The Investigations of Sherlock Holmes

by John Heywood

  “Ah, so Harfield’s reasons for using piano-rolls were not what he claimed,” said he. “I thought as much.”

  “Of course, his reasons may have been innocent ones.”

  “That is hardly likely, Watson. Certainly Harfield himself does not seem to have thought them innocent, since he lied about them.”

  “True enough,” I admitted. “Rezin did not say it in so many words, but I had the impression that he did not think Harfield a man of sound character.”

  Holmes gave a derisive snort. “I should think he did not. What I have discovered today about Mr Rupert Harfield suggests a man of the most dubious sort. Touch him where you will, he is rotten, rotten to the core.”

  “What did you find out about him?”

  “I shall tell you, if I might trouble you first for another glass of brandy-and-water. Thank you. Well, Old Harfield, the father of Mr Rupert and his sister Miss Matilda - there were no other children, by the way - was a Bristol lawyer who by a combination of hard work and business acumen became a wealthy man. The mother died when the children were young, and Harfield never remarried. In fact he became something of a recluse, dividing his life exclusively between his work and his investments, with little time left over to spend on his children. In time Rupert went up to the University, which he left with no degree but considerable debts. In the space of a few years he formed several limited companies, none of which flourished, and most of which were dissolved leaving disappointed investors and creditors. With this talent for losing money he combined expensive tastes, and he ran up large accounts with his tailor, his vintners, and other tradesmen. His sister Matilda, meanwhile, took an opposite course. She lived modestly at her father’s house, and spent little. Her only indulgence seems to have taken the form of two annual cheques, one made out to Archbishop Speke’s Mission to Borneo and the other to the Animals’ Friends’ Society. Brother and sister each received an annual allowance from old Harfield; as you may suppose, Matilda’s was more than enough for her, while Rupert’s scarcely affected his ever-growing debts. Four years ago the old man died; the house was sold, and the entire estate was shared equally between brother and sister. Miss Matilda bought a house in North London, invested the remaining capital and lived comfortably on the interest. Mr Rupert spent more than ever, lost more than ever in ill-judged investments, and after three years ended up deeper in debt than he had been before. During these three years his activities seem to have progressed from the merely ‘fast’ to the barely legal, and in all probability to the downright criminal. I might mention, by the way, that he has been in the habit of acting under various aliases, a habit which did not make it easy to trace the details of his illustrious career. Much of my information on Harfield fils came through the kind offices of Lestrade, for Rupert Harfield has been known to the police for some years, though they have never had enough evidence to arrest him. Rather more than a year ago he lost the handsome house in which he had lived in splendour; it was mortgaged to the hilt, and finally the bailiffs threw him out. For a few months he lived in a succession of cheap rented rooms, usually fleeing at night owing rent, until he conceived the brilliant notion of moving in with his sister at her house in Belford Crescent.

  “So much for Mr Rupert Harfield. I also managed to identify the doctor who visits Miss Matilda Harfield so assiduously. He is an old associate of Mr Rupert, and like him is known to the police without ever having been formally detained. He is known as Doctor Tobias Marshall. He completed but a single year of medical studies, and as far as I could find out, has no more right to style himself ‘doctor’ than I.”

  “What medicines had he prescribed for Miss Harfield?” I asked.

  ‘I can show you,” answered Holmes as he began rooting about among the retorts and dishes and papers that littered the table. “These are what I managed to take from Miss Harfield’s room. Various vegetable alkalis; most of them powerful sedatives, but some stimulants too. Chloral hydrate here, and bromide - well, see for yourself.”

  I examined the labels. “I don’t like the look of this, Holmes. All these medicines can be highly poisonous at the wrong dosage. Atropine - it can cause madness, as you know. Strychnine here - very similar - and yet no dose is given on either bottle. This is most irregular and disturbing. And what is the fellow’s line of treatment? Why does he prescribe powerful sedatives and powerful stimulants for the same case?”

  “Those were my thoughts precisely, Watson, when I looked at the medicines last week. This business begins to look very dark, would you not agree?”

  “I would indeed. Do you suspect that he is deliberately making the lady ill? Is he poisoning her?” All my professional honour as a physician revolted at the thought. “That is a foul betrayal of trust, Holmes. It is unpardonable.”

  “I am not confident that there is any deliberate attack on the lady’s life, though that is certainly a possibility. I am inclined to think that the attack is on her reason.”

  “You may well be right,” I agreed. “Frenzy, delirium, loss of memory are all likely effects of the drugs here.”

  Holmes sat awhile in silence. He walked over to the window and opening a shutter, stared out at the night sky and the city beneath it. “What am I to do, Watson?” he asked. “The situation has changed. This case seemed merely curious at first, with Miss Davies bringing her intriguing tale of impossible events, but it has led us to a dangerous, cruel plot against an innocent woman. It is a serious and urgent matter now.”

  “My dear fellow,” I answered, “there is surely no question about what you should do. You must go to the police.”

  “So that they may arrest Harfield?”

  “Of course.”

  “On what charge?”

  “He is trying to undermine Miss Harfield’s health, to break her, body and mind.”

  “I am not aware that that is a criminal offence. An assault, perhaps? I am not sure. And even if there is a charge, what is the evidence? That another medical man has his doubts about the wisdom of the treatment being given.”

  “Well, yes, it sounds weak, I grant you, but there is also the matter of the piano-roll, and the voice down the chimney.”

  “A nervous maid thinks she heard a voice in her room, a private detective found a cigar-end on the roof, and a man plays piano-rolls on his piano. This is not evidence, Watson. All these poisonous medicines - every one of them is a recognised medicine, is it not, prescribed by hundreds of doctors? Any half-competent lawyer would laugh all our ‘evidence’ out of court.”

  “So you do not think the police would be prepared to arrest Harfield and charge him?”

  “I do not.”

  “Wait a moment, Holmes. What about Miss Harfield? If she were to testify, surely a conviction would be likely.”

  “Ah, there is the problem in a nutshell. In her present state of mind she cannot possibly testify. She is forgetful, confused, probably delirious, deluded, and frightened. A worse witness cannot be imagined.”

  “But after a few weeks of care--”

  “Indeed, after that, perhaps her brother could be arrested. And when might she be able to get those weeks of care, and be well enough to testify? Only after the arrest of her brother.”

  The truth was born in upon on me; Miss Harfield was trapped. It was not so easy to see a way out. It was late, and I was tired, but I had little inclination to go to bed. I lit a cigarette and turned the problem over in my mind, but try though I might, I could find no solution. “Can anything be done?” I asked. “Can more evidence be collected, perhaps? I should be glad to give what help I can.”

  Holmes sat with his eyes closed. Were it not for the nervous drumming of his finger-tips on the arm of his chair, I might have thought he slept. “Suppose we try to gain more evidence, and in some way alert Harfield’s suspicions,” he said in a quiet voice, as if he were talking to himself. “What then? He might decamp w
ith his sister. I have no doubt that in her present state he can get money out of her easily enough. We might lose track of him, and we would have made matters worse for her.” After a long pause he continued. “On the other hand, what if I confront him? In that case, he can hardly continue his activities against his sister. Seeing himself discovered, and surrounded by the forces, official and unofficial, of the law, he will desist from his plot against her, and will probably flee the house. His sister will be saved, but he will escape justice.”

  “Are you sure you can scare him off?” I asked. “You were not sanguine a few minutes ago about the case against him.”

  “I was not sanguine about convincing a jury. I am a good deal more sanguine about convincing Harfield that he would not be well advised to continue his schemes under the eyes of Sherlock Holmes and the Metropolitan Police.”

  “Then to my mind there is no question as to what you should do. An innocent lady is in grave danger. You must save her, Holmes. If Harfield escapes, so be it. Will you stand by and watch her life destroyed in order that you may bring the destroyer to justice?”

  “Ah, Watson, my one-man British jury! You are quite right, of course. Thank you; the issue is decided. I shall decide how to go about it tomorrow. For now, I bid you good-night.”

  It was two days later. Noon in Belford Crescent was the time and place Holmes had set for his meeting with Harfield. Having spent the morning at the practice I returned at midday to Baker Street, whence we set off for Belford Crescent. “By the way, Watson,” said Holmes, as we sat together in the cab, “my suggestion to Harfield that he receive us in his house was couched in terms which may lead him to suppose that the police are watching him. There is no need to disabuse him of his mistake.” As our cab rattled past Regent’s Park towards Kentish Town Holmes glanced keenly out at the world that flashed past; his eyes took on the alert glare of the predator. “Oh, another thing,” he said. “You will be pleased to hear that we shall be joined by the mysterious organ-grinder, so-called.”

  “I shall be very interested to see him, at last,” I replied, “but how do you know he will be there?”

  “Because I sent him a note purporting to come from friend Harfield.”

  We left our cab at the western end of Belford Crescent and walked down. It was much as I had pictured it to be: a respectable little street, its terraced houses built in the stilted manner of the last century, their windows curtained and doorsteps scrubbed. As we made our way along the curve of the street we passed nobody; none of the traffic, wheeled and pedestrian, that thronged the busy high street we had just left had found its way down this little backwater. It was not difficult to see how the appearance of unaccountable strangers would cause such consternation here.

  When we reached the Harfield house, Holmes strode up the steps and rapped on the door. It was opened by the maid Aggie. If she had any suspicion that Holmes was the delivery man whom she had admitted at the tradesmans’ entrance a few days before, she did not show it. As we walked in, Holmes warned her in a low voice that two more gentlemen would be coming soon to join us and her master. “Yes sir,” she said, and showed us into the parlour. There at the fireplace stood a tall man, pink in the face, a lock of fine tow hair falling over his brow. His elbow rested upon the mantelpiece as he looked coolly down at us from beneath his fair lashes. There was no doubt that we were in the presence of Mr Rupert Harfield. He took the cigar from his mouth and exhaled a cloud of blue smoke.

  “I am a busy man, Mr Holmes, very busy. I trust that this conference is necessary.”

  “Not in the least, Mr Harfield,” was Holmes’s calm reply. “There is no necessity at all for my involvement. If you wish it the police will be very willing to pursue the matter instead. I am sorry to have troubled you; good day.” With these words Holmes turned on his heel and made towards the door. I was about to follow him when Harfield called us back, with as good a show of bluster as he could manage. “Come now, you fellows! Now you’re here, you might as well stay, both of you. I don’t know what you want of me, or why you talk about the police, but I’ll hear what you have to say.”

  Holmes replaced his hat and cane on the table. “That is very wise of you,” said he in his most feline manner. “I assured my colleague here not an hour ago that you would listen to reason, did I not, Watson?”

  At this moment the doorbell sounded, at which Harfield started visibly. “Don’t be nervous, Mr Harfield,” said Holmes. “I took the liberty of inviting your friends the Arrighelli brothers to our little meeting. This must be they.” We heard Aggie open the door, and in a moment the brothers entered, to my unutterable astonishment. I seemed to be in the presence not of two men, but of one man and his reflection in a looking-glass. Evidently identical twins, they were stocky men in the late twenties, swarthy of skin and black of hair and eyes. In dress as well as person they were identical, down to the red flannel waistcoats with brass buttons of which I had heard so much. The pair frowned and flashed quick glances at me and Holmes, evidently puzzled by our presence. They nodded curtly to Harfield; their eyes seemed to ask what was going on, but they said not a word.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am Mr Sherlock Holmes,” said my friend, “and this is my colleague Dr Watson. Mr Rupert Harfield, of course, you know. It was I who left the note for you asking you to come here today. You will forgive my little subterfuge. We are here to discuss the events of the last month or so, events in which you played your part. Now you are here, let us proceed.” He turned to Harfield. “I shall outline what took place. Pray correct any inaccuracies.

  “It all started a month ago when you, Mr Harfield, stored some stolen goods in this house. Unfortunately for you, your sister saw them. She confronted you and insisted that the goods be removed. You arranged for them to be taken away at night, in secret. But you still had quite a problem, did you not? Suppose she told her friends, or worse, went to the police? How could you be sure that would never happen? You thought of your sister’s mild, perhaps timid disposition, and you saw a way of playing on this weakness; you decided to make her mistrust herself, to doubt the evidence of her own senses; you would make it appear to herself and others that she was a wholly unreliable witness. To this end you devised a number of cunning tricks designed to undermine what little self-assurance she possessed.” Holmes counted them off on his fingers as he spoke. “Firstly, when you knew your sister to be in her room you climbed out on to the roof, onto the chimney-stack and spoke vile phrases down the chimney that served her fireplace, so that she would believe herself to be hearing imaginary voices.”

  The brothers, still frowning as they listened, muttered to each other in Italian, with an occasional angry gesture.

  “Then there was the mysterious piano music. You had some rolls made of imperfect piano-playing, complete with false notes and corrected mistakes. Exactly how did you make use of them, I wonder? Did you perhaps deny to Miss Harfield that you heard anything while the piano was playing? Perhaps you even showed her the empty room, with none at the piano. The poor lady must have been quite convinced that she was losing her reason.

  “Another little scheme involved the brothers Arrighelli here. You persuaded them to appear, identically dressed, in different parts of the crescent. I note that the days on which they appeared were the days on which your sister ventured out for a short constitutional. One of the brothers would be stationed outside your house - your sister’s house, I should say - where she could not fail to see him, and the other would be waiting round the corner, evidently a creature with supernatural powers of locomotion. What could she think, but that she was seeing things as well as hearing them?”

  “I don’t know what the devil you’re talking about,” snarled Harfield.

  “This was all a joke, he tells us,” exclaimed one of the brothers.

  “He tells us, it will be funny,” continued the other. “His sister she will think it very funny,” the f
ellow shouted, spitting out the words and glaring at Harfield. “We don’t know nothing about this bad thing, he don’t tell us nothing.”

  Harfield had quite lost his blustering poise, despite his pretence of denial. He stood there, a crumpled figure against the mantelpiece as Holmes continued his inexorable account of events.

  “Now we come to the medical treatment you arranged for Miss Harfield. Medical treatment, did I say? I had rather call it a systematic derangement of the senses, forced upon an innocent woman against her will or without her knowledge. Bromide, chloral, strychnia, atropine in unspecified quantities - these have all been prescribed for your sister. Or have I made a mistake? Shall we go upstairs and check on the medicines there?”

  “You can do as you damned well please,” muttered Harfield.

  “When, I wonder,” continued Holmes, “did the idea of having her pronounced insane come to you? Should she be committed to an insane asylum, you as her next of kin would get your hands on her house and her money. What had begun as a defence against her telling what she knew grew into a solution to your financial problems. Perhaps you hoped that the drugs with which you plied her would result in her death.”

  “I never did!” cried Harfield from the floor. “That’s a damned lie.”

  “Indeed? I shall take your word for it - although now you have spoken out in denial of that charge, I think we can safely take your silence concerning the other charges as an admission of guilt.”

  Throughout my friend’s exposition the brothers’ muttering had been rising in a crescendo of what sounded like oaths. Suddenly one of them dashed forward; in an instant he was upon Harfield, and with a terrific blow sent him crashing into the fireplace. As I lunged forward and pulled him back by his arm the other twin moved forward, fists clenched. Harfield cowered on the floor amid the scattered poker and fire-tongs, wiping blood from his mouth and looking up in terror at the brothers.