The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories Part I Page 12

  “No, that won’t do,” said Holmes. “The fencing first became known two years ago, and it has increased steadily since that time. What you could not realize is that the police will often let such an activity continue for a while, taking place as it is in a known location. They know that by closing it immediately, it would soon reestablish itself somewhere else, and they would have to find it anew. Also, by leaving it in place, they can keep track of who goes in and out, identifying other related criminals. You stated that Mr. Willis has only been an employee for three months. That is long after the fencing was first known.

  “This is what happened, then, in general terms,” continued Holmes. “I would hope that you might correct me in the small particulars where I go wrong, but of course I don’t expect it. You moved back to London, after having escaped any official connection to the crime at the coast. You were welcomed to some degree or other by your father, and began to learn the business. I’m not sure to what level he was involved in the fencing as you found your way into it, but I suspect that he was blissfully ignorant for some period of time. Eventually that part of the business started to become very successful indeed, and you became used to the income that you were salting away. It was probably around this time that your father became aware of it. Possibly he wanted his own share. Or perhaps he urged you to stop.

  “I’m not certain of this part, but in either case it would explain why you determined that you had to kill him, and also why you chose to involve an innocent dupe, Mr. Willis. I’m aware, never mind how, that your entire story from this morning, regarding the warning letters and the conflict between your father and your supposed fiancé, was a complete fabrication. I say supposed fiancé, as I know that your engagement was false, and that Mr. Willis was simply hired to have a ready-made victim on hand.

  “This morning you set your plan in motion. You met Mr. Willis when he arrived at work, and, stepping behind him, hit him in the head, killing him instantly with the brass pot. It would not take as much effort as one might think for a small woman such as yourself to inflict a deadly force on an unsuspecting victim. Then, when your father came down and stood staring at the corpse, you stepped up and shot him in the head. The inspector’s letter to me mentioned that it was a small caliber weapon, and you counted on the fact that the sound would not be noticed or commented upon at that busy time of the morning.

  “You went upstairs and changed out of the bloody dress, no doubt spattered from when you killed one or the other, or both. Placing an easily forged and simple suicide note on the counter, you then left up the shop and took a cab to Scotland Yard. It is obvious that you have not walked any great distance today, despite your earlier statement that you made your way on foot from the shop all the way to Whitehall. Another lie, as your dress is too fresh. We know you have ridden in cabs since you left here, both from here back to the shop where you revealed the bodies, and then from the shop back to here with Inspector Lestrade.

  “Your plan was to go to the Yard, after supposedly walking for an extended period of time while the two men were involved in the fabricated disagreement. You would tell your story and lay the groundwork of mysterious threats and a falling out between your father and Willis. Then you would return to the shop, and in front of witnesses, find the bodies, if they hadn’t already been discovered, posed to look as if your father had killed Willis and then himself. Your trip to Scotland Yard went according to plan. But the one thing that you hadn’t counted on was that Inspector Lestrade would then bring you around to Baker Street, ostensibly to share the story with me, but also to look at my scrapbooks to see if my facts matched what the police already knew about the fencing operation.

  “You returned to the shop as planned and found the bodies, preparing to play the grieving daughter for a few days before resuming your work and increasing the fencing activities, but now as sole owner and without the interference of your father. What you did not know was that I already knew you to be the likely manipulator who had taken your father’s innocent business and turned it criminal, and also that I was aware that your entire story this morning was a lie.

  “When word came of the two murders, I instantly realized what your plan must have been, and I sent a wire to my agent in Clacton-on-Sea, and instructions to Lestrade.” He turned to the inspector. “You say that you found it?”

  “I did. It was pushed down in some other dirty clothes.”

  He opened the Gladstone bag by his feet and pulled out a yellow dress, spattered with blood.

  The girl gasped, the first sign that I had seen of any sort of reaction. I think it was only then that she realized she was well and truly caught.

  “As you wrote in your note, she must have been spattered when she killed Willis - it was a very messy murder - and then after she killed her father, she went back upstairs and changed to her current dress before going to the Yard.”

  Holmes gestured with a finger toward the dress in Lestrade’s hand. “It must have been very messy indeed. You verified that she never went back into the shop after opening the door, finding the bodies, and fainting, as observed by the cabbie and other passers-by?”

  “That is correct,” said Lestrade.

  “Then,” Holmes said, shifting his finger to now point at the hemline of the girl’s current dress, the same that she had worn during her morning visit, “she probably obtained that small spot of blood along the hemline there when she passed through the shop after changing clothes,” said Holmes. “She was certainly careful, but not careful enough. I had noticed the spot on her dress when she was here the first time, at the same time that I was observing she had not walked to Whitehall as claimed. If she had truly walked, there was always the chance she could have received the spot on some street. But we know she did not walk. At the time I noticed that stain, I simply filed it away. Later it gained a great deal more importance.”

  “That it did,” agreed Lestrade, raising his head from where he had bent to see the bloodstain. Then he stood up, and the constable moved forward, sensing what was going to happen next. “Miss Letitia Porter, I place you under arrest for the murder of your father and Floyd Willis.” He continued the formalities, but she did not seem to hear. She was physically turned toward Holmes, but her face was staring up at the mantel to her left.

  “Do you see, Watson?” Holmes asked. “Do you see it? She is remembering what she did this morning, trying to think if she could have done anything differently.”

  Her eyes then cut sharply to Holmes, and then, after a long moment while Lestrade continued to speak, they drifted up to the right, just for a second. “And now,” Holmes added, “she’s imagining the various possibilities of how to escape this predicament.”

  She looked back at Holmes again, and then with an unexpected shriek, she lunged at him. But before she could sink her nails into Holmes’s face, Lestrade had her arm, spinning her around and into the approaching constable. Within moments she had been bundled out of the sitting room and downstairs.

  “They are never to be trusted, Watson,” said Holmes softly. “Not the best of them, and certainly not this pawnbroker’s daughter.”

  Later that evening, Lestrade returned to let us know that the girl had made a full confession. He inquired how Holmes had known that she was lying, but Holmes did not choose to explain his knowledge regarding the way that people behaved when visualizing real or constructed memories. Instead, he gave a vague answer concerning his deductions about the girl’s engagement ring, the dress and its slight bloodstain, and his determination that she had ridden in a cab when she said that she had walked, resulting in his questioning all of her statements. This seemed to satisfy our friend the inspector, and he departed soon after.

  “After all, Watson,” said Holmes when the man had gone, “my ideas about this sort of involuntary action are not thoroughly researched or proven. It would not be a good idea - in fact it might be dangerous in the wrong hands
- to present it as otherwise until more data has been established. Should you ever publish a monograph about these little cases of mine, you must be sure not to mention this trick.”

  I laughed. “As a matter of fact, you simply don’t want to give an advantage to the criminals. Or to your rivals at the Yard, I’d wager.”

  Holmes smiled in agreement. “Perhaps you are right. Possibly someday. But right now, a poor consultant needs every advantage that he can get.”

  “Then I thank you, Holmes,” I said, “for letting me in on one of your many secrets.”

  “Ah, Watson,” he replied, “you are an equal partner in this agency now, and as such you need to be fully equipped with every tool in your toolbox. Yet, I despair, as you still so often see but do not observe. While you did not yet know the method that I used to read the girl’s glances during her story today, you should have seen that her dress was far too fresh to have walked so great a distance across London. Surely, there were seven different indicators-”

  He could see my reaction to that statement, so he quickly changed the subject and suggested a dinner at Simpson’s, which was a rare treat indeed in those days, as a way to celebrate the recent fee from the Duke. We both knew that his two-month’s share of the rent that he had just earned would be somewhat depleted from such a meal, and that a new case would be necessary in order to replace the spent funds, but that night, with the memory in both our minds of the trapped girl’s suddenly vulpine face as she was led away by the constable, seemed to require some sort of special reward to counter the unpleasantness of it all.

  By way of an epilogue, I would like to mention the small encounter that led me to recall these events. Just the other day, I was down by the south end of the new Tower Bridge, standing where Jacobson’s Yard used to be located. It had all been torn down when the bridge was built a few years ago. I still remembered that night, not quite seven years earlier, when the signal had come, in the form of a waved white handkerchief, letting us know that Mordecai Smith’s boat, The Aurora, was departing from its hiding place at Jacobson’s to begin that mad and dangerous dash down the river, pursuing Jonathan Small, the last of the Four. Holmes, Athelney Jones, and I were waiting on a similar steam launch across the river, hugging the shore by the Tower, little realizing what the rest of the night would bring.

  Now, I was pretending to look over toward the Tower itself, shining in the morning sun on the far side of the Thames. The tide was in, and the wind was raising a gray chop on the water’s surface. I say that I was pretending to look at that old historic pile, but in reality, I was glancing to my right, towards the bridge, to see for sure that a certain man carried out his instructions and exchanged one package for another. This went as planned, and I then gave the signal, a touch to the brim of my hat with my left hand, to a small, dirty lad sitting on a nearby barrel, eating an apple. Without acknowledgement, he jumped down and scampered toward the bridge. He was, of course, one of Holmes’s Irregulars, and he was carrying word that the next phase of the complicated investigation had commenced.

  It was then that I saw an expensive carriage stop nearby. While the horse skittishly took a step or two forward and back, the door opened, and a woman stepped down. She was clearly one of those impoverished unfortunates who prey and are preyed upon throughout the East End. The attention that the area had received back in ‘88 had done very little to alleviate their terrible circumstances.

  As the woman found her footing, she turned back to the carriage, and a man’s arm, covered in a sleeve of very rich-looking fabric indeed, flipped her a coin, which she tried to catch, but dropped. The carriage door slammed shut, and I heard the sound of a stick knocking inside. The driver, thus alerted, gigged the horse into a trot and departed into the first advances of an impending fog.

  I glanced across the river to see that the Irregular was now to the west of the Tower, and conversing with another very similar-looking lad. The second one nodded, and took off running toward the north, into the City, while the first put his hands on his knees to catch his breath. Looking away from them, I found my gaze wandering back to the unfortunate woman as she unbent from retrieving the coin.

  As she straightened, her eyes locked with mine, and I was shocked to realize that I knew her. It had been thirteen years since her arrest and conviction, and except for her eyes, I do not think that I could have identified her. She was only in her early thirties now, but time in prison had wasted her. Gone was the pretty girl with the lustrous curls. In spite of Holmes’s testimony and her own confession, she had escaped a life sentence, due to somehow charming the jury, and had instead served only ten hard years. But what years they must have been.

  I could see that she recognized me as well. Miss Letitia Porter, if miss she still was, glared at me with a raw hatred. It lasted only a second, before her gaze drifted off to the right. Then, with a grim smile, she shifted her eyes back to mine, and making an abrupt turn, she walked away from the river, into a rat’s warren of streets.

  It was an unsettling experience, and I can only imagine what she was thinking when she smiled. It cannot have been a good thing, whatever she was picturing then, either for Holmes or myself...

  The Adventure of the Defenestrated Princess

  by Jayantika Ganguly

  I have often remarked on the variety and oddity of clients who sought the aid of my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, at our shared quarters. More often than not, our visitors would be accompanied by an aura of drama and intrigue. An especially dramatic entrance sprung to my mind when I last visited Holmes in Sussex Downs, and he finally gave his assent to reveal the details of the case. The parties involved are beyond human reach now, and the only sufferer of this narration would be Holmes’s own perception of his sentimentality - or rather, the lack thereof.

  It was towards the end of autumn in the year 1882, and in the months that I had known Holmes by then, I was truly convinced that he was as coldly logical and unfeeling as he projected himself to be. He had been generous enough to permit me to accompany him on several of his cases, and I was as much in awe of his genius as I was appalled at his apparent lack of empathy. While he was mostly polite to his clients, and unfailingly gentle with the fairer sex, I had come to realise that he did not much care for their plight; it was the puzzle which appealed to him. I know better now, of course, but in those early days, Holmes and I were not as close, and he kept much of his thoughts to himself.

  This particular case began with a gunshot at the ungodly hour of three in the morning. The terrible noise roused me from my sleep. I hurriedly threw on my dressing gown, pocketed my bull pup and rushed downstairs to find Holmes similarly dressed and armed.

  “What happened?” I enquired, my voice barely a whisper.

  “From the sound, I can only tell you that a .476 calibre Enfield Mk I revolver has been fired within twenty yards of our abode, Watson,” Holmes replied grimly. “I intend to step out to investigate further.”

  “I should like to keep you company, if you do not object,” I offered.

  “Thank you, Doctor. Your assistance may be invaluable. I suspect we shall have an injured person at hand shortly.”

  We passed an anxious Mrs. Hudson in the hallway. Insistent knocking, growing increasingly desperate with each passing moment, beckoned us to the front door. Holmes waved Mrs. Hudson away to safety, and gestured at me to take up a discreet position, so I could assist him if our late-night guest bore intentions of assault. The detective threw open the door.

  A raggedly-dressed young man stood outside, one hand still raised towards the knocker and the other clutching his abdomen.

  “Mr. Holmes?” he whispered hoarsely.

  To my surprise, Holmes pulled him in immediately and closed the door. The boy leaned against the wall, breathing heavily. His dark eyes were wide as he stared at Holmes.

  “Oh, but you are more beautiful than I was told to expect,
Mr. Holmes,” the boy sighed dreamily. “May I paint you?”

  I was rendered speechless. Holmes appeared embarrassed and flabbergasted in equal measures. Then the boy collapsed and I noticed the dark blood coating his fingers, realising he had been delirious with pain.

  “Get your medical kit ready, Watson,” Holmes said urgently. “I will bring up our visitor.”

  I rushed upstairs and grabbed my bag and some clean linen. We might not have the antiseptic environment of a hospital, but I would not let an infection take my patient. But where could I perform the required surgery? Our living room did not offer a surface large enough.

  “My bed should suffice,” Holmes said, walking in with the boy in his arms.

  Wordlessly, I followed him to his bedroom and spread the clean linen on his bed. With as much care as a mother would display for her injured child, Holmes laid our visitor on the bed. He proceeded to turn up all the lights.

  In the well-lit room, I could see the beauty of that young, smooth, golden face and felt a wave of fury sweep through me. The boy could not have been more than fourteen. How dare a ruffian harm a child?

  Holmes’s soft voice broke through my anger. “How may I assist you, Watson?”

  “Cut away his clothes, if you would, Holmes. I need to see the bullet wound,” I told him, pouring alcohol on both our hands.

  Holmes nodded and carefully removed a strip of the boy’s blood-stained shirt.

  “It might be better if you removed the shirt completely,” I suggested.

  Twin spots of colour appeared on my friend’s pale cheeks. “I am afraid that may not be prudent, Doctor,” he said. “Our client is a lady.”