The Notched Hairpin

by H. F. Heard

Overview

Brilliant detective Mycroft Holmes—Sherlock’s older brother—tackles cases beyond life and death in this reimagining of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic mystery series.
 
When London grows stifling, Mycroft Holmes and his assistant, Sydney Silchester, flee to the English countryside. They rent a charming little house whose sprawling garden boasts a pond, trees, sculpture—and an irresistible mystery. When a dead man is found in the backyard, sitting in the carved throne that forms the garden’s centerpiece, an antique hairpin buried deep in his chest, the official verdict is suicide. But Mycroft can’t imagine a man could stab himself in the heart. Vacation is over before it’s begun; the game is afoot.
 
The death in the garden is only the beginning. This mystery will take Mycroft and Sydney deeper into the underworld of Victorian England than Sherlock Holmes and John Watson ever dared to tread. Unraveling the incident in the backyard will mean understanding more than a simple murder; it will force Mycroft and Silchester to confront the nature of mystery itself.
 
An elegantly constructed golden-age mystery, The Notched Hairpin is a brilliant intellectual investigation of what makes detective stories tick. Author H. F. Heard entrances and amazes fans of Victorian adventures with a mystery-solving duo that can more than hold its own against Sherlock and Watson.
 
The Notched Hairpin is the 3rd book in the Mycroft Holmes Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504037754
Publisher:	MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Publication date:	07/05/2016
Series:	Mycroft Holmes Mysteries , #3
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	152
Sales rank:	85,596
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Henry FitzGerald “Gerald” Heard (1889–1971) was an English philosopher, lecturer, and author. The BBC’s first science commentator, he pioneered the study of the evolution of consciousness, which he explored in his definitive philosophical work The Ascent of Humanity (1929). A prolific writer, Heard was also the author of a number of fiction titles, including mysteries and dystopian novels. He is best known for his beloved Mycroft Holmes mystery series.

Read an Excerpt

The Notched Hairpin

A Mycroft Holmes Mystery

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By H. F. Heard

MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media

Copyright © 1976 The Barrie Family Trust
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3775-4

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CHAPTER 1

THE RED BRICK TWINS

"Don't touch."

"I wasn't going to! And if tact means touch, then I don't think you'd be the worse for a little of it!"

"I'm ready to apologize in advance for being so guarded, but, you see, this is quite a peculiar treasure."

"I don't see. What I do see is a very commonplace object. But I am ready to accept your apology."

Yes, it was one of the usual Silchester-Mycroft squabble-sallies. The gauge of battle had arrived by the breakfast mail. I'd paid no attention to it until Mr. M., having finished all his letters, came to the small box — the kind of thing in which you sent a wrist watch. As I had finished the paper, I let myself enjoy his attack on it — rather like the cautious behavior toward some new sort of fly in its web. When he had opened it and peered inside for a while, out came the professional lens, and then at last I was called in. I couldn't help being amused by all that preliminary ritual of inspection. For when I took a single glance, I could only conclude that the lens-play was either a mere reflex or a piece of semiconscious acting. What lay in the little casket, all dolled up with cotton wool, was a commonplace little paper knife of some dingy kind of metal. It was the sort of thing which, when Spanish was all the mode with second-rate interior decorators (a tribe which, at best, I care for very little), was described as a suitable objet d'art to go with stamped-and-gilded leather furniture and twisted iron fittings! Perhaps I had made some courtesy attempt to express an act of interest I couldn't honestly feel, and this, my gesture of sympathy, had simply been snubbed. And when you have labored to pretend attention, it is irritating to be accused of precipitate meddling. Therefore Mr. M.'s further defense, "But it is very interesting!" did nothing to mollify my feelings.

The play with so light a weapon as the lens having failed to draw me, heavy artillery was now brought to bear and provoke my curiosity. The portentous microscope was hauled into position and, to teach me procedure with treasures, the "object," certainly not "of art," was picked out of its case with tweezers and examined slowly from head to foot. Finally, while it lay in the microscope's sacred and pure grips, Mr. M. did permit himself the liberty of poking at its handle end with a pin and examining, with special care, whatever piece of dust the pin could have picked up before it was raised to the rank of becoming an "exhibit." Then, to see if by this time and all this play I had become agog with curiosity, he looked up and nodded. I saw no reason to nod back. And evidently seeing I was not to be soothed, he shut the box with a snap, carried it off like the reliquary of a newly interred saint, and locked it in his desk. Then at last, apparently becoming aware he had really been quite cavalier with my offer of courtesy, he remarked in his most ingratiating voice:

"Do you know, I believe we both may need a small summer vacation. I have lately been scanning the advertisements of houses to be let for August, and I believe I now have a couple in view, either of which might suit us very well."

At that I "perked up," as my nurse used to phrase it. And when the cunning old bird added, "The two which I am hoping you might come with me to look at are, as far as I can understand, twins — that is to say, they were both built by the same architect in the same year — built as a pair, I presume. The date, I am told, has been placed on each of them by the builder — 1760." Then I couldn't help relaxing into the quite neat reply: "Perfect! Set between the French and the English Regencies, between the severity of Queen Anne and the sparse elegance of the Brothers Adam — they should be a perfect balance of taste."

Indeed, I was so mollified I was quite ready to run on with a really entertaining little impromptu essay on "1760 as the Balance of English Architectural Style." And Mr. M. actually seemed inclined to listen, when, at my saying again my key word, "balance," he spun round, went back to his desk, whisked out the little case from where he'd locked it and, disregarding all the instruction he might have had, turned over the little sarcophagus reverently, rolling out of it onto the tablecloth the object it had immured. Then, picking up a knife, he began to play an awkward game of giant spilikins, with table knife and paper knife, trying to pick up the latter on the edge of the former. He proved quite clumsy at this rather silly pastime. But at last, after a number of trials, he did get his present-by-post teeter-tottering on the blade of the table piece.

"Look," he said.

Of course there was nothing to see, or at least to applaud.

"Do you notice anything?" followed, and to my honest antiphon, "No," all he replied was, "It would be convenient, I have often thought, if only cutlers would think to make table knives and forks that way, wouldn't it?"

To my perfunctory, "Which way?" he replied, "Properly balanced; so that they wouldn't fall off the plate, because their center of gravity would lie not at the handle end but forward."

The whole subject was so trivial and dull and, I could not help feeling, done maybe to spoil my really rather generous attempt to turn his offer to be agreeable into a little piece of conversation that would have been truly instructive, that my patience again began to ebb sharply, and to avoid further provocation I asked, "May I hear more about those two houses?"

And to show that I meant what I said, when he replied, "Yes, and there's no reason why we shouldn't go and see them today," I again showed perfect cooperation.

As a result we were off in the train within an hour. For when Mr. M. chooses to act, he can do so with a speed and precision I can often envy. When we were comfortably seated and had half an hour before lunch would be served, he took from his bag a Milton and handed me a nice little edition of Housman's Poems.

"We are going into country which these two poets illustrated. So, while I read 'Comus' and, being so much the elder, brood on the dreaming water of Sabrina fair, you, being of his age, can climb Tredon Hill' with the Shropshire Lad,

'And hear the larks so high
About us in the sky.'"

It was perhaps forty minutes after lunch — the right time for digestion to have reached that stage when it suggests mild exercise — that Mr. M. rose and, taking down his suitcase, said, "We shall be met at the station by a house investigator."

"Investigator?" I questioningly exclaimed. "Why go so far to avoid the obvious and not call him in common parlance an agent?"

He smiled at my rally and replied in equally good vein, "Don't you think that 'agent' sounds a little secretive, anyhow too committal, almost perhaps sinister? While 'investigator,' after all, commits us to nothing? We need not take the house if in any way you should feel that it might not suit you."

This was graciousness itself, and I hastened to assure him that all I had been told made me very much inclined to close the negotiations without further trouble.

"Well," he said as the train began to slow, "anyhow, we shall have seen an interesting piece, as museum authorities call anything that is more of the past than the present."

At the station a quiet-looking man came up to Mr. M. As only two obvious farmers and three ladies of uncertain age got off the train with us, the man did not have to use much acumen to recognize us. He ushered us out to where a delightful museum piece of a landau was waiting for us — all complete, with faded, moth-eaten cushions once royal-blue, and old stamped and tasseled leather window straps for hauling up the glass windowpanes when the cracked leather-japanned top hamper should be put up against the rain.

But today was glorious and, imagining myself the Grand Duke of Baden driving to take "the cure" with my equerry and physician, I thoroughly enjoyed it as we bowled along through the streets of the quaint little town. Mr. Mycroft, unconsciously playing up to the role of court physician in which I had cast him, entertained me, the Royal Highness, with, "Twibury is a delightful little town. It has a medicinal warm spring. On your left you see the tower of the largely Saxon church, with the characteristic 'long-and-short' work of the quoins and the 'midwall shafting' of the tower windows, while round the town itself are some peculiarly happy examples of mid-eighteenth-century domestic architecture."

All this, which would have bored me had I been listening to it "out of character," now that I was daydreaming of being a German princelet fell in so well with the whole fancy that I was already more than half in love with the place.

When, then, through orchards in bloom, we drew up by a fine, stately brick house with a flight of mellow stone steps leading up to the fanlighted and column-flanked door, I did not need to decipher, in the finely wreathed ironwork which arched over the steps and made a nest for the doorlamp to rest, the date "1760."

I turned to Mr. M. as we came to a standstill and said, "I'm won already. We may stay here as long as you please."

I should have judged that he would then fail me, and his "Well, wait," I felt, was meant to bring me down from a dream which, like enough, he saw I was enjoying. Certainly there seemed less and less to wait for, or to delay us from getting out of the small and rather stuffy quarters in which we'd cooped ourselves up in London to be in this — to quote somebody I've forgotten — "larger, serener air." For as our attendant fell in behind us as we mounted the steps, the door opened. A most efficient maid stood by it — I could see at a glance, for I am a judge of maids. And my judgment was confirmed with every step we took over the threshold: the brass was like gold; the mahogany like tortoise shell; the pieces of silver bright as mercury; not a speck of dust anywhere, still less the thread of a spider; the chintzes lately calendered, bright-stiff but not repellent.

As we passed through from the hall to the dining room, even Mr. M. was impressed and had the courtesy to say, "What a lovely polish all the woodwork has." The maid bridled with pleasure; and then, not content with having given pleasure, he must overload the whole thing and begin taking that rather absurd overinterest. He bent and looked at the grand piano we were passing.

"You use one of the new waxes, don't you?"

"Oh, yes, Sir! Sheen is just wonderful!"

"None of the old oils and resins now!"

"Oh, no, Sir, they was ever so much trouble, and when you'd done all your best, there they were, and never could you be sure whether the gloss would last; I'd never go back to those old things, would never let them in the house again, never!"

He had, as usual, when casually and by habit of fidget picking at the dike of some special and really boring interest, unloosed a flow of utterly irrelevant technicalities. He gave no further encouragement, but it was too late — the technician had tasted blood, or rather resin or wax or whatever it was that whetted her appetite and loosed her tongue. She followed the three of us as we moved through the dining room to a stately, tall window at the end that opened out to another short flight of steps leading into the garden. We went down these, I supposed to get a general view of the house from the back.

The garden was as charming as the house. It was of the period and as unspoiled. There were pleached alleys of beech just coming into leaf, these, with their light green, framed against a solid background of close-clipped yew, and behind that again, closing in the whole, a fine, tall brick wall and some most promising peach trees covered with bloom. At the end I thought I saw a fish pond with a statue or two, while on the right this lovely enclosure had the only outer entrance, a fine green door, serenely shut.

I was still at the top of the steps surveying this, which I already saw as my privy garden for the summer, when I noticed that Mr. M., the man he would call the house investigator, and the maid, still hoping to impart further technical tips on the polishing of furniture, had paused at the foot. There the pleached alleys met and made a kind of arbor. They went into this little bower, and I followed. It certainly was charming inside, and I became even more deeply rooted — for here, clearly, was the actual spot where I would sit, working at that very suggestive essay on "1760 as the Acme of English Taste." The place was made for such work, for in the little enclosed bay which it formed, screened from the house, screened from almost all the garden, was a sort of sanctum sanctorum fitted as a kind of shrine. I felt the owner must have used it thus, for there was a beautiful stone chair carved in lovely half-marble Hopton Wood stone that time and a small bloom of lichens had deepened, so that it was more like moss agate. This noble seat was flanked on both sides by two stone tables of the same material, and looking down on each side were marble busts, now too gone a decent duck-egg green, of two Greek worthies. I felt in my bones that I had arrived. Here was a spot so manifestly prepared that, as little as a bird can fail to lay an egg in a properly finished nest, so little need I doubt that here was the inevitable environment so apposite to my genius that I must produce a masterpiece!

CHAPTER 2

THE INSPECTOR'S "WHO?"

I was just about to seat myself on this throne and see how it felt — and I was certain it must feel as good as it looked — for inspiration, when the house agent, who till then had said hardly a word, began to speak.

Not unnaturally, I felt impatience. I couldn't help dreading that this man of ledgers, rents, and "advts." would be bound to spoil quite half of my perfectly toned appreciation with sales-pressure talk about the "quaint setup" and "picturesque atmosphere." What then was my surprise, yes, shock, when I found that what he was actually saying was so incongruous that beside it the weariest cliches of the most dismal trafficker in house property would have been more apposite — and more soothing! What he was saying was not only highly disturbing but so utterly out of character with what one has a right to expect of a house agent. I felt as though one of those nightmares was coming on, when the chest of drawers begins to turn into a loquacious and voracious dragon.

"The body was there. As he stabbed himself, he fell over, of course."

Mr. Mycroft's counter, "You're certain of your ... diagnosis?" was not answered by this utterly out-of-character character.

A further note of the odd and uncanny, a further darkening of the sudden cloud spreading over my bright day, was caused by the voice of the wonderfully prim and efficient maid taking up the tale; saying, "Excuse me, Sir, Mr. Sankey — he was murdered. I don't say that he was a man who was loved or admired, but give the dead their due and the living their rights, murdered he was, and I know it. And I know that the living ought to be protected, and not just told, against all their senses and their commonsense into the bargain, that it was just common-and-garden suicide as anyone of us might be taken with after influenza or crossed in love."

If this outbreak disconcerted me, it did not seem to have any such effect on the other two. They showed as little discomposure as did Balaam when his ass spoke and, in further likeness to that perverse if cold-blooded prophet, proceeded to enter into easy conversation with their unexpected interrupter.

"Well, Jane," said the agent, with the ease of someone asking a crony of the inglenook to cap one of his stories, "tell this gentleman your theory."

"Theories and such things, Sir, if you will pardon me, I know nothing about. Them things I leave to those who think they do —" and with this there was shot a glance that was meant to win Mr. M., who certainly had already won her heart, and defy the rival who had refused to treat her hope of the excitement of murder as being well-founded.

With a sniff she swept on. "I trust my senses and not theories, and nothing will move me not till Judgment Day, no not Judgment Day itself, that poor Mr. Sankey — as one has a right to call him whatever he may have been till he was murdered — poor Mr. Sankey was murdered, and what is more —" and here she seemed to feel the part of tragedy queen hovering over her with all its regalia — "right under my nose as I might say."

To Mr. M.'s rally, "You don't mean — as we are dealing, as you rightly claim, not with theory but with fact — that you really smelled the murderer?" she granted, as I am sure she would not to the rest of us, a cold smile of triumph.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Notched Hairpin by H. F. Heard. Copyright © 1976 The Barrie Family Trust. Excerpted by permission of MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword by Dr Christopher Pittard,
The Notched Hairpin,
The Red Brick Twins,
The Inspector's "Who?",
Mr. Millum's "Why?",
Mr. Mycroft's "How?",
The Enchanted Garden,
Preview: A Taste for Honey,
About the Author,