“You misunderstand, my dear Watson,” said Holmes. “I mean the grudge to be on his part against you. There is nothing quite as trying as saving another man’s life. He punishes you to this day. Yet, since you maintain a personal attachment, the case shall be ours. As you know, I cannot promise it will turn out as you want it to. But I should not mind terribly satisfying a long curiosity I’ve had by making a firsthand study of the methods of Boston detectives-the oldest department of detection in the United States, Watson. In my knowledge of Boston crooks, their crimes are by no means as clever as Chicago nor as desperate as New York, but they are singular to the degree their misdeeds are performed out of public view. One thing, Watson, have you seen Dr. Lavey since his arrest?”
“Yes. I visited the jail this morning and found he hadn’t even a lawyer! He can hardly be of help to himself, I am afraid, Holmes. He mumbled pitiably how he could not be guilty of any crime if he could remember nothing of it.”
“To be found lying on top of a murder victim is most unfortunate for the public perception. I should be interested in what he has to say about the girl. Miss Pinton, you say?”
I nodded. “He knows very little. Miss Pinton is twenty-three or twenty-four, from somewhere out west. Though quite attractive, she never married, has no family to speak of, never had a single visitor to the house.”
“You are right that Dr. Lavey knows very little, but to our advantage. I am certain you have already considered that a housemaid may meet all kinds of ruffians on her errands for her master.”
“Yes, Holmes, I did think just that. I asked Lavey to tell me the location of every household mission he had sent her on in the last weeks. I have recorded them on the map of Boston in McNally’s guidebook, with a mark in red for his house.” I showed this to Holmes, who seemed extremely pleased by it.
“Excellent, Watson! This shall be critical in time in understanding the crime.”
“There was one other thing, Holmes. I thought it might be promising, but it turned out rather useless. When Lavey left here the other day in quite a state, I had urged him to remain but he said, ‘She is gone; I must take care of her.’ I thought it a queer phrase considering.”
“Yes, I see why.”
“This morning, I asked my friend in his cell,
“A fine line of questioning, Watson. And did he tell you about the little animal?”
“Why, Holmes, you astound me still! Exactly!” I cried. “Lavey looked at me with a blank stare, then said, ‘Oh, no. I meant only I had to take care of Mollie, the wretched kitten Mary had brought into the house the other day.’ But Holmes, how did you know his strange words had referred to a pet?”
Holmes waved this away and smiled. “A trivial deduction little worthy of talk, Watson. If Lavey and his maid were united in the care of another being in their quiet household, by which Mary’s sudden absence burdened her master, it was most likely to be a domestic animal and no doubt, with his recent mood, any pet too large or unseemly would have already met with expulsion. I shall say no more on the subject for now, so that we may begin to gather one or two important particulars you have failed to consider.”
I visited the police headquarters. Detective Dugan, upon hearing the name Sherlock Holmes, immediately arranged for us to visit the scene. The modest three-story house was located in a dingy residential district near the waterfront of the city. Lavey had lived there for three years, having moved from a desirable street in Back Bay following his wife’s death.
“We sealed the doors upon discovery of the crime, Mr. Holmes,” Dugan said with a tone of professional pride. “The body was in the kitchen-over there. Dr. Lavey had fainted right on top of her, holding a rifle. I saw from the jump how it happened.”
“She jumped, Detective Dugan?” I asked, looking around the kitchen.
“No, Watson,” Holmes interjected. “‘The jump,’ if I am not mistaken, is like the start, the beginning. I have made a study of Americanisms since our passage, and consider doing a small monograph on the subject for publication upon our return to England. Please continue, Detective.”
“I could see that she had been smothered and suffocated, Mr. Holmes, from the
“Excellent! I would have asked you about the latter point, if you had not anticipated it,” Holmes said.
Dugan was moved to a boyish smile by my friend’s praise. “I also thought to check the doors, but none had been forced open.”
“Was there anyone else seen near the house?” I asked the officer.
“The nearest neighbors did not look out until Dr. Lavey’s shouts for help were heard before he fainted dead away. I am sorry to say the evidence is strong against your friend, Dr. Watson,” said Dugan. “Firstly, they were the only two people in the house. Secondly, Lavey discovered the girl’s body but says he cannot remember the circumstances.”
“That is just it, Detective Dugan,” said I. “It would surprise me greatly if Dr. Lavey had not turned to a habitual usage of opiates since Mrs. Lavey’s death, which could explain his confusion and his untimely swoon. It is the vice of too many medical men here and in our own country.”
“If you’d permit, Dr. Watson. Thirdly, it has become known that he has been complaining around the neighborhood in recent weeks about Miss Pinton’s qualities as a housekeeper. Fourthly, as you testify, he had been a heavy user of opium as of late, and so could be prone to violence.”
“The Boston detective force is extremely organized,” Holmes said as an aside to me, with an amused air I could not share at the moment.
“As a point of fact, Detective,” I remarked firmly, “it is my experience that those who take opium tend to be drowsy and depressed, rather than roused to violence.”
“Even if that is the case, Dr. Watson, there is fifthly.”
“Fifthly?”
“Ah, fifthly,” Dugan resumed, “is that he feared, because of the sloppiness in her work, she was on the verge of resigning and looking for a new place, which could result in her whispering secrets of his habits around town. That would cause irreparable damage to his reputation as a doctor. There, that is the case in a nutshell.”
“Do you not think,” I said insistently, “that if a man is to take the trouble to suffocate a woman silently so that nobody will hear, he would not call for the police a moment later?”
“Narcotics can make a man act irrationally,” the Boston detective replied after a pause.
Holmes looked back and forth at the kitchen. “I think we have learned all we can from this place. I wonder only where has the household pet gone?”
“Beg pardon?” Dugan nervously avoided looking at my friend.
“The kitten,” Holmes clarified, speaking the word slowly and deliberately.
“Ah, yes,” the detective replied. “Probably it has died of starvation and heat by now-gentlemen, spread out and look for that dead cat for Mr. Holmes to examine!” he ordered the two police officers that had accompanied us. When they had left the room, Dugan shifted to Holmes’s side.
“Mr. Holmes, when we had first entered,” he said in a contrite whisper, “the kitten was pawing at my shoe and mewing. I gave her a dish of milk, though I could hear the other men laugh at me. I had read in the paper of a new organization on Carver Street that condemned the practice of leaving cats in vacant houses to die. So before we left I placed the kitten in my pocket, beseeching the creature to remain quiet, and took her there straightaway.”
“I perfectly understand,” said Holmes. “You may rest assured your good deed will remain entirely quiet with us. I would not mind in the least seeing this organization.”
Stopping on the way back to our lodgings, Holmes and I alighted at a three-story brick building bearing the name of the Animal Rescue League. Before going very far, we learned that the new organization had not escaped controversy, as circulars were posted on walls nearby with the following printed copy:
