The Secret Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes (14 page)

Consequently, Rouse had rented the isolated house in Hampstead where Miss Maitland was taken late one night, having first been rendered unconscious by a sleeping-draught added to her wine at dinner. It was intended that she would be kept there in a drugged state, induced by regular intakes of morphine introduced into her food or drink, until a lawyer of dubious reputation could be found to draw up the necessary document which Miss Maitland, now dependent on the drug and with her mind clouded and her will broken, would sign without protest.

On their return to California, Rouse intended to tell any concerned friends that Miss Maitland had suffered a breakdown in health while in England and, with no witnesses to refute his story and with Miss Maitland’s memory of the events far from clear, he might have escaped without detection.

‘A remarkable story!’ Holmes exclaimed when Dr Moore Agar had finished his account. ‘When you next see Miss Maitland, pray convey to her my very good wishes for a complete recovery. She will, I assume, return to America, when she has fully regained her health?’

‘That is her intention,’ Dr Moore Agar replied. ‘I understand that, once there, she will marry a young man who, like her father, is a talented engineer and who no doubt will develop and manufacture the drill. I shall certainly pass on your good wishes to her, Mr Holmes, and in return, I have to convey her gratitude to you and Dr Watson, together with these tokens of her regard.’

He handed each of us a small parcel the contents of which,
when unwrapped, were revealed to be two silver cigar cases, engraved with our initials.

With a disapproving air, Dr Moore Agar remarked, ‘I deliver them with reluctance, gentlemen. However, Miss Maitland chose them herself. As a token of my own gratitude, I felt I could make you no better offering than my own services. Should you ever be in need of medical attention, Mr Holmes, pray do not hesitate to pay me a professional visit. My fees will, of course, be waived.’

‘That is most generous of you,’ Holmes said. ‘However, as my good friend, Dr Watson, will vouchsafe, I am generally in excellent health, although it is a subject which affords me no interest whatsoever. Nevertheless, should I ever require your services, I shall certainly call on you in Harley Street.’

Dr Moore Agar took a long look round the room, his glance passing from Holmes’ rack of pipes and tobacco pouch to the tantalus of decanters standing upon the sideboard.

‘A few words of advice before I leave,’ he continued, rising to his feet and holding out his hand. ‘If you wish to continue in the excellent state of health which you at present enjoy, allow me to recommend regular hours and meals, adequate fresh air and exercise, and an abstinence from all forms of drugs such as alcohol, tobacco and any others which you may from time to time indulge in. They are poisons to the system, Mr Holmes. Good-day to you, sir!’

Holmes waited until he had heard the street door close behind his client before he burst out laughing.

I was less inclined to be amused.

‘He is quite right, you know, Holmes,’ I said seriously. ‘You should take more fresh air and exercise as well as giving up that most pernicious habit of yours, as I have long advised you.’

Holmes laughed even more heartily.

‘Oh, come, my dear fellow!’ he exclaimed. ‘It was you, not I, who complained about the effort of pushing the hand-cart up Heath Street.’

‘That was entirely the fault of Smallwood’s boots,’ I protested.

‘Then let us see which one of us can outwalk the other,’ he rejoined, seizing his hat and stick. ‘Twice round the lake in
Regent’s Park, Watson, and the one who loses shall buy the other a whisky and soda at the Criterion Bar!’

And with that, still laughing, he went bounding off down the stairs.

In ‘The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual’, I described how my old friend Sherlock Holmes, although otherwise neat in his personal habits, had a horror of destroying documents and that, in consequence, they would gather in dusty piles about our sitting-room until he could find the inclination or the opportunity to put them away. To be fair to him, much of his time was taken up with more urgent matters, in particular his investigative activities although his chemical experiments, his books and his violin as well as many other interests too many to mention also claimed his attention. It was, therefore, very infrequently, perhaps only once a year, that he set about docketing and tidying away these accumulated papers.

Such a fit overtook him late one winter’s afternoon before my marriage. The weather was so bitterly cold that we had not ventured out of doors all day but had stayed by the fire reading, I engrossed in one of Clark Russell’s sea adventures, while Holmes was deep in the study of a volume of reference concerning the mathematical principles on which the Egyptian pyramids were constructed.
*

He was mercurial by temperament and suddenly, at five o’ clock, he flung aside the book and announced, ‘Enough of Cheops, Watson. I am in need of something less cerebral to
pass the time until dinner. What do you suggest, my dear fellow?’

I put forward my proposal a little diffidently, not at all expecting him to agree to it.

‘Well, Holmes,’ said I, ‘could you not make a start in indexing some of your documents? You have been saying for months now that you ought to make the effort and, in the mean time, the piles have grown even higher.’

To my utter astonishment, he concurred at once.

‘Well said, Watson! The room has indeed come to resemble the chambers of some over-worked barrister whose clerk has been on extended sick leave. I shall begin immediately.’

With that, he sprang up from his chair and disappeared inside his bedroom to return shortly afterwards dragging behind him a large tin box. Depositing it in the centre of the carpet, he knelt down in front of it and, throwing back the lid, began to empty it of its contents, neatly packaged up and tied with red tape, in readiness for it to receive all the other bundles of manuscripts which had overflowed from his desk on to the floor and which no one was permitted to touch, let alone dispose of.

I, too, rose from my chair to look curiously over his shoulder, knowing that the trunk contained the records and mementoes of those earlier cases which Holmes had investigated before I became acquainted with him, only a few of which he had so far recounted to me.
*

One small packet which he was in the act of laying to one side caught my attention. I had not seen it before and, as he set it down, I inquired, ‘What is in that, Holmes?’

He looked up at me, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

‘The relics of a most singular case, Watson, which occurred before your advent as my chronicler. Would you care to hear about it? Or would you prefer that I went on with the task of putting away my papers? The choice is yours entirely.’

I was torn between the two suggestions, as no doubt Holmes had intended I should be, but, in effect, I had little choice in the matter, curiosity proving stronger than the urge for tidiness, as Holmes had probably also been aware when he put his proposal.

I attempted a compromise by saying, ‘If the account of the case will not take too long, Holmes, I should very much like to hear it. Perhaps there will be time to finish the more onerous task before dinner.’

Abandoning the trunk in the centre of the room, we resumed our places by the fire, Holmes curling up in his favourite baggy armchair and watching with an expression of amused indulgence as I eagerly undid the piece of tape which held the bundle together and examined its contents.

They consisted of three items, a faded photograph of an elderly peasant woman wearing full skirts and with a shawl about her head and shoulders, a small, crudely executed painting on wood of a bearded, emaciated Saint, the gilt peeling from his halo, and lastly an official-looking piece of paper, well creased and thumbed, which was printed in Cyrillic characters and bore several stamps and signatures in the same script.

‘Well, Watson, what do you make of them?’ Holmes inquired after I had carefully examined these objects.

‘They appear to be Russian,’ I ventured. ‘Whom did they belong to?’

‘To a certain Misha Osinsky.’

‘And who is he?’

‘You are looking at him, my dear fellow.’

‘You, Holmes!’ I exclaimed, greatly surprised. ‘I had no idea you had Russian connections.’

‘Nor have I. The name, along with the photograph and the ikon, was given to me by a Count. As you may guess, they are mementoes of a case I once investigated on his behalf into the murder of an old Russian woman. No, not the one in the photograph. She was supposed to be my mother and was part of my assumed identity as Misha Osinsky.’

‘How did you come to be involved?’ I asked, quite forgetting the trunk and its scattered contents.

Holmes, who had been filling and lighting his pipe in a leisurely manner, settled back in his chair, the wreaths of smoke curling about his head.

‘Like several other of my early cases, it came to me through an old fellow-student at University for, although I had but one close friend,
*
my name was already becoming known through the studies I was making into criminal research.

‘Among these acquaintances was Sergei Plekhanovitch who was at the same college as myself and whom I met through a common interest in fencing,
†
one of the few athletic sports I indulged in. We used to practise together with the foils although we were not intimate; he was too sociable and fond of amusement for my tastes. However, he had a most interesting background, being the only son of Count Nicholai Plekhanovitch who had once owned extensive estates in Imperial Russia. Because the Count had liberal and democratic sympathies, he had fallen foul of the Tzarist authorities and consequently had sold up his land and had brought his family and his fortune to this country where he intended to raise his son in the English tradition. There had been, I understand, an English great-grandmother, the daughter of a Yorkshire squire, and I like to believe that it was she who had passed on to her descendants that sturdy love of freedom and hatred of oppression which characterised the Plekhanovitch family.

‘As you know, Watson, when I first came to London, I had lodgings in Montague Street, not far from the British Museum, and it was there that I received a visit one evening from Sergei Plekhanovitch.

‘I found him greatly changed, and for the better, since I had last seen him at University where he had been chiefly known for his love of fashionable clothes and good company. In the intervening time, he had grown more mature and sober in his
manner; perhaps as a result of the experiences he had to recount to me.

‘I must break off my narrative at this point to explain to you, Watson, that I had had some little success with one or two investigations I had undertaken, principally into the affair of Lady Greenleaf’s missing son. Indeed it was this case, as well as my former acquaintance with Sergei, which had persuaded the Plekhanovitchs to consult me.

‘Would I, Sergei inquired, be willing to undertake an inquiry on behalf of himself and his father?

‘The case he laid before me was so singular that I readily agreed. To sum it up briefly, it was as follows.

‘Because of Count Nicholai Plekhanovitch’s liberal sympathies, his house in Kensington had become the focal point for many Russian
émigrés
who came to him pleading for help and advice. On account of this, the Plekhanovitchs had decided that, in order to assist their fellow-countrymen, they would rent a house in the East End of London, not far from the docks where the exiles had first disembarked and where they had a better chance of finding employment. The house would be used as a refuge for some of the more deserving among them where they could stay as temporary tenants until such time as they could find lodgings of their own.

‘Count Plekhanovitch had placed an elderly but still active woman in charge of the household to act as housekeeper to the tenants. She was a former nurse to Sergei whom the Plekhanovitchs had brought with them from Russia, and she was devoted to them. They, in turn, were extremely fond of her and treated her as one of the family.

‘Two nights before Sergei called on me at my rooms in Montague Street, this old woman, Anna Poltava, had been found murdered in her bed. It was this case which the Plekhanovitchs wished me to investigate.

‘This was all that Sergei had time to tell me in the cab on the way to his father’s house in Kensington although once we had arrived and were shown upstairs to the drawing-room, Count Nicholai Plekhanovitch, a tall, handsome man, with exquisite manners, was able to give me further details of the case.

‘“It is a matter of honour, Mr Holmes,” he explained in excellent English. “Anna Poltava was part of my household and a most loyal servant. I feel I must make every effort to find her murderer and bring him to justice. That is why my son and I decided to call on your services. The official police, under Inspector Gudgeon, appear to have reached an impasse in their inquiries and admit themselves baffled.”

‘“Have they no evidence?” I asked.

‘“Very little, it seems. They have one witness, a man called Moffat, a porter, who was passing the house on his way to Spitalfields market at about half-past three in the morning, the time when it is believed that the murder was committed. He saw a dark, bearded man, wearing a long black coat and with a wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his eyes, lurking at the entrance to an alley-way which leads to the yard behind the house. The description appeared to fit one of the tenants, a certain Vladimir Vasilchenko, who is also dark and bearded, but when Moffat was called in to identify him, he failed to do so. The man he had seen, he insisted, was shorter and of much slighter build. Inspector Gudgeon has therefore dismissed Vladimir Vasilchenko from the case. Indeed, I understand that the Inspector is firmly of the opinion that the murder was the work of an outsider, not one of the tenants.”

‘“On what grounds?”

‘“On the evidence at the scene of the crime. Anna Poltava was found smothered in her bed on Monday morning, two days ago. Her room was on the ground floor at the rear of the house, its window overlooking the yard. From various marks and gashes on the outside of the frame, made apparently with a knife, it seemed the window was forced open by an intruder who, the official police assume, crept into the room while Anna Poltava was asleep and placed her own pillow over her face before making his escape by the same route, taking with him her purse containing, among other coins, two half-sovereigns which were intended for housekeeping expenses and the payment of the rent. Moreover, the door to her room was still found to be locked. It had to be broken open the following
morning by some of the tenants when her absence was noticed.”

‘From his manner and his troubled countenance, I deduced that Count Nicholai Plekhanovitch was not convinced by this official explanation and when I put this suggestion to him, he immediately replied, “No, Mr Holmes, I am not! I grant it is plausible and would seem to cover the evidence and yet I cannot believe that it is the true explanation for Anna Poltava’s murder.”

‘“You have your own theory?” I inquired.

‘“Theory, yes, but I have no facts to support it apart from my own instinct in the matter.”

‘“Then pray expound it,” said I. “If robbery was not the motive, what do you suppose was?”

‘As you know, Watson, although I generally prefer facts to mere conjecture, I am not entirely averse to a little judicious imagination being brought to bear on a problem. It is one of my chief criticisms of Lestrade and his colleagues at the Yard that, although they may be thorough in a plodding, pedestrian fashion, they lack that spark of imaginative intuition which, if properly employed, can cast light into the darkest corners of a case.
*
Moreover, Count Plekhanovitch had knowledge of the persons concerned in the inquiry which I myself did not, at the time, possess. I was therefore curious to hear his ideas on the matter.

‘“I am convinced,” said he, “that the death of Anna Poltava was politically motivated.”

‘This seemed highly unlikely to me. Why should anyone wish to murder an elderly Russian servant-woman? When I expressed my doubts, Count Nicholai continued,

‘“You must understand, Mr Holmes, that not all the Russian exiles who seek refuge in this country are private or even innocent individuals, such as Jewish immigrants escaping from the pogroms carried out against them by the Tzarist authorities
or Liberals like myself who wish to live and raise their families in a more tolerant society. Among them are Revolutionaries, Nihilists and Anarchists, desperate and dangerous men – and women, too – who seek to bring about the violent overthrow of the Imperial Russian Government through acts of terror, murder and assassination, such as was carried out in St Petersburg in 1881 against Tzar Alexander II,
*
or by Vera Zasulich
†
 a year earlier in her attempt against the life of General Trepov. Mine is a tragic country, Mr Holmes, with a past that is dyed deep in blood and a future which will, I fear, be no less savage and bloody. You do not know how fortunate you are to be English and born into a democracy.

‘“However, while I myself wish to see a democratic government established in my mother Russia, I am strongly opposed to all forms of violence. Therefore, when I come to select tenants for the Stanley Street house from among the many exiles who clamour for a place there, I am most careful in my choice. It is not an easy task. Although Sergei and I scrutinise their documents closely, it is quite possible that some of these may be false and that, despite our efforts, a criminal escaping from justice may have slipped through our net. Indeed I have reason to believe that an attempted assassin has taken refuge on the premises, disguised as an ordinary lodger. Or so rumours among the
émigré
population have informed me.”