The Perils of Sherlock Holmes (11 page)

“A very great pleasure, Monsieur ’Olmes. Your services to my country are known in every corner of the Republic. The circumstances surrounding the rescue of Marechal Henri Bonaparte from monarchists is still the talk of Paris.”

The marquis was a small man as was common to the Gallic race, with a large head adorned by neatly pointed moustaches. A red satin sash described a violent diagonal across his starched shirtfront, with the golden starburst of the
Legion d’Honneur
appended to his right breast. He bowed deeply.

“I hope to do it one more service this night, on behalf of both our homelands, your excellency,” replied Holmes.

He proceeded to tell both duBlac and our host, in the sparest possible terms, the circumstances that had led us to this meeting.

“What rot!” said Sir John, when he’d finished. “You propose to disrupt an important affair of state on the basis of a trinket you received in the post?”

“Disruption is not my intent, and we should all be wise to pay particular attention to trinkets. The fates of kingdoms often turn upon such trifles.”

“I agree with Monsieur ’Olmes,” said the Frenchman. “A necklace led to the fall of the Bastille and the Reign of Terror. What do you propose to do?” he asked Holmes.

“Nothing, your excellency.”

“Nothing?” The honoured guest’s great brow creased.

“Nothing!” Patches of unhealthy colour appeared upon Sir John’s hollow cheeks.

“Holmes!” Even I, who knew never to expect anything but the un-expected where my companion’s methods were concerned, was astounded.

“Then I trust you will have no objection to my sending Gregory out for the police.” Sir John reached for a bell pull beside the desk.

Holmes held up an admonitory hand.

“Forgive me for assuming too much, Sir John. There is no reason to expect a busy M.P. to be familiar with the lyrics to a popular American song. I call your attention to the first stanza.”

Whereupon the greatest detective in England astonished us all further by singing, in a pleasant tenor:

“The message is clear,” he said, abandoning the rest of the composition. “Our assassin will not strike before the end of the evening. If we disrupt the entertainment with an aggressive investigation, we will put him on alert, and merely postpone the inevitable until another time when we are less prepared. Whoever our unknown benefactor is—we shall assume for now he is a traitor in the enemy camp—we must not waste the clue he has sent us by behaving rashly.”

Our reluctant host withdrew his hand from the bell pull. “Do you mean to suggest that we go on with the ball as if we knew nothing?”

“That is the impression we must leave, and it is not far from the truth. In reality, of course, we shall be wary. Is there a location from where Dr. Watson and I can observe the activity in the ballroom without calling attention to ourselves?”

“There is a landing on this floor where you can stand between the staircases and look down. There will likely be other guests there,” added Sir John with a faint hint of apology. The gravity displayed by his illustrious intruder had to some degree eroded his disbelief.

“All the better for us to lose ourselves in the crowd.
Au revoir
, your excellency.” Holmes executed a smart bow in the marquis’ direction. “I pray that you will be able to enjoy your fete without fear for your safety.”

“I do not see how it could be otherwise, with the great Sherlock Holmes as my protector. In any event, once you have faced Prussian cannon, you find that life is”—he hesitated—“
surprix
, what is the English word?”

“Overpriced.
Vous somme un chevalier, excellence.
”

The Frenchman took his leave. Following, Sir John Whitsunday interrupted his own departure to peer down at my friend. “I should warn you that if it turns out my guest’s trust is misplaced, you will have to answer to all of Europe.”

“Thank you. I am not so concerned at that as I am of answering to myself.”

The ballroom had been refurbished in the grand Victorian manner, with a high vaulted ceiling and twin staircases swooping down from a balustrated landing. As we climbed the steps, having left our sticks and outerwear in the study, I said, “Holmes, I’ve known you for twenty years and never heard you speak more than a common phrase in French before tonight.”

“I picked it up during the Bonaparte affair the marquis mentioned—a simple matter, not a worthy subject for your memoirs. Learning required little effort, beyond inserting a string of unnecessary letters into one-syllable words.”

At the top we stood among a group of gentlemen elders who had sought refuge from the energetic activity on the floor to smoke cigars and pontificate upon the situation in Ireland. To one who recalled the bright hues and laughter of happier times, it was somewhat depressing to observe the subdued fashions of the dancers moving decorously to restrained music from an orchestra clad in black from neck to heels. Even the wreaths and coloured glass ornaments that decorated the hall were understated to a funereal degree.

Holmes, I saw, was in no such reverie. In spite of his own assurance that nothing would happen for several hours, his hatchetlike profile and intense gaze as he gripped the marble railing made him resemble a bird of prey. I slid my hand into my coat pocket and found comfort in the cool touch of my old service revolver, veteran of so many adventures.

I directed my attention to the marquis, who stood drinking wine and chatting with the Whitsundays beneath a huge full-length portrait of our late queen, suitably framed in black crepe. When that proved uninvolving, for some time I endeavoured to pick out the villain or villains who had infiltrated the gathering. It seemed that this swarthy fellow standing by the refreshments table fit the bill, but then that nervous dancer drew my suspicions regarding the source of his unease.

Such diversions are contagious; at the end of an hour I had decided that everyone present, with the exceptions of my friend and I, our hosts, and of course the marquis himself, was capable of assassination. Holmes had told me time and time again that I lacked imagination, but at that juncture I decided I had it in surplus.

Then a stout, red-faced guest who shared our landing raised his voice in argument with a companion, loudly excoriating the French government for criticising our stand against the Boers. He could be overheard above the music, and as far as the ballroom floor, where annoyed glances rose his way. The vehemence of his tirade caused me to share my suspicions with Holmes in a hoarse whisper.

“That is Colonel Sutworth,” said he. “He’s been in the House of Commons since Gladstone was a lad. In any case, I have eliminated all the men on this landing, so long as they remain upon it. Their tailoring will not admit the accessory of an air rifle or a crossbow. The range is too great for any accuracy with a revolver.”

“Have you eliminated the women present tonight?”

“Nothing would please me more. Daggers and poison are their weapons of choice, and I do not relish wrestling one to the floor the moment she moves within striking distance of duBlac or his wine.”

“Perhaps we should move closer. ‘After the break of morn’ may be a ruse to divert us from the actual timetable.”

“I considered that, and rejected it immediately. If subterfuge were intended, why alert us at all? In any case, I would postulate a later hour even without the lyric. The floor is too crowded for the killer to make good his escape. He will wait until the guests thin out.”

I resolved thenceforth to withhold my opinions, which were clearly an irritation to my companion.

Sometime later I suppressed a yawn and withdrew my hand from my weapon to reach for my watch. Holmes’s sudden grip upon my arm arrested the movement. Belatedly I became aware of the tune the orchestra was playing:

He cursed beneath his breath. “I’ve been a fool, Watson! The clue was not in the lyrics, but in the song itself. It is a signal for action!”

“But the killer’s escape—”

“No time to explain!”

With that, he was gone from my side, flying down the stairs with his coattails flying.

I sprinted to catch up, drawing my revolver and shouldering aside a number of guests who were climbing the steps to escape the heat and noise of the ballroom. Several well-dressed gentlemen complained of the effrontery in no uncertain terms. A middle-aged woman in black taffeta shrieked when she spied my weapon.

By the time I quit the stairs, Holmes was halfway across the floor, shoving men and women sprawling in his anxiety to reach the guest of honour. I hastened behind, dodging and leaping over the hunched forms of outraged dancers attempting to regain their feet. I overheard a Scotsman declare in an angry, burring baritone that this was what one might expect now that Edward was on the throne.

Now the refreshments table was the only thing separating Sherlock Holmes from the emperilled marquis. He seized the table in both hands and flung it over. It was a twelve-foot trestle, and it went down in a flurry of white linen, flashing silver, and shattering crystal as Holmes vaulted on over, bound for the shocked trio of duBlac, Sir John, and Lady Alice.

I am not as athletic as my friend; years of overindulgence have thickened my girth and shortened my endurance. I paused before the ruined table, panting heavily; and was immediately grateful that I had, for as I glanced up, I experienced a hallucination so real, the shock might have flung me on my face in mid-stride.

Queen Victoria was moving.

Moving, I repeat, with the same stately dignity with which she had comported herself in life, advancing in my direction while the crowd on the dance floor parted to make her a path.

Presently I realised that this was a misapprehension, and that the great seven-foot portrait that hung behind the marquis and his hosts was swinging outward, as on a pivot. Beyond it yawned the dark rectangular of an open passage, and inside that rectangle, standing poised within easy striking distance of the French dignitary with a long-bladed dagger was—

But I am drawing ahead of my narrative. In that frenzied moment, I saw only the great blubbery figure of a man in immaculate evening dress, his flipper of a right hand engulfing his weapon to the hilt.

I drew aim upon that broad target with my revolver, but Holmes himself prevented me from squeezing the trigger, for as he leapt to fling his arms round the man in the passage, his back came between us. I held my fire whilst the pair fell into a heap on the floor inside the opening.

“Hold, Sherlock!” the huge man exclaimed, disentangling himself from the detective. “Whenever will you learn to place your head before your feet?”

It was then that I recognised Mycroft Holmes, my friend’s older brother, from whose hand the dagger had fallen when he crashed
to earth.

Ten minutes later, Holmes and I were seated in our host’s commodious study with Sir John, the Marquis duBlac, and Mycroft, who had corrected his dishevelment and now occupied the largest armchair with a cigar in hand and a glass of claret on the table at his elbow.

“All your questions will be answered in the fullness of time,” said he. “Impatience always was your great weakness, Sherlock. A man with less natural protection than I might have suffered a cracked rib.”

“As might I,” responded his brother, “had I not an enormous feather mattress to break my fall.” The sharpness of this retort gave evidence of the mixture of curiosity and resentment that roiled beneath Holmes’s otherwise calm exterior.

Mycroft ignored the aspersion. “As the elder brother, I shall go first. Tell us how you guessed at the presence of a secret passage behind the painting.”

“I haven’t guessed since we were children. When the orchestra began playing ‘After the Ball’ and I realised the die was cast, a hidden corridor was the only possibility that occurred to me. It offered both access to the intended victim and escape afterwards. The antiquity of Balderwood House suggested the probability that such a feature existed. Fairer circumstances did not prevent the Catholic clergy from designing priest-holes for concealment in the event of further persecution.”

“Admirable!” cried the marquis. “Unfortunately, our society includes a number of deranged individuals for whom the prospect of flight holds no importance.”

“There is no allowing for the movements of such men—or women, if your Charlotte Corday is any example. However, the wax recording cylinder that was delivered to my door, and the whole business of the song, pointed to a subtle and devious mind. A fanatic did not answer.”

“Close plotters have been known to employ fanatics,” Mycroft reminded him.

His brother shook his head. “The prize was too great, and as I said, the deranged are unpredictable, a danger to their masters as well as to their opponents. Skilled labour demands a steady hand.”

Sir John sat back and crossed his long legs, exhibiting calm for the first time. I began to see then that his apoplectic display had been just that: a show to throw us off the trail.

“He is brilliant, as well as cool under fire. Gentlemen, I withdraw all my objections. I feared that Holmes was an invention of fiction, but his performance tonight convinces me he is the man for us.”

“I was never in doubt.” The Frenchman’s eyes twinkled. “Dr. Watson’s accounts of his friend’s adventures are very popular in my country. The Marechal Bonaparte business confirmed their veracity, but I was not present on that occasion. I am now privileged to have witnessed his genius and daring at firsthand.”

“I felt sure you would see it my way, your excellency,” put in Mycroft. “I was not so certain of Sir John, and so remained neutral.”

Here, Holmes demonstrated the impatience that his brother deplored. His eyes were as bright and sharp as Mycroft’s dagger, and there were patches of high colour on his cheeks.

“The time has come to tell me the purpose of this charade. You haven’t the ambition, brother, for practical jokes, which in any case would be unseemly in the shadow of our recent loss.”