“And you have seen none of the material which is said to lie in Aspern’s escritoire?”
“Not as yet. I was first informed of it by a hint from the notary, Angelo Fiori, who had acted at one time for the Aspern estate. Fortunately his sister is a family friend who nursed my father in his last days. It was through her that her brother communicated with me.”
Holmes glanced at his pipe but forbore to light it in the presence of Fannie Browning.
“Forgive me, Mr Browning, but how would so many private papers of your father’s come to be in this collection unless he gave them to Jeffrey Aspern or the Misses Bordereau? Could a housemaid and her follower account for all that you have described? In any case, surely Aspern himself was dead before most of your father’s letters to female friends, of which you speak, could have come into his hands.”
“Exactly so, Mr Holmes. Perhaps they have simply been stolen by an intruder and sold to the Bordereau sisters. Perhaps they are innocent letters misinterpreted in some way. I am at a loss to say. After Aspern’s death the sisters were notorious as dabblers in innuendo and defamation. Lice on the locks of literature, as Lord Tennyson has it! On one occasion, my father used that very phrase to describe them. He never liked Juanita Bordereau. He thought her meddlesome and troublesome. She was scandalous in her youth and when she became too old to create scandal, she encouraged it in others. That was how he summed her up. For many years she had been a collector of documents and any rare editions which had a whiff of sensationalism. William Beckford and the like. Then it seems her tastes became more depraved. She employed scouts, if I may so call them, to attend the sale rooms or to negotiate privately.”
“But she did not negotiate with you or your father, I take it?”
“She would have known better. However, I have been visited by two of these scavengers since my father’s death, asking me if I would care to buy back certain papers. I sent them about their business. I see now that it was perhaps not wise to do so. And now Juanita Bordereau is dead. Tina Bordereau has shown no interest in the papers nor in Jeffery Aspern, except for the money that could be made. Since the death of her sister she has put the whole business into the hands of agents, whose job it would be to dispose of them at the best price. This is regardless of what damage may be done to the feelings of the living or the reputation of the dead.”
“And, of course, the present agent—or one of them—was Augustus Howell?”
Pen Browning lowered his head and nodded.
“I had come to London in order to negotiate with him but at first he wrote and intimated that I was too late. A good many of the worst items were already in the hands of the auctioneers or the valuers. He explained that he was not empowered by Tina Bordereau to halt their sale. I must buy at public auction.”
“He would not negotiate with you?” “Eventually, he made a concession, as he called it. He would agree to make what he called ‘a special price’ if I would buy the papers ‘sight unseen’ before the auction. In other words, with no idea of what I might be getting. Even that seems impossible now that the wretched man is dead.”
“So he would lead us to believe.”
“And so you see my predicament, Mr Holmes. The matter is in the hands of Tina Bordereau, who is heaven knows where and has no interest but money. Before long these so-called papers will be released to the world.”
Holmes walked across to the window and looked down at the traffic of Baker Street in the spring sunshine. Then he turned back.
“Mr Browning. Before we squander any more of your time or, indeed, your money, I think we must clear the decks a little. You should return to Venice as soon as convenient.”
“We are to travel next Monday,” said Fannie Browning quietly, “subject to your advice.”
“Excellent. The sooner the better. If you wish it, my colleague and I will follow as quickly as we are able. By the end of next week at the latest. As I say, you should return beforehand. At the earliest opportunity we must get sight of these documents.”
“But how?” she exclaimed, “They are scattered among any number of unscrupulous dealers.”
“Madam,” said Holmes coolly. “When a poisonous cobra has embraced you, it is of no use to struggle with its coils, to fight against its fangs or stab it here and there. You must sever its head from its body and the coils will fall away soon enough. The Casa Aspern is the head of this conspiracy. That is where we must strike, before it is too late.”
“I wish it, Mr Holmes,” Pen Browning broke in passionately, “I would have you act to guard my father’s reputation and my mother’s. I have inquired a little after this man Howell since I have been in London. I can find only that he boasted of having dived for treasure lying in the wrecks of sunken galleons and of having been sheikh of an Arab tribe in Morocco. He is a braggart and probably a liar. I do not want my father’s character to lie in the hands of such a man or those who now continue his work.”
“That is commendable indeed,” said Holmes, “I believe this is an occasion when speaking ill of the dead may be permitted. He was a thoroughgoing scoundrel—but an effective one.”
“Then I would have you go to Venice, to the Casa Aspern if you can, Mr Holmes. Destroy that nest of deception and slander. You have detective skills and I have not. Believe me, they are needed.
“All this must be done before someone of Howell’s type succeeds Howell,” Holmes spoke reassuringly, placating the young man. “Who has authority there?”
Pen Browning looked uneasy.
“At present, there is an interregnum. The house is briefly in the hands of the Venetian notary, Fiori, on behalf of Tina Bordereau. She shows no interest in the papers beyond their commercial value. It was only her sister, after all, who had been the poet’s great love. Before some other person intervenes or the auction houses hold their sales, I believe it would be possible to negotiate with the friendly
notaio.
It might be agreed that you should, on my behalf, examine such of my father’s papers as are said to be in Aspern’s escritoire.”
“And then?” Holmes asked warily.
“Mr Holmes, the love of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett was a great and noble passion, a redemption from sickness and death. It must not be sullied by trash or trade. If I have to pay, I must pay.”
Holmes stared long and thoughtfully. Then he spoke.
“Allow me until noon tomorrow to make the necessary arrangements.”
“Indeed I will, Mr Holmes.”
Pen Browning was on his feet now and so was Sherlock Holmes. Our visitor was shaking my friend’s hand with a warmth beyond anything I had expected of him. It was plain to Mr Browning—as it was to me—that wild horses would not prevent Holmes setting out for Venice as soon as berths could be booked in the wagon-lit of the continental express. There was justice to be done to the memory of a noble man and woman but that was not all. Holmes’s nostrils were twitching to inhale a few molecules of the very same air that Lord Byron and Robert Browning had breathed—and, of course, to fight his now invisible adversary, the late Gussie Howell.
For my own part, I felt subdued by what I had heard. Once we were alone I could not conceal it.
“This is a bad business, Holmes, however we go about it. Once those papers have been scattered over the earth there will be no holding back the scandal. Whatever the truth, the wise world will say that there is no smoke without fire.”
He was brooding over the pages of the evening
Globe
and now looked up.
“I will repeat for your benefit, Watson, that the man who would kill the serpent must sever its head. That is the one sure way—and it is the one I shall follow.”
I was still not greatly reassured.
4
I
t was several days later when our train crossed the long railway bridge
from
the desolate landscape of Mestre to the enchanted island of Venice in its lagoon. Pen Browning was on the station platform to rescue us from pandemonium, briskly commanding the porters and dismissing the officials of the fever hospital, until our bags were accommodated on a launch and ourselves in his gondola.
We had declined his offer of rooms in the Palazzo Rezzonico, in favour of Danielli’s Hotel. It would be best, as Holmes put it, to remain “independent.” Moreover, Pen Browning was a gifted exponent of the female nude in painting and statuary, which was reputed to have led to domestic disagreements. Fannie Cornforth had been brought up in the strict American Puritan tradition. It would not do, Holmes remarked, to become a party to family quarrels and find ourselves obliged to take sides.
Pen and Fannie Browning had left London three days ahead of us. Since his arrival in Venice, Pen had accomplished almost everything. An inquiry from the Palazzo Rezzonico had been addressed to Signor Angelo Fiori, the notary for the Aspern estate, whose sister Margherita had by great good fortune nursed Robert Browning senior. Fiori cabled at once to Tina Bordereau, informing her that Italian law would require a valuation of the entire Aspern estate before matters could proceed further. He received his instructions within the day. After her sister’s death she had confided to him that she had never been in the least fond of Venice and had long wanted to get away from it. She was even less fond of Jeffery Aspern, though she had never met him. While it was clear that she would do nothing to help us, her attachment to Aspern’s papers remained financial rather than sentimental. Let the estate be valued as soon as possible.
While the gondola rolled side to side in the swell of the Grand Canal created by passing steam launches, we floated between marble palaces and gleams of reflected sunlight. Pen Browning described the latest unproductive negotiation with Tina Bordereau. Angelo Fiori, however, would allow Holmes to see such papers as remained in the Casa Aspern, by appointing him as “assessor” or “valuer” of the questionable material. Miss Bordereau agreed after being warned by Fiori that it would never do for her to sell as genuine what afterwards proved to be fraudulent.
“It’s as well you never had the two sisters to deal with, Mr Holmes,” said Pen Browning, “They’d have led you to your ruin, getting all your money and showing you nothing. They haggled like fishwives. They always tried to
combinare,
as the Italians call it, to make a special price! When that failed, they would wheedle you like stall-holders. ‘Perhaps we could find some way of treating you better,’ they would say. But you always came out of it worse! As for Aspern, he was one of those fellows at whom such women as Juanita Bordereau flung themselves—and they soon thought that he treated them very badly. I daresay he did.”
By such means we found that we had only Angelo Fiori to deal with. It was now arranged that we should visit the ‘Palazzo Aspern,’ as the dilapidated house was absurdly called by the gondoliers, whenever we wished. A housekeeper would be there to arrange whatever we needed—and, of course, to ensure that we did not steal any of the contents. However, any doubt as to our good characters was soon laid to rest, for Miss Bordereau’s benefit. At our first meeting, Signor Fiori confided to me that he acted on our behalf after receiving a testimonial to our honesty and integrity written at the request of Mr Browning by “Signor Lestrade” of Scotland Yard. The name of that famous institution was our “Open Sesame!”
The warmth of the Venetian spring was tempered by a sea breeze across the lagoon, which stirred the net curtains at the windows. Our evenings were spent eating ices or drinking coffee after dinner at Florian’s in St Mark’s Square. It was agreeable to pass the twilight away among music and chatter under the lamps, to hear smooth footfalls on polished marble, and watch an afterglow of sun touching the low domes and mosaics of the famous basilica.
On our first morning, the gondolier took us into the quiet and shaded domestic waterways, which rather recalled Amsterdam. We came to a clean quiet canal with a narrow footpath running along either bank. The front of the house was of grey and pink stucco, about two hundred years old. A stone balcony ran along its wide facade with pilasters and arches at either end. Holmes pulled at the rusty bell-wire and the summons was answered by a maid in a shawl.
We entered a long, dusty hall and followed our guide up a high stone staircase, passing fine architectural doors in a building that seemed empty and abandoned. There were brown paintings in tarnished frames. Above us the stone shields with armorial bearings still retained vestiges of the paint applied to them centuries ago. The floors were so empty and the walls so bare that it was hard to imagine anything of value in such a place. Harder still to think there could be an answer here to the riddle of Augustus Howell, unless he was alive to supply it after all.
“Surely,” I had said to Holmes in the train, “he may have announced his own death on previous occasions but he never claimed to have been murdered.”
My friend made no reply but continued to read his Baedeker.
Now we were in the upper rooms with a view of rough-tiled roof-tops and the sunlit lagoon in the distance. There was a garden below us, or rather a tangled enclosure whose stone walls hid it from the world. How could anyone, let alone the Bordereau sisters, have lived in this desolate place just a year ago? What squalor it must have been!
Our guide took out a bunch of keys and unlocked the door ahead of us. It opened on to yet another dusty room with straw-bottomed chairs and rush mats on a red-tiled floor. Its window reflected a cooler light from a northern sky. Almost the greater part of the far wall was taken up by a tall escritoire of dull mahogany, larger than many a wardrobe. Its style was that of the First Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte with brass eagles and regal ornaments. This was surely Jeffery Aspern’s famous “secretary,” containing as his famous poem
Old and Young
describes it, “the arid secrets of a soul’s decay.” Its tiers of locked drawers and the cupboards on either side seemed a suitable receptacle for tales of illicit passions or furtive criminality. On a writing-table, which formed the central part of its design, lay a single key to its drawers and cupboards.