Sherlock Holmes and the Missing Shakespeare (9 page)

Back upstairs, he made his way to Roger’s still body, put the noose around his neck and tightened it as far as it would go. He tied off the remainder of the rope to the balcony railing, then in one steady motion, he lifted and heaved Roger’s body over the edge. The rope snapped tight and swayed sickeningly in Reginald’s night vision. If Roger was not dead before, and Reginald was pretty sure he was, then he certainly was now.

Chapter Thirteen:

The Conclusion

“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man can invent.” —
Sherlock Holmes

The next morning, we had all gathered in Kendricks’s office at Holmes’s request.

He had invited the two arresting constables from the night before so that they could take a proper statement. In reality, Holmes was finally ready to deliver his version of what he thought might be the best explanation for the series of events our latest case had put us through.

Lady Jessica of Harcourt and Avon was there; understandably, however, her parents were absent. They were now the inheritors of the Galham Estate and all its holdings and the legalities were overwhelming for them. She sat demurely beside her new fiancé, Gerald Fitzwilliam, who I was pleased to see was as doting as he was expected to be. I felt sorry for them that their monumental engagement should have to start like this, especially after having admired each other in secret for so many years.

Llewelyn Kendricks was, as always, the ever-gracious host. He’d seen to ensuring there were comfortable seats provided for everyone and refreshments in abundance, though I did not think any of us were in a mood for it.

As soon as we had all arrived, we took our seats and Holmes stepped out in front of us. His pipe was firmly held between his lips but out of courtesy to the police and Lady Harcourt, he had not lit it. As we sat in anticipation, the detective took a few moments to slowly pace back and forth before us. I knew he was doing his best to sort out the series of events in his mind and formulate a plan for how he would deliver his narrative. Soon, he began to address us all.

“Welcome, everyone. I am particularly relieved to announce that we have come to the conclusion of our game and now it is only right that I lay the facts out before you as Watson and I have deduced them, for you have all indeed been players in the game.

“However, as I had discussed last night with my dear friend, Dr. Watson, this caper has mostly been about the ‘hows’ of the case rather than the ‘whys.’ The reasons were basal, instinctual, driven by pure self-preservation on Reginald’s part and these are emotions we all too clearly understand as human beings. As members of civilized society, we keep them at bay, at an arm’s length, but for some, they remain within easy reach still.

“How Reginald started this whole palaver was with the murder of his brother, Roger Galham, and his family. When Reginald had learned from Roger during a family squabble over his ridiculous spending habits that he was the bastard son of the reverend and not the Earl of Galham’s son at all, he lost his mind in a fit of rage.”

The account of how Roger and his family were murdered were gruesome enough for Miss Harcourt to succumb to her feminine sensitivities, but, for one reason or another, Holmes felt it important, especially for the constables present, for us all to understand the ruthlessness that had been employed in the act. Holmes held nothing back.

Holmes was silent after his retelling and stood before us, slowly shaking his head. He walked over to a table that was covered with a white sheet in the corner of the room and pulled the sheet off throwing it to the ground. There were three metal boxes with matching locks laid out side by side on the table. The smallest one first, the largest one last. Iron keys lay in front of the first and second but the third had none.

Holmes lifted the first key and turned it in the lock. The lid of the box rose easily and Holmes withdrew from it the altered last will and testament of Roger Galham. He threw it down on the table, disgusted, and stepped away, pacing in front of us again.

“Once the family had been murdered, and the false will was read and accepted, the pathology and police investigations closed, and the funerals conducted, Reginald was free and clear to assume his new position. There weren’t a great many more obstacles set in his way. What he foolishly hadn’t accounted for was Paul Kijumbe’s treachery.

“As soon as Reginald discovered that Miss Harcourt had found the manuscript and removed it from the Galham House library, he sent Kijumbe to steal the document from my Baker Street apartments. To ensure the secret of Reginald’s heritage remained safe, it was imperative that the William Shakespeare play never be properly authenticated. If it were ever found to be real, then the rumors of an indiscreet affair between Lady Anne Galham and the Great Bard could possibly be confirmed, and, if that were the case, then the question would be: Why would such a precious belonging of the Avon’s turn up in the Galham Library? It would have been there because Countess Avon, Roger’s mother, gifted it to Edith Galham for graciously accepting Roger into her home and allowing him the protection of his real father, the Earl of Galham.”

At that point, the detective moved toward the table again. He picked up the second key and placed it into the lock on the second box. Again the lock sprang open easily and the lid of the box rose. Sherlock reached into the box and when his hand emerged, he held in it the stolen manuscript of the missing Shakespeare play.

“Earlier today, I asked several document and Shakespeare experts from all over the city to come here to Mr. Kendricks’s office to take a look at this manuscript. There were eight experts, to be exact. Among them was Alexander Richardson the Third of Sotheby’s auction house, a rather renowned authority on Renaissance books and literature. According to Mr. Richardson, the document is as authentic as any other Shakespeare manuscript he had had the honor to appraise or auction. He further commented that it could perhaps be the most valuable he has seen to date due to its pristine condition and the fact that it is proof of something scholars have known for years but have been unable to prove. You see, every famous artist was once a beginner, an apprentice, a novice before they were ever a professional. Therefore, it stands to reason that their more crude or unfinished attempts at their craft and their earliest completed works are out there in the world for us to discover. This is just one of such.”

In conclusion, Holmes mercilessly dropped the priceless manuscript on the table in front of its box and moved on.

“Paul Kijumbe, the valet, as it turned out, was incapable of keeping his mouth shut and had been known for slandering his previous employers in the pubs of south London for years. I had a notion that the habit would not have been lost, considering Reginald should have supplied more than enough material to gossip about. It wasn’t hard to find him and it didn’t take long before the story of the key came out one night at the bar. You see, Paul, the instigator, had made sure that Reginald would never betray his role in the plot by stealing the key to one of the strongboxes. A box that even Reginald himself was unaware was occupied, a box that held the clue to his absolute destruction. Because unbeknownst to Reginald, the new Earl of Galham, his accomplice had not destroyed Roger’s original will
.

“The key for that box was kept so closely on Kijumbe’s body that Dr. Watson and I had to relieve the man of his shirt to find it. But find it, and retrieve it, we did. After he woke up on the streets and realized the key was gone, Paul Kijumbe was inclined to make a hasty retreat from both the capital city and Warwickshire county, but I took it upon myself to have him detained at Scotland Yard for possible involvement in the murder of a peer of the realm. And that, dear friends, brings us to the last of our three strongboxes.”

Sherlock made his way across the room again and stood before the table. He reached inside his sport jacket and from the inside left breast pocket, he retrieved a key that was identical to the two he had previously used to open the other boxes on the table. He held it up for all of us to see before slipping it into the lock and turning it. Again, the lock sprang open without hesitation and he reached inside.

The document that Holmes produced from the box was not easily recognizable. No one present in the room had ever laid eyes on it before. Holmes realized quickly that the suspense was being ruined by the fact that we had no realization of what he was holding up.

“Come on now, friends. You are all supposedly intelligent people here. There was one more item of interest that remained missing from the equation.”

After a brief pause, it was Kendricks who offered a response; and it was the correct response to Holmes’s challenge.

“The original, unaltered copy of Lord Roger’s last will and testament,” he announced.

“You’ve got it!” Holmes announced, throwing the pages down on the table. He picked up the last iron key and raised it up high for all to see.

“On the day that Watson and I had relieved Mr. Kijumbe of the possession of this key, I had not one clue as to where it fit into the whole mystery but I knew it was very important. Why else would the rogue carry it so closely on his person?”

I cringed, remembering again where we had located it on Kijumbe’s body.

“It wasn’t until the night at Galham House when Reginald told me they were old army footlockers that belonged to his father, the previous Earl Galham, that it fell into place. The boxes, as you can see, are untarnished; not a nick or much of a scratch on them. The locks sprang free as smoothly as if they were made quite recently and so too was true of their hinges. That is only because they were only made weeks ago by the blacksmith, Mr. Tyler, who resides in Penstone Heath. Mr. Tyler was kind enough to evaluate the boxes for me, after I had removed them from Lord Reginald’s possession, and gave me full confirmation that they were indeed his work. To prove his statement, he fashioned copies of the keys for box numbers one and two for me that very day. As you can all see, the keys worked perfectly.

“It was at that point that I became undoubtedly sure that not only had Reginald altered and forged his brother’s will, he had also planned and executed the murder of the Galhams and unrightfully acquired the seat and property of the earldom under false pretenses. In addition to those crimes, he also had Kijumbe murder the Dowager Countess and Reverend Jones, his own mother and father. In doing so, he ensured that the valet’s hands were just as dirty as his own and he also eradicated any further possibility that his claim on Galham could be disproved; all this, in one fell swoop.

“The news of the murders led Watson and myself to Harcourt Hall the very next night and, just as I had suspected, Reginald was there ready and waiting to eliminate the last threat, Miss Jessica Harcourt. Fitzwilliam falling victim to the lead in his gun would only have been a bonus, because of how much Reginald hated the man. After all, Fitzwilliam, though a man with land and a title, was from a family that made their money from their holdings in America. Reginald considered Marquis Fitzgerald to be an upstart and a nouveau riche. Also, with Lady Jessica gone, there would be not one single person alive in Penstone Heath who could lay a stronger claim to the Earldom of Galham than himself; the illegitimate son of a county parson.”

***

With the case concluded, Holmes saw no need for us to linger in Stratford-upon-Avon.

I assumed he had grown quite bored of the place and I knew for a fact that country living had never appealed to him at all. As we sat in our compartment on the train back to London, he spread out a considerable collection of weeds, flowers and leaves which he had gathered in the meadows across Warwickshire and pressed carefully in a book he carried.

“What’s that then?” I asked curiously.

“As it turns out, Watson, I think I may have picked up an appetite for botany. It is remarkable the things that plants are capable of, the effects they can have on the human body. I may have cost myself and my experiments dearly by overlooking their properties and so, I think I shall take up a study of it.”

“Very relaxing work, botany,” I replied. “Even as a doctor, I can say it is much like the study of man; appearances are almost always deceiving and the truth one finds as a result of the study is always much more strange than anything you could possibly have made up.”

Holmes laughed and returned his specimens to the safety of the pressing pages.

“It’s as you’ve always said, my dear Watson...”

“What have I always said, Holmes?”

“The proper study of mankind is man.”

“Indeed, Holmes. Indeed.”

The End

Holmes and Watson will return in:

Sherlock Holmes and the Lost Da Vinci

by J.R. Rain and Chanel Smith

Coming soon!

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