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

‘I noticed there didn’t seem to be much going on in his studio at the moment.’

‘Not only at the moment, Watson. From the state of his brushes and other equipment, it is clear that no work has been done there for some considerable time, possibly several months. All these things I observed yesterday, but I did not act on my observations for one simple reason.’

‘What reason is that?’

‘That I am an idiot.’

‘But at the time you saw Philips, you knew nothing of the diamonds,’

‘That is true. But once we had learnt from Inspector Lestrade of Cosgrove’s brother and the Bellecourt robbery, I had ample time to review all I had learnt during the day in the light of that new information. This I did not do. I was so pleased with myself for solving the cryptogram and working out the location of the diamonds that I gave no thought to anything else. That is what makes me an idiot – almost as big an idiot as Philips himself. It is clear to me now that once his suspicions had been aroused, he must have made it his business to find out what lay behind those eccentric tomb-inscriptions. He would soon have discovered the connection between Henry Cosgrove and the Bellecourt diamonds, and then no doubt solved the cryptogram and worked out where the diamonds were hidden. At which point the fool clearly yielded to the temptation of wealth that the diamonds represent. There is nothing that corrupts and destroys a man’s life so certainly as sudden wealth, especially if that wealth is unearned. But in this case the danger is yet more serious than usual, for I rather fear that Albert Cosgrove has reached the same conclusion as I have and I doubt that Philips has any conception of the kind of man he is up against. Let us hope we are not too late!’

We had reached Higham’s Park station as Holmes had been speaking, where the police van stood waiting for us. ‘It will be quicker if we take the train,’ said Holmes. He hurried into the station to consult the timetable, but was back again in a moment. ‘There is a train to Liverpool Street in five minutes,’ said he. Lestrade quickly explained matters to the other policemen, instructing them to notify Scotland Yard at once as to what had happened and where we were going, to arrange for men from the nearest police station to meet us at Philips’s cottage and to post a constable in front of Mrs Cosgrove’s house in case her brother-in-law returned. A minute later we were in the train.

The traffic in central London was dense and slow-moving, and it took us some time to get across to Waterloo station, Holmes fretting and shaking his head in frustration all the while, but once there we were fortunate enough to find that a suitable train was just about to leave, and soon we were rattling along the viaduct through Lambeth and out to the south-western suburbs. As we alighted at Barnes, the only passengers to do so, the common seemed even colder, foggier and more desolate than on our previous visit. At least on this occasion, as Holmes remarked, we knew how to find Philips’s cottage, so could avoid wasting our time tramping hither and thither across the heath, as we had done the previous day.

‘I doubt if Cosgrove has been down here before,’ remarked Holmes, as he led the way along a rutted track, ‘so if he is here it will have taken him some time to find the cottage, and although he still leads and we still follow, we are therefore closer behind him now than we were at Higham’s Park. As I told you then, Lestrade, we may still trail behind him, but the game is not yet over!’

We turned from the track into a narrow road, where there was not a soul about. It took us little time to reach the old cottage, where icicles hung from the gutters, and the side wall and the bushes growing by it were covered with frost-whitened cobwebs. We approached cautiously, but saw no movement at any of the windows. At the front door, Lestrade was about to knock, but Holmes put his hand on his arm and indicated the step, where the muddy imprint of a large boot was clearly visible. Without speaking, Holmes then pointed to his own shoe and I at once saw his meaning: our shoes were not muddy; whoever had made the footprint on the step had clearly spent some time tramping about the heath, looking for the cottage. As he put his hand on the door, I saw there was a narrow gap at the edge of it and it was apparent that the door was not closed properly. He pushed gently and the door swung silently inwards. Putting his finger to his lips, he led the way into the house. As we made our way carefully through to the studio at the back, some slight sound from upstairs came to my ears. Then, as we passed through the open doorway of the studio, I stopped in astonishment. If the studio had seemed untidy and disordered upon our previous visit, that was as nothing compared to its appearance now. Every item of furniture that could possibly be upended was lying on the floor, everything that could possibly have been knocked off the shelves and other surfaces was strewn about, smashed and broken, and there on the floor, in the midst of this scene of chaos and destruction, lay Andrew Philips.

I quickly bent down to him, but it took me only a moment to establish that the body was lifeless. Philips was dead. I indicated some severe bruising on the neck which suggested he had been strangled, and as I did so there came a louder crash and clatter from upstairs, as if someone were pulling the drawers out of a tallboy and throwing them on to the floor. The door to the staircase stood open and Lestrade pointed at the stair, but Holmes shook his head and intimated we should wait where we were.

Abruptly, the racket ceased and there came the softer sound of footsteps moving about in the room above us. For a moment, that, too, ceased and all was silence, then there came heavy footsteps on the wooden stair. Holmes stepped back slightly, behind the door to the staircase, and drew his revolver from his pocket, as Lestrade quietly drew out a truncheon from an inside pocket of his coat.

With a heavy, rapid tread, the footsteps clattered down the steep, narrow staircase and in an instant a large, heavily built man appeared before us. He stopped abruptly when he saw us, a look of surprise on his large, coarse face. Then his features twisted into an expression of contempt, vicious and brutal.

‘Albert Cosgrove, I am arresting you—’ Lestrade began, but he got no further. Cosgrove let out a fearsome roar and started forward. But even as he made to launch his violent attack upon us, Holmes stepped out from behind the door and clapped his pistol to the side of his head.

For a split second Cosgrove stopped, then in a flash he had brought his arm up and knocked Holmes’s revolver out of the way, at the same instant drawing a pistol of his own from his pocket and firing it wildly in our direction. There came a sharp cry of pain from Lestrade, but he launched himself forward, striking out with his truncheon and knocking the pistol from Cosgrove’s grasp. I flung myself forward and the three of us crashed to the ground in a heap. For a few moments we struggled wildly, then Holmes brought the butt of his revolver down sharply on Cosgrove’s head, his whole body went limp and he lay still.

Lestrade quickly snapped a pair of handcuffs on Cosgrove’s wrists, then he rose to his feet, grimacing with pain. ‘That shot he fired caught me on the left shoulder,’ he said. I helped him slip off his coat and jacket, picked up a chair for him to sit on, and examined the wound, which was bleeding profusely.

‘You were very lucky,’ I said after a moment. ‘The bullet has passed clean through your upper arm. It will certainly be painful for a time, but I don’t think it has done any lasting damage.’ I picked up the cleanest piece of rag I could see on the floor and tied it tightly round his arm. ‘You’ve lost a fair amount of blood,’ I added. ‘We’ll have to get this dressed properly as soon as possible.’