The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (40 page)

‘What has that to do with the case? We had seen his face already when he came through the door. The tone of his voice would have told us the rest.'

‘He dare not go into court and confront a jury. No matter what the cause of the offence.'

‘I cannot see it, Holmes.'

‘He did not intend that you should. But the jury will see it. The judge will see it. Sir Edward Carson will see it. My dear Watson, if that man goes to court he is doomed. As soon as he opens his mouth, his case is lost. Small wonder that his lips are so tight in all his photographs!' His voice became softer.

‘Perhaps, my dear fellow, you were not at an angle to see his teeth.'

‘His teeth? He is not being libelled for his teeth!'

‘He might as well be. Those teeth, Watson, are all in place and healthy in appearance, somewhat protuberant—but uniformly black! Did you not notice, when he stood in the doorway, the habit of putting a hand near his mouth when he spoke?'

I stared at him, for it was something I now recollected but had thought nothing of at the time.

‘Does that mean nothing to you, Watson, as a medical man?'

‘Mercury? That he has been treated for syphilis?'

‘Precisely,' Holmes turned back from the window. ‘A man is treated by mercury in that manner for one reason and one alone. Mercury and blackened teeth, the subject of cruel jokes and private gossip. At the trial, he must stand in the witness-box of the Central Criminal Court with the light full upon him. When he opens his mouth to give evidence, he will advertise to every man on the jury that he, the champion against slander and indecency, is in the grip of a most loathsome disease, contracted in a very familiar manner. If he hung a card about his neck, he could make it no plainer to the world. What chance will he have of a verdict then?'

It was many months later that I was to hear from Sir George Lewis how the famous playwright had contracted this disease from a woman of the streets, as the result of undergraduate folly while at Magdalen. I now guessed why, when the Prince of Wales and the leaders of society applauded and called for the author at the end of the first night of
An Ideal Husband
, Mr Wilde had prudently absented himself.

‘He must not do it,' Holmes persisted, ‘but nothing I could say would stop him. Little as I care for Mr Wilde, I should not like to be in court when Sir Edward Carson begins to cross-examine a fellow so vain and, worse still, when he begins to interrogate those young gentlemen who dote upon their master. Believe me, I would not wish on any man the destruction that our client is hell-bent to bring upon himself.'

I was still more astonished by this.

‘Then he is still our client?'

Holmes shrugged.

‘The matter is at his discretion.'

But we never heard from Mr Wilde again.

I shall let the words of that afternoon's encounter fade from my mind. I fold the stiff law-stationery of
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde, Esq. v. John Sholto Douglas, Marquess of Queensberry
, and lay it in the tin trunk.

As I sit in my chair and recall that familiar room in Baker Street, I see the chemical corner with its acid-stained, deal-topped table. There upon a shelf stands the formidable row of scrap-books and volumes of reference, which so many of our adversaries would have been glad to burn. The diagrams, the violin-case, and the pipe-rack, the Persian slipper which contained his tobacco—all these take shape in the imagination. As for Sherlock Holmes, I imagine him most often at the breakfast table, having risen late as was his custom. The silver-plated coffee-pot stands before him.
The Times
or
Morning Post
lies beside his plate. Sometimes his profile is like a bird of prey as he scans the columns and says sourly, without looking up, ‘If the press is to be believed, Watson, London has singularly little of interest to offer the criminal expert at the present time. I wonder whether our friends in the underworld have become a good deal less active of late—or a good deal more clever.'

This impatience was usually short-lived. Sometimes, even before the remains of his mid-morning breakfast had been cleared away, a clang of the bell or a stentorian knocking on the well-hammered Baker Street door would be followed by the appearance of Mrs Hudson with a card upon her salver. Or else Holmes would lean back in his chair at the end of his meal and hand me the newspaper, where his finger had dented a paragraph, saying simply, ‘Read that.'

On such occasions, as the newspaper was put down or the visitor's tread was heard upon the stairs, he would chuckle and say quietly, ‘I believe, after all, that this morning may present us with infinite possibilities.' How familiar these memories are and how often were we confronted by infinite possibilities! Yet the earliest bundle of papers that comes to my hand dates from several years before my friendship with Sherlock Holmes began. Looking at it now, who would think that it threatened to rock the state and government of Great Britain, to bring down law and order in utter ruin? It is inscribed with the laconic title that Holmes himself gave it: ‘The Case of the Racing Certainty'.

The Case of the Racing Certainty

I

This remarkable case in the career of Sherlock Holmes was concluded four years before the summer day when I first met him in the chemical laboratory of Barts. From time to time during the period of our friendship, as we sat over the fire in Baker Street on a winter evening, he would lug from his room the familiar tin box and hand me a bundle of documents, tied in red tape. In one of these I first encountered the case of the
Gloria Scott
, in another the mystery of the Musgrave Ritual, published long ago in
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
.

One evening, I learnt of a bizarre adventure, dated several years before our first meeting in 1881. We were talking of Inspector Lestrade and I remarked that I had never been quite clear how he and Holmes became acquainted. My friend withdrew and brought me one of the familiar bundles. With an eye to life's absurdities, he had inscribed upon it, ‘The Case of the Racing Certainty'.

By the time of our first meeting, Holmes had been ‘a consulting detective' for some years. He was trusted in matters of great delicacy and had been called upon by Scotland Yard, notably by Lestrade, when that officer had ‘got himself into a fog over a forgery case'. Odd though it now seems, I had never yet heard the details of this investigation.

When Holmes handed me two papers from the bundle, chuckling as he did so, I saw at first no connection with Lestrade. My friend had untied a mass of documents, including counsel's brief for the Crown, marked
Regina v. Benson and Kurr 1877
. How that prosecution affected our colleague at Scotland Yard, the reader will presently see. Meantime, as a storyteller's narrative is preferable to a mere report, I tell the tale as I heard it from Holmes that night but with no apology for interpreting the nuances of the drama. The first sheet which he had given me was a page from a newspaper devoted to horse-racing. It was
The Sport
, dated 31 August 1876. Still chuckling, he watched me read an article devoted to the misfortunes of Major Hugh Montgomery, evidently a man of honour, and a hero to whom the nation owed debts of gratitude upon many a field of battle, from Inkerman to the Abyssinian campaign.

Major Montgomery was that legend among racing men, a gambler who has never lost a bet—or nearly so.
The Sport
outlined his career, naming many winners he had backed. I am no racing man, but even I had heard of most. Alas, this gallant officer had now fallen victim to a conspiracy among the bookmakers of England, who had ganged together to refuse his bets.

The editor of
The Sport
rounded upon these ‘vultures', as he called them, whose sole object was to take a man's money when he lost and to refuse payment when he won. Knowing little of the turf, I should not have realized the extent of Major Montgomery's tragedy but for the newspaper's account. My first thought was that he could surely continue his success by giving the name of each horse to a friend who would place the money for him. Alas, this proved to be impossible. As
The Sport
reminded its readers, betting must take place on the race-course, where the Jockey Club is supreme. By its rules, no person may bet for another. This had become a necessary regulation, after the Gaming Act of 1845 had made gambling losses irrecoverable at law. The article ended with another blast on the major's behalf against the ‘vultures' of the profession.

The second sheet was a still more curious production. It was a letter from ‘The Society for Insuring Against Losses on the Turf'. It was written in French and this particular copy had been sent by Major Montgomery, the apparent founder of the philanthropic body, to the Comtesse de Goncourt living near Paris, at St Cloud. He drew her attention to the article in
The Sport
and explained that neither the Jockey Club nor the Gaming Act could prevent bets being placed for him by those living beyond the jurisdiction of the English courts. However, the Act required that money from abroad must be placed only with a ‘sworn bookmaker' in England. I had heard of ‘sworn brokers' on the Stock Exchange and supposed these others were something of the same kind.

Major Montgomery's letter went on to explain how he had at first demurred at trusting large sums of his money to strangers. However, he had approached the Franco–English Society of Publicity to ask if they could recommend men and women of proven integrity in France who might assist him. The name of the Comtesse de Goncourt had received the society's warmest endorsement.

The fact that Holmes found the business so amusing made me uneasy. Yet I could not see how those who assisted Major Montgomery could be losers. At regular intervals, he would send them a cheque, drawn on the Royal Bank of London in the Strand, and the name of the horse to be backed. They would forward the cheque and the horse's name to the ‘sworn bookmaker' in England. If the horse won, as it always seemed to do, Major Montgomery would send his new friend ten per cent of the proceeds. If the animal failed, the major would bear the cost. The Comtesse de Goncourt felt, as I had done, that she could not lose. On the contrary, she stood to gain a substantial sum for very little effort. Holmes assured me that Major Montgomery sent his first cheque, the bet was placed, and Madame de Goncourt received news that the horse had won. A cheque for her share of the winnings followed. So did another cheque to be ‘invested' and the name of a horse for the next race.

At that time, Sherlock Holmes still had ‘consulting rooms' a little to the south of Westminster Bridge. They were convenient for the laboratory of St Thomas's Hospital, to which he had grace-and-favour access. I have written of his origins among the English squirearchy. The indulgence shown him by the hospital governors stemmed from a bequest made by one of these kinsmen. To the handsome but decayed terraces and tree-lined vistas of this neighbourhood Holmes returned each evening from his labours among test-tubes and Bunsen burners.

He came home on a fine but windy autumn evening in 1876 to find that a visitor had been waiting for half an hour in his landlady's ground-floor parlour. Holmes described his guest as a well-dressed ‘pocket Hercules', dark haired, and with a face to which nature had given the pugnacious lines of a fairground bruiser. As soon as Mr William Abrahams opened his mouth, however, he was no show-ground boxer. In a voice that was gentle yet inflexible he apologized, as they entered the upstairs sitting-room, for calling upon the ‘consulting detective' without notice. Holmes waved the courtesy aside.

‘It is I, Mr Abrahams, who should apologize for keeping you so long. I confess I have been a little pressed today. However, had your problem not been so confidential as to require my anonymity, I should willingly have come over to your Temple chambers and saved you a crossing on the penny steamer. Now, I fear, you have missed your train home and it may be well past dinner time before you arrive in Chelsea. Ladies are sometimes impatient on these occasions, so I daresay it as well that you are not a married man.'

Mr Abrahams stared at him, the lined face more deeply incised with suspicion.

‘Surely we are perfect strangers, Mr Holmes? How can you, to whom I had not spoken until this minute, talk of my chambers in the Temple, or my travelling habits, or my house in Chelsea, or the fact that I am not married?'

Holmes smiled and motioned his guest to a chair.

‘Pray sit down, Mr Abrahams. It has been a dry day and yet there are fresh water-marks upon your shoes. Though you carry a hat, your hair, if I may say so, is a little ruffled. Where does a man ruffle his hair most easily on a blustery day? Why, on the river, crossing by steamer from the far bank. Where does water lie to wet the shoes so conveniently as on the decking of the piers at the ebb—and notoriously upon the Temple Stairs? That you are a lawyer is suggested by your manner. It is confirmed for me by a small blot of sealing-wax on your right cuff and the seal upon your waistcoat-chain. A man who seals documents for himself is something more confidential than a mere trader. You might be a banker, of course. Yet the banks have already been closed for some hours. The courts frequently rise later, so that the time of your arrival suggests to me a busy lawyer.'

Mr Abrahams relaxed, smiled, and nodded his head in acknowledgement.

‘As for your mode of travel,' Holmes went on, ‘like many men of affairs, you have a habit of concealing the return half of your ticket in the lining of your hatband, causing a slight deformity of the silk which is visible to the trained eye. The Temple station would take you as far as Chelsea. You might, of course, travel a shorter distance on that line but a man whose time is as valuable as yours would more probably take a cab for a short journey. As for being a bachelor, I observe that you wear a gold signet ring and one other. I have found, when a man wears rings and is married, a gold wedding-band appears on the fourth finger of his left hand. In your case it does not. I daresay, however, that I am quite wrong in every particular.'