The Investigations of Sherlock Holmes

by John Heywood

  “Oh yes, one or two. General Wallace, a widower. Indian Army, retired now. He has just moved down here, and we thought we ought to invite him. One doesn’t want to be unfriendly. Our new member of Parliament, of course, Bonnington Smythe; he was here, though his wife could not come. There was a Varsity friend of my son - I hadn’t seen him before, and don’t much mind if I never see him again - and some people called Blaine.” For a few moments Ayres scoured his memory. “I think those were all the new people we’ve had here recently, Mr Holmes.”

  “Thank you.” Holmes stood up. “We have taken up enough of your time. I think my researches can now better be pursued in London.”

  “I trust you are making some headway, Mr Holmes. May I know what theories you have developed?”

  “It is not my business to develop theories, Mr Ayres, but to discover the truth. The truth of what happened to Mr Mayne is beginning to emerge here and there from the mist, but much is still hidden. You may rest assured that if I do discover the truth, you shall know of it immediately.”

  We returned to the station, leaving, as we had come, in the carriage driven by Mottram. As we rattled along, he and Holmes engaged in a discussion of the merits of the runners at the next meeting at Newmarket. Mottram favoured us with what he assured us was a ‘warm’ inside tip. He had already had some money on the horse himself, he told us, at excellent odds.

  “I hope you are as lucky as Mr Mayne was the other week,” said Holmes. “I hear he quite cleaned out the bookmakers.”

  “First I heard of it!” came the answer.

  “Ah,” said Holmes, “but perhaps he kept his luck to himself.”

  “Perhaps he did, sir. Perhaps poor Mr Hugo kept quiet about a win at the races, and likewise, perhaps hogs might fly.”

  Holmes laughed. “Well, he had some wind-fall, did he not? I wonder what it was.”

  “Couldn’t tell you, sir.”

  “He said nothing about it? That sounds unlike him, from what I’ve heard of the man.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact he did say something, but what it meant is a mystery to me. This was just before he went to London that last time. He talked about some buckshee that was coming his way. It had been due nigh on twenty years, he said, and now the time had come at last. And if you can tell me what he meant by that, sir, you’re a wiser man than I.”

  We had arrived at the station. “Well, Mottram, here’s some buckshee for yourself,” said Holmes, handing the groom half a guinea.

  “Right you are, sir. Thank you.” Mottram pocketed the coin, whipped up the mare and rattled down the road back to Glebe House a good deal faster than he had come.

  We arrived in Baker Street early in the evening. Holmes strode immediately to the bookcase, hauled out a volume and spread it before him on the table.

  “Now,” said he, “let us see what we can find out about these newcomers to Glebe House.” He lit the lamp and turned it up high, hovering over the tome like a bird of prey. “General Wallace ...” He flipped through the pages. “Here we are! ‘General Sir Robert Vansittart Wallace, DSO, etc.’ ” Holmes read the entry briefly in silence - “No, I don’t think the General can help us,” he concluded. “ ‘Blaine’ was another name. Let me see ... no, no Blaine in here. Unless it’s spelt otherwise ... no. I’ll try the MP, Bonnington Smythe. He was the other newcomer.” Holmes read out the entry:

  “ ‘SMYTHE: Captain Robert Algernon Bonnington, MP, born 1858, son of ...’ Ah! This is better; ‘Matobo expedition,” he read, “1878(despatches); Administrator for Matabeleland, 1885; contested Birmingham South, 1892; MP North Kensington, 1895; Under-secretary to the Foreign Office, 1896; Colonial Secretary--’ and so it goes on.

  “Well, Watson, that is interesting, is it not? The young Bonnington Smythe was in Matabeleland at the same time as Mayne.”

  “Mayne was in Southern Africa, at any rate,” I ventured.

  “In Matabeleland. Did you not see the inscription on one of his sticks? ‘Hugo Mayne, Matobo, 1879.’

  “Ah! Better still!” Holmes suddenly exclaimed. “Listen to this: ‘Married Florence, youngest daughter of Revd. Henry Charteris.’ ”

  “I don’t quite see ...”

  “The inscription in the book of poems! You found it yourself, amongst Mayne’s books. In the fly leaf, you remember? ‘To Hugo Mayne,’ it ran, ‘F.C.’

  “This is excellent!” cried Homes, his eyes glinting. “The mists begin to clear. A definite picture emerges of the background to the Mayne killing. That is fortunate, for I have other calls upon my time which cannot wait much longer. A strange, back-to-front sort of case, is it not, Watson? When the crime of twenty years ago is perfectly clear, but the crime of last week is still shrouded in uncertainty. Perhaps one day you will favour the public with an account of it; it should suit your story-telling method.’ He glanced at the clock. ‘Half past five o’clock. There is still time to visit the Bonnington Smythe household. I am tolerably sure as to the events behind the murder, but it is as well to be certain, and an interview with Bonnington Smythe, husband or wife, will establish the facts beyond doubt. Will you accompany me, Watson?”

  “Alas, I cannot. I have an appointment.”

  “Very well. I wish you a pleasant evening.” He seized his hat and hurried out.

  When I returned that evening, eager to hear about his visit to the Bonnington Smythe home, there was no sign of Holmes. The next morning he was already gone, or still sleeping, and I breakfasted alone. So it was that evening, and so it continued for the following five or six days. Where he was, and what cases he was working on, I had no idea. But although I had lost touch with Holmes, I had news enough of Mr Bonnington Smythe, almost every morning in the newspapers. Courts require proof and certainty before they punish the guilty, but for society, suspicion is enough, and it was evident that the deepest suspicion hung over the head of the eminent politico, for every day brought news of some fresh humiliation as one by one his powerful friends turned their backs on him. It was reported that upon rising to make a speech in the House he was greeted by booes and hisses, from his own side of the House as well as from the benches opposite. Ugly rumours concerning him were circulated in the press, and in some papers his name began to be openly mentioned in connection with the Hugo Mayne murder. Then it was announced that he had been relieved of his cabinet responsibilities. So the spate of reversals continued, until finally it became evident that his public life was ruined beyond the possibility of recovery.

  One afternoon at his time I returned to our flat to find Holmes seated in his armchair, leaner than ever, and brown as a nut. He looked up from his newspaper and greeted me with a casual nod of the head. I was eager to hear from him about the case whose public aspect had so dominated the political news for the last week. “My dear fellow,” I exclaimed, “I am delighted to see you. Have you got to the bottom of the case?”

  “Yes, yes, it was Maratin, the Viper of Montpellier. It was the rope used to raise and lower the basket that gave him away.”

  “No, I mean The Mayne murder.”

  “Oh, that. No, I have not. It is most disappointing. Nothing from the Baker Street irregulars, and nothing from the official force either.” The irregulars of which he spoke was the squadron of well-trained street urchins who, at the princely rate of a shilling per day per urchin, would search out vital scraps of information inaccessible to more formal bodies. Holmes had instructed them, and his underworld contacts, to keep their ears and eyes open for any signs as to the identity of the hired killers of Mayne. He had also approached the police inspector in charge of the case, advising him where to look. He had even spoken to his old friend Lestrade, who was not officially concerned in the case at all, for Lestrade, though limited in his acumen, had the virtues of thoroughness and tenacity in full measure. For the past week, while Holmes himself was on the continent, these agents had continued his enquiry
. “It is strange that nothing has turned up, Watson,” he said. “How can it be that after a week of searching by so many agents, official and otherwise, not a single clue has come to light? There can be no doubt that Smythe hired two or three thugs to kill Mayne. Is there not somewhere a message from Smythe, a witness who saw him with the murderers? Has there been no rash act by the killers, no mistake to give them away? I begin to suspect that Smythe was not alone in this plot. I sense an eminence grise behind this affair, someone more cunning and professional in arranging an assassination than friend Smythe could ever have been. This casts a different light on the problem. If my suspicions are right, then there is little point in wasting more time in searching for clues, for there are none to be found.

  “Of course the outlines of the case are perfectly clear, but mere outlines are not enough. Until we have our hands on the perpetrators of the crime I cannot regard the matter as resolved.”

  “I’m sorry to say that even the most rudimentary outlines of the case are far from clear to me, Holmes. I should be grateful if you could sketch them out for me.”

  “Throw me the tobacco, Watson, and I will be happy to satisfy your curiosity.” He put a match to his pipe and drew, until clouds of smoke began to billow and rise. “The first thing that brought itself to my attention,” he began, “was the nature of the crime itself. The attack upon Mayne and the burglary of his quarters were most accurately coördinated. Consider the timing; Mottram found the body of Mayne immediately, for he came tell his master within four minutes or so of the gunshot, yet the murderers or murderer had already vanished without trace. Mayne’s rooms were ransacked before the arrival of the housekeeper and footman, but they arrived at Mayne’s quarters a mere five minutes or so after the gunshot. All had been well only some twenty minutes earlier when the housekeeper had set the table. Either the burglars did their work quickly and hurried down to the lake to kill Mayne, or, more likely, there were two parties - the burglars and the killers - working almost simultaneously. In any event it was clear that we were dealing not with a crude crime of opportunity, as the police supposed, but a carefully planned stratagem. The element of burglary was interesting; little of value was taken from the flat - objects that might have been seized almost at random, inconceivable as the intended haul of a robbery - and yet the place had been thoroughly ransacked, and Mayne’s pockets utterly emptied. Why should that be so? Evidently the culprits were not seeking valuables. What, then? Presumably something that would incriminate - perhaps something suggesting a motive for the murder, perhaps a note giving a rendezvous - who knows? The possibility of an incriminating rendezvous note, by the way, was given a little more weight by the place of the murder. The Glebe House lake was not a usual resort of Mayne’s, but, being comparatively isolated and half-hidden by trees, it would provide an ideal spot on which to kill the man, if only he could be lured there. Very well; we have not a common burglary that led to a fight, but a deliberate, carefully planned murder. A murder carried out, in all probability, by strangers, for local men capable of such violence would surely be known and suspected. Only in a city would such desperate characters be able to lie low.

  “We now come to the victim. I was immediately struck by the circumstance that shortly before his death Mayne’s customary behaviour changed in several small ways. He started to carry a gun; he visited London - that was not so unusual in itself, but when there he spent profusely, and spoke of coming into funds that were long overdue. On the evening of his death, his walk took him to a place where he seldom went. If there were any lingering suspicions that his death was a commonplace theft gone awry, these unaccounted oddities of his behaviour dispelled them. Something had happened to bring about these changes in his ways. What was it?

  “The answer to that question came when I looked up the details of Bonnington Smythe, the recent visitor to Glebe House. It was immediately obvious that here was the missing piece in the puzzle. Bonnington Smythe had been in the same part of Africa, and at the same time, as Mayne. He had married Florence Charteris; was she the ‘F.C.’ who had given Mayne a book of love poems? Mayne had spoken of his windfall as having been overdue twenty years; that is, it dated from his time in Africa. From all this it was evident that the story began twenty years ago, in Matabeleland.”

  Holmes shot a glance in my direction. “You will tell me, Watson, if I fail to make clear the logical sequence of thought I describe?”

  “So far I follow you perfectly, Holmes.”

  “Excellent. Let us agree, then, that the changes in Mayne’s behaviour derived from his meeting again this person from his past. That raises the question: what was the nature of their friendship? Already, with the book inscribed from F.C., there is the possibility that twenty years ago they were rivals in love. And if Smythe and Mayne contested for the young lady’s affections, it was remarkably convenient for Smythe, was it not, that Mayne should suddenly suffer a dreadful accident?

  “I shall return to that in a moment, but I wish first to address the subject of money. On his visit to London Mayne flung money around with abandon, buying gifts for one and all, himself included. Where did the money come from? To rephrase the question: what happened in Africa that twenty years later produced for Mayne such buckshee, as he called it, and why did he think it his due?

  “So we have these two separate things; the events in Africa, and the sudden windfall of money. I put them together, and asked whether Mayne’s mauling by the lioness was connected to his windfall of a fortnight ago.”

  “There you lose me, Holmes,” I interrupted. “How could they be connected?”

  “Well,” said he, “it could be that Bonnington Smythe had some guilty part in the accident; that twenty years later, at the Glebe House garden party, Mayne recognised his old rival; that he confronted him, and Bonnington Smythe paid him off.”

  I was speechless as the enormity of the suggestion sank into my mind. Holmes, imperturbable as ever, said nothing, merely knocking out his old briar in the grate and refilling it.

  “My suggestion seems to have shocked you into silence, Watson,” he said eventually.

  “I don’t mind admitting that it has. Are you saying that Bonnington Smythe deliberately engineered the accident?”

  “I don’t say that he did, no. I say that it is a hypothesis that covers all the facts. Can you think of another?”

  I could not. Staggered though I was by my friend’s conjecture, the more I turned it over in my mind, the more probable it seemed. Young men, in a wild and lawless country, are capable of much, both of good and bad. Smythe, it seemed, had turned to the bad; perhaps in the end his vile act of treachery, committed all those years ago, had indeed come back to haunt him.

  “And you suggest that Mayne exacted money from his old friend? That is little short of blackmail, Holmes.”

  “Well, perhaps so, if you care to look at it that way. I doubt if that is the way Mayne looked at it. His old friend, as you call him, had deprived him of his arm, half his leg, his sweetheart, and nearly of his life. Mayne would surely have seen any payment he might extract from Bonnington Smythe as perfectly justified reparation. His due, as he put it to the groom.”

  “That would explain the money that suddenly came to Mayne, I grant you; but what about the murder?”

  “The murder follows on naturally from the picture we have already built up. Bonnington Smythe paid once, but he realised that he might have to pay again and again, and, worse, that Mayne, a wilful, loose-tongued sort of man, might, in his cups, let the cat out of the bag anyway. In that case, even if the matter were never to come to court, the scandal would mean the end of Smythe’s career - as indeed it has. He decided there was only one thing for it; to silence Mayne for ever.

  “Well, the Right Honourable Robert Bonnington Smythe is scarcely the man to spill the brains of another with his own hands. He is a man of the world, a man with contacts; a word in the right ear, an
d the men to do his dirty work for him were found.”

  “Good Lord! The man is a minister of the Crown. It’s an ugly story, Holmes.”

  He shrugged. “Ugly stories are my speciality.”

  It was a masterly synthesis of the facts. Yet there was a doubt in my mind, which I could not pass over in silence. “I dare say you are right, Holmes. It all fits together. But where is the proof of what you say? What evidence is there?”

  “Well said, Watson! You are quite right: it was all mere supposition. There was, however, an obvious way of testing it, at least as far as the events in Africa were concerned. I could ask Mrs Bonnington Smythe, née Charteris, to see how much of my hypothesis was true. You remember I went to the Smythe London home in Lowndes Terrace last week, when you had other commitments. Let me tell you about that visit, Watson. Smythe was not at home, and I sent in my card to the lady, with a note that I wished to speak to her about the death of Mayne. I was admitted to a small first-floor room, where I had not many minutes to wait before Mrs Bonnington Smythe entered. She was a well-made woman, five feet four inches in height, firm in character, and although expensively dressed, neither wasteful nor given to vanity. As soon as I saw her I read in her face that she knew of Mayne’s murder. No doubt she had read of it in the newspapers.

  “I informed her that I was retained to look into the murder. ‘You and your husband were friends of Hugo Mayne in Africa, I believe?’ I asked.

  “ ‘We were.’

  “I explained that it was necessary to ascertain some personal matters about the past in order to form a right view of the case. I told her that I had seen the book of poems that she had given to Mayne. She looked at me and nodded assent - it was she who had given him the book. I needed to go further:

  “ ‘Forgive me, Mrs Bonnington Smythe; was Hugo Mayne a suitor of yours in those days?’

  “Again she nodded a silent affirmation.

  “ ‘Thank you. Now, if you would, please tell me about the lion-hunt in which Mr Mayne was injured. Pray do not omit any detail.’