Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly (38 page)

“Mr Jenks refuses to say anything about them until he has spoken to you in confidence, sir. Perhaps you can advise him of his own best interests, Mr Holmes. I believe we shall soon have finished our investigations here. Then he must come with us—or show us why he need not.”

“I presume you have not found any replies from Sir Caradoc addressed to Mr Jenks?”

“No, sir.”

“Where is my client at the moment?”

“In the sitting-room of the Dome. He is accompanied by two of my uniformed men, Sergeant Witlow and Constable Royston. He maintains his innocence but refuses to discuss any further questions. He says he will swear to his innocence upon Holy Writ—but he will not deal with me. You must make what you can of that, sir. I assume you wish to see him before we take him elsewhere?”

“Presently, Mr Bradstreet. Seeing him at once would complicate my own investigation. First, I should like to examine certain evidence for myself.”

“And so you shall, sir. Would you like to begin with the stage? That seems to be where the root of this mystery lies.”

Holmes's mouth tightened with impatience.

“I think not. I have seen quite enough of the stage.”

I was surprised by this. So far as I could see, we had hardly been near it.

Holmes was saying, “I have no doubt that your police surgeon's analysis of the contents of the goblet will confirm his suspicions. A fatal dose of prussic acid is the least that we can expect. However, I would appreciate a few minutes to survey this dressing-room.”

“There is a plain mortuary van outside, sir,” said Hopkins quietly. “It was waiting only for Mr Holmes to see the body. Sir Caradoc could be moved now.”

“Thank you,” said Holmes courteously. “Sir Caradoc will not inconvenience us. Let him remain, if you please.”

Bradstreet was visibly concerned that my friend's requests should be so modest and apparently irrelevant.

“There really is not much in here, Mr Holmes. His key to the door was lying on the carpet, close to the tasselled cord of the dressing-gown. The evening paper is on the desk. It seems that he usually read it after the performance, while he smoked his cigar. I believe he liked to do the puzzles which they print at the back. It relaxed him.”

Holmes brightened up at this. Bradstreet continued.

“We have not touched nor moved the ash-tray, nor the half-smoked cigar lying in it. Still, it may save you time if I tell you that there is no trace of poison that Dr Worplesdon or Dr Hammond from Scotland Yard could detect in the cigar or its ash.”

“Nor I,” said Stanley Hopkins apologetically.

“Capital!” said Holmes enthusiastically, “I wonder if these two medical gentlemen have chanced to read a slight monograph of mine, printed in 1879, ‘Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos.' It would be of the greatest assistance to them. Unfortunately, at the time, I was insistent that it must be illustrated with colour plates. I was therefore obliged to defray the cost of having it privately printed. In consequence it now changes hands at a premium and has become something of a rarity.”

The two policemen shook their heads sympathetically.

“No matter,” said Holmes amiably. “If you would be so good as to leave us, we shall not keep you very long.”

Bradstreet hesitated, but Hopkins forced the issue by walking into the passage at once. The superintendent followed reluctantly and Holmes closed the door behind them.

4

“B
radstreet is the giddy limit, Watson! He may only be a uniformed man but that does not preclude the exercise of a little common sense or logic. Hopkins, however, may go far.”

Sherlock Holmes stood over the desk. A gold-inlaid green leather blotter was filled with pink paper that showed not a mark. Roughly folded across it lay that evening's
Globe
newspaper. A silver cigar-cutter had evidently been used and then put to one side. The white china bowl of the ash-tray was about half full of grey dust. A quarter or so of a partly-smoked cigar lay balanced upon its rim. A box of yellow Vesta matches was beside it, one of them used and discarded with the ash. The paper band of the cigar lay among the dust. This ash-tray itself was a distinctive but not uncommon souvenir, embossed with “Royal Herculaneum Theatre” in crimson round its edge, and with a gold Prince of Wales crown where the two ends of the legend met.

Holmes picked up the
Globe
and turned its pages. Nothing took his fancy until he reached the end. A blank strip had been torn from the margin of the final page. There was no indication of its use. He looked about him, scrutinised the top of the desk and then turned to me.

“Be good enough to see what you can find in his dressing-gown pockets.”

“His pockets?”

“Certainly. In his predicament, assuming he tore it off, that is where I should put a slip of paper. It is missing and it is not on the desk or on the floor. His pockets are the only other place that would probably have been within reach during his last moments. We are meant to believe that he had already staggered towards the door to open it and found he could not do so. He lost the cord of his dressing-gown and dropped the key as he struggled back to the chair. He was not a fool. He knew he was in mortal torment. It seems he tore a strip from the back page of the paper. Why? Surely to write a message. He would not spend the last seconds of his life playing newspaper games.”

“To leave his last testament?”

“Look in those pockets. The right-hand one. I do not recall he was left-handed.”

Averting my eyes from the dead man's contorted features and crimson-blotched cheeks, I slid my hand into the right pocket. Holmes was correct, of course. There was the stub of a pencil and a crumpled scrap of paper that anyone else might have thrown away. Why was it not on the desk? I handed it to my companion. The writing of the dying man spidered into illegibility but Holmes seemed to make sense of it easily enough. He had recognised that the subject was a nonsense poem of a kind well-suited to newspaper competitions. When we first met I had noted that his knowledge of literature was esoteric but extensive.

“Holmes! What the devil is this trumpery?”

“A riddle well enough known to those like Caradoc who particularly enjoy such mysteries. It dates, I believe, from the reign of Queen Anne. I imagine that the
Globe
newspaper has made use of it in the recent past on its puzzle page.”

“But what use?”

To three-fourths of a cross.…

Two semi-circles.…

Next add a triangle.…

Then two semi-circles.…

He held it in front of him and completed those lines that I had not been able to decipher. I stared at the finished text.

To three-fourths of a cross add a circle complete;

Two semi-circles a perpendicular meet,

Next add a triangle that stands on two feet,

Then two semi-circles and a circle complete.

He spread it on the desk.

“Very well. Let us see what we have. ‘To three-fourths of a cross add a circle complete.' Now that indicates the letters T and O, does it not? Then we have, ‘Two semi-circles a perpendicular meet.' What can that be but the letter B? There follows an instruction. ‘Next add a triangle that stands on two feet.' What a picturesque description of the letter A! And last of all. ‘Two semi-circles, and a circle complete.' That can only be the letters C plus C plus O. Put it all together and you have TOBACCO.”

“What has tobacco to do with it?”

“What, indeed? And why should he thrust it into his pocket?”

“So that it should not be found,” I said.

“No, Watson. So that it should be found later on, when his pockets were turned out. It must be hidden for the moment. In his last moments, he seems to have guessed that his enemy would return to this room to make certain changes in the evidence. He could not leave his scrap of paper where that man—or woman—would find it. Such a person would be alert for it on the desk or even on the floor. But with only seconds to spare, the killer would not dare to waste time in struggling with the dead weight of a corpse, searching the clothes for something which was probably not there anyway.”

“And yet to search him might make all the difference.”

“Balance that against the difference between slipping out into the passage unseen or walking into the path of a witness. In other words, the murderer's second visit was almost certainly during the curtain calls and speeches when the dressing-room passage was empty and the keeper of the stage-door had his eyes on the little crowd of worshippers who gather there each night for a kind word or an autograph.”

“But neither Worplesdon nor Hammond found any contamination of the cigar.”

“Of course not. That is the whole point.”

He had drawn his folding lens from his watch-pocket. He opened it and sat at the desk, peering through the glass at the remaining length of the cigar and then at the match which had been used to light it. There was also a crumpled paper band which had been stripped from the cigar before lighting it. He gave a quiet sigh of satisfaction, like one whose expectations have been justified. Without another word of explanation, he eased a fresh match from the box and, for what seemed like an age, gently sifted the cold ash.

If there was no poison in the room, I could not see how we should find anything of interest here. The flakes of pale grey ash at the tip of the dead cigar looked a perfect replica of those in the ornamental porcelain bowl. Holmes continued to poke cautiously with the unused match, stirring so lightly that hardly a fragment of ash fell out of place. Presently he uttered another long and relaxed sigh, as if he had been holding his breath in a trance throughout this process.

“As I supposed,” he said to himself.

“Prussic acid?” I asked uncertainly. “Cyanide?”

He looked up at me in despair.

“Of course not, Watson! That is the last thing we shall find here! You underestimate our adversary, whoever he or she may be.”

“Do you mean that Caradoc was not poisoned here?”

“I did not say that.”

“But if there is no cyanide here, how can he have been poisoned by it in this room? The door was locked and he did not go out. And if there was no cyanide in the wine, how was he poisoned at all?”

“I deduce that there was no cyanide in the wine during the final scene of the play,” he said softly, “But there is now. Be patient and watch.”

I looked on but I could not see that he was doing anything other than before. The ash below the surface was not even much different in colour. A little darker, perhaps, but the colour of different burnt leaves from a single cigar will almost always vary a little.

“Look,” he said, easing up a flake of ash which seemed to have a mere thread of spider's web hanging from it.

“What is it?”

“A burnt stalk. This cigar is of premier extraction.” He paused to flatten out the red and gold band. “‘Real Feytoria Reserva,' a Portuguese importer and a Brazilian leaf of the highest quality. Believe me, such a superior weed does not contain the stalk of the tobacco leaf. That is the mark of an inferior brand, what is called in the trade ‘bird's eye.' You will see tiny white flecks here and there. You understand me?”

“The ash in the bowl has come from elsewhere?”

“Much of it has. On its own, that is conclusive of nothing, but it is indicative of a good deal.”

I could not see the logic of this.

“Surely the bird's eye may have been deposited either by Sir Caradoc at some other time or by some other person?”

He folded his glass and slipped it into his watch-pocket again.

“Cranleigh would have left a clean ash-tray. I am sure that Caradoc smoked his usual cigar this evening after settling down in his chair with the newspaper. He came in, changed from his doublet and hose, putting on his green silk dressing-gown. However, I do not think he bothered to lock the door after him. People were not in the habit of disturbing him, and, in any case, he was on his own. As I say, he smoked a cigar. What he did not do was to smoke this cigar.”

I saw at once what was coming but I was not quick enough to say so.

Holmes continued.

“A Real Feytoria is a long and expensive cigar, such as Caradoc affected. It is not a sixpenny, twenty-minute cheroot. He would never touch those. I should not wish to pose as an expert merely because I have written my little treatise upon the subject. However, I may tell you that a Real Feytoria would probably last a smoker for at least fifty minutes or an hour. There is not enough ash in the bowl to account for that. Someone who knows little about the joys of smoking has bulked it out with the ash of bird's eye, but it is still too little.”

Now I took my chance.

“Caradoc probably did not live for anything like thirty or forty minutes after leaving the stage. He was found then but he had not answered any knocks for most of that time. In any case, he could not have smoked so much of the cigar before that.”

“Well done, Watson. As so often, you are there before me. After Caradoc's death, his adversary returned. The contaminated cigar was taken and this remainder was substituted. Someone has cut off a large portion of it and lit what remained. It was left here for us to find.”

I tried to pin down a flaw in this.

“Suppose Caradoc had started his cigar earlier, let it go out and lit it again after he left the stage at the end of the play.”

“It would seem, Watson, that Shakespeare wrote
Hamlet
with the primary purpose of thwarting you as a detective. If you will look at the last hour of the play, there is hardly a point where the King is off-stage for long enough to tempt a sensible man into ruining a good cigar. In any case, why would the dresser Cranleigh bring his master a bowl half filled with the ash of bird's eye? No, my dear chap, let us settle the one remaining point.”