Authors: Laurie R. King
“Ah well,” he said to me, “we’ll just have to experiment. Mrs. Barker.” She looked up as we came into the room, wet cloth in her hand. “Mrs. Barker, have you a small spoon? Yes, that will do. Russell, you pour, your hands are steady. Two drops to begin with. We’ll repeat it every twenty minutes until we see some results. Just slip it in between his teeth, that’s right. Will he take some water? Good. Now we wait.”
“Mr. Holmes, what was that?”
“It was the antidote to the poison which is affecting your husband, Madam. It is sure to be quite concentrated, and I don’t want to harm him by giving too much, too fast. He will have to take it for the rest of his life, but with it he will never be ill like this again.”
“But, I told you he’s not being poisoned. I should be ill too, if he were.”
“Oh no, he’s not received any poison for over a year. He receives the antidote regularly, as do you, without harm. You told me that his manservant had been with him for many years. Did that include his time in New Guinea?”
“Yes, I believe so. Why do you ask?”
“Madam, one of my hobbies is poisons. There is a small number of very rare poisons that, once administered, reside permanently in the nervous system. They are never got rid of, but can be effectively blocked by the regular ingestion of the antidote. One of these poisons is popular with a tribe in the Sepik River area of New Guinea. It is manufactured from a very odd variety of shellfish native to the area. In an interesting serendipity, the antidote comes from a plant which is also found only in that area. Obviously, while your husband was there, his servant conducted his own research on the side. I suppose he will tell us eventually why he chose to turn traitor, but turn traitor he did, and made use of the poison last year. Your husband made telephone calls generally on market day, did he not?”
“Why, yes, how did you know? The Woodses were always driven to town by Ron, and I would either walk or go for a drive. And Howell—”
“Howell would take the dogs for a walk, would he not?”
“Why, yes. How—”
“They would go down to the woods; he would climb up to the telephone line and listen in on your husband’s conversations while the dogs gnawed bones. On the next clear night he would fail to administer the antidote, cloister himself up with his master, and slip up to the roof to signal the results of his spying to a confederate on the coast. Ah, I think it is beginning to work already.”
Two dazed eyes looked out of a pale face and fastened onto those of Mrs. Barker.
“My dear,” he whispered, “what are these people doing here?”
“Russell,” Holmes said quietly, “I believe we should see if we can help with moving Mr. Howell and leave these two good people. Mrs. Barker, I suggest that you guard this bottle most carefully until it can be analysed and duplicated. Good evening.”
We found the ambulance attendants working their way awkwardly down the narrow steps. At the front door Jones waited to let them out. A familiar cacophony came from the other side. Holmes reached into his rucksack for the small bottle, but I laid a hand on his arm.
“Let me try first,” I said. I cleared my throat, drew myself up to my full height (over six feet in those boots), and opened the door to face the pack. I put my hands on my hips and glared at them.
“Shame on you!” Seventeen jaws slowly shut, thirty-four eyes were glued to my face. “Shame on you, all of you! Is this any way to treat agents of His Majesty? Whatever are you thinking?” Seventeen faces looked at each other, at me, at the men in the doorway. The wolfhound was the first to turn tail and skulk away into the dark, the Yorkie with the blue bow the last, but they all went.
“Russell, there are unexplored depths to you,” murmured Holmes at my elbow. “Remind me to call you whenever there is a savage beast to be overcome.”
We saw the traitorous butler and his guards off through the gates and walked off down the dark road beneath the telephone line, and talked of various matters all the way home.
What is petty and vile is better than that which is not at all.
T
HE BARKER PROBLEM
was the first time Holmes and I collaborated on a case (if one can consider it a collaboration when one person leads and the other follows instructions). The remaining days of the spring holiday went by uneventfully, and I returned to Oxford much invigorated by my hard labour under Patrick’s eye and by having bagged my first felon. (I ought perhaps to mention that the night’s work resulted in the capture of an even dozen of German spies, that Mr. Barker recovered his health, and that Mrs. Barker was quite generous in her payment for services rendered.)
When I returned to my lodgings house Mr. Thomas seemed to approve of my appearance, and I know that I returned to maths, theological enquiry, and the career of Ratnakar Sanji with renewed enthusiasm. I made it a point also to take exercise more often, walking into the hills surrounding the city (with a book in hand, of course) and did not find myself quite so exhausted when the year ended in June.
That spring and summer of 1918 was a time of intense emotions and momentous events for the country as well as for one female undergraduate. The Kaiser had begun his final, massive push, and the pinched and hungry faces around me began to look grim as well. We did not sleep well, behind our blackout curtains. And then, miraculously, the German offensive began to falter, while at the same time the Allied forces were taking on a constant flow of American transfusions, men and supplies. Even the huge and deadly May air raid on London did not change the increasing awareness that the German army was bleeding to death into the soil, and that after so many years of mere dogged existence, there was now a glimmer of future in the air.
I strode home in midsummer eighteen and a half years old, strong and adult and with the world at my feet. That summer I began to take an active interest in the running of my farm, and began to ask Patrick the first questions about farming equipment and our plans for the post-war future.
I found that in my absence Holmes had changed. It took a while to see that perhaps he was a bit taken aback by this young woman who had suddenly emerged from gangly, precocious, adolescent Mary Russell. Not that I was outwardly very different—I had filled out, but mostly in bone and muscle, not curves, and I still wore the same clothes and braided my hair in two long plaits. It was in my attitude and how I moved, and how I met him eye to eye (in conversation, but nearly so in stature). I was beginning to feel my strength and explore it, and I think it made him feel old. I know that I first noticed caution in him that summer, when he went around a cliff rather than launch himself down it. That is not to say that he became a doddery old man—far from it. He was just a bit thoughtful at times, and I would catch him looking at me pensively after I had done some exuberant thing or other.
We went to London a number of times that summer to see her limited wartime offerings, and I saw him move differently there, as if the very air changed him, making his muscles go taut and his joints loosen. London was his home as the downs never would be, and he returned relaxed and renewed to his experiments and his writing. If the summer before I went up to Oxford was one of sun and chess games under the open sky, my first summer home had a tinge of bitter in the sweet, as I realised for the first time that even Holmes was limited by mortality.
That awareness was at the time peripheral, however. Bitterness is an aftertaste that comes when the sweetness has had time to fade, and there was much that was sweet about that summer. Sweetest of all were the two cases that came our way.
I say two, although the first was hardly a case, more of a lark. It began one morning in July when I walked down to Patrick’s house with an article I had read concerning a new mulching technique developed in America, and found him slamming furiously about in his kitchen. Taking the hot kettle from his hand before he injured himself, I poured it over the leaves and asked him what was the matter.
“Oh, Miss Mary, it’s nothing really. Just that Tillie Whiteneck, down the inn? She was robbed last night.” The Monk’s Tun, on the road between Eastbourne and Lewes, was popular with locals and holiday trippers. And with Patrick.
“Robbed? Was she hurt?”
“No, everyone was asleep.” Burglary, then. “They forced the back door and took her cash box and some of the food. Real quiet about it—nobody knew until Tillie came down to start the stove in the morning and found the back door open. She had a lot in the box, too, more than usual. There were a couple big parties, and she was too busy to take the money down to the bank.”
I commiserated, gave him the article, and walked back to the main house, thinking. I put a telephone call through to Holmes, and while Mrs. Hudson went to fetch him I sat at the desk and watched Patrick move across the yard between the barns, his shoulders set in anger and depression. When Holmes came on the line I came to the point.
“Holmes, didn’t you tell me a few weeks ago that there has been a series of burglaries from inns and public houses in Eastbourne?”
“I hardly think two qualifies as a series, Russell. You are interrupting a delicate haemoglobin experiment, you know.”
“Now it’s three,” I said, ignoring his protest. “Patrick’s lady-friend at the Tun had her cash box taken last night.”
“My dear Russell, I am retired. I am no longer required to retrieve missing pencil boxes or track down errant husbands.”
“Whoever took it just happened to choose a time when the box was much fuller than it normally is,” I persisted. “It is not a comfortable feeling, knowing that the thief may be in the area. Besides,” I added, sensing a faint waver down the telephone line, “Patrick’s a friend.” It was the wrong card to play.
“I am so pleased for you that you can count your farm manager as a friend, Russell, but that does not justify dragging me into this little affaire. I believe I heard a rumour that Sussex now has a constabulary force. Perhaps you would be so good as to let them be about their work and let me be about mine.”
“You don’t mind if I look into it, do you?”
“Good heavens, Russell, if time hangs so heavy on your hands and you’ve run out of bandages to wrap, by all means thrust your nose into this momentous crime, this upsurge of depravity on our very doorsteps. I only suggest that you not annoy the constabulary more than you have to.”
The line went dead. In irritation I hung up my earpiece and went to get out my bicycle.
I was hot and dusty when I reached the inn, not a very prepossessing figure, and I had practically to tug the sleeve of the village constable before I was allowed a glimpse of the scene of the crime. I positively itched to look more closely, but the good PC Rogers, proud of his outré little crime, had the better part of the downstairs roped off awaiting his inspector, and he would not hear of trespass. Even the owner and her workers and guests were forced to edge through the room behind a wall of potted palms, which were already suffering from the attentions of steamer trunks and Gladstone bags.
“I promise you,” I begged, “I won’t disturb anything. I just want to look at the carpet.”
“Can’t do it, Miss Russell. Orders were to let no one through.”
“Which means, of course,” snapped a voice from the violently waving palms, “that I cannot have any food from my kitchen, so I lose not only my cash box, but today’s income as well. Oh, hello, you’re Patrick’s Miss Russell, aren’t you? Here to look at our crime?”
“Trying to,” I admitted.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jammy, let her—Oh all right, all right: ‘Constable Rogers,’ let her have a peep. She’s a bright girl, and she’s here, which is more than I can say for this inspector of yours.”
“Yes, Rogers, do let her have a peep,” drawled a voice from the door. “I’ll stand bail that she won’t disturb anything.”
“Mr. Holmes!” said the startled police constable, reaching for his helmet and then, changing his mind, straightening his shoulders instead.
“Holmes!” I exclaimed. “I thought you were busy.”
“By the time you let me go the blood had clotted beyond all recognition,” he said dismissively. He ignored the expressions on the faces around us that his statement had brought, and waved a hand at the young constable.
“Let her in, Rogers.” Meekly, the uniformed man went to drop the rope for me.
Torn between fury and mortification I stalked forward to the beginning of the runner carpet and, wrapping myself in every shred of dignity I could muster, bent to examine it. The carpet was new this season, had been brushed the night before, and did not take long to reveal its secrets. With my cheek nearly touching the fibers to take advantage of the angle of the light, I spoke to Holmes.
“This is from a medium-sized man’s boot with a pointed toe and a worn heel on the left foot. The pile of the carpet has lifted off more of an impression than the bare floor. There are also tiny bits of gravel, dark grey and black, or—?”
Holmes materialised at my knee and held out the glass I had neglected to bring. Through its lens the three bits of stone came into focus.
“Dark gravel with tar on it, and an overall haze of oil. And down here—is that a bit of reddish soil, rubbed off on the edge of the carpet?”
Holmes took the heavy glass from my hand and retraced my steps on his hands and knees. He made no comment, just handed the glass back to me and gestured that I should continue. He was turning this into an all-too-public viva voce exam.
“Where does red soil come up?” I asked. “There’s a patch where the road dips, south of the village, I remember, and two or three along the river. And wasn’t there some near the Barkers’ house?”
“Not so red, I think,” said Holmes. “And I believe a strong lens might reveal that this has a more claylike texture.” He volunteered nothing more. Fine, I thought, be that way. I turned to Constable Rogers, who was looking uncomfortable.
“The council has been surfacing a number of the roads recently, hasn’t it? Would you happen to know where the crews have been working in the last week or so?”
He shifted, looked to Holmes for advice, and apparently received it, because he looked back at me and answered. “There’s a patch about six miles north, and the mill road they did last week. And a section just east of Warner’s place. Nothing closer since last month.”
“Thank you, that narrows it down a bit. Now, Mrs. Whiteneck, if I might have a word?” I took Patrick’s friend to one side and asked her for a list of the names and addresses of her employees, and told her that as soon as the police inspector had been, he would allow her to use her kitchen. She looked much relieved.
“Did Patrick say the thief took food, too?” I asked her.
“That he did: four beautiful hams I had just taken from the smokehouse; lovely, fat things they were. And three bottles of the best whisky. Set me back a bit, they did, and heaven knows how I’ll replace them, what with the shortages and the rationing. Here, you’re sure he’ll let me use the kitchen?”
“I’m sure he will. Even if he’s struck by a fit of mad efficiency he’ll only want to leave that part of the carpet and the doors for a fingerprint expert, but that may be hoping for too much. I will let you know what I’ve found.”
Outside the Monk’s Tun the sun was fully up and the narrow village lane was hot and bright. I spared a moment’s thought for the work crew I was supposed to be in and pushed it away. I felt Holmes at my elbow.
“I’d like to take a look at your topographical maps, if I may,” I said. This in itself was an admission of failure, that I did not hold the details of the Ordnance Survey for my own district firmly to mind, but he did not comment.
“All the resources of the firm are yours to command,” he said. This proved to include one of the automobiles his neighbour ran as the rural taxi service, which was standing next to the inn. We got in and returned to Holmes’ cottage.
I greeted Mrs. Hudson and went through the sitting room to the cabinet where Holmes kept his vast collection of maps. I found the ones I needed and spread them out on the worktable and made notes of the five places that I knew had red clay surfacing from the chalky soil of the downs. Holmes had busied himself with some other project, but when he walked past the table to fetch a book he casually laid a fingertip first at one place on the map, then another, reminding me of two more occurrences.
“Thank you,” I said to his back. “In all but one of the places where the red soil is found, the map shows an outcropping of rock. Two of those correspond both with—Are you at all interested in this, Holmes?” He did not look up from his book but waved his hand in a gesture I took to mean “continue,” so I did. “There are only two places where we find a combination of red soil, recent road work, and employees of the Tun. One is north two miles on the Heathfield road, and the other is west, down near the river.” I waited for a response, received none, and went to the telephone. Apparently I was to be in charge of this investigation, although, I suspected, with a hawk-eyed critic at my shoulder. As I waited to be connected it occurred to me that I had not heard the taxi leave and indeed, when I glanced out the window, there it was in the drive, the man behind the wheel settled back with a book. I was briefly annoyed at Holmes, not so much because of his easy anticipation of our needs as because I had not thought to have the automobile wait.
The exchange connected me with the Monk’s Tun.
“Mrs. Whiteneck? Mary Russell here. Has the inspector arrived yet? He did? Oh, did he? PC Rogers must have been disappointed. Yes. Still, you have your kitchen back. Look, Mrs. Whiteneck, could you tell me which of your employees are at the inn today, and the hours they’ll be working? Yes. Yes. Fine, thanks, then. Yes, I’ll be in touch.” I rang off.
“Inspector Mitchell came, took a look, gave PC Rogers a dressing-down for wasting his time, and left,” I said to the room at large, received back the response I expected, which was none, and sat looking at the list of names. They included Jenny Wharton, a maid at the inn who lived on the north road and worked today until eight o’clock, and Tony Sylvester, a new barkeep, who would be away from his home near the river until well after seven.
Now what?