The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (63 page)

From the street below came a familiar stamping of hooves and the long grind of a cab wheel as its metal rim rasped against the kerb. The door bell sounded and the housemaid, whom Mrs Hudson had lately taken into her service, burst in upon us, twittering with excitement like a beribboned sparrow.

Presently, there came a frou-frou of a woman's skirts on the stairs. Then, in the full glare of the light, a slim, dark-haired figure stood before us, a veil over her face, a mantle drawn round her chin. Her breath came quickly, as if the stairs had been an exertion. Every inch of her lithe figure seemed to quiver with strong emotion. When she put up the veil, her young face was clear-cut with a straight nose, dark brows, glittering eyes, and a thin mouth that seemed as if it might form a dangerous smile. The neatness of her face and the skill with which it was painted gave her the air of an expensive doll.

My friend crossed the room to greet her.

‘Mr Holmes?' she inquired, her voice low yet richly modulated, ‘Mr Sherlock Holmes?'

‘Ma'am,' said Holmes punctiliously. He did not bow to this daughter of the aristocracy, for that would have bruised his Bohemian soul, but there was a slight inclination of the dark head and aquiline profile.

Her lips parted in a promise of hopeful innocence, as she took his hand. Still holding the hand, she looked long and directly into his eyes. Holmes stared at her, as if mesmerized. Then he said, as if in an afterthought, ‘This is my associate, Dr Watson, before whom you may speak as freely as before myself.'

As I took that cool, delicate hand and looked into the frank blue eyes of our client, I thought that she was the type of young woman who would make you all the world to her for that moment, and dispense with you the next.

‘Pray be seated,
ma'am
,' Holmes said gently, ‘and tell us how we may be of service.' He allowed her to choose her place on the settee, watched her sit down, then took his own place in a chair diagonally across the carpet.

‘Mr Holmes,' she said quickly, as she arranged her skirts, ‘I will come straight to the point. You will know that I have been separated from my husband for some months. There is no communication between us, except through our lawyers. However, I am told that there is evidence in the hands of a certain person which would convict him of murder. Of two murders, indeed.'

‘Lord Russell?'

She nodded, stood up again, crossed to the small occasional table where she had left her reticule and took a miniature silver box from it. She lit a cigarette and chose a fresh arm-chair, for all the world like a modern matinee heroine at Her Majesty's Theatre or the Haymarket.

‘I believe my husband capable of many moral crimes, Mr Holmes, but scarcely of the murders of young women who are strangers to him.'

The slim fingers of one hand curled tightly over the end of the chair-arm, her gaze cool and direct. I saw why Holmes had responded to her appeal for help. A series of young women murdered? Lord Russell? The grandson of England's greatest prime minister in the past fifty years? If there were a word of truth, it was surely the sensation of the century.

‘I cannot say whether the charge of murder is true or false, Mr Holmes. I mean to know, however, for a threat of blackmail is made to me.'

Holmes nodded, as if he approved of her determination.

‘Whom is it said that he murdered?'

Only the denting of the white cigarette by her fine nails betrayed her anxiety.

‘Two names are mentioned in a letter, from Mr Bayne, a barrister. He claims that since our separation Lord Russell has frequented houses in Lambeth and Southwark. The allegation is that Lord Russell derives his pleasure by making poor fallen creatures swallow noxious draughts to cause them torment. A fortnight ago, by accident or intent, he caused the deaths of two young women.'

Holmes looked askance.

‘Lady Russell,' he said presently, ‘such pathological pleasures are happily rare. They were indulged by certain Byzantine emperors and Renaissance princes, to be sure, and by the Comte de Sade at Marseille in 1772. In my own practice I have met not a single example. May I see the letter?'

She blushed very slightly, unfolding the sheet of paper and giving it to him. Holmes read it, looked at me and raised his eyebrows.

Without asking her leave, he handed me the paper to read.

To the Countess Russell,
Savoy Hotel,
London

Madam,

I am writing to inform you that, since your parting, your husband Lord Francis, Earl Russell, has been a regular patron of many houses of ill-fame in Lambeth and Southwark. He has killed several girls. A week or two ago he gave enough strychnine to Matilda Clover and Lou Harvey to kill a horse. Only it killed them. Two letters incriminating him were found among the effects of Clover after her death. Think of the shame and disgrace it will bring upon you and your family if Lord Russell is arrested and put in prison for this crime.

My object in writing this letter to you is to ask if you will retain me at once as your counsellor and legal adviser for a fee of two thousand pounds. If you employ me at once to act for you in this matter, I will save you from all exposure and shame. If you wait until your husband is arrested, then I cannot act for you, as no lawyer can save you after the authorities get hold of Clover's papers. If you wish to retain me, just put an advertisement in the personal column of the
Morning Post
, saying
Lady R. wishes to see Mr Bayne the Barrister
and I will drop in and have a private interview with you. I can save you and your husband if you retain me in time, but not otherwise.

Yours truly,

H. Bayne, Barrister

As I put the letter down, I confess that my heart had quickened with relief. Whoever Matilda Clover and Lou Harvey might be, they were neither of them the young woman whom I had found dying on Saturday evening.

‘How was the letter delivered?' Holmes asked quietly.

‘By mail this morning, sent by yesterday's post, the final collection last night.'

Holmes nodded.

‘Tell me, who is your solicitor?'

‘Sir George Lewis, of Lewis and Lewis.'

He nodded again and brought the matter to an end, as it seemed.

‘Then you have no need of my services, Lady Russell. There is no better man than Sir George. Take the letter to him. Request him to bring it to the notice of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. That will put a stop to blackmail. The police may ask you to insert the notice in the
Morning Post
, as a trap to catch the criminal. I doubt if you will hear from your blackmailer again. There is spite in this letter, rather than blackmail. However, if Mr Bayne, or whatever his name may be, attempts to contact you, the police will have him. They will do as much for you as I could.'

Her eyes showed a glimmer of petulance.

‘And the young women my husband is said to have murdered a fortnight ago?'

Holmes smiled at her.

‘Lady Russell, one murder—let alone two—would have been reported, however briefly, in the press. I assure you there has been no such report. Scotland Yard, in the person of Inspector Lestrade, is also kind enough to take me into its counsels. I believe I can say that neither I nor Mr Lestrade has so much as heard of Matilda Clover or Lou Harvey. Either they do not exist, which is most likely, or they are names of girls alive and well, put there for spite against them.'

‘Perhaps the murders have not been discovered?'

‘In that case,' Holmes said gently, ‘if the murders were secret, there would be no point to the blackmail. Would there?'

She did not answer. I could swear she was almost disappointed to find there was no evidence against her husband. Her fingertips rattled on the chair-arm.

‘I will also speak to Sir George Lewis,' Holmes continued, as if trying to mollify her. ‘If there is any way in which I may assist you further, he need only say so.'

‘Speak to whom you please!' She was standing up now and so were we. ‘You may hang Lord Russell at Newgate a dozen times for the murder of Matilda Clover or Lou Harvey before I will pay a farthing to Mr Bayne!'

‘Admirable,' Holmes said with every appearance of sincerity.

Lady Russell took her leave with a further assurance that Holmes would be at her beck and call, if Sir George said the word. Then my friend sat down with his legs out straight, the tips of the fingers touched together, his eyes closed.

‘Let Sir George Lewis puzzle out the letter,' I said cheerfully, trying to console him. ‘That is the end of the matter so far as we are concerned.'

He spoke without opening his eyes.

‘My dear Watson, the significance of this case eludes you. What blackmailer would propose a scheme that is bound to put the handcuffs on him as soon as he approaches his victim? You saw, did you not, the script? Sharp and yet curiously florid in its decoration of open letters. The initial B of Bayne and the R of Russell were obvious examples. Such a hand is strongly indicative of inherent mania. I think, my dear fellow, that this is not the end of anything at all. I fancy, however, that it may be a most promising beginning.'

Two hours later the street-door bell emitted a single vigorous clang.

Holmes glanced at me, uneasily as I thought. The housemaid's steps rattled up the stairs and she burst in upon us, ribbons fluttering.

‘Mr Fred Smith!' she gasped. ‘Most urgent Mr Smith is, to see Mr Holmes!'

Holmes looked at me with an ironical despair.

‘Then let Mr Fred Smith be shown up,' he said languidly. ‘I should not like to think, Watson, that our evening was to be entirely without further diversion.'

III

A sense of farce, as if one actor crossed the stage in pursuit of another, now began to threaten a case which was to prove one of the grimmest. While the maid went downstairs, I stole a glimpse of the windy street from behind the curtains. There stood a dark carriage, its coachman dressed in black, with a crape hat-band and arm-band, a black crape bow on his whip. At this hour on a stormy night, he seemed like a messenger of death come to bear Don Juan down to hell.

A moment later his master was before us in a fur-collared coat, the length of a black silk weeper trailing from the hat he handed to the maid. Now that ‘Fred' Smith stood before us, we recognized a man of great influence in England's political and commercial life. His face had lately graced the weekly magazines as the son and heir of a famous bookseller and Leader of the House of Commons, the Right Honourable W. H. Smith, who had died a fortnight since. With his square-set face and quick eyes, the Honourable Frederick Smith, himself a Member of Parliament, appeared as a paragon of action and integrity.

Holmes crossed the room, his hand extended.

‘You need not introduce yourself, sir, for Dr Watson and I had the pleasure of meeting you last summer. It was at the Stationers Company, the occasion of a most informative address by Mr Walter de Grey Birch of the British Museum. The chemical effects produced upon logwood ink by the introduction of wood pulp in paper milling.'

Mr Smith faltered.

‘You are quite right, Mr Holmes. I had overlooked that.'

‘And now,' said Holmes in a graver tone and with a slight inclination of the head, ‘permit me to offer you my condolences upon the death of your father.'

Frederick Smith looked as if he hardly knew how to go on. Then he said quickly, ‘It is in that connection that I have come to you, Mr Holmes, rather than to the police. I fear that my family's grief is to be compounded by a painful scandal.'

Holmes looked at him a little more keenly.

‘I should be sorry for that, Mr Smith. Pray be seated.'

Our visitor sat down, though first he handed my friend an envelope.

‘This letter and enclosure came this morning. It is preposterous, of course, and cruel in its persecution of a bereaved family. I hope I may look to you to ensure that we are not taunted in this way. I cannot believe I am obliged to take this nonsense to the police. I should rather trust you to keep a watching brief. You know already, I daresay, of the murders in Lambeth. The death of an unfortunate young woman, Ellen Donworth …'

The sound of that name was as if a prize-fighter's fist had knocked the wind from my solar plexus. Holmes gave me a quick look which counselled silence but Mr Smith must have seen something for he repeated carefully, ‘Ellen Donworth, and …'

‘Matilda Clover?' Holmes suggested brightly.

Frederick Smith shook his head.

‘Louisa Harvey—or Lou Harvey as he calls her.'

Holmes caught my eye again and looked quickly away.

‘Indeed? May I read this curious letter?'

‘By all means.'

Holmes glanced at the paper and began to read out loud for my benefit.

‘
To Mr Frederick Smith, 186 Strand. On Saturday night, Ellen Donworth, sometimes calling herself Ellen Linnell, 8 Duke Street, Westminster Bridge Road, was poisoned with strychnine. Among her effects were found two letters also incriminating you in the murder of Lou Harvey. If they ever become public property they will surely convict you of both crimes. I enclose a copy of a letter Miss Donworth received the day she died
.'

Holmes glanced at the second letter but then continued to read the first.

‘
Judge for yourself what hope you have of escape if the law officers ever get hold of those letters …
'

My friend skimmed down the page a little, humming to himself.

‘
My object in writing to you is to ask if you will retain me at once as your counsellor and legal adviser. If you employ me to act for you in this matter, I will save you from all exposure and shame. If you wait till you are arrested before retaining me, I cannot act for you. No lawyer can save you after the authorities get hold of those two letters
.'

He sat for a moment with his brows drawn down, staring at the sheet of paper.