The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures (36 page)

“I am flattered by your presumption, Mr Macklesworth. Pray, could you tell me the date of the last letter you received from Sir Geoffrey?”

“It was undated, but I remember the post mark. It was the fifteenth day of June of this year.”

“I see. And the date of Sir Geoffrey’s death?”

“The thirteenth. I supposed him to have posted the letter before his death but it was not collected until afterward.”

“A reasonable assumption. And you are very familiar, you say, with Sir Geoffrey’s hand-writing.”

“We corresponded for several years, Mr Holmes. The hand is identical. No forger, no matter how clever, could manage those idiosyncracies, those unpredictable lapses into barely readable words. But usually his hand was a fine, bold, idiosyncratic one. It was not a forgery, Mr Holmes. And neither was the note he left with his housekeeper.”

“But you never met Sir Geoffrey?”

“Sadly, no. He spoke sometimes of coming out to ranch in Texas, but I believe other concerns took up his attention.

“Indeed, I knew him slightly some years ago, when we belonged to the same club. An artistic type, fond of Japanese prints and Scottish furniture. An affable, absent-minded fellow, rather retiring. Of a markedly gentle disposition. Too good for this world, as we used to say.”

“When would that have been, Mr Holmes?” Our visitor leaned forward, showing considerable curiosity.

“Oh, about twenty years ago, when I was just starting in practice. I was able to provide some evidence in a case concerning a young friend of his who had got himself into trouble. He was gracious enough to believe I had been able to turn a good man back to a better path. I recall that he frequently showed genuine concern for the fate of his fellow creatures. He remained a confirmed bachelor, I understand. I was sorry to hear of the robbery. And then the poor man killed himself. I was a little surprised, but no foul play was suspected and I was involved in some rather difficult problems at the time. A kindly sort of old-fashioned gentleman. The patron of many a destitute young artist. It was art, I gather, which largely reduced his fortune.”

“He did not speak much of art to me, Mr Holmes. I fear he had changed considerably over the intervening years. The man I knew became increasingly nervous and given to what seemed somewhat irrational anxieties. It was to quell these anxieties that I agreed to carry out his request. I was, after all, the last of the Mackelsworths and obliged to accept certain responsibilities. I was honoured, Mr Holmes, by the responsibility, but disturbed by what was asked of me.”

“You are clearly a man of profound common sense, Mr Mackelsworth, as well as a man of honour. I sympathize entirely with your predicament. You were right to come to us and we shall do all we can to help!”

The relief of the American’s face was considerable. “Thank you, Mr Holmes. Thank you, Doctor Watson. I feel I can now act with some coherence.”

“Sir Geoffrey had already mentioned his housekeeper, I take it?”

“He had sir, in nothing less than glowing terms. She had come to him about five years ago and had worked hard to try to put his affairs in order. If it were not for her, he said, he would have faced the bankruptcy court earlier. Indeed, he spoke so warmly of her that I will admit to the passing thought that – well, sir, that they were …”

“I take your meaning, Mr Mackelsworth. It might also explain why your cousin never married. No doubt the class differences were insurmountable, if what we suspect were the case.”

“I have no wish to impune the name of my relative, Mr Holmes.”

“But we must look realistically at the problem, I think.” Holmes gestured with his long hand. “I wonder if we might be permitted to see the statue you picked up today?”

“Certainly, sir. I fear the newspaper in which it was wrapped has come loose here and there – ”

“Which is how I recognized the Fellini workmanship,” said Holmes, his face becoming almost rapturous as the extraordinary figure was revealed. He reached to run his fingers over musculature which might have been living flesh in miniature, it was so perfect. The silver itself was vibrant with some inner energy and the gold chasing, the precious stones, all served to give the most wonderful impression of Perseus, a bloody sword in one hand, his shield on his arm, holding up the snake-crowned head which glared at us through sapphire eyes and threatened to turn us to stone!

“It is obvious why Sir Geoffrey, whose taste was so refined, would have wished this to remain in the family,” I said. “Now I understand why he became so obsessed towards the end. Yet I would have thought he might have willed it to a museum – or made a bequest – rather than go to such elaborate lengths to preserve it. It’s something which the public deserves to see.”

“I agree with you completely, sir. That is why I intend to have a special display room built for it in Galveston. But until that time, I was warned by both Sir Geoffrey and by Mrs Gallibasta, that news of its existence would bring immense problems – not so much from the police as from the other thieves who covet what is, perhaps, the world’s finest single example of Florentine Renaissance silver. It must be worth thousands!

“I intend to insure it for a million dollars, when I get home,” volunteered the Texan.

“Perhaps you would entrust the sculpture with us for the night and until tomorrow evening?” Holmes asked our visitor.

“Well, sir, as you know I am supposed to take the
Arcadia
back to New York. She sails tomorrow evening from Tilbury. She’s one of the few steamers of her class leaving from London. If I delay, I shall have to go back via Liverpool.”

“But you are prepared to do so, if necessary?”

“I cannot leave without the Silver, Mr Holmes. Therefore, while it remains in your possession, I shall have to stay,” John Mackelsworth offered us a brief smile and the suggestion of a wink. “Besides, I have to say that the mystery of my cousin’s death is of rather more concern than the mystery of his last wishes.”

“Excellent, Mr Mackelsworth. I see we are of like mind. It will be a pleasure to put whatever talents I possess at your disposal. Sir Geoffrey resided, as I recall, in Oxfordshire.”

“About ten miles from Oxford itself, he said. Near a pleasant little market town called Witney. The house is known as Cogges Old Manor and it was once the centre of a good-sized estate, including a working farm. But the land was sold and now only the house and grounds remain. They, too, of course, are up for sale by my cousin’s creditors. Mrs Gallibasta said that she did not believe it would be long before someone bought the place. The nearest hamlet is High Cogges. The nearest railway station is at South Leigh, about a mile distant. I know the place as if it were my own, Mr Holmes, Sir Geoffrey’s descriptions were so vivid.”

“Indeed! Did you, by the by, contact him originally?”

“No, sir! Sir Geoffrey had an interest in heraldry and lineage. In attempting to trace the descendants of Sir Robert Mackelsworth, our mutual great-grandfather, he came across my name and wrote to me. Until that time I had no idea I was so closely related to the English aristocracy! For a while Sir Geoffrey spoke of my inheriting the title – but I am a convinced republican. We don’t go much for titles and such in Texas – not unless they are earned!”

“You told him you were not interested in inheriting the title?”

“I had no wish to inherit anything, sir.” John Mackelworth rose to leave. “I merely enjoyed the correspondence. I became concerned when his letters grew increasingly more anxious and rambling and he began to speak of suicide.”

“Yet still you suspect murder?”

“I do, sir. Put it down to an instinct for the truth – or an overwrought imagination. It is up to you!”

“I suspect it is the former, Mr Mackelsworth. I shall see you here again tomorrow evening. Until then, goodnight.”

We shook hands.

“Goodnight, gentlemen. I shall sleep easy tonight, for the first time in months.” And with that our Texan visitor departed.

“What do you make of it, Watson?” Holmes asked, as he reached for his long-stemmed clay pipe and filled it with tobacco from the slipper he had brought with him. “Do you think our Mr Mackelsworth is ‘the real article’ as his compatriots would say?”

“I was very favourably impressed, Holmes. But I do believe he has been duped into involving himself in an adventure which, if he obeyed his own honest instincts, he would never have considered. I do not believe that Sir Geoffrey was everything he claimed to be. Perhaps he was when you knew him, Holmes, but since then he has clearly degenerated. He keeps an octoroon mistress, gets heavily into debt and then plans to steal his own treasure in order to preserve it from creditors. He involves our decent Texan friend, conjuring up family ties and knowing how important such things are to Southerners. Then, I surmise, he conspires with his housekeeper to fake his own death.”

“And gives his treasure up to his cousin”? Why would he do that, Watson?”

“He’s using Mackelsworth to transport it to America, where he plans to sell it.”

“Because he doesn’t want to be identified with it, or caught with it. Whereas Mr Mackelsworth is so manifestly innocent he is the perfect one to carry the Silver to Galveston. Well, Watson, it’s not a bad theory and I suspect much of it is relevant.”

“But you know something else?”

“Just a feeling, really. I believe that Sir Geoffrey is dead. I read the coroner’s report. He blew his brains out, Watson. That was why there was so much blood on the suicide note. If he planned a crime, he did not live to complete it.”

“So the housekeeper decided to continue with the plan?”

“There’s only one flaw there, Watson. Sir Geoffrey appears to have anticipated his own suicide and left instructions with her. Mr Mackelsworth identified the handwriting. I read the note myself. Mr Macklesworth has corresponded with Sir Geoffrey for years. He confirmed that the note was was clearly Sir Geoffrey’s.”

“So the housekeeper is also innocent. We must look for a third party.”

“We must take an expedition into the countryside, Watson.” Holmes was already consulting his Bradshaw’s. “There’s a train from Paddington in the morning which will involve a change at Oxford and will get us to South Leigh before lunch. Can your patient resist the lure of motherhood for another day or so, Watson?”

“Happily there’s every indication that she is determined to enjoy an elephantine confinement.”

“Good, then tomorrow we shall please Mrs Hudson by sampling the fresh air and simple fare of the English countryside.”

And with that my friend, who was in high spirits at the prospect of setting that fine mind to something worthy of it, sat back in his chair, took a deep draft of his pipe, and closed his eyes.

We could not have picked a better day for our expedition. While still warm, the air had a balmy quality to it and even before we had reached Oxford we could smell the delicious richness of an early English autumn. Everywhere the corn had been harvested and the hedgerows were full of colour. Thatch and slate slid past our window which looked out to what was best in an England whose people had built to the natural roll of the land and planted with an instinctive eye for beauty as well as practicality. This was what I had missed in Afghanistan and what Holmes had missed in Tibet, when he had learned so many things at the feet of the High Lama himself. Nothing ever compensated, in my opinion, for the wealth and variety of the typical English country landscape.

In no time we were at South Leigh station and able to hire a pony-cart with which to drive ourselves up the road to High Cogges. We made our way through winding lanes, between tall hedges, enjoying the sultry tranquillity of a day whose silence was broken only by the sound of bird-song and the occasional lowing of a cow.

We drove through the hamlet, which was served by a Norman church and a grocer’s shop which also acted as the local post office. High Cogges itself was reached by a rough lane, little more than a farm track leading past some picturesque farm cottages with thatched roofs, which seemed to have been there since the beginning of time and were thickly covered with roses and honeysuckle, a rather vulgar modern house whose owner had made a number of hideous additions in the popular taste of the day, a farmhouse and outbuildings of the warm, local stone which seemed to have grown from out of the landscape as naturally as the spinney and orchard behind it, and then we had arrived at the locked gates of Cogges Old Manor which bore an air of neglect. It seemed to me that it had been many years since the place had been properly cared for.

True to form, my friend began exploring and had soon discovered a gap in a wall through which we could squeeze in order to explore the grounds. These were little more than a good-sized lawn, some shrubberies and dilapidated greenhouses, an abandoned stables, various other sheds, and a workshop which was in surprisingly neat order. This, Holmes told me, was where Sir Geoffrey had died. It had been thoroughly cleaned. He had placed his gun in a vice and shot himself through the mouth. At the inquest, his housekeeper, who had clearly been devoted to him, had spoken of his money worries, his fears that he had dishonoured the family name. The scrawled note had been soaked in blood and only partially legible, but it was clearly his.

“There was no hint of foul play, you see, Watson. Everyone knew that Sir Geoffrey led the Bohemian life until he settled here. He had squandered the family fortune, largely on artists and their work. No doubt some of his many modern canvasses would become valuable, at least to someone, but at present the artists he had patronized had yet to realize any material value. I have the impression that half the denizens of the Café Royal depended on the Mackelsworth millions until they finally dried up. I also believe that Sir Geoffrey was either distracted in his last years, or depressed. Possibly both. I think we must make an effort to interview Mrs Gallibasta. First, however, let’s visit the post office – the source of all wisdom in these little communities.”

The post office-general store was a converted thatched cottage, with a white picket fence and a display of early September flowers which would not have been out of place in a painting. Within the cool shade of the shop, full of every possible item a local person might require, from books to boiled sweets, we were greeted by the proprietress whose name over her doorway we had already noted.