The West End Horror

by Nicholas Meyer

  “Nothing very much, I grant you. The murderer is a man. He is right-handed, has a working knowledge of anatomy, and is very powerful, though somewhat under six feet—as calculated by the length of his stride. He wore new boots, expensive and probably purchased in the Strand, and he smoked what is definitely a foreign-made cigar, purchased abroad. And before he left, he tore out the page in McCarthy’s engagement diary with his name on it Good day, Inspector Lestrade.”

  * Inspector Tobias Gregson, also of Scotland Yard. A perennial rivalry existed for many years between Gregson and Lestrade. On the whole, Holmes had a higher opinion of the former.

  † In 1881, the word Roche was found written in blood on the wall of an empty house in Lauriston Gardens. The only other feature of interest was the corpse of a man, recently murdered. Watson’s account, titled “A Study in Scarlet,” was the first of Hohnes’s cases to be written up. It was published in the Beeton’s Christmas annual of 1887 under the pen name of Watson’s literary agent, Dr. A. Conan Doyle.

  ‡ In 1912 Shaw wrote Pygmalion, a play very obviously inspired by Holmes, about an eccentric bachelor with the same gift for placing people by their speech. Dr. Watson finds his counterpart in Colonel Pickering, who like Watson, has met his roommate on his return from Indian dimes.

  § This is fiction on Watson’s part or Shaw’s. I can find no mention of a scandal involving such a theater, author, or actress. There may have been such a tragedy, of course, but if there was, the names have been changed.

  ¶ Holmes’s prediction proved correct. Hopkins became chief inspector in 1904 and had a forensic laboratory named for him upon his retirement in 1925.

  FOUR

  CONCERNING BUNTHORNE

  On our way downstairs, we passed the police surgeon, Mr. Brownlow, and his men with the stretcher. Holmes exchanged a few words with that grey-bearded individual, with whom he had a nodding acquaintance. We then passed through the police barriers outside, and Holmes withdrew his watch.

  “I’m in the mood for lunch,” he declared, sucking in the cold fresh air and looking about “Watson, this used to be your stamping ground; where shall we dine?”

  There’s the Holborn; it’s not far from here.”

  “Excellent Let us repair to it for sustenance. Are you coming, Shaw?” He began to walk through the dirty snow at a smart pace, obliging the critic to skip briskly.

  “How can you even think of food after what you have just witnessed?” Shaw cried in dismay.

  “It is because of what I have witnessed that I find it crossing my mind,” the detective returned. “Food is one of the principal means by which death is avoided.”

  I really ought to be at work,” Shaw growled as he sat down with us at the Holbom and eyed askance the Masonic tiling with which the establishment was decorated. “I’ve two pieces due by noon tomorrow, and I haven’t begun either of ‘em yet.” In spite of which statement he showed no disposition to leave.

  “Watson,” Holmes turned to me, his face hidden by the menu, “what do you say to some Windsor soup, beefsteak pie, roly-poly pudding, and a respectable Bordeaux?”

  “That would suit me down to the ground.”

  “Good. Shaw, my dear fellow?”

  “Certainly not. I am no carnivore, preying upon my fellow creatures. You may order me a small salad.”

  Holmes shrugged and gave our order to the waiter. It nettled me, I confess, to have my eating and drinking habits constantly challenged and rebuked by this waggish fellow. Furthermore, I perceived that far from paying Holmes for his services, the Irishman was now prepared to accept his luncheon as part of the detective’s largesse.

  We sat in silence for some moments, awaiting our meal and listening to the hubbub around us: the chat of the many customers crowding the restaurant at midday, the clatter of cutlery, and the incessant swinging of the doors that led to the kitchen. Holmes paid no attention to the chaos, but sat lost in thought, his eyes closed and his chin sunk upon his breast. With his great hawk’s bill of a nose, he resembled nothing so much as some sleeping bird of prey.

  “Well?” Shaw demanded, tiring of watching him. “Will you take the case?”

  Holmes did not move or open his eyes. “Yes.”

  “Excellent!” The Irishman beamed, his countenance wreathed in smiles. “What must we do first?”

  “We must eat.” Holmes opened his eyes in search of our waiter, who arrived at that moment, carrying a large tray. Suiting action to the word, the detective refused to utter so much as a syllable for the next thirty minutes. He cheerfully ignored all Shaw’s insistent enquiries but favoured that peppery individual with a smile every now and then by way of encouragement.

  More familiar with his humours than was the critic, I did my best to contain my speculations and addressed myself to my own victuals, until at length Holmes took a final sip of wine, patted his mouth delicately with his napkin and proceeded to fill his pipe.

  “You’re not going to smoke!” Shaw protested. “Great heavens, man, are you intent on killing yourself?”

  “The case is not without its features of interest,” my companion began as though the other had not spoken. “Young Hopkins has a career unless I am very much mistaken. Are there any points which occur to you, Watson?”

  “Aside from the business of the book, I must confess I was perplexed by the manner in which rigor mortis had set in,” I replied. “One does not expect to find it so pronounced in the neck and abdomen and so conspicuously absent in the fingers and joints.”

  “Hmm.”

  “But what about the book?” Shaw interposed, excitedly. “Surely its importance cannot be overestimated. It must have been a ghastly ordeal for him to reach it.”

  “I do not underestimate its importance, I assure you. I merely question its value at the moment. Oh, I have encountered such evidence before.” He waved a languid hand. “In a man’s dying extremity, he tries to communicate the name of his murderer or else that murderer’s motive. Unfortunately, without knowing more of Jonathan McCarthy than any of us do at present, it is highly unlikely that his outré clue can be forced into yielding much of value. What are we supposed to infer from it? That he saw himself as Mercutio? As Tybalt? That he was involved in a familial vendetta? Is it a word, a phrase, a passage, or a character that we are looking for? You see?” he threw out both hands in an expressive gesture. “It tells us nothing.”

  “But he must have thought otherwise,” I protested.

  “He must indeed. Or possibly he could not think of anything else in the crisis. I doubt he could have managed pen and paper, even had he reached them—and they were farther away, still. Then again, the clue may be perfectly obvious to a specific individual for whom he intended it.” He shrugged.

  “Then where do we begin?” Shaw demanded, puzzled. He was brushing his beard forward with his fingers into rather a fierce attitude.

  Holmes smiled.

  “Dunhill’s would seem as likely a point of departure as any.”

  “Dunhill’s?”

  “They may be able to assist me in identifying the origins of the murderer’s cigar. I shall go there after luncheon. In the meantime, I suppose we might begin with Bunthorne. Any idea who that might be?”

  “Bunthorne?” We stared at him, I, for one, never having heard the name. He smiled yet more broadly, then drew forth his pocket book and produced a torn piece of paper from it.

  This is from McCarthy’s engagement diary.”

  “I thought you said his murderer had pinched his engagements for February the twenty-eighth.”

  “So he did. This, as you can see, is for February the twenty-seventh, and I pinched it.”

  “It contains but one entry,” I observed, “for six-thirty at the Cafe” Royal.”

  “Precisely. With someone named Bunthorne.”

  Shaw silently reached forward and took up the paper, a scowl on his face, rendering his features more comical than usual. Abruptly he broke into an amused chuckle of appreciation.
/>   “I can tell you who Bunthorne is—and so could anyone else in the West End, I fancy, but as you don’t frequent anything but Covent Garden and the Albert Hall, I doubt very much if you’d know.”

  “Is he famous, then, this Bunthorne?” I asked.

  The critic laughed again. “Quite famous. One might even say infamous—but not under that name. My late colleague appears to have noted his engagements in a sort of code.”

  “How do you know for whom Bunthorne stands? Is it a nickname?” Holmes enquired.

  “Not precisely. Still I daresay he would answer to it.” Shaw spread the paper out and jabbed at it with a thin forefinger. “It’s the restaurant that makes it certain. He is usually to be found there, holding court.”

  “Holding court?” I ejaculated. “Who the devil is he, the Prince of Wales?”

  “He is Oscar Wilde.”

  “The playwright?”

  “The genius.”

  “What links him with this ‘Bundiome’?” Holmes wondered.

  Shaw laughed once more. “For that you must be familiar—as I suspect you are not—with the comic operas of Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan. Do you never go to the Savoy?”

  “The Mikado and so forth?” Holmes shook his head and relit his pipe.

  Then you are missing the greatest combination of words and music since Aristophanes, Wagner excepted. Bunthome is to be found in Patience.”

  “I have heard the tunes, I expect, on the barrel organ.”

  “Of course you have. Every hurdy-gurdy in London grinds all Sullivan’s music interchangeably.” He regarded Holmes with a trace of scorn. “On what planet do you spend your time?” he wondered. “You are at least familiar with ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ and The Lost Chord’?” He was amazed, I could see, by the detective’s ignorance, which nonetheless did not seem strange to me. Sherlock Holmes was the man who once said it was a matter of utmost indifference to him whether the earth circled the sun or the sun the earth, provided the fact did not affect his work. Aside from his own particular musical interests (which leaned towards violin concerts and the grand opera), nothing was less likely than his knowing anything of London’s fads and rages. He ignored Shaw’s gibes and persisted with his own line of enquiry.

  Tell me about Patience,” he demanded.

  “Just a moment,” I cried, rubbing my forehead. “It comes to me now. Holmes, when I returned from Afghanistan in eighty-one, I saw this play! At the Savoy, was it?” I turned to Shaw.

  “I believe it opened the theatre,” the critic assented.

  “I’m almost certain of it, though I can’t remember what it was about, for the life of me. I always forget the plots and so forth within a week or two. I remember this one because I couldn’t understand what it was about at the time I was watching it—soldiers and someone with very long hair who was liked by all the chorus.”

  “Can you be more precise?” Holmes asked Shaw.

  The opera parodies the whole Oscar Wilde cult of aestheticism in rather a smart fashion. It was lost on you, Doctor, because you were out of the country when Wilde and his cronies burst upon the scene. Wilde himself appears in the piece in the person of Reginald Bunthorne—‘A Fleshly Poet’” Shaw grinned, coughed, and broke into song, his voice proving to be surprisingly musical, a pleasant, not quite robust baritone that caused a nearby head or two to turn in our direction:

  If you’re anxious for to shine in the high aesthetic

  line as a man of culture rare,

  You must get up all the germs of the transcendental

  terms, and plant them everywhere.

  You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in

  novel phrases of your complicated state of mind,

  The meaning doesn’t matter if it’s only idle chatter

  of a transcendental kind.

  And every one will say,

  As you walk your mystic way,

  “If this young man expresses himself in terms too

  deep for me,

  Why what a very singularly deep young man this

  deep young man must be!”

  Seeing that we made no move to interrupt, he went on:

  Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion

  must excite your languid spleen,

  An attachment … la Plato for a bashful young potato,

  or a not too French French-bean!

  Though the Philistines may jostle you will rank

  as an apostle in the high aesthetic band,

  If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily

  in your mediaeval hand.

  And every one will say—

  Here he broke off, coughing again and looking embarrassed.

  “It goes something like that for another verse or so. Anyhow, that’s Bunthome—and depend upon it, that’s Oscar.” He looked at his watch. “Heavens, I must be off. I’ve had my fun, and now I must pay for it. Where shall we meet? I want you to catch me up on what progress you make.”

  “Willis’s for supper?” I hazarded.

  “That’s a trifle rich for my blood.”

  “What about Simpson’s?”

  “Very well.” He started to rise. “A little before eight?”

  “One moment.” Holmes laid a hand on his arm. “You know Mr. Wilde personally?”

  “I know him, though not well. We are too awed by one another’s gifts, with the result that we intimidate ourselves.”

  Holmes maintained his loose hold on the critic’s arm. “Is he really a genius?”

  “Oscar? Some of the cleverest people in London suppose so—Harris, Max Beerbohm, Whisder—”

  “Do you?”

  “What does it matter whether he is or is not a genius and if I think so or not?”

  “I am trying to understand the dramatis personae in this business. You didn’t think much of Jonathan McCarthy; I should like your estimate of Oscar Wilde.”

  “Very well,” he frowned, gnawing a bit of his beard. “Yes. I would say definitely yes, he is a genius. His plays will be remembered as among the most scintillating in the language—and they are the least of his creations. Patience, on the other hand, will become passé within his lifetime.* A genius,” he repeated, unwillingly, “but he is courting ruin.”

  “Why?”

  Shaw sighed and considered how best to answer the question. It was more difficult than I would have imagined for him to frame a response.

  “I am not at liberty to be specific,” he temporized after a pause.

  “Then be general,” Holmes advised.

  Shaw thought again, his Mephistophelian brows arching in concentration. “Oscar has antagonised the world,” he began, choosing his words with care. “He delights in antagonising the world. He doesn’t take it seriously.” He put his hands on the table and interlaced the fingers. “But the world does. The world takes it very seriously and is not inclined to forgive him for it The world is waiting to take vengeance. There are sacred rites and conventions which will not be flouted.”

  “Mr. Gilbert has flouted them for years, hasn’t he?” I asked. “Are they howling for his blood, as well? I don’t believe it.”

  Shaw looked at me. “Mr. Gilbert’s private life is beyond reproach. Or if it isn’t, Mr. Gilbert is discreet. The same cannot be said of Oscar Wilde.” He rose abruptly, as though annoyed with himself for having spoken too much. “Good day, gentlemen.”

  “Shaw,” Holmes looked up languidly. “Where can we find Wilde?”

  “These days I believe he puts up at the Avondale, in Piccadilly. Good day,” he said again and bobbed his head in elfish acknowledgement before leaving with that curious dancing gait.

  Sherlock Holmes turned to me. “Coffee, Watson?”

  We proceeded after lunch to Dunhill’s, in Regent Street, where Mr. Fitzgerald, who knew the detective well, examined the bit of cigar we exhibited.

  “Dinna tell me you’re at a loss,” the Scot laughed, his blue eyes twinkling as he took the cigar.

  H
olmes was not amused. “I can identify twenty-three kinds of tobacco from the ash alone,” he responded somewhat testily, it seemed to me. “When you have told me what this is, I shall have incorporated a twenty-fourth into my repertoire.”

  “Ay, ay,” the honest fellow went on chuckling as he bent over the thing. “Well, it’s foreign but not imported by anyone I know,” he began.

  “So much I had already deduced.”

  “Did you, indeed? Ay, well that narrows the field.” He held it up and smelled it. “From the scent and the wrapping, I’d say it was Indian.” He turned it back and forth between his thumb and forefinger, holding it to his ear and listening to the crackle, then sighted along its length like a rifle. “A cheroot. Notice the square-cut end and the heavy proportion of Latakia? They’re a great favorite with the boys in the Indian army, but then those laddies’ll smoke anything. I doubt I’d have the stomach for it, but I’ve heard you can acquire a taste for them.”

  “You can’t buy them in England?”

  “No, Mr. Holmes, I don’t believe you can. They’re too tough for civilians, as I’ve said, though some of the lads come home with boxes because they know there’re none to be found here.”

  “Mr. Fitzgerald, I thank you.”

  “Not at all, Mr. Holmes. Does it figure in a case?”

  “It may, Mr. Fitzgerald. It may.”

  * Shaw’s ability to predict the future popularity of plays and operettas is questionable. He postulated an early demise for Sardou’s play, Tosco, which in operatic form enjoys the same robust health as Patience.

  FIVE

  THE LORD OF LIFE

  Holmes and I had of course seen caricatures of Oscar Wilde. Over the years his strange haircut, corpulent physique, and outlandish mode of dress had become familiar to us—as to all—through countless pen-and-ink sketches in various papers. And though we had not seen either play, we were aware that the brilliant Irishman was the author of two comedies playing simultaneously to packed houses. His latest, The Importance of Being Earnest, had opened only a fortnight or so before and been highly endorsed by the critics and public alike.