Detective Inspector Lestrade strode purposefully into the study, flanked by two Constables from the Metropolitan Police. Shorter than average, slightly squat, and bearing the features of a disgruntled rat, Lestrade was a competent detective, albeit one that lacked the true ingenuity required to solve the more complex cases that came under his remit.
It was fortunate, therefore, that he was well-acquainted with Sherlock Holmes, who he turned to regularly for advice and often, the solution to cases that eluded him.
On occasion however, Lestrade liked to be able to crack a case himself. And this, he mused to himself as he entered the room, looked like the type of case he could open and shut without the help of his mystery-solving friend. Indeed, it seemed as straightforward as they come.
He looked at the scene in front of him. The room was a mess – chairs upturned, lamps on the floor, papers everywhere. And at the end of the room, glass doors that led to a terrace outside were wide open, curtains blowing in the wind.
In front of the fireplace lay the body of an elderly male, a red patch of blood seeping through the hair on his head and coalescing into a small pool next to him. The coals in the fire were still hot, and there were fragments of paper fluttering around in the grate.
On the floor beside the victim were fragments of pottery broken into large pieces and an empty glass. Nearer the door was a tray, a pot that had leaked tea over the rug and a scattering of broken biscuits.
“Who found the body?” asked Lestrade of the officer nearest him.
“The housekeeper, sir. Came in with a tray for tea, saw him lying there and screamed the house down. Never seen a dead body before”, the Constable replied.
Lestrade dropped down to his haunches and turned the body over. There was no doubt that he was dead. Although he was surprised at the expression on the face. A rictus grin looked back, almost like the blow to the head had caused his face to spasm.
“It doesn’t really get any easier.” Lestrade said grimly. He looked up. “Where are the rest of the occupants of the house?”
“Waiting in the sitting room for you, sir. They’re becoming a bit impatient.”
———–
The mood as he entered the sitting room was sombre. Lady Royston, wife of the deceased, looked elderly and wan as she was comforted by her daughter, Lady Dalston, on the chaise-longue.
Her husband, Sir Humphrey Dalston, stood at the window looking out and conferring quietly with his younger nephew, Peter, who was the Royston’s second son.
By the fireplace, drinking a whiskey from a cut tumbler and looking shocked, was Edward, heir to the estate and the new Lord Royston.
“Thank you for your patience ladies and gentlemen,” Lestrade began. “I’m sorry to keep you for so long. However, I have now seen enough to make it clear to me that what happened today was the result of a botched robbery by persons unknown”.
There was a collected gasp from the assembled crowd.
“The Home Office confirmed to me earlier today that Lord Royston was working on a new formula that would revolutionise naval combat operations. That formula appears to have been destroyed by Lord Royston himself in a brave final act to prevent it from getting into the wrong hands. And as retaliation for that act, the prospective thief hit him over the head with a nearby vase, killing him immediately.”
He paused briefly to let the information sink in, and a low hubbub floated through the room as the family reacted to the news.
“It is my belief that the thief remains at large and will no doubt be looking for an escape out of the county,” he carried on, “so I will now lead a full-scale hunt to track down and find the killer. If you will excuse me, time is of the essence, and I will depart immediately”.
He turned theatrically, his coat swirling around him and headed for the door before anyone could speak.
“Lestrade?” a voice piped up.
The inspector stopped and felt a horrible sinking feeling in his stomach. He recognised that voice. He slowly turned back around.
“Yes…?” he said quietly.
In the far corner of the room, unnoticed till now, a high-backed chair turned to display a tall, thin, intense man with dark hair, dressed in a smoking jacket and puffing on a pipe.
“Lestrade my good fellow, what a pleasure to see you again,” the man said cheerily. “We haven’t spoken since that case in Camden.”
“Mr Holmes,” Lestrade replied slowly through gritted teeth. “Of course, a pleasure to see you too. What brings you here, if I may ask?”
“Oh, just visiting for a few days. Lord Royston had some questions he felt I could help with in relation to his formula. We made good progress.”
He smiled. It was a smile that Lestrade had seen before, and the type of smile that made him want to disappear into a very deep hole and not come out again for a long time.
“But whilst I am here, I wonder if I might offer the briefest of suggestions?” Holmes said gently.
“Of course, Mr Holmes,” Lestrade replied. “You know how much I value your opinion in these matters”. The sinking feeling wouldn’t go away.
Holmes stood up and strode towards the front of the room. “I just wondered if you noticed the vase in the study”, he asked. “Of course,” said Lestrade more confidently. “It was lying in pieces next to the body.”
“Ah yes, but did you notice it?” Holmes said with a strong inflection.
Lestrade paused as he thought back to the scene of the crime. Yes, he had noticed the vase, but what more was there to notice? It was white, patterned and broken into pieces. It was clear that it was the murder weapon as the gash on the back of Lord Royston’s head was consistent with a heavy blow from behind.
“Well, perhaps I didn’t look as closely as I might,” he finally conceded, aware that he must have missed something but for the life of him couldn’t work out what.
“Because if you had, you might have noticed that the pieces of the vase were larger than you would expect from a fine piece of porcelain, which would typically shatter into countless shards when broken.”
Lestrade sighed. “I see,” he said evenly.
“And then you might wonder why that would be the case,” said Holmes expectantly, “given that the vase in question was indeed a valuable porcelain from the Ming dynasty”.
“Yes, I would indeed wonder why that would be the case,” Lestrade agreed.
“And then naturally you might also wonder,” Holmes went on “as to why Lord Royston might be murdered with a vase that wasn’t in his study to begin with.”
“Yes, you might naturally wonder that,” Lestrade replied despondently. He knew what was coming next. This was going the same way that most of their conversations seemed to go.
“Would you perhaps like to hear my idea?” Holmes offered.
There was a murmur of assent from around the room. “Well, I’d like to hear your view, Holmes,” said the new Lord Royston. “My father trusted your opinion, and I have no reason to doubt his judgement.”
Holmes smiled. “In that case, let us all move to the study and see if we can piece this all together.”
Lestrade’s mood, so confident only a few minutes before at the thought of closing the case himself, dropped further and he walked mopishly behind his acquaintance towards the study. Holmes, meanwhile, spent the short walk talking quietly to one of his Constables.
———–
It took a few minutes for the group to assemble in the smaller room, but once they had, Sherlock Holmes took centre stage, addressing his audience.
“Now, let us begin with my good friend Inspector Lestrade’s theory of the case,” Holmes began. “In his telling of the story a thief has entered the house and argued with Lord Royston, who has then thrown his life’s work into the fire to prevent him from stealing it. The thief, outraged at this action, hits him on the back of the head with a priceless vase he has picked up off the shelf. He’s then panicked, opened the doors to the terrace and ran off across the garden to escape.”
The group nodded in agreement.
“Well, look Holmes,” said Lestrade imploringly. “The evidence clearly all points to this chain of events. Paper in the fireplace, a smashed vase, open doors. Even you would say that it is logical.”
“Logical, yes. The scene is indeed well-set,” Holmes agreed. “But it is not what happened, only what you were led to believe.”
He paused.
“Isn’t that true, Peter?” Holmes said accusingly as he turned towards the youngest member of the family.
“What?!” Peter stammered. “I don’t know wha… what you mean”. He turned red as at one, the group turned to stare at him, gasps ringing around the room.
“Oh, come now Peter, don’t be so shy. It really was a brilliant plan,” Holmes admonished. “And no doubt it would have worked if I wasn’t here. It’s just bad luck and timing that your father reached out to me for help last week, and you couldn’t have foreseen it.”
Peter sat down in the chair nearest to him and put his head in his hands.
“Peter! Tell me this isn’t true,” the Lady Royston cried. “You must be wrong, Mr Holmes,” she said as she wheeled round to face Sherlock. “Peter isn’t capable of this.”
Peter took one look at Sherlock Holmes and realised that there was no escape. “No, mother, he’s right” Peter admitted. “I did it.”
“But why?” she asked loudly. “Why would you do such a thing? To your own father?”
“Your son is struggling with gambling debts Lady Royston,” Holmes explained. “His clothes are more ragged than his position would naturally allow, and his complexion betrays a lack of nutrition. I think you’ll find that your husband refused to bail him out again and demanded that he find his own solution. Unfortunately, that led him to take matters into his own hands.”
“Peter?” said Lady Royston pressed her son again. “Is Mr Holmes correct?”
“I’m sorry mother, he is,” Peter replied sadly. “Father wouldn’t support me, and I’m in a bit of a hole. I couldn’t see any other way out. I did what I had to do.”
“So, what happened, Holmes?” Sir Dalston intervened, looking disparagingly at his nephew. “How did he do it? And what’s this business with the vase?”
“I’m glad you asked, Sir Dalston. It was a fiendishly clever plan. Do you mind if I explain, Peter?” he asked the boy. “Not at all,” Peter replied offhandedly, already resigned to his fate.
“In that case.” Holmes began with a flourish, “imagine this. You’re Peter Royston, saddled with debts to loan sharks and a father that refuses to help you out, claiming that he cannot afford to. Yet you know that he pours his money into his research and sitting in his study is a priceless Ming vase worth thousands of pounds. If you could get hold of that vase, you’d be able to pay off all your debts and fund a life overseas. You’d be free – both of your obligations and your family. But how to steal it without anyone noticing?”
Everyone turned to look at Peter, but he waved them away with a hand.
“The answer of course is to make the vase disappear. And for that, all you need is the semblance that it is no longer there. People tend to come up with their own solutions. And if you know that a room has a vase, and then you see a smashed vase on the floor, then your instinct is to believe that they are one and the same vase. Without any evidence to the contrary, why would you consider that they may be different?”
“Then these pieces,” Lestrade said, pointing to the broken pottery on the floor, “aren’t from the Ming vase?”
“No, they’re not,” confirmed Holmes. “They are the pieces of a hastily constructed fake, designed to look similar enough to pass a cursory look whilst all eyes are on the other elements of the scene – the body, the paper in the fireplace, the open doors. All the constituent parts needed to make it look like a robbery gone wrong and that there was a thief on the loose.”
“But then where is the real vase?” asked Lady Dalston.
Holmes looked towards the back of the room, where the Constable that he had been talking to earlier had just walked through the door with a large grin on his face.
“Et voila,” he announced, pointing in the Constable’s direction and as one, they turned to face the officer.
In his hands was the Ming vase; small, delicate and very much in one piece.
“I found it in Peter’s room, as you said I would, Mr Holmes,” the Constable announced. “And I also found this,” he said as he produced a small bottle with a skull and crossbones on the label.
“Ah, yes,” said Holmes. “Strychnine. A more precise way of killing someone than a blow to the head from a vase. I believe that Peter secretly dropped it into his father’s brandy whilst they talked so as to take no chances.”
“Which would explain the rictus grin,” said Lestrade, as he caught up. “No wonder he had that look on his face. I did think it was strange that a blow to the head would cause that.”
Lestrade had heard enough. He motioned towards Peter Royston. “Take him away, Constable. I think it’s clear we have found our murderer”. The officer took the boy by the arm and led him out of the room.
The rest of the family filed out after them, Lady Royston crying and supported by her daughter, and the gentlemen whispering quietly to each other. “Thank you, Holmes,” Lord Royston said as he passed him. “It’s not an outcome I would have wanted, but I am glad to know that my father’s killer has been apprehended.”
———–
“Don’t feel too bad, Lestrade,” Holmes said to the inspector after they’d all left. “At first glance, this was an open and shut case. Anyone else would have come to the same conclusion as you.”
Lestrade stiffened. Anyone except Sherlock Holmes of course. Once again, Holmes had solved the case, and whilst it made his numbers look good and helped his rise through the ranks at Scotland Yard, he knew that he was riding the coattails of a genius.
Still, maybe that was his good luck. It certainly wasn’t doing any harm to his career. And it wasn’t like Holmes was interested in taking the credit.
“Pity about the formula though,” Lestrade said. “Sounds like it could have been useful to our Royal Navy.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Holmes replied cheerily, as he sat down in an armchair with a broken biscuit he’d picked up off the floor. He tapped his finger against his temple. “All safely stored. I’ll be off to the Admiralty tomorrow. I think they’ll be quite pleased to see me indeed.”
Well at least someone will, thought Lestrade.