Paul Gilbert - The Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes

I was much relieved at finding my friend’s coat and hat once again, adorning their customary hook in the entrance hallway and I raced up the stairs in eager anticipation. However my excitement upon making this discovery, was soon quenched by the sight of Holmes’s exhausted form lying, dishevelled, across our settee! Obviously his recent exertions had left him spent and I was certain that it would be many hours before he might be disturbed.

It was not unusual to find Holmes so incommoded. Whenever he sensed the conclusion of a difficult case, or realized the urgency of tracking down an elusive clue, his energy and willingness to extend himself knew no bounds. On this occasion, however, his indisposition presented me with something of a dilemma, for I did not feel that I could rely on Daley to detain the witnesses long enough for Holmes to be able to examine them, I decided that to await Holmes’s return to consciousness would be to waste valuable time. So I instructed Mrs Hudson to direct Holmes to the Holborn with all urgency should he awaken before my return. Then I hailed a cab to the same destination.

Daley’s forlorn demeanour led me to deduce, correctly, that his interrogations had borne little or no fruit. Distraught would be an accurate description of his expression once he had realized that I had returned to the Holborn alone. I hurriedly explained the reason for Holmes’s absence, although this was of little consolation to the despondent Inspector.

‘Oh dear, upon my word this is a puzzle to be sure, Doctor. Nobody here seems to have heard of the late Stamford, much less to have borne a grudge against him.’ Daley shook his head slowly.

‘Well, they would hardly admit as much under the circumstances, now would they?’ I suggested, somewhat impatiently.

‘Now, now Watson, I am sure that the good Inspector is doing his best.’

With a sense of relief that I could hardly suppress I turned to find my friend standing in the doorway, looking as fresh and alert as if he had remained on that settee for a further ten hours.

‘Well, upon my word!’ I exclaimed.

‘Watson, if you had wished me to remain undisturbed, you might not have stomped around our rooms like a wild herd of water buffalo. A keenly trained mind, albeit an unconscious one, is always alert to the slightest disturbance of any significance. Mrs Hudson had me on the road here in next to no time!’

‘My dear fellow, a thousand apologies! I would not have disturbed you for all the world, although your arrival is well-timed, I must admit.’

‘No doubt, no doubt and this must be…?’ Holmes glanced briefly in Daley’s direction, but he largely ignored the Inspector’s attempts to introduce himself and his men once he became aware of Stamford’s body in the chair. He stared down at the bloodied wound whilst I repeated my diagnosis. Holmes acknowledged this with a nod of his head and then slid down to the floor with his magnifying glass in his hand.

This was a process that I had witnessed on many such occasions, although I soon became aware that to the uninitiated inspector the whole procedure might have appeared most bizarre. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and seemed both puzzled by and uncomfortable with what he was seeing.

Oblivious to this, Holmes slowly made his way across the floor towards the crutch, examining the floor meticulously. Occasionally he extracted from the boards an object, invisible to mere mortals, and slipped it carefully into a small buff envelope. He then ran his glass up and down the entire length of the crutch before standing and turning to face us.

‘Gentlemen, I must congratulate you,’ Holmes announced to my immense surprise. ‘Nothing appears to have been disturbed or moved and the evidence is as fresh as when the crime was first committed.’

‘Evidence?’ Daley queried. ‘I was not aware of any, save the body and the strange-looking crutch.’

‘Very likely not, however, I have already uncovered three separate pieces of evidence that I will need to put to the test,’ Holmes said quietly whilst the hint of a mischievous smile played briefly over his thin, dry lips.

‘Ah, the contents of that envelope!’ I stated superfluously.

Briefly raising his eyebrows in exasperation, Holmes then asked: ‘Would one of you now explain to me the exact circumstances that led to the untimely demise of the unfortunate Dr Stamford?’

Daley read from his notebook and every so often Holmes would glance at me for confirmation of the inspector’s accuracy. This I was able to provide.

‘Excellent!’ Holmes rubbed his hands together excitedly. ‘Has either of you formulated theories of your own?’ he asked, albeit with a thinly veiled air of resignation in his tone.

‘Sadly, no,’ Daley responded as he slowly shook his head. ‘My interviews with the club members have revealed nothing of significance other than the fact that none of them has any connection with the victim.’

Holmes now turned to me and I thought long and hard before answering:

‘Well, whoever committed the crime certainly had a cool head because very little time had elapsed between the attack and my arrival at the club. Yet the nature of the weapon seems to indicate that the decision to kill Stamford was made on the spur of the moment. And surely a blow of such force would have caused an indentation in a metal as light as aluminium. At least we know from this that the murderer possesses great strength.’ I concluded whilst unsuccessfully trying to conceal my confusion.

‘Your haphazard ramblings do nothing to clarify the situation,’ Holmes observed shaking his head. ‘Inspector, perhaps now I might have sight of this list of members that you hold in such reverence.’ In answer to Daley’s questioning glance Holmes continued: ‘I might learn more by comparing the signatures that it contains with the writing style of the note, than you could during all your hours of tireless questioning.’

With an air of resignation Daley passed over the blue leather-bound members’ book to Holmes, who now flattened out my note on the table next to it.

After a few moments of detailed comparison Holmes revealed nothing either in his facial expression or by other physical reaction. Nevertheless he now pronounced: ‘Inspector, in my opinion you may now safely allow the club members to go about their business. However, I would not recommend the same with regard to the staff, until such time as Watson and I return here this evening. Come, Watson!’ Holmes now hustled me from the room, leaving the forlorn Inspector Daley anxiously rubbing his chin.

‘I am not certain that our friend can be relied upon to carry out my wishes for any length of time, so I would suggest that speed is of the essence,’ Holmes said as he scoured the street for an available cab. Once one was in sight Holmes, his cane aloft, called loudly to it. ‘Watson,’ he said to me as we climbed in, ‘please give the driver the address of Stamford’s consulting room.’

‘St Bartholomew’s Hospital, please, cabby,’ I told the man.

Once we were under way Holmes held up his hand in front of my face.

‘Now please, Watson, before you start bombarding me with a myriad of questions, allow me to lay these facts before you. If you consider them logically I trust that you will soon find your questions becoming irrelevant.’ I closed my mouth immediately and nodded my agreement.

‘The points that I would commend for your consideration are the handwriting employed in the note and the nature of that most singular of murder weapons. Have you seen anything of its like before?’

‘Whilst wood is still the most common material used in crutch manufacture, aluminium is not uncommon and certainly not unique,’ I replied.

‘Ah, but did you not notice the unusual spring hinges that divided the thing? Surely they were designed and inserted to help relieve the armpit of the strain of supporting the body weight.’