The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes (59 page)

‘A curious coincidence,' said Holmes blandly.

‘Coincidence?' Mr Jackson tightened his mouth. ‘Cold-blooded and deliberate, if you ask me. According to Mrs Tuckett, they were reconciled. First thing Williams did then was to take his wife down to Mr Littlington, of Bakers the Solicitors, in Waterloo Street, and make her sign everything of her father's over to him.'

‘Ah, yes,' said Holmes, as if approving of such prudence on the part of Smith,
alias
Williams. ‘That is just as it should be.'

Mr Jackson looked at him sharply but my companion smiled and bowed himself out of the kiosk.

‘I fear, Watson, that Constance Maxse is by no means Mr Smith's first bigamous bride. I should give a good deal to know how many there are altogether.'

As we walked past the pier and heard the music of the band drifting in towards the shore, I said, ‘What can it matter? He will go to penal servitude for seven years, if he goes for a day.'

Holmes frowned at me.

‘I should like something better than that for Mr Smith. He is an artist to whom a mere seven years would be an insult. A true artist in crime, Watson, plays the game with nothing less than his feet on two boards, the pit beneath him and the noose round his neck.
Qualis artifex pereo
, as the Emperor Nero remarked wisely at the last. The execution shed is a far nobler exit for such men than a mere convict cell.'

IV

Our return to Baker Street from the coast of the Bristol Channel coincided with another of those periods of lethargy that overtook Holmes without apparent warning. Since the beginning of the investigation I feared that he might be suffering from a psychic ailment of some kind. He seemed, from time to time, to lose interest in a case that was far from concluded. Much of the day he leaned back in his chair, in gloomy speculation. When Lestrade came to see us of an evening to impart the criminal news of London, he now found Holmes leaning languidly against the mantelpiece, scarcely endeavouring to conceal his yawns.

This lasted for about five days after our return, during which he said not a word to our Scotland Yard friend of the inquiry which we had in hand. It was the morning post on the sixth day that put an end to his indolence. I was aware that from time to time an envelope embossed with the crest of Somerset House appeared among my friend's correspondence. He had been indebted on several occasions to Dr L'Estrange, the archivist of that estimable institution where all births, marriages, and deaths are recorded. On this occasion, Holmes appeared from his bedroom well after ten o'clock and, showing none of his usual disdain for correspondence before breakfast, snatched at the Somerset House envelope. In a single cut, he slit it open with the silver and ruby-handled paperknife that had been a token of gratitude from a prime minister of France, Georges Clemenceau, following the resolution of the Dreyfus espionage scandal and the vindication of an innocent man.

He read the enclosed letter with a chuckle.

‘Dear me, Watson! We have underestimated Mr Smith!'

I could see that there was a second sheet of paper attached to the letter. He looked up, his eyes shining with merriment.

‘This, my dear fellow, is the marriage certificate of George Joseph Smith!'

‘To Miss Burnham—or possibly to Miss Constance Maxse?'

He shook his head.

‘Better than any of those. This records his marriage, under his own name in 1908, at Bristol, to Edith Mabel Pegler. We should have done that lady a grave injustice in assuming an irregular relationship between them. She is described here as a housekeeper, no doubt to her bridegroom. George Joseph Smith appears as thirty-three years old, a bachelor and general dealer, son of George Smith deceased, described as a figure artist.'

‘Then the man is a bigamist! Thank God, there is an end of the matter.'

He looked at me and shook his head.

‘My dear Watson, your capacity for bourgeois moral calculation never ceases to amaze me. If Smith is a mere bigamist, then Miss Maxse may be set free and our interest ends. I venture to think that will not be so. However, let us count up. Our general dealer marries Miss Pegler in 1908. Two years later, he marries a woman, yet unknown to us, as Henry Williams. A year later he marries Alice Burnham, now deceased. A few weeks ago, he becomes a bridegroom for the fourth time that we know of. How many times he may have walked down the aisle with other brides is yet to be revealed.'

With that, he began to open the rest of his correspondence, glancing briefly at each letter and tossing it aside.

‘Can it be for money?' I asked sceptically. ‘How many of these women had much to give him?'

‘In the case of Alice Burnham and Constance Maxse, I have no doubt that their families might be blackmailed or bullied into parting with a handsome sum in exchange for Smith allowing himself to be divorced at the first possible moment. Better still, think what he might demand by revealing that a union was yet unconsummated and that a complete annulment might be possible. You see? We can be sure of something like that in two cases. What the financial position of the
soi-disante
Mrs Williams may have been, we have yet to discover. It is certain, from the details already sent me by the Clerk of Probate, Admiralty and Divorce, that no divorce action between Smith and the former Miss Pegler was listed before 1910 or even 1912. As you acutely observe, that makes him guilty of bigamy, a subject we will now put to rest.'

‘Put to rest?' I got up from my chair and watched him dismember a kipper. ‘But, for God's sake, Holmes, we have a duty to free our client's daughter from the clutches of the man!'

He put down his fork and looked at me.

‘Our first duty, Watson, is to use our best efforts to ensure that our client sees his daughter alive again. As matters stand, I should not count upon it.'

I stared at him, not understanding, until he retrieved and handed me a second letter. This was from Mr Maxse. He had endeavoured to contact his daughter, only to be told by the Southsea landlady that Mr Smith had been away for a week—as our visit to Weston-super-Mare already informed us. On his return, the couple had moved from Southsea and were now thought to be somewhere in the Midlands.

‘He is on the loose with that poor girl!' I said in dismay, as I put down Mr Maxse's letter. ‘Surely, then, the time has come to alert Lestrade? A warrant may be put out for the man, if only for bigamy.'

Holmes stared ahead of him, at the August sky framed by the window.

‘I think not, Watson. We will not yet involve Lestrade, if you please. Once our suspicions reach Scotland Yard, they become public property. There is no discretion in that organization. They could not keep a secret if their lives depended on it. Moreover, bigamy is not a crime actively pursued by our police force. They prefer the comfortable method of waiting for the criminal to make an error. In any case, if my suspicions are correct, I fear that any bigamy warrant for Smith might also prove to be the death-warrant of Constance Maxse.'

With this flourish of Hoxton melodrama he dropped the subject and would not be provoked into taking it up again. Nothing was said of it to Lestrade on his visit that evening. Next morning, a further embossed envelope arrived from Somerset House. It contained a copy of the marriage certificate of Henry Williams and Bessie Mundy, dated at Weymouth on 26 August 1910. This was accompanied by a further certificate, recording that Bessie Williams,
née
Mundy, had died of ‘misadventure' at Herne Bay on 13 July 1912 and that an inquest had been held.

‘A coroner's jury,' I said cheerfully. ‘Well, I must say, that rather puts Mr Smith in the clear, so far as everything but bigamy may be concerned.'

Holmes fixed me with an expressionless stare that was far worse, in its way, than any glowering or glaring.

‘I doubt that,' he snapped, ‘I doubt that very much indeed.'

So it was that on the following afternoon we landed by a steamer that had brought us from Tower Pier to Herne Bay, and were taken by cab to our rooms at the Royal Hotel.

V

Next morning, in a shabby brick-and-tile police office, we sat opposite the rubicund and self-confident figure of Constable John Kitch-ingham, Coroner's Officer in the case of Miss Bessie Mundy, as the bigamously-married wife of ‘Henry Williams' was still known in law. Constable Kitchingham showed an ill-placed self-confidence.

‘I'm afraid we aren't Scotland Yard, Mr Holmes, not down here. Nor we aren't Baker Street neither, with respect, and don't need to be.' As he talked, he shuffled through a few papers, looking at them and not at us. ‘We know what people are round here, all the same, and that's a good deal. This town, Mr Holmes, has a good name, and we depend upon that for the summer trade.'

Had this bumpkin been looking at us he might have seen the beginnings of cold anger in Sherlock Holmes, usually evident only to those who knew him well, and avoided the consequences before it was too late. Kitchingham opened another folder and read resonantly from a paper.

‘Mr Henry Williams took a yearly tenancy of a house at 80 High Street, Herne Bay, on 20 May 1912. He lived there with his wife, Bessie, on affectionate terms for some weeks. On 8 July, he says, they made mutual wills.' Seeing the suspicion in Holmes's eyes, Kitchingham added hastily, ‘That had to be done. A new marriage or divorce invalidates an existing will.'

‘A fact of which I am aware,' Holmes said bleakly. ‘Pray continue.'

Constable Kitchingham continued.

‘The premises were shabby and had been derelict for long periods. It seems Mr Williams was vexed there was no bath for his wife. On the day after the making of the wills, an enamelled bath was ordered from Mr Hill, ironmonger of the same street. 'Owever, the rooms had never been brought “up to date”, so there was no means of plumbing the bath. It was delivered without taps or pipes, standing by the bathroom window to be filled and emptied by hand. This was done by carrying up hot water in a bucket from a copper in the downstairs kitchen.'

A horse and trap rattled over the cobbles outside the window.

‘I don't think you could say, gentlemen,' Kitchingham said proudly, ‘that Mr Williams showed himself lacking in duty to a wife that was never a well person. The day after that bath was delivered, he was with her at Dr French's. Epileptic seizures, she having had a bad one the day before, with him there to see it.'

‘Forgive me,' said Holmes quietly, ‘the inquest report contains no evidence that this lady had bitten her tongue or showed any sign of having had such a fit.'

‘Which was remarked, Mr Holmes, but which isn't invariable, it seems.'

‘That, at least, is true,' I said reluctantly.

Constable Kitchingham took courage from my approval.

‘Dr French thought it advisable to administer a mild sedative of potassium bromide, which would do no harm in any case.'

‘Nor much good,' I said. Kitchingham looked at me with the reproach of a man betrayed. Then he resumed.

‘However that may be, Mr Holmes, the doctor was fetched two nights later at 1.30
A
.
M
., when the lady had had another seizure. He found her flushed and clammy. Heart and pulse were normal, but she complained of a headache.'

‘The files of the
Herne Bay Press
, which I had the pleasure of consulting in the public library yesterday afternoon, tell us that,' Holmes said dryly. ‘On another page the paper also records the July temperature for that week as varying between 78 and 82 degrees and remarks on the humidity of the season. I should imagine the entire population of Herne Bay might have been flushed and clammy on such a night. Nor do I see how Dr French could say much about an epileptic seizure which must have been over before he got there. Unless she had bitten her tongue or something of the sort, which once again was not the case.'

Kitchingham shrugged. His tone now assumed a melodramatic self-importance, with which he had no doubt told the story to a good many people before us.

‘Two days later, according to Mr Williams, they rose as the town hall clock sounded the half-hour at 7.30. He went out to buy some fish. He didn't fill the bath, so his wife must have done it herself. On his return, about a half hour later, he called out to her, received no reply, and then went into the bathroom. She was lying on her back in the bath, which was three-quarters filled. Her head was under water, her trunk on the bottom, legs sloping up, feet just clear of the surface. He pulled her up, so that she lay against the slope of the bath, her head clear of the water. Then he sent a message to Dr French. “Can you come at once? I am afraid my wife is dead.”'

‘What does French have to say about it?'

‘He came about fifteen minutes later and found her on her back, her head having slipped beneath the water again. There was no pulse, but neither body nor water was cold. She was clutching a piece of Castille Soap in her right hand. They lifted her out and laid her on the floor. Dr French removed her false teeth and tried artificial respiration for ten minutes, while Mr Williams assisted by holding his wife's tongue. But she'd gone. Clean gone, sir.'

‘That I do not doubt. When did you first see her body?'

‘About two hours later, as coroner's officer sent to take their statements.'

‘Where was it?'

‘Lying on the boards of the bathroom floor. Being quite a small room it was behind the door as you opened it.'

‘What was it covered with?'

‘It wasn't, Mr Holmes.'

‘Do you mean to tell me that this man left his dead wife naked on the floor behind the door for two hours, while policemen and coroner's officers, landlord and undertakers, the world and his wife, tramped in and out?'

‘If you put it like that.'

‘If you can think of another way of putting the matter, Mr Kitch-ingham, I should be obliged to hear of it. Now, the report in the paper says nothing of evidence at the inquest as to the height of the lady and dimensions of the bath.'