“It seems,” said Holmes to me from the corner of his mouth, “that the housemaids here have been as careless as in most establishments when it comes to the matter of dusting. I daresay I should be so myself, in their situation. A good deal too much fuss is made about dust-which settles again almost as soon as it is brushed off.”
The housekeeper had walked silently from the room, though we could feel that her eyes were still upon us from some vantage point just beyond the door. Holmes turned to the piano. He had come equipped with a black Gladstone bag that might more properly have belonged to a doctor. From this he took an instrument case, laid it on the table and opened it. He chose two camel-hair brushes, such as a painter might have used for fine work. To these he added two small bottles. The first contained dark powder, which was graphite of much the kind used for lubricating locks. The second was his own preparation, two parts of finely powdered chalk and one part of metallic mercury. These little bottles were accompanied by two insufflators to allow each powder to be blown gently on to any surface. In his waistcoat pocket, as usual, a folded magnifying-lens was readily available.
For the next twenty minutes, Sherlock Holmes worked patiently and intently, his features drawn in a slight frown of concentration. He began with the light coloured powder of chalk and mercury, puffing it gently but accurately on to the black keys of the piano. Then he removed a little surplus with a camel-hair brush. When this was done, he took the graphite and the second insufflator, applying the darker powder to the white ivory of the piano keys. It settled like a thin drift of snow-and like snow it revealed the contours over which it lay, in this case those slight ridges imprinted by the exudations of the human skin.
He took a little mirror from his pocket and angled it to catch the light from the windows. Then there began his long examination of each piano key in turn. I knew better than to interrupt him. It was half an hour before his back straightened and he stood up, the sharp profile animated and eyes glittering. He put down the little mirror into which he had been staring, seeking the best angle. The powders had now left on the polished ivory of the keys what I can only describe as a slight and brittle encrustation which a sweep of the hand would remove.
“Of one thing we may be sure, Watson. The last person to touch this keyboard played upon it the ‘Préambule’ from the set of pieces entitled Carnaval, by the late and sublime Robert Schumann. It has not been dusted nor touched since then.”
He seemed a little too pleased with himself for my liking.
“How can you possibly say that?”
“Very easily, my dear fellow. To begin with, we are only concerned with the last person to touch the instrument. I can assure you that all these prints belong to the same pair of hands. Only one person has played upon it since it was last dusted.”
“Lord Arthur?”
He raised a finger.
“Look at the two topmost octaves of the keyboard in the right hand. No prints appear on the four highest keys. That is to say, G, A, and the raised notes of F and G. They are very often not required. We can safely forget them. But five other notes are also free of prints. Those are significant.”
“Of what?”
He sighed tolerantly.
“Significant in your case, my dear Watson, of hours wasted in concert halls, fighting back sleep when the air was shimmering with the genius of Rubinstein or Paderewski. Before our little outings to the Wigmore Hall, I like to read the scores of the pieces to be played. Consequently I may tell you that in the right-hand of Robert Schumann’s ‘Préambule’ there are only five other keys-black or white-which are not touched. All are in the same two topmost octaves. They include the upper D flat and, in both octaves, the keys of E natural and B natural. Now you may study the keyboard of this splendid instrument and tell me for yourself which of those five keys have produced no finger-prints.”
He was right, of course. I tried to salvage as much dignity as I was able.
“Hardly conclusive proof of anything but Lord Arthur playing Schumann. Not much to go on.”
“My dear fellow, I am nowhere near my conclusion yet. I promise you I have a good deal more to go on. Look at the lower half of the keyboard, by the way. Tell me what you see.”
“There are no prints on the lowest twelve keys, black or white. All the rest seem to have been touched.”
“Exactly. It will not surprise you to learn that those are the very notes not required in playing Schumann’s exquisite sketch.”
“But Holmes, there is no dispute that Lord Arthur played that piece on this piano.”
“There would have been a great deal of dispute if we had asked Lord Blagdon, or indeed Lord Arthur himself, for a set of our subject’s finger-prints as though he were a common criminal. He is a young man of excellent family and as yet unblemished reputation. Therefore he is likely to resist being treated as a suspect. None the less, we now have what we want: a set of his finger-prints is essential if our investigation is to be successfully carried out.”
There was little point in arguing. In any case I must either concede that Holmes was right or, at least, suspend my judgment. He left the lid of the keyboard open and turned instead to the display case with its magnificent collection of Sèvres porcelain. It was the most remarkable example of eighteenth-century craftsmanship. Its vases, cups, tableware, and bonbon dishes were fit for a royal drawing-room.
He carefully opened the unlocked glass doors.
“I think we shall find very few finger-prints of any kind here, Watson. The servants in great houses are taught to dust such treasures, on the rare occasions when they do so, by holding them in a cloth without allowing their fingers to touch the polished surface. It would not do for a housemaid’s or even a butler’s greasy thumbprint to blemish the display.”
“Lord Arthur used no duster.”
“No. Curious is it not that a man who wore gloves on most occasions-except when playing the piano which he could hardly do with gloves on-should have left them off while practising the art of burglary. That may be the answer to everything.”
“He cannot have expected to be caught.”
“He cannot have expected to be seen, rather,” said Holmes with quiet emphasis.
“Then why play the piano without gloves in front of others?”
“We shall have an answer to that without leaving these rooms. For the moment, I should value your assistance in taking the pieces of porcelain as I hand them to you and putting them gently on the table behind you. Please avoid marking them with your own fingers and preserve the prints already there. We shall not need to look far. We have it on Lord Blagdon’s authority that whatever interested his cousin was comfortably within his reach as he stood at the opening of the cabinet doors, where we are now. I doubt whether we need examine more than a dozen items.”
As it proved, we required eight. Four of these were a fine set of Sèvres vases with gilt handles and ornament, each bearing a garden scene set in royal blue lustre, taken from a painting by Fragonard. Holmes tested all four with dark powder. They had been dusted some time ago but not marked since. A satin-pink gilt-edged dessert plate bore the signs of the zodiac but no finger-prints. Two Meissen vases decorated in blue on white with a pattern of Indian flowers required both light and dark powder but yielded no prints. Holmes was evidently correct that all these had been dusted, polished and then put away without the fingers of the servants touching their surfaces once the cleaning had been completed.
Then my friend took a dainty Sèvres bonbonnière. It was in richly enamelled porcelain, a rectangular chocolate-box, some six inches across. Edged by a motif of golden fleurs-de-lys, its centrepiece was a golden knob by which the lid was lifted. On each of its sides, the face of one of the winds was painted in natural tones, Boreas for the North, Auster for the South, Eurus for the East and Zephyr for the West. Sherlock Holmes handled it so that none of his finger-tips touched the polished surface.