Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not

by Sequeira, Christopher;

  With no regard for his own people, he shoved those still standing aside to confront my partner. To her credit, Van Helsing chose to twist herself out of his frontal charge and missed being punched in the head by mere inches. As she glided around the maddened giant, she cut him with a back slash across the ribs.

  Sparks roared in pain and whipped his left arm around, catching her in the small of the back and knocking her off her feet. That such a large man could move so fast amazed me and I knew it would take our combined efforts to defeat him.

  I hurriedly got to my feet again, holding tightly to my empty revolver. If nothing else, it would make an effective club. Van Helsing had leaped back onto her feet by performing a backwards somersault just as Sparks came for her again. With his back to me, he was now vulnerable and I raced at him, flipping my pistol so that I was holding the barrel, and, without hesitation, I jumped up and smacked him on the back of the head with the butt. He was jolted and stumbled a few feet forward.

  And that was the extent of his reaction. It was as if he’d been struck by a fly. Turning on me while massaging the knot forming on the back of his skull, he smiled cruelly.

  But only for a second.

  Dr Van Helsing, using my futile attack as a distraction, had managed to launch herself at him, her entire body flying through the air, and, at the last possible moment, she snapped out her right foot and kicked Sparks in the chest. He fell backwards and toppled over like some mighty oak in the forest. Dazed now, he tried to sit up only to have me drop down on my knees beside him and this time smash my pistol butt into his forehead with all the strength I could muster.

  Sparks’s eyes rolled up in their sockets; he groaned and then his head fell back. He was unconscious and no longer a threat.

  Dr Van Helsing approached him from the other side, her blades held before her in case he was merely faking. When he didn’t move, she sighed and straightened up.

  From my knees, I looked up at her. “What the bloody hell kept you so long?” I inquired.

  Shrugging, she pulled back her hood to show off her lustrous brown hair, tied in a bun, and smiled, “My dear inspector, a woman must take care of her appearance before going out. I’d have thought you would know that by now.”

  There is no need to bore you with the minutiae concerning the aftermath of that evening. Sparks, and those of his follow­ers who survived Dr. Van Helsing’s wrath, were arrested and brought to trial. As the leader of the cult, Josiah Sparks was sentenced to be hanged at the Lexington State Penitentiary three months hence. That should have been the end of the story. It was not.

  The days went by and I confess to forgetting all about Sparks and his sentencing date. The Commonwealth has no shortage of crime. I was kept busy protecting the streets of our fair city while the good doctor signed on to teach a class at Harvard on Secret Cults of the Middle East for a semester as a guest lecturer.

  The three months passed as time always does.

  I was nearly finished shaving when the knock on my front door interrupted me.

  “Van Helsing?” No reply. Sometimes, I think the woman could sleep through the Second Coming.

  Cursing, I put down my razor, wiped away most of the white foam off my face and tossing the towel around my neck, jogged down the stairs to the front door.

  “Good morning, Inspector,” a nervous Officer Robert Muldoon greeted as he handed me a telegram. “This arrived at the station a few minutes ago. Superintendent Lestrade said to get it to you at once.”

  “Hmm.” Naked, except for my pants and slippers, I tore open the envelope and read its content. It was more than enough to ruin my day permanently. Muldoon kept fidgeting.

  “Is there a reply, sir?”

  “Yes, tell Lestrade to wire the prison that I’m on my way.”

  “Yes, sir.” He started to turn.

  “And find a hansom cab on your way. Have the driver here in ten minutes.”

  At that, he tapped his hard cap, “Will do, Inspector. G’day to you.” Then he was rushing off down Boylson Street.

  As I walked back up the stairs I re-read the telegraph from Warden Horatio Alper. It was a puzzle, the kind I am incapable of ignoring.

  Back in the bedroom, I started towards the bathroom, setting the telegram on the bureau beside the door. Of Dr. Amelia Van Helsing, all I could see was a very shapely leg emerging from a tangle of blankets and pillows.

  “Amy, wake up,” I said in a loud voice.

  “Huh…wha…?” A lovely, round face, hair all a-mess, rose up out of the concealment. “What the bloody hell time is it?”

  “Just after seven.”

  The head fell back on the pillows. “Aggh. Leave me alone.”

  “Can’t; we’ve got a case.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Josiah Sparks…”

  “I don’t give a shit about Josiah—”

  “He’s been murdered.”

  “Why would anyone want to kill a man who was scheduled to hang in two days?” Van Helsing asked as we rolled towards the prison complex in nearby Cambridge.

  “An intriguing question, Doctor. One I am most anxious to discover the answer to.”

  It was a cool fall day and the leaves were changing their colours so that the sombre, dark, gray edifice at the end of the long boulevard—which was our destination—was surrounded all sides by trees of red, yellow and orange. The scene was like a surrealist painting. The guards stopped us at the gate to confirm our identities, then another pulled back the massive bars, and our cabbie urged his horse to continue on to the main building on the opposite side of a long courtyard.

  Stepping out of the hansom, we were greeted by Warden Alper, a portly man with graying hair and a thick, walrus-like moustache of the same hue.

  “Thank heavens you’re here, Holmes,” he blurted, not bother­ing the formality of a hand shake. “Please,” he swung his arm to the main entrance hall and the staircase along the right wall. “The Final Corridor is located on the second floor. I believe you’ve been here before?”

  “On several occasions,” I confirmed. “This is my consulting assistant, Dr Amelia Van Helsing.”

  “Yes, yes,” he looked back at her sheepishly. “Please excuse my lack of manners, Doctor. This entire affair has me quite flust­ered.”

  “I’m sure,” Van Helsing politely said. “When was the crime discovered, if I may ask?”

  “Only a few hours ago when Guard Edgar Tennant went to his…ah…Spark’s cell to deliver his breakfast. He found Sparks on his bed: dead.”

  We reached the second floor landing and Warden Alper, while holding onto the banister, took a second to catch his wind. By his girth, it was obvious he did very little in the way of physical activity. Taking a silk handkerchief from his coat, he mopped the perspiration from his forehead.

  “And who was the last man to see Josiah Sparks alive?” I asked while Alper regained his breath.

  “The same fellow, Tennant.” He pointed to a door at the end of the hall. “In there is the guard station which is manned by two men at all times. Last evening’s shift consisted of Tennant and Guard Leo Bailey. They are both awaiting us now.”

  At the door, the warden rapped his knuckles under the eye-slot. It opened, someone peered out and then it closed; followed by the sound of a lock being slid back. The door opened and Van Helsing and I went in after Warden Alper.

  There were actually three people awaiting us in the square room; the two prison guards easily identified by their dark blue uniforms, and my old friend, Dr Nigel Pettibone, the county coroner.

  The room had a single window to our right that overlooked the main courtyard and high prison walls beyond. In front of this were two small desks set side by side and to right was another door appropriately marked ‘LOO’. There were several hard wood chairs scattered about, a clothes rack, and to the left of the window a
tall medicine cabinet. Directly across from the entry door was a matching door which I easily assumed led out to the so-called Final Corridor; the place where condemned men were quartered five days before their appointed executions.

  While I was taking all this in, the warden was introducing everyone. “This here is Edgar Tennant,” he said indicating the shorter and older of the two guards. Tennant was balding with patches of gray hair over his ears, a button nose and wire-rim glasses covered two brown eyes. He could not have been more than five feet, five inches tall.

  “And guard Leo Bailey, two of our finest men.” Bailey was average height, maybe five feet, ten inches, with fine, straw coloured hair and a razor thin moustache barely visible over his upper lip. Both men, standing behind their respective desks, nodded to us politely.

  “I’m sure you know Doctor Pettibone,” our host concluded, pointing to the beefy pathologist in the brown tweed suit. A dapper fellow, with slick, black hair, my friend looked more like a barrister than a medical man.

  “Hello, Inspector and Dr. Van Helsing,” he smiled. “Good to see you both.” Pettibone was enamored of Van Helsing and could never quite hide it completely; whereas she often flirted with him unmercifully. Women are by far the crueller sex.

  “Pettibone,” I returned his greeting, while eyeing the closed door behind him. “I take it you have not yet examined the body?”

  “What, and incur your wrath, old boy,” he chuckled. “Heaven forbid, Holmes, I do know you that well by now.”

  “Yes, I dare say you do.” I turned my gaze to Warden Alper. “Shall we proceed?”

  Alper in turn gave Tennant a hand wave and the small man hustled over to a wall mount to retrieve a set of keys. He reached up; grabbed them, and then, circling around us, went over to the locked door and opened it. He backed up to let us pass.

  “It was you who discovered Sparks dead?” I asked Guard Tennant.

  “Er…yes, sir, Inspector, when I went to bring him his break­fast.”

  “Very well, you will accompany me and Dr. Van Helsing.” I looked back at the others. “The rest of you will kindly remain here while we examine the crime tableau.”

  Knowing they would comply with my wishes, I then allowed Tennant, still clutching his keys nervously, to move past me into the adjoining corridor.

  The Final Corridor is a long, rectangular, windowless hall through which extends a small aisle for approximately twenty yards. At the end of this aisle was a door secured with a chain and lock. To either side were two fairly large cells, each of which contained a seven foot cot, with a pillow and rough, coarse blanket. At the centre of each cell, against the back wall, was a white porcelain toilet.

  In the exact centre of the aisle was an old, cast-iron, pot-bellied stove; its flue-pipe rising up through a fitted hole in the ceiling. We could feel the heat emanating from it as we approached the first cell on our left. It was the only one of the four cells currently occupied.

  Looking through the equally spaced bars, I saw the late Josiah Sparks lying half on the floor in a diagonal position, his thighs and legs still on the cot where he supposedly had met his demise. Something, or someone, had caused his body to slide off the bed during the commission of their foul deed. All imposing seven feet of him; although no longer menacing.

  “Is this how you found him?” I asked Guard Tennant as he slid the proper key into the cell locking mechanism.

  “Aye, sir. He was just like you see him now, Guv’nor, half in and out of his sack.”

  “Did you enter the cell?”

  Tennant pulled open the door. “Yes, sir. I did.”

  “What did you do with the breakfast tray?”

  “The wha…oh, right. Yes, sir. Well, when I sees him stretched out like that, I set it down on the floor slot next to your foot there. It’s against orders to open the door without an armed guard present, he being such a monster and all.”

  “Did you call out to Sparks?”

  “Well, no, sir. I mean, I could see by the blue colour of his face he was a goner.”

  “Continue, Mr Tennant. What did you do next?”

  Tennant looked at Van Helsing and then back to me obviously fearful of what he was about to confess. “I was scared and all, not thinking right. As I said, I set the tray down and I unlocked the door to go in and check on ‘im.”

  Then Tennant, having opened the cell door, entered and moved to the body and demonstrated what he had done. He pointed at the dead man awkwardly. “I knelt right here, Guv’nor, and leaned over his face to see if he were still breathing. He weren’t.”

  “And then?”

  “Well, then I run to fetch Leo Bailey, I did. Told him what I’d found is what I did.”

  “Did Mr Bailey come back with you to see for himself?”

  “Yes, sir. He did. Then he left to go tell Warden Alper while I stayed in the hall there, waiting.”

  The poor fellow looked as if he would be physically ill. I was almost finished with him.

  “Just a few more questions, Tennant, if you don’t mind.”

  “No, sir. Whatever it is you need.”

  “Excellent. Who was the last person to see Josiah Sparks alive?”

  “That would be me, sir. When I brought him his dinner last night.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Shortly after six, sir. The kitchen had made up a lamb stew, sir. Our cooks do a fine job of it, they do. We get no complaints from the inmates cause of the grub.”

  Dr Van Helsing was doing her best not to chuckle.

  “Was that the last time you saw him alive, when you brought him this meal of lamb stew?”

  “Well, yes, sir.”

  “Then where is the bowl and serving tray upon which you delivered it?”

  Edgar Tennant’s eyes widened like a trapped rabbit, then he shook his head. “Forgive me, sir, I misspoke. I did return later to remove those items.”

  “Which would have been what…about six-thirty?”

  “Yessir.”

  “And did Sparks appear well and healthy when you returned and removed those items?”

  “Yes, sir, he did. He shoved the empty tray through the floor slot, said to give his compliments to the chef like some fancy big-wig and then returned to his bunk. That was how I left him. Sitting there, with his back against the bars.”

  “Thank you, Guard Tennant. You may return to the guard station now while my colleague and I examine the body.”

  As soon as Edgar Tennant was gone, Dr Van Helsing came into the cell and stood beside me. I could see her own eyes flicking back and forth as they took in every single detail before them. Van Helsing’s memory is nearly as sharp as my own.

  “Do you believe him?” she finally asked, referring to the guard’s story.

  “Do I have a choice?” I went down on one knee and carefully took a hold of Spark’s right wrist. Even through my kid gloves, I could feel its coldness. “Rigor has set in. He’s been dead for most the night.”

  “Look at his throat,” Van Helsing directed as she leaned over my left shoulder. “Those are fingers marks about his neck. It appears his larynx has been crushed.”

  Staring into the face of a dead man is not pleasant but in dealing with murder one must endure such discomfort in seeking out the truth.

  There were indeed ligature marks on Josiah Sparks’ neck, rough, red bruises like those left by human hands. His mouth was open and his tongue, now gray in colour, stuck out from it like some devilish slug attempting to rise from its hole. The pupils of his eyes were dilated and there was blood around them; evidence of ruptured capillaries. The human body undergoes many violent changes when violent death attacks it.

  It was then that my nose detected a faint, sweet odour. I titled my head closer to that awful, gaping maw and sniffed.

  “You smell something?” Van Helsing is also v
ery good at stating the obvious.

  “Perhaps. But it’s too faint and I cannot quite identify it.”

  Having observed all I needed to, I rose to my feet and said, “I’m done here. You?”

  She made a point of walking in a tight circle around the small cell then copied my own inspection of the corpse to include smelling the area about the mouth.

  “Hmm…the only odour I can smell is foul; from whatever he ingested last. Nothing overly peculiar in that regard.”

  Thus we concluded our tableau investigation and returned to the guard station. There I informed Dr Pettibone about our surmising that death was by strangulation. Pettibone picked up his medical bag and went to make his own determination.

  In the meantime, I turned my focus on the second guard; Leo Bailey. He was standing beside his desk, having given over his chair to Warden Alper.

  “Now, Guard Bailey,” I began. “If you would be so kind as to answer a few questions, just as your associate has done.”

  “Anything, sir. I am at your service.”

  “One of them did it,” Van Helsing said matter-of-factly as we were jostled up and down in the hansom cab.

  “Or both of them,” I returned as we rode through Boston and to Constabulary Headquarters. There was a fire in her eyes indicative of the puzzle’s challenge.

  “But bloody how?” she slapped her hands together. “Together, Tennant and Bailey wouldn’t pose a problem to a normal back alley ruffian. One is no more than a bean stalk and the other an overgrown dwarf! It is physically impossible for either of them, alone or together, to have gotten the best of a giant like Sparks; overwhelmed him and then successfully strangled him.”

  “But we are left with the fact that it did happen, my dear. There is no denying the man is dead, the very life choked out of him, while he was incarcerated in a cell where the only two people having access to him were George Tennant and Leo Bailey.”

  I tapped the two slim folders on my lap; the prison’s personnel records on both men which Warden Alper had been kind enough to let us borrow. “I believe the answer…or part of it, lies within these pages.”