Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #6 Page 5

  “Aha!” Dr Watson suddenly exclaimed. “I see how you won that game!” He then appeared unsure of himself, an attitude I suppose is integral to sharing quarters with Sherlock Holmes. “Well, I believe I do …”

  “Tell us what you think, dear fellow.”

  “You told me, Holmes, that there would come a time when you would need me to create a diversion to distract the Colonel. That’s when I pretended to faint.”

  “Yes, Watson, and one of your better performances, I may say. Continue.”

  “While the others were helping me off the floor, you switched the deck we’d been using with the one you bought earlier.”

  Holmes nodded. “Go on.”

  “The deck you’d brought had all of the spades reversed so that you’d recognize them when you assembled your hand.”

  “Precisely.”

  I broke into the conversation with the observation that it was fortunate Holmes was acquainted with a game such as Niagara Falls bridge-whist with its odd variation whereby the dealer names the trump suit before being permitted to examine the cards he’d chosen blindly.

  “Oh, dear Inspector!” Holmes exclaimed. “There’s no such game. I invented it!” He took a moment to pour more coffee for us and also refilled our snifters. I was beginning to worry at the growing lateness of the hour, and hoped my dear wife was not in a pet, but before I left, there was one more thing I positively needed to know, and dear Dr Watson surely shared my curiosity.

  “Holmes,” I said, “who was the Colonel’s accomplice?”

  “Why, Toddy Armbruster, of course.”

  “But there’s no such member in the club!”

  “I never said there was. Toddy Armbruster is the confidence trickster who was involved in an attempted securities swindle last summer in Manchester. He’s the only member of the gang who got away. I’ve seen his face on the wall of nearly every police station I’ve visited during the past few months. I’m surprised you don’t know about him, Inspector.”

  I sighed. “Since they relegated me to a desk job, I’ve not been able to stay current with the day-to-day, so to speak.”

  “Another bit of luck for us,” said Holmes. “He’d never met either of us, so he had no idea what was ahead for him. But during Watson’s pretended fainting spell, I not only switched decks, I also managed to whisper to him, ‘Hello, Toddy.’ That’s when he tried to bolt.”

  Now I understood! “Great Heavens! You mean that Armbruster —”

  “Yes, Lestrade,” said Holmes, “Toddy Armbruster was pretending to be none other than the Nonpareil Club’s speechless employee, Richmond.”

  “Damn him!” I swore. “So while he fussed about emptying our ash-trays, he peeked at our hands and told what he’d learned to Colonel Upwood in the sign language of the deaf-mute!”

  “Yes, gentlemen. It is, you see, a case in which the silent butler did it.”

  “Ooh, Holmes,” Dr Watson groaned. “How could you?!”

  The Curse of Bridges Falls, by William E. Chambers

  “

  Sir, I believe my husband is in grave danger.”

  “Please specify, Madam.”

  Our first meeting with Sherlock Holmes, the great consulting detective as he is now known, made me think him devoid of feeling. I learned later that this was not so, that he excelled in the discipline of divorcing emotion from mental calculation, which made him a master of his craft. But that first night, sitting with Edmond by a crackling fire while this tall, gaunt figure stared down at me, I felt quite unsettled as I explained, “Edmond’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather all fell to their deaths on their fortieth birthdays.”

  “Dear! Dear!” Dr Watson, who had been standing silently in the background, uttered those words. “Quite singular Holmes, I daresay.”

  “Mrs Bridges —” The detective’s hawk-like features bore no emotion at all. “— please elaborate.”

  “I’ll explain, sir,” Edmond offered, then reached inside his jacket and drew out several darkened and brittle sheets of paper. “My great-grandfather Edmond Bridges the first was the son of Missionaries who laboured to bring Christianity to Asia.

  Great-grandfather resented the poverty of his youth and held the asceticism of religious life in low esteem. He formed a partnership with a Dutch Merchant named Johannes Koopman and made a fortune selling English tea to the Japanese. At least that’s the official family legend.”

  “Clever. Only the Dutch could deal with Japan years back as those Asian people had tired of general European arrogance.” The detective thrust a curved pipe into his mouth and began stuffing it with tobacco from a slipper on the mantelpiece over the fireplace. After lighting it, he said, “And the real story is … opium?”

  Edmond reddened. “How did you guess?”

  “I never guess. The deduction was elementary. The Japanese grow tea. But some of us British, I am ashamed to say, have exported opium to other countries. It is a fast road to riches. At the time you indicate, China was a well established trading partner for legitimate goods as well as opium but Japan was unblemished territory.”

  “It was, sir. So my great-grandfather and his partner made their wealth and quit while they were ahead. But they both fell in love with my great-grandmother Lillian, who worked as an actress on the London stage. When Lillian’s affections started leaning toward my great-grandfather, Johannes Koopman tried to dissuade her by creating foul lies about him. Namely that he made his fortune as a white slaver who kidnapped young women and sold them to Oriental noblemen. When Lillian challenged my great-grandfather over this, he explained Koopman was lying to turn her feelings, then admitted the truth about his role in the drug trade. He confessed that he was no better than a criminal, but he also told her that the love he felt for her ennobled him. That he would do all he could to rectify his previous inequities by helping the impoverished children of London if she would forgive his past and marry him.”

  A wisp of smoke curled up from the detective’s pipe. “Obviously, she did.”

  “Yes. And he founded an orphanage that exists to this day, the Bow Street Institute.”

  “BSI,” Sherlock Holmes nodded, “a most worthy institution.”

  “I chair its board of directors. But getting back to my ancestry, my great-grandmother berated Johannes Koopman and turned against him forever. So incensed was he that he challenged his former partner to a pistol duel at Blackheath. Great-grandfather, being a man of daring, could not resist this challenge. Now my manservant and coachman is a widower named Farrell. His great-grandfather acted as Edmond’s second. He wrote an account of the duel on these very papers that I hold here.”

  Mr Holmes nodded. “Please read it to us.”

  “On the morning of October 9, 1804, Edmond Bridges and Johannes Koopman did meet to engage in combat, with myself and a gentleman named Samson Leeds serving as seconds. The weapons agreed upon were flintlock pistols. At the hour of seven a.m., both men faced, turned, strode twenty paces, turned again and fired. Johannes Koopman was shot through the stomach. Edmond Bridges’s arm was superficially grazed. Johannes Koopman, who thought himself dying, did curse his adversary with these words. ‘As today is my fortieth birthday, I swear that you, your first-born son and each first-born son thereafter shall not live through the first day of their fortieth year on earth.’ ”

  Edmond lowered the paper and said, “My great-grandfather fell down the steps of the very staircase in my house and died of a broken neck on the night of his fortieth birthday, while my great-grandmother slept. There were no witnesses to his death. His first-born son died that way on his fortieth birthday. So did my father, who was also first-born.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was a reflection of the pipe he was smoking, but the detective’s eyes seemed suddenly to glow as he asked, “Were those blasphemies Koopman’s last words?”

  “No. That wound extended to his spinal cord. He lived nine more years as a cripple.”

  “Who was present when your grandfather died?”<
br />
  “No one. Farrell’s grandfather was overseeing the servants as they prepared the food for my grandfather’s birthday festivities which were to take place that night. It seems he went to question grandfather about which wines to serve when he found him face down at the bottom of the staircase with his neck broken. Grandmother had taken a carriage to the market an hour before to personally choose fresh produce and when she returned that afternoon the civil authorities were at the house. Grandfather’s death was ruled an accident.”

  “And who, pray tell, witnessed your father’s death?”

  “Again, no one. I was away at boarding school. Mother was asleep. And Farrell’s father and the maid were in their quarters. My father loved to stay up late smoking his pipe and reading. Mother, having sensed his lack of presence, awoke in the middle of the night and found him sprawled at the bottom of the steps. His neck was broken.”

  “And now Edmond’s time is drawing near,” I blurted.

  The detective frowned. “Sir, what is your birth date?”

  “December 14th.”

  “Hour of birth?”

  “Three minutes past midnight.”

  After my husband answered, I asked, “Mr Holmes, can deaths like these be brought about by suggestion or coincidence as Edmond sometimes reluctantly suspects?”

  “It is in the realm of possibility, Madam.” A night wind suddenly wailed, rattling the windows, “but doubtful in the world of probability.”

  “Then…?”

  I caught my breath as he said, “I believe there are malignant forces at work. We must not waste time.”

  * * * *

  M

  r Holmes insisted upon inspecting our house immediately, so he and Dr Watson joined us in our carriage, which was being driven by Farrell. The detective nodded to our coachman, but once inside the carriage fell into a brooding silence that cast a pall over the rest of us. He abruptly broke his meditation, murmuring, “My methods of inquiry are unorthodox. Should my sudden actions or words seem incomprehensible, you must accept them without question.”

  We nodded and he fell back to contemplation. Then I breathed damp air and watched through curtained windows as gas-lit street lamps blurred against the fog. But for the clopping of my horse’s hooves on the deserted cobblestoned streets, and the marking of the hour by the chiming of Big Ben, London was silent.

  When we finished the mile-long journey, Farrell held the door and took my gloved hand. By the time my feet touched the pavement, the detective was standing beside me. He glanced at Farrell’s deformed knuckles under the light of the carriage lantern. When the manservant remounted the driver’s seat, Mr Holmes turned to me and said rather loudly, “The thievery in your husband’s London offices will soon cease.”

  Although forewarned in the carriage, the earnestness of this exclamation still startled me. Mr Holmes quelled my nervous impulses with a frown and nod. Edmond held my arm as we climbed the high front stoop of our brown-stone, with the detective and doctor following. Once inside, Edmond lit wall and table lamps while Mr Holmes seemed to read my thoughts regarding his strange statement.

  “Servants tend to gossip, Madam. Let their imaginations be deceived.”

  While my assessment of servant’s behaviour differed from the detective’s, I kept my opinion to myself. Mr Holmes removed his deerstalker cap and cape-backed overcoat, hanging them on wall hooks in the vestibule, while saying, “Your coachman appears to be powerfully built.”

  I thought this observation odd but agreed with it. “When there is hefty work to be done, Farrell is up to the task.”

  “But what is wrong with his hands?”

  “Familial birth defect, sir,” I replied. “Edmond told me Farrell’s father suffered from the same malady. The first and middle knuckles are fused together, but it doesn’t hamper him, thank God.”

  “Mr Bridges, have you ever sought Farrell’s opinion of this family curse?”

  “No,” Edmond answered.

  “It’s a painful subject, Mr Holmes,” I interjected. “My husband prefers not to dwell upon it. It was I who insisted he retain your services.”

  “An astute act, Madam.”

  “I know the dangers of inaction, sir.”

  Mr Holmes eyed me curiously as Edmond muttered, “Mara …”

  Doctor Watson hung up his greatcoat and bowler hat and both men followed me into the parlour. Mr Holmes glanced about at the furnishings and décor, then back-tracked and inspected the staircase. Dr Watson trailed behind while Edmond and I followed the detective’s ascent, stopping behind him as he bent down to study something or other with a magnifying lens drawn from his jacket pocket. He made a curious sight, frowning and mumbling to himself. Finally, reaching the top of the stairs, he shouted, “Hello! What’s this?”

  Edmond and I both laughed as we saw Mr Holmes staring oddly at the life-sized wood statues of hooded, black-garbed warriors tucked between thick drapes in wall coves. Each stood as a sentinel, guarding either side of the staircase. Edmond said, “Japanese Ninja warriors, Mr Holmes. Great-grandfather brought these statues here from Japan many years ago.”

  Mr Holmes nodded silently. He did not share our merriment. The sound of Farrell entering after having tethered the horse caught his attention. He held his hand up and whispered, “Dismiss your servant for the night.”

  Edmond went to the staircase and bade Farrell good night. When he returned, Mr Holmes asked him, “Where are the servants’ quarters?”

  “Across the rear courtyard.”

  “Which means they access your home through a servant’s entrance in back?”

  “Yes.”

  “I should like a list of your servants and the tradesmen who traffic to your properties, as well as their work schedules. How soon can you make it available?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Four p.m.?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I’ll send a lad over.”

  The detective turned to me. “Madam, I see you have never borne children.”

  “What?” I felt hot blood rush to my face because in fact I had never conceived.

  “The photographs proudly displayed around your mantel-piece clock downstairs show you and Mr Bridges at various stages in life. But the only children are in a photo of you as a girl with what appears to me to be your parents and a younger sibling.”

  “You are correct, sir. My sister Phoebe … the riptide took her … she was only eleven …” After all the passing years this memory still made tears sting my eyes. “Had I been there …”

  “Mr Holmes, Mara always accompanied Phoebe to the beach. But one day she stayed home to pursue an art lesson. Phoebe and two other girls were caught by the tide. The lifeguards saved two of them but … destiny chose Phoebe.”

  “Destiny,” I snorted into my silk handkerchief.

  “No one understands the workings of Providence, Madam,” Mr Holmes said gently, then added, “Do you close your home in Brighton for the winter?”

  “No. We have a groundskeep — how did you know about our estate in Brighton?”

  “Your parlour is lined with oil paintings of Brighton, autographed by you, Mrs Bridges.”

  “I … uh … do love to paint outdoors when the weather’s agreeable,” I admitted.

  “Indeed. And the same house appears in several paintings.”

  I nodded.

  The detective then said, “Mr Bridges, I will want you and Mrs Bridges to visit your seashore estate soon. I will tell you exactly when to go and you will stay until the eve of your birthday. You have nothing to fear until then. Pray write down your Brighton address for me. Who picks up your mail?”

  “Farrell usually collects it from the postman,” Edmond stated.

  “And your telegrams?”

  My husband shrugged. “I seldom get any.”

  “Excellent. When you get to Brighton, I want you to leave instructions with the telegraph office that no messages are to be delivered to your home. Make it clear that
you will collect all telegrams personally. Can you check for messages daily?”

  “I suppose so. When in Brighton my wife and I often bicycle around the estate for exercise. Do my health good to fit in a stop at the telegraph office.”

  “Very well, then. Please do. Now Watson and I must take our leave.”

  “Mr Holmes,” I asked, “how will you get back to Baker Street?”

  “There are always cabs waiting on the streets of London, Madam. And my most trusted friend and noble ally the good doctor has his whistle at the ready.”

  “Holmes is quite right m’ dear,” Dr Watson chuckled, obviously pleased by the compliment, while patting his breast pocket. “One blast will fetch us a Hansom.”

  * * * *

  B

  righton was cold, yet splendid. Every day, while Edmond tended to his real estate apartments and store rental businesses via the mails, I walked briskly along the beach or camped and painted the rolling waves as they caressed the shoreline, often imagining Phoebe’s spirit hovering nearby. One day, after returning home red-faced with the cold, but feeling exuberant from a long brisk walk, my husband called me to his study and bade me lock the door behind.

  I followed this instruction, then took the leather armchair at the side of his enormous oak desk as he lowered his voice. “I don’t want anyone walking through that door while I read this telegram.

  “My Dear Bridges. Imperative you leave for London. Early morning. Eve of birth date. Allegedly to clear up urgent business matter. Return Brighton following day. Celebrate waning hours fortieth birthday. Invite friends. Wife must oversee festivity preparations. She must remain at Brighton in your absence. Last point critical.

  Do as I ask and all will be well.

  Your servant,

  S. H.”

  I rose and leaned toward him. “Absolutely not, Edmond! I will not leave you to be alone in our London home from midnight until morning of that day!”