The peer, whom Cecily had been talking to previously, had been hovering nearby and now obtruded himself into our circle. ‘That may be so,’ he said. ‘Yet I am responsible for great good. For in society to be wicked is to be talked about, and there is no greater good in society than to provoke conversation.’
Cecily laughed prettily. ‘But if the talk one provokes is also wicked?’
‘There is no wicked talk, my dear, only wicked deeds. And the wickeder the deeds, the more improving the conversation.’
‘I confess that that has not been universally my experience,’ said Holmes coldly. ‘Watson and I have witnessed some acts the mention of which would put a stop to all polite discussion. Lord Illingworth, Mrs Moncrieff, I believe the two of you discovered the body earlier this evening.’
‘Why, yes,’ said Cecily brightly. ‘It has been quite the night for new experiences.’
‘I blame myself for persuading Mrs Moncrieff to take the night air with me,’ Lord Illingworth confided playfully. ‘Young ladies should be exposed to agreeable sights exclusively.’
‘On the contrary, I feel that every young woman should be shown what a dead body looks like,’ Cecily declared with spirit. ‘How else is she to recognise one should she stumble upon one alone? Without looking closely, I should have thought the man asleep or drunk. To be sure, it would be most unusual for anyone to be asleep or drunk in Ernest’s garden, but it is hardly to be expected that somebody should be dead there either.’
‘Nevertheless, it must have been a most distressing experience,’ I suggested gently. So keen were those around her to armour themselves with wit and flippancy against any expression of genuine feeling, that it seemed to me that Cecily was feeling obliged to suppress the horror she must surely have felt at such a disagreeable sight. This, I thought, could hardly be healthy for her nerves, especially in her delicate condition, although she showed no outward sign of being troubled.
‘Oh, it was horrid,’ she agreed sincerely. ‘Distressing, and frightening, and thrilling too. I have led a sheltered life, Dr Watson, and that prepares one for a great many things. When excitement has been so rare, one savours what one finds. And, of course, it means that I have read a great deal of sensational fiction, though only when my governess was otherwise occupied.’
‘So you knew what to do on finding a body, at least,’ I said.
‘Of course. I knew not to move it or interfere with the scene of the crime, and all those important things. And I asked Merriman to call the police at once.’
‘What about you, Lord Illingworth? Was this your first dead body?’ Holmes asked.
The diplomat blanched a little. ‘I have seen my share of misfortune, Mr Holmes. I try not to dwell on it. It is one of the principles of good taste.’
‘You have been in Vienna, I perceive,’ Holmes noted. ‘Your cufflinks were made there, and you still wear your whiskers in the style the Austrians favour.’
‘Indeed I have,’ the peer boasted. ‘I have spent the best part of the last four years as the ambassador to Austria-Hungary.’
‘Dr Watson, you must meet Major and Mrs Nepcote,’ suggested Gwendolen, drawing me gently away. ‘Major Roderick Nepcote has spent considerable time in Afghanistan, I believe. I am sure you will have very little in common.’
‘Oh, excellent,’ I said, with little enthusiasm. The hour was late, and I was in no mood to swap stories of the subcontinent with some old warhorse.
‘To tell you the truth, you need not meet them if you don’t wish it,’ said Gwendolen more quietly. ‘Mrs Nepcote is a lady of the highest breeding, and always perfectly shameless in her treatment of the gentlemen to whom she is introduced. It is very amusing to watch, especially for those of us who were at school with her, but I will spare you if you would prefer it. I wanted to speak to you about this business in the garden. I am exceedingly concerned about it.’
‘It’s a very concerning matter,’ I agreed. ‘But your questions would be better directed towards Inspector Gregson. There is very little Holmes or I can tell you.’
However, the Honourable Gwendolen Moncrieff was not a woman to be diverted from her chosen conversational path. ‘Does Mr Holmes have any idea who this Mr Bunbury was? Such an unusual name,’ she added quickly. ‘I am certain Algy must be right that it is an invented one. I expect you will find out nothing at all if you enquire after him. But does anybody know why he called at such an inconvenient hour, asking to speak to my husband?’
‘We are not even sure it was your husband he wanted to speak to,’ I said. ‘Inspector Gregson will be doing his best to find out who the poor man was, of course, whatever his name may have been. As I’m only a medical man, all I can tell you is that he fell, struck his head, and died.’
‘You found nothing to identify him?’ Gwendolen asked. ‘No papers or personal items?’
‘We must trust the police to know their business, Mrs Moncrieff,’ I said, concerned by her persistence, ‘and Holmes to know his. They are the experts in their profession. We mustn’t carry coal to Newcastle.’
Gwendolen looked at me with sudden chilly disdain. ‘I assure you, Dr Watson, I am not in the habit of carrying coal anywhere.’
I heard a voice call, ‘Watson!’ I looked hopefully for Holmes, but it was Lord Goring beckoning me over. I crossed the floor to him in the hope of respite, which evaporated when the viscount said, ‘Dr Watson, I’d like you to meet Major and Mrs Nepcote.’
‘Dr Watson, I’m so pleased to meet you,’ Mrs Nepcote purred. She was an auburn-haired woman of around Gwendolen’s age, rather plump and with a manner that was, as her friend had implied, embarrassingly forward. ‘I can’t understand why you’ve never been invited to any party I’ve attended before. You would be quite the ornament at any of them.’
‘My blushes, madam,’ I protested as Goring slipped away with evident relief, but Mrs Nepcote seemed unstoppable. In the space of five minutes she praised my ‘military’ physique, my presumed bravery on the battlefield, my selfless devotion to medicine, my writings (which it was perfectly apparent she had never read), my wonderfully practical attire and, in the end, my moustache, which she even went so far as to stroke, all while her husband the major, who might have been anywhere between two and three times her age, smiled indulgently at her every antic.
‘Mr Holmes, too, is a fascinating man,’ she went on, finally exhausting her first subject and turning without pause to the next. ‘A man of his accomplishments and adventures will always be enthralling, but I did not expect him to be so handsome in the flesh!’ She glanced across to where my friend was still in conversation with Lord Illingworth and Algernon Moncrieff. ‘I am always fascinated by the private lives of prominent men. I am sure he must have had many lady friends not mentioned in your discreet stories, Dr Watson.’
I spluttered afresh at this absurd characterisation of my friend, and she showed me a calculating frown. ‘Or perhaps,’ she said, ‘his interests do not lie in such directions. In your stories—’
‘His interests,’ I said, very stiffly, ‘lie entirely in the arena of detection, and my accounts reflect this with the most faithful factual accuracy.’
Mercifully, at this juncture Inspector Gregson entered, carrying the torn and somewhat soiled shawl that the constable had finally retrieved from the tree, and I excused myself hastily. Holmes also gravitated towards the inspector, as did Lord Goring, and we reconvened in the passageway.
‘That is certainly my wife’s shawl,’ Goring confirmed when asked, and Gregson showed us how the torn section fitted into the hole. The spider’s-web brooch, the inspector told us, had already been taken to Scotland Yard for safekeeping.
‘Well, my lord, you will see how this looks,’ Gregson said, apologetically.
‘Naturally,’ Goring confirmed. ‘It looks just as it would if my wife had met with this Bunbury fellow on the balcony outside the library and pushed him to his death. That was what you were about to suggest, was it not, Inspector?’
‘
I can hardly ignore the facts, my lord,’ Gregson replied, more defiantly this time.
‘You accuse Lady Goring of murder,’ the viscount insisted.
‘I would not say accuse, my lord. Not at this stage. But, as I say, you must understand how this looks.’
‘If I may, Inspector,’ said Holmes, and Gregson gave way to him at once. ‘The scenario you outline raises significant questions.’
Lord Goring said, ‘Go on,’ but Holmes had not been waiting for his permission.
He said, ‘Firstly, why would Lady Goring make such an ineffectual attempt to conceal the shawl? She might instead have hidden it, perhaps up the chimney in the library or behind some books, to be retrieved at her later convenience. She might indeed have stirred up the library fire and burnt it, all unobserved. Instead, you ask us to believe that she threw it across the garden onto a tree where it would hang for the world to see.
‘Nor is it an easy feat to throw such a light object such a long distance, unless it be from a greater height. The shawl would naturally unfurl as it flew, increasing its resistance to the air. Unless thrown with considerable force, it would have simply fluttered and alighted on the lawn. To me the position looks far more as if it were thrown down from an upper window, perhaps even an attic room – those being the servants’ quarters, I assume?’
‘I believe so,’ said Gregson slowly. ‘I’ll grant you those are objections, Mr Holmes, but—’
‘There is another,’ Holmes said, ‘and it is the largest of all. Why would Lady Goring make concealing the shawl her priority, when the far more distinctive brooch that she had been wearing all evening was clearly visible in the deceased’s hand? There are any number of ways in which a lace shawl might become torn, but a corpse clutching a unique item of jewellery is a good deal more difficult to explain away. And yet your supposed murderess seems to have made no attempt to remove this far more incriminating piece of evidence.’
Holmes was, I knew, overstating his case. I had been by his side during enough murder investigations to know how rare it is for a criminal to act rationally in the aftermath of a homicide. Not even the most hard-headed of killers can always manage it. The point about the ballistics of a thrown shawl might be valid, though Holmes would normally have preferred to confirm this by experiment rather than asserting it so boldly, but the arguments relying on Lady Goring’s state of mind after putatively committing murder were tenuous at best.
Of course, Gregson had been a policeman long enough to know this as well. However, while never a detective of Holmes’s calibre (as if there were ever any other such), the man was no fool. Holmes was not seeking to convince him, merely to establish grounds for doubt… and if it meant that Gregson did not have to arrest the wife of a viscount without first obtaining his superiors’ approval, the inspector would be very willing to go along with the pretence.
He said, ‘Well, I dare say those points would benefit from further consideration, Mr Holmes. Very well then, if you insist then I’ll do nothing precipitate tonight. Lord Goring, may I assume that Lady Goring will remain at your brother-in-law’s house until we have spoken to her?’
‘I believe I can give you that assurance, Inspector,’ Goring said, and I understood that he, too, comprehended Holmes’s subterfuge and was allowing it for now. Though it could surely not be hoped that it would last, Holmes had for the moment brokered a truce between the inspector and the viscount.
Goring gave us Sir Robert Chiltern’s address in Grosvenor Square, and Gregson said, ‘Well, then. My men still have a number of statements to collect, but I can let you gentlemen know what we find out in the morning. I suggest that we all might get whatever sleep we can, and approach this afresh on the morrow.’
As we left Ernest Moncrieff’s house and looked for a cab, I espied a man loitering next to one of the trees in the small park that occupied the centre of the square. He wore an ordinary suit rather than evening dress, and seemed otherwise out of place, with a noticeably scarred face and a misshapen nose. He stood in the shadows, where he could watch the house without Constable Northbrook or his colleague, standing in the well-lit doorway, seeing him.
Seeing me staring, the man scowled, spat and sloped off into the bushes. I turned to point him out to Holmes, who sighed.
‘I saw him also, Watson,’ he said, ‘but I made my scrutiny less obvious. An incident such as this will naturally draw idle observers, however, and his presence is not necessarily suspicious. I suggest that we remember his face, all the same.’
CHAPTER FOUR
INSPECTOR GREGSON MAKES AN ARREST
‘What is your opinion of the celebrated “Ernest Worthing” and his circle, Watson?’ Sherlock Holmes asked me at breakfast the next day.
‘Well, it’s hard to say,’ I mused, grateful for the excuse to put down my newspaper. I had been scanning an article about the government’s forthcoming financial regulation bill, but the details were beyond me. ‘On the surface they seemed utterly frivolous, but I can’t believe that they could really be so unfeeling about a man’s death. The trouble is that they all seem so unwilling to reveal anything of their feelings that it’s as if they are nothing but that surface. Even Lord Goring seemed to be putting up a front most of the time, for all his concern for his wife.’
‘Quite so, Watson, quite so. Their social milieu prizes a calm and imperturbable demeanour, and they are so repulsed by vulgar sentiment that even conventional expressions of shock or horror seem tawdry to them. I sometimes think that Mr Wells is right, and that the rich really are becoming a separate species.’
We shook our heads at the obliviousness of the rich as Mrs Hudson bustled around us, clearing away our breakfasts. A moment later, she returned and announced that Inspector Gregson was waiting outside. I finished my coffee hurriedly while pulling on my coat.
‘It’s not looking rosy for Lady Goring this morning, I am afraid, gentlemen,’ Gregson revealed grimly in the cab on the way to Grosvenor Square. He looked rumpled, and no less pale in the morning sunshine than he had at midnight. ‘I’ve talked to the commissioner already, and it seems Sir Robert Chiltern’s influence goes less far than it used to. So does Lord Caversham’s, her father-in-law.’
The interviews Gregson’s sergeant and constables had held with the servants and, eventually, with those guests who could be persuaded to comply, had continued into the small hours and had turned up some points of significance. Gregson told us that the overfriendly Mrs Nepcote claimed to have seen Lady Goring climbing the stairs to the library at around half past ten, midway between when Bunbury had been left to wait there and when his body was found. A housemaid by the name of Dora Steyne, who had returned briefly with a headache to her room at the top of the house, had looked out soon after that time, and seen a woman dressed similarly on the library balcony, with a man in a suit who she was now sure had been Bunbury.
‘A woman dressed similarly to what?’ Holmes asked. ‘What exactly was Lady Goring wearing?’
Ponderously, Gregson read from his notes. ‘A ballgown in midnight-blue satin, with flared chiffon sleeves and a pompadour neck with pearl-bead trimming at the side-fronts, a satin sash and bow. That description’s put together from a number of conversations with the ladies and their maids, so we can probably trust it. As far as I can make out, it means a dark blue dress with frills stuck onto it. And the lace shawl, of course.’
‘The maid saw the shawl?’
‘She was not altogether clear on that point. In fact, she became a bit flustered when we asked her. You know how these girls are. She’s worried about getting into trouble if she says the wrong thing.’
Holmes considered. ‘It would be difficult to distinguish between dark hues by moonlight,’ he pointed out.
‘That’s true,’ Gregson agreed. ‘This Dora says she recognised the dress by its cut. The trouble is, that sort of thing’s the height of fashion at the moment, and half the women present were wearing something similar.’
‘Most of those we saw were in di
fferent colours, though,’ I said. ‘Although wasn’t Mrs Teville’s dress a quite dark purple?’ I recalled the glamorous widow in her perfunctory mourning.
‘Very observant, Watson,’ Holmes replied. ‘Indeed it was, a royal purple, I should say. Gwendolen Moncrieff was in a much lighter powder-blue, and Cecily Moncrieff in teal. The former could never have been mistaken in moonlight for such a dress as you describe, Gregson. The latter might, were it not for the fact that its wearer was in the family way. Mrs Nepcote’s dress was of a rather dark red.’
Gregson sighed heavily. ‘I’ve a list here of what the other female guests were wearing, too. I dare say, when we manage to speak to the guests who skipped out on us, they’ll give us even more detail.’
‘Did Mrs Nepcote recognise Lady Goring by her dress?’
‘No, she swears she saw her face before she mounted the stairs. There’s nothing else up on that floor except the guest bedrooms, and they were all locked. So, either Mrs Nepcote’s lying, or Her Ladyship was in the library after Bunbury was settled there.’
‘Not that that makes her a murderess, of course,’ Holmes observed, ‘but it is suggestive, nonetheless. Well, let us see what Lady Goring has to say in her defence.’
There are few addresses in London grander than Belgrave Square, but Grosvenor Square is among them. Rather than Belgravia it is in Mayfair, a neighbouring district built at the commission of the same aristocratic family, but earlier, in the eighteenth century rather than the early nineteenth. Its houses are older, therefore, and a little less elaborately decorated, but their luxury, wealth and exclusiveness are wholly comparable. When we arrived, we found Sir Robert Chiltern’s house to be more imposing than either of those we had been in the day before. Not only was it more spacious in every dimension, but its interior was quite as befitted its owner’s station, with chandeliers and marble floors, and a grand staircase leading to the upper levels.
Robert Chiltern was not one of the idle rich, like Savile and the Moncrieffs, but an able politician who had served as a Cabinet minister under the Earl of Rosebery and was at present one of the leading lights of Her Majesty’s Opposition. As a baronet he was, of course, ineligible to sit in the House of Lords, but was a leading figure in the Commons, speaking often on matters of finance and foreign affairs, and his colleagues and opponents alike considered him a man of great integrity and principle. As well as a testament to his personal wealth, his house had served as a venue for affairs of state, hosting receptions involving ambassadors, royalty and other dignitaries.
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