The Secret Documents of Sherlock Holmes

by June Thomson

  While the rest of us cried out in disbelief and astonishment, it was Mrs Woodruffe who made the only coherent comment.

  ‘So that’s where the dish went!’ she exclaimed. ‘I thought the maid had broken it and had thrown away the pieces although she denied it at the time.’

  ‘When was this?’ Holmes inquired eagerly.

  ‘About a year ago, sir. It was one of a set of six. I even stopped a shilling out of the girl’s wages to pay for it.’

  She was interrupted by Inspector Willard whose broad, good-natured features expressed a complexity of emotions from baffled astonishment to a lurking suspicion that Holmes’ revelation was nothing more than an elaborate hoax, the exact purpose of which escaped him.

  ‘Now, see here, Mr Holmes,’ said he in a tone of heavy reprobation, ‘when I spoke of evidence, I had something more in mind than a lump of butter, even though I admit it’s a strange object for a lady to carry about in her needlework bag.’

  ‘Quite,’ Holmes agreed drily. ‘However, you have so far seen only half of the evidence, Inspector. If, Mrs Woodruffe, you would be so good as to bring the other dish of butter from the pantry, I shall explain the relevance of both to this inquiry.’

  As the housekeeper left to carry out these instructions, Holmes lifted the dish from the box and held it out so that we could examine it more closely, an opportunity of which only the Inspector and I took advantage. Dr Thorogood, I noticed, looking pale and shaken, had taken himself off to the far side of the room where he sat down on an armchair, studiously avoiding the sofa where Mrs Abernetty was languishing, dry-eyed but still holding the handkerchief up to her lips. Placing his elbows on his knees, Dr Thorogood covered his eyes with one hand as if to shield them from some sudden and blinding light.

  ‘You will observe,’ Holmes was saying in that high, quick voice of his he always used when expounding some subject in which he was particularly interested, ‘that the butter contains some tiny, dark grains which could be mistaken for milled pepper. In this instance, however, I believe that, on analysis, they will prove to be crushed laburnum seeds which contain a quinolizidine alkaloid, a poison known as cytisine.’*

  ‘Laburnum!’ Inspector Willard interjected. ‘I know the tree – in fact, I have one growing in my own garden – but I’ve never heard it was poisonous. What put you on to it, Mr Holmes?’

  ‘The name of the house, Laburnum Lodge. As Dr Watson will confirm, the realisation came to me suddenly this morning, like a bolt from above, and I drove straight over here to make sure the name was not merely a fanciful invention. But there is indeed a laburnum tree growing near the entrance to the drive. As Dr Watson will also attest, I have made a trifling study of poisons.† If given in small doses, cytisine causes nausea and abdominal pains which can be confused with a gastric complaint such as indigestion, as Dr Thorogood had diagnosed in the past when Mr Abernetty suffered from similar indispositions.

  ‘However, I believe it was never Mrs Abernetty’s intention to give her father-in-law a lethal dose which might have aroused suspicion. Instead, she fed him small amounts of the toxin over a period of time in order to so undermine his health that the final dose would be fatal.’

  At this point in his exposition, there came a knock on the door and, at Holmes’ invitation to come, Mrs Woodruffe entered, ceremoniously carrying the other dish of butter on a silver salver.

  ‘“She brought forth butter on a lordly dish,”’ Holmes remarked to me in a murmured aside. Seeing my bewilderment, he added with a touch of asperity, ‘Jael and Sisera, Watson; the Old Testament, judges, Chapter 5.* Look it up, my dear fellow, look it up.’

  Breaking off, he thanked Mrs Woodruffe and, taking the salver from her, placed on it the first dish, the one taken from Mrs Abernetty’s bag, so that it was standing next to the one Mrs Woodruffe had just brought in from the pantry.

  ‘Observe,’ said he, pointing a long finger. ‘While at first glance the two pats of butter might seem similar, both being roughly the same shape and placed on identical dishes, there are some significant differences. Only the one recovered from Mrs Abernetty’s bag contains the dark grains I have already remarked on, and it has also softened to a greater degree than the other. There is one more piece of evidence which I took special note of as soon as I saw the second dish in the ice-box in Mrs Woodruffe’s pantry. It was this which led me to suspect murder. Dr Watson, Inspector Willard, would either of you care to comment on it?’

  The Inspector and I exchanged a baffled glance before we both shook our heads in unison.

  ‘Then allow me to do so,’ Holmes continued. ‘Note the sprigs of parsley, gentlemen! The one on the pat brought in from the pantry has sunk into the butter no more than a quarter of an inch. But shouldn’t it have sunk deeper? The temperature today must stand at over 80 degrees and, as the dining room faces south-east, it would have caught the full sun for the whole of the morning as well as part of the early afternoon. Had that butter remained on the table throughout luncheon, from twelve fifteen until two o’clock, the time when Mrs Woodruffe cleared it away, then in that hour and three-quarters I would have expected the butter to have become so soft that it would have begun to spread across the dish, causing the parsley to sink deeper into it.

  ‘Let us now inspect the second pat of butter, the one discovered in Mrs Abernetty’s bag which I have suggested contains crushed laburnum seeds. What do we observe about that?’

  ‘The butter has melted and the parsley has sunk so deep into it that it is almost lying on the dish itself,’ I replied.

  ‘Exactly so, Watson! The inference is therefore obvious. It must be this second pat of butter which stood on the dining room table throughout the meal.’

  Straightening up, Holmes turned his head to look in Mrs Abernetty’s direction, deliberately addressing his remarks at her.

  ‘From this evidence,’ he continued in an austere, clipped tone, ‘we may deduce what happened in this house earlier today. After the dining room table was laid and while Mrs Woodruffe was absent from the room, Mrs Abernetty substituted for the original dish of butter the one she had secreted in her bag, containing the crushed laburnum seed. After the meal was over and again in Mrs Woodruffe’s absence, Mrs Abernetty then exchanged the two dishes, returning to the table the original from which she removed a portion of one corner to make it appear that part of it had been eaten in the course of the meal. As it had been kept in the tin containing ice, it was, of course, still relatively firm.

  ‘Although Mrs Woodruffe remained in the dining room to serve the meal, she would not have noticed anything amiss as the dishes were identical and, at a cursory glance, so apparently was the butter.’

  At this point, he broke off to address the housekeeper.

  ‘I assume you noticed nothing?’

  ‘No, sir, I did not,’ she replied.

  ‘Was it Mr Abernetty’s habit to take butter with his meal?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Holmes. He liked to put it on his vegetables, especially new potatoes.’ In a faltering voice which was close to tears, she added, ‘Oh, sir, if only I had known!’

  ‘You are not to blame yourself, Mrs Woodruffe. It was such a trivial difference that it was easily overlooked,’ Holmes told her in a kindly voice. ‘There are only two more questions I need to ask you and then you may go. Was a dish of butter usually supplied with the meal?’

  ‘Yes, sir; always.’

  ‘And was Mrs Abernetty aware you had an ice-box in the pantry?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Holmes, she was.’

  ‘When was it bought?’

  ‘Last July, sir.’

  ‘Was this before or after Mr Abernetty’s first gastric attack?’

  ‘About a week before, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Woodruffe. You may go now,’ Holmes said gravely.

  He waited until the door had closed behind her before resuming his account.

  ‘I think,’ said he, ‘that what Mrs Woodruffe has just told us casts an even darker shadow over the events
for it suggests that Mrs Abernetty first began to think about murdering her father-in-law a year ago. It was the purchase of the ice-box which gave her the idea of how it might be accomplished without rousing suspicion. The murder itself was carried out in careful stages over the following months. The motive, of course, was greed. As her mother-in-law and her husband were both dead, she was Mr Abernetty’s sole remaining heir. Indeed, I believe …’

  Breaking off suddenly, he made a gesture of revulsion with one hand as if repudiating not only Mrs Abernetty but whatever black thoughts were troubling his mind.

  ‘Come, Watson,’ said he abruptly. ‘Let us find somewhere more congenial for I confess I am sickened by the company which at present I am forced to keep.’

  Although he did not mention her name or even look at her, all of us knew to whom he was referring, including the lady herself. I ventured a quick glance in her direction and saw her sitting upright on the sofa, her eyes still dry and those once mobile features as hard and as cold as marble, with such a dreadful fixity of expression that I was put in mind of a death mask.

  Striding to the door, Holmes flung it open, pausing to direct one last remark at Inspector Willard.

  ‘I shall call on you later at the police station,’ he announced. ‘In the meantime, I suggest you send the gardener’s boy with a message to your colleagues for whatever officers you will need to bring about the arrest.’

  IV

  We left the house by the front door, Holmes walking rapidly across the lawn towards a large copper beech tree where he threw himself down on the grass in its shade, covering his face with an upflung arm.

  For a few moments, I stood regarding him and then, recognising the all too familiar symptoms of depression and guessing he would prefer to be left alone, I walked quietly away.

  There was one particular aspect of the case which, out of curiosity, I wanted to see for myself and, taking advantage of Holmes’ absence, I strolled back towards the drive where my old friend had said he had observed a laburnum growing near the entrance.

  It was a slender tree with delicate, fern-shaped leaves amongst which were hanging a few clusters of small, yellow flowers, tarnished a little by the heat and the lateness of the season. Many of the blossoms had already dropped to be replaced with bunches of narrow, green seed cases, very similar in shape to pea-pods. Lying beneath the tree among the litter of last year’s leaves, I noticed many dried and empty pods and a scattering of small, round, black seeds which, as I picked one up and rubbed it between my fingers, felt as hard and as dry as a peppercorn.

  If Holmes was right and Mr Abernetty had indeed died from cytisine poisoning administered by his daughter-in-law, then she had not had to look far to find the means for murder.

  As I was pondering this aspect of the case, I heard the sound of running footsteps approaching along the gravel path at the side of the house and I hurriedly concealed myself behind a clump of rhododendrons. Seconds later, a young lad, presumably the gardener’s boy, came into view trotting quickly down the drive to disappear through the gateway and along the road.

  Within fifteen minutes, a four-wheeler cab, with the gardener’s boy perched precariously at its rear, turned into the drive and drew up outside the house. Two people alighted, one a uniformed officer, the other a middle-aged lady dressed in black, most probably a matron employed by the police to escort female prisoners. My curiosity now thoroughly aroused, I remained where I was and was able therefore to witness the subsequent events.

  The first person to emerge from the house was the bowed figure of Dr Thorogood, from his stance alone looking ten years older than the last time I had seen him. Getting into his brougham, he drove away, passing my hiding place at little more than a walking pace, as if both the horse and its driver were so utterly dejected that neither could summon up the energy to proceed any faster.

  Not long afterwards, Inspector Willard’s tall figure appeared on the porch, accompanied by the uniformed officer and the lady in black. Surrounded by this soberly dressed entourage, Mrs William Abernetty seemed as graceful and as resplendent as a bird of paradise among a flock of ravens, her blue dress and magnificent gold hair catching the sunlight as if the sun itself had conspired to enhance her beauty with its own radiance.

  Unlike Dr Thorogood, I could see nothing about her to suggest either guilt or shame. With head held high, she spurned the matron’s hand with a contemptuous gesture and climbed unaided into the cab where the others joined her. Seconds later, the four-wheeler came briskly down the drive, allowing me to catch a glimpse as it passed of her hard, stony profile, staring straight ahead.

  As soon as the cab had turned into the road, I emerged from the shrubbery and set off across the lawn to find Holmes who was by now sitting upright, his back against the trunk of the beech tree and his arms locked about his knees. His mood seemed lighter and he greeted me cheerfully enough although his face bore that gaunt, careworn look which told me that his nerves were still stretched close to breaking point.

  ‘They have all gone, Holmes, including Mrs Abernetty,’ I announced.

  ‘Yes, I heard the cab arrive and leave,’ said he. ‘Thank God that woman’s evil presence can no longer taint the atmosphere.’

  ‘Evil?’ I repeated, surprised at the choice of word which seemed a little excessive.

  ‘Evil. Wicked. Monstrous. Choose whichever epithet you wish, Watson. None of them is adequate, for I believe she is guilty not of one murder but of three.’

  Horrified, I fell silent and, seeing my expression, Holmes continued in a bitter, caustic tone.

  ‘Oh, yes, my dear fellow, that beautiful creature whom no doubt you, like all the other men with whom she was acquainted, Dr Thorogood, her father-in-law and probably also her husband, thought so charming is a cold and ruthless killer, as deadly and as loathsome as a poisonous serpent. I began to suspect the extent of her iniquity this morning when I made a few inquiries about her, which was why I was so late returning to Baker Street.

  ‘I spoke first to Mrs Sheldrake, the former housekeeper here who left so suddenly on the day of old Mrs Abernetty’s funeral. You remember Mrs Woodruffe referred to her?’

  ‘Yes, indeed, Holmes. How did you manage to trace her?’ I inquired.

  ‘Without too much difficulty although it took more than an hour. As she left without giving notice, I assumed Mrs Sheldrake had applied to one of the domestic agencies for another post. Fortunately, her name was unusual and, at the third such agency, I discovered her present address in Kensington where I interviewed her. One of her reasons for leaving the Abernetty household was her suspicions of Mrs William Abernetty and the part she had played in the old lady’s death. It seems she saw Mrs William Abernetty coming out of her mother-in-law’s bedroom early one morning. Later, when Dr Thorogood called to make a routine visit, old Mrs Abernetty was found dead in bed, of an apparent heart attack, as the doctor recorded on the death certificate.’

  ‘Surely there is nothing suspicious in that, Holmes?’ I protested. ‘Mrs Woodruffe told us Mrs Abernetty had helped to nurse her mother-in-law.’

  ‘Ah, yes, Watson! No doubt she did and carried out the task admirably, as Dr Thorogood evidently thought. There is, however, the towel to account for which, like the butter dish, was unaccountably missing.’

  ‘I do not see …’ I began but, ignoring me, Holmes bore on with his account as if, having steeled himself to begin it, he was compelled to continue in order to put into words those black thoughts which were still haunting him.

  ‘Mrs Sheldrake noticed its absence when she was collecting up the laundry after old Mrs Abernetty’s death. Although she could not explain why, she felt instinctively that young Mrs Abernetty had taken it and that it was in some way connected with her mistress’s death. I believe her suspicion was correct for I am convinced the towel was placed over the old lady’s face before the pillow was used to smother her. The towel would have absorbed any tell-tale signs such as blood or saliva which might have suggested she had b
een suffocated. Later, I suspect, Mrs William Abernetty took the towel home in that needlework bag of hers and destroyed it.

  ‘From Kensington I moved to Clapham where, after a few discreet inquiries, I managed to trace the late Mr William Abernetty’s physician to whom I put a few questions, posing as a member of the Abernetty family recently arrived from abroad and anxious to discover the exact circumstances of my cousin William’s death which I did not like to ask of old Mr Abernetty for fear of causing him distress. From Dr Martin I learned that Mr William Abernetty, who you will recall was partially crippled due to a childhood illness, had fallen down the stairs one Sunday morning and struck his head against the newel post. An inquest was held in which Dr Martin gave evidence and, in view of Mr William Abernetty’s physical condition, the coroner brought in a verdict of accidental death.

  ‘Three deaths, Watson, all of which led Mrs William Abernetty step by step nearer to inheriting the family fortune! If I could prove those deaths were murder and could lay them at Mrs Abernetty’s door, I would willingly retire from practice, satisfied with the knowledge that I had brought that she-devil to justice and cleansed society of her evil presence.’

  ‘Do you intend speaking of your suspicions to Inspector Willard?’

  ‘No, Watson, for they are nothing more than that – mere suspicions with not a scintilla of evidence to prove them. But at least there is enough data to establish her guilt for old Mr Abernetty’s murder and for that, I suppose, we should be grateful.’

  Rising to his feet, he added, ‘Come, Watson. We shall take our leave of Mrs Woodruffe and then call at the police station so that I may make my statement. After that, I suggest we return immediately to Baker Street for I am eager to shake the dust of this accursed place from my feet.’