A Study in Murder, page 34
‘It sometimes does one good to ring the changes. We have nothing to lose here. There is no urgency, apart from to track down the killer, whom I suspect is already long out of Scotland Yard’s reach. But having come up with our theory, we can then test this explanation by any fresh facts that may arise. If they all fit into their places, the probability is that we are upon the right track, and with each fresh fact this probability increases in a geometrical progression until the evidence becomes final and convincing.
‘You recall that the lamps of the express had been lit at Willesden, so that each compartment was brightly illuminated, and most visible to an observer from outside. It is within everyone’s experience how, under such circumstances, the occupant of each carriage can see very plainly the passengers in the other carriages opposite to him.
‘Now, the sequence of events as I reconstruct them would be after this fashion. This young man with the abnormal number of watches was alone in the carriage of the slow train. His ticket, with his papers and gloves and other things, were, we will suppose, on the seat beside him. He was probably an American, and also probably a man of weak intellect. The excessive wearing of jewellery is an early symptom in some forms of mania.
‘As he sat watching the carriages of the express which were – on account of the state of the line – going at the same pace as himself, he suddenly saw some people in it whom he knew. We will suppose for the sake of our theory that these people were a woman whom he loved and a man whom he hated, and who in return hated him. The young man was excitable and impulsive. He opened the door of his carriage, stepped from the footboard of the local train to the footboard of the express, opened the other door, and made his way into the presence of these two people. The feat, on trains going at the same pace, is by no means so perilous as it might appear.’
I lit a cigarette. ‘I’m not sure I’d like to test that theory again. Now you have got our young man, without his ticket, into the carriage in which the elder man and the young woman are travelling.’
‘Yes, Watson, and it is not difficult to imagine that a violent scene ensued. It is possible that the pair were also Americans, which is the more probable as the man carried a weapon – an unusual thing in England. If our supposition of incipient mania is correct, the young man is likely to have assaulted the other. As the upshot of the quarrel the elder man shot the intruder, and then made his escape from the carriage, taking the young lady with him. We will suppose that all this happened very rapidly, and that the train was still going at so slow a pace that it was not difficult for them to leave it. A woman might leave a train going at eight miles an hour. As a matter of fact, we know that this woman did do so.
‘And now we have to fit in the man in the smoking carriage. Presuming that we have, up to this point, reconstructed the tragedy correctly, we shall find nothing in this other man to cause us to reconsider our conclusions. According to my theory, this man saw the young fellow cross from one train to the other, saw him open the door, heard the pistol-shot, saw the two fugitives spring out onto the line, realized that murder had been done, and sprang out himself in pursuit. Why he has never been heard of since – whether he met his own death in the pursuit, or whether, as is more likely, he was made to realize that it was not a case for his interference – is a detail that we have at present no means of explaining. I acknowledge that there are some difficulties in the way. At first sight, it might seem improbable that at such a moment a murderer would burden himself in his flight with a brown leather bag. My answer is that he was well aware that if the bag were found his identity would be established. It was absolutely necessary for him to take it with him. My theory stands or falls upon one point, and tomorrow I will call upon Mr Henderson and the railway company to make strict enquiry as to whether a ticket was found unclaimed in the local train through Harrow and King’s Langley upon the 18th of March. If such a ticket were found my case is proved. If not, my theory may still be the correct one, for it is conceivable either that he travelled without a ticket or that his ticket was lost.’
‘Remarkable, Holmes.’
‘You don’t sound convinced, Watson.’
‘And neither,’ I ventured, ‘do you, Holmes.’
To which he gave a peal of laughter. ‘Perhaps not, but we shall see what tomorrow brings.’
It was actually two days before the glum tidings arrived. No such ticket as hypothesized by Holmes was found; secondly, that on the night of the murder, thanks to a boiler problem, the local train had been stationary in King’s Langley Station when the express, going at fifty miles an hour, had flashed past it.
Holmes took this news remarkably well, perhaps because an intriguing note had arrived from Montague Place from a governess with a singular problem. ‘I am sure that the solution to this puzzle will present itself eventually,’ he said. Neither of us realized then that it would take five long years for The Rugby Mystery to be solved and, in the interim, my great friend would appear to be lost to the world for ever.
I recall it recorded in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy day towards the end of March 1895 that Holmes received a telegram over breakfast. He scribbled a reply and said nothing more of it. A few hours later there was a measured step on the stairs and a moment later a stout, tall and grey-whiskered gentleman entered the room.
‘Mr Peredue. Come, please be seated. This is my friend and companion Dr John Watson.’
‘I have read and greatly enjoyed your works, sir. Most engaging.’
‘Aren’t they?’ said Holmes. ‘Although Watson does have a rather romantic streak when it comes to reporting our cases. And a tendency to tell stories backwards. How was the crossing?’
‘Crossing?’
‘From the United States.’
Peredue frowned at this. ‘Rough, since you ask. It took me a day or so to recover. How did you . . . ? My accent?’
‘Sir, I would have placed you as from New York or its environs before you uttered a single word. The cut of the jacket, the cuffs on the trousers, the pearlized buttons on your waistcoat . . . or should I say vest?’
‘Waistcoat will do. I haven’t gone entirely native.’
‘When did you leave Buckinghamshire?’ Holmes made an aside to me, in case I wasn’t keeping up. ‘Peredue is an old Bucks surname.’
‘It is. My people emigrated to the States from there in the early fifties.’
Holmes took his customary place on the sofa. ‘Come, arrange your thoughts, Mr Peredue, and lay them out in due sequence. Watson, make yourself comfortable, because you are about to hear the solution to The Rugby Mystery.’
I needed no more encouragement to give Mr Peredue my undivided attention. At last! Five full years since Holmes hopped between those trains.
‘My family settled in Rochester, in the State of New York, where my father ran a large dry goods store. There were only two sons: myself, James Peredue, and my brother, Edward Peredue. I was ten years older than my brother, and after my father died I sort of took the place of a father to him, as an elder brother would. He was a bright, spirited boy. But there was always a soft spot in him, and it was like mould in cheese, for it spread and spread, and nothing that you could do would stop it. Mother saw it just as clearly as I did, but she went on spoiling him all the same, for he had such a way with him that you could refuse him nothing. I did all I could to hold him in, and he hated me for my pains.
‘At last he fairly got his head, and nothing that we could do would stop him. He got off into New York, and went rapidly from bad to worse. At first he was only fast, and then he was criminal; and then, at the end of a year or two, he was one of the most notorious young crooks in the city. He had formed a friendship with Sparrow MacCoy, who was at the head of his profession as a bunco steerer, green goodsman and general rascal.’
‘We have heard that name before, have we not, Watson? But not for some time.’
‘They took to card-sharping, and frequented some of the best hotels in New York. My brother was an excellent actor. In fact, he might have made an honest name for himself if he had chosen. He would take the parts of a young Englishman of title, of a simple lad from the West, or of a college undergraduate, whichever suited Sparrow MacCoy’s purpose. And then one day he dressed himself as a girl, and he carried it off so well, and made himself such a valuable decoy, that it was their favourite game afterwards.’
‘Ah,’ said Holmes, then put a finger to his lips, as if to remind himself not to interrupt.
‘They had made it right with corrupt politicians of Tammany Hall and with the police, and nothing would have stopped them if they had only stuck to cards and New York, but they must needs come up Rochester way, and forge a name upon a cheque. It was my brother who did it, though everyone knew that it was under the influence of Sparrow MacCoy. I bought up that cheque, and a pretty sum it cost me. Then I went to my brother, laid it before him on the table, and swore to him that I would prosecute if he did not clear out of the country. At first he simply laughed. I could not prosecute, he said, without breaking our mother’s heart, and he knew that I would not do that. I made him understand, however, that our mother’s heart was being broken in any case, and that I had set firm on the point that I would rather see him in Rochester gaol than in a New York hotel. So at last he gave in, and he made me a solemn promise that he would see Sparrow MacCoy no more, that he would go to Europe, and that he would turn his hand to any honest trade that I helped him to get. I took him down right away to an old family friend, Joe Wilson, who is an exporter of American watches and clocks, and I got him to give Edward an agency in London, with a small salary and a fifteen per cent commission on all business. His manner and appearance were so good that he won the old man over at once, and within a week he was sent off to London with a case full of samples.’
That explained the watches on the young man who, clearly, was this gentleman’s brother.
‘It seemed to me that this business of the cheque had really given my brother a fright, and that there was some chance of his settling down into an honest line of life. My mother had spoken with him, and what she said had touched him, for she had always been the best of mothers to him and he had been the great sorrow of her life. But I knew that this man Sparrow MacCoy had a great influence over Edward and my chance of keeping the lad straight lay in breaking the connection between them. I had a friend in the NewYork detective force, and through him I kept a watch upon MacCoy. When, within a fortnight of my brother’s sailing, I heard that MacCoy had taken a berth in the Etruria, I was as certain as if he had told me that he was going over to England for the purpose of coaxing Edward back again into the ways that he had left. In an instant I had resolved to go also, and to pit my influence against MacCoy’s. I knew it was a losing fight, but I thought, and my mother thought, that it was my duty. We passed the last night together in prayer for my success, and she gave me her own Testament that my father had given her on the day of their marriage in the Old Country, so that I might always wear it next to my heart.
‘I was a fellow traveller, on the steamship, with Sparrow MacCoy, and at least I had the satisfaction of spoiling his little game for the voyage. The very first night I went into the smoking-room, and found him at the head of a card-table, with a half a dozen young fellows who were carrying their full purses and their empty skulls over to Europe. He was settling down for his harvest, and a rich one it would have been. But I soon changed all that.
‘“Gentlemen,” said I, “are you aware whom you are playing with?”
‘“What’s that to you? You mind your own business!” said Sparrow, with an oath.
‘“Who is it, anyway?” asked one of the dudes.
‘“He’s Sparrow MacCoy, the most notorious card-sharper in the States.”
‘Up MacCoy jumped with a bottle in his hand, but he remembered that he was under the flag of the Old Country, where law and order run, and gaol and the gallows wait for violence and murder, and there’s no slipping out by the back door on board an ocean liner.
‘“Prove your words, you . . . !” said he.
‘“I will!” said I. “If you will turn up your right shirt-sleeve to the shoulder, I will either prove my words or I will eat them.”
‘He turned white and said not a word.’
I recalled that newspaper article I had been reading the very day when Henderson had called. ‘He would have revealed that he had an elastic band down the arm with a clip just above the wrist,’ I said.
‘Yes. It is by means of this clip that they withdraw from their hands the cards that they do not want, while they substitute other cards from another hiding place. I reckoned on it being there, and it was. He cursed me, slunk out of the saloon, and was hardly seen again during the voyage. For once, at any rate, I got level with Sparrow MacCoy.
‘But he soon had his revenge upon me, for when it came to influencing my brother he outweighed me every time. Edward had kept himself straight in London for the first few weeks, and had done some business with his American watches, until this villain came across his path once more. I did my best, but the best was little enough. The next thing I heard there had been a scandal at one of the Northumberland Avenue hotels: a traveller had been fleeced of a large sum by two confederate card-sharpers, and the matter was in the hands of Scotland Yard. The first I learned of it was in the evening paper, and I was at once certain that my brother and MacCoy were back at their old games. I hurried at once to Edward’s lodgings. They told me that he and a tall gentleman (whom I recognized as MacCoy) had gone off together, and that he had left the lodgings and taken his things with him. The landlady had heard them give several directions to the cabman, ending with Euston Station, and she had accidentally overheard the tall gentleman saying something about Manchester. She believed that that was their destination.
‘A glance at the timetable showed me that the most likely train was at five, though there was another at 4.35, which they might have caught. I had time to get only the later one, but found no sign of them either at the depot or in the train. They must have gone on by the earlier one, so I determined to follow them to Manchester and search for them in the hotels there. One last appeal to my brother by all that he owed to my mother might even now be the salvation of him. My nerves were overstrung, and I lit a cigar to steady them. At that moment, just as the train was moving off, the door of my compartment was flung open, and there were MacCoy and my brother on the platform.’
‘In disguise,’ said Holmes. ‘Because Scotland Yard was after them? Yet you recognized them?’
‘I did. MacCoy had a great astrakhan collar drawn up, so that only his eyes and nose were showing. But that nose, that great red beak, I’d know it anywhere. My brother was dressed like a woman, with a black veil half down his face, but of course it did not deceive me for an instant, nor would it have done so even if I had not known that he had often used such a dress before. I started up, and as I did so MacCoy recognized me. He said something, the conductor slammed the door, and they were shown into the next compartment. I tried to stop the train so as to follow them, but the wheels were already moving, and it was too late.
‘When we stopped at Willesden, I instantly changed my carriage. It appears that I was not seen to do so, which is not surprising, as the station was crowded with people. MacCoy, of course, was expecting me, and he had spent the time between Euston and Willesden in saying all he could to harden my brother’s heart and set him against me. That is what I fancy, for I had never found him so impossible to soften or to move. I tried this way and I tried that. I pictured his future in an English gaol; I described the sorrow of his mother when I came back with the news. I said everything to touch his heart, but all to no purpose. He sat there with a fixed sneer upon his handsome face, while every now and then Sparrow MacCoy would throw in a taunt at me, or some word of encouragement to hold my brother to his resolutions.
‘“Why don’t you run a Sunday school?” he would say to me, and then, in the same breath: “He’s only just finding out that you are a man as well as he.”
‘“A man!” said I. “Well, I’m glad to have your friend’s assurance of it, for no one would suspect it to see you like a boarding-school missy. I don’t suppose in all this country there is a more contemptible-looking creature than you are as you sit there with that Dolly pinafore upon you.” My brother coloured up at that, for he was a vain man, and he winced from ridicule.
‘“It’s only a dust-cloak,” said he, and he slipped it off. “One has to throw the coppers off one’s scent, and I had no other way to do it.” He took his toque off with the veil attached, and he put both it and the cloak into his brown bag. “Anyway, I don’t need to wear it until the conductor comes round,” said he.
‘“Nor then, either,” said I, and taking the bag I slung it with all my force out of the window. “Now,” said I, “if nothing but that disguise stands between you and a gaol, then to gaol you shall go.”
‘“Oh, you would squeal, would you?” MacCoy cried, and in an instant he whipped out his revolver. I sprang for his hand, but saw that I was too late, and jumped aside. At the same instant he fired, and the bullet which would have struck me passed through the heart of my unfortunate brother.
‘He dropped without a groan upon the floor of the compartment, and MacCoy and I, equally horrified, kneeled at each side of him, trying to bring back some signs of life. MacCoy still held the loaded revolver in his hand, but his anger against me and my resentment towards him had both for the moment been swallowed up in this sudden tragedy. It was he who first realized the situation. The train was for some reason going very slowly at the moment, and he saw his opportunity for escape. In an instant he had the door open, but I was as quick as he, and jumping upon him the two of us fell off the footboard and rolled in each other’s arms down a steep embankment. At the bottom I struck my head against a stone, and I remembered nothing more. When I came to myself I was lying among some low bushes, not far from the railroad track, and somebody was bathing my head with a wet handkerchief. It was Sparrow MacCoy.
