Sherlock Holmes - The Stuff of Nightmares Read online

  The message was clear. The vicomte wanted us to know that he was a hunter, unafraid of danger, not squeamish about bloodshed.

  And both wolf and boar were intimidating, I cannot lie. The taxidermist had done a skilful job with them. Fangs and tusks bared, haunches hunched, they looked as though they were ready to charge at us at any moment and tear us to pieces.

  Holmes must have spied the apprehension on my face, for he leaned close and said, “Fear not, Watson. If they magically come to life, I’ll protect you.”

  “It’s not the stuffed creatures I’m worried about. It’s what they represent.”

  “I see. It is a good thing, then, that le vicomte is not carrying a gun. And,” he added, “that I am not a dumb animal.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SAVATE VERSUS BARITSU

  We stood on the patch of lawn that was shortly to become a gladiatorial arena. De Villegrand set to limbering up, working out his shoulders and performing little jumps on the spot. Holmes doffed his jacket and gave it to me to hold. Then, as the vicomte had done, he unbuttoned his shirtsleeves and rolled them up.

  “Holmes,” I whispered, in a final attempt to talk him out of it, “this is not necessary. What’s to be gained? Apologise to de Villegrand. Call the fight off. Sparring with him is hardly the way to establish his guilt or innocence.”

  “No,” said my companion, “but it is a reliable yardstick by which to take the measure of the man.”

  “Someone who is so swift to challenge another to combat would not do so if he were not confident of his abilities in that field.”

  “I am no slouch myself when it comes to the use of the fists, Watson. I boxed at university, remember, and have picked up various associated skills since. Our bout promises to be interesting as well as instructive.”

  “Ifyou say so,” I sighed, accepting that he would not be dissuaded.

  I stepped to one side, leaving Holmes and de Villegrand to square off against each other. I noticed a couple of faces peering out through a downstairs window of the villa. It was Benoît and Aurélie. Something told me that this was not the first time they had watched their employer enter into a physical altercation with another man. Benoît looked on quite avidly, his hangdog features for once animated.

  “I should have you know, Monsieur Holmes,” said de Villegrand, “I am an exponent of the martial art known as savate. You have heard of it?”

  Holmes nodded. “La boxe française is not unfamiliar to me.”

  De Villegrand unleashed a couple of ferocious kicks in Holmes’s direction. They were showpieces, for display purposes only. Holmes, I am pleased to say, did not flinch, for all that de Villegrand’s shoe soles came within an inch of his nose.

  “Savate uses the feet primarily,” the vicomte said. “It was developed on the streets of Marseille, by sailors.”

  “A somewhat lowly origin. I’m surprised a man like yourself would care to be associated with anything quite so déclassé.”

  “Ah, but that is the precise reason why I have studied it. No one in the circles in which I move would expect it of me. They prefer the more refined pugilistic sciences. That gives me the advantage.”

  Two further kicks came Holmes’s way, not feints this time but the real thing. The first swung at his head, de Villegrand spinning full circle as he delivered it. Holmes ducked sideways out of its path. The second followed swiftly, the vicomte crouching low and sweeping at Holmes’s ankle with his instep. This one Holmes barely managed to anticipate and avoid.

  “You’re fast,” Holmes said.

  “As are you, monsieur. But I will land a blow on you soon enough.”

  There ensued a flurry of attacks from de Villegrand. He was like some whirling dervish, his legs flying in all directions, his body twisting and revolving. Holmes, for his part, met the assault with a series of blocking moves, deflecting the vicomte’s feet with a forearm or a shin. It was all I could do simply to follow the action with my eyes. The two of them had become intertwined blurs of motion.

  Then, perhaps inevitably, de Villegrand made good on his threat. He got past Holmes’s guard and planted a firm, solid heel in my friend’s midriff. Holmes staggered backwards, the wind driven out of him. A subsequent kick caught him on the jaw and, to my horror, he fell.

  He was on his feet again in a trice, but I could tell that he had been stunned and was groggy. He shook his head in order to clear it and wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.

  De Villegrand, after so impressive a display of sustained athleticism, was not even out of breath.

  “I am loath,” he said, “to inflict further harm on you, monsieur, lest I damage that amazing brain of yours. Shall we call it quits and say that honour has been served?”

  Mentally I urged Holmes to acquiesce to this suggestion.

  “Why, my lord?” said Holmes. “We’re only just getting started.”

  De Villegrand grinned savagely. “Then en garde again. Prepare yourself.”

  Up came Holmes’s fists, as de Villegrand embarked on another dynamic volley of kicks. His legs lashed out at every level – aiming at the head, the abdomen, the thigh, the ankle – and sometimes they shot forwards like pistons and sometimes they hooked round from the side in an effort to knock my companion off his feet.

  Holmes darted nimbly this way and that, staving off the attacks. He was defending himself more than adequately, but I found it puzzling, not to mention frustrating, that he would not actively retaliate. De Villegrand was making all the running, and Holmes seemed content to let him. I could not fathom why Holmes wasn’t trying to turn the tables and become the aggressor.

  Once more de Villegrand managed to make contact with one of those spinning kicks of his, and Holmes was toppled. He hit the ground hard, narrowly missing the trunk of an acer which was then in its autumnal finery of crimson and gold.

  De Villegrand paused, at last needing to catch his breath. Holmes, meanwhile, lay prostrate, and I was convinced I heard him emit a groan.

  “Really!” I exclaimed. “Enough is enough. You’ve proved your point, de Villegrand. I am throwing in the towel on Holmes’s behalf.”

  “You will do no such thing, Watson,” said my friend hoarsely, pushing himself onto his side. “The vicomte has been lucky, that’s all. A few of his blows have got through. It’s nothing.”

  “Lucky?” growled de Villegrand. “You’re the one who is lucky, Monsieur Holmes. Lucky I haven’t knocked your block off, as you English say.”

  He lunged at Holmes, making as if to stamp on him where he lay, but Holmes was quick, quicker than either I or de Villegrand might have expected. He sprang aside, panther-like, and the vicomte, in his blind rage, charged headlong into the acer. As the Frenchman recovered from his collision with the tree, Holmes was upon him, punching him several times about the torso. With a roar, de Villegrand launched a backward kick which my friend was forced to leap away from.

  Holmes looked almost as fresh now as when the fight had started, and I perceived that his moments spent in distress on the grass had in fact been a sham, a pretence designed to make de Villegrand overconfident and entice him into precipitate action. This, then, was a fight as much on the mental plane as the physical, a battle of wits as well as fists.

  Holmes circled his opponent. His hands were raised, half-cupped, and describing small serpentine arcs in the air.

  “I, too, am a student of a martial art,” he said. “It is called baritsu, and it is little known outside Japan. It synthesises numerous different fighting styles, from wrestling to ju-jitsu. I would be very surprised if you were at all cognisant of it.”

  I feel entitled to insert a digression here on the subject of baritsu. No one can censure me for halting the narrative briefly, since no one but me is ever likely to read it.

  Four years on from the events I am relating, Holmes would call upon all his skills as a practitioner of the art of baritsu during his grim, life-or-death struggle with Professor Moriarty atop the Reichenbach Fa
lls. However, several of my readers have felt moved to point out that baritsu itself only became popular in England at the turn of the century, too late for Holmes to have mastered it for his confrontation with Moriarty, let alone for this tussle with de Villegrand.

  In this instance, though, as in so many others, Holmes was ahead of his time. He adopted baritsu long before any of his contemporaries, simply so that he could have an edge over his foes. He was forever enriching his arsenal of knowledge with new and advanced techniques, the better to fulfil his vocation.

  My readers’ confusion may arise because a variant form of baritsu, known as bartitsu, enjoyed a brief vogue at the tail end of the nineteenth century. It was devised by a certain Edward William Barton-Wright, who learned baritsu while working as an engineer in the Far East in the mid-1890s and then brought it over to England, where he opened a club dedicated to its promotion and promulgation and even staged a few exhibition matches. He added the extra “t” to the name in order to make it chime with his surname and thus put his personal stamp on it. Bartitsu was an impure version of baritsu, according to Holmes, who was deeply scathing of it, calling it “a clumsy reproduction of an Old Master, worthy only to hang in a boudoir, not a gallery”.

  De Villegrand, certainly, was unaware of the existence of baritsu, and scoffed loudly at its mention.

  “You are bluffing, monsieur,” he said to Holmes. “You hope to intimidate me with some absurd made-up martial art, to bamboozle me. But I am not so easily misled.”

  “It’s no bluff, your lordship,” Holmes responded. “Baritsu even includes elements of savate. Allow me to demonstrate.”

  All at once, Holmes was executing a range of kicks similar to those de Villegrand had deployed. His lacked the blunt force of the Frenchman’s but more than compensated for that with their pinpoint accuracy and their almost balletic grace. De Villegrand protected himself with reciprocal kicks and some open-handed slaps, but he was undeniably rattled by the turn of events. He understood that, until now, Holmes had been merely toying with him, lulling him into a false sense of security. It was a blow to his considerable pride.

  Holmes manoeuvred himself in close, at which point he switched to a different fighting style, one more akin to judo. He grasped de Villegrand’s clothing and flipped him neatly onto his back. As de Villegrand attempted to rise, Holmes grabbed him, lofted him up, doubled him over his thigh, and downed him again. Savate afforded the vicomte little in the way of riposte to this kind of manhandling. His kicks were rendered almost ineffectual when delivered from a prone or supine position. Repeatedly he was dumped onto the lawn by Holmes. Repeatedly he strove to regain his balance or the initiative, and failed.

  At last Holmes let go of him and stepped back. De Villegrand was on all fours, panting stertorously, looking both disgruntled and nonplussed.

  “I could continue to humiliate you,” Holmes said, “but I do not believe in labouring the point. You acquitted yourself admirably, my lord. I shall trouble you no further today. Vive l’Entente Cordiale indeed.”

  With that parting shot, Holmes beckoned me to return him his jacket, and we both made our way back towards the conservatory. Behind us de Villegrand growled something deeply uncomplimentary in his native tongue, which I shall not reproduce here. He did not, however, pursue us. He remained where he was, a sorry sight, the picture of arrogance brought low.

  As we passed indoors, I glanced at the window where the two servants were standing, spectators to the contest. Aurélie’s expression was more or less unreadable. On her brother’s face, however, I caught a distinct look of triumph, as though he were rejoicing at his employer’s humbling. The look vanished as he caught my gaze, his erstwhile blank lugubriousness reasserting itself, but I had seen it plainly, and resolved to remark upon it to Holmes.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  BRAWL ON PRIMROSE HILL

  Holmes eschewed catching a cab to Baker Street, declaring a wish to travel on foot instead, so that he might cogitate.

  He seemed in no mood to talk, so I left him to his thoughts and instead imbibed impressions of the city around us. London remained in a febrile mood. I discerned on the faces of shopkeepers and passers-by clear signs of worry and strain. Some masked it better than others. Only children remained oblivious, gaily playing on doorsteps with their dolls and tin soldiers, for all the world without a care – which is how it should be.

  The headlines that the newspaper sellers yelled from their pitches were all about the bombings. “Scotland Yard Stumped!” “Still No Arrests Yet!” “Where Will Terrorists Strike Next?” They were doing a roaring trade. I had heard tell that some of the broadsheets had more than doubled their circulation. At least someone was profiting from the general misery.

  On Primrose Hill we happened upon one of those protests that Inspector Lestrade had talked about. An angry multitude marched, brandishing placards and decrying the authorities’ apparent inaction. As we watched, members of the constabulary arrived in order to waylay the protestors and make them disperse, as they were holding up the traffic and preventing other citizens from going about their business peacefully.

  The confrontation rapidly degenerated into a slanging match. Someone threw a punch – it might have been protestor, it might have been policeman – and a brawl broke out. The police resorted to their truncheons, while the protestors used the wooden stakes of their placards for the same purpose. It was all highly reprehensible and regrettable, and left several on each side with bloody noses and aching crowns but, thank heaven, nothing worse than that.

  Holmes and I skirted the mêlée and carried on along side streets. I noticed that my friend was walking somewhat stiffly, favouring his left flank. De Villegrand had hurt him worse than he had let on at the villa.

  “Holmes,” I said, “you must allow me to take a look at you when we get home.”

  “Kind of you, Watson, but I beg you not to worry. It’s nothing. A few mild contusions. Nothing a bath of Epsom salts and bed rest won’t cure.”

  “That de Villegrand. He’s the very Devil. I can only hope that, having been comprehensively trounced by you, he will think twice before throwing down the gauntlet again with anyone else.”

  “He doesn’t strike me as a man who learns his lessons,” said Holmes. “But at least he now knows there is someone who isn’t cowed by him, who will stand up to his bullying ways. Who knows? Perhaps as a result of the chastening he has received, he will be inclined to curb his depraved appetites, at least for a time. We can but hope.”

  “Is he Baron Cauchemar, do you think?”

  Holmes barked a laugh. “What makes you say that?”

  “I thought... Well, dash it all, you mentioned sewers while you were talking to him. I assumed...”

  “You assumed de Villegrand is the one who puts on an extraordinary suit of armour of an evening and goes out foiling crime in the East End.”

  “Yes,” I said. “And uses the sewers to move about undetected.” And, I nearly added, has struck a deal with Beelzebub to grant him abilities beyond those of a mere mortal.

  “Oh, Watson,” said my friend pityingly. “You and your assumptions. How long have we known each other? Nigh on a decade. In all that time, have you not divined that logic lies at the heart of my methods? Logic and logic alone. If facts cannot be made to fit a theory, one must not bend the theory to fit the facts; one must reassess the theory itself. Assumptions! Let us look at this case so far and review what we know. We know that someone adopting the sobriquet Baron Cauchemar has taken it upon himself to roam the East End, attacking felons. We know that he has some sort of mechanised carapace which he wears to protect himself and, also, to hide his identity. We know that he has offensive weapons which stun and temporarily disable but do not kill. Now tell me, honestly, do any of those seem like something the Vicomte de Villegrand might do?”

  “He is an aggressive man.”

  “That he is, and all too easy to rouse to anger. But the Bloody Black Baron, disconcerting appearance not
withstanding, acts from motives of altruism. He is an opponent of sin, while the vicomte is an exponent of sin. Cauchemar is a force for good, while beneath de Villegrand’s polished, genial exterior there lies, I believe, a cruel and ruthless soul.”

  “Could it be a front?” I offered. “A ruse, to put people off the scent? No one would suspect him of being Cauchemar if he feigns a touchpaper temper and the habits of a libertine.”

  “A very perspicacious remark, my good fellow. And it is precisely that that I wished to put to the test by fighting him. As soon as I saw his duelling scar I realised that de Villegrand was not the sort to take insults lying down. However true what I said to him was, his instinct would be to automatically deny it, and with vehemence. I judged that he was a martial artist from the way he held himself, even in repose. There is a certain poise, an inner stillness, which is the unmistakable mark of a trained combatant. All in all, it seemed to me that I could stir him into a fit of high dudgeon with just a few judiciously chosen words and, through violence, get him to reveal his true character. In that I succeeded. There are no liars ‘in the ring’. What you are, who you are, comes across loud and clear with every punch and kick.”

  “His house was grand, though,” I said. “Must have cost a pretty penny, even in an unfashionable area like Hampstead. And yet he told us he is penniless.”

  “That is an anomaly, I grant you. Even on an attaché’s salary, I doubt he could afford such a residence, unless the French embassy is liable for his overheads.”

  “Possibly his father did leave him some portion of inheritance after all, just not the full amount he was hoping for. Often when the rich say they have no money, what they mean is they have little by their own standards, whereas by the standards of most of us they have a great deal.”

  Holmes acknowledged my point with a bow.