The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part II (39 page)

Vamberry looked in the very opposite direction from Holmes. To no one in particular, he said in perfect English, “I still await my pomegranate tea.”

Lestrade looked in exasperation at Holmes, at Hynes, at the same spot in the distance at which Vamberry stared. “I have told you Mr. Vamberry, we can offer you as much plain tea as you like. I really don't know where a man would find pomegranate tea in London.”

Holmes interrupted me with a laugh. “Oh, it's a shame you weren't there then, Watson. You could have laid bare London's tea underbelly, you who has found in our city's byways shops to not only satisfy your taste for Afghan and Egyptian teas, but also located that awful sea salt brew you like from Ullapool.”

Here Holmes shivered in memory at accidentally taking a sip of this north Scotland specialty when I had left my steaming cup near his microscope.

As if to wash away the memory, Holmes delicately sipped at his port, smacking his lips with relish. Momentarily he nodded at me in apology. “I'm sorry, do go on.”

After his pronouncement regarding tea, Vamberry fell silent, ignoring any and all questions no matter from whom they came.

Holmes observed all of this in keen silence, and then said, “The Infanta is quite angry, sir.”

For but a moment, Vamberry frowned then cleared his expression, blinking slowly as if bored.

“Perhaps if we could share with her why such a trusted servant has done this unthinkable thing, she would find within her mercy.”

Another fiercer frown, this one chased away by a haughty lift of the chin.

“If you and the noble lady fall out, I'm sure her son and your fine boy will grieve.”

At this all expression washed from Vamberry's face. And it was this response that helped Sherlock Holmes solve the mystery.

With a sigh I rose to refill my port glass. At the extended silence, my friend cracked open one fire-dozy eye.

“I'm afraid the inspector stopped the story there,” I said, returning to my chair. “He quite belatedly said it was not his story to tell. Diplomatic secrets.”

Holmes straightened in his chair, lifted his own glass. “Mr. Lestrade has unexpected wells of reserve, though tardy. He told you more than enough to un-secret this diplomatic secret. Ah, well.”

At that, Mrs. Hudson quietly entered, and began serenely collecting our dinner plates. As we thanked her for the fine meal - I suspect we laid it on a trifle thick - my gaze went repeatedly to Holmes. When our landlady withdrew I leaned close, “Well, what happened? Why did Vamberry's lack of reaction to your remark about his son solve the case?”

“That last is the good inspector quoting something I said later and it's overstating the matter. I did not solve the case then. However, as with Plum, it was Mr. Vamberry's opposite response to the expected one - even greater arrogance - that told me we were close to his nest, so to speak.

“You must understand Watson, to Vamberry I was certainly no better than any other detective in that station - worse, in fact, as I'd been suddenly called from home that day after a fussy experiment left me with yellow-stained fingers, a singed collar, and a small plaster on my cheek. I looked disreputable. My discussing his royal employer in familiar terms rankled a man that class proud. The
lack
of his response when I was even more familiar in talking about his son - that told me this issue might be
about
his son. Following a brief viewing of his boat, it was
then
the case was solved.”

Suddenly my friend bolted restless from his chair, then grousingly began pacing the sitting room, pushing aside rumpled dressing gowns, sheet music, and newspapers, careless of where they landed.

“I've told Mrs. Hudson I have a method and that her tidying - ah, here it is!” Tossing aside a bird's wing and a magazine on its belly, Holmes snatched up a blue waistcoat. Mumbling something about the secret pocket he'd only half-installed inside the snug silk, he settled again across from me with needle, thread, and thimble.

“So sorry, Watson, where was I? Ah yes, it was then that our small party of four decamped to the sailing vessel
Ayng.

“Once onboard, there were two things of note. The first was the deplorable mess left by the police search. The narrow mattresses had been turned up, the dish cupboards ransacked, a child's small bucket been overturned, and its wet sand pawed through. Despite the disarray, I was assured no stolen coins had been found.

“The other thing of note was the familiar scent of tar. The very commonality of this odour is what likely prevented the good Inspector from perceiving it, or that the scent of it was especially strong. Yet, as Lestrade had mentioned, the boat was new. It was also a royal vessel, so no doubt kept in prime condition. So why had it been so freshly tarred the scent was strong?

“I'm afraid I then did that thing which seems to so alarm the tidy mentalities of Scotland Yard. I began climbing over the interior furniture of the little boat, and was quickly rewarded with what I sought: a fine black seam of tar at the bow. I dug into it with my thumbnail and within a few seconds had unearthed edge-on a gold coin, a bit more effort revealed a second.

“The inspector was jubilant, Vamberry unmoved, and here is where one of the more abstruse bits of deduction comes to the fore Watson. You must always remember that, though you've found what you're looking for, keep looking.

“While Lestrade went about the messy business of prying gold coins out of stiffening tar, I went about my business: I continued searching the boat. After a while I located in the hull near the stern another tar seam, this one better hidden and even thinner than the first. Two seams perpendicular to it also gave in to my nail. I knocked against the hull; the sound was hollow - and followed by a small-voiced whimper.

“Then, quoting Poe at his most grimly poetic, it was like ‘a hideous dropping off of the veil.' All was clear, and I knew why this proud and trusted man had risked so much when he seemed to want for so little.”

Holmes paused here to put on his freshly-tailored waistcoat. He spun in a slow circle, arms akimbo. Only after I assured him that I couldn't spy the location of the newly-installed secret pocket did my friend settle in his chair again and this time complete his story.

“I returned to the wine merchant. ‘Mr. Vamberry, please allow us to help you.' Still the man said nothing, and so I said, ‘Then I'm afraid we shall have to burn your boat.'

“At the bow of the boat, Lestrade stopped buffing gold on his trouser leg. ‘Beg pardon, Mr. Holmes?'

“‘The criminal is in hand Lestrade, and we have found the missing treasure. The
Ayng
is taking up valuable space in a dock already short of it. If I recall today's headlines, the 2
nd
Earl of Westfriars has requested berth in this same snug harbour and been denied. I say burn Mr. Vamberry's boat.'

“It was then Vamberry's iron spine crumbled. ‘For the love of God, no!' he cried.”

“Why, Holmes?” I cried, starting forward in my chair. “Why?”

“I didn't make the nest analogy lightly, Watson. Like a mother bird who flaps on the ground as if wounded, leading a predator away from her chicks, once Vamberry knew he was caught - and for diplomatic reasons Scotland Yard announced their intention of boarding his craft a full half hour before doing so - Vamberry flapped us away from his nest. He hid the coins at the bow, in sight of the observant, while at the stern he more carefully covered the seams of the hidden door cut into the
Ayng's
hull, and behind which lay his ill son.”

“No!”

“Yes. Vamberry's child was desperately sick, and the wine merchant with not enough resources to help the poor boy. Vamberry's brother, a physician, lives in London, and so in desperation the Infanta's pleasure craft and a pittance of her gold were stolen, the boy secreted on board, and Vamberry sought safe haven for both of them here. When he knew he would be boarded, he hid his young son in what any diplomatic vessel holds: A hiding spot.

“Vamberry's failing in all of this was pride, Watson, which made him both blind and rash. Though it is true that the Infanta and her kin do not much truck with weakness, any good ruler understands mercy. Not only had this never occurred to Vamberry, but he, who hews so strictly to lines of class, did not believe the Infanta could hold him or his family in tender regard, so he simply never thought to ask for her help. Fortunately all ended well. Father, child, and boat were returned to Spain, and after a time the boy was made well. As a matter of fact, both Vamberry's son and the Infanta's son made the papers recently, together starting University at Oxford.”

With a faint smile, Holmes nestled further in his chair. “And so you see, simple cases hinging on a few abstruse details. I hope they suit your needs, Watson?”

I agreed that they gave me more than enough to while away the rest of the cold winter evening.

And so it was, while Holmes dozed contentedly in his chair, I crafted the heart of each missive you've read here. It was a bit past midnight, and as I was banking the fire, that my friend woke with a start and shouted.

“The Mayflies will be hatching!”

Sherlock Holmes rose and ran to his water-filled jars lined upon the window sill and began to tut-tut at an experiment that would take him busily through the night.

For my part, I took down an encyclopaedia and began reading up on Mayflies.

The Adventure of St. Nicholas the Elephant

by Christopher Redmond

It was a mild day near the end of March, in the year 1895, when Mr. Thomas Sexton appeared at the Baker Street rooms which I shared with my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Holmes and I were lingering over one of the fine breakfasts provided by our landlady, whose imposing figure as she appeared in the doorway of our sitting-room to announce our visitor was promptly followed by the much smaller figure of Mr. Sexton himself. There was something a little comic about his old-fashioned and threadbare black suit, the jacket and waistcoat stretched to contain his rotund belly, with a smear of some greasy substance near the cuff of his right sleeve, while the firm jaw and solemn countenance above his double chin gave warning that, although he might be small of stature, he expected to be treated with some deference. And yet he was clearly in the grip of an intense agitation, as his writhing hands made evident.

“Come in, come in,” said Holmes at once. “Pray have a seat, and perhaps your nerves will be no worse for a cup of Mrs. Hudson's not unsatisfactory coffee. What can be amiss in the affairs of the church to bring you out so early on a Saturday morning, Mr. - ?”

“Sexton, sir, Thomas Sexton. But how do you know I come from the church? I've heard of your wonderful guesses, Mr. Holmes, as we all have, but I have not said a word yet about the church - St. Nicholas the Elephant it is, sir, out in Lambeth, past Elephant and Castle. How could you guess that I was a churchman?”

“I did not guess,” said Holmes. “When the available data justify no more than a guess, I remain silent and I observe. In this case, Mr. Sexton, I have observed a spot of what must be candle-wax on the sleeve of your coat. Your attire is otherwise immaculate, so that the stain has come there very recently, and you would hardly have been lighting and extinguishing candles for any household purpose on so bright a morning. Further, I recognize the distinctive if somewhat dull typography of the
Church Times
on the sheaf of paper protruding from your pocket. I conclude that you have been in church this morning, and that your name reflects your calling: that you are, in fact, a sexton.”

“It's true enough,” our caller replied, gratefully sipping the coffee that Mrs. Hudson had brought for him, “although the word
sexton
is one I don't care to have used, if it's all the same to you, Mr. Holmes.
Church-officer
is the right name nowadays, and church-officer at St. Nicholas is what I have the honour to be. Still, it's true that my grandfather and his fathers before him called themselves sexton. I dare say that may be why my family bears the name it does. Church-officer I have been at St. Nicholas for nineteen years this Whitsun, and never have I seen anything like what has happened this week. Witchcraft, I call it, witchcraft!”

“Tut, man, you call it nothing of the sort,” said Holmes. “If you believed that it was witchcraft, you would hardly be here in Baker Street. You would be seeking help within the church itself, from the bishop's chaplain, or whatever the proper dignitary is called. You know very well that whatever has happened is the result of human agency, and so you rightly turn your steps to Baker Street. Or rather, not your steps, but the wheels of the Metropolitan Railway, if your journey is from far-off Lambeth. And so I ask you again: what is amiss, and what have you to tell that might be of interest to me?”

“Well, it may not be witchcraft in the end, but Mrs. Brickward calls it witchcraft,” the little man replied, “and what else might anyone call it, with blood on the very steps of the church, and a page of the Bible burned there on the stone beside it?”

“Beside what, Mr. Sexton?” I interjected. “Beside the bloodstain?”

“Beside the body, sir!” he shot back. “Beside the body, there on the pavement. A page taken from the church's own Bible, that sits on the lectern for Mr. Brickward to read each Sunday. Now if there is no witchcraft in it, why would somebody have burned a Bible page, and a chapter of the Holy Gospel at that?”

Sherlock Holmes, who had shown some impatience when our visitor began to describe his problem, was now leaning forward in his chair, his long bony fingers rubbing together rapidly. “Why indeed, Mr. Sexton,” he said. “Why indeed. I could suggest six, no, seven possible reasons at once, but without data I can hardly be expected to choose one. But you interest me much more when you speak of a body. What body?”

“That's just it,” was the reply. “A body, a young woman, lying there dead, at the side door of St. Nicholas, in Moss Road. We didn't know who she was, not any of us, and nor did the police.”

“Ah, the police?” said Holmes. “Of course, they would take an interest in the matter. For all the deficiencies that the police sometimes demonstrate, they can at least be relied upon to take note of a woman's body found at the door of a suburban church. Found when, Mr. Sexton?”

“On Sunday last, at twelve o'clock. We were coming out of Matins and we found it. Mrs. Brickward found it first, as she went round into Moss Street on the way to the rectory, and Mr. and Mrs. Wallace said she was crying and weeping beside it when they saw her. Mrs. Wallace was the first to see the Bible page there, burned so that all you could read were a few words at the bottom of the page. ‘Cometh in his glory' it said, and that's all that was left that wasn't blackened, ‘cometh in his glory'.”

“I see,” said Holmes, “and this Mrs. Wallace no doubt summoned the police? But no, she will have been fully occupied with comforting Mrs. Brickward - I take it that is the rector's wife? - and doubtless it fell to Mr. Wallace to go in search of a constable.”

“Exactly.”

“And when the constable came?”

“Well, Mr. Holmes, he told all the people to go home, all the people who had gathered round I mean, and he sent a messenger for an inspector to come. I waited to see if I could be of any assistance, but there were enough police to do everything, and after they took the body away in a waggon I locked up the church as I always do, and I went home to my dinner.”

“Where, no doubt, Mrs. Sexton was all agog to hear every detail of the affair?” I put in.

“I am sorry to say that there is no Mrs. Sexton,” said the little man quietly. “She died last year of a fever.”

“A careful observer could have seen as much from a glance at our visitor,” said Holmes. “I will not insult you, Watson, by mentioning the clues that you might have seen, had you only looked for them. Tell me, Mr. Sexton, as you waited in case your assistance might be required, what did you in turn observe?”

“Observe, Mr. Holmes?”

“Yes, man, observe! Mark, learn, and inwardly digest, to put it in words you must often have read in your Bible. What did you see? There was blood - was there a wound? How was the girl dressed? What did she look like?”

“As to that, I can't rightly say,” was the response. “She seemed a fair enough girl, and dressed well enough. She did have a wound, for certain, for her shoulder and side were all wet with thick blood, such as I never saw but once, when a lumber-waggon overturned in Moss Road and there was a man crushed to death.”

“Just so,” said my friend. “If this woman's death on Sunday last made such an impression upon you, why have you waited until Saturday and then come in such haste to see me?”

“It was the Bible, Mr. Holmes. When we saw the burned page beside the body, we all knew it was from a Bible, of course, but it was only today, when I went into the church to make the candles ready for tomorrow and do my other Saturday tasks, that I glanced at the Bible on the lectern and saw the page had been torn from there. Of course I went straight to the rectory to tell Mr. Brickward, and Mrs. Brickward screamed out that it was witchcraft. When I came away and thought it over a little, I determined to come and see you at once.”

“Hmph,” said Holmes. “Well, Mr. Sexton, your story is an interesting one, and I do not object to looking into it briefly, for I am rather at loose ends since we put old Carstairs and his not-so-prepossessing son behind bars. Tell me, and then I will detain you no longer: what was the name of the police inspector who took charge of the case?”

“Hopkins, sir,” said Sexton, and Holmes gave a brief nod of satisfaction, for I knew that he esteemed Stanley Hopkins more highly than any of the other official detectives. Thus I was not surprised when, as soon as our pompous little visitor had taken his leave, he rang for the pageboy and scribbled a telegram to be sent to Scotland Yard.

“Hopkins will not object to dropping round,” he said, “and it may be that he can offer us transportation to south Lambeth this afternoon, as well as the benefit of whatever information the police have failed to overlook. We can at least be confident, I think, that they will have a better theory than witchcraft to explain matters - although, sad to say, little explanation may be needed, for a body at the side door of a church on a Sunday morning is the natural consequence of a quarrel or attack outside some nearby public house on the Saturday evening.”

“But the Bible page?” I asked.

“I admit that is a little out of the ordinary,” said Holmes. “What do you make of it, Doctor?”

I was flattered that my friend, who had spoken slightingly of my deductive skills just a few minutes earlier, was now eager to hear any suggestion I might be able to make. “I suppose,” I said judiciously, “that we may disregard the words left visible at the bottom of the page, since whoever took the page and set it alight cannot have been able to guarantee how much would remain unburnt. ‘Cometh in his glory' is hardly a very illuminating message in any case. But might the whole page be some sort of message? It should not be difficult to find out what else should have appeared there.”

“Indeed,” said Holmes. “Then your theory would be that someone wished to point out a connection between the dead woman, or perhaps the reason for her death, and some incident or moral in Holy Writ? I have known something of the sort once or twice before. The difficulty in this case is the burning. If you seek to leave a written message, Watson, do you generally set fire to it and watch it shrivel to ash before it can be read? No, I think the explanation must be a little different - although I do agree that a message was sent, and indeed received.”

He would say no more, and I was left to turn the matter over in my mind, and to occupy myself as best I could, while Holmes leafed through the day's newspapers and cut out two or three items with his black, long-bladed scissors, for later pasting into his steadily growing commonplace-books. I glanced at the cuttings later, but could make nothing of them: one was a report on glue manufacturing in some Midlands town, while another discussed the anticipated marriage of a Member of Parliament to the daughter of a Professor of Poetry.

Shortly after luncheon, however, Stanley Hopkins was announced, and both Holmes and I greeted him as the old friend he had become through a succession of odd and once or twice dangerous adventures together. “So it's the Lambeth case, is it?” said the inspector with a smile, as he sat easily in the chair where we had seen him so often before. “Well, you won't find much in your line this time, Mr. Holmes. A dead girl in south Lambeth is nothing so unusual, you know. I say a ‘girl' by habit, for so many of those we find dead on the streets are very young, as you know, but this one can't have been less than thirty.”

“The girls you find dead on the streets are not so often on the doorsteps of churches, or marked by torn pages from a Bible,” Holmes observed. “And I note that you speak of this particular girl as ‘the Lambeth case', although there is, as you say, never any lack of cases in Lambeth.”

“You have me there,” Hopkins grinned. “As a matter of fact, the matter has been on my mind all this week, although I have not been able to spare so much as a constable to look into it since Sunday afternoon. There was something just a trifle odd about the matter.”

“The lack of a weapon, for example?”

“I see you know a little about it already,” said the inspector. “That was certainly a striking feature, although it may mean nothing, for a knife is a valuable thing to some of the roughs who can be found on the streets thereabouts. I have a little time to spare this afternoon; would you care to ride down to Lambeth with me and see the place for yourself? I can't offer to show you the body itself, for we had it buried on Wednesday in the usual way.”

Holmes and I accepted the offer with alacrity, and as we rode through London and across Westminster Bridge, Hopkins gave us, in response to my friend's request, a brief sketch of the personalities at the church of St. Nicholas the Elephant, apart from the church-officer, our caller of a few hours earlier. Ambrose Wallace, the churchwarden, Hopkins dismissed as an elderly busybody, and his wife as a nonentity. “The rector and his wife are another thing altogether,” he said, “and I gather that there has been a good deal of talk about them, although it may be no more than the usual gossip in any church, or any pub for that matter, when a young man comes to take the place of an old one. Mr. Brickward is no more than five or six-and-twenty, fresh from the theological college up in Durham, and of course a London parish is a difficult place for a man from the north. Then his wife is a northerner too, and she is said to be a sulky young woman, with a dark eye and a hot temper, who has been slow to seek friends and slower to find them. If Mrs. Wallace had not been nearby to take a motherly interest, she would be entirely without female company.”

“An admirable thumbnail sketch,” said Holmes. “And she is the one who discovered the body, our client told us. I should be very glad to meet Mrs. Brickward.”

However, when the carriage stopped in Moss Road and we rang the bell at the rectory, it was the Rev. Mr. Brickward himself who answered the door. I wondered at the lack of a maidservant, but Hopkins murmured to me that the girl who had been employed at the rectory had left the previous week with Mrs. Brickward's screams of fury ringing in her ears. “A matter of burnt toast, I was told,” he added.