The Case of the Whit Sunday Revolver

0:00 A Wager at the Window

0:04 Watson: It was Whit Monday, the third of June, nineteen fifty-seven, and London had spent its bank holiday under a sky the colour of wet slate. Holmes had idled all week over a monograph on bootlaces, and I over a paper bag of humbugs, sweets having been off the ration two whole years. That evening we stood at the sitting-room window, watching the holiday crowds trudge home.

0:28 Watson: There. The tall fellow with his umbrella furled like a rifle. An old campaigner, Holmes.

0:35 Holmes: A church verger. Half a crown says so. Watson: Nonsense. Shoulders back, eyes front. That's the parade—

0:43 Holmes: That's the nave, Watson. He paces it every Sunday behind the choir. Watson: And soldiers don't pace?

0:50 Holmes: Not with a ring of keys the size of a dinner plate. Watson: Quartermasters carry keys. Holmes: You have a quartermaster's stubbornness, at any rate.

0:59 Watson: And you a verger's smugness. Done, then. Half a crown.

1:05 Holmes: A cab left ticking at the kerb. Somebody means to leave again quickly. Mrs Hudson: A lady to see you, sir. She wouldn't wait in the hall.

1:12 Holmes: Then show her in, Mrs Hudson. And tea, I think. Rosalind: No tea, thank you. I've a taxi waiting, and a letter the police laughed at.

1:22 Watson: Sit down, madam. That hand looks painful. Rosalind: My name is Rosalind Ridley, and it's nothing beside what brought me.

1:31 Holmes: Which is? Rosalind: A man was shot outside the Black Heron in Hampstead last night, Mr Holmes. Watson: Good Lord. Were you there?

1:40 Rosalind: Passing by. And somebody has since written to apologise for my hand. Watson: And the police, Mrs Ridley?

1:48 Rosalind: They've put it with the cranks. Holmes: Quite right. A shooting outside a public house is legwork, madam, and the—

1:55 Watson: She's come all the way from Hampstead. Holmes: And Scotland Yard has more legs than I, Watson. Cranks write after every one.

2:02 Watson: Then think what cranks write. They boast. They confess. They accuse the neighbours.

2:08 Rosalind: That's near enough what I told the sergeant. Watson: They never apologise, Holmes. Least of all to a wounded passer-by.

2:17 Holmes: Not once, in my experience... Mrs Hudson: Shall I send her driver away, then? Holmes: Keep him, Mrs Hudson. We shall want him.

2:25 Watson: And our wager? Holmes: Drop it. A verger keeps till Sunday. Your hat.

2:31 Watson: And so, with that engine still muttering below, the three of us went down into the June rain.

2:38 Bullet Marks in Ferndale Rise

2:42 Watson: Our taxi left Mrs Ridley at her door and set us down in Ferndale Rise a little after ten, where Inspector Lestrade stood under a dripping street lamp beside the Black Heron. Lestrade: Mr Holmes. Doctor Watson. I'd a feeling that woman would come running to you.

2:58 Holmes: She ran to your sergeant first, Lestrade. He laughed at— Lestrade: He's got letters a foot high on his desk. Look at this wall instead.

3:06 Watson: Chipped, there, and again by the door frame. Fresh brick dust in the mortar. Lestrade: Bullets, Doctor. A racing driver, name of Julian. Knightsbridge clubman. Shot down right here, Sunday night.

3:20 Holmes: The marks run low, Lestrade. Knee height, most of them. Someone kept firing at a man already falling.

3:27 Lestrade: The barman says he went down at the second shot. Holmes: Then it was no robbery. Someone wanted him dead and stayed to make certain.

3:36 Watson: Horrible. Lestrade: Deliberate, I'll grant you. Which makes it my job, not a crank's. It's in every paper this morning. Racing man shot, woman passer-by hit in the hand.

3:50 Watson: With her name and her street printed underneath, I suppose. Lestrade: Right there in the Courier. Half London could write to—

3:57 Holmes: Half London doesn't say sorry. Lestrade: Every shooting in London brings out the cranks.

4:05 A Typist's Bandaged Hand

4:08 Watson: Mrs Ridley's parlour smelled next morning of lavender polish and a sulky coal fire; Holmes took the window, and I took her bandaged hand. Steady, Mrs Ridley. This may pull a little.

4:21 Rosalind: Pull away, Doctor. The lad at the hospital tied it up like a Christmas parcel. Watson: The edges are torn, not clean. That bullet struck something hard before it ever reached you.

4:33 Rosalind: The pub wall, the police said. As if that made it any kinder... Holmes: A covered machine by the window, carbon paper in the grate, a flattened fingertip. You type for your living, Mrs Ridley.

4:45 Rosalind: For a firm of solicitors in Chancery Lane. Twenty years, and never a blot. Watson: Twenty years. I can't write a prescription without three crossings-out.

4:56 Rosalind: Will I go back to it, Doctor? Tell me straight, now. Watson: The tendon's cut. I won't— I won't pretend. Those two fingers may never bend properly again.

5:09 Rosalind: Well. Twenty years... and a stranger takes it in a second, and then writes to say sorry. Holmes: Who else has read that letter?

5:19 Rosalind: Nobody but the police. The sergeant kept it, for all his laughing. Holmes: Good. And the hour, when the shots came?

5:27 Rosalind: Twenty past nine. I'd just looked at my watch under the lamp. Holmes: You're sure?

5:33 Rosalind: Quite sure. Holmes: Then I want you on that pavement again, step for step. Rosalind: You don't ask much of a woman, Mr Holmes. But I'll be there.

5:43 Holmes: Tonight, Mrs Ridley. At twenty past nine.

5:47 The Station Register

5:51 Watson: Holmes gave Lestrade no peace that afternoon, and by four the inspector had the Hampstead station register open across his desk, under protest. Lestrade: There. Sunday, nine twenty-two, shots reported in Ferndale Rise. Happy?

6:07 Holmes: The weapon. Lestrade: A revolver, under the plane tree across from the pub. The constable lifted it off the kerb edge and kept off the grass. We roped the lot that night.

6:17 Holmes: Where's it now? Lestrade: With the gunsmith. You'll wait for his report like everybody else.

6:23 Watson: And Mrs Ridley's letter? It must be entered too. Lestrade: Item seven. Typed, unsigned, London postmark. And not a line of it given to the papers.

6:34 Holmes: Read me the line that bothers you. Lestrade: Nothing bothers me. It's just— well, this one's peculiar.

6:42 Lestrade: "I never wished you harm. I am sorry for the bullet that lost its way." Watson: Rather tender, for a crank...

6:50 Holmes: And rather cold. The writer's sorry for one bullet only. Not a word for the others, or the man they killed.

6:58 Lestrade: Or he's a lunatic who likes his own prose. Either way, those words are known to Mrs Ridley and the Yard, and nobody else. Holmes: See that nobody else ever hears them.

7:10 Lestrade: And nobody will, Holmes. Not a word leaves this office.

7:16 Back on the Pavement

7:19 Watson: We stood on that Hampstead pavement again at a quarter past nine, the four of us, with the pub windows glowing at our backs and the street ahead as black as a coal hole. Rosalind: That piano. It was playing on Sunday too. The same— the very same tune.

7:36 Lestrade: Keep to the pavement, Mrs Ridley. That grass under the tree is roped off. Rosalind: I came along from the station end, same as Sunday. As far as here.

7:46 Holmes: And he came out of that door. Rosalind: Like that. Just like that. Laughing, calling something back inside.

7:56 Watson: There's no hurry tonight. None at all. Rosalind: Then a crack, like a motor backfiring. He turned round, puzzled, and—

8:04 Holmes: From where? Rosalind: Under the tree, where it's blackest. Holmes: There's a lamp behind that tree. Whoever waited there had the light in your eyes and their own face in shadow.

8:15 Rosalind: There was no face at all. I saw only a headscarf in the dark, knotted under the chin. Lestrade: A headscarf. There's your woman, then.

8:24 Rosalind: Is it, Inspector? Half the men on the boats at Skerrow tie a scarf on in a gale. I couldn't swear man or woman.

8:32 Lestrade: Hmph. Watson: And after the first shot? Rosalind: More of them. He was down, he was— and something hit my hand like a coal from the grate.

8:42 Watson: You didn't move? Rosalind: I couldn't. Then running feet, Mr Holmes. Then nothing... nothing at all...

8:51 Contents of a Dead Man's Pockets

8:55 Watson: Near eleven, back at the police station, Lestrade laid out what a dead man had carried along a deal table under a bare bulb, for Mrs Ridley's eye. Lestrade: Wallet, keys, cigarette case. And this, folded in his breast pocket.

9:11 Holmes: Read it aloud, Mrs Ridley. You've the eye for typescript. Rosalind: "Sir. Your account at the Little Club stands at forty-two pounds ten shillings. Settle by Saturday or be refused the door."

9:23 Watson: That's a good deal of gin, even for a racing man. Rosalind: And signed at the foot. "Guy. Proprietor, the Little Club."

9:32 Lestrade: Is it, now. Holmes: He carried it for days. The folds are furred soft. He meant neither to pay it nor to throw it away.

9:41 Rosalind: Inspector, would you give me my own letter a moment? Lestrade: Against regulations. Here.

9:49 Rosalind: Look at the E's. Every one sits a hair low, and fainter on the left, like a man favouring a bad leg. Watson: Machines go out of true. Surely two of them could share—

10:00 Rosalind: Not that fault, Doctor, not in that place. It's the same limping E, and I'd know it across a room. Lestrade: Guy's club. Guy's typewriter.

10:12 Holmes: So it'd seem.

10:15 Past Midnight Above Knightsbridge

10:18 Watson: The Little Club stood up a steep flight of stairs off Knightsbridge; at one in the morning its members had gone, leaving Guy, his manageress Stella, and the dirty glasses. Guy: Forty-two pounds ten, Mr Holmes! And the fellow goes and gets himself shot owing every penny.

10:37 Stella: Guy, sit down before you burst something. Mr Holmes never came about a bar slate. Holmes: On the contrary. Julian died with your demand in his breast pocket.

10:48 Guy: Hear that, Stella? First time he ever kept anything of mine. Watson: You don't seem to grieve for him much.

10:55 Guy: Grieve? I told him— I told him to his face, in this room, I'd shoot him if he didn't pay. Half the bar heard me.

11:03 Watson: Not a remark I'd repeat to a detective, old chap. Guy: Why not? It's the truth! He drank my gin, smashed my chairs, insulted my members, and I'm to—

11:13 Stella: Guy. Drink this. A large one, no water.

11:17 Stella: There, bab. He'll be sweet as a lamb in a minute, Mr Holmes. Holmes: You poured without asking, and he took it without looking. You've talked him down before.

11:28 Stella: Every Saturday night since I came. It's half my job. Holmes: That's a great deal of fury over a slate, for a thriving club. Unless every pound—

11:38 Guy: We do very nicely, thank you. Very nicely indeed. Holmes: Do you.

11:43 Stella: Julian never paid for anything in his life, Mr Holmes. There was always somebody to pay for him. Holmes: Where were you at twenty past nine on Whit Sunday?

11:53 The Office Behind the Bar

11:57 Watson: Lestrade climbed the club's stairs at noon, and Stella showed him into a cramped office behind the bar, with Guy, Holmes and me at his heels. Stella: Mind the crates, Inspector. It's an office the way a broom cupboard's a ballroom.

12:11 Lestrade: That machine on the desk. The only one on the premises? Guy: The only one we can afford. What the devil does Scotland Yard want with my—

12:19 Lestrade: A line off it, sir. Mr Holmes, you've the lighter touch. Holmes: Your own demand, Guy, word for word. The one we found in Julian's breast pocket.

12:30 Guy: Is that all this is? Of course I typed it. Two fingers and— well, a great deal of swearing.

12:38 Lestrade: Every E sits low and faint on the left, sir, the same limping E as on your slate. Guy: Low? Holmes: And a fresh ribbon, and the keys wiped clean. Somebody looks after this machine.

12:52 Stella: That's me. Wages, orders, begging letters to the brewery. Guy: Stella writes the polite ones. I write the rude ones.

13:01 Watson: I'd save that joke for the members, old chap. Lestrade: When this door's locked, who can get at the machine? Stella: Guy and me. They're the only two keys, and mine never leaves my handbag.

13:12 Guy: And mine's on my watch-chain. Stella, tell him nobody else could possibly— Stella: I just did, bab.

13:18 Holmes: You left my question unanswered last night, Guy. I doubt the inspector will be so obliging. Lestrade: Whit Sunday evening, sir. Where were you?

13:27 Guy: Home. I was— all Whit Sunday evening, in my own rooms. I'll swear to it.

13:34 A Constable's Book of Empty Houses

13:37 Watson: Shutters were going up for the afternoon trade when Lestrade came back with two constables and a dog-eared notebook, and found Guy polishing glasses beside Stella. Lestrade: Bank holidays bring out the burglars, sir, so the beat man keeps a book of empty houses. Your rooms are in it.

13:55 Guy: Are they. And what does your bobby say? Lestrade: Your windows dark and empty from eight till midnight on Sunday. He tried your door at ten, and again at eleven.

14:05 Guy: Then he's an ass. I was asleep. Lestrade: Were you.

14:10 Holmes: You looked at the till before you answered. Wherever you went on Sunday, it was about money. Guy: I glanced at the clock! It's opening time, and I've a living to—

14:18 Stella: Tell him where you were, Guy. For pity's sake, just— just tell him. Guy: At home. I've said so.

14:25 Lestrade: Then you're the one soul in this club I can't account for. Barman at his mother's in Putney. Stella at a friend's flat, sworn to by the friend, a gentleman called Howard.

14:37 Guy: And the gunman? Your witness saw him, didn't she? She must have—

14:40 Lestrade: Tell him, Mr Holmes. Holmes: Mrs Ridley saw only a headscarf in the dark. I grant you, it'd hide a man's face as well as a woman's.

14:49 Guy: A headscarf? Do I look as if I own a headscarf? Lestrade: Your machine. Your key. Your threat in front of a full bar. And four hours you won't account for.

15:02 Guy: Because they're my own business! I won't— I'm damned if I'll stand in my own club and— Lestrade: I'm arresting you for the murder of Julian Pryce. You needn't say anything, but what you say may be given in evidence.

15:14 Stella: Bab, don't. Not another word. Guy: Mind the till, Stella. You'll hang me for a bar slate, Holmes.

15:23 The Club Falls Quiet

15:27 Watson: When the constables' boots had faded down the stairs, Stella turned the sign on the door, and we two stayed on among the empty stools. Stella: Pardon me, Mr Holmes. Size threes, and I've stood in them since nine this morning.

15:42 Watson: Your hands are shaking. Sit down, and let somebody pour for you, for once. Stella: Gin, then. Large, no water.

15:51 Holmes: You keep this club's books, I fancy. You knew what forty-two pounds meant to Guy before he did. Stella: I keep the bar. The books are— they're Guy's, and he's welcome to them.

16:02 Holmes: Welcome to them. Nobody says that of books in good health. Stella: You want Guy's money, ask Guy's bank manager. It's that poor woman in the Courier I keep thinking about.

16:14 Watson: Mrs Ridley. She's a typist. Or she was.

16:19 Stella: Walking home of a Sunday, minding her own business, and a bullet that lost its way takes her living off her. Holmes: Lestrade has Guy's threat, sworn to by half the bar. He'll need nothing—

16:30 Stella: Guy shouts, Mr Holmes. He doesn't shoot.

16:35 Midnight in Baker Street

16:39 Watson: Our Baker Street rooms were cold and unlit when we came home near midnight, and neither of us thought of bed. Well, that's closed. The limping E, his key, his threat before half the bar, and four hours of dark windows.

16:54 Holmes: A tidy list. Now set two things beside it. A sworn word for Stella, given by a man none of us has met.

17:02 Watson: Howard. A gentleman friend, presumably. You can't hang a woman for having one.

17:08 Holmes: And the headscarf. I granted Lestrade it could hide a man. I never said it did.

17:14 Watson: The man announced the thing in advance! Holmes: Exactly. A man who tells a crowded bar he'll shoot someone doesn't then write a gentle letter to a stranger.

17:24 Watson: Conscience comes late to some men. I've sat up with a few of them. Holmes: Every fact fits Guy, Watson. Why do I mistrust a perfect fit?

17:35 Three Days at the Gunsmith's

17:39 Watson: Lestrade sat in his shirtsleeves at Hampstead next morning, pen poised over Guy's charge sheet, when we walked in out of the drizzle. Lestrade: Whatever it is, Holmes, it'll keep. I've a charge to—

17:49 Holmes: The revolver, Lestrade. The gunsmith has had it three days. Lestrade: Guy's property first, for the sheet. Watch, chain, two keys, one pair of brogues, size eleven. Feet like barges.

18:03 Watson: The report, Lestrade, before Holmes wears out your lino. Lestrade: Smith and Hallam, thirty-eight. Number filed off, no record anywhere. Untraceable. Recently oiled.

18:16 Watson: No name, no number. It can't hang anybody by itself, then. Lestrade: Six chambers. Five fired, and one live round still in it.

18:27 Watson: Odd, that. Holmes: Five emptied, and the sixth kept back. Why would anyone who fired five so freely save the last?

18:36 Lestrade: Saving it for the next fellow who didn't pay his— Holmes: Then I'll stand where it lay, Lestrade. This afternoon.

18:43 Lestrade: A kerb and a wet rope, for a gun I've already got. Somebody find me my hat.

18:52 Under the Roped-Off Tree

18:55 Watson: The rope round the plane tree hung slack and beaded when Lestrade, Holmes and I reached Ferndale Rise that afternoon, the Black Heron's doors still shut. Lestrade: There. Kerb edge, where my constable picked it up. Now you've seen it.

19:11 Holmes: He kept off the grass, and so did your men, and Mrs Ridley never left the pavement. Since the shooter left on Sunday night, nobody has stood in here. Watson: Holmes, you're kneeling in the mud.

19:24 Holmes: Outside the rope, Watson. Now look. Close by the trunk, where it leans and the rain hasn't reached.

19:30 Watson: Heel marks. Two of them, deep. The toes barely touched.

19:36 Holmes: Someone stood here a long while, braced, the weight back on the heels. Waiting, then firing. Lestrade: Or a courting couple. Hampstead's crawling with—

19:46 Holmes: One pair of feet, Lestrade, and a small pair. Your tape. Lestrade: Humour the man, Doctor. Hold the end.

19:54 Watson: Narrow heel. Short in the foot. Well, Lestrade?

19:59 Lestrade: A woman's shoe, size three, not Guy's eleven.

20:04 Down in the Cells

20:07 Watson: The cells at Hampstead smelled of carbolic and stewed tea when we went down to Guy, Lestrade carrying a plaster cast in newspaper. Guy: Come to measure me for the rope, Inspector? Lestrade: For your shoes, sir. Your brogue, Doctor, beside the cast.

20:24 Watson: It swallows the print whole, with inches to spare. Holmes: Resoled twice, the welt cracked. A thriving club's proprietor buys new shoes.

20:34 Lestrade: Which clears your feet, sir. Not your Sunday. Guy: Then what the devil am I doing in here?

20:40 Holmes: Answering for Sunday. Your rooms were dark and empty from eight, Guy. Where were you?

20:46 Guy: Shepherd Market. A— a moneylender who'll see a man on a Sunday and ask nothing. Lestrade: Pawning what?

20:54 Guy: My late wife's pearls, for the club's rent. "Very nicely indeed," I told you. God help me.

21:02 Lestrade: I'll have a man in Shepherd Market tonight. If he backs you, you walk. Holmes: You swore to shoot Julian over a slate. Was it only the slate?

21:12 Guy: The least of it. He lived off Stella two years. Her money, her flat, her gin.

21:18 Watson: And when her money wasn't enough? Guy: He knocked her about. She'd powder the bruises and laugh it off behind the bar.

21:25 Holmes: And still she kept him. Guy: She'd have kept him for life. Then Julian threw her over and hid all Whitsun. Don't— don't tell Stella.

21:37 A Taxi Through the Lamplight

21:41 Watson: Holmes rode the taxi down from Hampstead with his eyes shut, while I turned my notebook under each passing lamp. Holmes: Three things, Watson. First, item seven in Lestrade's drawer.

21:53 Watson: The letter. Its words never reached a newspaper. Holmes: Second. Stella at her bar, the afternoon Guy was taken. What did she talk of, unasked?

22:05 Watson: Mrs Ridley. Pitied her, walking home, her living gone. Holmes: In what words? Your shorthand, not your memory.

22:14 Watson: I have them down exactly. You don't mean— Holmes: Third.

22:18 Watson: Her shoes. Kicked off on the floor. Size threes, she said, stood in since nine...

22:26 Holmes: Your pages have stopped turning. You've gone back to the second. Now, Watson — what do those three things share?

22:36 An Hour Before Opening

22:39 Watson: We found Stella alone at her typewriter an hour before the club opened for the night, and Lestrade rapped on her open door. Stella: Inspector. Mr Holmes. If it's the wages, I'm halfway through.

22:52 Holmes: It's Guy. He'll be released tonight. Stella: Oh, thank God. I told you, didn't I? He shouts—

22:59 Holmes: You haven't asked why. Stella: I don't care why. He's out.

23:03 Lestrade: A letter, Stella, posted to Mrs Ridley the morning after. Stella: Oh? Lestrade: "I never wished you harm." Typed, unsigned. "I am sorry," it says, "for the bullet that lost its way."

23:18 Stella: Poor woman. Some crank, was it? Holmes: You said it first, Stella. Yesterday, at your own bar, you pitied her for a bullet that lost its way.

23:28 Stella: Then I read it somewhere. The Courier— Lestrade: Not the Courier, nor any paper. I kept that letter locked away. Mrs Ridley and the Yard, that's who's seen it.

23:38 Stella: It's a— it's a turn of phrase. Anybody might say it... Holmes: Anybody might. Nobody did, but the one who wrote it to her.

23:48 Stella: I only... I... Watson: You've gone white as that sheet. Sit back, now.

23:54 Lestrade: Stella, I'm arresting you for the murder of Julian Pryce. You heard the caution yesterday. Stella: I heard it. Mr Holmes, you'll see Guy tonight?

24:05 Holmes: I will. Stella: Tell him I'm sorry. For the till, for the cells. For all of it.

24:13 The Green-Shaded Lamp

24:16 Watson: One green-shaded lamp lit the Hampstead charge room, and Stella sat under it with station tea gone cold. Lestrade: The letter, Stella. From the start.

24:27 Stella: Mine. I had the Courier off the first van Monday and— I typed it at dawn. With my own key.

24:34 Holmes: And Guy's never left his watch-chain. Only yours could have opened that door. Stella: I never thought... I only thought of her hand.

24:43 Lestrade: And the gun, filed number and all? Stella: Howard's. He gave it me Sunday night, loaded, and drove me to Hampstead. Lestrade: Did he, now.

24:52 Holmes: And oiled it first. A man who loved you enough to clean the gun, and not enough to stop you. Stella: Howard does what I ask. He swore to your sergeant because I asked.

25:04 Lestrade: The gunsmith found one live round still in it. Five fired, one kept back. For whom?

25:12 Stella: For me. Watson: Good God. Stella: He came out laughing, Doctor. Two years I paid for him, and after— after hiding from me all Whitsun, laughing—

25:23 Holmes: So you fired. Stella: Till he stopped. Then I put it to my own head, and my hand... my hand wouldn't.

25:32 Watson: Steady. Take a breath. Stella: A woman cried out, and I dropped it and ran. I couldn't even do that properly.

25:40 Lestrade: You'll be charged with killing Julian Pryce. And Howard with perjury, before morning.

25:47 A Fortnight Later

25:51 Watson: I find from my journal that a fortnight later the case came back to us, folded on Mrs Hudson's tea tray. Mrs Hudson: Your evening paper, Doctor. That woman from the club's on the front again.

26:03 Watson: Committed for trial at the Old Bailey. And at the foot, the Little Club has— Holmes: Closed its doors. Read no further, Watson. Your face has done it already.

26:13 Watson: Guy's pearls bought— well, one month's rent, on a club that shut regardless. Gone for good. Holmes: Poor devil.

26:23 Watson: But why on earth write to Mrs Ridley at all? That letter— Holmes: Undid her, yes. Because she never meant to see Monday. The sixth chamber was for herself; she told us so in the charge room.

26:35 Watson: And alive after all, she could still say sorry to the one stranger she'd hurt. Holmes: So sorry she said it again at her own bar, in the letter's words. Watson: I told you on the first night they never apologise.

26:51 Holmes: You did, my dear Watson. A crank's letter, Lestrade called it. Cranks so seldom say sorry.