A Study in Sherlock

“I should have thought it obvious,” Montague said. “She came here to meet someone.”

“Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “Who?”

“You,” said Montague, folding the clipping and returning it to his pocket. “Before you arrived, I watched the lady fiddling with the key. She fished it from her bag a half-dozen times to make sure she still had it. When you finally appeared—you were late, by the way, judging by the number of times she consulted her watch—she made a point of not looking at you. More to the point, you did not look at her. Quite astonishing, when you come to think of it: such a fine figure of a woman seldom remains unogled by a gentleman of your … ah …”

“This is preposterous,” I said.

“Is it?” he asked, his voice as level as a gaming table. “In spite of the evidence to the contrary?”

“What evidence?” I could not resist asking. The fellow was trying to rack up a score against me.

“Your height, of course,” he said. “You would be quite capable of stabbing in the neck someone as tall as Welland Barnett—not that that means anything in itself. But then we come to your behaviour: you circled any number of times round the bench upon which the lady is sitting, but you did not approach. At first, it was because of the nanny—that one with the curly red hair who was begging to borrow her pencil to fill in one of those new-fangled crosswords that are becoming all the rage. Then it was the retired tea broker who perched beside her for a maddeningly long time as he fed the pigeons. After that, the two police constables who strolled by. No, sir, she has simply not had the opportunity to hand over the promised key, a key which quite clearly, even at this distance and with my no-longer-perfect vision, is one of those used to unlock a box at the National Safe Deposit Company in Victoria Street.

“As to your relationship to her, it is best not to enquire, except that it ended in a pretty little plot involving a worthwhile amount of money and, if I am not mistaken, a life insurance policy. It is an old story: the Freudian practitioner; the female patient who is trapped in a loveless marriage; the sympathetic talk (‘transference,’ I believe you call it); the temptation; the fall …”

“This is outrageous,” I said, my voice rising. The governesses were by now staring at us openly.

“And then,” Montague said, almost as an afterthought, “there is the blood upon the instep of your right shoe. I saw it when you crossed your legs.”

I leaped to my feet and looked round wildly. There sat Frieda, still staring at the ground as if in a trance. Had she even noticed my predicament?

“Watson,” he said in an altogether different voice, “I believe this is where you come in. Pick up his rolled newspaper. Be careful of the knife.”

The doctor, who had been standing all the while casually under one of the limes, came forward, and there was suddenly in his hand an ancient but no less dangerous looking military pistol. He held it shielded by his black bag in such a way that it could be seen only by Montague and myself.

“Keep quite still,” Montague said. “My medical friend is somewhat out of practice in the small-arms department. The thing has a hair trigger, and we don’t want any nasty accidents, do we?”

“Ah, constables!” he said, as the strolling policemen made their appearance. “Right on the second, as usual. We’ve been expecting you. There’s someone here your superiors will doubtless be pleased to see. Who knows? There might even be a promotion in it.”

“You devil,” I spat. “You’re no more Samuel Montague than the man in the moon. You’re Sherlock Holmes!”

As the constables, one on each side, seized me by the arms, he stood up, put one heel to the instep of his opposite foot, and made a little bow.

“By the way,” he told them, “the lady on the second bench is Mrs. Barnett. Inspector Gregson will be forever in your debt if you should mention to him the curious silver key which you will undoubtedly find in her handbag.

“Come, Watson,” he said to the doctor, “the incomparable Evelyn Laye is at the Gaiety and we have just time enough to fortify ourselves with roast beef at Simpson’s. The thespian art is one which does not always receive sufficiently hearty applause.”

As they dragged me away, I couldn’t resist taunting him over my shoulder.

“What will you do, Holmes, when you’ve brought to book the last criminal in London? You’ll have no more excuse to dress up in your fancy disguises!”

I’ll admit my fury had got rather the better of me. As we passed in front of her, Frieda—poor, dear, weak Frieda, with the now-that-you-mention-it pinkish teeth—didn’t give me even so much as an upward glance.

“Elementary,” I heard him call out as we passed beneath the limes and walked towards the iron gates. “Elementary, my dear fellow. I have my eye on a cottage in St. Mary Mead.”