The Autobiography of Sherlock Holmes by Sherlock Holmes, Don Libey
Authors: Sherlock Holmes, Don Libey
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notice, as his work was carried out in Paris and was concentrated in the Gypsy enclaves for which I had little interest. It is possible that other personas and blackmail specialties existed in other cities for this master criminal prior to his death, although none have, as yet, emerged in the criminal record. Inquiries led me to conclude that Lucas and Fournaye were each aliases used by an unknown but brilliant criminal who moved easily between his various bases of operations and his various disguised personas until he was killed by Mme Fournaye, the woman said to be his Creole wife, in their villa in Rue Austerlitz, Paris.
When Mme Fournaye was returned briefly from Paris to London to be closely questioned about her role in the international web that had shaken the highest reaches of British rule, I ascertained through careful questioning and observations of her physical responses that Henri Fournaye may not have been her husband’s real name. When she admitted to his having been married previously, I pressed her for the details of that earlier wife. She related to me the following facts:
1. Fournaye only spoke of his first wife on two occasions and each time mentioned her name as being Mary.
2. A letter was found by Mme Fournaye from Lucy Parr with Streatham in the inscription. The salutation is simply ‘Dear Miss Mary’ and goes on to ask Mary’s return home citing the seriousness of her uncle’s health.
That was all that Mme Fournaye knew about her husband’s first marriage, and she could give no information as to his possible identity. She had met him in Paris when she immigrated from Jamaica and had only known him as Henri Fournaye. They were married in common law. She passed from my knowledge into a French prison, convicted of the murder of Henri Fournaye, to spend the remainder of her days.
The letter from Lucy Parr, found in the Fournaye household, led to a number of connexions whereby I concluded that Henri Fournaye’s first wife was, in fact, Mary Holder, the adopted niece of Alexander Holder whose son Arthur’s reputation I had salvaged in the beryl coronet case during December of 1890. Mary Holder was lost to her family as a consequence of her unfortunate infatuation with the villainous and contemptible Sir George Burnwell with whom she had disappeared. And Sir George Burnwell had moved on from theft to society blackmail in his adopted serial identities as Eduardo Lucas, Henri Fournaye and, doubtless, many others.
One can only reflect that, when I had clapped a pistol to this blackguard’s temple in 1890, perhaps I should have saved England then from the dangerous future progression of this singularly amoral individual’s growing ambition that would metastasise to treason in only four short years.
I mention aspects from these cases to underscore once again the necessary balance that must be present when justice is properly served. As I look back on my career, I do not hear myself saying, ‘I wish I had been more detached,’ nor do I hear myself saying, ‘I wish I had been more compassionate.’ I find myself accepting what has been the sum and substance of my career: proper attention to the facts—cerebral and human—of each situation.
22
Inspector Ambrose Hill was unique in my experience of the Scotland Yard detectives. He was the first of the ‘specialists’ to emerge in the Metropolitan force beginning in the early 1890s. The specialists were both vertical and horizontal; that is, vertical as to criminal communities, such as nationalities, classes of society, area of focus such as banking, art, real property, and others; and horizontal as to the categories of crimes, such as murder, robbery, forgery, kidnapping and their ilk. At its fullest expansion, the specialist ranking had inspectors who focused, for example, only on murders in the Chinese quarter or embezzlement in the banking sector, or theft and counterfeiting of fine art. It proved to be a more efficient manner of utilisation
When Mme Fournaye was returned briefly from Paris to London to be closely questioned about her role in the international web that had shaken the highest reaches of British rule, I ascertained through careful questioning and observations of her physical responses that Henri Fournaye may not have been her husband’s real name. When she admitted to his having been married previously, I pressed her for the details of that earlier wife. She related to me the following facts:
1. Fournaye only spoke of his first wife on two occasions and each time mentioned her name as being Mary.
2. A letter was found by Mme Fournaye from Lucy Parr with Streatham in the inscription. The salutation is simply ‘Dear Miss Mary’ and goes on to ask Mary’s return home citing the seriousness of her uncle’s health.
That was all that Mme Fournaye knew about her husband’s first marriage, and she could give no information as to his possible identity. She had met him in Paris when she immigrated from Jamaica and had only known him as Henri Fournaye. They were married in common law. She passed from my knowledge into a French prison, convicted of the murder of Henri Fournaye, to spend the remainder of her days.
The letter from Lucy Parr, found in the Fournaye household, led to a number of connexions whereby I concluded that Henri Fournaye’s first wife was, in fact, Mary Holder, the adopted niece of Alexander Holder whose son Arthur’s reputation I had salvaged in the beryl coronet case during December of 1890. Mary Holder was lost to her family as a consequence of her unfortunate infatuation with the villainous and contemptible Sir George Burnwell with whom she had disappeared. And Sir George Burnwell had moved on from theft to society blackmail in his adopted serial identities as Eduardo Lucas, Henri Fournaye and, doubtless, many others.
One can only reflect that, when I had clapped a pistol to this blackguard’s temple in 1890, perhaps I should have saved England then from the dangerous future progression of this singularly amoral individual’s growing ambition that would metastasise to treason in only four short years.
I mention aspects from these cases to underscore once again the necessary balance that must be present when justice is properly served. As I look back on my career, I do not hear myself saying, ‘I wish I had been more detached,’ nor do I hear myself saying, ‘I wish I had been more compassionate.’ I find myself accepting what has been the sum and substance of my career: proper attention to the facts—cerebral and human—of each situation.
22
Inspector Ambrose Hill was unique in my experience of the Scotland Yard detectives. He was the first of the ‘specialists’ to emerge in the Metropolitan force beginning in the early 1890s. The specialists were both vertical and horizontal; that is, vertical as to criminal communities, such as nationalities, classes of society, area of focus such as banking, art, real property, and others; and horizontal as to the categories of crimes, such as murder, robbery, forgery, kidnapping and their ilk. At its fullest expansion, the specialist ranking had inspectors who focused, for example, only on murders in the Chinese quarter or embezzlement in the banking sector, or theft and counterfeiting of fine art. It proved to be a more efficient manner of utilisation
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