Sherlock Holmes - The Stuff of Nightmares Page 11

  “‘In the near future, Mr Holmes,’ he said, ‘our world is going to alter radically. You, I fear, are going to wind up on the wrong side of some very powerful forces, and I do not rate your chances of survival. Which leads me to think: perhaps now is the time for you to see sense and use your much-vaunted abilities to further your own ends rather than help the common man.’ He smothered those last four words in a sneer. The thought of helping anyone other than himself was anathema to him.

  “‘What are you suggesting?’ I said. ‘That you and I join forces? Forge an alliance?’

  “‘We are alike in so many ways, both of us set apart from the herd by our brilliance. What if we were to put aside our enmity, these silly hostilities of ours, and co-operate? My great brain alone has achieved so much. Imagine what it could do in concert with yours. The summits we could scale together! The heights to which we could ascend!’

  “‘The prospect revolts me. What you call heights, Moriarty, I call depths. I will hear no more of this.’

  “‘Very well,’ said he, pouting, more than a little put out. He honestly thought I would jump at his invitation. ‘But in spurning my proffered hand of friendship, you doom yourself, sir.’

  “‘The atmosphere in this carriage is becoming most uncongenial to me,’ I said. ‘I have known cesspits less foetid.’

  “For the merest of moments I thought that Moriarty was going to unleash one of the brougham’s booby traps on me, out of sheer spite. His face clouded and his eyes were filled with a baleful malice. ‘Perhaps,’ I said to myself, ‘you have overstepped the mark, old boy. You have allowed your emotions to trump your better judgement.’

  “But then he smiled once more – ugh – and bade me a courteous farewell. I left with the impression that he had been taunting me, so sure of his position and his predictions that he believes nothing I can do will make any difference. Which, of course, leaves me all the more determined to resolve things.”

  “Perhaps he was sounding you out, too,” I said. “Seeing how far along you are in your investigations.”

  “That is a very astute observation, Watson.”

  “To be honest, I don’t see that we are very far along at all, other than that we now have a fresh murder on our hands and no suspect.”

  “Not far along? On the contrary. It should be obvious that I have not been idle this past couple of days. I have been rushing hither and yon, finding myself in any number of unusual venues, gathering crumbs and morsels of intelligence. I also received another peremptory summons from my brother, as threatened. He proved to be in a very sour frame of mind, I must say. He berated me over my apparent lack of progress. I believe he is feeling pressure from several quarters and needed to vent his frustration on someone. I did my best to reassure him that everything is in hand, but Mycroft is hard to mollify when he is in one of his funks. I fear he may be provoked into doing something rash and intemperate.”

  “Such as neglecting his own health?” I said. “Pushing himself too hard for his own good?”

  “But,” my friend went on, ignoring my pointed remark, “the good news is that I have, as a consequence of my labours, unearthed a palpable lead. One which we shall act upon tonight and which, if my sources are correct, should herald the re-emergence of at least one old acquaintance.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “MRS H TO THE SMITHS’ PLACE”

  Another telegram from Mycroft arrived at Baker Street that afternoon, this one delivered by a traditionally juvenile courier, who said that a reply was expected.

  The telegram read:

  Propose that Mrs H be moved north to the Smiths’ place. Advise. M

  “Who,” I asked Holmes, “is this Mrs H?” I wondered whether it might be an oblique reference to our own dear Mrs Hudson, but could not for the life of me think why Mycroft would wish to recommend a change in her whereabouts. Unless he had reason to believe that Holmes and those immediately around him were in grave and imminent danger...

  “Can’t you guess? Mycroft is being very cryptic and coy. He must fear his message being intercepted. Would it help if I said the H stands for Hanover?”

  “Mrs...? Goodness gracious! He means Victoria. And ‘the Smiths’ place’?”

  “The architects who designed and built Balmoral Castle were John Smith and his son William.”

  “Then it all makes sense,” I said. “Your brother believes the Queen will be safer if she is relocated to Aberdeenshire. I can’t say I disagree. Balmoral is remote and, I’m led to understand, somewhat fortress-like. The terrorists will be far less able to threaten her there.”

  “Ah, but Watson, you are not thinking clearly.”

  I bristled. “I’m not? Our monarch’s security is surely paramount. A bomb went off scarcely half a mile from her official London residence yesterday, Holmes. And with the masses up in arms and mayhem on the streets, it isn’t wise for her to remain in the capital. Inconceivable as it may seem, the people might turn against her. There are those out there who regard our nation’s figurehead as a legitimate target. Remember how she was attacked four times by as many different men during the ’forties, and again, much more recently, by that poet whose work he posted to her for her approval and she rejected. What was his name? Maclean. Some of them took direct pot shots at her!”

  “All of her assailants were in various ways insane, and one of them used a rusty flintlock and another a cane, hardly lethal weapons.”

  “These are insane times. Her Majesty may have brushed off those previous attempts on her life with the words ‘It is worth being shot at to see how much one is loved’, but right now, things are different. She must go to Balmoral. It is imperative.”

  “No, Watson. Think how it will look. She will appear to be running away from trouble.”

  “Not running away – making a tactical retreat.”

  “It will weaken her authority,” Holmes insisted. “It will give the impression that the nation as a whole is a shambles, the ship of state rudderless. She must stay put and ride out the turbulence. I suspect that Her Majesty herself knows this and is adamant about not going, contrary to Mycroft’s wishes. My brother is being over cautious, far too protective, and hence losing objectivity. This is what I feared might happen.”

  “He is cleverer than you. You have told me so yourself. There has always been some sort of unspoken rivalry between you two, but perhaps, just this once, you should accept that he knows best.”

  “What I have said is that Mycroft possesses a faculty for observation and a facility for detection that are superior even to mine. What I have also said – and this is crucial – is that he does not apply his skills with the same logical exactitude as I do. He is prone to arrive at solutions to problems through leaps of reasoning rather than precise, methodical thoroughness. He is, in essence, lazy. Omniscient, yes, and capable of assessing and pigeonholing reams of data at a glance, but lacking in rigour and foresight. This telegram shows that he himself is uncertain of his course of action. Hence the request for me to ‘advise’. And my advice to him will be to desist from having Victoria transported north of the border. Her taking refuge at Balmoral will only fan the flames further.”

  “Holmes, you would gamble with our Queen’s life?” I said, aghast.

  “Fools gamble, Watson. I make measured judgements.”

  “But if you’re wrong... The potential cost...”

  Holmes sat back in his chair. “In the event that I’m wrong, I daresay that posterity will view me in a very harsh light. But it is a risk I am prepared to take.”

  He scribbled a note to Mycroft and had Mrs Hudson pass it on to the delivery boy downstairs, along with a shilling.

  “And now, my friend, we must focus our energies on this evening. We have an address and the hour at which we need to be there. It promises to be a long, arduous night, so I suggest you take a nap beforehand. The bed in your old room is made up.”

  “And you? Will you not sleep too? You should.”

  Holmes tamped
tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and applied a match.

  “I,” he said, “shall do what I do best.”

  So saying, he slipped into a contemplative pose, gradually wreathing himself in a pall of smoke. He appeared calm, but as I was on the point of leaving the room, a sound caught my attention and made me turn. It was the grinding of teeth.

  Holmes’s jaw was working even when he wasn’t puffing on the pipe, the mandibular muscles tensing and flexing visibly beneath his skin. I refrained from commenting on it, but I knew it could mean only one thing.

  He was angry.

  My friend was a man to whom emotions were remote and alien. He was apt to regard them distantly and with curiosity, much as an astronomer regards the planets through his telescope. On the rare occasion when one overtook him, it affected him strongly.

  What had provoked his ire? Was it the Abbess’s murder? The meeting with Moriarty? The telegram from Mycroft?

  Possibly it was a combination of the three, and I must confess it made me uneasy to see Sherlock Holmes for once not the master of himself. It left me fearful of an unsuccessful outcome to the investigation.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  GRAVEYARD VIGIL

  Midnight saw us in Stepney, in the graveyard of a deconsecrated parish church.

  The church, situated between Whitechapel Road and Commercial Road, had fallen into disuse not through any lack of attendance but thanks to subsidence. It had been erected on a patch of unusually soft marshy soil and had begun to sink, becoming unsafe, potentially a fatal hazard to clergy and congregation. Signs had been posted all around, warning passers-by to keep away: the edifice was condemned and scheduled for demolition.

  The signs were hardly required. One look at the church itself ought to have sufficed. Deep fissures ran through the stonework, forking like lightning. Chunks of fallen masonry, and even the broken-off head of a gargoyle, littered the precincts. The bell tower was canted alarmingly, its angle with the earth more acute than that of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The whole building had been shored up with thick timber braces, but still seemed fragile, as though a casual sneeze could bring it all crashing down. I confess I felt nervous being in such close proximity to it. Nervous, too, at the prospect of the “re-emergence of an old acquaintance” that Holmes had promised. Who? Baron Cauchemar? I feared as much.

  My anxiety communicated itself to Holmes via my constant shifting of position. I just couldn’t get comfortable in our hiding place, crouching behind a brace of large headstones.

  “Watson, you fidgeter,” my friend hissed. “Do keep still!”

  “I am getting to be of an age,” I said, “when lying in wait in damp grass at an absurd hour of the night no longer seems appropriate or sensible behaviour.”

  “Nonsense. Stop complaining. I am marginally your senior, and did I not spend several days in the wilds of Dartmoor just last year, in the bitterest of conditions and the crudest of hovels?”

  “You are evidently made of sterner stuff than I.”

  “As an army surgeon in Afghanistan, you had to camp out in inhospitable mountain regions, assailed by icy winds and in constant fear of sneak attack by the forces of Ayub Khan, for months on end. How can this even compare?”

  “That was a long time ago and I was a much younger man. I am married now. I have responsibilities.”

  “Pshaw! If your marital and professional obligations were really so important to you, you would not be here at all. The truth is you relish the thrill of these adventures of ours, Watson, albeit usually in hindsight, from the vantage point of having survived them. They make you feel young again and alive.”

  This I could not gainsay, although it irritated me how Holmes had picked his way to the nub of the matter. It irritated me whenever his insights into my character were dead-on. One could hide nothing about oneself from him.

  “At least I needn’t ask if you have brought your revolver,” my friend added. “You keep checking the blasted thing every five minutes. It’s another habit that speaks of nerves and insecurity.”

  “Give me one good reason, Holmes, why I should not feel –”

  “Hsst!” Holmes silenced me with a forefinger to my lips. “Hear that? Someone is coming.”

  I drew back the hammer on my revolver, ready. There were voices, faint in the dark, and then the gleam of a lantern.

  Three figures hove into view, entering the graveyard by a side gate. One was bent, pushing a wheelbarrow in which lay two shovels.

  The man leading the way, the bearer of the lantern, was immediately recognisable by silhouette alone. That barrel chest, that beard, the absence of a left arm...

  Abednego Torrance.

  The other two were unfamiliar but, from the glimpses I got of them by the lantern’s light, they resembled in dress and bearing the two accomplices whom Torrance had had with him at the docks in Shadwell. Two more burly bravos to aid him in whatever shady practices he was engaged in.

  “Right-ho, lads,” Torrance said, coming to a halt not thirty yards from where Holmes and I were sequestered. “This is the spot. I had it buried right here, under this rather fetching statue of an angel. See? Looks like a recently dug grave, but it ain’t. Grab the shovels and get to work.”

  “It’s not six feet down, is it, boss?” one of the accomplices asked. “Only, that’s a long way to dig.”

  “Of course it ruddy isn’t six feet, Gedge. What do you take me for? I’m not stupid. And the soil’s not long been turned, so it isn’t as if it’ll be back-breaking work. I’d do it myself, only a shovel’s a tool that demands two hands, and I come up short in that department. Sinnott and Creevy did the job on my behalf last time, but since they are currently indisposed, you two are my new left arms.”

  “I don’t know,” said the other accomplice gloomily. “Digging in a graveyard? It seems sort of wrong. Blasphemous, like.”

  “Shut your hole and get on with it, Kaylock,” snarled Torrance. “You’re being paid, aren’t you? Anyway, this here church has been de-holy-fied. God’s been spring-cleaned out of it. So you’re not doing anything that’ll offend Him, but if you do nothing, that’ll offend me. Got that?”

  Kaylock nodded avidly and got busy with a shovel. Gedge joined him. Torrance, for his part, trained the beam from the lantern on them as they laboured. Meanwhile he remained on the alert, casting a keen gaze around, keeping lookout. I almost admired him for daring to venture out at all tonight, so soon after his last run-in with Cauchemar. Talk about tempting fate. He was clearly a man of some inner fortitude. Or perhaps he reckoned he couldn’t be that unlucky twice running.

  “Holmes,” I whispered, “should we charge them? Element of surprise and all that.”

  My companion shook his head. “Let us wait and see what they are here to retrieve.”

  “Here, Torrance,” said Gedge. “How come you lost your arm anyway?”

  “I’ve heard all manner of stories,” said Kaylock.

  “Oh yes?” said Torrance. “Such as?”

  “I’ve heard you were in a shipwreck in the tropics, afloat for days clinging to a section of broken mast, and a tiger shark bit your arm off, although you snatched the arm out of the beast’s jaws and beat it to death with it.”

  “I’ve heard,” said Gedge, “that you were wounded in a knife fight with three lascars in a tavern on the Malabar Coast, so badly you had to have your arm amputated.”

  Torrance gave a gruff chuckle. “Well now, there’s a grain of truth in both of those, but only a grain.”

  “What happened, then?”

  “Fact is, I did get bitten, yes, but not by a shark. It was back in my sailing days. I was crewing with a scientific expedition ship, the SS Mayumba, collecting live samples of rare and supposedly extinct animal species from the islands of the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Leading the show was this young shaver, George Challenger by name, fresh out of university and looking to make a reputation for himself, as well as gather material that would help earn him his doctorate.
You think I’m built big? Challenger was a giant, and devilish smart too, but also crude, opinionated, and not one to give a fig about the feelings of others.”

  “Sounds like you liked him.”

  “I did, and he me. Education aside, we had much in common. But to cut a long story short, we were tracking down a rodent in the jungles of Sumatra, a massive thing, a rat the size of a cat. No, bigger. Of a dog. I found it. Or rather, it found me. Sank its teeth into my forearm and wouldn’t let go, no matter how I whacked it and pounded it. In the end Challenger had to kill it with his machete, because there was no other way of getting it off me. He was not best pleased about that, I can tell you. He bawled at me for an hour. ‘Prize specimen, the fabled Giant Rat of Sumatra, we’ll probably never find the likes of it again, thanks to you I’ve had to chop it in half,’ et cetera, et cetera. And that would have been that.”

  “But?”

  “Damn me if the wound didn’t become infected. Badly. That vermin had been carrying some nasty germs in its gob, and within hours the bite was inflamed and starting to fester and my arm had swollen up like a football and I was stricken with a fever like you wouldn’t believe – the sweats, the shakes, cramping, agony. There was a likelihood of gangrene and even death, so young Challenger stepped up to the mark. I never did learn what he was a student of. All the sciences, as far as I can tell, and one of them was medicine. As the ship’s resident sawbones he saw there was only one possible course of treatment, so he got me stinking drunk on rum, rammed a pad of leather in my mouth so I wouldn’t bite my own tongue off, and set to work with a hacksaw and a bone file.” Torrance winced at the memory. “Saved my ruddy life, he did, but was it pleasant? No, it was not.”

  “Phew,” said Gedge. “Rather you than me.”

  “That was the end of my career as a seaman. You can’t tie a sheet or hoist a sail with only one arm. I had to look to other forms of employment to make ends meet. And that’s your bedtime story for the night, lads. Back to work with you.”