Next, they found the body of Black’s wife. She was lying on her back, a pool of brain matter and blood having formed beneath her head. Nearby, a trail of blood led to the staircase. It was upstairs in the couple’s bedroom that the two men discovered the dead body of the missing teacher. Dressed in his nightshirt and lying face downward on the bed, Arthur Black had bled heavily from the nose. The non-lethal bullet wound described at the start of this narrative was located in his right thigh.
On the table next to Arthur’s body, Parsons noted a revolver, the kind the Americans call a “six-shooter”. Four of its six bullets had been fired. Also on the table were a blood-stained hammer, a knife, and a group of medicine bottles containing chloroform.
Upon examining Black’s body, Edward Treves, the police surgeon, posited that a deranged Arthur Black, after murdering his wife and child, had killed himself by drinking the sweet-smelling liquid. Such a desperate act, Treves said, would explain the excessive bleeding from Black’s nose as well as the observation by a neighbour that earlier in the day of the killings Arthur had looked “wild”. Nothing accounted for the bullet wound in the man’s thigh.
The authorities concluded that Black had been insane when he performed these murderous acts, but it seemed to me that testimony critical of his wife raised questions about her own possible involvement in the matter. Witnesses considered Jesse Black a drunk, a misfit, a liar - in short, a woman of ill repute. She had been delusional, they said, overheard by neighbours on at least one occasion screaming out that she was being strangled when, in fact, she was not.
Adding to the confusion, one witness reported having heard no more than two shots fired - certainly not four - on the night of the murder and no multiple screams. Another witness testified to having seen Arthur Black in the street well after the police surgeon believed him to have died. And there still remained the curious matter of the door that had remained unbolted. I fancied how the inquest’s ignoring of that clue would have irked Sherlock Holmes.
“Surely,” I argued with Detective Parsons, “the unbolted door suggests the possibility that someone else might have perpetrated these horrific acts. Such a villain could easily have made his escape through the garden door. With no key in his possession, he would have been unable to lock the door from the outside, and it would have remained unlocked in precisely the condition in which it was found.”
Absent any credible proof of such possibilities, however, the police appeared more than satisfied with Mr Treves’ original premise - that mother and child had been murdered by Mr Black who went on to drink the chloroform and kill himself.
In the end, possessing no reasonable alternatives to offer the jury, I could muster little conviction in my argument to them for prolonging the investigation: “Gentlemen,” I pleaded, “there is no need to rush to judgement. There may yet be other explanations to examine before a correct conclusion can be reached with any degree of certainty.”
Oh, that the jury disregarded my plea did not surprise me. Yet I cannot rid myself of the notion that had Sherlock Holmes been involved, any undiscovered facts would most certainly have been brought to light. What is more, I believe that the Garnett family clearly agreed with my suspicions. Why else would Richard Garnett, writing in his biography of his grandmother Constance, lament the absence of my missing friend? With so much of the case sounding “like the language of Sherlock Holmes,” he observed, “one almost expects the great detective to take over and explain all.”[2]
Alas, no such saviour was forthcoming; and in response to the decisive but unconvincing verdict - that “mother and child came to their death by the hand of Mr Black and that Mr Black destroyed himself whilst of unsound mind” - the family chose to sweep the entire matter under the proverbial carpet.
* * *
So marked my initial involvement with the Garnett family. A second meeting took place in early 1899. Some five years after Holmes had returned to Baker Street from his putative death, we found ourselves in pursuit of a master blackmailer. One of his victims was the American novelist Stephen Crane, then living in England.[3]
Now it should be noted that one could not enter into Crane’s orbit without also bumping into various members of his literary circle. Writers like Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, HG Wells, Henry James, and - more to the point - Edward and Constance Garnett were frequent visitors to Crane’s home.
The Garnetts happened to live close by the Cranes just southeast of London in Surrey. Indeed, the Cearne, the Garnetts’ newly built stone-and-oak house in Limpsfield Chart, stood only a few miles from Ravensbrook, the Cranes’ unassuming brick villa in Oxted, which Edward had suggested they rent.
Holmes and I had occasion to stop at Ravensbrook during our investigation into the blackmail entanglement. Months later, once the Cranes had moved to their stately - albeit rundown - mansion called Brede Place (another home recommended to them by Edward), the Garnetts joined many other celebrated guests at the soirées the Cranes hosted there. In fact, Constance’s brother-in-law, architect Harry Cowlishaw, was said to have provided a number of recommendations for improving the once-grand manor house.
Like Brede Place, the Cearne also attracted its share of serious writers. Over the years, literary figures like Galsworthy and Lawrence would join the crowd that had frequented Brede Place. My opportunity came in late 1899, when our investigation on behalf of Stephen Crane provided me the chance opportunity to meet the Garnetts.
Not long thereafter, I was honoured to receive an invitation to one of the Garnetts’ social gatherings, an especially treasured invitation since it was tendered to me in my capacity as author rather than amateur sleuth. Apparently, I had established
