The Seventh Bullet Read Online Free Page B

white table covering upon which Mrs. Hudson had placed her dishes and silver. The salmon mayonnaise, cucumber salad, petit pois à la française , and champagne sorbet provided the perfect afternoon meal. Indeed, dining in such an idyllic setting with the sea stretching to the horizon, one could almost forget thatthe reason for our outing that day was to talk of murder; but just as the undulatory ocean looked calm only from a distance, and the thunder of the waves breaking not so far beneath us reminded one of its violent force, so the persiflage at the luncheon table belied the terrible seriousness of the thoughts that were roiling just below the surface of our spoken words.
    Once Mrs. Hudson had cleared the table and Sherlock Holmes had filled the calabash with his favourite shag still kept in the Persian slipper, we all seemed ready to confront the business that had been hanging just above us.
    “Pray, Mrs. Frevert,” Holmes said, exhaling a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke, “tell us, if you would, what you think was wrong with the publicised account of your brother’s death.”
    From the brocade black reticule that she kept on the floor by her side, Mrs. Frevert extracted her black lace fan and began fluttering it once more. “Thank you for the invitation, Mr. Holmes,” she said. “Let me refresh your memory of that darkest of days. Much of what I know is, of course, from what I myself read in the newspapers or even from what the police have told me. And I imagine I should say at the start that I have little reason to contradict most of what they all have reported. It is rather with their conclusions that I am forced to differ.”
    Holmes nodded. “Please, go on,” he said. At Baker Street he might have closed his eyes as he pulled on the pipe and took in the narrative. Here on the South Downs, however, he stared off at the hazy conjunction of sea and sky. The raucous crying of the terns and gulls overhead and the angry pounding of the surf far below were the only counterpoints to Mrs. Frevert’s story.
    “It’s a bizarre tale, Mr. Holmes. Even though Graham was mybrother, it doesn’t make me unable to see the strangeness of the events leading up to his death. I myself learned of the shooting while I was out shopping. I was selecting the bill of fare for our dinner that night when the butcher, who obviously had already heard the tragic story, said that I wouldn’t be needing anything to eat at home that evening. I’m sure I didn’t know what he meant at the time. And how he had gotten the news so quickly I never did discover.”
    “Quite,” said Sherlock Holmes impatiently. “But what about the tragedy itself?”Mrs. Frevert returned to the black bag on the floor. This time she removed a handkerchief of Irish linen framed with delicate lace. She held it in the same hand with which she gripped the fan. No-one need have told us it was for the ineluctable tears that would accompany the most wrenching part of the story.
    “My brother, Mr. Holmes,” she said firmly, “received a telegram on the day of his death. It was addressed, as you might expect, to David Graham Phillips. It was dated January 23, 1911, and it read: ‘This is your last day.’ But here is the really strange part, Mr. Holmes—it was signed ‘David Graham Phillips.’”
    Both Sherlock Holmes and I had heard of this peculiarity before. If we had not, it surely would have aroused Holmes’s curiosity more than it did on this occasion; for after first reading in The Times of the strange happenstance, he had observed with not a little admiration that a self-signed death threat delivered to the victim on the day of his murder was a plan demented enough to be worthy of the late Professor Moriarty himself. Today, however, he kept his judgements to himself.
    “How did your brother react to the message?” Holmes asked simply.
    “He took very little notice of it, I’m sure, Mr. Holmes. You see,ever since Graham had written those articles on