The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (133 page)

“Then we had the visit from our friends next morning, shadowed always by Stapleton in the cab. From his knowledge of our rooms and of my appearance, as well as from his general conduct, I am inclined to think that Stapleton’s career of crime has been by no means limited to this single Baskerville affair. It is suggestive that during the last three years there have been four considerable burglaries in the west country, for none of which was any criminal ever arrested. The last of these, at Folkestone Court, in May, was remarkable for the cold-blooded pistolling of the page, who surprised the masked and solitary burglar. I cannot doubt that Stapleton recruited his waning resources in this fashion, and that for years he has been a desperate and dangerous man.

“We had an example of his readiness of resource that morning when he got away from us so successfully, and also of his audacity in sending back my own name to me through the cabman. From that moment he understood that I had taken over the case in London, and that therefore there was no chance for him there. He returned to Dartmoor and awaited the arrival of the baronet.”

“One moment!” said I. “You have, no doubt, described the sequence of events correctly, but there is one point which you have left unexplained. What became of the hound when its master was in London?”

“I have given some attention to this matter and it is undoubtedly of importance. There can be no question that Stapleton had a confidant, though it is unlikely that he ever placed himself in his power by sharing all his plans with him. There was an old manservant at Merripit House, whose name was Anthony. His connection with the Stapletons can be traced for several years, as far back as the schoolmastering days, so that he must have been aware that his master and mistress were really husband and wife. This man has disappeared and has escaped from the country. It is suggestive that Anthony is not a common name in England, while Antonio is so in all Spanish or Spanish-American countries. The man, like Mrs. Stapleton herself, spoke good English, but with a curious lisping accent. I have myself seen this old man cross the Grimpen Mire by the path which Stapleton had marked out. It is very probable, therefore, that in the absence of his master it was he who cared for the hound, though he may never have known the purpose for which the beast was used.

“The Stapletons then went down to Devonshire, whither they were soon followed by Sir Henry and you. One word now as to how I stood myself at that time. It may possibly recur to your memory that when I examined the paper upon which the printed words were fastened I made a close inspection for the water-mark. In doing so I held it within a few inches of my eyes, and was conscious of a faint smell of the scent known as white jessamine. There are seventy-five perfumes, which it is very necessary that a criminal expert should be able to distinguish from each other, and cases have more than once within my own experience depended upon their prompt recognition. The scent suggested the presence of a lady, and already my thoughts began to turn towards the Stapletons. Thus I had made certain of the hound, and had guessed at the criminal before ever we went to the west country.

“It was my game to watch Stapleton. It was evident, however, that I could not do this if I were with you, since he would be keenly on his guard. I deceived everybody, therefore, yourself included, and I came down secretly when I was supposed to be in London. My hardships were not so great as you imagined, though such trifling details must never interfere with the investigation of a case. I stayed for the most part at Coombe Tracey, and only used the hut upon the moor when it was necessary to be near the scene of action. Cartwright had come down with me, and in his disguise as a country boy he was of great assistance to me. I was dependent upon him for food and clean linen. When I was watching Stapleton, Cartwright was frequently watching you, so that I was able to keep my hand upon all the strings.

“I have already told you that your reports reached me rapidly, being forwarded instantly from Baker Street to Coombe Tracey. They were of great service to me, and especially that one incidentally truthful piece of biography of Stapleton’s. I was able to establish the identity of the man and the woman and knew at last exactly how I stood. The case had been considerably complicated through the incident of the escaped convict and the relations between him and the Barrymores. This also you cleared up in a very effective way, though I had already come to the same conclusions from my own observations.

“By the time that you discovered me upon the moor I had a complete knowledge of the whole business, but I had not a case which could go to a jury. Even Stapleton’s attempt upon Sir Henry that night which ended in the death of the unfortunate convict did not help us much in proving murder against our man. There seemed to be no alternative but to catch him red-handed, and to do so we had to use Sir Henry, alone and apparently unprotected, as a bait. We did so, and at the cost of a severe shock to our client we succeeded in completing our case and driving Stapleton to his destruction. That Sir Henry should have been exposed to this is, I must confess, a reproach to my management of the case, but we had no means of foreseeing the terrible and paralyzing spectacle which the beast presented, nor could we predict the fog which enabled him to burst upon us at such short notice. We succeeded in our object at a cost which both the specialist and Dr. Mortimer assure me will be a temporary one. A long journey may enable our friend to recover not only from his shattered nerves but also from his wounded feelings. His love for the lady was deep and sincere, and to him the saddest part of all this black business was that he should have been deceived by her.

“It only remains to indicate the part which she had played throughout. There can be no doubt that Stapleton exercised an influence over her which may have been love or may have been fear, or very possibly both, since they are by no means incompatible emotions. It was, at least, absolutely effective. At his command she consented to pass as his sister, though he found the limits of his power over her when he endeavoured to make her the direct accessory to murder. She was ready to warn Sir Henry so far as she could without implicating her husband, and again and again she tried to do so. Stapleton himself seems to have been capable of jealousy, and when he saw the baronet paying court to the lady, even though it was part of his own plan, still he could not help interrupting with a passionate outburst which revealed the fiery soul which his self-contained manner so cleverly concealed. By encouraging the intimacy he made it certain that Sir Henry would frequently come to Merripit House and that he would sooner or later get the opportunity which he desired. On the day of the crisis, however, his wife turned suddenly against him. She had learned something of the death of the convict, and she knew that the hound was being kept in the outhouse on the evening that Sir Henry was coming to dinner. She taxed her husband with his intended crime, and a furious scene followed in which he showed her for the first time that she had a rival in his love. Her fidelity turned in an instant to bitter hatred, and he saw that she would betray him. He tied her up, therefore, that she might have no chance of warning Sir Henry, and he hoped, no doubt, that when the whole countryside put down the baronet’s death to the curse of his family, as they certainly would do, he could win his wife back to accept an accomplished fact and to keep silent upon what she knew. In this I fancy that in any case he made a miscalculation, and that, if we had not been there, his doom would none the less have been sealed. A woman of Spanish blood does not condone such an injury so lightly. And now, my dear Watson, without referring to my notes, I cannot give you a more detailed account of this curious case. I do not know that anything essential has been left unexplained.”

“He could not hope to frighten Sir Henry to death as he had done the old uncle with his bogie hound.”

“The beast was savage and half-starved. If its appearance did not frighten its victim to death, at least it would paralyze the resistance which might be offered.”

“No doubt. There only remains one difficulty. If Stapleton came into the succession, how could he explain the fact that he, the heir, had been living unannounced under another name so close to the property? How could he claim it without causing suspicion and inquiry?”

“It is a formidable difficulty, and I fear that you ask too much when you expect me to solve it. The past and the present are within the field of my inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer. Mrs. Stapleton has heard her husband discuss the problem on several occasions. There were three possible courses. He might claim the property from South America, establish his identity before the British authorities there, and so obtain the fortune without ever coming to England at all; or he might adopt an elaborate disguise during the short time that he need be in London; or, again, he might furnish an accomplice with the proofs and papers, putting him in as heir, and retaining a claim upon some proportion of his income. We cannot doubt from what we know of him that he would have found some way out of the difficulty. And now, my dear Watson, we have had some weeks of severe work, and for one evening, I think, we may turn our thoughts into more pleasant channels. I have a box for ‘Les Huguenots,’
^he
Have you heard the De Reszkes?
³⁵
Might I trouble you then to be ready in half an hour, and we can stop at Marcini’s for a little dinner on the way?”

ENDNOTES

1
(p. 14)
Thomas Carlyle:
This great Scottish essayist and historian, born in 1795, first gained prominence by publishing a history of the French Revolution in 1837. His highly unorthodox style puzzled and enraged many readers but inspired many more. He died on February 4, 1881, days before Watson and Holmes met.

2
(p. 19)
Gaboriau . . . Lecoq:
French author Émile Gaboriau (1832-1873) was the creator of the detective novel. Between 1866 and 1869 he wrote five such works in which his detective, the simple Monsieur Lecoq, solves a host of baffling crimes.

3
(p. 19)
even a Scotland Yard official can see through it:
This remark is not as sarcastic as it may appear. Scotland Yard, a nickname for the London Metropolitan Police, had not yet gained its reputation for crime investigation. That came later, partly as a result of adopting the scientific techniques of Sherlock Holmes. Scotland Yard is so named because the building in which the service was housed was once the site of the home of Scottish kings when they visited London.

4
(p. 22)
Cremona fiddles and the difference between a Stradivarius and an Amati:
For three generations, the Amati family of Cremona, beginning with Andrea (c.1510-c.1578) and extending through his grandson Nicolò (1596-1684) were celebrated violin makers. Together with Nicolò’s pupils, Antonio Stradivari (c.1644-1737) and Andrea Guarneri (c.1626-1698), they created what are still considered the finest violins and violas ever made. Cremona is synonymous with great string instruments.

5
(p. 27)
“They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains”:
A common corruption of Thomas Carlyle’s well-known saying, from his
History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Called Frederick the Great
(1858-1865), book 4, chapter 3: “ ‘Genius’ (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all).” By quoting this saying Holmes revealed that, for whatever reason, he misled Watson when he pretended to be ignorant of Carlyle’s very existence. As Carlyle was the leading British man of letters of his day, no educated man of the time could have been unaware of his importance. In addition, as Carlyle’s death had occurred just weeks before the conversation about him that Watson records, Holmes certainly would have read about him in the newspapers he so regularly devoured.

6
(p. 30)
Hallé’s concert:
From 1861 until his death in 1895, pianist and conductor Charles Hallé gave a series of seasonal concerts in London that included piano recitals, operatic performances, and symphony orchestras. He was knighted in 1888.

7
(p. 30)
Norman Néruda
: Born in Germany, Wilhelmine Néruda (1839-1911) was a musical prodigy as a child. She gave her first violin recital at the age of six, then toured Europe three years later, when she made her London debut. After she married Swedish composer Ludwig Norman, she used the name Norman-Néruda. After Norman’s death, she married Sir Charles Hallé, with whom she played many concerts. She retired upon his death in 1895, but resumed her career again in 1898.

8
(p. 36)
Henri Murger’s
Vie de Bohème: Louis-Henri Murger (1822-1861) was among the first French writers to depict the lifestyle of young students, painters, and writers who scorned conventional mores. His
Scènes de la vie de bohème
(
Scenes of Bohemian Life
; 1847-1849) formed the basis of Giacomo Puccini’s opera
La Bohème
(1896).

9
(p. 38)
Vehmgericht . . . the Ratcliff Highway murders:
Every item in this list refers in some way to the history of crime. The Vehmgericht in Germany and the Carbonari in France and Italy were secret criminal tribunals, operated by “holy bands” sworn to secrecy on pain of death. Aqua tofana was a secret poison supposedly invented and used by a Sicilian woman named Tofana at the end of the seventeenth century to dispatch no fewer than 600 souls. The Marchioness de Brinvilliers was a notorious poisoner in seventeenth-century France. Charles Darwin’s thesis of natural selection—the “survival of the fittest,” as the philosopher Herbert Spencer put it—was sometimes popularly interpreted to describe a direct and ruthless struggle for the resources that support life, evoked by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in his line “Nature, red in tooth and claw.” Thomas Malthus predicted disastrous results when populations grew faster than the food supply, which would produce strife among peoples. The last item is a series of sensational crimes the public still remembered seventy-five years later—the “7 Pear Tree Murders,” which took place in 1811 on Ratcliff Highway in the East End of London.