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Authors: Sherlock Holmes, Don Libey
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followed by death when the concentration is sufficient; the natural toxins of the swamp adder or the cyanea capillata , when their bite and sting appear accidental, can effectively shield the quiet murderer from exposure; and, of course, the oft-encountered charcoal poisoning and asphyxiation due to carbon monoxide have been used with great success by legions of subtle killers.
Of the fifty-odd murderers I encountered in my career, there was only one who staged a perfect murder, and one that I recognized only after the killer was long out of reach in Brazil. Young John Hector McFarlane was duped not by Jonas Oldacre, but by Oldacre’s actual murderer, Otho Cornelius, who had assumed the identity of Jonas Oldacre when I flushed him from his priest’s hole at Deep Dene House in Lower Norwood. Cornelius had murdered Oldacre and, in league with his wife, established himself and her as Jonas Oldacre and the house keeper, Mrs Lexington, in order to plunder Oldacre’s wealth and implicate the unsuspecting young McFarlane. The brilliance of Cornelius lain in the fact that the circumstances of his dramatic emergence created the expectation of acceptance of his identity as Oldacre by McFarlane, the spurious housekeeper and, by extension, the police. No one questioned whether Oldacre was, in fact the real Oldacre. After killing Oldacre, Cornelius had transferred all of Oldacre’s money into his bank account under his own name and, during the period immediately after the discovery when McFarlane was released from police custody and the matter was resolved, Cornelius and his wife, upon his release as Oldacre for want of evidence of conspiracy or attempted murder by Scotland Yard, quickly transferred their illgotten monies to Brazil and set sail for Rio de Janeiro under new names. Both the real Oldacre and his money had disappeared; his body was never found. Cornelius was never traced and the murder of Jonas Oldacre was perfected by a cunning murderer whose greatest accomplishment was in using my own ego as the instrument of his success. Lestrade’s praise, “… this is the brightest thing you have done yet …” was sufficient to close my eyes momentarily to the potential of an imposter.
Watson was kind in his setting down the case of the Norwood builder, particularly as he was privy to my failure to pursue the thread to its end. In some ways, I believe, it was a quid-pro-quo for one or two of his own eclipses which are not found in the stories and that best remain in shadow.
One confessed murderer—Leon Sterndale—benefited from my mother’s compassionate bent which, from time to time, has kept me from acting upon all that I have deduced. It can be argued that the perfect murder is, perhaps, accomplished far more often than thought as a result of the selected non-intervention by a compassionate investigator. For me, there has existed a line of demarcation between premeditated homicide and justifiable homicide. Often, that line has described the boundaries of love, honour, fidelity, and, yes, revenge. Across the boundary, however, there exists only savagery, cruelty, pathology, and horror. It has not been difficult for me to place myself on that line of demarcation on those occasions where the line was true and defined. My responsibility is to Reason. Atonement does not signify and is best left to those who practice in the realm of spiritual mythology.
13
Langdale Pike. A most extraordinary person. No one in London knew more about the gentry, the aristocracy or the Royals than Langdale Pike. He studied society as intensely as I studied crime. He organised and filed relationships, indiscretions, infidelities, affairs of the heart, addictions, bankruptcies—all the flotsam and jetsam of the upper class and the individual foibles of the most and least prominent of its members. This encyclopaedic knowledge was contained wholly within his formidable brain equipped with its photographic memory. The workings of his mind were
Of the fifty-odd murderers I encountered in my career, there was only one who staged a perfect murder, and one that I recognized only after the killer was long out of reach in Brazil. Young John Hector McFarlane was duped not by Jonas Oldacre, but by Oldacre’s actual murderer, Otho Cornelius, who had assumed the identity of Jonas Oldacre when I flushed him from his priest’s hole at Deep Dene House in Lower Norwood. Cornelius had murdered Oldacre and, in league with his wife, established himself and her as Jonas Oldacre and the house keeper, Mrs Lexington, in order to plunder Oldacre’s wealth and implicate the unsuspecting young McFarlane. The brilliance of Cornelius lain in the fact that the circumstances of his dramatic emergence created the expectation of acceptance of his identity as Oldacre by McFarlane, the spurious housekeeper and, by extension, the police. No one questioned whether Oldacre was, in fact the real Oldacre. After killing Oldacre, Cornelius had transferred all of Oldacre’s money into his bank account under his own name and, during the period immediately after the discovery when McFarlane was released from police custody and the matter was resolved, Cornelius and his wife, upon his release as Oldacre for want of evidence of conspiracy or attempted murder by Scotland Yard, quickly transferred their illgotten monies to Brazil and set sail for Rio de Janeiro under new names. Both the real Oldacre and his money had disappeared; his body was never found. Cornelius was never traced and the murder of Jonas Oldacre was perfected by a cunning murderer whose greatest accomplishment was in using my own ego as the instrument of his success. Lestrade’s praise, “… this is the brightest thing you have done yet …” was sufficient to close my eyes momentarily to the potential of an imposter.
Watson was kind in his setting down the case of the Norwood builder, particularly as he was privy to my failure to pursue the thread to its end. In some ways, I believe, it was a quid-pro-quo for one or two of his own eclipses which are not found in the stories and that best remain in shadow.
One confessed murderer—Leon Sterndale—benefited from my mother’s compassionate bent which, from time to time, has kept me from acting upon all that I have deduced. It can be argued that the perfect murder is, perhaps, accomplished far more often than thought as a result of the selected non-intervention by a compassionate investigator. For me, there has existed a line of demarcation between premeditated homicide and justifiable homicide. Often, that line has described the boundaries of love, honour, fidelity, and, yes, revenge. Across the boundary, however, there exists only savagery, cruelty, pathology, and horror. It has not been difficult for me to place myself on that line of demarcation on those occasions where the line was true and defined. My responsibility is to Reason. Atonement does not signify and is best left to those who practice in the realm of spiritual mythology.
13
Langdale Pike. A most extraordinary person. No one in London knew more about the gentry, the aristocracy or the Royals than Langdale Pike. He studied society as intensely as I studied crime. He organised and filed relationships, indiscretions, infidelities, affairs of the heart, addictions, bankruptcies—all the flotsam and jetsam of the upper class and the individual foibles of the most and least prominent of its members. This encyclopaedic knowledge was contained wholly within his formidable brain equipped with its photographic memory. The workings of his mind were
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