The Misadventure of Shelrock Holmes (44 page)

After this outburst he turned his back on us again.

"Come, come," said Holmes gently, "we mustn't get excited. Think a minute. Is that why you have come off here and left all your friends — hidden from the world?"

"Yes, Mr. Holmes. And that is why I have had this old well cleaned out: I am going to fill it with editors' blood. It will take quite a lot of editors to fill it, but I have hopes."

We saw that it was useless to pursue the conversation further and rose to depart.

"Well, then, go take a walk," he said, "take the path straight over Light House Hill to White Head. After that you'd better come back here. I can give you a crust and perhaps a bit of short lobster if you're not too legally minded."

We crossed the island to the cliffs and stood for a time looking into the blue haze. "Strange, isn't it, Watson," Holmes reflected, "that crime and madness can lurk in so peaceful a spot. ... I hate to do it, but I must question him further."

"But I say, Holmes, would it be quite sporting," I protested, "now that we are his guests?" But Holmes was resolute. When we returned to the little house at sunset, we found its owner

312 THE ADVENTURE OF THE MURDERED ART EDITOR

composed. We talked quietly together of his life on the island, where, he said, he meant to end his days. Only one subject seemed to bring on a return of abnormality, — the subject of editors.

"There is a big cavern up the shore," he said, "that I've got rilled solid full of dynamite. There's a big boulder over it, and if an editor ever comes to this island, I'm going to pry it loose. . . ."

"But these editors," said Holmes gently. "Aren't they human beings?"

"Not after they become editors," was the reply. "They are machines. Machines that buy merchandise by the yard, put it in pigeon holes, label it. . . ."

"Look here, my dear fellow," said Holmes, "you are happy here, aren't you? You are not bloodthirsty about other people — fishermen for example?"

"Oh, no."

"Well, then, I think Watson and I will go back to England and leave you in peace. You will be safe here. No one need ever know."

Two weeks later we were back in the old rooms in Baker Street. There had been no further developments in the Grootenheimer case. The police had given up the search for the missing artist, and now thought that the editor might have been killed by some Modernist or other deranged person.

But Holmes's watchful eye had caught this curious PERSONAL advertisement in the New Yorf( Times: "WANTED, an Art Editor, as companion for a summer vacation in Maine. All expenses paid. Must be full-blooded American."

"Poor soul," I said musingly, "no doubt his sorrows have driven him mad. But somehow I am not convinced that his crime is real. It may be entirely imaginary."

"Quite," said Holmes.

"No one could blame him, of course."

"Hardly."

Detective: SHIRLEY HOLMES Narrator: JOAN WATSON

THE CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL

MURDER

by FREDERIC ARNOLD KUMMER and BASIL MITCHELL

Here is one of the most daring "pastiches" ever to claim admission to the Sacred Canon. In this story — hold your hat!— Sherloc^ Holmes is in effect a woman!

We can than{ two authors, one an Englishman, the other an American, for this amazing state of affairs. The hands-across-the-sea collaboration postulates that Holmes has married and is now blessed with a grown-up daughter; that her name, most appropriately, is Shirley Holmes; that quite naturally Shirley follows in the footsteps of her illustrious father; that just as naturally her adventures, memoirs, and cases are recorded by none other than the daughter of Dr. John Watson, named with equal appropriateness Joan Watson!

Shirley Holmes first appeared in print in THE ADVENTURE OF THE QUEEN BEE, a four-part serial in "Mystery" magazine, issues of July, August, September, and October 1933. This tale was adapted by Frederic Arnold Kummer from the London stage play by Basil Mitchell, which was produced with the consent and approval of Lady Conan Doyle. The debut of Shirley Holmes, in drama and novelette, was so successful that she "returned" (again emulating her famous father} in the December 1933 issue of the same magazine — and it is this return engagement we now bring you.

Gentlemen, the Sherlocfyan stag-party is over . . . We welcome the one and only feminine facsimile of The Great Man to our innermost circle.

A,

.s SHIRLEY HOLMES and I descended the steps of the North Transept at Canterbury Cathedral she suddenly seized my arm.

"Look, Joan!" she whispered. "There! On the slab!" '

I peered through the stained-glass gloom ahead of us, my heart pounding. Even though the celebrated murder of Thomas a Becket was a seven-century-old affair, the ancient stone which is popularly supposed to mark the spot where he perished still attracts many sightseers, some of whom make a practice of prostrating themselves upon it in silent devotion. There was a figure lying on the slab now . . . the figure of a man, and but for a certain grotesqueness in his attitude I might have supposed him to be merely one of these pious pilgrims, paying his respects to the sainted bishop. But the moment my eyes fell upon his sprawling form I drew back, shuddering, striving to remain as calm as Shirley.

He was a young man, clean-shaven, with rather long, untidy hair. The soft white shirt beneath his tweed sports jacket was open at the neck; his wrinkled flannel trousers, his scuffed and dusty shoes, suggested the tourist, the hiker.

I did not, however, grasp all these details in that first terrified instant. Shirley still held my arm in her slim, strong grasp.

"Don't scream!" she commanded, her voice reassuringly cool. A moment later we were bending over the figure.

He lay on his breast, with his head turned to one side. His right arm was doubled under him, his left outstretched, and in his left hand he clutched a small, open notebook. I saw Shirley's finger tips rest for an instant upon that inert wrist, then she stood up, her eyes narrowing.

"Joan!" she murmured, glancing swiftly about. "You'd better fetch somebody . . . quick!"

I ran up the stone steps, my brain whirling. As the more or less modest chronicler of Shirley Holmes's adventures I had complained to her only that morning of the dullness of life since her amazing exploits in the case of the stolen Queen Bee, but I am quite sure that neither of us expected to come upon anything exciting in the course of a peaceful afternoon's visit to Canterbury Cathedral. I glanced

about the dim old building, wondering to whom I had best apply for help.

Not far away I saw the verger, holding forth on the martyrdom of the unfortunate Becket to a group of visiting tourists. I went up to him, managed to attract his attention.

"If you please!" I said. "I'd like to speak to you. . . ."

The verger frowned. It annoyed him to have his little lecture interrupted.

"What about, miss?" he asked gruffly.

"There . . . there's been an accident!" I whispered. "You'd best come at once!"

Still frowning, the verger turned the group over to one of his assistants and accompanied me back to the point where Shirley stood.

"What's the trouble here?" he grumbled.

Shirley glanced up; I thought her face, in the shadows, unusually white.

"This man has been stabbed through the heart!" she said quietly. "He's dead!"

"What?" The verger's jaw sagged; in his astonishment his voice became a mere squeak. "Dead! Good God." He ran swiftly down the short flight of steps. "How did it happen?"

"I haven't the least idea," Shirley replied calmly. "Miss Watson and I — " she glanced at me — "found him lying here a few moments ago. He hasn't been dead very long ... the body is still warm. I advise you to send for a doctor . . . call in the police at once! And as a precaution, I think the doors of the building should be closed!"

The verger, having at last grasped the situation, acted promptly. Going to the head of the steps he signaled to one of his assistants, gave the necessary orders without alarming the group of visitors near the altar, then hurried to the main entrance.

I looked at Shirley. Did her suggestion that the doors of the building be closed mean that the man had been murdered? If so, the order, I feared, came too late. Whoever had committed the crime, if crime it was, had already been allowed ample time to escape. But Shirley did not seem disturbed; as she stood there, her figure alert and tense, her fine, aquiline features thrown into relief by her short, blonde hair, I was again struck, as I had so often been in the past, by her astonish-

ing resemblance at times like this to her celebrated father, Sherlock Holmes.

"You say the man has been stabbed?" I asked curiously.

"Yes," Shirley nodded. "With a silver pencil, of all things. If you'll bend down you can see the end of it, between the fingers of his right hand."

I did as she directed. The pencil, a heavy one, had been driven through the young man's shirt straight into his heart. Since it still plugged the wound there was almost no bleeding; the circulation had ceased with the stopping of his heartbeats. But I could not quite understand why the dead man clutched the pencil in his fingers. That suggested suicide, rather than murder.

"Do you suppose he could have done it himself?" I whispered. "Have placed the sharp point of the pencil against his breast and then deliberately fallen forward with all his weight? From the way he's holding the end of it in his fingers . . ."

"It's possible," Shirley said, but I saw that for some reason unknown to me she did not think so.

I glanced at the notebook in the man's outstretched hand. It was clearly new and on the very first page of it two lines had been written in the form of a verse. I read them aloud.

"Oh, who could find a nobler fate Than death where died the good and great."

"Why, Shirley!" I exclaimed. "It's a poem about himself and . . . Thomas a Becket! A sort of farewell message, I should say!"

"Yes," Shirley agreed. "It could certainly be so interpreted. I wonder if he wrote it."

"Then you still think the man was murdered? After reading that?"

"I do. But the police won't, I imagine. Here they come now. You'd better not say anything about my opinion. Let them form their own."

I looked up. Two worried policemen were hastening down the aisle, accompanied by the verger and a small, thin man in civilian's clothes whom I took to be a doctor. A third had taken charge of the startled group of tourists.

The doctor proceeded at once to examine the body while one of the two officers who had joined us, a beetle-browed sergeant, turned to

Shirley and myself and curtly demanded our names. But the moment Shirley told him who she was, his frowns vanished, and when I remarked that I was the daughter of Dr. Watson he fairly beamed.

"Have either of you young ladies ever seen this man before?" he asked.

"No," Shirley said, shaking her head. "We haven't. Miss Watson and I arrived at the Cathedral about half-past three. The party of tourists didn't particularly attract us, so we came straight along here . . . and found the body lying on the slab. I sent Miss Watson for help, and she brought the verger. . . ."

"That's right!" the latter nodded. "My assistant at the door tells me the young fellow came in, alone, a little before three. He remembers the man particularly, on account of his long wavy hair. The party of tourists arrived about ten minutes later and I took them in charge at once."

"Bring them over here?" the sergeant questioned.

"Oh, yes. All visitors want to see the slab. . . ."

"Then some of them must have noticed the young man."

"I don't doubt they did, sir."

"Find out, Harris," the sergeant said, turning to his companion. "And get all their names and addresses."

"There's something written in here, sir," announced the policeman, indicating the dead man's notebook. "Looks like a farewell message to me." He strode off.

The sergeant read the verse aloud, nodding.

"Think it could be a suicide, Doctor?" he asked.

"Why, yes ... it could. Unusual, but by no means unprecedented. The noble Romans, when they were tired of life, usually fell on their swords, didn't they? That silver pencil, almost as sharp as a needle, didn't need much force behind it to penetrate to the heart. The weight of his body, against the stone slab, would have done it. And with the butt end of the pencil clutched in his fingers . . . that farewell message in his book . . ." He shrugged.

Harris, the other policeman, now came back, bringing several of the wide-eyed tourists with him. All remembered seeing the young man sitting on the steps half an hour before. He had held his head in his hands as if praying. One gray-haired woman testified that in

going down to look at the slab she had accidentally trodden on the open notebook, lying on the steps at the young man's side. When she apologized he had glanced up and nodded. This, according to the verger, was at a quarter past three.

"Miss Watson and I found the body at twenty minutes to four," Shirley volunteered. "I took the time immediately, of course." She smiled at the sergeant, as though he would appreciate her caution. "He can't have been dead over twenty-five minutes."

"Rather less, if anything," said the doctor, who was searching the young man's pockets. "Nothing here to identify him," he went on, placing some keys, a small pile of money, a pipe and pouch of tobacco on the floor.

Shirley went to the steps and sat in approximately the same position the young man had occupied when seen by the tourists.

"Would you mind, madam," she asked the gray-haired woman, "going down to look at the slab just as you did before?"

"Why . . . not at all." Somewhat mystified, the woman descended the short flight of steps, went up again.

"Thanks!" Shirley rose, her eyes shining, and stood beside the young man's body. "You can see plainly, Sergeant," she continued, pointing, "the print of this lady's shoe on the open page of the notebook. There. Very faint, of course . . . under the penciled verse. Which would seem to show that he wrote it after the verger's party came by . . ."