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

As to Sherlock Holmes, when next I saw him he was absorbed in a fresh problem, the consequences of which, he confided to me, might well bring down every government on the Continent. The details of Mr Herbert’s strange adventures had quite passed from his mind and he appeared genuinely surprised when I suggested to him that the citizens of London owed him a debt of gratitude.

‘They may all sleep a little easier in their beds, as a result of your achievements in the Rowsley case,’ I remarked.

‘Perhaps you are right,’ he responded with little interest. ‘I really have no time to consider matters from such a perspective. My work itself is the sole focus of my attention and must be its own reward. Do you know that line of Chaucer’s, Watson: “The life so short, the craft so long to learn”? It is an observation that applies with peculiar accuracy to my own line of work. That being so, you will perhaps appreciate that it is the pursuit of professional mastery rather than ephemeral praise to which my energies must always be directed.’

‘Is it really possible, do you suppose,’ said Sherlock Holmes to me one morning, as we took breakfast together, ‘that a healthy and robust man may be so stricken with terror that he drops down dead?’

‘Certainly it is,’ I responded. ‘There are numerous recorded instances. Of course, in many of them there were also other factors. If a man’s heart is weak or diseased, for instance, the likelihood of such an event is increased. And if the fear arises suddenly, and comes as a terrific shock, that also increases the likelihood. Do you have a specific case in mind?’

‘Indeed: that of Victor Furnival, of Wharncliffe Crescent, Norwood, who died suddenly on Tuesday. There was a brief mention of it in yesterday’s papers.’

‘I did not see the report,’ I said. ‘Was he in a situation of menace?’

‘On the contrary, when the blow fell, he was seated at the breakfast table, as you and I are now, no doubt drinking tea and contemplating a boiled egg.’

‘What, then? Why should the papers have reported that he died from fear?’

‘It is not the papers that mention it. They give the cause of death as heart failure and otherwise confine themselves to listing Mr Furnival’s accomplishments – he was, it seems, a local councillor, a magistrate and altogether a notable figure in the district; but I have this morning received a letter from the dead man’s niece, Miss Agnes Montague, who has been acting as his housekeeper for the past eighteen months. She informs me that Mr Furnival was seated at the breakfast table, opening his post, when he uttered what she describes as the most dreadful cry of terror she has ever heard. A moment later he was dead.’

‘Then the shock he received must have come in the morning post.’

‘That is, I agree, the logical inference. And something more than simply a steep bill from the gas company, to judge from the severity of it. Miss Montague proposes to consult me this morning, so perhaps we shall learn a little more then. If she is as punctual as the urgency of her note suggests,’ he added, glancing at his watch, ‘she will be here in precisely seventeen minutes, Watson; so if you would ring for the maid to clear away the relics of our breakfast, I should be obliged.’

It was a dull morning in September, chilly and damp, and as I stood by the window for a moment, surveying the ceaseless flow of traffic in Baker Street, I was struck by the banality of the scene. It was certainly difficult to imagine anyone dying of terror in modern London and I confess I rather doubted that Miss Montague’s problem would be of much interest to Holmes, or would possess any of those recherché features which so delighted his eccentric taste.

His client arrived at the appointed time. She was a slim, dark-haired young lady of about five and twenty, a little below the medium size. She had a soft West Country accent and a quiet reserve in her manner which I had learnt to associate with those raised far from the brash clamour of London.

‘I understand,’ said Holmes, when his visitor was seated in the chair by the fire, ‘that you wish to consult me in connection with the death of your uncle.’

‘That is correct.’

‘And yet I am not clear what it is you wish me to do. As I understand it, the cause of death was given as heart failure. In your letter you suggest that Mr Furnival’s heart failed him as a result of fear. Do you have any reason for this supposition?’

‘Mr Holmes, there can be no doubt. Mr Furnival cried out in the most terrible fear only moments before he died.’

‘I do not doubt your conviction on the point, madam; but is it not possible that his cry was one of pain, occasioned by the heart seizure?’

Miss Montague shook her head. ‘No, Mr Holmes,’ said she in a firm tone. ‘His cry was not one of pain, but of terror. There is a difference, which anyone hearing it would recognise at once. Even as I speak to you now, I can hear his last cry ringing in my ears and it chills my very bones.’

‘Very well,’ said Holmes. ‘Perhaps you could describe to us the circumstances and what you suppose might have caused such fear in your uncle.’ So saying, he leaned back in his chair, with his eyes closed and his fingertips together, the very picture of motionless concentration.

‘I will tell you what I can,’ began his visitor. ‘The difficulty is that I have known my uncle and his household for less than two years. I was born and raised at Swanage, in Dorset, where my parents ran a small hotel. Two years ago my father died and when the business was sold, I was obliged to look elsewhere to make my way in the world. Some three years previously, Mr Furnival had paid us a brief visit. He was a distant cousin of my father’s and thus not, strictly speaking, my uncle; but I have always addressed him as such. His visit to Swanage was the only previous occasion upon which we had met, for he lived in Norwood, in the suburbs of London, where he was, so I understood, an important and wealthy man. Now, despairing of finding a suitable occupation in Dorset, I wrote to him and asked if he would put me up while I sought employment in London. This he agreed to do and I came up to London about twenty months ago.

‘The household then included also Mr Furnival’s widowed sister, Mrs Eardley. Her husband had died some years previously, upon which, having no children, she had gone to live with her brother in the West Indies, where he was resident at the time, and had subsequently returned with him to England. The household was a very regular and orderly one, and I soon learnt that I should be required to fit in with its strict routines. Both brother and sister admired order and cleanliness above all else, and had a deep abhorrence of anything which fell short of this ideal. This inclination even extended to the garden of the property, for I subsequently learnt from a neighbour that when Mr Furnival moved into the house, he had most of the flowering plants cut back severely, so that little remains now but a strip of lawn and a row of small rose-bushes, and he had the climbing plants – wisteria and so on – completely removed from the walls of the house, which are now perfectly bare of any such ornament.

‘A few months after I took up residence in Norwood, Mr Furnival and his sister fell out. They were both very quarrelsome by nature and had often exchanged sharp words, but on this occasion the rift was more severe, and shortly afterwards Mrs Eardley moved out and went to live by herself in Peckham. Mr Furnival then asked me if I would act as housekeeper for him, which, having no other immediate prospects, I agreed to do. Since that time, Mrs Eardley has called round occasionally, but her visits have almost always concluded with the two of them quarrelling.