Secret Archives of Sherlock Holmes, The, The (15 page)

As I ran forward to feel for the carotid artery in his neck, Holmes remarked in a dismissive manner, ‘Oh, do not distress yourself, my dear Watson. He is not dead. He is merely knocked out by an uppercut to the jaw.
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If anyone needs medical attention, it is myself. The blow has split the skin on my knuckles, but no doubt I shall survive.’

‘But I heard the gun go off!’ I protested.

‘It did indeed. In fact, it nearly deafened me. But by that time, I had managed to wrench the weapon sideways in Madoc’s grasp so that when he pulled the trigger, the barrel was pointing upwards, hence the hole in the ceiling and the broken plaster.’ Turning to Rees, he continued, ‘I suggest you handcuff him now, Inspector, in case he decides to continue the struggle after he comes
round. He is a very powerful, and more to the point, desperate man.’

But Holmes had misjudged him for, when Madoc regained consciousness, he was subdued and contrite rather than aggressive and he put up no further resistance when he was led out of the house to the station wagon that was waiting in the yard. Accompanied by Inspector Rees and the two policemen, he was driven away to Abergavenny gaol, there to await trial for the murder of Dai Morgan.

As for the rest of us, we too dispersed, Holmes and I to walk to the Golden Harp to await for the arrival of Dr Parry who, in the meantime, drove Rhian Madoc to a neighbour’s house to be cared for there.

By a common unspoken agreement, neither Holmes nor I discussed the morning’s events until Dr Parry returned and the three of us retired to the snug, where I was able at last to ask my old friend the questions that had been foremost in my mind since the previous day.

‘How on earth did you know that it was Owen Madoc who had killed Dai Morgan and not Hywel Morgan? And what was the relevance of your remark about the dog in the night?’

Holmes, who was lighting his pipe, took a moment or two to reply before, leaning back in his chair, he blew a long stream of smoke up to the low ceiling of the little room, its once whitewashed surface tanned brown like a kipper by layers of nicotine.

‘If you remember, my dear fellow, the dog failed to bark. That was its significance.
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It was the
absence
of something that should have happened. In this inquiry, it was also the absence of something, not of a sound but of an object. If you recall, various farm implements were hanging on the wall of the barn or propped up against it, but one implement was missing that, considering the other features of the place – the hayloft and the hay lying scattered on the floor – should have been present. It was, of course, a pitchfork.

‘I asked myself: Why was it missing? I then recalled Dr Parry’s description of the two wounds in Dai Morgan’s chest, which we all assumed were the result of a double stabbing with a single-bladed weapon. According to you, Dr Parry, there was also something unusual about the wounds themselves. They suggested a blade that was narrow and tapering but also
curved
, a description which matched no knife or sword I had ever encountered. But the very word “knife” brought to my mind another implement, common enough but often associated with a knife that one sees every day on a dining table. A knife and a …’

Holmes broke off and glanced across at Dr Parry and myself, his eyebrows raised in a teasing, quizzical fashion as he waited for us to supply the missing word.

‘Fork!’ Parry and I chorused together.

‘Excellent, gentlemen!’ Holmes exclaimed. ‘You have come to the same conclusion that I myself made. A fork! Now what kind of fork would you find in a barn? A pitchfork, of course. And once I had realised that, much of the evidence began to make sense. It accounted for the two wounds in Dai Morgan’s chest, for example; not two separate stabbings as we thought at first, but a single strike with a double-bladed weapon. It also explained the force with which the blow had been struck, strong enough to knock Dai Morgan off his feet, as well as the downward direction of the thrust. This suggested it was not the result of a close encounter, but of an attack delivered from a distance as from a spear or a javelin. This downward direction also suggested that whoever had thrown the weapon had been standing above the victim and, given the location of the murder, the obvious place was the hayloft. I deduced that fact when I examined the loft on the first day we entered the barn. Footprints were clearly visible in the dust on the floor but there was only one set and they were freshly made. As Dr Parry stated that neither Inspector Rees nor his colleague had climbed into the loft, they therefore had to belong to someone else; a man, judging by their size, and this evidence pointed directly at Owen Madoc,
the only other male on the premises that morning apart from Hywel. But according to the statement Rhian Madoc made to the police, at the time of Dai Morgan’s death, Owen Madoc was tending to the injured sheep in a field some distance from the farm.

‘However, at some point he must have returned to the barn, presumably without her knowledge, to carry out another task, almost certainly to prepare feed for the cows.

‘From these deductions, we can build up a scenario of the events that must have taken place in this barn four days ago, including the positions of the two participants in the drama. Madoc was standing in the loft, presumably in the act of pitchforking hay down to the floor of the barn when Dai Morgan enters. A quarrel breaks out between the two of them – the cause of which I will recount later – and in a rage, Madoc hurls the pitchfork down at Dai Morgan who is standing below him, with sufficient force to knock Morgan off his feet and to drive the tines of the fork into his chest, rupturing his heart and causing a massive haemorrhage.

‘One has to imagine the rest of the scene – Madoc’s terror as he scrambles down the ladder and discovers Morgan is dead, his panic as to what he should do next. There is no point in sending for Dr Parry; Morgan is past human aid. But what of himself? If he admits to the murder, he will hang. The horror of this realisation forces him into a frantic attempt to cover up the deed
before anyone discovers the truth. He cannot get rid of the body. Where would he hide it? But he can dispose of the weapon and this may throw the police off the scent. So he tries to prise the pitchfork out of the victim’s chest. But even this simple task is difficult to accomplish. The tines are embedded too deeply. So he does what any man would do under similar circumstances. He tries to get a purchase on the fork by putting his foot on the dead man’s body.’

‘Of course!’ I cried. ‘The muddy print on the front of Dai Morgan’s jacket!’

‘Exactly, Watson! And having levered the weapon free, he now has to rid himself of it. There is blood on it and, no doubt, traces of flesh as well. His instinct is to take it away as far as possible from the scene of the crime, so that no one would associate the implement with Dai’s death and also to disassociate himself from the murder and the accompanying guilt, on the simple precept of “out of sight, out of mind”. So he takes it out of the barn to the stable yard and thrusts it into the dungheap.

‘In the event, it was not a wise decision. Had he simply cleaned the blood from the pitchfork and put it back among the other farm implements in the barn, it is much more likely that no one would have associated it with the murder of Dai Morgan and the crime might have been recorded in the list of unsolved cases, attributed perhaps to a passing thief who had entered the barn looking for
something worth stealing and was confronted by Dai Morgan, who therefore had to be eliminated.

‘What had not occurred to Madoc, an omission that, I think, supports my theory that the murder was a spur-of-the-moment crime, was the likelihood that Hywel Morgan would be accused of his father’s death. If Madoc thought about it at all, which I very much doubt, he would have relied on the fact that Hywel had gone to the pig yard, some distance from the barn, to feed the animals, so he was nowhere near the scene of the murder. The other factor in establishing Hywel’s innocence was the close relationship between Hywel and his father that everyone knew about and which would also count in clearing him of any suspicion of guilt, Madoc assumed. He was therefore genuinely horrified when Hywel was arrested.

‘But in his blind panic he discounted another relationship that appeared to give Hywel a motive for killing his father, as you, Dr Parry, pointed out when you first met us – that beween Dai Morgan and Carys Williams. Evidently the possibility of marriage between the two was common gossip in the village, a situation which Madoc was probably not aware of. He is unsociable by nature and made a point of not mixing with the local people. The tragic irony is that, when he heard the gossip, Madoc’s reaction was almost the same as that which the police attributed to Hywel.’

‘In what way?’ I asked, bemused.

‘As I explained, the assumption of Hywel’s guilt was based on the belief that he was afraid that if his father remarried, one of Carys Williams’ sons might take precedence over his own claim to the farm, and it was that fear which led to the quarrel between Dai and Hywel Morgan. No one looked at the situation from Owen Madoc’s point of view. If Morgan married again, Madoc’s position and that of his daughter at Plas Y Coed could be compromised. Their services at the farm might no longer be needed. Carys Williams would take over Rhian’s role of housekeeper while one of the Williams boys would replace him as the farm assistant. If that happened, the Madocs could lose their cottage, which was tied to their employment. It is all conjecture, of course, but not entirely baseless. If you remember, Madoc himself had lost his claim to his father’s farm because he had an older brother. There may have been another motive as well, although it may never be proved.’

‘And what is that?’ I asked.

‘My theory, like so much else about the case, is also based on conjecture,’ Holmes replied with a wry smile. ‘But just suppose Rhian Madoc had taken it into her head that Dai Morgan was in love with her and they would eventually marry. She was, after all, a lonely woman who for years had acted as a surrogate wife as Dai Morgan’s housekeeper. Like the gossip over Dai and Carys Williams, it would not take much to persuade her that he was in love with her – a smile, a friendly
comment which she misinterpreted, a meeting of glances over some domestic chore. She may even have confided her beliefs in her father. If that is indeed what happened, then one must add one more combustible ingredient to this already inflammatory situation.’ He turned to Dr Parry. ‘Is that interpretation possible?’

‘It is indeed,’ he agreed gravely. ‘But all of that is now in the past. At the moment, Mr Holmes, I am more concerned with Rhian’s future. Dai Morgan is dead, her father will presumably be hanged for his murder. What will happen to her and the others caught up in this dreadful tragedy?’

No one ventured a solution and it was not until a year later that we received a letter from Dr Parry giving a partial answer to this dilemma.

Rhian, he wrote, had left Pentre Mawr to join her younger brother in Cardiff where, for a time, she had acted as his housekeeper before marrying a local cobbler. Hywel, too, had married, in his case Bronwen Hughes, a cousin of Carys Williams, and seemed happy and settled at Plas Y Coed with his wife and their newborn son.

As for Owen Madoc, he had pleaded guilty to Dai Morgan’s murder at Abergavenny Assizes
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and had
been sentenced to be hanged, but before the sentence could be carried out, he had collapsed and died of a heart attack.

And so, as Holmes expressed it, the final curtain had fallen on our Welsh adventure and, considering the circumstances, it was indeed a most fitting conclusion.

It was a morning in mid November, not long after our return from Devonshire following the conclusion of the Baskerville Case in which Inspector Lestrade had played a not inconsiderable role,
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when, much to our surprise, who should be shown upstairs to our Baker Street sitting-room than the inspector himself. Usually dapper in appearance, he was looking unaccustomedly dishevelled, a condition which my old friend commented on as our guest, at Holmes’ invitation, seated himself by the fire.

‘I see,’ he remarked with a twinkle, ‘that you have been doing some digging recently. May I inquire if that is the reason for your calling on us?’

Lestrade looked astonished.

‘How the deuce—?’ he began.

‘“To discover a man’s calling, just look at his fingernails, his coat sleeves, his boots and the knees of his trousers”,’ Holmes murmured in explanation.

I recognised it immediately as a reference to a magazine article by my old friend,
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but one with which Lestrade was clearly unfamiliar for he stared at Holmes in bewilderment.

‘The sleeves of your overcoat, my dear Inspector,’ Holmes explained, ‘and the knees of your trousers, not to mention your boots, have given the game away. There are smears of London clay on all of them. So where have you been digging recently and why?’

Instead of replying directly, Lestrade reached into his pocket and produced an envelope which he handed to Holmes. Rising from my chair, I went to stand behind him so that I could see the missive over his shoulder. Long acquaintance with him had taught me the importance
of close observation and I saw that the envelope, which was of a cheap quality available at many stationers’, was addressed in crude capital letters, almost certainly disguised, to ‘
THE INSPECTOR IN CHARGE OF MURDER CASES, SCOTLAND YARD’
.

Holmes raised a quizzical eyebrow.

‘Murder?’ he asked coolly, although I noticed that he had lifted his head like a bloodhound testing the air for the scent of a quarry.

‘Read the letter, Mr ’Olmes,’ Lestrade suggested in a lugubrious tone.

On Lestrade’s instruction, Holmes opened the envelope and extracted from it a brief note on a single sheet of writing paper of the same poor quality as the envelope and written in the same ill-formed capital letters. There were no opening or closing inscriptions and it read: ‘Go to the back garden of 17 Elmshurst Avenue in Hampstead and dig under the tree ten paces to the left of the gate and you will find the body of Mlle Lucille Carère, the stepdaughter of Mme Hortense Montpensier who murdered her and buried her body there.’

There was a hard, cold-blooded quality about this matter-of-fact statement that made my own blood run cold.

‘So have you recovered the body, Inspector?’ Holmes inquired, laying aside the letter. ‘Judging by the state of your clothes, I assume you have.’

‘I ’ave, indeed, Mr ’Olmes; about an hour ago. As
soon as I got the letter first post this morning, I set off for the address with a sergeant and a constable. We found the grave exactly where it says in the letter. It wasn’t difficult to find. Even though it was overgrown with ivy, you could tell the earth had been disturbed. It was looser than the soil around it.’

‘And the body?’

‘Well, it’s not exactly a body; it’s more of a skeleton really. I sent for an anatomist from St Clement’s, the local hospital, and ’e took a look at it. He reckons it’s been down there for at least a year, more likely eighteeen months, so there’s not much left of it apart from bones and a few scraps of clothing.’

‘Where is the body now?’

‘Still in the grave.’ Lestrade hesitated and ran his tongue over his bottom lip before continuing, ‘I didn’t want to move it until you’d ’ad a chance to look at it.’

‘Me?’ Holmes inquired sharply, although I noticed he sat up immediately in his chair ready for action.

Lestrade looked uncomfortable and shuffled his feet on the carpet.

‘Well, the point is, Mr ’Olmes, all the people in the ’ousehold are French and I don’t speak the lingo except for a few words like “sieveooplay” and “wee-wee”, which won’t get me very far in a murder inquiry, will it?’

‘How many people?’ Holmes interjected.

‘There’s four altogether: Mme Montpensier ’oo
owns the house, and her lady-companion, Mlle Benoit. Then there’s a married couple, M and Mme Daudet. I understand from the wife, ’oo’s the housekeeper and ’oo speaks a bit of English, that she’s Mme Montpensier’s cousin. The ’usband’s a sort of jack of all trades; ’e’s the butler-cum-’andyman-cum-anything else you care to name. I got the impression they’re the poor relations. ’E doesn’t speak any English at all. And that’s the point, Mr ’Olmes. Now, I know you speak French like a native
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and I wondered if you’d be willing to come along and ’elp out with the investigation …’

‘Of course, as long as Mme Montpensier agrees,’ Holmes replied with an indifferent air, although, knowing him as well as I do, I could tell by the set of his shoulders that he was eager to take up the challenge.

‘I think she will. She’s not a young woman and the finding of the body ’as set ’er back on ’er ’eels, if you get my meaning. As far as I could make out, she’s denying any knowledge …’

‘Leave all that to my interview with her, Lestrade.’

‘Then you’ll come?’ the inspector asked, his face brightening.

‘I would not miss it for the world. Apart from anything else, there is the matter of the names.’

‘Names?’ Lestrade repeated. ‘Well, like I said, they’re all French …’

‘Of course they are. But I was not referring to that.’ Lestrade and I exchanged a bewildered glance, wondering what he meant but there was no time for further explanation. Holmes was saying, ‘Now, Watson, coats, boots and sticks and we are ready to go!’

‘I came in a four-wheeler,’ Lestrade was saying as we bustled about in preparation for the journey, ‘and, trusting you’d take up the case, I’ve taken the liberty of asking the cabby to wait by the door.’

‘Excellent!’ Holmes declared, seizing up his hat and making for the stairs.

Moments later the three of us were in the cab and rattling off down Baker Street on our way to Hampstead.

At Holmes’ request, Lestrade refrained from mentioning the case during the journey. As my old friend explained, he would prefer to come to his own conclusions once he had seen the evidence for himself, an opinion Lestrade apparently agreed with; at least, he made no reference to the inquiry until the cab drew up in a quiet, tree-lined road when he announced, ‘’Ere we are, gentlemen! Number 17 Elm’urst Avenue, the scene of the crime!’

It was a large, ugly house of dark-red brick, with a heavy slate roof that put me in mind of a leaden-coloured dish-cover clamped down over the building beneath, as if to keep its occupants in close confinement. The ivy
which hung in swags from the wall and errant tendrils of which were creeping across the windows added to the general air of melancholy entombment.

A tall iron gate gave access to a black and white tiled path leading to the front door, but to my surprise, Inspector Lestrade made no attempt to approach this entrance but struck off to the right in the direction of an alleyway that ran along the side of the house towards its rear, before turning sharply to the left a few yards from where a uniformed constable was standing guard outside a wooden door set in a high hedge.

On seeing us approach, the constable saluted and, pushing open the door, ushered us inside the garden that lay beyond. It was large and full of overgrown trees and bushes, most of which had shed their leaves, their interlaced bare branches forming a natural lattice which partly obscured the view. Even so, it was possible to catch a glimpse through this barrier of the grave. It lay to the right, a pile of disturbed fallen leaves and freshly dug earth marking its position. A sergeant stood guard over the scene while a constable waited nearby resting on his shovel, his face flushed with exertion, his jacket hanging nearby on a convenient branch. On our approach, they straightened up, the sergeant stepping forward to salute, ready and eager to give his official account, if requested.

‘Where’s Doctor Chitty?’ Lestrade demanded.

‘’E left about twenty minutes ago, sir; said ’e’d got a patient to see at St Clement’s,’ the sergeant replied.
‘But ’e said to tell you that ’e’d send you a more detailed report later by messenger. In the meantime, I was to tell you that the body’s that of a young woman in ’er twenties, by the look of ’er; approximately five feet four inches in height; slight build; dark-haired; no obvious signs of ’ow she might ’ave met ’er end – no fractured skull, for example, or broken neck.’

As he spoke, the sergeant shuffled sideways in the dead leaves to give us a clear view of a shallow grave, no more than four feet deep, and the skeleton it contained. It was neatly laid out on its back, legs straight, arms by its sides as if it were drawn up to attention, the skull turned a little to the left and fixed in that ghastly rictus of death which no matter how often I had seen it during my medical career, in particular in Afghanistan,
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always aroused in me the chilling thought that death was nothing more than a macabre joke played on mankind by some malign power to demonstrate our ultimate insignificance.

Holmes, who had moved forward to the very edge of the grave, was staring down at its contents with keen attention and I, too, tried to shift my gaze from the grinning skull to a more general view of the body and its surroundings. It had evidently been wrapped in a makeshift shroud, probably a blanket, for scraps of
brown woollen cloth still clung to some of the bones together with remnants of a fabric of a finer texture that may originally have been a dress. It was blue in colour with the faint suggestion of a pattern in a paler blue. But it was Holmes’ sharper observation that pointed out an anomaly that I had not noticed.

‘Were there no shoes with the body?’ he inquired sharply.

Lestrade, who from his expression was also clearly unaware of their absence, started forward.

‘Not that I know of, Mr ’Olmes. What about you, Benson? Did you find any?’

The sergeant shook his head.

‘No, sir.’

‘And what is that?’ Holmes continued, raising his stick to point at a clod of earth that lay a little to the left of the body and that, as far as I could see, was no different to the other lumps of clay that lay strewn about in the bottom of the grave.

Lestrade stared and then, with a jerk of his thumb, summoned the constable with the shovel to join us.

‘’Ere, you; Palmer, isn’t it? See that lump of dirt down there? Bring it up to me,’ adding, as the man stepped carefully down into the shallow pit, ‘and mind where you put your feet!’

The clod in question, having been retrieved, was handed first to Lestrade who, after a cursory examination of it, passed it on to Holmes with a shrug.

Knowing my old friend would not have chosen that particular lump of earth without good reason, I watched closely as he took it between his fingers and with great care broke it open, revealing what it contained.

It was, we discovered, when Holmes crumbled away the soil that enclosed it and displayed it on his open palm, a silver, heart-shaped locket attached to a fine-linked chain, also of silver, but both so caked with clay and so tarnished that it was a wonder anyone had observed it lying there at the bottom of the grave.

‘How on earth did you notice it?’ I asked.

‘Surely it should be “in earth” my dear fellow?’ he remarked with a chuckle. ‘And to stretch the epithet to even more extravagant lengths, the solution is equally down to earth! I merely noticed a glint of metal in the soil. Now, what is its significance, do you suppose, to the body?’

‘It belonged to ’er, of course,’ Lestrade replied, without any hesitation, jerking his thumb towards the skeleton.

‘That is indeed possible,’ Holmes concurred. ‘But why should whoever buried her take care to place her locket in her grave but not her shoes?’

There was a silence in which Lestrade puffed out his cheeks and exchanged a glance with me, as much as to say, ‘It’s your turn to speak up.’ Well aware of Holmes’ tendency to lure the overconfident into making a fool of themselves by jumping to a too hasty conclusion, I refused to rise to the bait and remained silent. Holmes
seemed disappointed by this lack of response and, making the most of the advantage of having the upper hand, turned to the inspector and inquired sweetly, ‘I trust you will allow me, my dear Lestrade, to take the locket and chain home with me? There are one or two tests I should like to make on them. But rest assured, they will be returned to you undamaged.’

‘I think I may permit that in the cause of justice, Mr ’Olmes,’ Lestrade replied with a magnanimous air, adding a hasty proviso, ‘provided I have
your
permission to call on you later this evening to find out what conclusions you’ve come to re the objects in question.’

‘Of course,’ Holmes agreed with equal graciousness and, with a small, secret smile, he placed the locket and chain in one of the little envelopes he carried about with him for such a purpose before putting it away in his pocketbook. ‘And now,’ he continued more briskly, ‘I think it is time we interviewed Mme Hortense Montpensier about her stepdaughter Mlle Carère.’ As we set off towards the gate, he added, ‘Odd that, Inspector, do you not agree?’

‘Odd? What’s odd?’ Lestrade demanded, hurrying to catch up with him.

‘The names, Lestrade,’ Holmes replied.

‘Names? What about them?’ Lestrade demanded. ‘They’re bound to be odd. They’re French, aren’t they?’

It was the second time Holmes had specifically referred to them but I was no closer to understanding
the relevance of his remark; nor was Lestrade, judging by his expression, who seemed satisfied by his own facile explanation. But, as we set off down the path towards the front of the house, I continued to puzzle over Holmes’ insistence on drawing our attention to them.

I was no nearer finding a solution as we approached the front door to number 17 Elmshurst Avenue. I therefore dismissed the matter to the back of my mind for later consideration as Lestrade lifted the heavy iron knocker and let it fall with a thud loud enough to wake the dead.