Текст книги "The Mammoth Book of the Lost Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes"

Автор книги: Denis O. Smith

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Holmes’s keen, hawk-like features assumed a look of the most intense concentration, and it was clear that this news had surprised him. Then, with a groan, he slapped his hand to his forehead. “Of course!” cried he. “What a fool I have been! I should have expected such a development. An intruder has been in your dressing room, Captain Reid.”

“That is evident,” returned the other. “My travelling-trunk, which was in there, has been rifled.”

“Is there any evidence of how the intruder might have gained access to the window? Is there a ladder anywhere about?”

Reid shook his head. “That would not have been necessary. Just below the window is the low roof of a pantry, from which it is very easy to climb through the window. I have climbed in there myself many times, as a boy.”

“I see. Has anything been taken?”

“A small leather satchel containing my most private papers – diaries I kept while on active service, letters, copies of official dispatches and a few pencil sketches I made of the terrain around Candahar.”

Holmes nodded. “When was the theft discovered?”

“Not until Ranworth and I reached Oakbrook a short while ago. I was attempting to speak to my father – with no great success, I am afraid – and Ranworth had gone up to my bedroom to look for a book of his, which I had borrowed from him the last time he was here and had left in my room. The door to the dressing room was open, and he at once observed the broken glass on the floor and the rifled trunk. The break-in could not have occurred earlier than last night, incidentally, for the maid was in my room yesterday, dusting the furniture, and she says she saw nothing amiss then. Do you believe this incident has any connection with any of the other matters that have occurred, Mr Holmes?”

“Indeed it has, Captain Reid. It follows with iron logic from all that has gone before,” returned Holmes. “Where is Captain Ranworth now?”

“He is waiting for me in the trap, outside.”

“Very good. We shall not keep him long. Now, if you will be seated here, I shall give you a sketch of what I have been able to discover – I shall provide a more detailed account later this afternoon – and then I shall explain to you a specific task, which I should like you to perform later this afternoon. First, however, there is a small point I wish to clear up. Do you recall losing a cufflink, some time during the summer of ’78?”

“Why, yes, I do,” returned Reid. “Of course, it seems such a long time ago now. I remember wondering if Major French or Captain Ranworth, who were staying here then, had taken it by mistake, as they both had similar cufflinks, but they said they had not. In the end I decided I must have dropped it in the orchard somewhere. We were helping with the apple-picking at the time, and I had rolled my shirt sleeves up and slipped the cufflinks into my waistcoat pocket. I suppose it must have fallen out as I was bending down. How on earth did you hear about it, Mr Holmes? Don’t tell me the cufflink has turned up!”

“Indeed it has,” returned Holmes, “although not, I’d wager, in a place you would expect. But, all things in order. You will appreciate the significance of the cufflink when I describe to you all that has happened here since you left these shores.”

At twenty to three that afternoon, Sherlock Holmes and I took the trap from the White Hart to keep our appointment with Colonel Reid at Oakbrook Hall. At the top of the high street, as we passed the long curving wall of the churchyard, I saw Noah Blogg, our curious acquaintance from the Willow Pool, in the company of a squat, grey-bearded elderly man. They were just turning in at the gate of the vicarage, and I lost sight of them as we passed on at a clatter. About halfway to Oakbrook Hall we passed a rustic-looking figure striding out along the road, and I recognized John Dickens, brother of the dead girl. Holmes, meanwhile, spoke not a word during the journey, and I could see from the tense, strained expression upon his features that he was in a state of heightened expectancy.

Shortly before three o’clock we arrived before the front door of Oakbrook Hall. It was a broad, symmetrical building, built of red brick. Standing before it and dominating the approach to the house was a very tall and spreading cedar, beneath the curving branches of which our trap halted.

We were shown into a large square room to the right of the front door. From the bureaux it contained, and the shelves of books that lined the walls, I took it to be the study of which Captain Reid had spoken. Almost in the very centre of the room stood a broad desk, and upon this, on a heavy wooden stand, rested a very large globe. On one wall, flanked on either hand by bookshelves, was a pair of French windows, through which I could see the neat and attractive garden at the side of the house. After a few moments, we heard footsteps approaching, and a tall young man strode briskly into the room. He had sallow skin, and dark hair and moustache, and I recognized him as the man I had seen in the trap outside the White Hart earlier in the day. He introduced himself as Captain Ranworth.

“The others will be along in a minute,” said he. “While we are waiting, I’ll show you the pantry roof, from which someone must have climbed into Reid’s room last night.”

He opened the French windows and we followed him into the garden. To the left, near the back of the house, a small single-storey extension protruded from the house wall at right angles. Just above its tiled roof was a small square window.

“As you see,” Ranworth continued, leading us along to the wall of the pantry, “it would not be too difficult to climb onto the pantry roof. Once there, to get into the dressing-room window would be very easy.”

Holmes crouched down and examined the ground by the pantry wall. “There are no marks here,” said he after a moment, rising to his feet.

“I suppose the intruder took special care not to leave any,” responded Ranworth. “I observed earlier, however, that one of the tiles on the pantry roof is cracked,” he continued, directing our attention to the tile in question, “but, of course, it may have been cracked for some time.”

“It does appear rather ancient damage,” remarked Holmes, squinting up at the pantry roof. “The broken edges of the tile are discoloured with age. But, come! It sounds as if the others have arrived. Let us return to the library and proceed with matters.”

In the library we found Holmes’s client, his father, and the secretary, Northcote, standing together in awkward silence.

“Well?” said Colonel Reid to Holmes as we entered through the French windows. “We are all here as you requested. Now let us get this nonsense over with as quickly as possible.”

Before Holmes could reply, there came the sound of a horse and carriage on the drive outside.

“Now what?” cried Colonel Reid irritably. “Who in Heaven’s name is this?” His question was answered a moment later, when the butler opened the door and announced the arrival of Admiral Blythe-Headley, accompanied by his son and daughter. “What!” cried Colonel Reid in a tone of stupefaction.

“This is not a social call, Reid,” said Blythe-Headley loudly, in a tone of distaste, as he strode into the room. “It gives us as little pleasure to be here as I imagine it gives you to see us. But I have been persuaded to come against my will and, I might add, against my better judgement, in order to hear what this gentleman has to relate.” He inclined his head slightly in the direction of Sherlock Holmes, and everyone turned to see what my friend would say.

“I have requested this meeting,” said Holmes after a moment, “to acquaint you all with certain facts.”

“Pah! Facts!” cried Admiral Blythe-Headley with a snort. “What facts, pray?”

“Facts which I have good reason to believe are not known to you,” responded Holmes. “In so doing, it is my hope that I might help to right the most grievous wrong that has been done to Captain Reid.”

Blythe-Headley snorted again, and Colonel Reid sighed in a sceptical manner, but Anthony Blythe-Headley held up his hand.

“One moment,” said he. “Let us hear what Mr Holmes wishes to say. We have already wasted enough time in coming here. Let us not waste further time in prolonging the nonsense!”

“When Captain Reid returned recently from India,” Holmes continued when the room had fallen silent once more, “he was met with a hostility for which he could think of no explanation.”

“Well, he obviously did not think hard enough,” snapped Colonel Reid.

“Over the course of the following days,” Holmes continued, ignoring the interruption, “incidents occurred which he found equally inexplicable. He received a white feather in the post, for instance, and was accused of damaging a garden bench at Topley Grange. Finally, brought to a very low ebb by these unpleasant events, he consulted me. I have therefore spent the last few days conducting a thorough enquiry into the matter, and am now in a position to lay the full facts before my client, and before all those who know him. It will be apparent when I do so that Captain Reid has been the victim of a most serious miscarriage of justice.”

“You are trying our patience,” interjected Anthony Blythe-Headley, taking his watch from his pocket in an ostentatious manner. “You have not yet told us anything we did not already know. Unless you do so within the next three minutes, I for one shall bid you adieu!”

“My enquiries quickly led me to the death in this parish, three years ago, of one Sarah Dickens,” Holmes continued. “Although this matter will be a familiar one to most of you, it was completely unknown to Captain Reid.”

“Humbug!” muttered Colonel Reid.

“It soon became apparent to me that Captain Reid was widely regarded as having treated this girl shamefully. In a fit of melancholy, it was supposed, this girl had taken her own life, or, at least, had been so careless of it that she had lost it accidentally.”

The room had at last fallen silent, as Holmes described the tragedy that had cast such a shadow upon the parish. I stole a glance at the faces of those assembled there, and it was clear that all were recalling the events of three years previously. After a moment, Holmes continued:

“There seemed, despite the verdict of the inquest, to be some doubt as to whether the girl’s death was the result of an accident or suicide. I therefore determined to look into the matter myself and form my own opinion.”

“What possible difference can that make now?” demanded Admiral Blythe-Headley.

“As it has turned out, it makes a great deal of difference,” responded Holmes. He thereupon described in detail the investigations he had conducted at the Willow Pool, the testimony of Mr Yarrow concerning the discovery of the girl’s body and the conclusions he had reached from this information. As he worked his way methodically through his account, a hush fell upon the assembly, and it was evident that all present were impressed by the painstaking care with which he had conducted his investigation.

“So what you are saying,” said Anthony Blythe-Headley at length, as Holmes finished speaking, “is that, in your opinion, it is impossible for the girl’s death to have been an accident?”

“I am morally certain of it.”

“But nor do you believe,” interjected Captain Ranworth, “that her death could have been suicide?”

“That, also, is practically impossible.”

“But what, then, is your opinion?” queried Northcote in a tone of puzzlement.

“There are only three possibilities,” replied Holmes in a dry tone, “and it is an axiom of mine that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth.”

“Then?”

“Sarah Dickens was murdered.”

“Absurd!” cried someone. “Nonsense!” cried another.

“You may call it absurd if you wish,” responded Holmes in a calm, authoritative voice, “but it is the truth.”

Anthony Blythe-Headley appeared greatly disturbed by what Holmes had said. A variety of emotions passed in rapid succession across his agitated features.

“You are overlooking the note, sir!” cried he at length in a hot tone. “The girl left a note. The inquest did not regard it as a suicide note, but everyone else with half a brain does so. Are you suggesting that the girl composed her note, which clearly implied that her life was not worth living, and then, by chance, encountered someone who obligingly put an end to her life? That would be an absurd coincidence!”

“I agree. I am not suggesting that.”

“Then what? You cannot deny that the note implies that the girl was considering taking her own life!”

“It might imply that, under certain circumstances,” responded Holmes in a calm tone.

“What circumstances, pray?” interrupted the other.

“The circumstance, for a start, that the girl actually wrote the note.”

“What! What do you mean?” demanded the admiral.

“Sarah Dickens did not write the note that was found in Jenkin’s Clump. It is a forgery, left there deliberately by her murderer to throw any enquiries off the true scent.”

There was a general cry of incredulity at this pronouncement.

“What fantastic nonsense is this!” cried Colonel Reid in a tone of disbelief.

“It is the truth.”

“How can you know?” demanded the colonel. “What possible reason can you have for supposing such a thing?”

“Because the forger has made a mistake. I have seen the note, and I have seen an exercise book of poems that Sarah Dickens had written, and the handwriting, although very similar, is not the same.”

“Everyone else considers the note to be in the girl’s own hand.”

“Everyone else is wrong.”

“Why should you be the only one to detect this difference?”

“Because I am the only one who has examined the writing with sufficient care.”

“But even her own family accepted that the note was genuine, and no one could have been more familiar with her hand than they were.”

“Well, of course, the two samples of handwriting are very similar. If you were writing a note, but wished it to appear to be the work of another, you would obviously take great pains to make the letters appear as much like those of the other person as possible. There would be little point in attempting the task otherwise. That the note found by the Willow Pool was taken to be the work of Sarah Dickens is thus no more than one would expect, under the circumstances. The dead girl’s hand was neat and regular. She had evidently learnt her handwriting lessons at school very well. Her style did not deviate to any significant extent from the copybook style she had been taught, and displayed few of those idiosyncrasies to which an older person’s hand is prone. This would have made it uncommonly easy to imitate, and it cannot be denied that the murderer – for the murderer’s hand it must be – made a good job of it. However, he made a little slip. He missed the one variation that Sarah Dickens had introduced into her hand – the formation of the letter ‘f’. There are, as I recall, three instances of this letter in the note that was found, and not one of them is formed in the same way as those in her book of poetry. It was almost the very first thing that struck me when I saw the two samples of writing.”

“But surely everyone’s hand varies a little, each time pen is put to paper,” protested Admiral Blythe-Headley in a sceptical tone.

“That is true, but such trivial and transient variations are not important. There are certain letters, however, those, generally speaking, which are more complex in structure, which are especially liable to idiosyncratic formation, and are thus of particular importance in identifying the author of a piece of writing. Of these letters, although ‘b’ and ‘g’ may also be of significance, ‘f’ is generally the most reliable guide.”

“That is amazing!” cried Captain Ranworth.

“On the contrary,” returned Holmes, “it is perfectly elementary; but like everything else in this woeful case, it is an issue that was overlooked or misjudged by those whose duty it was to establish the truth of the matter. The girl did not write the note, and thus it is of no direct relevance to her death. It has, however, been of immense importance to the case as a whole.”

“What on earth do you mean?” demanded Admiral Blythe-Headley in a tone of bewilderment. “Stop speaking in riddles, man!”

“I mean simply this,” replied Holmes in a calm voice, “that everyone at the inquest was at very great pains to declare that the note in question did not constitute a suicide note. It is perfectly clear, nevertheless, that it was the existence of the note that planted the idea of suicide so firmly in the general mind, conjuring up so vividly as it did the picture of a sad and forlorn young lady, who, it appeared, had been pining for a lost love. Had there been no note, perhaps the people of this parish would not have been so blind as to what really occurred that afternoon at the Willow Pool. The note also served, by its use of the phrase ‘you have gone away and left me’ to confirm what many had suspected concerning Captain Reid: that he had at least been trifling with Sarah Dickens, and had perhaps seriously abused her affection, for at the time of the girl’s death, of course, when the note was discovered, Reid had indeed ‘gone away’ less than two weeks previously. In sum, the note was one of the very foundation stones of the terrible obloquy that has been heaped so unjustifiably upon the head of this unfortunate young man.”

There was silence for a moment in the room, and it was evident that Holmes’s careful and detailed exposition of the case had made a very profound impression upon everyone there.

“I can hardly credit my ears,” said Admiral Blythe-Headley at length. “You have argued your case very well, young man, but I am still not entirely convinced. What about our garden bench? You will be telling us next that John Reid was not responsible for that, either!”

“That is correct. He had nothing to do with it.”

“What! Of course he did!” the admiral retorted. “It could be no other but he! Why, he was seen to be loitering in the garden pavilion earlier in the afternoon! We certainly had no other visitors that day.”

“It was not a visitor that caused the damage.”

“One moment!” Ranworth interrupted. “Where has Reid himself vanished to?”

I turned to see. The last time I had glanced in his direction, Captain Reid had been standing by the open door of the room. Now he was nowhere to be seen; he had evidently slipped away while the attention of everyone else had been upon Sherlock Holmes. There were general expressions of surprise and perplexity; Holmes alone appearing unperturbed by his client’s disappearance.

“He will be back in a few moments,” was his only remark.

Captain Ranworth appeared momentarily confused, but at length he spoke. “I was about to remark,” said he, “that it is a great misfortune that three years have passed since these events of which Mr Holmes has been speaking. I, for one, am sure that all that you say is correct, Mr Holmes; but now, after so much time has elapsed, there must be very little likelihood of our ever discovering who was really responsible for the death of Sarah Dickens.”

“On the contrary,” returned Holmes in a firm voice, “I am confident that I could very quickly lay my hand upon the man responsible.” He turned to Colonel Reid. “You expressed some doubt earlier when I stated that your son returned home from India perfectly ignorant of what was alleged against him.”

The colonel nodded his head vigorously. “I have kept my peace until now,” said he in a firm voice, “and have allowed you to state your case at some length. But you must know that everything you say is vitiated by one simple consideration: if my son is as innocent of any involvement in this affair as you claim, why, then, did he not take the opportunity I offered him to deny the allegations?”

“You wrote to him on the matter when he was in India?”

“Yes, of course I did. I described to him the rumours that were circulating following the death of that girl, and asked him to assure me that they were utterly false. He did not respond to my request. I then wrote to him again, stating that if he did not clearly deny the rumours to me, I would take it that he could not, because they were true. Again, he did not respond. Only one conclusion was possible.”

“Colonel Reid,” said Holmes, “your son never received the letters you sent. That is why he did not respond to the rumours and accusations.”

“There you are quite wrong, Mr Holmes,” returned the other. “There is no doubt whatever that he received them, for in the letters that he wrote to me he responded to one or two other trivial matters that I had mentioned in my letters, but not to my questions about Sarah Dickens.”

“I say again,” Holmes persisted, “that your son never received the letters you wrote to him. They were intercepted by someone else, someone who did not wish your son to have the opportunity to deny the rumours and thus clear his name.”

“What!” cried the colonel. “Do you seriously expect me to believe such nonsense? If that were so, how came he, then, to respond to the other matters included in my letters?”

“Because he that intercepted your letters substituted compositions of his own, which repeated all the remarks you had made on other matters, but omitted every reference to Sarah Dickens. These were the letters that your son received. He did not respond to any questions about Sarah Dickens because he was not aware that you had asked any.”

“That is an utterly fantastic theory!” cried Colonel Reid. “What could anyone hope to gain by such a deception? It would be bound to come to light eventually.”

“Not necessarily. India is never the most peaceful spot in the world, and the north-west provinces in particular have been in uproar. He that interfered with your post no doubt thought it possible that your son would lose his life during his service there, and that the deception would thus never be discovered.”

“And does your theory suggest anyone in particular?” asked Colonel Reid in an ironic tone. “Or is it merely of a general nature?”

“The man responsible is your secretary, William Northcote.”

“What!” cried the colonel.

“How dare you!” said Northcote, his voice trembling with emotion. “That is an outrageous suggestion! I am aware that Reid has employed you to effect a reconciliation between himself and his father, but I could never have imagined that you would stoop so low as this! You seek to achieve your aim by blackening my name without justification!”

“Even if Reid were not killed in India and returned home,” continued Holmes, speaking in a calm voice and ignoring the protests of the other man, “your scheme might still prove successful, you considered, so long as father and son remained estranged, so that the discrepancies between the letters written by the one and those received by the other did not come to light.”

“Nonsense!”

“Fortunately for Captain Reid, he consulted me, and I have been able to discover the truth. After you spoke to us yesterday evening, at the White Hart, you feared that exposure was at hand, which is why you arranged the supposed burglary last night. It was you that broke the window, North-cote, when everyone else in the house was asleep, to make it appear that the theft was the work of an intruder from outside. But there was no intruder. It was you that stole Reid’s private papers, for you wished to prevent his showing the letters to his father.”

“That is a monstrous suggestion!” cried the secretary.

At that moment there came a surprising interruption. Captain Reid himself stepped into the room, carrying in his hand a small leather satchel. I had the impression that he had been waiting for some time outside the doorway, listening to what was being said.

“I have the stolen papers here,” said he, holding up the satchel. “It was in one of the places you suggested, Mr Holmes, hidden at the bottom of Northcote’s wardrobe.”

“It’s a lie!” cried Northcote.

“I will swear to it under oath,” returned Reid. “Besides, why should I lie?”

“To blacken my name further,” cried Northcote, whose face had assumed a pale, sickly hue. “This is slander, gross slander! Gentlemen, I call upon all here present to witness this slander! I shall see this matter settled in court!”

“When my father sees these letters, which he did not write, but which are in an imitation of his hand,” said Reid in a cold voice, “I think it is I that shall be the plaintiff in court and you the defendant, Northcote!”

For a long moment, the secretary said nothing, but looked at each of us in turn as he swayed slightly on his feet. Then, abruptly, he flung himself to his knees in front of his employer and wrung his hands in silent entreaty. “It is true,” he cried at last. “I confess it. In a moment of madness I did it. I destroyed the letter you had written to your son and substituted one of my own, in which I made no reference to Sarah Dickens. I was angry that although he had treated the girl so badly and, as everyone seemed to think, driven her to take her own life, nevertheless the strong bond between father and son still persisted. This seemed to me unfair. Why should he live on happily when the one to whom he had caused so much sorrow had died? But as soon as the letter was sent, I regretted it bitterly. It was a hateful, shameful thing to do. Having falsified one letter, however, I was then obliged to falsify the next. Oh, have pity on me for my shameful actions!”

There was a general shuffling of feet in the room, but no one spoke, and it was clear that no one could think what to say. Captain Reid looked down coldly at the abject figure of his father’s secretary squirming on the floor, and eventually broke the silence.

“I ought to kick you from here to the coast,” said he in a tone of disgust.

“Let me see those letters,” said Colonel Reid abruptly, like a man coming out of a dream.

“One moment,” interrupted Holmes, and the room fell silent once more as everyone turned to see what he would say. “Let us not become too distracted by the matter of the letters. You may see them in a minute, Colonel Reid. But there is a greater crime in question here than the forging of letters: the murder of Sarah Dickens.”

“No!” cried Northcote in a hoarse voice, rising unsteadily to his feet. “It cannot be! Sarah Dickens took her own life. Everyone believes that, save you, Mr Know-all Holmes! I would never have falsified any letters had I thought that the matter was one of murder!”

“If everyone believes that Sarah Dickens took her own life, then everyone is in error. Sarah did not take her own life, and nor was her death an accident: she was murdered. The murderer had planned it coldly and carefully for some time. He had arranged to meet her by the Willow Pool on the afternoon she died. He had, I believe, feigned affection for her, and she no doubt went to meet him expecting to be met with friendship, but the only desire that stirred in his heart was a desire to be rid of someone whose existence was an inconvenience to him. He went to the Willow Pool that day for one reason only, to murder Sarah Dickens in cold blood.”

“Your arguments have been very convincing, Mr Holmes,” interrupted Admiral Blythe-Headley. “Do you have any evidence to lead you to the culprit?”

“I have a witness,” responded Holmes. So saying, he stepped to the open French windows and called to someone in the garden outside. The next moment Mr Yarrow, the vicar, entered, and with him was Noah Blogg.

“Now, Noah,” said the vicar, “tell these gentlemen what you told me earlier.”

The large young man hesitated, and seemed cowed and frightened by the grave faces about him.

“You remember the day you and Harry Cork found the body of Sarah Dickens in the Willow Pool?” said the vicar by way of a prompt. The young man nodded his head dumbly and the vicar continued: “You had seen Sarah earlier that day, had you not, Noah?” Again the young man nodded. “Where had you seen her, Noah?”

“In the shop, sir,” Blogg responded at length. “She came in to buy pegs. She talked to Mother.”

“What did she say?”

“She said she was going to pick blackberries at Jenkin’s Clump. Mother said they were better down the hill a way, and Sarah thanked her and said she’d look down there, too. After she’d gone, Mother said, ‘That girl’s up to something.’”

“Do you know what she meant by that?” asked Holmes.

Noah Blogg shook his head. “No, sir,” he answered.

“Can you think what she might have meant by it, then?”

Blogg appeared confused and did not immediately respond. “Perhaps Sarah was going to meet somebody,” he answered at length.

“Very well. What did you do then?”

“Thought I’d go up the Clump myself and surprise Sarah.”

“And did you?”

The young man nodded his head in a reluctant fashion, as if he would rather not continue.

“So you went to Jenkin’s Clump?” persisted Holmes.

“Yes,” responded Blogg at length. “There weren’t nobody there.”

“And then?” queried Holmes, as the young man fell silent once more.

“Sarah came, and a man came down the other path.”

“Did they see you?”

“No, sir. I was behind a tree.”

“And then?”

“Sarah said something, then he got hold of her and she shouted a lot, then he hit her and she stopped shouting. Then he pushed her in the water.”

“And then?”

“I went to have a look. He saw me and said, ‘What are you doing here, Blogg?’ and I said, ‘Nothing, sir.’ Then he said, ‘Sarah’s had a fit. You mustn’t say anything or they’ll think you killed her. You keep quiet and don’t say a word, and I’ll not tell them I saw you here. But if you say anything, I’ll tell them you killed her.’ So I had to keep quiet.”

“I see,” said Holmes. “I think we all understand. Now, Noah, the man you saw in the woods that day with Sarah, do you see him in this room now?”

The young man’s expression was one of utmost terror, and he did not raise his eyes from the floor.

“You have nothing to fear,” said Holmes in a voice that was kindly but firm, “but you must tell the truth, Noah. Is that man here now?”

“Yes,” mumbled Blogg, “it’s him.”

Slowly, then, he raised his hand and pointed his finger at Colonel Reid’s secretary, William Northcote.