Sherlock Holmes - Gods of War Page 6

  “Perhaps he fell overboard – from a ferry, for instance.”

  “Possible, possible.” Holmes peered up at the beetling white brow of Beachy Head. To my mind the crag had taken on a forbidding aspect, as a locus of despair and death. “Or perhaps he threw himself off the cliffs as Mr Enwright surmises. Had he done so during high tide, the sea could have claimed his body immediately, washing him out away from shore and depositing him back when the tide turned. What else about him do you observe, Watson? Apply my methods of forensic analysis, if you will.”

  “He is young, in his late teens or early twenties, and well dressed. His suit appears tailored, bespoke, rather than off the peg. The one cufflink I can see appears to be solid gold. His shoes are of good quality. He is moneyed.”

  “Very good. I concur.”

  “If we could get a better look at his face…”

  “I am loath to disturb the body just yet,” Holmes said. “One should attempt to preserve the integrity of a crime scene for as long as possible.”

  “This is a crime scene?” I said. “But so far everything points to either suicide or mishap. If his death was an accident, that is a tragedy but nothing more. Do you suspect foul play, Holmes?”

  My friend did not answer but instead resumed his scrutiny of the body. I could not help but wonder if he was actively trying to find some evidence that this was anything other than death by misadventure. The bucolic life had its attractions for him, but was he missing the excitement of being on a case? Had yesterday’s incident at Barraclough’s whetted his appetite for detection? If that jewellery theft had been the hors d’oeuvres, could this drowned man be the entrée?

  He leaned forward over the back of the body’s neck, so close his nose almost touched it. The salt water had preserved the corpse to some extent, so that it had not begun to rot as swiftly as it would have if exposed to the open air, but still, I myself would have been unwilling to place that particular sensory organ in quite such proximity to it.

  “Interesting,” my friend said softly to himself.

  “What is it, Holmes?”

  Then a loud, gruff shout resounded along the beach.

  “Hey! You there! Get away from that corpse!”

  CHAPTER NINE

  INSPECTOR GEORGE TASKER

  A brace of police constables were making their way towards us, led by a short, ginger-haired man in a trenchcoat who was waving an arm irritably.

  “Did you not hear me?” he yelled. “I said get away from it. This instant! In the name of the law.”

  “Ah, the gendarmes,” Holmes said, straightening up and taking a step back, as bidden. “Now the fun begins.”

  “Who do you think you are?” the trenchcoated man demanded as he covered the last few yards between us and him in a series of rapid, panting strides. “You’ve no right to be nosing around the body like that. This is police business.”

  “I beg your pardon, Mr…”

  “Inspector George Tasker,” said the plainclothes policeman, laying emphasis on his official title. “And you are?”

  “Sherlock Holmes, and this is my friend –”

  “Oh yes.” Tasker raised a wry eyebrow. “I’ve heard about you, Mr Holmes. The amateur sleuth. The prying busybody.”

  My companion remained outwardly unperturbed, but beneath the calm surface I could tell he was bristling. Who knows which term offended him more, amateur or busybody?

  “You were a lion in your day,” Tasker went on. “We’re well aware of the reputation you had. Plenty of my boys read about your exploits in the pages of the Strand. What do those stories have in common?”

  “A near one-hundred-per-cent success rate in solving crimes?” I offered.

  Ignoring me, Tasker barrelled on. “They took place many years ago, and in London, not here. Down here, in this new century, I think you’ll find things are a bit different. I know how Scotland Yard granted you plenty of latitude, sir. You had free rein to do as you pleased. Those conditions do not apply in Eastbourne. This is my turf, and I will not have the likes of you trampling all over the place, interfering and getting under foot. Are we clear?”

  Holmes withstood the tirade with every show of meek acquiescence. Offering Tasker the most courteous of smiles, he said, “Of course, inspector. Implicitly. I have done nothing here beyond cast an eye over the body of this poor wretch. I have not touched it. I have not tampered with it in any way. I have no desire to obstruct you in the pursuit of your duties. I’m sorry if you may have acquired an otherwise impression. I am merely a concerned citizen, not to mention an ardent supporter of His Majesty’s constabulary.”

  “Yes, well.” Tasker was a little mollified. “It was my day off yesterday, and when I came into the station this morning, all anyone could talk about was the great Mr Sherlock Holmes nabbing a couple of jewel thieves the day before. I do not care to hear such things. I will not have members of the public taking the law into their own hands. Policing is a serious business, best carried out by those with the appropriate training. It is a vocation, not a pastime. If it weren’t, why else would I be out on a Sunday morning when I should be at church?”

  “Now see here!” I began intemperately. I had had enough of Tasker’s condescending attitude. “How dare you talk that way. The damned impertinence. Sherlock Holmes has done more for this country, for the Crown, for the Empire, than a mealy-mouthed functionary like you ever will. Why, while you were still in short trousers, this man…”

  Holmes forestalled me with a hand on my arm. “No, Watson, it’s all right. The inspector is quite correct. I lack his training and his professional experience. I am content to concede gracefully. This corpse falls squarely under his jurisdiction. Let him deal with the matter.”

  Inspector Tasker glared at me for a good long while, clearly weighing up whether or not to discipline me for my outburst. I have no doubt that he could have arrested me for insulting an officer of the law or on some other such charge, and that he was tempted. In the end, he decided against it.

  “I would caution you not to speak to me like that again, sir,” he warned with an upraised finger, “or we’ll have you off to Lewes Assizes quicker than you can say Jack Robinson. A gent of your advanced years has no wish to spend a night or two on a pallet mattress in a damp cell. It will do little for your constitution. Now then, Pumphrey, Ayers!” The two policemen with him stiffened to attention. “Get these gawpers out of here, will you? Clear the area, and let’s have no further ‘concerned citizens’ sticking their beaks in where they don’t belong.”

  Constables Pumphrey and Ayers began directing Holmes, myself and the various Winnicks away from the corpse with brusque ushering gestures and orders to “move along” and “go back to your homes”. Tom Enwright grumbled that he was “not a man to be druv” but complied nonetheless. Holmes, for his part, set his foot on a large, limpet-covered rock and began fussing with a bootlace which had apparently come loose. Constable Pumphrey invited him to hurry up, but my friend said it was no easy matter tying a lace at his age, when arthritis was playing merry havoc with his finger joints.

  By this subterfuge he contrived for both of us to be within earshot when the following exchange took place between Inspector Tasker and Constable Ayers.

  “Is it him, sir?” Ayers asked.

  Tasker grasped the body by the shoulder and heaved it over onto its back. His face assumed a grim cast. “By God, I’m afraid it is.”

  “You can be sure? Even with all the bloating?”

  “Yes. Patrick Mallinson, in the swollen flesh. I’d recognise him anywhere.”

  “So the father wasn’t mistaken.”

  “I wish, for his sake, he had been. And for mine, since I’m the one who’ll have to break the news to him and confirm that his worst fears are well founded.”

  Constable Pumphrey could not endure any more of Holmes’s prevarication and instructed him to leave whether or not the lace was tied, threatening to help him along with the toe of his own boot.

 
“Mallinson,” I said sotto voce as Holmes and I followed the Winnicks along the beach. “As in our weekend aviator.”

  “Indeed. The late Patrick we can safely assume was his son. I think we can also safely assume that the father spied the body from his aeroplane and despatched the police to this spot to check on his behalf.”

  “So Mallinson senior was searching in the plane. His son went missing and he had a shrewd idea what might have become of him.”

  “Enter Inspector Tasker and his cohorts. You know, whatever one thinks of Lestrade, and of Gregson and Athelney Jones and Bradstreet and Hopkins and all the other Scotland Yard men we were obliged to associate with over the years – they may not have been of the brightest but they were never knowingly a hindrance. Tasker, on the other hand, is an obtuse, puffed-up little martinet, the classic big fish in a small pond. I fear he shall prove problematic if we are to attempt to clear up this mystery.”

  “Clear up…?” I said. “You mean something has given you to believe that the drowned man – Patrick Mallinson – died in suspicious circumstances?”

  “Had I had longer to inspect the remains, I might have been able to establish one way or the other with a degree of certainty. The father being prompted to search for him is a telling detail. As is the matter of the angle of his neck. Did you notice? His head was bent sharply forwards, so sharply that it was unnatural, and I discerned an indentation at the base of the skull where the axis, the second cervical vertebra, lies. It appeared to have been shattered.”

  “So his neck was broken,” I said. “But would that not be consistent with a fall from a great height – a height such as Beachy Head?”

  “It might, but for the lack of cuts, abrasions and other forms of external damage, which there would be had he plunged straight onto rocks.”

  “If the tide was all the way in, could not the sea have spared him from superficial injury, while not cushioning his bones from the trauma of impact?”

  “Very possibly so. But then there is the question of the mud.”

  “The mud?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE MANIFOLD PROPERTIES OF MUD

  In lieu of answering my question, Holmes abruptly accelerated, at the same time calling out Tom Enwright’s name.

  The venerable old fisherman halted, permitting my friend to catch up with him.

  “What be heggling you, Mr Holmes?”

  “Tell me, my good man, did you happen to get a thorough look at the mud on the body?”

  “I’d reckon as so.”

  “Was it smeery, would you say, or stoach?”

  “Hmm, now there be a thing, Mr Holmes,” said Enwright. “It weren’t neither. It were more sleech or gawm.”

  “Definitely closer to slub than stug, then?”

  “Oh aye, for certain.” Enwright scratched his head beneath his cap. “Queer, that, now you come to mention it.”

  “Thank you, Mr Enwright.”

  “Most welcome, sir.” The Winnick resettled his cap and walked on toward the shacks.

  “Care to explain what that was all about?” I asked. “It sounded as though you had slipped into pure gibberish. Stoach? Slub? Is that even the King’s English?”

  “You know how the Eskimo has fifty words for snow.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, likewise the Sussex fisherman has numerous words for the various types of mud he encounters in his daily course. That stolen-baby case Enwright referred to earlier? My solving it hinged on the fact that the kidnapper’s shoes bore clods of the right kind of mud, whereas those of Jenny Fitch, the Winnick girl who was alleged to have taken the infant from its pram, were covered in the wrong kind of mud.”

  “I don’t follow. Mud is mud, surely.”

  “On the contrary. Have I not demonstrated to you time and time again that everything, no matter how homogenous it seems, is unique, and in its uniqueness, enlightening? To take an example dear to my heart, no lump of tobacco ash is like another. Each tells its own individual story. Thus it is with mud too. The sediment on a river bed is of an entirely dissimilar consistency and composition to the silt at the bottom of the sea. And, for Winnicks and their fishing brethren, there are even finer distinctions, such as between, say, shoreline mud and deep-sea mud. Still with me?”

  “It’s as clear as mud to me, old chap.”

  “Pawky as ever, Watson. The woman who stole the baby – a young creature driven half mad after a succession of stillbirths and miscarriages, overcome by her desperation to have a baby of her own, any baby – had trodden through mud at the exact spot on the beach where the abduction occurred. Jenny Fitch, though her shoes were of the same size and style as the other woman’s, was nowhere near the place at that time. The mud on her soles and heels proved as much, because it originated from further along the coast, where the proportions of minerals in the alluvial deposits are somewhat different and consequently the colour and texture of the mud differs. The shoe prints by the pram were the main plank of the police’s case against Miss Fitch, and once that collapsed, they had nothing left to charge her with.”

  “Why was she accused in the first place?”

  “Merely because she had cooed over the infant earlier that day, while the parents were perambulating with it along the seafront. Subsequently the distraught couple gave her description to the police who, I’m afraid to say, were only too quick to pounce on her as a suspect. There is a great deal of prejudice among Eastbourne townsfolk against Winnicks. The fisher folk are held in the same low esteem as gypsies and tramps. They form an unfairly maligned underclass and are often the first to be blamed when there’s trouble, which would account for their mistrust of outsiders.”

  “And this business of the mud in that case led you to take a deeper interest in the topic.”

  “Of course. I am only too happy to apply my mind to whatever new fields of interest take my fancy.”

  “Do you think there might even be a monograph in it?”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  Sometimes my friend seemed not to realise when I was gently ribbing him. That or he was perfectly well aware but would not deign to acknowledge it.

  “How it is relevant in this instance,” he said, “is that the mud on Patrick Mallinson’s body is not the mud one finds in the shallows of a beach. It is not the loose, thin mud of the kind that Winnicks know as ‘smeery’ or ‘stoach’. It is ‘gawm’ or ‘slub’, thicker and denser. Such mud comes from much further out to sea.”

  “Goodness. What might that signify?”

  “Possibly nothing, possibly everything. It is a singular factor, at least. How does deep-sea mud get onto the body of someone who may have hurled himself off a cliff?”

  “The tide could have dragged him further out than you think. Or we could reconsider my theory that he fell from a boat.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Holmes. “As yet we do not have sufficient data to draw any firm conclusions. We are too much in the dark. But there is always the prospect that something will come along to shed more light on the situation, and I would not be surprised if it happens soon.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CRAIG MALLINSON, ESQUIRE

  Further light did indeed come, that very afternoon. This was in the wake of a roast Sunday lunch at the Tiger Inn during which I did my utmost to dissuade Holmes from becoming embroiled to any greater extent in the affair of Patrick Mallinson’s death.

  “It really is none of our business,” I insisted. “I feel that you very much want it to be. Your blood is up. But I would counsel you to steer clear. A man your age has better things to do with his time. You have been at pains to divest yourself of the stresses and strains of detective work. Why, then, be willing to take them on again, and with such avidity? Apprehending a jewel thief or a baby-snatcher is one thing. Those are relatively trivial exercises for someone of your powers. One could pass that off as merely keeping your hand in. But a mysterious death? That is altogether more serious and potentially more taxing.”

/>   “I am like the heavyweight prizefighter who reckons he has one more good bout in him,” said Holmes. “He craves the challenge, so he re-enters the ring.”

  “To prove what? That he can be some young up-and-comer’s punching-bag?”

  “To prove to himself that he still has what it takes.”

  “But what if there is no case here? Or at any rate, nothing that warrants your involvement, nothing that the likes of Inspector Tasker can’t handle.”

  “Then I will have roused myself from my state of torpor for no good reason. Should that happen, so be it. Sometimes the prospect of the hunt is as good as the hunt itself.”

  We had settled down in the sitting room at Holmes’s cottage to digest our meal, and I was just closing my eyes for a well-earned and much-desired forty winks, when there came a loud rapping at the front door. Holmes was on his feet in a flash, and shortly was escorting in two visitors and inviting them to take a seat.

  “Watson, vacate that chair, would you? There’s a good chap.”

  I blearily and, I will admit, somewhat grumpily gave up my comfortable berth. Holmes found me a wooden dining chair to perch on, which did little to assuage the sourness of my mood. Aged bones like mine needed the consolation of upholstery.

  I was none too cheered, either, by the fact that one of the two guests was Inspector Tasker, and that it was he who took occupancy of the very armchair I had been occupying. His demeanour was somewhat less officious than before, however. He was exhibiting more a kind of petulance now than anything, his air that of a schoolboy who has been dragooned into some errand by his headmaster on pain of a flogging.

  The “headmaster” in this instance was a man far and away Tasker’s social superior, a well-built, patrician individual wearing a box-pleated tweed Norfolk jacket with matching breeches and knee-length woollen stockings, the very picture of a prosperous country landowner. He had a fine head of raven-black hair, tufts of which also garnished the backs of his stubby fingers. His shoes were brown Oxford wingtip brogues of the latest fashion.