I saw nothing of Holmes all day, but at the hour named he returned,
grave, preoccupied and aloof. At such times it was wiser to leave him
to himself.
"Has Amberley been here yet?"
"No."
"Ah! I am expecting him."
He was not disappointed, for presently the old fellow arrived with a
very worried and puzzled expression upon his austere face.
"I've had a telegram, Mr. Holmes. I can make nothing of it." He
handed it over, and Holmes read it aloud.
"Come at once without fail. Can give you information as to your recent
loss.--ELMAN. The Vicarage."
"Dispatched at two-ten from Little Turlington," said Holmes. "Little
Turlington is in Essex, I believe, not far from Frinton. Well, of
course you will start at once. This is evidently from a responsible
person, the vicar of the place. Where is my Crockford? Yes, here we
have him. J. C. Elman, M.A., Living of Mossmoor cum Little Purlington.
Look up the trains, Watson."
"There is one at five-twenty from Liverpool Street."
"Excellent. You had best go with him, Watson. He may need help or
advice. Clearly we have come to a crisis in this affair."
But our client seemed by no means eager to start.
"It's perfectly absurd, Mr. Holmes," he said. "What can this man
possibly know of what has occurred? It is waste of time and money."
"He would not have telegraphed to you if he did not know something.
Wire at once that you are coming."
"I don't think I shall go."
Holmes assumed his sternest aspect.
"It would make the worst possible impression both on the police and
upon myself, Mr. Amberley, if when so obvious a clue arose you should
refuse to follow it up. We should feel that you were not really in
earnest in this investigation."
Our client seemed horrified at the suggestion.
"Why, of course I shall go if you look at it in that way," said he.
"On the face of it, it seems absurd to suppose that this parson knows
anything, but if you think----"
"I _do_ think," said Holmes, with emphasis, and so we were launched
upon our journey. Holmes took me aside before we left the room and
gave me one word of counsel which showed that he considered the matter
to be of importance. "Whatever you do, see that he really _does_ go,"
said he. "Should he break away or return, get to the nearest telephone
exchange and send the single word 'Bolted.' I will arrange here that
it shall reach me wherever I am."
Little Purlington is not an easy place to reach, for it is on a branch
line. My remembrance of the journey is not a pleasant one, for the
weather was hot, the train slow, and my companion sullen and silent,
hardly talking at all, save to make an occasional sardonic remark as to
the futility of our proceedings. When we at last reached the little
station it was a two-mile drive before we came to the Vicarage, where a
big, solemn, rather pompous clergyman received us in his study. Our
telegram lay before him.
"Well, gentlemen," he asked, "what can I do for you?"
"We came," I explained, "in answer to your wire."
"My wire! I sent no wire."
"I mean the wire which you sent to Mr. Josiah Amberley about his wife
and his money."
"If this is a joke, sir, it is a very questionable one," said the vicar
angrily. "I have never heard of the gentleman you name, and I have not
sent a wire to anyone."
Our client and I looked at each other in amazement.
"Perhaps there is some mistake," said I; "are there perhaps two
vicarages? Here is the wire itself, signed Elman, and dated from the
Vicarage."
"There is only one vicarage, sir, and only one vicar, and this wire is
a scandalous forgery, the origin of which shall certainly be
investigated by the police. Meanwhile, I can see no possible object in
prolonging this interview."
So Mr. Amberley and I found ourselves on the roadside in what seemed to
me to be the most primitive village in England. We made for the
telegraph office, but it was already closed. There was a telephone,
however, at the little 'Railway Arms,' and by it I got into touch with
Holmes, who shared in our amazement at the result of our journey.
"Most singular!" said the distant voice. "Most remarkable! I much
fear, my dear Watson, that there is no return train to-night. I have
unwittingly condemned you to the horrors of a country inn. However,
there is always Nature, Watson--Nature and Josiah Amberley--you can be
in close commune with both." I heard his dry chuckle as he turned away.
It was soon apparent to me that my companion's reputation as a miser
was not undeserved. He had grumbled at the expense of the journey, had
insisted upon travelling third-class, and was now clamorous in his
objections to the hotel bill. Next morning, when we did at last arrive
in London, it was hard to say which of us was in the worse humour.
"You had best take Baker Street as we pass," said I. "Mr. Holmes may
have some fresh instructions."
"If they are not worth more than the last ones they are not of much
use," said Amberley, with a malevolent scowl. None the less, he kept
me company. I had already warned Holmes by telegram of the hour of our
arrival, but we found a message waiting that he was at Lewisham, and
would expect us there. That was a surprise, but an even greater one
was to find that he was not alone in the sitting-room of our client. A
stern-looking, impassive man sat beside him, a dark man with
grey-tinted glasses and a large Masonic pin projecting from his tie.
"This is my friend Mr. Barker," said Holmes. "He has been interesting
himself also in your business, Mr. Josiah Amberley, though we have been
working independently. But we both have the same question to ask you!"
Mr. Amberley sat down heavily. He sensed impending danger. I read it
in his straining eyes and his twitching features.
"What is the question, Mr. Holmes?"
"Only this: What did you do with the bodies?"
The man sprang to his feet with a hoarse scream. He clawed into the
air with his bony hands. His mouth was open, and for the instant he
looked like some horrible bird of prey. In a flash we got a glimpse of
the real Josiah Amberley, a misshapen demon with a soul as distorted as
his body. As he fell back into his chair he clapped his hand to his
lips as if to stifle a cough. Holmes sprang at his throat like a
tiger, and twisted his face towards the ground. A white pellet fell
from between his gasping lips.
"No short cuts, Josiah Amberley. Things must be done decently and in
order. What about it, Barker?"
"I have a cab at the door," said our taciturn companion.
"It is only a few hundred yards to the station. We will go together.
You can stay here, Watson. I shall be back within half an hour."
The old colourman had the strength of a lion in that great trunk of
his, but he was helpless in the hands of the two experienced
man-handlers. Wriggling and twisting he was dragged to the waiting
cab, and I was left to my solitary vigil in the ill-omened house. In
less time than he had named, however, Holmes was back, in company with
a smart young police inspector.
"I've left Barker to look after the formalities," said Holmes. "You
had not met Barker, Watson. He is my hated rival upon the Surrey
shore. When you said a tall dark man it was not difficult for me to
complete the picture. He has several good cases to his credit, has he
not, Inspector?"
"He has certainly interfered several times," the Inspector answered
with reserve.
"His methods are irregular, no doubt, like my own. The irregulars are
useful sometimes, you know. You, for example, with your compulsory
warning about whatever he said being used against him, could never have
bluffed this rascal into what is virtually a confession."
"Perhaps not. But we get there all the same, Mr. Holmes. Don't
imagine that we had not formed our own views of this case, and that we
would not have laid our hands on our man. You will excuse us for
feeling sore when you jump in with methods which we cannot use, and so
rob us of the credit."
"There shall be no such robbery, MacKinnon. I assure you that I efface
myself from now onwards, and as to Barker, he has done nothing save
what I told him."
The Inspector seemed considerably relieved.
"That is very handsome of you, Mr. Holmes. Praise or blame can matter
little to you, but it is very different to us when the newspapers begin
to ask questions."
"Quite so. But they are pretty sure to ask questions anyhow, so it
would be as well to have answers. What will you say, for example, when
the intelligent and enterprising reporter asks you what the exact
points were which aroused your suspicion, and finally gave you a
certain conviction as to the real facts?"
The Inspector looked puzzled.
"We don't seem to have got any real facts yet, Mr. Holmes. You say
that the prisoner, in the presence of three witnesses, practically
confessed, by trying to commit suicide, that he had murdered his wife
and her lover. What other facts have you?"
"Have you arranged for a search?"
"There are three constables on their way."
"Then you will soon get the clearest fact of all. The bodies cannot be
far away. Try the cellars and the garden. It should not take long to
dig up the likely places. This house is older than the water-pipes.
There must be a disused well somewhere. Try your luck there."
"But how did you know of it, and how was it done?"
"I'll show you first how it was done, and then I will give the
explanation which is due to you, and even more to my long-suffering
friend here, who has been invaluable throughout. But, first, I would
give you an insight into this man's mentality. It is a very unusual
one--so much so that I think his destination is more likely to be
Broadmoor than the scaffold. He has, to a high degree, the sort of
mind which one associates with the mediæval Italian nature rather than
with the modern Briton. He was a miserable miser who made his wife so
wretched by his niggardly ways that she was a ready prey for any
adventurer. Such a one came upon the scene in the person of this
chess-playing doctor. Amberley excelled at chess--one mark, Watson, of
a scheming mind. Like all misers, he was a jealous man, and his
jealousy became a frantic mania. Rightly or wrongly, he suspected an
intrigue. He determined to have his revenge, and he planned it with
diabolical cleverness. Come here!"
Holmes led us along the passage with as much certainty as if he had
lived in the house, and halted at the open door of the strong-room.
"Pooh! What an awful smell of paint!" cried the Inspector.
"That was our first clue," said Holmes. "You can thank Dr. Watson's
observation for that, though he failed to draw the inference. It set
my foot upon the trail. Why should this man at such a time be filling
his house with strong odours? Obviously, to cover some other smell
which he wished to conceal--some guilty smell which would suggest
suspicions. Then came the idea of a room such as you see here with
iron door and shutter--a hermetically sealed room. Put those two facts
together, and whither do they lead? I could only determine that by
examining the house myself. I was already certain that the case was
serious, for I had examined the box-office chart at the Haymarket
Theatre--another of Dr. Watson's bull's-eyes--and ascertained that
neither B thirty nor thirty-two of the upper circle had been occupied
that night. Therefore, Amberley had not been to the theatre, and his
alibi fell to the ground. He made a bad slip when he allowed my astute
friend to notice the number of the seat taken for his wife. The
question now arose how I might be able to examine the house. I sent an
agent to the most impossible village I could think of, and summoned my
man to it at such an hour that he could not possibly get back. To
prevent any miscarriage, Dr. Watson accompanied him. The good vicar's
name I took, of course, out of my Crockford. Do I make it all clear to
you?"
"It is masterly," said the Inspector, in an awed voice.
"There being no fear of interruption I proceeded to burgle the house.
Burglary has always been an alternative profession, had I cared to
adopt it, and I have little doubt that I should have come to the front.
Observe what I found. You see the gas-pipe along the skirting here.
Very good. It rises in the angle of the wall, and there is a tap here
in the corner. The pipe runs out into the strong-room, as you can see,
and ends in that plaster rose in the centre of the ceiling, where it is
concealed by the ornamentation. That end is wide open. At any moment
by turning the outside tap the room could be flooded with gas. With
door and shutter closed and the tap full on I would not give two
minutes of conscious sensation to anyone shut up in that little
chamber. By what devilish device he decoyed them there I do not know,
but once inside the door they were at his mercy."
The Inspector examined the pipe with interest. "One of our officers
mentioned the smell of gas," said he, "but, of course, the window and
door were open then, and the paint--or some of it--was already about.
He had begun the work of painting the day before, according to his
story. But what next, Mr. Holmes?"
"Well, then came an incident which was rather unexpected to myself. I
was slipping through the pantry window in the early dawn when I felt a
hand inside my collar, and a voice said: 'Now, you rascal, what are you
doing in there?' When I could twist my head round I looked into the
tinted spectacles of my friend and rival, Mr. Barker. It was a curious
forgathering, and set us both smiling. It seems that he had been
engaged by Dr. Ray Ernest's family to make some investigations, and had
come to the same conclusion as to foul play. He had watched the house
for some days, and had spotted Dr. Watson as one of the obviously
suspicious characters who had called there. He could hardly arrest
Watson, but when he saw a man actually climbing out of the pantry
window there came a limit to his restraint. Of course, I told him how
matters stood and we continued the case together."
"Why him? Why not us?"
"Because it was in my mind to put that little test which answered so
admirably. I fear you would not have gone so far."
The Inspector smiled.
"Well, maybe not. I understand that I have your word, Mr. Holmes, that
you step right out of the case now and that you turn all your results
over to us."
"Certainly, that is always my custom."
"Well, in the name of the Force I thank you. It seems a clear case, as
you put it, and there can't be much difficulty over the bodies."
"I'll show you a grim little bit of evidence," said Holmes, "and I am
sure Amberley himself never observed it. You'll get results,
Inspector, by always putting yourself in the other fellow's place, and
thinking what you would do yourself. It takes some imagination, but it
pays. Now, we will suppose that you were shut up in this little room,
had not two minutes to live, but wanted to get even with the fiend who
was probably mocking at you from the other side of the door. What
would you do?"
"Write a message."
"Exactly. You would like to tell people how you died. No use writing
on paper. That would be seen. If you wrote on the wall some eye might
rest upon it. Now, look here! Just above the skirting is scribbled
with a purple indelible pencil: 'We we----' That's all."
"What do you make of that?"
"Well, it's only a foot above the ground. The poor devil was on the
floor and dying when he wrote it. He lost his senses before he could
finish."
"He was writing, 'We were murdered.'"
"That's how I read it. If you find an indelible pencil on the body----"
"We'll look out for it, you may be sure. But those securities?
Clearly there was no robbery at all. And yet he _did_ possess those
bonds. We verified that."
"You may be sure he has them hidden in a safe place. When the whole
elopement had passed into history he would suddenly discover them, and
announce that the guilty couple had relented and sent back the plunder
or had dropped it on the way."
"You certainly seem to have met every difficulty," said the Inspector.
"Of course, he was bound to call us in, but why he should have gone to
you I can't understand."
"Pure swank!" Holmes answered. "He felt so clever and so sure of
himself that he imagined no one could touch him. He could say to any
suspicious neighbour, 'Look at the steps I have taken. I have
consulted not only the police, but even Sherlock Holmes.'"
The Inspector laughed.
"We must forgive you your 'even,' Mr. Holmes," said he; "it's as
workmanlike a job as I can remember."
A couple of days later my friend tossed across to me a copy of the
bi-weekly _North Surrey Observer_. Under a series of flaming
headlines, which began with "The Haven Horror" and ended with
"Brilliant Police Investigation," there was a packed column of print
which gave the first consecutive account of the affair. The concluding
paragraph is typical of the whole. It ran thus:
"The remarkable acumen by which Inspector MacKinnon deduced from the
smell of paint that some other smell, that of gas, for example, might
be concealed; the bold deduction that the strongroom might also be the
death-chamber, and the subsequent inquiry which led to the discovery of
the bodies in a disused well, cleverly concealed by a dog-kennel,
should live in the history of crime as a standing example of the
intelligence of our professional detectives."
"Well, well, MacKinnon is a good fellow," said Holmes, with a tolerant
smile. "You can file it in our archives, Watson. Some day the true
story may be told."