Denis Smith - The Mammoth Book of the New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes

‘It is evident,’ said Sherlock Holmes, as we sat either side of a blazing fire in our rooms in Baker Street, later that evening, ‘that for some time Trent had been determined to rid himself of his wife. He would have realised, however, that should she meet her death in sudden and suspicious circumstances, he would inevitably be a chief suspect in the eyes of the authorities. He therefore conceived a scheme in which a series of malevolent actions would appear to be directed at Richard Hudson Hardy’s theatre company in general – for which no suspicion could possibly attach to him, he being one of the financial sponsors of the company – which would culminate, however, with the murder of his wife.’

‘But if The Lavender Girl had been cancelled, Trent stood to lose a large amount of money,’ I protested.

‘Perhaps so; but that was evidently of less importance to him than being rid of his wife. In any case, it is not certain that Miss Ballantyne’s death would necessarily have entailed the cancellation of The Lavender Girl . It would, of course, have been postponed, but it might have opened later, with Lydia Summers, or someone else, in the leading role.’

‘I suppose it might,’ I conceded; ‘although I doubt if anyone else could have adequately replaced Isabel Ballantyne. Why on earth,’ I cried, as I reflected upon this possibility, ‘would anyone wish to be rid of a woman of such charm and such gifts?’

Holmes chuckled. ‘As I have had occasion to mention to you once or twice before, my dear fellow,’ replied he in a tone of amusement, ‘you must never let your admiration for the fair sex affect your assessment of a case! You perceive Isabel Ballantyne only from a distance, as it were, in the form in which she presents herself to the public. Perhaps upon closer acquaintance she appears somewhat less charming and gifted. Who knows? Perhaps she had an annoying habit of singing whenever her husband wished to discuss the movement of prices on the Stock Exchange, or perhaps she fell asleep and snored each time he began to describe the hunting of tigers in India. We cannot say. I am hopeful that Count Laszlo might be able to enlighten us on that side of things. He promised he would call by this evening on his way home.’

‘Did you ever suspect that Trent was behind all that had happened?’

‘I was certain of it.’

‘What! How on earth could you know? After all, Miss Ballantyne herself had described to us how her husband had tried to persuade her to leave the production.’

‘Yes, the cunning devil! It is evident he made the suggestion in the full and certain knowledge that his wife would never agree to it. But, to describe to you how I came to perceive the truth: when first we went down to the Albion yesterday, I suspected no one. The data with which I had been supplied were too meagre for me to form any meaningful suspicions, and it would have been a capital mistake to attempt to do so. Whilst we were there, however, an incident occurred which led me to know, with almost complete certainty, that Captain Trent was responsible for what had been happening at the theatre. This incident occurred after we had come up from the basement for the first time. Whilst down there, I had made a few measurements, of footprints, marks on the door-frame and so on, as you will no doubt recall.’

‘Certainly.’

‘A few simple calculations from those measurements enabled me to form a mental image of the man who had left those traces, an image which was subsequently confirmed, as to height at least, by the mark your assailant left upon the corridor wall as he fled, which was slightly higher than the marks you had made. This image, Watson, was exactly matched by a man who walked in at the front door of the theatre just a short time later. That man was Captain William Trent.’

‘But there must be thousands of men in London who are approximately of the same height and build as Trent.’

‘There may well be; but just how many of those thousands are intimately connected with Hardy’s Theatre? Besides, Trent would have been drawn to my attention in any case because of the incident to which I alluded.’

‘What was that?’

‘He entered the theatre soaking wet.’

‘I may be obtuse,’ I remarked, ‘but I can see no significance whatever in that observation, Holmes. Why, it was pouring with rain at the time! Anyone would have been wet! If you recall, Jimmy Webster arrived at the theatre in precisely the same condition.’

‘That is so; but Webster had come on foot, he informed us, from a coffee-shop some distance away. Whether true or not, his account was at least plausible. Captain Trent offered no such explanation. He had, he said, come directly from his club. He must, then, have come in a cab. But if so, why was he so wet? At the front of Hardy’s Theatre is a large glass canopy, which extends across the width of the pavement. Anyone alighting from a cab there could step almost directly under the canopy and thus practically avoid the rain altogether. Clearly, then, Trent had not alighted from his cab outside the front of the theatre just before we saw him, despite the impression that he tried to give. It was evident he had walked from further afield, but there was no clue at that time as to where he might have come from. The only innocent explanation which seemed likely was that he had alighted early from his cab in order to call at a tobacconist’s shop or a post office, or somewhere similar. When I surveyed the area later, however, I established that there was no shop of that sort nearby. In the meantime, you and I had discovered the old tunnel which runs between the Albion and the Palace, and it was clear that anyone using it – specifically, the mystery persecutor of Hardy’s company – would have emerged into the daylight from the ruined Palace. At the side of the Palace, in the short cul-de-sac between the two theatres, is a little side-door which seemed to me the most likely exit from the building, and the distance from that door to the front of the Albion would be just sufficient for a man to get caught in a sudden downpour and arrive at the Albion soaking wet. I have little doubt that Hardy’s missing bunch of keys will be found in Captain Trent’s possession and little doubt, either, that one of the keys upon it will fit the side-door of the Palace.

‘Of course, if Trent were behind the recent incidents, as I was compelled to believe, then the whole matter was cast in a somewhat different light. Hardy had assumed that the actions of the anonymous miscreant were designed to wreck his production, so that it would not be a success and would not run for long, or might possibly not even open at all. But this motive could not apply to Trent, one of three men who stood to lose money if The Lavender Girl were not a success and whose own wife was the leading lady in the production. It seemed to me possible, then, that the whole series of fairly trivial incidents might be nothing more nor less than an elaborate blind, to distract attention from Trent’s true aim. What this might be, I could not at first conceive; but when – thanks to your alertness, old fellow! – we learnt that he had been in the chamber under the stage and discovered that the trap-door there had been tampered with in an elaborate and highly ingenious manner, I felt sure we had discovered the kernel of his evil scheme. Anyone falling through that trap-door to the flagstones below would surely break his neck. This little piece of malice was therefore on an altogether higher plane of devilry than the spiteful tricks which had gone before. Here, surely, then, was the goal towards which that callous villain had been working.

‘But if it was Trent’s intention to murder someone, who might that someone be? In the absence of any other obvious motive, his wife – despite all those charms and gifts which have impressed you so greatly – seemed to me the likeliest candidate. Why else would Trent have gone to such lengths to disguise his true intentions? By an examination of the script, I was able to establish that Isabel Ballantyne spent some parts of the play alone on the stage, which was not the case for any of the other characters. Moreover, as you and I observed yesterday afternoon, for some time at the end of the first act she passed over, or stood upon, the trap-door itself. I was convinced, then, that this was when the attempt would be made upon her life. But there is the bell! This may well be our visitor!’