Chapter Twenty-One
Miss Holmes, of course, could not accompany Treadles as a woman without darkening his reputation or hindering his investigation. Instead, she took the earliest train the next morning and arrived as the rotund, bespectacled, and very professional-looking Mr. Adams. Odd—Treadles had been under the impression that the great detective and her associates typically used the name Hudson when they wanted a casual alias. It was as if she didn’t want anyone to know that Sherlock Holmes was involved.
“I have engaged Mr. Adams to take photographs for the case,” said Treadles to Sergeant Burr, the local police officer assigned to assist him.
His conscience prickled at the deception. But compared to the violent internal struggle he’d experienced concerning her presence at Stern Hollow, this was only a twinge.
The use of photography in police work being spotty and very much at the individual investigator’s discretion, the presence of a photographer greatly impressed Sergeant Burr. “A pictorial record of crimes. At least she was beautiful, Mrs. Overhill. Imagine some poor future bobby coming across a picture of old Mr. Tavis after he’d been stabbed seven times. Or the sight of Squire Gibbons’s favorite greyhound skinned and strung up on his front gate.”
Treadles occasionally imagined retiring to the country someday. The skinned greyhound gave him pause.
Miss Holmes, in her guise, questioned Sergeant Burr eagerly about the poor dog and the just as brutally done-in Mr. Tavis, details of which the sergeant was more than happy to provide as they drove to the scene of the murder.
“But in those cases, gruesome as they were, there was hardly any mystery,” said Sergeant Burr. “We knew the culprits, and we knew the causes. Mrs. Overhill’s case makes me scratch my head.”
“I understand she spent a night at the railway inn in Sittingbourne?” asked Treadles.
He glanced at Miss Holmes. She had said only that she happened to be in the midst of another inquiry and the victim’s description matched that of a witness known to have left London under less-than-ideal circumstances. He hadn’t asked for more information beyond that—he had received the impression that a fuller picture would not have been forthcoming.
What was she investigating? And was it related to the trouble she and Lord Ingram had expected?
“That’s right,” answered Sergeant Burr. “At the inn in Sittingbourne Mrs. Overhill saw the house being advertised. She visited the place the next day, and liked it enough that she paid for two weeks and took the key right away.
“Mrs. Staples, the caretaker’s wife, was instructed not to enter the house to clean except every three days. It was only because provisions Mrs. Overhill had ordered were delivered to the caretaker’s cottage that she decided to go over to the house. When no one answered her knocks, she let herself in. That was how she found Mrs. Overhill dead.”
Miss Holmes nodded gravely and made all the appropriate noises of sorrow and dismay.
They were driving through some rather featureless countryside, but even featureless countryside was fresh, green countryside. Due to Kent’s relative proximity to London, the land was becoming more and more desirable as residential plots.
The scene of the murder was a former farmhouse bought by town dwellers and remade as a rustic villa. It was hired out most of the year, with the owners descending only at Christmas and Easter, according to the sergeant.
They looked around the grounds first and found little of note, besides a largeish fishpond that had acquired a landscaped border in the renovation. The sergeant then unlocked the front door and ushered them inside.
The inside of the villa was decorated like a hunting lodge, with wood-paneled walls, stuffed animal heads, and even a few hunting horns set on stands. The air smelled of floor polish, which must have been applied liberally when the previous guests had left.
Their footsteps echoed on the floor as they marched toward the back of the house, where the parlor was located. Presumably the parlor gave onto the pond, but all the windows were shuttered, all the curtains drawn. The sergeant lit two lanterns; their light shone on leather-upholstered sofas and tapestries that depicted medieval woodlands.
“I read in a circular from Scotland Yard that we ought to leave crime scenes as undisturbed as possible until expert detectives arrive. I tried to do exactly that,” said the sergeant. “?’Course we’ve had to move the body, but other than that, Inspector, I haven’t touched a thing. Mrs. Staples said she also didn’t touch anything—not in here, at least. But it’s a shame about the rug.”
A large zebra-skin rug near the center of the parlor was now grotesquely bloodstained.
“Mrs. Overhill lay facedown on the rug, shot three times in the back,” said the sergeant, rather reluctantly.
“Shot in the back,” mused Inspector Treadles. “Does that mean she was headed to the sideboard to fetch some whisky?”
The sergeant looked thunderstruck. “Is that possible? I thought that she was fleeing her attacker.”
“That is, of course, also a possibility.”
The sergeant scratched his beard. “Then again, there were no signs of forced entry on either the front or the back door. ’Course the assailant could have turned threatening after he was admitted to the house…No, then she would have been running out of the parlor, wouldn’t she, rather than toward the wall?”
He looked back at Inspector Treadles. “So she turned away to fetch some whisky. Does that mean the murderer was sitting right there in that chair? I can’t believe it. She let this person in, offered hospitality, and was killed for her trouble.”
“It happens more often than I would like to acknowledge,” said Treadles, “people murdered by those they trust.”
Sergeant Burr grimaced. “And she let him in at night, too. When I got here, the candles were all burned down to stubs because no one had snuffed them out.
“Yes, it must have been at night.” The sergeant nodded to himself. “Otherwise, three shots—the caretakers should have heard those. But that night, after the Stapleses made sure that indeed she wanted neither cooking nor attendance, they took themselves to visit their daughter in the next village.”
“Did anyone come through the area during that time?” asked Treadles.
“I inquired as soon as I left here yesterday, Inspector. Neither the ticket agent, the station master, nor the shopkeepers on the high street could recall seeing any new faces in the last few days.
“And there’s another odd thing. She had only one small valise and no other luggage, according to the estate agent. But we can’t even find that. I can only assume the murderer took it. Earlier, when I thought she was shot in the back because she was fleeing, I could have theorized that this was a robbery gone wrong. But if she was going to offer the murderer a glass of whisky, then I’m at a loss as to why he also robbed her.”
Treadles looked toward Charlotte Holmes. She had one arm across her chest—on her false paunch, in truth; her chin rested against the knuckles of her other hand.
“Let me take a look at the curtains and the windows,” Treadles suggested. “And then we can let in some light and Mr. Adams can take photographs.”
“Mr. Adams” wasted no time setting up the camera. She pulled the shutter, then expertly swapped in a new plate and recorded another image.
“Very advanced policework, this is,” said the sergeant, full of admiration.
“And if in this country we ever take up photographing inmates, as they now do in France, I’d never run out of work,” said Mr. Adams cheerfully.
?They toured the rest of the house, spoke to the caretakers, who could tell them little, and then traveled to the constabulary to view the body.
Mr. Adams winced as soon as “he” saw the victim. “What a pity.”
Treadles had noticed that when playing characters, Miss Holmes was far more expressive. In person, not a single muscle on her face would have moved.
“Yes, a pity indeed,” he echoed.
But neither the victim’s unpeaceful expression nor the three bullet holes in her back told them anything about why she had been killed—that is, they did not greatly increase Treadles’s knowledge. What Miss Holmes gleaned, she kept to herself.
She took more pictures, then Sergeant Burr presented the scant items the victim left behind. Treadles opened a golden locket. Only one side of the locket held a picture, an image of a shy but happy-looking Mrs. Claiborne, captured some years ago.
Miss Holmes caught Treadles’s attention, pointed at the locket, and then pointed to herself.
Before he could ask why, Sergeant Burr handed him a monogrammed handkerchief. “We call her Mrs. Overhill because that’s the name she gave to the estate agent. But her initials say MGC. And look here, Inspector.”
He brought them the dress that the victim had been wearing when she’d been shot. At the hem was sewn a small label that read Claiborne, 2 Prince’s Grove Close.
It was not uncommon for a household that sent out its washing to attach such labels to the clothes, so that the laundress would know which garments belonged to which client.
“Would this be an Exeter address? She told the estate agent she was from Exeter.”
Treadles might not know every street in London, but he knew that there was a Prince’s Grove Close in St. John’s Wood.
“We will find out,” he said. “Now, Sergeant, before you pack everything away, I should like to send the locket with Mr. Adams back to Scotland Yard. The photograph inside might help in finding out the victim’s true identity.”
“Certainly, Inspector. Anything to advance the investigation.”
Sergeant Burr placed the locket in an envelope, asked Treadles to sign a register for the loan of the item, and then gave the envelope to Miss Holmes.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” she said. “And thank you, Inspector, for the trust you have placed in me. Now may I have a word with you before I leave?”
Treadles thought she would impart some wisdom concerning the murder at hand, but she said only, when they were out of the hearing range of others, “I would recommend that you take your time with this case, Inspector, and not return to London too soon.”