The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part II (40 page)

“I may have a question or two for you, and also for your wife if she is at home,” Holmes told the rector, “but first, it would be a great kindness if you would allow us to see the interior of the church. I dare say these modern bricks conceal stonework and woodwork of some real antiquity and artistic merit, do they not?”

Mr. Brickward, who at first had appeared far from gracious, brightened at once, and in a moment had snatched up a key and was escorting us to the north door of the church, chattering all the way about mediaeval tracery, Elizabethan carvings, and Georgian re-pointing. Inside the building it was so dark, even on a bright spring afternoon, that my eye could distinguish little, and when Mr. Brickward pointed into the gloom and spoke ecstatically about the foliated rood-screen, I nodded mutely. Holmes made even less pretence of taking an interest in the architecture, but made a beeline for the brass-and-oak lectern, where he pulled out his thick magnifying lens, struck a match, lit a stub of candle, and bent to peer closely at the great Bible which lay there. As he moved the flame from side to side, then up and down the open page of the book, I heard a gasp from the back of the church, and realized that the church-officer, our client, had joined us. I chuckled at his anxiety, knowing the care with which Holmes avoided so much as touching, let alone scorching, anything that might yield a clue to his extraordinarily keen eye.

“Thank you, I think that will do,” he called, joining us again near the doorway. “Now if Mrs. Brickward can spare us a moment, her clarification of one or two points might be most illuminating.”

Mr. Brickward led us back along the path we had taken from the rectory, stepping carefully to avoid the stone flag on which I could still detect a pale brown stain that doubtless represented the dead woman's blood. “Jennie!” he called as we entered the rectory. “Jennie, these gentlemen would like a word with you.”

We took seats a little awkwardly in the parlour, all of us save Holmes, who propped his lean frame against a bulging bookcase beside the mantel and surveyed the heavily furnished little room with a keen eye. In a moment the rector's wife appeared before us: a slight, dark woman, as Hopkins had said, neatly though inexpensively dressed in a pale blue costume. Dark shadows beneath her eyes reminded me of the strain this mysterious bloodshed, with the curious and even sinister desecration that had accompanied it, must be imposing on a young couple not yet much tried in the fires of life. It crossed my mind that the young rector, through his ecclesiastical training and no doubt an innately religious cast of mind, must have resources for facing the proximity of death that were not available to his more delicate wife. Seated together on a horsehair sofa, her little hand resting gently on her husband's arm, they seemed a picture of courage in time of sorrow.

Hopkins introduced us, Thomas Sexton adding with a note of pride in his voice that as church-officer he had taken the responsibility of asking Mr. Holmes to look into the affair. Holmes murmured a soothing word or two to Mrs. Brickward, then asked her to tell how she had found the body on Sunday morning.

“I had slipped out of church during the last hymn,” she explained. “I know it seems dreadful of me, and I always do stay long enough to listen to John preach, but I do feel so alone in the middle of the congregation sometimes, and suddenly I thought, ‘I can't bear to listen to
Alleluia! Alleluia!
one more time. I'll just leave quietly and have a few things started for luncheon before Mr. and Mrs. Wallace arrive, since I don't have Mary Ann to help me any longer.' So I did that, and when I came round the side of the church to the rectory path, I saw the woman lying there on the stone step, with the blood splashed out around her like - oh, like a red cape!”

Her low voice rose in pitch and her dark eyes seemed wider than ever; I saw her husband's protective arm reach around her. “Mr. Holmes,” he said, “I hope you will forgive me if I say that my wife is overwrought; she is really not able to discuss this dreadful affair.”

“I have only one other question of importance to ask,” said Holmes. “Mrs. Brickward, when did you first recognize Ellie?”

The rector's young wife stared at Holmes in horror, rose to her feet, gave a little shriek and crumpled to the floor.

“It was obvious from the first that someone closely connected to St. Nicholas had killed the young woman,” Holmes explained as he, Hopkins and I rattled homeward in the inspector's cab. “If you will forgive me for saying so, friend Hopkins, street brawls that end in sordid bloodshed are most unlikely to take place on a Sunday morning, when the public houses are closed and their denizens asleep in their lodgings or under Lambeth Bridge. As soon as I saw the place, I recognized that if there had been a body in Moss Road before the service began, someone among the good people of St. Nicholas would certainly have seen it, perhaps the diligent Mr. Sexton himself. It followed that the murder was committed during the time of the service itself.

“The most important indication, however, was the page from the church's Bible. We may dismiss witchcraft - a suggestion which, I strongly suspect, Mrs. Brickward put forward as a desperate attempt at misdirection. Likewise it was apparent from the beginning that there must be an excellent reason for someone to have ripped a page from the great Bible in the church itself, when so many other copies of scripture are easily at hand.

“You spoke, Watson, of a message being conveyed by the page. Indeed it was, but through no work of the printer or any divine hand. Asking myself why that particular page was torn from the volume, I looked in the volume itself to see what remained, and in the margins of the next page after the torn stub, my candle revealed deep and irregular impressions. It was not difficult to tell that words had been scrawled on the missing page, and I was able to read them: ‘John, I have returned. Meet me in Moss Road after the service ends. Ellie.'

“Evidently it was a message for Mr. Brickward, which he was to find when he looked at the Bible during the service on Sunday. The writer, this Ellie, cannot have anticipated that he would find it beforehand, presumably when he came in to see that all was in readiness for Sunday morning, or that he would tear it out, for fear that others might see it - still less that he would confide in his wife. On the contrary, she must have assumed that he would keep his wife in darkness, and even abandon her for the sake of the one who had ‘returned'.

“Of course we do not yet know exactly what had been the relations between Mr. Brickward and this woman, but it is clear that despite her husband's remarkable willingness to show her the letter, Mrs. Brickward perceived Ellie as a serious threat and was prepared to take drastic action to keep her from ever meeting her husband.

“Taking the page from the Bible is not, of course, the same thing as murder, but the one led to the other. Again, the opportunity to be in Moss Road during the service is the vital indication. Mr. Brickward himself was, if I may say so, under close observation by the entire congregation throughout the service. Much the same must be true of Mr. Sexton, the church-officer.

“Mrs. Brickward says that she left the service early, and that in itself might have given her the opportunity to find Ellie. It must have taken some little time, however, to have words with her, stab her dead, and conceal the knife somewhere. I dare say, your constables will find it in the cellar or kitchen-garden about the rectory if they take the trouble to search. More than that, however, she also needed a moment to burn the Bible page beside Ellie's body.”

“I cannot see why she took the trouble to do that,” Hopkins remarked.

“I should think,” said Holmes, “that she intended her husband to recognize the remains of paper and to realize what had happened. Her heart told her that he would feel himself as much to blame as she, and the secret of Ellie's death would bind them close together. Burning the page, of course, would also ensure that no stranger could read the pencilled message.

“Doing all these things must have taken more than the few seconds by which Mrs. Brickward preceded other churchgoers into Moss Road, and for a moment or two I wondered whether the young woman had, in fact, been killed earlier than I thought. But then Mrs. Brickward herself gave us the explanation. You will recall her remark that the service had included the words ‘
Alleluia! Alleluia!
' again and again.

“It is many years since I was compelled to attend Sunday School classes as a boy, but I do recall being told with determination, as a matter of great importance in the mind of the maiden lady who instructed me, that in the austere season of Lent, those words are never used in the liturgy. Here we are in March, a fortnight before Easter, and so it is Lent. Mrs. Brickward cannot have heard the congregation repeating
Alleluia!
this Sunday morning - because the prayer book told them not to say it, and because she was not in church at all. I knew that she was not telling the truth, and the matter was settled. Unnoticed by the other churchgoers, for she had no friends to look for her, she was not in the church, but in Moss Road, where she waited for Ellie, killed her, and burned her last message to John Brickward.”

“It seems very straightforward as you set it out,” said Hopkins. “If only I had had a few minutes to consider the case, I should have come to the same conclusion on Monday last, and you need not have been troubled.”

“Ah,” laughed Holmes, “and so my hours have made good your minutes. It was a trivial matter, certainly, and yet not without interest, particularly for the novelty of the message written on a leaf of the Bible. Watson, I recall hearing that some device of the sort was used in one of the romance novels of your friend James Barrie. I must look into it one of these days, although I understand that his works are written in a Scots dialect which is perhaps more congenial to you than it is to me.”

The Lady on the Bridge

by Mike Hogan

Sherlock Holmes pushed back his chair, stood, and laid his napkin on the table. “Settle up, would you, old chap? I have a small errand to run.” He weaved among the tables of the restaurant and disappeared through the main entrance doors.

I pulled out my pocket book and sighed. Our finances, as often at the end of the month, were at a low ebb, but at Holmes's insistence we had travelled from Baker Street to Sydenham on a blustery afternoon to take an early dinner at a fine French restaurant in the Byzantine court at the Crystal Palace. The decor was as highly stylised as the menu prices were highly inflated.

And Holmes's attention had not been on the food. Even as we were ushered into the room, his eyes had flickered around as if looking for someone, and between courses he had glanced at his pocket watch as if gauging whether he had time to make a rendezvous.

I requested the bill and peered at a note in tiny print explaining that the charge had been calculated according to a Continental system by which a seven-per-cent gratuity had been added. It occurred to me as I received my change from the sharp-eyed waiter that a gratuity should be precisely what the word suggested, a token of appreciation from a satisfied customer, not a levy. However, under the supercilious gaze of the waiter and with the
maître d'hôtel
, hovering with an elderly couple anxious to possess our table, I made a swift mental calculation and left an appropriate amount in the saucer as a ‘tip'. The waiter peered at the thru'pence coin and its ha'penny companion with disdain, the maître d'hôtel sadly shook his head, and the gentleman waiting for our table shared a condescending half-smile with his lady companion. Undaunted, I stood and marched to the entrance of the restaurant, where I found Holmes leaning against an iron pillar deep in his
Evening
News
.

He folded the newspaper and tucked it under his arm. “Nothing yet, but there is still the final edition.”

I frowned. “What are you expecting?”

“Did you take the receipt?” he asked.

I handed it to him. “The price included a seven-per-cent charge for service. It was clear from the attitude of the restaurant staff that a further amount was expected as a tip.”

Holmes considered. “Fourpence three-farthings would have been an adequate addition to the charge to make it consistent with your usual practice. Come.”

I followed him out of the restaurant, counting surreptitiously on my fingers, and into one of the huge galleries in the iron-framed glass building. A crystal fountain glistened in the sunlight streaming through the tremendous glass walls and curved ceiling high above us, and I stood in awe as I gazed at the long vista before me. Tall trees brushed the ceiling of the central nave, and massive monuments from antiquity and gigantic engines from the present day occupied the aisles and transepts.

I looked for Holmes and found him reading his paper in the shade of a palm tree in what was clearly a Roman or Greek themed exhibition. A dozen ladies sat before a row of plaster statues of naked, ivy-leaved young males, while a spade-bearded gentleman discoursed on features of ancient sculpture. One young lady seated at the end of the row of students flicked her eyes along the line of sculptures and then past them to me. I blinked at her, and she smiled. It would have been boorish in the extreme not to return such a charming smile, however inappropriately offered, and I - “

“Watson?”

“The Palace is a virtual university,” I said as Holmes led me away. “A very useful institution, especially for young ladies of artistic inclinations.”

Desiring to smoke after our meal, Holmes and I strolled the extensive gardens on what had become a balmy, early spring evening and found a bench where we sat, lit our pipes, and watched the Palace come alive with glittering electric lights.

The sky darkened and Holmes looked at his watch, tapped out his pipe and stood. He led me to a gate to one of the special garden exhibits, where he displayed our restaurant receipt to an attendant and we were waved in,
gratis
.

A newspaper boy ran up to Holmes holding out a copy of the
Evening
News
late edition. Holmes grabbed it from him and flicked through the pages in the light of a gas lamp, humming softly to himself. He folded the newspaper in half and held his hand out to me. “Pencil?”

I reluctantly gave Holmes my propelling pencil and peered at the boy. On one invasion of our rooms by Holmes's band of ragamuffins, his Baker Street Irregulars, I had lost not only my propelling pencil, but a signed score of
The Lost Chord
by Sir Arthur Sullivan. I was understandably wary of nefarious activity by any boy under Holmes's direction.

Holmes ringed a paragraph in the paper and handed it to me, then he leaned down and fixed the newspaper boy with his steady gaze. “You know what to do?” he asked.

The boy grinned up at Holmes, turned and sped away.

“In the Personals,” I said, holding out my hand for my pencil. “To Ajax. ‘
Seven is impossible - Tower Bridge at nine; agent must wear red carnation and carry a newspaper. One Fearfully Wronged
'.”

I shook my head. “What silly names; she (we must assume a she) is loquacious, even when paying by the word.”

I was talking to thin air; Holmes was on the move. “Come,” he called back. “It's ten minutes to seven.”

I scurried after him. “We'll not get across London to the Tower in time, Holmes, it must be several miles. It is a physical impossibility, unless you have engaged a private balloon!”

Holmes skirted an ornamental fountain and came to a stop at a magnificent floral display. He plucked a red carnation bloom and slipped its stalk through my button hole.

“I say, old chap,” I remonstrated.

He handed me his
Evening News
and propelled me into a large grassy enclosure, the principal feature of which was an artificial lake crossed by a bridge illuminated with coloured electric globes.

I recalled that some years previously, the promoters of the hideous Tower Bridge across the Thames had built a wood and plaster, quarter-scale model of the structure in the gardens of the Crystal Palace, no doubt hoping that the public would get used to a Gothic monstrosity almost as uncouth as the ridiculous iron tower that defiled the centre of Paris. The model had proved a popular attraction, especially when illuminated on spring and summer evenings. Young couples perambulated the lake and crossed the bridge, no doubt focussed on each other and oblivious to their less than scenic surroundings.

I followed Holmes to the arch that marked the start of the bridge walkway. Close to, the model was sadly dilapidated. Bare wood showed through the paintwork, and the suspension wires hanging from the twin towers were visibly bent and frayed, and it was with trepidation that I followed Holmes onto the creaking deck and we joined the crowd crossing and re-crossing the structure. A police constable stood by one of the towers, but he seemed content to chat with a flower seller rather than enforce any rule of the road. Holmes and I took the leftmost tack as having fewer people walking against our direction.

“Keep an eye out,” he enjoined me in a murmur.

“What for?”

My question was immediately answered. Coming towards me against the flow and at a stately pace was an oddly-dressed figure, a lady, who, despite the mildness of the evening, was wrapped in a voluminous grey cape. On her head she wore a grey, flowery hat and her face was hidden, veiled in net. She stopped before me and slipped a hand into her reticule.

I blinked at her, started at a huge bang, and looked up as a firework bloomed high above me in the shape of a bright red carnation.

Holmes stepped between the lady and me and took her arm. “Madame,” he said softly. “I urge you not to take such a foolhardy step.”

More fireworks thundered over us as Holmes drew the lady to the side of the bridge. He made no move to bid me join them, and I stood uncertainly and in a state of utmost confusion as the crowd swirled past me staring up, mouths agape. An instinct of delicacy drew me away from my friend and the lady, and I took a position on the opposite side of the bridge against the balustrade and out of the flow of pedestrians. I could only glimpse Holmes and his companion through gaps in the passing throng and in the bursts of light from the fireworks as if in a jerky, slow-motion Kinematograph. Holmes bent towards the veiled lady and spoke most earnestly, emphasising his words with sharp gestures.

A thickening of the crowd hid them from me for a few seconds, and Holmes was beside me and the lady gone.

“Holmes,” I exclaimed. “You arranged a rendezvous for me with that lady!”

The newspaper boy reappeared, handed Holmes a rolled up newspaper, and disappeared into the crowd.

“In a manner of speaking.” Holmes unrolled the newspaper and disclosed a pocket pistol. “She intended to assassinate you.” He smiled. “Come, let's take the train home and smoke a pipe or two in the safety of our comfortable den in Baker Street.” He took me by the arm and steered me towards the station.

“Miss Berthoud said that she was sorry to have bothered you, but she cannot see very well without her spectacles, especially through her veil and in the glare of the electric lamps and pyrotechnics, and your luxurious moustache is very like that of her oppressor. I advised her to go home and lay the matter before us in the morning.”

I dropped both newspaper
and boutonniere into a bin. “Bothered, Holmes?” I said, somewhat sharply. “Yes, I dare say a bullet through the breastbone might have been bothersome.”

Holmes kept his counsel during our ride home, over late supper, and for the rest of the evening, and I went to bed with no more idea of why I had been targeted by the veiled lady than I had on the bridge.

I came down to breakfast the next morning and found Holmes in his dressing gown, reclining on the sofa, puffing on his morning pipe, and sipping coffee. A newspaper-wrapped parcel lay on the floor beside him.

“I feel that I am owed an explanation, Holmes,” I said as I poured my coffee.

“I am sure you do, old man,” he answered amicably. He leaned towards me and held out his cup for a refill.

“I think it only right that I should know what the devil is going on,” I said stiffly. “Oh, good morning, Mrs. Hudson.”

“Language, Doctor,” our landlady said as she placed fresh dishes of scrambled eggs, bacon, and kidneys before me on the table. “Naming calls. Billy will bring your toast, hot-and-hot.”

“I expect Murchison did what I should have done in his circumstances,” Holmes said as the door closed behind her. “He bribed the boot boy (or boot girl as Miss Berthoud resides in an exclusive ladies' hotel in Bayswater) to slip a note under her bedroom door. The note referred her to the
Evening News
Personals and gave the gentleman's
nom de plume
, Ajax.”

The bell rang in the hall downstairs.

“Who is this Murchison,” I asked. “And how did you become involved in the matter?”

Billy appeared at the door as I was about to tuck into my bacon and eggs.

“Where's the toast?” I asked.

“Which, I didn't bring it, Doctor, on account of the lady in the waiting room come to see Mr. Holmes.”

“But, what about breakfast?” I exclaimed.

Holmes jumped up. “Clear the table, Billy, then show her up.”

“I am a wronged woman,” Miss Berthoud said in a charmingly French-lilted English. “I was harried from my home, driven from my position as a nanny with a titled family, and hounded and threatened by a fiend who will stop at nothing to ruin me.”

Our visitor was a fresh-faced young lady of twenty or so, again in grey, but she had exchanged her cape and veil for a well-fitting, tailored ensemble in the latest fashion, and on her head was a tiny grey and pale yellow hat that clung to her tightly coiled hair like a budgerigar to its perch. She refused refreshment and took Holmes's place on the sofa while he and I sat in our usual chairs before the empty grate.

She folded her hands in her lap. “There are moments, gentlemen, when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely - or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. I grasped that moment yesterday when I saw you on the bridge, Doctor. I was determined to destroy he who stands between my dear Alfie and me.”

Holmes sniffed. “But, you must consider, Miss Berthoud, that you would undoubtedly have been apprehended. Your costume, although admirably conceived for hiding your identity, was too voluminous for speedy escape, and a constable was at hand. You must have been caught and inevitably hanged for murder.”

Miss Berthoud seemed about to contradict Holmes, but he overrode her. “I see you frown. Although your English is excellent, I deduce from your accent (and your name) that you are French by birth, and you may not be aware that on this side of the Channel the courts do not have the option of excusing a murder as a
crime passionel
. Our Judiciary is not known for its Romantic conceptions; no, no, it would have meant the rope.”

“I say, Holmes-” I interjected.

“If I might accept your offer of refreshment, Doctor?” Miss Berthoud asked softly.

“Of course, tea or coffee?” I asked.

“A reviving brandy and soda for our guest, Watson,” Holmes said firmly. “And a whisky for me while you're at the Tantalus.”

I poured the drinks, handed them and helped myself to a whisky.

“Tell me more of the target of your assassination attempt,” Holmes requested. “This Reverend Murchison.”

“Your oppressor is a clergyman?” I asked. “Not of the established church, I trust.”

“Of the Church of Scotland,” Miss Berthoud answered. “He retired to Boulogne, as do many of his countrymen, particularly professional gentlemen.”