Associates of Sherlock Holmes Page 16

  Miss Morris looked at me in shock, then buried her face in her handkerchief and descended into a peal of sobs.

  Holmes gazed at me sternly. “I have made investigations,” he announced, “and I am quite certain that Mr Drake’s family were happy that he was happy, and that they had taken Miss Morris to their bosom.” He held up a hand. “And, before you attempt to suggest that someone in Miss Morris’s family – perhaps a funfair shooting booth operator – was the guiding intelligence behind the shot, I have found only happiness in the extended Morris clan at the forthcoming nuptials.”

  “No jealous paramours?” I inquired.

  “Gordon was my first beau,” Miss Morris stated, cheeks still damp from her tears. I glanced at Holmes, and he nodded in agreement.

  “I wish I could be of more help,” I said. “The trouble is that I know nothing.” I couldn’t let the opportunity to bait Holmes a morsel pass. “And, as you well know, Holmes, I’m not the kind of journalist who would just make something up. All my stories are based on verifiable facts.”

  He raised an eyebrow, but made no response. Instead he stood up. “Watson has kindly offered to travel up to London and consult on Mr Drake’s –” he paused, “– physical state in the pathology lab at Scotland Yard. I have to meet him shortly.” He turned to Miss Drake. “I shall call a cab for you, and I shall report if I make any progress.” Glancing at me he added, “As for you, Pike, shall I slip you a shilling now or merely settle your bar bill on the way out?”

  “Neither,” I said, surprising myself as much as him. “Take me with you to see Dr Watson, if you wish to recompense me.”

  He fixed me with a gimlet eye. “Why would you want me to do that?”

  I shrugged. “Boredom. That, and a feeling that there might be something in this case of interest to me.”

  “Very well,” he said, “but do not get in the way.”

  Holmes escorted Miss Morris to the door of the club while I collected my various notebooks and pens together and put them carefully in the shoulder bag I habitually carried with me. Men, I have noticed, have much less latitude than women when it comes to personal items. They have both clutches and handbags to choose from when carrying their personal items, whereas we have to make do with briefcases and, in extremis, carpet bags. It seems unfair on the male sex, so I instructed a man who works in leather in the back streets around Charing Cross to construct a square bag for me into which I can fit everything than I need and that I can then sling over my shoulder with a strap. It attracts a certain amount of attention when I am out. Jealousy, I expect. Some men are undoubtedly ahead of their time. Still, Oscar Wilde has complimented me on it, so I know I am on safe ground.

  I met Holmes outside the club and we walked the fifteen minutes or so along the Embankment until we reached Scotland Yard. He was recognised by the constable on the door and waved through. My experiences of police stations have not been comfortable, and so I was nervous as he led the way towards the stairs and then down into the basement. For an uncomfortable moment I thought we were heading for the cells, but in fact he took me to a large room with several long, rectangular windows along the top of one wall through which, if I strained, I could see the feet of people walking past. The walls were lined with shelves containing all manner of unpleasant surgical instruments and anatomical specimens in glass jars. Three metal tables had been placed side by side in the centre of the room, with gaps between them large enough for two people to pass, side by side. The floor was tiled in white, and several drains had been sunk into it. The purpose of the drains became unpleasantly clear when I realised that the body of a naked man was lying face-up on one of the tables. No cloth or towel covered his modesty. He was, I should make clear, completely dead. It was not that kind of establishment.

  The room was filled with a strong smell of carbolic acid and formaldehyde. I took my lavender-scented handkerchief from my pocket and bundled it up beneath my nose. It did not help much.

  Dr Watson was standing over the body, examining it intently and professionally. I do not believe I have described him before, and he has never described himself, so let me make the first attempt – he is a man of slightly less than average height, with a rugby player’s physique and a well-kept and luxuriant moustache. His hair is generally brushed back from his forehead, but often flops forwards. It is clear why he is so fortunate with the fair sex. Looking at him now I noticed that his sleeves were rolled up and secured with flexible metal bands and he was wearing a waxed green apron to protect his shirt and trousers from what I shall delicately refer to as the “bodily fluids” of the man on the table.

  “Ah, Holmes!” he exclaimed, looking up. His attention moved to me. “And – yes, it’s Mr Pike, is not it? Langdale Pike. What are you doing here?” He moved his gaze back to Holmes. “What is he doing here?”

  “Mr Pike is joining me on this case,” Holmes said, his gaze fixed upon the body. “Given that you can only spare a few hours of your precious time, and given also that Mr Pike knows more about the hidden secrets of the average Londoner than most people, it seemed logical so to do. Now, what can you tell me about this gentleman?”

  As Watson pointed at an obvious chest wound, which he appeared to have methodically enlarged with a scalpel, I found myself feeling a strange mixture of interest and revulsion. The body – which I presumed to be the unfortunate fiancé, Mr Drake – was of a young man, in his early twenties I would estimate. His hair was blond and rather long, and his body shape – wide shoulders and narrow hips – suggested to me a swimmer, rather than the rugby player that Watson resembled. His eyes were mercifully closed. His skin was white on top, but this faded into a maroon colour for a distance of about two inches from the surface of the table. It was the kind of effect one would obtain if he had been lying in a pool of purple ink for a while, although I could not imagine why anyone would have done that.

  Dr Watson noticed my queasy interest. “You’ve noticed how the blood settles in the body under the influence of gravity in the absence of pressure from a heartbeat,” he said, straightening up.

  “In that case,” I observed, “I shall endeavour to keep my heart beating for as long as possible. It is a faintly ridiculous look, and I have no intention of indulging in it myself.”

  Holmes was still looking at the chest wound, which resembled a flower constructed from dark red meat. Watson turned to join him. “A bullet has obviously entered the body here, and travelled onwards through the heart,” he said.

  “The death of this man was almost certainly intentional, then,” Holmes mused. “If the shooter had been aiming at someone else in the crowd then it is extremely unlikely that he would have so accurately hit this man’s heart.”

  “I have found a corresponding entrance wound in his back, just to the right of his left scapula.” Watson slid his hands beneath the body and turned it half-over. “Here, take a look.”

  Holmes bent over eagerly. I stepped back. This was not the kind of thing I had anticipated to be doing that day. Or, indeed, any day.

  “The exit wound is lower than the entrance wound,” Holmes observed. “The shot must have come from above.”

  “Indeed,” Watson said. “That was my assumption also.”

  “Assume nothing,” Holmes snapped. “It is a valid deduction based on evidence to hand.” He straightened up. “Did you recover the bullet?”

  Watson nodded. Letting the body fall back to the table with a flabby thump reminiscent of a large fish hitting a fishmonger’s slab, he crossed to a table at the side of the room and picked up a glass vial. Inside was a twisted piece of metal: brass or copper, I estimated, based upon the colour.

  “Quite a soft one,” he observed. “Designed to deform as it travelled through the body. Its velocity had slowed so much that it was caught by the man’s cigarette case. Its diameter is slightly less than half an inch, which suggests that the weapon that shot it was a Martini–Henry rifle or something similar. It’s certainly bigger than the .303 rounds fired by the
Martini–Enfield or Lee–Enfield rifles.”

  “That would certainly have the range,” Holmes mused. “The Martini–Henry is sighted to 1,800 yards.” He nodded decisively. “Very well: are there any other points of interest to which you would draw my attention?”

  Watson shrugged. “The state of the body is similar to half a hundred I saw in Afghanistan.” He clapped his hands and then started to pull off his apron. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have a holiday to return to.”

  “Would it have been a difficult shot, in your estimation?”

  Watson was, by now, rolling his shirtsleeves down and fastening his cufflinks. “Not if the shooter was a practised hunter – big game in India or deer on the Scottish Highlands, it makes little difference.”

  “Distance?”

  “A shot like this, taken with a standard rifle by an experienced marksman, could be accomplished accurately – by which I mean within an inch of the aim point – over, perhaps, five hundred yards.”

  Holmes glanced over at me. “I do not suppose that you recognise this man from any of your… regular haunts?” he inquired.

  I shook my head. “Absolutely not. I would have remembered such a noble brow, and such a fine head of hair. And, of course, those muscular shoulders.”

  “Indeed.”

  By now Watson had pulled his jacket on, picked up his bowler hat and his medical bag, and was heading for the door. He turned, in the doorway, as if expecting Holmes to say something – “Goodbye”, perhaps, or “Thank you!” – but his friend was frowning and looking at the floor. Instead, I waved at the good doctor, and he left with a scowl on his face.

  “We must go to the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.” Holmes said. “I need to see the scene of the crime.”

  We left the unfriendly edifice of Great Scotland Yard behind us and Holmes hailed a cab to take us to Vauxhall. It was late afternoon, and as the sun began to dip behind the roofs of the buildings, I drew my coat closer around me.

  Characteristically, Holmes did not seem to feel the cold. He did not, I had noticed, seem to feel much of anything. I envied him that. I felt too much of everything – my mind is vulnerable to insults and slights that the average man would shrug off, and my skin sometimes feels as if it has been sanded down to a tenth of its previous thickness. I had to try five different laundries before finding one that uses just enough starch to keep my collars and cuffs stiff but not so much that it makes me come out in a rash.

  We left the cab at the corner of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, and entered via a gap in the low stone wall and tall hedges that surrounded the area. Lanterns had already been lit and were hanging from posts, and there were enough people promenading along the paths and sitting or lying around blankets and picnic hampers on the grass that it was beginning to look crowded. A band was playing off to our right, and a puppet show was taking place in a booth to our left. I had seen similar scenes many times over the past few years – carefree Londoners enjoying their free time. It made me wistful. I wish I could join in, but I am not a gregarious man.

  A young lad in a cloth cap passed by. He winked at me. I was about to wink back when I remembered that I was on what I can only describe as “duty”. With a tinge of sadness in my heart, I looked away.

  Holmes pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. Unfolding it, he glanced at the illustration upon its surface. He glanced around.

  “According to this picture, which I had Miss Morris draw for me, she and her fiancé were standing about a hundred yards away from here, in this direction.”

  He set out in a straight line across the grass, nearly stepping on plates of food or knocking over bottles as he went. A chorus of complaints rose in his wake. Instead of following and apologising – which I suspect Dr Watson would have done – I diverted around the edge of the grass until he stopped, and then found a path to him that offended the least number of people. I have no problem with offending people, by the way – I merely prefer to do it at long range, in print, and to get paid for it.

  “This is the spot, as near as I can tell,” he said, looking around. We were over towards the edge of the grassy area, near to the bushes that marked one of the Pleasure Gardens’ borders. “Miss Morris stated that her fiancé was facing her, and she was facing away from the bushes. She said that she remembered seeing that church steeple –” he pointed into the distance “– directly behind his head. Now, you shall be Miss Morris and I shall be her fiancé.”

  “I would not have it any other way,” I murmured as he grabbed me by the shoulders and positioned me. He was a tall man – taller than Miss Morris’s fiancé – and so I could not see the church spire behind his head, but I found that if I moved my own head then I could spy it over his shoulder.

  Holmes pointed over my own shoulder. “Based on the downwards trajectory of the bullet, the shot can only have come from the roof of that building.”

  I turned to see where he was pointing. Over the hedges I could see the top of a brown stone building with thick sills above narrow windows. They made the building look as if it was frowning heavily. “We need to gain access to that roof, in case the shooter has left any evidence behind.”

  “You do that,” I said, catching sight of one of the Garden’s attendants, obvious in his striped shirt and cap. “I shall go and question the natives.”

  Holmes bounded off without a backward glance, while I raised a hand to attract the attendant.

  “Can I help you, sir?” he asked, approaching. “Directions to various entertainments or cafes, perhaps, or just a potted history of the gardens themselves and the famous people who have visited in the past and continue to do so?”

  “Perhaps another time,” I rejoined. “I am assisting the police with their investigations into the recent death of a young man.” I felt no guilt at saying I was assisting the police – I was assisting a man who was assisting the police, and that seemed good enough. I once danced with a man who’d danced with a girl who’d danced with the Prince of Wales, which leads me to tell people that I got close to dancing with the Prince of Wales – it is a similar situation.

  He winced. “Ah, yes. We have been instructed not to talk about that, sir. Bad for publicity, if you see what I mean. I believe the owners of the gardens have impressed upon the owners of the city’s newspapers that their regular advertisements would be stopped if the newspapers carried anything more that a cursory report. People would not like to go to a place where someone has recently died.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “The general public, in my estimation, have a vein of morbid curiosity running through them like the letters in a stick of Blackpool rock.” I slipped a coin into his hand with a well-practised motion. I suspect I could be a theatrical magician and prestidigitator with little or no practice. “Was this where it happened?”

  “It was, sir,” he said, slipping the coin into his pocket with a similarly smooth motion. Perhaps we should form a double act. “The young man was just over there, on that patch of grass. Some say that he was shot. With a bullet! Others say he was stabbed, or suffered a sudden haemorrhage.”

  “Indeed. And if a gun was fired, did you see where the shot might have come from?”

  He shook his head. “There was nobody around holding a gun, and nobody did a runner.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and started to turn away.

  Perhaps he did not think he’d given me enough value for my money, because he added: “Of course, if the man was shot then another two feet to the left and it would have been a greater tragedy. Not that this was not a tragedy, but the Earl of Montcreif was standing just beside the young man.”

  “Oh, was he?” I asked. That was, indeed, worth the money. “And what did he do?”

  “Like everyone else, sir, he legged it.”

  “As one would,” I observed.

  I waited, watching the crowd and thinking, until Holmes returned.

  “Some scratches on the stonework,” he said, his face contorted into a frown, “and so
me scuffing in the moss suggestive of footprints, but nothing I could use to make an identification or further the investigation.”

  “I have found out something rather interesting,” I said.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Indeed?”

  “You can remove that sarcastic tone from your voice. I have an intellect, you know, even if I use it in ways you disapprove of.”

  He smiled slightly. “I apologise if I gave offence. I am too used to being with Watson. You do have a fine mind, Mr Pike, otherwise I would not have let you join me on this investigation. And as for disapproving of what use you make of it… well, on the list of people in London whom I disapprove of, your name appears far down the list.”

  “I shall take what crumbs of comfort I can from that,” I said. “What I discovered is that the Earl of Montcreif was also in the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens at the time the fatal shot was fired, and was standing very close to Mr Drake.”

  Holmes shook his head. “I have already established to my own satisfaction, based on the accuracy of the shot, that Mr Drake was the intended victim. This was not an accidental shooting, with the shooter firing at the Earl of Montcreif and missing.”

  “I would agree with you,” I said, “except that I happen to know that the earl’s valet took several items of jewellery belonging to his master to a pawnbroker’s in Mayfair yesterday morning. The cash value was in the order of ten thousand pounds.”

  “And how do you know this?”

  “I have my sources. Knowing when the gentry are short of cash or in need money in a hurry has led to a number of my columns.”

  He stared at me fixedly, but I could see that his mind was elsewhere. “There is no connection that I am aware of between the Earl of Montcreif and the unfortunate Mr Drake, although now that I have been made aware of this information I will need to check. I cannot believe that the earl would have paid for Mr Drake to be shot and then stood beside him – he would have been far better off establishing an alibi some distance away.” He raised his head and gazed upwards, eyes half-closed, seeking inspiration. “Does the Earl of Montcrief have any, let us say, ‘habits’ that would require him to spend a great deal of money in a surreptitious and rapid way?”