Sherlock Holmes--The Devil's Dust Page 4

  “Of course, my dear lady, of course. I can see that this recent escapade has discomfited you.”

  “That is putting it mildly.”

  “Then let us tarry no longer.”

  With a gallant bow Holmes fell in on Mrs Hudson’s right. I did likewise on her left, and, flanking her thus, we escorted her homeward through the fog, without further incident.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A DISTAFF BLUEBEARD?

  Holmes spent the rest of the evening at his chemistry bench, which was then not yet quite as ridden with acid scars as it would later become. He put the dregs of Niemand’s meal to the test, applying various solvents and reagents and studying the reactions. As time went on his manner grew increasingly vexed, until at last he shunted his chair back from the bench, emitting a groan of pure frustration.

  “Nothing?” I said.

  “A few tantalising hints but none sufficient to confirm beyond doubt the presence of a toxic substance in the stew, and certainly not to identify it. Had I a larger sample to work with than these meagre scrapings, I might achieve a more concrete result.”

  “I note you did not ask Mrs Biddulph if there was any more of the stew left.”

  “It would have distressed the woman unduly, implying mistrust of her. Besides, she would not have been so foolish, were she Niemand’s poisoner, to adulterate the entire pot. She would have introduced the poison into his helping alone. Otherwise she would run the risk of diluting the concentration and decreasing the efficacy.”

  “She did mention that she ate the stew herself,” I said. “Was that a lie to throw us off the scent?”

  “Or a simple statement of fact. But even if she is Niemand’s murderer, we come upon a stumbling block. Why? Why kill him? There appears to be no link between Inigo Niemand and Ada Biddulph beyond their respective statuses as lodger and landlady. What does she stand to gain from his death? I see nothing in it for her. I see only a practical drawback: she loses the income from his rent.”

  “She could always find another lodger. What if she needed no motive to kill him other than a certain sick, sadistic satisfaction?”

  “You think that she is the type who kills for pleasure? A distaff Bluebeard?” Holmes sounded derisive.

  “Hear me out. Assume the neighbourhood gossips are correct and Mrs Biddulph did murder her husband. Could it be that she found the deed so darkly gratifying that she wished to repeat it? Having acquired a taste for homicide, she felt a compulsion to do it again, this time her victim being her lodger.”

  “George Biddulph might be said to have warranted murdering, thanks to his persistent ill-treatment of her, but what could Niemand have done to deserve the same fate?”

  “As I said, she simply has a taste for it now. No provocation is necessary. In some twisted part of her mind, she relishes the act of killing.”

  “She has a taste for it but has not indulged this appetite before now, Watson? Even though it has been five years since her husband perished? I find that hard to stomach – no pun intended.”

  “Perhaps the opportunity did not present itself until Niemand came along.”

  “Murder for murder’s sake, and damn the consequences.”

  “Is it not at least worth countenancing as a possibility?”

  “I have countenanced it already,” Holmes declared, “and while I have not rejected it wholly, it is not my preferred hypothesis. For one thing, if Ada Biddulph was putting on a performance for us this afternoon, if all those tears and tremors were just for show, then she is an actress of consummate skill, easily the rival of Winifred Emery or Ellen Terry. For another thing, there was a set of curious footprints outside the house.”

  “You did not mention that before.”

  “I am mentioning it now.” Holmes crossed the room to fetch his pipe from its stand and a wad of tobacco from the Persian slipper by the hearth. “Fresh footprints in the yard, discernible in the thin layer of slime upon the flagstones, most prominently visible next to the rear window of the basement flat.”

  “Mrs Biddulph’s?”

  “A man’s footprints, too large to belong to any woman.”

  “Niemand’s, then.”

  “Too large to be his, either. I saw shoes of Niemand’s, which the police had turfed out of a cupboard. The sizes were no match.”

  “A policeman’s footprints. Is that not the likeliest explanation of all?”

  “The soles were not hobnailed as police-issue boots are. They were corrugated, as in a boot designed for hiking or similar.”

  “Could they have belonged to the man who followed us?”

  “Were you not paying attention? That fellow was slight in stature. His shoes would be commensurately small, smaller even than Niemand’s. Furthermore, the weight distribution on the footprints was even upon both soles, whereas our pursuer, as I told you, was lame in one leg and had a distinct limp, which would show in any impressions left by his feet. No, Watson, some other person stood recently outside Niemand’s bedroom window and perhaps, at some point, opened it from without to let himself in.”

  “And then poisoned Niemand’s meal.”

  “The one inference does lead enticingly towards the next, although not inevitably. Tell me, what is your impression of Niemand himself? What do you make of his foibles, his proclivities, as described by Mrs Biddulph? Do they not strike you as irregular? The closed curtains, the aversion to daylight…”

  “He was recovering from disease. Some tropical fevers are known to cause a sensitivity to light. Infectious jaundice, for one.”

  “Granted, but he suffered from the lingering effects of such an ailment while retaining a healthy appetite. Is it, in your professional opinion, likely that one so afflicted might still be a trencherman?”

  “Not likely but not unheard of either. If I have learned anything in half a decade of medical practice, it is that patients get better in different ways. There are no hard and fast rules. One man may refuel himself copiously in his convalescence, another may find even the thought of food disagreeable.”

  “Let me put it to you this way.” Holmes’s pipe was now alight and shedding clouds of smoke that made me think of the fog outdoors, unseen behind the curtains, bumping up against our windowpanes. “Is Mrs Biddulph the impostor in our tale? Or is it perhaps Inigo Niemand? Take that surname: Niemand. What do you make of it?”

  “It sounds Germanic in origin.”

  “It is in no other way suggestive?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Not to my thinking.”

  “It is indeed Germanic,” Holmes said. “It is, in point of fact, the German word for ‘nobody’.”

  “Goodness me.”

  “Yes. Then there is ‘Inigo’.”

  “What of it? Does it, too, mean something in German?”

  “No, but insert two spaces into the word and it becomes ‘in I go’. ‘In I go, nobody’.”

  “Heavens! Do you really think that is the case? The name is some elaborate alias?”

  “It might account for the ‘B.W.’ on the handkerchiefs. Those could be Inigo Niemand’s true initials. And as for the dislike of daylight, what if that is not, instead, a dislike of being observed? Niemand chose to keep the curtains closed even during the day. He ventured out of the house seldom, and never for long. This, along with the pseudonym, is the behaviour of somebody in hiding, surely. Somebody who has gone to ground and is keen not to be unearthed.”

  “But if he did change his identity, as you suggest, why choose a name which practically advertises the fact that he wishes to be anonymous?” I said. “Why not call himself something altogether more ordinary and innocuous? ‘John Smith’, for example.”

  “You would have to ask him that.”

  “But since I cannot…”

  “Since you cannot, my best surmise is that Niemand, or whatever his real name was, chose to rechristen himself ‘in I go, nobody’ without really thinking. It was not a conscious decision, more the first thing that sprang to mind. When one is on th
e run, keen to evade some pursuer, one does not necessarily plan out one’s actions in detail. One operates on instinct as much as anything. In his desperation our man grasped at a pseudonym that seemed to him appropriate. This accords with the impression we are building of someone who was in fear of his life.”

  “With good cause, as it transpires,” I said. “Your construal of the facts, along with the presence of the footprints in the yard, would at least seem to exonerate Mrs Biddulph once and for all.”

  “It would,” said Holmes, “unless she were complicit with the fellow who left them. Rather than our unknown loiterer giving Inigo Niemand poison himself, he could somehow have coerced her into doing it. It would not have been impossible. Judging by her relationship with her late husband, Mrs Biddulph is the compliant sort, easily cowed.”

  “What a horrible thought.”

  “Worse than the thought of a distaff Bluebeard?”

  “In some ways, yes. To be forced into murder rather than carry out the deed of your own volition…”

  Holmes looked up sharply. His keen grey eyes scintillated in the light of the fire. I thought that he had been struck by some sudden, penetrating insight, a kind of eureka, and that in a moment the full resolution of the case would be laid before me, delivered in tones of measured triumph.

  Instead my companion cocked his head, then laid aside his pipe and very slowly and carefully began to rise from his chair. When I opened my mouth to ask what the matter was, he silenced me with an upraised hand.

  His movements still precise and unhurried, Holmes reached for the poker that was leaning against one of the andirons in the fireplace. The implement was not quite straight, the kink in it betraying how it had been bent into a curve by the hulking, barbaric Dr Grimesby Roylott the previous year, using main force, and then restored imperfectly to true by Holmes in the same fashion. Holmes now hefted it in his hand, applying the same fencer-like grip he used when conducting practice with his singlestick. Then he padded towards the door that connected the sitting-room to his bedroom.

  These actions caused me no small bafflement, and unnerved me too. It appeared there was someone else on the premises, an intruder. I had heard nothing to indicate it, yet I knew Holmes’s hearing was more acute than mine, which exposure to gunshots and cannon fire on the battlefield had done much to degrade.

  I stood, prepared to give Holmes my full backing in whatever confrontation might ensue. My hands became fists. My jaw was set.

  Holmes grasped the door handle, paused to collect himself, then thrust the door wide open.

  The bedroom window, which Holmes would never have left open on a night as inclement as this one, gaped open. Wreaths of fog stole in over the sill and the curtains wafted in a chilly breeze. The room itself, though shrouded in darkness, appeared empty.

  Holmes did not relax his guard. He eased himself through the doorway like a prowling cat, the poker to the fore. I leaned in after him. We had only the illumination from the sitting-room to see by. There were gloomy corners where someone might be lurking.

  What happened next happened fast. Holmes cried, “Aha, you scoundrel! I see you. There you are!” At the same time a figure sprang out from behind the bed. Holmes engaged with him and there was a tremendous struggle. Blows were exchanged. The poker was batted from Holmes’s clutches and clattered to the floor, skidding under the chest of drawers. I glimpsed my friend and his opponent lurching to and fro, locked in a fierce embrace like wrestlers grappling. The make-up table at which Holmes donned his disguises was knocked over. Both combatants crashed against a cupboard. The impact made the wall shudder, and a small oil portrait of Holmes’s parents by Vernet fell to the floor, the frame breaking.

  Then I beheld a sight I had expected never to see. Holmes’s prowess in the martial art of baritsu was something which he vaunted much and which I had witnessed in action on a couple of occasions and found impressive. I honestly believed there was no man alive who could best him in a fair fight.

  How wrong I was, for Holmes’s foe had gained the upper hand in the contest. My friend had been brought to his knees and was restrained by an arm around his throat. Holmes resisted, ramming an elbow repeatedly into the man’s thigh, but to no avail. It looked as though he was being strangled.

  That was when I weighed in. I had held back before, safe in the assumption that victory would inevitably be Holmes’s and my assistance was not required. Now, with a guttural snarl, I launched myself at Holmes’s assailant, fist raised to deliver a swingeing jab.

  To my utter astonishment the man intercepted, catching my wrist with his free hand. Next thing I knew, my arm had been twisted about and yanked up behind my back. I was obliged to bend forward from the waist to relieve the pressure on the limb. I writhed, but the hold on my wrist was irresistibly strong. The harder I fought against it, the further my arm was drawn up, such that my shoulder – the one wounded by a Jezail bullet – began to throb with pain and seemed at risk of dislocation.

  All the while, the man retained his dominance over Holmes. I could not help but wonder who this intruder was that had been able to overpower the pair of us with seemingly little difficulty. I could also not help but wonder what were his intentions. He had us at his mercy. Were we to perish by his hand, or would he be content with merely subduing us?

  I had my answer as the fellow said, “I mean you gentlemen no harm. I am not here to do battle with you.”

  “You could have fooled me,” I gasped out.

  “I was on my mettle. You got the jump on me. I responded instinctively. I am now going to let both of you go. Our hostilities are at an end, but be aware that I will not hesitate to counter, should I sense the least threat from either of you. Do you understand?”

  I turned my head to look at Holmes. He, half choked by the arm that encircled his neck like a boa constrictor, nodded.

  “We understand,” I said.

  The stranger let go of Holmes and me simultaneously and stepped away from us with his hands in the air, palms forward, to signify peaceability. I, massaging my shoulder, glared at him, while Holmes rose with alacrity from his semi-recumbent posture and scrutinised the fellow from head to toe.

  In the dim light I perceived that our intruder matched in every detail the description Holmes had given of our Notting Hill shadower. Short, sinewy and elderly, he had a face that was as brown as a walnut and as riven with lines, the wrinkles in it so deep they were almost grooves. Beneath a scowling brow his age-paled eyes gleamed like opals. His attire was that of a well-heeled Home Counties squire, but his checked tweed suit hung off him awkwardly, not through any deficiency in the tailoring but simply because he appeared uncomfortable wearing it, as though he were in the habit of going about in something less formal. This impression was reinforced by the leather wristlets which poked out from his shirtcuffs and, visible above his collar, the braided thong from which hung the tooth of some large predator – a crocodile’s, I thought. Here was a man who was not at home in the metropolis, nor even in the English countryside, but liked to haunt the wilder regions of the planet.

  “Who are you fellows anyway?” said he curtly.

  “One might ask the same of you, sir,” replied Holmes. “I feel under no compunction to give my name to somebody who has broken into my home. On the contrary, I feel the onus is on you to identify yourself first.”

  The intruder weighed up the remark, then smiled grimly. “You have an impudence about you that I like, young man. You also acquitted yourself well in our little contretemps just now, which inclines me to look upon you with a modicum of respect. Allan Quatermain is who I am. And you are…?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MACUMAZAHN

  Minutes later, Sherlock Holmes, Allan Quatermain and I were ensconced together in the sitting-room as though the brawl in the bedroom had never taken place. I had gone downstairs to placate Mrs Hudson, whom the disturbance overhead had roused from sleep; and now, with a mutual détente having been reached amongst the three of us men, Holmes
was offering tobacco to Quatermain.

  “Or would you prefer a cigarette?” he said. “No, you lack the distinctive yellowing of the index and middle fingers that is the mark of the cigarette smoker. You are a pipe man.”

  Quatermain confirmed it by producing a calabash from his jacket pocket. After tamping a pinch of Holmes’s rough shag into the bowl and lighting it, he took a few exploratory puffs. “Bitter,” he pronounced, “but I have inhaled worse. Indeed, I have several times sampled a native tobacco, Taduki, the effects of which are not dissimilar to dakka. You know of dakka? No? Many an African’s preferred choice of smoke. Highly intoxicating. But this Taduki herb is even more potent and induces visions. Such strange, entrancing visions…”

  His voice trailed off, as though he were lost in reverie. His eyes seemed to be peering across a great distance at some vista no one else could see.

  “Mostly I have smoked it in the company of the dear departed Lady Ragnall, widow of Ragnall the Egyptologist,” he resumed. “A woman who was a great friend of mine and perhaps could have been more, had heart disease not taken her from us just last year. The Honourable Luna Holmes, as she used to be in her maiden days. No relation to you, I suppose?”

  Sherlock Holmes shook his head.

  “Aunt?” said Quatermain. “Cousin?”

  Again Holmes indicated in the negative. “My family tree is not extensive, and no Luna perches on any of its branches, nor indeed any member of the aristocracy.”

  “Just wondered. But then, Holmes is not an uncommon surname.”

  “The same cannot be said for Quatermain. You are, of course, the celebrated big game hunter.”

  “None other.”

  “I have read of your exploits, in passing. Now and again a report appears in the international columns of the papers. Mention has been made of your involvement in the notorious Battle of Blood River, at which the Boers more or less destroyed the Zulu kingdom, and also in the rise of Cetawayo as ruler of what remained of that people.”

  “I was present at Cetawayo’s death, too,” said Quatermain. “I have led a long and storied life.”