Sherlock Holmes in Russia (12 page)

‘Well, I never!’ said Holmes in a tone of evident disapproval.

‘Oh, yes, sir! You can hear it moaning,’ whispered the old man enigmatically.

‘What is it that is moaning?’ asked a surprised Holmes.

‘Whatever is locked in that chest. Some folk say that a man who has lost his mind is hidden inside. Someone possessed. Might be related to the master!’

‘Where do you get all that from?’

‘I’ll tell you where from. Sometimes at night you can hear someone grunting or snarling. It is neither a human sound nor an animal’s either.’

‘Maybe someone got frightened and just said it,’ suggested Holmes.

‘Out of fright!’ said the old man, this time truly aggrieved, ‘I heard it myself.’

Holmes approached the door and looked at the lock. ‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘this is no ordinary lock. You wouldn’t easily find a key to fit it. In any case, if I were to decide to open it for myself, it would take a considerable while.’ He turned suddenly and looked at the big house.

I don’t know what made me, but I automatically followed his
example and that very moment I noticed the figure of Boris Nikolayevitch jumping back from the window as soon as we turned around. Actually, I don’t know whether this was so or merely appeared so to me, but the expression on the nephew of the dead man was on this occasion particularly strange. It seemed to me that his eyes looked at us with an unnatural anger. But all this was only momentary.

Holmes turned away calmly from the mysterious shed and we continued on our way still interrogating the old man about any old trivia. Our stroll didn’t last more than an hour. When we had had enough of the yard, we went in again and this time, meeting nobody, went to our room.

We had just about retired, when there was a knock at the door. It was Boris Nikolayevitch, come to ask whether we’d like to have supper before retiring for the night. He looked perfectly content to accept our refusal, wished us a good night and departed.

We began to undress, but before we went to bed, Sherlock Holmes locked the door, leaving the key in the door and, approaching the window, began to look out carefully at the grounds. He stood like that for nigh on a quarter of an hour. Then he reached into his pocket for his leather case, took out a few nails and once again very carefully nailed them into the frame of the pane.

Next he put out the light, came up to my bed and leaning down to my ear whispered very softly, ‘My dear Watson, have your revolver at the ready and under no circumstances let go of it. In the meantime, I suggest that you part the curtains carefully and give your attention to anything that occurs anywhere near our window.’

We tiptoed towards the curtains, parted them ever so slightly and put our eyes to the gap. A pale moon had risen and cast its mysterious light over the park. We tried to stand so quietly that the slightest move would not betray our vigil. A considerable time must have passed. I couldn’t check the time in the dark, but it must have been all of two hours.

I became bored by the long silence and finally just had to ask Holmes, albeit softly, ‘What do you suppose is going on?’

‘Quiet,’ he said. ‘This is no time for conjecture. We’ll know everything in the morning.’

And once again, hour after hour stretched past. My legs became numb from prolonged standing and I lost all sense of where I stood.

Suddenly, some object appeared at the window. A pole with an attachment! Holmes indicated I was to increase my vigilance, but my nerves were already stretched taut as it was. The pole was being slowly guided from below by some unseen hand and the attachment stopped at the level of the pane.

Whoever was below came nearer and the outer latch of the pane was now in the groove of whatever was on the end of the pole. It turned. Clearly, someone was trying to unlock it from down below. But now, just as it must have happened last time, the nails that Holmes had fixed with his usual foresight, proved too much of an impediment.

Someone below was trying hard to open the pane, but it would not give way. The effort lasted for nearly half an hour. The man seemed desperate to carry out his intention but eventually the pole was lowered beneath the level of the windowsill. We heard a slight noise from outside and below and then all was still. We waited in vain while another hour passed and then moved away from the window.

‘There you are,’ said Sherlock Holmes, ‘you and I, my dear Watson, proved to be wiser, and as it seems to me, this time escaped certain death.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ I asked.

‘Someone was intent on opening the pane to let in a strange creature capable of squeezing through such a narrow aperture. Undoubtedly, it could not be a human being. The pane would have been too narrow.’

He was silent for a moment and then added, ‘In any case, the morning brings wiser counsel, so it would be better for us to sleep. I’ll tell you everything in the morning.’

I was dying of curiosity, but I knew perfectly well that Holmes would never say anything till such time as he was good and ready, and so I did not insist.

Next morning, for a change, I was up before my friend. But I had hardly swung out of bed when Holmes opened his eyes. He was a remarkably light sleeper. No matter how tired out he had been, the slightest movement served to waken him.

‘Aha, my friend,’ he exclaimed cheerfully. ‘I’m not quite myself this morning. Surely you couldn’t have wakened before me.’ I gave an involuntary smile.

We began to dress. Our movements and voices must have come to the attention of the household. Hardly twenty minutes had gone by when there was a knock on the door. A servant had come to ask whether we’d like tea served up in our room.

‘No thanks, my dear chap,’ Holmes answered. ‘We’ll have it in the dining-room.’

He waited till the servant had gone before giving me a look fraught with meaning, saying ‘It’ll be safer this way, especially being able to see the host drink first.’

Having completed our toilet, we entered the dining-room, where Boris Nikolayevitch and Nikolai Nikolayevitch were already sitting at breakfast.

There most probably had been a slight tiff between the brothers, at least judging from the end of the sentence uttered by Boris Nikolayevitch, ‘—you cannot possibly lay claim to any part of the inheritance. After all, you never paid so much as a visit to our uncle and he was entirely in my care.’

‘A will represents the will of the departed,’ Nikolai Nikolayevitch answered coldly. ‘Whether I visited him or not is beside the point. Since he left me a part of his estate, this is how it must be.’

Boris Nikolayevitch was about to say something, but noticing our arrival, broke off the conversation abruptly, greeted me very cordially and offered tea. ‘I hope you slept well,’ he addressed us both.

‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘I slept like a log till morning.’

‘And I, too,’ said Holmes. ‘Country air does predispose one to sleep, especially after an energetic stroll. And we must’ve strolled round your place at least a full hour before retiring.’

‘You have such a lovely nanny,’ he added, turning to Nikolai Nikolayevich.

‘Oh, indeed!’ answered the young man smiling happily. Evidently, he liked having the old lady praised. His face lit up with a kind and sympathetic smile. ‘I do love the old lady,’ he said tenderly, ‘for I have neither father nor mother. She is all I have left as the only loving reminder of my happy childhood.’

The brothers reminisced about their childhood, their capers and pranks. Our presence didn’t seem to divert them from their memories. However, when breakfast was over, before leaving the table, Boris Nikolayevitch turned to my friend, ‘You will allow me to ask a question, Mr Holmes?’

‘By all means,’ came the answer.

‘Forgive me for what might be considered an insolent question, but I am curious to know how far advanced is your investigation into clearing up the mysterious murder. In fact, has it advanced at all?’

Holmes gave an enigmatic smile. ‘Yes, one could say that it is advancing and successfully so,’ he said. ‘But owing to certain circumstances I have to be circumspect and consider the time is not yet ripe for me to reveal the results. Of course, while I know I can rely on your discretion, nonetheless, an incautious word, involuntarily dropped, may serve to harm the course of events.’

Boris Nikolayevitch shrugged, ‘Of course, you know best and it would be silly of me to insist. Sooner or later, however, you’ll reveal all yourself, but since I do not belong amongst the ranks of the curious, I shall be silent, at least until such time as you yourself choose to share your secrets with me.’

We exchanged various trivia and then Holmes announced he had to say something to me in private. We thanked our host for breakfast and left the dining-room. We went back to our room, put on our hats and went out, following the country road further out. Holmes glanced around him, saw that nobody followed and we lessened our pace. Well over a mile later, we threw ourselves on the soft grass beside the road.

‘Well, then, my dear Holmes, last night you promised you’d reveal something interesting to me concerning your preliminary findings. We are all alone here, and since we cannot be overheard, there is nothing to prevent us from speaking loudly and clearly.’

‘True, true,’ said Holmes and stretched himself out with evident pleasure on the green sward. ‘When we set off, it was with the intention of sharing with you everything I have done up to this point. If you are ready, I’ll begin.’

‘Of course,’ I said in joyful anticipation of a good story.

Holmes stretched himself lazily, turned his head to face me and began his story.

‘You probably remember, my dear Watson,’ he began, ‘our first arrival on the scene. As soon as we arrived at the scene of the crime, I was really amazed at the inadequate attention the investigative authorities had given the matter. It was as if the crime was of no particular interest. They didn’t even bother to examine the room in which Kartzeff died. By the way, even from my initial glance at the bed on which he died, I was able to spot clues with the use of my magnifying glass and that put me on the right track. It was from that moment that I was convinced that the crime was committed not by a man, but by a beast.

‘I spotted a few soft grey hairs on the blanket and the pillows. I examined them with a magnifying glass and established that they undoubtedly belonged to an animal. Then a close examination of the waxed parquet floor showed several traces of movement from the window to the bed and back again. These were long, with a narrow heel and long toes. They had definitely been made by an ape. I found the same sort of traces by the wall from which the window of the dead man looked out.

‘It was clear that the ape had crept into Kartzeff’s room through the window pane, strangled him, clambered up to the roof and then descended using the rain pipe attached to the wall.

‘An examination of the corpse only confirmed my assumption, as there were traces of an ape’s paws round the throat of the corpse.

‘You know, of course, that I have often journeyed through India. I have covered nearly all the shores of the Indian Ocean, often travelling deep inland and, on several occasions, I saw the baboons which local Indians utilized for hunting. It was enough to show these dreaded animals the intended victim for them to leap on it with lightning-like agility, using their muscular paws to choke the life out of it. For some reason, these Indian baboons somehow came to mind when I looked at the scene of the crime.

‘I have to admit that, at first, my suspicions fell strongly on Nikolai Nikolayevitch, of whom it was said that he visited his uncle extremely rarely and when departing never ever displayed any warmth. That’s why I hastened away with you to test my suspicions. But the old nanny’s account caused me to change my mind completely and all suspicions directed at Nikolai Nkolayevitch flew out of my mind.

‘In fact, since then I had no doubt that his brother, Boris Nikolayevitch had committed the crime, although the latter hadn’t betrayed guilt in the slightest manner. His service and dismissal from the navy and merchant marine, his poor reputation and finally his travels up and down the Indian Ocean gave rise to the first suspicions. Even then, the thought struck me that it could have been there that this sort of ape was acquired by him.

‘The threatening letter which came to us in the hotel only strengthened my suspicion. That letter was a terrible blunder on the part of Boris Nikolayevitch and became the prime mover in establishing his guilt. Of course, it is possible to disguise handwriting, but I am certain that a handwriting expert will prove that it is that of Boris Kartzeff.

‘And so, this was the course of my thinking: he’d lost everything in riotous living and now he couldn’t wait for the death of his uncle. He knew about the will. And so, seeing that his own estate was about to go under the hammer, he decided to advance his way out of the situation.

‘The fact is that from the moment of his arrival he had kept the ape under lock and key, let nobody see it, all this was a clear indication that he was up to no good. Evidently, that damned beast had been prepared for its task long before and all he had to do was point it at the victim for it to carry out its task. This is how Kartzeff distanced himself from the crime, substituting a creature that had no sense of what it was doing, thus guaranteeing his own safety from punishment.

‘I fully comprehended his train of thought and action, but I have to admit that as an intelligent man he too read my mind and intuitively realized he could not escape from me. Of that he must actually have been convinced on the very first day we met, and when we arrived the very first time he immediately decided to put an end to us. You, of course, hadn’t noticed that we had been assigned a room in which the window had a pane with a broken latch, nor that the room in which old Kartzeff had been strangled had a pane with a similarly broken latch.

‘But on that occasion, his plan did not work. With foresight, I had nailed down the pane and for it to be opened there would have to be enough noise for us to be alerted. And that wasn’t part of the villain’s plan. I think you saw him in the window during our stroll last night—’