The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures - Mike Ashley [12]
Holmes knocked out his pipe in the hearth and consulted his pocket watch. There wanted a few minutes to two o’clock. It was time for another call. Donning a light top coat and extracting a cane from a wicker basket beside the sitting room door, he let himself out and ran lightly down the stone staircase.
Twenty minutes brisk walking through the city centre and out along the Banbury Road brought him to the edge of the city’s suburbs. Here the substantial houses were well spaced out and overlooked fields and meadows running down to the Cherwell. Holmes found the one he was seeking almost at the end of the row. It was a large double-fronted villa approached by a short gravel drive. A pull upon the bell brought a manservant to the front door.
Holmes handed in his card. “I am an art enthusiast and an amateur collector, currently residing at Grenville College,” he explained. “I must apologize for calling without an appointment, but I should deem it a great honour to be permitted to view Dr Gidding’s collection.”
The major domo admitted my friend to a spacious hall and asked him to wait. Within moments he returned, ushered the visitor into a well furnished library and announced him. Holmes looked around a room which, at first acquaintance seemed empty. Then he espied a bath chair, its back to him, facing a french window giving onto the garden.
“Over here, young man,” a voice commanded from the conveyance.
Crossing a parquet floor scattered with Persian rugs, Holmes found himself confronted by a shrivelled figure almost completely bundled-up in a plaid rug. Gidding’s greyish skin was drawn tight over his skull and a fringe of white hair protruded from beneath a velvet skull cap. However, if there was an air of quiet decay about the aged scholar this certainly did not extend to his bright, peering eyes or the mind behind them.
“Sherlock Holmes? Never heard of you, sir!” Giddings announced in a high-pitched voice.
“But I have heard of you, Dr Giddings, as has anyone with more than a passing interest in the history of art. Your studies on the northern Renaissance have greatly widened our understanding of the great masters of this side of the Alps.”
“Huh!” the old man snorted. “I thought I’d been forgotten long ago.”
Holmes affected a shocked tone. “By no means, sir. Quite the reverse. Some of the radical ideas which you advanced in the twenties and thirties are now taken for self-evident truth. As to your private collection …”
“I suppose that’s what you’re here to see; not me. Well come on then. You can work for the privilege. Push me. We go through that door over there.”
Holmes grasped the handles of the invalid carriage and propelled it in the direction indicated. They passed through into a suite of three ground floor rooms interconnected by tall doors. The contents made Holmes gasp in amazement. Every surface from floor to ceiling was covered with paintings on canvas or panel. Scarcely a square inch of papered wall could be seen.
“This is truly remarkable,” my friend exclaimed. “I had not prepared myself for such a treat.”
“The work of a lifetime, young man. If you start now you might just be able to match it by the time you’re eighty.”
They made a leisurely tour of the private gallery and Giddings spoke with mounting enthusiasm and excitement about several items. Sherlock Holmes relaxed the aged don with flattery interspersed with pertinent comments and awaited the moment to broach the subject that had taken him thither.
At last he said, “I was devastated not to be able to see the Rembrandt you presented to your college. When I visited the chapel there was a notice saying that it had been sent for restoration but I heard a rumour …”
“Vandals!” The old man became suddenly animated.
“Then it’s true, sir, that the painting has been stolen?” Holmes asked in shocked tones.
“They should have