The House Of Silk (25 page)

Satisfied with my work, I finally went to bed and fell into a troubled sleep punctured by images of the girl, Sally, lying in the street with blood all around her, of a length of white ribbon looped around a dead boy’s wrist and of the man with the high-domed forehead, looming at me across the refectory table.

I awoke early the next day and sent a message to Lestrade, urging him once again to help arrange a visit to Holloway, no matter what Inspector Harriman had to say. To my surprise, I received a reply informing me that I could enter the prison at three o’clock that afternoon, that Harriman had concluded his preliminary investigation and that the coronor’s court had indeed been set for Thursday, two days hence. On first reading, this struck me as good news. But then I was struck by a more sinister explanation. If Harriman was part of the conspiracy, as Holmes believed and as everything about his manner and even his appearance suggested, he might well have stood aside for a quite different reason. My host of the night before had insisted that Holmes would never be allowed to stand trial. Suppose the assassins were preparing to strike! Could Harriman know that it was already too late?

I could barely contain myself throughout the morning and left Baker Street well before the appointed hour, arriving at Camden Road before the clocks had struck the half-hour. The coachman left me in front of the outer gate and, despite my protestations, hurried away, leaving me in the cold and misty air. All in all I couldn’t blame him. This wasn’t a place where any Christian soul would have chosen to linger.

The prison was of Gothic design; on first appearance a sprawling, ominous castle, perhaps something out of a fairy story written for a malevolent child. Constructed from Kentish ragstone, it consisted of a series of turrets and chimneys, flagpoles and castellated walls, with a single tower soaring above and seeming almost to disappear into the clouds. A rough, muddy track led to the main entrance, which was purposefully designed to be as unwelcoming as possible, with a massive wooden gate and steel portcullis framed by a few bare and withered trees on either side. A brick wall, at least fifteen feet high, surrounded the entire complex, but above it I could make out one of the wings, with two lines of small, barred windows whose rigid uniformity somehow hinted at the emptiness and misery of life inside. The prison had been built at the foot of a hill and, looking beyond it, it was possible to make out the pleasant pastures and slopes that rose up to Highgate. But that was another world, as if the wrong backdrop had been accidentally lowered onto the stage. Holloway Prison stood on the site of a former cemetery, and the whiff of death and decay still clung to the place, damning those who were inside, warning those without to stay away.

It was as much as I could bear to wait thirty minutes in the dismal light with my breath frosting and the cold spreading upwards through my feet. At last I walked forward, clutching the book with the key concealed in its spine, and as I entered the prison it occurred to me that were I to be discovered, this horrid place could well become my home. I think it is true to say that I broke the law at least three times in the company of Sherlock Holmes, always for the best of reasons, but this was the high point of my criminal career. Strangely, I was not even slightly nervous. It did not occur to me that anything could possibly go wrong. All my thoughts were focused on the plight of my friend.

I knocked on a door which stood inconspicuously beside the outer gate and it was opened almost at once by a surprisingly bluff and even jovial officer, dressed in dark blue tunic and trousers with a bunch of keys hanging from a wide, leather belt. ‘Come in, sir. Come in. It’s more pleasant in than out and there’s not many days you could say
that
with any truth.’ I watched him lock the door behind us, then followed him across a courtyard to a second gate, smaller, but no less secure, than the first. I was already aware of an eerie silence inside the prison. A ragged, black crow perched on the branch of a tree but there was no other sign of life. The light was fading rapidly but as yet no lamps had been lit and I had a sense of shadows within shadows, of a world with almost no colour at all.

We had entered a corridor with an open door to one side, and it was through here that I was taken, into a small room with a desk, two chairs and a single window looking directly on to a brick wall. To one side stood a cabinet with perhaps fifty keys suspended on hooks. A large clock faced me and I noticed the second hand moved ponderously, pausing between each movement, as if to emphasise the slow passage of time for all those who had come this way. A man sat beneath it. He was dressed similarly to the officer who had met me, but his uniform had a few trimmings of gold, on his cap and shoulders, denoting his senior rank. He was elderly, with grey hair cut short and steely eyes. As he saw me, he scrambled to his feet and came round from behind the desk.

‘Dr Watson?’

‘Yes.’

‘My name is Hawkins. I am the chief warder. You have come to see Mr Sherlock Holmes?’

‘Yes.’ I uttered the word with a sudden sense of dread.

‘I am sorry to have to inform you that he was taken ill this morning. I can assure you that we have done everything we can to accommodate him in a manner appropriate to a man of his distinction, despite the very serious crimes of which he is accused. He has been kept away from the other prisoners. I have personally visited him on several occasions and have had the pleasure of conversing with him. His illness came suddenly and he was given treatment at once.’

‘What is wrong with him?’

‘We have no idea. He took his lunch at eleven o’clock and rang the bell for assistance immediately after. My officers found him doubled up on the floor of his cell in evident pain.’

I felt an ice-cold tremor in the very depth of my heart. It was exactly what I had been fearing. ‘Where is he now?’ I asked.

‘He is in the infirmary. Our medical officer, Dr Trevelyan, has a number of private rooms which he reserves for desperate cases. After examining Mr Holmes, he insisted on moving him there.’

‘I must see him at once,’ I said. ‘I am a medical man myself …’

‘Of course, Dr Watson. I have been waiting to take you there now.’

But before we could leave, there was a movement behind us and a man that I knew all too well appeared, blocking our way. If Inspector Harriman had been told the news, he did not look surprised by it. In fact, his attitude was quite languid, leaning against the door frame, with his attention half-fixed on a gold ring on his middle finger. He was dressed in black as always, carrying a black walking stick. ‘So what’s this all about, Hawkins?’ he asked. ‘Sherlock Holmes ill?’

‘Seriously ill,’ Hawkins declared.

‘I am distraught to hear it!’ Harriman straightened up. ‘You’re sure he’s not deceiving you? When I saw him this morning, he was in perfect health.’

‘Both my medical officer and I have examined him and I assure you, sir, that he is gravely stricken. We are just on our way to see him.’

‘Then I will accompany you.’

‘I must protest—’

‘Mr Holmes is my prisoner and the subject of my investigation. You can protest all you like, but I will have my way.’ He smiled malevolently. Hawkins glanced at me and I could see that, decent man though he was, he dared not argue.

The three of us set off through the depths of the prison. Such was my state of mind that I can recall few of the details, although my overall impressions were of heavy flagstones, of gates that creaked and clashed as they were unlocked and locked behind us, of barred windows too small and too high up to provide a view and of doors … so many doors, one after another another, each identical, each sealing up some small facet of human misery. The prison was surprisingly warm and had a strange smell, a mixture of oatmeal, old clothes and soap. We saw a few warders standing guard at various intersections, but no prisoners apart from two very old men struggling past with a basket of laundry. ‘Some are in the exercise yard, some on the treadwheel or in the oakum shed,’ Hawkins replied to a question I had not asked. ‘The day begins early and ends early here.’

‘If Holmes has been poisoned, he must be sent immediately to a hospital,’ I said.

‘Poison?’ Harriman had overheard me. ‘Who said anything about poison?’

‘Dr Trevelyan does indeed suspect severe food poisoning,’ returned Hawkins. ‘But he is a good man. He will have done everything within his power …’

We had reached the end of the central block from which the four main wings stretched out like the blades of a windmill and found ourselves in what must be a recreation area, paved with Yorkshire stone, with a lofty ceiling and a corkscrew metal staircase leading to a gallery that ran the full length of the room above. A net had been stretched across our heads so that nothing could be thrown down. A few men, dressed in grey army cloth, were sorting through a pile of infants’ clothes which were piled up on a table in front of them. ‘For the children of St Emmanuel Hospital,’ Hawkins said. ‘We make them here.’ We passed through an archway and up a matted staircase. By now I had no idea where I was and would never have been able to find my way out again. I thought of the key that I was still carrying, concealed in the book. Even if I had been able to deliver it into Holmes’s hands, what good would it have been? He would have needed a dozen keys and a detailed map to get out of this place.

There was a pair of glass-panelled doors ahead of us. Once again, these had to be unlocked, but then swung open into a very bare, very clean room with no windows but skylights up above and candles already lit on two central tables, for it was almost dark. There were eight beds, facing each other in two rows of four, the coverlets blue and white check, the pillowcases striped calico. The room reminded me at once of my old army hospital where I had often watched men die with the same discipline and lack of complaint that had been expected of them in the field. Only two of the beds were occupied. One contained a shrivelled, bald man whose eyes I could see were already focusing on the next world. A hunched-up shape lay, shivering, in the other. But it was too small to be Holmes.

A man dressed in a patched and worn frock coat rose up from where he had been working and came over to greet us. From the very first I thought I recognised him, just as – it occurred to me now – his name had also been familiar to me. He was pale and emaciated, with sandy whiskers that seemed to be dying on his cheeks and cumbersome spectacles. I would have said he was in his early forties but the experiences of his life wore heavily upon him giving him a pinched, nervous disposition and ageing him. His slender, white hands were folded across his wrists. He had been writing and his pen had leaked. There were blotches of ink on his forefinger and thumb.

‘Mr Hawkins,’ he said, addressing the chief warder. ‘I have nothing further to report to you, sir, except that I fear the worst.’

‘This is Dr John Watson,’ Hawkins said.

‘Dr Trevelyan.’ He shook my hand. ‘It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, although I would have asked for happier circumstances.’

I was certain I knew the man. But from the way he had spoken and the firmness of his handshake, he was making it clear that, even if we were not meeting for the first time, this was the impression he wished to give.

‘Is it food poisoning?’ Harriman demanded. He had not troubled to introduce himself.

‘I am quite positive that poison of one sort or another is responsible,’ Dr Trevelyan replied. ‘As to how it came to be administered, that is not for me to say.’

‘Administered?’

‘All the prisoners in the wing eat the same food. Only he has become ill.’

‘Are you suggesting foul play?’

‘I have said what I have said, sir.’

‘Well, I don’t believe a word of it. I can tell you, doctor, that I was rather expecting something of this sort. Where is Mr Holmes?’

Trevelyan hesitated and the warder stepped forward. ‘This is Inspector Harriman, Dr Trevelyan. He is in charge of your patient.’

‘I am in charge of my patient while he is in my infirmary,’ the doctor retorted. ‘But there is no reason why you should not see him, although I must ask you not to disturb him. I gave him a sedative and he may well be asleep. He is in a side-room. I thought it better that he be kept apart from the other prisoners.’

‘Then let us waste no more time.’

‘Rivers!’ Trevelyan called out to a lanky, round-shouldered fellow who had been almost invisible, sweeping the floor in one corner. He was wearing the uniform of a male nurse rather than that a prisoner. ‘The keys …’

‘Yes, Dr Trevelyan.’ Rivers lumbered over to the desk, took up a key-chain and carried it over to an arched door set on the far side of the room. He appeared to be lame, dragging one leg behind him. He was sullen and rough-looking, with unruly ginger hair spilling down to his shoulders. He stopped in front of the door and, taking his time, fitted a key into the lock.

‘Rivers is my orderly,’ Trevelyan explained in a low voice. ‘He’s a good man, but simple. He takes charge of the infirmary at night.’

‘Has he been in communication with Holmes?’ Harriman asked.

‘Rivers is seldom in communication with anyone, Mr Harriman. Holmes himself has not uttered a word since he was brought here.’

At last Rivers turned the key. I heard the tumblers fall as the lock connected. There were also two bolts on the outside that had to be drawn back before the door could be opened to reveal a small room, almost monastic with plain walls, a square window, a bed and a privy.

The bed was empty.

Harriman plunged inside. He tore off the covers. He knelt down and looked under the bed. There was nowhere to hide. The bars on the window were still in place. ‘Is this some sort of trick?’ he roared. ‘Where is he? What have you done with him?’

I moved forward and looked in. There could be no doubting it. The cell was empty. Sherlock Holmes had disappeared.

Harriman rose to his feet and almost fell upon Dr Trevelyan. For once his carefully cultivated
sang-froid
had deserted him. ‘What game is going on here?’ he cried. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’