She paused a moment.
“Not that it made much difference, in the end,” she said bitterly. “My lovely lad. He was beside himself with joy when the Pole Star Line took him on as a deckhand. He thought a job crewing with the nation’s most prestigious shipping company would be the making of him. There he was, barely nineteen, and off he went, sailing round the world aboard the Eagle of Enterprise, supposedly the flagship of the line.”
Into my mind flashed the phrase Ellen Efralstein had flung repeatedly at Sir Hubert: “Remember the eagle.”
“His letters home, gentlemen, were full of excitement,” Mrs. Leinster continued. “The sights he was seeing, the things he was discovering… He wrote about the turquoise waters of the tropics, so clear you could see through them to a depth of several fathoms, and about the natives of the South Sea Islands, the lascars he shared quarters with, how dolphins would sport in the Eagle’s bow wave. Every word thrilled with novelty and delight. It was a tough life but, notwithstanding, he was happy.”
“Until, regrettably, his ship met with disaster,” said Holmes. “October ’eighty-seven, was it not?”
“Two years ago, almost to the day. Typhoon season in the western Pacific was coming to an end. The Eagle was hauling cargo from the Philippines – tobacco, sugar, Manila hemp – and, as is usual for a Pole Star merchantman, there was far too much of it on board. She got into difficulties in a storm in the South China Sea. The winds were gale force, the waves towering. She was last seen by another ship, a Spanish frigate, making a run for harbour at Macau. The Spanish captain said that the Eagle was already riding too low in the water and he feared for her safety. She never did reach Macau.”
“I learned as much at Lloyd’s,” said Holmes. “Even a fully shipshape vessel might have struggled in those conditions, and the Eagle of Enterprise, as with her sister vessels in the line, was not only overloaded but in a state of some disrepair. According to the reports, she went down with all hands.”
“She would have sunk fast, that’s what I’ve been told,” Mrs. Leinster said. “It is the one saving grace. Everyone aboard would have drowned quickly.”
“My goodness,” I said. “You poor thing.”
“I did not even have a body to bury,” said she, choking back emotion. “The ocean is my Jim’s grave.”
“It is understandable that you would have resented Sir Hubert,” said Carstairs. “I am not going to defend him. I knew he was unprincipled; I simply never appreciated to what extent. When Mr. Holmes laid before me the facts of your tragedy, it brought home the consequences of my employer’s neglect. Perhaps I myself am to blame.” He scratched at his sore-encrusted wrists. “Had I known, I might have done something about it, although I can’t think what. Badgered him to mend his ways? But Sir Hubert was hardly a man to listen to reason.”
“Not from anyone living, that’s for certain,” said Mrs. Leinster. “I tried it myself. I confronted him one morning outside his house. I wanted him to know how I felt, to understand the agony his irresponsibility had caused. He brushed me aside as though I was not there. The sheer indifference of him! He did not even recognise my surname, the surname of one of the many men who went down with the Eagle. That was how little he cared about his employees, towards whom he surely had a duty of care. They were nothing to him. I and others lost their nearest and dearest, and Sir Hubert received not a prison sentence, nor even a fine, but rather a handsome insurance payout. Where is the justice in that?”
“Speaking of justice,” I said, “I am surprised nobody sued him over the sinking of the Eagle.”
Mrs. Leinster shook her head. “I considered it, but I am a woman of modest income, living on a navy widow’s meagre pension. Besides, who would dare take on someone as rich and powerful as Sir Hubert Cole in court? One may as well sue a mountain, for all the good it would do one. No, Doctor, I knew that if I wished to gain redress from him in some way, I would have to be clever about it. For a time I racked my brains as to what to do.”
“Then you hit upon the idea of pretending to be a medium,” said Holmes. “You had learned that Sir Hubert was a spiritualist, and so a plan began to form.”
“Just so, Mr. Holmes. What is the line from Hamlet? ‘The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.’ I would turn Sir Hubert’s beliefs against him. I would undermine him using that which he held most dear. I could not destroy him from the outside in, but maybe I could from the inside out.”
“You were more successful in that ambition than perhaps you might have hoped.”
“As I said, it was not my intention he should die. I would much rather he had lived, to be plagued constantly by doubt and remorse. I wanted him to suffer just a little of the pain I was suffering. How was I to know that, after my séance, he would perish that very night?”
“Yet the one thing surely led to the other,” said Holmes. “So tormented was Sir Hubert by the wrathful entreaty to ‘remember the Eagle’, his heart gave out under the strain.”
“For so heartless a man, there is a certain poetry in that,” Mrs. Leinster said. “Tell me, Mr. Holmes, how did you divine the truth about me? What gave me away?”
“That necklace of yours, madam, was my first clue. I observed that the initials engraved upon it had been altered. Crossbars had been added in order to create the ‘E.E.’, and I could tell the original inscription had in fact been ‘F.L.’ Now, of course, you could have bought the necklace secondhand and had it altered. Equally, it occurred to me that you might have changed ‘F.L.’ to ‘E.E.’ as part of a process of transformation from one identity to another. Given that you were wearing a veil and wig, the latter option seemed the likelier.”
“I see. Was that all?”
“The photographs in your hall. Those were my next clue. Who else would keep such a series of images on display but the mother of the subject? There was a certain familial resemblance there, too. The lad in the pictures had your chin. And, most pertinently of all, the photograph that was last in chronological order depicted a young man dressed in the uniform of a merchant mariner – tunic, cap, lanyard. Thus I began to descry a possible link between you and Sir Hubert. The link was strengthened considerably when I interviewed Sir Hubert’s valet and learned how Sir Hubert had been verbally assailed by a Mrs. Fenella Leinster. A woman with the initials ‘F.L.’, whose name was a combination of the same letters as Ellen Efralstein.”
“Oh, you noticed that, Mr. Holmes, did you?”
“We are both good at what we do, Mrs. Leinster.” Holmes smiled wryly. “All these things led me to the doors of Lloyd’s, where a helpful clerk showed me the register of lost Pole Star ships. It did not take me long to find an Eagle amongst them, nor to discover the name Leinster listed in the roll call of the dead. From there on, the case was more or less solved. It was simply a matter of choosing how best to bring it to a close. I hit upon the notion of using a medium and holding a special séance. I embarked upon the task of teaching myself the art of mediumship, and within a couple of days had the measure of it.”
I thought of Mrs. Hudson and her complaints about Holmes’s recent noisy behaviour at Baker Street. It was clear, now, what he had been up to in his rooms.
“A couple of days?” said Mrs. Leinster. “It took me months! I went to countless séances so as to fathom the techniques used. Then, only when I was confident I could replicate them, I set myself up as a medium and began painstakingly building a reputation in that field.”
“Time I did not have. That is why I came up with the character of Swami Dhokha, mystic from the subcontinent. Unlike you, a medium from India would not need to build a reputation locally. He would need only the imprimatur of Alec Carstairs, private secretary to Sir Hubert Cole. That would be his entrée into the spiritualist demi-monde. And as he hails from another country rather than from within the rather close-knit circles in which you London mediums move, none of you would find it suspicious that you had not heard of him. Yet I felt I could not in all conscience
masquerade as an Indian. Thus I recruited Mr. Bakshi, whom I have met several times at the Old Bailey through his involvement in trials based upon cases that I have investigated. Mr. Bakshi has impressed me not only with his lawyerly rhetoric but with his propensity for the dramatic flourish. He, I knew, would make an excellent Swami Dhokha. I passed on to him all that I had worked out about being a medium, and he picked it up with ease. Between him and Mr. Carstairs, some eerie effects were successfully generated. You had fun, did you not, gentlemen?”
Ishaan Bakshi nodded smilingly.
“We did,” Carstairs said. “At times I found it a struggle not to laugh as I cavorted around the room with my bits of painted card.”
“The two of you did a good job,” Mrs. Leinster allowed. “You have quite the knack for it.”
“As do you, madam,” said Holmes. “Watson was almost wholly taken in by you at the séance he and I attended. Weren’t you, Watson?”
I nodded, a touch shamefacedly.
“I would even say,” Holmes went on, returning his gaze to Mrs. Leinster, “that your ability to infer data about someone just from close observation of their person nearly rivals my own.”
His tone carried a note of condescension, but Mrs. Leinster chose to be flattered.
“You are too kind, sir,” said she.
“It strikes me as curious, however, that you continued to practise mediumship after Sir Hubert’s death. I would have thought that, having achieved your sole purpose in becoming a medium, you would immediately have retired and gone back to being Fenella Leinster once more. Yet instead, Watson and I were able to engage Ellen Efralstein’s services.”
“Would it not have been too obvious a sign of culpability if I had abandoned the role so suddenly? It was better that I kept at it, so that no suspicion might attach to me. Besides, the extra money my séances have brought in has not gone amiss. I must ask, though, Mr. Holmes, what do you intend to do about me now? Am I to be arrested?”
“When all is said and done, what killed Sir Hubert Cole was Sir Hubert Cole. His guilt, tiny creature though it was, had been destroying him by degrees for a while, like woodworm in a ship’s timbers. All you did was help it finish the job. However, even if I may not wholly disapprove of your goal, I can hardly support the method by which you went about achieving it, nor the fact that Sir Hubert was not the only person whom you defrauded. I would beg you, madam, to abandon the role of medium from here on and find yourself some other form of gainful employment.”
“To that end, Mrs. Leinster,” Carstairs interjected before the lady could reply, “I would like to offer you a consideration, if I may. Compensation for the loss of your son. Once I have come into my inheritance, I shall set up a trust fund for you that will allow you to live out the rest of your days in comfort.”
“Oh, heavens,” Mrs. Leinster said, overcome with emotion. “I cannot… Sir, it is too much.”
Turning to Holmes, Carstairs said, “I can, of course, rely on you to keep your end of our bargain, sir, can I not?”
My friend nodded. “I will, as promised, sign an affidavit declaring you to have had no direct connection with Sir Hubert’s death. There will always be those ready to condemn you, come what may – Deakins, for instance – and such a document can do nothing about that. If required, however, I will take the witness stand in a court of law to bear testimony to your good character and demonstrate you innocent in all respects. You will not find a stauncher advocate than me.”
“I thank you.”
“Payment of my fee in full will be gratitude enough.”
“I can well afford it,” Carstairs said with a self-deprecating laugh. “I can also well afford to help others whom the Pole Star Line has wronged, in addition to Mrs. Leinster here. Reparations will be made out of my own pocket to anyone to whom Sir Hubert’s negligence has brought misery. Furthermore, I shall see to it that the buyer I choose for the line will be honourable and will undertake to render the ships properly seaworthy before any of them sail again. This I swear.”
As he made the vow, Alec Carstairs seemed, in that moment, to stand a little taller and straighter than before. I realised that in front of me was a young man who had come into his own and knew at last what life demanded of him. I envisaged that from this day forth, he would no longer be troubled by eczema or any other nervous complaint, and that he would use his newfound wealth wisely. His encounter with Sherlock Holmes had been the making of him, as it had been and would be for many another of Holmes’s clients.
* * *
Later, Holmes and I left the basement flat. Both Carstairs and Ishaan Bakshi had gone before us. Holmes had insisted upon handing the latter ten pounds, even though Bakshi insisted he would have done the work pro bono.
“It was as satisfying as any prosecution I have brought,” he said. “Nothing pleases me more, Mr. Holmes, than seeing criminals getting their just desserts – especially criminals whom the law cannot touch.”
Holmes looked thinner now. He had removed the padding which had bulked out his figure to obese proportions and he had changed into his normal clothes.
The fog looked thinner, too. I dared to hope that its dismal reign was over and it was finally lifting.
“Do you reckon,” I said to my companion as we strolled towards Baker Street, “that those three mediums – Potts, Ventnor Brown, and Lapham – will learn from the lesson you taught them?”
Holmes gave an ironical chuckle. “I would like to think so, Watson,” he said, “but I doubt it. Their sort are incorrigible. Once a cheat, always a cheat. Unlike Mrs. Leinster, they will be back to their bilking ways tomorrow, I am quite certain. There will be no recanting, no repudiation of spiritualism. Far from it. They enjoy the money too much, not to mention the cold, calculating satisfaction which comes from fleecing human sheep. All I can hope is that, as with Sir Hubert, in the depths of their wretched souls they feel guilty. If I have instilled even a modicum of self-reproach in them, then I have done a good deed this evening.”
By dawn the next morning, the fog was gone altogether, leaving not a wisp behind. The sun shone and, it being a Sunday, I took the opportunity to go to All Saints’ Cemetery in Nunhead to visit my brother’s grave. There, in that sprawling necropolis, I bent my head in silent contemplation of a life not well lived. I prayed that, wherever Harry was now, he had found contentment.
The soughing of a breeze through the autumn branches sounded, just for a moment, like the whisper of a voice. A voice which said, “Yes.”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE HEROIC TOBACCONIST
DERRICK BELANGER
I remember October of 1890 well. The weather had been dry and blustery that month and the temperature unusually chilly. When visiting my good friend Sherlock Holmes, we spent much time indoors by the fire discussing the news of the day.
I had been spending more time with Holmes, as my wife Mary was away on a brief sojourn, visiting an old school friend in Liverpool. One leisurely Tuesday afternoon, our conversation turned to the results of the St. Leger Stakes, which had been won by the Duke of Portland’s horse, Memoir. Holmes and I were having a lively fireside debate about the best way to know if a horse will be a great racer. I argued that lineage is the key. Great racehorses father great racehorses.
“That is the general rule, Watson. So it has been believed for generations and will most likely continue to be believed for generations to come,” Holmes said, while packing his pipe with Turkish tobacco.
I was enjoying an excellent Cuban cigar myself. “If that is the rule, then there is a reason for it,” I explained between puffs of smoke. “This rule has been an accurate predictor.”
“My dear Watson,” Holmes chuckled as smoke billowed from his nostrils. “Just because people do something for many years does not make it right. Why, think of your own field. For many centuries, doctors looked to the stars to help diagnose their patients. Do you feel astrology is an accurate predictor of people’s health simply because it was used for centuries?”
“Well, no, surely not,” I concurred. “But this is different, Holmes. It is about lineage.”
“Ah, but is it so different, Watson? There are those who are making the same claims about humans, that ancestry predetermines our potential, that athletes sire athletes, even that criminal minds sire criminal minds.”
“I believe there is something to that. Look at some of the wicked minds you’ve faced. Take, for example, the residents of Baskerville Hall. From Sir Hugo to Stapleton, never has there been such a strong case for bad seeds sprouting, their evil harvest returning with each turn of the season.”
Holmes studied me quietly for a moment, his flushed cheeks emphasising his aquiline features. They recalled a bird determining if an animal before it is friend, foe, or prey.
“Your reasoning does a great disservice to Sir Henry,” he noted quietly. “Do you not recall that we had to save a Baskerville from a Baskerville? Sir Henry was an absolute gentleman and in no way like his cousin. People are not born evil, Watson. Wickedness develops over time, whether through the agent’s own actions or the actions of others upon said agent. Our life paths are not predetermined.”
Holmes had once again proven the folly of my reasoning. I apologised and admitted so. However, I would not concede my point on the breeding of racehorses and still argued for lineage as key in determining a fine racer.
“And I say that lineage is but a small determiner of a horse’s potential,” Holmes responded dryly. “There are other, more scientific explanations. If the horse has a bad temperament, for example, no matter how perfect its parentage, the horse will not race well. It will buck any rider who dares mount it. If a horse has particularly long legs, one would assume it to be a great runner, but if the rest of its body is not proportioned so as to support those legs, then the horse is much more likely to break a leg early in its career.”
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