The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (9 page)

IV

It was more than another two months before the King's visit to Dublin was to begin, on 10 July. Holmes and I returned to England for the intervening period. So did Shackleton, whose visits to Ireland as Dublin Herald were now rare enough and whose business ventures kept him in London. Seven weeks passed. It was on the morning of 29 June, at about eight o'clock, that I woke from a deep sleep to find Holmes standing by my bed. My friend had never been an early riser but now he appeared in a large purple dressing-gown with a blue telegraph form in his hand.

‘Wake up, Watson! We must be on our way. Events are moving in Dublin, as I expected. Sir Arthur has lost his key to the door of the Bedford Tower.'

I fear I was a little put out, since our planned departure for Ireland was still two days away.

‘The tower? Is that all, Holmes? Half a dozen people have keys to it.'

‘I should not knock you up without good reason,' he said a little sharply. ‘Now, there is a boat-train from Euston at noon. We shall be in good time for the night boat from Holyhead and be in Dublin first thing tomorrow.'

I fear that I grumbled a good deal at this sudden change in our arrangements. All the same, I agreed to cancel my engagements for the next couple of days and accompany my friend. As the express of the Northwestern Railway carried us beyond Birmingham, I read the
Times
list of social engagements for the previous day. Among the guests at Lady Ormonde's luncheon party in Upper Brook Street was the name of Francis Richard Shackleton of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, the Dublin Herald. I handed the paper to Holmes.

‘Whatever may have happened to Sir Arthur's key to the tower, Frank Shackleton cannot have taken it. He is here, in London.'

‘I have no doubt of that, Watson. Shackleton has never left London since he returned from the opening of the exhibition in early May.'

‘Are you so sure?'

I could almost swear that Holmes looked a little awkward.

‘Our friend Lestrade has had officers keeping a watch. I think you may rest assured that Shackleton has scarcely been outside Mayfair, let alone London.'

He closed his eyes and never showed so much as the tremor of a lid until we pulled into Holyhead. I could think only of the inconvenience of having to wait more than a week in Dublin for the King's arrival. My displeasure was not diminished upon our arrival at the North Wall in Dublin early the following morning. Detective Officer Kerr was on the quayside with a cab to take us to our lodgings.

‘I fear, gentlemen,' he said sympathetically, ‘that you have been disturbed without necessity. Sir Arthur mislaid his key to the Office of Arms two days ago. He could not find it on his dressing-table that morning. He came to me at once and reported this. I used my own key to let him in. Last night, however, I received a message from him. The key was on his dressing-table after all. It had slipped under the hollow base of a brass candlestick.'

‘Hmm,' said Holmes, as the cab turned into the long elegant boulevard of Sackville Street. ‘What of the strong-room and the safe?'

‘All the keys are accounted for and the contents are secure, sir,' Kerr replied.

I was inclined to agree that the discovery of the missing key was the end of the matter. In any case, even a man who could enter the Bedford Tower was far from being able to open the strong-room or the safe. What more natural than that Sir Arthur had mislaid his copy of the door key?

Four days in Dublin passed without incident. On Wednesday, 3 July, a week before King Edward's arrival, Holmes and I had finished breakfast. We were sitting with the newspapers before us. Outside the handsome houses, there was a sound of children playing among the lawns and trees of the gardens at the centre of St Stephen's Green. I noticed in the
Morning Post
that Frank Shackleton had been at a reception in London the day before with the Duke of Argyll, husband of the Princess Louise and, hence, son-in-law of the late Queen and brother-in-law of King Edward VII. Scoundrel though he might be, Shackleton seemed to have little difficulty in securing social advancement. But he could not both be with the King's brother-in-law in London and making mischief in Dublin.

I had no sooner thought this to myself than there was a knock at the door and our landlady inquired whether it would be convenient for Mr Sherlock Holmes to receive Mrs Mary Farrell. We looked blankly at each other.

‘Mrs Farrell from the castle,' the good woman explained.

Our looks changed and Holmes said, ‘By all means send her in.' When the landlady had gone out, he added to me, ‘No doubt this is some lady of the Viceroy's court. We had best see her.'

Imagine our surprise when there appeared in the doorway a gaunt and venerable figure dressed in black. Her clothes were the ‘Sunday best' of the working-class widow-woman, the feather boa, the leg-of-mutton sleeves, the bonnet perched high on the tightly drawn hair, a handsome face hardened by toil and care. I do not think it had occurred to either of us that our visitor would be Mrs Farrell the cleaning-woman of the Bedford Tower. Now that we saw her, it seemed certain that she was the good woman whom Sir Arthur had mentioned in this connection. A look of concern contracted her features slightly and it deepened when she saw that Holmes was not alone. He rose, however, and received her with as much courtesy as if she had been a duchess or a
femme fatale
.

‘Good morning, Mrs Farrell. This is an unexpected pleasure. My name is Sherlock Holmes. This is my intimate friend and associate, Dr Watson, before whom you may speak as freely as before myself.'

She looked a little awkwardly from one to the other of us.

‘Pray take a seat, Mrs Farrell,' Holmes said gently.

Our visitor sat down, clutching her handbag on her lap.

‘I must speak to someone about the tower,' she said in a tense quiet voice. ‘I must speak, for I should not want to be thought any way dishonest.'

‘Indeed, not,' Holmes said.

She looked at us both again.

‘Well, sir, I came to clean as usual this morning, just on seven o'clock. The door of the tower was shut as it always is. When I put the key in the lock, it would not turn. I tried the handle and the door opened. It was unlocked all the time, Mr Holmes. For what I know it was unlocked all night. I cleaned as usual and could not see anything wrong with the building. Still, when I finished, I waited for Mr Stivey and told him I had found the door unlocked. Mr Stivey told Sir Arthur, as soon as he came in. The strong-room was checked at once and they found everything in order. Nothing more is to be done.'

‘Then you have no more to worry about, Mrs Farrell.'

She looked at him intently. ‘If anything should be found amiss, sir, I would not have it come back on me. I cannot afford to lose work, Mr Holmes. I thought, if I spoke to you now, you might vouch I have been every way honest.'

Holmes smiled to reassure her. ‘You need have no fear of that, Mrs Farrell. You have behaved as honestly as any woman might. Tell me, though, might not the door have been left accidentally unlocked?'

‘It might,' she said doubtfully.

‘And who would have been the last person to leave the tower before you?'

‘Sir Arthur, Mr Holmes. He is always the last of the gentlemen to leave in the evening. But then Mr Kerr, the detective officer, makes his inspection, usually between seven and eight o'clock at night. Sir Arthur, Mr Mahony, Mr Burtchaell, and Mr Stivey all have keys. If any of them had come back later still, they might have left the door unlocked.'

Holmes assured her several times that she had done the proper and honest thing. Appearances may deceive, yet it was impossible to look at Mrs Farrell and think her anything but decent, loyal, and industrious.

‘We ourselves will say nothing of this to Sir Arthur and his colleagues,' Holmes said to me, as soon as Mrs Farrell had left us. ‘Nor to Detective Officer Kerr. Strictly speaking, the Bedford Tower is none of our concern.'

‘And what of the jewels?' I protested, somewhat alarmed by my friend's apparent ease of mind.

‘I think we may assume, my dear Watson, that St Patrick's regalia is as safe as it was yesterday—no more and no less.'

With this enigmatic comment he dismissed the topic, nor could he be persuaded to return to it.

V

Three more days passed and we came to the morning of Saturday, 6 July, four days before King Edward's arrival at Kingstown on the
Victoria and Albert
. There was no further explanation of the unlocked door, as Mrs Farrell described it, unless either Sir Arthur or Detective Officer Kerr had left it so. The matter was not mentioned to Holmes or myself by anyone but Mrs Farrell.

Holmes said with a shake of his head, ‘By the nature of the thing a man cannot be sure of what he has forgotten. I think it would be safer to assume that the door was left accidentally unlocked and let us watch the consequences.'

What those consequences were to be became clear on Saturday morning. At about eleven o'clock, a boy in brass-buttoned livery arrived at St Stephen's Green with a regally embossed envelope. It was addressed to Sherlock Holmes in confidence by the Viceroy of Ireland, Lord Aberdeen, requesting him to go at once to Dublin Castle. There had been a discovery in the Bedford Tower which gave His Excellency cause for concern and materially affected the King's visit.

It was less than twenty minutes later when we entered the upper courtyard of Dublin Castle through the arched gateway on Cork Hill. Holmes rang the bell at the door of the Bedford Tower and we were admitted by William Stivey, a slightly built man of about fifty whose tanned face and somewhat rolling gait proclaimed his previous occupation.

‘If you don't mind, sir,' he said to Holmes, ‘you're to come straight to my office. Sir Arthur has a visitor with him just this minute but he'll see you as soon as he can.'

‘Really?' said Holmes. Though he did not quite sniff, there was an air of scepticism about him. We followed Stivey to the little office and there found Mrs Farrell sitting in a chair with Detective Officer Kerr standing behind her. Kerr was a fine red-headed giant with the look of a man who has his career to make. Stivey announced Sherlock Holmes. Kerr, straightening up, at once told Mrs Farrell to tell us the story she had first told Stivey.

‘It was like the other morning, sir,' the woman said, eyeing Holmes earnestly, ‘but this time it was the steel door of the strong-room.'

‘You mean it was unlocked?' Holmes asked quickly.

‘I mean, sir, that when I came to work at about seven this morning, the door of the strong-room was partly open. I could see the grille inside it, which I never saw before, and there was a key in the lock of the grille. I took that key out and put it on Mr Stivey's desk, knowing he would be the first gentleman to arrive. Then I wrote a note, describing what I had found, and put it with the key. I closed the door to the strong-room but could not lock it, having no key.'

‘You did right,' Holmes said. ‘And what did Mr Stivey do?'

He swung round on the former naval rating who met his inquiry without flinching.

‘As soon as Sir Arthur arrived, Mr Holmes, I went up to his room and told him that the strong-room door had been found unlocked and slightly ajar.'

‘And what did Sir Arthur say?'

‘He said, “Is that so?” '

Holmes stared at William Stivey.

‘Did you not think that a curious thing to say?'

But William Stivey was loyal to his master. ‘Sir Arthur had come in with a gentleman from West's the jewellers. He was much occupied, sir. The knight's collar intended for the investiture of Lord Castletown has been altered to bear his name and was returned this morning. Sir Arthur was preoccupied at that moment. I was able to tell him that I had checked the strong-room and that nothing was missing nor out of place. He was reassured by that.'

‘Very well,' said Holmes, though he did not sound as if he thought it was very well. ‘Then how comes it that the strong-room door was open?'

‘It was not open at half-past seven last night,' Kerr said. ‘I made my patrol then. As I turn the corner I always swing myself round by the handle of the strong-room door. I should have known at once if it was open or unfastened. If it was open this morning, someone unlocked it during the night. Apart from the key kept in the strong-room itself, there are two copies. Sir Arthur and Mr Stivey have one, though Mr Stivey's is handed to Sir Arthur when he leaves.'

‘Do you say that Sir Arthur must have opened the strong-room door?'

Kerr shook his head. ‘Sir Arthur was seen to leave at seven o'clock last night. He collected his mail from the Kildare Street Club at half past seven and was home at St James's Terrace when dinner was served at eight. To have returned here and then gone home again would have taken him almost an hour. He was seen constantly by his servants until after eleven o'clock last night. He retired to bed a little before midnight and, by his own account, did not leave the house again until nine o'clock this morning. Had he returned during the night, he would have been recognised at once by the guards on the castle gate.'

‘Dear me,' said Holmes, as if to himself, ‘how very singular. You are quite sure that you made a thorough patrol of the building last night?'

Detective Officer Kerr flushed a little, as fair-skinned redheads of his type are apt to do when falsely accused.

‘So thorough, Mr Holmes, that I went through every room on both floors, even the coal cellars beneath. The one room I did not enter was the strong-room, to which I have never had a key. Only Sir Arthur has the keys to that.'

‘The cellars,' said Holmes quickly. ‘Do they have a coal-chute which might be used to enter the building?'

Kerr shook his head. ‘There is a coal-hole but it is in the castle entrance. The military guard and the duty constable stand within a few feet of it, sometimes on top of it. In any case, it is fitted with a coal-stop, precisely to prevent an intruder getting in that way.'