Sherlock Holmes - The Stuff of Nightmares (21 page)

“Or else,” said Grimsdyke, “she did not personally plant that bomb; one of her associates did. Terrorists work in gangs, after all, never solo. She is part of the conspiracy, of that there can be no question.”

“I think there can be question,” said Holmes. He turned to Aurélie, who throughout the foregoing exchange had sat placid and unperturbed, her gaze fixed on the wall opposite her. It was as though she were still alone in the cell, we three a quartet of silent, invisible phantoms, not registering at all with her senses.

“Aurélie.” Holmes squatted before her so that he and she were eye-level with each other. “Do you remember me? Dr Watson and I visited your master’s home a few days ago. I fought your master in the back garden, perhaps you recall that. Fought him and won.”

The girl’s unnaturally blank face showed not a flicker of recognition. I recalled de Villegrand likening her to an automaton. She certainly seemed that way now. Without instruction, without someone to guide her actions, she was all but lifeless.

Holmes tried again, saying much the same thing as before, only this time in French. The sound of her native tongue stirred something in Aurélie. Briefly her expressionless features turned curious, as though she was hearing a strain of a song she knew well from long ago. But that was all.

Holmes continued in the same vein for several minutes, trying to coax a firmer response from her, using all the French at his command. Eventually he gave it up. He might as well have been addressing a shop-window mannequin.

Outside the cell, we conferred with Lestrade. Beetle-browed Grimsdyke looked on.

“The girl is, for want of a better word, feeble-minded,” Holmes said. “It is not imposture or pretence. She is capable of simple menial duties, but no more than that. I find it hard to believe she could be involved in a sophisticated terrorist plot at any level.”

“On the contrary,” said Lestrade. “She sounds just the sort to be easily duped into carrying out the terrorists’ bidding. She is compliant and suggestible. Simpletons often make the best foot soldiers. Tell them to do something, and they’ll do it, unthinkingly, unquestioningly.”

“I’ll bow to your superior expertise on that front.”

Lestrade preened, unaware that he had just been subtly slandered.

“Yet,” Holmes continued, “with someone of Aurélie’s low mental capacity, there is every chance she might misconstrue her instructions or perform them incorrectly, rendering her useless as a reliable puppet. Watson can back me up on this.”

“She spilled sherry in my lap,” I said. “A small accident, but it flustered her completely.”

“She would only be reliable if something forced her to concentrate, if some incentive was given which allowed her no alternative but to rally her inner resources and comply. In short, if someone twisted her arm hard enough.”

“She’s not Irish, though,” Grimsdyke said. “That didn’t sound like Gaelic you were speaking to her.”

“French,” said Holmes.

“Which begs the question,” said Lestrade, “how
did
you two meet her? Who’s this ‘master’ of hers you referred to? What don’t I know?”

Holmes would tell me afterwards that he was tempted to answer, “A lot.” In the event, what he said was: “You noticed, of course, the dried blood encrusted beneath her fingernails.”

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

“But you said she has been quiet all this time. ‘Docile’ is, I believe, the word you used.”

“She didn’t resist arrest, I’m told. Came as meek as a lamb.”

“So whence the blood? Has she scratched anyone in the interim?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“There’s no indication that she has scratched herself either. Which leaves no other logical conclusion than that she came by the blood prior to her abortive bombing attempt. Violent coercion has been used, not against Aurélie directly but against someone she cares for, to get her to attempt an act which her conscience rebels against. I would like to go back in and speak to her one more time.”

Inside the cell, Holmes knelt before Aurélie again. He took her hands gently in his.

“Aurélie,” he said.
“Regardez. Ce sang, auquel appartient-il? Est cela peut-être votre frère?”

Slowly, almost with the leisureliness of a lizard, Aurélie blinked.

“Benoît?” she said faintly. It was scarcely even a whisper.

“Yes, Benoît,” said Holmes.

All at once, Aurélie’s face contorted and she let out a shrill, piercing scream. She clutched her cheeks, half covering her eyes. She was seeing something, some horror undetectable to the rest of us.

“Benoît!” she cried.
“Mon pauvre frère! Aidez-le, quelqu’un! S’il-vous-plaît, aidez-le!”

Her screams turned to uncontrollable, inconsolable sobs. Her whole body was wracked in a paroxysm of anguish. Nothing would calm her or snap her out of this tormented state, not soft words from Holmes, not an artfully dispensed slap from me. The racket she was making disturbed the inmates of the other cells.

They started clamouring and howling in sympathy.

“Lestrade,” I said, “is there another doctor in the building?”

“No.”

“And I don’t have my medical bag with me. Do you have a first aid kit of any kind? The woman is hysterical. She could cause herself harm. I must administer a sedative.”

Lestrade sent Grimsdyke off in search of what medicinal supplies he could find. He returned shortly with a bottle of laudanum.

“One of the lads in my squad has a taste for the tincture,” the Special Branch officer said. “Keeps it in his desk drawer. Stresses of the job and all that.”

While Holmes did his best to restrain Aurélie, I tipped the laudanum down her throat. She spat out some of the concoction, but ingested enough of it that soon its soothing effect began to take hold. Her sobs subsided, her spasms eased, and she lapsed back onto the bunk, drugged into a daze.

Outside the cell again, Lestrade was not looking best pleased.

“Well, this is a fine to-do, isn’t it?” he snapped. “You’ve only gone and upset our prize suspect, Mr Holmes, and now she’s off away with the fairies for the next few hours and there’s even less chance of getting anything useful out of her than before. Melville’s not going to be happy when he hears about this.”

“No, he is not,” said Grimsdyke. “His nibs isn’t a man to take bad tidings well. Trust me, I know.”

“Well,” said Holmes, “the two of you will just have to come up with a way of breaking the news gently, won’t you?”

“Why not do it yourself, Mr Holmes?” said Lestrade. “Seems only fair. You’re the one who set her off on her fit of the screaming abdabs, so you should be the one to carry the can for it. Some of us have our careers to consider. Melville can’t sack or demote you the way he can me or Grimsdyke, you not being a copper.”

“I’d be only too glad to help you out, Inspector. However, Watson and I are required elsewhere, and we need to be there in a hurry. This building has a back entrance, am I correct?”

“Up the stairs, bear left, second right,” said Lestrade. “It’s how we sneak in some of our arrestees, like we did with Sleeping Beauty there. But you’re not getting off that easily. Melville first, then you can leave.”

“Really, Lestrade, no time!” Holmes was already moving down the corridor, dragging me with him. “Apologise to Melville on my behalf. Say it’s all my fault. I’m already low enough in his estimation that I doubt it will make much difference.”

“Mr Holmes! Mr Holmes, come back here. That’s an order.”

“Sorry, Inspector. ‘Not a copper’, remember? You can’t order me to do anything.”

“I can jolly well arrest you, if I have to.”

“Then do,” said Holmes, breaking into a run. “But another time.”

“Where are you off to anyway? Who is that girl? Who’s this Benoît? You’ve still got questions to answer.”

“Want me to go after them?” I heard Grimsdyke ask Lestrade, just as Holmes and I were almost out of earshot. “I can bring ’em back, no problem. Give ’em a bit of a sorting out while I’m about it.”

Lestrade seemed tempted, but sighed, “No. Let them go. Sherlock Holmes may be a liability sometimes, and he never shares information if he can possibly avoid it, but damn him, when it matters he gets results.”

A hansom ferried us north. Our destination: Hampstead.

De Villegrand’s enviable, pristine villa sat silent in the morning sun. Holmes rapped on the front door several times, without answer. It seemed that no one was home.

“We’ll try round the back, Watson. It should be easier to effect an entry, should we have to, via the conservatory.”

“What did Aurélie mean about her brother – ‘someone help him, please’?” I said as we stealthily circumvented the house.

“I don’t know for sure. But I fear very much for Benoît’s safety.”

“Holmes, there’s a lot you’re not telling me.”

“I am only just beginning to thread together the elements of this case into a coherent narrative, my friend. I feel I am grasping the outline of a monstrous scheme, something so enormous and potentially devastating that it could change our nation forever.”

“The bombings...”

“...are only the start. The
hors d’oeuvres,
one might say. The
entrée
threatens to be even more ruinous. Wait!”

We had reached the far corner of the villa, the large, wrought-iron conservatory at the rear just coming into view. Holmes shoved me back. I fell into a crouch, and he did likewise. He peeked carefully out.

“Who did you see?” I hissed. “Is it de Villegrand?”

Holmes crept round the corner on all fours, beckoning me to follow. Arriving at the conservatory, he raised his face just high enough to peer through the glass. I did so too, and saw someone inside seated on a mahogany fiddleback chair. The person’s head was bent forwards. Fast asleep? Or...?

Then I realised who it was, and perceived at the same time that he was fastened to the chair.

“Benoît,” I said.

“Quick,” said Holmes. “We must break in.”

He snatched up a stone, part of the border of a flowerbed, and used it to smash out a pane in the conservatory door. He snaked an arm through the empty frame and turned the latch. We rushed inside.

I went straight to examine Benoît. The young manservant was bound to the chair by his wrists and ankles using window-sash cord, and had been most cruelly and sadistically beaten. His face was a pulpy mess of contusions and blood. More blood soaked his shirtfront and spattered the chessboard-pattern floor tiles around him. I felt for a pulse, not expecting to find one. Benoît was so motionless, he must surely be dead.

At my touch, his head snapped up. He drew in a raspy, lurching breath. I shouldn’t have been startled, but I was, so much so that I nearly fell backwards.

“Aurélie!” he yelled.

“Benoît,
soyez calme,”
said Holmes. “You are safe. Aurélie is also safe.”

Holmes bent to the task of undoing the knots that secured Benoît to the chair. Together we bore the Frenchman across to a wicker settee which sat adjacent to the rear wall of the house. I made him as comfortable as possible and checked him over thoroughly.

I gave Holmes my prognosis in the form of a single, sombre look. Benoît was in a very bad way. His injuries were such that he had, I estimated, a few minutes left to live, if that. Nothing I or any other doctor could do would help him.

“Benoît,” said Holmes. “Please, if you can, tell me all you know. What happened to you? Who did this?”

Benoît moaned, semi-delirious. The stuffed wolf and boar, de Villegrand’s trophies, looked on with their dead glass eyes, pitiless. They had seen everything but could reveal nothing.

“Listen to me, Benoît. It is vital that you give me all the information you can. To judge by the fact that it is only the left-hand side of your face that has been hit, whoever hurt you favours his right hand when punching. Could it be that he had no left arm at all? Was it Abednego Torrance?”

“Torrance...” Benoît murmured. It sounded like confirmation.

“Torrance is an associate of your master, yes? He works for
le vicomte?”

“
Oui
.” The word was barely more than an expelled breath. “Works for...
le maître.
He is... wicked man.
Méchant
.”

“He is,” said Holmes.
“Très méchant
. He and de Villegrand forced Aurélie into taking a bomb to Buckingham Palace, didn’t they? They made her carry it there and told her to throw it over the wall.”

“Did... Did she...?”

“No, Benoît. Aurélie is a good girl. When it came to the crunch, she couldn’t bring herself to go through with it.”

“Dieu de remerciement
,” said Benoît. “I knew... hoped... she would not. They made her watch.
Le maître
, he held her while Torrance, he...”

“He beat you, yes.”

“Aurélie, she screamed. Begged them to stop. Said she would do as they ask. Without me she has nothing, so she would do anything to keep me safe. But Torrance, he only pretended to stop. After
le vicomte
let her embrace me then took her away, Torrance started again. He laughed. He enjoyed.”

My fists clenched. I could well imagine the vicious Torrance deriving pleasure from pummelling a helpless captive.

“He said to me it was ‘tying up loose ends’. He was killing me.” Benoît coughed and choked. Blood frothed from his mouth, oozing down his chin and neck in a gory slick. “I think maybe he has succeeded.”

“You’ll be fine, Benoît,” I lied.

“Benoît,” said Holmes, “where are de Villegrand and Torrance now?”

“I do not know. I do not know. Gone. I think they will not be coming back.”

“This isn’t de Villegrand’s own house, is it?”

“No. He... lends it?”

“Rents it?”

“Yes, rents. To look good. Look like true
vicomte,
with wealth.”

“But you and Aurélie are genuinely his servants?”

“We are. We are all that is left of his father’s household. His father – not a wise or prudent man. Cruel to his wife.
Le vicomte
is also cruel to women. I have seen... As a boy... There was a young woman, and her lover, and
le vicomte
, he destroyed them. Used them and destroyed them both. For his own amusement. That is how he is. Yet Aurélie and I, we must still be loyal to him. We owe him our service. But always I must watch out for Aurélie, take care of her, because he is dangerous. She is innocent and sweet and he is a, how you say,
prédateur?”