“For a few moments I thought Tate really would shoot Patrell,” said Bess. “And once the police arrived and demanded explanations, it seemed as if we’d never get out of there. Lieutenant Murray is a good man, but he’s a fiend for details.”
“Even he wasn’t quite sure what to do with Mr. Patrell,” I said. “Patrell never made a formal complaint against Addison Tate, so the nature of the crime is unclear.”
“I overheard Mr. Patrell offering to pay the medical expenses for Tate’s mother,” said Bess. “I’m guessing that Tate will let the matter drop, especially if Mathilda Horn has anything to do with it. She clearly wants to run away with him and live happily ever after.”
“A remarkable woman,” I said. “She never wavered in her belief that he was innocent.”
“Indeed,” said Bess, patting my arm. “We knew there had to be some reason she was able to resist your attentions.”
“But what about Sherlock Holmes!” demanded Harry. “My letter came back unopened!”
“Actually, Harry, it began with something you said. When the case began to get frustrating, you said something about ‘turning things upside-down.’ That put a seed in my head. Then, when I saw the letter to Sherlock Holmes, it all fell into place.”
“But how?” Harry took the envelope from his pocket and studied it. “It’s simply an unopened letter.”
“With a message on the outside. And what is the message instructing us to do?”
“I don’t understand. The message is simply telling us to-ah!” A smile broke across Harry’s face. “The message is telling us to turn it over! Turn it over and look at the other side. Which is exactly what you did with the gun. You turned it over and looked at the other side.”
“And once I did that, I saw that it hadn’t been used as a weapon, but as a nutcracker.”
“You turned things upside-down, just as I said.” Harry leaned back and gave a sigh of satisfaction. “I must say, Dash, you have been positively brilliant in this business.”
“My blushes, Harry.”
“Almost as brilliant as-”
“As the man who wrote the message on that envelope?”
He fingered the envelope tenderly for a moment. “Really, Dash,” he said, slipping it back into his pocket. “Now who’s being ridiculous?”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE BOSTON DROMIO by Matthew Pearl
Matthew Pearl is the author of the historical novels
“‘More morphine!’ ‘More chloral!’” he cried, his eyes small and restless. “Oh, you wouldn’t believe, Watson, how American patients order you about as if you were the stable boy.”
This commentary I heard over breakfast with Dr. Joseph Lavey, the surgeon who had ministered to my injuries in Afghanistan, during my restorative tour through America. Lavey, formerly of London and now of Commercial Street, Boston, had remained in disconsolate and solitary spirits in the years since his wife had died of pneumonia. He was highly distracted and complained of matters large and small, whether the dwindled profits in his medical practice, or the incompetence in recent weeks of his housemaid.
“She has brought me plates of food never requested,” he said about this. “She has spent daytime hours locked in her little room instead of at her duties!”
I could not know then what startling events the moody statements of my old friend Dr. Lavey portended.
Lavey’s misery was so robust, I was relieved at the end of our breakfast to be left in peace with some free time and my guidebook to Boston. Two days later, Lavey returned to my lodgings at dinner. He was out of breath and had fear painted across his face.
“Why, Lavey, you are not well,” I said. “Let us have something to eat.” I wanted to get a closer look at him, thinking I had recognized in him some telltale signs of an opium eater.
He cried out in a muttering voice, his hands clapped to his brow, “Dead!”
“What?”
“She is dead, Watson! And the detectives’ eyes are hot with suspicion. My dear Watson, I know you have experience in the line of queer criminal happenings. You are the only friend remaining to me in the wide world. You must help!”
During the night, Lavey said, he had been awakened to a loud thumping. Dressing hastily and taking a rifle from the wall, he nearly tumbled down the stairs before finding his housemaid, Mary Ann Pinton, lying dead on his kitchen floor. That was all he could remember. When next conscious, he was lying on top of her body with his rifle and the police were shaking him. It occurred to me that the whole fantastic tale had been some mental production of his opiates.
“Lavey, remain here with me in my lodgings,” I implored him.
“No. She is gone; I must take care of her!” he said cryptically, and hurried away from the premises deaf to my pleas.
Opening the next morning’s paper, I found news of the most alarming type: Dr. Joseph Lavey, the man to whom I owed my life, arrested for the murder of Mary Ann Pinton!
I cabled my friend and traveling companion, Sherlock Holmes, at once requesting that he depart on the earliest train for Boston. He had remained at our hotel in Portland, Maine, on business of a personal nature while I had continued our tour of New England.
During these same days, my name and Holmes’s could be found in the Boston news columns. It was said that I had decided to hide Sherlock Holmes from the public of Boston. That when we had crossed through New Hampshire, I kept my coat draped over his face. That I had refused to make him available in any public appearances. Various editors called for Holmes to banish me back to England and replace me with an improved companion, preferably a Yankee. Meanwhile, I received piles of notes from portrait artists and photographers proposing Holmes the honor of sitting for them, and others from admirers offering up to twenty dollars for locks of his hair!
All this interrupted my attempts on poor Lavey’s behalf. As I sat at my small desk writing letters to lawyers one afternoon, I was surprised in turning around for my water carafe to find that the armchair by the open window was now occupied.
“Holmes!” I cried.
“Boston is a city of overgrown college men,” Sherlock Holmes said abstractedly.
I was overjoyed to have my friend back by my side.
Holmes had been suffering from the variety of mild ailments to the skin, nails, and lungs that many English visitors to United States cities experienced from the stale air and the lack of ventilation inside buildings and trains. Yet, as though his spirits compensated for his physical depression, Holmes had more than usual pluck and smartness in his slender, swift frame. I explained in detail what I knew about Lavey’s case.
“You say your reunion with this man at this lodging house was less than pleasant?” Holmes asked, steepling his long fingers together.
“Lavey is by disposition a temperamental man. Still, he had been a well-meaning citizen at the side of his American wife, Amelia, a good and strong woman I counted as my friend. Since her death by pneumonia, I believe he has reverted to his former state, and turned to drugs for comfort.”
“You had not seen him for many years, then.”
“No. Yet I am fully inclined to give the old fellow assistance when requested-his dutiful services when an army surgeon having saved my life in the base hospital at Peshawar.”
“That is an old grudge,” Holmes observed.
“I should call it gratitude, not at all a
