A Study in Terror

Ellery Visits the Past

Ellery put the Watson manuscript down thoughtfully. He barely heard the click of the lock and the opening and closing of the front door.

He looked up to find his father standing in the study doorway.

“Dad!”

“Hi, son,” said the Inspector with a defiant grin. “I just couldn’t stand it down there any more. So here I am.”

“Welcome home.”

“Then you’re not sore?”

“You stayed longer than I expected.”

The Inspector came in, scaled his hat to the sofa, and turned to regard his son with relief. It soon became concern.

“You look like hell. What’s wrong, Ellery?”

Ellery did not reply.

“How do I look?” asked his father cunningly.

“A damsite better than when I packed you off.”

“You’re sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Don’t give me that. Is your story still sour?”

“No, it’s going fine. Everything’s fine.”

But the old man was not satisfied. He sat down on the sofa and crossed his legs and said, “Tell me all about it.”

Ellery shrugged. “I should never have been born the son of a cop. All right, something’s happened. An interlocking of events, past and present. The loosening of an old knot.”

“Talk English.”

“Grant Ames dropped in on me.”

“You told me that.”

“I got sucked into the manuscript. One thing led to another. And here I am.”

“I don’t get it.”

Ellery sighed. “I suppose I’ll have to tell you all about it.”

And he talked for a long time.

“And that’s where it stands, dad. She believes absolutely in his innocence. She’s nursed it all her life. I suppose she didn’t know what to do about it until, in her old age, she suddenly got this inspiration to drag me into it. Inspiration!”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’d just made up my mind to pay her a visit when you walked in on me.”

“I should think so!” Inspector Queen got up and took the journal from Ellery’s hand. “The way I see it, son, you’ve got absolutely no choice. After all, she’s asked for it.”

Ellery got to his feet. “Why don’t you read the manuscript while I’m gone?”

“That’s just what I’m going to do.”

He drove north into Westchester, taking Route 22 until he came to Somers. He passed the wooden elephant at the main intersection, a reminder that Barnum & Bailey’s Circus had once wintered there. In Putnam County he thought of the Revolutionary heroes, hoping they were all in a hero’s heaven somewhere.

But these were surface thoughts. In depth he was thinking of the old lady he would find at the end of his journey. They were not pleasant thoughts.

He finally turned in at a trim little cottage with a doll’s-house drive, got out, and reluctantly went up to the front door. It opened to his knock immediately, as if she had been lying in wait for him. He had half wished she would not be at home.

“Deborah Osbourne Spain,” he said, looking down at her. “Hello.”

She was very old, of course; she must be in her late 80s, according to his calculations. The manuscript had not given her age on the day Holmes and Watson visited Shires Castle, except in approximate figures. She could be 90.

Like so many very old ladies, especially the tiny plumpish ones, there was a slightly withered-apple look to her, with the bloom still touching her cheeks. Her bosom was large for her size, and fallen, as if tired of its weight. Only her eyes were young. They were bright, and direct, and they twinkled in spite of themselves.

“Do come in, Mr. Queen.”

“Could you make it Ellery, Mrs. Spain?”

“It is something I have never quite become accustomed to,” she said, ushering him into a cozy little parlor, as mid-Victorian as Victoria’s bustle, Ellery thought. It was like stepping into 19th Century England. “I mean, the American habit of instant familiarity. However―take that Morris chair, Ellery―if you wish.”

“I wish.” He sat down and looked about. “I see you’ve kept the faith.”

She seated herself in a ducal chair, in which she looked lost. “What else does an ancient Englishwoman have?” she asked with a faint smile. “I know―I sound disgustingly Anglophilic. But it’s so difficult to get away from one’s beginnings. Actually, I’m quite comfortable here. And a visit to New Rochelle once in a while to see Rachel’s roses rounds out my existence.”

“Rachel was the one.”

“Oh, yes. At my request.”

“Miss Hager is related to you how, exactly?”

“My granddaughter. Shall we have tea?”

“Not just now, if you don’t mind, Mrs. Spain,” said Ellery. “I’m too chockful of questions. But first.” He sat on the edge of the chair, avoiding the lace antimacassar. “You saw him. You met them both. Holmes. Watson. How I envy you!”

Deborah Osbourne Spain’s eyes looked far into the past. “It was so very long ago. But of course I remember them. Mr. Holmes’s glance, sharp as a sword. And so reserved. When I put my hand in his, I’m sure it disconcerted him. But he was very sweet. They were both such gentlemen. That above all. In those days, Ellery, being a gentleman was important. Of course, I was a little girl, and I recall them as giants, towering to the sky. As I suppose they were, in a way.”

“May I ask how you came by the manuscript?”

“After Dr. Watson wrote it, the journal was turned over by Mr. Holmes to the Osbourne estate. It became the responsibility of the estate’s solicitor, bless him! He was so faithful to my interests. Then, after I was grown, and shortly before he died, he told me about the manuscript. I begged for it, and he sent it to me. His name was Dobbs, Alfred Dobbs. I think of him so often.”

“Why did you wait so long, Mrs. Spain, before doing what you did?”

“Please. Everyone calls me Grandma Deborah. Won’t you?”

“Grandma Deborah it shall be.”

“I don’t know why I waited so long,” the old lady said. “The idea of asking an expert to verify my conviction never crystallized in my mind, although I am sure it has been there for a long time. Lately, a feeling that there is a need to hurry has come over me. How much longer can I live? And I should like to die in peace.”

The implicit plea moved Ellery to her aid. “Your decision to send me the manuscript came from the manuscript itself, I take it?”

“Yes. Afterwards, Mr. Ames confided in Rachel about the hunt you sent him on.”

“Grant’s searching accomplished an end, though not the one I expected,” Ellery smiled.

“Bless him! Bless them both. I know he gave you no help, Ellery. I also knew you would find me, just as Mr. Holmes had no difficulty in tracing the owner of the surgeon’s kit. But I’m still curious as to how you did it.”

“It was elementary, Grandma Deborah. It was obvious from the first that the sender had some personal interest in the case. So I put a call through to a friend of mine, a genealogist. He had no trouble tracing you from Shires Castle, as a child, to the custody of the San Francisco branch of the family. I had the names of Grant’s four young ladies, and I was sure one of the names would pop up somewhere. From your marriage to Barney Spain in 1906 my expert got to the marriage of your daughter. And, lo and behold, the man your daughter married was named Hager. Q.E.D.” His smile became a look of concern. “You’re tired. We can put this off for another time.”

“Oh, no! I’m fine.” The young eyes pleaded. “He was a wonderful man, my father. Kind, gentle. He was not a monster. He was not!”

“You’re sure you don’t want to lie down?”

“No, no. Not until you’ve told me…”

“Then lie back in your chair, Grandma. Relax. And I’ll talk.”

Ellery took the withered old hand in his, and he talked against the ticking of the grandfather i clock in the corner., its pendulum, like a mechanical finger, wiping the seconds off the face of time.

The little frail hand in Ellery’s squeezed at irregular intervals. Then it stopped squeezing, and lay in Ellery’s hand like an autumn leaf.

After a while, there was a movement of the portieres at the archway to the parlor, and a middle-aged woman appeared, wearing a white housedress.

“She’s fallen asleep,” Ellery whispered.

He carefully laid the old hand on her breast and tiptoed from the room.

The woman accompanied him to the door. “I’m Susan Bates. I take care of her. She falls asleep like that more and more.”

Ellery nodded and left the cottage and got into his car and drove back to Manhattan, feeling very tired himself. Even old.