He chuckled.
“It is only to their victims that blackmailers pretend to have an archive of incriminating evidence. They know too well that such documents are like a knife which is more likely to injure its owner than his victims. It is the invariable practice of these scoundrels to carry the important or crucial items in their heads-or in the case of Mr Septimus Podgers what remains of his head now that the tugboat and its barges have passed. We will, if you please, take our leave of Lord Blagdon and return to Baker Street. I daresay it will be as well to keep an eye upon the columns of the press for a week or two.”
With a sense of foreboding I followed his advice. The next week brought a letter from Lord Blagdon informing us that Lord Arthur Savile had suffered a nervous collapse and was now in the care of a keeper at a clinic for such disorders in Bexhill-on-Sea. He was well cared for in every way and, so far as he could ever be, he was happy. It was not thought that he would be released at an early date, therefore the services of Holmes and myself would no longer be required for his protection. Lord Blagdon added his thanks and enclosed fifty guineas in settlement of his account.
There the matter stood for a further week. Then, as the breakfast-table was cleared on a fine September morning with a hint of autumn in the air, I opened the pages of the Morning Post and knew that our anxieties for Lord Arthur Savile were at an end.
On Sunday morning at seven o’clock, the body of Mr Septimus R. Podgers, the eminent cheiromantist, was washed on shore in Greenwich, just in front of the Ship Hotel. The unfortunate gentleman, whose mortal remains appear to have been in collision with a steamer of the river traffic, was identified by the contents of his pockets and the prints of his fingers. He had been missing for almost a fortnight, and considerable anxiety for his safety had been felt in London ’s cheiromantic circles. It is supposed that Mr Podgers committed suicide under the influence of a temporary mental derangement, caused by overwork. A verdict to that effect was returned this afternoon by a coroner’s jury. Mr Podgers had just completed an elaborate treatise on the subject of the Human Hand, that will shortly be published, when it will no doubt attract much attention. The deceased was sixty-five years of age and does not seem to have left any relations.
Holmes read this. Ile put the paper down and gazed at the mellow sunlight beyond the window.
“I was a little short with you, old fellow, in the matter of a week or two at Ilfracombe or Tenby. September is not too far advanced and the sunny days are not yet too misty. I have for some time been meditating a monograph on criminal aberrations of the benevolent impulse, what the poet Browning calls ‘the honest thief and ‘the tender murderer.’ Warm autumn days on an Atlantic coast would do as well as anywhere for the composition I have in mind.”
Before he had a chance to change his mind, I had consulted Bradshaw’s railway guide, wired to a comfortable hotel reserving our rooms and also to the Great Western Railway, securing a first-class carriage from Paddington to Barnstaple, via Exeter.
II. The Case of the King’s evil
1
Of the letters addressed to our detective agency at 221 B Baker Street, almost all bore the name of Sherlock Holmes and very few came directly to me. I had remained in medical practice for some time after our first meeting and my patients necessarily had first call upon my services. When I encountered men and women in the critical moments of their lives, it was more often in my own consulting rooms. I was therefore all the more surprised, on an autumn morning in October 1884, when my services as a criminal investigator were requested by telegram.
Whatever distress had overtaken Miss Alice Chastelnau, mistress of the Openshaw Academy for Young Ladies at Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast, was plainly a matter of urgency. At the time, Holmes and I were not otherwise occupied. I replied to Miss Chastelnau at once by wire. Noting the distance she must travel to reach us, I proposed a consultation at Baker Street on the following day at 4pm.
Within the hour I received a confirmation of this. Her second message added that her two brothers had been missing since Sunday evening, two days previously, in very disturbing circumstances. If that were so, I thought it a little curious that she had not consulted Sherlock Holmes in the first place.
As I explained all this to my friend, pipe smoke continued to rise from behind the copy of the Morning Post which he was reading. At length he chuckled, though without lowering the newspaper.
“The disappearance of her brothers, indeed! That at least adds a little piquancy to an otherwise unpromising case. Have no fear, Watson, I shall vacate our sitting-room tomorrow afternoon upon your client’s arrival.”
“She might prefer you to remain,” I said hastily, “Unless, of course, the lady’s own medical condition is at issue. If that were so, I should be obliged to see her privately.”
He chuckled again but offered no further reply. As the hours passed, I felt increasingly that I would have preferred Miss Chastelnau to ask the advice of Holmes in the first place, thereby allowing me to play a supporting role in any inquiry. I could scarcely introduce him as my subordinate. In that case, I feared I could not introduce him at all. Holmes knew this as well as I did. Indeed, he was enjoying my predicament of being “senior man,” as he called it, relishing this far more obviously than was decent.
Miss Chastelnau was in good time to take afternoon tea with us on the following afternoon. Her manner was earnest, as befitted the occasion. In appearance, she was neat and dainty without being self-consciously elegant. There was a spinsterly attractiveness in the demure oval of her face, and in the old-fashioned style in which her light brown hair was pulled back tightly to frame it. She put me in mind of those portraits of Charlotte Bronte and the “bonnets” of the 1840s. I judged her to be more than forty years old but not yet forty-five.
Sherlock Holmes was at once courteous and courtly, bowing her to an armchair by the fireplace. As I had foreseen, he had no intention of vacating the sitting-room beyond saying,
“If you would prefer to speak to Dr Watson alone, you need only say so.”
Miss Chastelnau did not say anything of the kind. She produced an envelope from her bag and came at once to the point of her visit.
“I have brought a letter, addressed to an unnamed doctor by my half-brother, Abraham Chastelnau. I doubt if he knew any doctor well enough to put a name to it. I hope you will overlook my custom of referring to both my half-brothers as ‘brothers,’ for it stops speculation and gossip which might be painful to me.”
I thought that this certainly indicated a delicate and fastidious nature, such as became a mistress of Miss Openshaw’s academy. Our visitor continued.
“The letter in its envelope was found by me after both Abraham and Roland disappeared on Sunday night. I have shown it to no one. In the first place, I should like it to be read by a medical man. Even at Mablethorpe, I had heard something of Dr Watson who works in partnership with Mr Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street. The letter, combined with the disappearance of my brothers, persuaded me that I should come to you.”
She seemed an admirable young woman, polite but determined. If she appeared more composed than might have been expected at such an anxious time, I put that down to the inner strength of a quiet personality. I have seen such a balance of characteristics often enough in medical practice.
“First tell me a little about your brothers, Miss Chastelnau”
“They are the two keepers of the Old Light on the river estuary at Sutton Cross. It lies on the coast of the Wash about forty miles south of Mablethorpe and just above Kings Lynn. It is not a proper lighthouse but a beacon standing on nine wooden stilts. There is a barrack-room and a lantern-room above. It is on the mudflats near the river estuary and is cut off from the land for an hour or two each side of high tide.”