Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures

"Both your son and Beacham knew it would be foolish to place the forgery where the original had hung now that its absence had been discovered. They were aware that your husband would, as a matter of course, call in an expert to verify that it was the original."

Lady Darlington nodded mutely.

"You have been a foolish woman, Lady Darlington. Although you may have acted with the best of intentions towards your son, you have allowed a situation to develop that cannot fail but to bring pain and disgrace to those two men whom you hold dear."

"I beg you not to tell my husband."

"Your husband is my client. He must be told. Besides, we are not dealing with a family squabble here. This matter concerns the theft of a series of master paintings. Two of the culprits are the son and wife of the owner, who is a minister of the crown. A scandal now is inevitable."

"I appreciate that the truth has now to come out. But I want to be the one to tell Hector. It is the least I can do to atone for my sins. Give me a day – twenty-four hours – to do this and also to try and persuade my son to give himself up to the authorities."

Holmes hesitated. He was somewhat moved by the woman's plight.

"Please be merciful," she begged.

My companion consulted his watch. "It is now approaching four o'clock. I will send a telegram to reach Lord Darlington in the morning, indicating that I shall call on him at four in the afternoon to convey information of the greatest moment."

"Bless you, Mr Holmes."

As events turned out, Holmes was never to make that visit. The following morning I was late down to breakfast and I found my friend slumped in his armchair perusing the paper. His face bore a grim expression.

"Violent delights have violent ends," he said, more to himself than me.

"Bad news?"

He shrugged. "Fate has entered the lists and we have effectively been relegated, old fellow." He waved the paper in my direction. "I refer to a report in here. Two bodies were washed up on the shingle below Tower Bridge late last night. They were bound and gagged and their brains had been blown out. They have been identified as Lord Arthur Beacham and Rupert Darlington, the son of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Lord Hector Darlington."

"Great heavens what a tragedy. What happened?"

"It was no doubt the work of Alfredo Fellini and his cronies. Obviously Beacham, in his frustration regarding the de Granville painting, tried, foolishly, to pass the fake off as the original to the American. His treachery received the usual rough justice of the gangland courts. Rupert Darlington was seen as part of the conspiracy – which he may well have been. Ah, Watson, Scott had it aright: 'Oh what a tangled web we weave when we practise to deceive.' "

The next case we stumbled over by sheer chance. Devotees of Sherlock Holmes will remember that Dr Watson met his future wife, Mary Morstan, when she sought Holmes's help in the case of "The Sign of Four". In introducing herself she reminded Holmes that he had once helped her employer, Mrs Cecil Forrester, to unravel "a little domestic compilation!" Holmes had to think for a while to remember and then recalled that the case "was a very simple one". It was so simple that Watson probably kept no record of it.

A few years ago that excellent scholar of ghost and mystery fiction, Barbara Roden, was undertaking research in a firm of insurers on another matter entirely, when she chanced upon some information about a certain Mr Forrester, and piece by piece she was able to rebuild "The Adventure of the Suspect Servant".

It is seldom that my friend, Mr Sherlock Holmes, has turned down an investigation which fell his way. There were times in our long association when his formidable brain was preoccupied with a case of supreme importance, and such circumstances occasionally precluded the taking up of another, less pressing, matter. As a rule, however, it was his habit never to neglect an opportunity to exercise those powers of observation and deduction which it has been my privilege to observe and chronicle. No case was too small to engage his attention; and I have had cause to bless the advent of more than one client, whose misfortune, however trivial, lifted Holmes from out

of the depression into which he was prone to sink when not occupied. If, in my chronicles, I have dwelt upon the macabre and the outré, it is because such cases, however unsatisfactory the outcome, have features which commend themselves to the reading public. I therefore set the following case before my readers as an example of an affair which was not as complex as some of my friend's other adventures, but which was no less pressing to those immediately concerned with it.

It was a morning in late October 1886, and London was enjoying a period of exceptionally fine weather known as St Luke's little summer. So warm was the day that I had flung open the windows of our sitting room, and was looking out over Baker Street and the bustling crowd contained therein. Holmes was perusing The Times, surrounded by the remnants of the Chronicle, Standard, Telegraph and Post, which lay in drifts around him.

I had been standing at the window for some minutes, watching the flow of the crowd, before I remarked casually, "We have a client, Holmes, so you might just tidy those papers."

My friend looked up, an expression of surprise upon his face. He cocked his head towards the door, rather in the manner of a hound listening for the view-halloa, then said, "I hear nothing, save Mrs Hudson downstairs.Yet you say we have a client?"

I chuckled, for I must confess that I enjoyed seeing my friend puzzled. He rose and joined me at the window, scanning the street for whoever had caught my eye. There was still no sound of footsteps upon the stair, and he looked at me quizzically.

"There," I said, gesturing to a woman who stood gazing into the window of a shop across from our door. "She is our client." "And what leads you to that conclusion? Pray elucidate."

"When I see a lady," I began, emulating my friend's manner on such occasions, "alight from and dismiss a cab, I infer that she has some business to conduct which she anticipates will take more than a few minutes, or she would have kept the cab waiting. The fact that the cab stopped immediately outside our door shows that her business lies in our vicinity. When the lady then proceeds to pace the pavement opposite us, not once but four times, I deduce that she is deeply disturbed about something, and is endeavouring to reach a difficult decision. Although she has been gazing into the window of the bookbinder's shop

opposite for the past few minutes, it is unlikely that anything there is causing her such consternation. What else, then, but a client for Mr Sherlock Holmes?"

"Your reasoning is certainly sound, Watson – ah, but here comes the lady herself, to silence all doubt."

She had indeed turned and, with an abruptness which signalled an end to indecision, crossed the road. We heard a ring of the bell and then a voice at the door, enquiring if Mr Holmes was at home, a signal which caused my friend to gather up the untidy papers and thrust them into his bedroom. He had exchanged his dressing-gown for a jacket when Mrs Hudson knocked at the door and announced, "Mrs Cecil Forrester."

The lady was middle-aged, yet her slim figure and graceful air gave her an air of youth that many a younger woman might have envied. She was well and fashionably dressed in a navy-blue costume which combined elegance with restraint. Her features were attractive, yet drawn with worry and fatigue, and there were still traces of indecision marked upon her countenance. She looked from one of us to the other, and my friend stepped forward.