The Adventure of the Unlocked Door
A Sherlock Holmes Mystery
By B. P. Cahill
It has been several years since Holmes's return from his supposed death in Switzerland, and I have finally decided to once again take up the pen to record one of my companion's latter cases.
It was in the late spring of 1897, around the time of May 20th, as I recall, that Holmes called me to his rooms at Baker Street. He left no reason, only that it was an urgent matter. Having trusted Holmes's judgment before on what is an urgent matter and what isn't, I promptly closed up my practice for the day and hurried of to Baker Street.
"I hope that I haven't taken you away from your patients," Holmes remarked as I entered.
"Not at all," I replied, "It's late on a weekday. Things were going quite slowly, so I didn't hesitate to close up early when I received your message."
"Very good Dr. Watson. Now, if you will open the door, I believe that our companion this night has arrived."
I pulled the door open, and sure enough, there stood a stout man, his hand raised as if he were about to knock on the now-open door.
"My word," the man said, "How did you know I was here?"
"Watson, I will let you explain to our friend here how we knew he was here."
Now, I have, in the past, mentioned how being in Holmes's presence can make me feel downright stupid, while I know that I am not. To be perfectly honest, I had no clue in the slightest how Holmes knew our mystery guest had arrived. Sensing my trepidation, Holmes stepped in.
"Deduce, my dear Watson. You must have heard the man's cab. Just a moment ago, a horse drawn carriage paused for a moment just outside the door. A moment later, it had gone. Watson, you must have realized this."
To be perfectly honest, I hadn't. However, I just stood mute and waited for our guest to introduce himself. After a moment, he adjusted his bow tie and said, "Well then, I suppose we should get down to business. My name is Mr. Harry Tutton. I presume that you are Watson?"
"Yes I am," I replied, shaking the man's hand. "I assist Holmes on many of his cases,"
"Very good," Tutton said, "For I think that it shall take all the minds present to solve this most baffling mystery."
"I'm sure we will all be of assistance," Holmes remarked, "But I must first ask, how did your shooting match today go?"
"Why Holmes, I never mentioned that to you! How did you guess that I was at a shooting match today?" Tutton seemed thrown off, but I, of course, knew Holmes better than that by now.
"If I may Holmes, I would like to handle this one,"
"By all means Watson, deduce!"
"Of course. Mr. Tutton, Holmes did not guess, he knew. You have what appears to be a powder burn on your right hand, and there is gunpowder residue on the sleeve of your right arm. Not to mention the strong aroma of gunpowder that has taken hold of your jacket."
"Well done Watson. Now, Mr. Tutton, if you will please answer my question, how did you place at your shooting match?"
"If you must know Holmes," Mr. Tutton replied, "I didn't place at all. I don't see, however, what this has to do with my case."
It was here Holmes smiled for the first time that night. "It has everything to do with the case, Mr. Tutton. It shows that you are concerned for your safety and have recently taken up shooting to defend yourself if need be. Now, if you and Mr. Watson will take a seat, we can get started."
We took our seats, and Mr. Tutton began to tell an elaborate tale.
"Well, Holmes, you can see by my dress that I am a simple man, a member of the working class. I had thought that my entire life would be spent doing sitting behind a desk at a municipal office, but that soon changed several weeks ago.
"I received a letter from a cousin stating that my uncle had died. I took several days off from my job, and went to Sussex to see my family and pay my last respects. However, I arrived to find that my uncle was alive and well, and that no one in my family had sent such a note. Distraught over who would perform such a mean-spirited joke on a middle-class worker such as I, I returned to my flat in London.
"When I arrived, I noticed that the door had been unlocked, and I am sure that I had locked it when I left. It is, you should know, unlike me to leave anything undone; I always make sure all the necessary arrangements have been made when I plan on an extended trip. But I digress. When I entered my apartment, I found nothing to be out of place, so I gave the incident little thought.
"I returned to my daily routine, and didn't think of the matter again until my door continued to apparently unlock of its own accord. I have had the locks checked by several locksmiths, all of whom have said that there is nothing wrong. I cannot, at this time, afford to have the locks changed, and fell that doing this would only delay the matter rather than stop it. Therefore, I turn to you Holmes, to see if there is anything you can do."
"It appears that this may be a rather mundane case," Holmes said after a moment of thought, "But I feel that a thorough search of your apartment is in order. If you don't object, I will be there tomorrow around three o'clock."
"Please, by all means come!" Tutton said without hesitation. "You may find this mundane, but I feel something larger at work here."
Holmes stood and lit his pipe. "Perhaps there is Mr. Tutton. Now, of you two would be willing to return home for the night, I wish to retire. I shall see you both tomorrow."
The next day was uneventful for me, and I was glad to see that it was at last nearing three in the afternoon. I closed up the practice, and, once again, proceded to Holmes's apartment at Baker Street, where I found him waiting.
"Ah, Watson, you are here at last! I have just called for a cab to take us to Mr. Tutton's flat. It should be here shortly."
And sure enough, several minutes later, we were on our way to central London, where Tutton's flat was. At three o'clock sharp, we arrived at his door, and found that Tutton was nowhere to be found.
Holmes took the opportunity to sleuth around the front door. I noticed his gaze pause when he saw the keyhole, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary. I made a mental note of this, however, as I knew Holmes would make use of whatever information he had gleaned from the keyhole at some other time.
"This is quite odd," I remarked.
"Yes... Perhaps we should try the door?" Holmes replied.
The door, as Holmes had suspected, was open. We took a look around his flat, but the man was no where to be seen.
"Why, wherever could he be?" I asked.
"My dear Watson, I think that our friend is here, just hidden away, and most likely dead."
"Why Holmes, that is quite a serious assumption!" I exclaimed.
"Perhaps Watson, but it is not entirely unfounded." Holmes replied.
I made no attempt to decipher his riddle, and decided simply to follow him into the flat's meager basement. Holmes went straight to work, making an effort to shut out all light coming in through the windows. As the light dimmed, I noticed another source of light coming up through the floorboards.
"My word, whatever could that be?" I inquired.
"That, my dear Watson, is the reason we are here. Now, if you will help me lift a few of these boards, we can see what is down there."
We pried open the floor, and were astonished to find a lit lantern, several large sacs filled with money, and the cold body of Mr. Harry Tutton.
"He's been poisoned," Holmes said, looking at the body. "A simple poison, but a deadly one. It was probably mixed into his food by the same person who put all this money down here. It's a shame that those shooting lessons never did him any good. It is good, however, that the criminal didn't think to extinguish his lamp."
"Well Holmes, what should we do now?" I asked.
"I will go contact the police and let them in on my plan. You should proceed to place these boards back into the floor. We want everything in order for when our murderer comes so we can catch him coming back for his money."
The next several hours passed relatively slowly. Holmes contacted the police, who sent over two officers. Holmes told them to remain inconspicuous until someone entered the house. Then, they should guard the door and keep the perpetrator from exiting at all costs.
"My dear Watson, this plan is foolproof in its simplicity," Holmes remarked after we had finished replacing the floorboards.
It was close to eleven that night that we finally heard someone creep into the flat. We hid in the shadows, and waited for the intruder to reveal himself. He came down the stairs and began his work prying open the floor. It was here that Holmes jumped out and attempted to apprehend the man, but he was able to slip through his grasp and run up the stairs. We heard a slight scuffle as the intruder fought with the two police officers stationed at the door, which promptly stopped as the man was apprehended.
Once we were all upstairs, Holmes began to explain his theory.
"Mr. Tutton said that he was a working man. This made him the perfect target for this crime. This man sitting before us forged a letter to Tutton, claiming that his uncle had died. While he was away, he had a cast of Tutton's front door's keyhole made, as evidenced by the presence of plaster around the keyhole. He used this cast to make a copy of the key, which he used to enter Tutton's apartment without leaving any evidence of a break-in. He then hollowed out a small area under the basement floor to hide the money that he had been stealing from Tutton's office. This leads me to believe that this man is a coworker of Tutton's, but we'll get to his identity in a moment. This man thought that if something went wrong, Tutton would be the one found with the money and would be the one accepted as the thief.
"His biggest mistake, however, was that every time he entered Tutton's apartment, he forgot to lock the door behind him, leading Tutton to seek my help.
"When Tutton was found dead, we can safely assume that this man killed him in the hopes that without a client, I would not solve the mystery. Again, he made a mistake, this time in underestimating me. When he came back tonight, it was to be for the last time, to collect his spoils and run. However, he was apprehended before he could do so.
"Now then, the important question is, who is our thief?"
The man sitting across from Holmes was dumbstruck. "It's true, every word of it. My name is Jeremy Fletcher, and I was indeed a coworker of Tutton's. I had been skimming money from the company funds for some time, and had decided to hide it in Tutton's flat to take the blame off myself, in the event something went wrong. I heard a few days ago, however, that Tutton had decided to seek the help of the great Sherlock Holmes, and decided to kill him to keep the secret safe. Tonight was indeed going to be my last night here; I already have arrangements to leave England on the Continental Express tomorrow."
Holmes smiled. "Mr. Fletcher, while you flatter me by calling me 'the great Sherlock Holmes,' it will not by any means help reduce your sentence. Officers, if you will please take this man to the station, I'm sure there are people quite eager to see him."
And so the two officers left, and Holmes and I once again went our separate ways, at least until the next time he calls me to 221B Baker Street on another "urgent matter."