The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (11 page)

Another visitor had also landed at Kingstown, down the gangway of the
Black Prince
. He was a dark-suited nondescript figure, muscular and bowler-hatted. John Kane, Chief Inspector of the Special Branch, had been despatched by Lestrade to inquire into the matter of the missing gems. Kane described to us the King's fury at the incompetence of the Viceroy's court.

‘And the worst of it is,' the Chief Inspector added, ‘that Mr Shackleton was with His Majesty's brother-in-law when the robbery was discovered. And three days before, the young scoundrel was a guest at a luncheon party in Upper Brook Street. The Dublin visit and the jewels were mentioned. And do you know, Mr Holmes, what the young devil did? He smiled and told them that he would not be a bit surprised if the jewels were stolen one day!'

‘Really?' Holmes replied with a yawn. ‘You don't say.'

Kane became more earnest. ‘It must have been Friday night they were stolen, Mr Holmes. Why else would the door of the strongroom have been open next morning?'

‘Why else, indeed?'

‘And it must have been Sir Arthur who opened the strong-room and the safe. That's what makes the King so mad, Mr Holmes. His Majesty knows as much now as you or I and the thought that a man in such a position of trust should betray it is beyond bearing.'

Holmes sat—or almost lay—in his chair, his eyelids drooping as if he could scarcely stay awake.

‘King Edward himself is more likely to be the thief than Sir Arthur Vicars. Sir Arthur is one of the very few men who certainly could not have done it.'

Kane stared at him and Holmes raised his eyelids a little.

‘If you know something, Mr Holmes …'

Holmes laughed. ‘It is my profession to know something, my dear Kane. A week or so ago, there was a curious business of the Bedford Tower main door being found unlocked one morning. For several days before the robbery, I had arranged that a watch should be kept discreetly on Sir Arthur's house in St James's Terrace. Superintendent Lowe obliged me. In addition, when Sir Arthur left his office, I was in the habit of keeping an eye upon him until he was safely home. I followed him on Friday evening. He speaks the truth when he says that he left the Castle with his secretary and then went alone to Nassau Street, to the Kildare Street Club. He was there about ten minutes, perhaps collecting his post. From Nassau Street, he went directly home and was there for dinner at eight o'clock. He did not leave again until just before nine on the following morning, when he went to his office to find the strong-room door open and the safe empty.'

‘And that was all?' Kane asked uneasily.

‘Almost. A little after 10
P
.
M
., a young woman who might have been a servant was admitted to the house. Her name is Molly Malony, or sometimes Molly Robinson, and she has a certain reputation. By that time, however, the light in the study had gone on and off as it did every night at the same time. In other words, Sir Arthur had checked that his key to the safe was in its hiding-place. The second key and the key to the strong-room were on his person. Even if the young woman could have got them, neither she nor anyone else left the house until the following morning.'

Kane looked at him soberly.

‘Then, Mr Holmes, the robbery of the jewels can't have taken place on Friday night after all. Not if all the keys were in the right place. Friday can't have anything to do with it.'

‘On the contrary, Mr Kane. It is the only night on which it can possibly have occurred. I'm surprised you don't see it.'

Sherlock Holmes had a greater capacity of infuriating his colleagues by these paradoxes than any other man I have known. He now appeared to lose all interest in the case. It seemed certain that the robbery must have occurred on Friday night. But the keys with which it had undoubtedly been committed could surely not have been used on Friday night. Chief Inspector Kane parted with us, not in the best of spirits. On the following afternoon, Holmes announced to me, ‘I think I shall go back to London, my dear fellow. To speak frankly, Dublin has begun to weary me and I feel I shall do no good here.'

It was so contrary to his character to throw up a case like this—and one of such significance—that I wondered if he was quite well. I said as much.

‘I was never better, Watson. All the same I shall go back. You must stay here, of course, and do exactly as I tell you without question.'

‘But are the jewels lost for ever or not?'

‘For all I know they may be,' he said with a casual shrug.

IX

I remained in Dublin alone. The case made little progress and it seemed to me that nothing of the least consequence happened. Whoever Molly Malony might have been, not the slightest interest was shown in her. The thieves had scattered such confusion in their wake that I felt sure we had seen the last of the gems.

Yet what had happened before was nothing to the madness that followed. First there was a message brought to Sir Arthur Vicars at St James's Terrace. A young woman who was a spiritualist medium had seen the missing jewels in a dream. They were hidden in a graveyard not far away. The Dublin police announced that this corresponded with a theory of their own and a search of several old and overgrown burial grounds was begun at Mulhuddart and Clonsilla. How any sane person, let alone a Special Branch officer, could sanction this hocus-pocus was beyond me.

Nothing was found. How could it be? Next, there was a message that the jewels would be found in a house at 9 Hadley Street. Of course, they were not. We had a week of this nonsense and then Sherlock Holmes summoned me back to London.

My first question, as we sat at last in our own rooms, was to ask him what the devil it all meant.

‘Oh dear,' he said, ‘I have kept you in the dark too long, Watson.'

‘Seeing that you know neither how it was done nor by whom, that is hardly surprising.'

He looked at me with concern.

‘My dear fellow, I have known from the beginning how it was done. Duplicate keys were used.'

‘Why did they not scratch the mirrors of the locks?'

‘They were not used on the mirrors of the locks. That is the goose chase which Kane and Lowe have followed.'

‘You had better explain that,' I told him.

‘Very well,' said Holmes. ‘You recall that there was a spare key to the strong-room door locked in the strong-room itself? No one had looked at it for a year. There was also a second key to the safe hidden in Sir Arthur's bookshelves. He checked every night to make sure it was there. But he never used it to open the safe. Why should he, when he had one round his neck all the time? The great point of this crime, Watson, is that the duplicate keys were cut and were used. But they were not used to open the safe or the strong-room. Their task was merely to lie where the original keys had lain. By that means, all suspicion was cast upon Sir Arthur Vicars. He was, of course, entirely innocent, except perhaps of felonious and unlawful carnal knowledge of Molly Malony.'

‘And the method?'

‘Frank Shackleton, so often a guest of Sir Arthur's, must have discovered the second key to the safe hidden in the bookshelves. Perhaps it was accident, perhaps persistence. No doubt he saw Sir Arthur checking it one night. Shackleton had all day, after Sir Arthur left for Dublin Castle, in which to take that second key from the bookshelf to Sackville Street, have an impression cut, wrap the impression and slip it into the binding, keeping the genuine key for himself. That was probably done months ago. There was not the least danger of discovery. If Sir Arthur had ever examined the key closely and felt suspicious, he need only try it in the lock of the safe. It would have worked. But why should he? Each night, he felt a key wrapped in the binding of the book and was content.'

‘So much for the key to the safe. And the strong-room?'

Holmes smiled. ‘Shackleton was Dublin Herald. Nothing more natural than that he should visit the Office of Arms when he was staying with Sir Arthur. If Stivey was out of his office, Shackleton knew from experience where the strong-room key was hidden in the messenger's desk. He could open the strong-room and, even if Stivey came back, there would be nothing sinister in the Dublin Herald having gone into the strong-room to consult a volume of genealogy. The other strong-room key that was kept in the room itself had not been used for a year. Probably it was never looked at. Shackleton could safely pocket it, take it to Sackville Street, have a copy made, return the copy to the wrapping in the strong-room drawer and keep the original for himself. He now had the original keys to both strong-room and safe. He needed only a key to the door of the building. But that was a quite ordinary Yale. You recall he borrowed Sir Arthur's key to collect his letters? A copy would have been the easiest thing in the world to obtain. It could have been cut for him in a few minutes while he was on his way to collect his letters from the Bedford Tower.'

‘And the door key that Sir Arthur mislaid for several days? And the fact that Mrs Farrell found the door to the Bedford Tower open several days before the theft?'

Holmes shrugged. ‘Who knows? Perhaps Sir Arthur genuinely mislaid it. Perhaps it was stolen and copied then. It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which are vital. The mislaid key and the fact that the door to the tower was found open may be accident or coincidence. I am inclined to regard it as a coincidence but no matter. What signifies most is that our thief now had keys to open the main door, the safe, and the strong-room without leaving a single scratch on the mirrors of either the Ratner or the Milner lock. The most difficult part was no longer the robbery but returning the genuine keys of the safe and the strong-room to their proper places.'

‘Yet it was done.'

Holmes gazed through the smoke from his pipe.

‘The robbery began early, Watson, not during the night. I feel quite sure that when Detective Officer Kerr made his rounds at seven thirty that Friday evening, the thief was already there, locked in the strong-room. Kerr could not open that door and would not know of the intruder. When Kerr left, the thief let himself out and—if he had not already done so—emptied the safe of its jewels. He locked the safe. Then came the most important moment.'

‘The key?'

‘The genuine key to the safe must be returned to Sir Arthur's bookcase. The thief had a confederate. Molly Malony, I daresay. Perhaps she was with him in the building; more likely she was waiting outside. She slipped out with the key or, probably, she was already outside the tower. In that case he had only to drop it out through the letter-flap or a window. All you would see is a girl passing by, kneeling a moment to adjust the strap of her boot. A little later the key was in its proper place in the bookshelf at St James's Terrace.'

‘What of the strong-room?'

‘After the thief had emptied the safe, he waited until it was safely dark. About ten
P
.
M
. perhaps. He could then slip out of the door of the Bedford Tower into the shadows of the portico without being noticed. But when he left, there was one thing he could not do. One slight imperfection in a perfect plan. He must leave the genuine key to the strong-room wrapped in a drawer of the strong-room itself. He could not lock the strong-room door unless he used the duplicate key that had been cut. But that would scratch the mirrors of the lock. It would spoil the scheme by which all the evidence points to Sir Arthur. And so he chose to leave the strong-room door unlocked, as Mrs Farrell found it a few hours later on Saturday morning. With his carpet-bag in his hand, he let himself out into the shadows and slipped away. The duplicate keys were destroyed and there is an end of the matter. The original keys are all in their proper places once more and it seems that only Sir Arthur Vicars can have been the thief.'

‘One thing remains,' I said quickly. ‘It cannot be Shackleton. Who, then, is the thief?'

To my discomfiture, Holmes began to laugh, as if in sheer enjoyment of the tale he was telling.

‘I think, Watson,' he said at last, ‘it is as well that I have never tried on you my powers as a clairvoyante!'

X

‘You?' The whole thing seemed preposterous. ‘The message from the clairvoyante about the jewels in a graveyard? It was you who caused that to be sent?'

He was intent for a moment on recharging his pipe with coarse black tobacco.

‘It was I, Watson,' he said with a sigh. ‘Oh, I never doubted that Shackleton was the rogue but there was not a shred of evidence against him. If he was not in Dublin, he could not have taken the jewels himself. Therefore he had a confederate. But how to find that confederate among so many tens of thousands?' He put down his pipe. ‘Imagine yourself in Shackleton's position. You have played your part. You suppose that the jewels are in the hands of your accomplice. But then you hear, or read in the newspapers, that they are to be found discarded in a graveyard. Worse still, you hear that the authorities are directed to Hadley Street, which you know to be the lodging of a young woman who assisted in the crime by seducing Ulster King of Arms. What will you do?'

I looked at Holmes. He lowered his eyelids and regarded me as a cat might study a mouse.

‘I should want to know what the blazes was going on,' I said emphatically. ‘But I should keep well clear of Dublin. I suppose I should send a letter—or better still a telegram. But if things are as bad as they seem, I should simply tell my confederate to bolt.'

His eyes opened and he beamed at me.

‘Excellent, Watson! What a capital fellow you are.'

‘I should tell him to bolt and lose no time about it, taking the young woman with him if need be.'

‘Of course you would, Watson. I confess that when our friends at Scotland Yard convinced themselves that Shackleton could not be the thief, I took to watching him myself. I decided I would flush the game from cover. So I became the clairvoyante who wrote to say that her daughter, in a dream, had seen the jewels in a graveyard. I became the informer who wrote to direct Kane's attention to Hadley Street. I knew he would not find the jewels. But Shackleton would have been superhuman had he kept silent while such commotions were going on. My
pièce de résistance
was in knowing Sir Patrick Coll, a former law officer of the Crown. He and Shackleton belong to the same club and are known slightly to one another. Sir Patrick obliged me by saying in general conversation with Shackleton present that he had read a report of the jewels being recovered in Dublin.'