The Confidential Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (3 page)

A flustered Inspector Lestrade left a few minutes later, with many apologies for his lack of insight. I accepted them cordially. But
when I returned to Holmes, insisting on his immediate retirement, he looked at me so strangely that I wondered if the fever which had taken two days to subside had returned.

Then he spoke. “I would like to see a doctor.”

I reminded him that I still bore the title.

“I want to see a very specific doctor, Watson. Tomorrow.”

“But why?”

“Because,” he said, his voice as sonorous as a church bell, “it's a matter of life and death. Not my own, dear fellow,” he added, seeing my expression.

I
woke the next morning a good hour and forty minutes past my usual waking time, surely the result of the surplus brandy I had ingested the night before.

I had an uneasy feeling that Holmes was no longer in his sickbed. I heard the distinct rattle of a cup and saucer, and poking my feet into a pair of slippers, I padded out into the parlour, to see a fully dressed Holmes making himself a cup of tea.

“It's all right,” he said in a strained voice. “I'm quite well, Watson, I assure you. I tested my temperature this morning, and it was a smidgeon below normal. I did not cough all night, and my head is clear.”

“Surely you don't mean to leave the house?”

“It wasn't easy to obtain the addresses I needed, but as it happens, one of the butlers who serves in Lord Darlington's household is an avid reader of your stories in
The Strand
. He was thrilled to talk to me, once I convinced him that I was not merely a fictional character.”

“But what addresses did you want?”

“For one thing, the present location of Lord Darlington and his bride . . . It seems that they've gone off on still another honeymoon, this time around the world, a trip bound to last a year or two. Then Lord Darlington reports to a diplomatic post on the island of Anguilla, a rather smallish outpost in the Caribbean.”

I was becoming irritated. “What does all that matter, Holmes?”

“It matters a great deal,” he answered. “But what matters even more is the name of Lord Darlington's personal physician. It's Blevin. Dr. Hugo Blevin. Do you know him, Watson?”

“Well, yes,” I said. “I've met Blevin a few times, at medical conventions. I wouldn't say we were friends, but we are definitely acquaintances.”

Holmes smiled broadly. “Then I can use your name as a reference,” he said cheerfully, and sailed towards the door, scooping up his greatcoat as he went. He paused in the open doorway, and his lightheartedness vanished like melted snow.

“And when I return, Watson,” he said, in a voice flattened by serious purpose, “you and I are going to visit the Institute for the Criminal Insane.”

I
t was some six hours later that I heard the voice of Sherlock Holmes in the downstairs hallway, consulting Mrs. Hudson about some domestic matter. I had spent the day studying my notes on the Musgrave Ritual affair, but my mind kept wandering back to Inspector Lestrade's visit and Holmes's curious reaction to the story he had related. I simply could not understand my friend's interest in a case whose central mystery was only in the mind of a deranged woman.

When he appeared in the doorway, my first thought was for his well-being. There was indeed a feverish look in his eyes, and I was prepared to insist on an examination, but Holmes quickly quashed the idea.

“We must leave at once, Watson,” he said. “We must not let this helpless victim suffer another minute more than necessary!”

“Victim? Suffer? What are you talking about, Holmes?”

“My carriage is downstairs. Take your medical bag; it might be necessary. And dress warmly. The air is frigid, and I don't want you to risk your health.”

Considering who had been ill these past few days, the remark seemed highly inappropriate. But then I realized that Holmes was pulling my leg, an indirect sign of his affection.

When we reached the Institute, the first guardian of its portals proved to be a stout Welshman with fierce moustaches. For once, Holmes let me do the talking. I gave him my credentials, and asked to see the highest possible authority on a matter of grave importance. This proved to be a thin, ascetic gentleman named Stokes, who heard our names and began to wheeze with excitement.

“Mr. Holmes!” he said. “What a pleasure to meet you in the flesh! Only yesterday I read of your exploits with that nefarious Red-Headed League!” He ruffled his own reddish crown and grinned toothily. “I might well have been victimized myself.”

“Speaking of victims,” Holmes said cordially, “we were wondering if we could spend some time with your patient, Mrs. Paige. It's a matter of some importance, but I'm sure you'll understand that I cannot reveal its confidential nature.”

Stokes looked dismayed at this, but I could see that he was in such awe of The Great Detective that he would not be denied. After a stream of warnings concerning her uncontrollable state, he led us to a door with a small glass panel through which we could discern nothing.

“Her sedative is not scheduled for another hour,” Stokes said, “but I'll arrange to have it administered at once, so that your encounter will be less troublesome.”

He was about to instruct a matron, but Holmes swiftly intervened.

“No,” he said. “We need to speak to the woman with her mind alert.”

“Her mind, Mr. Holmes?” Stokes shook his head ruefully. “But her mind is a disordered place, full of wild imaginings.”

“Nevertheless,” Holmes said firmly.

Of course, he won the point, and after careful unlocking, we were admitted into the room of the pitiful Mrs. Paige.

It was a small chamber, with its walls padded with a vile pinkish cloth. There were only three items of furniture: a narrow bed without either foot or headboard, a table with rounded corners, and a rocking chair drawn up to the barred window.

The woman in the chair turned to stare at us as we entered, and I tried to stifle the sound that came to my throat. I am a physician, after all, and I have seen many disfigured patients. Actually, it wasn't the dirty facial bandages, the unkempt hair, or the healing wounds which shocked me; it was the haunted look in her eyes, as if she had been allowed a glimpse of Hell.

“What do you want?” she croaked, her voice hoarse from endless bouts of shouts and screams. “When will you stop bothering me?”

“My name is Sherlock Holmes, madam; I am a Consulting Detective. This is my associate, Dr. John Watson.”

“Another doctor come to poke at me!”

“We are not here to trouble you,” Holmes said evenly. “We have come on an important mission—to give you an opportunity to prove the truth of your outlandish claim. Will you answer one question for us?”

“No!” she cried. “I've had enough questions! None of you care about my answers! Get out, out!”

“This might be the most important question you have ever heard. Your life, your future, your freedom may depend upon your reply. Will you listen?”

The rigidity of Holmes's posture, his emotionless tone, the absence of neither indulgence nor pity seemed to startle the woman. She nodded, her unkempt black hair falling in a dirty tangle over her bandaged face.

“Very well,” she said, “What is it?”

“I would like to know,” Holmes said, “if this phrase holds any significance for you:
the Ace of Spades.”

She stared at him vacantly, and I'm sure her surprised expression was a mirror of my own.

“The Ace of Spades?” she said scornfully. “I thought I was the one supposed to be mad!”

“Think carefully, madam,” Holmes said.

She rose from the rocking chair and turned her face to the window, so thick with grime that the only view it afforded was pale winter sunlight. Then her narrow shoulders lifted slightly, and she turned.

“The Ace of Spades,” she repeated slowly. “The birthmark. On his upper right thigh.”

If there was even a flicker of acknowledgment on the face of Sherlock Holmes, I missed it by staring open-mouthed at the woman by the viewless window. By the time I turned my attention back to him, that face was wholly transformed. Instead of the carved, stony countenance he could adopt so easily, his features had melted into a look of mingled triumph and—what would be the right word? Compassion.

A smile flickered across his lips, and Holmes said, “I will promise you this, Lady Darlington. I will obtain your release within the next few days. But I cannot predict how long it will take to bring your monstrous husband to justice.”

I now understood why Holmes had insisted upon my bringing my black bag. No sooner did he speak these last two sentences than the woman's legs gave out and she crumpled to the floor in a dead faint. It was almost an hour before she was fully recovered, and during that waiting period, I learned the rest of the story as deduced by that astonishing convoluted organ that was the brain of Sherlock Holmes.

I
t wasn't one fact alone that Inspector Lestrade offered which made me suspicious,” Holmes said. “It was the odd combination of events. The fact that Rufus Darlington, for all his aristocratic pretensions, married the daughter of a tea merchant. The fact that he learned ‘somehow'—to use Inspector Lestrade's word—about Mrs. Paige's
odd delusion, and allowed his wife to convince him to make a mercy mission to a madhouse. The fact that Mrs. Paige insisted on being alone with the couple. The fire that succeeded in maiming her. And then, the quick departure of Darlington and his bride on a long cruise and a distant address . . . Do you see the pattern, Watson?”

“No,” I had to admit. “I do not!”

“Rufus Darlington was a murderer,” Holmes said. “A murderer who escaped the law, behind the skirts of a woman.”

“Good heavens, Holmes! Do you mean Darlington shot Carlton Paige?”

“Mr. Paige discovered the
affaire
between Darlington and his wife. And being a brutal husband, he punished her with a beating that enraged His Lordship enough to make him take a gun to the Paige household. He may have meant only to threaten Paige, but as often happens in such cases, the gun was fired.”

“But—Mrs. Paige took the blame!”

“A very noble woman, in her own way,” Holmes said drily. “But I suspect that Darlington himself suggested it, promising her that a beaten wife would receive sympathetic treatment in the courts of law. As you know, there was no leniency. Mrs. Paige was sentenced for life.

“It was then that Darlington vowed she would be free, that he would find some way of gaining her release, to repay her for shielding him. It was a daring scheme he concocted, but Rufus Darlington was a daring man . . . It took him many months of ‘scouting the field' until he spotted a young woman who sufficiently resembled the new inmate of the Women's Prison. He wooed her passionately, and won her easily. She was beneath his station, of course, but that did not matter. All that mattered was—the resemblance.”

Now the light began to dawn in my own mind. “Her ‘delusion'! It was all play-acting, wasn't it? She was only pretending that she believed herself to be Lady Darlington.”

“It was preparation,” Holmes said gravely. “Establishing the
mental madness that would precede the
real
Mrs. Darlington's mental condition when the two women traded places.”

“So that was the purpose of their visit—to effect the trade.”

“Of course. They overpowered the innocent Mrs. Darlington, switched clothing, and started the fire they hoped might destroy all possible evidence.”

“You mean they would not have been concerned if the poor girl burned to death!”

“No,” Holmes said grimly. “But it hardly mattered when she survived. She was still recognized as a prisoner, with the very same delusion of grandeur . . . And Lord and ‘Lady' Darlington were free to travel the world and then live on an idyllic island where no one would ever question her identity . . .”

“And that's why you visited Dr. Blevin. To determine if there were identifying marks or scars which only his wife would know.”

“The Ace of Spades,” Holmes said. “I wonder if Lord Darlington ever considered his birthmark an evil omen, a harbinger of early doom.” He picked up the evening paper, and handed it to me without another word. In the first column was the account of a British steamer called the
Craithie
that had collided with a German ship in the North Sea. Among the listed dead were the names of Lord and Lady Darlington. I tried to evoke a feeling of pity within myself, but failed. As for Sherlock Holmes, he was only concerned with the lighting of his pipe, the pleasures of tobacco once again restored by his return to health.

^*
A descendant of Lord Darlington, Palmer Leeds of Manchester, did solicit the courts to prevent the publication of this story, but his petition was denied.

Composed from Notes in the Files
of Dr. John H. Watson

BY
H. P
AUL
J
EFFERS

I
n the two years which passed since I entered into an arrangement to share rooms at 221 Baker Street with Sherlock Holmes, I had through diligent effort accommodated myself to the many singular, even peculiar, traits of character and habits which had brought him increasing respect and work in his unique occupation—private consulting detective. I had grown used to his brooding silences, smelly chemical experiments, many unsavoury-looking callers in the parlour that he insisted on referring to as his “consulting room,” and an array of Scotland Yard detectives who appeared to be incapable of solving crimes without his keen guidance. Like Mrs. Hudson, our patient landlady, I accepted the unusual hours he kept and no
longer felt astonished or affronted by his abrupt arrivals and departures, which frequently stretched into lengthy, unexplained absences.