by David Marcum
“So, even if he had attempted to cry out,” I mused, “he would have been unable to raise more than a choking gurgle.”
“Thank you for that medical viewpoint, Watson,” murmured Holmes. “I wish you had been allowed to extend your skills to an examination of the wound while fresh, but a coroner’s report will have to suffice. Pray continue, Lord Sternfleet.”
“I instructed one of the servants lurking in the corridor to assemble the male staff in the entrance hall. One was to ride out to summon the police, the others to secure the house and patrol every inch of the park.”
The groan this elicited from Holmes was no doubt in response to the idea of a troop of butlers, footmen and stable-boys trampling across the grounds and efficiently obliterating any valuable trails underfoot. However, rather than voicing a complaint I had heard him level at many a police inspector over similarly unthinking carelessness, he prompted, “You believed it was murder from the first instant?”
“If it had been suicide, then where was his instrument of self-destruction? His hands were free of any blade or shard. My wife refused to consider that a murderer may have stalked within our home as we slept, insisting some terrible act of despair must have caused our friend to end whatever woes may have beset him. I had actually to restrain her from dropping to her knees in search of a weapon that might have fallen under the bed. It was only the return of the Graf that brought her to herself, his shock now equally matched by concerns for the Grafin, who had practically fainted in her bed at the news and entered that state of profound shock in which she remains. Rupert was naturally inclined to take her immediately back to Germany but, even had Inspector Highford been of a mind to let him leave the country, Natascha’s condition forbids it. Not that any suspicion falls on such a noble visitor, of course, and his continued presence is a mere courtesy. But it is for this reason he has summoned the specialist from Dantzig to hasten the progress of the enquiry.”
“If you incline toward notions of an intruder or assassin, your Lordship, you must feel that Monsieur Lefalque was a man whose death would benefit some other agency. Was anything stolen, from his room or his belongings? No documents of a private and confidential nature?”
Lord Sternfleet released a long plume of smoke as he slowly exhaled, before shaking his head. “I do not understand, Mr. Holmes, what you may be insinuating.”
“Come now, we have no time for game playing. The death of a minor visiting dignitary with no connection to government - or should I stress no visible connection? - is embarrassing, indeed painful, but unlikely to cause the international crisis you protest of. But if it has set so busy a man as Fritz von Waldbaum scurrying through the facts of the man’s life, and has also caught the lofty attention of your - ha! - advisor, there is more to it than is being said. Plainly put, was Lefalque carrying any clandestine document that others may wish to either obtain or suppress?”
“There you go wildly astray, Mr. Holmes. Francois was no spy, nor would I use my own home for such sordid goings on as you imply. It is where I live, sir! It is where my wife and family should feel safe.”
“Well, as family has been invoked, what of Madame Lefalque? It is she who summoned the feted Dubuque to take charge of discovering how she comes to be a widow, I believe? Was she not invited to this friendly jamboree?”
“Claudine Lefalque prefers to summer in the South of France, and has invariably done so for many years.”
“But the marriage was still a viable one, with no estrangement? No? And Madame’s relations with the rest of the party? Your wife, for example?”
“Amicable. Agreeable! Friendly! We were all of us friends, Mr. Holmes!”
Holmes nodded in silent acknowledgement of Lord Sternfleet’s grim insistence, and that silence persisted as the bustling, cramped streets thinned around us to the outlying tranquillity that abides beyond the city’s overflowing heart, with even these charming byways becoming less crowded with their pleasant terraced houses and gardens. I viewed as much of this as I could through yet another fog of tobacco fumes, eventually giving in and, at risk of ending up as cooked and wrinkled as one of Mrs. Hudson’s breakfast kippers, I produced my own pipe and puffed merrily away until the gates displaying that same coat of arms that adorned our transport came into view, and beyond it the great wooded parkland that held Marleigh Towers in green seclusion. On spying our approach, from slouching as wilted as the rapidly drying out flowers in those suburban gardens, a constable stationed at the gates became as stiffly formal as any Palace guardsman, marching swiftly to open the way, before no doubt slumping once more the instant our carriage was out of sight along the tree-lined driveway whose verdant abundance shielded from the outside world that house whose unwelcomed notoriety had made it a beacon for the morbidly inquisitive.
III. Inside the Murder Room
Marleigh Towers’ renown had not, of course, commenced with this recent outrage. Its stables have at various times housed several champions - including a particular thoroughbred whose best remembered victory had, in my bachelor days, brought me winnings enough to finance a holiday in Margate that was itself memorable for several happy reasons that shall not be divulged here - while I had long nurtured a wish to view the great clock whose hands famously remained frozen at the hour and minute its tower was struck by lightning in 1827, at the precise instant General Sir Hartford Sternfleet fell drunkenly under a carriage outside his club and was trampled to death. It was from high atop this tower that, on hearing the grave news, his young wife threw herself in her urgent desire to be reunited in eternity with the general. Perhaps unfortunately for her, she survived the plunge and lived to a greatly advanced age, though with injuries so awful to behold they eventually earned her the cruelly whispered title of “The Red Widow”; thus she remained confined both to her wheelchair and to a house that had become a constant reminder of all she had lost, and which she chose to spend her remaining years filling with her bitter, impotent rage, which some say has never quite fully dispersed. The disappointing truth, however, was that this infamous landmark looked like any other stopped clock, while the enduring grandeur of the house itself was something I observed but fleetingly, as Lord Sternfleet set a brisk pace in marching Holmes and me indoors through a pillared portico, past deferential servants and constables alike, and straight up the magnificent main staircase.
“You are taking us directly to the murder room?” enquired Sherlock Holmes, keeping step easily with his Lordship’s long strides.
“I was given to expect that this is where you would prefer to begin. Now, you there, Constable Whoever-you-are, is Inspector Highford still skulking somewhere?”
The uniformed officer seated outside the bedroom door scrambled to his feet, apologetically replying, “He’s down our local station, your Lordship. Said he reckoned that maid wasn’t telling all she knew.”
“Damn fool! She can wait,” grunted our host. “The stupid child has nothing to do with this.”
“Of course the poor girl has nothing to do with it!” The imposing voice that chimed down the corridor was followed by my first equally imposing sight of the striking and elegant Lady Verity Sternfleet. She strode with a gliding step to her husband’s side and, as he discreetly extinguished his cigar, she slipped a fond arm comfortably round him, insisting, “We are allowing our own horror and suspicion over poor Francois to make us vengeful. You must instruct that inspector to stop hectoring her and let the poor, bewildered creature go free.”
“My sweetest Verity, you are altogether too soft-hearted. The girl took advantage of this, was too brazen or foolish to not get caught, and must pay the cost of her own greed and stupidity. Now, now, do not upset yourself. No, do not argue, for I felt you shiver. Shall I have Tanner make you up another fire?”
“A fire? In this summer heat, would that not be rather excessive?” remarked Holmes.
“Exactly so, Mr. Holmes,” agreed Lady Verity.
“Indeed, such a fuss, but my husband found me shivering before a freshly-lit fire in my bedroom on that awful morning, and since then he has been trying to bundle me in blankets and shawls, as if I might shudder myself into pieces.”
“Shock can have profound and pronounced effects,” I warned, delicately. “If you would like me to perhaps prescribe something for your nerves...”
“My nerves are perfectly all right, Doctor, merely jangled.”
“But you are recovered enough to go out, I perceive.”
As Lady Verity looked down at her own fashionable if sober dress, her pearls, and her long silken gloves, a pained look crossed her gentle features, and her poise momentarily deserted her as she wrung her hands together. But her natural grace asserted itself swiftly, as she tightly smiled. “Oh, Mr. Holmes, this costume is not for going out. I cannot go out, but instead I must face a daily procession of strangers in my home, and even now - particularly now, with so many eyes upon us - one cannot allow appearances to slip. If I am to be peered at and queried, I shall ensure it is on my own terms.”
“Not the attire to go crawling about the floor searching for weapons,” Holmes murmured sardonically, but if his words had been meant solely for my ears, they also reached Lady Verity’s, and her genteel tone sharpened in response.
“If it helped discover who had done this terrible thing, I would crawl through the undergrowth clad in a ballgown and diamond tiara! I admit that I was not thinking clearly when first we found Francois. But perhaps I was clearer in my thoughts than it appeared, for the blade I sought was later found.”
Holmes turned keenly, his eyes flashing at this fresh data. “I had not read of this.”
“We have managed to keep some secrets back from the press. Here, I will show you the very spot. No, Herbert, I am not a weakling, and keeping me out of the room will not erase what I have already seen. Follow me, if you will, gentlemen.”
The bedroom was spacious and comfortable, with expansive windows letting golden light flood in. A wardrobe lay open, its contents on display, the cut of a wealthy man’s suits unmistakeable even here. A jug and bowl sat on the sideboard, pen and paper on the bureau, and all seemed so normal it would have appeared that the occupant had stepped out mere moments before, had it not been for the stark memorial the bed made to the violence that had been committed here. Stripped of its bedding, and with the stains already dried to a darkening brown, the mattress looked better suited to an abattoir than a bedroom; wings of blood apparently stretching out around the corpse my mind’s eye placed in the bed. That blood had dripped and dried in rivulets down the side close by the door and an awkwardly placed bedside cabinet that nestled between door and bed, leaving powdery burgundy puddles on the polished floorboards, and a deep crimson crusting to the tufts on the rug.
“Inspector Highford claims the discovery of it, yet in a way I helped. No, not crawling on the floor. That officious little fellow had asked my description of that morning’s events. Rather than repeating what I had already told his colleagues, I felt it easier to show him. But I fear I overestimated my own courage, for no sooner had I entered than I felt terribly faint. I reached wildly for support, forgetting this bedside cabinet was on casters. It slid easily across the floor and almost brought me sliding down with it. The inspector, in an attempt at gallantry I suppose, moved to assist me. But just as he had steadied me he very nearly knocked me aside again, crying, ‘What’s this I spy here?’ And from the floor he scooped up Francois’ razor, with its blade and ivory handle still red and wet from his blood.”
“You knew it was Lefalque’s own razor?”
“At that moment? No, of course. But I assumed it to be so - whoever else’s razor would I expect? - and an inspection of Francois’ shaving kit showed this to be true.”
“And was there any indication of how it found its way underneath the cabinet?” asked Holmes, crouching smartly to run his slender fingers in the gap between the base and the floorboards, before narrowly examining the floor around both cabinet and bedside.
“We believed that Francois must, in his death throes, have dropped or thrown it.”
“But the angle at which he would have had to release or propel it counts against that, otherwise why should I be summoned?” As he spoke, Holmes paced the room, his grey eyes prowling over every surface, fingers prising lightly at the window locks, knuckles rapping softly on wood panelled walls as if some secret means of access might be revealed, before his attention turned once more to the floor, prompting a tut-tut of disapproval. “This morass of foot-scuffs are evidence of nothing more than the British bobby at work. But since the floor was recently scrubbed, as you would expect before a visitor’s arrival, and there has been no recent rain, no trail in the dust nor muddied footstep could be expected in any case. Yet if murder had been the intent, why would the culprit have required the victim’s own razor? Surely any killer worth the label carries their own weaponry?”
“Unless the murderer wished the crime to look like suicide,” I exclaimed.
“Without placing the instrument of death in Lefalque’s hand to strengthen the illusion?”
“A burglar, then? An opportunist, taken unawares, who grabbed the first item that came to hand? Then, in their panic at the horror they had perpetrated, they threw down the razor wildly, before fleeing without whatever spoils they had come for?”
My hypothesis prompted only a noncommittal grunt from Sherlock Holmes, but I had expected no more, knowing well his preference to leave any clear statement of events until he had gathered and analysed all data available to him. His eyes and attention now seemed transfixed by that fearful stain, practically as if it drew him to it. So closely did he lean in to inspect the grisly markings, angling his neck so that he alternately peered down at the ruined mattress and then up at the wall above the head of the bed, while stretching out his long frame and lightly describing arcs in the air with his thin fingers, that for a mortifying instant I believed he might lay at the centre of those bloody angel wings in an attempt to view the scene as if through the eyes of the murdered man. “If I may call on your expertise again, Watson; a cut throat would not produce a steady flow of blood?”
“Not necessarily,” I advised, glancing apologetically at Lord and Lady Sternfleet before responding to Holmes’s impatient gesture to elaborate. “If the carotid artery were severed, as I believe was the case here, then it would spray outwards... in gouts.”
“I should desist from occasionally chiding your mastery of words, Watson. ‘Gouts’! Exactly!” He sprung upwards, like an impatient jack-in-the-box. “Where are these gouts? We see the leakage of the life force, but where is the stain of that initial spray? Unless something obstructed its projection before it could spatter.”
“You imagine that the killer, who would necessarily be close to him to strike, was that obstruction? Good God, Holmes, they would be coated all over in his blood!”
“And a fleeing, blood drenched murderer would leave a trail in their wake. Yet there is no red footmark nor handprint, and not even the tiniest crimson droplet to be found anywhere else in this room, or in the halls beyond.”
“If you must continue with this barbarous talk, Holmes,” barked Lord Sternfleet, “can we not at least get out of this charnel room?”
Sherlock Holmes, as if deaf to these protests, laid a finger absently against the lip of the water jug on the cabinet, murmuring, “With nothing removed apart from the corpse and bedding, who emptied the water jug? Ah, but he had drank heavily, so would have been thirsty.” His distracted air dispersing with an abrupt clap of his hands, he continued, “Without the late occupant’s presence, there is little more to be learned here. Besides, I must carry out my next interview in less distressing surroundings.”
“If you would wish to interview me, Herr Holmes, it makes no difference if you do so here or anywhere else,” announced the man who stood stiffly in the d
oorway. Here was a rugged fellow, made all the more so for the darkening growth of stubble on a strong, determined chin, which stood at odds to his smart suit, across whose jacket breast I could picture a row of medals, and yet smarter bearing and intonation. “My wife, however, if you wish to speak with her, must to be given time to prepare herself, and cannot be pressed on these dark matters.”
“It has clearly been a strain, Graf von Schellsberg,” said I, noting the shadows around his eyes, “for both of you.”
“The Grafin is most upset, Herr Doctor,” he replied, a polite nod acknowledging my concern. “She it was who introduced me to Francois Lefalque some twenty years ago, while I was merely a student, and he seemed so worldly. I learned from him how to live life and celebrate the living of it.” A far-off look stole across his features, a shadow of a smile raising the tips of his moustaches. “Ha! Live? He could have been the death of us both. I remember now, to impress a woman he claimed to be wooing in secret, he stole some gaudy trinket from a hotel we had found ourselves supping in, then paraded his prize until the gendarmerie threw us both in a cell for the night to sober us up. Yet when he was told the next morning to expect a fine, he produced twenty times what the bauble would have cost. ‘I could have paid for it, of course, but this experience with you, friend Rupert, I could never have bought.’ Where he led the way, I followed, but when I was wed to my glorious Natascha and put such wildness behind me, it was he who quickly followed me, marrying Claudine but months later. We had become, you might say, respectable. If I may be glad of anything from these past days, it is to have a final memory of how he assisted me to my room, both of us staggering and laughing, as if we were become for an instant those youthful, drunken rogues once more.