George Mann - Associates of Sherlock Holmes

That was how I became apprised of Holmes’s involvement in the affair. I saw Dr Watson arrive at the Haven – an incongruously grand edifice, set in its own grounds yet surrounded by humble suburban terraces – and enter via the gateway. He spotted me but, of course, had no idea who I was or what my purpose was for being there. He did not even correlate me with the fellow he had seen on Park Lane less than half a decade ago. How can Sherlock Holmes ever have borne the company of such a plodding, unobservant clod? It is almost as though Holmes enjoyed having someone present that he could look down on from his lofty intellectual height; and the duller-witted that person was, the more superior he might feel to him. That would surely be why he had not wanted me as a partner. He could not view me with quite the same Olympian disdain as he did Watson.

Having watched Watson go into Amberley’s house and then an hour or so later leave, I was led to intuit that there was more going on here than met the eye. I went away and did some surreptitious asking around. I spoke to various police contacts at my Lodge. It soon became apparent that Amberley was not the tragic dupe he seemed. Something sinister was afoot.

While I was attempting to discern what that something sinister might be, who should I run into but Sherlock Holmes? I had returned to Lewisham and, having ascertained that Amberley was out, was contemplating the best means of breaking into his house in order to look for clues. As I crossed the unkempt, overgrown garden, I saw to my startlement that someone else had had the same idea. A man was crawling out of a ground-floor window.

Amusingly, I did not realise who it was at first. His face was hidden from me, and I took him to be a common-or-garden cracksman. I seized him by the collar while he was still halfway through the window and yelled, “Now, you rascal, what are you doing in there?”

There followed a scuffle, in which Holmes managed to turn the tables and get the better of me, depositing me prone on the lawn in an arm lock. Him and his deuced baritsu . Underhand tactics, if you ask me, using an Oriental martial art. What’s wrong with a man’s own strength and good old-fashioned fisticuffs?

Be that as it may, once he saw who I was, he released me and we dusted ourselves down and had a good laugh. Two detectives independently investigating the same case – or such was the situation as far as Holmes was aware – and we were battling each other like a pair of rogues. Absurd!

“How about this?” Holmes said. “Why not forge a temporary alliance? Two heads are better than one, as the saying goes. I do not necessarily ascribe to that principle, but on this one occasion it might pertain. Let us pool our resources and work together.”

I should have said no, but in all honesty how could I? Although I had come to nurse a deep-seated grudge towards this man, he remained my boyhood benefactor, my exemplar, even my hero. Here he was, offering to conduct an investigation side by side with me. It was, in many ways, a dream come true. If only for a while, we would be Holmes and Barker, Consulting Detectives after all. A fusion of talents. Greatness squared.

Saying yes to his proposal would also deflect any hint of suspicion away from me, for Holmes gave no sign of perceiving my true motives for being at the Haven. His assumption that I had come there in the course of my enquiries would only be reinforced if I consented to co-operate with him. It would have been out of character, and risk arousing his curiosity, were I to have refused.

Josiah Amberley, Holmes confided to me, was not a victim. He was the perpetrator of a heinous crime. It was as plain as the nose on your face.

“It is?” I said, thinking that for a man with a nose as prominent as Holmes’s, everything must be plain.

“It most certainly is.”

He reeled off the facts he had unearthed about the case. There was the Haven’s strong-room, where Amberley kept his cash and securities. There was the malodorous green paint Amberley had been using to carry out some redecoration. There were the peculiar pair of words written in purple indelible pencil just above the skirting: “We we”. Most of all there were the tickets for two upper circle seats at the Haymarket Theatre, one of which Amberley had presented to Watson as his alibi for the night Dr Ernest and Mrs Amberley went missing. It transpired that neither seat had been occupied during the performance, according to the theatre’s box-office chart.

I must have still looked perplexed, for Holmes said, “Tut, man! Think about it. Consider the data. Data, data, data. What does it all add up to? You style yourself a detective. You have studied my methods. Apply them.”

I did. “The strong-room, you say, has an iron door and window shutters. It is all but hermetically sealed. That is suggestive.”

“Suggestive at the very least.”

“As for the paint, its smell may have been intended to disguise another smell.”

“May have been, Barker? Was!”

“A smell such as that of gas.”

“A-ha! Very much so.”

“He killed them – Dr Ernest and Mrs Amberley. He gassed them to death in the strong-room.”

“But how?” said Holmes. “How did he manage it?”

“Do you not know?”

“I have an inkling, but tell me your thoughts.”

“Well, I imagine he set the jet for a lamp going, without lighting it. Then he inveigled the two of them into the room on some pretext and slammed the door on them. Unable to escape, they would have asphyxiated within minutes.”

“My interpretation precisely, Barker. And the ‘We we’?”

“I cannot but think that it was scribbled by one or other of the doomed couple as they lay gasping their last on the strong-room floor. It represents a desperate last-ditch attempt to leave a clue for anyone who might inspect the room looking for signs of foul play. The first ‘we’ is an abortive attempt to write a sentence. The second ‘we’ likewise met with failure.”

“Or,” said Holmes, “the second ‘we’ is part of a new word, which was left unfinished: ‘were’.”

“As in ‘We were here’. ‘We were innocent’.”

“Or ‘We were murdered’.”

“That seems plausible,” I said, nodding, even as a slight chill ran through me. “And if Amberley was not at the theatre as he maintains…”

“Then his alibi crumbles like a sandcastle before the incoming tide,” said Holmes. “He may be diabolical, but he is not as clever as he thinks he is. We have him. All that remains is for us to extract a confession out of him. Would you, pray, care to assist me with that?”

“Holmes,” I said, “I should like nothing better.”

It seemed I would not be getting the portion of Amberley’s worldly wealth that I had been hoping for. That was a source of great regret. I would, however, be on hand to see a double murderer brought to justice and play a significant role in his apprehension. The glory would be an almost adequate substitute for the money.

Events played out more or less as Watson has described in the closing passages of “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman”. Amberley attempted suicide by poison pellet when Holmes confronted him with an accusation of murder. Holmes’s extraordinarily swift reflexes prevented him from cheating the hangman’s noose, and together we wrestled that great brawling brute of a man to the floor, subdued and secured him. Inspector MacKinnon took him into custody. In all, it was a satisfactory conclusion to the proceedings.

Save in one respect.

There was still the question of where the money and securities had gone. If they were not in the strong-room, where were they? Dr Ernest and Mrs Amberley had, obviously, not made off with them. Their bodies were revealed to have been buried in the garden of the Haven, down a disused well whose opening was concealed by a dog-kennel. In the breast pocket of Ernest’s jacket was a purple indelible pencil. One can only presume Amberley tucked it there after finding it on the strong-room floor and failing to spy the truncated message Ernest had scrawled with it on the skirting.