The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--Sherlock Holmes and the Crusader's Curse

by Stuart Douglas

“Nothing whatsoever. I fear I was too preoccupied with hiding myself to take much notice of the man I was hiding from.”

  “A shame, but no matter. I doubt we shall need further evidence.”

  Again, Fisher began to protest and again Holmes continued as though he had never spoken.

  “Which brings us to the reason you were outside, and why you could not be found there,” he said. “Now here, I know the broad strokes, but not the specifics. I should be grateful if you could fill them in, purely to satisfy my own curiosity. First though, it is about time I started using your real name, is it not, Mr Thorpe?”

  The effect of this last sentence was dramatic. Reilly had perhaps expected it, for he simply smiled broadly at Holmes and bobbed his head towards him in acknowledgement. Fisher, however, exploded from his chair, catching his precious notebook with the side of his hand and sending it flying across the room.

  “Mr Thorpe! What on earth are you babbling about, Holmes? This is no more Mr Thorpe than it is the prime minister!”

  “On the contrary, Inspector. May I introduce Elias Thorpe, son of Edward Thorpe, and nephew to the late Lord Robert Thorpe.”

  “How do you do?” Reilly – Thorpe – said, with another nod.

  “Explain yourself, Holmes, and quickly, or I’ll charge you with wasting police time and throw you in the cells myself! Lestrade and the rest of them in Scotland Yard might appreciate this circus act, but I don’t!”

  “Circus act, Inspector? That is a little harsh. Watson has accused me of a taste for the dramatic before now, though, so perhaps you have a point, if one unkindly expressed. However, I am not entirely sure what it is you wish me to explain first. Would you prefer that I discuss why Elias Thorpe chose to call himself Stephen Reilly while he was in England, or why he was skulking about the grounds of his uncle’s estate in the dead of night? Or, indeed, why he sent that particularly damning telegram? Though,” he mused, “all three are intimately connected, so perhaps I can satisfy you on every count at the same time.” He turned to the newly revealed Elias Thorpe. “With your permission, of course.”

  Thorpe agreed with a smile of pleasure. “This is the first real enjoyment I’ve had since I arrived in this dreadful country,” he said. “Please do continue.”

  “Very well. Fifty-three years ago, Edward Thorpe, the younger brother of Lord Robert Thorpe, did what many young men of his class and prospects did at the time, and took ship for the Far East, determined to make his fortune in the colonies. He took with him a reasonable amount of money, given to him by his father, and did quite well for himself, buying a plantation and building it up over several profitable years. Then, sadly, he contracted one of the many unpleasant infectious diseases which are rife in hotter climates than our own and, with none of the inherited resistance of the native population, quickly weakened and died. As was, and is, the practice, his body could not be returned home, but his family were informed, they grieved and, in time, Edward became merely a fading memory.

  “A fading memory everywhere, that is, except in the minds of the local woman to whom he had formed a deep attachment, and the son whom he loved. Of course that son was Elias Thorpe, the gentleman who sits before us now.”

  “Bravo.” Thorpe clapped his hands slowly together. “You have uncovered my secret, Mr Holmes, and though I would have preferred that it remain secret until I left these shores, I hope that I can rely on the discretion of everyone in this room to ensure that nobody else finds out.”

  “Of course,” said Holmes, speaking for both of us, though Fisher remained pointedly silent, “but why must it remain a secret?”

  “For a number of reasons, some of which may seem foolish to you, but are of paramount importance to me.” He sighed, and the smile fell from his face. “Naturally, I was born out of wedlock – no minister would marry an English gentleman to a native woman, even if the gentleman was minded to do so. This is no issue whatever at home, but I know that English morals are… less flexible, and more hypocritical, than ours and I should not wish my father’s memory to be tarnished in any way by scandal, no matter how long ago or how remote. Also, I am a wealthy and successful man, used to the respect of my fellows. But if it were known that I was the closest living relative of my father’s brother, there would be whispers that I was only in England to seek financial advantage, to make a claim on the family estate. I have no desire to live in England, nor to own the Thorpe lands.” He laughed, but there was a bitterness in it. “Oh, I had a half-formed, romantic notion on the ship across that I would fall in love with England, the birthplace of my beloved father, buy Thorpe Manor and set myself up as the new Lord Thorpe. But the reality is that England is cold and miserable and dirty, and I am no Englishman. I could no more make my home here than I could make it among the Eskimos.”

  I bristled a little at this description, then remembered he had known only the wet heat of the Far East. And he had spent his entire time in England trapped in a freezing snowstorm. I wondered if he would like the country any better in the height of summer, when every tree, every bush and every field was in fecund bloom.

  Inspector Fisher, though, had other questions on his mind. He had sat quietly while Thorpe and Holmes conversed, as engrossed in the story as I was myself, but now he spoke up.

  “This is all very interesting, but I have yet to hear why Mr… Thorpe was in the grounds at two o’clock in the morning, or the reason for his threatening telegram?”

  “Because he loved his father as much as his father loved him, Inspector,” Holmes replied.

  “Will you stop talking in riddles, Holmes, and give me a straight answer to a straight question. For that matter, how do you come to know all this?”

  “I, too, would be interested to know that, Mr Holmes,” agreed Thorpe.

  “All too simply,” replied Holmes. “Almost from the first moment I met the supposed Mr Reilly, there was something tickling at the back of my mind, some sense that I had met him before. It was only when I saw him swinging a walking stick in the hall that I recognised the similarity with the younger of the two Thorpe brothers in the painting in the main hall. The shape of the nose and ears, the spacing of the eyes, there could be no doubt that the two were related. From that assumption, a single telegram to an acquaintance in Malaya confirmed the details, which are common knowledge there.”

  “I have nothing to be ashamed of back home, it’s true,” Reilly confirmed. “The opposite, in fact. My workers like to think they work for an Englishman and I am afraid I had grown to think of myself as one. It was only coming here, and living for a day or two among the real thing, that convinced me that I am not.” He frowned and allowed his eyes to drop. “I am embarrassed to think of myself only a few days ago, lambasting poor Salah for daring to consider himself a worthy owner of an English estate. My hypocrisy is painful for me to recall!”

  Fisher was still staring at Thorpe. “Very well, Holmes, this man’s name is Thorpe and not Reilly,” has said, “and he’s the half-Malayan offspring of a long dead Thorpe brother come to England to look at his father’s ancestral home. For the moment, let’s say I’m willing to accept all that.” He stopped, unable, even hypothetically, to allow his own statement to pass without qualification. “Or at least willing to do so until I get a chance to check the facts for myself. Let’s say that – but even if we do, I shall still repeat my earlier questions. If you are entirely innocent, what were you doing in the grounds of the manor in the middle of the night, and what about the telegram you sent?”

  Thorpe smiled, then turned to Holmes. “I should not like to steal your thunder, Mr Holmes. I am sure you can enlighten the inspector?”

  “Of course,” said Holmes. “You recall, Inspector, that I said at the beginning that one answer would cover both of the questions to which you required a response? That answer is, I suspect, contained in Mr Thorpe’s suitcase.”

  “In his suitcase?”

  Inspector Fisher and I spoke almost as one, but it was clear from Elias Thorpe’s amused
reaction that he at least knew exactly what Holmes meant.

  Fisher jumped to his feet and threw open the door. “Halliday!” he bellowed down the corridor. “Halliday! Go and find the suitcase the prisoner had with him and bring it here.”

  He closed the door with enough force to cause the glass to shudder, and immediately confronted Holmes. “I warned you before that I’d arrest you for wasting police time. I assure you that I’ll do so, if this suitcase ends up containing nothing but shirts and socks!”

  Holmes was sanguine. “I do not think you will be disappointed, Inspector,” he said.

  “Do not be so sure, Mr Holmes,” Thorpe chuckled. “Some men are born to be disappointed.”

  Before Fisher could react, a heavy hand knocked on the office door and Constable Halliday entered. He placed the suitcase he carried on the desk and, at a sign from Fisher, departed again. With the exception of Thorpe, who remained seated, we all stood round as Fisher turned the suitcase to himself.

  The case itself was nondescript, brown leather with brass corners, a little misshapen at one end and with a long but light scratch extending across one side. With a sceptical squint in Holmes’s direction, Fisher pressed the locks with his thumbs and flipped the lid open. I leaned forward to see what was revealed inside.

  All that was in the case were the usual shirts, ties and the like and, on the side which had appeared misshapen, a metal box, which was slightly too tall for the case but had been crammed inside even so. I realised what it must be a moment before Holmes announced it.

  “The ashes of Mr Edward Thorpe,” he said quietly. “Brought from Malaya by his son to scatter on the grounds he once played in as a child.”

  I looked down at Thorpe for confirmation and saw tears rolling down his cheeks, and knew that what Holmes had said was true. Inspector Fisher was also looking at the tearful man and, I was pleased to see, made no attempt to open the tin.

  “My mother had promised him, you see,” Thorpe said, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping his face. “His final wish was to be brought home to England, and though she was never able to do it, I thought this was the perfect opportunity.”

  “The telegram!” I blurted out, suddenly recognising its significance. “You were talking about scattering your father’s ashes!”

  “Exactly, Dr Watson. The telegram was to my representative in London, apprising him of my intentions. I was keen to do my duty and be gone. I intended to scatter the ashes by the lake. As soon as I had done so, I intended to leave for home.”

  “Knowing that a police investigation was still active,” accused Fisher, but his heart wasn’t in it. He seemed to have accepted that Thorpe was who Holmes said he was, and that he had been engaged on a matter of filial duty. He closed the suitcase and placed it on the floor, then opened the door and called Halliday again.

  “Take this gentleman to the waiting room along with his case. Keep an eye on him and don’t let him leave, but he’s no longer under arrest.” He turned to Thorpe. “Is that acceptable to you? I can’t release you until I’ve checked a few things, but you are no longer a suspect in the murder of Alim Salah.”

  As he spoke the dead man’s name a change came over him. It was clear that he had remembered Holmes’s earlier words about the killer. Suddenly, he was impatient to be done with Elias Thorpe.

  “Well, don’t just stand there, Halliday!” he snapped. “Get moving!”

  Halliday hurriedly grabbed the suitcase and hustled Thorpe out of the door, with barely enough time for Holmes and I to bid him farewell. As soon as he was gone and the door firmly closed behind him, Fisher rounded on Holmes.

  “And now, I would be very much obliged if you could explain what you meant earlier by describing Salah’s killer as a big man who’d killed before?”

  Holmes gestured to Fisher’s desk. “I suggest you take a seat, Inspector. I have rather a lot to tell you.”

  * * *

  Once Holmes had repeated everything he had told me in the Silent Man pub, and had shown Fisher the telegram he had received from Lestrade describing Billy Robinson, Halliday was called back inside and ordered to prepare a four-seater carriage for the return journey to Thorpe Manor. Fisher suggested we go to the front to wait for it to be brought round.

  I had completely forgotten that Frederick Schell had accompanied the inspector and Reilly to Stainforth, but as we passed through the public area of the station, I saw him sitting at the end of a row of hard chairs, his hands resting on a wooden walking stick and his rheumy eyes blinking blearily in our direction. The carriage would be a few minutes, so I wandered over to say goodbye.

  “Dr Watson?” he said, looking up and squinting at me uncertainly. “What brings you here?”

  “I’m here with Mr Holmes,” I explained slowly. “We had one or two things to clear up with the inspector.”

  “With the inspector?” he asked, but he seemed confused, and those flashes of temper and personality I had occasionally seen at the manor house were conspicuously absent. Clearly, the news about his wife and Captain Hopkirk had crushed the man. Now he appeared to be exactly what I had taken him for, that first night at dinner. A decrepit old man, with only a tenuous grip on his faculties.

  “I was betrayed, you know,” he went on, without waiting for clarification. “My wife and Hopkirk betrayed me.” A single tear rolled down his face. “They were carrying on behind my back, you know. And I wondered why he asked to come here with us.” He sighed and wiped at his face with the back of his hand. “Well, I know now.”

  He shook his head and I looked about for someone to keep an eye on him, but before I could do so, Holmes pulled me out of the way and kneeled by his side.

  “What did you just say, Mr Schell?” he barked, his eyes blazing with sudden interest. “Hopkirk asked to accompany you to Thorpe Manor?”

  Schell blinked at him but said nothing, and Holmes, realising the condition to which the old man had been reduced by his wife’s infidelity, took his hand and went on in a more moderate tone, “Your wife did not make that request? Hopkirk definitely asked himself?”

  “Only so that he could betray me,” Schell said again. “He practically begged, you know. I said there was no point in him coming. He’d no money, you know. He couldn’t buy the Thorpe place. But he insisted. To be near her…”

  His voice trailed off into mumbling and Holmes gently replaced his hand in his lap. “Thank you, Mr Schell,” he said. “You have been very helpful.”

  He straightened up and called over to Fisher. “Is the carriage ready, Inspector? It is vital we return to the manor house as quickly as we can. We should call in at the village on the way, but it is imperative that we reach James Hopkirk before he has a chance to abscond.”

  “James Hopkirk?” Inspector Fisher was, I think, understandably confused. “I thought you said the publican was our man? Have you changed your mind?”

  “Robinson killed Salah, Inspector, of that I am certain. But until now I had been under the impression that Julieanne Schell had invited Hopkirk to visit Thorpe Manor. If that was the case, then it was just as likely that Amicable Watt was Robinson’s accomplice as Hopkirk.”

  “Accomplice, Holmes?” I asked, puzzled.

  Rather than reply immediately, Holmes hurried out of the station and climbed into the carriage waiting outside. We followed behind, Fisher complaining loudly that everything must be made clear before we reached Thorpe-by-the-Marsh. We settled into our seats as Halliday swung himself up beside the driver, and as the carriage pulled away, Holmes continued his explanation.

  “My apologies, Watson. I confess, I realised that Robinson must have had an accomplice later than I should have. How else would he manage to lift a man as large as Salah over the various items of machinery and place him in such an inaccessible corner of the cellar? It was only when I joked to you that Mr Schell and Alice the maid could not have done so even working together, that it occurred to me that nobody could have done so on their own.”

  �
�Meaning one of the other men must have helped him. But why only Watt or Hopkirk? Why none of the others?”

  “Buxton is far too timorous to be involved in anything so unsavoury. Frederick Schell, as we just saw, is an old, frail man, of no use in helping heft a heavy body, and Pennington is pathologically obsessed with punishing criminals. He could no more assist a wanted man than commit a crime himself. But Watt admitted to involvement with a bad element in his youth, and is of a similar age and background to Robinson. I admit I thought him the most likely to have assisted Robinson in disposing of the body.” He frowned. “Oh, at first, I was unsure about Captain Hopkirk, but when the extent of his infidelity with Mrs Schell was exposed, I put any misgivings I had about the man down to that. After all, I had no definite reason to suspect him, and you appeared to think well of him, Watson.

  “He is a clever man, I must admit. I have no doubt that once the inspector discovered he was not in his room at the time of Salah’s death, he deliberately allowed the idea of his apparent guilt to gain traction, even to the point of refusing to defend himself against the accusation that he was a murderer. He knew, of course, that he could at any time admit to his dalliance with Mrs Schell and so provide himself with an unimpeachable alibi. As soon as their affair became common knowledge, the police lost interest in him, as he knew they would. As I did myself, to my regret, though I shall allow myself the minor justification that a far stronger suspect presented himself at that same moment.”

  “Walter Robinson.”

  “Exactly, Watson. I noticed the very specific alignment of the mirrors in The Silent Man, and recalled what Reilly had said about Salah on their visit to the village. I was certain from that moment that Robinson was the murderer, and so made the elementary mistake of failing to consider the entirety of the crime, including the disposal of the body. Had I done so, Robinson would still be alive to face justice.”

  Fisher had no time for Holmes’s self-reproach. “But now you have decided that Captain Hopkirk better fits the role, is that it, Holmes?” he asked. He had been taking notes the whole time that Holmes spoke, but now he tucked his pencil behind his ear and made a point that had also occurred to me.