Further Associates of Sherlock Holmes Read online

  Mr Holmes is concerned only with the case in hand, and the conundrum it poses. The lady suffragette’s case must have been an interesting one indeed. As intrigued as I was, I could make no sense of what it might be.

  By the time of Mr Holmes’s return, I had swept the rug, dusted the mantel, and cleared the glasses from the evening’s visit, both water and brandy. Of course, it might be considered unusual for a lady to drink brandy, but this was a forward-thinking woman, and besides the brandy might be considered medicinal: a restorative.

  Mr Holmes’s supper tray was hardly touched, the liver curled at the edges and the gravy congealed, but the large ashtray was full. He must have tapped out his pipe a dozen times, something he did a great deal when deep in thought.

  I sorted Mr Holmes’s post, hopeful that I might see more violet ink, but it was not to be, and I put the most urgent-looking letters on the top of the pile, including one with an interestingly peculiar seal.

  I was cleaning the gas lamps when Mr Holmes swept back into the house, Dr Watson hard on his heels.

  “Since twilight is precisely five hours and forty-seven minutes away,” said Mr Holmes, consulting his timepiece, “perhaps you could interrupt your task, and furnish us with a tea tray, Mrs Hudson?”

  I returned to my own rooms, and, whilst boiling the kettle, I removed my apron. As I hung the garment in its usual place on the pantry door, I noticed a smudge of soot on the hem, and recalled the signet ring and the slip of paper that I had put in the pocket. I retrieved them at once, in order that I might not forget to restore the items to Mr Holmes’s possession.

  As I returned to the gentlemen, I caught a little of their conversation.

  “There must be a train from London to Preston this afternoon,” said Dr Watson. “I shall telegraph the Grand Hotel to expect our arrival.”

  I placed the tea tray on the card table at Dr Watson’s elbow, and crossed to the credenza. It took the matter of a moment to pull the railway timetable from its customary home, turn it to the page for Euston station, and hand it to the good doctor.

  “There you are,” said Dr Watson. “There’s a direct train from Euston at a quarter to four o’clock.”

  I wondered whether the lady had come all the way from Lancashire to see Mr Holmes. Perhaps she too had travelled by train such a distance to meet the man himself. Perhaps Mr Holmes had shredded the letter when it had arrived in the post. I tried to recall seeing a matching envelope among his correspondence in the days prior to the lady arriving, but could not.

  “It’s a dashed distance to travel,” said Dr Watson, reaching for the teapot.

  “Should you prefer a passenger ship to the colonies?” asked Mr Holmes.

  “Indeed, I should not,” replied Dr Watson.

  “Then we must needs visit the cotton mills.”

  While the gentlemen stirred their tea in silence, I crossed back to the tray to top up the pot from the steaming kettle. When that was done, I put the ring and the slip of paper on the tray where they would not be missed.

  “What have you there, Mrs Hudson?” asked Mr Holmes.

  I might have known that he would detect my movements.

  “When I was cleaning this morning—”

  “Yes, yes,” said Mr Holmes, eager that I should come to the point. “Whatever it is, bring it here, will you?”

  “It’s a ring that I found in the ashes of the hearth,” I said, “and a slip of paper lodged in a cushion.”

  Mr Holmes pocketed the ring absentmindedly, and put the slip of paper back in my hand. I was astonished that he took so little notice of the evidence that I had so carefully saved, and which might be at the centre of this case.

  “But what of the lady?” I asked, unable to contain my thoughts. If the lady could be so bold as to associate with the women’s suffrage movement, then surely I could speak out on her behalf.

  “The lady?” asked Dr Watson. “What lady?”

  “There was a lady here, last evening,” I said. There was no turning back now that Dr Watson had taken an interest, though I was surprised he didn’t know already. “I smelled her perfume in here while I was tidying up.”

  Mr Holmes handed me his cup and saucer, and went to his desk. He picked up his post and rummaged for the paper knife, which I had earlier returned to his pen tray. I crossed the room to retrieve it, and handed it to him. He sliced open the first envelope with its seal, before Dr Watson spoke again.

  “Well?” he asked. “What of the lady, Holmes?”

  “It was nothing,” said Holmes, not looking up from the letter, “a trifle.”

  “Then I shall not pursue it further,” said Dr Watson, whose eyes seemed almost to twinkle.

  A gentleman’s privacy is paramount, of course, and I had always afforded Mr Holmes his seclusion. I had never interfered in his affairs, nor did I care to, but this was too much.

  “She is a suffragette,” I said.

  “Oh indeed,” said Mr Holmes, setting down his letter, “and what brings you to such a conclusion, Mrs Hudson?”

  I did not know whether I was being mocked, or whether Mr Holmes had genuine interest in my opinion, but I had come this far. I opened my hand.

  “This,” I said. “This slip of paper. There is a lady’s handwriting upon it, in violet ink. The paper is bordered in green…”

  Dr Watson took the paper from me and examined it. “She’s perfectly right, you know, Holmes,” he said.

  “Brava, Mrs Hudson,” said Holmes. “Then what did you make of this?” he asked, plucking the signet ring from his waistcoat pocket and holding it out. Dr Watson half-rose from his chair and took the ring from Mr Holmes’s hand.

  “I found it in the ashes—” I began, but Mr Holmes urged me to my point once again.

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “I believe you mentioned that, Mrs Hudson, and what of it?”

  “It’s a man’s ring,” I said. “Perhaps belonging to the father of the lady, her brother, or her husband.”

  “And how might it have come to rest in the hearth?” he asked.

  “Perhaps she discarded it,” I said.

  “So, you deduce that last evening I was visited by a suffragette with a grudge against a male relative?” asked Mr Holmes.

  “I thought that it might be some such,” I said.

  “And where, then, is the case to answer?” asked Mr Holmes.

  “A lady in dire straits might require your help,” I replied.

  “And what straits might she be in?” asked Mr Holmes.

  “Take it easy, Holmes,” said Dr Watson, under his breath.

  It was chivalrous of him to come to my defence, but I can stand up for myself. “What little understanding I have of your work, Mr Holmes,” I said, “leads me to believe that you have come to the aid of a great many persons in distress during your career.”

  “She’s right,” said Dr Watson, “you have.”

  “So, you detected a lady,” said Mr Holmes, “and you were correct, but what else, Mrs Hudson? What else did you discover that you have left unsaid?”

  I thought for a moment, thinking back to that morning. “Two brandy glasses,” I said. “A woman rarely drinks brandy, except as a restorative.”

  “That’s true,” mused Dr Watson.

  “The slip of paper, of course, and the ring,” I said, enumerating what was already known, while racking my brain for anything new.

  “Is that everything, Mrs Hudson?” asked Mr Holmes.

  “Is that not enough?” asked Dr Watson.

  “It is not nearly enough,” said Mr Holmes, returning to his chair.

  “You make sport of Mrs Hudson, and I wonder whether it isn’t unkind,” said Dr Watson.

  “No, indeed, my dear Watson,” said Holmes. “We have a little time before embarking on our escapade to the cotton mills, and I am interested in the turn of Mrs Hudson’s mind. I wonder if she can’t come to the truth with a little encouragement.”

  “You were up all night,” I said. “You did not rest,
so I must presume you had some case to consider.”

  “Indeed I did, Mrs Hudson, but must it, by necessity, have been the case of the scented lady? Do we subscribe to the principle of ‘Post hoc, ergo propter hoc’?”

  “After it, therefore, because of it,” I said. I may not have learned Latin, but we are all familiar with the meanings of the most common axioms. Finally, I was reminded of something new.

  “There’s an inscription inside the ring,” I said. “I wondered if that might be a clue. If the lady tossed the ring into the fire, you might not have known of the inscription.”

  Dr Watson held the ring up, and turned it so that he could read the inscription inside. “She’s right, again,” he said.

  “Ad usque fidelis,” said Mr Holmes.

  “A family motto, perhaps,” said Dr Watson.

  “But what does it mean?” I asked. “It talks of loyalty, surely?”

  “‘True to the end’,” said Dr Watson. “It’s rather beautiful.”

  “Is that another piece in the puzzle, Mrs Hudson?”

  “And the stone is left blank,” I said. “It is not engraved with a coat of arms or monogram.”

  “How very observant you are, Mrs Hudson,” said Dr Watson.

  “There seems to me a great divide between observation and deduction,” said Mr Holmes, “but do go on, Mrs Hudson. Did you discover any other clues in this room? Evidence of anything or anyone else?”

  His emphasis fell so heavily on “anyone” that I truly began to feel that my lodger must be mocking me.

  Mr Holmes stood and took a turn around the room, glancing from the credenza to the hearth, to the seat by the window, glancing at his desk, up to the mirror over the mantel, and then into the hearth again.

  “Come, come,” he said, “even after your domestic ministrations, clues abound. What of the hearth, for example, or the rug?”

  I looked down at the rug that I had swept only half an hour previously. It had been lightly soiled, a little dusty, before I had cleaned it, but I could see nothing nor remember anything very unusual about it.

  “The tassels are in disarray, Mrs Hudson,” said Mr Holmes. “I wonder that you did not notice, and straighten them.”

  He was right, of course, the tassels at the corner of the rug furthest from the hearth formed a swirl of curving strands.

  “I wonder what might cause the rug to be disturbed in such a way?” asked Mr Holmes. “And the hearth; you must see the hearth?”

  I looked again. I cast my eyes into the grate, and then along the rail where Mr Holmes’s slippers still lay. Then I did see something. There was the finest line of dried earth against the far end of the rail, about the width of my hand.

  “There,” I said, “a line of dirt on the rail.”

  “Brava, again, Mrs Hudson, but how did it come to be there? And what relation does it bear to the rug?”

  It had all become rather too much for me. My thoughts were in turmoil, and I could make no sense of these tiny signs, signs that I had not previously seen. Perhaps my observation was as limited as my facility for deduction. I could do nothing but sigh and shrug.

  “Take a seat, Mrs Hudson,” said Mr Holmes.

  “Yes, dear lady, do sit down,” said Dr Watson, who rose and moved the chair that stood beside the window closer to the hearth, that I might sit, yet still be able to see the hearth and the rug. “I fear we are to be schooled.”

  “It was a simple matter,” began Mr Holmes, “of a personal nature, but since you take so great an interest, allow me to enlighten you. I was visited last evening by a young gentleman of my acquaintance, from a great family. I have previously worked for his father, and he saw fit to consult me on the matter. He was accompanied by a lady, his fiancée, whose presence you noticed. You did not see that he stood at my hearth, his foot upon the rail, or that he stepped and turned, suddenly, to address the lady, hence the smudge on the rail and the swirl in the carpet. You were correct in your assumption that the brandy was supplied to the lady, for she was in some consternation that her beloved had thrown his ring in the fire, but there were more used glasses than there were people you had decided were in this room. Her fiancé took only water.

  “The ring belonged to him, given as a gift by his father. What does the inscription tell you, Mrs Hudson? Or the empty cartouche?

  “No, no… no need to answer.

  “The young man was torn in his affections between his father and his sweetheart. His father is a rather well-known politician, who heartily disapproved of his choice of bride. The ring was given to remind his son of whence he had come, and to prick his conscience, the cartouche left blank until the lady was forsaken, when the family shield would be engraved upon it.”

  “No gift at all, then,” I said, unable to contain myself.

  “No, indeed,” said Dr Watson.

  “And what did you do?” I asked Mr Holmes.

  “Why,” said Mr Holmes, “I did nothing, of course.”

  “You did nothing!” exclaimed Dr Watson. “But what of your deductive powers, Holmes? Surely there was something to be done?”

  Dr Watson voiced my own amazement, for I had never known a time when Mr Holmes was incapable of making a deduction that might aid a cause.

  “Might you not have intervened, Holmes?” Dr Watson continued. “Was the lady not, in other regards, suitable?”

  “Indeed, I made a great many deductions,” said Holmes. “I deduced that the young man was besotted by the lady, and that he was therefore immune from any advice I or anyone else might furnish him with. I deduced from the lady’s dress, demeanour, poise and manners that she was the young man’s equal in all things, including intellect and breeding. I deduced that the suffragettes might win their cause, and having won it that the lady would be free from its shackles. I deduced that the young man’s politician father would remain gracious in defeat, as politicians must if they are to continue on and succeed in their careers. And, I deduced, or rather I knew, that affairs of the heart are not my bailiwick. Give me facts, give me a mystery, but do not ask me to navigate the finer feelings of a young man in love or of a lady.

  “I deduced that the young man would come to his own conclusions, make his own decision based on his emotions, and that having done so there was nothing left for me to do but to support him… for his own sake, for his father’s and for the sake of the lady. I deduced that there was some truth in the adage, ‘He also serves who only stands and waits’.”

  “And what was the outcome of the romance, Holmes?”

  “The young man talked himself into a rage, threw the ring in the fire and turned into the embrace of the lady,” said Mr Holmes. “She, in her turn, scolded her lover, and made him promise to make amends with his mother, should his father decide to carry out his threat of cutting off his son.

  “In all regards, these two are suited, and peccadilloes are easily overcome by doting parents, such as most fathers must surely be, given a little time and the right kind of feminine persuasion. The social order might change, but that has little or nothing to do with families. Besides, the lady is so very suitable that, should the young man find himself cut off, they would still be very well provided for. It was a romance, nothing more.”

  “And the letter?” I asked.

  “It was a note that the young woman had written to her lover, excusing him of any obligation to her. He tore it to shreds and threw the pieces onto the fire, declaring his constancy to her. A piece must have been kept from the fire in the flurry.”

  “Then all is well?” I asked.

  “I anticipate being invited to a society wedding within the month,” said Mr Holmes, “if I am returned from Lancashire by then. Indeed, since I had deduced that my support was wanted, I offered to stand up for the groom at the altar in order to appease his dear father.

  “This was a delightful interlude, Mrs Hudson,” he finished, “but there is work to be done, so perhaps you wouldn’t mind packing my overnight bag.”

  “No, i
ndeed,” I said, rising from the chair. I took his words to mean that I was dismissed.

  “One more thing, Mrs Hudson,” he said, rising, and fingering the pile of books that I had placed on the edge of his desk. “How did you reconcile my choice of reading material with your deductions?”

  I thought for a moment. “I didn’t,” I said.

  “You didn’t wonder how a political treatise on East India, a biography of a Lancashire cotton magnate, an almanac and a romance novel might provide answers in the plight of a lady suffragette?” Mr Holmes asked.

  “I must have wondered for a moment,” I said, “but I failed to connect the clues.”

  “Mrs Hudson, I am working on the case of a missing industrialist and his East Indian factotum. Time is of the essence, and my research must be thorough.”

  “But the romance novel?” I asked.

  “Belonged to the factotum, and was the last book he was known to have read,” answered Mr Holmes. “And that is my first lesson to you, Mrs Hudson. Every clue contributes to the whole. We cannot ignore evidence because it fails to fit in with our own imagined scheme.”

  Mr Holmes was generous in his lesson, but he need not have given it, for I had no intention thereafter of allowing my curiosity or my interest to get the better of me, ever again.

  HARLINGDON’S HEIR

  Michelle Ruda

  Violet de Merville appears only in “The Adventure of the Illustrious Client” (1924). She is the daughter of a general, and is engaged to an Austrian murderer called Baron Adelbert Gruner. Gruner has manipulated every public scandal he’s been a part of in such a way that Violet thinks he’s the one who’s been mistreated. A friend of the general’s hires Holmes to thwart the relationship. It is only upon receiving Gruner’s “love diary” from Holmes that Violet de Merville disengages herself from Gruner.

  —Michelle Ruda