Holmes for the Holidays Read online

  'I should say at the start, for reasons we need not go into, that Dr Watson and I were convinced that Irene McEvoy had not pushed her husband to his death. The question was how to prove it, and in that regard your daughter's evidence was indispensable. She alone saw Mr McEvoy fall and she alone heard what he shouted. The accurate ear of childhood—once certain adult nonsenses had been discarded—recorded that shout as precisely as a phonograph and knew that strictly speaking it was only half a shout, that Mr McEvoy, if he'd had time, would have added something else to it.'

  A pause. I sat up in bed with the counterpane round my neck, straining not to miss a word of his quiet, clear voice.

  'No—something. The question was, no what? Mr McEvoy had expected something to be there and his last thought on earth was surprise at the lack of it, surprise so acute that he was trying to shout it with his last breath. The question was, what that thing could have been.'

  Silence, waiting for an answer, but nobody said anything.

  'If you look up at the back of the hotel from the terrace you will notice one obvious thing. The third and fourth floors have balconies. The second floor does not. The room inhabited by Mr and Mrs McEvoy had a balcony. A person staying in the suite would be aware of that. He would not necessarily be aware, unless he were a particularly observant man, that the second-floor rooms had no balconies. Until it was too late. I formed the theory that Mr McEvoy had not in fact fallen from the window of his own room but from a lower room belonging to somebody else, which accounted for his attempted last words: 'No . . . balcony.'

  My mother gasped. My father said: 'By Jove ... '.

  'Once I'd arrived at that conclusion, the question was what Mr McEvoy was doing in somebody else's room. The possibility of thieving could be ruled out since he was a very rich man. Then he was seeing somebody. The next question was who. And here your daughter was incidentally helpful in a way she is too young to understand. She confided to us in all innocence an overheard piece of adult gossip to the effect that the late Mr McEvoy had a roving eye.'

  My father began to laugh, then stifled it. My mother said 'Well' in a way that boded trouble for me later.

  'Once my attention was directed that way, the answer became obvious. Mr McEvoy was in somebody else's hotel room for what one might describe as an episode of galanterie. But the accident happened in the middle of the morning. Did ever a lady in the history of the world make a romantic assignation for that hour of the day? Therefore it wasn't a lady. So I asked myself what group of people are most likely to be encountered in hotel rooms in mid-morning and the answer was ...'.

  'Good heavens, the chambermaid!'

  My mother's voice, and Holmes was clearly none too pleased at being interrupted.

  'Quite so. Mr McEvoy had gone to meet a chambermaid. I asked some questions to establish whether any young and attractive chambermaid had left the hotel since last Christmas. There was such a one, named Eva. She'd married the under porter and brought him as a dowry enough money to buy that elegant little sleigh. Now a prudent chambermaid may amass a modest dowry by saving tips, but one look at that sleigh will tell you that Eva's dowry might best be described as, well... immodest.'

  Another laugh from my father, cut off by a look from my mother I could well imagine.

  'Dr Watson and I went to see Eva. I told her what I'd deduced and she, poor girl, confirmed it with some details—the sound of the housekeeper's voice outside, Mr McEvoy's well-practised but ill-advised tactic of taking refuge on the balcony. You may say that the girl Eva should have confessed at once what had happened

  'I do indeed.'

  'But bear in mind her position. Not only her post at the hotel but her engagement to the handsome Franz would be forfeited. And, after all, there was no question of anybody being tried in court. The fashionable world was perfectly happy to connive at the story that Mr McEvoy had fallen accidentally from his window—while inwardly convicting an innocent woman of his murder.'

  My mother said, sounding quite subdued for once: 'But Mrs McEvoy must have known. Why didn't she say something?'

  'Ah, to answer that one needs to know something about Mrs McEvoy's history, and it so happens that Dr Watson and I are in that position. A long time ago, before her first happy marriage, Mrs McEvoy was loved by a prince. He was not, I must admit, a particularly admirable prince, but prince he was. Can you imagine how it felt for a woman to come from that to being deceived with a hotel chambermaid by a man who made his fortune from bathroom furnishings? Can you conceive that a proud woman might choose to be thought a murderess rather than submit to that indignity?'

  Another silence, then my mother breathed: 'Yes. Yes, I think I can.' Then, 'Poor woman.'

  'It was not pity that Irene McEvoy ever needed.' Then, in a different tone of voice: 'So there you have it. And it is your decision how much, if anything, you decide to pass on to Jessica in due course.'

  There were sounds of people getting up from chairs, then my father said: 'And your, urn, demonstration this morning?'

  'Oh, that little drama. I knew what had happened, but for Mrs McEvoy's sake it was necessary to prove to the world she was innocent. I couldn't call Eva as witness because I'd given her my word. I'd studied the pitch of the roof and the depth of the snow and I was scientifically convinced that a man falling from Mrs McEvoy's balcony would not have landed on the terrace. You know the result.'

  Good nights were said, rather subdued, and they were shown out. Through the crack in the door I glimpsed them. As they came level with the crack, Silver Stick, usually so precise in his movements, dropped his pipe and had to kneel to pick it up. As he knelt, his bright eyes met mine through the crack and he smiled, an odd, quick smile unseen by anybody else. He'd known I'd been listening all the time.

  When they'd gone Mother and Father sat for a long time in silence.

  At last Father said: 'If he'd got it wrong, he'd have killed himself.'

  'Like the skiing.'

  'He must have loved her very much.'

  'It's his own logic he loves.'

  But then, my mother always was the unromantic one.

  The Adventure in Border Country

  Gwen Moffat

  What do you know of Cumberland, Watson?' Sherlock Holmes glanced up from his breakfast plate and I answered promptly. 'Sausages. They make excellent sausages in Cumberland. And there are the lakes. And daffodils. A pretty poem of Mr Wordsworth's—' And then I noticed the letter beside his plate. 'A case?' I asked eagerly. There had been no problem of note since November 5, when a certain Mrs Chaffinch took a meat skewer to her husband, dressed the body as a guy, and wheeled it in a perambulator through the East End to be consumed by a bonfire on the bank of the Thames. A simple affair for Holmes, although it had Lestrade stumped. Mrs Chaffinch had neglected to remove the buttons from her husband's old army tunic and they did not burn.

  'What do you make of it?' Holmes passed the letter across the table. 'It was delivered by hand/

  Dear Mr Holmes [I read],

  Some few years ago you resolved a problem for Sir Timothy Eamont who assures me your discretion is of the highest order.

  I have come up from Cumberland to ask if you can assist my neighbour in a matter so delicate that the intrusion of police and newspapers could spell disaster for all concerned. I propose to call on you at eleven o'clock this morning.

  Yours faithfully, Clement Daw.

  I shrugged. 'I assume he requires assistance for his own delicate problem. Blackmail, I shouldn't wonder. The man has become involved with a woman and has panicked.'

  'It is intriguing,' Holmes murmured, and I knew he had not been listening. 'This is an articulate fellow, accustomed to command, but the script resembles that of a boy, and one more at home on the back of a horse than in the school-room. A self-made man, Watson, and labouring under strong emotion, not a rake who has formed an embarrassing liaison with his wife's maid. I look forward to eleven o'clock. Can it be possible that the tedium of Christmas is to be relieved af
ter all?'

  'I enjoy Christmas,' I confessed. 'Although this year the weather is hardly traditional.'

  During the first half of December we had endured temperatures of such ferocity that a number of poor people had frozen to death in their unheated rooms. And when the cold did relent, a dank fog descended on us. Incarcerated in our sitting room, we had so far kept boredom at bay, Holmes applying himself to the study of bones in a paper recently published by the Royal Society while I was enthralled by a new book on monomania by Professor Gins-burg. Thus, with the fog outside and pungent tobacco clouds within, we occupied ourselves until that gloomy morning when Clement Daw's missive arrived.

  The man himself appeared promptly at eleven, shown up by Billy the page. He was a big, hearty fellow with a strong nose and a thin but well-shaped mouth. He put me in mind of a prosperous yeoman farmer and he spoke loudly, like one accustomed to talk against the wind.

  Tm not going to waste your time, Mr Holmes,' he began, as soon as he was seated. 'Nor that of Dr Watson. I am a tobacco merchant and a widower. My two sons operate the business in Liverpool, allowing me to spend most of my time on my country estate, which is close to that of a Mr and Mrs Aubrey. It is on their behalf that I have made this journey, and it is necessary here to tell you something of our surroundings.

  'Our houses front a lake and behind us wooded crags rise to a bleak moorland, the domain of sheep and grouse. There is a shooting box or cabin some three miles from Aubrey's house—' At this point our visitor checked and frowned, at a loss for words.

  'The cabin features in your story?' Holmes prompted.

  'That's the puzzle!' Daw cried. 'You see, Mr Holmes, Miles Aubrey has quite disappeared. He has not been seen since last Tuesday evening, when he told his wife he was going to the stables to look at a sick pony.'

  'Six days ago.' Holmes was thoughtful. 'You searched of course. What did you find at the cabin?'

  Daw said grimly, 'There was champagne on the table: an empty bottle and another a quarter-full. There was the remains of a game pie, and the bed had been ... occupied. There was no sign of Aubrey.'

  'What makes you think he had been there?'

  'The champagne was from his cellar and the cook recognised her crust on what was left of the pie.'

  'Why did you not go to the police?'

  Daw slumped in his chair. 'There were two champagne glasses,' he said miserably. 'There is Mrs Aubrey to be considered and, indeed, her daughter. Minnie is only twelve. She is not Aubrey's child. Mrs Aubrey's first husband died of cholera in India. The poor lady is a sad example of the maxim that wealth cannot buy happiness. For she is an heiress: the only child of a Glasgow ironmaster. Widowed while still young, she remarried—' Again he broke off and glowered at us.

  'And now the lady has lost this husband?' Holmes pondered his own question. 'What has been done to locate him?'

  'When he did not come down to breakfast, Mrs Aubrey sent to see if he was indisposed, and discovered that his bed had not been slept in. She was not greatly surprised. She has confided in me and I knew that this was not the first time he had stayed out all night, and without warning. However, by afternoon, she began to worry, not least because he had taken no horse and no change of clothing, and it had snowed that morning. So she sent for me. I got up a search party but there was little we could do in the short space of daylight left. No one had seen Aubrey in the village, which lies two miles east of his house.

  'At first light next morning we started a more organised search. We looked for tracks. I was leading the party that went to the cabin. Now the snow had started quite early the previous morning but there were no tracks about the place; the snow was pristine.'

  'Which argues that he left before it stopped snowing,' Holmes put in. 'What of his drinking companion?'

  Daw pursed his lips. 'The obvious person denies that she was with him, but then I am not adept at interrogation. Which is why I come to you, sir. We have to discover his whereabouts.'

  'Do you suspect foul play?'

  'It is possible. Our people are a rough, untutored folk, passionately loyal, but implacable in their hatred.'

  'So,' said Holmes when our visitor had left, 'the disreputable Aubrey has at least one mistress in the locality, and someone has seen fit to avenge her dishonour?'

  'Or the woman is with child and demands money as the price of silence.'

  'Then she would be the victim.' Holmes reached for tobacco in the Persian slipper and started to fill his pipe. He glanced at the window. 'A visit to Cumberland promises escape from this climate and the ennui of Christmas. Moreover, there is the small matter of a fee, and Mr Daw is not without substance.' He glanced at the cheque left by our visitor to retain his services. 'Now why is it Daw who engages me to find the husband, and not the wife?'

  'She shuns publicity.'

  'So he comes to me knowing I shall be discreet? I have the impression that the lady is less keen to engage us than is this gentleman. There is an attachment? His concern is for her but he referred to her as "poor lady": a term more fatherly than romantic'

  'He will be considerably older. He has grown sons, her daughter is a child.'

  'A girl of twelve can be precocious.' It was a statement out of context and I disregarded it. Holmes now lapsed into one of those periods of preoccupation which often assail him at the start of a case and which persisted until we were steaming out of London the following morning. We were alone, Daw having gone ahead the previous day. As the first pale ray of sunshine crept into the carriage he fixed me with a sharp stare and announced: 'The motive is not greed. It is the greedy person who has come to grief.'

  'You think then that he has come to grief? He could have disappeared in order to escape creditors.'

  'His wife would settle his debts. No, Watson, there is more to this than meets the eye. Daw may have it to rights with his talk of unbridled passions. We must not forget that Mr Wordsworth's pretty Lake District merges with the wild border country, where rapine and pillage were commonplace until a few generations ago. I suspect we shall find less of sparkling waves and dancing daffodils and more of Ruskin's "awful curtain of night and death" at the end of our journey.'

  How right he was. In Cumberland the absence of fog served only to emphasise the harshness of the landscape. Other passengers alighting from our train and bound for a family Christmas, burdened as they were with packages and fat fowls, these good people seemed positively delighted to view the bleak lines of the mountains, indeed they even grumbled at the lack of snow.

  Mr Daw had sent his carriage to meet us, and from the comfort of this, behind a pair of matched bays, I regarded the surroundings with some trepidation. I had thought Dartmoor a wilderness well suited to a savage monster,* but the Lake District was altogether more impressive. The lines of Dartmoor sweep and undulate but here the mountains loomed over us, rising above crags which themselves reared above timbered slopes so steep it was a marvel that any tree could find a purchase.

  We had arrived late and the light was fading fast. As we drove westward the afterglow illuminated a vast horizontal mass that gleamed dully about its margin. 'The lake,' observed Holmes, 'and starting to freeze, I see. Now I wonder: did they drag the lake?'

  *The Hound of the Baskervilles We passed through a village, doors and windows fastened against the frosty air, although a knot of children accompanied a pony that dragged a log along the frozen street. At the pony's head was a tall woman in a red cloak. In the light from a window we saw her face framed by dark curls and a scarlet hood: large, luminous eyes and sensual lips. I lifted a hand in salutation and she nodded casually, then, remembering her place, dropped a curtsey.

  Leafless trees crowded the road and, after a couple of miles they stood back to expose parkland and a large house, its dimensions revealed by the disposition of its lighted windows. 'Aubrey's,' said Holmes. 'Daw's is the second house.'

  The village boasted only a rude inn and Daw had insisted that we accept his hospitality. Upon arrival we were sh
own to adjoining rooms by a man-servant who informed us that his master was at Swithins, the Aubreys' place.

  Nothing had been visible of the exterior of Daw's house other than the studded door lit by a porch light, but once inside we realised we were in one of those ancient buildings termed peel towers: relics of a time when even farmhouses had to be fortified against marauding Scots. Such was the servant's contention but I guessed that a similar tale would be told north of the border where marauding English would be the bogeymen.

  The window of my room was heavily draped, the casement leaded with tiny panes, the walls over a yard thick. There was no fireplace and I wasted no time descending to the hall where massive logs flamed on the hearth. Holmes joined me and we were regaled with tea and scones until the appearance of our host. He told us that the search for Aubrey had continued but with no result, and that Mrs Aubrey asked that we should call on her at our earliest convenience. 'She is confronting the situation with courage,' he said. 'But then she must retain her composure for Minnie's sake.'

  'The daughter is attached to her step-father?' Holmes asked.

  Daw hesitated. 'They are not close. Aubrey is younger than his wife and he employs a playful air with the child which she seems to resent. I don't understand it.' He glanced at me, as if a doctor might divine the significance better than a detective.

  'Perhaps he tries to get on a footing of equality with the little girl,' I ventured. 'To bridge the gap in age in order to be friends.'

  'Quite.' Daw's expression was bovine in its lack of comprehension, which only echoed my own. Holmes, on the other hand, had a devilish gleam in his eye.

  'Why are you so interested in Minnie?' I asked when we climbed the stairs after a robust dinner.