by David Marcum
“By Jove, yes!”
We climbed the stairs again, I with my hand on my revolver and he armed with a set of skeleton keys. Holmes was a match for any burglar. We reached the housekeeper’s door, and while he picked the lock, I put my ear to the door, listening for any sound within. There was no whining from a dog that I could hear, or any cry, human or animal. The room appeared to be deserted.
“That’s got it,” my friend said, but before I could respond the door flew open in our faces and we were knocked to the ground. Something sailed over my head. I had just enough time to turn my head and glare after it.
“What was it?” Holmes asked, for I had a better look at whoever had knocked us over than he.
“It was most definitely a man,” I stated.
“Did you recognize him?”
“How should I have recognized him?”
Just then there was a scream from the corridor. It sounded like Mrs. Urquhart. We leapt to our feet and ran down the hall as quickly as possible. In the hall we passed Mrs. Petrie, armed with nothing more dangerous than a spatula. She glared at us scornfully as I ran past on my injured ankle.
Mary Urquhart wailed again, and as we neared her door we could hear the sounds of furniture being upended. As we entered, we saw Alec Urquhart locked in a desperate struggle with another man. Both were ginger haired, and when the other fellow turned his head I saw he was his double in every way, down to the very moustache on his upper lip.
Sherlock Holmes did not hesitate, but jumped upon the back of the combatant who was dressed, Alec Urquhart still being in his nightshirt. I joined the fray as well, seizing the man’s muscular arm and trying to keep him from strangling Urquhart. Was this Andrew returned from the grave, I wondered, or had Alec set up this up to trap his brother into revealing his jealousy?
Whoever we were wrestling with, he was uncommonly strong, and seemed to have little difficulty tossing all three of us about the room. Holmes had an arm wrapped about the fellow’s throat, but he had little effect against his bull neck. This version of Urquhart seemed larger and stronger, with a deep chest and apelike arms. With one shake of his arm he set me flying against the wall. Mrs. Urquhart, cowering in a corner, shrieked again.
“Archie!” I heard Mrs. Petrie’s voice behind me. “Put the man down immediately!”
In answer, he swept the air with one of his long arms and knocked the poor woman senseless. Then he tore Holmes from his shoulders and flipped him over onto his back with a jarring crash. Having done that, he closed his hands about the throat of the last of the Urquharts, and began to squeeze the life from him.
Alec Urquhart’s face was already pale, but now it turned chalky white, and his lips looked blue. I tried to remove the fingers from his fragile throat, but they were like steel. The poor man could not take much more of this. As a medical man, I feared he was approaching death.
“Archie!” Mary Urquhart barked. “What do you think you’re doing? You put him down this instant!”
The muscular attacker suddenly looked up, his concentration broken. His face looked perplexed, and possibly even ashamed.
“Did you hear me?” she continued. “Am I going to have to repeat myself? Take your hands away now.’
The thick, ruddy fingers began to pull away from Urquhart’s throat, leaving him coughing and gasping for air. The intruder looked down sheepishly.
“You know this man?” I asked.
“I believe he is the man I found staring at me that night. He looks very much like my late husband. He can only be another brother!
“Thank you, Archie,” she continued, using the name the housekeeper had supplied. “I’m very proud of you. Now can you come over here and sit beside me? I shall let you hold my hand if you do.”
A feint smile grew on the fellow’s lips and he crossed the room to her. I saw an expression on his face which explained everything. This brother was mentally slow.
“So,” I said. “The Urquharts weren’t twins at all. They were triplets.”
“Precisely,” Holmes said. “Watson, would you be so good as to see to Mrs. Petrie?”
I crossed to the old woman. She was in her sixties and the blow had sent her sprawling. I helped her up and nothing appeared broken, but she there was a dark bruise upon her cheek.
“My god,” our host finally choked out.
“Do I have the honor of addressing Mr. Andrew Urquhart?” Holmes asked.
All of us leaned forward for the answer. Mary Urquhart hand even squeezed the hand that had been choking our host a few minutes earlier.
“You do,” he finally muttered.
The young bride burst into tears. I handed her my handkerchief, while the strange doppelganger patted her hand with mute concern on his face.
“You mustn’t think I killed him, Mary,” Urquhart went on. “I was genuinely happy for Alec, even if I admired you myself. The morning I found him dead at the foot of the stair was the worst of my life, but I could tell no one.”
“You shaved your brother’s corpse, fashioned a false moustache, and took his place,” Holmes said.
“I did. I’m afraid I panicked. We had always been trained to keep the family secret, you see, and to never let anyone know about Archie.”
“Did he kill your brother?”
“I wish I knew, Mr. Holmes. Archie has a temper, and afterward he doesn’t remember things. The truth is he has been very curious about Mary since the wedding. I warned Alec that it was time to move Archie to a proper facility, where he could be looked after properly, but he wouldn’t hear of it. We’d had several arguments both before and after the wedding about how Archie was handling all the changes that had occurred, but Alec took all my suggestions as an affront to his abilities. He was head of the Urquhart clan, you see, and he would make all the decisions.”
“You understand these events put you in a bad light,” Holmes said. “You are the chief suspect in a murder investigation.”
“I begin to suspect, sir, that your being here is no accident. Just who are you, really?”
“Mr. Urquhart, I am a consulting detective hired by your sister-in-law to look into the matter of several curious events that have happened since she arrived at this house. I cannot keep the matter hidden, you understand. A man has been slain.”
“I understand that, sir, and I am ready to take any punishment the courts find necessary. I loved my brother, and a day hasn’t gone by that I haven’t regretted his death. I’ve made several mistakes, but only to try to rectify the large one Alec made when he brought Mary here, yet refused to tell her about Archie.”
“I understand there are loose boards upon the staircase. Have you formed a conclusion as to what happened?”
“No, sir, I haven’t. I mean, he could have fallen in the middle of the night. The stair was loose and I intended to fix it. However, Archie was agitated the night when Alec fell, but then he is often agitated without causing trouble.”
“Many men in your situation would have taken advantage of the situation. Why didn’t you?”
“I’d like to think that Mary’s arrival awoke in me new possibilities. I wanted to be a better man to please her, not a worse one.”
“So, you became a stockbroker,” my friend, a thin smile playing on his lips.
“Actually, I rather enjoyed that part. Alec always talked about his work, so I knew the names of his partners, and what he did there. I was terrified on my first day, but I found I enjoyed the work.”
“And what was Mrs. Petrie’s part in all this?” Holmes continued.
I looked over and saw that the woman had begun crying, the tears rolling down her withered cheeks.
“I was the children’s governess before I became housekeeper,” she said. “We knew within a few years that something was wrong with Archie. Mr. Urquhart put it about that he had
died of diphtheria, then sought out the best medical care. All of them suggested Archie be put away, because of his violent tendencies, but the old master refused. ‘A family must look after its own,’ he said.”
“You kept the secret to this day,” Holmes said.
“Aye, and I warn’t Mr. Alec he had no business bringing a bride home to this old manse. Nothing but tragedy would e’er come of it. I’ve naught against you, ma’am. You’ve a good soul, but I knew the secret would come out one way or the other, and not for good.”
There was a silence in the room for a moment or two.
“So, what happens now, Mr. Holmes?” Andrew asked. “According to the courts, I am a dead man.”
Holmes turned to me.
“Watson, what is your opinion of Mr. Urquhart’s actions?”
I considered the matter. Sometimes Holmes would saddle me with the responsibility for an entire case, almost on a whim.
“It would have been better if he had revealed what had occurred immediately, rather than keep it to himself. However, he did not take advantage of his circumstances by placing demands upon another man’s wife. I believe he was merely trying to contain the mounting problems in order to keep a secret that was not his.”
“I believe you are ‘off the hook’, sir,” Holmes told Urquhart. “I cannot fault Watson’s logic or judgment.”
“Thank you, Mr. Holmes, but what do we do now? According to the law, I am a dead man.”
“You want an opinion, sir? Very well, I shall give it. You must resign your position on some pretense and sell this tragic old building. Archie must go into a proper facility with doctors to watch over him. Mrs. Petrie should be given a proper severance, if he wishes to leave. I suggest you move away and change your name.”
I thought it a harsh sentence, but the only one under the circumstances.
“And what of Mary?” Andrew Urquhart asked.
“That is a decision she must make for herself.”
“I shall go home to my parents’ house for a while. I have some thinking to do.”
“And what of Archie?” Andrew went on. “He might be innocent of the crime.”
“Perhaps, but your brother must be put away in either case, whereas if you are found responsible, you will surely hang for it.”
Holmes turned and regarded our client.
“Mrs. Urquhart, do you consider this matter concluded?”
“Yes, Mr. Holmes. Thank you.”
“Watson and I must return to London, then. Our continued absence encourages mischief among the Underworld.”
We gathered our few possessions and made our way back to the station. Holmes did not speak about the case again until we were on the platform.
“A family secret causes all sorts of mischief, Watson. It is a conspiracy as much as any governmental plot, and the one whom is hurt the most is often the most innocent.”
Some cases end with a timely resolution, while others we don’t hear about for months or even years later. One day during the holiday season a couple entered our consulting rooms in Baker Street unannounced. They were a fashionably dressed couple living in Paris, where intrigue was not unknown. They were a Mr. and Mrs. Anderson of the 18th Arrondissement. He was a stockbroker, with a shock of red hair and a nice looking imperial. His wife, “Marie”, looked quite content. As a medical man, I suspected she was expecting a child. Perhaps there would be more Urquharts after all.
The Adventure of the Seventh Stain
by Daniel McGachey
Preface: The Identity of Cases
Such does his celebrity continue to grow that, despite his retirement to his bees and his studies in Sussex, many are the letters that still arrive daily for Sherlock Holmes, and in particular since my friend finally granted permission that I might share with an admiring world the details of his return from that watery grave in which my published accounts had left him a decade earlier. This, naturally, is a source of considerable pride to the humble narrator of Holmes’s adventures; the satisfaction further bolstered by the fact that the post brings me almost as many letters, gifts and requests for a reply or souvenir as are received by my celebrated associate.
Rather, it is usually a source of pride. Yet there is little to crow over when a goodly proportion of the day’s mail is devoted to messages proclaiming one a liar, a fraud, or a charlatan. There have admittedly been prior accusations that my works are not entirely truthful records, not least from Sherlock Holmes himself who was never shy of offering a detailed critique, whether one had been invited or not. Yet opening a ninth, then a tenth missive in succession to accuse me not simply of the “embellishments” that were the basis for Holmes’s disapproval, but of outright deception against my loyal readers, is not a situation for which I was remotely prepared.
The source of this unheralded epidemic of disapprobation lies with the latest edition of The Strand Magazine, in which I fulfilled what I considered a long-standing obligation in presenting the adventure I had dubbed “The Second Stain”. This title had prompted its own flow of missives requesting further details, since I first made passing mention of it in certain earlier accounts. And it is these fleeting allusions that now cause such ire, for the details I had previously let slip and the particulars in my recently published tale bearing that designation do not tally. So, far from rewarding the curiosity excited by those teasing hints, I have succeeded only in provoking the wrath of those in whom curiosity has turned to frustration.
Revisiting those earlier references to a “Second Stain”, I see that in one instance I have it listed as an episode in which Holmes failed to conclude his case satisfactorily, while in the other I have referred to an incident involving some of the most powerful houses in the land. And while, as in my now published statement, the household of the Right Honourable Trelawney Hope may surely be regarded as noble and powerful, certain of the international players initially mentioned are missing from the scene, and Holmes’s return of the document that threatened not only his client’s political career but also the fate of nations could in no way be regarded a failure. Thus, the public cry of “substitution” or “fake” is not so readily dismissed. So I readily admit that this case is neither of those to which I so recklessly alluded in the past. Yet nor is it a fiction to obscure the true events. It is without question the story of “The Second Stain”. However it is not the only adventure of Sherlock Holmes to bear this title!
In truth, amongst my notes there exist details of no fewer than seven separate cases to which the appellation has been applied; though on delving into those files, closer examination of my occasionally unintelligible handwriting reveals one of these actually to be labelled “The Second Strain”, dealing as it does with the misappropriation of a brace of bacillus cultures, each harmless unless brought into contact with the other. It was only due to the rapid action of Sherlock Holmes that half of London narrowly avoided catching a fatal bout of cold. Thus we reduce the total to six, and the affair of the Trelawney Hope document diminishes the number yet further.
Of the others, the case previously referred to as unresolved falls into that category in which Holmes was unable, as in his customary maxim, to entirely eliminate the impossible, herein with relation to a chamber in which a supposed “phantom bloodstain” refused, after more than two centuries, to dry. Holmes was swift in finding the cause of a second, more recent bloodstain and, in turn, the murderess who sought to mask her crime with an ancient curse. But my friend’s determination to dispel the far older mystery of the original, livid splash was to remain frustrated, and my report of the venture lies sealed with those other apparently impossible cases that may one day find their solutions in science, yet which, for now, remain within the province of superstition and the supernatural.
Two further sets of notes refer to acts of vandalism which were easily resolved and offer little to excite the reader’s interest, w
hile the sixth I find listed involved a celebrated Renaissance painting in a prominent gallery whose discoloured layers of three-hundred year old varnish artfully disguised its far more recent genesis on the easel of an illiterate flower-seller in the cellar of a Soho gin-house.
Which leaves us with one outstanding case, and this, indeed, is that which my readers have been clamouring for. But they must clamour in vain, for it remains one which discretion still stays my hand from signing over to the public gaze. But record it I will, for an undefined future reader, which is a nobler reason than - by documenting the events they are so curious about in papers which must still remain sealed away from their gaze - to spite all those who have taken time to put pen to paper and stamp to envelope to libel my name. Petty? Even if so, by the time other eyes peruse these pages, my pettiness will be long forgotten and posterity will have benefited, whatever my motive.
I. Three Callers at 221B
I had been married little under half-a-year and, as the bright summer days lengthened, my time was divided between the domestic comforts of the marital home and my efforts to establish my new practice. I had not forgotten my good friend, of course, nor would my dear Mary have allowed me to do so, and I endeavoured to make myself known at my former lodgings as often as my schedule permitted. The last such visit had seen our reminiscences cut short by the sudden arrival, and yet more sudden collapse, of Captain Gideon Blackhall of the S.S. Genevieve, and a leisurely few hours stretched dramatically into those several tense days in which we strove to uncover the reason behind the captain’s sudden lapses into prolonged stretches of fearful, nightmare-haunted sleep. Now, having just received a much revived Blackhall in my surgery, I was able to confirm that the opiates he had been surreptitiously fed, so that his first mate and crew might tend to the practicalities of their thriving smuggling trade undisturbed, would soon be out of his system. So it was with the intention of relaying this good news to Holmes that I ascended the well-worn stairs to my old sitting room.