Sherlock Holmes: Repeat Business. Lyn McConchie

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СКАЧАТЬ I did, and it was more the pity I did not.”

      I laughed aloud at that. “I think you would have had to engage in a foot race through the city to do so, my dear Holmes. The man saw the intent in your eyes and fled; indeed, seldom have I seen a man move so quickly as Windibank once he saw that you knew all.”

      Holmes’ attitude seemed to sober. “Yes, but I fear he may not have remained impressed for long. Two mornings ago I had a visitor, and his tale is one which seems to me to be an ominous one.”

      I poured myself out a beer, drank half the glass, and sat in my usual chair to listen to the tale my friend related.

      It had been a bright fine morning, and Holmes had risen early to work on a new monograph concerning the deductions that could be made from various sorts of paper. He was hard at work when there came a brief rapping on his door. He opened that to find a young man standing there, waiting to be admitted.

      “I saw at once,” Holmes said. “That he was from the colonies. His tan had not yet faded and since here it is barely spring, it was obvious that he had come from a country where the season was just fading into autumn. He was a fine upstanding young man in his late twenties, as I should judge it, and there was about him an aura of health and hard physical work. He reached out and shook my hand eagerly and, from aspects of his hands and wrists, I deduced him to be a sheep farmer—and as soon as he spoke I recognized the accent also. He was a New Zealander, a man of the land, owning his own farm, and I said as much.”

      “Why, sir, how can you know that?”

      “You are clearly a man used to hard physical work, but that could be many occupations. However, despite calluses, your hands are far softer than one might expect; such a thing comes from the regular handling of sheep, the lanolin in their raw fleeces keeping soft the hands, which might otherwise be rougher-skinned. You could be merely a shearer, or a farm laborer, but for your clothing. It is not in the first style here in England, but it was clearly made for you, and from cloth of excellent quality by an experienced tailor.”

      “You are…you must be…Mr. Sherlock Holmes then. I have heard of your great deductive powers, sir, and it is for that reason I have come to consult you most urgently.”

      “I am he; come in and be seated. Tell me the problem and I shall see what may be done.”

      The young man accepted the offer, sat, and considered briefly before commencing his story.

      “I am Josiah Sutherland, known at home as Joe. My father, Edward Sutherland, came out from Cheshire to New Zealand as a lad of sixteen, there he worked for a farmer and learned the trade while he saved hard. Later he wed, took up an area of land near Auckland, and became a farmer himself. It is volcanic soil there and very rich—so that with hard work and a devoted wife, he prospered. Still, I will say to you, Mr. Holmes, that he never forgot his parents and only brother at home.

      “He felt that he owed his mother and brother much. His father was a hard man, and for some youthful peccadillo he cast my father off, but my uncle was already working as a paperboy, and my grandmother had some small savings of her own. Between them they secretly provided the fare for my father to emigrate so that he should have not have a debt outstanding on his arrival. My father never forgot that, but by the time he was in a position to repay them, my grandmother had been dead for many years, and my uncle had just died.

      “Instead my father chose a sum of money which he thought represented the amount of his fare they had provided, with—added to it—the interest which would have accrued over the years since. It came to two and a half thousand pounds and this sum he placed in a bank in the city of Auckland and said in his will that it was to fall to my cousin, Mary. The interest was to be hers so long as she lived, so that she would never be in want.”

      “How did he know of her?”

      “He kept in touch always with his mother and younger brother. There were letters sent to a friend that were passed on to them, while they were free to write openly to him so long as my grandfather knew nothing of that. Once my grandfather was dead, they were free also to receive letters openly, and when my father died there was a whole small chest containing the letters he had received over more than thirty years. The affection between the brothers remained a great constant in both their lives, and before my uncle died he had planned to bring his wife and daughter on a visit to our farm.”

      “But this did not occur.” It was a statement, and Josiah Sutherland nodded.

      “No, my uncle died, his wife remarried, and as my father also died about that time, there was a complete, though temporary, lapse in communication between the two families. I cannot swear to it, sir, but from things within the letters I have cause to believe that my uncle’s wife resented her husband’s friendship with my father, and was only too happy to cut her connection upon his death.

      “My lawyer said that once she discovered that my father had left a large sum of money to my cousin, Mary, she attempted to have the money transferred to herself instead, but my father had a good lawyer and the trust was firmly established. Perhaps, had the money alone been left to Mary, it could have been diverted since she was barely twenty-one at the time. But it is in trust, and the principal reverts to me on her death, or to my heirs should I also be dead.”

      “So you stand to receive two and a half thousand pounds upon the death of your cousin. It is a large sum.” Holmes’ voice was bland.

      Josiah Sutherland flushed angrily. “It is nothing to me, sir. I have five times the sum in my bank, and many times that again in the worth of my beasts and land. No, I came here to England to seek out my cousin. Our fathers were brothers and the best of friends, and I would like to know her also as a friend. She continued to write to me after our fathers’ deaths, less often but still regularly, telling me much about her own life, talking of her home,” here he smiled, “and at least one unusual feature of it, and much else so that I became concerned when, some four months ago I ceased to hear from her without knowing any cause for her silence.”

      “So you rushed halfway across the world to see what could have happened to a woman you have never met, do not know, and whose death provides well for you?”

      The young man leapt to his feet, anger blazing in his eyes. “Sir! I know not why you should make such imputations. The lady is my cousin, the beloved daughter of my uncle, a man who gave all he had that my father should be free in the land he chose. That debt now is mine and I honor it. I will bid you good day.”

      He strode for the door and was halted only by the voice behind him. “I must humbly beg your pardon, but previous experience has not given me a high opinion of the men of the Sutherland family.”

      Josiah turned back. “Ah, I understand. You speak of Mr. Hosmer Angel, and Mr. Windibank. I would remind you, sir, that neither man was of Sutherland blood.”

      Holmes looked at me as he explained further. “I tell you, Watson, I was astounded as that comment. How could he know of that? I believed that Miss Mary had not guessed, and I had never spoken of it to any save the man himself and you. I asked that of the young man, and he smiled.

      “You underestimate my cousin while overestimating her step-father. So terrified and enraged was he that some months later he could not forbear to speak of his evil plan and how it had almost failed. He spoke to his wife, my cousin Mary’s mother, in—as he believed—complete privacy, but by a complete accident Mary overheard what was said and was struck to the heart.

      “She considered taking a small room where she could at least work at her typing without remaining all day within that household, СКАЧАТЬ