The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (19 page)

The sun was low on the mine tipple across the great river when we began to gather. There was a chill in the air, as there had been the night before. I had bathed and massaged my foot in its special emollient cream for half an hour. I wore my black silk dress, black stocking, black shoe. I wore my grandmother's black onyx pendant on its tiny platinum chain. I wore my mother's good quarter-length beaver jacket—as soft and fresh as the day she put it in the cedar chest the afternoon of her death. I put a dab of mother's favorite perfume (and mine—Christmas Night by Houbigant) behind each ear and on the instep of my pretty, pretty foot. I gave my shoe a little shine. Then I came out—rather regally, I think—and made my way down the tanbark path toward the brick sidewalk, under the enormous and venerable tree, where the rest of the Irregulars were awaiting me.

Gene Voitle, his big gun clinging to his hip, looked vainglorious and a little defiant. He looked as determined as the Brown Recluse to win that precious award. I smiled. I knew that my expression betrayed nothing. And I was thankful for that, because the Brown Recluse never once took his beady, spidery eyes off my face, as the meeting began.

I don't know what this is all about, grumbled the sheriff. I don't know how there could be any more incriminating evidence than to find a man at the scene of a cold-blooded murder with the fatal weapon in his hand.

But the brick did not kill Jim Smitherman, said the Brown Recluse. Ort Holliday merely discovered the body and being the cut of man that he is and being, moreover, blind drunk, stole the dead man's wallet. Corpse robbing is, of course, a felony. But it is not the felony of first-degree murder, gentlemen.

And Ms. Lathrop. May I remind you I am here. And that I am not a gentleman, Charlie.

Forgive me, Ellen, he said with ungracious politeness. I had not forgotten your presence here. Oh, far from it.

The wind stirred the long, lovely willow fronds down by the landing where the river lapped on the old stones of the now deserted wharf. For a moment I dreamed one of the old steamboats—lovely as a white-clad bride—was feeling her way in for a landing. Sun motes danced like spinning gold pieces in the high grass and clinging, thick green moss on the brick pavement. The wind blew—that cold September wind. Soon the fog would be up—soon it would claim all, everything, the town, the world, in its white embrace—like a lover taking all from a lover, owning the clasped white earth. Soon it would be London out here where we stood and footpads and cut-purses would dart amid the moonstruck and radiant woolly world. Down yonder where the dark water lapped would not be the Glory wharf—it would be Shadwell Stair and the stair named Wapping Old. And the white queen sleeps more soundly in her Windsor bed because of the Master. And because of me.

Now, said the Brown Recluse. Let us stop this child's play, gentlemen. And—and dear Ellen.
Let us show who really murdered James Arthur Smitherman quite early this morning.

I spoke recklessly then.

Charlie Gribble, I said, in a level voice devoid of all the bitterness I might well have been justified in showing. Charlie, I guess this is the happiest moment of your life.

He pondered this.

Oddly enough, he said, it is one of the most uncomfortable. Even though I shall gladly accept and treasure forever the result of it. No, Ellen, it is quite a sad occasion, really.

In what way, sir?

Because it involves my proving that the real murderer was not Ort Holliday as Gene proposes, he said, but that it was someone much closer to us.

Closer? How?

One of us, he said, almost in a whisper, his little glass eyes fixed on mine, a faint smile whispering round his thin, gray lips. One of the Baker Street Irregulars is the murderer.

Oh, really, now, blurted two or three of the group at once. Come on now, Charlie. That's a little thick to cut. Who? Which one?

I'll get to that, said the Brown Recluse, strutting back and forth across the blood-stained bricks like some barnyard tyrant, crowing as he went. First though we must establish motive.

Well, the motive was plain enough, said the sheriff then. Robbery. The defendant already had the victim's wallet in his pocket when he was apprehended. With the murder weapon in his hand.

Again I say that was not the murder weapon, said the Brown Recluse.

I stared at him. He was not wearing the bilious brown tweed cape. That, I supposed, had gone to Empire Cleaners, with an admonition to return it to him in pristine, unstained state. Now he shivered in a shabby little Aquascutum trench coat, quite a few sizes too small. He strutted some more, picked his gold tooth, and inspected a particle of food on the end of it. He flicked it into the gold-dappled grass beside the bricks.

The blood on that brick was dry, he said. Already several hours old. For reasons known only to Holliday he picked the brick up—already clotted with the considerable flow from the deceased's wounds a few feet away. The blood was dry, I say. Clearly Holliday arrived at the scene of the crime a full two hours after it took place. Now are you asking us to suppose that he committed the crime say around four in the morning and then stood there till six with the bloody brick in his hand and the victim's purse in his coat—waiting until Gene yonder could chance upon him? I say that is sheer nonsense, gentlemen—Ellen.

O, he was so patronizing when he said my name. And yet I felt that wine of assurance warm in my veins. Somehow I should win. You see the key to the murder—to any murder—is the establishment of the strongest motive.

What was the motive, Charlie? asked Ory then. If it wasn't greed.

Oh, it was greed all right, said the Brown Recluse. But it wasn't the greed of a simple-minded drunkard for a purse containing forty—maybe fifty dollars and a few coins. It was a much greater greed.

Everyone waited. No one spoke.

The evidence of how great that greed is, he went on, is provided by the absence here this evening of one of our charter members.

I cocked my brow. What was happening here? My mind ransacked all possibilities. What was the repulsive creature getting at? O, I was more determined than ever that he should not possess my treasure. Yes, it had always been mine, I thought in that instant.

And everyone was looking around to see who was missing. Gene Voitle was there. I was there. Gribble was there. Jake Bardall, the carpenter, was there. Ory looked uncomfortable.

He cleared his throat.

Harry Hornbrook, he said. I know he'd be sorry to miss this meeting. I mean, a special meeting like this.

Where is Harry? Where is your real estate partner, Ory?

He went to Wheeling early this morning, Ory said. Took a plane to Pittsburgh. Planed out of there for Washington.

Tell us, Ory, said the Brown Recluse, strutting all the more, his pale, hairy wrists jutting
out of the undersized trenchcoat like naked chicken bones. Tell us, he said, like some popinjay of a small-town prosecuting attorney, why Harry said he was going to Washington.

Why to fight Bow Chemical's mineral rights contract—they bought up hundreds of them last year—to take over his coal lands.

Tell me, Sheriff Voitle, said the Brown Recluse then, would you have any idea where the original deeds for those mineral rights might be?

No, Charlie, I don't.

Perhaps I can inform you, said the Brown Recluse, like some shyster in a thirties movie, that until the murder in the early hours in this September morning, those original contracts—the sole arbitrating fulcrum for any claims in this case—these were in Jim Smitherman's briefcase.

Charlie, that's not so. I gave those contracts to Harry to take to Washington. You must know that.

You did not, said the Brown Recluse, and I knew when he was lying. (When a man lies to a woman in love she can forever spot a lie in that person's mouth.) He was rigging this, the fiend. He was setting up Harry Hornbrook—just so he could claim the Persian Slipper.

You know Harry has those mineral right deeds, said Ory, red-faced and perplexed before this array of unreason. He had to have them to show to the government boys. To make his claim.

I remember sending Jim back to the bank for them, said the Brown Recluse. He was returning with them—through the foggy town—when Harry struck. Struck and took the deeds. And flew the coop.

Ory picked his nose and then flickered his fingers nervously.

By God, Charlie, he said, you'd do anything to win that damned old Arabian nights shoe. Even betray a friend.

Respect for law and order, said the Brown Recluse, goes deeper than friendship. The Master would agree, I think.

Nobody said anything. Nobody argued.

But I knew, I think we all knew that Charlie Gribble was not through.

Relentlessly, he went on, building his vicious and preposterous case against the poor real estate partner. I had earlier noticed the bulge in the tawdry, tight little trench coat. Now his spidery fingers dove into this pocket and took out something round and perhaps four inches in diameter wrapped in a white, though bloodstained, handkerchief.

This, he announced pretentiously, is the murder weapon. I found it a few moments ago under those leaves and moss by the tree.

What is it, Charlie? asked the sheriff drawing near and scratching the back of his neck.

It is a glass paperweight, said the Brown Recluse. Affixed to the bottom of it so that it can be read easily is a printed advertisement for a Glory firm. It is a promotional give-away.

Which one, Charlie? the sheriff asked. Which company?

A real estate firm, it so happens, drawled the dreadful little spiderman. One quite prominent locally.

He cleared his throat in the manner of a bad actor.

The firm of Hornbrook and Gallagher, he said then.

Again all was still save for the wind and the rustle of the dear old tree. I was fascinated, as though watching the filming of something prerecorded and all stacked up by whatever Fates there be. I felt a little giddy.

This paperweight was the weapon that killed Jim, said the Brown Recluse then. There is blood on it. And even a few hairs. And—

Oh, how dare you perpetrate this unbelievable folly! I blurted. You with your widely known shares in every chemical plant between Weirton and Nitro. You—a millionaire in chemical plants. Bow, I am sure, among them. You want that land for Bow, damn you, you—you Brown Recluse!

Ellen, control yourself, he stammered in a faint, scared voice. You shan't snatch this moment of glory from me now.

I shall—damn you. And I shall snatch with the fingers of Truth!

But Harry Hornbrook's fingerprints are on this paperweight, dear lady. Can that be controverted?

Ory Gallagher was standing tensed, half crouching.

Every one of those paperweights has Harry's prints on them, for God's sake, Charlie. He distributed them. Mailed them out personally.

But the blood. The blood, my dear fellow, snapped the Brown Recluse, and I swear his voice had assumed a kind of fake Englishness. As the Master would say in this case, Elementary, my dear Gallagher.

Oh, this was unspeakable. Absolutely detestable.

He had trumped the whole thing up, this greed-head, in the hopes of causing Harry to lose his deed claim with the powerful chemical combine. And to win, as a kind of lagniappe, the lovely Persian Slipper.

I think, I said, that it is time that the woman's voice be heard, gentlemen.

I hobbled forward and stood swaying amid lovely beams of a sun which burned all the more fiercely as it declined behind a stripped-out hill. The wind blew and stirred my curls across my cheek.

My soul made choices in that instant.

In the manner of the Master, I announced with a modest lilt to my voice, I shall now demonstrate the true manner in which this crime was perpetrated.

I stared across the grass where the Brown Recluse stood, and I stared into the space six inches above his head, putting him forever beneath my regard.

In the first place, I said, we all know that he yonder wants those mineral rights for Bow Chemical. He is therefore prejudiced. He is also stupid—for the blood and hair on the paperweight will probably, under examination, prove to be the blood of one of his own Rhode Island red stewing hens. Establishing that, I shall continue.

Harry Hornbrook is a small man, I said. The deceased was a large man. I do not believe that Harry Hornbrook could have reached high enough to get a proper swing to deliver the fatal blow.

I hobbled around the dear old tree and stared at the empty case of a locust. Blessed creature, you have escaped and flown away into the moon. I plucked it loose and watched it fall to the moss at the base of the tree. I smiled.

How could you, Charlie Gribble—how could you, Sheriff Voitle—be so blind as to have missed
this
?

They all gathered round.

This footprint, I said. In the sweet, thick moss which grows here. It is so clear. It is unmistakable.

The sheriff stooped and stared. Presently he nodded.

It is like the print of a child, he whispered. A child—maybe ten, eleven. Such a tiny shoe.

Oh, yes, I breathed. Do observe how small. In fact—I smiled over their heads. The sun still clung—a bright, striving crumb of fire upon the mine tipple across the already fog-wisping river—I think if you measure the print, sheriff, you will find it was made by a size five and a half quadruple A.

That's amazingly narrow, amazingly small, said Jake Bardall, who sold shoes on a commission mail-order business.

Oh, thank you—thank you, I said.

The thought seemed to strike everyone at once for at least three of them asked it.

Where is the other print? they chorused.

The wind blew so sweetly. O, I felt as if I could dance—dance—if only something soft and green, jade green, with sequins and paste gems were only clasping my dear little foot.

There was none, I said. The murder was committed by a one-legged person—quite strong in the shoulder and arm of the good side, as most such lame people are—and this one-legged person, to judge from the impression of the shoe in the moss, was probably a woman. Surely, no man would wear so small—so delicate—so petite a shoe.