Free And Then There Was No One by Gilbert Adair

foot-and-a-half to separate them, was the room’s only window, which was small, rectangular and glassless, and crosscut by a pair of narrow iron bars.
    But it was the awful sight of James Gable, a boy of some sixteen summers, which transfixed our gaze. He lay stretchedout lengthwise on the cot in the exact pose, and with the same deathly pallor, of the dead Chatterton in Wallis’s celebrated painting, except that his two hands tightly gripped his own neck and his naïve and youthful features had been warped out of shape by a grimace of ineffable and indescribable horror.
    With a ghastly moan the boy’s father made as if to fling himself on the cot, but Holmes, his lean frame suddenly exploiting that unexpected reserve of physical strength that has got the better of many a Limehouse bruiser, managed to hold him back.
    ‘Courage, man, courage!’ he cried. ‘Something foul has taken place here, and it would be best if the lad were left undisturbed for now.’ He turned to me. ‘Watson, there is, I fear, little doubt as to the ultimate diagnosis, but examine him nevertheless. And do so, pray, without moving him. Watson? Are you unwell?’
    ‘I am sorry, Holmes,’ said I, and my voice quivered. ‘It’s … it’s just that it is all so uncanny … like a stage-set. Forgive me.’
    While Holmes continued to hold his client back by the shoulders, I quickly stepped over to the cot. Although no doubt remained that young James Gable was gone, I was obliged to prise his hands from off his neck to learn the precise cause of his death. And there I discovered a cut so deeply incised that it had utterly severed the jugular vein, a cut, as I observed to my consternation, corrugated in form –just as Jerrold’s was said to have been – and apparently effected by a row of huge razor-sharp teeth. Judging by the rictus on the youth’s face, I supposed that he had expired both from that cut and from the abrupt heart failure which would have been its immediate consequence.
    This startling information I conveyed to Holmes as succinctly as I could, and I saw his hollow cheeks flush with horror. He ran his eyes over the assembled servants – they were still standing in the doorway, shivering with fear yet continuing to stare at the macabre
tableau
inside the attic room – and finally let them settle upon a handsome, tow-haired, barefoot young man dressed in nothing but a long white nightshirt.
    ‘You are Edward Gable, are you not?’ he enquired of him.
    ‘Yes, sir, I am,’ the youth answered rather hoarsely, no doubt in awe of Holmes’s masterful presence.
    ‘How old are you, Edward?’
    ‘Just passed eighteen, sir.’
    ‘Now, my boy,’ said Holmes, softening his tone, ‘you realise, don’t you, that your brother is dead?’
    ‘I do, sir,’ replied Edward, who, bar a faint trembling of his lower lip, allowed no expression of feeling to be visible on his face. ‘It was… it was I who found him so.’
    ‘Well, my name is Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and later I shall have to ask you and everybody else a number of important questions. But first, I think, your father should be comforted. Will you take him downstairs and pour him some brandy?’
    ‘Yes, sir, I will.’
    And, without a further word being spoken by either, he took his father by the arm and guided that now visibly broken man along the corridor and down the staircase.
    Holmes meanwhile, facing the others, spoke to the oldest and most responsible-looking person there, a woman whose plump and kindly face was still streaked with the copious tears which she had already shed.
    ‘You are …?’
    ‘Mrs. Treadwell, sir. I am Dr. Gable’s housekeeper, if you please,’ replied this typical specimen of the housekeeping breed.
    ‘I do not imagine, Mrs. Treadwell,’ said Holmes, ‘that anyone has had the mind to send for the police?’
    ‘Why no, sir … that’s to say … if you please, sir, it all happened so sudden …’
    ‘Quite so. Then, Jerrold, may I suggest you