The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (56 page)

‘But Scott cannot have inflicted such a wound at so short a range,' said the Deputy Fiscal, sitting down again. ‘There is no altering that.'

Holmes turned to Dr Littlejohn.

‘On what day was Hamborough killed?'

‘I understand it was 10 August.'

‘The day upon which Dr Macmillan certified accidental death? The poor boy was then taken to Ventnor on the Isle of Wight. He was buried there on 17 August, a week to the day after his death. Correct?'

Dr Littlejohn nodded but said nothing.

‘After which,' Holmes continued, ‘his body lay in the family vault. For how long?'

‘The exhumation was carried out on 4 September and the postmortem followed.'

‘Did it indeed?' Holmes turned to the window and glanced down at the crowds in the Trongate. Then he looked round. ‘In your experience as a police surgeon, Dr Littlejohn, how many of the bodies examined by you in cases of suspicious death have been exhumed?'

The bald bespectacled surgeon stared back at him.

‘Not many as a percentage but quite a few in total.'

‘From what causes?'

‘Almost always where there is a suspicion of poison. Also I have known two or three who have died from violent blows and where there has been a question raised later of
mens rea
, deliberate harm.'

‘I see.' Holmes turned to the window again. ‘What is your experience of cases where the deceased has died of gunshot wounds?'

Dr Littlejohn shrugged.

‘I have known two cases of homicidal shooting and quite a number of accidental shootings in the hunting season.'

‘In how many of those cases was the deceased interred and exhumed before post-mortem examination?'

Dr Littlejohn stared at him, this time without speaking.

‘There was not one,' said Holmes at last, ‘was there, doctor?'

David Stewart had been fidgeting upon the sofa.

‘What can that matter, Mr Holmes? Dr Littlejohn is expert and vastly experienced in the examination of gunshot wounds.'

Holmes bowed his head a little, as if to acknowledge this.

‘Indeed he is. Perhaps he is less experienced, however, in the effects upon gunshot wounds of decomposition, a warm summer month later and after a few weeks of interment.'

‘There was no decomposition to speak of!' said Littlejohn indignantly.

‘Permit me,' Holmes turned to the table, from which he took a sheet of paper. ‘Your post-mortem report, Dr Littlejohn. May I read you a word or two? “
The features were swollen … Decomposition was making progress … The hair, owing to advancing decomposition, was easily detached
…”'

‘There is nothing in that!' said the Deputy Fiscal, now plainly rattled.

‘Is there not, Mr Stewart? Are you familiar with the work of Professor Matthew Hay, who acts as police-surgeon for the City of Aberdeen?'

‘I have met him several times.'

‘Are you familiar, specifically, with his work on gunshot injuries?'

‘His work?'

‘His published work.'

‘I cannot say that I am.'

‘Would it surprise you to know that three weeks after death the progress of decomposition would make any measurement of the surface extent of an original shotgun wound almost impossible?'

The gaze of Sherlock Holmes now pinned his young victim like a moth to a specimen board. He went on without respite.

‘The post-mortem report by Dr Littlejohn gives the maximum extent of the wound as varying from two to three inches, which in itself is consistent with a shot fired at a range of fifteen feet. Now, gentlemen, either there was decomposition or there was not. If there was, no accurate measurement of the wound can be given. If there was not, then the measurement is accurate and Hamborough was shot from fifteen feet. He was certainly not shot by Major Monson with paper pellets! In either event, I fear that your case against the defendant is blown to smithereens.'

Stewart stared at him with that mixture of exasperation and incomprehension characteristic of so many adversaries of Sherlock Holmes. The young man seemed to be listening to the door of a trap as it closed behind him. He then made the same mistake as so many of his predecessors, seeing a promise of salvation and leaping at it.

‘Why should Scott do Monson's work for him? It was Monson who would benefit directly from the insurance, not Scott.'

Holmes walked across and laid a hand sympathetically on the young man's shoulder.

‘He did it for the money, Mr Stewart. He meant to be rich for life. There was no way to do that so long as Hamborough lived, once his funds were exhausted. Scott and Monson were partners in fleecing the poor fellow but until he was dead, they had nothing more. Fortunately for Scott, Dr Macmillan knew little of gunshot wounds and gave the young man a death certificate. Scott then withdrew from the scene to attend to his own affairs. His undoubted intention was that Monson should believe that he himself had killed Hamborough accidentally. If the coast had remained clear, Scott could have returned to claim from Monson the “debts” his young friend Hamborough owed him. I do not doubt that Hamborough's signature, forged where necessary, would appear on far more IOUs than he ever wrote to Mr Beresford Tottenham, the moneylender. Such claims on the young man's estate, on the insurance money of £30,000, were more than enough to make Scott's fortune. The shooting would remain an accident, as Dr Macmillan thought it was. Naturally, when Scott read the reports of Monson's arrest, he preferred not to show his face.'

‘Monson would surely refuse to pay him,' said Mr Stewart hopefully.

Holmes shook his head.

‘Scott,
alias
Davis,
alias
Sweeney is no stranger to blackmail. Least of all when he might threaten to fabricate evidence of murder against his partner. Monson, the poor swindling booby, already believes that he shot Hamborough by accident. It would only need Scott to whisper in his ear a promise of going to the authorities with a story of having seen Monson creep up on the young man and take deliberate aim. For good measure, he might swear to having seen Monson take the bung out of the rowing-boat the night before. Scott himself, of course, was the perpetrator of that curtain-raiser.'

There was an uncomfortable silence, until Holmes added quietly, ‘You, Mr Stewart, would have hanged Monson even on the evidence you have now! Think how much easier your task would have been had Scott offered you such evidence as I have just suggested. Do you still doubt that Monson would give Scott half of the £30,000 to shut his mouth? I promise you he would give him all to save his neck from the rope!'

The Deputy Fiscal got slowly to his feet.

‘I will report what you have told me.'

‘Please do so,' said Holmes graciously, ‘and when you do, pray inform the Procurator with my compliments that Professor Matthew Hay, Police-Surgeon of Aberdeen, has already agreed to give evidence for the defence in any trial of Major Monson.'

It is a matter of history that Professor Hay did so and that the charges against Alfred John Monson were found ‘not proven' by the jury at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh. Holmes and I heard no more of the major, except that he sued Madame Tussaud's Waxworks for placing an effigy of him in the Chamber of Horrors. Edward Scott, or Edward Sweeney as he was born, remained at large. I was putting together the papers in the case, so that they might be deposited in the tin trunk, when something struck me in one of the depositions.

‘Is it not curious, Holmes, that having hired a place like Ardlamont for the summer, Scott absented himself so much at night? He seems to have risen late, gone to Glasgow by the afternoon steamer and returned late, except on Sundays when he dined with the Monsons at Ardlamont. On Wednesday and Saturday, he went still earlier, to be in the city by two in the afternoon. It is all here in the butler's statement. I suppose the fellow was probably taking street-girls to some low-class hotel.'

Holmes listened with eyes closed and fingertips pressed tight together. Then he opened his eyes and said, ‘But scarcely on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons with such regularity.'

He closed his eyes again and appeared to have gone to sleep. Then he sat up abruptly.

‘It is his profession! Of course! Not an admirable one but, such as it is, I suppose it is his
métier
. What professional man is occupied every evening but Sunday—and upon Wednesday and Saturday afternoons?'

‘I have no idea at this moment.'

‘Dear me,' he said with a yawn, ‘did you never, in your wild youth, Watson, attend a music-hall? It is available every evening with matinées on Wednesday and Saturday. I daresay you might have found Mr Scott on the stage of the Glasgow Empire.'

‘That is quite absurd!'

‘So it is. However, if I had a guinea for every occasion on which what is absurd has proved to be true, I should be a good deal richer than I am.'

We did not discuss the matter further. A long time later, a letter came to Holmes from David Stewart, the Deputy Fiscal. Edward Scott had been seen briefly, working as the assistant to a music-hall magician. Then he had vanished for good. In the course of the stage performance, there was some ‘trick-shooting', when the blindfold magician shot the segments from an orange on his assistant's head—or something of the kind. The trick is one of the oldest in the world. The fruit, or whatever the target be, is carefully dismembered beforehand. The pieces are plucked from it by a concealed thread in the moment when the audience blinks at the firing of the shot and the scene is veiled by smoke. One of the chores of the brave but humble assistant is to ensure that the cartridges in the pistol of the magician have been rendered blank.

‘I assure you,' said Holmes, stretching out his long legs towards the winter fire, ‘Scott is probably quite safe, even if he should be found again. To prosecute him now would be difficult in any event. Moreover, if they could not get a verdict against Monson, they will hardly get one against Scott. Mr Stewart and his colleagues must admit publicly the falsity of all their evidence in the previous case and the fact that I was right in every particular. I do not somehow think that they will swallow so bitter a pill.'

It is a matter of history that they never did.

The Case of the Hygienic Husband

I

On a rainy morning of early autumn, in the last days of peace before the Great War, Sherlock Holmes leant back in his chair, the remains of his breakfast still littering the table. He began to open his correspondence. As I took up the
Times
report on the Serbian crisis, there was an exclamation from my friend. I put aside the paper and saw his face writhing with inward merriment, his eyes shining, as if he was restraining a convulsive attack of laughter.

He read out to me from a sheet of notepaper in his hand.

‘
Sir—In answer to your question regarding my parentage, etc. My mother was a bus-horse, my father a cab-driver, my sister a rough-rider over the arctic regions. My brothers were all gallant sailors on a steam-roller. This is the only information I can give to those who are not entitled to ask such questions—contained in the letter I received on the 15th inst. Your despised son-in-law G. Smith
.'

‘Who the devil, Holmes, is G. Smith and to whom is this nonsense addressed?'

He looked at two more sheets of paper and shook his head.

‘I have no notion, my dear fellow. At least, it can scarcely be addressed to us. Curiously, however, there seems to be no covering letter. I have no doubt that we shall discover something more before the day is over. One moment. Here is a second from the author of the first!'

He held up this sheet of paper and read it out.

‘
Sir—I do not know your next move, but take my advice and be careful. Yours etc., G. Smith
. Now that, Watson, sounds more businesslike. And here is a third, dated like the others within the past ten days.
Sir—I have all the copies of the letters, &c., my wife and self has sent to you and yours, also all letters &c., we have received relating to same and family affairs which I intend to keep for the purpose of justice. G. Smith
. Whoever Mr Smith may be he shows, does he not, an engaging innocence of the conventions of grammar and syntax?'

‘But why have these things been sent to us with no explanation?'

‘I believe we shall have an answer to that soon enough.'

Without another word, he knocked out his pipe and stretched upon the sofa with his violin and a score of Scriabin's tone poem
Prometheus
. Holmes had lately conceived an unfortunate enthusiasm for the ‘new music' of Stravinsky and Scriabin. Such cacophony may do well enough in a concert hall, but in one's domestic quarters it is insupportable. The score of
Prometheus
he professed to find interesting because the composer claimed that he had allowed religion, occultism, and even the properties of light to dictate the unmelodious music. A better reason for destroying such tosh would be hard to find!

As Holmes predicted, however, there was a happy interruption half an hour later from the clang of the bell at the street-door. Mrs Hudson came upstairs alone.

‘A gentleman,' she said, rather archly as I thought. ‘He has no appointment but believes Mr Holmes may be in possession of some papers belonging to him. The gentleman is here to collect them.'

Holmes seemed not the least put out as he laid down his violin and bow.

‘By all means show him up, Mrs Hudson. He shall have our undivided attention.'

While we awaited this visitor, Holmes recited phrases from the letters as if they had been a schoolboy's lesson.

‘My mother was a bus-horse, my father a cab-driver, my sister a rough-rider across the arctic regions. This promises rather well, Watson. I am inclined to think …'

What he was inclined to think remained unspoken. At that moment, the door of the sitting-room opened. We confronted a tall pleasant-looking man, a little more than fifty years old. His face was high-nosed and pale, his clothes of a dark clerical cut with a pearl-grey cravat.