How Holmes Assisted “The Armchair Detective”
Dear Investigators,
Job well done and a hearty thank you from The Armchair Detective, no doubt. Courtesy of your sleuthing, Wark and his daughter can rest assured they are not being targeted by mob bosses, shady preachers, or any other such villains. (And Winslow’s Bank can start to address their embezzlement issues head-on.)
For The Expert’s overview of this tricky case, read Holmes’ solution just below.
Until next time,
The Dear Holmes Team
——
16 May, 1920
Dear Mr. Mackenzie,
Let me start with the most important news for you and Jenny. William Wilson is alive and well, and there is no reason to suspect Jenny will be the target of an attack from Sabini or otherwise. Please, take a moment to relish this news.
Now let us examine the broader series of events that have formed the backdrop for Mr. Wilson’s disappearance and other criminal goings-on in your neighbourhood. When you first wrote to me, your case was already quite the strange one. Your old regular, Joe Stark, had been dreadfully drubbed, and two most singular obituaries, mourning Jack Faltworthy and Annie Nickerson prior to their deaths, had been printed by the Daily Herald. Already, you had correctly deduced that these obituaries were warnings, aimed at getting other “welchers” to pay up (well done, sir,) but then Annie Nickerson was murdered. This took the case in another direction. At the time, you wondered why Sabini would be so foolhardy as to murder a debtor; I instead asked myself who else would have cause to commit these murders.
Your following letter, dated 11 May, helped answer this question, but brought another complication to light as your daughter’s husband William Wilson, and his associate, James Madder, suddenly disappeared. You suspected that the ominous Joshua, and possibly the “gauntlet of righteousness”, were somehow involved if not responsible, and that was partially true. I will further address this later. More intriguing is Jack Darby, who you indicated in that second letter had recently arrived from Clerkenwell and wanted to move in on Sabini. This made him a strong suspect for Nickerson’s murder, for while it is unquestionable that Sabini and his associates placed the bogus obituaries in the newspapers, he had nothing to gain from the murders. The same cannot be said of Darby. I surmise that when he learned of Sabini’s bogus obituaries, he hatched the idea of making them a reality to take his rival off the streets. A clever move. If Darby could secretly dispatch Sabini’s welchers in the right way, he would get the law to accomplish his greater goal for him. Still, this is only but a fragment of this mystery. Darby’s manoeuvre would not explain our newly missing men, or the fact that only Nickerson, not Faltworthy, had been murdered, despite both of their “obituaries” being printed.
Additional evidence would be needed to see reason in these occurrences, but in this same 11 May letter, you turned up a fascinating clue pointing to a completely different crime– another fragment of the mystery. When you found the charred letterhead for Knollen Finances, our investigation into Madder’s disappearance took a sharp turn. My initial hunch was that William Wilson, James Madder and other confederates at Winslow's, were involved in some sort of embezzlement. Under cover of their own bookkeeping, they were likely syphoning funds to a fraudulent investment firm, I thought. Jenny’s reports of Madder’s visits and William’s patterns of carousing indicate that they performed these “deposits” once a month, but even so, I struggled to see how Sabini came into play in all this.
I was able to develop this hypothesis with your third letter, of 12 May, which not only showed your capacity for reconnaissance, but hinted at several scenarios explaining Wilson and company’s disappearance. Your report offered three reasonable theories:
(1) Sabini might have kidnapped or killed Wilson;
(2) Wilson and his partner Madder had turned on one another, with greed or jealousy as potential motives; or
(3) your daughter Jenny had turned on her husband.
The trunk missing from Jenny’s house, and the large hole in her garden, both cast doubt on your daughter, as did the fireplace poker. Yet the same thing could be said of Wilson and Madder. Either of them could have committed a foul crime and fled while attempting to cover it up. Thankfully, in the midst of all this, Joshua had again reared his head, drawing my attention back to Sabini with his limp. Its onset, which you unknowingly chronicled, was surely the result of an injury from a blunt instrument wielded by a strong man. In this case, Jenny’s fireplace poker. Joshua must have tried to pay an intimidation call on Madder, whom he’d followed, much like he did to the Falkworthys and no doubt Ranny Annie – but instead of cornering his target amidst friends and family, he ran into two desperate men, preparing to flee the country. Far from intimidated, they set upon him. At this point, it was still plausible to believe that Joshua (or another associate of Sabini’s) successfully killed or kidnapped Wilson and Madder, despite their injuring his leg, but with your final missive in hand, I was able to tie a neat string around this unexpected case and formulate a new hypothesis: On that fateful night described in your second letter, Wilson and Madder, under pressure to escape the country and upon confronting Joshua, decided to take advantage of Sabini’s shady tactics, much like Darby did.
Your interviews with Madder’s neighbour and the staff at Winslow’s provided several bits of information that strengthened this conjecture and shed light on their main collaborator. The neighbour, Mrs. Calloway not only revealed that Madder was more than healthy, but also confirmed a long-standing connection between Miss Gilbert (from Winslow’s), Wilson, and Madder. The nature of their relationship – Wilson and Miss Gilbert’s, that is – may well be spurious, but he is surely smitten to some degree, or the young lady would not be in possession of your daughter’s bracelet. The revelation that Miss Gilbert, too, had suddenly gone missing, bolstered my confidence in the fact that she was working together with Wilson and Madder. However, it was not until learning of “Fifi’s Paradise” that I truly perceived this small gang’s plan.
When I read of your discovery of “Fifi’s Paradise” on Lime Street, I took another look at the addresses you had noted early on, on the Knollen Finances stationary. Clearly, chicanery was afoot, and perhaps, I am slipping. The office supposedly found in Paris was listed on Rue “Treblig” — this happens to be Miss Gilbert’s last name written in reverse order (and a street I defy you to find on one of the Librairie Hachette’s tour books of Paris.) Upon realising this, their crime unravelled before me.
The crime’s modus was simple. Each month, with Mr. Jacobson’s blessing, Madder and Wilson left the bank with a large sum of money and brought it not to “Fifi’s Paradise”, but to Jenny’s backyard, where they buried it as dogs might a bone. On each of these paydays, they would celebrate late into the night with Miss Gilbert. Meanwhile, at Winslow's, Jacobson, with false hope, prepared to leave with Miss Gilbert for France, believing the young men would take the fall. Her elderly suitor was sorely mistaken. After the encounter with Joshua described in your second letter, the duo dug up the pilfered pounds and left behind a “calling card”, making it appear that they had been yet another victim of the voracious Lion. The embezzlers then made their separate ways to Southampton where Miss Gilbert later joined them. Thence they boarded the Coronia. The local authorities plan to greet the trio when it docks in New York City, all three will be in the custody of the London police once they are escorted back to Southampton. Inspector Walls at Scotland Yard has agreed to let you break this news to Jenny. I suggest you do so before the ship docks on 21 May, as Wilson’s arrest will more than likely find its way into the headlines.
To complete the picture, we have only a few loose ends. In your most recent letter, you fretted over the fact that Sabini would soon be let out of gaol and that Jack Darby had become another of the missing. I think it is a tribute to your good nature that you underestimate the depravity of the criminal mind. Regarding Sabini’s latest brush with the police, I propose that it was not Jack Darby who informed on him, but Sabini who tipped off the police to ensure that he would be brought in for questioning. I say this because Jack Darby soon after went missing. Darby is not the sort of man to go into hiding. I fear he will not be found alive. When did he go missing? When Sabini was still in jail. What better alibi for Sabini? None.
As concerns the evangelists at Alexandria Park Racecourse and nearby... While you may find them to be a nuisance, and once suspected them of brutality, they can clearly be held harmless in all of this. While it is repugnant to think that a hoodlum like “Joshua” would hide behind a Bible, you yourself, and later Snape Stevens, provided confirmation that the “gauntlet” and Joshua were unrelated entities. I will add that colleagues of mine in Birmingham discovered that in addition to his criminal past, Joshua has performed in many amateur theatre productions in Birmingham, (most recently as the pirate Mr. Smee in “Peter Pan”). He uses the name Bobby Fischetti. Family histories can be curious. Finally, regarding Jack Faltworthy, I believe he has escaped unharmed — at the cost of having to remain in hiding with his poor wife Margie at Brighton this past week. They will soon surface, likely with sun burns, and more willing to stand you to a cup of tea.
So, there you have it, Wark. You should be proud of your detective work. (And along those lines, congratulations on your skillful disguise – believe me I have had my share of trouble with moustaches.) It disheartens me to see such promising young adults choose a criminal path, but I take solace in knowing that your daughter Jenny will be all the better knowing the truth about her husband now. Hefty debts aside, the fact that Wilson was capable of making a bracelet he had given to his wife into a gift to Miss Gilbert hardly speaks well of his character or cash reserves.
May I suggest that in the future, you continue to keep your wagers small and clients few. It has been a pleasure to reacquaint, and to help you through this bracing chase. If you find yourself in London, you would be more than welcome to enter the Diogenes Club and join me for a brandy. This will be a silent celebration, if you recall the club’s rules, but the situation could be mended with a quick stroll to the closest pub.
Your colleague,
