Sherlock Holmes and The Adventure of the Ruby Elephants (23 page)

‘If you don't, it will not be me walking into St George's Hall empty handed.'

We made our way with all speed to the library, led on by the supercilious royal staffer. His legs moved with astonishing swiftness, while the upper half of his body remained almost perfectly still. Mycroft was suffering with the pace, while Sherlock hopped like a sprite as we neared our destination. All about us was sensational opulence; great chandeliers hung down like baubles of light and the works of the old masters gazed on.

The library was a place of unexpected light. Sunshine streamed in through the tall, elegant windows and reflected on the white stucco ceiling. Holmes gazed out of the window to the spires of Eton College beyond, the birthing pool for so many of our prime ministers and men of state.

‘I fear,' he said, ‘despite the great learning contained within these walls, my friend, our answer does not lie here.' He peered at his shadow cast against the floor. ‘Tell me,' he asked Ampleforth, ‘is Mrs Woodbridge trusted within the household?'

‘Implicitly,' he confirmed. ‘In fact, I would go further. In my opinion her lobster cutlets and marbled blancmange are valued by the Queen more highly than half her fortune. This has given her a special place in the Queen's affections, perhaps second only to the Munshi, her faithful Indian companion.'

‘Which of the Queen's jewels are held here?'

‘The royal collection is too vast to contain in a single sentence, nor is it curated in a single location.'

‘Let me put it another way,' said Holmes. ‘What jewels are closest to the Queen's heart?'

‘Again, that is an impossible question.'

‘I applaud your need for precision,' laughed Holmes. ‘Please let me be more direct. Which is her favourite diamond and her favourite ruby?'

‘Then that is perfectly simple: the diamond known as the Koh-I-Noor, and let us not speak of that, and the Timur Ruby, now known to be a spinel. In fact I happen to know that the Timur Ruby necklace has been laid out in readiness for this evening's state banquet. The Queen is planning to wear it; or rather she was planning to wear it. As things stand, an international incident appears inevitable. We already have Christian IX of Denmark demanding an explanation. We have confined him and Queen Louise to their rooms.'

‘Are all of the exits to the castle being watched?' asked Mycroft.

‘Of course,' said Gregson, ‘even the Hundred Steps. We have men at every gate.'

‘Then our answer lies in the Queen's Private Apartment. I believe our villains may still be within the castle walls.' We bustled across more lawns and courtyards.

‘This is all highly irregular,' complained Ampleforth.

We spiralled up another set of stairs until we stood in front of the door to the Queen's Royal Bedchamber. The equerry stepped forward and knocked three times on the door. While we waited for a response, the Holmes brothers occupied themselves with the study of some minute indentations on the carpet immediately in front of the door.

‘I would say four men of average build,' said Holmes. ‘One is walking with the aid of a cane.'

‘Nonsense, Sherlock,' tutted Mycroft. ‘It is two men, one walking with a cane and two women.' We stared at the perfectly ordinary looking carpet. To my eyes, there was simply nothing there.

‘Well whoever was in here has since departed' muttered Holmes. ‘Do you have a key, Ampleforth?'

‘To the Queen's Royal Bedchamber? Are you quite mad?'

‘Then we have no choice but to force the door.' The man looked aghast.

‘I won't stand for it,' he shouted. ‘You would swing for less.'

‘Then we will have to take that chance. Mycroft, would you be so good as to lend me your shoulder?' Ampleforth threw himself in front of the door.

‘You will have to get past me first,' Ampleforth said defiantly, folding his arms. Just then we heard what sounded like muffled cries from inside the room.

‘Heavens!' shouted Ampleforth, his ear to the wood. He thumped his fist against the door. ‘Lady Catherine, is that you?' The sounds grew louder.

‘Who is it?' Gregson demanded.

‘Lady Catherine Crebble, The Mistress of the Bedchamber,' said Ampleforth. ‘She must have stayed behind when Her Majesty was taken to safety.'

Gregson cupped his hands and called through the wood: ‘Can you unlock the door?' he asked.

‘If she could, I believe she would have done so my now,'reasoned Holmes. My friend produced one of the hairpins he had retrieved from the staircase at 221b Baker Street.

‘Ampleforth,' he said, dropping to one knee and fiddling with the lock, ‘let me see if I can spare you the gallows.'

‘Why,' he said haughtily, ‘You are little more than a common cracksman. It is you I should hand over to Scotland Yard.'

‘I am Scotland Yard,' said Gregson. ‘Get a move on, Holmes.'

There was a click and all at once we tumbled through the door: Holmes first, followed by Gregson, Ampleforth, myself and finally Mycroft, who collapsed heavily upon us all. It took some time to extricate ourselves from each other's limbs. Ampleforth adjusted his toupée.

‘Lady Catherine!' he cried again and ran towards the woman who was gagged and bound to a chair at the centre of the room. She was a handsome, formidable woman of forty five. Her flame-coloured hair was swept up in a mass of curls and she held up her head in defiance. Ampleforth fumbled with the gag and finally succeeded in removing it.

‘Unhand me!' the woman cried.

‘Are you hurt?' he fussed.

‘That is no concern of yours,' she fired back. ‘Now loosen these bonds and be quick about it.' Gregson stepped forward and slit the ropes with his pocket knife. Lady Catherine rose imperiously to her feet.

‘A half an hour ago and you would have been of some assistance. Now you are merely a troupe of fools.'

‘Please tell us exactly what happened,' instructed Gregson, drawing a notebook from his pocket.

‘Give me one good reason?' she asked, folding her arms. ‘For all I know, you are part of the same rabid mob. I would be mad to trust another man so long as I live.' She turned her face away.

‘The taller man entered the room first,' said Holmes, surveying the room.

‘Followed by Mrs Hudson,' continued Mycroft.

‘Then Miss Woodbridge, followed by the second man,' my friend concluded.

‘Mrs Woodbridge made an attempt to burst free,'Mycroft said, ‘and then ran towards the bed. She banged her leg against the bed frame and dropped this.' He stooped and picked up a bracelet.

‘The taller man took a bite from an apple,' said Holmes, with a surprised tone. He picked up the remains of an apple from the bowl and examined the tooth marks. ‘He should see a good dentist when all this is over.'

‘He then asked you,' said Mycroft calmly, ‘where you had hidden the rubies.'

Lady Catherine peered at him with a deep suspicion, tempered with a growing astonishment.

‘You told him that he would have to kill you first,' said Holmes. A smile grew on his face. ‘Then I do believe that they turned you upside down and shook you.' The woman's mouth widened a little.

‘An outrage!' she cried. ‘It was an outrage and every word you have said is true.' She clenched her fist and raised it quivering to her mouth.

‘I don't know who you are but you are late. You are too late! Our dear Queen may be safe, but her precious Timur Ruby is lost! It is lost! She will never forgive me. I hid it as best I could and would have defended it until the last, but now, it is gone. She will be inconsolable.'

‘But what of the two women?' asked Gregson, somewhat dumbfounded himself. His pencil hovered above his pad and I noticed he had not yet written a single word. Lady Catherine gestured towards the window.

‘They bound me, then opened the window. For all I know, they are still on the roof. Mrs Woodbridge I know. She was brave, so very brave. She told them they would feel a stretch upon their necks before the month is out. The other woman I did not know. But she was even finer. She told them that there was a man who would find them. This man, she said, was like no other who had ever lived. He had a nose like a beagle; a mind like Aristotle; the body of one who had conditioned himself to withstand any assault. He could live for days without food; spend a week without sleep. His senses, she said, were as honed as those of a spider. She told them that they had only days to live.' My friend listened to this description with the keenest of interest.

‘Would you mind,' asked Mycroft, ‘if I finished this apple?'

Gregson ran to the window and threw open the shutters.

‘Not a trace,' he said, peering around. And yet the roof is sheer. No one could climb down from here.'

‘Perhaps they had ropes,' asked Ampleforth.

‘Well if they did, I did not see them,' said Lady Catherine.

‘But what did you hear?' asked Holmes. She paused.

‘It was the sound,' she said slowly, ‘like the breath of a dragon.'

Holmes and I stared at each other.

‘A balloon!' we shouted.

EIGHTEEN - The Scarred Man

We returned to Baker Street to consider our position. Scotland Yard had committed everything to the case and the Queen herself had declared that the safe return of Mrs Hudson and Mrs Woodbridge was the national priority. She said nothing of the Timur Ruby or Koh-I-Noor, but the implication was there that any inspector returning empty handed would find his career severely limited. I was all for joining the search ourselves. Holmes however was convinced that the best policy was to stay at home. ‘If they want something,' he reasoned, ‘they will know where to find us.' Sure enough, half an hour later there was a knock at the door. I re-entered the sitting room clutching a card.

‘It appears to be an entirely new case,' I said, somewhat crestfallen. ‘A gentleman has travelled from Suffolk. He has an injury to his face and I have told him he should see his own doctor rather than call here. He then told me that he needs to see you at all costs.'

‘Did you catch his name?

‘A Thomas Featherstone,' I said, glancing at the card. ‘He is the manager of the Hixstead Estate.'

‘Well, we have a doctor in the house and he can tell me his business while you look him over. Why not let him in?' I cast a disapproving eye around the room, still in some disarray. ‘Really Holmes, we should make some effort in here.'

The man was a tall, broad fellow of fifty with thick brown hair with a widow's peak and ruddy cheeks. His teeth were widely spaced like yellow pegs and he had an unusually long chin, giving him something of a Mr Punch demeanour. A livid scar ran across his face diagonally from his chin to his forehead. His suit was of heavy tweed, expensively made, but which had seen some wear.

‘You have had an argument with a riding crop,' I see, said Holmes. ‘Please take a seat and my friend, Dr Watson, will be only too glad to take a look.' The man brushed this offer aside.

‘Then a cigarette?' He accepted one without comment and sat down on the couch. Holmes and I exchanged a look.

‘Please state the particulars of the case, Mr Featherstone, leaving out no detail.'

‘My master is Gustavus Wyndham,' he began. ‘Perhaps you have heard of him?' My friend suppressed a smile.

‘The diamond magnate?'

‘The very same,' confirmed Featherstone. ‘It is two years since we returned from Kimberley, on the Cape Colony. Wyndham made spectacular gains from his stake in the diamond mines. His company extracted no less than 200kg of diamonds from the Big Hole. He was a hard man, but fair in his own way, and paid his employees well, myself included. He was often to be seen at the Big Hole himself, swinging his pick with the other men, and earned their respect by working the same hours as them, drinking from the same canteens and sharing his bread and cheese. He built accommodation for his workers and provided schools for their children.

‘As time wore on, however, I believe that he began to tire of the business. It was all too easy. There were months when the diamonds came out of the ground as easily as flint. But he never found a diamond in size or brilliance to match the Eureka or the Star of South Africa. Increasingly, he flew into rages, chastising his managers for failing to find the diamond that would make him truly great.

“How is it,” he asked them, “that children have found the greatest diamonds on Earth, and yet my managers, some of the most well paid men in Africa, bring me pebbles and stones?” He would throw them out, then turn over the tables. He stopped visiting the mines. The schools fell into disrepair. He slashed the wages and the families began to despair.

‘One by one, he fired the managers and the men began to leave of their own accord to work for Rhodes or Rudd, more constant employers, or even to take up on their own. Only I stayed by his side, hoping he would see sense and bring us back to a more business-like footing. One morning I went to the office and found it closed. This was unprecedented. Even in the darkest days, Gustavus Wyndham was always the first in without fail. Then a boy came running up to me, saying that he had seen him heading to the hole with a cart laden with dynamite. I rode over as quickly as I could, but had not reached it when I heard a huge explosion. It was as if there was an earthquake. A cloud of rock and ash rose high above the mine and when I arrived, I believed he was dead. His face was bloodied beyond recognition. If it had not been so early in the day, I believe many men would have died. As it was two other miners were injured. One lost a leg.

‘After this, there was no future for him in Africa. De Beers was formed and they squeezed us out. Few would do business with us. As for Wyndham himself, although he survived, he was blind from the day of the accident. It was many days before I could get any sense out of him, but it was clear that he had taken it upon himself to find the diamond he was dreaming of. After he paid hefty compensation to the injured men, he sold up at a greatly reduced price and we returned to England in ignominy. Despite his setbacks, Wyndham was still in possession of a considerable fortune. He acquired a magnificent house and estate from a Suffolk Earl who had squandered his own wealth. He shed most of the staff and shut up an entire wing of the house. He continued to employ me to manage the estate and keep the world away from him. He is generally a sullen man, but prone to fits of great excitement followed by rage and then depression. He still talks of finding the diamond.'

‘A fascinating story,' noted Holmes who had been listening intently, his fingers joined together. ‘But none of this explains how you found the butler dead in his office.' Featherstone rose to his feet in astonishment.

‘What else do you know?' Featherstone demanded. ‘How do you know this much?'

‘Simplicity itself,' said Holmes. ‘You have two identical sets of keys in your pockets. Each is heavy, and ordinarily no man would carry both. I therefore surmised that you are holding another man's keys. From what you have told us about the house and estate, it would be the butler who held the other set. You also have the butler's accounts book in your pocket. I have seen this type of stationery a hundred times in the great houses of England and no butler who values his position would ever let it out of his sight. My third clue was your un-ironed shirt. The household is in disarray.'

‘But still this could not explain how you know the man is dead?'

‘It was your own grim face which told me this. I know the look of a man who is confronted with a dead body and who harbours a terrible secret.' Featherstone hung his head and shook it a number of times, as if hoping to wake from a nightmare.

‘You found the body did you not,' continued Holmes ‘and confronted Wyndham. His reply is written across your face.'

‘Mr Holmes,' said Featherstone slowly, ‘I have heard talk of your methods and your powers of deduction, but it is another thing to witness them at first hand.'

My friend beamed, and only I knew how much he enjoyed the flattery despite his protestations to the contrary.

‘Nonsense,' said Holmes. ‘It is a simple matter of observation. If the evidence is before you, the only work left to do is put it in a comprehensible order. And as my brother Mycroft knows, having the information is only half the struggle. It is the practical application of the knowledge where the difference can be made.'

Holmes drew thoughtfully on his cigar.

‘Tell us exactly how you found the butler.'

‘He was in his office, as you say, at his desk and slumped in his chair. My first thought was that the man's heart had given way. And yet he was an active man who walked five miles a day. He was not yet sixty and had not missed a day's work in two years.'

‘Was there anything on the desk?' pressed Holmes. ‘Any paper that might give a clue to what may have precipitated this collapse?'

‘There were papers everywhere,' said Featherstone. ‘Which was entirely out of character. Mr Brillington was perhaps the most ordered man I have ever encountered. All of the papers were all of a domestic nature. Nothing remotely out of the ordinary. I did however find this at his feet.' Featherstone reached into his pocket and retrieved a single monocle. ‘He did not wear one,' said Featherstone. In fact, to my knowledge, the only man who affected a monocle, despite his blindness was Mr Wyndham himself. I confronted Wyndham and asked him straight out what he knew. It was then I received this lash across my face. For a man with no sight, he had a deadly aim. For all I know, the matter has a simple explanation. But that is not perhaps how it will look to the police. That is why I came to you.'

‘Your case certainly has features of interest,' said Holmes. ‘Is everything as you left it?'

‘Exactly,' said Featherstone.

‘And what of Wyndham himself?'

‘After the altercation he returned to his room and locked the door, I believe overcome with remorse. I have endured similar behaviour in the past. The pattern is that he leaves me a gift of sorts and the matter will not be discussed again. No doubt he will assume that I will deal with the incident and protect him as I have always done. He has his own kitchen annex and is entirely self sufficient.'

‘Just a few more questions,' said Holmes.

‘Of course.'

‘Mr Brillington; does he have a family?'

‘He is a bachelor with few close friends.'

‘And the other staff?'

‘There is only the gardener, the stable boy and I. None of these others live in the house itself.'

‘That certainly buys us some time,' said Holmes.

‘Then you will take the case?' asked Featherstone, sitting forward with an earnest look about him.

‘Naturally,' said Holmes. ‘But one thing more. Have you seen Wyndham associate with any unfamiliar men, four to be precise?'

Featherstone glanced at me then looked back at Holmes.

‘No,' he said, not entirely convincingly, in my view. Holmes glanced at his pocket watch.

‘Gentlemen,' he announced, we still have time to catch the four o'clock train to Bury St Edmunds. Watson, there is a chance we will miss the last service back to London, so pack what you need for a trip to the country and let us be ready in ten minutes.'

We had no trouble finding a growler and soon found ourselves bumping down Marylebone Road towards King's Cross. Presently, we swerved from the main road and darted down a side alley, into another and like so many occasions, within the space of ten minutes of leaving Baker Street, I had entirely lost my bearings.

‘There is an expert I wish to consult briefly,' Holmes said by of explanation. The carriage slowed and Holmes let himself out.

We were standing outside Crabtree's shop. I had never seen it before and did not even recognise the street. The walls were painted black, the window was also blackened and across the door was the legend, in a minute superscription: Crabtree's Lenses. Holmes pushed open the door to the accompaniment of a single ting from a tiny bell. As we entered the grotto, I felt as a child might, stepping into a house of wonders. All about me was shimmering glass: a thousand monocles hung suspended from the ceiling with gas light glinting from each one. They winked and glistened as they slowly revolved this way and that, never quite catching the light in the same way. It was as if we had walked into a rainstorm and the rain had stopped in mid air.

As the breeze blew through the open door, several hundred of these monocles began to chime together. And it was in this sweet cacophony that our small, bespectacled friend appeared on the other side of the counter. He was barely tall enough to see over the top, but on seeing the towering figure of Holmes his small eyes lit up.  

‘Mr dear Mr Holmes,' said Crabtree, lifting his counter slightly and walking beneath it into the shop. ‘What a pleasant and unexpected surprise.' He was clearly never more comfortable than on home soil.

‘There is talk,' he said, addressing Featherstone, ‘of the monocle falling out of fashion. However I can see that you are gentleman of impeccable taste. That much is evidenced by your choice of Mr Sherlock Holmes as your friend.'

‘Crabtree,' said Holmes, ‘there is none other like you in all of London. Your single minded dedication to your craft, to the art and science of the single lens is a credit to you. There is nothing you do not know about the monocle.' Crabtree blushed and bowed low, so as almost to disappear. ‘We have come on an urgent matter,' said Holmes, moving to business. ‘Mr Featherstone, if you would be so kind as to produce the monocle you found in the butler's parlour.' The man placed it in Crabtree's outstretched palm. He received it as solemnly as a communion host. The optician bustled to his counter and searching with his hand on the surface felt for a magnifying glass. He let his two monocles dangle on their cords.

‘Gold,' Crabtree muttered. ‘Not more than five years old. Not English.' He squinted and continued to mumble to himself. ‘A darker lens than you would find here. South African I would say.'

‘Excellent,' said Holmes. ‘You are worth your weight in gold sovereigns.'

‘Then I would be only too happy to accept them,' Crabtree said, returning the monocle to Featherstone and rubbing his hands together. ‘You know how much I love an adventure, Mr Holmes,' he added. ‘Could you not give an inkling of what's afoot?'

‘Alas, not yet my dear Crabtree,' sighed Holmes. ‘You find us at the very crux of our case. We are heading to Bury St Edmunds on the four o'clock train to settle a matter that may have far reaching consequences.'

‘And you could not use my powers once again on your adventure? I would only be too happy to join you and provide what service I can. You will know how quiet it can become in a specialist trade such as mine and in a backstreet such as this.' He looked a little crestfallen, peering around the walls of his shop. The monocle trade, I do not mind admitting, can at times become, well, rather monotonous.'

‘Your services rendered so far have acquitted you well enough,' said Holmes. ‘I have no doubt that if ever the day comes when Dr Watson chooses to chronicle the case, he will not forget you in his account.'