“With his throat cut?”
“I should take the liberty of doubting that. I think it more likely that when he was taken into the Home Hospital in Fitzroy Square-with pneumonia shall we say?-he seized the chance of putting about a story that would deter his creditors once and for all. Unfortunately for him and, I imagine, rather to his own surprise he then succumbed in reality to this pneumonia. I rather think he is now beyond justice of the sort administered by judges of the Central Criminal Court.”
“It was not revenge of some kind?” I asked,
Holmes shook his head.
“As for the coin wedged between his teeth, you may forget the underworld of Naples. More probably, the loyal fingers of Rosa Corder or some other classically-minded acquaintance placed it there to pay Charon the ferryman for the crossing of the Styx into Hades.”
“And the cutting of the throat was an incision in the trachea to the bronchial tubes to assist his breathing?” I asked sceptically.
“It would not be unknown.”
Pen Browning interrupted.
“What of the volume of Sonnets in his pocket?”
“I believe that was there,” said Holmes quietly, “However great Howell’s avarice, it was mixed with a very large dash of vanity. Hence the stories of having dived for treasure on a sunken galleon, having been sheikh of a Moroccan tribe, and indeed of being attaché at the Portuguese embassy in Rome. Perhaps he knew that his last moment had come and he certainly knew that those who had attended him would have found the ‘1847’ Sonnets in his pocket.”
“That would convict him of nothing.”
“There is a certain type, Mr Browning, whose greatest pleasure is in boasting of his tricks. He is like the murderer who taunts the police with ‘Catch me if you can.’ He puts his neck in the noose and snatches it out again.”
“And Howell?”
“‘Leaves of grass,’ which I can well believe were his last words, was not a reference to Mr Whitman but to the Sonnets. Esparto grass. The world had been tricked. But where was the fun unless, before he died, he could tell the world how cleverly it had been tricked?”
“He was not murdered after all?”
“His killer was far more likely to be a meek and merciless little microbe, thriving on the fermentation in his lungs, than the agent of a Neapolitan criminal gang. The story of underworld vengeance has too much of Gussie Howell about it to be believed.”
8
After that, Sherlock Holmes was not inclined to remain in Venice “to no purpose,” as he said. It was impossible to book a wagon-lit for the next day’s Grand European Express to Calais and London. On the following day we were more fortunate. By then the fate of Augustus Howell was beyond question. His death had been attended by such drama of his own making that they had held a coroner’s inquest on him. The report in the Continental edition of The Times reported a verdict of death from natural causes.
“How are the mighty fallen!” Holmes exclaimed as he closed the pages of the newspaper. “Poor Gussie Howell! To die of natural causes after all!”
It was the evening before our departure and we were sitting at a table outside Florian’s with the sunset casting fire across the outlines of basilica and palaces. We were waiting for Pen and Fannie Browning, whom Holmes had insisted should be our guests before we left for home.
“There is something amiss in their household which I cannot quite put my finger on, Watson. It is probably the incompatibility of Puritan principles and nude female models under the same roof. I sense that the young Brownings’ marriage is ‘but for a two months voyage victualled,’ as Shakespeare puts it. I would therefore prefer to meet on neutral ground.”
That evening, under the lamplight and the soft echoes of the wavelets by the canal steps, Holmes offered his final advice in response to questions from the youthful Pen Browning.
“You have a clear course before you now. You or your attorney must let it be known that whatever manuscripts are in the hands of auctioneers or vendors, purporting to be written by your parents, have been proved fraudulent. You may call me to witness if necessary. You must make it plain that those who dabble in such things are parties to a criminal fraud, carried out solely for the purposes of deception. That will put a stop to most dealings.”
“It may not stop publication.”
Holmes set his coffee cup down and looked thoughtful.
“Unfortunately the good old-fashioned remedy of taking a horsewhip to the scoundrel who publishes falsehood in this manner has been rather at a discount for some years. Now it must be a matter of threatening in advance to bring proceedings for libel against whom it might concern.”
“But surely,” said Pen Browning quickly, “it is no longer possible to libel the dead.”
Despite the difficulty which this presented, I saw that the young man was no end pleased in “putting one over” on the Great Detective. Holmes smiled at him indulgently.
“It is quite true that, at Cardiff Assizes in 1877, the excellent Mr Justice Stephen ruled that the dead have no remedy against civil libel since they are no longer juristic personalities. Criminal libel, however, that is to say defamation so offensive as to threaten a breach of the peace, is another matter and carries with it prison sentences long enough to deter all but the most resolute liars. There is your remedy.”
It was plain that young Mr Browning’s knowledge of English law stopped far short of this. He was chastened but grateful.
“Well then, Mr Holmes, there is only one more question. I must decide whether the letters of courtship between my parents should be published or burnt. About five years ago, my father burnt almost all his letters and manuscripts. He was in London at the time, in Warwick Crescent. He brought down an old travelling box of my grandfather’s and threw papers by the handful on to the fire in the front room. I saw the whole of his correspondence with Thomas Carlyle go up in flames.”
Holmes prompted him.
“And the letters written by your parents during their courtship?”
“He could not do it. He knew that he ought to destroy them but he could not. They were kept where they still lie, in an inlaid box. Not long before he died he gave this box to me and said, There they are. Do with them as you please when I am gone.’ But what am I to do?”
“When the time is right, you must publish them,” said Holmes at once. “Not now but in five or ten years. If they are anything like the two people who wrote them, they are noble and passionate, faithful and understanding, the exchanges of lovers who would die for one another. They must not perish, for there is too little of that sort of thing in the world. Publication will smash the forgers once and for all. Such creatures of darkness cannot endure the light of the sun.”
Pen Browning looked up, as if startled by this.
“I believe you are right,” he said firmly.
The letters were published nine years later and whatever fakes or forgeries may have lingered were extinguished by their beauty. Next day Holmes and I returned to England. He would accept no fee from Angelo Fiori on behalf of Pen Browning. Instead, he asked only for the “worthless” manuscripts of Don Juan in the New World, The Venetian Nun and Savonarola to the Signoria, with a set of the false “first editions,” including the 1847 Sonnets of “E. B. B.” They were given a place in what he called his “Cabinet of Curiosities.” By an irony of time, some of the books were to become more valuable than the genuine first editions which they had claimed to pre-date.
Yet Holmes knew the difference between true gold and fool’s gold. As the express left Venice, he opened a copy of Robert Browning’s “Roman Murder Story,” The Ring and the Book, which he had picked up from a bookstall at the last moment. It so absorbed him that he sat up all night reading and closed the last page of its twelfth book about ten minutes before our train pulled into Charing Cross.