A movement at the door, and a dry, rasping cough interrupted them again.
It was the thickset policeman, Sergeant Cuff. “Well, Mr. Dickens… for someone who did not know the corpse, you seemed to have reached here pretty quickly.”
There was a little scream from the girl. She had gone pale, the back of her hand to her mouth, staring at the detective.
Dickens made an irritated clicking noise with his tongue. “Miss Hexton was a friend of Wraybrook,” he admonished.
“ ‘E’s dead?” cried the girl in a curious wail.
“Murdered, miss,” the policeman confirmed without sympathy.
The girl let out another wail and went running out of the room. They heard her ascending the stairs outside.
“Congratulations on your diplomatic touch, Sergeant,” Dickens reproved sarcastically.
Sergeant Cuff sniffed. “The girl’s a dredgers daughter. Gaffer Hexton. He would rob a corpse without thinking any more about it. In fact, he was going to be one of my next port of calls. He and his daughter probably set Wraybrook up to be done in, if they didn’t do it themselves. Wraybrook was a godsend to these river thieves. Whoever did him in has made themselves a fortune.”
Dickens frowned. “You seem very positive that it was a robbery.” Then he started. “You’ve just implied that you knew Wraybrook and knew that he had something of value on him. Look around you, Sergeant Cuff. Would a rich man be living in these frugal rooms?”
Sergeant Cuff had a superior smile. “We’re not stupid in the force, Mr. Dickens. Of course I knew Wraybrook. Been watching him for some months. I recognized the body at once but had to wait for a constable to arrive before I came on here. I suppose that you haven’t touched anything?”
“Nothing to touch,” retorted Dickens in irritation.
“I don’t suppose there would be. How did you come to know Wraybrook?”
“I didn’t. His name was on his shirt collar. A laundry mark. I deduced he was a solicitor by the cut of his cloth and went to look him up in Kelly’s. Miss Mary at the Grapes saved me the trouble as she knew of a Eugene Wraybrook and indicated where he lived. It was as simple as that.”
“Very clever. Had you confided in me that you had seen the name, I would have saved you the trouble of coming along. Wraybrook arrived in London six months ago from India. We had word from the constabulary in Bombay that Wraybrook was suspected of a theft from one of the Hindu temples. The theft was of a large diamond that had been one of the eyes in the statute of some heathenish idol. But while he was suspected, there was no firm evidence to arrest the man. He was allowed to travel to England, and we were asked to keep a watch on him. It was expected that he would try to sell the diamond and make capital on it. He was a clever cove, Mr. Dickens. I suppose, being a solicitor and all, he was careful. Settled in these rooms and plied for business. Not much business, I assure you. Seems he was eking out some living from his savings. We’re a patient crowd, Mr. Dickens, we watched and waited. But that’s all…. Until tonight. I guess someone else had found out about the diamond. He must have kept it on his person the whole time, because we searched these rooms several times, unbeknown to him.” Sergeant Cuff sighed deeply. “I suspect the girl and Gaffer Hexton, and that’s where my steps take me next.”
He touched his hat to Dickens and Collins and turned from the room.
Dickens stood rubbing his jaw thoughtfully.
Collins sighed and picked up the lamp. Its crystal hangings tinkled a little as he did so.
“That’s that. I think we should return to our decanter of port.”
Dickens was staring at the lamp. There was an odd expression on his face.
“Let’s take that lamp into the office where we can have a look at it under the gaslight.”
Collins frowned but did not argue.
Dickens stood, appearing to examine the dangling crystals for a while, and then he grunted in satisfaction. He instructed Collins to put the lamp on the table, turn it out, and then he bent forward and wrenched one of the crystals from its slight chain with brute force, wrenching the links of the chain open. He held up the crystal to the gas burner. Then he walked to the window and drew it sharply across the surface. The score mark had almost split the glass pane.
“And that, dear Charley, unless I am a complete moron, is the missing diamond. By heavens, it’s quite a big one. No wonder anyone would get light-fingered in proximity to it. I suspect that on the proceeds of a sale to an unscrupulous fence, even allowing for such exorbitant commission that such a person would take, one could live well for the rest of one’s life.”
His son-in-law frowned. “What made you spot it?”
“Look at the crystals-clear, pure white glass. When this bauble was hanging by them, it emitted a strange yellow luminescence, a curious quality of light. If it was crystal, then it could not be the same crystal, and it is entirely a different shape. Round and yellow. When I peered closely at it just now, I saw that its fitting on the chain was unlike the others. My dear Charley, if you are going to hide something, the best place to hide it is where everyone can see it. Make it a commonplace object. I assure you that nine times out of ten it will not be spotted.”
Collins grinned. “I’ll tell Wilkie that. My brother likes to know these things.”
“Well, let’s follow the redoubtable Sergeant Cuff. I think that this will take the main plank out of his theory that Wraybrook was murdered for the sake of the diamond.”
As they left the late Eugene Wraybrook’s rooms, a thickset man was hurrying down the stairs. He moved so quickly that he collided with Dickens, grunting as he staggered with the impact. Then, without an apology, the man thrust him aside and continued on.
“Mr. Bert Hegeton,” muttered Dickens, straightening his coat. “He seems in a great hurry. Oops. I think he’s dropped something.”
Indeed, a small thin leather covering of no more than two and a half inches by three and a half inches lay on the top stair where it had fallen from the man’s pocket.
“What is it?” asked Collins.
Dickens bent and retrieved it. “A card case, that’s all. Visiting cards. Not the sort of thing one would expect a schoolteacher in this area to have.” He was about to put it on the wooden three-cornered stand in the corner of the landing when he paused and drew out the small pieces of white cardboard inside. He grimaced and showed one to Collins.
They were cheaply printed and bore the same legend as on the handwritten pasteboard on Wraybrook’s door. Dickens smiled grimly.
They ascended the stairs. They could hear Sergeant Cuff’s gruff tones and Beth Hexton’s sobbing replies.
Sergeant Cuff looked annoyed when they entered the room unannounced.
“You’ll excuse me, Sergeant.” Dickens smiled, turning directly to the girl. “Does Mr. Hegeton live in this tenement?”
The girl stared at him from a tearstained face.
“Mr. Dickens…,” began the sergeant indignantly, but Dickens cut him short with a gesture. “I need an answer,” he said firmly.
“On the next floor above this,” the girl said, trying to regain some of her composure.
“A jealous type?”
“Jealous?”
“Come, Miss Hexton. You said that he was attracted to you and you rejected him. Isn’t that so? In turn, you were attracted to Mr. Wraybrook?”
The girl nodded. “Gene was a gen’leman.”
“So you have told us. But Bert Hegeton was not?”
“He was a beast. Yes, he and Gene had an argument this morning over me.” Her eyes suddenly widened. “Bert said he would do for Gene. ‘E said that. Told Gene that he wouldn’t stand for him pinching ‘is girl. I was never Berts girl. Straight out, I wasn’t.”
Sergeant Cuff was shaking his head. “Come, Mr. Dickens, this won’t do at all. We know that whoever killed Wraybrook robbed him and the cause was-”
He stopped because Dickens was holding out his hand toward him. On his palm lay the diamond.
/> “It was where we could all see it, in the crystals of the lamp,” explained Collins.
Dickens then held out the visiting card case. “Hegeton just brushed past me on the stairs and dropped this. I think he killed Wraybrook in a jealous passion, removed certain items from the corpse to make it look like the work of dredgers, and left him in the river. He came back here, and then he found Sergeant Cuff and us in the house and panicked. Instead of hiding the things that he had taken from the body in his room, he decided to go to dispose of them in the river. Fortunately, for you, Cuff, he dropped Wraybrook’s visitors cards on the way out.”
He paused while Sergeant Cuff digested his words.
“Jealousy, over the girl?”
“Exactly so.”
Sergeant Cuff was thoughtful.
There came the sound of footsteps ascending.
“Then we won’t have long to see if your theory is a reality,” Sergeant Cuff said grimly. “I have had a couple of constables outside with strict orders not to let anyone leave the house until I gave permission. If Hegeton has Wraybrook’s personal possessions on him, then he would have been unable to discard them, and he should still have them on him now.”
They turned as a police constable came through the door, ushering the white-faced Hegeton before him.
“What’s all this?” he cried angrily. “You can’t-”
“I can and I do,” Sergeant Cuff said calmly “Empty your pockets.”
Hegeton needed a little persuasion, but after a short while a number of items lay on the table before him, including a silver hunter watch.
Cuff picked it up and glanced at it. “Bert Hegeton? That’s your name?”
The thickset man nodded resentfully.
“Then you would not be bearing the initials EW, would you. The inscription on the watch is ‘EW from his friends, Advocates Club. Bombay’ You are right, Mr. Dickens. This is our man.”
Beth Hexton gave a little scream and lunged toward the schoolteacher but was held back by Sergeant Cuff.
“You killed him, you swine. You killed him!” she cried.
Bert Hegeton turned a pleading face to her. “I did it to protect you, Beth. He wouldn’t marry you. Not him with his high-and-mighty airs. He only wanted one thing. He would have discarded you after that. I love you, Beth. I-”
The girl again leaped forward, beating at him with her fists.
The constable and Sergeant Cuff separated them.
Half an hour later Dickens and Collins were back in the Cozy of the Grapes, sipping their port. Dickens had been frowning in concentration ever since they had returned. Suddenly his features dissolved into a rare smile of satisfaction.
“Damn it, Charley! I can feed parts of this little drama into my book and use it to make the tale come alive.”
Collins was cautious. “You’ll need to change the names, surely?”
“Nothing simpler. Bert Hegeton now…” Dickens paused in thought. “Why, I do believe that is easy enough. Hegeton in Old English means a place without a hedge. Do you know there is such a place name in the county of Middlesex, which has now been corrupted into the name Headstone? So let us have Bert… no Bradley, sounds more distinguished, Bradley Headstone.” He smiled in satisfaction.
“Eugene Wraybrook?” queried his son-in-law.
“Even easier. Just change the ending of Wraybrook into another word meaning exactly the same thing-brook becomes burn. Wrayburn. The name still means the place of the remote stream.”
Collins grinned. His father-in-law enjoyed etymology and playing with words. “So what about poor Beth Hexton?”
“Beth is Elizabeth, so we make her Lizzie. Hexton can become Hexam. And there we have my new characters. I can get on now, build up some enthusiasm about rewriting my book. I can even bring in Beth’s father, the dredger. Gaffer Hexam. Ah, to hell with those critics who would say my work is becoming full of dry moral rectitude. Away with such shadows.”
He struck a pose. Collins knew that his father-in-law liked to perform.
Hence, horrible shadow.
Unreal mockery, hence. Why, so being gone.
I am a man again.
Collins nodded slowly. “Well, there was no detective needed in Macbeth, but this has, indeed, been a neat piece of detection.”
“These shadows passing before us, Charley, are the substance of the writers craft,” mused Dickens. “You can let time slip by you with its shadows, who have the agility of a fox, now you see them, now you don’t. The writer must capture them before they disappear. Mind you, I think I can dispense with the character of Sergeant Cuff.”
Charles Collins grimaced. “I felt sorry for poor Sergeant Cuff, off on the wrong track about the diamond and the reason for the murder.” He suddenly grinned. “I’ll have to tell this story to my brother, Wilkie. He’s been saying that he wants to write a novel in which a policeman is called upon to solve a theft of some enormous diamond and subsequent murders. This might give him some ideas.”
Dickens chuckled with a shake of his head. “A policeman solving crimes of theft and murder in a novel? I’ll have to have a word with your brother. No one will believe a policeman as a detective hero.”
“I seem to recall that when Sir James Graham set up his detective department twenty years ago, it was you who used your campaigning journalism to break down public hostility to having a dozen Metropolitan Police sergeants working among them in plain clothes solving crimes.”
Dickens pursed his lips in irritation. “That’s different,” he snapped. “You are talking about a police detective in a novel. The reading public will never buy such a book.”
THE AFFRAY AT THE KILDARE STREET CLUB
My narratives of the adventures of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the well-known consulting detective, have always attempted a modicum of discreetness. There is so much of both a personal and professional nature that Holmes confided in me which I have not passed on to posterity-much, I confess, at Holmes’s personal request. Indeed, among Holmes’s personal papers, I had noticed several aide-memoirs that would have expanded my sketches of his cases several times over. It is not often appreciated that while I indulged in my literary diversions, Holmes himself was possessed of a writing talent as demonstrated by over a score of works ranging from his Practical Handbook of Bee Culture to The Book of Life: the science of observation and deduction. But Holmes, to my knowledge, had made it a rule never to write about any of his specific cases.
It was therefore with some surprise that, one day during the spring of 1894, after the adventure I narrated as “The Empty House,” I received from Holmes a small sheaf of handwritten papers with the exhortation that I read them in order that I might understand more fully Holmes’s involvement with the man responsible for the death of the son of Lord Maynooth. Holmes, of course, did not want these details to be revealed to the public. I did acquire permission from him at a later date to the effect that they could be published after his death. In the meantime, I have appended this brief foreword to be placed with the papers and handed both to my bankers and executors with the instruction that they may be released only one hundred years from this date.
It may, then, also be revealed a matter that I have always been sensitive about, in view of the prejudices of our age. Sherlock Holmes was one of the Holmes family of Galway, Ireland, and, like his brother, Mycroft, was a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, where his closest companion had been the poet Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, who even now, as I write, languishes in Reading Gaol. This is the principal reason why I have been reticent about acknowledging Holmes’s background, for it would serve no useful purpose if one fell foul of the bigotry and intolerance that arises out of such a revelation. Many good men and true, but with such backgrounds, have found themselves being shunned by their professions or found their businesses have been destroyed overnight.
This revelation will probably come as no surprise to those discerning readers who have followed Holmes’s adventures. There have been clues e
nough of Holmes’s origins. Holmes’s greatest adversary, James Moriarty, was of a similar background. Most people will know that the Moriarty family are from Kerry, the very name being an Anglicization of the Irish name O Muircheartaigh, meaning, interestingly enough, “expert navigator.” Moriarty once held a chair of mathematics in Queen’s University in Belfast. It was in Ireland that the enmity between Holmes and Moriarty first started. But that is a story which does not concern us.
If there were not clues enough, there was also Holmes’s fascination with the Celtic languages, of which he was something of an expert. In my narrative “The Devil’s Foot,” I mentioned Holmes’s study on Chaldean Roots in the Ancient Cornish Language. I did not mention that this work won high praise from such experts as the British Museum’s Henry Jenner, the greatest living expert on the Cornish language. Holmes was able to demonstrate the close connection between the Cornish verb and the Irish verb systems.
The Holmes family were well known in Galway. Indeed, it was Holmes’s uncle, Robert Holmes, the famous Galway barrister and Queen’s Counsel, whom the Irish have to thank for the organization of the Irish National School system for the poorer classes, for he was a member of the Duke of Leinster’s seven-man education commission in the 1830s and 1840s, responsible for many innovative ideas. These few brief words will demonstrate, therefore, the significance of this aide-memoire, which Holmes passed to me in the spring of 1894.
My initial encounter with my second most dangerous adversary happened when I was lunching with my brother, Mycroft, in the Kildare Street Club, in Dublin, during September of 1873. I was barely twenty years old at the time, and thoughts of a possible career as a consulting detective had not yet formulated in my mind. In fact, my mind was fully occupied by the fact that I would momentarily be embarking for England, where I had won a demyship at one of the Oxford Colleges with the grand sum of 95 pounds per annum.
I had won the scholarship having spent my time at Trinity College, Dublin, in the study of chemistry and botany. My knowledge of chemistry owed much to a great Trinity scholar, Maxwell Simpson, whose lectures at the Park Street Medical School advanced my knowledge of organic chemistry considerably. Simpson was the first man to synthesize succinic acid, a dibasic acid obtained by the dry distillation of amber. It was thanks to this great countryman of mine that I had produced a dissertation thought laudable enough to win me the scholarship to Oxford.
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