In the archives of Sherlock Holmes few papers have been more jealously guarded than those which touch upon blackmail or extortion. How strange it is that these should include a small collection of literary manuscripts and rare first editions acquired in the course of an investigation in 1890. They are items which Oxford ’s Bodleian Library or the British Museum or wealthy collectors like John Pierpont Morgan might have fought over in the auction rooms of the world.
To the present day, most of these treasures remain unknown to literature or scholarship. In the Baker Street files repose such lost works as the manuscript of Lord Byron’s Don Juan in the New World, in the poet’s own hand. Its stanzas confirm the great romantic rebel’s ambition to make his home in the land of Thomas Jefferson. Among other manuscripts is The Venetian Nun: A Gothic Tale, written in 1820 by the notorious William Beckford, creator of the short-lived extravaganza of Fonthill Abbey. A further portfolio contains the monologue of a famous heretic facing the flames in fourteenth century Florence, “Savonarola to the Signoria,” apparently omitted by Robert Browning from his collection of Men and Women in 1855.
A shelf of rare editions, which Holmes acquired during the same investigation, was equally remarkable. He was particularly fond of a small octavo volume in pinkish wrappers. It bore the simple title of “Sonnets By E. B. B.” At the foot of the cover was printed, “ Reading: Not For Publication, 1847.” Such was the first appearance of Sonnets from the Portuguese, written by Elizabeth Barrett to express her love for her bridegroom, Robert Browning, at the time of their elopement and marriage in the previous year. No more than three or four copies of the private 1847 edition have survived. It was intended for intimate friends, the printing arranged by Miss Mary Russell Mitford. Sherlock Holmes’s copy bore a pencil inscription on the fly-leaf “For Miss Mitford, E. B. B.” It was Mrs Browning’s reminder that this copy had been set aside for her friend.
How odd that half a century later such a treasure should find its way into the pocket of a dead blackmailer.
The case occurred almost ten years after my first meeting with Sherlock Holmes. It followed a visit from our Scotland Yard friend Inspector Lestrade on 24 April 1890. He was now in the habit of calling upon us of an evening, once a week, sharing a glass or two of single malt and passing on the detective gossip of the day.
In the course of conversation on this occasion, he mentioned that a man in a plaid overcoat was reported to have been found dying in a Chelsea gutter. The man in question was known to the police as Augustus Howell, of whom I had never heard. It appeared that he had been suspected from time to time of demanding money with menaces but nothing had ever been proved against him. Lestrade now told us that shortly before he left his office that evening, a report of the man’s death had come in. It seemed that the gutter in which he lay was outside a bar in Kinnerton Street, Chelsea, and that the victim’s throat had been cut. Between his teeth was wedged a gold half-sovereign coin. Several years later I was to learn, in our investigation of “The Red Circle,” that in the underworld of Naples this is the traditional reward of a blackmailer or a police informer.
Our detective agency, as Holmes now liked to call it, had rarely received a complaint of blackmail. I had found this surprising at first because blackmail is surely one of the most common causes that drive a man or a woman to seek advice from a confidential investigator. However, the details that Lestrade gave us on that April evening suggested that the more robust victims of extortion may scorn the services of a private detective and employ those of a professional assassin.
Lestrade ended his brief summary of the message received by Scotland Yard with an important nod, as if to say, “So there!”
Holmes looked back at him and intoned, almost accurately, a line of Shakespeare from Macbeth.
“He should have died hereafter! Indeed, my dear Lestrade, in Howell’s case I can assure you he probably will continue to do so, as he has done many times before!”
“I don’t think I follow you there, Mr Holmes. How could the man be dead before this?”
Holmes lay back in his chair and began to guffaw with delight. Then he composed himself.
“A hint to you, Lestrade. In a case that involves Augustus Howell, steer well clear of the matter. Let some other poor devil at Scotland Yard beat his brains out over it.”
“I do not follow your drift, Mr Holmes, but I should not have thought this was a matter to be made fun of.”
“Then you quite evidently do not know your man. Have you any idea how many times Augustus Howell has died in the last thirty years of his disgraceful career? At least four, to my knowledge. Notice of his death is generally followed by a post-obit sale of his effects at Christie’s or Sotheby’s. His announcement of his own death is a convenient method by which he escapes his creditors from time to time. However, if what you are told is true, it seems that someone may have settled accounts with him in a more conclusive style. Or perhaps he has merely performed his usual stunt with a little more melodrama, a touch more grand guignol, than usual.”
“It can’t be done, Mr Holmes. Surely?”
“Can it not? No more than a year or two back, there was an obituary auction-sale of ‘Howell deceased’ at Messrs. Christie’s in King Street, St James’s. It included paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, as well as several by the late Mr Dante Rossetti, whose agent Howell had been. That agency ended when Rossetti discovered that the man was pocketing money from collectors by mortgaging paintings which Rossetti had not done and would probably never do. Naturally, the purchasers all came upon the artist for the money that had been borrowed and spent by his agent. Gussie Howell had also purloined from the painter’s studio Rossetti’s sketch for the ‘Venus Astarte.’ By imitating Rossetti’s monogram on the canvas, he sold it as the definitive work at a handsome price to one of his more gullible connoisseurs.”
Lestrade was now paying attention.
“And the Reynolds, Mr Holmes? And the Gainsboroughs?”
“For some time Howell lived as man and wife with a woman in Bond Street, Rosa Corder. By profession she was a painter of horses and dogs. He trained her as what he called a facsimilist-in plain English, a forger. Between them they also produced copies of pictures for clients of questionable tastes. Some rather objectionable paintings by Fuseli were copied for sale, which was the cause of their landlord giving them notice.”
“Well, I never did!” said Lestrade thoughtfully. “I can tell you confidentially, Mr Holmes, we do have records at Scotland Yard of Mr Howell as a young man. A sympathiser with Orsini, he was, in the conspiracy to blow up the Emperor Napoleon III outside the Paris Opera. As the law stood then, there was nothing criminal in sympathising with an attempt. That was soon altered. I also remember from our Home Office records, in the time of Lord Aberdare, that Mr Howell was the person who arranged for Mrs Rossetti’s coffin to be dug up from Highgate Cemetery. It was done at the dead of night in order that Mr Rossetti’s poems might be retrieved. Very rum business all round. Born in Portugal of an English father, was Mr Howell.”
“Indeed,” said Holmes with a chortle, “and brought to England in the nick of time at sixteen, following a nasty outbreak of card-sharping in Lisbon and threats made with stiletto knives. I know him only at second hand but even I have heard him called, with whatever justification, an arrant rascal, a filthy blackmailer, an impudent trickster, a ruffian, a polecat, a libeller and a congenital liar. Take your pick, my dear Lestrade! I once heard Mr Rossetti recite a poem which he had composed after dismissing his former agent. It went something like this.
There’s a forger and scoundrel named Howell,
Who lays on his lies with a trowel.
When he gives-over lying,
It will be when he’s dying,
For living is lying with Howell.
Poor fellow! You know, he is so utterly devoid of redeeming features that I rather have a soft spot for the rogue. There, but for the good fortune of my present occupation, go I.”
“You would be a blackmailer?” inquired Lestrade sceptically.
Holmes made a deprecating gesture.
“You would never convict him of blackmail. He is far too clever for that. It was Howell who introduced the young poet Swinburne to a genteel house of ill-repute in Circus Road, Regent’s Park. Such gilded youths sported there on idle afternoons among rosy-cheeked damsels, in a manner lamentably reminiscent of the late Comte de Sade.”
I was intrigued to see that Lestrade, always the cocksure man of the world, went suddenly and deeply red. Holmes continued.
“Howell and the fledgling poet exchanged letters, in which these rather childish goings-on were much discussed. At the peak of his fame, ten years later, Mr Swinburne received a message from his former acquaintance. Howell had pasted all the poet’s letters into a keepsake album. Having fallen into penury, he had been obliged to pawn it. Now he had not the money to redeem it. The pawnbroker had lost patience and proposed to offer it immediately for public sale. Within the week, Admiral and Lady Jane Swinburne paid a very large sum to buy back from the money-lender this chronicle of their son’s youthful folly. The proceeds were no doubt shared gleefully between Howell and his accomplice pawnbroker. Now, make what you can of that, friend Lestrade.”
Lestrade recovered himself.
“Strike me down!” he said thoughtfully, “As neat a piece of stitching as I ever heard of!”
“Precisely. On other occasions, where a client was difficult, Howell would encourage him by giving well-publicised readings from such compromising correspondence to groups of invited guests-until the author was minded to buy back his indiscretions. Do you really believe that having gone to such lengths to conceal their son’s folly, the Swinburne parents would enter a witness-box and reveal it? In any case, could you prove blackmail in the matter of the pawned letters? Was it not, perhaps, a friendly warning from Howell, by which the author of the letters might mend the damage done? And as for recitals of the correspondence, if you were to send me a private letter and I were to read it to others, it is certainly not the act of a gentleman but it is hardly criminal.”
“And have you known this person for long, Mr Holmes?”
“I repeat that I cannot claim a close acquaintance, Lestrade.
Indeed, though I have heard of him several times, I have not seen him for almost ten years. That was when I represented a client, Mr Sidney Morse, in the so-called case of ‘The Owl and the Cabinet.’ Howell’s name had always been pronounced ‘Owl’ by the cockney Pre-Raphaelite painters and poets. They made a joke of it.”
Light was beginning to dawn behind Lestrade’s eyes.
“Was this matter of Mr Morse also to do with Mr Whistler, the American painter?”
“You are there before me, as usual, Lestrade. In 1878, Whistler was going to Venice. He had sold to Mr Morse a valuable Japanese cabinet, which had an upper and a lower half. Mr Whistler left delivery in the hands of Howell. Mr Morse came to Howell’s address on a Saturday, paid for the cabinet and was to have it after the weekend. The minute he left, Howell summoned a pawnbroker and pledged the cabinet to him for a considerable sum. The upper half went on a cart to the pawnshop, where Howell was paid. He promised to bring the lower half after the weekend.”
“I think I see the trick,” said Lestrade suddenly.
“Perhaps you do. On Monday, Howell delivered the lower half to Mr Morse. He claimed the upper half had been damaged in moving it. It had gone for repair and he would deliver it upon its return. Naturally he then informed Chapman, the pawnbroker, that it was the lower half which had been damaged and had gone for repair.”
Holmes drew breath and suppressed another onset of laughter.
“Howell then disappeared with both payments, leaving each dupe with half the cabinet. Both men trusted Howell. Knowing no better, they thought that half a cabinet is no use to a thief on its own. How little they knew Gussie! The legal proceedings necessary to settle the matter lasted for three years. During that time, my services were retained by Mr Morse. Mr Whistler on his return was obliged to redeem the lower half of the cabinet from the pawnbroker, repaying the loan as well as three years’ interest and restoring the furniture to its rightful purchaser. Mr Howell hastily advertised his own death again and yet another post-obit sale of his effects was held.”
Lestrade looked almost overwhelmed.
“Oh dear,” he said, “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!”
Holmes chuckled.
“One of the innocents at the sale was L. H. Myers, son and disciple of Frederick Myers of the Society for Psychical Research. The son was able to report to his father a celestial vision of ‘Howell deceased’ at Christie’s sale-room. The lad was examining a locket, said to contain the hair of Mary Queen of Scots. He felt convinced that the shade of it was wrong. At that moment, a vision of the dead sidled up to him and said, ‘I shouldn’t bid for that if I were you, it’s only Rosa Corder’s.’”
And Holmes began to guffaw again, quite helplessly.
I could not see that such a maelstrom of dishonesty and extortion was an occasion for quite so much merriment. But just then there was a tap at the sitting-room door, soon after nine o’clock, and Mrs Hudson’s “Buttons” appeared with a telegram envelope in his hand.
“Wire for Mr Lestrade, gentlemen. No reply expected.”
He proffered it to the Scotland Yard man and withdrew. We waited while Lestrade read it. Whatever the message, it seemed to restore confidence in the inspector, who had just had the wind taken out of his sails, so to speak. He looked up.
“Well, doctor! Well, Mr Holmes! Here’s one for you. You can believe what you like about Mr Howell. Here’s a message that came in less than an hour ago from a duty constable at the Home Hospital in Fitzroy Square.”
There was a twinkle in Holmes’s eye as he inquired.
“Are you quite sure, that the wire has not been sent to Scotland Yard by Howell himself, masquerading as the duty constable? He is more than capable of that!”
Lestrade glared at him-the only time I had ever seen such a thing-and continued to read.
“In Mr Howell’s greatcoat pocket they found a book, Sonnets by Mrs Elizabeth Barrett Browning. An old copy, by the look of it. Nothing else of value on him. Also, the last words that the poor fellow was able to articulate, several times over, were ‘Leaves of grass.’”
And so the sonnets came into the case, though as yet they meant nothing to me. But what had Howell to do with Walt Whitman?
“Leaves of Grass, by Mr Whitman,” I said quickly, for having read and greatly admired the new American poet I recognised the title of his work. “Does the message say whether Howell is now alive or dead?”
Before Lestrade could reply, Holmes cut in.
“Whatever the answer, in the case of Augustus Howell, I fear it is very little to be depended upon.”
And he chuckled again.
Lestrade was mollified by another glass of single malt and a cigar. That should have been end of the matter. A fortnight later, however, we received two visitors of a very different type. A few days previously Holmes had remarked to me that a Mr and Mrs Browning were coming to consult him at 2.30pm on 8 May over a matter of some delicacy, which they had not detailed in advance. I gathered that they were the son and daughter-in-law of the two great poets of that name.
The famous Robert Browning had died only the year before but the equally famous Mrs Elizabeth Barrett Browning had been dead for almost thirty years. The present visit of their descendants to us might seem a coincidence, after the discovery of the Sonnets in Howell’s pocket. Sherlock Holmes, however, was not a great believer in the law of coincidence. He lived in a world of cause and effect.
Mrs Hudson knocked on the door at the appointed hour and announced with a look of self-conscious formality,
“Mr Robert Wiedemann Penini Browning and Mrs Fannie Cornforth Browning.”
I recognised, as any reader of the newspapers might, the distinctive names of Robert Browning’s son. He was universally known as “Pen” Browning, an easy-going young man who had taken up painting and sculpture, rather than poetry. I found him slighter in build than I would have expected. At thirty, he had almost the look of a man who might not yet be fully grown. His face was still youthfully round, though with full dark whiskers and thinning hair. His was such a contrast to the bold head and profile of his late father. Fannie Cornforth Browning appeared several years his junior. She was a fine and handsome woman, rather plump and with the blue eyes and red hair of a Titian painting. She had been, as I understood from the newspapers, American by birth and English by upbringing.
When the introductions were over and the Brownings were seated, it was Pen Browning, if I may so call him, who took the initiative.
“Mr Holmes-Dr Watson-my wife and I have lately had occasion to approach Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard. He can do little for us but he has suggested that we should consult you. It is a complicated and delicate matter. I fear that it concerns the death of a man called Augustus Howell, whose manipulation of the truth and downright chicanery had begun to threaten my parents’ reputation and our own peace of mind.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” said Holmes deferentially-he had put on his black frock coat for the occasion-“I know of the man Howell, of course, and I know of his reported death. I also know from Mr Lestrade that a copy of your mother’s poems was found with his body.”
Pen Browning nodded.
“He had been a complete stranger to me until I received a note from him. He suggested that he was prepared to sell the volume of poems to me-and a good deal else concerning my parents-for a very considerable sum of money. Indeed, I was to have met him on the following day. He said he was an agent of some kind and authorised to do so. He claimed that he had private papers in his possession, confidential papers emanating from my parents, which he was commissioned to put into a public auction on behalf of their owner. The volume of Sonnets itself was an extremely rare private edition of 1847, three years before general publication. It was his approach which brought me to London last month. You may perhaps know that Mrs Browning and I live most of the year in Venice.”
“Indeed,” said Holmes, “the Palazzo Rezzonico on the Grand Canal, I believe?”
“Correct. My father bought it and bequeathed it to me. You may also know something of the late Jeffrey Aspern’s life in Venice?”
Holmes looked a little surprised.
“Who does not know of Jeffery Aspern? A precursor of Edgar Allan Poe, who left Virginia in 1818 and lived so much of his life in Europe. The friend of Byron and, I believe, briefly of Shelley during their last years in Italy. Does not Edward Trelawny in his Recollections have something to say about their meetings in Venice and Ravenna?”
“And still more in his private papers.”
“Most interesting,” said Holmes enthusiastically, “I cannot pretend to be a literary critic but I have always considered that Aspern’s early promise remained unfulfilled. However, his ‘Juanita’ lyrics will live as long as poetry is read. His dates, if I remember correctly, were 1788 to 1863. He certainly outlived Lord Byron and his English counterparts. Like William Wordsworth he lasted too long, for a romantic poet, and he worked past his best.”
“You are remarkably well informed, sir.” Pen Browning looked at Holmes and then glanced quickly away again as though coming to the painful part of the matter. “You know that Aspern’s former companion, Juanita Bordereau, died last year as a very old woman?”
“I had read a notice of her death in the papers. She was quite ninety years old, I believe.”
“She became Aspern’s young mistress in 1820. The worse he treated her, the more devoted to him she seemed to become. After his death, twenty-seven years ago, she was joined at the Casa Aspern in Venice by her younger sister, Tina. They lived there until last year, as a pair of elderly spinsters. The house lies on a small canal in a quiet backwater.”
“Indeed,” said Holmes again. His eyes invited Pen Browning to continue.
“Since her sister’s death, Tina Bordereau has left the house empty and returned to America. The estate is a complicated one, for there was no marriage between the poet and his mistress, and no children. Everything is in the care of executors and agents. Yet the Casa Aspern apparently contains treasures of great literary value, as well as secrets capable of creating an insupportable scandal. I am told that in the locked drawers of a Napoleonic escritoire there lies the whole unpublished correspondence of Lord Byron and Aspern.”
The eyes of Sherlock Holmes narrowed in astonishment. Pen Browning continued.
“There are also said to be manuscripts of poems by Byron which have never seen the light of day. I have also been offered by a dealer the chance to purchase the manuscript of an unpublished novel of 1820, supposed to have been bequeathed by Byron to Aspern when his lordship left Venice on his final and fatal voyage to Greece. It is The Venetian Nun: A Gothic Tale, by William Beckford, the so-called “Abbot of Fonthill.” The only known copy to survive, it had been presented by the author to Byron. Goodness knows what more there may be. Worst of all, for me, there are said to be unknown poems and letters of my father’s and of my mother’s. That is what brings me here.”
“Remarkable,” said Holmes tolerantly.
“There are alleged to be letters written by both my parents. These may be rough drafts but they are none the less compromising. They include intimate letters to one another. Also my father’s private letters to close female friends written by him after my mother’s death in 1861. He was very close to Miss Isa Blagden while in Florence, as was my mother, and the attachment continued long after his bereavement. They exchanged letters sometimes every day. The same was true in London during his attachment to Miss Julia Wedgwood, also after my mother’s death. Such women were an intimate part of his life. There was nothing vicious or improper in these friendships-hardly even indiscreet. Yet it is now suggested by the agents that some of these Casa Aspern letters, containing expressions of private affections, are already in the hands of dealers.”
He paused, as if watching us for incredulity. If so, he found none.
“I fear,” said Holmes, “that a letter becomes the property of the person to whom it is addressed, though the right to publish it does not. However, the contents may be made known.”
“Such stories are lies, Mr Holmes, or at the best misinterpretations. How any such papers could have reached Aspern-let alone the Bordereau sisters-I do not know. Domestic dishonesty is unlikely but chicanery may well be the answer. A housemaid may have a follower. In truth, he cares nothing for her but a great deal for access to the house, to documents which he may steal and sell. Something of that sort. As for Jeffrey Aspern, of course my father, and indeed my mother, knew him. I do not think they found him simpatico and I am sure they would not have entrusted such papers to him knowingly. Of Robert Browning’s poetry there is said to be a rejected prologue to The Ring and the Book among the Aspern papers and also dramatic monologues excluded by my father from his great collection of Men and Women in 1855.”
He paused once more.
“Pray continue, Mr Browning!” The impatience had vanished from Holmes’s eyes.
“I doubt if the Bordereau sisters knew the half of what was there. They were not connoisseurs of poetry but, if you will forgive me, money-grubbing harpies! They lived a secluded life after Aspern’s death and I never met them. My father, of course, lived in Italy until 1861 and had certainly known Aspern in his later years. My father also returned to us in Venice for part of each year and died there in December.”
“And you have seen none of the material which is said to lie in Aspern’s escritoire?”
“Not as yet. I was first informed of it by a hint from the notary, Angelo Fiori, who had acted at one time for the Aspern estate. Fortunately his sister is a family friend who nursed my father in his last days. It was through her that her brother communicated with me.”
Holmes glanced at his pipe but forbore to light it in the presence of Fannie Browning.
“Forgive me, Mr Browning, but how would so many private papers of your father’s come to be in this collection unless he gave them to Jeffrey Aspern or the Misses Bordereau? Could a housemaid and her follower account for all that you have described? In any case, surely Aspern himself was dead before most of your father’s letters to female friends, of which you speak, could have come into his hands.”
“Exactly so, Mr Holmes. Perhaps they have simply been stolen by an intruder and sold to the Bordereau sisters. Perhaps they are innocent letters misinterpreted in some way. I am at a loss to say. After Aspern’s death the sisters were notorious as dabblers in innuendo and defamation. Lice on the locks of literature, as Lord Tennyson has it! On one occasion, my father used that very phrase to describe them. He never liked Juanita Bordereau. He thought her meddlesome and troublesome. She was scandalous in her youth and when she became too old to create scandal, she encouraged it in others. That was how he summed her up. For many years she had been a collector of documents and any rare editions which had a whiff of sensationalism. William Beckford and the like. Then it seems her tastes became more depraved. She employed scouts, if I may so call them, to attend the sale rooms or to negotiate privately.”
“But she did not negotiate with you or your father, I take it?”
“She would have known better. However, I have been visited by two of these scavengers since my father’s death, asking me if I would care to buy back certain papers. I sent them about their business. I see now that it was perhaps not wise to do so. And now Juanita Bordereau is dead. Tina Bordereau has shown no interest in the papers nor in Jeffery Aspern, except for the money that could be made. Since the death of her sister she has put the whole business into the hands of agents, whose job it would be to dispose of them at the best price. This is regardless of what damage may be done to the feelings of the living or the reputation of the dead.”
“And, of course, the present agent-or one of them-was Augustus Howell?”
Pen Browning lowered his head and nodded.
“I had come to London in order to negotiate with him but at first he wrote and intimated that I was too late. A good many of the worst items were already in the hands of the auctioneers or the valuers. He explained that he was not empowered by Tina Bordereau to halt their sale. I must buy at public auction.”
“He would not negotiate with you?” “Eventually, he made a concession, as he called it. He would agree to make what he called ‘a special price’ if I would buy the papers ‘sight unseen’ before the auction. In other words, with no idea of what I might be getting. Even that seems impossible now that the wretched man is dead.”
“So he would lead us to believe.”
“And so you see my predicament, Mr Holmes. The matter is in the hands of Tina Bordereau, who is heaven knows where and has no interest but money. Before long these so-called papers will be released to the world.”
Holmes walked across to the window and looked down at the traffic of Baker Street in the spring sunshine. Then he turned back.
“Mr Browning. Before we squander any more of your time or, indeed, your money, I think we must clear the decks a little. You should return to Venice as soon as convenient.”
“We are to travel next Monday,” said Fannie Browning quietly, “subject to your advice.”
“Excellent. The sooner the better. If you wish it, my colleague and I will follow as quickly as we are able. By the end of next week at the latest. As I say, you should return beforehand. At the earliest opportunity we must get sight of these documents.”
“But how?” she exclaimed, “They are scattered among any number of unscrupulous dealers.”
“Madam,” said Holmes coolly. “When a poisonous cobra has embraced you, it is of no use to struggle with its coils, to fight against its fangs or stab it here and there. You must sever its head from its body and the coils will fall away soon enough. The Casa Aspern is the head of this conspiracy. That is where we must strike, before it is too late.”
“I wish it, Mr Holmes,” Pen Browning broke in passionately, “I would have you act to guard my father’s reputation and my mother’s. I have inquired a little after this man Howell since I have been in London. I can find only that he boasted of having dived for treasure lying in the wrecks of sunken galleons and of having been sheikh of an Arab tribe in Morocco. He is a braggart and probably a liar. I do not want my father’s character to lie in the hands of such a man or those who now continue his work.”
“That is commendable indeed,” said Holmes, “I believe this is an occasion when speaking ill of the dead may be permitted. He was a thoroughgoing scoundrel-but an effective one.”
“Then I would have you go to Venice, to the Casa Aspern if you can, Mr Holmes. Destroy that nest of deception and slander. You have detective skills and I have not. Believe me, they are needed.
“All this must be done before someone of Howell’s type succeeds Howell,” Holmes spoke reassuringly, placating the young man. “Who has authority there?”
Pen Browning looked uneasy.
“At present, there is an interregnum. The house is briefly in the hands of the Venetian notary, Fiori, on behalf of Tina Bordereau. She shows no interest in the papers beyond their commercial value. It was only her sister, after all, who had been the poet’s great love. Before some other person intervenes or the auction houses hold their sales, I believe it would be possible to negotiate with the friendly notaio. It might be agreed that you should, on my behalf, examine such of my father’s papers as are said to be in Aspern’s escritoire.”
“And then?” Holmes asked warily.
“Mr Holmes, the love of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett was a great and noble passion, a redemption from sickness and death. It must not be sullied by trash or trade. If I have to pay, I must pay.”
Holmes stared long and thoughtfully. Then he spoke.
“Allow me until noon tomorrow to make the necessary arrangements.”
“Indeed I will, Mr Holmes.”
Pen Browning was on his feet now and so was Sherlock Holmes. Our visitor was shaking my friend’s hand with a warmth beyond anything I had expected of him. It was plain to Mr Browning-as it was to me-that wild horses would not prevent Holmes setting out for Venice as soon as berths could be booked in the wagon-lit of the continental express. There was justice to be done to the memory of a noble man and woman but that was not all. Holmes’s nostrils were twitching to inhale a few molecules of the very same air that Lord Byron and Robert Browning had breathed-and, of course, to fight his now invisible adversary, the late Gussie Howell.
For my own part, I felt subdued by what I had heard. Once we were alone I could not conceal it.
“This is a bad business, Holmes, however we go about it. Once those papers have been scattered over the earth there will be no holding back the scandal. Whatever the truth, the wise world will say that there is no smoke without fire.”
He was brooding over the pages of the evening Globe and now looked up.
“I will repeat for your benefit, Watson, that the man who would kill the serpent must sever its head. That is the one sure way-and it is the one I shall follow.”
I was still not greatly reassured.
It was several days later when our train crossed the long railway bridge from the desolate landscape of Mestre to the enchanted island of Venice in its lagoon. Pen Browning was on the station platform to rescue us from pandemonium, briskly commanding the porters and dismissing the officials of the fever hospital, until our bags were accommodated on a launch and ourselves in his gondola.
We had declined his offer of rooms in the Palazzo Rezzonico, in favour of Danielli’s Hotel. It would be best, as Holmes put it, to remain “independent.” Moreover, Pen Browning was a gifted exponent of the female nude in painting and statuary, which was reputed to have led to domestic disagreements. Fannie Cornforth had been brought up in the strict American Puritan tradition. It would not do, Holmes remarked, to become a party to family quarrels and find ourselves obliged to take sides.
Pen and Fannie Browning had left London three days ahead of us. Since his arrival in Venice, Pen had accomplished almost everything. An inquiry from the Palazzo Rezzonico had been addressed to Signor Angelo Fiori, the notary for the Aspern estate, whose sister Margherita had by great good fortune nursed Robert Browning senior. Fiori cabled at once to Tina Bordereau, informing her that Italian law would require a valuation of the entire Aspern estate before matters could proceed further. He received his instructions within the day. After her sister’s death she had confided to him that she had never been in the least fond of Venice and had long wanted to get away from it. She was even less fond of Jeffery Aspern, though she had never met him. While it was clear that she would do nothing to help us, her attachment to Aspern’s papers remained financial rather than sentimental. Let the estate be valued as soon as possible.
While the gondola rolled side to side in the swell of the Grand Canal created by passing steam launches, we floated between marble palaces and gleams of reflected sunlight. Pen Browning described the latest unproductive negotiation with Tina Bordereau. Angelo Fiori, however, would allow Holmes to see such papers as remained in the Casa Aspern, by appointing him as “assessor” or “valuer” of the questionable material. Miss Bordereau agreed after being warned by Fiori that it would never do for her to sell as genuine what afterwards proved to be fraudulent.
“It’s as well you never had the two sisters to deal with, Mr Holmes,” said Pen Browning, “They’d have led you to your ruin, getting all your money and showing you nothing. They haggled like fishwives. They always tried to combinare, as the Italians call it, to make a special price! When that failed, they would wheedle you like stall-holders. ‘Perhaps we could find some way of treating you better,’ they would say. But you always came out of it worse! As for Aspern, he was one of those fellows at whom such women as Juanita Bordereau flung themselves-and they soon thought that he treated them very badly. I daresay he did.”
By such means we found that we had only Angelo Fiori to deal with. It was now arranged that we should visit the ‘Palazzo Aspern,’ as the dilapidated house was absurdly called by the gondoliers, whenever we wished. A housekeeper would be there to arrange whatever we needed-and, of course, to ensure that we did not steal any of the contents. However, any doubt as to our good characters was soon laid to rest, for Miss Bordereau’s benefit. At our first meeting, Signor Fiori confided to me that he acted on our behalf after receiving a testimonial to our honesty and integrity written at the request of Mr Browning by “Signor Lestrade” of Scotland Yard. The name of that famous institution was our “Open Sesame!”
The warmth of the Venetian spring was tempered by a sea breeze across the lagoon, which stirred the net curtains at the windows. Our evenings were spent eating ices or drinking coffee after dinner at Florian’s in St Mark’s Square. It was agreeable to pass the twilight away among music and chatter under the lamps, to hear smooth footfalls on polished marble, and watch an afterglow of sun touching the low domes and mosaics of the famous basilica.
On our first morning, the gondolier took us into the quiet and shaded domestic waterways, which rather recalled Amsterdam. We came to a clean quiet canal with a narrow footpath running along either bank. The front of the house was of grey and pink stucco, about two hundred years old. A stone balcony ran along its wide facade with pilasters and arches at either end. Holmes pulled at the rusty bell-wire and the summons was answered by a maid in a shawl.
We entered a long, dusty hall and followed our guide up a high stone staircase, passing fine architectural doors in a building that seemed empty and abandoned. There were brown paintings in tarnished frames. Above us the stone shields with armorial bearings still retained vestiges of the paint applied to them centuries ago. The floors were so empty and the walls so bare that it was hard to imagine anything of value in such a place. Harder still to think there could be an answer here to the riddle of Augustus Howell, unless he was alive to supply it after all.
“Surely,” I had said to Holmes in the train, “he may have announced his own death on previous occasions but he never claimed to have been murdered.”
My friend made no reply but continued to read his Baedeker.
Now we were in the upper rooms with a view of rough-tiled roof-tops and the sunlit lagoon in the distance. There was a garden below us, or rather a tangled enclosure whose stone walls hid it from the world. How could anyone, let alone the Bordereau sisters, have lived in this desolate place just a year ago? What squalor it must have been!
Our guide took out a bunch of keys and unlocked the door ahead of us. It opened on to yet another dusty room with straw-bottomed chairs and rush mats on a red-tiled floor. Its window reflected a cooler light from a northern sky. Almost the greater part of the far wall was taken up by a tall escritoire of dull mahogany, larger than many a wardrobe. Its style was that of the First Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte with brass eagles and regal ornaments. This was surely Jeffery Aspern’s famous “secretary,” containing as his famous poem Old and Young describes it, “the arid secrets of a soul’s decay.” Its tiers of locked drawers and the cupboards on either side seemed a suitable receptacle for tales of illicit passions or furtive criminality. On a writing-table, which formed the central part of its design, lay a single key to its drawers and cupboards.
“Please,” said our guide with a wave towards the writing chair, “You will sit and I will be here if you need me. The key will open all.”
I was astonished to hear her speaking in very good English, albeit with an accent.
“I was for some time a translator at the hospital,” she said with a smile, “Angelo Fiori is my cousin. The papers of Jeffery Aspern that were here have nearly been lost twice. The old Miss Bordereau hid them between the mattresses of her bed when she was dying. She called my cousin to add a clause to her will that they were to be buried with her. Perhaps she was a little ashamed of them. It was never done. The young Miss Bordereau burnt a few of them in the kitchen fire on the last night she was here but the rest are in the drawers. There are also the rare books but you will find those in the side-cupboards and on the shelves.”
“Thank you so much, signora,” said Holmes with a gracious half-bow, “You have also met Mr Howell, I believe?”
She smiled but there was a hint of concern in her eyes.
“He was here more than a month ago. He went back to England. I did not see him again.”
“He left no message of any kind?”
“I do not think so.”
She went out without closing the door and we could hear her busying herself in the next room.
Despite the first heat of the Venetian spring, Sherlock Holmes was still dressed in his formal suit. From the waistcoat of this he now drew a powerful lens, laid it on the writing desk and set to work. Using the key, he opened the lower drawers. The first contained nothing but dust and chips of wood. The second yielded a few scraps of paper of the most ordinary kind.
He tried the lowest and deepest of the main drawers. Then, with a muttered syllable of satisfaction, he lifted out a decayed olive green portmanteau, which nonetheless looked as though it had been dusted in the past few months-possibly by Tina Bordereau. Underneath this was a folio correspondence box, cased in leather and stamped in gold with Aspern’s name.
Holmes sprung the two catches and brought out its contents. He also opened the cupboards to either side of the escritoire, revealing shelves lined with volumes that were almost new and, at the worst, only a little worn. I was not surprised that there should be notebooks and folders of papers. What I had not expected was that so much of the treasure would consist of printed books, most of them of comparatively recent date and in multiple copies. It was a little like a publisher’s stockroom. They were still rarities, of course, first printings often inscribed by their authors. I noticed Dante Rossetti’s Verses printed as late as 1881. The bulk of the volumes were the works of John Ruskin, William Morris, Algernon Charles Swinburne as well as Rossetti. There were three rare printings of Robert Browning’s poems. Two were inscribed by the poet to Jeffery Aspern, dating from the 1850s. The third, Gold Hair, published after Aspern’s death, was inscribed to Juanita Bordereau. How much had the author disliked her after all?
Holmes opened the gold-stamped and leather-bound correspondence box. Here, if our information was correct, lay Jeffery Aspern’s letters from Lord Byron, Robert Browning, William Beckford, as well as other literary treasures. The papers had been neatly arranged in portfolios and I would have said this had been done recently, for the covers appeared much newer than their contents. Those papers that I could see looked tarnished by time but the black ink was far less “rusty” than I had expected.
Holmes stood up, walked to the window and held a paper to the north light.
“I believe that the usual iron-gall ink of the 1820s has been adulterated by indigo to make the script darker. So far as that goes, what we have appears genuine and is not contradicted by any date in the watermark.
“What is the writing?”
“A corrected page from the manuscript of Canto 6 of Don Juan. John Pierpont Morgan would pay a small fortune to add the complete work to his library, in the author’s own manuscript. According to the list of papers it is in Byron’s own hand. Notice the date at the top, “1822.” The formation of the first ‘2’ makes it look almost like “1892,” does it not?
“Very like.”
“A forger would have taken care to make both figures ‘2’ look alike. None of us signs a name or writes a line in the same way twice. A perfect forgery may be too consistent, too perfect, as if it has been drawn rather than written. Here you will see in the first line Byron has written, ”There is a Tide…” The letter T in both cases has a loop at either end of its cross-piece. Each letter in the line has a gap before the next one. That is almost too consistent, a cause for suspicion. By the fourth line, however, the poet’s pen is flowing freely, rather than hesitating. Every T is joined to the following letter, lacking the loops but sprouting a confidant tail.”
“And that is all?”
“Far from it, old fellow. However, Lord Byron is the most forged of all the English poets. The appetite for new discoveries is insatiable. In 1872, Schultess-Young foisted on the world two sets of Byron letters said to have belonged to his aunts. They were obvious impostures and the manuscripts were not available for inspection. Nineteen others in his book were examined in manuscript and proved to be the work of De Gibler, who called himself Major Byron and claimed to be the poet’s natural son. He had been exposed long before because the paper on which the letters were written was watermarked ten years after the writer’s death!”
Holmes was in his element among so much high-class dishonesty. He sat down at the writing table and adjusted the range of the magnifying lens.
“When a manuscript is examined closely, it is possible to see minute breaks in the line, where the writer has lifted pen from paper. In a genuine copy, as here, there are relatively few places where the pen has been lifted. A forger of modest talents will stop more often, in order to compare his copying with the original. There may also be signs of counterfeiting, when a letter in a word has been patched, as they call it, to make it a more accurate imitation, leaving a feathery appearance.”
“And by such clues forgery is detected?”
“Among many others. A true craftsman, of course, will know what I am looking for and will take care to provide me with it. Indeed, a counterfeiter who practices an author’s script for long enough can produce a flowing imitation. In that case we must use other methods of detection. Perhaps the date of ink or paper, sometimes the provenance of the work. I think we may assume that this is a genuine page of Byron’s manuscript.”
He examined a letter of some kind and then chuckled as he quoted two lines of Don Juan.
‘This note was written upon gilt-edged paper,
With a neat little crow quill, slight and new!’
We need have no doubt about these two pages. They have been known as a forgery for almost eighty years.”
I looked over his shoulder at the narrow page of script, the paper yellowed and the ink rusty. I read the first words, which looked mighty like Byron’s hand that had written Don Juan. “Once More, My Dearest…”
Holmes smiled.
“It poses as a letter from Byron to Lady Caroline Lamb. Unfortunately it was forged by Lady Caroline Lamb herself in 1813 as a means of stealing his portrait. The story is well known. She was insane with love of him, the man whom she called mad, bad and dangerous to know! She forged this letter in his handwriting, authorising her to go to his publisher John Murray and demand the famous Newstead miniature of the poet. She got the portrait and he got her letter back from Murray.”
Under Lady Lamb’s copy of his signature, the poet had written, “This letter was forged in my name by Lady Caroline Lamb,” and he had signed the postscript.
“The two Byron signatures are very much alike.”
“Lady Lamb might have made a competent forger in time. However, look at the letter ‘t’ again. In Byron’s hand the cross-stroke extends over the next two letters. She extends it still further. It is a fatal mistake, when forging, to exaggerate such foibles. She also varies her style twice by adding a strong up-stroke before the main down-stroke of the ’t.’ That is a grave error. A writer who makes a ‘t’ with a strong down-stroke may embellish it but will hardly precede it with a strong up-stroke. The up-strokes of normal script are light, whereas the downstrokes are strong. Where the pressure of a nib is of uniform strength throughout, as it is here, you may suspect facsimile copying or forgery. In short, however like the two scripts may appear to be, Lady Caroline Lamb’s effort raises too many questions to be acceptable.”
“I low did such a document come into Jeffery Aspern’s hands?”
“It must be from Byron. No doubt on the occasion, a few days before his death, when he bequeathed such treasures to his friends before leaving Venice for Greece.”
Despite Aspern’s reputation as the recipient of a rich horde of Byron’s correspondence, a good many documents in the leather box were questionable. There was a further forgery, if one can call printed material by that name, again the work of Lady Caroline Lamb. It had been published in 1819, purporting to be a new canto of the poet’s Don Juan. Holmes read the opening line.
“‘I’m sick of fame-I’m gorged with it-so full…’ Heaven preserve us, Watson! It does not even sound like Byron!”
Then he paused. He had put aside this pastiche and was looking at a sheaf of papers that were clipped unevenly together. His face was grave and yet his features were tense with excitement.
“And here, I believe, is the legend of Lord Byron in the United States! For a good many years before going to fight for Greece against the Turks, it was said that he had determined to make a life for himself as Europe’s ambassador to the New World. Who better than an American poet like Jeffery Aspern to receive his confession?”
He ran his eyes down a sheet of wizened paper, its ink once again rusted by time. Then he passed it to me. I read it with astonishment and a chill in the spine at the thought that I was holding a sheet of paper which the greatest of the romantics once held and that I must be one of only three or four people to read these lines since Jeffrey Aspem had received them from Byron all those years ago.
Ravenna, April 25, 1821
My dear Aspern,
So you and Murray would have me write a modern epic! You know my opinion of that second-hand school of poetry. But what would you say to my hero’s visit to your own country? “Don Juan in the New World ”? When anything occurs in it to betray my ignorance of your native Virginia, pray revenge yourself upon the manuscript as freely as you like. If you can observe that condition, let our man take a turn in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson.
Upon the Virgin land is Juan set
A place of beauteous slaves and tropic morals.
(I don’t much wonder that Bob Southey funked it
Or that his women had a score of quarrels.)
Juan lay fast in Venus’ toils, whose jet
And agile limbs wore little else but corals.
Pillowed he lay, on skin as hot as Hades,
Treasured by those who sported like true ladies.
Sing, Muse, of Coleridge and the Susquehanna,
(I won’t sing Southey since he came in first).
Who knows, from Philadelphia to Savannah,
Which of Juan’s conquests would have pleased ‘em worst?
Both Senate’s wives and maiden queen Susannah
Juan’s nocturnal catalogue rehearsed.
O Lords of Golden Horn, stand ye in wonder
To see our hero steal your Sultan’s thunder!
Could not you and I contrive to meet this summer?
Could you not take a run here with Miss B.-or alone if
need be?
Yours ever & truly,
Byron.
I read it again and stood in disbelief. If this meant what it said, the portmanteau in front of us contained an “American epic,” written by Byron while still in Venice but corrected by Jeffery Aspern to give it the authenticity of Virginia and Georgia. Who could forge such a thing? Not Augustus Howell-but Aspern himself!
But there was nothing in the document, at first glance, to suggest that its substance was counterfeit. The writing and the style were surely Byron‘s-as surely as Lady Lamb’s were not. The paper appeared identical to other documents of that age which are known to be genuine. The black ink had “rusted.” Perhaps most important of all, two stanzas of Byron’s poem were embedded in a letter to Jeffery Aspern, among whose correspondence they had been found. This surely established their provenance beyond question. The style was Byron’s, if anything ever was.
If all these facts were so might not the sheaf of papers, in the portfolio which Holmes was examining, contain one of the great undiscovered literary treasures of our time? Even while Byron led his amorous hero through the gallantries of Seville and Cadiz or the harems of Turkey in Don Juan, his eyes were already raised to the distant prospect of Washington and the Delaware.
I looked at Holmes.
“Can it be true?”
“I should not think so for one minute.”
I was utterly deflated. I felt what the forger’s dupe always feels at first. With all my heart I wanted these lines to be Byron’s own. A cold douche of scepticism was profoundly unwelcome. I had expected my friend’s excitement to turn to enthusiasm. Too late, I saw that his exhilaration was not that of literary discovery but of unmasking a villain. I continued to protest.
“It is entirely convincing.”
“Augustus Howell has a peculiar gift of being entirely convincing. He owes his success to it. Because he has planted this among Aspern’s correspondence from Byron, it will carry all the more conviction in the salerooms of London or New York.”
“How much is in that collection of papers?”
“Enough to kindle a good bonfire.”
My surprise turned to dismay.
“The paper is of the right date-1822?”
“Almost certainly.”
“The ink has rusted over the years?”
“It would appear that it has.”
“It is Byron’s writing.”
“Deceptively like.”
“The handwriting, the ink and the paper are those of seventy years ago. That cannot be Howell. He was not alive seventy years ago.”
“Precisely. Therefore it is a forgery.”
With that he took the letter from my hand and walked to the window again. Holding the page of manuscript horizontally, he tilted it a little this way and that, catching the light on its back and examining the surface with his glass. I felt a certain annoyance at such self-confidence.
I could not tell what he had discovered by scrutinising the surface of the paper. However, he now put it down abruptly, turned to the escritoire and began to pull every drawer clear of its slot. I thought we had already emptied the furniture of all that might be of interest. Now he was looking for scraps. He searched the recesses, as if for some secret compartment. He turned each drawer upside down and shook it, scattering the last fragments of paper, dust and wood-chippings on to the table. Not satisfied with this, he continued to rummage in each of the cavities where the drawers had been. At last he gave a sigh of satisfaction and retrieved a small slip of paper. I could see quite easily what he had found-a receipt from a London ironmonger.
“It behoves us, Watson, to become snappers-up of unconsidered trifles.”
The receipt was stamped by Kinglake & Son, High Holborn, for three shillings and eight pence. Its date was “12 November 1888.” Why should anyone keep a common receipt of this kind for such a length of time and in such apparent secrecy as this? Perhaps, after all, it had not been hidden but had merely fallen from the back of the drawer and been lost behind it. Only Augustus Howell could tell us and he must be presumed dead. Then I saw that there was writing on the back of the receipt.
“1 oz. galls, 1 oz. gum arabick, 1 oz. iron sulphate to oxidise, 6 cloves, 60 grains indigo. Add 30oz. boiling water/stand 12 hours.”
“How soon can we make sense of this?”
“I have already done so. It is a recipe for making iron-gall ink which, I imagine, no one has bothered to do for many years. Logwood and then blue-black replaced it long ago. When I have a reply to my wire, sent to the Vacuum Cleaner Company in St Pancras, we may have a complete explanation.”
“But you have surely not sent such a wire?” “It is remiss of me,” he said impatiently, “I should have known how this would turn out. Trickery-and shoddy trickery into the bargain! We will go to Thomas Cook the courier at once and despatch a cable. Meantime, be good enough to look at the so-called poem of Lord Byron you were reading. Hold it at the window. Let the light fall upon the back of the paper at an angle and tell me what indentations you can make out.”
I stood in the window and held it at various angles, studying it through the magnifying lens.
“It is a little creased here and there, so it should be after seventy years!”
“Look for a pattern.”
“There is a very slight pattern impressed on it.”
“Indeed there is.”
“It appears to be the impression of a grid, a series of horizontal and vertical lines.”
“They suggest, do they not, that the paper has rested for some time on top of such a grid? And that means nothing to you?”
“I can’t say that it does.”
“Then the sooner we reach Messrs Cook, the sooner we shall have an answer.”
By that evening we had a reply from St Pancras. The so-called Vacuum Cleaner Company had been a novelty a year or two earlier with its new carpet-cleaning device, though the device itself was not new. Holmes, with his insufferable fund of arcane knowledge, assured me that it had been patented in America as early as 1869. The device had originally required two servants to operate it. One worked a pair of bellows to create a vacuum and the other held a long nozzle which sucked up dust.
My friend, intrigued as always by such eccentricities, had quoted to me an article on the subject in the Hardwareman of the previous May. This promised a cleaner operated by a motor instead of bellows. Though I had heard these “vacuum” contraptions spoken of, I had never seen one of them.
As we sat with our coffee at one of Florian’s tables in St Mark’s Square, Holmes offered his explanation.
“The indentations which you observed, Watson, were those created by the paper lying on a wire mesh.”
“Very likely. What has that to do with a vacuum cleaner?”
“To acquire so clear a pattern, the back of the paper must have been supported for some considerable time on a wire screen, held in place by clips or pegs. In addition, the gentle application of a vacuum tube would suck it back against the mesh, for as long was as necessary. Soft paper, such as this, was always made of rags and takes the impression of metal very easily.”
“But that would not alter the apparent age of the paper, surely.”
“Certainly not. What it would alter is the apparent age of the ink.”
“By the use of a vacuum?”
“Cast your mind back to the formula on the ironmonger’s receipt,” said Holmes patiently. It is a prescription for the manufacture of a small amount of iron-gall ink, used by Jeffrey Aspern, Lord Byron and their contemporaries in the 1820s. It was long ago superseded. Therefore, ask yourself why anyone should want iron-gall ink in November 1888.”
“You did not need to send a wire to a vacuum cleaner manufacture in London to learn about black iron-gall ink!”
He looked surprised.
“My dear fellow, of course not. A pair of bellows may produce a vacuum without the assistance of a cleaning device, though with more effort. The wire was merely sent to inquire whether these benefactors of man and womankind had recently supplied one of their excellent machines to Mr Howell of 94 Southampton Row, London West Central.”
“And the answer?”
“They had not.”
“Then you were wrong!”
“Not entirely. They had supplied a machine to that address. However, the customer gave his-or her-name as Mr Aspern.”
He snapped his fingers for the waiter and ordered more coffee.
“Black iron-gall ink sinks very slowly into such paper as this. As it does so, it goes rusty by reason of oxidation. If it remains black then it cannot be of any great antiquity.”
“As any schoolboy might deduce.”
“One moment, if you please! The purpose of a vacuum applied to the back of soft rag paper, long and gently while the ink is still damp, is to draw the fluid more deeply and quickly into the paper, to accelerate the ageing process. All things considered, I believe we may conclude that Byron never intended Don Juan to follow in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson. However, I think we have followed those of the Bordereau sisters and their forger very closely indeed.”
On the following morning Holmes received a note, or rather a press cutting, from Lestrade. Without comment, our Scotland Yard man had forwarded a paragraph cut from the previous Thursday’s edition of the Winning Post and Sportsman’s Weekly, published for racing men by Robert Standish Siever in Pall Mall.
We are informed that the smartest mover in the village, ‘Gussie’ Howell of Southampton Row, has gone to his reward. His mortal remains were interred on Wednesday at Brompton Cemetery, attended by his creditors and the belles of Piccadilly in garters of the friskiest black silk. His elegy by the bard ‘ACS’ is currently circulating among the cognoscenti and reads as follows.
The foulest soul that lives stinks here no more,
The stench of hell is fouler than before.
A toast to his memory will be drunk by the swell mob of Romano’s in the St Leger Bar on Friday at 6pm.
“Truly dead this time,” I said.
“A pity,” said Holmes coldly, “I might have obliged him to be useful to us. After that he could have died as often and as soon as he liked.”
It was an hour or so later that we came across a final batch of papers. The letters bore dates between 1845 and 1855. There were also a number of poems, written in manuscript on octavo sheets of paper. I picked up one of these, covered in a neat and purposeful hand, devoid of the loops and curlicues of Lord Byron. It was a speech-or rather a dramatic monologue. I soon gathered that it was supposed to be spoken by the fanatic reformer Savonarola, his adieu to the council of Florence which had condemned him to be burnt.
Savonarola to the Signoria
24 May 1498
I drink the cup, returning thanks.
(The rack that turns one cripple in an hour
Draws a man’s throat to nothing with the pain.)
So let them hear me first and last,
The Florentines that keep death’s holiday…
“Robert Browning!” I said excitedly, “It can only be he. I am no expert but I would recognise the style anywhere as being his! This is surely the poem, or one of them, that was discarded from Men and Women before publication of the book in 1855.
“You are of course quite right, friend Watson,” he said rather languidly.
“I am right that we have found Browning’s lost poem?”
“No! That you are no expert.”
I was considerably put out by this and continued to read a few lines of the condemned man’s speech, which made me all the more hopeful.
Ah, sirs, if God might show some sign,
The very least, to be God’s own,
The certainty of bliss with hell beneath,
What man stands here who’d not endure my flame?
Or buy my place in pain with all he hath?
But God being not, not in that sense, I say,
Let this unworthy flesh His proxy stand…
“The tone and the style…”
“Confound the tone and the style! Any mountebank could work those up.”
Holmes was now scrutinising the neat and level lines of verse through his glass.
“Very well,” I insisted, “What of the penmanship?”
“Plausible,” he said grudgingly. “This is the work of an expert who has studied and practised the author’s writing until he can produce it flowingly. It has been written with speed to make it convincing. See how the pen has just joined the last letter of one word with the first of the next. See here, the slight connecting stroke of ‘throat’ and ‘to,’ then here again with ‘of’ and ‘bliss’. Such tricks indicate skilled counterfeiting, where the pen seems to be in motion almost before it touches the paper.”
“Precisely as it would do in a genuine document.”
“It is a forgery. You may depend upon that.”
“What of the ink?”
“It would not be iron-gall, of course, this is merely blue-black made with indigo and that alters far less.”
“Then ink and penmanship appear to stand examination?”
“One moment.”
He began to check through a bundle of these octavo manuscripts and then set several of them aside. The pages were of a size usual in correspondence. They were far less yellowed than the Byron samples.
I noticed several rough drafts of letters, the hand identical to Savonarola but with crossing out and insertion. I saw a first draft of a letter from Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett. It came from their courtship in 1846, while she lay a prisoner and an invalid in her father’s house. I cannot betray the secrets of that correspondence, when letters passed between them every day. I will just say that it was full of reverence for his “Dearest Ba,” as she signed herself in replies that called down heaven’s blessings upon him.
It was monstrous to think that such intimate memorials of their devotion were destined to pass under the auctioneer’s hammer, merely to gratify the greed and curiosity of the public. Who knows what had already been hoarded in sale-rooms across the world in anticipation of this? Holmes turned to me.
“I think we must have young Mr Browning here. I shall have him sent for.”
He went to inform our guardian, Angelo Fiori’s cousin, and gave instructions for Pen Browning’s immediate attendance. While we were waiting for him, Holmes took from beside him a neat black attaché case, no more than eighteen inches by ten. He unclipped it and took out the polished steel components of Monsieur Nachet’s Combined Simple and Compound Microscope. This was the most powerful instrument of its kind. Yet it could be dismantled or assembled in a few seconds thanks to a milled head on its tubular stem, by which the body of the microscope might later be detached and the dismembered instrument packed away neatly in its case.
From his bag, he also retrieved a metal right-angle set-square. I cannot count the number of times I had witnessed the scene which followed, usually at the work-table in Baker Street. Holmes, tall and gaunt, sat with his long back curved, gazing into the mysterious world of the powerful microscopic lens. One by one, he took the papers he had selected, all of them adorned by the strong neat lines of Robert Browning’s script. After scrutiny, he set each page down carefully with its lower left-hand corner in the angle of his set-square. At first he frowned and then his face cleared. When he had examined the last of them, he straightened up and turned in his chair.
“I believe we have the rascal, Watson! Empty every cupboard. Collect every book from every shelf. I believe they will tell us whatever else we need to know.”
I began to remove books by the armful and stacked them on the bare table. As I did so. Holmes took them one by one, trying each of his chosen documents against the blank fly-leaves of the volumes. Or rather, he tried them in many cases where the fly-leaf would have been-had it not been cut out! Someone had used the blank leaves as writing-paper-but might not that have been Robert Browning? Presently, Holmes put the manuscripts aside and subjected the books themselves to the lens. Each was opened and exposed to its powerful scrutiny.
He did not choose a particular page but opened each volume at random. I noticed the earliest printing of Lord Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur in an edition of 1842, Mrs Browning’s Sonnets of 1847 and her Runaway Slave of 1849, Robert Browning’s Cleon and The Statue and the Bust both published in 1855, as well as Sir Galahad by William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Sister Helen, both having been issued in 1857. He looked closely at the first few but dismissed the rest with hardly a glance.
It was while Holmes was still examining this collection of rare editions, with the exclamations of a man who has been proved right after all, that Pen Browning arrived alone. He looked with some surprise at the tubular steel of Monsieur Nachet’s compound microscope. Holmes swung round but without getting up.
“Mr Browning! Pray be seated!” He indicated one of the straw-bottomed chairs. “First I will tell you what you already know. You and your parents’ reputations have been in great danger, since their secrets and confidences have somehow been distributed to the auction houses of the world. I believe we may now say that the danger of blackmail or embarrassment is past.”
For the first time in our acquaintance, the young man smiled.
“I am truly your debtor, Mr Holmes, if that is so.”
“I have no doubt that it is. First, however, you must indulge me by answering a few questions.”
“I will gladly do that.”
“Very good. You remember nothing of your mother’s “Reading Sonnets” of 1847 because the edition would have been issued long before you were born.”
“I know that my father had doubts about publishing the poems at all, even after they had been given to the world in 1850. He said to me several times that people should not wear their hearts upon their sleeves for daws to peck at. He said it again when it was suggested that his letters to my mother during their courtship-and hers to him-should be published after his death.”
“Very interesting. Now I must ask you one question that is most important. I beg that you will consider carefully before you answer.”
“Indeed I will.”
“When your father made a fair copy of a poem, and while the ink was still wet, did he use a sand-box to dry the ink in the old fashioned method? Or did he use blotting-paper as many people have done for the past thirty or forty years?”
Pen Browning looked surprised but the answer came readily enough.
“Neither. My grandfather had held a post in the Bank of England and had used a brass sand-box, shaking fine sand on to the ink and then shaking it off again. In Florence, we still had the brass box. I played with it as a child. It was never used otherwise.”
“And blotting-paper?”
“When I was a little boy I sat with my father while he made fair copies of his poems. He never used blotting-paper, for fear that it would cause a smudge and that he must begin again. I do not recall that he ever possessed any. Indeed, he said that a poet must be like a medieval scribe and set out his pages in the sun to dry. That was easily done in Italy.”
Holmes handed him the manuscript of Savonarola.
“Would you look at that, please. It is dated 1855. Is it your father’s?”
“It appears like his writing. I do not know the poem. It may well be his.”
“Would you look at the last lines and tell me what you see?”
“Nothing. Unless that they are dimmer than the rest. He would not have allowed that in a fair copy.”
“Would he not?”
“The appearance of a poem was a work of art to him, like a painting. He was very particular about the look of it.”
“But the person who wrote this was not particular, was he? Moreover your father did not use blotting-paper, as you say. This page was written out complete and then blotted. The upper lines of ink had dried and darkened progressively by then. The later lines were still wet and the ink was drawn away, leaving them dimmer.”
“Is that all?”
“No, Mr Browning, it is not nearly all. Under microscopic examination, it is possible to see that the fainter letters are also feathered in their outline from the pressure of being blotted. There is even a microscopic wisp of what appears to be white blotting paper.”
Pen Browning’s face clouded with unease.
“I have told you what I remember, Mr Holmes, but no one can swear that my father may not have used blotting-paper on one particular occasion. Perhaps this was not a fair copy.”
“Perhaps it was not, Mr Browning, but it was blotted and dated 1855. Curious, is it not, that blotting-paper was not manufactured commercially until 1857 and only then in the United States? Moreover, until 1860 it was made of pink rag and only after that from white.”
“And is that all?”
“It is not,” said Holmes a little impatiently, “The pages of the poem, like most of the manuscript copies on this table, are not quite square. Take my set-square and try to make a right angle at the bottom left corner. You will see that there is a slant to many of them, rather than a straight line, and that many others are a little too narrow for octavo. It is often difficult to cut straight at the beginning when one cuts a blank fly-leaf from a book.”
Pen Browning’s mild face looked up uncomprehendingly.
“I do not understand, Mr Holmes.”
“I daresay not. These pages are the fly-leaves which have been cut from books on this table, perhaps six months ago. During the time you have been on your way I have matched most of them with the stubs left in the books from which they were cut. Our forger had imagined he would return here with ample time to cover his traces. Mortality has caught him out.”
“Why would my father, or anyone else, want to write a poem in 1855 on a fly-leaf cut from…”
“Cut from his poem Cleon printed in that year?”
“Yes.”
“He did not do so. The book itself is a forgery. Like the rest of these volumes and the inscriptions within them.”
I interrupted at this point.
“I think you had better explain that, Holmes. How can a book be a forgery? Cleon is one of Robert Browning’s outstanding poems and it is included in Men and Women.”
“More precisely then,” said Sherlock Holmes, “Whatever it may claim on its title-page, this copy of Cleon was not printed in 1855, nor in 1865 nor in 1875-nor probably even in 1885. It would have been a physical impossibility. Would you care to make use of the microscope?”
My friend unceremoniously tore a page from the “1855” copy of Cleon. He positioned it on the stage of the microscope and adjusted the lens. Then he made way for the young man to sit down at the table.
“Ignore the printing, if you can, Mr Browning. Look at the paper itself. What do you see?”
“Nothing, except that it is magnified and therefore appears more speckled than paper normally is.”
“Will you please concentrate on the pale yellow specks. Some of these you can ignore for the moment. One or two, however, will show what appear to be rather like fine hairs. Do you see them?”
“Yes,” said the young man uncertainly and then, more confidently, “Yes, I do.”
“Leaves of grass,” said Holmes magisterially, “The words used by Augustus Howell as he lay dying, whether or not his throat was cut.”
“The poems of Walt Whitman!” I said at once.
“I think you may take it, Watson, that this has nothing to do with Mr Whitman. It has everything to do with esparto grass, of which paper-makers in England nowadays use a great deal. I choose the word ‘nowadays’ advisedly. Until 1861, paper in England always consisted of rags. The cotton shortage caused by the American Civil War made this impossible. Other ingredients were then substituted.”
“In other words…”
“In other words,” said Holmes finally, “the Sonnets printed in 1847 at Reading-as well as the 1855 copy of Cleon-and the manuscript of Savonarola dated 1855-all of them are on paper not manufactured until Thomas Routledge of Eynsham Mills near Oxford first used esparto grass in 1861. Indeed, in my view the true reason that your father could not have been the author of Savonarola is that he was already dead when it was written. The same applies to the so-called rough drafts of his letters to your mother. By trickery or dishonesty, something of the genuine letters reached a forger who has built most shamelessly on that in an attempt to enrich himself.”
There was silence in the tiled room with the bright sun outside and the quiet splash of a gondolier’s oar in the shady waters of the canal. Pen Browning looked cautiously at Holmes.
“Let me have this clearly, sir, you are talking of…”
“Fraud,” said Holmes exuberantly, “on an outrageous and preposterous scale. Indeed, though esparto grass had been available since 1861, I would suggest that this is a very recent fraud, committed within the past few months. More specifically, those who committed it could only do so in safety once your father was dead.”
“But you talked of 1861, Mr Holmes, almost thirty years ago. My father lived until last December.”
“Very well,” said Holmes patiently, “If you will look through the microscope again, you may be able to see similar specks in the paper. However, they lack the fine hairs of the esparto leaves. These other specks are traces of chemical wood. During its manufacture, this sheet of paper with its date of 1855 has passed through a mill where it was in contact with such pulp. However, the first use in England of chemical wood in paper for printing was in 1873. In the form we have it here, it was unknown to us until about five years ago. Taking all the evidence, including the likelihood that had your father still been alive he would have denounced the poem about Savonarola as a fraud, the date of this manuscript is almost certainly not six months ago.”
“And the letters, Mr Holmes?”
“They are written on the same paper. The forger-or impostor in the case of the letters-was prepared to take a chance. Having acquired forged copies of these books which had been accepted as genuine in their dates, he thought himself safe in cutting out fly-leaves on which to compose forged documents.”
“Can you be certain that so many of these books are forgeries?”
Holmes sighed.
“I will tell you what I am certain of, Mr Browning. The rare 1847 edition of your mother’s Sonnets contains traces of chemical wood and, on that evidence, must have been printed more than thirty years later. Her poem The Runaway Slave, in what purports to be a first edition of 1849, contains a modern form of the letters ‘f’ and ‘j’ cast as type for the printer Richard Clay in 1880 and never used before then.”
Pen Browning looked dumbfounded, there was no other word for it.
“It is a conspiracy, Mr Holmes! Nothing less.”
Holmes brushed this aside.
“Among the other rare editions, the paper used for the so-called first edition of Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur in 1842 has the 1880 type as well as esparto grass and chemical wood. The same is true of Mr Swinburne’s Dolores which purports to be a first rare printing of 1867. There are multiple copies of all the volumes to be found on these shelves and in these cupboards, ready to be slipped into book auctions. A small fortune if they could be sold as genuine to J. P. Morgan and his rivals. However, Lord Tennyson and Mr Swinburne are still alive, therefore they must wait a little. Your parents were, for the forgers, conveniently dead-as indeed was Lord Byron. Even if a manuscript forgery was skilful enough, it was important that whoever was supposed to have written it was no longer alive to deny the claim. Meantime, such treasures of Byron and Beckford, of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, would make a fortune for the criminal. This, believe me, was only a beginning.”
“And Mr Howell?”
“We are advised by that estimable weekly paper The Winning Post and Sportsman’s Weekly that he has indeed been gathered to his fathers.”
“With his throat cut?”
“I should take the liberty of doubting that. I think it more likely that when he was taken into the Home Hospital in Fitzroy Square-with pneumonia shall we say?-he seized the chance of putting about a story that would deter his creditors once and for all. Unfortunately for him and, I imagine, rather to his own surprise he then succumbed in reality to this pneumonia. I rather think he is now beyond justice of the sort administered by judges of the Central Criminal Court.”
“It was not revenge of some kind?” I asked,
Holmes shook his head.
“As for the coin wedged between his teeth, you may forget the underworld of Naples. More probably, the loyal fingers of Rosa Corder or some other classically-minded acquaintance placed it there to pay Charon the ferryman for the crossing of the Styx into Hades.”
“And the cutting of the throat was an incision in the trachea to the bronchial tubes to assist his breathing?” I asked sceptically.
“It would not be unknown.”
Pen Browning interrupted.
“What of the volume of Sonnets in his pocket?”
“I believe that was there,” said Holmes quietly, “However great Howell’s avarice, it was mixed with a very large dash of vanity. Hence the stories of having dived for treasure on a sunken galleon, having been sheikh of a Moroccan tribe, and indeed of being attaché at the Portuguese embassy in Rome. Perhaps he knew that his last moment had come and he certainly knew that those who had attended him would have found the ‘1847’ Sonnets in his pocket.”
“That would convict him of nothing.”
“There is a certain type, Mr Browning, whose greatest pleasure is in boasting of his tricks. He is like the murderer who taunts the police with ‘Catch me if you can.’ He puts his neck in the noose and snatches it out again.”
“And Howell?”
“‘Leaves of grass,’ which I can well believe were his last words, was not a reference to Mr Whitman but to the Sonnets. Esparto grass. The world had been tricked. But where was the fun unless, before he died, he could tell the world how cleverly it had been tricked?”
“He was not murdered after all?”
“His killer was far more likely to be a meek and merciless little microbe, thriving on the fermentation in his lungs, than the agent of a Neapolitan criminal gang. The story of underworld vengeance has too much of Gussie Howell about it to be believed.”
After that, Sherlock Holmes was not inclined to remain in Venice “to no purpose,” as he said. It was impossible to book a wagon-lit for the next day’s Grand European Express to Calais and London. On the following day we were more fortunate. By then the fate of Augustus Howell was beyond question. His death had been attended by such drama of his own making that they had held a coroner’s inquest on him. The report in the Continental edition of The Times reported a verdict of death from natural causes.
“How are the mighty fallen!” Holmes exclaimed as he closed the pages of the newspaper. “Poor Gussie Howell! To die of natural causes after all!”
It was the evening before our departure and we were sitting at a table outside Florian’s with the sunset casting fire across the outlines of basilica and palaces. We were waiting for Pen and Fannie Browning, whom Holmes had insisted should be our guests before we left for home.
“There is something amiss in their household which I cannot quite put my finger on, Watson. It is probably the incompatibility of Puritan principles and nude female models under the same roof. I sense that the young Brownings’ marriage is ‘but for a two months voyage victualled,’ as Shakespeare puts it. I would therefore prefer to meet on neutral ground.”
That evening, under the lamplight and the soft echoes of the wavelets by the canal steps, Holmes offered his final advice in response to questions from the youthful Pen Browning.
“You have a clear course before you now. You or your attorney must let it be known that whatever manuscripts are in the hands of auctioneers or vendors, purporting to be written by your parents, have been proved fraudulent. You may call me to witness if necessary. You must make it plain that those who dabble in such things are parties to a criminal fraud, carried out solely for the purposes of deception. That will put a stop to most dealings.”
“It may not stop publication.”
Holmes set his coffee cup down and looked thoughtful.
“Unfortunately the good old-fashioned remedy of taking a horsewhip to the scoundrel who publishes falsehood in this manner has been rather at a discount for some years. Now it must be a matter of threatening in advance to bring proceedings for libel against whom it might concern.”
“But surely,” said Pen Browning quickly, “it is no longer possible to libel the dead.”
Despite the difficulty which this presented, I saw that the young man was no end pleased in “putting one over” on the Great Detective. Holmes smiled at him indulgently.
“It is quite true that, at Cardiff Assizes in 1877, the excellent Mr Justice Stephen ruled that the dead have no remedy against civil libel since they are no longer juristic personalities. Criminal libel, however, that is to say defamation so offensive as to threaten a breach of the peace, is another matter and carries with it prison sentences long enough to deter all but the most resolute liars. There is your remedy.”
It was plain that young Mr Browning’s knowledge of English law stopped far short of this. He was chastened but grateful.
“Well then, Mr Holmes, there is only one more question. I must decide whether the letters of courtship between my parents should be published or burnt. About five years ago, my father burnt almost all his letters and manuscripts. He was in London at the time, in Warwick Crescent. He brought down an old travelling box of my grandfather’s and threw papers by the handful on to the fire in the front room. I saw the whole of his correspondence with Thomas Carlyle go up in flames.”
Holmes prompted him.
“And the letters written by your parents during their courtship?”
“He could not do it. He knew that he ought to destroy them but he could not. They were kept where they still lie, in an inlaid box. Not long before he died he gave this box to me and said, There they are. Do with them as you please when I am gone.’ But what am I to do?”
“When the time is right, you must publish them,” said Holmes at once. “Not now but in five or ten years. If they are anything like the two people who wrote them, they are noble and passionate, faithful and understanding, the exchanges of lovers who would die for one another. They must not perish, for there is too little of that sort of thing in the world. Publication will smash the forgers once and for all. Such creatures of darkness cannot endure the light of the sun.”
Pen Browning looked up, as if startled by this.
“I believe you are right,” he said firmly.
The letters were published nine years later and whatever fakes or forgeries may have lingered were extinguished by their beauty. Next day Holmes and I returned to England. He would accept no fee from Angelo Fiori on behalf of Pen Browning. Instead, he asked only for the “worthless” manuscripts of Don Juan in the New World, The Venetian Nun and Savonarola to the Signoria, with a set of the false “first editions,” including the 1847 Sonnets of “E. B. B.” They were given a place in what he called his “Cabinet of Curiosities.” By an irony of time, some of the books were to become more valuable than the genuine first editions which they had claimed to pre-date.
Yet Holmes knew the difference between true gold and fool’s gold. As the express left Venice, he opened a copy of Robert Browning’s “Roman Murder Story,” The Ring and the Book, which he had picked up from a bookstall at the last moment. It so absorbed him that he sat up all night reading and closed the last page of its twelfth book about ten minutes before our train pulled into Charing Cross.