what has occurred.”
When we reached The Wild Goose, Trunch was nowhere to be seen, but his absence was soon explained, as the serving-girl informed us that he had gone to fetch the local constable, after declaring with great vehemence that he wished he had never become involved with these people. Just a few minutes later we heard a trap pull up outside the inn and Trunch entered, with a policeman who was almost as massive as Trunch himself. Holmes quickly explained to the policeman all that had taken place. This interview ended with Schnabel in handcuffs, and he and von Stamm going off with Trunch and the constable.
“I can’t imagine what Mr. and Mrs. Whittle will think when they learn what you have discovered,” I remarked to Holmes later that day, as we took lunch at a hotel in Cromer.
My friend chuckled. “Yes, it will certainly be strange for them to discover that as their honeymoon was taking its no doubt blissfully happy course, they were, all unaware, sharing a roof with international intrigue and murder!”
I heard later that the body of Franz Krankl had been recovered from a shallow grave on the marsh, but the medical examination and inquest which followed proved inconclusive. The cause of death was established with certainty as being the wound to the head, but the medical examiner stated that he could not be certain whether Krankl had been struck once, or more than once, and in the end a verdict of accidental death was recorded. Trunch, Schnabel and von Stamm were all convicted on their own admission of attempting to conceal the death, but taking various circumstances into account, and with no doubt half an eye on the diplomatic aspects of the case, the court took a lenient view and handed down relatively light sentences. Trunch therefore returned, no doubt a chastened man, to the inn on the marsh where he continued to cater for the needs of keen bird-watchers, and von Stamm and Schnabel returned to their homelands, and never, so far as I am aware, visited these shores again.
The Adventure of the Traveling Orchestra
by Amy Thomas
My friend Sherlock Holmes, as I have observed on occasion, was at his best when investigations were at their zenith. With all of his senses and powers of observation engaged, he appeared lit from within, as if by some force neither known nor experienced by the rest of the world. In contrast, when too long a time elapsed in which a case had not presented itself - or, at least, no case possessing feature sufficient to keep his interest - that selfsame light was extinguished, progressively, until a dim shadow of the man remained, a repository of talent lacking an igniting catalyst. Such was Holmes’s condition in the autumn of a year not many into our acquaintance.
We were partaking of dinner together in Baker Street, as was our usual custom, when a thought occurred to me. “Perhaps you might take up the violin tonight. Mrs. Hudson and I would be vastly amenable to a concert.” I had observed the effect music had on my flatmate, a
deeply calming one not unlike that of his seven-per-cent solution.
Holmes raised blank eyes to mine, his long, thin fingers closed around his glass. “I have no inspiration, Watson.” Such was the exact source of my concern, for when his mind had reached that point, there was little else to expect but the drug. I fell silent, but fortunately, the lassitude was soon to be remedied.
As I finished my last morsel of sustenance, my friend rose abruptly from the table and went to the window, peering down into the darkening street. “If I am not mistaken, Watson, a client appears.” His voice sounded hopeful for the first time in several weeks. I followed Holmes’s gaze with my own and found it filled with the sight of a young man carrying an oblong object in his right hand.
“A musician,” said my friend, and I realized that the object was of the size and shape of the sort of box that normally contains a small instrument such as a flute. Unlike many of our visitors, the man did not hesitate in the slightest to make his way to the entrance to the building.
Holmes already looked more vital than I had seen him in quite some time, and as we waited for the newcomer to join us, his energy only appeared to increase. Gone was the lethargy that had plagued him; it was instead replaced by the quickness of movement and glance that characterized the detective in his prime.
Within a moment or two, Mrs. Hudson admitted the young man to our dwelling. In the light, I could make out more of his appearance. He was tall but slight in build, of an age I put between twenty and thirty years, and possessed of dark brown hair. Now that he stood before us, he seemed no more tentative than he had previously. In fact, the air of confidence he conveyed made it seem as though his thin frame took up far more space than it actually occupied.
“Mr. Holmes?” His blue eyes passed across both my friend and myself.
“I have the honor to be thus addressed,” said Holmes readily, motioning to the chair we kept for guests.
“I am Charles Green,” he replied, before taking his seat, a smile on his lips. Rarely had I seen a client in such a perfect state of non-agitation.
“I see that you’ve come to me about the theft of your instrument,” said Holmes, taking his seat opposite Green, his eyes on the instrument case that rested on our visitor’s lap.
“How?” asked the young man simply. Far from appearing put out, he grinned broadly at the deduction of the missing contents of a hard-sided, closed case that did not seem to betray anything about its contents or lack of such.
“The theft wasn’t a brutal one,” my friend replied, “but I see signs of the center clasp, which normally locks, being pried open, an unlikely action for the owner of the instrument to perform.” Green handed over the case, and upon closer inspection, I, too, could see evidence that something had bent the clasp and then bent it back.
“I also deduce from your manner,” continued Holmes, “that this theft was, if not welcomed, at least not overly troubling.”
Our guest smiled again and leaned forward excitedly. “It was stolen from a concert hall, along with every other instrument in the entire orchestra. If they’re not recovered, or are recovered damaged, the hall will have to pay us for the lot of them. I liked my flute well enough, but the payout would furnish me with a better one. I haven’t been with the orchestra for long, and my instrument is hardly worthy of it.” It occurred to me to wonder, if this were true, why he had chosen to consult my friend at all. He must have realized how he sounded, for he added, “Not all of us were so fortunate. A few of the instruments were valuable enough to be irreplaceable. I’ve come to you on behalf of friends for whom the losses are far more catastrophically felt than my own.”
“Were all the cases, like yours, left behind?”
“Yes,” answered Green, nodding emphatically. “That’s the strange part. They took the trouble of taking every one of the instruments and leaving each case exactly as they found it.”
“Which was how?”
“We are a traveling orchestra,” the young man replied. “Our members are usually responsible for their own instruments, but most of us had left them behind for a single evening of dining out. We are not wealthy, and our manager had promised us a night of rest and good food, not something we are normally afforded for free.”
“The hall itself was left in the care of a guard, and we locked our instruments into a dressing room and thought little of it. The few who refused to do this are, of course, relieved and filled with the glow of justification.”
“All right,” said my friend, “let me ascertain the timeline of events. You and your fellow musicians arrived in London upon what day?”
“Yesterday morning,” he answered promptly. “We traveled from Edinburgh to begin a series of engagements in England. We lodge at a boardinghouse near Dorrigan Hall, which is in-”
“I know where it is,” said Holmes brusquely. “Continue.”
“We arrived by train in the early morning hours, and had only long enough to deposit our personal belongings in sparsely-furnished rooms before we were spirited away to rehearse in the hall, a schedule we are accustomed to keeping. We observed our usual agenda of four hours of practice, then a half hour for dining, and back to the grindstone in the afternoon.”
“What did you do with your instruments during your midday meal?” I was gratified that the same question my friend asked had also occurred to me.
“We kept them with us,” answered Green. “Food was brought to us from a local public house.”
“Very well. What of your evening entertainment?”
“Before we recommenced our rehearsal, our manager, Mr. Pike, informed us that we were all to be his guests last evening at the Hotel Durrants on George Street, a fact that was met with a great deal of excitement by most members of the orchestra, who are little accustomed to such luxury, especially at Pike’s expense.”
“It is unlike him, then, to offer such a gift,” murmured Holmes.
Green nodded. “I don’t mean to imply he’s an unfair employer. He’s scrupulously conscientious in his dealings and, I think, errs more on the side of leniency than severity in most instances, but he is not a rich man. He’s in a better way than most of us, but he’s far from truly wealthy, at least as far as any of us have ever seen in his person or manner of living.”
“I see,” answered Holmes.
“As I said previously,” Green kept on, “most of us left our instruments in a large dressing room on the right side of the hall, with the assurance of a sturdy lock, a competent guard, and the hall’s responsibility for their safekeeping. Musicians, as a rule, care for our instruments, but only a few of us are so particular as to require them with us at all times, especially considering how little most of them are worth.”
“The theft was discovered, I take it, upon your return,” said Holmes. I could tell that he was beginning to grow impatient with the repetitive part of Green’s narrative.
“Yes,” came the answer. “We returned to our boardinghouse after six hours of practice to prepare ourselves up for the evening. From there, we were taken by taxicab to Durrants, where we dined very well, drank good wine, and generally enjoyed ourselves. We returned in the late evening, determined to rehearse for one more hour, but we were greeted by a locked room of empty instrument cases and a guard who was at the other side of the building and claimed utter ignorance.”
“Peculiar,” said my friend. I hoped that this portended his willingness to take the case and finally escape from his recent malaise. “Why did you not consult me sooner?”
The young man sat back in his chair. “I had not - as you said before, I did not have the strongest incentive for approaching you. It was only after-”
“After the young woman with whom you are in love made her distress known to you.” Green nodded wordlessly and did not ask for an explanation of Holmes’s deduction.
After a moment of silence,
he explained, “I became aware of your talents last year. I read about your exploits in the newspaper during our last trip to London, so when Doris - Miss Lake - told me of her distress over the loss of her viola, I spoke to Mr. Pike about consulting you.”
“I’ll admit-” He looked down at his interlaced fingers, “that I did not quite believe that you could be real or your reputation justified. However, Pike mentioned the idea of consulting you to Mr. Dorrigan, who owns the hall and will be out a great deal of money if our instruments remain lost, and he expressed great faith in you and tasked me with coming here straightaway to consult you about the matter.”
“Very well,” said Holmes. “Now I wish to see the scene of the robbery.”
We engaged a taxi, and within minutes, found ourselves passing through the London streets toward a part of the city that might almost be called fashionable, except that the highest echelons of society were never seen there on account of it being too affordable for those they considered irrevocably beneath them. In other words, it was a place of social passage between the low and the high, where those who wished to climb rubbed shoulders with those who had fallen.
After a brisk ride, we arrived in front of a large, solid building that clearly belonged to its place in the city: Dorrigan Hall. I had never attended there, but I had certainly seen theatrical entertainments and heard concerts in similar places. It was of a new style, constructed, I thought, within the past decade. Eight entrances opened it to the street, and the tall façade was impressive with its arched doorways and massive windows.