Sherlock Holmes Stories of Edward D. Hoch (16 page)

The feathers formed a definite trail across the carpet to a door that I took to be a closet. At the door itself there were two more, and I could not resist the urge to turn the knob and open it.

That was how I came to find the bloodied body of Jules Blackthorn.

I instructed the butler to summon his master and Holmes at once. It was only a moment before he returned with them both. When I revealed my discovery in the closet, Dobson was shocked.

“How could this be? I thought he’d gone home.” He turned to the butler. “Didn’t he leave the house, Samuels?”

“I escorted him to the door myself, sir.”

Blackthorn had been stabbed twice in the back. The trail of feathers was quickly explained when Holmes lifted the body slightly to reveal a slashed pillow beneath the dead man’s stomach. It might have been the twin of the one that had been left out for my costume.

“I believe you should notify the local police at once,” said Holmes. “They might wish to contact Scotland Yard as well.”

“But who could have done this terrible thing?” Edgar Dobson wondered. “Did Blackthorn surprise a thief?”

“This was no thief’s act,” Holmes pointed out. “If the man really left the house, as your butler says, someone must have let him in again. I believe we can reasonably assume that person is the one who killed him.”

While we awaited the arrival of the local constable, Dobson made the announcement to his assembled guests.

“I’m sorry to report, ladies and gentlemen, that there has been a serious accident to Mr. Jules Blackthorn, one of this evening’s guests. The local constable has been summoned and I suggest that we await his arrival. I’ll try to make you as comfortable as possible in the meantime. The waiters will pass among you with after dinner libations while Miss Selfridge entertains us with some additional carols.”

A murmur ran through the three dozen guests and several insisted they had to be starting home. However, the arrival of brandy and cigars soon lured the male guests into the library, while the women stayed to be entertained by the music. As for Holmes and myself, we quickly found ourselves in our host’s study, along with Elvira Ascott. “Please understand, Mrs. Ascott,” Dobson told her, “that Blackthorn’s death makes it more imperative than ever that we complete our transaction.”

Holmes merely smiled at this. “Would you explain yourself, Mr. Dobson? It seems to me that Blackthorn was nothing more than a cohort of yours, sent to persuade Mrs. Ascott to adhere to your wishes regarding the sale of her land.”

“Blackthorn was a principal in the sale. He was putting up a portion of the money for it. I know nothing of his motives. I do know that I am willing to take a worthless parcel of tidal land off your hands for a fair sum of money.”

It was night now, and all we could see against the windows was our own reflection in the darkened glass. For a full minute, no one spoke, and then Elvira Ascott herself broke the silence.

“I will sell you the land, Mr. Dobson, just to be rid of it and put an end to this business.”

“Not so fast,” Holmes cautioned, holding up a hand. “I am acting in your best interests, Mrs. Ascott, when I beg you to delay your decision.”

He slipped something, a small notebook, from his pocket and held it out to her. “Tell me…have you ever seen this before?”

She took the notebook and opened the cover. On the first page was the notation Boot, underlined. It was followed by a column of numbers, each having three digits.

Elvira Ascott shook her head. “I know nothing about this. What is it? To whom does it belong?”

“I found it under Blackthorn’s body when I lifted it. I believe it slipped out of his pocket.”

I studied the notations. “They seem to be a list of boot sizes.”

“My dear friend,” said Holmes, “have you ever seen boot sizes expressed in just three numbers like that?”

“What else could it mean?”

“I have a suspicion.” He turned to our host. “Come now, Mr. Dobson. Isn’t it time you told us what you know about all this?”

“I know nothing!” the man insisted.

Just then, we were interrupted by a knock at the study door. It opened just a crack, allowing Samuels, the butler, to announce the arrival of Constable Wallace.

As the door was closing again, Holmes called out, “Samuels, could you come in for a moment?”

The tall butler entered the room with some reluctance, his eyes downcast. “Yes, sir?”

“I’d like to ask you about the pillow that went with the Father Christmas costume. I assume it was used if the wearer of the costume needed more girth up front.”

“That’s correct.”

“And the pillow came from one of the upstairs bedrooms?”

“What has this got to do with Blackthorn’s murder?” Edgar Dobson wanted to know. “Of course the pillow came from a bedroom, probably one of the guest bedrooms. Why do you ask?”

“Because when the killer stabbed Blackthorn and ripped the pillow, he had to replace it. He had to go up to the second floor of this house and procure another pillow, so the original slashed one could be hidden. That is not something a guest would do, nor one of the servants hired for the party. Certainly your cooks were far too busy in the kitchen at meal time.”

“Are you accusing me…”

“You seemed to be very involved with your guests during the crucial period. There’s also the question of your size. If we assume the two men tussled before Blackthorn was fatally stabbed, it seems unlikely you could have overpowered him, Mr. Dobson. Whereas we have seen Samuels here do exactly that this very evening.”

The butler’s face had gone white at those words. He uttered an oath and turned toward the door, but Holmes was already upon him.

“What is this?” he demanded.

“It was you who killed him, you who replaced the torn pillow. But the police are here now, and your conspiracy is at an end!”

I was astounded by this turn of events. “Holmes, are you telling us the butler did it?”

Holmes ripped away the flesh-colored skullcap and fake hair, revealing the head of a much younger man.

“Only in a sense, Watson. You see, Samuels the butler is really William Ascott, engaged not in fighting the Boers, but in swindling his wife out of her land.”

It was not until later, when he was explaining it all to a devastated Elvira Ascott, that I learned the full story from Holmes. Edgar Dobson had been arrested along with Ascott, and we were at the station awaiting the last train back to London when Holmes repeated what he’d told the police.

“My first clue to your husband’s involvement was your meeting with Jules Blackthorn at the ballet on the very day that Dobson had made his offer for your land. You insisted you’d not told Dobson of your plans, yet this bogus solicitor was there to accost you. It seemed to me that only your husband, who’d planned to accompany you, knew in advance that you’d be at the ballet. When you said his group of volunteers had only recently departed, and after Erskine Childers indicated he believed he was in the first group, leaving just after New Year’s, I began to wonder. Was it possible that your husband was still secretly in London, and his New Year’s departure was the reason Dobson wanted the land deal completed before that date?”

“I…I can’t believe that was the case. What did William hope to accomplish?”

“He and Edgar Dobson had entered into a conspiracy with Blackthorn to get that land from you, one way or another. I regret to say this, Mrs. Ascott, but the conspiracy may have existed more than a year ago, even before your marriage.”

A sob caught in her throat at his words. “You mean he married me to gain control of that piece of worthless property?”

“It was not worthless to him. Blackthorn was offering a good deal of money for the land. But William learned, to his sorrow, that even in the case of your death, the land would pass to your sister’s children in America.”

“Do you believe he would have killed me for it?”

“Thankfully we never had to face that question.”

“But how did you know the butler was really my husband?”

“There were a number of things. Chief among them was my observation that he frequently averted his face when in your presence. Even with the false hair and makeup he used in his days as an amateur actor, he feared recognition. Then there was the obvious fact that he was left-handed, demonstrated when he was cutting the meat and when he grabbed Blackthorn with his left hand. In the photograph of your husband that you showed us, he was tall like Samuels and he was firing a pistol with his left hand.”

“If Blackthorn was in league with them, why was he killed?” I asked.

“Dobson said it was because they were taking too long to complete the transaction. Blackthorn had been patient for a year, and now his orders were to force you to sign the contract by any means possible. Your husband opposed that. This evening, when he forcibly removed Blackthorn from our presence, instead of showing him to the door, he took him to that sitting room and stabbed him, using the pillow to protect himself from blood stains. Then, of course, he had to replace the pillow for the Father Christmas costume.”

“But why was William disguised as a butler in the first place?”

“I believe he’d grown truly fond of you during the year of your marriage. As I indicated, he opposed the use of any force against your person, and insisted on being present while you were at Dobson’s house. The butler disguise seemed most practical for his purpose and, indeed, he did protect you from Blackthorn.”

“Why were they so anxious to buy that worthless land from me?” Elvira Ascott wanted to know.

“It wasn’t worthless to Dobson. It provided him with a connecting link to the sea. Any boats bringing men to Dobson’s estate needed that strip of land to deliver the men without raising a premature alarm.”

“Boats?”

“Blackthorn was an agent of the German government. He carried a list of the boat numbers in his notebook. The word ‘boot’ means ‘boat’ in German.”

“You mean Germans would have been landing here?” I asked.

Sherlock Holmes nodded. “In large numbers. Our dinner companion tonight, Mr. Childers, suggested that very thing. He was more correct than he knew. But, here, I believe our train is approaching at last!”

Ascott and Dobson were convicted of murder and conspiracy, and the German angle to the investigation was never made public. It was not until three years later that our dinner companion, Erskine Childers, wrote a fictionalized version of his suspicions involving a German invasion titled The Riddle of the Sands. It became his most successful novel.

I
T WAS A BLEAK
April afternoon in 1902, ten days after our early Easter and the first full year into King Edward’s reign, and Holmes and I had remained close to the fire. I was reading the latest issue of Strand Magazine, while he puttered in the next room with one of his scientific experiments.

It was Mrs. Hudson who announced our visitors in her usual manner. “A man and a boy to see Mr. Holmes on a business matter,” she said, after knocking on the door and presenting him with a calling card.

Holmes frowned at the interruption, but instructed her to send the visitors up. He quickly slipped on his dressing gown to cover a shirt stained with chemicals and said to me, “Well, Watson, this appears to be an acquaintance of yours.”

“Of mine?”

“Mr. Rutherford Wilson, a sub-editor of that magazine where your literary agent has placed several of your flamboyant accounts of my cases.”

“You mean the Strand?” I asked, holding up the issue I was reading. But, by that time, there came a second knock and the door opened to admit a middle-aged man wearing pince-nez and an obvious toupee. Accompanying him was a red-haired boy, perhaps ten or eleven years of age, his hands almost hidden by the sleeves of a grey winter coat.

“Mr. Holmes,” the man said, managing a nervous smile as he thrust the boy ahead of him into our parlor. “I hope you’ll excuse my bringing Roddy along, but he so wanted to meet you. He’s read about all of your early adventures in our magazine. Roddy, this is the famous Mr. Sherlock Holmes. And you must be Dr. Watson.”

I acknowledged the fact and shook his hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met, though I have lunched with my literary agent and Mr. Greenbough Smith on occasion at the Café Royal.”

Rutherford Wilson quickly nodded. “I am a mere sub-editor at the Strand. Mr. Smith is our chief editor, as you know. He dearly wishes there would be more of your stories, Doctor, now that Mr. Holmes is truly back among us.”

“Perhaps there will be,” I replied, glancing at Holmes, “though there is some reluctance on his part to allow the recording of his more sensational cases.”

Ever since entering our rooms, the boy had not taken his wide eyes off Holmes. He seemed at a loss for words, so Holmes bent to shake his hand. “So good to meet you, Master Roddy. Might I offer you a cup of hot cocoa while your father and I talk?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Holmes smiled and rang for Mrs. Hudson. Then he addressed our visitor. Your older son did not wish to accompany you?”

Wilson was taken aback. “Do you know of my family, Mr. Holmes?”

“No, but I observe that young Roddy’s coat seems a bit long in the sleeves, the sort that would have been handed down by an older brother.”

“And you are quite correct. Richard is thirteen and away at school, or I am sure he would have wanted to meet you, too.” He smiled in admiration. “Dr. Watson has not exaggerated your powers of observation, Mr. Holmes.”

When Mrs. Hudson returned with the boy’s hot cocoa, I gave him a picture book to look through while we talked with his father. “What brings you to us, Mr. Wilson?” Holmes asked.

“It is a matter of one of our authors at the Strand. If you read the magazine regularly…”

“I leave that for Watson,” Holmes assured him.

“Well then, Dr. Watson,” he said, turning to me with a bit of reluctance. “Perhaps you remember a long story, ‘The Missing Passenger,’ that appeared in our Christmas issue. It was almost novel length and was published anonymously. I have brought you a copy to read.”

I remembered it vaguely. “A man vanishes from a train…”