Mr. Doyle & Dr. Bell

by Howard Engel

  “Yes, let justice be done…”

  “Though the heavens fall!”

  That night at ten minutes after six, Bell and I found ourselves sitting in a howff called The Last Minst. The rest of the sign, the “rel,” had rusted away, but the nod at the memory of Sir Walter was noted. It was a smallish corner room with yellowish light from a lamp on the wooden bar. The lamp made a hissing sound, like the sound of a malevolent insect. The landlord was unshaven and dirty, but his establishment gave us an excellent view of the entrance to the tenement in which Webb lived his solitary life.

  When I came in, Bell greeted me with news that astonished me: Inspector Webb had sent a message round to his rooms stating that he wanted to speak with Bell. Bell answered the note—it came by messenger—agreeing to meet him the following morning at seven forty-five in a tavern close to the market where we had had our run across the rooftops.

  “If that is the case, why are we waiting here?” I asked.

  “Why, to see Webb, of course. I have no intention of meeting him tomorrow, even if he comes alone. No, this suits us better.”

  We tasted the beer, or, to be more accurate, we sat with a pewter mug of it before us. On trying the contents, Bell grimaced and set the container down on the table again with a smack that echoed his critical judgment. Without being quite as dramatic, I rejected my drink as well. As far as the landlord was concerned, our rejections touched him not; he was equally indifferent to our approbation and our abuse. Joe called out for a better-known ale, which duly arrived at our table. While drinking and chatting about inconsequential matters, we kept our eyes on the doorway to the staircase leading to Inspector Webb’s flat. We watched a woman carrying washing leave the tenement and we watched her return half an hour later. Meanwhile, others came and went: a man in uniform, an ensign in the navy; several women, painted for a night on the town; a tall, veiled widow of a certain age making slow progress with a furled umbrella; a bearded man wearing a plaid over his shoulder, like a rural dominie fallen on hard times—Bell put him in Perthshire from evidence he did not make clear; and sundry others, none of them entirely disreputable, but neither were they the crème de la crème.

  After a wait of more than an hour, it appeared that our guess that Webb would return to his lodgings when he had completed his shift at the station was ill-founded. We decided to give up our vigil and seek him out elsewhere. For my part, always happy to have a sow’s ear when a silk purse is denied me, I suggested that we climb the stairs to his rooms just to see where our quarry lived and more accurately gauge the sort of life he led. Together we left The Last Minst and crossed the close to the tenement we had been observing. The turnpike, or corkscrew stairs, wound their dark way in circular fashion up the inside of a round towerlike projection from the house proper. Bell lit a bull’s-eye lamp and shone light where it may never have penetrated before. It was one of the old lands, dirty, damp, cold and in need of repair. The steps wanted sweeping. All sorts of offal and garbage had fallen on the flagstones and simply been left there to rot or become part of the dust that held the cut ashlar stones together.

  On each door, we looked for some sign as to the occupant. Many of the doors were unmarked. Halfway up, Bell accosted a young woman, with a child in a basket, on her way out. He addressed her as politely as though she were the Queen of the Night:

  “My dear young woman, my friend and I are seeking the flat of Inspector Webb of the police, who lives here, I believe. Can you help us? As a stranger in Edinburgh yourself, you’ll appreciate our difficulty. It’s a far cry to Tarbert, my lass.”

  “How’d you ken I’m from Lewis? And who are you with your questions like some catechist come to bedevil me with more pernickety troubles, when, God knows, I have enough of them already?”

  “Your shoes are country made, lass. And your fine skirt was woven, then sewn, in a cottage, I’m sure. There’s no mistaking the craftmanship of the Hebrides. Even the baskets tell their tales. And a fine-looking laddie you have, Missus.”

  “Craftsmanship is it? I took this off the loom myself not ten weeks ago in Balallan. What are you, some kind of fortune-teller?”

  “Ah, my dear young woman, I wish I were. But, you see, we come asking for directions. Do you know this Inspector Webb at all?”

  “Know him? I wish I dinna. He harps on wee Ruaridh’s bawlin’ o’ nights. The bairn’s a wee bit wabbit with the teeth comin’ in just now. And wasn’t he a wean h’self once, I’m askin’? And h’self’s no’ that secret, mind. He’s been stumpin’ and shoutin’ somethin’ awful not an hour agone.”

  “If this is your door, then he must be your neighbour. Is he one up or one below, since there’s but one flat on each landing?”

  “You’ll have to climb up one more round on the turnpike, sirs. And give the gentleman no good word from me, if you please.” She ran off with her basket and baby as lightly as young feet could carry her. We climbed the few remaining steps to the next door. Bell rapped with his gloved hand and waited. There was no answer. He knocked again.

  “He may have had meetings or appointments outside his office work,” I suggested, just as Bell tried his door. “I myself would not hurry back here unless compelled to do so. The neighbourhood—” I didn’t finish what I was about to say because the door swung inwards at Bell’s touch.

  They were Webb’s rooms sure enough. An old uniform was hanging on a peg by a window which overlooked the close we had been watching. In this room, it appeared, Webb made simple meals for himself with water carried up the turnpike, and slops sent into the street from the window shortly after the warning cry: “Gardeyloo!” He was not a tidy person, the grease marks on the wall made me imagine his collars, cuffs and the shine on his boots. The stove was filthy: one could reconstitute his last hundred meals from the evidence on the floor.

  “Perhaps we should leave and come again,” I suggested. My non-existent Calvinist ancestors were already warning me of footsteps on the stairs.

  “We found the door open, Doyle. We are simply having a look around in case a robbery has been committed. See if any valuables have been taken from those drawers.” Bell went into the next room, which was almost completely filled with a brass bed. The worn ticking of the mattress gave further testimony to Webb’s housewifery. I hurt my knee painfully as I peered under the bed. I had kneeled on a black umbrella that had fallen to the floor. Beneath the bed I found only the expected slut’s wool and the odd sock. In some pain, I threw the umbrella on the bed, and checked my wound. It would serve, as Mercutio says. Next to the bedside table, I saw a Thornton-Picard camera with its tripod. The camera was curious in that a dummy lens had been inserted in front. The true lens was fixed to the left-hand side of the box, disguised as a focal plane shutter adjuster knob. I imagined that the interior would reveal an arrangement of mirrors. On a table, several exposed glass plates were assembled in a series. Bell picked one of them up, tilted it at an angle to his torch, then studied it in the oblique light.

  “Hello!” he said. “Here is a likeness of you, Doyle, coming from the Parliament House.” He handed it to me most carefully by the edges. I held the glass to the light and recognized a negative image, which with some manipulation of the plate became myself coming from a session of the trial.

  “Interesting,” said Bell. “Very interesting.” I replaced the negative where it belonged and cocked an eyebrow in the direction of my friend.

  “Why so very interesting?” I asked.

  “This case becomes more and more fascinating as time goes on,” he said. “This image of you at the trial, for instance, can be dated with a good deal of accuracy.”

  “That’s right. The trial was over a little more than a week after we agreed to help Lambert.”

  “Exactly! You see, that was before we questioned the pawnbroker; before we went to Liverpool!”

  “Before the authorities could have had any idea that we had taken an interest in Lambert’s affairs. I see!”

  “Yes. It is curious, is
n’t it? Someone close to Lambert must have told the police to be on the lookout for us. How careless it is to imagine that one is invisible. We were well over our heads in this business when we thought we were simply testing the water.”

  “But who could that have been? Alan and Graeme are above suspicion. And I will vouch for Louise.”

  “I thought you might,” Bell said with a smile. “Whom does that leave? Who tried once already to dissuade us from taking a role?”

  “The old man! Lambert, père!”

  “Precisely. He has been working against his son’s interests from the beginning. No! That isn’t exactly right. He has been working against us, to be sure, but he may be persuaded that we are not helping Alan’s cause. He may have had assurances from a source promising redress from a completely different direction. Assurances that may carry provisions that Lambert and his family do not stir themselves or take steps independently.”

  “Put like that, it is plausible. What can we do about it?”

  “I have the glimmerings of an idea, Doyle. But, that will have to await our return from this dismal hole.”

  Before leaving the flat, Bell and I tried the remaining drawers in the dresser and all other crannies. I turned up a penny dreadful with a lurid illustration of the final end of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber. Pressed between the pages was the following written on a scrap of paper:

  “What on earth… !” I began. Bell snatched it from me and held the paper up to the light.

  “Good paper. Watermark suggests a well-to-do author. And these symbols are not altogether unknown to me. But, I will have to remember where I first saw them. I recall it was while I was engaged in researching something else. All I have to do is retrace my steps.” He made a quick sketch of the note and pocketed it. The original, he replaced facing the engraving of Sweeney Todd in extremis.

  Bell and I walked out onto the landing, then paused. Without a word to me, he turned and re-entered the empty rooms. “There is something peculiar about the bulge in the wall by the window, Doyle. It suggests some external architectural feature, which I do not remember seeing when I examined the premises from the outside. Here, give me a hand.” I came around the end of the bed and attacked the oddly shaped protuberance. When I saw it through Bell’s eyes, I could see it was not symmetrical with the other side of the window. In fact, it proved to be a hidden cupboard. It slid open easily once a purchase on the edge had been managed. In the dark interior we saw that it contained various pieces of clothing, most of it worn and in tatters. “He uses these for going about in disguise, I’ll warrant you,” he said. Then he saw something which froze him solid for several seconds. He was closer to the open cupboard than I was and could see inside more readily. “I must amend that, Doyle. Here Webb kept clothing that he used to wear as disguises. My tense was inaccurate. In fact, the past tense is now the appropriate tense for Inspector Webb in the future. Webb has no future. He has lived, as the classical writers say.” I moved my head closer to the opening and drew my breath at what I saw. Bell had discovered more than either of us expected. Bell found Webb himself. He had lived, as Bell said. He had become his corpse.

  NINETEEN

  Once again we were seated in what was becoming our usual places in front of the fireplace in Dr Bell’s rooms. Bell was cleaning a cherrywood briar and I was nodding over the recent memory of the steak and kidney pie and the plate of mutton, with which Mrs Murchie had provided us. Perhaps I had taken a drop too much of the excellent port my host provided: Colborne, ’64, I think he said.

  It was the evening of our discovery of Webb’s body. A search of his pockets had revealed nothing more than we had discovered elsewhere in his flat. The man had been strangled with a leather thong ligature which was still embedded deeply in the flesh around the victim’s throat. From my limited medical experience, I had suggested that he had been dead less than two hours. The colour and warmth of the body had changed little. Bell had thought that life had been extinguished even more recently. I had deferred to his experience in these matters. He had moved the mandible back and forth, giving the face an almost comic appearance, and had drawn my attention to the facts that neither rigor nor lividity were yet present in the slightest degree. A lifelike shine was still visible on those staring eyes. He had also mentioned the girl we had passed on the stairs, who had indicated that Webb was at home and making noise an hour before our visit.

  We had left the rooms as we had entered them. Webb was once more closed within his private locker. He would be found eventually, even in that smelly sty, but the interval gave us an advantage which we discussed over our supper.

  “I am not at all comfortable about the fashion in which we left Webb’s flat, Joe,” I said, seeing the body again in a flash of memory as I set a bone down on the edge of my plate.

  “Nor I, Conan. But they must dance barefoot that have no shoes. He said he wanted a wee word in my ear, but that may have been police jiggery-pokery. Remember he was waiting for us with four constables at the tearoom. Others will follow quick enough. This stratagem has bought us a few useful hours. Meanwhile yon Inspector Webb feels no discourtesy. Steel yourself, Conan. We must be practical,” he said, then cocking his head to one side asked, “Does your left knee still hurt you so much after all this time? I saw that you favoured the leg as you came to the table.”

  “It’s nothing. I kneeled on something hard in the flat. An occasional twinge, no more.”

  “Of course!” Bell set his fork and knife down on his plate. “It was the umbrella!”

  “Yes, but what of it?”

  “It only delivers Webb’s murderer to us.”

  “What?”

  “Aye. It was the veiled widow we saw from The Last Minst. She went in with an umbrella and came out without it.”

  “Inspector Webb was murdered by that woman? I don’t believe it.”

  “That woman wasn’t a woman, Conan. It was a disguise. Remember how tall she was? How she used the umbrella as though it were a stick.”

  This ended the conversation at the table. We spoke no more until we were arranged around the fire and Bell was scratching away at the interior of his briar with a penknife.

  “You know, Doyle, I suspect that Lambert senior knows more than the father of the condemned man usually knows. Do you agree?”

  “I think what we found in Webb’s flat confirms it. He was undoubtedly the source of information about us.”

  “When a man of dangerously conventional behaviour has had a warning not to interfere, he may panic. He certainly becomes a focus of worry for the villain who requires his obedience. Webb became a similar worry and we saw how he was served. The pressure Lambert brought to bear on the two of us, through the charming intermediary of his daughter, reveals a force exerted on him from some source intended to stiffen even his fused backbone.”

  “Should we talk to the man? I’m sure he wants to save his son from the gallows.”

  “Undoubtedly. But, I fear, he would never reveal the source of the pressure. Nor would it amount to more than hearsay when all is done.”

  “It would indicate a target for our search,” I prompted.

  “Yes, and warn the villains that we are getting close. No, if we are to pursue the elder Mr Lambert, it must be by indirection. And I think I see a way. Will you be kind enough to hand me the folio of notepaper on the desk beside you.”

  From this large bundle of notepapers of various shapes and sizes, Bell selected a small half-sheet with the city’s crest at the top. On this, with a hasty hand he scribbled the following after only a moment of thought:

  Bell’s meddling is becoming serious. Must see you here this evening at 6.30. Dare say no more.

  Yrs,

  In place of a signature, Bell had made a scrawl which might be taken for any of the letters of the alphabet. He tucked the note into an envelope and affixed a stamp. With a quick reference to the city directory for the address, he was done. “On your way home, drop this into the pillar box closest to the
Parliament House. I mention this because I am half afraid you might want to deliver it by hand on the chance of meeting the bonnie Miss Lambert again.” I remonstrated with him briefly and we both laughed.

  “Lambert, père, will get it in the morning and we will be waiting in a cab in front of his house shortly after six o’clock.”

  “I will not sleep until then,” I said.

  “Well, laddie, you might spend the midnight hours on your histology with profit. The microscope will tire you if the mere prospect of so much work at this hour does not.”

  I saw Bell again the following morning in the lecture hall, where I was able to give a fair account of myself in the histology question period, and then, later still, after tea, down the street from the Lambert house. On his instructions, I arrived in good time at the corner of Waterloo Place and Leith Street. A hansom was waiting at the curbstone. Bell was inside, his eyes bright with anticipation of the chase to come. I was glad for the company and for the steep ride up Calton Hill. Bundled up against the cold, we sat in the cab which soon had an excellent view of Lambert’s front door. I couldn’t help thinking that less than twenty-four hours ago, we had been seated in a low drinking establishment watching another door. I shuddered at the memory of our macabre discovery—that face, the dark, wavy hair and staring eyes, the body propped up inside the cupboard, where, for all I knew, it yet remained.

  Lambert’s house was an impressive pile, standing out somewhat from its neighbours because of the profusion of ivy climbing its walls. I remarked upon this and was corrected. The vine, it seems, was a species of Virginia creeper introduced into Scotland from America. How he could tell in the dark is only another of the mysteries surrounding my friend.

  The night was cool, even in the relative shelter of the interior of a cab. Both of us had thrown a rug over our ulsters which were buttoned to the chin. We kept our eyes trained on anything that moved or appeared to move in Lambert’s street. We had been at our post less than ten minutes when the figure of a man came quickly out the front door and headed from Calton Hill towards Canonmill. He was covered by a dark full-length coat, with polished boots showing under it as he walked, and wore an old-fashioned beaver hat on his head at a serious angle. A muffler of grey wool kept his features hidden. Bell ordered the cabbie to keep the man in sight but not to step on his receding heels. Lambert kept up a quick, steady pace. For a man of his years—one could see the grey of his side-whiskers under the gaslight—he set a rugged pace. Without ever turning around, he began to tread the streets leading up the hill. Only once did he stop, to glance at a scrap of paper he produced from a pocket. The area was familiar to him, but I would suggest that he was unsure about the exact house. The cab stopped as he picked his way along Howard Place. Here he turned into the walk leading to number eight, a dark Georgian mansion with a view over the New Town.