A Study in Murder (43 page)

‘—when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,’ I completed.

‘Admirable, Watson. I see some of my methods are finally taking root. Now, we will be at Willesden soon. I suggest when the train stops we move one carriage forward, to that non-smoker
where the young man met his death.’

We were not alone in the second carriage. There was a young lady and her father, who had been down from Lancashire on business and wanted to show his daughter the metropolis. Neither seemed to
recognize that a Great Detective was among them and, after some polite words while the lamps were being lit, he went back to his book and she embroidering an antimacassar. Holmes sat on the inner
side of the carriage and glanced frequently at his pocket watch, as if impatient for something to happen.

‘Tring,’ he said absent-mindedly, as the train slowed. ‘The works must still be in place.’

‘Watson,’ he said eventually, ‘I took the liberty of bringing a flask. Perhaps you would like a sip for fortification?’

I thought it rather improper to drink in front of the young woman and turned to look at our fellow passengers. At that moment I heard the slamming of the door and looked around to see that
Sherlock Holmes had left the carriage.

All three of us watched in incredulity as a local train rattled our windows as it passed, leaving a trail of grit-laden steam in its wake.

‘What’s going on?’ demanded the businessman. ‘Where’s your friend?’

‘Please stay calm,’ I said. ‘This is entirely normal behaviour for Mr Sherlock Holmes.’

‘Sherlock Holmes!’ exclaimed the man. ‘I thought he looked familiar.’ He tapped his daughter on the knee. ‘And you were complaining we hadn’t seen anyone
famous.’

Her expression suggested that she had hoped for someone more celebrated than a well-known detective. I, meanwhile, dropped to my knees and examined beneath the seats but, as I expected, I found
only discarded rail tickets and dirt.

Then, in the space he had recently vacated, I saw the flask he had mentioned and, pinned beneath it, a small note.

I sprang to the window and lowered it, thrusting my head out without concern for any approaching train on the downline. The light was already fading but, through the dispersing
trail of smoke left by the local, I could just make out that there appeared to be no hideously crushed detective lying on the track.

It was late in the evening when I finally made it back to Baker Street. Holmes was still up, smoking a pipe, a fire blazed in the grate, as the nights were still chill. There was a plate of cold
meats set out by Mrs Hudson at Holmes’s request and I set about it with some relish.

‘Apologies again, Watson,’ said Holmes.

‘Leaping between moving trains, Holmes? It was a foolhardy thing to do—’

‘Which is exactly what I expected you to say if I had revealed my plans beforehand. Bradshaw’s told me there is a local train running through Harrow and King’s Langley, which
is timed in such a way that the express must have overtaken it at or about the period when it eased down its speed to eight miles an hour on account of the repairs of the line. The two trains would
at that time be travelling in the same direction at a similar rate of speed and upon parallel lines. As I have just demonstrated, it is entirely feasible to cross from one to the other.’

I finished off the last of the food. ‘That tells us how one might disappear from a train. But not why. Nor why murder was perpetrated.’

‘Whatever may be the truth,’ said Holmes, ‘it must depend upon some bizarre and rare combination of events, so we need have no hesitation in postulating such events in our
explanation. In the absence of data we must abandon the analytic or scientific method of investigation, and must approach it in the synthetic fashion. In a word, instead of taking known events and
deducing from them what has occurred, we must build up a fanciful explanation if it will only be consistent with known events.’

‘Really, Holmes? That goes against your usual methods.’

‘It sometimes does one good to ring the changes. We have nothing to lose here. There is no urgency, apart from to track down the killer, whom I suspect is already long out of Scotland
Yard’s reach. But having come up with our theory, we can then test this explanation by any fresh facts that may arise. If they all fit into their places, the probability is that we are upon
the right track, and with each fresh fact this probability increases in a geometrical progression until the evidence becomes final and convincing.

‘You recall that the lamps of the express had been lit at Willesden, so that each compartment was brightly illuminated, and most visible to an observer from outside. It is within
everyone’s experience how, under such circumstances, the occupant of each carriage can see very plainly the passengers in the other carriages opposite to him.

‘Now, the sequence of events as I reconstruct them would be after this fashion. This young man with the abnormal number of watches was alone in the carriage of the slow train. His ticket,
with his papers and gloves and other things, were, we will suppose, on the seat beside him. He was probably an American, and also probably a man of weak intellect. The excessive wearing of
jewellery is an early symptom in some forms of mania.

‘As he sat watching the carriages of the express which were – on account of the state of the line – going at the same pace as himself, he suddenly saw some people in it whom he
knew. We will suppose for the sake of our theory that these people were a woman whom he loved and a man whom he hated, and who in return hated him. The young man was excitable and impulsive. He
opened the door of his carriage, stepped from the footboard of the local train to the footboard of the express, opened the other door, and made his way into the presence of these two people. The
feat, on trains going at the same pace, is by no means so perilous as it might appear.’

I lit a cigarette. ‘I’m not sure I’d like to test that theory again. Now you have got our young man, without his ticket, into the carriage in which the elder man and the young
woman are travelling.’

‘Yes, Watson, and it is not difficult to imagine that a violent scene ensued. It is possible that the pair were also Americans, which is the more probable as the man carried a weapon
– an unusual thing in England. If our supposition of incipient mania is correct, the young man is likely to have assaulted the other. As the upshot of the quarrel the elder man shot the
intruder, and then made his escape from the carriage, taking the young lady with him. We will suppose that all this happened very rapidly, and that the train was still going at so slow a pace that
it was not difficult for them to leave it. A woman might leave a train going at eight miles an hour. As a matter of fact, we know that this woman
did
do so.

‘And now we have to fit in the man in the smoking carriage. Presuming that we have, up to this point, reconstructed the tragedy correctly, we shall find nothing in this other man to cause
us to reconsider our conclusions. According to my theory, this man saw the young fellow cross from one train to the other, saw him open the door, heard the pistol-shot, saw the two fugitives spring
out onto the line, realized that murder had been done, and sprang out himself in pursuit. Why he has never been heard of since – whether he met his own death in the pursuit, or whether, as is
more likely, he was made to realize that it was not a case for his interference – is a detail that we have at present no means of explaining. I acknowledge that there are some difficulties in
the way. At first sight, it might seem improbable that at such a moment a murderer would burden himself in his flight with a brown leather bag. My answer is that he was well aware that if the bag
were found his identity would be established. It was absolutely necessary for him to take it with him. My theory stands or falls upon one point, and tomorrow I will call upon Mr Henderson and the
railway company to make strict enquiry as to whether a ticket was found unclaimed in the local train through Harrow and King’s Langley upon the 18th of March. If such a ticket were found my
case is proved. If not, my theory may still be the correct one, for it is conceivable either that he travelled without a ticket or that his ticket was lost.’

‘Remarkable, Holmes.’

‘You don’t sound convinced, Watson.’

‘And neither,’ I ventured, ‘do you, Holmes.’

To which he gave a peal of laughter. ‘Perhaps not, but we shall see what tomorrow brings.’

It was actually two days before the glum tidings arrived. No such ticket as hypothesized by Holmes was found; secondly, that on the night of the murder, thanks to a boiler problem, the local
train had been stationary in King’s Langley Station when the express, going at fifty miles an hour, had flashed past it.

Holmes took this news remarkably well, perhaps because an intriguing note had arrived from Montague Place from a governess with a singular problem. ‘I am sure that the solution to this
puzzle will present itself eventually,’ he said. Neither of us realized then that it would take five long years for The Rugby Mystery to be solved and, in the interim, my great friend would
appear to be lost to the world for ever.

I recall it recorded in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy day towards the end of March 1895 that Holmes received a telegram over breakfast. He scribbled a reply and
said nothing more of it. A few hours later there was a measured step on the stairs and a moment later a stout, tall and grey-whiskered gentleman entered the room.

‘Mr Peredue. Come, please be seated. This is my friend and companion Dr John Watson.’

‘I have read and greatly enjoyed your works, sir. Most engaging.’

‘Aren’t they?’ said Holmes. ‘Although Watson does have a rather romantic streak when it comes to reporting our cases. And a tendency to tell stories backwards. How was
the crossing?’

‘Crossing?’

‘From the United States.’

Peredue frowned at this. ‘Rough, since you ask. It took me a day or so to recover. How did you . . . ? My accent?’

‘Sir, I would have placed you as from New York or its environs before you uttered a single word. The cut of the jacket, the cuffs on the trousers, the pearlized buttons on your waistcoat .
. . or should I say vest?’

‘Waistcoat will do. I haven’t gone entirely native.’

‘When did you leave Buckinghamshire?’ Holmes made an aside to me, in case I wasn’t keeping up. ‘Peredue is an old Bucks surname.’

‘It is. My people emigrated to the States from there in the early fifties.’

Holmes took his customary place on the sofa. ‘Come, arrange your thoughts, Mr Peredue, and lay them out in due sequence. Watson, make yourself comfortable, because you are about to hear
the solution to The Rugby Mystery.’

I needed no more encouragement to give Mr Peredue my undivided attention. At last! Five full years since Holmes hopped between those trains.

‘My family settled in Rochester, in the State of New York, where my father ran a large dry goods store. There were only two sons: myself, James Peredue, and my brother, Edward Peredue. I
was ten years older than my brother, and after my father died I sort of took the place of a father to him, as an elder brother would. He was a bright, spirited boy. But there was always a soft spot
in him, and it was like mould in cheese, for it spread and spread, and nothing that you could do would stop it. Mother saw it just as clearly as I did, but she went on spoiling him all the same,
for he had such a way with him that you could refuse him nothing. I did all I could to hold him in, and he hated me for my pains.

‘At last he fairly got his head, and nothing that we could do would stop him. He got off into New York, and went rapidly from bad to worse. At first he was only fast, and then he was
criminal; and then, at the end of a year or two, he was one of the most notorious young crooks in the city. He had formed a friendship with Sparrow MacCoy, who was at the head of his profession as
a bunco steerer, green goodsman and general rascal.’

‘We have heard that name before, have we not, Watson? But not for some time.’

‘They took to card-sharping, and frequented some of the best hotels in New York. My brother was an excellent actor. In fact, he might have made an honest name for himself if he had chosen.
He would take the parts of a young Englishman of title, of a simple lad from the West, or of a college undergraduate, whichever suited Sparrow MacCoy’s purpose. And then one day he dressed
himself as a girl, and he carried it off so well, and made himself such a valuable decoy, that it was their favourite game afterwards.’

‘Ah,’ said Holmes, then put a finger to his lips, as if to remind himself not to interrupt.

‘They had made it right with corrupt politicians of Tammany Hall and with the police, and nothing would have stopped them if they had only stuck to cards and New York, but they must needs
come up Rochester way, and forge a name upon a cheque. It was my brother who did it, though everyone knew that it was under the influence of Sparrow MacCoy. I bought up that cheque, and a pretty
sum it cost me. Then I went to my brother, laid it before him on the table, and swore to him that I would prosecute if he did not clear out of the country. At first he simply laughed. I could not
prosecute, he said, without breaking our mother’s heart, and he knew that I would not do that. I made him understand, however, that our mother’s heart was being broken in any case, and
that I had set firm on the point that I would rather see him in Rochester gaol than in a New York hotel. So at last he gave in, and he made me a solemn promise that he would see Sparrow MacCoy no
more, that he would go to Europe, and that he would turn his hand to any honest trade that I helped him to get. I took him down right away to an old family friend, Joe Wilson, who is an exporter of
American watches and clocks, and I got him to give Edward an agency in London, with a small salary and a fifteen per cent commission on all business. His manner and appearance were so good that he
won the old man over at once, and within a week he was sent off to London with a case full of samples.’