The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (70 page)

Dear Sir
,

I am writing to inform you that one of my operators has indisputable evidence that your son, W. J. Harper, a medical student at St Thomas's Hospital, poisoned two girls named Alice Marsh and Emma Shrivell on the 12th inst., and that I am willing to give you the said evidence (so that you can suppress it) for the sum of £1,500 sterling, or sell it to the police for the same amount …

Even before I read the rest I knew that there would be the threat to ‘ruin you and your family forever', and a command in this case to answer the letter through the columns of the
Daily Chronicle
, with the message ‘
W. H. M
.—
Will pay you for your services
.—
Dr H
.' The conclusion of the letter revealed a familiar name, the blackmailer of Dr Neill and the Metropole Hotel.

If you do not answer at once, I am going to give the evidence to the Coroner
.

Yours respectfully
,

W.H. Murray

Holmes offered the cigar case again. This time, the inspector helped himself to a corona.

‘You say you have your blackmailer, Lestrade? Under lock and key?'

The colour rose a little in our visitor's cheek.

‘Not as such, Mr Holmes. I believe we know who he is, though. An arrest at this moment might be imprudent.'

‘Ah,' said Holmes, as if this explained it all, ‘and who might it be?'

Lestrade looked like a man on the verge of some grand pronouncement.

‘The son of the man to whom this letter is addressed, gentlemen. Mr Walter Harper, the medical student.'

Holmes affected simple bewilderment.

‘Then young Walter Harper accuses himself of the murder of these two girls?'

‘Only to his father, Mr Holmes. We can't see he is the murderer. He may be or he may be not. However, we believe he knew both girls and that he got one of them into trouble, or nearly so, while she was at Mutton's down in Brighton.'

‘But why accuse himself?'

‘Because he believed that his father, knowing something of the rumours about his son, would never take this letter to the police. He would pay, rather than see his son disgraced by scandal and his career ended before it had begun. Our information is that young Harper never wanted to be a medical student but was compelled by his father's wishes. If the young rogue is half what we think, his allowance was spent long ago. He is in debt to the money-lenders, and he must have seen one way to clear himself. By blackmailing the only person that would never give him away, having first tried to blackmail a good many others.'

‘And the murders?' asked Holmes hopefully.

‘As to that, Mr Holmes, how was it the blackmailer and his gang knew so soon that Ellen Donworth had been poisoned? How did they know Matilda Clover would be poisoned before it happened? Take all that together with the accusations in this letter and Mr Walter Harper may have to face something stronger than blackmail before he's finished.'

When the time came for the inspector to leave, Holmes stood up and shook his hand.

‘Well, my dear Lestrade, I congratulate you. You have proved yourself the best man in this case and the best man has won. I can only apologize if my own humble efforts, such as they have been, have in any way interfered with your investigations.'

Lestrade glowed a little with satisfaction.

‘Very noble of you to take it like that, Mr Holmes. Very generous, I'm sure.'

‘One thing, if I may ask. How tall is Mr Harper?'

Lestrade stared at him.

‘Tall?'

‘High, if you prefer.'

‘What has that …'

‘Believe me it has.'

‘Very well, then. About five feet and nine inches, I should guess.'

‘Build?'

‘He played scrum-half for the hospital rugby, I'm told.'

‘Clean shaven? How barbered?'

‘Medium brown hair. Short military moustache.'

‘Does he wear a bowler hat?'

‘He was indoors!' Lestrade said impatiently. ‘What might all this amount to?'

‘A portrait of your murderer,' Holmes said amiably. ‘Mere idle curiosity on my part.'

Idle curiosity or not, I could not help feeling that the inspector was a good deal more uneasy when he left us than when he had arrived.

As soon as the door was closed, I said to Holmes
sotto voce
, ‘Did you not see the address of young Harper's lodgings in the letter?'

‘Of course I saw it! It is the house where your client Dr Neill lodges on his visits to London.'

‘No wonder that Neill thought the blackmailer was someone close to him.'

‘No wonder at all,' he said.

‘And was not the scrum-half with the brown hair and moustache the man that Mrs Phillips saw at the door with Matilda Clover the night she died?'

‘To be sure.'

He leant forward and stirred the dying fire with the poker.

‘Then Lestrade has got his man!' I exclaimed.

He looked up at me.

‘I never doubted that, my dear fellow. He has got his man. Have we got ours?'

He was back to his old mood again. I gave him a few minutes of brooding over the embers, then asked casually, ‘I suppose, Holmes, that you may find it convenient in the next day or two to pay me the money you owe.'

He looked startled.

‘Money? What money?'

‘The wager,' I said quietly. ‘On our way to Lambeth Cemetery the other day, I wagered you that after the letter to the coroner, accusing an unnamed medical student of the Stamford Street murders, the next letter would be an attempt to blackmail a wealthy student or his family. So it has proved to be.'

‘By Jove!' he said softly. ‘So you did—and so it has. However, just help me with one thing first, there's a good fellow.'

‘What sort of thing?'

‘With your assistance, Watson, I should like to see the inside of Walter Harper's rooms. I do not much mind whether he is acquitted or hanged but I think it desirable that one or other of these events should take place before much longer. Then we will settle the wager.'

XIII

Two days later, poison in Lambeth threatened the entire borough. Maisie, maid-of-all-work to Mrs Emily Sleaper, answered the knocker in Lambeth Palace Road. The door stood in a respectable set of houses. The day was Monday, the time 9.30
A
.
M
. The wide length of the road lay empty, the trees down either pavement were bare in the approach of spring. On Mrs Sleaper's doorstep stood a stout man of medium height in a bowler hat and moustache, a watch-chain looped ponderously across the waistcoat of his well-worn suit.

‘Jeavons,' he said with the least tilt of the bowler, ‘Area Inspector, South London Gas Company. Mrs Sleaper home?'

‘No, sir,' said Maisie, blushing a little under her white mob-cap.

‘Who might be in charge, then?'

In deference to his air of authority, Maisie almost performed a half-curtsey.

‘There's only me, sir.'

He glanced at her and his mouth tightened.

‘Any smell of gas in the house?'

‘No, sir. Don't think so, sir.'

‘Don't think so, sir? Meaning what, precisely?'

‘Meaning I haven't been through every room yet,' she said petulantly, ‘and Mrs Sleaper's gentlemen are all gone out this time of day, so I can't ask them.'

‘Any naked lights or flame?'

‘Kitchen fire, I suppose.'

‘Put it out immediately.'

‘I can't do that! She'd skin me!'

His brows tightened.

‘Young woman, you have heard of the Lambeth poisoner, I daresay.'

‘Oh, yes.' There was a slight but delicious shiver. ‘I heard of him, all right.'

‘What you haven't heard of is his letter to the gas company yesterday, promising to poison all occupants of houses in this area with household gas, by over-pressurizing the main. In other words, even with taps turned off, the gas leaks at loose pipe-joints, too soft for you to hear. Day or night. You don't smell it and you get drowsy. You fall deeper into your last long sleep. All done in ten minutes.'

‘Oh, God!'

‘Act sensible,' Inspector Jeavons advised, ‘Mr Crabbe, my mechanic, will be here any minute, working his way down the road. Your joints need tightening, miss, that's all. If you smell anything peculiar meantime, come straight out.'

He closed the door, leaving the terrified maid to douse the kitchen fire. In the stillness of the road, a baker's barrow passed, pulled by the roundsman between its shafts. A milk-cart stopped. The man called ‘Milk down below!' and whipped up his horse. Then the front door of Mrs Sleaper's house flew open and Maisie almost tumbled down the steps.

‘Gas! Gas! Mr Jeavons! There's gas in the house!'

His self-assurance calmed her a little, as he shouted to his mechanic.

‘Mr Crabbe, attend to these joints next, if you please.'

Mr Crabbe resembled a turtle more closely than his marine namesake. A large man with fine chest and paunch, bandy-legged from weight, rheumy eyes behind thick glasses, a hopelessly drooping black moustache, and a tattered cap. He had the stoop of one whose life since boyhood has been spent down manholes and in conduits. His tools hung in a greasy satchel over the shoulder of his overalls. His voice had the slight but chronic hoarseness of the inveterate whisky drinker.

‘Have the goodness to show me, dear,' he said to Maisie, who scowled at his familiarity. ‘Just point out the whereabouts of the pipes.'

She led the way to the front door, taking care to enter only a few feet.

‘Don't strike a light, and you'll be all right,' he said roguishly, making to pull loose one of the ribbons behind her apron, as she twisted away from him. He undid his satchel and selected an adjustable wrench, humming to himself, ‘I can't get away to marry you today … My wife won't let me.'

‘Don't you smell it?' she insisted.

‘I smell it, my sweetheart. Just wait here.'

A black rubber mask from his satchel covered his nose and mouth, making him a grotesque and frightening clown from Venetian carnival. He went round the ground floor rooms and she heard the grip of the wrench on the piping.

Now he was on the stairs, climbing lightly. Two rooms opened off each upper level, the tenant identified by a printed
carte de visite
slotted into a small brass holder on each door. These apartments were duplicated indefinitely in this neighbourhood of the great hospitals. Entering the first, after a respectful tap on the door, Mr Crabbe found it unoccupied. A well-worn carpet lay before a black-leaded grate, gas-mantels at either side. A mirror hung over the greater width of the mantelpiece. The furniture was spartan and black-varnished.

A wardrobe stood in the adjoining bedroom and two tiers of desk-drawers in the sitting-room. Mr Crabbe drew open the desk-drawers one by one. With a hoarse cough and a sniff he unmasked and rummaged. Then, whistling to himself, ‘Here's the very note … and this is what he wrote …' he drew out a pad of ivory-cream writing paper. Holding it firmly, he tore off the top sheet and burst into full-throated chorus, ‘There was I, waiting at the church …' He stopped and listened. A black marble Parthenon clock on the mantel ticked away the silence. He sang a little more, as he checked the other rooms. The spanner was heard tightening joints, then he came cantering down the stairs.

‘Safe enough now, miss,' he said cheerfully. The pinch that he aimed was rather half-hearted, giving her ample time to turn her back to the wall.

‘You sure it's safe?'

‘Tight as Noah's Ark. He can turn up the pressure as much as he likes. The joints in this house won't give, gas won't leak in here. Sound as a pound.'

But what if this man was the Lambeth murderer and had loosened the joints instead? She dodged him once more.

‘You're not a gentleman!' she shouted after him angrily, ‘I've a good mind …'

Mr Crabbe swung rakishly down the road. His voice carried back to her.

‘You be thankful, my girl, that you ain't a-singing “Too-ra-li-too-ra-li-too-ra-lay-ay!” with the ‘eavenly choir!'

He turned into Lambeth Road and paused in the dark under a low bridge, its iron ringing at the thunder of Waterloo trains. With no one in sight, he opened his satchel and slipped his cap in. Unhitching the shoulder-bands of his overalls, he stepped out, folded them small and added them to the cap. Glasses and moustache followed. At the Waterloo cab rank, Mr Jeavons was waiting, his foot on the running-board to detain a hansom.

‘Though I say it myself, Watson,' the Gas Man chuckled, ‘that was one of the neatest and quite the jolliest of all my impersonations to date. You have the bag of peeled garlic and tar that I lodged within the kitchen door?'

I assured him I had. As for what he might have found in Walter Harper's rooms, he would only insist that I must wait and see what I would see on our arrival in Baker Street.

Holmes took the blank sheet of cream paper straight to his worktable. With infinite care, a delicate sprinkling of graphite revealed the indentations of a message written on the sheet above. Rather, it revealed some of them.

I am writing to inform … operators … indisputable evidence

… son, W. J. Harp … St Thomas's Hospital …

‘The young devil!' I exclaimed. ‘Then he
was
trying to extort money from his own father!'

Holmes stared at the paper and stroked his chin.

‘So it would seem.'

‘But he dared not use his own writing, which his father would recognize. So there are at least two of them in this. Surely this is our blackmail gang!'

He drew from his pocket an envelope, addressed to ‘Dr Thomas Neill, 103 Lambeth Palace Road SE.' I stared at it.

‘Holmes! You have searched my client's room! You have removed his papers!'