The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes (11 page)

‘Naturally,' I said, ‘if he lured the American and murdered him, he would want to make it seem he was elsewhere.'

‘But if it was Jenkins, how do we explain the book and the phrase in Pashto?' asked Bundle. He looked first at Coombes, then at me.

Coombes said nothing.

‘Perhaps the book was only a prop,' I suggested. ‘A deception. Elaborate, yes. But plays are elaborate. You said he was a theatrical manager.'

Bundle and I looked at each other hopefully. Coombes seemed uninterested.

‘And one thing more,' said Bundle, ‘the
Heigh-ho
on the mirror. I hardly know what to make of it . . . do you, Mr Coombes?'

Coombes suddenly snapped out of his reverie. He blinked, looked at Bundle. ‘It, yes . . . it comes from the play. Lydia Languish says it repeatedly. You may recall, Bundle, that thirty years ago there was a very famous murder case in which the German word
Rache
was scrawled on a wall, in blood, by someone who hoped to throw investigators off the track . . . I'm sorry, not thirty . . . no, you wouldn't . . .' – he passed his hand over his forehead – ‘. . . more like a hundred and . . .' He frowned, seemed to drift away into another of his moods. Then he said, ‘A meaningless phrase meant to confuse us.'

Sergeant Bundle took little notice. ‘It sounds like mockery to me, sir – a phrase meant to mock the police.' He slapped his hand on the chair arm and got up.

Again Coombes was floating into some other realm, staring at the ceiling and drifting into outer space.

Bundle said his goodbyes and departed.

Suddenly the atmosphere in the room had become oppressive. I left my companion to his ruminations and walked to the top of the road and bought a newspaper. When I returned I saw that my moody companion had brought out his antique leather valise, the one with the
Hotel Beau-Rivage
sticker on the side, a valise of the sort people carried on board steamships in the days of the Titanic and Lusitania. It might have been on display at the Victoria and Albert. ‘So this is your suitcase, is it?' I said. ‘Your suitcase from 1914?'

‘Exactly so,' he said. ‘And it contains a positive treasure for dismal times like these.' He opened the valise and brought out a small morocco case a bit bigger than an eyeglass case. He opened the little case and withdrew a syringe. He gave a sigh as he sat down in his usual chair and rolled up his sleeve. I thought he might be ill, a diabetic perhaps. He seemed about to inject himself. I asked, as nonchalantly as I could, ‘What are you doing?'

‘The case has gone stale, Wilson,' he said. ‘It is evident that more information is needed before it can be solved. And I have learnt by long and often bitter experience that the needed information may never arrive. A telegram, a telephone call, an unexpected visitor may come at any instant and set me back on a track that I can follow. Meanwhile, I am powerless. I warned you that these moods come upon me at certain periods. Inactivity is death to me. If I have practical problems to tackle, theories to concoct, puzzles to untangle, I can be happy. At those times my mind soars like a hawk, seeking the smallest bit of motion to dive upon and feed my insatiable curiosity in hopes of solving the problem. But when information has been utterly exhausted, when the trail has gone stale, when I have no challenge, no mystery, no paradox, no danger, no dilemma, not even any physical adventure, my brain and all the earth become a desert of boredom and commonplace, and then my oasis – which I need in order to survive – is a seven per cent solution of cocaine.'

‘Come now, come now!' I said. I laughed heartily, albeit a bit tentatively. ‘I can't believe what you are saying.'

‘Old habits die hard,' he said.

‘If it is really cocaine in your syringe,' I said, feigning indifference, ‘I suppose you should know that nowadays using cocaine is illegal.'

‘Quite legal for me, though,' he said. ‘I have a special dispensation from Scotland Yard.'

‘Hah!' I cried. ‘That is difficult to believe, my friend.'

‘It is perfectly true, my dear Wilson. My cocaine supply was prescribed by a doctor and certified by legal hocus-pocus at the highest levels of Scotland Yard. And now, if you'll excuse me, I am off to a lovely oasis, for it beckons me so enticingly that . . .'

I touched his shoulder. ‘I hate to sound like a child, my friend, but please consider a moment – you have promised me a story. You have teased me by telling only half the story. That is not kind. That is not – if I may say so – honourable.'

He paused, staring at the tip of the needle as a lover stares trembling at the one he desires. I could see how much he craved it, how his promise was struggling with his private desire.

I urged him gently. ‘Why not give both of us a little pleasure, you and me, by telling the rest of the story? You will enjoy it, I will enjoy it. A vicarious adventure for both of us. While you talk we'll have lunch at the Old Black Lion. I'll buy. Afterwards you can finish your tale as we take a walk up the long path to Hay Bluff. How does that sound, my friend! Lunch, climbing a bluff, and a tale of your adventures during The Great War – surely that should be nearly as good as a shot of cocaine!'

Slowly he set down the needle. He rolled down his sleeve. ‘You should have been a diplomat,' he said. His grey-blue eyes were scintillant, lips pressed in half a smile. ‘So you believe my strange tale, Wilson?'

‘Whether I believe it I must yet discover. But you have told it in a most convincing manner. That cannot be denied. The suitcase –' I nodded towards it. ‘Is it of 1914 vintage?'

‘Much older than that, Wilson. I bought it in the '80s or '90s, and it became a good friend in my travels. It is a miracle that this old friend of mine made it through with me to the twenty-first century. By sheer good fortune my hand was gripping it in my last moments of 1914, and I was still clutching it when they found me in 2004. As a result, they had to cut the block of ice in which I was encased so that the block contained not only me but my valise. This slowed them down and made it difficult to transport me to London before I melted. So they told me.'

I laughed out loud. ‘You'll have to forgive me, my friend,' I said. ‘My laughter doesn't mean disbelief . . . not exactly, anyhow.'

‘Shall we go?' asked Coombes. ‘Let us fortify ourselves at the Black Lion, then head up to Hay Bluff.'

We closed the door of Cambrai Cottage and walked towards the Black Lion. As the clock tower in the village centre struck
one
, Cedric Coombes resumed his tale.

SEVEN

Pursuit

A
s I say, Dummkopf Ludwig was clinging to the window of my train compartment as we left Paris. He soon dropped away, however, and my two travel companions returned. The woman was very tidy. She wiped the blood off the window and closed the window tight. Thereafter we enjoyed a most pleasant train ride through French countryside, punctuated only by the distant thunder of an October storm. Thunder made the madame mistakenly fear she was hearing the German five-nines at the battle front. Her bespectacled husband and I both assured her that even the biggest of the German guns were too far away to be heard, and that she was hearing only God's cannons.

Say what you will about the Swiss, they know how to manage a country. Everything seemed just a little cleaner, quicker and less confused after we crossed the border and rolled into Geneva. I was waved through the frontier very quickly and soon had no more to do than find a comfortable hotel. From the train station I walked down the Rue du Mont Blanc to the lake, and there I turned left on to the Quai du Mont Blanc. I was soon attracted by the Hôtel Beau-Rivage where, for five francs a night, I booked a room with a view of the lake and the Alps beyond. The view alone was worth the price. The hotel had a French chef, and my supper was very fine. I ate slowly. I have never spent great effort developing a taste for food but I confess French food is my weakness, and although my nose is better trained for distinguishing the seventeen distinct types of tobacco smoked in Europe than it is for judging a wine's bouquet, yet I have always enjoyed wine and I indulged myself in a glass of fine wine that evening. As I ate and drank, I gazed out over the lake and considered my precarious situation.

King George had not kept his secrets very well. That was clear. Someone in his retinue had sneezed up the secret of my journey. The Germans knew my mission and they were following me. The Russians also knew, and they had tried to switch cases on me in order to assassinate the Kaiser with a bomb. But their bomb had blown up the wrong German, and the result was that the Germans, having no knowledge of the Russian plot, would now assume that I had killed their man, and doubtless they would now intend not merely to rob me but to kill me.

And then there was the problem of how to enter Germany. The border of Switzerland and Germany offered many routes of crossing. I was inclined to travel to the Bodensee, purchase a small sailboat at Romanshorn and sail across in the night to a landing spot somewhere near Friedrichshafen. From there I might travel north to Nuremberg, Leipzig, and Berlin – that is, if the Kaiser was still at Berlin. Recently (or so the newspapers informed me) he had been visiting his army in Belgium. Problem number one was to get into Germany. Problem number two was to locate the Kaiser – but that I could worry about later.

I folded my map, ate my dessert, drank my coffee, and occasionally gazed out over the blue lake at the strange white mountains rising to the south. Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Europe, looked oddly small behind all the nearer peaks. In the dying light of evening I paged through my faithful
Baedeker's
Switzerland
, 1913 edition. It informed me that the two-and-a-half hour steamer journey to Lausanne was far preferable to the railway journey. I took
Baedeker's
advice – one seldom goes wrong taking
Baedeker's
advice. Next morning I boarded the steamer.

The day was dull, the lake choppy and grey. Occasionally a flash of sun appeared through the clouds, turning the lake blue and the little shore towns white. I stood by the rail on the upper deck. Except for me, the deck was utterly empty, not a passenger to be seen. It was late October, windy, cold. I watched the town of Rolle drift by on the north shore. Then I saw another passenger appear on the deck, a woman. She was pressing against the wind, leaning forward as she came towards me. What struck me as odd was her hat. It was a large Parisian flower hat, very pretty but not at all suitable for travel by steamer. Her little black dog strained ahead of her on his leash. I gazed at her curiously. It seemed clear that at any moment her beautiful hat would blow away. I wondered why she would wear such a hat on deck. Even as this question posed itself to my mind I noticed her shoes. They were not shoes suitable for a woman, and they did not go with her outfit. A pulse of alarm surged through my veins – too late. She looked up at me and smiled – and I saw she was not a woman at all. The knife was in his hand. He lunged at me.

At Cambridge I was considered a rather good amateur boxer. People said I had excellent strategy and surprising speed. I am happy to report that my Cambridge boxing experience served me well on the windy deck of the Lausanne steamship. I darted to the right, swung at his head, and landed a right hook that sent him tumbling over the rail. He fell as silently as a stone and plunged into surging waves that swallowed him. Someone hollered, ‘Man overboard!' The Parisian hat, meanwhile, sailed away on the wind and settled on the wake far astern, where it bobbed like a little island of flowers.

The poor black poodle, having noticed his human friend fall into the lake, began to run up and down the deck, dragging his leash and barking frantically. Then he launched himself over the rail, tumbled head over tail, and vanished in the grey swells. He quickly reappeared, paddling desperately.

The massive steamship horn now resounded so suddenly and so close by that my whole body resonated. Steam rushed upward in grey clouds. The deck rocked. The steamer began to circle back. Somebody kept shouting ‘Man overboard!' Suddenly a redheaded man darted on to the rear lower deck with both arms outstretched as if he were a tightrope walker. With a howl he stripped off his shirt. He dove over the side and landed with a shallow splash. He began furiously clawing the water of Lake Geneva. He headed straight towards the dog. He grabbed the poodle with one hand, then swam back towards the steamer in a lurching sidestroke, holding the dog out of the water. He reached the side of the ship and, surging upward, he miraculously grabbed hold of the rail. He swarmed over the side like an orangutan. His red hair streamed down his cheeks. Only then did I notice that the dog was suddenly white. White again. The dye had washed off.

I watched from the deck above as a crew member threw a blanket over the man's shuddering shoulders. The man cried, ‘Danke, das ist schön!' and he walked away under the guiding arm of the solicitous crew member. From his affection for the dog, and his willingness to risk his life for it, I deduced that he must be the dog's owner and special friend.

I went to my cabin and sat down to count my enemies. The young German with the elegant Heidelberg saber cut on his cheek had been blown to pieces in my Paris hotel room. Dummkopf Ludwig had dropped on to a railway roadbed and was surely badly battered if not dead. The multiple transvestite actor – the London lady who walked her dog by Claridges, the mother who strolled her pooch in front of 221B Baker Street, the old crone who held her dog in a basket in the rain at Dover, and the Parisian charmer who crossed the Carrefour de Buci with her trotting poodle – had been drowned. Apparently so, anyhow. No one had spotted a body floating and already the steamer had stopped circling and had set its course for Lausanne. That left only the redheaded man. His physical prowess seemed prodigious. But what made him most dangerous was the dog. I knew that as long as that poodle was on the prowl he might come across my scent and track me down.