The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes (10 page)

I was in Paris to help the Préfecture de Police with the Countess Pernod case, and I was turning the gruesome details of that astounding debauchery over and over in my mind as I descended the Rue Napoleon towards the river. I turned into the Quai D'Orsay and noticed an elegant woman strolling gaily along the quai just a few yards away. It was the opera singer Nellie Melba. I recognized her immediately, for I had seen her picture often in the magazines and newspapers which I daily ransacked for information that might be useful to my work. Madame Melba hummed cheerfully as she minced along, her chin high. Suddenly a tall, shabbily dressed man lurched out from around a corner. He accosted her. His collar was up. He looked like a highwayman. He said, ‘Madame Melba, you don't know who I am? I'm Oscar Wilde. And I'm going to do a terrible thing . . .'

‘Oh?'

‘I'm going to ask you for money.'

Suddenly she seemed to recognize him. ‘Oh, my!' she gasped. The shocked woman hastily began digging into her purse. She gave him several handfuls of money. Wilde bowed slightly, muttered, ‘Thank you, my good Queen of Song,' and he quickly turned from her. Madame Melba gazed after him as he limped away. Then she hurried off along the quai, looking down and no longer humming.

That was a sad scene. And now, in 1914, looking back on those earlier days, I felt again how brief are life's bright hours. It seemed to me that, on the whole, those earlier days were happy ones, and that now the happy times were vanishing and ahead lay nothing but gloom. Every day in the newspapers were stories of war, disaster, death and uncertainty.

It was evening, dusk filling the streets as I checked into the Hôtel d'Alsace. I was given a ground floor room. I was quite certain I had not been followed to Paris but to be absolutely certain of anything is always dangerous. I pondered. In the days when Professor Moriarty and his men had pursued me through Europe I had often, after checking into one hotel, sneaked out in the night to another. But on this first evening in Paris, in 1914, I was so terribly weary that I decided to stay put. I would sleep. I would awake refreshed, gather what information I could about troop movements and new battle lines, and then I would plan the next phase of my journey to meet the Kaiser. Having made this decision, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the dead.

In the morning I walked out of the hotel feeling as energetic as Paris always made me feel. I strolled to the river and breakfasted on croissants and café noir. The air was sharp, the sun hazy. The barges tied up along the river looked leaden. As I strolled I calculated how long it would take me to get to the German border by travelling through Switzerland. When I reached the Place St Michel I saw a double line of French troops streaming toward me from the direction of Notre Dame Cathedral. Behind them the cathedral rose majestically. The soldier boys came across the bridge and into the Place and there they formed a great milling crowd. I silently wished them well. Then I walked up the angling little Rue St André des Beaux-Arts. When I reached the Carrefour Buci I took a chair in a café and had another café noir. As I sat, gazing absently, I became aware of a young woman with a white toy poodle on a leash. She passed in front of me once, then passed again on the far side of the little square. But something was false about her. She seemed to be an actress playing a part, not a Parisian strolling a dog. In a flash I remembered similar scenes in the recent past. I thought of the woman walking the poodle outside Claridges, and the woman with the poodle walking in front of Willie Wiggins's apartment, and I remembered the sound of a small dog barking repeatedly during my trunk ride to the Charing Cross Station. I also remembered the old woman at Dover who had lingered and lingered at the foot of the gangplank until she learnt that I was going aboard, and how her face was muffled in a shawl, and how she held a small white dog in a basket. Now suddenly, in a Paris café, I realized that all those were the same person in different costumes. And the lost glove, yes! Evidently someone in Buckingham Palace had stolen it and given it to my pursuers, who had used it to give my scent to their tracking dog.

I sat in dull Paris sunshine, in weather almost too chilly to be comfortable, and watched an actress with a dog, and I wondered if maybe I was getting too old. My mental powers seemed to be fleeing, like the leaves of autumn. I sipped the last of my coffee and laid down my newspaper. I stood up briskly and strode out of the café into the Rue de Buci. I strolled, then darted into a side street and made my way back to my hotel in the Rue des Beaux-Arts. I walked with a soft step along the shabby hallway till I reached my room. I leant to touch the doorknob . . . but abruptly the doorknob was jerked out of my fingers and the door flew violently open. A tall young man stood before me. He waggled my own Webley revolver at me.

‘Come in, Mr Holmes,' said he.

‘Since you put it that way . . .' I said.

His thick black hair curled over his ears. When he smiled, the elegant scar on his cheek moved. I recognized him – he was the young man from Heidelberg, who had evidently won his badge of honour in a duelling society. ‘You are no longer a chauffeur?' said I.

‘That vas a temporary job, Mr Holmes. Chust sit down on that bed.'

I sat beside my open valise. He closed the door and waggled the end of the revolver. ‘A little further away, a little further away from me, please.'

I moved back on the bed.

On the floor at his end of the room were the two camel-coloured leather cases. ‘Two?' said he, waving a hand at them? ‘Vee vere aware only of one.'

He spoke with a noticeable German accent, but his English was very good.

‘They contain documents from King George meant only for the eyes of Kaiser Wilhelm,' I said.

‘Ah, yes, vell, but some of us German subjects do not vish the conflict to end, now that it has begun. Vee vish Germany to vin, as indeed she vill. And that is why vee think it best to prevent the Kaiser from becoming, shall vee say, confused.'

‘You have me at a disadvantage,' I said. ‘I am in no position to argue with you.'

‘You know, Mr Holmes, vee Germans respect genius. Vee do not vish to harm you. Vee vill relieve you of any documents that may trouble the Kaiser's peace of mind – then you may go your way.'

He lifted one of the small cases and laid it on the table. He clicked open the first latch, then the second. I was surprised he could do this. I had assumed both cases were locked. Then he lifted the lid and looked in. ‘Was ist denn das!' he cried.

A moment later fire flashed upward and tore his head away. I was flung backwards hard against the headboard by the force of the explosion. My ears rang with pain. My nostrils were filled with mingled smells of burnt flesh and gunpowder. I stumbled to my feet. The headless corpse was smouldering on the carpet and the window behind it was blown out. I grabbed the other document case and packed it in the valise. I strapped my valise closed, rushed into the hallway. Already footsteps were thudding and shouts echoing. I ran into the street and turned the corner into the Rue Napoleon and kept running. When I reached the Quai D'Orsay I was exhausted. I hailed a taxi and it carried me to the Gare de Lyon. Undoubtedly the other conspirators had been watching the hotel, yet I had no evidence they had followed me. I hoped I had made my escape without detection.

At the Gare de Lyon I was fortunate. A train for Geneva was leaving in half an hour. I bought a ticket and hurried aboard a compartment in the middle of the train, taking the seat farthest from the window. A middle-aged woman and her husband entered the compartment and sat in the two window seats, facing each other. The woman stood up, lowered her window, and leant on it with folded arms as she hung her head out and gazed down the platform with a proprietorial air. I held my watch in hand, waiting impatiently as the hands jerked towards the moment of departure. The woman sat down and tidied herself. At last the train began to roll. We were on our way . . .

But now a man with a huge bald head floated into view, running hard down the platform. His handlebar moustache looked huge and his eyes glared and his cheeks were puffed out like balloons. It was the man Willie had knocked out in the baggage van at Canterbury. Here he was, again trying to board my train. His elbows were going like pistons, and every few strides he tried to grab the door handle. A slim dark man ran to the left of him, dropping behind as the train picked up speed. Once more the bald giant lunged for the door handle, missed, stumbled, and to save himself he grabbed the top of our open window with both his hands. He clung, he was dragged. The slim man shouted, ‘Ludwig, du Dummkopf!' and vanished.

The platform flickered, disappeared.

Ludwig dangled in air, huge face pressed to our window pane.

The woman by the window humped to her feet and fled gasping out of the compartment. Her husband followed her.

I pulled off my boot and slammed Ludwig's knuckles with its heel, pounded his fat knuckles until they began to seep blood. At last he howled and fell, and hit the gravel of the roadbed . . .

Ye gods, Wilson!

SIX

The World Interrupts

‘
A
cat!' I cried, leaping to my feet. ‘Just a cat.' But it had startled me, that scream! It sounded at first like a cry of the damned. A thrill of terror faded along my spine.

I had been listening so intently to my companion's narrative that only when the cat screamed did I become aware that Sergeant Bundle was knocking on our window. I opened the door.

‘Good morning, gentlemen,' said Bundle. ‘I stepped on the cat's tail. Poor fellow was sleeping.' Bundle's face was piled with smiles as he hunkered into the room and sat down in the chair I offered. ‘Mr Coombes,' said he, ‘you have put me on track!'

‘Excellent!' cried Coombes, leaping from his chair and grabbing a spoon from the coffee table. He leant against the mantle and said, ‘Pray give me the details.' He put the spoon into his mouth as if it were a pipe, and he waited with a languorous look in his eyes. ‘Take your time and omit nothing,' he added.

Coombes's whole performance was so dramatic, and so odd, that it struck me as affected and phoney. Yet it certainly had the intended effect of settling the sergeant down to take his details very seriously. ‘I have made an investigation into the question of what bicycles have been sold in the area in the past week. We have checked shops from here to Hereford and Brecon. A number of bicycles have been sold, but only two with tire treads that match the tracks in your photograph, Mr Coombes. One of those two was sold in Hereford to a young lad named Charles Montgomery. His father, also named Charles Montgomery, used a Visa card to pay for the bicycle. The bicycle is presently stored in their garage in Hereford. The other bicycle was sold in the same shop, on Widmarsh Street. I examined the man who sold the bicycle in some detail, Mr Coombes. He said the purchaser had thick sandy hair and bushy eyebrows, and he was dressed in blue jeans, a white shirt, a green suede jacket. He seemed to be about fifty but the sales clerk was strangely uncertain about this, and said he might have been younger. This customer bought the bike, paid cash, gave no indication of where he was from or where he was going. The salesman thought the customer was English and very upper class. No foreign accent at all.'

‘Excellent work, sergeant,' said Coombes. ‘And what of the victim's computer?'

‘You were right again. The victim received a number of emails from someone who said she was Lydia Languish and who claimed to live here in Hay-on-Wye. We have not gone through all the emails yet, for there are hundreds, if not thousands. But it appears that the girl lured him here, just as you suggested. Unfortunately, we have not been able to connect the email address of Lydia Languish with the name of a real person. Our experts say that we may never accomplish this, although they are still working on the problem.'

‘You will never find her,' came the reply, ‘for Lydia Languish is a character in a play by Sheridan, called
The Rivals
, first performed in 1775.'

‘Is she now?' said Bundle, nodding wisely. He shrugged with his big face. ‘Also, sir, I found out the meaning of the Pashto words that were impressed into the dust jacket of the book. I passed them on to our mutual contact at Scotland Yard – you know who I mean—'

‘Yes, yes of course . . .'

‘And with the many resources of Scotland Yard, he called me back within the hour with the translation. The words mean, “God is great but we must do our own work”.'

‘We might postulate,' said Coombes, ‘that our suspect is an actor fluent in English and also in Pashto.'

‘That ought to narrow the field,' suggested Bundle.

‘Perhaps,' said Coombes. ‘But there are a great many people in Britain who to some degree or other fit that description. They may be professional actors, amateur actors . . .' He shrugged. ‘What else have you discovered, sergeant? I can tell by your manner that you are saving the worst news till last.'

‘Well, sir, I'm afraid your theory is refuted. You imagined that revenge might be a motive for this crime, am I right?' said Bundle. ‘And this was suggested to you by the book about Abu Ghraib.'

‘The thought had crossed my mind,' said my friend.

‘The trouble is, sir,' said Bundle, ‘Mr Hawes served in Afghanistan only. He never was anywhere near Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.'

I could see that this information disappointed Coombes. He nodded slowly, frowning slightly. Silence fell over both men. They were statues.

To fill the void I volunteered, ‘What of Mr Jenkins? Has he been seen recently?'

‘A very good point,' said Bundle. ‘We cannot be perfectly sure that Mr Jenkins was in Scotland as he said he was.'