The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (100 page)

‘It is his handwriting,' said Lestrade hastily. ‘Mr. Thomas Gurrin has said so on two occasions in court. He is the greatest expert we have.'

‘Or the greatest charlatan,' said Holmes equably. ‘However, let us return to the night of 31 May. Rose lit a candle in her window that remained there for ten minutes or so. Gardiner and his neighbours were standing in their doorways or in the street watching the storm. Had Gardiner stood in the middle of the road, he might have seen the candle in the window, two hundred yards away. All other evidence apart, Rose Harsent was certainly alive at ten
P
.
M
. and dead at eight
A
.
M
. next morning.'

‘Let us say four
A
.
M
.,' I added quickly, ‘and quite possibly two
A
.
M
., according to postmortem evidence of rigor mortis.'

‘So it shall be.' Holmes put down his glass and glanced at the sheet of paper before him. ‘Gardiner and his wife were asked by a next-door neighbour, Mrs. Rosanna Dickenson, an ironmonger's widow, to keep her company because she was afraid of the storm. Mrs. Gardiner arrived at Mrs. Dickenson's house at about eleven thirty
P
.
M
. Gardiner had said that he would look to see that the children were sleeping. He then followed his wife about fifteen minutes later, let us say eleven forty-five
P
.
M
. Gardiner was described by Mrs. Dickenson as ‘calm and collected.' He was wearing carpet slippers and not dressed for going out, even in fine weather, let alone in the storm that was still in full force. The couple stayed with Mrs. Dickenson until one thirty
A
.
M
. and left together. I see that Mrs. Dickenson was not cross-examined at the trial, so I take it we may accept the truth of her evidence?'

Our Scotland Yard man took the pipe from his mouth.

‘I think we may.'

‘Very well. Mrs. Gardiner then describes how they walked straight home and went to bed. She recalled that the first predawn light began to appear in the sky just before two o'clock. Remember that this was 1 June and almost the earliest sunrise of the year. As they got into bed at two twenty
A
.
M
., she said to her husband, ‘It is getting quite light.' Furthermore, the walls of those cottages are thin and their neighbour, Amelia Pepper, heard Mrs. Gardiner's voice and her tread on the stairs at about two
A
.
M
. Mrs. Gardiner tells us that she had a pain in her body and did not sleep until after five
A
.
M
., when she heard the clock strike. Her husband was in bed with her all that time. If this is true, then he cannot have murdered anyone after eleven forty-five
P
.
M
., unless we disregard his wife's evidence.'

‘Which we should be well advised to do,' said Lestrade quickly. ‘It is completely uncorroborated after two
A
.
M
.'

Holmes looked at him without expression.

‘I think, Lestrade, that a little common sense will suffice. If you check your diary or your almanac, you will find that the sun rises at that time of year at two forty-five
A
.
M
. and that it lights the sky from below the horizon somewhat before then. Were I Gardiner intent upon murdering Rose Harsent, it would be a deed of darkness. I should not walk down the main street in broad daylight where a wakeful neighbour or an early riser might see me from a window or even meet me on the way. Peasenhall is not Park Lane or Baker Street. Country people rise with the sun, not several hours after it. Added to that, the medical evidence cannot place the crime later than two or three o'clock, four o'clock if we accept Dr. Lay's unsupported guess.'

‘That is certainly true,' I said before Lestrade could intervene again. ‘In any case, Miss Harsent was in the kitchen when she was murdered, and the candle in her bedroom had been put out. If her lover failed her at midnight, she would surely have gone to bed and not sat up in the kitchen for two hours and more in her nightclothes.'

Lestrade turned round to us all.

‘This may be very a very amusing game to you, gentlemen. To me, it is something else. The young person may have been murdered as late as four
A
.
M
., according to Dr. Lay. If that was the case, then she had indeed sat up waiting or gone to the kitchen at that hour, however unreasonable it may seem to you. Remember she was wearing night attire and may have gone downstairs in answer to a knock or signal. Let that be enough.'

‘Enough for suspicion and innuendo, far too little for guilt,' said Holmes quietly. ‘If I were you, I should place the murder at a time before the Gardiners went to Mrs. Dickenson and not afterward. That would put it before eleven forty-five
P
.
M
. on the previous evening.'

‘Time enough, Mr. Holmes.'

Holmes stared into his glass.

‘Is it, indeed? Rose Harsentwas seen alive by Mrs. Crisp who said goodnight to the girl at ten
P
.
M
. It was ten fifteen when Mrs. Crisp went to bed and to sleep. She woke somewhen during the night and heard a thud, followed shortly after by a scream. She said at first it was at midnight; now she is not sure of the time, but it was dark. No matter. We have a period between ten fifteen and eleven forty-five, less than that if Gardiner was the murderer. He had to be at Mrs. Dickenson's in his carpet slippers at eleven forty-five, so let us say between ten fifteen and eleven thirty.'

‘Long enough,' said the inspector decisively.

‘What about the blood with which he was covered when he arrived at Mrs. Dickenson's?'

‘What blood?'

‘Precisely, my friend. There was none. Gardiner is said to have cut the throat of this young woman during a struggle in the kitchen. There was a struggle, of course, since Mrs. Crisp heard first of all a thud and then a cry soon afterwards. The thud, no doubt, was the staircase door banging back against the wall and the cry was the poor girl's last utterance.'

‘I don't entirely follow you, Mr. Holmes.'

‘I quite see that, Lestrade. The kitchen of Providence House is a small one, some ten feet by eight. The blood had spurted to the second step of the staircase. A man who grappled with his victim while he cut her throat, in a space as small as that kitchen, would have been covered by it. His shoes would have trampled it all over the kitchen floor. Forensic examination shows that there was not a speck of blood on Gardiner's shoes or clothing, neither the clothing that had been washed nor that which was waiting to be washed. All his clothing was examined by Dr. Stevenson of the Home Office, a man who can not only detect blood on clothing that has not been washed but the remains of blood on clothes that have been washed. There was not a drop.'

Lestrade said nothing, for Sherlock Holmes now held the floor.

‘What there was, however,' my friend continued, ‘was a copy of the
East Anglian Times
under the girl's head. Why? Is it likely that Gardiner would bring a paper to which he subscribed and the Crisps did not in order to leave it under her head? Then again, there was a medicine bottle with a label ‘For Mrs. Gardiner's children.' Is not that the first thing he would have taken away? Might it not be the first thing that another man would leave there to incriminate Gardiner? In which case the crime was committed by someone known to him, well enough known to be informed that the Gardiners of Alma Cottage subscribed to the
East Anglian Times
, rather than the
Chronicle
, which was taken in by the Crisps at Providence House.'

‘You tell me nothing I have not heard already.'

‘Then how can you hear it and still believe that Gardiner was the murderer of Rose Harsent? It can only be because no case has been built against any other man. That is not a good enough reason to deliver any poor devil to the hangman's mercies.'

Lestrade hung on like a plucky terrier to a thief's coattails.

‘Gardiner had ample time to burn a bloodstained shirt before his clothes were taken for examination three days later. If murder was his purpose, he might have gone barefoot into that kitchen and wiped away any prints as he left. Mammal's blood, possibly human, was found in a crevice of his pocketknife.…'

‘Rabbits!' said Holmes furiously. ‘Have you never heard of hulling rabbits? There is not a countryman who does not use his knife regularly to prepare them for the pot. I should find it far more incriminating if his knife was perfectly clean.'

But Lestrade would not be stopped.

‘He has no alibi but for the time spent with Mrs. Dickenson. The Gardiners' neighbour, Amelia Pepper, swears only that she heard the voice and step of Mrs. Gardiner after two
A
.
M
., not her husband. Rose Harsent may have met her death as late as four
A
.
M
. If she died the evening before, Gardiner had time to kill her at eleven
P
.
M
. and be back in Mrs. Dickenson's sitting room forty-five minutes later.'

‘Then his wife is necessarily a liar.'

‘Not necessarily, Mr. Holmes, but she is his wife. There is not an insurance company that would take a wife as sole witness in a husband's claim! If Gardiner killed that girl, he killed that girl. Not all your clever theories, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, can alter that!'

‘Very well. Then if he killed her, he must have had good reasons.'

‘He had good reasons, indeed,' said Lestrade triumphantly. ‘He had such reasons as being the father of her unborn child and being determined to protect himself, his family, and his reputation by putting an end to it!'

‘Which brings us back to the Doctor's Chapel and the scandal again,' said Sherlock Holmes thoughtfully.

‘So it does.'

‘Well then, Lestrade? Had we not better have an understanding between us? We have done enough sitting about in chairs. Let us take this matter of the chapel
au serieux
and fight the battle there, at the scene of the scandal. Shall we do that as soon as the principals can be gathered? I believe we shall have you back in London in no time at all.'

‘We might do that, Mr. Holmes. I will go this far. If you can disprove absolutely the scandal of the Doctor's Chapel, you shall have your way. For then the motive of the murder falls to the ground. I do not see how you can do it, but I will go that far to meet you.'

‘There must be sound tests of what, if anything, can be heard behind the hedge.'

‘They have been tried.'

‘They must be tried again. And there must be an examination of the two youths who claim to be witnesses of immoral conduct between Gardiner and Miss Harsent.'

‘That has been done. Wright and Skinner have said all that there is for them to say.'

‘Nonetheless, Lestrade, I shall require George Wright, Alfonso Skinner, and Mr. Crisp, who was deacon of the chapel and who with his wife employed Rose Harsent.'

‘Mr. and Mrs. Crisp? What have they to do with it now?'

Holmes let out a long sigh, which may have been of satisfaction or relief.

‘You see, my dear fellow? It seems they have not said all they have to say. I believe, Lestrade, this is another of our cases in which you and Scotland Yard will live to thank me for my assistance.'

5

The rain had cleared before midnight, and by dawn the clear sky had laid down a frost to accompany our visit to the Doctor's Chapel at Peasenhall. For the number of us who were to gather there, we might have hired a charabanc. Peasenhall consists of the main road, which they call the Street, and a road running south from it at the midpoint, which is Church Street. The Doctor's Chapel is two hundred yards down Church Street, reached through a narrow iron gate on the south side. Beyond this lies the equally narrow path that runs along by the building, overlooked on the other side by a tall bank topped with a hedge and a hurdle fence.

The chapel itself is a small structure with the appearance of a single-storey thatched cottage. It has three square windows and a plain door on this southern side. I doubt if its pews would accommodate fifty worshippers. It is surrounded and overhung by trees which give way to open fields a little distance beyond. Such was the scene of the scandal, upon whose proof or disproof the fate of William Gardiner must now depend.

Waiting for us by the door were PC Nunn, with a face of the severe but thoughtful type, Mr. Crisp, with an ear trumpet and walking stick, and his wife, who was, as they say, a stout body of fifty or so. We were introduced to them. The other two witnesses present were the Peeping Toms of the scandal, merely indicated to us as they stood apart sullenly. William Wright and Alfonso Skinner now wore their Sunday best.

I confess that I did not like the look of these two from the start.

Wright was a sallow, even swarthy young man who looked entirely out of place in a suit and cravat. His heavy jaw and the morose stare of his dark eyes gave him a mingled look of malice and Neanderthal stupidity. Skinner was quite the contrary, a more dangerous antagonist. He had a sharp, impatient manner, hair closely cropped, and narrowed eyes that stared without emotion. I swear that those eyes would watch suffering with indifference, would look on without either anger or compassion. In all my experience with Sherlock Holmes, I had seldom had the sense so strongly of men who would crush their victim as a matter of habit, hardly caring whether they did so or not. If it was necessary for William Gardiner to be hanged in order that they should be safe from prosecution over their perjury, I wager they would send him to the gallows as readily as they would order a chicken to be slaughtered for Christmas.