The Doctor's Case.pdf

The Doctor's Case

By Stephen King

Stephen King - The Doctor's Case

I believe there was only one occasion upon which I actually solved a crime before my

slightly fabulous friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. I say believe because my memory began

to grow hazy about the edges as I entered my ninth decade; now, as I approach my

centennial, the whole has become downright misty. There may have been another

occasion, but if so I do not remember it.

I doubt that I shall ever forget this particular case no matter how murky my

thoughts and memories may become, and I thought I might as well set it down before

God caps my pen forever. It cannot humiliate Holmes now, God knows; he is forty

years in his grave. That, I think, is long enough to leave the tale untold. Even

Lestrade, who used Holmes upon occasion but never had any great liking for him,

never broke his silence in the matter of Lord Hull -- he hardly could have done so,

considering the circumstances. Even if the circumstances had been different, I

somehow doubt he would have. He and Holmes baited each other, and I believe that

Holmes may have harbored actual hate in his heart for the policeman (although he

never would have admitted to such a low emotion), but Lestrade had a queer respect

for my friend.

It was a wet, dreary afternoon and the clock had just rang half past one. Holmes sat

by the window, holding his violin but not playing it, looking silently out into the

rain. There were times, especially once his cocaine days were behind him, when

Holmes would grow moody to the point of surliness when the skies remained stubbornly

gray for a week or more, and he had been doubly disappointed on this day, for the

glass had been rising since late the night before and he had confidently predicted

clearing skies by ten this morning at the latest. Instead, the mist, which had been

hanging in the air when I arose, had thickened into a steady rain, and if there was

anything that rendered Holmes moodier than long periods of rain, it was being wrong.

Suddenly he straightened up, tweaking a violin string with a fingernail, and smiled

sardonically. "Watson! Here's a sight! The wettest bloodhound you ever saw!"

It was Lestrade, of course, seated in the back of an open wagon with water running

into his close-set, fiercely inquisitive eyes. The wagon had no more than stopped

before he was out, flinging the driver a coin, and striding toward 22IB Baker

Street. He moved so quickly that I thought he should run into our door like a

battering ram.

I heard Mrs. Hudson remonstrating with him about his decidedly damp condition and

the effect it might have on the rugs both downstairs and up, and then Holmes, who

could make Lestrade look like a tortoise when the urge struck him, leaped across to

the door and called down, "Let him up, Mrs. H. -- I'll put a newspaper under his

boots if he stays long, but I somehow think, yes, I really do think that..."

Then Lestrade was bounding up the stairs, leaving Mrs. Hudson to expostulate below.

His color was high, his eyes burned, and his teeth -- decidedly yellowed by tobacco

-- were bared in a wolfish grin.

"Inspector Lestrade!" Holmes cried jovially. "What brings you out on such a -- "

No further did he get. Still panting from his climb, Lestrade said, "I've heard

gypsies say the devil grants wishes. Now I believe it. Come at once if you'd have a

try, Holmes; the corpse is still fresh and the suspects all in a row."

"You frighten me with your ardor, Lestrade!" Holmes cried, but with a sardonic

little waggle of his eyebrows.

"Don't play the shrinking violet with me, man -- I've come at the run to offer you

the very thing for which you in your pride have wished a hundred times or more in my

own hearing: the perfect locked-room mystery!"

Holmes had started into the corner, perhaps to get the awful gold-tipped cane, which

he was for some reason affecting that season. Now he whirled upon our damp visitor,

his eyes wide. "Lestrade! Are you serious?"

"Would I have risked wet-lung croup riding here in an open wagon if I were not?''

Lestrade countered.

Then, for the only time in my hearing (despite the countless times the phrase has

been attributed to him), Holmes turned to me and cried: "Quick, Watson! The game's

afoot!"

On our way, Lestrade commented sourly that Holmes also had the luck of the devil;

although Lestrade had commanded the wagon-driver to wait, we had no more than

emerged from our lodgings when that exquisite rarity clip-clopped down the street:

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Stephen King - The Doctor's Case

an empty hackney in what had become a driving rain. We climbed in and were off in a

trice. As always, Holmes sat on the lefthand side, his eyes darting restlessly

about, cataloguing everything, although there was precious little to see on that

day... or so it seemed, at least, to the likes of me. I've no doubt every empty

street corner and rain-washed shop window spoke volumes to Holmes.

Lestrade directed the driver to an address in Savile Row, and then asked Holmes if

he knew Lord Hull.

"I know o/him," Holmes said, "but have never had the good fortune of meeting him.

Now I suppose I never shall. Shipping, wasn't it?"

"Shipping," Lestrade agreed, "but the good fortune was yours. Lord Hull was, by all

accounts (including those of his nearest and -- ahem! -- dearest), a thoroughly

nasty fellow, and as dotty as a puzzle-picture in a child's novelty book. He's

finished practicing both nastiness and dottiness for good, however; around eleven

o'clock this morning, just" -- he pulled out his turnip of a pocket-watch and looked

at it -- "two hours and forty minutes ago, someone put a knife in his back as he sat

in his study with his will on the blotter before him."

"So," Holmes said thoughtfully, lighting his pipe, "you believe the study of this

unpleasant Lord Hull is the perfect locked room of my dreams, do you?" His eyes

gleamed skeptically through a rising rafter of blue smoke.

"I believe," Lestrade said quietly, "that it is."

"Watson and I have dug such holes before and never struck water," Holmes remarked,

and he glanced at me before returning to his ceaseless catalogue of the streets

through which we passed. "Do you recall the 'Speckled Band,' Watson?"

I hardly needed to answer him. There had been a locked room in that business, true

enough, but there had also been a ventilator, a poisonous snake, and a killer

fiendish enough to introduce the latter into the former. It had been the work of a

cruelly brilliant mind, but Holmes had seen to the bottom of the matter in almost no

time at all.

"What are the facts, Inspector?" Holmes asked.

Lestrade began to lay them before us in the clipped tones of a trained policeman.

Lord Albert Hull had been a tyrant in business and a despot at home. His wife had

gone in fear of him, and had apparently been justified in doing so. The fact that

she had borne him three sons seemed in no way to have moderated his savage approach

toward their domestic affairs in general and toward her in particular. Lady Hull had

been reluctant to speak of these matters, but her sons had no such reservations;

their papa, they said, had missed no opportunity to dig at her, to criticize her, or

to jest at her expense... all of this when they were in company. When they were

alone, he virtually ignored her. Except, Lestrade added, when he felt moved to beat

her, which was by no means an uncommon occurrence.

"William, the eldest, told me she always gave out the same story when she came to

the breakfast table with a swollen eye or a mark on her cheek: that she had

forgotten to put on her spectacles and had run into a door. 'She ran into doors once

and twice a week,' William said. 'I didn't know we had that many doors in the

house.' "

"Hmmm," Holmes said. "A cheery fellow! The sons never put a stop to it?"

"She wouldn't allow it," Lestrade said.

"Insanity," I returned. A man who would beat his wife is an abomination; a woman who

would allow it an abomination and a perplexity.

"There was a method in her madness, though," Lestrade said. "Method and what you

might call 'an informed patience.' She was, after all, twenty years younger than her

lord and master. Also, Hull was a heavy drinker and a champion diner. At age

seventy, five years ago, he developed gout and angina."

"Wait for the storm to end and then enjoy the sunshine," Holmes remarked.

"Yes," Lestrade said, "but it's an idea which has led many a man and woman though

the devil's door, I'll be bound. Hull made sure his family knew both his worth and

the provisions of his wijl. They were little better than slaves."

"With the will as their document of indenture," Holmes murmured.

"Exactly so, old boy. At the time of his death, Hull's worth was three hundred

thousand pounds. He never asked them to take his word for this; he had his chief

accountant to the house quarterly to detail the balance sheets of Hull Shipping,

although he kept the purse-strings firmly in his own hands and tightly closed."

"Devilish!" I exclaimed, thinking of the cruel boys one sometimes sees in Eastcheap

or Piccadilly, boys who will hold out a sweet to a starving dog to see it dance...

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Stephen King - The Doctor's Case

and then gobble it themselves while the hungry animal watches. I was shortly to find

this comparison even more apt than I would have thought possible.

"On his death. Lady Rebecca was to receive one hundred and fifty thousand pund'.

William, the eldest, was to receive fifty thousand; Jory, the middler, forty; and

Stephen, the youngest, thirty.''

"And the other thirty thousand?" I asked.

"Small bequests, Watson: to a cousin in Wales, an aunt in Brittany (not a cent for

Lady Hull's relatives, though), five thousand in assorted bequests to the servants.

Oh, and -- you'll like this, Holmes -- ten thousand pounds to Mrs. HemphilFs Home

for Abandoned Pussies."

"You're joking!" I cried, although if Lestrade expected a similar reaction from

Holmes, he was disappointed. Holmes merely re-lighted his pipe and nodded as if he

had expected this... this or something like it. "With babies dying of starvation in

the East End and twelve-year-old children working fifty hours a week in the mills,

this fellow left ten thousand pounds to a... a boarding-hotel for cats?"

"Exactly so," Lestrade said pleasantly. "Furthermore, he should have left

twenty-seven times that amount to Mrs. Hemphill's Abandoned Pussies if not for

whatever happened this morning -- and whoever did the business."

I could only gape at this, and try to multiply in my head. While I was coming to the

conclusion that Lord Hull had intended to disinherit both wife and children in favor

of a rest-home for felines, Holmes was looking sourly at Lestrade and saying

something which sounded to me like a total non sequitur. "I am going to sneeze, am I

not?"

Lestrade smiled. It was a smile of transcendent sweetness. "Yes, my dear Holmes!

Often and profoundly, I fear."

Holmes removed his pipe, which he had just gotten drawing to his satisfaction (I

could tell by the way he settled back slightly in his seat), looked at it for a

moment, and then held it out into the rain. More dumbfounded than ever, I watched

him knock out the damp and smouldering tobacco.

"How many?" Holmes asked.

"Ten," Lestrade said with a fiendish grin.

"I suspected it was more than this famous locked room of yours that brought you out

in the back of an open wagon on such a wet day," Holmes said sourly.

"Suspect as you like," Lestrade said gaily. "I'm afraid I must go on to the scene of

the crime -- duty calls, you know -- but if you'd like, I could let you and the good

doctor out here."

"You are the only man I ever met," Holmes said, "whose wit seems to be sharpened by

foul weather. Does that perhaps say something about your character, I wonder? But

never mind -- that is, perhaps, a subject for another day. Tell me this, Lestrade:

when did Lord Hull become sure that he was going to die?"

"Die?" I said. "My dear Holmes, whatever gives you the idea that the man believed --

"It's obvious, Watson," Holmes said. "C.I.B., as I have told you at least a thousand

times -- character indexes behavior. It amused him to keep them in bondage by means

of his will..." He looked an aside at Lestrade. "No trust arrangements, I take it?

No entailments of any sort?''

Lestrade shook his head. "None whatever."

"Extraordinary!" I said.

"Not at all, Watson.; character indexes behavior, remember. He wanted them to

soldier along in the belief that all would be theirs when he did them the courtesy

of dying, but he never actually intended any such thing. Such behavior would, in

fact, have run completely across the grain of his character. D'you agree, Lestrade?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," Lestrade replied.

"Then we are very well to this point, Watson, are we not? All is clear? Lord Hull

realizes he is dying. He waits... makes absolutely sure that this time it's no

mistake, no false alarm... and then he calls his beloved family together. When? This

morning, Lestrade?"

Lestrade grunted an affirmative.

Holmes steepled his fingers beneath his chin. "He calls them together and tells them

he's made a new will, one which disinherits all of them... all, that is, save for

the servants, his few distant relatives, and, of course, the pussies."

I opened my mouth to speak, only to discover I was too outraged to say anything. The

image, which kept returning to my mind, was that of those cruel boys, making the

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Stephen King - The Doctor's Case

starving East End curs jump with a bit of pork or a crumb of crust from a meat pie.

I must add it never occurred to me to ask whether such a will could be disputed

before the bar. Today a man would have a deuce of a time slighting his closest

relatives in favor of a cat-hotel, but in 1899, a man's will was a man's will, and

unless many examples of insanity -- not eccentricity but outright Insanity -- could

be proved, a man's will, like God's, was done.

"This new will was properly witnessed?" Holmes asked.

"Indeed it was," Lestrade replied. "Yesterday Lord Hull's solicitor and one of his

assistants appeared at the house and were shown into Hull's study. There they

remained for about fifteen minutes. Stephen Hull says the solicitor once raised his

voice in protest about something -- he could not tell what -- and was silenced by

Hull. Jory, the middle son, was upstairs, painting, and Lady Hull was calling on a

friend. But both Stephen and William Hull saw these legal fellows enter, and leave a

short time later. William said that they left with their heads down, and although

William spoke, asking Mr. Barnes -- the solicitor -- if he was well, and making some

social remark about the persistence of the rain, Barnes did not reply and the

assistant seemed actually to cringe. It was as if they were ashamed, William said."

Well, so much for that possible loophole, I thought.

"Since we are on the subject, tell me about the boys," Holmes invited.

"As you like. It goes pretty much without saying that their hatred for the pater was

exceeded only by the pater's boundless contempt for them... although how he could

hold Stephen in contempt is... well, never mind, I'll keep things in their proper

order."

"Yes, please be so kind as to do that," Holmes said dryly.

"William is thirty-six. If his father had given him any sort of allowance, I suppose

he would be a bounder. As he had little or none, he has spent his days in various

gymnasiums, involved in what I believe is called 'physical culture' -- he appears to

be an extremely muscular fellow -- and his nights in various cheap coffee-houses,

for the most part. If he did happen to have a bit of money in his pockets, he was

apt to take himself off to a card-parlor, where he would lose it quickly enough. Not

a pleasant man, Holmes. A man who has no purpose, no skill, no hobby, and no

ambition (save to outlive his father) could hardly be a pleasant man. I had the

queerest idea while talking to him that I was interrogating not a man but an empty

vase upon which the face of Lord Hull had been lightly stamped."

"A vase waiting to be filled up with pounds sterling," Holmes commented.

"Jory is another matter," Lestrade went on. "Lord Hull saved most of his contempt

for him, calling him from his earliest childhood by such endearing pet-names as

'Fish-Face' and 'Keg-Legs' and 'Stoat-Belly.' It's not hard to understand such

names, unfortunately; Jory Hull stands no more than five feet tall, if that, is

bow-legged, and of a remarkably ugly countenance. He looks a bit like that poet

fellow. The pouf."

"Oscar Wilde?" asked I.

Holmes turned a brief, amused glance upon me. "I think Lestrade means Algernon

Swinburne," he said. "Who, I believe, is no more a pouf than you are, Watson."

"Jory Hull was born dead," Lestrade said. "After he remained blue and still for an

entire minute, the doctor pronounced him so and put a napkin over his misshapen

body. Lady Hull, in her one moment of heroism, sat up, removed the napkin, and

dipped the baby's legs into the hot water, which had been brought to be used at the

birth. The baby began to squirm and squall."

Lestrade grinned and lit a cigarillo with a flourish.

"Hull claimed this immersion had caused the boy's bowed legs, and when he was in his

cups, he taxed his wife with it. Told her she should have left well enough alone.

Better Jory had been born dead than lived to be what he was, he sometimes said -- a

scuttling creature with the legs of a crab and the face of a cod."

Holmes's only reaction to this extraordinary (and to my physician's mind rather

suspect) story was to comment that Lestrade had gotten a remarkably large body of

information in a remarkably short period of time.

"That points up one of the aspects of the case which I thought would appeal to you,

my dear Holmes," Lestrade said as we swept into Rotten Row with a splash and a

swirl. "They need no coercion to speak; coercion's what it would take to shut em up.

Ihey've had to remain silent all too long. And then there's the fact that the new

will is gone. Relief loosens tongues beyond measure, I find."

"Gone!" I exclaimed, but Holmes took no notice; his mind still ran upon Jory, the

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misshapen middle child.

"Is he ugly, then?" he asked Leptrade.

"Hardly handsome, but not as bad as some I've seen," Lestrade replied comfortably.

"I believe his father continually heaped vituperation on his head because -- "

" -- because he was the only one who had no need of his father's money to make his

way in the world," Holmes finished for him.

Lestrade started. "The devil! How did you know that?"

"Because Lord Hull was reduced to carping at Jory's physical faults. How it must

have chafed the old devil to be faced with a potential target so well armored in

other respects! Baiting a man for his looks or his posture may be fine for

schoolboys or drunken louts, but a villain like Lord Hull had no doubt become used

to higher sport. I would venture the opinion that he may have been rather afraid of

his bow-legged middle son. What was Jory's key to the cell door?''

"Haven't I told you? He paints," Lestrade said.

"Ah!"

Jory Hull was, as the canvases in the lower halls of Hull House later proved, a very

good painter indeed. Not great; I do not mean that at all. But his renderings of his

mother and brothers were faithful enough so that, years later, when I saw color

photographs for the first time, my mind flashed back to that rainy November

afternoon in 1899. And the one of his father perhaps was a work of greatness.

Certainly it startled (almost intimidated) with the malevolence that seemed to waft

out of the canvas like a breath of dank graveyard air. Perhaps it was Algernon

Swinburne that Jory resembled, but his father's likeness -- at least as seen through

the middle son's hand and eye -- reminded me of an Oscar Wilde character: that

nearly immortal roue, Dorian Gray.

His canvases were long, slow processes, but he was able to quick-sketch with such

nimble rapidity that he might come home from Hyde Park on a Saturday afternoon with

as much as twenty pounds in his pockets.

"I'll wager his father enjoyed that," Holmes said. He reached automatically for his

pipe, then put it back again. "The son of a Peer quick-sketching wealthy American

tourists and their sweethearts like a French Bohemian."

Lestrade laughed heartily. "He raged over it, as you may imagine. But Jory -- good

for him! -- wouldn't give over his selling stall in Hyde Park... not, at least,

until his father agreed to an allowance of thirty-five pounds a week. He called it

low black mail."

"My heart bleeds," I said.

"As does mine, Watson," Holmes said. "The third son, Lestrade, quickly -- we've

almost reached the house, I believe."

As Lestrade had intimated, surely Stephen Hull had the greatest cause to hate his

father. As his gout grew worse and his head more muddled, Lord Hull surrendered more

and more of the company affairs to Stephen, who was only twenty-eight at the time of

his father's death. The responsibilities devolved upon Stephen, and the blame also

devolved upon him if his least decision proved amiss. Yet no financial gain accrued

to him should he decide well and his father's affairs prosper.

Lord Hull should have looked with favor upon Stephen, as the only one of his

children with an interest in and an aptitude for the business he had founded;

Stephen was a perfect example of what the Bible calls "the good son." Yet instead of

displaying love and gratitude, Lord Hull repaid the young man's largely successful

efforts with scorn, suspicion, and jealousy. On many occasions during the last two

years of his life, the old man had offered the charming opinion that Stephen "would

steal the pennies from a dead man's eyes."

"The b -- -- d!" I cried, unable to contain myself.

"Ignore the new will for a moment," Holmes said, steepling his fingers again, "and

return to the old one. Even under the conditions of that marginally more generous

document, Stephen Hull would have had cause for resentment. In spite of all his

labors, which had not only saved the family fortune but increased it, his reward was

still to have been the youngest son's share of the spoils. What, by the way, was to

have been the disposition of the shipping company under the provisions of what we

might call the Pussy Will?"

I looked carefully at Holmes, but, as always, it was difficult to tell if he had

attempted a small ban mot. Even after all the years I spent with him and all the

adventures we shared, Sherlock Holmes's sense of humor remains a largely

undiscovered country, even to me.

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Stephen King - The Doctor's Case

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