Murder, My Dear Watson

  “Just what we are about to ascertain.” Holmes carefully placed the pile of dust in an ashtray on a side table.

  “You will, of course, have observed, Watson, that Sir Giles’s chair is firmly bolted to the floor next to the fireplace. He would have been unable to change his position, had he wished to do so. Our indefatigable engineer at work again, I fancy. Miss Lucas, who occupies the room immediately above this one?”

  “No one at present. As I told you, much of the house is unoccupied. But, Mr. Holmes, what do you think happened?”

  “The foulest of foul play, dear lady. The locus invariably speaks for itself and this one shrieks its own story. Had I been here to listen to it twenty-four hours earlier, I could have prevented this tragic dénouement. As it is, the events of last night are emerging with great clarity and only a few pieces remain to be put into place. But, as Watson knows, I refuse to hypothesize until I have all those pieces in my possession. Ladies, shall we?”

  NOT SURPRISINGLY, THE upstairs room was considerably smaller than the library, but the configuration was clearly similar. Dominating one side of it was the brick extension of the chimney. Immediately opposite were a set of mullioned windows. The room itself was entirely bare of furniture and it was apparent that it did not normally benefit from Miss Lucas’s domestic attentions, for there was a distinct layer of dust everywhere except the floor area immediately next to the chimney embrasure and the central window. There were signs visible even to my eye of considerable activity.

  “As I told you, gentlemen, this room is unused and normally kept locked,” Miss Lucas said, looking around it in some surprise. Holmes and I followed her inside, though I noticed Miss Sommersby lingered in the doorway.

  “And yet the key turned in the lock with surprising ease,” Holmes remarked, moving purposefully over to the chimney, where he proceeded to tap with his fingernail at the brickwork.

  “Ah, as I thought.” His long fingers prised away a section of the brickwork exposing the chimney opening. Producing a lens from his inside pocket, Holmes examined the top edge of the exposed bricks with great care, before handing the lens to me to verify his findings.

  “I think you will find clear indications that the brick has been scratched by a metal link chain, Watson. There are minute shavings of new metal embedded in the old brick and here and here are clear imprints of where the links have rested. And now . . .”

  And with that—in the catlike manner that he invariably adopted when he was hot on the trail—he darted over to the window.

  “And yes—although the rest of the windows are firmly shut and warped with age, this one “—and he demonstrated by opening and closing it—“has clearly been used very recently. And here again the metallic scratches . . . Now, let me see, somewhere near the chimney we should find . . .”

  He dropped disconcertingly to his hands and knees and peered closely at the floorboards near the chimney aperture. Then, seeming to find what he was looking for, he gave a satisfied grunt, pulled two envelopes from the jacket pocket which was their invariable resting place, and carefully brushed the twin heaps of dust he had accumulated into them.

  “What do you have there, Mr. Holmes?” It was Miss Lucas, riveted as anyone must be watching Holmes at work for the first time.

  “The final pieces of our little puzzle, unless I am very much mistaken,” Holmes replied. “Now, why don’t we all repair to the morning room—I believe the local constabulary will require the library in due course—and I will attempt to explain the series of events.”

  “Don’t you think I should ask Robert to join us?” Miss Lucas asked, looking around her as if she had suddenly mislaid him. “I don’t know where he can be.”

  “I hardly think that would prove a very profitable request,” Holmes replied, studying his watch. “I would estimate that Master Robert, realising that the game was up, and that a little bird would soon be telling us all we need to know, will have caught the—let me see—the 9:05 train to town. Watson, you might like to telephone our old friend Inspector Lestrade and ask him to have the gentleman in question met on his arrival. Main line stations can be so impersonal, especially to people who have been wandering the wild blue yonder and may even now be contemplating doing so again. Oh dear, Miss Sommersby appears to have fainted.”

  “IT WAS OBVIOUS that Robert Halliford had to find some means of disposing of Sir Giles that appeared to be entirely natural.” Holmes was sitting in an armchair covered in colourful chintz—a far cry from the battered Baker Street equivalent. Mary Lucas and I were opposite him on a sofa with Miss Sommersby propped among cushions on another. We had moved to the conservatory to allow the local constabulary I had called earlier to do their routine work in the library.

  “Sir Giles’ asthma gave him the idea. That, together with the fact that he invariably fell asleep in his usual chair conveniently placed by the log fire. At Robert’s insistence, by the way. After that—like all good ideas—it was simple enough.

  “First, he had to make sure the room was completely insulated. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, a locked room. For his purposes it was better—it was a completely sealed room.

  “I would be prepared to wager a small amount that we shall find ‘Master Robert’ or ‘Tommy’—or whatever his real name turns out to be—was cashiered from the Royal Engineers for conduct unbecoming—though I somehow doubt he was either an officer or a gentleman—and thrown on his own dubious devices.

  “So here we have a trained engineer who is also familiar with the strange and exotic ways of the Far East—even as my friend Watson is . . .” And he gave me an ambiguous little smile. “Many’s the time he has regaled me with stories of how his more rakish friends were inclined to experiment with the inhalation of—shall we say—somewhat outré substances. This particular potion crossed my path during some rather extensive researches into perfumes and their origins. It is a particularly potent derivative of a species of the coriander, known to have an hallucinogenic effect on certain subjects. Its odour is particularly distinctive.

  “I think we may assume that the young man brought a quantity of it back with him in powdered form for his personal use. But then it occurred to him that here at Halliford Hall he might find another and more deadly use for it.

  “What a strong young constitution might tolerate in moderation might have a very different effect when administered in excess to a man in Sir Giles’s condition, sitting captive in an alcohol-induced slumber. Literally a sitting target. It was certainly worth the experiment.”

  “But, Mr. Holmes, why wasn’t I overcome with the same fumes when I went into the room the next morning?” Miss Lucas cried.

  “You were witness to what turned out to be a failed test, my dear Miss Lucas. Halliford wasn’t entirely sure that his mechanism would prove effective and did not use enough of the powder on that first occasion to have the desired effect. What it did prove was that the insulation worked. None of the fumes escaped and when you entered the room, all you detected was a faint residual odour, almost like a perfume.”

  “But how had he introduced the powder when, as you say, there was no one else in the room?” I asked.

  “Simple. He had waited until Sir Giles was safely asleep and the fire down to its ashes, then poured it down the chimney from the room above—probably using a rubber tube. Traces of it remain in the room above and can easily be analysed. The heat from the embers created the fumes and Sir Giles, being in such close proximity, was the unknowing recipient. The first night he survived. The second, unfortunately, he did not.

  “Robert Halliford’s principal problem,” Holmes continued, “was to remove the evidence—the poisonous smoke. And this is where his engineer’s training came into play. For such a man it was child’s play to obtain a simple bellows pump and convert it, so that instead of pumping air out—it would suck it in. With a simple hose attachment he could hope to drain the heavier, fume-laden air back up the chimney.”

  “And out of the open window,” I c
ried.

  “Precisely, Watson. So the evidence literally vanished into thin air. We find an ailing old man dead in his favourite chair in a room where he had palpably been alone. Who would think to analyse the ashes from the dead fire?”

  “The perfect murder, Holmes?” I asked almost innocently, only to be rewarded by what I can only describe as an old-fashioned look.

  “But what about the canary?” This from Miss Lucas. Every eye turned to where the small yellow bird sat once again on Emily Sommersby’s shoulder. She seemed to find its presence curiously comforting, for she was stroking it in an abstracted manner. Her eyes looked as though she, too, might be drugged. From the time we had first met her she had said not a word.

  “Ah, yes, our little feathered friend. The unwitting accomplice who let him down badly. When the police drag the lake I noticed at the bottom of the garden—as I strongly suggest they do so without delay—they will undoubtedly find, in addition to the aforementioned and unpatented pumping device, a small bird cage. On the base, unless I am very much mistaken you will undoubtedly find the legend ‘T. WILSON BERMONDSEY.’”

  “Wilson the notorious canary trainer?”

  “The very same, old fellow. Remind me one day to recount the full story of our earlier encounter. Yes, friend Halliford had clearly remembered the traditional coal miner’s device of taking a caged canary down into the mine to ensure that the air below ground was pure enough to breathe. Why a canary rather than any other species, I have not the faintest idea but a canary it was.

  “Having purchased a number of them, no doubt, from the disreputable Wilson, he adapted the practice for his own purposes. Once the fumes had been pumped out of the room, he would lower the bird in its gilded cage down the chimney, leave it there for several minutes and then retrieve it. The bird’s continued good health would be an indication that the room was now clear. Unfortunately for him, on this occasion he had neglected to fasten the door of the cage securely. Seizing the opportunity, his bird literally flew the nest and there was nothing Halliford could do about it.

  “Incidentally, there was one other factor he overlooked . . .”

  “Which was . . . ?”

  “The best laid plans of mice and men should not include the canary. Anyone who has ever owned one will tell you that they insist on spilling their food with unconfined abandon. In lowering the cage Halliford was actually introducing alternative evidence.”

  “Ridiculous! The whole thing is ridiculous! You’re making up a fairy tale!” Emily Sommersby was sitting up rigidly on the sofa, her face as white as parchment. These were the first words she had spoken. The bird fluttered around her head for a moment before settling again. It had never left her side from the moment she arrived at the scene of the crime.

  “Ah, Miss Sommersby, I was wondering when we should hear from you.” Holmes’s voice had a flat and final tone that struck a chill even in that sunlit room.

  As all eyes turned on her, he continued. “Fairy tales are designed to have happy endings. This one, I fear, will not. It seemed to me obvious that the soi-disant Robert Halliford must have an accomplice inside Halliford House, if he was to proceed with his plan without excessive risk of detection and you, I’m afraid, were the only candidate. I believe we shall find that you knew one another in India and perhaps had—shall we say?—some sort of ‘understanding,’ which was upset by your parents’ death and his perpetual ‘lack of funds.’

  “Then circumstances—and Sir Giles’s generosity—brought you back to England and landed you on your feet, as it seemed. Sir Giles was an old man and clearly ailing. Who else was there to inherit? But then you learned of his plan to remarry and instead of feeling happy that your benefactor had found a partner to brighten his last years, you felt cheated. Then, when you heard from your former lover of his own ‘misfortune’ in life, a sordid little plan began to take shape to destroy one of the people who had shown you kindness and defraud the other.”

  There was a gasp from Mary Lucas, who sat there ashen-faced.

  “I suspect you were the one who actually poured the powder. Dust, my dear young lady, is a powerful medium and the shoe an equally fine expression of it. There were marks in the upstairs room of a man’s footprint and also those of a woman of about your height. Since Miss Lucas has already told us that she is not in the habit of visiting the room in her professional capacity, it should prove a simple matter to make the necessary identification. Perhaps you have read my trifling monograph on The Tracing of Footprints—a seminal work? Ah, I see not.”

  Emily Sommersby was shrinking as far back in the sofa as she could and I felt fleetingly sorry for her, until I thought of the deed in which she had conspired. Holmes clearly shared the sentiment, for his voice was calmer when he resumed.

  “I prefer to think that you had qualms when the theory turned to reality but your lover was determined. He could feel that the inheritance that would come to him one way or another. For with Sir Giles dead, who would spend further time and money on a legal search? He became the driving force and you, perforce, went along with it. For, after all, Master Robert had promised to marry you, had he not? It would have been a union to rival the Borgias. Who would have been next—Miss Lucas? Or would you have been content to dismiss her without benefit of reference?

  “You were the one who handled the canary. When you entered the room, the bird clearly recognised you and came to you, as it was trained to do. In a very real sense, it identified the murderer. Watson, I do believe Miss Sommersby has fainted again. Would you be so kind . . . ?”

  AN HOUR OR SO later we were on the train back to London. The local police had taken Emily Sommersby into custody and informed us that Robert Halliford had been apprehended as he stepped off the train at Victoria. Mary Lucas—her grief fighting with her gratitude— had thanked us with such simple dignity and grace that Holmes had exhibited signs of rare embarrassment.

  “Mr. Holmes, I see now that some greater power must have intended that Sir Giles and I were not to be allowed a life together. Perhaps the differences between us were too great after all. All I know is that I am grateful for the few happy months we were given and more grateful to you than I can say for ensuring that his death will not go unavenged. He was a good man and so are you, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and the world is a better place for your being in it.”

  As the train sped along, though, I could not forbear to ask my friend how she would manage.

  “One thing the privileged classes understand, Watson, is the obligation of privilege. Having committed himself to the lady in question and being aware of his own fragile mortality, I think we shall find that Sir Giles had already taken care to make adequate provision for her, without ever saying a word to her. No, my dear fellow, money will not be Miss Lucas’s chief concern.”

  “And what will be?”

  “Persuading the cat and the canary to live together in reasonable accord.”

  And with that he slumped in his opposite corner of the carriage and proceeded to brood over what he considered his relative failure. I offered him a penny for his thoughts.

  “About all they are worth, old fellow. I was thinking about that damned bird.”

  “What about it?”

  “I should have asked her for a more explicit description of its song. Had I been able to identify it sooner as a canary, the game would have been ours. Watson, remind me to prepare a small monograph on Bird Song and Its Application to the Solving of Crime. It might prove quite invaluable.”

  Then a more pleasant thought struck him.

  “We should be back in town just in time for lunch. What do you say to a decent steak at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand?”

  “It depends.”

  “On what, pray?”

  “It depends on whether the steak has ANITNEGRA written on it. And by the way, Holmes, you do realise, don’t you, that . . .”

  BEFORE THE ADVENTURES

  Lenore Carroll

  Mr. H. Greenhough Smith

  Editor,
The Strand Magazine

  Burleigh Street, The Strand,

  London

  May 6, 1881

  Dear Mr. Greenhough Smith:

  Many thanks for your kind letter. Your warm response to the story I submitted to your magazine is indeed heartening. I have had two short novels about my detective character published, one in Beeton’s and one in Lippincott’s. But they were met by only a very small response, and I feared this “scandalous” orphan might find no home. So I am delighted that you see a series of these stories, and am greatly encouraged to continue.

  Let me assure you that the principal characters (aside from the detective and his friend) have no counterparts in real life to my knowledge. I created them by stitching together bits and pieces of real life into a patchwork fiction. I trust the results are seamless.

  It is true, however, as you suggest, that there are actual people who inspired the story’s protagonist and his narrator friend. And it is flattering for you to ask how I came to write these tales. I must confess that I, like my narrator, am a trained physician; and at one time I had no thought at all of ever becoming an author. I entered the Army Medical Department after receiving my degree, and eventually found myself in India as an Army surgeon. I had determined to make my career in Her Majesty’s service, and had looked forward to making a good start.

  My career was cut short, however, when I was gravely wounded during service in the Afghan war. And when I was invalided out of the Army, I found the rain-soaked greenery of my native island, for which I had longed heartily while residing in the brown desert, only aggravated the wounds I had sustained. An irony to add to the irony of a surgeon sent to heal being hurt in the fray. I had taken one Jezail bullet in the shoulder and another penetrated my leg at the fatal battle of Maiwand.