Craven Street was a pleasant street lined with tall buildings, which crossed the smaller Craven Passage at right angles, and was bookended by the Strand at one end, and a busy playhouse at the other. There was nobody in sight as we stepped from the hansom and made our way to our destination, which was a handsome family home of three storeys, with large windows to either side of the front door. It seemed plain that Miss Marr was a woman of substantial means.
As we approached, we could see that the door to Number 11 lay very slightly ajar.
I knocked and received no answer, then stood back on the step, hesitant to enter someone’s home uninvited. Holmes, however, had no such compunction and immediately crouched down, placing one palm flat against the rug positioned just inside the door.
‘Soaked, even more than one might expect given the recent downpour, and—’ He pushed the door further open, exposing more of the rug. ‘See for yourself, Watson. The rest of this rug is completely dry, and the line of moisture is an exact and straight one. This door has lain ajar for more than this morning, possibly several days, and has not been moved an inch since it was first left open. Tread carefully, Watson.’
Thus forewarned, I pulled the revolver from my pocket and, holding it in front of me, led the way into the silent house.
The hallway was short, with two doors leading off from it on the left side, and stairs at the end leading to the first floor. Decoration was sparse – a small occasional table upon which stood three photographs in rigidly aligned silver frames and a bare hat stand just inside the door were the whole of the furnishings – but two very tasteful paintings brightened the plain walls.
I crossed to the first door, intent on trying the handle, but Holmes touched my arm and pointed instead to the end of the corridor, where the second door sat ajar. As we approached I realised I could hear the sound of rustling paper from within. Painfully aware of the warning telegraphed by our shoes on the wooden floor, we positioned ourselves on either side of the doorway and after a silently mouthed count to three, pushed it fully open and, as one, moved into the room beyond.
A cat leapt from the large oak desk that dominated the space, upsetting a stack of paper onto the floor, and shot past our ankles. I watched as it ran along the hall, through the open front door and out into the street.
‘Watson!’ Holmes’s insistent voice brought my wandering attention back to the room – and to the body that lay stretched out on the floor, behind the desk.
That this was Eugenie Marr, the lady we were seeking, was not certain, but there was no doubt that she was dead. A dark purple line at her throat and the redness of broken capillaries in her eyes, combined with scratch marks on her neck where she had struggled to escape the stranglehold of the choking cord, indicated strangulation by garrotte. I knelt by the corpse and carefully manipulated the jaw, neck and arms, feeling for the familiar stiffness. The advanced stage of rigor mortis placed the death at some point the day before, perhaps longer. I turned to Holmes, but he had already dismissed the victim from his thoughts and was busy rifling through the papers on her desk. I almost remonstrated with him for his indifference, but I might as well have lectured the desk, so instead I joined him in his search.
The desk, as with everything else in the room, bar the documents disturbed by the fleeing cat, was neat to the point of mania, with every element perfectly squared off against the next. Evidently, Miss Marr valued precision and order. I had seen similar cases of obsessive, monomaniacal behaviour described in the medical literature. I made this observation to Holmes, but of course he had already noticed it.
‘Did you not note that the photographs in the hall stood at exactly ninety degrees from one another? The lady clearly suffered from some form of neurosis.’ He shrugged. ‘I doubt that that will prove of any consequence to our case, except to confirm that the miniature she purchased has been stolen.’
He pointed to a small section of the desk, which lay empty. ‘The portrait sat there, if I am not mistaken,’ he said.
It was true that this small square was the only area on the entire desk not covered by tidy stacks of files and books, but even so it was a leap to assume that the miniature had until recently sat there.
Holmes obviously noticed my look of doubt. ‘Observe, Watson, how the files on each side of the bare area have been knocked askew, as though someone carelessly reached over and removed something. Someone less meticulous than the victim, for she would certainly have restacked the files afterwards.’ He indicated the body on the floor. ‘Expensive items have been left untouched; you will have noted the silver photograph frames still safe in the hall. It beggars belief to think that our murderer turned thief for anything other than a very specific item. And I need not remind you that people have already died in the matter we are currently investigating.’
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘But what exactly are we looking for, if the miniature itself is gone?’
‘I won’t know until we find it, Watson. Correspondence from the Gallery, catalogues from art auctions, a handy list of other artworks Miss Marr was interested in… anything which might provide us with a direction in which to proceed.’
As he spoke, he picked up, opened and examined each file within his reach, before dropping it onto the floor behind him, for all the world like some mechanical sorting machine. Occasionally he would pause for a heartbeat as some item from the victim’s life briefly caught his eye, before being rejected and discarded as so much waste paper. Still rankling at his unemotional response to the poor woman’s murder, I said as much to Holmes.
‘Waste—!’ Whatever spark my words had ignited in that most exceptional of brains was enough to cause Holmes to drop the sheaf of documents in his hand and dive beneath the desk. A moment later he reappeared, clutching a wicker wastepaper basket in his hand, which he dropped unceremoniously between us.
‘Everything on this desk is related to the victim’s work: unimaginative and poorly considered thoughts on the Trinity in the main, with yards of inaccurate translations from the Hebrew.’ He pointed to a large crucifix on the wall, and to a small pile of books carefully stacked at one corner of the desk. ‘Bibles in Latin, Greek and English. And you will recall that the miniature she purchased was of the twin sons of Isaac, son of Abraham. A religious woman, Watson, working on some obscure and essentially pointless ecclesiastical treatise. This desk represents her life, the very core of her being, but what we seek is something other than that, something upon which she would place a far lesser value.’
With a single sweep of his arm he tumbled everything off the desk onto the floor, then tipped the wastepaper basket upside down onto the now empty surface.
‘And here, unless I am mistaken, we have it.’ He pushed a discarded church newsletter to one side and picked out a plain white envelope, from within which he pulled a single sheet of folded notepaper. Handing me the envelope, upon which I read Miss Marr’s name and address in a precise, printed script, he unfolded the note and read it aloud.
2 Nelson Street
Camden, London
Dear Madam,
Please forgive the intrusion, but I hope to appeal to your Christian nature with regard to an item that I believe has recently come into your possession. I refer to a small miniature of Jacob and Esau, which I am informed you purchased last year.
I represent a small continental art gallery and have been tasked with sourcing items for an exhibition of late sixteenth-century miniatures. I believe that the example you possess would fit admirably into the planned collection, and would be obliged if you would consider selling to me.
Please reply at your earliest convenience. I await positive news with great anticipation.
Yours,
Elias Boggs, esq
He refolded the letter and slipped it inside his coat. ‘Printed in the same set of block capitals as the envelope, on reasonably good-quality paper, literate enough but with an occasional lapse into possible error. “Consider selling to me” is an unusual construction, wouldn’t you say, Watson?’
‘A foreigner, perhaps?’ I was sure Holmes and I were thinking the same thing.
‘Or someone taking dictation from such a person. Elias Boggs is not a name that rings with the exotic tang of the Eastern European states, though I am reminded of a confidence man of some distinction of that name. In any event, apparently Miss Marr did not wish to sell, hence the discarded note, and so Mr Boggs – or his employer – was forced to collect in person.’
‘What if she replied and then disposed of the original letter?’ I did not believe this for a second, but felt that the possibility needed to be considered before it could be dismissed.
‘I think not. A woman with Miss Marr’s particular neurosis would make a carbon copy of any reply, and would attach the original to that, for her own records. No,’ Holmes declared decisively, ‘the lady was murdered for the miniature, and no other reason.’
‘Where to now, then?’ I asked. ‘After we have alerted the police to Miss Marr’s demise, that is.’
‘To Camden Town – and with any luck the fate of the unfortunate Miss Marr will keep Lestrade occupied and out of our hair for the foreseeable future.’ Holmes gave one of his most hearty laughs, as though someone had said something enormously humorous, but I confess to feeling only a terrible coldness as I looked down at the poor woman’s corpse.