Watson's Choice Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Gladys Mitchell

  Dedication

  Title Page

  1. AN INVITATION TO DINNER

  2. THE SHERLOCK HOLMES PARTY

  3. UNSCRIPTED APPEARANCE OF AN EXTRA

  4. AFTER THE BALL WAS OVER

  5. A TUTOR’S DREAM

  6. CAVILLING CRITICS

  7. TWO HOSTAGES OF FORTUNE

  8. THE GHOST STATION

  9. DESDEMONA?

  10. CONTACT

  11. TO SEE A MAN ABOUT A DOG

  12. OFFICIALDOM

  13. THE PURSUIT OF THE UNEATABLE CONTINUES

  14. THE MYSTERY OF JANE EYRE

  15. MORE CONTRIBUTIONS INVITED

  16. NO SURFEIT OF ALIBIS

  17. THE WEAPON?

  18. THE EVIDENCE OF A WIG

  More from Vintage Classic Crime

  Copyright

  About the Book

  One of Sir Bohun Chantrey’s great passions in life are the stories of Sherlock Holmes. To celebrate the great man’s anniversary, he throws a party at which the guests are instructed to come as characters from the detective stories. But several of the guests are more interested in Sir Bohun’s money, and when he announces that he is to marry a poor governess, things take a turn for the worse, not least when the Hound of the Baskervilles turns up…

  Fortunately Mrs Bradley, and her secretary Laura, are amongst the guests and ready to investigate the deepening mystery.

  About the Author

  Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell – or ‘The Great Gladys’ as Philip Larkin described her – was born in 1901, in Cowley in Oxfordshire. She graduated in history from University College London and in 1921 began her long career as a teacher. She studied the works of Sigmund Freud and attributed her interest in witchcraft to the influence of her friend, the detective novelist Helen Simpson.

  Her first novel, Speedy Death, was published in 1929 and introduced readers to Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, the heroine of a further sixty-six crime novels. She wrote at least one novel a year throughout her career and was an early member of the Detection Club along with G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. In 1961 she retired from teaching and, from her home in Dorset, continued to write, receiving the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger Award in 1976. Gladys Mitchell died in 1983.

  ALSO BY GLADYS MITCHELL

  Speedy Death

  The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop

  The Longer Bodies

  The Saltmarsh Murders

  Death at the Opera

  The Devil at Saxon Wall

  Dead Men’s Morris

  Come Away, Death

  St Peter’s Finger

  Printer’s Error

  Brazen Tongue

  Hangman’s Curfew

  When Last I Died

  Laurels Are Poison

  The Worsted Viper

  Sunset Over Soho

  My Father Sleeps

  The Rising of the Moon

  Here Comes a Chopper

  Death and the Maiden

  The Dancing Druids

  Tom Brown’s Body

  Groaning Spinney

  The Devil’s Elbow

  The Echoing Strangers

  Merlin’s Furlong

  Faintley Speaking

  Twelve Horses and the

  Hangman’s Noose

  The Twenty-third Man

  Spotted Hemlock

  The Man Who Grew Tomatoes

  Say It With Flowers

  The Nodding Canaries

  My Bones Will Keep

  Adders on the Heath

  Death of the Delft Blue

  Pageant of Murder

  The Croaking Raven

  Skeleton Island

  Three Quick and Five Dead

  Dance to Your Daddy

  Gory Dew

  Lament for Leto

  A Hearse on May-Day

  The Murder of Busy Lizzie

  Winking at the Brim

  A Javelin for Jonah

  Convent on Styx

  Late, Late in the Evening

  Noonday and Night

  Fault in the Structure

  Wraiths and Changelings

  Mingled with Venom

  The Mudflats of the Dead

  Nest of Vipers

  Uncoffin’d Clay

  The Whispering Knights

  Lovers, Make Moan

  The Death-Cap Dancers

  The Death of a Burrowing Mole

  Here Lies Gloria Mundy

  Cold, Lone and Still

  The Greenstone Griffins

  The Crozier Pharaohs

  No Winding-Sheet

  TO

  BEE BARFORD

  IN LOVE AND

  FRIENDSHIP

  GLADYS MITCHELL

  Watson’s Choice

  CHAPTER 1

  AN INVITATION TO DINNER

  ‘Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown have been summoned …’

  ALLAN MONKHOUSE – The Grand Cham’s Diamond

  *

  ‘SO IT IS the Great Anniversary,’ remarked Mrs Bradley one dingy autumn morning. ‘And, in case we had forgotten to celebrate it in a fitting manner, here is an invitation from Sir Bohun Chantrey for us to attend a Sherlock Holmes dinner at his house on the twenty-fifth of November.’

  ‘Us?’ enquired her secretary, Laura Menzies.

  ‘Certainly. You, myself, and Detective-Inspector Gavin, our dear Robert.’

  ‘Why Gavin?’ asked Laura, who habitually referred to her swain by his surname. ‘You, of course; me as your amanuensis and general dogsbody, certainly. But why Gavin?’

  ‘I gather that Sir Bohun wishes him to impersonate Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard. We are to go in fancy dress, it seems. Each one of us is to represent a personage in a Sherlock Holmes story.’

  ‘Really? Bags I Irene Adler! Didn’t she appear as “a slim youth in an ulster” towards the end of the affair?’

  ‘Irene Adler is already provided for. Sir Bohun has sent a list showing those parts which are already filled. There seems to be a nursery governess who will represent “The Woman”.’

  ‘Too bad! Still, never mind – although there is scarcely much choice of women’s parts in the Holmes stories. Apart from Irene Adler and possibly that nosey little governess in The Copper Beeches, there isn’t a Holmes female I’d be seen dead as, unless – Oh, yes, I know! I’ll go as that woman who had the black baby in the yellow mask. What was her name?’

  ‘Mrs Grant Munro. An excellent idea. I myself shall impersonate Mrs Farintosh.’

  ‘Don’t remember a Mrs Farintosh. What a name! It sounds like three clans rolled into one!’

  ‘Exactly. Farquharson, Innes, and MacIntosh. I have always been fond of the Scots, and it will be a compliment to you and to our dear Robert if I appear in Scottish costume at the dinner. What are the colours of the Farquharson tartan?’

  ‘Green, blue, yellow, and red. It’s a good design, too. I like it. And the only Farquharson I ever met I took to.’

  ‘Beautiful! I will have the dress au Farquharson, then, and the mantle and bonnet in the ruddier weave of Clan Innes. Elastic-sided boots and a waterproof will help the company to identify one whose name, I feel, should become a by-word but not a hissing to the true disciples of the Master.’

  ‘The Master sounds blasphemous, put like that. Anyway, who was Mrs Farintosh? I thought I knew my Sherlock Holmes pretty well. Are you pulling my leg?’

  ‘She was the friend who recommended Miss Helen Stoner to appeal to Sherlock Holmes in the matter of The Speckled Band.’

  ‘Oh, I see. But do you think she’ll count? S
he doesn’t actually come into the story, does she?’

  ‘In a sense, no. Nevertheless, we must remember that, but for her, Miss Helen Stoner might not have heard of Mr Holmes, and, in that case, she would certainly never have been in a position to marry Percy Armitage, the second son of Mr Armitage of Crane Water, near Reading. You have not studied the text sufficiently, or you would not attempt to discredit her.’

  ‘You know,’ said Laura, putting her head on one side, and taking no notice of this criticism, ‘I shall wear a bustle, I think. I’m sure a woman who married a darkie and produced a black baby and disguised it behind a mask “of the strangest livid tint” would have sported a bustle. Besides, it will give Gavin a jolt to see me with some extra embonpoint. He thinks I’m too fat already.’

  ‘He will have to wear side-whiskers if he takes Inspector Lestrade upon him,’ Mrs Bradley observed.

  ‘Meaning that those will give me a jolt? Too right. I can’t imagine anything more loathsome than Gavin in side-whiskers. But he’s too tall and (although I say it) much too good-looking for Lestrade, who, as I recollect it, was a ferrety little man – how does it go? – lean, furtive, and sly-looking. Who else, besides the nursery governess, has been provided with a part? And why is a nursery governess bidden to the revels, anyway? I always thought they were the Cinderellas of this world. Oh, well, I suppose Cinderella did go to a ball. I take it that Sir Bohun isn’t thinking of casting himself as Prince Charming – otherwise the King of Bohemia? He’s only about forty-five, isn’t he?’

  ‘He is forty-seven, and personable. The point you raise had not occurred to me, but it is, perhaps, significant that he has given this Miss Linda Campbell the Irene Adler part. The Woman! An interesting speculation, that of yours, my dear Laura, although I cannot see how you jumped to such an idea. Your acquaintance with Sir Bohun is of the slightest, and Miss Campbell, so far as I am aware, is quite unknown to you.’

  ‘One gets these bright thoughts,’ said Laura, pleased with herself. ‘But, look here, how comes it that a nursery governess has been imported into Sir Bohun’s household? I thought he was a bachelor.’

  ‘He explains in his letter that he has given a home to two orphans, his nephews, a brother’s children. The nursery governess is to teach the younger boy, a child of six, and the older boy, aged ten, was to have had a tutor.’

  ‘Wrong tense,’ said Laura, looking over Mrs Bradley’s shoulder at the list which Sir Bohun had sent with his letter. ‘He’s got him already! Don’t you think Basil Grimston is the tutor? We know Tony Bell is the secretary. Who’s Manoel Lupez, though?’

  ‘I have no idea, but Sir Bohun, no doubt, has picked up acquaintances in various parts of the world. He is a man who seems to find it impossible to settle down.’

  ‘I see. Well, do you want me to write back and say we can come? – or shall we see whether we can get the costumes before we commit ourselves?’

  ‘Accept at once, child. Nothing will prevent me from playing Mrs Farintosh. I have immortal longings in me. When you have written the letter, please ring up our dear Robert and find out whether he will be able to join us.’

  Laura obeyed, and returned from the telephone to say that Gavin thought the idea of a Sherlock Holmes dinner an admirable one, that he had already received a separate invitation which he had accepted, and that he had put in for a week’s leave which had been granted.

  ‘He says it’s a sort of celebration,’ Laura added morosely. ‘He’s going to be made a Chief Detective-Inspector. Fancy me a Chief Inspector’s wife! He wants us to be married in the spring. I’ve agreed.’

  ‘And time, too,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘You can have half this house if you like. You won’t need to use the kitchen, as you can’t cook, and I shall be nice company for you when Robert is away on a case. You can have half the Stone House at Wandles Parva, too, if you wish. It is really far too big for me.’

  Laura, who had been dreading the thought of leaving her employer, walked rapidly out of the room. Mrs Bradley flicked open a scribbling pad and wrote: Wedding present. Then she went to the telephone, rang up Gavin, and congratulated him.

  ‘I say,’ said Gavin, ‘thank you, and all that – I never thought she’d come to it, incidentally – but what about this Sherlock Holmes business? Why am I invited? I’ve never met Chantrey. Does he know I’m engaged to Laura?’

  ‘I have no idea, child. He told me some months ago that he thought his life was in danger, but whether that has any connexion with his inviting you to dinner I find it impossible to decide.’

  ‘I see. Has he told the local police?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was a patient of mine during the war. That is how I come to be acquainted with him.’

  ‘Went off his onion, you mean?’

  ‘He was seriously affected by the air-raids. He was living in London at the time.’

  ‘You cured him?’

  ‘Possibly. Possibly not. He ceased to walk the streets armed with a hammer with which to hit Germans on the head. More I cannot say.’

  ‘Good Lord! And you think he might still be a bit crazy?’

  ‘I do not think so, no.’

  ‘Well, then, do you think he was serious when he said his life might be in danger?’

  ‘He was serious enough, yes. It does not mean that he was right, of course. The persecution mania may still persist, although I do not think it does.’

  ‘But if it did, would he be dangerous? This hammer business, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, he would be dangerous if he weren’t cured.’

  ‘A pleasant thought. Anyway, I have accepted the invitation. I say, could you and Laura dine with me to-night at Pesquero’s?’

  ‘Laura can. I can’t.’

  ‘Good. I mean I’m sorry you can’t. D’you know, I do hope nobody bumps Sir Bohun off while I’m actually in his house – or that he doesn’t do ditto to one of his guests. Bad publicity for the Yard. I’ll pick up Laura at your house at seven, then, if that’s all right. Good-bye.’

  Mrs Bradley rang off, and, seating herself in an armchair, unrolled a length of repulsive-looking knitting. When Laura returned she told her of Gavin’s invitation and sent her up to dress. When Laura, looking extremely handsome, had gone off with Gavin in a taxi, Mrs Bradley put away her knitting and rang up Sir George Sirrell.

  ‘Come and eat your dinner with me,’ she said, ‘if you’ve nothing else to do.’

  Sir George was a specialist in nervous diseases, and knew Sir Bohun Chantrey, for it was Sir George who had passed the blood-thirsty baronet on to Mrs Bradley in the first place. He was delighted to accept the invitation to dinner, for his wife was away and he disliked equally the thought of dining alone and that of dining at a restaurant.

  ‘Chantrey?’ he said, when Mrs Bradley’s maid had cleared the table and brought in the coffee. ‘What’s he like in these days?’

  ‘I have not seen him for some months,’ Mrs Bradley replied, ‘but he thinks his life is in danger, and he is giving a dinner in honour of Sherlock Holmes.’

  ‘Dear, dear! Bad as that again, is he?’

  ‘I don’t know. I have accepted an invitation to the dinner as the surest way of finding out exactly how bad (or the reverse) he is. It is quite on the cards that his life is in danger. He has travelled extensively and can be, on occasion, boorish, dishonest, and a satyr.’

  ‘Can he, by Jove! Yes, any or all of that might easily lead foreigners to think the worst of him. What about the idea of this Sherlock Holmes dinner?’

  ‘That’s probably reasonable enough. He was always interested in the Conan Doyle stories, and the Master-Mind is being toasted everywhere this year. It is probably a good excuse for him to give a party.’

  ‘Well, I hope he won’t want to take a hammer to his guests! Are there going to be Germans among them?’

  ‘No, but there seems to be a Spaniard, a man named Manoel Lupez.’

  ‘Lupez? Lupez? No, the name means nothing to me. Who else is going?’

  Mr
s Bradley produced Sir Bohun’s list. Sir George pursed his lips over it, but handed it back without comment, except to say, ‘It seems to be a fancy-dress affair. I see he has cast himself for a rôle, too. Professor Moriarty, of all things! And now, Beatrice why did you ask me to come here?’

  ‘To eat the dinner Laura didn’t need.’

  ‘Not ill, is she?’

  ‘No. She has gone out with dear Robert Gavin.’

  ‘The policeman fellow? Is he going to this Sherlock Holmes affair?’

  ‘Yes, he is. I think Sir Bohun wants him to act as bodyguard.’

  ‘It sounds like a case of obsession, doesn’t it? – unless, as you suggested, by his conduct at some time or another he has been given cause to fear violence.’

  ‘He is obsessed, certainly, with fear for his life. I shall be interested to observe him again. What did you think of the report about B.X. in Middlemarsh’s last book?’

  ‘I thought he was wrong in his conclusions. It seems to me that the patient showed all Lewis’s basic symptoms – ’

  ‘Schizophrenia, in fact. The complete forgetfulness, followed by the resumed monologue being based upon an entirely different and totally unrelated subject does seem to indicate the thought-blocking symptom of schizophrenia, certainly, but didn’t you think the reactive repressions were interesting?’

  ‘Yes, and his neologisms, too. He seems as obscure as a Gertrude Stein, although really some of his mind-coinings were remarkably clever, I thought.’

  They were in deep discussion of the book when Laura returned at midnight.

  ‘Were you talking about Sir Bohun?’ she enquired when the guest had gone. ‘It sounded a bit baboonish.’

  ‘Why should you think of Sir Bohun – oh, I see.’