The Adventure of the Jade Hansom
An original Sherlock Holmes short story
Folks, after five installments of Mafia madness, I thought you might be ready to lighten the mood. This week, I’m sharing an original short story I wrote in 1982. Its not in my normal true crime style, but it is also not in my crime fiction style either. This was intentionally written in the literary style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
I thought in these times of artificial intelligence and too-perfect editing, you might appreciate a blast from our crime fiction past.
Note: The British English spellings (italicized) are intentional.
The following short story is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche written in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
In the 1980s Sherlock Holmes’ stories were under copyright. To publish a story, I had to seek approval from the Conan Doyle estate in London, but they directed me to an American for final approval.
John Bennett Shaw (1913–1994) was one of the most legendary figures in modern Sherlockian history. He was an American businessman, scholar, and the most prolific collector of Sherlock Holmes memorabilia and literature in the world.
Famous for his warm hospitality, sharp wit, and his typed reviews, Shaw wrote me in 1984 saying he truly loved my story and that I had captured the relationship between Holmes and Watson better than most he had read.
When Shaw died 12 years later at age 80, my manuscript was found among his possessions. Today, it is permanently housed at the University of Minnesota Library with the rest of his papers.
What follows is that story, the Adventure of the Jade Hansom.
From the memoirs of Dr. John Watson of London…
It is not without reluctance that I set down the particulars of the adventure I have elected to call the Jade Hansom.
The matter touches upon events in my private life which I had sooner keep from the public record. Yet the case itself is singular enough, and the conduct of my friend Sherlock Holmes throughout it sufficiently remarkable, that I should do both the man and the truth a disservice were I to let it moulder unchronicled in the battered tin dispatch-box I keep at my bank.
I shall therefore record it faithfully. The personal portions must be excused by the professional interest of what surrounds them.
It was in the autumn of the year 1903 that the incident occurred — a season of low fogs and early dusks, when Baker Street wore its most familiar and melancholy facade. My second marriage, contracted some seven months before, had by that time fallen upon troubled ground.
Upon a grey Thursday afternoon I found myself walking the cobblestones of the Marylebone Road in a state of some interior disorder, my worries turning over and over without rest. I had told no one of my difficulties. Least of all had I told Holmes, whose powers of perception I both admired and, upon that particular afternoon, quietly dreaded.
I had not visited 221B since the wedding. Holmes had written twice; I had answered once, inadequately.
It was guilt as much as longing that turned my steps at last toward Baker Street, and as the familiar black door came into view beneath its transom of yellow gaslight, I confess that my pulse quickened in a fashion that would have interested me professionally had it been another man’s wrist upon which I laid my finger.
Mrs. Hudson received me with the warmth of a woman who had been expecting the visit for some months. She informed me that Holmes was upstairs and in one of his brooding humours, which is to say, I understood from long experience, that his mind churned at full pressure upon some question he had not yet chosen to share with the world.
I mounted the stairs quietly, resolved that he should not read me at a glance.
I had taken the precaution of having my cuffs freshly pressed by a woman I had hired for the purpose, and I had walked, not ridden, so that no cabman’s receipt should betray the direction from which I came. I had, in short, done my best.
I opened the door.
Holmes stood at the window with his back to me, his long, lean figure a dark brushstroke against the pale November sky. He did not turn.
“You have had a trying seven months, Watson,” said he, “and you have walked rather than ridden, which suggests that you wished the exercise more than you required the speed. Pray come in and sit by the fire. The teapot is fresh.”
I deposited my hat and coat on the rack and did as I was told, reflecting for perhaps the ten-thousandth time upon the futility of attempting to conceal anything from Sherlock Holmes.
The room was as I had left it, and the familiarity of it was, I own, something of a comfort. The chemical bench occupied its corner, a wilderness of retorts and specimen-jars. The great roll-top desk squatted opposite, buried under correspondence which had apparently reproduced in my absence. The still bookshelves lined the walls in cheerful disorder.
Upon the antique birch mantelpiece stood the two oil-lamps, a heap of sheet music, the black clay pipe, and what appeared to be a fresh manila notebook — Holmes’s handwriting visible upon its cover.
A wood-fire crackled in the grate, and the four familiar chairs were arranged about it. I settled into the nearest straight-back with a sigh that I had not intended to be quite so audible.
Holmes turned from the window and lowered himself into the rocking chair he had imported from America — “there is no finer grain than Louisiana cypress,” he had once informed me with characteristic authority — and reached for his cherry-wood pipe. He filled it slowly, watching me with those pale grey eyes that seemed, in the firelight, to see rather more than the situation warranted.
“I have, in your absence,” said he, “attempted a modest literary experiment. You have so often pressed me to chronicle a case in my own hand that I at last relented. There is a notebook upon the mantle. I call it ‘The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier.’
I should value your editorial opinion — not your sentimentality, mark you, but your professional judgment as to whether I have managed to render the salient points without undue embellishment.” He paused. “You may embellish it afterwards if you feel you cannot help yourself.”
“I am honoured, Holmes.” I reached for the notebook, genuinely moved, for it was a concession I had pressed him upon for years without the slightest yielding.
I had been reading for perhaps twenty minutes — the account was methodical to a fault, but not without its austere interest — when the fire began to sink, and Holmes, who had been studying the construction of a spider’s web within the dormant portion of the grate with the detached absorption of a naturalist, suddenly raised his head.
I had noticed nothing. Then, a moment later, I heard it: the pounding of hooves upon the bricks, hard and rapid, drawing nearer with a purpose quite distinct from the ordinary commerce of a Thursday afternoon.
Holmes was at the window before I had set down the notebook. I joined him.
Below, a large hansom cab of a distinctive jade green colour rounded the bend at speed, rocking upon its springs, the driver’s whip cutting the air above his horse’s haunches. The animal’s iron shoes struck sparks from the wet cobblestones. Then, with an abruptness that set the cab lurching on its axle, the driver hauled upon the reins and brought the whole equipage to a shuddering halt before our door.
“It is the Courtney Company’s livery,” said Holmes, watching with that peculiar stillness he assumed when his mind was engaged. “They operate exclusively upon the northeastern side of the city. Whatever has brought that man to Baker Street, it is not a fare.”
The driver sprang from his perch.
He did not enter. Or rather — he did not enter immediately. He stood below for perhaps half a minute, and once I saw his face tip upward toward our lighted window, white and irresolute in the yellow fog. Then he disappeared inside the building.
“He is coming up,” said Holmes. “Observe him carefully when he enters, Watson. Say nothing for a moment.”
We returned to our chairs. I set aside the notebook. Several minutes passed in silence before the knock came — not the confident rap of a man with a clear conscience and a straightforward errand, but the tentative double-knock of someone who has rehearsed the gesture so many times that it has lost all spontaneity.
“Come,” said Holmes.
The door opened upon a man of middle height and powerful build, with the deep-set lines about the eyes of one accustomed to outdoor work in all weathers. His driving-coat was of good quality but much worn; his gloves, heavy leather affairs, showed the creasing of years upon the right hand and were scarcely marked upon the left.
His boots carried a yellow clay quite distinct from the reddish mud of the Baker Street pavement, and there was a small, recent tear along the left lapel of his coat, consistent with a man who had taken a staircase in haste and caught himself upon a nail.
He held his hat before him in both hands and turned it by the brim. He was, I judged, between thirty-five and forty, and he was frightened.
Holmes looked at him for perhaps three seconds. Then:
“Pray sit down, Mister — ?”
“Williams, sir. John Williams.”
“Sit down, Mr. Williams. You have been driving a cab for the Courtney Company for, I should say, some eight or nine years. You came up these stairs at a run, though you have had second thoughts about every step. You are not a drinking man. And whatever has happened to you this morning has happened within the last two hours. Watson, perhaps you would be good enough to pour this gentleman some tea.”
Williams stared. His mouth opened once, then closed. “How do you —”
“The right glove tells me your trade and its tenure. The clay upon your boots is peculiar to the new excavation they have made by the chapel in the Kingsland Road — there is no other such cutting between there and the Park, and the Courtney Company, as I happen to know, stables on Bishopsgate.
You came up the stairs too quickly and caught your coat on the third-floor hook that Mrs. Hudson has been meaning to remove for six months.
Your hands are steady, your complexion ruddy and healthy, and there is no smell of spirits about you — so distress, not drink, accounts for your colour and your agitation. And the mud upon your wheels is still wet.” He waved a hand. “Sit down, man. Tell us what has occurred.”
Williams sat. He turned his hat three more times. Then he spoke.
“Mr. Holmes, I have killed no one. I want you to hear me say that before I say anything else, because I think no one else will believe it.”
“I have not yet formed an opinion upon the matter,” said Holmes pleasantly. “Pray begin at the beginning and omit nothing, however trifling it may appear.”
What followed was the account of a sufficiently strange morning.
Williams had been at his stand near Fenton’s establishment in the northeast quarter, waiting upon the subscribers of the Courtney Company’s private line, when a woman had approached him on foot.
She was youngish — he put her at five-and-twenty — and well-dressed, though the dress was not of London make; she had about her, he said, the look of someone who had been travelling and had not slept.
She had begged him in a low, urgent voice to carry her across the city, explaining that she had only just arrived and knew no one and had missed the omnibus. He had told her, as the rules required, that the line was private, for subscribers only. She had pressed him. She had named a fare that was more than the usual tariff. He had, in the end, agreed.
She did not speak during the drive. He had watched her once through the communication trap — she had it shut — and seen her sitting very upright, her hands clasped in her lap, looking straight ahead. He had thought nothing of it. Nervous women in hansom cabs were not uncommon.
It was when he had slowed to take the corner at Dorset Street that he heard the cry — a single, sharp sound, not quite a scream. He had pulled up at once, jumped down, and opened the cab door.
The woman was slumped against the back panel. There was blood. A constable appeared at the far end of the street at a run, and Williams, with the damning sight of a dead woman in his cab and no story that anyone was likely to credit, had done what a frightened and not very logical man will sometimes do. He fled.
He had driven hard, and he had come to the one address in London where he thought he might find help.
“You came here directly?” asked Holmes.
“I did, sir. I heard you was a fair man.”
Holmes was silent for a moment. His fingertips came together beneath his chin. “You mentioned that the woman spoke to you briefly before entering the cab. Did she give a name? A destination?”
“No name, sir. She said she wanted to go across — to the Marylebone side. That was all.”
“And her accent?”
Williams considered. “English, sir. But not London English, if you follow me. More from the country.”
“Quite so.” Holmes regarded him a moment longer. “One question more, Mr. Williams, and it may strike you as an idle one. Have you yourself any connexion with France, or with Germany — a relation abroad, perhaps, or family come from across the water?”
Williams shook his head. “None, sir. Welsh on my father’s side, and London born.”
Holmes rose abruptly. “Watson, I shall want my lens and my coat. Mr. Williams, you will be good enough to accompany us downstairs. Do not speak to the driver of any other vehicle, should one be present, and do not, on any account, run. Running is the one indulgence I cannot permit you.”
We had been at the cab for no more than five minutes when Inspector Gregson of Scotland Yard arrived, two constables at his heels and a face that suggested he had hoped to find the hansom unattended.
He was a lean, fair man with an ambitious moustache, and he greeted Holmes with the species of wariness that long experience of being out-reasoned in public will produce in a Scotland Yard inspector.
Holmes scarcely looked up. He was upon his hands and knees upon the floor of the cab, his lens moving methodically across the footboard. He had already sat beside the body, studied the position of the woman’s hands, and — to the considerable agitation of the constables — deliberately pitched himself forward from the seat to measure, I supposed, the precise arc of the fall.
From the muff that lay in her lap he had also drawn a folded scrap of newsprint, much creased, as though it had been long carried and often read; this he glanced at for an instant and transferred, without a word, to his waistcoat pocket.
“You know something of this, Holmes,” said Gregson. It was not quite a question.
“I know that your two constables are posted unnecessarily, that the cab driver is not the man you are looking for in the sense you imagine, and that there is a bloodied scarf upon the floor of this cab that is considerably more interesting than it appears.”
Holmes emerged from the cab, brushing his knees. He held out nothing — no theory, no chain of reasoning. “I shall require until to-morrow noon.”
“You’ll require — Holmes, there’s a dead woman in that cab.”
“There is. And she will be no less dead at noon to-morrow, while whatever explanation I advance to-day will be considerably less reliable than one I advance after a night’s reflection.
“I suggest you remove the body to the mortuary, preserve the scarf and the floor-board exactly as they are, and bring a photographer to record the interior of the cab before anything else is disturbed.
“You have nothing to lose as the driver, Mr. Williams, has no ride home. Your men can see him home and see that he returns to-morrow.”
Holmes glanced at me and spoke in a whisper. “Watson, I wonder if you might send a telegram for me this evening. Address it to Inspector Martin of the Norfolk Constabulary. Mark it urgent.”
“Of course. What shall I say?”
“Say that I require him in Baker Street to-morrow at noon, and that the matter concerns Otto and Charlotte Krüger .”
It was the first time I had heard those names. The effect upon Holmes of his own mention of them was nothing — not a flicker. He turned back to Gregson and handed him a card.
“Have the Commissioner’s office informed, if you would. Sir Edward Henry has an interest in the forensic aspect of the case that I think he will find it worth his while to pursue.”
Then he folded his hands behind his back, nodded pleasantly to the assembled constables, and walked back toward the building without another word.
I caught him up on the staircase. “Holmes,” I said, “I must confess I have not the remotest idea what you are about.”
“No,” said he, not unkindly. “That is rather the point, my dear Watson.”
He said nothing further upon my return from the telegraph office — not a syllable, not a hint — though he sat up past two o’clock with his pipe and the commonplace-books. It was near that hour when I made my excuses and went down to find a cab for myself.
The fog had come down thick while we talked, and Baker Street was a tunnel of brown vapour in which the lamps swam like drowned moons. I had not gone twenty paces from the door when I knew myself to be not alone upon the pavement.
A shape detached itself from the area railings opposite — a big man, very broad across the shoulders, moving with a soft-footed haste that ill suited his bulk. I had time to think that no honest errand brought a man abroad on such a night.
Then he was upon me.
TO BE CONCLUDED THURSDAY
The preceding account and the conclusion to follow was transcribed from notes made by the author in the week following the events described. Certain details have been altered to avoid embarrassment to living persons. The reader who wishes to verify the subsequent legal proceedings in the matter is referred to the Norfolk County Court records of the winter assizes, 1903–04.