“In what way?” Billy wanted to know.
“I asked him if he knew of the battle at Rooiwal. He had heard of it, he said; but, of course, he was just collecting numbers about those events. He couldn’t recall the names from any records in particular, and he certainly couldn’t account for a specific soldier’s name not appearing on some list.”
“Pity,” I said.
“Yes,” Holmes agreed, “but he did have a suggestion. He gave me the name of a surgeon in Harley Street, James Cuthbert, who, he told me, had actually served in South Africa and performed many a battle-related surgery.”
“Cuthbert,” I repeated. “I do believe I know the chap, Holmes. Tall, thin man with a narrow moustache. Friends with Dr. Doyle. They met in South Africa.”
“Right you are, Watson.”
“A bit on the sombre side, as I recall.”
“Right again. But then who wouldn’t be sombre after ministering to the horrific casualties that everyone fighting in South Africa would like to have forgotten? Or so I discovered after I’d left the War Office and gone to his surgery. He was good enough to make time in his schedule to hear me out.”
“And what did you learn from him?”Billy asked.
If Mrs. Sterne had any interest in this medical tangent, she gave no indication. She continued to sit motionlessly, hands clasped tightly together, fingers entwined.
Holmes smiled. “It was clear that Dr. Cuthbert didn’t know or recall the names of the men he had operated on all those years ago - at least, not at first. But once I described the white hair and the wounds to Terrence’s face, the doctor began to remember.”
“‘Poor chap,’ he observed through pressed lips that made him look all the more grim. ‘Not often one gets half one’s face blown away and lives. And all that white hair. Not common with young soldiers.’ He stroked his moustache for a good minute or so, asking himself, ‘What was his name?’ He thought it might have started with an M; and with ever-gaining confidence, he tried out, ‘Morrison? Marsten? Martin?’ At this last attempt, his eyes lit up. ‘Martin,’ he announced. ‘Yes, Martin. Paul Martin.’”
“No,” Mrs. Sterne whispered. As silent as she had been during Holmes’ account, we had paid her little mind. But now we could all see that, statue-like though she sat, tears were coursing down her cheeks.
Wincing in pain as he rose, Billy offered her his handkerchief. Catching her breath, she took the linen and daubed at her eyes. All of us turned to her questioningly. Who was this Paul Martin, and what was he to her?
“I loved him, you see?” she said in a voice we could hardly hear. “Before he was sent to the war. Terrence Leonard was Paul Martin then. We met in London, and he was the most beautiful lover I could ever hope to imagine. Handsome. Kind. Caring. For weeks, we spent every moment together. In a flat in Chelsea. Just before it was time for him to join his regiment, we married. And then he had to go. We pledged our love to each other, and I promised I would count the days until his safe return.”
Married? To Paul Martin? Didn’t that make Raphael Sterne her second husband and Elaine Sterne a bigamist?
Such complications didn’t seem to matter to Billy. Still wincing, he sat at the edge of his seat, listening to her every word. I knew he was picturing himself in Terrence Leonard’s shoes - if truth be told, in Terrence Leonard’s bed with Terrence Leonard’s wife - at least for those few weeks the young lovers had been together. Even I found myself envisioning how difficult it must have been to leave so gorgeous a creature as Elaine Sterne.
“But then,” she continued, “I didn’t hear from him, you see. I wrote many letters, but received no response. Months passed. Then a year. He was at war; I got no word. I presumed he was dead - wouldn’t you?”
None of us dared to answer.
“Then I met Rafe, so charming and successful.”
Billy’s back stiffened at the mention of the writer.
“As far I knew,” she continued, “Paul was gone. Why shouldn’t I picture a beautiful new future with a distinguished man of letters? Who wouldn’t have made such a choice? I believed my first husband to be dead, and so I married Rafe.”
Mrs. Sterne paused to fold the linen she was holding.
“But then one evening,” she said slowly, as if recalling a memory she must have examined over and over again, “Rafe and I were dining at the Savoy, and I saw Paul. My true husband. I was devastated.”
She touched the handkerchief to her eyes again.“You all saw what he looked like when he returned. How horribly disfigured he was. The terrible scars. The snow-white hair. He was a different man. Yet I recognized his smile - crooked now, but warm nonetheless. He even had a different name. It was obvious that he didn’t want me to see him this way. Obvious because he too had married again. But you all know this - that his wife was Sylvia Leonard, Lord Steynwood’s daughter. She’d been a nurse during the war - that was how they’d met - she was used to that sort of thing, I suppose - the scars, the wounds, the blood. I was not.”
Mrs. Sterne finished speaking and looked down at the handkerchief she was clutching. The silence that accompanied the end of her sad story allowed us to ponder the whirlwinds of emotion that were obviously raging within her breast.
It was Holmes who returned us to the world of practicality. “When did you have the doubloon made?” he asked.
“Just after Paul had gone to South Africa. I took a copy of one of his regimental badges to a jeweller who engraved the design on the coin. Except in place of the regiment’s motto in the banner, I had him engrave our names. Once I’d met Rafe, I had them removed, of course. But I could never part with the coin itself.”
“Why?” Billy persisted. “You’d given up on Terrence - or Paul. Why did you continue to wear the necklace?”
For the first time Mrs. Sterne managed a small smile. “A memory perhaps. A tribute to the evanescence of love.”
As I looked into the glistening eyes of Elaine Sterne, I thought again of Tennyson’s Elaine. This time I remembered how she had “lifted up her eyes and loved... with that love which was her doom.”
Holmes was not so sentimental. “Maybe you wear the necklace to torture yourself for giving up on a man you thought you would be faithful to forever.” He spoke in a most calculating tone. “Not to mention your foray into bigamy.”
“Really, Holmes,” I said, “you go too far. The woman has been through a terrible ordeal.”
“No, old fellow” he replied, “we still have much farther to descend to get to the bottom of all this.”
“All what?” Billy demanded of Holmes. “You’ve already pulled out from this poor woman the story of her two tragic marriages. We know Terrence killed Sylvia, and we know that Rafe killed himself. What more is there left to get to the bottom of?”
“I would like a sherry,” Mrs. Sterne announced, a bizarre sort of answer to Billy’s question.
“We might all do with one,” I suggested, “if it is not too great an imposition.”
Mrs. Sterne rang for Mrs. Jenkins. A few moments later we were sitting with small cut-crystal glasses, each filled with the smoked-amber of Harvey’s Bristol Cream.
“To lost love,” Billy said, slowly raising his glass to Mrs. Sterne.
Ever the Lancelot, I thought as we three drank.
She bowed her head in reply. Then she too took a sip, and then another.
“And now, Mrs. Sterne,” Sherlock Holmes said in his most serious tone, “pray tell us what really happened to Terrence Leonard’s second wife.”
Billy’s eyes widened at the question; Mrs. Sterne, returning her glass to the table, seemed prepared to fulfil Holmes’ request.
“I don’t know where Rafe met that whore,” she said angrily. “And I don’t care. I don’t know where he found so many of the tarts he took up with. He spent lots of time with Sylvia, but wh
en I discovered that she - not to mention Paul - was our neighbour in Marlow, I for one refused to be fooled. I told Rafe to leave her alone - I pleaded with him. At first, he just laughed. But I wouldn’t give up, and he finally seemed to come round. He said he would break it off with her; and to be certain he did, I followed him to her London house the next night all the way from Marlow. I stood by an open French window outside the drawing room, and I heard Rafe tell her he was done with her. But she said she’d never let him go. He pleaded with her, but she just laughed. And so Rafe picked up a small statue and beat her head in with it.”
Mrs. Sterne covered her eyes with her hands, as if she could blot out the horrible scene she had witnessed.
“No wonder Sterne had been drinking so much,” Billy said. “After what he’d done. No wonder he sought out a place like Dr. Vering’s.”
“Small wonder,” I observed, “that he ultimately took his own life.”
“And yet,” Billy charged Mrs. Sterne, “you allowed Terrence to take the blame for your husband’s crime. The man you once loved, or said you did. He confessed falsely. My God, he killed himself. All because he loved you.”
Billy forced himself to lean back in his chair. He seemed to be putting distance between himself and the lady.
For her part, Mrs. Sterne began sobbing quietly. It was as if she had recognized the desertion of her most gallant supporter.
Sherlock Holmes put his fingers together in that familiar steeple; if we hadn’t been listening to so melancholy a tale, I might almost have thought he looked amused.
“What next, Mrs. Sterne?” he prodded. “Do tell.”
“I had to protect my husband. I got Rafe to change his bloody clothes and boots - he had some clothing left in that woman’s London house. I found a Gladstone bag in a closet, and I stuffed Rafe’s things into it along with the statue he’d used to hit her with. We took a cab to Paddington and made our way back here to Marlow. Once we got off the train, I put him into a hansom and sent him home. Then, so he wouldn’t be linked to his crime, I carried the Gladstone from the railway stop to the Thames and threw it off the bridge into the river. I stood there for a few minutes watching the evidence that could incriminate my husband sink slowly into the water.”
“My God,” Billy whispered again.
“A Gladstone full of clothes, heavy shoes and a bronze statue,” Holmes observed dubiously. “It must have weighed a lot. How did you manage to carry it on your own all the way down to the river?”
“A crisis makes a woman strong, Mr. Holmes,” she said.
“Strong enough to throw it over that high wooden fencing on the end of the bridge nearest to the railway station?” Holmes asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Even so.”
“But, Mrs. Sterne,” Holmes announced with great deliberation, “here in Marlow, there is no high wooden railing near the station.” He paused to let the implication resonate.
Her unmarked brow began to furrow.
“You never threw them anywhere, did you?” Holmes charged.
Mrs. Sterne sucked in her breath and then exploded into tears.
Not even Billy came to her rescue this time.
“And so, Mrs. Sterne,” Holmes said, “we have come to the crux of the problem: who was it who really killed Sylvia Leonard?”
Billy and I sat speechless, spellbound by the drama unfolding before us.
“It was you who murdered Sylvia Leonard,” Holmes persisted, “was it not?”
At first, she said nothing. She merely sat there, taking it all in. Then she slowly nodded. “That whore told Rafe she’d never let him go,” Mrs. Sterne said, her voice a near whisper. “So I shot her.”
Holmes reached into his coat pocket and produced a small paper envelope, the same envelope he had used to collect clues at the scene of Sylvia Leonard’s murder. He displayed for all of us to see the pale strand of hair he’d extricated from the light-blue carpet near the bloodstains. I should have remembered the old rule: one sees what one expects to see. I had originally thought the strand to be white, evidence from the head of Terrence Leonard; I could see now that it was not white, but blond.
Pinching the single golden hair between his right thumb and index finger, he held up the strand next to Mrs. Sterne’s shining locks. “Behold the incriminating evidence,” Holmes announced.
“But the beating?” Billy asked. “Certainly, Elaine - Mrs. Sterne - couldn’t have accomplished that.”
“No,” said Holmes, “she did not. Strange as it may seem, with all of his antics, Raphael Sterne still did love his wife. So much so that when he watched her shoot his mistress - after Mrs. Sterne had followed him and confronted the woman - it was he who beat in Sylvia Leonard’s head. He was attempting to cover up the wound caused by the bullet from the Webley that might have led the police to his wife - the same bullet that had passed through Sylvia’s head and lodged in the wall, the same bullet that produced the bullet hole which Scotland Yard has yet to discover.”
Billy now sat upright in his chair, narrowing his eyes and nervously flexing his right foot. It was clear that he was absorbing all that he’d heard, trying to make some sense of it, trying to comprehend these depraved facets of human behaviour that he was obviously encountering for the first time in reality.
“So,” Billy said to Elaine Sterne, “Rafe, your second husband, killed himself to assure that the murder which you had committed would be blamed on him - just as Terrence had done before.” The deliberateness in his voice suggested the deliberations in his brain; he might have been trying out some devious plot line in some macabre work of fiction.
“Oh, Ray,” she said, never calling him Billy as Holmes and I always did. “I killed Rafe too. I slipped into the house that day while you were in the garden, and I shot him when I knew the Marlow Donkey would sound its whistle and cover the sound. I only pretended not to have a key when you let me in.”
Billy’s mouth dropped open. He too had been a victim. Raising his eyebrows, he looked as if he was going to ask a question. But he never did.
“Once Rafe stopped drinking,” she continued, “the more rational he was becoming, and the more he started talking to me about what I had done to Sylvia. I couldn’t take the chance that one day he might tell the truth. That’s why I kept his soiled clothes. So I could use them to implicate him if I ever needed to. I couldn’t give him that much power over me. I had to remain in control. That’s why I originally came to you, Mr. Holmes - to get you to find Rafe. When I went to Scotland Yard to report Rafe’s disappearance, I overheard Inspector Youghal say that Sherlock Holmes was investigating Sylvia Leonard’s death. That’s the real reason I chose you to find my missing husband.”
And so the story was complete, Holmes’ reputation as a master crime-solver the ironic hook that had brought Elaine Sterne to my premises in the first place.
Like an ice princess, Mrs. Sterne now rose; as a consequence, so did we all.
“And now,” she said, hands clasped in front of her, “I must ask you gentlemen to be so kind as to leave. I am quite exhausted. I shall expect the police in the morning.” With that, she mustered whatever pride she had left and withdrew from the room, leaving us to find our own way out.
* * *
It was late afternoon when the three of us approached the tiny railway station in Marlow. The rain had stopped, and long shadows wrestled with reflections of fading sunlight on the wet ground. From a telegraph office in West Street, we had already notified Scotland Yard of Mrs. Sterne’s confession. But once informed, Youghal apparently doubted our claims; though he did order a local constable to remain standing in front of the cottage, Youghal himself had no plans to come all the way out to Marlow to see Mrs. Sterne until the following day. His recalcitrance surprised none of us.
We were but a few paces from the station when suddenly, highlighted by final ve
stiges of the setting sun, the low white suspension bridge that crossed the Thames came into view.
“Holmes,” I asked, pointing in its direction, “you’ve never been down there by the water. How did you know there was no high wooden railing where Mrs. Sterne said she’d thrown the bag?”
“I hadn’t the foggiest clue, old fellow,” he said. “But the more important fact is that neither did she.”
XI
If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer.
- Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
The weather turned even colder the next day; but when Inspector Youghal arrived at Queen Anne Street just after lunch, his furrowed brow signalled more than just the bad weather. We met him in the sitting room, and he offered a grim nod. I indicated a chair, but he refused, and we all remained standing.
“I owe you an apology, Mr. Holmes,” he began. “I should have got out to Marlow immediately.”
Holmes and I exchanged concerned glances as Youghal reached inside his coat pocket and produced a photographic copy of a handwritten note.
“Gentlemen,” the inspector announced in his most official tone, “you should know that Mrs. Elaine Sterne committed suicide last night. I thought you should be informed. She took arsenic - her husband had it in the house, something related to his book-writing and the study of poisons. The housekeeper, Mrs. Jenkins, found her dead this morning in bed with this note lying beside her. The original, as you can see, was written on fine stationery.”
The Final Page of Baker Street Page 16