Sherlock Holmes Stories of Edward D. Hoch (20 page)

“Sure, what’s not to like? That’s where I met Ralph. We’ll be getting married soon, after we break the news to our folks.”

“I wish you all the happiness you deserve,” Holmes said.

Leacock had been standing close enough to overhear the conversation, and he commented to me, “Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl.”

“You do not approve?” I asked, addressing him for the first time since our journey began.

“It is not for me to say. Life, as we often learn too late, is in the living.”

As the evening wore on, I found myself forced into further conversation with Leacock. “Did you have an opportunity to read my little piece on the Defective Detective, Dr. Watson?”

“I did, sir. It seems to me you could devote your talents to more important matters.”

“Ah, but you see, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole of the Encyclopedia Britannica.”

I had no answer for that.

Holmes and I both slept well that night. The water was still, and a big change from our Atlantic crossing. In the morning, over breakfast, the talk turned serious. It was Leacock who brought matters to a head. “You have to come back with us, Ralph. If you don’t, I must tell the police where you are.”

But it was Monica who rose to his defense. “Why do you have to tell them? He’s done nothing wrong.”

Leacock turned appealingly toward Holmes, who said quietly, “Franz Faber named Ralph as he was dying. He told a police officer it was Norton.”

“But that’s impossible! I was with him all that night.”

“No, you weren’t, Monica,” Ralph told her. “This was Thursday, the night before we left. Remember, I had to pick up some things from home. I was gone for over an hour.”

“You couldn’t kill anyone, Ralph,” she said with a sigh. “Franz might not have seen his killer. You two’d had a fight, so your name was the one he spoke.”

“He was stabbed in the chest,” Holmes told her. “It’s most likely he did see his killer.” Then he turned back to Ralph. “What had you and Faber fought about?”

He gave a snort. “We fought over Monica. It felt like I was still a kid in high school.”

“Is that true?” he asked her.

“I guess so. I went out with Franz for a while and he didn’t want to give me up.”

If we were to be back in Montreal that night we had to be leaving soon. Rob Gentry had gathered up the material Leacock wanted to bring back, but there was still no agreement from Ralph. “I’m not going to ride all day on the train just to tell some ignorant detective I’m innocent.”

“I can stay here alone for one night,” Monica told him.

“Or you can come back with him,” Professor Leacock suggested. “That might be best.”

She shook her head. “No. I came here to get away from people—”

Holmes spoke softly. “Dr. Watson could examine you if you are concerned about your condition.”

“It’s not that. I just don’t want to go back there.”

“And neither do I,” Ralph decided.

Leacock tried to reason with them. “Sooner or later the Montreal police will learn where you are, Ralph. You’ll be arrested and taken back there in handcuffs. That’s hardly something you’d want your mother to see.”

“There’s no evidence that I killed him.”

“You fought, and he named you as his killer,” Holmes said.

“Our fight was several days earlier. There was no reason to renew it or stab him because Monica was coming with me. I asked you about this cottage and you gave me the key a full day before Faber was killed.”

“You make a good case for your innocence,” Holmes agreed. “But the police want a killer and you’re the only suspect they have.”

It was then that Monica Starr spoke. “They have another,” she said quietly. “I killed Franz Faber.”

“Monica!” Ralph shouted. “Don’t ever say that again! Someone might believe it.”

I stared at Leacock and Gentry, seeing the disbelief in their faces. But then I glanced at Holmes and saw something quite different, something like satisfaction. “Of course she killed him. I’ve known it since last night. But I had to hear it from her own lips.”

“How could you have known?” Ralph asked. “What happened last night?”

“You called her by a nickname, North. When Franz Faber lay dying, he reverted to his native language. The officer asked who stabbed him and he didn’t say Norton but Norden, the German word for north. He was saying you stabbed him, Monica. Do you want to tell us why you did it?”

She stared down at the floor, unable to look any of us in the eye. Finally she answered. “I love Ralph, I love him so much. My brief time with Franz was a big mistake, but when I became pregnant he threatened to tell Ralph the baby was his and not Ralph’s. I couldn’t let him do that. I begged him not to, but he wouldn’t listen. I’d brought a knife along to threaten him, but when he saw it he just laughed. That was when I stabbed him.”

“Monica—” It was almost a sob from Ralph Norton’s lips.

The six of us took the long train ride back to Montreal together. Holmes telephoned Detective Leblond from a stop along the route and he was waiting for us at the station.

Holmes and I took a carriage to Irene Norton’s home. He insisted on giving her the news in person. “Your son will be home soon,” he told her. “He’s gone to the Surete with Monica Starr.”

“Have you solved the case?” she wanted to know. “Is my son innocent?”

“Innocent of all but a youthful love. Only time can cure him of that.” He told her of Monica’s confession.

“And the baby?” she asked. “Who is the father?”

“We didn’t ask, but it seems Faber had reason to believe it was his. It may take Ralph some time to get over that.”

She dipped her eyes, and may have shed a tear. “A scandal in Montreal. Who would have thought it? First me, all those years ago in Bohemia, and now my son.”

“No one is blaming you, or your son.”

She lifted her head to gaze at Holmes. “How can I ever thank you? Will you be going back now?”

He nodded. “I am retired and keep bees at my villa in Sussex. If you are ever in the vicinity it would be my pleasure to show it to you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, and held out her hand to him.

I
WRITE OF THIS
late in life, because I feel some record must be left of the astounding events of April 1912. I am aware that prior attempts to record my adventures personally have suffered when compared to those of my old and good friend Watson but, following my retirement from active practice as a consulting detective late in 1904, I saw very little of him. There were occasional weekend visits when he was in the area of my little Sussex home overlooking the Channel but, for the most part, we had retired to our separate lives. It was not until 1914, at the outbreak of the Great War, that we would come together for a final adventure.

But that was more than two years away when I decided, quite irrationally, to accept an invitation from the president of the White Star Line to be a guest on the maiden voyage of the R.M.S. Titanic across the Atlantic to New York. He was a man for whom I had performed a slight service some years back, not even worthy of mention in Watson’s notes, and he hardly owed me compensation on such a grand scale. There were several reasons why I agreed to it but, perhaps, the truth was that I had simply grown bored with retirement. Still in my mid-fifties and enjoying good health, I quickly learned that, even at the height of the season, the physical demands of bee keeping were slight indeed. The winter months were spent in correspondence with fellow enthusiasts and a review and classification of my past cases. What few needs I had were seen to by an elderly housekeeper.

My initial reaction upon receiving the invitation was to ignore it. I had never been much of a world traveler, except for my years in Tibet and the Middle East, but the offer of a trip to America intrigued me for two reasons. It would enable me to visit places like the Great Alkali Plain of Utah and the coal mining region of Pennsylvania, which had figured in some of my investigations. And I could meet with one or two American bee keepers with whom I’d struck up a correspondence. I agreed to the invitation on one condition—that I travel under an assumed name. For the voyage, I became simply Mr. Smith, a name I shared with five other passengers and the ship’s captain.

Early April had been a time of chilly temperatures and high winds. I was more than a little apprehensive as I departed from London on the first-class boat-train to Southampton, arriving there at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, the 10th. Happily, my seat companion on the boat-train proved to be a young American writer and journalist named Jacques Futrelle. He was a stocky man with a round, boyish face and dark hair that dipped down over his forehead on the right side. He wore pince-nez glasses and a flowing bow tie, with white gloves that seemed formal for the occasion. Because of his name, I took him to be French at first, but he quickly corrected the misapprehension.

“I am a Georgian, sir, by way of Boston,” he told me, “which might explain my strange accent.”

“But surely your name…”

“My family is of French Huguenot stock. And you are…”

“Smith,” I told him.

“Ah!” He indicated the attractive woman seated across the aisle from us. “This is my wife, May. She is also a writer.”

“A journalist, like your husband?” I asked.

She gave me a winning smile. “We both write fiction. My first story appeared in The Saturday Evening Post some years back.” She added, “The maiden voyage of the Titanic might provide an article for your old employer, Jacques.”

He laughed. “I’m certain the Boston American will have any number of Hearst writers covering the voyage. They hardly need me, though I do owe them a debt of gratitude for publishing my early short stories while I worked there.”

“Might I be familiar with your books?” I asked. Retirement to Sussex had left me with a mixed blessing: time to read the sort of popular fiction which I’d always ignored in the past.

It was May Futrelle who answered for him. “His novel, The Diamond Master, was published three years ago. I think that is the best of his romances, though many people prefer his detective stories.”

The words stirred my memory. “Of course! Futrelle! You are the author of ‘The Problem of Cell 13.’ I have read that gem of a story more than once.”

Futrelle smiled slightly. “Thank you. It has proven to be quite popular. My newspaper published it over six days and offered prizes for the correct solution.”

“Your detective is known as ‘The Thinking Machine.’”

The smile widened a bit. “Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen. I have published nearly fifty stories about the character in the past seven years, and have another seven with me that I wrote on the journey. None has equaled the popularity of the first, however.”

Fifty stories! That was more than Watson had published about our exploits up to that time, but Futrelle was correct in saying the first of them had been the most popular.

“Have you two ever collaborated?” I asked.

May Futrelle laughed. “We swore that we never would, but we did try it once, in a way. I wrote a story that seemed to be a fantasy, and Jacques wrote his own story in which The Thinking Machine provided a logical solution to mine.”

The talk shifted from his writing to their travels and I found him a most pleasant conversationalist. The time on the boat-train passed quickly and, before long, we were at the docks in Southampton. We parted then, promising to see each other on the voyage.

I stood on the dock for a moment, staring up at the great ship before me. Then I boarded the Titanic and was escorted to my cabin. It was suite B-57 on the starboard side of Bridge Deck B, reached by the impressive Grand Staircase or by a small elevator. Once in the cabin, I found a comfortable bed with a brass and enamel head- and footboard. There was a wardrobe room next to the bed and a luxurious sitting area opposite it. An electric space heater provided warmth, if needed. The suite’s two windows were framed in gleaming brass. In the bath and water closet, there was a marble-topped sink. For just a moment, I wished that my old friend Watson was there to see it.

I had been on board barely a half-hour when the ship cast off, exactly at noon. As the tugs maneuvered it away from the dock and moved downstream into the River Test, I left my stateroom on the Bridge Deck and went out to the railing, lighting a cigarette as I watched our progress past banks lined with well-wishers. Then we stopped, narrowly avoiding a collision with another ship. It was almost an hour before we were under way again, and the next twenty-four hours were frustrating ones. We steamed downstream to the English Channel and then across to Cherbourg, where 274 additional passengers boarded by tender. Then it was a night crossing to Queenstown, Ireland, where we anchored about two miles offshore, while more passengers were brought out by tender.

When at last the anchor was raised for the final time, Captain Smith posted a notice that there were some 2,227 passengers and crew aboard, the exact number uncertain. This was about two-thirds the maximum capacity of 3,360 passengers and crew.

As I watched us pull out at 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 11th, I suddenly realized that an attractive red-haired young woman had joined me on deck.

“Is this your first trip across?” she asked.

“Across the Atlantic, yes.”

“I’m Margo Collier. It’s my first, too.”

Women seldom have been an attraction to me, but there were exceptions. Looking into the deep, intelligent eyes of Margo Collier, I knew she could have been one of them, had I not been old enough to have sired her.

“A pleasure to meet you,” I replied. “I am Mr. Smith.”

She blinked, or winked, at me. “Mr. John Smith, no doubt. Are you in first class?”

“I am. And you are an American, judging by the sound of your accent.”

“I thought you could tell from my red hair.”

I smiled. “Do all Americans have red hair?”

“The ones that are in trouble seem to. Sometimes I think it’s my red hair that gets me in trouble.”

“What sort of trouble could one so young have gotten into?”