The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (55 page)

‘If he took the very greatest care …'

Holmes inclined his head.

‘In that case let us admit that the weight of a man like Ham-borough falling upon the bracken below would break it down hard where he landed, for several feet in each direction. I will give you five pounds, Watson, for every broken stalk of bracken that you can find at the foot of this wall. See for yourself.'

He jumped down and I followed him. A man who had fallen from the upper level would certainly have landed within six feet of the sunken wall. At no point below the spot where Scott claimed to have lifted the body was the bracken disturbed. It had plainly grown for months as we saw it now.

‘Why should Scott murder him?' I asked.

‘For the same reason as Monson might have done. They had squeezed the poor young fellow of everything that they could get while he was alive. There remained only his far greater value to them when he was dead.'

‘They planned the murder together?'

‘That is possible but I do not think it likely. Neither would trust the other that far.'

While we talked, Holmes was examining a rough footpath, below the sunken wall, trodden through the lower bracken during the spring and summer months. It was no more than ten inches wide on bare soil. Towards the wall, there were a dozen prints of walking-shoes, preserved in compacted earth by the dry weather. They had therefore been made during or just after the last rainfall.

‘The very morning of the hunting-party!' Holmes said softly. ‘But look! Along here there is the full print of the man's shoes as he walks towards the sunken wall. Then, where the last half-dozen impressions end at this bramble bush, the print is only of the soles of the shoes with no sign of the heels.'

‘It was Scott!' I said at once. ‘Running the last few paces when he saw the body fall.'

Holmes uttered a dry, humourless laugh.

‘No doubt it was Scott! Look at this. One may calculate a man's approximate height by the length of his stride. In this instance, I should judge from the footprints that our sportsman was of less than medium height, say five feet eight inches, the figure given for Scott in the police records. However, when a man runs, his stride lengthens, which is not at all the case here. The stride remains identical, though only the soles of the shoes are imprinted. Be so good as to stand on the higher ground, on the spot where we assume that Lieutenant Hamborough's feet might be once he lay dead.'

I scrambled up to the higher level and did as he asked. Holmes raised his walking-stick as if it were a gun, aiming over the top of the bramble bush towards my head.

‘Though it will prove nothing in itself, Watson, my line of sight from here, at a range of fifteen feet or so, runs squarely to the level of your eyebrows. A little high, I grant you. The post-mortem on Hamborough confirms him as being one inch taller than you. Scott is quite four inches less than I am. Those last few prints are not of a man running but of a man standing on his toes, in order to raise his aim at a target situated where your head is at present. Were I to fire from here, I assure you the line would continue beyond your head to the beech tree, to the very centre of the pellet holes in the vertical spread of shot.'

‘Stewart could not have missed such evidence!'

‘Stewart missed it because his mind was overcome by the theory that the gun had been fired thirty feet behind. His minions found a sufficient spread of shot to make Monson the only suspect. Then they looked no higher. It seems that the incompetence of the Procurator Fiscal's office is quite a match for Scotland Yard. The yellow dye-marks are proof of that. Unfortunately, they could not test the true range by measuring also the horizontal spread, for there are no trees within five feet on either side to catch the pellets. Nor, it seems, had they any conception of a shot that was fired upwards, rather than on the level.'

It was clear that he was right, as he always seemed to be. However, one objection remained.

‘The fatal wound was behind the right ear, whereas you or Scott would have been on the young man's left.'

He chuckled, as if moving a chess-piece to checkmate.

‘As to that, Watson, you will see the answer written on the lime tree behind you.'

Instinctively, I turned to look. Before I had finished the movement, I knew that Holmes had just shot me through the right side of the head at no more than fifteen feet. He was correct. The vertical spread of the rising shot against the beech tree would make it seem a far greater range, as if fired from a spot where only Major Monson had been standing.

‘Then your case is proved!'

He shook his head.

‘I wish it were. Unfortunately, it is very far from proved. We have evidence that may convince the firearms experts but the patholo-gists will hold out against us. So long as the fatal wound is consistent only with a range of thirty feet, no amount of speculation with your head and my walking-stick will save Major Monson's neck.'

V

Our sitting-room window in the Argyle Hotel looked out towards the length of the Trongate. Tall shops with sash windows on their upper floors stretched away like cliffs beyond the signs advertising the waxwork display and Percy's Boot Bargains. It was Saturday evening, when the courts and alleys behind the streets poured out their population into the commercial arteries of the city. The pavements with their ornate lamps were too narrow to contain the crowds, who spread out into the streets among brewers' drays and open-topped horse-buses.

To and fro across this view passed the tall spare figure of Sherlock Holmes, pacing the room with controlled energy, his hands clasped behind his back. As he measured the carpet to and fro, he listened to the case against Major Monson outlined by David Stewart from the sofa, where the Deputy Fiscal sat with Dr Henry Littlejohn. This Edinburgh police surgeon was principal medical adviser to the prosecution. At length, Holmes stopped and straightened up, taller and gaunter than ever.

‘I compliment you, Mr Stewart, on the care and diligence which you and Dr Littlejohn have lavished upon the investigation. However, I have invited you both here this evening to suggest that you should waste no further time upon it.'

‘You are beyond me, Mr Holmes,' said Stewart quietly.

‘I should not be surprised. For the moment, however, I tender my advice that you should drop the prosecution of Major Monson forthwith. You have not the slightest chance of winning a verdict in court.'

Mr Stewart opened his mouth and then closed it again. Dr Littlejohn looked like a man who has accidentally swallowed a peppermint humbug whole. The Deputy Fiscal recovered his wits.

‘With great respect, Mr Holmes, there have been few cases in my experience where the chance of a conviction was greater. Certainly there have been none in which the accused has lied so consistently and so ineptly as Major Monson.'

‘Just so,' said Holmes quickly. ‘Then you would hang him for being a liar?'

Mr Stewart hesitated.

‘He will hang himself, Mr Holmes. Sir, you have a reputation for ingenuity, far beyond London or Glasgow. However, since your request to me yesterday morning, your theory that Lieutenant Hamborough was shot from below the sunken wall by Scott has been examined and rejected.'

Holmes seemed not the least put out.

‘May I ask why?'

Dr Littlejohn intervened.

‘Such a wide wound, Mr Holmes, some three inches by two at its extreme dimensions, could not have been inflicted on the deceased at so short a range as fifteen feet, for one thing.'

‘And for another?'

‘Two shots only were heard by the witnesses. They are all in agreement. Major Monson admits firing the first shot. It is quite possible that he fired both of them. However, if Scott fired the second shot, we come back once again to the fact that he did so from too close a range to kill Lieutenant Hamborough by that wound.'

‘Moreover,' added Stewart, ‘had Scott fired at a range of thirty feet or more to cause such a wound, he must have been much further back down the path. He would have been visible to the witnesses when he fired.'

Holmes paused. Then he swept all this aside.

‘I see. May we take it as common ground that Major Monson was lying when he changed his story about the guns to suit the absence of blackening on the skin?'

‘Indeed we may!' Mr Stewart was astonished and a little wary at the zeal with which Holmes tightened the noose round his client.

‘Good. First he tells us he was carrying the 12-bore loaded with smokeless amberite cartridges. We believe him. Later, when he discovers that this is the only ammunition with which Hamborough could have accidentally shot himself, the major changes guns—or rather stories—and is carrying the short-barrelled 20-bore with gunpowder? We think that is a lie?'

‘Correct.'

‘Excellent. You see? We are in agreement already! Very well, then Monson was carrying the 12-bore with amberite cartridges, as he said at first.'

‘Certainly. Lieutenant Hamborough had the 20-bore whose powder would have blackened his skin at such a range. It did not. Therefore he did not shoot himself by accident.'

‘Precisely!'

A great weight seemed to be lifted from Holmes by this general consent that his client was an unprincipled liar. His next observation did little to reassure me.

‘I think, Mr Stewart, that we are very near to the end of this case.'

Neither David Stewart nor Dr Littlejohn looked as if he thought so.

‘One thing, however,' Holmes swung round to the Deputy Fiscal, a long forefinger raised. ‘As adviser to Mr Comrie Thomson, I have requested sight of the packet of amberite cartridges from which we agree that Major Monson was loading his gun on that fatal morning. I should like to see them.'

The packet which Mr Stewart now took from his attaché case was almost empty, containing no more than three or four shotgun cartridges. They were of the most ordinary kind. He handed the packet to Sherlock Holmes, who studied the contents with narrowed eyes.

‘Have these cartridges been examined?'

Stewart's answer was abrupt, as if he suspected Holmes of playing some game with him. Had he known Holmes better, the Deputy Fiscal would have had no doubt of his earnestness.

‘You may see for yourself, Mr Holmes, that there is nothing to examine. The unused cartridges have been seen and noted for the court as exhibit 241, item 9, in the list of evidence appended to the charge of murder. They scarcely warrant further examination. They were never used, not even loaded in the gun, and played no part in the crime.'

‘How very remiss,' said Holmes coolly, sitting down at a small walnut table in the window and taking out his magnifying-glass. ‘I fear I must tell you that they played the decisive part in this crime. By such blunders as yours, sir, are innocent men and women hanged.'

Mr Stewart and Dr Littlejohn looked at one another. Holmes put down his magnifying-glass. His eyes flashed and he turned upon his two visitors.

‘As I suspected!'

Before anyone could stop him tampering with the evidence, he had opened his neat ivory-handled pocket-knife and was deftly slitting the hardened cardboard of a cartridge case down its length.

‘Mr Holmes! I must beg you will desist!'

The Deputy Fiscal was on his feet, crossing the room to rescue this ‘exhibit' from the depredations of the sharp little blade. Holmes waved him away. In any event, the damage was now done.

Dr Littlejohn and I got up and joined them. Holmes had spread open the cartridge case like a frog on a dissecting board. There was the percussion cap at the base to detonate the powder when the hammer of the gun struck the pin. The lower half of the cardboard casing was filled with yellow amberite powder. Above that, the interior of the cartridge was divided by a felt wad.

Between this division and a second wad at the top of the cartridge was a space which should have been filled with several hundred lead pellets. Instead, this upper cavity was packed by tightly compressed pellets of paper. Confined as they were by the cardboard tube, they appeared smaller and harder than the paper ‘flower heads' which we had found in the woodland at Ardlamont. Yet a single glance at the paper and the fragments was enough to confirm that they were of the same origin. Before Mr Stewart recovered his presence of mind, Holmes had slit open a second cartridge with the same result.

‘What is the commonest way of rendering a cartridge blank and harmless?' he said, as if speaking to himself. ‘To slit its upper half open neatly and substitute some innocuous substance for the lead pellets. Paper pellets are an excellent replacement. Almost all of them are burnt up in the discharge of the gun. A few are merely dispersed, though many of those are touched by flame.'

As he spoke, he took from his pocket the two scraps of paper picked up at Ardlamont. To be sure they were blank. However, in opening them out he showed that one was singed a light brown down its edge. Such was the ‘message' which Major Monson had unwittingly left.

‘Monson fired nothing more lethal than paper,' Holmes said quietly to Stewart, ‘Scott saw to that. As Monson said at first, he took the 12-bore and the cartridges on entering the woods. To be sure, had he opened a further packet of cartridges he would have fired live ammunition. What remained in the first packet was intended to suffice him until after the death of Lieutenant Hamborough. During that time, provided he used no more than five cartridges, he was no danger to man nor beast. We know from the witnesses that he cannot have fired more than twice.'

‘Then he cannot have killed Hamborough?'

‘He cannot,' said Holmes gently, ‘but the poor perjured wretch thinks he did, for he believed that he was firing live ammunition and that he alone had the range to cause a dreadful accident! Worse still, after the boating accident and the insurance of Hamborough's life for his own advantage, he thought quite reasonably that not a single juryman in the country would believe in his innocence! As for Scott, his trick would never have been discovered. Monson fired—but did not guess what he fired! If Hamborough's death had continued to be accepted as an accident, as it was by Dr Macmillan, the remaining few cartridges in the packet would have been used up by some other sportsman and Scott's secret would have been safe for ever.'