The Secret Notebooks of Sherlock Holmes (11 page)

His outcry had alerted a younger man, his son, I assumed, who until that moment had been out of sight in a storage area at the back of the office and who ran forward.

‘Holloa! What's going on?' he called out, his pleasant, rather plump features expressing acute anxiety.

I glanced round as I bent over his father.

‘Fetch some water!' I ordered him abruptly.

The young man took one horrified look at his father's face and, seizing up a cup which was standing on the desk, he dashed the dregs of tea which it had contained on to the floor before running out into the yard to fill it at a standing tap and bringing it back to me.

‘'E's not going to die, is 'e, like …?' he began and then broke off suddenly before he had completed the question.

I was more concerned with my patient's condition than with the significance of the unfinished query, although Holmes must have taken heed of it, for, as I saw Mr Buskin, to my relief, recover sufficiently to sip a little water from the cup I held to his lips, Holmes had turned with a stern expression to the younger man.

‘Like your visitor who came here yesterday morning?' he enquired.

The younger man's face went white as he cast a terrified look at his father, who was now struggling to sit upright.

‘Tell him, Jack,' he ordered in a hoarse voice.

But even with this parental permission, the son seemed incapable of speech and it was Holmes who took up the narrative.

‘Yesterday morning a visitor came to see you and your father, a wealthy Italian gentleman who had helped you and your family financially for many years. I am correct, am I not?' He waited for an affirmatory nod from the young man before continuing, ‘At some point during the visit, your visitor suddenly collapsed and died.'

Again Holmes paused but this time Jack Buskin made no gesture to confirm the truth of Holmes' statement; he merely ran his tongue over his lips. Only Buskin senior made any response. He groaned aloud and I felt him put all his weight on my arm as he struggled to rise to his feet.

‘Holmes!' I called out in warning.

Perceiving the older man's distress, Holmes said quickly, ‘I shall stop there, Mr Buskin. I should not wish to cause you any further concern.'

But Buskin senior was adamant.

‘No, go on, sir!' he cried, making a beckoning gesture with one arm as if urging Holmes to step forward. ‘I'm glad the truth is coming out at last.'

‘Then with your permission, I shall continue,' Holmes replied and resumed his account. ‘I do not know what caused your visitor's death but I am sure it was natural, a heart attack possibly or a stroke.
But whatever the reason, you and your son were left in a dreadful dilemma. You had a dead man on your premises whose address you did not know and whose identity you were unsure of. I think I am correct there. Mr Buskin, under what name did you know the Italian gentleman?'

‘Signor Morelli.'

‘And did you know his occupation?'

‘'E said 'e 'ad a business in Rome; something to do with church buildings, as I understood it.'

‘I see,' Holmes said gravely, his expression perfectly bland. ‘And now we come to the nub of the matter – how Signor Morelli became acquainted with you and your family in the first place.'

I saw Buskin senior glance across at his son, a humble, placatory expression on his face and, when he spoke, he addressed his remarks to his son, not Holmes.

‘I'd always 'oped I'd never 'ave to tell you this, Jack, but the story's got to come out now that Signor Morelli's dead. The truth is me and my wife was not your mother and father, although we brought you up from when you was a baby and loved you like our own son. Signor Morelli was your real father and my late sister, Lizzie, was your mother.'

At this point in his narrative, Mr Buskin, who seemed on the verge of breaking down, fell silent and covered his face with one large, calloused hand.

It is never an agreeable sight to see a grown man
reduced to tears, certainly not someone of Mr Buskin's large and powerful stature, and I was considerably relieved when Buskin junior dragged another crate to the side of his erstwhile father and, seating himself upon it, placed a protective arm about the older man's shoulders.

‘Now, Pa,' said he, ‘for you'll always be Pa to me, don't distress yourself. Whatever 'appened in the past is over and done with. All that matters is that you and me are together and always will be. Now I know Mr 'Olmes 'as to make enquiries on be'alf of the police or whoever it is 'e's acting for, but I'm sure 'e's enough of a gen'leman to come back another time when you feels up to talkin' to 'im. Isn't that so, Mr 'Olmes?'

‘Of course,' my old friend began but Buskin senior cut him short.

Drawing himself up, he said with great dignity, ‘It's kind of you to offer, Mr 'Olmes, but the truth 'as got to be faced and better now than later, says I. And the truth is this.

‘Thirty years ago, my sister Lizzie was in service in a boarding-house somewhere in London, although I can't remember the address. She was a lovely looking young woman was Lizzie, not quite seventeen, and she caught the eye of this Italian gentleman who had been sent to London to improve his English. Anyway, to cut a long story short, he fell in love with Lizzie and I'm sure you and your friend there, being men of the world, don't need telling what happened. Signor
Morelli went back to Italy and Lizzie found she was carrying his child. There was nothing to be done. We had no address for him and Lizzie wouldn't tell us the name of the 'otel where she'd met 'im; not that it would have done any good because, as soon as the 'otel owner found out about the baby, Lizzie was dismissed with no references.

‘Well, Lizzie had the baby, a little boy, and you won't need me to tell you 'oo he is now. But things went wrong with her soon after the baby was born and Lizzie died of a fever. My mother couldn't bring the child up herself. She was widowed and in poor 'ealth. So we talked it over and decided it was best if me and my wife took the baby on as ours. We'd been married about three years but didn't have no children of our own, a big disappointment to both of us. So we raised him as our own.

‘Then two years after Lizzie died, Signor Morelli turns up again in London. God knows 'ow he found out where we was living, but I was working then for a builder in Wapping and he arrived one evening out of the blue, looking for Lizzie. When we told him she had died after having his baby, he went as white as a ghost. He gave us money to 'elp pay for the child's keep. I didn't want to take it, Mr 'Olmes, because it seemed wrong some'ow to be paid for looking after a child we loved and looked on as our own. But times was 'ard and the money was very welcome. Anyway, after that, he came back every year to see the child and
pay for his keep. It was a generous sum; so generous that I was able to put a bit aside and, after a few years, I'd managed to save enough to buy this little business in Spitalfields. But there was one condition. We was to go on pretending the child was really ours and we wasn't to let on to anyone 'oo the real father was.'

‘Did you never ask yourselves why he should insist on this?' Holmes asked.

Buskin senior looked abashed.

‘Of course, we did, but we understood he was from a rich family and he didn't want them to know he'd fathered a child out of marriage. And to be honest, Mr 'Olmes, it suited us as much as it suited him. 'E'd turn up 'ere once a year, stay for a couple of hours and give me the fifty pounds which, now that Jack's left school and 'as been working 'ere with me, we ain't needed. So I've been putting it aside so that if 'e ever wants to get married and set up on 'is own, there's a tidy little nest egg to get 'im started.'

‘But you didn't keep the money Signor Morelli brought the other day?' Holmes pointed out.

Buskin looked affronted by the question, as if the answer should have been obvious.

‘'E dropped dead afore he could pass it over and it didn't seem proper to go through 'is pockets and 'elp myself to it, even though I knew 'e'd 'ave it on him, same as usual. Anyway, we was more concerned with what we was to do with 'im. We couldn't go to the police. They
might think we'd murdered 'im. And besides, who was going to believe our story about an Italian gen'leman givin' us money. So we put 'im on the 'and-cart and covered 'im with some sacks and, when it was dark, we pushed the cart down to Paternoster Yard where we left 'im, laid out decent-like. It was all we could do for 'im. We didn't know where 'e lived so we couldn't let 'is family and friends know.'

‘But why Paternoster Yard?' Holmes asked.

‘Well, sir, it was quiet and bein' a dead end – no disrespect intended to Signor Morelli – no one 'ardly ever used it. We thought by the time the body was found, things might 'ave gone quiet-like.'

His voice trailed away miserably as if, having put into words, probably for the first time, the unspoken hope that, like dirt swept under a carpet, the whole matter might somehow also disappear, he was made aware of the foolishness of such an expectation.

Buskin senior cleared his throat and, drawing himself upright, he looked Holmes in the face.

‘I know me and Jack done wrong, sir, by not telling no one about 'im and just leavin' 'im there like a bundle of old clothes,' he said. ‘It's been on my mind ever since. So what can we do to put things right? Shall I go to the police or will you go for me? If it's a matter of a fine, I'll pay up on the nose.'

There was a long moment's silence, so intense that I could hear quite clearly the sound of wheels and horses' hooves passing up and down the main
thoroughfare beyond the entrance to the yard. While it lasted, the two Buskins stood side by side at attention, like soldiers awaiting the judgement of a superior officer.

I was unable to look at them because their expressions, so pitifully submissive and yet at the same time oddly dignified, made me feel humbled by their willingness to accept whatever punishment Fate, in the person of Holmes, might mete out to them. I ventured a sideways glance at my old friend to see if he also was affected by the Buskins' self-abasement.

He was staring fixedly down at the toes of his boots, his face quite imperturbable.

And then suddenly, as if coming to an abrupt decision, he looked sternly at the two Buskins standing there side by side and said in a clipped voice, ‘Leave it with me! Do nothing yourselves. I myself will arrange matters on your behalf.'

With that, he turned on his heel, so quickly that he cut short the Buskins' exclamations of gratitude and left me no choice but to hurry after him.

‘What will you do, Holmes?' I asked when at last I caught up with him in the street.

‘I have already told you. Nothing!' he retorted impatiently.

‘Nothing? But surely, Holmes …' I began in protest.

‘I repeat. I shall do nothing. What more can I say? If I report this business to the police, there will be no question of paying a mere fine, as Mr Buskin so
sanguinely expects. They will be arrested and charged, if not with murder, then most certainly with the failure to report a death and with the concealing of a body, both of which can carry a prison sentence. Is that what you want, Watson? To see the Buskins, two decent, hard-working men, behind bars, their business, and probably also their lives, ruined?'

‘Of course not, Holmes!' I protested, much taken aback by the ferocity of his reply. ‘But what will you tell Inspector MacDonald and Father O'Shea?'

‘That I have nothing to tell them,' Holmes replied. ‘In short, that I have failed. For all my much-vaunted skills and the evidence of the builder's materials on the dead man's clothes, I was unable to find the yard where those materials originated and therefore I cannot say where he died or who was with him at the time of his death or who carried his body to Paternoster Yard. In other words, the investigation was a total failure on my part, a deception which you will support me in, Watson, if you value our friendship.'

And with that, he raised his stick and hailed a passing hansom, in which we returned in mutual silence to Baker Street.

There is very little more to tell.

Inspector MacDonald and Father O'Shea were separately informed of Holmes' apparent failure, an admission which both of them accepted, on the Inspector's part with a degree of scepticism, for I saw him give my old friend a long, searching glance of disbelief.

On Father O'Shea's part, I thought I detected unexpected relief.

‘So that is the end of the matter,' he declared, trying but failing to entirely suppress a small, gratified smile and, as he walked out of the room, he looked positively cock-a-hoop. I found this response quite extraordinary until Holmes explained that it was highly likely that Lizzie Buskin had been a servant at St Christopher's House where Cardinal Tosca, then a young priest, had met her and fathered her child, for which she was dismissed. If Father O'Shea was already the parish priest at the nearby church of St Aloysius, he might have been aware of the situation which, at the time, was hushed up.

It seemed to me a little far-fetched until Holmes pointed out that it would account for Father O'Shea's reluctance at the time my old friend interviewed him to discuss Cardinal Tosca's charitable works as well as his poorly-disguised relief at Holmes' apparent failure.

As for Cardinal Tosca's body, it was transported back to the Vatican where it was duly buried with, I assume, all the rites and ceremonies suitable for a priest of such high standing.

As for myself, I have become reconciled to the fact that this account can never be published which, all things considered, is perhaps the best outcome after all. For while Holmes' reputation suffered a temporary set-back at his apparent failure, it was soon restored
by his success over his next investigation, the case of the Devonshire Scandal and the supposed murder of a member of the House of Lords by his butler, which occupied the newspaper headlines for the next three months.