A Study in Murder, page 35
‘“I guess I couldn’t leave you,” said he. “I didn’t want to have the blood of two of you on my hands in one day. You loved your brother, I’ve no doubt; but you didn’t love him a cent more than I loved him, though you’ll say that I took a queer way to show it. Anyhow, it seems a mighty empty world now that he is gone, and I don’t care a continental whether you give me over to the hangman or not.”
‘He had turned his ankle in the fall, and there we sat, he with his useless foot, and I with my throbbing head, and we talked and talked until gradually my bitterness began to soften and to turn into something like sympathy. What was the use of revenging his death upon a man who was as much stricken by that death as I was? And then, as my wits gradually returned, I began to realize also that I could do nothing against MacCoy that would not recoil upon my mother and myself. How could we convict him without a full account of my brother’s career being made public – the very thing that of all others we wished to avoid? It was really as much in our interest as his to cover the matter up, and from being an avenger of crime I found myself changed to a conspirator against Justice. The place in which we found ourselves was one of those pheasant preserves that are so common in the Old Country, and as we groped our way through it I found myself consulting the slayer of my brother as to how far it would be possible to hush it up.
‘I soon realized from what he said that unless there were some papers of which we knew nothing in my brother’s pockets, there was really no possible means by which the police could identify him or learn how he had got there. His ticket was in MacCoy’s pocket, and so was the ticket for some baggage that they had left at the depot. Like most Americans, he had found it cheaper and easier to buy an outfit in London than to bring one from New York, so that all his linen and clothes were new and unmarked. The bag, containing the dust-cloak, which I had thrown out of the window, may have fallen among some bramble patch where it is still concealed, or may have been carried off by some tramp, or may have come into the possession of the police, who kept the incident to themselves. Anyhow, I have seen nothing about it in the London papers. As to the watches, they were a selection from those that had been entrusted to him for business purposes. It may have been for the same business purposes that he was taking them to Manchester, but – well, it’s too late to enter into that.
‘I don’t blame the police for being at fault. I don’t see how it could have been otherwise. There was just one little clue that they might have followed up, but it was a small one. I mean that small, circular mirror that was found in my brother’s pocket. It isn’t a very common thing for a young man to carry about with him, is it? But a gambler might have told you what such a mirror may mean to a card-sharper. If you sit back a little from the table, and lay the mirror, face upwards, upon your lap, you can see, as you deal, every card that you give to your adversary. It is not hard to say whether you see a man or raise him when you know his cards as well as your own. It was as much a part of a sharper’s outfit as the elastic clip upon Sparrow MacCoy’s arm. Taking that, in connection with the recent frauds at the hotels, the police might have got hold of one end of the string.’
‘The mirror,’ said Holmes. ‘I should have known.’
I kept quiet. I had been reading that article about card-sharpers and it had mentioned the very same device and technique. Yet my mind had not made the connection. That, of course, is the difference between Holmes and the rest of us – his brain would have seen the link at once.
‘I don’t think there is much more for me to explain,’ Peredue continued. ‘We got to a village called Amersham that night in the character of two gentlemen upon a walking tour, and afterwards we made our way quietly to London, whence MacCoy went on to Cairo and I returned to New York. My mother died six months afterwards, and I am glad to say that to the day of her death she never knew what happened. She was always under the delusion that Edward was earning an honest living in London, and I never had the heart to tell her the truth. He never wrote; but then, he never did write at any time, so that made no difference. His name was the last upon her lips. Once she was gone, I felt I owed it to the authorities to travel here and put the record straight and take my punishment. But before going to Scotland Yard, I thought I would offer the explanation to you, as I followed the news carefully, and knew you had been consulted. It must be very vexing to a man of your unblemished record—’
I suppressed a smile, knowing that there was a clutch of cases that represented a blemish. Norbury, for example.
‘Oh, I would not bother with Scotland Yard, Mr Peredue,’ said Holmes.
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘I will convey the basic facts to Chief Inspector Vane. I am sure he will decide that unless you can produce Sparrow MacCoy, there is little point in reopening the case.’
‘But I—’
‘Lost a well-loved brother. None could have done more to try and save his soul. I am grateful you have drawn a line under The Rugby Mystery.’
‘Very well, Mr Holmes. There’s just one other thing that I have to ask you, sir, and I should take it as a kind return for all this explanation if you could do it for me. You remember the Testament that was picked up. I always carried it in my inside pocket, and it must have come out in my fall. I value it very highly, for it was the family book with my birth and my brother’s marked by my father in the beginning of it. I wish you would apply at the proper place and have it sent to me. It can be of no possible value to anyone else. If you address it to me at Bassano’s Library, Broadway, New York, it is sure to come to hand.’
‘I am sure we can locate it and have it returned.’
When Peredue had taken his leave, to visit the grave of his brother and arrange, anonymously, for a headstone to be erected bearing his name, Holmes turned to me. ‘Watson, no doubt one day you will wish to write of these events, of the time when Sherlock Holmes developed a theory so preposterous, it was only trumped by the truth. But have a care. Peredue did aid the escape of a murderer, albeit an accidental one, and leave the law, and a certain Consulting Detective, scratching their heads. Strictly speaking, he should face the courts. Perhaps you should allow some time to pass before putting pen to paper.’
Time has indeed passed and two of the principals are no longer with us. James Peredue perished in 1907 when the Larchmont, a paddle steamer, sank after a collision off the coast of Rhode Island, en route from Providence (where Peredue owned a fine home) to New York. Sparrow MacCoy sharped one too many cards and was shot dead in a gunfight in San Francisco in 1906, just days before the earthquake. Mr Sherlock Holmes is retired, tending his bees, his reputation secure and robust enough to survive a tale in which he played the part of the mistaken detective.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Although A Study in Murder is fiction, the details of the POW camps in Germany (including the sanctioned strolls in the countryside, providing a form was completed giving the officer’s word they would return), the prisoner aid services in the UK and the exchanges for POWs to live on licence in Holland and Switzerland are all based on fact. Harzgrund is inspired by the rather grim Holzminden, where the commandant really did run the camp for profit. No prisoners were dissolved in acid, although there was a largely successful mass escape through tunnels in July 1918. See Jacqueline Cook’s The Real Great Escape and Neil Hanson’s Escape from Germany. There really were work camps in Germany like the one described for the Russians, which presaged the conditions and brutality found in Nazi concentration camps twenty-five years later. The War Behind the Wire by John Lewis-Sempel is a sobering and thoughtful overview of the life of POWs of all ranks and the harsh regimes they often endured.
Watson’s story about Sparrow MacCoy & Co. is based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Man With the Watches’. Like ‘The Lost Special’ this is one of his tales that, while not part of the Sherlock Holmes canon, has the feel of a Holmes tale (in fact an unnamed ‘amateur detective’ and an ‘amateur reasoner’ pops up in both). I have reworked it to put Sherlock at the centre of the puzzle, even if, as in A Study in Scarlet, the answer to the crime ultimately lies off-stage from Baker Street.
The Connaught in Mayfair was once called the Coburg and changed its name in 1917 (although a little later than here).
The Holland class of experimental submarines did exist, but Holland 6 never got off the drawing board, except within these pages. And if you happen to be in Venlo, don’t go looking for the bridge at Knok. There isn’t one there. We novelists have to be allowed to make some things up.
As always, I would like to thank Clare Hey, Sue Stephens, James Horobin, Jamie Groves, Carla Josephson and all at Simon & Schuster, as well as Susan d’Arcy, David Miller, Christine Walker and Deborah Ryan for their enthusiasm, help and support with this series.
Robert Ryan, A Study in Murder
