The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (28 page)

Neither Holmes nor I supposed at the outset that there was anything likely to involve us in the investigation. Since the acquittal of Robert Wood in the Camden Town murder case, thirteen years had passed during which both Sherlock Holmes and I had admired the skill of Sir Edward from a distance. The newspapers of those days were filled with the triumphs of his advocacy and, no less, with reports of sensational trials in which even he had not been able to save his client's neck. Dr Crippen, George Joseph Smith of the ‘Brides in the Bath' murders, and Seddon the poisoner were among his clients who had gone to the gallows. In the most famous of his cases, Holmes was of the opinion that Sir Edward could have saved Dr Crippen, had not the defendant's chivalry forbidden the calling of any evidence that might implicate his young mistress, Ethel Le Neve.

It was the more surprising that, within a few days of Ronald Light's arrest, my friend should have received a wire from Sir Edward's clerk, Mr Archibald Bowker, asking us as a matter of urgency to attend a conference at his chambers in Temple Gardens on the following Monday. Sir Edward was at that moment conducting the defence of Eric Holt at Manchester Assizes, where this other young officer of the late war was accused of having shot his mistress. Holmes had shown himself increasingly reluctant to act as Mahomet summoned to the mountain by his clients, but even he could scarcely decline an invitation from a man of such public reputation.

To enter the presence of Sir Edward Marshall Hall in his middle years was a little like sharing the company of a great actor. It was well said that he had a head of Roman nobility on shoulders of Saxon power. By now his hair was silver and his profile a little sharper. Yet his voice retained a characteristic resonance and range, a depth of passion that would have been the envy of Henry Irving or Beerbohm Tree. The effect of his performance upon a jury was such as to make him the despair of even the most eminent of prosecuting counsel. Add to this the acuity of his mind, the speed and drama of his response, a knowledge of forensic science unparalleled at the English bar, and you will have some idea of the power of the great defender, as he was called. He could no longer enter a courtroom without every head turning in his direction, with a stir of excitement and a murmur running from floor to gallery.

Sir Edward stood in the window of his room at 3, Temple Gardens, as we entered. To either side, the break-front walnut bookcases housed maroon leather volumes of case reports, their green labels stamped in gold. Behind him, the lawns and trees fell away to the glitter of the Thames below Westminster Bridge, the smoke of steamers and the sails of barges along the Surrey shore. He shook our hands with a powerful grip, rang for tea and cakes, then motioned us to leather chairs. His desk was piled with briefs tied in pink tape and marked for his attention. I could not help noticing that one of these was inscribed ‘Rex v. Light' and endorsed with the words ‘Special 50 Guineas'. Sir Edward was not a member of the Midland Circuit and the etiquette of the Bar required that he could not appear there unless he was briefed ‘special' in addition to his usual fee and daily refreshers. He looked at us a little forlornly, as it seemed to me.

‘Gentlemen, I regret that I have had to bring you here but I must be at Manchester again tomorrow and had not the time to come even as far as Baker Street on this visit. Let me get to the point at once. It will not surprise you, I daresay, to know that the matter at issue is what is called the Green Bicycle case. You have no doubt read something of it.'

‘A little,' said Holmes cautiously. ‘Enough, at any rate, to follow the story as far as your client's arrest. May I ask how it was that he became a suspect, after so many months?'

Sir Edward's mouth tightened.

‘Nemesis, Mr Holmes. There is no other word for it. Last month, on the twenty-third of February to be precise, a boatman was taking a load of coal into Leicester by the canal. Close to the town gasworks, the tow-rope from the horse ran slack and dipped under the surface. When it tightened and came up, it lifted from the water the frame of a bicycle. The man was able to see it for a moment before it slipped from the rope and fell back into the water. He returned next day, no doubt remembering the rewards that had been offered in the case of Bella Wright. A canal dredger dragged the water until the bicycle was found again. It was the frame of a green bicycle, a BSA De Luxe model, without the rear wheel. The individual number of the bicycle had been filed away. However, the owner evidently did not know that the De Luxe models have a further number-stamp on the handlebar pillar. From this it was established that the machine was made in 1910, ordered by a wholesaler in Derby, and sold to Ronald Light. Mr Light has also been paraded by the police and identified by Mr Measures and Mr Evans as the last person seen with Miss Wright before her death.'

I could not restrain my feelings after this last revelation. ‘Well, sir, this looks even blacker than the Camden Town murder did for Mr Robert Wood!'

‘Blacker yet,' Sir Edward said. ‘Valeria Craven and Muriel Nunney, the two schoolgirls who were followed by a man on a bicycle, also identify Ronald Light as that man. Bella Wright's uncle and another member of the family who was in the cottage at Gaulby identify him by his appearance and by his voice as the man who waited outside for Miss Wright, while she remained indoors and hoped he would go away. They are quite sure that it was his voice which said, “Bella, you
have
been a long time,” when she left them.'

‘Curious,' said Holmes to himself, but the advocate held up his hand, entreating a further explanation.

‘There is worse, Mr Holmes. When the police dragged that same stretch of the canal a few days ago to see what else might be found, they retrieved the holster of a Webley Scott .455 service revolver, such as Mr Light was issued with during the war. It was filled with .455 ammunition, identical to the bullet which killed Miss Wright.'

‘And the revolver?' Holmes inquired.

Sir Edward shook his splendid head. ‘It was not found.'

Holmes gave a sceptical sniff. ‘He throws away the holster and the ammunition but not the gun, the very article that might hang him!'

‘Perhaps it is there but not found, Mr Holmes. I scarcely want to encourage a further search.'

‘Would it not be found in a canal, Sir Edward? It is little more than dragging a pond. Smaller items like a holster or cartridges are found but the revolver is not? Singular, to be sure. And does your client offer any explanation for his extraordinary conduct?'

Sir Edward looked grim but resolute.

‘He insists that he met Bella Wright for the first time that evening as she was riding to her uncle's cottage. She was standing by the side of the road. The front wheel of her bicycle was loose in the fork and she asked him if he had a spanner to tighten the nuts. He had not. They rode carefully to her uncle's cottage. Ronald Light claims that he had a slow puncture in his front tyre and could not ride for very long at a time without stopping to pump up the tyre. He met her again as she left her uncle's cottage and kept company with her for about ten minutes until their routes parted. With his slow puncture, the short distance took some time. He then rode on back to Leicester. That was the last he knew of her.'

‘He has told you all this himself?' Holmes asked quickly.

‘No, Mr Holmes. I have not met Light and I shall not do so until the day of the trial. To speak frankly, his character was not of the best during his military service. Moreover, when he was arrested he first intimated that he had an alibi for the evening on which Bella Wright met her death. Then he threw that defence away, admitted his ownership of the bicycle and his meeting with her, but insisted that she was alive and well when he last saw her at about five minutes before nine
P
.
M
. Twenty minutes later she was dead.'

‘And will you not probe him further?'

‘Mr Holmes, I fear that if I were to discuss the case with Light, he would either blurt out some half-confession of guilt or solicit my advice as to the best story he might invent. I should have to withdraw from the case, if anything of the sort were to happen. There are clients whom it is best to represent at a distance. We must put Mr Light aside and concentrate upon the evidence, the facts in the case. If you are prepared to assist in the matter, I should consider it an honour to retain your services and those of your colleague, Dr Watson.'

There was no delay in agreeing this, since Holmes was intrigued beyond measure by the mystery of the case. Before we left, however, he returned to two points which seemed to Sir Edward of little significance, by comparison with the evidence of firearms and bullets.

‘Strange, is it not?' Holmes said. ‘They have only known one another for fifteen or twenty minutes at the most, according to what the poor girl said to her uncle. Yet as she left the cottage, Light called her “Bella”. The exact words were, “Bella, you
have
been a long time.” Hardly a familiarity that a stranger would use. Is it not more likely that he said “Hello”? “Hello, you
have
been a long time”? It would be easy enough to mistake the two words. “Hello” might sound like “Bella” if spoken rather softly or heard at some distance.'

‘Mr Measures insists that the man with the bicycle called her “Bella”.'

Holmes sighed. ‘Well, Sir Edward, that is as nothing compared to the difficulty of the bird, the carrion crow, as the newspapers describe it. I assume its cadaver has not been preserved as evidence?'

‘There was no apparent reason to do so, Mr Holmes. It was dissected but nothing was found. No shot and no bullet.'

‘With the greatest respect, Sir Edward, there was every reason to preserve evidence in this matter. Take, for example, the matter of the tracks.'

‘Which tracks, Mr Holmes?'

‘The twelve little tracks of blood that we are told ran to and fro between the gate of the field and the body of the unfortunate young woman,' Holmes said thoughtfully. ‘The police recorded those tracks with their usual meticulous care. We are invited to believe that this evil bird sat upon the gate. I have no doubt that it did. We are further invited to believe that it then flew to and fro, gathering blood from its victim and returning to the gate to consume it.'

‘Well, Mr Holmes?' It was impossible not to see that Sir Edward Marshall Hall's expression had darkened a little with displeasure. He had staked everything on firearms or ballistics and was in no mood for a lecture on ornithology.

‘Well, Sir Edward, if you observe a carrion crow or any other bird of its sort, you will see that it does not fly to and fro. Unless it is disturbed, it stands over its loathsome feast and continues to feed there until it has finished. But, of course, there is a far greater objection to the tracks of blood.'

‘Indeed?' said Sir Edward coolly.

‘There are twelve!' Holmes said. ‘I am surprised that even the local constabulary did not notice the absurdity of it. Twelve! I ask you, Sir Edward!'

He sat back with a flourish of his hand as if in despair at all human intelligence.

‘You think them too many?'

‘Not the least,' said Holmes reassuringly. ‘Thirteen, if you like. Or twenty-three, or thirty-three. But not twelve or fourteen or sixteen or eighteen or any other even number. If the bird went to and fro from the gate, be it flying or hopping, it would not have had blood upon it when it first made towards the body. Therefore the number of tracks surely cannot be twelve or any other even number, if we are to believe the story we have been told. You had not noticed that, Sir Edward?'

It seemed that Sir Edward had not, nor was he best pleased by having it drawn to his attention in this casual manner. However, we got through the remainder of the interview without further damage to vanity on either side. A few days later, in the sunlight of an early spring morning, Holmes and I took the London and North-Eastern Railway from St Pancras to Leicester.

II

Holmes spent the greater part of the journey reading again those statements of evidence which Sir Edward Marshall Hall had had copied for him. I had read them the previous evening but could add little to my friend's remarks at our meeting in Temple Gardens. At the same time Ronald Light, like Robert Wood in the Camden Town case, had made the task of defending him infinitely more difficult by his foolish or guilty conduct. Instead of coming forward at the time of Bella Wright's death to tell the police what he knew, Ronald Light—like Robert Wood—had behaved as a murderer might have done. In Light's case, he had got rid of his green bicycle in the canal, throwing his revolver-pouch and ammunition after it. Had these items never been discovered, he might have lived undisturbed for the rest of his life as a teacher of mathematics in Cheltenham. Yet the boatman's tow-rope on the Leicester canal might now prove to be the very rope that hanged him.

We were almost at Northampton before Holmes put the papers down and lit his pipe.

‘The story will not do, Watson,' he said. ‘It will not do at all. I do not care for this case in the least. Sir Edward's brief is to fight for his client at all costs and win whatever it may take. As a dispassionate investigator, I find that uncongenial.'

‘You think Ronald Light guilty?'

He stared at the flat fields in which the winter rain still lay like a lake.

‘I think him very foolish. At the moment, I think no more.'

I gave a laugh and said, ‘Then you must be the only man in England who thinks no more than that. Even Sir Edward will not go near him, for fear of being compromised.'

Holmes thought for a moment.

‘I do not say a jury will find him guilty, Watson. Sir Edward will find a good deal to say in his defence. Consider this. We are to believe that Light went out on his bicycle to meet, or seduce, or rape, girls or young women. There is no evidence that he had ever done so in the past but set that aside. We are also to believe that he took with him a Webley Scott service revolver for the purpose. He is a professional man of some intelligence and must have known that he dared not use the gun without the probability of being hanged, as the last man seen with the poor girl. There again, the sound of a shot carries a good distance on a quiet summer evening in the country and would surely be heard. Even to threaten a young woman with a gun in broad daylight on a public road would be his downfall. Surely it would be reported. If it is true that he behaved in such a manner none the less, Watson, it falls in the area of mania. That subject belongs to your profession rather than to mine.'