CONTENTS
The Three Monarchs: A Sherlock Holmes Short Story
An Excerpt from Moriarty
Praise for The House of Silk
About the Author
Original Short Story by Anthony Horowitz
Copyright
About the Publisher
The Three Monarchs
A Sherlock Holmes Short Story
It has never been my desire to write very much about my own affairs for I am well aware that it is only my long and intimate acquaintance with Mr Sherlock Holmes and the many insights that I have been afforded into his deductive methods that are of interest to the public at large. Indeed, it has often struck me that, but for our chance introduction, when I was looking for inexpensive lodgings in London, I would simply have followed my calling as a doctor of medicine and might never have set pen to paper at all.
And yet some aspects of what might be called my private life have, necessarily, appeared in these pages. Readers will, for example, be aware of the wound that I received at the decisive Battle of Maiwand and the frequent troubles that it caused me in my career. I believe I have had reason to mention my older brother, Henry, who having disappointed everyone in his life, none more so than himself, took to drink and died young. On a happier note, my marriage to Miss Mary Morstan, as she was when I met her, has been central to at least one of my narratives for I would never have met her had she not first presented herself as a client of Sherlock Holmes. I loved her from the very start and made no attempt to disguise the fact from my readers – and why should I have? We were married soon afterwards and, although our union was not to be a long one, we were as close to each other as it is possible for a man and a woman to be.
Our first home was in a quiet street close by Paddington Station: not perhaps the most elegant part of town, but one that was conducive to my return to civil practice. It was a pleasant house with a large, airy consulting room at street level and two further floors above, which my new wife decorated with both modesty and good taste. And yet I will confess that to find myself surrounded by all the hallmarks of domesticity, with everything in its right place and almost nothing surplus to requirement, caused me at first an uneasiness which was hard to define. Even the maid, a neat little creature who seemed determined to avoid me, inspired in me a vague sense of threat. It was a strange sensation. On the one hand I was completely happy, but at the same time I was uncomfortable, missing something without knowing exactly what it was.
It embarrasses me that I was not able to diagnose more quickly the source of my disquiet. The many months that I had spent at 221b Baker Street had of course left their mark on me. Quite simply, I was missing my old rooms. I might have complained often enough about Holmes’s abominable habits; his refusal to throw away a single document so that every surface was piled high with papers of one sort or another, his extraordinary untidiness with cigars in the coal scuttle, test tubes and flasks scattered amongst the breakfast things, bullets lined up along the window sill and tobacco stored in the toe of a Persian slipper. Well, I missed them now. How often had I gone to bed with the sound of Holmes’s Stradivarius winding its way up the stairs, or risen to the scent of his first morning pipe? And added to this was the bizarre array of visitors who beat a path to our front door – the grand duke from Bohemia, the typist, the schoolteacher, or, of course, the harassed inspector from Scotland Yard.
I had seen little of Sherlock Holmes in the year following my marriage. I had stayed away perhaps purposefully for there was a part of me that worried that my new wife might take it amiss if I went in search of a life I had left behind. I was also, I will admit, concerned that Sherlock Holmes himself might have moved on. There was a part of me that dreaded to find a new lodger in my place, although Holmes’s finances were such that he would have had no need to continue such an arrangement. I said nothing of this, but my dear Mary already knew me better than I thought for one evening she broke off from her needlework and said, ‘You really must visit Mr Holmes.’
‘What on earth makes you think of him?’ I asked.
‘Why, you do!’ she laughed. ‘I could see that he was on your mind a moment ago. Do not deny it! Just now, your eye settled on the drawer where you keep your service revolver and I noticed you smile at the recollection of some adventure you had together.’
‘You are very much the detective, my dear. Holmes would be proud of you.’
‘And he will, I am sure, be delighted to see you. You must visit him tomorrow.’
I needed no further prompting and, having dealt with the few patients who had come to my door, I set off the following afternoon, planning to arrive in time for tea. The summer of ’89 was a particularly warm one and the sun was beating down as I made my way along Baker Street. Approaching my old lodgings I was surprised to hear music, and moments later came upon a small crowd gathered round a dancing dog that was performing tricks for its master who was accompanying it on the trumpet. Such entertainers could be found all over the capital although this one had strayed some distance from the station. I was forced to step off the pavement and make my way round in order to enter the familiar front door where I was greeted by the boy in buttons who led me upstairs.
Sherlock Holmes was languishing in an armchair with the blinds half drawn and a shadow across his forehead reaching almost to his eyes. He was evidently pleased to see me, for he greeted me as if nothing had changed and as if I had never really been away. Slightly to my regret, however, I saw that he was not alone. My old chair on the other side of the fireplace was taken by a burly, sweating figure whom I recognised at once as Inspector Athelney Jones of Scotland Yard, the detective whose wrong-footed assumptions and subsequent actions had caused us both irritation and amusement when we were investigating the murder of Bartholomew Sholto at Pondicherry Lodge. Seeing me, he sprang up as if to leave but Holmes hastily reassured him. ‘You have timed your visit quite perfectly, my dear Watson,’ he said. ‘I have no doubt you will remember our friend, Inspector Jones. He arrived just a few moments before you and was about to consult me on a matter of the greatest delicacy – or so he assured me.’
‘I am quite happy to come back if it is not, after all, convenient,’ Jones demurred.
‘Not at all. I confess that I have found it increasingly difficult to rouse myself without the friendship and good counsel of my own Boswell. Take the Trepoff murder, for example, or the strange behaviour of Dr Moore Agar – in both instances it was only through purest chance that I prevailed. You have no objection, Watson, to hearing what the inspector has to say?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Then it is agreed.’
But before Jones could begin, the door opened and Mrs Hudson bustled in carrying a tray laden with tea, scones, a small plate of butter and a seed and currant cake. The pageboy must have informed her of my arrival, for I noticed that she had included a third cup but, casting his eye over the spread, Holmes came to a very different conclusion.
‘I see, Mrs Hudson, that you were unable to resist the charms of the street entertainer who has chosen our doorstep for his performance.’
‘It is true, Mr Holmes,’ the good woman replied, blushing. ‘I heard the music and did watch for a while from an upstairs window. I was going to call out to them to move on but the dog was so amusing and the crowd so good-natured that I thought better of it.’ She scowled. ‘But I cannot see what it is on my tea tray that could possibly have given you any information concerning my movements.’
‘It is of no great importance,’ Holmes laughed. ‘The tea looks excellent and, as you can see, our good friend Watson is here to enjoy it.’
‘And a great pleasure it is to see you again, Dr Watson. The house isn’t the same without you.’
&n
bsp; I waited for Mrs Hudson to leave before turning to my friend. ‘You will forgive me, Holmes,’ I said. ‘But I cannot see how you could have drawn such a conclusion from a plate of scones and a seed cake.’
‘Neither of them told me anything,’ Holmes replied. ‘It was in fact the parsley that Mrs Hudson has placed on top of the butter.’
‘The parsley?’
‘It has been placed there only a minute ago. But the butter has been out of the pantry and in the sun. You will see that it has melted in this warm weather.’
I looked down. It was indeed the case.
‘The parsley has not sunk into the butter, which suggests an interval of time during which Mrs Hudson was interrupted in her duties. Apart from the arrival of my two visitors, the only distraction has been the music and the applause of the crowd outside.’
‘Astonishing!’ Jones exclaimed.
‘Elementary,’ Holmes returned. ‘The greater part of my work is founded upon just such observations as these. But we have more serious business at hand. You must tell us, Inspector, what it is that brings you here. And meanwhile, Watson, might I inveigle upon you to pour the tea?’
I was happy to oblige and, while I set about my work, Athelney Jones began his narrative, which I set down as follows.
‘Early this morning, I was called out to a house in Hamworth Hill, in North London. The business that had brought me there was a death by misadventure, not a murder – that had been made clear to me from the start. The house was owned by an elderly couple, a Mr and Mrs Abernetty, who lived there alone, for they had never had children. They had been woken up at night by the sound of breaking wood and had come downstairs to discover a young man, darkly dressed, rifling through their possessions. The man was a burglar. There can be no doubt of that for, as I would soon discover, he had broken into two other houses in the same terrace. Seeing Harold Abernetty standing at the doorway in his dressing gown, the intruder rushed at him and might well have done him serious harm. But as it happened, Abernetty had brought down with him a revolver, which he always kept close by, fearing just this eventuality. He fired a single shot, killing this young man at once.
‘All this I learned from Mr Abernetty. He struck me as an elderly, completely harmless fellow. His wife, a few years his junior, sat in an armchair and sobbed almost the entire time I was there. I learned that they had inherited the house from its former owner, a Mrs Matilda Briggs. She had given it to them, quite freely, to thank them for their long service. They had lived there for the past six years, quietly and without incident. They were retired and devout members of the local church and it would be hard to imagine a more respectable couple.
‘So much for the owners. Let me now describe to you the victim. He was, I would have said, about thirty years of age, pale of complexion and hollow-eyed. He was wearing a suit and a pair of leather shoes which were spattered with mud. These were of particular interest to me as it had rained two nights before the break-in and, venturing into the Abernettys’ garden – they had a small square of land behind the house – I had quickly found footprints made by the dead man. He had evidently come round the side and broken in through the back door. I also discovered the jemmy he had used. It was in the bag which he had brought with him and which also contained the proceeds of the robbery.’
‘And what was it that this young man had stolen from the elderly and harmless Abernettys?’ Holmes asked.
‘Mr Holmes, you hit the mark! It is exactly the reason I am here.’
Jones had brought with him a portmanteau bag which, I assumed, had belonged to the dead man. He opened it and, deliberately, with no attempt at a drama, produced three china figures that he stood in front of us, side by side. They were identical, crude and vulgar representations of our monarch, Queen Victoria, the Empress of India herself. Each one was about nine inches high and brightly coloured. They showed her in ceremonial dress with a small diamond crown, a lace veil and a sash across her chest. Holmes examined them, turning each one briefly in his hands.
‘Souvenirs of the Golden Jubilee,’ he muttered. ‘There is barely an arcade in London that does not sell them and I believe they are of little value. These have been taken from three different houses. The first belongs to a hectic and disorganised family with at least one small child. The second, I would say, was the property of an artist or a jeweller who attended the jubilee celebrations with his wife. The third must therefore have come from the Abernettys themselves.’
‘You are absolutely right, Mr Holmes,’ Jones exclaimed. ‘The Abernettys live at number six, at the end of a short terrace. My investigation led me to discover that both of their neighbours, the Dunstables at number five and a lady by the name of Mrs Webster at number one, had been burgled during the same night. Mrs Webster is now a widow but her husband was a watchmaker while the house next door is indeed occupied by a family with two small children. They’re currently away. But all three figurines are identical. How could you possibly have known?’
‘It is simplicity itself,’ Holmes replied. ‘You will observe that the first figurine has not been dusted for some time and carries the small, sticky fingermarks that can only belong to a child – and one who has used our monarch as a plaything. The second has been broken and very skilfully repaired – I will presume by the owner and he, surely, would not have undertaken such a task unless the day of the jubilee did not have some special significance for him. It is quite likely he was there with his wife – or, as she now is, his widow. Are you telling me that nothing else was taken, Inspector?’
‘That is precisely why I am here, Mr Holmes. When I first visited the house on Hamworth Hill, I thought I would be investigating a straightforward burglary, though one that had gone tragically awry. Instead, what I found was an unfathomable mystery. Why should any young man risk his liberty and end up losing his life for the sake of three statuettes that, you rightly say, he could have bought for a few shillings anywhere in London? I have to know the answer – and recalling my acquaintance with you I took the liberty of coming here in the hope that you might be able to help.’
Holmes fell silent and I wondered how he was going to respond to the Scotland Yard man. It was part of his mercurial character that a case with no obvious interest might set him alight while a mystery such as might have come from the pen of Poe himself would leave him languidly reclining in his chair. At last he spoke.
‘Your problem does present a few features of interest,’ he began. ‘At the same time, though, it would seem that no crime has been committed. This man, Abernetty, was defending himself and his wife and, on the face of it, there is no doubt that he was confronted by a desperate and a dangerous young man. Where is the body, by the way?’
‘I have had it removed to the mortuary at St Thomas’s Hospital.’
‘That is a shame. You will doubtless have removed many of the clues with it. I have one more question, Inspector Jones. How well acquainted were the three neighbours – which is to say, the Abernettys, the Dunstables and Mrs Webster?’
‘They all seem to be on the very best of terms, Mr Holmes, although, as I have explained, I have been unable to speak to Mr Dunstable. He is a stockbroker’s clerk and is currently away.’
‘It is much as I expected.’
‘Do I take it then that, as you show an interest in the matter, you are prepared to help me with my investigation?’
Once again, Holmes said nothing but I saw him glance at the tea tray and saw the twinkle in his eyes that I knew so well.
‘Hamworth Hill is not so very far from here but, that said, I have no desire to make the trek up in this unseasonal weather,’ he began. ‘I would be inclined to leave the matter in your own capable hands, Inspector. However, there is still the question of the parsley in the butter which, though immaterial in itself, would nonetheless seem to have a bearing on the case.’ I thought he was in some way joking, toying with his hapless visitor, but everything about his demeanour was perfectly serious. ‘I will look into this for you. It is
too late to do anything today but shall we meet tomorrow at, say, ten o’clock?’
‘At Hamworth Hill?’
‘At the mortuary. And you, Watson, having heard this tale, must come with us. I insist on it. Your practice can, I am sure, manage for a few hours without you.’
‘How can I refuse you, Holmes?’ I asked, although the truth was that my curiosity had been piqued. The three monarchs still stood in front of me and I was keen to know what secret they might conceal.
And so we met the following day in the frigid, white-tiled interior of the mortuary where the body of the unfortunate burglar was presented to us. He was, in appearance, exactly as Inspector Jones had described him. The bullet had struck him just above the heart and I have no doubt that his death would have been instantaneous. Such considerations, however, did not seem to be of interest to Holmes who had barely glanced at the wound before he turned to the silent inspector, one hand resting beneath his chin.
‘I would be interested to know what you were able to construe from the body,’ he said.
‘No more than I have already said,’ Jones replied. ‘He is young, perhaps thirty. He looks English . . .’
‘Nothing more?’
‘I’m afraid not. Is there something I’ve missed?’
‘Only that he has very recently been released from prison. I would say, in the last few days. He served a long sentence. He was drinking sherry before he died. This is a bloodstain, here. But this most certainly is not. That is most curious.’
‘How can you tell that he has been in prison?’
‘I would have thought that would be obvious to you. You must have seen men with the pallor that comes of being denied sunshine for a length of time. His hair has been cut in a terrier crop and what are these fibres beneath his fingernails? I detect the smell of pine tar. He has undoubtedly been picking oakum. His shoes are brand new and yet they are out of fashion. Could it be that they were taken from him at the time of his arrest and returned to him on his departure from jail? Ha! There is a fold in his left sock. I find that to be of the greatest significance.’