Sherlock Holmes and the Hammerford Will Read online

  Sherlock Holmes and the Hammerford Will

  John Hall

  © John Hall 1999

  John Hall has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in the UK by Baker Street Studios Ltd, 1999.

  This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Extract from Sherlock Holmes at the Raffles Hotel by John Hall

  One

  Mr Sherlock Holmes looked up from his morning post and said, ‘Have you any plans for the day, Watson?’

  ‘None at all. Have we a case, then?’ I hoped fervently that it was so, for Holmes had been inactive now for a long time, far too long for my tastes. I knew only too well that despite my best efforts over the years the demon still sat leering upon my friend’s shoulder. It is true that for a decade now Holmes had not had recourse to anything stronger than rough-cut tobacco or an occasional glass of brandy, but I have seen too many instances in my medical career to believe that dependence upon artificial stimulants can ever be truly eradicated. Let boredom get the better of his resolve for but a moment, and the grinning demon would know that it was the right time to direct Holmes to the syringe in its neat morocco leather case.

  By way of an answer, Holmes passed across to me the note which he had been reading, and I looked at it. ‘Sir James Damery presents his compliments to Mr Sherlock Holmes, and will call upon him this morning at 10am, if convenient, in connection with a matter of the utmost importance and delicacy. If inconvenient, please advise Sir James at once; he may be contacted at the Carlton Club,’ it ran.

  ‘Sounds promising, Holmes.’

  ‘And what do we know of Sir James Damery, then?’ mused Holmes, rising from his chair and taking down one of his massive index volumes.

  ‘His name appears constantly in the society pages,’ I ventured. ‘He is an Irishman, I believe, he certainly has something of a reputation as a dandy, a leader of fashion, and he is often seen in the company of some of the most exalted personages in the land. He began his career as a soldier, or I am much mistaken, and had a fine record.’

  ‘You are not mistaken in the least,’ said Holmes, without looking up from the page. ‘Here he is, “Colonel Sir James”, yes! Irish, as you say, served with an Irish regiment, and with some distinction, rising to command it. H’mm. Left the service some years ago, and does not appear to have done very much since.’ He closed the book with a thump, and added in a curious musing tone, ‘Or not so far as the press and public are aware, at any rate.’

  I asked, ‘Oh? And in private?’

  Holmes laughed, and threw the volume back on the shelf. ‘Ah, that may be a slightly different tale. I have heard some hints, fragments of stories, from Mycroft regarding this Sir James. Reading between the lines, it would appear that he is not merely the companion of some highly placed public figures, just as you said, but their confidant and man of affairs to boot.’ He glanced at his watch, raised an eyebrow, and exchanged his shabby old bottle-green dressing gown for a respectable frock-coat. ‘Now, Watson,’ he went on, ‘what does Sir James, Irish aristocrat, distinguished soldier, and latterly doyen of the society pages, a man who has risen so far as to bring himself to the attention of brother Mycroft, want with plain Sherlock Holmes?’

  ‘You should find out soon enough,’ I told him, getting up from the table in my turn, ‘for that must be his ring at the door now. If the matter is as delicate as both the note and your own knowledge of the man seem to suggest, and especially if it involves important public figures, he will scarcely want me here, so I shall spend the day —’

  Holmes raised a hand. ‘Sit down, Doctor. He may well be grateful for your opinion, and I know that I certainly shall.’

  A moment later, the pageboy ushered Sir James Damery into our little sitting room. My first impression was that the reputation for meticulousness of dress of which I had heard was well-founded. His frock-coat alone must have cost as much as my entire wardrobe, though frankly that is not difficult. His top-hat and shoes did not disgrace the coat, while a large, lustrous pearl glinted in his black silk cravat. But that first glance also made it clear that he was no mere aristocratic waster, not simply a tailor’s dummy fit only for escorting beautiful ladies to genteel functions. The grey eyes looked as if they missed nothing, while his deep, rich voice indicated a man used to swaying others by his oratory. This man, I thought, might have been Prime Minister, or an ambassador, had he chosen to turn his energies in that direction. I could not believe that he would ever be content to pass his days drifting idly from club to dinner table.

  ‘I have heard of Doctor Watson, of course,’ he said, when Holmes introduced us, ‘and shall be grateful if you could stay and listen to my tale, for you may well be of assistance. Particularly,’ he added with a smile, ‘as you are a fellow-countryman.’

  ‘Hardly that, Sir James,’ said I.

  ‘Oh, come, now! One Irish grandparent is sufficient to leaven any amount of English dullness. And the same might be said of one French grandparent,’ he added, looking at Holmes. ‘You see, gentlemen, I have done some research on you. It is as well to know one’s friends.’

  ‘And one’s enemies?’ murmured Holmes.

  ‘That too, of course, if one is unfortunate enough to have ’em.’ Sir James laughed, and then grew serious. ‘I have said that I have looked into your backgrounds, gentlemen, and that is true. It was a presumption, I know, but a presumption which I am confident you will excuse when you hear the details of the case I am about to lay before you. Suffice it at the outset to say by way of apology that it was essential that I should have complete faith in your discretion.’

  ‘You may rely upon us,’ said Holmes.

  ‘Oh, I know that. I should never have contacted you had there been the slightest doubt on that score. Now, to business. Have you heard of the late Lord Hammerford?’

  Holmes shook his head. ‘Watson?’

  ‘An Irish peer, as I recall? And something of an eccentric, though that is not entirely unknown across the water. That is all that comes to my mind.’ I frowned, trying to recollect some gossip I had heard. ‘Oh, he died quite recently, did he not? And left a considerable fortune, according to the chap who told me about it. “Rich as Croesus”, that was the rather hackneyed phrase he used.’

  ‘That is all perfectly correct, as far as it goes,’ said Sir James. He leaned back in his chair. ‘The title is an old one, and an honourable one in its own small way. But, as is so often the case with these old families, the lustre outlasted the lucre. To be blunt, the family was all but bankrupt when the late Lord Hammerford succeeded to the title. The estate had shrunk to a fraction of its original size, and what remained was mortgaged and remortgaged to the hilt. The late Lord Hammerford was but a young man when he inherited, still at university. He determined to turn the family fortunes around, threw up his studies and went out to Africa accordingly.

  ‘Well, it was indeed as if the old tale of Croesus, or perhaps King Midas would be a closer parallel, had indeed come true and been brought bang up to date. Gold, diamonds, ivory, sisal, railways, you name it and he made money in it. After a mere decade, he returned home an extremely wealthy man, paid off the creditors, restored the house and grounds to something like palatial splendour, and married the daughter of the local parson. Almost a fairy tale come true, don’t you think?’
/>   ‘Almost,’ Holmes agreed.

  ‘The creditors must have been very patient men,’ said I.

  Sir James laughed aloud. ‘It would have cost them more to wind up the estate than they would have recovered!’ he told me.

  ‘In that case, Lord Hammerford was fortunate indeed.’

  Sir James resumed his tale. ‘He settled down, lived quietly, not by any means a recluse, you are to understand, but he went out little in society, preferring to remain with his wife and the one son who was all the family they had. The boy was, as you might expect, the apple of his father’s eye, and in this instance the most dispassionate observer could not attribute it to mere parental partiality, for the boy was everything any father might wish, handsome and many-talented. He won his Blue at university, rowed and boxed for his college, was a keen sportsman and swordsman, but never at the expense of his studies, for he took a First. He started with every advantage, and possessed every quality a man might want in his son.

  ‘By the time the son left college, his father had bought not only a town house here in London but an estate in the North of England, which the old Lord Hammerford seldom visited. Anyway, the boy went there to live, and to act as a sort of manager to the estate. The mother was dead by this time, and the two men grew about as close as father and son can be. The lad did what his father had done, married a local clergyman’s daughter, and they had one child, a son.’ Sir James paused, and looked directly at me. ‘You have said that the late Lord Hammerford was a fortunate man, and that was true of the earlier part of his life. And it seemed as if the son, with his manifest and manifold advantages, would be even more blessed. But how inscrutable are the workings of Providence, to quote the Reverend Gilbert White, or someone of that sort. The young wife died in childbirth, and Lord Hammerford’s son was heart-broken. A short year later, he too died, a hunting accident.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ I said. ‘Tragedy almost on a Greek scale.’

  Sir James nodded. ‘It was dreadful. Now, the only other close family old Lord Hammerford had possessed was a younger brother, who also died suddenly and before his time, and so too did that brother’s wife. Their only child was a daughter, old Lord Hammerford’s niece, that is to say, and this niece married a man called Sir George Lewis. They had no children of their own, so that one might have expected that the couple would adopt the young boy, look after him. But the — I had almost called it “the curse of the Hammerfords” — that devil’s own bad luck which had dogged the family, was at work again. The old Lord Hammerford’s niece, now Lady Lewis, had died of cholera on a visit to Venice a short while before, so it was out of the question that the grandson should go there to live.

  ‘The grandfather, the late Lord Hammerford, was by this time very nearly a recluse in reality, burying himself amongst his collection of curios, and passing much of his time studying codes and ciphers, puzzles of all kinds, which had become a hobby of his. It was at that period that he earned that reputation for eccentricity which you mentioned just now, Doctor. He was, as you may imagine, deeply shocked by the death of his one son, another of those untimely deaths which seem so common in the family. Everyone, myself included, fully expected him to withdraw yet further into his shell, and we rather despaired as to what might happen to the grandson. Well, quite unexpectedly, Lord Hammerford, far from withdrawing into it, came out of his shell entirely and took over the upbringing of the grandson, the present Lord Hammerford, himself. He left the Irish estate and moved here to London, saying that the boy needed to be out and about in society, lest he too should run the risk of ending up a recluse. Lord Hammerford still did not mix much in society, preferring to roam the more obscure streets and by-ways, but at least he had emerged from his former isolation, thanks to his grandson. And it worked, against all the odds, and things went on very nicely.’ He hesitated.

  ‘Until?’ queried Holmes.

  Sir James gave a wry smile. ‘Until the late Lord Hammerford became ill, a very few weeks ago. I should mention that I was a personal friend, and a week back he called me to his bedside in consequence.’ He hesitated a second time.

  ‘Sir James, you have already established that our discretion is to be relied upon,’ said Holmes sternly. ‘I suggest you stop trifling with words, and set out your case in as succinct a fashion as may be.’

  Sir James frowned, then his face cleared. ‘You are right, sir,’ said he. ‘I hesitated just now because it is a very delicate matter, but of course you must know the whole story before you decide what you will do. Well, then, the facts are these. Before ever the grandson was born, the late Lord Hammerford’s son and daughter-in-law had all but given up hope of having children.’ He looked directly at me. ‘As a doctor, sir, you will be only too well aware of the uneasiness, the distress even, which that particular situation can cause.’

  ‘Indeed, yes.’

  Sir James nodded. ‘Such was the case in this instance. Now, the north country estate was honoured by a visit from a very illustrious personage.’ There was a fraction of a second’s pause, then he went on, ‘I may as well be plain, and say that it was a relative of Her Majesty, and a close relative at that.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Holmes, as if it were clear to him.

  Sir James nodded. ‘I think you have it, Mr Holmes. Need I elaborate?’

  ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘you need, for I fear you have lost me.’

  Sir James sighed. ‘Well, Doctor, the person to whom I refer has earned something of a reputation as a ladies’ man, if you take my drift, and not entirely undeservedly. To make a plain matter even plainer, do the initials “EP” not suggest anything to you?’

  ‘ “EP”? “Ed —” Good Lord!’

  Sir James nodded. ‘Just so, Doctor. And, a month or so after that visit, the wife told her husband that those wishes which they had almost given up as hopeless dreams had come true at last, and that the family was shortly to be augmented.’

  ‘Good Lord!’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Sir James drily. ‘Though some might give the credit elsewhere.’

  ‘Ah, I see what you mean, but it may have been mere coincidence,’ I told them. ‘It need not have meant — well! No, I have known these cases sort themselves out, many a time. Any doctor would tell you exactly the selfsame thing.’

  Sir James nodded. ‘I would not need telling,’ he said. ‘Frankly, such a scurrilous thought would never have occurred to me. But the late Lord Hammerford was another matter altogether. He had got the idea into his head that all was not well, if you take my meaning. And nothing that I, or anyone else might say, would shift the notion. Whether it was a result of his illness, his mind becoming unsettled, so to speak, I cannot say. But it is a fact that the idea was planted in his mind and would not be shifted. “Jimmy”, says he, he being an old friend of mine, “Jimmy, I’ve nothing against the man, you’ll understand, the family’s a good one in its own way, but I should not like my money to go to anyone but a true Hammerford”, and I can’t say as how I could argue with him there. But for the life of me I couldn’t see how the devil he could prove it one way or t’other. And I said as much, plainly, without mincing words, he being an old friend, as I tell you. Well, he levers himself up on the pillow, and he looks at me, and he laughs. “You’ll see”, he tells me, “when the will’s read”, and devil another word did he speak in this world.’

  ‘And the will has been read?’ Holmes asked.

  ‘It has. You are aware that in English law there is a presumption of legitimacy within marriage. The title goes to the grandson, no question of that, and the real property is entailed, both old and new, so the income from that will provide a competence in any event. The new Lord Hammerford will not be a pauper.’ Sir James hesitated again. ‘However,’ he went on, ‘the bulk of the late Lord Hammerford’s wealth was his own, earned abroad by his own efforts, just as I told you earlier, and wisely invested since then, and thus he could do what he wanted with it. Well, he chose to convert it into precious stones, and these he hid, somewhere or the ot
her. I have a copy of the will here, and I shall leave it for you to study in detail if you wish to do so, but the gist of it is that the money, or the gems, I should say, which amounts to the same thing, will go to whomsoever is clever enough to find it, or them.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ said I, not for the first time during this extraordinary tale. ‘Do you tell us that anyone might search for this treasure in gemstones, then? That any casual searcher might recover, and keep, the inheritance rightly due to Lord Hammerford?’

  ‘It is not quite as bad as all that, Doctor,’ Sir James told me with a laugh. ‘The late Lord Hammerford left two envelopes. One was to be given to the present Lord Hammerford, but the other was to be handed to Sir George Lewis, he being the nearest thing to another relation that old Lord Hammerford had, though he’s not a blood relation, for there was no family at all left otherwise. Now, the contents of the envelopes are identical, I have that from the family solicitor, though perhaps he should not have told me. It was old Lord Hammerford’s intention that he test his grandson’s wits, to see if the new Lord Hammerford is a true descendant or not. I told you that the late lord had a turn for puzzles and cryptograms, did I not? Well, he has left a puzzle to be solved before the treasure is found. If the present Lord Hammerford solves the puzzle and finds the money, well and good, he keeps everything, and incidentally satisfies the late Lord Hammerford’s criteria for proof that the inheritance is deserved. But if on the other hand Sir George finds it, the present Lord Hammerford gets merely a pittance, the income from the lands. Now, Mr Holmes, my question to you is just this: will you act for the new Lord Hammerford, assist him to find the treasure, and incidentally avert a possible slander upon both him and a great gentleman to whom we both owe allegiance?’

  Holmes sat back in his chair and thought in silence for a long moment. Then he frowned. ‘It is an ingenious scheme, I agree,’ he told Sir James. ‘But there are some points upon which I would wish illumination before making any decision as to whether to help you.’