The Sensible Necktie and Other Stories of Sherlock Holmes (11 page)

“Goodness,” said Miss Brill. “So you mean to say that there was a treasure underneath our hallway the whole time we have been living here?”

“Yes.”

“And now it is stolen?” said Miss Landseer. “Stolen from under our very noses!”

“Look on it from a positive angle, Miss Landseer. You never knew that you had this treasure, so why mourn the fact that it is gone?”

Miss Landseer put on a cynical grin.

“Perhaps it would have been better if you were never summoned here to inform us of our loss.”

“In that case, I must make amends, and do everything in my power to help the police in tracking the thieves.”

We thus took our leave of the two ladies, who still seemed shocked by the lengthy explanation they had just received, and barely thanked us for our help.

“An attractive little mystery, eh, Watson?” said Holmes as we were walking down the street. “Incomprehensible when viewed from the perspective of Miss Landseer and her companion, but with a little outside information the whole thing was quite transparent.”

“I suppose so,” I said. “But how you managed to narrow it down to a hatch in the floor, I cannot fathom.”

“I based my reasoning entirely on the factor of the absent fifth footstep. We have encountered numerous cases, have we not, that hinged on something commonplace that has always been there, but suddenly is not? I look for such details, because I know that they tend to lead to a solution. If there is aberration in the midst of the mundane, the contrast is more easily detected.”

Holmes and I walked away from Albany Place in contentment of a satisfying solution, unaware of what proportions the case was to take. It appeared that a newspaperman had been listening to Holmes' interrogations at the public house, and, conjoining the snatches of conversation he had overheard with fragmentary information gained from some informant in the police force, he concocted a story claiming that Miss Landseer had purchased the house in complete awareness that it was the hiding place of the Quiller fortune, and had lived in luxury off the money since then, even hiring Sherlock Holmes to corroborate the hoax that the money had been stolen by burglars. These lies were most ardently refuted at the time, both by me in a letter to
The Times
, and by Inspector Lestrade in a public statement, but as the chances of catching the criminals diminished with each day so that no traces of them were found, and Miss Landseer herself seemed to prefer to let the matter rest, the false allegations of the gutter press were allowed to stand virtually unopposed. Now, several years later, the public might be prepared to absorb the finer details of the case and view it in its true light. Nothing was ever heard of the devious “Mr Hutchinson” and his accomplice again, although Holmes strongly believed that reports of similar crimes in New Jersey six months later contained strong indications of the same mind at work. An occasional correspondence with Miss Brill since our visit to Albany Place has assured me that the two women residing there lived on in the fashion they preferred until the peaceful demise of Miss Landseer two years later. I have been given to understand from the account of Miss Brill that her mistress spoke enthusiastically about Sherlock Holmes and his memorable visit to her house until her last days.

The Adventure of the Hobnailed Boots

The case of the six Napoleon busts which I have recounted previously in these annals, was, as my trusty readers might recall, a mystery of some momentum that had its beginnings in something seemingly trivial, brought to Sherlock Holmes' attention by Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard. Holmes' subsequent success in solving this case was met with much admiration from the good inspector, who proceeded by approaching Holmes in the following months with a number of similar trifles, expecting the consulting investigator to reveal their connection to some significant crime. Most of these cases, I am sorry to say, proved to be nothing more than the trifles they appeared to be at first sight. Among them were the amusing incident of the corn dolly, the slight but diverting case of the red-nosed pickpocket, and the affair of the bigamist Oliver Treadwell, who managed to keep three wives oblivious of each other's existence in different flats of one and the same house. But in this mostly unrewarding string of investigations, I retain in my records notes of one that proved much more consequential than was first suspected.

It began, as all of the cases mentioned above, with our receiving a visit from Lestrade, who was, at this time, in the habit of dropping by at Baker Street in the afternoons to enjoy a free cigar from Holmes' seemingly endless supply, which he eccentrically stored in the coal scuttle. Holmes questioned the unassuming little policeman on his recent work, ever eager to find a gem of a puzzle within the output of commonplace matters that made up the majority of the police work. On this occasion, Lestrade had been looking impatient from the moment he arrived, and it was apparent to me that he was enjoying the sensation of knowing something that Holmes did not know but would be very interested in.

“Do you know,” he said after chatting with us for nigh on twenty minutes, “there is a small affair that has come my way recently which might be right up your street, Mr Holmes.”

“And you are referring to the theft of your bicycle?” said Holmes.

Lestrade was distracted from the relish of his secret. “How the devil did you know about that?”

“I know that you are a keen cyclist in your leisure time, and the traces are usually apparent in the characteristic marks on your boots. But you have been wearing a new pair of boots on your two recent visits, and they lack the distinctive marks from the pedals. Thus, you have not been indulging in your favourite pastime for at least two weeks, and when a man is as passionate about something as you clearly are, one concludes that he has been robbed of this pleasure through circumstances that are beyond his control.”

Lestrade leaned forward in his chair and touched the side of his left boot. “The blackguards took it straight from the driveway. The sheer nerve!”

“It was not my intention to remind you of sadder things,” said Holmes. “You were about to tell us something.”

“Indeed I was, and perhaps your keen eye concerning footwear will come in handy in this problem. It is a case of alleged assault reported at Hackney police station yesterday morning, and it only came to my attention by coincidence when I had business there today. Apparently, it concerns a Mr Montague Selwyn, a railway porter living locally, who, while walking home the night before, had been struck on the head with something heavy so that he lost consciousness immediately, and when waking up in the deserted alley where the assault had taken place, learned that nothing had been stolen, except that his boots had been pulled off his feet and were nowhere to be seen. As the hour was late and he was close to his lodgings, he went home and did not report the theft until the following morning. A police constable accompanied him to the scene of the crime to investigate, but nothing could be ascertained. Mr Selwyn had neither seen nor heard anything strange prior to the attack, and could see no reason why anyone would want to run off with his boots. The robbery constitutes no great loss to him, as the boots in question were purchased at a second-hand clothes store for a small sum; small even for an impecunious labourer such as Mr Selwyn. The main reason why he reported the crime, he says, is his bafflement and more than wishing to retrieve the boots, he would like to know why the robbery was committed.”

“What a curious story,” I remarked. “It is the type of incident that you read brief notices of in the evening newspapers and then never hear the resolution. I expect things like that occur every day in this bustling metropolis.”

“You would be surprised, Dr Watson,” said Lestrade, “at all the singular occurrences that the police have to deal with. Some of them are merely strange and amusing, such as this one, but a great majority of them, I am sorry to say, are grotesque and illustrative of the basest aspects of human nature.”

“Did the police make inquiries at the second-hand clothes dealer?” asked Holmes, whose gaze had not strayed from Lestrade during his narrative.

“I doubt it,” said Lestrade. “Although the boots had been purchased not more than two weeks prior to the theft. But the whole thing is evidently some form of madness. I know, Mr Holmes, that I said so about the Napoleon bust business, but in that affair there was always a hint of something sinister, what with the violence of the deeds and the breakages. Here we have a man who commits an act of violence, I grant you, but only with one blow, and only to remove something that he cannot possibly make any money on. I advised the men to make a list of known escaped lunatics who might have been in the vicinity on that day.”

“That sounds like a good strategy,” I commented. “People who have taken leave of their senses often perpetrate the type of deeds you have described. On the spur of the moment, they swing something hard on the head of a passer-by without realising the strength of the blow. Seeing the result, this man was probably overcome with guilt, deterring him from striking again, and in his twisted logic the removal of the shoes was seen as some sort of conciliatory gesture. Or maybe he has an obsession in connection with footwear, and can be struck without warning by a strong impulse to steal the first pair that comes along.”

“We are back to the
idée fixe
again, Dr Watson!” cried Lestrade in a mixture of enthusiasm and disappointment. “Is Watson right this time, Mr Holmes?”

“He might be,” said Holmes, stroking his chin in contemplation. “I confess that the madness theory seems a bit more applicable here than in the Napoleon case. But I am reluctant to succumb to it, if only because the simplicity of it jars with my sense of aestheticism. After all, gentlemen, we must assume that a majority of people are sane and only a minority insane - at least to the point of stealing boots without reason. So based on that statistical assumption, we should consider other possibilities before seriously considering madness.”

“But what are the other possibilities?” I asked.

“Aha!” Holmes raised his hands as if in triumph. “Let us dwell on the matter.” With a bounce, he was out of his chair and had placed himself next to the blackboard that he kept on an easel in a corner next to the fireplace. He grabbed a bit of chalk in his hand and assumed the pose of an interrogating headmaster. “Now then, how many possible reasons for stealing a pair of boots off someone's person can we come up with?”

Lestrade and I looked at each other to try and surmise whether we should react with laughter or sincerity. But Holmes was perfectly serious, and he looked at us both with such intensity that I almost felt like I was headed for the dunce's chair.

“Well,” mumbled Lestrade eventually, “the thief could have been the previous owner of the boots, and wanted to retrieve them for sentimental reasons. Perhaps his wife had sold them in a moment of rage, and he was so furious that he went out to track them down.”

I could not help but chuckle slightly at Lestrade's theory, which he himself did not seem to believe in.

He peered at me. “I am struggling here, Doctor! Do you have any suggestions?”

Holmes dutifully wrote “1) Previous owner” on the blackboard, then turned to me with an expectant face.

“Uh, er… well, there is something of the Blue Carbuncle in this, is there not? Maybe someone has hidden something inside the boots, and did not expect them to be sold to anyone?”

Holmes wrote “2) Something hidden in boots” on the blackboard.

Now Lestrade was starting to enjoy the game. “Maybe Selwyn has been lying from the start and his boots were stolen. Suddenly, the man from whom they were stolen saw him walking down the street, and became so furious that he acted impulsively.”

Holmes frowned and nodded, as if he was struggling to take these suggestions seriously. He wrote “3) Boots stolen”.

“The simplest possibility,” I said, “would probably be that they were stolen by some vagrant or tramp, who had lost his own boots and was desperate for new ones. The weather has been particularly wet and cold these past few days. A homeless man who has no boots might be capable of the rashest of acts.”

“That is not a bad conjecture, Doctor,” said Lestrade. “Perhaps I should have all the common lodging houses of the vicinity searched?”

Holmes wrote “4) Vagrant” on the board, then took a step back and looked at the list. “Gentlemen, we seem to be taking one step forward and two steps back. The minute a possibility presents itself it is so easily flawed upon closer inspection. Look at this. Number three can be excluded at once, for instance. Unless they were extremely unusual boots of a glaring pastel colour, the previous owner could not possibly have identified them as his old boots in the darkness that night. Number one, well, Watson has time and again reminded me never to underestimate the rage of a wronged husband, but surely Selwyn would not report the theft if he himself was a thief. And if the clothes seller was the thief, then there is no need to direct rage at poor innocent Selwyn. Number four is an attractive proposition, but I deem it as highly unlikely all the same. Any tramp knows full well that if he is in desperate need of a pair of boots, he can get them for free from the nearest charity, or from fellow tramps. Boots are not such a rarity in this metropolis of ours that a tramp - already living on the margins of legality - should wish to incriminate himself in such a thoughtless way.” Holmes had drawn a line through all the alternatives as he discarded them, until only one remained. He pondered it for a while. “This eventuality, gentlemen, is highly improbable, but it is the only one that explains why the culprit would carry out the deed in such a sudden and mysterious way. But who would go to the trouble of hiding something precious in something that was up for sale?”

“Maybe he had no time to think up a good hiding place?” suggested Lestrade. “Maybe he was pursued?”

“There are too many maybes and perhapses in this case,” complained Holmes. “It's what comes from trying to solve a problem without leaving one's sitting room. Lestrade, do you think we can find out the location of the shop where Selwyn purchased the boots?”

Lestrade smiled a cunning smile and picked up his notebook. “As a matter of fact, I have the address right here.”

He had managed to get Holmes just where he had wanted him, and Holmes took the bait. Within minutes, we were in a hansom rattling towards Hackney, and Holmes, ever the machine that only waited for someone to pull his switch, was giddy and ebullient, talking without pause about his recent studies into Elizabethan court proceedings while Lestrade looked increasingly perplexed at the morass of information being heaped upon him.

Finally, we arrived at the little second-hand clothes shop, which was located down a narrow street only accessible by foot. The purveyor was an old Jewish gentleman by the name of Klum, with a crooked back and trouble keeping his skull-capon his head due to considerable baldness. He approached us just as we entered the cramped and crowded interior of the shop, where rows of rotting old clothes were hanging from the ceiling and across the walls, and were even lying in piles on tables and the floor. Lestrade asked him if he remembered a gentleman who had come a few weeks ago to buy a pair of boots, but Mr Klum only shook his head and said that he had many customers, which was hard to believe from the out-of-the-way location and the general inhospitability of the interior. Holmes asked him where he kept his boots, and the man took us further into the shop to a little room where piles of old shoes were lying on shelves along the walls. A majority of them were sturdy boots of the regular, hard-wearing type preferred by labourers, and although there were varieties in the details, I found it difficult to tell one pair from another, and I assumed that many customers probably walked away from there with an odd pair, judging from the messy way in which they were scattered on the shelves. Holmes picked up a few of them and let his fingers run along the soles and the laces. Then he turned to the proprietor.

“Mr Klum, do you keep any records of who you purchase your items from?”

The man laughed so much that he gave himself a violent cough. “They come to my shop and show me what they have to offer. Sometimes I take it, sometimes I don't.”

“But surely,” said Lestrade, “you must give them a receipt.”

The man only shrugged his shoulders, quite indifferent to Lestrade's authority. The inspector was infuriated by his attitude, but just as he was about to give Mr Klum a lecture in legal matters, Holmes placed his hand on his arm and signalled to us that it was time to leave. Once we were out in the street again, Lestrade and I started to walk down towards the end, only to notice after a few paces that Holmes had stopped in front of the shop and was studying the exterior of the house.

“Have you forgotten something?” asked Lestrade.

Holmes turned to us with a broad smile on his lips. “I thought I had, but I couldn't have, could I?”

He quickly led the way to the nearest thoroughfare and called for a cab. “We have been following the wrong lead,” he said. “Our next port of call must be Mr Montague Selwyn.”