A Case of Identity: Part One

It's very cold.

“It's a bit of a shame that it's not a good idea. Not Nutella, it's Nutella.”

I'm Hugh Bonneville and welcome to Sherlock Holmes' short stories. The series where we delve into the files of Fiction's most brilliant detective,

following his keen mind and unerring instincts from the first subtle clue to the final dramatic revelation.

This time, a young woman, Miss Mary Sutherland, walks into Holmes's Baker Street rooms with a tale of heartbreak and confusion. On the very morning she was due to Mary, her fiancé, Hosmer Angel, vanished without a trace. Was he the victim of some dreadful fate? Or could there be something far more calculating behind his disappearance?

As Holmes begins to unravel the case, he senses deception, lurking close to Holmes. From the noise of podcast network, this is a case of identity, part one.

"My dear fellow," said Sherlock Holmes, as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street.

“"Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.”

We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere common places of existence. If we could fly out of that window-hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs and peep in it the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposees, the wonderful chain of events working through generations and leading to the most utray results.

It would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions, most still and unprofitable." "And yet I am not convinced of it," I answered.

“The cases which come to light in the papers are, as a rule, bold enough and vulgar enough,”

we have in our police reports realism pushed to its extreme limits, and yet the result is, it must be confessed neither fascinating nor artistic. A certain selection and discretion must be used in producing a realistic effect remarked Holmes. This is wanting in the police report where more stress is laid perhaps upon the platitudes of the magistrate than upon the details which to an observer contain the vital essence of the whole matter.

Depending upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace. "I smiled and shook my head. I can quite understand your thinking, so," I said. "Of course, in your position of unofficial advisor and helper to everybody who is absolutely puzzled throughout three continents, you are brought in contact with all that is strange and bizarre. But here, I picked up the morning paper from the ground. Let us put it to a practical test.

Here is the first heading upon which I come, a husband's cruelty to his wife.

There's half a column of print, but I know without reading it that it is all perfectly familiar to me. There is, of course, the other woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the bruise, the sympathetic sister or landlady, the crudest of writers could invent nothing more crude. Indeed, your example is an unfortunate one for your argument, said Holmes, taking the paper and glancing his eye down it. Now, this is the dandas separation case, and as it happens, I was engaged in clearing up some small points in connection with it.

The husband was a titular. There was no other woman, and the conduct complaint of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth, and hurling them at his wife, which you would allow is not an action likely to occur to the imagination of the average storyteller. Take a pinch of snuffed doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over you in your example. He held out his snuffed box of old gold with a great amethyst in the center of the lid. Its splendor was in such contrast to his homely ways and simple life that I could not help commenting upon it.

Ah, said he. I forgot that I had not seen you for some weeks, it is a little souvenir from the King of Bohemia, in return for my assistance in the case of the Irene Adler, papers, and the ring. I asked glancing at a remarkable brilliant, which sparkled upon his finger. It was from the reigning family of Holland, though the matter in which I served them was of such delicacy that I cannot confide it even to you who have been good enough to chronicle one or two of my little problem.

Some 10 or 12, but none which present any feature of interest, they are important you understand without being interesting.

“Indeed, I have found that it is usually in unimportant matters that there is a field for the observation, and for the quick analysis of cause and effect which gives the charm to an investigation.”

The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler for the bigger the crime, the more obvious as a rule is the motive. In these cases, say for one rather intricate matter which has been referred to me from Mathsay, there is nothing which presents any features of interest. It is possible, however, that I may have something better before very many minutes or over, for this is one of my clients, or I am much mistaken. He had risen from his chair, and was standing between the parted blinds, gazing down into the dull, neutral tinted London Street.

Looking over his shoulder, I saw that on the pavement opposite, there stood a large woman with a heavy fur bower around her neck, and a large curling red feather in a broad brimned hat, which was tilted in a cocketish Duchess of Devonshire fashion over her ear.

“From under this great panoply, she peeped up in a nervous hesitating fashion at our windows, while her body oscillated backward and forward, and her fingers fidgeted with her glove buttons.”

Suddenly, with a plunge, as of the swimmer, who leaves the bank, she hurried across the road, and we heard the sharp tang of the bell.

"I have seen those symptoms before," said Holmes, throwing his cigarette into the fire. "Ocillation upon the pavement always means an affair to cure."

She would like advice, but is not sure that the matter is not too delicate for communication. "And yet even here we may discriminate when a woman has been seriously wronged by a man she no longer oscillates, and the usual symptom is a broken bellwire. Here we may take it that there is a love matter, but that the maiden is not so much angry as perplexed or grieved, but here she comes in person to resolve our doubts."

“As he spoke, there was a tap at the door, and the boy in buttons entered to announce Miss Mary Sutherland.”

While the lady herself loomed behind his small black figure like a full-sailed merchantman, behind a tiny pilot boat. Sherlock Holmes welcomed her with the easy courtesy for which she was remarkable, and having closed the door and bowed her into an armchair, he looked her over in the minute, and yet abstracted fashion, which was peculiar to him. "Do you not find," he said, "that with your short sight it is a little trying to do so much type writing?" "I did it first," she answered, "but now I know where the letters are without looking."

"Then suddenly realizing the full purport of his words she gave a violent start and looked up, with fear and astonishment upon her broad, good, humid face. "You've heard about me, Mr. Holmes," she cried, "else, how could you know all that?"

"I never mind," said Holmes, laughing. "It is my business to know things, perhaps I have trained myself to see what others overlook."

"If not, why should you come to consult me?" "I came to you, sir, because I heard of you from Mrs. Etheridge, whose husband you found so easy when the police and everyone had given him up for dead?" "Oh, Mr. Holmes, I wish you would do as much for me. I'm not rich, but still I have a hundred a year in my own right, besides the little that I make by the machine, and I would give it all to know what has become of Mr. Hosmer Angel." For all, at the age of the price of this week, $650 for 0.09 or $0.25 for 0.30 for 0.09 and $0.30 in the age of $0.00 for the year.

And furthermore, take a look at the offer. All these. Good for all." "Why did you come away to consult me in such a hurry?" asked Sherlock Holmes, with his fingertips together and his eyes to the ceiling. Again, a startled look came over the somewhat vacuous face of Ms. Mary Sutherland. "Yes, I did bang out of the house," she said. "For it made me angry to see the easy way in which Mr. Windybank, that is my father, took it all. He would not go to the police, and he would not go to you, and so it last, as he would do nothing, and kept on saying that there was no harm done, it made me mad.

"No, it sounds funny, too, for he is only five years and two months older than myself."

"And your mother is alive?" "Oh, yes, mother is alive, and well. I wasn't best pleased, Mr. Holmes, when she married again, so soon after father's death, and a man who was nearly 15 years old. The father was a plumber in the Tottenham court road, and he left a tidy business behind him, which mother carried on with Mr. Hardy, the former. But when Mr. Windybank came, he made a sell the business for he was very superior being a traveler in wines. They got £4,700 for the goodwill and interest, which wasn't near as much as father could have got if he had been alive.

I had expected to see Sherlock Holmes impatient under this rambling and inconsequential narrative, but on the contrary, he had listened with the greatest concentration of attention.

“Your own little income he asked. Does it come out of the business?”

"Oh, no, sir. It is quite separate and was left me by my uncle Ned in Auckland. It is in New Zealand stock, paying 4.5%. 2,500 pounds was the amount, but I can only touch the interest." "You interest me, extremely," said Holmes, and since you draw so large as some as a hundred a year, with what you earn into the bargain, you know doubt travel a little and indulge yourself in every way. "I believe that a single lady can get on very nicely upon an income of about £60. Oh, I could do with much less than that, Mr. Holmes, but you understand that as long as I live at home, I don't wish to be a burden to them. And so they have the use of the money just while I am staying with them. Of course, that is only just for the time."

Mr. Indybank draws my interest every quarter and pays it over to mother, and I find that I can do pretty well with what I earn at type writing. It brings me tapence a sheet, and I can often do from 15 to 20 sheets an a day.

“"You have made your position very clear to me," said Holmes. "This is my friend, Dr. Watson, before whom you can speak as freely as before myself."”

Kindly tell us now all about your connection with Mr. Hussmer, Angel, a flush stole over Miss Sutherland's face, and she picked nervously at the fringe of her jacket. "I met him first at the gas fitters ball," she said. "They used to send father tickets when he was alive, and then afterwards they remembered us and sent them to mother."

Mr. Indybank did not wish us to go. He never did wish us to go anywhere. He would get quite mad if I wanted so much as to join a Sunday school treat.

"But this time, I was set on going, and I would go, for what right had he to prevent?" He said, "The folk were not fit for us to know, when all fathers' friends were to be there, and he said that I had nothing fit to wear when I had my purple plush that I'd never so much as taken out of the drawer. At last, when nothing else would do, he went off to France upon the business of the firm, but we went, mother and I, with Mr. Hardy, who used to be our former, and it was there, I met Mr. Hussmer Angel."

"I suppose," said Holmes, that when Mr. Windybank came back from France, he was very annoyed at your having gone to the ball.

“"Oh, well, he was very good about it. He laughed, I remember, and shrug to shoulders, and said there was no use denying anything to a woman, for she would have her way."”

"I see. Then at the gas fitters ball, you met as I understand a gentleman called Mr. Hussmer Angel." "Yes, sir. I met in that night, and he called next day to ask if we had got home all safe, and after that, we met him. That is to say, Mr. Holmes, I met him twice for walks, but after that, father came back again, and Mr. Hussmer Angel would not come to the house anymore." "No. Well, you know, father didn't like anything of the sort. He wouldn't have any visitors if he could help it, and he used to say that a woman should be happy in her own family circle.

But then, as I used to say to mother, a woman once her own circle to begin with, and I had not got mine yet." "But how about Mr. Hussmer Angel? Did he make no attempt to see you?" "Well, father was going off to France again in a week, and Hussmer wrote and said that it would be safer and better not to see each other until he had gone." "We could write in the meantime, and he used to write every day. I took the letters in in the morning, so there was no need for father to know."

"Well, you're engaged to the gentleman at this time? Oh, yes, Mr. Holmes. We were engaged after the first walk that we took.

Hussmer, Mr. Angel, was a cashier in an office in Leddon Hall Street, and what office?" "Well, that's the worst of it, Mr. Holmes. I don't know. Where did he live then?"

"To the Leddon Hall Street post office, to be left till called for. He said that if they were sent to the office, he would be checked by all the other clerks about having letters from a lady. So I offered to typewrite them, like he did his, but he wouldn't have that for he said that when I wrote them, they seemed to come from me, but when they were typewritten, he always felt that the machine had come between us. That would just show you how fond he was at me, Mr. Holmes, and the little things that he would think of. It was most suggestive," said Holmes.

"It has long been an axiom of mind that the little things are infinitely the most important. Can you remember any other little things about Mr. Hussmer, Angel?"

He was a very shy man, Mr. Holmes. He would rather walk with me in the evening than in the daylight, for he said that he hated it to be conspicuous, very retiring, and gentlemanly he was. Even his voice was gentle. He'd had the Quincy and swollen glands when he was young, he told me, and it had left him with a weak throat, and a hesitating whispering fashion of speech. He was always well-dressed, very neat and plain, but his eyes were weak, just as minor, and he wore tinted glasses against the glare.

“Well, and what happened when Mr. Windyback, your stepfather, returned to France?”

Mr. Hussmer, Angel, came to the house again and proposed that we should marry before father came back.

He was in dreadful earnest and made me swear with my hands on the testament that whatever happened, I would always be true to him.

Mother said he was quite right to make me swear, and that it was a sign of his passion. Mother was all in his favor from the first, and was even funder of him than I was. Then, when they talked of marrying within the week, I began to ask about father. But they both said never to mind about father, but just to turn him afterwards, and mother said she would make it all right with him. I didn't quite like that, Mr. Hussmer. It seemed funny that I should ask his leave as he was only a few years older than me, but I didn't want to do anything on the slice, so I wrote to father at Bordeaux, where the company has its French offices, but the letter came back to me on the very morning of the wedding.

“It's Mr. Ben. Yes, sir, for he had started to England just before it arrived. Ah, that was unfortunate. Your wedding was arranged then for the Friday, was it to be in church?”

Yes, sir, but very quietly. It was to be at St. Xavier's near King's Cross, and we were to have breakfast afterwards at the St. Pancras Hotel. Hussmer came for us in a hands, but as there were two of us, he put us both into it and stepped himself into a four-wheeler, which happened to be the only other cab in the street.

We got to the church first, and when the four-wheeler drove up, he waited for him to step out, but he never did.

And when the cab man got down from the box and looked, there was no one there. The cab man said that he could not imagine what had become of him for he had seen him get in with his own eyes. That was last Friday, Mr. Holmes, and I have never seen or heard anything since then to throw any light upon what became of him. But what I wanted to do was not to study the whole world. Mr. Baithag left the bus stop to the internet, so I was going to tell you. I said, you can say that you can go back to the street.

You have a story, right? But you don't understand. Yeah, it was a very funny story. It was just a story, and when he then worked, he said, "Catching?" "That's good?" "Safe!" "Wise story." "Hold it, don't go to the street." It seemed to me that you had been very shameful, it treated, said Holmes. Oh, no, sir. He was too good and kind to leave me so. Why? All the morning he was saying to me that whatever happened, I was to be true.

“And that even if something quite unforeseen occurred to separators, I was always to remember that I was pledged to him.”

And that he would claim his pledge sooner or later. It seemed strange to talk for a wedding morning, but what has happened since gives a meaning to it. Most certainly it does. Your own opinion is then that some unforeseen catastrophe has occurred to him. Yes, sir. I believe that he foresaw some danger, or else he would not have talked so. And then I think that what he foresaw happened. But you have no notion as to what it could have been.

And your father, did you tell him? Yes, and he seemed to think with me that something had happened, and that I should hear of Hosmer again.

As he said, what interest could anyone have in bringing me to the doors of the church, and then leaving me? Now, if he had borrowed my money, or if he had married me and got my money settled on him, there might be some reason, but Hosmer was very independent about money.

“And never would look at a shilling of mine. And yet, what could have happened? Why could he not write? Oh, it drives me half mad to think of it and I can't sleep a wink at night.”

She pulls a little handkerchief out of her mouth and began to sob heavily into it. "I shall glance into the case for you," said Hosmer, and I have no doubt that we shall reach some definite result. Let the weight of the matter rest upon me now, and do not let your mind dwell upon it further.

Above all, try to let Mr. Hosmer angel vanish from your memory as he has done from your life. Then you don't think I'll see him again? I fear not.

Then what has happened to him? You will leave that question in my hands. I should like an accurate description of him and any letters of his which you can spare. I advertised for him in last Saturday's Chronicle, said she. Here is the slip and here are four letters from him.

“Thank you, and your address. Number 31 Lionplace Campbellwell. Mr. Angel's address you never had. I understand. Where is your father's place of business?”

He travels for West House and Marbank, the great Clareton quarters of Fenchert Street.

Thank you. You have made your statement very clearly. You will leave the papers here and remember the advice which I have given you. Let the whole incident be a sealed book and do not allow it to affect your life. You are very kind, Mr. Holmes, but I cannot do that. I shall be true to Hosmer. He shall find me ready when he comes back. For all the preposterous hat and the vacuous face, there was something noble in the simple faith of our visitor which compelled our respect.

“She laid her little bundle of papers upon the table and went her way. With a promise to come again, whenever she might be summoned.”

Next time, on Sherlock Holmes' short stories, a typewritten note provides a clue. A visit from Mary Stepfather proves illuminating and Baker Street pays host to one of Holmes's most memorable showdowns. That's next time. Can't wait a week until the next episode, well listen to it right away by subscribing to Neuser Plus. Head to www.noiser.com/subscriptions for more information or click the link in the episode description. This March, on the Neuser Podcast Network, a brand new show is launching. Join host Ian Glenn for Real Vikings, a limited release series,

taking you on a deep dive into the Viking world. On short history of, we cross paths with earnest Hemingway and journey back to the European Middle Ages. On real survival stories, we're in sunny Spain as a lifeguard on his holidays gets drawn into a terrifying near drowning experience. And remote Myanmar as a devastating flood over worms and isolated mountain community. And in Sherlock Holmes' short stories, a woman arrived at Holmes' door, bemused by the sudden disappearance of her fiance in a case of identity.

Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Neuser Plus. And if you haven't already, get your hands on a copy of Neuser's book, a short history of ancient Rome. Available in all good bookshops and wherever you get your audiobooks.