Richard Dalby (ed)

by Crime for Christmas

  He came back almost immediately. ‘No, there was no conversation about the game while Churt was out of the room. Very well. Try the thing the other way round. Assume—as I think I can prove—that Gornay did tamper with the letters, the question is how could he tell that those two moves had been played?’

  He took up the chessboard again and looked at it so intently and so long that, at last, Norah grew impatient.

  ‘My dear boy, what can you be doing, poring all this time over the chess?’

  ‘I have a curious sort of chess problem to solve before the Sherlock Holmes man turns up from Scotland Yard. Follow this a moment. If there was any way by which Gornay could find out that the two important moves had been played, without being present at the time and without being told, then Churt’s argument goes for nothing, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Clearly; but what other way was there? Did he look in through the window?’

  ‘I think we shall find it was something much cleverer than that. I think I shall be able to show that he could infer that those two moves had been played, without any other help, from the position of the pieces as they stood at the end of the game; as they stand on the board now.’ He again bent down over the board. ‘White plays queen to queen’s knight’s sixth, not taking anything, and Black takes the queen with the rook’s pawn; those are the two moves.’

  For nearly another half-hour Norah waited in loyal silence, watching the alternations of his face as it brightened with the light of comprehension and clouded again with fresh perplexity.

  At last he shut up the board and put it down, looking profoundly puzzled.

  ‘Can it not be proved that the queen must have been taken at that particular square?’ Norah inquired.

  ‘No,’ he answered. ‘It might equally have been a rook. I can’t make the matter out. So many of the jigsaw bits fit in that I know I must be right, and yet there is just one little bit that I can’t find. By Jove!’ he added, suddenly starting up, ‘I wonder if Churt could supply it?’

  He was just going off to find out when a servant entered the room with a message that Lord Churt requested their presence in his study.

  The conclave assembled in the study consisted of the same persons who, in the drawing-room, had witnessed the discovery of the banknote, with the addition of Shapland, the detective from Scotland Yard. Lord Churt presided, sitting at the table, and Shapland sat by his side, with a face that might have seemed almost unintelligent in its lack of expression but for the roving eyes, that scrutinized in turn the other faces present.

  Norah and Kenneth took the two chairs that were left vacant, and, as soon as the door was shut, Kenneth asked Churt a question.

  ‘When you played your game of chess with Sir James Winslade this afternoon, did he give you the odds of the queen’s rook?’

  Everyone, except Norah and the sphinx-like detective, whose face gave no clue to his thoughts, looked surprised at the triviality of the question.

  ‘I should hardly have thought this was a fitting occasion to discuss such a frivolous matter as a game of chess,’ Aunt Blaxter remarked sourly.

  ‘I confess I don’t understand the relevance of your question,’ Churt answered. ‘As a matter of fact, he did give me those odds.’

  ‘Thank God!’ Kenneth exclaimed, with an earnestness that provoked a momentary sign of interest from Shapland.

  ‘I should like to hear what Mr Dale has to say about this matter,’ he remarked. ‘Lord Churt has put me in possession of the circumstances.’

  ‘I have an accusation to make against Lord Churt’s private secretary, Mr Gornay. Perhaps he had better be present to hear it.’

  ‘Quite unnecessary, quite unnecessary,’ Churt interposed. ‘We will not have any unpleasant scenes if we can help it.’

  ‘Very well,’ Kenneth continued. ‘I only thought it might be fairer. I accuse Gornay of stealing the thousand-pound banknote out of the envelope addressed to the Red Cross and putting it into a letter addressed to me. I accuse him of using colourless ink, of a kind that would become visible after a few hours, to cross out my address and substitute another, the address of a confederate, no doubt.’

  ‘You must be aware, Mr Dale,’ Shapland observed, ‘that you are making a very serious allegation in the presence of witnesses. I presume you have some evidence to support it?’

  Kenneth opened the chessboard. ‘Look at the stains on those chess pieces. They were not there when the game was finished. They were there, not so distinctly as now, about an hour ago. Precisely those pieces, and only those, are stained that Gornay touched in showing that Lord Churt might have won the game. If they are not stains of invisible ink, why should they grow more distinct? If they are invisible ink, how did it get there, unless from Gornay’s guilty fingers?’

  He took out of his pocket the envelope of Norah’s letter, and a glance at it brought a look of triumph to his face. He handed it to Shapland. ‘The ink is beginning to show there, too. It seems to act more slowly on the paper than on the polish of the chessmen.’

  ‘It is a difference of exposure to the air.’ Shapland corrected. ‘The envelope has been in your pocket If we leave it there on the table, we shall see presently whether your deduction is sound. Meanwhile, if Mr Gornay was the guilty person, how can you account for his presence in the library at the only time when a crime could have been committed?’

  ‘By denying it,’ Kenneth answered. ‘What proof have we that he was there at that particular time?’

  ‘How else could he know the moves that were played at that time?’ Shapland asked.

  Kenneth pointed again to the chessboard. ‘From the position of the pieces at the end of the game. Here it is. I can prove, from the position of those pieces alone, provided the game was played at the odds of queen’s rook, that White must, in the course of the game, have played his queen to queen’s knight’s sixth, not making a capture, and that Black must have taken it with the rook’s pawn. If I can draw those inferences from the position, so could Gornay. We know how quickly he can think out a combination from the way in which he showed that Lord Churt could have won the game, when it looked so hopeless that he resigned.’

  The detective, fortunately, had an elementary knowledge of chess sufficient to enable him to follow Kenneth’s demonstration.

  ‘I don’t suggest,’ Kenneth added, when the accuracy of the demonstration was admitted, ‘that he planned this alibi beforehand. It was a happy afterthought, that occurred to his quick mind when he saw that the position at the end of the game made it possible. What he relied on was the invisible ink trick, and that would have succeeded by itself, if I hadn’t happened to turn up unexpectedly in time to intercept my letter from Norah.’

  While Kenneth was giving this last bit of explanation, Shapland had taken up the envelope again. As he had foretold, exposure to the air had brought out the invisible writing so that, although still faint, it was already legible. Only the middle line of the address, the number and name of the street, had been struck out with a single stroke, and another number and name substituted. The detective handed it to Churt. ‘Do you recognize the second handwriting, my lord?’

  Churt put on his glasses and examined it. ‘I can’t say that I do,’ he answered, ‘but it is not that of Mr Gornay.’ He took another envelope out of his pocket-book, addressed to himself in his secretary’s hand, and pointed out the dissimilarity of the two writings. Norah cast an anxious look at Kenneth, and Aunt Blaxter one of her sourest at the girl. The detective showed no surprise.

  ‘None the less, my lord, I think it might forward our investigation if you would have Mr Gornay summoned to this room. I don’t think you need be afraid that there will be any scene,’ he added, and, for an instant, the faintest of smiles flitted across his lips.

  Churt rang the bell and told the servant to ask his secretary to come to him.

  ‘Mr Gornay left an hour ago, my lord. He was called away suddenly and doesn’t expect to see his grandmother alive.’

  ‘P
oor old soul! On Christmas Eve, too!’ Churt muttered, sympathetically, and this time Shapland allowed himself the indulgence of a rather broader smile.

  ‘I guessed as much,’ he observed, ‘when I recognized the handwriting in which the envelope had been redirected, or I should have taken the precaution of going to fetch the gentleman, whom you know as Mr Gornay, myself. He is a gentleman who is known to us at the Yard by more than one name, as well as by more than one handwriting, and now that we have so fortunately discovered his present whereabouts I can promise you that he will soon be laid by the heels. Perhaps Lord Churt will be kind enough to have my car ordered and to allow me to use his telephone.’

  ‘But you’ll stay to dinner?’ Churt asked. ‘It will be ready in a few minutes, and we shall none of us have time to dress.’

  ‘I am much obliged, my lord, but Mr Dale has done my work for me here in a way that any member of the Yard might be proud of, and now I must follow the tracks while they are fresh. It may not prove necessary to trouble you any farther about this matter, but I think you are likely to see an important development in the great Ashfield forgery case reported in the newspapers before very long.’

  ‘Well,’ Churt observed, ‘I think we may all congratulate ourselves on having got this matter cleared up without any unpleasant scenes. Now we shall be able to enjoy our Christmas. I call it a happy solution, a very happy solution.’

  His face beamed with relief and good humour as he once more produced his pocket-book. ‘Norah, my dear, you must accept an old man’s apology for causing you a very unpleasant afternoon; and you must accept this as well. No, I shall not take a refusal, and it will be much safer to send a cheque to the Red Cross.’

  [Thesolution of the endgame given in this story, and the proof that a white queen must have been taken by the pawn at Q Kt-3, is given at the end of this book.]

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLUE CARBUNCLE - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  Sherlock Holmes usually took a holiday from sleuthing over the Christmas period. The sole exception was The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle’, which first appeared in the Strand magazine in January 1892.

  I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season. He was lounging upon the sofa in a purple dressing-gown, a pipe-rack within his reach upon the right, and a pile of crumpled morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand. Beside the couch was a wooden chair, and on the angle of the back hung a very seedy and disreputable hard-felt hat, much the worse for wear, and cracked in several places. A lens and a forceps lying upon the seat of the chair suggested that the hat had been suspended in this manner for the purpose of examination.

  “You are engaged,” said I; “perhaps I interrupt you.”

  “Not at all. I am glad to have a friend with whom I can discuss my results. The matter is a perfectly trivial one”—he jerked his thumb in the direction of the old hat—”but there are points in connection with it which are not entirely devoid of interest and even of instruction.”

  I seated myself in his armchair and warmed my hands before his crackling fire, for a sharp frost had set in, and the windows were thick with the ice crystals. “I suppose,” I remarked, “that, homely as it looks, this thing has some deadly story linked on to it—that it is the clue which will guide you in the solution of some mystery and the punishment of some crime.”

  “No. no. No crime,” said Sherlock Holmes, laughing. “Only one of those whimsical little incidents which will happen when you have four million human beings all jostling each other within the space of a few square miles. Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to take place, and many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and bizarre without being criminal. We have already had experience of such.”

  “So much so,” I remarked, “that of the last six cases which I have added to my notes, three have been entirely free of any legal crime.”

  “Precisely. You allude to my attempt to recover the Irene Adler papers, to the singular case of Miss Mary Sutherland, and to the adventure of the man with the twisted lip. Well, I have no doubt that this small matter will fall into the same innocent category. You know Peterson, the commissionaire?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is to him that this trophy belongs.”

  “It is his hat.”

  “No, no; he found it. Its owner is unknown. I beg that you will look upon it not as a battered billycock but as an intellectual problem. And, first, as to how it came here. It arrived upon Christmas morning, in company with a good fat goose, which is, I have no doubt, roasting at this moment in front of Peterson’s fire. The facts are these: about four o’clock on Christmas morning, Peterson, who, as you know, is a very honest fellow, was returning from some small jollification and was making his way homeward down Tottenham Court Road. In front of him he saw, in the gaslight, a tallish man, walking with a slight stagger, and carrying a white goose slung over his shoulder. As he reached the corner of Goodge Street, a row broke out between this stranger and a little knot of roughs. One of the latter knocked off the man’s hat, on which he raised his stick to defend himself, and swinging it over his head, smashed the shop window behind him. Peterson had rushed forward to protect the stranger from his assailants; but the man, shocked at having broken the window, and seeing an official-looking person in uniform rushing towards him, dropped his goose, took to his heels, and vanished amid the labyrinth of small streets which lie at the back of Tottenham Court Road. The roughs had also fled at the appearance of Peterson, so that he was left in possession of the field of battle, and also of the spoils of victory in the shape of this battered hat and a most unimpeachable Christmas goose.”

  “Which surely he restored to their owner?”

  “My dear fellow, there lies the problem. It is true that ‘For Mrs. Henry Baker’ was printed upon a small card which was tied to the bird’s left leg, and it is also true that the initials ‘H. B.’ are legible upon the lining of this hat; but as there are some thousands of Bakers, and some hundreds of Henry Bakers in this city of ours, it is not easy to restore lost property to any of them.”

  “What, then, did Peterson do?”

  “He brought round both hat and goose to me on Christmas morning, knowing that even the smallest problems are of interest to me. The goose we retained until this morning, when there were signs that, in spite of the slight frost, it would be well that it should be eaten without unnecessary delay. Its finder has carried it off, therefore, to fulfil the ultimate destiny of a goose, while I continue to retain the hat of the unknown gentleman who lost his Christmas dinner.”

  “Did he not advertise?”

  “No.”

  “Then, what clue could you have as to his identity?”

  “Only as much as we can deduce.”

  “From his hat?”

  “Precisely.”

  “But you are joking. What can you gather from this old battered felt?”

  “Here is my lens. You know my methods. What can you gather yourself as to the individuality of the man who has worn this article?”

  I took the tattered object in my hands and turned it over rather ruefully. It was a very ordinary black hat of the usual round shape, hard and much the worse for wear. The lining had been of red silk, but was a good deal discoloured. There was no maker’s name; but. as Holmes had remarked, the initials “H. B.” were scrawled upon one side. It was pierced in the brim for a hat-securer, but the elastic was missing. For the rest, it was cracked, exceedingly dusty, and spotted in several places, although there seemed to have been some attempt to hide the discoloured patches by smearing them with ink.

  “I can see nothing,” said I, handing it back to my friend.

  “On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see. You are too timid in drawing your inferences.”

  “Then, pray te
ll me what it is that you can infer from this hat?”

  He picked it up and gazed at it in the peculiar introspective fashion which was characteristic of him. “It is perhaps less suggestive than it might have been,” he remarked, “and yet there are a few inferences which are very distinct, and a few others which represent at least a strong balance of probability. That the man was highly intellectual is of course obvious upon the face of it, and also that he was fairly well-to-do within the last three years, although he has now fallen upon evil days. He had foresight, but has less now than formerly, pointing to a moral retrogression, which, when taken with the decline of his fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably drink, at work upon him. This may account also for the obvious fact that his wife has ceased to love him.”

  “My dear Holmes!”

  “He has, however, retained some degree of self-respect,” he continued, disregarding my remonstrance. “He is a man who leads a sedentary life, goes out little, is out of training entirely, is middle-aged, has grizzled hair which he has had cut within the last few days, and which he anoints with lime-cream. These are the more patent facts which are to be deduced from his hat. Also, by the way, that it is extremely improbable that he has gas laid on in his house.”

  “You are certainly joking. Holmes.”

  “Not in the least. Is it possible that even now, when I give you these results, you are unable to see how they are attained?”