The Execution of Sherlock Holmes (33 page)

The manager tapped lightly at the door, but Holmes had watched Gurney go up to his room after dinner and had timed his report accordingly. By now, I suspected, the foolish fellow was in the arms of Morpheus. Of course he was not anaesthetized as deeply as a patient would be for a surgical operation, but nor would he be easily roused within the next hour or two. I was not surprised when there was no response to the knock. We both looked at the manager, a Milanese of lean and cadaverous appearance, as if to imply that should there be a mishap, he was bound to be held accountable. To me, he looked more than ever like some mournful bird of prey.

He motioned us back, then slid his passkey into the lock and pushed open the sitting room door. In truth, there was an odour but it was suggestive of operating theaters generally and not overwhelmingly evident as chloroform. We waited. As many of my readers will be aware, Brighton was the first town in England to have a supply of electricity under the Electric Lighting Act of 1882, so that the manager had only to turn a switch in order to illuminate the sitting-room. It was furnished with a pair of armchairs, a table with two upright seats at it, and a bureau. To one side was the bedroom door, which had been closed but not locked. Within that was a further division with separate doors for bedroom and bathroom.

When the first inner door was opened, there was a definite odour of chloroform, so strong that I opened the bedroom door in fear of what I might find. The dose had been potent enough for Edmund Gurney to succumb to sleep even before he could turn off the light. Yet nothing had prepared me for the grotesque spectacle that I now saw. He lay on the bed in the stark electric glare, wearing his nightshirt, the upper part of his body propped against the headboard. His body had slumped at an angle and his head was almost entirely encased in a rubber sponge bag, which he had drawn down far enough to cover his nostrils and mouth. His practice was evidently to soak the rubber bag in a measure of chloroform and then draw it over his head as he lay down to sleep. It was dangerous and foolish in the extreme, for he had no means of controlling the amount he ingested. He was a perfect subject for ‘The Hypochondriac’s Tragedy.’

First of all the sponge bag must come off. As I pulled it clear, he hardly stirred and I prayed that, this time, he had not gone beyond recall. His face was deathly pale, the countenance of a tall, lanky, big-boned fellow, perhaps forty years old. His blue eyes were a fraction open, but I am sure he saw nothing. The moustache was lank and the hair combed like thatch down either side of his head. I took his wrist and felt a pulse, which was stronger and steadier than I had feared. Perhaps, like so many habitués, his constant use had hardened him to the effects of the fumes. Holmes meanwhile had opened the window and fresh air began to drift into the room. I turned to the manager, who was hovering over us. There was no need to use deceit, for what I told him was the perfect truth.

‘You had better leave him to me for an hour or so. His life is not in immediate danger from the chloroform, which will pass off slowly. However, it may sometimes act as an emetic. If that were to happen when he is deeply asleep, there is a risk that he might choke on his own vomit without waking.’

I did not add that it was a remote risk. All the same, had such a thing happened after I had abandoned him to return to my room, matters would certainly not have gone well for me at an inquest. The manager’s relief was tinged with apprehension.

‘You do not ask for an ambulance or a doctor from the hospital? There will be no police?’

‘It would serve no purpose. He must be watched for an hour or two. That is all.’

In his gratitude, I thought he might seize my hand and kiss it. He had, of course, dreaded the publicity that hospitals and ambulances—let alone the police—bring to an establishment like his. Holmes and I did not appear to him as the types who would tell the story round the streets of Brighton.

‘Mr. Holmes has some experience in medical matters,’ I said to him reassuringly. ‘He can watch for me if I should be out of the room at any time.’

I did not add that my friend’s experience in medical matters, such as it was, usually concerned those who were already dead. Indeed, the manager with his thin, stooping gait and black clothes might have graced an undertaker’s parlour. He now withdrew in a fusillade of thanks and assurances while promising to be at beck and call if he were needed.

Holmes closed the door as the man left and came into the bedroom.

‘Well done, Watson! A first-rate performance!’

I looked at Gurney; I was convinced that I could have fired my revolver into the ceiling without waking him.

‘It was no act, I assure you, Holmes. His pulse is a little above normal. In the case of poisoning by chloroform, the rate may rise to one hundred forty or more, at which it is fatal. If it should increase now, I shall indeed summon whatever assistance is needed. He has taken a dose sufficient to put him to sleep. At least he is not one of those chloroform-eaters who prove to be suicides.’

‘Or victims of murder,’ said Holmes casually. ‘You will find at least three recent cases in Caspar-Liman’s
Handbook of Medicine
. Let us hope we can prevent anything of that kind. If someone were able to enter this room, think how easily they could pour a further thimble or two of chloroform over that sponge bag with the poor fellow already unconscious and knowing nothing further. You know how little coroners and coroners’ juries are to be depended upon. The whole thing would be put down to the dead man’s folly.’

He withdrew to the sitting room and I could hear him moving about. I left Gurney for a moment and went into the bathroom to find the chloroform. It was necessary to calculate, if possible, what dose he might have taken. I opened the cabinet and undid the top of a dark green bottle to smell the sweet and colourless contents. A fatal dose would probably have been between four and six ounces. Not more than an ounce or two had been used from this bottle altogether, some of it perhaps on a previous night. That, at least, was a welcome discovery.

From what little I knew of the man, I was not surprised that the rest of the cabinet contained an array of patent medicines and quack remedies. Carter’s Little Liver Pills, Beecham’s Powders, and the respectable potions of their kind rubbed shoulders with the Patent Carbolic Smoke Ball Inhaler, guaranteed to prevent influenza, Kaolin-and-Opium for the dysenteric, Propter’s Nicodemus Pills or ‘The Old Man Young Again,’ Klein’s Opening Medicine by Royal Appointment, Chocolate Iron Tonic, and goodness knows what. Holmes appeared in the doorway.

‘What have you found?’

‘Only that the poor wretch has turned his digestive tract into a druggist’s waste pipe,’ I told him. ‘At least he has not taken anything like enough chloroform to kill himself.’

‘Come in here,’ he said peremptorily. ‘I believe we are a little closer to knowing a useful fact or two about Professor Chamberlain. The hotel bureau was absurdly easy to open. Not least because Gurney had simply left the key to the top flap under a sheet of paper in the drawer beneath. I have always maintained that those who lock away their papers and valuables are far less fearful of thieves who may find the key than that they themselves will lose it or, more often, forget where they have put it. In this case there were no valuables in the upper section but a correspondence file and a series of letters.’

The flap of the bureau was down, supported on the two runners that Holmes had pulled out. On the table at the centre of the room was a long cedar-wood letter box in which a series of papers had been filed in order of date. It was characteristic of Gurney’s punctilious and scholarly mind that the letters sent to him had not only been filed in order but had their envelopes pinned to them with the date of receipt written in pencil upon them. Holmes took one letter from the file, put the cedar-wood box back in the top of the bureau, and closed the flap without yet locking it again.

I was still uneasy at the manner in which he had made free with Gurney’s possessions, but my friend had anticipated this.

‘It had to be done, Watson. There is a dark plot in these papers, unless I am much mistaken. What a fastidious fellow he is! Every letter kept and filed. These relate to his residence here and go back only a few weeks. When I think of my own unanswered correspondence, transfixed by a jackknife to the center of the mantelpiece in Baker Street, I become aware of deficiencies in my way of life. Look at this!’

He laid before me a typewritten envelope addressed to ‘Edmund Gurney, Esq., The Royal Albion Hotel, Brighton.’ It was postmarked with a date several days earlier and was one of the most recent to be received. Gurney had noted its receipt in pencil with a date one day later than the postmark.

‘What of it?’

‘Now look at this.’ It was another typewritten letter also bearing the date of the postmark and a pencil date of receipt by Gurney a day later. It bore the address of ‘Marine Parade, Brighton,’ and was signed ‘Professor Joshua D. Chamberlain.’ I read it without waiting for any invitation from Holmes.

My dear Mr. Gurney, I write to thank you for your generous letter and to express my delight that all differences between us have been resolved. I now see that they were never more than misunderstandings, for which I must hold myself entirely responsible. I should have made it plain that my performances, however much they may overlap your own more serious interests, were never meant to be more than entertainments of the kind offered by Jasper Maskelyne or the Davenport Brothers at the Egyptian Hall in London and elsewhere. You, for your part, are a well-respected investigator of second-sight phenomena and apparitions of the living. Though I maintain that Madame Elvira has remarkable abilities in respect of the former of these, I see that I must have caused you offence and for this I am truly sorry.

I am gratified that we may now be partners rather than adversaries. It would give me great pleasure if, as you suggest, we were able to undertake a tour together in the eastern cities of the United States. Whether we should appear under the same billing, or myself as entertainer and you as the true scholar and investigator, is a matter we might discuss. The interest in your book Phantasms of the Living would be intense and I believe you would find yourself acclaimed there as perhaps you have never been in your own country. As you know, the work of Madame Elvira and myself in popularizing psychic inquiry has been nominated for an award by the Psychic Research Society of Philadelphia, though without our prior knowledge or consent. We would be honoured if it were possible for us to withdraw that nomination and to put your name forward in our place.

My partner joins me in sending our sincere and cordial greetings.

I looked up at Holmes.

‘A quite extraordinary letter. The fellow was still claiming his psychic powers last night.’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said impatiently. ‘But I did not ask you to read it, Watson. Look at it! Do not read it! And look at the envelope.’

I could see nothing. The date on the letter and the postmark were the same. Both bore a pencil date a day later, when Gurney had noted them, a few days ago.

‘The typing, Watson!’

Those who have followed our adventures will recall that Sherlock Holmes quickly developed an interest in the new invention of the typewriter. ‘I think of writing another monograph some of these days,’ he had said, ‘on the typewriter and its relation to crime. It is a subject to which I have devoted some little attention.’ He believed, as he said, that ‘a typewriter has really quite as much individuality as a man’s handwriting.’

In the present case, he took a magnifying lens from his pocket and handed it to me as I studied the black carbon lettering.

‘Had this correspondence been set in type by a printer, Watson, the level of the printed letters would be straight as the edge of a rule can make them. However, one can see immediately that this note was typed by bar-end letters. That is to say, capital and lowercase of each letter are at the top of a thin bar. The bars stand in a semicircle above the ribbon of the machine. When a key is pressed, the chosen bar comes down, hits the ribbon, and imprints the letter on the paper.’

‘There is no doubt, I assume, that this letter and the envelope were typed upon the same machine that Madame Elvira used in her performance?’

‘None whatever, though that is not the most significant feature. If you consult the paper that you were about to throw into the sea, you will observe certain similarities between it and these two items. Place a ruler under this line of type, the letters
e
,
s
,
a
, and
t
drop slightly below. Whereas
h
,
n
, and
m
rise slightly above. The letter
c
drops when it is in lowercase but rises when it is a capital. That is caused by a minute variation in the metal casting of each bar that carries the capital and lowercase characters. So many parts are produced by machinery alone that any bar arm will vary minutely from the average setting. It is also evident that letters that drop are on the left-hand side of the keyboard and those that rise are on the right. That is not uncommon.’

He looked up at me quickly, lips lightly compressed in a pantomime of calculation.

‘Forty bar arms carrying two characters each, each arm subject to slight variation. A further variation in casting eighty characters. The odds are easily half a million to one against two machines of the same make being identical. Add to this the wear caused to the machine by the individual user. A criminal who disguises his own handwriting has a better chance of escape.’

It seemed to me a good deal of fuss about nothing very much.

‘Since Chamberlain signs the letter, it is presumably his machine. For the life of me, Holmes, I do not see what the dispute is about.’

He stared at me.

‘When this matter comes before the Central Criminal Court, as I have no doubt that it will, there may be a good deal of dispute. It will not do to say that the machine is presumably his. It must be his without question. By then it may have vanished. The piece of paper that you so nearly threw into the sea may be all that will tie Professor Chamberlain to this letter and, therefore, perhaps tie him ready for the gallows.’