Nightmares And Dreamscapes Part 60

'A vase waiting to be filled up with pounds sterling,' Holmes commented.

'Jory is another matter,' Lestrade went on. 'Lord Hull saved most of his contempt for him, calling him from his earliest childhood by such endearing pet-names as "Fish-Face" and "Keg-Legs" and "Stoat-Belly." It's not hard to understand such names, unfortunately; Jory Hull stands no more than five feet tall, if that, is bow-legged, and of a remarkably ugly countenance. He looks a bit like that poet fellow. The pouf.'

'Oscar Wilde?' asked I.

Holmes turned a brief, amused glance upon me. 'I think Lestrade means Algernon Swinburne,' he said. 'Who, I believe, is no more a pouf than you are, Watson.'

'Jory Hull was born dead,' Lestrade said. 'After he remained blue and still for an entire minute, the doctor p.r.o.nounced him so and put a napkin over his misshapen body. Lady Hull, in her one moment of heroism, sat up, removed the napkin, and dipped the baby's legs into the hot water, which had been brought to be used at the birth. The baby began to squirm and squall.'

Lestrade grinned and lit a cigarillo with a flourish.

'Hull claimed this immersion had caused the boy's bowed legs, and when he was in his cups, he taxed his wife with it. Told her she should have left well enough alone. Better Jory had been born dead than lived to be what he was, he sometimes said - a scuttling creature with the legs of a crab and the face of a cod.'

Holmes's only reaction to this extraordinary (and to my physician's mind rather suspect) story was to comment that Lestrade had gotten a remarkably large body of information in a remarkably short period of time.

'That points up one of the aspects of the case which I thought would appeal to you, my dear Holmes,' Lestrade said as we swept into Rotten Row with a splash and a swirl. 'They need no coercion to speak; coercion's what it would take to shut em up. Ihey've had to remain silent all too long. And then there's the fact that the new will is gone. Relief loosens tongues beyond measure, I find.'

'Gone!' I exclaimed, but Holmes took no notice; his mind still ran upon Jory, the misshapen middle child.

'Is he ugly, then?' he asked Leptrade.

'Hardly handsome, but not as bad as some I've seen,' Lestrade replied comfortably. 'I believe his father continually heaped vituperation on his head because - '

' - because he was the only one who had no need of his father's money to make his way in the world,' Holmes finished for him.

Lestrade started. 'The devil! How did you know that?'

'Because Lord Hull was reduced to carping at Jory's physical faults. How it must have chafed the old devil to be faced with a potential target so well armored in other respects! Baiting a man for his looks or his posture may be fine for schoolboys or drunken louts, but a villain like Lord Hull had no doubt become used to higher sport. I would venture the opinion that he may have been rather afraid of his bow-legged middle son. What was Jory's key to the cell door?''

'Haven't I told you? He paints,' Lestrade said.

'Ah!'

Jory Hull was, as the canvases in the lower halls of Hull House later proved, a very good painter indeed. Not great; I do not mean that at all. But his renderings of his mother and brothers were faithful enough so that, years later, when I saw color photographs for the first time, my mind flashed back to that rainy November afternoon in 1899. And the one of his father perhaps was a work of greatness. Certainly it startled (almost intimidated) with the malevolence that seemed to waft out of the canvas like a breath of dank graveyard air. Perhaps it was Algernon Swinburne that Jory resembled, but his father's likeness - at least as seen through the middle son's hand and eye - reminded me of an Oscar Wilde character: that nearly immortal roue, Dorian Gray.

His canvases were long, slow processes, but he was able to quick-sketch with such nimble rapidity that he might come home from Hyde Park on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon with as much as twenty pounds in his pockets.

'I'll wager his father enjoyed that,' Holmes said. He reached automatically for his pipe, then put it back again. 'The son of a Peer quick-sketching wealthy American tourists and their sweethearts like a French Bohemian.'

Lestrade laughed heartily. 'He raged over it, as you may imagine. But Jory - good for him! - wouldn't give over his selling stall in Hyde Park . . . not, at least, until his father agreed to an allowance of thirty-five pounds a week. He called it low black mail.'

'My heart bleeds,' I said.

'As does mine, Watson,' Holmes said. 'The third son, Lestrade, quickly - we've almost reached the house, I believe.'

As Lestrade had intimated, surely Stephen Hull had the greatest cause to hate his father. As his gout grew worse and his head more muddled, Lord Hull surrendered more and more of the company affairs to Stephen, who was only twenty-eight at the time of his father's death. The responsibilities devolved upon Stephen, and the blame also devolved upon him if his least decision proved amiss. Yet no financial gain accrued to him should he decide well and his father's affairs prosper.

Lord Hull should have looked with favor upon Stephen, as the only one of his children with an interest in and an apt.i.tude for the business he had founded; Stephen was a perfect example of what the Bible calls 'the good son.' Yet instead of displaying love and grat.i.tude, Lord Hull repaid the young man's largely successful efforts with scorn, suspicion, and jealousy. On many occasions during the last two years of his life, the old man had offered the charming opinion that Stephen 'would steal the pennies from a dead man's eyes.'

'The b-----d!' I cried, unable to contain myself.

'Ignore the new will for a moment,' Holmes said, steepling his fingers again, 'and return to the old one. Even under the conditions of that marginally more generous doc.u.ment, Stephen Hull would have had cause for resentment. In spite of all his labors, which had not only saved the family fortune but increased it, his reward was still to have been the youngest son's share of the spoils. What, by the way, was to have been the disposition of the shipping company under the provisions of what we might call the p.u.s.s.y Will?'

I looked carefully at Holmes, but, as always, it was difficult to tell if he had attempted a small bon mot. Even after all the years I spent with him and all the adventures we shared, Sherlock Holmes's sense of humor remains a largely undiscovered country, even to me.

'It was to be handed over to the Board of Directors, with no provision for Stephen,' Lestrade said, and pitched his cigarillo out the window as the hackney swept up the curving drive of a house which looked extraordinarily ugly to me just then, as it stood amid its brown lawns in the driving rain. 'Yet with the father dead and the new will nowhere to be found, Stephen Hull has what the Americans call "leverage." The company will have him as managing director. They should have done anyway, but now it will be on Stephen Hull's terms.'

'Yes,' Holmes said. 'Leverage. A good word.' He leaned out into the rain. 'Stop short, driver!' he cried. 'We've not quite done!'

'As you say, guv'nor,' the driver returned, 'but it's devilish wet out here.'

'And you'll go with enough in your pocket to make your innards as wet and devilish as your out'ards,' Holmes said. This seemed to satisfy the man, and he stopped thirty yards from the front door of the great house. I listened to the rain tip-tapping on the sides of the coach while Holmes cogitated and then said: 'The old will - the one he teased them with - that doc.u.ment isn't missing, is it?'

'Absolutely not. It was on his desk, near his body.'

'Four excellent suspects! Servants need not apply . . . or so it seems now. Finish quickly, Lestrade - the final circ.u.mstances, and the locked room.'

Lestrade complied, consulting his notes from time to time. A month previous, Lord Hull had observed a small black spot on his right leg, directly behind the knee. The family doctor was called. His diagnosis was gangrene, an unusual but far from rare result of gout and poor circulation. The doctor told him the leg would have to come off, and well above the site of the infection.

Lord Hull laughed until tears streamed down his cheeks. The doctor, who had expected any reaction but this, was struck speechless. 'When they stick me in my coffin, sawbones,' Hull said, 'it will be with both legs still attached, thank you very much.'

The doctor told him that he sympathized with Lord Hull's wish to keep his leg, but that without amputation he would be dead in six months, and he would spend the last two in exquisite pain. Lord Hull asked the doctor what his chances of survival should be if he were to undergo the operation. He was still laughing, Lestrade said, as though it were the best joke he had ever heard. After some hemming and hawing, the doctor said the odds were even.

'Bunk,' said I.

'Exactly what Lord Hull said,' Lestrade replied, 'except he used a term more often used in dosses than in drawing-rooms.'

Hull told the doctor that he himself reckoned his chances at no better than one in five. 'As to the pain, I don't think it will come to that,' he went on, 'as long as there's laudanum and a spoon to stir it with in stumping distance.'

The next day, Hull finally sprang his nasty surprise - that he was thinking of changing his will. Just how he did not immediately say.

'Oh?' Holmes said, looking at Lestrade from those cool gray eyes that saw so much. 'And who, pray, was surprised?'

'None of them, I should think. But you know human nature, Holmes; how people hope against hope.'

'And how some plan against disaster,' Holmes said dreamily.

This very morning Lord Hull had called his family into the parlor, and when all were settled, he performed an act few testators are granted, one which is usually performed by the wagging tongues of their solicitors after their own have been forever silenced. In short, he read them his new will, leaving the balance of his estate to Mrs. Hemphill's wayward p.u.s.s.ies. In the silence that followed he rose, not without difficulty, and favored them all with a death's-head grin. And leaning over his cane, he made the following declaration, which I find as astoundingly vile now as I did when Lestrade recounted it to us in that hackney cab: 'So! All is fine, is it not? Yes, very fine! You have served me quite faithfully, woman and boys, for some forty years. Now I intend, with the clearest and most serene conscience imaginable, to cast you hence. But take heart! Things could be worse! If there was time, the pharaohs had their favorite pets - cats, for the most part - killed before they died, so the pets might be there to welcome them into the after-life, to be kicked or petted there, at their masters' whims, forever . . . and forever . . . and forever.' Then he laughed at them. He leaned over his cane and laughed from his doughy, dying face, the new will - properly signed and properly witnessed, as all of them had seen - clutched in one claw of a hand.

William rose and said, 'Sir, you may be my father and the author of my existence, but you are also the lowest creature to crawl upon the face of the earth since the serpent tempted Eve in the Garden.'

'Not at all!' the old monster returned, still laughing. 'I know four lower. Now, if you will pardon me, I have some important papers to put away in my safe . . . and some worthless ones to burn in the stove.'

'He still had the old will when he confronted them?' Holmes asked. He seemed more interested than startled.

'Yes.'

'He could have burned it as soon as the new one was signed and witnessed,' Holmes mused. 'He had all the previous afternoon and evening to do so. But he didn't, did he? Why not? How say you on that question, Lestrade?'

'He hadn't had enough of teasing them even then, I suppose. He was offering them a chance - a temptation - he believed all would refuse.'

'Perhaps he believed one of them would not refuse,' Holmes said. 'Hasn't that idea at least crossed your mind?' He turned his head and searched my face with the momentary beam of his brilliant - and somehow chilling - regard. 'Either of your minds? Isn't it possible that such a black creature might hold out such a temptation, knowing that if one of his family were to succ.u.mb to it and put him out of his misery - Stephen seems most likely from what you say - that one might be caught . . . and swing for the crime of patricide?''

I stared at Holmes in silent horror.

'Never mind,' Holmes said. 'Go on, Inspector - it's time for the locked room to make its appearance, I believe.'

The four of them had sat in paralyzed silence as the old man made his long, slow way up the corridor to his study. There were no sounds but the thud of his cane, the labored rattle of his breathing, the plaintive miaow of a cat in the kitchen, and the steady beat of the pendulum in the parlor clock. Then they heard the squeal of hinges as Hull opened his study door and stepped inside.

'Wait!' Holmes said sharply, sitting forward. 'No one actually saw him go in, did they?'

'I'm afraid that's not so, old chap,' Lestrade returned. 'Mr. Oliver Stanley, Lord Hull's valet, had heard Lord Hull's progress down the hall. He came from Hull's dressing chamber, went to the gallery railing, and callec1 iown to ask if all was well. Hull looked up - Stanley saw him as plainly as I see you right now, old fellow - and said all was absolutely tip-top. Then he rubbed the back of his head, went in, and locked the study door behind him.

'By the time his father had reached the door (the corridor is quite long and it may have taken him as much as two minutes to make his way up it unaided) Stephen had shaken off his stupor and had gone to the parlor door. He saw the exchange between his father and his father's man. Of course Lord Hull was back-to, but Stephen heard his father's voice and described the same characteristic gesture: Hull rubbing the back of his head.'

'Could Stephen Hull and this Stanley fellow have spoken before the police arrived?' I asked - shrewdly, I thought.

'Of course they could,' Lestrade said wearily. 'They probably did. But there was no collusion.'

'You feel sure of that?' Holmes asked, but he sounded uninterested.

'Yes. Stephen Hull would lie very well, I think, but Stanley would do it very badly. Accept my professional opinion or not, just as you like, Holmes.'

'I accept it.'

So Lord Hull pa.s.sed into his study, the famous locked room, and all heard the click of the lock as he turned the key - the only key there was to that sanctum sanctorum. This was followed by a more unusual sound: the bolt being drawn across.

Then, silence.

The four of them - Lady Hull and her sons, so shortly to be blue-blooded paupers - looked at one another in similar silence. The cat miaowed again from the kitchen and Lady Hull said in a distracted voice that if the housekeeper wouldn't give that cat a bowl of milk, she supposed she must. She said the sound of it would drive her mad if she had to listen to it much longer. She left the parlor. Moments later, without a word among them, the three sons also left. William went to his room upstairs, Stephen wandered into the music room, and Jory went to sit upon a bench beneath the stairs where, he had told Lestrade, he had gone since earliest childhood when he was sad or had matters of deep difficulty to think over.

Less than five minutes later a shriek arose from the study. Stephen ran out of the music room, where he had been plinking out isolated notes on the piano. Jory met him at the study door. William was already halfway downstairs and saw them breaking in when Stanley, the valet, came out of Lord Hull's dressing room and went to the gallery railing for the second time. Stanley has testified to seeing Stephen Hull burst into the study; to seeing William reach the foot of the stairs and almost fall on the marble; to seeing Lady Hull come from the dining-room doorway with a pitcher of milk still in one hand. Moments later the rest of the servants had gathered.

'Lord Hull was slumped over his writing-desk with the three brothers standing by. His eyes were open, and the look in them . . . I believe it was surprise. Again, you are free to accept or reject my opinion just as you like, but I tell you it looked very much like surprise to me. Clutched in his hands was his will . . . the old one. Of the new one there was no sign. And there was a dagger in his back.'

With this, Lestrade rapped for the driver to go on.

We entered the house between two constables as stone-faced as Buckingham Palace sentinels. Here to begin with was a very long hall, floored in black and white marble tiles like a chessboard. They led to an open door at the end, where two more constables were posted: the entrance to the infamous study. To the left were the stairs, to the right two doors: the parlor and the music room, I guessed.

'The family is gathered in the parlor,' Lestrade said.

'Good,' Holmes said pleasantly. 'But perhaps Watson and I might first have a look at the scene of the crime?''

'Shall I accompany you?'

'Perhaps not,' Holmes said. 'Has the body been removed?'

'It was still here when I left for your lodgings, but by now it almost certainly will be gone.'

'Very good.'

Holmes started away. I followed. Lestrade called, 'Holmes!'

Holmes turned, eyebrows raised.

'No secret panels, no secret doors. For the third time, take my word or not, as you like.'

'I believe I'll wait until . . . ' Holmes began and then his breath began to hitch. He scrambled in his pocket, found a napkin probably carried absently away from the eating-house where we had dined the previous evening, and sneezed mightily into it. I looked down and saw a large, scarred tomcat, as out of place here in this grand hall as would have been one of those urchins of whom I had been thinking earlier, twining about Holmes's legs. One of its ears was laid back against its scarred skull. The other was gone, lost in some long-ago alley battle, I supposed.

Holmes sneezed repeatedly and kicked out at the cat. It went with a reproachful backward look rather than with the angry hiss one might have expected from such an old campaigner. Holmes looked at Lestrade over the napkin with reproachful, watery eyes. Lestrade, not in the least put out of countenance, thrust his head forward and grinned like a monkey. 'Ten, Holmes,' he said. 'Ten. House is full of felines. Hull loved em.' And with that he walked off.

'How long have you suffered this affliction, old fellow?' I asked. I was a bit alarmed.

'Always,' he said, and sneezed again. The word allergy was hardly known all those years ago, but that, of course, was his problem.

'Do you want to leave?' I asked. I had once seen a case of near asphyxiation as the result of such an aversion, this one to sheep but otherwise similar in all respects.

'He'd like that,' Holmes said. I did not need him to tell me whom he meant. Holmes sneezed once more (a large red welt was appearing on his normally pale forehead) and then we pa.s.sed between the constables at the study door. Holmes closed it behind him.

The room was long and relatively narrow. It was at the end of something like a wing, the main house spreading to either side from an area roughly three-quarters of the way down the hall. There were windows on two sides of the study and it was bright enough in spite of the gray, rainy day. The walls were dotted with colorful shipping charts in handsome teak frames, and among them was mounted an equally handsome set of weather instruments in a bra.s.s-bound, gla.s.s-fronted case. It contained an anemometer (Hull had the little whirling cups mounted on one of the roofpeaks, I supposed), two thermometers (one registering the outdoor temperature and the other that of the study), and a barometer much like the one, which had fooled Holmes into believing the bad weather, was about to break. I noticed the gla.s.s was still rising, and then looked outside. The rain was falling harder than ever, rising gla.s.s or no rising gla.s.s. We believe we know a great lot, with our instruments and things, but I was old enough then to believe we don't know half as much as we think we do, and old enough now to believe we never will.

Holmes and I both turned to look at the door. The bolt was torn free, but leaning inward, as it should have been. The key was still in the study-side lock, and still turned.

Holmes's eyes, watering as they were, were everywhere at once, noting, cataloguing, storing. 'You are a little better,' I said.

'Yes,' he said, lowering the napkin and stuffing it indifferently back into his coat pocket. 'He may have loved em, but he apparently didn't allow em in here. Not on a regular basis, anyway. What do you make of it, Watson?'

Although my eyes were slower than his, I was also looking around. The double windows were all locked with thumb-turns and small bra.s.s side-bolts. None of the panes had been broken. Most of the framed charts and the box of weather instruments were between these windows. The other two walls were filled with books. There was a small coal-stove but no fireplace; the murderer hadn't come down the chimney like Father Christmas, not unless he was narrow enough to fit through a stovepipe and clad in an asbestos suit, for the stove was still very warm.

The desk stood at one end of this long, narrow, well-lit room; the opposite end was a pleasantly bookish area, not quite a library, with two high-backed upholstered chairs and a coffee-table between them. On this table was a random stack of volumes. The floor was covered with a Turkish rug. If the murderer had come through a trap-door, I hadn't the slightest idea how he'd gotten back under that rug without disarranging it . . . and it was not disarranged, not in the slightest: the shadows of the coffee-table legs lay across it without even a hint of a ripple.

'Did you believe it, Watson?' Holmes asked, snapping me out of what was almost a hypnotic trance. Something . . . something about that coffee-table . . .

'Believe what, Holmes?'

'That all four of them simply walked out of the parlor, in four different directions, four minutes before the murder?'

'I don't know,' I said faintly.

'I don't believe it; not for a mo - ' He broke off. 'Watson! Are you all right?'

'No,' I said in a voice I could hardly hear myself. I collapsed into one of the library chairs. My heart was beating too fast. I couldn't seem to catch my breath. My head was pounding; my eyes seemed to have suddenly grown too large for their sockets. I could not take them from the shadows of the coffee-table legs upon the rug. 'I am most . . . definitely not . . . all right.'

At that moment Lestrade appeared in the study doorway. 'If you've looked your fill, H - ' He broke off. 'What the devil's the matter with Watson?'

'I believe,' said Holmes in a calm, measured voice, 'that Watson has solved the case. Have you, Watson?'

I nodded my head. Not the entire case, perhaps, but most of it. I knew who; I knew how.