Free The Secret Notebooks of Sherlock Holmes by June Thomson Page B

might, at the very least, be left some money in his master’s Will. I also suspected that he would, if the opportunity arose, so alienate Sir Reginald from his only living relative, his great-nephew, in order to supplant him as sole heir to the estate, a plot Adams had already put into motion with the use of the anonymous letters.
    ‘I explained to you yesterday, my dear fellow, that it seemed to me highly likely that this was not the first time Adams had used these means to his own financial advantage. On thinking over this aspect of the affair, I suddenly remembered my—’
    At this point in his account, he stopped abruptly and looked uncharacteristically flustered, a reaction I had never before witnessed on the part of my old friend, who was always in such complete charge of his feelings to the extent that, at times, I wondered if he were not entirely devoid of human emotion. 11
    However, he quickly recovered from this momentary break in his narrative, the thread of which he picked up again in his usual imperturbable manner.
    ‘—informant telling me of a similar case that had happened to one of his colleagues ten years earlier. This colleague’s wealthy grandmother, who was crippled by rheumatism, had taken into her employ a charming young man called Edwin Farrow, as a secretary who came withexcellent references and soon made himself indispensible to the old lady whom I shall call Mrs Knight. They played piquet 12 together, he took her out for walks in her invalid chair, he read aloud to her in the evenings. But Mrs Knight’s female companion, who took care of the old lady’s more personal needs, gradually grew more suspicious of Farrow. Money and jewellery went missing and, what was more sinister, Mrs Knight became more and more confused, as if she were taking some form of drug, although none was prescribed by her doctor.
    ‘Her suspicions were confirmed when she found a small glass bottle in the dust-heap, which she took to the local chemist’s. He analysed the few drops of liquid found in the bottom of the bottle and discovered that it contained morphia.’
    At this point, Holmes paused and turned to Miss Cresswell, who had been sitting in silence, her veil raised, listening to my old friend’s account, her plain and pleasant features quite calm, only her black gloved hands, which were tightly locked together in her lap, expressing the inner distress from which she must have been suffering.
    ‘But it is your story I am telling, Miss Cresswell,’ Holmes remarked. ‘Perhaps you would care to take up the narrative yourself, if it would not cause you too much pain.’
    ‘Thank you, Mr Holmes,’ Miss Cresswell said gravely. ‘There is, in fact, little more to tell. As soon as I received the chemist’s report, I sent a telegram to my mistress’s grandson, who arrived soon afterwards with his solicitor. I had sent Farrow on an errand to the village and, as soon as he had left the house, Mrs Knight’s grandson and the solicitor searched Farrow’s bedroom, where they found the missing money and jewellery hidden in his wardrobe. These were together with various pills and powders which no doubt he intended to give to Mrs Knight, for I strongly believe he had murder in mind once he had persuaded her to change her Will when she was under the influence of the morphia which he had secretly been giving her. This suspicion was confirmed by a piece of paper also discovered among Farrow’s effects on which he had written down a rough draft of an alteration to her Will, leaving five thousand pounds to himself in gratitude for what he called his “kindness and devotion”.’
    At these last words Miss Cresswell almost broke down but, with commendable courage, she pulled herself together and continued.
    ‘In the meantime, Farrow had disappeared. I think he may have returned to the house and seen the carriage in which the grandson and the solicitor had arrived standing outside the front door, which made him suspicious.