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

Автор книги: Denis O. Smith

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A HAIR’S BREADTH

THE WEEKS that immediately succeeded my marriage were a hectic time for me. As every married man will know from his own experience, so much that is new must be attended to then, and all the careful planning and preparation one has done beforehand inevitably turns out to have been either inadequate or misguided. For some weeks, therefore, I had seen nothing whatever of my friends. Indeed, so dramatically did the free time at my disposal seem to have shrunk since my bachelor days, when I had shared rooms with Sherlock Holmes in Baker Street, that I had scarcely had a moment to consider anything beyond the immediate concerns of my new household. I certainly did not expect to see Holmes for some time, and was surprised, therefore, as I stood one afternoon upon the kerb in Holborn, to hear through the noise and bustle about me that familiar, somewhat strident voice calling my name. It was a cold and wintry day, with a strong wind blowing, and I had been preoccupied with finding a cab. Now I turned to see Holmes standing at my elbow.

“My dear Watson!” said he, clapping me upon the shoulder. “It is good to see you looking so well. Your recent translation from solitary bachelorhood to the joys of married life has clearly been a success! You have the air of one happy with his lot!”

“And you, Holmes,” I returned with a smile, “you, too, appear in good spirits.”

“Well, well! I, too, have my little triumphs and pleasures! Just three weeks ago I was pleased to drink a toast in your honour, Watson, and to congratulate you upon your happiness. Now it is for you to congratulate me!”

“My dear fellow! I had no idea!”

“We have been regrettably out of touch lately,” said he with a shake of the head. “But it is true. Congratulations are in order! I have solved the Yelverton murder case!”

“What!” I cried.

“I can see that I have surprised you!”

I laughed. “You amaze me, Holmes! But I had no idea you were involved.”

“I was consulted at a late stage, at the express request of Lady Yelverton’s nephew, when it was apparent that the police were making no progress whatever. I take it you have followed the case?”

“I could hardly have failed to do so. It has been impossible to pick up a newspaper in the last week without reading something of the matter. It is undoubtedly the most sensational crime of the year!”

“Certainly, in terms of the publicity it has received, although in itself it is really a very trifling affair.”

“And you have found the murderer, you say?”

My companion nodded. “Indeed. I am hoping to pay a call on him later this afternoon, at his lodgings.”

“He is not yet in custody, then?” I asked in surprise.

“No.”

“But you know his whereabouts?”

“Precisely.”

“You have informed the police, no doubt?”

Holmes shook his head.

“Why ever not?” I cried in surprise. “Surely you must act quickly, before he has a chance to make his escape once more.”

“It is not quite so straightforward as you seem to imagine, Watson. I do not yet have all the evidence in my hands.”

“Evidence? But the case is as plain as a pikestaff! The man was practically seen to commit the crime!”

“Come, come,” said my companion, chuckling. “It is too cold a day to stand debating the matter on the pavement like this. You are having a busy day, I perceive.”

“That is true, but how—?”

“No matter. You know my methods, Watson! You have had one appointment already, this morning, and you have another one this afternoon. Can you break it?”

I shook my head. “I have to see a solicitor in Cheapside in ten minutes,” I replied, glancing at my watch.

“But no doubt you could make the appointment a brief one?”

“If necessary.”

“Good. I am meeting Inspector Lanner in Brown’s Coffee Shop on Ludgate Hill, at three o’clock. If you could be there by that time, Watson, you might find it an interesting experience!”

I drove to Cheapside with a thrill of excitement rising in my breast. The Yelverton case had been the single topic of conversation on everyone’s lips for the past week. That I might be able to play a part in the matter, if only as a spectator, sent the blood coursing through my veins. The meeting with Mr Scrimgeour, the solicitor, which had been dominating my thoughts for days, now struck me as a mundane matter indeed, and little more than an irksome distraction. I was determined to get it over with as quickly as possible, in order to get to the meeting place by three o’clock.

In the cab, as it made its slow way through the dense traffic along Holborn, and in the solicitor’s anteroom, I turned over and over in my mind all that I had read of the Yelverton case. The chief difficulty in the matter, as I understood it, was not so much in discovering who had committed the terrible crime, as in tracking down the culprit, for he had so far defeated all attempts to find him.

The facts of the matter were simple enough. Lady Yelverton had been a delicate old lady of seventy-odd, living alone quietly in the house in South Audley Street in which she had lived for more than fifty years, with a large staff of servants, some of whom were almost as old as their mistress. She had been widowed for nearly twenty years and had suffered ill-health for almost as long. Two years previously she had been very ill, and for several months her life had been despaired of, but much to everyone’s surprise, she had at length recovered. It was said that the gratitude she felt to her physician, one Dr Illingworth, was so great that she had subsequently included a substantial bequest to him in her will. But though her health had recovered, her illness had left her somewhat debilitated, with both her hearing and her eyesight, which had in any case been failing for years, severely weakened. As a consequence of this decline in her faculties, she rarely went out, but was always pleased to receive visitors, and offered a warm and hospitable welcome to everyone. Her visitors were not numerous, however, for many of her old friends had died, or were, like Lady Yelverton herself, somewhat frail, and she had but one surviving near relation, Mr Basil Thorne, a gentleman of about forty, the only son of her late husband’s younger brother. A man well known in London society, he would occasionally call by at his aunt’s house to bring her the latest news and gossip of London life, which she was always pleased to hear.

In recent years, she had taken a particular interest in charitable causes, and acted as honorary patron for several of them. Though debarred by her frailty from taking an active part in charitable work, her financial donations were said to be munificent. This, then, was the quiet household into which brutal violence had erupted in such a startling manner.

About three months previously, an elderly gentleman by the name of Quinlivan, with an untidy mane of white hair and a beard to match, had paid his first call upon Lady Yelverton. Her servants, noting the sheaf of pamphlets in his grasp, and his odd, jerky way of talking, had marked him down as some kind of eccentric, and had been disinclined to admit him to the house. Upon receiving his card, however, which indicated that his interests were charitable and religious in character, she had asked for him to be shown into her drawing room. There he had stayed for an hour, in deep discussion with Lady Yelverton, and it was evident that he had made a favourable impression upon her, for she had informed the servants afterwards that he would be returning at the same time the following week, and was to be admitted without demur.

After four weeks, the frequency of his visits increased occasionally to twice a week. None of the servants was ever present during these interviews, but it was clear from the sound of Quinlivan’s raised voice that he was a voluble and impassioned speaker. After each visit he would leave behind him a fresh religious tract, but although the language and sentiments contained in these were sometimes excessively vehement, they appeared unexceptionable. Nevertheless, Lady Yelverton’s old housekeeper, Mrs Edwards, became worried that her mistress was falling too much under Quinlivan’s influence, for Lady Yelverton had begun to lose interest in her other visitors. She therefore raised the matter in confidence with Basil Thorne, when next he called. He had previously been unaware of Quinlivan’s visits, for his aunt had mentioned the man but once, and then only in a passing remark which Thorne had not followed up. He was both surprised and concerned, therefore, to learn from Mrs Edwards that his aunt had lately become more withdrawn and silent, and generally less interested in the world about her. As delicately as he could, he raised the matter with his aunt at the first opportunity, but she brushed his remarks aside. The second time he mentioned the subject, a week later, she became, he said, quite angry, and forbade him from ever raising the matter again.

Having failed in this direction, then, and becoming increasingly concerned at the influence that this stranger appeared to be gaining over his aunt, Thorne determined to speak directly to the man upon his next visit, in order to form his own opinion of him. He therefore waited in a carriage in South Audley Street at the hour that Lady Yelverton’s servants believed Quinlivan would call, but his vigil proved fruitless, for the man never came at all that day. Twice this occurred, which made Thorne suspect that it was the presence of the carriage in the street which had deterred him, or that he had been forewarned in some other way. In either event, the implication as to his character was hardly reassuring, and Thorne therefore set about trying to discover anything he could of the man’s antecedents. Despite making enquiries, however, he had, at the time of the tragedy, made no progress in this direction either.

At about this time, Lady Yelverton’s domestic staff noted with alarm that the vehemence of Quinlivan’s manner was increasing with each visit. Lady Yelverton’s footman, Alfred King, a young relative of the housekeeper’s, who had twice lost positions through insolence, took it upon himself to speak to the man one day as he was leaving, informing him in no uncertain terms that he did not think it right that he should “go about shouting and agitating everyone”. Quinlivan responded in what was later described as an offensive and aggressive manner, whereupon the footman, well known for his short temper, struck the older man and knocked him to the floor. What might have happened next could only be conjectured, for at that moment Lady Yelverton herself appeared in the hallway. Informed of what had occurred, she at once gave the footman notice. He left the house the next day, words of bitter recrimination upon his lips.

One week after this incident came the dreadful event that so shocked all who read of it, and brought the name of Lady Yelverton and her quiet house in South Audley Street to national attention. It was a cold Tuesday afternoon, and Quinlivan had called and been shown directly into the drawing room, as usual. No sooner had the door closed behind him than his raised voice was heard, although no words could be discerned. After perhaps a minute, a complete silence descended, then the door of the room was opened abruptly and Quinlivan ran out, shouting angrily and incoherently at a maid, Susan Moore, who was in the hallway outside. She ran to the kitchen in terror, informing the other staff that Mr Quinlivan looked fit to kill someone. Anxious for the safety of her mistress, Mrs Edwards ascended at once to the drawing room. Receiving no answer to her knock, she opened the door and saw to her horror that her mistress lay slumped in her chair, her head and face a mass of blood. Of Quinlivan there was no sign, and it was clear that he had let himself out of the front door, for it stood open onto the street. Dr Illingworth was quickly summoned, and arrived within minutes, but pronounced Lady Yelverton dead almost at once.

This, then, was the crime that had taken place in South Audley Street, as horrific and brutal a murder as could be imagined, made yet more monstrous by the frailty and kindliness of the victim. The cause of death was given as repeated blows from a blunt instrument, possibly a life preserver, and a warrant was at once issued for Quinlivan’s arrest. So universal were the shock and horror with which the crime was regarded that it was thought inconceivable that anyone would shield the criminal, and without such help, it was believed, a man of such distinctive appearance could not evade discovery for long. But the police were soon to learn that Quinlivan’s arrest and prosecution were not to be as straightforward as they had supposed, for several days’ enquiries produced no result, and he appeared to have vanished without trace.

I opened the Standard one morning to read that, acting on information they had received, the police had moved their search from London to Leicester. It was soon evident that their quarry had once again escaped the net, however, for I later read that the search had moved on to other places. Such was the state of the matter, so far as I and other newspaper readers were aware, on the day I ran across Sherlock Holmes in Holborn. It will be appreciated, then, how eager I was not to miss the appointment with Holmes and the police inspector. But Mr Scrimgeour, a slow and careful solicitor of the old school, unaware of the thoughts that were now uppermost in my mind, discoursed in his measured and guarded manner like a lumbering, low-geared piece of machinery, so that an interview of less than an hour seemed to my impatient mind practically interminable.

A church clock was striking three when I at last found myself on the pavement of Cheapside once more. As fast as I could, I hurried past St Paul’s churchyard and round into Ludgate Hill. When I reached the coffee shop, I was relieved to see that Inspector Lanner, whom I knew well, was still there, sitting at a table near the window. Of Holmes, however, there was no sign. In a moment I had joined the policeman, and he was acquainting me with the latest facts in the case.

“Early last Friday morning,” he began, “a Mrs Unwin, who runs a small boarding house near the Midland station in Leicester, reported to the police that one of her temporary lodgers, a man calling himself Varney, seemed to her very like the description of Quinlivan she had read in her newspaper. She had not yet seen him that morning and believed that he was still in bed. The police quickly went round there, but found that his room was empty. Clearly he had left before Mrs Unwin herself had risen. He had spoken the evening before, she said, of taking a train to Hull, so the police at once notified their colleagues there to be on the alert. What they did not know at the time was that on that same morning we had received a letter in London from Quinlivan himself, posted in Leicester on Thursday afternoon. Most of the letter was taken up with protestations of his innocence. But he was convinced, he said, that if he gave himself up he would never receive a fair hearing.”

“I cannot see how he can possibly be innocent,” I remarked. “The matter could scarcely be clearer!”

“His claim,” Lanner explained, “is that someone must have been in the house before him, for he says he found Lady Yelverton dead when he entered her drawing room. It was this, he says, that made him cry out in anguish as he entered, making him appear deranged to the maid.”

“Could it be true?”

Lanner shook his head dubiously. “A window at the back of the drawing room was found to be open,” he replied, “despite the fact that the day was a cold one. It is just possible that someone could have climbed out from there into the back yard, and escaped that way.”

For some minutes I sat pondering the matter in silence.

“What does Holmes make of it all?” I asked at length. “When I saw him earlier, he said that the case was as good as closed, and that he knew Quinlivan’s whereabouts.”

Inspector Lanner appeared surprised at this information.

“All he has said to me,” he replied, “is that we are dealing with a very cunning and resourceful villain.”

“He has certainly managed to give you the slip so far,” I remarked. “Were any further clues found in Leicester?”

The policeman nodded. “Mr Holmes and I travelled down to Leicester on Saturday,” said he. “We examined the room at Unwin’s boarding house, which the man calling himself Varney had occupied, and made one or two discoveries. He had spoken on Thursday evening of taking a train to Hull the next day, but when I examined his room I found a pocket railway timetable under the bed, which had been folded back at the page showing the Glasgow trains. It might have been there a little while, of course, and been missed by the maid who cleaned the room after the previous occupant, but it did make me wonder if the mention of Hull had been a blind, to throw us off the scent if we ever managed to trace him as far as Leicester. We had had no word back from Hull, anyhow, so I at once alerted the Glasgow police. That this man, Varney, was in reality Quinlivan was confirmed, incidentally, by a letter I found in the room, on the floor beneath a chest of drawers, where it had probably slipped down as he was packing. It was a single folded sheet of paper, without an envelope. The writer had not put his address, and the message was a brief one: ‘Dear Matthew,’ it said, ‘you must give yourself up to the police at once. It is the only thing to do. We are convinced of your innocence, but if you remain in hiding, no one will believe you. Heed my advice. Your true friend, Rev B. Arnold.’”

“That certainly sounds as if it were sent to the man you are seeking.” I remarked. “Has anything come of these enquiries?”

“Well, we have not yet got the man, but a discovery was made yesterday which proves that his talk of Hull was indeed a blind. A sorter at the General Post Office in Glasgow noticed a letter addressed to Mr M. Quinlivan and marked ‘to be called for’. A warrant was at once obtained and the letter opened. It proved to be similar to the one I had found in Leicester: ‘You must give yourself up. Do not despair’ – that sort of thing. It was signed by the same person, the Reverend B. Arnold. There was again no address at the top of the letter, but the envelope was postmarked ‘London East’.”

“Have you been able to trace this man, Arnold?”

“Not so far. He calls himself Reverend, but we can find no clergyman of that name in London.”

“Perhaps he belongs to some small and obscure nonconformist Church.”

“That must be so. But all our resources have so far failed to find him.”

“You are not aware of any other discovery that Holmes has made?”

The policeman hesitated a moment before replying.

“Just one, that I know of, Dr Watson, and between ourselves, it seemed more to indicate that his mind was losing its grip than anything else. It was as we were examining the bedroom at Unwin’s boarding house. Mr Holmes had picked up a white hair from the hearth and fallen silent. I spoke to him but he did not answer. He just stared at the hair, examined it with his lens, stared at it again, and did not open his mouth for thirty minutes or more. On the train back to London, I could see that he was excited about something, but he said little, except that the murderer had made a slip, ‘a tiny, tiny slip’, he said. ‘He has been very clever, and has come within a hair’s breadth of getting clean away,’ said he, ‘but he will not evade us for much longer now.’ Then he laughed, in that odd, silent way of his. Quite frankly, Dr Watson, had it been anyone but Mr Holmes, I should have found myself another compartment to sit in at the first opportunity. One gets accustomed to Mr Holmes’s odd ways, but confined for a hundred miles or more with someone laughing to himself the whole way is almost too much for anyone to stand.”

At that moment, the shop door opened and Holmes himself appeared before us, an expression of urgency upon his features.

“Pray forgive the delay,” said he in a brisk manner. “If you will come now, I have a cab waiting outside.”

“Where are we going?” asked Lanner in surprise.

“To arrest Mr Quinlivan,” said Holmes.

There were two four-wheelers standing in the street outside. Holmes opened the door of the first one, and I was surprised to see that it already had one occupant, a thin, reserved-looking man, with short dark hair and a small beard.

“This is Mr Woodward,” said Holmes as we climbed in. “He is to assist us. Our first port of call will be Gordon Square,” he continued as the cab rattled off, “home of Mr Basil Thorne, nephew of the murdered woman. He asked me to notify him at once when I had some positive news, and I think he should be present when his aunt’s murderer is arrested.”

“You believe Quinlivan has returned to London, then?” I queried.

“I am absolutely certain of it, Watson. Has Inspector Lanner brought you up to date with the case?”

“Indeed. He informs me that you attach great significance to a hair.”

My friend chuckled to himself. “It may appear a somewhat slender thread on which to hang a case,” said he at length, “but it has proved sturdy enough for the task. It is, after all, a horse’s hair.”

“A horse’s hair!”

“Indeed. And it has led me at a merry gallop, from a small boarding house in Leicester to the present whereabouts of the most sought-after villain in England! He is a very cunning man, Watson, and if we had not found him now, I think it likely he would never have been found at all!”

No more would he say, and we travelled on in silence. As we turned into Russell Square, I observed that another four-wheeler, which had been behind us in Southampton Row, turned the same way.

“That cab appears to be following us,” I remarked. “I am certain I saw the same one in Ludgate Hill, as we left Brown’s Coffee Shop.”

“So it does,” said Holmes with a chuckle. It was clear from his tone that he knew something we did not, and Lanner glanced behind us with a frown on his face.

“I wish I knew what was afoot,” said he.

“All will be revealed shortly,” cried Holmes gaily. “Trust me, Lanner, and you could yet gain the divisional superintendent’s position you aspire to!”

With a sigh, the policeman sat back in his seat. “Very well,” said he. “We are in your hands, Mr Holmes.”

Arriving at Basil Thorne’s house in Gordon Square, Holmes, Lanner and I were shown into a richly decorated chamber, used as a study. A tall, broad-shouldered, handsome man, with firm features and a small dark moustache, Thorne listened with an expression of intense interest as Holmes quickly explained to him what had been discovered in Leicester and Glasgow.

“But what makes you think that Quinlivan is in London again?” he asked in a puzzled voice as Holmes finished. “Do you believe he’s staying with the man whose letters you found?”

Holmes nodded his head. “Yes,” said he, “the two of them are together. But I had quite forgotten Mr Woodward!” he cried abruptly, springing from his chair. “Perhaps his testimony will make matters clearer.” He hurried from the room and returned a moment later with the thin man who had travelled with us in the cab. “This is Mr George Woodward,” said he, “who has some very important information.”

For a moment the newcomer glanced about the study, as if somewhat abashed by the opulence of his surroundings. Then, at a nod from Holmes, he raised his hand and spoke with an abruptness that set my hair on end.

“That is the man,” said he, pointing at Thorne.

For a moment there was silence, then Holmes spoke.

“I should perhaps explain,” said he in an urbane voice, “that Mr Woodward is a clerk at the left-luggage office at Leicester railway station. He was on duty there on Friday morning when you deposited a bag, Mr Thorne, before catching the early train back to London.”

“He must be mistaken,” said Thorne in a tone of puzzlement. “I have never been to Leicester in my life.”

“Matthew Quinlivan was there.”

“So I understand, from what you have told me, but I fail to see the relevance of that to myself.”

“You are Matthew Quinlivan.”

“What!” we all cried as one.

“It was a very clever scheme,” said Holmes calmly, addressing Thorne, who had taken a step backwards in alarm. “You have been living above your income for some years. Two years ago, you expected your aunt to die and you ran up very large debts in anticipation of your imminent inheritance. Inconveniently for you, she did not die, and you therefore determined to take matters into your own hands. It was vital, of course, that in the event of her death no suspicion should ever attach to you, and to that end, you conceived the idea of establishing the existence of a fictitious character – Quinlivan – who would commit the crime in as obvious a manner as possible, so that there could be no doubt as to who had done it, and then vanish without trace. Knowing your aunt’s weakness for charitable causes, especially those with a religious connection, you could be reasonably confident that ‘Quinlivan’ would gain access to her, and confident also that, because of her very poor eyesight and hearing, she would not detect the imposture.”

“Nonsense!” Thorne interrupted with a cry, his voice dry and hoarse. “What of the letters Quinlivan received from the clergyman you mentioned?”

“You wrote them yourself, Thorne, to add to the air of verisimilitude surrounding the murderer’s flight.”

“It is nonsense, I say!” Thorne cried again. “You seem to forget, Mr Holmes, that it was I who called you in to the case in the first place!”

“No, I have not forgotten that. It was your first mistake. You were confident that your deception would never be uncovered, and considered that it could only add to your appearance of innocence if you feigned impatience with the police and consulted me. But the truth is now known. The bag in which you secreted the clothes, wig and false beard, which you had worn when playing the part of ‘Quinlivan’, is now in the hands of the railway police.”

“You devil!” cried Thorne in a voice suffused with hatred. “You clever, clever devil!” He made a sudden dive for the desk that stood behind him, yanked open a drawer and drew out a heavy-looking pistol.

In half a second Holmes was across the room and had flung himself on the other man. For a moment they wrestled for the gun, then, with a deafening crash, it went off and a shower of glass fell to the floor as the bullet struck a picture on the wall. Lanner and I sprang forward and attempted to bring Thorne down but, with a hoarse cry of effort, he gave up his struggle for the gun, thrust us aside and raced for the door. In an instant, Holmes had a whistle at his lips and had blown a shrill blast. There followed the sound of a great commotion in the street outside, and we hurried to the front door. Upon the pavement before the house, his face contorted with rage, lay Basil Thorne, held securely in the grip of three uniformed policemen.

*   *   *

“As I have had occasion to remark in the past,” said Holmes as we discussed the case over a whisky and soda in his rooms that evening, “all evidence – even, sometimes, that of eye witnesses – is like a crooked signpost on a winding woodland path. The direction in which it is pointing is never entirely clear, and is apt to change as one changes one’s own position.

“The evidence found in Leicester appeared to indicate that Quinlivan had gone on to Hull, or possibly, as Lanner conjectured, Glasgow. But I was not convinced: if a man is cunning enough to present his pursuers with one false scent, might he not as easily present them with two? It struck me as unlikely, under the circumstances, that both the letter and the timetable should have been left behind as they were. It was almost as if he wished his pursuers to know who he was and where he had gone. There was no envelope with the letter, so we could not say where he had been staying when he received it, and no address upon the letter itself, so we were also unable to find the whereabouts of his one supposed connection, the man who signed himself ‘Reverend Arnold’. There seemed something excessively coincidental about this, and I began to feel the presence of a calculating, guiding hand behind it all, attempting to lead us carefully away upon a path of his choosing. At first glance it appeared we had made discoveries, but in truth we had learnt nothing whatever. Underlying this exercise in futility I seemed to dimly perceive a pattern unfolding; but to what end? This was the question that vexed me, Watson. And then I found the hair, and my perspective on the case altered completely.

“It was a white hair, and seemed likely, therefore, to have come from the head of the man we sought. But it was coarse to the touch, and I quickly realized it was not a human hair at all, but that of a horse. Now, it was not impossible that an ordinary horse’s hair might have been carried into the house on someone’s clothing, but the fact that it was the same shade as the hair of the man who had stayed in the room most recently seemed an odd chance. A closer examination with the aid of a lens revealed that one end of it had been neatly cut, almost certainly with a pair of scissors, while the other end had traces of glue adhering to it. I could not doubt then that it had come from a manufactured article, and it required no great leap of imagination to conjecture that the article in question had been a wig, worn by the room’s last occupant.

“But what did this mean? Why should anyone pretend to be Quinlivan? There seemed no point to it. Unless, I thought, as the idea struck me like a bolt of lightning, the same person pretending to be Quinlivan in Leicester had pretended to be Quinlivan all along! That there was, in other words, no such person, and never had been! That would make sense of the false trails he was strewing before us, for it would clearly have been in his interests to make his assumed character as solid and real as possible for a little while. Then, in a trice, he would take off his disguise and ‘Quinlivan’ would vanish utterly from the face of the earth. But if this were true, then all that had happened must have been planned well in advance, for the fictitious Mr Quinlivan had been flourishing for three months or more. There seemed only one conceivable purpose for such an elaborate plan, and that purpose was the deliberate murder of Lady Yelverton.”