The Secret Notebooks of Sherlock Holmes (14 page)

‘Gilbert Arnsworth was not expecting us. The thickness of the stone must have deadened all sound of our footsteps and it was only when Lestrade cried out as he stumbled over the threshold of the little door that Arnsworth was alerted to our presence.

‘He was standing at the far side of the tower, gazing out at the distant view of woods and fields and, by his lounging stance, I guessed he was confident that he had escaped detention. At Lestrade’s exclamation, he spun about to face us, his expression one of shocked disbelief and that kind of rage which a small child might exhibit when he is unexpectedly frustrated.

‘Throughout his life, Gilbert Arnsworth had been denied nothing and I believe he had come to expect that this fortunate state of affairs would continue, whether his own behaviour warranted it or not. In his own eyes, he was like a god, immune from all punishments and disasters to which ordinary mankind is subject. The sight of Inspector Lestrade, accompanied by the two constables who had joined us, advancing upon him, intoning those sonorous, doom-laden words “Gilbert Richard Grenville, ninth Earl of Arnsworth, I am arresting you on the suspicion of murder,” as he produced a pair of handcuffs from his pocket was not to be borne.

‘I saw him back away, his eyes fixed on Lestrade’s
face as if mesmerised by the awful solemnity of the occasion, and then the spell broke and his glance darted back toward the stone battlements and the distant view.

‘I read his thoughts, Watson, as clearly as if they had been written on his face, but before I could shout out a warning he had turned and, with a great cry which drowned out my own exclamation, he had vaulted on to the narrow coping where he stood for a moment outlined against the blue sky, arms outstretched, before he dived down into space.

‘Lestrade and I, together with the two constables, rushed to the battlements and peered over them just in time to see his body plunging downwards like a great sea-bird, into the moat as if hunting for its prey within its very depths.

‘God knows what was in his mind. Did he still believe in his invincibility? Was he convinced that he would surface safely and could swim to the further side and make his escape?

‘If he did, he was tragically deceived. There was no sign of him apart from the ripples which spread out across the water to touch the grassy banks and, within a few moments, they too had disappeared and the surface once more lay as smooth and as still as glass.

‘The uniformed officers recovered his body later with the help of two of the gardeners. The rest, as they say, is history, not all of which was recorded correctly.

‘The new Earl of Arnsworth, Gilbert’s cousin Eustace,
inherited the title and moved into the castle, while the Dowager Lady Arnsworth took up residence in the Dower house which was situated at the far side of the estate. As you know from my newspaper archives, she has since died. Gilbert Arnsworth’s death was attributed to a tragic accident, while at the inquest on Annie Davies a verdict of murder by a person or persons unknown was returned. As far as I know, no connection was ever made between the two deaths.’

‘“Persons unknown”!’ I protested. ‘That is not justice, Holmes!’

My old friend shrugged his shoulders and gave a small, cynical smile.

‘Not moral justice, perhaps, Watson; but legal justice all the same. There was no hard evidence against Arnsworth, only a strong suspicion. Neither the cab driver nor the night porter were ever asked to identify him as the young man seen running from the hotel in the early hours of the morning, nor as the client who engaged the cab which drove him to the gates of Arnsworth Castle. Besides, what does the death of a prostitute count against that of a belted earl? Shall you write up the story, my dear fellow?’

I paused to reflect for a moment. Although I felt a keen responsibility to place the facts of the case before my readers and to redress, if only a little, the imbalance of the scales of justice between the rich and powerful and the poor and weak, I knew in my heart I would never publish an account of the case. For, as Holmes
had pointed out, there was no final proof of Gilbert Arnsworth’s guilt, only a very strong suspicion, and I myself would be committing an injustice by suggesting otherwise.

I shall therefore place this account among my other unpublished papers, trusting that future research into the case may at last provide that evidence which will prove Arnsworth’s guilt, so that the truth may finally be laid before the public.

Looking through my notes, I see that 1889 was a particularly busy year for my old friend Sherlock Holmes. In addition to those cases such as the mystery of the five orange pips or the Reigate squire, accounts of which I have laid before my reading public, there were others which, for various reasons, I withheld publication. These include the inquiries into the Paradol chamber, the Amateur Mendicant Society, the adventures of the Grice Patersons on the island of Uffa, the Camberwell poisoning case and, finally, the investigation into the disappearance of the British barque, the
Sophy Anderson
, in which I played a small part and of which I have kept the records.

The inquiry began, I recall, one morning in April of
that year, some time after my marriage to Miss Mary Morstan
1
and my return to civil practice. I was on my way home from visiting a patient in the Baker Street area when, on the spur of the moment, I decided to call on Holmes, whom I had not seen for several weeks. As I turned into the familiar road, I saw a stocky, heavily-built man on the opposite pavement walking in the same direction as myself but more slowly, for he frequently halted to glance up at the numbers on the doors before consulting a piece of paper he held in his hand.

His appearance was so striking that I decided to play the game with which Holmes often amused himself as well as me, that of judging an individual’s character and profession by his clothes and his demeanour.

The man in question was in his fifties, I estimated, and even at a cursory glance it was easy to guess from his pea jacket and peaked cap that he was a sailor. His rolling gait and weather-beaten face bore out this impression.

I hurried ahead of him, eager to reach Holmes and lay my deductions before him so that, by glancing out of the window, he could confirm my conclusions. I was so eager, in fact, that I took the stairs two at a time and, bursting into the room, seized my old friend by the sleeve and drew him across the room. The man was now directly opposite the house, staring straight across the street at it.

‘Look, Holmes!’ I cried. ‘I am right, am I not, in thinking the man is a sailor who has spent most of his life at sea?’

‘You are quite correct, my dear Watson,’ Holmes replied, looking down appraisingly at the man. ‘He is indeed a sailor. But more to the point, what
sort
of sailor is he?’

‘I do not quite understand,’ I began, rather chastened by Holmes’ response.

‘Come now. Is he an able seaman, for example? Or a naval officer? Or perhaps a stoker? One must be precise about such details. My own assessment is that he is a merchant seaman, someone of rank, probably a mate rather than a captain, that he has sailed extensively in the southern latitudes and that he is left-handed.’

Seeing my expression, he burst out laughing.

‘It is really quite simple, Watson. His bearing tells me he is a man used to authority but of a lower order. He lacks the demeanour of an officer of high rank. His skin is tanned but the wrinkles round his eyes are paler on their inner surfaces, suggesting he has spent considerable
time with his eyes screwed up against bright sunlight. As for his left-handedness, that, too, is obvious. He is holding the piece of paper in his left hand. He is also a potential client,’ he added, ‘a deduction for which I claim no credit at all for the man has, at this very moment, crossed the street to our front door.’

As he spoke, there came a peal on the bell and, seconds later, the sound of heavy, deliberate footsteps mounting the stairs, and the man in question entered the room.

Seen at closer quarters, he bore out those particulars of his appearance which Holmes had specified but which I had failed to notice. His bearing did, indeed, have a stamp of authority, while the network of fine lines about his eyes showed the paler skin which lined their inner surfaces which Holmes, with his amazingly keen eyesight, had already remarked on.

However, what he had not apparently noticed and which I, as a medical man, immediately discerned, was the unhealthy flush about our visitor’s face and the difficulty he had in regaining his breath after mounting the stairs. If ever I saw a man suffering from heart disease, it was he.

In addition to these physical symptoms, there was an aura of profound melancholy about him which seemed to sit upon him like a large, heavy weight, bowing his shoulders and making his movements slow and cumbersome.

At Holmes’ invitation, he lowered himself ponderously
into an armchair, bringing his two great hands, which put me in mind of shovels, to rest one on each knee. He had already removed his cap, revealing close-cropped grey hair and a deeply furrowed brow.

‘I’m sorry to call on you like this, Mr Holmes, without writing to you first to fix an appointment,’ he said in a gruff voice which had an unmistakable North country accent, ‘but I had to speak to someone about the affair and I daren’t go to the police with my tale.’

As he spoke, he glanced dubiously in my direction under heavy eyebrows, a look which Holmes intercepted.

‘This is my colleague, Dr Watson,’ he said briskly. ‘You may speak as frankly in front of him as you would to me. Now, sir, tell me about this affair which I see is causing you great disquiet. But first, I would like to know a little about yourself, including your name. You are a seafaring man, are you not?’

‘Indeed I am, sir. As for my name, it’s Thomas Corbett and I’m the mate on board the
Lucy Belle
, a four-masted barque which trades mostly between Newcastle and the Far East.’

At this point in his narrative, he hesitated and I saw him clasp his two huge hands convulsively together.

‘Leastways, sir, that is the name the ship has carried for the past three years. Before that, she used to sail under a different name.’

Although I was considerably taken aback by this last statement, as well as confused about exactly what it
might imply, Holmes seemed to understand, for he gave a little inclination of his head.

‘And what was her original name, may I ask?’ he enquired.

‘The
Sophy Anderson
,’ Corbett replied, his voice husky with emotion as if he were naming a dead child.

‘If I recall correctly, she sank with all hands, did she not?’

‘Aye, sir; or so it was believed. She was supposed to have gone down in January three years ago off the coast of the Outer Hebrides when she was making for Glasgow from Valparaiso carrying a cargo of nitrate.’

I saw Holmes’ features sharpen and he murmured under his breath as if to himself, ‘Ah, an insurance fraud!’

Corbett heard him, for he replied, his expression grave, ‘Aye, it was sir, and one I bitterly regret taking part in.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Holmes said, settling back in his chair and directing a sharp, attentive glance in Corbett’s direction.

‘That I will, Mr Holmes. But first I must explain a little about the circumstances behind it. The
Sophy Anderson
was built on the Clyde in 1876 and was owned by a small shipping company, called the White Heather Line, based at Glasgow, which ran three or four other barques. The owners were a pair of brothers, Jamie and Duncan McNeil, and the captain was Joseph Chafer, a relative of the McNeils by marriage.

‘It seems the McNeils owed a lot of money and were close to going bankrupt, which was why the scheme was put in place. The plan was this. The
Sophy Anderson
would pick up a cargo of nitrate from Valparaiso but no passengers on the return voyage. Months before this, the crew had been carefully looked over and anyone Chafer thought couldn’t be trusted to keep his mouth shut over the plan was turned off and a new crew member taken on his place. You see, they wanted men who would be willing to disappear, so to speak, as if they really had been lost at sea, and would take up new lives and new names. So they had to be men with no families to question their whereabouts. They’d be paid, of course, with a cut of the insurance money.

‘When the scheme was put to me, I agreed to it like a shot. My wife’s been dead these many years and my only child, Tom, named after me, had died when he was twelve, so I had no close family to worry what had become of me. A sum of several hundred pounds, my share of the insurance money, would come in very useful. I was getting close to retiring age, you see, Mr Holmes, and I had this dream of owning a little farm somewhere south where it’s warmer, in Cornwall maybe, but near the coast so that I could still be in sight and sound of the sea. As for the details of the plot, the claiming of the insurance money and the re-registering of the
Sophy Anderson
under a new name, I left all that to the McNeil brothers. For that was the idea, Mr Holmes. She’d go on trading as the
Lucy Belle
but not from those ports
where the
Sophy
had traded in the past, like Liverpool, Glasgow or London. That way, the vessel would still be making money and the men would earn their usual wages, plus their share of the insurance which, taking into account the value of the ship and its cargo, would add up to a fair sum, more than most of them would see in a year’s sailing.

‘Like I said, we took on a cargo at Valparaiso but no passengers and set sail for Glasgow on January 17th and, with a good wind behind us, in 128 days we were in sight of the small island of Duncraig to the south west of the Outer Hebrides. Chafer and I knew the island well because we’d taken shelter there from a storm several years before. It’s an uninhabited island with steep cliffs rising straight from the sea on its western coast, a treacherous shoreline for any mariner who doesn’t know the tides and currents. But to one who does and has the courage to take a ship between the rocks, there are several sheltered inlets where a vessel can lie up for weeks out of sight of other shipping. And to give Chafer his due, he didn’t lack for neither skill nor courage. So with my help and the rest of the crew’s, Chafer took the
Sophy Anderson
into one of those inlets, where we dropped anchor.

‘When we’d loaded up the nitrate, I’d taken on board extra stores at Chafer’s orders in the way of lengths of timber and tins of paint, and, once we were safely anchored, the whole crew set about changing the look of the ship, painting her dark blue down to the water-line
instead of grey and giving her a white line round the hull. The ship’s carpenter, Morrison, also changed the trim round the edge of the deck housing which, too, was painted white. We renamed her as well, the
Lucy Belle
, which was written in dark blue letters along her prow.

‘When all that was done and the paint was dry, Chafer called us all up on deck and made a speech welcoming us aboard the
Lucy Belle
and wishing us God speed on all her voyages. He then re-christened the vessel in a little ceremony, pouring a tot of rum over her fo’csle. When that was done, every man jack of us from me, the mate, down to the least on board, young Billy Wheeler, a deck-hand, was handed a glass of rum and his new papers and the old ones were torn up and burnt there on deck in an old iron cooking pot. More rum was handed round and we went from one to the other getting used to our new names and those of the rest of the crew. Chafer’s was Michael Lofthouse, mine Joseph Nully, but I only use it when I have to. It don’t seem to sit easy on me like my old one, Thomas Corbett.

‘I think the handing out of the new names and the getting rid of the old ones made everyone realise there was no turning back. Like the papers, we had burnt our bridges and it was too late to change our minds. Some took it hard, especially Billy Wheeler, the young deck-hand. I was told later that on his last trip to Glasgow he’d met a lass he fancied but that was all finished and done with now.

‘Anyways, whatever the reason, he drank too much
of the rum and lost his nerve. Or perhaps he found it. He ran up and down the deck telling everyone that when we got to Rotterdam, the port we was to make for after we’d got under sail again, he’d sign on with another vessel and make his way back to Scotland. “I want to go home!” he kept shouting. As for the insurance money, it could be dropped in the sea, as far as he was concerned. He wanted none of it.

‘Well, Mr Holmes, what with him running about and shouting like a madman, it was like putting a spark to a powder keg. Several of the men, including Morrison, the ship’s carpenter, set about him like madmen themselves and began hitting him, not just with their fists but with anything that came to hand. I think I know what was in their minds. They, too, were wondering if they’d done the right thing and at the same time they were fearful that Billy might blab and then not only would the fraud come to light but their part in it. They’d lose their share of the money and perhaps finish up in gaol. By the time me and Chafer managed to drag the men off Billy, he was lying on the deck, his face and head covered in blood.

‘Chafer knelt beside him and felt for the pulse in his neck. Then he stood up and said in a loud, harsh voice, “Now listen up, my lads. Billy’s dead. There’s nothing we can do for him except set him adrift.”

‘The sound of his voice and the sight of Billy’s dead body brought the men to their senses. They drew back and one of them, Newton, started to speak, the tears standing out in his eyes. 

‘“We didn’t mean to …’ he began, but Chafer cut him short. “Shut your mouth and get below,” he ordered him. “Find a length of canvas and some rope.”

‘When Newton came back, he and another man wrapped the body in the canvas and tied it up. They were lifting it to carry it over to the side ready to tip it overboard, when I stepped forward.

‘I don’t know what made me do it but I couldn’t let them chuck him into the sea like a dead sheep. He was fifteen, Mr Holmes; a pleasant lad, always laughing and joking. Many a time he’d put me in mind of my dead son with his fair hair and blue eyes. I just couldn’t see him thrown overboard with nothing to mark his going.

‘When I first went to sea, my mother gave me a silver St Christopher on a chain, which I’d always worn round my neck for good luck on my voyages. I took it off and, just as they had lifted the body up on to the rail and had it balanced there, I put my hand through the folds of the canvas and laid it on his chest.’