The Lost Casebooks of Sherlock Holmes by Donald Thomas Read Free Book Online

sat upright.
    â€˜There was arsenic, Mr Holmes. Professor Taylor found arsenic. Dr Todd tested the substance and confirmed that it was arsenic. Mr Barwell tested it and agreed that it was arsenic. What good will it do to pretend that it was not?’
    Holmes shrugged. ‘Very well,’ he said, as if resigning himself to defeat. ‘Let us agree that it was arsenic. I never doubted it for a moment.’
    There was a pause while Mr Hardinge Giffard sought words to extricate himself with the least possible discourtesy and find his way to the street outside.
    â€˜What more have you discovered, Mr Holmes?’
    â€˜Beyond the obvious fact that your client is innocent, very little,’ Holmes remarked. ‘I can prove it but not without your assistance.’
    â€˜What would you have me do?’
    â€˜The samples that were taken from Miss Bankes before her death, those in which arsenic was found—I take it that the untested portion of the specimens is still available?’
    â€˜No doubt it is.’
    â€˜I should like it brought to the chemical laboratory of St Thomas’s Hospital. It will be made up into solution, under supervision. I will show you your client’s innocence in the presence of anyone who cares to be there. Professor Taylor, if you wish, Dr Todd, the Lord Chief Baron himself.’
    â€˜When is this to be?’
    â€˜Dear me,’ said Holmes. ‘On any day before your client is hanged, I suppose.’
    VI
    Three days later, on an afternoon in late August, a distinguished company had assembled in the Chemical Laboratory of St Thomas’s Hospital. Holmes was on familiar territory and was master of the scene. So many of his days had been spent in this lofty riverside room, lined and littered with countless bottles and apparatus. Though he was a hunter all his life, most of his quests so far had been among these broad low tables with their retorts, test-tubes and the blue flames of the little Bunsen lamps.
    Like a host greeting his guests, he led the visitors to a table on which apparatus had been set up for the Reinsch Test. A quantity of solution from a sealed bottle, in which the specimens taken from Isabella Bankes had been dissolved, was poured into a glass vessel. The liquid was pale blue in colour.
    â€˜Gentlemen,’ said Holmes, introducing the apparatus to his onlookers like a stage magician at the Egyptian Hall, ‘the Reinsch Test is simplicity itself. Our solution of the specimen is boiled in a vessel which contains copper gauze. If arsenic is present in any quantity, it will collect as a grey substance upon the gauze. If it appears, simple treatment with nitric acid will confirm that it is, indeed, arsenic. That, Dr Taylor, is a fair summary I believe.’
    â€˜It is, Mr Holmes,’ the professor said. ‘In this case, however, you have also considerable quantities of chlorate of potass. This will tend to damage the copper gauze. However, after two or three pieces of copper gauze have been used, the chlorate of potass will have been exhausted. Then you will see whether you have arsenic or not.’
    The light blue liquid was heated three times in all, a separate piece of copper gauze being used on each occasion. The first two pieces of copper gauze were corroded by the chlorate and no sign of a dark-grey substance appeared on them. A third time, Holmes took a new piece of gauze and applied the flame of the lamp. In the quiet room above the Thames it was hard to imagine that whether a man was to be strangled by a rope noose in a few days’ time depended upon the outcome of such an academic test.
    For a few minutes, the pale blue liquid shimmered and then boiled. Holmes drew the flame away. The bubbling ceased and the copper gauze was clearly seen again. It was almost completely coated with a dark-grey sludge. The sense of doom, for Thomas Smethurst, hung heavy in the air. It was Dr Taylor who broke the silence. He spoke courteously but