Текст книги "The Mammoth Book of the Lost Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes"
Автор книги: Denis O. Smith
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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 36 страниц)
“Is it Prentice?” asked Jones, rubbing his chin.
“Yes,” said Holmes, “and here, I think, is the weapon that struck him down – which solves another little mystery.” He picked something up from the floor beside the body, and I saw it was the second brass candlestick. As he held it up, I could see that it was bent slightly out of shape and smeared with what looked like blood. “How long would you say he has been dead, Watson?”
“This is certainly the cause of death,” I said as I examined a savage wound on the side of his head, where the hair was darkly matted with blood. “His skull has been fractured. As to the time of death, I am no expert, but it is evident that rigor mortis has already begun to dissipate, so he must have been dead at least forty-eight hours, I should say, and probably longer, as the cold air in this cellar will have slowed the whole process down.”
“My conclusions precisely,” said Holmes. “Let us get the body upstairs now, before the women return.”
Between us, we carried the body of poor Jack Prentice upstairs and laid him out on the tap-room floor, covered in an old dust sheet we found in a cupboard.
“What made you suspect that Prentice’s body might be down in the cellar?” I asked Holmes.
“The door to the street, Watson. Mrs Prentice found it unlocked on Tuesday morning, and it was supposed that Prentice had risen and gone out early. But at the time he was supposed to have left, the night would still have been pitch black. I could not believe that he would have left the door to the street unlocked when it was dark and the other occupants of the house were still asleep in bed upstairs. He would instead have locked the door on the outside and taken the key with him, knowing that there was a spare key behind the bar which his wife could use. It was possible, of course, that Prentice had been taken from the house by force, but it was equally possible that he had never left the building at all, and that the door was unlocked simply because he had never got round to locking it the night before. And if – dead or alive – he was still here, the cellar seemed the likeliest place to find him. That was the hypothesis I wished to test.”
At that moment, there came the sound of a key being inserted in the lock, and a moment later we were joined by Mrs Prentice and Maria. There was a moment of dreadful silence, as they saw the shrouded figure on the floor, and the blood seemed to drain from their faces.
Holmes took a step forward and addressed Mrs Prentice. “I am afraid you must prepare yourself for bad news,” said he, at which Mrs Prentice put down her shopping basket and began sobbing, leaning for support on the younger woman, who put her arm round her. Then, after a moment, she gathered herself together and stepped forward to identify the dead man. Inspector Jones lifted the shroud, at which she nodded her head and began to weep copiously. I brought forward a chair and sat her down on it, then went behind the bar to find some brandy.
“Who could have done such a thing?” the poor woman wailed, “and why?”
“Have no fear, madam,” said Jones in a reassuring tone. “We shall catch whoever committed this terrible crime. He shall not escape us!”
“The ‘why’,” said Holmes in a grim voice, “is because of this list that Jack was writing the last time you saw him alive.” He took the sheet of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. “He was certainly trying to work something out, but it was not the value of the ring that you saw. He was using Roman numerals so that you would not guess what he was writing, for it was something he was ashamed of, and he did not want to lose your trust, which I believe he valued above all else.”
“But what was it he was working out?” asked Mrs Prentice in a puzzled tone as I handed her a tot of brandy.
“I believe he was calculating dates,” said Holmes. “When I got home last night and examined this sheet anew, it seemed to me then that there was perhaps a slightly wider space after the third numeral on each line, and I conjectured that what he was writing in this deliberately cryptic fashion was perhaps a seven, followed by different numbers of single strokes, indicating ‘seventy-four’, ‘seventy-three’, ‘seventy-two’ and so on. This in turn suggests the years known by those abbreviations. If this is so, then the other letters must surely be the initials of the European ports that he remembered visiting in those years – Amsterdam, Hamburg, Oporto, Lisbon and so on. That is the only explanation that makes sense.”
“But why should he be trying to remember what he was doing all that time ago?” asked Mrs Prentice. “Those days were before he served his time in Pentonville; and after he came out, he gave up the sea completely. That’s all just ancient history now.”
“It might not be simply ancient history to everyone,” returned Holmes.
“What do you mean?”
“To someone who was born then, for instance, one of those years would undeniably be a significant date. Someone such as Maria, perhaps.” He turned to the Spanish girl as he spoke, and she took a step backwards, a look of alarm on her face.
“I do not understand!” she cried.
“I think you do,” returned Holmes. “I think you showed Jack Prentice that amethyst ring – a ring he had perhaps given to some woman he met in Corunna at a time when he was feeling fairly well-off from his ill-gotten gains – and you accused him of being your father. That is why I believe he was so concerned to recall everywhere he had been in those years of the early ’70s.”
“You lie!” cried Maria.
“I think not,” said Holmes. “You are the one that lied. There is no ‘C’ on Jack Prentice’s list – ‘C’ for Corunna – until ’74, which is much too late for him to have been your father. I believe you were down here in hiding, late on Monday evening, when Mrs Prentice came downstairs to see what was happening. After she had gone back upstairs, Prentice, who had satisfied himself that he could not possibly be your father, confronted you and demanded to know, I imagine, what sort of a trick you were trying to play on him. In the ensuing quarrel, you seized the candlestick from the mantelpiece and struck him with it. You may not have intended to kill him, but that was the result. You then dragged his body down the cellar steps, and across the cellar floor. Your footsteps were quite clear in the dust down there.”
“Lies! All lies!” cried the girl.
“If I am right,” continued Holmes, turning to Inspector Jones, “she’s probably got the ring on her. It’s certainly not in any of Prentice’s pockets. I suggest she be searched.”
“I have no ring!” the girl protested. “I never have ring!”
“That’s not true, Maria,” said Mrs Prentice in a quiet tone. “I saw you fiddling with a ring one day last week, but I never saw what it was.”
“All right,” said Maria. “I have ring. I find it on floor.”
“Let us see it, then,” said Jones.
She stepped forward in a reluctant fashion and put her hand in her coat pocket. The next moment a dreadful thing happened. She took her hand from her pocket, but in it was not the ring we were all expecting to see, but a wicked-looking little dagger with a narrow, pointed blade. In that same instant, with a loud howl of rage, she flung herself forward at Sherlock Holmes, the dagger aimed for his breast. But quick though she was, Holmes was quicker. His hand shot out like lightning, seized her wrist and held it tightly, then he pressed her arm down and forced her to drop the knife. At that point she let out an ear-piercing scream and began to kick him violently on the shins, at the same time lunging forward to try to bite him. Jones and I sprang forward and pulled her away, and in a moment the policeman had clapped a pair of handcuffs on her. At that moment the door opened and Constable Griffin put his head in to enquire if everything was all right.
“There’s a young woman outside, sir,” he added, “who wants to come in – name of Lily Bates.”
“That’s my daughter,” cried Mrs Prentice, rising to her feet. A moment later, a sandy-haired young woman pushed her way past the police constable and into the room. “Lily!” cried Mrs Prentice in a voice full of emotion. “Your father is dead!” The two women embraced, and in a few words Mrs Prentice gave her daughter a brief account of what had happened.
The younger woman’s eyes flashed fire. “I knew it!” she cried, looking with anger at the Spanish girl. “I always thought she was a scheming little minx! You do know, Ma, that she’s the reason William stopped coming round here. He didn’t trust her. He always said she was no good and was up to something!”
“Here’s a ring!” said Jones, who had been feeling in the Spanish girl’s coat pockets. “Would you say that that is an amethyst, Mr Holmes?” he asked, holding up the ring, which contained a single large purplish stone. Holmes nodded his head, and Mrs Prentice confirmed that it was the ring she had seen her husband slip into his waistcoat pocket on Monday evening.
“That rather settles the matter,” said Holmes. “I don’t know what this girl was doing before she came here, Jones, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she was put up to this scheme by ‘One-eye’ Vokes or Elias Dack.”
“Elias Dack?” cried Maria abruptly in a voice suffused with contempt. “I spit on Elias Dack!”
“Well, at least that shows you know who he is,” remarked Holmes in a dry tone. “As I was saying, Jones, I can’t believe that having made her way all the way from Corunna to England, whether alone, or in the company of an English sailor, as she claimed, she just happened by sheer chance to land up in the household of the man she was later to accuse of being her father. What is more likely, I think, is that she had already fallen in with Elias Dack, or some member of his gang, and he saw the possibilities in the situation: that he could use this girl to blackmail Prentice into throwing in his lot with them in their dishonest activities, as he used to do in the days before his prison sentence. It is likely, I think, that Prentice himself had mentioned to Dack, many years ago, that he had given this ring to a young woman he had met in Corunna. Dack would know that the very last thing that Prentice would want would be a serious falling-out with his wife, and he could use this fact as a sort of evil leverage against him.”
“It may well be so,” agreed Jones. “And we may learn more about it later. Between you and me, gentlemen,” he continued, taking us to one side and lowering his voice, “the important business that Inspector Quirke and his men are undertaking today is a raid on The Cocked Hat. We have had reliable information that the loot from most of those West End robberies is being stored there at the moment. A search warrant has been issued, and the raid should be starting any time now. With a little luck we should get our hands on both the stolen goods and Dack and his gang!”
As Holmes and I walked along to the railway station, I reflected on the whole sorry business.
“I was thinking,” I remarked, “that Elias Dack, despite supposedly being an old friend of Prentice’s – in days gone by, at least – was perfectly prepared to destroy Prentice’s marriage just to get him to help them.”
“That should not surprise you, Watson,” returned Holmes with a harsh laugh. “Despite the efforts of some writers to romanticize criminals, in tales of highwaymen and other such villains, there is, in truth, as the old saying has it, no honour among thieves. These sort of people would sell their own sisters into slavery if it happened to suit their immediate purposes. People like Dack have no real friends.”
I was to remember my friend’s cynical words later, when I read a report in the newspaper of the police raid on The Cocked Hat. For during the chaos and violence that followed the arrival of the police, Dack evidently scented treachery, and formed the opinion – rightly or wrongly – that the information the police had received had been given to them by his lieutenant, “One-eye” Vokes. Seizing a moment when no one was looking, therefore, he attacked Vokes with a knife he had concealed in his sock, and, before anyone could stop him, had plunged it into the other man’s breast, killing him on the spot. That raid, and the trials that followed, marked the eradication of what Holmes had described as a “plague-spot” in south-east London, leaving the honest inhabitants of that district to thenceforth go about their business in peace. The part I had played in the matter was, of course, a very slight and peripheral one, and yet I do not mind admitting that it gives me a feeling of both pride and satisfaction to know that I played any part in it at all.
The Adventure of
THE WILLOW POOL
I: CAPTAIN JOHN REID
MR SHERLOCK HOLMES was always of the opinion that no record of his varied professional career would be complete without an account of the singular case of Captain John Reid of Topley Cross, late of the West Sussex Infantry. It was without question an unusual case, and I should certainly have placed the facts on record long ago, were it not that those intimately concerned in the matter had expressed a specific wish that I not do so. That prohibition having recently been withdrawn, I lay the following narrative before my readers, to remedy the omission. The events I describe occurred in the autumn of the very first year in which I shared chambers with Sherlock Holmes following my return to England from Afghanistan, and just a few weeks after an Army Medical Board had finally determined that I was unlikely ever again to be fit enough to serve my country, and had therefore discharged me from further duty.
The Second Afghan War has already taken its place in the pages of modern history. Drawn unwillingly into a violent fraternal quarrel, in which a simple overture from one side justified one’s slaughter in the eyes of the other, the British Army endured great suffering and reversals of fortune before its final triumph settled the matter and restored peace. I have little doubt that many years hence, when the history of the time is written from a longer perspective, the whole campaign will command but a paragraph or two in an account of the period. A vicious conflict, which no one had desired, marked by treachery and double-dealing, in a barren and inhospitable land in which no one had ever wished to set foot, it can scarcely be expected to excite that interest in future generations which other, more glorious, episodes in our military history might command. Yet the very misfortune and hardship that bedevilled the campaign brought forth courage and endurance in our forces such as has never been surpassed, and those who were in Afghanistan during this fateful period are unlikely ever to forget it.
Having been severely wounded at the Battle of Maiwand, where our forces had been outnumbered by ten to one, I was among the first to be sent home to England; but it was not very long before most of my compatriots had followed me, and by the end of April 1881, Afghanistan had been effectively evacuated. It may be imagined with what relief the returning troops set foot once more upon their native turf, with what hopes for rest and the sight of a friendly face they turned their steps towards the towns and villages of their youth. But for one man, at least, that relief proved short-lived and those hopes remained unfulfilled, for when Captain John Reid returned home to the scenes of his childhood, he encountered a hostility there which was, in its way, as implacable and incomprehensible as any he had endured with his companions abroad.
It was a dull, foggy day in October, and I had not ventured out of doors all day. Now, as the afternoon drew on, I stood for a minute at the window and surveyed the dismal scene outside. Like a dull brown sea, the fog swirled slowly about the street and lapped silently at our windowpanes, where it condensed in filthy, oily drops.
With a sigh I returned to the bright fireside and picked up the tedious yellow-backed novel I had been attempting to read before the ache from my old wound had driven me from my chair. Sherlock Holmes was engaged at his chemical bench, in some malodorous experiment that involved the rapid boiling of benzine in a flask, and neither looked up nor spoke as I passed. He had his watch on the table before him, and was clearly timing the process precisely. I watched as he took a pipette and extracted a little of the bubbling liquid. Evidently satisfied, he added a small amount of chemicals to the flask and watched as the liquid became suffused with a vivid violet tint. Smiling to himself, he came to the fireside and took his old brier pipe from the mantelshelf.
“Is your experiment of importance?” I asked. “Professionally speaking, not at all,” returned my companion
with a shake of the head. “But it is not one I have performed before, and it is always worthwhile, I find, to verify for oneself the bland pronouncements of textbooks.” He took a handful of tobacco from the pewter jar on the shelf, and regarded me for a moment over his pipe. “It is a great pity, Watson,” said he at length, “that you and I cannot somehow combine our energies and our work. Between us we might just make one moderately useful citizen.”
“Whatever do you mean?” I asked in surprise.
“You are not yourself,” said he, “that is plain to see.”
“I sometimes fear I never shall be again,” I returned with feeling.
“Tut! Tut!” cried Holmes in a tone of admonishment. “You must not speak so! Time and rest will heal, Watson; I am sure of it! But it is clear that at present you are not in the best of health. You lack energy. On the desk I see a pile of foolscap, an atlas and your other books of reference. You desire, as I know, to pen a personal memoir of your time in India, and of the Afghan campaign especially; your work lies waiting for you to begin it, but at the present you simply do not have the energy to make a start. I, on the other hand, am blessed with excellent health and with energy sufficient for two men. But where is my work? Where is that for which I have trained myself for so long?”
“You have had no case lately?” I queried.
“Not a thing,” he returned in an emphatic tone. “No case, no clients, no crimes, no puzzles to unravel. As you see, I am reduced to working out a few elementary experiments in chemistry, simply to occupy my mind. When I have finished one, I move on to another.”
“In that case, I shall leave you to it,” I remarked with a chuckle, rising to my feet. “Your experiments may serve to occupy your mind, Holmes, but they do tend also to occupy one’s nose somewhat.”
“My dear fellow!” cried he in an apologetic voice, his features expressing dismay. “Do not say I am driving you from the room!”
“Not at all,” I returned, smiling at his expression. “You are not to blame for my feeling like a limp rag! I shall put my feet up for half an hour and then I shall be fine.” I left him busying himself once more with his test tubes and retorts, and ascended wearily to my bedroom.
The next thing I recall is being shaken by the shoulder. I opened my eyes to find Holmes standing by my bedside, a look of concern upon his face. The room was warm and stuffy, for the window was closed, and a fire was burning in the grate. I had fallen asleep fully clothed, and now, as I awoke, my brow was wet with perspiration.
“I am sorry to disturb you, Watson,” said he as I sat up, “but there is a brother officer of yours downstairs.”
“What! A friend of mine?”
Holmes shook his head. “He has come to consult me professionally, but he, like you, has lately returned from Afghanistan, and your presence at the interview might prove of assistance.”
“Is he ill?” I enquired.
“He is not, perhaps, in the pink of health, but his troubles, I fancy, are more spiritual than physical. He is finding it difficult to describe his circumstances to me. The presence of a brother officer, someone whose experiences are similar to his own, might set him at his ease. But do not feel obliged to come if you do not feel up to it.”
“I shall be all right when I have splashed my face with water,” I returned, setting my feet upon the floor. “Give me a minute and I shall be with you.”
I was intrigued by this invitation. During the year we had shared lodgings together, I had taken a great interest in my companion’s work. Indeed, without this interest, my life would have been a solitary and empty one, for I knew very few people in London, and my poor state of health frequently prevented my leaving the house for days on end. But, save in one or two exceptional cases, I had followed Holmes’s work only at second hand, and generally knew nothing of a case until it was completed, when he would entertain me by giving me a lively account of it, and of how he had worked his way to its solution. Whenever one of his clients called, my habit, generally speaking, was to absent myself from our shared sitting room. That he should have specifically requested my presence in this instance therefore greatly aroused my curiosity. In a few moments, I had neatened myself up and joined them in the sitting room.
“Captain John Reid, of the West Sussex Infantry,” said Holmes, introducing his visitor as I entered.
The man who rose to greet me was of about my own age, tall and spare, with sun-bleached, wavy brown hair and a clean-shaven, weather-beaten face. There was, I thought, something stiff and laboured in his manner, as if he was struggling to master his emotions.
“You have been in Afghanistan, I believe,” I remarked as we shook hands.
“Indeed,” he replied. Then he turned to my friend. “I do not recall giving you the name of my regiment, Mr Holmes,” said he, an expression of curiosity upon his features.
“You did not,” returned Holmes, “but your tiepin proclaims as much.”
“How very observant of you!” declared our visitor.
“A trifle,” returned Holmes. “But, to pass from mere observation to deduction, I perceive that though your regiment is based in Sussex, you have not come up from the country today. I take it you stayed in town last night.”
“That is so, but how . . . ?”
“Tut! Tut! Your boots, Captain Reid! Their highly polished condition tells me that you have undertaken no lengthy journey today.”
“Indeed not. I stayed last night at my club, the United Infantry in St James’s Place. It was there, as I was talking to a Captain Meadowes of the Buffs, that I first heard your name, Mr Holmes. Captain Meadowes informs me that you can solve any problem presented to you.”
“Captain Meadowes exaggerates. But, come, let us have the facts of the matter, and we shall see what we can make of them.”
“I scarcely know where to begin.”
“Is your service in India of any relevance?”
“Possibly,” replied our visitor in a hesitant tone.
“Then begin with that. I am sure that Dr Watson, especially, would be most interested to hear it.”
“Very well,” said Reid. His manner as he began to speak was oddly uncertain and nervous, like that of a man who has lost all confidence in his own judgement; but gradually, as he described his time in Afghanistan and heard a little of mine, a strength and vigour returned to his voice.
“I sailed with the first contingent of my regiment aboard the Jumna on the last day of August, 1878,” he began. “The remainder followed two weeks later on the Euphrates, along with a large number of Northumberland Fusiliers and several companies of Gloucesters. After a week in Bombay we all moved up north, to Peshawur. Things were quiet enough at first, but late in the year there were some heavy engagements, in the Khyber Pass, and at Jelalabad. After that it was calmer for a time, but there was a tension in the air, and we were all aware that trouble might flare up again at any moment. That moment came when Sir Louis Cavagnari was murdered at Cabul in September ’79, and all hell broke loose. We were at once placed under the command of Sir Frederick Roberts, who led us at Charasiab, and in the engagements that followed around Cabul. The fighting was severe, and it was many months before things quietened down again and we had full control of the area.
“When news reached us the following August of fighting in the south of the country, and of the dreadful massacre at Maiwand, where I understand you were with the Berkshires, Dr Watson, we set off at once and marched down from Cabul to Candahar to relieve the siege there. As you will know, there was again very heavy fighting before the southern countryside could be considered safe. The West Sussex men did not leave the country until the spring of this year, and my own was practically the last company to do so. Since then we have been on easier duties, around Bombay.”
“You have certainly seen your share of action,” I remarked.
Our visitor nodded his head in a thoughtful way. “There were moments,” said he, “when I think I sincerely believed that Afghanistan was the true location of Hell. And yet,” he continued after a moment, “to be hated and attacked by strangers when you at least have your loyal companions about you is not, perhaps, the worst thing that can happen to a man.” He paused, but neither Holmes nor I spoke, and after a minute’s reflection he continued in a voice which trembled with emotion. “To be hated and abused by those from whom you had expected friendship and affection, and to bear this assault alone, is perhaps the hardest suffering to endure.”
“Pray give us the details,” said Holmes after a moment, “however painful it may be to do so, and then perhaps we can begin to shed some light on your troubles.”
“My family has lived in Sussex for many generations,” continued Reid after a moment. “My great-grandfather bought Oakbrook Hall and its estate at the beginning of the century, during the Napoleonic Wars, and there the family has lived ever since. The estate lies just outside Topley Cross, in the west of the county, near Petworth. My father was colonel of the West Sussex Infantry before his retirement, and had, I think, only two further aims in life: to marry off his only daughter, Louisa, successfully, and to see his only son follow him into the local regiment. The former was achieved five years ago, when Louisa married a solicitor from Cornwall, where she now lives, the latter not long afterwards. I joined the regiment four and a half years ago, at the same time as Arthur Ranworth, an old friend from my schooldays in Canterbury, whose home is at Broome Green, near Rye, at the other end of the county.
“In the summer of ’78 we were posted to India, as I have described. Before we left, Ranworth frequently came to stay with us at Topley Cross, along with Major French and Major Bastable, friends of ours from the regiment. We always had a splendid time when we were all together, and it was evident to me that my father was as proud of me as any father might be. He has an old friend and neighbour, Admiral Blythe-Headley, who is the largest landed proprietor in the district, and whose property adjoins our own. They are great rivals whenever the respective merits of the Army and Navy are being debated, and I know that my father was particularly proud when he was able to inform his friend that I had followed him into the West Sussex. The situation is a little difficult, as our neighbour’s own son, Anthony, who is a couple of years younger than me, seems only to cause distress to his father. At school he was regarded as an outstanding pupil, and showed every promise of a brilliant future. But he took up with a dissolute group of friends at university, and has since wasted his time in idle and frivolous pursuits. It is certainly not for me to judge him, but I know that he and his father have frequently quarrelled violently in recent years, not least when he forged his father’s signature against a gambling debt, a matter that nearly came to court.
‘‘Admiral Blythe-Headley, who is a widower, also has a daughter, Mary, who is about my own age, and is, I might say, the local beauty. When I was younger I spent many happy days at Topley Grange, the Blythe-Headley’s home, and I remember with fondness the long hours spent playing rounders and other such games with Mary and her cousins. I had always hoped that one day she might join her future to mine, and a few words she spoke to me before I sailed for India led me to believe that my hopes in this regard might not be entirely unjustified. I am mentioning all these things to you so that you will understand that before I went away, everything was as right as could be. My mother, it is true, did not enjoy the best of health, but this had been the case for some years, so that although it was always a source of concern to me, it was not especially so at this time.
“There is splendid fishing in the district, and what with that, turning out for the village cricket team, lending a hand with the harvest, and a hundred and one other things, the summer before I left passed all too quickly. I was obliged to spend some time at regimental headquarters, near Horsham, but Topley Cross being at no great distance from Horsham, I was often able to get away at the end of the week, and I came and went regularly, as did Captain Ranworth. Occasionally, I was obliged to leave Ranworth to find his own amusement, when I was occupied with farming business or in helping my father, but this presented no difficulty for him, for he is almost as familiar with the people and places of the district as I am myself, having been a regular visitor there since our early schooldays. Earlier that year, my father had begun work on a history of the West Sussex Regiment, and had had one of the bedrooms upstairs turned into a study especially for the purpose. He had also engaged a secretary, William Northcote, a scholarly young man recently down from Oxford, to assist him. My father had underestimated the work involved, however, and even with Northcote’s help would have found it altogether too much had I not been there to lend a hand. By the time the day of our embarkation arrived, however, he and his secretary had got into a routine and were making good progress. I know my father greatly appreciated the help I had been able to give him. In a letter I received from home a few weeks after my arrival in India, he described how well he and Northcote were now getting on with the work, and how invaluable my assistance had been.
