The Confidential Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (10 page)

“There must be a perfectly logical explanation for this.”

Unsure of where this would all lead, I pressed on. “Well, of course. It's perfectly logical that Sir Henry gave Beryl Stapleton money and, I dare say, perfectly innocent as well. After the death of her husband, the lady had no means of support. Sir Henry was grateful to her, for she had risked her life and suffered great harm from her secret attempts to save his life. I suspect that he was concerned that she should not have further hardship in what had already been a life marked with suffering. Knowing him as I do, I'm sure that you will find that the cheques began shortly after the death of
her husband, about the same time that Sir Henry and his friend Dr. Mortimer began their trip around the world in an attempt to restore the baronet's health. I'm also confident that you will find that Sir Henry seldom, if ever, visited her, even though he has been in England for more than a year.” Sir Henry glanced up toward me with a look of gratitude.

“All your talk about sterling character won't wash away the facts,” Lestrade said. He halted abruptly as a constable threw open the door and stood back to allow into the room two of his companions. Between them they supported the bedraggled figure of a barely conscious woman. This time I saw her face and instantly recognized her.

“Beg your pardon, sir, but we just now found her tied up and gagged down in the club's cellar.”

We leapt to our feet as one man. The constable carried Beryl Stapleton to the sofa, and Lestrade followed him, barking orders at his men while I snatched up a decanter and poured her a glass of brandy.

“A man has been murdered, Mrs. Stapleton,” Lestrade told her as the constable set her down, “but at least we have managed to save you. Tell us who abused you so cruelly and abducted you.”

Warrington, his silent servant role shaken by the sight of this woman in distress, took the glass from me and held it to her lips. “Here, madam, drink this.”

She revived slowly, taking small sips and glancing apprehensively around the room. Sir Henry stood beside her, looking deeply into her dark eyes with a look of concern. “It was Henry Baskerville,” she said at last in a small voice I could hardly hear. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

“There, there, madam, take courage,” Lestrade said. “It is all over. You have only confirmed what I suspected from the start.” He seemed pleased as he turned to Sir Henry. “Sir Henry Baskerville, I arrest you for the murders of Sir Charles and Dr. Mortimer, and for the abuse of this poor woman.”

“Watson! Don't just sit there!”

“Wait, Lestrade, there is more to this than meets the eye,” I protested. “May I ask a question?”

“What is it?” Lestrade asked with some impatience.

I turned to Beryl. She still reclined on the sofa, clutching the blanket that had been fetched to cover her shapely bare legs. “Just tell me, Mrs. Stapleton, why you came to this club on the evening of May 17th, the same evening that I visited Sir Henry?”

She seemed apprehensive. “It was not I.”

“But it was! You must have wanted to tell Sir Henry something, but you were frightened off. I saw you at the door, but the instant that it was opened, you hurried away. What did you want to tell him, and what frightened you away?”

“I was not frightened! I was not there!” she cried, hiding her face behind shaking hands.

I stared back at her, dumbfounded. It had been no one else, I was certain.

“Take him away!” Lestrade barked at his constables and they stepped forward to take Sir Henry by the arms.

“Tell the worst, Watson, don't flinch!”
The voice in my head propelled me to the center of the room.

“Wait, Lestrade! Your refusal to be logical forces me to admit that you are right about one thing,” I said. “Sherlock Holmes
was
wrong—but not about Sir Henry Baskerville! Holmes was an excellent judge of character, and not for a moment did he suspect him. You can be sure that if Sir Henry were a fortune hunter, Holmes would have been onto him in a moment! No, Holmes proved beyond a doubt that it was Stapleton who murdered old Sir Charles, then tried to murder his heir, Sir Henry. But think of this. One month ago, Sir Henry announced his engagement to Abigail Ferncliffe. That very day, I was nearly run down by a coach and four. Not long afterward, someone took a shot at you. Some evil presence has been following both of us.”

“Coincidence,” Lestrade said.

“Holmes would say that there is no such thing as coincidence! Think of it! Almost everyone who knew of Sherlock Holmes's solution to the mystery of the myth of the Hound of the Baskervilles is under attack.”

“Everyone but his lordship,” Lestrade rasped. “And good reason for that, if he was the one doing the attacking!”

“But just think for a moment! Why should anyone want to murder you, Dr. Mortimer, and myself? Who would beat and threaten Mrs. Stapleton, forcing her to lie, as she is doing now? What do we four have in common?”

“Sir Henry is a murderer and philanderer,” Lestrade explained to me as though I were an idiot. “Of course he'd want to kill Mrs. Stapleton. And if he were betrayed, he'd do Mortimer as well.”

“That's fine as far as it goes,” I agreed, “but why attempt to kill you? And if he were going to murder Mrs. Stapleton, why call upon me to save her? No. The only common link among the four of us is this: we all knew Stapleton before Holmes branded him a killer, when he was pretending to be a harmless bug collector!”

“Oh, well done, Watson!”

“But Stapleton died in Grimpen Mire,” Lestrade protested.

I shook my head. “Mrs. Stapleton, you told Holmes that your husband had fled into that desolate swamp, yet we found hardly a trace of him. Impressed by that vast, trackless wilderness, Holmes deduced that Stapleton must have drowned. But no corpse was ever found.”

“You believe that Stapleton's still alive!” Lestrade gasped. “Do you honestly think that Holmes could have missed something like that?”

“He didn't,” I said with certainty, frowning as Warrington refilled Mrs. Stapleton's glass. “If Holmes had a fault, it was his genius for concealing uncertainties, rarely telling even me what he had in his mind until the facts seemed irrefutable. I know that he investigated the details of that case long after it was over, which was unusual for him. One of the things he discovered was that Stapleton
had a man-servant named Anthony who assisted him in his crime and later escaped to the Continent.”

“You have it now! Run with it, old boy!”

“But what if Beryl misdirected us that night, even as she is doing now?” I turned to glare at her and she dropped her eyes, a deep blush colouring her face. “Suppose it was old Anthony who died in the quicksand, and Stapleton who fled to Paris?”

“Hmm,” growled Lestrade, impressed in spite of himself.

“Imagine if Stapleton were still alive and plotting to inherit the Baskerville title and fortune,” I added. “Wouldn't he be compelled to murder Sir Henry before he could marry and beget an heir? And who could stop him?”

“Those of us who could recognize him on sight if he claimed to be the heir after Henry's death!” Lestrade agreed grimly. “I see what you've done. A simple example of ‘Eliminate the impossible—' ”

“ ‘And whatever remains, however improbable, is the solution,' ” I finished for him, echoing the man we both respected so much. “Stapleton never went near Grimpen Mire that night. He was much too intelligent to flee to a place from which there was no escape. While Sherlock and I searched for him, he made his way to the Continent, probably disguised as old Anthony. Having eluded the greatest detective in the world, he was free to resume a life incognito in Europe. When he heard that Holmes was killed, he must have gloated over the demise of his adversary, then began to scheme again how he would inherit the estate of Baskerville.”

“Yes,” Lestrade added, “and he would have to hurry when he learned that Baskerville was marrying one of the Fecund Ferncliffes. Sorry, Sir Henry, but you must know how some people talk.” He was embarrassed and reached for a tall glass on a silver tray offered by a silent servant.

“Don't drink that!” I said. “I'm deadly serious. I wouldn't trust anything served to us in this place.”

Lestrade squinted critically at the violently foaming head of ale that stood before him. “Poison?”

“I shouldn't be surprised,” I replied, trying to remember if I had sipped from the snifter that had appeared in my hand. “Who brought these drinks? Lestrade, see that no one leaves the room. I should think that—”

“Beryl!” cried Sir Henry. The deep blush had become livid, suffusing her fine features. The glass fell from her hand and she fell back, shuddering.

“She's dead,” I told them a moment later. “Mute testimony to the potency of the poison in all our drinks. That can only mean—” With shocking quickness, a man brandished a pistol and leaped for the door. “Get down, Henry! Look out, Lestrade!” I had my own pistol in my pocket, but before I could pull it out a constable appeared from the other side of the door and wrestled down the old servant.

“Warrington?” Sir Henry exclaimed, aghast.

“If I'm not mistaken,” I said, bending down, “it is Stapleton in a wig and makeup.” A few tugs on his hair proved me right. I refrained from touching the envelope with traces of white powder found in his pocket.

Lestrade pulled Stapleton to his feet and pushed him into the arms of the constable. “Take him away!”

May 26, 1893

With Sir Henry safely back in the arms of his fiancée, this afternoon I sat with Lestrade in my study. “How did you know?” he asked.

“Start at the beginning, Watson.”

“The poor woman's wounds,” I replied. “I assumed at the time that Sir Henry was responsible and called upon me because he'd injured her. But when I'd had time to reflect on it, I realized that such depravity is the result of what is, for lack of a better way of putting it, an English schoolboy's vice. I have seen such injuries in men who as boys were caned for infractions at school (and who are not?) and then acquire a taste for it. It is shocking, but after a time some are not satisfied with a simple birching and cultivate a proclivity for the lash.”

“Good God,” Lestrade said, and took a gulp of tea. “That's the sort of thing only a doctor would know.”

“But Sir Henry was raised in Canada,” I went on. “Like Americans, in Canada they brand cattle and horses, but it is a mark of ownership because they can't afford fences, as I understand it. It's not deliberate cruelty. And while that didn't eliminate Sir Henry, it made it seem less likely that he would be such an enthusiast. So I cast about for another explanation and remembered that Beryl Stapleton had been beaten by her husband in just such a way. When I realized that the woman
was
Beryl, the rest became clear.”

“In the beginning,” Lestrade inquired, “even though she'd been beaten, Beryl misled Holmes by telling him that her husband had run to Grimpen Mire?”

I nodded.

“And although he beat her again, she didn't warn you or Sir Henry that the murdering fiend was back. She had the gall to come in here and lie to our faces, trying to blame poor Sir Harry!” He shook his head, baffled.

“Be kind to her memory, Lestrade. She recognized Warrington as her husband and was frightened by him. And, I suspect, loved him. Yet as soon as she learned that Stapleton had returned to London, she came to the club to warn Sir Henry. If someone other than Warrington had seen me to the front door that night, and if they hadn't recognized each other, she might have succeeded and poor Mortimer might still be alive. Stapleton must have traced her to her room and threatened her into silence.”

“He abused her and he murdered her, yet she never said a word against him. I'll never understand women!” He was outraged, his lip curling in an angry sneer. Knowing his spouse, who was called by everyone, including the Inspector himself, “Mrs. Lestrade,” I knew he was telling the truth.

Few men, certainly not Lestrade nor the average reader of
The Strand
could comprehend why I privately suspected that Beryl Stapleton was bound by more than just love. I was sure that, as some
are addicted to drugs, she was doomed by what amounted to a sexual addiction to her husband, painful and humiliating as it must have been.

I came to a decision. “Lestrade, I must implore you to see that not one word of Holmes's involvement in this case ever comes before the public. I don't care how you manage it.”

Lestrade agreed. “I'll not mention old Sir Charles and the earlier case. I'll see that Stapleton is charged only for his wife's and Dr. Mortimer's murders. He'll be hanged, if there's any justice. The name of Sherlock Holmes will never be uttered at the trial.”

“Excellent. Try not to mention me, either.”

“What is the matter with you, Watson?” he asked. “It was you who solved this difficult case. You've sent a master criminal to his just reward. Why not take credit for it?”

“I'd rather not.”

“Oh, maybe just a small footnote, Watson,”
and I recognized the voice of my own vanity.

“When the Hound of the Baskervilles was killed and Sir Charles's murder solved, Holmes called it one of the greatest cases of his career,” I explained. “I shall publish it as such someday, in memory of him. Just because he didn't live long enough to work out this—this
postscript
, I'll not have it made public that he erred.”

“Suit yourself.” Lestrade shrugged. “I respect your loyalty.”

“But the truth is so perfect. The lie will be incomplete, unsatisfying,”
the voice pleaded.

“Be quiet!” I said firmly. “This is the end of it.”

Lestrade frowned, hurt, thinking that I was talking to him.