The Adventure of the Marchindale Stiletto

by James Lovegrove

“Now here is a queer thing,” said my friend Sherlock Holmes one September morning in 1883. He passed The Times across the breakfast table to me and indicated a short article on the third page.

Vanished Heirloom

Mystery surrounds the disappearance of the Marchindale Stiletto, the famed heirloom of the Marchindale family of Abbots Grange, near Hailsham in Sussex. The dagger, having been thrown into a pond in the grounds of the house last Saturday, has not been recovered and has defied all efforts to find it.

The throwing was an act of playful mischief conducted by the younger of the two sons of Sir Albert Marchindale, the present family patriarch. The young man, Nicholas, is said to be mortified that what was intended as a harmless prank has instead had dire unforeseen consequences.

The stiletto has been in the family since the late fourteenth century and is the Marchindales’ most treasured possession. It is believed, indeed, to be vital to their continued prosperity. Legend has it that should the stiletto be lost, the Marchindale dynasty will fall.

This may seem just so much superstition, were it not for the fact that a series of peculiar mishaps has befallen family members in the days immediately following the stiletto’s loss. These include illness, injury, and financial disaster.

Sir Albert is reputedly at his wits’ end and has offered a sizeable sum of money to anyone with knowledge of the stiletto’s whereabouts or information that might lead to its safe return. So far no reliable applicant has been forthcoming.

“What do you make of it?” Holmes enquired, his keen grey eyes scintillating in the hazy morning sunlight coming in through the window.

“It certainly would seem that some form of curse has blighted the Marchindales,” I replied, “one which can only be connected directly with the loss of this stiletto.”

“I thought you might say that - and feared it. I myself will have no truck with curses, prophecies of doom, artefacts with magical powers, or any other such occult claptrap. There are no forces at work in this world save the actions of men and the laws of science and nature.”

“Would you not allow that there is at least an outside chance that something other, something ineffable and indefinable, surrounds our lives and from time to time permeates them?”

“‘There are more things in heaven and earth,’ et cetera?” My friend chuckled. “To the rational mind, such a view is anathema. No, I would wager good money that there is nothing the slightest bit sinister or inexplicable about the events at Abbots Grange. There is simply a chain of circumstances which give the illusion of supernatural influences at work but which, if carefully unpicked, yields just link after link of plain, dull, unremarkable, readily testifiable fact. All it requires is the right approach, to wit the application of deductive reasoning. But do not take my word for it, Watson. I am quite convinced I will be able to prove my theory to you, and conclusively, this very day.”

“How do you know that?”

“I could claim it was precognition,” said he, “perhaps even sorcery. Or I could show you this telegram, which arrived shortly before you got up.”

I had heard a knock at the front door sometime around seven, while I was still abed. I had assumed it was the butcher’s boy making a delivery, which he customarily did around that hour. It transpired, however, that it had been a messenger instead.

Holmes handed me the slip of paper. It was a curt invitation from Sir Albert Marchindale to come down to Abbots Grange forthwith and investigate the disappearance of the stiletto. Although in those days Holmes’s career was still in its relative infancy, and I had not yet published any of these chronicles of mine which drew him to the attention of a wider public, nonetheless he was steadily garnering an enviable reputation and his client list was becoming ever more illustrious.

“Well?” said he. “Are you interested? Would you care to accompany me?”

My career, too, was in its infancy, and as a consequence patients were often thin on the ground. At that time I was going through something of a fallow patch, and so, out of both curiosity and a lack of anything else to occupy me, I said yes.

We arrived at Hailsham Station at noon, and by lunchtime were pulling up at the entrance to Abbots Grange in a dog-cart. The place was a particularly splendid specimen of Tudor architecture, with a Flemish bond brick gatehouse, a lengthy drive, and sweeping gardens mostly laid to lawn, all providing the setting for a large manor house built with an H-shaped floor plan. Its timber beams were arranged in a herringbone-and-quatrefoil pattern, and the leaded windows were no less decorative, being intricate symmetrical arrangements of rectangles, lozenges, circles, and triangles. The overhanging jetties of the upper storey lent the edifice a top-heavy, somewhat unbalanced air, as though the whole structure might topple over at any moment. Yet the chimneys which towered above the tiled roofs and the various instances of stone footing and brick buttressing looked sturdy enough.

A manservant ushered us in through the huge oak door, and soon we were in the presence of Sir Albert Marchindale. He was a ruddy-faced country squire, as rough-hewn as the woodwork of which the house’s interior was largely comprised. His features were more or less identical to those of his ancestors whose portraits hung in the hallway and in the study we now occupied. He was lineage and continuity personified.

“A damnable business,” he said. “Nicholas is a fool. He should never have done it. Don’t know what got into him. I think he thought it would be funny: Drop the stiletto in the pond, have us all race around like monkeys trying to get it out. The idiot. His brother Edward would never have dreamed of performing such a stunt. Whatever common sense I have, he has inherited. Nicholas, on the other hand, calls himself a pragmatist but underneath it beats a wayward, contrarian heart.”

“Edward, I take it, is the sole heir to your estate,” said Holmes.

“Of course. Primogeniture and all that. Can’t have it otherwise. It’s the only way it works. Nicholas will naturally get some money when I go, plenty to be getting by with, but it’s Edward who’ll take on the title of the house and pass it on in his turn to his firstborn son. That’s assuming there is a house by then. The way things are heading...”

“Yes. This so-called ‘curse’.”

Sir Albert bristled. “Don’t be so quick to dismiss it, Mr. Holmes. Let me tell you a thing or two. That stiletto has been with us Marchindales since the time of the Crusades. My forebear, Archambault Marèche-en-Dalle, went to the Holy Land in 1396 in the company of Sigismund of Luxemburg, king of Hungary. Archambault was among a contingent of French nobles on that expedition and took part in the siege of Nicopolis on the banks of the Danube. The Ottomans won the battle and took three-thousand prisoners from among the attacking force, but he was not one of them. He managed to escape to safety across the river, and just as well, because barely any of those captives survived. On the Sultan’s orders, they were systematically executed.

“Archambault attributed his good fortune in avoiding this fate to the stiletto, which he had purchased in Rome on the road to Nicopolis. Such a dagger was a new weapon then, and manufactured only in Italy. Archambault used his during his escape, slaying several foemen with it after he lost his sword. He considered it a lucky talisman thereafter, and the stiletto justified that belief since after his return to France he became ever more prosperous. His vineyards flourished, his property expanded, his coffers grew fat.

“So it continued through subsequent generations. Archambault’s many-times-great-grandson Philippe Marèche-en-Dalle emigrated to England in the late seventeen-hundreds. Philippe had seen which way the wind was blowing in his homeland. Revolution was in the air. Aristocrats were under threat. He used what money he managed to smuggle out with him to buy this house and started afresh. Soon, through prudent investment and careful husbandry of the land, he was wealthy once more. The stiletto had crossed the Channel with him, of course, and cast its benevolent spell over his affairs.

“Every Marchindale since - Marchindale being the Anglicised form of Marèche-en-Dalle which Philippe adopted - has been custodian of the dagger. Father after father has inculcated in son after son the importance of the stiletto to the family. While we have it, we lead what most would consider, not without accuracy, to be a charmed life. Should we mislay it, we are doomed. That is the legend - and recent events are clear evidence in support of the assertion.”

“Yes, the papers describe a ‘series of peculiar mishaps’,” said Holmes. “Would you elucidate?”

“The very day after Nicholas’s ridiculous, vandalistic act,” said Sir Albert, “all the fish in the pond died.”

“The pond into which he threw the stiletto?”

“None other.”

“How singular.”

“There were dozens of carp in there, and bream, perch, a few others, and every last one was found floating belly-up the next morning. Gave me quite a shudder when I saw it.”

“By then you had already searched the pond?”

“Thoroughly all the previous day. The servants, Edward, myself, we spent long hours combing through the reeds and mud. No sign of it.”

“Could the disturbance your actions inevitably caused have upset the constitutions of the fish somehow?” I said. “Could they conceivably have died of fright?”

“A capital question, Watson,” declared Holmes. “I was about to ask the same thing myself.”

“It is possible, I suppose,” said Sir Albert. “But these are not delicate exotic species we’re talking about. Far from it. They are hardy natives. I would have thought it would take more than a few humans splashing about to scare them to death. Often in summer we swim in the pond, and the fish do not seem to take that amiss. But dead fish were only the start of it. Then my wife took ill with quinsy.”

“I am sorry to hear it,” said Holmes, and I voiced similar sympathy.

Sir Albert waved a hand. “It was serious at first, but the doctor insists Constance is out of danger and will make a full recovery. The infection is clearing up, the pus has cleared from her throat, and as long as she gets rest the prognosis is positive.”

“You must be relieved.”

“Immeasurably. At the time, though, it was alarming. Not least because, the selfsame day, one of the housemaids burned herself. She tripped on the stairs while carrying a pitcher of freshly boiled water up to Constance in her sickbed. The water doused the girl’s arms and one leg. The doctor, being on the premises already, treated her straight away. The burns are widespread but not severe and he believes Agnes - that is the housemaid’s name - will be fine. There should be no permanent scarring.

“By this stage, as you may imagine, I was starting to feel very anxious indeed. It was dawning on me that the loss of the stiletto was having the foretold adverse effect on the family’s wellbeing. My fears were compounded with the arrival just yesterday of a letter from overseas. It was sent by the manager of my agricultural interests in the West Indies, where I own a number of sugar plantations. The harvest has been wretchedly poor this year, it transpires. I am going to suffer a considerable financial setback.

“Hot on the heels of that letter came a telegram informing me that one of my tea clippers, the Hilda Gay, had been lost at sea with all hands. She fell foul of a typhoon three days out of Shanghai. Wreckage was spotted floating in the vicinity by a Royal Navy frigate, amongst it a spar with the ship’s name on.”

Sir Albert sank back in his chair, burying his face in his hands.

“If this streak of bad luck continues,” he moaned, “I will surely be ruined. The Marchindales will fall. And all because of Nicholas and his absurd little ‘joke’.”

Holmes requested to view the place where the stiletto had been kept. It usually sat mounted upon a stand in a glass cabinet in the library. The cabinet was locked and Sir Albert had the key, which was stored in a drawer in his desk.

“An unlocked drawer?” asked Holmes.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Meaning anyone in the household could have access to it. That might be construed as irresponsibility on your part.”

“But who would take it? Why would they? Everyone in the household is aware of the significance of the stiletto. The staff would not dream of touching it. Neither would a family member. That was my thinking.”

“Nicholas nevertheless was able to avail himself of the key and retrieve the dagger from the cabinet.”

“And I have upbraided him for it repeatedly ever since. I have railed at him and chastised him, and he is greatly upset. Contrite, even. But still the damage is done, and may well worsen.”

“What do you think has become of the stiletto, Sir Albert, given that it has vanished seemingly without trace?”

“I cannot say. A part of me reckons some enemy is responsible. I cannot think of anyone I have explicitly wronged, but it is always possible I have given offence without meaning to.”

“And this enemy succeeded where you failed and somehow located the stiletto in the pond’s murky depths and made off with it?”

“Deliberately so as to destroy me,” said Sir Albert. “Yes. Or else it is simply some opportunistic thief who happened to witness Nicholas’s disposal of the stiletto, then returned under cover of darkness and found the dagger and absconded with it.”

“The stiletto has monetary value, I imagine.”

“Not a lot. It is made of steel, nothing else. There was no precious metal involved in its smithery. It is plain and functional in appearance, not beautiful by any means. From a collector, an antiquary, it might fetch a few pounds. To anyone hoping to sell it to a fence, though, I doubt it would yield much more than a similar weight of scrap metal might. Its worth is largely, if not wholly, symbolic.”

“Which Nicholas knew full well,” said Holmes. “I should like to meet him.”

“Let me take you up to his room. He has banished himself there, emerging only at mealtimes. It is his way of showing remorse.”

Nicholas Marchindale was a tall, lean fellow in his early twenties, with a sharp, aquiline profile. Physically he was so unlike his father, one could only assume he derived his looks from his mother’s side.

He was not alone in his room. As we neared the door the sound of raised voices came from within. Entering, we found Nicholas engaged in argument with another young man, perhaps a year or two the elder, who was every inch the spitting image of Sir Albert.

This was Edward. After Sir Albert made the introductions, both Marchindale scions eyed us somewhat shamefacedly. Their cheeks were flushed. The debate between them had been hot-tempered and intense. The accusations we had overheard, and the invective, had been not of the politest.

“Nicholas, if I may,” said Holmes, “what possessed you to take the stiletto from its display cabinet and toss it into the pond?”

“It had to be done,” said the lad.

“Why?”

“I have never believed in the talismanic properties of the stiletto, Mr. Holmes. I am a rationalist. I studied the sciences at Camford. I have no time for fairy tales and mumbo-jumbo. No time even for the platitudes of the priest at church.”

“More fool you,” snapped Edward.

“My brother, on the other hand, is in thrall to all manner of hogwash, not least the stiletto’s reputation as the family’s lucky rabbit’s foot.”

“I am a man of the Christian faith,” Edward averred, “as my father is, and as any right-thinking Englishman should be. As to the stiletto, I have always been of the opinion that, while it may or may not have held a benign sway over the Marchindales for all these centuries, why risk endangering that? Why tamper with it? If it seems to be working for us, then best leave it be. And then you came along with this mania of yours, Nicholas, this dogma of rationalism, and you commit one of the rashest, most foolhardy acts imaginable.”

“I was making a point!” Nicholas protested.

“And look how it has backfired!” Edward growled. “Mother unwell. A housemaid scalded. Father receiving news of two business calamities in a single day. Not to mention the dead fish.”

“Coincidence,” his brother retorted. “Mother has always suffered with her tonsils. It has never flared up into quinsy before, I admit, but she was under strain, so her resistance to infection may have been compromised. Dr. Watson can surely back me up on that supposition.”

I opened my mouth to speak - indeed, to offer agreement - but Nicholas forged on regardless.

“As for Agnes, she is notoriously clumsy. You know that as well as I do. Have you forgotten how she dropped the roast mutton onto the floor a few Sundays ago? And before that broke a pane while washing the drawing-room windows? And before that slipped and twisted her ankle on the floor she was scrubbing? The girl is a liability, a menace to herself and others.”

“And the sugar harvest? The sinking of the Hilda Gay?”

“We have had problems like that in the past. When you have fingers in as many pies as Father has, there are bound to be times when all does not go swimmingly.” In a gesture of vexation, Nicholas scratched the palm of his left hand with the fingernails of the right, then swapped round and did the same to the right palm with the fingernails of the left. He must have performed this gesture frequently, for the palms of both were irritated, quite red. “You, Edward, are committing the cardinal sin of tailoring the evidence to suit your prejudices. In statistical terms, there is nothing anomalous or untoward in the run of misfortune we have been experiencing lately. It just so happens to have occurred in the wake of me dropping the stiletto into the pond.”

“Precisely,” said Edward. “That is my point. The one led inexorably to the other.”

“No, it is mere happenstance. There is nothing to link effect to cause other than your mistaken conviction that it must be so. Mr. Holmes, do you not concur? Your name is well known, and held in high regard, in my social circle. I am told your methods hinge on the meticulous compilation of data and you draw your inferences solely therefrom. You must see the false logic of my brother’s assumptions.”

Holmes nodded noncommittally. I could tell, after nearly three years’ close acquaintance with him, that he liked Nicholas and, furthermore, was impressed by him. The young Marchindale seemed a man after his own heart.

“It was a cold morning,” said Holmes, “when you dropped the stiletto into the pond. Am I right?”

“It was,” Nicholas replied, a tad warily. “The first frost of autumn made itself felt that morning.”

“And you committed the deed in full sight of your family?”

“Father, Mother, and Edward all saw me from the dining room as I strode up to the pond. The windows afford a clear, uninterrupted view of the spot. I announced my intentions loudly to them and waited until they had all looked up from their breakfast. I wanted their full attention.”

“The moment I realised what Nicholas was carrying in his hands,” said Sir Albert, “I lunged for the window and thrust it open. ‘What on earth are you up to, my boy?’ I called out. ‘What are you doing with the stiletto?’”

“The remarks were somewhat saltier than that, Father, as I recall. You made Mother blush and scold you.”

“I then hurried to the door,” Sir Albert continued, “once I had ascertained that Nicholas meant to throw the stiletto into the water. I was going to sprint outside to stop him. But too late. I hadn’t gone three paces when...”

“In it went,” said Nicholas. “Splash.”

“And you are sure, Sir Albert, that what you saw was the stiletto?” said Holmes.

“Completely sure. I know what that knife looks like. I’ve seen it practically every day of my life. I’ve grown up studying it in that cabinet. I am intimately familiar with every inch of it, from tip to pommel. It was the Marchindale Stiletto that Nicholas was carrying, not a shadow of a doubt about it.”

“The pond is how far from the dining-room windows?”

“Twenty-five yards, I would estimate. Thirty at the most.”

“It is just feasible, then, that at that distance you may have taken something which purported to be the stiletto for the actual stiletto.”

“I don’t think so. I have excellent eyesight. Same goes for Edward. Eh, Edward?”

“It was the stiletto,” Edward stated firmly. “I’d stake my life upon it, not least because I know my brother. Throwing away the Marchindale Stiletto is just like him. Isn’t it, Nicholas? You would do it purely to annoy me. That is the sort of younger brother you are.”

“It wasn’t to annoy you, Edward,” Nicholas said, “although if that has been a by-product, I can’t say I am disappointed.”

“You scoundrel!”

Nicholas responded with a smug leer, and I honestly felt that his older brother was about to attack him. Edward’s fists were clenched and resentment smouldered on his face. Having had an older brother myself, I could sympathise. Hamish was the apple of our parents’ eye when we were growing up, and my tactic for dealing with that was to provoke him at every opportunity. I would drive him to distraction sometimes, if only to see him lose his cool and retaliate. I wanted my parents to realise that he was not the golden boy they seemed to think he was. I also wanted them to pay me more attention. Such acts of petty peevishness are the battlefields of siblings in childhood.

“Come now!” Sir Albert barked. “The pair of you, cease your squabbling. We have plenty of woes already without you adding to them. Think of your poor mother. Think how she must feel, lying just across the landing, hearing you two bicker.”

Nicholas and Edward lapsed into sullen silence. A brooding enmity continued to simmer between them.

Holmes’s voice broke in on the truce, such as it was. “I should like to inspect the pond now, Sir Albert. Would you be so good as to show us the way?”

Sir Albert escorted us from the room. A few seconds later Edward followed us out, slamming the door behind him.

The pond was broad, roughly circular, and fringed with reeds. Duckweed covered the water’s surface in clusters, but its bright green efflorescence was tinged throughout with patches of brown, as though it was not as healthy as it might be. Holmes gathered up a few of its tiny, multi-lobed leaf pads for scrutiny. He then begged Sir Albert to fetch him a glass.

“Nothing fancy. A small tumbler will do.”

With it he drew a sample of water from the pond. Then he requested the use of the kitchen.

“I wish to conduct a small test,” said he. “Domestic implements and ingredients will suffice.”

Sir Albert gave his consent, albeit with puzzlement. “What are you hoping to demonstrate?”

“Confirmation of a hypothesis, or refutation of same.”

In the kitchen, Holmes asked the cook, Mrs. Fredericks, to bring him a zinc bucket and some coal tar soap. He poured the pond water into the former and added flakes of the latter, then boiled the lot over the stove. Mrs. Fredericks expressed consternation at her domain being treated as the venue for some sort of scientific experiment whose nature she could not fathom, and Holmes had not vouchsafed.

Her consternation deepened as the mixture of pond water and coal tar soap came to the boil in the bucket and gave off a faintly acrid aroma. She left the room in high dudgeon.

“Ah,” Holmes said eventually, with a small nod of satisfaction.

What remained after the water had evaporated was a thin residue, silvery-black in colour, coating the base of the bucket.

“I have just carried out a rather crude approximation of the Marsh Test, Watson. The zinc of the bucket and the phenol in the soap have, combined, served to prove the presence of a toxic substance in the water.”

“The Marsh Test,” said I. “Isn’t that a method for establishing the use of Arsenic?”

“It works just as well for another substance - gallium.”

“Gallium?”

“An element found in trace quantities in zinc ores and bauxite. It is one of the more interesting metals, in that it is a solid at low temperature but a liquid at room temperature. In this instance, gallium has been used in the commission of an elaborate and I think rather amusing fraud. Is that not so, Nicholas?”

I turned to see the younger of the two Marchindale brothers, who had just sidled into the kitchen.

Sheepishly, but also with a hint of secret delight, Nicholas said, “You have caught me, Mr. Holmes.”

“Young man.” The form of address seemed appropriate, even though Holmes was only a few years Nicholas’s senior. “In many ways I find you admirable. You have an empirical attitude to life which jibes with my own. However, I feel that this joke of yours has gone far enough, and I believe you feel that too. The time has come to own up.”

Nicholas sighed. “Father informed me a few minutes ago that you were here, testing water from the pond. This confirmed what I already suspected from our interview, that you had divined the truth. I felt it wise to come straight here and throw myself on your mercy.”

“You have the stiletto in your possession.”

“It is in my room, tucked away in my chest of drawers.”

“You fashioned a replica, using gallium, one that from a distance it would be all but indistinguishable from the real thing. You must have kept it somewhere cold, in order that it retained its shape.”

“The wine cellar retains its coolness year round. I concealed the fake stiletto behind one of the racks of bottles, in a crevice in the brickwork.”

“You then made your move. You removed the real stiletto from the cabinet, after which you fetched the gallium copy and went through the whole masquerade of tossing it into the pond. In the chill of the morning air, the replica would not melt in your hands. As soon as it hit the water, however, it turned to liquid and dispersed instantly. Water retains heat better than air, so the pond would be a few degrees warmer than its surroundings at this time of year, precipitating the melting process.”

“Just so.”

“Gallium being a toxic substance, it killed all the fish in the pond after it had dissolved and spread. It also left you with skin irritation from handling it. Hence the scratching I noticed earlier, and the reddened inflammation of your palms. All of this was a ploy, not just to irk your brother, although it achieved that, but to show that there is no curse attached to the stiletto. It has no hold over your family’s fortunes. It is merely an inanimate object.”

“Alas, how was I to know that so much would then go so wrong, so quickly?”

“It is ironic, to be sure.”

“I sincerely wanted Edward to appreciate that the future of the Marchindales rested with him and not with any dagger. I wanted to teach him the best kind of lesson. Father too. The stiletto was lost, apparently, but life would continue as normal. That was the plan. A week would pass, a month, and everyone would shake off their superstitious attachment to it. Eventually, after perhaps three or four months, I would ‘by accident’ stumble across the stiletto in the reeds, having of course placed it there earlier. It would be returned to its place in the cabinet but, I hoped, not to its place in family folklore.”

“Your iconoclasm does you credit.”

“Thank you. In the event, I failed dismally. Fate conspired to pull the rug from under me. The dead fish, I predicted.”

“They were the only one of your brother’s litany of catastrophes for which you neglected to offer a rationale.”

“As for the rest, I could do nothing but gnash my teeth. It made me look as though I was the agent of our family’s downfall, when I knew all along that the stiletto was safe and sound and we were just having a bad go of it. It almost - almost - persuaded me to confess the truth. I decided instead to brazen it out. The bad luck could not continue indefinitely, could it? Soon it would run its course and everything would be back on an even keel, and my point could still be made.”

“I have a way out of this for you,” said Holmes. “It will not regain you the face you have lost with your family, but it will at least permit you to bring your imposture to an end.”

“I am all ears, sir.”

Later that day, the Marchindale Stiletto was wrested by Holmes, almost miraculously, from the pond. His experiment in the kitchen had, he explained to Sir Albert, demonstrated that the consistency of the mud of the pond bed was such that it would have sucked the dagger further down than anyone suspected. The searchers simply had not delved deep enough.

Sir Albert and a sickly-looking but still beautiful Lady Constance, clad in nightdress and gown, looked on as Holmes waded into the pond up to his thighs, leant down and began to probe the bottom. What they did not see was Holmes slipping the stiletto out of its place of concealment in his jacket sleeve, even as he methodically groped about underwater. The cry of delight my friend gave as he pretended to locate the stiletto and the triumph with which he held the mud-stained weapon aloft were so well feigned - a masterclass of acting - that the Marchindale patriarch and his wife were none the wiser. Sir Albert was overcome with relief and joy, and gladly wrote out a cheque for a handsome sum in recompense.

Holmes, I am pleased to report, donated the full amount to the Salvation Army.

“I cannot in all conscience spend it on myself,” he told me upon his return to Baker Street after handing the money over at the Marylebone Mission, “since I did not properly earn it. It would be rank charlatanism.” A wry twinkle entered his eye. “The lifting of curses should be left to witches, Watson, and perhaps the clergy. It is not, and never should be, the province of the humble consulting detective.”