Murder, My Dear Watson

  From the downs above the Old Hall the sound of a single shot rang out, echoing in the clear summer air.

  “It has already happened,” said Grisel Rountree, turning to go. “It’s best if I see to the laying out myself.”

  “Now there’s a thing,” said Sherlock Holmes.

  THE ADVENTURE

  OF THE MOONING SENTRY

  Jon L. Breen

  DESPITE THE IMPLIED finality of “His Last Bow,” and the elegiac note that concluded that tale, few of my readers have been willing to believe that Sherlock Holmes, with his mental powers and patriotic enthusiasm at their peak, would retreat into permanent retirement at his country’s darkest hour. When that east wind blew across England, he did not wither before its blast. Indeed, he undertook several more investigations in his country’s service before the world war had finished energizing, glorifying, decimating, and mutilating a generation of young men.

  Early in the autumn of 1917,1 received a surprising invitation to a weekend house party at the country holding of Sir Eldridge Masters, a wealthy baronet best known as an amateur historian—or, less politely, a dilettante. The gathering was to be in honor of a visiting American cinematograph director, and would include a special showing of one of the fellow’s films. It all sounded very jolly, to be sure. However, not feeling particularly festive in those dark days, and finding weekend house parties a somewhat frivolous activity with the country at war, I was about to decline. But a second message in the next day’s post changed my mind: “My dear Watson, / Do please join me in accepting Sir Eldridge’s hospitality. Come alone, bring your sidearm, and withhold recognition of an old friend. Your country needs you, and so do I. / Holmes.” Loyalty to friend and to king made a negative response unthinkable.

  Everything about the Masters estate, from the long winding carriageway lined with lime trees to the venerable oaks framing the great ivy-covered house itself, bespoke wealth and tradition. When I arrived by pony cart from the station that evening in early October, the other guests had already assembled. From my room, I was shown to what the butler characterized as the “small ballroom,” a chamber quite large enough for most purposes in which a score of men in white ties and women in stunning gowns posed in the light of a crystal chandelier with a grand staircase behind them. Spirits flowed freely, with only the lack of young male servants to suggest the country was at war. I was immediately greeted and taken aside by my host, an erect man of around sixty with an impressive grey moustache and a hesitant manner of speech that contrasted with his military bearing.

  “Dr. Watson, isn’t it? So good of you to come, so, ah, very good of you.” With a hand on my sleeve, he lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Now, ah, when we come upon our mutual friend, you know, ah, that is, you have been apprised . . .”

  “Certainly, Sir Eldridge. I understand fully.” In truth, I understood nothing, except that our host was aware of Holmes’s mission, whatever it was, and that I was to take the cue for my behavior from Holmes.

  A young woman of about thirty approached us from across the ballroom. She was ethereally lovely, but the grandness of her gown only served to accentuate her frailty and fragility. She had the air of someone doggedly performing an unavoidable duty. A spinster daughter of the house, I concluded, but my surmise proved incorrect.

  “My dear,” Sir Eldridge said, “may I present Dr. Watson. Doctor, my wife, Lady Miranda Masters.”

  “Welcome, Dr. Watson,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. Sir Eldridge watched her with a keen eye and obvious concern as we exchanged the traditional comments of hostess and guest. Her words were perfect, but her manner nervous and distracted. Even as we spoke her eyes, looking troubled, even haunted, darted about as if searching corners of the room for someone or something. Looking at her lovely face, I was certain I had seen her before.

  Courtesy forbids questioning a man about his wife’s past, but as Lady Miranda moved on to mingle with other guests, Sir Eldridge seemed to read my mind. “My wife was on the, ah, stage before our marriage, Dr. Watson. She enjoyed, ah, quite a popular following before consenting to, shall we say, cast her lot with me. She was known then as Miranda Delacorte.”

  I did not comment on my difficulty in believing this wispy wraith could command a stage, but again my expression apparently made the comment for me.

  “My wife has, ah, not been well, I fear. Her health is a matter of grave concern to me. Grave concern, indeed.”

  I feared I was on the brink of being consulted in my professional capacity, but the subject was closed by the weaving approach of a portly man who had clearly been imbibing copiously of his host’s generosity.

  “Sir Eldridge, my congratulations on your book. A superb overview of the Etruscans in all their merry malefaction and malfeasance, eh?”

  “Ah, thank you, Mr. Barrows. I, of course, value your opinion most highly indeed. Do you, ah, know Dr. Watson? This is Mr. Conrad Barrows, someone rather in your line.”

  “Oh? Medical man?” I ventured.

  “More your, ah, literary line. Mr. Barrows is a book critic, who was, ah, most kind to my rather amateurish tome on the Etruscans. A hobbyist’s scribbling, I fear.”

  “You are much too modest, Sir Eldridge,” Barrows protested. “You made those mad Italians come to life more vividly than a battalion of professors!” He turned to me. “And what sort of writing do you do, Dr. Watson?”

  Our host looked rather embarrassed. “Surely you’re aware of Dr. Watson’s accounts of his cases with Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Oh, that Dr. Watson. But you see, I never review fiction.”

  I suspected the fellow was being deliberately offensive, but I did not rise to the bait, merely muttering something polite. In truth, I’d been accused before of writing fiction—by Holmes himself, in fact!

  “Well, now, Sir Eldridge,” Barrows went on, “when will we be so honored that we may give honor to our guest of honor, eh?”

  “Mr. Griffith has been, ah, resting in his room. His schedule has been, ah, rather taxing of his energies, I fear. You see, he, ah, only recently returned from filming at the front in France. But, ah, he will be down to introduce the showing of his film for us, and after that he will be pleased to, ah, mingle with all the guests.”

  Barrows looked around the room with comic exaggeration. “Well, the poor fellow. You know what he wants, Sir Eldridge. Money. Investors for his next project, whatever it is. My understanding is that his latest production, Intolerance, has done disappointing business in the States.”

  “Really? But, ah, I believe it has attracted large audiences here—”

  “Certainly. Where it had the good fortune of opening at the Drury Lane on the very next day after President Wilson announced America’s entry into the War. But now the chap once again needs money. And when he descends from his cloister, makes his dramatic entrance, what will he find? A room full of actors and society ladies who long to pose for the cinematographs, eh?”

  Sir Eldridge seemed flustered. “Well, ah, really, I hardly think—”

  A tall, saturnine figure with a commanding presence, which was only intensified by the stunningly beautiful woman on his arm, came to our host’s rescue. “You malign Sir Eldridge, Mr. Barrows,” the newcomer intoned, in a rich theatrical voice. “I do believe that I, apart from our distinguished hostess who has retired from the stage, am the only professional thespian in the room. My companion, Lady Veronica Travers, surely has the beauty to shine on the cinema screen but has to my knowledge no such ambitions.”

  The humorous sidelong glance the magnificent Lady Veronica gave her companion suggested ambitions beyond his knowledge.

  “And these guests,” the actor went on, his rolling delivery now commanding the attention of the entire room, “are here neither to flaunt their wealth nor to seek immortality on film but rather to appreciate the greatest artistic advance of our young century. For The Birth of a Nation has revolutionized the cinema, raising a commercial novelty to the stature of
an art that may stand beside painting, sculpture, and drama in the pantheon of human aesthetic endeavor. And any viewing of great art is enhanced by the presence of the artist. Thus, I long to sit at the feet of Mr. David Wark Griffith, not for any employment he might afford this poor and aging player but for the enlightenment that can come from any association, however brief, with a genius.” He paused for a moment, possibly allowing an opportunity for applause. “But I must apologize for my rudeness in interrupting your conversation, gentlemen.”

  “Not at all, Hope, ah, not at all,” Sir Eldridge said. After formally presenting us to Lady Veronica, he introduced the actor as Sherrington Hope, but I knew him by another name. On some past occasions, my friend had so transformed himself with wigs and false whiskers as to fool even me. This time, however, the disguise was more one of speech and manner. I had known from first glance that this preening, posing ham was none other than Sherlock Holmes.

  Another guest joined our circle then, a tall and well-built American, with a sensitive, long-jawed face, but loud and brash as his countrymen so often are. Sir Eldridge introduced him merely as Ernest Wheeler.

  “Say, Dr. Watson, this is a pleasure. We’re in this thing with you now, and about time, too. We’ll take care of the kaiser for you.”

  “Yanks come to crown or kill the kaiser,” Barrows slurred, having armed himself with another glass from a servant’s passing tray. “Jolly big of you, big of you indeed. We’re probably in for some dreadful American films about the war now, eh?”

  “Isn’t that exactly why Mr. Griffith has come to our shores?” Lady Veronica, speaking for the first time, revealed a melodious voice that complemented her visual beauty. “I understand he’s been asked by the government to make a film to aid the war effort.”

  “It won’t be dreadful, though, I can assure you of that,” Holmes said.

  “As I heard it,” Barrows said, “the whole idea was to convince the Yanks to come in with us.” Addressing the American, he added, “And now that you lot are in with all your colonial superiority, the war won’t last past Tuesday, so who needs the film?”

  “Well, I guess morale is still important,” Wheeler replied, choosing as I had to ignore the critic’s offensiveness.

  “Some of us,” Lady Veronica went on pointedly, “appreciate your country’s entry on the side of righteousness, Mr. Wheeler, even if our friend Mr. Barrows takes it as an opportunity for derision.”

  Barrows seemed instantly abashed, saying with inebriated dignity, “I do apologize to one and all for my flippantly habitual manner, that is to say, my habitually—well, you take my meaning, I’m sure. We should all be grateful, as Lady Veronica so rightly asserts, to our colonial allies. I abase myself, Mr. Wheeler.”

  “No apology necessary,” the American replied briskly.

  “But, Mr. Wheeler, we don’t see many American travelers these days,” the critic went on. “Are you by chance of Mr. Griffith’s battlefield-touring troupe of cinematographic artistes?”

  “Oh, no, no, indeed. Rarely even attend the flickers, to tell you the truth. I owe my presence here to an interest in common with Sir Eldridge, whose hospitality I have been enjoying for nearly a week. I’m a professor of Etruscan literature, you see, at the University of California.”

  “A rare specialty, sir,” Holmes remarked.

  “A criminally undervalued body of literature, Mr. Hope. I have done my best to give it the serious study it deserves.”

  “Well, then, you and Sir Eldridge will have a lot to talk about, won’t you?” I said, doing my bit to sooth the uneasy atmosphere. I was relieved when Wheeler drifted away. He seemed a pleasant enough fellow, but Americans can be wearing at times.

  A group of unobtrusive servants—mostly women even for this technically demanding job—had begun to prepare an area of the “small ballroom” for the film viewing, hanging a screen on one wall, carrying in a projector, arranging the seating. The chairs looked to be antiques, and it struck me as ironic we would be sitting on such venerable objects while enjoying such modern entertainment. A half dozen musicians, apparently employed to accompany the film, were unveiling their instruments and setting up their stands.

  It was at this point that the guest of honor, the celebrated D. W. Griffith, made his entrance down the staircase at the other end of the room. He was a tall and commanding figure, his most prominent features a hawkish nose and a receding hairline. My impulse, in common with the other guests, was to draw toward the guest of honor, but Holmes took the opportunity to pull me aside for a quiet word.

  “I must be quick, old fellow. We are here at the behest of my brother Mycroft. Put simply, Griffith is to make a film to help the war effort, and a German spy is believed to be among our fellow guests, possibly with the intent of assassinating Griffith. We must not let that happen.” He laughed loudly, as if I had made some great joke, then added, “Lady Miranda has reported seeing a sinister stranger, both in the garden and in the house, oddly dressed and able to vanish as suddenly as he appears. No one else has seen this person, however, and Sir Eldridge fears she may be unbalanced, losing her reason.”

  “And is she?”

  “It’s too soon to say. We must be alert to anything.” To this point, Holmes had spoken quietly and almost without moving his lips. Now he raised his voice for the benefit of those guests nearest us. “Come, Doctor. Let us hear what the great man has to say.”

  But in fact, as we approached the circle around Griffith, another guest was doing most of the talking. It was the American, Ernest Wheeler, who apparently had chosen to provide an excessively complete answer to a polite question about his academic specialty.

  “You know, Mr. Griffith, the Etruscans were a happy, fun-loving people, much more so than the Romans who eventually overran them. Though they were a religious people, they had liberal attitudes to merrymaking and, shall we say, romance.”

  “My sort of people,” the director murmured humorously.

  “Yes, indeed your sort. I often think it would be enjoyable to be an Etruscan. But then I remember that not all Etruscans had a life of pleasure, that many of their celebrations included the beating of their slaves. Slavery is an ugly stain on human history. I am embarrassed that our country was so slow to rid itself of that deplorable institution.”

  “But so we did, sir, and painfully.”

  “Some of our countrymen who have seen The Birth of a Nation believe you regret the abolition of slavery.”

  Griffith drew himself up, but his tone remained civil. “That is a gross and I think deliberate misunderstanding of my film. I am a Southerner, through and through, but I am no champion of slavery. The themes of my film were the effects of war on the individual and the human hunger for power and exploitation, not a brief for the subjugation of one race by another.”

  The tension in the air was palpable, and Sir Eldridge looked speechless with embarrassment at seeing one American guest insulting another. Though controlling his emotions, the courtly Griffith appeared old-fashioned enough to demand satisfaction at dawn. Once again, it was Lady Veronica who came forward to calm the waters.

  “Surely, Mr. Wheeler, we needn’t refight the American Civil War here in Sir Eldridge’s ballroom, when shortly we can watch it unfold most vividly and brilliantly on the screen.”

  As Griffith smiled her way, I imagined a degree of lust mingled with the gratitude in his regard. If Lady Veronica does long to pose for cinematographs, I reflected, she might get her chance.

  “You are very kind, m’lady,” Griffith said. “But I must offer one small correction. In my part of the world, we prefer to call it the War between the States.”

  “I understand some of your actors and technicians accompanied you to our shores, Mr. Griffith,” Lady Veronica went on. “Will none of them be joining us this weekend?”

  Griffith smiled. “I fear I have been keeping them much too busy for that, m’lady, but they have found their stay as memorable as I. Miss Lillian Gish, a most brave lady, accompanied me
to the front. We were, I hasten to assure you, well chaperoned by others of my company. And Miss Dorothy Gish made her contribution to the war effort during her crossing by coaching General Pershing for his newsreel appearances— but perhaps I am telling secrets.”

  “Ah, ladies and gentleman,” said our host, finding his voice at last, “if you will kindly take your seats, Mr. Griffith has agreed to say a few words to us before we view his wonderful and, ah, might I say, historic film.”

  As the guests moved to the other end of the room, Holmes attached himself to Griffith, very convincingly suggesting an actor seeking a role. But the director, understandably, appeared more intrigued by Lady Veronica on his other arm.

  I took a seat in the back row, where I could observe the entire gathering. To my surprise, the American professor sat down next to me, looking rather more pleased with himself than embarrassed at the tension he had caused.

  “Don’t think I’m too popular at the moment, Dr. Watson,” he said. “The way some of these folks were looking at me, I could figure in one of your stories before the night is out. ‘The Adventure of the Murdered Professor,’ eh? But where I come from, that war isn’t really over yet, and I don’t know if it ever will be. Have you seen this film before?”

  “Can’t say that I have. Don’t get out to the cinema much. Busy practice, you know.”

  “Certainly. Mr. Griffith’s presentation of American history purports to be scholarly—he even provides occasional pretentious footnotes. But his memory is selective, owing to his background, I guess. When they stop to change reels, I’ll try to give you a more truthful view of the facts.”

  “That will be splendid,” I replied, with an utter lack of sincerity.

  When we all were seated, D. W. Griffith, standing in front of the white screen, assured us how welcome he had been made in England, how enthusiastically he and President Wilson supported our great cause, and how he chose to let his film speak for itself. Then he proceeded to orate at such length, I began to doubt we’d see the film at all. He praised Lord Beaverbrook, the head of the government’s cinematograph office who had invited him to Britain, and Minister of Munitions Winston Churchill, who had suggested to him many promising ideas for scenarios. He spoke of being under fire during his time at the front in France. He movingly described the impact of observing the war first hand on this side of the channel. He and his company were staying at the Savoy, and from their rooms they could watch the German aeroplanes flying up the Thames to their targets. He remarked on his British ancestry, his Kentucky boyhood, his father’s heroism in the War between the States, his family poverty, his early films for a company called Biograph, and finally some details on the making of the film that would soon speak for itself. He made no reference to the controversy that apparently had attended its release in the States, but my American companion whispered in my ear accounts of the negative reaction of Negroes to their depiction (sometimes inflammatory, other times merely patronizing) by white actors in the film, and of the story’s origin in a vicious novel championing white supremacy, Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman.