The Falling Curtain (The Assassination of Sherlock Holmes Book 3)

by Janacek, Craig

  Rushing towards it, Holmes tore off the lid and peered down into the crate. Joining him, I could see that it was filled with a row of about twenty brown paper tubes. Judging from the depth of the box, I estimated that it went roughly five tubes deep. These were all wired together with a copper filament and via this attached to an ornate silver pocket watch. I glanced at the clock, which was inexorably counting down towards detonation. To my dismay, I noted that there was less than a minute left. “But that is too short!” I protested.

  Holmes shook his head ruefully, “It was a mistake, Watson, to think that Mortlock would ever play by the rules.”

  “But you can deactivate it?”

  He pursed his lips and frowned. “In my little brain-attic I possess some knowledge pertinent to the neutralization of bombs, but I fear that there is not enough time to bring it to bear.”

  “Then what shall we do?” I cried.

  Holmes looked about the walkway. He nodded towards a larger window nearby. “Throw that open, Watson!” he commanded. “Quickly!”

  While I carried out this order, Holmes reached into the crate and pulled the bomb forth, its weight heavy even in his strong arms. He staggered to the window and with a great heave tossed it into the night. We both leaned against the window and watched it fall towards the river. If Holmes had flung it too late, it might explode in the air, and still destroy the roadway and anyone passing over the bridge. I could feel every beat of my heart as it sank towards the waves, and I cheered as the Thames covered it. Seconds later, an enormous burst of fire and steam were thrown into the air, with great sound and fury.

  §

  Fortuitously, as we soon discovered upon our descent, no serious harm had been done to either man or bridge. However, if I had thought that Holmes would be pleased to have narrowly avoided both his death and mine, not to mention the destruction of one of London’s finest landmarks, I was much mistaken. Despite the fact that our Irregulars had fished Shinwell Johnson out of the frigid river before the bomb fell, and all were safe and sound, Holmes’ mood could generously be described as taciturn. In short, he was cold and aloof for the entire drive back to our headquarters at Wat Tyler’s House, and in turn, this gloom infected me and the rest of our companions. It was a grim lot that finally laid down our heads that night, each of us aware that although one plot had been hindered, Mortlock himself was still at large, and could strike against us at any moment.

  In the morning, I found that Holmes had arisen before anyone else, and in a fit of uncommon courtesy, he had repaired outside to the rear garden of the inn. There he had paced back and forth long enough to wear a small furrow in the winter-browned grass, but when he joined us in the war-chamber, I noted that the bright shining of the sun seemed to have erased some of Holmes’s black depression. The bright, eager spirit that greeted us in turn also served to revitalize the mood of the Irregulars.

  After acknowledging each of our compatriots, Holmes sat down in the head chair and leaned back. He then proceeded to chuckle, as if he found something hilarious. “I have been terribly obtuse, Watson. I fear that I have not been operating at the heights of my powers, or I would have seen that springing Mortlock’s trap was not in fact the most efficient method to go about our offensive. Instead, we should hunt him down in his bolt-hole.”

  “How do you propose to do that, Holmes?” I inquired.

  “Tell me, Watson, what was the point of that little escapade outside of Silvester’s Bank four weeks past?”

  “Do you mean on top of the Monument? Why, Sebastian Moran was trying to assassinate you and Inspector Lestrade. It was intended to be Moran’s revenge for Lestrade capturing him, with no small assistance from you, Holmes, fifteen years ago.”

  Holmes raised his bushy eyebrows. “Was it? I wonder.” He tapped his pip against the arm of his chair.

  “What else could it have been?” interjected Shinwell Johnson.

  “A test. And perhaps a trap,” said he, enigmatically. “Watson, I should have gone with you to interview Moran. This was a capital mistake. Perhaps I could have prevented his death, or at least delayed it until we obtained more useful information from him. And there is no substitute for direct observations made at the scene of the crime.”

  “I described everything to you, Holmes,” I protested.

  “You described everything you saw, Watson. That is not the same as everything I would have observed.”

  “Then go now,” I replied, with some peevishness at his recitation of my apparent limitations.

  He shook his head. “No, I am afraid it is far too late for that. You will just have to tell it again.”

  I sighed and proceeded to do so, as his eyelids drooped and he attempted to visualize the scene. When I was finished reciting Moran’s last breaths, however, he simply sighed. “It will not do, Watson. How could you have let him die before your eyes?”

  “How was I to know that the cigarettes were poisoned, Holmes! And the speed by which they acted….”

  He suddenly sprang upright. “That is it, Watson! Unless there was only one poisoned cigarette, amongst a case of normal ones, then this must have been a new package. Something that was delivered shortly before you arrived!”

  I thought back. “There was a woman...”

  “What!” he exclaimed. “You only mention this now?”

  I shrugged. “How could I have known that the trivial matter of a woman leaving the prison just as I arrived would be of any note?”

  Holmes shook his head. “Watson, Watson. How many times must I tell you that there is nothing so important as trifles? We may take it as a working hypothesis that this woman was the vector of Moran’s doom. The question is why?”

  I frowned. “Is not the question the nature of her identity?”

  “Not at all, Watson.” He turned to the former district messenger boy. “Cartwright, this is exactly the sort of task that you excel at. We shall send you to Wandsworth Prison forthwith in order to determine who precisely had the necessary permit to visit Colonel Sebastian Moran.”

  “What if she used a false identity?” I protested.

  “Possible, Watson, possible. But Moran was no simple smash-and-grabber. Not just any person could waltz into his cell. They would need a good reason. And from that we should be able to deduce her true self.”

  §

  Several hours passed before Cartwright returned from this errand, and it proved that there was little deduction needed to be made. For the woman had brazenly signed both her name and provided the location of her London residence. The latter was at 98 Finchley Road, at a Camden inn called the Swiss Tavern,[141] and the former was listed as ‘Patience Moran.’

  This was, of course, a name that I recognized, like a specter from the past. “Could it be the same girl, Holmes?” I asked, aghast.

  He shrugged. “A girl no more, Watson, for the McCarthy case was twenty years ago. But there are stranger things in heaven and earth.”

  “Is she a relative?”

  Holmes nodded slowly. “Perhaps a niece. Her father was the local lodge-keeper, was he not? Possibly a by-blow of the late Sir Augustus? At the time of the Boscombe Valley affair, I had yet to determine that Sebastian Moran was serving as the chief lieutenant for Professor Moriarty’s empire of crime, and thus, I took little notice of the girl’s name. In retrospect, that may have been a mistake.”

  However, it is difficult to say how Holmes could have possibly suspected the transformation of the girl we found waiting for us in a private room at the Swiss Tavern. She proved to be but a few years over thirty and her face was still unlined. Her piled up hair was golden blond, which contrasted vividly with her eyes, so dark brown to be almost black. She wore what was plainly an expensive grey muslin dress and her neck was adorned with a golden necklace studded by a dozen exquisite rubies. Sitting in a high-backed chair, her posture was ramrod straight, as if she was a sergeant-of-arms just off the parade ground. I thought her beautiful at first glance, but further inspection revealed the bla
zing eyes that I recognized from portraits of such zealots as Joan of Arc or Bloody Mary. As soon as she spoke, I realized that she was far gone from the paths of decency.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” said she, in a voice like being entombed in a glacier. “I have been expecting you for several days now. I had been told to anticipate far more from you, Mr. Holmes, but it is now clear that you were put out to pasture for a reason.”

  If Holmes was upset by her slights, his face did not show it. “And your uncle? Were you also instructed to put him down, like a maimed thoroughbred?”

  She chuckled, but there was a curiously-hollow tone in her laughter, as if she was merely aping the emotion rather than actually experiencing it. “Very good, Mr. Holmes. But are you simply guessing, I wonder?” When Holmes failed to respond, she continued. “He was never very kind to me, you know, or to my father, who was but his half-brother,” she shrugged. “So once he had outlived his usefulness, it was time to make certain that he could betray no confidences.”

  “And who precisely trained you to be a lowly assassin?” asked Holmes, harshly.

  But Holmes’ blistering words made little impression upon her rosy cheeks. Only her cold dark eyes narrowed dangerously. “Those are dangerous words, Mr. Holmes. If you were to repeat them in public, you can be certain that you would be hearing from my solicitor. Do you truly want your last appearance in the papers to be the story of how you libeled a defenseless young woman?”

  “It is not libel if it is true.”

  “If what is true, Mr. Holmes?” She opened her empty palms. “What proof do you have that I have ever committed a crime? Especially one so foul as the murder of my own uncle. Who could believe such a thing?”

  Holmes shook his head. “I may not be able to directly link you to the Colonel’s death, but once I imprison Mr. Mortlock, you can be certain that your source of income will be cut off. How long will you be able to eat after pawning that necklace on Tottenham Court Road? Three months? And then what? The workhouse? The back lanes of Whitechapel?”

  She smiled cruelly. “You truly do not see, do you, Mr. Holmes? What do I care of fancy jewelry and fine dresses? These are merely props, stage settings for the great play in which we are all actors. Unfortunately for you, the playwright has deemed that this will be a tragedy. And like all great tragedies, it must end with the protagonist’s death.” She glanced over at me for the first time. “Only your Horatio here will be allowed to survive long enough in order to take up his pen and record the sequel to his prior false finale. What shall you call it, Doctor? ‘The Fall of Sherlock Holmes?’ I think that has a nice ring.”

  “So you will not give him up?” Holmes demanded.

  With a smile that dripped with false sweetness, she shrugged again. “Give who up, Mr. Holmes? Provide me with a name, not some nom-de-plume, and perhaps I can help you.” She stared at him for a moment. “No? Then be gone, I say!” she waved her hand, her tone no less commanding than a queen of old, though I knew her to be nothing but a country-bred lass.

  Holmes stared at her for a moment, and then nodded coolly. “Very well, Miss Moran. If you will not listen to a voice of reason, then there is little I can do to save you when the sword falls. And fall it will. Even the great Professor Moriarty was no match for me. What hope does Mr. Mortlock have?”

  He strode out imperiously, matching her manner with a similar aloofness. As I followed behind him, I glanced back to see if he had made any impression on the fanatical soul that resided in the bosom of what looked like nothing more than a modest young lady. But I feared that there was nothing hopeful in her lifeless gaze.

  As we departed, I threw my hands into the air. “Why will she not give him up? Does she not realize that he is a monster?”

  Holmes shook his head. “As you know, Watson, I am not a whole-hearted admirer of the so-called gentler sex. I find them to be capable of as many horrors as a man. And while their inner workings are more your area of expertise, I would suggest that she must be in the grips of a perverted love, much as were Maria Pinto Gibson or Violet de Merville.[142] And a woman’s love is not so easily set aside.”

  “But if she will not tell us anything, how are we to ever find Mortlock?”

  “I can think of seven separate possibilities, Watson. For example, we could wait for either her to go to him or vice versa, but that could prove to be a long game. Who knows how long they are willing to go without seeing each other? And then we have given him sufficient time to devise some new scheme against us. No, we must maintain our momentum of last night, when we disrupted his carefully-planned attempt upon my life.”

  “So what do you propose?”

  He stopped and looked at me. “Tell me, Watson, what poison was in that fatal cigarette?”

  I frowned. “I do not know, Holmes.”

  “But surely you still retain the professional knowledge of all medical men on the pharmacopoeia of typical poisons, either deliberate or accidental, that you might encounter in your daily practice?”

  “Of course, Holmes. But this was certainly no common poison,” I protested. “Did you yourself not once write the definitive monograph on the various agents employed by the famous poisoners throughout the centuries?”

  He smiled. “I did indeed, Watson. And that is what is so remarkable.”

  “So you do recognize it?”

  “No, I do not.”

  “But you just said that it was remarkable!” I protested.

  “Exactly, Watson. As I have said before, singularity is almost invariably a clue. The fact that Miss Moran employed a poison unknown to me suggests that it is singularly rare. If we can identify it, we should be able to determine from where it came. And there, unless I miss my mark, we shall find Mr. Mortlock.”

  “So it is to be a chemical experiment, then?”

  Holmes nodded. “Of course. However, it is during moments like this that I regret my retirement, Watson. For while Mycroft’s chamber served as a marginally adequate base, even if the repairs were complete, it cannot truly replace our flat at Baker Street. And of course, our Hampstead inn is remarkably lacking in chemical equipment.”

  I shrugged. “I have a suggestion, Holmes. Why not use the laboratory at St Bart’s? I am certain they would let you borrow it one more time.”

  A smile lit up his normally grim face. “Ah, Watson, you are in a deplorably sentimental mood today. You wish to return to the scene where we were first introduced?”

  I smiled in return. “Why not? While you are working, I may even pay a visit to the Criterion Bar.”

  Holmes shook his head and laughed. “I suppose if this is to be the end of us, there is something apropos of coming full circle. Very well, let us head to your old stomping grounds.”

  §

  A hansom ride of some twenty minutes deposited us at the steps of St Bart’s, though we stopped along the way so that Holmes could dash into a telegraph office and order Gregson to meet us there with a representative sample of the instrument of Moran’s death. As I stepped from the cab, a profound sense of familiarity washed over me, and I knew I would need no guiding to our destination. Gregson, stalwart and true, was waiting for us with the requested package, which he handed carefully to Holmes. However, the Inspector seemed mildly dismayed that Holmes would not include him further in his confidence, and he departed morosely.

  Once he was gone, Holmes and I turned down the narrow lane and through a small side-door into one wing of the great hospital. We climbed the stone staircase, even bleaker after an additional thirty years of wear, and made our way through the long corridors of whitewashed walls and dun-colored doors. Near the far end, a low arched passageway branched off to the old chemical laboratory. This lofty chamber had little changed since the last time I stepped through its doors. It was still lined and littered with countless bottles, while a plethora of students were absorbed in their work over the flickering blue flames of their Bunsen lamps.

  Holmes spotted one unoccupied space and immediately set to
work on the poisoned cigarettes with the pipettes, retorts, and test-tubes that he found there. I had accompanied Holmes up to the chemical laboratories in a nostalgic temperament, but the noxious fumes soon drove me from the place. I did not bother to inform the engrossed Holmes of my destination, for I knew that he would easily deduce it. I spent many fine minutes under the glistening ceiling of the Long Bar, whose gold mosaics were curled down into ornaments of blue and white tesserae. Over a glass or two of Château d'Yquem, I merrily conversed with a wide variety of acquaintances that I had not seen for many years. I had almost forgotten my raison d'être when Holmes finally appeared. His body looked haggard, which was hardly surprising given how hard he had been pushing himself over the last few weeks, and his hands were covered with small pieces of plaster where he had clearly had some recent mishap. But his manner was bright.

  “He has finally made his mistake, Watson,” said he, exultantly.

  “You have identified the poison then?”

  “I have indeed. And it can only have come from one place.”

  “Where?”

  “All in good time, Watson.” He leaned back and took a small phial from his pocket. “As I suspected, this has not yet found its way into either the pharmacopeia or into the general literature of toxicology. I shall have to revise Chapter Four of The Whole Art of Detection.[143] But I have nonetheless found references to it in Eckermann.[144] It is known as tetrodotoxin, and has some similar properties to curare, which you will recall is the favorite poison found on South American arrows.[145] But unlike curare, which is a plant-based poison, tetrodotoxin derives from a certain species of Pisces known as the puffer.”[146]

  “Was there not a sea captain in English history whose crew and hogs fell sick from eating pufferfish?”[147]

  “Excellent, Watson, you are scintillating this evening. And do you also know what nation is known for their consumption of pufferfish?”