places, in Highgate Cemetery, behind one of the tombs. But here's an odd thing, now – every single label had been removed from his clothes! Well, perhaps he was going about incognito, but it seems he couldn't escape his fate.'
Declaring that he would wait until Holmes returned, Lestrade accepted a cigar from me, and we sat in companionable silence until Holmes entered the room, grim-faced, with the news that George Cresswell had not been seen for nearly two days. 'Our client wished to keep this matter confidential,' he remarked, 'but it seems that we shall have to call in the police after all.'
Upon hearing Lestrade's information, he shrugged his thin shoulders and said, 'Then let us go and see the last of the Freeling case.'
I had seen many unpleasant sights during my time as an Army Surgeon, but nothing quite as grisly as that which lay on a white marble slab in the mortuary at Highgate. Yet to Sherlock Holmes this hideous and pitiful object was not the mutilated shell of a fellow man but merely an object of professional study. Gently he raised the dead head and carefully scrutinized the great bruises at the base of the skull. Then, after a brief glance at the raw wound that had once been a human face, he turned his attention to the muscular
arms. He ran his sensitive fingers over them and, taking the hands in his own, he closed the fists.
'Feel those forearm muscles, Watson,' he commanded. 'Their condition should be of interest to a medical man.'
The muscle of the right forearm indicated considerable strength, consistent with what we knew of Esme Freeling, but that of the left astounded me. It stood out like an egg, and was by far the most highly developed I had ever seen.
'Good heavens!' I exclaimed. 'This man must have been left-handed and immensely strong.'
'Freeling was strong, sir,' said Lestrade, in response to my friend's questioning glance, 'but there's nothing in the files about his being left-handed. Besides, his only sport was rowing, and that would tend to develop both arms equally. Are we to take it, Mr Holmes, that this is
'Just so,' replied Holmes. 'I know of only one activity that can cause such muscular development in a man. The muscle swells like that through years of taking the recoil of a rifle. You know little of this as yet, Lestrade, but Watson is informed. Look at the man, Doctor! Look at his tall stature, his thick brown hair, his large feet. Imagine the moustache and the pale blue eyes, and now tell me who he is.'
'Why,' said I, 'surely this can only be the retired gunsmith, George Cresswell!'
'Precisely. We have encountered a singularly brutal and fortunately unsuccessful attempt on the part of a very wicked man to disguise the identity of his victim. Lestrade, I must ask you to restrain your natural impatience until later this evening, for I have to make a few further enquiries. Then, I think I can promise that you shall have your murderer.'
My own impatience must have been quite as great as the police detective's, and how either of us contrived to bear the waiting I cannot say. Holmes had left us directly, and did not return to our lodgings until the evening was far advanced, but the expression upon his face was one of satisfaction. The three of us proceeded immediately to Hampstead, where we were joined by two uniformed constables from the local Police Station.
Henry Staunton was not pleased to see our companions, but his demeanour changed upon hearing Holmes's bleak announcement of the disappearance of Mr George Cresswell. This fact, said my friend, meant that the theft of the Grace Chalice must inevitably become a matter for the police.
'Dear me,' observed our client, sententiously. 'Such a wicked crime – wicked, sir! Who would have thought it?'
'Who indeed?' replied Sherlock Holmes. 'Murder is a very wicked crime, Mr Staunton. And when you add to that the attempt to defraud the insurance company…'
Staunton's face had turned very pale, and his fleshy features seemed to sag. 'Really, sir, I – I fail to understand you!' he blustered.
'Oh, it won't do, you know. Really it won't. Mr Lestrade here has a warrant, and we intend to search this house until we find the Grace Chalice – Hold him, gentlemen!'
Staunton, his face twisted with inexpressible malice, had sprung for the door, but in a flash the two constables were upon him. He put up a considerable struggle, but at last I heard the satisfying click of handcuffs.
'I told you,' said Holmes later, when the precious cup had been retrieved from its hiding-place beneath a flagstone in the cellar of The Elms, 'that I had some more enquiries to make this afternoon. Well, I discovered, as I had suspected, that our client had gambled heavily upon the Stock Exchange in recent years and, not to mince words, he was now over head and ears in debt. This, of course, was in addition to the large sum that he owed to his easy-going cousin. His plan, clearly, was to stage this false robbery, collect the insurance money, and then to sell the chalice. His cousin was murdered to provide a scapegoat for the crime, and to ensure that the gambling debt need not be paid. The escape from prison of Esme Freeling was merely a fortunate coincidence. There was more to the murder, however, for Henry Staunton hated his cousin as only a mean man can hate a generous and contented one.
'As you may have surmised, Watson, it was the supposed burglar's footsteps that first suggested to me that all was not right. They appeared to lead from the garden wall, but there was no evidence that anyone had ever come over that wall. More important was the singular fact that the outgoing steps did not overtread those incoming. The two lines of prints were
close but quite separate. Now, what burglar would ever tread so artistically? There could be but one explanation: the footsteps did not, in fact, lead from the wall to the study and back, but from the study to the wall and back. In all probability, then, our client himself was responsible for this mummery, and had he not stepped too carefully the fact of an inside job would have been plain to the meanest intelligence. For the rest, he wore boots – new ones, you will recall – fully three sizes too large for him, and strode out manfully to give the impression of a taller man. We may eventually find the boots, but I fear that they have been destroyed.'
On this point, however, Holmes was wrong. It is a matter of record that the boots were discovered, carelessly discarded, in the attic of The Elms, and proved to fit exactly those damning footsteps in the garden. This was the final link in the chain of evidence that took Henry Staunton to an unmourned death on a cold morning at Pentonville Prison.
The Case of the Faithful Retainer – Amy Myers
'You are correct, my dear Watson. The hour may indeed have come when it is in the interests of our great nation that your readers should be permitted to know the full truth behind my indisposition of 'ninety-seven'.'
As so often in the past, my old friend had correctly broken into my thoughts. 'How could you know – ' I began. But why should I be amazed that his powers of observation and deduction remained undimmed, infrequently though circumstances had permitted me to visit Mr Sherlock Holmes, during his years of retirement on the Sussex downs? We were taking our ease in his pleasant farm garden, on a summer day in 1911, and I had been studying the grave news reported in my newspaper.
Holmes shrugged. 'You are absorbed in
and casting its shadow over the peace not only of Europe but of the British Empire itself, was simplicity itself. It was then but a small step to deduce from your unconscious glance towards me that in your opinion the unfortunate case of the faithful retainer should now be made known to the world. I agree, but masked, I must insist, in suitable
